Three: Escape
Ginny almost wished she and Malfoy were on speaking terms because the Dungbomb she'd dropped the previous night had been hard enough to deal with alone. Instead of splitting the burden or strategizing their next step, she and Malfoy stubbornly ignored each other while they waited for the Healers to bring breakfast, though Ginny was beginning to suspect that Malfoy was trying to annoy her. She sat up in bed with her arms crossed in a belligerent refusal to interact with him, and Malfoy copied her pose exactly, down to the scowl on her face and the twiddling of her toes.
She wanted to tell him off for being childish, but that would go against everything she currently stood for. In other words, she refused to be entertainment for Draco bleeding Malfoy.
"Gooood morning, dears!" Healer Gibby said as she backed into the room with a food trolley.
Ginny didn't bother responding in kind as she had the last several days, but Malfoy wiped the scowl off his face and gave an annoyingly perky (for him), "Morning, Healer."
A multitude of Healers took care of Ginny and Malfoy. Ginny had a suspicion that the majority of them were training, and the Janus Thickey Ward was the perfect ward to disabuse such wet-behind-the-ears Healers of their notions of optimism. There was no hope for the patients in ward forty-nine, and the sooner they learned that not all cases could be healed, the better.
Gibby was the kindest Healer; Ginny had to give her that. The rest of their caretakers were cold and to the point. They came in, did their duty, and left without ever saying a word—even if they were spoken to. Healer Gibby, on the other hand, was a sweet middle-aged lady who treated her patients like her own children. She went out of her way to make conversation, and even when Ginny and Malfoy met her attempts with silence, she never lost her glow. Ginny had a suspicion that Healer Gibby stayed on this ward to prove that optimism was a kind of medicine of its own.
For the eleventh morning in a row, Ginny received her breakfast in sullen silence, ignoring Healer Gibby’s chatter as easily as she’d ignored her noisy roommates at Hogwarts.
“What about you, dear? Did you sleep well last night?” the Healer asked Malfoy as she pushed the trolley around to his bed.
“Could have been better,” he replied.
“Oh?” She actually looked concerned!
“See, Healer, I think there’s been a mistake. I just discovered last night that I’m in the Janus Thickey Ward! Isn’t that ludicrous? I’d like to speak to someone about how such a mistake could have been made.”
“Oh. Oh, dear.” She patted Malfoy’s knee, and even through the corner of her eye, Ginny could see tears welling in Healer Gibby’s. “I’m so sorry. There’s been no mistake.”
Ginny glanced at Malfoy, and watched as the optimism bled out of him. He clenched the edges of the tray in his lap, and his friendly expression turned sour.
“If there has been no mistake, then what is wrong with me? I have a right to know. Do you know how much money my family donates to this hospital every year? If I am not moved to an open ward or told what ails me, that funding will stop. Now.” His tone was even and his volume was no higher than his normal speaking voice, but it was clear that his calmness was a farce. Underneath his words, an unmistakable anger roiled unlike anything Ginny had ever witnessed—perhaps because she shared his anger now, and the anger he’d displayed in their school days had been childish and irrational in comparison.
“My dear, I am not qualified to speak to you about such things.” Gibby now placed her hand on Malfoy’s shoulder, but his disgusted glare convinced her to keep her hands to herself. Her lips trembled as she pushed the trolley back around his bed. “Please. Just know that there has been no mistake. And I’m so sorry!”
She ran the rest of the way out of the room, and Ginny could hear her sobbing straight down the corridor, the creaking wheels of the trolley fading as she fled further away.
“That went well,” Ginny said.
Malfoy’s humiliation at the hands (or tears, rather) of Healer Gibby put the Quaffle in Ginny's pitch, which gave her the opportunity to break their silence. The standoff hadn’t lasted very long, but, then again, Ginny didn’t want to go through this ordeal by herself. She’d pretended to be asleep the previous night when Malfoy had crawled out of bed and tried the door for himself, and the devastated, frightened look on his face she’d seen as he'd returned to his bed proved to her that he didn’t want to be alone in this either.
