Disclaimer: Nope, I don't happen to own anything of the Potterverse; however, I do own (part of) the plot, as well as the character Timothy Groan, as much as he is inspired by Mervyn Peake's character Stillingfleet, from the Gormenghast trilogy.

Prologue

With a start he wakes up, panting, the first rays of sunlight of the morning of the first of June filtering through the threads of thick fabric hanging over his bed. Something sharp is in his mouth: a terrible, specific sense of unease.

Ron Weasley slowly lowers himself back into his bed, the softness against his body providing no comfort. Wincing a little, he shifts to his side; thankfully Groan had caught him, just in time, or else –

Turning his head into his pillow, he already knows that something will happen.

~

Chapter One: A Gathering of Heirs

1st June, 1997

Her room is where the magic of the protective wards are weakest. They do not know why, having only ghost-like suspicions which they wave away, half-annoyed and half-afraid, like they would wisps of frost and long-drawn breath in frigid winter air. But anyhow, they do not tell her.

But one evening on the first of June, the last red tendrils of English sunshine curling slowly away from the expanse of idyllic English countryside, it is due to this inexplicable fact that someone has managed to deliver his charge into the room.

This room, the smallest in the house, has always been a beautiful one, despite its modest furnishing and proportions. Shaped curiously like a quadrant with the curved side adorned with quiet, understated windows, it catches the first rays of morning light, and allows the turning of autumn to be viewed in its rawest red and gold.

When Severus Snape quietly leaves his unconscious charge on the bed in the corner of the room, devoid of its owner who is still blissfully away, in another universe which Hogwarts now belongs to (in his eyes at least, bloodshot and wary), even he stops for a while, knowing somehow why this room would be hers, and there is a wearied quirk to his lips as he ponders the irony of Draco Malfoy being here.

Lying here, defenseless and vulnerable, in Ginny Weasley’s room.

~

As Draco Malfoy lies on Ginny Weasley’s bed, his silver-white hair spread out like a halo beneath his head, the fifteen-year-old Heir of the House of Groan, having saved the life of Ronald Weasley days before, is already moving.

Having sent his Muggle uncle and his steward away, he dismisses the remainder of the household with an efficiency which belies his years.

Finally, as he picks up his bags, moving – for he always moves in a half-walk, half-run that cannot be so simply understood as either action - towards the highest balcony, jutting out from the Tower of Stones, he allows himself a smile.

It is time to collect the debts owed to the Noble House of Groan.

~

He wakes up, and a curtain of long red hair is the first thing he sees.

‘…just left him to die…’

‘Snape must have left him here…’

‘Why?’

‘…his mother’s left, they say…’

‘No protection left…’

The somewhat sinisterly familiar voices weave in and out. The sudden light hurts his eyes, but a blink later, the blurs of people swim into view.

Potter, of course. His eyes seem intent on looking at the ceiling, facial muscles drawn tight. The two Weasleys, with the youngest Weasley nearest to him, her hair falling in front of him, face turned away, hidden. The other Weasley looks uncomfortable, and for once the blank expression seems to have left his face, and instead there is some sort of tragic concentration in it – he studies some obscure feature about the place, not looking at anyone in particular. Granger and the Weasleys’ parents. McGonagall. Even, to his mild surprise, Lupin, the werewolf professor.

As if everything that had happened was not enough of a nightmare.

A sigh escapes his lips. Ginny Weasley immediately turns around, and, in a concerted effort to state the obvious, says, ‘He’s awake!’

He tries to sneer at her, if not for the fact that there is no pity in her light amber eyes. Instead they are just wide, with dark grey circles under them, as if she hasn’t had enough sleep for a long time. The sight strangles the words in his dry throat, and he can only stare at her, dumbly, and for the world of him he cannot explain why it distracts him so from what he has just escaped from.

The room is curiously bright, and he realises that a full section of it consists of floor-length windows. There is something intimate about the room -

Wincing, he finally finds his voice. ‘Where am I?’ He sounds harsh, his voice scratching and clawing its way out of his throat. And then, as the implication of his companions finally struck home, a suspicious ‘I didn’t do anything that you can prove.’

He isn’t protecting anyone else. He is just speaking for himself.

It almost makes him feel light-headed.

Finally, a snort from the older Weasley, and ironically enough, the world seems strangely less lopsided now because of his action. Not everything is wrong.

It’s just that, a voice in his head says mockingly, a lot of things are.

‘Can you remember how you got here, Malfoy?’ asks McGonagall, and in a spurt of annoyance at her evading his question with a question he tries, in one swift action, to get up, but yowls when the pain shoots through his body, a ruthless reminder.

His sleeve. It feels dry, he thinks, breathing shallowly, until he turns his head and realises that the only reason it feels dry is because the blood has long since congealed and hardened on the material.

‘I wouldn’t move too much, if I were you,’ remarks McGonagall, but the acerbic edge to a voice is not there, replaced by something softer in quality. He flinches.

‘I don’t need your pathetic pity,’ he hisses, his eyes fixed on the sleeve.

‘We don’t need a lot of things in life, Malfoy,’ comes a voice, and he is almost startled to realise that its owner is Ginny Weasley. ‘But it isn’t as if we’ve got a choice.’

‘Ginny…’ admonishes her mother, and she in turn turns her full gaze onto him, a heavy, motherly gaze which he draws away from, unable to bear it. ‘We’d better see to your injuries, first.’ She smiles, and her eyes are over bright. Her voice is warm. He hates her already.

‘He needs nothing,’ comes Potter’s voice, quiet with hatred. Draco whips around, this time barely registering the shock of pain, to return the other boy’s steady, unwelcoming gaze. It makes him feel suddenly and recklessly awake. ‘He only needs to be killed by his very own Dark Lord.’

The last words were barely a hiss, and at them Draco freezes, retorts stolen from his mind. And then, before anyone can move, Potter turns on his heel and stalks off.

‘Harry!’ calls Lupin, after him, and he gets up, hastily, going after the idiot, and the action pulls Draco out of his trance.

‘Where am I?’ Draco asks again.

‘In. My. Room,’ replies Ginny Weasley, enunciating each word clearly and bitterly, and he dearly wants to slap her, to shake her and scream at her, to tell her that he hates her as much as she hates him. ‘Seems like someone got kicked out of Tom’s inner circle.’

Something changes in the room at this point; even Draco notices this, as he ponders, wildly, who Tom is, before dimly remembering, and becoming wakefully afraid, and angrily so, although he doesn’t know exactly why. He clenches his left fist. Ronald Weasley shifts uncomfortably, and glances at the mudblood Granger, who looks worriedly at Ginny Weasley. The adults look away. Adults always do.

So instead he smiles at Ginny Weasley, a cruel, knowing smile, and asks, ‘And you would know about that, wouldn’t you, sweet Ginevra?’

Her eyes, for the first time since the year before in Umbridge’s office, are intent on him, narrowing, and for that instant he is almost pleased with himself.

But she leans forward, hand reaching towards him, and in a singular motion tears his sleeve off.

‘Non serviam,’ she reads, and the fluster of motion from the others stops suddenly. Everyone stares. ‘“I will not be a slave,”’ she pauses here, then, almost in a whisper, ‘A slave to whose will?’ She raises her eyes to his, unwavering, before bending down again. ‘He wrote it in his handwriting,’ she continues abruptly, and he stares, unable to move, as slowly but surely, a tentative finger traces the thin cursive words cut into his flesh, its touch so light he barely feels the pain beneath the caked blood. The expression on her face is almost soft, the facial muscles relaxed. Then the words come out in a torrent, bruising and quick. ‘Did he tell you that he would have loved you, if he weren’t who he is, and you weren’t who you are? Did he ask you if you liked to hear that? Did he laugh?’

‘Ginny,’ comes another voice, an awkward, upset one; Ronald Weasley’s voice. ‘It isn’t Riddle anymore. It’s – it’s Voldemort,’ he pauses, looking very deadly pale and scared, ‘don’t let Malfoy get to you, now. It’s not Riddle.’

‘I know,’ his sister replies, and there is a trace of irritation in her voice. Finally she removes her hand away from him, and Draco lets out a breath he hadn’t known he had held. ‘I know it isn’t; it’s just something Tom would have done.’

Granger looks quickly, sharply at her.

‘Poppy is coming,’ McGonagall speaks, her voice stiff, ‘Poppy’s coming, and then we’ll see exactly what kind of hurt has been inflicted on the boy.’

Ginny Weasley looks away, and Draco knows, suddenly, what she is thinking.

When she turns around again, he almost thinks she is smiling at him, a smile as cruel as his own.

~

‘Harry,’ she says, and he looks up, self-consciously brushing another stray lock of black hair away from his face. Her face is strangely hard in the darkness, without enough light to bring out the softness of her cheeks. ‘Ron said you wanted to talk to me?’

‘Yes,’ he nods, then, frowning a little, asks, ‘Are you alright?’

Ron has told him about how she repeatedly spoke of Riddle in her room, an hour earlier. Malfoy has been shifted to another room by now; he is still sleeping, sedate and dreamless with the aid of potions Harry doesn’t believe he deserves. Malfoy deserves nothing.

Ron has told him what Voldemort has written on Malfoy’s arm. A war cry: Non serviam. Hermione has said that these were the words Lucifer whispered when he fell, believing himself not to be the subordinate of his Creator.

An example is what Malfoy has been reduced to. Harry almost smiles, cruelly, at this. But Harry isn’t cruel. So instead of smiling, he just keeps quiet, letting his anger bide its time.

‘I’m fine,’ she replies, but her face is thoughtful, facing away from him into the distance beside him, beyond the window which he is next to. ‘It’s just…’

‘It’s just what?’

‘It’s just…’ she trails off, and her eyes close, abruptly, briefly, before opening again. She still doesn’t look at him. ‘Bill and Phlegm’s wedding is this weekend. School has only ended for half a day, really, and already…already so many things have happened.’

‘You mean Malfoy’s happened,’ states Harry dryly, and idly he knows there is something she isn’t telling him, but he is too spent with the day’s anger and bitterness to be able to rally any effort to push further. ‘And the attacks on the muggleborns’ families have happened. Don’t worry, Ginny, everyone’s been brought to Hogwarts, and everyone is safe, even the Dursleys are, cooped up in Hogwarts…’

‘Hogwarts isn’t safe, I thought you would know that,’ she cuts in, her voice soft and her words fast, almost tripping over each other. ‘They haven’t found Groan, the Slytherin Prefect from my year, and his Muggle uncle,’ she adds.

Harry sighs. ‘I thought everyone would know that Hogwarts isn’t safe, Ginny,’ he replies, conceding defeat, admitting in his words that he has been patronizing. ‘But it’s the safest place now; the safest place to house so many people. And Groan and his uncle…well, they haven’t found their bodies, and anyway at least we know that Groan had had the time to dismiss an entire household of servants before disappearing, if that’s a good sign. And he’s in Slytherin…’ He trails off, and reaches over and tugs at one long red lock of hair, which falls straight until its last inch, where it pulls into a curl.

‘Harry,’ she says, and this time her voice is flat. He looks up, startled at the sound. ‘Stop doing that.’

‘Doing…’

‘That,’ she says, and a note of agitation has crept into her voice, ‘Whatever it is you’re doing to my hair.’

Shocked, he lets go of the lock, and it slips away between his fingers. ‘Ginny, I…’

‘You said it’s over,’ and she finally faces him, ‘you said it’s over, at least until you’ve done what you must. Then you’d better make sure you keep to your own word, Harry James Potter, because I’m not someone you can come back to as and when you like it.’

He has never seen her angry before, at least not at him, and here she is, voice quiet and hard. ‘I didn’t mean that,’ he finally says, shaking his head, then, more fervently, ‘I didn’t mean it that…’

‘I don’t care and don’t want to know what you meant,’ she interrupts, again, but this time there is for some reason a heavy note of tiredness in her tone. She shifts away, getting up, leaving him. ‘I’m going to bed, Harry, and you’d better go to bed soon too. We still have to settle Malfoy tomorrow. I heard McGonagall asking Pomfrey if there’s any way they can extract information or memories from him, without hurting him. Although why she should care whether or not he gets hurt is beyond me,’ Ginny pauses, and Harry is struck again by how hard her face seems without there being enough light to soften it. Her next words tumble out of her, like a flood coming from behind a broken dam. ‘I hope he gets hurt; I hope he gets as hurt as – ’

‘Ginny,’ he whispers, and is shocked by how uncertain his own voice is. ‘Ginny, stop it. He’s not worth it.’

A long gap of silence hangs over them. Then, finally, she nods, and begins to walk away, saying, ‘He’s not worth it; you’re right.’ Then, repeating, ‘He’s not worth it.’

One day, when Harry remembers this conversation, he finally thinks to wonder who she was really referring to.

~

2nd June, 1997

‘He’ll never need to know,’ Hermione whispers into her ear, and the words she neglects to speak hangs low over the two of them, like a monsoon cloud threatening to break: he’ll never need to know, if only you don’t say a word, Ginny; if only you don’t say a word, he’ll look at you and one day he’ll smile, memory coloured with the dyes of years, and he’ll thank you for this year, he’ll love you still.

Ginny looks away, turning so that Draco Malfoy’s body, white and calmly breathing, is closer to her, and oddly enough she is thankful for his being here, despite her words to Harry in the early hours of this morning; she feels safe in the presence of something so strangely white and still. Hermione’s presence weighs heavily over her, her voice and her scent and her hair all over the place, intrusive, and Ginny wishes she would shut up, shut up, shut up. Go away.

‘What are we doing here, anyway?’ Hermione asks, and anxiously she rubs her hands about her arms as if she is cold, even though this is June, and summer kisses the windows.

‘I thought you’ll leave me alone if I came here,’ replies Ginny, cruelly but almost absent-mindedly, remembering what Hermione has done. She doesn’t turn around, knowing already that Hermione flinches at this.

‘You agreed to it eventually,’ she whispers, ‘you were happy.’

‘I was,’ Ginny concedes, and her heart wants to relent. She misses Hermione; the smiles and the girlish support and the heady confidence when she confides in her. ‘And I know you were just – trying to help…’

‘Yes, yes…’

‘But you didn’t,’ Ginny interrupts her, firmly, ‘It’s gotten worse than ever before. I can’t look at him; just looking at him disgusts me. It’s – it’s so much like what – what Tom did. I can’t believe I didn’t see that before.’

The last words are spoken almost in a slow, horrified wonderment. Hermione blanches, reaches out towards Ginny, but the smaller girl pulls away before she touches her.

‘Ginny, Ginny, it isn’t; and Riddle did it because he wanted to kill Harry, not because he wanted to help him – and, and anyway, it wasn’t Dark magic; I would never…Ginny,’ Hermione’s words fall over themselves and Ginny stares at her, at the frightened face stripped of its usual seeming assurance. ‘I would never, never, never hurt Harry.’

Abruptly, almost as if she hasn’t been listening to Hermione, Ginny speaks, ‘I can’t look at him, Hermione, and I can’t let him touch me…’

‘It’ll be alright, it’ll be alright,’ Hermione says frantically, never listening, ‘Ginny, he’ll be alright.’

‘No – no he won’t be, and Hermione – what about me?’ Ginny asks, and the two girls face each other.

‘Ginny…’

But before Hermione can speak, Draco Malfoy opens his eyes, and, almost as if she senses this already, Ginny Weasley turns back to greet the sight.

~

Draco wakes up, and with the potions still holding his senses in thrall, a half-formed emotion from a suppressed dream just escapes the vaguely-roused tendrils of his mind.

‘You’re awake,’ comes a voice. He blinks, and a curtain of red hair swims into view, and for a beat he almost sees an eleven-year-old girl with dark blue eyes – but only for a beat. Then it is light brown eyes, flinted and hooded in the morning June sun.

‘Weasley,’ he replies, but there is hardly a weak thread of bitterness in his voice. Numbness holds his mind in a whiteness strangely devoid of feeling. ‘McGonagall…’

‘She should be coming with Pomfrey soon,’ replies Weasley, voice with nary an inflection, ‘There’re other things that need to be attended to in Hogwarts.’

‘So he did it then,’ he remarks, and he almost forgets to wonder at how this conversation seems to actually be progressing.

‘Tom would always have done it,’ nods Weasley, ‘and he’ll do more.’

‘Ginny, don’t…’ another voice enters, and breaks the spell. ‘Ginny, come on, we should tell the others that he’s awake…’

‘You go,’ Weasley replies almost quickly, almost gratefully, ‘I’ll stay.’

‘Ginny!’ Granger expostulates, her voice going up by an octave. ‘Honestly, what is wrong with you?’ Her voice becomes suddenly frantic now, abruptly lowering to a hiss. ‘I’ve only done all this for everyone’s good, and you should stop talking about Riddle as if he – well, because he isn’t, and Malfoy, well, Malfoy – he’s…’

‘I know, I know, Hermione, which is why I can’t talk to any of you right now; we’ve both of us talked too much to each other. I’ve said too much. We can always talk later, but we won’t stop unless I stop seeing you around for a while,’ Weasley’s speech is comes in staccato beats, short and sharp, and Draco almost narrows his eyes, vaguely wondering, as she continues, ‘So go. And hurry, Hermione, and bring all of them with you, but don’t talk to him, please don’t; you won’t be able to now without – being strange.’

Finally Granger nods, and, looking pale, hurries out of the room.

‘McGonagall put up wards around the room; you can’t move your arms or legs until she lifts them,’ Weasley says cleanly without preamble, just as the door closes softly behind Granger.

‘I figured,’ he replies, and is almost surprised that it comes out dryly.

‘I would say I’m sorry if I were to care, and if I were to think you’ll believe me,’ she says, in her mercurial fashion, all brilliant red and burnished gold like he remembers, in swimming, unfocussed technicolour memory, and there is no pity in her eyes.

‘I would believe you,’ he answers almost heavily, not wanting to care about the former clause in her speech, and instead focusing on the latter. ‘You’ve never lied to me before.’

‘We’ve never talked much. We don’t happen to like each other. I might in fact hate you, considering what your father…’ she mentions him without pausing, without looking at Draco, and continues easily, ‘…did in my first year, and considering that you let him do it, and considering all the other things that you have done to us Weasleys, collectively or separately,’ she says, tone and intonation still clean and light, like a sharp summer wind, ‘Even though admittedly, you’ve never insulted me as much as you did others. Is that a sign of friendship and trust, Malfoy?’

He almost smiles. ‘Not quite, I suppose. But you don’t lie for – such purposes.’

‘How do you know?’

‘You don’t. You’ve always told them about Tom Riddle, haven’t you, and nobody’s ever listened.’ He watches her; he realizes that in this state of numbness he is thankful at the distraction that is her. ‘You’ve always had diarrhea of the mouth.’

‘If you’ve realized and somehow listened, then why did you do what you did then, Malfoy?’ she leans forward. There is a strange gold glint to her eyes, too light to be called brown, really. ‘What did he do to you?’

‘I don’t know anymore, for the former. As for the latter question, he wanted me dead. I don’t know why I’m not,’ he says, quickly, frankly, calmly, ‘and honestly like you I’ve always had diarrhea of the mouth, too.’

‘I know,’ she smiles, this time, ‘that’s how I got to hex you in your fifth year.’

‘That was painful,’ he admits, almost freely, and wonders suddenly whether he should count the seconds this conversation lasts, so that he can remember it more factually later.

Weasley’s eyes are a light yet burnished gold.

Then the door opens and Weasley turns around, quickly, and away from him, and they enter the room, with Potter leading, and suddenly the numbness loses its hold, and the words leave him and only the pain is left.

~

When they finally get Malfoy to speak, it is only through Veritaserum. Harry frowns; having come close to the door first, he knows he had heard Malfoy’s voice, the thin inflection dying just as his hand turned the knob.

‘Ginny, can I come in?’ he asks, still mulling over Malfoy’s words, Malfoy’s actions, still letting his anger brew within himself, quietly and hotly. He raps on the door, slightly ajar. ‘Ginny?’

‘Harry, I…’

But Harry has already entered the threshold, and he stops as Ginny pulls a swath of material about her, heavy and white. ‘What’s that?’ he asks, pointing.

‘I thought I told you not to come in,’ Ginny says in answer, and her forehead is creased. Unheeding, Harry walks over, his slight, lanky frame folding easily into a cross-legged position on the floor next to her.

‘You didn’t manage to say so,’ he says, softly, ‘and anyway, Ginny, how come you’re so irritable?’

‘It’s the bridesmaid dress Phlegm ordered,’ replies Ginny, still not looking at him.

‘Gin…’ Harry feels the edge of something starting to spill over onto his control. ‘What’s gotten into you?’

‘Well, the fact that I found Malfoy lying on my bed…’ begins Ginny, but Harry stops her, his hand reaching out, slender fingers circling around her arm. She looks very nearly beautiful like this, her hair undone and in long, loose waves, the sunlight from the windows kissing it and seeming to set it ablaze. Something clenches around Harry’s heart, and he shakes his head.

‘Ginny, it’s not just Malfoy, is it? Are you angry with me? Because of my breaking up with you – Ginny, I’m not breaking up with you, not really, it’s just that…’

‘Harry,’ Ginny interrupts, and there is a strange look on her face, ‘not everything’s about you.’

‘I know,’ Harry finally snaps, ‘But you’ve been this way since I came here ‘cos the Dursleys were deposited at Hogwarts…’

‘Well then, it’s not all about you,’ Ginny retorts, and the sharpness of her tone almost causes Harry to flinch, but he doesn’t loosen his grip on her. Her eyes finally meet his, a murky brown, seeming incongruous on her white, small face.

‘I’m not angry with you, Harry,’ Ginny finally says, softly and heavily, ‘it’s just – there’re a lot of things happening now, and…’

‘You can talk to me about it,’ Harry whispers, leaning his head towards hers, adjusting slightly until his cheek is pressed against hers. ‘Gin, I really do…’

‘I know,’ Ginny says quickly, ‘I know.’

‘Is it Riddle? Do you – do you still have nightmares about him? Is that why you were so bothered about Malfoy’s arm?’ Harry asks, pulling back, before placing his other hand on her shoulder, feeling the hard shoulder blade clearly beneath the thin cotton of her shirt. She continues to return his gaze steadily, but he doesn’t remember, really, her eyes being such a shade of brown. A gap of silence falls between them.

‘Harry,’ she says finally, and there is a quirk to her lips, and he realizes that she is smiling – a dry, thin smile devoid of mirth.

Suddenly his mouth feels very dry, and he knows he doesn’t want to hear her next words.

He leans forward, and presses his lips on hers.

~

Ron remembers when Ginny first returned home, that year when the Chamber opened. He refuses to remember it as the year when Ginny opened the Chamber.

