"Wait, wait, wait. So you're telling me that the reason everyone is sick is because the water?"
"Yes! That is exactly what I'm saying!" Ginny said, grabbing his robes.
"But how did the water become contaminated?"
"I don't know, but we can use the Pensieve to find out. He doesn't speak much." Ginny said, shaking his robes. Draco nodded his head and they entered the hospital room.
"Miguel, we're going to do some tests on you, okay? We know what's been making you sick, and the tests we're going to do is going to make you feel better." Miguel nodded and Ginny put him in a bewitched sleep. As Ginny took his blood, Draco extracted memories. The blood was sent to Lilly for testing and Ginny and Draco went to the Pensieve in Ginny's office. Slowly they skimmed through the memories before they came across the one they needed.
'The sun was shining, the clouds breaking over the hill outside the town. Miguel was running and laughing with his friends around the owlery, scattering the birds. The air rippled with magic and Miguel and his friends ran to the hill to greet whoever it was. They were not expecting to find a group of people in white coats.
They ignored the children and advanced to the river, pulling something out of a bag. Miguel looked at the strange liquid splashing around in the bottle, a purple tint to it. Miguel and his friends followed the people to the river and watched as they poured what was in the bottle into the water. They quickly walked away from the river and back to the portkey.
The people in the town tried to stay away from the water, but soon their imports from other cities, towns, and villages, stopped coming. They were forced to drink the water. They drank in small amounts, only drinking the bare minimum. Miguel was forced to drink half a cup a day, while his parents drank one or two. Then people started getting sick. When Miguel's friend died, he refused to drink any water. His parents started eating fruit as a replacement, but that wasn't enough. Slowly the people in the town started dying, or getting more and more ill. The village was dying from the inside out.'
Draco pulled back from the Pensieve and shook his head.
"What's wrong?" Ginny asked as she pulled away as well, wiping her face with her robes.
"I know those people, the ones who dumped that, stuff, into the river."
"Really? Draco, that's great!"
"No, Ginny, it's not. They work for the Ministry." Ginny looked at him confused, eyes squinted, brows furrowed. Draco sighed. "I know you're not dumb enough not to see it, you just don't want to. Ginny, the Ministry poisoned that town, and then made sure that their trade was cut off. The Ministry made sure they were going to die."
"But, why would they do that?" Ginny asked, the betrayal evident in her eyes.
"I don't know, but I'm going to find out." Draco said, eyes a steely color Ginny hadn't seen since her years at Hogwarts.
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Blaise sighed as he rubbed his temples. He had just sat through a three hour long meeting about a new safety precaution that the War Defense Program had cooked up. He shook his head. It sounded promising, but crazy. He pulled out a bottle of Scotch from his drawer with a shot glass. He poured himself a hefty shot and downed it, pounding the glass against the desk. He loosened the tie around his neck and sat back before he started to pour himself another glass.
His door burst open, and a fuming Draco Malfoy walked through. He looked at Blaise, a fire burning in his eyes, and the mocha skinned man set the shot glass aside.
"What's going on?" Blaise asked, leaning back in his chair.
"That's what I'm here to find out. You said that the defense program made something?"
"Yeah, what about it, mate?"
"You need to see something." Draco said, his voice slightly cracking. Blaise furrowed his eyebrows but nodded none the less. Draco pulled out the Pensieve and showed Blaise what they'd discovered.
"Now," Draco started, "tell me what they said in that meeting." Blaise was still staring at the Pensieve. He'd seen some pretty horrible things in the war, they all had, but never, ever, had he seen something that terrible. He'd seen people die, and his own mother tortured in front of him. But he hadn't seen anything like this. This took ruthless to the next level.
"They, they said that they came up with a way to keep us safe and to effectively take out an enemy before something, like the last Wizarding War, happened again. They said that they had tested it, but that the test they ran didn't harm anyone. They said it was a last ditch effort if peace couldn't be reached. This, this is just…" Blaise shook his head, anger taking over his peaceful mind.
Blaise had never been one for violence, he had tried to stay out of the war, only siding with the Dark Lord to keep peace for his family. But seeing this made his blood boil.
"I'm going to call them in for questioning." Blaise said. Draco nodded.
"Under one condition." Draco said, determined.
A group of people sat in a large room in the basement of the Ministry. It had brick walls and two lanterns hanging on the walls giving off a faint glow that cast flickering shadows around the room, causing the people to become nervous. Blaise watched them from behind a charmed window with Draco as they watched the group fidget with the long wait.