Even if he didn’t know it just yet.
“Bugger off, Weasley. You were right, all right? You were right.”
“Oh, you want me to bugger off, do you?” Ginny pulled a wand out from under her leg and held it up. “Since you want to be left alone, I guess I’ll just have to take this with me.” She might have smirked a little, too. But only a little.
Malfoy’s mouth dropped open. “Where did you get that?”
Ginny shrugged, twirling the wand between her fingers. “Nicked it off good ol’ Gibby while she was giving me lunch. Good job making her cry. She probably won’t come back for ages now.”
“Do you know what this means?” Draco asked, shoving his breakfast tray to the end of the bed and swinging his legs over the side.
“Probably.”
“We can break out of here! We can escape!”
“Yes, that was my thought when I stole the wand,” Ginny replied with a sarcastic roll of her eyes. “Do you know what this means, Malfoy?”
Where before he’d been nearly overjoyed (as overjoyed as a Malfoy could be anyway), now he was wary. “What?”
“You are dependent on me. I have the wand, so you have to do what I say.”
“There aren’t very many places you can hide a wand here where I won’t find it, so if you don’t get us out of here as soon as possible, I will have to take the wand from you.”
Ginny clutched the wand to her chest. “You wouldn’t.”
Malfoy sneered. “You really don’t think I would? And don’t think hiding it on you will deter me from taking it, because I would be more than happy to search you for it.”
Ginny gulped as her flush spread quickly from her face to the rest of her body. A very tiny, disgusting part of her loved the idea of him searching her body, but the rest of her was indignant at such a declaration.
“We should eat some breakfast first, at least,” Ginny said.
“If you can call this breakfast,” Malfoy muttered.
“It’s the first meal of the day, so, yes, I do think you can call it breakfast.”
Malfoy approached Ginny's bed. "Has anyone ever told you that you're cheeky?"
"They don't have to tell me, do they? Hey, what are you doing?"
Malfoy had one knee on the bed, looking as though he wished to join her, and Ginny backed herself to the edge in retreat. He didn't answer her, just crouched over her as she continued her attempt to flee. When they were nose to nose, her back pressing down into the mattress, he lifted his hand. She didn't try to stop him when it moved towards her chest, just stared into his eyes, too aware of the thin fabric of her hospital gown between them. Her nipples tightened in anticipation of his touch, and her breathing became shallower. When his eyes came nearer, hers fluttered shut, waiting for the warm press of his lips on hers.
He ripped the wand out of her hand and returned to his bed before Ginny knew what was happening. Her eyes opened again, and he was smirking and twirling the wand in his fingers, looking smug and leaving a tight, empty expectation in her stomach.
"Now you have to do what I say," he said. "Or... I could not include you in my plans at all."
As she sat back up, Ginny frowned in disapproval, her ears burning with embarrassment at her reaction. How long had it been since her last kiss with Harry? Since the last time she'd slept with him? Too long. Long before they'd broken up more than a month ago. "I didn't think you'd be so cruel as to leave me behind,” she said to Malfoy, crossing her arms over her chest.
"Why not? Slytherins have been called many things, but what we are first and foremost is self-serving. You were in my way, so I took what I wanted."
He was such a slimy git, and his little speech proved it, but the way he said "I took what I wanted" made Ginny's face burn and her body ache. She hadn't felt wanted in so long—that was one of the reasons she and Harry hadn't worked out—but Draco Malfoy didn't want her, and she honestly didn't want to be wanted by him. At least she didn't think so, though her body seemed to say otherwise.
Being manipulated so easily loosened Ginny's tongue in a bitter, awful way.
"That doesn't sound much like you. I remember you being a little coward. You had all these ambitions and couldn't achieve them because Harry always foiled your plans."
She shouldn't have provoked him. He was the one carrying the wand after all, but she couldn't help herself. She was tired of being disposed of like something useless, as if Ginny Weasley's sole purpose in life was to defer to others and push out babies.
