Ginny didn't expect much of anything. Being locked away in a dungeon didn't afford her any luxuries; even sunlight was a luxury at this point. She had expected to be taken if she hadn't been killed, and she expected to be tortured for information she did or didn't have. She didn't expect to survive the war at this point. With her elder brothers dead, she didn't really want to. It was all right if she became another name on the eventual war memorial. Ron would remember her, if St. Mungo's ever got his memory fixed. Luna's lips might uncross and she would speak again. Maybe someday she would recover.

For now, it was all right.

There was torchlight in the hallway beyond the bars to her cell. She wasn't surprised to find Draco Malfoy there. She was only surprised to see how gaunt he looked. He was tall and lithe, but his face carried lines of starvation and pain. He didn't sneer at her as he unlocked the door.

He grabbed her arm without ceremony. "Where is the last regiment?" he demanded.

"Even if I knew, I wouldn't tell you," Ginny replied evenly.

Their faces were close, almost touching. She could smell the scent of his soap as well as the sharp scent of her own fear. Death could be close now.

His wand pushed her jaw up. "You don't want me to cast a spell," he warned. "You don't."

"I wouldn't kiss you even if you did," Ginny replied, lips twisting into a sardonic grin. "Sorry, ferrets aren't my type."

Draco struck her then, and her teeth closed over her lip. She could taste blood in her mouth, but she didn't cry out. Ginny swallowed it down; it was a reminder that she was still alive. She would have to do something about that soon.

"There's your first kiss," Draco replied, voice icy. It sent a chill down her spine, and Ginny thought she could dissolve in the molten quicksilver of his eyes.

"The next will be better," Ginny replied flippantly.

"Where's the last regiment?"

"I can't tell you what I don't know."

His grip on her arm tightened, and she wondered what he was thinking. His face was a mask, almost carved from marble. She couldn't tell a thing about him, and she was beginning to get curious. She would bruise from his grip, but she didn't mind. He would come back, and maybe someday she would see a chip in the marble. Maybe someday she could tell what he was thinking.

"You're lying to yourself," Draco replied finally. "I'll find the truth, even if I have to dig it out of the center of you."

"There is no center," Ginny gasped. She felt as if the ground had fallen out from beneath her feet, and she grabbed hold of Draco's tunic to keep her balance. His lips tightened, but it was impossible to tell what he was thinking. Ginny could feel her insides turn to ice, and she remembered dark eyes and the hiss of a basilisk. It was never far from the edge of her nightmares, and anything could recall it. "Ask your master. I'm a bottomless hole inside. He put it there."

Draco dropped her to the floor. She fell in a tangled heap, and made no move to reposition herself as he left and locked the door.

***

A week and a half of staring at Draco while he tried to question her, and Ginny could see small nuanced changes. She wondered if it was part and parcel of Death Eater survival. He was singleminded in his persuit of this last regiment, and he would never accept that she didn't know.

He didn't look right. Ginny couldn't put her finger on it, but he didn't look right. Something had happened, something that marked him. There were dark smudges beneath his eyes, an absent look in those quicksilver eyes. He opened the door and shut it behind him. The key was in his pocket, and his wand was in its holster.

Neither moved.

"Where is the last regiment?" he asked finally. His voice sounded hoarse, and she wondered if he had been screaming. She wondered if Voldemort had laced him with a Crucio for not being able to get information out of her. But there was no way to get blood from a stone, or information from someone who had never known anything.

"I don't know."

"They'll kill you if you don't tell them."

"And you?"

He didn't say anything. She imagined that he would say something like I already am dead, something melodramatic, something almost pompous. But he remained silent, staring at her with empty silver eyes.

"You know what he is," he said finally. "How do you know?"

"Ask your father," Ginny replied wearily. She wrapped her arms around her knees and let her face fall to crown them. She didn't want to see the hurt burning in his eyes, the evidence that even Death Eaters were human.

"How do you know what he used to be? How do you know what he can do?"

"Someone has to, right? Someone has to remember. That's all I have. They never trusted me with anything important. So we'll both die for no reason, because I never knew where anything was. They didn't want me to know. So I can't lie, and I can't tell you, and he'll kill us both."

"Why don't you care?"

"Everyone I should care about is gone," Ginny replied, looking up. She rested her chin on her knees. "Everyone I really did care about, anyway. There were so many bothersome people, so many who would never understand what true darkness is like."