Ritchie Coote, the head of the War Defense Program, sat on the farthest corner of the table. His curly hair was just as unruly as it was in Hogwarts, and his caramel skin had gotten slightly darker. Him being in this situation was most unbecoming for a former Gryffindor. To his left was former Ravenclaw Daisy Corran, her blonde hair tied up in a ponytail. Next to her was Martine Copplestone, former Hufflepuff, and her tan skin looked rather pale. And the last one in the group was Bowen Duffield, an old housemate, and it disappointed Draco to no end that he took a turn for the worst.
Just as the group of people were most agitated, Ginny slammed open the door, her red hair falling in a curtain around her. Bowen scoffed at the girl as she stood looking down at them. Ginny folded her arms across her chest and stared at them. Five minutes passed and Ginny just stood there, looking at them.
"Is that the best you got, Red?" Ritchie asked, rolling his eyes.
"You know that I haven't even gotten started, Coote." Ginny said icily, her voice a few octaves lower than normal.
"Why are we here?" Martine asked, biting her lip.
"Oh, you know why you're here."
"No, we don't." Martine protested, getting loud with her. Ginny slammed her hands on the table, fire flashing in her eyes as a red blush of anger crept up her neck.
"DON'T GIVE ME THAT RUBBISH!" Ginny practically screamed, making all four of the people in the room lean back in their seats. It also caused Draco and Blaise to take a step back in the other room. "You left a town to die! You left an entire village to suffer, to die from the inside out! You caused them paralysis! You caused them pain, and agony! It shut down every system in their body, slowly suffocating them!"
"We didn't do anything!" Bowen said, standing quickly. Ginny glared at him and waved her wand, causing pictures to fly around each person. Each picture showed what they had caused. People lying in beds, skin taught over small bones of children, sunken eyes of parents watching their babies die beside them. They showed entire families being buried in a second cemetery that they had to make because the first one filled up. They showed babies, lying in cribs, sobbing as slime dripped from their noses, and they showed how the coughing overtook a person once it started. They showed lifeless eyes staring up at them, silently screaming. She stopped one picture in particular, the final breaths of a toddler, no older than three.
"Her name was Illana. She died the day before her birthday." Ginny said, too calm. "Her bones are stuck repeating three, while your bones keep aging, keep growing, keep screaming, MURDEROR!" Ginny's voice gained momentum as she spoke, gaining a strength that she never knew she had. She looked each one of them in the eyes as she kept going. "You can deny it all you want, but we have proof. We have evidence against you. And your conscious, your guilt, will eat away at you for the rest of your lives. And when I personally put you in Azkaban, the dementors will have a feast." Ginny grit her teeth and stared down each person with the best Molly glare she had, which was pretty damn good, until each person looked away from her. She was not going to back down.
"You have no proof." Daisy said, a slight smirk playing on her lips, avoiding the pictures. Ginny leaned down on the table in front of her, inches away from her face, her own smirk gracing her lips, and in that moment, Draco thought she couldn't look more Slytherin, and that suited her.
"Actually, we do." Ginny spat out. She motioned toward the door, and it opened. Soft footfalls shuffled into the room and Ginny set her hands on the small boy's shoulders. She leaned down to his ear and whispered. "Miguel, are these the people you saw dump the stuff in the river?" Miguel looked at each one of them, brown eyes glistening with unshed tears. He sniffed and nodded his head.
"Si, yes. Why?" Miguel asked, his tiny voice filling the room. And that was what broke the camel's back.
Martine broke down crying, and Ginny sent Miguel out of the room where Lilly was waiting to take him back to St. Mungo's.
"We did it!" She blubbered.
"Martine, shut. Up." Ritchie hissed at her.
"No! It's been killing me this entire time! Knowing we did this to those people! We dumped the potion in the river, but we weren't the ones who made it. It was orders, orders from higher up."
"Who? Who told you to do this? Who gave you that potion?"
"Shut up, Copplestone!"
"Seriously! Knock it off!"
"No! It- it was,"
"Senior Undersecretary, Mundungus Fletcher." Daisy said in a quiet voice. Ginny nodded and left the room, letting the pictures fall to the floor around the group of disgraced witches and wizards.
Ginny made her way through the floors of St. Mungo's until she reached the top. Witches and wizards parted at the sight of her, never seeing her this angry before. She was a lioness on the prowl and she was in for the kill. She slammed the door of Mrs. Strout's office. She jumped in her seat and put a hand over her heart.
"Ginny! Dear, you really must knock first."
"Who called us out of Spain?"
"What are you talking about Ginny?"
"Who. Pulled. Us. Out." Ginny grit through her teeth. Mrs. Strout's brows pulled together as she thought about it.
"The Undersecretary. He said it was too dangerous for you to be there any longer. He was worried about the spread of disease." Ginny nodded her head and bit her lip, refusing to give her any information. She didn't know how far this went. And so far the only people that knew anyone else knew were being watched by Draco and Blaise, wands locked away and no contact with the outside world.
