The temptation
To take the precious things we have apart
To see how they work
Must be resisted for they never fit together again
If this is rain let it fall on me and drown me
If these are tears let them fall
- Must I Paint You A Picture, Billy Bragg
~*~
Ginny stared at the place where Draco had disappeared for a long time before turning back to the door. Her family had retreated back into the flat, but Harry was standing at the door, watching her and looking furious.
"What was that?" he demanded.
"Don’t." Ginny said curtly, hugging her arms to her chest. "Just...don’t, Harry. Don’t start. I really don’t want have this conversation right now." She pushed past him and walked back into the kitchen to sink back into the chair she’d left.
Harry followed. "You don’t know anything about why he’s come back, Ginny. He’s not a nice person!"
"Harry, it has been twelve years since you last saw Draco. He is not 17 anymore and neither are you. I hardly think you’re in any position to judge what sort of person he is now."
"I’m not in a position to judge?" Harry repeated. "I’m not the one who’s snogging him in hallways!"
Ginny glared at him coldly. "My relationship with Draco is not up for discussion. I don’t care if you don’t like it Harry, I am not talking about it now. "
"I think right now is a perfect time to talk about it," Harry snapped back.
"In case you haven’t noticed, Harry, two of our children are missing! I am not going to entertain your desire to play overprotective husband right now, I have more than enough to worry about!"
"Yes, and maybe if you’d been paying attention, there would be nothing to worry about," Harry said acidly.
Ginny went white. She stood up so suddenly her chair fell over backwards, and slammed her hands down on the table. "Don’t you dare try to insinuate this is somehow my fault!" she shouted. "You weren’t there! Just like you haven’t been there for the entire ten years of our marriage! There was always something you had to do, the wonderful Harry Potter who can do no wrong, out saving the world or winning the Quidditch Cup or setting Seeker records, or rescuing your beloved Cannons from the basement of their stupid league with your fantastic coaching! And now you’re going to sit there and yell at me for having the gall to want to spend time with someone who doesn’t happen to be you? Who’s actually interested in what I do all day, even if it’s just sitting around playing with the same kids you don’t have 2 words for most of the time? Who adores my children, and who adores me? To hell with you, Harry Potter! In case you’ve failed to notice, my babies would be here right now if it weren’t for you! Those bastards didn’t kidnap them because they were Ginny Weasley’s children, did they?"
A horrified silence fell over the kitchen as Harry and Ginny glared at each other. Harry opened his mouth and closed it again, then spun on his heel and stalked up the hall. No one else moved an inch as he strode away. The sound of a door slamming in the hall was very loud in the silent kitchen. Ginny's shoulder's slumped forward and she bent her head, her hair falling around her face. Ron made a movement toward the hall, but Hermione caught his arm and shook her head at him.
"Don't, Ron," Ginny said, her voice rusty. "Don’t." She took a deep breath and raised her head, one hand pressed against her mouth, then walked quietly out of the kitchen after Harry.
He was in Jamie’s room, sitting on the edge of the bed with his hands twisted in the sheets, staring at the floor with a mixture of anger and pain written on his face. She crossed to him and pulled a small stool over so she could sit in front of him. "Harry - "
"Is that what you think?" Harry asked harshly, not taking his eyes off the floor. "That I’m a bad father? That this is all my fault? That I wanted this to happen?"
Ginny shook her head, trying to gather her thoughts. "No...no, Harry, I...I think that there are things that both of us would have done differently if we had the chance. You’re not a bad father, but it’s not a priority for you, is it? I know you love them, and that you want the world for them, but you’ve never made them the centre of your life. Or me either."
Harry’s jaw clenched, but he didn’t speak.
"And I knew that, Harry. I knew when we got married what I was getting into. So many people have claims on parts of you, and there are people who will always be closer to you than I am, like Ron and Hermione, or Sirius. And when I was 18, it seemed like enough, to have just a corner of your heart." Ginny stopped for a moment and bit her lip, looking down at her hands. "I knew then that being married to The Boy Who Lived would put me and later the kids on some sort of pedestal, make us...targets for all the people who want to have a claim on you, for every greedy bastard who comes along wanting an autograph or an ‘I met Harry Potter’ moment. But that’s not your fault. It’s just a part of who you are. And you’re a part of who I am, and you always will be." She raised her head again and stared at him, at the curve of his neck, the black hair curling slightly around the collar of his robes, willing him to understand, willing him to just look at her. "Please, Harry. I shouldn’t have said that, it wasn’t fair to you, and I’m sorry. This is no more your fault for being who you are than it is mine for being careless with the children. I don't think it would have mattered to those...those bastards if I had Jamie and Sarah tied to me, they'd have tried to take them anyway. And I should have been watching, or paying more attention, or - "
"Gin, no..." Harry finally raised his head to look at her, emerald eyes bright with emotion. His expression changed as he did so, the anger draining out of it and leaving only pain. "It’s not your fault, you couldn’t have known." He looked at her for a long moment, then shook his head. "I know that I haven’t been the kind of husband you should have had, or the kind of dad the kids deserve. I can’t blame you for stopping loving me." He sighed heavily and tilted his head back. "I deserved that."
"Harry, I do love you. I have loved you since I was 10 years old, and I've never stopped. I probably never will. But it wasn't enough, no matter how hard I tried to make it be enough. For either of us. And that’s not your fault either, or mine. No one can say we didn't try to make things work...all we did was try." Ginny stopped and just looked at him for a moment, the black head bent back toward the ceiling, clear skin stretched over the planes of a face she knew better than her own. He looked so young - in all the years since Hogwarts, he’d barely changed at all. She reached out one hand gently and touched his fingers. "And I am so sorry, for everything that's happened."
His hand turned in hers and clutched at her fingers, and he lowered his eyes to hers. Ginny thought her heart would break at the look in his eyes. "I'm sorry too. For everything. I never wanted to put you through this, or the kids...God!" Harry's voice broke suddenly, and his face crumpled. Ginny slid from the stool to the bed to hold him in her arms. Harry wrapped his arms almost painfully tight around her waist as he buried his head in her shoulder, chest heaving. "I’m so sorry," he choked.
"I know, love, I know," she whispered, rubbing his back softly. The tears didn’t last long - Harry hated showing emotion in front of anyone. He calmed after a few minutes and they sat in comfortable silence, her arms wrapped around his shoulders, his head on her shoulder. Ginny absently smoothed his hair, faintly amused at the way they seemed to automatically adjust to each other, as if the years they had spent sharing a home and a bed had lent them special knowledge of how best to be comfortable with each other. It was something that she didn't have with Draco yet; that ability to fit themselves to each other almost unconsciously.
Ginny ran her fingers through Harry's unruly black locks and smiled. She remembered the very first time they’d done this, curled up in a chair in the living room of the Burrow, breathless and exhilarated with the mere presence of each other. They had sat for hours that day, the house miraculously empty of people, wrapped around each other, kissing sometimes, but mostly just caught up in the sheer pleasure of being able to touch. She’d played endlessly with his hair, thrilled to be able to give in to the urges she’d had for years, to smooth down the cowlick at the back, to tidy the messy bits with her fingers. Sarah's hair was the same untamable mass... Ginny’s hand stilled, and she bit her lip, fighting tears. She was sick of crying. She wasn't going to do it anymore. She wouldn’t haveto anymore.
After a long silence, Harry shifted his head so that it lay in the hollow of her neck. "Why didn’t you tell me?"
"Hmmm?"
"Why didn’t you tell me you were seeing him?" Harry asked again. "And why Malfoy, of all people? I mean, I know we're split up, but why’d you have to pick him?"
"I meant to tell you, honestly, but I could never find the right time, or the right way to put it." Ginny shifted her weight slightly. "And then you ran into him at the flat, and it was just... I couldn’t figure out a way to tell you without you being furious, so I put it off again and again..." she let her breath out in a short sigh. "I left it too late, obviously."
"You were afraid I’d be angry?" Harry snorted softly and straightened up, pulling away so that he could look at her. "And finding out by having him appear in your living room like he owned the place made it better."
"I am sorry about that," Ginny said quietly. "That wasn’t fair. And as for why...well. I don’t know, really. It just sort of happened."
"What, you just met him and thought ‘I’ll sleep with Draco Malfoy, just for a lark’?"
Ginny made a face at him. "No, I did not. It was months before we even went on a real date, thank you very much. I ran into him at the supermarket, and we went for coffee, and he was nice to the children, so I gave him my number. And like I said, it was two months before we even went on our first real date."
"But why?" Harry shook his head in bewilderment. "He’s...he’s Malfoy. He’s horrible."
"He’s not horrible. He really has changed," Ginny said. Harry made a muffled noise. "I mean it. I know he might seem the same to you, but he honestly has. Do you think Neville would have been working with him all this time if he hadn’t?"
"I wondered about that," Harry said. "Considering how evil Draco was to Neville at Hogwarts, I was surprised he’d be willing to put up with him."
"Neville puts up with him because Draco is a different person," Ginny said. "He’s not the same now as he was when we all went to Hogwarts."
"He doesn’t seem that different to me," Harry said derisively.
"Well he wouldn’t, he doesn’t like you. Some things haven’t changed. But to everyone else, he’s a lot nicer, and he’s not as mean as he used to be. He spent all this time living as a Muggle...he stopped doing magic, stopped having any sort of contact with the wizarding world. It changed him for the better. He even admits it." She stopped and glanced at Harry’s incredulous expression with a small smile. "And he’s much better looking."
Harry glared at her and sputtered. "That’s not...he’s not...he isn’t that good looking."
Ginny’s smile got a little wider. "Oh no? That’s not what Hermione says."
"Hermione?" Harry looked horribly betrayed.
"Or any of the girls." Ginny stopped again and smiled sweetly at him. "Or Neville."
Harry choked and then laughed. "I wonder what he’d say to that if he knew."
"He does know, and he doesn’t say anything, actually," Ginny shot back. "Neville would die of embarrassment, so Draco doesn’t bring it up."
Harry raised his eyebrows skeptically. "That seems awfully civil."
Ginny made an exasperated noise. "Which is exactly what I mean when I said he’s changed. He is civil, usually. Even to you. Do you really think he’d offer to just give you 5 million galleons if he were still the person you think he is?"
"I don’t know how you can be so sure," he said dubiously. "I mean, he may not have been a Death Eater, but that doesn’t excuse the fact that he was a spoilt brat and tried to get us in trouble all the time. Or that he tried to get Hagrid sacked, or me and Ron expelled, or even the fact that his father nearly got you killed when you were eleven."
Ginny gritted her teeth. "I’m just saying that you can’t judge him based on what happened in the past. It’s not fair, because he’s not that person anymore. You might at least make an effort to get over things that happened twelve years ago."
Harry leaned back and studied her carefully, a frown creasing his features. Ginny met the disapproval in his gaze steadily. Finally he shook his head. "I just don’t like it."
Ginny bit her lip, but didn’t lower her eyes. "Harry, you don’t have to."
He glanced away quickly, but not before she saw him flinch. "I know," he said softly.
Ginny closed her eyes briefly, fighting against the ache in her chest. She hadn’t believed Sirius, or Draco, for that matter, when they had told her he still loved her. She had always believed - always - that she cared more for Harry than he for her. Now that was reversed, and her regret was a palpable thing. "Harry, I’m sorry."
He inhaled deeply and shut his eyes. "I am too," he said, so quietly she almost couldn’t hear the words. "Oh, Ginny. I am too."
~*~
The heat settled around him like a weight the moment Neville apparated into the tiny kitchen, following Draco’s locator charm. He’d come from a small apparition platform near Saskatoon - it wasn’t really safe to apparate too far, so the International Wizarding Union, set up not long after the end of the War, had established such platforms across most of North America and across the Atlantic, to provide points to aim for when traveling long distances. Neville had apparated in stages, hopping from England to Iceland to Sault Ste Marie to Saskatoon and then to Draco's charm in Calgary. He was subconsciously expecting it to be cold despite the fact that it was summer, so the sweltering late-afternoon heat was something of a shock.
Neville had arrived in a small kitchen, with a set of white cupboards, violently yellow walls and white gingham curtains on the window above the table. There was a sink and counter along the wall with a doorway to the rest of the house, from what Neville could see, and a fridge and stove side-by-side on the wall he was facing. A table was set against the free wall, under the window, and a closet along the last wall, beside two stairs down to a landing and an open door, presumably to the outside; Neville was crammed into the space between the table and the sink. It was a cramped space, made even smaller by a giant of a man standing in front of the open refrigerator, a beer bottle in one hand, staring at Neville open-mouthed.
The man had coal black hair in two long braids hanging over his shoulders, a nose that would have done an eagle proud, and was dressed in faded blue jean shorts and a short-sleeved checkered shirt that was hanging open at the front, exposing an impressive expanse of smooth copper skin. He probably topped Ron, the tallest man Neville knew, by at least an inch or two, and he wasn’t so much muscular as solid, dwarfing everything around him with his sheer presence. Neville gulped and opened his mouth, but the man recovered first.
