The long, wide cloth ripples and billows as Ginny tests its weight – it is light and airy in her hands. She can't keep her eyes off the fabric. The bluish grey sets off its silver embroidery, scattered groups of dots arranged in familiar-looking patterns.
It's beautiful.
"Are these constellations?" she asks her father, the question unnecessary. She'd drawn enough star charts during her school years to recognise several of them on sight.
Arthur's expression is grim as he nods. "That blanket was wrapped around poor Marjorie Wyatt's neck when the Muggle authorities found her," he says distractedly as he flicks through a stack of documents. "The – er, what are they called? The Muggle Aurors –"
"Police."
"Thank you, love. They're dismissing it as a suicide, bless them, but there were reports about a violation of the Statute of Secrecy and the magic trail led to the blanket." He pulls out a piece of parchment, tears off a part covered in ink, and begins to scribble hastily on it. "Improper Use of Magic thinks my department's better suited, so Mafalda had it sent to my office." Arthur pauses to look up, glancing at the watchful Aurors by the doorway, and frowns when he sees Ginny run her fingers across the blanket. "Be careful with that, Ginny. There's some strong magic woven into it, all right, but testing hasn't shown if it's malevolent yet. Of course, due to the circumstances under which it was found, for all intents and purposes we are to assume that it is cursed."
Ginny's hand halts for a moment, and then traces lightly over Aquila. She can't help it. The smooth texture is too irresistible to her fingers. "I thought you were done testing it."
Her father makes a noise she assumes is agreement. "We are. Which is why..." He signs the parchment with a flourish, sighs, and holds it out to her. Ginny puts down the blanket and takes it, her eyes skimming over the careful writing. It's a formal request - well, as formal as any request written on torn parchment can be. "Which is why I need you to go to Gringotts and find a good Curse-Breaker." She hears the unspoken Today, if you can from her father's tone.
Muggles murdered by magic. Ginny shivers as bone-white masks float into her thoughts. Her hand drifts to the wand in her pocket by instinct.
"I'll get right on it."
Ginny thinks he looks familiar for all of three seconds before the platinum hair finally registers and she realises it's Draco Malfoy.
"Miss Weasley," he says as she accepts his proffered hand. Draco fucking Malfoy is shaking her hand at Gringotts, calling her Miss Weasley in front of all Diagon Alley. She can't believe it.
His hand is cold, burning hers. She keeps the handshake brief.
"Mr. Malfoy," she returns in kind, suddenly finding herself bereft of words. The polite prefix feels odd to her tongue – she's too used to the days where he was just Malfoy, a name scoffed at, jeered at, and, later, spoken with fear and disgust in the Gryffindor common room.
Malfoy is looking at her just so and suddenly she knows that he knows what she's thinking about, but both of them know better than to dig up the past. Thankfully, he breaks the silence first. "Karduk didn't give you too much trouble, I hope."
Ginny almost laughs at the mention of the goblin she'd been told to give the letter to. Karduk had given her the fight of her career. She kept telling herself to grit her teeth, to bear his stares and repeated questions with patience instead of knocking him off the high chair he'd sat on, like she wanted to. He treated her with the same mistrust the Gringotts goblins treated most wizards, despite her numerous, exasperated explanations that she was Arthur Weasley's assistant.
But he had given in when she mentioned the death of Marjorie Wyatt, and the way he had nodded at her victory made her realise, not for the first time, that although the war had been between wizards, they had not been the only ones affected.
She remembers the battle at Hogwarts, and the goblins.
"No," Ginny finally answers. "He understood."
Malfoy nods. "Well, the budget's been tight," he offers by way of explanation. "The bank can't lend resources they don't have." It's true. The shortage is a problem everywhere, and Ginny herself has felt the exhaustion that comes with added workload. She thought Gringotts would be faring better, but if even Malfoy is willing to admit it...
Five years, Ginny notes bitterly, and the war is still as present as ever.
"Is this all?" Malfoy asks, pointing his wand at the blanket, draped across Arthur's desk. The Wyatt case file lies open beside it, gruesome pictures of the crime scene flapping slightly with an errant breeze.
Ginny gets up from her seat, closes the windows, and after some thought, flicks her wand to close the door to the office. "It probably caused a Muggle's death, remember."
His mouth quirks up at her briefly. At Ginny's nod, he murmurs, "Specialis revelio!"
The fabric begins to glow with a pulsating green light growing brighter every second, and runes flash in the air and vanish in the blink of an eye. Malfoy's eyes widen in understanding and then alarm.
Ginny has only noticed the heavy spike in air pressure when everything explodes in a blinding white light, and she is thrown back at a filing cabinet with such force that her body leaves an indentation on the metal surface.
When the air ceases to rush at her, she turns her head and finds Malfoy using her upturned desk to help himself up with little success. He's saying something, but there's a thickness in her ears that's blocking every sound but for the roar of her blood.
