Title: Fragments 2: The Difference a Malfoy Mind Can Make

Author: Tiny Q

E-Mail: one_legged_lesbian_seagull@hotmail.com

A/N:  I just don't understand how this many of you could actually want me to continue this!  I told myself that if I got 7 reviews that I would keep going.  That was how many I had received on Fragments 1 when I first put it up.  What is wrong with all you people?!  Not that I'm not grateful!  I really am.  And becasue of it I added two pages onto this chapter.  I was going to end it rather cruelly, then I made it far too long and now it is as it is.  Hopefully you will find it entertaining.  It's a bit of a foundation chapter though not that- How about I just let you read??

Disclaimer:  I own nothing.  Not even the plot is really mine.  And the characters definitely aren't.  Harry Potter or any other I have ripped off from other sources.  Because that is what this story basically is: one big rip.  Bah!

Fragments 2: The Difference a Malfoy Mind Can Make

Chapter 2

Did the Nazis Ever Recruit Ferrets?

~*~

            Ginny stared at this new and rather threatening version of the caretaker she had always not much cared for when she had attended this school.  She was beginning to feel rather nervous, getting the feeling that the object in his hands was a Muggle weapon.  One that could kill.  Yet on the other hand she was beginning to feel curious as to how such an object could get into Malfoy's head.  'Curiosity killed the cat,' she thought darkly.  She could figure the weapon out later, at the moment there were more important things to worry about.  Like running away.

            "Uh," she said in a rather daft fashion, backing up slowly, hoping that she wouldn't be noticed.  The clicking of her heels made this rather difficult though.  "I'm just helping you to clean it a bit more," she said lamely, mentally smacking herself in the head. 

            'Why not just shout that I love filth and that there should be more of it around?' she thought angrily, staring up at the black leather clad Filtch.  He was turning rather red in the face and it clashed rather badly, in some odd way, with his outfit.  It then occurred to Ginny that the Squib had owned a cat, a sneaky evil cat. 

            As if on queue, Ginny felt something rub up against her leg.  Taking in a sharp breath she looked down, only to hear herself let out a small scream.  The ugly evil cat was wearing black, shinny leather and Rayban sunglasses.  The cat tipped its head so Ginny could see the red eyes glaring at her.

            "Sorry," she mumbled, then turned and ran as fast as she possibly could with heels. 

            "Get her my sweet!" she heard the caretaker screech at his cat and Ginny turned her head just in time to see a shinny black streak pelt towards her. 

            "Gah!" she let out and ran faster, moving towards a hall that, if memory served her correctly, led up to the library.  She could hear claws clicking on the marble behind her and Ginny had this desperate feeling that claws would soon be lodging themselves into her back.  'Oooh, I am going to kill that stupid asshole when I find him,' she thought angrily, barreling into another hall to the left, leaving large marks on the floor with her shoes.  If Filtch didn't have a real reason to kill her before, he sure as hell did now.

            This hall was darker than the other, but still on she ran.  But something was different.  Something sounded odd.  Looking behind herself, Ginny let out a little gasp.  The cat was gone.  Slowing to a halt, Ginny looked around, searching for the cat.  But it seemed that her trip around the corner had thrown the evil creature off, leaving Ginny to be the only one in the hall.

            "Well, that was easy," she muttered to herself, smoothing out her skirt and straightening her blouse. 

            Once she felt properly groomed, Ginny looked around, trying to remember where she was.  She knew this wasn't going to be easy if she didn't know where she was.  She had gotten lost with Malfoy in the dungeons last time and he knew where they were.  And she wasn't too keen on getting lost in his mind.  She wanted to get back into her own head, thank you very much.

            Taking in a deep breath, she strode forward.  The best way to find the blonde in question seemed to be to walk around until she found clues as to where he was, or better yet, find him in person.  It was a rather stupid plan, but it seemed a touch better than standing around waiting for Filtch and that blasted cat to catch up with her and go all kung-fu on her.

            Seeing nothing better to do in the meantime however, Ginny found herself looking about this darker hall.  She realized it was because there were not as many torches in this hall as there had been in the main one.  But it made sense.  Why light up unused halls? 

            She also noticed that there seemed to be more detail in Malfoy's mind than there had been in her own.  When she had been in her mind, everything had seemed dull, and unreal.  Yet in here everything seemed much sharper, much closer to the waking world than her own.  For one, the halls had their original marble tiles that caused her shoes to kick as she walked over them.  And they were sharp and detailed, not just blurry and mundane.  It was not as if they had been expected to be there, but instead had been examined carefully and that they knew they were there for a purpose.  It wasn't like in her mind where the floor had simply been covered in red carpet for she had always imagined it that way. 

