A/N: Written for Clanmalfoy, who requested a D/G war fic.


Draco stepped out of the alcove he had ducked into and sneered after the girl. Susan Bones hurried away, her braids flying.

Ginny was watching his expression. “Don’t do that, Draco. You don’t really think she’s lower than you.”

He made a dismissive sound in his throat and slid his arm around her. “You can’t change who you are. And I don’t love you enough to hide it.”

“But you do love me.”

Draco looked away. “Yeah. Sure.”



It was Tuesday night when Harry Potter crash-landed his Firebolt at the Manor. He wasn’t alone. He had someone with him.

Draco couldn’t imagine the ride that must have been, with the rain and the sleet, and he grudgingly admired Potter’s flying ability.

He couldn’t imagine the ride that must have been, with the lashing rain and the sleet and Potter’s hands full of the broom and the girl who hadn’t helped him fly at all.

Later at night, Draco would, in passing, notice the bruises along her arms and wrists, proof that she had fought Potter every inch of ground they’d covered in the air.


_______________


Ginny had been burning bright and uncontrolled when Harry dragged her up to the Manor. Harry whispered a spell, and Draco raised his eyebrows.

“Cheering Charm?”

“First thing I could think of,” Harry responded, pocketing his wand and wiping his forehead with his soaked sleeve and swaying where he stood. He was clutching his Firebolt with white knuckles, and it seemed as though the racing broom was all that was standing him upright. His face was ashen, and it looked like speaking was costing him every bit of energy he had left. “She’s exhausted. It’ll just knock her out.”

Even as he spoke, she stumbled forward, her unconsciousness taking over and turning her boneless, and Harry, with the hands of a Seeker, caught her easily and shifted her over to Draco, who hesitated before taking on her small weight. His arms full of Ginny, Draco stared back at Harry, lifting an eyebrow in question.

“Take her,” Harry, his Secret Keeper, said grimly, blinking at the water that dripped into his eyes. “She’s as good as dead out there. She’s out of control. She’s like a missile headed for anything with a Dark Mark and she doesn’t realize that she’ll get blown up in the process.”

Draco looked faintly bemused at the Muggle analogy, but said instead, “What happened?” He felt he had a right to know.

Harry looked away, his expression tight and pained. “She got Antonin Dolohov.”

Draco was impressed, but something in Potter’s voice was evasive. He repeated slowly, “She got him.”

Harry said shortly, green eyes haunted, “I’ve never seen anyone die like that. I didn’t know…I didn’t know someone could die like that. And I’d rather not see that happen again.”

“Ah,” said Draco softly.


_______________


So there she was, an unwilling guest in the Manor. She wouldn’t speak to him. She remained in the room he had provided and ate the food set on the table or sent up to her room, and that was all. Even if Potter hadn’t warned him, Draco would have known. He recognized the wild look in her eyes. There was no more lethal combination than the kind of rage and determination fueled by raw pain and loss. That kind of anger was fatal, even to its host. Despite the reasons that forced her to remain there, Ginny was waiting, not hiding. And that meant he had to watch her.

So Draco threw up a few wards and as an extra precaution, he drew an Age Line as well, making it so anyone a day younger than he would not be permitted to leave the Manor. The Age Line was very effective in not only keeping people out but also keeping people in.

The Manor was silent, for the most part. He had lived for seven years in the Slytherin dungeons; he was used to the cold…or so he told himself. Sometimes Draco thought he saw a ghost, but he was a Slytherin, not sentimental, and he dismissed the brush of coolness on his neck and the dust in his throat as a stubborn wind that would not be kept out despite the excellent housekeeping.

It was when Ginny deigned to leave her room and grace him with her presence that everything suddenly became too loud, like a Silencing Charm that had been removed without warning in the midst of a fight.


_______________


“I want to leave, Malfoy.”

Draco didn’t bother responding now. In the beginning, he had tried for patience and understanding, two traits a Malfoy had little use for and had little in reserves. Now, he ignored her. After a week, he was getting rather good at it.

“You have no right to keep me here.”

Draco continued to look over the papers on his desk. Lately, with so little to do around the Manor besides safeguarding his little spitfire of a charge, he had been going through the Malfoy ledgers. When it was all over, he didn’t intend for another Malfoy Galleon to be spent or taken from him without it being his explicit desire. To make certain of that, he needed to make certain of exactly how much was in his bank account.

