Chapter Three: Umbridge’s Office
June 1995
When she looked back on the events of that June day in years to come, Ginny could see so clearly that she should have known how they would end. They had all led to an inevitable conclusion. But she was never sure how it had all begun, and that fact made her head spin. Everyone else knew. Or thought they knew. But in some secret part of her, Ginny kept an unspoken knowledge to herself. The true beginning had come on the morning of that day. And it had happened so uneventfully, in the midst of another dull, desultory breakfast while the enchanted ceiling shone down with the flat bright greyness of sun behind a bank of clouds, and tired murmurs crossed and recrossed among the tables that were partially filled with students.
Fewer and fewer people were bothering to come down to the Great Hall in the mornings. The O.W.L.’s were over, and only a couple of weeks of school remained anyway. But the term seemed generally exhausted for its own reasons, as if it were barely limping towards a finish line and perhaps wasn’t even going to make it over. It was a bright, oddly chilly, windy Friday outside—too bright, thought Ginny. Ideal for flying. But she didn’t want to fly anymore. She glanced around as she spooned oatmeal into her mouth, then toast with marmalade. It was all fairly tasteless. She forced herself to chew and swallow. A group of Hufflepuffs was peeling oranges for each other at their table, clustered together at one end. Almost all the Ravenclaws were still in bed. There were more Gryffindors, but nobody from fifth year, as far as she could see, and few fourth years either. Colin and Dennis Creevey were there, but Colin fell asleep in his eggs as she watched. And the Slytherins… Ginny let her gaze slide over their table. She almost succeeded in making it look like a casual glance. One entire end of the table was empty except for Malfoy, who was moodily chewing on a rasher of bacon.
She was sitting in an odd place at the table, nowhere near her normal one, but there were so few Gryffindors at breakfast that it hardly mattered. Her chair was partially behind a pillar. She moved the chair further back, edging its legs over the uneven floor so that it made no scraping sound. She could now see without being seen, and she looked her fill.
His hair was smoothed into perfect place as always, and his robes were as beautifully cut as ever. But Ginny could tell that he was thinner beneath them, the bones of his wrists finely etched in sharp relief, and his skin seemed fragile and paler than usual. The dark circles under his eyes stood out against it in smears of lavender and grey. Ginny wondered if he had lain wakeful night after night after night, even as she had done. It gave her a strange feeling in her chest to think about that.
The movements of his hands were graceful and precise as he picked up food, brought it to his mouth, chewed and swallowed. Ginny wondered if he ever did anything clumsy or awkward. Was his every movement a performance, calculated to impress those who might be watching? Except that he couldn’t think anyone would be watching him now. He couldn’t see her, surely. Ginny shrank back a bit more behind the pillar. It wasn’t safe to keep looking at him. Anybody from Gryffindor could come down to breakfast at any moment, and they might see her—and tell Ron. She had to stop. What good could it do to watch him anyway? The sight of Malfoy only made her more restless and unhappy the longer she watched him if she were trying to quench a burning thirst by drinking sea water. Yet she could not look away quite yet.
The owls were delivering mail now, and a rain of envelopes and parchments showered down on the tables. Good. That might divert everyone’s attention for a few minutes, and in that time surely she’d be able to stop looking at him. She had been trying to do just that ever since the last evening on the Quidditch pitch.
The beautiful Malfoy eagle owl swooped down to the Slytherin table. Ginny lost herself for a moment in watching the sleek silver bird land. Malfoy raised his head and saw it too, and Ginny watched the minute stiffening along his entire body. He passed a hand over his eyes, closing them briefly, and then took the parchment tied to the owl’s leg. He unrolled it. He scanned it. The little color in his pale face simply drained away.
The sound of his chair rasping over the flagstones of the floor was shockingly loud, or perhaps it only seemed that way to Ginny. Malfoy pushed himself back from the table almost violently and left the hall. He passed by the Gryffindor table as he went, and she quickly lowered her eyes, studying her plate of cold, leathery toast. She saw, out of the corner of one eye, that his face was set and still.
But she never told anyone about what she had seen, and everyone else thought they knew exactly how it had all begun. In years to come, most people argued that the true trigger to the war had come that day when Harry Potter was shown a false vision of Sirius Black and lured to the Department of Mysteries. And if this was so, then the events of that afternoon at Hogwarts had been like the tiny fulcrum on which a massive door turns, and had sparked everything that had come after them. Ginny always nodded when these discussions began, and said nothing. After all, she never had found out exactly what had been in that parchment delivered to Draco Malfoy by his father’s owl, and she was sure she never would. She kept what she had seen that morning in her heart, and long pondered it, but she accepted the official story. According to that, the true beginning had come a few hours later, and she had been present for that as well.
It was early afternoon. Ginny and Luna both had a free hour, and, as if by mutual agreement, were tiredly heading to the library. There was a little cubbyhole in the back of the restricted section, just behind the ninety-nine volume set of The Encyclopaedia of Exraordinarily Dangerous Enchantments, where the two girls liked to go. They would sit up against an unused bookshelf and talk quietly about unimportant things. Luna would tell Ginny stories about the favourite haunts of Crumple-Horned Snorkacks in the fjords of Norway, or the mermaids that lived off the coasts of Denmark, and Ginny would nod and half-listen, her eyes closed. Luna liked to braid her hair, and Ginny would let the other girl’s words wash over her as she felt Luna’s slender fingers weaving the strands together. It all seemed like a very pleasant idea today. They were walking down a little-used first floor hallway when they heard a raised voice from what was supposed to be an empty classroom.
“If you think I’m just going to act like I haven’t seen—“
It was Harry, and she’d never heard him sound so angry. Ginny put out a hand, stopping Luna and then raising a finger to her lips for silence.
Hermione’s voice answered in furious, yet oddly pleading tones. “Sirius told you there was nothing more important than learning to close your mind!”
