Disclaimer: Again? Really? Ok. Not mine, all J.K.Rowling's. Happy?

I was in a bit of a hurry so I didn't run this by my Beta. Excuse all the spelling mistakes.

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Bella Mia: Just because you were my first reviewer for this story I'm going to weave in one of those pairings you asked for, even though I'm not really much of a fan for those two.

Azhben: Thanks for the support

Latrikana: Wow, you're so. enthusiastic. It's really moral boosting. Thanks!

***

THE DRAGON'S BATTLE

***

The Malfoy Manor was silent when Draco arrived home. A house elf scuttled past him to the kitchen, and looked surprised when Draco didn't immediately kick him.

"Is master feeling well sir?" It asked, it's tennis ball sized eyes widening even further.

"Yes, why?" He replied sharply.

"Well, Nolly has worked here since before master was born, and master has been kicking Nolly since master could walk." It told him.

"Well, would you feel better if I did kick you?" Draco asked, feeling a bit unsure.

"Is master sure he is feeling well? Master has never asked Nolly, or any other house elf how they feel." It pointed out.

"You know what, I think I am feeling a bit unwell." He admitted, "Make me some soup elf."

"Please." Narcissa added, much to her son's annoyance.

"You don't have to ask them mother, you know that." Draco scolded.

"Yes, but I prefer asking them, it makes me feel like I'm less of a monster." She explained.

"I'm not a monster!" He exclaimed. His mother smiled kindly at him, "I'm not! Mother! I'm not! Am I?"

***

"You truly are a monster." She said to him.

"What? All I said was that your kitchen was a little shabby." He laughed, "I'm quite possibly one of the most evil minds ever encountered, and you find my insulting your kitchen monstrous."

"Well, that means that I'm also one of the most evil minds ever encountered, as you are living in my mind." She pointed out.

"Very true. I suppose that makes us soul mates, two evil minds, twined together as one." He was rummaging through her cupboards, possibly looking for something to eat, although that was probably pointless.

"I wasn't evil until after you corrupted me." She snapped, "And anyway, I only have an evil mind because you're currently residing in it. If you were to go away, I'd be a perfectly normal child again."

"Really? How many normal teenage girls are in love with the child incarnation of the evil Lord Voldemort? How many normal teenage girls have been dragged into the legendary chamber of secrets? How many normal teenage girls have almost committed murder?"

"All those thing's are your fault." She exclaimed, "Besides, I'm not in love with you. When I was a little girl I had a crush on you because you were this amazing boy who understood my completely. But even if I hadn't found out who you really where, I'd have eventually moved on."

"And yet I still dwell in your mind, to a point where you can sit and converse with me." He pointed out.

"Tom, you can't fool me, you are no figment of my imagination. You're what's left of your dairy self. You put so much of yourself in me, that you got a part trapped." She smiled brilliantly, and saw him tremble slightly "And you are trapped here Tom, forever. I won't ever let you out, not ever. Because if you got out, I can't even imagine the damage you'd do. So you're stuck. But I'm not, I can leave whenever I like."

And with that parting statement, she focused on her body, and felt her mind slip back into place.

***

"I see your son's returned from Hogwarts."

"Yes, it really in unfortunate as I shall have to spend some time with him."

"Count yourself lucky. I have five daughters, five! It's actually quite embarrassing, people see it as a reflection on myself."

"I hope your not intending on going home to see them this holiday, I need you here."

"Come now Lucius, just one day. It's Lucinda's first year, I have to go and see her."

"Quite frankly, I don't care. What's happening now, with all those squiggly lines?"

"M-Waves, Lucius, M-Waves, its not that hard."

"Just tell me what's happening."

"Ok, ok. Hm, now this is interesting, most interesting."

"What's interesting?"

"The M-Waves are changing. It's possible that Mr Riddle is finally coming into control."

"Yes, yes, I can see, that line is definitely higher than the other one."

"Yes, but that's not right. That's Weasley's line. What in the hell? She's taking over again!"

"But that's not possible, Riddle should have crushed her mind!"

"I know it's not possible, but it's happening! Damn, this isn't working."

"Well, what now?"

"I have no clue."

***

It was a bright morning at the Burrow, Remus had come to visit, and the table was crammed with a breakfast that would have made the Hogwarts house elves bow their heads in shame.

"Mum, what are those?" Ron asked, pointing a golden brown square that was shaped like a window.

"I'm not quite sure, your father brought them home." Mrs Weasly admitted.

