The Forgotten

by pardonthelitany

Where do they end up–the forgotten? The war's end has arrived, and after a very bloody mess, they must decide what to remember and what to forget. All that's left is those varying shades of red–blood and copper. D/G

Where do they end up, the forgotten? The war's end has arrived, and after a very bloody mess, Draco must decide what to remember and Ginny must decide how much she wants to forget. All is left up to those varying shades of red–blood and copper, perhaps there has always been too much color.

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar
Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;
Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us -- if at all -- not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.
-T. S. Eliot, The Hollow Men

The Forgotten

Draco was sitting perfectly still on his prison cot. He was staring through the mirror over the small sink at the wall behind his back. He was staring and he was waiting. Something was coming. Something came every night. Unless he had gone insane.

But he knew he hadn't. Draco Malfoy was not insane, despite his mind trying to tell him otherwise. Incomplete memories that didn't belong to him flashed though his head, perfect little brushes of skin against his, heat battling through his cold, peace, red against grey, and a name–dauntingly hovering on the tip of his tongue. But there was never more, just a hint that left him grasping at straws and yelling incoherently at the unresponsive walls. No, Draco Malfoy was definitely sane.

Or as close as was possible in the current conditions. Insanity was probably preferable to sanity; trapped here in this windowless, doorless cell, insanity might have given him some comfort. But he was not insane.

He chewed at his nails, biting off flecks from his thumb and spitting them across the room. He was anxious. And bored. But still sane.

The wall shifted in the mirror.

…

Ginny stared at the stone in front of her. It was rough, rusticated, and very simply hideous. The ground was damp, in the basement of a forgotten safe house that was watched only as a precaution. People couldn't get out of the hidden cells. And the only person who could get in was standing there, biting her lip.

There was only one prisoner left, one last man waiting to go to Azkaban and suffer for his crimes. The war was coming to an end now. The Ministry was out of the Death Eaters' hands. Voldemort was gone. So many were dead, and Ginny wondered if anyone would miss him if he died too.

She would, but she had realized long ago that her opinion never really counted.

With a fleeting glance backwards, she thought the password clearly as she stepped through the wall. He was there, waiting.

"Weasley," he spluttered, turning quickly to glare angrily at her, "What are you doing here?"

She had known he wouldn't see the imperceptible differences in her appearance, the tiny hints at a resentful attempt to make herself attractive. He wouldn't notice the lip gloss or the eyeliner. He wouldn't see her skirt as her best one, or her shirt as the one with the least frays. But it didn't stop her from wanting him to think she was beautiful.

There would be no calming charms today, she had decided that his anger would be fitting. And no weak obliviate, this was something that he had to remember.

But it was the first time he had spoken to her in weeks, and she felt the tightness in her chest and the fear growing from the base of her spine. She tried not to shake. It had been too long since she had heard her name on his lips. She vaguely wondered if she ever would again.

Ginny did not look at him, casting her eyes to the stained stone floor, as she fought off the bitterness rising from her stomach. "Draco Malfoy," she said in a clipped tone, exactly as she had prepared, "As the was has come to an end, it is the Order's decision to turn you over the Ministry of Magic to be incarcerated permanently in Azkaban."

She paused, twisting her hands and glancing away, why did he have to suddenly look so defeated, so accepting? "Though the date of your transport has yet to be set, you will be removed from the Order's care within the next two weeks."

He was still silent, still angry, as he stared at her. She found that somewhere along the way she had started to miss his anger, and she welcomed the emotion in a futile hope that they could fall back into their old skins and start again, years ago, long before this awful mess.

His face was contorted painfully–a strange mixture of murderous rage and horrible sadness. Ginny was momentarily afraid that he would explode. And she had to remind herself that he wouldn't touch her. That he couldn't know that no one would find her body for weeks.

But slowly, the expression faded into a tense calm. She glanced at her hands and felt the tingling in her fingers. Accidental wandless magic.

"What time is it, Weasley?" he asked, his eyes no longer on her, but staring intently at the wall across from his makeshift bed.