He would count to a hundred, quickly and softly, listening to the screams from the room next to his, something twisting within him, and then the footsteps, heavier and older, and when he finally reaches a hundred, he would climb out of his bed, feet cold on the floor despite the June warmth, and grope his way blindly into her room.

He remembers just how the moonlight floods into her room, viscous and accusing, and once he had whispered, holding tightly onto her hand as she sobbed, gaspingly, ‘Should I stay with her, mum – just in case, well, just in case things come…’

A quick, fierce look from his mother had censured him from continuing.

And he remembers the mornings, strangely cold for June, when Ginny stirred the cold milk in her bowl of cornflakes: thrice clockwise, thrice counter-clockwise, again and again, until the milk turned yellow and Ron would reach over, clumsily and hurriedly, and stop her.

But Ginny seems alright, his mother would say, Ginny is alright, look, she’s talking as always, and she’s well-behaved, and she’s…

And she’s brushing her hair straight, over and over again at night in front of her mirror, Ron remembers thinking, just unlike how she once told you she was too tired at night to do so. And she’s brushing her hair, and telling me about things Riddle said, clever things, and funny things.

Looking into the same mirror as he stands behind her now, Ron remembers that he had thought, even then, that Ginny is beautiful, really, in a quiet, pure way; she is beautiful in a manner that is so polite, you don’t realize it until you watch her, just as Ron remembers he had, that summer. Her skin is fair, not pale, her hair a rich, heavy red, her lips small and shell-pink. Her eyes are gold. As Ron grows older, and begins to see other girls – Fleur Delacour, his future sister-in-law, and her sister, Gabrielle, Cho Chang, Lavender Brown, Parvati and Padma Patil – with the kind of beauty that is immediate and straightforward; he cannot help reacting to it. But even so, cloudily, Ron always knows that Ginny is just as beautiful; he acknowledges with that mixture of pride and reluctance that only a brother would know.

‘How do I look, Ron?’ Ginny asks, shifting a little in her bridesmaid’s dress, which she has mumbled earlier about being made of cotton overlaid with some kind of expensive lace; it is a simple dress, white and sleeveless and with a lightly pleated, slightly flaring skirt.

Beautiful, Ron thinks, but instead answers, ‘Alright, good,’ nodding as he does so. Ginny catches his eye and smiles, knowing him well enough. ‘C’mon Ron, you’re so stingy. Bill and Charlie would’ve told me the truth.’

‘And you’re very sure of yourself, aren’t you?’ replies Ron, grinning, before continuing, his eyes half-closed as the sunlight shifts and filters more strongly into the room, ‘I’m sure Harry’ll like it.’

He studies her almost lazily beneath his lashes, watching as the smile drops clearly from his sister’s face.

‘What did Harry say to you?’ demands Ginny. She does not turn around; her eyes meet his in the mirror.

‘He didn’t say anything, Gin; I’m not so very thick that I can’t see what’s going on in front of me,’ Ron pauses, ‘What did you do, Gin?’

Something stills within her, and in the mirror she is suddenly seems static, although she had not been moving all this time.

‘I didn’t do anything.’ Her words are quick.

‘You’re guilty,’ accuses Ron, but not roughly. ‘You wouldn’t have been talking so much about Riddle otherwise.’

‘What do you…?’

‘I remember the summer after your first year, Gin; you kept saying things about him, you wouldn’t stop,’ Ron says, and he hears a thread of desperation in his voice, now. ‘Harry didn’t need to say anything – Harry doesn’t understand, does he? And this isn’t about Malfoy, as much as he’ll rather talk to you than the rest of us…’

‘How did you know?’

‘Harry told me that, at least,’ Ron concedes. ‘Ginny,’ he coaxes, turning her around, ‘Tell me, and I’ll do whatever I can. This time, I promise.’

Ginny closes her eyes, before they flutter open again. She looks up, and Ron, not for the first time, realizes how much smaller she seems compared to himself. Her tone is quiet as she speaks. ‘I didn’t do it, Ron. But I can’t tell you what it is about, either. Not yet, anyway.’

Ron nods, slowly, uncomprehending her words but strangely accepting of it. She will tell him sooner or later – she will. At least – at least now she knows that he wants to listen to her.

Slowly, slowly, he pulls her towards him, and when he embraces her he remembers as he had that night, how small and how frightened she must be.

And then he pulls away, kissing her on the forehead, and heads to the kitchen, the sense that something is coming awaking vaguely in his conscience, even as he slowly descends the stairs towards his mother’s kitchen, with the warm smells of food and home emanating from it.

~

I shut my eyes and the world drops dead/ (I think I made you up inside my head)

Ginny fingers the penciled writing on the wall behind Draco Malfoy’s bed – Percy’s bed, really, but now only Draco Malfoy is on it, so it was of his ownership, however temporarily and however unwittingly – and recognizes it; it is by a Muggle poet, a tragic Muggle poet, who put her head into an oven, slowly and calmly, and killed herself.

‘Sylvia Plath,’ drawls a voice, invading into her thoughts. She turns around to face him; Malfoy is upright against the headboard of the bed, in Percy’s pajamas, the cuffs reaching over his wrists by half an inch. ‘I read the quote just now; it’s from one of her poems.’

‘Mad Girl’s Love Song,’ nods Ginny, ‘I didn’t know you liked Muggle poets.’

‘I don’t,’ replies Malfoy, managing to inject disgust and dislike and so many other unpleasant things into his voice as he does so. ‘I read it somewhere, that’s all.’

Ginny can tell him that it does say something that Malfoy should read a Muggle poet’s work anywhere, but instead doesn’t, knowing suddenly that he can ask her, as well, why she should know so clearly where the quote comes from, and so she asks, ‘What does it feel like, Malfoy, to take Veritaserum?’

‘Why don’t you ask me what it feels like to know that your father is dead, and that your mother has probably gone in that direction, too?’ replies Malfoy, softly, but there is a dense lick of anger in his tone, and Ginny recognizes it all too well.

She doesn’t care for it. She opens her mouth, recklessly, to say something, but he is too fast for her.

‘Why are you here anyway, Weasley?’ he asks. The bruises about his face have long faded, but the shadows remain. ‘Why aren’t you with Saint Potter?’ He leans forward, his face inches from hers, and she feels her control slipping away, the anger at Harry, at herself, at him, threatening to reveal itself. ‘I can’t tell you much about your Tom, if that’s what you want. He’s ugly; he isn’t what you would know.’

‘Not everything is about Harry, not everything is about Tom, and not everything is about you,’ retorts Ginny, not backing down. This close, his skin seems almost white, his hair silver – the colour of early morning virgin snow.

‘But everything is about you and all of us combined, isn’t it, Weasley, and that’s why you’ve come here to avoid everyone else,’ drawls Malfoy, and amazingly, she sees a ghost of a smirk flit about his face. She knows his silence is his display of grief; she knows it hasn’t really sunk in yet. She has seen him cry before, returning from Astronomy class with Groan, with Myrtle hovering him. ‘We’re an expert at losing friends and alienating people, aren’t we, Weasley?’

Back stiffening, she doesn’t dignify him with an answer, and instead leaves without a word, walking down to her mother’s kitchen, where Ron has already settled himself into a chair.

~

The family, Harry, Hermione and Fleur Delacour are gathered about the table when they hear the cough from the living room.

For a moment everyone freezes; then, in a flurry of movement, Mr. Weasley crosses over the threshold between the two sections of the first floor of the Burrow, his wand before him – and then stops.

Before the fireplace, a tall, slender figure stands, bags around his feet. There is an English politeness about his short, sand-coloured hair, and his incongruous, violent-shaded eyes are almost too close together as he looks up at Mr. Weasley, but even the Weasley patriarch senses the sharp sensuality and potency that is the boy, and which cannot be diminished by the dust and the fading sunlight.

The boy smiles.

‘Mr. Weasley,’ he says, ‘My name is Timothy, of the Noble House of Groan.’

~

Standard Disclaimer applies: I own nothing save for the character of Timothy Groan, and even then he is largely inspired by the character Steerpike (my mistake from the previous disclaimer) from Mervyn Peake's brilliant Gormenghast trilogy.

With love and thanks to my reviewers from the last chapter, Anise and Lili Montegue. Do hope you'll like this chapter. :)

Chapter Two: No One Answers

For moments everyone is still: standing here, having arrived in a fireplace which has been closed off from the main Floo network since the night before, is a boy grown Aurors have been searching high and low for.

And then Ginny rushes forward, pushing past her father, and throws her arms about the slender, pale figure, a gurgle of words that trips over themselves coming out of her mouth. The gist of her outburst, however, is finally made clear, as extricating himself slowly from her, the boy smiles and promises in his clear intimate voice that he will tell her everything.

‘Ginny,’ comes a wondering voice, ‘who is this?’

Right hand still linking the boy’s left, Ginny turns around, as if released from a trance. Finally, she says in a voice rushed with a bubbling kind of ecstasy, ‘This is Timothy; he has told you already. Timothy Groan, mum, from school, and one of my best friends,’ she pauses, smilingly, and then continues, ‘I promised him he could come and stay.’

Blindly, as she says this, she does not notice Harry Potter turning away, suddenly unable to take the sight of her.

~

Upstairs, Draco Malfoy frowns as he slips a long, slender finger into a small crevice in the wall behind the low backless shelf located directly (and rather unwisely, he had thought previously, wondering how many times Percy Weasley could have banged his head against its cheap pine) above the bed frame, almost diagonally across from the penciled words. He almost imagines that he can see, from this height, a thin sliver of weak light from the hole, aborted abruptly by the row of books – but he is not certain if it is really that deep enough to reach the other side.

Finally he pulls his finger out again, and shifting his body against the bed frame, he uses his legs and body weight to somehow straddle the bed forward slightly, making sure not to trigger the wards, which are, as he has enquired of McGonagall this morning, within a half metre of the sides of the bed. His arm, reaching upwards onto the shelf, hurts, despite it being in a less uncomfortable position now, but he ignores it, clamping down on the pain and the memories and the terrible future, and taking the books down carefully and placing them onto the bed, he finally manages to be eye level with the hole, his body half on the bed and half upright.

A whorl of dust and light greets him, and behind the small crevice, at an awkward angle and almost half a floor above, stretches the room which he had awoken in the day before.

Ginny Weasley’s room.

~

Outside, Harry Potter can still hear Timothy Groan’s soft insinuating voice and the reactions of the Weasleys to his words. A fluid action beside him allows for a slender, womanly frame to drop onto the steps facing the Weasley backyard. Fleur Delacour is next to him, her hair like faery strands of ivory-coloured silk in the growing darkness.

‘You like Ginny?’ she says rather than asks without preamble, her words curling and thick just as Groan’s are thin, even as they are as pregnant.

Harry frowns. ‘If you’ve been in this house for so long, I’m sure you would have heard about this by now,’ he replies, not bothering to keep the irritation from showing itself.

Fleur turns around, and fixes her gaze on him, cat-like and bright, but strangely unseeing. ‘Not ‘heverything is about you, ‘arry,’ she whispers, almost in a sing-song voice. ‘Ginny is a lot of things, and you’re…’ she pauses here, smiling lightly and almost to herself, ‘you’re just one of those things.’

‘You think she’s forgotten about me?’ Harry asks, sharply.

Fleur clicks her tongue, and her mouth twists into a deeper, wider inflection. ‘You’re still asking the wrong questions, ‘arry,’ she replies cryptically, ‘You’ve got to – ‘ow do you say it? – change the subjects of your question about,’ she ends, and helpfully pats his knee.

‘So I’m supposed to ask if I’ve forgotten about her?’ he demands heatedly. ‘What in the world do you mean by that, Fleur?’

‘Exactly what I mean,’ she replies, except this time, abruptly, there is nothing cat-like to her eyes, and nothing remotely detached in her tone. Suddenly Harry feels cold, and Fleur’s face seems almost to be made of sharp shafts and angular plains in the dim light. ‘You must realize who Ginny is, Harry Potter, since you seem to have always forgotten about that.’

And with these words Fleur gets up, leaving him in the gathering darkness, and it is a long time before Harry realizes that she has not mispronounced his name.

~

Inside, Timothy Groan does not seem to have any answers. He has had a private, one-way and one-trip Floo connection to the Weasleys’ (with personal permission from Ginny, in blood an owner of the Burrow), and he has disabled it since, well, he has obviously just used it. But he does not say why or when or where; politely, he addresses Mrs. Weasley’s question – she has already warmed to him, with his quiet measured voice. No, he did not know about the attacks then – but he lightly laughs, in an endearingly self-deprecating manner, and jokes about something about clairvoyance, and constant vigilance.

Hermione Granger wonders if he is about to say something about being a snake. Narrow-eyed, she studies how closely Groan is sitting next to Ginny as he addresses each Weasley in turn, and wonders why Ron has not protested. Ron is watching Groan with a frank interest that is distinctly lacking in hostility. The twins laugh; Hermione turns away, knowing sickeningly that Harry isn’t around.

Fleur slides noiselessly into the room, and shakes her magnificent head at Hermione. It is a testimony to how much Timothy Groan has his audience in thrall, as no one, not even Ron, notices this. Hermione winces, almost: Harry being Harry, she already knows what he must be thinking.

Poor Harry.

Hermione frowns, to herself, because that last thought leads to a train of other thoughts, as is often the case with her; yet this train is so dense and convoluted in structure even Hermione begins to feel the foetal stirrings of helplessness somewhere within her consciousness.

She cannot understand why, after all that she has done, Ginny would decide to treat Harry this way. She never did understand why Ginny should ever have protested against it, but finally she had gone along…but now, even as everything seems to fall apart, Ginny seems to be insisting on heading in that direction.

She suddenly wonders how much she knows about Ginny, sliding a glance towards her from the corner of her eye, and watching her seated so easily by Groan’s side.

Timothy Groan. Hermione frowns again, this time almost forgetting her previous entanglement of thoughts, rolling his name slowly and carefully in her mouth. A fifth-year Slytherin Prefect, quiet and adroit of movement; Hermione once overheard the Head Girl saying, in a sharp, violent voice quite opposite to her usual mild tones, that she hated him, hated him. Hermione remembers the quick, horrid quirk to the older girl’s lips, grotesque with such a foreign exertion.

She wonders, suddenly almost afraid, why Ginny has never mentioned him to her.

~

Far away from the Burrow, what is left of Tom Riddle holds court.

‘Severus,’ he says, in a thin, keening voice, ‘why is it that the rest of the wizarding world has not heard about the sacrificial lamb that is Lucius’s son?’

The last words in his question are slow, and the eyes, red in its core but with a strange graduation of dark blue spreading from its centre, tilt towards a bowed head, its light hair silver in the dim light. There is no movement from the Death Eater, and a languid, terrible smile stretches Voldemort’s lips.

In some hell, his mother might weep.

Then the smile slides from the face, and he returns his gaze to Snape, similarly bowed before him.

‘McGonagall, I would suppose, milord, does not want to give us a reaction,’ replies Snape, and there is nothing in his voice.

‘He is crippled, then? Crippled to an extent that he can never wield magic again?’

‘Yes, milord,’ Snape answers, mechanically, then abruptly, almost in a show of some form of life within him, lifts his head calmly and continues, ‘However, it seems Poppy Pomfrey has been made to watch over him; the Weasleys, it seems, are to nurse him back to health, at the least. He should survive.’

Voldemort nods at this, lightly and almost distractedly; his quick eyes have returned to Lucius’s form; there is nothing in the clean, well-cut frame.

‘The Weasleys – their youngest son, Ronald, I remember, being Potter’s best friend; and their youngest daughter…’

Tom Riddle, his face ageless and cruelly smooth, smiles, and this time Snape, his face being the only one tilted up towards him, sees it, and almost flinches.

‘I remember the girl.’

~

In the room in the left corner of the fifth landing of the Burrow, just below the attic, a boy awakes, panting, just as Snape finally turns away from Tom Riddle’s face.

Blimey, a strange dream that one was. Ginny talking, and talking, her eyes staring straight in front of her, and figures and figures walking around and around her and him being unable to push past them towards her. Another voice, thin and reed-like and almost soft, saying that he – it was a male voice, he is sure – remembers someone, a girl.

He blinks, shakes his head, and looks over towards his clock, at the far end of the room where Harry’s bed is…

He bolts out of bed, knowing already that something has gone wrong, and not just because Harry is not in his bed.

~

Almost ten minutes before Ron wakes up, Ginny slips out of her room, drawing her arms about herself as she shivers; the air is strangely cold for June.

Before she can turn, however, her fingers barely having left the knob of her door, someone moves out of the shadows and speaks.

‘What are you doing out so late, Ginny?’

‘Harry,’ she breathes, after recovering her composure, ‘what are you doing here?’

‘Standing,’ he replies, and there is something hard in his tone, something indefinable. ‘I suppose you’re about to go looking for someone. Groan, maybe?’

Ginny lets out a quick, frustrated sound, before whispering back, ‘We’re not together anymore, Harry James Potter.’

‘So you and Groan, one of your best friends, are what I think you were?’

‘Harry, don’t think,’ she retorts sharply, ‘it doesn’t become you.’ She moves forward, meaning to sidestep him.

‘What exactly is it with you and Slytherin Prefects, Ginny?’ he hisses, low and harsh, and she stops, staring at him; something passes between them and suddenly everything has changed, to Ginny at least.

‘I’m going now, Potter,’ she says, slowly and deliberately, and he reels as if he has been slapped. Before she has had the chance to move, he has reached out and gripped her arm, pushing her against the corridor wall in one swift movement. There is something broken in his expression; she cannot pause to care.

‘Ginny, I’m not going to be here for long,’ he says, the words quick and desperate, ‘and please, I just...you’ve got to listen to me, you can’t be like this…’

‘Timothy is one of my best friends,’ replies Ginny, softly, looking directly at him, ‘and I don’t need to explain myself to you.’

‘Ginny, I…’

‘When you find out about everything, in the end, Harry, you’ll think differently. I’m tired now; just let me go,’ she interjects, and as the grip loosens, as he stares at her, lost and upset, she slips beneath his arm and walks off into the darkness, and doesn’t turn back.

~

When Ginny is in his arms, back against the couch at the end of Charlie’s room, she falls asleep quickly and doesn’t whisper or scream.

At the window, his eagle owl in its cage gives a low, melancholic hoot; in the morning, Mr. Weasley will banish it (‘Let it out,’ were his precise words, but Timothy is an unflinching boy) into the nearby woods along with the rest of the family owls for the rest of the summer: it has already been established to him that he is not to owl, because no word is to be expressed about the state of things – people – within the Burrow.

Timothy Groan smiles to himself and he reaches around her towards the thin archaic reed pipe, the stuff of another pale, slender Groan before him; balancing it between his long fingers, he begins to play.

It is a low hypnotizing tune, and only the night knows how beautifully he plays, and only the night can despair of a thing he cannot do.

Beside him, Ginny Weasley sleeps, tangled red hair over her white face.

~

‘Harry,’ says Ron, immediately after the two boys almost collide into each other in the stairway just midway above the third landing where Ginny’s room is, ‘something’s going to happen to Ginny.’

When the words tumble out of his mouth, half breathless, he doesn’t even know where they came from. He doesn’t even think to ask why Harry is out of bed at this hour in the first place.

Harry narrows his eyes. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I don’t know, it’s just…’ Helplessly, Ron sweeps his tousled hair up with a hand. ‘Harry, I know this is going to sound mental, and I’m not quite sure myself what exactly is going on and how I somehow know that I’m right, but you’ve got to hear me out…’

~

His heart clenches to fit in this new toy, the tiny hole just slightly higher than halfway above the room; it should feel very empty, actually, what with his father’s death and his mother’s disappearance and Tom Riddle’s words, but years and inertia doesn’t an efficient compartmentalization and updated profile of one’s heart make.

He remembers as he falls asleep, vaguely from somewhere, a pale face and some words, but he can no longer remember what exactly is real and what exactly is from dreams or waking dreams; sometimes in the rush everything had seemed to meld into one another, in this past year.

Draco remembers, when he was young, to have seen someone seated at the second floor of the Malfoy library, leg crooked at an angle and back against the Louis XIV, someone smiling and pale, but something cold had gripped him and he had run past ahead instead of stopping to look at the person; years later, he can never know whether the person had been a person, real and breathing hollow breath in the thick stifling air of June, or whether the person had only been a figment of his imagination.

He remembers another pale face, and a shock of hair that is so neutral in its colour it is impossible to define; he remembers whispered words, the cold serpentine smile in each syllable as a voice said, ‘Please allow me to introduce myself: I am a man of wealth and taste.’

He remembers, and he remembers, and then a hand pulls at him –

And he wakes up, screaming, and stares into Ginny Weasley’s pale face.

~

He is panting; it is half past five in the morning of Bill’s wedding. She had woken up earlier to get back to her room before Hermione wakes up, when she had heard the screaming.

Sightlessly screaming, he had clawed at her before the wide gray eyes had finally snapped open, and now she watches him carefully, knowing not to speak.

‘Weasley,’ he finally manages. He looks away. A long silence follows.

‘I know it’ll be useless to tell you that everything will be alright,’ Ginny finally says, ‘So I figure I’ll just remind you it’s morning.’

Malfoy finally turns back to her, his expression inscrutable. Eventually he says, ‘I know, Weasley,’ and she recognizes the familiar thread of condescension in it.

She turns to return to her room at this point; from the far corner of her eye, she almost imagines that something changes in his countenance at this point.

Closing the door, she feels his eyes on her.

~

That night, Ginny’s dress still white about herself and the celebratory Butterbeer still coursing through her system, she stops, shocked, as she watches Harry, Ron and Hermione move carefully along the corridor just as she is entering the bathroom.

They stop at the sound of her gasp.

‘You’re going,’ Ginny says, the words sounding limp and useless; ‘you’re going off to face Tom, aren’t you?’ And then, suddenly with greater conviction, ‘Without me, and without telling Mum and Dad.’

‘Ginny,’ coaxes Ron, stepping forward, ‘We need to go now…we can’t possibly…’

‘Bring me along because I’m too young?’ finishes Ginny in a deceptively soft voice. ‘You’re going to find the Horcruxes without my help?’

‘Ginny, please…’ begins Harry, and suddenly she hates the way he calls her name, softly and politely; it reminds her very much of Tom. She flinches, backing away from him.

She turns on Hermione, a blind anger surging through her.

‘And why does Hermione deserve to go with you, and not me?’

