Disclaimer: If it was all mine, d'you really think I'd be posting it here?
A/N: Well, here it is. It took a while to get out, since I've had an insane amount of essays to write. Reminds me I still haven't finished one, but…I figured this was more important. And I decided to have a whole Draco-related chapter. What fun!
Chapter 8 ~ The Dragon Spreads His Wings
Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Ginny huddled together in the common room that night, looking quite like the conspirators they were. Their whispers were muffled and people kept casually waking near them in hopes of overhearing something. Others watched them avidly, and the majority of the eyes were glued to Ginny. Finally, they all seemed to get fed up with it and separated to go to their dorms and presumable their beds.
One by one, the other students went to bed and the common room quieted. Then three shadows and one glowing form drifted back. The fire, which had died down to glowing embers in the absence of anyone who could appreciate it, flared up again.
"Well, now that we can finally talk…" Hermione said in a tone of exasperation.
"Yeah, it was getting really annoying, wasn't it?" Ron agreed. "You'd think people would just mind their own business once in a while."
"The price of fame, guys, the price of fame," Harry said pompously, imitating the overbearing tones of former Professor Lockhart. They all laughed. "Ok, down to business. One, we need bone from Mrs. Weasley. Two, we need flesh from Lucius Malfoy. Three, a little blood from me. One and three should be easy to do, so all we need is to work on two. Any suggestions?" Harry tried not to look hopeful, but he truly wished that someone else would be able to come up with something. He was drawing a complete blank. Not only could they not get to the elder Malfoy, since he was quite obviously not at Hogwarts, but even if they could, there was no way a group of teenage wizards and a ghost could subdue a fully-grown and trained dark wizard. The whole thing seemed hopeless….
"It's hopeless," Ron said, looking a little desperate. "There's no way we can do this. It's impossible."
Hermione glared at him. "Ronald Weasley! Are you insane? Of course we can do it. We have to do it." She widened the glare to include everyone. "We are going to make this happen no matter what. We haven't been beaten yet, and we're not going to be!"
Harry grinned wanly. "You should be the captain of the quidditch team, Hermione. You could give really wicked pep talks."
Hermione grinned back with more feeling than Harry. "Just call me in if you want. We can discuss my fees later. Anyway, back to the business at hand. Malfoy."
Ginny gasped. "That's it!" she cried. Everyone looked at her in confusion. "We can't do it. That's obvious," she cut off Hermione's immediate protest with a shake of her head. "What we need is inside help, so to speak. Someone who can get closer to the Malfoy family than us."
"But who?" Ron protested. "Everyone in Slytherin hates us, and no one outside it would get near Mr. Pureblood Stuck-up Malfoy."
"But that's just it. What if we get a 'pureblood stuck-up Malfoy' to help us? What if we talked Draco into helping us?"
Ron let out a great guffaw. "The day Malfoy helps us, and against his own family, no less, will be the day the dementors are imprisoned in Azkaban. We haven't got a chance in hell of persuading him."
Hermione was nodding in agreement, but Harry looked thoughtful.
"Y'know, it might just work." Harry said contemplatively. Ron and Hermione gaped at him.
"Harry, are you completely insane?" Ron said, a bit too loudly for comfort. Hermione tried to shush him so that he didn't wake up the sleepers upstairs, but he ignored her and continued, "Join forces with Malfoy? Against a Malfoy? You've lost your marbles this time, for sure!"
"I just don't see how it would work," Hermione chimed in, looking apologetically between Harry and Ginny. "I mean, it's Malfoy and…well, Malfoy."
Harry and Ginny exchanged a glance. Then Ginny looked back at Ron and Hermione.
"It's not as crazy as you might think." She proceeded to tell them about the run-in with Malfoy and how he had been so shocked and appalled when Ginny had implied his father's involvement in her death.
"So maybe," she concluded, "he'd feel guilty enough to help us. As he said, he may be a bastard, but it doesn't make him a murderer. And you have to admit, there's no one better for getting close to Mr. Malfoy."
"Well," Ron conceded, "I guess you're right about that. But I still don't like it. I wouldn't trust him any farther than I could throw a bludger."
"But Ron," said Hermione reasonably, "you can't throw a bludger."
"Exactly," Ron said.
~*~
The next day, Ginny made it her business to follow Malfoy wherever he went. She actually found it rather amusing; every time he saw her, he would jump violently and then resolutely look elsewhere, until, after several minutes, his eyes would creep back to her, and he would jump yet again. She had to work very hard to control her giggles. Much as it would have been satisfying to annoy him, that wasn't what she was trying to accomplish.
