Hello, I know I should be working on my other story Only by Chance, but this story came to me, quite litterally in the middle of the night. I couldn't get to sleep so thought 'sod it' and wrote it. I'm sorry if it doesn't make sense, it was written in the wee hours of the morning and lets face it, my checking and editing skills could probably do with some work! so, with out anymore nonsense from my half, here it is...! (I dont own any of the characters, just the plot).
Frozen.
Ginny had encased herself in a thick shell of ice. Her brittle edges kept the worst of the war at bay, helped her keep her focus on what mattered; surviving. There was a group of them, Dumbledores Army and other younger students who had been tortured that had taken to living in the Room of Requirement. The Room was a layer of defense between them and those that hunted them. The likes of Draco Malfoy, Zabini, all of the up and coming young Slytherins who were trying to be noticed. They were cruel, heartless, mindlessly torturing firstyears. It pained Ginny to see what they did to fellow students, but none of it broke her.
In fact all the trauma built, like layers of frost, about her until all she could feel was the numbing cold. She wasn't brave when she held wand fights with Death Eaters, protecting younger students in Hogsmead, smuggling them through the painting in Aberforths shop; she was too far gone for bravery. All she knew, all she had to rely on, was who was good and who was bad. Emotions were frozen in a small section of her heart, only to rise to the surface in sparks as something particular would crack her brittle shell. It would be covered, unnoticeable to all but herself.
She was Ginny Weasley, best friend to the smartest witch in the country, sister to the most loyal person anyone could ever meet and sweetheart to the most famous wizard to have ever lived. She didnt show how badly she wanted to shatter her cold exterior because that would lead to the shattering of her very being. To give up now would be to spit at the famous three's efforts. She could not fail them now by letting her heart rule her head.
She realises it's too late anyway, to back track and pick up all her lost feelings, when she is firing a particularly nasty bat-bogey hex at Goyle. She feels no triumph when he falls down screaming, scratching at his nose in an attempt to unleash the clawing bats inside. Not even a mild sense of pity. She feels nothing because she knew it had to be done. To protect the others and to protect herself. She can think later, feel later, when the war is over, whichever side wins.
So Ginny Weasley turns and runs away from the young deatheaters, allowing herself a pinch of adrenaline to help her pump her arms faster. If she can get to the Room before them, she can be safe. But strong arms wrap around her, the first traces of fear spreading filigree cracks across the icy fortress around her heart. That and a sense of pity; she survived so long.
Ginny does not go quietly. She spits, claws, bites, screaming profanities, even, when her wand is snatched from her grasp. She is as wild and as hot tempered as her flame hair suggests.
Ginny prepares herself for cold dungeons and pain, knowing that more often and not people lost their minds before they lost their lives under torture. So when she is thrown to the floor of an empty classroom, two more emotions penetrate her cold world; surprise then suspicion. She has lasted many forms of pain and she knows she won't fold under questioning but... But there is a look in the boy's eyes in front of her. A look that speaks volumes.
His eyes are a snow storm grey, flecked with silver, his hair a white blonde of a babies, but thicker. Draco Malfoy is the epitome of cold heartedness and cruelty, so when his hands cup her face with a tenderness she suspects he didnt even know he had, she says nothing. Doesn't move a muscle, or even flinch under the unnerving contact. It unnerves her because it feels good.
So many emotions and Ginny can feel them all pressing just underneath the glassy ice of her exterior, desperate to break free. It is in that moment, knowing that in a seconds time that Draco Malfoy was going to kiss her for some unfathomable reason, Ginny knows that encasing her most poignant emotions in an unfeeling cage was both her savour and her downfall. Because now she knew that those emotions, if let free, would rule her completely. With a sudden denial of Draco's actions on the tip of her tongue, Draco kisses her.
