Chapter Twenty One
From the Order of the Phoenix's emergency plan for the Weasley family:
Arthur: rescue from Ministry.
Molly: safe, resides at Headquarters.
Bill and Fleur: at Shell Cottage – alert so they can ward their home.
Charlie: either at Headquarters or dragon reserve – if in Romania, contact Ski Blustag.
Fred and George: shop in Diagon – if possible, rescue along with Arthur, otherwise contact Lee.
Ron: who knows? try to send owl?
Ginny: extract from Hogwarts, immediately, via Minerva or Pomona.
From Status Report to Kingsley on first day of Easter holiday:
Arthur: was the one to hear the news first, is safe at HQ.
Molly: at Muriel's, under a heavy Calming Potion, watched by a Healer.
Bill and Fleur: reported that their wards are up, haven't heard from them since.
Charlie: safe at HQ.
Fred and George: safe at HQ.
Ron: verified captured, now in hands of Death Eaters. Our hopes and prayers are with him.
Ginny: Minerva's working on finding her…!
Finally, the boys weren't under Carrow-surveillance. Finally, they were all having a good week, the depression of the Gryffindor loss forgotten – classes were winding down in anticipation of spring break – and finally they were all… in a state more conducive to being free with each other's bodies. Or as Blaise, blunt as ever, put it to Ginny: "You're not on the rag for another week and a half now, am I right?"
Ginny had swatted him on the backside, but also said in a low tone, "Yeah, no worries." There was only a single factor tripping them up now, and that was the question of 'where.' Ginny, frankly, saw nothing wrong with her workshop, and neither had Blaise, originally, but all of the sudden Draco, perhaps inured to waiting by this point, was kicking up a fuss, and his idea of finding somewhere more 'appropriate' had now infected Blaise as well.
Ginny was steaming mad at both of them for several hours, thinking they were both being quite unreasonable – what about the Room of Requirement? It was literally impossible for the Room to not be 'appropriate' to their desires. Blaise had sneered, protesting that he didn't want Gryffindor cooties getting on him while he was fucking, and then just to make a mockery of his own hypocrisy, licked her cheek sloppily. Only later did Draco, ruefully, explain to her that Blaise was trying to protect him from bad memories, at which Ginny grimaced and dropped the issue.
She was still mad, though, until Blaise had himself some kind of brainstorm that left him bouncing off the walls with delirious glee. With a great deal of cuddling, he relaxed her, and promised up and down to ensure her deflowering before spring break, even if he had to go to the ends of the earth to make it happen.
As it turned out, that was a reasonable enough description of what he'd conceived of doing. Pulling a Potter, he apparently struck out through the castle in the middle of the night looking for a Floo to use.
The catch was, he had free reign of the castle, and so didn't face the perils Potter would have – but because he was Head Boy, he faced another set of complications… it took four consecutive nights of skulking about before his luck was finally good enough to avoid running into anyone. The first night, it had been Snape, who had struck up a very curious hour-long conversation with him, then shepherded him back to Slytherin. Another night it was Filch, who had been searching out a Carrow, but latched on Blaise to lend a hand with a spell for a broken pipe. Peeves and a wandering first-year rounded out the obstacles of the week. Finally, with barely two days left, he managed it, and explained himself fully to Ginny and Draco the next day in her workroom.
At the culmination of a series of mishaps, which gave Ginny and Draco panic attacks to hear described even though Blaise was clearly safe and sound before them, he'd found that he'd broken into McGonagall's office on accident, on which he shrugged and Flooed home as he'd planned anyway.
Ginny was wholly unimpressed when he showed off the result of his quest, a glinting onyx ring. Draco, though, immediately asked a number of technical questions. Only then did Ginny take note of the similar ring on his right pinkie, which she'd generally written off as an affection of his, the same as his innumerable monogrammed handkerchiefs (which typically were put to very undignified service in post-canoodling clean-up.) Finally Draco seemed to have exhausted his stream of incomprehensible queries, and offered very hearty congratulations for his boyfriend's cleverness.
