Maggs did yet another wonderful job fixing up my mess! :)
We are back to the story, end of flashbacks.
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4.
Draco sat in his small, cramped office with his feet propped on his desk. There were no windows, and the majority of his worldly possessions were either in this office or in the small room in which he slept. His eyes were closed as he recalled times gone by, happier times. He thought of his mother, of Quidditch, and he even thought fondly of his classes at Hogwarts.
Renaldi tapped on the doorframe and stepped in. “You must execute her.”
Draco nearly fell out of his chair as he looked up. “What?”
“The Wood girl is not giving us anything. Her death will send a message to others who will not talk.”
“I just need more time with her,” Draco exclaimed, desperately clutching at his forehead with one hand. Since when did his job involve killing anyone?
Torturing he could take- mainly because many prisoners would give in or he could get into their minds and get the information needed. He hadn’t necessarily known what happened to the prisoner after he was done with them. Until now, he hadn’t cared.
“You have had two weeks, Draco. You are one of our best Legilimens. Now remove her from the dungeon and kill her, or I will,” he paused seeing hesitation in Draco’s eyes. “Is this a problem?”
“No. It is not a problem,” Draco replied and stood, suddenly firmly resolved.
“Good. Let me know when it is done and we will send her body to her Order friends,” Renaldi grinned wickedly.
*
Draco opened the door to Ginny’s cell; the two guards remained outside as always. Ginny looked up at him and smiled softly.
“What did you bring me today?”
Draco didn’t say anything or return her smile. He simply threw a piece of black material to her. She caught it, looking confused and horrified.
“Put it on,” he ordered.
“Are you going to kill me, Draco?” she asked, barely whispering. He turned his head away and she knew the answer.
She pulled the black shroud over her head and stood. This was the moment she had been dreading, hoping against hope that it would not come but knowing it inevitably would.
Draco called for the two guards, who came in and escorted her. He walked carefully behind them down the corridor.
As soon as they were around a corner in a deserted hallway of the large, looming Durmstrang dungeons, Draco stepped in front of the guards.
“I’ll take it from here, thank you.” They nodded, saluted, and left.
As soon as the guards were gone, Draco grabbed Ginny by the arm and pushed her into a corner beside a door.
“What? What’s going on?” Ginny gasped, frightened. Draco pulled the shroud from her head. She looked at him with wide, wet eyes and watched as he cut her hands free of their bindings with his wand.
“Twenty meters outside this door, there is a supply carriage that will be leaving shortly. They don’t check them on the way out, only coming in. Get inside. Cover yourself any way that you can. They won’t reach a town for nearly an hour. That will be enough time for you to jump out and hide,” he whispered, clutching her shoulders and flicking his eyes back and forth between each of hers, searching for a sign that she understood.
“Come with me,” she gasped, reaching out and clutching at the collar of his robes.
“I don’t have your courage,” he smiled. He had accepted his fate.
“You have more than you know,” she replied hoarsely.
“Ginny, you have to go,” he pleaded.
“Draco, what are you doing?” asked an all too familiar voice. Draco froze and turned from Ginny’s terrified face.
Putting a hand where it could easily find his wand, Draco looked Renaldi squarely in the eye and said, “Don’t.”
Renaldi ignored Draco’s warning and went for his wand crying, “Guard!” Renaldi was fast but Draco was faster.
“SECTUMSEMPRA!” Draco cried, standing and pointing his wand towards his opponent. Ginny screamed as blood poured from the newly created slashes in the man’s body. Draco threw up a quick ward around the deserted hallway to prevent anyone outside from hearing anything else.
“Draco! Now you have to come with me! They will kill you!” she cried as she grasped his arm with a shaking hand.
“No,” he said, thinking quickly. “You escaped. You took my wand, and you cursed him. And then you tried to kill me,” he began to point at one of his legs and whisper a curse. She grabbed his sleeve and stopped him. His head shot up to her.
“Draco! Come with me! You will be safe- I promise,” her eyes were almost brimming with tears.
“Why? Why do you care?” he asked, more harshly than he meant. She shook her head impatiently and cracked the door open, still holding onto the sleeve of his robe.
Draco glanced around and saw no one coming. No one had heard his shouts or her scream. He looked once more into her eyes and pushed ahead of her, opening the door into the cloudy, black night.
