Redemption Lost

Ginny Weasley sat silently in her bed and let the sunlight filtering through the window wash over her lithe frame. She had been here since the war had ended. If not here, then in someplace almost exactly like it.

She knew, of course, why she was there. She accepted it with quiet resignation. On most days, she could quietly rationalize why she was here, and did not rage against the injustice of the situation. In between, she had good days, and bad.

There were days where she was genuinely overcome with grief at her actions. But those days were few and infrequent. On other days, she rallied against the unfairness of it all.

She had been working hard to improve herself, and make some degree of penance for all the heartache she had caused to the people who loved her. She knew now that they loved her. It wasn't that she doubted them, but there were days where their platitudes were so overwhelming, she felt like she was suffocating. It was difficult to accept forgiveness when you spit in someone's face.

Her current surroundings didn't help matters much. The room was all too white. It was all too bright. There were days she wished she could close her eyes and let the darkness envelop her again. More often then not she was unsure if this was a good thing, or a bad.

She sighed in resignation. The logical part of her brain, which had taken so long to reintegrate into her consciousness, told her that if she were lucky, she would spend the rest of her life in her current location. A shiver ran up and down her spine as she considered the alternatives to that.

She leaned back, and stretched her body out until she felt her muscles tighten against her frame.

There had been incredibly atrocious acts committed during the war. Before he fell again. Before he died again. Voldemort and his Death Eaters. They had redefined brutality, and reshaped cruelty. They had done so with a vengeance. And she had helped them.

Not willingly at first, not with any degree of pleasure, or sense of self worth. But as time had passed, she had come to rejoice in it all, and to revel in the completeness she felt. The screaming and pain, the last gasps of victims washing across her face, their blood splattering across her robes, and dripping down her face. She had savored every drop, drinking it down like so much butterbeer.

At her trial, she had not even tried to suggest she had been controlled. She had been at first, put under the Imperius Curse for a time, until her will had been broken. But the court had deemed that immaterial in the end, their sentence was firm, life in prison. But somehow they had been convinced she was unwell. In the end, they said she had caught a sickness and needed to be cured of it.

In other words, she was insane.

She was, and she knew it. It was that insanity that had allowed her to do all those mean, nasty, vile things to people. To her friends and classmates.

She had flayed Susan Bones to death. Cutting off her skin in one-inch strips, listening to the poor girl's screams until she passed out from the blood loss. The poor girl's voice had been hoarse in the end. Bellatrix Lestrange had taken to wearing her hair as a wig, pretending to be the once beautiful Hufflepuff in a macabre game of pantomime, following Ginny around and mimicking her every move.

Ginny had been under the Imperious then, still conscious of the horrible evil she had just perpetrated. Fortunately, the rest of the girl's family never found out what happened to her. They died during the war.

Eventually though, Ginny's defenses had weakened. Bellatrix Lestrange, the woman who had killed Sirius Black, and had tortured poor Neville's parents. Bellatrix Lestrange, the woman who had spent over a decade in Azkaban, and had clearly gone quite insane. Bellatrix Lestrange. Bella. Lovely Bella, the evil bitch that had seduced her, and who's love had compelled Ginny to join her in the morbid games that she played on all the innocents that were paraded before them.

Ginny had been captured during the first Hogsmeade visit of her fifth year. When she awoke, it was her distant cousin who was stooped over her.

She had held out hope of being rescued. That the Order would find out where she was being kept and come rescue her. That Harry, precious Harry, dear sweet Harry would liberate her. She prayed that someone would come and find her. Noone did. Days passed by, then weeks, and then months. Noone came for her at all.

In time, after Susan Bones had died, her dead and mutilated body being left in Ginny's cell for over a week, Ginny began to weaken. She still fought for quite some time, or at least she thought she did. But in the end, even she couldn't deny that some of the acts she had committed had been done by her own free hand.

There had been that muggle family from Kent. Their only crime having been to catch sight of Lucius Malfoy through a bedroom window after he had killed some unnamed wizard. Their young children had screamed the loudest. But it had been their mother who had somehow lasted the longest. She held on for almost a week before having her skull caved by a brick dropped on her head. Death Eaters are easily amused. And easily bored as well.

That poor woman's death had sparked something in Ginny. That much was clear, though she couldn't decide if it was a spark of understanding, or a spark of heartache, but it had been a spark. She realized then and there that the sooner people understood what she was seeing, the better off they would be. If they could grasp an understanding of all the pain that existed in the world, they would be grateful for that small improvement in their lives.

This was when she had ceased to fight the curses put on her, by Bellatrix, and by the others. But mostly it was Bella, her sweet Bella, who had been the one to spend so much time with Ginny. In time, Bella had recognized that she no longer needed to keep Ginny under control. That she was now acting of her own will.

That was when she had begun to hurt. That was when she had begun to revel in the pain. That was when she had allowed herself to be twisted and warped beyond anything Tom Riddle's diary had ever made her do. That had been control. This was free will. It was addictive, it was nourishing, it was glorious. It made her sick to think of it.

