Sunsets

Draco wondered, as he walked away, if he had done the right thing. The guilt in his chest was almost unbearable, and he was unable to stifle it with thoughts of her having a better life without him. He could try to give her a better life, god, he could try, and he would try so hard, he promised himself. He wiped tears off his cheeks before he exited the Astronomy Staircase, having descended the hundred and fifty or so steps in an almost trance-like state--he wiped the tears away and he shoved aside what he acknowledged to be infantile thoughts.

'You know better Draco,' he thought, his father dawning fearfully on the horizon in his mind, 'You know better.' He wanted to bang his head against something, wanted to hit himself so hard he just forgot everything.

Lord, how he wanted to forget.

---------

Ginny dodged questioning stares from the other students all the way back to her Dorm. Her eyes were puffy and no matter how hard she tried she couldn't bring herself to stop crying. She just couldn't. If she loved him, and he loved her, they should be able to be together for always. They should be able to love each other--why, why did it hurt so much to love him? Why did it hurt so much to love her Prince Charming? She felt as if all hope was gone, any thoughts of chasing after him, pursuing what she wanted, snuffed out of her mind. 'Mother,' she thought, slamming the door shut and cursing it locked, 'I've failed in the worse way possible. I can't do it--I can't do anything. The one person I just may love--no, I know I love, is making all the decisions, for us both, and it seems I'm not meant to have a say...even if it is my own life in question.'

She held the vial tight in her hand, wanting to crush the damned object that would show her his sorrows, show her the reason he couldn't be with her. She didn't want there to be any reason that he couldn't be with her--it just wasn't right. Their paths should be clear, their paths should be wide open and filled with oppurtunities for their love to blossom. And here, clutched in her hand, was the very container that held this reason, that held the very calamity that pushed her away from him. Away from, she thought ironically, Draco Malfoy.

She'd never planned to fall in love with him, honestly. She'd never expected it to happen anywhere along the way. At first she'd just felt the need to help him--she'd been compelled; then, it somehow turned into something more. She didn't know how or when, but it had, and now she couldn't erase it from existence--she couldn't just pretend it had never happened when every breath she took had his name flowing out onto her lips. She lived for him now; she had a good family, best friends and all the happiness she could ever ask for, but now none of that mattered because with out him, everything was misery.

She curled up into her bed early that night, leaving her dorm-mates to figure out how to unlock the door themselves. She didn't care when they barged in and gave her angry lectures, cursing her from head to toe until they realized she was elsewhere, that her mind was too far away for even their furious shrieks to reach. Then, it was quiet, and Ginny lay there, distant, the vial still held in her shaking hands as silent sobs wracked her body.

She would owl her mum in the morning.

---------

The vial was forgotten by Sunday--or more so ignored. Ginny placed it beneath her pillow, somewhere she never looked and rarely touched. Ocassionally her fingers would brush past it at night, only to be snatched away and pressed desperately between her legs. She didn't want to know why he couldn't be with her--if there was actually a valid reason, she thought she may lose all hope in living life. This way, she could maybe go on thinking him a git, a git that she loved and a git that didn't want to be with her.

She still hadn't told Helen. She hadn't told her bestfriend a word of her dilemnas, though Helen's previous cryptic statements the night before Hogsmeade were still unbearably haunting. Why did innocent, oblivious Helen who dated a new boy every week know so much about love to be able to effectively state, "It's better to have loved and lost, than to have never loved at all." And then her mother...Ginny shuddered in remembrance, remembering her mother's simple and precise reply to her most recent letter:

I'm disappointed in you.

Yes, the words had stung Ginny more than any other. Childhood reprimands and scoldings all floated back into her mind--the same ones she had so taken for granted, the same ones she had thought she'd grown out of. She hadn't realized how much it would hurt to hear those words, or even to read them, from her mother...she hadn't realize how much it would ache her heart with the admittance that she had let Molly Weasley down.

'But I can't do anything, mum,' she wanted to whine, just as she had done when she was a child, 'I can't do anything if he's being a git, if he won't allow me to love him...' And then her mother would smile that ever maternal smile, gazing fondly down at her youngest child, You can do anything you want, darling.

'If only that were true,' she thought, bitterly as she settled down to sleep that night, Helen's probing questions as to Ginny's declining social ability still drifting about her head. 'If only I could do anything I want, I think I would turn back time and never be born.'

She knew what her mother would say to that, too. And then I'd never have a daughter, never have a little girl to make me proud.

'But all I do is disappoint you.'

She shut her eyes, tired of the meagre grey light that seemed to always hover about nighttime. Why couldn't it ever be black? She flipped over. Why couldn't life ever be simple? She yawned, running a tired hand over her tired face. And why couldn't Draco Malfoy just let her love him?!

