When Ginny was a little girl, she had been full of dreams. She’d spend hours and hours imagining what her life would be like – what she’d do for a living (a teacher), where she’d live (a quaint, cozy cottage), and how many children she’d have (three: two girls and a boy). Even the Chamber of Secrets hadn’t been able to rid her of her fantasies, since, after all, hadn’t her knight in shining armor come to rescue her?

Then war came and slowly but surely shattered all her illusions. And when Harry asked her to marry him, and she didn’t even know what she wanted or if she could ever want anything again, she left. She said she needed space, but the truth was that what she really needed was something to fill the space inside her.

Most days she doesn’t even notice it, but sometimes she becomes painfully aware and that’s when she turns most to her camera.

He’d tried to fill her space, to be her center, but he couldn’t.

She never felt sad about it; really, she’s not felt sad or happy or truly angry since… well, for quite some time. No one seems to understand that, because they look at her pictures and they see all these things; they feel all the emotion in her work that she cannot feel herself.

Sometimes she wonders how that’s possible, but it’s only a passing thought.

So she watches. She doesn’t know if she’s waiting, or if that’s her state of being, and she doesn’t even really think about it.

***

It was humid, making her clothing into a damp cotton second skin. The noise of cars and pedestrians mixed into a cacophony of sounds, branding Brasilia in September with a signature all its own. Every place she’d been to had its own noise, unique in place and time. London in summer was loud and quick, humming with potential; the honking of horns there was a white noise behind the voices of a thousand tongues. A spring afternoon in Madrid was bright and relaxed, with clusters of happy voices coming from cafes and bars. Paris, Hamburg, Vienna, Athens – even Delphi, quaint Delphi, nestled into the mountain, where people raised chickens in their yards, next to the thousands-year-old wall where slaves had inscribed their freedom. Even Delphi was unique – the low murmur of speech over the sound of the wind in the olive trees in the gorge below.

But she wasn’t here to listen. She was here to see. Javier would be back soon with a friend. Javi had friends everywhere.

They’d met one afternoon in a Spanish town she’d wandered into for the day. He’d seen her in the Plaza Mayor, trying to catch a shot of a stork perched on a tower. The white-black of the bird had caught her eye against the brilliant azure of the sky. She’d liked the idea of the bird haunting the battlements, instead of the soldiers of a thousand years ago.

Javier invited her for a copa, and she didn’t turn him down. Over wine and olives they’d talked. She’d shown him some of her photos and he’d decided she had potential.

She’d become his apprentice, of sorts. Javier was a photojournalist, and Ginny liked to take pictures. She followed him around from country to country. He frequently told her she had a good eye, and that she caught things he missed.

She liked watching people.


They were on their way to a cattle ranch for a piece. So far they’d followed cowboys in the Great Plains, vaqueros in Mexico, gauchos in the Pampas, and now they were here, in the Cerrado. They were working on a larger piece about the impact of pastoralism on biodiversity. It was Javi’s sense of balance that kept Ginny interested – he saw the whole picture, or as much of it as any one person could. Javi’s friend Alberto, a Brazilian journalist, was taking them to see the ranching operation of the friend of a friend.

Ginny watched as the miles rolled by, staring out at the open grasslands and short, twisted trees. She thought they looked lonely. If they weren’t in a moving vehicle, she would have taken their picture.

She liked taking pictures of cowboys. Normally she preferred inanimate objects, but cowboys always seemed to know who they were, and never tried to be someone else for the camera. Cowboys also worked outdoors, where she liked to work. If she were indoors for too long she’d begin to feel restless.

“What do you know about the Cerrado?” Javi asked. It was ritual. Even though he always researched their locations, he liked to hear what she knew.

“The Cerrado. It’s a big grassland, a tropical savannah, dry most of the year except for the summer rains. In the last few decades it has been opened up to cattle ranching and soybean farming, mostly.”

“That’s it?” he asked.

“Well, no,” she spoke. “I’ll tell you the rest when I see it.”

Looking to her, Javi asked, “Do you know what ‘cerrado’ means?” When she merely shook her head, he responded, “It means ‘closed.’” He watched her impassively for a moment before turning back forward.

Looking out the window, she thought it looked very barren and empty. She could see why it had been closed so long.

