Title: One Thing

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?

And if anyone cares, I have a Livejournal, username cissasghost - It occasionally contains fic-related ramblings.

"Weasel!" Draco hissed, out into the empty dungeon hallway. The light from his wand provided a long slanting shaft of light, and outside that dim glow, all was impenetrable darkness. There was a chill draft coming down off the ceiling, cold enough to raise the hairs on his arms.

No one answered him, but he thought he heard the faintest pattering of footsteps down the hall. He'd thrown a robe over his shoulders and stuffed his feet into the nearest available slippers – Goyle's, he thought – before following her.

"Come on, Weasel!" he raised his voice just slightly. He thought the footsteps paused, but then they continued.

Fucking goddamned bloody – he let the door slip shut behind him, falling into the frame with a grinding sound that made him jump, ridiculously loud against the otherwise absolute silence. His own slipper-clad feet made no noticeable sound.

A few feet further down the hallway the light from his wand picked out a silhouette; just a dark shape, vanishing around a corner. Draco picked up his pace as much as he could without stepping right out of the too-large slippers, his robes catching on his pajamas and tangling around his legs. He stumbled to a stop, swearing in a vicious whisper that echoed down the corridors, before a set of stairs.

He shone the light up the steps; Ginny was paused there, looking down at him. Her eyes reflected a colorless dark in the blue luminescence. She doesn't look human.

Why are you following her, anyway? She's probably just going back to bed, back to her room, and you're acting like a fucking psycho –

- she doesn't look fucking human, she doesn't look fucking alive.

"Weasel?" he called up to her in a harsh whisper.

She stared.

"Did you go fucking deaf?" he demanded, his voice rising slightly.

She turned and walked away.

Fucking hell, bloody fucking hell, why couldn't she just be going back to bed? Why does this have to be so fucked up, why does everything have to be so fucked up?

He followed.

"Giles?"

He turned, stared, whipped off his glasses and stared more.

"You know, I can explain," Willow blurted out in a rush. "About the leaving, and the not leaving a note, and all the other . . stuff . . and, okay, I can't really explain some of that, but I'm really, really sorry and I'm better now and . . how much already got explained?"

"Quite a lot," he said coldly, polishing his glasses and returning them to his face; sharp, precise movements that let her know he'd moved past surprise and into his unique brand of low-simmering fury. Dumbledore had moved a little away, and was saying nothing. I'm sinking or swimming on my own here.

"Oh." Continuing to meet his gaze required a conscious effort. "Um, I mentioned about being really sorry, right?" I sound like I'm fifteen again.

"You can explain on the plane," he responded coldly.

"Wait, what – plane?" Willow yelped. "No plane. There will be no plane. I can't just leave!"

The glare he gave her was eloquent in its derisive irony.

"Look, I know," she tried, sucking in a deep breath and trying to remember that she was, in fact, no longer in high school. I'm an adult, I'm a professor for pete's sake, and he's just Giles and why do I owe him an explanation anyway? He left too!

Though not in the middle of the night while stoned after breaking Dawnie's arm.

Oh God breathe, remember how to breathe, you can do this.

I'm not going back there, I'm not, I can't, I won't –

- when did I start feeling like that? Like I escaped?

Like things are making a kind of sense and I'm actually caught up and dealing for the first time in six years – except I guess I'm not dealing as well as I thought I was.

I can't deal with going back.

"What I did was wrong, and childish, and I'm sorry," Willow continued on, voice a little higher and squeakier than she'd intended, but level. "But it was the right thing for me to go, I needed to go, and I have responsibilities here now -"

"YOU HAD RESPONSIBILITIES THERE!" Giles suddenly exploded, his cool reserve snapping so abruptly that Willow actually flinched and took a step back. "You were trusted, others relied upon you -"

"You mean you relied upon me!" she snapped back, aware of hot tears gathering in the corners of her eyes and willing them back. Not now, not in front of Dumbledore and Severus and not ever, ever, ever in front of Giles. "You mean you left and you relied on me to be there to pick up your slack!"

"You arrogant, presumptuous child!" he shouted, all incredulous indignation. "I left because it was what was best for Buffy, you left because you were ashamed of your behavior, and well you should have been!"

