Finding Color
By Mell8
--------------------
Part Three:
Harry, Ron and Hermione arrived later that week to much crying and sobbing on Molly Weasley’s part. They were scratched, scathed, and hurt, but still alive, and were almost killed again when Molly strangled them in her arms.
Ginny smiled happily with everyone else but stayed out of their way. She couldn’t see where they were injured, so she couldn’t offer help healing them. She also couldn’t remember any of their faces.
Ron’s she had a vague idea of: long nose, freckles, and red hair. She remembered Hermione’s bushy brown hair, but the rest of the girl escaped Ginny’s memories. Did she have buckteeth or had those mysteriously vanished one year?
And Harry, beloved Harry, she couldn’t remember at all.
She knew his hair was a mess and that he had a scar somewhere on his forehead, but that was all.
When he kissed her the first time she missed his lips entirely, thinking that he was taller than he really was. Draco’s lips were at the height she reached for, but Harry was smaller with less muscular shoulders and a much more rounded face, Ginny felt, as he slobbered and sucked until she felt sick.
Ginny found herself missing the cool assuredness of Draco’s arms. She missed how his lips found hers so unerringly and how any wetness that ensued was from his tongue purposefully gliding along her lips before delving into her open mouth.
Harry’s kiss left her wanting a sponge to wipe up the drool and slobber, like a dog, when his lips tried to find hers. Maybe it was inexperience on Harry’s part and he would improve with practice, but Ginny found that she didn’t want to be the one Harry practiced on.
She gently broke up with him three nights into his stay at the Burrow.
The Order had taken refuge at the Burrow now that the trio had completely given away Grimmauld Place to the Ministry during their travels, and, now that Snape had defected and no doubt told Voldemort everything, they doubly didn’t want to go anywhere the Death Eaters might suspect.
The Burrow was their way of hiding in plain sight; only there were enough wards around the Weasley’s house to keep anything unfriendly away. They had added another floor that circumvented the ghoul in the attic with three rooms for anyone who needed to say over.
The best thing about the Order being at the Burrow was the fact that they couldn’t exclude Ginny from their meetings any longer. Ginny went right up to her mum and point blank told her that she could hear the meetings from anywhere in the house so she might as well be included.
Arthur had agreed, saying Ginny was certainly old enough, now that she was seventeen and could make her own decisions according to the Ministry. Molly had very reluctantly allowed her youngest into the meetings.
And nobody noticed that Ginny never looked them in the eye, or even that she rarely opened her eyes at all. Luna had noticed easily and Draco had come to his own conclusions eventually. But her family, who should have known her best of all, noticed nothing.
“We’ve gotten all the Horcruxes,” Harry reiterated for the fifth time in just this meeting. A month ago he had finally broken down and explained what the hell he, Ron, and Hermione had been doing for an entire year. “There’s just Nagini, Voldemort’s snake, and Voldemort himself.”
“Yeah,” Mad-Eye Moody snarled. “But we can’t get close to him. We’ve got no idea where he is or even what he’s doing. Now that we’ve lost our spy, we’re completely blinded.”
“And it’s safe to assume that You-Know-Who has a spy on us somewhere, so he’s not blind at all to our movements,” Arthur added in.
“If only there was someone we could-” Molly began but was interrupted by Mad-Eye.
“There isn’t, Molly. He’s got all his Death Eater scum locked away somewhere and is still managing to control the Ministry, Hogwarts, and just about the entirety of Wizarding Britain from his hiding spot.”
“We can’t get anyone to infiltrate?” Charlie asked as he leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees. “Ron, you don’t have any Slytherin friends who you could ask for help?”
Ron snorted. “Of course not. They’re scum. Why would I make friends with them?”
The conversation continued on, circling around the same problems, all of which could be solved with a spy inside Voldemort’s inner circle. Ginny sat in her seat, squished on the couch between her mother and Professor McGonagall, and thought about Draco Malfoy.
His grey eyes still burned in her memory as they had searched her out on the train platform one last time, but he had disappeared after that. She hadn’t gotten any correspondence from him at all and the Order hadn’t heard anything about the young Malfoy. He had simply vanished.
And now the Order needed someone inside Voldemort’s inner circle, right where Draco was. She wondered if he remembered her words about spying and fighting back against Voldemort. She certainly remembered his about the probability of his death if he tried.
Yet, one thing stood out in her mind from their conversation. “The only way neither of us would be dead would be if I were an Order member or if you were a Death Eater.” He laughed. “If I joined the Order, Voldemort would still kill us both. If you joined the Death Eaters, your family would abandon you.”
