Late June 1995
The Hogwarts train sped through the bleak lands that lay in the southern part of Scotland and Northumberland on its way to central London. Many of the hills and dells and lochs did not exist in the real world. But then, that train did not precisely travel through the real world on its journey back to King’s Cross, Ginny thought. How appropriate. She sat staring out the window, taking in none of the passing scenery. All the sights and sounds around her seemed to be reaching her through a muffling layer of cloth, faint and dim. Ron and Hermione were talking about Cho, now. I was once so jealous of her, Ginny thought. And then I was meanly glad, I remember, when I stole the Snitch out from under her nose during the last match… Even that feeling seemed a thousand years and a thousand leagues distant, and as if it had happened to another person entirely. The Ginny who had gone through the Department of Mysteries was not the petty girl who had triumphed over Cho Chang. . Just as the Ginny who had first entered Hogwarts was not the same Ginny as the one who had lain dying in the Chamber of Secrets, knowing that she had betrayed her friends, knowing it was all her fault. Ginny wondered drearily if she had ever really known who she was at all.
“I—er—heard she’s going out with someone else now,” Hermione said tentatively. Yes, they were still talking about Cho.
“You’re well out of it, mate,” said Ron forcefully. “I mean, she’s quite good-looking and all that, but you want someone a bit more cheerful.”
Ginny wondered if she was the only one who really knew what lay beneath that dogged cheerfulness her brother showed the world now. Were they all playing a part? She wondered about that too. Harry was, she could tell. His body was present, but his spirit seemed far, far away. His every response was oddly out of sync with whatever question had precipitated it, like a sluggish caboose following a brisk train.
“She’s probably cheerful enough with someone else,” said Harry, shrugging.
“Who’s she with now, anyway?” Ron asked Hermione.
“Michael Corner,” Ginny answered without thinking. She could have bitten her tongue off the second the words came out of her mouth.
“Michael—but—“ Ron craned around in his seat to stare at her. That stare was far too penetrating, and Ginny had the uncomfortable feeling that her brother saw much too much. “But you were going out with him!”
Ginny swallowed. “Not anymore,” she said dully. She had tried for a bright, unconcerned tone, but it all came out sounding rather as if she were speaking through gritted teeth. Resolute, at best. She began an explanation about Quidditch and house jealousy and Michael running off to comfort Cho, hoping that her story didn’t sound nearly as disjointed and rambling as it felt, and ended abruptly by scratching her nose with her quill and turning The Quibbler upside down.
Unfortunately, she saw that Ron looked delighted. “Well, I always thought he was a bit of an idiot,” he said happily, prodding his queen forward towards Harry’s quivering castle. “Good for you. Just choose someone—better—next time.” Ginny’s heart sank when Ron gave Harry what was supposed to be a furtive look. As usual, it had all the subtlety of a charging cockatrice.
Think, Ginny, think! Hurry!
She took a deep breath, pulled a name at random from the male population of Gryffindors above fourth year, and tried for the most matter-of-fact tone she could manage. It sounded rather vague. “Well, I’ve chosen Dean Thomas, would you say he’s better?”
“WHAT!” shouted Ron, upending the chessboard. Crookshanks went plunging after the pieces and Hedwig and Pigwidgeon twittered and hooted angrily from overhead. Harry kept staring blankly at the space where the board had been, which was, as far as Ginny could see, the one saving grace in the whole situation.
“Honestly, Ron!” Hermione glared at him. There had been a great many glares exchanged between her and Ron during the past half hour. Ron had spent rather a suspicious amount of time going to the boys’ lav during an early part of the train trip, and Hermione had looked out the window set into the door of the compartment and gasped. She’d gestured to Ginny, and both girls had peeped into the corridor to see Ron talking to Millicent Bulstrode, who had lost a great deal of weight that year. After Ron had returned and seen Hermione’s face, which had taken on a distinct resemblance to a thundercloud, he’d protested his innocence at length.
“I was only trying to see if I could find out anything from her! Secrets of the other side, and that sort of thing,” he’d insisted.
“I suppose that’s why you were holding her hand,” Hermione had said.
“I was doing no such thing! She was showing me the scar where Parkinson twisted her arm that day. You know, the day in Umbridge’s office. I really think Bulstrode isn’t all bad. She didn’t actually want to—“
“Shut it, Ron.” Hermione had clearly still remained unconvinced.
Ginny now raised the Quibbler until it covered her entire face. Ron scrambled for the pieces of the chess game, his face turning at least as red as his hair. “Sorry,” he mumbled. Harry nodded without looking at him. She waited a few minutes, until they were engrossed in another game, Hermione had returned to reading the Prophet, and Neville was softly singing something to his Mimbulus mimbletonia. Then Ginny slipped out of the compartment.
She had never meant to end up where she did, but her feet seemed to carry her to the destination on their own. And she realized, then, that she could have gone nowhere else.
A few hours before, Ginny had come upon the scene in the corridor that led to the lavs in the aftermath of what had happened, when Ron and Seamus were dragging Goyle into the luggage compartment by his grotesquely swollen feet, taking special care to knock his head on every trunk. “What—what happened?” she’d asked, staring at the silent, bloated, almost unrecognizable body.
“They tried to ambush Harry. We took care of them. Nothing for you to worry about,” Ron said with some satisfaction.
“Them? I don’t see anybody but Goyle, and—oh, wait, there’s Crabbe, I suppose--” Ginny craned her neck to see over the mounds of luggage.
“Malfoy’s back there somewhere,” Ron said carelessly. “Under Neville’s trunk, I hope—that’s the one with all the rock samples in it.” He’d taken her arm then and propelled her back towards the compartment where they were all sitting, and she’d had no choice but to go.
Now, she slipped into the luggage compartment as silently as she could, pulling the door shut behind her with great care. Crabbe and Goyle were easy to spot, but she searched for a long time before she found Malfoy. At last, she saw him stuck in the back of the lowest luggage rack, and her hand flew to her mouth to stifle a cry. Whether it was of horror or hilarity, she couldn’t be quite sure. He glared back at her, or at least he seemed to be doing so. Although it was rather hard to tell, considering what had become of his head.
“Mmmpher,” he said, in a way that was obviously meant to be threatening.
Ginny giggled. She couldn’t help it. She couldn’t believe that she was still capable of such a thing, after the last few weeks, but the little laugh flew out of her parted lips as merrily as a bird.
Malfoy’s—face?— well, it had to be, since there was blond hair on that end of him—reddened in a remarkably unattractive way. “Mmph oo,” he sputtered.
Ginny had to turn to the wall and muffle her laughter in her cupped palms. She laughed for a very long time, and when she had finished, she realized that a bit of the dead dull feeling that had been haunting her had simply been blown away, like mist under the sun. Turning back to him, she sobered.
