Recondite
Disclaimer: I own nothing (and I also have given up on finding new, witty ways to say that).
Summary: Harry reflects on how Ginny is a recondite person, whilst dodging blows from Hermione for slaughtering the English language.
Rating: PG-13 for themes and such.
Genre: Drama/Angst/Humor
A/N: For aibhinn's Word of the Day challenge. I totally crammed for this. -guilty look-
I don’t open dictionaries very often.
It’s not that I don’t like them, or don’t know how to use one. It’s just that I never had a use for them. It seems that nobody really finds a need for one as long as Hermione Granger is around.
It’s as if she has psychic powers when it comes to such things. Before a question can even be formed into words, she’ll arrive at the answer and provide in the most practical manner possible.
It’s actually a bit scary.
Which Ron is, also. Scary, that is.
He’s been absolutely bonkers for her, and nearly broke some git’s arm for asking her out to some posh restaurant one weekend, whilst proclaiming that he certainly didn’t like Hermione that way.
Nobody believed him.
Except for Hermione. That was about the point when she stomped out of the room, yelling something about ‘arrogant, repulsive boys I hang around’ (which is a bit unfair, because I’m certainly not repulsive!), and how she wouldn’t be ‘reconciled’ to them anymore.
Ron realized that he’d lost her for the fifty gazillionth time and decided promptly to turn around and declare that it was all my fault for being an arrogant and repulsive boy.
“Me? Repulsive?” I gaped at him, because I had been silent during this quarrel, pretending to be highly engrossed in my Divination book.
“Yeah! You don’t even know what reconcile means!”
Ron, I decided firmly, had gone around the bend.
“What does that have to do with anything?” I retorted, madly resisting the urge to smack him upside the head and knock some sense into him. “And I do know what it means!”
I didn’t.
He didn’t notice I’d said anything.
The moment Ron left, moaning about how he’d lost his chance at his only happiness (which wasn’t true, because he drove away his chance at happiness quite often… several times a day, at least), I dove for the nearest dictionary and started searching for the word.
It took a little while for me to remember that ‘r’ came before ‘s’, but I found the word eventually.
And this was when I found the word. It was a few words underneath the one I was searching, but it seemed to work.
In innocent tiny text, the dictionary stated the following:
Rec-on-dite /’rekendait/ adj [only before noun] formal recondite information, knowledge etc is not known about or understood by many people
I don’t know how much you know about me, but I’ll be making a statement that pretty much sums up my life.
Ginny is a recondite person.
(I probably just slaughtered the English language, which will result in instant strangulation by the hand of Hermione.)
But she is. Ginny is not known about or understood by many people.
…Well, that’s a lie. She is known about. But she isn’t understood by many people.
I thought I’d known everything about her.
I’d stared at her enough to know exactly the way her eyes crinkle up at the corners when something amuses her. I’d memorized every single curve of her face and every blister on her palms from flying. I’d known how she’d hate her brothers for teasing her, but quickly flare up in defense of them the moment anyone insulted her family. I’d known what made her angry, what made her happy.
And although I hadn’t said anything about getting back together, I knew that she’d read my hidden meaning. The moment all this killing and death was over, we’d be back together.
It had been a bumpy road getting to the end, but the only way I’d been able to make it through was to think about her and how we could continue to have endless sunlit days.
So it shocked me when she told me that she couldn’t be with me. She said she needed time to get better (she’d been taken prisoner by the Death Eaters, but we’d gotten her out and made sure that the Death Eaters would rot in Azkaban until Azkaban itself rotted).
I didn’t understand, and asked her why, looking stupid with slightly wilted flowers in my hands and my stubborn hair in some semblance of a part.
“I just can’t,” she said, and her voice was pleading. “Don’t come and see me anymore.”
Too stunned to say anything clever like, ‘but I love you!’, I dashed out of the room and to my house. I spent the next day and a half analyzing everything she had said before I went back to her.
No matter how much I told myself that I was insensitive to her condition, I couldn’t help it. She couldn’t leave me like that. She at least owed me an explanation.
I had planned to say something sweet and romantic to her (something like, “Ginny, I love you, and I don’t understand why we can’t be together. Please explain it to me, so I can at least have some closure.”), but what actually ended up bursting from my mouth was something less pleasant.
“Why the hell don’t you like me anymore?”
I started a bit guiltily as I got a good look at her. Her face was extremely pale, her freckles dark against her skin, and there were dark circles under her eyes. She opened her eyes, and I finally noticed that they seemed so sad.
“Please don’t ask me,” she said in a tiny voice. “Please, Harry.”
“Oh.” I deflated quickly, suddenly forgetting why I had gone to her rooms in the first place. The only thing I could think was that I never wanted to be the one to make her sound so tired and sad. “All right then.” I shuffled out of her room.
It wasn’t until I was all the way down the hall and out the doors that I remembered why I’d barged into her room in the first place. By then, it would have been purely stupid to stomp back to her to get an answer, so I went home.
I came back the next day.
A part of me felt a twinge of remorse for bothering her so often when she probably needed rest, but I couldn’t help it. I never could help anything, when I was around her. My monster would come rearing up and make me want to behead Dean for even looking at Ginny.
She appeared to be expect me, because she gave a little half-sigh and said, “You again.”
“Yes,” I said shortly.
She stared at me blankly while I veritably drank in the sight of her as if I hadn’t seen her in years.
Moments stretched between us, and the silence became a tad awkward.
“So. Hello,” I said, shifting from one foot to another. I was determined to think out all of my words so I didn’t say something completely embarrassing. “How are you doing?”
Ginny made a noise at the back of her throat noncommittally, fiddling with the end of her the spoon on her tray.
I waited for a few moments, hoping that she’d say something so we could at least make a show of having a conversation, but she remained quiet.
“Oh, that’s good. I’m great … too…” I trailed off, realizing that she wasn’t listening to a word I said. It was probably just as good, anyway, because I was feeling stupid for having a one-sided conversation.
I suddenly noticed that her tray was still mostly untouched, although I knew for a fact that breakfast had been sent to the rooms a good half hour ago.
“Ginny, are you not eating properly?”
Her face abruptly changed, and she glanced at me guiltily. She looked as if she had been caught red-handed by her mother, throwing Dungbombs. She cleared her throat. “Of course not.”
“You’re not eating!” I flew over to her side, outraged. “How do you expect to get better when you’re not eating?” I demanded of her, almost ready to stab her fork into her sausages and shove them into her mouth.
“Well, maybe I don’t need a second Mum bugging me!” she flared suddenly, glaring at me stubbornly.
It was strange, how much I felt better. This was the Ginny I knew. There was none of the pale, withdrawn, quiet in her now. Her cheeks were bright red, and her brown eyes were flashing at me.
“I wouldn’t need to bug you, if you weren’t so stupid! No, you must like that thin, waif look-that’s why you’re starving yourself,” I taunted, even though it felt curiously like poking a rabid dog with a very short stick.
Ginny scowled at me. “I’m just not hungry,” she muttered, shoving the tray away from her.
I could almost see the change taking place, in the way that her face relaxed from anger to weariness. I almost cried out for her to stop and wait, trying to hold onto the Ginny I knew, to keep her with me for a little while.
There was a sudden noise and a startled yelp from behind me. I swiveled around to see her Mediwizard bending over the clipboard that he had dropped. “No worries,” he said cheerily, smiling as he saw me. “It just landed on my foot.”
