Disclaimer: Do not own Harry Potter.
Okay, I need to write a huge author's note. I am so sorry I haven't updated in months. Really, I don't have many excuses. I've had a bit of writer's block, and I also have been busy. But mostly, I just kind of forgot my ideas for this story. My outline is kind of brief and i didn't want Draco to get repetitive. I hope I can update more quickly next time, but I have no promises :(. I really am sorry, but I wanted this chapter to be good. i think it's a bit different from the others, simply because I haven't written in so long, and I can't completely recapture my writing style of before. But I think this is also because over time, you grow as a writer, so I hope you enjoy this chapter. I also think it's a bit longer. Many apologies, and enjoy!
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When he awoke, he could see the sun shining. He smiled.
It felt like it had rained for days on end, and that the sun was just coming out. Symbolically, he realized, it was.
No more emotional pain.
Of course, he wasn't talking about himself, so he couldn't be sure of that. He was talking about her, as he always was. Her emotional pain was his emotional pain. She affected him that much.
That made him inexplicably happy. For no good reason. Or for a very good reason.
She wasn't completely healed, of course. It would probably take a while until she was really Ginny again. But this was a start.
He got out of bed, feeling refreshed. Feeling happy. His mood, he was sure, was connected to hers. He felt alive again.
Of course, he reminded himself, she might be stabbed again in front of him. No more emotional pain, but plenty of physical pain.
He winced. Well, if she could handle it, so could he. If this was the price he had to pay… well, he'd think about it.
Watching her in pain was hard enough. Watching her in pain and proud of the fact that she was… well that was a different story.
But it was her choice, wasn't it? She was a fighter. This was who she was. He should know that by now. She would not sit back and nail her mouth shut. She couldn't handle that. She could only fight back, no matter how unwise that was.
That was what he was learning. He was discovering who she was. It seemed to take a while, because basically, he couldn't learn who she was when she wasn't herself. But he was bringing her back, the firecracker of a girl he had noticed and even admired in earlier years.
He hadn't liked her. No, not at all. But he had admired her feisty, edgy, fiery spirit before. He had always noticed her strength. She didn't back down from insults, she returned them with equal force and passion. That was who she was.
She was intelligent. Not top of the class or anything, but she was smart. She was good at magic. He could practically still feel the sting of the Bat Bogey Hex back in his fifth year. Lethal, that thing had been.
He looked in the mirror. He was smiling.
He didn't usually like reflecting on the past, it mostly made him hate himself. Last year had been full of mistakes. Looking at his past made him feel worthless and foolish. He had been naïve and stupid and made a thousand mistakes.
But looking at her past was different. Even if he realized what mistakes he had made concerning her, he could remember her past without him, and appreciate it. He could admire the lively, enchanting girl she had been – the girl she was becoming again – and think that she was a thousand times better than him. Because, no matter what her parents had taught her since birth, she was a good person. She was different than him. She was better than him.
It was simple. But it was something he could not have accepted before. She was a good person. He was not.
But maybe, by being her friend, he was getting there.
He made his way to breakfast. He felt like he was seeing differently.
Because when he looked at the fellow members of his House, all he saw was desperation. They were trying to be who they were meant to be, even though few of them understood that. They thought they wanted the lives people had forced on them. They were liars, all of them.
They were too young, too inexperienced, to understand the blurry, grey world they were in. They thought they understood their place. But how could they? They couldn't see the other side. They didn't know the meaning of fear. They didn't know the meaning of courage.
He turned his gaze to the Gryffindor table, and saw it. Because they knew. Ginny Weasley was not the only fighter left.
They knew what loss really meant. They knew danger and destruction and pain. Beyond that, they knew courage. It was what their House had always professed to hold. And every last one of them, down to Neville Longbottom sitting near the end, had it. They were brave. They were so fucking brave.
His gaze washed over the table and his eyes met hers. He could see everything in her eyes. She saw it too.
This was why she was proud. This was who she was. This was who she always had been.
This was why he was a Slytherin. He couldn't face this shit. It made him scared. It was her who could look it in the eye and confront it. Confront who people were and who they could be.
He wondered for a moment what she saw he could be.
The day wandered by in a haze. He felt like for the first time in his life, he could tell who people were. How they lied. Why they lied.
It was actually watched Blaise Zabini that proved this to him.
He and Blaise had always been best mates, since they were children. They came from well-bred, respectable families and were introduced to one another when very young. They had both known they would be Slytherins, and had both known what the future held for them. They were both cunning, sly, and craved glory. Last year, Blaise had often questioned him on what was up with him, and he had seen the envy in his friend's eyes. He knew the Blaise had wanted what he had. He knew Blaise would have cherished it.
He thought, beyond anything, that he knew who Blaise Zabini was.
But, watching him that day proved otherwise.
Blaise seemed quieter this year. He still bragged of his position in the war ahead, bragged how his 'Master' loved him, bragged away because although there was no Dark Mark on his arm, who cared? He'd get one soon enough, because he wasn't a failure like that Draco Malfoy.