"I'm not like that anymore," he said, his jaw clenched so tight, she imagined his teeth breaking.
"Oh, so you're a proper Slytherin now? Mr. Big, Bad, and Terrible who takes what he wants because he's so big and bad?" Ginny stood up, her breakfast tray falling to the floor with a loud clatter. When she spoke, she pointed a finger in Malfoy's face. "You are not leaving me behind like a bad Sickle. I am worth more than that whether you see it or not, and if you don't take me with you, you will suffer the consequences."
Again, they were nearly nose to nose, but this time Ginny had her wits about her.
"What can you do?" Malfoy asked with a scoffing laugh.
"More than you think. More than everyone thinks," she seethed. She wasn’t little Ginny Weasley anymore, the baby of the family who had to be protected and cared for and... guarded!
"If you're so ready to go, then let's go," he said, and Ginny was relieved that he'd chosen not to question her further. She didn't know what the consequences she had spoken of were; all she knew was that this subject was hitting too close to a pain already deep inside her, and she would throw herself out the window before she admitted her weakness to him.
Maybe that was why she was in the Janus Thickey Ward. Had she jumped out a window for her pride? Ginny struggled to remember and failed, but that didn't feel like what had happened.
"Fine! Let's go!" She grabbed a dressing gown hanging on a bed post and put it on. "I'm ready!"
He shoved past her to the door, the wand gripped firmly in his hand. "Just don't get us caught."
Ginny breathed in deeply and clenched her fists to keep herself from replying, but the effort made her head want to explode.
Malfoy tried the doorknob without effect, so he pointed the wand at the door and whispered, "Alohamora." They heard a click, and this time when he tried to open it, the door swung inwards.
He stuck his head out of the room to look around, and then motioned to Ginny to follow him. The corridor was deserted, but she could hear the sound of voices coming from the lobby. It sounded like all the Healers were congregating around the reception desk.
"Here," Malfoy said as he tapped Ginny on the head with the wand.
There was a brief sensation like someone had cracked an egg on her head. When she looked down at herself, she saw right through her body. A Disillusionment Charm.
"Now we need a distraction," she said. "I've got an idea."
Before Malfoy could stop her, she crept down the corridor to the last room and snuck inside. Two people were sitting up in their beds finishing their breakfasts, but the door opening alerted them to her presence. As quietly as she could, she made her way to one of the patients, a woman whose head and hands were completely wrapped in bandages. Ginny was horrified as she took in the mess around her bed: eggs scattered all over the sheets, the bacon sitting limply on the floor, and her mouth covered in bandages preventing her from eating. She wanted to help, but there was no time and Ginny had her own problems, so she activated the alarm charm installed in the bed for emergencies and hurried out of the room.
She couldn't see Malfoy in his Disillusioned state, but she didn't have time to search for him anyway. She barely managed to crush herself against the wall before five Healers stormed down the corridor, and as soon as they passed, she had to run to catch the door to the lobby before it closed.
One Healer remained behind the reception desk looking concerned but oblivious to Ginny's presence. She was starting to wonder if Malfoy had made it through the door when a firm, invisible grip on her arm settled the matter.
“Nice thinking,” he whispered.
His hand slipped down her arm until her hand was clasped gently in his. It was strange to feel the warmth of his fingers and be unable to see them clearly. Strange... but pleasant.
He pulled her along after him towards the stairs, staying to the walls as much as possible. Ginny’s heart beat faster as they made their way down the spiral staircase. She didn’t know what they would do when they got out of the hospital, but just the idea of being free again made her spirits soar. She’d take the bloodthirsty media over the quiet seclusion of St. Mungo’s any day.
Thinking of what awaited her when she got out, Ginny wondered what Malfoy’s life was like now. She’d seen him in the Daily Prophet every now and then in the past few years, which was a change. After his family’s trials directly after the war, he and his mother had stepped out of the public’s eye. It was thought that they’d left the country, only returning when wizarding Britain had forgotten about them. About four years ago, Draco Malfoy had come back into the spotlight. Ginny wasn’t sure what he did for a living—if he did anything at all—but the press had been kind to him. That or he never did anything to warrant bad press.
