The dungeon was pitch black and nearly freezing. "Lumos," Draco said. He located a lantern on the far wall and flicked the light toward it. The lantern he was looking at and the one behind it burst into flame. "How's your wrist?"
Ginny, white-faced, lightly touched her wrist with the fingertips of her other hand. "I can fix it, for now," she said, withdrawing her wand. She tapped it over her wrist and murmured a few words Draco couldn't hear. The skin under her wand faintly glowed, and then slowly resumed its normal color. "Madame Pomfrey should still get a look at it, but that should keep things together for a bit." She turned to face Draco.
"Here," she said aggressively, thrusting her wand at him. Her eyes were shiny and fierce. "You have to take this too, right?"
Draco didn't reach his hand out. He didn't want to look at her, didn't want to see her flaming hair and the silver threads worked through the fine green silk of her robes be snuffed out in the darkness of the dungeon. He opened his mouth to say something, anything. Nothing came out.
Ginny grimaced. "Look, it's fine," she said. "I know you have to do it. At least I'm able to hand it over to you of my own accord and not have it taken from me by some sweaty-palmed asshole who'd try to shove their hands down my top." She waved the wand. "Take it!"
Draco took it. He looked at the girl before him. She stood straight up and stared him in the eye, her expression strong and rigid, impassive as a glacier. She looked wild. She looked righteous. And she wasn't blaming him for everything he had to do to her. If there was anything in her eyes for him, it may have been a small scrap of pity.
Draco, suddenly, remembered an office that now seemed impossibly far away, and a conversation with one sallow-skinned man, a man he knew was in the ballroom this very moment.
"One of the most important things you will ever learn is that there is always a choice," Snape had said to him. And another conversation, in the library, with her -
"Malfoys," Draco said suddenly, "act of their own volition and certainly don't take orders from inconsequential red-heads."
Ginny stared. "Are you nuts?" she said. "What are you going to do, then?"
"I don't know if it will work," said Draco. "I've never done it before. But I'll try." He tapped Ginny's wand once with his own. Closing his eyes and concentrating, he said "Geminio."
The spell took the breath right out of him. He stumbled but recovered, taking a great gulp of air to refill his lungs. He heard a sharp gasp in front of him and opened his eyes. Instead of one wand, his left hand now held two.
"Draco, you're a genius!" Ginny exclaimed. "But won't he know it's a fake?"
"I don't know," he said, panting. "It looks like the real thing, and I think I was able to get a little bit of magic in it, too. The magic won't last for long, though. Try it." He held the wands out to her.
She took the two wands and felt them both, testing their weight in her hands. She chose one of them. "Lumos." A bright white light burned from the tip of her wand. "I thought that was the real one," she said. She repeated the spell with the other one. The tip of the wand cast a shaky glow under the dungeons.
"Do you think it'll be enough?" Draco asked.
Ginny handed him back the wand. "It's a damn good shot," she replied. "But what about your wand?"
"What about it?"
"Won't he be able to tell what the last spell was, if he wanted to?"
Draco shook his head. "I don't think he'll check."
"But what if he does?" Ginny demanded. "Draco, you can't just use a spell like that and trust no one will check! Especially if they expect anything about us!"
"Expect anything about us?"
"Yes, you dolt, about us being friends!" Ginny said, exasperated. The word 'friend' made Draco's stomach lurch. Ginny waved about the dungeons. "Shoot some curses down toward the back! They'll bounce around for a bit back there but the stone will absorb them eventually, right?"
Draco didn't waste time with a reply. He pointed toward the back of the dungeons. "Impedimenta!" he said. A jet of orange light shot out of his wand and into the darkness.
Ginny shoved him. "What are you doing? I meant a real curse!"
Draco glared at her. Then he thought about his father. He thought about the fawn he'd been forced to kill when he was just a boy. He thought about the bruises he'd so often seen on his mother's face. He thought about the grotesque, twisted thing that had the nerve to call himself a lord, that had the nerve to lay claim over the red-headed girl before him among countless others, the nerve to order people to maim and murder on his behalf. He thought about Ginny on the floor of the Hogwarts dungeons, writhing and screaming with her eyes roving about wildly.
He took a deep breath, pointed his wanted into the darkness, and shouted "CRUCIO!"