It is so ironic she knows, as her body moulds to his in every contour possible, that Draco malfoy is the coldest single person on the planet, so cold, in fact, that he burns and she feels the warmest she has in months. Breathlessly, she asks why. Why now does her protection fail her, leaving her so very vulnerable in front of Draco Malfoy? Why now do the emotions rule her, leaving her without rhyme nor reason? He takes it for why does he kiss her and with his accustomed smirk in place rather than the desperation she had seen before hand, he replies with a casual 'I had the choice of killing or kissing you. Are you going to complain about my decision?'
No, she wanted to accuse him of having the same icy shell of protection that she had, but his was older, thicker, the emotions finally, irrevocably, seeping out at the most unprecidented time. But she doesn't because she knows that inpenitrable barrier of his is back from the look in his eyes; she keeps her silence, prefering to live for at least one more day.
Ginny returns to the Room of Requirement to cheers and crows of delight, for how on earth did she escape so many? She smiles despite the turmoil inside, knowing its what they need to see; she has become accustomed to adjusting to their needs. She is unbreakable... Until Malfoy kisses her. Her lips stay shut through out the thought and she never utters a word to even suggest she is anything but coping. Nothing to suggest that the most alive she had felt since Harry left was in the arms of his oldest enemy.
Maybe that was why; the feeling of utter wrongness after no feeling at all felt completely right in the void her emotions had left. So when Draco grabs her for the second, the third, the countless number of times, she lets him. He has to work to catch her, but she knows that like her own barriers, his are melting under the pure fire and heat that they create just by touching.
Soon it becomes dangerous; she can no longer leave the Room with a valid reason and Draco can no longer use the excuse of catching the rebels to search for her late at night. All that were to be saved by her and caught by him had already had their fate played out. In his abscence the ice reforms, thicker than ever. People notice this time, commenting on how the time without Harry was finally getting to her.
Maybe it was, but it was the time without Harry that lead to the time with Draco, and now both were gone, perhaps for good. The more ice and the more distance she puts between herself and everyone else, trying to ensure that nothing slips out, the bigger the pressure her emotions became.
The saying 'the higher you climb, the further you fall haunts her' especially when she stands at the top of the stair case, wand at the ready, prepared to fight for her school now that Harry, Ron and Hermione have returned.
She has seen him only once after she decided not to see him anymore. The meeting was painful and the conversation stilted, no snarky comments left his lips and no harsh retorts left hers. They both stood in the loss of eachother. Even if they saw eachother again, they were on the wrong side. Different sides. Did it matter? Ginny knew in her heart of hearts, somewhere burried under a glacier perhaps, that he was only using her to feel something other than the oppressive nothingness that comes with ignoring the worst of the war, especially if you're the one to cause it.
She knows that, but the last time she sees him, in casual clothes in his prefects bedroom, sometime in the early hours of the morning, she can't help but think that for those many brief encounters they had shared she had started to peek the draco underneath the ice. The Draco that hid from his fears and the hurt and the pain by pretending he didn't see them in the first place. So she kisses him, with all the passion and all the fire and (dare she even think it?) all the raw emotions that border on something undeniably more that she can muster.
Ginny leaves without saying anything else, knowing that he will bury any emotion, if he felt any towards her in the first place, under a thick coating of ice. After all, that's what she will do and he is not so different to Ginny.
Different enough to come across eachother though, different enough to recognise the Other side and fling curses at eachother. Different enough that when the oppotunity arrises, he walks away with his parents and she doesn't. Even if it were to produce a thousand cracks in her fortress she cannot walk away. So she watches him do it instead. He doesn't come back.
It is many years later, when she is in Harry Potters bed, warm and content, no longer afraid to feel, that Ginny Weasley realises, with only a pinch of guilt for the man next to her, that Draco malfoy, Death Eater and renowned cold blooded killer, was the one to have saved her from succumbing to that icy world she had built for herself. With a slightly embarrassed half smile she curls into Harry's side, wondering if, just possibly, she saved him from his.