He brushed past me to examine Ginny, scribbling importantly onto the clipboard with his black pen. “How are we feeling today, Ginevra?” he asked, without even bothering to glance up.
It was then that I noticed that she was grinding her teeth, an action I knew to happen only when she was truly agitated. Her hands were trembling, even as she gripped the bedsheets around her.
I glanced curiously at the Mediwizard, who seemed like a nice, pleasant sort of person, even though he looked as if he could be quite pompous. He had pale blonde hair and smiling blue eyes. I certainly couldn’t find anything wrong with him.
The checkup didn’t take more than a few minutes, so I stuck around, glancing aimlessly at the hideous pictures in her room, waiting for the Mediwizard to leave so I could interrogate her about her food habits, and, more importantly, what I had done to drive her away.
Her Mediwizard continued to ask her friendly questions, assessing how she was, but her answers were terse and unhelpful. He finished quickly, glanced at her breakfast meaningfully, but refrained from commenting. “You know what to do if you need me,” he said, patting the bed next to her feet.
It was impossible to miss the fact that she cringed when he came near her.
The moment he left, I sped over to her side, ready to demand explanations from her on why she acted as if her Mediwizard were the next Voldemort.
Her hands searched for mine, and I noticed that her hands were clammy, and her skin was slippery with sweat. She clasped my hand so tightly that I could hear my bones creaking in protest.
Ginny’s eyes flickered over to the door where her Mediwizard had just left, and she leaned close towards me. “I don’t trust him,” she whispered to me.
I frowned, feeling confused by what she had said. “Why not? Have you seen something suspicious?”
A strand of red hair fell from behind her ear to rest in front of her face. “I just don’t trust him. There’s just something about him… ” She looked pleadingly at me, gnawing her lower lip nervously.
“I’ll… I’ll look into his background for you.” My eyes darkened. If anyone even thought about harming Ginny, I would probably go into a homicidal rampage; I had never been very rational around her. “I’ll take care of everything. You can rest now.”
She looked a little doubtful, but she relaxed against her pillow, looking at me pensively with her brown eyes. “You will do it, right?
“Of course I will,” I said, a bit miffed that she would have even the slightest misgivings about trusting me.
“Thank you, Harry.” Ginny gave a little sigh, and then said something that made my blood run cold. “I don’t know how long I have.”
I searched all of his records. His name was Hugh Seales, and he was 34 years old. He had gone to Hogwarts, been sorted into Hufflepuff with average grades. During the war, he had remained at St. Mungo’s to work with the wounded.
There was absolutely nothing wrong with him; he had never even slightly bended a rule in any point of his life. He was extremely boring, but there was certainly nothing shady about him.
I didn’t want to think that Ginny was wrong-there was no way that she could fake being so disturbed by him. I had seen the way her whole body shook in his presence and how her eyes had filled with fear. But on the other hand, the sketchiest thing Seales had ever done was to go home at 11:30 at night.
But when I told that to Ginny, she didn’t take it very well. In fact, she didn’t take it well at all. She threw her entire lunch at me, shouting that she never wanted to see me again, ever, in her entire life, and that she’d known not to trust me, but had against her better judgment.
I ducked from a particularly lethal turkey sandwich, wondering what I had done to incite this particular attack.
I didn’t know what to do, so I did what I always do when I’m stumped by something.
I went to Hermione.
She looked a little surprised to see me, but she hugged me enthusiastically and welcomed me in.
After we were seated, she looked at me critically. Handing me a cup of tea, she said, “What’s the matter with Ginny?”
“I think she’s gone mad,” I said, putting my head in my hands in despair, not even bothering to be amazed by the fact that Hermione could figure out what was wrong by simply looking at me. “She thinks her Mediwizard is set on murdering her, even when I checked into his background and everything. I think she’d have locks and bolts on her doors if she were allowed. She’s gotten so paranoid.”
“She’s been captured in the war,” Hermione pointed out. “It’s a bit natural, isn’t it?”
“No, that’s not it!” I felt frustrated in my inability to express what really bothered me about Ginny. “She blows up at random things, and then the next moment she’ll act just… disconnected with everything around her.” I looked at Hermione, but she just motioned for me to go on, a frown marring her brow. “And she’s not interested in things anymore. She’s not eating, she has nightmares-”
Hermione abruptly stood up, grabbing her purse from a nearby table. “Come with me,” she said, and her tone brooked no argument.
While she was dragging me up the stairs of an imposing looking building, she deigned to explain a little bit. “I think it is-but I’m not sure… I’ve heard of it happening, and I’ve been stupid not to think it would happen… but I’ve got to make sure!”
“I see,” I said stupidly, but by then she had lugged me up to a door which read in neat letters Dr. Dillon - Psychologist. Before I could ask her what this was about, she had opened the door to reveal a surprised secretary.
“Hermione Granger,” she said, sounding a bit breathless from storming up the steps. “I don’t have an appointment, but Dr. Dillon knows me.” Before the secretary could answer, or even close her gaping mouth, Hermione had barged into the inner door.
I noticed a very old man with crinkly white hair and startling blue eyes, reminding me of Dumbledore. “Dr. Dillon, this is Harry Potter,” she said crisply. I didn’t even have a chance to say a bewildered hello before she had launched into exactly what I had told her.
“In conclusion, I’m led to believe she’s suffering from PTSD,” she said, matter-of-factly. “I wasn’t sure, though, which is why I came here.”
Dr. Dillon raised his eyebrows at her. “Well, this is a surprise.” He rose from his desk. “Please sit down, both of you.”
Hermione looked ready to implode with the uncertainty, but she sat down on one of the cushy sofas with me.
“Mr. Harry Potter, it’s a pleasure to meet you,” he said, coming up from behind his desk to shake my hand. “I didn’t think I’d ever get a chance to actually talk to you.”
“Doctor,” Hermione said, actually looking agonized. “Please.”
Dr. Dillon permitted himself a smile as he leaned against his desk. “I believe you’re right,” he said slowly. “Of course, I cannot make a proper assessment until I’ve seen her. But her lack of trust, her avoidance of certain reminders, or triggers, if you will, her lack of interest in life and her feeling of a foreshortened future-it points to PTSD.”
Hermione saw my absolutely confounded look. “What is it, Harry?”
I had been trying to name it myself and had only been able to come up with Polar Tasmanian Sexual Diseases and had been disturbed by it. “What is it?”
Before Dr. Dillon could say anything, Hermione had interrupted eagerly, and I couldn’t help but be reminded of our Hogwarts days. “Posttraumatic Stress Disorder. It happens when the person has been exposed to a traumatic event in which the person has witnessed or been confronted with an event that involves actual or threatened death or serious injury or a threat to the physical integrity of oneself or others.”
“What Hermione is saying,” cut in Dr. Dillon kindly, noting how my confusion had only been exacerbated by her word-for-word definition of the illness, “is that when your Ginny was captured in the war, she underwent some traumatic events, and they’re still haunting her now.”
By the time we left his office, we’d procured his promise to look at Ginny and see what could be done for her. The technical terms and words whirled around in my head, but I fiercely gripped onto the hope that in time, Ginny could make a recovery.
“He’s a family friend. He’s a wizard, but he decided to set up a separate psychology practice for Muggles and Wizards alike,” Hermione explained, shoving her keys into her front door. She noticed by dejected look, and, before I could hide it and claim that I was ‘fine,’ she had poked me in the shoulder. “What’s the matter?”
