Hours are spent in Sirius's room, staring out the window. Harry says nothing. He occasionally eats, but even that amounts to little more than toast or biscuits. On the odd occasion he takes a shower, Harry Scourgifies his clothing and shrugs them back on. The rest of the time, he sits in filth, surrounded by filth.
"Filthy blood traitor whore is desecrating my couch! How could that disgusting son of mine let our house fall to the hands of a half-blood. A half-blood!" Her shrieks of outrage waft in and out as he sits there, watching birds flit to and from a nearby nest. He can feel the thrum of his headache in his eyes. Tap-tap. Tap-tap. Or is that his heartbeat? He looks down. His finger drums it out, no matter what it is. Tap-tap.
An agitated snarl greets Walburga Black by mid-day. "Wreaaaaaaaagh. Woman! Would you cease that incessant blithering? The dear lad does not need to listen to that dried out husk you call a tongue wagging all bloody day." This seems to infuriate her more and, rather than go on about Ginny doing whatever it is Ginny now does during the day, she screams across the room at him.
"Orion. How dare you! This is my house and you are both disgraces to the noble and Most Ancient House of Black." She huffs, turning away in her portrait. If she wants to, she can visit one of her other frames, like the one on the downstairs wall with a permanent sticking charm, or perhaps the one in the attic. Instead, she wars with the portrait of her late husband. They never visit one another's frames—oh no, that is indecent. Rather, Harry listens as they squall and argue over his inheritance of the Black estate, subsequent moving into Grimmauld Place, and Ginny's current inhabitance there. "A Weasley, Orion! Even you can see the filth beneath that ginger fringe. It doesn't matter that the stupid bint hasn't visited a bath in nearly a week." Harry shudders at this. His own habits are not much better, but the last time he'd passed Ginny in the hall, her hair was stuck together in clumps and she reeked of last week's curry.
Perhaps he shouldn't be so hard on Ginny. Several nights, he wakes to find her curled alongside him, arms wrapped around his sweating body. She clings to him as if she needs his very breath to live. In the mornings—if they are lucky enough to make it to one without a nightmare rending them apart— Harry watches as Ginny twitches and seeks out her vials. It's at this point that he notices the bags no longer hold up the luggage of her eyes and her collarbones seem to jut toward him in the night—silent reminders of why he cannot sleep. Each morning. Ginny claws her way toward a fresh vial and, for a few hours at least, manages to keep her body functioning.
He allows this. He allows this because she doesn't bother him during the day. He allows this because he doesn't mind her draining his coffers, even if she uses every last galleon. He allows this because she seems to need it. She seems to need those few moments of peace after ingesting the potion before her body begins its countdown toward the next. At first, he thinks their use is casual. Just a morning pick-me-up. What he fails to realize is that she is so far gone that she can't care if she wanted to—if, somewhere deep inside, there is cause for Ginny to care about anything.
Harry doesn't remember falling asleep. All he can concentrate on is the arm slowly curling over his waist and the foul stench of alcohol slamming his foggy thoughts toward alertness. He slides from beneath her, the sweat across his chest allowing her arm to drop heavily to the bed. She huffs indignantly.
"Harry, come back to bed." She pouts.
"Where have you been? You smell foul."
"Wha'chu mean, Harry?" she slurs. "Come back to bed." She reaches for him then. On hands and knees, the position unbalances her and she falls forward awkwardly onto her face. Harry rushes forward to right her, rolling her flailing body onto her side so that she doesn't suffocate in the blanket.
"Ginny. Answer me. Where have you been?" As he looks down, blown pupils greet him. Her jaw hinges open and he smells the alcohol again. There is something else, though. He leans forward. Her bra is missing and she reeks of sex. "Ginny, were you with another man?"
"Piss off." Her hand reaches up and shoves at his where it holds her upright. She falls backward.
"Ginevra Weasley. You tell me right now if you've been shagging someone else!" Harry's fingers shake as he stands hovering over the end of his bed.
"I said you can bloody piss off, Harry bloody Potter." As she says this, she has the gall to stick her tongue out at him.
"That's it. You don't get to do this to us. To me." Fury resounds in the room. "This is his bed. This is Sirius's bed. He was my godfather, Ginny. You don't get to bring someone else here!" His words aren't making too much sense to her muddled brain and she squints up at him. She just hears the tapping of his fingers, the incessant tapping before it goes still. Harry drops to his knees; that's when she feels it.
"Ha-Harry? What are you doing, Harry?" She scrambles to the edge of the bed. Sobered up some, Ginny kneels in front of the brunette and tenuously reaches out. "Harry you have to control this!" The bedside lamp is skittering across the table, nearly at the edge. Just as she is about to touch him, it topples over and shatters across the floor. Harry grinds his teeth together and lets out a howl. "Stop it, Harry." Ginny is practically whining now. The ground is shaking, even though they're on the second floor. They can both feel the reverberations throughout the floorboards and everything around them. Dust that hasn't been touched in years migrates to new colonies while spiders flee to higher ground.
"Fuck." Harry lets out a grunt and collapses fully on the ground, hands splayed out before him. "You can't be here." He hasn't lost control like this in a very long time.
"What the hell was that?" she demands. "What do you mean I can't be here? I live here!"
"No, you don't. Not anymore." He looks up at her then to see the fire Molly Weasley kept hidden, stoked for rare times when she needed to light up the backside of one of her children. It's that fire Ginny holds, coiled and ready.
"I live here," she says again. "You and I live here together, Harry."
"Ginny, you need to leave."
"Fuck you, you pathetic arse."
"Me? You have the bollocks to call me an arse when you come home smelling like the very definition?"
She scowls at him then, pulling her wand from the floor where it fell. A stinging hex flies at him and he catches it in the thigh, not quite believing her temerity. He stands.
"Really, Ginny? Get the hell out of my house! Expulso!" Ginny flies backward into the door, her arms flinging upward as they wrap around the frame. She slides slowly downward, but manages to keep hold of her wand. As Harry stalks toward her, she uses her favorite spell: a Bat-Bogey hex. This one he knows too well. He sees the short flick of her wand and puts up a Protego. In retaliation, Harry sends a Confundus charm toward her, hoping it might slow her reactions. She catches it, but seems to shake it off quickly.
Ginny hefts herself to her feet, using the door frame as a tether and hauling with her upper body. Once standing, the full weight of her unhappiness hits Harry then. He sees it in the dull strands of hair clinging to the nape of her neck and the dirt beneath her fingernails. He sees it in the anger fairly seeping from her pores as she lifts her wand again. He sees it most, perhaps, in the way her eyes hold none of the recognition or warmth they used to hold for him. The only thing left in Ginny Weasley is blame. She wants to blame this life on someone and he is the perfect target.
Ginny pounces on him. It's easy to tackle him to the ground, unsteady as he is. "Don't you love me, Harry?" she is unsure whether she's asking or begging. "Don't I mean anything to you? Did I ever mean anything to you?" Each word, each sentence is punctuated with a thud to his chest, a corresponding slap of skin that shakes him. "Is this all you can do?" He stares up at her blankly, unable to form a response.
Ginny levels her wand at Harry, then speaks the word clearly, though he does not hear it. All he can hear is the rush of blood to his head and the steady tap-tap. Tap-tap. Then there is nothing.