“My brother and the others told me what they’d done to you,” Ginny said quietly. “I didn’t see it happen, though… didn’t know it was this bad…” Then she took out her wand, and got to work.
She removed the Mouthbinding curse next to last. Malfoy spat and sputtered a little, then reached up with a hand and rubbed his mouth. He did not look at her.
“Are you all right, then?” asked Ginny. “Did I get them all?” She believed she had. Certainly, Draco Malfoy no longer resembled a gigantic slug. It had not been as attractive as his usual look, true, but her mouth twitched as she remembered. She rather wished she’d had Colin Creevey’s camera.
“Yes. Now sod off,” he said in a surly voice.
Ginny shook her head and sat down on the floor of the baggage compartment, her legs crossed comfortably.
He swore at her violently. She smiled. “D’you honestly think I haven’t heard worse before, Malfoy? Growing up with Fred and George?”
He tried to get up. The effort was less than successful. “Don’t you know why I left the Leg Locker curse till last?” Ginny asked pleasantly.
“No,” he growled. “And if I could get at my wand, I’d—“
“Tut, tut,” said Ginny. “That’s not a very nice way to behave towards someone who just took a very large number of hexes off of you.”
“What? What about that Bat-Bogey? I’ve still got bruises all over my neck where they started sucking on me before Crabbe managed to get them off that day.”
Against her will, Ginny imagined the bruises, cruelly purple and black against his pale skin. A little tremor of weakness passed through her. She tried to ignore it. “I really think that what I just did more than makes up for one little curse,” she said primly.
“Oh, so you want me in your debt?” sneered Malfoy. “What’s your price, Weasley? Would you like to hold a galleon, for once in your life? How about new robes that don’t look like they were dragged through a mud puddle by pigs? Or shoes of your very own that weren’t passed down through all six of your brothers first?”
“Nope,” she said. “Just some answers.” He was at his very worst, and she found it oddly comforting. The horrible oppressive feeling that had lingered over her like a dark cloud for the past few weeks had lifted, inexplicably. How odd that she should have Draco Malfoy to thank for that.
He was silent for a moment, looking at her. Then he turned his face to the wall, pressing his lips together, obviously determined not to speak.
Ginny continued, undaunted. “Or I could tell you what I’ve figured out since the last time we talked. How would you like that, Malfoy?”
No response.
“All right, then. The first thing I’ve learned,” said Ginny, “is that you were the one who originally tipped off Filch that Peeves was really smearing ink all over the lenses of the telescopes in the Astronomy Tower.”
“What?” exclaimed Malfoy. “How did you ever find out—“ He stopped too late.
“It seems someone is in a talking mood after all,” said Ginny sweetly.
He scowled at her.
“You knew he’d tell Umbridge, of course,” Ginny continued. “And that’s why you weren’t with the Slytherins who captured us in the corridor, wasn’t it? You were talking to Filch.”
Malfoy paused. “Yes,” he finally said.
“And you knew Ron had just finished telling Umbridge that Peeves was in the Transfiguration classroom, didn’t you?”
“Of course I did.”
“However did you learn that so fast?” Ginny asked curiously.
A smile curved Malfoy’s thin lips. The bottom one was much fuller than the top, Ginny noticed. Rather… pink and pouty. She remembered what it felt like, having those lips a hair’s breadth from hers. She remembered the minty smell of his mouth, millimetres from her own. The memories possessed her against her will, and yet not quite. Perhaps she only wanted to believe that they did. Very much as it had been when he had backed her against a wall and grabbed her waist between his hands and come so very close to kissing her the second time, in that broom cupboard in Umbridge’s office.
“That’s for me to know,” he said, “and you to never find out.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure of that.”
“Oh, I would.” Malfoy wriggled around so that he lay on his stomach in the luggage rack, propping his chin in his hands. He looked up at her.
“But that’s not all, is it? The only way you could have actually been with Umbridge when she went there to catch Harry in her office—as you were—was if you warned her right after you warned Filch. You didn’t wait for Filch to come back and tell her; you couldn’t have done. I think you must have told Parkinson and the rest to round us up on your way back to Umbridge… Otherwise, you couldn’t have possibly gotten there so fast, and the Inquisitorial Squad wouldn’t have known to go looking for us, either, because she wouldn’t have had time to tell them and then also get to Harry as quickly as she did,” Ginny said, thinking it out as she spoke. “That point’s bothered me ever since it all happened. But that’s the explanation, isn’t it?”
"How much longer are you going to keep me under the Leg Locker curse, Weasley?” he asked. “It’s really dreadfully uncomfortable.”
She threw him a pillow from an upper rack. “Until you’ve answered my questions.”
He tapped one long, elegant finger against his cheekbone. “I suppose that’s fair enough,” he finally said. “I do owe you something for removing the curses. Malfoys always pay their debts. But I’ll ask you a question first, then; something I’ve always wondered about.” Draco grinned, but there was no humor in his eyes. “Didn’t Potter or Granger or any of your brothers ever wonder why my parents didn’t raise holy hell at the end of term last year, after I’d been hit with every curse under the sun and then rolled out into the corridor of the train? Or Crabbe and Goyle’s parents, either?”
“You were the one who took the curses off Crabbe and Goyle,” Ginny pointed out.
“And I’ll have to do it again,” sighed Draco. “After we’ve finished speaking though, I rather think. I don’t want them conscious now. But it was you who removed the hexes from me, Ginny Weasley, now wasn’t it?”
“You know very well I did,” said Ginny grudgingly. “I’ve regretted it ever since. If you have a question, Malfoy, please get to it.”
He looked up at her, his silvery eyes bright. “Why’d you do it? Last year, I mean.”
She was tempted to fire his own answer back at him. That’s for me to know, and you never, never to find out. “I was wandering around the corridor,” Ginny said instead. “I just happened to stumble across you. I just—you looked so awful. And I didn’t even know it was you at first, under all those jelly-tentacle things,” she lied. “I already told you that, Malfoy. But if I’d known all the horrible things you’d said to Harry and Hermione and my brother, about Cedric and all the rest of it, I wouldn’t have done.”
There was a short silence.
“Yes,” he said without inflection. “They were rather horrible things, weren’t they?”
“Seemed that you were rather declaring what side you were on, Malfoy.”
He shrugged.
