A/N: So, I'm not entirely sure when this story hit/passed 100 followers, but I just noticed it the other day and it made me so excited! And so happy! And! Wow! Wow! That is incredible. Like, really really incredible. Thank you, guys! I would be happy to just have like, 5 people reading this, but 100+ followers?!
Anyways. Thank you for following, thank you for reading, thank you for the reviews! And look! Look! It only took me a week to post a new chapter! And I'm going to shut up now because there is likely going to be a longer author's note on the next chapter for... reasons. Okay. Again, thank you for reading! It means the world to me!
"I don't know where to start."
"That's okay. Take your time. We don't have to dissect anything right away. You can just say what comes to mind."
"There are parts that are so clear, and then there are parts that seem… faded, I guess. But not really. Because if I think about them hard enough, they come back, just as clear as everything else… But I don't let myself think about them, so they get fuzzy, because I've made them that way…. Does that make sense?"
"It does," Simone nodded.
"It's happened before. When I was younger," Ginny admitted.
"Did it have anything to do with what happened to you during your first year here?" Simone asked, and Ginny nodded. "Why don't you tell me about that?"
"When I was eleven, I was possessed by a memory of You-Know-Who," Ginny began. She stopped, almost impulsively, feeling strange talking openly about something that she didn't even like to think about. But she glanced at Simone, and without saying a word, with only a gentle raise of her eyebrows, she urged Ginny forward.
"And I set a basilisk loose on the school. People were petrified. The Chamber of Secrets was opened. The school was almost shut down. And I… I… I almost died. But that was never what really haunted me. For a really long time, I wished…," she trailed off, and shook her head, not wanting to continue with that particular train of thought. But Simone was looking at her, her eyes boring into her.
"What did you wish?" she asked.
"I wished," she started again, and took a shaky breath. "I wished that Harry had been too late to save me. You know, that he still managed to get rid of all the bad stuff, but that I didn't make it…. But I lived. And I had to live with what I had done. I still have to live with that. And for a really long time, I didn't want to live with it. I didn't want to be alive because I didn't want to live with it."
"And how did you deal with those feelings?"
"I never tried to off myself, if that's what you mean," Ginny told her. "I thought about it a lot… Not necessarily offing myself, just not wanting to be there. I remember I kept thinking to myself 'I don't want to be here anymore', but I wasn't sure where here even was. I wasn't even twelve years old yet and it was hard to comprehend what I was feeling. I just knew that I felt guilty for everything. People kept telling me that it wasn't my fault, but I didn't believe them. I knew that I was somehow responsible. Because of everyone in the school, it was me who did it. Nobody died. Nobody died because of what I did, and I was grateful, but I was still responsible for a lot of shit. And the thought of having been possessed by You-Know-Who made me… I felt… tainted. My body hadn't been my own and it had been polluted and I wasn't sure if it would ever feel like mine again."
Simone had an elbow on her desk, her chin in her hand, fingers splayed across her bottom lip, and she had her eyes on Ginny, eyebrows knitted closely together, and she nodded as Ginny spoke, listening intently. She didn't interrupt. She let Ginny speak, and Ginny spoke without looking directly at her, because it was easier if she didn't look directly at her. It was easier if she just spat it all out without thinking about it too much, without formulating every word, without worrying about what Simone might think or say.
"Eventually, I… felt better. I don't know if I have ever fully… I mean, I don't think that's something that you can fully get over? It's always going to be something that happened to me, it's always going to be there, but I eventually stopped wishing that I had died. I was happy that I was alive. I was glad that Harry had saved me. I had such a crush on him, you know? From the moment I first saw him, when I was ten, and Ron was going to Hogwarts for the first time, and Harry was there, and he was alone, and I remember seeing him and thinking that he was the cutest boy I had ever seen. I hadn't really even noticed boys up until that moment, but when I saw him...I noticed," Ginny said, and she smiled at the memory. Simone smiled, too.
"When did you two begin to date?" she asked.
"Not for a long time after that. I was too nervous around him to even speak in full sentences. But he was my brother's best friend. He stayed with us for a while every summer after Ron's first year. I was nothing more than Ron's little sister to him, though. And I knew that. I was able to start talking around him, though… I dated other boys. Towards the end of fifth year, though… he kissed me. And we dated. But then… that was when…," she frowned, thinking back to the end of her fifth year.
