A Perfect Circle

It's really quiet, too quiet I guess. I don't know what the time is, one o'clock in the morning, maybe two o'clock. I think I've been asleep for a couple of hours, I'm not sure.

Mum and Dad are downstairs. They're murmuring down in the kitchen, or maybe the lounge. It's like a lullaby. I don't hear the words they're saying but I hear their voices playing music with each other, Dad's deep and dark, Mum's lighter but just barely. They've seen it twice, and I guess they just don't have the energy to be laughing.

I hear movement. It's either Charlie or Bill. I can tell because their feet sound like they are going somewhere.

Everything's quiet suddenly. There's no snoring, no mumbling in sleep, Mum and Dad have stopped talking, the movement has stopped, no bathroom promenades, you know the shuffle-shuffle-creak-piddle-flush-creak-shuffle-shuffle. It's absolutely silent. I hate it. I'd rather have screaming than that.

I like the fact that this room is my own, and that home isn't so packed. There's really only Mum, Dad, Ron and me. Sometimes Bill and Charlie come back on vacation, and Fred and George visit often, but besides that it's just the four of us with this huge house. I don't know how Mum is going to cope when we all leave and it's just her and Dad here. But you can't manufacture a miracle, I guess. One day we're all going to leave.

Still, I like the fact that I've always had my own room. I could have been easily thrown into a room with somebody else, though it would have been too embarrassing I guess. Fred and George shared a room, and Percy used to too until he turned thirteen. I'm not exactly sure about Bill and Charlie, but maybe they did too. It doesn't matter though. I've always had my own room at home. It's only been at Hogwarts when I've slept with anybody else.

Shared a room with anyone else, I mean. God, I hate how everything can be misconstrued with sex, the way it all sounds like it's connected with sex. Like last year we were talking about Blaise Zabini, and I said, "He sucks," and Colin said, "Yeah, you'd know." That's the kind of stuff I mean.

It was the way everyone laughed at me. You get so scared to say anything, through fear of the laughing, or whether you are going to be laughed at. Laughter's meant to be loving, like Mum's, wrapping itself around you like a hug. It always sounded so cruel when it was aimed at me.

I was better off than others, though. I wasn't clear from all the pranks, but I wasn't the worst off. Luna, I don't know how she stood it, being put down by everybody else. She tried to make a joke, or she would say something, and then she would have to listen to others, mockingbirds surrounding her, as they told her what they thought of her joke. She would try to find a partner in Potions, waiting to be asked by anybody, and finally one had to be chosen for her by Snape, and that person would pay no attention to her and instead roll their eyes and talk to the person next to them, if they could get away with it. I shivered when I watched Luna. What did she ever do to make herself so unpopular, to be called 'Loony', to have her stuff stolen every term only to be given back to her the night before? She did nothing rude, mean, or anything at all bad. I mean, what else did she have to do? How many points does it take? How many do you need?

That's why I shivered when I saw Luna. I'd counted my points enough times, and it wasn't enough for some of the people. I guess the diary back in my first year freaked people out. At least Colin forgave me. For years I looked at my friends and wondered. Colin, Michael, Laura, Orla, Emma. What was it that they liked in me? If I'd made a mistake, would it be different? If I had more money, would more people like me? What if none of the stuff in first year happened, would I be fully popular then? If I had a different name, a different family, if I wore different clothes, if I weren't Pureblood, if I weren't a Gryffindor, would I have stopped being their friend? What did I have that Luna did not?

There is noise again. I can see shadows going backwards and forwards, passing quickly under the door. It's definitely Charlie. Bill has a sort of slant and a limp when he walks. Mum and Dad have followed him. Something's wrong. Something's wrong with Ron again.

I wish I could sleep. I want to sleep. The more I want to the less I can. It's the worse thing in the world. I never used to have problems with sleeping, really bad ones anyway. I would have nightmares, and sometimes I would see things in the dark, or imagine I would, but I could fall asleep. I've slept about five hours in the last two weeks, not any more than that. I don't know how I can pull myself out of bed in the morning. I just want to sleep, then wake up and see that everything is different.

So many things happened the last year, and these problems with Ron are just one more. It makes me wonder who's inhabiting my body now. I mean, I know I'm not being enchanted by a diary or anything, but I don't know what's inside of me, what I am, what this confusion of feelings and thoughts that I keep inside are. I can't keep balanced. These feelings storm through me, up and down and all around, crashing into each other and falling back, rubbing their noses. They want to erupt. I'm saving the world by stopping them.

