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I opened my eyes to the soft maroon hue of my bed hangings surrounding me on all sides. Staying very still, as if I were trying to convince my body to still be asleep, I lay basking in the surreal experience of that moment. I could hear Ron’s snores from the bed next to mine. I heard the familiar ticking of my bedside alarm clock. In the distance I could hear the chime of the school clock clang eight times: Eight in the morning. I groaned softly as I turned to my side, pulling apart the hangings. My trunk was of course not in its usual spot. I swung my legs over the edge of the bed and gingerly stepped onto the freezing stone floor with my bare feet. Rubbing the sleep from my face, I approached the large, round mirror adorning my empty bureau to take my first glimpse of myself in months.
I almost gasped aloud.
My hair as usual had taken on a mind of its own, but the extra length of the dark locks made my pale, sallow face look even sicklier. Dark purple half-circles puffed out beneath my eyes, magnified by the thick lens of my glasses and clashing horribly with the bright green hue of my irises. The various battles fought over the course of our journey had each left their mark, from the long, pink scar running the length of the side of my face, to the missing section of my left eyebrow that had been singed off, as well as the fresh, large gash along the right side of my chin. The lightning bolt scar, once my most favourite distinguishing mark before I had known what it meant I lost, had never looked darker, as my face had never looked paler. My disorderly hair couldn’t even hide it.
How could I have faced my friends the night before with this scary mask, made jokes – smiled? I tried a smile now, stretching my lips over my teeth, crinkling my eyes in the way that I remembered making the gesture in my head. What looked back at me resembled something more like the Joker from the Batman comics I used to nick from Dudley’s room when we were kids.
And then it hit me. Being here wasn’t right. It wasn’t another morning before school. I didn’t take a long holiday, just to pick up my studies where I had left off. The five of us – Neville, Dean, Seamus, Ron, and me – reunited again in this room wasn’t right; I shouldn’t be here. I was putting everyone in this castle in so much danger just being alive. I’d have to leave as soon as possible, lure Voldemort elsewhere. We’d tell McGonagall everything that I saw in his mind about his plan to show up at Hogwarts and obtain hostages to draw me out of hiding so that she could better arm the castle; keeping her in the dark seemed reckless now.
As the panic crept into my chest, a battle of warmth began to calm the build as I remembered why I even wanted to wake up this morning: The girl of my dreams would be waiting for me soon. I had to fix things with her, make up for what I did by leaving her, and let her know that she was still everything to me – before I would have to leave again.
I started to pile on the only clothes I had with me, pulling on my dirty socks and lacing up my boots. Ron began to stir, having become as attune to my sleep schedule as I had to his. Seeing that I was awake and moving, he pulled himself out of bed and began to dress blindly through bleary eyes. We took the spiral staircase wordlessly and met a lively Hermione in the common room. Looking at her and Ron through clearer eyes after having seen myself, I could appreciate what this mission was costing them. They looked as sickly and damaged as I felt having them with me, and I felt a recognisable stab of guilt.
“All right, boys?” she asked from her perch in one of the overstuffed chairs, reading a book as usual.
“You’re awfully chipper,” Ron grumbled, rubbing his stomach absentmindedly.
“Yes, well.” She rolled her eyes lazily, and then met mine.
Giving me a meaningful look, she grinned; my letter to ask Ginny to meet me this morning must have made it to its recipient last night. My heart did a little flip-flop, and my day looked a little brighter. The disappointment I felt last night at having missed her after she had already gone to bed was ebbing away, and I felt an urgency to get going.
~*~*~*~*~*~
I left Ron and Hermione at the castle as I began the walk alone to the large oak by the lake. The tree was so significant to me now, I couldn’t remember ever not associating it with rare free days spent lying in Ginny’s arms as we watched the stirrings of the lake surface, enjoying her small fingers running through my hair, usually trying to get it to lie flat. It was secluded enough that we didn’t have to worry about our displays of affection occasionally escalating to an improper degree for a public setting, but not private enough that we had to worry about receiving an earful about spending too much time alone there.
It was under that tree, on a particularly chilly day – I remember having to hold her close as were laying on a thin blanket – which I had whispered into her ear that I loved her. I hadn’t been happier than I was the moment her eyes opened to look deeply into mine. Her fingers came up to rest against my lips, warming them, or maybe warming her own hand with my breath. The soft skin of her fingertips slowly drug across my lower lip, claiming it, mapping it, before she leaned forward to kiss me.
