Dumbledore, Snape and Hagrid reappear in this chapter, but in case you're totally lost as to where they are, review chapter 13—it's where we last saw them. ;)
Chapter 15: Hopelessness
She had just started to catch her breath again, though she was actually breathing quite hard, when she heard Blaise's voice one more time.
"AVADA—!"
Without thought, Ginny, remembering she'd placed Draco's dead wand in her back pocket, pulled it out and hit Blaise's wand as hard as she possibly could.
"—KEDAVRA!"
Though Ginny felt she'd used enough strength and force to knock the wand out of Blaise's hand, she'd merely caused the death spell to hit the wall above her, at which point Ginny shielded her eyes and quickly crawled away from the crumbling pieces of the stone wall falling toward the ground. She could see the sky outside through the hole in the wall; it was raining.
"You little wench!" Blaise cried after hurriedly surveying her wand for damages. "Get back here!" But ignoring what she'd just demanded of Ginny, Blaise, instead, ran at Ginny again just as she'd done at the beginning of the fight, but the youngest Weasley was prepared this time.
Ginny placed her weight on her heels and bent her knees and just as Blaise was nearly on top of her, Ginny stepped aside and then jumped at Blaise's midsection, pushing the Zabini girl to the floor. Ginny heard Blaise's cries of pain and she felt something inside her tighten. It struck her as odd that the louder Blaise screamed, the stranger she felt, yet this strange new feeling felt good.
Blaise had obviously had the air knocked out of her and Ginny took advantage of this opportunity. She grabbed Blaise's hair with both her hands and quickly walked on her knees to the wall and banged Blaise's head against it.
More screaming came from Blaise and Ginny felt her insides go empty. For so long—even before she'd entered this mad mansion, she had so many feelings, so many thoughts, so many things bottled up, and here she was, taking it out this pathetic Blaise Zabini. A worthy opponent, no doubt, but what kind of fight was this? This wasn't a fight… Ginny felt herself let go of Blaise's hair. She stood up and backed away one, then two, then three steps from Blaise.
Zabini was a mess. Ginny was sure Blaise looked worse than she did. The girl in emerald garb lay motionless on the floor, eyes wide open. Ginny almost feared she was dead, but the occasional rise and fall of her chest and the one or two raspy breaths she drew proved otherwise.
"Oh, Godric…" Ginny couldn't bear to look at Blaise anymore. She turned around and aimlessly walked away from the girl on the floor. "Dear Gods…" Ginny whispered, covering her face with the palms of her hands. She winced, the blows on the left side of her head stinging as she touched them. And when she removed her hands from her face and opened her eyes, the first thing she saw was Draco's still form, a mere three or four paces from her. "Oh, dear Godric!" She cried before running and then falling a few feet away and vomiting.
She thought her ears were ringing, but during a break in her coughing fit, she realized they weren't ringing. Breathing hard, she crawled back toward Draco's body. In her head she could hear his last words in life—more like last word: "Rain."
* * *
Harry, Ron, and Hermione were shoved into their "room" at Malfoy Manor.
Hermione mused aloud. "This looks just like a Muggle hotel room!"
The room was about ten paces wide and ten paces long. The walls were painted a depressing gray and the carpet floor was emerald green. Pushed against the far wall were two twin beds with stark white sheets, between which was a small table with a lamp atop it and off to the side was a room they assumed to be the latrine.
Hermione broke the silence that she'd planted. "Well, since they were nice enough to give us beds and such, we might as well catch a few winks while we can."
"Are you sure it's safe?" Harry asked.
But Ron didn't seem to care; he had already crawled into one of the beds and sat propped up by the wall. He was clutching his arm and it looked as though he was still in considerable pain.
"Harry, you should know one can't do that much to hex a hotel room!"
"Since I spent so much of my time with the Dursleys in lavish hotels—forgive me Hermione, how could I have been so silly?" Harry said sarcastically. "Oh! Let's not forget the fact that this hotel room's in Malfoy Manor!"
"Oh," Hermione trailed off, realizing that though Harry came from the Muggle world, many Muggle things were still new to him as they are to a wizard. "Well, I'm pretty sure nothing in here has been hexed. Riddle mentioned that they weren't done with us just yet, and as dandy as that may not sound, it means we're safe for now… odd as that may sound." Hermione made a face.