The noises are calming again, getting quieter and duller. It seems darker now, and colder. At the moment, I want to stay in my bed forever. Mum and Dad and Charlie and Bill and Ron won't hurt me. They know me. I like the little things that don't change in my house; Mum getting up at seven o'clock every morning to begin breakfast, Dad always asking me what robe colour he should wear for work, Charlie and Bill and Fred and George, when they're here, playing Quidditch always after twelve thirty. It's the little things that count.

Another reason that I don't want to leave is this picture that I have on my wall. Technically it's a picture of a really, really old relative when he was twenty or so. He has bright red hair and deep brown eyes. But when night falls and the lights go out he loses all his colour and becomes the grey scale of film. It's dumb to like this picture because it looks nothing like Draco Malfoy, but if I look at the picture then turn away quickly, I can make it seem like it might be him.

I shouldn't have done what I did. I know that now, in hindsight, but when it all began I didn't have an idea.

It was the first of September, a balmy day considering the time of year, and it was my sixth year in Hogwarts. It's strange when you reach this time of year. Apparently turning sixteen, or seventeen in a few months in the case of some of the people I knew, saw you be respected more by the teachers. In the space of three months you're suddenly an adult. I don't know how they came to that conclusion, or whose idea it was in the first place, but as soon as you entered sixth year the teachers didn't force their power down your throat.

The feast that night had seen the standard things - the sorting, the food, Dumbledore's speech - but everything seemed to be going backward, not quite right, as though the Great Hall had been painted black. There were a lack of students and they were turning up at the worst times. Of course, this was a security caution. I was sitting next to Hermione, who halfway through Dumbledore's speech had grabbed my hand under the table and gripped it so tightly that I thought her nails would break my skin and I would bleed. We all listened intently, my attention placed firmly on Dumbledore, when the doors of the Great Hall opened for the last time.

And there he was.

Draco Malfoy.

But he didn't look like Draco Malfoy, or the Draco Malfoy that I remembered. He looked older, tired, as though somebody shredded him up and then tried to glue him back together, piece by piece. He looked like he had been bulldozed, destroyed, and I was interested straight away. What had happened to him to kill him so completely?

I guess there are a few things I should have realised. His family were in ruins after the event at the Department of Mysteries two years ago, and Draco had not recovered completely. He didn't talk much when it came down to things, but one thing he had told me was that his fingers were in the mire, and that he didn't know what to do.

It was all over his face that day, the fact that he didn't know what to do. It was just that nobody noticed it, or if they did they didn't care. At that time I didn't care at all. That fact kills me all over.

I thought Draco Malfoy was evil, a Death Eater in hiding, the way he was in Slytherin and the way he used to talk to everyone, like he was above them, like he was God or some deity. He may well have been ambitious and cunning like those in Slytherin are termed to be. But I don't think he was evil.

The first time I realised that there was more to Draco Malfoy than the green on his robes was a few weeks into term. I entered the prefects bathroom and there he was washing his hands. He looked in the mirror, saw my reflection, and continued to wash. He must have washed them for five minutes, for when I left my cubicle he was still there. I thought he must have been an obsessive compulsive, or something similar, but when I got closer to the sinks I realised that he wasn't washing his hands as such - rather he was trying to slip a piece of paper under a silverfish that was scurrying around the basin.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

It was the first time I'd ever spoken directly to him, except for a few times when he was insulting my friends and I stood up for them. He looked shocked - not surprised, but shocked - at the sound of my voice. He looked me up and down for a moment, then said, "Saving its life."

I frowned, and began to wash my hands. "Saving its life? Why would you want it to live?"

"Why would I want it to die?"

I just looked at him. I had no answer.

"It's such a complex creature," he began to explain, still trying to get it to walk on the slip of paper so he could carry it out. "Really delicate. Imagine how long it would take to make one. You could spend your whole life trying to build it, working on it, and you wouldn't come close. And we kill them so casually. A squish of the finger and a moment later we've forgotten that we did it."

I began to feel guilty. I had squashed, and killed, plenty of silverfish in my life. Our house has plenty of them scuttling around in our bathroom as though they are on steroids at the speed they're going at. I turned off the tap and looked down at the silverfish, now on the paper. He picked it up, walked to a window, and waited until it walked off, which it did soon enough.

He turned around then, and looked at me as though he had seen me for the first time. And I guess, in a way, I had seen him for the first time. And we stood there, staring at each other for a moment, some form of electricity running between our eyes, I guess.

But then he sneered at me and walked out.

