Chapter 17: Jailbreak
Draco
He has finished both letters and rolled them up. They are sitting on the old, scratched-up wooden desk.
He wonders, for the thousandth time, what his parents think of him. He wonders what Snape has told them. He feels pulled toward home, toward his comfortable room and his familiar life. A haze of homesickness has settled on his thoughts. But that life is gone. His home has been taken over, and his comfortable life, his room and his manor and the familiar routines of day-to-day life, have been hijacked by Death Eaters. Even if he were to find a place at the Manor, he cannot go back to his old life.
"It's gone," he whispers to himself.
He walks around the room and places his few positions into his school trunk, which McGonagall had brought over from the Slytherin dormitory when he was first smuggled out to Grimmauld Place. As he packs, Draco wonders about Pansy, or Crabbe and Goyle. If he wrote to them, would they help him? Would they be on his side? But he can't be sure.
Ginny Weasley is probably the only one he can trust, but she hasn't been back since that day she wrapped her freckled arms around his neck, and then pushed him away.
Maybe Granger didn't say anything to her. Or maybe she did, and Ginny decided it wasn't enough. She was too damaged. He was too dark.
His packing done, Draco sits down on the bed, the mattress sagging beneath him. He sits for a minute, tapping his fingers against his thigh, and then jerks back up. Continues pacing around the room, his eyes on the window, waiting for nightfall.
Maybe he's going mad from the boredom, the restlessness. The werewolf has been hiding out in his room all week. The moon is waxing, and though he's assured Draco that the potion will keep him docile, he hasn't been around at breakfast. There's only the ancient house-elf, and it doesn't seem inclined to speak with him either.
Draco has started talking to himself, in his mind, and sometimes even out loud. Mostly mutterings, rationalizations. Accusing himself on behalf of others, then defending his actions. Eventually, his inner-voice peters off, and anxiety and fear and shame creep up on him in the dusty silence. At night, Snape's Killing Curse blazes through the darkness behind his eyelids, jolting him awake.
Draco sighs. It's twilight. Fluid blue shadows stretch down the block. The occasional Muggle walks past.
A few more hours.
He walks over to the desk and picks up his letters.
One to Narcissa Malfoy.
The other to Ginny Weasley.
One asking to meet, so he can see with his own eyes that Mother is alive and well, and can explain in his own words why he'd abandoned her.
One for Ginny with his justification: he hasn't deserted her. Maybe they can find each other again someday if they are both alive at the end of all this.
Eyes on the window, Draco watches the darkness slowly consume the empty street below. The werewolf is locked away in his room, weakened by his potion. Draco takes out his wand. It takes a few attempts to perform a Shrinking Charm on his trunk. Finally, he wrangles it down to a manageable size and stuffs it into the deep pockets of his traveling cloak. He runs a hand through his hair and takes a deep breath.
He pads quietly down the stairs. The house is dark, silent as death itself. He passes Walburga's painting, but even she remains quiet. Perhaps she holds no grudge against the pureblood Malfoy heir.
Draco presses on the ancient door handle, and he walks quickly into the damp, dark evening. His cloak swishes behind him. His trunk bangs against his leg. Draco takes one last look at the Black House, and he Disapparates.
Ginny
Ginny sits up in bed, her blankets rustling around her. She blinks into the darkness. Something woke her. What was it? She looks to the left where Hermione's adjacent cot used to stand, but remembers the cot is gone. Hermione moved downstairs when Bill and Fleur arrived, and her dad expanded the first level of the Burrow to accommodate the wedding party.
The corner where Hermione had slept has a pile of discarded robes and Quidditch magazines. Nothing but blue, bulbous shadows in the darkness. She feels around for her wand and casts Lumos. Her room is empty. The cicadas have quieted down, and there's only the rustle of wind outside, and the occasional scurry of a gnome or a small animal in the garden below.
Ginny's about to extinguish her wand, burrow back into her blankets, when something on her desk catches her eye. It's a small, circular object, and it's vibrating slightly, trembling against the wooden desk. "Draco," Ginny whispers, realizing what it is. He's left Grimmauld Place.
She gets out of bed and pulls some robes off the floor, jerking them on over her pyjamas. She doesn't turn on her lights in case someone gets suspicious. She doesn't want anyone coming to investigate, telling her to wait in the safety of her room while they all go barreling out into world. The only person who knows about the tracking charm is Hermione, but she doesn't want to tell her either. Ginny didn't think they'd need to track him at all. She didn't think he would leave. But Hermione saw this coming. Hermione insisted that couldn't be trusted. And she was right, wasn't she?