"You must be Neville," he said, deep voice remarkably steady for someone who had just watched someone else appear in his kitchen out of thin air. "Hi." He extended a large hand over the refrigerator door, which Neville took, somewhat shakily.
"Yes...um. I think I may have the wrong house?" Neville said questioningly. But he couldn’t have; that was Draco’s cell phone sitting on the table, he was sure. He eyed the man nervously. So much for not letting the Muggles know about wizardry.
"Nope, you got the right place. I’m John, I’m Dray’s roommate. He told me you were coming, I just wasn’t expecting you to be all Star Trek-like, popping in out of nowhere. That was actually..." he stopped to consider, "pretty damn cool. Wanna beer?"
"Er..."
"Or not, since you’re technically on duty, right? We’ve got water, Coke, Sprite, lemonade...I’d offer tea, but it’s really too damn hot. No coffee, I’m afraid, Dray doesn’t drink it and I hate instant." He stepped around the refrigerator door and shut it, looking inquiringly at Neville, who shook his head.
"Actually, about Malfoy - " Neville began hesitantly.
"Oh, he's not here." John shrugged. "He’ll be home pretty soon, I think. He was at the cop shop all night, and all of this morning too. C’mon outside while we wait...this place is a sauna. Still hot outside, but at least there’s a breeze."
John sauntered down the two steps and out the back door. Neville watched him go in bemusement, then shrugged mentally and followed. John seemed to be taking his precense with remarkable aplomb, and all things considered, it was better than the alternative.
Neville stepped out onto a small wooden deck screened by a honeysuckle hedge on one side and a huge poplar tree on the other. A plastic deck table and covered chairs were set in the shade, a large green umbrella casting more shade over the chairs. The yard was large and extremely well kept, with neat picket fences separating it from the neigbouring yards and the alley, and flowers in pots on the two deck steps down to the grass. There was a single car garage at the bottom of the yard, with white plastic siding and dark-blue window trim that matched the house, and what looked like a vegetable garden beside it.
John waved Neville into a chair and sat down himself, stretching out long legs and resting his beer bottle on his chest. He gazed at his new houseguest and smiled, black eyes sparkling. "You sure you don’t want anything to drink?"
Neville shook his head again. "No, thank you, I’m fine."
John shrugged. "Suit yourself. So you’re Dray’s partner? He’s told me a little about you, but not much."
"Yes, I am," Neville said cautiously. "We’ve been working together for over a year now on this case."
"Yeah...Draco’s been chasing that little punk for ages. If it’s the same guy, I hope you catch him."
"So do I," Neville admitted. "It’s been the most frustrating case I’ve ever had, waiting about for them to do something wrong. They’ve been surprisingly good at covering their tracks."
John shook his head. "Sneaky little bastards. I’m surprised that they’d have the nerve to actually kidnap someone...from what Draco’s told me about the one kid, he’s never been all that nervy, unless he had somebody backing him up and he was sure he could get away with it."
Neville sat up straight. "Really?"
John raised his eyebrows. "Yeah. When he was still here in Canada, he was involved in all sorts of petty crimes and stuff, but nothing too serious, and the kid never let anything happen that would point to him directly. From everything I’ve heard about him, he’d never do anything he wasn’t very sure he could get away with. I figure Draco would have told you that."
"He did, but not in so many words." Neville frowned thoughtfully. "Makes me wonder. There’s a lot of people in England who would dearly love to get back at Harry for any number of things, but are either afraid to try anything, or don’t want to dirty their hands."
"That’s typical," John said. "I tell ya, people in general make me shake my head. Scratch beneath the surface and we’re all basically bastards."
Neville smiled at that. "You don’t have a very high opinion of people."
"You wouldn’t either, if you were in my line of work. You’d be amazed at what people try and get away with."
"What do you do?"
"I’m a treaty lawyer for the Blackfoot Nation. Native rights, mostly," John said as Neville looked confused. "Land disputes, dealing with the government on all sorts of stuff, but it mostly boils down to land. I do a little legal advising on the side, but not that often...mostly because I get too irritated with people."
"Ah," Neville said. "That sounds interesting."
John laughed. "It’s pretty damn dull most of the time. Lots of reading, not much in the way of courtroom drama. Dray gets all the fun stuff. Chasing people, tracking people down, catching crooks, that sort of thing. I just read." John gave an exaggerated sigh. "It’s so boring."
"Why didn’t you become a police officer then?" Neville asked.
"’Cause I was young and naive and wanted to change the whole world, not just a part of it. Still do...I just didn’t know changing the world would be so unexciting. Of course," he said with a sly grin, "I’m smarter than your average policeman. I’d have been wasted as a cop."
There was an elaborate noise of disgust from the door to the house, and Neville jumped. John just grinned. "Oki ni-kso-ko-wa, ksik-kihk-ini," he said lightly to Draco, who scowled back.
"Hello," he said in reply, and nodded at Neville. "Longbottom." Draco pushed himself away from the doorframe and pulled an extra chair to the table from the edge of the deck, flopping into it. He was in uniform, wearing black pants with a broad yellow stripe up either leg, calf-high black leather boots and a light blue short-sleeved shirt with chevrons on both shoulders and Draco’s last name above the breast pocket, which was untucked and partially unbuttoned. He looked...edible. Neville felt his mouth go slightly dry, and he blinked, averting his eyes. Draco tossed his hat onto the table, stretched his legs out in front of him and sighed. Then he got up, unbuckled the utility belt from around his waist, tossed that onto the ground beside his chair and flopped back down again, groaning. "Just for the record, I really, really, really hate my boss. Have I mentioned that?"
"Not recently but then, you’ve been away," John replied mildly. "What’s he doing now?"
"I just got a 2 hour lecture on my hair," Draco said disgustedly. "I show up in uniform rather than plainclothes, and he decided to bitch about my hair. Because it’s not ‘regulation’." He pulled the elastic out of the hair in question and ran his hands through it, tilting his head back and closing his eyes. "Bastard."
"Sucks to be you," John said, amusement plain in his voice. "Maybe you should get a haircut."
"Drop dead," Draco said wearily, and John laughed. Draco looked at Neville. "When did you get here?"
"Just now, actually," Neville replied. "Someone from the Canadian Ministry is supposed to be meeting me here shortly to discuss what we’re going to do. Back-up, that sort of thing. What have you found out?"
Draco straightened up a bit. "Where that park in the picture is, for starters. I was right, it is here in town. It’s Edworthy Park, which won’t mean anything to you," he said to Neville’s blank look, "but I do know where it is. The RCMP will send a few units for backup, and I’ve talked to the city police, who’ve agreed to help as well. They’re going to close off the park once our little kidnappers get there, and prevent them from getting away if anything goes wrong."
Neville nodded. "I think the Canadian Ministry will provide more manpower, or at least I hope they will. Once their representatives get here, we can discuss it in more detail, but ideally, they’ll send a couple Aurors to assist us."
"Good." Draco stood up and yanked his shirt off over his head. "Damn, it’s hot. I’m going to change, I’ll be right back. Sure you don’t want anything, Longbottom?"
Neville nodded faintly, thinking very hard about flobberworms. "I’m fine," he said. At least his voice didn’t crack. Draco shrugged and headed for the door, shirt dangling loosely in one hand. Neville couldn’t quite resist looking over his shoulder at the other man, and his eyes widened in surprise as he glanced at Draco’s back. Draco had a tattoo. What looked like a small stylized bird on his back, between his shoulder blades, done in black. Neville took several deep breaths and turned back around quickly, hoping his blush could be passed off as too much sun. He looked up slowly to find John watching him with a mixture of amusement and sympathy.
"I didn’t know he had a tattoo," Neville said weakly.
"He tends to forget," John replied softly, answering Neville’s reaction rather than his words. "He doesn’t think of himself as all that attractive."
Neville’s eyes widened at the sheer absurdity of that. "He doesn’t?"
"Nope. I gather he wasn’t the best looking kid in the world...it seems to have stuck with him." John shrugged.
"Well, he wasn’t, but..." Neville trailed off and shook his head. "I didn’t know he had a tattoo," he repeated.
"We both do," John said, and stood up suddenly, shrugging out of his own shirt and turning his back to Neville. His was what looked like a large, stylized cow with horns in the same place as Draco’s, centered between his shoulder blades.
Neville stared at the broad expanse of John’s back and couldn’t decide if he were cursed or very, very lucky. He cast about for something suitably neutral to say. "It’s very well done," he said finally. "Who designed them?"
John shrugged his shirt back on and sat back down. "I did, actually. Mine’s a buffalo, his is a thunderbird."
"A what?"
"Thunderbird. They’re the sacred birds of the Pikuni, the Peigan Indians. Some people say that what we call a thunderbird is actually a bald eagle. A ksik-kihk-ini, in Blackfoot." John went pokerfaced for a second, his face settling into strong, fierce lines. "Strong totem. Heap big medicine."
Neville raised his eyebrows slowly. "Um."
"That’s my best Hollywood Indian impression." John grinned and relaxed. "I’m just kidding."
"Kidding about what?" Draco reappeared, wearing a black t-shirt and black slacks that, aside from being practical for wandering about in the dark, set off his pale skin and hair wonderfully. Neville gulped.
John looked him up and down. "You are going to die of heat exhaustion in about two minutes in that outfit."
"I am not. Kidding about what?" Draco demanded. He was carrying a pitcher of what looked like iced tea, and two glasses. He handed one to Neville, poured himself a glass, then filled Neville’s while Neville watched in bemusement.
"Er, thanks," he said, and Draco nodded at him before turning back to John.
"What were you kidding about?"
A broad smile spread across John’s face. "Nothing," he said with a hint of what could only be described as glee. Draco glared at him, clearly debating whether or not to rise to the bait. John grinned back. "You’re pouting."
"I am not!" Draco exclaimed sulkily. "Never mind, I don’t want to know."
John smiled cheekily. "I know and you don’t, and I’m not going to tell!" he said in a singsong. Neville held his breath, waiting for Draco to lose his temper; Neville knew from experience that he didn’t take well to teasing.
The explosion Neville braced himself for didn’t come. Draco glared, slouched further in his chair and pretended he hadn’t heard. "What time are the Ministry people supposed to get here?" he asked Neville, haughtily ignoring John, who was snickering under his breath.
Neville glanced at his watch. "Soon, I think. They said that they’d be here around 5, so they should be a few minutes." Draco nodded and sipped at his iced tea, still pretending John wasn’t there. John grinned and slouched down in his own chair, pushing his feet into Draco’s legs. Draco yanked his legs away and glowered at the other man.
"Anne is pissed at you, by the way," John drawled, still grinning.
"What for?"
"You forgot to call her for Mother’s Day. You forgot to call Ed last weekend for Father's Day, for that matter, and I’m guessing she’s not too pleased about that either." John tilted his head back and closed his eyes, settling into his chair. "She says you’re ungrateful."
"I’m not ungrateful, I just forgot," Draco said defensively. "I’ve been busy."
"Tell her that, man. I sent her a card."
Draco glowered and folded his arms over his chest. "Not my fault I forgot. You might have reminded me."
"It’s not my job to remind you. Do I look like your secretary?"
Neville listened to them bicker with half an ear, watching Draco. He looked different, for some reason, although that was patently ridiculous, since he couldn’t have changed much since Neville had seen him the day before. Neville furrowed his brow, trying to put his finger on what it was. It finally dawned on him; Draco was...relaxed. There was a slight tension in him, the same kind that Neville shared - there was no such thing, really, as an off-duty cop. But aside from that, Draco seemed more at ease than Neville had ever seen him. He looked comfortable, as though he was where he belonged. Neville considered that thoughtfully.
The doorbell rang from inside the house, startling them all. "That’ll be the Ministry," Draco said as he stood up. "I’ll go let them in."
He disappeared inside the house, and returned a few moments later with the two Canadian wizards in tow. The Canadian wizards, both men, scanned the area nervously as they followed Draco onto the deck, eyes flicking about and hands hovering close to their pockets. They were both dressed in Muggle clothing - light pants and polo shirts - and managed to look as uncomfortable about it as Neville felt most of the time. The first wizard was older, with thinning light brown hair and plain, weather-beaten features. The other seemed impossibly young, 20 at the most, fresh-faced and eager. He stared around the yard with wide, astonished eyes. Pure-blood, Neville thought to himself, a sinking feeling in his stomach. Probably never been in a real Muggle house before. Neville stood and extended his hand to the older one. "I’m Neville Longbottom, with the British Ministry of Magic."
"Bruce Purvis, Canadian Department of Magical Inquiry. This is my partner, Wayne Busby," he replied, shaking Neville’s hand firmly. His voice was harsh and loud, as though he was used to shouting a lot. "Pleasure to meet you."
