Chapter Fifteen:
"Nagini? He's a Horcrux? We're going after the Dark Lord's pet?"
She blushed the slightest bit, having forgotten that he still didn't know exactly which Horcrux they were looking for.
"Just out of curiosity," he asked with a slightly harsh tone, "exactly how many of the Horcruxes have you all destroyed so far that we're going after one that is almost always with the Dark Lord himself?"
"Um, Harry took care of the diary his second year, Dumbledore found Marvolo's ring before your sixth year. Regulus Black actually stole and destroyed Slytherin's necklace years ago, and well, we got Hufflepuff's cup a couple months ago, and Ravenclaw's desk after Christmas."
"Five?" The word came out somewhat incredulous, and she couldn't decide is she was proud or insulted because he thought it so surprising that she and the others had taken and destroyed so many already. "So we're after the last, aside from the sodder himself."
She nodded and he shook his head, choosing to ignore the sense of responsibility, and the hint of pride that he was being trusted with it, and instead went back to the memory Weasley had apparently just recovered.
"So, uh, this cave?"
Ginny nodded, though she swallowed perceptively before she reached for the map she had been holding when the vision had taken hold. Shifting on the couch to allow him to see it, the redhead tried her best to organize the recovered memory into a coherent description.
"The entire system is like a large maze, large enough that the Death Eaters could have set themselves up at the far end. Even if they are there, they obviously wouldn't be going into an area that prohibits magic, so as long as we're fairly quiet, it shouldn't pose a problem. Besides, if they're triggered, the wards will let Voldemort know we're there no matter how far away he is at the time," Ginny said with a small shake of her head.
The blond nodded. "True enough, but it's more likely that there is a camp at the other end of the system; the Dark Lord has always kept his pet close to him in the past. Even if the wards against magic use don't extend to the opposite end of the cave system, they probably cover Nagini's end completely, and most likely continue a ways past the entrance."
"I would agree, he'd have made the wards as far reaching as he could without interfering with any camp they might have in the area, which makes it a little more difficult for us to get into the cave where Nagini's hidden. The only entrance I saw at that end was a really deep hole in the ground that led to a tunnel. Tom used magic to levitate down before he set the wards, but obviously we can't do that."
The wizard silently conceded that argument, and with a wave of his hand, indicated for her to continue.
"Our first problem, however, is going to be getting to the caves in the first place. I'm not sure how far from the entrance the wards extend, and we can't risk Apparating or Port-Keying in not knowing the scope of the ward. To make it harder, it's pretty isolated."
Draco eyed the paper in her hands, noting the location of the cave system and mentally calculating how best to get there when the time came. "There don’t appear to be many roads in the vicinity, but we could probably fly in pretty easily."
"But where would we land? If we don't know how far the wards go, we can't be certain how close to get. Even without using our wands, operating a broom uses magic, and..."
Draco shook his head with a laugh, and the Gryffindor fought not to raise her hackles. His expression wasn't exactly mocking, but memories of previous encounters with him made the reaction nearly automatic.
"Not on brooms, Weasley. I meant we'd fly in an airplane. There's no landing strip, but it would probably be best not to land anyway; it would draw too much attention if there are any Death Eaters in the area."
Putting aside any urge to snap, or reply defensively, to his laughter, she did her best to respond calmly, though she was unable to hide her underlying confusion. She'd seen several images of airplanes over the last week, especially on the picture box he liked to watch so much. And she'd even seen one in the sky her first day with the Tonks, but the rest of his answer alluded her.
"How do we get out of the airplane if it doesn't land?"
"We jump."
Brown eyes widened almost comically, drawing another chuckle from the blond. "Jump?"
"Yeah. Muggles have these things called parachutes that slow you down so you can land. I've not done it yet, but Aaron and the guys have lots of times. They can set us up with lessons, even loan us their gear. It'll be perfectly safe once we know what we're doing."
"You want us to jump out of the sky, without a broom or anything?"
He shook his head again, and couldn't keep from laughing again at the scared look on her face. "It'll be fine, I'll call the guys later about lessons. For now we should try to figure out how we're going to get in the cave once we're on the ground."
"And how exactly are we going to get out?" She tried to keep the challenging tone out of her voice, but she was well aware that she didn't exactly succeed. "If the plane can't land to drop us off, how is it going to pick us up?"
