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Yeah, wow, it's late, and I started a new job this week and am tired, and I'm late with this chapter and I apologize profusely but it needed some detail work, and I really need to give a shout out to my WONDERFUL AND PATIENT betas for helping me with that.
*shouts*
Okay, so. This chapter is fairly Ginny-heavy, and that's all I'm saying 'cause I'm sleepy. ^_^
Title: The Road (12/?)
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rurounihime
Rating: hard R when all is said and done…
Pairing: H/D eventually
Summary: In the midst of a disintegrating war, Harry awaits the arrival of the Order’s last hope.
Warning: violence, character death, spoilers for all books
Disclaimer: The HP characters and most of the spellwork do not belong to me. The song "Bonny Portmore" is a traditional, and is not written by me.
A/N: Thank you to April and Fire for letting me pick their brains about this chapter, and to Coffee for constantly letting me bounce ideas off of her. The other major pairing in this is Blaise/Seamus, but there are minor het pairings as well.
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No artwork for this chapter.
…
**ETA: THIS CHAPTER HAS RECEIVED ITS FINAL EDIT**
Previous chapters
Chapter 12: Inner Scream
It was waking to find the world full of new colours. The grass was still green, the sky patchy and blue, but it was a different green, an unfamiliar shade of blue. Ginny could make little sense of it; even the air seemed to bite, full of impossibility and sheer, ridiculous circumstance.
In the indigo dawn, rolling from sleep as suddenly and blankly as she had rolled into it, Ginny had discovered she was now voiceless. But not wordless. Oh, no, the words dug and scraped away inside her head, but there was no outlet. Her voice was a tremble of wasted breath, and after an hour, Ginny gave up and succumbed to the inner monologue.
If she could only make sense of it herself first... perhaps the rest would venture forth. But she had no idea what form it would take. Couldn’t decide between bursting anger and wretched disbelief.
Now sunlight crept into the sky, and Ginny sat in the shadow of the ridge and glared hard at the soil beneath her shoes. Her fingers were numb around the bag of granola; she hadn’t opened it. Food was trivial in the face of this new... Well. She hadn’t even decided what to name it.
If she could have believed Draco capable of such a—Ginny’s chin jerked and she forced herself to be still. Incongruous. Dra—Malfoy didn’t even know the meaning of such an emotion. It was impossible to imagine this circumstance in anything but her wildest dreams, and she would not allow her stresses and fears to catalyse it into reality. She knew Draco Malfoy.
But her eyes told her a different story. All the colours had warped, as though she were peeking through a tinted veil, but she knew what she’d seen. It had been burned there like a twisted tattoo. If it had been anything less...
Draco Malfoy, in love with Harry Potter? Yearning after him as if he had any right to do it.
Ginny sniffed and then glanced at her guide. But he was looking dully across the fields. Her old schoolmate’s face had worn the same mask since she’d woken. Perhaps he would have noticed her discomfort, had he not been so deep in the dregs of his mind.
Why was he so broken? Why now, why not when he’d first come to fetch her from Seamus and Blaise? She was looking at a different person, so changed was he. No less careful, but less of everything else.
More than once, Ginny caught herself wishing for him to be the way he had been, and then grew angry every time.
Harry... Harry was not Malfoy’s. She clenched her fingers tightly into her cloak. Damn it all, Harry cared for her, not him. Had never cared for him. She was the one fated to be with Harry, by Harry’s own words. But these thoughts were an old path: she’d walked down it over and over again, and what followed was just as well-trodden as what had come before.
She was only the other half of a spell. Perhaps that’s all she was—No, no, the spell was not just some spontaneous bond. It required sacrifices no one could be prepared to make without, pieces of the body and mind that were irreplaceable. It was ancient and permanent, and there was just no way Harry would ever choose a person he didn’t love and cherish and wish to share his very soul with. For that was what would happen; their souls would tangle together, weaving like a tapestry, and she would be him for the rest of her life. It was a frightening prospect. She would know him better than she knew herself, taste him and hear him and dwell within him. And she loved him. She would do anything for him, and he knew that, damn it, knew it and returned the feeling tenfold. He was for her; he was not for Draco Malfoy.
Just what have you done to gain that sort of love? she thought bitterly, watching Draco’s profile from the corner of her eye. He’d done nothing. Ginny had known Harry since she was a child, had loved him for years. She’d been sister, friend, and yes, lover. She’d earned his respect and adoration, and Draco Malfoy had done nothing but tear Harry’s feelings to pieces for as long as Ginny had been nursing her feelings for Harry. Draco Malfoy only knew how to hurt Harry, to slash and beat and injure. Where Ginny nurtured, Draco cut. He’d never known Harry, never understood him as she had. He had never held Harry in his arms and shushed away the trials of growing up.
It was at the height of this thought that it came to her: There was no way Draco’s emotions were enough to tip the scales.
You can’t possibly be in love with him. Want him with every fiber of your being, every breath. It was ludicrous. The proof stared her right in the face. Ginny yanked the hood of her cloak over her head. If she were Draco... oh, no, it was much too obvious: She would never, ever be able to guide someone else into the arms of someone she was so desperately in love with. To walk by that person’s side day after day, knowing that the instant she succeeded in her task, the other half of her soul would be ripped away forever.
No, Draco was not in love with Harry. He would never give Harry up to her if he really felt that way. He would not have led her through the forest, or shared his water, or saved her life. He couldn’t, knowing that to do so would be to rob himself of the person he wanted most.
Ginny sat back, mollified, and traced her memory for that strange wound in Draco’s eyes, the one that had first opened the door for her. She tried to find the falsity in it, the lapse of commitment that corroborated her conclusion.
It wasn’t there.
Well, why the fuck are you doing this, then? She longed to shout the question, demand an answer. Surely it was for his own ends, some desire to be accepted at last, or to be detached from the name of his family. Maybe—and she might just give him this—maybe he truly had become Harry’s friend and was just doing as Harry asked, only to confuse it with something else along the way.
Harry had asked him specifically, after all.
Draco’s expression flashed upon her inner eye again like a badly timed signal. Harry had asked him to guide her all the way to the castle so that they could end this war. Her mind tried to turn away from the uncharacteristic altruism, but...
It had always been Draco. Ginny hadn’t understood it at all when Seamus told her of Harry’s choice. Draco Malfoy hated her; why would he ever agree to be her protector? And he had protected her, she was way past denying that. Had he done it for her? Or... or because Harry had...
