"Ginny, my Ginny," the cold voice came. Ginny's breathing became erratic. It was a dream; she knew it was. But dreams didn't mean she was safe. At least not with him.

"You're right, Ginny. You aren't safe from me. You know, I've always had a thing for redheads." He fingered a strand of her hair. He was behind her, and she could easily turn around and look him in the eyes, though she'd have to look up.

"Leave. Me. Alone," she hissed with more conviction than she felt.

He merely laughed. He could see right through her.

She looked for a door; there had to be a door.

"There is no door. You can only escape when I allow you to." The strand of hair was tugged on sharply, and she cried out, eyes closing in pain. The rest of her hair was woven through his fingers, and she kept her eyes closed. She knew what was coming next. This was what always happened.

"And we wouldn't want to break routine, would we?" he mused amusedly before slamming her head into the wall. It shouldn't have hurt as bad as it did. But when he was here, dreams were never just dreams.

Her head connected with the wall again, and she screamed in agony. If this weren't a dream, darkness would already have enveloped her, but she didn't get that luxury from this man who could see into her thoughts.

"Ginny, my Ginny. You've been so bad by sleeping with Malfoy. Didn't I tell you before that you are mine?"

Her face was dragged against stone, layers of skin peeling off . Blood was trickling down her face.

"Please, oh gods please, stop!" she pleaded while sobbing. She would have gladly taken death at this point. The pain was too much. Her head was throbbing, and it wasn't a dull throb at all. The pain was sharp and precise. Real life pain wasn't as bad as this. Nothing was as bad as this.

"And it is only going to get much worse. I've been too busy to punish you, traitor."

Ginny sobbed at the last word.

"Yes, you know you're a traitor, don't you!" he hissed. "Your brothers died to protect you against what you've so willingly embraced. It could be expected of Lovegood. She has always been a bit… off. But not the littlest Weasley."

She was thrown to the floor and her head connected with stone once again. The thud her head made caused her stomach to churn. Then something out of the usual pattern happened. He placed a sharp kick to her stomach and she retched painfully. He would never let her throw up. He controlled these dreams as she had learned long ago. Fighting back was beyond pointless.

Another kick was brought to her stomach, and she retched again, though harder than before. Her eyes were closed when the foot struck her face. She was sobbing in pain. There was so much pain.

"Draco!" If only she could manage to scream it in her sleep. Maybe even whisper it.

"Don't make me gag you. It will only go on longer," he whispered harshly. She continued to scream out Draco's name.

"You will regret this, Ginny, my Ginny." He pulled out a piece of cloth to tie around her mouth.

"DRACO!"

"Gin!"

Ginny bolted up in bed, a fresh stream of tears flowing down her face. The pain still continued even though the dream had ended, and Ginny ran for the bathroom, heaving up the contents of her stomach. Her sobs echoed through the bathroom as she crumpled to the floor.

Draco came in and wrapped one arm around her while using the other to hold back her hair. He was talking, but Ginny couldn't hear him. She could only feel the excruciating pain in her face, head, and stomach. She heaved again and almost missed the toilet. The word traitor was playing itself over and over in her mind.

He had been right; she was a traitor. It was a terrible thought. It should have made her sick, though if it did she wouldn't be sure whether it was the thought or her stomach. Ginny continued sobbing in pain. She hadn't had one of those dreams since prison. She'd almost thought they were over. Silly her. It would never be over as long as he was alive. If he were dead, she would find peace from it.

She screamed in frustration and started beating the toilet. Draco held her hands down to protect her from hurting herself. Unable to hit anything, she continued screaming and sobbing.

No matter what she did, she would never escape the hell that was in her mind.

xXx

Ginny was floating in darkness. She could hear voices distantly, but at the moment, they were of no concern to her. There was no pain, and best of all, the source of her dream pain wasn't there. Not that she'd expected him to be. Her dream in France was the first time he'd been there since she was taken from the prison.

Ginny idly wondered if she was still in France. Was she even anywhere, or was she caught in limbo? She'd heard terrible things about witches and wizards who incorrectly performed a spell and ended up stuck in limbo, wandering through nothingness the rest of their lives. A few had made it back, and they were often quite mad.

Maybe if she went mad she could escape from him… or maybe she would have to deal with him every second of her life. She shivered at the thought. Or maybe she didn't. It wasn't like she could feel her body, so it had to have been a mental shiver.

You can have mental shivers? That's crazy. Maybe I am crazy already.

