A/N: Thanks to readers and reviewers, especially opaque girl and Princess Phoenix Tears.
There came a time when the risk to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom. ~Anaïs Nin
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Ginny ran to catch the closing door just an instant too late; she almost, almost caught the edge of it in her hands, but it just slipped past her fingers. She reached down for the knob. Draco's voice echoed back to her just one last time, and even though Ginny didn't speak a word of Danish, she had a very bad feeling about what this spell might mean.
"Klokken høre op!"
Oh, shite, she thought.
When she opened her eyes again, late afternoon sunlight was slanting in through the window. A Time Stopping Hex. I might've known.
"Malfoy, you bastard," Ginny said aloud. She scrambled up and ran out into the hall, already knowing that she was much too late, and that she'd only find it empty. But no. It wasn't too late to find him, because she wouldn't let it be.
The stairs were empty too, and the vestibule of the building, and the street outside, and her anger grew as she paced up and down the sidewalk. Draco couldn't do this to her! He couldn't threaten to… he couldn't scare her this way… because he wasn't actually going to do what he said, of course; he couldn't. That was just mad. Something had been started between the two of them, and although Ginny couldn't begin to understand what it really was, she felt right down to the marrow of her bones that it was a beginning that had gone too far to go back from. What had happened the night before… She stopped walking for a moment, and shivered where she stood. He had opened her up like a flower unfurling, and he had played deliciously among her trembling petals. He had opened her body to sensual pleasure, and she knew that she could never return to a closed, budlike innocence. She was his now in some way, and surely, surely he was hers, wasn't he? He couldn't go to Astoria Greengrass. He just couldn't.
But where is he? Where? Gods, where?
A male figure was moving towards her at the end of the block. The sun blinded her so that she couldn't see who he was. Her heart flew up to her throat, and she ran towards him.
"Ginny! I've been looking for you everywhere. Where the hell have you been? Do you know how worried I've been? I've been searching and searching everywhere, and here I find you wandering about on the street looking like you just escaped from St. Mungo's and—"
No chocolate. And the voice is wrong. Not Malfoy. It's not Draco Malfoy. The figure came closer and closer, and she sagged with disappointment into Colin Creevey's arms.
"Oh. It's only you," she said.
"Nice to see you, too," said Colin. "For Merlin's sake, Ginny, let's get off the street."
"I can't," said Ginny. "I'm still—"
"You can, and you'd better do it right now," said Colin. "I'm surprised the Aurors didn't find you before I did. I'm surprised they didn't find me." He pulled her into a side alley and stabbed his finger into a copy of the Daily Prophet, pushing it into her face. "Look, I'm sorry to break it to you like this if you don't already know, Gin, but there's no time to beat around the bush- haven't you seen this?
Hermione's photograph stared out from the front page, her big brown eyes tearful, her face resolute and determined. It was the same paper she'd seen blowing around on the street while she was looking out the window a couple of hours earlier.
Ginny Weasley: Innocent Ministry Official's Daughter, or Draco Malfoy's Deadly, Mysterious Mistress? Dubious damsel Ginny Weasley led Aurors on a terrifying chase through Gringotts bank last night, culminating in the escape of wanted suspect Draco Malfoy. Sinister former Death Eater Draco and his partner in crime, the pretty, loose-living Ginny, then vamoosed to Malfoy property on the Dorset coast, near Lyme Bay. Seven Aurors followed them, but only six came back. Heroic Harry Potter's whereabouts still remain unknown. "We're making a desperate appeal for help," said the brave, plucky Hermione Granger, Harry's trusted Auror sidekick and very, very close personal friend. "If anyone has the slightest idea where Harry might be—even the vaguest clue—we need to know. We still haven't been able to learn conclusively what Draco Malfoy might be capable of, and as much as I'd hate to think that Ginny Weasley could have any part in his plans, that simply can't rule that out yet." Neither can we, Hermione! And as much as this reporter hates to besmirch an innocent girl's name by such insinuations, it hardly seems necessary to fret too much about that possibility in this case. Considering her shockingly long history of changing paramours more quickly than she does last night's knickers, even the dangerous Draco just might find himself double-crossed-
Ginny put the paper down, staring out into the empty streets.
"Ginny, they're out searching for you. They've got to be. You have to lay low."