I thought about that time in the prefect's bathroom a lot after that. It seemed to plague me, in a way, and I spent days just replaying the event in my mind. In particular I focused on the part where we had just watched each other, just before he left, and what had happened. It was weird, but the blood started dancing in my veins, and my legs went weak, and everything around me began to swim, and I began to feel very hot. I hadn't felt this way when it came to my other crushes, like with Harry or Michael or anybody. This was very new and very different.

It was a few days after that I realised what these symptoms meant. I was eating my breakfast when I saw him enter the hall. My heart seemed to be connected to some form of hook or string, which tugged, and my stomach began to knot itself and my face flushed.

And it was then that I knew.

I knew it as plainly as I knew the sky was blue.

I choked on my eggs and suddenly couldn't eat anymore.

I spent weeks trying to push the idea out of my head, but every time I did it just seemed to come back at me just as hard and just as fast. I didn't talk to a lot of people at this time - Orla tried to cheer me up, Emma kept on asking if something was wrong, Colin asked if he could take pictures of me for his "depressed" portfolio, or set of prints he was going to make. I hexed him into the next century, and got a detention from it.

I hated Draco Malfoy a lot during that time. I would repeat it in my sleep. I would order myself not to think of him at all. Not in a good way, and not in a bad way. But then I would start thinking about him and would get a tingling feeling between my legs, and my blood would begin to dance and my legs would not exist anymore and I realised I couldn't fight it.

I guess I would have gotten over it, especially after various viewings of the way he treated the people around me. He was especially cruel to Harry and Ron, and he would call Hermione worse things than 'Mudblood' and would suggest the worst things he could do to her. And stupid me would feel jealous as he would brag about how he could get Hermione in the sack before Ron could.

Hermione could ignore it. I would wish I was in her place.

He never said anything to me though, which made it harder to give up and get over him. Then, one night, when I was doing my prefect duties, I found myself pulled into an empty Transfiguration classroom on the second floor.

I gave out a little yelp in shock and pain - whoever had grabbed me had their fingers digging into my skin and they were pulling me into the room. They had complete control since I had temporarily forgotten how to react, and soon enough I had been pushed against the wall, door slammed behind me, and a pair of lips smashed into mine.

Teeth and tongue. Wild and feral. Growling low in his throat. I didn't know what was going on and my eyes were trying to adjust to the light, or lack there of. I didn't move. I froze beneath whoever it was. I tried to push, but my arms were pinned. Finally, they pulled away from my mouth. I could still taste them.

In front of me, inches from my face, was Draco Malfoy with a fire in his eyes.

"Is that what you want?" he asked breathlessly, hoarse, as though his throat was broken.

I shook my head. "No," I said dumbly.

His face didn't change. Neither did his breathing patterns. He just stared straight into my eyes, reading them, and I worried what he saw in them. Did he see the same things that I saw in the mirror late at night? The wounds that I would open and rub salt in?

But as he continued to look, his face softened slightly, and when he kissed me next it was the complete opposite of what he had done before. Before it was rough and rushed and wrong. This time it was gentle and bittersweet and right.

And then ... I kissed him back. There's a bit of a difference when you kiss someone. It's more ... I don't know. I was coaxing him in kissing me back - which he did. Inside, I was fighting. Against over what was good against what was right, mainly. A Slytherin and Gryffindor should never have mixed.

But this went past all those distinctions. This was everything I ever wanted it to be.

We are all parasites, really. I sucked all the energy out of Draco, and he sucked the energy out of me. I lived off him. He lived off me. We come into this world as the result of other's actions. We survive on the dependence on others. Nobody is independent. We are parasites, blood-suckers, free-loaders; no different to spineless, gutless leeches.

After the whole encounter, I looked at my forearm and noticed the marks there. I had bruises from where he had grabbed me to drag me in.

It's all a bit sad, the dating game. Really, it is. Imagine how the news, or the Daily Prophet, would report it as a bulletin. How each try to impress the other, a wriggling riot of desperation, an orgy of eyelashes, eyes that sparkle in the dark, loud laughter and ridiculous, exaggerated stories. Girls and Boys. Women and Men. Guys and Dolls.

I got mine handed on a green and silver platter.

I felt my life was going to become complicated. I was right.

But when life got complicated, it wasn't just with this new-found relationship with Draco Malfoy. Things were going on outside of Hogwarts, things I didn't understand and didn't want to. At least Draco Malfoy provided refuge; an asylum I was able to build to protect myself from all the outer forces - rolls of thunder chasing wind, forces pulling from the earth, things hitting me down and down again.