"Time?" she asked, momentarily confused before glancing down at her watch. Her watch that used to be Draco's, handed over with a desperate whisper and a desire to speed time. He didn't see it, though, and she sighed in relief, covering it up again before he could. "It's just after one in the afternoon."

"What day?"

"Umm… Monday, the seventeenth of November."

He nodded, musing, "I've been here for–"

"Six months, seven days," she said softly.

He didn't move on the bed, and Ginny barely heard him whisper, "Felt a lot shorter."

She didn't tell him about the other things he had given to her.

…

Draco watched her go with the ease of someone who has watched too many possibilities slip from his fingers. He waited until he was sure she was gone before he latched onto a memory. "Ginny," he whispered.

The red hair was the temperature of the sun, spreading heat over skin where it touched him, branding lines of life into his surface. It was soft to the touch, tangled between fingers and it stuck to sweaty skin.

It gave him color.

…

Ginny leaned closer to the fireplace, "When are they coming to get him?"

Ron's face paled a little bit, but she couldn't really tell, "You'll get your orders from the Auror; he'll be there soon, I just wanted to give you a head's up."

"They're taking him now?"

Ron sighed and shook his head, "Gin, I have to go, I'll see you tomorrow at home, okay?"

Ginny's eyes widened, "Ron, what's going on? Are they transporting him tomorrow?"

Ron frowned at her, "Gin," he paused, starting determinedly in the other direction, "They're not transporting him at all."

"Are–are they…?"

But Ginny never got an answer to her non-question, Ron's face was gone from the fireplace, the last expression she had glimpsed a resigned mixture of righteousness, regret, and shame.

…

Draco fell asleep not long after, torn between a desire to say goodbye to this prison and the horror of accepting a new one. He was having trouble believing that he had really ever done anything horrible enough to get there. He couldn't remember any excessive torture or murder. He couldn't remember relishing death the way that some of his friends did.

In fact, he could hardly remember any of the war. After he took the mark, everything just sort of faded into a blur of running, fighting, and running again. Before he had been angry at his imprisonment, but now he doubted his relative innocence. He stared at his hands, clean and perfect except for the nails bitten to the quick. How much blood was really on them?

They were becoming clearer now, the varying shades of red.

He didn't notice the wall shimmer again.

"You should stop that."

Startled, Draco glanced up. Ginny Weasley was standing there, looking half hopeful and half worried.

"Stop what?"

"Stop thinking, it's bad for you," she replied, crossing from the wall in three short steps and sitting on the edge of the bed.

"Look, Weasley, I know that thinking isn't your strong point," he said, briefly confused by her proximity, "But for some of us, it's all that we can do."

She sighed, mumbling something under her breath. He glared at her. "You knew it would be what way, exactly?"

"Nothing. Just… stop."

"No."

"Draco," she said softly, "You're going to be ...leaving tomorrow."

It was the way she said his name that made him snap, and he hardly realized the way she said leaving.

…

He was still covered in blood, that was the first thing he realized. He had been running for four and half days, and his clothing had become crusty with the blood. His hair was brown with it. He didn't want to look in a mirror.

There were voices to his left. "What are we going to do with him?" One asked.

Draco looked up, squinted through bars; Harry Potter was standing there with a tall stranger.

"Does it matter? He'll talk, of course, and after, we can just stick him away until the end."

"I guess we're lucky we found him first."

"Yeah, no telling what condition he'd be in if the Death Eaters had actually managed to catch up with him in Dover."

"That would have been pretty…"

A short laugh and then the voices and the men disappeared, and Draco was left, sitting silently, remembering whose blood it was that covered him head to toe.

…

"Draco?" she asked quietly.

"Did you think it would make me a better person?" he growled harshly.

"What?" she said, standing quickly.

"Did you think that it would make it better, taking them from me?"

When he looked up, she took a startled step back, "Draco…" she said warningly.

He stood, straightening himself until he towered over her. "Talk."

But she didn't, instead, she threw herself at him, jumping up and wrapping her body around his before kissing him.