Ginny grabs the small, circular orb off the table. She can see now that it's pulsing with a steady glow as it vibrates faster in her closed fist, the pale light leaking out between her fingers. She grips her wand, pulls her robes tighter over her pyjamas, and Disapparates, letting the pulsing orb draw her to him.
She appears in an empty street, the pavement dark and glistening with recent rain. There are shops on either side of her, all dark and shuttered. There isn't a witch or wizard in sight, only a few owls hooting softly from the rooftops.
It takes several beats for Ginny to realize that she is in Diagon Alley. She'd never seen it like this before: empty and dark, closed up for the night. The lampposts are lit, but the thin, fluttery light they give has turned the streets to greyscale.
The tracking orb is pulsing insistently in her hand. She peers ahead, but nobody is there.
Then, she hears the shuffle of footsteps. Behind her. She whirls around to see a cloak vanish into an alleyway. Ginny runs after it. She doesn't know if it's him. It could be an enemy, a Death Eater. She grips her wand with a hex ready on her lips. Maybe she's being foolish – she could be killed. Worse, she could be captured to lure Harry into a deadly trap.
Stupid, Ginny thinks, pounding down the dark alleyway. In the middle of the night. Following a skittish shadow. Nobody knows where she's gone.
The figure turns a corner. Ginny skids to a stop, catching him darting behind a wall.
He whirls around, his wand in a white-knuckle grip, his open-wide grey eyes full of terror. His chest rises and falls. He lowers the wand. "Ginny?"
She lowers her own wand, relieved. It's not a Death Eater. At least, not a dangerous one. "What are you doing here? Why did you leave?"
""What are you doing here?" he echoes, the terror leaving his face, replaced by confusion. "How did you find me?"
They are both catching their breaths, their questions breathy in the grimy alleyway. Draco's eyes are darting back and forth. He still looks nervous. He casts a muffiato and makes sure nobody has followed her.
Ginny opens her hand to reveal the vibrating orb.
"Is that a Sneakoscope?" he asks.
"It used to be, actually. Hermione charmed it to track you if you left Grimmauld Place."
He looks skeptical. "She just charmed a Sneakoscope to keep tabs on me? Come on, you expect me to believe that?"
"Hermione's brilliant!" Ginny shoves the device into the pocket of her robes. "You don't know the half of what she can do."
He rolls his eyes. "I'm just saying it's not likely. That's complicated magic, even for Potter's pet Mud – Muggleborn witch."
Ginny knows what he was going to say. "She's not his pet," she huffs.
"No, that'd be you, would it?"
"Just shut it, Malfoy."
They're both angry now, in each others' faces, but it feels good and familiar. Damn. Ginny takes a step back. "She didn't do it from scratch. She used the Ministry's Trace. You're still underage. She somehow tapped it into, adjusted it. Instead of going off when you do magic in front of Muggles, it goes off when you set foot outside of Grimmauld Place."
Draco takes her cue, backs away and calms down. "Oh," is all he says.
"She took some of you hair the last time she saw you, with Harry. That's why she came upstairs."
He looks like he's trying to remember. He finds her eyes. "Did she talk to you, then? Did Granger tell you..."
Ginny nods.
First, all they'd talked about were the Death Eaters roaming around Grimmauld Place. Hermione was obsessed with the fact that they couldn't see it, when surely Snape would have told them the location. Finally, when Harry and Ron had gone down to dinner, she kept Ginny aside and they talked about Draco. She was confused by him. She relayed his message, and then she'd shrugged.
"He cares about you, as improbable as that seems," she'd said to Ginny.
"But you still don't trust him?"
"I'm still working on the tracker, if that's what you mean." She'd been sure he would try to slip away. Ginny hated that she'd been right.
Now, in the empty alleyway, Ginny grips the tracker inside her pocket. She meets Draco's eyes again. "She told me what you said."
Draco holds her gaze. "But you didn't come back?"
"I was going to," she whispers, taken aback at his accusatory tone. "I was just talking some time to think things over..." Ginny frowns. She shouldn't be the one being interrogated. "It doesn't matter now, though. Does it? You've left. You've changed your mind? Are you going back?"
"Going back?" he says.
"Back to them? Back to Voldemort?"
