Ties in the Soul

***


Chapter Two

Each dab of cover-up blotted out more of her freckled skin, smothering over the evidence of countless broken nights. It was necessary because tonight, Ginny had a responsibility. She was to be beautiful, to play the trophy on Harry’s arm: a symbol of Wizarding triumph.

A mauve dress cut tastefully across her cleavage. Her hair was up. A fake, vacant smile already prepared.

‘You look gorgeous,’ said Hermione, beside her.

As always, Hermione looked simply stunning. Whereas Ginny felt like a little girl wearing her mum’s dress and smearing stolen lipstick artlessly around her lips, Hermione carried her midnight-blue ensemble off as if each seam were part of a pattern she had built meticulously, as if the silk and satin were just extensions of her natural confidence and unconscious grace.

‘Thanks,’ said Ginny.

‘But you seem… tense.’

Her body stiffened. ‘Harry’s spoken to you?’

‘And Ron.’

‘Ron’s noticed?’ Ginny asked, mildly surprised. ‘Damn, things must be getting bad.’

Hermione perched against the edge of the dressing table. ‘Talk to me.’

‘What? Just like that? Pour my heart out at a moment’s notice?’

The older girl winced. ‘I’ve been a bad friend, I know. I haven’t given you any time –’

‘Oh, Hermione, it isn’t like that,’ Ginny interrupted. ‘It isn’t about you. You’ve been rebuilding the country virtually singlehandedly. How could I blame you for being busy? No, it’s me. I’m all knotted up.’

‘About what?’

‘Look… it’s incredibly humiliating. I don’t think I want to –’

‘So it’s about sex?’

Ginny sighed. ‘Sort of. Harry’s stopped giving me what I want and it’s left me very frustrated.’

Hermione laced her fingers together. ‘Why did he do that?’

‘Merlin knows.’

‘There’s more, isn’t there.’

She glared across at Hermione. What was she supposed to say? That she was fighting an animalistic need to be fucked by Lord Voldemort?

‘I’ve been having… desires. They’re a bit self-destructive.’

‘Sexual?’ Hermione asked with a raised eyebrow.

Looking over Hermione’s shoulder, Ginny nodded.

‘Well, that’s not altogether surprising,’ Hermione replied slowly. ‘And it’s certainly not unnatural.’

‘It’s not?’

‘We’ve all been through hell and back, had our lives ripped through by the darkness of others. It’s not surprising if that breeds a little bit of deviance.’

She blinked. ‘You’re saying we’re tainted?’

‘Look, I’ve been tortured. I know what that is. And a little bit of spanking or the odd Incarcerous curse or whatever else you’re fantasising about is nothing of the same if it’s between consenting adults.’

When Ginny made no response, Hermione continued. ‘It might even help – be a therapy for you. You’ve suffered as much as anyone. I’m sure the Carrows singled you out and then there’s the Chamber. If it gives you a way to work through that, to transform pain into something sexual and fun, then where’s the harm?’

Poor Hermione thought this was something cute and kinky. Yet Ginny knew that a few slaps on the arse wouldn’t give her what she needed. Ginny was infected with the darkness: it ate through her. Ever since the battle, ever since Fred’s death and that sight of Voldemort, she’d known it.

But how could she explain that to someone good and pure? How could anyone with bravery and decency and kindness ever come to understand it?

They couldn’t, so Ginny forced herself to smile weakly. ‘Thanks, Hermione. I needed to hear that.’

Hermioned beamed back. ‘Now go to that party, wow Harry and don’t take no for an answer when you get back.’


***


Harry had been given the Order of Merlin, First Class, on the very evening of Voldemort’s defeat. How there was any government to give it to him was something of a moot point. Hermione and Ron’s awards had followed the next day, but after that, as a proper provisional body formed, there had been something of a slowing down in the procession of shiny medals.

It was felt that each hero should be savoured and tonight it was the turn of Neville Longbottom, leader of the DA in Harry’s absence and destroyer of Voldemort’s last remaining Horcrux. A ceremonial chamber of the Ministry of Magic had been put aside and important personages, plus a worryingly high amount of press, would all be in attendance.

Harry detested it.

The early gatherers were mingling around the drinks table, chatting polite nonsense at each other, while Harry stood off to one side, knowing he would have only seconds before someone noticed him.

‘Mr Potter!’

A bespectacled reporter hurried over. The party hadn’t really started, most of the guests still yet to arrive. It made sense to get this out of the way now.

‘Barmius, isn’t it?’ he said, trying to smile.

‘Yes, sir. I was wondering if you could give me a statement about the event tonight.’

‘Uhm… of course,’ Harry began. ‘Well, it’s a great opportunity to celebrate a pretty… uhm… fantastic person. Neville sums up what allowed us to triumph. His courage has always been an example to me, because he’s never had, you know, the recognition that I’ve sometimes got. But he just does the right thing anyway, which is pretty… uhm… fantastic.’