‘I love you too,’ she had said, breaking skin contact for a brief moment to mumble the words against my mouth. I felt a fire in my core that couldn’t be stifled by the most frigid of winters, let alone that bleak day a few days into spring, and the hot wetness of her lips and the heat of her breath stoked the fire to a roaring blaze. That exchange of words had led to the first of our indecent displays, never taken as far as I desired, though I never would have pushed it. I also never stopped desiring.
The thought of that day began to get my blood boiling. Taking a moment to fill my lungs with a freezing yet calming breath, I took a look around me to enjoy the winter scenery and think cold thoughts. I never looked around anymore as it always seemed to be life or death. It grew tiresome fast, and moments like these were hard to come by. Though the snow surrounding me was matte white with the sun hidden behind a thick layer of cloud cover, the purity of it was soothing after so much chaos. It crunched beneath each step of my boots, and the sound seemed amplified in my ears within the compressing quiet.
I soon reached the peak of the small hill hiding the base of the oak tree from view, and as I scaled it, my eyes darted to where I knew I’d find her. There she stood: The other half of my heart. My face involuntarily contorted into that terrifying shape of a grin as I admired her.
Her fiery red hair was longer, now flowing down the middle of her back. The heavy cloak protecting the shape of her womanly figure still managed to contour to her body in a pleasing way. Her creamy skin was translucent against the backdrop of frigid blue lake water. Her mouth opened as if to call something to me, but no words reached my ears. My eyes crept up her face to finally meet hers. I could easily imagine the precise shade of deep chocolate brown looking back at me, having memorised it long ago in my sleep; so hard to see from far away. The colour of her eyes moved to the back of my mind once I noticed their shape. The scrunch between her eyebrows had altered the lovely face I had been imagining behind my eyelids for months. That simple wrinkle at the base of her brow began to weigh down my high spirits, so I chose to ignore for the moment that she looked so... sad.
Now within arm’s reach, I pulled her tight against me. Feeling her body relax against mine gave me back an ounce of my confidence. She was here in my arms, what more could I possibly ask for?
“I’ve missed you so much, Ginny,” I mumbled into her hair, breathing her in.
“Harry… I need to tell you something,” she whispered.
There it was again. Something was off, something was horribly wrong. Where was my long awaited moment of happiness slipping away to?
“It’s almost over. We can pick up where we left off, finish what we started,” I shushed her, continuing to play dumb in hopes that she would take my lead.
“Please, we need to talk.” Her voice was louder this time; she wasn’t going to let me have this.
“I’m so glad that you’re here, that you’re safe.” I could hear the desperation in my words, begging her to acknowledge my ebbing joy.
“Harry… stop. Harry, listen to me!” she shouted, then pushed me away.
What was happening? Was she angry that I had left her here? She had seemed so understanding the day of Dumbledore’s funeral, like she had been expecting me to play the superhero card and break her heart in order to protect her. She seemed to have accepted it before I had even finished. Had she secretly been furious, left to dwell on it for months while I only thought of how I couldn’t wait to be with her again?
“Ginny, what’s wrong?” I winced internally at how young I sounded, and I knew I must look pathetic.
She heaved a great sigh, as if she would have to explain to a five-year-old that Father Christmas wouldn’t make it this year.
“There won’t be a place for us to pick up where we left off. I’ve moved on.”
My heart stopped. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think. As I stared at her, attempting to absorb her words, a fine sheet of red traversed my vision and blanketed anything my eyes fell upon as if someone had draped a transparent crimson scarf over my head. My hands began to shake. Give me dragons. Give me Voldemort. Give me Rita-bloody-Skeeter – anything but this.
“What’s the bloke’s name?” The words were out of my mouth as soon as the thought entered my mind. I could hear the hard disdain in my voice, but I didn’t care.
Her eyes widened; had I hit the nail on the head? I closed my fingers into tight fists, but the shaking only worsened. I consciously took in a breath through my nose, which created a cascade of shivers to erupt from my inner core.
“That’s not important, what matters–”
The shivering erupted in a blast of fury upon those words. She could have denied it; she could have given me some other sodding excuse. The veil of red darkened until I could have been blinking through a film of blood seeping over my eyes. I was hardly a violent person, so my rage escaped in the only way I would allow it.
