A/N: Thanks to all the reviewers! I FINALLY got to Oregon…. The move is OVER… what a NIGHTMARE…. Anyway. Here's Chapter 10.
Ginny sat under the harsh light in one of the Ministry interview rooms, sipping at a cup of tea, trying desperately to keep sort out her jangled nerves. She hadn't even seen Harry since he'd left her there a few hours before. A minor Department of Mysteries official with an underbite and a stutter had come in with a quill and a parchment and politely asked if she wanted to give a statement about what she'd witnessed, and after a few moments' thought, Ginny said yes. Astoria had every reason to throw Draco to the rabid flobberworms with her testimony, after all. The least that she herself could do, Ginny decided, was to give an accurate account of what had actually happened in the alley.
After the short interview, a secretary had come in with tea and biscuits, and although the tea was weak and the biscuits dry and flavorless, Ginny accepted both. She hadn't eaten a thing all day since the cinnamon scone in Draco Malfoy's flat.
Draco.
Or rather, two Dracos. One was cheerful and charming, careless and flippant, light and easy and laughing, the one who had woken up next to her in bed that morning and teased her about cherry flavoring and morning-afters and the appalling lack of sex ed classes in the Hogwarts curriculum.
And what happens when boys and girls fancy each other very, very much.
She remembered how she had woken up to find him leaning over her with his pyjama top open, his bare chest radiating warmth, that lazy, sleepy, amused half-smile on his face, his silvery eyes half-lidded, his mouth half-open as if he were just about to kiss her, close, so close, closer still, almost there… Fuck! Ginny chomped viciously on a biscuit and winced as she bit her tongue. Why didn't I just grab him and pull his head down to mine and put a lip-lock on him? Oh, shite. Shite, shite. That's it. I don't know this happened but it has and it's too late to go back now. I really do fancy him! Ginny ran the sore spot on her tongue over and over her lip as if the slight stab of pain would erase the knowledge from her mind, but it was hopeless, as she very well knew. She had crossed the Rubicon of desire for Draco Malfoy, and at least she had more sense than to make any hopeless attempts at paddling back to the barren shore in a leaky rowboat. And yet…
And yet there was that other Draco, the one who had emerged when the sunny mask suddenly dropped. The one with eyes like ice and fingers like iron and a flat, deadly voice, the one who'd seemed, who had been, ready to kill if his orders weren't followed. Get your hands off her, Potter. Don't you touch her. Never touch her again. Never lay a hand on Ginny Weasley, ever again. And then, to her… You wait for me. Wait for me, Ginny.
Two Draco Malfoys, and Ginny had seen him change from one to the other before her eyes. Or at least she thought she had. Now that some time had passed, doubts were really starting to creep in. Trying to match the two just seemed so damn impossible; it was like dressing up Voldemort in drag and setting him the task of singing Don't Leave Me This Way on karaoke night at Illusions. Speaking of which, Colin had invited her to go Thursday next; all of his friends had declared that they really, really wanted to hear her version of Stand By Your Man, especially in a Tammy Wynette wig, although it was a crime to cover up that hair…
Ginny giggled. The sound was rather unsettling when she heard it echoing off the concrete walls. Maybe I'm becoming hysterical at last, she thought.
The door opened, and Ginny desperately hoped that it was some minor Ministry official or other telling her that she could finally go home. Gods, but how desperately she needed to get out of this cramped little room with its low ceiling and glaring greenish lights and make herself a cup of very strong coffee and just think, and think, and think about what she wanted to do now.
But it was Harry Potter instead.
"What are you doing here?" Ginny blurted.
He sat in a chair on the opposite side of the table without answering her.
"I told that other Auror exactly what happened in that alley, Harry," she said. "I suppose Astoria Greengrass said that Malfoy tortured small children in front of her?"
"No, your accounts pretty much square with each other," said Harry. He put down a cup of coffee and a copy of the Daily Prophet on the table next to him, absently. Except that it wasn't really absent at all, thought Ginny. It was the same copy Astoria Greengrass had been carrying, the same copy that she herself had looked at. It was open to the Rita Skeeter story.