The two girls looked at one another and then crept to the doorjamb. Ginny peered around it.
Harry towered over Hermione, who stood up to him, looking afraid but determined. Ginny hadn’t realized just how much he’d grown this year until this very moment. His face was red and he was advancing on her, backing her into a corner, his hands clenched into fists. Ginny felt a quiver of alarm as he raised a hand to Hermione. But he only ran it through his hair and then began shouting at her friend again, each word a bellow.
“Well, I expect he’d say something different if he knew what I’d just—“
Ginny reached for the doorknob without a pause. Hermione, I’ve got to help Hermione raced through her mind on wings of fear. That was an utterly silly thing to think; surely it was… Harry would never hurt anyone; of course not. And anyway Ron was there… but… She pushed the classroom door open.
They all whipped their heads round towards her and Luna, and when Ginny saw Harry’s face, she could not help blanching back. His green eyes were blazing in a way that genuinely frightened her. The anger in them wasn’t directed towards her, but in a way it was worse that it was so impersonal, so unfocussed. His emotion was like a forest fire that might destroy anything in its path.
“Hi,” she said, hoping her voice showed none of her ridiculous sudden fear. “We—we recognized Harry’s voice; what are you yelling about?”
“Never you mind,” he said roughly. The thing in his eyes turned itself on her, and she trembled.
Ginny sternly took hold of herself. This was only Harry, the boy she had known since she was ten years old, who’d eaten breakfast at the kitchen table in his pyjamas at the Burrow a hundred times, who’d been her brother’s best friend since the day they both began at Hogwarts, whom she’d loved without hope, and let go without rancour. She saw nothing in his eyes that she hadn’t seen there before. She was being absurd.
“There’s no need to take that tone with me,” she said coolly. “I was only wondering whether I could help.”
“Well, you can’t.”
“You’re being rather rude, you know,” Luna said serenely.
Harry swore and turned away, and Ginny could not help being glad. He was no longer looking at them.
She could never clearly remember what happened next, or exactly what was said. The look on Harry’s face kept replaying itself in her mind, over and over and over. She could not stop trying to recast her memory of it into a more appealing shape. Something that did not frighten her so much. She did not succeed.
Ginny did gather that something awful was happening to Sirius Black, or at least that Harry thought there was. He wanted to go to the Department of Mysteries right away, and even in her badly confused state, Ginny knew that couldn’t possibly be a good idea. Hermione was desperately trying to be the voice of reason. “We’ll have to use Umbridge’s fire and see if we can contact him,” she said, and even as Ginny struggled for understanding, she immediately said, “Yeah, we’ll do it,” with an instinct so automatic that she didn’t even think about it. She had to help Harry, as she knew that she would always have to help Harry, no matter what he felt, or thought, or did.
“Luna and I can stand at either end of the corridor,” she said, “and warn people not to go down there because someone’s let off a load of Garroting Gas.” Hermione looked surprised at how readily she’d come up with that idea. “Fred and George were planning to do it before they left,” Ginny added quickly. It was true.
Besides, she wanted nothing more than to get out of that room.
She and Luna began moving down the corridor. Ginny wondered if Luna noticed how fast she was walking in the opposite direction from Harry. But it didn’t matter, anyway. Even if Luna guessed what was wrong—and she was far more perceptive than most people believed—she’d never say a word. At the end of the corridor, she halted, putting a hand on Luna’s arm so that she did the same.
“You can’t come down here!” Ginny called to the crowd. “No, sorry, you’re going to have to go around by the swiveling staircase, someone’s let off Garroting Gas just along here—“
Anthony Summerby was at the very head of the group of Hufflepuffs, she saw now, and he took several more steps until he was almost nose to nose with her. “I don’t see any gas,” he said in a surly sneer, his eyes raking her up and down.
“That’s because it’s colourless,” said Ginny, “but if you want to walk through it, carry on; then we’ll have your body as proof for the next idiot that didn’t believe us.” She glared at him coldly. Oh, I wish there really was Garroting Gas down that hallway… and I just wish he’d walk through it, it’d serve him right… But something in her eyes must have convinced him, because he turned and headed in the other direction, the rest of the students following him in ragged groups.
When the crowd had thinned, Harry and Hermione walked quickly down the corridor and past her. “Good one, don’t forget the signal,” Hermione whispered. Ginny nodded, her eyes fixed on Harry. His mouth was tightly set, and his face was utterly without expression. Ginny shivered again. Looking at him now was like picking at a scab that would not heal. Again and again, she was confronted with the memory of what she had seen in that deserted classroom. The look on his face. The rage. The unquenchable fury. An anger beyond all forgiveness, all healing. She tried and tried to follow back the tangled threads of how these things had sprouted in Harry Potter, for surely they must have had a beginning. Surely they hadn’t sprung up like choking and poisonous weeds in one afternoon. Luna looked down the hall, whistling vaguely, and Ginny thought and thought.
Perhaps when the DA was broken up? No, before that. The awful scene after the last Quidditch game he’d played in, when he’d attacked Malfoy after the Slytherin boy had said all those terrible things? No. Things had been worse after that, no doubt, but they’d been bad enough before. Ginny sometimes wondered if something had happened a bit earlier that she didn’t know about. Harry had gone so strange and stiff late that autumn, around the time he was getting all those detentions from Umbridge. He’d seemed a little thinner and paler after each one. Ginny’s heart gave an odd painful twist, thinking of how silent he’d become during that time, and how he’d avoided everyone’s eyes.
There was a rustling at the end of the hall and she glanced up quickly, worried that too much time had passed while she was thinking about Harry and now they were about to be caught, but it was only Luna braiding her hair into plaits. This really is dreadfully dangerous, what we’re doing. I have to remember that and keep watch. It’s like walking a precipice—one wrong move and you might fall off. She fell back into thought.