“You bloody-well better believe it’s important!” I shouted, my voice ringing with a hostility I didn’t recognise, reverberating from the stillness of the grounds.
She held my stare, biting her lower lip. She always bit her lip when she didn’t want to lie. I hated that I could still read her.
“You left! You left me here! I never said I’d wait for you!” she exclaimed, then went back to biting her lip and wringing her hands.
The air whooshed out of my lungs as if I had been punched in the chest by Goyle and Crabbe at the same time. The red veil dissolved until a normal spectrum of colour had been restored to the world, though the tinge of fury had significantly dulled my appreciation. Everything looked gray, dull – lifeless.
She had a point: She didn’t say she’d wait for me. I took another pull of air; each breath was more painful than the last. I guess I had assumed that when one had to end a relationship for the girl’s own good to save the Wizarding community from a psychotic maniac, a few months grace period might be given.
“I left to save you, to save the effing world! This is the thanks I get? I come back to see you before I might die, and you… you’re…” I couldn’t finish that sentence or I might just throw up.
Her eyes narrowed and her arms crossed her chest. “The thanks you get? Was that my job, to just stand around and thank you?”
“No, of course not,” I immediately responded, my voice soft. I looked away, unable to handle her anger and mine at the same time.
“You don’t need me; you were always on your own! He needs me. I could have come with you, I could have helped, but you couldn’t be bothered; you were too busy playing the hero.”
‘He needs me.’ She had given him a title, made him a pronoun, made him more real than I could bear. ‘He’ had touched her, ‘he’ had kissed her, and Merlin knew what else. My head gave an involuntary jerk as an image of a strange hand running up her bare arm stole through my mind, a faceless man moving his lips towards hers. I found her eyes again, the pain flowing through me making me wish for the Cruciatus curse.
Not only was she solidifying the image of someone she wanted more than me, but she had dared to label me as the hero? That I had broken up with her because I wanted the spotlight all to myself? I tried to encourage the anger; it was easier than the pain.
“Playing the hero? Hi, my name’s Harry Potter, have we met before? Do you know me at all?”
The white snow surrounding us began to reflect in the pools of remorse filling her eyes.
“No, I know you never wanted to be the hero. That was stupid of me to say,” she whispered softly.
There she was, the girl I love, hiding beneath an unfamiliar exterior. I wasn’t about to buy that hero shite, but hearing her take it back didn’t feel like a victory. It felt like the calm I experienced before I stepped out from hiding behind Tom Riddle senior’s tombstone in the graveyard, like watching Dementors suck the life from my past self and knowing that my dad wasn’t coming, like the realization that Basilisk venom was coursing through my veins before I knew Fawkes’ tears would save my life. Fawkes was nowhere in sight, and the gaping wound in my chest was awaiting a final blow that would end the life of its bleeding occupant.
I stared deeply into her russet eyes, willing my Ginny to come back to me. I could see in the tears now rolling down her cheeks that there was something on the tip of her tongue, something that would ruin me.
“I love him, Harry.”
There was that blow. Her words were garbled as they reached my ears, but became clearer as they echoed in my head; I couldn’t deny that I understood them. I felt dizzy. My vision was tunnelling and my eyes were getting heavy as I gazed at her. I could hear a voice at the back of my head screaming at me. I was forgetting to do something; I was missing a vital element that I needed to live. I didn’t want it; I had lost her.
‘Breathe!’ the voice shrieked at me, and I took in a searing breath. A flood of bitter relief began to sweep through me, elongating my suffering. The excruciating pain coming from the place where my heart used to be brought a sting to my eyes, and I turned away from her to stare over the glossy sheet of smooth water. Now would be a great time for the squid to reach out and snatch me, to drag me under, but I knew I wasn’t so lucky. The lake retained its calm as if nothing sinister lurked within its murky depths.
“I’m so sorry to ruin what we had by falling in love with someone else, by acting like you didn’t mean anything to me,” she continued to speak, her tone begging for my understanding, but it took all of my self control to merely listen, let alone absorb. “Being with you was magical; it had been a dream come true for me, but he makes me feel…”
“Different,” I whispered without thinking, the word escaping my lips as if spoken by someone else. I was disconnected, floating somewhere above this mess, remembering the happiness that had been mine, which I thought I still had rights to mere minutes ago. I imagined my body reeling me back.