‘This has nothing to do with Hermione…’

‘Really?’ A wide quirk comes upon Ginny’s lips, stretching her mouth into an ugly sneer. ‘Would you like to hear what Hermione has done this past term, Harry?’ Her words are sharp and fierce, and Hermione blanches.

‘Ginny, what are you doing?’ Hermione hisses, eyes wide, but the strange contortion of Ginny’s lips deepens.

‘What’s Hermione done, Ginny?’ Ron blurts in, but there is something fearful in his eyes, and that is enough to make Ginny hesitate.

Her hesitation only lasts a moment, but within this moment something at her side slips, and then everything goes black.

Additional disclaimer -
'Please allow me to introduce myself: I am a man of wealth and taste' are lyrics from the song 'Sympathy for the Devil', and belong to the Rolling Stones.

Disclaimer: I don't own the characters save for Timothy Groan, who is admittedly largely inspired of the character Steerpike from Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast trilogy.

With love and thanks to all previous reviewers ; thanks for the encouragement. :)

Chapter Three: A Question of Need

2nd June

A tall, slender figure has managed to catch Ginny just as she keels forwards; stepping forward into the light as he does so, the figure reveals himself to be Timothy Groan.

‘What did you do to her?’ demands Ron, horrified, as Ginny’s head lolls backwards against Groan’s chest.

Something, almost an expression, flits past Groan’s clear, nondescript face like a light ripple on a still pond. ‘I didn’t do anything. That,’ he says, motioning to a relatively small but nevertheless heavy oak photo frame which lay, until then forgotten, on the floor, ‘was what hit Ginny on the head, and it seems she has been knocked unconscious because of it. I’ll just bring her to Mrs.…’

‘Very timely so,’ Hermione suddenly interrupts, and narrows her eyes at the younger boy.

Groan merely raises his eyebrows, and does not say anything.

‘Ron, Hermione, we’ve got to…’ Harry begins, and then stops, turning back at Groan, peering suspiciously at the boy through the dim light.

‘Go?’ suggests Groan, and nonchalantly he checks his wristwatch. ‘The last train leaving Ottery St. Catchpole leaves in well, fifteen minutes. I would recommend you hurry,’ he continues, in a tone of voice which would have been taken as helpful, if not for the fact that his eyes are unerringly unblinking.

‘But Ginny…’ begins Harry, his brow furrowing.

‘How do you know we’re leaving?’ asks Ron brusquely, addressing Groan. He has had a good impression of Groan all the while; this, however, disappears in the light of his inexplicable appearance just as Ginny passed out. But he remembers, of course, what Groan has done for him, and restrains himself.

‘You’re dressed and carrying bags at this hour about the house,’ replies Groan in the same calm, nearly pleasant tone. His neutral, sand-coloured hair looks almost translucent in the pale light.

‘You’re a snake, that’s what you are,’ explodes Hermione abruptly, ‘how can we possibly trust that once we leave you wouldn’t tell on us, and that you won’t do anything…’ she struggles for a suitable word, ‘untoward to Ginny?’

‘Because I don’t care for any one of you, except by way of accident,’ he pauses, glancing for some reason at Ron, ‘and because I’ve had plenty of opportunities to do untoward things to Ginny and I haven’t,’ he finishes, his words clipping against each other, and punctuates the statement with a strange, sideward smile. Yet there seems to be something missing about him: Hermione frowns, realizing that the usual perfect façade of pleasant politeness is revealing chinks in its armour. She stares at him, at the light shadows about his eyes.

So this is what Groan is when he’s tired.

But Hermione remembers Groan dancing with Ginny at the wedding, his body respectfully apart from hers, and Groan brushing something off Ginny’s hair, seemingly distractedly, and she remembers what they – Harry, Ron and herself – have to do.

‘Fine then,’ she says, shortly, and turns to Harry and Ron. ‘Come on, we’ve got no time for this. Ginny will be safe enough here,’ she pauses, and casts one final purposeful glance at Groan. ‘He wouldn’t try to do anything to her within the Burrow; it’s too well-protected against aggressive spells, and anyway the others would hear him easily.’

‘But of course,’ agrees Groan, expression unchanged. He shifts Ginny’s body, so that she is facing him, her head falling onto his shoulder and resting against his neck. Ron looks worried; Harry looks away.

‘Goodbye then,’ Ron finally manages, ‘And make sure you get Mum to look after Ginny as soon as possible.’

‘I will,’ Groan nods, and turns away, half-carrying, half-pulling Ginny along with him, her white dress brushing against the corridor.

‘And Groan,’ continues Ron, looking almost as if he were choking on his own words. Groan stops, but does not turn around. ‘Thank you for everything. Well, you know.’

Groan gives a curt, sharp nod, and rounding the corner, his short neat hair even more so that indecisive, quite indefinable colour against the rich red of Ginny’s, his footsteps fade away slowly.

Ignoring Harry’s questioning look, Ron turns away, very suddenly pale.

~

The dark-haired boy sweeps a finger along the jaw line; it is clean and very delicately sharp, and it pleases him. He very much likes the rich red of the hair, too, and the wide amber eyes and the small, perfect mouth. Altogether all these things are beautiful; he likes it like the way he likes all of those other things that he collected from other people, really a lifetime ago – half a century – but so very near the tips of his fingers, only one or two or six or seven years ago from his own very real youth.

Perhaps, if she somehow manages to survive this – he doubts it, smiling almost disappointedly, like a cat which finds its mouse dead instead of alive – he could keep her in a special glass room, and watch her grow into something even more beautiful. He would like that. She would be so perfectly untouched, and the red and the white and the gold would be so pure. So perfectly ready to be defiled, just behind a thin glass; he could watch behind and press his fingers against its surface and smile to himself.

He himself is young. Only sixteen.

Leaning forward, he presses his finger against her lips, and feels the life within her ebb away.

~

Only sixteen and wanting to stop a grief only more acute in isolation, Draco Malfoy thinks of the girl who had woken him up this morning, the girl whom he had followed with his eyes, half-lazily, across the backyard of the Burrow, on the other side of the window to his left, the girl whose room he can see into through the forgotten hole in the wall.

Clenching his fist, the back of his hand laced with silvery wounds, and ignoring the words across his arm, he tries to remember the first time he had seen her, at the bookshop in the summer before his second year, but a strange lurching sensation in his stomach makes him know rather than recall that something isn’t right. He doesn’t remember something, for some reason. Something is at the tips of his memory, but isn’t within its reach.

It disturbs him, and distracts him enough.

Finally, as the minutes tick by and sleep slowly claims him, a finger is swept along a jaw line somewhere and in some time, and he smiles, unseeing.

~

Moving quickly and silently in his strange half-walking, half-running gait, he returns to the corridor, stopping at the fallen frame.

Slipping his hand into a black glove, he carefully and slowly pulls a single long, hooked wire from the back of the frame, strong but thin and almost invisible from a distance. Freed, the wire springs magically into a compact, thin coil, slightly smaller than a gumdrop. He pockets the wire, and then, with the same hand, lifts the heavy frame with some difficulty and returns it to its original position on the wall. He stands back for a moment, staring into the photograph of a picturesque Romanian countryside, and, deciding something, he nods, more to himself than anything, and leaves for his room.

He will have to clear away the others later.

Picking up the gold-handled wand from the desk at the corner of the room, he bends over her, having left her on the bed only moments ago, and mutters a spell, before slipping the wand into the folds of his robes which he had thrown onto his bed, as he waits for her to regain consciousness.

‘Ginny,’ Timothy Groan smiles as she blinks, staring up at him, ‘you’re alright. I suppose I wouldn’t need to awaken your mother, then.’

~

‘Why would you need to do this, Tom?’

The tone is light, and he turns around and looks the younger boy in the eye; not for the first time, he wonders wryly how such weak-coloured hair, incongruently dark eyes and pale skin could altogether make such a strangely compelling face. There is beauty, possibly, in Titus, the seventy-seventh Heir to the House of Groan, but not of a kind that settles well on a fifteen-year-old; the boy wears his looks like it were an overlarge robe he is patiently waiting to grow into.

‘You ask so much, Titus,’ he replies easily, smiling at him, a complacent, intimate smile he dispenses without thought.

The boy only stares back at him; abruptly, he leans back, and something passes over his face that looks dangerously like mutiny.

‘You don’t care for what I do, don’t you, Titus?’ he whispers, leaning closer to the boy, close enough to feel his breath against his own skin. ‘Strange how you don’t seem to love anything.’

Titus only turns away, although he doesn’t pull back from him. Tom Riddle, in his Hogwarts robes with his long fingers smudged with ink and blood, waits.

Finally he responds.

‘You don’t love anything either, Tom,’ Titus Groan says, looking him in the eye, and slowly backs away, moving into the darkness of the corridor.

~

‘So he can’t use magic any more?’

Minerva McGonagall chooses not to turn around; the voice is balanced on a knife point. Her humiliation is enough, and McGonagall knows enough of the Malfoys not to turn around and be party of it.

‘It was a very old spell You-Know-Who used on him,’ McGonagall replies softly, feeling the faint points of red at her own cheeks; having known the person so long ago, she still cannot erase the shame at not being able to say his name. ‘Unless…’

‘Unless what, Professor McGonagall?’

The woman’s tone is desperate, and McGonagall almost winces, hating that she should address her in this way, because it almost makes Narcissa Malfoy nee Black so young and so vulnerable again, and makes their relationship seem somehow more intimate. Resolutely keeping her back to her, she tries to keep her tone calm and steady, unable to stop herself from feeling intensely ashamed, as if somehow she has failed this girl – this woman, all these twenty years.

‘Unless your son has a secret store of backbone, or unless the magic in his blood is more potent than any of us had thought,’ she replies.

‘Unless that’s the case, Narcissa, I’m sorry.’

Finally she leaves the room, never once looking at the younger woman as she does so, feeling as if her last words applied in so many more ways than one.

~

The next morning, when her parents find out about Harry, Ron and Hermione, Ginny stares unflinchingly into her bowl of cornflakes, Timothy’s hand warm and dry around hers.

She feels, oddly enough, Fleur’s eyes on her, but refuses the acknowledge her sister-in-law; Ginny would never admit it, but Fleur knows, maddeningly enough so, more than everyone ever thinks she does, and Ginny has always never liked to be on the receiving end of the thought processes of such characters of her ilk.

And Ginny, gripping her spoon with her other hand, is almost white with anger.

‘They’ve already sent a team of Aurors to Godric’s Hollow, Molly,’ her father is saying, a Ministry owl having landed on the kitchen table fifteen minutes before with a note addressed to him. ‘Shacklebolt’s going to bring them back; they’ll be safe.’

Her mother’s expression clearly shows that she thinks otherwise. Her father reaches towards her, and places a placating hand on her shoulder.

And then her mother turns towards her.

‘Ginny,’ she starts, ‘did any of them – Harry – did they…’

‘No.’

Her mother seems taken aback at the answer; her father’s mouth is opened slightly, his lips forming a rather ridiculous-looking ‘o’.

She stares at them unflinchingly. Her mother’s eyes soften.

She hates this.

‘Well, Ginny, I’m sure…’

‘I don’t care, Mum,’ Ginny replies, and turns back to her cornflakes, her left hand still in Timothy’s right, and begins to eat, tasting only the numbing cold of the milk and nothing else.

She knows rather than sees her parents look at each other uncertainly, and suddenly a wave of disappointment washes over her; couldn’t they be more sensitive, couldn’t they solve everything? Aren’t they supposed to be her parents?

Abruptly, there is a loud thump from the living room, just beyond the threshold of the kitchen; before anyone actually responds, a figure staggers in.

‘Molly, Arthur,’ rasps Remus Lupin, his face ashen. ‘We’ve got them, but we’re going to need your help…’

~

‘There were Dementors everywhere,’ he hears a voice saying, as he slowly gains consciousness, the tips of his fingers feeling cold and numb.

‘Ginny,’ he whispers, then more strongly so, as the room and its characters swim into view, ‘Where’s Ginny?’

Silently, the girl steps up from behind Lupin, nearing the bed, and the room is suddenly quiet, watching the two of them, but he doesn’t care.

‘I, Ginny…’ he falters, reaching towards her.

Her face is still white and hard and angry, but she seems to understand, though. Without speaking, she bends down, and shifts so that he can embrace her.

He buries his face into her long red hair; holding her like a lover would, Harry Potter begins to weep.

~

The room holds its breath as he steps into it; the wards McGonagall had put up around his bed had been removed, because, well, there is nothing he has that can warrant its need anymore. And they know he wouldn’t be leaving this house.

Weasley and Granger, both pale, sitting side-by-side to each other facing the bed, with Weasley holding a half-eaten chocolate bar in his hand.

Lupin, and the Aurors, Kingsley Shacklebolt and Moody and his cousin Nymphadora Tonks, and the other male Weasleys and their parents, who are arranged in their twos and threes and ones about the small room, faces stiff with helpless concern.

They pull back when they see him, not wanting to touch him.

Finally, Potter, who is half-reclined on the bed, holding on desperately to Ginny Weasley, pliant body almost glowing white in the full sunlight that filters in from the windows.

‘I need you,’ Potter chokes, and Ginny Weasley nods, never making a sound despite of how cruelly he holds her, and suddenly something catches in Draco’s chest.

Angry, alone, and blind, he turns away, only knowing that he has to get away from her, and this room, this house.

~

The sunlight burns into his eyes when he steps out, but he half-runs, half-staggers into the backyard, through its gate, and into the meadows, directly before the forest; he slips and cuts himself – his bare feet bleeding, he can hardly see the blood before he continues, in his mad dash away from somewhere into anywhere, the colours bright about him, too bright for him to see.

He runs and he runs, and when he finally realizes that the darkness receives him, hurtling him downwards into his misery and unconsciousness, he almost forgets that he wants to cry.

~

Standard Disclaimer: All characters and concepts are owned by JK Rowling; however, I do own the characters of Timothy Groan (though he is admittedly largely inspired of Mervyn Peake's Steerpike from the Gormenghast trilogy), and Tiernay and Titus Groan. The characterization of mentioned-briefly-in-canon-character Terence Higgs is purely of my improvisation. I'm actually rather fond of him, so he'll likely appear in the future as well.

Additional notes: With thanks especially to the observant tudorrose1533, who had remarked that time in the fic seems to be rather squashed - and yeah, it is because I made a mistake with it; I had assumed wrongly that 1st June was a Friday, when it really is a Saturday...in other words, Fleur and Bill's wedding, according to the previous chapters, would have to be on 3rd June, a Monday. Harry, Ron and Hermione's reappearance at the Burrow would be on 4th June, the same day as the happenings of this chapter. I do apologise for any confusion caused. Thanks so much again, tudorrose1533!

With love and thanks again to all previous reviewers. And no, bnm, you're not missing any prequel (I just have an irritating tendency to write convoluted plots); hopefully, June is going to be the prequel for another fic planned, September. :)

Chapter Four: Blood and Ink

4th June, 1997

‘I’m small enough, Tonks; anyway, I’m sure I heard something down there,’ she says; finally, feeling the weight of Tonks’ gaze lifting away slowly from herself, knowing all along that she would have had no choice to agree – this is her cousin they are looking for, considering – she lowers herself carefully into the small dip just on the inside of the bottom of the slope just a few feet away from the river, so covered with dead leaves it is almost unnoticeable, her hand gripping tightly to her wand.

Her feet touch the side of something, for half a moment, when she slips –

And everything begins to fall.

~

He stands at the window, feeling still slightly sick from his recent proximity to the Dementors, the dense heaviness of the chocolate still being rolled slowly in his mouth, when Harry begins to speak.

‘Why do you think that Malfoy would do that?’ he asks, and Ron half-turns to look at him as Hermione begins to answer the question, realizing as he does so, suddenly, how very small and pale Harry looks; it has never struck him until now that Harry isn’t very tall or very wide: he is really slender, almost thin, and he is likely, by now, slightly more than half a head shorter than Ron himself. The green eyes stare out of the sharp face in a manner that almost seems painfully acute; Ron narrows his eyes, abruptly wondering why he only seems to notice them now…

And then from the corner of his eye, he notices the first red sparks being sent up into the summer sky.

~

With them gone, with more gone, it would be so much easier for everything to fall into plan, he thinks grimly, remembering just how Harry Potter had held on to Ginny, but his quick mind moves at so ruthless a pace that the thought has not completed itself before he has already begun to embark on another train of thought, calculating how exactly he can direct the current cast of players along the lines of his motivations, even as he trudges through the claustrophobic forest, too dense for this continent for it not to be magical.

When the first red sparks are sent up into the summer sky, back from the area where Ginny and Tonks are supposed to be, the thoughts freeze for a moment, and then transfigure themselves into something even more immediate, as Timothy Groan sprints towards them, wand at a ready.

~

Someone holds her, slender hands twisting roughly around her frame and pulling her up from the soft, mossy floor; opening her eyes, the panic coming up her throat forcefully like bile, she can hardly see anything.

‘Malfoy,’ she chokes, recognizing the white-blonde hair, shadowed into a pearl-like grey. ‘I was right; you are here.’

He doesn’t answer; what little light there is, coming from the mouth of the hole, allows her to understand that he has raised an eyebrow. The grey eyes are almost black, and strangely reflecting.

Finally he speaks. ‘It wasn’t like I had a choice,’ he says, voice so bitter he almost sounds like himself again, and at this, in the closing darkness she begins to laugh, hysterically, at him and at their situation; she laughs and laughs, unseeing, until a sharp stinging pain across her cheek makes her realize abruptly that he has slapped her.

Shocked, staring at him, she whispers light-headedly, ‘We don’t need a lot of things in life, Malfoy; it isn’t as if we ever have a choice.’

This time, he comes so close to her she sees the streaks down his face, like silver rivulets on a white plain. ‘I really do wish you would say something original, Weasley, if we’re –’

A sound from behind him causes Ginny to look up; in the darkness, another figure is coming towards them –

And she begins to scream.

~

His face whips up towards the female Auror before him when they hear the scream – Ginny’s scream, from further away than either of them had truthfully expected.

Tonks flinches; the boy’s sickly colouring seems to belie something else entirely more menacing that makes her irrationally afraid – wary – of him.

‘Are there any shape-shifting creatures around here?’ he demands, his clear sharp voice hard. He peers into her face, expression urgent and narrowed; the dark eyes almost a queer heavy red in the sunlight. ‘Are there?’

‘I…’ Tonks begins uncertainly, but Timothy Groan has already turned his back on her, dismissing her hesitant answer, and bends down, starting to pull away the damp leaves from the mouth of the hole.

~

The silence seems to crystallize itself around them just as Weasley’s screams grow louder and more sustained.

He has turned around; before them is a boy about his age, face pale, blue eyes wide and darkened almost black. His black hair is damp and curling against his forehead, and there is something about him that is forcefully familiar. His robes are black, too heavy for summer.

‘Who are you?’ Draco finally whispers, and it is strange how his words seem to echo into the closing space louder than Weasley’s screams do.

At this point, Weasley abruptly stops screaming. A long silence hangs heavily over them –

‘Tom,’ Ginny Weasley sobs, and the boy’s red lips stretch into a smile.

~

Yet there is something wrong, realizes Draco, even as his blood freezes at that singular spoken word.

The boy is too silent.

But when the sound of river begins to drum in his ears again, he doesn’t know whether he should be relieved or not, as a slow horror begins to dawn on him.

~

‘Oh sweet Merlin,’ Tonks mutters under her breath, realizing, eyes wide as her hands begin to rake at the tangled leaves, opening the mouth wider and wider. ‘You don’t think…’

‘Yes,’ Timothy Groan nods, face tight; in a quick movement, he pulls himself up again, and points his wand in the direction of the hole.

‘Lumos maxima!’

~

There is a sudden strong beam of light, and a voice; the boy’s head snaps up in surprise. Almost instinctively, Draco reaches about Weasley for her wand, limp in her hand –

Without thinking, he whirls around, wand in hand, and yells the first thing that comes to his tongue.

‘Sectumsempra!’

A slashing light; the world explodes.
~

‘What was it?’ comes Ron’s voice, as he enters the threshold of the forest, Harry and Hermione close behind.

Timothy Groan’s head turns sharply at this; there is something shrewd in the pale face, but Ron doesn’t notice. Instead he steps around the younger boy, towards Tonks and Moody and Terence Higgs, a young Auror they had not been introduced to previously, who had been sent just that morning to help guard the Burrow.

Malfoy and Ginny, standing close and bloodied. Harry pushes past him; Ron stops in a vague kind of shock.

‘Kelpie,’ mutters Moody from his left, ‘Malfoy destroyed it. Somehow the curse he used was a tad too…effective. This is about the largest piece of it left.’ He lifts a hand; Ron almost retches at the small snake’s severed head within it, its black eyes wide and unseeing.

Moody nods, seemingly immune to Ron’s adverse response – instead, he brings the dead thing even closer to him, and continues in his usual agitated commentary, ‘See how perfectly diamond-shaped the head is? And the blue sheen to its skin? Could only have come from the mane of a fully-matured Kelpie, a rare one at that, and I’ll be surprised if it were indigenous to these areas.’

‘What do you mean…’ comes Groan’s voice from behind them; Hermione beats him to it.

‘So it’s foreign? But why would it come here then? You don’t think -?’ She pauses, and then starts again, ‘And isn’t Malfoy supposed to be unable to do magic?’

But Ron’s attention has been diverted, and he doesn’t really hear what Moody says next.

‘Ginny, Ginny, it’s alright, I’m here now, and it’s gone,’ Harry is saying, turning Ginny around to face him; Ginny’s eyes are wide and unseeing, and Ron is curiously and forcefully reminded of the dead snake in Moody’s palm. There is something tightly coiling within her, Ron suddenly realizes, and instinctively he moves forward to pull Harry away –

But in a sudden movement Ginny has already forced herself away, towards Malfoy, silent and white beneath the blood, and falls against him.

~

There are strange points of red on Harry’s cheekbones as the group slowly moves back to the Burrow; the embarrassed silence about him only seems to emphasize this.

Everything seems to slip about his mind and heart as he watches Ginny and Malfoy in front of him, Ginny holding tightly and blindly and quietly on to Malfoy like how a little girl holds on to her favourite toy in the dark. Malfoy is silent; even as Ginny had begun to hold him he has been silent. Ron and Groan had stepped in between them and Harry just moments before, and there had been something in Ron’s expression that had been both desperate and forbidding; Ron is behind Harry now, and he can hear his quiet breathing. Something white-hot in Harry wishes he or Malfoy would say something, do something for Harry himself to have an excuse; his fingers, still touched with cold, dig into his palms, pressing against the fine bones.

A slow, cold sensation begins to fall into his consciousness, and he finally knows that somehow, everything has changed.

