Disclaimer – I don’t own any of the canon characters or concepts. Luc Malfoy is mine.
CHAPTER 6 – Introducing the Game.
The next day, Ginny was sitting down to her breakfast in her flat, still half asleep because it was seven in the morning and she was most assuredly not a morning person, when she cast uninterested eyes over the front page of the Prophet.
Blinked. Looked again.
SACKED WORKER DENOUNCES CORRUPT PRACTICES!!!!
Oh, dear Lady.
"...An anonymous former Gringott's employee came forward to denounce what he calls "corrupt practices" and "ancient, outdated 'old-boy' privileges" which he alleges led to his unfair dismissal…"
"I was dismissed for exercising my right to free speech in a public place, and because they didn't like what I was saying. This is a breach of a fundamental human right," said the employee.
"Even after You-Know-Who's fall, the aristocracy's influence still reaches into all corners of England's financial and political quarters - it's a shamefully outdated, morally corrupt system that has gone on for far too long, and it's time we put a stop to it."
"...Their pasts and backgrounds, especially some of the more powerful ones, are enough to send any other men to Azkaban for life, and yet they are regarded as pillars of the community. It's time we showed them that we will no longer bow down to them, no longer tolerate their slights and their sins..."
A cold chill ran down Ginny's spine. That sounded like some of the things Gerald often said - he was an avid believer in class equality and bitterly resented the hold the High Clan still had on the wizarding world – in fact, she recognised one or two of those quotes. The anonymous employee was Gerald? And he had said some of those things in public? In Gringott's itself?
No wonder he had been fired. But why had he gone to the papers? He'd been fired, yes, he'd lost his job, but inflammatory remarks of this sort, in print, quoted, might lose him everything he had. He must have been mad. And why had the Prophet even printed such biased copy, and on the front page too? They were openly courting, even inviting a lawsuit. There was something else at play, here - something deeper, something darker than Gerald's personal crusade against the aristocracy. She didn't know who or what it was, but she could sense it, almost reach out and touch it. And one thing she did know - whatever it was, Draco Malfoy stood at the very heart of it.
A knock sounded. She knew it was him before she opened her door, and was sorely tempted, even if just for a moment, to simply not let him in, to leave him standing on the doorstep and hope he would go away. But that would be naïve, and Ginny, despite what some people thought, was no longer naïve. So she let him in, because she knew he was capable of overcoming her wards and her locks, and because she wanted to ask him some questions of her own.
Such as how he had been involved in Gerald's dismissal. And who or what else would also take an interest in it? Ever since that night she'd foolishly sworn she'd rather marry Draco than Gerald, Gerald had grown more and more suspicious, more jealous, more fanatical in his crusade, and he'd made Draco the main target of his animosity. But this – this was the something more, something deeper that she'd sensed before. There was no way that Gerald could have known, even as whispered rumour, the shadows of Draco's past. No way, unless someone else had told him.
And what was Draco not telling her?
When he sat down at her kitchen table, an elegant, aristocratic figure almost completely out of place in her old, battered kitchen, like ethereal quicksilver or moonlight seen in the harsh light of day, she looked at him through puzzled eyes. She knew absolutely nothing about him, she realized. Oh, she knew him by reputation, but that was not the true Draco Malfoy - it was a mask, a public persona; there was something deep, something powerful lying beneath the suave, sophisticated surface - and whatever it was, she sensed instinctively that it could be very, very dangerous.
Looking into his grey eyes, she casually pushed the newspaper over to him, so that it lay open to the front page. His eyes flicked down to it, once, and then back up to hers, and he said nothing, did nothing other than look at her expressionlessly. They sat like that for a while, staring at each other, seeing who would break first; finally she tired of the foolishness, sighed, and gestured with her coffee cup towards the newspaper.
"So," she said flatly, "talk."