The curse erupted from his wand with an intensity that knocked Draco over. It shot out like quicksilver and made a crashing noise as it blasted its way into the dungeon walls. The strength of the incantation made Draco's throat dry and sore. He coughed and felt a little light-headed.
"That's more like it," said Ginny. She reached a hand down to pull Draco to his feet. "Now," she said briskly. "You've been down here far too long. Don't worry about me, all right? I'll figure something out. You just concentrate on not getting the Dark Mark, okay?"
Draco blinked. "But—"
"No but," she said, shaking her head. "Go."
She looked confident, and her chin was tilted up in a defiant way that Draco recognized from looking at himself in the mirror. She placed her hands on her hips and raised her eyebrows. "What's stopping you?" she demanded. The hair on the back of Draco's neck bristled like an angered dog's.
Draco crossed the distance between them in a single step. She looked up, surprised. The mists their breaths made in the freezing air mingled in one cloud. Draco reached for her face, cupped her cheek roughly with the palm of his hand, and kissed her.
Her lips were soft and warm and inviting. The smell of hyacinth and something sweet like fruit filled his nostrils. It was like the first time he'd ever ridden a broomstick. He was soaring, he was flying, his insides spun dangerously inside of him and he thought he might faint. He felt indescribably, impossibly free, and happiness welled up in his chest like a rapidly-inflating balloon. And then her lips parted, just a little, and his tongue was on her tongue and it was hot and wet and good, so good he felt like he could do it for hours, like he could do it for days.
And then she suddenly pushed him away. Her eyes were fuzzy and dark.
"Later," she said roughly. "Later, Draco, I promise. But now you have to go!"
He looked at her one last time, then quickly turned and strode out of the dungeons. The kiss had rejuvenated him, bolstered his strength and left something inside of him, a feeling he wasn't sure he ever had before.
If he had to name it, he might have called it hope.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
"How is our young guest?" as Voldemort, as Draco re-entered the ballroom.
"In the dungeon, in chains."
Voldemort smiled and gestured for Draco to come nearer. "Your wand, young Malfoy?"
Draco pulled his wand out from his cloak and handed it over to Voldemort. Voldemort took it in his right hand, and tapped it with the wand he held in his left.
"Prior Incantato."
A dark mist rose from the tip of Draco's wand. It formed itself into a ghostly, screaming face.
The Dark Lord nodded. "Excellent work, my child," he said, handing Draco back his wand. "You're doing so well. But we must cross the t's and dot the i's, so to speak, mustn't we? Lucius, as we discussed."
Draco's father nodded and reached one well-manicured hand into his cloak and withdrew a small vial full of dark green sludge. After he had unscrewed the cap, he elegantly tossed his head back and swallowed the contents.
His skin seemed to bubble and stretch. His long blonde hair shrank back into his head while his body shot up a few centimeters. The tiny crow's feet and the corners of his eyes smoothed themselves away, leaving him looking several years younger.
Draco stared at the perfect imitation of himself. Lucius' mouth twisted into a wry smile.
"Minty," he said. "Refreshing. But, perhaps, just a tad too sweet." Lucius turned to the Dark Lord and bowed. "Shall I see to the girl, Master?"
"Yes, I do hope you'll make sure she's comfortable."
Lucius nodded and strode off in the direction of the dungeons.
"I trust you'll understand our need to be sure exactly where everyone's loyalties lie," said Voldemort silkily while casually draping an arm of Draco's shoulders. "So much of the original plan has gone awry, especially regarding dear Ginevra, and it would be a pity of the rest of it fell apart."
"Yes, My Lord," said Draco obediently. He felt Voldemort's exploratory tentacles nipping at the edges of his mind. Cold, he thought. He conjured up an image of Ginevra's face right after he'd hexed off her hair. Cold and hate and blood and cold and stone.
Only about fifteen minutes had passed before Ginny heard the squeak and rattle of the doorway to the dungeons opening. She slipped her wand up her right sleeve, where it would be easily accessible but hopefully remain unnoticed. She set her feet squarely on the floor and faced the door. It couldn't be Draco. There was no way he'd be able to return so quickly.