We’re not done yet. She’s worth more of a fight than this, you coward.
“Yes,” she responded, and I hardly noticed that she spoke as I gathered the nerve to turn around and face her again.
I took a step towards her and reached forward to grasp each of her shoulders within my hands. We were less than a foot apart, and I could feel her tense beneath my touch.
“Please, give me another chance, I do need you,” I pleaded.
She remained stiff in front of me, cold, and she closed her eyes to me as if aggravated. Without the distraction of losing myself within those coffee brown rings, I looked to her lips. Full, flushed with cold, I watched them round out her next words with devastation that I was no longer allowed to touch them, warm them – kiss them.
“It’s too late, Harry,” she whispered.
It couldn’t be too late. I had one last act of desperation, one she couldn’t deny me. She would feel what I felt; I’d make sure of it.
“No, it’s not.”
I moved quickly, taking my opportunity to catch her by surprise as she opened her eyes and I closed mine. My hands came up to take hold of either side of her face, and our lips met forcefully, in a way I had never tried before. She didn’t immediately recoil, so I pushed on. I moved my lips around hers, coercing them to life. They remained dead to my advances for just a moment, but then they parted slightly, then a little more, and then her bottom lip moved underneath mine and her top in between. Her mouth was hot and wet as I moved in deeper. My thumbs grazed over her cheekbones, re-memorizing the texture of her creamy skin, absorbing the chill. I imagined the exact colour of the crimson flush brought on by the cold that my hands were now warming away. I took a half-step closer so that our bodies were now meshed together, and she didn’t step back. Her lips were not quite parted enough to allow access of my tongue, so I pushed my way in, forcing her mouth to contour to mine as it opened further. She tasted exactly like I remembered, her tongue soft as mine ran over it. I felt the whimper she let escape, and my hands moved from her face and into her hair in response. I pulled her closer to me, never having wanted her more. Her hands finally came up from hanging at her sides to run themselves up my chest. She wanted me too. I could feel the pressure coming from her fingers, but I couldn’t feel the warmth, and it made me desperately want her to rip away my cloak and shirt and find my bare chest. The pressure increased, like she was pushing, and in a sudden motion that caught me completely off-guard, she pushed me away from her.
I took a small step back, but she had managed to throw herself completely off-balance. She stumbled backwards until she regained control, the back of her hand covering her mouth. She looked at me as if I had betrayed her trust, as if she hadn’t been kissing me back only seconds ago. She wouldn’t get off that easily.
“Tell me that you didn’t feel that too, and I’ll leave you alone,” I said in a low voice, the anger building in my stomach at the nerve she had to put this all on me.
“I’m sorry, Harry.” She shook her head.
I could feel the shaking start up again, and all I could imagine was finding the faceless man and ripping him apart. I could do it; I didn’t even need my wand. I didn’t care if he was bigger than me, tougher, that he had her love on his side. So what if I was skinny, that I hadn’t been properly fed in months. But maybe he would crush me, and I would probably thank him for it. It’d be easier.
“What’s his name?” My voice was strangled with rage.
“Please, Harry, it won’t help you to know–” she squeaked, beginning to look afraid of me.
“Tell me his bloody name!” I shouted into her face. I took a step towards her, and she took several back, her eyes wide with alarm.
But then she stopped stepping backwards and stood her ground, squaring her shoulders.
“I won’t tell you, not when you’re like this!” she shouted back.
Her finite words struck me hard, seeping into my hot fury. As I held her glare, I could feel the cool sensation of defeat soak into my skin, chilling me to the bone. The girl in front of me felt like a stranger.
I dropped my eyes and let out the breath I had been holding in a cloud of sparkling frost. I took a tentative step forward and reached for one of her small hands. The fingertips of my right hand slid slowly beneath her left, my sensitive skin absorbing the sensation of the warming friction as I found her soft palm. I lifted her hand towards me, bringing my other hand on top to encase hers. As I commenced to drawing patterns with my pointer finger across her pale skin, I fought through the numbness for one last pathetic attempt.
“It was supposed to be you and me,” I muttered, my voice now feeble and frail.
“Says who?” she asked softly.
I found her eyes, fighting the humiliating pool of moisture gathering in mine.
“What world is worth saving without you?” I whispered.
