A/N: Didn't you just love Draco in HBP? Thanks to everyone who's reviewed: you all make my day, every day! And thanks to the incomparable Gabriele, who faithfully formats and posts these chapters for me, because I am a technological idiot, and have never been able to figure it out for myself.
Chapter 13
Ginny stared dumbly at the sheaf of parchments in her hands, at the photo of Draco's handsome, arrogant face smirking up at her. From a great distance, she heard Harry saying something, but she couldn't seem to make sense of his words. Her mind was carrying on an argument with itself.
'It's not true, of course. He wouldn't be involved in this.'
'Oh come on: you know he was always capable of it.'
'No! He's changed!'
'Has he? How do you know?'
'I just... do. I mean, he could. People change... right?'
Somehow she got through the rest of that meeting, her mind blessedly shifting into automatic and making her mouth form pleasantries she later couldn't remember saying. The moment Harry was out the door she stuffed the sheaf of parchments into her briefcase, grabbed her travelling cloak, and headed for the Apparition Port.
Lolly was surprised to see her home, when she had only been gone just over an hour. She told her that yes, Master Draco was still away, and was Mistress feeling all right? Did she want a cup of tea or a digestive biscuit? Ginny sent her back to her work in the kitchen, and went upstairs.
Draco's bedroom was unlocked, and she stepped inside cautiously, closing the door behind her, looking around herself with new eyes. Three hours ago, she had awoken in this bedroom feeling that it belonged to her as much as to him. So much had changed between them; she had really begun to hope – no, begun was the wrong word. She had never been one to make up her mind about anything by degrees; hope had simply flared into life and burnt brilliantly in her from the moment Draco had shown her that waterfall, more than a week ago. She had let him charm her, kiss her even. He had bought her a pair of sunglasses and a stupid vase, and she had nearly let him sleep with her.
She had nearly let herself fall in love with him.
Now, skulking about his bedroom, looking for evidence that would lock him away in Azkaban, she felt like a sneaking, deceiving traitor. Which, of course, was exactly what she was. But then, very possibly – no, very probably – it was what Draco was too, so didn't that put them on even ground?
She did her best to force those kinds of thoughts out of her mind. This was not personal, it was purely professional. There was right and wrong to consider: good and evil. It was her job to unearth evil and see that it was done away with. If that happened to conflict with something that had happened to her heart, then so be it. Emotions could not take precedence here.
Firmly, she fixed her mind on the task at hand. She had heard Draco mention his 'study' a time or two, yet she had never seen a room that fit that description, in all the rest of the house. It made sense, then, that it might be off his bedroom. She looked around: there were three doors in the room, besides the bathroom door. Determinedly, she strode to the first and yanked it open. It was a clothes cupboard, filled end to end with Draco's usual array of gorgeously-cut robes and highly-polished shoes.
The second door also revealed a clothes cupboard, but this one was more puzzling. It contained only a handful of clothing: jeans, tee-shirts, work boots, trainers, and all of it stained, torn, and very worn-looking. It looked, she thought at once, like the kind of clothing a carpenter or a labourer would wear on the job. She had never seen Draco wear any of it. She frowned at the clothes, then leaned forward and cautiously sniffed one of the shirts. It had been laundered, but an acrid smell of smoke still clung to it. It wasn't cigarette smoke, nor would she have called it wood smoke. It was... where had she smelled that particular odour before?
The war. She remembered vividly then how she and Harry, Ron and Hermione had picked their way through the rubble of Hagrid's hut the morning after it had burnt to the ground. What she smelled on Draco's clothes was the same odour that had hung in the air that day: the scent of destruction and terror, of burning buildings, and loss and ruin, and the collapse of someone's dreams. She frowned, trying to add this puzzle piece to the picture of Draco that was still evolving in her mind. She didn't like the way it fit.
The third door was locked. She felt her pulse quicken; where the two cupboard doors had opened by swinging outward, into the bedroom, this one had the hinges on the inside; it opened inward, indicating that the room behind it was bigger than a clothes cupboard. Pointing her wand at the lock, she said, "Alohomora." Nothing; apparently, it needed a password. The image of the broom shed sprang immediately to mind: the password there was 'Thursday', and she could almost hear Draco's voice, that first night they had flown together, saying, 'Not the most creative password maybe, but I bought the house on a Thursday, and it's something I can remember.'
