A/N: Okay, I'm gonna get all the formalities out of the way first. This is going a stong D/G fic, but that does not mean, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that they will be together at the end. That's what I like to call 'creative license' and I like to use mine right up the the very boundaries of sanity, thanks, so you've been warned. ^_^
Also, I'm highly irregular with updating so... uhm, there's nothing I can really do about that (save locking myself up in a straight jacket, and then I couldn't update at all), so you'll have to grin and bear it. Or review and bear it. Or just review. I'm really not partial. ;)
I tend to use flashbacks a lot, and sometimes the nature of them can be quite confusing. If you don't understand how the different perspectives work (ie First, second, third, double-narrative etc. etc.) then I'd suggest a quick and meaningful roundevouz with Dictionary.com before reading. I like to play with my perspectives, it's what gets me through the day.
This fic's rated Mildly Naughty, because that's (roughly) how bad I estimate it will get, but that's not a guarantee. I'm only human :P Anyway, I'll inform you of any Rating changes, so you don't need to worry about stumbling in on some lovely G/D smut entirely unprepared. ;)
Finally, I'm a huge D/G fanatic, and I do (sometimes) come up with some canon stuff in the fic, so if you haven't read HBP and you don't want to spoil it, you should probably leave now. Also, that doesn't mean to say that I'm completely without fault - I do harbour mistakes (sometimes big ones), so if you find anything truly heinous, email me or review and I'll assess whether or not I need to change it or not. ^_^ Because, after all, it is up to me. :P
Oh yea, and enjoy!
Prologue
Almost Broken Promises
Broken promises. Empty threats. Vacant expressions.
The wind whipped volcanic red hair about mercilessly, slashing it into her face and tangling it around her throat as if in an attempt to choke the life from her. Not that it would have mattered. Nothing mattered anymore.
Small dried orange and red leaves tumbled past her feet, dancing a dance of death as they made their last stand, swirling and pivoting in protest. She looked over the barren world before her, debris and people everywhere. Survivors of The Last Battle. And none of them she recognized. Not one of them she knew.
She looked over the vast expanse of land that used to be Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. There was no evidence of a magical institute here except a large pile of smoking rubble. More than large; enormous. Empty of feeling, Ginny made her way towards it.
Stumbling blindly over blank faces and unmoving limbs, she tried not to let her tears fall. These people didn’t want her pity, they didn’t want her pain. They had their own troubles to deal with, in their own way she supposed. She snuffled self-deprecatingly, hating that she could walk through a field of people who had given their lives for others and not give them a second glance. Then she tripped.
Sprawled across the trampled grass, Ginny lay still. She dared not move for the fear of being spotted by lifeless eyes.
How was it that Dean had been so alive only hours ago and now everything had been stolen away in less than a breath? The wind taken from his sails as if by a vacuum as it sucked up dust. And yet, in all that destruction, life continued. Emily, Dean’s younger sister, being comforted in the arms of a stranger as she was pulled out from beneath his saddening weight. Ginny’s eyes dried up, almost as if in protest at what she was seeing. Everything Dean Thomas had been, could have been and was still yet to be was gone.
Even from where she lay, Ginny could see Emily’s eyes dancing in the light, the pale yellow sky casting a soft glow over her bloodstained face, tear tracks clear amongst the dirt and grime. Invisible to her, Ginny struggled to her feet and crept on. She wasn’t here to cry over people she had lost. She was here to look for those she could yet lose.
Suddenly, Ginny dropped to her knees as she saw a shock of brilliant red hair pinned beneath another unknown being. Another person lost in transit. She knew that hair. She saw that hair all the time. It was there when she looked in the mirror.
Choking on her own terror, she scrambled forward, brutally shoving the man in a Death Eater’s costume away. She wanted to scream, she wanted to howl. She wanted to make some noise that might release what that stark, lifeless, humorless face brought to existence in her. Feelings of anguish and utter despair as she remembered all the times that face had smiled down upon her with worldly love expressed in those pale brown eyes. That was no more. The pale brown eyes were blank and dull, the absent twinkle causing bile to rise in her throat.
‘What have they done to you?’ she asked, horrified. ‘Why? What good did this do?’ She glanced around at her brother’s surroundings, seeing what it was that he saw as his life came to an end. The unfair abrupt halt that stopped her life as much as his own.
The crackle of a dead leaf being stood on alerted Ginny to another presence. Another person was standing directly behind her. She closed her eyes tightly… waiting.
‘It never does any good, Ginevra.’
