Savage Love

Chapter Two

As soon as the spell hit her, Ginny felt as if she had been jolted awake—as if her entire life had been a dream and this moment of pain was the only real thing she had ever known. Just a few seconds were saturated with agony so acute that she couldn't really think, couldn't remember her name or if she had a family. All she could do was hope there would be an end—hope that she would pass out or even die—anything to make it stop.

And it did stop—or at least, it might have, she couldn't be sure. Slowly, as if struggling under a giant weight, she became aware that she had legs and that they were twitching, and that her fists were clenched so tight her palms had begun to bleed. She found herself lying on her side on a roughly hewn stone floor. Several inches away from her was a familiar pair of shiny black boots.

"Well done, Draco."

Ginny strained to look up without moving her aching neck. At first it seemed that Lucius' expression had hardly changed at all—he still wore the same smug, half-bored smile he had directed earlier towards Ginny. Yet from her position on the floor, she could see that his eyes were a little wider than before, staring at his son with restrained astonishment.

"I did it." The words were hollow, emotionless, but when Draco's cool grey eyes met hers, there was a look of such revulsion in them that Ginny's blood ran cold.

Draco turned from her completely and Lucius quite unexpectedly caught him up in his arms. It looked like some kind of struggle until Ginny realized that Lucius was embracing his son—congratulating him for what he had done to her. If she hadn't felt so exhausted, she would have vomited.

Instead, she summoned the last dregs of energy within her and pushed herself across the floor towards the ornate iron door behind her. She came within inches of it when she heard the boom of Lucius' voice. "Oh, so you think you'll just leave, then? Son, restrain her."

Something shot from Draco's wand to tighten even further around her limbs. She didn't have the energy left to even try to fight it.

Draco slid his wand back into the pocket of his plush black robes, his face impassive. "What's the point of keeping her around at all, father?"

Ginny detachedly registered his voice and the unspoken suggestion within it. So they meant to kill her, did they?

Lucius looked at his son as if he were crazy. "You don't suggest letting her go, do you? Aside from being a fun little souvenir, she may become valuable leverage against our enemies."

Draco had nothing to say to that.

"Excellent, it's decided. I'll just call for a house elf to escort her down to the dungeons—"

"I can bring her down myself."

"Taking initiative! Splendid!" He clapped his son gruffly on the back. "I'll be in my study if you need me." Surreptitiously snatching a bottle of scotch from the mantle, he headed through a door on the far side of the room and was gone.

The moment the door shut, Draco lunged towards Ginny. She barely had the time to cringe away before he harshly hauled her up by her forearms. "What were you doing in Knockturn Alley in the middle of the night?" His face a mere inches away from hers, Ginny could see the individual hairs of his furrowed eyebrows and the stormy flecks of blue in his grey eyes.

She was terrified he would crucio her again, but she wanted so desperately to finally fight back—even if it was in the smallest of ways. "That's none of your business," she retorted, trying hard to mimic the condescending tone Draco so often used. "Don't even pretend to care."

His grip grew tighter. "Did someone attack you?"

"You mean besides you?"

Draco let her go so suddenly she almost tripped over her awkwardly positioned bound legs.

"You know what? You're right. I don't care about what happened to you before." He wore a familiar sneer. "And I don't care what happens to you now, blood traitor." Unbinding the ties on her legs with a swish of his wand, he pulled her through the wrought-iron door.

Inside, Ginny could make out a dark stairwell illuminated weakly by the light of wall sconces. Beside her, Draco cast lumos and began to climb down the steps, tugging her along with him. The air grew cooler and damper the further they descended and there was a coppery scent in the air.

Quite abruptly, they reached the bottom of the stairs and from the dim light of Draco's wand Ginny could just make out the shadows of a row of barred cells.

"Come on," Draco said gruffly, pulling her towards the nearest cell.

"You're just going to leave me down here?" She tried to make her voice sound strong but a tenor of fear broke through. .

He refused to meet her eyes.

Ginny tried to remain calm but her thoughts ran in fearful circles. How long would she be locked up here? What would they do to her if she tried to escape? What was her family doing now—had they figured out she was missing yet?

At least Lucius hadn't been the one to bring her down here. It seemed to Ginny that hatred had already hardened over him long ago, leaving him like marble-cold and hard and smooth. But Draco was different; he was more erratic and roughly hewn. Perhaps she could find a chink in his stony exterior.

"Look, Malfoy," she began, her voice sounding scared and desperate even to her own ears. "I know we hardly knew each other at Hogwarts, but I can't imagine that this is really what you want to do."

He cocked his head up, his eyes completely immersed in the shadows that his hair cast on his face. They were close enough that she could hear him breathing.

"I'm sure everyone expects you to act this way, but—"

"This isn't an act, Weasley."

"I know, but—"

"Don't pretend to understand me." His hand shook her shoulder with the force of his words. "I'm not some poor, misunderstood schoolboy, alright? What I am is a death eater."

Ginny tried to protest but in one fluid motion he opened the cell door and locked her inside.

He was almost to the stairway when Ginny called out. "Let me go and I'll tell you what I was doing in Knockturn Alley."

For a moment Draco froze, his back facing her and his pale white hand resting on the stone banister. But a second later Ginny blinked and he was gone.

To be continued. Feedback is always appreciated.