CHAPTER NINETEEN: The Separation

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"Hello, Mrs. Weasley," Pansy said tentatively.

Molly was already shaking her head. "No," she said flatly.

George sighed. "Look, Mum, I know that this is a, er, surprise. But you're just going to have to accept it. Pansy Parkinson is my girlfriend, and she's going to start coming to this house."

"No," she repeated.

George gritted his teeth. "Mum. I know I should've told you earlier, but It's my fault, so put the blame on me, not Pansy. -do calm down, please-"

"Don't you tell me to calm down!" She slammed the glass down on a side table so hard that the stem snapped off.

George's eyes widened with alarm. "Oy, Fred! Help me out here!"

Fred actually looked alarmed as well, which was something that Draco was quite sure he had never seen from that more outgoing Weasley twin.

"Mum, maybe you really should take it down a notch," Fred said. "I know; we have an invasion of Slytherins on our hands, but it won't do any good to lose our tempers, will it?"

Molly began clenching and unclenching her hands into fists. Arthur laid a hand on her shoulder.

"Molly, no matter what you think of the Malfoys—and never mind what that might be, or why- Pansy Parkinson has nothing to do with this," he said quietly.

That was the last straw. Draco saw it clearly. Molly whirled on her husband.

"She nearly got Harry Potter killed!" she screeched. "He almost died at Voldemort's hands, and it would have been all her fault! That girl goaded him into going out to fight!" She stabbed a finger at Pansy, who stood frozen, spots of color in her cheeks. "And now she and that—Draco Malfoy have schemed and plotted to get into our house, taking advantage of Ginny and George—"

"Mum, that's enough. I can't listen to you speak about Pansy that way." George's face darkened.

"And it's nonsense. Draco didn't take advantage of me," snapped Ginny.

Molly gave a shrill, eerie laugh. "Oh, didn't he?" She bent close to Ginny, and Draco could smell the firewhiskey on her breath. "You poor, poor thing. You don't even know. You don't realize. The Malfoys always take advantage of the Weasleys. Every single time. Do you think I don't know how he seduced you?"

"Oh, Mum, do you really have to talk about—" Fred began to groan.

"That's how all the Malfoy men are," she spat. For the first time since the explosion began, she looked directly at Draco, and he was shaken by the blazing emotions in her eyes, misery and longing and anger and regret, all aimed at someone else who was not present. But he himself represented the closest substitute for whatever this mysterious target of her rage actually was. "You are the same as all the rest," she hissed. "Get away from my daughter! No, you won't have her! She's one Weasley girl who won't fall under the Malfoy spell!"

She made a wild grab for Ginny's arm and actually managed to drag her away from Draco. He was so stupefied that he could only gape at the pair of them for a moment. Then Draco started to lunge for Ginny, but Molly had pushed her onto the other side of the wall, and he smacked into its hard, stinging surface.

And then the wall shot up into the air and down into the ground, snapping the vestibule in half. The floor wobbled and shook. A loud roar filled the air.

"Mum, I told you that dragon was real!" yelled George.

The floor suddenly broke up with a series of loud cracking noises, breaking up into solid, separate pieces, like islands. Arthur, George, and Pansy stood on one of them, and it began steadily moving away from the vestibule. Ron grabbed for George, Cho running with him, and they were pulled onto the same island, which began to move faster away from the other side. Fred, George, Arthur, and Ron were all yelling, Pansy and Cho were screaming, but they drifted relentlessly into a sort of mist and then stopped. Draco could still see them all, but he could no longer hear any of their shouts and cries.

The dragon—if there really were one in the first place—sounded as if it had to be on his side. Ginny and her mother were on the other side. on a smaller moving patch of floor, and the roaring was moving towards them. Draco thought as swiftly as he had ever done in his life. The chasm between them was much too far to jump.

But there was one chance.

Suddenly, he knew what to do, indeed, the only thing that could be done.