Soft footfalls padded down the stone steps, scarcely making a sound. The footsteps grew nearer and nearer, and suddenly she saw the pale glow of a wand-tip lighting up the darkness. Illuminated by that glow was Draco's face. He smiled at her, but there was something wrong about it – something she couldn't quite put her finger on.
"What's going on?" she asked quickly, taking a step closer to him.
"We're leaving," he said shortly. "This way, quickly!" He gestured for her to follow him, then turned and headed back up the stairs.
Ginny, warily, followed. Draco didn't turn around and remained silent.
The corridors of Malfoy Manor seemed to twist and turn around them, and it wasn't long before Ginny was hopelessly lost. Without a guide, there would be no way she could make it out of the house. They passed dark tapestries depicting scenes of war – the Goblin Rebellions, from the looks of the uniforms. Down one hall was a particularly menacing series of portraits – all tall blonde men with evil eyes wielding swords with jeweled hilts – one, painted when the subject was near Draco's age, depicted a boy with his black riding boot firmly planted on the decapitated head of a house-elf. Ginny shuddered.
"In here," he said, after what seemed like ages had passed. He darted through a doorway to the right.
Ginny tried to shake off a sense of foreboding. They hadn't passed any guards—or, in fact, any other living creatures to speak of, wizard or otherwise – throughout their entire flight from the dungeons. Surely they shouldn't have been able to make such an escape; not this quickly, and certainly not this easily. Ginny took a few steps into the room into which Draco had disappeared.
In the middle of the room stood a giant bed. The hangings were made of thick black velvet, with the Malfoy family crest embroidered in silver. The duvet was also black, as was the carpet she stood on. The walls were made of rough, uneven stones. This room was old, far older than she expected the Manor to be. She turned to face Draco.
"I was instructed to make you comfortable," he said, closing the door behind him.
As he reached out to shut the heavy oak door of the bedroom, Ginny saw an ornately cast silver ring on his middle finger. The ring featured a giant onyx around which a jeweled-fanged serpent writhed. Carved into the stone was a large 'M.'
Ginny's eyes widened and her stomach felt as if she'd just been punched. She fought back the bile that had begun to rise in her throat.
Lucius shut the door and locked it with a small silver key. He placed the key somewhere in his inner robes. Then, turning his wand on the door, he cast several locking charms. He turned to Ginny.
"What are we going to do now, Draco?" asked Ginny, her voice quivering. "How are we going to get out of here?"
Lucius walked toward her, his eyes (Draco's but not Draco's) shining with a malicious light. "Oh, I have no intentions of going anywhere," he said silkily. "We're going to stay right here, just the two of us, for a while."
Ginny backed away from him until the back of her legs hit the edge of the bed. Lucius stepped closer.
"You know, you're much smarter than you look, Miss Weasley," said Lucius. "Anyone who caught a glimpse of your mind could surmise that much. However, you lack control, and if you're going to play games with the Dark Lord, some occlumency practice would not go amiss."
Fuck. Ginny sneered at Lucius. No sense in pretending now.
Lucius chuckled darkly. "So young, and full of such rage! I had doubts, but perhaps you would have made a good tool after all. Pity you were found to be unsuitable for the cause. Still, maybe there's something you could be used for." He licked his lips. "Maybe you can help me understand how you seduced my son. What charms are you hiding under those robes?"
Before Ginny had the chance to react, he lunged at her and pushed her down on the bed. She struggled against him, but his body was heavy and firm. Draco had the lean muscles of a Quidditch seeker, and Lucius seemed intent to use them to the most advantage.
"Why don't you put a body-bind on me?" she asked, trying to buy herself a few moments to think. "Make it easier on you. Wouldn't want you to have to break a sweat."
Lucius (not Draco!) laughed and gripped her upper arms more tightly. "The struggle is part of the fun," he whispered into her ear, his hot breath making the hair on her neck stand up. He licked the side of her neck from her collarbone to under her ear.
She whipped her head back and forth, trying to crack his skull with hers. In response, he bit sharply into her skin. Ginny cried out. He chuckled as he sucked on her, hard. He ground his hips against her, and she felt the hardness growing in his groin. She thought of kissing Draco earlier in the dungeons, and she let out a little moan.