When I left that refuge, that temple, I came to receive a shock, and figured out that I am just a self-sacrificial lamb.

And when those rolls of thunder caught me, when those forces pulled me under, when those things hit me down for the final time, I bruised and scarred and never recovered.

So I don't know how Emma recovered, because it was her that they caught.

It was November. The weather was foul. She was in the Owlery when I found her, hugging her legs, losing circulation to her hands so that they were purple and white. I froze in the doorway.

"Emma?" I said.

But she just hugged her legs to her chest, face as white as the snow outside.

"It's Jamie," she whispered. "He's in observation. They performed Cruciatus on him."

Emma's little brother, Jamie, is ten years old. Why on earth anybody would have performed an Unforgivable on him was questionable enough, but the story was that they were trying to get information out of Emma's father. By doing so, instead of torturing him, they tortured his only son till he was within an inch of his life, till Emma's dad was driven insane with the thought of his son dying like that. He told them the information they wanted. They killed him in the end and left Jamie for dead. He was found just in time.

Emma went to London immediately. We didn't see her for a week. When she did come back everybody was silent. All except a few on the Slytherin table, who messed with her mind when she walked into the Great Hall, doing interpretations of how Jamie would have looked under Cruciatus. Emma went to the infirmary. The Slytherin boys and girls in question were never seen again.

I spent that night when she left in the empty Transfiguration classroom, listening to Draco's heartbeat, as he ran his fingers through my hair. There was really nobody to share it with, no-one to see how I felt, no-one to talk about what it was like to sit on the floor and watch Emma stare around her as if none of it existed.

He was saying meaningless things, really. None of the words really registered. I was busy listening to his heart beat. It's strange, the whole idea behind it. It was just nice. I used to listen to mum's when I was growing up. It told me she was alive. Draco had one too, and so did I, somewhere. Tom Riddle didn't have one. It told me something about the person.

He didn't push me for anything, just stroked my hair and ran his fingers through it. I wanted to fall asleep with the feel of it. Just this slow, unhurried, laggard movement, making sure it didn't hurt me or make me feel any pain.

I knew then that life happens and finishes in an instant. Life was like taping a song, only for the tape to run out in the middle of it; life was spreading jam right to the edge of a piece of toast; life was losing fifteen minutes because you took a left instead of right; life was a sunshower; an ant bite; melted ice cream; a spelling mistake; lost post; life was laying in bed, waiting for life to happen.

I turned to him then. He looked surprised. I doubt he had expected me to move at all. But when I looked at him, it was then that I knew.

"If I touch you here," - with that, I placed my feet on top of his - "And here," - with that, I kissed him for a moment on the lips - "Then we make a circle."

He stared at me for a while then, grey eyes clear. It was the first time I had ever seen him like that, so calm and clear, so evenly balanced. It was like he knew what he wanted for the first time, that all the stuff that clouded his vision vanished, as though it had rained and left the sky clear and fresh. It was in that instant that I knew Draco Malfoy, really knew him. He wasn't the boy that Harry and Ron and Hermione used to see, not the boy that everybody used to see, the ice. He was there, in front of me, all his scars and secrets. I saw right into him then.

He leaned forward, placed his lips against mine, and pulled away quickly. "Then let's make it a perfect circle," he said.

Our feet were entwined throughout it all. I fell so badly. But when it was over, even though I never wanted it to be over, I felt so at peace with at the world, like everything was right, like everything had clicked into place, like a lock and a key. The grass was green, the sky was blue, the sun was out; there was no such thing as rain, no such thing as thunder. Everything flowed. Nothing would ever crash and burn.

I wanted to shout it out to the world! But I just couldn't say it in words. Words wouldn't work. I had to scrawl out the declaration on a night sky pregnant with stars. Or write it on a huge cake that would feed everybody in the world. Or compose a song. Or take out a full-page sheet in the Daily Prophet. Or write the message in a bottle and throw it out to sea for somebody to find sixty years later, just when I had realised once and for all that this was the meaning of life.

Just when I had realised that this was a perfect circle.

Every artist is a cannibal and every poet is a thief. They kill their inspiration and then sing about the grief.

Where Draco was, nothing was predictable or dull. You had no idea what he would do. That's one reason why I want him with me now, in here, forever, and one reason why I'm glad he is gone. My house is really predictable. Sometimes it can be a good thing, a comfort thing, but we really need a Draco to brighten things up, or at least put some sort of spark back into our lives. I mean, we're all mad really, and you'd think, with Fred and George with their pranks, and Dad with his obsession with all things muggle, and Charlie and Bill's outlandish ways, and Mum's almost obsessive compulsive behaviour when it comes to cleanliness, it would be pretty interesting. But it's not. Put it altogether and it's dull.