“But then there’s something I don’t understand,” said Ginny. She leaned forward, looking at him intently. He might have moved his face away, but he did not. “You’re the one who got Umbridge to her office that day. Now, she’s horrible. And she’s evil. I don’t feel any sorrier for her because she’s landed herself in the mental ward at St. Mungo’s now, either. But if she’d kept Harry and Hermione and the rest of us in her office, we’d never have gone to the Department of Mysteries. A lot of terrible things wouldn’t have happened. And—“ her voice caught, no matter how hard she tried to keep it steady “—Sirius Black would still be alive.” And you tried to keep me away from all of it. Maybe. I suppose I’ll never know if that’s what you really meant to do. But I didn’t listen, and I went. What I saw there is forever burned into me, and what I heard… what I heard…Take the little girl, Bellatrix Lestrange said to Harry. He can watch. How much did you know, Draco Malfoy? And why, why did you try to warn me? But she didn’t say any of that.
His face did not change, as she had known it would not. Silently, he nodded.
“Yes,” she continued, “I was pretty sure you already knew about everything that happened there, Malfoy. No point in my keeping it a secret from you. So even though Umbridge was the one who caught us in her office, it was your fine hand that led her there, wasn’t it? And I want to know why.” Her voice kept breaking, no matter how hard she tried to control it. “Why? Whose side are you on, Draco?”
Ginny didn’t realize that she’d called him by his first name until it was too late. She waited almost fearfully for his reaction. It was a long time coming, or at least it felt so to her, in these strange secret moments between them in the baggage compartment, in the train speeding towards King’s Cross. It had grown late. The last shaft of late afternoon sunlight fell through the small high window and illuminated his face. It was almost expressionless, but there was a hint of some emotion around the mouth, or perhaps at the corner of those silvery-grey eyes, something subtle and refined, even devious, that Ginny could never have defined. He lifted one hand and caressed her cheek. The gesture was so unexpected that Ginny’s eyes went wide and she simply lay frozen where she was, her face close to his, her breathing quick and light and frightened as a trapped animal’s. Draco’s touch was so light and gentle that she could barely feel his fingers skimming the length of her face, but each fine peach-fuzz hair dusting the line of her cheek stiffened, and her pulse beat frantically in her throat. At last, the hand came to rest on her collarbone, and reached upwards to tilt her chin towards his, so that Ginny was staring directly into those crystal-like eyes.
“The side I’m always on,” he said, his voice as soft, and gentle, and inexorable as his touch. “Mine.”
Ginny simply closed her eyes for a moment. He was far too distracting, this close to her, in this strangely intimate setting. So she deliberately tried to conjure up the sight of his smirking face and the sound of his drawling, contemptuous voice all that year. All the words to Weasley Is Our King echoed in her head. She remembered the rumours she’d heard of the vicious things he’d said about her brothers, her father, her mother, and the Burrow that infamous day on the Quidditch pitch when Fred, George, and Harry had all been banned from playing. The way he’d strutted around the halls that spring with that ridiculous silver Inquisitorial Squad badge pinned to his robes. The triumph in his eyes every time he used his prefect’s power to play the bully. The fleeting look of sadistic pleasure on his face when Umbridge had been readying herself to cast the Cruciatus curse on Harry. How much easier all this would be if she could only hate Draco Malfoy, and there were so many good reasons. Surely, surely there were enough reasons…
Yet there weren’t, not enough to make her feel the hatred she should have felt. And if it was her moral failing, she couldn’t help it.
“I heard about what happened the last day of term,” she whispered, looking at the carpeted floor. “After-- everything else happened, in the Department of Mysteries, I mean. How you swore you’d get revenge on Harry. For—for your father—“ she swallowed hard, past a sudden awful lump in her throat. The bitterness, the rage, and the impotent fear she always felt when she thought of Lucius Malfoy rose in her again. God, how she hated the feeling, and how she hated him! “Going to Azkaban,” she continued. “Is that true?”
“Which part?” Draco asked. His voice was utterly even. “That my father’s in Azkaban now? That’s true.”
“No, that’s not what I meant. The—the other. Did you swear you’d get revenge on Harry?”
Draco laughed softly. It was not a pleasant laugh. “That’s what he said, is it?”
“That’s what I… heard.”
“You seem to be a font of information, Weasley.”
Ginny looked down even further, playing with her interlaced fingers. “I have ways of finding out things.”
“I’ll bet.”
She could feel his eyes on her, even though she wasn’t looking at her. “You can deny it if you like, Malfoy,” Ginny said. “But I know it’s true.” She couldn’t stop herself from thinking of him as Draco now, but she wasn’t going to call him by his first name again.
“Really?” asked Draco. “And how can you be so sure?”
“Because I know Harry.”
“Really?” Draco repeated, but the word was full of unpleasant insinuation, this time. “Just how well do you know Potter?”
“We’re friends,” she said.
“Really,” said Draco for a third time, and now the word was silky, as smooth as the skin of a snake. “It’s always nice to have… friends.” He paused. “Well, Weasley, you think you’ll get answers from me? No. I neither confirm what you’ve heard, nor deny it.”
“But I do know it’s true,” insisted Ginny. “I just wanted to know why.”
“Hmm. Want must be your master then, I’m afraid.”
“But why?” Ginny persisted. She had inherited the Weasley gift, and curse, of persistence in full measure. “It wasn’t Harry’s fault, what happened to your father.” It was Lucius Malfoy’s own fault and he deserved worse, she nearly said. For what he did to me, and others… For the diary, for the Chamber of Secrets, for that horrible night in the Department of Mysteries when he helped to lead into a trap. When he led the Death Eaters who tried to kill us all.
Draco’s mouth twisted up into a smirk that distorted his features cruelly. If he didn’t look that way so often, he might be handsome, she thought stupidly. When he spoke, his words were icy and controlled. “Do you think this is about faults, Weasley? About fairness?”
“I only thought—“
“You thought,” he said, and his words turned into a hiss, although it seemed that he was trying hard to control them. “You thought. You think this entire thing is like the village nursery school you undoubtedly went to, I suppose? You think the world’s run according to your stupid Gryffindor ideals, fair play and sharing and good citizenship—let’s all play nice and share our toys, and it’ll all come right in the end—“ Draco broke off, breathing heavily. Spots of bright red colour stained his ivory cheeks. She could see his fingers digging into his palms, the knuckles of his hands going white. His struggle to get himself under control was visible, and she watched, fascinated. She realized that he would probably hate her even more than before for seeing him this way, but she could not stop looking at this thing she had never dreamed she would see but was now seeing for the second time, this strange nakedness of Draco Malfoy.
“It’s not like that,” he finally said, his voice calmer, more distant. “Strange that you could still think that, after everything that’s happened to you. Stranger still that I should be the one to tell you. But you couldn’t have remained an innocent forever. We all pay, all the time, even for things we didn’t do. There is no justice. No fairness. In the end, we all swing, Ginny Weasley.”
She met his eyes. “Do you think I don’t know that?” she asked.
Draco looked back at her. She had a sudden, wild impulse to cry out questions. Do you know about the diary your father gave me when I was only eleven years old? Do you know what was done to me? How I was possessed, stolen from myself, torn apart so I thought I’d never be whole again? But he would not tell her the truth about that, either.