Lucius stopped his attentions and looked at her with a wickedly delighted face. "You actually like it, you little slut. I shouldn't be surprised – it must run in the family. Look at your mother – how many of you mongrel brats has she had? Seventeen?" He laughed again and quickly moved his left forearm in a holding position against her chest. Still pinning her down, he withdrew his wand.
"Incarcerous," he said, conjuring ropes to tie together Ginny's wrists. He set his wand aside and pushed her body up towards the headboard. Ginny struggled against the ropes as he pulled a small silver knife out of his pocket and used it to carefully slice open the front of her robes. He set the knife next to his wand. "Lovely skin," he murmured as his fingertips trailed almost lovingly across her flesh. He brought his hands down to cup her breasts.
BAM! A flash of light and a scream. "YOU BITCH!" cried Lucius, his hands out in front of him. They were scarlet and blistered, severely burned. Ginny's brassiere glowed bright red like hot steel. "WHAT DID YOU DO TO ME?"
"Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes, you arsehole," said Ginny. She used her arms to drag herself up into a sitting position and pointed her bound hands at him. "STUPEFY!" she screamed.
The spell burst through the sleeves of her robes and hit Lucius head-on. He crumpled to the floor.
Stupid fucking disgusting pervert, thought Ginny, curling her lip in disgust. Sending a mental 'thank you' to her older brothers, she used a severing charm to unbind her wrists. She rubbed them a bit to help restore the circulation and then pulled her wand out of her sleeve. Holding it in front of her in dueling position, she cautiously approached Lucius' limp form.
He lay in a heap beyond the foot of the bed. His hands were swollen and glowing red; they looked like two tiny campfires against the black of the carpet.
"Incarcerous." She bound his limbs behind his back, wrists connected to knots at the ankles. And then – "Finite Incantatem."
His features melted-the skin slackened, the hair lengthened into Lucius' recognizable long strands.
She breathed a sigh of relief and sat down heavily on the floor next to Lucius' body. "What now?" she said aloud.
"There's a secret passageway next to the headboard," said a voice from her left side.
Ginny immediately leapt to her feet and brandished her wand. "Who's there?" she demanded, taking care to keep her wand hand steady. "Show yourself!"
"Over here, you silly girl," the voice sniffed superciliously. Ginny looked up at the wall. Hung on it was a large portrait of a rather matronly-looking woman dressed in grey silks. She wore a large fur stole (werewolf, judging by the texture and eerie way it reflected the light) and several strands of onyx beads. Her platinum hair was piled high on her head in a complicated knot, the strands pulled so tightly they stretched the skin at the edges of the woman's face. The portrait was impossible not to notice (unless, Ginny reflected, one was in the process of staving off a rape).
"Who are you?" Ginny asked suspiciously.
"Bellona Medea Malfoy," she responded, tilting her chin in a way that was so distinctly Draco Ginny couldn't help but smile. Bellona gestured toward Lucius. "I saw what that half-witted offspring of my great-nephew tried to do to you. An embarrassment to the family, manhandling an unwilling pureblood witch! If you'd been a muggle, well, perhaps I could understand, but a pureblood! In my day, we wouldn't have stood for it!"
Ginny's smile vanished, her temporary good humor obliterated by the portrait's prejudice.
"How'd you know I was a pureblood?" she asked.
The portrait sniffed. "Look at you," she said. "Red hair, freckles - you must be a Weasley. Although heavens knows what you're doing at Malfoy Manor."
Ginny glared. "You said there's a passageway next to the headboard? Where does it go?"
"It leads two ways," said the portrait. "The left goes to the ballroom, though I don't suggest you go that way. There appears to be some sort of raucous party going on, and it doesn't seem that you're quite the honored guest this evening." The portrait raised her eyebrows and looked at Ginny's chest, then coughed and looked away.
Rolling her eyes, Ginny muttered a quick mending charm. The threads of her dress robes quickly knitted themselves back together. "And the right?" she asked.
"Straight to the kitchens. You'll have to crawl, though. The passage is used primarily by house-elves."
Ginny pursed her lips, looking at the portrait critically. "Why should I trust you?" she asked. "How do I know you're not trying to fool me or something?"
The portrait looked amused. "You're right. The best option is to stay here and wait until Lucius wakes up or someone comes knocking on the door. I'm sure either of those situations are in your best interest."