"Alright, so, with twenty-four hours to go, and your ring fetched, can we get this started, already?" Ginny asked, irate and a touch scornful. She'd been tormented all week by dreams that picked up where she and Draco and Blaise, in real life, always left off…
"I don't know, Draco… do you think she wants it badly enough?" Blaise stage-whispered in an aside, at which Ginny flew at him in a fury and pinned him to the couch in a way that was more suggestive than threatening.
Draco, rolling his eyes, dove in and sorted the prats out, dragging them apart. "We need to make sure they'll not notice you using it, I believe, correct?"
Ginny swallowed at the clear reference to the Carrows, but Blaise only huffed. "Yes, alright." The process of 'making sure' somehow involved Draco and Ginny hiding in a broom closet while Blaise strode the hallway outside, checking that the coast was clear. When it was, he whispered to his closeted lovers, "Assuming they don't track me and follow me – which I can talk my way out of well enough – I'm going to be there a while preparing things, alright? So just wait till it's clear I was undetected, and then you can pop on out of there. Or," he grinned, noting how Ginny leaned into Draco and how Draco's hands were slipping further and further around her waist, "you can stay in the closet. It's no difference to me."
His final directions and snarkiness delivered, he spun on his heel – and shrank away into nothingness, without even a crack of noise.
"Ack!" was Ginny's unintelligent, high-pitched response to this surprise.
"Hush," Draco told her absently, looking at his watch and apparently counting. After about a minute and a half, he sighed, telling her in a relieved tone, "If there were an alarm going off, they'd have gotten here by now." In imitation of his vanished boyfriend, he threaded his fingers idly through a few strands of Ginny's hair.
"You're still watching your watch," she pointed out.
"In case they noticed and aren't worried… they'll still come check it out, just not immediately. We'll give them ten minutes."
Seriously, she told him, "I'd be far too concerned for Blaise to give up the watch after ten minutes… we better give it at least thirty."
He cocked a golden eyebrow, and smirked. "Alright, fine… but you'd best sit good and still on my lap, here, and be very, very quiet," he informed her, tugging her into his lap, his fingers immediately fanning up her skirt and across her thighs, starting to tease, worm their way higher and deeper, until it was very hard indeed for Ginny to keep from wriggling or making noise.
The Carrows never came; the same could not be said about the two keeping guard.
By the time Blaise had returned, hours later, Draco had been summoned home by owl. His parents wanted an accounting of what he'd been up to over the semester, as he'd spent a great deal more money that year than usual. Ginny thought back to the carriage ride, the constant bribes of expensive chocolates, the dinner at Kama Sutra, and gulped, but he gave her a very calm, dignified kiss and told her to be good, he'd be right back. Then he'd hissed in her ear to look after Blaise, to do, to say, anything, to keep him calm.
So she'd returned to the closet and done problem-sets by wandlight until their buoyant boy had returned. It hurt to pop his ebullience immediately, and she saw both in his crestfallen slump, and the sparkle of irritation and indignation on Draco's behalf, why he needed looking after. She stole off to her Quidditch locker during dinner to procure the bottle of champagne that Gryffindor's Quidditch team had never had the opportunity to drink.
With that, she managed to pacify him until much later that night, when Draco still wasn't back, and Blaise broke into her bedroom, asking if she knew where he was. They knew the probable answer, but 'he's at home' wasn't any reassurance to either of them. They crept out of Gryffindor and down to the workroom and talked for hours. The culmination of these talks, as Blaise grew increasingly hysterical, entailed Ginny telling him all the ways in which she knew Draco loved him. When he was still only barely restraining himself from bolting for the nearest Floo, she was struck by inspiration.
"You know, he would do anything for you," she told him.
"Probably true," he muttered without moving his gaze from where it was fixated on the door.
"Definitely true," she insisted. "In fact…" she grinned, lacing her arms around his chest to tug him sideways, to lean against her, and feeling a flutter of pride and love when he finally looked her in the eyes, listening, and melted a few degrees now that he was in her lap, "I know it's true, because he gave me permission to make you a very, very special offer… a nice surprise for you."
"What's that?" Blaise asked, and although his eyes weren't dancing at the word 'surprise' as usual, he'd lost the dead, desolate note in his voice.
"Since he had to scarper, he lost his place at the, erm, front of the line, if you want to look at it that way. He's giving that place to you. Erm, that is, the place in line for my virginity."
