Grey

Grey

The world went grey.

One day, Ginny Weasley sat hopelessly by and watched in agonizing silence as the world lost the delicate hues that had once colored it. Gone were the butter-yellow daisies that filled her garden. Gone was the soft green moss that covered the tree she used to sit under to watch her brothers play Quidditch in the sun. The vibrant blue skies of summer disappeared, as well as the lustrous white snows of winter. She couldn't even see the red in her own hair anymore. For Ginny Weasley, everything was grey.

She sat in a small grey room that was once awash in greens and blues and just a bit of pink. Pink was one of her secret vices; she always thought it clashed with her hair terribly but she was fond of it nonetheless. A subtle reminder in a house full of boys that she was different, that she stood out. She sat quietly with a thin grey blanket wrapped around her legs, trying to remember and trying to forget. She could do neither properly.

She remembered a boy -- a dark haired boy. And she loved him. But it wasn't the dark haired boy she was supposed to have loved. Not the dark haired boy the others thought she had loved. She told no one about this love -- about Tom. He was her secret and she would not share him with them. They wouldn't understand anyway. How could they?

When one is a faceless child in a sea of faceless children no one really notices you - not at school, not at home, not anywhere. But he noticed her. He spoke to her. Tender words of love and understanding that caressed her skin and made it burn with emotions she had never felt before. He touched her soul as no one else had, as no one else had ever tried. He was hers and hers alone. And he loved her.

For a few glorious moments they were joined, secluded in a chamber, miles away from the rest of the world. His essence coursed through her veins, and her blood burned with his power, his very life force. She could feel him in her skin as his voice spun silken words of devotion in her ears. He was cinnamon and sugar and heat on her tongue. His scent lingered in the air, on her skin, everywhere, long after she awoke to Harry telling her she was safe. Harry Potter had banished Tom Riddle, destroyed him. Harry Potter thought he had saved Ginny Weasley. He had no idea what he had done.

Now her hand slips silently under her grey pillow and her delicate fingers stroke a thin grey book; the burnt, battered remnants of her lover. No one knew she had it or how she got it back. It had cost her dearly to have her Tom near again, but it was worth it. He would find his way back to her through it. She knew he would.

She waited patiently, living her life as she always had. Playing a part, even believing it most of the time. She really tried living without him, to lead something that resembled a life and she was sure there were even a few days that she didn't think about him, not once.

There were times when Ginny wanted to get away from who she was and what she wanted. But he was never too far from her and no matter how hard she tried he was there, his scent on her skin, his life in her veins. He suffused her thoughts and interposed her dreams. He was in the air she breathed and to turn him away completely would only succeed in suffocating herself in the process. As she needed air to live, she needed Tom.

Until the day Harry Potter destroyed him, the second time. Oh, he didn't look like her Tom then. His soft olive skin replaced by green tinged scales, his sapphire blue eyes replaced by blood red slits of venom, his silky voice, lost, along with his easy smile. His touch was cold and dank, but Ginny knew somewhere in there, underneath it all was her Tom. But Harry killed him; and then the world went grey.

She didn't hate Harry. She couldn't -- she loved him, too. That was a love born out of years of hero worship that grew into one intense with emotion and friendship. But he was not her Tom. He was not all hers and only hers. He tried to be, but he couldn't. Too many people wanted a piece of him. It was his destiny, one that had no room for little Ginny Weasley; even if that's what he wanted.

He was gone now, her Tom, and all she had to remember him by was this diary from another life; its singed pages filled with the scribbling and scrawl of a girl looking for a memory. 'Are you there, Tom? Do you think of me, Tom? Will you hold me again, Tom? I need you, Tom.' Page after page filled with pleading words and stained with tears.

She hid her memento from the eyes of those who would try to take it away, telling her it was wrong - he was evil, he had hurt her. They wouldn't understand why she needed to keep it. That he was a part of her life in a way no one else could ever be. That for a brief and blessed moment she and her beloved were united in mind and body. Their souls touched as he lived through her. That he still does.