Double Potions, which Slytherin had with Gryffindor, was especially trying. Harry, Ron, and Hermione all had to suppress their own laughter, and every time Ginny looked at them, she wanted to start laughing too. The looks Malfoy kept giving her were priceless. Nevertheless, she kept her face in an expression of grief and accusation. Malfoy got so nervous by the end of Potions that he actually tipped over his cauldron, spilling a Confusing Concoction over the students near him, and was reprimanded by Snape, though no points were taken from Slytherin. Ginny didn't have to fake her look of disapproval at that.
After classes were over for the day, Ginny decided that she'd done enough. Hopefully, Malfoy would feel guilty enough to come looking for her. And if he didn't, well…there was always tomorrow. Or better yet, tonight. Ginny almost giggled in anticipation.
The four of them lounged around in the Gryffindor common room that night, waiting to see if Malfoy would show up. True, he didn't have the password, but they were all confident that if he really wanted to get in, he could. Probably, Hermione had commented sardonically, by bullying one of the younger students.
The hours ticked by and soon all of them were yawning. Malfoy didn't appear.
"Well," said Harry, face falling, "I guess we overestimated Malfoy's conscience. Anybody have another idea?"
"Don't give up yet, Harry," Ginny said with determination. "I've still got some ideas about Malfoy. Good thing I don't need to sleep. See you in the morning!" With that, she whisked away through the wall, leaving her friends bewildered in her wake.
A good
thing about being a ghost, Ginny reflected as she drifted through the hallways,
was that no teacher or prefect could ever tell her to get to bed. She was a law unto herself.
And as a law unto herself, she could go wherever she pleased. With that thought in mind, she drifted into
the dungeons and through a wall into the Slytherin common room.
She wrinkled her nose as she looked around. Everything was hard and unwelcoming, exactly like the Slytherins themselves. Luckily for her plan, there was no one left in the common room at this late hour. She thought it must be near midnight, and remembered with a sigh when she had been able to curl up in a warm bed and go to sleep. If this worked, there were a lot of things she would never take for granted again.
Two hallways led out of the green and silver room, gently sloping downwards. Ginny chose the one on the left for no real reason and floated down it. She poked her head through a door and immediately knew that she'd chosen wrong. The room was decorated with metallic silver and sickly pink, and makeup was scattered on every available surface. There were posters of bodybuilders and teen-heartthrobs on the walls, flexing their muscles and grinning with mouths full of very white teeth. Ginny had to stifle her sniggers as she backed out of the room. The Slytherin girls really were pathetic.
She floated back to the common room and down the other tunnel, feeling a little surer of herself. The first room she came to held several Slytherin boys whom she didn't recognize…first years by the look of them. When the boys sleeping in the next room looked only a little older, she decided to just skip a couple of rooms, since they were probably roomed by order of year. When she reached the right door, she entered slowly and poked her head through the curtains of the first bed. Goyle's ugly face looked up at her, and the horrendous noise of his snoring would have burst her eardrums if she'd been alive. Ginny thankfully withdrew her head, and the racket stopped. She guessed that the other boys had put a silencing charm on his bed so that they'd be able to sleep.
She had better luck with the next bed. There was Malfoy, looking very small and pale against the dark forest green bedclothes. He didn't snore, but was restless, tossing back and forth as though he was in the grip of a bad dream. Ginny figured it would not be long before he woke. She carefully entered the curtains of his bed and floated at the foot of it, watching him intently.
Malfoy thrashed as if he was trying to escape from his covers and moaned a little in his sleep. Ginny felt an unexpected wave of compassion for him. Nightmares were never pleasant, and she was rather well acquainted with them, after the debacle of her first year. She floated nearer reached out a hand to gently brush the sweat-soaked silver-blonde hair from his forehead.
Ginny found herself in the midst of a whirlwind, being sucked inside Malfoy's dreaming mind. She was shocked and irritated. Of all the things….she hadn't meant for this to happen.
Ginny found herself in a dry and barren wasteland. Gray crags reached up to the overcast sky and a wailing wind whipped through the rocky valleys. Malfoy was nowhere to be seen.
She began to walk. When she had been inside Harry's mind, when she had begun to walk, she had come upon him immediately. Though Harry's mind, she thought peevishly, had been much more pleasant to wander about in. This place was just ugly. She scrambled up a ridge and looked down into a bowl-shaped valley.
Ginny gasped. This place was nothing like the dry, dead wasteland which she had walked through before. A sapphire river ran through the valley, nurturing a forest of towering trees. Spanish moss dripped from their branches, and silver mist swirled around the forest floor. The effect was strangely beautiful yet disturbing.