"Fine, I believe you," Harry said, taking his glasses off and tossing them on the bedside table while he peeled his T-shirt off and flung it somewhere behind him. When he sat down on the bed he felt himself bounce a second later—Hermione had sat down on the other side, but had sprung up immediately as did Harry.
Both were scarlet.
"You can have the bed," Harry stuttered, rubbing the nape of his neck. "I'm used to sleeping on the floor, and after living with the Dursleys for so long, a carpeted floor is somewhat a luxury," he said with a sheepish laugh.
"Well, we could share the bed," Hermione suggested, suddenly wishing Harry would put his shirt back on.
"Hermione, you are not sharing a bed with Harry!" Ron finally chimed in. And then he flushed red. "You're not sharing one with me either," he said a bit uneasily.
"Then do you and Harry want to share a—?"
"NO!" Both boys said at once, both pulling faces of childish disgust.
"Ron, no one can share a bed with you. What, with you and your gymnastics displays, anyone bunking with you would be lucky to wake up the next morning!" Hermione scoffed.
"Not to mention your snoring," Harry muttered.
"Well… you still can't share a bed with Harry." Ron said, trying to cross his arms without bothering his injured hand. "It's gross… because… uh… because…" Ron thought for a second. "Because Harry sleeps so darned still that it's like sleeping next to a dead person and it'll frighten you if you happen to wake up in the middle of the night!" He turned his nose up. "So there!"
"Honestly!" Hermione threw her hands in the air. "You are so naïve!"
"It's okay!" Harry yelled. "I already said it—I'll sleep on the floor, and don't either of you think anything of it. I've slept on the floor all my life and missing the chance to sleep on Malfoy covers and bed sheets is a chance I'm willing to miss."
Harry pulled a couple blankets off Ron's bed and grabbed the cushion from a chair in the corner and proceeded to make himself a bed in-between the twin beds.
* * *
As soon as Snape and Hagrid had walked out of the bottle they were held captive in, they had returned to their normal sizes once again. Hagrid now held the small bottle in his enormous hands, marveling at how small he had been moments before.
"Hagrid—"
"Professor Hagrid," Hagrid corrected Snape, still gushing with pride after having figured out how to get out of the bottle they had been in moments before.
Snape put a hand to his face and covered his eyes. He gritted his teeth. "Professor Hagrid! Would you please stop examining that damn bottle and get your ass into gear? We need to save the children!"
Hagrid suddenly looked up from the bottle, remembering little Ginny, Harry, Hermione, Ron—even Draco.
"Yes! Those children!" Snape growled, finally gaining Hagrid's attention. "And you cannot stay here if you intend to go to where the children are—to save them!" Snape had tried to make the message as easy to understand as possible. Just because Hagrid was a half-giant didn't mean his brain was proportional to the rest of his body. "Do you understand?" Snape asked slowly in an overbearing tone.
Hagrid's mouth hung open and without warning, his eyes lit up, his mouth broke into a grin, and he clapped his hands together repeatedly. "We're gonna be heroes! We're gonna be heroes! We're gonna be heroes!" He chanted.
"What did I do to deserve this?" Snape muttered, closing his eyes for a moment. He proceeded in leading an ecstatic Hagrid out of the room to no place in particular.
* * *
Harry lay on his stomach in the dark room, his chin resting on his hands, his head at the feet of the twin beds he lay between. He assumed it had been roughly an hour since his two best friends had fallen asleep and he wondered how Hermione could look like she was sleeping so peacefully while Ron's snoring was louder than a freight train. Though had Ron been a silent sleeper like Hermione, Harry doubted he'd be able to sleep even then. There was too much to think about—so much he wished his head would explode…that way everything would be out in the open, visible and obvious.
Harry was wearing his cargo pants. He reached into a pocket on the side of his leg and pulled out an all too familiar object wrapped in crumpled brown paper. He removed the brown paper with care and inside was Harry's half of the communicating mirror Sirius had given him. It seemed so long ago that he'd received it.
He stared into the mirror, straining his eyes to find his dark reflection in the already dark room. Though he could barely see into the mirror, Harry stretched the sleeve of his shirt down to his palm and used the cloth material of his shirt to polish the mirror, as if doing this might convince the mirror to 'work'. Harry found he'd look into the mirror quite often nowadays. Childish as it was, every time he peered into the enchanted mirror, he'd always hope that instead of his own reflection staring back at him, he might, just maybe, just for a second, see Sirius. See his Sirius. The only person who he had ever loved.
