Title: Found
Author: Sonya
Rating: R
Disclaimer: Anything you recognize, I don't own. Buffy the Vampire Slayer and all associated characters, settings, etc., belong to Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, UPN, etc. Harry Potter and all associated characters, setting, props, etc., belong to J.K. Rowling, Scholastic Inc., etc. No copyright infringement is intended, so please don't sue - all you'll get is a really bratty bird and some really spoiled rats.
Spoilers: Up to 'Wrecked' in the Buffyverse, up to "Goblet of Fire" in the Potterverse.
Pairings: Willow/Snape, Hermione/Viktor Krum, Draco/Ginny, Fred/Angelina. Other 'ships to be revealed later. ;)
Summary: "Truth is just like time, it catches up and it just keeps going." – Dar Williams, 'Cool as I Am'
Author's Note: Just a reminder that this story takes place following "Goblet of Fire" - as in, "Order of the Phoenix" never happened. There will be overlaps, but there will also be differences, and there are no intentional spoilers. So, if you've read the book, you'll see some things familiar and some things not. If you haven't read the book and don't want to be spoiled - use your own judgement. If I don't tell you what's my idea and what's from the book, then you're not really being spoiled, right?
I apologize for the lack of formatting - there ought to be little asterisks between scene-shifts and also to place emphasis in some parts of the dialogue, but is eating them. I went through and tried to re-insert them with the new text editor, and it still ate them when I saved my changes. So, there's nothing much I can do.
And if anyone cares, I have a Livejournal - user name cissasghost (I'd provide a link but doesn't seem to like links) - It occasionally contains fic-related ramblings.
"It does stop this eventually, right?" Willow asked, scrunching up her nose and staring out at the dismal gray sky and the mixture of snow and sleet that was falling from it. The charm on the windows that kept out the inclement weather couldn't completely ward off the damp chill.
"It does," Severus confirmed, leaning in behind her and wrapping robe-clad arms like great black wings around her. He's so warm – why doesn't he ever get cold?
Probably has something to do with the eighty pounds of black robes, and the coat and trousers underneath.
Why don't they make trousers for witches? I mean, what century is this supposed to be, huh? Okay, sure, the really traditionalist men don't wear them either, but if I want to be all new-fangled and practical, I should get to be!
I think Severus would keel over and die if he knew anyone had ever thought of him as "new-fangled". Not that anyone who isn't me has really used that word since the Victorian era or anything, but – well, it fits.
And I feel like I belong in a novel by the Bronte sisters, for Pete's sake. I probably look wan and pale and sickly, and will shortly catch pneumonia and die a very melodramatic death.
"Generally in the spring. Not in February," Severus was concluding, sounding both derisive and amused.
"It's still February?" Willow asked wistfully.
I should just go buy a pair of wizard's trousers. I'm already the Mudblood Yankee wilder, why not be the transvestite Mudblood Yankee wilder? Maybe a few pureblood parents would just up and have seizures about it, and die of the shock, and thus cease to write Dumbledore annoying letters.
"It's the third,"Severus pointed out.
"Well, bleh," Willow responded petulantly. Though why any of them are bitching about the appointment of teachers who aren't even teaching required courses when there's like, the trial of the century going on and probably starting a full-out war, I really don't get.
Well, maybe it's distraction. Maybe they want to think about something not so dire, like what sort of degenerates are influencing the impressionable minds of their youth.
Though actually, that sounds pretty dire too, put that way.
I am not dire, damn it, I'm trying to help and my legs are cold.
"Ahem!" said a very vehement, scandalized sounding voice just behind them. Willow pried herself reluctantly out of Severus' suddenly rigid arms, and scowled at the intrusion.
Professor Winston Reed – who did not wear trousers, or if he did, wore robes of sufficient length to hide them – had his arms folded across his rather anemic-looking chest, and was scowling furiously.
Wow, he might actually look intimidating if . . well, if he weren't him.
"Yes?" Severus drawled in a distinctly unamused tone, crossing his own arms. It's possible I'm biased, but I think he's way better at looking scary. "What is it now, Reed? Have your students stolen your ledger again? Because I'd like to point out that your insinuations that it was Slytherins behind that last incident were completely unfounded, and it was eventually found in a Gryffindor's -
"I have my students perfectly well under control, thank you very much, Professor Snape," Reed snapped out, chin jutting indignantly. The effect was somewhat ruined by a lock of sandy hair falling in his face. He had to unfold his arms to brush it away, and managed to knock his glasses askew in the process. He also dropped the paper he'd been holding under one arm.
"Lemme get that for you," Willow chirped with excess enthusiasm, as it gave her an excuse to bend down and hide her grin. Must not antagonize fellow faculty members. Really must not.
Even if they're . . well, Reed.
He'd folded the paper down to a precise square around the article he was reading –"Families of Accused Form Anti-Ministry Coalition – Continued from Front Page" read the title.
"Thank you," Reed snipped, yanking the paper out of her grasp.
I already read it this morning, so – bleh! Jerk. Poop-head jerk.
Is it bad that I can't think of someone I actually dislike that way anymore without feeling a little weird that I'm using Severus' nickname as an insult?
Not that he, you know, knows it's a nickname or anything. It's just what I call him when he calls me an interfering, sanctimonious twit.
Okay, I need to come up with more intelligent insults, I really do.
"I was going to say," Reed went on loudly, before leaning in towards the pair and continuing in a distinctly unsubtle hiss, "that perhaps you ought to be more discreet. In front of the students."
There were, in fact, perhaps a half-dozen students in the near-empty hallway, all Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw first years making their way back into the main portion of the castle after Herbology. They were universally red-nosed, sniffling, and miserable-looking, and Willow strongly suspected they could have easily ignored a herd of stampeding hippogriffs.
They weren't staring so much before, jerk-person.
They do stare a little, sometimes – the students. In a whispering-and-giggling kinda Snape's-got-a-girlfriend way. But not so much since he gave that poor Hufflepuff girl a week's detention for it, last week.
But it really is mostly good-natured, I think – okay, maybe a few of them want to know what I'm thinking, but mostly I think – well, so maybe they're not precisely happy for him 'cause he's not really their favorite professor or anything, but – well, okay, so it's just that they want to know what I'm thinking.
But it's no big deal, for pete's sake, there's a kangaroo court starting a war down in London, could somebody around here please learn how to spell 'priorities'?
"Really," Snape returned, sounding doubtful. "Obviously we were unaware of the inappropriateness of our behavior. Perhaps you could enlighten us, Professor Reed, as to how we were indiscreet?" Willow gave him a sideways glance – what are we doing here, Mister? Some of us may have wanted to argue that point –
"Well, you were – indiscreet," Reed repeated, gesturing with one hand at both of them, taking obvious care not to drop his paper a second time.
