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Disclaimer: J.K. Rowling owns Harry Potter, along with her various publishers and related companies. I’m making no money off of this. I torture these characters for my own personal enjoyment.
Ginny, Insane
He’s insane.
He lies on the sofa until noon and then does nothing but sit at the table in the kitchen while sipping his black, black coffee. While I sweep around his feet. While I wipe the sticky linoleum floor, he stares. His eyes are bloodshot. I hand him an eyedropper. He smiles and continues to drink his poison. I tell him, maybe if you don’t drink so much coffee. You’ll go to sleep if you stop. I’ll remember the soft way you snore again.
I know the problem is not coffee. The problem isn’t him not working. The problem is not that he is a pig and that every time I clean the fucking floors his hands tremble and he spills a bit more.
The problem is that we have been married too long. The problem is that vacations and pretty little excursions to the sandy beach aren’t supposed to last years and years.
I almost want to tell him to get out. The words are roaring in my chest, beating to the same rhythm of my angry, torn heart. If only I could open my mouth, and let out some air. All of that musty, dusty air tastes stale in the pit of my stomach. I feel sick.
When I wonder just how I came to be slightly disgusted by him, I can never blame any single person. I am thinking that our plans have gone wrong, like a mistaken road sign we hastily read in the dark. It was like this: When we met, we had love in the crook of our arms. I looked at him and held him and stroked his soft hair and kissed his full lips. But it doesn't matter how we loved each other then, because what mattered was the happiness. The part where we looked forward to tomorrow. That kind of love was a collection of bright little sparks. It would have lasted forever if it weren’t for the inevitable fact that all fires went out. It doesn’t matter if the wind is always blowing, always fueling. Time is too strong for that.
Is it wrong, that we were so young? Should I have been sage at the age of seventeen, pushing this handsome boy away because I knew he might be a little bad for me? Is it wrong that I had never loved before? Is it wrong that no one ever told me about marriage and falling into a choking household rhythm that we wouldn’t be able to stand? Because we were young then, and we are still young. I am still too young. It is just the way things are. I always nag about money, and he always shuts his eyes and tells me to shut the hell up, because what do I want him to do about it? Work, you lazy bastard, I tell him. I stop. I shouldn’t have said that. I should have either said I’m sorry baby, and I love you, or I should have said, get out. Go right now, and be done with it. We were over long ago. Why stay for the after party? Are you waiting for an explosion?
I always thought that it didn’t matter, whatever my life threw at me. Throw me a million consecutive winters and I would duke it out with my husband. Look at mother and father, I said to myself. Love has held them together. It will be the same for my Draco and I. We are so in love. We are. It doesn’t matter that he is completely different from me, and that most of the times I don’t even understand him. I love him. That’s what I said. I still love him. Just not the crazy way I did before. You realize soon, without being able to stop any of it, that all things are meant to fade. It’s then that I realize how harsh and frank things are with this entire place, this entire planet, this entire society.
Should I feel cheated by all those love ballads? Because I know he wants to leave. If I had the willpower, I'd do anything in my power to stop him from thinking that. If I had the conviction, I'd do anything in my power to stop me from thinking that. If only that same passion would still burn me. I would tell him we are a family. But are we? If so, we sure make a shitty one. With no child to love in this rickety shack, no grounds of familiarity, we are just two lonely strangers who look at each other from time to time and say, hey, don't I know you from someplace?
I know that what he wants most is a family. Before he came to me, he told me that he hated his Mother and that he feared his Father. I knew it to be a lie but I said nothing. He told me I was his family now. That’s never really worked out. He’s disappointed in us, just like I am. Does he furiously ask God why we aren’t happier together? After we have just about faded into nothingness, he wants something permanent. I guess it is about then that he realizes what he’s had before me. I guess it is about then that he realizes he’d rather have that, than his zombie-like, penniless and hopeless existence. And when I say that, it sounds like my life has only served to be someone else’s fable, someone else’s life lesson; you don’t miss the things you truly love until they’re gone. Would he miss me?
I’ve seen him look fondly at the pictures of his own cold family. I don’t know anything about them, but I can relate. I have a family of my own, and when I think of them, I feel younger and smaller than ever. See? It doesn't matter if his Father is a Death Eater who's been through Azkaban and back, and it doesn't matter that his mother is every bit his Father, except quieter. I listen to him patiently when he talks about his grand manor. I try to smile when he talks about his beautiful mother and his charismatic father. He misses them. These are the things important to him, and they have been there forever. He loves them, in a way that he will never love me. But I understand. We are both still tiny little children.
