Chapter Five | Alliance
If you live among wolves you have to act like a wolf – Nikita Khrushchev
Cho throws her arms around Ginny at the ferry dock. "Look at ya, Gin!" She coos in her thick Scottish brogue. Next to Cho's polished look, Ginny feels very grimy. "Look at 'er, Ern!"
Ernie MacMillan is a big, broad shouldered man now, with curly dark blond hair and a five o'clock shadow that somehow makes him look rugged. He's wearing a kilt and a band t-shirt, with high top red chucks to match. "Aye, a verra Muggle-lookin' lass ye are, Ginny." Ernie nods to Cho. "We've been verra worrit about ye an' Seamus. Where is the mon?" He looks towards the ferry hopefully, as though Seamus might explode out any minute.
"I... I don't know." Ginny finds she is suddenly very close to tears. "I don't know, Ernie. He hasn't contacted you?"
Ernie and Cho share a look. Cho loops her arm through the other girl's. "Come on then, ye must be famished."
Ginny is drooping, she's been trying to stay awake since Belfast to keep her edge and stay one step ahead of the aurors. But now that she is safe, she finds that all her exhaustion has crept up on her at once, and she closes her eyes for a sweet, single moment.
"Ginny!" Cho is shaking her. She's fallen in the street and Muggles are looking on, concerned.
"Excuse me," A man in wellies and a jumper worn through at the elbows rushes up. He kneels on the pavement, shining a tiny torch in Ginny's eyes. "Aye, there's nae concussion."
"She's fine, just verra tired," Cho says. "Our friend didnae sleep on the ferry." Under her light tone is a thread of fear.
"If she starts complainin' of dizziness, don't be afeart to gie me a call, day or nicht." He hands Cho a hastily scribbled slip of paper. "Andrew MacTavish. I'm a medical student at the Royal College in Edinburgh." His eyes are very, very blue. "Really, call anytime a' all."
Cho blushes deeply, but Ginny can see that she is pleased. "All right," she says with a smile in her voice.
"We'll take it frae here," Ernie cuts in, scooping Ginny up in his arms. "Ye daft lass, don't go scarit us like that again." In a faint whisper, his lips close to her ear, he says, "Don't look, but there are 'interested parties' behind us."
Cho has noticed too, she is tense as a bowstring, her hand fiddling with something in her purse that Ginny would bet is her wand. Andrew is making a joke and Cho smiles, but she's not laughing.
"Ahm not as funny as I think Ah am, Ah guess," Andrew says with a wry chuckle. "It was verra nice tae meet ye." He seems to be waiting for something.
Cho surprises him with a sudden hug. "Thank you again."
With a wave of her fingers, she starts walking away, Ernie and Ginny following apace. Once they turn the corner, Ernie sets Ginny down. "Eechie ochie?" He asks Cho. She nods. "Come on then, lass," he says to Ginny.
With a soft pop! they Apparate away.
In the ringing silence left by their absence, two wizards come racing around the corner and then stop dead.
"Those fuckers!" Zacharias Smith kicks a trash skip furiously. "One more strike an' it's to Azkaban for me."
The other wizard turns to Smith, the beginnings of a twisted grin lighting the sharp planes of his face. He fingers a spelled coin in his pocket, and smiles benignly instead, though his eyes still gleam nastily. "What a terrible pity that would be."
•••
"Yer awake," Ernie states the obvious, and hands Ginny a glassful of whiskey. He's making food, and the kitchen smells enticingly of fresh bread and rabbit stew. "Go on, then, an' ask yer questions. I can see 'em in yer eyes."
She lets out the breath she didn't know she was holding. "Fine. Where are we?"
"Eechie Ochie." Cho slaps a stack of parchment down on the counter, hard. "It's on a property on the coast o' Orkney, belongin' tae that feckin' Sassenach, Laird Justin Finch-Fletchley. His English Muggle family only uses the acreage once a year, fer the huntin' season. We're just the caretakers."
"Are you fucking serious?" Ginny demands.
"Not everyone's cut out to go 'round the world fightin' in Muggle wars, Ginny Weasley," Cho hisses. She passes a hand over her eyes, taking a deep breath, then rests her palms lightly on the countertop. "I'm sorry. I'm just worried fer Susan. We havnae seen her in a few days."
Ginny looks over at Ernie, whose shoulders are tense. She remembers Susan and Ernie coming out of that forest when all the birds were singing, Susan as golden and glowing as the queen of the May. It shouldn't surprise her that they have become lovers, wars give strange bedfellows, after all.
Just look at her and Seamus. Two years ago, she wouldn't have looked twice at him, too enamored of Harry, and now... Now, she wonders if she really knows how to love anyone at all.
"I'm sure she isn't gone for good." She regrets the words as soon as they come out of her mouth, for the room swirls with strange undercurrents and the tension is thick as treacle. "Um... I need a smoke. Be back in a few."
Cho joins her beside the fire pit some five minutes later. "I'm fair sorry, Ginny. We've been beside ourselves. Susan an' Ernie had a fallin' out right before she left."
"Maybe she went to stay with her family. Doesn't she have Muggle cousins in Liverpool?"
"They were all murdered," Cho says, hugging herself. "Down to the verra last wee bairn. Thon Muggle police said it was gangs, but I've never heard of a Muggle gang who killed folk an' didn't leave a mark. Susan hasnae been all right since it happened, neither. Usually she an' Ern have a big fight, an' she storms off fer a few hours, then comes back drunk as hell. She's nae peach tae live with, Ginny, believe you me." Cho's lips thin a little, and Ginny is glad she doesn't have to share Seamus with another witch. "...Ah was right lucky, ma parents were visitin' ma brother in the States. It didn't take much tae persuade them tae stay infinitely."