"How do you know why I left?" Willow demanded. "Did you ask? 'Cause if you did, I missed it! I don't remember anybody saying just now, 'Willow, what was so awful that you just had to-'"

"I do not bloody well care what was so awful!" he cut her off. "Do you suppose everyone else was having an easy time of it, dealing with the aftermath of your colossal, incomprehensible arrogance? Do you take no responsibility for your part in creating the situation you fled?"

"I did the best I could!" Willow shouted back. "We all thought she was in some hell dimension, and don't tell me you thought anything different, you never said anything different, you never did anything except train that stupid robot and try to pretend like she wasn't even dead -"

"You cannot play god and then run away like some - some distraught adolescent!" He seemed at a loss for words, lacking any insult of sufficient magnitude to what she'd done.

"I was a distraught adolescent!" she retorted, feeling the tears spill over and powerless to stop them.

"You were twenty-one!"

"You were forty-something!" she shot back. "What's your excuse?"

"I don't need one!" he insisted furiously. "I didn't run off in the dead of night! Do you have any comprehension of what you've put us all through? Tara attempted a locator spell to find you, Tara who you all but raped-" Willow flinched, felt what seemed like all the blood in her body rushing into her face, and thought she just might be sick. "- that's how bloody desperate they were, she was willing to find you, and she couldn't. Of course, that makes far more sense now, knowing you've been here, the wards here are all but impenetrable, but at the time the only conclusion we could reach was that you'd either left this dimension or died. Xander -"

"Wait," Willow blurted out, his words suddenly clicking back in whatever small portion of her brain was beginning to recover from her shock. "You said the spell didn't work. The locator spell. It didn't work."

"And Tara has been going half mad with worry, though Lord knows why after what you'd done to her," Giles ranted on, "not to mention with the added responsibility your disappearance forced her onto her shoulders -"

"Then how did you find me?" Willow asked. The entire situation had narrowed down to the pinhole awareness of that one discordant fact – locator spells didn't work in the vicinity of Hogwarts, and yet, there he was.

"You walked around a bloody corner, that's how!" Giles retorted sharply.

"How did you find the school," she clarified, not quite believing that she was having the nerve to question him. You should be cowering and begging forgiveness.

Except that something's off here. Something's not right.

The locator spell didn't work. So how . .

"That is irrelevant to the bloody situation!" he snapped. "Though if you must know, I didn't find the school at all, considering I already knew precisely where it was – I merely could not conceive of you being in it. And long enough to purchase a new wardrobe, apparently!" He gestured furiously at her attire – the dark grey robes, Severus likes dark colors – why am I thinking that right now – "I don't suppose it occurred to you to ponder what might have been happening to the friends you abandoned, while you were perusing Diagon Alley? Did it ever, for a moment, cross your mind what it meant to leave Buffy in her weakened state -"

"Diagon Alley," Willow parroted dumbly, feeling rather as if she'd just been hit in the back of the head by a freight train.

That's silly, I don't know what being hit by a freight train feels like, not that anyone really does, because everyone who has been is dead, so, not really possible to know, and oh my fucking God, he knew. He knew all along, all this time, he knew.

"Oh, I beg your pardon, were your robes purchased in Hogsmeade?" Giles voice was all acidic sarcasm, as enraged as she'd ever seen him. I used to be scared of him when he was angry.

When did that stop?

He knew. He knew and he never told us, never told me, I never knew there were places like this and a whole world like this and people who could have helped me, helped us, who could have . . oh God my brain is going to explode with all the could-haves –

"Perhaps this conversation would be better completed in the morning," Dumbledore suggested tactfully, into the sudden silence. "Now that you have ascertained the whereabouts of your missing witch, might it not be wise to -"

"Thank you, no," Giles bit out, interrupting the older man. "We'll be leaving immediately."

"No, we won't," Willow said flatly, though some glimmer of feeling beyond shock and shame was beginning to simmer in the pit of her stomach.

"Yes, we bloody well will!" Giles shouted. "You took on responsibilities, damn it, and you will bloody well -"

"You knew," Willow interrupted quietly. "About all of this, the Wizarding world, you knew and you never said anything." The slow burning sensation in her gut was reaching a boil, hissing its way up her spine, filling her head like a scalding fog. "You never told me."

