The Fairest One

"Mirror, mirror, on the wall; who's the fairest one of all?" The old rhyme comes easily, but the smile is hard to force out. "You are, my dear. Ginerva means fair, after all." But Ginny doesn't feel very fair right now, and all the broken shards of mirror in her hand show is a shattered face, caked in dirt and stained by blood.

She told her Harry that it didn't matter. So what if being labeled his made her even more desirable a captive? She didn't care. But that decision was another life time ago, and it's hard to come to terms that it has only been seven days, and days really aren't decades in Death Eater captivity. She thinks, perhaps, she might have been a bit hasty. And it sort of matters now, and she can't help but caring.

At first she wonders why her death was faked. Why did they go to the trouble of pulling out all the stops in a grand scheme to make her family, her friends, her Harry believe her dead? One week after being starved and left to rot in a dingy cell in what used to be Azkaban she was handed a Daily Prophet. That is how she knew it only to be a week. Her face was spread over the cover, and she had to fight down the urge to roll her eyes at the choice of photo the Prophet managed to acquire. She wasn't eleven anymore. And she doubted if she'd ever really been so innocent.

It isn't until a month later she finds out what they really mean to do. She receives multiple Crucio's for her laughter, but doesn't regret her humor at the thought of wearing white masks - black robes have never been to her taste, and she isn't one for a tattoo. Skulls and snakes are so garish, anyways.

He likes to dress her in red, and His choice of gown never lends itself to clashing. Odd, how she hadn't ever pictured Him like that - caring about whether clothing matched. While waiting she amuses herself by holding the fabric to her hair, to see how perfectly they matched. She wonders if he did that himself, if some remnant of Tom still exists to remember the exact shade of her hair.

She sits beside Him at meetings, her head held high as though she is not bound to the chair in which she sits. She wonders why He has her dress so beautifully, why she must always be so perfect. They both know she will do something foolish, that she will give Him a reason to punish her. They both know that she looks to be punished, that it is the highlight of her week. Standing in a circle of faceless black shadows, sparring with whoever was luckiest of the night. It is only then when she remembers the feel of magic as she curses and hexes with all her might. It is only then when she inevitably loses, that she remembers there is honor in her refusal to kill. It is only then, that she realizes there is still some shard of innocence left, and she guards it like the shattered mirror beneath her pillow.

It is on such a night, when she lies broken and beaten beneath a white masked form that is languidly closing its robes around it, that He speaks to her. He never has before, and their communication lies strictly in the soprano of her nameless elf. His voice is just as high, and she chides herself for expecting Tom's tenor. "Come."

She does. She's learned to always answer his demands - it's far easier on them both. Shrugging off the tatters of a gown that could have fed her family for a week, she wills her battered body to hold her up one last time. He leads her back to her room, and she has heard tell that it if He needed to sleep it would have been His.

With only a nod, the sunken tub fills with steaming water and a raise of skin where an eyebrow should have been results in silky foam. They both stop with a quirk of his lipless mouth. He doesn't bother to waste such powerful gestures on her, and she sinks into the medicinal water without a movement from Him.

The foam heals her wounds, as it always does, and she begins to forget that He is there, that He is always there. It is just another night, another attempt to revel in her Gryffindor bravery. Except that He is watching her tonight. His eyes are putting the red of her hair to shame, because she can never glow that brightly.

"Do you wonder, Ginerva, why I have never bothered to break you?"

She wants to say something witty, something that will make Him reveal those rare bits of emotion that He stores away for her Harry. But the warmth of the water feels too good, and her body rebels so exquisitely against the thought. So she keeps her eyes closed and prays to a God she no longer believes in that "yes" is the right answer.

She imagines that He smiles when He answers her, because it makes it just a bit easier to swallow.

"I could entrust you to Bellatrix, or Alecto, or even Macnair, as he so often reminds me, but I don't. Not just because you wouldn't be nearly so enchanting if your eyes were hollow, which is an acceptable reason on its own, but because you have a fire and a passion which I haven't seen in one of Mine in a very long time."

She opens her eyes, and sure enough He has an odd expression on His face - as though His lips have forgotten how to smile and are making a poor imitation of it. She is silent in His wake, and He places a skeletal hand upon her tangled hair. It feels warm, and the thought freezes her more than if it had been ice.

"I have lost too many dresses to your Gryffindor bravado. It is time you put that foolishness aside. You know the curses; see that you use them next time. I won't ask you again."

And He doesn't. That next week sees her standing over a body more broken than hers ever was. She is not surprised at how easily the curses flowed, how she knew when to stop and when to nudge the boundaries of death. She is not shocked, either, at how her dress and hair are still perfect, and how the angry jeers are caught in the throats of the formless shadows. And she knows that He has remembered how to smile again.

She is lying awake when He enters her chambers, and she knows that He did not expect to find her sleeping. Sitting up, letting the sheets fall to her hips, and wanting to see if he registers the fact that she is far more a woman than the other two who pass under the same title. If He does, then she can't tell.

"I'm not taking your mark. I may have murdered one of yours for you, but I won't be branded."

"So presumptuous, my fair Ginerva?"

"You didn't come here to see if I was a better lay than Alecto, or more adventurous than Bellatrix. That much I can presume."

"So I must be here to brand you in some other lasting way?"