It’s a fucking job. He’s doing it to get on Harry’s good side. But why would he need to? That went down tangled avenues she wanted to avoid. So then, he was only doing what Harry wanted. For the good of the cause.
Or for the good of Harry.
Her stomach churned. She fought the urge to leap up and pace. Draco had shown no disdain for his task, only pain, deep-seated and—and long-present. It was not new, what she’d seen in his eyes, in his entire body. It was something he’d dealt with. Something he knew, but not something he could dismiss and accept.
Harry had asked. He was doing what Harry wanted.
And what Harry wanted most… was to save them all. Ginny’s breath stopped in her lungs.
Perhaps Draco Malfoy didn’t love Harry Potter enough to refuse to guide Ginny. Perhaps Draco Malfoy loved Harry enough to set them both aside. To know that there was a bigger picture, thousands of suffering people who couldn’t be ignored. Because loving Harry Potter meant letting him love others more than he loved you.
Because it was what Harry would have wanted most, in the end.
Her palms were bleeding. Ginny stared at the four arced cuts from her fingernails. Draco got heavily to his feet.
“Come on,” he muttered. Ginny heard the new listlessness in his words. “Only another few hours.”
Ginny lurched up from the rock, barely subduing the scowl that threatened, and yanked her pack over her shoulder. Draco had stilled. She could feel him watching her. But she couldn’t look back. She was afraid of what she might see.
Let him be the martyr, then, she thought as they skirted along the ridge. She certainly wasn’t going to be one. Who gave a flying fuck if Malfoy wanted to sacrifice his happiness for Harry Potter? It was only one half of the equation anyway, and there was no way to know what Harry’s feelings on the matter were. Martyrs had cast themselves over the proverbial cliff for less; a one-sided love affair was hardly new to the cause.
Ginny sighed, the guilt of her disdainful thoughts finally having its way. When had she become so vindictive? She eyed Draco’s back, several paces in front. He’d saved her life and all she could do was get mad at feelings that she—
Fuck. That she had experienced herself. So Draco loved Harry Potter. So did she. There was no shame in it; she could hardly berate Draco for falling for so worthy a person. Was such a commonality so difficult to accept? Ginny chewed her lip. Draco’s hypothetical sacrifice was going to ensure that there would be an end to this war; it was a glimpse at a pain Ginny wasn’t sure she could bear herself. And he hadn’t said a word.
She’d asked him why he was in this war. Whatever else might be driving them, it was clear that they were both in it for one of the same reasons.
Common ground with Draco Malfoy. Ginny found the concept shocking. To at last see proof of a goal they both shared for the same reasons, regardless of whom they had been born to and how much they’d loathed one another for being different. He was more like her than she’d known, and that was so… strangely… comforting?
Yet when they finally reached their destination, only one of them would see that goal realised. Suddenly reality was too real, too unforgiving. It didn’t matter how much they had in common; nature wasn’t that kind. There was, after all, only one Harry. And even if Harry could—possibly?—love both of them, he would only bond with one.
Which?
Ginny scowled, angry all over again. The world had changed, hardened. There was no room for sympathy for Draco Malfoy, and even if she wanted there to be, logic overwhelmed everything. So what if she had loved Harry for years, seen him return her affections eagerly, and gotten to know him better than Malfoy? It all paled in the face of physicality: she, Ginny Weasley, was a girl, and Malfoy was a boy.
Ginny wasn’t a fool. In all her dating during school, her distancing from Harry and exploration of her attractions to others, she’d never lost sight of Harry’s preference. She’d watched the successes and failures of his relationship with Cho Chang, the thrall Fleur and her Beauxbatons friends held over him, and she’d known that they were the reason she still managed to hope. Whatever else Harry might be, Ginny had seen no evidence that he was interested in the same sex.
But that had been years ago. She’d been the first to see how the war affected Harry’s outlook on relationships. She’d damn well lost him to it, hadn’t she? Nobility, concern for her well-being—it couldn’t cover up the fact that the war had made his feelings for her secondary. And then they’d all changed so drastically, and could she really say after three years of hardly being around him that she had any idea what he was feeling now?
What if… Ginny stumbled slightly. What if she was wrong in thinking that those three years had been the same blank slate for Harry as they’d been for her? The war had swung up and grabbed hold too tightly for Ginny to even consider another emotional entanglement. But there had been opportunities, that she could not deny. Only the thought that Harry might be waiting for her had kept her out of Dean’s bed a year ago, and she’d heard through the walls and tent canvas the trysts that would never be repeated, but were necessary for comfort’s sake. People came together, people split apart again. The relief of stress was so very important to avoid insanity. She’d simply found other ways to go about it.
But Harry, the saviour of them all, leader first by accident and then by horrible, enduring trial… His pressure was greatest. And choosiness was not often an option. Might there not have been nights when the person who found a way into Harry’s bed was not a woman, but a man?
Ginny hated the idea. Not because it was repugnant, but because it was very possible. Gender rarely made a difference in the heat of the moment, not during a war. And she, so absorbed in her own loss and yearning, had not thought to look for it.
“Fuck it all, no.” No. It didn’t matter who Harry might have taken to his bed. This was still Draco Malfoy, and she was a long way from believing that six years of rivalry had succumbed to two years of desperation. It did not work like that. Harry had standards and Draco would have to have done something drastic to meet them. Coming over to the Order’s side wouldn’t have been enough and that wasn’t just her hope talking. She still understood Harry Potter, in all the important ways.
But somehow, Draco had managed to gain Harry’s trust. Hermione had expressed concern two years ago, though Ginny didn’t know if she’d said anything to Harry himself. But eventually even Hermione let it go. Hell, Ron had refused to rail about it after a fashion, and it had been a hub of many, many fights between Ginny and her brother. Ron had said that in the end, it didn’t make a difference how many times she shouted at Harry to be reasonable. The cold, hard truth was that Draco Malfoy had passed Veritaserum under the judgment of not only Harry, but the five heads of the Order as well, including McGonagall, Moody, and Remus Lupin, who had more than enough reason to want Draco thrown out or even killed.
It was only when Ginny sought out Dumbledore’s portrait and demanded satisfaction from him that she’d finally been forced to silence her argument. When it came down to it, she could not call Albus Dumbledore a fool, even if she could still pin Harry as one.
But love? Harry in love with Draco Malfoy? Everything inside her railed against it. Malfoy could be in love with Harry. He could even need Harry. But that did not make Harry love or need him.
