A/N- I wrote this fic to participate in the monthly contest Sept '05, writing challenge number 4, using the second sentence “The hardest thing in this world is to live in it.”
I would like to thank my brilliant beta OuchKibble who helped me a lot with this.
I don't own any of the characters.
From silver_tears
Slytherin House

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Ginny Weasley was lying on the cold damp ground, one wintry night, starved to death. The days when she had been loved were now gone for good and it seemed like thousand years had passed since her family and friends actually had cared about her. Everyone had been so preoccupied with Harry's death that she wondered if they had even noticed that she was gone.

She had been so deeply depressed after his brutal murder that nothing seemed to make sense in her life anymore. The person whom she had cared about most had been taken violently from her life. She felt like everything she had done wasn't real and the life she was living no longer felt like her own-how she wished she could get hers back again. Now she knew what Harry had meant when he once said that the hardest thing in this world is to live in it. She felt so numb inside, and nothing anyone said or did could make her feel better. They don't know what it's like, she thought, when the one you love leaves you to deal with life on your own. She knew she had been making a mistake when she ran away from the safety of her home, but now she wasn't regretting it at all -- she had many regrets; her biggest one was living.

Deep inside she knew that Harry was dead, but she was trying hard to make herself think that there may have been some mistake, clinging to this last bit of hope as if her life depended on it. The last time she had seen Harry, he had been in St. Mungo's, deeply wounded and in a critical state. A couple of days later, she heard rumors that the famous Harry Potter, the only person who was born to stop Lord Voldemort, was now dead. That was all people cared about; now no one could stop Voldemort and the Dark Side was getting stronger.

She couldn't possibly attend his funeral, it seemed so final and she didn't want to say goodbye. She still didn't want to believe the fact that what she had been dreading had now happened. Everyone was shocked when Ginny was nowhere to be found, just before the funeral of her loved one.

After that, Ginny's once perfect life with a perfect boyfriend turned into a prefect nightmare. She feared nighttime more than any other time of the day. That was when she had terrifying dreams about Harry that left her shivering violently until early in the morning, when she would finally make herself believe, once again, that those dreams where just fragments of her imagination. But no matter what she did or said, she couldn't stop those horrible nightly dreams from coming to her mind.

That night, she was lying on the cold filthy ground, trying to sleep and ignore her increasing hunger. It was then that she saw distant shadows coming closer to her with every shallow breath she took-she had never seen anyone close to that lonely alley before. As she backed against the filthy wall and made sure she was safely hidden in the shadows, she heard muffled voices.

She strained her eyes in the darkness to catch a glimpse of the strangers, and what she saw made her gasp. Two familiar tall figures were whispering urgently to each other and although Ginny couldn't make out what they were saying, they didn't seem to hear to sharp intake of breath coming from the very end of the lonely alley. The tallest one, with red hair just like hers, whom she recognized as her brother Ron, held his wand steady, clearly searching for something ... or someone.

Ginny knew they were looking for her. But how did they find the area where she was hiding? She didn't know exactly what she was hiding from. Reality, maybe? Suddenly, she wished to go back with them, to be loved once more and had almost revealed herself from her hiding place when something held her back -- something which she acknowledged as fear. What if they didn't want her to go back? No, she'd stay here, minding her own business and facing life as it was.

"You don't really expect her to be here, do you?" said a male's voice. She realized that this voice belonged to George. She felt tears of grief coming from her bright brown, pained eyes and down her cheeks as the shadows of her beloved brothers faded slowly into the darkness. Something inside her mind was telling her that she was never going to see them again and she missed the only chance she had to get back her life.

She cried herself to sleep once again on the cold filthy ground as she felt every bit of the energy in her body leave her and she fell into an unusual dreamless long sleep.