"Hermione said that she stillhadn't been able to learn anything. She said she couldn't rule out anything yet," she said, scanning the horizon as if it held answers it refused to reveal.
"Right, right, that's exactly what she said. Listen, Ginny, where were you before?"
"Up in my art studio," she said absently. "And that article didn't say a word about where Draco was now. Did it?"
"No. I suppose it didn't. Ginny, I think you'd better go back up there. They're probably looking for me as well. I'm coming with you. Can't I come with you?"
"No, Colin, you can't."
"I can't? What do you mean, I can't?" he asked incredulously. "I'm out on the streets risking life and limb for you, and you won't even hide my arse from the Department of Mysteries for a few hours? Doesn't friendship mean anything anymore to you?"
"Of course it does," said Ginny. "That's why you're coming with me to the Ministry, Colin. I think they're holding Draco Malfoy there."
"Oh, no. No, no," said Colin. "You're not dragging me into this one, Gin. I don't care what you say, you're not talking me into this perfectly mad scheme!"
It was a good thing, then, Ginny decided, that no talking was required. And surely a few hexes didn't matter much between friends.
"I don't know how I always end up doing these things for you," said Colin, rubbing his bum a few minutes later.
"You don't have to do anything," said Ginny. "You're providing moral support. And shh. Whisper, please. You don't know who could be listening."
"Where the hell are we?"
"Somewhere in the Subfiling Department of the Undersecretary of the Legal-Type Division of Various and Largely Uninteresting Wizarding Licensures on the ninth floor of the Ministry. Shhh." Ginny took his hand as they crawled through a miniature tunnel of teetering files in manila envelopes.
"I don't understand how we were able to get in here. We're right next to the Department of Mysteries, aren't we? You're not supposed to be able to Apparate in here."
"Um…" Ginny felt rather uncomfortable. "It's through a blood-bond. My brother Percy is a junior barrister here." It didn't seem necessary to add that she hadn't talked to him in several months.
"Ugh. I think a spider just crawled down my back. The things I do for you… Ginny, do you honestly think that they're holding Malfoy here? They didn't exactly say it in that article."
"But Hermione said that she hadn't learned anything about what he was doing yet," said Ginny, swatting away sticky cobwebs. She had an uneasy feeling that Colin might have been right about that spider. "What's the point of saying that, unless she's in the process of getting information from him?"
"I suppose that you might have a point," Colin admitted.
"And the Department of Mysteries doesn't have to answer to anyone for what it does," said Ginny. "Or for the methods it uses." Even though the filing room was stuffy and hot, she shivered, picturing Draco being questioned by Aurors. What if they're using Veritaserum? Or what if it's… worse? Oh gods, oh gods. Could they be using Cruciatus now? No. Maybe. I don't know anymore. Oh gods, oh gods… Draco's beautiful body writhing on the floor, his bright hair sticking to his forehead, wet with sweat, his low melodious drawling voice cracking in a scream—
And then she heard herself scream, involuntarily, because something popped up in front of her face. It was completely surrounded by cobwebs, so it clearly had to be the biggest spider she'd ever seen in her life, at least a foot wide and covered with prickly hair, all its legs waving at her.
"Ergh! Squash it, Gin!" she heard Colin groan. She screamed and batted at it and scrambled backwards and fell over onto him, and a tower of cardboard boxes teetered and crashed. She covered her head with her arms as they fell around both of them.
Dead silence. Then a high, screechy, very aggrieved-sounding voice spoke.
"I must say, I don't believe that I have ever been so insulted in all my life."
"Do Acromantulas talk?" Colin whispered in Ginny's ear.
"I don't think so," Ginny whispered back.
"Maybe that wasn't actually a spider."
Ginny didn't answer, but the idea was starting to occur to her as well, uncomfortably.
"I'm only trying to do my job, I'll have you know. And to be randomly attacked- one would think one would be safe on one's way to Subsystem A of Filing Cabinet B-6 of the Division of Wizards' Licenses! But apparently not."
Ginny peeked just slightly over the edge of a box. A very short, squat filing-elf was brushing itself off with one hand and holding a manila folder with the other. "At any rate, I'm here to deliver a copy of a completed license," it said in very put-upon tones. "That is, if nobody has any particular plans to begin chasing me about with a flyswatter, or anything of what nature. Because Merlin knows, I wouldn't want to interrupt that. Only do be good enough to let me get a headstart, Weasley."