She leaned further over his desk, her shadow falling across the papers as her hair fell over her shoulder, deliberately trying to invade his personal space. Draco made a tiny mark in a ledger, unperturbed. It took more than that to ruffle him.

He heard the tiny exhaled breath that whistled impatiently through her clenched teeth, and before he could look up, she had made a quick motion with her hands. Draco sat back and stared at his now cleared desk as the papers scattered and settled to the floor around them.

“You have no idea,” she breathed. “You have no idea what it’s like out there. Everyone being killed by shadows. More traitors than you can imagine. They’re taking causalities in numbers. They lost eighteen people yesterday in an hour.”

He contained a sigh. She had somehow managed to procure a copy of The Daily Prophet that was delivered to the Manor by an owl from the Order. He should have burned it instead of asking the house elves to dispose of it.

“Wouldn’t I understand?” he demanded calmly. “Wouldn’t I know?” His voice was evasive and dark, and the smile he gave her was not pleasant, it was droll and it was ironic and it was mocking her.

Ginny, perhaps, was surprised that he finally responded, so she leaned back, silent, brown eyes flat and angry.

“Voldemort will not take kindly to the murder of one of his best Death Eaters,” Draco said levelly, hiding away his exhaustion with practiced ease. “You’re a target. And he wouldn’t kill you. That makes you a liability.” His voice rose to meet hers. “Would you further jeopardize your family? Your friends? And don’t tell me you wouldn’t get caught. My father got caught. He was the best wizard his year to graduate Hogwarts. He was a Malfoy. He was a Slytherin. He was Voldemort’s right hand, and he got caught.” He gave her a derisive look and stated with a sort of vicious certainty, “You would get caught.”


_______________


Friday was when it happened.

She had been sneaking about his desk again, and this time he caught her. He had entered the room on silent feet. The Manor knew its master, and the old creaky floorboards were quiet and smooth beneath his feet.

Still, something in the room must have changed with his presence as he prowled closer to her because her questing hands froze, and she whirled. She turned right into him, and he was so surprised, he barely managed to stifle a groan. He felt his neck heat up as he turned quickly away to conceal his reaction. She flushed.

“Sorry,” she muttered, but the damage was done.

Later, he would wonder for what incident she had been apologizing. He never caught her rummaging through his things again, but he didn’t quite trust that she had given up.

Passing plates of food to each other at dinner became an exquisite torture as fingers brushed and feet touched. Unreadable eyes were darting, sidling, slipping, uncontrolled glances. They feigned unawareness, assuming a sort of obliviousness to each other’s presence and the memories of an old but youthful romance in their school days.

What was worse, if that were possible, was early morning.

Ginny had the habit of taking baths when she woke up, as he had discovered the second morning she had been there. The Manor had seemed too fucking small and stifling when he’d come up the stairs and rounded the corner into Ginny, who was clutching a towel around her, water sliding down the curve of her shoulders and disappearing into the dip between her breasts. She was pale and long-limbed, and he knew too well how perfectly she fitted to him.

Draco wondered why he had installed Ginny in a bedroom without its own bathroom as he had snarled, “Get some clothes on.”

“I’m going to!” Ginny had flung back, stepping around him and hurrying into her bedroom.

She still had that unfortunate habit. Draco could hear the bathroom and bedroom doors opening and closing from within his room as he lay on his bed, pretending to be unaware of what Ginny was doing, and he imagined and he hated himself for imagining but he couldn’t stop. It was a habit he couldn’t break but was trying its damnedest to break him.

Outside the Manor, the causalities mounted.


_______________


Monday, he was gone for the entire day. He’d woken up in the middle of the night, awakened by the rain pounding at the windows. He couldn’t force himself to go back to sleep again, so he rolled off the bed to his feet and began to ready himself.

The water Draco splashed on his face shocked him into a full awakening, and hunched over the sink, water pooling in his cupped hands, he stared into the mirror at himself. Merlin, how he had changed. He wasn’t fit for anything good. Nothing good deserved him like this.

Over the years, he had grown into his looks. The sharpness of his features had become less distinct.