She points to her ears. Malfoy grimaces, flicks his wand at his own head, and then at her. Ginny winces at the sudden popin her ear.
He's walking towards her, and her hearing clears up in time to catch the end of his question. "...all right?"
Ginny reaches her arm up to push back the hair that's fallen in her face, wincing as a dull pain courses through her shoulder. "I'm fine," she tells him as he helps her up, barely standing up himself. "Just... a bad bruise, on my shoulder."
Malfoy pulls down the back of her collar just enough to check. "No blood," he confirms.
She smiles weakly at him. "I'm guessing that wasn't supposed to happen?"
A pained expression crosses his face. "I'm sorry. I managed to shield us from the worst of ‒"
A loud crash resounds throughout the office and both of them flinch instinctively, but Ginny relaxes when she sees it's only the door.
Arthur is the first one to rush into the scene. "Ginny! Ginny, are you ‒"
"I'm okay, Dad," she begins to reply, but is cut off as she is enveloped in a hug.
"Oh, thank goodness!" He lets her go when she tenses up in pain. "What? What's wrong, Ginny?"
"Her shoulder's badly bruised," Malfoy says, and her father's head whips around to see him.
"What happened here?" an unfamiliar voice demands, and Ginny realises that two supervising Aurors must have come in with her father.
"I underestimated the situation," Malfoy replies darkly, exhaling. "But I can tell you now that there's a good chance that you have a powerful Dark item in your possession."
Both Aurors frown heavily, glancing at each other. "Then we should probably take over ‒"
"No!" Malfoy barks sharply at once, and even Ginny is surprised at his vehement tone. "How many experts on Dark magic do you have? Three at most who'll be of any use to you, and Potter, Weasley, and Granger aren't even in Britain, because they're the only ones who know enough to track the rest of them down." He jerks his head in direction of the blanket, but Ginny knows he isn't talking about objects.
One of the Aurors purses his lips, but the other still looks unconvinced. "But protocol ‒"
"Oh, for Merlin's sake. What good is protocol if you and your colleagues are dead?"
"Enough," Arthur interrupts, holding his arms out between the two parties. "Gentlemen," he addresses the Aurors, "I'm afraid Mr. Malfoy has a point. Rest assured we will keep you updated, and you're welcome to inquire freely, but this item requires a certain expertise. Which," he turns to look at Malfoy, "I assume you have, Mr. Malfoy?"
He nods. "I'll have to take it with me tonight, so I can examine it safely. If you need to know anything, address your owls to me. I will reply as quickly as possible."
"This is unheard of! A civilian taking home a –"
"The Malfoy Manor has been granted certain... protections so as to withstand this particular brand of magic," Malfoy cuts them off, sneering. "With all due respect, I would be able to continue my investigation there without expecting an encore of what happened today."
The other Auror, whose face had already begun to morph into an expression of distrust at the mention of Malfoy's name, asks Arthur tersely, "And you trust him?"
"He saved my life," Ginny answers instead, quietly. Everyone looks at her, and she straightens herself, feeling self-conscious.
"Very well," the same Auror tells her after a short silence. She can feel Malfoy's stare boring into the back of her head. "But we can't ignore what happened today. We'll expect daily reports." He nods to his companion, and both of them return to their posts in the corridor, red robes flaring behind them like banners of authority at every step.
Malfoy strides over to the blanket, still sitting on the desk, unscathed. Conjuring up what looks to be a leather bag, he levitates the swath of cloth and drops it unceremoniously into the bag. "I'll be going now," he informs them. "The Floo at Malfoy Manor will be kept open, should you need me. Until then."
"And you know where we'll be, should you need us." Arthur shoots him a friendly smile.
Malfoy nods back, stopping at the doorway ‒ Damn it, did they have to blast that door off its hinges? ‒ and responds, "I'll see you tomorrow." He pauses, looks at her, and gives her a small smirk with a single nod. "Miss Weasley."
After he departs, Ginny surveys the files strewn across the floor and the knocked over furniture with a dismayed expression.
She can't wait for tomorrow.
She dominates the heavens, the wind caressing her feathers like a long-lost lover as they whip through clusters of cumulus.
The landscape below is sprawling and majestic, but lifeless, without the vibrancy of colour. She circles a grey tree. The colourlessness leaves her ears ringing with an odd silence she despises, so she decides to paint the tree a lush, understated green, adjusts it to a more acrid hue, and then selects to tint the branches a bold orchid pink.
The leaves rustle.
She's about to move on to the next one when something cleaves through her chest, the force shoving her backward. She sees the feathers of an arrow jutting out of her breast.
Oh, she thinks. Those aren't my feathers.
Then she's falling, falling to the ground, her wings little more than flightless against gravity's pull, and she hardly feels the impact when she hits the dewy grass. There's a strange sort of tranquility, almost lethargy, radiating from the arrow lodged in her chest and it enters her bloodstream like a lethal injection, spreading throughout her body until it paralyses her.