"I don't have anything more to say. Can I go now?" Just the presence of that paper was making her nervous. She tried not to look at it. She didn't want to see what the little black-and-white Draco and Ginny were doing.
Harry drummed his fingers on the table. "I'd really like to hear if you do know anything more, Ginny."
"What are you going to do, throw me into solitary confinement and feed me on bread and water until I confess?" snapped Ginny. "I'm telling you that I don't know any more. You know more than I do, I'm sure. So are you going to tell me what you know?"
She didn't expect for a second that Harry would answer her, but he nodded.
"All right, Ginny. Part of what Malfoy told Astoria Greengrass is the truth. He's under investigation, all right. Actually, the investigation never really ended. It was just switched to the Department of Mysteries after he was cleared by the Wizengamot. We weren't about to ever give up as long as there was something to find. And we did find it last night."
"Are you going to tell me what it is?"
"Ginny, I really can't tell you all that much. I'm not allowed to. But Aurors did pick up activity right around his estate. Only a former Death Eater could've cast some of those spells, even though we can't tell exactly what the spells were, because a witch or wizard would need to have the Dark Mark in order to be able to do it. That's why we were trying to find Malfoy. Astoria Greengrass too, because the Department of Mysteries had information that she was with him."
"But none of that proves anything," said Ginny, grasping at straws. "You said as much yourself. You don't even know what the spells were, or what they did. If you actually had decent proof, you would've been able to take Malfoy in. All you have is suspicion."
"Yeah, that's about the size of it," said Harry, "as far as what we can prove. But Ginny, we know something happened last night. The only question is exactly what it was."
"Well, I don't see what it has to do with me," said Ginny.
Harry's face twisted. "You were just found in Draco Malfoy's… presence, Ginny."
"Whose presence I choose to be in is my own business, Harry," said Ginny. "You can't exactly arrest me for that."
"No, of course not." Harry was silent for a moment. "But what did Malfoy mean by what he said? 'Wait for me, Ginny'?"
"I really don't know," said Ginny. "Do you want to give me Veritaserum, Harry? Because I'll say exactly the same thing. I simply don't know. I don't know Malfoy very well at all."
"You seemed to know him well enough to wrap yourself round him in that alley!" snapped Harry. "What were you, a bloody tourniquet?"
Oh, shite, here we go."That didn't mean a thing. It was just a hug."
"Right," muttered Harry. "An innocent hug between friends. I'll just bet it was."
Ginny took a deep breath. "Harry, do you honestly think that means I'd cover up that Malfoy was doing anything like starting up the Death Eaters again, if I had any proof at all that he was doing it? Do you think I don't remember Tom Riddle and Voldemort and the last battle at Hogwarts—do you think I don't remember Fred-" Her throat closed up, and she couldn't go on. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the photograph-Ginny covering her eyes with her hands. Photograph-Draco shook his head and stroked her shoulders, her arms, her hair, and the little Ginny finally let him hold her in his arms. She rocked back and forth, her head against his chest.
"I know you remember Fred," Harry said softly. "So do I."
"And do you know, Harry, do you have any idea, how much I hate and despise Lucius Malfoy?" she demanded. "I think I hate him more than all the others put together. He terrifies me more than anyone else, and I hate the feeling of being afraid more than any other feeling I know."
Harry looked at her strangely. "He's dead, Ginny."
"I know. I just—" She broke off. How could she explain the nightmare flashes that kept flickering through her head?
"I hate everything and everyone connected with the Death Eaters, or with dark magic, or with any kind of rebirth of that cause, more than I could ever even describe to anyone," she said, more calmly. "But Draco Malfoy has changed, Harry. I'm sure you don't want to hear about it, but he has. Just the idea of him being involved in any kind of Death Eater activity now is too ridiculous for words."
"If you don't know him well enough to know what he's talking about when he tells you things, then you don't know him well enough to guess whether he could be a secret Death Eater or not," said Harry.