Neville nodded politely. "Thank you for coming. I spoke to Jim Lowe in your department earlier, but I’m not sure if he’s told you what’s gone on."
Purvis shook his head sharply, looking forbidding. "We’ve had a minor briefing."
Neville nodded and outlined the details of what they knew about the kidnappers while Purvis listened and nodded and interrupted with questions from time to time. The younger wizard, Busby, didn’t do much of anything except sit and nod and look keen. He kept casting nervous glances at John, who finally excused himself politely and vanished into the house. The boy watched John go with something like relief, and relaxed minutely. With John gone, though, it was Draco’s turn to be the object of nervous glances - Neville wondered how Busby had managed to make an Auror at all, if he were that edgy about Muggles.
After he had finished with the explanations, Neville looked at the two Canadian wizards expectantly. "We hope to have this go as smoothly as possible after we arrive at the park. I was thinking we might go and have a look at it beforehand, to sort out positions, test the obscurus charms, that sort of thing."
"I don’t think that will be necessary," Purvis said shortly, casting a sharp glare in Draco’s direction. "We know where it is."
Draco raised his chin haughtily. "It would probably be a good idea."
Purvis ignored him and looked pointedly at Neville. "What time should we meet?"
Neville blinked and cleared his throat. "Um, 11:30? Perhaps at the entrance to the park?"
"There’s a footbridge over the river that leads into the park itself," Draco suggested, his voice tinged with disgust. "Good a place as ever."
Purvis glanced at Draco like he would rather not take any sort of suggestion from him, but nodded grudgingly. "Then we’ll see you tonight."
Neville agreed politely and watched as the Canadian wizards showed themselves out. He dearly wanted to ask why they didn’t just apparate away, but it wasn’t really his place to inquire, and Purvis didn’t look like he’d answer anyway. He cocked an eyebrow at Draco, who was scowling at the door they’d left through. "So what do you think?"
Draco snorted. "I think they’re idiots. I doubt Purvis could see past the end of his nose, and if the younger one were any greener, you could plant him."
"Aside from that," Neville said with a small grin. "Not that I don’t agree with you."
"I don’t suppose we have a lot of choice." Draco let out a long breath and shook his head. "I doubt we could get away with shipping them back and demanding Aurors with experience."
"Not without calling the wrath of their whole department on our heads," Neville replied with a sigh. "Maybe we can find somewhere out of the way to stash the younger one."
"Like under a rock somewhere?" Draco suggested.
Neville laughed ruefully. "I know what you mean. I knew they were insular, but I didn’t realize that ‘insular’ meant ‘intolerant of anything non-magical’."
"Well, maybe we can shunt them aside without making it look like that’s what we’re doing," Draco said. "I’d just as soon have them more or less out of the way once things start happening. As a very wise man once said, I’ve got a bad feeling about this."
~*~
Four hours later, Neville apparated back into Draco’s tiny kitchen with Ginny and Harry. The house was quiet and dark, the sun low in the west through the kitchen window and the yard outside cloaked in shadows. Ginny moved out of the corner when she arrived, leaving room for Harry, looking around the kitchen with great interest. John came in from the hallway as Harry arrived. "Hi there," he said, looking at Harry and Ginny with intense curiosity.
"Hello," Neville replied. "John, I don’t think you’ve met Ginny and Harry Potter. Harry, Ginny, this is John...um."
"Sitting Buffalo," John supplied, holding his hand out to Harry. He was eyeing Harry carefully, his face neutrally blank. Neville wondered what Draco had told him. "Hi."
Harry took the hand offered to him, sizing John up as he did so. "Hello," he said stiffly, standing up a bit straighter. It didn’t really make a difference; John was a big man, tall and solid, and Harry wasn’t. Perhaps John didn’t mean to be intimidating, but Neville had a hunch that John knew exactly how uncomfortable it made Harry to have John looming above him and shrinking the kitchen just by standing there, and didn’t care.
John nodded and turned to Ginny with a smile. "And you’re Ginny," he said, his voice warming noticeably. Ginny flushed and nodded, and John reached out and clasped her hand in both of his gently. "It’s nice to meet you."
"Draco’s told me a bit about you," Ginny replied, smiling weakly.
John chuckled. "It’s all lies. Don’t believe a word of it." Ginny’s smile widened a bit, and John turned back to the other men. "Dray’s just stepped out, but he’ll be right back. Head on into the living room and make yourselves at home. Can I get anyone anything?"
Neville and Harry both shook their heads, and Neville led the way to the small living room. It was a sparsely decorated room, with a low leather couch and a battered brown recliner as the main pieces of furniture. A glass-and-steel coffee table sat in front of the couch, with a subtly patterned area rug, done in shades of brown and cream on the hardwood floor in front of it. A large picture window, hung with cream Venetian blinds took up most of one wall, and the far wall was dominated by two huge bookcases that flanked a small fireplace.
Harry did a quick circuit of the room, eying the print above the couch - a stark black and white photograph of grain elevators framed against thunderclouds - and skimming over the book titles in the bookcases, before settling into the recliner and watching the others broodingly. He looked rather nervous to Neville, as though he really did not want to be here. Neville tried a reassuring smile, but Harry either didn’t notice, or didn’t want to be reassured.
Ginny settled at one end of the couch, drawing her legs up underneath her and hugging her arms to her chest, her eyes wandering over the furniture, the bookcases and table, looking anywhere but at the two men. She was tightly wound, calmer than she had been earlier, but still worried. Neville had the impression that something had happened between her and Harry after he and Draco left, but he wasn’t sure what. The atmosphere between them had altered in a way Neville couldn’t quite decipher.
The back door opened, and Neville could hear John’s rumbling voice coming from the kitchen, and Draco saying something in response. Moments later, Draco appeared around the corner, nodding curtly at Harry and Neville. "Longbottom, Potter." He smiled at Ginny, who smiled tremulously back. "Did you just get here?"
Neville nodded. "About 5 minutes ago."
"Sorry I wasn’t here. I stopped by the station to pick up a few things." Draco lifted what he was holding, a bundle of what looked like black coats of some kind. He tossed one at Neville, who nearly dropped it. It turned out to be some sort of black vest, made of a weighty but flexible material. "Those are to put on under your jackets before we go."
"What is it?" Harry asked, holding up the one Draco dropped in his lap.
"Bulletproof vest. No point in taking any chances," he said. Harry looked taken aback. "We know that the one of them, at least, is a Muggle and it’s likely that he’ll have a gun, so better safe than sorry. It'll still hurt like hell if you do get shot, but it's better than being totally unprotected." Draco glanced at Neville. "I could only get three, so your little Ministry friends are on their own. If there’s shooting, tell them to duck."
Neville snorted. "I’m sure they’ll manage."
"One of them is a Muggle?" Harry said in astonishment. "I thought they were wizards."
"One of them is," Neville said. "The other is a Muggle. Their names are Chris Nesbitt and Brad Straker - Nesbitt is the wizard, and from everything we’ve been able to gather, an average one. They’ve done a good job of covering their tracks, but they haven’t really done anything to imply that he’s particularly powerful, magically speaking. The basic plan for tonight is not to do anything fancy. We’ll wait until they hand over the children and you’re safely away, then grab them." He glanced over at Draco, who nodded and continued.
"There’s only two real ways into or out of the park. There’s a footbridge over the river to the north, and train tracks on the south side, separated from the main park by a chain link fence, and both are easily closed off. Once we get into position and the kidnappers arrive, the city police and the local RCMP will seal off the park from all sides - the bike paths, the road into the parking lot for the park from the residential area on the hill above it, and the parking lot on the other side of the river." Draco smiled faintly. "Even if they make it out of the park, they won’t get far."
"Then we get the children, arrest the kidnappers, and that should be that," Neville finished. "If all goes well, it shouldn’t take more than an hour altogether. The Canadian Ministry has asked that we keep magic usage to an absolute minimum. They wanted to forbid anyone but their officers from carrying a wand, but we talked them out of it, so you can keep yours with you, Harry."
"I wasn’t about to give it up," Harry said stiffly. "Why wouldn’t they let me carry my wand?"
"Canadian rules about Muggle-wizard interaction are a lot stricter than they are in England," Neville replied. "They don’t like to have people with unlicensed wands running around."
"Unlicensed wands?" Harry asked incredulously. "They make you license your wand here? That’s ridiculous."
"They’re very strict about magic," Neville said. "They’re too spread out not to be. There’s probably half the wizarding population here as we have in England, and it’s harder to keep track of magic use with so few wizards in such a large area." Harry looked skeptical, and Neville shrugged. "At least, that’s the explanation they gave me."
Ginny excused herself quietly to use the washroom, and Harry slumped down in the recliner, one hand supporting his chin as he stared moodily at the window. Neville stretched his arms and paced around in a small circle in front of the couch in an attempt to burn off his nervousness. The closer the appointed time drew, the more nervous he seemed to get. Draco didn’t look nervous at all, but then, he seldom did.
The phone rang and Draco vanished into the kitchen, presumably to answer it, leaving Neville and Harry to their own devices. Neville glanced at Harry, who was still staring silently at the wall, and sighed. If Harry really wanted to talk about anything, Neville supposed he would just say something...in the meantime, there wasn’t much he could do. He shrugged mentally and turned to the bookcases. There were photographs on the shelves in front of the books, full of people Neville didn’t recognize, but even that small distraction was better than watching Harry brood.
~*~
Ginny had slipped quietly out of the house, and was sitting on the edge of the deck, her feet on the grass and her arms crossed, resting on her knees. The sun was fading rapidly from the sky, casting long shadows across the yard and spilling faint orange-gold light in stripes across the deck, setting fire to her hair. Draco closed the door quietly behind himself and sank down next to her. "Hi," he said softly.
She glanced at him and quirked a corner of her mouth up. "Hi."
"How are you doing?"
"I’m fine," she said slowly. "Tense. A little worried."
Draco slid his arm around her and rubbed her back slowly, feeling the tension in her. "It’s almost over. An hour or so, and we’ll have them back safely."
"I know," she whispered, leaning toward him so she could rest her head against his shoulder. He shifted slightly, settling her against his side. "I can’t help but worry. The people I care most about in the world are walking willfully into danger, and there’s nothing I can do but wait. It’s so frustrating" Ginny fidgeted for a second, then pulled away from him and stood up, walking a few steps out onto the grass. "This is driving me crazy. I want to do something, and there’s nothing I can do!" She growled and kicked at the ground with one foot.
Draco watched her, nodding. He could imagine how ineffectual she felt right now - he’d felt that way often enough himself over the last year. "I’d say you could come, but it
really is too dangerous. It’s bad enough that there’s going to be as many people as there are. Every extra body is just one more person who can make a mistake. I don’t want to risk it." He stood up and closed the small distance between them, resting one hand lightly on her shoulder. "I know this is hard for you."
She nodded and reached up to cover his hand with her own, sighing heavily. "It’s probably just as well," she said slowly. "Because if I were there, and they had done anything to my children, I would kill them both." She said it in a calm, matter-of-fact voice that left no doubt that she was absolutely sincere. "So it’s all right. I’m used to waiting, even if I don’t like it." Ginny sighed again and moved so that she could lean back against him. Draco wrapped his arms around her waist and rested his cheek against hers. They stood silently, watching the last of the sunlight fade from the yard. "You don’t like having Harry here, do you?" she finally said.
Draco smiled ruefully. "I’ll live."
"I don’t know if it will make you feel better, but he’s as unhappy to be here as you are to have him."
"I imagine he probably is." Draco paused. "Though I’d be a bit happier if he’d stop glaring at me all the time. I feel like I’m under a microscope."
He felt her chuckle under her breath. "He doesn’t trust you, I don’t think. We...talked a bit, after you left yesterday, and he’s accepted that you’re helping, but he’s still not quite reconciled to seeing you as a real person with a real life and friends and all."
The way she hesitated made Draco wonder what had actually happened. He suspected that Harry’s barely-hidden hostility had more to do with Harry’s feelings about her than about himself, but now wasn’t the time or place to bring it up. "I’ll live," he said again. "It could be worse, I suppose. I had visions of everyone I know just happening to descend upon the house tonight." Draco shook his head and chuckled. "Thank God Anne and Ed aren’t in town this week...I don’t think I could have stood it."
"I’d like to meet them one day," Ginny said quietly.
"You will," Draco replied. "I think you’d like them, and I’m positive they’d like you."
"You think so?" Ginny craned her head around to look at him. He smiled down at her.
"I know they would. Anne’s predisposed to like you, anyway. She’s been pestering me for years to ‘find a nice girl and settle down’," he raised his voice in squeaky imitation of Anne, which made Ginny giggle. "She’d all but given up on me after Laura died...she thinks you’re her best hope, so she’s bound to like you."
Ginny went still in his arms. "Laura?" she said questioningly.