"How?" Snape pressed.
"You were – there, and she-" Reed stammered, and blushed a rather unbecoming shade of fuschia. " – and, arms-"
"Arms," Snape repeated flatly, raising one dark brow.
"Well, I couldn't see your hands!" Reed finished determinedly, turning nearly purple. Willow stifled a giggle, turning it into a rather inelegant snort – Reed shot her a nasty glance, shuffling his feet awkwardly but standing his ground.
"I see," Snape concluded smugly. "Clearly, that could be distressing to a person of stifled, prurient, hormonal adolescent sensibilities." He paused, and Reed sputtered indignantly. "I am referring to the students, of course," Severus finished smoothly, reaching for Willow's elbow and pulling her away before she asphyxiated herself in attempting to control the urge to burst into outright laughter.
"That – that was not nice," she managed to stammer between giggles, once they'd rounded a corner.
"I was more interested in 'effective' than 'nice'," Severus retorted, sneering on the last word. "Of all the arrogant, presumptuous – what are you doing?" he cut off, as Willow pulled to a stop and grabbed a handful of his robes.
"Being indiscreet," she answered with a shrug, and pulled him down so that she could place an affectionate peck on the corner of his scowling mouth.
"Oh – ah – I'm – bye!" Neville Longbottom stammered, eyes round as saucers, before stumbling back out of the 5th year Gryffindor boys' dorm as if pursued by hungry dragons.
"Damn it," Blaise grumbled, shoving irritably away from Ron and attempting to straighten her hair; it had been in a French braid when they snuck in through the empty common room. Halfway up the stairs it had gotten loosened a bit, as fingers were shoved impatiently through its weavings. By the time they'd made it into the dorm, the tie had been lost – was laying just behind the outside door, in fact. When Neville burst in, it was nearly loose and very tangled, spread out over the comforter at the wrong end of Ron's bed; they hadn't been paying all that much attention when they tumbled there.
Her fingers shook as she refastened the top two buttons of her blouse, and then she was stalking irritably around the room looking for her sweater and her hair tie, muttering to herself.
"Sorry," Ron mumbled; he remained seated on the bed, and pulled a pillow into his lap. "I thought he was in the greenhouse, that's where he usually is this time of day."
"It's not your fault," Blaise snapped. "It's his room too, he's allowed to be here."
"Yeah, but I thought we'd have-"
"Never mind," she cut him off. "I should be getting back anyway, it's almost dinnertime."
"Oh, right," Ron returned, growing annoyed. "Can't let anyone see you coming from Gryffindor tower."
"No, I can't," she snipped, finding her sweater behind a pile of Seamus Finnegan's books and pulling it over her head. The static made her hair stand out like a dark cloud around her flushed face.
"Well why not?" Ron demanded; that she looked gorgeous rumpled and annoyed was suddenly more infuriating than tempting.
"Because I can't," she insisted. "Where'd my hair tie go?"
"How should I know?" Ron retorted. "Maybe it's hiding 'cause it doesn't want to be seen with a Gryffindor!"
"Don't be an ass," she scowled at him dismissively. "I need to find it, if my hair's different people are going to notice-"
"Are you even listening to me?" Ron demanded.
"Of course I'm listening to you but you're being an ass!" she shot back. "Why can't you just let it go?"
"You didn't used to be embarrassed to be seen with me," Ron insisted. "Why's it different now?"
"I'm not embarrassed to be seen with you," Blaise sighed, sounding exasperated.
"Oh, right, you're not embarrassed to be seen with me, it's just that you don't want anybody to see us together. That makes loads of sense," he threw up his hands, then grabbed the pillow off his lap and threw it hard at the headboard, before standing.
"Stop it, help me find my hair tie," Blaise mumbled, lifting up a pair of Neville's shoes and looking inside them.
"Who gives a bloody damn about your hair tie?" Ron shouted.
"I do!" she shouted back. "You know what, forget it. Just forget it, I'll see you in class." she stomped off, muttering, pulling her fingers violently through her hair. Ron watched the door slam behind her; for a moment he just stared, then kicked Neville's shoe at it.
"Hey, stop there -" Draco reached out over Ginny's shoulder, not quite touching either her or the diary.
"What?" she paused, letting the pages still.
"Back a few -" he gestured, and she flipped.
"Pervert," she snapped irritably when she saw what had intrigued him. It was the same woman that was sketched on the first page of the diary, and nearly every page since. She was sprawled out across a bed, drawn in stark shadows that suggested torchlight, and wearing nothing but the shadows. The expression on her face was vaguely amused, vaguely impatient.
"What? It's the most interesting thing we've found in a hundred bloody pages," he protested. She hadn't turned the page, feeling oddly caught by the woman's expression. I've seen Mum look at Dad that way; well, except more clothed. Thankfully.
"Tom doesn't find that interesting?" Draco asked, and there was an edge of care to his voice, as if he wasn't sure how she'd take the question.
Tom's never seen anything like that, Ginny thought.
Just flesh. Lust. A powerful tool for the control of the weak-minded, easily engendered, easily manipulated . . useful . .
. . but that's not why you're staring at it, is it? Not what you're seeing in her face.
All those sketches, every minute of her life –
- it's insignificant! There was a reason I found this, a reason, a purpose – this was meant to be mine, there must be more to it -
"No," she snapped caustically, and hastily flipped the page, past sketches of frighteningly normal things; a round-faced baby balanced on the woman's hip, a taller child working a loose tooth with his tongue, a toddler in intricate braids collapsed asleep on the woman's chest, her own chin tucked down over her daughter's head and her lips just slightly parted. Peaceful. Forever. "Not like that he doesn't."
"Just asking," Draco shrugged, he was sitting with his legs splayed out to either side of her hips, sufficiently taller that he could slouch while she knelt and still see easily over her shoulder. They weren't touching, and something about that irritated her; that he'd begun to be careful of her.
But I don't know what I might do if he weren't.
She found an unillustrated page and stopped, smoothed it almost compulsively; the need to touch the diary remained. Mine. "Here. This, what does this say?"
"Clariandra, min modwelig wif, baed me to awritan hire nytt praett to healdan merefix unformolsnod," Draco read out, "swa þæt heo willan ne forgitan."
"Stop it, just tell me what it means," Ginny snipped impatiently.
"It means, 'Clariandra, my talented wife, asked me to write down her useful charm to preserve fish,'" he responded in a very dry tone, "so that she wouldn't forget it."
Ginny began furiously flipping pages.
