Chapter 4
Later that night, tired and grumpy, Ginny let herself back into her flat. Stripping her cloak off and letting it fall to the floor, she slumped down onto the couch and let her head fall back, closing her eyes and breathing deeply, trying to get herself back under control.
Damn.
Damn, damn, damn…
She hadn’t thought that his file would upset her so much. There had been more – much more – than the basic facts; the Ministry had been keeping an eye on him ever since he had been kicked out of the Order, and his file was fat, detailed, and – perhaps the most frustrating thing of all – completely clean.
On the surface, that was.
Underneath, there were hints. Questions. Rumours.
Suspicions that were all but certainties, but for the lack of concrete evidence.
He was crooked – they all knew it. But there was only one problem – the challenge: prove it. And how did Moody plan to gain this proof? Why, by sending Ginny undercover to seduce the one man who would certainly be able to identify her, no matter what guise she took…
They had been lovers for four years. No matter how much they’d changed in the intervening ten years, there was still no way she could fool him, especially not if – as Moody suggested – she tried for pillow talk. Some things could not be forgotten, and some things could not be faked. As she had shouted at Neville – poor Neville, always caught in the middle – that afternoon after she had stormed out of the building, there had to be another way.
*****************************************
The music was pounding, surging as rhythmically and as inevitably as the tide, as a heartbeat; Draco let the vibrations run through him, gave into the chemically enhanced illusion that the thrumming was some kind of magic, and that it connected him in some way to all the others out there on the dance floor – witches and wizards of all types – who also shared in the power…
He closed his eyes, tilted his head back, opened his arms wide and gave himself to the music and the growing light like a sacrifice offering himself up to his God –
And let go.
He would crash. It was inevitable – he always crashed, and hated himself in the morning. But in freefalling, he came the closest he had been in a very, very long time to complete and utter rapture…
***************************************
It had meant something, once, to be a Malfoy.
She remembered the quiet bitterness in his voice, when he had first talked to her of his world – or what had once been his world. The scars were old, by now, but the wounds still ran deep, influencing him in ways impossible to describe. And it was not just him: somehow it seemed that the whole world was scarred, that there was nothing and no one that Voldemort and the endless war had not touched and corrupted in some way.
When they destroyed his estates and his people, they struck at the very touchstone of his identity, stripping away the security of tradition, of belief and faith, replacing it with knowledge of fallibility and of mortality; and when they destroyed his identity, they destroyed his purpose.
Who are the Malfoy without their land, without their people? What is a Lord who has nothing to protect?
Nothing. Absolutely nothing.
But who was he, if not Caius Draconis Malfoy? If he had nothing, if he was nothing, then he had absolutely nothing to lose, and everything to gain. Oh, yes, Ginny could understand it, how he could justify his actions, whatever they may be. In a way, she could even sympathise…
*******************************************
Working back late at the Ministry building, Jared Carlisle stared down, once more, at the proud, confident face of the man he had sworn to destroy. A fairly recent photograph – taken only last year – it returned his gaze sardonically, not sneering as earlier pictures would have done.
It was hard to believe that this man had ever been one of Dumbledore’s most trusted lieutenants. For all his compassion and humanity, the Headmaster had a definite preference for golden, gallant Gryffindors, brave and loyal and daring, and Draco Malfoy was not – most decidedly not – of this ilk. He was too independent, too opportunistic… And yet he had been one of the central members of the Order of the Phoenix during the Second Rising, playing a vital role in bringing Voldemort down once and for all –
And then, once he had fulfilled his purpose, he severed all his ties to Dumbledore and the Order and went his own way.
Shadowlands.
Jared swore silently, rubbing the bridge of his nose. That thrice-cursed hellhole should never have been allowed to come into being. So much innocence had already been destroyed by Voldemort’s reign of terror; Malfoy’s illusions preyed on the barely-healed wounds, on the instinctive desire for oblivion, for other, better dreams than reality could ever provide…
Too many lost themselves in that oblivion, in those dreams.
Slowly, carefully, he took out another photograph – an older one, this time – of his sister Ellen, a young girl, laughing and joyous in the sunlight. Later on the innocence of youth had been stripped away and the laughter had died out of her eyes, only to be replaced by a darker, more febrile glitter – the deceptive light of the brittle, fragile dreams and illusions that she had become addicted to, at Shadowlands. And then, when the illusion was so much more real than stark, unforgiving reality, she had chosen her dreams, leaving him with nothing but bitterness and a futile anger that had threatened to destroy him, before he turned it towards revenge...
