Draco Malfoy was a traitor.

He hadn’t defected to the side of good, or fought the good fight for Harry Potter, but he was a traitor nonetheless. But then, so was Ginny Weasley, he supposed.

Because, while they spent almost all their time plotting, and planning, and fighting for their respective sides, they spent the minutes in between in each other's arms in a shack no one knew existed.

And there it was, the source of his treason, and hers. The Shack, where they met for whatever time they had, whenever they had it. It was located on Potter’s territory, technically, far away and so removed from the main camps that no one knew it existed. It was, however, still Potter’s land.

Except, for some reason, Death Eaters could Apparate into it without tripping the magical alarms placed on the rest of the land. They could also walk out of it right onto the land, and then stroll into the midst of Potter’s camps without tripping a single one of those damn alarms.

And he and Ginny were the only two people who knew about it.

This war could end tomorrow if he wished it, but he didn’t, so he kept silent and remained a traitor.

*********************************************************

Ironically, it was the war that had brought them together. Dumbledore’s death in his sixth year had begun a bloody battle that still waged eight years later. The wizarding world had been torn apart, and both Dumbledore’s Army and the young Death Eaters at Hogwarts were now hardened warriors fighting a battle with no apparent ending in sight.

She had only just turned eighteen the first time they really met. She had never before been on the battlefield and, looking back, she had been so young. She hadn’t yet seen murder, or the destruction the war thrived on.

He had been badly wounded, and she had stumbled upon him within the chaos. She had instantly recognized him and, unable to simply turn away, levitated him to a safe place. Even as she cursed herself as a fool, she stopped his bleeding and cleaned the mud from him. He had woken while she was taking care of him.

“What are you doing?”

“I…you were bleeding…I just…”

“My god you really must be stupid. Don’t you know what a war is?”

“What?” her voice was practically a whisper.

“War. W.A.R. You do not heal the enemy, you kill him. On second thought, never mind. Please, heal our side while we kill yours. It’ll end wonderfully for you, I’m sure.”

“I know you’re a prat, Draco, but I’m saving your life. If ever there was an appropriate time to keep your mouth shut and resist the impulse to insult everyone around you, this really is it.” She had been leaning over his stomach to clean his wound, but now she moved towards him, to look directly into his face.

He glared.

She turned back towards his wound. “You should be alright, there was a lot of blood, but it’s healing nicely.”

He glared. “Why are you helping me?”

She looked up again. “You were hurt.”

“This is war. I am your enemy. But then, I’d expect a Weasley to be weak, can’t even get these rules straight, and they’re the simplest ones that exist. Kill. The. Enemy.”

“We’re not all monsters, Malfoy. I’ve no intention of becoming just like you.”

“Ahh… Weasley.” He pulled her close and ran the backs of his fingers down the side of her face, she could feel his breath on her. The sheer intimacy of the moment had her frozen, he was so close, so…real.

“Stupefy!”

Suddenly she was paralyzed, she couldn’t move at all. She saw his wand, which had been next to her, was now in his hand.

“You’re just too easy. You’ll be dead within the month.” He smirked at her, then leaned in mockingly and placed a chaste kiss on her lips. Then, with an arrogant laugh and another obnoxious smirk, he was gone.

It was eight months before he saw her again. This time it was she who had fallen in battle. Her wound, unlike his, was not small or simple to heal. He had seen her lying there bleeding to death and, for some unknown reason, had remembered the feel of her lips and the gentleness of her hands on his skin as she tended his wound.

Suddenly, it had seemed abhorrent to him that she should die there alone in the cold on Death Eater land.

He had taken her to the shack, which he had just found while out scouting for information. He had, in fact, been on his way back to report it when he stumbled across her.

The shack was worn and dirty in places, the walls barely holding it up, but it had been a safe place he could heal her. She had moaned in pain when he placed her on the old bed, and he had rushed to comfort her, though he wasn’t sure why. It seemed the last traces of instinctive humanity he had thought he lost long ago were still in him somewhere.

He had stayed with her for a full day, until he was sure she would live, then left before Voldemort realized he was missing. When he returned to the shack several days later, she was still there.

She looked at him warily. “Why are you helping me?”

“We’re even,” he said solemnly.

“Okay.” She nodded hesitantly. He walked to the table and gathered some ointment, then returned and administered it to her wounds as she watched him curiously. When he was finished he walked to a bucket of water and rinsed his hands.

