Imperfections of Perfection

"We are never so helplessly unhappy as when we lose love."

IV

The Silence Weeps

"He's such an idiot," I said rolling my eyes. "But you'll see... he'll eventually see what you're worth."

Hermione smiled at me and we walked back to the Gryffindor common room. I saw Harry sitting in a soft armchair by the fire with Ron. I couldn't look at him. I mean... I just couldn't.

I knew he didn't love me - not the way I loved him. I told him that I'd wait for him. But I knew that he wasn't going to come back to me. I was just a little girl and he was a boy who'd been through too much.

"Are you all right?" Hermione asked me. I nodded.

"Yeah," I whispered. "I'm all right."

"Good," said Hermione. "You deserve to be happy, Ginny."

Happy. God, what a riot. As if I could ever be happy now. I had loved Harry Potter, but he was gone.

Oh, he was still alive - he still acted like everything was normal, but Voldemort had killed something inside him. The thing that had made him my Harry.

I wanted that Harry back. I hadn't known - hadn't wanted to believe that the war could affect him anywhere nearly as bad as it had. But the point is it had affected him.

"I'm going to bed," I announced to Hermione. She nodded at me and I turned toward the stairs, heading for the girls' dormitories. I had the room to myself. Most of the girls in my year had gone away. They'd fled the war, fleeing to the States, Canada... anywhere that wasn't Europe.

I sat on my bed and thought of Hermione.

She was perfect. My brother Ron liked her, you see... They were getting married. She had the perfect life. Her crush had become her boyfriend and now... they were getting married. Hermione was getting the happily ever after I wanted. It wasn't fair! I wanted my happily ever after... my boyfriend.

In that moment I hated Hermione with all the fire in my heart. She had the perfect life I wanted. She had the life I was never going to get...

Because my boyfriend was now the ex-boyfriend who'd forgotten I exist.

I turned to the side. As I did, I saw something glinting out of my bag at the foot of the bed. I clambered out of bed and went to see what it was.

For a moment I stared at the ivory handle of a knife. I couldn't remember packing into my bag or where I'd gotten it.

It's like nothing you've ever felt... it feels so good... the words drifted within my mind. One of my friends had used a knife.

I had never used a knife.

Before I thought it through, I took the knife and drew a horizontal line across my skin. Tiny little droplets of blood came to the surface.

It wasn't deep, but the tiny amount of blood fascinated me. It made me feel so much better.

For what felt like the first time in ages, I smiled and drew another line across it - not too deep because I didn't want to commit suicide. I just wanted to see the blood and feel the pain.

Physical pain is so much better than inner pain.

- Sigmund Freud

A/N: Yeah... this is why the warning label says "self-harm" now instead of what it used to when I first posted up the first chapter which was "eating disorder"

And, while I don't really believe Ginny would hurt herself, she'd be a better choice simply because she's a bit of mystery. She broke up with all her previous boyfriends. Harry was the first (only?) boyfriend to break up with her... that's the reason...

Citation/Disclaimer(s)/Reference:

1. On this one - the last line, "Physical pain is so much better than inner pain" - it's not exactly a quote but something I've come to believe. Or something I believe most human beings tend to believe in consciously or subconsciously. Most people would rather someone punch them than to make them feel bad about themselves - it's the way most people make up their own punishment. Their conscience beats them up more than anything we could say. The guilty feel much worse than they would if they got physically punished. That's probably why corporeal abuse isn't nearly as good as emotional abuse. Emotional touches the core while if you abuse the body - it's just the body, not a person's soul. Also, many "cutters" believe it's better to hurt physically than emotionally. Because if it hurts physically, it has a way of healing, but if the wounds are inside the soul, how is that going to heal?

All of that comes from research done over many years, but don't take me at my word. This is going into psychology and that's a soft science and not everyone agrees!