And Ginny Can Only Cry

Ginny is lying on her bed, in the dormitory, thinking about Tom. Her lovely Tom. Rolling over, she sleeps, dreams about her Tom. Ginny always sleeps now. To be dreaming of her Tom. A childish rhyme in her head sings, "My Tom, oh Tom."

A darkness is seeping in now. Through the cracks in the walls and under the bed and over her face until she can no longer breathe. The ghostly blood of her betrayed friends is everywhere, covering her hands; her eyes weep tears of it. So red and bright, it screams to the world, "I am unclean! I am unclean!"

And Ginny can only cry.

From the corners of the room, she can feel him watching her, waiting for her, calling for her to come and worship him. He infests her like a disease and she feels him pulse in her veins. A knife slices so easily through her pale skin, the blood trickles down and with it, Ginny hopes Tom will bleed out.

A screaming voice wells up within her in Potions class; she feels it rising, bubbling, begging

to be let out. And she opens up, tired of hiding. Her scream is loud and startling, frightening her

classmates. Ginny screams and screams, tearing at her face and her arms and ripping at her hair with broken and bitten fingernails. Snape is shocked, his face a multitude of questions and thoughts. Ginny screams on.

At St. Mungos, she sits, held tightly by a straight jacket, her pain still screaming in her head though her voice box gave out long ago. It has been three years now since her outburst in Potions. At first they had brushed it away as "stress" and had given her Calming potions, the second time they said it was out of mere shock that Harry died along with her Tom. And the

third time, they finally faced the truth. Her carefully crafted mask had been ripped away.

"She is lost in her mind," the doctor concluded, and turned off the light. From her cold, plastic, seat Molly wept, great heaving sobs. Another child lost to the war. Arthur stood stiffly, patting his wife’s shoulder, his countenance that of an old, old man.

Ginny is screaming still, trying to wake Tom up. To make him emerge from inside her where he sleeps. She knows he is in there. Inside of her veins, pulsing, waiting. Ginny can feel him at night, when no one else is around. He stirs and moves and waits for the right moment. Ginny knows that he will rise again. And she will be with him.

Hermione watches through the small hidden window in Ginny’s room. Hermione’s small hands clenched into tight fists, if only she could find a way to cure Ginny. She’d been through every book known to Wizards on mind illness and had yet to find something that would help. At that moment, Ginny looks up, as if she knows someone is there. Hermione stiffens as she sees the look in Ginny’s eye; something cold is in there, something perfectly sane and calculating and evil. Hermione slowly backs away from the window, her heart pounding as she realizes, Ginny isn’t quite insane after all.