“I’m not the innocent you think I am, Draco Malfoy,” she said, instead.
“Aren’t you,” he said. “Aren’t you, indeed.”
And then the implications of what she had said struck her, and Ginny knew she was blushing. Merlin’s beard, she hadn’t meant it that way.
“I—I didn’t—I don’t—“ she began, before realizing that it sounded even worse to try to explain what she had said.
In answer, Draco’s arm shot out and dragged her forward, into the lower level of the luggage racks where she’d placed him, half-hauling her into the darkness under the rows of trunks.
“What—“ she sputtered.
“Someone’s coming,” he said, and then she heard the footsteps in the corridor.
“Where d’you reckon you heard it, Hermione? In here?” her brother’s voice asked.
There was no time for thought. Frantically, Ginny started wriggling into the cramped lower rack, the only hiding place in the room. There was almost no space left; it wasn’t large enough for one person let alone two, and she couldn’t quite make it all the way in.
“Unlock my legs,” said Draco, her lips at her ear. “Hurry.”
“Finite,” whispered Ginny, waving her wand frantically at him.
He braced his feet against the far wall of the train and used the leverage to pull her completely under the rack and towards him. Ginny scrambled back as far as she could and huddled against Draco’s chest as the door opened.
“Ginny?” Hermione’s voice called. “Are you in here?”
Ron walked over to the luggage rack. Ginny couldn’t see him, but his footsteps were instantly recognizable. She’d been hearing them all her life. She lay as still as she could, hardly daring to breathe. Don’t look down, she prayed, don’t look down…
“Ugh. I honestly think Crabbe and Goyle look worse than they did two hours ago,” said Hermione.
“Doesn’t really wear off, does it?” chortled Ron. Ginny chanced a quick peek upwards and saw him poking their sluglike forms with his wand. She certainly didn’t like Crabbe or Goyle—they’d never given her a reason to do anything but dislike them, unless you counted that one encounter with Crabbe on the Quidditch pitch—but the expression on her brother’s face was making her very uncomfortable. It was a sort of sadistic glee. She remembered that fleeting expression on Draco’s face when they’d all thought that the next second, they were going to see Harry start writhing in agony on the floor of Umbridge’s office. The way Ron looked now really wasn’t any different. Maybe it was even worse.
The thought was like an eddy of poison seeping through her mind.
“Of course it doesn’t wear off,” Hermione said impatiently. “Honestly, Ron, did you use those curses without even knowing their effects?”
“They worked, that’s all that matters,” said Ron. “Funny, they look exactly like those big slugs that would always crawl out onto the walk in front of the Burrow after a long rain. We all used to love stepping on those. Except for Ginny. She never would… Shame one of us didn’t think of using a Shrinking charm today, really…”
“Ron!” said Hermione, her voice uncomfortable. “That’s enough. Er, where’s Malfoy? I don’t see him.”
“Rolled somewhere behind Crabbe and Goyle, I expect,” said Ron indifferently. “D’you really want to check? We’d have to touch them.”
“Good point,” sighed Hermione. “But, Ron—“ She hesitated. “We haven’t been able to find Ginny yet, and it’s been half an hour at least, and I just thought…”
There was a moment of silence. Ginny could almost hear the wheels in her brother’s head whirring. “What?” he said at last, in a soft, deadly voice. “What did you think, Hermione?”
“Nothing,” she said hurriedly. “Look, Ron! I think I—uh—just saw someone out in the corridor!”
“Oh,”said Ron. “Say, you’re right! It’s Millicent Bulstrode. I mean, uh, that evil Slytherin cow.”
Hermione gave an unmistakable snort.
Their footsteps clattered out the door again, and it slammed behind them. Ginny gave a shuddering sigh of relief, and then remembered that she was still wedged into the bottom of a luggage rack with Draco Malfoy.
She could have screamed. She could have cried out. She could have called her brother’s name. And they would have been found, and she would have had no trouble at all in getting Ron to believe that Malfoy had dragged her there by force and was about to do something horrible to her. She wouldn’t have had to even open her mouth to convince Ron of that. Minor details such as how Draco had done any such thing when he was under about twenty different curses wouldn’t have been very important next to her brother’s pressing urge to kill.
And Ginny had done nothing.
Draco bent his head down and towards her and she twisted around to face him as best she could.
“I didn’t want to get Ron in trouble,” she said in a rush. “He would have gone mad if he’d seen us, and I don’t know what he might have tried to do.”
“Oh, your brother’s a paragon of mental stability,” said Draco in her left ear. “Anybody ever tell you that?”
She could not think of any reply.
“What really strikes me about this,” he continued, “is the astounding bravery of the Gryffindors. Let’s see. It would have been three against one, wouldn’t it, between you, your brother, and Granger?”
There seemed to be nothing to say.
“And yet you didn’t make a sound,” Draco said musingly.
Now he was sure to ask her why not. Ginny prayed for the floor of the train to open up and swallow her before that happened. But there was only a silence that stretched on and on.
“Ron hates you,” she blurted. “Always has.” She had meant it to be some sort of explanation, but she was aware that it sounded a lot more like a confession.
Draco looked at her quizzically.
“All my brothers hate you.”
“I’m quite sure they do.”
“My entire family hates you.”
“Ah. No surprises in that direction, either.”
The next words came before she could think to stop them.
“I don’t hate you,” she said. Then she looked down, so she did not have to meet his eyes.
They were both silent, and in the silence between them something seemed to whisper through the air. Then Draco looked up, and she knew, somehow, that the conversation they’d been having before they heard the footsteps in the corridor would now continue as if nothing had interrupted it.
“Are you still an innocent, Ginny Weasley? After everything that’s happened to you, and everything you’ve seen?” he asked.
“No,” she said. “Well, yes—in some ways, I mean—“ Ginny blushed; she really couldn’t help it.
“Some ways?” Draco cocked one dark-blond eyebrow. “Well, well, Weasley. What do you mean?”
“Nothing,” she mumbled.
“Poor Michael Corner.”
“He’s not my—we aren’t-- we’re not together anymore,” said Ginny, not at all sure why she felt it was so important to clarify this point.
“Aren’t you?”
“He told me I always seemed to be thinking about someone else.”
“Were you?”
Ginny cleared her throat and decided to change the subject. “I’m not innocent in the ways that really matter.”
“I see.” The train chugged on. Neither of them spoke. She was pressed so close to Draco that she could hear his steady heartbeat beneath his fine linen shirt, and the sound lulled her so much that she was surprised to hear him suddenly ask, “You love your parents, don’t you?”
“Yes,” said Ginny. “Very much.” She thought fleetingly of how horribly disjointed their conversation would sound to anyone listening. “And you…?”
