Take A Deeper Look
~~*~~
Chapter Two: Don't Know Why
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Much like whom?
The question was still drifting about his head when lunch came about. And today seemed to be the day that the youngest Weasley decided to skip the midday meal.
Who could she know that was a spy against Voldemort? He only knew of Snape as the schools resident Death Eater. Yet he was not a spy . . . Was he? No. Someone else on the staff, or even a student now that he thought about it, could be the spying Death Eater she knew about.
But who?
And why would a Gryffindor, a Weasley at that, know this person? His thoughts were pushed aside as he went on with his classes. Though they stayed with him, he could not address them until he went to his dorm at the school days end.
Where the sight of Virginias' cloak flooded his mind with memories. The thought of how to go about returning the strange item of clothing immediately went into him mind before it was again pushed aside by the question of Much like whom?
It couldn't be Snape. Could it? He couldn't be the spy that Virginia knew about. Would he even dare to spy against Voldemort?
The best way to find out, Draco figured as he lay down on his bed, was to ask the man himself. Or so he decided he should go about finding out the proper answer. Yet the boy succumbed to the night before he could go to question the professor.
~~*~~
Ginny skillfully avoided the seventh year the next day, knowing he could quite possibly be wondering about her comment of "Much like . . ." She knew she could not give that answer. She wasn't even supposed to know about it, yet she did.
Overheard from a conversation Harry, Hermione, and her brother had been having one night; when they thought everyone asleep. It wouldn't have mattered anyway, they would not have seen her.
What she did know, however, was that she had to take this secret to her grave. No matter when that grave came to be. It was her secret; her secret about a secret.
The fact alone, that she had almost slipped up, tortured her. What would have happened if Draco were to find out who she knew was spying? Would she be tortured, so to speak, by the seventh year? Or would she escape his wrath unscathed; merely because of the shock she had bestowed upon him with her answer?
She ate her meals alone and in thought that day. She found herself going to the library after her classes were done; dinner could wait until she went to the kitchens.
~~*~~
"Draco!"
He knew that voice anywhere. "Pansy, I'm busy."
"Where are you going, Draco?" Pansy hooked her arm through his as she caught up to him.
Draco couldn't say he was going to talk to Snape, to question the man about his loyalty to Lord Voldemort, she would join him. Where could he go that she probably wouldn't?
"Library," he detached himself from her and quickly bounded up the steps to the second quietest part of the castle.
He quickly went to the back, taking many twists and turns in hopes she wouldn't find him if she did come looking. "Completely mental, that one . . ." he hadn't the slightest clue as to where she had gotten the idea that he fancied her in the least. Maybe it was just a thought she held to herself.
"As are you, if you are talking to yourself," a voice spoke from behind him.
He turned quickly, startled, but not showing it. "You."
"Me," she half-smiled as she pushed past him to grab the book she had come for. "And through I don't know who you are talking about, they can't be that mental."
"Pansy." Why did he always answer her? It should be easier to just ignore her.
"Oh," she sat herself down on a plush chair in the corner. "I retract my previous statement. She seems a bit questionable, if you ask me."
"Well I wasn't," Draco snapped.
Ginny scowled before opening her book to where she had left off last Tuesday and turned her attention to it. A ways into it, she had to stop. "Malfoy, would stop pacing . . . Or at least go elsewhere to do it."
Draco turned to her and sneered. "Be quiet, Weasley. I'm allowing your presence out of the kindness of my heart."
She snapped the book closed at his statement. "Out of the kindness of your heart?" Ginny stood with a glare. "What heart is there in you to have kindness in?"
He shoved her from his pacing path. Draco was rarely at a loss from his words, but he now found himself in that exact situation.
"Draco!" how had she found him? "How boring could this get? You're just pacing about." Pansy had a knack from appearing out of nowhere; it was starting to make him wonder. "Let's so somewhere more . . . private."
Ginny almost gagged at the implication Pansy was making. "If you would excuse me, I believe I have a date with the toilet."
Though Pansy did not seem to understand her jest, it was quiet clear to the red head that Draco did.
"Pansy, will you please leave me alone? There is nothing that has ever been between us, besides the mutual dislike we hold for our fathers."