The two figures headed for the abandoned supply carriage and hopped in the cargo carry in the back. Ginny was shivering under her robes. Having not planned this, Draco had not thought about grabbing any of his few possessions, much less any supplies. He noticed the boxes in the carriage with them.
Draco tapped Ginny’s elbow lightly and gestured towards the boxes. “We can raid these for supplies,” he whispered. She nodded, still shivering.
“When we jump off of this thing, I’ll just need a minute to get my bearings and then I can lead you back to our camp. It will take us a day or so to walk,” she whispered.
They remained silent as they heard approaching footsteps and voices. They heard the doors of the horseless carriage shut and the voices of the men accompanying it. They felt the pull of the wheels and the rocky ground beneath them.
Draco motioned to Ginny once the noise of the road they were traveling was cover enough for them to go through what lay in front of them. They silently and carefully began looking though boxes for anything they could find that would be of use. Ginny only found a few moth-eaten blankets and a metal bucket that could be good for getting water when they came across any.
Draco found a few ratty wands but seeing as Ginny didn’t have one, he figured one of them would suit her for the time being.
Draco noticed that Ginny was still shivering violently and placed some of the blankets over her. He sat down beside her, the sides of their bodies touching, and covered himself as well.
Ginny turned to look at him and smiled, their faces only an inch apart. “I am glad you decided to come with me.”
Draco nodded, his eyes focused on hers and then they slowly dropped to her lips. He stared momentarily at them before turning away and closing his eyes. The thought of physical contact with her made him shudder with longing. It had been a long time since he’d been this close to a woman. That’s all it was, nothing more.
Ginny breathed steadily beside him and leaned her head into his shoulder. He stiffened, surprised at her warmth and level of comfort, but decided it was simply her survival instinct.
*
Draco nudged Ginny when he felt they had traveled far enough that it was safe to abandon the carriage. They gathered their goods and quietly slipped off the back of the truck.
They quickly walked from the road and went partway into the forest. They waited until the sounds of the carriage could no longer be heard.
Ginny drew the wand Draco had found for her and asked him to dimly light his. Ginny concentrated on the Order’s spy camp and exclaimed, “Point me!”
The wand twitched and then pointed in a direction they would later determine, once the sun rose, to be west. They walked in silence, huddled in blankets and constantly casting quick warming charms on themselves.
“This may be a silly question but can we not Appar-”
Sensing his question, Ginny replied hastily, “Our camp has many wards around it, naturally. We could Apparate near it but I am not familiar enough with the surrounding areas. Don’t worry, it won’t be too far.”
Draco sighed. He was uncomfortable with the silence for some reason and, since Ginny was the first of his schoolmates he had seen who wasn’t on the Death Eater side, he had an abundance of questions.
“So you married Wood, eh?”
Ginny nodded, smiling. “I did.”
“What about Potter?” Draco winced, realizing he had just asked that. He mentally smacked himself.
Ginny remained silent, looking thoughtful. When she finally spoke, she was smiling softly. “Of course, you probably knew Harry and I were together when… when you left school. Well, he ended things for my safety right after Dumbledore’s funeral. He fled with Ron and Hermione in tow. I was bitter and remained behind. I stayed with the other members of my family at the Order headquarters and that's when I struck up the relationship with Oliver.”
“Revenge?” he asked.
“At first, possibly,” Ginny nodded with a small smile. “But Oliver was charming and it wasn’t long before I had no thoughts of Harry at all. Harry probably would’ve attended our wedding if we’d invited anyone other than our parents. It was too difficult a time to concentrate on something as silly as a big wedding.”
“What about your brother and Granger?”
“Wow! Even you picked up on that, eh?” Ginny chuckled.
“Yeah. It was obvious they were completely over the moon for each other from about year one.”
Ginny chuckled. “Something like that; they are together but have never married, I think for Harry’s sake. I suppose they will once times are better- if that ever happens- but for now, they are just the ‘Golden Trio’ as always.”
Draco snorted. Ginny took a moment to study him. “So what about you, Draco? Did you ever marry?”
“No time for such things. Besides, I was too busy staying alive.”
Ginny nodded sympathetically and looked at him from the corner of her eye. “You’ve been doing this for eight years to stay alive?”
“Yes. Since… well since the incidents of my last year at school and my father’s death and mother’s…” He paused, his mother’s suicide still a sore topic. “I just did what I had to do to survive.”
