A High Price

She tells herself that it's nothing, that she isn't doing anything that her friends aren't doing, that it's simply a phase she's going through, and not at all like her first year but deep down Ginny knows that she's lying. Her stomach clenches.

One.

Two.

Three.

Four.

She counts and hopes the sharp, stinging pain will go away.

-

Ginny knows what she's doing is ridiculous, stupid, insane, suicidal. She tells herself this every day right after she walks down early for breakfast, when there is no-one else in the hall, and drinks only black coffee.

Her friend Judy asks her if she's been eating and Ginny forces a bright smile onto her face. "Of course!" she says, cheerfully, and pushes her food around her plate.

At home, mother calls her a fussy eater and shakes her head when Ginny leaves food on the plate. Ginny smiles and mumbles something about growth spurts and how they've stopped.

-

She knows that she isn't fat, the mirror tells her that every day but Ginny can't stop herself. I'll stop when I can hide from Tom, she thinks and shivers.

-

Why? she asks herself as she stares at the food spread out at dinner and loses her appetite.

Why? she asks herself when she doesn't get up in the morning only to stumble into the Hospital Wing a few hours later. "Headache," she explains to the busy Pomfrey who hands her a bottle of Headache Potion (extra strength) and shoos her away. Ginny knows she doesn't have a headache but she feels uncomfortable. One gulp leads to another and before she knows it half the bottle is empty. She lies down on her bed and falls into a restless sleep but not before hiding the bottle under her bed.

Why? she asks herself when she hears the endless, droning lists of families attacked, destroyed, killed and wonders why she doesn't feel anything.

Why? she asks herself when she asks Harry where he put Tom's diary. Harry looks at her strangely and mutters something about Lucius Malfoy.

-

Ginny discovers that she can slip by almost undetected nowadays in the thick fog of terror that blankets the rest of the wizarding world. She can slide between the droplets of fear. Almost invisible.

But not invisible enough, she thinks when Ron comes up to her in the Gryffindor common room one night when everybody else's asleep and she's sitting in front of the fire, staring at the dancing flames. "Gin," he calls her by her old nickname, not noticing her flinch. "Are you okay?"

She turns and gives him the same crinkly-eyed smile that reassured all her friends and tells him about her increasing load of schoolwork and the upcoming exams.

Ron looks relieved and offers to help.

Ginny almost laughs as she thinks of the neatly stacked piles of finished assignments in her bag and refuses.

She watches as Ron walks away, his red hair (so like her own, she thinks) haloed in firelight and fumbles in her backpack for a bottle of potion. They made numbing potions in class today and Ginny finds that they work equally well when ingested.

Her throat numbs over as she swallows.

One swallow.

Two.

Three.

-

She almost doesn't notice when Malfoy approaches her near the end of term. "Think about it," he says at the end, and leaves with a mysterious smile.

Ginny thinks about it and wonders whether she's going insane.

-

It's almost ridiculously easy to sneak out of Hogwarts and she wonders why she has never done it before. Then again, she has never been as invisible as she is now.

"So you came," comes the calm voice from her left as she stands in the deserted Hogsmeade street, the faint yellow of the streetlight illuminating the sunken hollows of her face.

"I did," she agrees.

-

He tells her that she's too thin. "Surely your family isn't this poor," he says, with a curl of his upper lip. He tries to give her food but Ginny refuses and drinks only his black coffee, far better than Hogwarts coffee, she thinks as she downs the bitter drink.

She feels breakable in his arms and likes that feeling. Likes the feeling as he fucks her into his silken sheets until she's panting, with veins sticking out of her neck.

She wonders whether he will keep up his end the bargain.

-

Ginny begins to skip classes, invisible, she tells herself, to go down to Hogsmeade. She wraps a black cloak around herself and melts into the shadows of dark streets.

The Portkey is always there waiting for her and she wonders whether it's keyed to her alone.

-

The first time he finds her downing an entire bottle of his Headache Potion (extra strength), she can feel the shock radiating off him. "Didn't your mother ever tell you that addictions were bad for you?" he says as he plucks the bottle out of her fingers.

She glares up at him. "Give me my diary," she says, almost clearly. Ginny finds that one bottle isn't always enough.

"In time," he tells her.

-

She finds that he is (almost) as good a listener as Tom. As long as she doesn't look into his eyes, she can pretend that it's Tom sitting there. But as soon as she looks up, the spell is broken and all she sees are cold grey eyes. So Ginny tells her stories with her head turned to one side, towards the green silk sheets and never looks up. And he gives her all the right answers.

"I'm tired of pretending that everything is alright," she tells him.

"I've never had a better friend than Tom," she tells him. "Tom understood me."

"Dumbledore seems strangely lately," she tells him. "And I think the wards on the castle have been increased. It's harder for me to get out."

"I heard them," she tells him. "They're planning an attack."

And she wonders why she's saying all this.

-

She tells herself that she isn't enjoying this but knows she's only pretending again.

-

Ginny isn't surprised when he finally gives her Tom's diary back.

"Here, girl," he says, "you've earned it."

She nods. She has earned it. Betrayal wasn't too high a price to pay, was it?

Ginny doesn't think so.

-

That night, amid screams of horror as the Death Eaters strike, Ginny writes in her diary, her thin fingers clenched around the quill, knuckles white. A flash of green light and a figure tumbles down to her right but Ginny ignores it.

Hello Tom, missed me? she writes and waits for the answer.