She didn’t need to look up. She knew who it was, and she still didn’t want to look up. She wished he would just go away, leave her to her task and pretend he’d never even seen her.
‘What would you know about it?’ she asked, suddenly enraged by the aloof pretense alive in his voice. He was immune to the world, but she certainly wasn’t. ‘You don’t care enough about anyone to even comprehend what might be going on in this place other than killing and dying! You pretend, and you do a bloody shoddy job of it!’
Draco knelt down beside her, grasping her chin lightly and turning it up to look into his silver gaze. ‘I see what goes on behind turbulent eyes, Ginevra. I don’t need to pretend; I know.’
Ginny pushed his hand away angrily, trying to stem the tears that built up in her eyes. She didn’t want to cry… not in front of Malfoy! ‘What are you doing here?’ she demanded, her voice full of unshed tears. ‘If you’ve come to look for your Father, he’s not dead.’ Ginny stood up and glared down at him, her eyes suddenly clear of moisture and lined with something that didn’t often grace a Weasley’s eye; hatred. ‘Yet.’
He almost smirked. ‘What is it that you think you could do to him?’ he sneered. ‘He’s twice your size, three times your age and he’s extremely adept at Dark Magic.’ Draco pulled himself up to his full height, reversing their roles as he now glared down upon her. ‘Going up to him and attempting to pull his hair won’t do a thing, Weasley. More likely than not, he’ll just get annoyed.’
‘You underestimate me.’ Ginny turned and kept on walking towards the large pile of smoking rubble, suppressing the disgust in herself as she left her brother, her own flesh and blood, lying alone and silent.
‘Where do you think you’re going?’ Draco demanded, catching up and pulling her round to face him.
‘That,’ Ginny answered as she tried to pry his steel fingers from around her arm, “is none of your business.’
‘Of course it’s my business!’ he growled angrily, his grip tightening painfully. ‘I’m making it my business. It’s suicide, you silly girl!’
Ginny whirled around to face him, stumbling slightly as she bumped into him. ‘Since when have you ever cared what I did, Malfoy? Never! This is exactly the same.’ She wrenched her arm from his grip and waved her small hands at him before shoving him back in the direction they had come. ‘Bugger off!’
He didn’t move. Instead, he shifted his intense glare towards the rubble, taking in the irregular flames of light that erupted from the other side, illuminating the sky for an instant and then fading. ‘I won’t let you go.’
Ginny frowned, confused by him. ‘Why on earth not? You’ve forgotten your place, Malfoy. I’m only a Weasley to you. I would have thought you’d be glad to let me go over there and get myself killed. One less Weasel to dirty your empire with, right?’
‘No.’ Draco ran his hands through his hair and watched Ginny with a calculating look that made her feel uncomfortable. She didn’t know how he did it. He always made her uncomfortable underneath his gaze. Something she’d been trying to repress for years. ‘You’re wrong,’ he continued, after a long pause. ‘You’re so incredibly wro--’
‘Why am I wrong, Malfoy? What in Merlin’s name would make me wrong about this?’ Ginny glanced desperately over her shoulder at the flashes of light. ‘You’re wasting my time! I need to go!’
Draco grabbed Ginny’s arm and pulled her away from the ruins of what used to be Hogwarts, dragging her into a small grove of scorched and smoldering trees beside the lake.
‘I refuse to let you go and kill yourself, Ginny. I can’t let you.’
Ginny looked incredulous. ‘You can’t let me? You can’t let me?’ She stepped back from him, looking livid. ‘I'm going to give you something to bloody let in a minute, Malfoy!’ With that, Ginny launched herself at him, scrabbling to throw a punch or aim a kick that might hit its target.
‘Ginev--’ Draco grunted as a well aimed kick to his shin almost caused him to buckle. ‘Don’t be stupid!’
‘I’m – not – being – stupid!’ she shouted as she took multiple shots for his face, missing each time. ‘If you don’t let me go,’ she growled, connecting with one of Draco’s arms, ‘then I can’t be held accountable for any damage done to you!’
Not more than a moment later, Ginny found herself sprawled, once again, on the grass. This time, however, she had Draco Malfoy’s knee driving painfully into her lower back and her left arm pulled around in a death grip.
‘Get off me,’ she wailed, close to tears. Even her Gryffindor courage had its limits, and in the face of Malfoy’s onslaught her steel-lined resolve was beginning to melt.
‘It’s for your own good.’
‘For my own good?’ she cried incredulously. ‘You call making me eat grass ‘for my own good’? I’m going to be pulling it out of my teeth for weeks!’