Draco sighed, and when he spoke again, his voice sounded oddly remote. “I know my mother will be waiting for me at King’s Cross, as she’s always waited for me. And I know that seeing her, it’ll be like it always has been… like a kind of peace has come over the world, and nothing could ever really be bad, or wrong, if I can see my mother’s face.”
“And…” Ginny could not bring herself to say Lucius Malfoy’s name.
Draco laughed shortly, a harsh sound. It reminded her weirdly of Sirius Black’s short sharp bark of a laugh. Or maybe it wasn’t so odd. He’d been Draco’s cousin, after all. “Do you know what it is, Ginny Weasley,” whispered Draco, “to be torn between love and hate? So torn that you yourself can’t tell the difference between them, and you think perhaps there isn’t any?”
Yes, she knew.
Ginny remembered Draco’s face when he had asked her to stay with him in Umbridge’s office a few weeks earlier. To let Harry and Hermione wander around in the forest; to let Neville and Ron and Luna follow them, if they must, but to stay. He had looked the same then as he did now, she realized. It had been almost like a prayer, his wish for her to stay; an impossible hope, like a dream of heaven. She remembered how she had thought for an instant that he was not himself; that this could not be Draco Malfoy, that some imposter had briefly slipped into his place.
She thought that she owed him some thanks for that. Or at least, the truth in return for what truth he had told her.
“I think maybe I do,” she replied. “Or at least, I know what it’s like to be torn.”
He let out a long, shuddering breath. “Do you?”
Ginny wasn’t sure if what she would have said in reply, or even if he really expected a response. But she had no chance. There were other footsteps sounding in the hall, lighter and quicker, a general faint murmur that was growing closer. The train was starting to slow down.
The evening was far advanced, and even this long June night was drawing towards dusk. A dusky orange ray of the setting sun spilled in through the window and limned Draco with gold; every peach-fuzz hair on his narrow face glowed, and Ginny, feeling the warmth on her own cheeks, knew that she was glowing too. There was perhaps a minute left in which they could still be sure of remaining undiscovered. She knew that, and looking into Draco’s eyes, she knew he did as well. He mumbled something under his breath; she was never sure what, but she doubted, afterwards, that it had consisted of coherent words. And he closed the last gap of space between them.
Ginny was to think later that she could have at least tried to squirm away from him, could have attempted to kick and scratch and bite. She certainly could have kneed him in the groin, since her knee was in a very strategic position at the time. But she did not. Draco actually hesitated for an instant after lowering his head, as if asking permission. And, without speaking, Ginny gave it.
So close your eyes… for that’s a lovely way to be… aware of things your heart alone was meant to see… A Muggle song she’d heard once, sweet and melancholy. It flashed through her mind. Her eyes closed. She relaxed into Draco’s chest. The space that had seemed impossibly small and cramped suddenly contracted to its heart, and could not have been a bit larger. And at last, he kissed her.
Ginny had been kissed before. Neville had followed her around the rose gardens at the Yule Ball a year and a half ago, her hands growing sweatier and sweatier and his mouse-brown hair sticking to his forehead from nervous perspiration. She’d known what he was trying to do. At last, she’d given up and stood still under a sprig of mistletoe, and sighed softly when she felt his rubbery lips on hers. Colin Creevey had given her a few wet, slobbery smacks that spring. She’d had her little snogging sessions with Michael Corner, sometimes pleasant, especially in the beginning, but always rushed, always unsatisfactory.
And of course there was that summer night at Grimmauld Place last year, the night before Harry came to that house, the one she had tried so hard to forget, as Sirius Black had said they must. The drunken kisses, her narrow bed, the mingled fear and desire that drove them both to a place they never should have gone… Yet Sirius had stopped them in time, as Ginny knew that she herself that she would have not been able to do, on the rare occasions when she could not quite keep herself from remembering. And she’d never gone further than that, with anyone. She somehow knew, when Draco kissed her, that he had. With Pansy, no doubt. But even that thought could not stop what she was feeling. It was so very different from anything she might have expected, being kissed by him. His mouth ravaged hers without finesse, without restraint. He was greedy. Hungry, starving even. Desperate. She had never imagined that he was capable of such desperation. But then, so was she, and she would never have believed that, either.
She made a low sound deep in her throat. So did he. The kiss deepened and deepened. It seemed impossible that he could press her any closer to him, but he did, and she tried, awkwardly, to do the same. He edged one of her legs over his and pressed between them a little and, oh Goddess, she felt something against her upper thigh through the layers of cloth and it wasn’t a wand, not this time. She whimpered nervously and he said, “Shh… shh…”
She was floating in the soft ragged sound of his voice murmuring things she couldn’t quite hear, and the feel of his mouth on her lips, her jaw, her throat, the part of her upper chest that he’d bared by pushing down her blouse as much as he could. Draco was trying to get his hands around to the front and her breath gave a dizzying leap when she realized what he wanted to do. What he wanted to touch. The realization almost brought her back to herself. But then he surged forward, trying to get at her, wedging her even further against the back of the luggage rack, and the long, blind, fearfully wild kisses went on and on and on. There was no room for rational thought.
At last their frantic wriggling allowed Draco to pull his hands around, and they slid up her stomach and beneath her cotton blouse to cup her breasts. Ginny caught her breath. She still had all her clothes on but was far more vulnerable to him than if she’d been stripped naked; she was completely trapped against the rack and couldn’t move a muscle. She might as well have been in a full body-bind curse. His face studied hers. Ginny gave an incoherent little moan, and her head moved up and down in a nod.
Then she bit her lip to keep from crying out when his thumbs rubbed her covered nipples, gently. Gently. Ginny sobbed with frustration, trying to move her own hands, to touch him, but one was stuck behind her and one was pulled over her head. She tried to straighten the rest of her body so that it touched his more closely, but she couldn’t do that, either. They were so close to each other, and yet they couldn’t do anything but this. They couldn’t move from the luggage rack; they’d be found if they did. The seconds were ticking down to the one when she’d have to leave, or they’d be found anyway.
The torture was exquisite.
Ginny found that she could bend her head down the slightest bit, and her lips brushed his fingertips; as he clearly realized what she was trying to do, he moved his palms up a little further, trapped between their bodies. She pulled his fingers into her mouth and sucked and nipped at them, inexpertly, eagerly; he shivered and so did she, in mutual pleasure. She had allowed Draco to put his hands on her, but she realized then that it was the first time she’d willingly touched him.
“Ginny—“ he began in a choked voice, and then stopped. She was to spend a good deal of time afterwards wondering what Draco would have said if he had been able to continue speaking, then. But there was a loud rumbling, a shuddering pulling to a halt, and he was thrown against her. For a fleeting instant, they touched each other at every point, from forehead to foot, and she felt him yearning towards her, and her to him, in a desperate wordless cry. One last frantic, devastating kiss. Then he was shoving her out of the luggage rack, out onto the floor.