In a sense, this was just a mini detour in his life, and mine. We were, after all, very different kinds of people. Like taking a curious cut through the woods, and then finally finding your way back home like you are supposed to. Maybe loving someone isn’t enough. Maybe it needs to be at the right place, at the right time. Maybe when Ginny Weasley and Draco Malfoy are together confined for eternity within these ugly robin’s-egg-blue walls with nothing to do but think, it will kill the both of them slowly.
Maybe it was the last chilling thought, that I was handing my life away, was the last straw. It probably was.
It’s sunny outside. I might have suggested that we go take a walk, but we haven’t done one of those in nearly a year. I would probably forget how to walk. Today, he is pretending to read a newspaper. He’s pretending he cares about how a woman was hospitalized due to her flying pottery. The heat becomes suddenly sweltering. I don’t reach for the water.
Instead, I take a deep breath, and let the mop come to a stop in its never-ending motion. It takes every ounce of bravery in me to do this, and I can feel the fuzzy cloth of the slippers I’m wearing stick to my sweaty feet.
He looks at me for a moment, confused at the sudden lack of the swish-swish sound of the mop. Then his face clears when he watches mine; sympathetic and determined, looking with tears at the crumbling ceiling and crooked picture frames of scenery. I let the silence stay there for a last time. For once, it feels okay.
I know, Draco. I know that you want to leave. I know that I want to you leave. I know that we’re being silly, standing around here all day, I say almost regretfully. So I'm saying you should go, right now. Go home, Draco.
He places his cup on the table decisively. Stands up in his ratty turquoise bathrobe and nods, almost thankfully. My words seem to strengthen him. Maybe he's thinking of the things that really matter in his life; his soft, king-sized bed with silk sheets. Canolies on a silver platter. A Father who will push him around again, knowing that his son loves him.
I know, too. Goodbye, he replies seriously. He hasn’t been this agreeable in months. The door is cracked open and blows in bitter, saying-farewell breezes. I look at his lucid eyes for the first time in eight long years. We are leaving, parting, after so many different lives (it feels like) we have spent together, and yet it is the most relieving, refreshing moment of my short and infinity-life. His leaving seems to be about so many different things, my mind bubbles and stretches and still doesn't take in all of it. It's like jumping into a clear stream naked. Like jumping off of a high, high cliff, and realizing you can fly. It’s exactly like that. And the only thing to do when you feel like this is to let go of your thoughts completely.
And then I think, perhaps he is not so insane after all. Maybe we both are, to be leaving it off like this. Normal people, outside people might frown down on us and say, Bah, those young folk, they don’t know how to keep together. Maybe we are just both being weak.
I’ll see you around, he says. Like he’s just going away until tomorrow. I look up.
I see a shadow of a smile. He takes a ratty old briefcase that contains nothing much at all. His face is calm and serious, but I can tell he is bursting with excitement. When he’s ready, he straddles the space between our house and the outside streets. Time stills for us.
I still love you. He says it in a hoarse whisper.
Then, he shuts the door behind him closely, and I think I see the tip of his yellow, yellow hair.
I sit alone in the same chair he had, sipping the remains of his disgusting coffee. I'm shaking for a reason I can't describe. Even my heart is shaking. Fat and ugly tears spill out of my eyes at the same time the coffee tumbles completely to the floor I've just cleaned. Sensible Ginny Weasley wants to keep on crying, and then clean up the mess miserably. Sensible Ginny hates tattered ends. But Crazy Ginny wants to smile, then laugh cheerfully. Glee tries to bubble in her and overflows. Insane Gin scolds her logical self, asking her to leave the mess alone, just for once. What does it matter? Loony Ginny tells herself that nothing is as important as happiness.
And then, I—not Sensible Ginny, not Crazy Ginny, but Just Ginny--think that I have never been so content and satisfied in my life, sitting in a decrepit kitchen like this with a ruined marriage. For a second, that is all that matters.
A day later, all my belongings are squished into old-lady carpetbags. The house is empty, and it barely feels like I’ve spent so many years here.
I walk out the door with my two lonely bags. Ladies next door stare rudely at me, their thin lips pursed in disapproval. I can just hear them calling me insane. But I don’t care.