Unlike Ginny, who’d managed to keep from making headlines for the majority of her relationship with Harry until the dramatic conclusion. She wondered what the press was saying about her now that she was supposedly insane.
She thought about Alice Longbottom, Broderick Bode, and Gilderoy Lockhart, all of whom had been so damaged that they were no longer themselves. Even Lockhart, who Ginny remembered as eager to sign autographs, hadn’t understood why he was famous. And Bode and Mrs. Longbottom had been incapable of speech and completely unaware of their surroundings. Where had they gone? Had they been cured?
But Ginny was alert, aware, and capable of speech. She knew who she was. She looked in the mirror in the bathroom every morning and saw herself, no fur or strange protrusions or discolorations that might keep her in the Janus Thickey Ward. The only memories she was missing were the ones that led her to St. Mungo’s. So why was she here?
“Weasley!” Malfoy hissed.
Ginny shook her head, bringing herself back from her thoughts.
“Listen....”
Footsteps. Someone was coming up the stairs. There wasn’t enough room for she and Malfoy to plaster themselves to the wall this time. They would have to retreat back up the stairs—losing progress and potentially revealing themselves with their own footsteps—or hide on another floor.
Ginny looked around for the nearest door, spotting one only one turn up the staircase. She pulled Malfoy towards it, but it wouldn’t budge. Locked.
Malfoy whipped the wand back out to unlock the door, and then shoved her inside, where she promptly tripped over something heavy and clanging. Both of them stiffened and waited for the noise to stop reverberating, and then held their breaths, expecting to be caught.
"Good going!" Malfoy said in a harsh whisper.
"If you hadn't pushed me, I wouldn't have fallen over a...." It was too dark to see, but Malfoy lit the wand tip, which illuminated the tiny utility closet they'd fallen into. "A bucket!"
Malfoy made no response. Instead, he pressed his ear to the door, listening for the sounds of people climbing the stairs.
"What is a broom closet doing in the middle of a staircase anyway?" Ginny muttered in irritation.
"Will you be quiet?" he hissed back.
Ginny threw her hands up in capitulation, turned the bucket over, and sat down on it, her elbow resting on her knee as her head perched on her fist.
Moments passed until Malfoy said, "I think it's clear." Then he doused the light.
Ginny stood back up, but he didn't move.
“What?"
"There's no doorknob."
"Then use the wand!"
"I tried that already. It's not working."
"What do you mean it's not working? It got us in here, didn't it?"
"Here, you try it, then!"
He shoved the wand into Ginny's hands, and then they tried to switch positions without making any more loud noises. Unfortunately, this meant squeezing herself past Malfoy, which meant putting her hands on his upper arms to steady herself, which in turn led to him placing his hands on her waist. They turned around, trying not to step on the bucket again or anything else that might be laying perilously on the floor, until Ginny was in front of the door. They quickly released each other, but even as she concentrated on unlocking the door, she could still feel the imprint of his hands on her body.
She couldn’t let that distract her right now, though. She wanted to get somewhere safe, where she could think about her stupid reactions to Malfoy’s touch in peace and freedom. They had to get out of the closet first in order to achieve that.
"Alohamora!" she whispered. When she pushed on the door, it didn't budge. She tried a few other spells she knew, and then in a normal, albeit irritated, tone tried a Reductor Curse for good measure. She groaned and let her forehead fall on the cool wood.
"Any luck?" Malfoy asked sarcastically.
Ginny's jaw clenched. "No."
"Well," he said as he took her previous place on top of the bucket, "looks like we're stuck here until one of our jailers gets us out. Thanks for your brilliant effort though."
She contemplated a Bat Bogey Hex, but the spell would surely backfire in such a confined space.
She was almost willing to suffer those consequences.
.
.
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