There were footsteps in the hall, coming closer. She could hear students’ voices. They were all headed towards the baggage compartment. Ginny lay on the floor, her hands propped against the carpet, utterly dazed.
“Get out,” Draco said from behind her. “Hurry. Don’t look back at me. Go!” And he pushed her towards the door.
Ginny scrambled to her feet and ran out of the room, her heart pounding as if it would burst out of her chest.
She caught up with Harry, Ron, and Hermione just as they were walking through the magical barrier between Platforms Nine and Ten, and let them go ahead of her, leaning against a pillar for a moment, closing her eyes. Then the ticket inspector waved her on, and she went as sedately as she could. Her family was waiting to greet them on the platform, along with Moody, Tonks, and Remus Lupin. Ginny wondered briefly what they were doing there.
“Ron! Ginny!” called her mother, hurrying forward and embracing her daughter. “Oh, and Harry dear—how are you?” Ginny stepped away gratefully when Molly Weasley pulled Harry into a hug. She felt… tainted. As if everything that had happened only a few minutes before was somehow written on her face in the language of lust. Ron looked at her strangely. Then he was distracted by the lurid green jackets that Fred and George were wearing, and Ginny shrank back, grateful. But the respite didn’t last long. Harry’s relatives were standing on the platform, she saw now, all looking as if they would have given a great deal to be somewhere else—Antarctica, perhaps—and the members of the Order were talking to them rather loudly. Under cover of the far from amicable conversation, Ron turned back to his sister.
“Where were you?” he asked under his breath.
“Oh!” said Ginny. “I, er, went to find the food trolley.”
“After all those Cauldron Cakes you ate? What, do you have a hollow leg?”
It hadn’t been a good lie. “I felt a bit ill, suddenly,” she said.
“So you were in the girls’ lav.”
“Yes,” Ginny said eagerly. “Yes, that’s exactly where I was the whole time.”
“Funny then,” said Ron, “that Hermione went looking for you ten minutes after you left and didn’t see you there.”
“I expect I’d, uh, started down the corridor by then.”
“And yet we didn’t see you for the next hour, either.”
Ginny looked down at her feet. “I needed to be alone,” she said, putting an edge on her voice. “Can’t you understand that, Ron?”
He looked abashed. “Yeah. Yeah, I guess I can. That’s all it was, though?”
“That’s all it was,” she said firmly. She couldn’t bear her brother’s eyes on her another moment. Ron didn’t look quite satisfied. But he finally turned back to the rest of the group, following the argument with fascination.
“Yeah, if we get any hint that Potter’s been mistreated in any way, you’ll have us to answer to,” Moody was saying, as Harry’s purple-faced uncle swelled ominously.
Ginny slipped away from her family a little, leaning against the nearest stone pillar. She rested her cheek against the marble, desperately trying to cool the heat in her head a bit. She felt as if she had been plunged through some sort of madness, like a rushing fever dream. It had nothing to do with daily life, ordinary life. She must simply forget it. She leaned even further against the marble until she was sitting on the opposite side, dully watching the stream of people hurrying by. A lot of Muggles, of course. But there was Hannah Abbott… Susan Bones… Pansy Parkinson’s horrible little sister, Ivy…
Draco Malfoy.
He sat down very close to her but turned the other way at the opposite base of the stone pillar. For an instant she almost thought he was looking in her direction, but she quickly decided she was wrong about that. His fair head was bent over something in his lap, and by scrunching down a little and peering to one side without moving her neck, Ginny saw that it was a parchment. The same one Draco had always had earlier in the year when she saw him on the Quidditch pitch, she’d swear. He was writing something on it with a quill pen. Then he tapped it with his wand and it shrank to the size of a small coin.
His face was expressionless, scanning the crowd. As she watched, he caught sight of something, and following his line of vision she saw his mother, Narcissa Malfoy, dressed in expensive Muggle clothing. Ginny’s eyes widened in surprise when she saw that. The older woman’s perfect face was expressionless as well, but as she saw Draco and began to walk purposefully in their direction, Ginny could see that there were deep violet shadows under her eyes, not quite covered by makeup. Ginny recognized them as the smudges left by night after night of wakefulness. Narcissa looked very weary. But her face lit up as she drew closer to her son, and Ginny felt a strange, not quite painful pang, watching the two of them. Draco’s face relaxed, and he rose to his feet, starting towards his mother. He did not glance at Ginny. But when he walked by her, his hand brushed hers, as if by accident. His fingers pressed something into her palm.
“Ginny!” Molly Weasley stood over her, looking down at her with concern in her face. “There you are, dear—you’ve just missed Harry. We tried to find you before he left so you could say good-bye, but it’s so dreadfully crowded here—“ She waved a vague hand at the bustle of King’s Cross. “Are you all right, dear?”
Ginny forced herself to smile. The flat little thing Draco had pressed into her palm felt like a burning brand. “Yes, Mum. Of course I’m all right. Sorry I missed Harry.”
The family piled into a sleek silver car outside the train station.
“S’pose they’ll lend Dad any car he wants at this point,” Fred was chortling. “Should’ve asked for a Jag.”
“As usual, Fred, you go for ostentation over true style,” sighed George. “Give me a Thunderbird convertible, every time.”
“Ministry’s eating their words now, are they?” asked Ron happily. “Dad, ask for an office with a proper window next—“
They chattered on and on, and Ginny prayed for the journey to be over soon. She kept fingering the little square in her pocket, not daring to return the thing to its original size and look at it until she was somewhere more private.
She sat on the bed of her little girl’s room and pulled the pink lacy curtains. Her old dolls stared glassily down at her from their shelf. Her stuffed lion’s unravelled ear drooped into her hair as she moved as far back behind the curtains as she could. She wondered if they’d really hide what she was doing if anyone came into the room. They weren’t made for privacy. When they had first been put up, she’d been nine years old, with nothing to hide. Now, she had plenty.
Ginny tapped the tiny square with her wand. “Engorgio,” she whispered. It unfolded smoothly into a large sheet of parchment. Slowly, her hands lowered it to the bed, and her eyes closed.
She didn’t know what she expected to see when she opened them. Detailed notes about her worst performances at Quidditch practice, maybe. All fourteen lost verses of Weasley Is Our King. A list of every insult Draco had ever hurled at her family, friends, and house over the years.
Or perhaps—just perhaps—some sort of explanation. Something that revealed the reasons for everything, everything; every look, every gesture, every touch, and above all else, that long consuming kiss on the train that had burned through her like a wildfire and left her heart covered in ashes. Ginny, I pour out my soul to you, as I could never do in speech… She cringed at her own imagined words. And Draco Malfoy probably didn’t have a soul.
