"And that was it? She just...let you go?"
Draco wrapped the ribbon around his first and middle fingers and pulled it tight.
"Would you want to get in the middle of Pureblood loyalties?" he asked dryly.
Ginny made a face of agreement.
There was, from outside, the CRUNCH of a hefty door swinging inwards hard and the muted THUD THUD THUD of feet heavy on the thick carpets. An alarm wailed and somebody shouted a counter-curse just in time.
They both jumped and leaped for their wands.
"Quick, put that back!" Draco snarled, making for the door. Scrambling, silently apologising in her head as the careful ordering was undone, Ginny shoved everything back into the trunk and slammed the lid shut. An edge of parchment and the tip of the quill were stuck in the gap, but there was nothing for it; the living steel was already flowing over it, sealing it tightly shut. Risking a look over her shoulder, she saw the flash of a Stunning Spell and her heart began to pound. Shoving the heavy trunk back into the hole, she couldn't shift the heavy flagstone; she was too weak and hurt. She cursed her own helplessness just as-
"Ginny! Where are you?"
"Neville!" she said to herself out loud and launched herself from her knees to her feet, limping quickly to the door and swinging onto the scene by the frame.
The couch was overturned, Draco was on the floor, curled, blood dribbling from his eyebrow as Ernie, Justin, Luna, Anthony and Neville, scattered around the room, turned to look at her.
She was alive, in decent health and wearing a pair of Malfoy's boxers with a black cashmere sweater. They saw this and breathed a sigh of relief. Ginny looked at Draco, looked at Neville and said;
"Fuck"
Neville sat slumped in a chair, fingers clasped together and tapping his thumbs together rhythmically as he waited. A Hufflepuff first year girl was crying in Luna's lap nearby; he could hear the Ravenclaw girl crooning a lullaby about Plimplies. Scattered around, Dumbledore's Army waited. There was a heart-pounding feeling of terror that lay corporeal over their heads with the weight and heat of a woollen blanket.
"Neville, are you-"
"Yes Seamus" he said again. The question had been asked so many times in the last quarter-hour that it was almost like clockwork; every two or three minutes, the Irish Gryffindor would work up the courage, or fear, it was hard to tell, to ask it again.
He'd never felt so bloody terrified in his entire, eventful life.
Taking another deep breath, quickened the beats of his thumb-twiddling, not noticing his leg was bouncing uncontrollably. Then, a delicate hand sat itself firmly on his knee and he looked up into Luna's slightly glazed blue eyes.
"Ginny will be right along now, Neville. You don't need to be so worried" she gave him one of her hazy summer's day smiles. Only this day, for the first time, he couldn't summon one in return.
"I'm sorry if I'm having a little difficulty believing that Draco-bloody-Malfoy is suddenly reformed and has been...with Hermione, since they were twelve" he muttered, stumbling over the still alien concept. Luna shrugged.
"He never said he'd reformed. That's a good sign"
As was common, her comment drew confused expressions. She looked back at them.
"Well, if he said he wasn't a Death Eater and that it was all a big mistake, then we'd know he was lying. Since he hasn't, it's probably a good bet he's going to be on our side" she explained slowly.
As was equally common, despite her lapses of vague insanity, Luna Lovegood had an irritating habit of, in her own way, making perfect sense. One knot of the many began to unwind itself in Neville's shoulders and he managed a half-smile for Luna. She had that effect on him, he realised as she smiled back and bounced to her feet. He wondered if he'd ever get the chance to tell her.
Then curtain began to shimmer and the room held its breath. A moment later, Draco appeared, blindfolded, hands in the air, flanked by Ginny and Anthony, holding wands. Ginny whipped the improvised blindfold, a Ravenclaw tie, off and for a moment the snake stood, blinking slowly and eyed the lion's den.
"Longbottom" he said finally, eyes alighting on the now standing Gryffindor.
"Malfoy" he replied cagily.
He glanced around.
"So...the Room's had a bit of a make-over?"
"Has since you were last in here" Neville replied. Not sure how to react to that, Draco just nodded, clasping his hands behind his back. Ginny, who had been talking to the Patel twins, turned to find them in a tense stand-off.
She folded her arms and tapped her wand pointedly until Neville, with a world-weary sigh, nodded.
"Alright Malfoy. What did you find out?"
"That Aberforth Dumbledore is entirely willing to listen to a known Death Eater but not until he's in his backroom and then he's entirely lessthan willing"
There was a pause.
"Listening spells?" enquired Neville. Draco nodded sharply.
"In the bar, almost certainly, not in the backroom"
"So is he going to help us or not?" Dean Thomas didn't like Draco standing there. The Slytherin prince held his furious gaze for long enough to let them all know he refused to be cowed by them.
"Once I said I was with you lot, he took a little convincing. Ultimately, yes"
Everyone stiffened. Anthony Goldstein's hand strayed dangerous close to his wand pocket and Draco glanced back to keep an eye on the movement.