“Nothing,” I said sharply. A little too sharply.
“Right,” she said, unconvinced. “It’s about you and Ginny, isn’t it?”
I knew there was no use hiding anything from her. She could sniff out secrets as skillfully as a bloodhound. “I just don’t think… Idon’tthinkGinnylovesmeanymore,” I mumbled quickly, hoping she would leave it at that.
I could swear that the corners of her mouth twitched. “Just give it time,” she said, clicking her tongue sympathetically. “It’ll work out.”
“But she said she didn’t want to be with me!” I hissed, my face burning and wishing above anything else for a broomstick so I could throw myself off of it.
But her words encouraged me. Although I wanted to doubt, there was no way to mistake Hermione, who had never done badly on a single subject in her life.
Dr. Dillon was as good as his word. He arrived the day after to assess what was the matter. Hermione squinted at him and nodded. “It’s good that you got rid of your beard a few months ago,” she said.
“Why?” I asked, wondering what that had to do with anything.
“Dumbledore,” she said briskly, as if that explained everything.
It didn’t, and I was left in the dark as I waited outside the room with Hermione to wait for Dr. Dillon to finish talking to Ginny. As I heard a distinct lack of objects being thrown, I surmised that things were going well, and that Ginny was going to be okay afterall.
Dr. Dillon came out of the room relatively quickly, and both of us crowded to hear if PTSD-whatever it was-was the real problem.
“Definitely,” he said, placing a piece of paper in a folder. “She couldn’t tell me much about what actually happened, so I was unable to get far.”
“What? She’ll tell eventually, right? Is she just nervous around you, is that it?” I was brimming with questions, and the words bubbled out of me anxiously.
“No, she cannot. I will be willing to bet that she has blocked the most important parts of her capture and has difficulty remembering it.” He noticed my face falling, and patted me gently on the shoulder. “You have to be prepared for all kinds of information, because I don’t believe that it is just the capture that is haunting her.”
I was only partially listening to him, trying to figure out what kinds of horrors she must have been through that she would actually block it.
Dr. Dillon’s voice changed abruptly. “First things first. You have a romantic interest in her, do you not?”
I could actually feel the heat radiating from my skin. “Maybe,” I said, feeling tortured.
“Hm. Hermione, I need to know some background information on Ms. Weasley.” He peered at me. “And Mr. Potter, I would advise for you not to step into that room while she is recovering. At least, when I’m not there.”
All parts of me rebelled at the thought that I couldn’t see Ginny, but he raised his hand at my yet unvoiced protests. “For her sake.”
I nodded, feeling a bit disgruntled that everyone seemed to know my weakness regarding her. I was ready to slump home and smother myself with a pillow, when Dr. Dillon turned towards me again. “And another thing. Do you know anyone who calls her ‘Ginevra’? She seems to be quite averse to anyone who calls her that, but she’s unable to tell me why.”
I thought for a while, trying to go back to our Hogwarts days, dredging up what little knowledge I knew about her circle of friends. I came up with nothing. “Sorry,” I said, shrugging. “Everyone I knew called her Ginny.”
“All right.” He paused. “But if you remember anything, make sure to tell me.”
I agreed to it, although I doubted that I would come up with anything. I dragged myself home and went to sleep.
Recovery was extremely slow, and Dr. Dillon wouldn’t allow me to go see her any day, saying that I was a hazard. I might just as well have been some sort of a waste product, because I was ordered not to go near her rooms.
I spent the following weeks glaring at love-y couples and staring longingly at Ginny’s door, as if waiting for her to burst out and say that she needed me more than anything, and that I was like her tonic and she could only get better if I was there feeding her and plumping her pillows daily.
When I said something like that to Ron, he told me he’d knock me upside the head if I said something so cheesy again.
“Well,” I said, sullenly, “I’d probably land in a bed next to hers.” I began brightening. “And then-”
Ron was kind and showed me his fist before I could let that idea progress.
I didn’t realize how serious it was until Dr. Dillon gathered us all and admitted that he hadn’t been able to get anything done.
“The thing is, I still don’t know anything about what happened, just the bare details you all have provided. I don’t know what to work with, except her triggers, and even there I do not know why she reacts as she does.”
“How about a Pensieve?” Hermione suggested. “That way she’d lose the memory and we’d be able to see what happened.”
Dr. Dillon shook his head. “Providing that she is honestly unable to remember anything, it will be useless. She needs to be the one consciously removing the memory. Which brings me to another point.” He fixed his spectacles further up his nose. “It has been more than a month, and the fact that she still doesn’t remember parts of the trauma is alarming. I have only been able to address her problems with her Mediwizard, but only barely. We need to decide on a course of action quickly.”
All of us remained silent. With the exception of Hermione, all of us couldn’t quite follow Dr. Dillon. All we knew was that Ginny was slipping away, and we seemed powerless to keep her with us.
“Maybe she does remember,” Hermione persisted. “Maybe she just doesn’t want to tell us.”
Dr. Dillon looked doubtful but he considered the possibility. “All right then. Now, I’d like to ask your permission in my next strategy. There is a new spell being developed which is similar to using her head as a Pensieve. I will be able to walk around the memory as it happens.”
“Being developed?” Charlie demanded. “How will we know that it won’t explode her head or something?”
“I will take the utmost care to make sure it doesn’t happen,” said Dr. Dillon, smothering a smile. “Do I have permission from the family? Naturally, I will ask Ms. Weasley before I continue.”
Charlie didn’t look very satisfied with the remark and was about to protest further when Arthur Weasley spoke up. “I suppose if Ginny says it’s alright, we don’t have any say in the matter.”
Dr. Dillon thanked us, but as he turned to go, Mr. Weasley laid a hand upon his arm.
“But do make sure that her head doesn’t explode,” he said anxiously.
I was worried, but for a different reason. What could have been so awful that Ginny had blocked it from her mind completely? Torture was awful, but how terrible had it been?
I didn’t sleep that night thinking about it.
The morning it was light, I dashed out the door to stay outside Ginny’s door. The healers at St. Mungo’s had learned to ignore my blatant disregard for patient visiting rules. I wasn’t ashamed to throw around my forehead and have them make an exception for the ‘Chosen One,’ if it meant that I could be by Ginny.
I found with some surprise that Dr. Dillon was already there.
The door was slightly ajar, so I could hear the voices.
“The repressed memories are in a certain part of your mind, so I won’t be mucking around in places you don’t want me in.”
There was a long pause before Ginny spoke. “All right.”
“Excellent. I’ll teach you the spell. It will only work if you cast it.”
I zoned out a little, yawning as they went over the spell and the correct way to wave the wand for it to work.
“You’ve got it,” said Dr. Dillon, sounding impressed at the speed she had mastered the spell. I swelled up with pride as if he had complimented my own skill. “Are you-”
“Wait. I want Harry-”
Even before she had expressed the entire sentence, I had barged in, nearly slamming into a little table, the only other furniture in the room besides the bed.
“Mr. Potter,” Dr. Dillon said, looking a bit exasperated.
“No,” Ginny said fiercely. She looked frail and tiny in the large bed that threatened to swallow her up. “I want Harry to see.”
Her brown eyes were large and remorseful as she fixed her gaze on me. “This way you’ll know why,” she said, and her voice had softened. “I didn’t want to tell you, but maybe it’s better that you know.”
“Know what?” I asked, looking confused.