Draco
"No!" The name drives a spike of fear through chest. Merlin, he hates how she says it so causally, so insolently. She hasn't yet been close enough to the horror of it all. Her fear is still theoretical. He narrows his eyes. "Of course I'm not going back," he tells her. "Do you think I would? After everything that's happened."
Ginny just looks at him with equal measure pity and mistrust. He hates that look. "Why did you leave then? They told you not to go. You could be a liability to the Order now. They trusted you and you've gone and run away. What am I supposed to think, Draco?"
"Hah, that's a laugh! Nobody trusts me worth a damn – you should know that, Weasley." He feels anger in his fingertips, flaring. "They only pumped me for information, didn't they?"
"We protected you!"
"Your lot locked me up and wouldn't let me leave! I was a prisoner, wasn't I? Couldn't even owl my own parents."
"We trusted you!" she's shouting now, her voice high and desperate. "After what you did! After you let Death Eaters into Hogwarts! After Dumbledore DIED!"
Draco swallows back his retort, the anger leaching out of him. She's right. He's been a right bastard, and they still took him in, gave him some security. "Stop it, Ginny." He whispers. "Stop shouting at me. We're on the same side."
"Are we?"
"Yes!" He takes her hands, and they're cold. He squeezes them. "I'm on your side. I told Granger to tell you that, and I meant it. I'm on your side. For good."
She looks at him hard, her brown eyes locking onto this. "Ok. Fine. So then, why did you leave?"
"I told you. The werewolf wouldn't let me contact my parents. He wouldn't even listen to me."
"It's not safe," she says obstinately.
Draco needs her to understand. "I have to see my parents. I need to explain everything, and to see if they're alright. I need to make sure my mother is safe, that she hasn't been punished for what I've done. My father...I want to know...if he still loves me, if he'd forgive me."
Ginny's hard gaze softens a bit. "But Draco, maybe if you waited a bit longer. Another week..."
"I've got to meet with Mother. They won't let me send an owl or use the Floo, or anything. I just need to see that she's all right."
Ginny takes a shuddering breath. "Where are you going, then, if not back to Malfoy Manor?"
He doesn't know exactly, but he won't tell her that. "I thought I'd start here and find an inn to hide out in. When the owl post opens tomorrow morning, I'll send my letters."
"Your letters?"
He pulls them out of his cloak. "I guess I only need to send one of them now." He hands her a scroll. "This one was supposed to be for you. So you wouldn't worry. So you wouldn't think that I've betrayed you all." He smirks at her, and she takes the scroll.
"You can't stay in Diagon Alley. It's too central, too crowded. Someone will see you."
Draco sighs. "Yeah, I guess I didn't think about that."
Ginny pulls at her hair, looking tense. "What about the Burrow? I can take you there for now." She spots his confused look. "It's what we call my house. The Burrow."
"Are you serious? Merlin, it sounds like some kind of animal nest. You're just making fun of yourselves now, are you?"
She slaps him hard, and he grins. But then his grin falters. "Anyway, I can't go to your home, not with your family there. They'll just send me right back where I came from."
"Yeah, probably."
"I need some time, Ginny. I'll go back into hiding, but I just need a few days to contact my parents."
"Are you sure it's safe? What if they just drag you home against your will? Or worse?"
Draco closes his eyes. "My mother wouldn't do that. I have to trust her, don't I? She's my mother."
Ginny nods, but continues to look uncertain. "Alright, how about this. I know an inn. It's in Wales where my cousin Doxy lives. It's run by this old wizard, and it's completely out of the way of everything. It's just one of those pubs, you know, at the edge of a random Muggle village. We stayed there once a few years ago when we were visiting Doxy's family, on our way to Egypt."
"Egypt?"
"Never mind. There's a few Wizarding families nearby, but mostly it's just Muggles, so you'll have an easier time staying invisible."
"Ok."
"Yeah?"
He smiles. "Yeah. Take me there."
She loops her arm around his own. "I don't know if I'm ready to try side-along apparation. I've only just learned how to Apparate, and I'm not that good yet. I only ended up here as easily as I did because the tracking charm pulled me."
Draco tightens the hold on her arm and pulls her into him. "Just think of us as one person," he says. Her body is warm against him, her hair tickling his chin.
"I don't want to splinch you," she whispers.
Draco closes his eyes and sighs dramatically. "Just do it, Weasley, before I lose my nerve."
They Disapparate with an audible crack, away from the quiet alleyway in the heart of Wizarding London.