Harry knew his parents had loved him—why else would they have died for him? But he hadn't known them long enough to truly love them back. He loved that they had loved them and he loved them for saving his life with theirs, but they were gone now. And Sirius… he was gone now, too; however, Harry had known him and he had loved him from the bottom of his heart.
The troubled boy turned on his back now. Harry eyed Ron's tossing form, then eyed Hermione's still form, her chest rising and falling in a steady pattern.
They would never understand.
He sat up now, his bangs casting dark shadows on his normally stunning green eyes.
Harry knew Ron and Hermione wanted to understand what he was going through, but frankly, he hoped they would never understand. He didn't want to see them get hurt on his account. He was the living proof of what damage heartbreak does.
He quietly wrapped the mirror back up and placed it back in his pocket. He got up and placed a pillow under his covers in case either of his sleeping friends glanced at the ground if they woke up in the middle of the night and he walked toward the door of the room. He tried it and it opened—why hadn't he thought of trying the door before?
Torches along the walls lighted the corridor beyond the room. No one was around.
With one final glance at his friends, he left them behind.
* * *
Hagrid had long since stopped chanting and singing.
"Are we lost, Professor Snape?" Hagrid asked.
Snape glared at the half-giant, silencing him. He turned another corner.
"I think we've already been this way, Professor," Hagrid pointed out timidly.
Snape whirled around. "You think we've already been this way?" Snape mimicked Hagrid's timid yet burly voice.
"Well, I already remember passing these stones here," Hagrid pointed to a spot on the highest part of the wall where uncannily anthropomorphic bones were stuck into the stones.
"All right. You lead the way, you giant oaf!" Snape growled.
"I never said I knew which way to—"
"Go!" Snape growled. "You think I don't know what I'm doing? Fine! You lead us, Professor!"
"Er… okay," Hagrid muttered, turning around, opposite from the direction Snape had been leading them. Five minutes, six turns, and three staircases later, Hagrid began to worry—not that he wasn't worried before that. The walls all looked different, but no matter which way he went, he kept getting more and more confused. He now stood at a fork in the road—more specifically a fork in the building? "This way," Hagrid muttered. And just as they turned the corner—
BAM!
Hagrid stumbled backward, Snape fell to the ground and whomever or whatever they had bumped into somersaulted backwards and finally stopping on his stomach.
"What the bloody—" Snape had begun to say when Hagrid suddenly exclaimed.
"Headmaster Dumbledore! It's so good ter see ye! We've been lookin' all over fer ye!"
"Hello, Rubeus," Dumbledore said with a chuckle. "Severus, are you all right?"
Snape got up. "Yes," he muttered, knowing he'd never hear the end of this from Hagrid—Professor Hagrid.
"Did ye know, Headmaster? We're gonna be heroes!" Hagrid exclaimed and then proceeded in explaining what he imagined was the rescue plan.
* * *
"Ron!" Hermione whispered. "Ron! Wake up!"
Ron groaned. "Five more minutes," he pleaded as he hid under his covers.
Hermione ruthlessly tore the covers off of him. "Ron! WAKE UP! HARRY'S GONE!"
That worked.
Ron sprang up and tried to open his sleepy eyes wide. "What? He was just down there, wasn't he?"
"No, he's not anymore!" Hermione cried. She turned on the lamp on the bedside table. "Oh, Ron! What if they've taken him to… to who-knows-where?" She began pacing back and forth. "Who knows what they'll do to him!" Her hands were buried in her bushy hair. "What, with them being Voldemort's evil minions and whatnot… Ron!" She looked up. "Ron?"
Ron had an awkward expression about his face. He wasn't nearly as hysterical about the situation as Hermione was. "That bastard," Ron spat eyeing Harry's sleeping area.
"Wha-?! Ron! What're you saying? Harry's gone! He's not here! They took him!"
"Yeah, he's gone and that's because he left!" Ron yelled.
"Of course he left, but—?"
"But what, Hermione? Look where the pillow is, Hermione—use your brain because I know you have one! He put the pillow where he was supposed to be sleeping and I assume that pillow was covered with his blanket before you pulled it off, was it not?" Ron glared at Hermione, waiting for an answer, but her silence was answer enough.
Hermione gaped. "Well if he left by free will, he could at least have told one of us or left a note."
"Yet he didn't, thus proving his being a bastard." Ron rebutted. He walked across the room to where Hermione had thrown his blanket and picked it up with his uninjured hand. "I'm going back to sleep. You best get back into your bed as well because I'm turning the light off and if you can't see, then you can't see!"
