Four: Contributions and Tortures
Draco heard a strange, brief sliding sound. Weasley must have sat down against the door.
"Are we just going to sit here in the dark?" he asked as he massaged his temples. He was starting to develop a headache, an unpleasant one, and the source of that headache could help by being less of an agitation to him.
There was a throaty sound of disgust before the room erupted with illumination, but Draco could see nothing of her except her vague shape, colored to match the door behind her.
“It’s bizarre seeing right through you,” he complained.
She exhaled in exasperation and said, “Finite Incantatem. Happy now?”
Not really. Draco suddenly regretted both the luminescence and the removal of the Disillusionment Charm as they offered him up for her scrutiny. In the dark or invisible, he could exist without being beleaguered by anyone else's opinion of him, but now he had to sit in this tiny closet with nothing to look at except the ever-present scowl on her face. And just as she was the cause of his headache, Draco knew that he was the cause of her scowl.
Weasley had been right about him early that morning: Draco Malfoy was a coward. He'd been right too: his cowardice was completely self-serving. As soon as he and his mother had escaped their trials, relatively unscathed thanks to Harry bloody Potter's testimony, they had withdrawn to the continent to evade media and public attention. It had been his mother's wish, and he'd gone with her because it just so happened that his mother's request had coincided with what served Draco best as well.
Draco didn't even know how many years he had been gone, and after years of peace and anonymity, they had returned to their homeland and quickly become swathed in attention. Eyes that would have swung right past them in France, watched them guardedly as if expecting he or his mother to attack. Those who hadn't seen them in person—and Draco had endeavored not to be present amongst the public as much as he could—could read about their comings and goings in the gossip rags that called themselves newspapers. But the Malfoys were contrite and well-behaved, and the media could not make money off well-behaved people, even though they tried.
So Draco did not like scrutiny. None of his accusers had lived through what Draco had, and to be judged so easily for actions he had been unable to prevent chafed against his pride and exacerbated his bitterness. He did not need the baby Weasley's judgment here, too.
"How long do you plan on staying here?" she asked several minutes later. She sat with her knees up, her heels flat against the floor, and her arms, with the wand dangling in one hand, settled on top of her knees.
Draco shrugged. "Until the door unlocks."
"And if it doesn't?"
He noticed her chewing on her lower lip, the crease in her brow one of worry, not displeasure. "I'd rather be stuck in here with you than out there with them," he answered truthfully. He hadn't been lying when he'd told her that she wasn't the last person he'd want to be hospitalized with. If they could somehow get along long enough to work together, they might even manage to make it out of the hospital.
Perhaps it was a trick of the light, but her face grew redder at his words, and she looked away from him to stare at the wall.
"Nervous, Weasley?" he asked with a smirk.
She shrugged, keeping her gaze averted.
He had an unnatural desire to reach out to her and touch her—not necessarily in a lewd way, either—just to make sure she was real. The closet was so small, their feet were nearly touching, and he wouldn't have to reach far to take her hand. The feel of her skin on his just yesterday had reminded him how isolated Draco still was. In order to avoid surveillance by the public, he had kept to Malfoy Manor as much as possible, traveling via private means—usually Floo—as convenient, and only venturing out when necessary.
That's what had made his visit into Diagon Alley so out of character for him when—
Draco's head pounded. He couldn't remember! Why couldn't he fucking remember?
"Are you all right?"
He released his tight grip on his head to meet Weasley's concerned eyes. No judgment or scorn. Just concern, though she did seem to question his sanity. That was appropriate. Draco was questioning it, too.
"Fine," he answered.
"Are you claustrophobic?"
"I said I'm fine, Weas—" But her eyes stopped him. They were actually tear-filled with an angry slant to her eyebrows, the worried crease still in her forehead. She looked caged and wild and ready to lash out at the slightest provocation.
"Are you?" he asked, wondering what in the hell he was doing trapped in this closet with this emotional woman.
"I hate being locked up," she answered, steel in her voice. "I don't like the silence or the loss of control or the darkness."
The light from the wand flickered, and every time the spell failed, red sparks flew out of the tip instead.
"Why don't you give the wand back?" Draco suggested, hoping she wouldn't attack him without provocation. He'd spent the last several days thinking that Weasley was just as sane as he was, but there had been no evidence to suggest that. What did he really know about her? Maybe she did belong in the Janus Thickey Ward, and he'd agreed to set her free upon the world!
"I can't," she said. "Without a wand, I'm powerless to fight back."
Nope. Nope, nope, nope. This woman was mad. Completely mental.
"Fight back against what?" He didn't dare ask "who." He was the only person around and he didn't want to give her any ideas.
"Everyone," she said savagely. "Do you know how they treated me after the war?"
Draco stiffened. "Who?"
"Everyone!" she repeated. "After everything I did... after everything that was done to me.... My family, Harry, everyone ignored it. They pretended it didn't happen. We'd lost Fred, so I didn't matter anymore!"
Draco had had his own problems during the war. His sixth year of Hogwarts had been the worst of his life. By the time the Dark Lord had taken over the school, Draco hadn't cared about anything anymore except himself and his family, but he remembered what had happened behind the walls. He remembered the kinds of detentions the Carrows had forced students to serve, and he remembered the example they'd made of Ginny Weasley. But he hadn't cared. He'd only wanted to get by without special notice from anyone, including the Death Eaters who had thought him a pathetic ally.
Draco didn't know how to proceed from here. He didn't want to rile her up even more, provoking her to attack him for the sheer fact that there was no one else around to take her abuse. So he humored her as best as he could, hoping to placate her enough to take the wand from her. "What happened to you?" he asked.