"Well, if you think about it, that would have been a really bloody brilliant thing to figure out, back then," Draco pondered aloud. "Can you picture living before they knew how to preserve fish and meat and things? Just the smell -"
"Here," she paused, ran her fingers down another unadorned page. "This one. What does this say?" It must mean something, it must, there's something here, something I was meant to find, that I paid for – something more important – more important than anything, than blood or flesh or bone or pain or death –
"It says, 'My heir should go read some other fucking book, because my life was bloody boring,'" Draco retorted.
"What does it say!" Ginny demanded sharply, nearly shouting; the harsh pitch of her voice reverberated around the closed space of the empty astronomy tower, echoing back to her, say, say, say ..
"It says Eadric – that's the brat that had the loose tooth back a ways, I think – got lost in the woods," Draco said tiredly. "What it does not say is 'here is the meaning of life', or 'here are my instructions in world domination, for my heir only' or -"
Ginny snapped the diary shut and pushed herself up off the floor away from him, then settled into a corner across the room with the diary tucked to her chest and glared at him.
"What?" Draco snapped. "This is fucking pointless. All he wrote about was his wife and his brats. Oh, and the bits about classifying new kinds of snake. And the part where he hired on ghosts to haunt trade routes and then got the merchants to pay him for protection – that part was actually sort of amusing, if you want to read more of that bit -"
"It means something," Ginny interrupted flatly, putting her chin down on her knees. "There's a reason -"
"What if there's not?" Draco pressed. "What if it's just a diary?"
"It's Slytherin's diary," Ginny insisted.
"Yeah, and I'm less impressed by the minute," Draco shot back. "He was just normal. A little bit on the conniving side, disgustingly besotted with his wife, and had a really weird preoccupation for things with scales, but pretty much ordinary."
"He can't be," Ginny said in a tiny voice. "He's Slytherin. He's the greatest wizard who ever lived, his ideas -"
" – were mostly about how to better swindle the Normans, so he could buy pretty things for his wife," Draco interrupted sharply. "He probably wasn't even any big deal for his time; he's just impressive now because we've lost so much knowledge."
"But I found it," Ginny murmured into the crook of her arm, laying her head down. "I found it – I did -"
"Bugger that," Draco snapped, jumping suddenly to his feet and making her flinch. "We're doing something else. Let's go flying."
She raised her head just enough to glower incredulously. "It's nearly dark, pouring down sleet in buckets, and neither of us has a broom," she pronounced flatly, before putting her head back down.
"So we'll borrow one," he suggested, shifting impatiently from foot to foot in front of her.
"Steal one, you mean," she grumbled into her robe sleeve.
"Well, yeah," he admitted. "But I was being mindful of your delicate Gryffindor sensibilities."
She gave a short bark of muffled laughter. Delicate sensibilities.
"Right, I'm a moron," he sighed.
"Uh-huh," she agreed tiredly; she felt too tired to move, and at the same time taut with tension – as if she couldn't bear to take another breath until something began making some sense. It felt safest not to move; she tried and failed not to even think. It must mean something – I'm just too pathetic and stupid to find it – but it's there, I know it's there, it means something –
"How 'bout your brothers? The twin ones? They've decent brooms, don't they?"
"Cleansweeps," she answered. "But decent ones." Draco snorted. Ginny ignored him.
"Well, I suppose if that's the best we're going to get, it'll have to do," he pronounced a moment later with a long-suffering sigh. "They might ice up a bit, but I think we'll manage. How good are you with weather like this?"
"I'm not," Ginny muttered, annoyed. I do not care about bloody brooms. "Mum never let me."
"Oh," Draco paused, momentarily thwarted. "Well, then you'll just have to ride along behind me. I can fly in any weather," he said, and Ginny noted a touch of the old Malfoy arrogance making its way into his voice. "Once, there was a blizzard, came up suddenly, and I was about 800 feet up over this Muggle town -"
"We're not stealing Fred and George's brooms," Ginny interrupted.
"No, we're only stealing one of them now, 'cause your Mum wouldn't let her baby girl learn to fly in the rain," Draco agreed. "So we're not stealing both of them, right."
"We're not stealing any of them," Ginny retorted.
"Come on, Weasel!" Draco whined, and she glanced up to see him practically bouncing in frustration. "Don't you want to get out of this place? Just for a bloody hour, just – this place is a fucking cage, I don't know how I ever stood it before -"
"By making everyone else miserable," Ginny pointed out. "You entertained yourself by making all of our lives hell. Remember?" He scowled. "Well, you did."
"I miss flying," he insisted petulantly. "Come on, please? We'll read that stupid fucking book for hours and hours and hours later, when we get back, promise -"
"It's almost dark," she protested, but weakly. He grinned.
"Oh," Morag MacDougal exclaimed as Blaise took the seat next to her; chill blue-green eyes ran a rapid assessment of Blaise's appearance, pausing a fraction of a second on her mussed hair. "Oh, Blaise – hello. I'm sorry."
"For what?" Blaise asked, trying to sound casual. She felt overheated and a bit like the Weird Sisters were giving a live concert in her stomach; she hope she wasn't still flushed, though her skin still felt hypersensitive, her sweater poking coarse fibers through the thin material of her shirt and making her want to rip the thing back off. She noticed. I knew someone would notice, I knew it, and I don't know why he has to be such a prat about it –
- though it could have something to do with not appreciating being treated like a leper in public. And I like him, I really like him a whole lot, and it's not bloody fair. He's mad at me now.
I don't want him mad at me, and I can't bloody well explain, and I hate this. I just bloody hate this.
"It's just that I told Gretchen Avery I'd sit with her today," Morag was saying, looking excessively apologetic. "She's having such a rough time of it, you know, she's really -" Morag leaned in towards Blaise and lowered her voice to a conspiratorial hiss, "- well, she's just really not that good, you know? At Quidditch. And Delacroix has been giving her seven different kinds of hell even if we are likely to get the Cup anyway, and I thought – well, that it would be the thing to do, you know. With her father missing and all," Morag finished carefully, watching Blaise's every twitch.
"That's a nice idea," Blaise agreed readily.
"And well – you know Delacroix, she's -"Morag paused, and quirked a brow suggestively.
"Not my biggest admirer?" Blaise finished for her.
"You just got off on the wrong foot or something, that's all," Morag said dismissively, and then fixed on a point just past Blaise's shoulder and shouted, "Gretchen!"
Blaise turned in time to see Gretchen Avery shuffle to a started stop, looking very puzzled. Gretchen was tall for her age and thin, with a hooked nose she hadn't quite grown into and dark brows that seemed to swallow her face. Blaise thought that in a few years she'd look dramatic, but in the present she just looked a bit like she'd been stretched. And she's no better at being subtle than she is at hitting bludgers.