“I need something, too,” she muttered as she walked. “My brother’s dead… My mother’s Merlin knows where, I, I haven’t seen—” She rubbed the tears angrily from her eyes. Haven’t seen the twins in months. No idea if Charlie or Bill are still alive, and Percy—Dad—Ginny felt impotent fury building, marring her thoughts.
I need him just as much as you, you bastard. You of all people are not going to take what I have left!
She had as much claim to Harry’s feelings as he did. More, even. But if she was perfectly honest, that didn’t imply a return of affection anymore than Draco’s feelings did. In the end, it was Harry who had to tip the scales. And in that, Ginny at last found unequivocal comfort.
Harry did love her. Had been in love with her once. His embraces during those few months in her fifth year, his kisses and whispered words as they’d fooled around in abandoned corridors, even the manner of his departure at the end of it, had told her so. He still cared for her a great deal, and she’d thought it only awaited the chance for them to be together in the same place and time to bloom into full fire again. And then the bonding spell: He’d asked her tentatively during the first moments they’d had together in months if she would still be willing to be with him. He’d told her of the ancient bond. He had not touched her, but there’d been no place for that, not in all her bewilderment and questions. He’d answered them all carefully, and asked her to be the one in the end, the one in four whom the Death Eaters might suspect. She’d agreed. Even though it was over a year since they’d been anything to each other, she had agreed, and he had gathered her close and embraced her the way they used to, holding her in quiet affection. It was like a dream she’d forgotten she was still having.
But for all that… Ginny’s throat burned. For all that quiet comfort, he hadn’t kissed her.
She told herself that maybe the bond was contingent upon it, maybe every embrace and touch had to occur a certain way. The spell was so old that no one really knew how it would manifest. Other ancient spells were going into it to bind their magic as well, so the outcome was even less predictable. Ginny had never given much thought to Harry’s restraint, far too distracted by her own delight that he’d come back to her at last.
But now the poisonous tendrils worked their way in, and Ginny couldn’t help but fear that Harry’s actions were grounded in something far more simple. Perhaps he wasn’t in love with her anymore. Perhaps someone else had carved the floor right out from under her.
Harry and Draco had always had a mystifying sort of connection. Their fury toward each other knew few boundaries, even in school, and Ginny had spent many an evening arguing with herself—and in fifth year, with Harry—about why they should both fixate so heavily on each other. Why Harry felt the need that year to immerse himself in everything Draco Malfoy did, when Draco didn’t seem to know he existed. The loathing was palpable, an entirely separate presence in the room with them. She remembered being ridiculously jealous that Malfoy still incited more feeling in Harry than she, his girlfriend, could, and also recalled how stupid she felt afterward for being envious of hatred.
It wasn’t the hatred, her mind whispered traitorously. It was the fire behind it.
Had Harry’s fire found a new outlet in her absence?
In the midst of her thoughts, Draco stopped in the cool shadow of the ridge. The rocks formed a little cul-de-sac from the wind just before dropping away into a vast, rolling plain. Ginny gazed across the expanse. Too smooth for the tumult of her thoughts, but just as barren. Draco dropped his pack and lowered himself wearily to the earth. His cloak was a mess and his hair was flattened over his forehead. He glanced up at her and then away.
“That’s it,” was all he said.
Ginny tried for her voice. “The plain.”
Draco nodded. His eyes went unfocussed. “It’s out there. We just… have to wait.”
For Luna. Ginny fisted her cloak. She could see nothing out there except windblown grass. The implications of such a strong magical shield tried to stagger her, but she was too tired to feel much.
So close. She wasn’t ready to deal with this sad little triangle yet. But in mere hours, she would be shoved right into it.
“Fuck,” she whispered. Draco stirred. His eyes brightened into hunted awareness.
“What is it?”
Ginny’s mouth opened. “Oh—no. No, I just… It’s hard to believe.”
The flicker in those grey eyes faded and in spite of everything, Ginny’s heart panged. Draco nodded again and looked down. Ginny stood there, unformed emotions vying for attention. When one finally made it out, she barely knew what she was saying.
“I—” She bit her tongue, and Draco looked up again. Ginny gestured aimlessly at herself. “Is it alright if I go and… and…”
Draco studied, then rose and looked carefully around. His right hand lighted very briefly on his left forearm. “Go quietly,” he muttered.
Ginny moved stiffly away, edging around the jutting rocks. Once out of sight, she stopped and leaned her head against the stone. Tears leaked down her face and she smacked a fist against the rock.
“No. Not after all this, Harry. You don’t just get to find someone else.” But now all of Harry’s overwrought protectiveness over Draco at Grimmauld and the weird little rapport that stretched between the two men like a woven cord battered about her. If Harry cared for him, why ask her, why embarrass her in such a horrible way? Why raise her hopes only to dash them? Harry wasn’t that cruel.
His determination the night he’d asked for her help had been real. She was the intended. But she couldn’t discount the fixation on Draco Malfoy, the strange and absolute trust Harry placed in him, and… and the way Draco was behaving now. Something had shifted between all of them. She wished Hermione were there, with her sharp eyes and keen understanding, ordering it all out for her.
Ginny came to a decision. They were mere hours away from the answer. She would see Harry and she would not hold her own emotions in check. It would be simple to read their return in his eyes, and when she did, she would have her answer, and would not think about Draco Malfoy any longer.
But if… if she didn’t see it in Harry—
All of a sudden the possibility overwhelmed her, despite all her careful conclusions.
“Oh, gods.” Her chest was too tight. The despair was there, unlooked for. It had come before, but never with such conviction. She caught herself in a breathless sob. “Oh, Hermione, I’m not going to get him. Am I?”
The sky gave her no answer. She rubbed the tears from her eyes, allowing herself to at last feel the resentment she’d fought against for months, that there was no way to just go back to when everything made sense and there weren’t all these shades of… grey. Ginny thought it odd that she should be laughing and crying at the same time.
* * *
Draco rubbed at the vague bruise lying behind the bridge of his nose, shutting his eyes against all the grey and green. The wind coming in across the flatlands had turned chilly, hinting at more rain. His cloak, already wet, made an icy shell over his limbs. He longed for water, but hadn’t the energy to reach for the canteen.
Where before the words had flowed between them, now a blockage was forming, and Draco couldn’t bring himself to break Ginny’s moody silence.
He felt like a husk. The sudden burst of emotion the previous night, crashing over him like water exploding through a dam, had left him empty, scraped of every twinge. He stared at the gloomy, wet world with eyes that saw everything, but did not really comprehend. There was no anger, no sorrow. Nothing left. As though he hovered over the brink of some huge abyss, and his emotions had already fallen into it and were swirling there, unable to find him again.