She bit her lip one last time, and I was done. I dropped the dead weight of her hand, the hole in my chest unable to withstand anymore of her cold stabs, and I walked away.
I almost gasped aloud.
My hair as usual had taken on a mind of its own, but the extra length of the dark locks made my pale, sallow face look even sicklier. Dark purple half-circles puffed out beneath my eyes, magnified by the thick lens of my glasses and clashing horribly with the bright green hue of my irises. The various battles fought over the course of our journey had each left their mark, from the long, pink scar running the length of the side of my face, to the missing section of my left eyebrow that had been singed off, as well as the fresh, large gash along the right side of my chin. The lightning bolt scar, once my most favourite distinguishing mark before I had known what it meant I lost, had never looked darker, as my face had never looked paler. My disorderly hair couldn’t even hide it.
How could I have faced my friends the night before with this scary mask, made jokes – smiled? I tried a smile now, stretching my lips over my teeth, crinkling my eyes in the way that I remembered making the gesture in my head. What looked back at me resembled something more like the Joker from the Batman comics I used to nick from Dudley’s room when we were kids.
And then it hit me. Being here wasn’t right. It wasn’t another morning before school. I didn’t take a long holiday, just to pick up my studies where I had left off. The five of us – Neville, Dean, Seamus, Ron, and me – reunited again in this room wasn’t right; I shouldn’t be here. I was putting everyone in this castle in so much danger just being alive. I’d have to leave as soon as possible, lure Voldemort elsewhere. We’d tell McGonagall everything that I saw in his mind about his plan to show up at Hogwarts and obtain hostages to draw me out of hiding so that she could better arm the castle; keeping her in the dark seemed reckless now.
As the panic crept into my chest, a battle of warmth began to calm the build as I remembered why I even wanted to wake up this morning: The girl of my dreams would be waiting for me soon. I had to fix things with her, make up for what I did by leaving her, and let her know that she was still everything to me – before I would have to leave again.
I started to pile on the only clothes I had with me, pulling on my dirty socks and lacing up my boots. Ron began to stir, having become as attune to my sleep schedule as I had to his. Seeing that I was awake and moving, he pulled himself out of bed and began to dress blindly through bleary eyes. We took the spiral staircase wordlessly and met a lively Hermione in the common room. Looking at her and Ron through clearer eyes after having seen myself, I could appreciate what this mission was costing them. They looked as sickly and damaged as I felt having them with me, and I felt a recognisable stab of guilt.
“All right, boys?” she asked from her perch in one of the overstuffed chairs, reading a book as usual.
“You’re awfully chipper,” Ron grumbled, rubbing his stomach absentmindedly.
“Yes, well.” She rolled her eyes lazily, and then met mine.
Giving me a meaningful look, she grinned; my letter to ask Ginny to meet me this morning must have made it to its recipient last night. My heart did a little flip-flop, and my day looked a little brighter. The disappointment I felt last night at having missed her after she had already gone to bed was ebbing away, and I felt an urgency to get going.
~*~*~*~*~*~
I left Ron and Hermione at the castle as I began the walk alone to the large oak by the lake. The tree was so significant to me now, I couldn’t remember ever not associating it with rare free days spent lying in Ginny’s arms as we watched the stirrings of the lake surface, enjoying her small fingers running through my hair, usually trying to get it to lie flat. It was secluded enough that we didn’t have to worry about our displays of affection occasionally escalating to an improper degree for a public setting, but not private enough that we had to worry about receiving an earful about spending too much time alone there.
It was under that tree, on a particularly chilly day – I remember having to hold her close as were laying on a thin blanket – which I had whispered into her ear that I loved her. I hadn’t been happier than I was the moment her eyes opened to look deeply into mine. Her fingers came up to rest against my lips, warming them, or maybe warming her own hand with my breath. The soft skin of her fingertips slowly drug across my lower lip, claiming it, mapping it, before she leaned forward to kiss me.
‘I love you too,’ she had said, breaking skin contact for a brief moment to mumble the words against my mouth. I felt a fire in my core that couldn’t be stifled by the most frigid of winters, let alone that bleak day a few days into spring, and the hot wetness of her lips and the heat of her breath stoked the fire to a roaring blaze. That exchange of words had led to the first of our indecent displays, never taken as far as I desired, though I never would have pushed it. I also never stopped desiring.