Now his face was slack with incredulity. "He is? He said that?"
She nodded, making a mental note to be sure to find Draco before Blaise did in the morning, to let him know how she'd rearranged the terms. Well, he had said "whatever it took" to calm Blaise. When his cerulean eyes sparkled with delight at 'Draco's' display of affection, Ginny knew Draco would approve, and all the more so when, about half an hour later, they fell asleep finally, in each other's arms, piled under blankets.
The next morning was the final day before spring break; the train left immediately after dinner. Blaise was supposed to be supervising the arrangement of the carriages and the assignments for the house-elves over the break. Ginny was supposed to be in class, and if not there, then belatedly packing for home. Draco, as far as his parents knew, was in his room dressing for a formal afternoon luncheon.
But instead, with fluttering stomachs, broad, excited grins, and a nervous, lustful energy in the air, they were gathered around Blaise, hand-in-hand-in-hand, in very back of the Library.
"Wait!" Gin yelped suddenly.
Both boys gave her dirty looks. "What nowwww?" whined Draco childishly.
"Rubbers. We didn't need rubbers when we were staying in the castle for this, but-"
"- I told you," Blaise cut her off, "I wanted to take care of a few things while I was there, and it wasn't all plumping pillows. I took care of it. A quick nip to the Restricted Section, and I hunted up the same charm that the whole castle's covered by."
Before she could get another word in edgewise – though all she wanted to do was congratulate him on his foresight – Blaise gave the thick dark ring on his right hand a short, hard twist, and the boys' hands collapsed to smoke in hers – Ginny, too, felt that she'd become entirely ethereal, almost better than when she was flying, except for the utter loss of control.
A moment later, they were solid again, if windswept and winded, in an incredibly sumptuous room. Draco broke out beaming. "My bedroom," Blaise announced, as if it needed introduction – the bed itself, the size of Ginny's own room at the Burrow, was kind of a giveaway.
They almost succumbed to shyness, then, the two bawdy boys who'd been telling her all year they wanted to shag her, so Ginny, her hands still in theirs, tugged them over to the bed. Once they saw her sit primly on the duvet, long freckled legs crossed elegantly and skirt riding up, the lust that had plagued them for so long returned in a crushing wave.
Two minutes later, Ginevra Weasley found herself stripped, sitting in the naked lap of her soon-to-be deflowerer, his strong forearms urgently holding her against him while his long fingernails traced patterns on her belly. Her heart was pounding so hard that she felt as though her ears were probably pulsing in time to it, and Draco and Blaise's hands roamed hungrily across her skin. Blaise nibbled her shoulder at the same time Draco lapped a nipple, and Ginny wriggled with pleasure at the spark of bliss that went surging through her – followed by another spark as her wriggle brought her and Blaise into a deeply intimate contact. His strong arms around her urged her to do it again, and shortly Ginny established a mind-blowing rhythm grinding against him.
When she was writhing and moaning wantonly in his arms, Blaise caught Draco's eye, prompting a wide, excited grin from his boyfriend. Suddenly, muscular thighs pressed up between hers, pushing her legs apart, and hands were on her hips, shifting her weight slightly forward, and in the kind of swift but exquisitely clear movement that Ginny would replay for years later in her head, Blaise slid down along her slit and stabbed up, into her.
The pain was anything but insignificant, but then Draco was immediately at work to counter it – shifting down between her spread legs, he bent his head to her lips, repeating his exotic, sinfully good performance of Valentine's Day, but this time, the achy longing inside her was filled, and then some, by Blaise and his smooth, even thrusts. Ginny was completely overwhelmed to be the focus of their very pointed concentration, to have so much intention directed simply at pleasuring her.
Soon enough she lost even the ability to contemplate that, as the sure strokes of Blaise inside her and Draco's tongue lovingly bathing her (and Blaise, on the off-strokes,) swept her completely away. Conscious thought only returned when, in a tremendous sequence, the boys' attention took her over the edge, and she came to, hazily, Blaise curling her tight in his arms, and Draco curled over her leg to rest his head on her stomach. Her muscles were still shivering from their new and powerful exercise.