She pointed her wand again. "Alohomora Thursday." Nothing happened. She glared at the stubborn lock. She could try going through all the days of the week, but sometimes locks had built-in hacking protection spells that locked down after three wrong attempts, and wouldn't let you in even if you got the password right after that. She contemplated the door, thinking. If this was Draco's study, it was possible he hadn't always kept it locked. Possibly, it was only locked because of her. And she had come to live here on a Sunday.
"Alohomora Sunday." She held her breath: the door clicked open. "Oh, Draco, Draco, Draco," she muttered with satisfaction. "You'll have to do better than that if you want to keep me out." Cautiously, she pushed open the door, and felt her mouth drop into a little, soundless "O".
It looked like some sort of military headquarters. A vast, walnut desk dominated the space, with a silver Sneakoscope spinning and shrilling wildly on its polished surface. She twitched her wand at it, and it fell over, still and silent. A foe-glass hung on the wall, and she could see her own face looking out of it with an expression that was half-guilt, half-defiance. Her reflection in Draco's foe-glass: proof enough that this was something she, an Auror, was not supposed to see. The entire left wall was taken up with a three-dimensional map of the world, drawn in shimmering blue light, and suspended in the air. She went closer to it; it emitted a low humming noise, and was covered with thousands of dots, in different sizes and colours, swarming over its surface like ants. What was it for?
She watched the dots move across the faces of the oceans and continents. Some moved slowly, while others seemed to jump from place to place – people Apparating? Eventually though, as she watched, a few of the dots began to stand out from the others.
A large, red one that did not move at all, in Moscow.
Another stationary red one on the island of Sumatra.
One in the US, in a state called Virginia.
Her eyes jumped almost frantically to Great Britain, expecting to see the final red dot in the Highlands of Scotland. But no; it was there, but it was further south, on the Isle of Wight. Four Winds was not the actual British Headquarters, then. If Draco was really The Baron that would explain his frequent disappearances from home: he had been going to England, to conduct business from there.
She turned her attention to his desk. Three drawers ran down the left side of it, with one long one across the top. It was not locked. The top drawer proved to hold only quills and ink, parchment, sealing wax, and – ominously – a seal with the letters DMS worked in ornate script. DMS: Dark of the Moon Society. Feeling a little sick, Ginny slammed shut this drawer and yanked open the top one on the left.
It, and the two beneath it, were full of neatly organized file folders. She hesitated, a part of her not wanting to know: wanting to hold onto the illusion that this was all a mistake, that she was not actually seeing what she was seeing. But she was a professional, and she had a job to do. She steeled herself and pulled the first file from the drawer. The folder was filled with smooth, blank sheets of parchment. There was nothing there: no writing, no photographs, no maps, nothing. The next was like it, and the next, and all the rest of the files in all of the drawers: they were all blank. Encoded, obviously, and if she'd been an Auror worth half her salt, she would have set to work at once trying to decode them.
Instead, she slammed shut the drawers and sank onto the floor with her head on her knees. She was filled with a half-hysterical sense of relief that she could not read the files; she had already seen more than she could take in for the moment. She needed some time to process it – to process her feelings about it, and about Draco – before she looked any further.
Eventually, she pulled herself together and left the study, closing and locking the door behind her, and went down to the library to wait for his return.
Draco spun to a stop in the Floo and stepped out onto the hearth rug in his own bedroom. Home. Ginny.
She had never been far from his thoughts in the – he glanced at the mantle clock – the twenty-eight hours and forty-two minutes since he'd left her. He was back now though, and she'd be finished work in a few hours. He had time for a shower and a nap before she came home. In fact, he'd kip on the sofa in the library, where he'd be sure to hear her when she came in.
It would also give him time, he thought, to fabricate an excuse for where he'd been, and why he'd had to leave so abruptly. Because no matter what he'd promised her before he'd left, he was not going to tell her about Quicksilver. Everything depended on the fact that no one knew, no one but three other men whom he trusted profoundly: trusted with his life. Ginny was beautiful; she was clever; she was good. But he did not trust her; he could not afford to let himself do that. He showered, did a quick Drying Charm on his hair and tied it back in its usual leather thong, then went down to the library to wait for her.