Now she curls her slender fingers around that diary, clutching it as if fighting for her life. She needs it to remind herself what it was to feel alive and that her heart beat for another, that the blood that ran in her veins gave him life and form; that he was hers and hers alone.

______________________________________________________________

Ron Weasley was perched in his usual spot on the elm tree that grew outside his sister's window. He could be found there, day after day, watching his sister sit on her bed and stare at the wall. The final battle affected so many so deeply, but none as much as Ginny. She was on the battlefield when Voldemort went down. Ron would never know how she got there, but somehow his youngest sibling found herself standing right next to Voldemort, almost as if she had sought him out. Trying desperately to protect Harry, no doubt. They all were. All focused on trying to end the war, trying to come out of it in one piece, trying to protect each other as best they could.

A dozen people faced Voldemort then or rather watched Harry face Voldemort. As the enemies faced off, they crowd gathered in silence, in terror, held completely immobile. Two wands were drawn, extended, and aimed. Harry's voice boomed, carrying over miles to reach every ear on the battlefield, as he cast the spell that had finally ended it all. The instant Voldemort fell, Ginny let out a cry of agony, a howl almost.

She hadn't said a word since.

Ron thought it was a curse at first, a hex gone astray, but it is more than that. She was lost, his sister. Confused, maybe. Scared, definitely. And lost. He couldn't make the others understand, but he knows. They had always had a special bond. They understood each other, more than any of the other siblings, even the twins. But whatever connection they had held was gone. He needed to find it again, to reach Ginny, because he would be the only one who could.

It hurt him to watch her sitting there day after day, but he could not turn away. He sat on his branch watching her closely, looking for any sign of the verbose, energetic girl she once was. Ginny had lost weight these last few months. A mere wisp of her former self, looking so small that Ron was sure she would blow away or fall apart with a gentle breeze. But then she always seemed fragile to Ron.

Once, when he was younger, Ron had found a baby bird that had fallen out of its nest. Without knowing what he was doing, he picked it up and held it. This tiny being in his cupped hands just looked up at him and trembled. Though he was young he understood that he held a life in his hands, and if he was not careful with it, he could break it. People thought he was just an overprotective brother not allowing his sister to grow up, but it was more than that. Ginny was like that tiny baby bird to Ron, a life he held in his hand that could be broken so easily. He had carefully put the bird back in its nest; he had brought it home to the family waiting to take care of it. He needed to do that with Ginny.

She never speaks. She never smiles. And her eyes are empty. Dead really. Her skin sallow and drawn. She is grey. Like the sky before the rain, leaving you in a limbo waiting for the downpour that might never come. But you always wait -- wait for the shower to begin or the blue skies to break.

What he would give to hear her voice once more, to hear her laugh or even complain about his interfering in her life. To simply know that she was still in there somewhere.

He spent his days in that tree watching her. He had tried talking to her. Yelling at her. Pleading with her. She wouldn't even look at him. He left and went straight to the tree outside her window. The same tree he used to climb back into the house after sneaking out for one adventure or another, when he needed a non-magical way to get inside without being detected. This tree and Ginny's room offered that. She had kept his secret, satisfied by simply hearing the details of his excursion.

The elm was special to them both. They dubbed it "the purple quill" years ago. When Ron would ask to borrow the purple quill from Ginny it meant that he was going out and he wanted her permission to use the tree to get back in the house. Ron Weasley was waiting for permission now. Waiting for Ginny to tell him it was alright to use the purple quill, that it was alright to come inside.

He could have stayed all night balancing on his branch, but his brothers always made him come down, for the sake of his mother who was unable to bear losing one, let alone two, of her children to this madness. They didn't understand; no one did. He was responsible for Ginny. She had followed him around as a small child, wanting nothing more than to be a part of his life. Because of him and who he was, and who his friends were, she was part of things she should never have been a part of. It was his duty to keep her safe, to protect her and watch over her. He had failed her and that was killing him. He could not move on until he knew that she was all right.

He sat in that tree day after day and watched for the slightest flicker of something from the sister he loved so much, to find her and bring her home.