            The next thing that she noticed was that she could see the paintings on the walls much more clearly than she had been able to in her own mind.  They had been blurry in hers yet in Malfoy's they were detailed and had depth.  But yet they were off somehow.  All the colors seemed dark and depressing, despite their depth or cheery depiction.  Or at least what was supposedly a cheery depiction.  Ginny narrowed her eyes at one and got the distinct impression that fairies and water nymphs were not supposed to scowl at you like that.  She also was beginning to think that damsels in distress should not look so bitter and sinister.  They were not supposed to seem so dark and filled with angst.  They were going to be rescued after all.

            Ginny broke her eyes away from the bizarrely warped paintings.  It seemed that Malfoy had spent a lot of time examining the school and the things in it, yet it had all been tainted by his darkness.  By his dark and rather sinister personality.  But then, that was why he had been in Slytherin after all.  The dark and conniving personality that was his.  Ginny shook her head in disgust.

            Coming to a T in the hall, she chose to turn left, figuring if she turned that direction every time she would be able to get back to the Main Hall if she needed to.  Yet as she came to be in the mouth of the aforementioned hall she instantly regretted this decision.  She stopped short.

            "What is it with this guy and ferrets?" she asked herself in alarm, looking at the large army before her. 

            There were ferrets for as far as her eye could see down the narrow hall she had entered.  They were all wearing daft looking mettle helmets that just screamed Muggle and had odd red bands around their left arms.  There seemed to be some sort of symbol on them, but she couldn't quite make it out.  Not that she felt she wanted to see it anyway. 

            They didn't seem to notice her at first, then one turned slightly and gave off an alarmed "Squeak!" causing the rest to turn as one body and stare at her as well.  Ginny felt her heart skip a beat.  They were all staring at her, baring sharp little pointy teeth in twisted little grins.  Grins that Ginny did not like in the slightest.  'Shit,' she thought weakly.

            "SQUEAK!" a ferret at the front of the heard called, glancing over his shoulder to the rest of his pack.  An instant later they were running towards her, their little feet roaring loud enough that she could have sworn it was a heard of Hippogriffs charging towards her rather than ferrets. 

            Without a second glance, Ginny turned on her heel and began to run in the opposite direction.  Her feet began to cry out in protest at being forced to run in her stupid heels for the second time in the last five minuets.  She studiously ignored them, instead deciding to pay more attention to the ferrets raging behind her. 

            "Why?" she asked herself.  "Why does he have to make everything so difficult?" 

            "Squeak!" she heard a ferret call as it whizzed by her head.  Apparently the others had decided to catapult him towards her.  It landed with a pitiful thump in a flowerpot.  Ginny diverted to the other side of the hall so as to avoid it.  But it didn't do her much good as there were soon more of his fellow soldiers flying past her making odd little noises as they went.  She was just waiting for one of them to hit her and bring her down for the rest of them to stampede over her.  Or do whatever it was that ferret soldiers did to their quarry.

            She ran faster, leaning slightly to the right as she hit a bend in the hall.  Yet it seemed a bend wasn't good enough to shake the army off her tail as a corner had been to the cat.  As she faced what was in front of her, Ginny stopped dead in her tracks at what she saw.  She once again left marks on the floor but didn't even think about it this time around.  There were more pressing matters at hand.

            "Merlin," she uttered, staring wide eyed at the apparent second regiment of the Ferret Brigade.  They had come around from the other side, effectively boxing her in and coming to a halt to do so.  The first regiment came to a stop behind her, leaving her a twenty foot gap between each of the groups.  Ginny stared from on group to the other, not quite knowing what to do next.  They were all grinning again.  Grinning that terrible grin.

            You've got to stop fighting him!  Suddenly ran through her head.  Though as to why Malfoy's words would suddenly pull themselves from the recesses of her memory, she had no idea.  But then, staring at the multitude of ferrets she began to realize something: they were there to get rid of her. They weren't the quite memories that sat behind the doors, waiting to be observed.  These were thoughts with a purpose, with a reason.  A duty. 

            They began to move in for the kill.  Slowly.

            "What are you doing?" she suddenly screamed as loud as she could, staring all around her.  The ferrets seemed unaffected by her sudden outburst.  In fact, they seemed to grin wider.  "I'm here to help you, you idiot!" she continued to scream.  "If you let these stupid beasts get me, then you'll never get out of here!!"

            Her insult towards the ferrets did not seem to be the best of ideas and she instantly regretted it.  One of the soldiers of the second regiment leapt at her.  She let out a small shriek and slammed her eyes shut throwing her arms to her head, waiting to be bitten, clawed and generally gnawed on. 

            Yet the attack never came.  Slowly opening her eyes, Ginny peaked through her arms, looking for the reason why the attack never happened.  It was quite evident really: all the ferrets had vanished.  Ginny blinked then slowly lowered her arms, still looking about for that one ferret just waiting to finish the job the others were too scared to deal with. 

