***


When he walks in on that first night, pale and with slumped shoulders, she can hardly believe her eyes. Her expression is a mix of shock and indignation, and the others temper their stares with revulsion as they look his way. No one else notices the spark of pity in her eyes before it disappears. But he does, and it makes him quickly look down to the floor, trying to scowl, but instead he only looks pained.

As Snape explains the newcomer’s presence to the others, they move away from the sullen young man and into the kitchen where Molly Weasley can show her affection by fussing over everyone’s supper.

Only she stays behind with the boy across from her, knowing that the others won’t want her to hear the ‘serious business’ of war because she is not only a girl but a little sister. “Ginny isn’t ready to handle it,” they say. “She’s still fragile from her first year.”

As she continues to stare at him, more curious now that the surprise of it all has worn off, he looks up sharply and stares back. They are metres away from one another but can almost feel the tension between them, as tangible and heavy as stone.

She shrugs and walks away, going off to find Crookshanks and play with him, just like she always does during the meetings. He watches her go with narrowed eyes. He hears Snape calling for him and pushes past the door and into the chaos of the kitchen, not before looking back once more. He can’t see her, but she is still staring, bitter because he is welcomed into the inner fold just minutes after defecting. Nonetheless, she knows it isn’t his fault.

They start speaking within the week.

***

In the modest library of Grimmauld Place, a young man passes the time poring over text after text. Sometimes Ginny goes up into the room, wary of disturbing him but so bored that she defiantly enters the small chamber regardless. One day she finds him leaning back on a chair, only two of the legs still on the ground. She cranes her neck to see what he is reading this time, but the angle isn’t good and she can only make out that it doesn’t look like English.

Testing the waters, she asks, “What are you reading?” She asks quietly, but he still jumps a little, as if he was so absorbed in the story that he wasn’t aware of her entrance.

Two legs of the rickety wooden chair land with a dull thud on the once impressive-looking rug, and he looks up at her, replying, “Just a bit of research that might help me later.” Now that he has closed the book, she can read the title.

It says Inferno, and she wonders at it. “What’s it about?”

He gives a faint smile before saying, “It’s a poem drawn from the Catholic version of Hell.” She doesn’t know why he finds that amusing, but then again, he doesn’t seem like the same boy anymore.

“And that would help you because...”

He looks down, no longer smiling, and he mutters more to himself, “If I know what it is I’m going to, I’ll have a head start.”

The faint trace of pity that was in her eyes before returns tenfold, and she hurts for the tentative friend that had no one to tell him that he was just as good and pure as all other children can be.

He misses the expression on her face and opens the book again.

She starts acting more warmly towards him, and he becomes cautiously hopeful.

***

They’ve been sitting across from each other at the wobbly table for what feels like hours now, him reading that same book and her reading, then stopping out of boredom, then looking around the room for something to do, and then reading another line. In her bouts of looking around the room, her eyes always drift over to him no matter how much she tries to stop.

She is sure he notices but chooses not to say anything in an attempt to spare her the embarrassment. For that, she is grateful.

She is the midst of another one of her breaks when she sees his eyes widen slightly and then dart her way before going back to reading.

“What part are you at now?” she asks- more to hear something in the quiet of the room than to actually know the answer.

He answers, “The Second Circle of Hell,” without looking up. It doesn’t even occur to her that he might be purposefully avoiding her gaze.

The way he says it makes a feeling of foreboding simmer subtly within her. She can’t help but ask, “Who goes there?”

He finally meets her eyes, the most amused she’s seen him yet, and he responds, “The Lustful,” his lips quirking just so. He continues without her asking, “I was reading about two people named Francesca and Paolo. They were sent to the Second Circle for kissing each other.”

She is incredulous, “Sent to Hell just for kissing! How is that fair?”

It seems he has anticipated her surprise, so he elaborates upon his earlier answer. “Francesca was married to Paolo’s brother, who she found absolutely horrid. One day, she and Paolo were reading the story of Lancelot and Guinevere in the library”- at this she feels her face heat up, but he is too immersed in his retelling to notice- “and when they got to the part where Lancelot kissed Guinevere for the first time, Paolo couldn’t help but kiss Francesca. Francesca’s husband came in at just the wrong moment and saw the two, so he killed them. They were sent to Hell to spend all of eternity together in punishment.”

She still doesn’t understand why that one kiss earned the two the sentence of eternal damnation, and she says so. He shrugs and says casually, “Maybe it was the intent that got them there instead of the act.”

This conversation makes her feel uneasy, but she presses on anyway. “Surely it can’t be wrong to love someone?”

This time, his gaze feels as if it’s ripping through her, seeing into the very depths of her mind those things that not even she is completely aware she thinks or feels.

