Thanks to all readers and reviewers.
The dogs may bark, but the caravan moves on.
Rhett to Scarlett in Gone With the Wind.
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"What do you mean, Ginny can't see me! Of course she'd want to see me. I'm her dearest friend—sorry, Luna. I'm on her top two list of dearest friends. How's that? Anyway, she'd definitely want to see me."
"I didn't say she wouldn't want to see you, Colin. I said that she couldn't see you just now."
"Whatever do you mean? Unless she's suddenly been hit by a Blinding hex, of course she can see me."
"I'm afraid not. She can't see anything but her art."
A pause. Some scuffling noises.
"Let me in that studio, Luna. Open that door right now."
"No."
"What—what is that?" The voice sounded nervous now. "Did I just get a glimpse of something with zigzaggy horns?"
"Perhaps. We're rather close to the Zigzag Snorkacks' natural habitat. Do you want to hear the Summoning Call? I'm almost sure I remember it. Let's see. I think it begins with an 'A-Oohgah…'"
An exasperated sigh. "Just tell me, is she eating enough? Does she have any money? What about you? I know you were fired from the Ministry last week."
"It's terribly sweet of you to worry, Col, but we're perfectly all right. I do wonder why everyone wants to feed her. I'm doing a very good job of it. Goodbye."
"That wasn't a very subtle hint."
"I'm not terribly good at subtle, Col."
"I can be dreadful at it as well." The voice became petulant. "Blaise has been asking about you. He wants to know if you're all right. He's worried. He… oh, Luna, don't cry!"
Some sniffling. "Go away."
"I'm only going to come back, you know. And I'm terribly sorry… about that other thing, I mean. I never was very diplomatic, was I?"
"No. But I forgive you. It's worth it to keep coming back, you know. One of these days, Ginny will have returned to the world we both live in. Something tells me that she'll need you then."
Ginny heard the voices only vaguely. Later, she would learn that she had stayed at the table in the front room for three full days, straying from it only when Luna led her to the bathroom. Once or twice, Luna pushed her under the shower. She ate the plates of food that Luna shoved under her nose at regular intervals. Colin never gave up on knocking at the door, and conversations more or less identical to the first one were reenacted several times each day, but Ginny ignored them all. She drew, and drew, and drew, and then she got clay out and impatiently allowed Luna to spread dropcloths over the kitchen table and modeled, and modeled, and modeled. ("Only because otherwise clay will have a way of getting into the scrambled eggs," Luna explained. "I don't think the flavor will be improved.") She drank gallons of coffee that Luna set at her elbow in enormous self-renewing cups.
By the end of the third day, she had finished all the models for the sculpture series that she would later call Fossils. Then she staggered to the little bedroom, fell into bed, and slept like the dead.
Almost.
He sat under a high lamp hung from the ceiling; it poured a pool of light down onto his head, turning his hair to burnished silver, casting his face into shadow. "I want her sent to France," he said. His voice was light and even, almost pleasant, but there was something… wrong in it, somehow. Ginny didn't know what. She felt the pervading sense of dread that she had only felt in dreams for a very long time now. "Not possible that is," said an apologetic voice in front of him. "Then The goblin trembled. Ginny could see that the other speaker was a goblin now; he'd moved forward slightly, into the light. "Er… working on the project as of this very moment we are, yes yes…" "You're working on it?" The wrongness in his voice spread and spread until it was running through Ginny's veins like a stream of icy water. The goblin pressed his gnarled hands together. "Our very, very best doing we are, sir, but—er—" "Then you've got to do better than your best,don't you?" he asked softly. The goblin gulped. "Of course you are," he said. "Gringotts has always served our family so very well. I have no fears at all." His words were almost friendly. Ginny wasn't sure when she had last heard anything so disturbing. Or, no… she was sure. Yes, she was. Get your hands off her, Potter. Don't you dare touch her. Do you hear me? Never, ever touch Ginny Weasley again. The voice of the predatory, possessive male. "Yes, yes sir… of course…" "Of course," he repeated. He leaned forward in his expensive leather chair, and he smiled. The light hit him fully. Ginny saw the face of Draco Malfoy in all its cold perfection. "You've always helped me to get what I want, haven't you?"
She woke with a start.
Ginny sat up, clutching the sheets to her chest, suddenly aware that she was completely nude. She'd stripped off the clothes she'd been wearing for three days; she dimly remembered that now. Caught between dream and waking, all she could think for a moment was that Draco Malfoy had been sitting in the other room and she'd somehow spied on the scene. I want her sent to France, he'd said. But who?