"Get over here, silly!" Morag called out jovially. Gretchen gave the small clutch of fellow second-year girls she'd arrived with a vaguely pleading look – somebody tell me what's going on, said that look. I'd really rather not get another upperclassman mad at me.
They didn't have any lunch date. Not before I lost my stupid bloody goddamned hair tie, anyway.
"I'll just get out of the way," Blaise mumbled and stood, leaving the plate she hadn't had time to fill. Gretchen nervously took her place; Gretchen's friends shuffled out of Blaise's way as if afraid she might be contagious.
There was an empty place near the far end of the table, and Blaise hurried towards it, trying to ignore the turning of many eyes as she passed. She sat without looking up, reaching out mechanically for whatever happened to be on the table, and realized only after it was on her plate that she'd helped herself to a heaping portion of mashed potatoes. I don't like mashed potatoes.
She forced herself to look up before she accidentally spooned up something else vile; a gaggle of first and second-year boys sat across from her, staring. They looked hurriedly away, snickering none too subtly.
"Would you pass the roast pork, please?" she asked, trying to sound cool and unaffected. As one they blinked back up at her. "It's right over – right at your elbow. You're Quentin, right? Your sister Maribeth graduated last year?" The boy in question – a sand-haired twig of a child – just gaped at her as if she'd spoken in Troll. The boy next to him elbowed him hard, and Quentin scowled at his friend and kicked him under the table.
"Could I – could you just pass -" Blaise tried to gesture towards the pork, but the boys were now too busy abusing one another's shins and looking rather dementedly amused that they were getting away with it.
"They're ignoring you," pointed out another of their companions.
"I've noticed that," Blaise snapped back.
"How come you're not sitting with your own year?" the boy demanded; Blaise didn't answer, and gave up on the pork, grabbing the next nearest serving dish and spearing several stems of asparagus with great enthusiasm. Smug little twits who's voices have yet to crack shouldn't be asking shrewd questions like that.
Someone leaned in over her shoulder just as she was biting down on an asparagus stem, causing her to jump and nearly swallow the stringy vegetable whole. She was caught up in a fit of coughing, and from the hysterical laughter coming from the other side of the table, she guessed that she was probably turning very purple with the effort of neither choking to death nor spitting asparagus into the boys' faces. Though it would serve them right if I did!
"You're fooling nobody, Zabini," Delacroix whispered, then leaned away and continued on down the table. Blaise grabbed for her pumpkin juice and buried her face in the glass, washing the asparagus down her throat and wishing she could just crawl under the table.
I want to go home. I just want to go bloody home, and never come back here. I could transfer to Beaubatons next term –
The bench next to her creaked.
"What?" she snapped, slamming her glass down on the table hard enough to make a little juice slosh out over the side. "Who wants to threaten me n-" she cut off mid-syllable, her tongue cleaving to the roof of her mouth and sticking as her eyes went wide and round and her stomach seemed to leap up into her throat, all full of churning pumpkin juice.
"Who's threatening you?" Ron scowled.
"What – what are you -" she stammered. Oh no. He didn't. He CAN'T have, this is not happening, oh please this cannot be happening – "What are you doing?!"
"I'm sitting with my girlfriend," Ron pronounced mulishly, "'cause that's what people do when they're seeing each other, they sit together and things, and they're not embarrassed of each other."
"You – you can't - " Blaise stuttered. I could transfer to Beaubatons mid-term. I could tell Mum I miss my cousin Simone, we had a good time over the summer, I'm sure Simone would be happy to see me, and besides, if I stay here they're going to bloody kill me.
He can't be doing this. How can he be doing this? How can he be bloody stupid enough to be doing this?
I really really like him and he's going to get me really really killed, the bloody sodding idiot!
"Could you pass the potatoes?" Ron asked determinedly, face stubbornly set.
Ginny stood flat against the wall behind Greenhouse #3, arms folded across her chest and glowering as Draco turned Fred's broom over in his hands, eyeing it critically.
"So are you willing to be seen in public with it?" she finally snipped, patience snapping as a half-frozen raindrop hit her squarely in the nose; the wind was blowing unpredictably, gusting in what seemed like all directions. It was a dark blue-gray twilight; in another half-hour they wouldn't be able to see a thing.
"We're not going to be seen in public, Weasel," Draco responded distractedly, straightening seemingly random twigs. "Not unless you want to get expelled."
"That's your specialty, sorry, not mine," she shot back.
"Well, it's well cared for, I'll give it that," Draco conceded, trying to set the broom on the back of his hand and make it balance; he nearly dropped it three times before he gave up. "And I think it'll hold two, though I can't quite get the balance of it in this wind. But it'll do. One of your brothers may not be completely useless after all, Weasel."
"You'd better hope he's completely useless," Ginny warned, swallowing down the lump of guilt in her throat. "Or that Angelina's very useful, I should say, but either way, you'd better hope he doesn't miss that." It's not like he's never done worse. He'd probably approve, for Merlin's sake.
Except for the part where it's Draco Malfoy you're out here with.
This is a waste of bloody time –
- he's bored, and if he gets too bored he'll stop wanting to translate it at all, and where does that leave you, hrmm?
You're not out here for the diary. You're out here to forget, to let him distract you, you weak, pathetic, unworthy little –
"So -" Draco cut in on her thoughts, stepping a little away from the greenhouse wall and mounting the broom, " – are you coming, or are you just going to glare at me disapprovingly? Because if you are, I'll warn you, the visibility's not very good, I probably won't even see it once I'm -"
"Shut up," she snipped, stomping over to Draco and the broom and climbing on behind him. She'd had the presence of mind to nick a pair of Ron's trousers while she was pilfering the broom, so her legs were not completely bare when her robes rode up, but the trousers were not as cozy as she'd hoped. The wind went right through them, and she shivered.
I hate the cold. You could be inside, you could be warm –
He was sitting only slightly forward of the center of the broom, leaving her very little room to arrange her robes so that they wouldn't tangle in the twigs at some inopportune moment and send them careening out of the sky. It suddenly occurred to her that she was going to have to ride pressed right up against Draco's back.
"You do know how to sit on a broom, right, Weasel?" Draco glanced back over his shoulder, raising an eyebrow. The cold had turned his pale complexion an alarming red around the nose and ears. Weak –
- he's just pale, that's all.
She shifted awkwardly forward, until her legs bumped the back of his thighs, and snaked her arms around his chest, clasping her own wrists.