He opened the door and something inside him leapt joyfully when he saw her unexpectedly sitting there, waiting for him. In the next second, however, he registered the work robes she still wore, and the tension etched on her face. He frowned. "You're home early, aren't you? Is anything wrong?"
She stood up, her hands clenched into fists at her sides, and Draco realized with a sinking feeling that much more than just the length of the room stood between them. She was angry.
Well, he supposed he couldn't blame her, the way he'd left her to shift for herself in Crete like that, disappearing without a word of explanation. He regarded her warily, wondering how long it might take to convince her to pick up where they'd left off the other night...
"We need to talk," she said.
That was the trouble with women: they were always wanting to talk things to death. He stifled an impatient sound, and resigned himself to the inevitable. "All right. What do we need to talk about?"
"The Dark of the Moon Society."
It was the last thing in the world he had expected to hear. Something cold and hard dropped into the pit of Draco's stomach. He forced himself to sound careless. "What about it?"
"You've heard of them?"
"Of course I've heard of them: I imagine anyone who reads the papers has done, at one time or another."
"Draco –"
He interrupted her. "Look, if you're going to be staging a full Inquisition here, I think I'd like to have a drink first." He crossed to the bar and poured himself a whiskey with a perfectly steady hand. "Can I get you something?"
"No, I don't want a drink. What I want are answers."
He came around the bar to face her, and raised his glass in a mocking toast. "To answers then. Fire away."
Ginny seemed nonplussed by his cavalier attitude toward it all. She looked at him long and searchingly, and finally said, "Are you involved in the Dark of the Moon Society?"
There it was, then. He could see no sense in lying about it; obviously she already knew.
"Yes," he said. "I am." He watched her face blanch, her freckles standing out in stark relief against the pallor, though her expression never once wavered.
"They're wizard mafia," she said, as though somehow he might not already know this. As if it might change his answer.
"Yes, I know." Draco sounded bland, polite, even a bit disinterested. They might have been discussing different opinions on the state of the roads, or the weather. In reality, he felt he might possibly throw up.
The mantle clock ticked in the silence. After a moment, she asked, "Are you The Baron?"
He started. "How do you know about The Baron?"
"How do I know about any of this? I had a visit from an Auror Special Forces agent today."
Reflexively, he sneered. "Special Forces? That wouldn't have been your old friend Harry Potter, would it?"
"It was Harry, as a matter of fact."
"I might have known he'd come tomcatting around one of these days. I hope you thought to tell him you're married now. I hope you remembered it yourself."
Ginny gasped. "What a filthy thing to say!"
He knew it was, and he regretted it the instant it came out of his mouth. He wasn't about to take it back, though. He wasn't about to give her any more of an advantage over him than she already had. He looked at her stonily.
Her eyes narrowed, and her voice grew hard. "All right Draco, if you want to talk like a pig to me, fine: I should be used to it by now. Meanwhile, let's keep to the subject at hand, shall we? Are you The Baron or not?"
He took a sip of his drink and fixed his gaze somewhere above her head. "No. I'm not."
"But... there is such a person? You know about him?"
"Of course I know about him. I work for him."
"You... work for him? What does that mean, exactly?"
"If you want details, I'm afraid I'm going to have to disappoint you. In general, though, it means I take orders from him, see that they're executed, report back to him, and collect payment for services rendered." He forced down another swallow of his whiskey. It tasted like pure gall in his mouth.
"Services rendered?" She spat the words. "Is that what you call them? Drug trafficking; prostitution; human slavery –"
"You," he cut in harshly, "have no idea what my work involves! Don't accuse me of things you know nothing about!"
"Oh, come off it, Draco! You're telling me you're involved with the mafia, but somehow you're not involved in the despicable things they do?"
"I'm not telling you anything, one way or the other. If Auror Special Forces are so clever, let them figure it out." He swallowed the rest of his drink and forced himself to sound indifferent. "I assume now you know all this you'll be turning me over to them."
For a moment, she didn't speak, but only stared at him with eyes that were over bright, twin spots of colour blazing in her white face. At last, she said, "I can't turn you in, can I? If I do, they'll throw you in Azkaban. The Curse of the Firstborn says we have to live together a year and a day, remember?"
He wanted to sag with relief. Instead, he spoke coldly. "Ah, right: the Curse. So, if you turn me in, your brother's life will be in jeopardy."
