Chapter Twenty-Four:
They had moved forward as one, their lips meeting almost violently, emotions surging through and between them for several moments before they even became fully aware of what they were doing. They were kissing. Draco Malfoy and Ginny Weasley, former enemies and current partners and semi-friends, were making out rather enthusiastically on an abandoned airstrip in the middle of nowhere and had been doing so for a while. That fact hit them both nearly simultaneously and they pulled apart almost as quickly as they came together.
Silence continued to reign, growing increasingly uncomfortable as their gazes swept the deserted strip of concrete, looking anywhere but at each other. She soon found herself staring intently at the large bag which concealed the giant snake they had gone through so much to obtain. A surge of fear overcame her discomfort enough to allow her to ignore the urge to put some distance between herself and Draco and instead reach out to grasp his arm in a painfully tight grip. His gaze darted back to her face from where it had been fixed on the winch several feet away. The blond opened his mouth but, before he could find his voice, she was suddenly grasping her right earring with her free hand. Ginny canceled the charm concealing her wand in the piece of jewelry and was swishing and flicking almost in the same movement.
The redhead had cast several silencing and sleep spells on the snake and the bag itself before he had a chance to question her. They had, of course, planned to cast the spells as soon as they were safely away from any conceivable reach of the anti-magic wards, but the suddenness with which she had done so surprised him. Still, he waited to ask about her actions, a breathless moment passing, in which they both waited to see if anything would happen. As impossible as it was that there could be a ward against magic on the snake, it was a fear they couldn’t suppress. Once the apparent lack of reaction or consequence to their casting left them feeling at least somewhat comfortable that Death Eaters would not pop out of nowhere to catch them or follow them to their next destination, he turned to her.
She beat him to it, her voice filling the quiet air, her words causing a sudden chill down his spine that had nothing to do with the occasional breeze that drifted through.
“I thought I saw Nagini move.”
They stared at the bag in silence as they watched for any sign of movement from the snake, holding themselves as still as possible, as if doing so would keep the animal still as well. Just as their breath began to return at the lack of noticeable movement, the bag seemed to jerk just the slightest bit, though the movement also appeared to coincide with a small gust of wind. They eyed each other wearily, the partners glancing continuously back at the bag as they spoke.
“Was that the snake moving or just the bag?” Her voice came out as a whisper, scared of being overheard by the animal or through it, by the Dark Lord, despite the newly-cast spells. Though when it came down to it, if the animal was awake, the damage could already have been done. He seemed to share at least some of her fear, despite his words, because his response was just as quiet.
“I think it was just the wind.”
“Right, just the wind,” she agreed in a whisper, though she didn’t miss the fact that he had to jerk his hands back as they started to move towards the bag, perhaps to open it and check to see if the snake was conscious. At least that was what she assumed as she felt the need to clasp her hands tightly behind her back to keep from checking the bag herself.
Silence stretched between them for several minutes with more than a few glances being exchanged and a lot of nervous staring at the bag. Eventually however, they forced themselves to concentrate on something else, knowing that even if the medication had worn off, the Order would still want and need to move forward as soon as possible. And one thing that the Order would need to be able to do so was information that only the two of them had, such as the location and layout of the cave system Voldemort was using to hide his pet and conceivably other similarly important things. Like himself or some of his Death Eaters.
So the partners, after moving several meters down the runway and huddling together, drew up a map of the cave. Even staying busy didn’t keep them from worrying, and they both not only kept one eye on the bag while they worked but they made a point of using pen and paper to carry out their discussions rather than do so verbally. By the time their portkey was almost due to activate, the witch and wizard were both strung so tight that the kiss they exchanged was the furthest thing from their minds. Despite being over fifty kilometers from the cave, and having noticed no other movement of the bag, they couldn’t help thinking that they were far from in the clear.
The last minutes ticked by with painful slowness until it was time. They each placed a hand on the bag containing Nagini and the other on the small portkey that they had been given only two days before. Then they were gone.
The combination of the day’s stress, the portkey’s disorienting tug to their guts, and the impact of the headquarters' wards as they snapped immediately back into place around them, left Ginny almost certain that she was about to lose what little she had eaten that morning. She didn’t have time to even say a silent thank you that her stomach managed to stay down, however, as the grizzled acting head of the Order practically leapt upon them before they so much as regained their balance.