"Alright?" he asked, and just waited.
"Where are we going?" she asked by way of response, tucking her face down against the back of his neck, deciding that between touching him and looking at him, touching as infinitely safer. Snow had collected on his cloak and it was cold against her skin, but her front was beginning to warm where she was pressed to his back. Just takes a few seconds for the heat to come through all the clothes we have on, I guess.
My mother would kill me. My mother would absolutely die if she saw this.
It's just flesh, it's just a distraction, a waste of time –
- I thought you wanted to be warm. Well, this is warm.
"Dunno," Draco answered with a shrug that she felt all the way down to the pit of her stomach; his whole body moved with it. Then he kicked off from the ground, and she was far too busy hanging on for dear life to worry about anything else.
"Are you completely insane?" she shrieked into his ear, as he shot nearly vertically up into the clouds. Even shielded behind him as she was, the sleet stung like icy needles and she could barely keep her eyes open; she didn't know how he could possibly see.
"That's your specialty, Weasel, not mine," he retorted, and they just kept climbing.
"Stop following me!" Blaise hissed out furiously.
"Stop running away and I'll stop following you," Ron retorted, stomping determinedly after her. "You didn't even finish your dinner – what, sitting with me makes you lose your appetite?"
"Don't be an idiot," she snapped, rounding a corner. "You can't do this, you can't just do this."
"Why the hell not?" he protested, throwing up his hands and glaring daggers at the back of her head; her hair swished back and forth as she walked, and it reminded him of the tail of an angry cat. He wanted to yank on it, just to see if it would get her to turn around.
"Because you can't!" Blaise insisted, not slowing.
"Well that's real convincing," he shouted at the back of her head. "Great argument there. I'm really won over -" She stopped so abruptly he nearly ran into her, whipping around to face him; Ron saw with something like shock that she was crying.
"Because if certain people see I'm spending time with you then they're going to hurt me," she hissed into his face, close enough that he could see the salty tracks of individual tears running down her flushed cheeks, her ordinary pale complexion mottled.
"What?" he asked uncomprehendingly, "Who?" An angry edge remained to his voice, but he was suddenly nearly as sick as he was furious. She's been crying the whole way – since we left the hall.
"Delacroix and Goyle and I don't know who else," Blaise answered quietly, stepping back and folding her arms. "Maybe lots more people – my face was all scratched and nobody said anything-"
"Your face was all scratched?" Ron demanded, growing angry again. "When? I never saw that – and how'd it get scratched, anyway? You just said they would, you didn't say they already had-"
"After the Quidditch game when Viktor Krum was here, I used a concealing potion, and it got scratched when Goyle shoved me into a wall," she rattled off, as if reciting potion ingredients. "It wasn't – it wasn't like I was really hurt, it was a warning, that's-"
"I'll kill him," Ron blurted out, then, "You didn't tell me? Were you ever going to tell me?"
"No, you won't!" she snapped back. "You'll leave it the bloody hell alone!"
"I can't just leave that, bloody hell-"
"You'll make it worse!"
"Well how much worse can it get? Did you tell Snape? Didn't he do anything about it?"
"Of course I couldn't tell Snape, you don't understand!"
"No, I bloody well don't! And I'm not just letting some asshole shove you into walls!" he shouted.
"It's not your business!" she shouted back, letting her arms drop in clear exasperation.
"Look, are you my girlfriend or not?" Ron demanded, arms crossed, and he fully expected her to protest that of course she was – just as she had every other time they'd had this conversation. At the back of his mind was the realization that they'd never screamed this conversation in the middle of a hallway before, and she'd never been crying before, but those things didn't quite register at first. Then the seconds ticked by and she stood there sniffling and blotchy with her arms just hanging at her sides, and he began to realize that had been exactly the wrong thing to say.
"Look, I just -" he began defensively, unable to keep all the anger out of his voice, but wanting the words back none the less. This is just so stupid, just so bloody stupid –
"Not," she said softly, then hiccoughed.
He felt as if his stomach had just dropped right out of his body and possibly fallen through the floor, and didn't have any idea what to say. The words not what? floated through his brain, but he didn't say them, because he knew the answer already despite the illogical urge to clarify what was already completely obvious. Just to make sure .. because it'd be really stupid to think it if that wasn't what she meant .. but of course it's what she bloody meant . .
Blaise hiccoughed again, and then blurted out, "Damn it!" He was still just watching her; she was pretty even with her face all blotchy from crying. I'll beat Goyle's bloody brains in. "Sorry, just – I hate having hiccoughs, it's such a – you don't care about that now, do you?" she babbled. "I'm sorry. It's not -"
"Yeah," he interrupted hastily, really not wanting to hear what it wasn't. Not personal, not your fault, not your bloody fucking business to break Goyle's kneecaps however much you'd want to anymore because she's not. Not yours. Just like that, just because she says so, just because - because of no bloody reason that makes any bloody sense or has anything to bloody do with us – "I mean, right. It's just -" He couldn't finish the thought – he had no idea what it was just. It's just a bloody stupid waste.
"I do like you," she said, and it sounded like an apology.
"I like you too," he responded, a little more belligerently than he'd intended. She didn't tell me for weeks – wasn't ever going to tell me – and now it's not any of my bloody sodding business anymore, and that's why she's doing this, she's doing this just so I won't go pick a fight with Goyle. That's all.
So maybe if I just thrash him but good anyway she'll see there's no reason – no reason why she has to do this –
- unless it's not that, unless it's just that we're fighting so bloody much and there wasn't a reason for us to be together in the first place – she was just proving a point in the first place -
"I'm sorry," Blaise said again. "It's just that – it's just the way it is, that's all," she finished with a defeated sort of shrug, voice catching on a hiccough as she did. She turned and walked away, and he just watched her go.
"My hands are going to freeze the fuck off," Draco complained, pushing Ginny head of him into the dark and empty greenhouse. "My hands are so cold they fucking hurt."
"That's what happens when you get soaked through with sleet," Ginny muttered between the chattering of her teeth. "Stop dragging the broom like that, you're going to snap twigs -"
"The broom is a fucking piece of shit," Draco snapped.
"Yes, but it's my brother's fucking – just don't, okay?" she retorted. "It's not yours."
"Right, 'cause if it were mine, it'd be even more of a fucking piece of shit," Draco shot back, tearing off his gloves and throwing them across the darkened room. "It'd be a fucking –" he ripped a boot off, and hurled that away as well. Somewhere back in the dark, leaves crunched and twigs snapped, before it landed with a thud. " – useless sodding –" the other boot went after the first "- bloody pathetic –" his arm went up to throw the broom.