"Laura was my fiancée. She died almost 10 years ago," Draco replied quietly.
Ginny was silent for a long moment. "You’ve never talked about her," she said finally.
Draco made a face. "I don’t like to, really. I...cared about her, and it’s not something I really like to tell people about." He stopped speaking, resting his head against hers and staring out at yard without really seeing it.
"What was she like?" Ginny asked softly.
Draco sighed heavily. "She was loud." He stopped and laughed softly. "If you asked just about anyone to describe her, that’d be the first thing they said. She was always talking, and she was just...loud. Outgoing, happy, very bouncy. She was a tiny little thing, but she had a ton of energy and she loved to party. That was how we met...John dragged me out to a house party at the place of someone he knew, and she was there. I wasn’t actually talking to anyone - it was maybe a year after I’d got to Canada, and I still wasn’t all that happy to be here, but she came over and introduced herself, spent the whole party with me and that was that. We dated for a year and a half, and then I asked her to marry me, and then..." He stopped and took a deep breath. "It was about a week after I asked her - she’d gone out with her girlfriends to the bar, and they were coming home in a cab, and the cab was hit by a car running a red light. Her best friend was killed instantly, but she was alive for almost a week. She was in a coma, but she never woke up."
He stopped abruptly, staring into the darkness. It still hurt to remember that week. Ginny turned in his arms and looked up at him, concern in her deep brown eyes. "I’m so sorry," she said softly. "You must have loved her very much."
"Yes." Draco cleared his throat and tightened his arms around her before he went on. "But it wasn’t - it wasn’t a sort of deathless passion, if you know what I mean. I cared about her, but I don’t know if it would have worked out in the long run." And he had never admitted that to anyone about Laura, not even to John. He looked down into Ginny’s face without really seeing her. "She wasn’t always the easiest person to be around, and she didn’t really get along with John, or with Anne. And Del hated her." He smiled faintly. "At the time I thought she was jealous, because Del’s not very outgoing, and Laura was the sort of person Del was predisposed to dislike - pretty, thin, blonde, and not very bright. But now I don’t know. I didn’t know Del as well then, but she’s got an uncanny ability to sense the good and bad in people. If she doesn’t like someone, it’s usually because there’s something about them that isn’t very nice. It might not be immediately obvious, but sooner or later she’s usually vindicated. And she hated Laura. So I don’t know."
"How does she know?" Ginny asked curiously. "It sounds almost like she might have some magical skill."
"No, it isn’t that...she’s got no magic to speak of. She says they’re just hunches, sort of vague feelings. And she’s been known to be wrong, of course." Draco flashed a grin at Ginny, the tension easing out of him. "She never used to like me at all, for instance, but she changed her mind."
Ginny snickered. "Oh, and I’m sure you were terribly charming when you first met her."
Draco did his best to look innocent. "I’ve always been charming!" he protested, which made Ginny laugh out loud. He grinned back, happy to see her looking a little more cheerful. She was so worried, and it pleased him to see that lift, if only for a little while.
There was a noise from the house, and they both glanced up as Neville poked his head out the door. "We should go," he said to Draco. "It’s getting close to time."
Draco nodded and turned back to Ginny as Neville retreated back into the house. He cupped her face in his hands, searching her face. "I won’t let anything happen to any of them," he said softly. "I promise...everything will be fine."
Ginny didn’t say anything, just flung her arms around him and held him tightly. He drew her into a hug and rested his head against hers, rubbing one hand along her back. She drew back and looked up at him, her face drawn. "Please be careful."
"I will." He cupped her face in his hands and leaned forward to kiss her gently. "I promise."
She returned the kiss almost desperately, winding her arms around his neck and holding on tightly. "Please be careful," she whispered against his mouth as they
pulled apart.
Draco nodded, grey eyes shining in the faint light, and kissed her lightly on the forehead. "I will."
~*~
Ginny followed Draco slowly into the house, arms wrapped around her chest, trying to ignore the worry gnawing at her stomach. John came around the corner from his room and followed them into the living room, where Neville and Harry were talking quietly with grim expressions. Harry’s lips thinned at the sight of Draco’s hand resting lightly at her waist, but mercifully he didn’t say anything.
She sank down on the couch and watched apprehensively as Draco slung his utility belt around his waist and buckled it, then shrugged one of the vests over his shoulders. Neville and Harry did the same, settling them into place and pulling light jackets over top. Neville was businesslike as he shifted his shoulders and patted his pockets to be sure his wand was in place. Harry wore the same expression he wore before Quidditch matches, intense and focussed, his own wand stuck in the pocket of his jacket. Draco appeared calm and unruffled as he checked his gun into its holster on his hip and adjusted the hang of his vest, as though arraying himself with a small arsenal of weapons and protective gear was perfectly normal - Ginny had no idea how he managed it. She caught herself nervously rubbing her hands together and made herself stop.
When they were ready to go, Ginny stood up and hugged Neville and Harry in turn. "Be careful," she said fiercely to Harry as she held him. "Don’t do anything silly."
"Hey! When do I ever do anything silly?" he protested, which made her laugh.
"There isn’t time to catalogue all the extremely foolish things you’ve done in the name of bravery," she shot back as Harry grinned impishly at her. "Just be careful. And you too," she said to Neville, who nodded and smiled reassuringly at her.
Draco looked at John. "If anything happens, I’ve told Mike to call and let you know." The other man nodded solemnly and leaned against the wall, and Draco turned to look at Ginny. "We’ll be back in an hour," he said softly, reaching out to cup her cheek in one hand. She leaned into his touch slightly, arms folded across her chest. He stroked his thumb along her cheekbone, tracing over her freckles lightly, then lowered his voice to a whisper for her alone. "I love you."
Ginny caught her breath and pressed her eyes closed, reaching up to touch the back of his hand with the tips of her fingers. Draco smiled down at her, then slid his hand away and glanced at Neville. "Let’s go."
~*~
Harry stood alone next to the lone picnic table, back straight and shoulders squared, stoically gazing straight ahead. The box full of Galleons was at his feet, a plain wooden crate, magically expanded to hold all the coins, and lightened with a quick spell so that they could move it. Draco glanced quickly around the clearing from his position crouched behind a group of bushes near the table. He couldn’t see anything beyond the pine trees lining the clearing moving in the breeze, which was a faint relief. He knew where Neville was hidden, behind a small stand of trees directly opposite Harry, a bit further up, but he couldn’t see him at all. The Canadian wizards had taken up positions closer to the parking lot, one behind another clump of bushes, and one hiding in plain sight, standing near the path wrapped in an invisibility cloak. All of them were armed with Obscurus charms, that hid their presence from magical detection, and Draco just hoped that they’d hold.
Now it was just a matter of waiting.
The wait wasn’t a long one - it was five minutes or so when two shadowed figures appeared on the path. They were both wearing black cloaks with the hoods up, and blended effortlessly into the shadows. Draco gave a silent sigh of relief at the sight of them; there was always the off chance that he and Neville had been wrong about who was behind the kidnapping, but here they were. Both started visibly at the sight of Harry waiting for them, clearly surprised to see him there. One of them looked quickly around the clearing, as the other stepped cautiously forward, into the faint light. Draco pressed the button on the small remote he was carrying to signaling the RCMP units waiting just outside the park entrances to move into position.
"I see you found it," said the one who’d stepped forward. He was taller, and seemed less edgy than his partner, who was darting quick looks into the trees, judging by the movement of his hood. From the tape they’d found back in March, Draco knew the taller one was Straker, the Muggle.
"It wasn’t too much trouble," Harry replied coolly. "What kept you?"
The kidnapper laughed faintly and turned to the shorter man, whispering quietly. He turned back to Harry. "Is that the money?"
"Yes," Harry replied, outwardly calm. Draco might not like Harry, but he had to admire the other man’s grace under pressure. "Now where are my children?"
"It’s all there?" There was a distinctly avaricious note in the man’s voice. Harry glared at him in disgust and wordlessly kicked the lid off the crate. The small mountain of coins gleamed in the faint light, and Straker appeared to nod. "Good." Harry watched with narrowed eyes as the shorter one disappeared with a small pop, apparating away.
There was a short, tense silence as they waited, then the other one - obviously Nesbitt, the wizard - appeared again, staggering slightly as he arrived with Sarah and Jamie. An old tennis shoe fell to the ground at his feet - portkey, Draco identified automatically. The children seemed unharmed but tired and scared. Jamie’s chin was set stubbornly, mirroring his father’s expression, although Jamie looked terrified under the bravado. Sarah was clinging to Jamie’s hand, her face white and her hair in an impossible black tangle around her face. She made a soft little noise when she saw Harry, and tried to run to him.
Nesbitt clamped a hand down on her shoulder, and Sarah whimpered. "Money first," he said, the first words he’d spoken since they’d arrived.
The look Harry gave the younger man should have vaporized him on the spot. He gave the crate a vicious shove toward Straker with his foot. "Take it, then, and let them go," he spat.
Straker started forward to pick the crate up, keeping his eyes on Harry while he did so. There was a loud rustle from behind the two kidnappers, and a grunt, the sound of branches snapping, and then a loud thump as Busby, the younger of the two Canadian wizards, ignominiously fell out of his hiding spot and landed sprawling on the grass in plain view.
There was a slight pause while everyone in the clearing froze, and Draco shut his eyes briefly in disgust and swore under his breath. Not even an Obscurus charm was going to hide that. Nesbitt, startled, let go of Sarah and Jamie, and spun around. Jamie, displaying remarkably quick thinking, grabbed his sister’s arm and darted toward Harry.
Harry leaped forward and scooped the two children up, one under each arm, then spun around and ran for the trees. Straker drew a gun from the waistband of his pants, his hood falling back as he did so, exposing cropped brown hair; he barely glanced at the source of the noise. Instead he raised his gun, pointed it straight at Harry’s back, and started to pull the trigger.
Draco didn’t even think, only reacted, moving before the boy had even raised his arm. He burst out of his own hiding place, and shouted, "Hey!" It distracted Straker, just as he’d intended, and Straker’s shot at Harry went wide. Harry made it to the shelter of the trees from which Neville was emerging, and he very sensibly ducked out of sight with the children. Draco yanked his attention back to Straker as he raised his gun again and fired. Draco felt the first impact, sharp against his ribs, and staggered back, the sound of the bullet hitting his kelvar vest loud in his ears. It was odd, he thought abstractedly, that he could hear each crack of the gun and then the thunk of the bullet impacting against the vest protecting his chest as two distinct, separate noises, once and then again. He winced at the sharp pain, knowing he’d have bruises afterward. With the third report of the gun came a savage, tearing pain in his right arm, which he did his level
best to ignore.
Ignoring it was hard, because it hurt, quite a lot. Draco decided not to think about it, instead switching his gun to his left hand and firing back at Straker, who had started to run for the footpath to the bridge across the river. He missed; his aim with his left was terrible, but someone - Neville, he thought - fired off a spell, bringing the young man to the ground. Draco switched his attention to the other one, raising his gun and leveling it at the retreating figure just in time to hear one of the Canadian wizards yell, Stupefy!" and watch Nesbitt drop like a rock. At least they’re not totally useless, he thought.
Draco lowered his gun and reached out a hand to prop himself against the edge of the picnic table. "Ow," he said softly, to no one in particular. His chest was starting to hurt alarmingly, battling the pain in his arm; it felt like someone was sitting on his chest. One of the shots must have cracked a rib. He forced himself away from the table, walking slowly toward where the two Canadian wizards had clustered around Straker’s body with Neville. They were arguing in low voices, Neville gesturing angrily at one of the other wizards.
As he got closer, it became clear that Neville was giving Purvis a piece of his mind. " - clumsy, half-cocked, foolish prat!" Purvis was clenching and unclenching his fists, jaw stubbornly set. It was very clear that he was not happy, but he didn’t have much room to argue, since the brush with disaster was largely his partner’s fault. Busby was standing beside Purvis, head down and shuffling his feet in the red dust of the path while Neville expounded upon his parentage, his intelligence and his probable future. Draco fetched up beside Neville, cradling his injured arm against his aching chest. He’d never actually seen Neville lose his temper before; it was educational, to say the least.
Neville glanced at him during a pause in his tirade, and the alarmed expression on his face would have been almost comical if Draco’s chest hadn’t hurt so much. "Malfoy, are you all right?"
Draco swayed slightly, and Neville leapt forward to grab him. "I’m...ok," he said, a bit surprised at how breathless he sounded. He sank to his knees, as slowly as he could, clutching at Neville’s arm so he wouldn’t simply fall over. Draco thought he heard Sarah crying somewhere behind him, and he could hear Neville’s voice distantly, but Draco couldn’t seem to gather enough breath to ask him to speak louder. It hurt. His whole chest felt like it was going to collapse under its own weight. He closed his eyes slowly, and then finally, softly, mercifully, the world went dark and slipped away.