There was one left: resignation. For everything, even the thirst parching his throat. An odd calm had settled over him, and yet he seemed outside it still.
He could make out the hills through the haze. The landscape was just as empty as his chest; not the faintest stirring of life. He was incredibly lucky the Death Eaters had gone the other direction. He wouldn’t have noticed them now until it was too late.
What kind of protector was he? He couldn’t concentrate on the task anymore. Ginny, when he even thought to look outside of himself, seemed to have drawn inward as well, her face a block of stone he couldn’t see through. Perhaps if he tried… But he soon gave up, and returned to the pain-edged space within. More a memory of pain, having cracked its shell and fled.
There was a castle somewhere in this field. Right in front of them, maybe. He had mere yards left of his journey, but for once, the end held no scrap of solace. He’d been able to feel something like joy at the prospect of being safe again, of having reached… what he wanted to reach. But there was no reason for it now, and he should have seen that coming, from the instant he stepped out on this mission. The end had always been the same and he’d fooled himself into thinking it might turn out differently.
What was he doing here?
Anger tried to climb out of the void, but it was just a ghost. What use was there for it anyway? He wouldn’t be able to act on it; he hadn’t the wherewithal to undo everything he’d done over the last few days.
He wanted warmth. Dry clothing and solitude. A single room in the depths of that evasive castle where he could just breathe. Try to locate himself once more, if there was anything left to find.
The war had already sucked away two of his best friends. It was poetic justice that he, the one who had dragged them all into it, go next.
This is Limbo, he thought. Nothing had the ability to surprise him anymore. Limbo, where I can’t think and she sits there fighting some battle in her own head, the grass glitters like dew, the sky rolls into purple, and we never find our way out. Ginny’s face was twisting faintly again, the edges of an emotion he didn’t know. She would look at him every so often and then away again, and he couldn’t tell what she was thinking.
Somewhere in this field, Harry stood in a stone room awaiting their arrival. Draco found he did not want the moment to come at all.
He heard Ginny shift suddenly, and dragged his head up. “What is it?”
Her face was turned skyward, eyes closed. A dreamy expression settled on her features. All the care lines had vanished and her skin glowed a healthy flush. The wind wisped at loose strands of her hair. She looked peaceful. As she hadn’t for the past three days. Her hair was vibrantly red against the rain-lush grass.
She belonged here.
“Can you hear it?” she asked.
Draco’s every nerve was instantly alert. But only the wind through the grass met his ears. “Hear what?”
“It’s Luna,” Ginny murmured. “It’s the song to guide us. We’re close.”
Draco inhaled through his nose… and then he could hear something. Light, lilting notes echoing impossibly.
His chest loosened. He leaned into the sound and felt the notes caress him under his skin, soothing like balm. His breath escaped in a soft, sad gasp. Luna’s words rested against his bones.
…the more I think on you… more I think long…
He opened his eyes and found that Ginny’s were wide and fixed on him. Draco realised he had no idea what he looked like. He wondered what she saw.
There seemed no danger of stepping out into the open now. Draco lifted his pack, staring fixedly at a point just before the nearest hill. There was nothing there to see, but something pulled at his veins, urging him to look, look, do not drop your eyes. He began to walk, and Ginny followed.
…Where shall we shelter, where shall we sleep?
The weariness draining away like infection sucked from a wound. He was still empty but… but there was something coming, ready to flow in. He just wasn’t close enough yet. Luna sang sweetly in the curves of his ears and the hollows of his ribs. Her voice twined delicately through the ache. Draco breathed and tasted clean rain.
Foolish, crossing this empty field as though there were nothing to fear. But Draco did not fear, and when Ginny came alongside him, walking close at his side, he knew that she wasn’t afraid either. The Death Eaters had faded from his mind, mere spirits on the other side of some glass, beating their palms futilely at them as they moved past.
He didn’t need to protect anymore, and the pain of that duty faded, allowing Luna’s voice deeper. He was the protected one now.
…If I had you now as I had once before…
It was minutes, many stretching minutes before the hill loomed, a gentle guardian cutting emerald into the bleak sky. Like a mirage rising off the h sands of a desert, the castle wavered into sight, stretching its strength into the heavens. Draco watched it flicker in and out, a dream puffing like smoke. It was massive, the magic infusing its walls a heady vibration against his nerves. Four towers, the glimmer of coloured glass in soaring windows, cold iron bolstering huge oaken doors that were stone-dry, regardless of the damp. He approached until it was close enough to touch, and felt Ginny right there beside him. Drawn, Draco lifted one foot and placed it upon the transient steps of the castle, and the eidelon flicker supported him as normal stone would. Ginny met his eyes.
And held.
And stepped up.
They came upon the door together, and it swung open with the anguish of ancient wood wed to stone for thousands of years. Heat rushed out, bathing Draco’s face and body. Beside him, Ginny convulsed. Her hair left wet splashes across her cheeks. Luna’s voice reached out like a welcoming embrace, easing them inside. The door creaked ominously, sliding shut and cutting off the light.
Draco caught his breath and looked around. The front hall was cavernous, with a grand staircase made of stone curving upward along the far wall. Torches lining the walls and staircase cast a yellow glow, and Draco could see heavy tapestries clinging, bathed in daylight from the windows high above. Luna’s voice gradually slipped free of his bones, and Draco shuddered, bereft. Now he could hear her in his ears, and it was raw and beautiful, but it was only sound.
He could also hear Ginny breathing beside him. She had gone pale; her lips were beginning to tremble. Draco sought inside himself, hoping that maybe… but the emptiness was still there. Lovegood had not filled it; she’d merely cloaked it, and there in the dim front hall, Draco had to deal with the pain of its presence once again.
They’d arrived.
His mind tried to sling itself away, tilting abruptly enough to dizzy him, but another sound rapped out, dispelling the throb that tried to surface. Clunk. Clunk. Ginny raised her head unsteadily and Draco followed the sound until a figure formed in the gloom and came toward them.
“About time you got here,” a familiar voice growled.
Draco made out the warped features of Mad-Eye Moody in the torchlight. The old man glared at him, his beady eye rolling as it scanned his face and body. Draco felt the walls inside himself fall into place once more. Portcullises slamming, guarding. He drew himself back to his full height, and found he was sneering again. His chest hurt like a fresh wound.
“Where’s Potter?”
...