"Convincing?" questioned Neville, sounding tense. Draco raised an eyebrow.
"Well I didn't Crucio the old man, for the love of Morgana. I just...I revealed a little more than I would have liked, is all"
"He swallowed that?" asked Ginny, catching on, surprised. Draco glared at her and muttered something to her alone. She snorted.
"Not the one of her in bed I hope" she chuckled.
There was more than one set of extravagantly raised eyebrows at their private back-and-forth. Draco's eyes stabbed her viciously with blunt knives and she only smirked in reply. Turning his head back to Neville, he folded his arms.
"Fact of the matter is; he showed me, rather pointedly, a portrait of his sister on the back wall. Do you think you can ask the Room to put the tunnel to there?"
Neville shrugged.
"It's always worth a shot, but we don't even know if we can make it give us a tunnel yet"
Draco's aristocratic nose wrinkled.
"Another thing...he then spent long enough for me to get entirely bored talking about a meeting of a 'select few' in the backroom next week. Said if I was really with the DA, he'd see me there"
Neville and Ginny looked at each other.
"You think he means Order members?" asked Ginny. He was quiet for a moment, chewing the inside of his lip in thought.
"Maybe-" he blurted finally and looked at Neville- "But it might be a trap and if it is, you shouldn't put the tunnel in-" Seamus snorted at the obviousness of this and was ignored. Draco hesitated and moistened his lips. His uncertainty drew looks; it was entirely un-Malfoy behaviour, after all.
"Can you lot hold off another week?" he asked then, softly, seriously, glancing pointedly at the growing number of permanent residents.
A child began to cry and Luna moved off again. Ginny sat down and Neville looked around the room, reading the expressions of his people.
"We don't have much of a choice" Ginny said firmly, standing. She looked at Draco's hand as it went to a chain around his neck; it was a man's chain, but there was a locket on one of the links holding a brown curl. She looked away and for the first time hoped that Hermione didn't fall for Ron, feeling guilty even as the thought made itself cohesive.
And so the week past. A pack of werewolves moved onto the grounds permanently; the DA clashed with them violently in the first two days of their assignment. A group of the masked vigilantes burst into the classroom-turned-barracks and set them ablaze. Lavender Brown would hold her arm a little closer to her side when they walked past during the day. Luckily for her they'd used their claws and not their teeth.
Snape had stood at the front and demanded that anyone who knew anything about the phoenix masks to come forward; he'd made them stand there until most of the first years had passed out and while they were occupied, their rooms were turned over. There was broken telescopes and torn books everywhere when they returned to their dorms. Professor Flitwick emerged from questioning with a split lip.
It was indeed a meeting of Order members in the backroom of the Hogs Head that evening. Draco had never been more relieved to see the lanky, scarred figure of Remus Lupin in his life, even if the ex-Professor had put him against the wall. Once things were explained, he'd ducked back out to collect Ginny and Neville from their loitering inside the Hogwarts barricades (Bill Weasley accompanying him) and when they'd returned, Molly Weasley was waiting anxiously by her husband's side. Draco and Neville both had the good sense to draw to one side while Ginny greeted her mother; there were relieved and joyful tears all around.
They heard of the Trio's latest exploits, Neville and Ginny with the sort of hunger expected of the besieged, Draco with superficial bemused disinterest. They also laid down their plans for the extraction of those endangered students. While ignoring the warning burning against the skin of his left arm, Draco told all he knew of the increased security measures. The students, particularly those children of Ministry employees and the few Phoenix-inclined Purebloods, were being held more or less to ransom. Hogwarts was a vault of living, breathing insurance policies.
The tunnel was opened two days later and a week after that, the first bedraggled gang of refugees were escorted out of the tunnel, emerging from behind Ariana Dumbledore's portrait into the waiting arms of the Order. They took them, under the cover of night and wearing Fred and George's anti-hex hats, to the edges of the anti-Apparatition wards of the town and then they were gone. The new contact with the Order meant that they now had their own Wizarding Wireless in the Room. Potterwatch had a new and avid following in the Hogwarts Phoenixes.
Dumbledore's Army continued to make themselves known, even as security had been tightened to strangulation levels as the number of students haemorrhaged. The Hog'N'Phoenix Trail, as it had come to be called, was draining students away one by one, but casualties had been claimed. An Order member and two escaping students were killed when the runaways were ambushed on the edge of Hogsmeade in one of the most recent runs. No Gryffindor had been allowed to eat for the last month; luckily for them, the Hogs Head kept the food flowing in. It wasn't the greatest, but it was normally edible. Ginny had been forced to ban the house elves from bringing them food or supplies; there were five elf heads mounted in the Great Hall as testament to the little creatures bravery and sacrifice.
