This story was written for idreamofdraco's prompt in The DG Forum Fic Exchange – Winter 2010.
Like the Flicker of a Candle
Part One – The Prologue of Our Darkest Days
1898
Winter was a bitter time. The way the cold wrapped around her skin and burst through her lungs made her wish evermore for summer.
Summer was chocolate iced cream and strawberry sorbet. Summer was lazy days and her favorite sundress. Summer was swimming in the pond and dancing in the rain. Most of all, summer was… summer was him.
She had been waiting for an age. The gentle breeze of fall had disappeared, replaced by an eerie and chilling wind. And he had not come. He had promised her forever, but forever never came.
Her entire life was built on promises, on arrangements and decisions. It didn't matter to her that the marriage was arranged, she had loved him since that summer so many years ago and he had told her he loved her too.
She kept sitting there, on the step in front of the abandoned Muggle church they'd picked out together. Time slowly faded into nothing, her life faded slowly into winter, but he never came.
xXx
Part Two – For Every Beginning, an End
Ginevra Molly Weasley was fifteen years old the first time she had her heart broken and sixteen when she fell head first into love again. She was nearly seventeen before she knew it was true. IT was not something she had set out intending to do, especially given the War that surrounded her [suffocated her, engulfed her whole].
And if she were honest, with herself at least, Draco Malfoy was the last person she expected to fall head over heels, crazy in love with.
He wasn't stable, wasn't completely whole [what little sanity did anyone have left?]
Sometimes when they sat together in their special hiding place, he was detached. In a moment, things could [would] change.
"You can't be with me. They'll kill you."
"Draco, they would kill me anyway."
The Carrows were her worst [Tom Riddle, death, Draco] nightmare. They watched her, taunted her, haunted her, hunted her. She was only without their piercing glares and disturbing touches when she was in Gryffindor Tower [her hiding place, her earthly Nirvana, wrapped in Draco's arms].
"Ginny. Are you coming?" Neville's voice hits her, ringing through her ears for a moment, then silence.
"Right after you, Neville." A whisper, a promise, [a lie].
xXx
Part Three – Winter, Like Life
Winter was showing its ferocity well before it was due. Scarcely November, and the grounds were a frozen and unforgiving landscape. The Carrow's reign was darker, and little of the Hogwarts she had grown up inside was left.
Except, when it all came down to it, nothing about Hogwarts stayed the same year after year. Nothing except the essential truth: school was hell and that was it.
The lights were dimmer in the winter of the Dark Lord. It was the only way she knew how to describe it. The Carrows had taken their toll on her [Draco]. Detention with them was like her own personal hell.
Alecto liked to touch her and Ginny liked to imagine what would happen to Alecto when Harry [Harry. Harry. Oh Harry] would be returning to rescue them all.
And then she remembered the time that had passed.
Harry couldn't rescue them unless they fought to keep alive until then.
Alive.
Oh how she missed him [Draco, alone].
"Ginny. We are going to fight back. We aren't going to stand by and let them destroy what little world we have left." Neville's voice was heavy with and forceful, saturated with the belief that one person could change the world—and that many could save it.
Gone was the simple and shy boy she went to the Yule Ball with. Here was a man, and one who would die to save them.
She should take him up on his offer to be with him.
She doesn't [Draco. Waiting. Her. Only her. ]
[Always]
xXx
Part Four – Pain in Holiday
Nights spent mostly in her bed [in their secret room, together, never apart] add up until one night it is their last night.
End of term, Christmas time.
How can she go home knowing that Harry [Draco, always Draco] is in danger at every moment? How can she sleep at night without him to calm her nightmares? How can he without her to end his twisted dreams?
She goes home, with a promise.
"Ginny, the only reason I haven't lost it is you. Come back."
Perhaps not a real promise, but words are scarce between them. Touch is their life. Speaking is not. Lies would come too easily. Hands and fingers [and lips and skin and flesh and taste] cannot lie.
Christmas comes too quickly.
The first night without Draco's arms around her lasts an eternity. She cannot sleep and she cannot admit to anyone that it has come down to this. The feeling of another person's bare skin, the way his breath warms her skin and calms her spirit, these are things that she cannot explain to her mother, to her brothers. Not her father.
The second night is worse. Ron is home. Harry and Hermione were abandoned. Her family is crumbling somehow. If Ron can abandon the ones he loves so easily, will she abandon them [Draco, always Draco] too?
She does not sleep this night, only thinks and wishes and wants [and wonders].
Will they still be together when the need is gone?
The next few days pass as the last few have. Christmas comes and goes and she returns to Hogwarts sans sleep and feeling evermore so alone.
[Draco].
[Where are you?]
xXx
Part Five – The Ice and Fire
It is her first night back and Draco does not show up in their secret place. She waits until daybreak but he never comes.
