Disclaimer: Harry Potter, friends, and enemies belong to JK Rowling and Warner Brothers and blahdy blahdy blahdy. Tommy and Jimmy are mine, I guess, although I'd be perfectly willing to trade them for Draco…
that was close
The night was cold; the air nipped at Harry's ears and sliced through the warmth of the cloak. A faint mist rose steadily from Ron and Hermione's mouth, so white Harry often confused it with the snow as they trudged stiffly down the icy streets of Hogsmeade. They had hidden until the sun set in the cave Sirius had used as a refuge in their fourth year, warmed by one of Hermione's magical blue fires and Harry wished he had bottled some of the flame to warm his hands that were bundles up by the hems of his too large sweater and stuffed into his pockets. It was a wonder that no one heard his teeth chattering in the iced silence. Numbly, they all stepped into the Hog's Head.
It was barely warmer inside the pub, and so dark that they could barely see the counter where several drunk men sat muttering to themselves between liberal gulps from their dusty glasses. One idly dragged a dirty fingertip around the rim of his half-empty glass as if he was debating whether or not to drink the rest. In one sudden motion, and with a satisfying "ah", he downed his liquor and banged the glass on the table for more. The bartender scuttled over to him, poured more of the same from a bottle, and said in an almost accusing tone, "I'll be adding that to your tab."
"Remember to let me do the talking," Hermione muttered out of the corner of her mouth as they walked up to the counter. The bartender was now wiping the counter with a rag so brown it was hard to imagine that it had ever been white.
"Excuse me, but we're looking for a place to stay the night." The bartender stopped, opened one eye very wide and looked Ron and Hermione up and down.
"Do I know you?"
"I doubt it." He focused on Ron's hair as if he was trying very hard to find a long discarded memory.
"Aren't you a bit young–"
"– Could you please tell us of a place nearby where we might get a room?" His eye fluttered shut and he resumed wiping the counter. They waited and Hermione had just opened her mouth to ask again when he spoke.
"They're about five hotels of 'spectable reputation."
"We'd like the names of all of the places we might get a room in Hogsmeade," Hermione said briskly, pulling out a quill and a scrap of parchment. He opened his eye piercingly and fixed it upon her parchment. Hermione's hand trembled slightly, nervously, but only for a second before she stilled it.
"If you're wanting the names of all the places to stay in Hogsmeade, you're going to need a larger slip of parchment than that."
~~~~~
They always talked before they went to sleep, usually because Ginny would start it and he didn't have the energy to fight her questions with witty, meaningless phrases. He had never worked so hard in his life; she needed help with everything. He had to carry her to the bathroom, help her do what girls do on the toilet, carry her from the bathroom, bathe her, get her food, make her eat when she wasn't hungry, carry her from the bed to the chair, make a warming potion, make her take the warming potion…the lists of all the things he had to do went on and on. He had never thought he'd ever have to take care of an invalid in his life. Not that she was one. Sometimes he got the idea that she could do things just fine and merely enjoyed taunting him. He didn't know anything about sick people and for all he knew she was faking everything. She could walk with a great deal of help, and she tried every day. He appreciated that she tried…but there were some times…
"Will you give me a massage?" Groggily he opened his eyes. She lay on her stomach, propped up on her elbows and looked over her shoulder at him, her mouth curved into a cute smile as if she were a Cheshire cat. He regretted giving her the massage the first day; she'd requested one every day since and he was just too tired to give one now.
"Maybe later…"
"You'll be asleep later." I would be asleep now if you'd stop badgering me…
She slid further down into the bed putting her nose so that it touched his.
"Please?"
"No." He rolled over and she laughed gently.
"Well, g'night then." He mumbled "goodnight" in response, or at least tried to but it came out more like a groan because opening his mouth took too much effort. She shifted in the bed, bouncing a little more than he thought was necessary before coming to rest and letting him drift away.