Draco shrugged with infuriating casualty. "I'll figure it out."
"You mean you don't know?" The redhead popped out of her seat and began to pace. "We can't go in without some sort of exit strategy. If we have to use magic, they'll know we were there and they'll figure out what we did and then they'll have time to get on the defensive. We need to do this as unobtrusively as possible so we can attack before He realizes we've neutralized his Horcruxes."
Her voice had risen in both pitch and volume as she spoke, leaving the wizard with rapidly thinning patience.
"Weasley." The word brought her attention away from her fearful preoccupation and the sharpness of his tone made her round eyes narrow in his direction.
"Malfoy." His own eyes narrowed the slightest bit at her caustic reply but he ignored it and instead looked own at the map, reaching out to poke somewhat irritably at the image of the cave system.
"The entrance. We have to decide how we're going to get down the shaft."
"The exit," she intoned with vehement, but subdued insistence.
Draco let out a rather explosive sigh. "I'll figure it out"
He held up a hand imperiously before she could respond. "All we need is the right trainer with the right background to get us access to the right equipment. The guys can help with that, but until I have that, and know exactly what we can get and when, I won't know what options we have to chose from. It may take a little while, but once we have that, I can arrange for an appropriate extrication. I'm not likely to forget about it, so just calm down and give me some time to work it out."
Ginny took a deep breath and forced herself to nod and take her seat once more. What calm she managed to obtain, however, didn't last very long when faced with his suggestion as to how they could get into the cave itself.
"First you want me to jump out of an airplane, and now you want me to jump off a cliff?"
Draco gritted his teeth against the outraged, and scared, words the witch threw at him. "We wouldn't be jumping, we'd be repelling, and it's not a cliff, it's a shaft."
"What's the bloody difference?"
"We'd have a rope attached to us that would help us repel down slowly and would be firmly anchored above the shaft entrance. It's perfectly safe, and pretty easy to do, so stop screeching at me."
Ginny clenched her jaw shut against the words that wanted to come out, the redhead watching her partner throw his arms into the air and stand from the couch in a huff. Once she had gotten herself moderately under control, she regarded him as calmly as she could.
"I'm sorry," she said with as little sarcasm as possible, "if I find the idea a little unsettling. This isn't exactly something I have a lot of experience with."
The wizard let out a loud sigh and ran his hands through his hair a few times before turning to face her. "Look, you said yourself that you don't know how far the ward against magic goes, and if we want any chance of getting in, we have to err on the side of caution and do everything the Muggle way. And the reason you're here is because I know how to go about doing that, so however it sounds, whatever you think about it, you've got to believe that I know what I'm talking about. I'm going with you, remember; I'm not going to pick something that is going to get me killed."
The redhead took a deep breath. Everything he said was true. He was the Muggle expert, strange as it sounded, and she needed his advice about how to get around the ward. Needing his advice, and taking it, however, were two very different things. After all the trouble and torment he had caused her and her family at Hogwarts, it was hard to trust him, especially to such a degree as this mission required. But it wasn’t at all like a Malfoy to put himself in danger, though it wouldn't surprise her if he were picking things that sounded dangerous just to scare her. The mission was still more important than her sense of ease or comfort, though. If they didn't take care of Nagini, Harry and the Order would have no chance of defeating Voldemort, and that was more important than any lingering distrust of Draco Malfoy.
"All right. So you know what you're talking about when it comes to Muggle stuff." She couldn't quite hide the less than confident tone, and it brought a less than patient sigh from her companion.
"Yes, I do. And I know that parachuting and repelling are our best shots at getting to the cave. And I know that even if we don't have an exact exit strategy yet, we will be able to plan one soon enough."
This time it was the witch who sighed as she once again acknowledged that she was going to have to trust his judgment in this matter. His ideas still made her uncomfortable, but she refrained from saying so, instead reaching up a hand to rub wearily at the headache that was still throbbing in her temples. The first few hours after regaining a memory were never pleasant, especially when they were spent arguing with a Malfoy.
The motion caught his attention, and grey eyes couldn't help narrowing as he pictured her reaction to the map they now knew depicted Nagini's hiding place. Even being annoyed with her as much as he was, the memory of her pale, slightly green face, her distant brown eyes, her shaking limbs, and her groan of pain as she snapped out of it, left him feeling slightly off center.
