Chapter 15: Separation

Ginny

They stay outside for another hour, talking until the sunshine begins to wane and Ron is shouting at them from the doorway to come inside for dinner. Hermione agrees that it's best to keep this thing with Malfoy between them for now. Ginny agrees that it's best to end it.

She walks into the house behind the other girl feeling exhausted. Everything Hermione said makes sense. The issue of trust aside, there's the fact that they don't even really know each other.

"What can you possibly have in common?" Hermione had asked her. "Everything you believe is the opposite of what he believes. How can he claim to have feelings for you when he doesn't even know anything about you?"

What could Ginny say? That it's something she feels deep in her gut when he's standing in front of her? That she can't stop replaying his kisses, or the heat of his body, or his hands running possessively over her skin? But that's not a relationship. That's just hormones.

Ginny places the empty lemonade jug on the kitchen counter and sits down to dinner.

"Took you long enough to come inside," mutters Ron.

"Oh Ron, you let them have their girl talk," her mother fusses, piling mashed potatoes onto his plate. She smiles at Ginny and plops a spoonful of potatoes onto her plate. "It's nice to have another girl in the house, isn't it Ginny?"

Ginny is saved a response when Fred flicks a gob of mashed potatoes at Ron. His aim is high, and it lands squarely on her father's lapel. The dinner erupts into chaos.

She doesn't sleep well that night. The next morning she wakes up determined to get to Grimmauld Place as soon as possible. If she's going to end things with Draco, she's got to do it quickly or else the waiting will drive her crazy.

Another two days crawl by, but then one evening her father is heading to Grimmauld Place to speak with Remus, who's been spending most of his days at the old house to keep watch over Draco. Ginny has to fight tooth and nail to be allowed to come along, but in the end she sways her mother by painting a picture of a lonely Draco Malfoy, desperate for some company. Ron opens his mouth, no doubt to say something nasty about Draco, but Hermione shoos him and Harry out of the room. She gives Ginny a meaningful look before heading up the stairs.

Ginny follows her father a little ways away from the house. He produces the portkey – a bulbous, chipped vase – and with a nauseating jerk, they arrive at Grimmauld Place just as the sun is kissing the tips of clouds. The air smells wet and earthy, and the grand, old house looks somehow even more decrepit in the fading light.

Her father disappears into the kitchen with Remus, and Ginny walks up the stairs. She can see Draco's pale face peering down at her through the open door.

"Hi," she whispers when she makes it inside his room. The lights are off, and the room looks smaller in the dimness.

Draco takes a step towards her and lifts her into his arms. "Ginny," he sighs into her hair. "I didn't know you were coming today. I've missed you like mad."

She draws her arms around his neck, breathing him in for a moment. But then Hermione's stern look filters into her mind, and she pushes him gently away. "I need to talk to you."

"Maybe later," he murmurs, his lips running down her neck, his hands on her hips drawing her closer.

"Wait." She pushes him away more firmly. "Hermione knows about us."

"Oh." Draco shrugs. He looks out the window. "That's fine. Is that a problem? It's not a problem for me." There's a challenge in his voice. "Are you ashamed? Is that why you look so upset?"

Ginny frowns. She thought she had hidden her feelings pretty well, but apparently not. "No, Draco." She begins to pace, unable to look at him as she recites the words she'd planned in her mind over the last few days. "We need to talk about us. I don't think our relationship is healthy."

His expression grows colder, the warmth seeping away. "You think so, or Granger thinks so?"

She ignores the question. "We don't even know each other, really, if you think about it."

"How can you say that?" Draco takes a jerky step back, hitting the wall behind him.

Ginny puts her hands on his arm to steady him. He won't look at her face either, his eyes wavering somewhere above her head. He looks worn and tired, so different from the arrogant, entitled Slytherin from school, flanked by his cronies. "You're going through some kind of identity crisis," she tells him.

Draco scowls, looks away. "No I'm not. It's not that simple."

Ginny tries a different tactic. "What exactly is it that you love about me, Draco? You don't know anything about me. You think I'm pretty, I bet. Maybe I'm good to snog now and again."

"I do think that, yes." He grins.

"Do you know what I like to do for fun? Do you know who my friends are, or my favourite band, or my Quidditch team?"

"It's got to be the Harpies, right?"

"Stop it, I'm serious. You know I'm right. We don't even know each other. We'd never even spoken before that night in the dungeons."

Draco looks down at her with a rueful smile, his blond hair falling into his eyes. "There was that time you got me with a Bat-Bogey Hex that I couldn't get rid of for hours."

