Yesterday, we shook hands
My friend

Today, a moonbeam
lightens my path
My guardian

--“Angels Fall First”, by Nightwish

X

He walked with long purposeful strides along the torch-lit corridor, in the direction of the small prison cells. The dungeons of Malfoy Manor had been carved as if by magic through ancient rock, with the ceiling, floor, and walls made out of unpolished, dark stone.

Walking through the winding corridors of the vast Malfoy dungeons produced a disconcerting effect, as if one were descending into the belly of some massive beast. In a sense, one was.

Draco drew his dark cloak around himself reflexively against the cold. Even in the summer, the searing heat of the sun could not hope to penetrate this dank, dreary space, and no amount of warming spells could counter the cold during winter; it was as much a part of the ancient manor as the Malfoys themselves.

There was only one Malfoy left now, however, and there was a parallel to be drawn down here, in the dungeons; there were eleven cells, but only one prisoner.

Draco stood outside of the only occupied cell now, observing the pitiful bundle of limbs within for a moment, before tapping at the iron bars with the tip of his wand.

He watched as the iron twisted and parted, allowing him entrance. It was a dramatic effect, designed by his ancestors, like everything in this dungeon, to instill despair and hopelessness in the hearts of their prisoners. Look how hard it is to even get in here, that I must bend metal to do so…

Draco walked in between the deformed bars, inclining his head slightly, and gathering his cloak about him with unconscious grace.

He stood before the prisoner, and let the hood of his cloak fall at his back, exposing his gleaming, white blond hair, and his pale, handsome face, which was devoid of any expression.

The girl had been dozing off in a sitting position, in a corner of the small cell, with her knees drawn up, and her arms hugging her ankles. When she saw him standing there, she rose to her feet, glaring at him fiercely.

Draco took a step towards her, and she lifted her chin in defiance, while attempting to cross her arms over the front of her slender body.

The chains that rose from the stone floor, binding her thin wrists, rattled as she stretched them to their full length, which was not enough to enable her to complete the motion. But Draco saw the intention behind her gesture, just as clearly as if she’d spoken.

She was closing off her body to him, and though they both knew this would prove useless if he indeed intended to violate her in any way, to Draco it seemed she had really drawn protection around herself, and that whatever he did to her could not hope to hurt her, where she lay hidden, inside of herself.

“There’s no need,” he told her briskly, meeting her eyes.

The amber depths were blazing with defiance, and, even when he raised his wand over her, she looked back at him evenly, unflinchingly.

It was clear she expected punishment, or perhaps even death, for her eyes widened with shock when the chains fell from her wrists, which were thin as twigs.

Draco lowered his wand and observed her calmly.

She wore a plain tunic, which had once been white, but was now threadbare, and had become gray. Her body had been ravaged by hunger, by the cold, and the pain inflicted by her captors, and it showed. She was painfully thin, and gaunt, with dark circles under her eyes. Her ribs showed through the thin material of her tunic, and her once vibrant red hair had faded to an opaque maroon, falling down her back in dull, brittle waves.

The only aspect of her appearance which remained unchanged was that fire, that blessed fire in her eyes, which spoke of an indomitable spirit, unbroken, still, though God only knew they’d tried their best.

Draco took a step towards her, and she took a step back, surprise turning into wariness. He had never been down here to see her, but whenever she’d received male visitors, she had suffered in the worst of ways, he knew.

He recalled with a sneer of disgust, and a bitter taste in his mouth, how he’d heard McNabb bragging that she had been a virgin.

This was the part of the Dark Lord’s reign of terror that Draco despised above all else; for this reason he never participated in dispensing “punishment” and “retribution” to traitors, which in others words meant killing, raping, and destroying.

Perhaps this was the reason why his loyalty had ultimately come into question. Perhaps, he mused, he had brought hell raining down upon his own head, and his family’s.

Draco’s eyes flicked to her again, and he knew he’d never be able to do something so vile to a woman.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he told her, extracting a wand from an inner pocket of his double breasted vest.