"When what?"
"Dumbledore died. He broke up with me after Dumbledore's funeral. It didn't surprise me. In fact, I think a part of me even expected it. I knew what he had to do. None of it really seemed real until he was gone, though," she said, and she could feel her heart beating inside of her chest. It wasn't any faster than normal, but it seemed to be pounding harder, and she was so incredibly aware of it. She continued to talk.
"My brother's wedding… that was the last time I saw Harry until I saw him here, the day the war ended. And he was disguised, so I barely really even saw him. But there was… chaos. Absolute chaos. And then they were gone. Harry, Ron, and Hermione were gone. My boyfriend, my brother, and my best friend. They left because they had to, and they wouldn't tell us anything - couldn't tell us anything. Every day that passed that I didn't hear about them was good, because it meant that they were still alive. I was certain that if Harry was dead, everybody would know. Every day, I hoped for no news. But sitting there, waiting for nothing wasn't doing any good. Not here, not when the school was full of Death Eaters, and we were just stuck. I thought about Harry and how, during that year after You-Know-Who had returned, but nobody believed him, he never backed down, not even for a moment. I admired him for that. And I knew that I had to be like that. And I wasn't alone. But we got in trouble. A lot. And the Carrows, they… well, they got pretty bored of me pretty quickly. I didn't struggle, I didn't scream, if I could help it. I just… took whatever punishment they gave me. I could handle it. But the younger kids… It wasn't fair. And no matter what, it seemed like I wasn't doing enough. I kept thinking that there was so much more that I needed to be doing, but I didn't know what! But I know that there was so much more that I could have done!"
She was growing upset. She had tried so hard to push certain memories of her previous year at Hogwarts out of her mind. But it was all rushing back to her.
"It sounds to me like you did what you could without getting into even more trouble," Simone told her in a steady, soothing voice.
"I just felt so helpless," Ginny admitted. "The entire time… everything… I felt helpless. I wanted to be doing more. And maybe I would have, if I had come back after Easter break. But I didn't come back. I didn't come back until… until it all happened."
"The battle?" Simone asked. Ginny nodded. Her mouth felt dry from speaking so much with hardly a pause. She was nervous to continue. This was what she had been avoiding since she had started counseling.
"It all happened so fast," she said quietly. "It was like, one minute, we were just waiting… and then it was happening. And...my mum didn't want me to be there at all. But there was no way that I couldn't be there. I had to be. I had never seen anybody die before. But I saw people die. The first time it happened, it was… it wasn't even anybody that I knew. But they were standing there, alive, and then… then they were dead. I didn't even know the person, but I don't know if I'll ever get their face out of my head. I knew that we were in a battle in a war, and people had been dying - I had known people who had died already, but I hadn't seen a death in front of me until then. It made it all seem way too real. That's when it hit me that it was all really happening. And any one of us could just be standing there alive, and then be dead. My entire family was there. My mum, my dad, and all of my brothers. I knew that the odds weren't great that we would all make it out alive. But I was really hopeful.
"I wasn't there when Fred died. I didn't see it happen. So much happened between the start of the battle and Fred's death, but I can hardly remember any of it. It's just bit and pieces. If I think hard enough, I can remember it, but… when I found out about Fred, everything else that happened… didn't matter anymore. Because my brother died."
Ginny furrowed her eyebrows, frowning, churning the sentence over and over again in her mind.
"My brother died," she repeated, the words sounding foreign as they left her mouth. "He was so full of life. It didn't make sense. Sometimes it still doesn't make any sense. He was young and funny and he was becoming so successful, and there was still so much left for him to do. My whole life, he has been there. I love my brothers. All of them. I don't know who I would be if I didn't have them all in my life growing up. And now Fred is just… he's just gone. He's gone, and I'm never going to see him again and I didn't get to say goodbye, I didn't tell him that I love him, I don't even remember the last time I told him that I loved him, but I did. He was my brother and I loved him and now he's gone."
It was hitting her like it hadn't hit her since it had happened, and it was hitting her in a much different way. When it happened, she mostly felt shocked and there was so much else going on, she was mourning multiple deaths at one time, she hardly had a chance to fully process everything. And then she started pushing it away, not letting herself think about it, not letting herself feel anything, just trying to be as strong as she possibly could.