Ginny grins, but then the circumstances of that hex come to mind, and she feels terribly unhappy again. It was last year, when Umbridge held them all hostage, and Draco had been a different person in her eyes. He'd bullied them all mercilessly as leader of the Inquisitorial Squad. He'd been callous and power-hungry. Hermione was right. How much could a person change, really, in such a short time?

He's watching her face carefully. She meets his eyes. "The reason you think you love me, Draco, is because I was there when you needed someone like me, when you couldn't reach out to anyone else. I think you've just confused relief and attraction with … something stronger."

The look on his face is a little heartbreaking. "What about you, then?" he asks sarcastically. "Have you got an identity crisis as well?"

"I'm…damaged."

Draco scoffs.

"No, I'm serious. You know about the diary and the heir of Slytherin and all that. You know what happened to me in my first year."

"I mean, I know a bit. What does that have to do with me? I'm not the heir of Slytherin, if that's what you're thinking."

He tries to pull her into him, but she resists, side-steps his outstretched hand. "Listen, all right? I poured my heart out into Tom's diary. Tom Riddle's diary. You know who that is, don't know you."

"Yes." His voice is low. His touches his arm, unconsciously, where the Dark Mark rests below his sleeve.

"I liked him. I had a crush on him. I thought he was handsome, you understand?" There are tears in her eyes, and Ginny swipes them angrily away.

"You were only eleven. You couldn't have known who he was."

"My age doesn't matter, and that's not true. I could feel that there was something wrong with him. As time went on, I knew on some level that he was a dark wizard, but I couldn't stop using the diary. I couldn't resist."

"Oh, Ginny, that's not…"

"I'm damaged inside. It's why I feel so drawn to you, Draco, why I can't … move past this."

"I'm not Tom Riddle. I am not like that. I was never like that, but now, how can you still compare me to him?"

"I need to have a normal, healthy relationship. I need to be with someone for the right reasons, for normal reasons."

He finally gets his arms around her, draws her into him. "I think you're wrong, Ginny." He whispers into her hair. "I know what I feel."

"I'm sorry," she says, and she hears her voice crack and knows she's going to have to cry. She feels a great, ugly sob welling inside of her, and she doesn't want him to see it.

She pushes him away and stumbles out of the room, desperate to leave as her face contorts, the tears already burning in her eyes. She hurries down the staircase. Looking back, she can see his crushed expression.


Draco

He is lying on the bed and staring up at the waterstained ceiling. There's an elaborate spider web in the corner by the window entangled with dead flies. It's raining again, and the rain hits the ground hard in a steady, angry patter. Draco throws one arm over his eyes. He doesn't know how to answer Ginny. If she even wants an answer. It sounded like she'd made up her mind. But hasn't that been their whole relationship, since the beginning? Being drawn together, kissing and then fighting. Moving forward, and then backtracking. Over the past months, they've spent more time being angry with each other than kissing or even talking. Why, then, does it feel like Draco is losing something he desperately needs?

Not opening his eyes, he listens to the rain hammer down. From the depths of his mind, he brings up each of their meetings, beginning with the first time he kissed her in the dungeons. Her face was pale in the dimness, the smattering of freckles trailing over the bridge of her nose, sweeping up to her forehead. His lips barely brushed hers. Then, in the corridors, they had shouted at one another, and then she'd been in his arms again. Later, their walk by the lake, when he'd felt uncharacteristically awkward and cheerful until their conversation had unraveled. Because they had nothing in common. Because they couldn't find any common ground.

But all that's changed now. He'd switched sides, capitulated to Dumbledore, disobeyed his parents and put his family in a precarious position. He'd joined her. He'd taken her side. How could she tell him now that they have nothing holding them together when she's the only friend he has left; when he has turned his entire life upside down for her. He may not be completely reformed, but he is trying.

The rain pummels the dark window and Draco seethes in his dim prison. He imagines Ginny holed up with Potter all day long while he's alone in this stinking old house. She told him how she and Potter broke up, that the tosser actually broke up with her, for her safety. Maybe she thinks Draco should have broken it off with her as well, for her safety. He's the fucking Death Eater, after all.

Potter's probably staring at her all day long, and eventually he'll try to snog her again and she'll let him because he's such a fucking saint, and she's so fucking damaged or whatever ridiculous notions she's convinced herself of.

His thoughts spiral into disquieted dreams, and he still thinking about her when he wakes up the next morning. The sun is steaming through the rain-streaked windows. He wonders if she's thinking about him at all.

