Draco threw himself into a chair in front of the fireplace in his room, staring at the empty grate, kept spotlessly clean during the summer months. He wished there was a fire going, just so he could throw something in and have the satisfaction of watching it burn. More than anything he wished he could take back his words to Ginny Weasley. In an attempt to play on the soft side he now wasn't so sure she had, he had given her a weapon, the truth, and now she had a hold over him as surely as if she were standing here holding a knife to his throat. It had been three days since his confession to her, and the fact that he hadn't heard so much of a whisper of it from anyone else only proved that she was a cunning little witch and was waiting until she could use the information to her best advantage.
Draco realized, of course, that the Malfoys could and would deny it, and that in all likelihood, no one would believe young Ginevra Weasley, but there were always the what ifs. What if the shopkeepers they owed came forward with tales of the Malfoys' debts. What if someone remembered that Narcissa Malfoy had been seen in dress robes she'd worn a few years ago. What if local charities noted that the Malfoys' generous contributions were becoming slowly but steadily less generous. All it would take was one small crack for the whole weak structure of lies to fall apart around them. Draco simply had to have the money from the will, whether she would marry him or not.
Draco sifted through the ideas in his head, looking for one that might work. He was a Malfoy and a Slytherin, and nothing would stop him from getting what he wanted. He tried to think back to what his father had said about getting people to do what he wanted. You could coax the weak willed, but Ginny Weasley was anything but weak. You could bribe them, but he he'd offered her more than half the fortune and she hadn't accepted, and he'd be damned if he was letting her have more. Or you could force them. His father, he knew, was a great fan of the Imperius curse, but while that was appealing, he didn't think he'd be able to keep it on the Weasley brat for more than a few minutes, if it worked at all. That ruled out forcing her...or did it?
An idea began to form in his mind, insubstantial as smoke. Carefully he probed it and examined it, and the pieces began to fall into place until it was solid and real and, he hoped, workable. But he'd need help. He'd need someone who would do whatever he said, someone as greedy and ambitious as he was. He needed Pansy.
Ginny sighed as she gave the floor a last sweep and set the broom aside. It was well into the evening and she'd been working all day. She'd already missed dinner at her parents' house because of the all the back to school shopping. Everyone needed potions ingredients, and more than a few anxious parents of soon-to-be first years had wanted reassurance that there was nothing dangerous in the potions kits. A sudden commotion in the alley behind the shop caught her attention and, sighing again, she went out ready to hex whichever mangy stray cat had gotten in to the garbage this time.
Poking her head out the door, she peered into the dim evening light, trying to see what was going on. The trashbins were lying on the ground, garbage strewn around them, but there was no sign of a cat enjoying the spoils. It must have been scared off by the noise, she decided, deliberately ignoring the rubbish she would have to pick up in the morning. She was taking a last look around when she heard a small cry that sounded suspiciously human.
She stepped out the door, lighting her wand. The apothecary backed out almost directly onto Knockturn Alley, and the complex locking charms on the back door lent credence to the street's reputation as a place to be avoided. "Is anyone there?" she called out hesitantly into the night.
She was about to return to the shop, when she heard the noise again, coming from somewhere behind the overturned cans. Gingerly avoiding the rubbish, she shone the wandlight behind the bins, illuminating a very small and very ragged boy clutching his arm. Startled, Ginny took a step back. "Are- are you all right?" she asked hesitantly. The boy held out his arm for inspection. Pity overcame here fear, and she knelt to inspect it. It wasn't broken, thankfully, but it was badly bruised. "What happened?" she asked. Looking at him more closely, she could see he wasn't much older than seven or eight. She wondered where his parents were, and what they were thinking to let him out in Knockturn Alley this late at night.
"I fell," the boy said sullenly, avoiding her eyes. Ginny didn't believe him, but nevertheless, his arm did need tending. "Stay here, I'll get something for your arm." She rose and went into the apothecary, where she found the bruise salve she was looking for. She returned to the boy, a bit surprised that he was still there, and smeared the oily green potion on his arm.
"There," she said when she was finished, putting the cork back into the jar. "That ought to help. Come back tomorrow if you can, you'll need more of it then." He nodded slightly. "What's your name?" Ginny ventured.
The boy stared at her a minute, dark eyes wide. "Antony," he muttered, and fled.
The next night, just as Ginny had given up hope of him, Antony was back. His arm was much better, and with another application of the bruise potion, it would be fine. But before Antony left, he grabbed her arm in a surprising tight grip. "Will you come see my sister?" he whispered timidly. "She's coughing." Some part of Ginny knew not to get involved. She knew she should apologize and send him away. But there was vulnerability left in Antony's eyes, a childish hope with hadn't quite yet been extinguished by a hard life in Knockturn Alley, and she couldn't tell him no. She nodded and went back in to get everything she might need for a coughing child.
Antony took her hand tightly and led her through the street. She was glad of a guide, feeling that all her mother's paranoid warnings about Knockturn Alley might not have been so paranoid after all. There was a malignant feeling hanging in the air like a foul odor. Hostile eyes watched her from dark corners, but didn't follow. Antony seemed oblivious, however, and she wasn't sure if she should be reassured by this or appalled. He led her through the twisty streets to a rundown shack wrapped in darkness. A feeble candle shone through a single broken window, giving little light and even less warmth.