"I do think I know him well enough for that," she said reluctantly. "But what he said in that alley didn't make any more sense to me than it did to you."
"Maybe," muttered Harry. "But Ginny, whatever it was that happened in Dorset last night, it was Dark magic, and Draco Malfoy was behind it, I know he was. Nothing you can say can change that.'
Ginny bit her lip. She was really treading on dangerous ground now, but this had to be said. "Harry, you know about that story in the Prophet." Even Harry can't be obtuse enough to not know. It's sitting in front of him on the table! I was…uh… with Draco last night, right in London. That proves he couldn't have been behind whatever it was, if anything even happened in the first place. He couldn't have been anywhere near that Malfoy estate—oh!"
Over their heads, a light shattered. Harry didn't even seem to notice. Ginny did. He's doing uncontrolled magic again, she realized. I don't remember him doing that since he was fifteen years old. He really is getting worked up.
"Damn it, Ginny, that Prophet story's already come up in meetings over this case," he said. "Of course it has. But it doesn't prove anything, I don't care what anybody says. It doesn't. Malfoy has operatives everywhere. All he would've had to do would be to give the word, and then Death Eaters would have been following his orders down in Dorset while he was out clubbing with you— and just what the hell were you doing with him, anyway?"
"It wasn't anything like what that story claimed." Ginny ignored photograph-Draco's indignant look. "You know exactly how Rita Skeeter is. You can't trust a single thing she writes. And I don't like your tone of voice, Harry."
"I want to know."
"If you must know, I was at that club with Blaise Zabini, not Malfoy. I had a bit too much to drink, and Malfoy didn't want me to go home with Blaise. He can be a bit…" Ginny made a vague gesture with a hand.
"Very noble of Malfoy. If it's a gay bar, then why was he worried about what Zabini might do? Or does he bat for both teams?"
"Look, Malfoy was only trying to help," said Ginny.
"And I suppose he was only trying to help when he had you up against his car with his tongue stuck down your throat and one hand up your skirt!"
"That's not how it was at all," said Ginny hotly.
"Then how was it?" demanded Harry.
"If you have to know, I was kissing him!"
In the silence that followed, thought Ginny, you could have heard a pair of gold satin knickers drop.
That may not have been the most diplomatic thing to say to Harry right now, she thought.
But he was already shaking his head. The idea that she'd offered herself up for snogging to Draco Malfoy was one that just couldn't enter Harry Potter's world, so it was impossible, unthinkable; oh, she knew all too well how his mind worked.
"Malfoy was taking advantage of you," said Harry.
"He wouldn't do that," Ginny insisted.
"The hell he wouldn't," said Harry. "I know what Malfoy is. I've always known. He's never fooled me. He would have shagged you right then and there if he could have got away with it, Ginny. Shite, what am I saying? I'll bet he did do it, the moment he got you into the back seat of his car, and you were too drunk to stop him or even remember anything about it!"
"He wouldn't do that, Harry!" Ginny repeated. "And he didn't."
"Yeah, well, I damn well think he would and did. It was the perfect opportunity."
"Malfoy never would, he's not that kind of—"
"The fuck he isn't." Harry studied her face. "What makes you think you can be so sure?"
Photograph-Draco was lunging forward, his little grayscale face filled with murderous rage, trying his best to take futile swings at Harry outside of the picture frame, and photograph-Ginny was shaking her head, mouthing no, no, no, never,, but Ginny somehow didn't think that Harry would take any of that as evidence. She looked at the floor. She was sure that Draco wouldn't have taken advantage of her, but she truly did not want to explain any of the reasons why to Harry Potter, her childhood crush, the boy she thought she'd loved for so many years before it all went horribly, hideously wrong.
"Ginny! I'm waiting," said Harry.
"Because I just know, Harry," said Ginny. "Can't you just believe me?"
"You just know," said Harry. "But you can't know, Ginny. You saw that photo. Are you honestly going to tell me that you have any clear memory of what happened last night?"