The portrait had a point. Ginny jerked her head in what could have been a nod and walked over to the head of the bed. On her way, she tripped and stumbled. Looking down, she saw the object she had tripped over was Lucius' wand. She reached down, picked it up, and tucked it away in her robes. After a moment's hesitation, she grabbed the small silver knife from the bed as well and put it up her sleeve where her wand had previously been. Then she walked over to the wall.
"Behind the nightstand," said Bellona. "Password's disembowel."
"Of course it is," said Ginny mockingly. She pushed the nightstand out of the way and tapped on the wall with her wand. "Disembowel."
The wall dissolved away in a matter of seconds, exposing a gaping hole about half a meter in height. Ginny turned to the portrait. "Um, thank you," she said, her mother's lessons in good manners overriding her growing dislike of the painted woman.
The woman flapped a hand at her. "Oh, for Merlin's sake, hurry, you blithering child! You think he won't notice the nightstand was moved?"
Without a backwards look, Ginny launched herself into the hole and headed to the right.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
"Well, you certainly aced that one, didn't you? Showed that girl right proper!"
Lucius' head was aching. His great-aunt's voice pierced his ears, probably causing even greater damage to his brain than what he had already incurred. He grimaced as he tried to flex his fingers. It felt like his hands had been replaced with two balls of lava. And despite the stunning spell having obviously worn off, he was still incapacitated. He twisted his neck around to snatch a glimpse of his back. Ropes. Ahh, clever little bint, he thought.
"Bellona," he said through gritted teeth. "Please do not speak unless you can improve the silence."
She scoffed. "I'm a lot more useful than you, that's a fact. Look at you, paralyzed and all wrapped up by some tiny slip of girl. I can't believe what the family has been reduced to! Blundering idiots, all of you! You're a disgrace to true purebloods everywhere! Your wand should be snapped in half! If I wasn't stuck up here on this damn wall, I'd—"
"BELLONA," shouted Lucius. "I am the master of this home, and I will not be spoken to in such a manner! Another word from you, and it's conflagro!"
Bellona narrowed her eyes, pursed her lips, and crossed her beefy arms over her tremendous bosom.
"That's better," said Lucius, his voice tightly restrained. "Now, please tell me where the girl went."
Bellona lifted her left hand and carefully examined the nails on it.
"DAMN IT, BELLONA!" Lucius roared.
"What?" she demanded, crossing her arms again. "Didn't you just tell me to hold my tongue? Didn't you just say if I said another word you'd burn me right up, as if you were a common muggle and this the fourteenth century?"
Lucius closed his eyes and took a deep breath. His great-aunt Bellona had never married – she claimed it was by choice, but it was Lucius' opinion that she hadn't found anyone fool enough to put up with her ridiculously contrarian nature. That was also probably the reason she had been shoved back here in one of the spare bedchambers and not featured in the Green Hall with the rest of the family portraits.
"Great-aunt," he said sweetly. "Please, forgive me; you're absolutely right. How stupid it was of me to get myself into such a situation. If you would be so kind as to inform me of where my young captive went, I would be eternally grateful."
"It was stupid of you," replied his aunt, "but you are young yet, and I daresay you won't make the same mistake again." She pointed toward the wall. "I guided her toward the passage. She headed right, for the house-elf quarters and the kitchens."
"The kitchens?" asked Lucius. "But that passage doesn't lead toward the kitchens. Left goes into the garden, and right to the ballroom."
"Oh, does it now?" asked the portrait in mock surprise. "I must have forgotten! These old manors just have so many passages, a poor old painting such as myself just can't keep up with them all!" She smiled tightly. "Your captive is going to be in for a nasty shock. I daresay the Dark Lord will not be too happy to see her, especially outside of your protection." Bellona tilted her head slightly to the left. "What was that you told her earlier? The Dark Lord asked you to make her comfortable? Well, there's not much more comfortable for a captive than freedom!"
"Conflagro!" growled Lucius angrily.
Nothing happened.
"She took your wand, as well," smiled Bellona.
Lucius glared at his great-aunt. "As soon as these robes are unbound," he said in a deathly whisper. "I will tear you apart with my bare hands."
Bellona laughed. "Judging from those blisters, I don't think you'll be doing anything with your hands for a while," she said. "Besides, no one knew where you were going, correct? I imagine you'll be here for quite a while."
