Minds Escapisms I

Dark Illusion

Rating: PG13
Genres: Angst, Drama
Relationships: Draco & Ginny
Book: Draco & Ginny, Books 1 - 5
Published: 14/09/2004
Last Updated: 14/09/2004
Status: completed

Ginny hoped that someday they would take her for what she really was, a murderer and saviour, given the mission to save the man she loved. She was too obsessed to see and too in love to try or maybe love shouldn't have taken that long. Disturbing contents.

Chapters

1. Crucify my love...

1. Crucify my love...

Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or any of the characters you recognise in this fictional story belonging to Joanne Kathleen Rowling, Warner Bros., and whoever else…Bloomsbury and Scholastic. I do not own the song Crucify My Love either, X Japan do. I own the disturbing plot bunny, in all its glory. *coughs violently*

Rating: High PG-13
Author's Note: This isn’t a songfic. Ginny is a bit strange in this story. Here’s a new one for you all, Wannabe-Martyr!Ginny. There is a quite a strong chance of a sequel, in which we follow Ginny’s journey. It will be most likely just right after she faces the consequences.

Dedication: This goes to a person that shall remain to be called the ‘new dove era’ boy. I don’t know why you did it; you’ve hurt so many people and all I am to suppose is that you wanted to leave with a ‘bang’. You were too sick to see… so R.I.P.

Minds Escapisms I

Crucify my love

If my love is blind

Crucify my love

If it sets me free

Never know, never trust

That love should see a colour

Crucify my love

If it should be that way

Till the loneliness shadows the sky

I'll be sailing down and I will know

I know I can clear clouds away

Oh is it a crime to love…

๑๑๑

What truth is there in the saying that a man cannot change his stars?

Realise that you won’t ever be ahead, nor behind. Here is now, this is you, right now. Always changing, never staying the same, you have always kept up - it just might be that you’re slightly out of focus.

Your future lies in the hands of the stars and some of you might determine to never rest without that control over your life… but what’s the point? If you can make decisions in your life to give the effect you want it to then so can others and unless you have mind control (which you don’t) you can’t fit in with the ‘unexpected’.

Yet with predestination and the like we see tea cups, crystal balls, sweating palms, riddled omens and prophecies. We interpret the signs. We see truth, the future and we look back on the past and use our wisdom from the present to make these decisions in life that are right or wrong.

Our morals and principles lead the way to make this decision.

We can give into temptation and lose ourselves in mindless self indulgence or realise possible consequences and face up to our responsibilities, making sacrifices by thinking of others before ourselves. It seems that all things must go either way, but what we can wonder is… can we satisfy both?

To do what is right for everyone else and pleasing to ourselves?

So ask yourself - does such perfection even exist?

It does.

You’ll know it well...

๑๑๑

He had never said a nice word to her, in all her years. Then again, Ginny never said anything nice either; but really, that wasn’t so much the point at hand. He had probably never even given her a second thought, but she had thought of him. She had pondered him many times, for hours upon end. Ginny had fought with herself and her new found obsession she had found in him for so long it ached.

She would have hardly called it fair. But then she noted to truth in the saying that all was fair in love and war…

Tragically, it was totally applicable to her situation. She had once determined herself to stop thinking as if she could have done anything to stop it, the obsession that is. Until she realised that there was a price to everything, even for a mere thought or indulgent fantasy. She had suffered much for her cause, so then she promised herself freedom. The freedom from the state of mind she had found herself in because a she had longed for it and perhaps needed it, to just breathe the simple air.

It was over time that she got to see how people changed, from the things they had said and the things they hadn’t. Everything, it seemed in life, was interrelated with each other. She knew that well, and lived by the relation.

It was just that people didn’t realise that time is really ticking, each second wasted stressing with bated breathe was lost forever. Time wasn’t (and still isn’t) something that would ever wait for anyone else’s convenience. Some things just didn’t work that way, whether or not you understood it as well as she did.

And it wasn’t safe to depend on it otherwise.

๑๑๑

Ginny gripped her stomach firmly, as if willing it to settle down. She pushed herself from the toilet bowl before staggering her way toward the basins. After a short while, she took to her feet and started into the hall ways.

As she passed the door leading to Hogwarts grounds, her breath quivered. She hadn’t bothered to cling on to her cloak tighter, because she knew there was no wind. Her eyes glazed over at the glimpse of bright green and day behind the massive doors, the skies seemed terribly clear.