~

Words raped from her tongue, Ginny leans against the silent Draco Malfoy; not thinking anymore.

~

‘I have so many questions I feel like a five-year-old,’ begins Tonks, her words light, but there is a concentration to her expression that betrays her. Her gaze shifts to the right; Higgs is far enough away, speaking to Timothy Groan at the porch facing the backyard. She pauses at this sight, then abruptly turns back, shaking her head as if to clear her thoughts.

Moody nods towards her; between her, Moody and Remus, the small coffee table in the living room of the Burrow is quiet.

‘For one,’ elaborates Tonks, ‘Ginny’s friend – that Timothy.’ She hastens to continue as Remus raises an eyebrow in question; it doesn’t escape her, however, that Moody’s expression remains unchanged, as if he is unsurprised by her priority in suspicions, even in the light of conversation topics such as her cousin and Ginny and Harry, all of which would possibly sustain several afternoon teas in succession. ‘I would certainly like to know more about why exactly he had that one-way Floo available at the onset, and why he didn’t report his situation to the Ministry immediately, and save us all the trouble of running about that mausoleum of a house he calls his ancestral home, but that’s another matter – what I would really like to know is how he could have possibly known, just now, that it was a Kelpie. I mean, you could have put two and two together sooner or later, what with the river, and the hole, and the damp leaves, but I’m telling you, his deduction was almost immediate. Practically as soon as Ginny began to scream he asked me if there were any shape-shifting creatures native to the forest. And not only that. He cast the Lumos spell, not me – and yet there has been no letter from the Ministry. And I would have sworn he was pleased when Ginny started clinging on to my cousin; I was watching him, and something very close to a smile had flitted past his face, and I’ll bet ten Galleons that if we weren’t there he would have started to dance.’

‘I taught Timothy Groan for a year – he’s an intelligent boy, albeit rather quiet,’ nods Remus, ‘But I would agree with you, Tonks. It is rather suspicious.’

‘Not especially suspicious if you consider the boy’s heritage,’ retorts Moody gruffly, ‘I knew his father – he was a few years younger than me at Hogwarts, Lucius Malfoy’s year, to be exact, and McGonagall will tell you that his grandfather – he was in her year – was a black hole for question marks.’

Tonks, curiosity aroused, leans forward, ‘How exactly? Any juicy gossip you know, Moody?’

‘Well…his grandfather, Titus I think, was said to be thick as thieves with You-Know-Who when they were in Hogwarts, but as soon as he had finished his last year at Hogwarts he disappeared. Some said he controlled the Groan fortune quietly and spread it out across Europe, some suspected he worked underground for the Dark Lord, some thought he died…there was a lot of talk, but not nearly as much evidence, or at least never enough to trigger a concerted search. Slipped out of people’s minds, after a while. And then his son appeared at age eleven to attend Hogwarts, seemingly out of nowhere. I remember his name was Tiernay – thin sort of boy, very ambitious, but silently so. Likely,’ says Moody, his face screwing up at this point, as if pronouncing something sour, ‘very much like Ginny Weasley’s Timothy Groan. You’ll have a lot of questions about him, too, but you’ll likely never find the answers, Tonks. No one has.’

‘And with what happened about that hole, I would like to know how the Kelpie could have known the exact form that would trigger such a response from Ginny …’ says Remus, a thoughtful look upon his face, but abruptly Moody looks up, and gives a loud cough.

‘Need something, Higgs?’ growls Moody at the young man, good-looking in the pale, English fashion that seems rather to be the appropriate portrait of the young Slytherin. Except the lad’s face always shows everything – one would wonder how he ever got past his Auror training with the transparency of his countenance. However, he had somehow been assigned duty by Kingsley Shacklebolt himself for the protection of the Burrow…

He is, thinks Moody, either a very poor Slytherin, or a very exceptional one.

The young Auror simply shrugs at the question, and sits himself down between Tonks and Moody. ‘I’ve spoken to Timothy,’ he starts, his narrow face with its clear brown eyes earnest, ‘he has rather a lot to tell.’ He stops suddenly, and his long slender fingers begin to fidget, seemingly nervously, but Moody has been told it has been a long-time, almost unconscious habit of the lad, formerly considered Hogwarts’s best Seeker since Charlie Weasley – before, of course, the coming of Harry Potter.

‘I think – Moody,’ he begins again, in that abrupt manner of his, the fingers twisting and untwisting themselves in his lap, the brown eyes now everywhere else but on Moody, Lupin or Tonks, ‘I think we need to keep an eye on Ginevra – Ginny – Weasley and Draco Malfoy – especially Weasley.’

At the snort of frustration from Tonks, Moody sends her a sharp look, quelling whatever it is she is about to say. Higgs nods, jerkily, but his eyes are clear and steady; his gaze settles again on Moody. ‘Maybe more so than Harry Potter, even. There’s something going very wrong with the both of them.’

‘Groan said this?’ Moody finally speaks, his voice low.

The younger man’s gaze is unwavering. ‘He didn’t.’

‘Then how…?’ begins Tonks, but Higgs interrupts, cleanly and clearly. His fingers finally extricate themselves from each other.

‘It’s precisely because he didn’t,’ he says, and for the first time in days, Moody allows himself a real smile, even as Tonks wears an expression of pure unadulterated disbelief on her face.

A very exceptional Slytherin, is our Higgs.

~

‘Miss Weasley, you have to let go,’ McGonagall says in exasperation, only short of physically plying the girl’s white fingers from Draco Malfoy’s arm – the arm on which the Dark Lord had written his war cry. The expression – or lack thereof – on Ginny Weasley’s face has not changed since McGonagall and Poppy Pomfrey Apparated onto the Burrow’s grounds just minutes after the two had been brought in, and she still refuses to let go of the older boy; Draco Malfoy, for his part, has not spoken a word, and instead seems more dangerously pale by the second.

His blood, thinks McGonagall, almost wildly, frantically, it must have been the only reason why he could have done such magic – uncontrolled magic – just moments before…

And if Ginny Weasley does not let go of him so that Poppy can attend to him, he will most definitely die.

‘Minerva…’ murmurs Poppy from her side, ‘I have no choice; the girl’s in shock, but I need the boy…’

McGonagall nods. Deliberately ignoring the furious look that Molly Weasley, practically physically restrained by her husband, sends in her direction; she points her wand at her student, and utters a spell.

There is a sharp, piercing scream, and then a liquid, thick and heavy – ink and blood, she knows, almost absently – splatters everywhere.

~

‘Something’s wrong,’ begins Ron, pacing about his room, since they had been shooed away previously by a flustered-looking Madam Pomfrey from Ginny’s, ‘something’s very, very wrong.’

‘Of course something’s wrong,’ murmurs Hermione; worriedly she casts a glance at Harry, who has not spoken since arriving back at the Burrow from the woods.

‘No, Hermione, you don’t understand,’ says Ron, frustration creeping into his voice, ‘When I thought – when I somehow knew – that something’s going to happen to Ginny: and no, what just happened doesn’t count, because it’s something bigger, something worse…I thought that it meant that the three of us had to begin looking for the Horcruxes earlier, and try to destroy You-Know-Who as soon as possible. But I thought wrong…I think it must somehow be something that’s much closer that we’ve somehow overlooked…’

‘How do you think so much, Ron? Wouldn’t your head explode?’ Suddenly Harry’s voice, quiet and with a kind of foreign quality, interjects. Ron looks at him, startled; there is something oddly mobile within the depths of his dark green eyes, and for the first time, looking at him, Ron almost thinks he tastes fear, its sweet, acrid edge cutting into the tip of his tongue.

‘Harry,’ says Hermione, a shocked, almost frightened expression on her face. And then Ron realizes why Harry sounded strange to him – there is a thread of real malice in his voice he has never suspected Harry would ever possess.

‘There are bigger things than just you and the prophecy here, Harry,’ Ron says, trying to keep his voice steady. ‘And I know…’

‘That Ginny is right in the middle of it?’ interrupts Harry, the tone of his voice still very much the same. Ron forces himself not to take a step away from his best friend.

‘I know that too, Ron,’ he continues, ‘and I’m going to stop it, even if it destroys either of us.’ Then, abruptly, he gets up and starts towards the entrance of the room in one fluid movement, brushing almost roughly past Ron.

Ron already knows who he refers to.

When Ron’s eyes meet Hermione’s, he knows as well that things have truly fallen out of their control.

~

A whiplash of magical force, and then suddenly everything is static again.

Poppy, paler than McGonagall has ever seen her to be, starts to speak first, her words tripping over each other in their sudden torrent.

‘I need to stop the blood first; he’s lost too much blood. And I have to disinfect the wounds – I can’t possibly imagine how…how ink could possibly have been in his system, but it cannot be anything good…’

Ginny Weasley, after that scream, suddenly sobs: the sound almost sounds strangled within her throat. Her parents rush towards her, but McGonagall, staring at the girl’s white face, doesn’t remember anything that ever looked so fearful.

The ink and the blood is everywhere about the room, staining the worn white sheets with crimson and black.

Abruptly McGonagall’s eyes are back on Draco Malfoy, knowing that…

Knowing that it isn’t just his blood that has allowed him to perform magic.

tbc

Additional notes:
-The Lumos maxima spell Timothy Groan uses isn't exactly pure canon; it just appears in the PoA movie (so says the HP Lexicon). The Sectumsempra spell, or Slashing Hex, used by Draco is ironically the same one used on him by Harry.
-A Kelpie, according to some definitions, is supposed to be a rather murderous river spirit that often appears as a horse but which can also shapeshift, and can apparently be assumed to be dangerous according to its rating in the Fantastic Beasts canon (with thanks to the HP Lexicon again).

I'll be going on holiday to Thailand next week (and school will start come January), so updates might be a tad slower from now on. Please do still read and review, however, so I can better improve upon my writing.

Chapter Five: Stratagems

 

4th June 1997

 

‘Ginny, you’re awake,’ breathes a voice, too sharp in the corners of her mind.

 

She blinks, irritably, her body still feeling tender, ‘I know, Harry.’

 

There is a pause as she looks at him, and then looks away, drawing her hands from her sides. Avoiding him.

 

‘What’s wrong, Ginny?’ His voice could almost pass off as being calm; Ginny would have turned around in surprise if it isn’t for – the circumstances.

 

‘You mean what’s wrong other than all the things that are wrong? For example, Kelpies appearing out of nowhere in the shape of Tom Riddle, you and Ron and Hermione being ambushed by Dementors – oh wait, and we forget, of course, the entry of Draco Malfoy, and his spectacular exit, and the fact that he’s probably about to –’

 

‘You’re talking a lot suddenly for someone who refused to talk for so long,’ Harry suddenly interjects. She looks at him, now, unable to help herself. There is something fluid in his eyes. Perhaps it’s the moonlight, streaming in gently into the room…

 

‘I was in shock,’ she replies quickly, the words reliable and always having explained nothing, really; she pauses. And then opens her mouth again, quickly continuing before Harry can, though this time at a more moderate pace. ‘And I can’t really be accountable for my actions immediately afterwards; I think my mind – just fled for a while there, I suppose.’ She braces herself for his coming words, his hands.

 

Unexpectedly, Harry leans back.

 

He seems to study her for a while, eyes narrowing; madly enough, she begins to blush even as strangely, coldly, tendrils of something within her begin to unfurl. There is a palpable sense of something amorphous, almost dangerous, hanging between them.

 

‘You can’t leave your room for a while, Ginny; Madam Pomfrey said so. I think Mrs. Weasley should be coming up soon to see you, along with the others,’ Harry abruptly says, breaking the heavy silence. There is something detached about his tone of voice, something dead, and despite her confusion about – everything, she supposes, Ginny is almost surprised to find her heart breaking a little at that. He sounds like how he used to. Indifferent, really.

 

Then he nods, standing, his eyes sliding off her, and leaves the room.

 

~

 

Timothy Groan, bending and facing a small frame on the wall, almost reaches into his pocket to finger for a small, coiled wire when a voice says, ‘And I have broken all your warped little charms on the photos, lad.’

 

He freezes, not turning around.

 

‘Ingenious charms those were,’ continues the voice, gruff-edged but almost light, ‘it’s been a long time since I’ve seen one of those, and I have to confess I never knew its name. Care to enlighten me, lad?’

 

He finally turns around, facing Alastor Moody. His back is held straight.

 

‘It doesn’t have a name,’ he replies, almost matter-of-factly. ‘An old household charm used by elves and maids sick of listening to grumbling portraits.’

 

‘Hmm,’ Moody says in return, ‘that must be most useful. Dreaming up of scenarios that the portraits’ subjects can immerse themselves in and cursing them to repeat changing permutations of these over and over, making them neglect the situation external to their frames. Exquisite form of torture, really…those elves and maids of yore must have had bucketfuls of time.’

 

The boy in front of him only nods solemnly. ‘I believe there used to be an abundance of elves and maids in the old houses, sir, to allow for such excesses.’

 

‘Stop playing your little games with me, boy,’ Moody suddenly growls. ‘The only reason why you are here still…’

 

‘Is because I’m one of the players you want to watch?’ finishes Groan, sounding perfectly helpful.

 

Moody leans back. ‘Is because you’ll be in more danger if you were away, won’t you?’ he says, softly and almost gently. The years and the sins that the boy is chasing…

 

The boy turns away, but stands his ground.

 

‘Be careful, boy. Do what you have to do, but don’t do it through such ways; don’t hurt her.’

 

Timothy Groan nods, and, not looking up at Moody, turns to move away.

 

~

 

‘Mum, there’s a black shadow in my room!’ The voice is high with its usual panic, and Mr. and Mrs. Underwood groan to themselves from across the hall. Mrs. Underwood turns her head into her pillow, muttering, ‘Your turn, please, Julian…’

 

‘Nic, I’ve got a presentation tomorrow…’ A pause, then a yawn. ‘Anyway…well…he called for you, dear.’

 

Mrs. Nicole Underwood curses under her breath; she cannot argue against that – hasn’t found an argument against that. And this happens, night after night after night. First sounds, then strange lights, and now a shadow in his room…

 

Think of Andrew’s beautiful eyes, she wills herself, think of your baby boy’s beautiful blue eyes…

 

In any case Andrew has gone quiet, which is unusual for him – it always was cries and screams until she half-stumbles her way in and provides maternal comfort and protection against the forces of darkness. Perhaps it isn’t quite the time yet for Andrew to sleep on his own – or perhaps they should get a night light, yes, that was probably the best solution…

 

She reaches the door frame, and flicks on the light switch.

 

And she begins to scream.

 

~

 

5th June 1997

 

‘They attacked a Muggle family last night,’ said Mr. Weasley, and there is something hollow and despairing in his voice which makes his children flinch. ‘Nothing to do with the magical community – except, well, except...except that it was in the vicinity…’

 

‘How bad was it, Dad?’ asks Fred – George has his face turned away from the table.

 

Mr. Weasley looks like he cannot bring himself to speak – he grimaces, opens his mouth, and then shuts it again.

 

‘They murdered a six-year-old Muggle boy,’ comes Moody’s rough, matter-of-fact voice, ‘slashed him apart. He was wide awake when they did it – blue eyes wide open…’

 

‘…the parents?’ comes a voice in the stunned silence, a thread of dawning horror in it.

 

‘Completely unharmed,’ replies Moody steadily, though at Mrs. Weasley’s look he corrects himself, continuing, ‘well, as unharmed as anyone can be when you find your only son brutally murdered with no one and nothing about other than a large black Death-Eater’s cowl hanging from the clothes stand.’

 

‘What spell was used?’ Harry’s voice is steadier than everyone seems to expect it to be – at least everyone turns around in surprise as he says it.

 

Moody’s magical blue eye wheels around to him. ‘Sectumsempra spell, just like the one Malfoy used against the Kelpie.’

 

Harry’s eyes harden, and he says, quickly, ‘Well, what…’

 

‘Malfoy has not come out of a coma, Harry,’ says Ginny, voice soft. ‘In any case, the wards are back up around him.’

 

Abruptly the silence descends again, as Harry slowly turns to face her.

 

‘Well, other than Malfoy and I, I can think of only one other person who would know…’

 

‘Why leave the cowl, though, Moody?’ interjects Tonks. She shoots a glance at Harry, which is ignored, before sending another to Ginny – who is looking down at her bowl of cornflakes.

 

‘Calling card,’ says Moody gruffly. ‘Jeering at us.’

 

‘How are we going to deal with the situation, sir?’ comes another voice – Higgs. His fingers are twisting about each other again, faster and faster. ‘We don’t have the resources to protect all the houses around…’ He pauses, and everyone waits for his next words, the inevitable and the unwanted. ‘And it’s going to happen again. It’s going to happen until…’

 

‘Until the wards on the Burrow are taken down,’ finishes Mrs. Weasley, ‘until we all come out in the open for their picking.’

 

Her hand flutters about the handle of the teapot, her voice breaks, and this time no one can speak.

 

~

 

The silence is only broken when a broken sort of cough comes from the stairs. Everyone looks up in surprise.

 

‘Malfoy?’ expostulates Ron, always the first to react. His wand is gripped tight in his hand. ‘Aren’t you…?’

 

‘…I don’t know either,’ the blond boy replies, his voice weak, ‘I just woke up and sort of pulled myself up,’ He pauses, taking in the suspicion and confusion on the faces before him. Something steels in his deathly pale face. ‘I was hungry,’ he continues, voice slightly harder this time.

 

‘Did you do anything to the wards, Malfoy?’ Moody asks, studying the boy with a narrowed eye – his magical eye whirls madly about its socket.

 

‘What wards?’ Malfoy replies irritably, as he grips the banister and slowly descends down the stairs. ‘There weren’t any. Pomfrey must have thought I was going to die anyway. I would say it would have likely been a better fate,’ he pauses again, on the last step, looking critically about him in a shadow of an attitude that had come to define him in the eyes of those in the room, ‘hell should have better entertainment than this.’

 

‘Then why do you seem to be so unwilling to saunter down in that direction?’ says Harry, the venom evident in his voice. His glare is directed purely at Malfoy now.

 

‘Harry,’ admonishes Mrs. Weasley; brushing her hand across her eyes quickly, she continues, almost in her usual bustling manner, ‘the questions for the poor boy can be asked later. He’s hungry – as all of rest of you should be, as well. Although Arthur, perhaps you had better summon Poppy here now, for her to examine the boy as soon as possible. I doubt he should be up and about, really. But – breakfast, everyone, come now…’

 

Everyone shifts immediately, almost like clockwork; silently, Ginny rises to get the necessary items for one more place at the table from the kitchen. Malfoy has somehow made his way to the table, hovering – uncertainly, except that he somehow manages to look disdainful while he is at it – at the corner. Meeting his eye, she places his plate and utensils next to her own place, second to the corner of the table, then pauses –

 

‘Where’s Timothy?’

 

~

 

 

Additional notes: Harry's remark about sauntering down to hell is inspired of a line of description of the character Crowley from 'Good Omens' by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett.

Chapter Six: Stood on a Bridge, Tied to the Noose

5th June 1997

‘I’m sure they’ll find him, Ginny,’ Ron mutters, patting his sister’s back; ‘he can’t just have disappeared without a trace and for no reason.’

Hermione narrows her eyes; she has not spoken to Ginny these few days, despite wanting desperately to – about Harry, about Groan. But she cannot bring herself to, staring into the golden-flecked eyes that have suddenly become so foreign. And Harry…Harry holds himself away before all of them, even as Malfoy, being examined by Madam Pomfrey from across the living room, peers and leans forward ever so imperceptibly. There is something heartbreaking in Harry’s reversion to apparent indifference –

Hermione knows that despite everything else about his lack of speech, and his body language, he has not turned away from the smaller girl opposite him. Hermione knows that kind of tingling, barely suppressed pain, her own fingers having gripped the edges of a school desk so many times.

Why can’t Ginny see it?

Hermione gets up, unable to face the burden of the events about her any longer. Everything seems to be coalescing, she finds herself thinking; shaking her head slightly, she begins to absent-mindedly finger the upper frame of the fireplace…

Abruptly, something ricochets in her mind – quickly, Hermione bends down and reaches her hands into the inside of the fireplace. There is no soot, nothing except dust…dust that has settled in a perfect layer, undisturbed for days until Hermione intruded.

Mrs. Weasley has been too busy with everything to attend to the cleaning the way she would…

Suddenly, despite the warm summer weather, Hermione feels very cold.

She knows now – Timothy Groan never arrived by Floo.

He never arrived by any earthly method at all.

~

Harry wants to shake Ginny, but looking at her only seems to make it harder for him to even think.

And it’s difficult to watch her like this – caring so much for Groan, no matter how selfish that sounds even to himself. Harry closes his eyes. His head has started to hurt; he hasn’t been feeling very – very stable of late.

It must be the shock from yesterday…and the shock at Godric’s Hollow, he thinks, the shock of the Dementors…

But even he knows that it is more than that – even more than the true shock that he had first felt when he had stepped off the train onto the platform at the train station nearest to Godric’s Hollow, the surreal sensation of being somehow so close, although he didn’t – couldn’t – admit it. It has been so difficult to keep himself in check; he has been having these headaches, and he has been feeling so easily tired…he cannot even bring himself to fight Ginny any more.

Harry opens his eyes again, focusing on Ginny, Ron. Ron is still patting Ginny’s back, every bit the concerned brother – but Harry remembers what Ron muttered the other night, about something being wrong, and even then he had somehow known the taller boy had meant something being wrong about Ginny, something wrong happening to her. And Ron had not slept well the night before. Harry had woken up in the middle of the night, when they had finally been sent to slept by Mrs. Weasley, turned away from Ginny’s room, to the loud creaks from his friend’s bed, and had turned to find him folded in a foetal position, hands clenched against the sheets, eyes tightly shut.

The pain begins to creep around the back of his head again, and Harry groans silently to himself. There is just so much.

~

And then Terence Higgs comes down the stairs, and announces that he has found Timothy Groan.

‘Where?’ Ginny demands. She stands up quickly, and her eyes are wide, making her look younger than she really is. ‘Where is he?’

Higgs seems almost to pause before answering; his quietly handsome countenance seemingly bland, he says, ‘In a far corner of your attic. Seems he sleepwalks. He didn’t even wake with the din the ghost up there was making.’

‘How did you find him, then?’ asks Hermione, even as Ginny pushes past everyone, running up the stairs, Harry’s and Malfoy’s eyes following her. Ron looks at Hermione, his clear blue eyes unusually keen.

‘The ghost rather unhappily mentioned it to me when I walked up on a hunch,’ replies Higgs evenly, and his hands are still, grasped together.