Lucius swore.
. . . . . . . . . .
The Dark Lord, still in the guise of Tom Riddle, had his hand clamped firmly on Draco's shoulder, and steered the boy around the room as he greeted his Death Eaters. Draco followed compliantly, keeping his mind blank of any thoughts of Ginny; of any thoughts of anything, really.
Several minutes passed, and still Lucius has not returned.
"Wormtail!" shouted Voldemort.
Instantly, the sniveling, rat-faced man was at his side. "Yes, my Lord?"
"Go see what is taking Lucius too long. I suspect he has gotten overzealous and started manhandling the goods." Wormtail nodded and fled from the room.
A sudden wave of rage seared through Draco before he could stop it.
Voldemort laughed, and turned to Draco, looking at him eye-to-eye. Draco refused to look away from the dark brown eyes that danced with the hint of fire in the pupils. "We don't like that much, do we? Wanted to be the first one?" He shook his head. "To be young again! To feel the throbbing insatiability of youthful hormones!" His grip on Draco's shoulder tightened; Draco felt as if a hawk had latched its talons into him. Draco winced. "Remember," whispered Voldemort in his ear. "I was first. And what is mine, is mine always."
He was still holding on to Draco a few minutes later when Wormtail returned.
"Master," cried Wormtail, breathless. "Master - the prisoner, she's gone, and so is Lucius!"
Voldemort's hand crushed Draco's shoulder. Draco staggered, fighting to stay upright under the force of the Dark Lord's grip.
"Find them," hissed Voldemort, his bloated, fire-eaten face flickering behind the glamour of his former self. "Find them, and bring them to me!" He looked around the room. "All of you, go!" he shouted.
The crowd anxiously began to scatter, tripping over themselves in their haste to leave the room.
"Severus!" shouted Voldemort.
Professor Snape, cool as ever, came gliding over to where Voldemort and Draco stood. "Yes, my Lord?"
Voldemort roughly shoved Draco toward Snape. "Take care of this one," he said. "And his mother."
"Of course," said Snape, grabbing Draco by his upper arm.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Ginny crept along the passageway. She kept hoping it would become tall enough to stand it, but of course it didn't - as the portrait said, these tunnels were used by the house elves. It was impossibly dark; the huge tennis-ball sized eyes of the house elves must help them see, but Ginny had to mutter a quick lumos and crawl with her wand clenched firmly in her teeth. She could feel the rough edges of the stone grabbing and pulling the silk of her robes.
Several other, smaller passageways had veered off in various directions. Ginny chose to stay in this one, assuming it was the main one, and would eventually lead her to the kitchens, as the painting had said. After all, it seemed to make sense - the kitchens were the hub of house-elf activity, so this main passage surely must lead to it.
Ginny paused, thinking she heard voices up ahead. She continued crawling, until she was brought up short. The corridor ended abruptly. To the left was a small door. The kitchens? She thought. Her wand still in her teeth, she pushed on the door.
It opened slowly and noiselessly. All Ginny could see in front of her was a heavy shroud of thick, black velvet. She stepped toward it, the door sliding shut behind her. The voices she had heard earlier were coming from the other side of the curtain.
"Take care of this one. And his mother."
Ginny bit her lip, cursing the portrait. She was back in the ballroom.
She reached behind her and tugged on the handle of the door to the passageway. It didn't budge.
Shit.
Ginny slowly brought her hand to her mouth, removed her wand, and muttered a quick spell to pierce a small hole in the curtain. She peered through.
Tom had shoved Draco roughly at Professor Snape. Ginny bit her lip. Dumbledore trusted Snape, that she knew; but then again, Dumbledore had also been a professor at Hogwarts with Tom, and still hadn't managed to figure out or stop anything that had happened. According to Draco, Snape had been first to the dungeons when she collapsed and had helped save her life. But it's not exactly like he could let a student die right in front of him in the same castle as Dumbledore, she thought.
Snape twirled his wand, and silver ropes shot out of it, binding Draco's arms tightly against his body and tying him to column that held up the marble ceiling. Snape flicked his wand toward the door, and Narcissa, swept up as if by a heavy wind, came flying across the ballroom. Snape caught her by the arm, carefully, and tied her up next to her son. "Now, you two don't even think about moving," he said through clenched teeth. "And maybe we won't have to kill you."