The thought of that day began to get my blood boiling. Taking a moment to fill my lungs with a freezing yet calming breath, I took a look around me to enjoy the winter scenery and think cold thoughts. I never looked around anymore as it always seemed to be life or death. It grew tiresome fast, and moments like these were hard to come by. Though the snow surrounding me was matte white with the sun hidden behind a thick layer of cloud cover, the purity of it was soothing after so much chaos. It crunched beneath each step of my boots, and the sound seemed amplified in my ears within the compressing quiet.
I soon reached the peak of the small hill hiding the base of the oak tree from view, and as I scaled it, my eyes darted to where I knew I’d find her. There she stood: The other half of my heart. My face involuntarily contorted into that terrifying shape of a grin as I admired her.
Her fiery red hair was longer, now flowing down the middle of her back. The heavy cloak protecting the shape of her womanly figure still managed to contour to her body in a pleasing way. Her creamy skin was translucent against the backdrop of frigid blue lake water. Her mouth opened as if to call something to me, but no words reached my ears. My eyes crept up her face to finally meet hers. I could easily imagine the precise shade of deep chocolate brown looking back at me, having memorised it long ago in my sleep; so hard to see from far away. The colour of her eyes moved to the back of my mind once I noticed their shape. The scrunch between her eyebrows had altered the lovely face I had been imagining behind my eyelids for months. That simple wrinkle at the base of her brow began to weigh down my high spirits, so I chose to ignore for the moment that she looked so... sad.
Now within arm’s reach, I pulled her tight against me. Feeling her body relax against mine gave me back an ounce of my confidence. She was here in my arms, what more could I possibly ask for?
“I’ve missed you so much, Ginny,” I mumbled into her hair, breathing her in.
“Harry… I need to tell you something,” she whispered.
There it was again. Something was off, something was horribly wrong. Where was my long awaited moment of happiness slipping away to?
“It’s almost over. We can pick up where we left off, finish what we started,” I shushed her, continuing to play dumb in hopes that she would take my lead.
“Please, we need to talk.” Her voice was louder this time; she wasn’t going to let me have this.
“I’m so glad that you’re here, that you’re safe.” I could hear the desperation in my words, begging her to acknowledge my ebbing joy.
“Harry… stop. Harry, listen to me!” she shouted, then pushed me away.
What was happening? Was she angry that I had left her here? She had seemed so understanding the day of Dumbledore’s funeral, like she had been expecting me to play the superhero card and break her heart in order to protect her. She seemed to have accepted it before I had even finished. Had she secretly been furious, left to dwell on it for months while I only thought of how I couldn’t wait to be with her again?
“Ginny, what’s wrong?” I winced internally at how young I sounded, and I knew I must look pathetic.
She heaved a great sigh, as if she would have to explain to a five-year-old that Father Christmas wouldn’t make it this year.
“There won’t be a place for us to pick up where we left off. I’ve moved on.”
My heart stopped. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think. As I stared at her, attempting to absorb her words, a fine sheet of red traversed my vision and blanketed anything my eyes fell upon as if someone had draped a transparent crimson scarf over my head. My hands began to shake. Give me dragons. Give me Voldemort. Give me Rita-bloody-Skeeter – anything but this.
“What’s the bloke’s name?” The words were out of my mouth as soon as the thought entered my mind. I could hear the hard disdain in my voice, but I didn’t care.
Her eyes widened; had I hit the nail on the head? I closed my fingers into tight fists, but the shaking only worsened. I consciously took in a breath through my nose, which created a cascade of shivers to erupt from my inner core.
“That’s not important, what matters–”
The shivering erupted in a blast of fury upon those words. She could have denied it; she could have given me some other sodding excuse. The veil of red darkened until I could have been blinking through a film of blood seeping over my eyes. I was hardly a violent person, so my rage escaped in the only way I would allow it.
“You bloody-well better believe it’s important!” I shouted, my voice ringing with a hostility I didn’t recognise, reverberating from the stillness of the grounds.
She held my stare, biting her lower lip. She always bit her lip when she didn’t want to lie. I hated that I could still read her.
“You left! You left me here! I never said I’d wait for you!” she exclaimed, then went back to biting her lip and wringing her hands.