"Uh—" Shite! This is why I never would've made it in Slytherin. I just can't lie convincingly.
"Then you don't know what Malfoy actually did to you. I thought so." Something very dark and ugly came into his face.
"Look, Harry, you've been a part of the wizarding world since you were eleven years old, but there are some things that you don't know," Ginny said steadily. "Women's things. Things that only witches know, because there are some sorts of magic that wizards don't understand. I didn't want to tell you, because some things are secret, but you've forced me to it. There are spells that only women can do in order to find out if anything like rape has happened to them, and I've done them, because dear gods, don't you think I wanted to know the truth about this, too? And if Malfoy had forced me last night, I'm telling you, I'd know. He didn't."
Harry scanned her face again. Then he looked away from her, seeming to collect himself . "All right. I believe you about that, Ginny."
She gave a very small, very secret sigh of relief. Apparently, she could lie well enough to fool Harry.
"I want you to do something," he said.
"What?" she asked warily. But whatever it is, I'll do it if I possibly can, she thought, grimacing inwardly. I do owe Harry that much. He thinks he's doing the right thing, and he means well. He always has done. The trouble is, he's always thought that meaning well is enough.
Harry leaned forward. "Ginny, I want you go to St. Mungo's and get tested right now."
"Whatever for?" Ginny blinked at him. "Harry, you just admitted that you believe what I said about Malfoy not… uh… doing anything to me. So what would be the point of a rape test?"
"I don't mean that sort of test," said Harry. "I mean one of the new conclusive tests for an Imperius charm."
All the breath went out of Ginny as if Harry had hit her in the stomach. "A—a what? An Imperius charm? Harry, you've got to be joking!"
"I think that's what Malfoy did to you," Harry said flatly. "I think you're under Imperius right now."
She stood up. "That's it. I'm leaving."
"You can't," said Harry. "And if you were yourself, Ginny, you wouldn't want to."
"I am myself! And you're absolutely barking mad!"
"Then why wouldn't you at least want to convince yourself that you're right? That it isn't true, what I'm saying about Malfoy?" Harry challenged her.
"Because—" Ginny stopped. Because it can't be true was the phrase that had leapt to her lips, but for some reason, she hadn't been quite able to say it.
I haven't been myself today, she thought. Not from the moment I woke up in Draco Malfoy's flat and saw him next to me in bed. And yet.. .and yet even that's not quite true, is it? Sometimes she thought that she had been walking a road that had been leading further and further away from herself, imperceptibly, and that she couldn't even put her finger on when she'd made the wrong turning.
But Draco Malfoy couldn't have put her under the Imperius curse. Couldn't have done. She knew what that was like. She knew worse, because she'd been put under Imperius more often than strictly necessary in Defense Against the Dark Arts class during her sixth year under the Carrows, and they'd known how to cast that curse if any witch or wizard ever did. It was still a bad joke next to what she'd endured during her first year.
"Wouldn't you want put any man in Azkaban who did that to you, let alone Malfoy? Think of what Tom Riddle did, wasn't that like Imperius?" Harry asked angrily.
"Harry, I am thinking of it!"Ginny said passionately. "Yes, that was like Imperius, but that doesn't mean that you know what it was like. You can't know. You'll never understand. Voldemort didn't touch my body, he couldn't, but he raped my mind when I was only eleven years old, Harry. Eleven years old! And I know all about that test—"
Ginny broke off. We only want to find out the truth, Ginny dear, her mother had said. We have to know exactly what happened. We need to know so that we can help you. Please, dear, let us help you. And then they'd taken her to St. Mungo's the summer after her first year, before she'd even turned twelve years old, for this same test. She remembered everything about it, everything. She'd been so terrified before it happened, expecting the worst, and then all that the mediwitches had done was to scan her clothed body and head with a wand. But it hardly seemed as if it could have been worse if they'd stripped her naked in front of everyone she'd ever known. Tom Riddle hadn't touched her physically, they assured her over and over again. She'd heard a mediwitch whisper to her mother that he'd tried, and that if he could have done, he would have. But the shade of Voldemort hadn't succeeded in taking any kind of coherent form. That was why they hadn't done a rape test; there would be no point. But she felt so dirty that she wasn't sure she could ever be clean again. She were so many things she had never told anybody; Tom Riddle leering down at her, whispering about all the things he wanted to do to her, all the ways he planned to use her once he took shape just enough to force himself on her bound, helpless body lying on the floor of the Chamber of Secrets. And under the Imperius test, they had all been revealed.