Ginny walked along side him in silence for a while. “Why were you going to just let me go, back there?”
Draco didn’t know how to answer. He didn’t have an answer. “I can't honestly say. You came along at the right time, I reckon. I’ve never actually been for one side or the other, you see.”
He could see the wheels turning inside of Ginny’s head and before she could ask any more questions, he stopped and turned to look at her.
“Ginny, stop. Would you like me to clean you up a bit?” he asked, noting the dried blood and dirt that covered her face and hands. She stretched her arms out, looking over herself as well.
“Yes please. That would be nice. I haven’t the faintest clue how I look.”
Draco didn’t reply. He set to work cleaning the blood off her with his wand. “The scars you showed me when I first saw you- why did you never have them fixed?”
“The acid burns and curses in my hands I just let go because St. Mungo’s was full of patients far worse off than I was… and even if I had wanted them corrected, I didn’t really get back in time for much to be done. I can live with the scars,” she shrugged.
He finished and they began to walk again. “Draco?” she asked as they continued on their way. “I just thought of something.”
“Yes?” he questioned. She stopped and turned to him. She gestured towards his left arm.
“The Dark Mark. You must have it- can they track you or anything?” she asked, looking scared. Draco grinned.
“Actually, I managed to evade that blasted thing. I started off in the lower ranks so I wasn’t ‘good’ enough to receive one. Then, things began to happen- the Dark Lord rose to power. He didn’t have time to waste with such matters and so I never got one.”
A wave of relief washed over Ginny. “Thank goodness! It never occurred to me that if you’d had it you could be in even more danger.”
“I got lucky, I guess,” he shrugged as they began to walk again.
“I’d say you did,” Ginny paused and bent over, coughing. Draco stopped as well, not knowing what to do.
“Um… er,” he fumbled.
“Just a bit of a cough. I constantly have one these days from the cold and such,” Ginny shook her head, not wanting Draco to make a fuss.
“Listen, let’s stop here and rest, okay?” Ginny shrugged and sat down against a tree. Draco remained standing, seemingly lost in thought. Then he began to pace.
“I wasn’t exactly honest with you earlier, when you asked me why I was going to let you go. Ginny, the thing is, I have a plan. And I think you can be the person to help me with it.”
We are back to the story, end of flashbacks.
___________________________________________________
4.
Draco sat in his small, cramped office with his feet propped on his desk. There were no windows, and the majority of his worldly possessions were either in this office or in the small room in which he slept. His eyes were closed as he recalled times gone by, happier times. He thought of his mother, of Quidditch, and he even thought fondly of his classes at Hogwarts.
Renaldi tapped on the doorframe and stepped in. “You must execute her.”
Draco nearly fell out of his chair as he looked up. “What?”
“The Wood girl is not giving us anything. Her death will send a message to others who will not talk.”
“I just need more time with her,” Draco exclaimed, desperately clutching at his forehead with one hand. Since when did his job involve killing anyone?
Torturing he could take- mainly because many prisoners would give in or he could get into their minds and get the information needed. He hadn’t necessarily known what happened to the prisoner after he was done with them. Until now, he hadn’t cared.
“You have had two weeks, Draco. You are one of our best Legilimens. Now remove her from the dungeon and kill her, or I will,” he paused seeing hesitation in Draco’s eyes. “Is this a problem?”
“No. It is not a problem,” Draco replied and stood, suddenly firmly resolved.
“Good. Let me know when it is done and we will send her body to her Order friends,” Renaldi grinned wickedly.
*
Draco opened the door to Ginny’s cell; the two guards remained outside as always. Ginny looked up at him and smiled softly.
“What did you bring me today?”
Draco didn’t say anything or return her smile. He simply threw a piece of black material to her. She caught it, looking confused and horrified.
“Put it on,” he ordered.
“Are you going to kill me, Draco?” she asked, barely whispering. He turned his head away and she knew the answer.
She pulled the black shroud over her head and stood. This was the moment she had been dreading, hoping against hope that it would not come but knowing it inevitably would.
Draco called for the two guards, who came in and escorted her. He walked carefully behind them down the corridor.
As soon as they were around a corner in a deserted hallway of the large, looming Durmstrang dungeons, Draco stepped in front of the guards.
“I’ll take it from here, thank you.” They nodded, saluted, and left.
As soon as the guards were gone, Draco grabbed Ginny by the arm and pushed her into a corner beside a door.