Draco was clearly not about to join the Order and in the weeks since she had last seen him, he had certainly not stooped to spying. But she could become a Death Eater, couldn’t she? And if her family knew about it, they certainly wouldn’t abandon her. Of course, that was only if they allowed her to do it in the first place. This would take some delicacy.
“What if,” Ginny began, breaking through the argument between Bill and Mad-Eye about capturing and interrogating any possible known Death Eater for information.
“What if I told you that I might have a way to get you that information you needed?” she continued once everyone’s eyes were on her. She didn’t look up from her hands so they wouldn’t notice that her eyes were closed as she spoke.
“I would wonder why you haven’t told us this before,” Moody snapped.
“Because I would have to leave,” Ginny said and her mum gasped out a “no”. “I would have to go and speak with him, face to face, and I probably wouldn’t be able to return home until this war was over.”
“Absolutely not!” Molly snapped.
“This is the chance we need!” Moody snapped. “We could finally win this war if we got this information.”
“Molly,” Arthur added in a pained voice as he looked at his daughter’s bowed head and clasped hands. “Ginny is a perfectly capable witch and she didn’t say anything about her being hurt. If she can get us this information we can end the war quickly and bring her back home.”
“I don’t like it!” Molly snapped.
“You don’t have to like it,” McGonagall chimed in. “Like Arthur and Alastor said, if she can get us the information, then we should let her go.”
None of the Weasley’s were happy about this idea. Ginny could see their magic angrily swirling in their bodies.
“Can you do this and get us the information we need without killing yourself?” Lupin spoke up for the first time this meeting. Sitting next to him was Tonks who was nodding in agreement.
“I can,” Ginny said with absolute conviction in her voice.
“Then do it,” Lupin replied.
“No!” Molly wailed, but Ginny ignored her and stood from her seat.
“Give me a few weeks before you get worried,” Ginny said to Lupin before turning and leaving the room.
She went up to her room and packed a small bag of things like underwear, things she knew she wouldn’t find where she was going. She hoisted her bag onto her back, called on her magic, and vanished from her childhood home.
She reappeared in Wiltshire, just outside of the gates to Malfoy Manor. She cloaked herself in her magic and sat down on a nearby rock to wait.
The white peacocks grazing on the front lawn were beautiful, Ginny mused as she sat and waited for a couple hours. The magic inside of them was so pure. She couldn’t help laughing at the irony of such purity being a part of the Malfoy family home.
And then, she felt it. Winging its way through the air like a siren call of doom, came the dark call of Lord Voldemort. It impacted with two people inside of the Manor. Ginny felt Draco’s wince but he didn’t move to go anywhere. The call must not be for him.
Lucius Malfoy, on the other hand, immediately stood and reached for his Death Eater robes and mask. Ginny let out a lasso of magic that she wrapped around the eldest Malfoy. When he Apparated away, her lasso dragged her along with him. She was pulled to outside the gates of a run down old mansion in Little Hangleton.
Ginny let her lasso of magic go before Malfoy noticed it and felt his presence join a large number of other dark magic users, Voldemort among them. It was now or never for her.
Ginny’s magic let her walk through the wards without tripping them. She walked right up to the house, let herself in, and walked to the largest drawing room, all without anyone noticing her.
She took a deep, steadying breath outside the door before reaching up and knocking. The voices inside the room were silenced in surprise as Ginny waited for someone to open the door.
“Enter!” came the high, cold voice of Lord Voldemort himself. Ginny reached out, grasped the doorknob, and pushed open the door. She walked into the room amid gasps of horror and pleasure at having someone new to torture.
“A Weasley!” Voldemort crowed, sounding excited at the prospect of all she would tell him under duress. “Do come in.”
“Hello,” Ginny said amicably as she stopped in front of Voldemort’s chair. She conjured up a chair of her own and gracefully sat down across from him.
“And what,” Voldemort hissed, “can I help you with, Miss Weasley?”
“I have come to offer my services to your cause,” she said with a smirk at him.
“Your services?” a woman laughed cruelly. “Crucio!” she screamed through her laughter. The spell flew towards Ginny and dissipated the second it came in contact with her magic. Nothing dark could ever touch her, be it a spell or a creature; her magic wouldn’t allow it.
“Now, now, Bella,” Voldemort said calmly, as if young girls calmly walked into a meeting of the most dangerous people in the world and then brushed aside one of the most painful spells ever created as if it all were nothing. “She is offering her aid to us freely.”
“Not entirely,” Ginny corrected as she leaned back in her chair. This was going exactly as she had hoped.