He held it out to her, and watched calmly as her eyes went from his, to his extended hand.

“Take it,” he said. “You’ll need it to Apparate.”

Her eyes widened, and an instant later she strode up to him, limping slightly from her right leg. She grabbed for the wand, as if she thought he would take it away, and gripped it tightly between her fingers.

“Why?” she demanded, piercing his pewter colored eyes with her amber ones.

“There’s no time,” he replied, turning swiftly. “Come.”

He walked out of the small cell, and after a moment she did the same.

Draco cast her a critical glance out of the corner of his eye, and realized that she wouldn’t get far, barefoot, and in a flimsy, torn tunic.

Closing his eyes briefly, he concentrated on something that brought a stab of fresh pain to his heart, catching him by surprise. He thought he’d managed to repress the emotions that, not half an hour before, had threatened to overtake him, to destroy his sanity.

Apparently he hadn’t locked them away as well as he’d hoped, he observed detachedly; now was not the time to wallow.

He concentrated again, and a second later, Draco had summoned a travelling cloak and a pair of boots from his mother’s room. He handed the objects to the girl beside him with an uncharacteristic vehemence, as if their touch burned his delicate hands.

She took them wordlessly, and he watched as she began to slip into them.

Where she was thin and haggard, he was well cared for, and strong. The richness of his clothes, the sheen of health in his porcelain skin, in his pale, silvery blond hair, said as much. But, he knew, he was in every sense as much a prisoner as she.

We’ll both be free, after tonight, he thought grimly.

They continued on their way, once she was dressed, and Draco paused to cover her red hair and gaunt face with the hood of her cloak, once they’d climbed the stairs that led up to the main floor of the manor.

“Be ready to attack anyone we encounter,” he told her, gripping his own wand. “But don’t do so until I tell you to.”

Luck was on their side, for once; they encountered no one.

Draco could almost feel the girl’s trepidation as they walked past the imposing archway of the main entrance, and several other exit points.

He wondered briefly if she would trust him to lead her to safety, or if she would break and run off on her own. If she did, all would be lost, but he would just have to trust her, now.

At last they reached a wooden door, which led to Narcissa’s garden, and the emergency exit he and his family had agreed upon as a last resort, in case they were accosted by Aurors; it was the shortest distance from any point of the manor to the edge of the grounds, where Apparation was possible.

It had never occurred to them that Aurors wouldn’t be the final enemy, or that their escape route would be used by one of their prisoners.

Draco paused, holding his arm out for the girl to stay behind him. He drew his wand out, gave the door a certain tap, and watched as it swung open.

He gripped his wand tightly, a hex at the ready, although he expected to find no one outside, and he knew that if he encountered the new master of Malfoy Manor, his wand would be entirely useless.

Voldemort had easily dispatched of more powerful wizards than Draco himself was, even the famed Hermione Granger, leader of the resistance, since the fall of Harry Potter.

Satisfied that there was no one, Draco turned to the girl at his back, and urged her through. He quickly followed after her, closing the door behind him.

“Run across the grounds until you reach the gates,” he instructed, meeting her golden eyes. “I’ll be watching you from here. When you get to the gates, I’ll open them for you. The moment that you’re outside, Apparate to a safe place.”

“Why are you doing this?” she asked breathlessly, looking up at him intently.

“Does it matter?” he inquired sharply.

“It does. It matters to me,” she replied staunchly, but her eyes softened when they met his.

Draco looked at her long and hard.

What was it in her eyes that had always drawn him in, back at school? He never got the chance to find out.

He took a deep breath, and didn’t realize he was actually going to tell her until the words were already pouring out of him slowly, like a mortal wound sometimes bleeds, constantly and discreetly, until it’s too late.

“He asked my father for proof of his loyalty tonight. He said “kill your son, or your wife, for love of me, Lucius.” My father refused,” Draco said slowly, and he felt his words coat his tongue, like bitter honey, and he sounded feeble, and child-like, even to his own ears. “Now he’s dead, and so is my mother. I was warned by someone, but it’s only a matter of time...”