"You couldn't possibly," Draco replied, voice uneven. It was the first sign of emotion she had seen, and she didn't know what it was. "They'll peel you apart layer by layer. They'll rifle through your memories and rip them out. You'll wish they simply killed you when every nerve is burning with pain. It won't be an easy death."

"No, it won't," Ginny agreed. "Tom was never that way."

"Tom?"

"Go ask. See if anyone knows who he used to be. Once upon a time, he was just Tom. I knew that part of him. I knew where he came from, and you can see who he grew up to be. I know where his soul came from. I've lived with it."

"They lie," Draco said abruptly. Their eyes locked, and Ginny could see a tendril of pain curling in his gaze. It was startling to see.

"They always do," Ginny said softly. "That's the way of things."

"How can you accept it? Why aren't you fighting it?"

"How do you fight against a shadow? How to stop the darkness from devouring itself? He's going to consume the world, and it will never be enough. Nothing will ever be enough." Ginny sighed and let her arms fall from her knees. "So who did you lose?"

"They sacrificed my mother tonight."

She blinked at the raw anger shimmering in his tone, the bleak despair layered over everything. Is it night? You can't tell down in dark tunnels, she wanted to say. She wanted to be as callous as they had always been to her. Her pain had been thrown back in her face, and every shard of memory haunting her had drawn blood.

"I'm sorry," she said instead. Her voice was soft, light, without any anger or sadistic enjoyment. Ultimately, she was sorry. Draco didn't know any better, really. She could have just as easily been born to one of the other Pureblood houses that believed in Voldemort's schemes, just as he could have been born into one that wasn't. It was an accident how anything ever came about, and it wasn't right to hate someone for an accident of birth.

"She was supposed to be safe. She wasn't supposed to be touched. It's all I ever asked for," Draco replied, eyes boring into hers. "How do you give it over and not fight? How do you sit there and accept?"

"You can't change the past, Draco," Ginny murmured, his name feeling unfamiliar and strange on her tongue. "Just as you can't change the future, no matter how hard you try. We're all fated for something. I think I realize that now. I can't escape it."

He strode to her in quick, jerky steps. That wasn't like him. He grasped her arms to lift her up, but the touch wasn't laced with cruelty. His gaze wasn't sharp and cruel, and there were no comments set to cut her soul to ribbons. He didn't mean to flay her alive.

"I can help you," he whispered. His eyes searched her face, looking for something. She barely remembered what her freckled face looked like, that she had wicked red hair and plain brown eyes, that her mouth quirked and curved as she spoke. She could be sarcastic, she could be sassy, she could be silent. There was silence in the center of things, in the deepest heart of fear buried within her. She carried the lost memories of her first year with her, the ghost of the crushing need for acceptance. She could be anything and anyone, if only someone could love her.

"Where would we go?" she asked, voice unwavering.

"Anywhere. As long as we're away from here tonight. I can't get you anything. Your wand was snapped anyway." She nodded, remembering it. "Where is a safe place?" he asked, insistent.

He still wants to know where the regiment is, Ginny thought wildly, her eyes raking over his face. This grief isn't real, nothing is real. He doesn't care, he's putting me on since threats wouldn't work. Nothing happened, his mother is safe, and I'm going to die as soon as I speak. He really doesn't feel a thing, he's a soulless monster and he's using every dirty trick in the book.

But her gut didn't think so, didn't want to think so. He seemed so sincere, so distraught, pain running through him. It was impossible to fake that, the dark circles and the jerky steps, the trembling voice and the desperation hidden in his eyes. She knew what that looked like; she had seen it in the mirror all too often.

"I know a place," Ginny whispered. "At least, it's a starting place. We can change and then really start running."

He breathed out a sigh of relief, and touched her cheek softly. Ginny shivered, and looked away from his intense gaze. She couldn't shake the feeling that maybe she was wrong, maybe this was all an elaborate game. Maybe the silence hadn't bonded them, and he was still interested in information she didn't know.

"Where are we going?" he asked.

"The Burrow."

It was safer this way, she decided. She would have time to get to know him, to feel his soul sliding over hers. She would know if he could fill the gaping holes within her, adding sound to her silence.

She would know if he was lying. She would have to know.


End