Voldemort picked up on her conditions and frowned. “Meaning?”
“I have power. A lot of power,” Ginny began.
“And it’s being squandered with the Order, isn’t it,” Voldemort laughed, as if he heard this all the time.
“No,” Ginny shook her head emphatically. “I don’t want to use it at all, and you can give me that.”
“Don’t want to use power?” Bella laughed and Voldemort let out a chuckle of his own. If he had power, he used it, but this little girl with the clasped hands and bowed head wanted him to get rid of it for her. Well, he would gladly take that power from her.
“Of course I don’t,” Ginny laughed. Then she slowly lifted her head to look at Voldemort and opened her eyes.
Voldemort gasped and bent forward in his chair. He reached out one finger and brushed it just under her eye. Ginny refused to flinch at the cold slimy sensation of Voldemort’s finger touching her as he examined her blind eyes. She refused to let her magic zap the Dark creature touching her either.
“Your power removes your sight?” Voldemort guessed.
“I lost my sight a long time ago,” Ginny disagreed. “My magic gives me back a semblance of sight. It’s why dark magic can’t touch me. What I want is my sight back.”
“By taking your power I give you sight back?” Voldemort guessed again.
Ginny laughed. “No. You have in your employ a person whose presence negates my blindness. If you give me that person then I’ll give you what knowledge I have left to give.”
“A person?” Voldemort said skeptically.
“Yes,” Ginny stood. She turned to the back of the room and looked directly at Lucius Malfoy as she said, “I want Draco Malfoy.”
III
Draco was sleeping, dreaming about Ginny, when his arm began to burn. Voldemort was calling, but he was calling for his inner circle. Draco was not invited so he rolled back over and tried to go back to sleep.
Her eyes, once a dark brown but now a light tan color, looking after him as her father guided her out of the train station, haunted him. He wanted to go after her, tell her how much he missed her, but that was impossible. He wanted to spy as she had asked, but that was impossible as well. Instead he wallowed in misery, caught between his love for her and his duty to his father.
He was just drifting back off to sleep when the door to his room slammed open. His father stood in the doorway, looking incensed and worried.
“I don’t know what you did to her, Draco,” Lucius said as he ripped the covers off his son, “but she’s requested your presence and the Dark Lord has seconded it. Hurry, and get dressed.”
“Who wants me?” Draco asked, utterly confused, as he rushed to find clothing. His father didn’t answer and instead focused his wand to fix Draco’s sleep mussed hair.
When Draco was dressed, Lucius took his son’s arm and Apparated them to Voldemort’s meeting room in the old Riddle house.
“My Lord,” Lucius stepped forward and bent into a bow. “I have brought him.”
“Bring the boy forward,” Voldemort snapped.
Draco couldn’t stop the shiver that went down his back at that hateful voice. It was the same voice that had threatened the lives of his family if he didn’t kill Dumbledore. It was the same voice that had punished him when Snape had to accomplish the task for him. Draco hated that voice as much as he had ever hated anything.
His father’s strong hand on his arm was the only thing that got his feet moving. Draco shuffled forwards.
“Draco!”
Her voice rang through the room and Draco’s head snapped up in absolute shock. What was she doing here? She was standing behind an armchair that had her magical signature all over it with Voldemort hovering menacingly over her.
She looked up at him with her eyes open and he gasped. They were milky white, all color leached from them, but as he neared, he, and everyone else watching her eyes, could see the pupil suddenly open, as if it had two lids to close itself with. Suddenly she had one small black spot at the center of each ball of white.
“Incredible,” Voldemort murmured to himself.
“Ginny? What are you doing here? Are you okay?” Draco’s voice might have sounded worried, but it was forgotten as he gave up all sense of propriety and rushed over to her.
She eagerly tucked herself into his arms as they circled her.
“I wanted to see again,” she said in a voice loud enough to project through the room. Draco could tell she was lying, but only because he knew her so well. “You give me that, so I came here.”
“You silly girl,” he said in a slightly quieter voice, giving the illusion to everyone listening in to their conversation that he was trying to say something private. “You didn’t have to come here and endanger yourself.”
“She has offered her powers to me in return for you, Malfoy,” Voldemort hissed, interrupting their conversation.
Ginny pulled herself free of Draco’s arms and laughed. “I most certainly did not! I offered you my services and when you did not agree to take them, I offered you what knowledge I have left to give instead. My powers were never offered, only spoken about,” Ginny smiled up at Voldemort as he seethed. “You have given me Draco, so, when you ask, I will give you knowledge.”