When he'd seen her have the reaction in his room after she'd first arrived, he had been unsettled, and perhaps even the slightest bit concerned. And then, when it had happened again, less than two hours before, he had felt much the same way. Yet now, knowing it was because she had accessed one of the Dark Lord's memories, actually seen what he had seen, it left an even more noticeably sour feeling in the pit of his stomach. He had met the Dark wizard, and he didn't want to even speculate as to what his memories contained. He certainly didn't want to speculate as to what she had seen or felt, or how sickening, how frightening it much feel to glimpse his thoughts or...
Draco shook his head. He didn't feel sorry for Ginny Weasley. She was a necessary evil to endure in order to destroy the last Horcrux, bring them closer to destroying the Dark Lord, and bring himself closer to having his old life back. His life away from the Tonks' and martial arts, and Aaron, Blake, and Carren, and pop and delivery pizza, and...
Now was not the time for pointless blathering, even if only in his head. If they were to have any chance at success, they needed to get to work. She needed to learn to repel down a shaft, and probably climb back up it, and they both needed to learn how to safely parachute out of a moving plane. Aaron and the others could handle that just fine he was sure, but they'd have to schedule some time with the plane and the rest of the equipment they would need. That was easily enough arranged, but as he reached for the phone to call his friends, he caught sight, once again, of the youngest Weasley rubbing her temples with a look of exhaustion on her freckled face.
"Why don't you go to bed, we’ve been at this long enough for tonight."
Brown eyes rose slowly to meet grey, a mix of relief and suspicion in her gaze. "You sure?"
"Of course I'm bloody sure." Draco took a deep breath before he finished that statement the way he wanted to. "I'm going to go to sleep in a minute myself, just as soon as I give the guys a call and set things up for tomorrow."
It was probably a measure of how much her head hurt that she didn’t question him any further, but instead merely made her way up to the room she had been assigned for her stay. It was probably a measure of how much her involvement was required for a successful outcome that he watched her slowly ascend the stairs before he once again reached for the telephone.
End Chapter Fifteen
"Nagini? He's a Horcrux? We're going after the Dark Lord's pet?"
She blushed the slightest bit, having forgotten that he still didn't know exactly which Horcrux they were looking for.
"Just out of curiosity," he asked with a slightly harsh tone, "exactly how many of the Horcruxes have you all destroyed so far that we're going after one that is almost always with the Dark Lord himself?"
"Um, Harry took care of the diary his second year, Dumbledore found Marvolo's ring before your sixth year. Regulus Black actually stole and destroyed Slytherin's necklace years ago, and well, we got Hufflepuff's cup a couple months ago, and Ravenclaw's desk after Christmas."
"Five?" The word came out somewhat incredulous, and she couldn't decide is she was proud or insulted because he thought it so surprising that she and the others had taken and destroyed so many already. "So we're after the last, aside from the sodder himself."
She nodded and he shook his head, choosing to ignore the sense of responsibility, and the hint of pride that he was being trusted with it, and instead went back to the memory Weasley had apparently just recovered.
"So, uh, this cave?"
Ginny nodded, though she swallowed perceptively before she reached for the map she had been holding when the vision had taken hold. Shifting on the couch to allow him to see it, the redhead tried her best to organize the recovered memory into a coherent description.
"The entire system is like a large maze, large enough that the Death Eaters could have set themselves up at the far end. Even if they are there, they obviously wouldn't be going into an area that prohibits magic, so as long as we're fairly quiet, it shouldn't pose a problem. Besides, if they're triggered, the wards will let Voldemort know we're there no matter how far away he is at the time," Ginny said with a small shake of her head.
The blond nodded. "True enough, but it's more likely that there is a camp at the other end of the system; the Dark Lord has always kept his pet close to him in the past. Even if the wards against magic use don't extend to the opposite end of the cave system, they probably cover Nagini's end completely, and most likely continue a ways past the entrance."
"I would agree, he'd have made the wards as far reaching as he could without interfering with any camp they might have in the area, which makes it a little more difficult for us to get into the cave where Nagini's hidden. The only entrance I saw at that end was a really deep hole in the ground that led to a tunnel. Tom used magic to levitate down before he set the wards, but obviously we can't do that."