            Yet she saw none.

            "Thank you," she found herself uttering, still looking around in disbelief. 

            Shaking slightly, Ginny once again straightened her outfit.  She was getting the feeling that she was being tested.  And if not tested then she was simply being played with.  And she didn't like it.  Not one little bit.  Taking a deep, shuttering breath she strode forward, keeping her head high and her eyes ever weary for signs of trouble. 

            Yet it was beginning to seem to her that there was only one obstacle per hall.  For as she walked the length of the exceedingly long one, she ran into no other problems.  No ferrets.  No caretakers.  And no creepy little cats.

            And then she came to another hall.  She stopped, feeling her heart begin to pound.  What would it be this time?  What would he make her face?  What horrid and twisted thing could he come up with?  What hand could he possibly deal her?

            Taking another deep breath, she held her head high and walked around the corner.  There was no real point in just standing there after all.  If she ever wanted out of here she would just have to take a chance.  She stopped.

            "Hullo, Ginny," a voice met her ears, coming from a person sitting cross-legged in the center of the hall.  A certain blonde person.  "I was wondering who they would send in here to get me out."  He turned and smirked at her.  "I had a feeling you wouldn't be able refuse."

            Ginny walked up to the man, frowning down on him.  He remained seated, watching her approach with an expressionless face.  Yet it seemed more sinister than usual for the shadows cast by the torches were playing darkly across his face, not allowing her to see it properly.

            "Wouldn't be able to refuse?" she sneered, suddenly getting the feeling that perhaps the ferret armies would have been a better time than the one she had just stumbled across.  "Well that's rich.  It was more like blackmail, really."

            "Well," the blonde replied, smirking up at her.  "We all know how much you need the money."

            "I only see the two of us," she sneered down on him, looking around pointedly as if to prove her point.  "And I know that I would not need the money, even if I was doing this for it."

            Something passed across the blonde man's face, yet Ginny didn't quite catch it.  Probably due to the poor lighting.  Yet it apparently seemed that his guards and walls to keep others from seeing what he was feeling had gotten higher.  'Pity,' she thought, feeling a touch of melancholy at the memory of his face when he laughed.  She shook her head.  'Get a grip, Ginny,' she thought angrily, glaring down at the man in question as though it was his fault.  Which, in a way, it was.

            "How long have I been unconscious?" he asked finally, sounding more civil than before.  But not by much according to Ginny's standards. 

            "A day or so from what I heard," she replied truthfully.  It struck her as odd, now that the subject had arisen that no one had told her how long the man had been unconscious for.  She suspected that it was really rather irrelevant, but it still seemed as though she had been kept in the dark.  They had told her about everything else practically.  Well, perhaps not everything, she wasn't exactly trusted amongst the Order any more.

            "It's felt like longer than that," the blonde said slowly, tilting his head and frowning at the ground.  The movement cast even more shadows across his face making his already dark features seem even darker, more evil.  Yet despite the fact that she couldn't quite see him properly, she could sense that something was troubling him.  But she wasn't about to ask what was wrong.

            "Forgot to bring your expensive watch with you this time, Malfoy?" she hissed, smirking at him slightly. 

            "Actually," he drawled, fishing about in his expensive looking robes and pulling something on a chain out.  "It broke before I landed in here." 

            He held the gold object up by its chain, swinging slightly.  The firelight caught at the broken face of the pocket watch, proving to her that it truly was broken.  Ginny felt an odd pang for some reason.  She swore at it.

            "Aww, poor Draco," she cooed in bitter pity.  "Your daddy's watch is all broken.  How does that make you feel?"

            "Not as bad as it feels to have you in my head," he snarled up at her.  "Honestly, couldn't they find anyone else for the job?  I mean besides you and you're leaping at the opportunity to see what I am like in my head?"

            "Nope," she said sweetly, grinning down on him.  "They apparently don't seem to think that you have anyone else.  Which is really rather sad considering that I haven't seen you in the last five years."

            "And you say this as if it were my fault," he snapped, rising to his feet.

            "Well who else's fault could it be?" she snarled, glaring at him, as he rose to his feet as gracefully as if he had been sitting on a thrown.  "Min-" 

            She cut off, his features coming into full view.  It was the first time she had seen him in five years, with the exception of the St. Mungos, but that didn't count.  She felt her eyes grow wide slightly.  He looked so different.  So unlike the immature creature she had once cared for.  He was practically the same height, but he had thinned out.  He was leaner, yet had muscle to him.  And his face was sharper, more defined, making him look even more aristocratic than he ever had before.  He looked so much like his father, it startled her.  Even his eyes were similar.  They were grayer than she remembered.  More guarded

            "Weasley, I know that I'm dead sexy," his voice sliced through her mind with a drawl.  "But I am finding that this hall is getting rather cumbersome.  Can we leave it any time soon?"

