Author Notes: This first half of this chapter is rather fluffy, well, as fluffy as the majority of this story is going to get, though it's necessary that Ginny begins to rebuild herself now that she has found a place where she belongs for the rest of the story to continue as it is planned. Anyway, sorry about the long gap between updates, but finals are steadily approaching and with the level of my grades, I do believe studying my arse off so I can pass my classes is a wee bit more important than writing fanfiction, no matter how enjoyable it might be. I M P O R T A N T : This chapter skips ahead several chapters, for if I did not do this chapters seven through about ten would be nothing but pointless, dull fillers. What occurred through those 'lost' weeks, while nothing of extreme importance, will be revealed as the story progresses.
Disclaimer: Anything you recognize most likely does not belong to me. Although, I do believe I can stake claim to Vampyres and the plot…Do not hesitate to correct me if you know for a fact I am wrong.
Death…Or Something Like It
Trust – Chapter Seven
She awoke one morning, an indescribable power thrumming through her veins. It felt as if the very blood within her had begun to corrupt, burning her up from the inside out. She lurched into a sitting position, blankets that had seconds before kept the considerably frigid air of her room away, gathering in her lap. A disgusting force pounded wildly behind her ears, forming a halo that clenched around her temples to the base of her skull.
She swallowed heavily and swung her legs out of the bed, the coolness of the stones beneath her feet hardly alleviating her throbbing migraine. She stumbled blindly from the bedchamber into the adjoined bathroom, a steady stream of sailor inducing blush worthy curses coming from her each time she bumped into something sharp. The clenching agony pummeling her innards began to thrum hotter and she gripped the cool porcelain of one of her sinks, knuckles growing white as she attempted to swallow a wail.
Her vision tinged crimson as she felt her knees weaken, her body crumpling to the ground quite audibly. Within seconds footsteps pounded outside of the door and arms scooped her up, so only her rump touched the cool stone. A hand gently touched her forehead and an urgent voice bade for a moist towel to be brought. The next thing she knew, cold water trickled past her temples to be sucked into her hair. She tried to twist away from the freezing liquid, but the person holding her kept her still.
"Raven, please be still." The familiarity of the voice soothed her writhing.
She forced an eyelid to crack, her now violet hues blood shot. "Fucking kill me." She begged, wanting nothing more than the clenching pressure in her head to cease.
"Sorry, but we kind of need you. Ask me that in a couple months and I might grant you your request."
"You are such a prick." She groaned, letting her eyes open fully. "Let me go."
"Not until I know for certain you won't pass out the moment you are on your feet."
Her spirit, which had been considerably cowed when she first entered the once hallow halls of the Vampyres, had slowly begun to return with a vivacious life, yet it seemed to have fled from her. She merely sighed quietly and leaned back in the blonde's hold, letting her self bask in the momentary feeling of being supported. While she still did not trust those who gave her sanctuary from the bitter world, a certain understanding had grown between herself and the last Malfoy.
He did not encroach upon her personal space and she would keep the violent, deadly explosions of power to a minimum. Of course, after her last display of her magickal ability, none within the sprawling manor desired to ever anger their Lady in such a way. Though, if it could be directed at the ones that sent her into her withdrawn, cynical shell of a person they would not bat even an eyelash. As the backlash of her contained power began to recede, Draco slowly let her rise from his grasp and support her own weight.
She was mildly surprised to find several Vampyres watching her with instinctive concern. No matter how long she spent with them, their desire to protect her still awed her into touched silence. A very slight smile pulled her lips upwards into a crescent moon shape as she unconsciously wrapped her arms around her abdomen.
"Thank you for your concern, but I am unharmed."
A quiet murmur reached her ears as she walked through the small crowd, a rare occurrence coming to pass as she let them lightly brush their outstretched fingers against the bare flesh of her arms and face. They wanted the reassurance that she would not drop dead on them and she, despite how often she denied it, required the knowledge that she was needed by someone.
She slowly lowered herself into a sitting position on the edge of her bed and watched them slowly leave her room, that simple quirk to her lips remaining until the last Vampyre exited. Draco stood in the doorframe that led to her bathroom, watching her. Her gaze snapped onto his tall form and she lifted a blood coloured brow, not seeming to be amused.
"Yes? What is so amazingly interesting about me?"