Luxuriant, incongruously golden lashes lowered over silver eyes, hiding whatever he didn't want her to see. She made a frustrated sound deep in her throat and reached out to grab his wrist, hesitated, suddenly, when she saw the coiled power only just held in check. He raised his eyes and she saw, once again, the very dangerous force she had once suspected lay beneath his composure. Only this time there was nothing to conceal it.
"What is there to say?" he asked smoothly. "He was indiscreet, and he paid the price."
"Because you ordered it." She could see it all too well - that arrogance, the supreme self-assurance...
He shook his head. "No. I didn't have to order it. It was understood."
"You didn't even have to order it? Do you have so much power, Malfoy?"
He looked at her a little curiously. "Had he said what he said to anyone other than myself, he would still have been dismissed. Free speech is all very well, but there is such a thing as discretion, especially when one works in Gringott's."
She spotted the evasion, but didn't take him up on it, diverted by something else he had said. "What he said? What, exactly, did he say?" she demanded.
His eyes went blank once more. "Nothing that you need to hear." She opened her mouth to protest, and then shut it again when he looked at her.
"And what of his...speaking out?" she drew the words out sarcastically. "Don't tell me that was also your doing."
He smiled very, very softly. "You know it wasn't, Ginevra. I am not the only man with influence and power in this world."
"But you could have stopped this, right? One word from you and they would never have printed this."
He looked at her through old, jaded eyes. "Perhaps I couldn't have stopped it." His lips twisted. "Perhaps I didn't want to stop it."
She banged her coffee cup down on the table. "All right," she all but snarled, tired of the evasions, of the half-truths, of the mysterious shadows she knew nothing about. "What the bloody hell is going on?"
He sighed, closing his eyes; and when he looked at her again, he had shed all the defenses and the masks and she was looking into what she believed was the real man.
****************************************
Draco was tired. Tired of politicking, tired of intrigue and playing games, and tired of running from his past and himself. The unexpected addition of Ginny, a wildcard, had only complicated the game further, with her Vow, with her sudden impulsive desire for a transformation, and with the wholly unexpected lust she inspired in him. Sweet Lady, a Weasley! He could hardly have picked a more inappropriate mate - and yet, with her impulsive Vow she had become part of the game, whether she liked it or not. The Wind had brought her declaration to him for a reason - as soon as he'd heard it, he'd felt the chill breath of inevitability trickle down his back.
And then he'd set out to gather all the information on her that he possibly could, so that her entry would work for him, rather than against him. Take control of the wildcard, control as many of the variables as possible, and he might just come out of this alive, and even more powerful than before. Unfortunately for him, she was proving rather difficult to control: it seemed now he would have to try that most unreliable of methods - cooperation. Preferably willing, but he would take what he could get. And to achieve that, he would need to explain himself.
"Do you remember my fifth year at Hogwarts and your fourth, when the Hogwarts Express was attacked by Death Eaters?"
She nodded, listening intently, now that she was finally getting answers. "I remember. Professor Malfoy - that is, your uncle - stopped them."
"Yes, he did - and in the doing, he showed his true allegiances. He publicly threw his support behind Dumbledore and the Order, and it sent Voldemort into a frenzy."
"Why?" she asked, intrigued. She hadn't seen the implications of the act at the time, or at any time since - had taken Luc Malfoy's protection of them as something inevitable. She hadn't thought that there might have been unforeseen consequences.
"Because he was a Malfoy - and he and my father were always very close, always together in everything. The Dark Lord suspected that my father, too, had turned against him, and he resolved to teach us, the Malfoy, all a lesson."
'Too?' thought Ginny. But she said nothing.
"There was more to it, of course, but the main point is that he brought my father to the edge of our land, to the Veil which separates Malfoy land from the Outside world, and he thought that if he tortured my father to death, then the Veil would come down and he could destroy the Land and the people who lived on it - everything the Malfoy hold sacred."