“It’s too bad for you, Miss Weasley,” Voldemort hissed, angry that he had been duped and that he was about to lose taking her powers for himself. His wand rose to menacingly point at her before he continued. “That you are here, under my power. You will do as I tell you or you will perish.”
Draco thought that Ginny willingly backed into his arms, but knew that it wasn’t for comfort. It was almost as if she were protecting him. Her eyes were closed and her skin gave off a pale white glow that let Draco know she was using her magic. He closed his hands on her shoulders.
“I came here under my own power and I will leave here under my own power,” Ginny snapped. “When you want what I have offered, call Draco to you and I will come as well.”
Draco felt a pulling sensation, much like when traveling by Portkey, and when his eyes focused again they were inside his bedroom in Malfoy Manor.
“He’s going to kill you, you know,” Draco said as he guided her over to sit on his bed.
“He won’t be able to,” Ginny said, although her voice didn’t sound nearly as steady as it had a few seconds ago. She was shaking so Draco quickly joined her on the bed and wrapped his arms comfortingly around her.
“Gods, what are you doing here?” Draco moaned as she crawled into his lap.
“Saving your life,” she said into his neck. “Spying for the Order, since you certainly can’t. Using you so I can see again. Take your pick.”
“Endangering your life. Scaring me half to death. Take your pick,” Draco echoed with a worried snarl.
He could tell that she was afraid. Who wouldn’t be after coming face-to-face with Voldemort and surviving the encounter? The aftershocks of what she had done were shaking her body so much that he was afraid his arms wouldn’t hold her.
“Calm down, Ginny,” Draco said. He was worried that she might hurt himself if she didn’t relax.
Her magic was also flaring along her body, giving off little flashes of light that made Draco want to close his eyes from the sudden glare.
“Shh,” Draco whispered as he began to rock her in his arms. “I’ve got you. It’s okay.”
Slowly, ever so slowly, she calmed down. By the time Lucius Malfoy came storming into the room she was asleep, happily snuggled in his arms.
“Draco!” Lucius snapped.
Draco held up his hand to forestall his father before the man could yell anything else and wake up Ginny.
“Don’t wake her up,” Draco whispered.
“What the hell’s going on?” Lucius snarled in a slightly quieter voice.
“Ginny and I found out that I give her back her colors,” Draco said to stay in keeping with the story Ginny was using. “Our relationship stems from there.”
“Relationship?” Lucius sniffed. “With a Weasley?”
“With a witch who can use wandless magic like it was a child’s toy,” Draco corrected, although he gave Ginny a discrete squeeze just in case she was listening.
“Wandless magic,” Lucius scoffed. “Impossible.”
“She lost her wand sometime in her fifth year at school,” Draco said sharply as he felt Ginny stir in his arms. “Since she doesn’t need it, she never went looking for it.”
“You’re telling me she conjured a chair, deflected an Unforgivable Curse, and Apparated out of a room covered in anti-apparition wards, all without a wand?”
“I did,” Ginny spoke up as she lifted her head from Draco’s shoulder. “And now I’m tired. Please go away.”
Lucius Malfoy spluttered. “You are in my house and have effectively kidnapped my son from me. How dare you speak to me like this!”
Ginny sighed and pulled herself from Draco’s comforting arms. She got off the bed and stood, staring defiantly at Draco’s father.
“I don’t really care what you think,” she sighed out. “I am here for a reason and the fact that the reason includes your son, which therefore has you terribly worried for his safety, does not mean that you have the right to yell at me.”
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Draco sighed and rolled over so he wouldn’t have to watch his father go through Ginny’s inspection.
“You enjoy having power over others,” she said in that echoing voice of hers that lifted the hairs on Draco’s neck. “You enjoy watching others come to you asking for mercy. However, you do not enjoy it when you can’t grant that mercy on your own terms. You joined Voldemort for the illusion of the power he said he could give you. Now you’re stuck, powerless and sick of killing those who used to grudgingly come to you for aid.”
“And you know all of this how?” Lucius sneered, trying to pretend that her words hadn’t rattled him.
“The same way I know that Draco doesn’t hate you for dragging him into this,” Ginny replied with a sad smile as she finally opened her eyes. “Now, if we’re done with the power play, I really am tired.”
She turned away from Draco’s father and Draco rolled back over to let her climb back into his arms. She had clearly been up late before making her entrance to the Death Eaters and then she used enough magic to seriously deplete her stores. Draco had been woken up in the middle of the night to come collect her, so he was just as tired.
Lucius Malfoy left and it wasn’t long before they were both asleep.