Ron was as red as his hair and Hermione was close to tears.
"Ron…" Hermione trailed off.
"What?" He barked.
She stared at him, her lips trembled. "Goodbye."
Ron finally looked up. "What?" He said flabbergasted.
"I'm going to look for him," Hermione clarified.
"Oh no you're not! He left and if he'd wanted us to follow him, he would've left us a feckin' note, Hermione! So get back into bed now and go to sleep!"
"Ron, I don't care if he left with or without leaving us a note! He's wandering the halls of Malfoy Manor alone—your sister's here, too!" Ron looked up at the mentioning of Ginny, his gaze piercing. "It baffles me that I'm the one trying to convince you to go out there and look for them! Don't you care?"
"Fine." Ron struggled out of bed. "You want to look for them?" Ron grabbed Hermione's arm and pulled her to the door. He opened it and shoved his best friend over the threshold. "Go feckin' find them and I hope you have a grand time!"
And he slammed the door shut.
* * *
Ginny sat on her knees at Draco's side, her head lowered, veiling the blank expression on her face. She stared at Draco's ever-paling countenance.
How had things gone so wrong? So morbidly awry? What she'd give to hear Draco hiss at her just one more time. He hadn't even been a large part of her life, really. In fact, all she'd ever felt for him was hatred. Yet now, his lifeless form before her, the one thing she wished for most right now was for Draco to live. Alas, fate had played its card and her wish was hopeless.
Her infatuation with Harry—hopeless. Her flings with Michael Corner, Dean Thomas, the others—hopeless. Trying to stand out in a family of seven children—completely hopeless. Trying to do at least one thing right with her life—apparently, beyond hopeless.
She suddenly remembered when Draco and Ron had switched bodies—how freely she had spoken with Draco when not taking into account who he really was. She knew she wished for Draco's vitality to return because she knew, truly and deeply, that Draco wasn't bad. He was a bully, his father was hopeless, but he wasn't. He wasn't his father. He wasn't hopeless like her either…he was supposed to be alive—he was the hope for people like him. As obvious as his pallor and silver locks, he was the light at the end of the tunnel for those supposedly like him—for those he was supposed to be like.
But he wasn't like them. Ginny knew for a fact the boy had not been like anyone at all. He was truly unique and such a flame wasn't supposed to go out so easily.
Ginny breathed in deeply and exhaled slowly. She felt so empty, so clear. So guilty.
Not only had she taken her anger out on Blaise by busting her head open, but she somehow felt responsible for Draco's death.
She shivered even though she was still covered in a thin film of sweat from the strenuous fight she had just endured. Her arms were stiff, fists clenched on her knees. She bit her lip, trying to stay together, but as she opened her mouth to breathe, she felt herself fall apart and the tears rolled freely down her face.
"Oh, Draco!" She whispered in a trembling voice.
The young girl put her head on Draco's chest, hugged his cold body with one arm, and brought one of Draco's rigid arms closer with her free hand.
When she was young, she remembered crying and whining all the time and her mother would tell her that if she cried too much, some day she's run out of tears to cry. But she felt so horrible now…it would be a blessing if she could run out of tears.
She knew that would never happen, but it would be a blessing if she could just run out of reasons to cry.
As the majority of her tears subsided, she sniffled occasionally in the otherwise silent chamber and remained lying on Draco's chest when she suddenly felt something.
Her eyes snapped open, her heart began racing and she squeezed Draco's hand hard.
Thump…
Author's Note: Oh, gasp! The thump! XD Wow… I love doing these cliffhangerish endings… though this one's only halfway cliffhangerish. ^^;; And, uh, yeah… Ron… heh, more about him and his issues later. Oh yeah, hope no one was too terribly confused with the Dumbledore, Snape and Hagrid scenes… don't tell me you'd forgotten about those guys!! But yeah, kinda short chapter… shorter than usual, that is… but I still hope you guys liked it!
Chapter 16: We'll follow Harry for a bit then find out what happens with the Ron/Hermione fight and why Ron's in such a fussy mood. More Draco/Ginny madness, more halfway deep thoughts, and more random stuff! :O!! Look forward to it? ^__^
Muchas gracias to my reviewers: Jonah, LaurenLizHP, Lily Thorne, Spinn, Eiko, Maureen, Grace, and bigreader! Yall're what keeps this story pumpin' and pimpin'! XD I live on reviews... O__O!!
