Tattered

Dear Diary-

Oh, the irony. I remember swearing, after my very first year, that I would never write down those words, and here they are, staring me boldly in the face. My quill is shaking because it's cold and my hand is unsteady, and I'm afraid, but what can I do? Bill once told me that the last years at Hogwarts are the hardest, and if you survive them, then congratulations, you're good to go. I doubt he knew how well he had it when he had said those words to me. Now I know. So true, Bill, so true.

I thought I would survive. I remember myself in my first year, happily sauntering into Hogwarts with a grin on my face, a new diary under my arm and dreams of pies in the sky in my head. My whole family had gone here before me, and I've heard so many stories. It was only natural I'd want to go, too, and then, finally, I was at Hogwarts. It seemed like magic. Not like magic you can do with a wand, but the other kind. The true and pure kind that comes from the soul.

Then things got horrible. My crush on Harry Potter, when he wouldn't even pay attention to me, my fainting all over the place and then waking up with blood or chicken feathers all over my robes. Tom was my only friend then, and at the end of the year, that, too, was taken away from me, my impression of my friend shattered into smithereens. I was horribly disappointed. This wasn't what Hogwarts was meant to be like! Why me? I remember crying into my pillow night after night at the Burrow, wishing that it wasn't me that almost died in the Chamber of Secrets, wishing that Tom was real and that he really loved me. Wishing that Harry saving me was more than just a heroic gesture. He had done what everyone expected him to do, even if they didn't know it. At first, I thought that he saved me because he cared for me personally, as more than a friend or Ron's little sister. All those wishes crumbled to dust, of course.

When I went back, it was better. But that's not the point. Maybe I should say why I'm writing what I thought I'd never write. Maybe I should say what I'm going to do, and why I'm going to do it.

I've been broken. I am shattered and tattered, and there's nothing I can do about it. I can't heal, because wounds this deep don't heal, they just fester and ache for all eternity. I can't presume to go back and live life the way I tried to live, long ago, when I thought everything was just peachy and the world was a big happy place.

I'm a Weasley, what did anyone expect? Just another red-headed, freckled kid who'll be Sorted into Gryffindor and live happily ever after and be brave and strong and loyal. Nobody expected this little Weasley to fall in love with the Dark Lord. Nobody expected her to trust a thing whose brain she couldn't see.

I've been broken, rolled over and broken all over again by so many things. I just can't go on. Even Ron noticed, and he never notices anything. He didn't even notice something was wrong, back in first year. I suppose he was too busy flitting around Harry to notice his annoying little sister. But he noticed now.

He had Hermione talk to me, ask me if anything was wrong and if I wanted to talk about anything. I just looked up from my Charms homework and smiled and shook my head, no, nothing wrong. What was I supposed to say? "Oh, I'm secretly in love with Harry, whom I've seduced, but he always seems so distracted when we're snogging in the library, so I'm shagging Malfoy on the side, but really, nothing's going on, oh, and do you know the theorem of the Redundus Charm? I'm quite stuck." I don't think so.

She said I've been looking pale and skinny lately. Yes, thank you for noticing. I'm almost afraid to look in the mirror, because I know what I'll see. Pale, thin face, jutting cheekbones, shadows under my eyes, freckles looking lost and faded. Even my hair, which used to be so rambunctious and the source of never-ending frustration, now just hangs there limply, and I swear it's turning auburn.

Charlie called me into his office. He's teaching Care of Magical Creatures here, and he couldn't help but notice. He's much more observant than Ron. I remember, in his office, there were photographs everywhere, and there was one of me, taken last summer, before any of this began. I'm standing in the picture, my hair braided and long and bright red, I'm wearing a white sundress and I look terribly freckly, and I'm laughing and waving and eating a huge ice cream cone. Charlie caught me looking at the picture wistfully, and he asked the same thing as Hermione did. I gave the same answer, of course. Everything's fine, Charlie dear, just tired, overworked, Prefect meetings and all those classes and all, not a light load, you know. He told me not to strain myself and let me go, but I don't think he's fooled.

At least they didn't owl Mum. I don't think I could've lied to her that well. I know I couldn't've lied to Bill. I never could. But Bill's in Egypt again, they like him there, bringing in the gold and being cool and charming young Egyptian girls. I want Bill here. If I owled him and told him something was wrong, he'd come. But I don't want to be a bother. I've been that long enough.

Well, I suppose I should move on and tell what I'm all about.

It all started last year, when I still had that silly crush on Harry. Right after Voldemort sieged the castle, I caught Harry in the library. He was alone, and I was going to leave him to himself when he asked me to stay. He was so lost, and he looked so sad and heartbroken and so much like a little boy that I stayed with him, hoping to comfort him. Well, one thing lead to another, and soon we were fumbling between the bookshelves. He was harried and inexperienced, I let him take advantage of me, I thought he needed me and I thought I loved him. Later that night, I cried into my pillow because I was sore and because he never kissed me on the lips or said my name, not once. But I, like the little fool I was, still thought I loved him, and thought he needed me, that using my body for his own would make him feel better. Help him, somehow.