“Draco?” He turned and looked at her. “Thank you.”

He nodded.

“Draco?”

“What?”

“It’s not going to be all right, is it? Even if we win, Harry I mean, it’s still not going to be okay. We’re dying, people…Colin’s dead. And.. and Charlie, and Pansy. And you and I, we almost…there isn’t going to be an alright, I don’t think.”

He sighed. “No.”

“No.” She was looking down at her hands now.

He walked up to her and lifted her chin. “Ginny…” He kissed her delicately, then more harshly. “Ginny.”

They made love frantically that first time, with thoughts of death and loss chasing after them. Neither had thought of it as love at the time, but he had looked back years later and realized that it had started that day.

They had lain in bed for hours after, side by side, in a sort of restful peace. They hadn’t spoken of much, as neither wished to remember the war, but it had connected them in a way he hadn’t expected.

“Where are we?” she had asked at some point.

“Somewhere on Potter’s land. This falling pile of wood is far enough away from your main camps that you lot seem to have never found it.”

“But, if we’re on DA land, how are you here? Why haven’t the alarms been activated?”

“It seems to be some sort of spell that protects the place from detection, which is probably why you never found the place. We’re able to see it from outside, so its not being kept by a Secret Keeper or anything, it seems to just be undetectable by magic. I’ve never heard of such a thing before, frankly. And for the spell to have lasted even after the one who cast it is clearly far away, or dead, it’s very strange.”

She had sat up at that point and looked around in wonder. “Merlin, you’ve found Ophelia’s Manor.”

He raised his eyebrows. “What?”

“Haven’t you ever heard of Ophelia Bertrand?”

“Uh…the pure-blood chit who fell in love with a Muggle and ran away from her home? Wasn’t that almost a hundred years ago?”

“Yes.”

“Didn’t they find her and drag her back to her fiancé? Her father eventually killed her, if I recall the story. Gruesome.”

“Yes, but she and her lover were in hiding for five years before they finally found her shopping for groceries in the village! They say she had figured out a spell that completely shielded her manor from magical detection, which is how she hid for so long. They were trying to use magic, but the only way they could have found the place was by looking the Muggle way. They never found it; it’s been the stuff of folklore for years.”

He looked skeptical. “I never heard that part of the story.”

“This is it. They found her in a village in this part of the country as well. You’ve found Ophelia’s Manor!”

He hadn’t been particularly interested. “So, what now?”

“Nothing, I suppose. It’s just…this place was home to one of the most tragic love stories of the wizarding world. The memories this manor holds…”

“It’s not a manor anymore, it’s a shack.”

“What does it matter? She loved him, and it was real. This place is proof that it was real.”

“Was it worth it?”

“She defied the pure-blood world for him. I suppose she must have thought so.”

He returned to Voldemort and, again, didn’t mention the shack which could secure victory for the Death Eaters. He held out three days before he went back to it. She wasn’t there when he arrived.

He left and didn’t return for another five days. This time, she was sleeping in the bed, waiting for him. He woke her and there was a tenderness neither had expected could exist in such destruction.

It became their place, the shack, a personification of the treason they committed. He would spend hours there waiting for her, hoping she could get away. With no means of communicating, they could only find each other by going there and hoping the other would be coming that night. It was the only hope he had held since the night he watched Dumbledore’s murder.

*********************************************************


And so here he was seven years later, in a shack that was beneath his dignity, holding a woman he shouldn’t love so desperately.

The war would end, eventually, but it wouldn’t be by his doing. He would fight and he would serve the Dark Lord, but he would be a traitor until his final breath. Perhaps it would be the one good thing he had ever done in this world, keeping her safe.

He didn’t give a damn about Potter or the rest, but he would keep her safe even if it meant losing everything. He understood now why Ophelia Bertrand had betrayed her father and bloodline and, one hundred years later, he lay in her shack betraying his own family and bloodlines.

Perhaps it had been fate, or Ophelia watching over her manor, which had allowed him to stumble upon Ginny minutes after he found the place. Perhaps it was simply a coincidence that the shack was once again protecting a pair of forbidden lovers.

None of that really mattered in the end, though. They were traitors, Draco and Ginny. And it was worth it.


Ophelia’s Manor- 1900

Ophelia: They’ll never find us here. This place is protected now, a refuge for all times.
Ryan: Then we’ll stay here, we’ll stay here forever. Together.

RIP Ophelia Bertrand
1879-1904