Draco blinked, momentarily lost in his memories, remembering the awful knowledge of his father's plight, of his helplessness as he watched his torture. "But the Veil was already failing," he continued, voice curiously, carefully neutral, "the balance between Lord and Land and Laymen - what we call the Covenant, which holds everything together - was already upset, because of my father's Dark Mark, which was poisoning everything he was part of. The only way to restore the balance was to instate a new, untouched Lord, and for that to happen, my father had to die."
She made a low, sympathetic sound. "I'm so sorry. So you watched him die?"
He laughed suddenly, a wild, harsh, bitter sound. "No, Ginevra, I killed him myself."
She opened her mouth – to exclaim, to commiserate – but there did not seem to be anything to say.
His face was utterly frozen, his eyes were like hammered, bitterly cold silver, and his voice was dangerously, lethally soft. "I ordered the killing of every single Death Eater who took part in that meeting. Every single one. They all died, marked with the Malfoy mark, to show that I judged them, found them guilty, and ordered their execution..." He felt, dimly, through the memories, through the bitterness and hatred, the touch of her hand as it gripped his, her strength acting as an anchor to keep him in the present, in the now. "But they weren't responsible for his death - I was." he tossed his head suddenly, an oddly incongruous gesture for such a self-controlled man, and changed the subject. "I offered them an amnesty - all the families of the dead Death Eaters - and they took it, hoping to destroy us during the war. But I, and the Malfoy survived. It's been twelve years since then, now - and no amnesty lasts forever, only until the defeated feel strong enough to take their chances once more."
"So they're coming after you."
"Yes, with everything they have, including the media and public opinion. All they needed was a cause, a figurehead." He gestured to the paper, his eyes neutral as he watched her.
She followed his gesture, uncomprehending - and then her eyes widened in amazement. "Gerald? You're not serious?"
"Oh, yes. Gerald, the epitome of the middle class, with his public campaign against aristocratic privilege; Gerald, who has been so ignominiously dismissed because of me..." he paused and looked her in the eye, "whose fiancée I have stolen and seduced..."
She spluttered and choked on her coffee. "What?" She shook her finger at him. "Oh, no. Oh, no, no, no - you are not dragging me into this."
He gently reached out and pulled her hand back to the table. "But you are already involved. You swore Blood Vow. You broke up with Gerald. You made yourself part of this."
"No, you dragged me into this. You came into my shop and suggested we do something shocking, and instead you embroiled me in a...a damned blood feud!"
"You could have said no," he pointed out reasonably.
"You shouldn't have asked me!"
He sighed. "Like it or not, Ginevra, you are part of this. You were Gerald's fiancée. You have now been seen on my arm, only hours after Gerald's dismissal. The whole world knows you swore Blood Vow preferring me over Gerald." He held tightly onto her hand. "You are Arthur Weasley's daughter..."
She went white and tried to pull away, but he held her wrist flat to the table. "Listen to me," he said softly, intensely. "It is too late to go back. A confrontation is coming - the board is already assembling, the players taking their places. And you have become my Queen - you cannot walk away and hope to survive. We must play this to the end."
"I would have felt better about that speech if I didn't think that you engineered this whole thing," she said bitterly, her eyes wounded and cold. "You could have arranged this differently, Malfoy - but you deliberately created this whole scenario, shaping it to your whim..."
"Yes," he said very, very softly. "Yes I did. Yes, I could probably have left you out of this - even with the Vow - but I didn't. I am the Lord of High Clan Malfoy, and I will not stand meekly by and let my enemies destroy me. If I must play this Game, then I will play it my way."
Her dark eyes were almost stricken, threatening tears, and for a moment he felt as if he had destroyed something precious. But, as he had said, he was the Lord of High Clan Malfoy. And he would do whatever he could to ensure the survival and continued well-being of his Clan. No matter the price.
***************************************
A/N: For all those who would like to know more about Lucius’ death and the events of twelve years ago, I would recommend that you read my story “The Greater Good, or the Lesser Evil.” (on ff.net) It will give you a bit more backstory.