By Mell8
--------------------
Part Three:
Harry, Ron and Hermione arrived later that week to much crying and sobbing on Molly Weasley’s part. They were scratched, scathed, and hurt, but still alive, and were almost killed again when Molly strangled them in her arms.
Ginny smiled happily with everyone else but stayed out of their way. She couldn’t see where they were injured, so she couldn’t offer help healing them. She also couldn’t remember any of their faces.
Ron’s she had a vague idea of: long nose, freckles, and red hair. She remembered Hermione’s bushy brown hair, but the rest of the girl escaped Ginny’s memories. Did she have buckteeth or had those mysteriously vanished one year?
And Harry, beloved Harry, she couldn’t remember at all.
She knew his hair was a mess and that he had a scar somewhere on his forehead, but that was all.
When he kissed her the first time she missed his lips entirely, thinking that he was taller than he really was. Draco’s lips were at the height she reached for, but Harry was smaller with less muscular shoulders and a much more rounded face, Ginny felt, as he slobbered and sucked until she felt sick.
Ginny found herself missing the cool assuredness of Draco’s arms. She missed how his lips found hers so unerringly and how any wetness that ensued was from his tongue purposefully gliding along her lips before delving into her open mouth.
Harry’s kiss left her wanting a sponge to wipe up the drool and slobber, like a dog, when his lips tried to find hers. Maybe it was inexperience on Harry’s part and he would improve with practice, but Ginny found that she didn’t want to be the one Harry practiced on.
She gently broke up with him three nights into his stay at the Burrow.
The Order had taken refuge at the Burrow now that the trio had completely given away Grimmauld Place to the Ministry during their travels, and, now that Snape had defected and no doubt told Voldemort everything, they doubly didn’t want to go anywhere the Death Eaters might suspect.
The Burrow was their way of hiding in plain sight; only there were enough wards around the Weasley’s house to keep anything unfriendly away. They had added another floor that circumvented the ghoul in the attic with three rooms for anyone who needed to say over.
The best thing about the Order being at the Burrow was the fact that they couldn’t exclude Ginny from their meetings any longer. Ginny went right up to her mum and point blank told her that she could hear the meetings from anywhere in the house so she might as well be included.
Arthur had agreed, saying Ginny was certainly old enough, now that she was seventeen and could make her own decisions according to the Ministry. Molly had very reluctantly allowed her youngest into the meetings.
And nobody noticed that Ginny never looked them in the eye, or even that she rarely opened her eyes at all. Luna had noticed easily and Draco had come to his own conclusions eventually. But her family, who should have known her best of all, noticed nothing.
“We’ve gotten all the Horcruxes,” Harry reiterated for the fifth time in just this meeting. A month ago he had finally broken down and explained what the hell he, Ron, and Hermione had been doing for an entire year. “There’s just Nagini, Voldemort’s snake, and Voldemort himself.”
“Yeah,” Mad-Eye Moody snarled. “But we can’t get close to him. We’ve got no idea where he is or even what he’s doing. Now that we’ve lost our spy, we’re completely blinded.”
“And it’s safe to assume that You-Know-Who has a spy on us somewhere, so he’s not blind at all to our movements,” Arthur added in.
“If only there was someone we could-” Molly began but was interrupted by Mad-Eye.
“There isn’t, Molly. He’s got all his Death Eater scum locked away somewhere and is still managing to control the Ministry, Hogwarts, and just about the entirety of Wizarding Britain from his hiding spot.”
“We can’t get anyone to infiltrate?” Charlie asked as he leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees. “Ron, you don’t have any Slytherin friends who you could ask for help?”
Ron snorted. “Of course not. They’re scum. Why would I make friends with them?”
The conversation continued on, circling around the same problems, all of which could be solved with a spy inside Voldemort’s inner circle. Ginny sat in her seat, squished on the couch between her mother and Professor McGonagall, and thought about Draco Malfoy.
His grey eyes still burned in her memory as they had searched her out on the train platform one last time, but he had disappeared after that. She hadn’t gotten any correspondence from him at all and the Order hadn’t heard anything about the young Malfoy. He had simply vanished.
And now the Order needed someone inside Voldemort’s inner circle, right where Draco was. She wondered if he remembered her words about spying and fighting back against Voldemort. She certainly remembered his about the probability of his death if he tried.
Yet, one thing stood out in her mind from their conversation. “The only way neither of us would be dead would be if I were an Order member or if you were a Death Eater.” He laughed. “If I joined the Order, Voldemort would still kill us both. If you joined the Death Eaters, your family would abandon you.”