“Sometimes, I suppose it can be.”

They say nothing more to each other after that, both returning to their books until Molly calls them for dinner.

They start lingering over one another in their thoughts just before falling to sleep.

***

As the days crawl into weeks, the two still use the decrepit old library as a safe haven. On a particularly windy day, she is looking outside the tiny grimy window that looks out from the front of the house. Debris flies everywhere in the cloudy day, newspapers and thin plastic bags that others have carelessly disregarded. She wishes it wasn’t so dark outside, as she likes the way wind feels blowing against her face, like she is on her broomstick, speeding towards the goal posts. The greyness of the outdoors only pollutes the windiness and makes her unhappy.

She looks sharply over to him when she hears that his breathing has hitched slightly. She can see that he is nearing the end of the book, but doesn’t understand why it would bother him so. He of all people would be able to handle a book without getting upset.

Before she can ask him what the matter is, he flees from the room, and she can hear him descending the stairs and slamming the front door as he goes, making Mrs. Black erupt in foul shrieks as she is wont to do.

She sees him from the little window but not well. The wind blows his fair hair haphazardly about his face and makes his robe float about his frame. His is just standing with his back towards the house, hand braced on a broken streetlight, head bowed.

She knows that he needs to be alone for now, so she goes to the table to see what could have made him react in such a way.

She is disappointed to see that he has taken the book with him.

***

Late that night, after even Molly has gone to bed, she is still lying awake in her bed, obsessing over what the matter could be with Draco. She worries that he will do something rash, as boys always seem to do when something unpleasant happens.

She is startled when she hears the faintest knock above the howling of the wind. She knows before she opens her door that it is him, and she quickly ushers him in before anyone can see.

She is very aware that this is the first time he has set foot in her room and that she is wearing her flimsy flannel pajamas, but forgets all that immediately upon seeing the look on his face.

If pained was his expression when she first saw him, then tormented is what he looks now. He no longer has his robe, but the book is still clutched tightly in his right hand. She grabs his other hand to lead him over to her bed to sit down and nearly cries out at how freezing it is, even in the midst of summer. She makes him get under her covers before making the decision to join him.

As soon as she gets on the mattress, he pulls her to him and buries his face into her neck. She wraps her arms around him, and her heart clenches when she feels him trembling so badly that he shakes even her. She strokes his head with one hand, and it seems to calm him.

After a moment, he pulls away from her a bit and turns to face her. “It was the Ninth Circle” he says without emotion. She shook her head a little, not understanding why it would upset him. “The deepest level of Hell. For traitors.”

She understands immediately, her heart aching a little more for the boy not much older than her that has had to abandon so many and so much. She embraces him more tightly, and he responds in kind. Her heart flutters when she feels his lips press a chaste but lingering kiss to her temple.

“I was wrong, you know,” he says after a moment, looking into the distance.

“About what?” Here is another of those moments, when the threads of fate start pulling in two directions, everything hinging on what is said, what is done.

He brings both of his hands to the sides of her face, lowering his own slowly. He says softly but with all the certainty that is inside of him, “About love. It can never be wrong.” She shudders at the look in his eyes before she closes hers, and he closes his. Then they are coming closer, closer, until Guinevere and Lancelot, Francesca and Paolo, Good and Evil, everything fades away because love has taken over, and it can never be wrong. The phrase plays itself over and over in her head.

They start loving each other after that one kiss.

***

She shields her eyes as a blast nearby causing all sorts of debris to fly her way. She looks around wildly, wand in hand, trying to find someone to either help or harm, depending on the side. She knows that he is nearby, that he refuses to let her out of his sight.

She turns when she sees and feels a jet of purple light fly past her face, and she seems a hooded and masked man, wand at the ready. She lifts her own and prepares to cast a hex, but the other wizard is just a second faster than she, so she is unprepared to dodge the now green curse heading her way.

She knows he is nearby. She knows it even more now because he is pushing her out of the way. No outward sounds invade her ears, just her own thudding heart and the sound of it breaking into tiny little pieces as she lands with him half on top of her. She turns him over and sees his blank gaze.

Her hand reaches up to touch his face, those lips that had smiled for her before and kissed her and could’ve told her all the secrets of the universe, if she would only listen hard enough.

She smiles faintly then, remembering what he said to her on that unexceptional summer day all those months ago. She is there now, not on a war-torn spot of earth but in a musty smelling library, taking peeks at the handsome boy across from her.To spend all of eternity together. She cannot say anything she wants to say because a green light envelopes her. In the end, it doesn’t matter who, or why. All that matters is that they are together, if no longer in this life, then somewhere in the next.

Amore condusse noi ad una morte.

Love led us to one death.



***