Only chance had saved her from every one of those twisted, evil fantasies taking place in the flesh. As terrible as it was to live with them all having been implanted in her mind, Ginny knew that if Voldemort's teenaged self had actually done them to her, it would have been infinitely worse.
And… and Harry. Harry had saved her.
Ginny looked at his flushed, furious face, and tried as hard as she could to understand what was behind it. Was she being unfair to him now? Was he showing that he cared about her in the only way that he knew, the only way that he could, just as he had done then? But she'd known for a very long time that if Harry had arrived even a little later when she was eleven years old, it would have been too late. She'd known since she was sixteen years old that Ron was the one who'd really tried to find her then, not Harry, because her brother had finally confessed it to her when he knew that things were moving too fast between her and Harry. That piece of news had made her pull back from Harry in some indefinable way for a long time. In fact, she seriously wondered now if it was why she hadn't seriously tried to lose her virginity with him until after her eighteenth birthday.
"Then this is exactly why I want you to be tested for Imperius," Harry was saying. "This is why I can't believe you'd defend Lucius Malfoy's son like this. Ginny, none of that nightmare with Tom Riddle would've ever happened if it hadn't been for just one thing. The Chamber of Secrets wouldn't even have been opened if it wasn't for that one thing."
Ginny closed her eyes. She knew exactly what was coming next.
"Draco's father dropped that diary in your cauldron at the start of your first year," went on Harry. "If he hadn't done that, then you never would've gone through any of it. It was all Lucius Malfoy's fault."
"I know, Harry, I know it was, but he isn't the same person as—"
"And not even ten minutes ago, you told me that you despised people like Lucius Malfoy—no, you said that you despised Lucius Malfoy,, even though he's dead. Ginny, you said that you hated him more than Voldemort. You can't seriously expect me to believe that you willingly snogged his son and let him put his hands all over you, and all but let him shag you on a public street!"
"You're just jealous of him!" Ginny retorted, and was then struck by a sudden and very strong wish that she had bit her tongue off before saying a single word. Nothing, nothing she could have possibly said to Harry at that moment would have been worse. It was true. He knew it, and so did she.
Harry rose from the table, very slowly. His face was as dark as a thundercloud. "You're going to St. Mungo's right now, Ginny."
She began backing away, towards the door. He followed her.
"Uh… I can't do it just now. Maybe I could go later," she said. "I have to go back to my flat right now. Luna doesn't know where I am. I promised I'd meet her for lunch."
"Luna's out in the corridor. All the employees at the Department of Mysteries came in today. They're all working on the Malfoy investigation. She won't worry about you."
"Then nobody can take me to St. Mungo's," said Ginny. "I'll just go home."
"Hermione will take you," said Harry.
"Hermione?" asked Ginny, startled. "What on earth does she have to do with any of this?"
"She works at the Department of Mysteries now," said Harry.
"Whenever did she start? I thought she was still organizing S.P.E.W."
"She joined about six months ago, I think."
"But I haven't even seen her in almost two years, and the last time I did, we had a bloody awful fight! I don't want to go anywhere with her. I don't even want to see her. Tell her to go away."
"She's going with you, Ginny," said Harry.
How on earth had she ended up backed up against the door with him in front of her? She was holding the paper in her hand now, scrunching it up, and she heard faint cries. She could swear that at least one of them sounded like a tiny sort of cricket version of Draco's voice. She relaxed her fingers.
'Now you listen to me, Harry," she said bravely, hoping that her voice didn't wobble. "I am not going anywhere, and you can't make me. I haven't been charged with anything, I'm not officially a suspect, and under Muggle law, you can't just hold me at the Ministry or force me to do things I don't want to do."