But at least they have something going for their personality. I'm just short, small, clumsy Ginny Weasley. The youngest, the only girl out of a long line of boys, the failure.

Things went along so calmly for so long. Nobody knew what Draco Malfoy and I had gotten ourselves into, and I doubt I would have told anybody if things had turned out differently. I hardly ever saw Harry and Ron and Hermione. They had always stayed together; at Christmas it was as if they were a faculty all to themselves, a group that wouldn't mix with the others, almost as if they thought they were a disease. I heard Ron and Hermione one night, discussing Harry and how they thought he was drifting further and further apart from them and how they couldn't understand it. What they didn't realise was that Harry thought the further apart he was from somebody, the less danger they were in. There was some truth in his philosophy.

But, despite the fact that it went so calmly for so long, it came apart real quickly. It was like sewing. It takes so long to do, so much time and concentration put into it, and with one little tug it all falls apart. I don't suppose it was that quick, really; it just felt that way, like it was all happening at once.

The first hint of real trouble, beside everything that happened regarding a few disappearances and Emma's dad and brother, was when I was reading the Daily Prophet on a Saturday morning. I was one of the last to be in the Great Hall, just relaxing and drinking some Pumpkin Juice. I don't usually read that much of the Prophet, but I had been recently, ever since the leak regarding Jamie and the death of Emma's father and it's conjunctive story on page one. I was just having a flick through when I saw it. Page five. The word 'Malfoy'.

It was a name I was used to seeing in the paper, but not in this way and certainly not on page five. And then I realised. His name wasn't the headline but it was the by-line. The by-line contained numerous names. The headline announced about the break-out of Azkaban in early November last year.

I had no idea that Lucius Malfoy had been one of twenty that had broken out of Azkaban in suspicious circumstances. Break-outs in Azkaban happened often - the place was basically a ridicule in the wizarding world, but where else were you going to put the criminals? This one had been bad, though. According to the Prophet, people that had been associated as being the closest Death Eaters in You-Know-Who's circle had escaped. All of them. Azkaban was basically a joy ride for any Death Eater, the Prophet continued. Any convicted Death Eater would go in there and be out within a week.

The rest of the article had been subjective, but that didn't stop the flush creep up my neck and onto my face. This had happened early November. Draco had told me nothing.

When I saw him next in the Transfiguration classroom, I ordered him to explain. He didn't say anything for a long time, but just stood there, looking out of the window.

"Why won't you answer me?" I shouted at him, thankful for the silencing charm placed around the room. "Why the hell are you here if you can't even trust me? What are you doing, using me!"

There was a long silence. His skin looked as though it was made out of very old ivory, colourless in the moonlight that illuminated the room. His fingers were playing with a small Knut on his hand, moving from one knuckle to the next, until it reached his thumb and he placed it on his pinkie again. He did this for a long time.

"For God's sake, Draco! Why won't you talk to me?"

Still, nothing.

"You prick."

He turned then, and his eyes looked black in his sockets. He was snarling, snarling like a feral dog, and I took a step back.

"You think I'm happy about all this, do you?" he asked.

"Aren't you?"

He stopped. "Yes ... and no," was his answer. "But you have to trust me. I can't go near him."

So that was how it all began. An article in the paper, a few words with him. Now, as I lie here, it feels like my whole world has shrunk to my bedroom and my little bed. From living in Hogwarts, where we had the lake and the Quidditch pitch and that empty Transfiguration classroom, to my tiny bedroom of pale pink and white, with it's one picture on the wall and one photo in my hand. When I sleep, which isn't often, I get right under the sheets, pulling them right over my head. The air gets stale and it gets incredibly warm, but I feel safer. It's my cocoon, where I can be a caterpillar, never to turn into a butterfly or moth. It's the safest place I know.

Fishing is a fantastic analogy, when you think about it. It can be used for anything, really. It involves patience, composure. You stick your rod out into the river, and you wait. And wait. And wait. You wait so long you think your head is going to explode with all the things you've thought about whilst waiting. But then you get it. The big one. The one that counts. The one that can feed my family of nine for a week.

I was never patient. I was thirsty. I wanted to have my thirst quenched, now, forever.

A week later, with him, in the classroom, when I was doing up the buttons on my blouse;

"Ever been asked to be a Death Eater?" I asked.