The answer came to her in a flash. Astoria. He had to mean Astoria. The Gringotts goblin had said it couldn't be done, but that would mean nothing to him, of course. What a Malfoy wanted, a Malfoy would get, one way or another. And now… and now…
The bedroom door was opening.
A tremendous cloud of smoke billowed into the room. A hand poked through it, holding a pan with some unidentifiable blackened substance at the bottom. "Breakfast is ready. Only I do think I've burnt these eggs just a bit," a female voice said vaguely."I don't quite know. What do you think?"
Ginny coughed. Then she scowled. The fear and menace of the dream were already dissolving, and she was left only with sheer self-disgust at her own relentlessly Malfoy-centric fantasies.Will I never learn? And yet it hadn't been any sort of fantasy. No. Remembering the look on Draco's face, she couldn't call it that.
Luna's face peeped through the thinning smoke, her blue eyes mildly concerned. "What an odd face you're making. Are you quite all right?"
She sighed, dropping back to the pillows. "I'm fine. And I suppose you might be able to get those eggs off with a chisel, Luna. I'll be out in a minute, and I can help, if you like."
As she scrubbed clay out of her hair in the shower, Ginny firmly informed her mind that she'd be able to find it in herself to say no to Draco Malfoy if he showed up at her bedroom door, all right. For emphasis, she'd hit him over the head with one of Luna's breakfast attempts. The burnt eggs had nothing on her petrified oatmeal from their sixth year at Hogwarts. The two girls had agreed to strike the day on which Luna had originally served if from all of the calendars they could find, and as for the "toad-in-the-hole-of-horror experiment"… well, mutual Obliviation spell-casting had been seriously discussed.
Ginny shivered. We might have done it, too, she thought. Except… oh, except that I really,really hate Memory charms of any sort. I always have. And she had never even really known why, she thought as she dressed in some of the clothes that Luna had brought from their flat. It was all mixed up with the nightmares about the Chamber of Secrets that she tried to never think about, and the hissing sound of Tom Riddle's voice turning into the silky, menacing one of Lucius Malfoy's.
Such a silly little girl. Do you know now for whom I have always saved you, Ginny Weasley? I have the power to offer Draco his dream of perfect purity in you. But he will never be sure of your innocence until it is too late, and he will never trust you. I have seen to that.
Draco! Always Draco! Ginny sighed. But surely that had never been anything more than a dream.
After a breakfast of stale cereal and dubious milk on the very edge of turning, Ginny coiled up her hair in a French braid and looked in the bathroom mirror.
"You're still so dreadfully pale, dear," it clucked at her. "Perhaps a bit more blush?"
"Shut it, you," she muttered. One of these days, she was going to replace all the annoyingly mouthy objects in the house with silent Muggle ones. But she dabbed on more pink lipstick, feeling strangely deflated. She knew what the problem was, she thought dolefully. She'd lived in a blessedly Draco Malfoy-free world as long as she'd been busy creating art. But the minute she was done, every scrap of the obsession apparently had come flooding back. I won't drown in him again, she thought grimly, shoving on her shoes. I'll find my way out of the current, that's all, no matter what I'm doing. She tried not to think too hard about the fact that she'd never learnt to swim.
Ginny stood in front of the four clay figures in the back room at Bas-Bleu. Luna had helped her to unwrap them, and then she'd gone to find Tony Goldstein, who would bring Zenobia Smith in to see them. They could have been delivered, of course, but Ginny wanted to be absolutely sure that the gallery owner was the very first person who saw them outside of her own studio. She couldn't have said why this desire was so strong, or why it felt so right that it should be so, but she did know better than to argue with the voice within when it spoke to her so very clearly. She wished it was speaking loudly enough to completely drown out the voice of panic, which it wasn't quite managing to do. She gnawed nervously on a fingernail.
Oh, I can see it all now. That bitch Zenobia will come sauntering in with that contemptuous look on her face, she'll sniff at my art, she'll say that she might be able to reuse the clay for something else if I want to leave it here and she'll give me a few Knuts per pound, and then I'll punch her and the Muggle police will take me away. And when I'm locked in a prison cell, I'll have nothing to do at all except obsess about Draco Malfoy all day long!
And all night, her mind slyly added. Don't forget about the nights.