They were so young, all of them. How could children be asked to save the world and not be affected in the process? One doesn't come into contact with evil and madness and walk away unscathed. Is it any wonder they all went crazy?

Ginny Weasley stopped talking, stopped living. Ron Weasley watched her from a perch on a tree like some curious owl, fixated and still. He had stopped living, too. But who was she to judge? What could she say when she had stopped living herself?

She needed him, her Ron. Fiercely self-sufficient, painfully intellectual, usually reasonable, Hermione Granger needed him. No one seemed to understand, and she didn't bother to enlighten them. They should already know. Her mother just wanted her daughter back, for her to leave this world behind and return to the safety of her childhood home and their waiting arms. Her father tried to get someone to bring her back, asking anyone who would listen for help. But no one did anything. Hermione Granger was one of the most powerful witches in the world, and if she decided to set up camp under a tree for a few months, so be it.

Mrs. Weasley did what she could. She seemed to understand what the others refused to see. Molly Weasley understood about a love like this, a love so strong that it eclipsed all else. She understood a devotion so intense that it consumed everything that had the misfortune to get in the way. She also understood that for a group of children thrust into a world most adults were not able to handle, time was the one luxury they never had. What they needed now was time and peace and space. It was all she could give them. She would bring Hermione food and blankets and invite her in at night to sleep when Ron was finally brought in by his brothers.

Hermione seldom said anything other than 'Thank you,' and 'No, I'm fine,' to anyone. In fact, for one who was touted as the world's most loquacious know-it-all, she really didn't say much these days. She slept in the living room in a makeshift bed. How long she could live like this she didn't know, but she was grateful that she was left alone, left in peace to watch her Ron. Professors came, as did friends, and those who were both. They spoke words of encouragement, asked some questions but eventually left her to her own devices. If she chose to respond it was with a simple "I appreciate your concern but my place is here," and they accepted it, though they hated to see it. Hermione Granger had the ability to take over the world. She should be well on her way to doing it.

What they failed to see was that Hermione Granger was who she was because of the people around her. Her friends and the boy...the man she loved. They were a set. They came packaged and if one piece was broken the entire thing was useless. A symbiosis existed between them - one could not survive without the other; it was really that simple. You cannot spend years entwined in each other's lives, facing life and death at every turn, and expect to be unaffected afterward. It was silly that anyone would think that they could. Irrational, really. But sitting here and waiting made perfect sense to her. It was the next logical step. It was what she was supposed to be doing.

Harry had disappeared when Ginny stopped talking. He loved her, but he couldn't help her. He had the power to defeat a Dark Lord and save the world, but he found himself powerless when it came to helping the one person who meant the most to him. Hermione didn't blame him for leaving. It was too much for him to bear to have one of their unit gone like that. Ginny lost her mind, and Harry lost his will to go on.

They all felt powerless; they just handled it differently. Harry needed to get away from the world that had dictated his life from the day he was born. Ron needed to make sure Ginny was better because of his devotion to her. Hermione clung to Ron, the last reminder of who she was once, the last link to her true self. Ron - who had forsaken the world to sit in a tree, staring at the empty shell that had once been his cherished sister.

Hermione had never had a sister, but she could easily recognize a bond made of steel and love. It was because of that bond that she did not bother Ron; she waited patiently for the world to return to some state of normalcy. The rest of the world would have to wait. It could wait. Because of their sacrifices, the rest of the world had that luxury.

They were trapped somewhere between the childhood they never had and the adulthood they didn't want - not yet any way. Lost between the lives they were expected to live for the sake of the world and the lives they needed to live for the sake of their sanity. Caught between the lingering darkness of the past and the brightness of a future they were not ready to enter. Immersed in grey.

One day they would get it right. One day they would leave the grey behind. Hermione waited for it all to get better; she knew it would. Because that was logical.

_______________________________________________________________

Harry Potter decided he liked being invisible. Growing up as a neglected, abused child seemed to be so much easier than the world of notoriety and fame that trapped him now.