Nobody came into the library anymore. Nobody cared about studying, only survival. They moped about in the halls, or bent their heads together, trying to think of a possible way to end the siege. Hermione was always with Dumbledore, because she was so clever, helping him think of ways to fight back. But, really, there was no way. Ron was always moping around the common room, moving chess pieced around his board, muttering to himself. Harry was always in the library, reading, reading nonstop, and when I came to get a book, he was always there, as if waiting for me. He kept making passes at me, and I let him, because I thought I was helping, but he still hadn't kissed me, and he was looking as forlorn as ever, and I finally realized I had been a fool. He didn't need me. Well, perhaps he did, but only to forget, forget about what people had expected of him, to save them. He just wanted to forget, and I was right there, silly and willing and convenient, loving him even thought he never knew or cared. And still, I didn't stop.

It was after one of the times in the library that Draco caught me. Harry had gone, and I was sitting behind a huge desk, dwarfed by it, hidden behind piles of old, musty books that nobody wanted to read anymore, buttoning up my blouse and chewing my lip. I still don't know why he walked in there, but I remember him swagger up to me, slam his hands down on the table, sneer and ask, "Has Potter been here?" I looked up at him, and I think this was the moment when I had finally begun to go numb, because I didn't feel fear or embarrassment or anything, just looked at him and nodded. He looked at me for a moment, and I could see myself in his eyes - scarecrow girl, thin, starved, dark haunted eyes and bloody, bitten fingernails. Then, he had leaned across the table and kissed me, kissed me hard on the mouth, hard enough to hurt and bruise. We ended up behind the same bookshelves Harry and I used, although we remained standing. I was propped up against the bookshelf, and Draco was pinching me, biting me, bruising me, and I could feel his slow, deliberate rhythm. He kissed me again, tearing at my lip and lapping at my blood, his hands roaming, and who knows how many fingerprint bruises I found on my skin the next day. Malnourished and weak, it was so easy for me to bruise now.

At the end, he called my name.

That night, I did not cry, but rather prodded my bloody and swollen lip and thought about Draco, how he still seemed alive when everyone else, even the Boy Who Lived, were walking zombies. I thought about how he kissed me, and how he had called my name, and how I felt as if a little fire was being kindled inside me, returning me back to reality, giving me back my emotions, my feelings. Back to life.

Gradually, Harry and I stopped meeting. The few times we did, at first, I was just as empty and withdrawn as he, and neither of us took pleasure in it, so we stopped. I didn't love him, and I knew it. Instead, I waited for Draco, and he came, and he called my name and made me scream and hurt me, but pain was good because it let me know I was still alive. He took me into his arms and nursed me back to life.

The siege ended. Harry, Hermione and Ron were all happily back together. Harry ignored me, as if what had happened never had. I didn't wish it hadn't. I simply didn't care. Ron ignored me also, too wrapped up in his happiness over the trio being back together. Hermione and I...had never been close. Sunshine and laughter had returned to Hogwarts, although not like it was before. It would never go back to normal, but it was better. Much better, for everyone.

I now lived only for Draco. He was my light at the end of the tunnel, and now that the tunnel ended, he was just my light, my one and only. We didn't meet in the library anymore, since people were taking an interest in their schoolwork again. Instead, we met behind the greenhouses, in the Prefects' bathroom, in little alcoves when it was dark and way past bedtime. Every time, he made me scream, and afterwards, he would smile and count the bruises on my body, and kiss every one of them and tell me how much he loved doing this to me. Not how much he loved me. No, he never loved me. I never loved him either, really, but he was my escape.

They graduated at the end of the year, all of them. I didn't cry to see Draco go, because by then I could no longer cry. I thought he was bringing my emotion back. I was wrong. Instead, he was making me bury my emotions deeper within myself, locking them behind an adamantine wall so I could never reach them again. Well, what did I need emotions for, anyway? I had Draco. I had my pain.

I'm a seventh year now. Draco used to Apparate to the train station on Hogsmeade weekends. I'd meet him, and we'd go to a dark alley somewhere, and he'd slam me up against a wall and bite me and bruise me, but those bruises faded fast and he wasn't around to make new ones. Once, he didn't meet me. A week later, I read about his wedding to Pansy Parkinson in the Daily Prophet. I never saw him after that.

Charlie doesn't ask me how I am anymore. It's obvious. I'm silent in class, never raising my hand, never speaking up. I pick at my food at mealtimes. I'm not as thin as I was, but I don't look the way a seventeen year-old girl is supposed to look. I look like a twelve year-old boy, but I don't care.

I can't continue like this anymore. There isn't anything left for me. I've locked away the most important part of me, the part that made me who I am, Virginia Weasley, and now I can't bring it back. I can't do it by myself, and there's no one around to help. The worst thing is, I don't want to bring it back. I am nothing, an empty shell with ragged nails and haunted eyes, watching, not speaking, not feeling. I don't want Bill or Mum to see me like this. I don't want to see the pain in their eyes. I want them to remember me as the freckled girl in the white sundress, eating an ice cream cone in the sunlight.

It'll be better this way. I promise.