Chapter 12

Eventually, I grew restless and found myself wandering the halls, questions circling in my mind. Where was Ginny? How could I get in touch with her? What was she doing? Was she hurt?

Was she even still alive?

It hurt me to ask the last question; I tried so hard to banish it from my mind, but it kept returning. The more I ignored it, the more I needed to ask myself it.

Was she alive?

Oh god, I hoped so. If she died, I didn't know what I would do. Kill anyone who had ever caused her harm. But no, even doing that would not alleviate the pain I would feel–the pain I felt at the mere idea of her death. I would burn the world down.

My fear felt like it could send the entire world up in smoke right now.

Was she still alive?

I quickly tried to analyze the situation. I knew she had her brothers, Granger, Potter, Looney Lovegood, and Longbottom with her. And they were most likely fighting Death Eaters.

Red was incredible, but unless the Order had shown up, her possibilities of survival were slim.

And cue the all-out panic mode.

I was about to go crazy; where could she be? Oh my god, please don't let her be dead. She couldn't be dead, could she? Wouldn't I have known?

Surely I'd have felt it in my heart.

A life like hers, so vivacious and spirited, teeming with life and happiness and emotions, couldn't simply be extinguished from the world. She would have left some visible change when exiting it; the colors of the trees would have dimmed or the air would have been chillier or laughter would have sounded more hollow.

Or my heart would have broken.

My heart wasn't breaking, was it? I didn't know. I'd never before felt what I felt for Ginny. I didn't know what it would feel like to lose that.

Impossibly painful; it would be agonizing, I imagined.

Did you really ever know what it felt like to have your heart break? Or did the body protect the mind from feeling that sort of extreme pain? I don't think I could sustain that agony without going absolutely mental.

I couldn't live without her without going mental.

I was going mental.

Or was I? Do crazy people know they're crazy? If so, what did that make me?

Sometime around three in the morning, I collapsed in one of the corridors. My body had finally succumbed to the bliss of sleep.

I awoke the next morning to the toe of a shoe nudging my face. I pushed the shoe away from me and rolled over, desperately wanting to return to the dream I'd been having. I rolled over and my face suddenly felt like I'd been shoved into a bathtub of ice.

I yelped and jumped up.

I'd fallen asleep on the marble flooring of one of the hallways and ended up rolling onto it; the icy feeling was the tiles after chilling over night.

Beside me, an amused look on his face, stood Blaise.

"You didn't come home last night, mate." He said, his dark eyes twinkling.

Mate? Since when were we friends? We weren't. He'd tried to ruin everything. He'd threatened Ginny. At that thought, my mind drifted off and I began to plan out exactly how I would torture him. I needed someone to take my anger and frustration out on.

Blaise saw the unhinged rage in my eyes and took a few steps backward, throwing his arms up in the international sign of 'I-really-didn't-mean-to-piss-you-off-please-don't-take-out-your-homicidal-rage-on-me'.

"Whoa, whoa, slow down there mate. I wanted to apologize. Last night, after you went completely mad, I realized exactly how much you care for this girl."

Uh huh. As if I couldn't see through that one. "And by that, you mean that I made an equal fool of myself last night as I did of you when I ousted you and Pansy. And you may or may not have been the one responsible for me being stunned so brutally last night."

Blaise just gave me a cheeky look, "I can neither confirm nor deny that last statement."

I just gave him a hard look and waited for him to cave; if he wanted to be friends again, he would give me the whole truth and we both knew that was how it had to be.

Blaise exhaled suddenly and ran his hands through his hair. When he turned back to me, the look in his eyes was somber. "Look, I'm really sorry about everything. I never wanted to do it– it was Pansy's idea. But I saw how much you were hurting last night and I realized that I'd probably caused you to hurt that way before. It made me realized that I'd been an asshole; I knew that if I'd been in that much pain, you would have helped me. I realized that you really needed me in that moment." I gave him a defiant look; Draco Malfoy needed no one. At my look he grinned, "You needed me, whether you knew it or not."

I considered this. I knew I couldn't fully trust Blaise, but I also knew he was right– I needed him right now. "Apology accepted."

"Great. Besides, man, Pansy's crazy."

I laughed, "Interesting that this fight was all about a girl neither of us really liked."

"C'est la vie, I suppose." Blaise shrugged. I'd missed his easy-going attitude. He wasn't nearly as much fun when he was plotting against me.

"Pansy's still on the warpath though, right?" I asked knowing things with her wouldn't be solved as easily.

Blaise nodded. Well, I didn't need Pansy any way. For most of my time at Hogwarts, she'd been a thorn in my side. I was kind of glad to be rid of her.

But I was still on my guard with Blaise; I sure as hell wasn't getting rid of that evidence.

"She's going to be pissed when she finds out that you're back on my side." I remarked, internally wincing a bit for Blaise; the wrath that would befall him would be horrible and I knew that from personal experience.

"You don't know if they've come back yet, do you?" I asked Blaise, the hope in my voice clearly giving away my feelings.

"Damn, you really love this chick. How did I miss this?"

"You were too busy trying to ruin my life." I responded quickly, "Blaise. Pay attention. Have they come back?"

"Potter, Lovegood, Granger, and Long-ass have returned, but none of the redheads." Blaise replied, citing his favorite nickname for Longbottom. Personally, I preferred Schlongbottom; but to each his own, I suppose.

"What do you think that means?" I asked him, my heart in my throat.

Blaise shrugged; I should have known. As pretty and charming as Blaise was, he wasn't the best at making educated guesses.

I set to work. Most likely the situation had involved a family member or friend. Her entire family's absence from the school meant one of three things:

They were all brutally massacred. I would believe this about Ron, but not Ginny; especially since Potter had managed to live.

One of them had been injured. Most likely, this would be Ron, again, due to the fact that he was clumsy.

I was right about one of their family members being in trouble and they'd returned to their home for a little while.

I really liked my chances with B and C.

That is, until I was summoned to the Headmaster's office.