But she was feeling it. It was as if all of the pain she had been pushing away was coming back all at once in full force. And it was crushing her.
She was crying. It happened without any warning. It all came at once, and there was no way to hold back. She was crying in a way that she couldn't remember ever crying before. Her entire body shook, and noises escaped from her mouth, and she felt her tears streaking down her cheeks, all the way down to her neck. She could barely even speak. She tried, but everything she attempted to say came out in fragments until eventually, she gave up. The only thing she could do was sit there and let out everything that she had been holding in for so long. A box of tissues appeared on Simone's desk, in front of Ginny, and other than that, Simone did nothing else, but allowed Ginny to cry.
She was crying for herself, because her brother had died and she missed him terribly and was still having a hard time imagining life without him.
She was crying for her mother, because she had lost a son. She remembered the way that her mother had cried that night. It was something that she wished she had never seen or heard, because it cut into her. She never wanted to witness her mother crying like that ever again.
She was crying for George, because he had lost his brother, his twin, his best friend. For her entire life, she had barely ever seen one without the other. The concept seemed strange to her. She knew that George had lost a part of himself when he lost Fred.
She explained this to Simone later, once her breathing had steadied and her voice began to work again. She was still crying. There was nothing she could do to stop the steady flow of tears falling from her eyes.
There was still so much more that she wanted to say. So much more that she needed to say. But her time with Simone was already running out for the day. She wasn't sure if she could make herself so vulnerable again in a week's time. She was worried that this would be her only time to get everything out.
She told Simone this.
"I have another hour before my next appointment," Simone said. "If you have a class after this, I am willing to write you a note to excuse you for being late or missing it."
"I just have lunch. And I already know that I won't be eating."
"Then we can extend past our usual time."
Ginny nodded, her body still trembling, her face still wet.
"There was an hour during the battle… when it all stopped. You-Know-Who wanted Harry to come to him, told him that if he didn't come to him within that hour, then he would get him himself. I was in the Great Hall with my family… we were with Fred. I had already been told that Lupin hadn't made it… but I didn't know about Tonks until I saw her," her voice was breaking, she struggled to keep speaking. "Ron and Hermione showed up, but I didn't see Harry at all. Hermione said that he'd been right there, with them, but then he was gone. And I know we were all thinking the same thing. He was going to give himself up to him. I didn't want to believe it, but I knew already that it was true."
She sniffled, wiping at her eyes, even though it was pointless. Her tears hadn't stopped.
"Ron told me to stay where I was, but when he and Hermione left, it was so easy to just leave unnoticed. So I did. But there was a girl… there was this girl, and she was alone, and she was hurt and crying and I had to help her. I couldn't just leave her there. And… I remember feeling like somebody was watching me. You know how you can feel that sometimes? I think I had convinced myself that I would be the one to find Harry, to stop him from going to You-Know-Who. I was so sure that I would find him and keep him with me and he would listen to me because… I don't know. When I felt like someone was there, I thought it was him. I don't know why. There was nobody there at all. I wanted him to be there. I wanted to stop him. When You-Know-Who announced that he was dead… I didn't want to believe it, but I knew that it was true."
She remembered it all so clearly. It was the scene that had been haunting her dreams for months. She remembered seeing him, lifeless and limp in Hagrid's arms, and the feeling that her entire body was being torn apart from the inside-out. She remembered the way that the world seemed to float away from her and for a second, she was weightless, everything gone, in complete silence. But she came back and the light was too bright, the sounds were too loud, and her body seemed too heavy to support on her own. She remembered hearing the sound of her own voice, screaming, and the burning in her throat, but she couldn't remember actually screaming. But she heard it and she felt it, and she was moving forward, somehow, even though she didn't seem to be in control of her own body, but then she was stopped, somebody's arms had wrapped around her, holding her back, and she had struggled until she couldn't struggle anymore. And then she stopped.
"The world seemed to stop," Ginny mumbled. "It stopped. And then when it came back, everything was too fast. Everything was moving too fast."
"How do you mean?"