Hermione’s eyes meet Ron’s; without speaking, they turn to glance at Harry. The black-haired boy nods at them, even as his eyes are hooded, tired.

When the three of them leave together, Draco Malfoy turns his back on Madam Pomfrey, and begins to stand up as well.

~

Perhaps it is the first time that Ginny has seen Timothy in this state. His shock of pale hair is unkempt, the parting having somehow changed from right to left, and the usually well-ironed clothes are rumpled, draping over the limbs in an emphasis of the almost girlish, vulnerable slenderness of the boy. In the late morning sunlight, his eyes are a strange violet. She doesn’t quite remember them being of that shade of colour.

‘Timothy?’ she asks, bending down towards him. He is seated on the floor, and there is still a disconcerting look of disorientation on his face. ‘Are you alright?’

Abruptly any trace of disorientation is wiped clean from his face, and Ginny almost glimpses a kind of harsh shrewdness in his features before he turns fully, smiling, at her.

‘I’m quite fine, Ginny,’ he says, ‘I’m also very sorry.’ The smile turns rueful. ‘It seems I have rather…disturbed the family with my little midnight sojourn.’

‘I never knew you sleepwalked,’ says Ginny. She reaches out a hand for him, and he takes it; with a little effort she helps him up on to his feet.

‘Well,’ says Timothy, his tone light, ‘I never quite knew myself the seriousness of the condition.’

‘You mean you’ve never sleepwalked this far before?’

There is a pause, as Timothy runs his hands down his clothes, brushing off dirt, but Ginny cannot but help feel that he is avoiding her question. Finally, he says, ‘Hmm, perhaps, yes.’

‘Another perfectly non-committal answer, I see,’ cuts in a new voice; Ginny turns around to see Hermione, with Ron and Harry directly behind her, standing at the threshold. Hermione. Ginny hasn’t spoken to her in a while, and seeing her at the doorway leading into the attic Ginny almost forgets her previous anger towards the older girl.

Timothy is facing Hermione calmly, his face almost blank.

‘Why don’t you start giving some real answers, Groan?’ says Hermione, and her face, Ginny realises, in the sunlight, is becoming harder, looking more and more like a woman’s. ‘Like how you got here in the first place?’

‘I sleepwalk, Miss Granger,’ says Timothy slowly, and Ginny can hear the antagonistic condescension that is laced into his tone.

‘Hermione,’ Ginny finds herself saying, ‘Maybe we should do this some other time – perhaps Timothy ought to be getting a rest first before you start asking him such questions…’

‘Timothy Groan,’ interrupts Hermione, and her tone is emphatic, ‘You will tell us how exactly you managed to get into this house.’

Behind her and Ron and Harry, Ginny sees Malfoy’s white-blond head lingering at the end of the landing.

‘I have already elaborated on that,’ replies Timothy, but Ginny is beginning to feel the unfurling sense of apprehension blossoming within her. Yet unconsciously she takes a step closer to him.

‘The grate at the fireplace, Groan, is covered by a smooth layer of dust,’ Hermione says, her voice level and almost patient, ‘a smooth layer of dust,’ she repeats, ‘which has not been disturbed for days, perhaps weeks. You did not come here by Floo, Groan. Now, in case you did not already know, but I’m so very sure you do, the Burrow allows for Apparition only of the members of the Order of the Phoenix and the Weasley family. So you couldn’t have come by that means, either. And the wards on the Burrow have made it almost, if imperfectly so, Unplottable, so you could not very well have found it on a map, either, unless you had very ancient – and in that case, very inaccessible and backward maps on the Weasley family’s ancestral grounds – and entered into the house by physical means,’ Hermione pauses. Her eyes narrow. ‘I don’t like to not know about things, Groan. So why don’t you illuminate me?’

There is a resounding silence.

‘Harry,’ Hermione says, without turning around, ‘look very carefully at Groan, and talk to him.’

‘Hermione, what do you mean? Shouldn’t we interrogate him further?’ expostulates Ron. ‘Shouldn’t the Order know about this?’

‘Harry,’ Hermione says firmly. Then she steps aside, letting Harry face Timothy directly. Ginny feels as if she is rooted to the spot. There is a perplexed, yet angry expression on Harry’s face; there is unhappiness and confusion and so much anger.

And then abruptly, Harry’s face clears. For the longest time, Ginny stares at him, stares at his brilliant green eyes which are intent on Timothy. Then he opens his mouth to speak.

A sibilant hiss comes out.

~

‘Let me tell you the story, of a boy who shouldn’t have lived.’

‘He shouldn’t have lived, you see, for what he had seen, but unfortunately for him he did. He made a choice, and it was uninformed and misinformed, but it was a choice nonetheless. He was friends – very close friends – with an older housemate named Tom Riddle, and he fancied Tom liked him more than most, or at least appeared to like him more than most, because this boy wasn’t always very impressed with Tom like the others were. This boy didn’t hang on to Tom’s coattails. Most of the time Tom sought him out, not the other way around. But they were good friends, like many other good friends, and confided in one another, the older Tom helping the younger boy in his schoolwork, the younger boy listening to the older Tom about his troubles at the orphanage he was in. This boy understood Tom’s anger like no one else did, because he would always just listen quietly to all that sound and fury that poured off Tom’s tongue. He absorbed Tom’s anger, quietly. And Tom needed him for that; he couldn’t have contained all of that pain and anger all by himself, not at that age. He might have self-destructed.

‘But the boy didn’t know the extent of Tom’s ambitions, even as he listened to Tom’s stories and dreams and memories. The boy was like an undiscerning mirror to Tom, after a fashion, and after a while when Tom looked at him he saw himself. And by that time Tom had begun to make plans, but he also wanted security. He wanted something to preserve his memory in, a mirror of his soul, a perfect copy of himself and of his memories.

‘So he chose to perform a terrible variant of Necromancy on an old diary he had found at his orphanage a long time ago. It would have been such a perfectly ironic choice of medium, if not quite so very unpredictable. Tom as a sixteen-year-old had still been given to dramatics. And finally, his unwilling witness, and in some part, unwilling sacrifice, was the boy.

‘Something needed to be exchanged for Tom to tear his soul and make it undyingly sixteen in the pages of an old diary, ready for pain and emotion to poured into, and for him to become human on those alone again. He needed the boy for all that pain and emotion he had absorbed so uncomplainingly from him. But he also needed the boy as sacrifice for the help of the most capricious of common spirits.

‘A kelpie, with its power of shapeshifting, really has so much capacity for sympathetic magic; it reaches into the fears and desires of its victims, after all, for inspiration of its form. And its power is really so much more concentrated than that of an ordinary, half-witted boggart’s. Tom needed that reflected sensitivity in that diary to complement the bit of soul he tore out of himself to place into it, so that it was the ultimate legacy. And the kelpie wanted to live forever, too. It wanted the most vulnerable and yet most invulnerable form – it wanted a permanent human form. A form that holds the most power over all living creatures.

‘This boy was their compromise. But he was not a blank canvass for them to imprint their ambitions onto him completely. This boy became too powerful for them. He became the worst thing of all.

‘In the darkest magic of that hour, he became what was distilled from all three of them the worst thing imaginable. He was the boy and he was Tom’s hurt and anger of sixteen short years and he was the Kelpie’s unnatural long life and instinct all at once.

‘That boy was Titus Groan.

‘I am Titus Groan.’

~

‘Merlin,’ whispers Ron, as Timothy – Titus Groan ¬– finishes his story. The few of them has been quiet at the small landing leading into the attic all this time, listening to him. Even Malfoy’s presence hasn’t been questioned; he is nearest to Ginny, having moved up to better hear the story.

‘That’s why the Kelpie came yesterday,’ says Hermione, her voice strangely young-sounding compared to its tone of firmness previously. ‘It was coming for you, not Ginny or Malfoy. It had sensed your presence and had tailed you here. And that’s why Harry would know to speak Parseltongue to you. It’s instinctual. Kelpies understand Parseltongue.’

‘What happened to Tom when what happened to you…happened?’ asks Ginny, her voice breaking, her words coming out almost garbled and stumbling and incoherent.

‘Nothing,’ says Timothy – Titus – almost distantly, ‘he didn’t really know what he was doing. I didn’t really know what had happened.’

‘What are you doing here, then?’ interrupts Malfoy, very abruptly.

‘I needed to wait for all pieces of that particular magic that Tom employed to come together,’ replies Timothy – Titus. ‘I waited years for Ginny to surface; the magic of the diary does not follow linear time, you see. Tom had given it to Lucius a long time ago because of that, to pass it to the suitable candidate. And I waited years for your – mishap – to happen. Tom forgets, I think, in his corrupted form, what he wields with ink and blood.’

‘What do you want to do with Ginny?’ demands Harry.

‘I only want to help her destroy what’s left within her that is Tom’s hurt and anger.’ It is a simple reply, but Ginny feels very cold despite the summer heat.

‘And why would you want to do that?’ asks Malfoy, leaning forward. He is so close to Ginny now she almost feels his breath on her skin. She shivers.

Timothy – Titus, Ginny doesn’t know which, turns to him. That is almost a peaceful expression on his face.

‘I want to do that, Malfoy,’ he begins slowly, and then pauses.

‘I want to do that because I want to die.’

~

After Timothy – Titus’s words, the silence hangs sickeningly heavy, until Ginny finally breaks it by saying, as if despite herself, ‘Did you know that it would be me when you waited for the magic of the diary to resurface?’

The boy – not quite a boy – turns to her, and Ginny wonders if she sees friendship or pity in them, and she abruptly wonders which would be worse. Thankfully though, there is still that detachment in his gaze, a hardness that Ginny has become used to and finds herself strangely understanding.

‘No,’ says Timothy – Timothy, thinks Ginny, suddenly firmly, because I know him as Timothy, despite everything that has now changed – ‘I didn’t know. I could only bide my time and wait for it.’

‘Did Dumbledore know, then?’ asks Harry. His voice is surprisingly level. ‘Did Dumbledore know that – well, that you’re not quite human?’

Ginny almost thinks she imagines the flinch that passes through Timothy’s features like quicksilver; in a moment, though, Timothy’s face is blank and calm again, and he replies, ‘Dumbledore knew. He trusts me.’

Harry shakes his head abruptly, agitatedly at that, and then says, ‘I’m not even going to ask why that’s so. Why do you want to die, then?’

‘Harry,’ Ginny finds herself saying, ‘how can you…?’

‘It’s alright, Ginny,’ interrupts Timothy. He turns to face Harry directly, and there is an almost business-like hardness to his expression. ‘I doubt I can begin to explain it to you if you can’t already imagine it. Perhaps you could see it as a suitable revenge. Even so, my death would definitely be of benefit to you.’

Harry studies him through narrowed eyes. ‘In what way?’

‘Think about it, Potter,’ begins Timothy, and a ghost of a sneer settles on his features, ‘If we can reverse the spell that erases the perverted kelpie powers within me that prevents my death through physical means, and at the same time releases that bit of Tom’s soul kept alive by whatever pain and emotion I – and now Ginny and in some way Draco – have harboured for him, that would be the equivalent of making vulnerable the most dangerous and volatile of Tom’s Horcruxes for you to destroy.’

‘The spell is dark magic, isn’t it?’ says Ron, finally. There is something considering to his countenance, something Ginny finds herself, selfishly, almost sad to see is grown-up; it is as if Ron is just that much further away from her again.

‘Yes,’ replies Timothy clearly, ‘it is.’

‘Then there must be some other way,’ says Ron, his voice equally clear.

‘There isn’t,’ says Timothy. ‘Everything must be undone the same way it was put together.’

‘There has to be.’

His voice is of a tone and certainty that brooks no argument

~

That night, he watches her through the hole in the wall, his forehead and his neck strangely hot even in the warm summer night.

At first, as she comes close to the hole by entering the room through her door, he can see only her bare, slender ankles, white against the scratched parquet; he watches how she lifts the arch of her feet, resting her weight on the balls of her feet as she reaches for something at the top of her dresser – it is out of his sight, that – and he observes how the moonlight trips over the slim shapes of her calves as she moves further away from the hole.

Quietly he cranes his neck, pushing himself deeper behind the headboard, one elbow propped painfully onto the top of the bed’s metal frame.

She shifts away; comes back in old shorts and an oversized T-shirt, colour faded, and the only thing bright about her is the whiteness of her skin in the moonlight, and the deep red of her long hair. She seems distracted; she moves around the room, then abruptly turns on her heel and stops facing a different direction.

He can hear almost hear her steady breathing.

And suddenly, for no apparent reason that he can logically think of, he wants to ask her, shout through the tiny hole that just slips off into Sylvia Plath’s line at her, if she can tell him about Timothy Groan who was her friend and not her friend, and Harry Potter who so obviously and painfully loved her but whom he hated, and Tom Riddle who had sought to destroy him.

Perhaps because, inexplicably, all of Draco Malfoy’s questions now unerringly find themselves at Ginny Weasley’s doorstep.

~

Then she turns, and walks out of the room again.

In a moment he is out of his bed, too.

~

He hears footsteps pad softly across the landing. Beside him Ron is sleeping soundly.

He knows that Hermione is usually a sound sleeper too, and that it is unlikely that any of the other sleepers would be out, at this time. Terence Higgs is stationed outside the house.

Quietly, his head still pounding, he gropes for his spectacles on the side of his bed, and slips off.

~

‘Ginny,’ says Harry’s voice, and Ginny almost jumps; Harry always has such a quiet way of walking she never hears him, especially not when her head is full to burst with thoughts and questions and a strange sadness and sense of loss.

‘Hey,’ he says again, and reaches her. They are standing at the threshold of the kitchen, half in the flooding light from within the room.

‘Hey Harry,’ Ginny does not turn around, but her voice is kept light. She knows that despite everything that has changed, and all her guilt, she misses him; she misses his brilliant green eyes twinkling at her, she misses the way he never quite knows how to express himself, she misses how he smells so much like a boy should, like cut grass and rain.

She realizes all of this in this moment, with him so near to her, and almost feels as if something tightens in her chest.

It almost feels real, what it was between them.

‘Can’t sleep?’ she tries to say the words, but they come out choked instead. Horrified, she still doesn’t turn around, and her hands fly to her mouth and a half-formed sound comes out from somewhere in her throat.

‘Ginny,’ repeats Harry, and this time he pulls her around. In the half-light his brilliant green eyes are so bright and so full of something her heart almost lifts and she almost forgets the indifference with which he has treated her for the past hours.

But even so there is something too sharp about the way his eyes are so bright. Almost feverish-looking, Ginny thinks, fleetingly, is Hermione still administering the potion? And then, the thought, we haven’t all of us been very right in the head…

Then he smiles, a boyish, rueful smile. ‘A lot of things have happened, haven’t they?’

‘Things,’ Ginny repeats, helplessly, and she feels the ghost of a wan smile try to escape her lips.

‘Things,’ repeats Harry more resolutely, and the way he says it makes Ginny want to believe that these things will come to pass.

‘I’m sorry,’ Ginny blurts, suddenly, and then she wonders what she is apologizing for, before wondering how she can even start to apologize.

Harry looks at her levelly this time, and his hands are still over her wrists. She is suddenly aware of that, too. ‘The last few days were crazy, weren’t they?’

Ginny finds herself nodding fervently.

‘I was talking to Ron and Hermione,’ says Harry, ‘and we were thinking that perhaps it’s safest to stay at the Burrow and try to help Groan figure out what to do with himself – and Malfoy and…’

‘And me,’ finishes Ginny for him, and she almost surprises herself by hearing a note of bemusement in her tone.

‘And you,’ says Harry, nodding mock-gravely, then – he smiles again, and this time it is brilliant.

Ginny feels like her heart might break at any moment.

But Harry leans forward, and Ginny can see the brilliant green beneath his straight black lashes when he kisses her.

~

He has seen this happen before.

He once saw them, during the school term when the dew was still clinging to his robes and he could still feel the tiredness around his eyes after a Pepper-up Potion, as he walked quietly down the corridor back towards his dorms.

Ginny Weasley with her back almost ramrod straight, spelling uncertainty in her very posture, Harry Potter smiling and leaning forward.

Later, she smiled back at Potter.

Draco Malfoy could have told either of them that she wasn’t really happy.

That night, when he thought about it again, it somehow made him very, very angry.

That night, he found the route through which the Death Eaters could enter, and felt the feverish, coursing satisfaction that everything was going to be right in the world.

~

A/N: all the additional stuff about Necromancy and the Kelpie are of my own invention.

Chapter Seven: A Malfoy and a Weasley

19th August 1992

There is an awful lot of noise from the first floor; he turns from the bookshelf he is facing to lean over the banister, and sees the boy he hates with every fibre of his twelve-year-old being.

Harry Potter.

His eyes filled with the boy, he stalks down the stairs.
When he speaks to him, it is with his usual vitriol; everything is sharp and coursing through him and his words sound sharp and violent to his own ears.

And then she steps in.

He barely hears her speak enough to deliver a quick and ruthless retort back to her, just enough to make her flinch – he had learnt well from his father over the years – but really he drinks in her long dark red hair and gold eyes and pale skin. He remembers her. It was five years ago, but he remembers her.

He remembers a small girl with impossibly long rich red hair that shone like rubies, draped over an overlarge worn coat, her skin almost the colour of the snow she had fallen backwards against. Her eyes had been wide and gold in the morning sun as she stared up at him, aged seven. He had fallen over her.

Then she had laughed, and then stopped – and then she had smiled, a perfect smile, saying, ‘You’re an angel, aren’t you?’

It hadn’t been a question really, more like a statement. She must have really believed it. Then she had reached out a small slender white hand and touched his face, his hair.

‘My name’s Ginny. What’s yours? Do you have an angel name?’

That night, when he had reached home, he had stolen an embossed piece of parchment from his father’s desk, and had written, in his childish hand, Ginny Ginny Ginny.

Ginny Malfoy.

Five years later, the sight of her only makes him hate Harry Potter more.

~

6th June 1997

It has been four hours since Harry kissed her, and Ginny Weasley slowly pulls herself out of her bed to return to the kitchen where it happened.

As she makes her way down the stairs to the kitchen, she realises that this is a habit of hers; she eventually returns to things and places where she has a distinct memory of Harry. Not necessarily a good one – she remembers standing outside the Room of Requirement once in the past year, after Harry had left her to rush for a Potions class he had almost forgotten about, suddenly seeing in her mind’s eye Cho Chang walking towards Harry, and kissing him. She remembers having stood there for a long time, silently staring through a crack in the door, even as her eyes pricked with dust and tears.

Later that day, she had helped Hermione prepare a second portion of the love potion, and felt almost nothing when she slipped it into Harry’s pumpkin juice. He told her he loved her, that night.

Harry should be asleep by now, she thinks, even as she remembers his pulling away from their brief kiss, his eyes dark.

Then he told her that he loved her. But Ginny has been unable to sleep; she remembers nights thinking of whether Hermione really believes that Harry can love Ginny, if Hermione could have done what she had done.

When she reaches the kitchen, however, she starts as she sees, in the darkness, a figure hurdled over the table where her mother usually does the preparations for cooking, and her hand grips her wand –

‘I have no wand on me, and I doubt it’s entirely Gryffindor of you if you were to point one at me like that,’ comes a voice from the figure. The figure disentangles itself, and in the sliver of moonlight streaming in from the nearby window Ginny catches a flash of white-blond hair.

‘Malfoy,’ she says, calmly, but for whatever reason she feels disconcerted. She has been thinking too much of Harry, and of what she and Hermione has done.

‘So if it isn’t one-half of the golden couple of Hogwarts,’ remarks the boy in reply, and if Ginny were not irked already by his words she would have noticed a weak thread of tiredness in his voice. ‘Not returning for an early morning snog?’

‘You saw us.’

In the dim light she could just see Malfoy give her a long, hard look before he replies, ‘Yes.’

Strangely, even as she feels a hot anger course through her at his behaviour, she is unable to rant at him about this answer. It is too short, and too honest an answer for her to rant about. And she knows all too well, in any case, that Draco Malfoy has never been above spying.

Instead, she asks, somewhat curious, ‘You’ve been here all this time?’

Sounding almost disappointed, he replies instead, ‘You’re not going to sic that famous Weasley temper on me?’

‘I’m tired.’

‘That’s true,’ he nods, and beckons for her to join him at the table. Surprising compliant, she does. It was a strange night for surprises.

~

‘Do you remember your first encounter with Saint Potter?’ he asks, when she has settled herself in and he has passed her a cookie he must have managed to scavenge from some jar or another; it has been some time since Ginny has seen a cookie in this house. Looking down at the cookie in her hand, she cannot help but feel as if it means something from another time.

‘Why would you want to know about that?’ Ginny half-heartedly retorts – she has recanted the story many times to curious fellow students, albeit never to a Slytherin, or rather never to a person who managed to inject that much dislike into the question.

‘Since I gave you a cookie,’ replies Malfoy, and Ginny wonders if it is a trick of moonlight as for a brief moment, she thinks she sees a slight, soft upward curve on Malfoy’s thin mouth. ‘I want to know, in exchange for the cookie.’

‘A cookie that is from my house and which is therefore, a ninth mine,’ answers Ginny.

‘But it was in my possession. I could have chosen to gobble it all up and not given it to you.’

Ginny raises an eyebrow, and does not notice that her own lips have quirked upwards into a slight smile. ‘You’re being ridiculously persistent, Malfoy.’

Malfoy raises an eyebrow back at her, and replies, mockingly, ‘I am ridiculously persistent, Weasley. Unfortunately you’ve just never been exposed to that charming side of me. Many girls find it rather fetching.’

Ginny leans back for a moment, studying him. Finally, she says, ‘I don’t know why I am telling you this, but it’s late and you’re ridiculously persistent, and I’ve always been slightly mad – my first encounter with Harry was in your first year, when all of you were boarding the train to Hogwarts, and I remember waving and waving to him and Ron while the train was pulling away – but, ashamed as I am to admit this, it was probably very much to him – until they were out of sight.’

When she stops she notices that Malfoy has a look of mild disgust on his features. Irked, she demands, ‘What, Malfoy?’

‘Doesn’t really sound like much of an encounter,’ replies the boy smoothly. ‘It sounds more like a crazed fan doing something just within what society would deem non-criminal.’

‘Malfoy!’ exclaims Ginny, and disgustedly she starts to rise.

‘Wait – don’t go,’ he says instead, and in a quick action pulls her back down into her seat. She is surprised to note that his hands are painfully cold, despite the June weather. His face, she notices suddenly, is abruptly guarded.

‘So you’ve got a good memory, haven’t you, Weasley?’ he asks.

‘So you want me to provide you with another answer which you’re just going to use to insult me?’