"We will not kill them," said Tom. "You were listening earlier, Severus, were you not? The blood of a Malfoy, the blood of a Black - they are both too precious to spill. But there are worse things than death," he said, eyes blazing at Draco and Narcissa. Narcissa flinched, but recovered; Draco's face showed the hint of a sneer.
"You," said Tom, taking a step closer to Draco. "You. I would have given her to you, if you wanted. You were to be my greatest disciples, the two of you - you, raised from birth for my right hand, purest and oldest of the magical bloodlines remaining. She, pureblood, from a family of muggle-lovers, able to infiltrate into the homes of the mudbloods and exterminate them. And now," Tom shook his head. "Now you are lucky for the gold that runs through your veins, young Malfoy. For without that, you would certainly be dead at my hand."
Draco snickered.
Tom narrowed his eyes. "You dare to laugh in the face of God?"
"You wouldn't have, you know," replied Draco, his eyes sparkling dangerously.
Tom's glamour flickered, showing for just a second the bloated corpse-like visage underneath. "Wouldn't have what?"
Draco smirked. "Given her to me."
"And why's that?"
"You never struck me as the sharing type," said Draco. "And besides, you saw into her heart, didn't you? You can't give me," he lifted his chin and lowered his eyelids, "what's mine already."
Tom was no longer able to hold the glamour in place. It shattered like smashed porcelain, and Voldemort seemed to grow taller and taller in his rage. "I took her," he cried wildly, flames shooting from his eyes. "I took her, and listened to her, and she poured herself, her soul, into me. She belongs to me!"
A voice cut across the room, loud and clear as a bell. "I belong to no one."
Ginny stepped out from behind the curtain, wand gripped tightly in her hand. Her thin, pale face was set with anger, the hint of teeth showing from behind an angry sneer. Her robes were torn in places, and her hair had escaped from its braid, tendrils of it framing her faces like rays of the sun. "And you would both do well to remember that."
Voldemort whirled around as if he had been struck in the back. "Ginevra," he said, his voice dangerously soft. "How kind of you to rejoin the party."
Ginny felt her anger radiate through her, wave after wave of it, as she stood staring across the ballroom at Voldemort. She found herself taking a slow, deliberate step forward. Then another.
"Shall I take care of her for you, my Lord?" asked Professor Snape, still standing by.
Voldemort waved his hand distractedly, never taking his eyes off of Ginny. "You're such a clever girl, to escape from Lucius." he said. "Tell me, what did you do to him, Ginevra? What did he do to you?"
Unbidden, Voldemort's mind seized hold of Ginny's. She stumbled, once, while memories of the evening came pouring out of her before she could stop them. Following Lucius through the corridors, Lucius licking the side of her neck, his hands burned and blistered, his body tied up on the floor. The thought of Draco, crossing the dungeons with determination, grabbing her face-
"NO!" she shouted, catching herself with her hands as she stumbled to the floor, long robes pooling around her like a lake of emeralds. "No," she repeated, breathing heavily, face turned toward the floor. She brought her face up, glaring at Voldemort. "That's not yours," she said angrily. "That's not for you to take."
Voldemort laughed. "Don't you understand, my love? You are mine. Everything about you is mine. Don't you remember?" He tapped his chest on one long, spidery finger. "You think dreams are just dreams? You think I'm not inside of you, a part of you? You think I won't always be?" He smiled wickedly. "My blood in your body. We are bound together, the two of us, forever." He gestured for her to move closer. "So come, my love. Come and accept your fate. Perhaps if you obey me now, I'll forgive this evening's indiscretions."
Ginny shook her head. "I trusted you, once," she said. "I trusted you, Tom Riddle, and you betrayed me, as you would betray me again, and Draco, and his family, and all of those who are fool enough to believe you."
Voldemort narrow his eyes. "So you choose to disobey? Very well, then. Accio Ginevra's wand." Before she could stop it, Ginny's wand came flying out of her hand. Voldemort brought it up to his face and smelled it, the slits of his nostrils dilating as he did so. He closed his eyes. "Mine," he said. Then he turned to Draco. "Crucio."