Later that night, tired and grumpy, Ginny let herself back into her flat. Stripping her cloak off and letting it fall to the floor, she slumped down onto the couch and let her head fall back, closing her eyes and breathing deeply, trying to get herself back under control.
Damn.
Damn, damn, damn…
She hadn’t thought that his file would upset her so much. There had been more – much more – than the basic facts; the Ministry had been keeping an eye on him ever since he had been kicked out of the Order, and his file was fat, detailed, and – perhaps the most frustrating thing of all – completely clean.
On the surface, that was.
Underneath, there were hints. Questions. Rumours.
Suspicions that were all but certainties, but for the lack of concrete evidence.
He was crooked – they all knew it. But there was only one problem – the challenge: prove it. And how did Moody plan to gain this proof? Why, by sending Ginny undercover to seduce the one man who would certainly be able to identify her, no matter what guise she took…
They had been lovers for four years. No matter how much they’d changed in the intervening ten years, there was still no way she could fool him, especially not if – as Moody suggested – she tried for pillow talk. Some things could not be forgotten, and some things could not be faked. As she had shouted at Neville – poor Neville, always caught in the middle – that afternoon after she had stormed out of the building, there had to be another way.
*****************************************
The music was pounding, surging as rhythmically and as inevitably as the tide, as a heartbeat; Draco let the vibrations run through him, gave into the chemically enhanced illusion that the thrumming was some kind of magic, and that it connected him in some way to all the others out there on the dance floor – witches and wizards of all types – who also shared in the power…
He closed his eyes, tilted his head back, opened his arms wide and gave himself to the music and the growing light like a sacrifice offering himself up to his God –
And let go.
He would crash. It was inevitable – he always crashed, and hated himself in the morning. But in freefalling, he came the closest he had been in a very, very long time to complete and utter rapture…
***************************************
It had meant something, once, to be a Malfoy.
She remembered the quiet bitterness in his voice, when he had first talked to her of his world – or what had once been his world. The scars were old, by now, but the wounds still ran deep, influencing him in ways impossible to describe. And it was not just him: somehow it seemed that the whole world was scarred, that there was nothing and no one that Voldemort and the endless war had not touched and corrupted in some way.
When they destroyed his estates and his people, they struck at the very touchstone of his identity, stripping away the security of tradition, of belief and faith, replacing it with knowledge of fallibility and of mortality; and when they destroyed his identity, they destroyed his purpose.
Who are the Malfoy without their land, without their people? What is a Lord who has nothing to protect?
Nothing. Absolutely nothing.
But who was he, if not Caius Draconis Malfoy? If he had nothing, if he was nothing, then he had absolutely nothing to lose, and everything to gain. Oh, yes, Ginny could understand it, how he could justify his actions, whatever they may be. In a way, she could even sympathise…
*******************************************
Working back late at the Ministry building, Jared Carlisle stared down, once more, at the proud, confident face of the man he had sworn to destroy. A fairly recent photograph – taken only last year – it returned his gaze sardonically, not sneering as earlier pictures would have done.
It was hard to believe that this man had ever been one of Dumbledore’s most trusted lieutenants. For all his compassion and humanity, the Headmaster had a definite preference for golden, gallant Gryffindors, brave and loyal and daring, and Draco Malfoy was not – most decidedly not – of this ilk. He was too independent, too opportunistic… And yet he had been one of the central members of the Order of the Phoenix during the Second Rising, playing a vital role in bringing Voldemort down once and for all –
And then, once he had fulfilled his purpose, he severed all his ties to Dumbledore and the Order and went his own way.
Shadowlands.
Jared swore silently, rubbing the bridge of his nose. That thrice-cursed hellhole should never have been allowed to come into being. So much innocence had already been destroyed by Voldemort’s reign of terror; Malfoy’s illusions preyed on the barely-healed wounds, on the instinctive desire for oblivion, for other, better dreams than reality could ever provide…
Too many lost themselves in that oblivion, in those dreams.
Slowly, carefully, he took out another photograph – an older one, this time – of his sister Ellen, a young girl, laughing and joyous in the sunlight. Later on the innocence of youth had been stripped away and the laughter had died out of her eyes, only to be replaced by a darker, more febrile glitter – the deceptive light of the brittle, fragile dreams and illusions that she had become addicted to, at Shadowlands. And then, when the illusion was so much more real than stark, unforgiving reality, she had chosen her dreams, leaving him with nothing but bitterness and a futile anger that had threatened to destroy him, before he turned it towards revenge...
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