Over My Head

Chapter 5: Silence is Golden

If I raise my voice, will someone get hurt?

If I can't feel then I won't get touched

If no truths are spoken then no lies can hide

Silence is golden

-"Silence is Golden" by Garbage

I had the feeling I was losing myself in somebody else. I went to the Owlery and wrote a note to the all-powerful Headmaster, saying simply that vampires were on the campus. I didn't sign it.

And I couldn't shake the feeling as I went up to bed.

I stood in front of the open window while I took my clothes off and threw them on the floor. I tried to wash away the feeling with fresh air against my bare skin. I didn't feel the cold. I knew it was near freezing, but I couldn't feel it. I heard Hermione enter softly. I closed my eyes, willing her to go away.

"Ginny?"

"Nope. I'm the Tooth Fairy."

"You're a very strange girl, you know."

"You're a very beautiful girl, so we're even." I pulled a nightgown over my head and went to her on the bed.

"You find me beautiful?" I couldn't tell because of the shadows on her face, but she might have been blushing.

"Who doesn't?" I smiled shyly at her, pushing hair back from her face.

"Oh, Malfoy, Ron, Dean, Seamus..."

"All fools," I said before kissing her. "To tell you the truth, Draco and Ron have both had crushes on you at different times, and I have a feeling the other two are gay-"

"You are so...I'm not sure what." She was laughing.

"Do you like what I am? Can you even stand to be near me for too long?"

"Sometimes. Sometimes I like you. Sometimes I think I could possibly love you." Her eyes closed briefly, as if it hurt to tell me this. "But even if I could..."

"Don't." I kissed her again, running my hands through her still-perfect hair. She had obviously just come in from brushing it. I loved her hair. She always tied it back to make it look a little less unruly. But when it was down I could see all of her. Her hair just seemed to be so essential to her very existence.

It wasn't long before our clothes were on the floor and we were between sheets. Touching, mumbling, feeling...I'd left the window open, but together we were warm. I wondered briefly if I would have been even without her there. It didn't matter as her hands encircled my waist; bringing me closer with an authority I wasn't aware she was capable of.

I remembered the cold, hard and endless feeling of the night from moments before. Cold and endless. It seemed that everything was like that in some way or another. Except her; except this. This was warm; this was different from everything else in my life. This was not hatred or pain or life or death or sorrow...

She was gone to the world, I knew. She hated Harry deep within her, but she couldn't bring herself to admit it. She wanted a normal life too much. And it was his fault that she wanted it so badly. He was the one who had taken it from her to begin with, in the form of her parents.

She only seemed to understand this when she was incoherent. She grew into periods of insanity over the winter months. It started that night at the Astronomy Tower. It was bad in November. But I didn't even know that half of it then. It only came at night. It must have been some mechanism of self-preservation.

She would go into trance-like states, much as I had heard Harry describing Trelawny of doing when she had an actual prediction. It was then she understood her own hypocrisy; knowing Harry was responsible for ruining her only normality, and wanting for him so much to restore it.

In the morning I received an owl asking me to come to Dumbledore's office. He was there to let me in.

I was almost impressed by his office. Harry was there. Harry was always there, wasn't he? I sat as far from him as possible while Dumbledore went behind his desk.

"Ms. Weasley."

"Headmaster."

I felt Harry cringe at my tone.

"You were out after dark last night, I hear." He didn't seem angry. In fact, he seemed very un-angry. Very different from all the other teachers when they hear a student was out after dark. Maybe it was the times. Maybe it was because you could taste Voldemort on the air. I can only remember it being different for a short period of time in my third year. The security, for a moment in time, was almost lax. And then Cedric died and everything changed again...

"Sure. What's your point?" I was being rude. It was just the innate bitchiness in me.

"And there were two vampires on school grounds."

"Yeah. You know, they aren't that hard to kill. Professor Moody...er...Crouch was really exaggerating when he told us-"

"Ginny, shut up," Harry said, staring at me. He was angry.

"Nice glare, Potter. Taking lessons from Malfoy?"

"Mr. Potter, Ms. Weasley." He was still not angry. It was a little creepy. "Ms. Weasley, I don't know how you managed to destroy those vampires, but Mr. Crouch was not exaggerating when he told you how difficult it is to defeat them."

"One of them mentioned a slayer. Sounded pretty fun. Maybe I'm one of those?" I had the strange urge to take up smoking just for the satisfaction of blowing smoke in Potter's face.

"A slayer? No. There is only one in the entire world, and she lives in America." He stood and walked over to an intimidating bookshelf and pulled out a volume that said "Slayer: the Lore of the Chosen One" on the front. "Here, Ms. Weasley. You might find this interesting." He gave me the book. "Once you've read it, I would like to have it back please. You may go."

"That's all? You're not gonna reprimand me or anything?"

"Oh yes. Bad student. Never do that again." He was smiling as he said it. I didn't feel very reprimanded.

I went back to my room as soon as I could, in hopes of finishing the book before nightfall. Naturally that meant no one would leave me alone. Harry, of all people, chose the moment I was just about to open the book to enter my room. You'd think he would want to say thank you for Hermione or the vampire thing or something, but no. Instead, he wanted more.

"Hi Ginny."