“Did you get it? Were you seen?” Moody reached for the bag still clutched between them before the first question was fully formed, so Draco took a moment to catch his breath, then began to answer the second.
“I don’t think anyone saw us,” the blond stated tiredly.
Ginny, despite her own exhaustion and the nausea still rolling in her stomach, grimaced at the irritated impatience quickly forming on the former Auror’s face. From her previous work with the wizard in acquiring the other Horcruxes and subsequent interrogations, she knew the answer would not satisfy Mad-Eye and she hurriedly stepped in.
“We didn’t see anyone and there was no sign that any spells or alarms had been triggered by our presence. There was no indication that anything had changed around the caves while we were inside or after we exited.”
The wizard stared at her for a moment with one eye while the other remained uncharacteristically fixed on the bag he was still in the process of opening, then nodded and returned his full attention to making sure that the snake was still unconscious. The older wizard took advantage of his colleague’s silence to speak.
“How are you both? No injuries or problems from your adventure today, I hope?” Dumbledore asked with a smile. Draco responded with a short shake of his head, and Ginny managed a small smile at the kindly wizard.
Moody waved away the developing conversation and instead demanded the others’ help in moving the large bag into the back bedroom where he then pulled the former headmaster aside and the two began debating what to do with the comatose Nagini. The two older wizards went back and forth about their concerns about whether it was more important to act quickly in trying to destroy the Horcrux so that Voldemort would not have time to realize the snake was gone, or to be cautious in their attempts in case the wrong approach or action against the snake might somehow alert the Dark Lord through his unknown bond with the animal.
As they argued for and against, one urging swift action and the other advising caution, the redhead finally lost her battle with her mounting stress, fatigue, and whirling emotions. The shaking in her limbs had become visibly noticeable before she had made her way into the corner of the room and was able to slump against the wall with a quiet sigh. Despite Draco’s own unsteadiness on his feet, he was quickly at her side as she began to slide down the wall, the young blond’s hand steadying and slowing her descent.
She met his eyes for several long seconds, but couldn’t work up the energy to actually say anything. Even when they had been waiting for the portkey, there had been something to do, first monitoring the bag with Nagini and mentally evaluating their mission, and then composing the map and list of pertinent information about the maze-like cave system they had infiltrated. Now that they were back at Headquarters, had given their preliminary report, and handed over the snake, there was nothing for them to do and it left them both with entirely too much of an opportunity to think about what had happened which hadn’t been strictly related to their mission. Like the kiss they had shared after they had been picked up by the airplane.
The more time went by, the more that one single event seemed to gain weight until it sat heavily in the air between them. Draco tried his best to ignore the increasing awkwardness, at least long enough to ask his partner if she was all right after nearly collapsing, but was unable to force the words past his lips. Instead, he simply fixed his gaze on the argument occurring on the other side of the room while his hand wordlessly reached out and grasped hers in what he hoped was a reassuring grip. For a moment, he was sure he felt her eyes flick over to him, but the sensation ended almost as soon as it began, and silence continued to reign in their little corner of the room.
The silence had finally become comfortable between the blond and redhead when her soft voice broke him from his reverie. Her words were spoken in a detached, absent tone and he was so sure that she was just mumbling tiredly to herself that he didn’t bother to respond at first, let alone really listen to what she said. It wasn’t until her statement seeped past his exhaustion that he turned slowly to face her.
“...can’t see her eyes...”
“Whose eyes?” Draco asked, the question tumbling out automatically in response to his confusion.
The redhead jumped slightly where she sat, as though startled by the sound of his voice, then blinked slowly several times to bring him into focus before answering. “What?”
“You said something about ‘her eyes’.”