"That is entirely beside the -"

She heard the sharp crack of her palm meeting his cheek before she was even aware of having moved; there was no conscious decision involved. One moment he was standing there berating her; the next, he was stumbling back a step, his glasses clattering noisily to the stone floor, a stunned expression and a bright red hand-print on his face. Willow just stared, at him, and then at her still upraised hand. For a long moment everyone and everything seemed to hold its collective breath, and she could feel the force she'd put behind the blow in the tension of her arm, the way she was all off balance, needing to lurch a step forward to keep from falling.

Then a hand settled on her shoulder, steadying her; Severus. She'd forgotten he was even there.

"Well," said Dumbledore in a strident sort of voice, "I believe -"

Willow never heard what he believed; she turned and ran.

Draco lost track of Ginny somewhere above the Charms classrooms, though it was very clear by that point that she was not going to Gryffindor tower. After roughly twelve staircases – he hadn't been counting at first – and innumerable stretches of hallway, Draco's body was reminding him rather forcefully that it was the middle of the night, and cold, and he'd gotten no more than a few hours' sleep when she woke him. There were no more stairs up from this floor, and she had been going consistently upward from the time they left the Slytherin dorm, so unless she'd been purposefully leading him on a fruitless chase, there was nowhere left for her to have gone.

Except, she is gone.

Something nearby was making a faint metallic tinkling sound, like tiny brass bells, though Draco couldn't fathom why there'd be bells in the Charms hallway. Except to make that really fucking creepy noise, because this isn't bad enough as is, really. It needed odd noises, just as the finishing touch.

And it's bloody cold up here, colder than just the next floor down – like someone opened a door – except there are no doors up here that go outside and the windows are all charmed and she can't have gone out of one of the bloody windows, they're all arrowslits, she wouldn't fit, except in the classrooms – but those have glass in them and I would have heard that and besides, the classrooms are all locked –

Remembering the ease with which she'd entered the dorms, he checked the nearest classroom door just in case. The knob barely jiggled – still quite locked.

She could have locked it behind her, I guess. If she didn't want to be followed.

If she didn't want to be followed, why'd she keep stopping and looking back? Why'd she let me keep up? She could have lost me any time she wanted, if she really wanted –

- but if she wanted to be followed, why'd she just keep going?

Where in the bloody fucking hell did she go? What's so goddamned special about this floor, anyway? Not the classrooms, not that there's anything exciting about Charms classrooms anyway, but I can't think of what else – there's nothing else above this except the –

- you are an absolute sodding moron, you really are.

Draco pointed his wand upward at the ceiling, looking for a hatch; there was one not ten feet down the hall from him, and the latch was dangling loose, clinking forlornly against the metal ring that held it.
"I believe - well, I believe that could have been handled better," Dumbledore finished, frowning after Willow before turning his disapproving glare on Mr. Giles. The words were clearly not what they would have been had Willow not run, and Severus felt a trickle of malicious glee at Dumbledore's change of tone; he had been on the receiving end of it often enough himself. The Watcher just stared down the hallway, looking stunned. Dumbledore bent and retrieved Mr. Giles' glasses; the younger man made no move to take them.

"She slapped me," he finally blurted out. "She slapped me!"

"What keen powers of observation," Severus commented dryly. "Appropriate to a Watcher, I suppose."

"Severus," Dumbledore snapped sharply. Giles blinked, took his glasses from the Headmaster and began polishing them furiously.

Somewhere between the dungeon and the rooftop Ginny had lost her school robe, and was wearing only her oversized flannel nightgown. It billowed out around her, revealing bare feet tucked tight against her thighs with toenails turning a deep, bruised blue, visible even from a distance. Her skin was colorless, almost paler than the nightgown.

"Weasel, what the fucking hell are you doing?" Draco shouted, slipping and lurching across the roof towards her. The sound of his voice seemed unnaturally loud in the darkness, though logically he knew with the wind blowing as it was, she might not have even heard him. The edge of the roof was far enough off that there was no real danger of falling, but he felt almost delirious with exhaustion and fading adrenaline, and the fear that the wind would just pick him up and sweep him away was very, very real. Drifts of fine powdery snow washed and swirled over a thick layer of ice that offered no purchase at all.

