Everyday Tragedy
(failed Harry/Ginny)
 

Five hours, 46 minutes and 23 – 24 – 25 seconds ago you laid down to rest – to close your eyes and unburden your mind.

It’s a windless night, silent but for the clock, ticking away the time.   

Five hours, 47 minutes, 10 seconds – but who’s counting?

I am.

And two floors below, he’s gauging the hours and minutes too. For this moment, you’ve both fallen into a perverse sort of rhythm. On the verge of conceding defeat, you’re closer – more in sync – than you’ve ever been.

If you strain your ears against the velvety stillness of the night, you can almost make out the creaking of floorboards under his feet. He’s pacing again, wearing the threadbare rug thinner every night with every step.

One of these days it’s going to tear.

And when it does, it’ll hurt in the worst sort of way.

He will leave. Now it’s only a matter of time.

It’s what you don’t see and hear and feel that tells you <i>how</i> it must end:

Because he strives to be honorable in all that he does, he will wait for the right moment to pull the carefully packed suitcases out of the back of the hall closet. “I never meant for this to happen,” he’ll say, setting the suitcases side-by-side on the welcome mat. He’ll say you deserve better, whether or not you truly do. He’ll go so far as to fib and say that it’s not you, not even You – the two of you – but him.

He’ll beg you to say something – anything – to scream, cry, throw a fit. To let it all out. But there’s nothing left. Nothing left but to but walk to him, slowly this time, with the dignity and composure of the grown woman you’ve become and kiss him one final time, pausing halfway through the execution of the kiss so that the painful truth will linger between your lips – how far you’ve come, how far you’ve regressed.

The Daily Prophet will not chronicle this particular milestone in the Chosen One’s life, because it’s an everyday tragedy, slow to unfold and unremarkable to the last. Something that can happen to ordinary people. To Weasleys and Potters.

These things happen every day.

As the sun breaches the windowsill and the gray light of morning spills across the twisted linens, you hope it will be today.