It was almost strange, how blue the sky seemed to be. Grass seemed greener, the dirt deeper and darker, the trees taller. The air smelled cleaner, somehow, and the vague sense of doom and gloom seemed to be gone. Or it could simply be that Draco Malfoy had been locked away in Azkaban for the past five years, and he only now appreciated the world for what it was.
Most of the Death Eaters he knew were still in Azkaban. Draco had no idea how he had gotten out so early; everyone else had been sentenced to life imprisonment with no hope for parole, let alone release. He absently rubbed at the curse scar on the back of his right hand; every Death Eater in Azkaban had been given one along with the horrid gray prisoner's uniform and the identification number that had been used instead of a name while he had been imprisoned there. It was a black X on his right hand, easily observable no matter what he did. The Punishment Marks had been used because it was too easy to conceal the Dark Mark during everyday activities, and the Ministry of Magic wanted it clear who had been involved in Dark Arts and the upheaval of recent times. The Dark Mark on his left forearm was faded and gray, no longer as intense looking as it had when Voldemort was still alive.
His mind shied away from that name. He was uncomfortable using it, even if the Prophet and all of the Order of the Phoenix members gloried in using the name once the Dark Lord was dead. Draco was still too afraid of it, still wondering if some remnant of the bastard was still around somewhere and just biding his time until everyone thought he was gone for good. He'd risen like an evil phoenix often enough in the years before he had come to power. Draco didn't put it past him to do another resurrection from the dead.
In Azkaban, it had been an almost exquisite kind of torture to think that the world existed beyond the tall gray walls. The very light there had been dim, visitors discouraged and contact with the outside world was minimized. You are being punished, the guards always said, the mantra drilling itself into his mind from the regularity of the words. You must pay for what you've done to the world. You will learn humility and you will learn your place in the new order of things.
The memory of the guards' faces would have been enough to turn his stomach, if anything had been in it.
"Draco?"
He turned from the window in the drawing room of Malfoy Manor. It was the only property left to the Malfoy name; everything else had been taxed to the hilt and then seized in the intervening years. Narcissa Malfoy had done what she could with the Malfoy properties, managing everything in his absence. There was only so much she could do with the Ministry so dead set against them. He had lost what little appetite he had left when he had seen the black circle cursed into the palm of her right hand. It hadn't been just Death Eaters that had been cursed; all known family members and associates had been cursed as well. Ostensibly it was to monitor their actions in and around Knockturn Alley, but Draco knew better. The Ministry didn't trust any of them, and wanted them all to suffer.
Draco tried to smile at his mother, but she knew what his strained smiles looked like. She had seen plenty of them before he had been sentenced to Azkaban. She crossed the room and wrapped her arms around him. "Come outside, Draco," she murmured. "It's lovely outside today. You can sit in the rose garden with me."
It was too bright in the rose garden, the colors too vivid, the scents too strong. He couldn't sit there and avoid the memories that would inevitably come. Ginny.
"I'll be out in a moment," Draco murmured when Narcissa seemed to expect a reply from him. She sighed and nodded; they both knew he wouldn't leave the drawing room anytime soon. "I will, Mother. I promise."
Narcissa played with his hair a bit, not quite meeting his eyes. She didn't want to see his inevitable wince at the sight of the black circle on her palm. He blamed himself, as if it was all his fault. He seemed to have forgotten that they both would have been marked by a circle because of Lucius' involvement. Or Bellatrix's, or Rodolphus, or any of the distant cousins that had been caught up in the Death Eaters' need for blood purity. Fully half of the Wizarding World was likely marked; even Nymphadora Tonks would have been marked if she survived. If Narcissa was a braver soul, she might have owled Andromeda Tonks to see if she and the baby had been marked.
"It will get better, Draco," Narcissa murmured. "We'll be all right."
She couldn't have possibly known, but she echoed one of the last things Ginny had said to him at Hogwarts. It will get better, Draco, I know it. Fight with me, and we'll be all right. He hadn't been able to believe her then, and he absolutely couldn't believe her now.
Draco pasted a smile onto his face and smiled at his mother. "Of course, Mother. Of course." As if they didn't rattle around the Manor like two knuts in a pauper's purse. As if they could avoid the incredulous stares on the streets, the whispers and recriminations that lay on the tip of everyone's tongues. As if anyone would ever believe that a Malfoy could amount to anything.
But he lied to his mother to help her smile, and watched her leave the drawing room with an absent look on her face. He closed his eyes and leaned against the glass of the window. The morning light seemed to stain the insides of his eyelids red, and almost unwillingly he thought of Ginny Weasley. It had been an odd sort of thing that happened his seventh year. He could feel the hate falling over him from the gazes of the golden Gryffindors, could feel the others stare and wonder just what happened in the tower that fatal night. I didn't do it! he had wanted to shout, but he kept his lips shut and his thoughts to himself. The Carrows were vicious, Snape unyielding and Voldemort held his parents captive. What else was he supposed to do? He had to go along with what was expected of him. He had to do as he was told and he had to try to stay two steps ahead to keep his family safe. He hadn't expected to fall apart in a deserted hallway, let alone have the littlest Weasley find him there.
"So you're human after all," she had said, taking in the sight of him sobbing. She had her wand loosely held in her hand, livid bruises on her face. She had been fresh from the Carrows' detention.
"Go laugh somewhere else," Draco had snarled, pointing his wand at her chest.
"Who's laughing?" she had asked. And she hadn't seemed to be taking any kind of vicious joy in his pain, didn't seem interested in making him feel worse.
They had stared at each other for a while, and then Ginny had left. Draco thought of calling her back, but there had been nothing for him to say. It hadn't mattered. They bumped into each other at odd times, and he had supervised a detention session the Carrows had been too busy to attend personally. With no one else there, Draco had simply had her sit in silence. He had parchment in front of him, though he couldn't even contemplate what he was supposed to see.
"You aren't a very good Death Eater, are you?" Ginny asked suddenly. Draco's head snapped up and he took in her blank expression. "You don't take pleasure in hurting anyone seriously. Your Crucio isn't as strong as the others' and you don't hold anyone under as long as they do. This isn't what you wanted to do, is it?"
She was right, damn it all.
"Just keep your mouth shut, Weasley," Draco snarled at her, balling up the sheets of parchment. This was impossible. There was no way to make a defensive shield for his parents that the Dark Lord wouldn't know about. His Occlumency was good, but it wasn't that good.
Ginny got up from her seat and came directly in front of him. Almost hesitantly, she reached out and touched his face. Draco caught her wrist in his hand, squeezing tightly. There was a flare of panic in her eyes that she tamped down on almost immediately. She was better at hiding her emotions than he was, and the knowledge rankled. "What are you playing at, Weasley?" he asked, voice more raw than he wanted it to be. "Aren't you concerned I'll just kill you?"
"You would have before if you wanted to," Ginny told him confidently.
Draco spun her around and pressed her up against the wall, her arm twisted up behind her back. He could smell her scent, something like roses, something that made him feel alive. He was pressed tight against her, the tremors rolling through her. "Who says I won't now? Who says the Carrows won't approve?"
"That's not you," she said, her voice sounding more confident than than the tremors would have indicated. "You're not a ruthless killer."
"Shows what you know," he snarled against her ear. "You're just a Weasley. You don't count for anything in the new order of things."
He didn't know how it happened, but somehow Ginny spun out of his grip and pushed him into the wall. Her hands pinned his arms at his sides, and he faced her blazing eyes. "You're that sure it's going to happen? That Tom is going to push all his little toy soldiers into the right places and watch them go?"
Draco had looked at her in confusion. "Who's Tom?"
She had pulled back away from him, almost in disgust. "It's not important anymore." He didn't know who she was upset with, him for not knowing or herself for mentioning it.
"You're still in here?"
Draco started at the sound of Narcissa's voice. He had been lost in the memory, something that was only too easy to do. It was all he had left, really.
Narcissa sighed and entered the drawing room. "That's it. You have been moving around the house like a ghost. You have to do something more than simply look out of the windows. You're coming with me to Diagon Alley. I have some errands to run..."
"I won't be squired around like a child," Draco replied in a surly tone. "I'm a grown man that just spent five fucking years in Azkaban."
Narcissa's lips thinned. "Language, young man," she said, voice sharp. "Imprisonment is no excuse for bad manners."
He snorted, but acknowledged the point. "Just give me the list and I'll do them for you."
It was a short list; Narcissa needed embroidery supplies and bulbs for her flower beds. Draco wasn't sure how he would be received in Diagon Alley, but there was no way around it any longer. He would have to show his face sooner or later. He might as well know what he was in for if he went out in public.
At first, it was like he was invisible. He arrived in the public apparition point at the end of Diagon with no fanfare. No one noticed him as he walked along the street. He could feel the cobblestones beneath his feet, the shadows from the buildings falling in patches along the way. He had remembered this, but the memory had been somewhat blurred and indistinct compared to actually being back in Diagon. He saw a flash of vivid red out of the corner of his eyes; it wasn't Ginny, no matter how much he half hoped it would be.
He purchased the needles and thread for his mother, the shopkeeper's eyes boring holes into his chest as soon as the black X on his hand appeared. He was Marked, in more ways than one, and it burned. The sickles he received in change were heavy in his palm, his tongue thick in his mouth. I was just a boy, he wanted to say. I even fucked up killing people, all right?
But he stepped back out onto the street with the words unsaid. They wouldn't have been appreciated anyway.
For a moment, he had an odd sensation of being watched. That someone was looking at him specifically, that someone was keeping an eye on him. He wanted to turn in the direction of the sensation along his spine, wanted to see if warm brown eyes and vivid red hair were standing there. But he didn't want to turn around and see empty air, didn't want to know for certain that she had moved on and had forgotten him. Why should she care? He was just another Death Eater, just another student that had pushed at her family and said awful things. He was just another stupid boy playing at being a man and failing at everything he tried to do.
Draco's heart stopped at the florist's shop. He had to be imagining things, had to be hallucinating. Only, the world was so very bright, so very detailed. Everything stood out in sharp relief, every detail indelibly etched into his memory. It almost hurt to feel again, almost hurt to realize that this was, in fact, the wide world he had once pined for.
Ginny Weasley was behind the counter, laughing at something Harry Potter was telling her.
Draco turned abruptly, nearly careening into a basket full of lilacs and upsetting a delicate orchid perched on an ornate glass pin. He was being sliced to ribbons, bleeding from the inside out. He had known that Ginny could do better than him, had always known that she couldn't possibly care for him. Not that way. But seeing it with his own eyes, after carefully burying his hopes deep inside, burned him more than the humiliation of being Marked. Of course things never went his way. Of course the universe hated him. Of course everything went to rot where he was concerned now.
They noticed him right away, and of course they wanted to help him extricate himself from the lilac blooms that clung to his robes. Of course he would rake his eyes across Ginny's pale face, would take in the fact that she wasn't wearing a wedding ring, that she still kept her wand tucked into a messy bun at the top of her head if she needed both hands free, that she still worried her bottom lip with her teeth, that she still had exactly twenty-seven freckles across the bridge of her nose. He cursed himself for a fool for noticing these things, for allowing himself to want even for the briefest of moments.
"I'd heard you got released," Harry was saying amiably, plucking the last lilac from Draco's sleeve and handing it to Ginny. "I'm glad. I thought the Ministry was going to foul that up for you after all."
Draco blinked at him, but Harry was already looking over at Ginny. "I think she'd like these, actually. They're just the right shade of blue to match her eyes."
Ginny laughed. "Draco always did have good sense about color."
It was surreal. He had to double check that he in fact did have his curse mark on his hand.
"Well, then, a dozen of these and some of the sunflowers," Harry said cheerfully. "Luna will love them."