Ginny didn't respond. Her hair was blowing in an angry riot around her head; it was the only thing with any color to it. She made no move to contain it, though he could picture it blowing into her eyes, her nose, catching on pale lips – the image of her lips purple with the cold and cracking leapt suddenly into his brain.

She's only been out here a few minutes. Can't have been longer than that, and she was walking up all those stairs before that, so she'd have started out hot, started out with her blood pumping – and that's got to be worth something, like playing Quidditch in the snow, you don't want to hold still or it'll get to you, but if you're moving –

She wasn't moving, though; she looked like a statue draped in cloth. Like someone tried to cover her up, to protect her from the weather. Like you cover furniture and things when you're going to go away, so they won't get dusty . . like someone put her away up here and forgot all about her.

It's cold. It's fucking cold.

"Weasel!" he said sharply, stumbling the last few steps towards her, almost stepping out of his stolen slippers. His feet ached with the cold, his skin burning. I'd kill for a good pair of boots right now.

Aren't you planning to?

No – no, not for me, not for all that stupid useless shit, for my mother, for Weasel – Ginny –

- but it's boots you think of, boots and shoes and people laughing and not being a Malfoy anymore, and how nothing's funny, and nothing makes sense, and that's when it's clearest, isn't it? It's nothing to do with her, and it's not going to help your mother, now is it? Because she's -

"Will you fucking answer me?" Draco demanded, grabbing her shoulder. His feet went out from under him when he leaned forward, and he fell to his knees, a wordless pained shout escaping his lips as his kneecaps impacted the ice. There was a sharp hollow crack, and the wind caught it away.

Like the opposite of an echo. Like . . like the night and the snow and the cold all just eat sound.

Like it's going to swallow me whole. Swallow me alive and I'll fall and never stop.

Fucking hell, stop that, just stop that shit. It's just a fucking roof in the fucking snow and it's not –

She turned her head towards him, her face half-obscured by her blowing hair. Her eyes seemed to sit in deep purple pits, her lips white, and when she moved them, a thin line of crimson blossomed in the middle of her lower lip. Her tongue darted out, moistening her lips, smearing the blood.

"You should go inside," she said, voice hoarse with the cold but otherwise normal.

"Yeah, you think?" he snapped back. "Come on -" He tried to pull her to her feet, but she shrugged his hand off and wouldn't budge.

"Weasel, come on, it's fucking cold," he protested. "Couldn't we have this little breakdown somewhere warmer?"

"No," Ginny answered, emotionless, not responding to his jab.

"Weasel -"

"I won't fight," she announced flatly. "I'm letting it win."

"Letting what win?" Draco demanded, crouching down again beside Ginny. Her hair blew into his face, and he snatched it impatiently away, glaring at her profile. "That didn't make a whole hell of a lot of sense, Weasel."

"It wasn't the basilisk's fault," she answered.

"Right," Draco said; the sensation of weightless nausea was becoming overwelming, the temptation to run for the door – to run all the way back to the dungeon and crawl back into bed and pull the curtains – was becoming far more real than their one-sided conversation. "Weasel, you're gonna freeze out here."

"I know," Ginny responded with flat equanimity.

"That's the point, huh?" Draco snapped. "Haven't got the nerve to just slice your wrists?" I'm going to kill you, Father. You're going to die in the cold and the dark, just like this. Just like this . .

"I have to let it win," she insisted, and there was the first hint of feeling to the words. She turned to him, her eyes catching his, seeming to will him to understand. "Don't you get it? The basilisk wasn't a monster."

"Okay, basilisk not a monster," Draco repeated impatiently; his nose was running, and he had the horrible, disgusted feeling that the drip was freezing somewhere just above his lip. He didn't want to let go of her hair to wipe it away, though, and his other hand held his wand. If he wiped his face with that hand, he'd be all but shoving the light in her face, and he wasn't sure how well that would go over. We're going to blow away – blow away and be caught in a drift and they won't even find us until spring. "Check, one poor misunderstood basilisk, got it. Want to have a funeral for it?"

"Harry was the monster," Ginny whispered, as if in confession. "But that wasn't his fault, either."