---------

Draco had just about hibernated the past few days away. He was only seen for classes and then, rather sparingly. It was as though he had become a shadow, loping recklessly about Hogwarts from class to class, ducking into hallways at the slighest sign of red hair and sliding to bruised knees as strawberry and vanilla smells wafted past him, oblivious.

He couldn't bear to face her if she'd seen the potion. He couldn't bear to see the scorn on her face, the final acceptance that she was better off without him. He couldn't bear it, so he hid from it. It was what he did best nowadays, and he figured he may as well master it before he went home for Christmas at the Malfoy Manor. He'd be doing a lot of hiding if he wanted to keep himself intact and injury-less enough to return to school, to get away from Lucius again. He'd be doing a lot of smuggling from room to room, creeping from corridor to corridor and securely charming his rooms locked every night.

He groaned, exhausted as he tumbled into his Dorm that Tuesday evening. He'd stopped going to meals--it was just too common a gathering place. He could bump into any one there...he could bump into her. His heart seemed to give a twinge of displeasure from within his chest, as though he were starving it just as he had taken to starving himself. He flopped onto his bed--it was still light outside; everybody would be in the Great Hall having dinner--maybe, just maybe he could sneak down into the kitchens, or maybe even go out onto the grounds...

But he decided not to. Not only did he avoid Ginny Weasley; but it seemed he now avoided every one else, as well. He no longer wanted the bustling service of the house elves, eager to please; he no longer wanted the warmth of the sun upon the back of his head. All he wanted was Ginny Weasley, and Ginny Weasley was the one thing he could not have.

It was quite torturous, really, if you thought about it--and frustrating too. Draco had never been much of a decision maker; his father had made all the decisions, regardless of what any one else in the household thought. Narcissa had made one decision, one decision for herself, and though it seemed abundantly selfish, Draco could not help but congratulate her at her swift escape. His mother was his mother, and she had loved him in her Malfoy-like way, and he supposed he had loved her, too.

And now it had come Draco's turn to make a decision. He could have been selfish like his mother and taken Ginny Weasley for all she was worth; he could have ravished her, worshipped her body and soul, wrapped her in his love and given his life to protect her. But he didn't know if that would be enough to save her from his father, from the darkness his life had turned into--he didn't know if that would be enough to keep her happy.

Happy, like the way she was with her friends in the Great Hall; happy, like she was with her family of red-haired Weasels.

It occured to Draco how much he was unlike his mother. She had gone, not caring what would happen to him. But Draco had gone, knowing that though it would hurt him to leave the Weasley, the one girl, it seemed, who made his life worthwhile, it would make her happier, let her lead a better life.

He knew what his father would do to her if he found about their impromptu relationship--he knew, and he accepted the fact that he rather it be him than Ginny Weasley any day.

---------

Her heart caught in her throat when she saw him that Wednesday afternoon for Potions--her heart caught and it stuck. She felt as though she were a fish out of water, gasping for breath as something unknown choked her, squeezing the blood from her heart and rendering her paralysed. Everything tingled warning, everything shouted for her to run up to him, forced something solid and nutrituous down his throat, then make him sleep for a week--everything spun, and in the end all she could do was sit quietly at her desk, staring complacently down at the hardwood.

He looked a wreck, almost worst than he had when she'd first seen him this year. She hadn't seen him at meals, and now she knew why--he was probably starving himself to death, the git! Her heart clenched, she felt tears well up--fighting them back, her hands clasped the edge of the table; she couldn't allow this to happen. He mightn't want to be with her, but that didn't mean he should stop wanting to be in this world, too.

Quietly, she rose from her seat, careful not to alert Snape, and slid into the vacant chair next to him. He looked up from his notes, startled, then his eyes darkened and he looked back down, now furiously scribbling words onto the parchment. Gently, she reached her hand out and placed it over his free one, that lay upon the parchment to study it as he wrote. He looked up again, then away, his quille pressing so hard onto the paper that it broke.

He was such a mess, and it pained her to see him this way. His hair wasn't combed, his shirt wasn't ironed and it hung about his frame loosely, as though he were once again descending into the skeletal stage where she had found him at the beginning of the year. "Draco..." she whispered, after making sure no one was looking.

His head snapped around to look at her, his eyes as stormy and defiant as they had been that night in the Astronomy Tower.

"What are you doing to yourself?"

He got up abruptly, strolling swiftly out of the room and slamming the door behind him.

Snape looked up from his desk, eyes questioning and cold.

---------

Ginny stormed into her room after class, her stomach growling, though she fully intended to skip dinner. This wasn't fair. He couldn't do this to himself and not expect her to care! He couldn't keep on walking away from her like this! She wouldn't let him.

