Six: Pulling Back
Draco sat in one of the armchairs, staring out the window with such intensity that hopefully he would appear on the other side of it. He didn’t move when a Healer entered with a meal; he didn’t even move when the Healer left. He continued to stare out the window, memorizing the shape of the London skyline visible from this height in this part of the city. At dinner, the impending darkness made the view harder to see, and then he realized it had been raining all day, and the blurry vision he had been memorizing had already been imprinted in his head from other days spent staring out the window.
Weasley hadn’t spoken a word in days, and, as a result, neither had Draco. It had been fun for a short time there, when they'd planned their pranks and then pulled them off. He and Weasley got a good laugh at the Healers' reactions. One week, they'd hidden all the trays on which the Healers had brought their food, and then they'd built a tray castle out of them during the night. Another day, they'd flooded the ward by running the faucets in the small bathroom in the ward. And always, they stared silently at nothing, pretending to be mad while slowly going mad.
At least Weasley was going mad, as far as Draco could tell. The silence, the pranks, the way the Healers cared nothing for their mental well-being despite working in a ward that housed mentally unstable patients... they could change a person. But Draco knew all about living through mentally and emotionally scarring circumstances and coming out unchanged. He'd done it before, and he'd protected himself for years since then. The practice worked well for protecting himself now. All you needed to turn you mad was power or doubt. Draco had no power within St. Mungo's or without, and he had never doubted himself. He knew exactly who he was.
Ginny Weasley, however, was only full of doubt. Draco knew that because of their hour locked in that utility closet two months back. She'd returned from war only to have everyone she loved overlook her contributions and tortures. She must have been filled with doubt for years, and her stint here at St. Mungo's only hammered that doubt not only skin deep, but soul deep. Deep enough for her to hide all her emotions in a way Draco could not have taught her with Occlumency.
After the war—fuck, even during it—Draco had known that his family had been on the wrong side, but the Dark Lord had had all the power, and he'd used it to get what he wanted. Draco had been a sixteen year old boy with too large a burden to bear, but he'd always known what and who he was. He'd always had his parents' support. And when the war had ended, he and his mother had moved to France, where no one recognized them or judged them for their own contributions to and tortures from the war.
Draco didn't doubt himself. He never had. So what the Healers were doing here, treating Draco and Weasley as if they were mad, had little effect on Draco, but it did everything to her. He could see her going more insane, day by day. He knew what it looked like, even what it smelled like, because his Aunt Bellatrix had been mad, too. She'd been mad with power, and Azkaban had done nothing but drive her more insane. It looked as if St. Mungo's would be the amplifier for Ginny Weasley's madness as well.
Late into the night, Draco finally turned away from the window, his stomach twisting and eating itself in hunger reminding him of the day he'd wasted inside his thoughts. It was so late that the orbs on the ceiling that usually lit the rooms had been doused for sleep.
Thanks to the darkness, for a moment Draco thought Weasley had fallen asleep, but when he stepped closer to his bed—and so, closer to hers—he saw that she was staring up at the ceiling, wide awake.
"So what do we do now?" Draco asked, his voice shattering the silence and making Weasley flinch even though it had been barely more than a rough whisper.
When she didn't answer, he walked around his bed to stand in between his and hers, his figure looming over her and casting a dense shadow on her face. He nudged her shoulder, and she flinched again.
"Weasley, what do we do now?" he repeated.
Thankfully, this time her eyes darted to him in acknowledgment.
"What do you mean?" she asked, her voice hoarse from disuse.
"The pranks have worked. The Healers don't suspect us now. We need to step up our escape plan. Where do we go from here?"
Her eyes instantly focused on the ceiling again. "I can't leave," she said with more finality than he'd seen since her first fiery days in the hospital.
"Of course you can," Draco said in irritation. "That's what we've been working towards. Leaving."
She shook her head. "I can't. I have to stay here."
"Don't be ridiculous!" He was getting angrier by the moment, and he wasn't sure why. He'd watched her become... this... day by day. He knew the plan would not be easy once she thought she belonged here, and he certainly didn't need to bring her along. So why not leave her behind? Why not escape without her? Draco didn't have answers for those questions, so he got angry instead. "Don't be ridiculous! There is nothing wrong with you! That's why we have to get out of here!"
He wasn't completely correct. Nothing had been wrong with her, but now....
"I can't leave," she repeated, maintaining her staring contest with the ceiling. "It's better for me here. I feel better here."
Draco was pacing now. "That's because here you don't have to think about how your family treated you like shite after the war. You're not mad! You don't belong here!"
Now she looked at him, all that pain she'd successfully been able to hide buried deep in her eyes. "But it's less painful to think that I made it up than it is to have the memory of being ignored. Why didn't my suffering matter? What did I do to make them hate me?"