"Not Potter's fault," Draco said back, utterly lost. "Fuck it, Weasel, come on -"

"Everyone's the monster, see?" she explained, with a hint of the zealous fervor that had been in her voice before when she was begging him to read her the diary. Should have burned the fucking thing. "Everyone thinks they're the hero, but they're not. They're only saving their own world. Everyone is their own world and everyone's the hero and everyone's the monster, it's just – it's just a matter of where you're sitting, and it doesn't mean anything, it doesn't matter at all -"

"We could be sitting somewhere warmer," Draco interrupted desperately. "Come on, Weasel – I thought you were afraid of the cold." I'm letting it win.

"It has to stop," Ginny said insisted, voice dropped to a nearly inaudible whisper. "It never stops, it's never over, and it has to be. It just has to be, and I can make it. I can make it end. I can stop – stop trying to remake the world because it shouldn't be saved and it won't get better and it should just end, it should just be over -"

"Well it's not going to end like this," Draco cut her off hoarsely. "I'm not letting you -"

"You can't stop me," she said calmly, and turned away.

"I don't fucking care," he shouted back, yanking her hair to turn her face back to him. "You look at me, you understand? Don't you fucking dare think you're gonna just go – just go and leave me here -"

"I said goodbye," she said, as if that were perfectly reasonable. Like she doesn't owe me anything.

She doesn't.

I don't care, I don't fucking care –

"You should go inside," she went on in that maddeningly level voice.

"You're not fucking doing this, Weasel," he repeated. "This isn't going to happen."

She didn't answer, except to reach up and touch his hand, the one gripping her hair like a lifeline. It went numb and dropped away, and he was powerless to prevent it. She turned her head away.

"Weasel -" he tried to grab for her again, but found that it was like trying to hold water between his fingers; his hands just slid away from her. "Fuck, Ginny – look, okay, I can't make you, point fucking made."

Ginny didn't respond.

"Weasel – Ginny – this is bloody pointless," Draco protested; there was a petulant, panicked whine to his voice that he loathed. That's how I used to sound, how I always used to sound, talking to Father or Snape or anyone who I thought could get me anything and why did I think that? Why couldn't I hear myself before? I sound fucking pathetic, fucking useless –

"I'm not going inside," he pronounced. "If you think I'm just going to leave you out here like this, you're out of your fucking mind. Of course, you are out of your fucking mind, so maybe you do think that, but you can stop it. I'm not -"

"I could make you," she interrupted, still facing straight ahead.

"Yeah, you probably could," he conceded, sitting back on his heels in the snow beside her; his feet had gone from painful to numb, and his arms and legs were beginning to cramp with the cold. He had to clench his jaw to keep his teeth from chattering. "You could probably do whatever the fuck you want and nobody could stop you, so why are you doing this?"

"To make it end," she repeated. "That's all I want. I want it to stop."

"You're not stopping it," Draco argued. "You're stopping you." She turned at that; the smear of blood was still there on her lip, but it had darkened, a deep purple slash against her horrible paleness. This can't keep up, she's too cold, this can't just go on, have to get her inside soon or –

- can't you even think it? Are you too much of a chickenshit little coward to even think it?

You can't leave me here. You can't leave me here alone with nothing and nothing makes sense and you're the only fucking thing that makes any fucking sense – the only fucking good thing, the only thing that's not just a heap of shit and the only thing I don't want to just fucking burn down and you can't – you can't –

- I can't without you.

"It's the same thing," Ginny insisted. "Me – it – it's all the same, there's – there's nothing in my head that's good, nothing that's worth it -"

"Bullshit," Draco snapped harshly. "That's fucking bullshit, Weasel. So the world sucks -"

"My world," Ginny cut him off. "My world is horrible and cold and dead and freezing and it should end. Don't you understand, I thought I could make it better, I thought I could make it all like I thought it ought to be but I'm wrong, I was wrong, I'm wrong and I shouldn't exist -"

"No, you're -" He reached for her, and his hand slid away again. "Damn it, Weasel, stop that!"

"It'll be over soon," she said, in a tone that he thought was meant to reassure herself. "It'll just . . it'll just . . it'll just roll over me and it'll be dark and quiet and over." Her voice shook, and he realized for the first time that for all her apparent calm and resignation, she was petrified. "I should have let it before. I should have just let it win, the first time, back at the very beginning, in the orphanage, I shouldn't have fought, I should have just let it win. It would have been better."