If you start replaying that Succubus thing again, just one more time-
The door opened. She waited in front of her statues, trying very hard to look calm. Zenobia walked in, her beautiful, expensively made-up face faintly cynical, as always, her glossy black hair cut in a neat pageboy, her black suit understated and chic. She stopped dead in her tracks. For just an instant, Ginny's artistically trained eye saw something vast and eternal peep through the woman's dark gaze, as if a disguise had come close to slipping.Who is she, really? She reminds me of someone. Zach Smith does, too. Whoever it is, they don't exactly look the same as he does—whoever he is- but they are the same anyway, somehow. I can almost think- Art and wizarding knowledge briefly met, but Ginny could not quite put the two together to realize what they meant about Zenobia Smith. Then as quickly as it had come, the flash was gone, and the other woman was only a sophisticated witch again, highly assimilated into the Muggle world.
"There is a saying, Miss Weasley. I wonder if you have ever heard it." Zenobia paused.
Ginny wanted to say that it was pretty hard to tell if she'd ever heard it if she didn't even know what it was, but she decided that it would show better judgment to just keep her mouth shut at that moment. If the gallery owner was thick enough to decide that she didn't like the sculpture series after all, then she could bite her head off to her heart's content.
"'If you bring forth what is within you, it will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, it will destroy you.'" Zenobia gave the clay maquettes another long, appraising look. "You have brought it forth."
Ginny waited. That sounded like a good thing… sort of, anyway…
"It is everything that art can be," Zenobia said simply.
"So what does that mean?" Ginny felt rather dizzy suddenly.
"It means that this is your beginning. And that your talent will have no end." A faint smile curved up Zenobia's lips. "I really ought to have listened to my cousin; he wanted me to help you. He's taken a special interest of sorts. However, I don't care for those occasions when I think he's attempting to manipulate me in order to push along one of his little protégés. In all honesty, Miss Weasley, I believed you to be far too dependent on Draco Malfoy for my tastes. I don't like women who cling onto men."
"I don't cling," said Ginny.
"I know that now. Don't bristle. I'll arrange a special gallery showing on Friday, and I would advise you to be prepared for the melee that will follow."
Ginny wasn't quite sure if she could picture an artistic melee, and it seemed rather hard to believe that her work could possibly be at the center of it. But then, when she looked at her statues again, she could easily imagine them at the center of anything, or everything. "Who's your cousin?" she asked.
"Ah, that would be telling too much." The smile became secretive. "I think that you'll find out for yourself, one day."
"Will he be here? At the art showing?"
"Oh, no." Zenobia dismissed the possibility with a wave of her perfectly manicured hand. "Nick's always exercised his influence in the art world, but he doesn't care for these sorts of things."
"Nick? That's his name?"
"He has many names," said Zenobia. "Friday at eight o'clock, Miss Weasley. And don't be fashionably late. I can't endure that."
Ginny meant to prepare really, really well for the art opening. She really did. But somehow she wanted to finish the sketches for the series, and then there were a few drawings in pastels, and Luna could hardly keep her from sneaking back into Bas-Bleu and working on the sculpture series some more, especially after she'd woken up in a cold sweat for the nineteenth time in a row from that recurring nightmare about every piece of art in the entire gallery coming to life and laughing scornfully at her.
It all kept her lifted above the disturbing dreams about Draco Malfoy that almost almost kept breaking into her consciousness every night. She could never see anything clearly, and she never knew what was going on; there was only his bright head, and his brooding face, and his burning silver eyes. And he was always, always turned away from her.
So what with one thing and another, Ginny was moodily chewing on a piece of completely burnt toast Friday morning when Luna held two floppy wisps of spiderweb under nose.
"Which one do you think I ought to wear?" she asked.
"To what? A Halloween party? Isn't it a bit early?"
"The art opening. What are you going to wear? Perhaps we could coordinate outfits."
Ginny jumped up as if hit by a thousand Stinging hexes. "Oh—my- gods- I forgot all about it! Tonight, it's tonight! What do I do, what do I do?"
"Of course I don't pretend to know much about fashion. But I can't help thinking that it might be best to begin by wearing something other than that, you know," Luna said mildly, looking at Ginny's frayed orange pyjamas that had once belonged to Ron. She generally turned the cuffs up about ten times, and they still tended to get caught on her toes.
Ginny ran to the closet and began throwing items of clothing out at random, groaning louder as she saw each boring, drab, or downright raggedy one.