The farther Ginny walked inside the forested valley, the brighter the air seemed to become. By the time she reached the river in the center of the valley, the air was warm and welcoming, and the sky was a beautiful blue to match the glistening waters. The trees were glowing green with health, and their bark had a slight silvery shimmer. Ginny grinned in spite of herself. Malfoy always had to have something to do with Slytherin.
Malfoy himself, however, was nowhere to be seen. Ginny looked around in confusion. Surely Malfoy would be here and not in that other, ugly part of his mind…Acting on instinct, Ginny looked up through the trees to the other side of valley. There, upon the circular ridge, stood Malfoy, looking longingly at the valley, but not making any effort to descend. Ginny waved at him and beckoned to him to come down, but he only shook his head stubbornly. She sighed, and began to make her way up to him.
The air became colder as she moved away from the river. The whole place seemed to have an air of disdain for her. Ginny knew that she was unwelcome as she climbed up the ridge to Malfoy, but her own obstinacy kept her going. Obviously Malfoy wouldn't welcome her. That was why she was here.
"Hello," she said to him, carefully keeping her voice neutral.
"Hello," he replied in the exact same tone, and then went back to looking down at the valley.
"Why don't you go down there?" Ginny asked. "It's much warmer." She shivered a bit as the cold wind cut through her clothes. One benefit of ghostliness: She never had to worry about the weather.
"I can't go down there," Draco said, with a shiver of his own. "I've tried."
"Why not?" Ginny asked, suppressing a dozen cutting comments that flowed into her mind.
"I'll get hurt. It always happens. Look," he said, and he pulled up his sleeve to show a huge gash along one arm, the edges of the flesh blackened and raw. "I did try, you see. But I can't."
Ginny felt another rush of compassion for him. If only there was some way she could help…she knew he'd be much easier to live with if only he could reach that other part of his mind. The wasteland was only a façade, no matter how extensive it was. Here was another part of Draco Malfoy that no one had ever been allowed to see.
"Maybe…maybe you just need a little help to get there," Ginny suggested timidly. Draco's head swiveled to look at her intensely.
"No! I'll just get hurt even more if I accept help. And so will you."
"D'you know that?" Ginny asked quietly. "Have you ever actually accepted help before?"
He shook his head slowly but said nothing.
"Maybe you should give it a try," she suggested delicately.
"No," he said stubbornly. "You can't help me. No one can."
"My," Ginny said laughingly, "aren't we melodramatic tonight?" Draco looked at her in shock. Obviously no one had ever spoken to him in quite that tone before, not to make fun of him, but to laugh with him. He smiled hesitantly.
"Look," said Ginny, "I've already been down there, and nothing's hurt me. Why don't you give it a try?" On impulse, she reached for his hand. Draco gave her a strange look, as though he'd never met anyone quite like her…especially within his own head.
"Well…" he said, and Ginny knew that he wouldn't need much more prodding.
"Come on. Nothing stops the great Draco Malfoy, right?" she said it jokingly though, and Malfoy gave her another astonished look which quickly turned to one of apprehension.
"Nothing stops a Malfoy…" he said slowly, "except another Malfoy." He rubbed his arm nervously.
"Another Malfoy is keeping you out?" Ginny said, puzzled. "Who?"
"My father," Draco shivered.
Ginny's mouth opened in shock. Of course. Who else could frighten Draco?
"And you're going to let him win?" Ginny said indignantly. "Well, I'm not! He killed me, but I'm still around, aren't I? You're still alive, you can do plenty about him."
Draco looked discouraged. "No I can't. I'm just like him. How can you fight yourself?"
"You're not like him. I'd bet you anything that he doesn't have even one nice place in his mind like your valley. He's trying to make you like him by keeping you away from it. D'you want to be like him?" Ginny said crossly.
"No!" said Draco, with more vehemence than Ginny had ever seen him use with anything except tormenting Harry.
"Well, then, it's obvious what you have to do. Get down there," Ginny saw his face hardening with resolve and grinned with satisfaction. But then Draco turned back to her.
"And what's in it for you?" he said suspiciously.
"Me?" Ginny said in surprise. She wanted Malfoy's help, but she didn't want to tell him that, now did she? Well, why not? A favor for a favor…. "I need your help. I help you, and then you help me in return. It's only fair. It's what friends do."
"Friends?" a hint of Malfoy's trademark sneer appeared on his face. "Since when have we been friends?"
"Since now," Ginny replied complacently. "It's much easier to judge a person when you're inside their head, y'know. And I like what I see…well, I like what I see down there. And I'll put up with the rest of it," she gestured to the dead desert around them, "for the sake of that," and she gestured down to the lush forest.