"I haven't seen you smile since we went to school together."
A bitter expression crossed her face as the memories of her dark past seeped into her eyes. "Yeah, well I sort of lost any reasons I ever had to be happy about anything. Getting raped does that to a person, you know." He opened his mouth to apologize, but she merely shook her head. "Don't bother, it wasn't your fault. That bastard will get what's coming to him in due time. He seems to have forgotten the age old rule, what goes around comes around and it will be three times worse for him." A flicker of sadistic pleasure warmed her orbs as a cruel smirk settled onto her countenance.
An actually terrified shudder gripped the base of his spine as he took in the malicious grin on her attractive features. He unconsciously took a half step backwards until she gave her head a slight shake and leaned backwards on her hands for support. She suddenly lost all frightening attributes, to all appearances seeming to be an innocent young woman, naïve to the troubles of the world.
"I won't hurt you, Draco." She murmured softly.
He blinked slowly at the use of his first name before walked towards her, stopping an appropriate distance from her sitting form. "Will you be all right now?" Referring to her little fainting spell earlier.
She nodded and absently blew a piece of stray hair from her face, a quick flick of her neck keeping it from falling back before her line of sight. "I believe so. Though, you should tell the Elders that I will be leaving for a few days. There are a few things I need to take care of."
"What are you going to do?"
"It's not necessary that anyone but myself know."
"If you are going to exact your revenge on the Wizarding World, you are not going alone."
"Actually, I just wanted to meet up with Hermione Gra…Weasley."
"The mudblood married your brother?"
"Ironic, isn't it? All those years she vied for his attentions when in actuality he was giving them to me. She sent me a letter a few weeks ago asking to see me. To say the least, I was surprised. But, I figure that the worst she can do is try and ridicule me or attempt to hand me over to the media in which case I highly doubt there would be much of her left for there to be a funeral. I don't need anyone to accompany me."
"But what if you get injured? Apart from slowly sinking into extinction from our own bad decisions, we wouldn't be able to handle the guilt if we lost you."
"I'm not that important, you don't have to flatter me."
"How much to we have to do to drive it into your thick skull? Without you our race would be no more. With you here with us, we have a reason to continue. We have hope that perhaps our children will see the next century."
"So that's all I am to you? A free ticket to the survival of your species? Somehow I don't find that…"
"Why do you have to be so stubborn? If you were just a being we were using to keep us going, do you really think so many would have flocked to you when they heard you cry out in pain? In the beginning that is what most of us might have viewed you as, but now that you have begun to drop those unyielding walls from around yourself, we ache to help you, to let you know that we care. Why won't you see that?"
Her eyes, which had been resting on her hands that had moved from supporting her to clasp loosely in her lap, drifted up to his face, amethyst hues splintered with fear and determination. "I refuse to get hurt again. I almost died when my family shut me out from their lives. When my own mother looked at me with such disgusted loathing, my very soul shattered. The people who raised me cannot look at me without being repulsed. They think of me as a mentally deranged, incestuous menace to their loved ones. I cannot go through that again."
With a compassionate air around him, Draco Malfoy did something the majority of the civilized world thought he would never even dream of. He crouched before a mentally unstable and hurting girl and very gently wrapped her trembling hands in his own, a lingering sadness in his mercurial orbs. "We will never betray you, Raven." He said quietly, truth ringing in his words. "You are ours and we will never let you go. If we could, we would find a way to erase the horrible events of your past. But if we did that, you would not be the person you are today. You would not be the person we have come to know, respect, and care for. While you might not share our blood, there is no mistake that you are not one of us. Someday you will take the blood that makes us what we are and then it will be irrefutable, one of those betraying, sister raping, sick fucks even looks at you wrong, we'll rip their throats out before they can draw in another breath. You are ours, just as we are yours. You will never lack in people who care for you. Do you understand me?" It was then he noticed that her eyes appeared glassy and there were lingering, pink tinged trails clinging to her cheeks.
She made no effort to wipe the salty trails away and merely nodded, throat clenched with emotion. While she knew it would take many more years for her to fully let go of her protecting masks, the intensity burning in the man before her was enough to help seal off a part of that voice within her mind that screamed that she was naught more than a worthless slut queen of the scum of the earth.