Draco crawls out of bed, changes out of the clothes he'd slept in, goes to the loo. He doesn't remember waking up at night, but he feels like he didn't get any rest. Like most days, the house is empty save the old house elf who brings him tea, and the werewolf who keeps watch over Draco. Some days, Moody, Kingsley, or his cousin Nymphadora replace Lupin, but the werewolf seems to be his primary jailer.

Draco comes down to the kitchen for breakfast. He's been eating in his room most days, but the isolation and the loneliness is beginning to draw him out more and more. Lupin is sitting at the table, the remnants of his breakfast next to him.

"Good morning, Draco," he says. "Have a seat if you want some breakfast. Kreacher has made some delicious breakfast rolls."

Draco sits down without a word, and a moment later the old house elf is bustling around him with plates of food and a steaming pot of tea. He spoons sugar and milk into his tea and stirs it very slowly, the weight of another empty, pointless day settling over him.

Lupin is reading the Prophet, sipping his tea. He looks rather peaky, even more bedraggled than usual. "Are you sick?" Draco asks, his tone aggressive.

Lupin looks up from his paper, apparently surprised to hear Draco speak. He shakes his head and his mouth twists into an unhappy smile. "The full moon's a few days away."

Draco jerks away, nearly upending his cup. "You're not going to say here, are you?"

"Don't worry. I've still got plenty of Wolfsbane Potion remaining in my stores. Luckily, Snape brewed a large batch of the stuff before he..." Lupin waves his hand dismissively to capture Snape's betrayal.

Draco nods, settles back into his seat. He chews his breakfast slowly. Lupin doesn't leave the kitchen even though his tea is finished. The sunlight filters in from the kitchen windows in dusty columns, and outside he can hear birds and Muggle automobiles.

"I've got to do something," he says finally to Lupin. "I can't just sit in this house day in and day out."

"It's not permanent, Draco."

"Yes, but how long is it for?

Lupin looks him over. "Sirius was in this position too, you know."

"Sirius Black?" Draco frowns. How many times would he be compared to the ill-fated Black brothers.

"He escaped from Azkaban, you remember? He was wrongly accused of his crimes, but the Ministry didn't pardon him, and so he had to hide. He hated it. He stayed here for months, but when Harry broke into the Department of Mysteries last year, he insisted on coming along to help."

"My father was arrested that night," Draco says softly. That had been the beginning of the end for Draco. His father's arrest had brought the Dark Lord's ire on the family, had precipitated both his own Dark Mark and his nagging doubt at everything he'd been led to believe about the Dark Lord's reign.

Lupin nodded. "I know that. I was there."

"You were?" Draco doesn't know why he's surprised.

"Sirius was killed."

Draco nods. He'd known that, of course. It had been in the news. "So you're saying I should stay here, or else I'll be killed like Sirius Black."

Lupin shrugs. "I'm saying you don't have a choice, Draco. I'm saying Sirius might still be with us today if he hadn't insisted on leaving this house."

Draco frowns. "He couldn't have let you all go without him. Besides, any one of you could have died that night. That's the risk you all took, wasn't it?"

"But are you prepared to take that risk? Are you prepared to die, Draco?"

A cold dread snakes its way through his gut. "I mean, I don't want to die obviously."

"Then stay put for now."

Draco frowns into his tea. "Have you heard anything about my mother?"

"I haven't. Snape was our best connection to the Death Eaters, and now that we've lost him..." He shakes his head, sounding tired. "I'm sure she's safe, Draco. There has been a breakout in Azkaban, and we have reason to believe your father has escaped. He might have made it home by now, to Malfoy Manor."

Draco's mind is racing. If his father is home, is that good news or bad? How has he reacted to his only son's desertion? Does he even know? "I need to speak with my parents," he says.

"We've gone through this, Draco. The answer is no. Not yet. Be patient."

Draco scowls and doesn't reply.

"It's not safe for you, and it's not safe for us. You know too much about the Order of the Phoenix now. You're a liability."

"I won't tell them anything, if that's what you're thinking. I said I'm not a Death Eater, and I meant it."

Lupin shakes his head again. "This is the safest place for you right now." He turns the page of the Prophet and grows absorbed in the article.

Draco feels his face flush with anger. The werewolf can't keep him here. He needs to make sure his mother is alright; it's not too much to ask. He's not an idiot. He can be careful.

Draco abandons the remainder of his breakfast and storms up the stairs.