She did not love him anymore. She wasn’t exactly sure when the last embers of that hopeless, painful feeling had gone to ash. At some point that year it had simply happened. Yet even without love, she cared for him still. Everyone Ginny had ever loved, she would always love a little. Harry was no exception. So she would do whatever she could for him.
But she did wonder why she had stopped loving him. Michael Corner’s kisses and clumsy touches hadn’t made her forget Harry. Nearly a year of his ignoring her even more than he had in the past hadn’t done it, either. When did it start? In the spring? No… earlier than that… It’s as if other things just crowded it out of my mind, but they certainly never had that effect before. Well, what other things? Irritation, she answered herself. Anger. A determination to show Malfoy what she could do on a broom. Her mind sharpening every time she crossed wits with him, like a knife held to steel. A feeling that her blood and body had come to life after being half-asleep for a long while, and were tingling, tingling all the time… Oh, God! No!
And Ginny’s mind was caught in the horror of that thought. She groaned inwardly; she tried to suppress it; she clenched her teeth against it, and with all her inner turmoil, several precious moments passed before she realized that Luna had begun to sing.
Weasley can save anything,
He never leaves a single ring,
That’s why Gryffindors all sing:
Weasley is our King…
Ginny was confused for only an instant, but it was enough. The song was the signal, she remembered too late.
A hard arm went around her throat, almost choking her. She struggled against it and tried to kick whoever was holding her. She didn’t see her captor’s face clearly, only a lot of flying brown hair, but when she looked up she saw Pansy Parkinson standing a little distance away.
“Hold her, Veda,” the Slytherin girl said coldly. “I’ve got Lovegood.”
And indeed Pansy had grabbed Luna’s arm and was twisting it behind her; Luna looked at her in a puzzled way, as if she couldn’t see why all this fuss was necessary. Neville was trying to haul the Slytherin Veda Pierce away from Ginny; he must have been passing in the corridor, and Ginny wished with all her might that he hadn’t been. “Go,” she gasped. “Neville, hurry! Go and warn—“ A hand clapped over her mouth. She bit it. Veda gave a gasp of pain.
“Oh, so you want to play it like that, do you?” Pansy asked silkily. Ginny was struggling and wriggling like mad, but between them Veda and Pansy got a gag around her mouth, and she could only make muffled sounds. “Better do them all,” Pansy added. Ginny saw out of the corner of one eye that Crabbe was holding Neville. She tried to catch the Slytherin boy’s eye. He looked stolidly past her. Malfoy, she thought in a panicked way. Where is he? If he’s not here, that means he didn’t have anything to do with this! Maybe—maybe—But she could think about that no more, because she saw Ron. Warrington had her brother’s arms behind him and was frog-marching him down the corridor. Veda shoved Ginny, and she stumbled forward along with the rest. She felt herself being pushed through a door, and turned, trying to kick Veda’s shins. They were in Umbridge’s office, and the professor stood panting in the middle of the floor like a swollen, triumphant toad.
“Got ‘em all,” said Warrington with a kind of fatuous pride in his voice, shoving Ron forward roughly into the room. “That one,” he added, pointing at Neville, “tried to stop me taking her, so I brought him along as well.”
Poor Neville.
Umbridge watched Ginny with glittering, unpleasant eyes. “Good, good.”
Ginny felt as if her knees were melting and her bones losing all their strength, but she forced herself to stand upright, even though Veda was jamming her arms behind her back and she could already feel the bruises rising. She glanced around the room. Harry was sprawled against the desk, clutching his head. Hermione was pinned against the wall by Millicent Bulstrode. Her gaze slid over Umbridge. Standing next to the professor was Draco Malfoy. Ginny’s heart leapt and sank at the same time when she saw him. He was a part of this. He had known. But he hadn’t been a part of the group of Slytherins who had captured her and the others. Did that mean anything?
Look at me, she prayed silently. Turn your head and look at me.
And then he did, and his eyes skipped over her like cold grey pebbles across a pond.
“Well, it looks as though Hogwarts will shortly be a Weasley-free zone, doesn’t it?” said Umbridge.
Malfoy hesitated for just the briefest moment. Ginny wondered if anyone besides her had even noticed it. Then he laughed loudly and sycophantically. Far too loudly.
Everything was a blur to Ginny for several minutes after that. Malfoy kept laughing at everything Umbridge said, and the sound seemed to get into her mind and splinter it, making it impossible for her to hold onto anything that was happening. He left the room with Harry’s wand, she did see that. Ron’s lip was bleeding onto the carpet as Warrington held him down in a half nelson; the trickle of blood was strangely vivid against the muted greys that suddenly were filling the room. She kept trying to stamp on Veda’s feet in a mechanical way, and she could feel her upper arms going numb where the other girl had gripped them. Snape showed up in the office and said something, and Harry yelled something else. Ginny knew that she really should pay attention to what was going on.
“What does he mean, Snape?” Umbridge was asking eagerly.
Ginny fought to catch at what had been said, but the words fluttered past her like birds. Harry had said something about Padfoot… yes, that was it. He’s got Padfoot at the place where it’s hidden. She knew what Harry was trying to do, but she was suddenly afraid that warning Snape would only make matters worse. She’d never trusted the Potions Master an inch, for all that he was a member of the Order of the Phoenix. Or he’s supposed to be one, anyway! How do we really know?
“I have no idea,” Snape was replying coldly. “Potter, when I want nonsense shouted at me, I shall give you a Babbling Beverage. And Crabbe, loosen your hold a little. If Longbottom suffocates it will mean a lot of tedious paperwork, and I am afraid I shall have to mention it on your reference if ever you apply for a job.”
The door closed behind Snape, and Ginny swivelled her head towards Neville. If anything happens to him I’ll never forgive myself. He’s only here because of me really… oh, I wish I could feel something for him besides friendship, but I can’t.