Draco wound up following them back to the counter, watching incredulously as the two carried on, clearly friends, clearly engaged in a perfectly platonic relationship. He had to blink and refocus to realize he was supposed to be paying attention to what Ginny was actually saying. "You look... Well, not healthy, exactly. But not as bad as I'd heard Azkaban would be on people." Her hands went still for a moment before she finished bundling the flowers together, the paper crinkling under her hands. "I suppose they really did make it something less terrible?"
"No," he rasped before he could stop himself. "No, they hadn't." It was gray and hopeless and awful, the endless days of nothing. It didn't matter if Dementors were gone. The ghost of them still lingered.
Harry frowned, flowers in hand. "That's not right. They assured me that there were changes to it. That it was more humane. I should look into that, then." If anything, his expression darkened, and his right hand tightened into a fist. "It wouldn't be the first time they lied about something like that." Harry nodded at Draco, who stood there, stunned speechless.
Ginny shook her head, but waited until he had left the shop before speaking. "He needs something to fight for, you understand. It's always been that way for him."
For an impossible moment, Draco almost felt seventeen again, wishing he could take her hand as they sat together in a deserted classroom or the Room of Requirement. She'd talked of Harry's hero tendencies then, how left behind she had felt. She had tried to do so much, but always seemed to remain in his shadow somehow. At the time, he had wondered if their odd friendship had developed simply because he was the opposite of Harry Potter, and she was desperate to become someone other than the girl he left behind.
Then the moment passed, and there was pain in her smile. "Well, you must be here for your mother's bulbs. She doesn't ever trust them to owl delivery. She's convinced that the owl will eat them or something."
He wanted to ask her why she was talking to him, why she didn't seem to hate him the way everyone else did. He wanted to ask why she didn't glare at the black X on his hand, why she didn't demand that he leave her shop. He wanted to ask what had happened in the five years he had been gone, what he had missed. He wanted to ask if maybe they were still friends, or if they had ever been. He wanted to ask why she'd left.
But she passed him the box of bulbs and the moment was lost. "Tell your mother I said hello," Ginny told him with a soft smile as he turned to leave. "Welcome home, Draco. It's a different world, but you'll do all right in it, I'm sure. You always seemed to manage to take care of yourself."
"What about you?" he asked, then clamped his lips shut to keep himself from asking anything else.
Her smile was sad. "We all lose something, Draco. It's just that for some people it's harder to see." She straightened slightly and waved him of. "Go on, give those to your mother. You shouldn't keep her waiting."
Draco took the dismissal for what it was and went home. It was only when he handed the box of bulbs to his mother that he realized Ginny hadn't charged him for them. Thief, his mind told him harshly. It's just one more thing for them to call you, one more thing for them to blame you for.
It was too tiring to worry about. He would simply have to take care of it the next time he went to Diagon Alley.
***
Ginny didn't acknowledge the lack of payment, just as she used to ignore all the little details that didn't suit her back at Hogwarts. Little things like rules and propriety hadn't mattered then. She had an inner fire, she had the strength of her beliefs. It was what made her stand out so much, why she had always been a target. She was a Weasley, to be sure, but more importantly, she didn't have the good sense to sit back and refrain from making herself known in her own right. Draco had nearly despaired of her, certain she would get herself killed by the end of the year. It was a welcome relief that she hadn't.
But now it was almost torture.
Narcissa had been heartened by Draco's successful outing, and came up with errands for him to do on a regular basis. She needed more cloth, more thread, more flowers, more books to read. There were letters to write, magazines to pick up, vaults to check on and household goods to purchase. Narcissa had done these things herself or by owl post before Draco's release. Now that he was back, it was a good way to get him out and about in a controlled manner. She could see that he was discomfited by space and people and loud noise. It didn't do him any good to remain closeted in the house, skulking about corners like a ghost. Draco had become a shadow of the boy he had once been, and it broke her heart to see it.
Draco dutifully did her errands, dutifully endured the stares and the wondering looks that the black X brought him. There weren't many of those about, but he did catch sight of more than a few black O's on palms. Those made sure to give Knockturn Alley a wide berth, sure that it wasn't worth the inquiry it would cause.
He found himself wandering into Ginny's flower shop, even if Narcissa didn't want a new bouquet for the dining room. He watched her interact with the customers, his hands stuffed into his pockets. She knew the mark was there, had to know even if she hadn't seen it, but Draco didn't want her looking at him in loathing.
But then, she had never really loathed him. She had called him all sorts of filthy names, hexed him soundly, but she had never seemed to give him the kind of intense hatred he thought she would. Eventually Ginny had shown him an empty corridor in Hogwarts he hadn't known about, and they sat after hours together more often than not. Sometimes they sat in perfect silence, each doing homework next to each other. Sometimes she asked to see his Dark Mark; her fingers never actually touched the branded skin, but hovered somewhere above it as if afraid to actually feel the Mark writhing just beneath the surface.
Once, they had even kissed. It was a tentative thing, an awkward tangle of lips and teeth and tongue, hands firmly set on robes and away from any bits that might have appreciated the groping. Draco thought perhaps he would have tried again, tried to assure her he wasn't a complete idiot. But the kiss had been just before Easter hols, and she hadn't come back.
He had been afraid she was dead, and too afraid to ask about her.
"You've done well," Draco managed to say. He'd been skulking about her shop for days, making idle conversation over the different names of flowers or what kind of bouquet his mother would like.
"It's a lovely little shop," Ginny agreed.
"I didn't know you liked flowers," Draco murmured, then wanted to kick himself. There were so many things he didn't know about her, had never known about her. It hadn't been important at the time, but he had felt the loss so keenly while he was in Azkaban. If only had been a sharper knife than the shame of seeing his father crumble before his eyes.
Ginny laughed, though. Her laugh had always been full of life, a concerto of sound when she was truly happy. He'd heard it a few times, when he managed to startle it out of her. "So many things you don't actually know, Draco," she had replied, shrugging. "But to be fair, I didn't know it myself back then." She reached out and touched a lily's white petal delicately. "It was after. Someone had to make the funeral arrangements... And they're such calming, pristine things."
Draco dimly remembered talk of losses on the Order's side, of a Weasley numbering amongst the dead. "I'm sorry."
Her smile was wan. "It's all right. It's been five and a half years."
"I'm still sorry," he murmured. Impulsively, he reached out and grasped her hand. He wanted to curse himself for a fool when he saw the black X winking up at him. Though honestly, his left wouldn't have been any better, the ghost of the Dark Mark still hovering beneath his skin.
Ginny squeezed his hand back. "Let's get your mother her namesake flower, shall we? And some snapdragons to stand in for you."
Draco found himself smiling at her. "I don't often snap, do I?"
"Oh, I don't know. On occasion you actually do say something witty."
He had joked with her about holidays. Or homework. Or some stupid firstie antic in the hall. For months, they seemed to talk as if they lived in each others' skin, sometimes touching hands or exchanging looks. For some reason, he had been hesitant to push his luck any farther, to see if she shared those same feelings.
"Yeah," Draco agreed, his voice feeling like a shadow of itself. "Sometimes. Not too much to joke about nowadays."
"Sometimes there is," she assured him, reaching for a snapdragon. She looked at the purple blossom and then lifted it up. "Sometimes it's the only way to make it through the day."
"Are you happy?" he asked after a moment. "Really happy?"
She looked up with luminous eyes. "Sometimes I can be," she replied. He remembered the look on her face when they discussed the Dark Arts, when she said that such things had to be controlled. He remembered the hint of secrets in her eyes then, that something horrible had happened that she wouldn't say. "What about you?" she asked, as if none of that had ever happened.
"I'm trying," Draco replied, serious. "I'm learning, I think."
"You can be clever if you put your mind to it," Ginny told him, pushing the bouquet at him. "You'll pick up the knack sooner or later."
He thought of this bouquet in the empty stillness of Malfoy Manor, the suffocating quiet that made him think. "You think I'm clever?"
Ginny snorted indelicately, just the way she used to. It was eerie how he remembered that so keenly. "Still with an ego, I see. Stop in next week and see if I still think you're clever."
Draco grinned at her. His reply was cut off by the jangle of bells over the door, announcing a new customer. He didn't want to have this conversation in front of someone else. Too much meaning behind the words, too much history tangled between them that would be hard to explain. And she was happy, he could tell. She smiled widely at the customers, she touched the plants lovingly and she seemed content with the life she had built for herself. She was whole, and he was an empty shell pretending to be.
He took the bouquet home, remembering her smile every time he looked at it.
***
It was deep winter, with the snow thick and deep and even all around. He had been released in autumn, just when the colors were the sharpest and the air the crispest, just when life was about to die. Now it was cold and stark white, as lifeless as half of his old Death Eater acquaintances were. The other half were stuck in perpetual gray of a half-life that imprisonment had become. Draco sometimes thought that he hadn't really left Azkaban behind, that the endless shades of gray were simply lurking around the corner. His dreams were still in shades of gray.
The highlight of his life was his daily trips to Diagon Alley. It may or may not have had anything to do with Ginny Weasley... Well, he would have denied it if asked, but no one ever did. He enjoyed the quiet in the flower shop, the bright colors and the reminder that life still existed even if he seemed to have the memory of Azkaban clinging to him like a second skin.
Ginny liked roses and lilies, chatted with various customers and liked Thai takeaway for lunch. Potter was completely hopeless at getting flowers for Luna, who Draco assumed was his girlfriend. Ginny kept referring to Potter's "latest cause," whatever that was, though they both were suspiciously silent about it in Draco's presence. Potter even tried to be polite to Draco, and ask after his family awkwardly to make small talk. After the first few attempts, Draco stopped trying to needle him to reestablish the dynamic they'd had at school, but it was like trying to get a rise out of a blancmange. After a few attempts, he stopped trying. Everything else in the world had changed, so this was just one more.
Ginny was the brightest thing in his life. She didn't even seem to mind it if he hung about the shop looking at flowers in silence. It was almost like his seventh year at Hogwarts again, that odd friendship rekindled as if time hadn't passed at all.
"Have dinner with me?" he asked one afternoon.
Ginny smiled and handed him a red rose. "You know better than that, don't you?"
The red of the rose was different from the red of her hair, but it all seemed to blur together. "I don't mean in front of everyone," he said slowly, the syllables like ash in his mouth.
She snorted and rolled her eyes at him. "Yes, that's obvious. I meant there are nicer ways to ask me."
Draco blinked and let out the breath he hadn't realized had frozen inside his lungs. "Oh."
"Right. Oh. Honestly, Draco, you didn't used to be this thick."
"It kept me alive this long," Draco replied without thinking, and Ginny frowned at him. "It's all right if you don't want to," he told her quickly. He didn't expect her to say yes. He didn't expect her to really want to spend time with him.
She lofted an eyebrow at him. After a moment contemplating him, she reached out and gave him a hard shove on his chest. Draco staggered backward a step and frowned at her. "That was uncalled for," he said, disappointment coloring his tone. "I haven't done anything..."
"Yes, and that's the problem," Ginny replied, rolling her eyes. "What's with this mealy-mouthed routine? That's not you."
He bit back the impulse to snarl right back at her. That sort of thing had always been punished severely, and part of him still tensed in preparation for the pain that accompanied any show of spirit while in Azkaban. He'd gotten good at hiding his emotions, tamping down his instincts until even he couldn't tell what they were. This was Ginny, though, and she was throwing him off, making him feel again, her clear eyes seeing through him just as they always had.
"There you are," she said, and he liked her smile even as he thought she looked smug.
"What are you on about?"
"Just let me lock up the shop," Ginny told him with a soft smile. She looked sixteen again, innocent in some ways yet worldly and dangerous in others. I want to be here, she had told him once. You look at me like I'm real.