“What? What’s going on?” Ginny gasped, frightened. Draco pulled the shroud from her head. She looked at him with wide, wet eyes and watched as he cut her hands free of their bindings with his wand.
“Twenty meters outside this door, there is a supply carriage that will be leaving shortly. They don’t check them on the way out, only coming in. Get inside. Cover yourself any way that you can. They won’t reach a town for nearly an hour. That will be enough time for you to jump out and hide,” he whispered, clutching her shoulders and flicking his eyes back and forth between each of hers, searching for a sign that she understood.
“Come with me,” she gasped, reaching out and clutching at the collar of his robes.
“I don’t have your courage,” he smiled. He had accepted his fate.
“You have more than you know,” she replied hoarsely.
“Ginny, you have to go,” he pleaded.
“Draco, what are you doing?” asked an all too familiar voice. Draco froze and turned from Ginny’s terrified face.
Putting a hand where it could easily find his wand, Draco looked Renaldi squarely in the eye and said, “Don’t.”
Renaldi ignored Draco’s warning and went for his wand crying, “Guard!” Renaldi was fast but Draco was faster.
“SECTUMSEMPRA!” Draco cried, standing and pointing his wand towards his opponent. Ginny screamed as blood poured from the newly created slashes in the man’s body. Draco threw up a quick ward around the deserted hallway to prevent anyone outside from hearing anything else.
“Draco! Now you have to come with me! They will kill you!” she cried as she grasped his arm with a shaking hand.
“No,” he said, thinking quickly. “You escaped. You took my wand, and you cursed him. And then you tried to kill me,” he began to point at one of his legs and whisper a curse. She grabbed his sleeve and stopped him. His head shot up to her.
“Draco! Come with me! You will be safe- I promise,” her eyes were almost brimming with tears.
“Why? Why do you care?” he asked, more harshly than he meant. She shook her head impatiently and cracked the door open, still holding onto the sleeve of his robe.
Draco glanced around and saw no one coming. No one had heard his shouts or her scream. He looked once more into her eyes and pushed ahead of her, opening the door into the cloudy, black night.
The two figures headed for the abandoned supply carriage and hopped in the cargo carry in the back. Ginny was shivering under her robes. Having not planned this, Draco had not thought about grabbing any of his few possessions, much less any supplies. He noticed the boxes in the carriage with them.
Draco tapped Ginny’s elbow lightly and gestured towards the boxes. “We can raid these for supplies,” he whispered. She nodded, still shivering.
“When we jump off of this thing, I’ll just need a minute to get my bearings and then I can lead you back to our camp. It will take us a day or so to walk,” she whispered.
They remained silent as they heard approaching footsteps and voices. They heard the doors of the horseless carriage shut and the voices of the men accompanying it. They felt the pull of the wheels and the rocky ground beneath them.
Draco motioned to Ginny once the noise of the road they were traveling was cover enough for them to go through what lay in front of them. They silently and carefully began looking though boxes for anything they could find that would be of use. Ginny only found a few moth-eaten blankets and a metal bucket that could be good for getting water when they came across any.
Draco found a few ratty wands but seeing as Ginny didn’t have one, he figured one of them would suit her for the time being.
Draco noticed that Ginny was still shivering violently and placed some of the blankets over her. He sat down beside her, the sides of their bodies touching, and covered himself as well.
Ginny turned to look at him and smiled, their faces only an inch apart. “I am glad you decided to come with me.”
Draco nodded, his eyes focused on hers and then they slowly dropped to her lips. He stared momentarily at them before turning away and closing his eyes. The thought of physical contact with her made him shudder with longing. It had been a long time since he’d been this close to a woman. That’s all it was, nothing more.
Ginny breathed steadily beside him and leaned her head into his shoulder. He stiffened, surprised at her warmth and level of comfort, but decided it was simply her survival instinct.
*
Draco nudged Ginny when he felt they had traveled far enough that it was safe to abandon the carriage. They gathered their goods and quietly slipped off the back of the truck.
They quickly walked from the road and went partway into the forest. They waited until the sounds of the carriage could no longer be heard.
Ginny drew the wand Draco had found for her and asked him to dimly light his. Ginny concentrated on the Order’s spy camp and exclaimed, “Point me!”
The wand twitched and then pointed in a direction they would later determine, once the sun rose, to be west. They walked in silence, huddled in blankets and constantly casting quick warming charms on themselves.