It was easy when the enemy had a face. The Dursleys were cruel, but they were consistent. Perform the list of chores Aunt Petunia left for you, and she would remember to feed you. Stay out of Uncle Vernon's way, and he would happily ignore you. Keep a supply of candy hidden for Dudley, and he would find something else to abuse. He knew what to expect and never allowed himself to hope for anything more than to be left alone. It had been a simpler time.

For a few years, he enjoyed the fame. He wouldn't admit it aloud of course, but there was something spectacular about being admired and liked and revered. It wears thin quickly, however. When no one cares about you there was no need to be anything other than what you are. No flock of people looking for you to save the world, no reporters watching your every move, no villain aspiring to destroy you. He had very little to call his own while growing up, but he'd had privacy. And now, years later, he found he was still a boy who hoped for nothing more than to be left alone.

He sat in the corner of the room, huddled under his cloak watching her sit perfectly still on her bed. He sat looking into the vacant eyes of a girl once so full of life. Her expression, a ghostly caricature of the one she wore when he picked her up from the floor of a secret chamber. A secret chamber where she had been held captive by a psychotic echo of a madman.

He thinks that's when it happened. That's when he fell in love with her. What began as an overwhelming need to protect her became an overwhelming need to be with her. He did his best to cast those feelings aside convincing himself he loved her like a sister. There was too much at stake, and allowing himself those feelings would complicate things far too much. They were complicated enough already.

At some point towards the end, things began to change. At some point in the last few years it no longer mattered because the chance of them all surviving seemed like an impossibility. He had told her he loved her and she said she knew, but she never returned those words. He knew she did, but there was something holding her back. At first he thought perhaps it was Ron -- Ron's objection, Ron's temper -- but he soon saw that there was something else.

Even when they were together they were apart.

There was no explanation of why she could never say "I love you" when Harry whispered it in her ear on warm nights under the waning moonlight. Her body was there but nothing else, not her mind, not her heart, not anything. These were somewhere else, in someone else's hand. As much as he wanted to know whom and why, he wouldn't ask. She wasn't ready and pushing her might push her away and he needed her. He did not realize how much until he watched her, hoping for signs of life.

Ginny Weasley was sitting on her bed, dead to the world. She remained in that room, day after day, more often than not she never left she bed. Harry just watched her. The sound of her breathing, a comforting symphony, was all that sustained him as he waited patiently for some variation that would signal the next act was beginning. He never noticed when the food arrived, but everyday there it was next to him, without as much as a word. How Mrs. Weasley knew he was there he could not fathom, but he never questioned it.

Outside Ginny's window, Ron sat on the branch of a tree, too afraid to approach her, yet unable to go on without her. Occasionally Harry would watch him and the intense way he guarded his little sister. He would bear witness to the hope that grew in those vigilant eyes when she moved no matter how slightly, and the pain that replaced it when she showed no sign of progress. Below him on the ground Hermione quietly watched the man she loved and waited for him, unable to go on without him. What an odd group they made -- four individuals so incredibly entangled that they lead one life.

Harry Potter had nowhere to go. Nowhere to belong anymore. The Boy Who Lived died on a battlefield after he incinerated his enemy. All that was left in the ashes was boy named Harry, but no one knew that boy. No one cared to. Harry was not famous and revered. He was a boy who never had a chance to find out who he really was.

The spotlight didn't appeal to him, not to Harry. He had no interest in the spectacle and splendor lavished upon the defeater of the Dark Lord. He longed for a quiet existence; plain, boring, and exceedingly normal. He wanted to do the things ordinary twenty-year-olds did. The mundane acts that he never got a chance to do because he was The-boy-who-lived-but-was-never-truly-alive for so long. He didn't want fireworks and rock and roll. He wanted peace and calm and tedium and ennui. He wanted grey.

_______________________________________________________

Another night came.

Ginny preferred the darkness. While the rest of the world slept, she took her beloved book from beneath her grey pillow and held it to her heart. She composed words of love and longing in its disintegrating pages. She searched for the passion that had left her years ago in a dungeon chamber...then cruelly again a burning battlefield, just a short time ago.