‘At least you’ll live that long,’ Draco replied dryly, loosening his hold upon her arm. ‘I’ll get off you as long as you promise not to have any more little episodes.’
‘Episodes!’ Ginny hissed dirtily to the ground. ‘Episodes!’ Ginny thought she was behaving particularly restrained for someone who had lost three brothers, her mother, her father, multiple friends and still stood to lose a few more because she had a great lump of righteous aristocratic pillock sitting on her back. ‘Would you like me to show you what one of my episodes really looks like, Malfoy?’ she screamed at him, wriggling and struggling as he tried to control her. ‘It won’t be pretty!’
Draco’s face darkened considerably, not that Ginny could see, and it was even less likely that she would have cared overmuch anyway.
‘I’ll not let you go and willingly kill yourself, Weasley.’ Draco tightened his grip on Ginny’s arm, but didn’t pull it back any further. ‘Merlin knows that Gryffindors are forever plagued in the idea that ‘act first, think later’ actually works, but as a Slytherin I am obliged to inform you that it doesn’t.’ He paused, probably for a dramatic effect Ginny thought. ‘All it does is get more people killed by idiotic means.’
Ginny hissed, livid, ‘Are you trying to imply that, as a Gryffindor, what I intend to do is for a stupid cause?’
‘No,’ Draco snapped quickly, ‘Even I have to admit that your reasons are admirable. Your method, however, is completely shot. I’m not letting you go.’
‘I hate you!’ Ginny screamed, tears flowing freely down her cheeks as she struggled. ‘I hate you so much! Harry is going to die, and it will be your fault I was not there to help him!’
Draco hissed as if he’d been burned, letting go of the writhing girl and jumping back. His eyes were darted with slivers of pain as he watched her scramble to her feet, her face red and tear stained from exhaustion and pain.
Ginny withdrew her wand shakily from her pocket, wiping the tears from her face and standing taller in the face of the man who bore so much resemblance to her own version of the devil. ‘I hope, for your own sake, that I’m not already too late.’
Draco watched as the red-headed girl, barely on the brink of womanhood, picked her way across a field of bodies and debris. Making a path to her own grave, as he stood powerless.
‘Unfortunately, so do I,’ he said, so that only the restless spirits, invisible and hidden to him as they also stood and watched her go, could hear him. And silently, they wished it too.
Also, I'm highly irregular with updating so... uhm, there's nothing I can really do about that (save locking myself up in a straight jacket, and then I couldn't update at all), so you'll have to grin and bear it. Or review and bear it. Or just review. I'm really not partial. ;)
I tend to use flashbacks a lot, and sometimes the nature of them can be quite confusing. If you don't understand how the different perspectives work (ie First, second, third, double-narrative etc. etc.) then I'd suggest a quick and meaningful roundevouz with Dictionary.com before reading. I like to play with my perspectives, it's what gets me through the day.
This fic's rated Mildly Naughty, because that's (roughly) how bad I estimate it will get, but that's not a guarantee. I'm only human :P Anyway, I'll inform you of any Rating changes, so you don't need to worry about stumbling in on some lovely G/D smut entirely unprepared. ;)
Finally, I'm a huge D/G fanatic, and I do (sometimes) come up with some canon stuff in the fic, so if you haven't read HBP and you don't want to spoil it, you should probably leave now. Also, that doesn't mean to say that I'm completely without fault - I do harbour mistakes (sometimes big ones), so if you find anything truly heinous, email me or review and I'll assess whether or not I need to change it or not. ^_^ Because, after all, it is up to me. :P
Oh yea, and enjoy!
Prologue
Almost Broken Promises
Broken promises. Empty threats. Vacant expressions.
The wind whipped volcanic red hair about mercilessly, slashing it into her face and tangling it around her throat as if in an attempt to choke the life from her. Not that it would have mattered. Nothing mattered anymore.
Small dried orange and red leaves tumbled past her feet, dancing a dance of death as they made their last stand, swirling and pivoting in protest. She looked over the barren world before her, debris and people everywhere. Survivors of The Last Battle. And none of them she recognized. Not one of them she knew.
She looked over the vast expanse of land that used to be Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. There was no evidence of a magical institute here except a large pile of smoking rubble. More than large; enormous. Empty of feeling, Ginny made her way towards it.