She tried to speak and realized her throat was raw, realized too that she'd been screaming her head off a moment ago. "That – was incredible…" she croaked, still trembling and shuddering between the two boys. Blaise slid out from under her to settle beside her, holding her possessively against his chest.
But she reached out for Draco – "His turn," she said, meaning only that she wanted him to hold her, but he arched an eyebrow, and she realized how it had sounded – realized as well that the idea was indeed a good one. He took Blaise's spot reclining on the pile of pillows against the headboard. Ginny very, very gingerly crawled up his body to rest her hips against his – he was rock hard, and she was still primed from Blaise – he was inside her instantly, drawing a loud immediate moan from her that was half-lust, half-pain.
Draco knew exactly how to move, though, to keep from paining her more – he rocked slowly, gently up against her, deep, but not forcefully. Ginny leaned forwards to capture his lips in hers, gasping against his mouth as he slid a finger between them, to rub her slick skin right above her entrance. She nearly purred with joy at the doubled sensation, and then Blaise crouched behind her to start sucking and nipping at her neck and shoulder again, and thinking back on it later, she was pretty sure she did purr, then.
Neither boy commented on it, only focusing on arousing every last shred of bliss from her body and making her putty in their hands. Blaise, still hard and unsatisfied, pressed against her lower back, hands running up and down her sides and around front to toy with her nipples, mouth still roaming along the sensitive skin of her shoulder.
Then he shifted, moved forwards, and before Ginny could react, he was inside her too – always finding virgin territory, Blaise was – nestled up within her, only the thinnest wall between his cock and Draco's. Defensively, Ginny's body tightened in reaction, but he was already fully inside her, and her constriction around him only made him groan in her ear.
He must have prepared with lube, as Draco was lulling and relaxing her body – the shock was evaporating now, leaving Ginny's body anything but relaxed. Breath came fast and hard to her now – she could hardly bear the fullness of it, but she needed it, needed to relish it –she bucked between them, and was rewarded with grunts from both boys. Ginny was wedged so solidly between their bodies, and the sense of fullness and completion from Blaise's lovemaking was not just doubled but tripled, quadrupled…
"I can feel you," she heard Draco rasp in Blaise's ear, and Ginny could feel them both, could feel them feeling each other… their hands weren't roaming her feverish skin anymore, but occupied balancing all three of their bodies, and Ginny could hardly mind, because she was already completely overwhelmed by two mouths panting fast breaths against her neck, two hips cradling either side of hers, two muscular torsos which where driving against and inside her too fast to even understand the ways in which the boys were making her moan. The only thing she could pick out was when Draco shrieked, "Oh, fuck," in her ear. Then on the heels of that uncharacteristic vulgarity, he and Blaise were both stabbing deep up inside her, not that she could discern much about either of them, because as Draco was gushing within her and Blaise was squeezing her arse tightly, about to reach his own peak, she climaxed again, and was lost to all sensation until the aches between her legs started asserting themselves.
Ginny was groggy and sore, and so she let Draco and Blaise rearrange her as they liked between them till they were clean, dry, and warm beneath the covers, and completely entwined. The throbbing from her nether-parts started to assert itself in a more serious way then, but before she could curl up in a tight ball around herself, like she wanted, Blaise intervened to prevent her ruining their love-nest. ""Obscurisensi," she thought it was, but whatever the incantation, it worked to numb the throb.
That accomplished, she went back to playing dead, lying limply between the boys and basking in their petting, kissing, and constantly murmured compliments and praise.
It was maybe fifteen minutes later, though the whole thing had a timeless quality to it, that Draco was telling her, "You're incredible, Fota, the most sensual… and let's not forget, the most tolerant and open-minded, to ever even consider us,"
To which Blaise of course interjected, "Wait, open-minded to consider a pair of rascals like us, or open-minded to consider doing rascals that come in pairs?"
Draco rolled his eyes: "I was going for sexually, you dolt, since –" He abruptly cut himself off, rolling away in the opposite direction, shaking off the shared embrace.
"Dray?" both his lovers immediately asked. "What's wrong?"
As he fought free of the duvet and sheets, and staggered upright, striding across the room to his pants, Blaise could spot the problem immediately, though he hated to believe it – Draco was clutching his right-hand pinky finger.