His hand was cold and his heart thudded in his chest when they apparated to Malfoy Manor. Dinner was quiet; Narcissa was out for the evening with one of her friends and the dining room was far too large for just two people in it. But the elves put together a dinner for two as if it was a banquet, and the bouquet of fresh hyacinths was a bright spot of color on the table.
Draco felt as if he was suspended in time. Some things were different, too starkly different and painful. The stillness and the echoes in the empty rooms, the curse marks, the knowledge that he was a pariah on all sides, and the terrible feeling that it was better than he deserved. He was bitter and humble, ground down to pieces, lost within the cracks of the world. But some things were the same. The tilt of her head, the slip of a smile between her words, the way she threw back her head when she laughed, too long and too loud to be ladylike. The way she reached out to grasp his hand when he felt his worst, the way her eyes told him that even this would pass as well.
"I'm not..." he began slowly, anxiety plain in his voice even if his features were schooled to perfect impassivity. "I'm not good at this anymore." He took in her earnest expression and sighed. "They broke us, Ginny. It's what they wanted to do, what we were sentenced to. I don't know if I can be who I was, who you think I should be."
"You talk as if you'd died!" She threw up her hands in frustration. "I don't know. I'm no head healer, but I know you, and this... This cringing, fearful coward is not you. You might have changed, but not that much! You fought them at their own game and tried to play both sides."
"I had a reason then," he snapped, bristling at her implication.
"And you don't now?" she snapped back.
"Thank you," he murmured softly, reaching for her hand. She felt like she was on fire, as if she exuded the warmth he didn't allow himself to feel.
"Don't thank me," Ginny replied.
"Why not? You're still here."
"Where else would I be?" Ginny asked. She cupped his face with one hand almost tenderly. "We never finished what we started."
But they couldn't, not really, not the way he wanted. Her palms were clear, and he couldn't make her take a mark just for his sake. He wasn't worth that kind of pain, wasn't worth the effort. He wouldn't allow her to sully herself that way.
"Ginny, I..."
She leaned forward and kissed him. There was nothing awkward or tentative about this kiss, nothing childish about the way her tongue caressed his or how his heart hammered in his chest with all the needs and wants he had tried to keep from dreaming about.
Ginny smiled impishly at him when she pulled back. "There. That's how it should have been five and a half years ago."
"You didn't come back," he said, in spite of himself. "I thought... Well, it doesn't matter what I thought."
"Things happened. No one really had an easy time of it."
He thought of the empty, gray eyes in the mirror every morning, the way that it never seemed to change. He thought of how hopeless his friends had become, how dreary life was while living within the constraints the Ministry had put forth. "No, I don't suppose anyone has."
"So we start again," Ginny murmured, that half smile on her face. "Well, you more than me, really. You do realize that standing in the corner waiting to talk to me isn't helpful, right?"
"Look, this isn't comfortable..."
"No, but life isn't," Ginny replied. She leaned forward and kissed his cheek softly. "I liked it better when you had plans. When you talked about the future as something worth fighting for. When we were worth fighting for."
He ought to save her from herself, really. But he was no Gryffindor, and he was an even worse Slytherin, it seemed. He should do the right thing by her, keep this thing from starting again, keep her from making a tragic mistake. But he missed her, he felt alive around her, like he could even live again near her.
He'd been half dead for five years, and he couldn't return to that now that he knew better.
"They did a good job of taking away every dream I had," Draco told her plainly. "You think I can bounce back that easily?"
Ginny crossed her arms over her chest. "Why couldn't you? You're not dead."
But he had wanted to be for a long time, and it was like an old habit that was hard to break. "It's not that easy, Ginny," he said softly.
She gave him a push on his chest. "It can be, you giant prat. Stop feeling sorry for yourself. What did you used to tell me? You're Draco fucking Malfoy and you're not even scared of the Carrows?"
He laughed at the memory. He had been such an idiot. "I was lying, you bint."
Ginny laughed along with him. "I know you were. But you did a great job of it then. Why can't you now? What are you so afraid of?"
Seeing a mark on her palm. Seeing her hate him for it. Seeing everything he wanted die before his eyes.
"I shouldn't have..." He stopped and swallowed the painful words. "Look, Ginny. I shouldn't have asked you to dinner. I can't do this to you. The world is better off without me."
"No, it's not," Ginny said fiercely, her hands balled into fists and her eyes blazing with that spark he had missed dearly. "This world is an awful place without you in it. This world is empty."
He looked at her in wonder, reaching out for her hand. He stopped just short of touching her fingers, just short of making contact and being sure that this was real. He was still half convinced reality would shatter and he would find himself back in his cell at Azkaban, six foot square and eight feet tall. He was still half convinced he had gone mad.
"I missed you, Draco," Ginny whispered. "Why do you find it so hard to believe?"
Because then it would be real. Because then every failure, every triumph, every blasted moment of his existence would have to be real. Because it would hurt, and it would be painful, and he would have to own up to every last bit of it.
And he was afraid.
She grasped his hand tightly, so tightly the nail beds in her fingers went white. He looked at it in dismay, then back up at her face. "You can't."
"I do," she murmured softly. She lifted his hand slightly, then pressed her lips to his knuckles. "I told you. You're the only one that saw me. Even if you didn't know why, you saw me. And I see you, too. I always have." She ran her thumb across the ridges of his knuckles gently, as he had once done to hers. "I missed you. I care about you."
He wanted to lie to her, to say he didn't care for her, it was just a way to make Harry Potter jealous, just a schoolboy's stupid antic that backfired royally, that she was a silly bint that didn't know what she was talking about.
The lie refused to leave his lips. He couldn't do that to her. "I'm sorry," he said, voice raw as it scraped past his throat. "You shouldn't."
Ginny smiled then, that sneaky, sly smile he hadn't dreamed could exist on a Weasley's face. "I was never fond of shouldn'ts or couldn'ts, if you recall. I never liked being shut up in a box and put aside somewhere." She stood and walked the three steps around the corner of the table to meet him at its head. "I know what I'm doing. I know exactly what I'm doing."
Draco gulped when she sat in his lap and looped her arms around his shoulders. "Don't do this, Ginny," he said, his voice suspiciously like a whimper. "Don't ruin yourself for me." I'm not worth it.
She leaned her head down, their foreheads touching. Draco let his eyelids fall shut as she laughed bitterly. "Of all the sodding times to be noble, Draco, I didn't think you'd pick this one."
"I know better," he said, his hands along her back. He could feel the bumps in her spine through her blouse, could feel the flutter of breath trapped within the cage of her ribs. She was strong, much stronger than she looked. He knew that. But he also knew he wouldn't ask this of her. He wouldn't let her volunteer for this kind of ostracism, this kind of terrible fallout. The Ministry marked everyone. Everyone. Even babies, even the innocent. No one was spared, and if he could, he would spare her this.
Ginny pressed her lips to his forehead. "I don't."
You can still be selfish, he told himself, a deceptive whisper. You can still have it all. She can meet you here, and no one is the wiser. She won't have to be marked. No one would have to know.
It was tempting. But the last time he had been tempted into something like this had been a complete and utter disaster.
No, this time he was going to do this the right way. If she was going to damn herself, then he had to make sure she was going to do it for a good reason. He had to be worthy of that sacrifice, no matter what it took.
***
"Fancy seeing you here," Blaise said, arms crossed over his chest and his tone somewhat mulish.
Draco had his hands in his pockets, head somewhat bowed. "I'm sorry for what happened."
"You think that takes it all away?" Blaise glared at Draco, not moving from the doorway to his townhouse. "You think an apology undoes everything? That I'll simply forget it?"
Draco looked at the man that had once been one of his good friends. "No, I don't expect you to forget - you can't, any more than I can. I'm apologizing because I really am sorry. I'm sorry I wasn't a better friend, I'm sorry she died and it's my fault, and I'm sorry I didn't know any better than to drag you down with me."
Blaise contemplated Draco's expression for a long moment, until Draco was tensing to turn and leave without anything further said. "Come in, then."
He followed Blaise into the townhouse, quiet as he waited for a reaction, any reaction. No one knew about the night that Blaise's mother had died, not even Ginny. He had been too ashamed of himself to even think about it before, too caught up in his own worries. He sat down across from Blaise and managed to suppress a wince at the black curse circle pressed into his palm.
"So you're throwing yourself on my mercy?" Blaise asked, eyebrow raised. "That's a new trick."
"I've been hiding a while," Draco admitted slowly. He started at the sound of voices in the next room. "Should I leave? Am I interrupting?"
Blaise thought about it for a moment, then shook his head. "You might as well come by and meet everyone."
Draco followed Blaise from the sitting room into a large, airy room. There was a young woman lying on the floor playing with a toddler and a baby, and he wondered if it was the shock of realizing Blaise had moved on with living his life that kept him from knowing who she was. She looked up, and he realized it was a girl Blaise had always fiercely defended against teasing back at Hogwarts. "Chloe, this is Draco. Draco, my wife Chloe. And that's Finton walking around and Niles on the floor."
Draco nodded in greeting and hunkered down to look at the toddler at eye level. "Hullo," he offered, not sure what else to do with a toddler. The boy laughed, rushing to his mother's side. Draco's heart sank at the sight of the circle already pressed into the boy's palm as he reached out to yank on his mother's hair. He looked up at Blaise and croaked, "Is it because I...?"
Blaise shook his head. "Don't be so vain. It's for Chloe's brother." He sat down on the floor beside Chloe and grasped her hand in a tight grip. The toddler rushed forward and grasped his father's arm tightly.
Chloe gave a bitter laugh at Draco's shock. "As if I would give up family for something so trivial."
"But the children..." He had known it was possible for children to be marked. It had made sense in an abstract sort of way, but seeing the reality of it was brutal.
"We have circles because we love going to see Uncle Devon at the work farm," Chloe said, her voice firm. Finton laughingly repeated Devon's name in an increasingly excited tone. Smiling smoothed out her features and she ran a hand over the toddler's curls. "Yes, honey. We're going there next weekend." The boy jumped up and down with delight, then raced off to get one of his toys.
Draco could feel the eyes of the adults on him as the toddler ran around and gradually slowed down. He was sorely tempted to turn tail and run, but he didn't know how. "Do you want me to go with you?" he asked after a moment. "I can try to watch the boys, maybe, so you can talk to him alone?"
After a moment's pause, Chloe nodded and smiled softly, with Blaise squeezing her hand. "That would be lovely. There's so much we don't say, in case Finton would remember," Chloe said. "He always looks so sad when we visit."
"It's probably not too different from Azkaban," Draco murmured. "Only without the high walls blocking out the sun." He should have probably kept his mouth shut, but they had looked startled by his admission. "They're getting revenge," Draco said, rubbing at the black X on his hand absently. "They don't think we suffered enough, that's all."
"You've only had five years," Blaise pointed out. "They must have thought you paid your dues."
Draco blinked in surprise. The guards had certainly been spiteful and angry, not sparing him any of the painful punishments or harsh words. He hadn't been treated any differently. He wasn't special.
So why the special treatment?
"I'm glad you came by," Chloe said, breaking into Draco's thoughts. "It's good to renew acquaintances. Nowadays, they're so few."
Yes, he supposed they were. Draco pasted a smile on his face. "I'd like it if we could be friends again," he told Blaise. "I think I know how to be a better one now."
Blaise looked at his family, then grudgingly nodded at Draco. "We'll see. Maybe."
It was more than Draco had hoped for, and he found himself smiling despite having thought he didn't remember how.
***
"How did I get off so easy?" Draco asked Ginny abruptly.
She put down her fork carefully, not answering him right away. "You served five years in Azkaban."
"Everyone else is still there. My father is a half dead wreck still there. Why am I here and not there? I'm no better than any of them. I did what they told me, same as them."