"I'm quite sure it was no more than an honest mistake, Arachnos. Hold on for ten minutes or so, if you'd be so kind," said a voice. A very familiar voice, thought Ginny.
"Hmph." The elf gave a snort and stomped down the aisle, giving Ginny a long, meaningful look. His face was almost completely covered in very short, stiff hair, she saw, which made her feel marginally better about the mistake.
A heavier pair of footsteps approached. She ducked back under the box just a little too late; hands picked it up off her head even as she tried to pull it down. An exasperated sigh. That sounded familiar too, even though she hadn't heard it in a long time. Too long, she realized guiltily.
"Ginny, what have you done this time?" asked Percy Weasley, peering down at her.
She stood up and brushed herself off with all the dignity she could muster. "I'm trying to get to the Department of Mysteries."
"Yes, well, I didn't exactly delude myself into thinking that you were coming to visit me," snapped Percy. "It's not as if anyone in the family's bothered themselves to do that anytime too terribly recently."
She looked up at him, impeccably dressed in long black robes, not a dark auburn hair out of place, his sherry-brown eyes guarded and unwelcoming, or at least they seemed that way to her. His words hurt, the more so because they'd hit their mark. How dare he take that tone with her, anyway.
"You haven't exactly visited me either, Percy," she said. "Or owled. And you realize that we do use email at Flourish and Blotts, right?"
"Yes—well—" He looked a bit flustered. "You realize how incredibly dangerous it is to attempt unauthorized visits to this department at the best of times, don't you?"
"I'm fully aware of that fact, Percy," said Ginny. "I needed to get in here, and there was no other way than a blood-bond Transport spell."
"To get in?" Percy stared at her in exactly the same way that he had when he'd caught her climbing onto the roof when she was eight years old and she'd explained that she was trying to catch Fizzle-Footed Starflyers with a butterfly net, because she wanted to try out the idea that Luna Lovegood had told her during summer camp just a few weeks before. He crouched down to whisper in her ear. "Ginny, you simply don't know what's going on here, and I haven't time to explain it to you now. But the best thing that you can do is to crawl back under those boxes with Colin Creevey and Apparate back to wherever you came from as quickly as possible. I've been trying to find out exactly what's going on all day long, and the conclusion I've come to is that it can only be—"
Light suddenly shone in Ginny's face from ahead, behind, all sides; it seemed to come from everywhere, light stabbing from a thousand wands, and then one wand was being pushed in her face, and she saw another face illuminated above it. It was white and strained-looking, the brown eyes enormous and triumphant. Hermione. Other hands reached down and pulled her up, and she was confronting the face.
"I told you that she'd come," Hermione said to the circle of Aurors.
So before Percy had even finished his sentence, Ginny knew just how it had to end. There was a long, dragging moment of silence, so she thought that he might as well end it. But he didn't, so she did it for him, in her own mind.
A trap.
"Where is he?" Ginny asked, without preamble.
"If you're talking about Harry," Hermione said to her, "I was hoping that you could tell us that." Her voice trembled with an edge of something like controlled hysteria.
"Of course I don't know where Harry is," said Ginny. "You know bloody well who I mean. Where's Draco Malfoy? You have him here, don't you? Completely illegally, I suppose?"
"We don't have him here at all," said Hermione.
"You're lying," said Ginny.
"I assure you, I'm not," said Hermione.
Her eyes didn't even flicker. Ginny had a horrible feeling that she was telling the truth, and that Draco really wasn't here. Then where is he? Did he actually go to Astoria, and… no. No, it can't be true. I won't let it be true.
"You wanted me to think he was," said Ginny. "You thought I'd come for him."
"Yes," said Hermione. "Yes, and that's just what you did."
Oh, fuck. "I can't believe you'd stoop so low—"
"Save it. You know where Harry is, don't you, Ginny?" demanded Hermione. "Because Malfoy knows, and he told you."
"He didn't tell me anything, and I don't know!"
"But he knows." Hermione pounced on her words.
Shite! They wouldn't even have to use Cruciatus to get the truth out of me, thought Ginny. Just let me run my mouth long enough!
"Malfoy doesn't know a thing," Ginny said, with much more firmness than she felt.
"I think he does. I wonder how long it would take him to come back to the Ministry if he knew that you were being held here."
"Forever," said Ginny. "He wouldn't come here at all." She's bluffing. She's got to be bluffing.