Not knowing how to answer, she doesn't. She knows enough to assume that He does nothing without a purpose, and that goes for showing up unannounced in her chambers. When He laughs she wishes He wouldn't, because it makes her never want to laugh again, and it reminds her why she never will.

He doesn't touch her. He stands at the foot of the bed and watches instead, and it only serves to make her fingers work harder because it is so like her Tom. Instead of her Harry who would close his eyes while they made love, who had never seen her naked without blushing as red as her hair - her Tom always loved to watch.

So she obliges him. Every week when she stands unscathed over one less Death Eater He stands over her. Watching, always watching, as she makes her hands travel her body, makes herself wet. At first she tries to think of her Harry, but his face has become so distant now, as dead to her as she is to everyone outside this room. So she thinks of a tall boy, with black hair and elegant fingers (that aren't hers) driving into her. And she doesn't bother to hide her thoughts from Him, since she knows that it's her Tom's name that always falls in tangles from her parted lips.

Their ritual breaks her more than raping ever could, and she receives the Mark when he requests it without an argument; although she still wears red that doesn't clash and sits beside him instead of becoming another faceless shadow. She is special, and she knows this, she has always known this. And when Lucius sends her daggers from his eyes, she kindly thanks him for introducing her all those years ago.

She knew the day would come, but she did not expect it to be so soon... or was it so late? She can't remember how long she has been traveling His halls when her old life bursts through the door. At first she just stands there as the shadows and the fire meet in an epic display. He holds her back, one arm held casually across her path, long fingers grazing her arm - still surprising her with their warmth; though they don't make her cold any longer.

Her Harry finds them eventually, and she isn't sure what she should be feeling. She isn't Harry's anymore, and she isn't sure if she ever was. His eyes widen, to see her as his nemesis' lady in red and He laughs low beside her.

"Isn't she beautiful, Potter? My Ginerva, so fair... she always was mine, you do realize. There was darkness in her since the age of eleven, darkness only I could lay claim too. You merely broke her in for me, made her transition a little less painful."

She tries to tell him that He's wrong, that she never wanted this... but she stops herself, because her Harry has been lied to enough. So she keeps her eyes on Him, because His eyes don't make her cry like her Harry's does, and He is the only thing that is keeping her from running head long into the fray and shooting curses at whoever draws near her - no matter what robes they wear.

They put her Harry in a cell, to save him for a day when his downfall will not be confused with others of less importance. Still clad in her red gown, she evades the guards to find him huddled in the corner - head held high as hers had once been. He doesn't look at her, and she is glad. She doesn't want to see what is swimming in his eyes - and he has never been able to close them off.

"Come to summon me to me death?

"Don't do this Harry."

"Don't do what? Treat you as I would any Death Eater? Scorn you? How are you different?"

"I don't know... maybe I'm not. Maybe I never was."

He looks at her now, and she feels as if she will break under his stare. He could always make her heart stop with just a glance. But she's not sure if she has a heart anymore, and she doesn't know what his glance will break without a heart to focus on.

"Did I mean so little to you Ginny?"

And she flinches because it's been too long since she's heard that old nickname. Ginny is all smiles and bravado, a girl in ponytails and jumpers, kissing boys and reveling in her feminine power. She isn't that girl anymore. She isn't her Harry's anymore.

"No, you meant the world to me."

"So why are you doing this then?"

"Because it is a different world now. And it mattered more than I said it did."

"What, what mattered so much?"

Her smile is sad, misshapen as if she had no memory of ever smiling before and this was a clumsy first attempt, and she almost laughs because she thought that once of Him.

"You did. Being yours. But I never was, was I? Not fully."

He shakes his head, and mercifully lowers his eyes. He knows now, he understands in only a moment what took her months. That she'd have withered in the light he basked her in.

"No, I don't suppose you ever were. And I am no longer bound by you."

"Not anymore."

And her voice is breaking, because her Harry is no longer hers. He is just Harry... just Harry. She leaves him standing alone as he was always meant to do, because no one else could ever shine that bright.

The doors to her chamber close behind her before she shuts them, but she could feel His presence long before. He may not love her like Harry could, but He was the only one who could understand her so perfectly. She doesn't undress for him tonight, and recklessly she pushes her lips to a mouth with none.

He doesn't hold her, and he doesn't kiss her back, and she is not surprised; though she can't hide her face when her eyes start to shatter.

"I am not a man, Ginerva."

"I am still a woman, Tom."

Impatient with her now, He grabs her arm and pushes her forcefully to her bed. With a flick of his wrist her dress is gone and she is naked like she always is to him; and she can't remember when he started wasting gestures on her.

"I am Tom no longer. He is as distant as your Harry. Forget him."

"Harry is no longer mine."

"Neither is Tom."

She doesn't touch herself that night. She doesn't touch herself again. Tom's face is as distant as Harry's - another she has never owned. Harry falls, as she knew he would, and he took Him as well. Both. Gone. Together. Because it always had to end up that way.

And she is left alone, in a manor too big for the girl she was, and too small for the woman she is. She still dresses in the red gown, though her hair does not posses that same shine. The two clash without Him there to keep them balanced.

So she sits and she stares at a shattered face in a broken mirror, all hollowed cheeks and empty eyes. Her name holds far less meaning without Him there to invoke it. "Mirror, mirror, on the wall; who's the fairest one of all?" but the old rhyme is as false as it has always been.