As he shuffled about trying to stuff two feet into one pants' hole, Blaise lodged a hand over Ginny's mouth and hissed into her ear a brief explanation: "Those rings are connections to the estate – well, you already figured that out – well, they can be used to summon errant heirs. This means his parents very seriously want to find him – they've probably already searched the whole Manor for him."
Ginny's stomach flipped over and sank, her whole body feeling cold even though she was still sweaty from before.
"Do you think it's about –" she tried to ask, but before she could say 'us,' Draco, having managed to dress himself properly, strode back across the room. White-faced and wide-eyed, he grabbed Blaise and kissed him deeply, then seized Ginny for her kiss. As he backed away to a clear space, he tossed off to them, "Love you. Stay there," and vanished the same way Blaise had, disappearing in silence.
Blaise's instinctive reaction was to tuck Ginny close, entwining their naked bodies more closely and more desperately than before. Because she did crave him holding her – just as deeply as she craved Draco back, and holding her, she went along with it for about five minutes. However, soon, her grim experience with war-matters was pricking her to action.
"Ginny!" Blaise gasped pathetically when she tried to slip out of his grip. "Don't…"
"I'm not going to up and vanish, Blaise," she promised, her heart breaking at the expression on his face. "We need to get up though. If something's the matter, we've got to be dressed and ready when Draco gets back."
Her admonition proved true, only moments after Ginny had fondly straightened Blaise's collar and been tugged into his lap, where they'd both huddled, paralyzed by fear.
"Dray!" Blaise exulted, nearly toppling Ginny to the floor as he sprang up to meet his prodigal boyfriend.
Draco grabbed the hand Blaise had flung up in welcome, giving it a quick squeeze, but his face was stricken. "Get her back. Get her back to school absolutely immediately. Take her straight to McGonagall, and don't let any other professor or student take her, stop her, talk to her, even see her, if you can help it. Get her far, far gone from here – from me – right now. And… Gin…" he gulped, dry-eyed but devastated, "I'm sorry. Believe this of me – I am so, so sorry."
Ginny was gaping, horror-stricken. Draco was looking as blasted and ravaged by whatever had just happened as he had when Blaise cornered him in the bathroom long ago, at the Ministry, until his glamours wore off and revealed the toll of the summer on him. Blaise sucked down the still, heavy air of the bedroom, but the smell of lingering sex was hardly helpful. "I – Draco – you're not… going back, are you?"
"The sooner the better," Draco said in a dead tone. "There's Him to deal with," and he practically spat the euphemism.
With a cry of shock, Ginny's knees gave out, and Blaise caught her automatically, but he was still searching Draco's face. There was nothing there to welcome Blaise. Draco fully, one-hundred percent, did not want him to stay, did not want to be detained, to be rescued like he had when Blaise hustled him off to the Canary Islands last July.
Blaise stepped back from the abyss in Draco's expression, and in the most difficult movement he'd ever made, twisted his ring to take Ginny and himself back to Hogwarts.
A third year Slytherin rounded the corner as Blaise and Ginny appeared, staggering, and rebounded off a shelf. She yelped. Blaise swore at her, then, more practically, hauled out his wand and cursed her. She was frozen. "Petrified?" Ginny criticized. "Won't help us for long."
"Nothing will help us in the long-term – so we need to get you to your Head in as short a time as possible. Where'll she be right now?" Blaise's temples throbbed with the blood pounding in his ears, feeling dizzy with adrenaline and responsibility.
"Her office, probably – we've only got three floors to cross, then…" Ginny said in a forlornly hopeful way meant to boost their spirits.
It didn't. Not with Draco's eyes haunting them both.
It took ten minutes hiding in a secret passage, and three Stupefications. But Blaise hauled her through McGonagall's doorway just as Filch's cackling sounded from around the corner.
McGonagall's eyes and mouth were perfect circles of shock. "Mr. Zabini?" she asked in a faint, quizzical tone, not seeming to believe Ginny was there, safe and sound, until Blaise tugged his prize around him. "Miss Weasley…" The old woman's eyes, Blaise was alarmed to see, were misting up.
Draco's attitude had imparted a great deal of seriousness to Blaise that afternoon. He knew that he couldn't relent until he'd seen the back of Ginny, as she vanished through the Floo. "I delivered her here as ordered, Professor," he said pointedly, knowing very little was said in classrooms and offices that didn't make it to the Carrows' ears.