As he rose to his feet, he gently brushed his mouth across her forehead before leaving the room almost too quickly for her eyes to follow. His fleeting touch did not disgust her and a lingering sense of comfort clung to her as the sleep her emotionally exhausted body craved consumed her.
When consciousness returned to her, the accustomed grogginess that always remained when she awoke was pleasantly absent. Within a few short moments her clothing was on and she looked presentably to society. She looked at herself briefly in a large mirror within her bathing chamber, before quietly padding from her quarters and into the main hallway on the floor she resided on. The Vampyres she passed had learnt the hard way that she loathed being treated with awe and reverence, preferring if they acted as if she was one of their statuses.
She did not need hordes of creatures to bow and scrape before her because that was the socially polite thing to do. In her book, social politeness could go rot for all she cared. Her hands rested comfortably in the kangaroo style pocket of her sweatshirt as she made her way towards the large front doors of the manor, planning on stopping by one of the storage closets and picking up a broom to travel on. The Elders, Guard, and Draco had another idea however. Just as she began to slip between the large front doors of her home, a hand caught her round the bicep.
"And where do you think you are going, Lady?"
A soft noise of disgruntlement escaped from her as she turned to face them. "I am perfectly capable of walking around Diagon Alley without an entourage of bloodthirsty Vampyres, thank you very much."
"But we can't let you go without someone to protect you."
"In the face of the countless Aurors that would attack me the moment I did anything that might be suspicious, I would much rather it just be me that gets dragged into Azkaban and not several innocent Vampyres."
"We are hardly innocent."
"Beyond the point. It would also be rather strange if there were several shadowy figures hovering right behind me. Some people might mistake you for Dementors, and where would that get us? I know you are not comfortable with me leaving alone, but there are just some things a girl has got to do alone. Please, just let me be by myself for one afternoon."
They could not deny their queen her single request and the Vampyre elders slowly drew away and Draco looked at her, before shaking his head. "Just don't get yourself killed, all right? You're kind of important to us."
She merely shrugged before sliding out of the mansion, the doors closing ominously behind her. The moment the sunlight hit her vitamin d deprived skin, she let out a mildly pleased sigh and swung her leg over the broomstick she had nicked. She was able to block all negative thoughts from her mind as she flew towards London, pleased that she had had enough insight to grab one of the newer versions of the Firebolt that could achieve incredible speeds.
While it was lovely being up in the clouds, growing ill from prolonged exposure to chilly temperatures did not sound all that alluring. No more than half an hour after she took off, her feet lightly touched earth once more and she tucked the broom into the crook of one of her arms. The official landing pad for Diagon Alley had grown deathly still when she landed and she momentarily drew her eyes from the ground, immediately wishing she had not.
A mass of people watched her with widened eyes, a gamut of emotions readable on their faces: horror, disgust, loathing, pity. Instantly the walls that had begun to crumble in the welcoming air at the mansion, hastily rebuilt themselves. Her spine instinctively stiffened as she strode towards one of the cubicles that would hold her broom until she returned. The natural chatter of the space did not resume until she had left, a distinctly morose feeling latching onto her heart.
When she got out onto the actual street, those around her would grow quiet as she walked by and almost instantaneously after she passed; vicious whispers about her alleged attempt to seduce her brother filled her ears. How desperately she wanted to scream at those jaded people that it had all been Ron's fault, that she had been the innocent victim. That she had tried her best to present the court with the evidence that supported her claim, only to be pushed away with cold words of disbelief.
Why would one of the three who defeated Voldemort, who would never lack in willing women, ever try to brutalize his only sister? To their minds it made no sense and they turned her away with cruel rejection. Even three years later, the gossip had yet to die down. When would people learn to look at what was right before them? Never, spoke that voice within her that constantly debased her, she would never be reconciled with her family and the Wizarding World would always think of her as a head job that should be put down for the sake of all humanity.
The very thought stabbed harshly at her frozen heart and she bit down hard on her tongue to keep herself from expelling a pathetic sob. Showing any kind of vulnerability would only get her hurt more and her fragile soul could not take much for pain before her shattered completely into an unrecognizable pile of broken memories and fragmented emotion.
Well, please tell me what you think…The next chapter, why is Hermione so insistent on meeting up with Ginny?
Your Lord and Master;
Foamy the Squirrel