Then she saw something strange. Because of her position against the wall where Veda Pierce had trapped her, she could clearly see the way Crabbe was holding Neville. He wasn’t strangling the smaller boy at all; the Slytherin had only angled his arm so that it looked that way to the rest of the room. Ginny’s brow furrowed. But then she saw that Umbridge had pulled her wand out of her robes, and that took up all her attention.
“You are forcing me, Potter,” said Umbridge, moving restlessly from foot to foot, her scanty mouse-brown hair sticking to her forehead in wisps. She looked slightly crazed. “I do not want to, but sometimes circumstances justify the use… I am sure the Minister will understand that I had no choice…”
Ron gave a gasp. There was hatred on his face when he looked up from his prone position on the floor. But strangely, it was not directed towards Umbridge, but at Malfoy, who stood motionless at the professor’s side. The blond boy’s expression had been impassive, but he turned his head as if Ron’s murderous look had weight. Malfoy let a sneer spread over his face, deliberately, slowly. Ginny struggled to understand what was going on, and then, in a flash, she did. She tried to wrest her arms away from Veda, to no avail. The taller, bulkier girl simply pressed her further against the wall, and Ginny’s furious words were muffled by the gag biting cruelly into her mouth. She saw that Harry, too, shifted his eyes to Malfoy, and she watched this exchange of looks fearfully.
It seemed to take forever, the subtlety of the message that Malfoy conveyed to Harry and Ron with just an expression of the face and eyes, yet it could have lasted no longer than a moment. There was malice in it, and triumph, but more than anything else a sadistic glee at the thought of what was to come. A hunger to see Harry’s pain, Ron’s pain, anyone’s pain. That look would be no different if Umbridge’s wand were about to be turned on me, Ginny thought. And for the first time since this horror had begun, she wanted to cry.
“The Cruciatus Curse ought to loosen your tongue,” Umbridge said quietly to Harry
Ginny turned her face to the wall. Voices rose and fell around her, panting, screaming, shouting. Hermione was yelling that they were going to have to tell Umbridge something. Ginny turned back to stare blearily at her friend. Gradually it permeated her consciousness that Hermione was talking about something quite other than what had really been going on; that she’d made up some sort of story about Harry trying to reach Dumbledore to find out how to use a secret weapon. She was going to get Umbridge to take her and Harry out of the office, into the forest. And we’ll still be trapped here… oh, I’ve got to make myself pay attention, I have to figure out what to do next!
Veda was listening eagerly and not looking in her captive’s direction. Ginny worked at the gag with her teeth and managed to get it out of her mouth, shrugging her shoulders at the edge of it until it fell off her chin. She rotated her jaw, feeling the soreness in it. When she moved her head, she saw Malfoy looking at her for just an instant with an unreadable expression on his face. She glared back. If looks could kill, he would have left the office on a stretcher. He flinched slightly.
“Professor Umbridge,” he said, “I think some of the squad should come with you to look after—“
“I am a fully qualified Ministry official, Malfoy, do you really think I cannot manage two wandless teenagers alone?” asked Umbridge sharply. “In any case, it does not sound as if this weapon is something that schoolchildren should see. You will remain here until I return and make sure none of these—“ she gestured around at Ron, Ginny, Neville, and Luna—“escape.”
“All right,” said Malfoy with a grimace. To everyone else, his face probably looked sulky and disappointed, but Ginny saw something different. When his eyes flicked ever so briefly to hers, there was something like grief in them.
Umbridge ushered out Harry and Hermione, keeping her wand trained on their backs. Veda pulled up so hard on Ginny’s arms that she was sure her shoulders were about to be dislocated. The Slytherin girl dragged Ginny over to where Pansy Parkinson and the two had a long, whispered conference. Ginny’s face had gotten pressed against the wall and she didn’t see anything that happened next very clearly, but out of the corner of one eye she saw Warrington hauling her brother off somewhere, and Crabbe opened a little door on the far side of the room and walked through it, Neville in tow.
At last, everyone else disappeared, and Ginny was left with Veda Pierce and Pansy Parkinson. The room was silent, and dust motes danced in the shafts of sunlight spilling in from the high windows. Veda was looking at her captive dully, as if she were an uninteresting piece of furniture. Pansy stepped forward and her housemate moved aside to make room for her. Her breathing sounded very loud and excited in the still air.
“A weapon,” said Pansy. “So that’s it.”
Ginny did not reply.
“You know something about it, don’t you?” asked Pansy, pushing her narrow face very close to Ginny’s, her black-cherry eyes glistening with unhealthy excitement.
Ginny lowered her head slightly so that she was looking at the exquisitely subtle green embroidery on the chest of Pansy’s robes. Maybe Pansy would think she had her cowed. Afraid. Maybe that would buy her a few moments of precious time. She chanced a quick, darting glance out of the corners of her eyes from side to side. The fog that had seemed to overlay everything after she’d heard Malfoy laugh was gone now, and all her senses were on the alert.
She had never actually been in this office since Umbridge had taken it over, but she remembered the way it had looked when Professor Lupin had been their Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher. Nobody had ever known the little second-year secret Ginny hugged jealously to herself, but she had crept up here, after hours, for many talks. Professor Lupin had never said much, but he knew how to listen. And the office had always had a kindly, homelike air that reminded her weirdly of Molly Weasley’s kitchen, only with far more fanged water animals lurking in tanks. She’d overheard snatches of conversation between her brother and Harry about the way it had looked last year, when Professor Moody had lived and worked here. The false Professor Moody. They’d never told her that, either. Ginny had many ways of learning what she wasn’t supposed to know.
But surely the office had never seemed so sinister, even then. The frilly lace doilies on every surface and the saccharine kittens snoozing on the hideously painted plates fixed onto the walls only emphasized how dark its corners were, and how long the shadows of the late afternoon sunlight streaming through the curtained windows. Surely the office couldn’t have had so many nooks and crannies before, or so many little hallways leading off to side closets. Umbridge must have put some Expanding charms on it. Probably provided more space to interrogate people.
