Linger

Linger

I'm so tired of being here
Suppressed by all my childish fears
And if you have to leave
I wish that you would just leave
'Cause your presence still lingers here
And it won't leave me alone

These wounds won't seem to heal
This pain is just too real
There's just too much that time cannot erase...

You used to captivate me
By your resonating light
Now I'm bound by the life you've left behind
Your face it haunts
My once pleasant dreams
Your voice it chased away
All the sanity in me

I've tried so hard to tell myself that you're gone
But though you're still with me
I've been alone all along

These wounds won't seem to heal
This pain is just too real
There's just too much that time cannot erase...

- Evanescence, "My Immortal"

His voice slithered incessantly around the periphery of her mind, haunting, taunting. It was a deep, rich, handsome voice. Well-modulated and smooth, and sometimes dark and seductive in a way that eleven-year-old Ginny Weasley did not understand... but it was not warm. Never warm. His nebulous presence had not exactly been unwelcome during her lonely first year--walking with her through the cavernous halls of Hogwarts, although she was never sure if he was following or leading--it just made her slightly uneasy. A bit on edge.

No. What terrified the wits out of her back then were the blank spaces. Huge blocks of time that she simply could not account for.

At first she had feared some sort of mind disease, some memory-losing sickness. She had heard about those lumps people got in their brains, the kind that grew and grew and made you slowly lose your sight, your hearing, your memory... She started imagining headaches and tormented herself with grotesque daydreams featuring knots like those which gnarled trees, emerging out of her head. She confided her fears dramatically to Tom, of course. He reassured her that there was nothing the matter with her and she believed him, even though he was after all a blank diary and couldn't possibly know about such things. All she needed, he coaxed, was more companionship, but not the kind her fellow Gryffindors could offer, oh no, or that of her mean older brothers (poor Ginny, it's all right, love)... just Tom's.

She believed that, too. Of course.

Now, years later, she still has echoes of him in her mind. Is it really him, or just a memory that refuses to leave her in peace? She doesn't know, is rather afraid of the answer. She only knows that the whispers aren't just confined to her dreams. Maybe he really does walk around with her, perched in her brain, murmuring her worst fears continuously in her ears, or maybe some part of her unconscious took up the job for him when he left, and now her own mind torments her with her insecurities. Either way, she has his constant presence with her, and she is constantly fighting it. Fighting to keep her head above water, it seems on some days, to believe that Ginevra Weasley is a worthy person, a good person, a loved person.

And yet it is him she turns to in her loneliest moments, when she sees he is right, and no one really does value the Ginny she hides inside, no one truly knows or loves her. At times such as this she turns inward and loses herself once more in his It's all right Ginny, I'm here for you, I understand, love... none of those other bastards have a clue... and always, he says to her, You don't need them, Ginny, you've got me. We've got one another... Stay with me, Ginny, and then she gasps as if drenched in icy water and comes out of her mind with a terrifying jolt, because those words are most dangerous of all. Because sometimes she almost wants to believe them.

He has not truly left her. Not at all.