‘I’m not – well,’ Malfoy’s brow furrows, and he looks down for a moment, before facing her again. His features are still curiously guarded. ‘I was wondering – do you remember your first encounter with me?’

‘With you?’ she asks back, surprised.

He nods, but his eyes are focussed on his own cookie on the tabletop.

‘Why?’

There is a pause before Malfoy replies with an edge of mocking in his voice, ‘I thought we went through with the cookie business, Weasley...’

‘Well,’ interrupts Ginny, somehow sensing that allowing him to continue would somehow result in a quarrel which was not ready for at four in the morning, ‘it was in Flourish and Bott’s, wasn’t it? You were insulting Harry, as usual, and I stood up for him, and you insulted me. Seems to have set the pattern for all our future encounters.’

He does not answer for a while, at this, and returns to studying the cookie.

‘How was it, after your first year?’ he finally asks.
She is rather taken aback. ‘What’s with all these questions today?’

‘I just want to know, alright!’

She realises that she could tell him that he has no right to know, but for some reason does not. Instead she asks, ‘Have you been – have you been having dreams or feeling strange? Since what Tom did to you?’

There is a pause, before he replies, ‘Yes.’

She nods, and then continues, ‘I had many dreams. I think you know what it’s like – they’re disconcerting and vivid and make you feel...dirty, and unsafe. And sometimes, well – sometimes, when I try to remember what had happened to me before my first year, I feel as if there’s a chasm of something, memories maybe, which I can’t reach any more – like I believe I had a really happy childhood here, and my brothers certainly remember that they had been happy, but sometimes, I feel as if I’m not so very sure. And I can’t decide if it’s my own memories I can’t remember to account for such a feeling, or it’s Tom’s. Sometimes when I go to places, when I touch things, I remember Tom. It comes suddenly, and I’ll remember the sound of his voice, and it’s like he is with me, again.’

She stops, and Malfoy is staring at her, his face unclouded now. ‘Do you – do you know what I mean?’ she asks, hesitantly.

Slowly, Malfoy nods. He says, ‘I can’t say I know or feel as vividly or deeply as you do, but...’

But he understands. Suddenly Ginny feels tears prick her eyes.

Malfoy continues to study her, and it is as if a kind of understanding passes between the two of them. And then he asks, ‘So – what do you think we will be doing about Timothy Groan – and the two of us?’ His voice is soft yet thankfully normal in tone.

Ginny blinks, pushing away her tears. ‘I’m not sure. I guess we could – we ought to – do some research, to reverse the spell, or perhaps Timothy has rather an idea of how to reverse it, since he has been waiting so long already, just for us to appear to complete the picture.’

Malfoy nods. ‘If it’s research we have to do, we should probably be starting with the library at Hogwarts. Which I suppose shouldn’t be difficult for McGonagall to arrange – or probably Groan has some way to get us there even without Hogwarts; I wouldn’t be surprised if he does. But, well – I’m digressing – I’m surprised that you didn’t react more greatly at what Groan said.’

Ginny considers this, before answering, ‘I’m not sure I know what you mean.’

‘Don’t you feel as if he’s been lying to you?’

‘They were probably necessary lies.’

‘He wouldn’t have told you if not for Granger.’

‘Well...’ starts Ginny, ‘I think it was probably – eventually – his aim to do so. I don’t think he would have come here this summer if it wasn’t to do this.’

Malfoy smiles this time and Ginny is surprised at the expression – it is soft, and actually makes the planes on his face becoming.

‘Nevertheless I’m still surprised at you,’ he says, and his smile broadens.

Ginny finds herself smiling back despite herself. ‘Malfoy – did we just...’

‘I think you shouldn’t think too much into this,’ he interjects, but his tone is not forbidding, and the smile has not entirely left his face. ‘I’m a Malfoy, you remember.’

‘And I’m a Weasley,’

‘Really?’ I wouldn’t have guessed – what with...’

‘The red hair, and the freckles, and the hand-me-down clothes?’ recites Ginny. But for the first time the words, so familiar in the context of her interactions with Malfoy, are more friendly than hostile. It is almost as if it creates a real history between them.

Malfoy laughs at this; Ginny realises that it is a pleasant sound, when lacking in its usual spite.

~

‘So I was thinking, we should probably go to the Hogwarts library to get some more research done on – on what Riddle had done, so we can better understand how to reverse everything,’ starts Hermione the next morning, as Ginny, Hermione, Harry, Ron, Timothy Groan and Malfoy settle down for breakfast. Ginny glances at Malfoy, who is next to her, and finds herself pleasantly surprised to see that he meets her eye and that a slight smile is on his lips. ‘Do you have any concrete idea on how to undo things, Groan?’ continues Hermione.

‘I’ve found various methods to reverse the spell, Granger, but I doubt you would like to hear them during breakfast,’ replies Groan, an innocent expression on his face.

‘I hope you don’t mean that seriously,’ says Harry darkly, as he reaches for another helping of pancakes.

Groan only gives him a smile. Harry turns away from him, looking disgusted.

‘In any case, it would not hurt to do more research on the other Horcruxes,’ says Groan, ‘I’ve never actually looked into the rest of them.’

‘You’ve never...what?!’ exclaims Ron, almost choking on his cereal.

‘It was never of any importance to me, but it might be to you,’ Groan says helpfully, seemingly unperturbed. ‘I doubt the adults would protest against us going to Hogwarts, in any case.’

‘What do you mean by that?’ asks Hermione.

‘Terence Higgs told me yesterday night, before I went to bed. They are going to evacuate the muggles living within a five-mile radius of this place, and are also going to strip the Burrow of its wards after we leave the place as well.’

‘Why?’ asks Ginny, shocked at the news.

‘There was another murder by the Death Eaters last night,’ replies Groan, continuing to calmly and neatly cut his scrambled eggs. ‘A fourteen-year-old girl this time. It wasn’t the Sectumsempra curse though; they Crucio-ed her to death. And it seems they had raped her before that.’

A heavy silence falls over the table, punctuated only by the small sharp sounds of Groan’s knife against his plate as he continues cutting his food.

‘How are they accounting for the evacuation?’ asks Harry, finally. There is an edge to his voice.

‘The muggle authorities are releasing information that there’s been some environmental contamination, and that the area is dangerous to remain in. What the Order intends to do is to leave the Burrow open and empty to the Death Eaters to realise that they cannot have a hold on the Order by using the lives of the muggles in the area. I suppose we will be moving to Hogwarts, or some other secured Order premise. I think there’ll be an attack on a suspected Death Eater premise as well, to send them a warning.’

‘An attack?’ asks Harry.

‘You wouldn’t be allowed to join it,’ replies Groan evenly. ‘It would be more productive for us to work on the other Horcruxes together.’

‘We should try to access the Malfoy library,’ Malfoy says, quite suddenly. ‘If it’s not already overrun with Death Eaters – which I don’t think is likely,’ he pauses for a moment. Ginny has a sense that what he was about to say next is painful for him. ‘It was one of the first places the Ministry took over when my father was first captured.’

There is another silence, before Ginny asks, softly, ‘Would there be anything especially useful in the Malfoy library?’

‘It’s known as one of the best private libraries in the country,’ says Hermione, her voice even. ‘Many academics have consulted the Malfoy library, besides the Hogwarts library, for their work.’

‘A surprisingly fair remark, Granger,’ drawls Malfoy, but he does not continue beyond that.

‘We’re not going there unless we have to,’ says Harry, his tone curt. ‘It might be a trap.’

Malfoy turns to him, giving him a cold look. ‘Because after Voldemort carved my arm up, and after he meant for me to be killed, and after he actually rid me of my magical abilities, my heart is entirely into setting up a trap for him, Potter.’ Each word is harshly spoken, and his eyes are fiercely fixed on Harry’s.

Harry looks away first.

‘How do we enter into the Malfoy premises?’ asks Ginny, finally. Harry looks up at her, and there is a look almost of surprise on his face.

‘I doubt we could enter the normal way; it’s too dangerous for the Ministry to know we’re entering the place because we might as well be announcing our intentions to Voldemort in that case. We’ll have to enter through the forest which is part of the Malfoy land. It’ll be more dangerous, though.’ Malfoy is turned resolutely to Ginny only as he says this.

‘But it’ll be a back-up plan to Hogwarts in any case; no need to take unnecessary risks,’ Malfoy continues, still facing Ginny. Ginny finds herself not knowing if she ought to laugh at this; Malfoy and Harry have agreed with each other – eventually.

‘In that case then, we ought to start packing. I suppose we better pack as many of our things as possible; we ought probably to be staying over at the Headquarters or Hogwarts,’ Hermione says, and there is a note of familiar determination in her voice. Ginny does smile at this – this is the old Hermione she has always loved dearly.

If only they hadn’t done what they had...

~

Things only sink in for Ron, however, at mid-afternoon.

Standing in the garden, overrun with weeds by now, he realises as he puts his trunk down that this is the first time the Burrow is well and truly empty, for an indefinite period of time.

And when the Death Eaters come, there would be no telling whether they would let it stand.

The Burrow is ramshackle, and run-down, and Ron hates to admit this, but he remembers when he first heard that Malfoy had been found in Ginny’s room – that his first insane thought had been chagrin that all that Malfoy has ever said about his family’s home is true.

But in leaving, Ron suddenly has an acute sense of this being theirs. The Weasleys’.

Ginny is sobbing quietly to his right, and Harry pats him on the back; Malfoy, next to Ginny, looks up at the place, and for once neglects to say anything hurtful.

There ought not to be much to miss here. But Ron remembers his favourite post round the back garden fence, to look over into the forest behind the grounds, and the kink in the banister down the stairs that you have to be careful of when you slide down it when Mrs. Weasley isn’t looking, and thinks of the bright orange walls of his room which he has always refused to admit are a pain to fall asleep to, and the way the light falls in through the windows in Ginny’s room...

They’ve had birthdays and pets’ funerals and relatives’ weddings and blistered feet and laughter and quarrels and midnight feasts and his father’s muggle contraptions and – and almost everything Ron has ever known, full to burst within him.

‘It’s time to go,’ says Terence Higgs, from behind him.

‘We have to leave the Burrow now.’

~

‘There’s only space for you in the Slytherin dormitories,’ says Terence Higgs pleasantly; ignoring the loud groans immediately emitted by the members of the small troupe, save for Malfoy and Groan, ‘You can choose whichever rooms and beds you like as well; seems that the muggleborns’ families weren’t interested in these dorms.’

‘I wonder why,’ mutters Harry darkly. Only Harry, Ginny, Ron, Hermione, Malfoy and Groan have been left at Hogwarts; everyone else from the Burrow have left for another location which was not disclosed. Harry, Ron, Hermione and Ginny had tried, with what could only have been described as great futility, to protest against such an arrangement, but Terence Higgs had been a stone wall. He had calmly herded them, with their things, into a large Thestral-drawn carriage, and had equally calmly ignored all further questions from Harry.

Somehow he must have been irritated, however, because at one point on the trip to Hogwarts Harry found himself mysteriously deprived of the sound of his voice.

The Gryffindors look around at their silver and green surroundings; to Ginny and Ron, this feels like a slap in the face.

‘Well,’ says Hermione finally, ‘I do suppose we ought to start with our research.’

~

‘Found anything?’ asks Malfoy, coming up from behind Ginny. They are the only ones at the top floor of the library, a section usually closed off to students. Harry and Ron have gone to find some dinner from the kitchens, and Hermione and Groan are in another section of the library. The top floor has always been closed off to students, but they have, for once, Madam Pince’s permission to research in it.

It has been three hours since they have left the Burrow, and no news has come from the Order.

It has also been three hours of fruitless searching, and Ginny is beginning to wonder what they are supposed to be searching for in the first place.

When Ginny first entered the top floor, her breath had caught; it is really a large, expansive balcony. Three walls of the place are bookshelves lined with ancient books, at least thirty metres high – there is at least a few thousand of them; the last wall and the ceiling consists entirely of clear glass. The summer sunshine had entered fully into the room; the view is of the lake and large stretches of plains and meadows beyond. At the very centre of the ceiling hangs a chandelier of glass panes and long and slender gold bugles, the largest chandelier Ginny has ever seen.

Three hours later, however, with nothing to show from the mere one book that she was still going through, Ginny finds no comfort in her surroundings.

She looks up at Malfoy. ‘I can’t find anything.’

Malfoy nods. ‘Me neither.’

‘We’re not – we’re not helping at all, are we?’

‘I don’t suppose we are.’

‘I just – do you think...’ starts Ginny, and her voice is shaky with tiredness, and held-back tears. But she realises that the colour has drained from Malfoy’s already pale face, and he seems to be staring at something behind her.

She starts to feel a touch of coldness in the air, and realises that their shadows have started to disappear across the mahogany flooring.

‘Malfoy?’ she asks, and slowly, suddenly fearful, she turns around.

An army of Dementors are beyond the glass wall.

~

‘The wards – the wards – I thought the wards would have kept them away!’

‘Some wards don’t work very effectively on Dementors,’ mutters Malfoy, and there is a trembling note in his voice. ‘Some wards are even less effective with only glass to hold them. That’s why Father always said to stay away from windows – he always said to stay away from them and go to the dungeons if there ever were an attack – there’s no explanation for it, but somehow glass has always been a weak medium...’

‘Can they pass through? Malfoy – can they pass through!’

‘Azkaban...’ Malfoy has turned fully on her, and Ginny hardly realises that he is gripping onto her hands, and that his grip is almost cruel. His eyes are wide and bright silver with fear.

‘Azkaban has no windows.’

~

Her fifth birthday, when Ron had brought her on her first dip in the stream behind the Weasley grounds – when Percy had given her sweets from his first Hogsmeade trip – when the muggle boy from the nearest farm with the light, curling blond hair had given her a chain of daisies – her first memory of her mother’s cookies – an eleven-year-old Harry giving her a smile through the glass of the Hogwarts Express – when Colin, her first friend in Hogwarts, had sent her a series of muggle photographs that he had taken of her that first summer after Tom – when she had been among the top in her class – the feel of the first Snitch that she had ever caught, struggling in her hand –Hermione giving her a hug – Ron, coming home from his first year away at Hogwarts – Timothy dancing with her at Bill’s wedding – Harry bending down to kiss her –

‘Expecto Patronum!’ she screams, but her hands are cold and losing grip on her wand and Malfoy is holding on to her and they are surrounded...

‘Expecto Patronum!’

~

Ginny Weasley is faltering, and he has never seen such endless night.

He can barely see ahead of him, but he knows his hand is around hers now, around her small, cold hand that is gripping onto her wand; she is starting to weigh against his body.

There is no hope. There is no hope. There is no hope...

Then, suddenly, he remembers – his mother’s first sweets, sent to him from home to Hogwarts, the taste of his favourite caramel and the warmth he had felt, being the one to choose to give one sweet to Crabbe and another to Goyle; his father, giving him his first broom; his favourite sweet shop in the heart of Germany as a boy, with endless rows of colour and shine; Blaise Zabini and him, laughing fit to burst on a snowy winter evening, having pelted each other with magical flying snowballs...

The Slytherin Quidditch team complimenting him for winning a game – flying over the frozen lakes of Harbin on his broomstick – his father buying him his wand – a five-year-old asking him if he had an angel name –

‘EXPECTO PATRONUM!’

There is a rush of light, and Draco Malfoy sees no more.

~

Chapter 8: Taking Sides

6th June 1997

‘Malfoy!’

Someone is shaking him; the person’s nails dig into the flesh, through the thin fabric of his - Ron Weasley’s - shirt.

‘Please, Malfoy, wake up!’

Tentatively, painfully, he opens his eyes, and Ginny Weasley comes into view. Her face is ashen and tear-streaked.

His head hurts.

‘Weas - Weasley? What happened?’ He hears his voice and is vaguely shocked at how hoarse and far away it sounds.

‘You used my wand, Malfoy,’ says Weasley, and he realizes that she does so between sobs. ‘You used my wand and you drove the Dementors away…’

‘I ... I drove the Dementors away?’

‘Yes,’ replies Weasley, ‘but we need to go, Malfoy. They only just fled, I have no idea if they’ll come back, and it’s clear that this is the most unsafe place that we can possibly be in…And no one’s come yet, I don’t want to imagine why. D’you think you can get up?’

‘I - ’ Gingerly, as she lets go of his shoulders, he attempts to push himself up off the floor. His legs feel weak, and she has to reach out again to steady him as he slowly straightens up. Strangely, as he lifts up his heavy head, body half against Weasley’s, the world that swims before him is almost disappointingly as it was before. The glass wall, the chandelier, the books they had opened left on the table - are untouched.

But Weasley chokes another sob, and tendrils of frost remain in his chest.

~

‘Gin - Ginny, are you alright?’ Ron Weasley rushes up the stairs towards them, but it is a shock when Weasley grabs his free arm none too gently and leans him onto himself.

Wryly, he wonders if it is time he accepts that he is already a part of them.

‘We heard you screaming, Gin,’ says Potter, and already he is - unnecessarily - pulling her at the waist, away from Draco, towards himself. ‘And - and we could feel them…’

‘The wards didn’t hold them,’ he finally speaks, ‘It’s the glass. We have to get to some place else. I suggest the dungeons would be safe.’

Granger nods at this; she and Groan are at the bottom of the stairs, wands drawn. Then her eyes narrow - ‘Malfoy, were you the one who cast that last Patronus?’

He looks straight at her for a moment, not speaking, before nodding.

‘But how…’ her voice trails off, and then she shakes her head as if to clear it. ‘In any case, I don’t suppose we have the time to think about that now. We have to get out of the library, and if they’ve attacked the rest of the school we’ll have to go out and fight. There’re so many non-magical people in the school, it’ll be a massacre if the Death Eaters and Dementors really mean to attack. And Higgs told me - there are Aurors on the grounds, but most of the Order should be planning the attack on the Death Eater quarters.’

‘Right,’ says Potter, and reluctantly, he finds himself registering the decisiveness and clarity in his countenance. He almost catches himself feeling grateful for it. ‘Ron, you had better bring Ginny and Malfoy to the Slytherin dungeons, and stay with them at least until Ginny recovers. Malfoy’ll lead you through the quietest route he knows. Hermione, Groan, you’ll come with me.’

~

They make it to the dorm safely; still, even as he has chosen, unfortunately just as Potter directed, ‘the quietest route’, he finds it strange that the halls they pass are eerily empty, silent.

He still does not trust himself to walk however - Ron Weasley took to Levitating him halfway out of the library - and Ginny Weasley still looks like she could faint at any moment. He should be thankful for the quiet.

Ron Weasley mutters a quick ‘Finite Incantatem’ and he finds himself unceremoniously landing on a loveseat in the Common Room. He shoots him a look, but Weasley simply retorts, ‘It’s a soft place to land, what?’

‘You must have chocolates around, don’t you, Ron?’ asks Ginny Weasley, who seats herself across from him. Her voice is steady at least, if small. He wonders what exactly the Dementors made her see.

‘Yeah, I do, of course. I’ll go get them,’ replies her brother, and he lopes off in the direction of the Seventh Year Slytherin boys’ dorm.

‘Does Weasley frequently forget that he is a wizard?’ he sneers, pulling himself up from the loveseat. A brief wave of nausea passes over him. ‘He could have just Accio-ed his chocolate over here.’

‘It’s supposed to be the holidays, he probably forgets,’ replies Ginny Weasley, her expression distant. She seems to be looking past his shoulder. He resists the immediate impulse to turn around, and instead keeps his eyes trained on her.

‘You’re about as bad as Potter with Dementors, aren’t you, Weasley?’ he finally asks, but managing to check the venom in his tone. He tells himself that he would, after all, rather invite answers than retorts at this point.

‘I doubt anyone’s good with Dementors, Malfoy,’ she replies, and he finds himself almost relieved to hear a faint steeliness return to her voice. ‘And there were a lot of them, and it wasn’t as if you were helping until that one Patronus you cast.’

‘Which happened to be the one that saved the both of us?’ He reminds her, arching a brow. Her eyes finally return to him, but her expression remains unreadable. ‘You owe me now, you know,’ he continues, and his tone is almost sweet, and light.

‘Whatever for?’ Finally, her voice rises a tad, and there is some colour in her cheeks.

‘For saving you, of course,’ he replies smoothly, and allows his features to light into a smile that he knows does not quite reach his eyes. ‘And it would be the second time, considering. Or perhaps the second and a half.’ The last line comes out soft, almost as an afterthought.

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘Well - ‘

‘Ginny, Malfoy?’ comes a third voice, and his head snaps towards the fireplace at the end of the room. A boy’s head has appeared in it; he looks vaguely familiar - probably a schoolmate from another House.

‘Terry!’ exclaims Weasley, ‘Why are you in the fireplace?’ And then, hastily, at the boy’s narrowed glance in his direction, ‘Malfoy’s with us now - it’ll take some time to explain.’ She ignores the look that Malfoy shoots at her.

‘Okay…’ says the boy, who he now recognizes as Terry Boot, a Ravenclaw Mudblood from his year. Boot’s eyes still linger on him with a distinct dislike and distrust. ‘It’s not entirely convenient for me to tell you where I am right now, but someone told me that I may be able to find you and Harry and the others at the Slytherin dorm. My family’s over at Hogwarts, and just a bit ago my older sister texted me that something was happening, that Aurors are bringing them to some kind of panic room…’

‘So d’you know if they’re still fighting, out there in the rest of the Hogwarts grounds?’ asks Ron Weasley from behind them; he has returned to the Common Room with his arms laden with bars of chocolate.

‘From what my sister could tell me, the Muggleborns and their families are safe, but the Aurors and staff who went off to deal with whatever it was the problem haven’t yet returned, though the Aurors who were left with the students and their families are telling them that they haven’t received any signals from them that they need assistance or that they should start evacuating to the next safe house. So we reckon that the situation should still be containable. On our side, we haven’t gotten any signals either - ‘

‘On your side?’ asks Ron Weasley, while his sister asks at the same time, ‘Signals?’

Boot hesitates, before jerking his head towards Draco. ‘Are you sure we can trust him?’ He asks.

Ginny Weasley glances quickly at him, before directing her attention back to Boot. ‘It’s not like he’s entirely well-liked among the Death Eaters at the moment - they carved up his arm,’ she explains, to Draco rather excessively, but he at least appreciates that she does not reveal more of what the Dark Lord has done to him. He shudders just to think that a Mudblood like Boot would know that he had been stripped of his magical abilities - even if, judging from recent events, such had only been a temporary state.