Chapter 13
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…
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This chapter’s music: Luna is singing one of my favourite traditionals here… Bonny Portmore, as performed by Loreena McKennitt.
*shouts*
Okay, so. This chapter is fairly Ginny-heavy, and that's all I'm saying 'cause I'm sleepy. ^_^
Title: The Road (12/?)
Author:
rurounihimeRating: hard R when all is said and done…
Pairing: H/D eventually
Summary: In the midst of a disintegrating war, Harry awaits the arrival of the Order’s last hope.
Warning: violence, character death, spoilers for all books
Disclaimer: The HP characters and most of the spellwork do not belong to me. The song "Bonny Portmore" is a traditional, and is not written by me.
A/N: Thank you to April and Fire for letting me pick their brains about this chapter, and to Coffee for constantly letting me bounce ideas off of her. The other major pairing in this is Blaise/Seamus, but there are minor het pairings as well.
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No artwork for this chapter.
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**ETA: THIS CHAPTER HAS RECEIVED ITS FINAL EDIT**
Previous chapters
Chapter 12: Inner Scream
It was waking to find the world full of new colours. The grass was still green, the sky patchy and blue, but it was a different green, an unfamiliar shade of blue. Ginny could make little sense of it; even the air seemed to bite, full of impossibility and sheer, ridiculous circumstance.
In the indigo dawn, rolling from sleep as suddenly and blankly as she had rolled into it, Ginny had discovered she was now voiceless. But not wordless. Oh, no, the words dug and scraped away inside her head, but there was no outlet. Her voice was a tremble of wasted breath, and after an hour, Ginny gave up and succumbed to the inner monologue.
If she could only make sense of it herself first... perhaps the rest would venture forth. But she had no idea what form it would take. Couldn’t decide between bursting anger and wretched disbelief.
Now sunlight crept into the sky, and Ginny sat in the shadow of the ridge and glared hard at the soil beneath her shoes. Her fingers were numb around the bag of granola; she hadn’t opened it. Food was trivial in the face of this new... Well. She hadn’t even decided what to name it.
If she could have believed Draco capable of such a—Ginny’s chin jerked and she forced herself to be still. Incongruous. Dra—Malfoy didn’t even know the meaning of such an emotion. It was impossible to imagine this circumstance in anything but her wildest dreams, and she would not allow her stresses and fears to catalyse it into reality. She knew Draco Malfoy.
But her eyes told her a different story. All the colours had warped, as though she were peeking through a tinted veil, but she knew what she’d seen. It had been burned there like a twisted tattoo. If it had been anything less...
Draco Malfoy, in love with Harry Potter? Yearning after him as if he had any right to do it.
Ginny sniffed and then glanced at her guide. But he was looking dully across the fields. Her old schoolmate’s face had worn the same mask since she’d woken. Perhaps he would have noticed her discomfort, had he not been so deep in the dregs of his mind.
Why was he so broken? Why now, why not when he’d first come to fetch her from Seamus and Blaise? She was looking at a different person, so changed was he. No less careful, but less of everything else.
More than once, Ginny caught herself wishing for him to be the way he had been, and then grew angry every time.
Harry... Harry was not Malfoy’s. She clenched her fingers tightly into her cloak. Damn it all, Harry cared for her, not him. Had never cared for him. She was the one fated to be with Harry, by Harry’s own words. But these thoughts were an old path: she’d walked down it over and over again, and what followed was just as well-trodden as what had come before.
She was only the other half of a spell. Perhaps that’s all she was—No, no, the spell was not just some spontaneous bond. It required sacrifices no one could be prepared to make without, pieces of the body and mind that were irreplaceable. It was ancient and permanent, and there was just no way Harry would ever choose a person he didn’t love and cherish and wish to share his very soul with. For that was what would happen; their souls would tangle together, weaving like a tapestry, and she would be him for the rest of her life. It was a frightening prospect. She would know him better than she knew herself, taste him and hear him and dwell within him. And she loved him. She would do anything for him, and he knew that, damn it, knew it and returned the feeling tenfold. He was for her; he was not for Draco Malfoy.
Just what have you done to gain that sort of love? she thought bitterly, watching Draco’s profile from the corner of her eye. He’d done nothing. Ginny had known Harry since she was a child, had loved him for years. She’d been sister, friend, and yes, lover. She’d earned his respect and adoration, and Draco Malfoy had done nothing but tear Harry’s feelings to pieces for as long as Ginny had been nursing her feelings for Harry. Draco Malfoy only knew how to hurt Harry, to slash and beat and injure. Where Ginny nurtured, Draco cut. He’d never known Harry, never understood him as she had. He had never held Harry in his arms and shushed away the trials of growing up.
It was at the height of this thought that it came to her: There was no way Draco’s emotions were enough to tip the scales.
You can’t possibly be in love with him. Want him with every fiber of your being, every breath. It was ludicrous. The proof stared her right in the face. Ginny yanked the hood of her cloak over her head. If she were Draco... oh, no, it was much too obvious: She would never, ever be able to guide someone else into the arms of someone she was so desperately in love with. To walk by that person’s side day after day, knowing that the instant she succeeded in her task, the other half of her soul would be ripped away forever.
No, Draco was not in love with Harry. He would never give Harry up to her if he really felt that way. He would not have led her through the forest, or shared his water, or saved her life. He couldn’t, knowing that to do so would be to rob himself of the person he wanted most.
Ginny sat back, mollified, and traced her memory for that strange wound in Draco’s eyes, the one that had first opened the door for her. She tried to find the falsity in it, the lapse of commitment that corroborated her conclusion.
It wasn’t there.
Well, why the fuck are you doing this, then? She longed to shout the question, demand an answer. Surely it was for his own ends, some desire to be accepted at last, or to be detached from the name of his family. Maybe—and she might just give him this—maybe he truly had become Harry’s friend and was just doing as Harry asked, only to confuse it with something else along the way.
Harry had asked him specifically, after all.
Draco’s expression flashed upon her inner eye again like a badly timed signal. Harry had asked him to guide her all the way to the castle so that they could end this war. Her mind tried to turn away from the uncharacteristic altruism, but...
It had always been Draco. Ginny hadn’t understood it at all when Seamus told her of Harry’s choice. Draco Malfoy hated her; why would he ever agree to be her protector? And he had protected her, she was way past denying that. Had he done it for her? Or... or because Harry had...
It’s a fucking job. He’s doing it to get on Harry’s good side. But why would he need to? That went down tangled avenues she wanted to avoid. So then, he was only doing what Harry wanted. For the good of the cause.
