Disclaimer: so very not mine
A/N: I know, I know, nothing for a whole year and then two chapters in a week. There isn't much more to go now I'm afraid; just one more chapter and the epilogue. I'm setting myself a realistic target. I hope to have it finished by the end of July so here's hoping. Anyway on to dedication, this is a special one.
This chapter is for Richard without whom it wouldn't exist. Richard, you taught me so much, you taught me that anything I liked was stupid, that anything fun was without merit and that pretentiousness was next to godliness. So, to thank you I dedicated you a chapter of my fan fiction because I know what you think of fan fiction; after all, it's not proper writing. Then again, wait, just one question, how much many people have read the 'worthwhile' crap that you've written? That is all.
Chapter 20
Always a Reason
You say you think we need to go to war
Well, you're already in one
'Cause it's people like you that need to get slew
No one wants your opinionFuck you, fuck you very, very much
'Cause we hate what you do
And we hate your whole crew
So please don't stay in touch
Fuck you – Lily Allen
Somehow, and he had no idea how, Draco was finding the near silence of Harry and Hermione's common room distracting. He wanted his music but could, in his mind's eye, clearly see his CD player sitting on the bedside table at Grimmauld Place; exactly where he had left it.
Nothing but the sound of his quill broke through the heavy silence. Not the rustle of a page as Hermione leafed through some hefty textbook. Not the muttered curses from Harry as he spotted another spelling error. He'd been left on his own and he resented it.
He also resented the fact that Harry's homework was sitting, completed, on the edge of the table. Since when did Harry finish his homework before he did?
He glanced at the Transfiguration essay resting on top of the pile, the very essay that he'd been struggling to finish and he couldn't help wondering for just a moment how much Harry would mind if he were to just pull it towards him and mine it for ideas.
'He would probably offer if he were here,' Draco reasoned, saying the words aloud just to break the silence.
His fingers had just brushed against the heavy parchment when he drew them back as if burnt. Malfoys do not allow imprecise Gryffindors to do their homework for them: you know, unless it's Defence Against the Dark Arts.
With a sigh of resignation he smoothed his parchment and re-read his previous paragraph. He had just considered the possibility of filling a few inches by considering the ramifications of Gamp's Law when a knock on the door startled him slightly.
He eagerly leapt to his feet, grateful for the distraction. It would be Theo; Neville and Millie had taken to disappearing off in the evening, leaving Theo with nothing to do. He yanked open the door with a jibe about Theo's obsession with Hermione on his lips.
It was not Theo. Theo was not five foot two, did not have red hair and was not a girl. In fact, if he were to have listed all the people who he thought might have turned up at his door at half past nine on a Thursday, Ginevra Weasley wouldn't have been the last one on it because she wouldn't have been included at all. He hadn't seen her around since before the Easter break and he'd almost managed to forget that she existed. As she stood there staring at him, Draco considered for a moment simply slamming the door in her face. He wasn't sure what stopped him but something did.
'Where's Harry?' she asked, raising her chin slightly as though to prove to Draco that she wasn't intimidated by him.
'Elsewhere,' he answered simply, deciding in that moment winding up the She-Weasel could buy him at least ten minutes of procrastination and hell, he'd done it for less valid reasons in the past.
'Hermione?' she asked and Draco's resolve faltered for a moment as he heard the note of desperation in her voice. It was enough for him to offer her a proper answer.
'They're off doing head boy and girl things,' Draco offered, forgetting himself momentarily as he wiggled his fingers mysteriously.
Ginevra appeared to blanch slightly and that was impressive, because as Draco finally began to take in the girl's appearance he noticed how awful she looked. Her hair hung lankly about her face and her wide, frightened eyes were lined with shadows.
She turned to leave, but as she did the firelight glinted off the sleeve of her robe that was drawn down to cover her hand. If Draco had been anyone else he might not have noticed the heavy way the wet fabric moved and the way it shone slightly in a way that water didn't.