"You're not the same," Ginny said firmly, her voice brooking no argument. "You're not like that."
Draco slammed his hand down on the table, black X livid against the back of his hand. "Yes, I am."
Ginny's gaze bore through him, as if she could peel back the layers of what he had become to find the boy beneath it all. "You're not a seasoned killer. You're not a heartless bastard. You were a scared boy trying to save your parents and keep yourself alive. You were a boy caught up in something bigger than yourself. You were someone caught without any place to be. And I know you. I won't let you think you're something you're not. You're not Tom."
Tom was evil, she had said. She never said who he was, what became of him or why she hated him so much. All she would say was that Tom was evil, Tom had been stopped, but Tom in some ways would never leave her.
"Am I some project?" he asked quietly, putting his own fork down. "You took up the invitation because you feel sorry for me? You want to fix me?"
"You're long past fixing, Draco," Ginny replied in that droll tone she had. He forgot about that sometimes, how sharp her tongue could be, how her words sliced him to ribbons. "No, you're not my project."
It implied that he was someone's project, but he was too tired to ask what Harry wanted from him in return.
"Why did I get out early? It wasn't for good behavior. It wasn't because I'm that much better."
Draco had never seen her look this angry. "Yes, you are."
He never would have imagined she would be so angry on his behalf. "Ginny..."
"They couldn't keep you there for long because you didn't do half the things they accused you of," Ginny said, her voice sharp. "They never even told you what the charges were, but most of them were made up. We pointed that out, that's all."
"We?"
Ginny pressed her lips together. "You honestly didn't think it was just me that helped, did you? A good lot of us testified on your behalf."
He blinked in surprise. He hadn't expected that anyone would want to, let alone actually had. The guards had always shouted how worthless they all were, how unloved and unwanted they were in the world. He had believed it; there had never been any proof to the contrary before.
"Yes, Draco, you actually have people that care about you," she said, her tone sharp. "They do actually exist. You might want to ponder that one and maybe get out of the house a little more often. I'm not the only one that missed you," she said softly, her tone lessening the sting of her words. She reached across the table and grasped his hand.
"I didn't think anyone would but Mum. I'd hoped... I was afraid to hope..."
"Well, now you know," Ginny said, squeezing his hand. "What are you going to do about it?"
He leaned forward and kissed her lips, shoving aside the doubts he still had. They weren't his doubts, after all. They were just the ones drilled into him by the guards. "Who else should I thank?" he asked, lips quirking into a smile.
"Like that? Nobody else, you prat," Ginny replied with an answering smile.
"I should talk to them. Thank them, at least."
"Talk to whoever you need to," Ginny said, shrugging. "Most of us didn't do it for a thank you. It was the right thing to do."
The phrase echoed in his mind that night. As difficult as it was going to be, he was going to have to also do the right thing; he would have to make amends.
He owled Katie Bell the next morning. He had been the one at fault for the spell damage she had suffered from carrying the locket he had tried to send to Dumbledore. It didn't even matter if that had been revealed outside of his trial, but he needed to talk to her about it. After seeing Blaise, Draco knew he couldn't hide from his past. It was cowardly, and he wasn't going to be that scared little boy any longer.
Katie must have been curious about why he owled her, but she didn't seem to show it. She met with him at a cafe that weekend. Over tea and biscuits, Draco stumbled his way through an apology and explanation. Her expression had been neutral at first, and by the end, her jaw was clenched tight. Her hands had been clenched tightly in her lap, and Draco thought she was going to take a swing at him.
But instead, she pushed her dark hair back and away from her ears with her left hand. He could see a long, jagged scar along the left side of her head, just above her left ear. He had already caught the sight of the black circle on the palm of her right hand. Draco knew it wasn't polite to stare, but he couldn't help it. Katie had her jaw still clenched when he managed to look her in the eye again, and Draco wondered what she was going to do.
Katie took a sip of her tea and visibly calmed herself down. "I'd wondered who it was," she said finally. "Rosmerta said that she was told to Imperius me, that she had never meant to do it on her own."
"I didn't--"
"I was at Mungo's for months," Katie continued, interrupting Draco. "The pain was intense. You have no idea what it was like. No idea."
Ashamed, Draco gave a tiny shake of his head. He didn't really. He hadn't known what the locket would do, exactly. He had been too desperate at the time to really look at what he was doing.
"And all the rest of that year, you were going along as if nothing happened..."
"It wasn't like that," Draco corrected. "I didn't... Not like that. I wasn't glad that I'd ruined someone's life, I wasn't pleased that I'd hurt anyone. I was selfish, and I just didn't want it to be my parents."
"You didn't care who it was, right? It didn't matter who died as long as it wasn't you."
Draco stifled the wince he wanted to make at her blunt tone. It was something like that, but there was no way to make it sound better. "I was sixteen," he began slowly. "I didn't know what else to do. I didn't have anyone that could help me." He looked at her, hoping she could believe him. "I'm not excusing what I did, Katie. I want to make things right."
She gave a startled bark of laughter. "Make things right? How are you going to do that? I wanted to play professional Quidditch. There was going to be a recruiter there in the stands, and I might've been invited for open tryouts." Katie gave Draco's drawn expression a look of distaste. "And instead, do you know what I was doing?"
"I don't know," he admitted. "I didn't want to find out before."
"Trying to off myself in a particularly grand fashion," she ground out, and Draco's eyes drifted to the scar above her ear. Katie stood up, eyes flashing at him. "I don't forgive you for that. I can't forgive you."
"I'm not asking you to, exactly. I want to know how to make things right. I need to make up somehow for what I've done, even if you never forgive me for that."
Katie's lips curled in derision. "You need to? I don't need anything else from you. Your last gift was quite enough."
Draco watched her leave the cafe, feeling small and stupid. He hadn't been certain what he wanted to do with this, but it had backfired. He rubbed at his face wearily, not sure what to do next. He was startled when a heavy hand clapped down on his shoulder. He turned in time to see Marcus Flint settle into the chair Katie had just vacated, a coffee cup in hand. He took up one of the biscuits she hadn't touched and vaguely nodded at Draco. "I suppose it's a good sign she didn't hex you," Marcus began around a mouthful of biscuits. "It would've been a shame to have to memory charm everyone else here."
"I'm sorry, what?" he asked. Everyone seemed to be throwing him for a loop. He had been held in some kind of gray suspended animation over the past five years, but everyone else had moved on.
"Katie. My fiancee," Marcus said, nodding in the direction Katie had left in. "She didn't punch you either, I noticed."
"Well, I'm not her favorite person in the world." Draco looked in that direction, his expression distant. "I don't know what she told you--"
"Everything," Marcus said, finishing his coffee. "I was there from the beginning."
"You overheard us?" Draco asked, startled. He hadn't even seen Marcus in the cafe. Marcus was a towering block of a man, and should have been easy to spot in a crowd.
Marcus snorted. "And people called me thick at school? No, idiot. I was there when she was at Mungo's. I'm the reason she's still alive." He leaned back in his chair. "So why is it that you still are? I'd've thought she'd package you into pieces to owl back to your Mum."
Draco winced slightly. "I don't know how to make things up to her. I need to make things right somehow, and I haven't the foggiest idea how to start." He shook his head. "Maybe it's a lost cause. If she hates me..."
"What are you? A bleeding girl?" Marcus sneered, throwing an arm over the back of his chair. "You're still alive and she hasn't killed you yet. I'd say there are pretty good odds you can convince her you're genuine. Assuming you are, of course."
"I didn't mean to hurt her, Flint," Draco told him. "There's a lot of things I didn't mean, but they happened anyway. I'm trying to figure out how I can fix it, how I can make up for what I did." He looked over at the other man. "I don't know what she needs."
Marcus lofted an eyebrow at Draco and sat up a bit straighter. "What are you willing to do?"
"What do you mean?" Draco asked, frowning. "Kill someone?" He had been rubbish at that, though plenty of people seemed to die all around him.
"You need to start thinking, Malfoy," Marcus drawled. "You can't rely on everyone else around to do your work for you."
"But where else do I go? I'm doing this alone." Draco looked over at Marcus, only just taking in the circle mark on his palm, the tension in his shoulders. "I'm trying, Flint. I just don't know what to do."
Marcus merely stared at him, and Draco resisted the urge to squirm under that gaze. It was rather like when Marcus was captain of the Quidditch team at school. He had been heavy handed with the discipline, and had often forced Draco to stay later than everyone else for practice in order to drill it into him. Draco had the distinct feeling that Marcus would have forced him to stay an extra two or three hours on the pitch if they were back at school.
"What?" Draco asked irritably. He was tired of feeling like a recalcitrant child, though he was dimly starting to realize he was acting like one.
"You've been out for a while. What have you been doing to meet the requirements of your parole?" Marcus asked.
"I have another six months to find a job..." Draco began. He hadn't started looking, mostly because he hadn't wanted to think about it. Work? A Malfoy doing actual physical labor? That was unthinkable.
"So will they throw you back into Azkaban next fall if you don't?" Marcus asked, reaching for another biscuit.
It was a seemingly idle question, but one that made Draco wince. If it came down to working or returning to Azkaban, there was no doubt what his choice would be. "I hadn't thought that far ahead."
"Obviously."
Draco glared at Marcus. "Thanks ever so much for your help, Flint," Draco snapped at him. "You're a wonderful and upstanding part of society."
"Of course I am," he agreed, as if the words hadn't been laced with heavy sarcasm. "You know I still own the family shop?" Marcus asked, snatching up another biscuit. "Adrian's up at the desk, of course. I'm too busy to actually do most of the day to day bit. But inventory's a right mess. Last bloke I hired for that destroyed an entire shipment of vases just because he was a clumsy bugger." He stared at Draco, almost as if waiting to see if he would take the opening offered.
"Is it difficult to do?" Draco asked.
"You could probably do a better job than the last bloke," Marcus allowed. "You're marginally more clever than he was."
"I suppose I'll take it, then," Draco said grudgingly. "So what will I have to do?"
"Inventory," Marcus replied. It was that irritated tone he used to have when the Quidditch team couldn't follow one of his plays on the pitch. As much as he hated to hear it directed at him, it made Draco feel almost nostalgic. "I assume you can still do tallies? Or did prison rot what's left of your mind?"
"I can do that," Draco replied, sitting up a bit straighter in his chair. "What else am I going to do there?"
"You can start with that," Marcus told him firmly. "I'm doing you a favor, you realize."
Draco eyed him warily. "So what will I owe you for this, then?"
"I suppose I'd have to pay you something, to make this look like it's on the up and up," Marcus replied, not directly answering the question.
Draco felt like pounding his crooked teeth in. He hadn't thought about money since his release, though the amounts in the vaults were dwindling by the day. "I need the money, Flint."
"Yes, I suppose you do," he agreed, leaning back in his chair. "And you owe Katie." His eyes were hard and without pity at that remark. "Katie respects hard work. If you really mean to do right by what you did her seventh year, then you have to work at it."
"Does she still play Quidditch?" Draco asked, remembering a comment she had made about recruiters.
"Not a drop," Marcus said ruefully, shaking his head. "But we're both too busy for it, even if she wanted to."
"What are you doing?" Draco asked, curious.
"There's the wedding plans, of course. And finishing up training with the Healers' Academy." Marcus shrugged at Draco's start of surprise. "It made sense at the time, and we've grown to like it a lot." He got up abruptly. "You remember where Flint and Locke is, right?" He waited until Draco nodded at him. "Stop by Monday at nine o'clock sharp."
Draco nodded. "Thanks, Flint."
Marcus snorted. "Don't thank me yet. You haven't seen the storage rooms for the shop."
Draco's tea was cold by the time Marcus left the cafe. He finished off the last biscuit and thought about what to do next. He could do this, if he just didn't stop to think about it too much. The entire world had gone on, and he was thrown off balance at every turn. People around him weren't anything like he had expected them to be.