"They're waffles." Hermione said, smiling and scooping up one with her fork, "Muggle food. They're potatoes that have been pressed into that shape. They're really nice."

"Ingenious really." Mr Weasley said, taking a bite.

"Muggle food." Ron said doubtfully.

"Don't be a chicken." Harry laughed, piling food onto his plate, "Muggles haven't survived all this time by poisoning their food."

"Yes, but I've looked at some of Hermione's old Muggle studies books, and they poison their food more than our sort do." Ron pointed out.

"Our sort Ron? Really, that's just the sort of attitude that makes life so hard for me." Mr Weasley scolded, "We are all human beings. You could turn it around and say that Muggles are more civilised than us because they don't point pieces of stick at each other to blow things up. There is nothing wrong with eating their food, and if chocolate frog's wouldn't scare the life out of them, we'd share our food too."

Ron looked vaguely ashamed, and tried a bit of Hermione's waffle, before helping himself to two.

"They are quite nice." Ron admitted.

At that moment, Remus came into the kitchen and slid into a seat next to Harry's.

"Any bacon?" he asked Mrs Weasley, who was standing over the cooker, stirring a pan of baked beans absent-mindedly.

"What? Oh, of course, here you go love." She said, tapping her wand against a frying pan and causing it to sizzle.

"Where's Percy this morning?" Remus asked Mr Weasley, who uncomfortably glanced at Ron. Ron ignored him and continued to eat his food.

"He's at work at the moment. His division has been having a lot of troubles since You-Know-Who's resurrection went public."

"Serves him right for not believing us in the first place." Ron mumbled.

"Well, yes, of course if people had believed us at first thing's would be easier, but what matters is that they believe us now." Mr Weasley said nervously.

"Yeah well." Ron began, but was cut off my Mrs Weasley.

"Are you three packed? I took a glance at that bedroom, and it's a mess." She scolded. The three teenagers blushed, and finished their breakfast quickly before disappearing upstairs.

"Ron looks well." Remus commented.

"Harry and Hermione have been a great help." Mr Weasley nodded, "It's Bill that we're worried about. He adored Ginny, and since she died he's been working non-stop. We wish he would take a break."

"We all deal with our pain in our own ways." Remus pointed out.

"Yes, I just wish he would talk to us." The older man sighed unhappily.

"He'll come around."

At that point Mrs Weasley gave a huge sniffle, put down the dishes and walked into the living room. Mr Weasley sighed and buried his face in his hands, and all Remus could do was pat him gingerly on the shoulder.

***

Lucius sat at the head of the dinner table while his wife and son sat at either side of him.

"How was your day dear?" He asked Narcissa, who was glancing nervously between her husband and her son.

"It was quite pleasant." She nodded, "I saw Lucinda Parkinson today, she said that her daughter, Pansy, hasn't stopped talking about Draco since she got home. The Parkinson's are a very respectable family."

"I'm not marrying Pansy, if that's what you're saying." Draco growled.

"I quite agree." Said Lucius, much to his son's surprises, "The Parkinson's are all very unattractive, wouldn't you like my son to have a pretty bride?"

"And who do you think is 'pretty' enough for our son?" Narcissa asked, her voice icily polite.

"I hear Damien Zabini's daughter is in your year." He said to his son, seemingly ignoring the livid woman next to him.

"Blaise? She's a stuck up." Draco begun, but was cut off.

"Now, now Draco, you do not insult a lady, even if she isn't present." Lucius scolded, "Damien has five other daughter's you could choose from, three of which attend Hogwarts at the moment."

"I'm only just turning sixteen father, I'm hardly considering marriage!" Draco exclaimed. He saw his mother wince, and bury her head in her hands as Lucius's eyes blazed with anger.

"When I was your age I had already decided that I wished to marry your mother, and spent five long years in the pursuit of her." He growled, "And all I got as a reward was you, a boy with no extraordinary magical talents, and who hadn't even inherited his parent's good looks!"

Draco had been through this argument so many times before that it no longer affected him as it had. His father had always taken it as a personal insult that Draco was not a particularly powerful wizard, and even more so that he wasn't hansom like his father, or striking like his mother. He knew what was going to happen next, his father would start bringing up his faults.

"Look at how pinched your face is, like a ferret, it really is quite terrible. You're too short by far, and too skinny. My god, you look like a girl." Lucius stopped and glared at him, "Are you even paying attention? Boy?"

The next bit was inevitable, it always happened when they argued. Lucius's arm came up, and hit him squarely across his face.

"Lucius, please!" He heard his mother plead. She always did, but he never listened. Draco didn't even know why she bothered.