She said nothing, looking up at him.

What is she thinking? he wondered vaguely. That there is justice in the world, after all?

“They were loyal to him…” he said softly. “And I was loyal, for their sake.” Draco broke off, averting his face, the pain and guilt over what had happened making it impossible for him to continue speaking.

I did this. I brought this down upon them…he thought desperately, and it wasn’t until his nails drew blood from the skin of his palm that he realized he’d balled his hands into fists.

“He’ll be here soon, to claim his property,” he murmured, as if in a trance, relaxing his hands. “It doesn’t matter now. Nothing matters now, not even this. I don’t even know why I…”

“You can come with me!” she said urgently, grasping his hand in hers.

The gesture caught him by surprise, as did the warmth of her skin, the sheer softness of it, and the insistence with which she gripped at him.

Draco looked down at their joined hands, and then into her face, which was set in grim determination.

“You can come with me, and I’ll tell them, I’ll tell them that you freed me!” she said fiercely, grasping his hand harder in hers, and tugging at him. “What you did before, it won’t matter, if you’re willing to help…”

“What I did before?” Draco repeated, wonderingly.

Images sprung to his mind of all the despicable things he had done, shielded behind the mask that still lay in his pocket, the black mask whose nose was peaked in a sinister, bird-like fashion.

He’d never felt such raw power as he did when he was behind it. He’d never felt so ecstatic, and he’d never felt as repulsed by his own self. It was unlike anything he’d ever experienced before.

“What I’ve done will always matter,” he said coldly, looking past her shoulder.

The sky was overcast tonight, threatening rain. No stars, no moon were visible, only dark, velvety clouds. His eyes flicked back to the girl, who only held his hand tighter in hers, so much until it almost hurt him.

“But you must come, Draco!” she said hoarsely, looking at him like she used to.

Like she used to, he thought.

Back when they were just two school kids with an undeniable mutual attraction, and curiosity, that neither was willing to let show too much.

Draco looked into her amber eyes again, and saw that they had filled with tears.

Funny, he thought, he’d never once seen her crying, in all the months she’d spent as a prisoner.

As he continued to look at her, the hope she offered danced before his eyes. For the briefest of seconds, he imagined himself running over the moonlit grounds with her, gripping her hand tightly, towards the illusion of safety. Joining the resistance, now under Longbottom, and a battle he knew was futile, hoping to avenge his father.

But the resistance stood against everything his father had been, and everything Draco had become, and nothing could change that.

Not even her, or what he saw in her eyes.

Their hands were still clasped together, as if in a handshake, and Draco’s mind drifted to that moment, frozen forever in time in his mind’s eye, when they really had shaken hands.

It seemed like a lifetime ago, though in reality it happened less than two years ago; a Quidditch match, of all things.

The impression the moment caused on him had been so great, he could replay it in his mind, those precious seconds, as if it were now. She had been Seeker for Gryffindor, when Harry bloody Potter was off getting himself killed, and she had outflown him, the great Draco Malfoy. He had watched in amazement as her fingers had closed over the golden Snitch, and had touched down after her, landing lightly.

She had turned to him, with the sun blazing in her hair, and there was something so pure in the way her eyes were dancing with joy, in spite of everything, that any vicious, petty remark he’d prepared died on his lips when his eyes met hers.

He held out his hand for her to shake, compelled by something he didn’t understand, and she’d done so, but not in the formal manner he’d expected. No, she’d grasped his hand in a fist, crossing their thumbs, in the manner of brothers, or comrades. People who were the same.

Their hands had remained joined briefly, in between their still heaving chests, and she’d looked at him as if she could really see him.

Whenever he thought back to that moment, Draco wondered if things would have been different between them, if the war hadn’t happened. And he knew they would have been, with an unshakable certainty that was surprising. She would have been his, and he hers.

Still, he’d never allowed himself to ponder this for long. It did not do to dwell on impossible things. War tore into bonds that had been forged through blood and fire. It sundered families, turned brother against brother. What wouldn’t it do to fragile bonds that had yet to be formed?