Suddenly something caught her attention. She never allowed anything to distract her from her time with Tom, but she could not turn her eyes away. Something was walking, moving towards her. Someone she never thought she would ever see again.

Draco Malfoy.

Draco Malfoy - all sinew and silver and vapor, creeping towards her.

He had died just before it all ended; sacrificed before the minions of the Dark Lord, as an example of the fate awaiting those who refused the Dark Mark.

She felt a tremble in her throat and realized with a start that she was trying to scream, but months of disuse had rendered her vocal chords ineffectual. All that she could mutter was a rasp of surprise that did nothing to stop the advance of his ghostly form.

"Hello, Weasley," the specter drawled. "Surprised to see me?" Even in death Draco exuded pretension and vanity.

Ginny thought she was hallucinating. Had she truly gone insane? Had she truly lost all sense of reality? She tried to ask him, tried to say something, anything to the apparition floating in front of her. Words came out as stilted grunts and nonsense. Draco put up a wispy hand. "Don't bother. I am not here to listen. I am here to talk."

She gave a small nod in reply and waited.

"I see you still have that damned book," he tutted. "I always wondered why you wanted it so, why you were willing to trade your virginity to me for a scrap out of my father's trash. Not that I minded, it was a ....well, it was what it was." He smirked.

"I've been watching you for some time now. Watching you sit in emptiness, affecting those around you without a care in the world for how much you destroy. Now don't get me wrong. I quite enjoy watching a Weasley suffer, especially that bore of a brother of yours sitting there like some stuffed bird, petrified on a branch in a museum display. That look of sheer stupidly, that can only be described as classic Weasley, is a true treat for me.

"Then of course there's his bushy-haired girlfriend staring up at him with her moony eyes. Doesn't know the spell to fix this one does she? What? No book to give her the answer? And don't get me started on pathetic Potter, huddled under a cloak on your floor. The world has stopped for you hasn't it, and because of you the world has stopped for others as well. You certainly don't seem to care about those supposedly most important to you."

The phantom stepped nearer to Ginny, who clutched her book to her chest and angled away. Draco's visage softened slightly. "You believe he loved you but he didn't. He used you as he used everyone. That's all he ever did - consume and destroy. I don't know what image you have of him, but the boy who kept that journal died decades ago. And the boy you are pining for never existed at all."

A fire returned to his overcast eyes. "And while you sit there waiting to evaporate, I get the pleasure of wandering for eternity doing nothing but watch you pathetic, useless bunch of idiots waste life. You can't imagine how infuriating that is to me. I knew how to live, Weasley. I knew how to use the time I had to it's fullest and to watch you dolts waste it now is painful.

"You are in love with an illusion. He never loved you. He never loved anyone. It was not within his capacity. That's what killed him. That was his weakness. His immortality was an illusion to him, just as his affection was for you all those years ago. If you cannot feel love you cannot feel anything, and if you cannot feel, you are not alive."

He turned to look out the window. "It's time to move on, Weasley."

Ginny listened and felt the warm trickle of tears race down her pallid face. All she could do was say in a forced whisper, "Why?"

"Why what?" his voice rasped. "Why not just sit back and let you waste your days, enjoy the misery in which you all live? Because I am a selfish man, Weasley. I did not martyr myself for that gesture to be squandered. I did not lose my life for the sake of those who would waste that gift. If you didn't notice, I was never a generous person."

He shook his head at the lack of understanding on her face and continued, "Pansy, Weasley. I'm talking about Pansy." There was a sadness in his oddly sweet voice that Ginny had never noticed before.

He continued, "In a hospital, barely alive, is the only person I ever loved. Surprised to hear that? Yes, I loved someone. A love deeper than anything your meek little heart could fathom. We were bound to each other since childhood, by a contract our parents signed and by an understanding that no one else had. She was the one constant in my life that was positive. She was everything to me, but I never had the courage to tell her. I was unwilling to express my feelings because Draco Bloody Malfoy doesn't show emotions. Now she is destined to spend eternity as a vegetable in St. Mungos, kept alive by charms and concoctions, trapped in purgatory."