~*~
To take the precious things we have apart
To see how they work
Must be resisted for they never fit together again
If this is rain let it fall on me and drown me
If these are tears let them fall
- Must I Paint You A Picture, Billy Bragg
~*~
Ginny stared at the place where Draco had disappeared for a long time before turning back to the door. Her family had retreated back into the flat, but Harry was standing at the door, watching her and looking furious.
"What was that?" he demanded.
"Don’t." Ginny said curtly, hugging her arms to her chest. "Just...don’t, Harry. Don’t start. I really don’t want have this conversation right now." She pushed past him and walked back into the kitchen to sink back into the chair she’d left.
Harry followed. "You don’t know anything about why he’s come back, Ginny. He’s not a nice person!"
"Harry, it has been twelve years since you last saw Draco. He is not 17 anymore and neither are you. I hardly think you’re in any position to judge what sort of person he is now."
"I’m not in a position to judge?" Harry repeated. "I’m not the one who’s snogging him in hallways!"
Ginny glared at him coldly. "My relationship with Draco is not up for discussion. I don’t care if you don’t like it Harry, I am not talking about it now. "
"I think right now is a perfect time to talk about it," Harry snapped back.
"In case you haven’t noticed, Harry, two of our children are missing! I am not going to entertain your desire to play overprotective husband right now, I have more than enough to worry about!"
"Yes, and maybe if you’d been paying attention, there would be nothing to worry about," Harry said acidly.
Ginny went white. She stood up so suddenly her chair fell over backwards, and slammed her hands down on the table. "Don’t you dare try to insinuate this is somehow my fault!" she shouted. "You weren’t there! Just like you haven’t been there for the entire ten years of our marriage! There was always something you had to do, the wonderful Harry Potter who can do no wrong, out saving the world or winning the Quidditch Cup or setting Seeker records, or rescuing your beloved Cannons from the basement of their stupid league with your fantastic coaching! And now you’re going to sit there and yell at me for having the gall to want to spend time with someone who doesn’t happen to be you? Who’s actually interested in what I do all day, even if it’s just sitting around playing with the same kids you don’t have 2 words for most of the time? Who adores my children, and who adores me? To hell with you, Harry Potter! In case you’ve failed to notice, my babies would be here right now if it weren’t for you! Those bastards didn’t kidnap them because they were Ginny Weasley’s children, did they?"
A horrified silence fell over the kitchen as Harry and Ginny glared at each other. Harry opened his mouth and closed it again, then spun on his heel and stalked up the hall. No one else moved an inch as he strode away. The sound of a door slamming in the hall was very loud in the silent kitchen. Ginny's shoulder's slumped forward and she bent her head, her hair falling around her face. Ron made a movement toward the hall, but Hermione caught his arm and shook her head at him.
"Don't, Ron," Ginny said, her voice rusty. "Don’t." She took a deep breath and raised her head, one hand pressed against her mouth, then walked quietly out of the kitchen after Harry.
He was in Jamie’s room, sitting on the edge of the bed with his hands twisted in the sheets, staring at the floor with a mixture of anger and pain written on his face. She crossed to him and pulled a small stool over so she could sit in front of him. "Harry - "
"Is that what you think?" Harry asked harshly, not taking his eyes off the floor. "That I’m a bad father? That this is all my fault? That I wanted this to happen?"
Ginny shook her head, trying to gather her thoughts. "No...no, Harry, I...I think that there are things that both of us would have done differently if we had the chance. You’re not a bad father, but it’s not a priority for you, is it? I know you love them, and that you want the world for them, but you’ve never made them the centre of your life. Or me either."
Harry’s jaw clenched, but he didn’t speak.
"And I knew that, Harry. I knew when we got married what I was getting into. So many people have claims on parts of you, and there are people who will always be closer to you than I am, like Ron and Hermione, or Sirius. And when I was 18, it seemed like enough, to have just a corner of your heart." Ginny stopped for a moment and bit her lip, looking down at her hands. "I knew then that being married to The Boy Who Lived would put me and later the kids on some sort of pedestal, make us...targets for all the people who want to have a claim on you, for every greedy bastard who comes along wanting an autograph or an ‘I met Harry Potter’ moment. But that’s not your fault. It’s just a part of who you are. And you’re a part of who I am, and you always will be." She raised her head again and stared at him, at the curve of his neck, the black hair curling slightly around the collar of his robes, willing him to understand, willing him to just look at her. "Please, Harry. I shouldn’t have said that, it wasn’t fair to you, and I’m sorry. This is no more your fault for being who you are than it is mine for being careless with the children. I don't think it would have mattered to those...those bastards if I had Jamie and Sarah tied to me, they'd have tried to take them anyway. And I should have been watching, or paying more attention, or - "
"Gin, no..." Harry finally raised his head to look at her, emerald eyes bright with emotion. His expression changed as he did so, the anger draining out of it and leaving only pain. "It’s not your fault, you couldn’t have known." He looked at her for a long moment, then shook his head. "I know that I haven’t been the kind of husband you should have had, or the kind of dad the kids deserve. I can’t blame you for stopping loving me." He sighed heavily and tilted his head back. "I deserved that."
"Harry, I do love you. I have loved you since I was 10 years old, and I've never stopped. I probably never will. But it wasn't enough, no matter how hard I tried to make it be enough. For either of us. And that’s not your fault either, or mine. No one can say we didn't try to make things work...all we did was try." Ginny stopped and just looked at him for a moment, the black head bent back toward the ceiling, clear skin stretched over the planes of a face she knew better than her own. He looked so young - in all the years since Hogwarts, he’d barely changed at all. She reached out one hand gently and touched his fingers. "And I am so sorry, for everything that's happened."
His hand turned in hers and clutched at her fingers, and he lowered his eyes to hers. Ginny thought her heart would break at the look in his eyes. "I'm sorry too. For everything. I never wanted to put you through this, or the kids...God!" Harry's voice broke suddenly, and his face crumpled. Ginny slid from the stool to the bed to hold him in her arms. Harry wrapped his arms almost painfully tight around her waist as he buried his head in her shoulder, chest heaving. "I’m so sorry," he choked.
"I know, love, I know," she whispered, rubbing his back softly. The tears didn’t last long - Harry hated showing emotion in front of anyone. He calmed after a few minutes and they sat in comfortable silence, her arms wrapped around his shoulders, his head on her shoulder. Ginny absently smoothed his hair, faintly amused at the way they seemed to automatically adjust to each other, as if the years they had spent sharing a home and a bed had lent them special knowledge of how best to be comfortable with each other. It was something that she didn't have with Draco yet; that ability to fit themselves to each other almost unconsciously.
Ginny ran her fingers through Harry's unruly black locks and smiled. She remembered the very first time they’d done this, curled up in a chair in the living room of the Burrow, breathless and exhilarated with the mere presence of each other. They had sat for hours that day, the house miraculously empty of people, wrapped around each other, kissing sometimes, but mostly just caught up in the sheer pleasure of being able to touch. She’d played endlessly with his hair, thrilled to be able to give in to the urges she’d had for years, to smooth down the cowlick at the back, to tidy the messy bits with her fingers. Sarah's hair was the same untamable mass... Ginny’s hand stilled, and she bit her lip, fighting tears. She was sick of crying. She wasn't going to do it anymore. She wouldn’t haveto anymore.
After a long silence, Harry shifted his head so that it lay in the hollow of her neck. "Why didn’t you tell me?"
"Hmmm?"
"Why didn’t you tell me you were seeing him?" Harry asked again. "And why Malfoy, of all people? I mean, I know we're split up, but why’d you have to pick him?"
"I meant to tell you, honestly, but I could never find the right time, or the right way to put it." Ginny shifted her weight slightly. "And then you ran into him at the flat, and it was just... I couldn’t figure out a way to tell you without you being furious, so I put it off again and again..." she let her breath out in a short sigh. "I left it too late, obviously."
"You were afraid I’d be angry?" Harry snorted softly and straightened up, pulling away so that he could look at her. "And finding out by having him appear in your living room like he owned the place made it better."
"I am sorry about that," Ginny said quietly. "That wasn’t fair. And as for why...well. I don’t know, really. It just sort of happened."
"What, you just met him and thought ‘I’ll sleep with Draco Malfoy, just for a lark’?"
Ginny made a face at him. "No, I did not. It was months before we even went on a real date, thank you very much. I ran into him at the supermarket, and we went for coffee, and he was nice to the children, so I gave him my number. And like I said, it was two months before we even went on our first real date."
"But why?" Harry shook his head in bewilderment. "He’s...he’s Malfoy. He’s horrible."
"He’s not horrible. He really has changed," Ginny said. Harry made a muffled noise. "I mean it. I know he might seem the same to you, but he honestly has. Do you think Neville would have been working with him all this time if he hadn’t?"
"I wondered about that," Harry said. "Considering how evil Draco was to Neville at Hogwarts, I was surprised he’d be willing to put up with him."
"Neville puts up with him because Draco is a different person," Ginny said. "He’s not the same now as he was when we all went to Hogwarts."
"He doesn’t seem that different to me," Harry said derisively.
"Well he wouldn’t, he doesn’t like you. Some things haven’t changed. But to everyone else, he’s a lot nicer, and he’s not as mean as he used to be. He spent all this time living as a Muggle...he stopped doing magic, stopped having any sort of contact with the wizarding world. It changed him for the better. He even admits it." She stopped and glanced at Harry’s incredulous expression with a small smile. "And he’s much better looking."
Harry glared at her and sputtered. "That’s not...he’s not...he isn’t that good looking."
Ginny’s smile got a little wider. "Oh no? That’s not what Hermione says."
"Hermione?" Harry looked horribly betrayed.
"Or any of the girls." Ginny stopped again and smiled sweetly at him. "Or Neville."
Harry choked and then laughed. "I wonder what he’d say to that if he knew."
"He does know, and he doesn’t say anything, actually," Ginny shot back. "Neville would die of embarrassment, so Draco doesn’t bring it up."
Harry raised his eyebrows skeptically. "That seems awfully civil."
Ginny made an exasperated noise. "Which is exactly what I mean when I said he’s changed. He is civil, usually. Even to you. Do you really think he’d offer to just give you 5 million galleons if he were still the person you think he is?"
"I don’t know how you can be so sure," he said dubiously. "I mean, he may not have been a Death Eater, but that doesn’t excuse the fact that he was a spoilt brat and tried to get us in trouble all the time. Or that he tried to get Hagrid sacked, or me and Ron expelled, or even the fact that his father nearly got you killed when you were eleven."
Ginny gritted her teeth. "I’m just saying that you can’t judge him based on what happened in the past. It’s not fair, because he’s not that person anymore. You might at least make an effort to get over things that happened twelve years ago."
Harry leaned back and studied her carefully, a frown creasing his features. Ginny met the disapproval in his gaze steadily. Finally he shook his head. "I just don’t like it."
Ginny bit her lip, but didn’t lower her eyes. "Harry, you don’t have to."
He glanced away quickly, but not before she saw him flinch. "I know," he said softly.
Ginny closed her eyes briefly, fighting against the ache in her chest. She hadn’t believed Sirius, or Draco, for that matter, when they had told her he still loved her. She had always believed - always - that she cared more for Harry than he for her. Now that was reversed, and her regret was a palpable thing. "Harry, I’m sorry."
He inhaled deeply and shut his eyes. "I am too," he said, so quietly she almost couldn’t hear the words. "Oh, Ginny. I am too."
~*~
The heat settled around him like a weight the moment Neville apparated into the tiny kitchen, following Draco’s locator charm. He’d come from a small apparition platform near Saskatoon - it wasn’t really safe to apparate too far, so the International Wizarding Union, set up not long after the end of the War, had established such platforms across most of North America and across the Atlantic, to provide points to aim for when traveling long distances. Neville had apparated in stages, hopping from England to Iceland to Sault Ste Marie to Saskatoon and then to Draco's charm in Calgary. He was subconsciously expecting it to be cold despite the fact that it was summer, so the sweltering late-afternoon heat was something of a shock.
Neville had arrived in a small kitchen, with a set of white cupboards, violently yellow walls and white gingham curtains on the window above the table. There was a sink and counter along the wall with a doorway to the rest of the house, from what Neville could see, and a fridge and stove side-by-side on the wall he was facing. A table was set against the free wall, under the window, and a closet along the last wall, beside two stairs down to a landing and an open door, presumably to the outside; Neville was crammed into the space between the table and the sink. It was a cramped space, made even smaller by a giant of a man standing in front of the open refrigerator, a beer bottle in one hand, staring at Neville open-mouthed.
The man had coal black hair in two long braids hanging over his shoulders, a nose that would have done an eagle proud, and was dressed in faded blue jean shorts and a short-sleeved checkered shirt that was hanging open at the front, exposing an impressive expanse of smooth copper skin. He probably topped Ron, the tallest man Neville knew, by at least an inch or two, and he wasn’t so much muscular as solid, dwarfing everything around him with his sheer presence. Neville gulped and opened his mouth, but the man recovered first.
