Crucify

Crucify

"There is no love that does not pierce the hands and feet."

In her dreams, Ginny ascended endless staircases and stone corridors, wandering her castles that hovered like jewels in the sky. They were great, intricate monoliths with no foundations, with walls so thick that no enemy, no friend, could ever penetrate them. She was searching for something, for someone... a boy with dark hair and an ever-changing face. Some nights his eyes were blue, and others they were green; and on some nights, when the castle walls seemed too oppressive, when the shadows began to reach for her with ink stained hands, the boy's eyes became red.

Ginny always remembered her dreams. Often they were more real, more vivid even than memories, so that as the years passed it became difficult to tell the difference. However, she could never remember how the dreams ended. Every night, she would wander the hallways seeking the elusive boy, wanting to call his name but never knowing which name to call, and then finally, as dawn drew nearer, and she felt herself about to wake, a door would appear on a blank wall. The door was painted red, and something (a name? a secret?) was carved into the wood in dark, violent gashes. Fear would overtake her as the crimson paint on the door became blood, rolling in sheets to coat the floor like silk and the black words carved themselves into her mind, over and over again until the blood was her own, and just as she felt like she would die from the pain, and the fear, the red door would open.

She never seemed to remember what happened next.

Sometimes when she was tired Ginny would confuse reality with her dreams. There had been several occasions when, between classes, she found herself wandering the halls for no reason, looking into shadows and empty rooms, searching for the dark-haired boy. When she thought about her dreams during the daylight hours, which was often, she thought of the boy as Harry. Who else would she dream about, after all?

Ginny was in love with Harry Potter.

She had been in love with him since she had first met him. Oh, certainly she had dated other boys, like Michael Corner last year, and the beginning of this year (her fifth) she had gone out with Dean Thomas for a week or two, but neither of them had really made her feel anything. It was Harry who made her pulse race, Harry who took her breath away. Of course he did. Harry Potter was perfect; she'd be a fool not to have fallen in love with him.

And besides all that, they had so much in common. Harry wasn't the only one to have had a connection with You-Know-Who. She knew what it was like to have him in her head, to be ripped open like that and made to feel worthless, and to be unable (unwilling?) to stop him. Everyone thought that it was over and she liked for them to think that. But Tom had never really left. He had forced his way into her mind when she was eleven and had ingrained himself in her, become a permanent part of her psyche that she was unable to remove or even ignore. He was always there, in the back of her thoughts, whispering in her ear. He was always trying to seduce her, to trick her into setting him free, but Ginny knew that he had no power over her anymore. Tom was just a stain that never went away, a scar that never quite faded.

She imagined it was probably the same for Harry. They were both the victims of Voldemort's cruelty, and it was only natural that they should understand each other. But, as much as she loved Harry, as perfect as they were for one another, he didn't love her. He didn't understand her. Harry barely even so much as looked at her, and to love him was to love the way his indifference cut her to pieces day after day; to need him was to need the exquisite pain that only those green eyes could bestow as they looked past and over and through her, again and again.

"He doesn't want you," Tom whispered to her gently, whenever she watched Harry, praying that for just a moment he would look up and see her. Tom's voice was low and seductive, and he fed her obsession even as he rubbed salt in her wounds. "You worthless child. Look at the way he smiles at your brother. Do you really think he would ever bother to look at you like that? Poor, stupid girl... If only you were more beautiful. If only you were smarter, like that Mudblood he's always hanging around. I bet he even takes her to his bed. I bet she puts her filthy hands all over him, and..."

It was impossible to ignore Tom's cruelty because some part of her recognized what he said as true. He was only repeating the endless litanies that she told herself, so many times, because if it wasn't true, then why didn't Harry see her? Why didn't he love her? No, Tom was right. Tom was always right.

He made her angry, and his goading was what had led to her dating not only Michael Corner but Dean Thomas as well. He had told her that no one would ever notice her, that they all hated her--and she had proved him wrong. She made Michael notice her. She taught him to love her, and then once she'd gotten what she'd wanted, she broke up with him. He was an awful boyfriend anyway. As if she hadn't seen the way he looked at other girls...

Dean had been different, though. He hadn't paid much attention to her either at first, but with Tom's never-ending insults, dripping like poison in her mind, fueling her anger, it hadn't taken her long to get him to ask her out. But Dean wasn't like Michael. Michael was shallow and it was easy to thrive off of his attention. It was simple and uncomplicated, because they had used each other. But she couldn't do that with Dean. He was a quiet boy, and he felt things so strongly. As much as she needed his attention, she couldn't stand the guilt that came along with it.

