Author's note: Chapter twenty-six...wow... A while ago, I wouldn't have thought I was going to get past chapter TEN! Well, this is going to be a sort of sad... Well, at least I intend it to be...so I'll stop talking and let you decide!
Chapter Twenty-Six
Ginny had been strapped into the bed for two days, and her 'condition' never progressed. She would thrash violently about in an attempt to loosen the restraints. She was so worked up in fact, that even her family wasn't allowed in to visit.
On the third day though, Ginny was found on her bed lying perfectly still. Her eyes were staring at the ceiling, and she was practically catatonic.
After two days of useless anger, she let it fade out of her. Leaving her unmotivated, hopeless, and depressively miserable. Dumbledore made frequent visits to check up on her progress, and when he walked in that morning, he was met with a quiet hospital ward. He walked to the drawn curtain and hesitantly peered inside, afraid of what he would... or wouldn't see.
He gave a sigh of relief when he went behind the curtain, and saw that she was still there... and breathing. Madame Pomfrey was holding her wand out pointing it in Ginny's eye, with a light on the tip. She did it again to the other eyes, and when Dumbledore cleared his throat, she jumped in shock, turning to meet him. "I'm sorry." he apologized. "How is she doing?" Madame Pomfrey looked at Ginny, and then signaled for him to come to her office, where they wouldn't be heard. She closed the door, and turned back to him.
"She's doing as fine as she can be..."
"You say that as if it's a bad thing." Albus noted.
"Well you see, she has sunken into a serious depression." she admitted somberly.
"Well, how did this come about?" he asked, rather dumbly for someone of his intelligence.
Poppy glared at him. "How do you think it came about!" she asked harshly. He looked momentarily lost for words, but quickly recovered.
"How did she undergo the change from the vicious little hellion she was, to the catatonic girl in there?"
"I don't know! She wont respond to me when I ask a question, she wont do anything when I give her, her injections, the only response I got from her this morning, was when an owl came and delivered her daily rose and the note. She sat up and added it to the other nine roses in the vase..." she explained.
Albus stayed in silent thought for a minute. "What can we do?"
"Nothing."
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Ginny remained like that for another three days, only moving to put a rose in the vase, or seen walking around the wing, since her restraints had finally been taken off, she tried loosening up her muscles and tried to get the bed sores out of her flesh. That was all, still no response to any questioning, or even light conversation attempts.
Despite whatever Albus told Poppy, she insisted that there was nothing else wrong with Ginny, and that she had no real reason to continue keeping her.
Finally Albus relented, and told her to do whatever she thought was right.
Poppy went up to her at breakfast, and asked her whether she wanted to go back to classes. Ginny actually surprised her by turning her head, and nodding lightly. "Okay, we'll get to you to class tomorrow morning..." Ginny scowled at her, and she got the message. "We can have your books up here in a few minutes... You'll be a little late for first class though."
Ginny lay back down and waited for the nurse to send an elf to fetch her books.
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Fifteen minutes later, Ginny was opening the door to her potions class, which she conveniently had that morning. Severus Snape looked up, and gave her a welcoming nod. "Nice to see you up and about Miss Weasley." he said, catching the attention of his entire class, and they turned to see her. Everyone started whispering to their partners and looking at her nervously, as if waiting for her to blow.
She walked in, not caring about the others, and she found a seat close to the front. The whispering didn't die down until Snape threatened to dock points.
Ginny spent the whole class copying notes, not saying one word. Her classes followed similarly for the rest of the day. The rest of the week. And the rest of the month.
Every morning she would get up, go to breakfast, get the daily note and rose from Draco, go to classes, go to lunch, go back to classes, then go to the common room and work on her homework, then go to sleep at around 8 o' clock every night. She woke up, and repeated the routine.
Until on morning her rose never arrived. She skipped classes altogether that day, and stayed inside her bed the whole day, looking at her vase with twenty eight roses and a note book with twenty eight notes in it, accompanying each if her roses. She spent the day trying to bring up the happy memories of her and Draco, but whenever one surfaced, it went blank in her mind. She didn't want to, but she wondered if it was because he had been killed.
She banged her head against the wooden back board of the bed, for being so pessimistic. He wasn't dead, and she knew that if he were, she would know. The next day, she carried on with her routine and none of the teachers questioned her, by demands of Dumbledore.
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Two weeks later, it was now nearing the middle of November, and the very first snow had arrived. Ginny watched from her dorm window as the small pieces of white fell softly passed the window. She looked at them sadly, before concentrating on her work to keep her unwanted memories at bay.