"It was just… I don't know if I was fully there, because when I think about it, everything seems sped-up, like… my dad has a thing for muggle stuff, and one time he brought home this thing that played… they were these funny little black rectangles, and they had pictures that moved and talked, but not like paintings, because they only ever moved and talked in the exact same way every time…"
"A video?" Simone asked.
"Something like that. And there was a button, and when you pressed it, everything went by really really fast. You know what I mean?"
"I do," she nodded, and Ginny was grateful that Simone was muggle-born, because she knew that she was doing a poor job of explaining the thing.
"Well, that's what it's like. When I think about what happened, it's like I've pressed that button and I'm watching it on a screen. Neville killed the snake. Everybody was fighting somebody. I remember fighting Bellatrix Lestrange… And then my mum… I saw my mum kill her. My mum killed Bellatrix Lestrange. And then there was Harry… alive. But that's when everything slows down again. Harry was alive. I didn't really understand it, but he was alive. But so was You-Know-Who, and it was one or the other, and I couldn't bear the thought of losing Harry again. I felt like I had already lost him so many times. Obviously, you know the outcome. I was so scared, though. I just remember them circling around each other, and I just kept thinking that I couldn't lose him again. During the summer when I would fall asleep in his bed, I would wake up in the middle of the night and check to make sure that he was still breathing and that his heart was still beating. It doesn't make any sense. It's all over now. But he was dead, and sometimes I'm scared that none of this is real."
By the time that her extra hour with Simone had passed, Ginny felt completely exhausted, both physically and mentally. She felt like she had run a marathon and had been awake for three days straight. Her muscles ached. Her limbs felt too heavy. Her eyes burned. And when she left, the thought of going to class soon seemed completely illogical. The only place that she wanted to be was in her bed. So that was where she went.
The girl's dormitory was empty. Ginny got into her four-poster bed, pulled the blanket all the way over her, covering herself completely, and she closed her eyes. A few remaining tears fell onto her pillow, and she took a deep shaky breath. Hadn't she done enough crying already? But it was like a dam had been broken. She had opened up a part of herself that she had kept closed for so long, and now she wasn't able to close it again. She cried. Silently, her face buried in her pillow. She wasn't entirely sure what she was crying about, but she no longer needed a reason. She just cried until she fell asleep.
. . .
"Ginny? Ginny, are you okay?"
"Hmph?"
"You weren't at lunch or in class."
"Ngh."
"Is everything okay?"
"Fine. Tired."
"Okay."
She fell back to sleep. She didn't wake up at all. There were no dreams. She just slept.
"Ginny?"
She opened her eyes. Hermione was beside her bed. There was light streaming in through the windows. It was morning.
"I'm not going to classes today," Ginny said, deciding it on the spot. She was sure that Hermione was going to argue. But she didn't.
"Do you want me to stop by Simone's office so I can have her write a note for you?" is what she asked.
Ginny nodded. Hermione left. She went back to sleep.
Ginny stayed in bed until the next morning. She mostly slept, but she woke up every now and then, for no more than an hour at a time. When the next morning arrived, though, she finally felt as though she had slept enough. It was something she hadn't felt in ages. She knew that the breakthrough with Simone had something to do with it. She felt refreshed. She felt lighter. She sat up in her bed and was met with a sudden dull pounding in her head, a wave of dizziness, and a rush of nausea coming over her.
She immediately fell back down onto her pillow. Hermione was nearby, and noticed.
"Hey. Are you okay?" she asked.
"Yeah, I'm fine. I think I've been asleep for too long and my body is unhappy with me," she frowned. Hermione smiled.
"I think you needed that sleep, though," she told her.
"I do feel better," Ginny admitted, sitting up again, this time more slowly.
"That's good. Don't you have quidditch try-outs again tonight?"
"Oh, yeah! That is tonight, isn't it?"
"I'm going to the library before breakfast to work on the essay due for Slughorn next week. Do you want to come?"
"Is there anything due in Defense Against the Dark Arts today?"
"Yes," Hermione nodded. "I will have mine with me in the library…."
"You're the best, Hermione," Ginny smiled.
…
The second day of quidditch try-outs was drastically better than the first. Ginny had options, and was confident in the team that she finally decided on, a day later. Even though she had slept for more than a day straight, Ginny still felt extremely tired. And the feeling of lightness after her long slumber didn't seem to last more than a few hours. She had finally opened up about some of her experiences and feelings, but now she had to deal with them, and she wasn't sure how. And that was on top of classes and schoolwork, and it didn't take long for her to feel overwhelmed again.