Narcissa screamed as the spell hit her son. Draco's eyes closed tightly and he clamped his mouth shut. From across the room, Ginny could see his fingers clenching and unclenching in pain. His back arched, and he twisted himself sideways, but he still did not cry out.
Voldemort brought his wand down. Draco sagged against the ropes that bound him, breathing heavily. He would have fallen if he had not been tied to the column. Narcissa, tears rolling down her cheeks, whispered to her son, who did not seem to respond.
"That was your fault," said Voldemort, staring across the room at Ginny, who was blinking hard against tears that threatened to pour down her face. "Do you see how you hurt the ones you love? You hurt him like you hurt me, like you hurt your family by running away from them. Like you hurt all those poor students, your first year at Hogwarts." Voldemort walked across the room to where Ginny still lay huddled on the floor.
He knelt so he could look into her eyes. "You and I, we are the same," he said. "We know how to hurt people, and we can do it." His eyes glowed softer, now, and darkened as they cooled, darkened to become Tom's eyes again. His glamour returned, and Ginny watched, entranced, as the blue left his skin, as the brown hair grew to frame his face, as his body changed and shifted, shifted back into the young man whom she had loved so many years ago.
He reached out and touched the side of her face, gently, far more gently than Ginny would have thought possible. "I know your secrets," he whispered to her. The soft sound of his voice seemed to worm its way into Ginny's ear, through her veins, down into the depths of her heart where the black disc remained. "I know your dreams, your desires. Your hunger to be loved, to be wanted, to be respected. The things you would do to feel that way."
Ginny couldn't look away. Her brown eyes were locked on his own, transfixed. Something in the back of her brain was screaming for her to look away, to run, to do anything, but her body refused to obey. She sat as still as a statue, face blank, unable to move.
Tom shook his head. "Who else could love you now, Ginevra, now that you've hurt everyone who cares for you? Who else but I could ever understand your dark, secret thoughts? Your desires?"
His fingers moved from her cheek to smooth back the locks of hair that had become loose from her braid. "I know your power. Do you think it was easy, to bring me back? I know it wasn't. I'm here because of you. You changed me. You gave me your heart, and in return I would give you everything." His fingers in her hair tightened, pulling at the roots, and he pulled her face to his and kissed her, deeply.
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
Draco felt pain. Pain so blinding he couldn't think straight, pain that was like being set on fire and stabbed and breaking all his bones and turning his insides into his outsides. It was like being savaged by a hippogriff; it was like being crushed beneath falling stone. It was pain worse than he could have ever imagined, pain and anger and terror and hatred and despair. He felt himself biting his lip, refusing to scream out against the pain, refusing to give Voldemort the satisfaction of knowing that he was dying, that he was dead, that he was beyond death and in hell, roasting on the thousands of fires of demons. He tasted blood in his mouth and knew it was his own, knew he had bitten through his own flesh in order to maintain his silence.
And it suddenly stopped, and Draco's body went slack, and he allowed himself to be held up by the ropes Professor Snape had bound around them. The ropes were soft, supple; they supported Draco's weight without cutting into his skin. Draco could hear his mother whispering to him - Draco? Draco? Tell me you're all right - and his mouth hurt too much to speak, but his fingers found their way into hers, and he squeezed her hand, just once.
And then Draco looked up, and he saw Ginny on the floor, and with a shock he saw Voldemort kneel, get on the floor with her, to speak to her face to face. Never, in his years of growing up in the shadow of the Dark Lord, in his years of hiding in passages and spying through keyholes, had he ever seen Voldemort debase himself by coming down to someone else's level. Lucius was proud of that - The Dark Lord holds himself above all men, Lucius would tell Draco - yet here he was, the darkest wizard of the age, putting himself at the feet of a girl with no money, no power, and the least respected family of all the pureblood lines.
And then he reached out and touched her, put his fingers in her hair, and he grabbed her and pulled her in for a kiss, and Draco could hear his blood pounding in his ears, could feel his body grow hot against the robes, hot with anger. Hot with jealousy. And then he saw her arms wrap around Voldemort, holding him tightly, and suddenly there was a glint of something reflective at her wrist.
"NO!" shouted Professor Snape, lunging forward, as Ginny stabbed a small silver knife through Voldemort's throat.