He sat down on his bed, unsure what to say to that. Why did he feel the need to comfort her? Why was he looking for a justification for her loved one's inattention? He didn’t have answers for those questions, either. Exhaling loudly, he said in a kinder tone, "They... they don't hate you, Weasley. They just... they didn't know what to do with you. It's easier to hide from painful truths than to face them. Believe me, all I've done since the war is hide."
She stared into his eyes, but with the blurry moonlight shining in through the rain streaked windows behind him, his face was cast in darkness, and he wasn't sure that she really saw him. Perhaps she had replaced his shadowy image with one that was more comforting. He was glad to see her eyes tear-free though. He didn't know what to do with weepy women.
"How do you know I'm not mad?" she asked after several tense moments.
Draco shrugged. And then he lied. "You can’t be. You know it when you see it. My Aunt Bellatrix was completely insane. When you're constantly surrounded by that, you get a good feel for it." And then he told a truth. "Believe me. When we arrived here, we weren't mad. I'd have known if we were."
A giggle escaped her lips, but it was so misplaced in the conversation that it disappeared as if it had never existed. "That sounds like something an insane person would say."
"I think everyone's a little mad, to be honest. But we can't lock everyone in St. Mungo's for... suffering. Sometimes we have to...." He stopped and looked away—almost guiltily. If Malfoys could feel guilt, that is.
"What?" she asked, reaching across the divide between their beds to rest a hand on his knee.
"Sometimes we have to move on. That's the only way to shake the madness. Just let it go."
Her hand dropped, and a small smile tugged at the corners of her lips. "I've been acting strangely, haven't I?"
"Strange? No. Not strange at all. You're normal, Weasley, and the hardest thing to accept in life is that we're normal."
.
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Over the next few days, Weasley seemed to return to her old self, though not completely. There was a reluctance in her, a weakness she couldn’t hide, that took form in the very space she took up. She seemed smaller and less significant and wasn’t as prone to outbursts as she used to be.
It made Draco feel strange to see her that way, though he told himself it had nothing to do with her. Draco had lived every day since the war knowing that people wanted to knock him down several pegs, to teach him a lesson, and he’d done his best to ignore them and show society that he wouldn’t change for anyone. He’d been a boy when he’d committed his crimes, a boy living under grave circumstances that forced his hand. He felt sorry for nothing he’d done.
To see Ginny Weasley, a hero in the eyes of the wizarding world, get knocked down for doing what anyone would consider right rankled. That Potter and the rest of the Weasleys had this kind of power over someone who had fought Death Eaters alongside them—more than once, he could add—made him want to strangle necks. If Draco could push himself through life with his head held high, there was no reason she couldn’t do the same.
To be fair, he’d escaped the worst of society’s scrutiny while she’d lived in the heart of it, but that's what self-serving cowards did. They survived while preserving as much of themselves as they could.
"So what do you think?" she asked as a nervous giggle slipped out.
"I'd prefer it if we could make it look as if a Healer had made a mistake. You know, left the wand behind or something. Then they'll never suspect us, and if we get caught, it won't be our fault."
"But how do we do that short of stealing the wand and then Confunding the Healer to think he or she dropped it somewhere?"
Draco gave Weasley an appraising look. "That's not a bad idea. I don't know how we would trick Unger or Chiswick to leave the wand behind for us, so we may have to resort to doing all the dirty work ourselves."
"What do we do if we're caught?" she asked for the tenth time.
They sat in the armchairs by the window drinking tea as they discussed their new plan, but they were casual about it. There wasn't as much urgency as there had been the first time. For one thing, it had taken days to convince Weasley to escape again; for another, they didn't want to get caught this time, so they were more thorough with the details. However, Weasley was distracted, her attention wandering from their discussion to focus on something outside the window. It was starting to frustrate Draco, who hated to repeat himself, and this conversation was already going in circles.
"We can think about that after we develop a plan," Draco explained for the tenth time. He could tell she was looking for excuses not to go through with their escape, but he wasn't going to be deterred so easily.
She nodded and then lowered her head to stare into her cold tea. All he could see of her face was the crease in her brow that signified her worry.
"What is it now?" he asked a bit harshly. But he hadn't been made to be any kind of caring or sympathetic friend. He didn't know what to do with weak people whose emotions overcame them. These feelings were not meant to be shared in public. They were supposed to be hidden and ignored.
"I said some awful things to Harry, and I don't know how to apologize."
"Why would you want to? He's a prat."
"But he was my...." She looked up at Draco and then away, but she couldn't hide what she was feeling any better than he could care what her problem was. However, her aloofness intrigued him.
"Your what?" he asked.
She stayed silent for so long, Draco didn't think she was going to answer.
"My fiancé. We were getting married."
