The clock on the wall ticked loudly, the methodical rhythm ingraining itself in my brain. I stared at the worn, old face, watching the minute hand get closer and closer to the twelve. It seemed to take days for the five minutes to pass. At last, the clock struck midnight, and a loud, hollow chime sounded from within it, first to a jaunty tune, and then ringing out twelve times to announce the hour.
It ticked for forty-two more seconds before the door opened. She closed the wooden slab gently behind her, trying desperately not to make a sound. She whispered something at the lock and there came a faint ‘click’ from within; at this, Ginny turned and faced me.
The candles on the walls flickered sporadically, causing her scarlet hair to appear moving, although she stood perfectly still. Her brown eyes bore into me slightly, but I didn’t pay them much mind; instead, I moved quickly to where she stood and grabbed her in an intimate embrace. I could smell the lavender in her hair, could feel her throbbing pulse from within her chest. I let go of her only to give her a kiss, a gentle caress of lips, filled with love.
There was something about the kiss that made me pull back. It felt one-sided, as though I were kissing a brick wall. I looked at Ginny with a furrowed brow, examining her body language for a moment. She still hadn’t moved an inch since she had arrived; I realized that when I had hugged her, I hadn’t felt her hands on my own back. I turned my worried gaze instead to her eyes, looking for insight into why she was acting in such an indifferent manner.
It was there that I found my answer. Resting just below the surface of those eyes was a statement, a revelation, a confession that had yet to be stated. It was painful; it was hurt; it was embarrassed; it was fearful. I stared into her eyes, searching for the cause, the reason behind the pain and worry etched into her. And suddenly, I knew.
She was leaving me.
It seemed as though she had said it out loud, clear as day, although her mouth had remained closed the entire time. The pain, the agony that her eyes held was for doing the act; she didn’t want to hurt me. She loved me; that much I could still find, hidden in the vast recesses of her face. And yet, the embarrassment, the fear, came from the very thought of our relationship, the very thought that if someone found out it would ruin her. But I knew this could not be the reason; there had always been that fear, and we had even talked about it on more than one occasion. So why now? That was the one thing I could not find in her eyes, her face, her body. There wasn’t a hint.
“But… why?” I asked, barely more than a breath.
Ginny turned her gaze downward, staring at the wooden floor beneath our feet. She held that position for several seconds; when she returned her eyes to my own, I found my answer: It was him.
He had been looking at her more and more in the recent days and weeks, had been spending more and more time around her. She hardly spoke of him, but I often saw him at breakfast, lunch, and dinner, sitting a few seats down, but still staring across the nameless bodies, creating conversations that resulted in laughter and smiles. Slowly, Harry had begun to realize his feelings for her; I had been fearful for weeks of his acting upon it, and now it seemed he had.
I, too, looked down at the floor. It had not occurred to me that it would be so soon, or even that Ginny would pay him any mind and not ignore him, much like he had done since our first year. I had surely never expected that our nightly midnight rendezvous would be the place for it all to crumble.
I looked back at her, searching her eyes for my final answers. They said, “I’m sorry. I don’t want to leave you, don’t want to hurt you.” But they also said, “I can’t do this, can’t do something so wrong when something so right has come my way. I can’t stay with you, because I can’t lose the reputation I have built up over these five years.”
“I can’t love you anymore, Luna.”
The unspoken words hit me like a bomb. I stumbled back a few steps; my mouth fell open; my eyes became foggy and damp. Part of me expected a hand to brush my shoulder, to offer a condolence or a caress, but nothing came. I wiped my eyes, trying to distinguish through the tears that were making a silent cascade down my face. When I could finally see again, I found myself staring at an empty room, an open door, and a clock that read two minutes past midnight.