The silence had gone on too long, Ginny realized. She had to speak. “I haven’t the faintest idea what you mean,” she said, truthfully. “So I certainly don’t know if I know anything.”
“About that weapon, you idiot,” hissed Pansy. “The one Granger was talking about.” She trod on Veda’s foot, and the other girl gave a little squeak and dropped Ginny’s wrists. “Dry up, Veda,” Pansy said impatiently without even bothering to turn round. “Go and watch Lovegood. I’ll take over from here.” Veda scurried off.
“I don’t know anything,” repeated Ginny, feeling the butterflies begin in her stomach as Pansy moved closer still.
“Oh, I think you do. And I could make you tell me,” Pansy said in a low voice, her lips curving upwards, as if the thought afforded her much pleasure.
Everyone had gone; Veda must have taken Luna somewhere, and there was no sign of where any of the other Slytherins had gone with their captives. Malfoy had gone as well. Irrelevantly, Ginny wondered where he was. They were alone, the two of them, she and Pansy. The dust motes kept dancing in the spill of amber sunlight. The room was utterly still.
“I’d like to see you try it,” said Ginny. Apparently, her mouth was moving ahead of her brain, which informed her too late that it might not be a good idea to fire off snarky comments at anybody holding a wand one millimetre from her nose, as Pansy Parkinson was now doing. She watched it, mesmerized. She didn’t have her own wand. Dear God, where was it? She struggled to think, to remember. Malfoy had it, along with all the rest. He’d gathered up all their wands and taken them. She thought she’d seen him tuck them under his robes.
“Do you think I’d be too afraid to do what Umbridge was going to do?” Pansy asked, very softly.
Ginny swallowed hard, and did not answer. She wondered suddenly if Pansy Parkinson was quite sane. If she used an Unforgivable curse she’d end up in Azkaban; surely she must know that. Unless… unless the Slytherin girl knew something that Ginny didn’t.
There was a fly buzzing somewhere in the room. The noise grew ridiculously louder and louder.
“And she had to talk herself into it.” Pansy shook her head. Ginny watched the other girl’s long, perfectly straight hair move like dark water. “Silly bitch. I wouldn’t have any such trouble, I assure you…” The wand moved back a bit, as if coiling for a spring. “I’ve never liked any of the Weasleys,” Pansy continued, almost pleasantly. “But you… little Miss Ginny, little Miss Innocent… Don’t stare at the floor. Look at me.”
Ginny’s head went up without her volition and she looked into the other girl’s eyes, glistening with hatred, with venom. And she knew what she had been trying not to know, as if not thinking of it might protect her from it. Just as she’d heard Occlumency lessons were supposed to do, in the snatches of conversation she’d gleaned from the furious whispers between Hermione and Ron…
But it would do no good. She knew, now, that Pansy remembered the last time they’d been nearly so close to each other just as well as she herself did. That golden afternoon a few weeks before, when Draco Malfoy had been leaning in to kiss Ginny with the scent of apples on his breath, and the door to the broom shed had banged open to interrupt them. Pansy was many things, thought Ginny, but she was no fool. And the vicious hatred in the other girl’s eyes had been the same then.
Oh, we never covered this in the DA meetings. Wonder if we would have done. But there is no defence against this; what could Harry have told us, or taught us? Would it do any good to… brace myself? Or should I relax? Maybe if I tried to cast a Protection charm… The frantic, disconnected thoughts chased each other around Ginny’s head for a moment, but then she looked into Pansy’s eyes, and a strange calm came over her. She suddenly knew that the curse would fail before Pansy even opened her mouth. Pansy was gesturing too widely, and waving her wand too frantically, as if exaggerated motion would make up for the fact that she didn’t have the power she needed to put behind her malice. But the real clue was in her eyes, her wavering, unsure eyes, so at variance with the cold sleek surface covering the rest of her. So Pansy Parkinson is vulnerable, too, Ginny thought.
Not that Ginny could hold herself together entirely. It still gave her a frantic jolt to hear the other girl cry “Crucio!” Her heart leaped nauseatingly in her chest. This is real, this is not a game. Maybe I can’t handle it. Maybe I really can’t, she thought despairingly, and indeed a weak wave of pain prickled over her skin, gone almost as quickly as it had come. But Ginny was able to keep her face stolid, and even forced a laugh.
“You couldn’t give me a toothache, Parkinson!”
Pansy’s face crumpled like wet parchment.
How strange, thought Ginny. All that beauty drained out of her in a moment and became ugliness. How quickly things can change.
The door to the corridor opened. There was someone coming up behind Pansy, Ginny saw out of the corner of her eye. A quick, light way of moving, a flash of silvery hair—She looked up, distracted, and in that moment, Pansy reached up and raked her nails down Ginny’s face.
For an instant it didn’t even hurt, and Ginny stood staring stupidly, feeling something wet trickle down her forehead and cheeks, into her eyes, along her jaw, her mouth-- She licked at her upper lip and tasted something coppery.
Light, quick footsteps came towards her. Hands came forward to grab Pansy and swing her away, in the other direction.
“What the hell have you done?” demanded the furious voice of Draco Malfoy.
“I—I only thought—“ stammered Pansy.
“You’d tear Weasley’s face to shreds? You idiot. And where’s everyone else? I can’t leave any of you alone for two minutes—you haven’t got a brain cell shared among the five of you.”
Ginny put a hand up to her face. It came away red. She blinked at it stupidly. Her eyes stung. Something salty was dripping down into them. She saw Malfoy’s pale pointy face bending down to hers, icy with fury, through the red haze that was washing over her field of vision. He murmured a few Healing spells, still glaring at Pansy.
“Damn. These aren’t going to do any good at all. What do you have beneath your fingernails, Parkinson—cobra venom?”