I’m finally ready to get out of the woods, and go home.
Ginny, Insane
He’s insane.
He lies on the sofa until noon and then does nothing but sit at the table in the kitchen while sipping his black, black coffee. While I sweep around his feet. While I wipe the sticky linoleum floor, he stares. His eyes are bloodshot. I hand him an eyedropper. He smiles and continues to drink his poison. I tell him, maybe if you don’t drink so much coffee. You’ll go to sleep if you stop. I’ll remember the soft way you snore again.
I know the problem is not coffee. The problem isn’t him not working. The problem is not that he is a pig and that every time I clean the fucking floors his hands tremble and he spills a bit more.
The problem is that we have been married too long. The problem is that vacations and pretty little excursions to the sandy beach aren’t supposed to last years and years.
I almost want to tell him to get out. The words are roaring in my chest, beating to the same rhythm of my angry, torn heart. If only I could open my mouth, and let out some air. All of that musty, dusty air tastes stale in the pit of my stomach. I feel sick.
When I wonder just how I came to be slightly disgusted by him, I can never blame any single person. I am thinking that our plans have gone wrong, like a mistaken road sign we hastily read in the dark. It was like this: When we met, we had love in the crook of our arms. I looked at him and held him and stroked his soft hair and kissed his full lips. But it doesn't matter how we loved each other then, because what mattered was the happiness. The part where we looked forward to tomorrow. That kind of love was a collection of bright little sparks. It would have lasted forever if it weren’t for the inevitable fact that all fires went out. It doesn’t matter if the wind is always blowing, always fueling. Time is too strong for that.
Is it wrong, that we were so young? Should I have been sage at the age of seventeen, pushing this handsome boy away because I knew he might be a little bad for me? Is it wrong that I had never loved before? Is it wrong that no one ever told me about marriage and falling into a choking household rhythm that we wouldn’t be able to stand? Because we were young then, and we are still young. I am still too young. It is just the way things are. I always nag about money, and he always shuts his eyes and tells me to shut the hell up, because what do I want him to do about it? Work, you lazy bastard, I tell him. I stop. I shouldn’t have said that. I should have either said I’m sorry baby, and I love you, or I should have said, get out. Go right now, and be done with it. We were over long ago. Why stay for the after party? Are you waiting for an explosion?
I always thought that it didn’t matter, whatever my life threw at me. Throw me a million consecutive winters and I would duke it out with my husband. Look at mother and father, I said to myself. Love has held them together. It will be the same for my Draco and I. We are so in love. We are. It doesn’t matter that he is completely different from me, and that most of the times I don’t even understand him. I love him. That’s what I said. I still love him. Just not the crazy way I did before. You realize soon, without being able to stop any of it, that all things are meant to fade. It’s then that I realize how harsh and frank things are with this entire place, this entire planet, this entire society.
Should I feel cheated by all those love ballads? Because I know he wants to leave. If I had the willpower, I'd do anything in my power to stop him from thinking that. If I had the conviction, I'd do anything in my power to stop me from thinking that. If only that same passion would still burn me. I would tell him we are a family. But are we? If so, we sure make a shitty one. With no child to love in this rickety shack, no grounds of familiarity, we are just two lonely strangers who look at each other from time to time and say, hey, don't I know you from someplace?
I know that what he wants most is a family. Before he came to me, he told me that he hated his Mother and that he feared his Father. I knew it to be a lie but I said nothing. He told me I was his family now. That’s never really worked out. He’s disappointed in us, just like I am. Does he furiously ask God why we aren’t happier together? After we have just about faded into nothingness, he wants something permanent. I guess it is about then that he realizes what he’s had before me. I guess it is about then that he realizes he’d rather have that, than his zombie-like, penniless and hopeless existence. And when I say that, it sounds like my life has only served to be someone else’s fable, someone else’s life lesson; you don’t miss the things you truly love until they’re gone. Would he miss me?
I’ve seen him look fondly at the pictures of his own cold family. I don’t know anything about them, but I can relate. I have a family of my own, and when I think of them, I feel younger and smaller than ever. See? It doesn't matter if his Father is a Death Eater who's been through Azkaban and back, and it doesn't matter that his mother is every bit his Father, except quieter. I listen to him patiently when he talks about his grand manor. I try to smile when he talks about his beautiful mother and his charismatic father. He misses them. These are the things important to him, and they have been there forever. He loves them, in a way that he will never love me. But I understand. We are both still tiny little children.
