Disclaimer: I don't own any of J.K Rowling's characters, and this piece of fiction was not created to make profit.
Warning: There are many spoilers relating to the entire series within this fanfic so do not read unless you have read up to book six and have finished it. Thankyou.
Draw the shades to - Solace by FUEL
Close my eyes
I never want to see again
I found the cost of courage high
Sometimes hard to pay
Life had…changed, irreparably perhaps to the naked eye, and yet they tried to live normal lives, under the shadow cast by him, the poisonous snake, the…the rapist of all things good and innocent. It was a dramatic name to give him, and it was 'him' how they referred to him now, not that abhorrent, evil name he had given himself all those years ago. No, they would not adhere to him in such a way, they would not fear his name, nor would they fear the man himself, if he could be called as such.
He was not a man, he was a monster if ever there was one, and yet they were the ones who fought against him daily, risking their lives and their health for the betterment of mankind. Would they live to see the sunlight at the end of the dark tunnel? Or would they find that there was no sunlight, only ash and cinders where their whole world had once stood? Would the sky be blackened forever, or would the clouds clear? No one was certain.
Nothing was certain, not anymore.
Voldemort was as repugnant as ever, killing, maiming, raping, pillaging…the list went on and on into infinity, and yet no one from the ministry would admit that mistakes had been made. They had focussed too long on the underdogs, Voldemort's lackeys, following false leads over and over again, never paying enough attention to what was actually under their noses; the Prime Minister. He was not as innocent nor as good as he appeared to be; he had never received the brand from Voldemort. No, Voldemort had needed an 'inside man' without any markings, so that he would not be suspected of having ties with him, and the best man for the job had been dear old Rufus, head of the Auror Department.
No one would have even begun to suspect him, not until the very end. Fudge was out of the way, as was many of the other heads in the Ministry, all sacked for being 'incompetent', and yet with each one that was sacked, the situation worsened and worsened, and yet people still looked to their Prime Minister with unwavering trust.
Until Rufus angered the Greyback clan, who by far were Voldemort's favourite bloodthirsty band of followers, and Rufus was disposed of. His goings on unveiled to the public, and Voldemort rose to power, assuming the role of Prime Minister over the wizarding world of Britain. The world receded into a state of utter shock. No one had expected such a thing; no one had imagined such a drastic and evil turn of the tides. Voldemort was in power, and the hopes of the thousands of people occupying Britain turned to the Order of the Phoenix, in hiding underneath Voldemort's very nose. They kept their heads low; what, with the death of their Leader, Dumbledore, things had to take a slower pace.
Snape, Dumbledore's murderer, had returned to the ranks, though he did not grovel, nor did he beg forgiveness. Draco was with him, and Harry, who had witnessed what had happened, did not welcome either man warmly. The reason they had been accepted into the ranks was on the basis of information; they needed inside men, and both Snape and Malfoy would serve that purpose well. Both appeared to be a hundred percent loyal to Voldemort after Dumbledore's murder, and the Order wanted to use that to their advantage.
It was a dangerous plan, though they had no other hope but to try it. Malfoy moved back and forth undercover from the Death Eaters to the Order, and although he was 'there' in presence, it was as though his mind and soul had escaped somewhere, or was in hiding under the recent years of torment. His parents were dead, murdered by Voldemort himself as his father's final punishment. Draco's slate was 'wiped clean', and he replaced his father in the inner circle, though he appeared to gain Voldemort's trust and admiration from his dead exterior. He had no emotion; no feeling, no wavering hint of fear, anguish or pain. He was dead.
Apparently, at least, but even the most damaged of psyche's still feel, and it was only by watching him night and day that a person could see the odd flicker, the odd arousal of emotion and feeling; he still felt physical pain and pleasure, that much was obvious when Harry was arguing with him and ended up throwing a punch. Malfoy had stood there, and had laughed. It had not been the right reaction, but it had still been a reaction. Since then, the two men had not spoken; not that Malfoy spoke often save to Snape. It was a strange arrangement, the plan, where those two men risked their lives every day, more so than perhaps the rest of them, to bring information back to the people who hated them the very most.
Ginevra's hate for Malfoy had only multiplied since the death of her brother Percy, as it had been Malfoy's men that carried out the attack, and it had been Draco that uttered the killing curse. She knew, knew full well that he could not disobey the orders given to him by the Dark Lord, but it did not make her feelings any less, did not take away any of her grief or her pain, and the fact that the tall blond male had laughed in her face when confronted about the brutal murder did not help in the least. She held murderous tendencies towards him, and had tried twice to poison his morning coffee, and he had taken to wearing a hipflask like Moody, something the old and very much battered Auror found extremely disconcerting.
All members of the order had suffered since Voldemort's rise to power; Ginny had lost a brother, and her brother's girlfriend Penelope, and yet there had been greater losses; Dumbledore for one, and also Lupin had been badly injured in an attack from Death Eaters. He had recovered since, though he was deeply troubled by what had happened, and his relationship with Tonks had suffered as a result of his perpetual and unrelenting nightmares. He didn't sleep much nowadays, and yet both he and Tonks refused to give up on the feelings they held for each other, and Hermione had threatened on more than one occasion to kill the both of them if they thought of cancelling their engagement.