Professor McGonagall hadn't earned her title as a formidable foe of the Dark Lord for nothing. She blinked a moment before saying in put-upon, querulous tone, "My goodness… truly? I only put out the order to bring Miss Weasley to my office a moment ago. Her poor brother – Arthur said his spattergoit had taken a turn for the worse. At any rate, they can't be picking her up at the station in London," she prattled on.
"Oh! Is that what that's about?" Blaise said, his own sage, knowing tone just as much a show as McGonagall's display of dottering old age. "All I knew was the administration put out a call to fetch her, and I found her just down the hallway so I dragged her straight here. Professor Carrow seemed very concerned that she be found immediately," he added earnestly.
"Well, you did quite well, Mr. Zabini," she said, patting his cheek. The firm press of her hand, and the glint of fear in her gray eyes, told him she knew they'd both have to dance through fire to get out of trouble for their supposed innocent mix-up. Meanwhile, his precious, fair love was braced in front of the fire-place.
As McGonagall fetched the Floo Powder, Blaise's eyes raked her figure longingly. She was trembling – he suspected she had picked up something grave indeed from all that talk about spattergoit. They restrained themselves to a silent hug, which McGonagall mercifully ignored, fiddling with the lid. She extended the open container to Ginny, who threw it into the fire, choking out the address of some cottage.
The flames guttered, then grew back up – no green cast to them, they were a perfectly mundane yellow. Ginny's face wrenched at that, but she tried again with another pinch, and gasped out a name which Blaise carefully paid no attention to. This time the flames turned green promptly. Blaise may have let out a ragged, feminine cry, a sound of pure relief. Ginny nearly dove through – and was gone.
"Well." McGonagall looked down at her desk, straightening a quill. "I need to prepare myself for… any visitors who might utilize my office hours. And you… should probably report to… whoever sent you out on your task."
Blaise favored her with a lopsided grin, his most charming. "I'll do that." His ring would take him back to wait for Draco. He'd probably make things worse on himself by not being around to explain his 'mistake' in handing off the Weasley to the wrong faction that was looking for her. Well, his Fairest had handled the worst the Carrows could dish out, and likely was handling worse, now. So he could, too.
He'd still rather try and charm or bribe his way out, though.
Blaise was pondering the possibility that his pacing would wear a track into his favorite wolf's-skin fur rugs – if ever it was possible, it was going to happen this afternoon – when Draco returned.
His cry of relief was more masculine this time, he hoped, but still incoherent. He tried to pounce on Draco for a kiss, but Draco jinxed him in midair, freezing him, and immediately pelting him with a desperate: "She's gone? She's safe? You saw her out of Hogwarts?"
Blaise replied with a hoarse "Yes," but even then Draco wouldn't close the distance between there lips to reassure him that things would be alright. Only the longing expression in his foggy grey eyes, saying Draco wanted to kiss him, kept Blaise from cursing at him.
Draco read what he wanted quite easily. "Can't, Blaise. It's one of us who's kissed her last, and our only hope to keep Theo under control when they find out she's gone is… to try and transfer the spell."
"Wait – what?" Blaise spluttered. But even as he was objecting, it fell together in his mind – the 'Sealed With a Kiss' spell, without which Theo would have full access to the memories of Ginny's hours and hours 'shagging' him. Even if he was far too lecherous to see the obvious ploy at work, the second he volunteered that information to the Carrows – and he would, since it was a tidbit of the type they'd love – they would put two and two together and get five. Given all that their Fairest had sacrificed for the little first-years, Blaise and Draco could hardly let them face enraged Death Eaters who had freshly lost one object of their hate, and just discovered another.
"You kissed her last," Blaise said slowly. "She and I only hugged." That hurt to realize.
Draco's sharp, pointed face looked him over as sympathetically as he could manage. "It's on me, then. Take us back," he indicated Blaise's ring, which was properly set up between the bedroom and Hogwarts, whereas his own, in emergency mode, would only take him between the bedroom and the Manor, "and meet me back in her workroom, ok?"