"Are you all right?" asked Luna, popping her head in the door.
"No! Forget about an art opening- I couldn't wear any of these for a trip to the dump! Oh, Luna, what am I going to do?" wailed Ginny. "I need… I don't know… a fairy godmother or something; that's my only hope?"
Colin Creevey's head appeared above Luna's. "You rang?"
He tsk-tsked at the pile of discarded clothing. "Love, you really do need a magic wand, don't you? Luckily, I have one. But I'm not sure even that's going to do the trick." He poked at a floppy peach dress dubiously. "Did you say you were going to an art opening tonight?"
"Yes. A pretty exclusive one, I think."
"Oh, God. Let's burn all these clothes right now. You might as well go with a rubbish bag on. Whose is it?"
"Um… mine."
"Good for you! But I hope you're ready, at least. You are ready, aren't you? You did do everything you're supposed to do?"
"Uh—"
"You created a master contact list three months ago, right? You sent your press release? You hung your posters?"
"Um—"
"You've alerted la crème de crème of the art world, of course? You've created a buzz? You've established excitement? You've finalized your guest list, and you've hired the best security to keep out the madding crowd?"
"Er—"
"Tell me that at least you don't have toad-in-the-hole on your catering menu."
Ginny took a deep breath. "Uh… Colin, I haven't done a thing." She waited a moment, and then grew anxious at the lack of a reply. "Colin?"
"Please tell me I didn't just hear what I thought I heard," he said in a very faint voice.
"You did. I just said that I hadn't done a—"
"That was a figure of speech!" groaned Colin. "Maybe you really should show up with a rubbish can over your head. It would create some sort of buzz, anyway. Maybe we both should. Maybe we should dig a hole and crawl into it. Maybe—"
Ginny decided that enough was enough. "Don't you think you're being just a bit of a drama queen? Wouldn't Zenobia have said something if she really expected me to do—"
"Zenobia? Zenobia Smith?"
"Yes. It's at Bas-Bleu Gallery."
His brown eyes grew round as saucers. "You snagged an opening night there? What the hell did you do with Zenobia to manage that one? I didn't think you swung that way, Gin-girl."
She glared at him. "I do have talent, I'll have you know! I finished a whole group of new pieces, and she loves them. That's why she arranged this opening."
He gave her a long, odd look, and then shrugged. "All I can say then, Gin, is that we'd better find you a positively whorish dress."
"With what money?"
Colin grinned. "All the filthy lucre you'll be rolling in after this art opening. Until then, that can't possibly be enough time for MistressCard to catch up with you."
Several hours later, all Ginny could think was that she sincerely hoped Colin was right. If he wasn't, she probably really would have to work as a companion at the Crystal Palace for a good long time to pay off her debt for the black dress currently hanging in her closet. She collapsed across the narrow bed in the art studio with a sigh of exhaustion. Colin had bullied her into a pre-art-opening nap after much grumbling on her part, but she had to admit that she did need one rather desperately after all the frantic shopping. She could feel herself drifting off into sleep almost before her face was pressed into the pillow. Peaceful, dreamless sleep, she thought drowsily. Positively Draco Malfoy-free.