Ginny followed Antony in. Looking around, she knew that she could never consider her family poor again. This wasn't just poverty, this was squalor. A girl only a little bit older than Ginny sat on a broken, filthy bed in the corner, coughing hoarsely and trying to calm a screaming baby.
"Look, Toby, I brought home a healer for you!" Antony announced proudly, gesturing towards Ginny. The girl called Toby looked up, alarmed.
Ginny hastened to reassure her while every atom of her body screamed for her to leave, forget this place and these forsaken people. "You're brother said you had a bit of a cough," she said kindly, forcing a smile. Toby coughed again into a dirty rag, which Ginny could see was bloody.
"I can't pay for no healer," Toby's voice was hoarse. She coughed again, a dry, racking cough, and the baby screamed even louder, convulsing with sobs.
"I don't need money," Ginny assured her over the baby's cries. "I – I'm just training...I need the practice," she lied. Toby seemed slightly mollified.
Ginny gently took the baby from her and handed it to Antony while she listened to Toby's lungs and asked a few questions. The cough didn't seem too bad, it had just been left untreated. She dug in her bag for rumex leaves, and told her how to make tea out of them. "Will you come back?" Toby asked.
Ginny hesitated, considering. She wasn't sure she wanted to make any sort of commitment to Toby or to anyone else living in Knockturn Alley. She wasn't a healer, she wasn't even a proper apothecary yet. Knockturn Alley harbored hoards of dark wizards and witches, along with Deatheaters. But Toby and Antony weren't Deatheaters, nor did they seem particularly evil or dark. They were just people, people abandoned by the rest of the magical world simply because of where they were born.
"I'll be back on Monday."
Monday came and went, and Ginny lay in her bed, staring up at the ceiling, her body exhausted, but her mind too active to sleep. She ran over the day's events in her mind. Monday was her day off, and had started normally enough, with a morning visit to her mum, where she heard all about the dangers she, her father, and her brothers were in. Mum had taken down the clock that used to tell where they were and what they were doing, she noticed. She remembered a time when the clock had brought reassurance and not fear. A time when her mother's biggest concern was what the twins were up to, not whether her family would survive the day. She wondered if that time would ever come again. The afternoon she spent cleaning her rooms and finishing a book, pleasantly mundane and ordinary.
But the evening brought Antony back, and with it the remembrance of her promise to return. She had gathered her bag, throwing in anything she thought she might need. Arriving at the shack, she'd found that Toby's cough had improved dramatically, and that her reputation had spread. Leaving a minor sedative for Toby's fussy baby, she was led to a man with a festering, oddly colored leg wound, an ancient woman complaining 'aching bones' and a small girl with a persistent upset stomach. In each case she had soothed and consoled, passing out what cures and comfort she could, making a mental note to stock next week's bag better, start earlier in the day, and look up what could cause bright yellow bubbling wounds. Next week! she had thought to herself. She couldn't come back, she just couldn't. There were a million reasons why she shouldn't – it was dangerous, these people were criminals, anything could happen to her, her parents would kill her if they found out. But looking into the eyes of the tiny girl clutching her stomach, she knew she'd be back. Next week and the week after that, and as many weeks as she was needed. They couldn't go to St. Mungo's, she had realized as she bandaged the weeping leg of the man with the dark, suspicious eyes. As soon as one of them set foot in the door, they'd be off to Azkaban, their children dumped in the orphanage, their old ones left to fade away. They needed her as no one else did, and she would not let them down.
Draco sat in a dark corner of the Hog's Head, nursing a firewhiskey. The pub wasn't normally a place a Malfoy would be seen anywhere near. Everything was coated in years worth of filth, the alcohol was served warm and watered down, and only the worst scum of humanity frequented it, but it was one of the few places where he didn't have a tab the length of his arm. Not that the bartenders of the more acceptable pubs dared do anything more than scowl when they thought he wasn't looking, but still. He sipped the firewhiskey again, and wrinkled his nose slightly. There was definitely something wrong with it. It could just be second rate firewhiskey. Or it could be the brown grime that lined the glass that gave it its distinct flavor. Whatever it was, it was foul, and he pushed the glass away, taking out his own private hip flask. It was 300 year old wine pilfered from his father's wine cellar, too valuable to be chugged from a flask, but Draco didn't care. He was a Malfoy, expense shouldn't matter. But it did. He took another swig defiantly, choking a bit on the acrid wine.
He slipped the flask back into his cloak and stared at the table, as if the dark wood held the answers he sought. His plan was in place, everything was ready. He'd slowly siphoned off enough Polyjuice potion from his father's supply until he had a couple days worth. The sedative was ready as well, and he'd found the out of the way windowless room he'd need. He'd carefully set aside a long red hair he'd found clinging to one of the returned presents. All he needed now was Pansy. And he dreaded telling her.
Still though, he thought, scraping little paths into the muck on the table with his fingernail, he didn't really need to tell her for awhile yet. Not if he had everything ready. They didn't have to be married for another five months now. He could tell her in a few months time. Anything could happen in a few months. Anything at all. He might even have found someone less repulsive than Pansy to help him out. And surely he could keep his head above water for that long. After all, they'd been putting off creditors for years now. A couple more months would be nothing at all.
A/N: Thanks, of course, go to everyone who's reviewed. Sorry this chapter has taken so long, real life hit with a vengeance. Hope you've enjoyed it.