In a sense, this was just a mini detour in his life, and mine. We were, after all, very different kinds of people. Like taking a curious cut through the woods, and then finally finding your way back home like you are supposed to. Maybe loving someone isn’t enough. Maybe it needs to be at the right place, at the right time. Maybe when Ginny Weasley and Draco Malfoy are together confined for eternity within these ugly robin’s-egg-blue walls with nothing to do but think, it will kill the both of them slowly.
Maybe it was the last chilling thought, that I was handing my life away, was the last straw. It probably was.
It’s sunny outside. I might have suggested that we go take a walk, but we haven’t done one of those in nearly a year. I would probably forget how to walk. Today, he is pretending to read a newspaper. He’s pretending he cares about how a woman was hospitalized due to her flying pottery. The heat becomes suddenly sweltering. I don’t reach for the water.
Instead, I take a deep breath, and let the mop come to a stop in its never-ending motion. It takes every ounce of bravery in me to do this, and I can feel the fuzzy cloth of the slippers I’m wearing stick to my sweaty feet.
He looks at me for a moment, confused at the sudden lack of the swish-swish sound of the mop. Then his face clears when he watches mine; sympathetic and determined, looking with tears at the crumbling ceiling and crooked picture frames of scenery. I let the silence stay there for a last time. For once, it feels okay.
I know, Draco. I know that you want to leave. I know that I want to you leave. I know that we’re being silly, standing around here all day, I say almost regretfully. So I'm saying you should go, right now. Go home, Draco.
He places his cup on the table decisively. Stands up in his ratty turquoise bathrobe and nods, almost thankfully. My words seem to strengthen him. Maybe he's thinking of the things that really matter in his life; his soft, king-sized bed with silk sheets. Canolies on a silver platter. A Father who will push him around again, knowing that his son loves him.
I know, too. Goodbye, he replies seriously. He hasn’t been this agreeable in months. The door is cracked open and blows in bitter, saying-farewell breezes. I look at his lucid eyes for the first time in eight long years. We are leaving, parting, after so many different lives (it feels like) we have spent together, and yet it is the most relieving, refreshing moment of my short and infinity-life. His leaving seems to be about so many different things, my mind bubbles and stretches and still doesn't take in all of it. It's like jumping into a clear stream naked. Like jumping off of a high, high cliff, and realizing you can fly. It’s exactly like that. And the only thing to do when you feel like this is to let go of your thoughts completely.
And then I think, perhaps he is not so insane after all. Maybe we both are, to be leaving it off like this. Normal people, outside people might frown down on us and say, Bah, those young folk, they don’t know how to keep together. Maybe we are just both being weak.
I’ll see you around, he says. Like he’s just going away until tomorrow. I look up.
I see a shadow of a smile. He takes a ratty old briefcase that contains nothing much at all. His face is calm and serious, but I can tell he is bursting with excitement. When he’s ready, he straddles the space between our house and the outside streets. Time stills for us.
I still love you. He says it in a hoarse whisper.
Then, he shuts the door behind him closely, and I think I see the tip of his yellow, yellow hair.
I sit alone in the same chair he had, sipping the remains of his disgusting coffee. I'm shaking for a reason I can't describe. Even my heart is shaking. Fat and ugly tears spill out of my eyes at the same time the coffee tumbles completely to the floor I've just cleaned. Sensible Ginny Weasley wants to keep on crying, and then clean up the mess miserably. Sensible Ginny hates tattered ends. But Crazy Ginny wants to smile, then laugh cheerfully. Glee tries to bubble in her and overflows. Insane Gin scolds her logical self, asking her to leave the mess alone, just for once. What does it matter? Loony Ginny tells herself that nothing is as important as happiness.
And then, I—not Sensible Ginny, not Crazy Ginny, but Just Ginny--think that I have never been so content and satisfied in my life, sitting in a decrepit kitchen like this with a ruined marriage. For a second, that is all that matters.
A day later, all my belongings are squished into old-lady carpetbags. The house is empty, and it barely feels like I’ve spent so many years here.
I walk out the door with my two lonely bags. Ladies next door stare rudely at me, their thin lips pursed in disapproval. I can just hear them calling me insane. But I don’t care.
I’m finally ready to get out of the woods, and go home.
The End.
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