Or for the good of Harry.
Her stomach churned. She fought the urge to leap up and pace. Draco had shown no disdain for his task, only pain, deep-seated and—and long-present. It was not new, what she’d seen in his eyes, in his entire body. It was something he’d dealt with. Something he knew, but not something he could dismiss and accept.
Harry had asked. He was doing what Harry wanted.
And what Harry wanted most… was to save them all. Ginny’s breath stopped in her lungs.
Perhaps Draco Malfoy didn’t love Harry Potter enough to refuse to guide Ginny. Perhaps Draco Malfoy loved Harry enough to set them both aside. To know that there was a bigger picture, thousands of suffering people who couldn’t be ignored. Because loving Harry Potter meant letting him love others more than he loved you.
Because it was what Harry would have wanted most, in the end.
Her palms were bleeding. Ginny stared at the four arced cuts from her fingernails. Draco got heavily to his feet.
“Come on,” he muttered. Ginny heard the new listlessness in his words. “Only another few hours.”
Ginny lurched up from the rock, barely subduing the scowl that threatened, and yanked her pack over her shoulder. Draco had stilled. She could feel him watching her. But she couldn’t look back. She was afraid of what she might see.
Let him be the martyr, then, she thought as they skirted along the ridge. She certainly wasn’t going to be one. Who gave a flying fuck if Malfoy wanted to sacrifice his happiness for Harry Potter? It was only one half of the equation anyway, and there was no way to know what Harry’s feelings on the matter were. Martyrs had cast themselves over the proverbial cliff for less; a one-sided love affair was hardly new to the cause.
Ginny sighed, the guilt of her disdainful thoughts finally having its way. When had she become so vindictive? She eyed Draco’s back, several paces in front. He’d saved her life and all she could do was get mad at feelings that she—
Fuck. That she had experienced herself. So Draco loved Harry Potter. So did she. There was no shame in it; she could hardly berate Draco for falling for so worthy a person. Was such a commonality so difficult to accept? Ginny chewed her lip. Draco’s hypothetical sacrifice was going to ensure that there would be an end to this war; it was a glimpse at a pain Ginny wasn’t sure she could bear herself. And he hadn’t said a word.
She’d asked him why he was in this war. Whatever else might be driving them, it was clear that they were both in it for one of the same reasons.
Common ground with Draco Malfoy. Ginny found the concept shocking. To at last see proof of a goal they both shared for the same reasons, regardless of whom they had been born to and how much they’d loathed one another for being different. He was more like her than she’d known, and that was so… strangely… comforting?
Yet when they finally reached their destination, only one of them would see that goal realised. Suddenly reality was too real, too unforgiving. It didn’t matter how much they had in common; nature wasn’t that kind. There was, after all, only one Harry. And even if Harry could—possibly?—love both of them, he would only bond with one.
Which?
Ginny scowled, angry all over again. The world had changed, hardened. There was no room for sympathy for Draco Malfoy, and even if she wanted there to be, logic overwhelmed everything. So what if she had loved Harry for years, seen him return her affections eagerly, and gotten to know him better than Malfoy? It all paled in the face of physicality: she, Ginny Weasley, was a girl, and Malfoy was a boy.
Ginny wasn’t a fool. In all her dating during school, her distancing from Harry and exploration of her attractions to others, she’d never lost sight of Harry’s preference. She’d watched the successes and failures of his relationship with Cho Chang, the thrall Fleur and her Beauxbatons friends held over him, and she’d known that they were the reason she still managed to hope. Whatever else Harry might be, Ginny had seen no evidence that he was interested in the same sex.
But that had been years ago. She’d been the first to see how the war affected Harry’s outlook on relationships. She’d damn well lost him to it, hadn’t she? Nobility, concern for her well-being—it couldn’t cover up the fact that the war had made his feelings for her secondary. And then they’d all changed so drastically, and could she really say after three years of hardly being around him that she had any idea what he was feeling now?
What if… Ginny stumbled slightly. What if she was wrong in thinking that those three years had been the same blank slate for Harry as they’d been for her? The war had swung up and grabbed hold too tightly for Ginny to even consider another emotional entanglement. But there had been opportunities, that she could not deny. Only the thought that Harry might be waiting for her had kept her out of Dean’s bed a year ago, and she’d heard through the walls and tent canvas the trysts that would never be repeated, but were necessary for comfort’s sake. People came together, people split apart again. The relief of stress was so very important to avoid insanity. She’d simply found other ways to go about it.
But Harry, the saviour of them all, leader first by accident and then by horrible, enduring trial… His pressure was greatest. And choosiness was not often an option. Might there not have been nights when the person who found a way into Harry’s bed was not a woman, but a man?
Ginny hated the idea. Not because it was repugnant, but because it was very possible. Gender rarely made a difference in the heat of the moment, not during a war. And she, so absorbed in her own loss and yearning, had not thought to look for it.
“Fuck it all, no.” No. It didn’t matter who Harry might have taken to his bed. This was still Draco Malfoy, and she was a long way from believing that six years of rivalry had succumbed to two years of desperation. It did not work like that. Harry had standards and Draco would have to have done something drastic to meet them. Coming over to the Order’s side wouldn’t have been enough and that wasn’t just her hope talking. She still understood Harry Potter, in all the important ways.
But somehow, Draco had managed to gain Harry’s trust. Hermione had expressed concern two years ago, though Ginny didn’t know if she’d said anything to Harry himself. But eventually even Hermione let it go. Hell, Ron had refused to rail about it after a fashion, and it had been a hub of many, many fights between Ginny and her brother. Ron had said that in the end, it didn’t make a difference how many times she shouted at Harry to be reasonable. The cold, hard truth was that Draco Malfoy had passed Veritaserum under the judgment of not only Harry, but the five heads of the Order as well, including McGonagall, Moody, and Remus Lupin, who had more than enough reason to want Draco thrown out or even killed.
It was only when Ginny sought out Dumbledore’s portrait and demanded satisfaction from him that she’d finally been forced to silence her argument. When it came down to it, she could not call Albus Dumbledore a fool, even if she could still pin Harry as one.
But love? Harry in love with Draco Malfoy? Everything inside her railed against it. Malfoy could be in love with Harry. He could even need Harry. But that did not make Harry love or need him.
“I need something, too,” she muttered as she walked. “My brother’s dead… My mother’s Merlin knows where, I, I haven’t seen—” She rubbed the tears angrily from her eyes. Haven’t seen the twins in months. No idea if Charlie or Bill are still alive, and Percy—Dad—Ginny felt impotent fury building, marring her thoughts.