But she had quidditch now, and even though it was another thing that she had to make time for, practice was a welcome distraction from everything else.
Ginny sat at a table in the library with Hermione and Luna, all of them working on homework. Ginny was having a hard time focusing, though. The scratching of quills on parchment irritated her, and the smell of the old book that Hermione had propped open next to her was making Ginny feel ill. She rested her forehead on her hand, closing her eyes. She was already behind on homework. But she couldn't concentrate.
"Ginny," Hermione said. Ginny groaned and looked at her. Hermione frowned, concern etched across her face.
"I'm fine," Ginny mumbled, answering the question that she knew was coming next. "Just tired."
"Do you have trouble sleeping, too?" Luna asked, her voice casual and light, like usual.
"Sometimes. Yeah," she nodded.
"Me too. Yesterday I fell asleep while working on an essay that was due for Professor Flitwick today. My face smudged the ink. I was able to fix that, though. But it wasn't a very good essay. I don't expect that I'll receive very high marks on it," she sighed.
"How long have you had trouble sleeping?" Ginny asked her.
"Oh, ever since the Death Eaters took me," she said as easily as if they were discussing the weather. "Anyways. I think I'm done working for now. I'd like to stop by the kitchens before I go to bed. It's been ages since I've been in to say hello to the elves."
With that, Luna rolled up her parchment and collected her books. They said their goodbyes, and then she left. Hermione turned to Ginny.
"Ginny, I'm worried that you're depressed," she said, seemingly out of nowhere.
"What?" Ginny asked, and Hermione was looking at her, and Ginny looked back. She could tell from the determined expression on her face that Hermione had been wanting to say this for a while.
"First you couldn't sleep at all, now you can't get enough sleep, and you just seem very distracted and your moods change so quickly, and… I'm worried about you is all," she ended, her voice small and tentative. Ginny's mouth hung open.
"Maybe… Maybe I am," Ginny admitted. "I don't know. Simone and I are working through things, though. I don't know what more I can do."
"Maybe you should see Simone more than once a week," Hermione suggested. But Ginny shook her head.
"I don't have time," she said. "I barely have time for once a week as it is. If I didn't actually find it helpful, I probably wouldn't even go."
"But-"
"Hermione," she cut her off. "If I am depressed then… I'll deal with it once a week. That's all I can do."
"Okay," she replied weakly.
"I'm tired. I'm going to bed."
…
Halloween was approaching. The day before Halloween, Professor Slughorn had given them an exceptionally difficult potion to brew during class. Hermione was beside Ginny, muttering wildly under her breath as she changed the temperature of her cauldron, stirred counterclockwise seventeen and a half times, and added ingredients at precise times. Ginny already knew that her own potion was doomed. Her book told her that at the point she was at, the liquid inside her cauldron should be a pale blue. There were chunks of pale blue. But it was mostly a murky brown. And it wasn't supposed to have any chunks at all.
On the other side of the room, somebody's potion was coming along worse than Ginny's. There was a loud pop followed by an unpleasant odor that filled the entire dungeon within seconds.
"Oh dear, oh dear," Professor Slughorn muttered, hurrying over to where it had happened.
"Ugh," Hermione groaned, covering her nose with her free hand, continuing to stir her potion. Ginny, however, stopped what she was doing completely. As soon as the smell hit her - something like rotted eggs and burning hair - she could feel the vomit rising in her throat. She didn't even have time to turn and run to a bathroom. With hardly any warning at all, she threw up, right there, into her cauldron, her mess of a potion splattering out the sides. The noises of disgust that were directed at the foul odor were now being directed at Ginny, and her face burned, and she longed to be anywhere else.
"Oh dear," Professor Slughorn said yet again, having noticed what had happened.
Hermione had stopped stirring. She was staring at Ginny. Ginny pretended not to notice.
"Don't worry. Miss Weasley. I won't grade this particular potion," Slughorn said.
"I'm sorry, I'm not feeling well," Ginny mumbled. "May I please be excused to go to the hospital wing?"
"Yes, yes, of course."