He moved fast, caught her upper arm and pulled her back towards him and was surprised slightly when she didn't resist, didn't struggle.
'What's this?' he asked, trying to catch her eye.
'Nothing,' she murmured, but despite the denial, she'd phrased it more like a question.
'Despite what you might think, Ginevra, I am not a moron,' Draco explained and he raised a sceptical eyebrow.
Hesitantly, he tugged the fabric free from where it was clutched in her fist, feeling its damp stickiness between his fingers and reminding himself to breathe calmly as a series of memories assaulted him.
What he should have revealed was the smooth skin of a pale, freckled forearm. Only it wasn't. He knew it wouldn't be but the reality of it still caused him to catch his breath. The cut was about three inches long and deep, with dark red blood oozing from it continuously. It ran from just above her wrist diagonally across the inside of her arm and Draco felt slightly queasy at the sight of it.
Stepping back he held open the door to allow her into the room and was relieved when she shuffled past him. Immediately, he closed the door and guided her to the sofa, using the hand that hadn't been smeared in blood to push his homework into an untidy pile. Quickly, he sat down next to her and held her arm gently as he focused on siphoning off the blood so that he could see the cut more clearly.
The next bit was more difficult and he felt the panic set in slightly as he realised that there was a chance that he might make it worse. He needed to do something, though, much longer and she would pass out through blood loss.
'Harry is so much better at this,' he heard himself mutter and then, concentrating all his energy, he drew his wand down over the cut and was delighted to see the blood slow and the edges of the cut knit together slightly. It was still pretty nasty looking, however, and he disappeared off to the bathroom to retrieve some gauze and tape from the medical box that he knew Harry kept there.
'I'm sure this isn't going to improve your confidence in me at all, but I have even less idea what I'm doing with this than I did with the spell,' he said, offering Ginevra a small smile before tearing open the packet with his teeth. By the time he finished wrapping the limb, it was twice its usual size and he had used about half a roll of tape. It looked nothing like the picture on the wrapper but the bleeding had stopped and that was all that mattered at that moment.
She looked at her arm for a long time before finally meeting Draco's eyes.
'Why didn't you take me to the hospital wing?' she asked, but there was no accusation in her tone, only curiosity.
'I don't think that you are a moron either, you know,' he confided as he gathered up the discarded items and vanished them before perching on the edge of the table. 'You knew that the best place for you was the hospital wing and yet you came here. I can only assume that there was a reason for that, one that I hope you realise you are now going to have to reveal.'
He let her think about that for a moment whilst he went to wash his hands and summon a house-elf to bring them some tea. Realising that there was no way he was going to get any more of his homework done that night, he slipped it into his bag and had just settled beside her on the sofa when Kreacher appeared with a tea tray.
He poured the tea in silence, adding four teaspoons of sugar to Ginevra's cup, remembering as he did the way his mother would always ensure a house-elf bought him a particularly sweet cup of tea after his encounters with his father and it always helped his hands to stop shaking. He held it out to her and she looked at it sceptically.
'But... I don't take sugar,' she argued, reaching out to take the cup anyway and taking a sip. She winced slightly and Draco wasn't sure if it was her arm, the heat or the sweetness that had caused it.
'You do tonight,' he insisted, fixing his own tea, adding a couple of spoons of sugar to his own cup, too; he figured that he would need the boost tonight. He folded his legs underneath him as he sank back into the cushions at the other end of the sofa, wanting to give her as much space as possible. His words were going to be confrontational enough without adding aggressive body language into the mix. Besides, she'd probably had enough of that for the evening.
'Now, who did that to you?' he asked, indicating her arm and waiting patiently for a response. It didn't come immediately. Draco could see that she was wrestling with some kind of internal debate, turning over and over in her mind what she should say, if anything at all. He could see it all reflected on her face, knew the feeling so well. It was the same feeling he'd had every time Snape had asked him where he'd gotten a particular bruise or cut. He saw the moment that she realised that she was going to have to tell someone and that it might as well be the one person who had asked.