I need him just as much as you, you bastard. You of all people are not going to take what I have left!
She had as much claim to Harry’s feelings as he did. More, even. But if she was perfectly honest, that didn’t imply a return of affection anymore than Draco’s feelings did. In the end, it was Harry who had to tip the scales. And in that, Ginny at last found unequivocal comfort.
Harry did love her. Had been in love with her once. His embraces during those few months in her fifth year, his kisses and whispered words as they’d fooled around in abandoned corridors, even the manner of his departure at the end of it, had told her so. He still cared for her a great deal, and she’d thought it only awaited the chance for them to be together in the same place and time to bloom into full fire again. And then the bonding spell: He’d asked her tentatively during the first moments they’d had together in months if she would still be willing to be with him. He’d told her of the ancient bond. He had not touched her, but there’d been no place for that, not in all her bewilderment and questions. He’d answered them all carefully, and asked her to be the one in the end, the one in four whom the Death Eaters might suspect. She’d agreed. Even though it was over a year since they’d been anything to each other, she had agreed, and he had gathered her close and embraced her the way they used to, holding her in quiet affection. It was like a dream she’d forgotten she was still having.
But for all that… Ginny’s throat burned. For all that quiet comfort, he hadn’t kissed her.
She told herself that maybe the bond was contingent upon it, maybe every embrace and touch had to occur a certain way. The spell was so old that no one really knew how it would manifest. Other ancient spells were going into it to bind their magic as well, so the outcome was even less predictable. Ginny had never given much thought to Harry’s restraint, far too distracted by her own delight that he’d come back to her at last.
But now the poisonous tendrils worked their way in, and Ginny couldn’t help but fear that Harry’s actions were grounded in something far more simple. Perhaps he wasn’t in love with her anymore. Perhaps someone else had carved the floor right out from under her.
Harry and Draco had always had a mystifying sort of connection. Their fury toward each other knew few boundaries, even in school, and Ginny had spent many an evening arguing with herself—and in fifth year, with Harry—about why they should both fixate so heavily on each other. Why Harry felt the need that year to immerse himself in everything Draco Malfoy did, when Draco didn’t seem to know he existed. The loathing was palpable, an entirely separate presence in the room with them. She remembered being ridiculously jealous that Malfoy still incited more feeling in Harry than she, his girlfriend, could, and also recalled how stupid she felt afterward for being envious of hatred.
It wasn’t the hatred, her mind whispered traitorously. It was the fire behind it.
Had Harry’s fire found a new outlet in her absence?
In the midst of her thoughts, Draco stopped in the cool shadow of the ridge. The rocks formed a little cul-de-sac from the wind just before dropping away into a vast, rolling plain. Ginny gazed across the expanse. Too smooth for the tumult of her thoughts, but just as barren. Draco dropped his pack and lowered himself wearily to the earth. His cloak was a mess and his hair was flattened over his forehead. He glanced up at her and then away.
“That’s it,” was all he said.
Ginny tried for her voice. “The plain.”
Draco nodded. His eyes went unfocussed. “It’s out there. We just… have to wait.”
For Luna. Ginny fisted her cloak. She could see nothing out there except windblown grass. The implications of such a strong magical shield tried to stagger her, but she was too tired to feel much.
So close. She wasn’t ready to deal with this sad little triangle yet. But in mere hours, she would be shoved right into it.
“Fuck,” she whispered. Draco stirred. His eyes brightened into hunted awareness.
“What is it?”
Ginny’s mouth opened. “Oh—no. No, I just… It’s hard to believe.”
The flicker in those grey eyes faded and in spite of everything, Ginny’s heart panged. Draco nodded again and looked down. Ginny stood there, unformed emotions vying for attention. When one finally made it out, she barely knew what she was saying.
“I—” She bit her tongue, and Draco looked up again. Ginny gestured aimlessly at herself. “Is it alright if I go and… and…”
Draco studied, then rose and looked carefully around. His right hand lighted very briefly on his left forearm. “Go quietly,” he muttered.
Ginny moved stiffly away, edging around the jutting rocks. Once out of sight, she stopped and leaned her head against the stone. Tears leaked down her face and she smacked a fist against the rock.
“No. Not after all this, Harry. You don’t just get to find someone else.” But now all of Harry’s overwrought protectiveness over Draco at Grimmauld and the weird little rapport that stretched between the two men like a woven cord battered about her. If Harry cared for him, why ask her, why embarrass her in such a horrible way? Why raise her hopes only to dash them? Harry wasn’t that cruel.
His determination the night he’d asked for her help had been real. She was the intended. But she couldn’t discount the fixation on Draco Malfoy, the strange and absolute trust Harry placed in him, and… and the way Draco was behaving now. Something had shifted between all of them. She wished Hermione were there, with her sharp eyes and keen understanding, ordering it all out for her.
Ginny came to a decision. They were mere hours away from the answer. She would see Harry and she would not hold her own emotions in check. It would be simple to read their return in his eyes, and when she did, she would have her answer, and would not think about Draco Malfoy any longer.
But if… if she didn’t see it in Harry—
All of a sudden the possibility overwhelmed her, despite all her careful conclusions.
“Oh, gods.” Her chest was too tight. The despair was there, unlooked for. It had come before, but never with such conviction. She caught herself in a breathless sob. “Oh, Hermione, I’m not going to get him. Am I?”
The sky gave her no answer. She rubbed the tears from her eyes, allowing herself to at last feel the resentment she’d fought against for months, that there was no way to just go back to when everything made sense and there weren’t all these shades of… grey. Ginny thought it odd that she should be laughing and crying at the same time.
* * *
Draco rubbed at the vague bruise lying behind the bridge of his nose, shutting his eyes against all the grey and green. The wind coming in across the flatlands had turned chilly, hinting at more rain. His cloak, already wet, made an icy shell over his limbs. He longed for water, but hadn’t the energy to reach for the canteen.
Where before the words had flowed between them, now a blockage was forming, and Draco couldn’t bring himself to break Ginny’s moody silence.
He felt like a husk. The sudden burst of emotion the previous night, crashing over him like water exploding through a dam, had left him empty, scraped of every twinge. He stared at the gloomy, wet world with eyes that saw everything, but did not really comprehend. There was no anger, no sorrow. Nothing left. As though he hovered over the brink of some huge abyss, and his emotions had already fallen into it and were swirling there, unable to find him again.