“I’m so sorry.” Her voice had lowered to a mere whisper and I had to strain to hear her words. “I love you so much.”
Before I could register what she had said, Dr. Dillon grabbed hold of my arm as she performed the spell.
My eyes swum as if I were underwater, and I spent a few agonizing moments not knowing where I was or where I was going. The only real knowledge I had was that there was something gripping my arm harshly.
I landed somewhere cold and smelly, my knees bruising as they hit stone. I felt disoriented and jolted until I saw Dr. Dillon brushing himself off. “Where are we?” I asked out loud, peering about. It was dark and the edges of my vision felt blurry and misty.
“Inside a memory,” he said.
“Well, I don’t see her,” I said loudly, but I shut up when I heard a very familiar and very hated voice.
“So, what do we have here?” A tiny pinprick of light was coming our way, and the voice sounded disgustingly pleased. I saw a man with fair hair emerging from the staircase.
I could recognize him anywhere.
“Malfoy,” I snarled, ready to leap down and throttle him, even if he was only from her memory. The more Malfoys I got rid of from this world, the better.
He passed us, electing to head near one of the cells towards the back. There was a burly guard with him, who looked curiously akin to a mountain troll.
“It’s the Little Weasel!”
I saw her then. The light from Malfoy’s wand reached to the corners of the cell, and there, curled up in a little ball, was my Ginny.
Her lips were tinged blue from the cold, and she was trembling from head to toe. “What do you want, Malfoy?” she spat.
“What do I want indeed,” he said, and I noticed an unpleasant leer on his face as his eyes traveled down her body. I felt distinctly homicidal for a moment, only remembering myself when Dr. Dillon told me to cut it out because I was scaring him.
“Cabera,” Malfoy said suddenly, his tone changing abruptly.
The lump next to him grunted.
“Make sure she’s cleaned up.” He paused a little for effect, noting maliciously how Ginny’s eyes dilated a little with fear. “And then bring her to my rooms.”
Oh my god, he hadn’t. He hadn’t touched her. He couldn’t have. I would have known it.
The thought whirled around my head, but before I could voice my fears to the doctor, we were jolted from our feet.
The scene changed before us quickly.
We were in a beautiful room, all of the curtains and furniture working together to create a stunning aesthetic effect.
Not that I cared.
My eyes were immediately drawn to the middle of the room.
Ginny was tied to a chair with a gag around her mouth to muffle all of her protests. And Draco Malfoy was bent behind her, his hands resting innocently on her waist, his cheek pressed against hers.
“Beautiful little Ginevra,” he whispered.
I could hear him from where I was across the room.
“Didn’t I tell you that I always get what I want? And no matter how much you might run, I will always have you.”
Ginny struggled from her bonds, unable to stop the terror from entering her eyes.
“But no matter,” he said. He strode over to an elegant marble table next to the fireplace. “See this?”
I could see that it was a pensieve, and I heard Dillon muttering, “So that’s why.”
“It’s a pensieve,” said Malfoy, and in his voice I could hear a note of victory, as if this was what he was living for, what he was born to do. “And do you know why it is here?”
Ginny had stopped struggling to stare at the bowl with wide eyes.
“I’m going to take all of your precious memories and place them here. And then, I’m going to take you into all of your memories and take you there.” His voice was steady and his eyes didn’t waver from hers.
Ginny’s cheeks were extremely pale.
“Every single of your most beautiful and treasured memories will be tainted by the knowledge that I am there, in you, completing you.” His grey eyes gleamed. “And in this way, I will always be with you, even after I die.”
She let out a muffled scream of pure terror as he approached her, wand in hand. “And don’t think you won’t be able to give me the memories. There’s other ways of getting what I want…”
The scene faded away from my eyes and I felt my entire being revolting against the thought that Malfoy had … touched…
I could see myself and Ginny by the Hogwarts lake, laughing and throwing food at each other. It had also been one of my favorite scenes also.
I felt bile rise up at the back of my throat as I saw Malfoy kissing Ginny, even as she cried and begged for him to just stop.
“As I thought,” Dr. Dillon said, looking troubled. “We need to get out, or I fear we will be seeing some unpleasant things.”
Unpleasant. I let out a strangled laugh. “I didn’t know that professionals called rape ‘unpleasant’.” Hysteria was creeping up in me, and I was unable to imagine how Ginny had managed to survive through this and still remain sane.
He pulled out his wand and executed a very complicated wand movement, muttering a few words.
We were jolted out, and all I could hear was Ginny crying and sobbing.
I looked up from the floor where I had landed, and I could see Ginny’s brown eyes looking at me, so full of the sorrow that all of us had overlooked. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered.
I barely had time to run to the loos before I threw up.
By that time, I was thoroughly convinced that I wasn’t leaving Ginny. It was all my fault that this had happened to her, and it galled me to think of leaving her when she was suffering like this.
“It’s all my fault,” she said, when I went to see her the next day to tell her that I wasn’t leaving her, no matter what.
“No, it’s not,” I said hotly.
“You don’t understand,” she said, looking up at me with tears in her eyes. “He just took away all of my precious memories. I can’t think of my first meeting with you without thinking of …”
We both looked away, and I stared out the window, unwilling to admit that my eyes were welling up with tears.
“I feel dirty. I feel guilty and dirty, and I feel like not all the baths or Scourgifys will be able to make me clean again. And you don’t need that. You need someone who’s good for you, and I’ll never be good again.”
I don’t know how many hours I argued with her.
And I still couldn’t change her mind.
“And all of these memories-I can’t be rid of them, and there’s no way for me to look back without remembering… that.”
“We’ll make new memories!” I said fiercely. “And we’ll get rid of those memories. We’ll get a new pensieve!”
Too late, I remembered that it was one of her triggers and wasn’t supposed to mention it. Her breathing quickened, and her pupils dilated with fear and I sat, helpless as Dr. Dillon rushed in to handle the panic attack.
Hermione was the one who was able to rouse me out of it, patting my hand sympathetically. “She sounds just like you,” she said. “You had to push everyone away for their safety, while Ginny feels like she has to push you away to keep from tainting you.”
“I’m tainted too, then, if she wants to think about it that way. I killed people. I’ll never clean of that again.”
Hermione nodded. “She’ll get better. She’ll know that she can’t get rid of you, even if she tries. And no matter what she might say, she needs you.”
So instead of running away to Timbuktu to drown myself in my sorrows like I’d originally planned, I stayed around to help Ginny, popping in to present her with her favorite kind of chocolate, or to tell her that I’d gotten permission for her to fly, as long as I was with her.
She’s even started greeting her Mediwizard with a friendly hello.
Dr. Dillon continued to work with her, examining all of her triggers in a safe, controlled environment, teaching her healthy ways to cope with the anxiety and anger she felt.
He said that she’s been healing remarkably quickly and credits it to the fact that she’s always been surrounded by people she trusts.
But I know better.
I know it’s because she’s strong-she’s always been strong, and in this respect, she’s always been the same. She hasn’t changed, not really.
Ginny even let me kiss her yesterday.
We’re getting somewhere.
-fin
A/N: This is one of the first times I’ve tried it from Harry’s POV, and I don’t know whether I’ve horribly mangled it.
However, I’d like to credit the National Center for PTSD, for all of the information on PTSD.
This is in its unbeta-fied glory, because I was cutting close to the deadline, so if you see any grammatical or canonical mistakes, they are going to be fixed.