However, it didn’t seem as though much effort was needed from him to subdue her. She suddenly deflated; where her body had been tense before, it now went limp. The light from the wand steadied, emitting sparks no longer, revealing the expression of deep bitterness on her face. It went beyond the worried wrinkle in her brow, into her eyes, into her very spirit. The Dark Lord and the Death Eaters hadn’t been the only ones defeated during the war. Ginny Weasley had lost, too.
“I don’t like being contained. It reminds me of the time I spent by myself after the war, locked up in my room because I couldn’t handle everyone’s grief over Fred’s death on top of my own. No one asked me what happened to me while I was at Hogwarts. Not when I got pulled out of school after Easter break. Not when Harry returned. Not when everything ended. It was like my contributions and tortures didn’t matter.”
How different they were. Draco wanted his contributions and tortures during the war to be forgotten. He chose to lock himself up where no one could reach him. But that was the nature of their contributions—of the sides they’d fought for. Winners received glory. Losers only shame.
Draco remembered how the vestiges of Dumbledore’s Army had fought against Snape and the Carrows’ regime. Ginny Weasley had taken on Potter’s role as leader with Longbottom and wreaked havoc on the castle. She’d suffered for it, and the only people who’d known about it had been inside Hogwarts’s walls. Of course her family and Potter wouldn’t know or care. Potter was too full of his own importance to care about anyone else. How she’d continued to date him for years after the war, Draco didn’t understand, but there must have been some self-loathing or denial involved. How could she let herself be with him otherwise?
Emotion flickered across her face, unnamable but scarring, and Draco satisfied his earlier urge and reached out to take her hand. She was so surprised, the light spell ended, engulfing them in darkness once again. Draco pretended he hadn’t placed his hand on top of hers. Even though she couldn’t see, he turned his head, refusing to acknowledge what he’d done. Then he was surprised when she turned her hand over, entwining their fingers in a firm grip. He almost wished he could see the expression on her face. Maybe she was pointing the wand at him right now, ready to cast a curse to punish him for his unwanted touch.
That didn’t happen though, for her hand was ripped from his grasp when the door suddenly opened and Weasley fell backwards onto the floor. Above her stood a man in brown robes, the patch on his breast revealing him to be a member of the cleaning staff.
“Wha—” he said stupidly.
Draco considered bolting out the door and down the stairs. If he ran fast enough, he might overwhelm anyone he encountered and actually manage to escape. But Weasley was using her elbows to lift her upper body off the floor, and the janitor stood directly over her, trapping her there. He wanted to be self-serving and leave her behind, but he needed the wand Weasley was still holding, and there was something self-serving in that excuse, too.
“I’m so sorry,” Weasley was saying. “We were looking for a kitchen and got locked in a closet instead! We’ll just be heading back to the Artifact Accidents floor. I think I’ve lost my appetite anyway.”
The janitor looked like he bought the story. He stepped to the side of the door and apologized, reaching a hand down to help her up, but then voices floated up the stairs, and both Weasley and Draco froze.
“Oh my! What are you doing out here?” asked Healer Chiswick, one of their terse Healers, as she stood rooted on a stair below them.
Her companion, a male Healer-in-Training, said nervously, “I-is that a wand?”
Draco face-palmed as Weasley tucked the wand under her body and shook her head emphatically.
.
.
Of course, the wand had been confiscated and returned to its rightful owner, and Draco and his faithful companion were returned to their ward, where the wood-paneled walls looked more and more like prison bars.
With each passing day, the mood in the room grew increasingly despondent, with a hint of bitter, flaming anger roiling under the surface. All he had to do was look at Weasley to know what she was feeling. As for him, he was starting to care less and less about hiding his own emotions. What did it matter, anyway? He and Weasley were companionable in their silences, and only spoke to each other when they were alone. Without agreeing to any sort of stratagem beforehand, both of them pretended to be adversaries when they had witnesses and allies when they had none.
In the post-dinner hours, they devised plan after plan for escape, but without a wand, nothing short of attacking a Healer as he or she entered the door seemed plausible. And now the Healers were more careful with their wands than they’d been previously.
“We have to be subtle, Malfoy! We can’t attack people with bedpans and hope no one notices a trail of bodies left in our wake.”
“What other option do we have? Do you want to get out of here or not?”
“Yes, but I don’t want to hurt anyone. That would make us just as bad as them.”
That silenced Draco, even though he didn’t agree. Normally he would take a more subtle route, like Weasley was suggesting, but they’d spent days scheming with no conclusive plans to show for it. Maybe they needed to use a little force.
“We have to be careful,” Weasley said in a gentler tone. “They’ve already got control of us. We don’t want to do anything to make them tighten the reigns.”
“How do you mean?” Draco asked.
“What if we attack someone and get caught? We’d only prove that we are in fact dangerous. They might start tying us to our beds. They might keep us in a body bind. That would be a far worse outcome, don’t you think?”
He could hear the fragility she tried to hide under the words. If the Healers tied her to her bed, she would spiral down into her madness at a faster rate. He tried to imagine being hospitalized with her while she screamed and cried to be freed. The thought made his stomach lurch—and not for her sake, either. What would happen to his sanity trapped in a room with her while hers drained away?
He didn’t tell her that she was right, but she accepted his sullen silence as agreement.
They hadn’t gotten anywhere in the days since their first escape attempt, but they’d bonded over their resentment of their caretakers. Even Healer Gibby had lost some of her optimism; now she fulfilled her duties with one wary hand on her wand at all times and without chatter of any sort.
Despite the tense situation, their plans came to fruition. Two weeks after their first failed escape, they set their first plan in motion.
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