Now, however, Draco felt only tired. Pride, dignity, discretion, reticence, civility, wit – everything had fallen behind him, dropped to the ground like a discarded, worn shirt. All those things were, he thought, just commodities that had been dirtied and damaged in the war. His pewter eyes were sharp, the only thing awake about him. Weariness seeped through him like water, and he couldn’t get away from it.

Back at Hogwarts, in his seventh year, girls had been following him with their hopeful eyes as he stood and sat and walked into the Great Hall. Ginny hadn’t been any different. She had been burning for him, beneath his touch that quickly became expert at eliciting gasps and breathy moans from her.

Draco was knotting his tie expertly and mechanically when a house elf appeared and nervously informed him in its squeaky voice that breakfast was ready for him.

He inclined his head, eyes still focused on his mirror as he finished with his tie. He had cast a Glamor, now a habit, and he didn’t look half dead now. “Is Ginny – Miss Weasley awake?”

“No, the miss is still not awaken yet,” said the house elf, and he dismissed it.

It was harder than he thought it would be. There were those amongst the Wizengamot that clearly didn’t trust him, and he was put through his paces. He found himself repeating himself and explaining things he’d testified to months ago. Every time his memory failed him, his slip of tongue would begin a new line of questioning. He was allowed a slight reprieve when Potter arrived briefly to add to his testimony, but Potter was ushered away quickly to the Order and Draco was on the stand again. More Death Eaters became known. Names were given to the hooded and masked faces.

He was placed in solitary for lunch, and a witch who wouldn’t meet his eye brought him a lunch consisting of a rather pathetic looking sandwich. He eyed it with distaste before swallowing it halfheartedly.

In the afternoon, round two of questioning began just as he began to drift. He wondered what Ginny was doing back at the Manor. Sometimes they went for days without speaking to each other. Did she know he wasn’t there? Ginny’s favorite room was the library; she spent most of her hours in there. Not reading for leisure, not reading for pleasure. Ginny took advantage of the extensive Malfoy library. No, now Ginny was only interested in curses and hexes and other offensive spells.

“…Mr. Malfoy?”

Draco started. “Pardon?”

The wizard frowned at him and repeated loudly, “Were you aware of your father’s Death Eater activities while you were in school?”

“Yes, some of them,” said Draco, mind wandering again as hushed whispers broke out amongst the audience present.

“There are some of us missing…do you know anything about their whereabouts? Perhaps you heard your father speaking with others…?” Another wizard, a grandfatherly looking old man, pushed his spectacles further up the bridge of his nose and began to read, in a quivery voice, the list of missing wizards and witches.

Ginevra Weasley was the fifty-third person on the list. Draco wondered if Ginny was eating. Sometimes, she refused to come down from her room, and he had ordered the house elves to bring up food and make sure she ate all of it. She didn’t have a wand, and he’d be very interested in learning how she would make the food disappear. He had noticed that she tended to eat more when she was with him; he supposed it was her way of shutting him up and warding off his insistent demands that she eat.


_______________


Draco returned to the Manor just as Ginny was passing through the foyer. They both froze, staring at each other, and then Draco moved, shutting the door firmly and continued shrugging out of his coat.

“Dinner is set out,” Ginny said quietly. “I had the house elves cast a warming charm.”

“Thanks,” he said. “Have you eaten yet?”

“Not yet.” She waited, and he realized that she was waiting for him to follow her.

Draco quickened his step, and as he passed an ancient grandfather clock, he glimpsed his reflection. He had forgotten to re-cast the Glamour on himself. He looked terrible, and he wished she had given him some time to wash up.

Hunger took over, and he was halfway through his meal when Ginny was still sipping slowly at her soup. Draco cringed inwardly at how starved he must have seen, and then he remembered it didn’t matter.

“I was at the Ministry,” he heard himself saying to his drink. “The Wizengamot wanted some answers, and they thought I had them.”

“Did you?”

Draco shrugged. “I had a few. Did you eat lunch?”

Ginny looked as though she were about to give him an acerbic retort, but something changed in her eyes and she said simply, “Yes.”

“Good,” said Draco tiredly. “That’s good.”