"Don't!" Ginny exclaimed, grabbing for it. He let it go, sneering and stomping off into a corner, where he slouched against the wall, arms crossed. His hair fell forward over his face and dripped onto his stocking feet.
"I hate my fucking life, Weasel," Draco muttered to the floor, scuffing at the stone with a toe. "I hate it."
"We should go inside," Ginny said, wrapping her arms around herself and trying not to be unnerved. It's dark, cold and dark and why did you have to do this, you could be inside, inside and warm, why are we out here in the cold and the dark and my hands are shaking and I'm COLD, I hate the cold, I HATE THE BLOODY COLD, why are you doing this, we don't have to be out here, we don't have to be cold, don't have to be cold – "We're going to freeze out here."
"Thanks for caring," Draco snapped, and didn't budge. "Go ahead, go, fuck off."
I will not be cold again, I will not be here in the cold and the dark, I will not, I am Lord Voldemort, I am the Heir of Slytherin, I am the greatest wizard who ever lived and I WILL NOT BE COLD AGAIN, I will not, I will not –
"F-fuck off yourself," Ginny retorted, digging her gloved fingers into her arms and shivering hard. "It was your idea." I am Lord Voldemort, I am Lord Voldemort and I will not do this again, I will not, stop it, just stop it, make it stop -
"Right, and I'm a moron," Draco answered. "Why the bloody hell would you listen to me?"
"Stop it, I just want to go inside!" Ginny's voice raised to an uneasy, quivering shout. "I just – it's pissing him off, okay? He's scared –"
I am Lord Voldemort! I won't be scared – I won't be scared, I won't be cold – please –
"He's scared of the fucking dark?" Draco snipped, and then snorted derisively.
"Not the dark," Ginny snapped back. "The cold."
"Oh, that's much better," Draco sneered. "Makes him much less of a bloody fucking wanker."
I am Lord Voldemort, I am Lord Voldemort, I am Lord Voldemort -!
Ginny sat down on the floor and curled into a ball, trying to hold in what little warmth remained at the very center of her body. I will not do this, you can't do this to me, I won't be cold again, I won't, I am Lord Voldemort, you pathetic little girl, just leave him, let him freeze, who bloody cares about him, get inside, get inside where it's warm you bloody pathetic piece of meat, you idiot, get inside – you can't do this, you can't do this to me, I am Lord Voldemort –
"Weasel?" Draco's voice called out questioningly. She shivered and didn't answer; a moment later she could hear the creaking sound of movement in icy soaking clothes. Something brushed her shoulder.
She spun without even thinking of it, hand outstretched without the wand that was tucked away below layers of useless garments, a curse ready to leave her lips. "I am Lord Voldemort!" she screamed at him. "You can't – you can't make me do this again, you can't –"
He stumbled backward until he hit a large potted vine, and stopped.
"I'm sorry," Ginny whispered, and put her hand back down. "He's – I'm – it's cold."
"He's scared of the cold," Draco repeated back, incredulous and shaking.
"In – in the orphanage -" Ginny started, and choked on the words. "It was – it was always – "
"Cold," Draco finished for her, moving cautiously forward. "Take your gloves off."
"What?" she asked, confused.
"Your gloves," Draco gestured to her clutching hands, wrapped around her arms. "They're crap gloves, Weasel, might as well be Muggle, and they're soaked through and they're freezing. They're making you colder than you would be with them off."
"Why do you care?" she snapped back. "I thought I was supposed to fuck off."
"Because you're scared of the cold," he said, as if that explained.
"Not – not me –" she shook her head.
"It doesn't matter," Draco interrupted harshly. "I don't care. Whoever the fuck you are, just take your bloody gloves off."
"O-okay," she agreed, carefully uncurling enough to pry at the fingers of one glove. Her hands shook. "I suppose – I suppose one of us could just cast a warming charm -"
"Not in here, we'd make something go wonky with the plants," Draco retorted.
"But throwing your shoes at them is good for them," Ginny shot back, pulling the second glove free. "My hands aren't warmer."
"Here," Draco gestured toward himself.
"What?" Ginny asked warily.
"Give me your hands, Weasel, I'm not gonna bite them off," he sneered. She held one hand tentatively out; he took it between both of his, gently chafing.
"You're no warmer than me," she protested.
"Shut up, Weasel," he said, without real ire. "You have tiny little girl hands, you know that?"
"Well, I'm a girl," she retorted. His hands paused in their rubbing. "What? This is news to you?"
"Not exactly," he said, with a trace of wry humor that set off warning bells in her head in the moment before he leaned in towards her, his lips capturing hers. She felt a instant of numb panic, waiting for Tom's reflexive reaction, imagining herself trying to explain not only what they'd been doing out in the greenhouse, but how Draco had died of a curse that no one in this century should have known. In the next few seconds her brain registered that while his lips were freezing cold, his breath was hot; that he was still clutching her hand, his thumb now rubbing against her palm in a very distracting manner; and last but not least, Tom seemed to have no reflexes at all for this situation.
Then she broke away and ran.
"Just because it seems to be everybody else's bloody business," Blaise called out loudly as she slammed open the door to the Slytherin common room; it was just before curfew and crowded. "I thought I'd make a public announcement that I'm not dating Ron Weasley anymore."
No one said anything; chairs creaked, books were closed, people shuffled and a few looked away. Most stared. She'd splashed icy water on her face upstairs in the empty potions' lab until she was sure she wasn't blotchy anymore, but her traitorous nose was still running. She balled her hands into fists at her sides to keep herself from rubbing at it.
"I broke up with him," she went on. "Everybody happy now?" There was no response. "Good then." She stomped off past them all, ducking her head and biting the inside of her cheek hard enough to hurt to keep from making any revealing sounds. I will not sniffle and whimper in front of them. I will not. I will bloody well die first.
Delacroix was standing in the doorway to the girls' dorms, blocking the way.
"Move," Blaise demanded tiredly.
"You're crying," Delacroix pointed out, grinning nastily.
"And you're a fucking bitch, now get out of my way," Blaise retorted, voice catching; there were gasps from the common room. I don't care. I just do not bloody care. Try something, right now, just try it. For a moment Delacroix's face flushed and her round doll's eyes narrowed, and Blaise thought she just might try to hex her, but the moment passed and Delacroix just tutted as if disappointed in a recalcitrant child. She stepped sideways. The common room seemed to hold its collective breath.
You can all just go to hell. Blaise stomped past the gloating younger girl.
"Too little too late, Zabini," Delacroix murmured as she passed, quietly, so only Blaise would hear.