"I think he would. And if he did, then we'd find out what he knows," said Hermione. "No matter what we'd have to do—"
"As Ginny Weasley's designated legal counsel, I am very interested to hear that an official Ministry representative seems to be threatening the illegal use of coercive interrogative methods," Percy said in a clipped voice, rising from the pile of boxes. He stepped in front of Ginny, looming above Hermione.
"Er—yes! Yes. What he said. I'm very official as well," said Colin rather feebly, brushing off cobwebs and grimacing at the occasional skittering spider. "Well, I never pretended to be terribly brave, you know," he added in a whispered aside to Ginny. "But I didn't get more than a meter or so away before I just had to come back. Luna never would've let me hear the end of it."
Hermione blanched a bit, but recovered quickly. "Er—Weasley. Creevey. I didn't know you were there— but I wasn't even talking about Ginny, I was saying what would happen if Malfoy turned up—"
"I wasn't aware that two separate sets of wizarding laws had been passed, Granger," said Percy. "I don't see what else would lead you to believe that you could make such threats."
Hermione flushed. "I wasn't making any threats."
"I'm extremely pleased to know that," said Percy. "I'd hate to think that any branch of the Ministry was stooping to such tactics."
"Yes—fine—well, all right, then, Weasley, what do you know about Harry's whereabouts?" she asked rather defiantly. "And what about Malfoy- have you seen Malfoy?"
Ginny's spirits sank even lower. Hermione doesn't know, she realized. She really has no idea where Malfoy is.
"I certainly haven't seen either one of them, or I would have informed someone in the Ministry long before now, I'm sure," said Percy.
"Maybe we're not so sure that we can trust Weasleys to pass on accurate information anymore," snapped Hermione.
"And maybe I'm not so sure that I can trust the Department of Mysteries to run proper investigations anymore," said Percy. "Tell me, Granger, how exactly would you interrogate Malfoy if you did manage to get hold of him? Were you planning to use Veritaserum? I'd heard that your department introduced that without authorization into an investigation just last week. Lucky that Shacklebolt never found out about that one, wasn't it?"
Hermione bit her lip. "I didn't have anything to do with that."
"But you seem to have known all about it. Doesn't it bother you in the least? It seems to me that you used to possess a higher sense of ethics, Granger," said Percy. "At least that's what I recall from your time at Hogwarts."
"I—never mind! I don't need to defend myself to you," Hermione said passionately." My only concern is finding Harry. That's all I want. That's all I care about. Not that it seems to matter much to you! The Weasleys all rather seem to have become former-Death-Eater-lovers instead. Purebloods stick together, don't they?"
"I haven't said that I would throw a Water hex on any Malfoy if he were on fire in front of me," Percy said coldly. "But I defend the law, Granger. I always will. I won't allow you to subvert it in this way, not where anyone in concerned."
Ginny felt Colin yanking at her sleeve. "Maybe this would be a good time to go," he hissed. "I think we could escape under all these boxes while they're arguing about wizarding law. I'm really not very brave, you know… I never have been…"
"Shut it," she hissed back, giving him a shake.
"We haven't broken any laws," Hermione said hotly. "And we're not going to!"
"No, you're not going to, because Ginny is coming with me," Percy said flatly. "You have no right to either question her or keep her here."
"Oh, yes we do, and we will." Hermione raised her chin, and her voice became defiant."If we have any chance of luring Malfoy to the Ministry by holding Ginny, then we've got to keep her here. This could save Harry. I won't give up that chance. I simply won't. I suppose I can't expect you to take a reasonable view of this, Weasley, but I'm afraid you have no choice in the matter." She nodded to the Aurors surrounding her. "Smith, Pugsley…?"
The two Aurors stepped forward to flank Ginny, one on either side. In another instant, they'd pin her between them. They'd take her away to the Department of Mysteries and keep her in a small room, waiting until Draco Malfoy came for find her. And maybe, just maybe, he would. And then they would lock him away and learn what he knew. No matter what we'd have to do…
Without a second thought, Ginny dove under the pile of boxes. She tunneled through as fast as she could, headed for the stairs, praying that Percy and Colin would have enough sense to go in the other direction. Her brother's grim face confronted her as soon as she opened the door to the stairwell, of course, but she ducked under one of his arms before he could grab at her robes, and then she started darting down the stairs, pulling a more-than-willing Colin with her. The odd filing-elf was still waving a copy of the license at Percy, she saw out of the corner of one eye, but he pushed it away and started after her, several sets of footsteps clattering just behind him.