~~~~~
"How many do we have to go?" Ron asked as they stepped out of what he thought must have been the twentieth Bed and Breakfast they'd gone into.
"Seven," Hermione said, holding her wand to the parchment where the last concierge had written directions. He had been quite alarmed when they had stepped in, shaking snow from the hems of their cloaks, and had crankily informed them that the Bed and Breakfast was full. It turned out the concierge had only gotten up to get a glass of warm milk and lock the door before turning in, but he was as nice as an overworked and sleepy person can be. Many of the lights in the windows of Hogsmeade had gone out, leaving the streets much darker, but the streetlights still burned on and would until daybreak.
It was taking much longer than any of them had anticipated to check the lodgings. The concierges either didn't know much about their occupants or were unwilling to give information about them and it had taken a mixture or verbal force and coercion before Hermione was satisfied that they didn't have any idea where Ginny was. But with every lodging they checked, the dread in Hermione's stomach began to grow and she worried that they wouldn't find any information regarding Ginny's whereabouts, left instead at yet another dead end. Biting the chap off her lower lip, she glanced at Ron, dragging his feet through the snow with exasperating determination. She could see his lids drooping and didn't wonder why; they had been looking for over two hours, crisscrossing the village of Hogsmeade, and yet they had only been to 5 lodgings. In the selfish part of her mind, she wondered whether the search was best left for another day or if it would be possible for them to sneak off of the grounds to visit Hogsmeade the next night.
"We're here," a voice said out of the cold, sweeping away Hermione's preoccupation. Harry was still with them. She hadn't remembered to check for him like she usually did.
As they stepped into the Pheonix Nest, Hermione prepared herself for another useless inquisition.
~~~~~
Ginny couldn't sleep. No matter how hard she tried to ignore her stiff muscles, she just couldn't relax enough. She enjoyed taunting Draco, pretending her sickness to make his life difficult. Having decided he deserved a few days of hard work and misery for the centuries his family had oppressed hers, she felt no guilt faking everything. It was simply retribution. She just hadn't realized retribution was so hard.
Ginny stretched, rolling over to face him as he slept. She wished she hadn't given into Draco's grouchiness so quickly, so that he could massage the disuse out of her. The boy was good with his hands, and she wished she didn't know how he had gotten that way. Not first hand of course, but one hears things…
He wasn't bad looking when he slept, she had realized sometime during the past few days. Generally, beauty to her had been paired with personality, that once when she discovered someone's person to be ugly, they just kept getting uglier and uglier whenever she looked at them. But when Draco's eyes were closed and his face relaxed and completely void of expression, he lost the ugliness she always saw. And except for a few times when he had tried to molest her, he had been decent.
She needed to pee. The realization struck her bladder forcefully and she realized Draco hadn't carried her to the bathroom before he fell asleep. Would he notice if she left to go to the bathroom? She would only be gone for a minute or so, and it would be good stretching of her muscles. She hadn't been able to use them much at all, trying to keep up her act. She knew he slept lightly, but he slept so peacefully now. Trying to be as quiet as she could, Ginny slipped out of bed and crept out the door to the bathroom. As she walked gleefully to the bathroom, Draco rolled over in his sleep, searching for the warmth he had grown accustomed to the last few nights. With the clumsiness of the sleeping, he groped around for the warmth and found it wasn't there. He reached more, bordering on the state between sleep and consciousness, before hurtling into the awake with the realization that Ginny wasn't there. Oh bugger.
He sprang up out of bed, grabbing his shirt as he made his way furiously towards the door. He was going to kill the concierge and his brother, provided he found them. Someone had taken her, and they had let them. It was just as bad as taking her themselves. And they wouldn't have done that; the Malfoy family wielded too much power. It didn't look like the brothers could afford to be in even direr circumstances.
They couldn't have gone too far; the spot where she had lain was still warm. He opened the door and stepped out into the hallway. It was ill lit, the candles in the lamps along the wall were short and sputtered a few times before lighting as he passed. He stormed through, ignoring the fact that he couldn't see where his feet were going, heading towards the lit room at the end of the hallway. Suddenly, he felt his entire weight smack into something, sending him flying down.