"Thank you." Ginny said curtly.
"Why do you ask, dear?"
"I need to put it in my report. Sorry about the sudden intrusion, Draco's been on my arse about getting my reports done."
"It's okay dear." Mrs. Strout said and Ginny exited the room, softly clicking the door closed behind her.
'So, the Ministry really is in on this… Bullocks.' Ginny thought as she went to check on Miguel. When she got closer to the room she hear alarms going off. She sprang into action.
"What's going on?" Ginny yelled as she watched witches running into the room.
"The boy went into cardiac arrest." Ginny's eyes widened and she ran into the room to help. A few minutes later and they had him in stable condition, on a breathing spell. Ginny wanted to cry, looking at him sedated in that bed, looking very small. He was doing so well… Ginny shook her head and apparated to the lab.
"Lilly!" She called, and the woman appeared.
"Yes?"
"Where's the water samples from Spain?"
"Why?"
"We can't wait for the antidote. We need it now, or Miguel, and the rest of the town is going to die." Lilly hesitantly grabbed the vials with the water in it and handed them to Ginny.
"Don't go to Azkaban."
"I don't know what you're talking about. I'm dumping these out." Lilly looked at her skeptically before Ginny apparated back to the Ministry.
"Draco," Ginny said softly from the door of the interrogation room, "I can't let them sit here without proper hydration, and neither can you. We're Healers after all." Ginny set down four glasses of water, which each person took gratefully. They had been in this room with nothing to eat or drink for hours. As they sucked down the water, Ginny couldn't help the smirk on her face. Draco looked curiously at her, and pulled her out of the room.
"What did you do?"
"Miguel went into cardiac arrest a few minutes ago. We need an antidote, and now. They have one, I know they do. No one would send them into this without one, just in case." Then it hit him.
"You poisoned their water?" Draco said, eyes wide. "Bloody Hell Ginny!"
"They're going to give us the antidote." Ginny said, her warm eyes cold. It sent shivers down Draco's spine and he didn't say anything else, just walked back into the room shaking his head. Ginny followed him and plopped down in the chair next to Draco.
"Where's the antidote?"
"What?" Daisy asked, one eyebrow quirked.
"I may be a Weasley, but I'm the smartest Weasley out of the lot. I know no one would trust any of you with something like this without an antidote."
"None of us knows what you're talking about." Ritchie said smoothly.
"Well, in about a week, there will be four funerals." Ginny stood up and left the room, and utter chaos ensued. The two girls started sobbing into each other's arms, and Ritchie turned a ghostly white.
"What did that tart do to us?" Bowen yelled, knocking his chair stood too, wand at the ready.
"She is not a tart. Now sit your arse down and tell me where it is. I've had enough of this rubbish, and I'll gladly leave you all here to rot." Draco said calmly. Bowen sat down and grumbled.
"It's in my office. It's in a black bottle with a white ribbon around the cork. Hurry up." Draco quirked an eyebrow and left the room. Blaise stood behind the window and shook his head at the four in the room in front of him, disgusted with them.
Ginny walked into the hospital, an eerie calm about her. She walked straight to Miguel's room. He had gotten worse overnight and Ginny didn't sleep until they had found the bottle in her hand. She walked through the door and saw Miguel, a pasty white, his dark hair sticking to his forehead with sweat, she could hear his wheezing across the room. She grabbed the dropper from her pocket, undid the cork on the bottle, and opened Miguel's mouth. From what Ritchie told them, this antidote should take immediate effect, and he would cough out whatever slime was in his lungs. He also told them that that's what killed the people. The slime would spread through their respiratory system, clogging veins and arteries until they suffocated. It was a terrible process.
She dropped three drops into his mouth and closed it, massaging his throat to cox the liquid down his throat. About a minute later Miguel was coughing, body racking coughs that sent silent tears down Ginny's cheeks. She patted his back and held him close when all the slime was out of his lungs. He sobbed into Ginny's chest as she pulled him in closer to her, rocking back and forth, crying along with him.
Draco stood in the doorway, watching this unfold. He and Blaise apparated back to Spain last night. There were no survivors, and the river was dried. Miguel was an orphan, and he knew in that moment, that he had just found his new home.
Soooo…. I really hope you liked this chapter. I know Ginny's OOC, but with Miguel being so close to Teddy's age I figured she'd take a motherly approach with him, and I imagined her using every ounce of Molly Weasley she could find within herself. I know there wasn't much Drinny, but trust me, there will be. Alrighty, leave me a review, favorite, something! Thank you for reading.