“I was only trying to find out a few things,” whined Pansy. “To get some information. She knows more about that weapon than she’s telling, I’m sure she does, I’m sure they all do—“
“So that’s where everyone else went,” said Malfoy. “A pack of rabid hyenas would be more trustworthy than you lot.” He chuckled mirthlessly, studying Ginny’s face but still speaking to Pansy. His expression was utterly blank. There was nothing Ginny could grab onto, not the faintest clue of his feelings. Perhaps he didn’t have any. She’d thought that more than once before. “You don’t know how to cause pain without leaving scars, do you, Parkinson?” he continued, shaking his head. “No finesse. No subtlety. You never had that.” He grasped Ginny’s arm in one of his hands and began walking her across the room.
“Where are you going?” asked Pansy, her voice sounding afraid.
“That’s my lookout.” His fingers around her wrist were like iron bands, Ginny thought. “But if you must know, I’m going to accomplish what you couldn’t, Parkinson.”
Her footsteps scampered across the wooden floor towards him. “Let me come with you. Let me help you.” Pansy’s voice had the eagerness of a whipped puppy begging for a treat.
“No,” he said, opening a small door set into the wall and pulling Ginny through it. The door slammed behind them.
They were in a little janitor’s closet lit by a single witchlight glowing in a sconce in the wall. There was a large double sink that took up most of the space in the room. Ginny stood very still as Malfoy ran the cold water tap, pulled an embroidered linen handkerchief from a pocket of his robes, and soaked it. She felt the numbing chill as he pressed it against the right side of her face. His hands were careful and precise. If it had been anybody other than Draco Malfoy touching her, she might have called them gentle. His eyes were like the thin grey ice that formed at the surface of the pond in Ottery-St. Catchpole, concealing treacherous waters. Once Ginny had skated over that ice when she was very small. She had fallen under and nearly drowned.
Neither of them said a word.
The handkerchief had Soothing charms woven into it, and was impregnated with essence of murtlap, Ginny could tell. She had seen those for sale in Diagon Alley, but they were several galleons per dozen, far too expensive for her family to afford. The throbbing sting in her cheek began to dull.
He leaned against the far wall, still standing very close to her, looking at her, his eyes still expressionless, still silent. There was something about the way Draco Malfoy didn’t talk that made Ginny more nervous than anything else had done. They had not been anywhere so close to one another since that last day in the broom shed. He had not looked at her once in the days since then, and she had certainly not tried to speak to him. Every time she’d looked at him, she kept trying to find the golden boy of that last long afternoon on the Quidditch pitch, and she never could. Not then, not now.
“I’m all right,” she said, awkwardly. “Here, you can have this back, Malfoy—“ She stretched out her hand as if to return the handkerchief to him. He shook his head. It was covered with streaks and spots of her blood, she saw, and she blushed. “Sorry, I—“ she stammered.
He had dozens and dozens, she was sure. Of course he wouldn’t want one returned to him that had her blood all over it. She pressed it to her cheek again. His initials were embroidered on one corner in twisting black-letter script. D.L.M. Ginny wondered what the L stood for, and her mind ran after the ridiculous thought for a minute. Something very refined and upper-class, no doubt. Lambert, Limnel, Lemuel… surely not Larry… A bubble of hysterical giggling threatened to break the surface, to spill over into panic.
“Something amusing, Weasley?” Malfoy asked, raising his eyebrows slightly.
Ginny shook her head, fighting for control of her emotions. No. There was nothing amusing about the situation all of them were in now. Harry and Hermione were out there in the forest, trapped with Umbridge, leading her towards a weapon that did not exist. Soon that horrible woman would know it, if she didn’t already. Then her friends would be defenseless against her. And they had no wands… wands… Malfoy had those. Had Ginny’s own, as well. Could she steal them back? The idea seemed insane. She didn’t even know what the two of them were really doing in that janitor’s closet. Why had he taken her in here? If it was only to heal her face, why hadn’t he dragged her back out again as soon as the scratches faded?
He still watched Ginny with the inscrutable attention of a cat at a mouse hole, and the silence dragged on and on, pulling her nerves to the snapping point. “Look,” she finally said in desperation. “I don’t know anything about that weapon. I know what Pansy Parkinson said, but she was only fishing; I’ve never even heard anything about it.“
He nodded, as if a point had been confirmed.
Ginny knew that it would probably be smarter to keep her mouth shut. Unfortunately, discretion was not a Weasley trait by birth, and had not been developed by inclination or early training. Spying on her friends and family when they wouldn’t tell her anything, yes; discretion, no.
“Then why’d you bring me here?” she demanded.
He stepped closer to her. The room was so small. So hot. Why hadn’t she noticed it before? He stopped when he was only a few inches from her. She could feel his breath against her skin, which seemed more sensitive than usual. It tingled with each light puff of air. He smelled of mint. He still said nothing.
“Why don’t you just let me go?” Ginny blurted.
His look was more appraising now, as if he were actually considering it. She took a deep breath and plunged on. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, after all.
“Malfoy, surely you’ve got to see that Umbridge overstepped her bounds. She couldn’t have hoped to get away with using the Cruciatus curse on a student. And taking Harry and Hermione into the Forbidden Forest—even Fudge’s influence can’t keep her out of trouble over this one. So why don’t you just let us all go? That way, you can distance yourself from what Umbridge did.”
He hadn’t interrupted her. She decided that that had to be a good sign.
“You don’t want to get dragged down with her,” she said, as coaxingly as she could. “I won’t tell anyone what happened, I promise. I’ll get everybody else to keep their mouths shut as well. Or I’ll say you tried to talk Umbridge out of what she planned to do, or—I’ll say whatever you want me to say,” Ginny finished, lamely.
Malfoy chuckled. “You sound like a Slytherin,” he said.
Well, at least she’d finally gotten him talking.