Draco Malfoy had found himself in over his head, yet again, and forced himself to draw away from the addicting brightness that was Dumbledore's Army. He almost enjoyed their company, and that was a major incident on his behalf. Allowing himself to get too close, allow himself to become attached or, Merlin forbid, loyaland it spelled doom for the precarious safety net he had wound around his family and the love of his life.
So he pretending, Salazar help him, he pretended with all his might, when he was called to Malfoy Manor for what should have been the school holidays. The home that he had been born and raised in was unrecognisable as anything but a cold, black stone tomb and torture chamber. The screams of the prisoners in what was once the wine cellar kept him up till late at night.
And then...
She looked beautiful. Bedraggled, with blood on her lip and dark smudges under her eyes, she smelt like she hadn't had a proper shower in months, and he still thought she was beautiful.
This wasn't what he wanted. As Lucius forced him to stare into the brilliance green orbs squished in swollen pockets of blown-up flesh, demanding he answer, demanding his seventeen-year-old son give him an escape from the horror his youth's decisions had brought him to, Draco's insides were on fire and screaming. He knew it was Potter; she wouldn't go anywhere without him, and he had promised to keep her safe.
The situation was a blur, a bloody, painful blur.
"I can't be sure" he'd said, willing Potter with his eyes to have some sort of insane, half-plotted plan that under no circumstances could work and would work anyway, before this insecure state of affairs got any more dangerous.
And then it had.
"Ginny. Ginny wake up! Ginny!"
She jerked awake, throwing herself upright, wand against the cheekbone of the intruder. Seamus pulled away.
"Dammit women, what ya trying to do? Take me eye out-"
"Finnegan. What the hell are you doing here?" she grated, cutting him off.
"Dispatch in HQ. Malfoy's been found" he snapped back.
She threw off her covers and grabbed for a robe. Lavender was standing, bags under her eyes, at the doorway. She'd been on duty in the Commonroom when the DA Galleon had warmed and Seamus came inside, assisted by the Fat Lady's silence, with the message from their communication equipment.
He handed her their sketchy knock-off of the Marauder's Map and took over watch from Lavender. Under all the bows and ribbons and damn squealing, she was alright, he reflected as she trudged upstairs and Ginny disappeared into the dark corridor.
Casting a silencing spell over her pounding feet, Ginny ran, stopping hurriedly at each corner to check for danger and Stunning a werewolf patrol to cross the corridor to the Room. Attacks on and from the new guards were becoming dangerously more common. They were just waiting for someone to be fully turned, and lingering on the precipice for news on a Gryffindor fourth year taken to the Medical wing a few weeks ago.
Pushing through the curtained entrance designed to slow down any intruders, Ginny burst into the open, panting. Everyone looked up; there were currently six permanent residents of the Room, including Anthony Goldstein, waiting for the next Order-DA collaborated escape. The Ravenclaw potions expert looked up with his one good eye as she emerged, ruffled. The other had been blinded by a spell the Carrow's had been using to try and find out more about the mysterious, all-powerful Dumbledore's Army. He was now on the menu and needed shifting as soon as possible, before the curse spread to his other eye.
As she drew closer, everyone stepped aside and she realised it was Remus Lupin speaking from the other end.
"...have a chance for another week. Until then, Longbottom has a book someplace on Magical Water Plants and their Properties; Molly thinks there could be something in there to slow the spread"
"Alright, thanks Moony. Listen, the Lioness is here now, I'll hand you over" Dean handed the speaker to her and stood.
"Let Neville get his sleep. Talk to him about the plant in the morning" Ginny told him quickly as she sat down. He nodded, standing by and folding his arms. Glancing around, she realised they'd been waiting for her and none of them yet knew what Remus had to say about Draco.
"This is the Lioness, Moony. I hear there's word on the Dragon?"
"There is. There was an altercation involving the Trio at the house of cards. The Strange found out that Godric's Queen and the Dragon are less than enemies..."
Ginny caught her breath. There was a wave of murmuring as everyone took this in. Remus continued, unaware of the impact his words were having.
"...-needless to say, she wasn't pleased. Bad Faith Mama was killed, possibly at the hand of Bad Faith Papa, that is unsubstantiated. The Dragon is at the Phoenix's nest, and the Trio are at a safe house. The Dragon is being moved there. Will advise what the Trio's next move is; at the moment, we know they're going after another one"
Here, a cheer bubbled from a few throats and smiles abounded. Ginny, a smile cracking the ice of her face, waved for quiet.
"That's bloody brilliant news. The Barracks is overjoyed to hear that. Is the Dragon badly hurt?"
A crackling pause.
"Yes. It could have been much worse, Lioness, but I'm not sure how" Remus said grimly. Silence; somebody muttered to their friend and Dean rubbed his chin, the stubble grating against his hand.
"Is he going to be okay?"
"I don't know, Lioness. I just don't know"