CHAPTER 6 – Introducing the Game.
The next day, Ginny was sitting down to her breakfast in her flat, still half asleep because it was seven in the morning and she was most assuredly not a morning person, when she cast uninterested eyes over the front page of the Prophet.
Blinked. Looked again.
SACKED WORKER DENOUNCES CORRUPT PRACTICES!!!!
Oh, dear Lady.
"...An anonymous former Gringott's employee came forward to denounce what he calls "corrupt practices" and "ancient, outdated 'old-boy' privileges" which he alleges led to his unfair dismissal…"
"I was dismissed for exercising my right to free speech in a public place, and because they didn't like what I was saying. This is a breach of a fundamental human right," said the employee.
"Even after You-Know-Who's fall, the aristocracy's influence still reaches into all corners of England's financial and political quarters - it's a shamefully outdated, morally corrupt system that has gone on for far too long, and it's time we put a stop to it."
"...Their pasts and backgrounds, especially some of the more powerful ones, are enough to send any other men to Azkaban for life, and yet they are regarded as pillars of the community. It's time we showed them that we will no longer bow down to them, no longer tolerate their slights and their sins..."
A cold chill ran down Ginny's spine. That sounded like some of the things Gerald often said - he was an avid believer in class equality and bitterly resented the hold the High Clan still had on the wizarding world – in fact, she recognised one or two of those quotes. The anonymous employee was Gerald? And he had said some of those things in public? In Gringott's itself?
No wonder he had been fired. But why had he gone to the papers? He'd been fired, yes, he'd lost his job, but inflammatory remarks of this sort, in print, quoted, might lose him everything he had. He must have been mad. And why had the Prophet even printed such biased copy, and on the front page too? They were openly courting, even inviting a lawsuit. There was something else at play, here - something deeper, something darker than Gerald's personal crusade against the aristocracy. She didn't know who or what it was, but she could sense it, almost reach out and touch it. And one thing she did know - whatever it was, Draco Malfoy stood at the very heart of it.
A knock sounded. She knew it was him before she opened her door, and was sorely tempted, even if just for a moment, to simply not let him in, to leave him standing on the doorstep and hope he would go away. But that would be naïve, and Ginny, despite what some people thought, was no longer naïve. So she let him in, because she knew he was capable of overcoming her wards and her locks, and because she wanted to ask him some questions of her own.
Such as how he had been involved in Gerald's dismissal. And who or what else would also take an interest in it? Ever since that night she'd foolishly sworn she'd rather marry Draco than Gerald, Gerald had grown more and more suspicious, more jealous, more fanatical in his crusade, and he'd made Draco the main target of his animosity. But this – this was the something more, something deeper that she'd sensed before. There was no way that Gerald could have known, even as whispered rumour, the shadows of Draco's past. No way, unless someone else had told him.
And what was Draco not telling her?
When he sat down at her kitchen table, an elegant, aristocratic figure almost completely out of place in her old, battered kitchen, like ethereal quicksilver or moonlight seen in the harsh light of day, she looked at him through puzzled eyes. She knew absolutely nothing about him, she realized. Oh, she knew him by reputation, but that was not the true Draco Malfoy - it was a mask, a public persona; there was something deep, something powerful lying beneath the suave, sophisticated surface - and whatever it was, she sensed instinctively that it could be very, very dangerous.
Looking into his grey eyes, she casually pushed the newspaper over to him, so that it lay open to the front page. His eyes flicked down to it, once, and then back up to hers, and he said nothing, did nothing other than look at her expressionlessly. They sat like that for a while, staring at each other, seeing who would break first; finally she tired of the foolishness, sighed, and gestured with her coffee cup towards the newspaper.
"So," she said flatly, "talk."