She forced her eyes to open.
She was looking at a portrait of herself, done in coloured pen. He’d captured the shades of red and gold and copper in her hair, perfectly, and the layers of bronze and brown in her eyes, and the pink in her cheeks. The image of Ginny looked out of the parchment inscrutably, tendrils of her hair blowing back in an unseen breeze. Her lips were parted, as if about to speak. She blinked at her other self, and then she turned her head away. Ginny turned the parchment over, but the other side was blank
But as she stroked her fingers over the surface of the parchment as she couldn’t seem to stop herself from doing, words appeared, swimming up as if from a great depth. And her heart leapt ridiculously in her chest. She held her breath until the words became clear.
I give back to you the image I made of you. Because even this I cannot keep. Be well, Ginny, and hold fast to whatever you believe, in the darkness that is rising.
There was a little more writing in the corner, in that elegant, stark script of his. That was what he must have been doing when she’d seen him with the parchment at King’s Cross. But it was only his initials, she saw now. D.L.M.
She’d never even found out what the L stood for.
Ginny sat on her bed with the parchment clasped in her hand until she heard her mother calling her down to dinner. She rolled it into a neat package, placed it at the very back of the highest shelf, and went downstairs. Ron looked at her oddly as she slipped into her chair.
Then she picked up her fork and began to eat, as she had done every day of her life up to now, and knew she would have to do every day afterwards.
“The garden gnomes are absolutely dreadful, the worst infestation I’ve ever seen,” said Molly Weasley. “You’ll all have to get started right after dinner, there’s enough work for the entire—“
Ron groaned. “Way to welcome back the conquering Quidditch hero, Mum.”
“Oh, suck it up, Ronniekins,” said Fred, around the most enormous bite of Yorkshire pudding that Ginny had ever seen.
“We’re prepared to do our degnoming duty,” added George. Hermione, sitting between him and Ron, smiled vaguely but said nothing. She was very pale, and not yet truly recovered from Dolohov’s curse in the Department of Mysteries. Ginny wondered suddenly what her Muggle parents thought of all this, or if they even knew what their daughter had become mixed up in. She wondered if they ever would have allowed Hermione near Hogwarts, if they had really understood what was in store for her.
Ginny looked around the room as the voices of her family rose and fell. The kitchen was as close and cosy as ever, the checked tablecloth as shabby. The warm pools of rushlight touched the edges of the battered old wooden table in exactly the same way. The garden just outside the windows was as overgrown as it had been all her life, a profusion of tomatoes and squash and zucchini spilling over onto the front walk. Her parents were the same. Her brothers were the same. The very village of Ottery-St. Catchpole was the same.
Normal life, everyday life. Ordinary life.
Nothing has changed, thought Ginny. But I—I have changed. And there is no going back.
“Are you all right, Gin?” Ron asked in a low voice. “You look so pale. So—strange.”
“Yes,” said Ginny. “I’m all right.”
It wasn’t true yet. But it would have to become so. Perhaps in the two months before term started, she could put the scattered pieces of herself back together. Perhaps.
She went up to bed early that night, claiming a headache. No, she didn’t want any Naproxis powders. No, no herb tea. No, she just needed a good night’s sleep. Ginny was more than half afraid she’d spend the wakeful hours staring up at the canopy of her bed. But she dropped off to sleep as soon as her head hit the pillow, and tumbled into dream as if it had been lying in wait for her.
The sky was dark; the horizon distant. She was standing on an island in a rising sea of blood, the dark, clotted blood that seeps from old wounds. Her family and friends stood about her on smaller islands of their own, and the blood-ocean was already rising to their knees. She called out in horror, in desperation, but they only looked at her, and she saw them disappear under the crimson tide. Great sinister flying creatures circled in the sky far above her, things that looked something like birds and something like bats, the tendons of their wings flexing under leathery skin, their eyes white and blank. They’re a bit like Bat-Bogeys gone horribly wrong…but I’ve never seen them before, I’m sure I haven’t… And Ginny understood that all there was that saved her was her slightly larger island, and if the sea rose high enough, it would drown her too. Although it was an island, it was also the body of her brother Ron, or perhaps she was standing on his shoulders—as is often the case with dreams, the details were never clear. She understood that she would survive because he would not, that his death would preserve her life, and it filled her with a new horror. “Swim to shore,” she begged her brother. “Save yourself.” But he only smiled and shook his head, hair swirling around his head, its colour dimmed by the deeper redness of the blood. “I’ll hold you up, Ginny,” he said. “I’ll hold you up.”
“No!” she screamed, and with that scream she woke. Her heart beat so loudly that it felt as if would jump out of her chest. She clutched the covers to herself, looking wildly around the room until at last it slowed. It was only her bedroom; her dear, familiar bedroom. There was nothing to be afraid of.
The door opened, and then closed. “Ginny? Are you all right? I heard a yell—“ The shadowy form of her brother stepped into the room.
“Ron,” she said in a choked voice. Somehow, she did not feel relief, and she wasn’t sure why. “Oh, light a light, please.”
He tapped the bedside lamp and sat down on her bed. She rubbed her eyes. “What time is it?”
“Close to four.”
“Did I wake up anyone else?”
“Don’t think so.”
But even as Ron spoke, the door creaked open again, and Hermione’s head poked in. “What happened?” she asked, her voice oddly alert considering that it was so close to dawn. She held a witchlight aloft in her hand.
“It’s nothing,” said Ron dismissively.
“But—“ Hermione hesitated.
“Go back to bed.”
She stood for another moment. “Okay,” she finally said, and turned away.
“I wouldn’tve minded if Hermione came in,” said Ginny, a bit nettled. “I think you hurt her feelings.”
Ron ran a hand through his hair, making it all stand on end. He was wearing his old pyjamas with the cowboys on them, the ones that had been handed down from Charlie. They were grotesquely too short for him. “I can’t worry about that sort of thing right now.”
“Oh, that’s nice. Don’t you care about her at all?”
To Ginny’s surprise, Ron hesitated a long time before answering. “Of course I do,” he said. “Why’d you scream, Ginny?”
“Nightmare,” she said shortly.
He nodded, seeming unsurprised. “Thought so. I’ve been having those too. Almost every night.”
“When did they start?”
“I’m not exactly sure. Since I got out of the Hogwarts hospital wing, I think… no, a bit before that.”
“Oh.” A chill struck Ginny’s chest. She remembered what had happened to her brother that night in the Ministry of Magic, and against her will, the image replayed itself. The brains, rising from the tank of dark water. The tentacles wrapped around his head. The sound of that strange, terrible laughter from his throat. Ha.. ha… aha, ha ha…
Ron wrapped his arms around his knees and stared into the darkness. “Harry said he’s been having nightmares as well. Not the same as the ones he had all year, the ones about the chamber in the Department of Mysteries. New ones.”