She yanked the potion out from beneath her pillow, furiously uncorking it. If this was what was keeping them apart, then she might as well know. She might as well see why he didn't want her, why he had convinced himself he couldn't be with her.

She sat on the edge of her bed, drawing the curtains closed around her. The Potion smelt sickly sweet, and it left a bitter taste in your mouth if you breathed too much of it. She was determined to know now, lord she was determined to know. He couldn't break her heart without her consent, she decided, he couldn't make her let her mother down unless she let him. She would never let him. Slowly, she raised it to her lips, whispering, "Cattivius Ricodara," into its still surface.

She had the impression that she was falling, falling, falling into something unfathomably deep and deadly, as though she had lost control of every nerve and muscle in her body and was now part of some swirl of uncontrollable motion. She couldn't see anything, though she had her eyes open--everything was black, yet everything was moving.

Her knees sent a painful jolt up her legs as her feet hit hard ground, and she looked around, puzzled. She was in a large room, icily furnished in black, silver with glimpses of forest green every here and there. At first, Ginny had no idea where she might be--eventually, the idea came to her that she was in the Malfoy Manor. The place was impeccably clean, as though it were not even a house that some one lived in; everything seemed expensive, right down to the silver beading on the plush cushions, and the sheen on the curtains.

That was another thing--the room was impossibly dark, it seemed, though there were lights all around. The black curtains seemed unwilling to let in any sunlight, giving the place an utterly dead look.

Ginny was just about to explore further when she heard a deathly scream, sending her carolling back into the reality of what this was, after all. Draco Malfoy's worst experiences, all compressed into a vial of tiny potion of which she was now viewing.

She spun around to where the scream had come from, flinching to see a slender woman with white-blonde hair strewn across the floor, her pale arms up around her head, shielding it from the thumping kicks she was receiving from an unsturdy looking man. Ginny recognized, with a pang of displeasure, that this was the same man who had dropped Tom Riddle's diary into her cauldron all those years ago...this was Lucius Malfoy.

Except, she noticed, younger and obviously in a rather volatile mood.

The woman's wails echoed throughout the house, and eventually Ginny began to hear the sobbing of a child in the background. She blinked away the view of the now bloodied woman, looking past her into the shadows where a little boy crouched, tears rolling down his cheeks as he protested meekly.

She knew who he was immedietely; a young Draco Malfoy, sobbing at the sight of his mother's broken body.

The scene switched, and Ginny was faced with that unbearable feel of vertigo.

This time she was in a dining room, where three people sat along the length of a very long and lavishly dressed table. The food on their plates were very little, but the decoration almost made up for that. Ginny recognized the woman she had seen before, sitting silently at one end, Lucius Malfoy sitting galantly at the other, and Draco, still a mere child, sitting quietly in the middle.

The atmosphere was tense, as though this family sitting down to eat with one another had never even met each other before. Ginny thought back, fleetingly, to her own noisy family dinners, filled with bursting laughter and unsanitary burps. Then, there was a small, hardly audible noise--a sneeze, from the young Malfoy. Ginny almost smiled at the timidity of it, but her adoration was quickly snuffed out as the bellowing voice of Lucius Malfoy rose about the room in a scream of anger.

Ginny had to turn away for what came next--it was too painful for her to look. She felt the tears grow in her eyes as she heard the child scream--as she heard Draco's wails, her Draco's wails. Her heart seemed to crack down the center as the voice matured, turning into the one she now knew--still being beaten, always being beaten.

The scene changed, and Ginny found herself in a bedroom. She could see a sliver of long white-blonde hair dipping off the bed, the same slender woman she had seen being beaten now laying across it, her body limp. Ginny couldn't endure what came next--she couldn't even listen.

And yet, she couldn't block it out. She couldn't turn away this time. She heard Lucius's screams for his son, heard his condemnations of the evidently deceased woman on the bed--she saw. And what she saw scarred her so deeply that the tears overflowed and her screams joined those of Draco Malfoy, echoing about the empty Manor, echoing above Lucius Malfoy's sick laughter.

---------

Ginny found herself on the bed, covered in the potion she had previously clutched in her shaking hands, covered in that and drenched in a sorrow so deep she felt she had no more initiative live.

The potion's pungent smell wafted about the room--but there was no one else there to complain. Tears streaked down Ginny's cheeks as she lay back on the bed, letting the vial fall from her loose fingers.

'Draco...'

Author's Note: Happy Diwali and Eid Mubarak. Here it is, the chapter that took so very long, though not half as long as the next chapter will take :-) I'll have midterms soon so..yeah, go figure. Trying to be as angsty as humanly possible, not sure if I'm succeeding. Blame my boyfriend, he's made me happy.

And isn't Vaz just the coolest last name?

BTW, reviiiieeww!!