"And you managed to keep that out of the papers?" Draco asked in surprise. "I step outside to grab a newspaper, and there are headlines the next morning. 'Malfoy Not a Vampire!' 'Heir of Millions Wears Striped Boxers!' 'Draco Malfoy Still Not Dead!' How did you and Potter manage to keep your engagement a secret?"
She released a bitter laugh. "I didn't wear my ring much. I couldn't, really, because of practice and matches. But Harry asked me not to. I... didn't tell anyone. Not even my family."
Draco frowned. "How long were you engaged?"
"Oh, only a couple weeks before I broke up with him." She twisted her teacup in her hands, her thoughts clearly wandering.
Draco waited for her to add more, but when she didn't, he prompted her. "Care to elaborate on what happened there?"
Weasley shrugged. "Harry was talking about children before we'd even announced our engagement. He talked about our life all the time. He knew how many kids he wanted, what their names were going to be, where we were going to live." She looked up at Draco, her expression annoyed. "He talked about moving out of London to Godric's Hollow, about spending our honeymoon in our new home. But that would have required me to quit Quidditch, and I've only just made first-string! He made all these decisions for our life and never consulted me. It was suffocating! I love my mum, but I don't want to be just like her. I can't cook worth a damn, and it is way, way too soon for children. I'm only twenty-four!"
Draco was surprised that the view he'd had of Ginny Weasley was so different from the reality. Before he'd seen the headlines about their breakup, he'd thought of them as Britain's golden couple and sneered at the idea of them. Little Ginny Weasley, who had pined after Harry Potter since she was an ickle firstie, was living her dream life as heroic Potter's girlfriend. He'd thought her dreams had soared only that far, that she'd be content turning into her mother and serving Potter his every desire. He should have known better than to believe what he read in the papers. Most of the articles written about him were full of shite, so why would the most talked about couple in Britain be any different?
It made him strangely proud of her to hear that she wanted more from life than what Potter offered her, and that she'd seen below his false veneer and stood up for herself.
"Again," Draco said, drawing her eyes to him once more, "why would you want to apologize to him?"
"Did you read the papers when we broke up?" she asked incredulously.
"Of course I did. Who didn't?"
"Then you know the kinds of things I said to him."
The corners of Draco's lips tugged up into a reluctant smile. He could feel his face twitching, but he reigned his laughter in tight. "Did you really call him a selfish, parasitic Lethifold with a prick like a Flobberworm?"
Groaning, she covered her face with one hand and nodded her head in assent.
"And did you really say a troll could surpass him in intelligence and that you'd rather have a romantic relationship with a Blast-Ended Skrewt?"
"Yes, yes, yes, I said all those things! Every word the Prophet reported was true!"
Draco couldn't contain his laughter then, and he actually doubled over, his hands clutching his stomach as he fell out of his chair and onto the floor.
"Stop it, Malfoy. It's not funny! You're making a fool out of yourself."
"I... can't. It's just... too... good. A Flobberworm!"
"I mean it!" she cried, slapping his shoulder for good measure. "Stop it!"
Draco attempted to regain his composure, but when he pulled himself back up into his chair, he noticed that she herself was giggling, and then his laughter broke free again.
It took several minutes for both of them to finally control themselves, but the smiles on their faces could not be wiped off.
"Don't ever let me hear of you wanting to apologize to Potter again," Malfoy said as seriously as he could. "I won't stand for such an atrocious lack of courtesy."
She tried to compose her smile as she took another sip of her tea, but she couldn't. Her smile was glowing over the rim of her cup. "Courtesy to whom?"
"Yourself. Potter has the rest of the world fawning over him. I think he'll survive a few harsh words from a maltreated ex-girlfriend."
Her smile softened, becoming more wistful. "You mean ex-fiancée."
"I mean your relationship is over, so who cares?"
She perched on the edge of her chair as if ready to flee. "You know...."
"What?"
Then her hand drifted to the arm of his chair and stopped on top of his. "I never would have thought that Draco Malfoy would be giving me relationship advice. Almost as though he... cares."
"I don't care though," he said, staring at her hand until she withdrew it abruptly. "I don't have enough in me to care. I just want to see Potter knocked down a few pegs."
Her eyes lowered to her now lukewarm tea. "Of course," she said, the smile disappearing from her face.
He was going to leave it at that, but, damn him, he wanted her to keep smiling, and he didn't want to analyze why that was. "But that doesn't mean you can't rise above him in the process. No matter what you may think, Ginny Weasley, you deserve more than what Potter was willing to give you."
She did give him a tremulous smile at that, but her eyes also became shiny with—Draco feared—tears.
"How do you know what I deserve?"
Draco didn't know how to answer. He'd always been self-serving, but how did he explain his desire to see her smile and be more than everyone thought she could be? And he had nowhere to hide in this room, so he couldn't avoid answering the question. She would always be there waiting for a response.
So he gave her as much of the truth as he dared, which was still more than made him comfortable. "I don't. I just want to see you win."
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