But still. He didn't have the same energy this year, and that day, the great failure Draco Malfoy discovered why.
He was a liar.
While he boasted of his dark accomplishments, he was just as desperate to get out of them. And the twisted bit was that so were the grinning, adoring listeners.
It was sick how desperate everyone's façade was.
He was done with that. He was so goddamn sick of pretending. He had all of last year. He had been so fucking scared and no one had seen it but Albus Dumbledore. His parents still believed this was his destiny. But he was finding the strength to say it aloud, this broken truth. If it was only to one person in the entire fucked up world, he was finding to strength to say it.
He had one hero in the world.
And speaking of being a hero, Muggle Studies class felt like shit again. There she was, with a well-timed witty remark on the tip of her tongue. She was good, too. He would laugh if it was worth it. But it just left him feeling sick as her right wrist was slashed. He crimson blood trickled down her arm, but she never flinched. She never even looked at it. She just sat there, her head held high, staring at the their professor with a strange look on her face. It was… pity.
Dinner felt foolish and worthless. He didn't speak a word, and left quickly. He felt different today. He felt like life was changing.
When he reached the Astronomy tower, he wanted to scream and curse. It was goddamn raining.
He stood there, glaring at the offending sky, and feeling pathetic.
"It's only rain, you know," came her soft voice behind him.
He spun around immediately. "I know that," he said defensively. "But it's just been a kind of shitty day and… I don't know. Do you want to go somewhere else?"
She shook her head and mysteriously half-smiled at him. "I like the rain," she whispered. She leaned her arms down on the ledge of the tower, and looked up at the sky. She was getting soaked.
He slid down the ledge, and sat there, pathetically, and leaned his head against the stone. It seemed like she cleared his mind.
Soon, she sat beside him. She looked at her lap.
"I… I'm sorry."
He whipped his head up. He stared at her.
"About Muggle Studies," she clarified softly.
He closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the stones. "Don't apologize."
"Well, I… just so you know… it doesn't hurt so much. I guess… it's worth it."
He bit his lip. No, it was not worth it. It made hardly any difference, and it was always her, bleeding. Few others offered themselves as carving blocks. That blood, dripping down her skin, could not possibly be worth it. Nothing could be worth witnessing this.
Would it be worse if she actually responded to the pain? Or was it worse to watch her sit there still and unmoving, so inhumanly taking the blood and the pain? Did she think she deserved it? How could she sit there and wait for someone to slit her wrists just for speaking?
How could it ever, ever, be worth it?
She was watching him closely. She was sitting very close to him and he could see how her gaze flickered from his left eye to his right as she looked at him, concerned.
"How can you possibly tell me that it's worth it?"
Her face twisted a little, as if she couldn't really explain the answer. "It just is to me, Draco. I feel it. I know it. These cuts," she gestured to her arms and cheek, "they'll go away in time. They'll heal. But if I don't fight for myself, don't fight for what's right, I'll never heal. I will never forgive myself. So a few injuries are worth it to me."
She stood up and leaned against the ledge, staring at the stars. "Those types of people don't understand it. Spilling my blood is hardly the worst thing they could do to me. Hurting me physically is worth nothing. They don't understand emotion, Draco. They don't understand how when you hurt on the inside, it's a million times worse than any torture they can inflict on me."
He stared at her. He would never understand her.
"Today," he began, "after she…cut you, you looked at her. And—and, you had this look on your face, like, well, I don't know, like you pitied her or something.
She looked at him sadly for a moment. The rain dripped down her cheeks like tears.
"I do pity her."
He just looked at her sad, brown eyes.
"Don't you see Draco? Our side may never win this war, but at least we're fighting because we believe in this. She's fighting because that what she's been told to do since she was born. If she had grown up with my parents, and I with hers, our roles would be reversed. I feel sorry for her. She doesn't have any real emotions but the ones she's been taught to have. People have told her to hate me, Draco, so she does. She can't feel. She can't even think."
He licked his lips. He tasted salt. "Do feel sorry for me, then?"
She almost smiled at him. "No," she whispered.
He blinked.
She clarified. "You're not like her, you know. You were taught the same bullshit, but unlike her, you felt something. You're a different type of person, Draco. Because you have a brain. You can think past what people have told you. You believe in yourself, and you see the errors in everything they've told you. You might never break free of them, Draco, but even so, you are the best person on that side of the war. Because you, Draco Malfoy, have a heart."
And in that moment, he honestly didn't know why he did it, but in that moment of liberation, he pressed his lips to hers.
It was short, but sweet. Her lips, though unresponsive due to shock, were soft and warm and felt, there was no other word for it, right against his. But as soon as he realized what he'd done, he pulled away.
He couldn't look at her shocked face. "I'm sorry," he mumbled. "I don't know why I did that."
And with that he got up and left the tower, leaving a shocked Ginny behind in the rain, her fingers brushing uncertainly over her lips.