'It wasn't his fault,' she excused quickly, and Draco smiled at her sadly. He had a feeling he knew who the 'he' was but it was her place to tell him.
'Well then, whose fault was it?' he asked, working hard to keep any note of derision from his voice.
'Mine,' she whispered. 'I shouldn't have gotten in the way.'
Draco was forced to use every ounce of restraint he could muster to stop himself from leaping from his seat and shaking her violently until she realised what she was saying. It wouldn't help, though. It had taken him years to stop accepting the blame for his father's horrific treatment of him and it was something that she would have to come to herself.
Not that he couldn't help her along a bit.
'I understand; I got in the way of a few of my father's Cruciatus curses too,' he said bitterly, surprising himself with his honesty.
'He never meant to hurt me, though,' she whined and Draco heard it, the little note of doubt. She was no longer trying to convince him; she was trying to convince herself.
'Why don't you tell me what happened?' he said kindly. 'I promise, I won't judge, say what you need to say.'
He watched as she squared her shoulders, resolved, and stared at the flames of the candles burning in their brackets.
'He was upset tonight,' she began and then seemed immediately to run out of steam.
'Zac?' Draco asked, trying to prompt her a little. He remembered how hard this was. She nodded and swallowed a few times as if she were trying to clear the words from her throat.
'Why was he upset?' Draco asked. When in doubt, go back to the start.
'He saw me talking to Dean. Dean was worried because he hadn't seen me in a while and he had his hand on my arm, trying to comfort me. Za... he, he saw us.' She took a deep breath, her resolve strengthening. 'I met him in the normal place. There's this classroom on the third floor,' she explained, glancing sideways at Draco.
He couldn't help his small smile as he realised how thankful he was that he and Harry hadn't been forced to resort to all that sneaking around.
'He was just sitting there on a desk,' she continued, and Draco noticed something new in her voice—the disbelief. She couldn't understand how someone who had professed love for her could have treated her as he did.
'He was just playing with something that kept flashing in the light. It was his Potions knife; he was just turning it over and over in his hands. I asked him what he was doing and he told me that he could ask me the same question.
'I didn't understand at first. He said I had to figure out what he was angry about and I didn't know what to say. It was like he was asking me to list all the things I could have possibly done to hurt him.'
'My father used to do that,' Draco admitted, startling himself. He had not intended to tell Ginevra anything about his father but as she told her story he couldn't help but explain the reason he empathised. 'He would tell me that I was to be punished and that if I could tell him why then he would go easy on me, but as I threw out suggestions he would just add them on. The "real" reason was always so small and insignificant that there was no way I would guess.'
Something sparked in Ginevra's eyes, as thought it was the first time she was really seeing him, and he didn't regret telling her about his past for a moment because when she spoke again it was with renewed strength.
'He asked me why I was trying to hurt him. Told me that seeing me flirting with Dean was like a knife in his chest. Then he started waving the knife around. He yelled that it was all my fault, that he was going to do it and then he made to cut himself.'
Draco scowled, unable to stop himself. Not only were Smith's actions childish and attention-seeking, belittling the day to day struggles of hundreds of other people, his manipulation was crude and lacked subtlety. That was far from the point, however, and Draco scolded himself for his lack of perspective.
'The second he went to hurt himself, I reached out; it was stupid but I wanted to stop him. He got all agitated, started waving the thing about and told me that it was his right and the next thing I knew my arm was wet and burning.
'I know he didn't mean to hurt me, he apologised immediately after, told me that he never wanted to hurt me. But I wasn't sure how that was supposed to make me feel better. If this happened when he didn't want to hurt me, what would happen if he ever did?' There were tears in her eyes now, her voice was cracking and Draco couldn't stop himself. He reached out and pulled her towards him and held her gently against his chest, smoothing a hand down over her hair as she cried, tears soaking through his shirt.
'I know you're confused right now, Ginevra,' he said, his voice barely above a whisper. 'But you need to accept one thing about this. It was his fault.' He swallowed heavily before continuing, allowing in the memory of a man with a sneer and grey eyes so like and yet so unlike his own.