As she managed to tear her eyes away she continued to run up to her room in Gryffindor tower; once there, she waited silently on her bed.

Someone one would find him soon, she told herself.

After a few minutes in silence, Ginny finally got up from her bed. She quietly began to clean up her area of the dorm, from the mess under her bed to piling all her dirty clothes on top.

She also dragged her rusty trunk out and started to pack her thing into it, even though she knew it would not come with her when she would leave. She placed her clothes carefully and neatly, just the way she knew he always had his. Their trunks would have seemed identical if it hadn’t been for her skirts and house colours.

She grasped the small wooden photo frames from her bedside and lowered them gently beside her socks and scarves, noting that now their trunks were totally different. When she was done she started to do make her four poster bed, just the way she had imagined his would have been done when he was home.

Once her area was perfectly spotless, she breathed out a sigh of content. She would be prepared.

It had surprised her when it was he who had came to her in the very end. She was at the edge of the cliff near the greenhouses and she had thought that almost everyone would still be inside. She had skipped dinner to complete the next phase of her plan…

Her legs had been hanging over the edge of the cliff, one rolled-up sleeved arm reached into the potato sack she had nicked from Hagrid last week.

She closed her eyes as her gripped tightened and another second later the wand was broken in two. When she opened her eyes she had squinted at the wand last sparks, and then in a swift movement the wand pieces had fallen into the icy lake below.

The wind bit at her cheeks and she lacked any feeling in her toes, but she persisted until the small sack was empty. She tossed it into the water too.

“I must say, even I find this surprising.” a familiar drawl resounded in her ears, from only metres behind her.

Her hand froze in mid air. Had he just seen her-

“I had expected the wand thief to be someone with a bit of cunning, like a Slytherin. Not a stupid snivelling Potter-praiser Weasley.” She heard him spit out nastily. “I find it almost as shocking as that night a couple of months ago-”

She closed her eyes. He had found her out, oh Merlin!

This was perfect…

She stood up slowly, and turned around his face him. Draco Malfoy, the boy who hated her family; her friends; her beliefs and just about everything about her. She noticed vaguely that his Slytherin robes were actually his exact size.

That fact made her small hatred grow even more. He had all the riches in the world; he had all he had ever wanted in his life. How could a boy grow up with so much yet remain so empty. She knew the answer to that too well, because she had slaved over it.

She looked at him thoughtfully for a second and saw him smirk, “I’ll give you a few minutes before I report you… so you can scamp off and try to weasel out of punishment like your idiot brother and Potter do every time they break the rules. Maybe you’ve picked up some tricks of the trade from them, sucking up to Dumbledore…”

She regarded his comment with little reaction, not really paying attention to his cold words toward her but more toward the fact that this had to be the most he had ever spoken to her.

She smiled softly, she knew everything there was to know about Draco Malfoy… everything but what went on inside of him. It wasn’t hard for her to find out his habits but in all his precise routine, he never conveyed much about what affected him inside at all. She knew his pet peeves, eating habits and even knew what his room looked like but not even his greatest fear. She didn’t even scratch the surface of that soul behind the bratty exterior.

It scared the living hell out of her when she realised just how desperately she wanted to find out. It became some kind of raging passion, and it hurt her. All she wanted to do was get rid of it, get rid of her desires about him. She had worked on it for months, trying to distract herself from him in anyway possible. But she found that she could never tear her eyes away.

She barely realised his smirk turn into a disgusted sneer, he had thought she was smiling at him! Perhaps she had been.

“Turned a bit awry have we Weasley? Finally gone off with the equestrian pixies? First you break all the rules, stealing people’s wands and throwing them off a cliff now you’re smiling at nothing.”

Her smile faltered for a brief moment before lighting up again, he couldn’t have possibly thought of him as nothing.

“You should be running to your stupid brother trying to salvage all the favours you can get by being so close yet so far from your precious Potter!”

Her smile if anything grew, he thought that his words would affect her. But it wasn’t his words, it was his voice but he couldn’t have known that. He really did know nothing about her, besides the fact that she was a Weasley and (former) fancier of Harry Potter. He had never made the effort, yet she had. That made her mad. But her smile never faltered.

Ginny simply looked at him with wild eyes, lust not meeting them just right. As her eyes trailed along his body, she had remembered to time she had longed to find out just what his touch would be like on her skin. It would be warm and needy, she had thought to herself; even the idea of it gave her tingles, like she had forgotten something. Suppressed thoughts came bursting through her mind like sharp knives, giving her an incredible headache.