What was he even saying? Harry wished his mind wouldn’t repeat back his own words so he ended up having to listen to himself. He just needed to finish this and get it over with.

‘So it’s hard to think of someone more deserving of this great honour. I, uhm, hope that everyone can take pride in Neville, and his award, as it highlights the best qualities we have, as a whole in… you know, society.’

A simpering voice spoke up from behind him. ‘So what you’re saying, Harry, is that Longbottom is actually a better role model for society than you, because you only do it for the recognition?’

Harry turned. Rita Skeeter stood behind him, peering at him between curls of dyed blonde hair and with her quick quotes quill hovering over a pad in her hand.

‘I am not answering your questions, now or ever,’ he said and turned back to Barmius. ‘Will that do?’

‘Perfect, Mr Potter. Thank you kindly.’

As Harry walked away, he was just in time to see Hermione and Ginny being announced into the hall. Relieved to see them, he hurried over.

The sleek lines of Ginny’s dress dragged his eye immediately. He had been desperately trying to curb his appetite for her, but every step she took emphasised her taut sexuality. A slit down one side of the dress offered glimpses of toned calves half-hidden beneath her silk tights – conjuring up fleeting images of the rest of her strong, yielding body.

‘Try not to gawk, Harry,’ said Hermione.

Harry forced a laugh.

‘Hi,’ said Ginny. While her posture was confident, her eyes looked deadened.

‘Come on,’ Hermione whispered, ‘let’s find Ron and pretend to have some fun.’

The show followed. It was something of a mockery, person after person forced to articulate their innermost emotions to the hungry horde: Neville Longbottom stuttering through a heartfelt dedication to lost members of the DA, Kingsley Shacklebolt eulogising the heroism he’d seen against Voldemort, Minerva McGonagall praising Neville’s Gryffindor qualities with a ferocity that trampled eloquence…

Yet it meant something. It had to. Harry’s mind struggled to take in the sheer scale of the suffering that Tom Riddle had caused. If some awkward speeches made a difference to Riddle’s victims, then so be it. If people needed to be shown the courage of people like Neville, so that they could echo it in their own ordinary, but up-hill struggle to move on from grief, then he and Neville and everyone else would just have to live with this puppet theatre.

An hour later, Harry found himself swapping inane pleasantries with the ambassador from Bulgaria.

‘You have many fans in my home country, Potter.’

‘Uhm… I’m flattered…’

The ambassador had an incredibly bristly moustache that Harry found himself rather fixated with. His attention fluctuated momentarily when the man’s equally bristly eyebrows waggled.

‘Especially among the young ladies. They are very much enamoured with you.’

Acting on instinct, Harry sought out Ginny’s purple-coloured dress. As it happened, she was only a handful of feet away, with her back turned. Definitely in ear shot.

‘That’s very, uhm, flattering.’

‘You know, young man, I was quite a go-getter in my early teens as well. I did what you should do. I, what’s the expression, sampled the field. Best years of my life by far.’

Harry distantly wondered how any young Bulgarian girls had managed to breach the defences of his facial hair.

‘Uhm, that’s very interesting, sir.’

Ginny glanced over her shoulder and for just an instant their eyes locked. She had been listening and was battling back against a giggle. In that moment, Harry felt the weight of everything that had been lost between them. The simple ability to laugh, to connect as friends as well as lovers.

‘Excuse me, Ambassador,’ said Harry, nodding a quick farewell and not caring if he was being impolite.

He stepped toward Ginny and leant down to whisper in her ear.

‘We need to talk.’


***


It was so Harry – trapped by his own nobility, with no defences except his deadpan tone. She couldn’t help but glance at the look on his face, and couldn’t help but giggle at it.

Merlin, but she loved that boy.

And then he grabbed her and he was leading her into a small meeting room, ignoring anyone who tried to cut him off.

A wave of his wand locked the door. They were alone except for a round, wooden table and several plump chairs. The whole thing left Ginny vaguely turned on. Had he finally cracked? Was he going to bend her over the oaken table, hike up her dress, pull her knickers to the side and –

‘What did you want to talk about, Harry?’ she asked as innocently as she could.

Despite the tension and the doubt, and the whole horrible fixation with Tom, when she made love to Harry it all got covered over.

And she could really do with some covering over right now.

‘I miss you,’ said Harry.

She gazed at his green eyes, but said nothing.

‘I’ve behaved poorly,’ he continued. ‘I know I have, but I want to make it up to you.’

A sickly feeling began to grow in Ginny’s stomach. ‘What do you mean? Poorly?’

Harry sighed heavily. ‘I took advantage of you, in the first few weeks, after Voldemort died. I used you inappropriately, and I know that this tension between us at the moment, is because of how I behaved.’

‘You know this, do you?’

He missed the warning in her tone. ‘I have no excuses, except… you are so beautiful and… in any case, I’m going to work on controlling myself and –’

It all peaked: all the fury and the repression and the desperate battle to maintain decorum against the whirlwind inside. ‘You patronising little prick,’ she screamed. ‘How dare you!’