"It's not only my brother's life I'm concerned about." For a heart-stopping second, she looked at him with an expression of such mingled pain and ferocity that Draco's breath failed him.
"They don't want you, Draco." Her voice became suddenly pleading. "They want this 'Baron,' whoever he is. They won't bother coming after you – not if you agree to deal. Tell me who The Baron is, and I know Harry will see that you go free."
He nearly laughed out loud. "Don't be an idiot, Ginny: I'm not turning anyone over to the Aurors, especially not to Harry Potter. You say you won't grass me up to Special Forces until our year is out? Fine. Thank you, even. After that, I'll take my chances."
"You..." her voice faltered, "you don't actually... want to be a part of this?"
He could not answer her.
"How do you live with yourself?" she said in a horrified whisper. "How do you even sleep at night?"
Draco was suddenly furious. She only knew part of the story; why did it have to be the terrible, incriminating part? "You self-righteous little bint! How dare you presume to judge me?" His voice was rising, his temper getting away from him, but he hardly cared. "You know nothing about me! Nothing!"
She held up a hand to stop him, and her voice was deadly quiet. "You're wrong, Draco. I know everything I need to know about you. You just told me everything that matters." And she crossed the room, opened the door, and walked out.
Out in the corridor, Ginny heard a nasty word being shouted from the library, and the distinct sound of a whiskey tumbler shattering against the door.
It was impossible, of course, to avoid each other forever. Where before the incident in the library, it had seemed Draco was being called away on his mysterious errands every few days, now it seemed – inconveniently – that he never left home. They saw each other at every mealtime, and often ended up in the library together afterward, much as they had done before. Ginny refused to give up her evenings there, on the principle that she hadn't done anything wrong, so why should she hide up in her bedroom every night? If he was uncomfortable around her, let him leave. Unfortunately, Draco seemed to have much the same philosophy, and as both refused to surrender an inch of territory, they had to put up with one another's company. The atmosphere between them reverted to one of icy tension. It was as though the day in Crete had never happened.
She did not bring up the Dark of the Moon Society with him again. Auror Special Forces were not really looking for him, after all; it was The Baron they wanted. She kept quiet on the subject, biding her time; sooner or later, Draco would leave again and she would be able to get back to his study and start decoding some of the files in his desk. She would find out who The Baron was, and turn him over to Special Forces, and be shot of this whole, horrible responsibility. She would somehow get through the rest of this year living with Draco, and then she would leave and never, never look back.
Somehow, she would scrape together enough of her heart to keep on living.
On Thursday of that week, Betsy Kincaid Flooed her to say she and Lowen wanted them to come for dinner on Saturday. Ginny told Draco about it that night, while they ate.
"Do you want to go?" he asked her.
She shrugged dispiritedly. They could go, or not go; nothing really seemed to matter any more. Suddenly though, a question occurred to her for the first time. She put down her knife and fork.
"Do they know that you're part of the mafia? Are they involved in it too?" She didn't know which would be worse; to hear that they knew, and were a part of it, or to hear that they didn't know; that Draco had been deceiving these wonderful people all along, just as he'd deceived her.
He winced. "Could you please refer to it by its proper name? It's called the Dark of the Moon Society."
"Oh, pardon me," she said tartly. "I didn't realize there was an etiquette to all this. By all means, I'll try to refer to it in the nicest terms possible from now on."
"Crassness doesn't suit you either, Ginny."
"Well, it seems I can't speak in any way that pleases you then, can I?"
"Oh, you most certainly can." He raised his eyebrows suggestively. "Should I remind you of some of the things you said that day on Crete? They pleased me very much."
Ginny felt her cheeks flame. Infuriating man! There he sat, smirking at her, entirely unrepentant – she picked up her dinner roll and threw it as hard as she could at him.
He dodged it narrowly, and grabbed her wrist. He was – he was actually laughing at her! Ginny was mute with rage, and to her horror, she felt tears begin to well up in her eyes. She wrenched her wrist out of his grasp and stood up so abruptly her chair went over backward.
"You're despicable," she whispered. She started to move past him, to leave the room, but he stood up too, and blocked her.
"Sit down, Ginny."
"No. I'm going to my room. Move out of my way." She tried to push past him, but he took her by the arms.