It wasn't until after they'd broken up that Ginny realized how Tom had tricked her again. He'd intentionally led her to use both Michael and Dean, and to hurt them both with her indifference to them. And Tom had only laughed at her as she hid in her room for weeks afterward, ashamed of herself for being so incredibly stupid, and even more ashamed for having enjoyed it all so much. She had promised herself that she would never let it happen again. She loved Harry, and until he noticed her, she wouldn't be with anyone else. It wasn't fair.

But the loneliness wasn't easy either.

She liked to take refuge in the dreams. While awake, Ginny would walk the Hogwarts halls during her free time, or whenever she was upset, or when she needed to be alone, and she would trace the walls with her fingers, let them draw a path through the stone like the thread that led Theseus out of the labyrinth. In her mind she drew maps of all the places she discovered. They formed layers on top of one another, like an onion, riddled with secret chambers and locked doors. She didn't wander aimlessly; Ginny had a purpose. She was searching, she thought, for Harry--but sometimes when she thought about him, she couldn't seem to remember what he looked like. His face was always obscured, and even though she knew that his eyes were green, often he would appear with eyes the color of dark sapphires, cold and blue.

This bothered her, so she tried to think of it as little as possible. Of course she knew what Harry looked like... She'd just never had a good memory for that sort of thing, that's all.

Tom found her reasoning very amusing, but oddly, he never challenged it. He would simply laugh, and then persuade her to continue searching. Sometimes she thought that Tom wanted to find Harry even more than she did. Which was ridiculous, of course. Why would he care about Harry Potter?

But he did.

"Tell me about the Potter boy," Tom would whisper, his words taking on an edge of hunger that he'd never displayed when talking about her, or to her. It made her angry, although she couldn't understand why. "Tell me about the Tournament again. Tell me about the look on his face when he returned, with Cedric's body in his arms. D'you recall how broken he looked that day?"

And Ginny would think, You bastard. She knew it wasn't really her Tom that had been responsible for what had happened at the end of the Triwizard Tournament, but she hated the fact that he had the potential for that, that he could, that he had, become the Dark Lord. Tom delighted in her anger. He loved to remind her of who he was and he gloated endlessly over Voldemort's acts of terrorism. But even more than that, he loved to hear the stories of what Voldemort did to Harry. His favorites were the Tournament and what had happened in the Department of Mysteries at the end of the last school year. Despite the fact that Voldemort had not been entirely successful in either of these events, he had managed to hurt Harry badly, and that, it seemed, was more important to Tom than success. To Tom, victory was decided by how badly he had hurt Harry.

His obsession sickened her. She loved Harry so much, and yet in the back of her thoughts was Tom, delighting in the shadows that he had created in Harry's eyes, and the grief that seemed to have become a permanent part of him. Harry was the Boy Who Lived, he was the hero of the Wizarding World, and Ginny knew that if anyone could overcome Tom, it was Harry. She believed in him. She could survive Tom's presence in her mind, slowly driving her mad, because she had faith that someday, Harry would save her, like he had before.

But as she watched Harry, waiting for him to conquer his pain and therefore defeat Voldemort's hold over him, she began to notice things. Like how Harry never smiled anymore, and the way that he never let himself be touched. Sometimes Hermione or Ron would reach out to him, to put their hand on his shoulder or arm, like friends do, and Harry would flinch away from them before they could make contact. He didn't talk often, except for when he was angry, but he never yelled like he used to. Instead, he would grow very still, and his eyes would become dark holes lined with thin rings of green, so intense that it was frightening to look at him. When he spoke his voice had a hollow, brittle edge to it that reminded Ginny of empty pages. Anger was the only thing he seemed to feel strongly anymore, and even she could see the way that he sought out conflict, just to feel something.

The tension between Harry and Malfoy had changed from school rivalry to something darker and infinitely more dangerous. Harry thrived off of their enmity. It was the only time Ginny saw him come alive anymore, and she hated that only Malfoy could draw such a reaction out of him. Just as Ginny continued to cut herself on Harry's indifference, Harry drank in Malfoy's poison as though it were the only thing keeping him alive.

She tried to remind herself that this was Harry Potter, that he was stronger than that and eventually he would overcome this. But as the days passed, the shadows in Harry's eyes only grew darker until he was almost unrecognizable. This broken, twisted boy was the one she loved? The Boy Who Lived? The one that would someday destroy Voldemort for the Side of Light? He was the one she was waiting for, to save her from Tom?