He froze. "A Death Eater? No, never been asked before in my life."

I knew he was lying. Or else why would he say 'before'?

Draco was always distant, but this time was different. And it made me think. Everyone's problems are different, but they're same in a lot of ways. One thing about all of us is that we don't have any skin. You know how people talk about thick skin and thin skin? Well, we don't have any skin. Whenever somebody attacks us we've got no way of holding them off.

Draco was attacked like Harry was, but in a different way. Whereas Harry was an outright target for eminent death and destruction, Draco was a target for teaching, as though he was a student they desperately wanted for their program.

But Draco never wanted to be taught that. He didn't want to do anything for anybody. He wasn't going to be good, and he wasn't going to be evil. He was going to be himself, he told me, and he was not black or white. Draco was always shades of grey.

But he drifted further and further apart from me, and everybody else for that matter, until he was nothing. Just a figure floating down the halls like a ghost, not paying attention to what was around him, moving through the people as though they didn't exist. He wasn't dead, but he wasn't very much alive either.

One night, though, whilst sitting together in the empty transfiguration classroom, he started getting strange, and I realised that I didn't know him at all.

"I wish my mother would stick up for me," he whispered, hands curling with mine. "But she never did. Not once. She wanted everything so perfect: parties, me, the appearance of the house, herself."

He pulled his hand away from mine.

"She went into instant spin-out when they weren't. Sometimes it's like she is spinning out all the time, because I was never perfect. Not once, not ever."

But no one can be perfect. I told him words to that effect. He stared at me like I was mad.

"But you are," he said.

"No, I'm not."

"You are."

There was a pause. I didn't want to say I wasn't perfect, because I know I'm not, but I liked the fact that he thought I was. It made me feel more than stupid Ginny Weasley. I held onto it like a balloon.

It was in this time of thinking that he said he was leaving Hogwarts. Legally he was allowed to, but he had to tell me he was going into hiding. Hiding away from everything going on. He was going to hide under a bed and wait till the war was over, the other side of dawn. He told me that I could visit him, though, and told me where he was staying. He told me not to tell anybody, not one soul, not even a rag. It was my secret, mine to have, and not the worlds.

He shoved two pieces of parchment in my hand and left. It was later that I realised that one was not a piece of parchment - it was a photo. A photo of him. A photo of him with a smile that didn't reach his eyes. He hardly moved. He just stayed there, as cold as ice. The other piece of parchment was small, with a scribbled message, a beautiful scrawl, with two words. Only two. Your eyes.

He shoved two pieces of parchment in my hand, and left for good.

It makes me wonder now. I don't believe anything could be perfect.

So how were Draco and I ever a perfect circle?

I feel lonely tonight. I miss Hogwarts, even if it is such a mess. God, I even miss Snape. What does that tell you? I can't bring myself to think about what's happened, what I did. I don't know, I suppose all the stuff leading up to the big disaster wasn't my fault. It just took me to finish it off. I can't stop thinking about it. Without me it might have still worked out all right. When Draco told me that he was leaving, I knew things were getting bad. Maybe that was the beginning of the end. I wonder that, if he had never told me where he was staying, he might still be alive.

But that's the thing about regrets. It doesn't change a thing. I can regret my life and what I did in it, how I used it, till I'm old and grey and dead to the world, but it won't change anything.

I didn't even know I did it. But it was May, and the war of the worlds was going on. I was constantly on alert, watching for myself.

Then, one night, Thursday it was; I was doing my prefect rounds when I saw him. Harry. Looking angry, looking terrifyingly angry, and before I knew it he had pushed me aside and into a classroom.

I had fallen on to the floor, and hit my head. Everything was swirling, everything was fuzzy, but I remember him hauling me up roughly, pushing me against a wall, pushing himself against me, and hissing at me "Where is he?!"

"What?"

"Where is he?!"

"Who?"

"Malfoy!"

My mouth was dry and I had forgotten how to cry. The sounds coming from his mouth, so ugly and alien, it frightened me. And I was confused - I had never seen the blackness in his eyes, never heard him speak so desperately, so frenzied. And I didn't know how he knew about Draco and me.

"What do you mean?" I said after a moment. It took me a long time to find my voice.

He shook his head. "Don't be stupid," he spat. His eyes were hollow now, black in the dark. "I know what you and him have been up to. Where is he?"

I didn't ask why. I didn't even ask what for. All I said was "How?"

But he wasn't in the mood for that. He was acting differently, strangely. He had been too angry since he was fifteen. Now he was getting violent, exploding. He didn't look at me. I could have been a shop dummy. He only wanted his answer. I just had to provide it.