"Sit down, I said." His voice sounded weary. "I'm not going to live out the rest of this year in a cold war with you, and I daresay you don't want it either; I think we'd both agree we're beyond that point. We may as well talk about this and get it over with."
She hesitated. She did want to talk about it: she wanted answers. She wanted him to tell her it was all a joke; that he really wasn't involved in anything as horrible as the mafia. She bent and righted her chair, and sat back down.
"Lolly!" Draco shouted. With a 'crack' the house-elf appeared before them.
"Yes, Master?"
"Bring Ms Weasley and me our coffee."
"Please," Ginny added pointedly, glaring at him.
He looked amused. "As the lady says, Lolly."
He waited until the house-elf had cleared away their plates, brought their coffee, and returned to the kitchen. Then, he picked up a teaspoon and began to turn it in his hands, studying it as he spoke. "You have to understand that my father was a member of the Dark of the Moon Society before I was even born."
"I thought your father was a Death Eater," she interrupted him.
He shrugged. "He was, but the two were never mutually exclusive. Loads of people were involved in both. And remember, there were thirteen years between the Dark Lord's first reign and when he came back again. During those years, there wasn't a lot for the Death Eaters to do. Dark of the Moon kept my father busy in the meanwhile. It was very lucrative; it's how he built the family fortune." He dropped the spoon into his coffee cup and began to stir idly, and Ginny could see that his mind was somewhere far away: somewhere in the past.
She said nothing, but waited for him to continue.
"I grew up privy to all my father's activities. He made sure I saw plenty, heard plenty, so that by the time I was old enough to make the choice to join or not to join, there was no choice left for me to make."
"What do you mean?" She watched him carefully balance the spoon on the rim of his cup.
"I mean I knew too much about Dark of the Moon. I learned it all at my father's knee before I even knew what I was learning." He looked at her impassively. "Someone who knows the things I knew about them isn't just allowed to walk away from it, Ginny. Not and live, anyway."
Her voice, when she spoke, was shaky. "It... it sounds like something from a bad Muggle film."
"It does, rather, doesn't it?" His mouth twisted into a bitter facsimile of a smile.
"How old were you?"
"When I was officially inducted in? Seventeen."
There was another question she had long wanted to ask him. Instinctively, she felt he would tell her the truth if she asked it now. "Were you a Death Eater too?"
He picked up his napkin and began, deliberately, to fold it into little pleats. "No, funnily enough I never got around to that."
"Why not?"
"Ah! That's a story for another day, I'm afraid."
They sat in silence, while she tried to get up her nerve to ask the next question. It wasn't the asking that she dreaded; what she was afraid of was the answer she might hear. She cleared her throat. "Will you tell me what kinds of things you do in the – for them?"
"Ginny," he said, and his voice was surprisingly gentle. "I don't think you really want me to answer that, do you? And besides –" he held up his hand to silence her protest. "I've already put you in considerable danger just by telling you what I've told you."
"Danger? How?"
"The Baron knows I'm married to you: he's known about The Curse of the Firstborn as long as I have myself. But he's confident I won't tell you anything about my involvement in Dark of the Moon, because we're both planning for you to be gone in a year. It's his confidence in that that's kept you safe so far."
"Safe? I don't understand: safe from what?"
"I already told you," he said patiently. "People aren't allowed to know about these things and just... walk away from it."
Ginny felt as though an icy hand had gripped the back of her neck. "Oh –"
"So I think it would be best for you if you didn't ask any more questions, all right? The less you know about it, the safer you are."
She sat in silence and tried to digest this. The Baron – world leader of the wizard mafia – knew about her! It should have been a chilling thought, and yet Ginny did not feel at all afraid. She told him this.
"Well perhaps you should let me be afraid for you then," he said, giving her a funny little smile that made her heart twist painfully in her chest. "I'm not going to endanger you any more than I already have, so the subject is closed."
She remembered then how they had got onto the subject in the first place. "Do the Kincaids know?"
He said, "No, they don't, and I'd like to keep it that way."
"What about David and Fiona Gordon?"
"No."
"Then... will we have dinner with them Saturday night?" She said it with an apologetic smile because it was such a stupid thing to say, such an irrelevant, normal conclusion to all this talk of murderers and underworld evil and both their lives being in danger.
But Draco seemed to understand. "I think that sounds like an excellent idea."