You're the only person in the world I care about anymore. Her words came back to him, and made him falter for a moment. He could still feel his father's fist coming down on him, and still felt the familiar pain, but now another thought occurred to him. This was actually really upsetting his mother. He didn't mind the pain, he had become used to it, but his mother probably would never get used to the sight of her husband beating her son.

And despite what Lucius had said, Draco wasn't too short and too skinny to at least defend himself.

"Get off me!" he shouted, twisting away. Lucius looked totally stunned for a moment. In almost sixteen years his son had never raised his voice to his father directly. But the moment passed, and new anger blazed over the man's face.

"Get here boy, now!" He shouted, making a grab for his son.

"Don't touch me!" Draco shouted back, dodging, "You're lucky you're not in Azkaban, if they'd found you guilty of being a Death Eater, you'd be there now. I don't really think you should be doing anything else that could get you in trouble with the law."

"What I do in my own house has nothing to do with the law!" Lucius roared.

"Even if it involves locking a girl up in the wing and letting the world believe she's dead?" There, Draco had used his ultimate weapon. He only hoped he hadn't used it too soon.

"What?" His father whispered.

"You think I don't know about you kidnapping Ginny Weasley and locking her up in the wing?" Draco asked, "I know that's what you've done. I saw you sneaking into the manor on the day where you killed all those students."

"Draco, my son, you seem to be mistaken." Lucius had now adopted an oily voice which Draco hated, "I havn't got anyone locked up here."

"Liar! I don't know why you've got her, I don't really care, but that really is sick!"

"Would you have preferred if I had just killed her?" He asked, "Would that have been better?"

"Lucius, there's a girl locked up in our house?" Narcissa, who had been silent for a while, now turned on her husband, her eyes blaring, "You've got a little girl locked up in our house?"

"You don't understand." Lucius growled, "It's one of the Dark Lord's plans. You've done some terrible thing's in order to serve him too."

At this Narcissa looked ashamed and turned her head away, "You know I felt terrible about my cousin's death. I gave you the information you needed to lure Potter from Hogwarts, but I took no pride in it. And I thought we were above using innocent children in our schemes."

"We are above nothing, we are dirt in the eyes of our master. It is an honour to give out lives in his service, and should be grateful when he simply asks us to take another's life." Lucius told her.

"That's sick." Draco spat.

"Don't interrupt boy."

"Hey, we're the ones who're arguing!" He said in an offended tone.

"Don't you dare get side-tracked Lucius, I want to know exactly why we have a girl locked up." Narcissa warned.

"I don't believe it, my family has turned against me!" Lucius threw up his hands, and glared at his wife and son.

"Well, serves you right for being a bastard!" Draco exclaimed.

"Don't talk to your father like that."

"Mother!" he said, aghast, "whose side are you on?"

"My own!" She said.

"That's it, I will not tolerate this behaviour in my house. He turned to Narcissa "Imperus!" Narcissa's eyes became wide and vacant, and she sat down on a chair, looking into the distance.

"Bastard!" Draco shouted, raising his own wand.

"And you." Lucius turned to his son, "You, I want out of my house. Just get your things and get out. Two weeks on your own should teach you a lesson."

"Fine." Draco turned and stormed out of the dining room. But he didn't go up the main staircase towards his bedroom, instead he turned left, towards the forbidden wing.

I'll teach him, he thought to himself, How dare he chuck me out? I'll teach him.

As he walked into the first floor, the first thing he saw was Damien Zabini, Blaise's father. The man turned around in surprise, and Draco quickly hit him with a stunning spell. The room was filled with screens filled with little squiggly lines, that Draco couldn't even begin to understand. One screen however was much larger, and showed what appeared to be a white room with invisible walls. Floating in the centre was the vaguely familiar figure of Ginny Weasley. To his left was a door, which Draco opened and stepped through.and fell.

He immediately grabbed hold of the bottom of the door, and dragged himself up. What had first appeared to be a room, now looked like an endless space of nothingness. "Um. Accio Ginny?" He tried, and was quite proud to see that she was zooming towards him. The pride quickly died away when she hit him fully in the stomach, and sent him reeling back into the room with all the screens. She apparently hadn't felt it, and looked extremely surprised when she saw him. Her mouth moved once, but no sound came out.

"Weasley?" He said, and saw tears come to her eyes, and her mouth started moving more frantically. It occurred to Draco that she might be under some sort of silencing charm, and quickly produced the counter curse.