***

The ranch was situated in the middle of a vast, empty plain. From horizon to horizon the view was almost completely unbroken. Ginny got her camera out as they pulled up next to it, snapping a few quick shots of the buildings in front of a backdrop of brilliant blue sky. Despite the fact that they were surrounded by so much emptiness, the ranch house and its accompanying outbuildings didn’t seem as small or alone as she would have expected. There was an appealing quiet strength about them.

She was introduced to the owner and his wife, who showed her to a bright and cozy room decorated colorfully. It had a homey feel, which reminded her of the Burrow. She tried to catch a few abstracted shots of the bedspread and some of the furniture. After a consultation with Javi, she settled in to rest until mealtime. Taking off her shoes, she lay back against the wide pillow, but she couldn’t sleep. Instead, she listened to the noises around her. A dog barked in the distance, and somewhere in the house a radio was on. Someone light-footed was moving around the front rooms, humming softly.

After some time, the smell of food cooking drifted to her. She stood up, replacing her shoes and wandered along, following the scents. The kitchen also reminded her of the Burrow, with its old-fashioned look and well-worn utensils.

The ranch owner’s wife saw her and smiled. It was genuine, if reserved, stretching across her tanned face and up to her eyes. In that moment she looked very pretty.

She allowed Ginny to help her in the kitchen, and it was pleasant despite their inability to communicate with words. Ginny decided that they weren’t really necessary.

***

Most of the peões, the cowboys, were out with the cattle, and Ginny and Javi were going to ride out to see them. When they’d first started their work following around ranchers and their men, she’d never even been close to a horse. Over the last few months she’d gotten fairly proficient, something that Javi remarked upon with something she thought might be pride.

The little group of four stopped and dismounted for a rest, and the man who was taking them to see the cattle handed her a piece of soft, chewy bread. She chewed it slowly, seeing a short, twisted tree nearby. Taking up her camera, she walked over to it, through the myriad of plants that brushed at her legs. Up close the savanna didn’t look nearly as uniform as it had from the windows of the automobile. She saw now that there were many types of plants, some flowering beautifully, with space in between them.

The trees still fascinated her the most, though. They were gnarled and bent, with hard, tough bark and strange leaves. It was a tough life, being a tree in a place with little moisture for most of the year. She placed her hand on the bark, feeling its roughness beneath her fingers. A many-legged insect made a slow, crawling path up the side, and adjusting her lens, she snapped its photo. Looking up, she caught another shot of the azure slivers of sky showing through the twisted branches of the old tree. Leaning back against it, she felt content for the first time in a long time. Before she knew it, Javi was waving her back over, and they continued on.

***

The sun was low in the horizon when they reached the cowboy’s camp, washing everything over in a strange red-gold light that made it seem as though you could reach out and grab a handful of it. She’d had her camera around her neck since their last stop, and had paused whenever she saw a good composition. The horizon line was particularly fascinating. She’d tried a few shots of a bright pink flower in the foreground, with the endless grassland stretching out to the horizon behind it. She’d showed it to Javi on her camera’s display screen, and he’d said he liked the idea of showing how everything in the Cerrado could seem part of a vast sameness unless you looked closer. She’d blinked, confused. That hadn’t been her intention, but she realized the interpretation. She’d taken the picture because it reminded her of herself.

Two men stood up from a small group and approached as they neared. The ranch hand who’d traveled with them seemed to be issuing instructions, and they took the reins from her hand and handed her pack to her. She took it with barely a glance at the man. Her eyes were riveted to the sight in front of her.

A third cowboy sat in front of her, a short distance away. He was leaning forward, cleaning something, his hair falling forward. She took all this in, but it was his bare back that had caught her attention, because it was decorated with a tattoo. It was beautiful. The gold-tipped claw of a red dragon reached for his left shoulder and the body curved away, the tail curling around his right side, just below his ribs. It wings were furled and its face solemn, telling her of unspoken sorrows. The odd, ethereal light made it look like it could jump off of his skin and fly away, had it a mind to leave its master.

She hadn’t realized she was taking pictures until the dragon shifted and moved as the man peered at her over his right shoulder. He merely gazed at her. Her breath caught in her throat suddenly, and she took a deep breath.

“Ginny,” Javi called. “Hullo, Ginny?” She turned to him, startled. They spoke about plans for the night, and when she turned back, the man with the dragon tattoo was gone.