Thank you for reading!
Summary: Harry reflects on how Ginny is a recondite person, whilst dodging blows from Hermione for slaughtering the English language.
Rating: PG-13 for themes and such.
Genre: Drama/Angst/Humor
A/N: For aibhinn's Word of the Day challenge. I totally crammed for this. -guilty look-
I don’t open dictionaries very often.
It’s not that I don’t like them, or don’t know how to use one. It’s just that I never had a use for them. It seems that nobody really finds a need for one as long as Hermione Granger is around.
It’s as if she has psychic powers when it comes to such things. Before a question can even be formed into words, she’ll arrive at the answer and provide in the most practical manner possible.
It’s actually a bit scary.
Which Ron is, also. Scary, that is.
He’s been absolutely bonkers for her, and nearly broke some git’s arm for asking her out to some posh restaurant one weekend, whilst proclaiming that he certainly didn’t like Hermione that way.
Nobody believed him.
Except for Hermione. That was about the point when she stomped out of the room, yelling something about ‘arrogant, repulsive boys I hang around’ (which is a bit unfair, because I’m certainly not repulsive!), and how she wouldn’t be ‘reconciled’ to them anymore.
Ron realized that he’d lost her for the fifty gazillionth time and decided promptly to turn around and declare that it was all my fault for being an arrogant and repulsive boy.
“Me? Repulsive?” I gaped at him, because I had been silent during this quarrel, pretending to be highly engrossed in my Divination book.
“Yeah! You don’t even know what reconcile means!”
Ron, I decided firmly, had gone around the bend.
“What does that have to do with anything?” I retorted, madly resisting the urge to smack him upside the head and knock some sense into him. “And I do know what it means!”
I didn’t.
He didn’t notice I’d said anything.
The moment Ron left, moaning about how he’d lost his chance at his only happiness (which wasn’t true, because he drove away his chance at happiness quite often… several times a day, at least), I dove for the nearest dictionary and started searching for the word.
It took a little while for me to remember that ‘r’ came before ‘s’, but I found the word eventually.
And this was when I found the word. It was a few words underneath the one I was searching, but it seemed to work.
In innocent tiny text, the dictionary stated the following:
Rec-on-dite /’rekendait/ adj [only before noun] formal recondite information, knowledge etc is not known about or understood by many people
I don’t know how much you know about me, but I’ll be making a statement that pretty much sums up my life.
Ginny is a recondite person.
(I probably just slaughtered the English language, which will result in instant strangulation by the hand of Hermione.)
But she is. Ginny is not known about or understood by many people.
…Well, that’s a lie. She is known about. But she isn’t understood by many people.
I thought I’d known everything about her.
I’d stared at her enough to know exactly the way her eyes crinkle up at the corners when something amuses her. I’d memorized every single curve of her face and every blister on her palms from flying. I’d known how she’d hate her brothers for teasing her, but quickly flare up in defense of them the moment anyone insulted her family. I’d known what made her angry, what made her happy.
And although I hadn’t said anything about getting back together, I knew that she’d read my hidden meaning. The moment all this killing and death was over, we’d be back together.
It had been a bumpy road getting to the end, but the only way I’d been able to make it through was to think about her and how we could continue to have endless sunlit days.
So it shocked me when she told me that she couldn’t be with me. She said she needed time to get better (she’d been taken prisoner by the Death Eaters, but we’d gotten her out and made sure that the Death Eaters would rot in Azkaban until Azkaban itself rotted).
I didn’t understand, and asked her why, looking stupid with slightly wilted flowers in my hands and my stubborn hair in some semblance of a part.
“I just can’t,” she said, and her voice was pleading. “Don’t come and see me anymore.”
Too stunned to say anything clever like, ‘but I love you!’, I dashed out of the room and to my house. I spent the next day and a half analyzing everything she had said before I went back to her.
No matter how much I told myself that I was insensitive to her condition, I couldn’t help it. She couldn’t leave me like that. She at least owed me an explanation.
I had planned to say something sweet and romantic to her (something like, “Ginny, I love you, and I don’t understand why we can’t be together. Please explain it to me, so I can at least have some closure.”), but what actually ended up bursting from my mouth was something less pleasant.
“Why the hell don’t you like me anymore?”
I started a bit guiltily as I got a good look at her. Her face was extremely pale, her freckles dark against her skin, and there were dark circles under her eyes. She opened her eyes, and I finally noticed that they seemed so sad.
“Please don’t ask me,” she said in a tiny voice. “Please, Harry.”
“Oh.” I deflated quickly, suddenly forgetting why I had gone to her rooms in the first place. The only thing I could think was that I never wanted to be the one to make her sound so tired and sad. “All right then.” I shuffled out of her room.
It wasn’t until I was all the way down the hall and out the doors that I remembered why I’d barged into her room in the first place. By then, it would have been purely stupid to stomp back to her to get an answer, so I went home.
I came back the next day.
A part of me felt a twinge of remorse for bothering her so often when she probably needed rest, but I couldn’t help it. I never could help anything, when I was around her. My monster would come rearing up and make me want to behead Dean for even looking at Ginny.
She appeared to be expect me, because she gave a little half-sigh and said, “You again.”
“Yes,” I said shortly.
She stared at me blankly while I veritably drank in the sight of her as if I hadn’t seen her in years.
Moments stretched between us, and the silence became a tad awkward.
“So. Hello,” I said, shifting from one foot to another. I was determined to think out all of my words so I didn’t say something completely embarrassing. “How are you doing?”
Ginny made a noise at the back of her throat noncommittally, fiddling with the end of her the spoon on her tray.
I waited for a few moments, hoping that she’d say something so we could at least make a show of having a conversation, but she remained quiet.
“Oh, that’s good. I’m great … too…” I trailed off, realizing that she wasn’t listening to a word I said. It was probably just as good, anyway, because I was feeling stupid for having a one-sided conversation.
I suddenly noticed that her tray was still mostly untouched, although I knew for a fact that breakfast had been sent to the rooms a good half hour ago.
“Ginny, are you not eating properly?”
Her face abruptly changed, and she glanced at me guiltily. She looked as if she had been caught red-handed by her mother, throwing Dungbombs. She cleared her throat. “Of course not.”
“You’re not eating!” I flew over to her side, outraged. “How do you expect to get better when you’re not eating?” I demanded of her, almost ready to stab her fork into her sausages and shove them into her mouth.
“Well, maybe I don’t need a second Mum bugging me!” she flared suddenly, glaring at me stubbornly.
It was strange, how much I felt better. This was the Ginny I knew. There was none of the pale, withdrawn, quiet in her now. Her cheeks were bright red, and her brown eyes were flashing at me.
“I wouldn’t need to bug you, if you weren’t so stupid! No, you must like that thin, waif look-that’s why you’re starving yourself,” I taunted, even though it felt curiously like poking a rabid dog with a very short stick.
Ginny scowled at me. “I’m just not hungry,” she muttered, shoving the tray away from her.
I could almost see the change taking place, in the way that her face relaxed from anger to weariness. I almost cried out for her to stop and wait, trying to hold onto the Ginny I knew, to keep her with me for a little while.
There was a sudden noise and a startled yelp from behind me. I swiveled around to see her Mediwizard bending over the clipboard that he had dropped. “No worries,” he said cheerily, smiling as he saw me. “It just landed on my foot.”