There was one left: resignation. For everything, even the thirst parching his throat. An odd calm had settled over him, and yet he seemed outside it still.
He could make out the hills through the haze. The landscape was just as empty as his chest; not the faintest stirring of life. He was incredibly lucky the Death Eaters had gone the other direction. He wouldn’t have noticed them now until it was too late.
What kind of protector was he? He couldn’t concentrate on the task anymore. Ginny, when he even thought to look outside of himself, seemed to have drawn inward as well, her face a block of stone he couldn’t see through. Perhaps if he tried… But he soon gave up, and returned to the pain-edged space within. More a memory of pain, having cracked its shell and fled.
There was a castle somewhere in this field. Right in front of them, maybe. He had mere yards left of his journey, but for once, the end held no scrap of solace. He’d been able to feel something like joy at the prospect of being safe again, of having reached… what he wanted to reach. But there was no reason for it now, and he should have seen that coming, from the instant he stepped out on this mission. The end had always been the same and he’d fooled himself into thinking it might turn out differently.
What was he doing here?
Anger tried to climb out of the void, but it was just a ghost. What use was there for it anyway? He wouldn’t be able to act on it; he hadn’t the wherewithal to undo everything he’d done over the last few days.
He wanted warmth. Dry clothing and solitude. A single room in the depths of that evasive castle where he could just breathe. Try to locate himself once more, if there was anything left to find.
The war had already sucked away two of his best friends. It was poetic justice that he, the one who had dragged them all into it, go next.
This is Limbo, he thought. Nothing had the ability to surprise him anymore. Limbo, where I can’t think and she sits there fighting some battle in her own head, the grass glitters like dew, the sky rolls into purple, and we never find our way out. Ginny’s face was twisting faintly again, the edges of an emotion he didn’t know. She would look at him every so often and then away again, and he couldn’t tell what she was thinking.
Somewhere in this field, Harry stood in a stone room awaiting their arrival. Draco found he did not want the moment to come at all.
He heard Ginny shift suddenly, and dragged his head up. “What is it?”
Her face was turned skyward, eyes closed. A dreamy expression settled on her features. All the care lines had vanished and her skin glowed a healthy flush. The wind wisped at loose strands of her hair. She looked peaceful. As she hadn’t for the past three days. Her hair was vibrantly red against the rain-lush grass.
She belonged here.
“Can you hear it?” she asked.
Draco’s every nerve was instantly alert. But only the wind through the grass met his ears. “Hear what?”
“It’s Luna,” Ginny murmured. “It’s the song to guide us. We’re close.”
Draco inhaled through his nose… and then he could hear something. Light, lilting notes echoing impossibly.
His chest loosened. He leaned into the sound and felt the notes caress him under his skin, soothing like balm. His breath escaped in a soft, sad gasp. Luna’s words rested against his bones.
…the more I think on you… more I think long…
He opened his eyes and found that Ginny’s were wide and fixed on him. Draco realised he had no idea what he looked like. He wondered what she saw.
There seemed no danger of stepping out into the open now. Draco lifted his pack, staring fixedly at a point just before the nearest hill. There was nothing there to see, but something pulled at his veins, urging him to look, look, do not drop your eyes. He began to walk, and Ginny followed.
…Where shall we shelter, where shall we sleep?
The weariness draining away like infection sucked from a wound. He was still empty but… but there was something coming, ready to flow in. He just wasn’t close enough yet. Luna sang sweetly in the curves of his ears and the hollows of his ribs. Her voice twined delicately through the ache. Draco breathed and tasted clean rain.
Foolish, crossing this empty field as though there were nothing to fear. But Draco did not fear, and when Ginny came alongside him, walking close at his side, he knew that she wasn’t afraid either. The Death Eaters had faded from his mind, mere spirits on the other side of some glass, beating their palms futilely at them as they moved past.
He didn’t need to protect anymore, and the pain of that duty faded, allowing Luna’s voice deeper. He was the protected one now.
…If I had you now as I had once before…
It was minutes, many stretching minutes before the hill loomed, a gentle guardian cutting emerald into the bleak sky. Like a mirage rising off the h sands of a desert, the castle wavered into sight, stretching its strength into the heavens. Draco watched it flicker in and out, a dream puffing like smoke. It was massive, the magic infusing its walls a heady vibration against his nerves. Four towers, the glimmer of coloured glass in soaring windows, cold iron bolstering huge oaken doors that were stone-dry, regardless of the damp. He approached until it was close enough to touch, and felt Ginny right there beside him. Drawn, Draco lifted one foot and placed it upon the transient steps of the castle, and the eidelon flicker supported him as normal stone would. Ginny met his eyes.
And held.
And stepped up.
They came upon the door together, and it swung open with the anguish of ancient wood wed to stone for thousands of years. Heat rushed out, bathing Draco’s face and body. Beside him, Ginny convulsed. Her hair left wet splashes across her cheeks. Luna’s voice reached out like a welcoming embrace, easing them inside. The door creaked ominously, sliding shut and cutting off the light.
Draco caught his breath and looked around. The front hall was cavernous, with a grand staircase made of stone curving upward along the far wall. Torches lining the walls and staircase cast a yellow glow, and Draco could see heavy tapestries clinging, bathed in daylight from the windows high above. Luna’s voice gradually slipped free of his bones, and Draco shuddered, bereft. Now he could hear her in his ears, and it was raw and beautiful, but it was only sound.
He could also hear Ginny breathing beside him. She had gone pale; her lips were beginning to tremble. Draco sought inside himself, hoping that maybe… but the emptiness was still there. Lovegood had not filled it; she’d merely cloaked it, and there in the dim front hall, Draco had to deal with the pain of its presence once again.
They’d arrived.
His mind tried to sling itself away, tilting abruptly enough to dizzy him, but another sound rapped out, dispelling the throb that tried to surface. Clunk. Clunk. Ginny raised her head unsteadily and Draco followed the sound until a figure formed in the gloom and came toward them.
“About time you got here,” a familiar voice growled.
Draco made out the warped features of Mad-Eye Moody in the torchlight. The old man glared at him, his beady eye rolling as it scanned his face and body. Draco felt the walls inside himself fall into place once more. Portcullises slamming, guarding. He drew himself back to his full height, and found he was sneering again. His chest hurt like a fresh wound.
“Where’s Potter?”
...
Chapter 13
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This chapter’s music: Luna is singing one of my favourite traditionals here… Bonny Portmore, as performed by Loreena McKennitt.