Draco was clearly not about to join the Order and in the weeks since she had last seen him, he had certainly not stooped to spying. But she could become a Death Eater, couldn’t she? And if her family knew about it, they certainly wouldn’t abandon her. Of course, that was only if they allowed her to do it in the first place. This would take some delicacy.
“What if,” Ginny began, breaking through the argument between Bill and Mad-Eye about capturing and interrogating any possible known Death Eater for information.
“What if I told you that I might have a way to get you that information you needed?” she continued once everyone’s eyes were on her. She didn’t look up from her hands so they wouldn’t notice that her eyes were closed as she spoke.
“I would wonder why you haven’t told us this before,” Moody snapped.
“Because I would have to leave,” Ginny said and her mum gasped out a “no”. “I would have to go and speak with him, face to face, and I probably wouldn’t be able to return home until this war was over.”
“Absolutely not!” Molly snapped.
“This is the chance we need!” Moody snapped. “We could finally win this war if we got this information.”
“Molly,” Arthur added in a pained voice as he looked at his daughter’s bowed head and clasped hands. “Ginny is a perfectly capable witch and she didn’t say anything about her being hurt. If she can get us this information we can end the war quickly and bring her back home.”
“I don’t like it!” Molly snapped.
“You don’t have to like it,” McGonagall chimed in. “Like Arthur and Alastor said, if she can get us the information, then we should let her go.”
None of the Weasley’s were happy about this idea. Ginny could see their magic angrily swirling in their bodies.
“Can you do this and get us the information we need without killing yourself?” Lupin spoke up for the first time this meeting. Sitting next to him was Tonks who was nodding in agreement.
“I can,” Ginny said with absolute conviction in her voice.
“Then do it,” Lupin replied.
“No!” Molly wailed, but Ginny ignored her and stood from her seat.
“Give me a few weeks before you get worried,” Ginny said to Lupin before turning and leaving the room.
She went up to her room and packed a small bag of things like underwear, things she knew she wouldn’t find where she was going. She hoisted her bag onto her back, called on her magic, and vanished from her childhood home.
She reappeared in Wiltshire, just outside of the gates to Malfoy Manor. She cloaked herself in her magic and sat down on a nearby rock to wait.
The white peacocks grazing on the front lawn were beautiful, Ginny mused as she sat and waited for a couple hours. The magic inside of them was so pure. She couldn’t help laughing at the irony of such purity being a part of the Malfoy family home.
And then, she felt it. Winging its way through the air like a siren call of doom, came the dark call of Lord Voldemort. It impacted with two people inside of the Manor. Ginny felt Draco’s wince but he didn’t move to go anywhere. The call must not be for him.
Lucius Malfoy, on the other hand, immediately stood and reached for his Death Eater robes and mask. Ginny let out a lasso of magic that she wrapped around the eldest Malfoy. When he Apparated away, her lasso dragged her along with him. She was pulled to outside the gates of a run down old mansion in Little Hangleton.
Ginny let her lasso of magic go before Malfoy noticed it and felt his presence join a large number of other dark magic users, Voldemort among them. It was now or never for her.
Ginny’s magic let her walk through the wards without tripping them. She walked right up to the house, let herself in, and walked to the largest drawing room, all without anyone noticing her.
She took a deep, steadying breath outside the door before reaching up and knocking. The voices inside the room were silenced in surprise as Ginny waited for someone to open the door.
“Enter!” came the high, cold voice of Lord Voldemort himself. Ginny reached out, grasped the doorknob, and pushed open the door. She walked into the room amid gasps of horror and pleasure at having someone new to torture.
“A Weasley!” Voldemort crowed, sounding excited at the prospect of all she would tell him under duress. “Do come in.”
“Hello,” Ginny said amicably as she stopped in front of Voldemort’s chair. She conjured up a chair of her own and gracefully sat down across from him.
“And what,” Voldemort hissed, “can I help you with, Miss Weasley?”
“I have come to offer my services to your cause,” she said with a smirk at him.
“Your services?” a woman laughed cruelly. “Crucio!” she screamed through her laughter. The spell flew towards Ginny and dissipated the second it came in contact with her magic. Nothing dark could ever touch her, be it a spell or a creature; her magic wouldn’t allow it.
“Now, now, Bella,” Voldemort said calmly, as if young girls calmly walked into a meeting of the most dangerous people in the world and then brushed aside one of the most painful spells ever created as if it all were nothing. “She is offering her aid to us freely.”
“Not entirely,” Ginny corrected as she leaned back in her chair. This was going exactly as she had hoped.