Her cauldron was cleared. She collected her things and didn't meet Hermione's eye as she left the classroom.
She didn't go to the hospital wing, though. She had never planned to. She just wanted to leave the class as fast as she could. She went to the girls bathroom. She felt like she might throw up again. She sat down on top of a lidded toilet seat, hunched over, cradling her head in her hands. She sat that way until the feeling passed. She heard movement outside the bathroom and she knew that classes were over. She had her counseling session next, but she had no desire to go. She knew that she should, especially after Hermione had voiced her concerns about her, but she didn't want to.
She went anyways. She was fifteen minutes late.
"I threw up in Potions," Ginny explained.
"Are you sick?"
"No. Somebody did something wrong, it smelled really bad, and I threw up. Everyone else was fine, but I threw up. Pretty embarrassing. We're probably going to have to spend the next month getting me through it," she joked, and Simone laughed softly.
"Hermione thinks I'm depressed," Ginny said, diving right into a new subject.
"Did she tell you that?"
"Yeah. She said she's worried about me. I appreciate it, I do, but…."
"Do you think you're depressed?"
"I don't know. Do you?"
"I think it's a likely possibility," Simone told her. Ginny sighed.
"Hermione is always right about everything."
…
"Ginny, can I talk to you in private?"
"I'm sorry, Hermione, I really can't. I'm behind on homework and I have quidditch practice tonight."
"It's important, though!"
"It'll have to wait. I'm sorry," Ginny said, brushing past Hermione towards the portrait hole in the common room, heading to the library alone. She was avoiding Hermione. She was certain that she was going to ask her if she had arranged to see Simone more than once a week. She hadn't. She didn't think that she would. She simply didn't have the time for it.
She worked on her homework alone, and then went to the quidditch pitch for practice. When practice was finished, she went straight to bed.
…
Ginny was in a better mood than usual. She'd had a really good quidditch practice, she had made progress on her homework and was nearly caught up, and Yitzhak brought her a letter from Harry the morning of Halloween. She smiled, reading the letter, allowing Yitzhak to drink from her goblet.
"Look, Harry's sent photos of Teddy," Ginny said to Hermione, showing her the two photographs that had come with Harry's letter. One of them showed Harry laughing while holding a squirming and clapping blue-haired baby on his lap. Hermione smiled.
"He's really good with him," she said, glancing at Ginny, who just nodded.
"Yeah, he is."
"Ginny…," Hermione said, but she was interrupted by one of Ginny's quidditch teammates, a sixth-year boy named Sebastian.
"Hey, captain!" he said, and Ginny looked away from Hermione as he began to talk about something he wanted to try during the next practice. By the time he left, breakfast was ending and it was time to go to class.
…
"I love the Halloween Feast. I think it's my favourite feast of the year," Luna said as she walked with Hermione and Ginny towards the Great Hall.
"As much as I love the feasts, I can't help but think about all of the work that the house elves are doing," Hermione commented. Ginny tuned the conversation out. She wanted to stop walking and sit down for a moment. But she kept up with Hermione and Luna, trying to ignore the churning feeling in her stomach. But she couldn't ignore it anymore. She paused, realizing that she needed to act soon. Both girls looked at her.
"Go on without me, okay? I just need to use the bathroom," Ginny said, and turned the corner of a hallway, quickening her footsteps, hurrying towards the girls bathroom. She broke into a sprint, bursting into the bathroom, which was luckily vacant, and she fell to her knees in front of a toilet, emptying the contents of her stomach into it.
She had been feeling nauseous for the past hour or so. She had been feeling nauseous on and off all day. She had been feeling nauseous on and off all week. And before that, even. She thought back to the first day of quidditch try-outs, and how she had thrown up, but she had just assumed that it was the same illness that everybody else was getting.
She heard the bathroom door open. In her haste, Ginny hadn't managed to close the door of her stall. She glanced behind her. She saw the head of dark, curly hair, and then she turned back to the toilet.
"Ginny," Hermione said behind her.
She vomited again. Hermione was closer, standing right in the doorway of the stall.
"Ginny," she said again.
Ginny shook her head, not wanting Hermione to speak, not wanting to look at her. She couldn't bear to look at her. She knew what she was going to say before she said it.
"Ginny," Hermione said one last time. "Are you pregnant?"