He almost didn't have time to rebalance the two of them before lips and tongues and teeth met in fury. He could taste her fear and her impotence. He could taste her goodbye.

And with the kiss, he could feel little fingers pulling on the edges of his mind, things he wanted back, memories he needed.

They finally tumbled backwards onto the bed when his knees gave out, too weak to support them while she was purring against his lips.

"Gin," he murmured, her red hair falling against his face, her warm body sending spikes of fire through his own. Her lips traced the tendons in his neck, traveling down, finding his collarbone. His body arched upwards, momentarily lifting both of them from the mattress.

It was a few seconds before he could find his voice. "Gin, no," he whispered, pushing her off of him. She fell lightly onto the floor, looking both surprised and ashamed.

"I'm sorry," she whispered, "I am so sorry, I promised I wouldn't…"

"You have to tell me."

She bit her lip, "I can't."

And then she was gone.

…

Draco was dreaming, he must have been, because he knew wasn't insane and there was no other reason for the overpowering snap of his mind. He could see the magic holding him together, the charms hiding the past, protecting his sanity. He could see what was hidden.

"Weasley? You're my guard?" he asked incredulously. "Not my decision," she said, biting her lip.

"You can give us names," Potter said angrily, "Or we can take them from you." "Why don't you try?" Hardly a second later and he was flying–back into the past, bodies, death, his father, the Dark Lord, Death Eaters, blood, death, death, death. Pain. Draco's body twitched and the spell was dropped. "Not bad, Potter."

"Draco, what are you doing?" she asked, her body shaking beneath his touch. "Just testing the waters."

"Why did you run?" "Why do any of us run? I wanted to get away, I wanted to hide." An angry glare. "Hidden things are supposed to stay hidden," Draco snarled suddenly, "Why did you have to come looking?"

"I don't suppose you understand justice." "Is that what you would call this?" Red hair falling over curious eyes and naked flesh. "No, Draco, I call this something else entirely."

"Why?" "Because I wanted to. Because I had to."

"But… why?"

Torn, Draco was torn. Open. Shuttered. Safe. Warm. There was heat and passion and longing and lust. There was regret, there was remorse, and there was love.

There was a phoenix, born again from ashes, remembering only his master, his lover.

There was pain and there was death and there was red. There was so much red.

Draco woke as if he had never been asleep, and the dreams returned to reality. He gasped and turned to the wall. I am NOT insane was the last coherent thought he had before he fell back asleep.

…

The Auror they sent turned out to be none other than Dean Thomas. His face wore lines that shouldn't have been there, and Ginny could imagine that if he saw himself on the street, he would have wanted to draw that face.

He was tense and the only expression was a simple sad smile that he directed at her when he first arrived. "Ginny," he said, "How are you?"

"About as well as you, it appears."

It was hardly morning, but Ginny hadn't slept anyway. She had stared at the wall, imagining Draco twist and turn, imagining his brain shatter with what she had refreshed. She wanted nothing more than to give them all back. She shouldn't have taken them away; she hadn't saved him after all.

The plan, she should have just stuck with the plan. It was her edits, her deviations, her liberties taken that led everything to fall apart, that had brought so many things crashing down time and time again.

Dean shrugged with one shoulder, a simple gesture. "Ron told you I was coming?"

"Yeah. Are you… taking him today?" She asked, wearily comfortable with the euphemism.

Dean shook his head, "Tonight at the earliest, maybe tomorrow. Harry said you might want to do it, I thought I would ask."

Ginny's shoulders trembled, but Dean didn't notice. "Yes, I would."

Dean nodded, "I'll be back later to relieve you, there won't be any paperwork or anything like that. With the Ministry still in shambles, the Order thinks that keeping it all quiet is probably best." One more hidden death, she frowned, swept under the carpet with the dust and ignored, a murder that had never happened because of pretenses. Ginny found herself sighing. It wouldn't have been the first time.

He placed a wand on the table, twelve and a half inches, one of her own creations, "This is charmed only for you. You know what it's for."

And Ginny did know, she knew better than anyone. Before, she had worked in spells, charms specifically, for the battlefield. She had designed it, and she knew what it would do.