"You must be Neville," he said, deep voice remarkably steady for someone who had just watched someone else appear in his kitchen out of thin air. "Hi." He extended a large hand over the refrigerator door, which Neville took, somewhat shakily.
"Yes...um. I think I may have the wrong house?" Neville said questioningly. But he couldn’t have; that was Draco’s cell phone sitting on the table, he was sure. He eyed the man nervously. So much for not letting the Muggles know about wizardry.
"Nope, you got the right place. I’m John, I’m Dray’s roommate. He told me you were coming, I just wasn’t expecting you to be all Star Trek-like, popping in out of nowhere. That was actually..." he stopped to consider, "pretty damn cool. Wanna beer?"
"Er..."
"Or not, since you’re technically on duty, right? We’ve got water, Coke, Sprite, lemonade...I’d offer tea, but it’s really too damn hot. No coffee, I’m afraid, Dray doesn’t drink it and I hate instant." He stepped around the refrigerator door and shut it, looking inquiringly at Neville, who shook his head.
"Actually, about Malfoy - " Neville began hesitantly.
"Oh, he's not here." John shrugged. "He’ll be home pretty soon, I think. He was at the cop shop all night, and all of this morning too. C’mon outside while we wait...this place is a sauna. Still hot outside, but at least there’s a breeze."
John sauntered down the two steps and out the back door. Neville watched him go in bemusement, then shrugged mentally and followed. John seemed to be taking his precense with remarkable aplomb, and all things considered, it was better than the alternative.
Neville stepped out onto a small wooden deck screened by a honeysuckle hedge on one side and a huge poplar tree on the other. A plastic deck table and covered chairs were set in the shade, a large green umbrella casting more shade over the chairs. The yard was large and extremely well kept, with neat picket fences separating it from the neigbouring yards and the alley, and flowers in pots on the two deck steps down to the grass. There was a single car garage at the bottom of the yard, with white plastic siding and dark-blue window trim that matched the house, and what looked like a vegetable garden beside it.
John waved Neville into a chair and sat down himself, stretching out long legs and resting his beer bottle on his chest. He gazed at his new houseguest and smiled, black eyes sparkling. "You sure you don’t want anything to drink?"
Neville shook his head again. "No, thank you, I’m fine."
John shrugged. "Suit yourself. So you’re Dray’s partner? He’s told me a little about you, but not much."
"Yes, I am," Neville said cautiously. "We’ve been working together for over a year now on this case."
"Yeah...Draco’s been chasing that little punk for ages. If it’s the same guy, I hope you catch him."
"So do I," Neville admitted. "It’s been the most frustrating case I’ve ever had, waiting about for them to do something wrong. They’ve been surprisingly good at covering their tracks."
John shook his head. "Sneaky little bastards. I’m surprised that they’d have the nerve to actually kidnap someone...from what Draco’s told me about the one kid, he’s never been all that nervy, unless he had somebody backing him up and he was sure he could get away with it."
Neville sat up straight. "Really?"
John raised his eyebrows. "Yeah. When he was still here in Canada, he was involved in all sorts of petty crimes and stuff, but nothing too serious, and the kid never let anything happen that would point to him directly. From everything I’ve heard about him, he’d never do anything he wasn’t very sure he could get away with. I figure Draco would have told you that."
"He did, but not in so many words." Neville frowned thoughtfully. "Makes me wonder. There’s a lot of people in England who would dearly love to get back at Harry for any number of things, but are either afraid to try anything, or don’t want to dirty their hands."
"That’s typical," John said. "I tell ya, people in general make me shake my head. Scratch beneath the surface and we’re all basically bastards."
Neville smiled at that. "You don’t have a very high opinion of people."
"You wouldn’t either, if you were in my line of work. You’d be amazed at what people try and get away with."
"What do you do?"
"I’m a treaty lawyer for the Blackfoot Nation. Native rights, mostly," John said as Neville looked confused. "Land disputes, dealing with the government on all sorts of stuff, but it mostly boils down to land. I do a little legal advising on the side, but not that often...mostly because I get too irritated with people."
"Ah," Neville said. "That sounds interesting."
John laughed. "It’s pretty damn dull most of the time. Lots of reading, not much in the way of courtroom drama. Dray gets all the fun stuff. Chasing people, tracking people down, catching crooks, that sort of thing. I just read." John gave an exaggerated sigh. "It’s so boring."
"Why didn’t you become a police officer then?" Neville asked.
"’Cause I was young and naive and wanted to change the whole world, not just a part of it. Still do...I just didn’t know changing the world would be so unexciting. Of course," he said with a sly grin, "I’m smarter than your average policeman. I’d have been wasted as a cop."
There was an elaborate noise of disgust from the door to the house, and Neville jumped. John just grinned. "Oki ni-kso-ko-wa, ksik-kihk-ini," he said lightly to Draco, who scowled back.
"Hello," he said in reply, and nodded at Neville. "Longbottom." Draco pushed himself away from the doorframe and pulled an extra chair to the table from the edge of the deck, flopping into it. He was in uniform, wearing black pants with a broad yellow stripe up either leg, calf-high black leather boots and a light blue short-sleeved shirt with chevrons on both shoulders and Draco’s last name above the breast pocket, which was untucked and partially unbuttoned. He looked...edible. Neville felt his mouth go slightly dry, and he blinked, averting his eyes. Draco tossed his hat onto the table, stretched his legs out in front of him and sighed. Then he got up, unbuckled the utility belt from around his waist, tossed that onto the ground beside his chair and flopped back down again, groaning. "Just for the record, I really, really, really hate my boss. Have I mentioned that?"
"Not recently but then, you’ve been away," John replied mildly. "What’s he doing now?"
"I just got a 2 hour lecture on my hair," Draco said disgustedly. "I show up in uniform rather than plainclothes, and he decided to bitch about my hair. Because it’s not ‘regulation’." He pulled the elastic out of the hair in question and ran his hands through it, tilting his head back and closing his eyes. "Bastard."
"Sucks to be you," John said, amusement plain in his voice. "Maybe you should get a haircut."
"Drop dead," Draco said wearily, and John laughed. Draco looked at Neville. "When did you get here?"
"Just now, actually," Neville replied. "Someone from the Canadian Ministry is supposed to be meeting me here shortly to discuss what we’re going to do. Back-up, that sort of thing. What have you found out?"
Draco straightened up a bit. "Where that park in the picture is, for starters. I was right, it is here in town. It’s Edworthy Park, which won’t mean anything to you," he said to Neville’s blank look, "but I do know where it is. The RCMP will send a few units for backup, and I’ve talked to the city police, who’ve agreed to help as well. They’re going to close off the park once our little kidnappers get there, and prevent them from getting away if anything goes wrong."
Neville nodded. "I think the Canadian Ministry will provide more manpower, or at least I hope they will. Once their representatives get here, we can discuss it in more detail, but ideally, they’ll send a couple Aurors to assist us."
"Good." Draco stood up and yanked his shirt off over his head. "Damn, it’s hot. I’m going to change, I’ll be right back. Sure you don’t want anything, Longbottom?"
Neville nodded faintly, thinking very hard about flobberworms. "I’m fine," he said. At least his voice didn’t crack. Draco shrugged and headed for the door, shirt dangling loosely in one hand. Neville couldn’t quite resist looking over his shoulder at the other man, and his eyes widened in surprise as he glanced at Draco’s back. Draco had a tattoo. What looked like a small stylized bird on his back, between his shoulder blades, done in black. Neville took several deep breaths and turned back around quickly, hoping his blush could be passed off as too much sun. He looked up slowly to find John watching him with a mixture of amusement and sympathy.
"I didn’t know he had a tattoo," Neville said weakly.
"He tends to forget," John replied softly, answering Neville’s reaction rather than his words. "He doesn’t think of himself as all that attractive."
Neville’s eyes widened at the sheer absurdity of that. "He doesn’t?"
"Nope. I gather he wasn’t the best looking kid in the world...it seems to have stuck with him." John shrugged.
"Well, he wasn’t, but..." Neville trailed off and shook his head. "I didn’t know he had a tattoo," he repeated.
"We both do," John said, and stood up suddenly, shrugging out of his own shirt and turning his back to Neville. His was what looked like a large, stylized cow with horns in the same place as Draco’s, centered between his shoulder blades.
Neville stared at the broad expanse of John’s back and couldn’t decide if he were cursed or very, very lucky. He cast about for something suitably neutral to say. "It’s very well done," he said finally. "Who designed them?"
John shrugged his shirt back on and sat back down. "I did, actually. Mine’s a buffalo, his is a thunderbird."
"A what?"
"Thunderbird. They’re the sacred birds of the Pikuni, the Peigan Indians. Some people say that what we call a thunderbird is actually a bald eagle. A ksik-kihk-ini, in Blackfoot." John went pokerfaced for a second, his face settling into strong, fierce lines. "Strong totem. Heap big medicine."
Neville raised his eyebrows slowly. "Um."
"That’s my best Hollywood Indian impression." John grinned and relaxed. "I’m just kidding."
"Kidding about what?" Draco reappeared, wearing a black t-shirt and black slacks that, aside from being practical for wandering about in the dark, set off his pale skin and hair wonderfully. Neville gulped.
John looked him up and down. "You are going to die of heat exhaustion in about two minutes in that outfit."
"I am not. Kidding about what?" Draco demanded. He was carrying a pitcher of what looked like iced tea, and two glasses. He handed one to Neville, poured himself a glass, then filled Neville’s while Neville watched in bemusement.
"Er, thanks," he said, and Draco nodded at him before turning back to John.
"What were you kidding about?"
A broad smile spread across John’s face. "Nothing," he said with a hint of what could only be described as glee. Draco glared at him, clearly debating whether or not to rise to the bait. John grinned back. "You’re pouting."
"I am not!" Draco exclaimed sulkily. "Never mind, I don’t want to know."
John smiled cheekily. "I know and you don’t, and I’m not going to tell!" he said in a singsong. Neville held his breath, waiting for Draco to lose his temper; Neville knew from experience that he didn’t take well to teasing.
The explosion Neville braced himself for didn’t come. Draco glared, slouched further in his chair and pretended he hadn’t heard. "What time are the Ministry people supposed to get here?" he asked Neville, haughtily ignoring John, who was snickering under his breath.
Neville glanced at his watch. "Soon, I think. They said that they’d be here around 5, so they should be a few minutes." Draco nodded and sipped at his iced tea, still pretending John wasn’t there. John grinned and slouched down in his own chair, pushing his feet into Draco’s legs. Draco yanked his legs away and glowered at the other man.
"Anne is pissed at you, by the way," John drawled, still grinning.
"What for?"
"You forgot to call her for Mother’s Day. You forgot to call Ed last weekend for Father's Day, for that matter, and I’m guessing she’s not too pleased about that either." John tilted his head back and closed his eyes, settling into his chair. "She says you’re ungrateful."
"I’m not ungrateful, I just forgot," Draco said defensively. "I’ve been busy."
"Tell her that, man. I sent her a card."
Draco glowered and folded his arms over his chest. "Not my fault I forgot. You might have reminded me."
"It’s not my job to remind you. Do I look like your secretary?"
Neville listened to them bicker with half an ear, watching Draco. He looked different, for some reason, although that was patently ridiculous, since he couldn’t have changed much since Neville had seen him the day before. Neville furrowed his brow, trying to put his finger on what it was. It finally dawned on him; Draco was...relaxed. There was a slight tension in him, the same kind that Neville shared - there was no such thing, really, as an off-duty cop. But aside from that, Draco seemed more at ease than Neville had ever seen him. He looked comfortable, as though he was where he belonged. Neville considered that thoughtfully.
The doorbell rang from inside the house, startling them all. "That’ll be the Ministry," Draco said as he stood up. "I’ll go let them in."
He disappeared inside the house, and returned a few moments later with the two Canadian wizards in tow. The Canadian wizards, both men, scanned the area nervously as they followed Draco onto the deck, eyes flicking about and hands hovering close to their pockets. They were both dressed in Muggle clothing - light pants and polo shirts - and managed to look as uncomfortable about it as Neville felt most of the time. The first wizard was older, with thinning light brown hair and plain, weather-beaten features. The other seemed impossibly young, 20 at the most, fresh-faced and eager. He stared around the yard with wide, astonished eyes. Pure-blood, Neville thought to himself, a sinking feeling in his stomach. Probably never been in a real Muggle house before. Neville stood and extended his hand to the older one. "I’m Neville Longbottom, with the British Ministry of Magic."
"Bruce Purvis, Canadian Department of Magical Inquiry. This is my partner, Wayne Busby," he replied, shaking Neville’s hand firmly. His voice was harsh and loud, as though he was used to shouting a lot. "Pleasure to meet you."
