Drawing Pain

Even like this, she was beautiful.

Dean Thomas sat on bare hardwood flooring, sketchpad in his lap, drawing with soft, careful strokes.

The light on Ginny's face would fade soon. He wanted to capture her before it did: sharp line of cheekbone, covered with skin that looked impossibly delicate and translucent; wet, dark eyelashes, shading eyes the colour of the sea off the cliffs of the Scottish coastline; tangled, glossy hair flowing unheeded and wild over her shoulders.

She turned her head towards him, about to speak.

"Don't," he said softly. "The light...you have no idea how beautiful you look."

"Less beautiful than I'll look in the picture," she replied, a bit sharply, but duly turned her head back.

"Why do you draw me, Dean?" she asked, eyes fixed on the thick, leather-bound book in her lap.

He lowered his pencil. "Because, Ginny...I don't know what else to do. I don't know how to make it better, and I don't know what to say anymore. Look at me, Ginny," he asked her, raw-voiced.

Obediently, she turned her head again, locking stormy grey eyes with ebony-dark ones.

"I feel like...Ginny, I feel like, whenever I draw you, I capture your...and I don't know...I keep hoping that it will somehow take a little of that away. There's nothing else," Dean finished, through a lump in his throat bigger than a Snitch.

"Dean...Dean..." Ginny murmured, "You can't..."

He set his sketchpad down. "I know, Ginny."

Ginny uncurled herself from the plain armchair, setting her book down gently on the cushion. Padding over to Dean on bare feet, she sat down beside him and laid her head on his shoulder. She rested her cold cheek against him, feeling his warmth through its rumpled covering of white dress shirt.

He took one of her small, pale hands and entwined his artist's fingers with hers, stroking the skin softly with his long thumb.

She cried softly as they sat there on the hard wooden floor, as the light faded from the warm pink of the setting sun into a frosty, dim twilight.

Dean didn't move. He simply sat, allowing his shoulder to go numb and his palm to become sweaty, letting Ginny cry.

It was not the first time he'd done this; nor the second; nor even the fifth, or tenth. He'd lost count of the mornings, afternoons, evenings, nights he'd spent like this- holding Ginny's hand, smoothing Ginny's hair, stroking Ginny's back as she cried. She needed the release.

He needed the touch. He needed to know that she was still with him, that she hadn't evaporated with her tears or faded into a shadow while his back was turned.

And so he had the patience, night after day after evening after morning, to hold Ginny Weasley as she cried for everyone she'd lost.

After she cried, she'd fall into his arms, exhausted, and Dean would kiss her, softly. He would gather her slight body into his arms, carry her through the little flat, and make love to her gently in their comfortable bedroom.

He liked to draw her, afterwards; curled tightly into the plain, fluffy white duvet. Her face, even in sleep, would not relax, and he would sketch the set of her jaw and the way her eyebrows drew together.

Dean's heart broke every day, in pieces for Ginny. She'd lost everything: her parents, her brothers, her best friends...the only life she'd known. She wasn't like him, he still had his parents, life in the Muggle world was something he was used to.

For Ginny, it was a cage. There was nothing left for her but six rooms and her memories of the time before.

Every day, he hoped it would get better.

He drew her, and the bookshelf was full of sketchbooks of Ginny. The pictures changed, but she didn't.

Dean held Ginny as she cried, and no longer remembered how many days had gone by. The shoulder of his shirt was translucent with tears. He stared at the way their hands entwined, one small and so pale, one long and dark, with paint under his nails.

Once her sobs had faded, he lifted her from the floor, as he had so many times before, and carried her down the short hallway. He set her down on the bed and kissed her forehead, trying to smile for her.

"Thank you, Dean," she whispered, holding her arms out to him.

He went to her, letting her wrap her arms around him tight enough to suffocate. He let her slip off his half-unbuttoned shirt, and he let her pull him onto the bed.

Dean did what he'd done countless times, and made love to her with the gentleness that had become as easy as breathing. She clung to him tightly and dug the same tiny indents into his back with her nails that she'd dug so often. When it was over, she fell asleep as she always did, and Dean, for once, slept too.

When he awoke, however, something was different. There was no mass of red waves lying on the pillow next to him.

"Ginny?" he called, sitting up in bed.

The air in the bedroom was as cold as the English winter outside, and it hit his skin with icy sharpness, waking him instantly.

"Ginny?!" he called again. He felt his heart begin to pound in his chest.

Leaping out of bed and hastily pulling on the underwear left on the floor, Dean ran down the hallway, calling her name.

As soon as he saw the living room, however, he knew.

The sliding door to their tiny high-rise balcony was wide open. Snow dusted the floorboards, blown in by the wind.

Dean didn't need to look.

He fell to the floor and, like Ginny had done a thousand times before, cried.