Betsy and Lowen Kincaid owned a sprawling, modern estate called Heart's Content, on the outskirts of Edinburgh. It was here that Ginny and Draco were to join them for dinner on the Saturday night. They had just stepped into the Apparition Port to make the journey, when Draco reached for her hand. She shot a startled look at him.
"Just keeping up appearances," he said easily.
"Oh..." she'd forgotten about that, but before she could wrap her mind around the implications, they were stepping out of the Kincaids' Port, and being enveloped in Betsy's effusive embraces. The big, bashful Lowen greeted them more quietly, but with no less enthusiasm. David and Fiona were there as well, and Ginny was really glad to see all of them again. Betsy's French house-elf was a marvellous cook, and they spent a pleasant four hours talking and laughing, first around the table, and later, around the fireplace in the Great Room. Draco was at his most charming: he teased Betsy, made Fiona laugh, and engaged David in a discussion of political history that went far over Ginny's head.
She felt, the whole time, that she was walking around in a sort of a dream, standing at the edge of the room watching events unfold. She saw Draco's hand on her back as he pulled her chair out for her at the table. She saw him drop a light kiss on her cheek when he brought her a glass of wine, and saw herself tip up her face to receive it. Later, she watched him toy with a loose tendril of her hair as they sat on the sofa together. And although inside she was a jumble of nervous confusion, she knew that not a trace of it showed in her behaviour toward him. They were the perfect couple; attentive, devoted, in love. Ginny marvelled at their acting skills.
She knew it was only keeping up appearances and yet when they stepped out of the Port at Four Winds, and Draco abruptly dropped her hand and moved away from her, she felt her stupid, traitor heart sink.
"Well, that was fun," he said, stifling a yawn. "Thanks for a lovely evening. Good-night then, Ginny." And he walked away. She watched him disappear up the staircase to his bedroom, and had to bite her lip to keep herself from calling out after him.
She sank into a chair in the foyer. Going to bed was the last thing in the world she wanted to do: she'd never sleep. She'd only lie awake and stare at the ceiling and think, the whole time, that Draco was right across the corridor, slumbering away with a perfectly carefree heart and a happy conscience.
Git.
She glanced at her wristwatch. It was only twelve-thirty. Sarah might still be awake at twelve-thirty on a Saturday night. Yes, that was exactly what she needed: Sarah, and a pumpkin ale, and a good, long gossip. She went to the library to use the Floo.
"Sarah!" she hissed, when her head had stopped spinning, and she was looking at the front room of her old flat. Sarah was sitting on the sofa, flipping through a magazine. She looked up in surprise.
"Ginny! What in the world are you doing here at this time of night? Are you all right?"
"Yes, of course I am. Just fancied a bit of company, that's all. Are you busy?"
"No. Bobby just left. I was thinking of going to bed, but I'm not all that tired. Want to come over?"
"I was hoping you'd say that."
"Wait a minute." Sarah disappeared from sight, and reappeared a moment later. "Can you nip out and pick up some wine on your way? We seem to have drunk all ours."
"Nothing easier."
"Good. There's that Apparition Port over on Crandall and Lutz, with the Muggle market right nearby. It's only two streets over from here, so you could walk the rest of the way. I'd go myself, but I'm far too lazy."
"No, of course I'll go. See you in fifteen minutes!"
Hastily, Ginny changed her robe for jeans and a jumper, humming to herself all the while. Girlfriends: what would she do without them? On her way down to the Apparition Port, she shot a baleful glare at Draco's bedroom door. Who needed him anyway?
She Apparated to the Port on the corner of Crandall and Lutz. The Muggle market was still open. The clerk, a hefty, middle-aged woman, was sitting on a high stool behind the till, staring glassily into a hand-held mirror and plucking at the little hairs on her chin with a pair of tweezers. When Ginny came in, the woman acknowledged her by waving the tweezers at her. Ginny shuddered and turned her back. She was examining the dusty bottles of wine on the shelf, and trying to decide which of the two brands there was the lesser of the evils, when the door behind her burst open, and she heard someone shout.
She turned around. Three men stood there. They wore nylon stockings over their faces, which distorted their features into something grotesque and unrecognizable. They were yelling in some incomprehensible language, and it took Ginny a moment to realize they were waving guns in the air.
