Ginny couldn't remember the first time she'd heard the word 'soulmate.' It had always just been… there. Like the concept of mother or father or spider or magic. She'd never learned about it, it had just always been vaguely present in her life somehow- there were things to love, and things to know, and things to be afraid of, and things that were just her. And then there was 'soulmate,' which fell under 'things to expect one day.'
"But what's a soul?" Ginny used to ask, back when she was young enough to be loud and brash and bold, innocent enough to be curious without considering that knowledge always came with a price.
"A soul is a very complicated thing, dear," her mother used to reply. "It's your conscience and your heart and your being all in one. Now come along and help me fold the laundry." Or cook the breakfast, or de-gnome the garden, or any of the other thousand chores that came with a household of nine.
When Ginny was ten, she looked up and saw green eyes and black hair and felt her heart stop. This, she was sure, must be it. She'd heard about it all before— the electric shock to your entire system, the warmth in your chest, the feeling that you had to be with them. But he was older, and friends with her brother, and not at all interested in her.
She learned more about souls at eleven, when at first she didn't even notice hers being stolen. No, not stolen— given. At first it was just curiosity, a test of a quill, a question jotted down by the light of the fire. Curiosity had a cost, but Ginny didn't know that yet. So she poured bits of herself into a diary, because she'd found dark eyes and a slick smile and a soft, soothing voice that made her feel like she mattered. This was a soulmate, it had to be. Soft, smooth voice that made her feel safe, that made her feel warm, even as it slid into her head and warped her thoughts. If a soul was heart and conscience and being, then this must be it, because she'd give her heart freely and she was just so certain about right and wrong because that velvet touch nudged her thoughts here and there, filling up the gaps in her mind and leaving no room for doubt.
Then she'd woken up on a concrete floor filled with bones, heard the crunch of boots stomping on their already-broken spines. Something snapped within her, too, that day. Souls, she realized then, were dangerous, just like wishes and questions and carelessness. And her soul was hers— her danger to bear, hers to guard, hers to never give away again. Ginny decided then and there to never allow access to the parts of her that lay deep in her heart.
She began erecting walls between mind and heart and body, the summer after the diary. She laughed and she smiled and she didn't tell anyone what it was like inside, making jokes and pretending she still knew who she used to be until they all stopped asking questions. She stole a book about Occlumency from the family bookshelf and began reading.
Her oldest brother was the only one who questioned it. "What're you reading, Gin?" He asked mildly on one of his rare weekends home.
She narrowed her eyes. "It used to be yours, I think."
"Yeah," he agreed. "Care to tell me why you're reading a NEWT-level theory book, instead of your own texts, though?"
"I was bored." She wasn't, really. She didn't remember what being bored was, anymore. Boredom had come to mean too much time in her head, and too much time in her head meant risking hearing that voice again. So she kept busy, kept a book in hand.
He scooted closer, looked over her shoulder. "You and I both know that's not an answer. This stuff is dangerous, Gin. You have to separate half of your mind from itself, and you have to do it without driving yourself mad. It's done more damage to—"
She crossed her arms, cut him off "Are you going to interrogate me, or are you going to help?"
Bill set his mouth into a line, flexed a hand around his wand. "Right, then. Paddock, sunrise."
So they set to work, and she learned. Her brother was gentle, and a good teacher, and clearly pushing to find out what had happened that night in the Chamber. And he couldn't know. No one could know that Ginny hadn't seen the voice in her head as the monster everyone else knew him to be. No one could find out how close she'd been to loving him, how easily she'd have betrayed them all if only he'd asked. She set up walls stronger than iron, and eventually, even Bill couldn't find a way through.
She cast Silencing charms on her door at night, just in case she woke up screaming.
Of course, there'd be no escape of the talk about souls the next year, with Dementors at school and a murderer on the loose. But at least no one was talking about soulmates anymore. Fortunately, no one spent too much time looking at little second-years, so Ginny began waking up early, filling her lungs with cold air, testing her body's limits. She stole a broom from the shed, and either Madam Hooch didn't notice or didn't care, or else knew and was watching and that was fine. Ginny flew fast and furiously, white-knuckled as the ground rushed towards her, and then flew up at the last second. She flew until the broom was an extension of her, until she knew the air better than she knew her body. And while she was up in the sky, while adrenaline coursed through her veins, she learned to separate her consciousness from herself. There was Ginny-on-the-broom and there was Ginny-in-her-mind and those two Ginnys were not the same person.
She got better. She learned to separate Smiling Ginny from Worried Ginny. She attended the Yule Ball, slid her eyes right past the people snogging in dark corners, danced with boys, and kept her thoughts quiet even as her laughter filled the room. Towards the end of the night, Dean Thomas set his hand on her waist and asked her to dance.
"I could get lost in those eyes of yours, you know," he said, and it was entirely conversational, utterly innocuous, and Ginny-in-his-arms smiled even while Ginny-in-her-mind wanted to scream. Getting lost isn't a good thing. She just twirled and gave his cheek a peck with her lips and then came closer when he wanted more than that. Her body was one thing. Her mind and heart another.