He was half asleep, lost in the wilderness between wakefulness and dreaming wherein there was still some will but no sense. He was flying out over the forbidden forest again, with Ginny on his broom behind him, but her arms had fallen limp to her sides. A part of him thought that wasn't entirely right, but to most of him it seemed like a correction – like their earlier flight had not been an accurate representation of reality, and now, half-asleep, he was being shown what had really happened.
He felt her slumped forward against his back, so he knew she was still on the broom with him, and every now and then through the cloud cover he could see one of her hands swinging sideways into his frame of view – pale, limp, and blue with cold. He couldn't turn all the way around for fear of unseating her, and while her weight at his back should logically have been warm, it wasn't. She sat against his spine like a block of ice, and he could feel the cold seeping into him, threatening to turn his fingers numb and send them both plummeting to the ground.
Then something heavy rolled across his leg.
"What the fuck-" Draco exclaimed, scrambling into a sitting position and blinking furious, feeling his stomach plummeting and his pulse racing as if he had actually fallen. He was warmer than he'd felt a moment before, and there was nothing at his back, but it took him a few nauseous seconds to realize it.
In bed. I'm in bed, and – something just stepped on my leg. It was brighter than it should have been; his vision had yet to catch up to the rest of him, and all he could make out was a soft pinpoint of light, midway up the bed. His wand was under his pillow, but his pillow was now under his backside.
In the length of time it took him to conclude that he both really, really wanted his wand and really, really didn't want to move, breath, or make a single sound, his vision adjusted. A pair of huge brown eyes blinked at him in the soft glow, watching dispassionately as he gathered his senses.
"Weasel, what the fuck are you doing?" he croaked out.
"I think I found something," she said, voice hushed but urgent. The school robe she had thrown on over her nightgown fell away from her arm as she thrust the diary out at him, and her skin was pale and luminous in the light of her wand. "Really, I think it's something, the writing's all slanted and he almost ripped the page, and -"
"How did you get in here?" he demanded. There's a girl in my bed – well, on my bed. There's a girl on my bed and she wants me to read her a fucking book.
There's a girl on my bed and it's Weasel and she wears frumpy old lady nightgowns and fuck . . why does she have to look like that .. why does she have to look like that and be so fucked up, why do I have to be so fucked up –
- why does this all have to be so fucked up, I'm tired, I'm just fucking tired and why couldn't she be here just to be a girl in my bed?
She frowned, just a slight creasing of her brow as if she didn't quite remember. "I cast –a charm. Something about not being noticed, and then I just . . I told the door to open up. And it did. I'm not sure why it did that, but I knew it would."
"Anybody ever tell you that you're fucking scary, Weasel?" Draco asked, eyeing the diary held out to him.
"No," she said flatly. "Why would anybody be scared of Ginny Weasley?"
"Right," Draco sighed. And could you possibly not refer to yourself in the third person? It makes it harder for me to ignore the fact that I'm talking to two people, maybe, and one of them is the fucking Dark Lord who's just Tom to you, and maybe just is you, and see, thinking about that makes it so much harder not to piss my pants in terror. "Do you want me to take that, or are you going to hex my balls off if I lay a finger on it?" He nodded at the diary.
Ginny looked down at it as if surprised to see it in her outstretched hand. She jerked it back towards her body, then paused, then dropped it in his lap, open to a page filled with a desperately slanted scrawl that bore almost no resemblance to the rest of the text.
"It's okay," Ginny said aloud, though Draco thought she was speaking more to herself than to him. "It's okay. I trust you. You – you haven't done anything." She said the last in a wary, challenging tone – as if this made him an exception, for being someone who hadn't hurt her yet.
I'm going to kill him, Weasel. I'm going to kill my father for doing this to you. To my mother. To me. To the fucking world. He's going to die slow for this.
"You're sure?" he pressed, looking at the diary laying there atop his standard-issue school blankets – a far cry from the velvet monogrammed coverlet he'd brought to school in the fall term – and didn't want to touch it.
"I'm sure," she nodded her head rapidly, eyes full of manic zeal, huge and lost and clutching. Half of him wanted to back away, frightened and disgusted; the other half wanted to rip her nightgown off, and he wasn't sure if it was lust or just a desire to possess her. Her ordinarily pale lips were flushed, or maybe it was just the shadows. Or maybe it's just in your head. Maybe you're just a fucking pervert and you just want to own her like a pair of gloves.
I won't be my father. I won't.
He didn't want to touch the diary. Whatever it was that lit up behind her eyes, he could feel the tingling edge of it in the book, as if touching it might give him a nasty shock. She's right. She found something. This is important, this page is important.
I don't want it to be. I don't fucking want this shit, okay, I never fucking asked for this, and when the fuck did she become my problem anyway –
- when your father did this to her. When you father might as well have just raped her and been done with it, it would have been quicker at least.
I'll kill him –
- but that's him talking too, isn't it? You don't like a thing, crush it. The whole fucking world is your fucking oyster, and if it won't open for you then you hack at it until it shatters.
"It's okay," Ginny insisted, in the tone of the mindless faithful. He wanted to reach out and choke her for it. Don't you sound like that, don't you EVER sound like that. Nobody fucking owns you, nobody, not this stupid fucking book and not Slytherin and not He-Who-Is-Fucking-Tom-Just-Tom –
- and not me.
Why'd I kiss her? Why'd I do that?
Why can't she be here just to be a girl in my bed . . why can't I just want something for wanting it and not for breaking it . . why can't I just want to touch her . .
"It's not okay," Draco snapped back. "That's the point, right? You found a page that wasn't okay. He almost ripped the parchment."
"Yes," Ginny nodded. "But it's – it's supposed to happen this way."
"That's bullshit," Draco shot back. "That's fucking Trelawney-style bullshit."
"Please?" she whispered. "Please, just – you have to read it – I have to know this, I know it, this is what I was supposed to know -"
"Fine!" He picked up the diary, and it just felt like leather and parchment, slightly heavy – slightly heavier than such a slim book should have been. He'd noticed a long time ago that it had more pages open than it did closed, but that was nothing unusual for a magical text. "It says -" He paused, swallowed hard, read it again.
Well, fuck. Fuck.
"What?" Ginny demanded, crawling forward on the bed. Her nightgown gaped at the neck, enough to give him a glimpse of pale flesh inside, and it just made him feel so overwhelmed he might throw up.
"It says, 'the sun should not rise tomorrow'," Draco read. "'It does not – it does not seem like it should. Like all the sun – all the light – something to do with light, I can barely read this – every candle – something about no more light. All the lights should go out in – in mourning."
"In mourning," Ginny repeated, hushed.