"But –"
"No, Pansy," Draco said, finalizing his words with a slicing hand gesture. "Just go."
That had to be the first time Ginny had ever heard his voice sound like that. It sounded so final and yet so dispirited. She watched as Pansy nodded and gave the boy a slight smile before leaving the library. When Draco turned around to face her, she found herself jumping back. "I'll just leave you be . . ." she placed the book back on the shelf and picked up her dropped robe.
"Why aren't you taking the book?"
Ginny turned around with a smile. "It wouldn't matter if I did; the print will be gone by nine."
"Pardon?" how could the print just disappear from the book? Wait, what was he thinking? This was Hogwarts, anything could happen.
"This book only shows its script every Tuesday from three to nine," Ginny replied as she swung her robe around her shoulders and shoved her arms in the sleeves.
"Why don't you borrow it?" Why was he still talking to her?
Ginny walked towards him, stopping inches from his body. Keeping her blue-greens on his grays, she reached past his perfectly neat hair to retrieve the book.
Draco's mind was running rampant as she stood so close to him. He could feel the heat coming off her small frame. Though used to having people, mainly Pansy, stand that close to him, he had never been that wary before.
"Sit down. I'll show you why I don't borrow it." The girl did not know if he would follow her order as she sat down on the carpeted floor. She could only hope that he would.
He, however, was toying with the idea of just leaving, but when he looked down at her, he knew he would sit. She looked as if she were a child, eager to read her first book to her parents. Draco sat down in front of her, and waited for her to speak.
Ginny, with a mysterious smile, opened the age old book. "Life is a beautiful melody, only the lyrics are messed up."
He cocked an eyebrow. "That's all it says? No wonder no one che-"
"You can find out what your enemy fears most by observing the means in which he used to frighten you." Ginny stared him in the eye as she spoke. For a moment, she was silent, then she adverted her eyes back to the page. "With many people, what they fear (i.e., abuse, hatred, bigotry, sexual preferences) can lead you to the knowledge of what they fear. In the case of the most famous dark wizard, Lord Voldemort, it seems to be the general dislike of those who could quite possibly be better than him in magic. Though it is not always the case, as we see many times over with his many Muggle killings.
"Voldemort has long been in hiding, from his first defeat by a mere baby boy, yet one wonders what he has been doing all that time. Surely his haunting of the body of one Professor Quirrel Harry Potters' first year was a sign of his coming back to power, one cannot be sure. What was –"
"Stop."
Ginny raised her eyes to the boy. He met her gaze, and in a whisper she asked one simple thing: "Why?"
~~*~~
"You can find out what your enemy fears most by observing the means in which he uses to frighten you." Draco found himself unable to think for a moment as he processed the statement. How could such a little sentence hold so much truth to it? He listened numbly as she read further into the passage before he finally had enough.
"Stop."
And when she looked up to him, he once again saw that innocence that she possessed. She asked him a simple, whispered question. "Why?"
Yes, Draco, why indeed? he asked himself. Why did he need her to stop her reading? Was it because he knew that passage was one that should not be read in within the prying walls of Hogwarts?
No.
Was it because he knew the truth behind the words on that page?
Yes. And it scared him.
~~*~~
Ginny closed the book slowly and quietly. "Draco," it was the first time she had ever said his name. It sounded almost foreign in her mouth. "What I read on the page . . . it scares you, doesn't it?"
How did she know . . ?
"It is the truth, Draco, whether you want to believe it or not." Ginny told him, looking him in the eyes. What she saw shocked her to silence. She had never seen someone's eyes hold that look of complete and utter confusion. How was he confused?
Ginny placed a hand on his cheek, much like a mother would with a child; and felt him flight before moving away. She stood and replaced the book to its proper place. "I know it's strange to hear, but Voldemort will not last. He had made far too many mistakes already."
Far too many mistakes already? What mistakes was she alluding to?
Ginny, right as she was about to turn the bookshelf corner, turned back to him. "Draco?" his stiff movements made him face her after a moment. "You don't have to go through with getting the Dark Mark just because your Father wants you to. It's your choice, and no one else can make it for you." She smiled at him before turning the corner. "I'm here to talk to if you need it."