Ginny simply stared at him for another few seconds, processing his question, forcing her tired mind to connect it with what she had just been thinking. “Oh, yeah. I was wondering when they’re going to be done deciding what to do. They’re going to have to open the bag and I am just kind of glad that hasn’t happened yet so I don’t have to see her eyes.” The witch shook her head slightly. “Not that we’ll really be able to see them, since the snake is still unconscious, at least I hope she-”
He lifted a hand to cut off what looked like it could turn into a rather long babble, something he knew that she was prone to do when she was tired. Something she had said at first was raising an indistinct red flag in his mind, but he wasn’t sure what or why. In an effort to pinpoint the feeling, he redirected her back to her initial statement. “What’s the problem with her eyes?”
Brown eyes looked away for several moments before she turned back to him and quietly responded. “Harry used to talk about how much it bothered him when he saw through the snake’s eyes in the dreams Voldemort sent him last year. I didn’t understand until I remembered Nagini. It’s just that when I see Nagini in my- his memories, her eyes are always so creepy looking. I mean, she’s scary anyway, but her eyes, they’re...”
She trailed off, a noticeable shudder working through her as she fell quiet and it was that silence, that inability to articulate how much the snake’s eyes scared her that made him think. Draco thought about all the different things she had told him over the last few months about the things she had remembered, especially about the Dark Lord and his pet. He thought about the link that existed between the two evil beings and how important it was that both were destroyed. The problem was how to go about doing that. She had told him more than once the difficulty she, Moody, and Dumbledore had had in destroying the other Horcruxes. It had taken Gryffindor’s sword to destroy the Ravenclaw desk, and it had taken hours and countless attempts until they had literally melted Hufflepuff’s cup.
All other thoughts came to a screeching halt in his head as the last repeated itself over and over about half a dozen times. There was something about the cup, something about the eyes. His heart pounded in his chest and his mind spun. Harry had seen through Nagini’s eyes. Voldemort saw through her eyes. Voldemort was linked to the snake. The thing that stood out to Ginny in her recollections was the snake’s eyes, and there was something about destroying Hufflepuff’s cup that stood out to him. What was it about the cup that bothered him? What was it about the eyes that bothered Harry, that bothered Ginny? The eyes scared her the most. The key was in the eyes. The key was in the cup. Melted. No, not melted, that wasn’t quite it. But the image it conjured in his head was almost right.
“Liquefiat.”
End Chapter Twenty-Four
They had moved forward as one, their lips meeting almost violently, emotions surging through and between them for several moments before they even became fully aware of what they were doing. They were kissing. Draco Malfoy and Ginny Weasley, former enemies and current partners and semi-friends, were making out rather enthusiastically on an abandoned airstrip in the middle of nowhere and had been doing so for a while. That fact hit them both nearly simultaneously and they pulled apart almost as quickly as they came together.
Silence continued to reign, growing increasingly uncomfortable as their gazes swept the deserted strip of concrete, looking anywhere but at each other. She soon found herself staring intently at the large bag which concealed the giant snake they had gone through so much to obtain. A surge of fear overcame her discomfort enough to allow her to ignore the urge to put some distance between herself and Draco and instead reach out to grasp his arm in a painfully tight grip. His gaze darted back to her face from where it had been fixed on the winch several feet away. The blond opened his mouth but, before he could find his voice, she was suddenly grasping her right earring with her free hand. Ginny canceled the charm concealing her wand in the piece of jewelry and was swishing and flicking almost in the same movement.
The redhead had cast several silencing and sleep spells on the snake and the bag itself before he had a chance to question her. They had, of course, planned to cast the spells as soon as they were safely away from any conceivable reach of the anti-magic wards, but the suddenness with which she had done so surprised him. Still, he waited to ask about her actions, a breathless moment passing, in which they both waited to see if anything would happen. As impossible as it was that there could be a ward against magic on the snake, it was a fear they couldn’t suppress. Once the apparent lack of reaction or consequence to their casting left them feeling at least somewhat comfortable that Death Eaters would not pop out of nowhere to catch them or follow them to their next destination, he turned to her.
She beat him to it, her voice filling the quiet air, her words causing a sudden chill down his spine that had nothing to do with the occasional breeze that drifted through.
“I thought I saw Nagini move.”
They stared at the bag in silence as they watched for any sign of movement from the snake, holding themselves as still as possible, as if doing so would keep the animal still as well. Just as their breath began to return at the lack of noticeable movement, the bag seemed to jerk just the slightest bit, though the movement also appeared to coincide with a small gust of wind. They eyed each other wearily, the partners glancing continuously back at the bag as they spoke.