"Ginny!" he shouted. "The mints! You've got to take one and give her the other!"

"No, I'm going to come back and fight with you!" she yelled to him.

"You can't—the dragon is between us. And it's too far to jump. If the Hiding mint will really shield you, then it ought to protect against the dragon seeing, smelling, or hearing either of you. It will move away, and you'll be safe."

"Draco, I won't leave you!" Her face was desperate, and through the horror of that insane moment, his heart swelled.

"You've got to. You need to think of your mother, Ginny," he went on, relentlessly. "Everyone else is separated from you, but you've got to protect her."

Molly's face twisted at his words. He doubted that she wanted his protection. *Too damn bad, Mrs. Weasley. You're going to get it.*

Ginny popped a mint between her lips and then shoved one into her mother's mouth. The air around them wavered, and they disappeared. But the moment before Molly Weasley vanished, Draco saw a expression of terrible sadness crossing Arthur Weasley's face from where he stood on the larger island. Then the floor shook beneath his feet, he felt himself dropping into a space below where they had been standing, and there was no more time to think about anything but the danger facing them all.

He got his breath back and tried to take stock of the situation. They were now in a large, enclosed room of some sort, as far as he could tell, with a roughly paved floor beneath their feet. Mists drifted through the space, obscuring the walls and ceiling. It was impossible to see anything clearly even a few feet in front of their faces. But it seemed familiar somehow, even though Draco didn't know why. He had a feeling that figuring that point out would need to wait. The roaring of the dragon seemed to be coming closer.

"Sod it, George said this would happen," groaned Fred next to him. "I hate it when he's proven right. He'll gloat for months."

"He won't have the chance if we don't survive this in the first place, which I'd prefer to do." Draco took a deep breath. "We've got to somehow draw the dragon away from the others."

Fred squinted at Draco as if he had turned into some kind of unbelievable freak.

"If you've got a better plan, I'd love to hear it," Draco snapped.

"Of course I don't have one," said Fred. "That's the only thing we can do. But aren't Malfoys supposed to be a pack of cowards?"

"It's hardly a requirement," said Draco through clenched teeth. "And if it were only you, it might be a different case. But there are others to consider. Ginny and your mother are safe, but we have no way of knowing if that dragon will turn around and go after everyone else."

"You're a deal more honest than I ever thought you were at school, anyway," said Fred, glancing uneasily around him. "But I don't need your help. I can, uh, handle a dragon by myself." The particularly loud roar drowning out the end of his sentence made the idea seem less than convincing.

"Don't be a bloody idiot, Weasley! Using the surname was easier when Fred was the only Weasley within shouting distance, thought Draco. Anidea struck him. "Didn't you say that your older brother Charlie might get here in time for dinner."

"Well, obviously he didn't!"

"But could he be nearby?"

"It's possible."

"And he's the dragon tamer, so he'd clearly be helpful here…." Draco mused. "I think that I can call him with a blood-bound spell as long as you're here. It's wandless."

"You think you can?" Fred raised his eyebrows.

"I can't be sure, and it won't work if he's more than a few miles away, but it's the only option I can come up with at the moment that might actually help us. Do you want me to try it, or not?"

Fred still hesitated.

"Would you really rather be eaten by a dragon than accept my help?"

The other man's silence after that question went on far too long, in Draco's opinion.

"All right!" Fred finally said. "It probably won't help anyway. Charlie's likely still too far away from us. But it's worth a try."

That was the most enthusiastic encouragement he was likely to get out of Fred Weasley, Draco knew.

"That wasn't so bad, was it?" asked Draco.

"Yes, it was. I wouldn't cooperate with you at all if a hungry dragon weren't chasing my entire family around a dungeon," said Fred. "But as it is, I suppose we'd better call a truce, Malfoy."

"Oh, call me Draco." He smiled widely.

Fred scowled at him. "Don't push you luck, ay?"