"It wouldn't. It – look, do you want me to beg?" Draco asked angrily. He had to keep his fists balled at his sides to stop himself from just grabbing for her, no matter how useless a gesture he knew it would be. "Please, okay? Please, don't do this."

There was no reaction.

"All your sodding brothers would miss you, all two dozen or however many of them there are," he offered. "And blame themselves and go around sniveling and wailing and being fucking pathetic, did you think of that?"

Nothing.

"Did you think of how fucking pathetic and desperate I am right now to make an argument involving your wanking git of a brother? The one that's in my year, Ron. I can't stand the self-righteous little bastard, and if he was so devastated he just went and threw himself in the lake, I really wouldn't mind. Might brighten my day a bit, actually," Draco ranted. "But I thought you might feel differently on the subject, so that's why I'm bringing it up."

She sat still as stone. Frozen.

"Okay, right, fuck that thought," he snapped furiously. "I suppose that rules out pleading your Mum and Dad's case, too, huh? 'Cause you'd kill them. They've got no lives, Weasel, your Dad's a pathetic little two-bit bureaucrat with delusions of grandeur 'cause he got one fucking bill passed, and I don't even know what your Mum does all day. I figure they've got to more or less live for you lot – you and your brothers – because I can't see why else they'd keep on getting up in the morning."

Nothing.

"Are you listening to me?" he demanded. "Your Mum's gonna slit her wrists in the bathtub if you do this. You getting a mental image on that one, Weasel?"

"My mother's dead," she responded flatly, and he jumped; having grown accustomed to her stillness and silence, even that whisper was startling. "She died three days after I was born."

What little warmth was left in the center of his body seemed to drain away at that; ice crawled with nimble fingers up his spine, little frozen tendrils seeming to creep right into his brain.

"Oh," he said, dumbly, tongue gone thick and unwieldy in his mouth with the sudden ratcheting up of his state of panicked terror to previously unimagined levels. "Right. You're – you're Voldemort." You're not, you're Weasel-girl, Ginny, you're a Gryffindor and your hair looks like tomato soup and I'd bet anything you're a virgin and you've never even cheated on an exam and when the fucking hell – when the fucking hell did you turn into the thing I breathed for –

You can't do this. You can't do this to me.

"J-just Tom," she corrected, in a voice that suggested oceans of contained tears, but her face was impassive. "Lord Voldemort – Lord Voldemort isn't real. I just made him up, because – because Tom was so scared, he was so scared and so little and I couldn't – I couldn't -"

The pitch and sibilance of her voice wavered, rolled, and snapped back again, all in the same sentence. 'I' and then 'him' and then 'I' again. Draco felt dizzy.

"Right. Tom." He swallowed hard. "So you're not impressed with arguments involving the Weasley family, then."

"They don't know me," she said. "They would hate me."

Myrtle –

- might not be the best person to bring up right now, considering he killed her.

Fucking hell, I don't know how to do this, I'm no fucking good that this, how the hell am I supposed to know what to say?

"Well, I guess that leaves me," he said finally. Her eyes slid sideways, watching him carefully. "My mother's dead too, you know."

"I know." She turned away again. "Because of me. To stop me -"

"Not fucking you!" he snapped. "Voldemort, and you just said Voldemort's not real or you're not really Voldemort or what-fucking-ever, point being, there's somebody else going around by that name and it's not you."

"I won't become that," she said.

"Good to hear," he retorted. "I'm really not a fan; tend to think he's due for a good eviscerating. Possibly drawing and quartering, though that requires more in the way of preparation and he's got this nasty habit of slipping away, so maybe a nice quick evisceration would be the better way to go. You have an opinion on that?"

"Freezing," she said quietly.

"Oh, right, of course, freezing," Draco snarled. "You're not him, Weasel."

"Tom," she insisted.

"Okay, you're not him, Tom," Draco snapped. She frowned.

"Yes – yes I am," she argued. "Tom – Tom Marvolo Riddle is Voldemort. You know that."

"Yeah, got that," he answered back, "But Tom-in-Weasel-Girl's-head is just Tom."

She blinked at him.

