Meditation
A/N: This Draco is a 'little' bit different from what I'd commonly like to see him, and a world away from that Slytherin ferret who's so often portrayed. However, Ginny's always the same, glowing girl.
Disclaimer: Any characters you might recognise belong to J. the author of HP. Only this story is mine. I've ignored all the previous book dramas that might disrupt a DG relationship so forgive me :P.
Chapter One. Meditation.
The hallway was completely deserted as Draco made his way to the his secret resort. The night was going out, the owls were coming in, and the candles in distant windows were dying away. He only had a couple of hours at his disposal and was determined to make the most of them.
It really is a wondrous thing, this castle. Draco marvelled as he covered the length of the corridor and stole into a retired alcove . He held up his violin in his arms as he would with the love of his life, which wasn't very far from the mark. Closing his eyes, he shut out the darkness, the isolation and the eeriness of the place and began to tap out a silent rhythm.
Syncopation and triple, and a series of full notes. Four semiquavers followed by more syncopation. Slowing down and then picking up, and repeat. Forte and Piano playing against each other.
It was as if some inner tune was guiding him, measuring his every pace as the enclosing walls gradually opened up to a world within a world.
Sensing the subtle difference in his surroundings, Draco opened his eyes. Voilà. He was as removed from the dreary castle as could possibly be, and from the many cares of his life.
All around him were swathes of desert, shrouded in the invisibility cloak of nighttime, while in the distance a clock in a convent chimed two times. Heat waves clashed with his layers of cloaks and sent him perspiring heavily, but his mind wasn't exactly on the climate at the moment. Squinting hard, he could barely see two silhouettes huddled against each other and groping towards the house of God. A characteristic smirk crawled onto his mouth as he recognised his old friends, Thaïs and Athanaël.
Night after night, he would come to this same part of Hogwarts, he would manoeuvre his way into the world enclosed in the piece, Meditation de Thaïs, and he would stay out the protection of darkness before tapping out his own version of the Hogwarts Anthem and thus returning to the imprisonment he called life. He also found places in other pieces accessible, but preferred Alexandria and its sultry desert to all else. He was entirely ignorant as to the charms that had magicked his passage, but he couldn't care less. So long as he was there, in the barren desert that so resembled the asceticism of his life, the very fruitlessness of his travails, the fiery heat that sometimes swept him off his feet…
Ah yes, the fiery heat. The flaming red head who was the reason that a troubled Draco found himself in his last resort tonight. The girl who always lighted him up and extinguished him, who lifted his existence and erased it all at once… The very Genevra Weasley who was materialising out of the clutches of darkness and coming toward him, then and there.
"Ginny! " Draco was aghast and abashed. How could she be there, in HIS fantasy world, looking so glamorous in simple hand-me-down pyjamas?
"You're dreaming about that night again. " She sighed, and, upon moving closer, took his face in her hands.
As if on cue, Draco woke up in the midst of ruffled sheets, discarded clothes and the bare, smooth, loving arms of Ginny.
"You're dreaming about that night again. " Ginny exhaled and repeated, as Draco nudged against her neck.
"Yes." His answer was brief, even a little brusque, but the silence that followed was so prolonged that enough time elapsed to allow the couple a detailed recollection of that fateful night.
The night that a wondering Draco made for his secret world but was stalked by an equally roaming Ginny.
The corridors were vacant and daunting, the disillusionment charm was challenging and wearisome to maintain, the shadows that wavered on the walls illuminated by meagre moonlight were sinister and menacing to behold, but Ginny trudged undaunted after her man, who was totally unaware of her existence.
Long before, Ginny had heard on the grapevine of Draco Malfoy's supposed somnambulation, but she passed off the notion as a petty rumour, as Draco had been perfectly normal the few nights they had spent together. But now that she had caught him red-handed at his act, and as he was most certainly wide awake, she was bent on getting to the bottom of this mystery. She kept a safe distance, and only just caught up as he rounded the corner into a completely concealed niche behind a trap door at the very dead end.
What was he up to? Ginny was not a little perturbed. She was perfectly confident in his affection for her, as well as in his uprightness of conduct despite the many foibles of a typical Slytherin, but slinking down a deserted hallway in the dead of the night wasn't technically decent. So she baited her breath for the disclosure of Draco's secret.
She suppressed a muffled laugh which luckily went unnoticed as Draco produced his violin and posed it for performance. For all the reasons that could account for a nocturnal escapade, he was here to play the violin? But his following movements proved Ginny wrong. He didn't put the bow to the strings, but instead moved his fingers so that they struck out an inaudible tune on the chords. He seemed to be playing a piece unknown to Ginny, and she looked on, mesmerised by the sprightly dance of his long, slender fingers on the instrument. She had to force back another exclamation as their surroundings melted away into an amorphous haze which reassembled into an unending stretch of desert. The originally cool air of the castle heated up and settled as sweat amid Ginny's wild locks, and appreciation twinkled in her eyes as she lifted them to take in the magnificent landscape. In the protection of darkness and disillusionment charm, she studied the measured look on Draco's face which eventually settled for a smirk. But there was a trace of pathos and anguish underlying that smug expression, and she longed to wipe it off his face. So she stepped forth and called out to him.
The rest of the night sort of went by in a blur. Draco was taken aback at first, but quickly got accustomed to the thought that Ginny had penetrated his stronghold of fantasy. He was also euphoric at her presence in the place which he had considered exclusive until then, and weighted the many new possibilities that had never before been "possible". He apologised for a their quarrel in the day (which had been centred on their future plans ) and appealed once more to Ginny to run away with him.
Now that she was in Thaïs with him, there was little reason not for them to stay in the realm of his music until the war should end and things settle enough for them to return to the real world. He implored. They could move on, if Ginny were to tire of the desert, and of Alexandria, and perhaps live a little while in the clamorous fairs in Carmen, and then sample further Bohemian delights of Zigeunerweisen. He knew Ginny loved the pieces when he played them for her pleasure. Yes, his peppery girl could fare quite well and savour all the delights there were to his music.
Ginny acceded.
"Where are we again? " Draco's question abruptly put an end to further reminiscence.
Ginny redirected her attention to him, and smacked him playfully. "Do you have to ask me again first thing you wake up each day? We're spending the week with Merlin, courtesy of his apprentice."