***

Later that night, she sat alone, paging through a Portuguese-English dictionary by the light from her torch and the dying campfire. She was startled when a shower of sparks went up from the fire and it burst into a series of angry popping noises. Three of the ranch hands sat down on the other side, and a fourth threw on another log. It was the man she’d seen earlier. Before, she’d been so engrossed in her work, so startled, that she hadn’t taken a good look at him, and she hadn’t called up the image on the camera’s viewscreen because she was trying to save battery. Now, with the flames shooting up high and the blackness that edged along the circle of light, she couldn’t get a good look. She made out light-colored hair, long down to his shoulders, and the typical garments of the other cowboys.

He looked over to her, seeming to notice her stare, and with a quiet word to the man next to him, got up and walked away. There was a determinedness to his stride that she noted with curiosity.

The other cowboys were chatting and laughing, cooking something over the fire, when Javi returned. He sat down next to her.

“So who’s this dragon man?” he asked, reaching into his pocket for a cigarette.

“What?” Ginny asked, startled. Javi gazed at her assessingly.

“Earlier, when you were taking his picture, you looked like you’d seen a ghost,” he answered after he’d pulled out his lighter. She frowned. She didn’t remember feeling anything unusual at the moment she’d been snapping those photos.

“It must have been the light,” she replied, tugging her jacket closed, even though she wasn’t cold in the slightest.

Javi took a few drags on his cigarette, then spoke, “I’ve heard something interesting from Alberto.” Ginny was inwardly relieved at the change of subject. “There’s a fazenda near here that I think we should visit. The owner’s heavily involved in the local sustainability movement.”

Ginny nodded, her mind going over the words Javi was speaking without internalizing them. Her eyes kept going back to a spot at the edge of the circle of light, to the left of the cowboys.

“Alberto said that your dragon man used to work with the nearby fazenderos on one of their ecology projects. That’s how he came to the area.”

She stood up abruptly. “I have to—I’ll be back.”

Several paces outside the light of the fire, she stopped so her eyes could adjust to the darkness and light of the moon. She didn’t know where she was going; it was as though she were being compelled. The scents of the Cerrado wafted to her on the breeze as she brushed through the grasses and bushes that ringed the campfire area. They had been removed there, so as to avoid starting an accidental wildfire. She could hear the stamping and shifting of the cattle in the distance, and the jingling of a rider as he passed by a distance away.

Moving forward again, she saw a glint of something to her side. Looking closer, she saw that it was a bright point shining in the light of the moon and the nearby flames. For a moment she was reminded of the ornaments on the Christmas trees of her youth, but the notion fled quickly as all the disjointed images coalesced into a solid picture.

It was him. Dark shadows threw the features of his face into deep relief. It was almost menacing. She stepped closer.

Another amber flash and his eyes turned to her. He was still, merely looking at her. The night noises washed over them, and the moon beamed down on them timelessly.

“Where’s your camera?” he asked, screwing a cap back onto the bottle he held in his hand.

“I--” Her voice caught in her throat, and she cleared it gently. “In my bag.”

“You shouldn’t wander. You might get lost, or scare the cattle.” He moved toward her, grabbing her elbow lightly and steering her back toward the campfire. Her skin contracted at the touch. His hand was warm and gooseflesh prickled, even in the warmth of the night. She stared up at him, her eyes moving along the stubble brushing his chin and across to his lips. Her stomach burned.

Javi looked up as they neared.

“I’m for bed,” she said, forestalling the questions she could see in his eyes.

***

Camera strapped safely around her neck, Ginny waited as Javi checked over her horse as she’d saddled it herself. In his younger days Javier had been associated with the Real Escuela Andaluz, and was very particular about riding safety. She’d never heard the story why.

Alberto, Javi’s journalist friend, had left the day before back to the political beat in Brasilia, and Javi was left as the communicator. He’d spent some time in Lisbon, but found the Brazilian form of Portuguese somewhat beyond him after all these years. She could tell when things got difficult because he started to throw in Spanish words.

One of the men approached Javi just as he had turned to speak to her, and using her basic knowledge of French and Spanish, she could barely make out a general sense of the topic; there was some trouble. The man followed as Javi approached her.