Ginny nodded, accepting the veiled order, and not taking her eyes off of the wand as Dean disappeared into the fire.

She swallowed heavily and picked it up. An eerie green spark shot out of the end. It was still charged. She shivered internally, and stood. There was nothing else to do or say.

…

"I did it because you stopped sleeping," she said after she had entered the room. He was awake, staring at her uncertainly, as if being locked away had taken away his ability to act. "I did it because you screamed when you woke up and because you were doomed to be forgotten."

He was standing slowly, "I don't need to know."

"I didn't do it to make you a better person," she said softly, "I wouldn't have done that."

Draco was still staring at her, but she refused to meet his eyes, she was afraid of this man, she was afraid of what he had become.

"And why not?"

She glared at the floor, "You know why not."

His feet appeared in the corner of her eye, and she slammed her eyes shut. A hand reached out, pushed the hair from her face, tilted her chin up. She could feel his breath on her face as he spoke. "No, Weasley, I really don't."

She sighed, an admission in its own right. "Because I loved you."

And then it didn't matter that she was afraid, it didn't matter that they were both doomed. It didn't matter because he was kissing her, and his hands were on her back, and she was lost.

She forgot what she was supposed to do and how she was supposed to do it, and he remembered.

He remembered the beginning and their fights and the end and their promises. Their kisses and their skin meeting in the dark. He remembered her whispered concessions and the looks on her face that predicted different sorts of weather. He remembered the taste of the memory potion after he took the vial from her, and he remembered handing it over, half-empty, and her pouring the rest onto the floor. He remembered her tears and the way she had apologized.

Then it went further back, to interrogations and battles. To deaths that he had watched, that he had applauded, that he had caused. He was choking on memories as his hands skated across the skin of her back and her stomach and her legs.

But he also remembered loving her. He remembered the pull and the need and the desire. He remembered a different sort of pain, the pain of lost souls running into one another at speed. He remembered their collision and then he relived it.

He forgot that he had forgotten and his apologies spilled over his lips, burning into her skin.

And then she kissed him again, and he decided that maybe none of it had really mattered anyway.

…

She was fingering the wand again, when he woke up. The charmed wands were dangerous objects. Charged with extra power, power that was intoxicating, power that was addictive. Ginny could already feel it becoming a part of her. She could already feel the energy sinking into her skin. She knew it was a dangerous object, but it held the same sort of pull as a magnet, attached to her, pulling her back towards it.

That was part of the charm as well, she knew, but it still had a psychological affect.

She whispered a few words and felt it heat up beneath her palm. Then she dropped it onto the floor.

"You should just do it," Draco said, sitting up beside her. "I wouldn't stop you."

"I know," she whispered.

"You have to do it, you know?"

"There are other options," she snapped, standing up. She pulled on her knickers and her shirt, gathering the rest of her clothing.

"Nothing comes to mind."

She ignored him and crossed through the wall. The wand was sitting on the floor by his bed–he wondered if it had been deliberately left.

His stomach sank. This was not how he had imagined any of it. But he knew, given the options, that the only thing he could do was pick it up. It was his freedom, and hers, in a single spell.

His fingers closed around the wood and he waited.

"God damn it, Gin," He shouted, hurling the wand as hard as he could against the shifting wall when nothing happened. She had deactivated it.

…

It had all started three weeks ago, Ginny thought, as she packed her bag. Well, actually it had started six months and eight days ago. Draco had come, floating in his sleep, directed by the wand of none other than Harry Potter. Harry had smiled at her, saying something too quiet for her to hear to the man next to him. Ginny recognized him in the way that he was spelled to be unrecognizable, and then she had received her orders and the two had left.

"Keep him alive," was all that was said to her. And so she did.

She took advantage of his magical sleep in the first few days, cleaning him of the blood that seemed crusted to his skin, and when he had awoken, three days later, his icy fingers may have left bruises on her wrist, but even his cuticles had been spotless.

Things had more or less progressed from there. It was easy to come down and talk to him, wandering through the strange corridor with no doors and twelve cells. And their conversations had come easily enough, as their barbs and old insults gained new meaning and new implications.