Ginny was suddenly all motion, busying her hands with the napkin in her lap and her fork and her plate. “There’s no point in starving myself just to spite you.” She lifted her chin and met his eyes. “You see, I’ve forgotten everything.”

Draco went still. “Have you?”

Ginny brought the spoon to her lips and quietly finished her soup, head bowed over the bowl.


_______________


Gradually though, they fell into a quiet sort of peace that was accompanied by the first real heavy snowfall of the winter.

It was snug and so warm within the library that the windows had frosted over with mist, and Draco felt as though they were hidden away from everything else, like maybe they were buried under a white hill.

But they weren’t untouchable. News of the war filtered in slowly.

Charlie has been hurt. Charlie, brought down from Romania and his dragons, invincible Charlie, her older brother had been hurt. And Ginny had found out.

“Would you have kept this from me?” she demanded.

They were standing in the foyer. He had come back from an aimless walk in the cold to find her standing there, waiting for him again. He removed his coat slowly as Ginny repeated her question. She was angry and hurt and terrified, and she couldn’t hide the pained look in her eyes this time.

Draco didn’t know. His silence was telling, and his silence told.

“Never mind,” Ginny snapped, her face pale. “I want to go see him.”

Draco refused, of course. It was the right thing to do. Voldemort was not above continuing his killing spree when his enemies were in mourning.


_______________


The same day, late in the evening, Harry came over, drawing off his Invisibility Cloak with a jerky movement. The economy of Harry’s motion had always been fluid and easy, a Seeker’s walk, but now Harry stumbled on the step inside and couldn’t seem to make himself comfortable on the lush couch. Harry’s face was tinged blue, and he couldn’t stop shaking even after Draco began to feel uncomfortable in the unnatural heat of the room.

“Where’s Ginny?” Harry asked finally, pausing briefly in his recounts of the past week, slumping back slightly and passing a hand over his eyes.

“In her room, I imagine. Or the library. Or the conservatory. I don’t know.”

Draco’s voice was unemotional, but Harry stared at him curiously. Perhaps he had imagined the note of frustration.

“Oh. Well, I just thought – well, I wanted to tell her some stuff. Update her on Charlie. Charlie’s not doing so well, but I wanted to tell her that – ”

Draco shrugged, snapping his fingers to summon a house elf and rising at the same time. “I can get her, if you want.”

“I’m not done talking to you though,” objected Harry. “Snape had a – ”

“Tell the house elf to call me when you’re done.” At Harry’s puzzled expression, he admitted, “She won’t want to be in the same room as me. She hates me.” A shoulder lifted and dropped. “That’s what happens when you make me play the bad guy, Potter.”


_______________


Harry hadn’t called Draco back. He had left after he spoke with Ginny. Draco thought he’d make it easy for her, so he skipped dinner only to learn from a house elf that Ginny had forgone dinner as well.

Hungry and tired, Draco fell into his bed, straining his senses, keeping himself awake.

It wasn’t yet eleven o’clock when he heard the sounds he had thought he would. He heard the sound of a tiny gasp that died away too quickly, like a sob that had been smothered by a palm or a pillow, stifled into something that was not quite silence.

Draco was on his feet. Their rooms were adjacent, and he moved swiftly to the door that led to her bedroom. He opened it without thinking, and he didn’t hesitate until he was hovering just within the room. He saw her shoulders tremble, and then he moved forward again, staring down at her back.

“Ginny,” he said hopelessly, “Don’t cry. You can see your brother tomorrow if you’d like. I’ll take you there, at night, probably, it should be all right…”


_______________


So Draco Flooed a few people and set up a Portkey that would take the two of them to the Order’s hideaway in the renovated Shrieking Shack.

Ginny had been embraced tightly by Bill Weasley and whisked away upstairs to Charlie’s room, leaving Draco downstairs, looking around. He stood at the bottom of the stairs, wondering if he should go upstairs as well. He laid his hand on the banister, and although it looked splintery and cracked, it was smooth beneath his touch.

He could hear Bill and Ginny.

Draco caught Remus Lupin about the sleeve as he passed by. “I’m going back to the Manor first,” he said. He gestured at the object he had placed on the banister. “It’s a Portkey for her…whenever she’s done.”