Chapter 15: Hopelessness
She had just started to catch her breath again, though she was actually breathing quite hard, when she heard Blaise's voice one more time.
"AVADA—!"
Without thought, Ginny, remembering she'd placed Draco's dead wand in her back pocket, pulled it out and hit Blaise's wand as hard as she possibly could.
"—KEDAVRA!"
Though Ginny felt she'd used enough strength and force to knock the wand out of Blaise's hand, she'd merely caused the death spell to hit the wall above her, at which point Ginny shielded her eyes and quickly crawled away from the crumbling pieces of the stone wall falling toward the ground. She could see the sky outside through the hole in the wall; it was raining.
"You little wench!" Blaise cried after hurriedly surveying her wand for damages. "Get back here!" But ignoring what she'd just demanded of Ginny, Blaise, instead, ran at Ginny again just as she'd done at the beginning of the fight, but the youngest Weasley was prepared this time.
Ginny placed her weight on her heels and bent her knees and just as Blaise was nearly on top of her, Ginny stepped aside and then jumped at Blaise's midsection, pushing the Zabini girl to the floor. Ginny heard Blaise's cries of pain and she felt something inside her tighten. It struck her as odd that the louder Blaise screamed, the stranger she felt, yet this strange new feeling felt good.
Blaise had obviously had the air knocked out of her and Ginny took advantage of this opportunity. She grabbed Blaise's hair with both her hands and quickly walked on her knees to the wall and banged Blaise's head against it.
More screaming came from Blaise and Ginny felt her insides go empty. For so long—even before she'd entered this mad mansion, she had so many feelings, so many thoughts, so many things bottled up, and here she was, taking it out this pathetic Blaise Zabini. A worthy opponent, no doubt, but what kind of fight was this? This wasn't a fight… Ginny felt herself let go of Blaise's hair. She stood up and backed away one, then two, then three steps from Blaise.
Zabini was a mess. Ginny was sure Blaise looked worse than she did. The girl in emerald garb lay motionless on the floor, eyes wide open. Ginny almost feared she was dead, but the occasional rise and fall of her chest and the one or two raspy breaths she drew proved otherwise.
"Oh, Godric…" Ginny couldn't bear to look at Blaise anymore. She turned around and aimlessly walked away from the girl on the floor. "Dear Gods…" Ginny whispered, covering her face with the palms of her hands. She winced, the blows on the left side of her head stinging as she touched them. And when she removed her hands from her face and opened her eyes, the first thing she saw was Draco's still form, a mere three or four paces from her. "Oh, dear Godric!" She cried before running and then falling a few feet away and vomiting.
She thought her ears were ringing, but during a break in her coughing fit, she realized they weren't ringing. Breathing hard, she crawled back toward Draco's body. In her head she could hear his last words in life—more like last word: "Rain."
Harry, Ron, and Hermione were shoved into their "room" at Malfoy Manor.
Hermione mused aloud. "This looks just like a Muggle hotel room!"
The room was about ten paces wide and ten paces long. The walls were painted a depressing gray and the carpet floor was emerald green. Pushed against the far wall were two twin beds with stark white sheets, between which was a small table with a lamp atop it and off to the side was a room they assumed to be the latrine.
Hermione broke the silence that she'd planted. "Well, since they were nice enough to give us beds and such, we might as well catch a few winks while we can."
"Are you sure it's safe?" Harry asked.
But Ron didn't seem to care; he had already crawled into one of the beds and sat propped up by the wall. He was clutching his arm and it looked as though he was still in considerable pain.
"Harry, you should know one can't do that much to hex a hotel room!"
"Since I spent so much of my time with the Dursleys in lavish hotels—forgive me Hermione, how could I have been so silly?" Harry said sarcastically. "Oh! Let's not forget the fact that this hotel room's in Malfoy Manor!"
"Oh," Hermione trailed off, realizing that though Harry came from the Muggle world, many Muggle things were still new to him as they are to a wizard. "Well, I'm pretty sure nothing in here has been hexed. Riddle mentioned that they weren't done with us just yet, and as dandy as that may not sound, it means we're safe for now… odd as that may sound." Hermione made a face.
"Fine, I believe you," Harry said, taking his glasses off and tossing them on the bedside table while he peeled his T-shirt off and flung it somewhere behind him. When he sat down on the bed he felt himself bounce a second later—Hermione had sat down on the other side, but had sprung up immediately as did Harry.