"You're not Voldemort," he insisted. "All the stuff he did -"

"I killed Myrtle," she blurted, and her chin raised just a little off her knees – Draco clenched his fists until his nails bit into his palms, willing himself to show no reaction, not to give away the giddy spurt of triumph he felt. But that's her. That stubborn little chin tilt thing – that's her, her goddamned bloody righteous Gryffindor chin –

Stay with me here, Weasel, come on, stay with me.

"So go tell her you're real sorry," he snapped. "I think she'd take the apology, she seems to like you. All of you, both of you, whatever. She knows who's making himself at home in your head and she still likes you."

"She doesn't understand," Ginny shook her head furiously, and when her hair blew into her mouth, she spit it out. Stay with me. "She doesn't think I'm – that he's-"

"That you're Tom and Tom's you," Draco finished for her. "So explain it to her. Use little words, she's a Hufflepuff."

"I can't-"

"Well why the hell not?" he cut her off. "That's the part I'm not getting here, Tom, 'cause last I checked you were fucking scary powerful, and brilliant, and Ginny Weasley's nobody to scoff at either, you know. Has a hell of a mean kick." She glared. "And you know what, you told me not to go home, and did you think that was going to be fucking easy?" he demanded. "Oh yeah, why didn't I think of that before? I could just not get on the bloody train!" He smacked his forehead in mock bewilderment. "Gee, I must be bloody stupid, not to have thought of that, that would have solved everything -"

"I'm sorry," she interrupted, and hugged her knees tighter. "It was stupid, I know it wouldn't have fixed anything, I just thought -"

"It wasn't bloody stupid," Draco shouted. "And it was my bloody goddamned fucking choice, whether it would have solved one fucking thing or not, it was my chickenshit wanking cowardly choice to just go along like – like a fucking bull with a ring through it's nose, like they already had me, and they didn't, and you were the only fucking person who saw that and the only goddamned fucking person, including me, who thought it was worth doing anything about! The only one, Weasel! Or Tom, or whoever the fuck, whoever the fuck is sitting right fucking here in front of me, you're the only person -"

"Your mother -" she tried to say, and she was leaning a little towards him, uncurling just slightly, and trembling.

"My mother is DEAD!" he screamed in her face. "She DIED and I didn't even KNOW her and she was just stoned or drunk or not fucking THERE all the time and I never even BOTHERED and she DIED for me and you CAN'T FUCKING DO THIS!"

"I'm sorry-" Her voice was cracking, and she was reaching towards him. He grabbed her, and his hands contacted flesh this time, freezing and limp and pliant beneath his clutching hands. The movement caused feeling to run back into his fingers, bright sharp shards of burning pain. Draco hauled her roughly forward, dragged her along the ice, and she didn't resist. Her hands found his face, icy, clumsy, grasping touches, and he realized he'd been crying.

"You want one good reason?" he shouted into her face. "Me, okay? You can't do this to me, I need you, I need you here to make this make some sense and I'm going to make it better, I'm going to, you can't do this before I've had a chance – fuck that, you can't do this EVER, I'm going to fix it, I'm going to fix it – Ginny -"

"You can't fix it," she choked out, shaking her head wildly, hands slithering around his neck and pulling tight. Her forehead bumped his, her lips close enough for him to feel her breath, so hot it almost burned and then screaming painful cold in between, as the moisture froze on his lips. "You can't – I can't – I don't know how to fix it-"

Draco let go of her shoulders to wrap his arms around her, dragging her into his lap, pressing her as close to him as she could go without actually slipping inside his skin. Her face slipped away from his, her hair catching in the wetness freezing on his cheeks.

"I'm sorry," she sobbed into his neck. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry-"

"We'll figure it out, okay?" He'd turned his head toward her, curling around her, and the words were nearly lost in her hair, barely coherent. "Just don't – don't fucking do that again, okay? I need – you can't -"

"I know, I – me too," she breathed, voice hitching, so quiet he couldn't be entirely sure he actually heard the words, or whether he just felt them in her lips against his skin.

Restless tonight
'Cause I wasted the light
Between both these times
I drew a really thin line
It's nothing I planned
And not that I can
But you should be mine
Across that line

If I traded it all
If I gave it all away for one thing
Just for one thing
If I sorted it out
If I knew all about this one thing
Wouldn't that be something

- Finger Eleven, 'One Thing'