Lies

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Lies

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My life stopped when I was eleven. When it started again, it wasn't my life anymore.

That was the year I learned how to wear masks. Tom taught me that, both by example and by force. He pretended he was my friend, my almost-brother. I pretended nothing was wrong.

He's gone now -- no more masks. Even in his original life, he has no more masks. Voldemort is a monster in body as well as soul, and after that night at the Ministry his last mask -- the illusion of normality -- is torn away.

Harry took away Tom's masks.

I wonder if he'll take mine.

The closest I came to living again was the last day I knew Tom. I tried to strip off my mask, to tell Harry the truth, but I didn't. Not couldn't. Please note that. Ultimately, no matter how much Tom pushed at my mind, it was my choice. I had learned to shut him out by then, to thin his voice to a nagging whisper. But I still clung to my mask, my pretense that nothing was wrong.

My mask is my safety. My shield.

I nearly died behind that shield.

I remind myself of this whenever I find myself too comfortable in my masks now. I'm not sure why I bother; eventually reality catches me again and I feel the pressure against my face. A smile can become a prison as easily as iron bars.

I find it ironic that I keep my prison voluntarily.

When I lost my mask in the Chamber, the first thing everyone tried to do was pick up its broken pieces and glue it back onto my face. Ron wanted to hug me, and tease me about Harry. Mum wailed over me like a lost lamb rescued from the slaughter.

Harry ignored me.

I pushed Ron away at first, but putting aside a mask is not an easy proposition. And if I had put it aside, if I had showed how much I changed with Tom, I would have torn Mum's heart from her chest, raw and bloody, and squeezed.

There are things worse than hiding.

So here I am, Ginny Weasley, Gryffindor, social butterfly, Quidditch player, the girl who can and will put Harry Potter in his place when he's being a git. It's a nice mask, I think. Some days I find myself believing in it. I can be strong, I tell myself. There's no reason to let a few strange months affect the rest of my life. I can smile and laugh and study and fly and gossip and comfort Hermione and tease my brothers and make plans for the future.

Some days the mask is real.

And then I find myself thinking, if my mask can become real, what about Tom's? Were there some days when he really was my friend? He did teach me spells. He did help me write essays. He did show me around the castle. He did hug me, and whisper good night, and soothe away my dreams.

How much of that was false?

I think of Tom and I can't understand Voldemort. Oh, I know Tom wanted power. I know he hated Muggles. I know that. But what he wanted more than anything was to not be hurt again. He wanted to be accepted. He wanted power to make sure no one could ever hurt him. He wanted eternal life because death hurts. Death brings fear. Death strips away power.

Revenge, I think, came later, once he had some power, after nobody had shown him a different way to fit in. Slytherin can't have been good for him.

I think of Tom and I think of Harry, and I wish I could set aside my mask and cry. They're two sides of a coin, with nothing to say at the start which one had to be light and which one dark. And now Harry is growing darker, even while I remember Tom's flashes of light. I know Tom. I watch Harry. And what I see scares me. If he doesn't reach out, if he doesn't let go of his hatred, the thickness between the sides of the coin may wear away to nothing.

I wonder what Tom would do then?

Voldemort, I'm sure, won't care. He'll kill Harry anyway.

But Tom might have understood. Would they have pulled each other down? Or could they have dragged themselves back into the light, or at least the thinner shadows? It hurts to think of Tom, who was my friend, who was almost my brother, falling into Voldemort.

He tried to kill me.

I miss him anyway.

Tom helped me keep up my mask; he knew it was there, knew why I wore it, and helped me hide. I know it was wrong. I know he was using me. But the strength I got from letting one person inside, from knowing that one person knew the truth -- I want that back. I want the certainty of the early months, when he was my friend and I was his friend and I knew he would never let me down. I want even the twisted, barbed heartache of the later months. I was falling into hell, and he was with me every step of the way. I know he was the one pulling me down that road. But to pull a person, you have to hold her hand.

Nobody holds my hand anymore. Only the boys I go with, and they don't hold my hand. They hold a wax hand, a marble hand, and hand within a shield. They don't see my face.

I think Harry might have seen me once, even through the mask. He thought Voldemort might have been possessing him through his dreams and, afraid, locked himself up behind his own mask -- I wonder, sometimes, whether he knows he wears one. I reminded him that Tom had inarguably possessed me, at least at first, and I have never felt quite the same fierce, living, satisfaction as when he froze.

"I forgot," he said.

I wasn't surprised. Like Tom, he sees people only in terms of how he affects them or they affect him, not how they affect each other. Each is the center of his own universe, the two poles of mine. Tom built my mask. Someday Harry may unbuild it.

Until then, I am strong. I am brave. I am alive and unhurt. I lived through possession by Voldemort and survived unscathed, save in the presence of dementors.

I love Potions and work to spite Snape. I love Herbology and work to reassure Professor Sprout. I talk with Hermione and give her advice. I talk with my other friends and laugh and tease and sparkle. I keep tabs on my brothers and support them through the bad times. I play Quidditch, and whether I like the game or not, I love the freedom when I soar through the air, or corkscrew and dive, plummeting in freefall toward the unforgiving earth.

I want Harry, no matter how many other boys I chase. I want Tom, no matter how impossible that is. I want to curl up into a ball and make the world go away. I want them to lie beside me and run their hands down my sides and murmur that everything will be fine, that they will never leave me, that they will always hold my hands.

I dream of them. Every night I dream, and in my sleep I cry and they come to me, and they reach through my shields but let me keep my mask, let me hide my tears even as they wipe the salt away.

Someday my mask will crack again, falling to the earth in a thousand shards. Someday everyone will see the truth, and then they will turn away from me. Someday even the distant touches through my shields will cease and no one will reach for me, but I will reach out my own hands and grasp the world.

Someday I may be able to stop dreaming.

I think I'm waiting for that day.

I think I want to stop lying.

I think I want to live.

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A.N. Thank you for reading. Please review and tell me what worked and what didn't; I greatly appreciate feedback.