Voldemort picked up on her conditions and frowned. “Meaning?”
“I have power. A lot of power,” Ginny began.
“And it’s being squandered with the Order, isn’t it,” Voldemort laughed, as if he heard this all the time.
“No,” Ginny shook her head emphatically. “I don’t want to use it at all, and you can give me that.”
“Don’t want to use power?” Bella laughed and Voldemort let out a chuckle of his own. If he had power, he used it, but this little girl with the clasped hands and bowed head wanted him to get rid of it for her. Well, he would gladly take that power from her.
“Of course I don’t,” Ginny laughed. Then she slowly lifted her head to look at Voldemort and opened her eyes.
Voldemort gasped and bent forward in his chair. He reached out one finger and brushed it just under her eye. Ginny refused to flinch at the cold slimy sensation of Voldemort’s finger touching her as he examined her blind eyes. She refused to let her magic zap the Dark creature touching her either.
“Your power removes your sight?” Voldemort guessed.
“I lost my sight a long time ago,” Ginny disagreed. “My magic gives me back a semblance of sight. It’s why dark magic can’t touch me. What I want is my sight back.”
“By taking your power I give you sight back?” Voldemort guessed again.
Ginny laughed. “No. You have in your employ a person whose presence negates my blindness. If you give me that person then I’ll give you what knowledge I have left to give.”
“A person?” Voldemort said skeptically.
“Yes,” Ginny stood. She turned to the back of the room and looked directly at Lucius Malfoy as she said, “I want Draco Malfoy.”
III
Draco was sleeping, dreaming about Ginny, when his arm began to burn. Voldemort was calling, but he was calling for his inner circle. Draco was not invited so he rolled back over and tried to go back to sleep.
Her eyes, once a dark brown but now a light tan color, looking after him as her father guided her out of the train station, haunted him. He wanted to go after her, tell her how much he missed her, but that was impossible. He wanted to spy as she had asked, but that was impossible as well. Instead he wallowed in misery, caught between his love for her and his duty to his father.
He was just drifting back off to sleep when the door to his room slammed open. His father stood in the doorway, looking incensed and worried.
“I don’t know what you did to her, Draco,” Lucius said as he ripped the covers off his son, “but she’s requested your presence and the Dark Lord has seconded it. Hurry, and get dressed.”
“Who wants me?” Draco asked, utterly confused, as he rushed to find clothing. His father didn’t answer and instead focused his wand to fix Draco’s sleep mussed hair.
When Draco was dressed, Lucius took his son’s arm and Apparated them to Voldemort’s meeting room in the old Riddle house.
“My Lord,” Lucius stepped forward and bent into a bow. “I have brought him.”
“Bring the boy forward,” Voldemort snapped.
Draco couldn’t stop the shiver that went down his back at that hateful voice. It was the same voice that had threatened the lives of his family if he didn’t kill Dumbledore. It was the same voice that had punished him when Snape had to accomplish the task for him. Draco hated that voice as much as he had ever hated anything.
His father’s strong hand on his arm was the only thing that got his feet moving. Draco shuffled forwards.
“Draco!”
Her voice rang through the room and Draco’s head snapped up in absolute shock. What was she doing here? She was standing behind an armchair that had her magical signature all over it with Voldemort hovering menacingly over her.
She looked up at him with her eyes open and he gasped. They were milky white, all color leached from them, but as he neared, he, and everyone else watching her eyes, could see the pupil suddenly open, as if it had two lids to close itself with. Suddenly she had one small black spot at the center of each ball of white.
“Incredible,” Voldemort murmured to himself.
“Ginny? What are you doing here? Are you okay?” Draco’s voice might have sounded worried, but it was forgotten as he gave up all sense of propriety and rushed over to her.
She eagerly tucked herself into his arms as they circled her.
“I wanted to see again,” she said in a voice loud enough to project through the room. Draco could tell she was lying, but only because he knew her so well. “You give me that, so I came here.”
“You silly girl,” he said in a slightly quieter voice, giving the illusion to everyone listening in to their conversation that he was trying to say something private. “You didn’t have to come here and endanger yourself.”
“She has offered her powers to me in return for you, Malfoy,” Voldemort hissed, interrupting their conversation.
Ginny pulled herself free of Draco’s arms and laughed. “I most certainly did not! I offered you my services and when you did not agree to take them, I offered you what knowledge I have left to give instead. My powers were never offered, only spoken about,” Ginny smiled up at Voldemort as he seethed. “You have given me Draco, so, when you ask, I will give you knowledge.”