Harry blinked. ‘What?’

‘Do you think I’m some porcelain princess? That you control what I do and do not do with my own body?’

‘That’s not what I –’

‘Shut up, Harry, and listen. Maybe I can hammer this through your thick, bloody-minded little skull. I am talented and skilled and I can think with my own fucking brain! I am not your trophy, your perfect little choir-girl to show off at parties.’

The blood had drained from Harry’s face. He was staring at her as if she’d turned into a banshee. ‘But I didn’t –’

‘Do you have the slightest idea what it was like?’

‘What?’

‘To have the thing you fear the most taking over the entire world, murdering off every sense of safety that you’d ever known… and to be utterly irrelevant, to be powerless to stand against him?’

Harry’s mouth opened, but no words came out.

‘Do you know the thing I did that had the biggest outcome on the war? It wasn’t fighting for the DA. It wasn’t trying to steal a bloody fake sword, which I fucking well failed to steal anyway!’

‘You couldn’t have known –’

She took a step closer, so she could glare straight into his eyes. ‘It was giving you a little kiss on your birthday. It was being Harry Potter’s whore and giving him something to fight for.’

‘Ginny!’ he protested.

‘Of course, then there’s the doubt, isn’t there,’ her tone turned snide and sarcastic. ‘Maybe less people would have died if I’d offered you a blowjob.’

‘Don’t you dare talk about us like this.’

Ginny ignored him. ‘And now you won’t even let me do that. Forget about me being a powerful witch, or a thinking individual, you’re too fucking noble to let me be your whore.’

He gawped at her, clearly too bewildered to form a counterargument.

‘Fucking you was the only thing keeping me sane,’ she said. ‘But you took that away from me.’

She turned away from Harry, held out her wand and muttered a spell to unlock the door.

‘Ginny, please, wait!’

‘Do you know what the funny thing is, Harry?’ Ginny asked, glancing over her shoulder. ‘If you ordered me to my knees, right now, if you ordered me to do anything… I’d do it. This whole thing would disappear, because fool that I am, I love you.’

She swept to the door and opened it.

‘Problem is, you just don’t have it in you, do you?’

And she left.


***


The tears threatened to hit her as soon as she got a few yards. She needed to get out of there. Grabbing the edges of her dress in her hands, she ran toward the double-door exit.

She hurried through and out into the cold night air, where she was intercepted. ‘Oh, Miss Weasley, what an absolute delight. I’m sure you’ll be happy to give my readers a few moments of your time.’

‘No, thank you,’ she said, trying to dodge around her.

The reporter, a woman with bleached blonde hair that Ginny vaguely recognised, stepped back into the way. ‘Now – Ginevra isn’t it – you must understand, we all have to do our bit. Your boyfriend already gave a very thoughtful, mature sound-bite.’

It was Skeeter, Ginny realised, bloody Rita Skeeter.

‘Well, he’s good at them,’ she said through clenched teeth. ‘What do you want?’

Skeeter looked her over, seeming to weigh Ginny up, and her beetle eyes gleamed. ‘As it happens, there were some war facts I wanted to clear up. Some of my readers are very curious as to how you’ve been nominated for the Order of Merlin, Second Class.’

Her fists curled into balls. ‘Wasn’t my choice.’

‘But you must have an opinion. After all, you weren’t very involved in the war – you spent most of it hiding in a safe house with your relations, so far as I understand.’

‘Also not my choice.’ Each word was a struggle to get out.

‘I’m sure you can understand that certain allegations of favouritism are being –’

‘What is it you want!’ shouted Ginny. ‘You want me to say I’m a fraud? Is that it! Well, I am. I admit it! I tried to fight Dolohov and got saved by Remus Lupin at the cost of his life! I tried to fight Bellatrix and had to be saved by my mother. And when I was eleven, I tried to fight off Riddle’s grip on my soul and I failed then, too. Happy?’

‘Apart from the last bit of babbled nonsense, that will do nicely,’ Skeeter said, flashing her teeth. ‘Thank you so much for your time.’

Ginny levelled her wand in Skeeter’s face and had the satisfaction of seeing her flinch.

‘You’re not even worth an insult,’ she said.

An instant later, Ginny had Apparated away.


***


Once she’d got home, tossed an explanation at her mother and escaped to her room, Ginny didn’t even bother with the pretence of sleep. Instead, she sat in her ball-gown, staring blankly at her bedroom wall.

It was over. She wouldn’t play the game anymore. She’d just ended every chance of anything with Harry. The truth was out: she was a weak coward, a spoiled little whore. Now it was time for something else. She wanted a fight, a war, something to drown in and something to lose herself to.

What was it Hermione had called it? Oh, yes – therapy.

Ginny needed therapy.

But there was only one person who could give her a dose of that.




A/N: I should be able to keep up weekly updates for at least the next two weeks. No promises past that, though, I'm afraid.

Comments, positive or negative, are appreciated.