A stab of pure adrenaline shot through her. She dropped to the ground and rolled to the edge of the aisle, fumbling for her wand. The shop clerk screamed, and dimly, Ginny heard the hand mirror she'd been holding shatter on the floor.
Her hand was on her wand when something hot and heavy slammed into her left shoulder. She heard the excited, foreign jabbering, and the air was filled with strange popping noises. Belatedly, she realized it was gunfire. She couldn't move her left arm. She looked down. A dark stain was seeping through the wool of her jumper. She had been shot.
Strangely enough, there was hardly any pain at all. She wanted to move, but she just... couldn't. She lay there, her heart racing wildly, staring at the shattered glass front of the cigarette case while the shouting and the popping sounds, and the awful, high-pitched screaming went on around her. And then, abruptly, the screaming stopped, as though it had been switched off somewhere. Ginny felt hot tears prick the back of her eyelids, heard herself make a little whimpering sound. She wondered how many other people had been in the shop. There was the clerk, of course, and she remembered a young man wearing headphones, who'd been looking at the magazines. There had been an older man too, who she thought had been paying for a case of beer when the masked men had burst in. Another person – impossible to tell, behind the baggy clothes, and chopped-off hair if it had been a man or a woman – was buying cigarettes. How many others? She tried to roll over, to get to her wand, and then it did hurt.
The pain washed over her in a wave that took her breath away. The edges of the room began to blur, becoming soft and muted, blending together like tones of a watercolour. Dimly, she thought she smelled smoke. She felt herself beginning to slip away.
'Hold on!' She commanded herself. She heard a ripping, crackling sound, and knew that, somewhere, the shop was on fire.
'Hold on!'
Draco paced the length of his room, back and forth, back and forth. Keeping up appearances, indeed. Who did he think he was kidding? Not himself, that was for sure. He knew exactly what he'd been about; he'd known it the moment he'd taken her hand in the Apparition Port and said it to her. The truth was there was no need, with friends like the Kincaids and the Gordons, to keep up any kind of appearances; there never had been.
It was only that if he'd had to wait one more hour to touch her, he was afraid he might have gone mad.
He couldn't touch her the way he wanted to, of course. It was out of the question that he would ever again hold her in his arms and kiss her warm mouth... A shudder of longing ripped through him, and he kicked savagely at the granite fireplace. He only succeeded in hurting his foot. He leaned his arm against the mantle piece and buried his face in it, seeing her face as clearly as if she were standing before him herself.
He'd had to content himself with little things: resting his hands on her shoulders when he stood behind her chair; letting his fingers linger on hers when he handed her a glass of wine; standing close enough when he helped her on with her cloak to breathe in the warm, bright scent of her hair.
He was in love with her.
The knowledge of it came as something of a shock to him, and yet in a sense he was not surprised at all. He was the most selfish of people; this he knew and accepted, without apology, as a fact of his existence. It was the way he was made, the way he had always lived. Women, in his experience, were creatures who willingly placed themselves at his disposal: he enjoyed them solely for the pleasure they gave him. It had always just happened that way.
Ginny Weasley was another kettle of fish altogether. She had no interest in pleasing him. Neither, it seemed, was she about pleasing herself. He had observed her with Lolly; with Betsy and Fiona; with himself. She moved through life with purpose, treating others with dignity, without kowtowing or fawning over anyone. She had principles, and she was intelligent. She did not need him, or even seem, particularly, to want him. She was her own person, and did not require anyone else to complete her.
He realized that this put her maddeningly out of his reach. It was human nature to want what was forbidden; that was a principle as old as the Garden of Eden. He tried to tell himself that this was all it amounted to: he was, for the first time in his life, being denied a woman, and so, naturally, he thought he had to have her.
It had nothing to do with the warmth of her brown eyes, or the sheer, uninhibited delight on her face when she had seen the waterfall. It was not because she planted daffodils in his garden, or read her Muggle poetry books curled up like a cat in the armchair in the library. It was for certain not that damned ginger kneazle kit that was stretched out, asleep, on his duvet at this very moment...
He kicked at the fireplace again, then crossed to the little, wall-mounted potion kit in the bathroom. He was mixing himself a double Dreamless Sleeping Draught when the fire in his room flared green.
He froze, his hand on the stopper of the valerian bottle. It was a good thing he hadn't taken it yet. He dropped the bottle into the sink and went to kneel on the hearthrug.