She finds him in the Infirmary, bloodied up and bruised. Madam Pomfrey is quiet and lets her in without a word.
"Draco." She whispers as she rushes to him. Madam Pomfrey locks the door and retreats into her office.
Do all the staff [Alecto, Alecto] know of her and Draco?
Who did this to him?
"Ginny." His voice is soft and Ginny knows this is what war does to people.
Irrevocably changes your life.
Neville and Hannah are together. It seems right, just. Ginny is glad of his happiness, despite that she can't show her own saving grace. She knows war pushes people together.
For better or worse, she hopes he [Draco] never leaves. She cannot handle life without him, not after this.
xXx
Part Six – All Great Things Must Come to an End
Alecto assaults her today in the middle of the Charms corridor. She is forced into a classroom and leaves an hour later violated and afraid, so very afraid.
She searches out her room [the secret room] and finds him [Draco] waiting there. He holds her close and tells her it will be all right.
She almost believes it. Almost. [For him].
It is two weeks before she can bring herself to kiss him again. She knows he would have waited an eternity for her to be ready. [Not ready, not really. But she does it anyways].
[For him].
It is Valentine's Day when she finds a purpose in her being. She takes up with Neville and Luna and Dumbledore's Army.
She is afraid of leaving him [Draco, always Draco] behind.
Is this how Ron felt? So torn?
xXx
Part Seven – A Trust
"To sleep, actually sleep with someone did give this sense of intimacy, as though your dreams had flowed out to mingle with his and fold you both in a blanket of unconscious knowing. A throwback of some kind. . . in older more primitive times. . . it was an act of trust to sleep in the presence of another person. If the trust was mutual, simple sleep could bring you closer together than the joining of bodies" – The Outlander by Diana Galbaldon
Time passes quickly once she makes the effort to fight the Carrows and the Dark Lord. Nights spent in Draco's arms. They come to realize how much trust is in sleeping in the presence of one person. By day, they are enemies, but at night they know [love, trust] each other.
[Trust love trust love trust Draco love]. She knows she is reaching a point where one or the other is a distinct possibility. How can she choose between the family she was born into and the family she has made, here, in his arms?
xXx
Part Eight - Wind and Ice
Everything changes with Easter. Another time set apart, another night sleepless and hungry for him. She misses his arms and the whole of his being.
And then they return. The air around the school is the same and yet nothing is the same.
Easter is Spring but the Winter remains, darker and more malevolent than before.
Is not the winter of one's life supposed to be when one's children and grandchildren are aging evermore? And yet the winter of her life is a few years when she is meant to be learning and making mistakes and taking risks. She is doing all these things, but not the lessons she should be knowing about. Not now, not yet.
Draco tells her at night of his time at home. It is the first real glimpse of his life she has truly seen. Yet, it is about Harry and Ron and Hermione [Hermione, torture, Hermione. Are all girls learning what war truly entails?]
He tells her because he thinks she is worried over her family, over Harry. [Never Harry]
[Draco, always Draco].
She is in hiding. Draco cannot find her, but neither can Alecto. She needs his arms, but cannot leave their fortress for her personified fortitude. She pines and wishes but no reprieve will come.
She has abandoned him the night after they find each other's bodies again. That pierces her heart. [Sorrow]
Colin Creevey brings her a letter the night he is forced into the solitude of their fortress. Draco has been searching.
Fiery dragongirl,
I worry.
Your Ice lion
She knows in an instant that Colin has read the letter and not understood. But it doesn't matter.
The year is almost up. The tension of the War is at its peak. Within a few weeks, it will all be over.
[For better or for worse, whether they win or they lose, she will be Draco's.]
xXx
Part Nine – For at Every End, a Beginning
It is the evening before the Final Battle, although she doesn't know that then, when she sees Draco again. She had stolen away from the fortress in search of him, one final time.
She finds him in the Dungeons, ensconced far from the potion's classroom and deep in the darkness. A room far deeper in the castle than most knew existed. [Their secret room].
This is a place in the castle that light cannot reach, magical flames cannot penetrate. They have spent a year here together, but it feels like so much more. A lifetime has passed in the blink of an eye.
And in an instant, she knows what he does.
Like the flicker of a candle, love is brightest in the dark.
Jessica's Prompt:
Basic premise: "Love is brightest in the dark." - Avatar: the Last Airbender, Book 2, Chapter 2
What does this mean to you? Tell the story of Draco and Ginny using this quote from Avatar, without copying or parodying this episode. You don't need to have seen the show before to write this story.
Must haves: Touching and thoughtful , but not in a clichéd, dramatic, or over the top way. Make me feel the emotions. Make me ache or yearn or whatever Draco and Ginny feel in the story.
No-no's: Smut for smut's sake. :P If you must write smut, I'd like it to be tasteful and important and meaningful.
Rating range: K - M.
Bonus points: If you use the quote in the text of the story.