'It was his bad choice that led to the situation. He brought the knife into the situation and he was the one that was waving it around. Yes, it was foolish to tackle him and, why oh why do we always forget our wands in these situations?' He felt rather than saw her smile at this and ploughed on. 'But the way he behaved is completely unacceptable. Do you know that?'
She nodded against his chest and he squeezed her gently.
'It's their way of controlling us, as long as we take the blame they can carry on,' he said, surprised when she slipped her arms around his waist and hugged him back.
'I just don't know when we will have the time for something like that.' Hermione sounded shrill as she pushed open the door, Harry right behind her. Draco saw the moment Harry took in what he was certain must be a thoroughly bizarre scene and stop stock still in the doorway.
Immediately, Ginevra leapt away as if burnt and began blabbering, whilst Draco continued to recline against his end of the sofa.
'It's not what it looks like, Harry. We weren't doing anything, I promise.'
Harry looked past her, meeting Draco's eyes, face filled with confusion and barely-concealed amusement at the idea that Draco would be doing anything at all with a girl.
'What's happened?' he asked, becoming serious all of a sudden as his eyes rested on the heavily-bandaged limb. His gaze flicked to Draco, appealing for answers as both he and Hermione settled into chairs.
'I think this is your story to tell,' Draco said, looking at Ginevra, and he felt a little stab of pride when she squared her shoulders and launched into the story again.
XXXXX
When Ginevra got to the part where she described how Smith cut her, Harry got silently to his feet and crossed to kneel in front of her, carefully unwrapping the swaddled limb. Draco watched as he once again exposed the nasty cut and he felt his stomach flop slightly at the sight of it. It looked worse now, angry red and pinched, caked with dried blood. He watched Harry as he took a deep breath and allowed his eyes to slide out of focus as he swept his palm gently across her arm, leaving a stripe of shiny new skin in its wake.
They all sat there in silence for a moment, just staring at the place where the cut used to be. It was Hermione who broke the silence, her voice small and sad.
'How long has this been going on, Ginny?' she asked, and Draco watched as Ginevra shifted uncomfortably in her seat. They weren't going to like this answer, Draco thought. It had taken at least two years for his father's violence to become bad enough for him to actually be willing to tell someone about it and he would be surprised if Ginevra wasn't on a similar time scale.
'We got together about eighteen months ago and he was fine for the first couple of months,' she explained. 'Then he started telling me what to do, how to dress, who to hang out with.' She paused a moment, looking apologetically at Harry.
'After the war, I thought we would get back together and that I wouldn't have to deal with him anymore. It's why I was so angry. I'm so sorry, Harry.'
'I wish you'd said something,' Harry mused and Draco smiled slightly as Ginevra raised her eyebrows sceptically at this situation.'
'Because that wouldn't have seemed like I was making it up, like I was just desperate for attention, would it?' she asked.
'Why put up with it for so long, though?' Hermione asked, and it sounded to Draco like she was almost pleading with Ginevra, begging with her for it not to be true.
''Why didn't you mention it before, Hermione? Ginevra asked, raising her chin slightly in defiance.
'I didn't know!' Hermione wailed. 'If I had, I promise I would have done something.'
'Not me,' Ginevra scoffed. 'You.' Both Draco and Harry turned to look curiously at Hermione. 'You think I don't know how bad Ron's temper has gotten? You want me to believe you weren't terrified that whilst he was punching holes in walls, smashing up the dorm one day, his anger would be taken out on you? Why didn't you say something, Hermione?'
'I thought I could help him,' she explained. 'He's sick.'
'There's a reason we're both in Gryffindor, Hermione,' Ginevra explained simply. 'Besides, there was no one to tell; you had your plate full with Ron; Ron's temper is so volatile at the moment I was frightened of what he might do, and I burned my bridges with Harry when I acted like a psycho.'
'Well, you're going to have to tell someone now,' Harry said, surprising Draco with the fierceness of his tone.