“Was that the snake moving or just the bag?” Her voice came out as a whisper, scared of being overheard by the animal or through it, by the Dark Lord, despite the newly-cast spells. Though when it came down to it, if the animal was awake, the damage could already have been done. He seemed to share at least some of her fear, despite his words, because his response was just as quiet.
“I think it was just the wind.”
“Right, just the wind,” she agreed in a whisper, though she didn’t miss the fact that he had to jerk his hands back as they started to move towards the bag, perhaps to open it and check to see if the snake was conscious. At least that was what she assumed as she felt the need to clasp her hands tightly behind her back to keep from checking the bag herself.
Silence stretched between them for several minutes with more than a few glances being exchanged and a lot of nervous staring at the bag. Eventually however, they forced themselves to concentrate on something else, knowing that even if the medication had worn off, the Order would still want and need to move forward as soon as possible. And one thing that the Order would need to be able to do so was information that only the two of them had, such as the location and layout of the cave system Voldemort was using to hide his pet and conceivably other similarly important things. Like himself or some of his Death Eaters.
So the partners, after moving several meters down the runway and huddling together, drew up a map of the cave. Even staying busy didn’t keep them from worrying, and they both not only kept one eye on the bag while they worked but they made a point of using pen and paper to carry out their discussions rather than do so verbally. By the time their portkey was almost due to activate, the witch and wizard were both strung so tight that the kiss they exchanged was the furthest thing from their minds. Despite being over fifty kilometers from the cave, and having noticed no other movement of the bag, they couldn’t help thinking that they were far from in the clear.
The last minutes ticked by with painful slowness until it was time. They each placed a hand on the bag containing Nagini and the other on the small portkey that they had been given only two days before. Then they were gone.
The combination of the day’s stress, the portkey’s disorienting tug to their guts, and the impact of the headquarters' wards as they snapped immediately back into place around them, left Ginny almost certain that she was about to lose what little she had eaten that morning. She didn’t have time to even say a silent thank you that her stomach managed to stay down, however, as the grizzled acting head of the Order practically leapt upon them before they so much as regained their balance.
“Did you get it? Were you seen?” Moody reached for the bag still clutched between them before the first question was fully formed, so Draco took a moment to catch his breath, then began to answer the second.
“I don’t think anyone saw us,” the blond stated tiredly.
Ginny, despite her own exhaustion and the nausea still rolling in her stomach, grimaced at the irritated impatience quickly forming on the former Auror’s face. From her previous work with the wizard in acquiring the other Horcruxes and subsequent interrogations, she knew the answer would not satisfy Mad-Eye and she hurriedly stepped in.
“We didn’t see anyone and there was no sign that any spells or alarms had been triggered by our presence. There was no indication that anything had changed around the caves while we were inside or after we exited.”
The wizard stared at her for a moment with one eye while the other remained uncharacteristically fixed on the bag he was still in the process of opening, then nodded and returned his full attention to making sure that the snake was still unconscious. The older wizard took advantage of his colleague’s silence to speak.
“How are you both? No injuries or problems from your adventure today, I hope?” Dumbledore asked with a smile. Draco responded with a short shake of his head, and Ginny managed a small smile at the kindly wizard.
Moody waved away the developing conversation and instead demanded the others’ help in moving the large bag into the back bedroom where he then pulled the former headmaster aside and the two began debating what to do with the comatose Nagini. The two older wizards went back and forth about their concerns about whether it was more important to act quickly in trying to destroy the Horcrux so that Voldemort would not have time to realize the snake was gone, or to be cautious in their attempts in case the wrong approach or action against the snake might somehow alert the Dark Lord through his unknown bond with the animal.
As they argued for and against, one urging swift action and the other advising caution, the redhead finally lost her battle with her mounting stress, fatigue, and whirling emotions. The shaking in her limbs had become visibly noticeable before she had made her way into the corner of the room and was able to slump against the wall with a quiet sigh. Despite Draco’s own unsteadiness on his feet, he was quickly at her side as she began to slide down the wall, the young blond’s hand steadying and slowing her descent.