The wizard silently conceded that argument, and with a wave of his hand, indicated for her to continue.
"Our first problem, however, is going to be getting to the caves in the first place. I'm not sure how far from the entrance the wards extend, and we can't risk Apparating or Port-Keying in not knowing the scope of the ward. To make it harder, it's pretty isolated."
Draco eyed the paper in her hands, noting the location of the cave system and mentally calculating how best to get there when the time came. "There don’t appear to be many roads in the vicinity, but we could probably fly in pretty easily."
"But where would we land? If we don't know how far the wards go, we can't be certain how close to get. Even without using our wands, operating a broom uses magic, and..."
Draco shook his head with a laugh, and the Gryffindor fought not to raise her hackles. His expression wasn't exactly mocking, but memories of previous encounters with him made the reaction nearly automatic.
"Not on brooms, Weasley. I meant we'd fly in an airplane. There's no landing strip, but it would probably be best not to land anyway; it would draw too much attention if there are any Death Eaters in the area."
Putting aside any urge to snap, or reply defensively, to his laughter, she did her best to respond calmly, though she was unable to hide her underlying confusion. She'd seen several images of airplanes over the last week, especially on the picture box he liked to watch so much. And she'd even seen one in the sky her first day with the Tonks, but the rest of his answer alluded her.
"How do we get out of the airplane if it doesn't land?"
"We jump."
Brown eyes widened almost comically, drawing another chuckle from the blond. "Jump?"
"Yeah. Muggles have these things called parachutes that slow you down so you can land. I've not done it yet, but Aaron and the guys have lots of times. They can set us up with lessons, even loan us their gear. It'll be perfectly safe once we know what we're doing."
"You want us to jump out of the sky, without a broom or anything?"
He shook his head again, and couldn't keep from laughing again at the scared look on her face. "It'll be fine, I'll call the guys later about lessons. For now we should try to figure out how we're going to get in the cave once we're on the ground."
"And how exactly are we going to get out?" She tried to keep the challenging tone out of her voice, but she was well aware that she didn't exactly succeed. "If the plane can't land to drop us off, how is it going to pick us up?"
Draco shrugged with infuriating casualty. "I'll figure it out."
"You mean you don't know?" The redhead popped out of her seat and began to pace. "We can't go in without some sort of exit strategy. If we have to use magic, they'll know we were there and they'll figure out what we did and then they'll have time to get on the defensive. We need to do this as unobtrusively as possible so we can attack before He realizes we've neutralized his Horcruxes."
Her voice had risen in both pitch and volume as she spoke, leaving the wizard with rapidly thinning patience.
"Weasley." The word brought her attention away from her fearful preoccupation and the sharpness of his tone made her round eyes narrow in his direction.
"Malfoy." His own eyes narrowed the slightest bit at her caustic reply but he ignored it and instead looked own at the map, reaching out to poke somewhat irritably at the image of the cave system.
"The entrance. We have to decide how we're going to get down the shaft."
"The exit," she intoned with vehement, but subdued insistence.
Draco let out a rather explosive sigh. "I'll figure it out"
He held up a hand imperiously before she could respond. "All we need is the right trainer with the right background to get us access to the right equipment. The guys can help with that, but until I have that, and know exactly what we can get and when, I won't know what options we have to chose from. It may take a little while, but once we have that, I can arrange for an appropriate extrication. I'm not likely to forget about it, so just calm down and give me some time to work it out."
Ginny took a deep breath and forced herself to nod and take her seat once more. What calm she managed to obtain, however, didn't last very long when faced with his suggestion as to how they could get into the cave itself.
"First you want me to jump out of an airplane, and now you want me to jump off a cliff?"
Draco gritted his teeth against the outraged, and scared, words the witch threw at him. "We wouldn't be jumping, we'd be repelling, and it's not a cliff, it's a shaft."
"What's the bloody difference?"
"We'd have a rope attached to us that would help us repel down slowly and would be firmly anchored above the shaft entrance. It's perfectly safe, and pretty easy to do, so stop screeching at me."
Ginny clenched her jaw shut against the words that wanted to come out, the redhead watching her partner throw his arms into the air and stand from the couch in a huff. Once she had gotten herself moderately under control, she regarded him as calmly as she could.