She doesn't hear the deep growl from behind her as much as she can feel it seeping into her bones: slow, heavy, predatory, slicing through the marrow with primeval precision and polluting it with pure fear.
She feels her spine tingle like a final warning and she fights the invisible shackles, tries to take to the air, but her body won't obey her and it's too late, it's too late, she can smell the hot, acrid breath and can almost hear her skin break as the fangs pierce –
Ginny's eyes snap open.
Every hair on her body is standing on its end, and her gaze darts across the bedroom warily even as she forces her quick, dizzying breaths into an even rhythm. She slowly sits up, faintly registering she's still in bed, safely at home.
Ginny never cries out or bolts upright in terror during nightmares. She simply wakes up, ramrod-straight, her heart beating in a dangerous staccato as her mind deteriorates into a fight-or-flight response. She's figured out years ago that this is one of the reasons why she hadn't been dragged off to St. Mungo's regularly after Tom's diary. Everyone thought she'd managed to move past the traumatic events, but things like that don't disappear with a smile, and Ginny thanks Merlin every day that the terrors of her nightmares render her mute. She doesn't fancy weekly trips to the Spell Damage Ward to have her head tinkered with by Healers who don't even believe in possessions of such a magnitude.
It's the better deal for everyone, she reassures herself, the tension melting away from her muscles when she doesn't see anything out of place.. Ginny slumps back onto her bed, grasping at her blanket when it slips through her clammy palms and pulls it over her torso. The adrenaline begins to recede from her bloodstream and tremors take its place, her quilt feeling thinner than usual when she grips it tighter, but it's just as well if she's going to have a restless night.
It is the better deal for everyone. She's learned to move on from her nightm–
Whoosh.
Wand. Jump. Aim –
"Weasley!" Malfoy's head burns bright in her fireplace. "Oh, good, you're here."
She pretends she's just Nox-ed her wand and smoothly tucks it into the pocket of her dressing gown. "It is –" She glances at the clock over the mantle. "– five in the morning. Merlin, have you no sense of decency?"
"This is important," he tells her, nonplussed. "There're two things I need to tell you. The first is, I recognised the rune pattern we saw earlier. I'm fairly certain I've seen it somewhere before, but I'll need to get my hands on a Black family tree, and the Ministry confiscated my mother's around three or four years ago."
"I can help you with that, but couldn't this have waited until morning? Honestly."
"There's another thing," Malfoy says, now sounding frustrated. "I can't find that blasted piece of cloth anywhere."
"You can't –" The full meaning of what he's just said sinks in, and Ginny can feel her temper beginning to stir. "Malfoy, you took it home with you. If you're trying to –"
"I'm not trying to pull one over you, all right?" he snaps angrily, and she can see traces of actual fear on his face. "Believe you me, I know what the consequences are if my family or I so much as sneeze in the wrong direction, god forbid a Dark object goes missing under my watch."
"All right, then," Ginny replies warily. "Tell me what happened."
He exhales deeply. "I Flooed you the moment I noticed it was gone," he mutters, sweeping a hand through his hair. "I stopped working on it around midnight and stashed it in a bedside drawer. Woke up fifteen minutes ago and the drawer was empty."
She kneels down by the fire. "Does anyone else have access to that drawer?"
"My parents," he replies immediately, "but they have no idea I have it, or if they do, I wasn't the one who told them." He pauses, his head disappearing for a few seconds. "I'm quite sure they're still asleep."
"House-elves, maybe?" She bites her lower lip.
His eyebrows knit. "They all know better than to open my drawers."
"Can't hurt, though." Ginny rests her chin on the palm of her hand, face turned to the side in thought. "Maybe one of them could..." Her eyes rest on her bed.
A cold chill travels down her back.
"I'll ask them." Malfoy growls. "Damn it, what a fucking mess –"
"Wait." She dares not remove her gaze, but her hand trembles as it returns to her knee. "I know where it is."
The silver embroidery glints, reflecting the crackling light from the fireplace, the blanket hanging securely at the edge of Ginny's mattress.
A/N: The format of my author's notes keep changing... Oh well.
Many, many thanks to Ha'niqua for being an admittedly excellent beta (even though sometimes I think she really should go into anger management therapy. Slitting people's throats isn't a healthy habit, dear) and for putting up with the one hundred million other writings I have yet to finish (Rowan, if you read this, I am so sorry).
This is the first time I'm trying out the horror genre, so if you liked it, or thought some aspects could have been executed better, please don't hesitate to leave a review or PM. This story was written for two things, the first of which is the StoryWorld Card prompt challenge at HPFC whose deadline pretty much doesn't apply anymore. Oops.
The second of which is: happy birthday, Kyla! I hope you enjoy this sad excuse for an actual gift. You are an amazing person, and I hope you never forget that, too. Love always, your twinlee.
(By the way, if any of you happen to enjoy SSHG, don't be afraid to check out Ky's To Heal A Soul at the story id 6510757. It will change your life.)