Perhaps it was time to let go of his expectations.
***
Most of the Death Eaters he knew were still in Azkaban. Draco had no idea how he had gotten out so early; everyone else had been sentenced to life imprisonment with no hope for parole, let alone release. He absently rubbed at the curse scar on the back of his right hand; every Death Eater in Azkaban had been given one along with the horrid gray prisoner's uniform and the identification number that had been used instead of a name while he had been imprisoned there. It was a black X on his right hand, easily observable no matter what he did. The Punishment Marks had been used because it was too easy to conceal the Dark Mark during everyday activities, and the Ministry of Magic wanted it clear who had been involved in Dark Arts and the upheaval of recent times. The Dark Mark on his left forearm was faded and gray, no longer as intense looking as it had when Voldemort was still alive.
His mind shied away from that name. He was uncomfortable using it, even if the Prophet and all of the Order of the Phoenix members gloried in using the name once the Dark Lord was dead. Draco was still too afraid of it, still wondering if some remnant of the bastard was still around somewhere and just biding his time until everyone thought he was gone for good. He'd risen like an evil phoenix often enough in the years before he had come to power. Draco didn't put it past him to do another resurrection from the dead.
In Azkaban, it had been an almost exquisite kind of torture to think that the world existed beyond the tall gray walls. The very light there had been dim, visitors discouraged and contact with the outside world was minimized. You are being punished, the guards always said, the mantra drilling itself into his mind from the regularity of the words. You must pay for what you've done to the world. You will learn humility and you will learn your place in the new order of things.
The memory of the guards' faces would have been enough to turn his stomach, if anything had been in it.
"Draco?"
He turned from the window in the drawing room of Malfoy Manor. It was the only property left to the Malfoy name; everything else had been taxed to the hilt and then seized in the intervening years. Narcissa Malfoy had done what she could with the Malfoy properties, managing everything in his absence. There was only so much she could do with the Ministry so dead set against them. He had lost what little appetite he had left when he had seen the black circle cursed into the palm of her right hand. It hadn't been just Death Eaters that had been cursed; all known family members and associates had been cursed as well. Ostensibly it was to monitor their actions in and around Knockturn Alley, but Draco knew better. The Ministry didn't trust any of them, and wanted them all to suffer.
Draco tried to smile at his mother, but she knew what his strained smiles looked like. She had seen plenty of them before he had been sentenced to Azkaban. She crossed the room and wrapped her arms around him. "Come outside, Draco," she murmured. "It's lovely outside today. You can sit in the rose garden with me."
It was too bright in the rose garden, the colors too vivid, the scents too strong. He couldn't sit there and avoid the memories that would inevitably come. Ginny.
"I'll be out in a moment," Draco murmured when Narcissa seemed to expect a reply from him. She sighed and nodded; they both knew he wouldn't leave the drawing room anytime soon. "I will, Mother. I promise."
Narcissa played with his hair a bit, not quite meeting his eyes. She didn't want to see his inevitable wince at the sight of the black circle on her palm. He blamed himself, as if it was all his fault. He seemed to have forgotten that they both would have been marked by a circle because of Lucius' involvement. Or Bellatrix's, or Rodolphus, or any of the distant cousins that had been caught up in the Death Eaters' need for blood purity. Fully half of the Wizarding World was likely marked; even Nymphadora Tonks would have been marked if she survived. If Narcissa was a braver soul, she might have owled Andromeda Tonks to see if she and the baby had been marked.
"It will get better, Draco," Narcissa murmured. "We'll be all right."
She couldn't have possibly known, but she echoed one of the last things Ginny had said to him at Hogwarts. It will get better, Draco, I know it. Fight with me, and we'll be all right. He hadn't been able to believe her then, and he absolutely couldn't believe her now.
Draco pasted a smile onto his face and smiled at his mother. "Of course, Mother. Of course." As if they didn't rattle around the Manor like two knuts in a pauper's purse. As if they could avoid the incredulous stares on the streets, the whispers and recriminations that lay on the tip of everyone's tongues. As if anyone would ever believe that a Malfoy could amount to anything.
But he lied to his mother to help her smile, and watched her leave the drawing room with an absent look on her face. He closed his eyes and leaned against the glass of the window. The morning light seemed to stain the insides of his eyelids red, and almost unwillingly he thought of Ginny Weasley. It had been an odd sort of thing that happened his seventh year. He could feel the hate falling over him from the gazes of the golden Gryffindors, could feel the others stare and wonder just what happened in the tower that fatal night. I didn't do it! he had wanted to shout, but he kept his lips shut and his thoughts to himself. The Carrows were vicious, Snape unyielding and Voldemort held his parents captive. What else was he supposed to do? He had to go along with what was expected of him. He had to do as he was told and he had to try to stay two steps ahead to keep his family safe. He hadn't expected to fall apart in a deserted hallway, let alone have the littlest Weasley find him there.
"So you're human after all," she had said, taking in the sight of him sobbing. She had her wand loosely held in her hand, livid bruises on her face. She had been fresh from the Carrows' detention.
"Go laugh somewhere else," Draco had snarled, pointing his wand at her chest.
"Who's laughing?" she had asked. And she hadn't seemed to be taking any kind of vicious joy in his pain, didn't seem interested in making him feel worse.
They had stared at each other for a while, and then Ginny had left. Draco thought of calling her back, but there had been nothing for him to say. It hadn't mattered. They bumped into each other at odd times, and he had supervised a detention session the Carrows had been too busy to attend personally. With no one else there, Draco had simply had her sit in silence. He had parchment in front of him, though he couldn't even contemplate what he was supposed to see.
"You aren't a very good Death Eater, are you?" Ginny asked suddenly. Draco's head snapped up and he took in her blank expression. "You don't take pleasure in hurting anyone seriously. Your Crucio isn't as strong as the others' and you don't hold anyone under as long as they do. This isn't what you wanted to do, is it?"
She was right, damn it all.
"Just keep your mouth shut, Weasley," Draco snarled at her, balling up the sheets of parchment. This was impossible. There was no way to make a defensive shield for his parents that the Dark Lord wouldn't know about. His Occlumency was good, but it wasn't that good.
Ginny got up from her seat and came directly in front of him. Almost hesitantly, she reached out and touched his face. Draco caught her wrist in his hand, squeezing tightly. There was a flare of panic in her eyes that she tamped down on almost immediately. She was better at hiding her emotions than he was, and the knowledge rankled. "What are you playing at, Weasley?" he asked, voice more raw than he wanted it to be. "Aren't you concerned I'll just kill you?"
"You would have before if you wanted to," Ginny told him confidently.
Draco spun her around and pressed her up against the wall, her arm twisted up behind her back. He could smell her scent, something like roses, something that made him feel alive. He was pressed tight against her, the tremors rolling through her. "Who says I won't now? Who says the Carrows won't approve?"
"That's not you," she said, her voice sounding more confident than than the tremors would have indicated. "You're not a ruthless killer."
"Shows what you know," he snarled against her ear. "You're just a Weasley. You don't count for anything in the new order of things."
He didn't know how it happened, but somehow Ginny spun out of his grip and pushed him into the wall. Her hands pinned his arms at his sides, and he faced her blazing eyes. "You're that sure it's going to happen? That Tom is going to push all his little toy soldiers into the right places and watch them go?"
Draco had looked at her in confusion. "Who's Tom?"
She had pulled back away from him, almost in disgust. "It's not important anymore." He didn't know who she was upset with, him for not knowing or herself for mentioning it.
"You're still in here?"
Draco started at the sound of Narcissa's voice. He had been lost in the memory, something that was only too easy to do. It was all he had left, really.
Narcissa sighed and entered the drawing room. "That's it. You have been moving around the house like a ghost. You have to do something more than simply look out of the windows. You're coming with me to Diagon Alley. I have some errands to run..."
"I won't be squired around like a child," Draco replied in a surly tone. "I'm a grown man that just spent five fucking years in Azkaban."
Narcissa's lips thinned. "Language, young man," she said, voice sharp. "Imprisonment is no excuse for bad manners."
He snorted, but acknowledged the point. "Just give me the list and I'll do them for you."
It was a short list; Narcissa needed embroidery supplies and bulbs for her flower beds. Draco wasn't sure how he would be received in Diagon Alley, but there was no way around it any longer. He would have to show his face sooner or later. He might as well know what he was in for if he went out in public.
At first, it was like he was invisible. He arrived in the public apparition point at the end of Diagon with no fanfare. No one noticed him as he walked along the street. He could feel the cobblestones beneath his feet, the shadows from the buildings falling in patches along the way. He had remembered this, but the memory had been somewhat blurred and indistinct compared to actually being back in Diagon. He saw a flash of vivid red out of the corner of his eyes; it wasn't Ginny, no matter how much he half hoped it would be.
He purchased the needles and thread for his mother, the shopkeeper's eyes boring holes into his chest as soon as the black X on his hand appeared. He was Marked, in more ways than one, and it burned. The sickles he received in change were heavy in his palm, his tongue thick in his mouth. I was just a boy, he wanted to say. I even fucked up killing people, all right?
But he stepped back out onto the street with the words unsaid. They wouldn't have been appreciated anyway.
For a moment, he had an odd sensation of being watched. That someone was looking at him specifically, that someone was keeping an eye on him. He wanted to turn in the direction of the sensation along his spine, wanted to see if warm brown eyes and vivid red hair were standing there. But he didn't want to turn around and see empty air, didn't want to know for certain that she had moved on and had forgotten him. Why should she care? He was just another Death Eater, just another student that had pushed at her family and said awful things. He was just another stupid boy playing at being a man and failing at everything he tried to do.
Draco's heart stopped at the florist's shop. He had to be imagining things, had to be hallucinating. Only, the world was so very bright, so very detailed. Everything stood out in sharp relief, every detail indelibly etched into his memory. It almost hurt to feel again, almost hurt to realize that this was, in fact, the wide world he had once pined for.
Ginny Weasley was behind the counter, laughing at something Harry Potter was telling her.
Draco turned abruptly, nearly careening into a basket full of lilacs and upsetting a delicate orchid perched on an ornate glass pin. He was being sliced to ribbons, bleeding from the inside out. He had known that Ginny could do better than him, had always known that she couldn't possibly care for him. Not that way. But seeing it with his own eyes, after carefully burying his hopes deep inside, burned him more than the humiliation of being Marked. Of course things never went his way. Of course the universe hated him. Of course everything went to rot where he was concerned now.
They noticed him right away, and of course they wanted to help him extricate himself from the lilac blooms that clung to his robes. Of course he would rake his eyes across Ginny's pale face, would take in the fact that she wasn't wearing a wedding ring, that she still kept her wand tucked into a messy bun at the top of her head if she needed both hands free, that she still worried her bottom lip with her teeth, that she still had exactly twenty-seven freckles across the bridge of her nose. He cursed himself for a fool for noticing these things, for allowing himself to want even for the briefest of moments.
"I'd heard you got released," Harry was saying amiably, plucking the last lilac from Draco's sleeve and handing it to Ginny. "I'm glad. I thought the Ministry was going to foul that up for you after all."
Draco blinked at him, but Harry was already looking over at Ginny. "I think she'd like these, actually. They're just the right shade of blue to match her eyes."
Ginny laughed. "Draco always did have good sense about color."
It was surreal. He had to double check that he in fact did have his curse mark on his hand.
"Well, then, a dozen of these and some of the sunflowers," Harry said cheerfully. "Luna will love them."
