Chapter Text
Mum's voice was low but angry.
"Fifteen galleons, Arthur! We could have bought enough potions for an entire week!"
"Do you think I don't know it?!" Dad replied, just as angry as Mum. "But if we win-"
"I would understand one, two galleons tops, not fifteen given to a Niffler for a stupid lottery!"
"Better than kowtowing to your aunt for some Knuts!"
Mum snorted, and Ginny could almost see her with her arms crossed and glaring at Dad.
"Well, I guess you've given us no other choice now, Arthur Weasley, but to beg Aunt Muriel to lend us money!"
"We just have to wait until we get the subsidy."
"And in the meantime, the galleons must come out of our pockets! A visit to the Magipsychologist costs thirty-six galleons, and every month we spend twenty-two galleons in Dreamless Sleep Potion alone! What if we don't get that bloody subsidy? What if we can't prove that my baby is the victim, I won't say Death Eaters as Professor Dumbledore claims, but even of a powerful dark spell?"
Ginny heard neither of her parents talking for a while, only soft sobbing.
"Molly-"
"I can cut a lot of expenses. I can even play the House Elf for that hag of an aunt if it means I can afford all the treatment my baby needs. But please, Arthur, don't make things harder with such foolishness..."
Tucked away in her hiding place atop the staircase landing, Ginny hugged her knees against her chest and wiped her eyes with her hand.
It was her fault if Mum and Dad were arguing.
It was her fault if they had to eat beans, beans, and more beans.
It was her fault all the money Mum and Dad saved up to visit Bill or Charlie was eaten by healers and potions.
It was all her fault and her foolishness!
Why yes, Ginny Weasley, who believed she was so smart and clever, had been so stupid not to show Mum and Dad the diary right away!
She gasped, hearing the stairs creak, and rushed to her bedroom as fast and silent as a little mouse. She had hardly made it out of her light blue dressing gown with the snitches when Mum stepped into the bedroom.
"I brought your medicines, sweetheart," Mum said, placing the wooden tray on the bed.
Sleeping pill, Dreamless Sleep Potion, tablets, powders, lavender, chamomile tea... Dr Ubbly's Oblivious Unction. Mum put the pre-dosed powders in small wafers that Ginny had to keep in her mouth for a while before gulping down the herbal tea. Next came the pills, some to swallow, some to melt under the tongue, and the potions and ointment.
Ginny turned her head. She didn't want to see the scars on her arms and body. They made her feel ugly and dumb, and gullible.
"Come on, sweetie, if you wait too long to drink the potion, you'll have a hard time falling asleep afterwards," Mum said, gently rubbing the ointment in.
Ginny looked at the bottle of Dreamless Sleep Potion—twenty-two galleons that maybe Mum and Dad didn't have.
"One sip, right?"
"A nice sip, yes."
There are sips and sips, Ginevra.
Ginny held back a sob, staring without seeing the hand clutching the bottle.
Perhaps the potion would last longer if she took a small sip. Just even one week more could help Mum and Dad.
She wet her lips, only letting a tiny sip of potion trickle down her throat. She felt a little guilty, but perhaps this little was enough - Ginny had learned the hard way that sometimes less potion was better.
Mum finished rubbing the ointment and helped Ginny put her pyjama tops on. Then she adjusted her pillow, tucked her in tightly-even if it was summer, Ginny was always shivering these days—and kissed her on each cheek and forehead.
"Good night, sweet dreams, have beautiful dreams and don't have ugly ones. And always remember that I love you, Ginny. Whatever happens, whatever you do, wherever you are, always remember that I love you..."
"Goodnight, Mum."
Mum waved her wand, conjuring a goose of light: it was a bit blurry, as if Ginny saw it through frosted glass. Maybe she didn't remember well; after all, she hadn't slept with Mum's Patronus since she was five. The goose swirled around the bedroom, then laid down at Ginny's feet and tucked her head under its wing, giving off a faint reassuring glow.
* * *
Ginny stands in front of Professor Lockhart and the whole class, her hands behind her back, upright like a wand. The epitome of a perfect student.
She is there, and yet she's not.
Sit down, Ginny!
"Of course, you can send a singing letter," Professor Lockhart says with a beaming smile. The tune is the same as A Cauldron Full of Hot Strong Love, right?
Sit down and shut up, Ginny!
"No, Professor, sir. I composed the melody myself. With your permission, may I sing it so that this kind dwarf can learn it?"
You can't carry a tune in a basket, Ginny!
Professor Lockhart's smile widens, applauding and encouraging her to sing. Around her, students elbow each other, giggling and whispering. Ginny would like to hide, to run away, but her body is not hers, just as the feral smile on her childish lips is not hers.
Her body stiffens, her chest heaves. From his throat comes a voice that is and at the same time is not his.
♪♫ His eyes are as green as a fresh pickled toad ♫♪
My poem's so ugly!
♪♫ His hair is as dark as a blackboard ♫♪
Stop it!
♪♫ I wish he was mine, he's really divine, ♫♪
Everybody's laughing!