Ginny pondered this for what seemed like a long while, though it may have only been minutes. It wasn't like she had a way to tell time. From far away she thought she heard Draco's voice, and her heart gave a start. Draco had told her he loved her and had made love to her all night long. He had made her feel beautiful. She was surely causing him pain by being in limbo, or wherever the hell she was. Slowly, she fought to surface through the prison of her mind. For Draco.

xXx

"I don't know the answer to everything, damn it, Draco!" Kora screamed, going red in the face. She had Gin hooked up to all sorts of Muggle machines. She said it would tell them what her brain was doing. She had assured him that Gin wasn't completely in limbo. Her mind was slowly turning itself back on, and she would surface eventually.

Draco was glad that Gin would come out of this trance she seemed to be in, but he was a fucking Slytherin. He wanted some fucking answers. Like why the bloody fuck this had happened in the first place. He wasn't able to even reach into Gin's mind; it was completely fortified. This worried him. She was his, and something was wrong with her. He would kill it, whatever the bloody hell it was.

One of the machines made a weird beeping noise, and Draco glared at Kora. She sneered in response and went to check the noisy thing.

"She can probably hear us right now, though she can't yet respond. She's fighting through it. So maybe you should stop yelling at me." Kora's voice was cold.

"Maybe you should make sure not to be a bloody traitor this time and tell someone what's actually going on," Draco growled, with hatred dripping from his voice.

xXx

Traitor.

The word echoed around in Ginny's head. How was Kora a traitor? Ginny didn't like the woman working on her, but she'd never attempted to hurt her before. Besides, Draco would never let anyone hurt her. Yaxley was proof of that.

Traitor.

Was she a traitor? She was trying to find a way to stop all the death. Wasn't that what her side had been about before they got caught up in surviving? Preserving each and every human life?

He had thought otherwise. He had told her she was a traitor. He was one too if she was one. There was blood on his hands, and none on hers. She wondered if he was even alive. He had to be if he could violate her mind like he had, right?

Ginny pushed further through her mind, passing through memories. She tried so hard to ignore them. She didn't want to remember her family like that. She wanted to remember them as they had been before the War had ripped everything away from them. Away from her.

xXx

"She's climbing through her mind very fast. I've never seen anything like it. This could be dangerous." Kora backed away from Gin slowly, a look of fear on her face.

"What the hell do you mean it could be dangerous?" Draco snapped.

"I mean I don't know what's going to happen. I've never seen this except in a case for possession. When the man came through he tried to kill us all." Kora's back was pressed against the wall.

"That might be a problem if she had a bloody wand! Are you a witch or not?" Draco was seething at this point. Kora was a bloody imbecile. She couldn't even think of the simplest of things. And she called herself a witch. He sneered, his eyes turning back to Gin as her fists clenched and unclenched slowly.

xXx

Ginny wanted to scoff at Kora, which was a very Draco-like thing to do. Ginny would never kill anyone, unlike Kora. And she wasn't possessed. She knew that feeling much too well. Her brain had simply shut down temporarily. Kora should be a smart enough healer to figure that out.

She almost giggled when Draco screamed that Ginny didn't have a wand, except she couldn't make any noise yet. It wasn't like she could jump on Kora and strangle her. Eventually, she would be stopped before the girl could be harmed. Then again… Draco might be all for Kora being strangled. He did sound very angry. She had never seen- well, heard- him this angry before.

As Ginny clenched and unclenched her fists, exploring the feeling of having the ability to feel, she felt a big warm hand thread its fingers through hers and squeeze. She gave a small squeeze back, feeling very tired from this effort. She couldn't give up, though. If she let herself sleep, she might never make it out. She would be pulled down into limbo.

Ginny struggled to curl and uncurl her toes. After about ten attempts, she could feel them. Sweet success. Next came lifting her legs. This was much easier. Now her arms… there, not so hard. Finally, her eyes. This was harder. She struggled. And struggled. And struggled even more. The blasted things did not want to cooperate with her. This was annoying, as well as a bit scary. What if she could never see or talk again?

With that thought, her determination was renewed, and she struggled with her eyelids more fiercely. Slowly, her eyes slid open, and in front of her was a very haggard looking Draco.

She opened her mouth, and one word came out.

"Water."

xXx

Draco watched Gin gulp the water down as though she hadn't had anything to drink in weeks. He had dismissed Kora as soon as Gin had awoken. It was obvious that the idiot healer had no clue what to do in this case. Draco could take care of his… girlfriend? No, the word seemed so childish. Partner? Perhaps.

Gin was exhausted, but Draco refused to allow her to sleep yet. It was too soon after coming out of the protective prison her mind had put her in. Draco could only gather that much of what had happened. Gin refused to tell him who the mystery man was, claiming that said mystery man would come after Draco too.

