Eve, Astray

She is lonely when he is gone. And lately, he has been gone more days than she dares to count.

It begins a dull sort of aching in the pit of her stomach, that flourishes and branches like cracking ice over a half-frozen lake; until eventually, she has to sit down or lean on the kitchen counter for support before a wrenching sob erupts unbidden from her throat.

She writes letters to pass the time. To James, to Al, to Lily: mundane stories about her day, de-gnoming the garden, what she had for breakfast, what she had for lunch, accidentally dyeing the laundry pink, what she is having for dinner. The days slip together, over and under and over again, until it is too hard to separate last Monday from this morning.

Hi, Mum. Everything's fine, Mum. Yes, the food is good. No, classes aren't too difficult. Okay, bye, Mum. They all write back in scrambled, black ink. Always the same, as if they were reading one another's minds. (As if they didn't have time for her). Their words run into each other and it's hard to distinguish where one ends and the other begins. James forgets to dot an 'i' here and even Lily has begun to replace "Love, Lily" with a lop-sided, inky heart, instead.

She makes his favourite suppers to pass the time, when the children are not enough to dull the aching in her gut. Roast chicken and mashed potatoes, beef with gravy, meatballs and boiled potatoes. More often than not, his suppers end up in the bin.

She writes to him, too. Scrolls and scrolls of parchment, tiny cramped words shuffling onto the pages before she can stop them. Or maybe, just maybe, the way that they spill out of her, splattering across the white pages, uncontrollable and wild, it's that she doesn't want them to stop.

She doesn't ever dare send the letters, though.

*

Sometimes, she pretends that she isn't alone, in a house too big for one person and much too small at the same time.

Sometimes, she stands for hours and hours at the third floor landing, staring up at the attic door until the muscles in her neck cramp and she feels dizzy.

*

The owl arrives at the kitchen window as she is pulling the fat, brown roast chicken out of the oven. Recognizing the handsome, amber-eyed bird, her stomach lurches into the region of her throat.

Gin,

Sorry, something's come up. I won't be home for dinner. Don't wait up.

Love,

H

She rereads it twice before tossing it into the fireplace, where the orange flames greedily lick at the crumpled parchment, pours herself a large glass of red wine, and tears a piece of the juicy thigh meat for the owl. It flutters off into the night with a hoot of thanks. As she clears the table and wraps the chicken in foil, her mind wanders back upstairs, where it has been sneaking off without her for days now at a time, and lingers underneath the attic door. She grips the stem of the glass harder than she intends to and it snaps.

"Shit," she whispers, staring as the dark, rich blood (her blood) bursts forth. "Shit," she whispers, when, really, she is relieved that the pain, at least, is distraction.

*

He catches her by the arm just as she is slipping upstairs to the third floor landing.

"Hi," she says softly, caught off-guard. "I didn't hear you come in." The slightest edge of annoyance slips in alongside the accusation in her tone and she doesn't try very hard to suppress it.

He doesn't notice, nearly tramples over her words as he ploughs on with his excuses. "Sorry, I'm late. It's just that we're training new Aurors and it's just mind-boggling how incompetent these kids are these days," he prattles on, shrugging out of his dark blue Ministry robes and handing them to her. "Anyway, what's for dinner? I'm starving. I'll just go wash up, yeah?"

Before, she would have fought hard not to notice the scent of expensive women's perfume and the cigarette smoke lingering in the fabric of his robes, nor the heady mix of well-worn dragonhide and goblin-cast gold fluttering in the air as he brushes past. Nowadays, she has learned to stop fighting.

"Good chicken." Harry smiles at her owlishly across the long table. His eyes are fresh and green, his skin flushed from the heat of his bath water. Ginny feels dirty just staring at him. "Aren't you eating?" he asks around a mouthful.

"I already have."

He smiles at her again, chewing, wipes his mouth with the edge of his sleeve, and swallows a large gulp of wine.

They fall into a gaping black silence.