Draco wound up following them back to the counter, watching incredulously as the two carried on, clearly friends, clearly engaged in a perfectly platonic relationship. He had to blink and refocus to realize he was supposed to be paying attention to what Ginny was actually saying. "You look... Well, not healthy, exactly. But not as bad as I'd heard Azkaban would be on people." Her hands went still for a moment before she finished bundling the flowers together, the paper crinkling under her hands. "I suppose they really did make it something less terrible?"
"No," he rasped before he could stop himself. "No, they hadn't." It was gray and hopeless and awful, the endless days of nothing. It didn't matter if Dementors were gone. The ghost of them still lingered.
Harry frowned, flowers in hand. "That's not right. They assured me that there were changes to it. That it was more humane. I should look into that, then." If anything, his expression darkened, and his right hand tightened into a fist. "It wouldn't be the first time they lied about something like that." Harry nodded at Draco, who stood there, stunned speechless.
Ginny shook her head, but waited until he had left the shop before speaking. "He needs something to fight for, you understand. It's always been that way for him."
For an impossible moment, Draco almost felt seventeen again, wishing he could take her hand as they sat together in a deserted classroom or the Room of Requirement. She'd talked of Harry's hero tendencies then, how left behind she had felt. She had tried to do so much, but always seemed to remain in his shadow somehow. At the time, he had wondered if their odd friendship had developed simply because he was the opposite of Harry Potter, and she was desperate to become someone other than the girl he left behind.
Then the moment passed, and there was pain in her smile. "Well, you must be here for your mother's bulbs. She doesn't ever trust them to owl delivery. She's convinced that the owl will eat them or something."
He wanted to ask her why she was talking to him, why she didn't seem to hate him the way everyone else did. He wanted to ask why she didn't glare at the black X on his hand, why she didn't demand that he leave her shop. He wanted to ask what had happened in the five years he had been gone, what he had missed. He wanted to ask if maybe they were still friends, or if they had ever been. He wanted to ask why she'd left.
But she passed him the box of bulbs and the moment was lost. "Tell your mother I said hello," Ginny told him with a soft smile as he turned to leave. "Welcome home, Draco. It's a different world, but you'll do all right in it, I'm sure. You always seemed to manage to take care of yourself."
"What about you?" he asked, then clamped his lips shut to keep himself from asking anything else.
Her smile was sad. "We all lose something, Draco. It's just that for some people it's harder to see." She straightened slightly and waved him of. "Go on, give those to your mother. You shouldn't keep her waiting."
Draco took the dismissal for what it was and went home. It was only when he handed the box of bulbs to his mother that he realized Ginny hadn't charged him for them. Thief, his mind told him harshly. It's just one more thing for them to call you, one more thing for them to blame you for.
It was too tiring to worry about. He would simply have to take care of it the next time he went to Diagon Alley.
Ginny didn't acknowledge the lack of payment, just as she used to ignore all the little details that didn't suit her back at Hogwarts. Little things like rules and propriety hadn't mattered then. She had an inner fire, she had the strength of her beliefs. It was what made her stand out so much, why she had always been a target. She was a Weasley, to be sure, but more importantly, she didn't have the good sense to sit back and refrain from making herself known in her own right. Draco had nearly despaired of her, certain she would get herself killed by the end of the year. It was a welcome relief that she hadn't.
But now it was almost torture.
Narcissa had been heartened by Draco's successful outing, and came up with errands for him to do on a regular basis. She needed more cloth, more thread, more flowers, more books to read. There were letters to write, magazines to pick up, vaults to check on and household goods to purchase. Narcissa had done these things herself or by owl post before Draco's release. Now that he was back, it was a good way to get him out and about in a controlled manner. She could see that he was discomfited by space and people and loud noise. It didn't do him any good to remain closeted in the house, skulking about corners like a ghost. Draco had become a shadow of the boy he had once been, and it broke her heart to see it.
Draco dutifully did her errands, dutifully endured the stares and the wondering looks that the black X brought him. There weren't many of those about, but he did catch sight of more than a few black O's on palms. Those made sure to give Knockturn Alley a wide berth, sure that it wasn't worth the inquiry it would cause.
He found himself wandering into Ginny's flower shop, even if Narcissa didn't want a new bouquet for the dining room. He watched her interact with the customers, his hands stuffed into his pockets. She knew the mark was there, had to know even if she hadn't seen it, but Draco didn't want her looking at him in loathing.
But then, she had never really loathed him. She had called him all sorts of filthy names, hexed him soundly, but she had never seemed to give him the kind of intense hatred he thought she would. Eventually Ginny had shown him an empty corridor in Hogwarts he hadn't known about, and they sat after hours together more often than not. Sometimes they sat in perfect silence, each doing homework next to each other. Sometimes she asked to see his Dark Mark; her fingers never actually touched the branded skin, but hovered somewhere above it as if afraid to actually feel the Mark writhing just beneath the surface.
Once, they had even kissed. It was a tentative thing, an awkward tangle of lips and teeth and tongue, hands firmly set on robes and away from any bits that might have appreciated the groping. Draco thought perhaps he would have tried again, tried to assure her he wasn't a complete idiot. But the kiss had been just before Easter hols, and she hadn't come back.
He had been afraid she was dead, and too afraid to ask about her.
"You've done well," Draco managed to say. He'd been skulking about her shop for days, making idle conversation over the different names of flowers or what kind of bouquet his mother would like.
"It's a lovely little shop," Ginny agreed.
"I didn't know you liked flowers," Draco murmured, then wanted to kick himself. There were so many things he didn't know about her, had never known about her. It hadn't been important at the time, but he had felt the loss so keenly while he was in Azkaban. If only had been a sharper knife than the shame of seeing his father crumble before his eyes.
Ginny laughed, though. Her laugh had always been full of life, a concerto of sound when she was truly happy. He'd heard it a few times, when he managed to startle it out of her. "So many things you don't actually know, Draco," she had replied, shrugging. "But to be fair, I didn't know it myself back then." She reached out and touched a lily's white petal delicately. "It was after. Someone had to make the funeral arrangements... And they're such calming, pristine things."
Draco dimly remembered talk of losses on the Order's side, of a Weasley numbering amongst the dead. "I'm sorry."
Her smile was wan. "It's all right. It's been five and a half years."
"I'm still sorry," he murmured. Impulsively, he reached out and grasped her hand. He wanted to curse himself for a fool when he saw the black X winking up at him. Though honestly, his left wouldn't have been any better, the ghost of the Dark Mark still hovering beneath his skin.
Ginny squeezed his hand back. "Let's get your mother her namesake flower, shall we? And some snapdragons to stand in for you."
Draco found himself smiling at her. "I don't often snap, do I?"
"Oh, I don't know. On occasion you actually do say something witty."
He had joked with her about holidays. Or homework. Or some stupid firstie antic in the hall. For months, they seemed to talk as if they lived in each others' skin, sometimes touching hands or exchanging looks. For some reason, he had been hesitant to push his luck any farther, to see if she shared those same feelings.
"Yeah," Draco agreed, his voice feeling like a shadow of itself. "Sometimes. Not too much to joke about nowadays."
"Sometimes there is," she assured him, reaching for a snapdragon. She looked at the purple blossom and then lifted it up. "Sometimes it's the only way to make it through the day."
"Are you happy?" he asked after a moment. "Really happy?"
She looked up with luminous eyes. "Sometimes I can be," she replied. He remembered the look on her face when they discussed the Dark Arts, when she said that such things had to be controlled. He remembered the hint of secrets in her eyes then, that something horrible had happened that she wouldn't say. "What about you?" she asked, as if none of that had ever happened.
"I'm trying," Draco replied, serious. "I'm learning, I think."
"You can be clever if you put your mind to it," Ginny told him, pushing the bouquet at him. "You'll pick up the knack sooner or later."
He thought of this bouquet in the empty stillness of Malfoy Manor, the suffocating quiet that made him think. "You think I'm clever?"
Ginny snorted indelicately, just the way she used to. It was eerie how he remembered that so keenly. "Still with an ego, I see. Stop in next week and see if I still think you're clever."
Draco grinned at her. His reply was cut off by the jangle of bells over the door, announcing a new customer. He didn't want to have this conversation in front of someone else. Too much meaning behind the words, too much history tangled between them that would be hard to explain. And she was happy, he could tell. She smiled widely at the customers, she touched the plants lovingly and she seemed content with the life she had built for herself. She was whole, and he was an empty shell pretending to be.
He took the bouquet home, remembering her smile every time he looked at it.
It was deep winter, with the snow thick and deep and even all around. He had been released in autumn, just when the colors were the sharpest and the air the crispest, just when life was about to die. Now it was cold and stark white, as lifeless as half of his old Death Eater acquaintances were. The other half were stuck in perpetual gray of a half-life that imprisonment had become. Draco sometimes thought that he hadn't really left Azkaban behind, that the endless shades of gray were simply lurking around the corner. His dreams were still in shades of gray.
The highlight of his life was his daily trips to Diagon Alley. It may or may not have had anything to do with Ginny Weasley... Well, he would have denied it if asked, but no one ever did. He enjoyed the quiet in the flower shop, the bright colors and the reminder that life still existed even if he seemed to have the memory of Azkaban clinging to him like a second skin.
Ginny liked roses and lilies, chatted with various customers and liked Thai takeaway for lunch. Potter was completely hopeless at getting flowers for Luna, who Draco assumed was his girlfriend. Ginny kept referring to Potter's "latest cause," whatever that was, though they both were suspiciously silent about it in Draco's presence. Potter even tried to be polite to Draco, and ask after his family awkwardly to make small talk. After the first few attempts, Draco stopped trying to needle him to reestablish the dynamic they'd had at school, but it was like trying to get a rise out of a blancmange. After a few attempts, he stopped trying. Everything else in the world had changed, so this was just one more.
Ginny was the brightest thing in his life. She didn't even seem to mind it if he hung about the shop looking at flowers in silence. It was almost like his seventh year at Hogwarts again, that odd friendship rekindled as if time hadn't passed at all.
"Have dinner with me?" he asked one afternoon.
Ginny smiled and handed him a red rose. "You know better than that, don't you?"
The red of the rose was different from the red of her hair, but it all seemed to blur together. "I don't mean in front of everyone," he said slowly, the syllables like ash in his mouth.
She snorted and rolled her eyes at him. "Yes, that's obvious. I meant there are nicer ways to ask me."
Draco blinked and let out the breath he hadn't realized had frozen inside his lungs. "Oh."
"Right. Oh. Honestly, Draco, you didn't used to be this thick."
"It kept me alive this long," Draco replied without thinking, and Ginny frowned at him. "It's all right if you don't want to," he told her quickly. He didn't expect her to say yes. He didn't expect her to really want to spend time with him.
She lofted an eyebrow at him. After a moment contemplating him, she reached out and gave him a hard shove on his chest. Draco staggered backward a step and frowned at her. "That was uncalled for," he said, disappointment coloring his tone. "I haven't done anything..."
"Yes, and that's the problem," Ginny replied, rolling her eyes. "What's with this mealy-mouthed routine? That's not you."
He bit back the impulse to snarl right back at her. That sort of thing had always been punished severely, and part of him still tensed in preparation for the pain that accompanied any show of spirit while in Azkaban. He'd gotten good at hiding his emotions, tamping down his instincts until even he couldn't tell what they were. This was Ginny, though, and she was throwing him off, making him feel again, her clear eyes seeing through him just as they always had.
"There you are," she said, and he liked her smile even as he thought she looked smug.
"What are you on about?"
"Just let me lock up the shop," Ginny told him with a soft smile. She looked sixteen again, innocent in some ways yet worldly and dangerous in others. I want to be here, she had told him once. You look at me like I'm real.
His hand was cold and his heart thudded in his chest when they apparated to Malfoy Manor. Dinner was quiet; Narcissa was out for the evening with one of her friends and the dining room was far too large for just two people in it. But the elves put together a dinner for two as if it was a banquet, and the bouquet of fresh hyacinths was a bright spot of color on the table.