'Do we have to?' Ginevra asked nervously. 'I know it was his fault and everything,' she said quickly, shooting a sidelong look at Draco, 'but it was one incident. If I tell McGonagall, he'll be expelled, and this will follow him for years; it might even ruin his life. I don't know if I can do that to him.'
'I'm sorry about this, Gin,' Harry said, reaching out to cover her hand with his own. 'But if you don't tell her, I will.'
Draco couldn't help but wince slightly at this. He knew that Harry meant well, had a responsibility as head boy but he knew that what Ginevra needed now was to feel like she had power over her own life again. Not to just hand it off to someone else, however trustworthy they might be.
'I think you should tell her, Ginevra,' Draco said, and Harry shot him an appreciative glance. 'He obviously has a problem, and it's not going to go away simply because you aren't together anymore. He will go on, will do this again and the next person might not be as lucky as you. Remember what I said about control?' he asked, pleased when she gave a resigned nod. 'It's time for you to take control back.'
She looked at him then, eyes boring into his, looking for some kind of answer or reassurance. She must have found whatever she was looking for because she nodded again, more firmly.
'I'll tell her in the morning.'
XXXXX
She ended up spending the night on the sofa in the common room and while Harry and Hermione fussed around her a little, making sure that she was settled in, Draco slipped away to his and Harry's room. He needed some space to think a little after such an intense conversation.
His hands shook a little as he released the catch on the window and threw it open, breathing the heavy, warm air deeply into his lungs. The scent of grass and warm rain soothed him slightly as he slipped a cigarette from the packet and settled himself on the windowsill before lighting it.
He watched carefully as the shake in his hands lessened slightly with the effects of the nicotine. Unfortunately, the adrenaline was starting to wear off as well and the breaths he took were shaky as he tried to stop the slideshow that had started in his head. It had been necessary at the time to let Ginevra see how much he understood her situation, but now he was stuck with those images.
He was so immersed in his own horrific little world that he didn't hear Harry enter the room and he started slightly when his arms wrapped reassuringly around him and tugged the cigarette from his fingers. He watched as Harry raised it to his lips, taking a long drag, the end glowing brightly in the darkness before he handed it back to Draco and exhaled slowly, blowing the smoke out of the window.
'I'm a bad influence on you,' Draco smirked, aiming for humour but falling short. Harry ignored the pathetic attempt at a joke and just held on to Draco.
'How're you holding up?' Harry asked.
'I'm fine,' Draco said, hoping for a moment to brush away Harry's concern. He should have known better, though; Harry had never been dissuaded that easily.
'Yeah, of course you are,' Harry said sceptically, sitting on the window sill next to him and turning his head so their eyes met. Draco shrugged; it was useless trying to hide his distress from Harry. The man could see straight through him.
'He's never going to hurt you again, Draco, you know that, right? I won't let him.'
Draco nodded as tears prickled his eyes and Harry reached up to cup his face.
'What do you need?' Harry asked. Draco allowed his half-finished cigarette to fall out of the window as he leant forward to press his lips to Harry's, desperately seeking the comfort that he knew was there.
The familiar taste of Harry mingled with flavour of tea and the smoke from his menthol cigarette was reassuring. Short kisses stretched into long ones and Draco felt himself being pushed backwards until he was reclining against the window frame, Harry's heat pressing in all around him, calming his mind.
Dextrous fingers were working open his shirt, his trousers, exposing Draco's skin, inch by agonising inch, to the fragrant night breeze coming from the still open window.
He was losing himself, allowing himself to be lost, allowing Harry to take control. One minute there was rough denim pressed against his thigh as Harry's arousal strained against his jeans, the next it had been replaced by the warm silky skin that pushed incessantly against him as Harry just kept on kissing him. Even as slick fingers pressed themselves against him, sliding inside and causing him to moan, Harry would not stop kissing him.