"What made you think—this was a good idea?" panted Colin.
"You weren't supposed to- follow me!" said Ginny, running round a corner.
"You should've—known I wouldn't let you do—anything perfectly mad on your own. Where are we going?"
"Just follow me!" Ginny grabbed his hand and threw the large double doors open at the bottom of the stairs. Together, they skidded out into the Ministry atrium.
It looked the same, the same as ever, she saw briefly as she dragged Colin out into the middle of the new inlaid wooden floor, which was matched to the old one and polished to a high gloss. She wondered how this was possible when a hurricane of war and Voldemort and suffering and death had howled through it, and when she knew for a fact that most of it had been destroyed in a battle. The golden gates were back, and the gilded fireplaces up and down both sides of the large hall. The peacock blue ceiling was decorated with golden symbols artfully reproduced from the lost originals. And… oh, gods. Even the horrible Fountain of Magical Brethren was there, the ugliest piece of public art she'd ever seen in all her life. It all felt so utterly unreal, because nothing had changed, when everything, everything in the world, had changed around it so completely.
But the way that Hermione and the group of Aurors were surrounding her in an angry, shouting ring, holding back Colin and Percy… well, that was pretty real, thought Ginny. Although it just seemed to be Hermione who was shouting.
"It wasn't necessary for you to make this into a public spectacle!" she was yelling now.
"Apparently, it was," said Ginny. "Because otherwise, you would've been very happy to take care of this entire thing in a locked prison cell someplace, where I never would've been seen again."
"You know that nothing along those lines would ever have happened to you. How can you think—"
"Oh, so you just would have tortured Malfoy. I see. I wonder if the Daily Prophet might like to do a story on the sorts of things that the Ministry seems to be up to now?"
"Our methods aren't like that at all," Hermione said furiously. "But I've got to find out where Harry is. I've got to. You can't tell me that Malfoy doesn't know something—or that you don't."
"Well, I don't!" snapped Ginny. "So now you've been told."
For a moment, Hermione simply looked frightened. "But someone has to know! You were with Malfoy in that cottage all night long while we were out searching all round Lyme, and Harry mysteriously disappeared— are you going to tell me he vanished into thin air? He had to end up somewhere!" She stepped closer, so that she was almost nose to nose with Ginny, fear and desperation in her eyes. "Where is he, Ginny? Where?"
And as she looked into Hermione's frightened eyes, the same question came to Ginny's mind too. All that Malfoy said was that he hadn't killed him. He didn't have to tell me the truth about anything else. So what really happened to him? Where is Harry?
"I'm right here, Hermione," said a tired voice, and Ginny turned towards it like a magnet to metal, irresistibly, and she saw that everyone else did too. It was Harry Potter, standing behind them.
Hermione gasped and went very white, and she ran up to him, throwing her arms around him, laying her head on his chest. Harry let her do it, but he gently picked her arms off after only a few seconds.
"Calm down," he told her. "I'm perfectly all right."
Somehow, a crowd formed and swarmed round him; Ginny wasn't at all sure how it happened, but she found herself near the center of it and next to Harry without wanting to be in the least. Everyone seemed to keep demanding to know exactly what had happened in excited voices, and Hermione was making noises about having everyone arrested if they didn't get out of the way and allow them to go upstairs. Finally, Harry held up a hand.
"Look, Hermione, it's all going to come out anyway, so just let me tell it in my own way, all right? I'm sure a representative of the Daily Prophet is in the back somewhere, and we might just as well get this over with right now."
"Well… all right… if you think it's best, Harry," Hermione said uncertainly.
"I'm really just about done up, so I'm going to make this short," said Harry. "If all of you are wondering where I've been this entire time, well, I'll say that it's almost entirely been in Lyme, at the Malfoy property there."
"I knew it," said Hermione triumphantly. "Harry, I just knew it; that's why we've been trying to get Draco Malfoy here for questioning, we know he's guilty of someth—"
"You might as well not even bother," said Harry. "He's not. Nothing you'll ever be able to get him on, anyway."
"He's… not?" echoed Hermione. "What do you mean, he's not?"