Draco felt as if he was suspended in time. Some things were different, too starkly different and painful. The stillness and the echoes in the empty rooms, the curse marks, the knowledge that he was a pariah on all sides, and the terrible feeling that it was better than he deserved. He was bitter and humble, ground down to pieces, lost within the cracks of the world. But some things were the same. The tilt of her head, the slip of a smile between her words, the way she threw back her head when she laughed, too long and too loud to be ladylike. The way she reached out to grasp his hand when he felt his worst, the way her eyes told him that even this would pass as well.
"I'm not..." he began slowly, anxiety plain in his voice even if his features were schooled to perfect impassivity. "I'm not good at this anymore." He took in her earnest expression and sighed. "They broke us, Ginny. It's what they wanted to do, what we were sentenced to. I don't know if I can be who I was, who you think I should be."
"You talk as if you'd died!" She threw up her hands in frustration. "I don't know. I'm no head healer, but I know you, and this... This cringing, fearful coward is not you. You might have changed, but not that much! You fought them at their own game and tried to play both sides."
"I had a reason then," he snapped, bristling at her implication.
"And you don't now?" she snapped back.
"Thank you," he murmured softly, reaching for her hand. She felt like she was on fire, as if she exuded the warmth he didn't allow himself to feel.
"Don't thank me," Ginny replied.
"Why not? You're still here."
"Where else would I be?" Ginny asked. She cupped his face with one hand almost tenderly. "We never finished what we started."
But they couldn't, not really, not the way he wanted. Her palms were clear, and he couldn't make her take a mark just for his sake. He wasn't worth that kind of pain, wasn't worth the effort. He wouldn't allow her to sully herself that way.
"Ginny, I..."
She leaned forward and kissed him. There was nothing awkward or tentative about this kiss, nothing childish about the way her tongue caressed his or how his heart hammered in his chest with all the needs and wants he had tried to keep from dreaming about.
Ginny smiled impishly at him when she pulled back. "There. That's how it should have been five and a half years ago."
"You didn't come back," he said, in spite of himself. "I thought... Well, it doesn't matter what I thought."
"Things happened. No one really had an easy time of it."
He thought of the empty, gray eyes in the mirror every morning, the way that it never seemed to change. He thought of how hopeless his friends had become, how dreary life was while living within the constraints the Ministry had put forth. "No, I don't suppose anyone has."
"So we start again," Ginny murmured, that half smile on her face. "Well, you more than me, really. You do realize that standing in the corner waiting to talk to me isn't helpful, right?"
"Look, this isn't comfortable..."
"No, but life isn't," Ginny replied. She leaned forward and kissed his cheek softly. "I liked it better when you had plans. When you talked about the future as something worth fighting for. When we were worth fighting for."
He ought to save her from herself, really. But he was no Gryffindor, and he was an even worse Slytherin, it seemed. He should do the right thing by her, keep this thing from starting again, keep her from making a tragic mistake. But he missed her, he felt alive around her, like he could even live again near her.
He'd been half dead for five years, and he couldn't return to that now that he knew better.
"They did a good job of taking away every dream I had," Draco told her plainly. "You think I can bounce back that easily?"
Ginny crossed her arms over her chest. "Why couldn't you? You're not dead."
But he had wanted to be for a long time, and it was like an old habit that was hard to break. "It's not that easy, Ginny," he said softly.
She gave him a push on his chest. "It can be, you giant prat. Stop feeling sorry for yourself. What did you used to tell me? You're Draco fucking Malfoy and you're not even scared of the Carrows?"
He laughed at the memory. He had been such an idiot. "I was lying, you bint."
Ginny laughed along with him. "I know you were. But you did a great job of it then. Why can't you now? What are you so afraid of?"
Seeing a mark on her palm. Seeing her hate him for it. Seeing everything he wanted die before his eyes.
"I shouldn't have..." He stopped and swallowed the painful words. "Look, Ginny. I shouldn't have asked you to dinner. I can't do this to you. The world is better off without me."
"No, it's not," Ginny said fiercely, her hands balled into fists and her eyes blazing with that spark he had missed dearly. "This world is an awful place without you in it. This world is empty."
He looked at her in wonder, reaching out for her hand. He stopped just short of touching her fingers, just short of making contact and being sure that this was real. He was still half convinced reality would shatter and he would find himself back in his cell at Azkaban, six foot square and eight feet tall. He was still half convinced he had gone mad.
"I missed you, Draco," Ginny whispered. "Why do you find it so hard to believe?"
Because then it would be real. Because then every failure, every triumph, every blasted moment of his existence would have to be real. Because it would hurt, and it would be painful, and he would have to own up to every last bit of it.
And he was afraid.
She grasped his hand tightly, so tightly the nail beds in her fingers went white. He looked at it in dismay, then back up at her face. "You can't."
"I do," she murmured softly. She lifted his hand slightly, then pressed her lips to his knuckles. "I told you. You're the only one that saw me. Even if you didn't know why, you saw me. And I see you, too. I always have." She ran her thumb across the ridges of his knuckles gently, as he had once done to hers. "I missed you. I care about you."
He wanted to lie to her, to say he didn't care for her, it was just a way to make Harry Potter jealous, just a schoolboy's stupid antic that backfired royally, that she was a silly bint that didn't know what she was talking about.
The lie refused to leave his lips. He couldn't do that to her. "I'm sorry," he said, voice raw as it scraped past his throat. "You shouldn't."
Ginny smiled then, that sneaky, sly smile he hadn't dreamed could exist on a Weasley's face. "I was never fond of shouldn'ts or couldn'ts, if you recall. I never liked being shut up in a box and put aside somewhere." She stood and walked the three steps around the corner of the table to meet him at its head. "I know what I'm doing. I know exactly what I'm doing."
Draco gulped when she sat in his lap and looped her arms around his shoulders. "Don't do this, Ginny," he said, his voice suspiciously like a whimper. "Don't ruin yourself for me." I'm not worth it.
She leaned her head down, their foreheads touching. Draco let his eyelids fall shut as she laughed bitterly. "Of all the sodding times to be noble, Draco, I didn't think you'd pick this one."
"I know better," he said, his hands along her back. He could feel the bumps in her spine through her blouse, could feel the flutter of breath trapped within the cage of her ribs. She was strong, much stronger than she looked. He knew that. But he also knew he wouldn't ask this of her. He wouldn't let her volunteer for this kind of ostracism, this kind of terrible fallout. The Ministry marked everyone. Everyone. Even babies, even the innocent. No one was spared, and if he could, he would spare her this.
Ginny pressed her lips to his forehead. "I don't."
You can still be selfish, he told himself, a deceptive whisper. You can still have it all. She can meet you here, and no one is the wiser. She won't have to be marked. No one would have to know.
It was tempting. But the last time he had been tempted into something like this had been a complete and utter disaster.
No, this time he was going to do this the right way. If she was going to damn herself, then he had to make sure she was going to do it for a good reason. He had to be worthy of that sacrifice, no matter what it took.
"Fancy seeing you here," Blaise said, arms crossed over his chest and his tone somewhat mulish.
Draco had his hands in his pockets, head somewhat bowed. "I'm sorry for what happened."
"You think that takes it all away?" Blaise glared at Draco, not moving from the doorway to his townhouse. "You think an apology undoes everything? That I'll simply forget it?"
Draco looked at the man that had once been one of his good friends. "No, I don't expect you to forget - you can't, any more than I can. I'm apologizing because I really am sorry. I'm sorry I wasn't a better friend, I'm sorry she died and it's my fault, and I'm sorry I didn't know any better than to drag you down with me."
Blaise contemplated Draco's expression for a long moment, until Draco was tensing to turn and leave without anything further said. "Come in, then."
He followed Blaise into the townhouse, quiet as he waited for a reaction, any reaction. No one knew about the night that Blaise's mother had died, not even Ginny. He had been too ashamed of himself to even think about it before, too caught up in his own worries. He sat down across from Blaise and managed to suppress a wince at the black curse circle pressed into his palm.
"So you're throwing yourself on my mercy?" Blaise asked, eyebrow raised. "That's a new trick."
"I've been hiding a while," Draco admitted slowly. He started at the sound of voices in the next room. "Should I leave? Am I interrupting?"
Blaise thought about it for a moment, then shook his head. "You might as well come by and meet everyone."
Draco followed Blaise from the sitting room into a large, airy room. There was a young woman lying on the floor playing with a toddler and a baby, and he wondered if it was the shock of realizing Blaise had moved on with living his life that kept him from knowing who she was. She looked up, and he realized it was a girl Blaise had always fiercely defended against teasing back at Hogwarts. "Chloe, this is Draco. Draco, my wife Chloe. And that's Finton walking around and Niles on the floor."
Draco nodded in greeting and hunkered down to look at the toddler at eye level. "Hullo," he offered, not sure what else to do with a toddler. The boy laughed, rushing to his mother's side. Draco's heart sank at the sight of the circle already pressed into the boy's palm as he reached out to yank on his mother's hair. He looked up at Blaise and croaked, "Is it because I...?"
Blaise shook his head. "Don't be so vain. It's for Chloe's brother." He sat down on the floor beside Chloe and grasped her hand in a tight grip. The toddler rushed forward and grasped his father's arm tightly.
Chloe gave a bitter laugh at Draco's shock. "As if I would give up family for something so trivial."
"But the children..." He had known it was possible for children to be marked. It had made sense in an abstract sort of way, but seeing the reality of it was brutal.
"We have circles because we love going to see Uncle Devon at the work farm," Chloe said, her voice firm. Finton laughingly repeated Devon's name in an increasingly excited tone. Smiling smoothed out her features and she ran a hand over the toddler's curls. "Yes, honey. We're going there next weekend." The boy jumped up and down with delight, then raced off to get one of his toys.
Draco could feel the eyes of the adults on him as the toddler ran around and gradually slowed down. He was sorely tempted to turn tail and run, but he didn't know how. "Do you want me to go with you?" he asked after a moment. "I can try to watch the boys, maybe, so you can talk to him alone?"
After a moment's pause, Chloe nodded and smiled softly, with Blaise squeezing her hand. "That would be lovely. There's so much we don't say, in case Finton would remember," Chloe said. "He always looks so sad when we visit."
"It's probably not too different from Azkaban," Draco murmured. "Only without the high walls blocking out the sun." He should have probably kept his mouth shut, but they had looked startled by his admission. "They're getting revenge," Draco said, rubbing at the black X on his hand absently. "They don't think we suffered enough, that's all."
"You've only had five years," Blaise pointed out. "They must have thought you paid your dues."
Draco blinked in surprise. The guards had certainly been spiteful and angry, not sparing him any of the painful punishments or harsh words. He hadn't been treated any differently. He wasn't special.
So why the special treatment?
"I'm glad you came by," Chloe said, breaking into Draco's thoughts. "It's good to renew acquaintances. Nowadays, they're so few."
Yes, he supposed they were. Draco pasted a smile on his face. "I'd like it if we could be friends again," he told Blaise. "I think I know how to be a better one now."
Blaise looked at his family, then grudgingly nodded at Draco. "We'll see. Maybe."
It was more than Draco had hoped for, and he found himself smiling despite having thought he didn't remember how.
"How did I get off so easy?" Draco asked Ginny abruptly.
She put down her fork carefully, not answering him right away. "You served five years in Azkaban."
"Everyone else is still there. My father is a half dead wreck still there. Why am I here and not there? I'm no better than any of them. I did what they told me, same as them."
"You're not the same," Ginny said firmly, her voice brooking no argument. "You're not like that."
Draco slammed his hand down on the table, black X livid against the back of his hand. "Yes, I am."