He pressed her warm hand now, for the last time, and then drew back.

“They’ll be looking for you soon,” Draco said curtly, and watched from behind icy gray eyes as she wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand, like a child.

She didn’t look at him again, but turned away, and began walking along the dirt path that led outside of the garden, into the grounds proper.

Draco watched as she walked away, his eyes on her narrow back, and was surprised when he saw her turn around.

A moment later she ran back to him, and before he could say a word, had thrown herself at him, wrapping her painfully thin arms around his neck tightly, in a desperate embrace.

The warmth of her frail body enveloped him, and his eyes closed of their own accord when she covered his cold lips with her own warm, innocent ones.

It was a chaste kiss, and yet the most passionate one Draco had ever received. He was amazed to discover that, despite the fact that the temple of her body had been defiled in every vile way imaginable, she had retained her innocence, and was pure. He could taste it on her lips, in her tender kiss.

His eyes flipped open as she broke away from him, and he mourned the loss of her, silently.

She looked up at him, her chest heaving with effort and emotion, and her eyes, still shimmering with tears, were pleading and defiant, all at once.

“Ginevra, you must go!” he commanded, taking a step back.

It was the first time he’d said her name, and the wonderful feel of it stayed on his lips, where the sweetness of her still lingered.

Amber met gray for one last time, and he saw the tears run down her reddened cheeks, unchecked.

She turned away again, and this time she ran, ran as fast as her frail, abused body could propel her forward.

Draco’s pale gray eyes remained fixed on her as she ran, even as his hands reached up to draw the hood of his cloak over his moonlight hair. He did not wipe away at the wetness in his cheeks; her tears had fallen on his pale skin, when she’d pressed her face to his.

He continued to observe the spectral figure of the girl, half limping, half running, over the dark grounds. Her hood fell back, just as a moonbeam broke through the dark velvet of the clouds above, and came to play violet on her once blood-red hair.

Draco’s heart beat faster as he watched her run. She was coming closer and closer to the gate now. Once she was outside, he knew she’d be safe, at least for tonight. If only she could make it through the gates…He found himself praying that she would.

She reached the iron gate now, which shone a ghostly silver under the wan moonlight.

Draco gripped his wand tightly, and murmured the spell which would make them swing open…

He watched with unspeakable relief as she ran through them, her hair flying behind her now, like a standard.

By the time Draco became aware of the powerful, malevolent presence at his back, she had already disappeared.

He turned around slowly, gracefully, to find the creature, his Lord, standing there, shrouded in darkness. Its hideous face, which was completely inhuman now, like that of a snake’s, was covered by the hood of its dark robes, not like unlike Draco’s was.

Draco hastened to remove his own hood, anxious to have as little in common with this horrid thing as possible.

He lifted his head, letting the moonlight shine on his fair, elven hair, and let his eyes seek the dead, red ones of his master.

Draco had imagined what this moment would be like countless of times before, with dread, and a heavy heart. All Death Eaters did, he supposed.

He was almost surprised to note that he felt no fear now, not a single trace of it.

“Lucius died to protect you,” the thing in the robes said softly, and there was clear amusement, mixed with annoyance, in its horrid, slightly sibilant voice. “And you die to protect a blood traitor whore. Your father must be twisting around in his grave. That is, he would be, if he had one-”

But Draco wasn’t even listening. He hadn’t heard a thing Voldemort had said. He’d found the place, the place she went to, when they were hurting her. And he was thinking of her, aware of the warmth that lit his heart since the moment her lips had touched his.

How ironic, he thought, almost detachedly, that he should discover his heart was alive, and beating, moments before it died.

In that split second, when Draco saw the bright, unnaturally green jet of light speed towards him, he stood with his chin raised, and a faint smile of gratitude curved his lips.

He had realized just then that her tears hadn’t been for herself at all, but for him.

Ginevra.

He wanted to say her name again, but there was no time. And there was no fear, and there was no pain.

There was nothing, only darkness.

FIN