"Watch it!" the thing that had knocked him over said. He stood up quickly, ignoring the pain that had come with falling. The lamp above him sputtered into life and he saw the obstruction to his path also getting up off the floor. It was Ginny Weasley.
She had been fooling him. There was no other way she could have gotten out of bed. Damn her, making him do everything for her even though she could do it perfectly well himself. Damn her for making him crawl around on all fours to serve her. Damn her.
"What do you think you're doing?" he asked, his voice surprisingly steady and unnervingly low and quiet. His father would have been proud.
"Well, I had to pee, so I was heading down to the bathroom to pee, so if you'll excuse me –" She tried to push past him. He grabbed her arm. She looked down at his hand and then at him. "Let me go."
"Bitch."
"That hurts."
"Wench."
"Draco, let go of me."
"Whore." She pushed him against the wall, putting all the force she had in her against him. He pulled her with him.
"Shut up."
"No. You deceiving little brat." He felt like shaking her, like wrapping his fingers around her beautiful little neck and throttling her.
"Fine, then I'll make you." Her lips came crashing onto his violently, and her tongue demanded entrance into his mouth. He tightened his grip on her arm as his mouth slackened to let her in. Her kiss was forceful and he fought back, their tongues dueling in an eternal battle of wills. She pressed against him, a hand drifting down his body to touch the place that only he had touched before and he wondered if she was just as bold with her boyfriends.
Then he felt the pain, a blinding pain in his crotch that made him sink to his knees and curl up in the fetal position. She wrenched herself free and flailed out a hand, miraculously grasping her ankle and making her fall down beside him. Ignoring the pain he clambered on top of her to pin her to the ground while groping in his pocket for his wand that he had haphazardly stuffed there when he left. She tried to knee him again and he caught her leg with the hand that was not desperately searching for his wand, an unfortunate mistake since it freed her hands. She shoved him off of her and he hit the wall, knocking the wind out of him as she scrambled down the hallway. His hand emerged triumphantly from his pocket and he aimed it at her, shouting the first spell that came to mind.
"Stupefy!" the red light burst from the tip of his wand and she collapsed on the ground almost at the end of the hallway. Light from the greeting room splayed down almost touching the tip of an outstretched finger.
He leaned against the wall, fighting to regain his breath in the few moments that he would have without her to worry about. In all honesty, he had been expecting some sort of ill-conceived escape attempt but she hadn't fought with such brutality since he had first taken her. He had grown accustomed to her compliance and all the little annoying tasks that she requested. Hell, he hadn't even minded sharing a toothbrush with her.
He walked to her body which lay still, crumpled on the flood. She had landed on her stomach, one arm under her head and her snarled hair spread around her, covering her face. He knelt and brushed her soft hair to the side, in the dimly lit hallway it looked almost brown, and found that it was wet. Had she taken a shower?
Seeing her so helpless on the ground, he regretted stunning her. And yet there was a peace that radiated from her, a fragile stability that he admired. He smiled slightly in the dim light, knowing that no one would see him and picked her up into his arms, leaning her head against his shoulder. He couldn't see her face, but he didn't care, reveling in the comfort that her touch brought.
Distantly, he heard a bell tinkle and looked up as the door to the hall from the outside opened and in walked two people cloaked in black, shaking snow from their shoes. Draco's inside's clenched, as the man removed his hood.
Quickly, he glanced around for a place to hide. A withering Christmas tree stood a few feet away, in the greeting room, and as Weasley and the woman turned to the front desk, he darted behind it, praying that Weasley and the woman he now identified as Granger hadn't seen. Gently, he set Ginny down and leaned her against him.
"Do you think anyone's still up?" he heard Weasley ask in a hushed voice. He could barely make out the words, but Weasley's red hair came out lucidly between the bristles on the tree.