".And I've been so alone and scared and.oh! I can hear myself again!" She began crying even more "I can't feel anything, not at all."

"Maybe you're under a numbing spell." Draco guessed.

"I might be!" She closed her eyes and began thinking deeply, "Malfoy, please help me, there's a charm, it's a bit tricky, and I don't have my wand. The word is Felingus, and you have to do a quick flick up then to the right. Can you try?"

"I guess. Felingus!" It took several attempts, but Ginny finally was able to feel a bit. She marked this by crying even more.

"Come on, stop that, I have to get out of here, and I'm bringing you with me." Draco told her.

"You're rescuing me?" She hiccupped.

"Not really, I'm just trying to piss off my father." He admitted, "But it looks and smells like I'm rescuing you, so it doesn't really matter."

Helping her up, he carried her to the fireplace, and reached into a pot, pulling out some floo powder.

"Diagon Alley!" He shouted, and as the green flames flared up, he pulled her into the fireplace.

***

The Diagon Alley Floo Network was always busy, and the arrival of the two teenagers caused no stir. A fat wizard with eyes brows that looked like caterpillars nodded at Draco, who nodded back trying to make it look like he was hugging Ginny, and not supporting her.

"We need to get you somewhere to sit." He said, glancing around nervously.

"We could go to the Leaky Cauldron." Ginny suggested, but Draco shook his head.

"Everyone thinks your dead, and we can't let them know otherwise until we've figured out what to tell them."

"Well, the truth of course." She said.

"And tell me Weasley, what exactly is the truth?" Draco asked, and she looked away, saying nothing, "There's a slightly dodgy pub around the corner, the owners know that just because you look like the dead Ginny Weasley, doesn't mean you are her."

"But I am." Ginny pointed out.

"But they'll assumed you're not." He put his arm around her waist, and she put her arm on his shoulders, both hoping it looked casual.

Once inside the pub they found a secluded booth, and he sat her down.

"Can you move much yet?" He asked,

"Not really." She admitted, looking at her wasted hands, "How long have I been thought dead for?"

"Ten weeks I guess." Draco told her, and she closed her eyes sadly.

"And everyone else in the shop, they're really are dead?" Ginny asked.

"Your body was the only one unaccounted for." He nodded, "What was that thing I found you in?"

"Nothingness. They took away my ability to feel and speak, and gave me nothing to hear and see." She told him.

"Why?"

"I think they wanted me to find Tom." She replied.

"Who?" He asked, and she laughed softly.

"Do you remember what happened in my first year? When I was possessed by You-Know-Who? When he was young he was called Tom Riddle, and that was the boy I wrote to in my diary for a year. He poured his soul into me, and it's still here." She touched her heart, "And here." She touched her temple, "When I was in that room, I retreated into myself, and found him waiting for me. After talking to him for a while, I realised that as it was my mind, there was no reason why I shouldn't be in control, and I came back out. Has it really been ten weeks?"

"About." Draco nodded, "That's completely.unreal. The Dark Lord is inside you?"

"Not really. When Tom was sixteen he was just as evil as You-Know-Who is now, but he was still different. The person I have inside me is a sixteen- year-old You-Know-Who." Ginny grimaced, "Not that that's any better. You know, if it has been ten weeks since I was put in that room, it means I havn't eaten in ten weeks. I should be dead."

"My father probably put some spell up to stop that." He said, "Why would they want you to find Tom Riddle inside yourself?"

"I suppose they wanted him to take over me. With Tom by his side, You-Know- Who would be impossible to defeat." She told him, "ten weeks really is a long time to go without eating."

"Weasley, if you want some food you can ask." Draco sighed.

"Are you offering?" She asked.

"Yeah, I guess." He waved his arm up in the air, and a woman with a face like a bulldog came over.

"What can I do for you?" She asked.

"Um, I'd like some roast beef with some potatoes, roasted, and not mashed." She scribbled it down quickly, and turned to Ginny.

"What would you like dear?" She asked, but Ginny said nothing.

"Hey, Weasley, Weasley, you're being talked to." Draco waved a hand in front of her face, but nothing happened, she started blankly ahead, "Weasley? Weasley, you ok?"

She sat on her seat, looking into the distance, her mouth slightly open, ignoring him.

***

She was falling into darkness, screaming.

***

"I'm really sorry about this. She's my cousin, not very stable."

***

An arm shot out and grabbed her, pulling her straight.

***

"Cancel my order, thank you. I just need to get her home. This happens all the time."

***

"Hello Ginny, welcome back."

***

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