A/N – Thanks to all my reviewers. Feedback is always greatly appreciated.

Disclaimer – I don't own HP. Don't sue.


V


For a moment, he stirred. His lips parted, his eyelids fluttering, and Ginny leaned forward, her heart pounding.

But then he subsided, the coma dragging him under once more.


"I think it would be best if you leave me alone with him." Squinting in the morning light, Ginny pulled her hair back and tied it as best as she could. "I don't want anything to distract him while he's trying to return."

Moody fixed her with his roving, magical eye. "Quite frankly, Miss Weasley –"

"Why did you come to me at all, if you don't trust me?"


"Ron! What are you doing here?" Laughing, she threw her arms around him and hugged him tightly. "I haven't seen you in ages."

He smiled a little, strained and weary. "The Ministry sent a team over to help the Italian Aurors. There are rumours going round that Malfoy is here, in Florence."

She blinked. "M-Malfoy?" Her voice shook, just a little.

"He's a vicious murderer, Ginny – he's killed ten men that we know of, and Merlin only knows what the true count is. So be careful, will you? You know how much he hates our family."

When Draco slipped through her window that night, she asked him if he could remember their names and faces, all those men he'd murdered in the name of his Lord. She wanted to punish him, and punish herself –

Coldly, relentlessly, he laid their names at her feet, sixteen of them: thirteen men, two women, and a young girl who had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. When he spoke he was calm, composed; it was Ginny who wept, Ginny who held him tight.


"Trust is a very dangerous word these days, Miss Weasley. Malfoy trusts you, and look what it's going to get him. –And doesn't that raise all kinds of interesting questions."

She flinched. "I have never betrayed the Ministry."

"And I'll make damned sure you never will, Miss Weasley. Believe me."


"…aco, please, it's Ginny. I need you to come back…"

Ginny?