"What do you want?" I was in no mood for formalities. Of course, formalities for me mean general politeness.

"Well, first, I wanted to talk about what just happened in Dumbledore's office."

"You want me to explain what happened? We came, he talked, and I got a book. Then I went back to my room to read said book, and you barged in like the asshole you are. And now you're going to leave."

"No. I'm not going leave."

"Oh, you have balls all of a sudden? Where were those when you wanted to ask Hermione out? Or for that matter, where were they last summer when you left Draco to fight on his-"

"Shut up! You don't have any right to criticize me like this. You don't even know me."

"Don't I?" I stopped for a moment, letting everything I'd kept hidden for six years boil up to the top. "You're Harry Potter, Wonder Boy. You used to be innocent and sweet and I liked you. I genuinely liked you. And then something changed after you watched Diggory die. You cried over him, didn't you? And that was the last time you ever did. It hardened you to be right there in the line of fire. You became embittered over seeing death at fourteen. And instead of letting people know that you were hurt, you bottled it all up. You grew mean. You shunned those who loved you the most. I watched it all, Harry. You and Ron and Hermione never let me into your tight little circle, but you kept me on the very edge. You led me into my current outsider position. You made me what I am. I don't know how to be anything else. And I see everything. Outside, looking in. I've never been quite accepted by anybody, and I know you. I know you all. In your hardness you became shallow. Years ago you actually loved Hermione, didn't you? You would have given anything to be with her. But now you're battle-worn and fake. Now that you don't want her you have her. Now that you've made her nothing, she's yours to play with. Yes, Potter. She is nothing. She has nothing. She knows you too. Inside she knows that you don't want her and that you're no longer the boy she once loved. She knows that it's because of you her parents are dead. She knows you're at fault for her misery. She knows it all but she comes to you anyway. You want me to shut up Harry? I'm afraid I can't do that. I've been so silent for too long, you see. I've watched you destroy her for too many years. You know that time in the night when you're so close to sleep you can taste it? You know that aching you feel? How you just want to fall into that unconscious world? For a moment, you can remember yourself, can't you? For a moment you can hate what you've become. And then it's gone. That's when she loves you. That's when she's happy. That's what she lives for. And you had no idea." I paused again, trying to understand everything I was saying. "Yes Harry. I know you. I know you better than you know yourself. And someday you'll see it. You'll understand just what your life has come to, and just what you've made the lives of everyone around you. And on that day, I'll be there. I'll be there, ready to jump right in. Ready to watch you fall. Ready to push you in. So sleep well Harry."

I opened the book, trying to ignore his dumbfounded presence. There was no copyright page in the book. No author to speak of, I suppose. The first page merely said "Slayer: The Lore of the Chosen One as detailed by The Watchers." On the second page, it began, "Into every generation a slayer is born..."

"Ginny-"

"Whatever you have to say will not impress me Potter."

"I don't want to. What I mean is...I'm sorry. I'm sorry you feel this way. I'm sorry you think we kept you on the outside-"

"Well yeah. Are you trying to say you don't?"

"Not initially..."

"Yes initially! From the first day I saw you. You gave me just enough friendship to keep me from being able to break off and make new friends. But you never let me in. You never told me your saving-the-world secrets. I found them out on my own. Take for instance Sirius."

"What do you know-"

"I know enough Harry. I know that he's your godfather. I know that in your third year you helped him escape the Dementor's kiss. I know that he's innocent."

"How-"

"Why won't you ever shut up, Harry? I haven't finished explaining, have I? The way you and your trio kept me, I learned how to know things. I guess you'd call it spying or eavesdropping or some other ingenious name for trying to fit in. I always thought that maybe if I let you know that I knew, that maybe you'd let me in. But I never did. The more things I knew about you, the more fake you became. So I never did. And you say I don't know you."

"You don't."

"Amazing that you hold to such a feeble defense. Amazing that I once thought I loved you. And yet more amazing still is your complete lack of personality in the midst of all of this. You're still exactly how the media describes you. You're still, despite everything, Harry Potter." I smiled for a brief second, memory flashing before me. I put the book down on the bed. "And you're still in my room. I'd very much enjoy it if you left now."

"I want to know how you killed those vampires."

"Um..."

"That's why I came here. I want to know how you killed them, just in case."

"No. No, there's a reason, isn't there?" His lack of subtlety unnerved me. I was so used to defensiveness and mixed up signals from him.

"After you left, Professor Dumbledore told me that you would have to be convinced of a few things. He thought that maybe I could convince you, but it's obvious now that I can't, so I need to know how you killed them."

"Is this a saving the world issue? Are you afraid somehow that I'm going to take your spotlight for a few seconds because I killed some measly animals?"

"No."

"Why don't you explain to me what you were going to convince me of?"

"Dumbledore said that there had been a lot of vampires on school grounds lately. He said that the charms that keep them and other animals in the Forbidden Forest were somehow wearing down, and the occupants were slowly leaking out. Different teachers have been walking the grounds at night to try to spell them back, but it's not working very well."

"Interesting. I'm enthralled."

"He said that the charms were wearing down because of Voldemort."

"Get to the point already Potter."

"He wanted me to convince you to walk the grounds at night and kill anything that you found that shouldn't be here."

"Okay."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean okay. I'll do it."