“Looks like we’ll have to split up,” he said. “They’re saying it’s going to rain tomorrow, and if we want to see down in the gorge we have to go today. They don’t know what the water table will be like after the storm.”

She looked up at the cloudless blue sky, but didn’t question it. “That ranch owner we’re going to see is going to be gone any day,” she responded. “So am I going to there or on the nature tour?” She was only half joking. She was sure by now that she knew the word for ‘tourist’ in at least thirty languages. It always seemed to stand out of conversation, even when she didn’t know the language, just as she stood out in most foreign places with her bright hair.

“You’re with me,” a voice behind her responded. “To the valley.” She turned her head to the side, assessing him. It could only be him, speaking English. He was mounted, staring down at her with the same kind of look that she’d gotten the last time she learned a new way of saying ‘tourist’. Her camera strap twisted around her left hand, she nodded.

As she moved past Javi on her way to her horse, he leaned in to murmur, “It was a red dragon that made the angels fall.” At her blank look, he quirked his lips up in a wry smile. “In Revelations. And Saint George killed his, for causing the plague. But in Asia they’re a powerful and intrinsic part of nature.”

Shading her eyes, trying to see his expression, she responded, “What are you trying to say?”

His smiled faded, and his enigmatic reply left her slightly unsettled. “I’m only wondering what sort of dragon he is.”


They’d stopped after a few hours’ ride. It was springtime, but the sun was already beginning to feel hot and the humidity oppressive. The noise of the breeze on the plants and the buzz of insects surrounded them, but the silence between them made it all seem muted.

“Why’re you accompanying me?” she asked, her voice firm, loud in the void.

He shrugged. “Because I speak English.”

She didn’t respond. Movement caught her eye, and she was immediately flicking on her camera and moving toward it. Whatever animal it was eluded her, though, so she instead focused on the small paths she could see winding their way through the hardy plants. The gaps between the bushes and other plants were constantly changing with the wind and perspective, and every angle she tried failed to capture the nearly-hidden tracks. She let out breath she didn’t know she was holding in a sharp burst, blowing her hair into her face. Turning quickly, wanting to move on, she almost crashed right into him.

“Ready?” he asked, his eyes focused disturbingly on her face.

“Yes,” she responded, looking over his shoulder to the horses. She nearly jumped when his fingers touched her face gently, softly brushing her hair behind her ear.

Abruptly, he turned and led the way back to their mounts. It was a second before she moved, watching him silently. She almost forgot to turn her camera off again.


It would have been difficult to believe if she wasn’t seeing it with her own eyes. They’d come to a break in the flat landscape, a deep gorge, slashed in the ground by powerful ancient forces. They’d descended, down and down, into the valley below.

It was a whole other world, nearly. The flora was much different here, on the valley floor, than it was on the ridge above. She was surrounded by short trees – they were still drought-adapted – and it felt strange to look out and not be able to see the horizon stretching as far as the eye could see. He’d let her wander for quite some time taking photos, and she’d started to become frustrated. They were surrounded by wildlife – the sound of birds was all around them – and yet she didn’t seem to be able to get a clear shot of any of them. It was like some cosmic joke, where everything was hiding from her.

Rationally, she knew these things happened. She knew that not every single day could be productive, and that every photographer had to deal with it now and again.

It just didn’t happen to her.

She set the camera down on the ground, seating herself on a rock, turning her face to the sky. Closing her eyes, she listened to the sound of the valley. Nature had its own sounds, just like the city, but far from the sound of human voices. She let it seep under her skin, soak into her blood, relaxing her.

“We should be going soon.” Her eyes snapped open. She’d almost been able to let go of her frustration. Almost.

“Right,” she responded. Gathering her things, she marched over toward the stream where the horses rested. She zipped her camera up into her bag and stroked the horse’s neck as she waited for him to pick up the remains of their lunch.

He was still as graceful as he always had been. It was something she’d always envied him. It flowed out of him naturally and imbued him with a sense of security that she knew he didn’t always feel. She wondered what he was doing here.

It had been a few months after they’d gone their separate ways that she’d come to an epiphany about herself. She was looking for him. She’d read the Prophet, or be walking down Diagon Alley, and she’d catch herself searching for any sign of him. She hadn’t realized she’d been doing it at first, but when she thought about it she knew it had been happening ever since they’d walked out of each others’ lives. She’d spent a few days contemplating it, and then she’d packed up some things and left for France, and then kept going. She’d been running away, leaving the memories and the searching behind her.