She met his eyes for several long seconds, but couldn’t work up the energy to actually say anything. Even when they had been waiting for the portkey, there had been something to do, first monitoring the bag with Nagini and mentally evaluating their mission, and then composing the map and list of pertinent information about the maze-like cave system they had infiltrated. Now that they were back at Headquarters, had given their preliminary report, and handed over the snake, there was nothing for them to do and it left them both with entirely too much of an opportunity to think about what had happened which hadn’t been strictly related to their mission. Like the kiss they had shared after they had been picked up by the airplane.
The more time went by, the more that one single event seemed to gain weight until it sat heavily in the air between them. Draco tried his best to ignore the increasing awkwardness, at least long enough to ask his partner if she was all right after nearly collapsing, but was unable to force the words past his lips. Instead, he simply fixed his gaze on the argument occurring on the other side of the room while his hand wordlessly reached out and grasped hers in what he hoped was a reassuring grip. For a moment, he was sure he felt her eyes flick over to him, but the sensation ended almost as soon as it began, and silence continued to reign in their little corner of the room.
The silence had finally become comfortable between the blond and redhead when her soft voice broke him from his reverie. Her words were spoken in a detached, absent tone and he was so sure that she was just mumbling tiredly to herself that he didn’t bother to respond at first, let alone really listen to what she said. It wasn’t until her statement seeped past his exhaustion that he turned slowly to face her.
“...can’t see her eyes...”
“Whose eyes?” Draco asked, the question tumbling out automatically in response to his confusion.
The redhead jumped slightly where she sat, as though startled by the sound of his voice, then blinked slowly several times to bring him into focus before answering. “What?”
“You said something about ‘her eyes’.”
Ginny simply stared at him for another few seconds, processing his question, forcing her tired mind to connect it with what she had just been thinking. “Oh, yeah. I was wondering when they’re going to be done deciding what to do. They’re going to have to open the bag and I am just kind of glad that hasn’t happened yet so I don’t have to see her eyes.” The witch shook her head slightly. “Not that we’ll really be able to see them, since the snake is still unconscious, at least I hope she-”
He lifted a hand to cut off what looked like it could turn into a rather long babble, something he knew that she was prone to do when she was tired. Something she had said at first was raising an indistinct red flag in his mind, but he wasn’t sure what or why. In an effort to pinpoint the feeling, he redirected her back to her initial statement. “What’s the problem with her eyes?”
Brown eyes looked away for several moments before she turned back to him and quietly responded. “Harry used to talk about how much it bothered him when he saw through the snake’s eyes in the dreams Voldemort sent him last year. I didn’t understand until I remembered Nagini. It’s just that when I see Nagini in my- his memories, her eyes are always so creepy looking. I mean, she’s scary anyway, but her eyes, they’re...”
She trailed off, a noticeable shudder working through her as she fell quiet and it was that silence, that inability to articulate how much the snake’s eyes scared her that made him think. Draco thought about all the different things she had told him over the last few months about the things she had remembered, especially about the Dark Lord and his pet. He thought about the link that existed between the two evil beings and how important it was that both were destroyed. The problem was how to go about doing that. She had told him more than once the difficulty she, Moody, and Dumbledore had had in destroying the other Horcruxes. It had taken Gryffindor’s sword to destroy the Ravenclaw desk, and it had taken hours and countless attempts until they had literally melted Hufflepuff’s cup.
All other thoughts came to a screeching halt in his head as the last repeated itself over and over about half a dozen times. There was something about the cup, something about the eyes. His heart pounded in his chest and his mind spun. Harry had seen through Nagini’s eyes. Voldemort saw through her eyes. Voldemort was linked to the snake. The thing that stood out to Ginny in her recollections was the snake’s eyes, and there was something about destroying Hufflepuff’s cup that stood out to him. What was it about the cup that bothered him? What was it about the eyes that bothered Harry, that bothered Ginny? The eyes scared her the most. The key was in the eyes. The key was in the cup. Melted. No, not melted, that wasn’t quite it. But the image it conjured in his head was almost right.
“Liquefiat.”
End Chapter Twenty-Four
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