But it wasn't. "Go away," he said. "I don't want you here. I've told you that." Oh, gods, he's talking to Astoria, thought Ginny. I just lay down for a nice, refreshing nap, and I got sucked into this. Why the hell can't I let go of him completely; why can't he stop haunting me when I least expect it, least want it? I'll never have him now, so why can't I just forget him, the way he's surely forgotten me? But he wasn't talking to Astoria. She wasn't the one standing across from him. Ginny saw that now, because her perspective had shifted slightly, as if she saw what Draco was seeing as he looked at the other person on the balcony. He was tall and thin, with silvery hair and gray eyes, a lean, sculpted face that seemed to wear a perpetually amused expression, and long, graceful hands. He looked so much like Draco, and yet he didn't at all, and Ginny couldn't stop trying to puzzle out the similarities and the unfathomable differences. He lifted a little cup of espresso to his lips. Ginny saw that all of his fingers were the same length. Loki! Oh, I should've known. "Oh, no, I'm not going anywhere," said the trickster god. "The intricacies of this situation are far too amusing. You've really got yourself into a trap, little cousin. She can't be sent to France, and she can't be sent to Italy. She can't go to Germany, she can't go to Sweden, she can't go to Asia, Australia's right out, the Navajo Nation was at least a possibility but they've just refused as I understand it, and really, she'd have to stay on the planet…" Draco glared at him. Loki conjured up a small globe in the air and spun it between his fingers. "Hmm. Somehow, I doubt that Antarctica is going to work. She'll just have to stay where she is." He winked. "And you know what that will mean, don't you, Draco?" "I'm not discussing this with you. That's what it means," said Draco, his voice utterly flat. "Oh, don't try that tall-pale-and-menacing act with me," yawned Loki. "Although it's dead sexy, I will say. Really, Draco, this is becoming tiresome. It's time to lay our cards on the table, don't you think?" To illustrate his point, he waved one hand in the air and a card table hovered in front of him. With a flick of one finger, a poker hand spread itself out on the surface. "This is becoming tiresome, all right," said Draco. "I've had about enough of it. I'm going inside, and you can just—" "Oh, come come. Listen. You can have what you want," said Loki, pushing Draco down gently into a chair at the table. "All you have to do is to succumb to the inevitable, which you're going to have to do sooner or later anyway—that's why they call it the inevitable, you know. You have a winning hand. It's very silly of you to refuse to play it." He smiled, and Ginny shivered at the beauty of the Immortal's face wreathed in a smile. But there's something wrong with it, too, she thought. It's not like Draco's face when he smiles. What is it… I can't quite put my finger on it… Loki leaned forward to whisper into Draco's ear. "Give in, little cousin. Ginny wants you just as much as you want her. She's ready for you, ripe, like a perfect piece of fruit waiting to fall into your hand. How long are you going to let her wait?" Draco shut his eyes tightly. "Go away," he said again, but his voice sounded weaker than it had before, Ginny thought. "How long do you think that she "You're the devil," said Draco. "Thank you, Captain Obvious. But think about it. You know perfectly well that I'm right. The Devil knows these things, you see. She's innocent now; she's untouched now, but how long do you really think that's going to last? You're gone, you've given her up, she knows she'll never see you again, and finally… well, nobody remains innocent forever..." Draco turned slowly, his eyes blazing silver. "Get out," he said in the utterly dead, flat voice. "You've got to leave when I give you the order, Loki." "Fine!" The Immortal threw up his hands. "I know when I'm not wanted. But still, Draco, it's rather a disturbing image, don't you think?" He sipped at his coffee and folded up the card table. "I don't know what you mean," said Draco. "Nothing, nothing," said Loki. "Only… Ginny's first time. But not with you. Another man stealing what you considered yours, what you could have had, what she would have given to you willingly. She's lying in someone else's arms, moaning someone else's name. Ick. I wouldn't care for it. But you're so noble these days; who's to say? Maybe you don't mind a bit." "That's it," said Draco, in a voice that was almost pleasant. He made a sudden, savage move upwards, his hands outstretched towards Loki's throat. "Ah, ah," said the Immortal, holding Draco off the ground. "Well, don't think that this hasn't been a little slice of heaven, because it hasn't. See you later, cousin." He vanished abruptly, and Draco fell to the ground, the poker hand scattering over his head. He brushed the cards away, and then gave a harsh laugh. Each one was the ace of spades.
He stood on a stone balcony, staring bitterly into a warm May night. It wasn't the same balcony as the one outside the villa on Vendetta Island, the one she'd glimpsed through the bedroom window; Ginny knew that somehow. He had moved on. Draco Malfoy was running, running from one place to the next, fleeing his own footsteps, trying desperately to escape—what? He turned slightly.
"What are you doing still in bed?" yelped an irritated voice.
"Get up, get up, get up!" added another.
Ginny gasped, her eyes snapping open. "Seven p.m., and you'd best get your lazy behind out of bed, silly girl," the bedside clock informed her. Colin's anxious face hovered her, now joined by Tony Goldstein's, she saw. Luna was holding out the dress, and a little bag of makeup sat on the table.
Colin bent down to her. "Gin, I mean this in the nicest possible way, and please do take into account our many years of wonderful friendship, but it really is time for you to move your freckled arse now."
He was right. She groaned and pushed aside the covers. Life wouldn't wait for perfectly mad dreams about Draco Malfoy, whether she wanted it to or not. And really, she thought, it's best if it doesn't. It would be best if I never had them again.
Luckily, there were at least some distractions.
"Luna," she said, "I... um... respect your artistic tastes and everything, but I really don't think that turquoise,lime green, and hot pink eyeshadow are going to go too well together. Especially not with that orange hair ribbon. "