He brushed past me to examine Ginny, scribbling importantly onto the clipboard with his black pen. “How are we feeling today, Ginevra?” he asked, without even bothering to glance up.
It was then that I noticed that she was grinding her teeth, an action I knew to happen only when she was truly agitated. Her hands were trembling, even as she gripped the bedsheets around her.
I glanced curiously at the Mediwizard, who seemed like a nice, pleasant sort of person, even though he looked as if he could be quite pompous. He had pale blonde hair and smiling blue eyes. I certainly couldn’t find anything wrong with him.
The checkup didn’t take more than a few minutes, so I stuck around, glancing aimlessly at the hideous pictures in her room, waiting for the Mediwizard to leave so I could interrogate her about her food habits, and, more importantly, what I had done to drive her away.
Her Mediwizard continued to ask her friendly questions, assessing how she was, but her answers were terse and unhelpful. He finished quickly, glanced at her breakfast meaningfully, but refrained from commenting. “You know what to do if you need me,” he said, patting the bed next to her feet.
It was impossible to miss the fact that she cringed when he came near her.
The moment he left, I sped over to her side, ready to demand explanations from her on why she acted as if her Mediwizard were the next Voldemort.
Her hands searched for mine, and I noticed that her hands were clammy, and her skin was slippery with sweat. She clasped my hand so tightly that I could hear my bones creaking in protest.
Ginny’s eyes flickered over to the door where her Mediwizard had just left, and she leaned close towards me. “I don’t trust him,” she whispered to me.
I frowned, feeling confused by what she had said. “Why not? Have you seen something suspicious?”
A strand of red hair fell from behind her ear to rest in front of her face. “I just don’t trust him. There’s just something about him… ” She looked pleadingly at me, gnawing her lower lip nervously.
“I’ll… I’ll look into his background for you.” My eyes darkened. If anyone even thought about harming Ginny, I would probably go into a homicidal rampage; I had never been very rational around her. “I’ll take care of everything. You can rest now.”
She looked a little doubtful, but she relaxed against her pillow, looking at me pensively with her brown eyes. “You will do it, right?
“Of course I will,” I said, a bit miffed that she would have even the slightest misgivings about trusting me.
“Thank you, Harry.” Ginny gave a little sigh, and then said something that made my blood run cold. “I don’t know how long I have.”
I searched all of his records. His name was Hugh Seales, and he was 34 years old. He had gone to Hogwarts, been sorted into Hufflepuff with average grades. During the war, he had remained at St. Mungo’s to work with the wounded.
There was absolutely nothing wrong with him; he had never even slightly bended a rule in any point of his life. He was extremely boring, but there was certainly nothing shady about him.
I didn’t want to think that Ginny was wrong-there was no way that she could fake being so disturbed by him. I had seen the way her whole body shook in his presence and how her eyes had filled with fear. But on the other hand, the sketchiest thing Seales had ever done was to go home at 11:30 at night.
But when I told that to Ginny, she didn’t take it very well. In fact, she didn’t take it well at all. She threw her entire lunch at me, shouting that she never wanted to see me again, ever, in her entire life, and that she’d known not to trust me, but had against her better judgment.
I ducked from a particularly lethal turkey sandwich, wondering what I had done to incite this particular attack.
I didn’t know what to do, so I did what I always do when I’m stumped by something.
I went to Hermione.
She looked a little surprised to see me, but she hugged me enthusiastically and welcomed me in.
After we were seated, she looked at me critically. Handing me a cup of tea, she said, “What’s the matter with Ginny?”
“I think she’s gone mad,” I said, putting my head in my hands in despair, not even bothering to be amazed by the fact that Hermione could figure out what was wrong by simply looking at me. “She thinks her Mediwizard is set on murdering her, even when I checked into his background and everything. I think she’d have locks and bolts on her doors if she were allowed. She’s gotten so paranoid.”
“She’s been captured in the war,” Hermione pointed out. “It’s a bit natural, isn’t it?”
“No, that’s not it!” I felt frustrated in my inability to express what really bothered me about Ginny. “She blows up at random things, and then the next moment she’ll act just… disconnected with everything around her.” I looked at Hermione, but she just motioned for me to go on, a frown marring her brow. “And she’s not interested in things anymore. She’s not eating, she has nightmares-”
Hermione abruptly stood up, grabbing her purse from a nearby table. “Come with me,” she said, and her tone brooked no argument.
While she was dragging me up the stairs of an imposing looking building, she deigned to explain a little bit. “I think it is-but I’m not sure… I’ve heard of it happening, and I’ve been stupid not to think it would happen… but I’ve got to make sure!”
“I see,” I said stupidly, but by then she had lugged me up to a door which read in neat letters Dr. Dillon - Psychologist. Before I could ask her what this was about, she had opened the door to reveal a surprised secretary.
“Hermione Granger,” she said, sounding a bit breathless from storming up the steps. “I don’t have an appointment, but Dr. Dillon knows me.” Before the secretary could answer, or even close her gaping mouth, Hermione had barged into the inner door.
I noticed a very old man with crinkly white hair and startling blue eyes, reminding me of Dumbledore. “Dr. Dillon, this is Harry Potter,” she said crisply. I didn’t even have a chance to say a bewildered hello before she had launched into exactly what I had told her.
“In conclusion, I’m led to believe she’s suffering from PTSD,” she said, matter-of-factly. “I wasn’t sure, though, which is why I came here.”
Dr. Dillon raised his eyebrows at her. “Well, this is a surprise.” He rose from his desk. “Please sit down, both of you.”
Hermione looked ready to implode with the uncertainty, but she sat down on one of the cushy sofas with me.
“Mr. Harry Potter, it’s a pleasure to meet you,” he said, coming up from behind his desk to shake my hand. “I didn’t think I’d ever get a chance to actually talk to you.”
“Doctor,” Hermione said, actually looking agonized. “Please.”
Dr. Dillon permitted himself a smile as he leaned against his desk. “I believe you’re right,” he said slowly. “Of course, I cannot make a proper assessment until I’ve seen her. But her lack of trust, her avoidance of certain reminders, or triggers, if you will, her lack of interest in life and her feeling of a foreshortened future-it points to PTSD.”
Hermione saw my absolutely confounded look. “What is it, Harry?”
I had been trying to name it myself and had only been able to come up with Polar Tasmanian Sexual Diseases and had been disturbed by it. “What is it?”
Before Dr. Dillon could say anything, Hermione had interrupted eagerly, and I couldn’t help but be reminded of our Hogwarts days. “Posttraumatic Stress Disorder. It happens when the person has been exposed to a traumatic event in which the person has witnessed or been confronted with an event that involves actual or threatened death or serious injury or a threat to the physical integrity of oneself or others.”
“What Hermione is saying,” cut in Dr. Dillon kindly, noting how my confusion had only been exacerbated by her word-for-word definition of the illness, “is that when your Ginny was captured in the war, she underwent some traumatic events, and they’re still haunting her now.”
By the time we left his office, we’d procured his promise to look at Ginny and see what could be done for her. The technical terms and words whirled around in my head, but I fiercely gripped onto the hope that in time, Ginny could make a recovery.
“He’s a family friend. He’s a wizard, but he decided to set up a separate psychology practice for Muggles and Wizards alike,” Hermione explained, shoving her keys into her front door. She noticed by dejected look, and, before I could hide it and claim that I was ‘fine,’ she had poked me in the shoulder. “What’s the matter?”