The air whooshed out of my lungs as if I had been punched in the chest by Goyle and Crabbe at the same time. The red veil dissolved until a normal spectrum of colour had been restored to the world, though the tinge of fury had significantly dulled my appreciation. Everything looked gray, dull – lifeless.
She had a point: She didn’t say she’d wait for me. I took another pull of air; each breath was more painful than the last. I guess I had assumed that when one had to end a relationship for the girl’s own good to save the Wizarding community from a psychotic maniac, a few months grace period might be given.
“I left to save you, to save the effing world! This is the thanks I get? I come back to see you before I might die, and you… you’re…” I couldn’t finish that sentence or I might just throw up.
Her eyes narrowed and her arms crossed her chest. “The thanks you get? Was that my job, to just stand around and thank you?”
“No, of course not,” I immediately responded, my voice soft. I looked away, unable to handle her anger and mine at the same time.
“You don’t need me; you were always on your own! He needs me. I could have come with you, I could have helped, but you couldn’t be bothered; you were too busy playing the hero.”
‘He needs me.’ She had given him a title, made him a pronoun, made him more real than I could bear. ‘He’ had touched her, ‘he’ had kissed her, and Merlin knew what else. My head gave an involuntary jerk as an image of a strange hand running up her bare arm stole through my mind, a faceless man moving his lips towards hers. I found her eyes again, the pain flowing through me making me wish for the Cruciatus curse.
Not only was she solidifying the image of someone she wanted more than me, but she had dared to label me as the hero? That I had broken up with her because I wanted the spotlight all to myself? I tried to encourage the anger; it was easier than the pain.
“Playing the hero? Hi, my name’s Harry Potter, have we met before? Do you know me at all?”
The white snow surrounding us began to reflect in the pools of remorse filling her eyes.
“No, I know you never wanted to be the hero. That was stupid of me to say,” she whispered softly.
There she was, the girl I love, hiding beneath an unfamiliar exterior. I wasn’t about to buy that hero shite, but hearing her take it back didn’t feel like a victory. It felt like the calm I experienced before I stepped out from hiding behind Tom Riddle senior’s tombstone in the graveyard, like watching Dementors suck the life from my past self and knowing that my dad wasn’t coming, like the realization that Basilisk venom was coursing through my veins before I knew Fawkes’ tears would save my life. Fawkes was nowhere in sight, and the gaping wound in my chest was awaiting a final blow that would end the life of its bleeding occupant.
I stared deeply into her russet eyes, willing my Ginny to come back to me. I could see in the tears now rolling down her cheeks that there was something on the tip of her tongue, something that would ruin me.
“I love him, Harry.”
There was that blow. Her words were garbled as they reached my ears, but became clearer as they echoed in my head; I couldn’t deny that I understood them. I felt dizzy. My vision was tunnelling and my eyes were getting heavy as I gazed at her. I could hear a voice at the back of my head screaming at me. I was forgetting to do something; I was missing a vital element that I needed to live. I didn’t want it; I had lost her.
‘Breathe!’ the voice shrieked at me, and I took in a searing breath. A flood of bitter relief began to sweep through me, elongating my suffering. The excruciating pain coming from the place where my heart used to be brought a sting to my eyes, and I turned away from her to stare over the glossy sheet of smooth water. Now would be a great time for the squid to reach out and snatch me, to drag me under, but I knew I wasn’t so lucky. The lake retained its calm as if nothing sinister lurked within its murky depths.
“I’m so sorry to ruin what we had by falling in love with someone else, by acting like you didn’t mean anything to me,” she continued to speak, her tone begging for my understanding, but it took all of my self control to merely listen, let alone absorb. “Being with you was magical; it had been a dream come true for me, but he makes me feel…”
“Different,” I whispered without thinking, the word escaping my lips as if spoken by someone else. I was disconnected, floating somewhere above this mess, remembering the happiness that had been mine, which I thought I still had rights to mere minutes ago. I imagined my body reeling me back.
We’re not done yet. She’s worth more of a fight than this, you coward.
“Yes,” she responded, and I hardly noticed that she spoke as I gathered the nerve to turn around and face her again.
I took a step towards her and reached forward to grasp each of her shoulders within my hands. We were less than a foot apart, and I could feel her tense beneath my touch.
“Please, give me another chance, I do need you,” I pleaded.