"Tell me where he is!" he shouted.

And I did. I told him. I was scared. I had expected this to happen, but not with him. I didn't ever think he could be so rough, so savage. His face: I'd never seen him looking like that. It was black, dark with rage, shadowed. His lips were trembling. I think if pushing me hadn't have opened the door that Harry would have walked straight through it.

And then ... it changed. I don't know what did it. Maybe he heard my voice break, like my throat had been smashed, like my gut had lodged itself in my larynx, and he unfroze from whatever he was before. And next thing I know he was holding me, pushing his head into the wall behind me, mumbling "I'm so sorry ... I'm so sorry," - he was going mad beside me.

I mumbled the same things back. And we just remained there, like that, holding on to each other, for I don't know how long. Minutes, hours, days, weeks. It didn't matter.

Looking back, I shouldn't have told him. I just didn't know what else to do. What do you do in those situations? Give in or fight? I couldn't fight him, even if I had to. I just never wanted to fight Harry. Not once.

I shouldn't have told him, though. I should never have told anybody.

That's the thing about regrets. They don't change a thing.

Sometimes you kick. Sometimes you get kicked.

The disappartion and apparition charm placed around Hogwarts was broken days later by the Death Eaters. It was hysteria. Even I don't remember it. I haven't met anybody who does.

I sometimes visit the day in my dreams, but I don't know if some things were real or not. It was like a dark cloud had passed over Hogwarts, over the whole sky. We were all in classes when the screams erupted, and then large bangs. Nobody knew what was happening.

Then the doors were bursting open, and people were being stunned, and men and women in dark cloaks and hoods were yelling at everybody to be quiet or die, and people were dying. One boy threw himself out of a seventh story window when they got to his classroom.

I don't know how the school was still standing by the end of it. No communication was allowed out - the fires were blocked and the owls were all killed, and anybody near the Owlery were placed under an Unforgivable, any one of them. Eenie, meenie, mynnie, mo. Too bad if you got Avada Kedavra.

Maybe one of the portraits went for help. Maybe.

But through it all, he came back. Draco Malfoy came back. Later I was told his place was ransacked, his hide-out found; he had been pushed out and back to Hogwarts, the only other safe place. See, being daddy's little boy gave him an obligatory place amongst the circle of Death Eaters, and he didn't want to be one. But you don't say no to You-Know-Who.

And I knew it. I had told Harry, somebody had found out, they'd gone to kill him. He had just escaped and he came back to Hogwarts ... just to have to escape again.

I found him on the third floor, fighting his father. But I didn't hear what they said. I didn't hear anything at all. I just watched as Draco Malfoy was thrown into the air, and down three flights of steps straight on his back, neck, head.

I didn't think. I ran right down after him. But when I got there I knew there was nothing to fight it. He was lying there, barely breathing. He reached out and grabbed my hand.

"Tell Ginny," he said to nobody, "Tell her that I love her."

His face contorted into one last spasm of pain, agony and fear. And then it was gone. I sat there, the war fighting around me, rocking him to never-ending sleep.

I don't know if talking to Mum and Dad about it helped. I think it just seemed that they had overcome the problem of one of their kids and now their time could be spent solely on one. But they care. I know they do. Once I started talking I couldn't stop. That was strange. I hadn't expected that. I felt like I talked for about a week. It wasn't that long, but it certainly felt that long.

Oh well. It doesn't matter.

Ron and I are really the only ones connected now, like we were all those years ago when everybody else had gone to Hogwarts and it was just him and me. Hermione is home. I don't think she's much better than she was at the end of the year, but she's home anyway. She contacted us and she said she's going to come over, but when I don't know. I didn't cry in front of her when I saw her leave Hogwarts for the first time but when I was alone I bawled my eyes out. I'll see Colin and Laura and Orla again, but not Michael. He refuses to come back after what happened to him in the dungeons after the apparition charm was broken. Nobody knows what happened in the dungeons, but when I saw him that afternoon he couldn't walk properly. He's gone to live with his grandfather, one he doesn't like. His mother wanted some time to herself, so he couldn't go with her.

Harry stayed with us a few days after the end, but he left. He's probably gone to live as a recluse in the muggle world. I saw the look in his eyes as he said goodbye to everybody, like he knew it would be a long time till he saw us all again. He hugged me and Ron extra long. At one stage I thought he wasn't going to let Ron go, or the other way around. They stood there, silent but communicating all the same. They're so close and I know he won't be back till he deals with his demons. His showers were over forty minutes long, that's how long he would think about it.