"Ah, but it is it really salvation that you want?" Tom would murmur, and she tried so hard not to hear him, but it was impossible; he was always there. She would never be free of him. "You know how hopeless this is. Harry's never going to save you, and you keep waiting for him because you have nothing else to wait for. Just give in. Surrender now, little girl, before you break yourself..."

Ginny hid herself from his words, hating Tom with all that she was for hurting her this way, for always, always being right.

"Find him, then," Tom sneered contemptuously. "Go find your little hero, if you really think he will help you. Find him and make him destroy me, and then see if you can still live without me."

She couldn't escape Tom, but she could at least get away from the hushed voices and concerned stares of her housemates. Ginny ran through the halls, even though it was late and her footsteps echoed, making it all too easy for Filch to catch her out of bed, but she didn't care. If she didn't get out of there now, away from the voices and the truths that were too painful to accept, she would go mad.

Eventually she came to an old corridor that she hadn't seen since third year, and she slowed to a walk, studying the empty rooms and old portraits. There were footprints in the dust, evidence that she was not the only one to come up this way. She wondered who had been here last, and why they had come. Perhaps it was the boy, Harry, the one from her dreams that she was seeking. Maybe he was waiting for her here, to take her away from Tom and his horrible revelations.

As she progressed further down the corridor, she began to hear voices from ahead of her. They were distant, but grew louder as she continued onward. There was something familiar about the heat of their voices that drew her to them. Tom had gone strangely quiet ever since she had arrived in this hall, as though he were listening to something that she couldn't hear. The quiet in her mind, left empty in his absence, disturbed her, and she gravitated to those voices, trying to fill the void Tom had left behind.

She turned a corner, and then she saw them. Ginny's eyes went wide, as she took in the scene before her, disbelieving. She couldn't move, and Tom was gone, and there was nothing.

Ginny hadn't really been expecting to ever come across Harry when she set out looking for him. It was a game, to imitate her dreams. But now, finally, she had found him. Harry had his back to her, his dark head bowed, but it was unmistakably him, and with him, their bodies pressed close together as they kissed, was Draco Malfoy.

Harry had him pressed up against a wall, trapped there as though he were afraid Malfoy might try to escape if he loosened his hold. There was a certain violence to their passion, evident in the way Harry's hands dug into Malfoy's hips, and the way they crushed their mouths together, battling in a way that she realized the rest of their fights had only been leading up to. Ginny couldn't seem to breathe, unable to do anything but watch them, as something, everything, inside of her, shattered.

Malfoy's eyes slipped open then, and the harsh grey of his gaze split her open like twin razors, smooth and beautiful and unbelievably painful. She marveled at how fragile she really was, that Malfoy could hurt her so easily with just his eyes. He continued to stare at her as Harry pressed a trail of biting kisses down his pale neck, lingering over the spots where his heart beat pounded against his skin. Then his mouth curved up into a cruel smile, eyes never leaving Ginny's as he dragged Harry's mouth back to his own and claimed him again.

Ginny turned and ran. Her feet thundered against the old wood, and she could hear their voices again, but she didn't care. Harry was gone, and Tom had left her and she had nothing, there was nothing but silence in her head and the sound of empty footsteps in empty halls. She ran until she couldn't feel anything, until her exhaustion pulled at her and she couldn't think, until black spots danced before her eyes and she thought she would faint.

And when, finally, Ginny couldn't run anymore, when the length of the castle's long halls finally conquered her, she fell to her knees, eyes closed, tears burning like liquid fire against the backs of her eyelids, but she didn't care. She searched her mind desperately for Tom, needing him more than she had ever needed anything, too broken to care about what that meant. But Tom was gone. There was no mocking voice in her head, pointing out all her faults and teaching her to hate herself; no one to urge her after Harry, no one to fill the empty spaces in her mind.

Tom was gone, and Ginny began to realize that he had never been there at all.

She forced her eyes to open, and even though she had never been here before, she knew immediately where she was. The hallway ended abruptly at a short stone wall, and in the middle of it, right before her, was a small red door.

Shaking, Ginny rose to her feet, one hand pressed against the wall for support, and took a few tentative steps forward. Everything in her screamed to turn back, but Ginny couldn't bring herself to care anymore. Tom was gone, and she was so empty, and it all hurt so much... She crossed the short distance separating her from the door, and placed her hand on the knob. The metal was icy beneath her heated skin, slick with tears and sweat, but she tightened her fingers and, without another thought, yanked the door open.

There was nothing there but shadows, and darkness.

And Ginny found herself alone.

Fin.