She had wanted him and she wanted to know him. Even though she knew she shouldn’t, even though she knew she couldn’t.

She had not bothered to realise just how unfortunate he was to be a Malfoy, she remembered the time when she wished that she could have the privilege of a lux lifestyle just like his. When she had bothered, she wished she hadn’t. She knew why he was so empty, he could have had anything in the materialistic world but there was one thing he couldn’t buy, a choice. Sure, he was rich beyond her wildest dreams but he had been born and bred in soiled wealth, to be prejudice and follow his father’s footsteps in the Malfoy prestige. And he could not be changed, he would not.

She had noticed that he had been out of sorts lately; his habits were still regular but not precise. That made her think; she knew he was up to something.

There could have been mounds of explanation for it; grief for his father in prison would not to too far off.

It didn’t matter whether his father was a Death Eater, any common wizard barely realised that there was more to the prison of Azkaban than Dementors. Dementors didn’t affect animals or half breeds, the Ministry of Magic had more to guard prisoners than dark entities of depression. Lucius would be in Azkaban for a long time.

Ginny had vaguely remembered eavesdropping in her second year, remembering what he had said to Harry about revenge. The conversation has branded itself into her mind, Draco was sure to be dealing with the Dark Lord all ready, brewing something to destroy Harry. Harry had after all landed his father in Azkaban.

It made her so angry, the mere thought of it. How dare he even try to hurt Harry in anyway, she owed her life to that boy…

“Then let it be done with.” She said quietly; she looked him in the eye. “You won’t ever know, but it’s difficult to handle something when you don’t even know of it, or even that it’s there.”

“What in Merlin’s name are you on about, Weasley?” she heard him say nastily in the distance.

She was talking about her heart, of course. Although she had spoken to him in riddles, she had meant every word. He hadn’t known it was there and he hadn’t tried, he couldn’t have. Perhaps that was the reason her heart was so easily broken. They hadn’t known or tried and maybe it was just impossible.

Draco had stolen it from Harry right under her nose. It had been his for such an intense amount of time that it had become routine torture for Ginny. Her heart was the most precious thing she could ever give a person; that was what her mother had told her. Ginny had known it was true. But for the second time, it was left ignored.

She had thought that her heart would rot and start to collect dust, but some gut feeling told her that it was just going to explode into a million pieces. Her heart had only been twice ignored and once deceived, but that was already three times too many that her heart had been abused.

“Rack off Weasley, your soiling the scenery!”

She stared blankly at him, and then she blinked. She couldn’t help it, the dying sun was glaring at her in the distance and when her eyes closed for that moment she wanted to scream in a bloody rage. Why blink and waste another moment not looking at him?

She had taken in his form long ago, taken in all the details of aristocratic face and features, everything. But it wasn’t nearly enough… and she knew that what she wanted would never be granted to her, because that was the way it had to be.

It had to be that way.

She couldn’t just love him. She couldn’t even call it that, but she would. It felt like pain and pleasure so the word ‘love’ just wasn’t enough yet the word ‘hate’ would not have been suffice. It had grown into a monster inside of her that tore at her, bleeding her dry. It wasn’t something she needed.

“Weasley?”

Her wand was at his heart only moments later, her arm was steady her eyes trained upon his sleepy pools of grey. This was it.

She gripped her stomach with one hand as it churned underneath her fingertips but she willed herself to keep it all in. She barely noticed his arm lift to reach her…

She hated him. She hated him. She hated him!

She loved him so much it hurt all she wanted to do was hurt. Hurt him so badly for making her feel the way she did. Why did it have to be that way?

She had cared. How could he have ignored her so?

“Avada Kedavra!”

She watched his legs collapse beneath him, his soft grey eyes had widened in shock before the bright green light had blinded her. She heard him stumble to the ground lifelessly as she shut her eyes from the blazing light. When she tried to open her eyes they were stinging from all the smoke, she aimlessly waved her arms about her clearing the air until she could see him again.

Her ears were ringing but she could have swore she could hear the crunching grass beneath her polished shoes, she bent down and hovered a small hand over his still body.

She inhaled the clearing smoke sharply, trying to confirm that this vision of his body was true.