Hours had passed. They were on their way back to the ranch, as the valley was as close to it as the campsite. A breeze touched her cheeks, but it didn’t cool her. She felt strange; disconnected. She wondered if she was coming down with something.

Every hoofbeat grated at her, and the setting sun was angling toward her eyes. It felt like she was going to burst open at the seams.

He called a rest, and as soon as her feet hit the ground she was next to him, fists balled at her sides. “Is this your idea of a joke?” she hissed. “What are you playing at?”

His hands dropping from the bag he’d been opening, he turned to look at her. “What do you mean?” he asked, a note of deadly calm in his voice.

“Why are you here, Draco? This is my life, this is my story, my pictures. I’ve been working so hard for the last years, and why are you here?” There was a note of pleading desperation in her last question that she didn’t hear.

He stared at her long and hard. “This is my life, my story. Why are you here?”

“Because you left,” she cried, pushing at him. “Because everywhere I went I was looking for you, in all the places we’d been and all the places we’d planned to go – and I had to get away because the memory of you was driving me mad!”

He caught her wrists tightly. “It was you that walked away,” he said, and she stopped trying to free her arms from his grasp.

“And you didn’t follow me. I know I wasn’t what you really wanted, but I wanted you to come after me. I just wanted you to show that you cared enough.” Straightening, she compressed her lips into a thin line, and was about to speak again when he interrupted her.

“I did care. More than I should have. More than I wanted to. You were too good for me.” He dropped her hands. “And I’ve never stopped caring. I always will care. For every second, every minute, every hour, every day of my forsaken life. Para sempre.”

She stood rooted to the spot, her brain scrambling to understand. Without even thinking, she’d turned and leapt up onto her horse. He shouted after her as she raced away.

***

Luckily, she’d been listening when he’d mentioned the way back to the ranch. He hadn’t followed her. The man at the barn had spoken to her, but she didn’t understand and she’d brushed him off as she grabbed her bag and headed toward the house.

She was approaching the entrance when she heard Javi calling her name. When she didn’t respond, he ran up behind her.

“Ginny,” he called, catching her by the arm. She stopped, still as stone, and didn’t look at him. “Ginny, what’s wrong?”

Looking up at him, she responded with no inflection, “I’m not Ginny. I’m Saint George.” Yanking her arm free, she walked away.


Her mind was racing, but was going nowhere. The room’s homey atmosphere did nothing to assuage the strangeness she was feeling. Catching sight of her laptop, she fumbled in her bag for the camera. Work would take her mind off of whatever was wrong with her. It always did. She needed to download the pics she’d taken and clear the memory card for tomorrow.

Sitting on the bed next to the computer and camera, she waited. The photos downloaded easily, and she disconnected the camera, looking through the shots she’d taken, trying to determine if today had been a total waste. And then she saw it.

It was the picture of him looking over his shoulder at her as she’d been fascinated by his tattoo. When she’d been taking it she’d been so focused on the art of the scene, on the way the dragon seemed ready to take flight, that she hadn’t seen the way he was looking at her. Hadn’t chosen to see it.

It felt like something in her broke, like the world shifted. It hurt. It hurt and her mind was trying to wrap around it and she couldn’t. Tears were sliding down her cheeks as she tried to understand what was happening. What she’d done.

It was as though every picture she’d taken, every emotion she’d suppressed, had been lying in wait for her. The scenes danced in her mind, mixing together like a twisted pastiche, and she curled on her side.

But somewhere in the miasma of grief and pain and hurt, she felt something blossom forward; a truth she’d always known.

She hadn’t run away, and she hadn’t ever stopped looking for him.

***

A voice shouting outside woke her moments before the pounding on her door would have. Without waiting, Javi pushed through the doorway.

“Ginny, get up,” he demanded.

“What’s wrong?” She was worried. The last time she’d heard this tone in his voice it had been serious. Very serious. Her stomach clenched in fear.

“Fire,” he said. “They’re taking us out in the truck. The savanna’s on fire, and it’s out of control.”