The words echoed in Ginny's ears, too. He's not. He's not. Draco Malfoy's not guilty of anything. I knew it… I just knew it…
"Let me get on with it, Hermione," said Harry, with a hint of steel in his voice. "I thought I'd be able to find some proof of… something, let's just say… if I could get into the Malfoy mansion at Lyme last night. I did get in, and I did find something. But it wasn't what I was looking for. Do you remember how Kingsley Shacklebolt always thought that the Wizengamot didn't find even half of the Malfoy money in that investigation last year? Well, I found proof of it. Draco Malfoy has loads of money and property that somehow managed to escape the official inventory."
"But honestly, Harry, that's completely illegal," said Hermione. "He could be charged with obstructing justice."
"No, he couldn't. The problem is…" Harry gave a bitter little laugh. "Nothing that Malfoy did was illegal. He's been very clever. He's covered his tracks, and he's stayed just on this side of this law, every step of the way. There's not a thing we can do."
"How can you be so sure?" Hermione demanded. "What kind of proof did you find, anyway?"
For just the briefest moment, Harry looked confused, and it seemed to Ginny that a vague look came into his eyes. Then he shook his head slightly. "Documents in charmed lockboxes," he said. "A couple of secret rooms. But believe me, Hermione, Malfoy's done a bloody good job."
"Couldn't we get someone to look over those documents anyway? Perhaps there's something they can find in the legal language—"
"If the Ministry wishes to lend itself to completely illegal activities, that is," Percy said crisply. "I think that line has come close enough to being crossed, don't you, Granger?"
She looked at him coldly. Then she gave a long, appraising look to Ginny. "Do you know anything about this?" she asked.
"I don't know a thing," said Ginny. "And I would think that you'd be happy to have Harry back, Hermione."
"I am," said Hermione.
No, you're not, thought Ginny. Not really, because he didn't jump into your waiting arms.
"But I want to know what's really happening here," Hermione went on. "I'd still like you to come up to the ninth floor to answer a few questions, Ginny."
"Would you," said Ginny. "Well, I'm afraid that I'm not terribly interested in what you'd like."
"I'm afraid that you don't have much choice in the matter," said Hermione. She continued to give her the same appraising look.
Hermione doesn't believe for a second that Harry's story is all there is to it, Ginny realized. She's every bit as suspicious about Malfoy as she was ten minutes ago. Harry's convinced that it was all about money, but she's not. And she still wants to get me up into that room. To ask me questions? No. To lure Malfoy here, so that he can answer them.
"I won't go up there," said Ginny, hoping that her voice didn't quaver.
"I won't permit this," said Percy.
"Tell them that she doesn't have any choice," Hermione said to Harry.
"Maybe we could get out of here if one of us yells 'fire', and then we all just start running as fast as we can," Colin whispered in Ginny's ear.
Harry hesitated, looking from face to face, and Ginny had a strange, fleeting thought. The Boy Who Lived, darling of the wizarding world, had miraculously returned from a clash with a deliciously dangerous Malfoy on the run from the Ministry, complete with the sunny, spunky Weasley daughter turned sultry, sleazy Death Eater mistress. The Daily Prophet had been breathlessly following the entire story and painting it in purple prose for three straight days. So where were they now? Where on earth was Rita Skeeter?
In that moment of silence, the short, squat filing-elf marched up to Percy Weasley, folded parchment in hand. "Might I now be permitted to officially present this certificate for administrative purposes, which ought to have been done twenty minutes ago under Regulation 3.1416 of Subsection 1/0?" he asked in distinctly aggrieved tones.
"Yes, yes, Arachnos," Percy said. "Very well. I'll take it now." He unfolded the parchment and scanned it briefly. His eyes widened. He shot a strange glance at Ginny. Then he refolded it carefully. "I'll bring it upstairs," he said.
"What on earth was that?" snapped Hermione.
"Perhaps you'd best see it before filing, Granger," Percy said in a careful voice.
Hermione took the parchment, scanning it. "I don't see why I should waste my time on a Aladdin's lamp possession license, or whatever this rubbish is— oh. Oh." She pushed it over so that Harry could see.
Then they both looked up at Ginny, and their expressions were filled with something like pity. When she turned to Percy, he looked at her with pity, too.