“What do you dream about, Ron?” she whispered.
“Oh—different things. But it’s always the same as well. I’ll be at Hogwarts, or sometimes at the Burrow, or maybe at Hogsmeade walking down the street. Different places. You’ll always be with me.”
“That doesn’t sound too bad so far.”
One corner of his mouth went up in a grim smile. It stretched his young features into a painful shape. “It gets worse. The thing is, Ginny, that we’re always running, running and hiding. That’s all we ever do in these dreams. I never quite see who it is that’s chasing us, but I know it’s some powerful evil force—Death Eaters I suppose really. We just run and run until we’re fit to burst; sometimes we take trains, sometimes we fly on brooms, sometimes we drive in Muggle cars; we never get away and we’re never caught. But I’m always sure that next time, we will be.” He leaned closer to her, and his face was cast into an odd little pool of darkness as the orange light of the lamp shone on the top of his head, turning it to flame. “Is that what you dream about, Ginny?”
“No,” she said. “But that’s close enough.”
Ron gave a long sigh and propped his back up against the headboard of her bed. He took her hand and played with her fingers a little. Ginny was surprised although she didn’t say anything; it had been a long time—since they were little children, really—that he’d expressed his affection physically, with handholding or hugs. “How much do you know about what’s coming, Ginny?”
“Not very much,” she admitted. Nobody ever tells me anything, and I have to learn from listening at doors, she would have liked to add. On reflection, though, she didn’t want to take the chance of breaking this strange mood of confidence that had arisen between them.
“That’s as it should be,” said Ron. “You’re better off that way, believe me.”
Ginny bit her tongue. It seemed that he was about to say something more, and she wanted to hear it, whatever it was.
“I’m going to tell you something,” he said. “Maybe I shouldn’t. I’m sure I shouldn’t. But it’s the kind of thing that seems a little more right to tell, in the darkest part of the night… and I’m going to anyway… because I have to tell someone. If I tried to tell Harry, I’d only add to the burdens he has already, and he doesn’t need that. And if I tried to tell Hermione—“ Ron stopped, and gave a short laugh. “I don’t think it’s a good idea, let’s just say that. It’s about something that happened on the train.”
Ginny’s heart gave a frantic leap and lodged in her throat. She was sure that next she was going to hear, I was wandering through compartments and looking for you, and I thought I saw the strangest thing. You were wedged into a luggage rack with Malfoy and kissing him, and letting him put his hands on you. But that couldn’t possibly have happened. Could it? Surely I imagined it. Didn’t I? Please, please tell me that I did.
But that wasn’t what her brother said at all, and after she’d heard what it really was, Ginny almost wished that it had been what she feared.
“You know that Malfoy and those goons of his tried to attack Harry.”
She nodded.
“And you know that they decided to do it right outside of a compartment filled with DA members, and we let them have it.”
“Yes,” she said carefully. “You told me a bit about that, and I heard the rest.”
“Well, we rolled them into a luggage rack in the baggage compartment. You saw it. And when you were—gone—for so long during the last part of the train ride, Hermione and I went and looked for you absolutely everywhere. At least I’d thought we’d looked everywhere, until she thought of the baggage compartment. You weren’t there, of course. No reason why you would have been. But Crabbe and Goyle and Malfoy still were. And—when I saw them—“ Ron swallowed hard. “All I could feel was hate.”
“For—for all of them?”
“I don’t really care much about Crabbe and Goyle one way or the other. They can’t find their backsides with two hands and a wand.”
Ginny said nothing. She was beginning to wonder if that was as true as everyone thought, at least when it came to Vincent Crabbe.
“I mean Malfoy,” Ron continued. “I couldn’t even see him. He was rolled behind those two gorillas. But it didn’t matter. I just felt a sort of sheet of burning rage. Everything seemed to go red. And—I know that Harry and Hermione are both better at spells than I am, but I think, I really think, that if I’d had my wand out and pointed at Malfoy in that instant, I could’ve cast a really good Killing Curse. If Hermione hadn’t been there, I honestly think I might’ve tried. I’m still not sure I’m glad she was there. And the strangest thing of all is that I really don’t know where the anger came from—it’s like it just popped up in me, full-grown. I hate him, of course, and he’s been worse than ever this year, but it was like this was for a specific reason. Something that I knew without knowing what it was. That’s rather mad, isn’t it?”
Ginny could feel herself going cold. As her brother had stood over her and felt the killing rage, she had been tightly held in Draco Malfoy’s arms not a metre away from him. Less than a minute later, she had been kissing the boy her brother had wanted to murder, kissing him as if her life depended on it. No, you weren’t mad at all, Ron. But I—I-
Ron was taking her other hand, and still talking. She forced herself to focus on him.
“Things are changing, Ginny. I hope you never have to know how much. But I’m afraid. Not for myself, not so much, but for you. Sometimes I feel like we’re on a little island of light in a sea of darkness-- what is it? Why did you start like that?”
“No reason.”
“Well, anyway—the darkness is rising, Ginny, rising. Soon—it may cover our world, the whole world we know—“ He tried to laugh. “It’s so late and I’m so hideously tired. I’m sure I’m not making any sense at all. I’m probably spouting a lot of dreadful rubbish and scaring you. Just ignore me, sis; it’s easier.”
Before he left, he bent to press a kiss on her brow. “Good night, sleep tight, don’t let the bedbugs bite,” he said.
“You haven’t said that to me in years.”
“No—not since we were little kids. But I like the sound of it, tonight. It sounds-- safe.”
His words reverberated in her ears for a long time after the door had closed behind him. She listened to the settling sounds of the old house; the snoring of her brothers and father that she could hear through the thin walls, the faint, far-off sigh of the spring wind. They were the same sounds that had wrapped her in a cocoon of safety all her life.
The darkness is rising. Each in his own way, her brother and Malfoy had said it. Harry’s haunted face had said it the last time she saw him at King’s Cross. Hermione had said it without words as well, when Ginny had seen the other girl’s frightened face stuck through the doorjamb. And perhaps her father and mother… and her other brothers as well… and surely it was stamped on every line of Dumbledore’s face now, the face that looked so much older than it had done only one year before, and the dark inscrutable eyes of Professor Snape, and the lined and seamed and scarred visage of Alistair Moody… They knew, they all knew, and now she did too, and was forever condemned to that knowledge…
The darkness is rising.
Only one last time, she thought tiredly as the dawn stained the sky she at last fell back into sleep. One last time, let me feel safe.
And for the last time in a very, very long time, she did.
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