People say that they suffer from a lot of things. But gradually, no matter what they say you figure it out. Like Emma who couldn't eat all last year because of what happened with her brother, and Ron who has panic attacks and suddenly can't breathe, and Colin who spends his time living in photographs.

You-Know-Who might be dead, but his damage is going to last as long as an atomic bomb.

I miss Draco now. It's so lonely in this bed. Maybe it's not good having your own room. Dad and Charlie and Bill are all at work during the day. Mum's here but she is doing her thing and dreaming other people's dreams. Ron is so drugged out that he is over the Himalayas and still drifting.

I just wander around the property during the day. I wish I could think straight. My mind gets a hold of something and goes over it and over it, pulling and tearing at it until I think I'll end up mad trying to break up my own head. The thing is I think of things that didn't actually happen, but things I wish had happened, or am scared might have happened. Like earlier tonight I was confronting Draco, or he was confronting me. It was so real. I could smell it. I could smell him, and see the anger in his transparent grey eyes.

"Well, Virginia Weasley," he said. I hated it when he said that. It made me feel cheap. He always said it when he was angry with me, or with himself, or with the world. He would take it all out on me, and I would let him. "I hope you're satisfied with what you've done," he would then say after a moment.

I didn't say a word.

"Or is there some more damage you think you can inflict? More lives you can destroy?"

"It's not my fault," I said.

"Oh, that's rich! That's an interesting theory. You're not a six year old, you know, or that little slut in the Chamber of Secrets. You are responsible for what you say and do. You might like to pretend you're a child, but I've got news for you."

"That's not news."

"And you're not mentally retarded. At least I didn't think you were. Maybe I was wrong about that."

Nothing.

"Was I wrong? Are you actually retarded?"

"We don't use the word 'retarded' anymore."

"Well, I apologise for not being politically correct. Was that the problem? Let me tell you something, I don't care about that bullshit. I wouldn't have gotten anywhere if I had."

"Look where you are now."

"If it hadn't have been for you, there'd never have been a problem."

"There was a problem long before I came along, Draco."

"I sold my soul for you."

And suddenly, or according to my imagination anyway, I'd be on my feet, screaming, "Why didn't you just leave me alone? Why did you have to drag me in? Why did you let yourself be dragged in? You're scum, you're filth, and I hate you! I hate you! Go away! You deserve everything, everything, do you get it? It's not my fault. IT'S NOT MY FAULT!"

And he would just stare. After a moment, he would say, "But you don't hate me, Virginia Weasley," and then disappear.

It was so real. None of it happened, of course, but in a way it did to me. For hours I watched this movie in my mind, running it over and over, changing the dialogue or the course of it every now and then, making what I said to him more powerful and effective.

I took a pause and went to look out the window. There's not much to see. The night makes everything below my bedroom window look like an ocean. There's a few lights here and then, sort of like islands, and you can see the grass, dry and lifeless in the glare. But then it's black, like the ocean, dark and secret.

To reach the road outside our house, oh, just to reach that strip of life, with normal people rushing through their normal lives. That's my aim. I used to live that life so easily, so effortlessly. I breathed it, Ron breathed it, we all breathed it - in and out and in and out - not knowing that one day it will be an effort. But it suddenly got very hard to breathe.

Life is so fragile, so frail. You walk down the centre of a highway, down the centre of the train-tracks, and the trains or the trucks come rushing past. They make the air shake. They blow you off your course. You try to balance yourself, sticking out your arms, but one hits your arm and you go spinning around. You stagger. You fall. You hold your arm and cry. Another truck, or train, comes rushing past you, not caring you are there, not caring at all. There's no escape. Your body is just flesh and bones. Nothing more, nothing less. And there is no escape, not for anybody. There are too many things blowing at you, beating you, willing you to fall, hurting you and leaving bruises and scars. They take things from you, too. There are some things you never get back. Childhood is the first. Innocence is another. Love is a third. I've lost them all. I don't know if there is anything that can replace them.

And I lost him, and I know that nothing will bring him back. He just became a wispy figure, a ghost that isn't there, a figure living in my mind and in one photograph.

Time, memory, light, all captured in a circle.

Maybe I'll just stay in my room forever, looking at the real photograph of him and trying to make another one with the picture on the wall. I will be safe in here, safe and secure, protected from the piranhas. No diaries, no death eaters, no death at all. And I won't ever have to think anymore about my family and friends and how I killed Draco Malfoy.

End.