Killers and War Heroes
Chapter 1
The Empty
The moonlight reflected on her pale skin making her ghostly as her dress robes waved behind her in the breeze. The midnight frost on the grass stung against her bare ankles as she walked determinedly down the hill. She was all alone, and for once she was glad that she was. Her feelings about that night alternated. Part of her regretted sending that owl, and the other part knew this was what she needed.
Nothing had felt right in her life lately. The war shook the world of wizards and muggles alike, and once it was over the world seemed tired. Everyone was free to live without fear, but the problem was that nobody could. Between the mourning for the lost, the scars for injuries and scars for the things they have witnessed, most people walked as empty shells. Twenty one-year-old Ginny Weasley, even a year after the war ended, counted herself among the empty.
Ginny braced herself as she found herself in front of the black wrought iron gates of the cemetery. She pushed the gate open and cringed as the rusty hinges creaked loudly in the silence. The bottom of her skirt caught and tore on the bottom on one of the spikes on the gate and she cursed under her breath. Then she thought of something spitefully, "Doesn't matter, Harry hated it anyway."
Ginny had married Harry when she was seventeen. Ginny's parents didn't exactly approve, but Ginny convinced her parents with a tragic tale. She talked of their true love for each other, and how if they didn't live in such dark times they would wait until they were older. She cried when she told them that they might go to war and never be able to return to each other's arms. They eventually gave their consent and after a few months of engagement they were happily married. During their engagement, Harry begged her not to go to war and to stay home and help some other way. He wanted her to be a healer or something off the battlefields. She wouldn't hear a word of it and wouldn't be happy unless she was fighting alongside him and her friends.
One of her biggest regrets was being so bent on going to battle with them. Not long after their marriage, Harry got comfortable with the idea of her fighting, and she immediately became a soldier to him. She was no longer his delicate wife, but one among the ranks that he would command. Whenever she tried to act like a wife to him he would look at her with disbelief and she immediately felt ashamed for trying to take his mind off the war. It didn't take long for Ginny to grow tired of his new behavior and before long their marriage was in as much danger as they were.
She was so anxious that the sound of her own foot cracking a stick in half was enough to pull her out of her own thoughts. She didn't know if it was guilt or excitement that was making her feel the way she did. She didn't even know if he would show. He hadn't been seen anywhere since the war had ended. All supporters of the Dark Lord had changed their identities and physical appearances and she assumed that he was no different. He was probably living a new, but equally broken life, with everything he had ever known stripped away, just like her own. Still, she remembered every detail of him from that day that so often consumed her thoughts.
It was about four years ago, only months after Ginny and Harry were married and days before they were called to war. Ginny was only seventeen and knew she was too young to be married and too young to fight for the war. She felt like her life was moving too quickly and her body was just being dragged along for the ride.
It was one of the un-safest times to be alone, but she had to get out of Headquarters. Everyone was fighting and screaming at each other, arguing strategies and alliances. She had developed a very bad attitude about the whole war, sick of all of the tension and responsibility forced on her. That day she had fought with Harry, as she so often did those days. This time she was so angry she had been driven to say, "Maybe this was a mistake." When she said it they just walked in separate directions. He walked back to his strategies, and she walked out the front door.
She walked out onto the street and walked for about an hour until she was completely out of any recognizable area. She was surrounded by towering trees and falling darkness, and she didn't care one bit. It was then that she spotted him walking towards her on the other side of the streets. His figure and his platinum blonde hair were unmistakable. He was the one everyone was looking for, and the one she never expected to find. He pulled out his wand and pointed it in her direction, making her gasp fearing for her life.
She felt relieved when he just shined light from his wand tip in her direction. "What are you doing out here, Weasley?" he asked after a moment of squinting.
"I should ask you that, Malfoy," she spit her words at him angrily. She pulled out her wand to protect herself. "I could get you locked away so fast…"
He cut off her threat, "Go run and tell your brother's, Little Weasley," Draco said with a bored drawl.
"No, that's what you want me to do. You want to use me to lure them here." She accused him with her wand pointed at him as he walked closer.
"If that's what I wanted, I would have told you to go get your husband," Draco said pointedly.