“This may be a silly question but can we not Appar-”
Sensing his question, Ginny replied hastily, “Our camp has many wards around it, naturally. We could Apparate near it but I am not familiar enough with the surrounding areas. Don’t worry, it won’t be too far.”
Draco sighed. He was uncomfortable with the silence for some reason and, since Ginny was the first of his schoolmates he had seen who wasn’t on the Death Eater side, he had an abundance of questions.
“So you married Wood, eh?”
Ginny nodded, smiling. “I did.”
“What about Potter?” Draco winced, realizing he had just asked that. He mentally smacked himself.
Ginny remained silent, looking thoughtful. When she finally spoke, she was smiling softly. “Of course, you probably knew Harry and I were together when… when you left school. Well, he ended things for my safety right after Dumbledore’s funeral. He fled with Ron and Hermione in tow. I was bitter and remained behind. I stayed with the other members of my family at the Order headquarters and that's when I struck up the relationship with Oliver.”
“Revenge?” he asked.
“At first, possibly,” Ginny nodded with a small smile. “But Oliver was charming and it wasn’t long before I had no thoughts of Harry at all. Harry probably would’ve attended our wedding if we’d invited anyone other than our parents. It was too difficult a time to concentrate on something as silly as a big wedding.”
“What about your brother and Granger?”
“Wow! Even you picked up on that, eh?” Ginny chuckled.
“Yeah. It was obvious they were completely over the moon for each other from about year one.”
Ginny chuckled. “Something like that; they are together but have never married, I think for Harry’s sake. I suppose they will once times are better- if that ever happens- but for now, they are just the ‘Golden Trio’ as always.”
Draco snorted. Ginny took a moment to study him. “So what about you, Draco? Did you ever marry?”
“No time for such things. Besides, I was too busy staying alive.”
Ginny nodded sympathetically and looked at him from the corner of her eye. “You’ve been doing this for eight years to stay alive?”
“Yes. Since… well since the incidents of my last year at school and my father’s death and mother’s…” He paused, his mother’s suicide still a sore topic. “I just did what I had to do to survive.”
Ginny walked along side him in silence for a while. “Why were you going to just let me go, back there?”
Draco didn’t know how to answer. He didn’t have an answer. “I can't honestly say. You came along at the right time, I reckon. I’ve never actually been for one side or the other, you see.”
He could see the wheels turning inside of Ginny’s head and before she could ask any more questions, he stopped and turned to look at her.
“Ginny, stop. Would you like me to clean you up a bit?” he asked, noting the dried blood and dirt that covered her face and hands. She stretched her arms out, looking over herself as well.
“Yes please. That would be nice. I haven’t the faintest clue how I look.”
Draco didn’t reply. He set to work cleaning the blood off her with his wand. “The scars you showed me when I first saw you- why did you never have them fixed?”
“The acid burns and curses in my hands I just let go because St. Mungo’s was full of patients far worse off than I was… and even if I had wanted them corrected, I didn’t really get back in time for much to be done. I can live with the scars,” she shrugged.
He finished and they began to walk again. “Draco?” she asked as they continued on their way. “I just thought of something.”
“Yes?” he questioned. She stopped and turned to him. She gestured towards his left arm.
“The Dark Mark. You must have it- can they track you or anything?” she asked, looking scared. Draco grinned.
“Actually, I managed to evade that blasted thing. I started off in the lower ranks so I wasn’t ‘good’ enough to receive one. Then, things began to happen- the Dark Lord rose to power. He didn’t have time to waste with such matters and so I never got one.”
A wave of relief washed over Ginny. “Thank goodness! It never occurred to me that if you’d had it you could be in even more danger.”
“I got lucky, I guess,” he shrugged as they began to walk again.
“I’d say you did,” Ginny paused and bent over, coughing. Draco stopped as well, not knowing what to do.
“Um… er,” he fumbled.
“Just a bit of a cough. I constantly have one these days from the cold and such,” Ginny shook her head, not wanting Draco to make a fuss.
“Listen, let’s stop here and rest, okay?” Ginny shrugged and sat down against a tree. Draco remained standing, seemingly lost in thought. Then he began to pace.
“I wasn’t exactly honest with you earlier, when you asked me why I was going to let you go. Ginny, the thing is, I have a plan. And I think you can be the person to help me with it.”
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