Blaise was already twisting the ring with the hand not holding Draco's, and when they reappeared in Hogwarts, in the same musty spot in the Library, Draco bolted before Blaise could ask, 'why Ginny's workroom?' He figured it out on the way, though, and just in time. He had sufficient time for two passes of her worktable, shrinking everything and shoving it in his pockets, before the door burst open behind him.
"Ah, Zabini. Thought you were assigned to report to Snape, like, pronto," sneered Rosier-Hallaway. The prick had always been jealous of Blaise, for who knew what reason – because Blaise was older, was Head, was dating the most scrumptious blonde in the school…
"Guess some wires got crossed, since they're so worked up about the stupid bint," Blaise said easily. "I'll go do that then… and find some way to get back at Filch later for directing me to search the bloodtraitor's hovel. I'll leave you to it, mate!"
He cursed himself for how hearty and phony that last bit had sounded. He'd have to do better with the Death Eaters.
Blaise had still been somewhat careless in dissembling to Snape and the Carrows, but Snape only listened with half-lidded, glittering eyes, called him a moron seven ways from Sunday for bringing Weasley to McGonagall instead of someone more 'alert' and 'capable,' and quite literally threw Blaise out of his office by the collar of his robes.
All to the better – he could do a quick sweep of the hallways, issuing imperfect Memory-Charms to the people he'd Stunned along the route to McGonagall's office with Ginny, and un-Petrifying that third-year in the library, before scampering back to Ginny's old workroom and strolling right in through the portrait, which was left ajar. Sure enough, Rosier-Hallaway had trashed it, smashing what Blaise hadn't been able to rescue. Blaise tried not to let it bother him.
There was no manning-up and ignoring the pangs of fright and misery once Draco appeared, though. Cautiously, Blaise encircled his boyfriend in his arms, and when Draco didn't avert his face, assumed that the necessary deed had been done, and finally, finally, got a kiss. Then, the poor, confused, but eminently patient Head Boy got the story of the afternoon, at last.
Draco collapsed back against the futon, leaving Blaise to hover over him, a brooding mother hen, as his boyfriend related what had happened after going to Malfoy Manor, explaining in a strangled voice how he'd come to report to his parents and encountered a tableau of a poorly-disguised Potter, a Granger, and one Ronald Weasley. How he'd been asked to identify them – how he'd, heart hammering in his mouth, lied outright, with almost too much confidence, so that Bellatrix had, suspicious, Flooed the Dark Lord's chambers, asking him to come when he had a chance, to identify the Potter brat more certainly.
Draco had bolted the instant that pronouncement was made, knowing that even if his insane aunt didn't think to have Snape summon the only readily available Weasley to identify her brother – and he'd not doubted for a moment that those eyes were brothers to the eyes that had watched him disappear fifteen minutes previous from Blaise's bedroom – that when the trio of Gryffindors was positively identified, they would seize every relative they could get, and with Potter's dead and the Muggle-born's fled, Ginny was in the gravest danger.
He'd returned to the house just in time to witness the devastation that ensued in the flight of the three from the basement where they'd been detained. Hermione, poised as always, had deflected a knife as they vanished via house-elf magic… his aunt was dead, impaled on her own favorite throwing weapon. The scene was chaos. His mother literally bound him and dragged him into the attic, ordering him back to school immediately and making him swear not to return till that night, she was that frightened for his life.
After that, finding Theo, subduing him, and planting a kiss on him was comically non-frightening, as was blowing off Alecto Carrow's questions about where he'd been and why he hadn't helped search for Weasley: "I was helping Bellatrix on a consultation," he told her curtly, and left the professor somewhat awe-struck. Let someone else fill her in on the backstory, and on Bellatrix's death. Meanwhile, he and Blaise would quietly mourn that their girl had gone, and only bitterly rejoice that the crazy Bella Black wasn't out there to do anything to her. She was entirely in her family's hands now, they supposed.
It wasn't nearly as good as having her be in theirs.
A.N. - Not sure whether you all will love me, or hate me. This got much more serious than I'd thought it would, if it's any consolation. I made finishing this story more difficult for myself by a great deal! Fortunately I'm putting the free time I have right now to working out the final part, rather than doing homework. I'm sure you're all quite pleased to hear that. My professors won't be... :D