A long, long murmur went round the ring of people, and the ring swelled into a larger and larger crowd, an enormous circle of pitying eyes, all around Ginny. The tide had turned completely, and suddenly everyone was soothing her, patting her arms and shoulders and back, tenderly supporting her and offering her glasses of water and making her sit down and telling her that everything would be all right and at first she didn't understand and then she did, then she understood all too well. Much later, she would almost think that she remembered running down the street like a crazy woman, crying out the name that she had never called him.
"Draco! Draco! Draco!"
But of course, nobody had allowed her to do anything like that, so it must have happened only in her mind. Percy and Colin between them got her out of the Ministry right away. Harry tried to talk to her then, but Percy firmly told him no. Percy had always been the most perceptive of her brothers, Ginny thought, with a dim, slow, sense of gratefulness. All of her emotions seemed impossibly slow now, or perhaps simply in shock, or dead. They took her back to her studio. She did wonder why they didn't just take her to her flat, but neither one of them would explain. She figured out from what Colin whispered to Percy that Luna was with Blaise and hadn't come back, and that Dean had gone out after her. She was faintly afraid for Luna, but she simply couldn't feel much of anything, just then, so she couldn't summon up much fear either.
Both Percy and Colin wanted to come upstairs and stay with her, but the building was Shielded and wouldn't allow them in unless she permitted it, and she wouldn't permit it. At last, they both gave up and went away. She went upstairs and sat at the table for awhile, staring at the pieces of her broken statue near the door. Victory. What a joke, she thought.
Ginny knew now why Rita Skeeter hadn't been at the Ministry, of course. She'd been at the wedding. She knew now what that license had been. It wasn't for Aladdin's lamp possession, or fishing for prehistoric monsters, or manufacturing magic 8-balls. It was a marriage license. She knew what was written on it, too; or at least the most important piece of what she'd read kept piercing through her mind, on and off, on and off, like lightning flashing across a dark and empty sky.
This marriage was solemnized between us, Draconis Lucas Malfoy and Astoria Jacquelina Greengrass.
Solemnized between us.
Between Draco and Astoria.
After a long time, Ginny got to her feet, stumbled to the little alcove, and fell into the single bed. She stared at the ceiling, looking at nothing, until the blankness somehow passed into sleep.
Tap. Tap. Taptaptap.
Ginny's eyes flew open, and she sat up. Somebody was knocking at the door. She got out of bed and walked through the living room. The moon was high, casting sharp-edged shadows on the floor, and she half-expected to cut herself on the edge of each one.
Taptaptap.
She opened the door just an inch.
Harry stood outside, looking back at her unblinkingly. "Let me in, Ginny," he said.
She thought about that. "Why should I?"
"Because that's all you've ever done, since you were ten years old," he answered. "It would be so easy to do it again."
She thought about that, too.
"Come on," he said, leaning close enough so that she could look right into his brilliantly green eyes that had mesmerized her so thoroughly for so long. "You don't know who you are without me."
"That's true," said Ginny.
"Then why don't you let me in?"
"Because I want to find out." Then she slammed the door in his face, and she waited patiently.
The next knock came very soon. Ginny opened the door just a crack, because she knew who it would be, and she shuddered when she saw that she was right.
"Silly girl," said the man who was Tom Riddle and Lucius Malfoy all at once. "I became quite bored with having to listen to your silly little problems."
"Go away," she said, feeling the sick, awful shiver of helpless fear, as always.
"You yourself opened the door to me, Ginny," said Tom, and Lucius.
She thought about that. "You're right," she said, and she closed it.
Then Ginny leaned against the doorframe, praying that the last knock wouldn't come. I'm not strong enough, she thought. I'm not. I'm really not. But it came anyway, as she knew it would, and she opened the door, because her heart would not allow her to do otherwise.
Draco Malfoy stood in the doorway, the moonlight turning his hair and skin and eyes the same shade of unearthly, perfect silver. He stood very, very still, and she stared at him. Then he reached his hand forward, suddenly, and she stumbled back. She felt herself trip over something, and then pain blossomed in the bottom of her foot. She cried out and sank to her knees in the wreckage of her Victory statue. Then she began to sift it all between her numbed fingers. There was a shard of the vacantly smiling female face. There was a jagged piece of the overly feathered wings. There was one of the badly sculpted arms. There were the full lips… the lips had actually been pretty good… Or she'd thought so, anyway. Or maybe there hadn't been anything decent about that sculpture. It had been very bad, actually. Fake and phony and insincere.