His eyes narrowed. "I hate waste, Weasley. I hate loss, and frankly I am a not good at handling it. When I look at her and envision the life I will ever have, and yet see you whittle away the precious hours you are given - I find myself going mad. And as ghost, that is not a great option. But I can't turn away from you, from any of you. That is the destiny, the fate ...the damned curse of a ghost - reliving your horrors and mistakes for eternity. And forever, Weasley, is a very long time."

He swept across the room and the wind pushed aside a cloak to reveal Harry Potter asleep on her floor.

Ginny looked at him and felt her heart stir. He looked so small and broken, like a marionette dropped and left splayed on the cold floor.

"Potter loves you. Can't even bring himself to leave you. He's been on that floor for months. That is love. That is devotion. That is real. Your brother putting his own life on hold until you decide to live, that is real. Your friend unable to face the world without those most important to her is real. Your family taking care of them and each other while they wait for you to resume living, that is real. You can choose to throw it away on the memory of a man that never was or you can live the life so many died for."

Draco straightened and stared at Ginny. If Ginny didn't know better, she could have sworn she say pity in those grey eyes. Draco had stopped talking, saying all that he intended to say that night. She watched in silence as he drifted away.

____________________________________________________________

Ginny Weasley sat on the floor next to Harry, watching the slow raise and fall of his chest as he slept. Slowly his eyes began to flutter open and she watched the gradual realization that swept over them.

"Hi," he whispered.

"Hi," she whispered back.

"Are you back?" He hoped.

"I think so." She hoped.

"Where did you go?" he asked solemnly.

"I didn't go anywhere, Harry, that was the problem." And he understood.

He disregarded his sore neck and sat up. While stretching he looked over to her bed and noticed a pile of ashes on the floor. "You burned something? Why didn't I notice? Why didn't I smell it?"

She simply smiled, "Because illusions have no scent, Harry."

He asked nothing more. She had worked through whatever she needed to and that was good enough for him. "Let's go and get Ron before he goes in that tree again. It is time to start living, I think." He smiled, and it warmed her.

"Harry," she said, "have I ever told you what a beautiful shade of green your eyes are?"

_____________________________________________________________

A year later, Ginny Potter poured tea for her new husband as he read the Daily Prophet. She sat down and began to leaf through the pictures from Ron and Hermione's latest trip. Being three months pregnant did nothing to stop them; this is the eighth trip in as many months that they have taken since their elopement last year. Ginny was lost in images of Ron swimming with dolphins when Harry's sharp intake of breath caught her attention.

"What's wrong?" she asked.

Harry had paled. "She's dead."

"Who's dead?"

"Pansy. Pansy Parkinson. She finally died. Her family decided it was time to let her go and had requested the doctors stop the doses of potions and enchantments that were keeping her alive. Listen to this,

'Mrs. Portia Parkinson seemed at peace with her decision as she spoke of a letter she received from an anonymous source, convincing her it was time to let go of her daughter. The letter spoke of wasting the precious time so many died to protect, of holding on to a past that can never return. She said the letter was so poignant and honest that it made her realize keeping Pansy's body alive when her soul and spirit were gone would help no one, especially their beloved daughter. When the doctors stopped the treatments, Pansy died almost immediately. Mrs. Parkinson went on to say she could have sworn she heard a faint 'thank you' the moment her daughter had passed on. But when asked if she thought it was perhaps Pansy herself saying goodbye, she only gave a small smile and shook her head and said, "No, it sounds - it almost sounds like a young man, not Pansy.'

"Can you believe it? After all that's happened, what an odd ending."

Ginny smiled. "Not so odd I think. It seems like the best possible ending." She stood and brought her tea to the window. She was sipping silently when she caught the form of two people walking hand in hand through her garden. A wispy, silvery head gave a small nod and his partner's silvery hand gave a wave. Ginny quietly raised her teacup and bowed her head.

"Yes," she repeated, "The best possible ending."

Finis