Adrenaline kicked in and she shoved her shoes on her feet. She didn’t have time for anything else because Javi grabbed her arm, pulling her out the side door of the ranch house and toward a waiting pickup. He exchanged words with the driver and they hopped in the back.

They were bumping along the rutted dirt road so fast that she thought it would shake loose all of her teeth, when a blind panic seized her. She tried to tamp it down, but all her defenses were gone.

“Where’s everyone else?” she shouted to Javi. They were alone in the back; two ranch hands sat in the cab.

“Most of the men are trying to drive the cattle away from the flames. Not that they need much help – they’re pretty panicked, but they’re trying to keep them from heading to the gorge.”

“What?” she cried. Her mind spun an image of the cows, and the peões, being mercilessly driven closer and closer to the edge by the relentless flames. Before she knew what she was doing she’d jumped out of the truck and taken off.

The terrain here was more bushy than grassy, so it was easy for her to disappear into the night when the truck stopped at the three men searched for her. Later on, she’d secretly suspect that her magic had helped her elude them, but she could never be sure.

It was easy to head in the direction of the fire; it was a dull glow on the horizon. It reminded her of sunrise, but the sinister black clouds that rose from it chilled her. No one had been in the barn when she’d got there and she’d saddled up a horse and rode out.

She was riding east, toward the gorge, when she heard voices. She kept riding, and they got louder. There was a dull roar, like a rushing river, in the background, and a thrill of terror raced through her as she realized that was the noise of the blaze.

A shape loomed up out of the preternatural glow, startling her. The man looked astonished to see her. He called out, and two more shapes loomed out.

“What the hell are you doing here?” she heard from behind her. She snapped her head to the right, relief coursing through her. His skin was glistening and there was a dark streak down his cheek, but he looked fine. He looked angry.

“I came to look for you.” Her heart was beating quickly, loudly, and she wanted to run to him and away from him at the same time.

“Into a wildfire?” She nodded, unable to speak. “You’re out of your mind,” he cried. “What if you’d missed us? What if you’d gone right up to the fire and couldn’t get away?”

“I had to come,” she choked out. “I couldn’t – I don’t know what happened. I am out of my mind. I don’t know why I did it, but I had to come for you. I didn’t think about following you into the fire, just that I’d follow you to the ends of this world, of this life and the next, em qualquer lugar,” she said, not knowing where the Portuguese had come from. It had sprung off her tongue easily, committed to memory from the phrasebook as though destined for this moment.

He looked at her in the dim, demonic light of the acres and acres burning near them, and laughed. “I’m out of my mind, too. I thought I could forget you.” Her heart got louder and quicker, pounding in her ears. “But I don’t want to forget you. I need you.”

Suddenly she was laughing, peals of bright sound going up and up, twining with the smoke around them and beyond into the obscured night sky. It was heady and dizzying; it was as though a weight she didn’t know she’d been carrying had suddenly been lifted from her.

It rained that night, rained and rained, and she opened herself up, letting it wash down on her and through her.

***

Whenever anybody asks her what happened to her camera, and why she doesn’t use it anymore, she just shrugs and changes the subject.

She doesn’t miss taking pictures.



ORIGINAL REQUEST:
What would you like to receive? Ginny tracks Draco down in the poor rural interior of the Cerrado (Brazil). Focus should be on D/G dynamic in Brazil, not on her search for him.
The tone/mood of the fic: Angsty but with a clear happy ending, i.e., Draco and Ginny MUST be together. What pulls Draco and Ginny apart should be internal misgivings that one of them has about their relationship or about their worth to the other and the resolution of the issue should occur through efforts by both of them.
An element/line of dialogue/object you would like in your fic: Draco to Ginny: “For every second, every minute, every hour, every day of my forsaken life. Para sempre.” (Para sempre = “for always” in Portuguese.) Ginny to Draco: “I’d follow you to the ends of this world, of this life and the next, em qualquer lugar.” (Em qualquer lugar = “anywhere”) If you can bring in the Cerrado landscape or climate in as a theme or motif, that would be great but not necessary!
Preferred rating of the the fic you want: Any but no smut for the sake of smut.
Canon or AU? As long as it’s not compliant with the epilogue, it doesn’t matter.
Deal Breakers (what don't you want?): Ginny should NOT be with any other character, implied or otherwise. No physical abuse. No betrayal. No major character death.