She had suffered many and numerous losses; her parents, and most of her extended family. The Death Eaters had tracked them down, one by one, pair by pair, household by household, until finally she had barely anyone left. Just her cat and even he was getting older by the day, no longer as adventurous as he once was. Her mental state had deteriorated somewhat, but she still excelled in her brilliance; she was one of the reasons the Order hadn't folded upon Dumbledore's death. She hadn't allowed it to happen; had clung on with all of her might.
God, she'd be damned if it all went to pot along with everything else. People relied on them, Britain relied on them, and soon Voldemort would want to control more than just England. They couldn't quit now, not yet, not until he was gone along with his bloody band of followers. Both she and Ron had tried and failed to forge a relationship, even she and Harry had attempted to console each other at one point or another, but their friendships were too great to develop into anything else.
Harry and Ginny's relationship had been broken and remade more times than either of them cared to count, though they were together again for the moment, she unwilling to let him go, and he unwilling to let anyone else have her. It was a strange arrangement, and yet it suited them both for the meantime, until the war was well and truly over at least. Perhaps then they could think about marriage; perhaps then they could afford to think about children and nursery rhymes and blue and pink blankets.
But not now, never now, times were too dangerous and deaths were too common.
It seemed as though everyone had a story to tell, a sad and heartbreaking tale of loss and the raping of innocence, the tearing away of happiness and fulfilment, the destruction of peace and goodness. Each tale was so different, and yet so depressingly the same. And yet they all clung hopelessly together; their romances intermingling with each other, their needs and lusts taken to an entirely different level.
No one would have suspected she would see him in a romantic light, though Harry would pretend that it wasn't happening under his nose; he would pretend that she didn't see anything in him other than the sex appeal, though he couldn't imagine them together, wouldn't have had he not heard it for himself. Not Granger and Malfoy, not now after all that had happened, not after he tried to murder Dumbledore and had to get Snape to do it for him, not after…no. Not a Death Eater, and yet it was happening. He didn't tell anyone, didn't let on that he knew, he couldn't; for her sake and his own, he couldn't let on that anything was happening between her and Malfoy.
Despite the fact he found it disgusting, he couldn't allow anything to tear the group apart, not in such dark times. He just hoped to God that she didn't get herself more hurt than she already was, because he really would have to murder Malfoy in his sleep if she came away scalded and burnt. Never play with fire, people had always told him, and now he wanted to tell her never to play with ice.
Malfoy was like ice, you see; cold and dangerous, both that and calculating.
Dead, too, but he didn't want to go into that. Malfoy appeared to him to be as dead as a corpse, the pale skin and withdrawn eyes all pointed to a man that had died on the inside a long time ago. It didn't make Harry pity him; no, it only increased his hate for the other man. Why should he be able to die inside while Harry had to keep on fighting daily to keep himself alive for the benefit of everyone else? Had he been able to choose, he would have chosen to rest, to let the burden of the life he lived slide off his shoulders, but he couldn't do that, and yet Malfoy had, for all intents and purposes, given up on everyone.
But, life moved on, and the times were indeed changing, though no order member was prepared to say whether it was for better or for worse. McGonagall was dead, Dumbledore was dead, many order members had suffered the same fate, and yet they were still there, ever constant and ready to take on the dark forces that opposed them. But bravery cannot win a war, and although numbers do not win a war either, they sure as hell help, and the order's numbers are greatly lacking.
People wondered daily whether they would survive or whether they would die, and the Golden Trio of Harry, Hermione and Ron could not provide definite answers as to whether they would live to see the pretty lights at the end of the tunnel; they didn't even know if those bright lights were the lights of daylight, or the lights of an oncoming train. Either way, there would be more casualties before the war was over, and as depressing as that thought was, they had to get on with it and their own illicit affairs. Harry and Ginny, Ron and…well, they hadn't yet discovered who Ron took comfort with, and Hermione with…with him. One of his followers, though it was supposed that it could be worse. She could be in love with him…and she wasn't.
She couldn't be, right? No. Never, she'd never be so stupid as to love a man who could never love her back, and yet no one was actually sure about what depths Malfoy's emotions ran to. Still waters run deep, as the saying goes, and no one had yet been able to test the waters of Malfoy's soul, though no one had ever tried. Hermione kidded herself into believing she was only visiting him out of morbid curiosity; only giving him parts of her very soul because she pitied the fact he had no soul to call his own, and yet with each passing week she began to become more and more attached to him, though she couldn't admit it. She would never admit it, and he took pleasure in that, or so it seemed. It made him laugh in that cold, hard, dead vibration that came out of the depths of his chest, but never warmed by his heart.
Hermione would shake her head and resign to a bottle of Bacardi to wash away the memories. God, the memories…
TBC
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