"I'm sorry," she said with as little sarcasm as possible, "if I find the idea a little unsettling. This isn't exactly something I have a lot of experience with."
The wizard let out a loud sigh and ran his hands through his hair a few times before turning to face her. "Look, you said yourself that you don't know how far the ward against magic goes, and if we want any chance of getting in, we have to err on the side of caution and do everything the Muggle way. And the reason you're here is because I know how to go about doing that, so however it sounds, whatever you think about it, you've got to believe that I know what I'm talking about. I'm going with you, remember; I'm not going to pick something that is going to get me killed."
The redhead took a deep breath. Everything he said was true. He was the Muggle expert, strange as it sounded, and she needed his advice about how to get around the ward. Needing his advice, and taking it, however, were two very different things. After all the trouble and torment he had caused her and her family at Hogwarts, it was hard to trust him, especially to such a degree as this mission required. But it wasn’t at all like a Malfoy to put himself in danger, though it wouldn't surprise her if he were picking things that sounded dangerous just to scare her. The mission was still more important than her sense of ease or comfort, though. If they didn't take care of Nagini, Harry and the Order would have no chance of defeating Voldemort, and that was more important than any lingering distrust of Draco Malfoy.
"All right. So you know what you're talking about when it comes to Muggle stuff." She couldn't quite hide the less than confident tone, and it brought a less than patient sigh from her companion.
"Yes, I do. And I know that parachuting and repelling are our best shots at getting to the cave. And I know that even if we don't have an exact exit strategy yet, we will be able to plan one soon enough."
This time it was the witch who sighed as she once again acknowledged that she was going to have to trust his judgment in this matter. His ideas still made her uncomfortable, but she refrained from saying so, instead reaching up a hand to rub wearily at the headache that was still throbbing in her temples. The first few hours after regaining a memory were never pleasant, especially when they were spent arguing with a Malfoy.
The motion caught his attention, and grey eyes couldn't help narrowing as he pictured her reaction to the map they now knew depicted Nagini's hiding place. Even being annoyed with her as much as he was, the memory of her pale, slightly green face, her distant brown eyes, her shaking limbs, and her groan of pain as she snapped out of it, left him feeling slightly off center.
When he'd seen her have the reaction in his room after she'd first arrived, he had been unsettled, and perhaps even the slightest bit concerned. And then, when it had happened again, less than two hours before, he had felt much the same way. Yet now, knowing it was because she had accessed one of the Dark Lord's memories, actually seen what he had seen, it left an even more noticeably sour feeling in the pit of his stomach. He had met the Dark wizard, and he didn't want to even speculate as to what his memories contained. He certainly didn't want to speculate as to what she had seen or felt, or how sickening, how frightening it much feel to glimpse his thoughts or...
Draco shook his head. He didn't feel sorry for Ginny Weasley. She was a necessary evil to endure in order to destroy the last Horcrux, bring them closer to destroying the Dark Lord, and bring himself closer to having his old life back. His life away from the Tonks' and martial arts, and Aaron, Blake, and Carren, and pop and delivery pizza, and...
Now was not the time for pointless blathering, even if only in his head. If they were to have any chance at success, they needed to get to work. She needed to learn to repel down a shaft, and probably climb back up it, and they both needed to learn how to safely parachute out of a moving plane. Aaron and the others could handle that just fine he was sure, but they'd have to schedule some time with the plane and the rest of the equipment they would need. That was easily enough arranged, but as he reached for the phone to call his friends, he caught sight, once again, of the youngest Weasley rubbing her temples with a look of exhaustion on her freckled face.
"Why don't you go to bed, we’ve been at this long enough for tonight."
Brown eyes rose slowly to meet grey, a mix of relief and suspicion in her gaze. "You sure?"
"Of course I'm bloody sure." Draco took a deep breath before he finished that statement the way he wanted to. "I'm going to go to sleep in a minute myself, just as soon as I give the guys a call and set things up for tomorrow."
It was probably a measure of how much her head hurt that she didn’t question him any further, but instead merely made her way up to the room she had been assigned for her stay. It was probably a measure of how much her involvement was required for a successful outcome that he watched her slowly ascend the stairs before he once again reached for the telephone.
End Chapter Fifteen
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