Stumbling blindly over blank faces and unmoving limbs, she tried not to let her tears fall. These people didn’t want her pity, they didn’t want her pain. They had their own troubles to deal with, in their own way she supposed. She snuffled self-deprecatingly, hating that she could walk through a field of people who had given their lives for others and not give them a second glance. Then she tripped.
Sprawled across the trampled grass, Ginny lay still. She dared not move for the fear of being spotted by lifeless eyes.
How was it that Dean had been so alive only hours ago and now everything had been stolen away in less than a breath? The wind taken from his sails as if by a vacuum as it sucked up dust. And yet, in all that destruction, life continued. Emily, Dean’s younger sister, being comforted in the arms of a stranger as she was pulled out from beneath his saddening weight. Ginny’s eyes dried up, almost as if in protest at what she was seeing. Everything Dean Thomas had been, could have been and was still yet to be was gone.
Even from where she lay, Ginny could see Emily’s eyes dancing in the light, the pale yellow sky casting a soft glow over her bloodstained face, tear tracks clear amongst the dirt and grime. Invisible to her, Ginny struggled to her feet and crept on. She wasn’t here to cry over people she had lost. She was here to look for those she could yet lose.
Suddenly, Ginny dropped to her knees as she saw a shock of brilliant red hair pinned beneath another unknown being. Another person lost in transit. She knew that hair. She saw that hair all the time. It was there when she looked in the mirror.
Choking on her own terror, she scrambled forward, brutally shoving the man in a Death Eater’s costume away. She wanted to scream, she wanted to howl. She wanted to make some noise that might release what that stark, lifeless, humorless face brought to existence in her. Feelings of anguish and utter despair as she remembered all the times that face had smiled down upon her with worldly love expressed in those pale brown eyes. That was no more. The pale brown eyes were blank and dull, the absent twinkle causing bile to rise in her throat.
‘What have they done to you?’ she asked, horrified. ‘Why? What good did this do?’ She glanced around at her brother’s surroundings, seeing what it was that he saw as his life came to an end. The unfair abrupt halt that stopped her life as much as his own.
The crackle of a dead leaf being stood on alerted Ginny to another presence. Another person was standing directly behind her. She closed her eyes tightly… waiting.
‘It never does any good, Ginevra.’
She didn’t need to look up. She knew who it was, and she still didn’t want to look up. She wished he would just go away, leave her to her task and pretend he’d never even seen her.
‘What would you know about it?’ she asked, suddenly enraged by the aloof pretense alive in his voice. He was immune to the world, but she certainly wasn’t. ‘You don’t care enough about anyone to even comprehend what might be going on in this place other than killing and dying! You pretend, and you do a bloody shoddy job of it!’
Draco knelt down beside her, grasping her chin lightly and turning it up to look into his silver gaze. ‘I see what goes on behind turbulent eyes, Ginevra. I don’t need to pretend; I know.’
Ginny pushed his hand away angrily, trying to stem the tears that built up in her eyes. She didn’t want to cry… not in front of Malfoy! ‘What are you doing here?’ she demanded, her voice full of unshed tears. ‘If you’ve come to look for your Father, he’s not dead.’ Ginny stood up and glared down at him, her eyes suddenly clear of moisture and lined with something that didn’t often grace a Weasley’s eye; hatred. ‘Yet.’
He almost smirked. ‘What is it that you think you could do to him?’ he sneered. ‘He’s twice your size, three times your age and he’s extremely adept at Dark Magic.’ Draco pulled himself up to his full height, reversing their roles as he now glared down upon her. ‘Going up to him and attempting to pull his hair won’t do a thing, Weasley. More likely than not, he’ll just get annoyed.’
‘You underestimate me.’ Ginny turned and kept on walking towards the large pile of smoking rubble, suppressing the disgust in herself as she left her brother, her own flesh and blood, lying alone and silent.
‘Where do you think you’re going?’ Draco demanded, catching up and pulling her round to face him.
‘That,’ Ginny answered as she tried to pry his steel fingers from around her arm, “is none of your business.’
‘Of course it’s my business!’ he growled angrily, his grip tightening painfully. ‘I’m making it my business. It’s suicide, you silly girl!’
Ginny whirled around to face him, stumbling slightly as she bumped into him. ‘Since when have you ever cared what I did, Malfoy? Never! This is exactly the same.’ She wrenched her arm from his grip and waved her small hands at him before shoving him back in the direction they had come. ‘Bugger off!’
He didn’t move. Instead, he shifted his intense glare towards the rubble, taking in the irregular flames of light that erupted from the other side, illuminating the sky for an instant and then fading. ‘I won’t let you go.’