“But-- can’t you see how much better it would be for you if you could keep your hands clean? I mean—“
“Your solicitude for my welfare is touching, Weasley.” He turned so that his back was against the side wall, and she saw his profile, chin and brow touched with light from the one sconce.
“I only thought—“
“That you wanted to help?” He tapped one finger against his forehead in an exaggerated attitude of deep thought. “Have I missed an important holiday? Is it Be-Kind-to-Malfoys Week?”
She looked at the floor. “So you’re not going to let me out.”
“I’d have to be convinced,” he mused. “Thoroughly convinced. You see, I might have my own reasons for keeping you here.”
“Other than the fact that you’d hex yourself in the foot before you’d let me help Harry?” Ginny retorted, then bit her tongue. But he only laughed.
“Temper, temper. How much do you really want to get out of this office?” His eyes mocked her, even as his silky voice seemed to eddy within her mind and caress it.
“I—I want to. Very much.”
“Yes, but how much? What would you do, for example, to be allowed to leave?”
Ginny had stepped towards him without even realizing it. “What would you ask of me in return, Malfoy?” she whispered. “You never give anything for free.”
“No, I don’t,” he murmured. “Not to someone like you. Could you pay my price, though?”
Her chin was cupped in one of his big hands; how had that happened so fast? And the fingers of his other hand were trailing down the uninjured side of her face. She’d thought that his touch would be cold, like the wet handkerchief had been cold. Like a snake’s skin. But it was not.
“Name it,” she said, in a voice that did not seem to be her own. “And then I’ll know.”
“We were interrupted last time, weren’t we?” he said, as if only a few moments had passed since their last meeting in the broom shed. “We were left with… unfinished business.”
“So what do you want now?” Ginny croaked. Her throat had gone completely dry.
Malfoy’s hands went around her waist. She jumped slightly, but his grasp only became firmer, and he pulled her towards him until she was nearly, very nearly touching his body at every point, chest and stomach and thigh and knee. He undid a silver clasp at his throat and his cloak dropped open, then fell lightly around both of them.
“To finish it,” he said. And then his head was bending down towards hers and her eyes closed but it only made the sensations she was feeling more powerful; Malfoy seemed to radiate something indefinable, a heat, a need, a hunger, and it wrapped itself around her body far more tightly than his cloak had done. Ginny’s own head fell back and a dark roaring shrouded her inner eyes and ears. She was falling and only the circle of his arms held her up; he was going to take something from her and she couldn’t stop him if she tried, but she didn’t want to try; the warmth of his mouth came closer, closer, closer—
The door crashed open and banged against the opposite wall. Pansy Parkinson stood framed in the doorway, her face white as chalk against her ink-black hair.
“I knew it!” she said shrilly. “I knew it all along. Since I saw the pair of you in the broom shed. You said it didn’t mean anything but it was a lie, wasn’t it--how long has this been going on-- you—and her—“ She swung round to face Ginny. “Bitch,” she hissed, and then she was coming at Ginny with her wand outstretched, and there was such rage on her face that Ginny knew Pansy could have produced a Cruciatus now, if she tried.
Malfoy flicked his own wand up almost lazily. “Petrificus Totalus,” he said, and Pansy froze in mid-air, crashing to the ground. He stepped back and drew his robes away from her head as she rolled and hit the floor, her eyes closed, her lashes shocking streaks of darkness against her pale skin. Ginny stuffed her fist in her mouth to keep from screaming.
“She’ll tell everyone,” she said numbly.
He shook his head. “She won’t. I’ll modify her memory, and she won’t remember a bloody thing after she scratched you.”
Ginny hated Pansy. Always had done. But the sight of her enemy unconscious on the floor before her gave her stomach a queasy feeling. “Is she all right?”
“Unfortunately, yes,” said Malfoy. He sighed. “What a dreadful sense of timing she’s always had.”
“Let me out,” Ginny whispered. A wave of awful sickness washed over her and she leaned against the wall, struggling for her bearings. “Just let me out, Malfoy.”
He shook his head again.
“I won’t go to the forest—I swear—just out of this room, out—“
Her hands were beginning to flail. He took them in his. She tried to jerk them away, but he held them tighter, until she could feel her cheap rings biting into her fingers.
“Let go of me,” she gasped. “I hate you! Let me go!”
Malfoy pushed his face even closer to hers. “No,” he said.
Ginny moaned with despair when she felt his hands running up her spine; he pressed against her tightly and she felt something hard and blunt digging into her upper thigh. For a panicked second, she thought she knew exactly what it was she felt. That thing’s got to be over ten inches long! Oh, dear Goddess. I’ve heard the rumours but I never thought-- But wait—there’s more than one of them, I’d swear there is, and they’re bunched in a group—I don’t think even Draco Malfoy can manage that trick—why, I think they’re—
The wands. That was what she felt.
Her arms crept under his robes and her hands smoothed down his chest. He drew in his breath, harshly. They lingered at his waist. They began to journey down his thighs, slowly. “Ginny,” he said through gritted teeth, squeezing his eyes tightly shut, leaning into her, pressing her against the wall.
Then his eyes flew open wide. Ginny jammed her hand into the pocket of his trousers and yanked out all the wands in one swift motion. In a fraction of a second, she had grabbed hers and was pointing it at his nose. He blinked at her.
“Back away, Malfoy,” she said. “Slowly. Hands up.”
He made no move to do as she had ordered. “Listen to me,” he said instead. “Listen, Weasley. Listen.”
His voice sounded so different from all the other times and ways she had ever heard him speak, so free of the normal sneering, drawling, and icy contempt, that Ginny was taken aback. But only for a moment. This was obviously some trick, some attempt to throw her off her guard and get all the wands back from her.
“Nice try, Malfoy,” she said, with the best sneer she could muster. “Don’t trip over Parkinson, now.”