Boot affords him one more distrustful look, before starting, ‘Well then, I don’t suppose it’ll hurt to tell you. The quick version is, ‘cos most of the refugees in Hogwarts are Muggles, a few of us Muggleborns have been working with the Order to fix the way magic affects electronic devices, so that if anything goes wrong at Hogwarts, and the Muggles are left stranded, they can still contact the outside world. For those who have mobiles, pagers, laptop computers -we’ve been working on ways to allow the usage of these to be supported within Hogwarts itself. In any case some of the Muggle ways of communication can be just as fast as magical ways. And we’ve been teaching the Aurors how to use Muggle means of signaling and communications, because - ’

‘Because the Death Eaters could never bear to use such means, and they leave no magical trace,’ interrupts Ron Weasley. ‘That’s brilliant, Terry!’

‘Yes, well, I s’pose we have to use every advantage we’ve got, don’t we?’ replies Boot. ‘Now that I’ve got that out of the way, though, let me do what I’m supposed to do in the first place - I’m supposed to tell you to stay where you are, until you hear from me or anyone friendly again. Don’t leave the Slytherin dorm, don’t fight unless the fight comes to you first - they’re trying to keep the altercation at Hogwarts to a minimal while the Order concentrates on doing, ah, other work.’

‘So we’re just supposed to sit here, and wait?’ demands Ginny Weasley, her eyes narrowed. Her brother has a similarly mutinous look on his face.

Gryffindors.

‘Yes, well - they’re trying to contain the fight as much as possible, Gin,’ says Boot, almost apologetically, ‘in any case, it’s not like this is going to be the last fight. Once this one is over - when the Aurors and the Order have had the chance to regroup - you may be able to participate in the next one…well, they may even need your participation…’

‘What d’you mean, how would they know about that?’ asks Ron.

Boot sighs. ‘From what I know and understand - and don’t worry, it’s not much more than what you would know - what’s expected is that You-Know-Who’s conducting is a war of attrition. We’re just going to be constantly under siege, for a time.’

‘Until either side breaks, that is?’ he finally drawls out. He does not flinch when Boot and the Weasleys glare daggers in his direction.

‘Where’re Harry and Hermione, anyway?’ Boot asks the Weasleys, his features still betraying the hint of a scowl as he does so. ‘Aren’t they supposed to be with you?’

‘Well…they went to join the fight earlier,’ says Ron Weasley, somewhat sheepishly, ‘are you sure we shouldn’t go out to help as well?’

Boot curses under his breath - ‘I see I’m somewhat late then,’ he says, ‘but no, don’t go running out now, Ron, those are the instructions I’m supposed to pass on to you.’

~

It is another hour before Potter, Granger and Groan enter the Slytherin Common Room.

‘Thank goodness you’re alright,’ breathes Ginny Weasley; by now, the colour has returned to her cheeks and Draco leans back, eyeing the situation as she jumps up from where she was seated and rushes towards the trio.

Potter catches her and pulls her into an embrace, but Draco wonders, vaguely, if it can be definitively said that she meant to leap into his arms.

‘We’ve been waiting for you forever, Terry Boot told us not to go out there,’ says Ron Weasley, and he reaches to hug Granger.

Groan steps around the happy reunion, and nods curtly in his direction.

‘What happened out there?’ asks Ron Weasley, releasing Granger. Draco does not miss the way his hand lingers on her waist.

‘There weren’t any other Dementors, they must really have left after Malfoy’s last Patronus, but there were - well, Slytherins. The only adults among them were Dolohov and Jugson,’ replies Granger, and she shivers. Draco stores the reaction away in his mind for later examination, even as he starts at her mention of ‘Slytherins’. ‘I suppose it’s a kind of training exercise for them.’

‘What Slytherins?’ he finally manages.

‘Current Slytherins,’ replies Potter, his voice unpleasant and low with anger. ‘Vincent Crabbe. Gregory Goyle. Vivian Urquhart. Nicholas Harper. Miles Bletchley - ‘

‘It’s a bloody Slytherin Quidditch team reunion,’ bites out Ron Weasley, and his fingers are clenched around his wand.

A sharp coldness stabs his chest. ‘Are they - what did they - ’ he begins.

‘The Aurors handled them fine enough,’ replies Potter, and Draco hates that he almost cannot meet the fullness of his glare turned upon him. ‘They didn’t manage to go anywhere near the Muggleborns - the fight was entirely on the edge of grounds - and neither did they manage any lasting damage on the Aurors. The Aurors even managed to apprehend a few of them, even though Dolohov and Jugson slipped away; we just helped to transfer them to - ’ He cuts himself short, narrowing his eyes at Draco. ‘I don’t suppose we need to discuss that in front of you.’

‘After all, if circumstances were different, you would probably be with them.’

There is a thick silence. Draco’s jaw clenches, and he imagines, violently, terribly, that it might not be awfully difficult to wring Potter’s thin, malnourished neck with his bare hands.

‘Harry,’ starts Ginny Weasley, ‘Well - he wasn’t - isn’t. Isn’t with them, that is.’

Draco looks at her, surprised. Then he sneers, ‘Well, I certainly am not with your lot, either.’

The expression on her face infuriates him; it is almost matter-of-fact. In any case it is utterly devoid of evidence that she has been provoked by his remark. ‘Well, I don’t think it’s a matter of your choice, Malfoy…’

‘Draco?’

Collectively the small group turns towards the source of the new voice; at the threshold leading into the Slytherin Common Room are decidedly familiar faces.

~

‘Nott? Blaise? Davis? Brone!’ he exclaims. ‘What are you doing here?’ He notices that his Housemates are in travelling cloaks; all have Levitated trunks before them.

‘More Slytherins?’ Potter hisses, and in a movement his wand is drawn, his other hand pushing Ginny Weasley behind him. No one notices the tightening grip of Ginny Weasley’s hand around her wand, or the minute clenching of her jaw.

‘Relax, Potter,’ drawls Blaise, and Draco feels a wave of familiarity, almost comfort, in his tone. It is as if it assures him that everything is fine, as it should be. ‘We’re not here to attack you,’ he continues, then, flicking a calculatedly disdainful look at Potter, ‘Unfortunately.’

‘What’re you here for, then?’ asks Ron Weasley. His wand is also drawn, and notes of red touch his cheekbones.

‘Seeking refuge, of course,’ replies Theodore Nott for Blaise, ‘our families are being located elsewhere, but we were told that we can take up our usual beds in our dorm.’

‘Your families? You?’ sputters Ron Weasley at Nott. ‘Isn’t your father a Death Eater?’

‘Quite unwisely, yes,’ says Nott, calmly and perfunctorily, as if Weasley has just asked him about the state of the weather. ‘But I am decidedly not. And neither are Zabini, Zabini’s mother and her latest conquest, and Vaisey and his elder brother. And Tracey Davis,’ he adds, nodding slightly to the quiet, still girl next to him, ‘certainly cannot be one.’

‘Why would you need refuge, though?’ asks Potter, his voice still unwelcoming. ‘And why didn’t you seek refuge earlier, when they first moved the Muggleborns’ families in?’

‘Because, Potter, it would have been easier if we hadn’t had to make an obvious choice either way in the matter beforehand,’ cuts in Brone Vaisey, stepping around Nott and lowering his trunk to the ground. ‘In fact it would probably have been easier if we didn’t have to make a choice either way in any case.’

‘It’s not that we owe you any explanation, but we don’t exactly belong to a class with the choice whether or not to involve ourselves in the War,’ continues Brone, ‘And it isn’t as if the other side is going to accept anything less than full commitment, so - ’

‘So you thought you’ll have better luck with us?’ remarks Granger, her tone cutting. ‘This isn’t a war where you can afford to be neutral, Vaisey.’

Brone gives her a long look. Finally, he returns, ‘Well, unfortunately we can only promise not to get under your feet, Granger. You can hardly expect us to voluntarily throw ourselves into your endeavours.’

‘And that’s supposed to be enough for us to go to sleep next to you?’ speaks up Ginny Weasley. Her voice, however, Draco notices, is decidedly less harsh in tone compared to the other Gryffindors’.

‘I hardly expect we’ll be sharing a room with you, Weasley, as much as that may be a pleasant experience,’ smirks Brone, ignoring how Ron Weasley has grown dangerously red at his remark, ‘But yes, I suppose you’ll have no choice but to stomach our continued residence with you in the Slytherin dorm, for an indefinite length of time.’

A length of silence follows, as all in the Common Room digests what his words entail.

‘Well,’ speaks up Groan finally, ‘as we’re all staying together, perhaps introductions are in order?’

~

She already recognizes them, of course; Hogwarts is a small school - names and faces are learnt easily enough.

Brone Vaisey, she knows, is in the same year as her, one of the Slytherin Quidditch team’s Chasers - one of the best Chasers in the school, in fact. His father was a promising young Quidditch player who disappeared under mysterious circumstances early into the First War; of his mother Ginny has never heard anything definite. His older brother, Brett Vaisey, from what Ginny remembers, is a Seeker for one of the better-ranked professional Quidditch teams. He was in the same year as Charlie in Hogwarts.

Vaisey himself is tall, lean but muscular, handsome, perhaps, in a faded, detached way - he has a head of light ash-blond curls, high cheekbones and clear eyes the colour of which reminds Ginny of aged birch. He has never spoken up much in classes; it is only ever on the pitch, Ginny realises, that he captures any attention. Ginny has never had much direct interaction with him; ever since she started playing on the Gryffindor Quidditch team, however, he has nodded, unsmilingly, in her direction when their eyes meet along corridors between classes.

Theodore Nott is in Ron and Harry and Hermione’s year, a loner. At least, Ginny does not remember him ever being in the company of anyone. It is not lost on Ginny that he refers to his fellow Slytherins using their last names. Thin, pale, with a mop of dark hair and surprisingly dark blue eyes, his appearance is striking, if definitely gaunt.

Ginny has heard that his father is one of the more prominent Death Eaters, and she wonders what he thinks of Theodore Nott being in Hogwarts, now.

Blaise Zabini she knows, of course - even non-Slytherin girls have whispered, giggling, of his smooth dark skin and impossibly high cheekbones. He is as tall as Ron and about as inconspicuous, although for entirely different reasons. Ginny has never liked him - he is Malfoy without the tendency to explode in public, but just as predictably cruel in his delight in putting down fellow students, particularly those not of Slytherin House.

Tracey Davis she knows the least of. She is one of the quieter Slytherins, like Nott, and in the same year, but Ginny has also seen her with a clique of girls, mostly from Ravenclaw. Her hair is a rich, deep brown, long and falling in large, thick waves around her shoulders and her eyes are a pale yet distinctive blue. Looking at her closely for the first time, Ginny realizes that Tracey Davis is perhaps one of the prettiest girls in Hogwarts.

Save perhaps for Zabini, none of the group would have come to Ginny’s mind if she were to think, specifically, of the question of whether she would one day have to fight her own schoolmates - her stomach turns slightly at the thought of having to direct a curse at Brone Vaisey, particularly, who has accorded her the bare courtesy of a fellow Quidditch player for almost two years now.

It seems as if her thoughts are echoed in the minds of the others in the Slytherin Common Room, despite the hostile atmosphere when the Slytherins had first arrived - after the newcomers settled their things into their rooms and returned to the Common Room, Ron, having passed some of his chocolate to Harry, Hermione and Groan, awkwardly pushes his chocolate at them. Vaisey, Davis and Nott murmur their thanks and help themselves; Ginny catches a slight, unpleasant upward quirk of Zabini’s lips before he wordlessly takes a piece.

It is curious that it takes a war for them to sit together in this comfortable silence.

~

‘Explanations, Draco,’ says Blaise, as soon as he joins him in an alcove in the Slytherin Common Room, partly hidden and some distance away from the fireplace. Potter, Granger and Ron Weasley are huddled in a far corner of the room; curiously, Ginny Weasley does not join them, instead resting her head on Groan’s shoulder, sitting with the other Slytherins closer to the fireplace. Draco supposes that they are making small talk and waiting for dinner - a harried-looking young Auror had arrived earlier to tell them that dinner would soon be served in the Great Hall.

‘What is there to say, Blaise?’ he replies, suddenly tired. He is glad to see his Housemate here, both an old friend and constant competitor, in what feels a good century ago. At the same time, he cannot but wish that Blaise had more sense than to open the conversation so.

‘They can’t patch that up for you?’ asks Blaise instead, and he nods at Draco’s upper arm. He winces; he has almost forgotten that the Dark Lord’s cruel Non Serviam still licks into his skin, the words clearly visible. The Weasleys, Groan, Granger and Potter have had days of seeing it, and hadn’t remarked on the fact that the sleeve of the old shirt Ron Weasley had reluctantly spared him does not quite cover the words. A hot flush rushes to his skin, and he resists the urge to pull the sleeve down.

‘I don’t suppose the intention was to allow anyone to patch it up,’ he mutters in reply. He looks up at the taller boy. ‘I would’ve thought you and your mother would manage to leave England, before it came to this.’

Blaise studies him for moment, and then replies, lightly, ‘We could have, I suppose, but Mother wasn’t quite willing to leave England.’

‘What, because of Future Husband No. 8? I wouldn’t have pegged your mother to be the sentimental sort,’ remarks Draco.

Blaise returns him another long, measured look. His reserved nature has always unnerved Draco, and Draco is suddenly and forcefully reminded of the edge of impatience and irritation that has always accompanied his longer interactions with Blaise in their years together in Hogwarts.

Then Blaise smiles, quite unexpectedly, but it is a small smile, steeped in bitterness. ‘You don’t think that she could, possibly, simply be unwilling to leave England for good, do you?’

It is certainly an unexpected answer. ‘But you aren’t intending to participate in the War, are you?’ he finally asks.

‘It is our full intention to survive here, whatever it is that we survive to,’ answers Blaise steadily.

‘Preferably without first losing our necks.’

~

The Great Hall has always been a sight, but never like this.

It has clearly been magically expanded; the staff table is much further from the entrance to the Great Hall than Draco remembers. The tables are decidedly longer, and there are many, many more people.

He realizes that most of them must be members of the Muggleborn students’ families - he recognizes their unfamiliar chatter and their strange fashions from what glimpses of Muggle London he has seen over the years, at King’s Cross Station. It is certainly disturbing, however, to see them milling about the Great Hall, interacting, eating - as if it is a place that could belong to them, as if they belonged to the place.

‘Mum, Dad!’ he hears Granger’s voice, and surprised, he sees her running towards a rather ordinary-looking, middle-aged couple. Granger collapses into their arms, and he realizes that Granger’s mother has tears in her eyes. He finds himself wondering how long it has been since they have seen Granger, and what they understand of what Granger has been doing - and then he finds himself inevitably thinking of his own parents.

‘Draco,’ says Blaise from next to him, ‘I’m going to sit with my mother. Do you want to join us?’

‘I - ’ he starts, then realizes, quite abruptly, that in this mass of people, he is quite alone. Blaise has his mother, and his stepfather-to-be. Brone has his brother Brett. Tracey Davis has disappeared into a group of Ravenclaws, and Theodore Nott seems to be deep in conversation with Timothy Groan, who is being led, slightly ahead of Draco and Blaise, by Ginny Weasley. Potter and Ron Weasley have joined the Grangers.

‘I - I don't...’

‘Malfoy?’ he turns, and realizes that Ginny Weasley has stopped, and is addressing him. Her expression can only be described as neutral. ‘You’re having dinner with us?’

He finds himself nodding, even gratefully, and as Blaise walks away to join his family Draco Malfoy follows Ginny Weasley into the heart of a Great Hall he no longer recognizes.

~

Chapter 9: Living 6th June 1997 
‘You know, the food’s exactly as it’s always been.’ Weasley’s words are somewhat garbled, as she attempts to chew into an over-large piece of pie while she speaks. He does not doubt that this is entirely due to her being ill bred; he cannot keep from sneering at her. Weasley ignores this, continuing, ‘At least, I would think it’s still the same House Elves who are preparing dinner…’
 
‘I – well,’ he begins. He does not feel inclined to admit to her that he has been battling a rising feeling of dissociation from this place that he has known for years now, and that it is not helping his appetite.
 
‘Are you that allergic to Muggles, Malfoy, that it prevents your eating?’ asks Weasley, and a good touch of incredulity has slipped into her tone.
 
‘It’s – this is the Great Hall, Weasley,’ he manages to say, and he realizes helplessly. It certainly does not please him – this consistent, recurrent state of helplessness in the past days; it has made each day seem like a century from the last, and he is fast losing his sense of time, of self.
 
Weasley does not answer him for a while, and takes her time to finish the piece of pie. Finally, swallowing, she remarks, ‘It’s that it’s not the same, is it, Malfoy? Not just ‘cos the Muggles are here?’
 
It surprises him that she has understood, somewhat. He meets her steady gaze, ‘Yes, well, it’s not – and they’re acting like they’ve always been here, they’re acting so much like how we’ve always been, in Hogwarts, like us students…’
 
‘We’ve only ever come here to do ordinary things, Malfoy, like eat, and study,’ says Weasley, and it irritates him immediately that her tone borders on excessively patient, as if she is speaking to an especially slow child. ‘It’s not like we ever came here to do anything particularly different from what Muggles likely do in their own lives – well, except when we receive our owl post, or when we’re having Apparition classes…’
 
He does not know how to answer this, and goes back to starring at his plate, using his fork to pick at the slice of pie in front of him – absently, he realizes, that he had not taken it for himself, but that someone – Weasley, probably – had placed it on his plate for him.
 
‘Is it so difficult to realize that they’re just human, like we are, Malfoy?’ Weasley asks. Her tone is exasperated, but he realizes that she has kept her voice consistently low all this while, so that in the noise of their surroundings, Groan and Nott, seated opposite them, likely cannot hear what they have been saying – is Weasley trying to conduct the conversation privately, for his sake?
 
‘Well – they’re Muggles, Weasley,’ he finally replies. ‘They’re different.’
 
Weasley stares at him for a while, and then says, ‘Of course they’re different. This wasn’t supposed to be their war to fight, Malfoy, but they’ve been dragged into this, by the wizarding world, they’ve had to leave their own lives, leave what they’re accustomed to, to live in Hogwarts, heaven knows for how long. We can’t promise them that they’ll be able to return to the lives they’ve left, either. But look at them – they’re living. They’re accepting this reality. And well, that takes a good amount of courage, and I would give a good amount of respect to them, if I were you, rather than harp on about their difference from us.’
 
‘I…’ He finds that he no longer knows what to say. When his part in this had started, a year ago, all he had had in mind was the safety of Mother, and Father, fear for his life – then he had been overwhelmed by his complete inability to kill Dumbledore, tasting the complete and overpowering sense of having no reason not to do something, except that it was simply something that he could not do. He had never thought of what would follow after, and he has never thought of – he has never imagined that these people, these Muggles, with their own lives and their own reality, will be involved.
 
He wonders at their eating the food the House Elves have prepared for them, wonders at their going to sleep in the Great Hall, in the classrooms, in the other House Towers. He wonders how they can do all of this, and not feel as completely helpless, and completely resentful, as he now feels.
 
‘Malfoy?’ Weasley prompts. He turns back to her, jerkily, and he realizes that her eyes are soft and he wants nothing but to run from them, or demand that she resent him to, and feel as helpless as he does. Then Weasley sighs, breaking off eye contact with him as she shakes her head briefly.
 
‘Just eat, Malfoy,’ she says, in a tired voice. ‘You haven’t eaten much in days.’
 ~ 
In the end, he only manages to finish the slice of pie that Weasley had put on his plate.
 
He finds that he wants to remember the fear, the pain that he had experienced in the past year – he remembers that it had been acute. But now he cannot remember that driving sharpness, which had told him that he had only one option – to obey the Dark Lord’s commands, to let the Death Eaters in, to kill Dumbledore.
 
It has dulled, as if the reasons had themselves grown cold and useless.
 
The Dark Lord had still punished him, Mother and Father are still in his service, and he does not know how he is going to breathe in this June that stretches out at length before him, with Potter and Granger and the Weasleys, all ready to fight, probably to lay down their lives, with Groan and his wanting to die, with his Housemates who had not chosen as he had, with these Mudbloods and Muggles who had been forced out of their lives, and still acted as if they can live.
 
As he stumbles out of the Great Hall as if in a trance, he almost does not notice that someone has wrapped their hand around his, and tries to pull him in another direction, away from the Slytherin dorm. He does not respond, at first, then the hand jerks him towards its owner, more insistently.
 
‘Weasley? What are you – ’ he starts.
 
‘Come with me, Malfoy,’ says Weasley; there is something hard to her face, as if she has just made a decision, and one that was difficult to make.
 
‘Where?’ he asks, stupidly.
 
‘Just come,’ replies Weasley, shortly, and her hand closes more surely around his as she pulls him away, into the crowd.
 ~ 
‘Why’re we in the Room of Requirement, Weasley?’ he manages; he has to remind himself that it is not the Room of Hidden Things, at least not now – in any case, according to what Weasley’s apparent needs, it is a small room, carpeted and with large velvet cushions thrown about the floor. A low stone table is at the heart of the room; in its centre is a shallow stone basin – a Pensieve.
 
Her small, thin hand still grasping his, Weasley answers, turning around to him, ‘I wanted to show you something.’ She pushes him down, and, letting go of his hand, drops onto the floor herself next to the Pensieve.
 
‘You want me to view a memory of yours with you?’ he finally asks.
 
‘Yes,’ she says, and she does not quite meet his gaze.
 ~ 
‘I’m really, really sorry, Colin,’ sobs a younger Ginny Weasley; he realizes, watching her, that this must have been years ago – probably in her first, or second year. She is small for her age; he would not have guessed that she was already in Hogwarts, except that he recognizes that they are in the Infirmary, and she is wearing her Hogwarts robes. Weasley the younger is seated on a chair next to a bed; on the bed is a younger Colin Creevey, looking pale and terribly small, without his ubiquitous camera, and his eyes are large and touched with red and tears.
 
Weasley the older stands next to him, watching the proceedings calmly; it strikes him that she must have seen this scene before, not just because it happened to herself, but because she has reviewed this, in this Pensieve, likely many times.
 
‘Gin – Ginny, it’s okay, I didn’t – it’s not like I died, y’know. My mum’s just frightened, that’s all,’ says Creevey, in a soft voice, and tentatively he reaches small hands towards Ginny Weasley, and pulls her hands towards him. ‘She – she was just upset, she wouldn’t have screamed so at you, otherwise. You know I don’t blame you…’
 
‘I could have killed you,’ chokes out Weasley the younger, ‘I could have killed you, it would have been entirely my fault – your mum’s not wrong – ’
 
‘Hush, Gin,’ says Creevey, interrupting her, and this time his voice is stronger, clearer than Draco has ever heard it to be.
 