She sat still as a rock when they announced that Cedric Diggory was dead, didn't even clench hands into fists when they said that Tom was back. She almost, almost managed to keep her heart from skipping a beat. She just slid her ponytail over her shoulder, went home with all the rest of them, moved into a dusty house of Dark artifacts, accepted the apparent fact that a formerly-accused-mass-murderer lived there and was a friend now. She sat calm and quiet until Bill got home, and then she grabbed him by the sleeve, dragged him out to the paddock, and made him sit and practice Legilimency on her until the sun went down, day after day after day. It wasn't until a week had gone by and they were out there after dark in the cold summer rain that he finally broke through— he'd gotten too tired to remember to hold back, and she'd gotten tired enough that a wall had started to slip.
He didn't see much, only a glimpse before she slammed the mental walls back up. But he'd seen enough— enough of that awful year, enough of the thoughts that still raced in her mind if she sat still for too long— that he sank to his knees and hugged her. Water splashed down around them, soaking their hair and the hems of her jeans, and she thought, fine.
After that, though, Bill understood, and he gave her more books, more drills, more techniques, and didn't say a word to any of them. She went back to school with better armor than she'd ever had before, even as a monster moved into the Headmaster's office and made it clear that none of them were safe.
She joined an army of children and did her best not to let on that she knew better than any of them what they were up against. She just set her mind to being better. For once, Ginny-in-her-body and Ginny-in-her-mind were one and the same even as she held them separately, and she whirled and spun and attacked in a practice duel. The only way to feel safe was to be the best. So she was.
Then her dad was nearly eaten by a snake and Harry decided that it must have been his fault. He must have been possessed, he said. His soul was at risk. Ginny nearly slapped him, because how could he know? He'd fought Voldemort, sure, but that didn't mean he knew Tom. Not the way Ginny did. Paranoia and fear were not the same. Paranoia was a concept, a delusion, a privilege. Fear was truly understanding the danger that was out there and knowing that it was coming for you. And Ginny knew better than any of them, your soul wasn't truly at risk unless you gave it up.
It was an accident, the first time she broke into someone else's mind. Perhaps it was the adrenaline of battle, perhaps it was the knowledge that her life was truly in danger, perhaps it was simply that when her mind and body were in sync like this she was lethal. One of her walls became a weapon and with it, she stabbed one of her assailants and took him down.
No one ever did ask why Rookwood and Rosier took so long to get up.
Bill brought Fleur home the next summer, and it became clear that the two of them were bonded in some way that everyone else might never understand. Soulmates, whispered some voice at the back of Ginny's head. She shoved that thought to the side, got better at flying, got better at dueling, got better at blocking out her thoughts. No one noticed, that year, when she read ten books on Legilemency out of the Restricted Section of the library.
Hogwarts came under siege, Dumbledore fell from the Astronomy Tower, Bill almost died, and Ginny felt each of her senses sharpen again. She kissed Harry Potter, tried not to feel anything, and failed. Perhaps she didn't have a soul anymore, she mused. If she wasn't sure about right and wrong anymore, and if she didn't want her heart to quicken for anyone, and if she knew perfectly well who she was. There couldn't be any room for souls, not with what was coming.
Perhaps it was the lack of soul that she'd decided to have that saved her, the night of Bill's wedding. For everyone else, that was the night that their world caught fire, the night that they all realized the true danger that lurked out there. For Ginny, it was just the night that they all joined her in hell. When they came for her mind, her walls stayed up, and then she stabbed back. They left without killing her parents or siblings or finding Harry, which she'd surmised was their goal.
There was no room for souls at Hogwarts that year, either. Ginny did what she had to in order to survive, and if there was an edge, an urgency to her existence that the others didn't have, no one noticed that either. She retrained the army she'd fought in when she was fourteen, brought in other children, and trained them. They were dangerous, but not as dangerous as her.
Her brother fell in battle, Percy came back, and the deaths kept on coming. Students, faceless allies to the rest of them, but friends and teammates and fucking children whose names Ginny knew, lay dead on the ground, strewn amidst the rubble of the castle that used to feel like home.
"NOT MY DAUGHTER, YOU BITCH," her mother screamed in the height of battle, and Ginny felt a bit of her heart come back. Enough to feel something, enough to feel rage, enough to want to crumble and have to stand her ground once again. Enough to put a crack in those carefully constructed walls.
Harry disappeared, and the earth fell out from under Ginny's feet. The crack grew wider and she patched it up again. Certain death was on its way now, and the dissolution of the world as she knew it, and there were no souls in the world to come.
Then he came back. Then the world was aflame. Then the battle was over, and so too was the war.
She sat with Harry a few weeks later, at the end of the war.
"I had an extra bit of a soul inside of me," he told her.
She smiled grimly. "Once upon a time, so did I."
"D'you think that's why…" he faltered. "I really hope that's not why—"
"Do you believe in soulmates?" Ginny asked him but didn't give him time to answer. "I don't, you see. Because I made myself a promise. I'm never giving anyone that part of myself ever again. No matter how much I like them."
"Right, no souls, then." Harry reached out and took her hand, running a callused fingertip over her bruised knuckles. "What about hearts?"
And despite herself, Ginny smiled, leaned into him. Her soul was safe. And her heart— well, if she gave that away, at least she could get it back. "Promise you won't break it?"
He hooked a pinky finger around hers. "I solemnly swear."
Here's a little something different from me! Gathering Storm is still going strong, but I'm thinking about a few Ginny stories I'd like to write, so here's this one. Hope everyone's having a lovely weekend, especially now that autumn weather's starting to set in. As always, your readership is much appreciated, and I your reviews make my day every time! ~GC