Draco had tried to push into her mind, and was successful. But any and all dreams that had to do with this man were blocked, and not by Gin's mind. This bothered him incredibly. There was only one man Draco knew of that could safely extract the dream from Gin, and Draco knew she would not like it all. But Draco had to do it. It was for her own safety.

Draco had to ask the Dark Lord for his help.

xXx

Ginny should have been scared. That was the only rational thing to feel. Instead, she didn't give a bloody fuck. She was too tired to register Voldemort standing in front of her, wand out, with a displeased look on his face.

She could hear voices, though they sounded distant. Loud enough to prevent her from sleeping, but soft enough to not allow her to hear exactly what they were saying.

She tried to recall the man's face. She knew who he was, right? Yet the name and face eluded her. It was as though part of her memory was gone. All she knew was that this man had been someone she'd trusted with her life at one point. And he was tall. Oh, and strong.

Ginny scrunched her eyes together, wishing she could just put a pillow over her head and sleep. But she knew it wasn't safe. He might be there, whoever He was.

She could hear someone saying her name repeatedly, but she didn't care who it was. She didn't have time for anyone. The whole world was crashing down on her. Someone, whom she knew, was trying to kill her… in her bloody sleep.

"Ginevra!"

"WHAT!" she screamed, and then promptly found a pillow to cover her face with.

Someone tried to grab her pillow, and there was a brief tug-o-war fight. But then it was pried out of her hands, and there were cold fingers on her face.

"Listen, you silly little girl!"

Ginny's mind dimly registered that this was Lord Voldemort who was glaring into her face. But she truly could not care. She felt like she was crawling out of her skin. She wanted to scream and scream until the world knew what she was feeling.

But how could anyone know what she was feeling? Her entire family had been ripped away from her, she was suffering from some kind of mental trauma-type thing, and now she was being attacked mentally. Fuck the world. They knew nothing of pain.

xXx

Draco stood as stiffly as possible, focusing on his breathing and not on the hand that had grabbed Gin's face so roughly. He knew what would happen to her if he so much as protested the Dark Lord's treatment of her. So Draco stood as quietly as possible, not even daring to breathe.

Gin seemed to calm slightly under the glare of the Dark Lord, though if she knew who he was, Draco could not tell. Draco almost relaxed, until Gin started whimpering and trying to pull away from the Dark Lord. His grip on her face remained firm, and whatever he was doing, Gin didn't appear to like it.

Draco clenched and unclenched his fists, trying to ignore his instinct to forgo a wand and deck the Dark Lord in the face. That wouldn't be a smart thing to do. They would both end up dead then. They might end up dead if he didn't quiet his mind down.

So Draco stared at objects in the room, trying desperately to ignore the whimpers that were getting louder by the second. Having the Dark Lord extract something hidden in your mind wasn't a walk in the park. It was painful and harsh. But the alternative of not doing this was unbearable. Whoever this idiot was who was attacking Gin's mind needed to be stopped, and now.

When Gin's whimpers turned to near screams and Draco thought he could take it no more, the Dark Lord let go of her face, and she curled up into a ball on the bed. Draco slowly took a breath, waiting for the Dark Lord to say something.

"There is something very wrong here, young Malfoy," the Dark Lord whispered.

Draco felt his body shudder. The way that had been said sounded wrong.

"My Lord?"

The Dark Lord turned to Draco, a red gleam in his black eyes. Draco wished to take a step back, but refrained from doing so.

"I do not recall you asking to have… relations… with this woman." His gaze on Draco was stern. "However, I cannot begrudge my most faithful servant this one thing."

Draco let out a sigh of relief; a barely audible sigh of relief. The Dark Lord continued on, either not hearing or not caring.

"I am greatly concerned about young Ginevra. It seems that these… dreams… aren't just dreams. This person is blocking out their face and performing magic beyond the normal realm. It is, one could say, an astral projection that takes Ginevra's astral form with him with the plan of causing her pain." The Dark Lord let his words sink in.

"This is much like a lucid dream, except the pain is much more intense. It almost compares to the Cruciatus Curse… almost." The corners of the Dark Lord's mouth turned up into a sick, twisted smile.

"What can I do, my Lord?"

"I believe that she is safe, for now, from a reappearance. This person knows how much damage he has done. He does not want to push it. I am going to take the memories that I have extracted and see what I can find. I would not like to think that my… project… is being hurt when she has come so far. I was expecting her to make a great wife… for me. Take her home."

The Dark Lord swept from the room, but Draco stood there, hate coursing through his veins. Gin was his. He would not let Voldemort have her, no matter what he had to do.