“It’s too bad for you, Miss Weasley,” Voldemort hissed, angry that he had been duped and that he was about to lose taking her powers for himself. His wand rose to menacingly point at her before he continued. “That you are here, under my power. You will do as I tell you or you will perish.”
Draco thought that Ginny willingly backed into his arms, but knew that it wasn’t for comfort. It was almost as if she were protecting him. Her eyes were closed and her skin gave off a pale white glow that let Draco know she was using her magic. He closed his hands on her shoulders.
“I came here under my own power and I will leave here under my own power,” Ginny snapped. “When you want what I have offered, call Draco to you and I will come as well.”
Draco felt a pulling sensation, much like when traveling by Portkey, and when his eyes focused again they were inside his bedroom in Malfoy Manor.
“He’s going to kill you, you know,” Draco said as he guided her over to sit on his bed.
“He won’t be able to,” Ginny said, although her voice didn’t sound nearly as steady as it had a few seconds ago. She was shaking so Draco quickly joined her on the bed and wrapped his arms comfortingly around her.
“Gods, what are you doing here?” Draco moaned as she crawled into his lap.
“Saving your life,” she said into his neck. “Spying for the Order, since you certainly can’t. Using you so I can see again. Take your pick.”
“Endangering your life. Scaring me half to death. Take your pick,” Draco echoed with a worried snarl.
He could tell that she was afraid. Who wouldn’t be after coming face-to-face with Voldemort and surviving the encounter? The aftershocks of what she had done were shaking her body so much that he was afraid his arms wouldn’t hold her.
“Calm down, Ginny,” Draco said. He was worried that she might hurt himself if she didn’t relax.
Her magic was also flaring along her body, giving off little flashes of light that made Draco want to close his eyes from the sudden glare.
“Shh,” Draco whispered as he began to rock her in his arms. “I’ve got you. It’s okay.”
Slowly, ever so slowly, she calmed down. By the time Lucius Malfoy came storming into the room she was asleep, happily snuggled in his arms.
“Draco!” Lucius snapped.
Draco held up his hand to forestall his father before the man could yell anything else and wake up Ginny.
“Don’t wake her up,” Draco whispered.
“What the hell’s going on?” Lucius snarled in a slightly quieter voice.
“Ginny and I found out that I give her back her colors,” Draco said to stay in keeping with the story Ginny was using. “Our relationship stems from there.”
“Relationship?” Lucius sniffed. “With a Weasley?”
“With a witch who can use wandless magic like it was a child’s toy,” Draco corrected, although he gave Ginny a discrete squeeze just in case she was listening.
“Wandless magic,” Lucius scoffed. “Impossible.”
“She lost her wand sometime in her fifth year at school,” Draco said sharply as he felt Ginny stir in his arms. “Since she doesn’t need it, she never went looking for it.”
“You’re telling me she conjured a chair, deflected an Unforgivable Curse, and Apparated out of a room covered in anti-apparition wards, all without a wand?”
“I did,” Ginny spoke up as she lifted her head from Draco’s shoulder. “And now I’m tired. Please go away.”
Lucius Malfoy spluttered. “You are in my house and have effectively kidnapped my son from me. How dare you speak to me like this!”
Ginny sighed and pulled herself from Draco’s comforting arms. She got off the bed and stood, staring defiantly at Draco’s father.
“I don’t really care what you think,” she sighed out. “I am here for a reason and the fact that the reason includes your son, which therefore has you terribly worried for his safety, does not mean that you have the right to yell at me.”
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Draco sighed and rolled over so he wouldn’t have to watch his father go through Ginny’s inspection.
“You enjoy having power over others,” she said in that echoing voice of hers that lifted the hairs on Draco’s neck. “You enjoy watching others come to you asking for mercy. However, you do not enjoy it when you can’t grant that mercy on your own terms. You joined Voldemort for the illusion of the power he said he could give you. Now you’re stuck, powerless and sick of killing those who used to grudgingly come to you for aid.”
“And you know all of this how?” Lucius sneered, trying to pretend that her words hadn’t rattled him.
“The same way I know that Draco doesn’t hate you for dragging him into this,” Ginny replied with a sad smile as she finally opened her eyes. “Now, if we’re done with the power play, I really am tired.”
She turned away from Draco’s father and Draco rolled back over to let her climb back into his arms. She had clearly been up late before making her entrance to the Death Eaters and then she used enough magic to seriously deplete her stores. Draco had been woken up in the middle of the night to come collect her, so he was just as tired.
Lucius Malfoy left and it wasn’t long before they were both asleep.
Leave a Review