Title: Unsaid
Rating: Um... Violence, sex, depressing thoughts, and other unlovely things ahead. R to be safe.
Summary: Ginevra Weasley was the one to watch them come together... all three of them. HP/GW/DM.
Author's Notes: So yeah... I stayed up an hour after I went to bed last night thinking through the plot for this story.
Chapter Two
Take me with you.
Ginny says it just a moment too late, too sleep-fuzzed to realize that he has already gone, after the door has fallen closed behind him and he can pretend to not hear.
The sheets are tangled around her legs. She has been here as she has been every other night, waiting for him to leave the common room and come to theirs, for an hour. He only comes in to grab a cloak and wrap it around himself before leaving to the graves.
She kicks the sheets loose impatiently and tosses the blanket back. The air is cold and she is wearing only knickers and an old shirt, but she gets up and picks her way across the chilled floor anyway. Her discarded jeans are lying next to the wardrobe and she pulls them on and finds last year's Weasley sweater (turquoise and gold, and she revels in the atrociousness).
The hallways are quiet at this time of night, except for the occasional ghost drifting past who will eschew a nod for a quiet greeting. Colin Creevey always gives her a sad smile. He is quieter in death, and Ginny cannot help but think sometimes, guiltily, that it's an improvement.
She follows the shortest path down to the main entrance to Hogwarts, walking quickly, and catches a glimpse of Harry as the door falls shut behind him. Moonlight streams in. She cannot follow him across the (now almost bare) grounds to the lake without being seen, and she doesn't want him to know she's watching. She wants to know what he does, on these long nights sitting there next to the dead. The Astronomy Tower offers the best view, and isn't far if the staircases cooperate.
Snape is only buried on the grounds because Harry protested. His tomb is on the far side of the lake, far from either Dumbledore or the graves of the students and faculty (and others; former students and parents) that died. Ginny refuses to visit the graveyard. Fred's tombstone – she has never seen it, but George got drunk one summer evening and told her – says "We are proud of him." She does not think she can stand over her brother's body and have pride in his death. Something about it seems indecent.
There is a breeze that cuts right through her sweater as she steps closer to the parapet, casts the charm that freezes air in front of her and focuses it like a lense. Harry is at Dumbledore's grave tonight. Ginny leans forward in almost-fascination, squinting at the dark figure sitting in the shadow of the tomb.
That is how she misses the noise of footsteps coming up the stairs and across the tower until they are almost upon her. She spins, thinking irrationally of the Carrows, and almost breathes a sigh of relief at seeing only Malfoy. Almost. It is the first time she's seen him outside of meals since Harry hit him three days ago.
"Weasley," he comments, hands deep in his robe pockets and shoulders up near his ears. A faint yellowing bruise mars his cheekbone – she'd suspected he was using a glamour during the day; growing up with four brothers she knew that nobody got hit that hard and came out unscathed.
"Malfoy," she replies, cancelling the air-freezing charm with a wave of her wand. "What do you want?"
"Nothing." He pulls a square box from his pocket – after a moment Ginny identifies it as muggle cigarettes, which Hermione's father smokes (and Hermione can carry on a rant about the unhealthiness for hours). Malfoy removes one from the package and places it between his lips a little too carefully, dropping the pack back in his pocket while lighting the one in his mouth with the tip of his wand.
He comes to the wall and looks down and across the grounds, and after a moment Ginny joins him. The moon is on the cusp of fullness and she can almost see the blades of grass at the base of the tower in the harsh white light.
After a moment she asks him if she may have one. He hands it to her silently and lights it for her, cupping his hand against the breeze. Halfway through the cigarette (it tastes rather like wizarding smoking tobacco, which Ginny has smoked before but only secretly because "Ladies don't do that") he speaks, and she jumps a bit.
"He doesn't sleep enough."
It is understood that he is speaking of Harry. She doesn't know what to say in reply (it's true, and she hadn't realized it was obvious enough for others to notice), and settles for a noncommittal noise in her throat.
"I apologize for the remark I made. It was..." he takes another drag from the cigarette - "Crude."
"And untrue," he adds almost as an afterthought, a few moments later. "Vincent's mother killed herself a few days ago."
Ginny knows she is meant to say something here (it takes her a few moments to place 'Vincent' as 'Crabbe', and when she does she realizes that this is an explanation for what he said in the hallway), and ends up with a weak, "I didn't know."
"Most people didn't," Malfoy replies, stubbing out his cigarette on the wall with a precise twist. "Thanks for the company, Weasley." He walks towards the door that leads onto the tower.
"Likewise, Malfoy," Ginny says, and means it – being on top of Hogwarts in the middle of the night alone gives her more time to think, and she tries to avoid that these days.
He turns.
"Draco," he states, before beginning down the stairs.
It is only later as she lies there in the dark, waiting for Harry to return and slip into bed with her, that she realizes she knows no more than she did before of Harry's vigils.