Ginny's gaze bore through him, as if she could peel back the layers of what he had become to find the boy beneath it all. "You're not a seasoned killer. You're not a heartless bastard. You were a scared boy trying to save your parents and keep yourself alive. You were a boy caught up in something bigger than yourself. You were someone caught without any place to be. And I know you. I won't let you think you're something you're not. You're not Tom."
Tom was evil, she had said. She never said who he was, what became of him or why she hated him so much. All she would say was that Tom was evil, Tom had been stopped, but Tom in some ways would never leave her.
"Am I some project?" he asked quietly, putting his own fork down. "You took up the invitation because you feel sorry for me? You want to fix me?"
"You're long past fixing, Draco," Ginny replied in that droll tone she had. He forgot about that sometimes, how sharp her tongue could be, how her words sliced him to ribbons. "No, you're not my project."
It implied that he was someone's project, but he was too tired to ask what Harry wanted from him in return.
"Why did I get out early? It wasn't for good behavior. It wasn't because I'm that much better."
Draco had never seen her look this angry. "Yes, you are."
He never would have imagined she would be so angry on his behalf. "Ginny..."
"They couldn't keep you there for long because you didn't do half the things they accused you of," Ginny said, her voice sharp. "They never even told you what the charges were, but most of them were made up. We pointed that out, that's all."
"We?"
Ginny pressed her lips together. "You honestly didn't think it was just me that helped, did you? A good lot of us testified on your behalf."
He blinked in surprise. He hadn't expected that anyone would want to, let alone actually had. The guards had always shouted how worthless they all were, how unloved and unwanted they were in the world. He had believed it; there had never been any proof to the contrary before.
"Yes, Draco, you actually have people that care about you," she said, her tone sharp. "They do actually exist. You might want to ponder that one and maybe get out of the house a little more often. I'm not the only one that missed you," she said softly, her tone lessening the sting of her words. She reached across the table and grasped his hand.
"I didn't think anyone would but Mum. I'd hoped... I was afraid to hope..."
"Well, now you know," Ginny said, squeezing his hand. "What are you going to do about it?"
He leaned forward and kissed her lips, shoving aside the doubts he still had. They weren't his doubts, after all. They were just the ones drilled into him by the guards. "Who else should I thank?" he asked, lips quirking into a smile.
"Like that? Nobody else, you prat," Ginny replied with an answering smile.
"I should talk to them. Thank them, at least."
"Talk to whoever you need to," Ginny said, shrugging. "Most of us didn't do it for a thank you. It was the right thing to do."
The phrase echoed in his mind that night. As difficult as it was going to be, he was going to have to also do the right thing; he would have to make amends.
He owled Katie Bell the next morning. He had been the one at fault for the spell damage she had suffered from carrying the locket he had tried to send to Dumbledore. It didn't even matter if that had been revealed outside of his trial, but he needed to talk to her about it. After seeing Blaise, Draco knew he couldn't hide from his past. It was cowardly, and he wasn't going to be that scared little boy any longer.
Katie must have been curious about why he owled her, but she didn't seem to show it. She met with him at a cafe that weekend. Over tea and biscuits, Draco stumbled his way through an apology and explanation. Her expression had been neutral at first, and by the end, her jaw was clenched tight. Her hands had been clenched tightly in her lap, and Draco thought she was going to take a swing at him.
But instead, she pushed her dark hair back and away from her ears with her left hand. He could see a long, jagged scar along the left side of her head, just above her left ear. He had already caught the sight of the black circle on the palm of her right hand. Draco knew it wasn't polite to stare, but he couldn't help it. Katie had her jaw still clenched when he managed to look her in the eye again, and Draco wondered what she was going to do.
Katie took a sip of her tea and visibly calmed herself down. "I'd wondered who it was," she said finally. "Rosmerta said that she was told to Imperius me, that she had never meant to do it on her own."
"I didn't--"
"I was at Mungo's for months," Katie continued, interrupting Draco. "The pain was intense. You have no idea what it was like. No idea."
Ashamed, Draco gave a tiny shake of his head. He didn't really. He hadn't known what the locket would do, exactly. He had been too desperate at the time to really look at what he was doing.
"And all the rest of that year, you were going along as if nothing happened..."
"It wasn't like that," Draco corrected. "I didn't... Not like that. I wasn't glad that I'd ruined someone's life, I wasn't pleased that I'd hurt anyone. I was selfish, and I just didn't want it to be my parents."
"You didn't care who it was, right? It didn't matter who died as long as it wasn't you."
Draco stifled the wince he wanted to make at her blunt tone. It was something like that, but there was no way to make it sound better. "I was sixteen," he began slowly. "I didn't know what else to do. I didn't have anyone that could help me." He looked at her, hoping she could believe him. "I'm not excusing what I did, Katie. I want to make things right."
She gave a startled bark of laughter. "Make things right? How are you going to do that? I wanted to play professional Quidditch. There was going to be a recruiter there in the stands, and I might've been invited for open tryouts." Katie gave Draco's drawn expression a look of distaste. "And instead, do you know what I was doing?"
"I don't know," he admitted. "I didn't want to find out before."
"Trying to off myself in a particularly grand fashion," she ground out, and Draco's eyes drifted to the scar above her ear. Katie stood up, eyes flashing at him. "I don't forgive you for that. I can't forgive you."
"I'm not asking you to, exactly. I want to know how to make things right. I need to make up somehow for what I've done, even if you never forgive me for that."
Katie's lips curled in derision. "You need to? I don't need anything else from you. Your last gift was quite enough."
Draco watched her leave the cafe, feeling small and stupid. He hadn't been certain what he wanted to do with this, but it had backfired. He rubbed at his face wearily, not sure what to do next. He was startled when a heavy hand clapped down on his shoulder. He turned in time to see Marcus Flint settle into the chair Katie had just vacated, a coffee cup in hand. He took up one of the biscuits she hadn't touched and vaguely nodded at Draco. "I suppose it's a good sign she didn't hex you," Marcus began around a mouthful of biscuits. "It would've been a shame to have to memory charm everyone else here."
"I'm sorry, what?" he asked. Everyone seemed to be throwing him for a loop. He had been held in some kind of gray suspended animation over the past five years, but everyone else had moved on.
"Katie. My fiancee," Marcus said, nodding in the direction Katie had left in. "She didn't punch you either, I noticed."
"Well, I'm not her favorite person in the world." Draco looked in that direction, his expression distant. "I don't know what she told you--"
"Everything," Marcus said, finishing his coffee. "I was there from the beginning."
"You overheard us?" Draco asked, startled. He hadn't even seen Marcus in the cafe. Marcus was a towering block of a man, and should have been easy to spot in a crowd.
Marcus snorted. "And people called me thick at school? No, idiot. I was there when she was at Mungo's. I'm the reason she's still alive." He leaned back in his chair. "So why is it that you still are? I'd've thought she'd package you into pieces to owl back to your Mum."
Draco winced slightly. "I don't know how to make things up to her. I need to make things right somehow, and I haven't the foggiest idea how to start." He shook his head. "Maybe it's a lost cause. If she hates me..."
"What are you? A bleeding girl?" Marcus sneered, throwing an arm over the back of his chair. "You're still alive and she hasn't killed you yet. I'd say there are pretty good odds you can convince her you're genuine. Assuming you are, of course."
"I didn't mean to hurt her, Flint," Draco told him. "There's a lot of things I didn't mean, but they happened anyway. I'm trying to figure out how I can fix it, how I can make up for what I did." He looked over at the other man. "I don't know what she needs."
Marcus lofted an eyebrow at Draco and sat up a bit straighter. "What are you willing to do?"
"What do you mean?" Draco asked, frowning. "Kill someone?" He had been rubbish at that, though plenty of people seemed to die all around him.
"You need to start thinking, Malfoy," Marcus drawled. "You can't rely on everyone else around to do your work for you."
"But where else do I go? I'm doing this alone." Draco looked over at Marcus, only just taking in the circle mark on his palm, the tension in his shoulders. "I'm trying, Flint. I just don't know what to do."
Marcus merely stared at him, and Draco resisted the urge to squirm under that gaze. It was rather like when Marcus was captain of the Quidditch team at school. He had been heavy handed with the discipline, and had often forced Draco to stay later than everyone else for practice in order to drill it into him. Draco had the distinct feeling that Marcus would have forced him to stay an extra two or three hours on the pitch if they were back at school.
"What?" Draco asked irritably. He was tired of feeling like a recalcitrant child, though he was dimly starting to realize he was acting like one.
"You've been out for a while. What have you been doing to meet the requirements of your parole?" Marcus asked.
"I have another six months to find a job..." Draco began. He hadn't started looking, mostly because he hadn't wanted to think about it. Work? A Malfoy doing actual physical labor? That was unthinkable.
"So will they throw you back into Azkaban next fall if you don't?" Marcus asked, reaching for another biscuit.
It was a seemingly idle question, but one that made Draco wince. If it came down to working or returning to Azkaban, there was no doubt what his choice would be. "I hadn't thought that far ahead."
"Obviously."
Draco glared at Marcus. "Thanks ever so much for your help, Flint," Draco snapped at him. "You're a wonderful and upstanding part of society."
"Of course I am," he agreed, as if the words hadn't been laced with heavy sarcasm. "You know I still own the family shop?" Marcus asked, snatching up another biscuit. "Adrian's up at the desk, of course. I'm too busy to actually do most of the day to day bit. But inventory's a right mess. Last bloke I hired for that destroyed an entire shipment of vases just because he was a clumsy bugger." He stared at Draco, almost as if waiting to see if he would take the opening offered.
"Is it difficult to do?" Draco asked.
"You could probably do a better job than the last bloke," Marcus allowed. "You're marginally more clever than he was."
"I suppose I'll take it, then," Draco said grudgingly. "So what will I have to do?"
"Inventory," Marcus replied. It was that irritated tone he used to have when the Quidditch team couldn't follow one of his plays on the pitch. As much as he hated to hear it directed at him, it made Draco feel almost nostalgic. "I assume you can still do tallies? Or did prison rot what's left of your mind?"
"I can do that," Draco replied, sitting up a bit straighter in his chair. "What else am I going to do there?"
"You can start with that," Marcus told him firmly. "I'm doing you a favor, you realize."
Draco eyed him warily. "So what will I owe you for this, then?"
"I suppose I'd have to pay you something, to make this look like it's on the up and up," Marcus replied, not directly answering the question.
Draco felt like pounding his crooked teeth in. He hadn't thought about money since his release, though the amounts in the vaults were dwindling by the day. "I need the money, Flint."
"Yes, I suppose you do," he agreed, leaning back in his chair. "And you owe Katie." His eyes were hard and without pity at that remark. "Katie respects hard work. If you really mean to do right by what you did her seventh year, then you have to work at it."
"Does she still play Quidditch?" Draco asked, remembering a comment she had made about recruiters.
"Not a drop," Marcus said ruefully, shaking his head. "But we're both too busy for it, even if she wanted to."
"What are you doing?" Draco asked, curious.
"There's the wedding plans, of course. And finishing up training with the Healers' Academy." Marcus shrugged at Draco's start of surprise. "It made sense at the time, and we've grown to like it a lot." He got up abruptly. "You remember where Flint and Locke is, right?" He waited until Draco nodded at him. "Stop by Monday at nine o'clock sharp."
Draco nodded. "Thanks, Flint."
Marcus snorted. "Don't thank me yet. You haven't seen the storage rooms for the shop."
Draco's tea was cold by the time Marcus left the cafe. He finished off the last biscuit and thought about what to do next. He could do this, if he just didn't stop to think about it too much. The entire world had gone on, and he was thrown off balance at every turn. People around him weren't anything like he had expected them to be.
Perhaps it was time to let go of his expectations.
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