Still, Ginny was not completely trusted. And she understood why. She had yet to prove her worth. Until she did, she was a liability. She spent a month chained to the foot of Bella's bed, not in it, but rather to the cold stone floor underneath it.

She remembered with clarity all the acts she had freely committed. The first had been simple. The simplest act of generosity one can commit. Murder, a vial of liquid mercury poured down the throat of Colin Creevy. He hadn't even screamed. He hadn't even tried. She could still remember his eyes wide in shock at seeing Ginny before him. His body convulsing as the mercury ate through his organs. It had been mercifully quick. She hadn't shed a tear for him. What did she care for him? Not a thing.

In time, she had been invited into her mentor's bed. Bella had so many things to teach her, and so many hours in the day to teach them. The art of pain, the art of deceit, the art of madness, the art of darkness and all the powers of the Dark Lord that were hers to teach, she taught to Ginny. The last were the ones that Ginny had cherished the most. They were the secrets she had held onto for so long, and fought so hard to keep for herself, to keep hidden from the others. In the end, when Ginny had learned all else that Bella had taught her, she learned the last thing there was to learn, the most important lesson of them all; the art of seduction. In the end, Ginny did not need to be chained to Bella's bed. She entered it every night of her own free will. Their lovemaking had been powerful and forceful, yet brutal and vicious. By some chance, some strange quirk, some dark fate, the captor and captive had become lovers. Neither one argued against it, nor tried to fight it. It was strange and surreal, but Ginny couldn't question it.

They spent long nights awake in bed, scheming and plotting. Both knew things about loss, the loss of time, and the loss of love. Ginny, had lost time pining away for Harry Potter as well as with all the other simpering fools. For Bella, fourteen years lost in Azkaban as well as her husband Rodolphus, recently killed by Aurors. The bitter resentments of their lives heightened their passions for one another, and they fell deeper and deeper into each other's orbit.

They knew a way to cause revenge, to gain some measure of satisfaction on the one person both reviled, Harry Potter. They both knew that the best way to hurt Harry was to hurt his friends.

Ginny instructed Bella precisely. Capture her brother, the fool, and also the bushy-haired shrew he was constantly pining for. Ginny would take care of the rest.

Two weeks later, her brother lay naked in a bed in some undisclosed mansion; a collar around his neck constrained his movements. His girlfriend stood nearby, chained to the wall.

Ginny entered the room and heard them both exclaim her name. She beckoned them to keep silent as Bella and her fellow Death Eaters all entered the room, their eyes glistening with contempt from behind their masks.

Ginny hoisted herself into her brother's lap and leaned forward to whisper in her ear. She told him what would happen. She told him what he would do if he wanted to stay alive, if he wanted to keep them both alive. He recoiled in horror and attempted to be retch. But nothing would come up. She told him that his friend would be crucified if he failed to do as he was told. He held fast in refusal.

From across the room they both heard cries of 'Crucio' and Hermione's pitiful wail as she screamed in tormented agony. After several minutes of this he consented to Ginny's demands. Ginny reveled in his disgust, at how sick he was at what he was about to do.

She was thrilled to loose her virginity to someone she cared so deeply for, even if he was a fool for believing in the wrong side.

They made love all night long, he never needed to be reminded once of the consequences if he should stop. It was a beautiful thing. She had never suspected her brother could be such a skilled lover.

The next morning both of the captives had been released, a portkey sent them back to Hogwarts. Back to Dumbledore and Harry, to disgust them with what had happened.

Ginny lay in her consummation bed all day long, grinning in delight at what she had accomplished. She knew her brother would be traumatized for life at what he had done, even if he had grown to enjoy it in the end. She knew he did, even if he never admitted it, even to himself.

A week later, Aurors had raided their hidden lair, hidden no longer. Bella had been killed near the outset of the battle and Ginny had shrieked and howled in rage at the loss of her lover. She fought back with insane irrationality, or so the Aurors had said at her trial. It had been unavoidable given all her acts that she would fight for Bella, and pick up her banner when she had fallen.

But the court had decided to be lenient. Harry Potter once again played her personal savior.

That was five years ago. Voldemort was dead for good now. His dead body had been cremated, his ashes scattered to the winds. His wand had been snapped and burned as well.

And for five years she had been here, in this asylum. This special hospital with padded walls and high security wards. Wards to keep people from getting out, but not from getting in. Her parents and brothers came to visit her on occasion, her mother most of all, Ron the least of all. Harry, whom she had pined over for so many years, whom she had meant to hurt with her willing participation in debasement, he visited her every day.

He didn't love her; he couldn't bring himself to love someone who had performed such wicked acts of evil. He came to offer her redemption and salvation. She never asked if it was for him or her that he offered it, or if he was seeking it instead.

She sat there, reclining in her bed, alone in an empty room, the sunlight shooting through the window that never opened, and reflected off the padded walls of the cell, never allowing any shadows to fall.

Perhaps in time she would enjoy the sunlight, but for now she simply closed her eyes and enjoyed the darkness.