From the edges of her fading consciousness, Ginny felt herself being lifted up in somebody's arms. Oh Circe, the pain in her shoulder! She cried out, but there was no sound to it. The smoke was thicker up here, than on the floor, and she began to cough and choke. She turned her face into the shirt front of the man who was holding her – it had to be a man; he held her as though she weighed no more than a bird. She clutched at the shirt and coughed into it, her body spasming with the pain it sent through her shoulder.
And then she felt cool air on her face, and she could breathe again. Strong arms lowered her to the pavement in front of the shop.
"Get her to St Mungo's," she heard someone say.
St Mungo's? Someone knew she was a witch... Her vision grew spotty, and she closed her eyes and drifted away.
They kept her overnight at the hospital. Her wound was not deep, but she had lost a lot of blood, and was suffering from shock. She did not remember asking for Draco, but somehow he was there when she opened her eyes in the morning. She smiled, and reached for his hand.
He came and kissed her on the forehead. "You gave us a right good scare."
"It scared me too. What happened, exactly?"
"You were in the wrong place at the wrong time. The shop was being robbed, apparently, and you got in the way."
She frowned. "What about the fire?"
"One of the idiots shot up the fuse box."
"Was everyone ok?"
"No, the clerk was killed."
"Oh, that's terrible." Ginny felt her nose prickle, and her throat begin to clog up. She turned her head away from him so he would not see her tears.
"Are you all right?"
She gave a great sniffle, and with her right hand, swiped at her eyes. Her left arm seemed to be immobilized at her side. "Yes, I'm fine, thanks. How did you know to find me here?"
"The Healers called me. No idea how they knew. You must have said something to them."
"I don't remember."
"What do you remember?"
"Not a lot." Her tears under control, she turned to face him again, inexpressibly grateful that he had come. "I was on my way to see Sarah, and I stopped to pick up some wine. And then there was all this shouting, and I got shot. There was smoke everywhere, and someone picked me up and carried me outside."
"Who?"
"I don't know. I suppose it was the fire department, or the MLES, or something. They knew to take me to St Mungo's, anyway, so I imagine it was the MLES."
"Probably. What then?"
"I don't know, really. A Healer gave me a potion, and... here I am. Did they tell you what was wrong with my arm?"
"You were shot in the shoulder, and you lost a lot of blood, but there doesn't seem to be much damage. In fact, they said you might go home later today."
"Oh, that's a relief."
He was silent for a moment, and then said, "I was thinking you might feel better recovering at your mother's house."
"Oh, Draco, could I?" The thought of it brought such a wash of relief that she thought she might start to cry again.
"Yes, of course you can. When they're ready to release you, I'll Floo your father."
They were interrupted just then by the Healer, a brisk young Asian woman who shooed Draco out of the room, and closed the door behind him.
Gently, she felt over Ginny's arm and shoulder, flexing her fingers, probing and asking questions: "Does this hurt? And this? Can you move your second finger? And your third?" Finally, she said, "There's really no point in keeping you here, Ms Weasley. I'll send the Mediwitch in with your discharge instructions, and you can follow up with your own Healer in a week's time. How does that sound?"
"Heavenly."
"Good. Get dressed then. The paperwork won't take more than a few minutes."
Ginny had already thrown back the covers, and was getting out of bed.
"Take care then. Don't overdo things at home."
"I won't."
The Healer had her hand on the door knob when she turned back. "Oh yes, I nearly forgot –" She fished around in her pocket, and held something out to Ginny. "The man who brought you in last night asked me to give you this." She dropped a tiny, silver medallion into Ginny's hand. "Well, Cheerio!" And she was gone.
Ginny stared at the little disc, then picked it up and held it up to the light. She had never seen it before, in her life. It was no bigger than a button, and etched unmistakably, on both sides of it, was a pair of Mercury's wings.
She gasped, and groped for the bed, sitting down hard on it. Mercury's wings. Quicksilver. Her rescuer, last night, had been...
She stared blankly at the medallion, and remembered the strong arms that had picked her up. The shirt front she had buried her face in. The voice saying, "Take her to St Mungos." Quicksilver was real? Quicksilver was real! But who on earth was he? She knew she would never be able to rest until she found out.
A/N: Next chapter: Christmas!