Cold

By

Sannikex

Chapter Eight

A/N: Welcome to chapter eight that isn't beta-ed but nonetheless worth your time, hopefully.

Disclaimer: No, I'm not J.K.R. Actually.

"You're awake!"

"You were always good at stating the obvious, Ginny." A half-smile fluttered over his lips. The well-known teasing broke the last walls around her heart. She kneeled beside the bed as sobs wracked her entire body.

"I thought you were dead! How could you?" She pounded his bed with her fists. Draco Malfoy paled.

"I didn't mean to…I didn't think you'd…" She looked up and suddenly anger burned in her red-rimmed eyes.

"That I wouldn't care? That I wouldn't miss you? You self-centred bastard! You were my best friend! I loved you for Merlin's sake!" Her hair had started to escape the bun and fell in vibrant curls around her face. He turned his face away from her.

"No, you didn't, Ginny. Not the way I loved you." The anger died.

"Yes, I did." She whispered. "I just didn't see it." Slowly he registered what she said and when her words made sense she was already out the door.

-----

"Are you sad, Ginny?" Her brother's innocent eyes were staring into hers with sincere concern.

"Yes, Ron. I'm sad."

"Why?" He sat down beside her with his arms around his knees. It looked ridiculous for a man in his thirties to sit that way and it was like salt in her wounded heart to see it. She couldn't help him just as she couldn't help Draco. He'd had a miserable childhood that she could not do anything about and now her brother was having a miserable adulthood. He didn't have any at all.

"I just feel helpless, that's all."

"Why?"

"Because I can't help the people I love."

"But you are doing your best, right?"

"Of course I am."

"But then you can't do more." He looked at her like she wasn't very bright. Her shoulders slumped.

"I guess you're right." She had done everything in her power to make things undone and however she struggled it just was not going to happen. "I can't do more." She looked around the room. Lockheart's corner filled with posters and pictures of himself. Ron's corner filled with pictures of the Cannons and own drawings, toys and things from a stage Ron had passed long ago. "I just wish there was."

-----

"Nurse Connery!"

"Yes, Healer Weasley?"

"Patient 203 is awake now. Make a spell test on him now." The nurse bowed her head and hurried down the corridor. Twenty nervous minutes the nurse returned. In silence Ginny read the test results.

"No!"

-----

The moonlight never reached this room. There were no windows. The only source of light was a bleak candle on the bedside table. The man in the bed was breathing steadily and lay very still but he wasn't sleeping. A sudden noise from the door woke the man from his wake sleeping. A woman stood in the doorway. Her violently red hair hung in a wild tangle, she was shaking and her cheeks bore traces of countless tears.

"Draco…" Her hand on the doorknob trembled from suppressed feelings and her voice trembled from unsuppressed longing. The man mad a sound like someone had just hit him, something between a grunt and a sob. It was a sound of pain. The woman approached the bed in three rapid steps and kneeled beside it. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." She kept repeating the words over and over.

"Shh…" The man put a finger over her mouth. He traced her lips slowly and a keening noise escaped her. He wiped away the tears extremely gently as new ones kept falling like a summer's rain, quietly, softly. Then he bent closer and ever so slowly he sealed her lips with his.

Somehow the air in the room shifted, the tension disappeared, there was relief like breaking through the water surface right before you can't stand it anymore, it was like coming home after being away for a long time, it was like falling through an endless darkness without being afraid of hitting the ground. It was two hearts that had ached with every beat for years becoming one and finding consolation from the pain.

"Hold me. Just hold me." The man opened his arms.

----

The nurse smiled and closed the door to the room quietly. She could do the tests later or Healer Weasley could just do them herself, she was there already. With a grin the nurse considered going down to the nurses' lounge and tell her colleagues that strict and professional Ginevra Weasley was lying in a patient's bed with said very handsome patient's arms around her, sleeping peacefully.

Epilogue

The coffin was lowered slowly into a newly opened grave. A man stepped forward and turned towards the crowd of black clad people. His hair was grey and his eyes a startling green behind round glasses. A faint scar shaped as a lightning bolt could be seen on his forehead.

"We have gathered here today to say our goodbyes to Ginevra Malfoy. She was a truly amazing woman. I would like to tell you a few things about her. Some you might know, some you might not." He cleared his throat and looked out over the crowd. "The first time I met Ginny I have to admit that all I saw was Ron's little sister and I was oblivious to the crush she honoured me with. Ginny was sorted into Gryffindor as she was very brave, smart and kind hearted. We were all happy to have her in our house. She was a talented Quidditch player and she proved her courage numerable times. She went with me to the Department of Mysteries when she was just fourteen years old. She joined the Order the minute she was allowed and celebrated her seventeenth birthday on mission risking her life. She was always kind to those who needed it the most and she became the most capable healer in Britain. She cured her brother after years of research when all of us had given up long ago." A tall man with thin hair and long nose blinked away some tears. The woman beside him squeezed his hand and wiped away her own tears with a handkerchief. The initials on it were H.J.G.W. Hermione Jane Granger Weasley.

"But what illustrates her personality the best is the story about her and Draco Malfoy. I got to know a long time afterwards that she had befriended Draco Malfoy whom we all thought of as a Death Eater in training. She didn't let herself to be fooled by our prejudices and found a friend in him." He swallowed. "She found more than that but a series of misunderstandings led to that Draco Malfoy pretended to die to not have to become a Death Eater or turn his back to his family and his whole life. He lived in exile for years. During this time the Ginny we knew started to fade, something was missing and we couldn't imagine what. We couldn't imagine that she was mourning a love that never had time to grow. Then something happened. Draco Malfoy returned to the living. The Death Eaters had found him and I don't think it's possible for us to imagine what they put him through. But Ginny managed to wake him from the comatose he'd been pushed into. They got a year. The happiest year in her life Ginny told me. She discovered that the Death Eater's had not taken anything for granted. They had placed a very slow working poison in his body if he against all odds would survive the comatose. Even knowing he was dying Ginny married him and did so gladly. Draco Malfoy died very slowly and painfully three months after the marriage. I know that Ginny wanted to follow him then but she brought up her courage once again and lived on for her son. I am honoured to call myself her friend and I know that Ginny is much happier where she is now because that's where Draco is. Goodbye Ginny"

-----

The moonlight glinted in the white blonde hair of the man. His cloak whipped around his tall frame where he stood completely still, looking down on the tomb of his parents. He'd been there many times before together with his mother. But then there had been only one name on the stone and his mother had stood beside him. Tears had been rolling down her face but she had been there. Breathing and living.

"Goodbye mum. Say hello to dad." Then he left.

The stone he'd been looking at shone in the bright light.

Draco Malfoy

1980-2011

And his beloved wife

Ginevra Malfoy

1981-2047

Through Cold and Pain

Nil Volentibus Arduum

All For Love

The End

A/N: This it is. The latin on the tomb is translated to 'faithful to death'. My first attempt at sad ending…How did I do?