She remained stiff in front of me, cold, and she closed her eyes to me as if aggravated. Without the distraction of losing myself within those coffee brown rings, I looked to her lips. Full, flushed with cold, I watched them round out her next words with devastation that I was no longer allowed to touch them, warm them – kiss them.
“It’s too late, Harry,” she whispered.
It couldn’t be too late. I had one last act of desperation, one she couldn’t deny me. She would feel what I felt; I’d make sure of it.
“No, it’s not.”
I moved quickly, taking my opportunity to catch her by surprise as she opened her eyes and I closed mine. My hands came up to take hold of either side of her face, and our lips met forcefully, in a way I had never tried before. She didn’t immediately recoil, so I pushed on. I moved my lips around hers, coercing them to life. They remained dead to my advances for just a moment, but then they parted slightly, then a little more, and then her bottom lip moved underneath mine and her top in between. Her mouth was hot and wet as I moved in deeper. My thumbs grazed over her cheekbones, re-memorizing the texture of her creamy skin, absorbing the chill. I imagined the exact colour of the crimson flush brought on by the cold that my hands were now warming away. I took a half-step closer so that our bodies were now meshed together, and she didn’t step back. Her lips were not quite parted enough to allow access of my tongue, so I pushed my way in, forcing her mouth to contour to mine as it opened further. She tasted exactly like I remembered, her tongue soft as mine ran over it. I felt the whimper she let escape, and my hands moved from her face and into her hair in response. I pulled her closer to me, never having wanted her more. Her hands finally came up from hanging at her sides to run themselves up my chest. She wanted me too. I could feel the pressure coming from her fingers, but I couldn’t feel the warmth, and it made me desperately want her to rip away my cloak and shirt and find my bare chest. The pressure increased, like she was pushing, and in a sudden motion that caught me completely off-guard, she pushed me away from her.
I took a small step back, but she had managed to throw herself completely off-balance. She stumbled backwards until she regained control, the back of her hand covering her mouth. She looked at me as if I had betrayed her trust, as if she hadn’t been kissing me back only seconds ago. She wouldn’t get off that easily.
“Tell me that you didn’t feel that too, and I’ll leave you alone,” I said in a low voice, the anger building in my stomach at the nerve she had to put this all on me.
“I’m sorry, Harry.” She shook her head.
I could feel the shaking start up again, and all I could imagine was finding the faceless man and ripping him apart. I could do it; I didn’t even need my wand. I didn’t care if he was bigger than me, tougher, that he had her love on his side. So what if I was skinny, that I hadn’t been properly fed in months. But maybe he would crush me, and I would probably thank him for it. It’d be easier.
“What’s his name?” My voice was strangled with rage.
“Please, Harry, it won’t help you to know–” she squeaked, beginning to look afraid of me.
“Tell me his bloody name!” I shouted into her face. I took a step towards her, and she took several back, her eyes wide with alarm.
But then she stopped stepping backwards and stood her ground, squaring her shoulders.
“I won’t tell you, not when you’re like this!” she shouted back.
Her finite words struck me hard, seeping into my hot fury. As I held her glare, I could feel the cool sensation of defeat soak into my skin, chilling me to the bone. The girl in front of me felt like a stranger.
I dropped my eyes and let out the breath I had been holding in a cloud of sparkling frost. I took a tentative step forward and reached for one of her small hands. The fingertips of my right hand slid slowly beneath her left, my sensitive skin absorbing the sensation of the warming friction as I found her soft palm. I lifted her hand towards me, bringing my other hand on top to encase hers. As I commenced to drawing patterns with my pointer finger across her pale skin, I fought through the numbness for one last pathetic attempt.
“It was supposed to be you and me,” I muttered, my voice now feeble and frail.
“Says who?” she asked softly.
I found her eyes, fighting the humiliating pool of moisture gathering in mine.
“What world is worth saving without you?” I whispered.
She bit her lip one last time, and I was done. I dropped the dead weight of her hand, the hole in my chest unable to withstand anymore of her cold stabs, and I walked away.
Author notes: This idea came from a reader who suggested I write this chapter from Harry's POV to show what he's going through when Ginny tells him there's someone else, but isn't able to tell him that it's Draco. Please R&R! :-)
The End.
CrystalM is the author of 3 other stories.
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This story is a favorite of 3 members. Members who liked Here's to the Death of My Heart also liked 1000 other stories.
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