Draco was next to her. She knew it without turning to look at him; she felt the warmth of his body, and smelled the chocolate scent of his skin.
"This statue was terrible," she sobbed.
"I could have told you that, Ginny," said Draco. "There was nothing of your true self in it."
Ginny watched her tears dripping onto the broken pieces. She touched her cheek with her hand. Her fingers came back wet. "That's funny. I don't feel like I'm crying."
"You are, though. Your body is crying," said Draco.
Her brow wrinkled. "What do you mean?"
He smiled faintly. "Ginny, are you really telling me that you haven't realized this is a dream?"
She thought about it. "I suppose not."
"Come and see," he said, and they rose together to the ceiling and drifted into the bedroom. Ginny watched her sleeping self on the bed. Tears rolled down her cheeks.
"That's so sad," she said.
"Yes, it is," said Draco. "But I'm crying as well, if that makes you feel any better."
"Really?" asked Ginny, startled. "But it's your wedding night, Draco. I'd think you'd be a bit happier than that."
He grimaced. "It's my wedding night with Astoria Greengrass. Of course I'm crying."
"I can't imagine that makes her very happy."
"I can't say that I particularly care. At any rate, she isn't in the same room with me." Draco tugged at Ginny's hand, and they floated back into the front room. "Why are you crying, Ginny?"
She narrowed her eyes at him, remembering why she'd hoped that he wouldn't come to the door at all. She'd gotten very distracted by that chocolate smell, as usual. "Do you have to ask, Draco? Something very precious has been broken beyond repair."
His lips tightened. "No. I won't allow it to be."
Ginny laughed bitterly. "It's a bit late for that, Draco, considering what you've done."
"I had no choice, Ginny, no choice at all."
"Oh? And why was that?" she demanded.
"I can't tell you." A muscle in his jaw jumped. "No, not even in a dream; it's far too dangerous to tell you—"
Ginny stabbed a finger down at her bleeding foot. "Don't tell me about what's supposedly 'too dangerous'! Do you really think this is the last time I'll ever bleed for you, Draco Malfoy?"
"No," he said, his eyes darkening. "It won't be." He took her hands in his, and she thought dizzily that dream-hands weren't supposed to feel so real, so solid, so impossible to pull away from.
"You married Astoria Greengrass," she said. "What the fuck am I supposed to do now?"
"Wait for me," said Draco. "Wait. I will return to you. Trust me, and wait."
"You have no right to ask me that!"
He shook his head, painfully. "I don't."
"Then why the fuck are you asking me?"
"Because I have no other choice. Ginny, Ginny. I have no choice at all, and neither do you."
"But how do I know you'll actually come back?" she asked him.
Draco bent his head, and the moonlight turned his hair brilliant. The seconds slipped by, and he remained silent. "You don't," he finally said. "I have no promises I can make to you."
She thought about that. Then she did pull away from him. It felt like the hardest thing she had ever done.
"I do have a choice," she said. "And I choose…" She looked into his impossibly beautiful face, smelling his irresistible smell, knowing how utterly and completely and thoroughly she wanted even the hope of ever having him.
"I choose to wake up," said Ginny, and she did.
The bright morning sun flooded through the window onto her face, and she squinted against it. Her entire head felt like someone had stuck it into a vise and given it a vicious twist. Ginny winced, tried to sit up, fell over, and struggled to prop herself against a wall. A highly unattractive vision confronted her from the opposite wall. It seemed to be a frizzy-haired monster of some kind with a splotched face and hopelessly wrinkled clothes, and its arms had an awful lot of freckles on them… oh. She'd forgotten about the mirror.
Ginny peered closer. Ugh. Well, a shower and a hairbrush will probably do wonders. And yet… and yet… She studied herself curiously, as if looking at a stranger, tracing her face with her fingers, and then she smiled tentatively.
"Hello," she whispered, remembering every bit of her dream. "I don't know who you really are. Or rather… I don't know who I am. But I'm going to find out."
And thank all the gods, there's a coffeemaker here to help with the entire process!
Cheered by the thought of all the coffee beans she'd bought on sale the week before and decided to store in the studio, Ginny bounded out of bed, grabbing a hairbrush on her way to the kitchenette. After all, the heights of self-discovery could be far more easily scaled when every single hair on one's head wasn't sticking out in a different direction.