Both were scarlet.
"You can have the bed," Harry stuttered, rubbing the nape of his neck. "I'm used to sleeping on the floor, and after living with the Dursleys for so long, a carpeted floor is somewhat a luxury," he said with a sheepish laugh.
"Well, we could share the bed," Hermione suggested, suddenly wishing Harry would put his shirt back on.
"Hermione, you are not sharing a bed with Harry!" Ron finally chimed in. And then he flushed red. "You're not sharing one with me either," he said a bit uneasily.
"Then do you and Harry want to share a—?"
"NO!" Both boys said at once, both pulling faces of childish disgust.
"Ron, no one can share a bed with you. What, with you and your gymnastics displays, anyone bunking with you would be lucky to wake up the next morning!" Hermione scoffed.
"Not to mention your snoring," Harry muttered.
"Well… you still can't share a bed with Harry." Ron said, trying to cross his arms without bothering his injured hand. "It's gross… because… uh… because…" Ron thought for a second. "Because Harry sleeps so darned still that it's like sleeping next to a dead person and it'll frighten you if you happen to wake up in the middle of the night!" He turned his nose up. "So there!"
"Honestly!" Hermione threw her hands in the air. "You are so naïve!"
"It's okay!" Harry yelled. "I already said it—I'll sleep on the floor, and don't either of you think anything of it. I've slept on the floor all my life and missing the chance to sleep on Malfoy covers and bed sheets is a chance I'm willing to miss."
Harry pulled a couple blankets off Ron's bed and grabbed the cushion from a chair in the corner and proceeded to make himself a bed in-between the twin beds.
As soon as Snape and Hagrid had walked out of the bottle they were held captive in, they had returned to their normal sizes once again. Hagrid now held the small bottle in his enormous hands, marveling at how small he had been moments before.
"Hagrid—"
"Professor Hagrid," Hagrid corrected Snape, still gushing with pride after having figured out how to get out of the bottle they had been in moments before.
Snape put a hand to his face and covered his eyes. He gritted his teeth. "Professor Hagrid! Would you please stop examining that damn bottle and get your ass into gear? We need to save the children!"
Hagrid suddenly looked up from the bottle, remembering little Ginny, Harry, Hermione, Ron—even Draco.
"Yes! Those children!" Snape growled, finally gaining Hagrid's attention. "And you cannot stay here if you intend to go to where the children are—to save them!" Snape had tried to make the message as easy to understand as possible. Just because Hagrid was a half-giant didn't mean his brain was proportional to the rest of his body. "Do you understand?" Snape asked slowly in an overbearing tone.
Hagrid's mouth hung open and without warning, his eyes lit up, his mouth broke into a grin, and he clapped his hands together repeatedly. "We're gonna be heroes! We're gonna be heroes! We're gonna be heroes!" He chanted.
"What did I do to deserve this?" Snape muttered, closing his eyes for a moment. He proceeded in leading an ecstatic Hagrid out of the room to no place in particular.
Harry lay on his stomach in the dark room, his chin resting on his hands, his head at the feet of the twin beds he lay between. He assumed it had been roughly an hour since his two best friends had fallen asleep and he wondered how Hermione could look like she was sleeping so peacefully while Ron's snoring was louder than a freight train. Though had Ron been a silent sleeper like Hermione, Harry doubted he'd be able to sleep even then. There was too much to think about—so much he wished his head would explode…that way everything would be out in the open, visible and obvious.
Harry was wearing his cargo pants. He reached into a pocket on the side of his leg and pulled out an all too familiar object wrapped in crumpled brown paper. He removed the brown paper with care and inside was Harry's half of the communicating mirror Sirius had given him. It seemed so long ago that he'd received it.
He stared into the mirror, straining his eyes to find his dark reflection in the already dark room. Though he could barely see into the mirror, Harry stretched the sleeve of his shirt down to his palm and used the cloth material of his shirt to polish the mirror, as if doing this might convince the mirror to 'work'. Harry found he'd look into the mirror quite often nowadays. Childish as it was, every time he peered into the enchanted mirror, he'd always hope that instead of his own reflection staring back at him, he might, just maybe, just for a second, see Sirius. See his Sirius. The only person who he had ever loved.
