Means to an End

Look at her, sitting there with her perfect poise and her thick brown hair, and her eyes of furious concentration.

She always curls one leg underneath her when she sits; as if she's about to jump up at any moment. We all know she won't though because she owns too much. That seat for instance. Everyone in the house knows that's her seat. "Don't sit there, that's Hermione's chair," they say to one another, "she'll be back soon."

And she owns so much more. That quill, a thick, black, raven's feather. And her knowledge, she owns that as well. No one could take that away from her. Stripped bare of worldly good's she'd still always be safe with her knowledge, and her mind.

But no one seems to realise the one thing she owns which is the most important - Harry Potter. He is merely a possession of his friends and his duty. After four years at this school, and after all the battle he's faced and fought and defeated, it was all for his friends, and his duty. It's expected of him, isn't it? That if there's a problem he can march in on his white noble steed and make everything ok again. Restore peace. Create harmony.

But not this time. There's one battle he can't overcome. The one I feel. And what makes it so much worse, but also irrelevant, is that all I feel and all I do is for him! Every waking moment and every second I exist, I do so for him. When I open my eyes and drag myself out of bed, it's for him. When I stumble into the bathroom to comb my thick and unruly red hair, it's for him. When I walk as gracefully as I can down into the common room in the morning and pick up my book bag, it's all for him. But he doesn't know I exist.

Oh, he saved my life. I forgot to mention that. It's not important because he didn't do it for himself or for me, he did it for Ron. I can imagine now the look on Ron's face when he found out it was I in the chamber with Tom. And I can imagine now the way he'd stare, and deny, and cry if he knew the places Tom and I had been together. How we melted into each other, and how he explored me so deeply I stopped feeling alive. Everyone thinks I was a naïve little girl, tricked by the incarnation of the darkest wizard of all time - no one knows or dares to assume that maybe I wasn't so naïve - maybe I knew what was happening to me - and maybe I let it go on because I needed the release. I needed something to be about me for once in my life.

But it wasn't. Everything that took place in my first year wasn't about me. It was about the Dark Lord. And Harry. I was a means to an end, again.

So I'm a victim of my own existence. Incapable of love or life, and cursed to live forever without the acknowledgement of the one person who is my reason for existence. And this story isn't about Harry, or Hermione, or her possessions. It's about nothing. It's about feeling alive, and being alive.

And about me. Ginny.