Draco looked at her strangely again, and then nodded. With that, he started down into the valley, Ginny beside him. Now she was what he found so threatening about the forest. The trees reached out with long branches to snag on their clothing, and the roots lumped out of the forest floor to trip them. The fog thickened around them so that they had no idea where they were going. Draco's face told her how deeply afraid he was of this place, but Ginny kept herding him on determinedly.
Through a deep fog bank ahead of them, a huge shadow loomed. It had the look of a man, tall and cloaked in black. Draco caught sight of it as soon as Ginny did, and turned to run in panic. Ginny grabbed the back of his robes, determined that he would not back out now that they were this far. She kept dragging him forward, toward the menacing shadow, until they broke out of the fog, and the shadow was revealed as nothing more than a tree stump, blasted by lightening. Draco stopped fighting her and looked sheepish, then angry.
"What a nasty, rotten thing to do! You should have let me go." He said furiously.
"Why? So that you could go back to being scared of everything? Friends give each other what they need, and not necessarily what they want," Ginny replied angrily, quoting a variation of one of her mother's favorite sayings. "There's no need to get scared and run away from a tree."
Draco glared at her, and then put his nose in the air and continued walking forward, as if to prove that he was no coward. Ginny grinned and said, "Now that's more like it!" He turned around and looked at her in amazement, then smiled uncertainly back. She took a few steps forward and then they moved onward into the forest together.
They reached the river with no further mishap, although the closer they got, the more nervous Draco became. His apprehension melted away, however, when he gazed around him at the beauty in the very center of the valley. He sat down on the moss by the river and sighed with contentment.
"I haven't been here since I was a very little boy, and Lucius didn't care about me yet. Then I grew up…and he told me that no true Malfoy would ever be found in a place like this. So I left. Willingly. And then when I wanted to come back….he wouldn't let me."
Ginny sat down beside him, and put her hand comfortingly over his. "Well, you're here now. I told you all you needed was a little help."
Draco smiled at her. It was a true smile, full of happiness, an expression she had never seen on his face before. He opened his mouth to say something…
But the word was swirling away and dissolving into darkness. Ginny found herself once more within the shadowed darkness of Draco's bed. He was awake and glaring at her, eyes full of malice.
"Get out of my bed, muggle-lover. Get away from me!" He sat up, still looking very frail and white against the darkness, almost as though he was a ghost himself. "I know that spying on me sleeping has got to be the most entertaining thing you've ever done, but maybe you should go ogle Potter instead."
"Sorry," said Ginny comfortably. "I did that last night." Malfoy looked at her in shock. He had obviously expected her to get angry. "Oh, come on, Draco. I've been inside your head. I know you now. Don't pull all that 'I hate the world' crap with me. I know better."
Draco stared at her with his eyes bulging out of his head. Finally, he said, "I thought that was all a dream…"
"Sorry, that was real. About as real as anything gets for a ghost, anyway," Ginny answered sardonically.
Draco swore. "Go away," he said rudely, but then amended it by saying, "I need time to think."
Ginny nodded and smiled at him. He was clearly unnerved by it and didn't smile in return. Oh well, thought Ginny, you can only have so much progress in one night, after all. She floated out of his bed, startling Crabbe, who had a large piece of chocolate cake and was eating it noisily. She stuck out her tongue at him, and then zipped out of the tunnel and through the empty common room. In very few moments, she found herself back in the Gryffindor common room, which was also empty. She settled down to wait for the rest of the school to wake up and took advantage of the quiet to sort out her own muddled thoughts.
What, exactly, had just happened?
~*~
A/N: Well, Draco was just a tad OOC, wasn't he? But let me take this moment to assure you that it was only because he was inside his head and didn't think any of it was real. He'll go back to being his usual annoying self in real life, I hope. I just hope I can do his annoyingly superior self justice. Wish me luck!
Thank you to my amazingly spiffy reviewers!
Cariel: Thanks for giving my fic the chance to prove itself unique! I do my best never to just copy what everyone else has already done. As for the true love thing…yeah, it was a little trite, wasn't it? Oh well…not much I can do to change it now. I kinda meant it to be funny…Hermione getting all starry-eyed and girly…but it didn't come out sounding like that. Oops?
Pseudonym Sylphmouse: Thanks for reviewing again! I'm really happy that you're following my story.
Kawaii Yoshi: Thanks a lot! Here you go, more HP goodness.
Bucky: Wow, I'm so happy you came back to read some more! I'm really sorry about the wait…*looks sheepish*
Temporary Insanity: I'm glad everything's clear now. *looks relieved* And as for Malfoy…I'm still working on him. Who knows how he'll end up?
Mike: Yes dear…..
Bessorla: Yes, the name does give you away, as you very well know! I hope this satisfies your fanfic cravings for a little while at least….Thanks for the review!