Harry knew his parents had loved him—why else would they have died for him? But he hadn't known them long enough to truly love them back. He loved that they had loved them and he loved them for saving his life with theirs, but they were gone now. And Sirius… he was gone now, too; however, Harry had known him and he had loved him from the bottom of his heart.
The troubled boy turned on his back now. Harry eyed Ron's tossing form, then eyed Hermione's still form, her chest rising and falling in a steady pattern.
They would never understand.
He sat up now, his bangs casting dark shadows on his normally stunning green eyes.
Harry knew Ron and Hermione wanted to understand what he was going through, but frankly, he hoped they would never understand. He didn't want to see them get hurt on his account. He was the living proof of what damage heartbreak does.
He quietly wrapped the mirror back up and placed it back in his pocket. He got up and placed a pillow under his covers in case either of his sleeping friends glanced at the ground if they woke up in the middle of the night and he walked toward the door of the room. He tried it and it opened—why hadn't he thought of trying the door before?
Torches along the walls lighted the corridor beyond the room. No one was around.
With one final glance at his friends, he left them behind.
Hagrid had long since stopped chanting and singing.
"Are we lost, Professor Snape?" Hagrid asked.
Snape glared at the half-giant, silencing him. He turned another corner.
"I think we've already been this way, Professor," Hagrid pointed out timidly.
Snape whirled around. "You think we've already been this way?" Snape mimicked Hagrid's timid yet burly voice.
"Well, I already remember passing these stones here," Hagrid pointed to a spot on the highest part of the wall where uncannily anthropomorphic bones were stuck into the stones.
"All right. You lead the way, you giant oaf!" Snape growled.
"I never said I knew which way to—"
"Go!" Snape growled. "You think I don't know what I'm doing? Fine! You lead us, Professor!"
"Er… okay," Hagrid muttered, turning around, opposite from the direction Snape had been leading them. Five minutes, six turns, and three staircases later, Hagrid began to worry—not that he wasn't worried before that. The walls all looked different, but no matter which way he went, he kept getting more and more confused. He now stood at a fork in the road—more specifically a fork in the building? "This way," Hagrid muttered. And just as they turned the corner—
BAM!
Hagrid stumbled backward, Snape fell to the ground and whomever or whatever they had bumped into somersaulted backwards and finally stopping on his stomach.
"What the bloody—" Snape had begun to say when Hagrid suddenly exclaimed.
"Headmaster Dumbledore! It's so good ter see ye! We've been lookin' all over fer ye!"
"Hello, Rubeus," Dumbledore said with a chuckle. "Severus, are you all right?"
Snape got up. "Yes," he muttered, knowing he'd never hear the end of this from Hagrid—Professor Hagrid.
"Did ye know, Headmaster? We're gonna be heroes!" Hagrid exclaimed and then proceeded in explaining what he imagined was the rescue plan.
"Ron!" Hermione whispered. "Ron! Wake up!"
Ron groaned. "Five more minutes," he pleaded as he hid under his covers.
Hermione ruthlessly tore the covers off of him. "Ron! WAKE UP! HARRY'S GONE!"
That worked.
Ron sprang up and tried to open his sleepy eyes wide. "What? He was just down there, wasn't he?"
"No, he's not anymore!" Hermione cried. She turned on the lamp on the bedside table. "Oh, Ron! What if they've taken him to… to who-knows-where?" She began pacing back and forth. "Who knows what they'll do to him!" Her hands were buried in her bushy hair. "What, with them being Voldemort's evil minions and whatnot… Ron!" She looked up. "Ron?"
Ron had an awkward expression about his face. He wasn't nearly as hysterical about the situation as Hermione was. "That bastard," Ron spat eyeing Harry's sleeping area.
"Wha-?! Ron! What're you saying? Harry's gone! He's not here! They took him!"
"Yeah, he's gone and that's because he left!" Ron yelled.
"Of course he left, but—?"
"But what, Hermione? Look where the pillow is, Hermione—use your brain because I know you have one! He put the pillow where he was supposed to be sleeping and I assume that pillow was covered with his blanket before you pulled it off, was it not?" Ron glared at Hermione, waiting for an answer, but her silence was answer enough.
Hermione gaped. "Well if he left by free will, he could at least have told one of us or left a note."
"Yet he didn't, thus proving his being a bastard." Ron rebutted. He walked across the room to where Hermione had thrown his blanket and picked it up with his uninjured hand. "I'm going back to sleep. You best get back into your bed as well because I'm turning the light off and if you can't see, then you can't see!"