He moaned again at their loss but still Harry's mouth didn't leave his, even as he shifted position so that slick hardness could push forwards, filling the space that Harry's fingers had left. One of Harry's hands gripped his hip to guide his strokes as the other came up to grasp lightly at his jaw, his thumb pulling Draco's mouth open so that he could lick into his mouth as he stroked into him over and over, pushing Draco closer and closer to the edge, encouraging him to lose control as he moved against that spot deep inside over and over again.
Unable to kiss back any more, Draco just gasped as Harry's tongue continued its relentless mapping of Draco's mouth and he arched into Harry, his untouched cock spilling his release all over his stomach. Harry pushed into him once, twice more, and then he was moaning and staring into Draco's eyes, looking at him with impossibly large pupils that were surrounded by the thinnest band of intense green. Draco just stared back, so grateful in that moment for the man who had known instinctively what he wanted, even when he wasn't sure himself.
Eventually their breathing returned to normal, they realised that they were covered in rapidly cooling stickiness, and Harry shifted, cleaning them both with a lazy wave of his wand before pulling Draco to his feet and practically carrying him to the bed. He wrapped himself protectively around Draco as they both drifted off to sleep.
XXXXX
'I want Draco to come!' Ginevra's voice drifted through the open door to where he reclined lazily on the bed, scanning through a few notes for his Arithmancy class. He smiled slightly at how strange it was for a Weasley to be requesting his presence.
Casting his notes aside, he slid off the bed and made his way into the common room where the three of them were gathered. Harry stood, leaning against the fireplace, waiting impatiently and wearing what Draco liked to think of as his Achilles look, brooding, dangerous and purposeful. That look always meant trouble for someone. He was just glad that someone was no longer him. Hermione was fussing around Ginevra in the centre of the room.
'You know, you don't have to do this if you don't want to, Ginny, you can let Harry and I take care of it if you want?' Ginevra was about to say something in response when Draco decided to speak up. He knew that Hermione was only trying to help, but it was extremely counter-productive.
'She'll be fine, Hermione, she isn't a child,' Draco interjected, trying his best to sound firm without sounding harsh.
Ginevra's head snapped around at the sound of his voice and she darted across the room towards him, throwing her arms around him and encasing him in a tight hug. Alarm flared in Draco; he'd gotten better at dealing with tactile affection since he'd thrown his lot in with a bunch of Gryffindors but the suddenness and ferocity of their emotions still caught him off guard from time to time.
He glanced across at Harry, still standing by the fire looking intense and determined, but a smile threatened to break onto his face as he watched Draco smoothing his hand over the flame red hair.
Eventually, she pulled back from Draco but did not let go of him completely as she looped her arm through his and tucked herself into his side.
'Shall we go?' she asked.
XXXXX
Draco watched the professor's face carefully as Ginevra pulled back her sleeve to reveal the long pink scar that would probably always be there. She looked impossibly old and frail in that moment and Draco's heart ached for her. All this woman had ever wanted was to keep the students of Hogwarts safe and she had put up with all sorts of personal difficulties in order to ensure it. He was sure she must have felt that after the war had ended there might be something of a reprieve but still her students were getting hurt, now at the hands of each other.
'You have my assurances, Miss Weasley, that Mr Smith will be dealt with most severely,' she insisted, and Draco just about heard the slight quiver in her voice that betrayed her distress as she headed back around the desk.
'I'm concerned about you, though; I think it would be advisable for you to meet with a Healer, a Lunatrist'
Ginevra squirmed slightly in her seat, clearly uncomfortable with the idea but Draco caught her eye and gave her an almost imperceptible nod.
'Sure,' she agreed and Draco almost sighed with relief.
They were almost out of the office when Hermione, who was leading the way, stopped in her tracks and turned back towards the professor, her face clearly reflecting her internal struggle.
'There's something else, Professor,' Hermione blurted, and McGonagall looked up, her gaze sharp and worried.
'Yes, Miss Granger, what is it?'
They watched as Hermione fought with herself for a moment longer and then seemed to crumple slightly under an invisible weight.
'It's Ron, Professor, I think he needs some help.'