Luxuriant, incongruously golden lashes lowered over silver eyes, hiding whatever he didn't want her to see. She made a frustrated sound deep in her throat and reached out to grab his wrist, hesitated, suddenly, when she saw the coiled power only just held in check. He raised his eyes and she saw, once again, the very dangerous force she had once suspected lay beneath his composure. Only this time there was nothing to conceal it.
"What is there to say?" he asked smoothly. "He was indiscreet, and he paid the price."
"Because you ordered it." She could see it all too well - that arrogance, the supreme self-assurance...
He shook his head. "No. I didn't have to order it. It was understood."
"You didn't even have to order it? Do you have so much power, Malfoy?"
He looked at her a little curiously. "Had he said what he said to anyone other than myself, he would still have been dismissed. Free speech is all very well, but there is such a thing as discretion, especially when one works in Gringott's."
She spotted the evasion, but didn't take him up on it, diverted by something else he had said. "What he said? What, exactly, did he say?" she demanded.
His eyes went blank once more. "Nothing that you need to hear." She opened her mouth to protest, and then shut it again when he looked at her.
"And what of his...speaking out?" she drew the words out sarcastically. "Don't tell me that was also your doing."
He smiled very, very softly. "You know it wasn't, Ginevra. I am not the only man with influence and power in this world."
"But you could have stopped this, right? One word from you and they would never have printed this."
He looked at her through old, jaded eyes. "Perhaps I couldn't have stopped it." His lips twisted. "Perhaps I didn't want to stop it."
She banged her coffee cup down on the table. "All right," she all but snarled, tired of the evasions, of the half-truths, of the mysterious shadows she knew nothing about. "What the bloody hell is going on?"
He sighed, closing his eyes; and when he looked at her again, he had shed all the defenses and the masks and she was looking into what she believed was the real man.
****************************************
Draco was tired. Tired of politicking, tired of intrigue and playing games, and tired of running from his past and himself. The unexpected addition of Ginny, a wildcard, had only complicated the game further, with her Vow, with her sudden impulsive desire for a transformation, and with the wholly unexpected lust she inspired in him. Sweet Lady, a Weasley! He could hardly have picked a more inappropriate mate - and yet, with her impulsive Vow she had become part of the game, whether she liked it or not. The Wind had brought her declaration to him for a reason - as soon as he'd heard it, he'd felt the chill breath of inevitability trickle down his back.
And then he'd set out to gather all the information on her that he possibly could, so that her entry would work for him, rather than against him. Take control of the wildcard, control as many of the variables as possible, and he might just come out of this alive, and even more powerful than before. Unfortunately for him, she was proving rather difficult to control: it seemed now he would have to try that most unreliable of methods - cooperation. Preferably willing, but he would take what he could get. And to achieve that, he would need to explain himself.
"Do you remember my fifth year at Hogwarts and your fourth, when the Hogwarts Express was attacked by Death Eaters?"
She nodded, listening intently, now that she was finally getting answers. "I remember. Professor Malfoy - that is, your uncle - stopped them."
"Yes, he did - and in the doing, he showed his true allegiances. He publicly threw his support behind Dumbledore and the Order, and it sent Voldemort into a frenzy."
"Why?" she asked, intrigued. She hadn't seen the implications of the act at the time, or at any time since - had taken Luc Malfoy's protection of them as something inevitable. She hadn't thought that there might have been unforeseen consequences.
"Because he was a Malfoy - and he and my father were always very close, always together in everything. The Dark Lord suspected that my father, too, had turned against him, and he resolved to teach us, the Malfoy, all a lesson."
'Too?' thought Ginny. But she said nothing.
"There was more to it, of course, but the main point is that he brought my father to the edge of our land, to the Veil which separates Malfoy land from the Outside world, and he thought that if he tortured my father to death, then the Veil would come down and he could destroy the Land and the people who lived on it - everything the Malfoy hold sacred."