Ron was as red as his hair and Hermione was close to tears.
"Ron…" Hermione trailed off.
"What?" He barked.
She stared at him, her lips trembled. "Goodbye."
Ron finally looked up. "What?" He said flabbergasted.
"I'm going to look for him," Hermione clarified.
"Oh no you're not! He left and if he'd wanted us to follow him, he would've left us a feckin' note, Hermione! So get back into bed now and go to sleep!"
"Ron, I don't care if he left with or without leaving us a note! He's wandering the halls of Malfoy Manor alone—your sister's here, too!" Ron looked up at the mentioning of Ginny, his gaze piercing. "It baffles me that I'm the one trying to convince you to go out there and look for them! Don't you care?"
"Fine." Ron struggled out of bed. "You want to look for them?" Ron grabbed Hermione's arm and pulled her to the door. He opened it and shoved his best friend over the threshold. "Go feckin' find them and I hope you have a grand time!"
And he slammed the door shut.
Ginny sat on her knees at Draco's side, her head lowered, veiling the blank expression on her face. She stared at Draco's ever-paling countenance.
How had things gone so wrong? So morbidly awry? What she'd give to hear Draco hiss at her just one more time. He hadn't even been a large part of her life, really. In fact, all she'd ever felt for him was hatred. Yet now, his lifeless form before her, the one thing she wished for most right now was for Draco to live. Alas, fate had played its card and her wish was hopeless.
Her infatuation with Harry—hopeless. Her flings with Michael Corner, Dean Thomas, the others—hopeless. Trying to stand out in a family of seven children—completely hopeless. Trying to do at least one thing right with her life—apparently, beyond hopeless.
She suddenly remembered when Draco and Ron had switched bodies—how freely she had spoken with Draco when not taking into account who he really was. She knew she wished for Draco's vitality to return because she knew, truly and deeply, that Draco wasn't bad. He was a bully, his father was hopeless, but he wasn't. He wasn't his father. He wasn't hopeless like her either…he was supposed to be alive—he was the hope for people like him. As obvious as his pallor and silver locks, he was the light at the end of the tunnel for those supposedly like him—for those he was supposed to be like.
But he wasn't like them. Ginny knew for a fact the boy had not been like anyone at all. He was truly unique and such a flame wasn't supposed to go out so easily.
Ginny breathed in deeply and exhaled slowly. She felt so empty, so clear. So guilty.
Not only had she taken her anger out on Blaise by busting her head open, but she somehow felt responsible for Draco's death.
She shivered even though she was still covered in a thin film of sweat from the strenuous fight she had just endured. Her arms were stiff, fists clenched on her knees. She bit her lip, trying to stay together, but as she opened her mouth to breathe, she felt herself fall apart and the tears rolled freely down her face.
"Oh, Draco!" She whispered in a trembling voice.
The young girl put her head on Draco's chest, hugged his cold body with one arm, and brought one of Draco's rigid arms closer with her free hand.
When she was young, she remembered crying and whining all the time and her mother would tell her that if she cried too much, some day she's run out of tears to cry. But she felt so horrible now…it would be a blessing if she could run out of tears.
She knew that would never happen, but it would be a blessing if she could just run out of reasons to cry.
As the majority of her tears subsided, she sniffled occasionally in the otherwise silent chamber and remained lying on Draco's chest when she suddenly felt something.
Her eyes snapped open, her heart began racing and she squeezed Draco's hand hard.
Thump…
Author's Note: Oh, gasp! The thump! XD Wow… I love doing these cliffhangerish endings… though this one's only halfway cliffhangerish. ^^;; And, uh, yeah… Ron… heh, more about him and his issues later. Oh yeah, hope no one was too terribly confused with the Dumbledore, Snape and Hagrid scenes… don't tell me you'd forgotten about those guys!! But yeah, kinda short chapter… shorter than usual, that is… but I still hope you guys liked it!
Chapter 16: We'll follow Harry for a bit then find out what happens with the Ron/Hermione fight and why Ron's in such a fussy mood. More Draco/Ginny madness, more halfway deep thoughts, and more random stuff! :O!! Look forward to it? ^__^
Muchas gracias to my reviewers: Jonah, LaurenLizHP, Lily Thorne, Spinn, Eiko, Maureen, Grace, and bigreader! Yall're what keeps this story pumpin' and pimpin'! XD I live on reviews... O__O!!