"Today I have buried my wife," Draco read out, "though what remained of her was only a blackened – something – he says – all the world is so blackened and burned – all the world should burn-"
"His wife," Ginny said, eyes huge and almost rapturous. "The woman – in all the pictures – they - they burned her- the Muggles-"
"- all creation should burn if it has been left – left in the power, dominion, something like that – in the dominion of creatures who would – who would burn their own creatures – no, their own creations. Their own children."
Ginny jumped back as if stung.
"Their own children," she repeated blankly.
"And – Godric – that fool Godric, something like fool – he would allow them all to – find us, to know where we are – he would trust – trust the – bond of motherhood-"
"She was Muggleborn," Ginny said flatly, sitting back on her heels and wrapping black robes tight around her. "His wife. She was a Muggleborn. Not even a halfblood. That's what that means, isn't it? Her parents killed her. Burnt her for a witch."
"My Clariandra not yet – not cold in the ground – and he tells me to – something about faith, to have faith, he doesn't seem too keen on the idea of faith right about now – to have faith in – the goodness of creatures – all God's creatures-"
"But they killed her!" Ginny practically shouted, and across the room Goyle shifted noisily in his bed. Draco barely heard it; he barely heard Ginny. The diary had him enraptured with a thousand adoring images of a woman too beautiful to be real, laughing, sleeping, crying, an infant suckling at her breast, sprawled naked and wanton, alive – and burnt, dead in the ground. Just a thing. Just a thing to be used and disposed of . . just a thing to fetch ..
"Rowena has said that – only children of – old blood, or known blood, something about blood heritage – only those children should come here-"
"Rowena," Ginny repeated, disbelieving. "But – but, it was Slytherin-"
" – that we should be safe in our - cloister, or something like that, something about religious seclusion – but how can I – how can I – something about dirty, making something dirty – the memory of-"
"His wife," Ginny finished for him. "How can he dirty Clariandra's memory, by excluding Muggleborns." Her voice was hollow, vibrating like a rope stretched tight over some great dark space.
"Some other way must – some way must be found, in – solitude, secret, something about a secret – let Godric and Rowena have their quarrel – I will be the one to – to protect, keep safe, be guardian – her spirit will - fill, imbue, something like that – her spirit will return to me – for this purpose – her spirit will possess-"
'The Chamber," Ginny said, cold and final. "Her spirit will imbue the Chamber. He thought she would come back – that she would guard-"
"- new blood," Draco looked up at her, suddenly tense and ready to spring and not sure why. "The school."
"He didn't build the Chamber to purify the school of Mudbloods," Ginny said.
"No, he didn't," Draco said, closing the book and handing it back to her. She didn't take it; her arms remained curled around herself, clutching her robes like a dark shroud. "How's that for fucked up, huh?"
"He wanted it to protect them. The Chamber, and the basilisk, and everything – because the Muggles killed his wife – and she was a Mudblood -"
'Well, he did think Muggles were dangerous," Draco offered, looking at the diary laying between them on the bedspread and suddenly wishing he could forget the entire past year. I want something to make sense again. Just something. One thing. Just one thing, to be what I thought it was.
"But he thought it would dirty her memory, to keep Muggleborns out," Ginny argued, except that Draco had the dreadful certainty he wasn't talking to Ginny anymore. "He thought – he wanted her to return to him – to protect them, because he failed, he failed to protect her -"
"She didn't return to him, Weasel," Draco tried for derisive and failed; his voice shook. "His wife just got burnt alive and he was just a bit mental. If she was going to be a ghost he would have seen her by then."
"Not a ghost," Ginny shook her head rapidly, as if annoyed with his lack of understanding – as if that should have been obvious. "The Chamber. He wanted to bring her back to the Chamber. To build her . . to build her a new body," she blurted, eyes going round in epiphany. "Something .. more than flesh."
"Right," Draco said carefully. This is so wrong, just wrong, just fucking wrong –
"He didn't judge the flesh," she said, and there was the glistening of tears at the edge of her huge glowing eyes. "Didn't judge the blood."
"Weasel-" he tried to reach out uneasily. She didn't jerk back, but something stopped his hand short of touching her. It was no physical force, but something about her was wrong, deeply fundamentally wrong, and despite his newfound good intentions, he thought a herd of hippogriffs couldn't have dragged him one inch closer to her in that moment. Come on Weasel, snap out of it. Stop looking so – so –
- dead. Stop looking so damned dead. Fucking hell.
"That's what I needed to know," she whispered. "That's why the Chamber opened for me. To show me this. To judge me."
Oh fuck, oh fucking hell, stop it, just fucking stop it –
"Come off it, Weasel," he snapped out, though his voice broke midway through. "He was just-"
"Goodbye," she said emotionlessly.
"What?" he snapped back. "You're just leaving now? What the fuck, Weasel -" But she wasn't listening; she crawled backward off the bed, slowly and carefully as if wounded, and disappeared through the bed curtains. It took him a moment to regain the ability to do more than stare at the space where Ginny had been, and he scrambled out of bed after her. The diary was left where it lay. Her robes swayed around her thin legs as she padded dreamily across the room; her feet were bare, he saw.
"Weasel!" he hissed, afraid of waking the body in the other bed across the room. She did not turn around, did not answer.
Goodbye, whispered in his head as she slipped soundlessly through the door, as quiet as if she had never existed at all.
Goodbye – oh fuck. Oh fucking hell.
"You are an insufferable nag," Severus said dryly, making it a statement of fact, as if he were commenting on the weather.
"I'm not nagging," Willow protested. "I'm bringing you totally nag-free tea."
"In the middle of the night, while I am patrolling corridors," Severus pointed out. "And this sudden solicitousness has nothing to do with your oft-voiced opinion that I get too little sleep." He took the teacup despite his complaints, and sipped, scowling all the while.
"Not a thing," she insisted. "Would I be bringing you caffienated beverages if I wanted you to . ." she trailed off as they rounded a corner; Dumbledore was standing there, and he was talking to another man. The second man was in Muggle clothing, a suit and trousers of some brownish material, hair an indeterminate medium hue in the hazy darkness, shorter than the Headmaster but still tall, just slightly broad across the shoulders but of otherwise average build – and something about him made her stop, and stare, and wonder why she thought she knew the back of that head.
Then both men turned, Dumbledore catching Willow's eye briefly. The look he gave her seemed to carry some significance, some meaning that was lost on her as her gaze slid past him to the other man's face, and she was suddenly glad that Severus had taken the teacup without too much arguing. If I were still holding it, I'd have dropped it. I'd have dropped it and it would have shattered into little bitty pieces and gotten hot tea all over our shoes.
"Giles?"