Ginny frowned, confused by him. ‘Why on earth not? You’ve forgotten your place, Malfoy. I’m only a Weasley to you. I would have thought you’d be glad to let me go over there and get myself killed. One less Weasel to dirty your empire with, right?’
‘No.’ Draco ran his hands through his hair and watched Ginny with a calculating look that made her feel uncomfortable. She didn’t know how he did it. He always made her uncomfortable underneath his gaze. Something she’d been trying to repress for years. ‘You’re wrong,’ he continued, after a long pause. ‘You’re so incredibly wro--’
‘Why am I wrong, Malfoy? What in Merlin’s name would make me wrong about this?’ Ginny glanced desperately over her shoulder at the flashes of light. ‘You’re wasting my time! I need to go!’
Draco grabbed Ginny’s arm and pulled her away from the ruins of what used to be Hogwarts, dragging her into a small grove of scorched and smoldering trees beside the lake.
‘I refuse to let you go and kill yourself, Ginny. I can’t let you.’
Ginny looked incredulous. ‘You can’t let me? You can’t let me?’ She stepped back from him, looking livid. ‘I'm going to give you something to bloody let in a minute, Malfoy!’ With that, Ginny launched herself at him, scrabbling to throw a punch or aim a kick that might hit its target.
‘Ginev--’ Draco grunted as a well aimed kick to his shin almost caused him to buckle. ‘Don’t be stupid!’
‘I’m – not – being – stupid!’ she shouted as she took multiple shots for his face, missing each time. ‘If you don’t let me go,’ she growled, connecting with one of Draco’s arms, ‘then I can’t be held accountable for any damage done to you!’
Not more than a moment later, Ginny found herself sprawled, once again, on the grass. This time, however, she had Draco Malfoy’s knee driving painfully into her lower back and her left arm pulled around in a death grip.
‘Get off me,’ she wailed, close to tears. Even her Gryffindor courage had its limits, and in the face of Malfoy’s onslaught her steel-lined resolve was beginning to melt.
‘It’s for your own good.’
‘For my own good?’ she cried incredulously. ‘You call making me eat grass ‘for my own good’? I’m going to be pulling it out of my teeth for weeks!’
‘At least you’ll live that long,’ Draco replied dryly, loosening his hold upon her arm. ‘I’ll get off you as long as you promise not to have any more little episodes.’
‘Episodes!’ Ginny hissed dirtily to the ground. ‘Episodes!’ Ginny thought she was behaving particularly restrained for someone who had lost three brothers, her mother, her father, multiple friends and still stood to lose a few more because she had a great lump of righteous aristocratic pillock sitting on her back. ‘Would you like me to show you what one of my episodes really looks like, Malfoy?’ she screamed at him, wriggling and struggling as he tried to control her. ‘It won’t be pretty!’
Draco’s face darkened considerably, not that Ginny could see, and it was even less likely that she would have cared overmuch anyway.
‘I’ll not let you go and willingly kill yourself, Weasley.’ Draco tightened his grip on Ginny’s arm, but didn’t pull it back any further. ‘Merlin knows that Gryffindors are forever plagued in the idea that ‘act first, think later’ actually works, but as a Slytherin I am obliged to inform you that it doesn’t.’ He paused, probably for a dramatic effect Ginny thought. ‘All it does is get more people killed by idiotic means.’
Ginny hissed, livid, ‘Are you trying to imply that, as a Gryffindor, what I intend to do is for a stupid cause?’
‘No,’ Draco snapped quickly, ‘Even I have to admit that your reasons are admirable. Your method, however, is completely shot. I’m not letting you go.’
‘I hate you!’ Ginny screamed, tears flowing freely down her cheeks as she struggled. ‘I hate you so much! Harry is going to die, and it will be your fault I was not there to help him!’
Draco hissed as if he’d been burned, letting go of the writhing girl and jumping back. His eyes were darted with slivers of pain as he watched her scramble to her feet, her face red and tear stained from exhaustion and pain.
Ginny withdrew her wand shakily from her pocket, wiping the tears from her face and standing taller in the face of the man who bore so much resemblance to her own version of the devil. ‘I hope, for your own sake, that I’m not already too late.’
Draco watched as the red-headed girl, barely on the brink of womanhood, picked her way across a field of bodies and debris. Making a path to her own grave, as he stood powerless.
‘Unfortunately, so do I,’ he said, so that only the restless spirits, invisible and hidden to him as they also stood and watched her go, could hear him. And silently, they wished it too.
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