Sprawled along the blackened and smoking grass around his body, Draco Malfoy lay with his softened grey eyes glazed over and unmoving.

She peered into his glacial eyes and knew that there would not be a single moment for the rest of her life that she would not find it within her heart to mourn for him. She would love that boy even more so than how she had over the times when he was alive, but this time with a vengeance…

The broken wands had given her splinters. She had started taking the students wands the week before; she had pretended that she had been the seventh victim of the wand thief. She knew they thought it was probably one of the Slytherins; that was what Harry had said to Hermione the other night.

All it would end up showing was that she had tried to get away with it – her stealing and breaking the wands would prove that the murder had been premeditated.

Draco Malfoy’s escape from life itself was nothing but planned and well thought out; Ginny had known what was best. She had often thought of those ideas and only one thing was for certain amongst it all – she would not try to get away with his murder.

Perhaps she would just become mute. Neither confessing nor denying

She wanted to rot in a cell, waiting. She had thought that it would be the thing that would finally give her some peace. If she was confined, she would mourn with or without her sanity.

When almost everything was packed she changed into a new set of clean robes and took out the extra woolly scarf her mother had sent her and wrapped it around her neck.

She always felt comfort in feeling warm, being warm felt safe.

She leant against the window, numbing her forehead against the cold glass.

Any time now…

She looked back toward her packed belongings, she hoped that after she would taken away, that her belongings would be burned or given away to the needy. All of her things she would no longer need.

It had seemed like an age for her, staring back into her room; mesmerised by the warmness the sight brought to her. The memories she had here at Hogwarts, the life she would leave tonight.

She realised that the chances of Draco already being found were growing every second. She decided she could no longer wait.

If she went down into the hallways, she knew they would be almost mostly empty; unless everyone had finished dinner already. She checked her watch; dinner would just be finishing soon.

Ginny had to assume that someone had found Draco’s body already; she started down the stairs with one last glance at the room she had spent the best years of her life in.

When she was in the hallway, there were some students around. She made her way around each floor, taking in the whole castle. Then she ventured out into the courtyard.

It was chilly but it suited her mood and she was glad she was wearing her woolly scarf. She sat on the edge of the large fountain, facing the large pendulum that stood grandly swinging from east to west. She could hear the soft tinkling of water from the fountain behind her and couldn’t even begin to get any clear thoughts into her head; she was just waiting for something to happen.

Her gaze travelled up to the darkening skies, the stars shone down at her dutifully. She recognised Mars and agreed with the sight before her. There would be a war, but she would not be able to fight it. Maybe someone would fight for her?

As a particularly bright star twinkled at her she realised that she had never noticed it before. Maybe it was because it was a spectacularly clear night. But then her mind tried to tell her that she had just changed her own stars.

Eventually, she would most likely find herself willing enough to believe in that. Just because she knew that everyone had to have something to believe in.

“Miss Weasley.” a voice came from behind her.

She slowly turned around, tearing her eyes away from the new bright star and her breath caught up in her throat. She could feel her spine tingle and her heart beat quicken. Until she faced the voice, images of a dead Draco flashed in her mind.

The Headmaster looked down at his student with saddened eyes.

“Yes, Professor?” her voice her stable and collected, so unlike what she had felt inside.

She shivered slightly as the wind in the courtyard blew at them, when she looked into Dumbledore’s eyes she knew right away.

He knew what she had done.

“Would you kindly follow me, Miss Weasley?”

She found herself nodding at the aging professor; her eyes told him what he had expected. She would not fight it.

If anything, it saddened the old professor even more. Anyone who had known her well enough would have loved nothing else but hear her deny it, even it did nothing much to change how much they could fathom her doings.

She followed him silently, only a few paces behind. She took in the hallways, classrooms and the people that passed them looking curiously at her savouring every moment she was still breathing and seeing everything in front of her.

She knew what would happen next. Her family would firstly and foremost argue that she had been possessed, even if they knew deep down inside that she hadn’t been. Then she would be tried as an adult, for the severity of her crime. She would be put away in Azkaban for some time if not the rest of her life. But with her family’s connections, she knew she would not be given the Dementor’s kiss.

She would accept all she would get, she knew she deserved it. But she didn’t expect what happened next.

“Ginny!”

She stopped at the voice that called her, she noticed that Professor Dumbledore that also stopped. She looked toward the voice- it was Harry.

Harry had been panting, “You’re safe!”

She frowned.