♪♫ the hero who conquered the Dark Lord ♫♪
Stop it, please!
Ginny wants to run away from the DADA classroom, from her classmates' laughs, from Professor Lockhart's disgust. But she can't because the body doesn't belong to her anymore, isn't hers anymore.
Because vines of roses, with razor-sharp thorns and big black flowers smelling like honey and pepper, enfold her, entrap her.
She tries to free herself, but the more she struggles the more the vines tighten her—the more the vines tighten her the more the thorns penetrate into her flesh—and the more the thorns penetrate into her flesh the more her body oozes blood like a rose oozes nectar for a malevolent and obscene insect dark blood that gathers in a pool at her feet blood that impregnates the hungry yellowed pages of a diary blood of slave blood of witch first blood shed not through a wound rising to her like an elegant and slender hand a hand smelling of blood and old ink and paper yellowed by time and dampness the dampness of a cave the dampness of a secret underground cell where a sorcerer reigns a sorcerer with evil stone eyes deadly yellow eyes veiled by translucent eyelids eyes of the blackish green of the potion for carnivorous snails the blackish green of rotting seaweed the blackish green of the pond in the garden of Aunt Muriel scolding her for ruining her precious Cherna roses scolding her for flushing the diary down the toilet an insinuating and insidious voice she is a naughty child and naughty children must be punished Percy doesn't care about her Fred and George don't care about her Ron doesn't care about her Harry Potter would never like a witch who acts so ungrateful with her friends and without him she would never have had the guts to send that love poem and Mum and Daddy will agree with his punishment because this is not how a proper witch should behave because it is his duty to teach her right from wrong it is his duty to guide her on the right path and he doesn't take any pleasure in seeing her flesh torn apart to see her soul and conscience torn apart but he is lying because his voice is gleeful the smile on his beautiful tumid lips is feral and she is his to command his to shape his rosebud waiting for his word to bloom and she will bloom to die and she will die for him because she is his his Source of Life his Future his Rebirth his Freedom his Glory his Revenge his Rosebud
My Rosebud
Ginevra
Ginev
Gine
Gin
“Ginny? Ginny, it's all right… I'm here and it's all right…”
She blinked, her eyelashes heavy with sleep and moist with tears.
"M-Mum?"
"It was just a bad dream, sweetheart," Mum replied, gently stroking her head, her worried face lit by the wand's glow.
But had it only been a bad dream? Or did it really happen? Ginny was afraid to lift the covers, to find her pyjamas caked with blood and her arms shredded.
Mum sighed, tightening her lips a little.
"I don't understand; you took the potion... it's too early to up the dosage..."
A good girl always obeys, Ginevra
A good girl always does as she is told.
Her throat ached as she murmured so softly that she hardly could hear herself, giving an embarrassed glance to Mum. She felt really bad about what she had done.
"'What's up, sweetheart?" Mum asked soothingly.
"I-I heard you and Dad fighting because the potions and medicines are expensive, and there isn't enough money and... and... I thought that... if I took less, then it would last longer..." Ginny confessed, bursting out in tears. " I'm sorry, Mum, I just wanted to help a little bit..."
Mum hugged her tightly, stroking her hair.
"That's very... sweet of you, but you don't have to worry about these things," she murmured softly in her ear. "Even if the potions cost two, three, ten times more, it doesn't matter: what matters is that you... get better, sweetheart."
They stayed like that for a while, listening to their hearts beating and the sounds of the night-the crickets hidden in the high grass, the rustle of leaves in the breeze, an owl screeching in the woods nearby. Then Mum kissed her hair and stroked her cheeks.
"Try to sleep now."
Ginny nodded, but when Mum got up to go to her bedroom she reached for her nightgown.
"What is it, sweetheart?"
She tightened her lips. She was almost twelve, no longer a child.
{Madam Pomfrey told me that I am not a child anymore}
{"She is not even twelve years old yet, she is a child." His voice is a distant echo dripping with disgust}.
She was still a little girl, no matter what Madam Pomfrey said.
She wanted to be a little girl again.
The little girl she used to be, who didn't know how wicked the world could be and that someone could pretend to be her friend only to use her.
"C-could you stay with me? Please?" asked Ginny in a tiny little voice.
Mum didn't scold her. She didn't tell her that she wasn't five anymore-that she was a big girl now.
"Of course, sweetheart."
The bed was barely big enough for the two of them, and they'd most likely sleep uncomfortably. But Mum put an arm around Ginny's shoulders and pressed her forehead against hers, whispering like when she was a baby.
Mil harddach wyt na'r rhosyn gwyn
Na'r rhosyn coch ar ael y bryn,
Na'r alarch balch sy'n nofio'r llyn,
Fy maban bach.
Mil gwell gen i nag aur y byd,
Yw gweld dy wenau yn dy grud,
Fy ffortiwn wyt, a gwyn fy myd,
Fy maban bach.
Ginny yawned, snuggling against Mum a little more, and fell asleep, lulled by the reassuring chant and smell of soap.