Neville nodded politely. "Thank you for coming. I spoke to Jim Lowe in your department earlier, but I’m not sure if he’s told you what’s gone on."
Purvis shook his head sharply, looking forbidding. "We’ve had a minor briefing."
Neville nodded and outlined the details of what they knew about the kidnappers while Purvis listened and nodded and interrupted with questions from time to time. The younger wizard, Busby, didn’t do much of anything except sit and nod and look keen. He kept casting nervous glances at John, who finally excused himself politely and vanished into the house. The boy watched John go with something like relief, and relaxed minutely. With John gone, though, it was Draco’s turn to be the object of nervous glances - Neville wondered how Busby had managed to make an Auror at all, if he were that edgy about Muggles.
After he had finished with the explanations, Neville looked at the two Canadian wizards expectantly. "We hope to have this go as smoothly as possible after we arrive at the park. I was thinking we might go and have a look at it beforehand, to sort out positions, test the obscurus charms, that sort of thing."
"I don’t think that will be necessary," Purvis said shortly, casting a sharp glare in Draco’s direction. "We know where it is."
Draco raised his chin haughtily. "It would probably be a good idea."
Purvis ignored him and looked pointedly at Neville. "What time should we meet?"
Neville blinked and cleared his throat. "Um, 11:30? Perhaps at the entrance to the park?"
"There’s a footbridge over the river that leads into the park itself," Draco suggested, his voice tinged with disgust. "Good a place as ever."
Purvis glanced at Draco like he would rather not take any sort of suggestion from him, but nodded grudgingly. "Then we’ll see you tonight."
Neville agreed politely and watched as the Canadian wizards showed themselves out. He dearly wanted to ask why they didn’t just apparate away, but it wasn’t really his place to inquire, and Purvis didn’t look like he’d answer anyway. He cocked an eyebrow at Draco, who was scowling at the door they’d left through. "So what do you think?"
Draco snorted. "I think they’re idiots. I doubt Purvis could see past the end of his nose, and if the younger one were any greener, you could plant him."
"Aside from that," Neville said with a small grin. "Not that I don’t agree with you."
"I don’t suppose we have a lot of choice." Draco let out a long breath and shook his head. "I doubt we could get away with shipping them back and demanding Aurors with experience."
"Not without calling the wrath of their whole department on our heads," Neville replied with a sigh. "Maybe we can find somewhere out of the way to stash the younger one."
"Like under a rock somewhere?" Draco suggested.
Neville laughed ruefully. "I know what you mean. I knew they were insular, but I didn’t realize that ‘insular’ meant ‘intolerant of anything non-magical’."
"Well, maybe we can shunt them aside without making it look like that’s what we’re doing," Draco said. "I’d just as soon have them more or less out of the way once things start happening. As a very wise man once said, I’ve got a bad feeling about this."
~*~
Four hours later, Neville apparated back into Draco’s tiny kitchen with Ginny and Harry. The house was quiet and dark, the sun low in the west through the kitchen window and the yard outside cloaked in shadows. Ginny moved out of the corner when she arrived, leaving room for Harry, looking around the kitchen with great interest. John came in from the hallway as Harry arrived. "Hi there," he said, looking at Harry and Ginny with intense curiosity.
"Hello," Neville replied. "John, I don’t think you’ve met Ginny and Harry Potter. Harry, Ginny, this is John...um."
"Sitting Buffalo," John supplied, holding his hand out to Harry. He was eyeing Harry carefully, his face neutrally blank. Neville wondered what Draco had told him. "Hi."
Harry took the hand offered to him, sizing John up as he did so. "Hello," he said stiffly, standing up a bit straighter. It didn’t really make a difference; John was a big man, tall and solid, and Harry wasn’t. Perhaps John didn’t mean to be intimidating, but Neville had a hunch that John knew exactly how uncomfortable it made Harry to have John looming above him and shrinking the kitchen just by standing there, and didn’t care.
John nodded and turned to Ginny with a smile. "And you’re Ginny," he said, his voice warming noticeably. Ginny flushed and nodded, and John reached out and clasped her hand in both of his gently. "It’s nice to meet you."
"Draco’s told me a bit about you," Ginny replied, smiling weakly.
John chuckled. "It’s all lies. Don’t believe a word of it." Ginny’s smile widened a bit, and John turned back to the other men. "Dray’s just stepped out, but he’ll be right back. Head on into the living room and make yourselves at home. Can I get anyone anything?"
Neville and Harry both shook their heads, and Neville led the way to the small living room. It was a sparsely decorated room, with a low leather couch and a battered brown recliner as the main pieces of furniture. A glass-and-steel coffee table sat in front of the couch, with a subtly patterned area rug, done in shades of brown and cream on the hardwood floor in front of it. A large picture window, hung with cream Venetian blinds took up most of one wall, and the far wall was dominated by two huge bookcases that flanked a small fireplace.
Harry did a quick circuit of the room, eying the print above the couch - a stark black and white photograph of grain elevators framed against thunderclouds - and skimming over the book titles in the bookcases, before settling into the recliner and watching the others broodingly. He looked rather nervous to Neville, as though he really did not want to be here. Neville tried a reassuring smile, but Harry either didn’t notice, or didn’t want to be reassured.
Ginny settled at one end of the couch, drawing her legs up underneath her and hugging her arms to her chest, her eyes wandering over the furniture, the bookcases and table, looking anywhere but at the two men. She was tightly wound, calmer than she had been earlier, but still worried. Neville had the impression that something had happened between her and Harry after he and Draco left, but he wasn’t sure what. The atmosphere between them had altered in a way Neville couldn’t quite decipher.
The back door opened, and Neville could hear John’s rumbling voice coming from the kitchen, and Draco saying something in response. Moments later, Draco appeared around the corner, nodding curtly at Harry and Neville. "Longbottom, Potter." He smiled at Ginny, who smiled tremulously back. "Did you just get here?"
Neville nodded. "About 5 minutes ago."
"Sorry I wasn’t here. I stopped by the station to pick up a few things." Draco lifted what he was holding, a bundle of what looked like black coats of some kind. He tossed one at Neville, who nearly dropped it. It turned out to be some sort of black vest, made of a weighty but flexible material. "Those are to put on under your jackets before we go."
"What is it?" Harry asked, holding up the one Draco dropped in his lap.
"Bulletproof vest. No point in taking any chances," he said. Harry looked taken aback. "We know that the one of them, at least, is a Muggle and it’s likely that he’ll have a gun, so better safe than sorry. It'll still hurt like hell if you do get shot, but it's better than being totally unprotected." Draco glanced at Neville. "I could only get three, so your little Ministry friends are on their own. If there’s shooting, tell them to duck."
Neville snorted. "I’m sure they’ll manage."
"One of them is a Muggle?" Harry said in astonishment. "I thought they were wizards."
"One of them is," Neville said. "The other is a Muggle. Their names are Chris Nesbitt and Brad Straker - Nesbitt is the wizard, and from everything we’ve been able to gather, an average one. They’ve done a good job of covering their tracks, but they haven’t really done anything to imply that he’s particularly powerful, magically speaking. The basic plan for tonight is not to do anything fancy. We’ll wait until they hand over the children and you’re safely away, then grab them." He glanced over at Draco, who nodded and continued.
"There’s only two real ways into or out of the park. There’s a footbridge over the river to the north, and train tracks on the south side, separated from the main park by a chain link fence, and both are easily closed off. Once we get into position and the kidnappers arrive, the city police and the local RCMP will seal off the park from all sides - the bike paths, the road into the parking lot for the park from the residential area on the hill above it, and the parking lot on the other side of the river." Draco smiled faintly. "Even if they make it out of the park, they won’t get far."
"Then we get the children, arrest the kidnappers, and that should be that," Neville finished. "If all goes well, it shouldn’t take more than an hour altogether. The Canadian Ministry has asked that we keep magic usage to an absolute minimum. They wanted to forbid anyone but their officers from carrying a wand, but we talked them out of it, so you can keep yours with you, Harry."
"I wasn’t about to give it up," Harry said stiffly. "Why wouldn’t they let me carry my wand?"
"Canadian rules about Muggle-wizard interaction are a lot stricter than they are in England," Neville replied. "They don’t like to have people with unlicensed wands running around."
"Unlicensed wands?" Harry asked incredulously. "They make you license your wand here? That’s ridiculous."
"They’re very strict about magic," Neville said. "They’re too spread out not to be. There’s probably half the wizarding population here as we have in England, and it’s harder to keep track of magic use with so few wizards in such a large area." Harry looked skeptical, and Neville shrugged. "At least, that’s the explanation they gave me."
Ginny excused herself quietly to use the washroom, and Harry slumped down in the recliner, one hand supporting his chin as he stared moodily at the window. Neville stretched his arms and paced around in a small circle in front of the couch in an attempt to burn off his nervousness. The closer the appointed time drew, the more nervous he seemed to get. Draco didn’t look nervous at all, but then, he seldom did.
The phone rang and Draco vanished into the kitchen, presumably to answer it, leaving Neville and Harry to their own devices. Neville glanced at Harry, who was still staring silently at the wall, and sighed. If Harry really wanted to talk about anything, Neville supposed he would just say something...in the meantime, there wasn’t much he could do. He shrugged mentally and turned to the bookcases. There were photographs on the shelves in front of the books, full of people Neville didn’t recognize, but even that small distraction was better than watching Harry brood.
~*~
Ginny had slipped quietly out of the house, and was sitting on the edge of the deck, her feet on the grass and her arms crossed, resting on her knees. The sun was fading rapidly from the sky, casting long shadows across the yard and spilling faint orange-gold light in stripes across the deck, setting fire to her hair. Draco closed the door quietly behind himself and sank down next to her. "Hi," he said softly.
She glanced at him and quirked a corner of her mouth up. "Hi."
"How are you doing?"
"I’m fine," she said slowly. "Tense. A little worried."
Draco slid his arm around her and rubbed her back slowly, feeling the tension in her. "It’s almost over. An hour or so, and we’ll have them back safely."
"I know," she whispered, leaning toward him so she could rest her head against his shoulder. He shifted slightly, settling her against his side. "I can’t help but worry. The people I care most about in the world are walking willfully into danger, and there’s nothing I can do but wait. It’s so frustrating" Ginny fidgeted for a second, then pulled away from him and stood up, walking a few steps out onto the grass. "This is driving me crazy. I want to do something, and there’s nothing I can do!" She growled and kicked at the ground with one foot.
Draco watched her, nodding. He could imagine how ineffectual she felt right now - he’d felt that way often enough himself over the last year. "I’d say you could come, but it
really is too dangerous. It’s bad enough that there’s going to be as many people as there are. Every extra body is just one more person who can make a mistake. I don’t want to risk it." He stood up and closed the small distance between them, resting one hand lightly on her shoulder. "I know this is hard for you."
She nodded and reached up to cover his hand with her own, sighing heavily. "It’s probably just as well," she said slowly. "Because if I were there, and they had done anything to my children, I would kill them both." She said it in a calm, matter-of-fact voice that left no doubt that she was absolutely sincere. "So it’s all right. I’m used to waiting, even if I don’t like it." Ginny sighed again and moved so that she could lean back against him. Draco wrapped his arms around her waist and rested his cheek against hers. They stood silently, watching the last of the sunlight fade from the yard. "You don’t like having Harry here, do you?" she finally said.
Draco smiled ruefully. "I’ll live."
"I don’t know if it will make you feel better, but he’s as unhappy to be here as you are to have him."
"I imagine he probably is." Draco paused. "Though I’d be a bit happier if he’d stop glaring at me all the time. I feel like I’m under a microscope."
He felt her chuckle under her breath. "He doesn’t trust you, I don’t think. We...talked a bit, after you left yesterday, and he’s accepted that you’re helping, but he’s still not quite reconciled to seeing you as a real person with a real life and friends and all."
The way she hesitated made Draco wonder what had actually happened. He suspected that Harry’s barely-hidden hostility had more to do with Harry’s feelings about her than about himself, but now wasn’t the time or place to bring it up. "I’ll live," he said again. "It could be worse, I suppose. I had visions of everyone I know just happening to descend upon the house tonight." Draco shook his head and chuckled. "Thank God Anne and Ed aren’t in town this week...I don’t think I could have stood it."
"I’d like to meet them one day," Ginny said quietly.
"You will," Draco replied. "I think you’d like them, and I’m positive they’d like you."
"You think so?" Ginny craned her head around to look at him. He smiled down at her.
"I know they would. Anne’s predisposed to like you, anyway. She’s been pestering me for years to ‘find a nice girl and settle down’," he raised his voice in squeaky imitation of Anne, which made Ginny giggle. "She’d all but given up on me after Laura died...she thinks you’re her best hope, so she’s bound to like you."
Ginny went still in his arms. "Laura?" she said questioningly.