‘I don’t blame you. I’ve had some time to think about this, here, and even – even if it was your fault, even if you had meant it, which you did not – you’re my friend, and…even if you weren’t my friend, what can be done about this?’ In a sudden movement, Creevey has pulled Weasley, still sobbing, into his arms, ‘What is there to be angry for?’
 
‘But – but I – ’
 
‘It’s happened, and it’s passed, Gin,’ says Creevey, and Draco realizes that Creevey has started crying, too. ‘And I’ll live with it, Gin.’
 
‘And you’ll have to live with it, too.’
 ~ 
‘What was that, Weasley?’ he asks, quietly, as they return to the present. ‘What was that we just saw?’
 
‘That was when Colin regained consciousness, in the Infirmary. It was after I had gotten him Petrified; the Basilisk attacked him – and he was only alive because he happened to have his camera with him. It was entirely fortuitous,’ Weasley says. Her voice is almost steady, but he knows rather than hears that there is a tremor in it.
 
‘You know, after what happened in my first year, I apologized to each of them. I apologized to Hermione, to Filch, for Mrs. Norris, I apologized to Justin Finch-Fletchley, I apologized to Penelope Clearwater, I apologized to Nearly Headless Nick,’ she continues, and her voice starts to take on an almost matter-of-fact, conversational tone. ‘Apologizing to Hermione was the easiest, but also the worst. She told me – I still remember – she told me that it was alright, she knew that it was not my fault, and that I wasn’t myself, that she understood. I remember, at first I felt fine – we even managed to share a joke, after that – but I have never – it’s as if I have never made it up to her, that I can never. I feel always, forever, in her debt.’
 
‘Apologizing to Filch was the most unpleasant, but the easiest. He screamed at me, threatened me, threw things at me, even. I let him, and tried my best to stay still and not flinch. And then, finally – he stopped, his anger was spent.’
 
‘Apologizing to Justin was like apologizing to Hermione – I just haven’t felt it as badly, all this time, because I simply don’t see Justin as often as I do Hermione, and Justin has never gone on to want to be any particular kind of friend of mine. He was gentlemanly about it, and he nods to me and talks to me when he sees me – and I can’t ever help not thinking of what I did to him, whenever he does.’
 
‘Apologizing to Penelope and Nearly Headless Nick wasn’t particularly bad – Percy let me have it on Penny’s behalf, before hugging me and saying he was sorry halfway into his ranting at my utter stupidity and recklessness. Nearly Headless Nick just nodded when I said I was sorry – and maybe he understands how I would feel, will always feel, because he never tries to strike up a conversation with me, though he never looks like he is angry with me, either.’
 
‘But it was this apology to Colin – it was this apology to Colin that got me through the worst of it.’ Weasley pauses, finally. She looks down at her hands, as if studying them. ‘Colin was my first friend in Hogwarts. And he was worried – he was worried – that I’ll have to live with what I had done, what I had caused. And he’s not wrong – I’ve had to live with it, live past it, live with Tom…’  
 
‘What are you trying to say, Weasley?’ he whispers. She had told him – just hours before, in the Weasleys’ kitchen – about what it was, to live with what Tom Riddle had done to her, but now he realizes, in a slow, thick haze, that that wasn’t quite everything she had had to face – that she has to face.
 
‘What you did – when you realize what it is that you’ve done – you’ll realize that you’ll never make up for it,’ Weasley says, and she finally looks up, at him. ‘You’ll never make up for it, even if you’ve undergone punishment for it, even if they have given you forgiveness. If you really realize what you’ve done – you’ll never think that you’ll ever do enough.’
 
‘But…’ she continues, still looking steadily into his eyes, ‘But you’ll have to live with it. And it’s the only way you’ll ever go towards making up for it – by living, and knowing…knowing that you’ll never make up for it.’
 
When he does not answer – cannot answer, she reaches towards him, and lays a small, pale hand on his. ‘You’re not going to get forgiveness, Malfoy, and anyway, I don’t think those people out there – whether Muggle or no – know to give you forgiveness, and I’m not even sure if you want forgiveness. For all I know, all your reasons for doing what you did, they still make sense to you. All I can say is, Malfoy, is that whatever it is – ’
 
‘Whatever it is, and whatever you will pay for it, you have to live.’
 ~ 
When the tears come, when the knowledge finally comes, she reaches over and pulls him towards her, and he cannot remember how long they sit there, together in the Room of Requirement.
 ~ 7th June 1997 
When he wakes up, she is no longer there – someone, probably Weasley herself, had laid his head on a cushion, and had covered him with a blanket. He rubs his eyes and stretches, feeling strangely spent, and bereft, when he hears someone enter the room.
 
‘Malfoy? You’re awake?’ Weasley steps into the room. She is balancing a plate in her left hand – he smells fresh waffles and maple syrup – and in her right hand is a large mug. ‘I brought you some food – I s’pose you can call it sup-fast, since it’s so long past supper, but not quite time for breakfast yet…’ Gingerly, she moves towards the stone table, and looking over Draco realizes that there is no longer a Pensieve in its centre, in time for Weasley to put the plate and mug down on top of it.
 
‘What time is it?’ His voice comes out in a scratch.
 
‘It’s almost five in the morning,’ answers Weasley, ‘I was going to wake you up anyway, I don’t suppose you would want the two of us to be seen together by all and sundry, as if we’ve spent the night together…’
 
He shoots her a strange look, as he sits up and reaches forward towards the table, pushing the blanket off himself, ‘Are you fussed about your reputation, Weasley?’
 
‘If you’re implying that I don’t have a reputation to speak of to protect, Malfoy…’
 
‘No – no,’ he says, brow furrowed, as he reaches for a waffle – Weasley has not had the presence of mind to bring any cutlery with her, so he has to settle with eating it with his hands. He realizes that he is, indeed, extremely hungry. ‘Well, you did set yourself up for such a remark, but what I meant is, it’s not like we spent the night together in any particular sense which ought to get anyone’s knickers in a twist.’
 
‘Yes – well,’ Weasley starts, then shakes her head, as she reaches for a waffle herself. ‘It’s not something which would worry boys much, I s’pose.’
 
‘Well – I would hex anyone into oblivion who thought poorly of your virtue, Weasley,’ he replies, almost flippantly, but he keeps an eye on her reaction.
 
Weasley chokes slightly on her waffle at his words, and sputters, half a laugh at her lips, ‘Are you saying that you intend to protect my reputation for me, Malfoy?’
 
‘I’ll have to do something…for last night, don’t you think?’ He tries to keep his tone as light as possible, and concentrates on the waffle in his hand.
 
Weasley does not answer him for a moment, and then she reaches a hand towards him, and rests it on his arm. He tries not to flinch from her new familiarity with him, or from the slight pain that runs up his arm with her hand pressed against the Dark Lord’s carved-in words. ‘Malfoy, last night – I’m not going to say it’s nothing, because it was something for me, something which was both difficult and good for me to share, with you. But we’re not – you don’t have to think that you owe me anything…’
 
‘I’ve saved your life twice, anyway, so I think you’re still indebted to me,’ he says, as she trails off, and he is surprised at the note of amusement in his own voice, even as he knows that his lips have curved into a small smile.
 
Ginny Weasley stares at him for a beat, looking for all the world somewhat dumbfounded, until, finally, she bursts out into laughter. ‘Did you – did you just – with me – Malfoy!’ she manages, and he finds himself swallowing the piece of waffle in his mouth hastily as he starts to laugh too, his shoulders shaking.
 
When he finally manages to catch a breath, however – after the first time, he realizes, he has laughed properly, sincerely, in a long time – he realizes that there the dim light of the room just lights onto Ginny Weasley’s red hair, and sets it aflame.
 
And he thinks, not for the first time, that Ginny Weasley is, perhaps, the prettiest girl he has ever seen.
 ~ 
They make it back to the Slytherin dorm unmolested; at the Common Room, however, she pauses – they have been quiet on the way back, without speaking, and suddenly she wonders if she should say something.
 
After all, she has been thinking, on the way back – for hours, in fact, after Malfoy had fallen asleep in her arms, of what she has done with him. And, she supposes, what it means.
 
The night before had been strange enough – she has never had anyone admit, out loud, that they understood – could have felt as she had, and has – what it is to have had Tom, so near to her, in her. But Malfoy had, in a small way – and when she had seen him, his expression and his inability to eat in the Great Hall, she had seen in him what she had had to face, and still has to face, other than Tom – having to live with herself, with what she had done.
 
Which had led to the past hours – she realizes, suddenly, that she has now shared a part of herself that she has never shared with anyone else; only Colin himself knows of what had happened between them, but not what had happened with Hermione, and the others, and Colin certainly does not know just how much his words had meant to her. She realizes that what she has shared with Malfoy – Malfoy, who she cannot even think of calling by his first name, who she had assumed that she would always dislike – was intimate.
 
And he had cried – she remembers Harry relating how Malfoy had cried in the past year, Moaning Myrtle hovering at his shoulder – but she has never expected to ever, herself, see Malfoy cry. And when he had cried into her neck, his body trembling, she had felt the tears come to her own eyes, and she had held him, reached around the slender frame and held him close to her, and at that point, she would have given anything to take some of what he has to face away from him.
 
But now, they are in the middle of the Common Room – and the silence hangs between them; she realizes that Malfoy has not quite turned to make his way to the Slytherin boys’ dorm, either.
 
‘You’d better get some sleep, Weasley,’ says Malfoy finally, his eyes shaded in the low light from the fireplace, his voice soft and without its usual, drawling quality.
 
She nods, and turns to go, then stops. Impulsively, she spins around just as she hears his footsteps start – ‘Malfoy!’
 
Surprised, he stops and turns towards her. ‘What is it, Weasley?’
 
Abruptly, she feels the heat rise around her neck, onto her face – thank heavens it is dark in the Common Room – but she has made a decision, and she will see it through, ‘Call me Ginny, Malfoy.’
 
She cannot quite catch his expression in the poor light, but there is a stillness to his features which betrays his shock at this. She feels her cheeks burn, but forces herself not to run.
 
Then, finally, ‘Then you ought to call me Draco, Weasley,’ he drawls, but she knows he is not mocking her, at least not really – if this were him from a year ago, he could have answered in a myriad humiliating ways, but he has not.
 
She nods, and gives him a quick, small smile – she wonders if he sees it in the light. ‘Have a good rest, Draco.’
 
He does not respond for a moment, before nodding, shortly.
 
‘See you in a while, Ginny.’
 ~ 
‘Gin! Get up, it’s time for breakfast!’ Hermione reaches out to shake the younger girl in the last bed in the far corner of the room – Ginny has always liked to sleep up against a wall. Today she has backed herself against the wall next to her bed; her small form leaves an expanse of bed untouched. Tracey Davis has already left; she had nodded wordlessly at Hermione as a morning greeting, which Hermione takes as her form of friendliness. She has hardly heard a word from Tracey Davis since she had arrived – now that she thinks of it, she doubts she has ever heard Tracey Davis speak.
 
‘Ginny, c’mon, aren’t you hungry?’ Sighing at the lack of response from Ginny, Hermione aims her wand at her – ‘Reennervate!’
 
Ginny jerks awake, and immediately looks up at her, a full scowl on her face. ‘’Mione!’ she complains, ‘I wanted to sleep in a bit, it isn’t like we have school…’
 
‘Yes, well, but we’ve got to go back to our research, don’t we?’ replies Hermione, somewhat exasperatedly. ‘And you shouldn’t have come back so late from your Ravenclaw friends last night…’
 
‘Ravenclaw friends…?’ says Ginny, a look of confusion coming to her face. She rubs her eyes and a curtain of red hair falls over her shoulders.
 
‘Yes, your Ravenclaw friends – Groan said that you had gone to say hello to them, and talk with them last night,’ says Hermione, fully exasperated now, ‘Really, Ginny, I think you need some coffee…’
 
She turns away a moment to collect her things, and misses the quick, sharp look of comprehension that flits across Ginny’s face.  When she turns back, Ginny has already started to get up from the bed, and looks rather decidedly awake.
 
‘Well, I’ll wait for you at the Common Room, then we’ll walk to the Great Hall together,’ says Hermione, smiling at the younger girl.
 ~ 
‘You weren’t in the dorm last night, Malfoy.’
 
Inwardly, he sighs – why, in all hells, must the first voice to greet him at the Common Room have to be Potter’s?
 
‘I didn’t know you were keeping such close watch on my bed, Potter,’ he bites out, sneering.
 
Potter glowers at him, ‘You did enough last year, Malfoy, to warrant your being put in – ’
 
‘Draco was up talking to my brother, Brett,’ another voice interrupts; Draco recognizes it as Brone’s – the taller boy walks into Common Room, but he has come in from the corridor leading into the Slytherin dungeons rather than from the dorm. In his hand is his customized Firebolt; he is in what appears to be his older brother’s old Montrose Magpies practice robes. Brone might be the only Slytherin Draco knows to willingly and openly wear someone else’s hand-me-downs, but no one would tease him for it. Ron Weasley, who is standing next to Potter, casts an envious look in Brone’s direction.
 
‘Draco’s quite a fan of the Magpies, and he’s known Brett for some years,’ continues Brone smoothly, and spares Potter an easy, even sunny smile. Draco shoots him a grateful look.
 
When Brone quickly passes him on the way to his dorm, however, he says, in a low, fierce whisper, ‘You had better have been doing something innocuous, Draco.’
 
When he turns back, Potter is still looking at him suspiciously. ‘I hardly think anyone appointed you my guard, Potter,’ he manages, rather bitterly, ‘So why don’t you go and – ’
 
‘Let’s go for breakfast, Draco,’ cuts in Blaise, who steps out into the Common Room just as Brone disappears into the corridor leading to the dorms. ‘I hardly think this is worth sniping about, Potter.’
 
‘What’s going on?’ asks Granger. She too, has just come into the Common Room, from the corridor leading to the girls’ dorms.
 
‘I was just asking Malfoy why he wasn’t in his bed for most of the night,’ answers Potter, who still looks rather irritated. ‘Vaisey claims that Malfoy spent the night talking to Vaisey’s older brother.’
 
‘Malfoy wasn’t in his bed too?’ says Granger, and her brow begins to furrow.
 
‘What d’you mean…’ starts Potter, then he turns, and begins to smile as Ginny Weasley appears at the threshold of the corridor leading to the Common Room.
 
Ginny Weasley. He catches her eye, briefly, before she greets Potter, Granger and her brother. Despite what he had told her to do herself, he had not slept in the two hours since he had left her – he had spent the time thinking, of what she had shown him, of what he would have to face, but also of her telling him to call her by her name.
 
‘Draco,’ he hears Blaise hiss, and he realizes, looking at Blaise and at the irritated tone of his voice, that it must not have been the first time he has tried to catch his attention. ‘If you’re quite done staring at Ginny Weasley, Draco Malfoy, I suggest that we leave for breakfast before Potter notices what you’re doing.’
 
‘Oh, yes – and I wasn’t – ’ starts Draco, and he gives Blaise an annoyed look; Blaise returns him an infuriatingly superior one, and it takes all of Draco’s self-control not to hit him.
 ~ 
‘I somehow doubt Vaisey would’ve lied for you if he knew that you had spent the night with Ginny Weasley,’ says Blaise in a low voice; his features are alight with mischief.
 
‘What d’you mean by that?’ Draco shoots back irritably, stabbing his sausage rather viciously; he does not bother to protest that Blaise has gotten it wrong – Blaise is no idiot, and any such effort would be entirely futile, and only appear more worthy of suspicion and examination. This morning, Blaise sits with Draco – even Draco knows that Blaise’s mother never rises before eleven in the morning.
 
Even without needing to look up at the boy opposite him he knows that he is rolling his eyes as he answers, ‘Vaisey’s a bit soft on Weasley, don’t you know, Draco?’
 
Draco stops his attack on his sausage long enough to cast a full glare at the other boy. ‘No, why would I know that, and why would I care anyway?’
 
Blaise sighs, ‘Apparently Vaisey has been rather protective of Weasley’s virtue in the Slytherin Quidditch locker room one too many times in the past year, so there’s been some talk going around about what he thinks of her. You would’ve known of this too, Draco.’
 
‘Except that I was rather preoccupied, and not on the Quidditch team in the past year, Blaise,’ replies Draco with exaggerated patience. He ignores the slight distaste in his mouth at the kind of conversation which could have been conducted in the Slytherin Quidditch locker room with respect to Ginny, and also what could have driven Vaisey to have stood up for her – then again, Vaisey has always had a mind of his own. Perhaps that includes acting like a gentleman even when it is inconvenient – Draco cannot imagine why.
 
‘And anyway, you would care, since apparently you cared enough to spend an entire night out with her,’ continues Blaise unperturbed. ‘And you’re eating, today.’
 
‘I eat everyday, Blaise,’ he retorts, trying to keep his temper in check and ignoring his insinuation with respect to Ginny, ‘it’s not a particularly remarkable thing.’
 
‘You weren’t doing a very good job of it last evening, mate – I saw you, you weren’t very far from where my mum and I were having dinner,’ Blaise replies sweetly, ‘I suppose Miss Ginny Weasley is a convincing girl.’
 
Draco glowers at him.
 
‘It’s good though, you’ll need your strength…’ continues Blaise.
 
‘What for?’ Draco interrupts, rudely.
 
‘I heard yesterday from Groan that you’re already part of their little research team, Draco,’ smiles Blaise, and Draco dearly wants to smack him. ‘I am rather certain that Granger’s rather a slave driver when it comes to these things. And you’ll need a good deal of strength to deal with Ron Weasley, and Harry Potter, if your friendship with Ginny Weasley is going to persist…’
 
‘What have they got to do with whether I’m friends with Ginny or not?’ bursts Draco, and it is a beat before he realizes his mistake.
 
Blaise leans back, almost as if admiring his handiwork.
 
‘Well, well, Draco Malfoy…’
 ~ 
She notices that Draco is going spare at Blaise Zabini, while the latter leans back, a devious smile on his lips, and cannot help but try to bite back a smile herself. It is a scene that she has seen a few times in the past years, and she can only infer that it has nevertheless never significantly jeopardized the boys’ relationship – and she cannot help but feel that it looks so very much like how Draco would normally be.
 
He already looks much better, this morning – and he is eating. He looked rather over-eager, in fact, with a sausage just a while ago…
 
‘Gin?’ asks Harry from next to her, he is sitting very close to her, she realizes; his body touches hers and she suddenly feels somewhat short of space, of breath. ‘You’re drifting,’ he continues. ‘Are you okay?’
 
Since his kissing her the night before last – he has been acting like they are together again. She cannot deny that his kiss had comforted her, had made her hope that perhaps she could persist in this, or that perhaps he does love her, outside of Hermione’s love potion. But she cannot help the fear either; thinking of what she shared with Draco the night before, she wonders if she can just live with it, if that would be enough for both her and Harry.
 
‘I’m fine, Harry,’ she manages, ‘Just fine.’
 
‘Who were you hanging out with, from Ravenclaw, yesterday?’ he asks. At Ginny’s surprised look, ‘Hermione just mentioned – you must have missed it – you weren’t in your bed for the most part of last night either, Gin. She said that Groan said that you were with your Ravenclaw friends.’
 
‘Oh,’ says Ginny, rather stupidly, but she quickly recovers, ‘I was with well, Michael Corner, and Terry Boot – Terry had arrived yesterday, after the fight, to see his family.’ She had certainly seen Michael last evening at dinner and had waved at him, and he had nudged Terry who was next to him, who had also directed a friendly smile in her direction – she supposes that Terry must have, indeed, come to Hogwarts after the fight. She would have to ask Michael to corroborate her story if it came to that, later. ‘I haven’t seen Michael in a really long time, so…’
 
‘I didn’t know that you and Michael were still close,’ says Harry, and she does not miss the note of jealousy in his voice.
 
‘Well, we started talking again more often ‘cos he wasn’t very happy when he and Cho broke up, and we were friends for months before we got together, and have been friends even after we broke up, Harry,’ says Ginny, before adding, in a softer voice, ‘and we were with Terry, and it oughtn’t mean anything to you, anyway.’
 
‘Gin…’ says Harry, and his voice speaks both of warning and tiredness. ‘I told you…’
 
‘And I told you, Harry, that I think it should be clearer between us; you asked if we could break up,’ Ginny says, afraid to hear more. ‘And – and I think you might want some time, to think about how you really feel about me…’
 
‘Gin, I know how I feel about you,’ says Harry, ‘And if Ron and Hermione and I can’t leave for a while now – perhaps I shouldn’t have broken things off with you…’
 
‘So when you can leave, you’ll break things off again?’ Ginny says softly. Surely there is something wrong with them, independently of Hermione’s love potion – which she is not sure is even in effect now, anyway, since Ginny had stopped Hermione from administering it for weeks now…
 
‘You kissed me back, the night before, when I kissed you,’ he says, almost accusingly. ‘You must know that I only want what’s best for us, Gin – when,’ he suddenly swallows, ‘when all this is over, we’ll be happy together, Ginny, and – and remember when we used to say – I could get an apartment, at Hogsmeade, and stay with you here while you finish your last year…and after that, you’ll be with me…’
 
She barely remembers having ever had this conversation – it feels like a lifetime ago, and she feels quite suddenly ill that he remembers. It must have been within the first week of their getting together – she must have teasingly asked him what he would do without her, when he graduates, in between kisses, and he must have answered her with this. She never expected him to mean it, or to remember – are the effects of the love potion supposed to be this lasting, and this serious?
 
‘Are you – are you quite yourself, Harry?’ she manages to whisper.
 
‘Gin – what are you – ’ he begins, almost sounding angry, and then he stops himself. ‘Ginny, if I had known you would be like this, I would never have broken things off with you. I thought you understood – and Ginny, I need you more than ever, I’ve known since that day when we came back from Godric’s Hollow after the Dementors attacked us, you were one of my most important memories…’
 
‘I’m – I’m sorry, Harry,’ she manages. Her fingers are cold; she feels as if she is not quite within herself, and it is as if her tongue continues to speak of its own accord. ‘But you don’t – you don’t really love me.’
 
‘Ginny, please,’ his voice has taken on a pleading quality, and his green eyes look over-bright.
 
‘No – Harry, it’s not – I’m not saying it’s your fault, it’s mine,’ she chokes, and she realizes belatedly that hot tears are already slowly sliding down her cheeks, and she feels acutely that something is breaking inside her. But suddenly she knows – she knows – that she must say it –
 
‘You don’t love me, Harry, because Hermione’d – we’d – given you a love potion, and what you think you feel for me – it’s not real.’
 ~