_______________


The night was a deep, beautiful, inky blue, and flurries of virgin-white snow were falling. Draco’s head was tipped back where he sprawled on his favorite sofa; he breathed in deep the smell of gingerbread, nutmeg, clove and cinnamon. It was so warm there, beside the dying hearth. The subtle waft of fireplace smoke curled around the room, a deep, melancholy scent. The glass was hoary and –

Ginny appeared in front of him, clutching the tumbler he had charmed. She dropped to the floor at his feet.

“Draco,” Ginny uttered, and Draco saw the brightness in her eyes and he knew Bill, or somebody, had told her the truth.

The truth. Truth got lost easily in times of war. Motives were obscured just as people were concealed. Draco had never betrayed anyone. And now Ginny knew.

Draco could remember the morning everything had changed. Three things had happened.

First, Susan Bone’s family had been attacked the previous night. Lucius Malfoy had died there. No one was sure how.

Second, the Order had gotten word that the Death Eaters were moving in on Hogwarts and the school had to be evacuated.

Third, Ginny overheard a conversation between Draco and Snape. Draco had stood deliberately so his back would be turned to Ginny. The staged conversation of Snape’s disappointment at Draco’s betrayal of the Bone’s to Draco’s pleas for help and hiding had been carried out to perfection. Draco excelled as an actor, and Snape had dabbled too long in subterfuge that playing out a lie had come easily.

Now. Now, they were here.

Stiff fingers caught her hands up, and Ginny found herself ungracefully hauled to her feet and into Draco’s arms. He had tugged her forcefully into him, and for one breathless moment, the world was just her, just Ginny, just the smell of her and his face buried in her hair, his fingers caught up with her.

“Now you know,” he said hoarsely. Now you know, he told her again silently, wanting to reaffirm his innocence. Draco had been too afraid to take sides. He had been too afraid to do anything except take the chance at hiding when he had been offered it.

Draco had imagined it for so long, pretending that he hadn’t known immediately when Ginny entered a room and when she left it, that the act of kissing her was all at once familiar and different.

He felt humbled beneath her hungry mouth, and as his thumb brushed the corner of her lip, he let her take what she wanted from him. His heart was in his mouth, and she was kissing it away.

Draco stilled her hands with his before he reached for the hem of his shirt and tugged it over his head, dropping it down at his feet, his hair spiking slightly from the static electricity.

Draco was glad for the dim candlelight because it cast dancing shadows over his face and obscured the shadows that weren’t left by a play of light and darkness. It hid the hollows in his face and the dryness of his lips. Her small hands sliding down his bare back were suddenly more than he could bear, and he turned his face away, just in case, even as he lowered them onto the thick rug, easing them down. He whispered a cushioning and warming spell.

They burned themselves out quickly in a fiery explosion and rush of sudden movement and thrusts as he went undone at his name on her lips, but not much later, Ginny’s hand on his flushed face made him starved all over again. As he turned his cheek in her caressing palm, he rocked them slowly together, unhurried.


_______________


When Draco spoke again, he sensed what he said didn’t come as a surprise to Ginny.

“You used what I taught you to kill Dolohov.”

“Yeah,” said Ginny after a moment of silence. “Yeah, I did.”

“Why?”

The question lingered between them before she exhaled, her breath blowing it away. “Because it was the worst curse I knew. Because you taught it to me. Because I wanted him to suffer. Because I wanted to show that I wasn’t above using something you taught me, even if I thought you had become a traitor and I…hated you and wanted to forget you.” Ginny drew in a breath that Draco felt, with his whole body attuned to hers, his arm splayed across Ginny’s stomach and legs wrapped with hers. “I was angry and I loved you and I was angry that I did.”

“You do still love me.”

Ginny’s voice was soft when she spoke, and the emotion underscoring it was something Draco hadn’t heard in a long time. Teasing? Mocking? Playful?

“Yeah. Sure,” she said.



In the morning, three days later, on a Wednesday, Hedwig comes. Draco sees the snowy owl. Even before the owl reaches the Manor, Draco knows. Harry didn’t risk sending his owl everywhere now; no one did, owls could be attacked for information.

If Harry was sending his owl, that meant there was hope.

Behind him, Draco could hear Ginny stirring, and he turned to her.