"Laura was my fiancée. She died almost 10 years ago," Draco replied quietly.
Ginny was silent for a long moment. "You’ve never talked about her," she said finally.
Draco made a face. "I don’t like to, really. I...cared about her, and it’s not something I really like to tell people about." He stopped speaking, resting his head against hers and staring out at yard without really seeing it.
"What was she like?" Ginny asked softly.
Draco sighed heavily. "She was loud." He stopped and laughed softly. "If you asked just about anyone to describe her, that’d be the first thing they said. She was always talking, and she was just...loud. Outgoing, happy, very bouncy. She was a tiny little thing, but she had a ton of energy and she loved to party. That was how we met...John dragged me out to a house party at the place of someone he knew, and she was there. I wasn’t actually talking to anyone - it was maybe a year after I’d got to Canada, and I still wasn’t all that happy to be here, but she came over and introduced herself, spent the whole party with me and that was that. We dated for a year and a half, and then I asked her to marry me, and then..." He stopped and took a deep breath. "It was about a week after I asked her - she’d gone out with her girlfriends to the bar, and they were coming home in a cab, and the cab was hit by a car running a red light. Her best friend was killed instantly, but she was alive for almost a week. She was in a coma, but she never woke up."
He stopped abruptly, staring into the darkness. It still hurt to remember that week. Ginny turned in his arms and looked up at him, concern in her deep brown eyes. "I’m so sorry," she said softly. "You must have loved her very much."
"Yes." Draco cleared his throat and tightened his arms around her before he went on. "But it wasn’t - it wasn’t a sort of deathless passion, if you know what I mean. I cared about her, but I don’t know if it would have worked out in the long run." And he had never admitted that to anyone about Laura, not even to John. He looked down into Ginny’s face without really seeing her. "She wasn’t always the easiest person to be around, and she didn’t really get along with John, or with Anne. And Del hated her." He smiled faintly. "At the time I thought she was jealous, because Del’s not very outgoing, and Laura was the sort of person Del was predisposed to dislike - pretty, thin, blonde, and not very bright. But now I don’t know. I didn’t know Del as well then, but she’s got an uncanny ability to sense the good and bad in people. If she doesn’t like someone, it’s usually because there’s something about them that isn’t very nice. It might not be immediately obvious, but sooner or later she’s usually vindicated. And she hated Laura. So I don’t know."
"How does she know?" Ginny asked curiously. "It sounds almost like she might have some magical skill."
"No, it isn’t that...she’s got no magic to speak of. She says they’re just hunches, sort of vague feelings. And she’s been known to be wrong, of course." Draco flashed a grin at Ginny, the tension easing out of him. "She never used to like me at all, for instance, but she changed her mind."
Ginny snickered. "Oh, and I’m sure you were terribly charming when you first met her."
Draco did his best to look innocent. "I’ve always been charming!" he protested, which made Ginny laugh out loud. He grinned back, happy to see her looking a little more cheerful. She was so worried, and it pleased him to see that lift, if only for a little while.
There was a noise from the house, and they both glanced up as Neville poked his head out the door. "We should go," he said to Draco. "It’s getting close to time."
Draco nodded and turned back to Ginny as Neville retreated back into the house. He cupped her face in his hands, searching her face. "I won’t let anything happen to any of them," he said softly. "I promise...everything will be fine."
Ginny didn’t say anything, just flung her arms around him and held him tightly. He drew her into a hug and rested his head against hers, rubbing one hand along her back. She drew back and looked up at him, her face drawn. "Please be careful."
"I will." He cupped her face in his hands and leaned forward to kiss her gently. "I promise."
She returned the kiss almost desperately, winding her arms around his neck and holding on tightly. "Please be careful," she whispered against his mouth as they
pulled apart.
Draco nodded, grey eyes shining in the faint light, and kissed her lightly on the forehead. "I will."
~*~
Ginny followed Draco slowly into the house, arms wrapped around her chest, trying to ignore the worry gnawing at her stomach. John came around the corner from his room and followed them into the living room, where Neville and Harry were talking quietly with grim expressions. Harry’s lips thinned at the sight of Draco’s hand resting lightly at her waist, but mercifully he didn’t say anything.
She sank down on the couch and watched apprehensively as Draco slung his utility belt around his waist and buckled it, then shrugged one of the vests over his shoulders. Neville and Harry did the same, settling them into place and pulling light jackets over top. Neville was businesslike as he shifted his shoulders and patted his pockets to be sure his wand was in place. Harry wore the same expression he wore before Quidditch matches, intense and focussed, his own wand stuck in the pocket of his jacket. Draco appeared calm and unruffled as he checked his gun into its holster on his hip and adjusted the hang of his vest, as though arraying himself with a small arsenal of weapons and protective gear was perfectly normal - Ginny had no idea how he managed it. She caught herself nervously rubbing her hands together and made herself stop.
When they were ready to go, Ginny stood up and hugged Neville and Harry in turn. "Be careful," she said fiercely to Harry as she held him. "Don’t do anything silly."
"Hey! When do I ever do anything silly?" he protested, which made her laugh.
"There isn’t time to catalogue all the extremely foolish things you’ve done in the name of bravery," she shot back as Harry grinned impishly at her. "Just be careful. And you too," she said to Neville, who nodded and smiled reassuringly at her.
Draco looked at John. "If anything happens, I’ve told Mike to call and let you know." The other man nodded solemnly and leaned against the wall, and Draco turned to look at Ginny. "We’ll be back in an hour," he said softly, reaching out to cup her cheek in one hand. She leaned into his touch slightly, arms folded across her chest. He stroked his thumb along her cheekbone, tracing over her freckles lightly, then lowered his voice to a whisper for her alone. "I love you."
Ginny caught her breath and pressed her eyes closed, reaching up to touch the back of his hand with the tips of her fingers. Draco smiled down at her, then slid his hand away and glanced at Neville. "Let’s go."
~*~
Harry stood alone next to the lone picnic table, back straight and shoulders squared, stoically gazing straight ahead. The box full of Galleons was at his feet, a plain wooden crate, magically expanded to hold all the coins, and lightened with a quick spell so that they could move it. Draco glanced quickly around the clearing from his position crouched behind a group of bushes near the table. He couldn’t see anything beyond the pine trees lining the clearing moving in the breeze, which was a faint relief. He knew where Neville was hidden, behind a small stand of trees directly opposite Harry, a bit further up, but he couldn’t see him at all. The Canadian wizards had taken up positions closer to the parking lot, one behind another clump of bushes, and one hiding in plain sight, standing near the path wrapped in an invisibility cloak. All of them were armed with Obscurus charms, that hid their presence from magical detection, and Draco just hoped that they’d hold.
Now it was just a matter of waiting.
The wait wasn’t a long one - it was five minutes or so when two shadowed figures appeared on the path. They were both wearing black cloaks with the hoods up, and blended effortlessly into the shadows. Draco gave a silent sigh of relief at the sight of them; there was always the off chance that he and Neville had been wrong about who was behind the kidnapping, but here they were. Both started visibly at the sight of Harry waiting for them, clearly surprised to see him there. One of them looked quickly around the clearing, as the other stepped cautiously forward, into the faint light. Draco pressed the button on the small remote he was carrying to signaling the RCMP units waiting just outside the park entrances to move into position.
"I see you found it," said the one who’d stepped forward. He was taller, and seemed less edgy than his partner, who was darting quick looks into the trees, judging by the movement of his hood. From the tape they’d found back in March, Draco knew the taller one was Straker, the Muggle.
"It wasn’t too much trouble," Harry replied coolly. "What kept you?"
The kidnapper laughed faintly and turned to the shorter man, whispering quietly. He turned back to Harry. "Is that the money?"
"Yes," Harry replied, outwardly calm. Draco might not like Harry, but he had to admire the other man’s grace under pressure. "Now where are my children?"
"It’s all there?" There was a distinctly avaricious note in the man’s voice. Harry glared at him in disgust and wordlessly kicked the lid off the crate. The small mountain of coins gleamed in the faint light, and Straker appeared to nod. "Good." Harry watched with narrowed eyes as the shorter one disappeared with a small pop, apparating away.
There was a short, tense silence as they waited, then the other one - obviously Nesbitt, the wizard - appeared again, staggering slightly as he arrived with Sarah and Jamie. An old tennis shoe fell to the ground at his feet - portkey, Draco identified automatically. The children seemed unharmed but tired and scared. Jamie’s chin was set stubbornly, mirroring his father’s expression, although Jamie looked terrified under the bravado. Sarah was clinging to Jamie’s hand, her face white and her hair in an impossible black tangle around her face. She made a soft little noise when she saw Harry, and tried to run to him.
Nesbitt clamped a hand down on her shoulder, and Sarah whimpered. "Money first," he said, the first words he’d spoken since they’d arrived.
The look Harry gave the younger man should have vaporized him on the spot. He gave the crate a vicious shove toward Straker with his foot. "Take it, then, and let them go," he spat.
Straker started forward to pick the crate up, keeping his eyes on Harry while he did so. There was a loud rustle from behind the two kidnappers, and a grunt, the sound of branches snapping, and then a loud thump as Busby, the younger of the two Canadian wizards, ignominiously fell out of his hiding spot and landed sprawling on the grass in plain view.
There was a slight pause while everyone in the clearing froze, and Draco shut his eyes briefly in disgust and swore under his breath. Not even an Obscurus charm was going to hide that. Nesbitt, startled, let go of Sarah and Jamie, and spun around. Jamie, displaying remarkably quick thinking, grabbed his sister’s arm and darted toward Harry.
Harry leaped forward and scooped the two children up, one under each arm, then spun around and ran for the trees. Straker drew a gun from the waistband of his pants, his hood falling back as he did so, exposing cropped brown hair; he barely glanced at the source of the noise. Instead he raised his gun, pointed it straight at Harry’s back, and started to pull the trigger.
Draco didn’t even think, only reacted, moving before the boy had even raised his arm. He burst out of his own hiding place, and shouted, "Hey!" It distracted Straker, just as he’d intended, and Straker’s shot at Harry went wide. Harry made it to the shelter of the trees from which Neville was emerging, and he very sensibly ducked out of sight with the children. Draco yanked his attention back to Straker as he raised his gun again and fired. Draco felt the first impact, sharp against his ribs, and staggered back, the sound of the bullet hitting his kelvar vest loud in his ears. It was odd, he thought abstractedly, that he could hear each crack of the gun and then the thunk of the bullet impacting against the vest protecting his chest as two distinct, separate noises, once and then again. He winced at the sharp pain, knowing he’d have bruises afterward. With the third report of the gun came a savage, tearing pain in his right arm, which he did his level
best to ignore.
Ignoring it was hard, because it hurt, quite a lot. Draco decided not to think about it, instead switching his gun to his left hand and firing back at Straker, who had started to run for the footpath to the bridge across the river. He missed; his aim with his left was terrible, but someone - Neville, he thought - fired off a spell, bringing the young man to the ground. Draco switched his attention to the other one, raising his gun and leveling it at the retreating figure just in time to hear one of the Canadian wizards yell, Stupefy!" and watch Nesbitt drop like a rock. At least they’re not totally useless, he thought.
Draco lowered his gun and reached out a hand to prop himself against the edge of the picnic table. "Ow," he said softly, to no one in particular. His chest was starting to hurt alarmingly, battling the pain in his arm; it felt like someone was sitting on his chest. One of the shots must have cracked a rib. He forced himself away from the table, walking slowly toward where the two Canadian wizards had clustered around Straker’s body with Neville. They were arguing in low voices, Neville gesturing angrily at one of the other wizards.
As he got closer, it became clear that Neville was giving Purvis a piece of his mind. " - clumsy, half-cocked, foolish prat!" Purvis was clenching and unclenching his fists, jaw stubbornly set. It was very clear that he was not happy, but he didn’t have much room to argue, since the brush with disaster was largely his partner’s fault. Busby was standing beside Purvis, head down and shuffling his feet in the red dust of the path while Neville expounded upon his parentage, his intelligence and his probable future. Draco fetched up beside Neville, cradling his injured arm against his aching chest. He’d never actually seen Neville lose his temper before; it was educational, to say the least.
Neville glanced at him during a pause in his tirade, and the alarmed expression on his face would have been almost comical if Draco’s chest hadn’t hurt so much. "Malfoy, are you all right?"
Draco swayed slightly, and Neville leapt forward to grab him. "I’m...ok," he said, a bit surprised at how breathless he sounded. He sank to his knees, as slowly as he could, clutching at Neville’s arm so he wouldn’t simply fall over. Draco thought he heard Sarah crying somewhere behind him, and he could hear Neville’s voice distantly, but Draco couldn’t seem to gather enough breath to ask him to speak louder. It hurt. His whole chest felt like it was going to collapse under its own weight. He closed his eyes slowly, and then finally, softly, mercifully, the world went dark and slipped away.
~*~
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