The Improbable Twins of Ginny Weasley

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Her hands shook and the inkwell slipped from her grip to land with a glassy chink on the stone-flagged floor. Sucking in her breath sharply, Ginny listened hard as she quickly glanced around the room, but her roommates' snores and sighing breaths continued, uninterrupted. Exhaling in relief, she carefully, quietly, picked up the inkwell and parchment and tiptoed across her dorm to her four-poster.

She had to be alone to write this--and yet, she couldn't be alone. Not ever again. To be alone was to expose herself to harm. Ginny shivered as she climbed awkwardly to sit cross-legged in the middle of her bed. She laid the inkwell, quill and parchment out on the be in front of her and reached around to pull all the hangings shut tight except for the side that faced the window. Besides the fact that she needed the moonlight, she had to make sure she could still see her roomies, make sure she wasn't alone.

Ginny picked up her quill again. Deliberately, she dipped the quill in the inkwell. Deliberately, she brushed the tip against the side of the bottle to make sure no ink dripped on the white sheets. Deliberately, she poised the quill over the parchment. Deliberately, she touched the quill to the parchment.

A single tear followed the tracks down her cheek as she wrote a single word below the rest of the writing.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Breakfast was the worst time of the day, worse than the evenings. In the evenings, she wept into her pillow, but at least they thought she slept. At least they left her to herself.

But at breakfast, they all nagged. They thought that her problem could be fixed. They thought that some rest, some food, a stay in the hospital wing, or some tea would make her all better again. Like she was a child.

I am not a child, thank you, she snapped at them in her head, before her thoughts turned to despair again. I was a child, but can't you see that I'm not anymore?

She would seat herself as far from Hermione as possible. Ron would assume that she was just in one of her moods, and Harry, as her boyfriend, would "understand her," but Ginny had to watch out for Hermione. Out of everyone, Hermione would be the first to figure out on her own what had happened to Ginny. And no one could ever know. No one would ever know, besides Him of course.

Her moods oscillated wildly, from a desperate yearning for Harry or Hermione to figure out what had happened to a black despair in which she violently but silently mourned her lost innocence. Invariably, however, she would fly into a silent fuming rage when they just wouldn't get it.

So, she sat silent amid a group of third-years at her breakfasts and sat silent in the back row of her classes and sat silent amid the third-years through her lunches before sitting silent in her afternoon classes. She would then head to the library where she silently wept and fumed by turns as she tried to do her schoolwork. She curled up with Crookshanks and stared into the fire after her silent dinners, and went to bed when her roomies went. She waited until they were safely sleeping before screaming into her pillow.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Mostly, however, she wrote on the roll of parchment she carried with her. After her first year, it was the closest she could come to a diary, and it was her heart on paper. When she wrote, her mind was entirely occupied. She wrote about anything and everything, except that night.

Until now. Ginny stared at the word she had written on the parchment, long and hard. Finally, she picked up the inkwell and quill, corked the former and wiped the latter, and placed them carefully on her bedside table. Her hand moved a few inches to the left and picked up the black ribbon that was knotted in a loop. Her hands no longer shook.

She rolled the parchment tightly and slipped the loop of ribbon around it. Carefully, she opened her drawer and carefully she placed the parchment right at the back, nestling it underneath the Weasley sweater.

Not a single tear escaped her eyes, not a single sound did she make as she drifted off to sleep.