Draco blinked, momentarily lost in his memories, remembering the awful knowledge of his father's plight, of his helplessness as he watched his torture. "But the Veil was already failing," he continued, voice curiously, carefully neutral, "the balance between Lord and Land and Laymen - what we call the Covenant, which holds everything together - was already upset, because of my father's Dark Mark, which was poisoning everything he was part of. The only way to restore the balance was to instate a new, untouched Lord, and for that to happen, my father had to die."
She made a low, sympathetic sound. "I'm so sorry. So you watched him die?"
He laughed suddenly, a wild, harsh, bitter sound. "No, Ginevra, I killed him myself."
She opened her mouth – to exclaim, to commiserate – but there did not seem to be anything to say.
His face was utterly frozen, his eyes were like hammered, bitterly cold silver, and his voice was dangerously, lethally soft. "I ordered the killing of every single Death Eater who took part in that meeting. Every single one. They all died, marked with the Malfoy mark, to show that I judged them, found them guilty, and ordered their execution..." He felt, dimly, through the memories, through the bitterness and hatred, the touch of her hand as it gripped his, her strength acting as an anchor to keep him in the present, in the now. "But they weren't responsible for his death - I was." he tossed his head suddenly, an oddly incongruous gesture for such a self-controlled man, and changed the subject. "I offered them an amnesty - all the families of the dead Death Eaters - and they took it, hoping to destroy us during the war. But I, and the Malfoy survived. It's been twelve years since then, now - and no amnesty lasts forever, only until the defeated feel strong enough to take their chances once more."
"So they're coming after you."
"Yes, with everything they have, including the media and public opinion. All they needed was a cause, a figurehead." He gestured to the paper, his eyes neutral as he watched her.
She followed his gesture, uncomprehending - and then her eyes widened in amazement. "Gerald? You're not serious?"
"Oh, yes. Gerald, the epitome of the middle class, with his public campaign against aristocratic privilege; Gerald, who has been so ignominiously dismissed because of me..." he paused and looked her in the eye, "whose fiancée I have stolen and seduced..."
She spluttered and choked on her coffee. "What?" She shook her finger at him. "Oh, no. Oh, no, no, no - you are not dragging me into this."
He gently reached out and pulled her hand back to the table. "But you are already involved. You swore Blood Vow. You broke up with Gerald. You made yourself part of this."
"No, you dragged me into this. You came into my shop and suggested we do something shocking, and instead you embroiled me in a...a damned blood feud!"
"You could have said no," he pointed out reasonably.
"You shouldn't have asked me!"
He sighed. "Like it or not, Ginevra, you are part of this. You were Gerald's fiancée. You have now been seen on my arm, only hours after Gerald's dismissal. The whole world knows you swore Blood Vow preferring me over Gerald." He held tightly onto her hand. "You are Arthur Weasley's daughter..."
She went white and tried to pull away, but he held her wrist flat to the table. "Listen to me," he said softly, intensely. "It is too late to go back. A confrontation is coming - the board is already assembling, the players taking their places. And you have become my Queen - you cannot walk away and hope to survive. We must play this to the end."
"I would have felt better about that speech if I didn't think that you engineered this whole thing," she said bitterly, her eyes wounded and cold. "You could have arranged this differently, Malfoy - but you deliberately created this whole scenario, shaping it to your whim..."
"Yes," he said very, very softly. "Yes I did. Yes, I could probably have left you out of this - even with the Vow - but I didn't. I am the Lord of High Clan Malfoy, and I will not stand meekly by and let my enemies destroy me. If I must play this Game, then I will play it my way."
Her dark eyes were almost stricken, threatening tears, and for a moment he felt as if he had destroyed something precious. But, as he had said, he was the Lord of High Clan Malfoy. And he would do whatever he could to ensure the survival and continued well-being of his Clan. No matter the price.
***************************************
A/N: For all those who would like to know more about Lucius’ death and the events of twelve years ago, I would recommend that you read my story “The Greater Good, or the Lesser Evil.” (on ff.net) It will give you a bit more backstory.
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