Flash Back
"What do you mean you have never had a snowball fight?" Ginny asked Draco skeptically.
"Malfoy don't have fights with snow!" he replied mockingly disdainful.
"But how could you not? I mean, snow is amazing! It's the very spirit of the holiday season!"
"You think I care about that?" he asked with a smirk. "Snow is disgusting. It is wet, cold and evil!"
"Much like you!" she said, and then burst into a fit of giggles at her own "cleverness". "On the first snow fall, you and I are going to go out and dance in it... And if it snows enough, I am going to teach you how to make a snow angel!" she said, beaming.
"Deal, but I might have to throw snow at you." he said, then was hit in the face with a pillow, and she jumped on him, tickling him until he couldn't breath. Draco, was probably the most ticklish person other than herself, she had ever met...
End Flash Back
Just memories like that reminded Ginny of how little she appreciated the time they spent together. How, she never even got to tell him how she felt, how she may never see him again, and the last thing she had said to him was teasing him about the Quidditch match that was about to take place.
Ginny stopped caring about Quidditch, which left her team in even more of a tight spot since their captain had disappeared off the face of the earth, and Dumbledore had told the school that he was being sent off to do far more extreme studies. No one questioned him, since he was the one that they all thought was going to save the wizarding world. Ginny knew better. Dumbledore had actually told her. He had been taken out of the school, and was now being taught at Grimmauld Place, the only reason he wasn't completely being expelled, was because everyone still knew him to be the savior of the world, and he had to keep up pretences. Ron had taken over as captain... And for some reason, Ginny had never bothered to ask why; Colin had taken over as seeker, some fourth year had taken over the extra chaser position, but Ginny didn't really care.
She looked at the clock, and realized that it was nine o' clock, and she wasn't tired. She went and lay down on her bed, closing her eyes. After a time, she heard her roommates finally come in, and the light under the door faded. It had been about three hours, and Ginny was still lying wide awake. She sat up, frustrated, and flung her legs over the side of her bed. She went over to her trunk, and rummaged around for her winter cloak. She slipped her feet into her shoes, and then went down the dorm stairs and out of the common room. She walked through the halls soundlessly, and she walked outside, letting the frigid air bite her skin. She smiled, for what seemed like months.
She started in a run, to free all the energy she had kept inside. She ran right up to the forest's edge, then stopped and looked at it. The moonlight light the open field she had run across, but the forest seemed like a wall of darkness, a darkness she seemed to be drawn to.
She knew she shouldn't go in, and she should turn around as soon as she could, but her legs wouldn't move, and a strange wind started up, pulling into the woods. She tried to turn around, and then she heard the wind whisper. "Virginia..."
That was all she needed, as her legs finally began walking towards the trees. As soon as she entered, she was enveloped in the darkness, and she felt around with her hands, feeling an occasional tree, and feeling the leaves brush against her face. She continued walking, and as she walked, her foot caught unsuspecting on a root, and she was sent tumbling to the ground.
When she looked up, she saw she had come to a lit clearing. It was formed by a large circle of candles. The ground was of some sort of black rock that Ginny recognized as volcanic. She looked around in some confusion, and noticed the trees on the outside of the ring were covered in icicles.
She looked to the sky, and saw that it was still snowing. That is, until a flake fell onto her arm, and felt dry and warm. She touched it, and it was a grey powder. Instead of snow, ash was falling from the sky.
Ginny sucked in a breath of air, and looked to the centre of the clearing. There stood a man facing away from her, and his luminous blond hair took her very breathe away.
"Draco?"
TBC
Author's note: Yes, I know, I truly am evil! You have to wait until you see what happens... I was going to keep this chapter going and have a lot more in it, because frankly, not much happens... I cut it short though, because I'm going away to Canada's Wonderland tomorrow...YAY!... So, I wont be able to update... Next chapter will be very long though, because I feel guilty! I hope you liked this one and I feel I should jump for joy and shout with glee, because I have achieved FIFTY-TWO REVIEWS! Thank you sooooo much everyone, and I am really happy that you guys took the time to review!... Especially the people who review more than once! And I would like to thank murp for sending such a lengthy review! Well that seems about it... but I am going to keep writing, because I want this chapter to be longer than 2000 words... okay, all I need is forty more... thirty more!... la la la la la la la la la la... Twenty more! Jingle bells, jingle bells... Jingle all the wayyy... Okay, I think I should be able to cover it from here...see, YAY! ... Well, it doesn't even looked like I will be getting this posted today, because it wont let me upload the story... Grr...Please review!
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