They never spoke directly about the war, and she never asked for an explanation. He told her that he had run away and she accepted it as it was. "Nothing was going to work out to my advantage. Once I realized that, there was no reason left to stay and every reason to leave." A desperate action from a terrified man.

Sometimes, he would ask her about how she ended up here, in the safe house that was no longer a safe house, but more a hiding place for helpful informants the Order could come to in desperation. She would tell him that she had been unnecessary, but he knew she was lying.

She wouldn't tell him that she had buckled when she had discovered the perfect charm. She wouldn't tell him what it could do, what it would do, and the way that she tried to destroy it. The Order had pried it from her in one more of those desperate moments, and Ginny was left with nothing but the knowledge that her ingenuity had created piles of fleshy bonfires on both sides of the battle-line.

Suffice to say, the two of them were drawn to one another, perhaps for all the wrong reasons, but there were at least reasons for it. And for the past few months, it had been pretty simple.

And then three weeks ago, it had fallen apart.

Voldemort had been killed. Destroyed and scattered and lost. He had been burned and then burned again and then the ashes of the ashes had been burned again and then scattered across different sacred magical locations. Ginny had half-listened to Hermione explaining it, torn between feeling overjoyed and feeling distinctly put out.

Of course, this sort of fabricated, exaggerated peace never lasts forever, but Ginny was already missing it.

So she had convinced herself of her options. She had brewed the potion, using the first evacuated cell. But she had been torn, and ended up brewing an incredibly weak version of a potion for the loss of years, not months. She hadn't regretted it though, watching him getting angry, righteous, and then, finally, sleeping peacefully.

After that, she had obliviated him every time she came to drop off food, and had used the extent of her knowledge of calming charms. She was determined not to have to deal with his anger. Determined not to see his fear. They were not a part of anything, and the only thing they reminded her of was how much she loved him.

And it worked. It worked until the second to last prisoner, a woman who was just a skeleton covered in a thin stretch of skin was carted off. Then Ginny was forced to face the fact that he was leaving.

But she had already said goodbye to the man she had loved.

Ginny sighed, as she folded her last shirt. She wouldn't say goodbye to him again.

A million ways to fake a death, and only one incredibly complicated way to identify a cremated corpse. So she set about doing just that. And when she went back to the cell in a few hours, she didn't care if she had to hit him over the head and drag him away. She would not kill him, at least, not for the Order's reasons.

She would do what she had done from the beginning, she would keep him alive.

Maybe she would even save him. But, more importantly, maybe she would save herself.

…

"Gin," Draco said, looking up at the pale sooty woman who walked through the wall. "You have to do it. This is supposed to be an execution. You have to-."

"Shut up, Draco," she growled, grabbing him by the arm. "We are leaving right now, and if you argue I will hit you over the head with a brick."

Draco found himself fighting a smirk at her determination. "Ginny, we can't, what if you're caught? I can't risk you for me."

"Oh stop feeling sorry for yourself, it's out of character," she said. Her voice had taken on an infuriating unconcerned tone and she tossed the few belongings he had–a toothbrush, a spare shirt, some spare boxers (all cotton, cheap bastards), and a pair of socks into the bag he hadn't noticed she was carrying. He fell silent and watched her. More memories sparked at the edge of his mind. She always got what she wanted when it came to him.

He watched as she deactivated the wards and then followed her into the corridor. It wasn't until they got to the stairs that he realized what six and a half months of no movement could do. He struggled to make his legs move, and eventually managed to follow her into the naturally lit upstairs.

His eyes burned in the sun and she turned and looked back at him, her body framed in light, and for a second, he knew that this was the only way that any good could come of anything.

And maybe this–this that was fated to be an ending, an end of the war, an end of the fight, and end of his life–maybe it didn't have to be. Or maybe it was just another desperate action by a terrified man. She leaned forward and kissed him gently on the lips, her fingers tangling in the hair at the base of his neck, and he decided that it didn't really matter.

"Let's go," she whispered. He followed.

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