But Ginny wonders where it is. She wonders if Harry knows that she knows that it's there, in the attic. Although, truthfully, she is far beyond caring what Harry thinks.

"This is nice," Harry says suddenly, with a vague wave of his hand. "I'm glad I came home after all."

"Me too," replies Ginny. She wonders whether the pages will feel familiar under her fingertips, if the worn leather will be heavy with dust or sleek and smooth and perfectly preserved, save for the hole through its heart.

"I feel like I haven't seen you in weeks," Harry comments, while helping himself to another mound of mashed potatoes. He doesn't sound particularly bothered by this and Ginny, despite herself, silently agrees.

"How are the kids?" he tries.

"Good. Everything's fine. Food is good. Classes aren't too hard." She wonders if Harry has touched it in all the years it's been stored up in the attic, or if he wills himself to ignore it instead. He's good at ignoring things. He must have been curious, though, tempted once or twice. She wonders if Harry's tried writing in it, to see if it still works, if he's been writing in it while keeping it so selfishly from her.

"What's wrong? You're quiet tonight, distracted."

"Nothing," she replies mildly. "I've just had a tiring day."

Harry smiles up at her, that same complacent smile he'd offered her when he'd broken it off after her fifth year (abandoned her for Ron and Hermione); that same oblivious smile he'd given her when he had won a date with Cho; that same knowing smile he'd bestowed upon her when he'd asked her to marry him. She stands to clear the dishes and rewraps the chicken in foil. "Dessert?"

Even with her back turned, she can tell that he is checking his watch. Predictably, he declines. "Have to head back to work," he says and is already slipping back into his Ministry robes.

"That's too bad," Ginny murmurs absently.

She is upstairs before the front door slams shut.

*

When Ginny finally finds the diary, the attic looks as though it has been attacked by Peeves. But she'll clean that mess up later. She'll hang the clothes to dry, she'll set the dishes to wash, she'll write to James and Lily and Al. She'll clean up everything later...

But Everything steals softly from her head, unnoticed; a rustle, a whisper, a flash of narrowed green eyes and is replaced immediately by something else, unmistakable and demanding all of her attention. She unearths it from the bottom of an unmarked cardboard box, underneath a pile of old Hogwarts textbooks, a half-melted locket, an old cheap-looking gold ring, and a rusting ornate goblet.

It's a wholly unremarkable-looking book: old and tattered around the edges. Except for the raw, gaping hole plunged through the middle. The paper feels old and brittle to the touch, not unlike moth-wings.

She suppresses her only rational urge to pull away.

Slowly dragging the quill across the page, hard enough to draw blood if paper were skin, she writes, Hello.

She waits.

She holds her breath.

She stares at the page, willing the ink to shimmer and slide and finally sink underneath like before, but it does not this time. She stares as the black ink retracts around the edges and dries into permanence.

"Tom, where are you?" she whispers, hot tears dribbling stick and salty down her cheeks. Drip, drip, drip, they fall one by one, thunderously onto stale paper. She is closing the book, shame-faced and dizzy, suddenly eleven-years-old again and wishing for Harry and...

Hello, Ginny.

She sobs and tries to swallow the sound all at once.

Hello, Ginny. I have missed you. Have you missed me? The words bloom and soar, careening dangerously against the edge of the page, like a wounded man staggering inside a dark chamber.

I am weak, Ginny. Will you help me? Like you did before?

No, she scratches firmly. "No," she whispers out loud against the faltering she feels inside.

But he knows better. He always knows. He laughs, high and cold, his voice seeping like ink on paper, through her fingers and pooling into the hollow blackness inside her head.

Now, now, Ginny. We both know you don't mean that he whispers, soft and slithering. Ginny nearly cries out as he bursts inside her skull, filling her with foreign thoughts too big and too cold. Tell me about the world, Ginny.

I'll never leave you again, Tom, she whispers back, tiny-voiced.

But he already knows. He always knows.

No, you never will.