            "Wha?" she asked daftly, then shook her head.  'So what if he's hot?' she yelled at herself in her head, knowing that "hot" was a touch of an understatement at the moment.  It was more like an insane handsomeness that made her want to launch herself at him and never let go.  'He's still the same bastard you knew before!'

            "Leave?" he offered, making little walking movements with two fingers.  "Use your legs and move somewhere, rather than stand there and stare at me."  Ginny narrowed her eyes, feeling her face heat up slightly.  "I mean I'm flattered, really, but I have better people to stare at me these days."

            "Oh, really?" Ginny sneered nastily, suddenly wanting to make him forget about her laps of stupidity.  Or just to make herself forget by replacing the memory with something better.  Or rather more vicious.  "Then why am I here instead of them?  Or is it simply some fan club in your head?  Because if that's the case I can't wait to meet them."  She looked around as if searching for the banner waving group of girls, knickers a flying.

            "You're such a loser, Weasley," Malfoy spat at her, sneering in a terrible way that made Ginny want to turn away from it.  She held her ground though, glaring back.  "Can we just go?  I want to spend as little time in here as possible."

            "Trust me," Ginny hissed, crossing her arms.  "The feeling is mutual."

            With a snort, Malfoy turned away from her and walked down the hall, opposite of the direction she had come.  With a hiss of breath, Ginny followed after him, glaring angrily at the blonde's back.  'Maybe I should have stuck with Filtch,' she thought bitterly, coming up to walk beside Malfoy.  'At least he wouldn't have insulted me.'

            They walked in icy silence, ever sending glares at one another.  Ginny felt sure that if their eyes had been flamethrowers they would both be crispier than chicken from that Muggle food chain.  Not that she ever ate there very often.  She had once found a chicken brain fried into the batter coating a drumstick.  It had forever turned her away from Muggle fried foods.  Not that this is very relevant to the story, but I just thought I would mention it.  Moving on.

            When they had reached the end of the hall, Malfoy didn't even check to see if she was ready to round it with him, he just kept right on walking.  Ginny resisted the urge to snarl.  What if he had gone around and when she had gone herself he hadn't been there?  Then what?  She would have to wander around his head for who knows how long until she found him again?  She didn't think so.  But just as she was opening her mouth to tell him just that, something assaulted her ears.  Something loud.

            "I am ahead, I am advanced.  I am the first mammal to make plans, yeah!"  Someone screamed from a stage that was apparently right at the end of the rather short hall they had entered.  "I crawled the earth, but now I'm hot.  I tried to chill yah, but you turned to fire."  Ginny looked at the person who was gleefully bouncing around, bashing guitars and other such instruments and generally being destructive, up on the stage.  "It's evolution, baby!"  Then she gasped.

            "Malfoy," she said slowly, staring wide-eyed at the bone white man on the stage.  She felt her arms drop from their crossed position to hang limply at her sides.  "Why is Voldemort singing Pearl Jam in your head?"
~*~

A/N:  Ah, singing.  How I love to make characters sing.  I should do an entire musical some time.  No contest, no nothing.  Just singing... Oh, the possibilities.  But it won't happen, don't worry.  Anyhoo, next chapter is when the shit will really hit the fan.  There's so much wonderful stuff I have planed.  He He He.  I'd give you some tidbits, but I think I will just make you wait... Oh, alright.  There will be chipmunks, squirrels, dragons and Gollum!

Many thanks to: o0true0o, tulzdavampslayer(~tiny voice~ I updated...), oliverwoodsgirl(I already have half of it written up :D), Ella8(Uh, well that just sort of defeats the point of trashing it... JK), calie(Trust me dear, by the end he will be black and blue and his knees will bleed ~evil laughter~), Shlay, bobby(Hmm, perhaps that mullet will make a come back...), Meadow A(I hope you do too), fryechild(...wiggle dance...?), mngolianporkchop(Compelling and ingenious? ~stares is awe~ Thanks!), Azalai(...that was so...odd...), CherrymintChocolates(All in good time), Edainme, Monika1, redcrow, fire-sprite16(Why must you all threaten me?! Gah), Queen of Night, sneef22(Now why would I want a happy ending? JK), xi-swt-tearz-ix, Amaya, shelly2, LadyBex(Because there are too many ideas in my head. I've got 2 more on the way too. Gah. But I have finished Trees, all I have to do is get off my lazy bum and edit) and Laratiot(Oh, there's a reason. You'll find out about it soon. It's all- well, you'll have to wait and see :D).