“You’ll never believe it! Malfoy’s dead!” Harry’s eyes were wide as saucers. “Parkinson was screaming into the Great Hall! Look, you better go to the common room; it might not be safe here.”

She looked toward professor Dumbledore’s direction; he was looking at them in silence.

Harry followed her gaze and he looked confused, “What’s happening Ginny, are you-”

“I’ve got to go Harry, I’m sorry.” She told him quietly.

If anything, Harry’s bewilderment grew, “I don’t understand.”

But there was such an innocent misunderstanding look that was in his eyes that Ginny knew Draco had never been able to possess, and that look alone made her twice as depressed. She knew both her family and Harry could deny themselves of basic logic when it came down to little Ginny and she hated it.

Then she did something she had never done, or had ever thought to; she hugged him. As she hugged his thin warm body to her cold robes tightly, she felt his tense up immediately and rose to her toes to whisper something in his ear as soft as she could, “I’m sorry Draco…”

He pulled her away quickly, “What?” he couldn’t have heard her last mumble right.

Ginny seemed shocked that she had said that too, she had meant to apologize to Harry, not Draco…

Harry trained his eyes between Dumbledore and Ginny suspiciously, “Ginny, this doesn’t have anything to do with-”

She felt stricken for a moment, “I’ve to go…”

“But-”

Harry looked into her eyes meaningfully, he meant for her to know that he was to be just like her family. Had the person who had met her at that moment not been Harry but a member of her real family, she would have said the same thing. He didn’t understand that it didn’t matter to her any more; to her, he was her brother already.

She wanted to tell him that. She wanted to tell him he was her brother to her anyway and would have been from the start if she had only seen through her infernal juvenile infatuation and the dreams she knew her family would have felt safe with.

She wanted to tell him that it was she who had killed Draco Malfoy earlier today and she wanted to tell him that she had done it for him! Her brother! Her family! For the good of the light side! Draco was evil and she had vanquished him in a crusade against the dark side, she wanted to tell him that and more. Even though it wasn’t true, she wanted to say it because that would have been plausible compared to the real reason.

The real reason that she would take to her bittered grave because she knew they would not even begin to understand.

Ginny wanted to tell him all those things but she knew she wouldn’t, that she couldn’t. She would not put it all on him. What she was about to say was enough, for now…

She had hardly believed that she had come this far, to have murdered Draco and to preparing to face the consequences. It was something she wanted, the punishment. And she would be damned if her punishment would be taken away from her unjustly. In order for what she was preparing for she would have to hurt those she cared for.

She would have to reject them, outright. She would accomplish what she knew they would fight against; she would relinquish her family of all their responsibility to her.

She peeled his arms off of her shoulders gently.

“I’m so sorry Harry…” She said softly, looking back to see Dumbledore still waiting patiently for her. But she realised that he was almost well out of their sight.

She supposed the professor thought she wouldn’t hurt Harry, little did her Headmaster know that she already had or was about to. It was terribly selfish of her but by this point, she would say it anyway.

Just before she took off after Dumbledore, she looked at Harry for the last time and knew that this would be the last he would see her as innocent Ginny, as a victim of evil Ginny, as the Ginny he knew for so many years.

She became mesmerized by his concern ridden face, his emerald eyes, his scar she had learned to slowly despise and his unruly raven hair. All the features of the boy she used to pine for, back in the day when what she knew what was safe was what she wanted. She made the moment last before telling him her last words she would ever want to say to him.

She had meant to say it softly and collectedly, but what came out was a desperate choke. She knew how much it hurt. It hurt her at that very moment.

But she had known what to expect, even if they didn’t.

“I can’t be saved this time.” With that, she broke free.

๑๑๑

She had sacrificed so much for her cause; she had hurt and would continue to for the rest of her life. Given the chance, she would do it a hundred times over if it was needed. In time she knew she would one day meet her love, perhaps a long time after her sacrifice. She had given up her life for it, because she knew she had to and her heart held nothing of regret.

Yet she still had hope…

She hoped that someday, they would understand her and take her for what she really was; a murderer and saviour, given the purpose and task of fighting against the dark side but also the mission to save the man she loved. She hoped that her family would realise just how much she had helped her cause and that they would be lead to believe that she had done it for them. She hoped that they would not hate her for what she did. She hoped that all around her would know and recognise what she had done, not so much out of spite but out of love and sincerity, justice and truth…

-TBC-