"The door's still unlocked," Granger said briskly, "of course someone's still up."
Draco recognized Granger's agitated tone as a sign of fear and thought it ironic that she should be afraid when his heart was pounding so hard it threatened to leap out of his chest and charge at her like an angry bull at a bullfight.
Granger rang the bell that sat on the counter and it emitted a rusty squeak. She had to push two more times before a satisfying ding erupted from the bell, causing Weasley to jump. Draco would have laughed, but he felt something cold and wet on his shoulder. He looked down to investigate.
"How may I help you?"
Blood!
"Have you seen a slight, red haired teenage girl – "
" – she looks a bit like me," Weasley offered brightly. Granger scowled.
Ginny's bleeding! Draco frantically lifted Ginny's head up off of his chest where it rested on a growing stain of blood. He now noticed that the dampness in her hair had come from blood, blood that was flowing freely from her nose. He continued to watch, peeking through the branches of the Christmas tree, as he pressed his cuff up to her nose, keeping her upright with his other arm.
"I…" Tommy began uncomfortably.
"We hae nae seen your bonnie lass," Jimmy said, coming down the hallway, passing Draco as he hid behind the Christmas tree. Granger and Weasley turned around, looking somewhat surprised to see this old man, identical to the other one, yet so very different. Draco hoped they didn't notice his and Ginny's feet.
"Tommy, I think – " Tommy began to protest.
" – that this in no' the hour for questioning and bothering people from their beds. Would ye like a room?"
"We're just looking for a friend, could you please tell me if you've seen –"
"We cannae give ye information about our guests," Tommy said firmly, "We can give ye a room, if you'd be wanting one."
"I…" Hermione faltered, looking to Ron for help. He looked at Jimmy with grim determination.
"We would." A false smile spread across Jimmy's face. Ron winked at Hermione, who looked startled and bewildered.
"Jimmy, show our guests to a room."
"But Tommy – " Jimmy turned to Tommy and his smile became rigid.
"I'll be going back to bed. If ye need anything, come find me." Jimmy turned and walked back to the hallway, facing the tree. As he passed, he locked eyes with Draco for a split-second and Draco found a warning there. Draco had every intention of heeding it.
"Please, let me show you to your room," Tommy said, taking a half-melted candle off of the counter and lighting it before he led Granger and Weasley up the stairs. They left wet footprints on the carpet and as Draco watched, he noticed a fourth dustcloud being beat out of the carpet, behind Granger and Weasley. His stomach clenched again; someone else, Potter no doubt, had also come looking for Ginny.
He felt Ginny's head lift slightly and she groaned quietly, shifting her face away from his sleeve.
"Ginny?" he whispered and felt her sigh against him and he felt an odd twinge at her relaxation. He lifted her up again, laying her out between his arms like a groom would carry his bride to bed, and carried her slowly back to the room feeling very tired.
When he reached the room, he lay her out on the bed, slightly worried that she was still unconscious. But judging by the movement behind her eyes, she was just asleep. He took of his shirt and tipped it in the pitcher of water Tommy had brought before they fell asleep. Gently he washed the blood from her face and hair, noticing that her nosebleed had stopped. His shirt would be ruined, but he didn't care.
They couldn't stay there any longer, he knew. Tommy and Jimmy had been kind, but since Weasley and Granger were suspicious enough to stay the night and they would undoubtedly find a way to search the entire building, especially since one of them had an invisibility cloak. As he tucked her limp body under the covers, he made up his mind: they had to leave Hogsmeade.
~~~~~
And that's a wrap, on this chapter at least. I'm so sorry I left you all hanging for so much of it. I just got writer's block for a really long time, and then some personal problems came up, but now I'm ba-ack. As in one of my favourite plays "Proof", "The machinery is back on!" Thank you so much reviewers, for really sticking my me and being patient for this chapter. Poking and prodding is really a very good way to get me to write, although inspiration helps too. ;-)