“Nothing,” I said sharply. A little too sharply.
“Right,” she said, unconvinced. “It’s about you and Ginny, isn’t it?”
I knew there was no use hiding anything from her. She could sniff out secrets as skillfully as a bloodhound. “I just don’t think… Idon’tthinkGinnylovesmeanymore,” I mumbled quickly, hoping she would leave it at that.
I could swear that the corners of her mouth twitched. “Just give it time,” she said, clicking her tongue sympathetically. “It’ll work out.”
“But she said she didn’t want to be with me!” I hissed, my face burning and wishing above anything else for a broomstick so I could throw myself off of it.
But her words encouraged me. Although I wanted to doubt, there was no way to mistake Hermione, who had never done badly on a single subject in her life.
Dr. Dillon was as good as his word. He arrived the day after to assess what was the matter. Hermione squinted at him and nodded. “It’s good that you got rid of your beard a few months ago,” she said.
“Why?” I asked, wondering what that had to do with anything.
“Dumbledore,” she said briskly, as if that explained everything.
It didn’t, and I was left in the dark as I waited outside the room with Hermione to wait for Dr. Dillon to finish talking to Ginny. As I heard a distinct lack of objects being thrown, I surmised that things were going well, and that Ginny was going to be okay afterall.
Dr. Dillon came out of the room relatively quickly, and both of us crowded to hear if PTSD-whatever it was-was the real problem.
“Definitely,” he said, placing a piece of paper in a folder. “She couldn’t tell me much about what actually happened, so I was unable to get far.”
“What? She’ll tell eventually, right? Is she just nervous around you, is that it?” I was brimming with questions, and the words bubbled out of me anxiously.
“No, she cannot. I will be willing to bet that she has blocked the most important parts of her capture and has difficulty remembering it.” He noticed my face falling, and patted me gently on the shoulder. “You have to be prepared for all kinds of information, because I don’t believe that it is just the capture that is haunting her.”
I was only partially listening to him, trying to figure out what kinds of horrors she must have been through that she would actually block it.
Dr. Dillon’s voice changed abruptly. “First things first. You have a romantic interest in her, do you not?”
I could actually feel the heat radiating from my skin. “Maybe,” I said, feeling tortured.
“Hm. Hermione, I need to know some background information on Ms. Weasley.” He peered at me. “And Mr. Potter, I would advise for you not to step into that room while she is recovering. At least, when I’m not there.”
All parts of me rebelled at the thought that I couldn’t see Ginny, but he raised his hand at my yet unvoiced protests. “For her sake.”
I nodded, feeling a bit disgruntled that everyone seemed to know my weakness regarding her. I was ready to slump home and smother myself with a pillow, when Dr. Dillon turned towards me again. “And another thing. Do you know anyone who calls her ‘Ginevra’? She seems to be quite averse to anyone who calls her that, but she’s unable to tell me why.”
I thought for a while, trying to go back to our Hogwarts days, dredging up what little knowledge I knew about her circle of friends. I came up with nothing. “Sorry,” I said, shrugging. “Everyone I knew called her Ginny.”
“All right.” He paused. “But if you remember anything, make sure to tell me.”
I agreed to it, although I doubted that I would come up with anything. I dragged myself home and went to sleep.
Recovery was extremely slow, and Dr. Dillon wouldn’t allow me to go see her any day, saying that I was a hazard. I might just as well have been some sort of a waste product, because I was ordered not to go near her rooms.
I spent the following weeks glaring at love-y couples and staring longingly at Ginny’s door, as if waiting for her to burst out and say that she needed me more than anything, and that I was like her tonic and she could only get better if I was there feeding her and plumping her pillows daily.
When I said something like that to Ron, he told me he’d knock me upside the head if I said something so cheesy again.
“Well,” I said, sullenly, “I’d probably land in a bed next to hers.” I began brightening. “And then-”
Ron was kind and showed me his fist before I could let that idea progress.
I didn’t realize how serious it was until Dr. Dillon gathered us all and admitted that he hadn’t been able to get anything done.
“The thing is, I still don’t know anything about what happened, just the bare details you all have provided. I don’t know what to work with, except her triggers, and even there I do not know why she reacts as she does.”
“How about a Pensieve?” Hermione suggested. “That way she’d lose the memory and we’d be able to see what happened.”
Dr. Dillon shook his head. “Providing that she is honestly unable to remember anything, it will be useless. She needs to be the one consciously removing the memory. Which brings me to another point.” He fixed his spectacles further up his nose. “It has been more than a month, and the fact that she still doesn’t remember parts of the trauma is alarming. I have only been able to address her problems with her Mediwizard, but only barely. We need to decide on a course of action quickly.”
All of us remained silent. With the exception of Hermione, all of us couldn’t quite follow Dr. Dillon. All we knew was that Ginny was slipping away, and we seemed powerless to keep her with us.
“Maybe she does remember,” Hermione persisted. “Maybe she just doesn’t want to tell us.”
Dr. Dillon looked doubtful but he considered the possibility. “All right then. Now, I’d like to ask your permission in my next strategy. There is a new spell being developed which is similar to using her head as a Pensieve. I will be able to walk around the memory as it happens.”
“Being developed?” Charlie demanded. “How will we know that it won’t explode her head or something?”
“I will take the utmost care to make sure it doesn’t happen,” said Dr. Dillon, smothering a smile. “Do I have permission from the family? Naturally, I will ask Ms. Weasley before I continue.”
Charlie didn’t look very satisfied with the remark and was about to protest further when Arthur Weasley spoke up. “I suppose if Ginny says it’s alright, we don’t have any say in the matter.”
Dr. Dillon thanked us, but as he turned to go, Mr. Weasley laid a hand upon his arm.
“But do make sure that her head doesn’t explode,” he said anxiously.
I was worried, but for a different reason. What could have been so awful that Ginny had blocked it from her mind completely? Torture was awful, but how terrible had it been?
I didn’t sleep that night thinking about it.
The morning it was light, I dashed out the door to stay outside Ginny’s door. The healers at St. Mungo’s had learned to ignore my blatant disregard for patient visiting rules. I wasn’t ashamed to throw around my forehead and have them make an exception for the ‘Chosen One,’ if it meant that I could be by Ginny.
I found with some surprise that Dr. Dillon was already there.
The door was slightly ajar, so I could hear the voices.
“The repressed memories are in a certain part of your mind, so I won’t be mucking around in places you don’t want me in.”
There was a long pause before Ginny spoke. “All right.”
“Excellent. I’ll teach you the spell. It will only work if you cast it.”
I zoned out a little, yawning as they went over the spell and the correct way to wave the wand for it to work.
“You’ve got it,” said Dr. Dillon, sounding impressed at the speed she had mastered the spell. I swelled up with pride as if he had complimented my own skill. “Are you-”
“Wait. I want Harry-”
Even before she had expressed the entire sentence, I had barged in, nearly slamming into a little table, the only other furniture in the room besides the bed.
“Mr. Potter,” Dr. Dillon said, looking a bit exasperated.
“No,” Ginny said fiercely. She looked frail and tiny in the large bed that threatened to swallow her up. “I want Harry to see.”
Her brown eyes were large and remorseful as she fixed her gaze on me. “This way you’ll know why,” she said, and her voice had softened. “I didn’t want to tell you, but maybe it’s better that you know.”
“Know what?” I asked, looking confused.