~~*~~
Virginia had no idea how hard the choice to refuse the Dark Mark – thereby refusing his heritage – was. Draco wondered about her comment though. How had Voldemort make fatal mistakes?
"Severus would know . . ." he stood quickly, and was gone from the library as fast as he had arrived. His shoes clicked as he went down the many flights to the Potions room, and Severus' office.
"Mr. Malfoy, you are most certainly moving quickly."
Draco stopped and turned towards the voice. "Professor. Might we talk in private?"
Confusion flittered in and out of Severus Snapes' black eyes before he led the way to his office. "What can I do for you, Draco?"
"I was having a conversation with . . . an acquaintance about certain things. They mentioned how Voldemort would not win, because he has made too many mistakes already . . . Is that true?"
The Potions Master noticed the gender cover up. "Take a seat, Draco. Now, I don't know who told you that, but there is some truth to it."
"What?" disbelief flowed with the word.
"Yes. Though downfall may not happen, Voldemort had made mistakes that can provide to it. Strange to hear, I know that much from when Albus told me."
"Isn't he coming back to power?" Draco could not believe it. How had Virginia known? "Did she read between the invisible lines?
Snape nodded. "Slowly, yes. But from the near defeat by Mr. Potter three years ago, he has had to start almost all over again."
The blonde boy sat still in thought. "Professor . . ." he met Snapes eyes determinedly. "Are you a spy against Voldemort?"
"What do you think, Draco?"
"I want to think that you aren't, but I rarely get what I want." He lowered his eyes to the nameplate on the desk. "You're the spy she knows about . . ."
She . . . It seemed Draco did not want to speak her name to others. "Yes. She approached Albus with the question after overhearing her brother, Mr. Potter, and Miss Granger talking. She was so sure in her convictions that she would not take our answer of no as an answer. She demanded the truth.
"I –" could he say it aloud, without help form a truth potion? "Severus, I am not sure if I want to join Voldemort."
"I gathered as much," Snape replied, sighing in thought. "What do you want to do, Draco?"
What did he want to do? He hadn't thought hard on that. He just knew that he could no longer see himself helping Voldemort. Following a man who would, as it seemed, inevitably fall and put him, along with many other Death Eaters, in Azkaban. "Work against him, I suppose. Yet how would I escape the Marking?"
Severus shook his head. "It is doubtful you will. You were born to have it; with your families blood in you."
"Then I'll be a spy, like you," Draco stated matter-of-factly.
"Draco, think about what you're saying. Think of the consequences. Think of how people will treat you if the fall of Voldemort comes. People will most likely not care that you were aiding us, if you're killing for them."
Us and them. The eternal sides of every battle. Picking a side was easier for some, like Virginia; it was hard for him.
"Think it over for a few days. Albus and I will talk with you on Thursday."
A polite dismissal, Draco knew, and it was time for him to go. Nodding farewell, he left the office silently, thinking of all Severus asked of him.
Sighing upon entering his room and seeing Virginias' cloak, he sat down and scribbled a note for himself to return it before break. And then proceeded to scribe his thoughts.
It had been so long since he last wrote down what he was thinking that he did not know where to start. His fear had always been that someone would find what he wrote and use it against him. Which led to his reason of not writing for the long period.
~~*~~
Delirious – Deeper
Norah Jones – Don't Know Why
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I mention Ginny's cloak a lot, I've noticed. Probably because it plays an odd part to the entire story. I still have a few surprises up my sleeve for that old cloak.
The quotes are from Quoteland.com, very cool site. The interpretation of the second one, however, was entirely my own. My thoughts on what Voldemort might be up to and such.
Voldemorts' mistakes? You want to know what they are, don't you? Well, only I will know until such time that I find a prefect place to insert them. Be patient, you'll learn in all due time.
I also decided to make Pansy a bit nicer, more human. I don't know why, though. I hold no liking for the girl, but I decided to change the perspective of her. She isn't too far from normal girls that have a serious crush on a boy. I gave her the traits of a girl platonically, almost hopelessly, in love with a boy she knows deep down she'll never have.