Ginny's expression changed instantly, and Draco watched as her face paled at the mention of her husband. She looked down and put her wand back into her robes. It wasn't the reaction he expected. Her usual spitfire attitude had recoiled and she suddenly seemed vulnerable.
"You shouldn't be out here walking by yourself," he said in a slightly protective tone.
"Why do you care?" Ginny looked him straight in the eye.
He sent her stare right back and all of a sudden something in his eyes changed. "I guess everyone has to be running from something right?" Draco said sadly, more so to himself than to Ginny.
"I'm nothing like you, Malfoy," Ginny growled slightly.
She watched his expression when she said this. She watched the muscles in his jaw tense up and then relax again, closing his eyes as he did so. "I guess not," he said softly. Then he looked up into her eyes, as if he were looking for something, "There was always something different about you, kid."
Ginny didn't know what had gotten into her, but she took a step closer to him. She was so confused. Everything she had ever known about him would have made her run for her life. However, there she was, standing inches away from him and all fear had abandoned her. It was so cold she could see his breath, misty in the air right before her. They just stood there looking into each other's eyes for a moment. There was something entrancing about his bright gray eyes.
Ginny had that feeling again, as if he were looking for something deep in her eyes. Maybe if he looked long enough he would realize why she was running in the first place.
"You should get back to wherever you came from, Ginny," Draco said quietly, startling her out of her trance. He called her Ginny.
"I'll be fine, Draco," She choked out the last word with some difficulty.
"No, you may not be so lucky about the next person you cross paths with."
He began to roll up his sleeves and Ginny looked at him curiously. She then understood once he bared both of his forearms to her, pale and unscathed, in the moonlight. Slowly and without thinking, she reached out and ran her fingertips gently from the light blue veins of his wrist, all the way to where she always assumed his dark mark had been placed. There was no mark to be found. She looked up into his eyes as she let her hand drop back to her side.
"We may be more alike than you thought."
Ginny had nothing to say, but she could feel all the tears of the night start to immediately race to her eyes.
He gave her a sympathetic look, and raised his hand to her cheek. One of her tears slid down and landed on her lips, and Draco brushed it away gingerly with his thumb. He smiled at her slightly and said, "You'll be ok." He took his hand down and began to back away. "Take care of yourself, will you?"
Ginny nodded and tried to smile with little success as he turned and continued walking on his path to wherever. Ginny watched, crying the whole time, until she could no longer see his figure retreating in the darkness. She decided to turn around and walk back home, wrapping her arms around herself for warmth. She kept replaying everything that had just happened over in her head just as she would for the next few years. It was all she could think of, especially when she had walked back into headquarters and nobody had even noticed that she'd gone.
She never told anyone that she ever saw him, or that she even left that night. Ginny knew he was evil. She knew he was a Deatheater, but that's didn't stop her from thinking about what he had said, and how he made her feel when he touched her face. When he showed her his arm and brushed away her tears she felt like he was trying to tell her that you can't always divide things by good or evil. Some things go deeper than that. She felt like he too understood that sometimes things are more important than battle strategies. That was something that Harry could never understand, and she couldn't blame him, which is why she felt so horrible for resenting him for it.
The wife of a War Hero should be proud of her husband. Proud to attend ministry events, and to be on his arm at every public appearance and parade. The problem was that every event sugarcoated and glorified the victory of that war for the public, just as Ginny and Harry glorified their happy marriage at every reception and ceremony. The war was brutal and most that made it out alive had died in some way or another. By the end of the war, all that victory meant to her was that she could finally rest. After the war Harry and Ginny tried their best to return to their old selves. It was too late and the hope of rebuilding their relationship after the damage done was long gone. Neither of them were who they used to be, and eventually they accepted it.
That was why she sent that letter. That's why she walked on that dark and frigid night in a cemetery to be reunited with Draco Malfoy, the Deatheater who helped her make it though the war.
Hello Readers! So I published the first chapter of this story in fall 2006, and many many years later I am back to continue it. If any of my old readers are still out there, welcome back! And to new ones, I would love to know what you think. And Thanks to my forever BETA and Best Friend Courtney for still checking my work over ten years later. xoxo