“I’m so sorry.” Her voice had lowered to a mere whisper and I had to strain to hear her words. “I love you so much.”
Before I could register what she had said, Dr. Dillon grabbed hold of my arm as she performed the spell.
My eyes swum as if I were underwater, and I spent a few agonizing moments not knowing where I was or where I was going. The only real knowledge I had was that there was something gripping my arm harshly.
I landed somewhere cold and smelly, my knees bruising as they hit stone. I felt disoriented and jolted until I saw Dr. Dillon brushing himself off. “Where are we?” I asked out loud, peering about. It was dark and the edges of my vision felt blurry and misty.
“Inside a memory,” he said.
“Well, I don’t see her,” I said loudly, but I shut up when I heard a very familiar and very hated voice.
“So, what do we have here?” A tiny pinprick of light was coming our way, and the voice sounded disgustingly pleased. I saw a man with fair hair emerging from the staircase.
I could recognize him anywhere.
“Malfoy,” I snarled, ready to leap down and throttle him, even if he was only from her memory. The more Malfoys I got rid of from this world, the better.
He passed us, electing to head near one of the cells towards the back. There was a burly guard with him, who looked curiously akin to a mountain troll.
“It’s the Little Weasel!”
I saw her then. The light from Malfoy’s wand reached to the corners of the cell, and there, curled up in a little ball, was my Ginny.
Her lips were tinged blue from the cold, and she was trembling from head to toe. “What do you want, Malfoy?” she spat.
“What do I want indeed,” he said, and I noticed an unpleasant leer on his face as his eyes traveled down her body. I felt distinctly homicidal for a moment, only remembering myself when Dr. Dillon told me to cut it out because I was scaring him.
“Cabera,” Malfoy said suddenly, his tone changing abruptly.
The lump next to him grunted.
“Make sure she’s cleaned up.” He paused a little for effect, noting maliciously how Ginny’s eyes dilated a little with fear. “And then bring her to my rooms.”
Oh my god, he hadn’t. He hadn’t touched her. He couldn’t have. I would have known it.
The thought whirled around my head, but before I could voice my fears to the doctor, we were jolted from our feet.
The scene changed before us quickly.
We were in a beautiful room, all of the curtains and furniture working together to create a stunning aesthetic effect.
Not that I cared.
My eyes were immediately drawn to the middle of the room.
Ginny was tied to a chair with a gag around her mouth to muffle all of her protests. And Draco Malfoy was bent behind her, his hands resting innocently on her waist, his cheek pressed against hers.
“Beautiful little Ginevra,” he whispered.
I could hear him from where I was across the room.
“Didn’t I tell you that I always get what I want? And no matter how much you might run, I will always have you.”
Ginny struggled from her bonds, unable to stop the terror from entering her eyes.
“But no matter,” he said. He strode over to an elegant marble table next to the fireplace. “See this?”
I could see that it was a pensieve, and I heard Dillon muttering, “So that’s why.”
“It’s a pensieve,” said Malfoy, and in his voice I could hear a note of victory, as if this was what he was living for, what he was born to do. “And do you know why it is here?”
Ginny had stopped struggling to stare at the bowl with wide eyes.
“I’m going to take all of your precious memories and place them here. And then, I’m going to take you into all of your memories and take you there.” His voice was steady and his eyes didn’t waver from hers.
Ginny’s cheeks were extremely pale.
“Every single of your most beautiful and treasured memories will be tainted by the knowledge that I am there, in you, completing you.” His grey eyes gleamed. “And in this way, I will always be with you, even after I die.”
She let out a muffled scream of pure terror as he approached her, wand in hand. “And don’t think you won’t be able to give me the memories. There’s other ways of getting what I want…”
The scene faded away from my eyes and I felt my entire being revolting against the thought that Malfoy had … touched…
I could see myself and Ginny by the Hogwarts lake, laughing and throwing food at each other. It had also been one of my favorite scenes also.
I felt bile rise up at the back of my throat as I saw Malfoy kissing Ginny, even as she cried and begged for him to just stop.
“As I thought,” Dr. Dillon said, looking troubled. “We need to get out, or I fear we will be seeing some unpleasant things.”
Unpleasant. I let out a strangled laugh. “I didn’t know that professionals called rape ‘unpleasant’.” Hysteria was creeping up in me, and I was unable to imagine how Ginny had managed to survive through this and still remain sane.
He pulled out his wand and executed a very complicated wand movement, muttering a few words.
We were jolted out, and all I could hear was Ginny crying and sobbing.
I looked up from the floor where I had landed, and I could see Ginny’s brown eyes looking at me, so full of the sorrow that all of us had overlooked. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered.
I barely had time to run to the loos before I threw up.
By that time, I was thoroughly convinced that I wasn’t leaving Ginny. It was all my fault that this had happened to her, and it galled me to think of leaving her when she was suffering like this.
“It’s all my fault,” she said, when I went to see her the next day to tell her that I wasn’t leaving her, no matter what.
“No, it’s not,” I said hotly.
“You don’t understand,” she said, looking up at me with tears in her eyes. “He just took away all of my precious memories. I can’t think of my first meeting with you without thinking of …”
We both looked away, and I stared out the window, unwilling to admit that my eyes were welling up with tears.
“I feel dirty. I feel guilty and dirty, and I feel like not all the baths or Scourgifys will be able to make me clean again. And you don’t need that. You need someone who’s good for you, and I’ll never be good again.”
I don’t know how many hours I argued with her.
And I still couldn’t change her mind.
“And all of these memories-I can’t be rid of them, and there’s no way for me to look back without remembering… that.”
“We’ll make new memories!” I said fiercely. “And we’ll get rid of those memories. We’ll get a new pensieve!”
Too late, I remembered that it was one of her triggers and wasn’t supposed to mention it. Her breathing quickened, and her pupils dilated with fear and I sat, helpless as Dr. Dillon rushed in to handle the panic attack.
Hermione was the one who was able to rouse me out of it, patting my hand sympathetically. “She sounds just like you,” she said. “You had to push everyone away for their safety, while Ginny feels like she has to push you away to keep from tainting you.”
“I’m tainted too, then, if she wants to think about it that way. I killed people. I’ll never clean of that again.”
Hermione nodded. “She’ll get better. She’ll know that she can’t get rid of you, even if she tries. And no matter what she might say, she needs you.”
So instead of running away to Timbuktu to drown myself in my sorrows like I’d originally planned, I stayed around to help Ginny, popping in to present her with her favorite kind of chocolate, or to tell her that I’d gotten permission for her to fly, as long as I was with her.
She’s even started greeting her Mediwizard with a friendly hello.
Dr. Dillon continued to work with her, examining all of her triggers in a safe, controlled environment, teaching her healthy ways to cope with the anxiety and anger she felt.
He said that she’s been healing remarkably quickly and credits it to the fact that she’s always been surrounded by people she trusts.
But I know better.
I know it’s because she’s strong-she’s always been strong, and in this respect, she’s always been the same. She hasn’t changed, not really.
Ginny even let me kiss her yesterday.
We’re getting somewhere.
-fin
A/N: This is one of the first times I’ve tried it from Harry’s POV, and I don’t know whether I’ve horribly mangled it.
However, I’d like to credit the National Center for PTSD, for all of the information on PTSD.
This is in its unbeta-fied glory, because I was cutting close to the deadline, so if you see any grammatical or canonical mistakes, they are going to be fixed.
Thank you for reading!