Slowly, he raised his hands, but he made no other move. “You don’t know what’s going on,” he said. “Let me explain—“
“Oh, now that there’s a wand pointed at your head, you want to explain?” asked Ginny. “What a slimy little coward you are.” She had to whip up honest hatred for him, but it was proving difficult. He was looking at her so strangely.
“There’s so much you don’t know,” he said.
“I don’t want to hear anything you’d have to say. I wouldn’t trust it anyway. I’m sure you’d do anything to save your own skin, now.”
“I’m not leaving this room until you’ve heard me out,” said Draco.
“I don’t want to hex you,” said Ginny, “but I will. Don’t think I won’t.”
Yet her wand wavered. He was breathing hard, and his silvery hair had come a little loose and fell over his flushed forehead; his eyes were wide and troubled, and he took a stumbling step towards her as she hesitated. It was the first uncontrolled action she’d ever seen him take.
“All right. Say what you’ve got to say,” she finally said.
Malfoy gulped once, clenched his hands into fists, and then started speaking very fast, in an agitated voice, as if terrified that someone would overhear him.
“Don’t go into the forest. Don’t go to rescue Potter and Granger. They can take care of themselves. But don’t you leave, Ginny Weasley. Don’t get mixed up in--“ He stopped. “Don’t follow them,” he continued in a whisper. “Let Longbottom and Lovegood and your brother go, if they want. But don’t you go.”
“What do you mean?” demanded Ginny, baffled. “Why not?”
But Malfoy’s mouth snapped shut, and he was silent. A shiver passed over him.
“What?”
He collected himself, clearly with great effort. When he lifted his head again, the mask was back in place. But she had seen it drop—she had seen it, and heard it too. Or had she? The last few minutes already seemed too bizarre to have actually happened. “Nothing,” he said. “Nothing at all.”
When she edged toward the door, Malfoy made no move to stop her. His face was calm, faintly sardonic.
“Aren’t you going to stop me?” Ginny asked, her hand on the doorknob.
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “Go on, Weasley.”
There was a distinct sense of anticlimax. Or maybe that really wasn’t the correct word for what she was feeling, thought Ginny, but she didn’t know what was. “You’re not going to do anything,” she said, staring at him. “You’re going to let me leave.”
He checked his watch. “Yes… I’m going to let you leave.”
“Well—“ said Ginny awkwardly. There was such a sense of something rudely cut off, unfinished. Not to mention that she didn’t trust him an inch.
“There’s only one thing,” Malfoy said, cutting into her thoughts. “If you stroll out there and leave me in a closet, it’ll look odd, won’t it?”
“They’ll wonder how I got away from you.”
“Won’t look good for me, either.” There was an agitation in his voice that it seemed as if he could not quite control.
“It won’t,” Ginny agreed.
“Hex me,” he said. “Quick.”
“Something showy, but harmless,” she said, raising her wand. “Bat-Bogey all right?”
“Ugh.” He grimaced. “Let’s get on with it, then.”
He opened the door for Ginny and she stepped out of the closet; he followed her, and made a rather ostentatious throat-clearing noise. The other Slytherins had returned with their captives, and they were bunched in the middle of the room. Everybody turned at the sound, and Ron’s face went white.
“Ginny!” he yelled.
“You’ll never get me, you filthy blood traitor,” Malfoy snarled at Ginny, sweeping his cloak over one eye like the villain in a vampire melodrama.
“That’s what you think, Malfoy,” said Ginny in a hurt, yet sweetly brave voice, and then she hexed him.
She meant to throw the curse as gently as she could. She really did. But once she had her wand in her hand, a tremor went through her, and in the casting of the spell was contained all her anger at Malfoy for laughing when Umbridge had said that Hogwarts would shortly be a Weasley-free zone, and for sneering at her brother as Ron lay bleeding on the floor, and for letting malicious joy spread over his face when he’d thought that Harry was going to put under the Cruciatus curse. Then, too, Ginny was livid at Umbridge for triggering all of these awful things. She was angry at Harry, just a little, for putting them all in this position in the first place. And she was furious with herself for letting Malfoy come within a hair’s breadth of kissing her twice. All those things went into the Bat-Bogey spell; without her volition, perhaps, but they formed a part of it still, and gave it strength.
Ginny saw the curse heading for Malfoy, spreading out into the cawing, flying bat-bogeys, and then they hit him and he staggered back with a cry of pain. He picked himself up and started running blindly, and they flew after him in attack formation. A pang went through her at the thought that she might have hurt him. But there was no time to feel that, or anything else.
“Catch!” Ginny yelled, throwing the wands to Ron. In the confusion, nobody stopped her in time.
*****************************************************************
“Come on. Faster!” Ron pulled at her arm; Luna was on her other side, Neville hurrying to keep up, and they all clattered down the back stairs to the edge of the Forbidden Forest.
“You all right?” Ron asked once they were safely away from the castle and skirting the massive trees in search of the path.
Ginny nodded.
“Are you sure? Say…” He glanced at her face, which still showed the faint tracks of the scratches. “How’d you get those? That Slytherin cow Pierce who was guarding you, did she do it? Did Malfoy do that? I’ll tear him limb from limb if he did, the little—“
“It’s nothing. And d’you think I couldn’t handle Malfoy?” Ginny asked impatiently.
Ron looked at his sister, and she glanced down at the snowy forest floor, glad that Neville and Luna were ahead a little. There was something very shrewd in his look. Her brother had been having more and more of these shrewd moments all year, and they made Ginny very nervous. She decided that he was safer when oblivious.
“What did you do to get our wands back, Ginny?” he asked.
“Nothing,” she said. “Stole them, that’s all.” Then she scampered ahead to catch up with Neville and Luna. She had been right not to tell any of them about the way Malfoy had tried to keep her in Umbridge’s office, she decided. The way he’d warned her not to follow Harry and Hermione. Who knew why he’d done it, but, being who and what he was, it couldn’t have been for any good reason.
She was sure that it wasn’t important, anyway.
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