"But we're not under Muggle law," said Harry. "This is still wizarding law. Things haven't changed as much as all that. Anybody who's suspected of being under an Imperius curse can be forced to undergo a test."
"Harry, no matter what you think of Malfoy as a person, he hasn't been convicted of anything," she said, fighting to keep calm. "There's something else you haven't thought of. I'm telling you that Draco Malfoy would never do anything like that. The mediwitches at St. Mungo's won't find anything. But if you accuse Malfoy of that kind of crime, the very worst there is, don't you understand what just that accusation alone might do to him? If the news ever got out, half of the wizarding world would never forget it or forgive him."
"No, they wouldn't, would they?" said Harry with obvious relish.
"Are you saying that you wouldn't even care if it did get out?"
"Malfoy would deserve anything he gets," said Harry.
"But the news couldn't get out about him unless it also got out about me, Harry! Or haven't you thought of what it'll mean to me? What it'll make people think about me?"
"You're an innocent victim," said Harry. "Nobody could possibly think it was your fault."
"Shite! Do you still not understand the wizarding world at all? Don't you know how most wizards think about a woman who's even been accused of having an Imperius put on her by a man, when they were caught together in a photo like this one just the night before?" Ginny stabbed her finger at the Daily Prophet picture.
Is that true? Is it? photograph-Ginny demanded of photograph-Draco, and he nodded sadly.
"It's the witch's fault; that's what they'll say, she must have led him on, she must've provoked him," went on Ginny. "I'll be blamed almost as much as Draco will! Half of them will hate him and half of them will hate me, and you don't even care."
Harry bit his lip. "Ginny—Ginny, listen to me. Ginny, I'd be careful; when—all right, if- we find out that Malfoy's guilty, the news wouldn't get out, it would be kept a secret. I wouldn't do that to you. I care about you too much, I really do, I mean it, but we have to find out the truth. Just go to St. Mungo's for the test, there's Hermione, she'll take you—"
Harry opened the door, and there Hermione was in the corridor, giving Ginny a tentative but still superior smile. She'd been waiting all along. Ginny wondered if she'd been there the entire time.
That was the last straw.
"You don't care about me at all, Harry! You've somehow convinced yourself that you do after all, who the fuck knows how, but you don't—you can't! You haven't even bothered with me for two years except for a few stupid owls, but once you saw that I'd picked up the pieces and moved on, you just had to try to get me back, and you can't get me back—and don't touch me—"
The little black and white Draco and Ginny were trying to climb out of the picture frame now, their arms held out to her, but the flat surface kept crushing them back, and they finally fell against Draco's Mercedes, looking defeated.
Should've known better than to try that, said photograph-Draco.
There's got to be something we can do! said photograph-Ginny.
There isn't, shrugged photograph-Draco. Look, I'd like to help our real selves out as much as you do, but three-dimensional space-time itself is a bit much for even a Malfoy to go up against.
"She's hysterical," said Hermione's soothing voice. "Perhaps I ought to give her something, a Calming draft might be helpful—"
Luna's white, shocked face hovered behind Hermione's, and other than that, the corridor was empty, thank all the gods. Ginny struggled to contain herself, to drag herself back from the edge of screaming and kicking and punching and flying to pieces and doing everything, everything that would confirm their worst fears about her.
"Luna," said Ginny steadily. "I want Luna to come with me to St. Mungo's, too."
They would drag her away if she didn't go quietly, after all. She had to keep her last shreds of dignity. And she had to be cunning and clever, because if she wasn't, she would never find a way out of this catastrophe, She would never find Draco again, and she had to find him again. She knew, now, that she couldn't live with herself if she didn't find a way to warn him about what the Ministry and Harry Potter between them were trying to do to him. And because she had all the dangerously unquenchable curiousity of a Weasley, she knew that no matter what Draco Malfoy was really up to, she had to find out what it was before the Ministry did.