"An' Ernie's family?" She is almost afraid to ask.
"Ah pulled a Granger an' Obliviated 'em." Ernie walks up to the girls, handing them both a goblet full of a steaming golden alcohol. "Cheers, witches. To erasin' our fuckin' names frae the book o' the 'Sacred Twenty-Eight'... To bein' kings an' queens o' our lonely exile..."
Cho raises her goblet. Her eyes gleam, reflecting the sunset. "Tae flippin' the bird any way we can tae our fuckin' so-called 'laird an' master'."
"To the ones we've lost, who died fighting the good fight. To Dean and Katie, who held off three Death Eaters single-handedly, so we could steal the Quidditch teams' brooms. And to Harry..." Neville has emerged from the house, reeking of Floo powder, and he chokes down whatever he's been about to say. He raises his glass.
"To Harry, who died for all of us," says Padma Patil, who walks up with Anthony Goldstein from the garden gate, the wind in their hair. "And to Dumbledore's Army - what's left of us, anyway."
"To us!" They raise their glasses, clink, and down the fiery brew. Ginny thinks she holds her liquor remarkably well for a witch of barely eighteen. The other girls are gagging and coughing, while all the boys hold out their goblets for more. They'll drink and drink, until they can't see straight, and then they'll drink some more. It's been fifteen months since they've all been in one place together, she realizes... since the massacre that they all survived, in one form or another.
Cho and Ernie, sitting so close to one another on the bench that their thighs touch, breathing heavily through the nose and pretending not to notice one another. Anthony and Padma, wandering around the garden and pointing at things, then laughing. Padma is dressed in a turquoise silk sari, and Anthony like he works in an office somewhere, he's looking very smart in a suit.
Neville stands apart, staring at the sun as it sinks in a scarlet and gold haze beneath the gray ocean, the stillness broken only by the scream of a hawk from a long way off. Ginny steps closer, careful not to startle him. Cho was right, in a way - Ginny has seen what a war can do to a person, and the way back is never smooth or even kind.
Ginny doesn't know if she will ever find her way back, or if the only way is forward.
"This world won't stand," Neville says bitterly, draining his goblet of every last drop. "It won't go on like this. It can't."
"Harry wouldn't have wanted -"
Neville turns on her, barely restrained anger in his voice. "And you'd know? You, Miss 'I'm going to run off to Belfast and Kosovo and leave the rest of you to pick up the pieces'?" He runs a hand through his hair, and she is shocked to see how haggard he looks. "Look, I'm sorry. It's just... It was a hell of a time for you and Finnigan to up and disappear."
"You're not the only one who lost someone you loved." Ginny moves closer, until they are shoulder to shoulder. She doesn't want to say anything, to break the moment. Instead, she reaches out and takes his hand, squeezing it firmly.
Neville makes a choking sound, somewhere between a laugh and a sob, and he drops his goblet, pulling her into a tight embrace. "I'm sorry about your family," he says into her hair. "It fucking hurts. So much. Every fucking day. We were supposed to win, Ginny. What in the bloody hell happened?"
Belatedly, she remembers - his parents were killed too, and though they never found his grandmother's body, somehow it is crueler, for until Neville knows of her death, he will be tormented by hope. "I don't know," she says softly, leaning into his comforting warmth. "I tried... I tried..." She thinks of Fred, lying so still and quiet on the ground. Of Charlie, who she never told goodbye. Of Harry, who cast her away to keep her safe, but in the end, never kept her safe at all. And of Seamus... She pinches the bridge of her nose. Her thoughts are swirling.
"...Can I get you another drink, Red?"
Ginny recoils.
"What?" Neville picks his goblet up off the grass. "Did I say something - what's wrong?"
"Ginny, Nev. Sorry tae break this up, but everyone is in the house. Ye know the sayin', but our hearth is yer hearth. There's stew on the hob an' enough firewhiskey fer an army." Ernie winks. "We're waitin' on one special guest, a lad o' pairts."
"Shall we, Red?" Neville puts his hand on Ginny's shoulder. She shrinks back from his touch, and he stiffens, just. "What has happened to you, brave Weasley girl?" Neville asks, brushing his thumb across her cheeks.
"It's better that you don't know," Ginny says, and turning from him, follows Ernie into the house.
•••
Ginny sits near the fire, watching her former friends talk and laugh, catching up on each other's lives. For every Dumbledore's Army member who is in the room, there are faces missing, not only the slain, but the ones who ran so far she's not certain if they'll ever return. Lavender Brown, mauled by Fenrir Greyback, vanished into the wilds of Canada. Luna Lovegood, last seen with Lee Jordan on the Quidditch pitch, their fates forever unknown. Hermione, the only person who can tell her of Ron's death, hiding her face in Paris.
Yes, she should hide. If Ginny ever sees her former best friend again, she's isn't sure she won't tear her from limb to limb. Consorting with known Death Eaters. Proclaiming her innocence. Hermione is lucky she stayed in Paris tonight.
"Is this seat taken?"
Ginny looks up in surprise. Dennis Creevey takes her silence for an answer, and sits down casually next to her, sinking into the old sofa, mug of firewhiskey levitating precariously at his elbow. He smiles, holding out his hand.
"Do you remember me?" He is the kind of boy Ginny might have dated in her younger years - messy brown hair, brown eyes and long, lanky limbs.
Ginny nods, not trusting herself to speak. She does remember. Dennis was a Gryffindor. His brother, Colin, followed Harry everywhere, even into the jaws of death itself.
Dennis should have been in his fifth year at Hogwarts by now, but since he is a Muggleborn, he will never again have that chance.
"I stole a broomstick to get here from my neighbor. He's gonna be bloody confused in the morning." Dennis grins, the cheeky brat, and then takes a huge gulp of firewhiskey, his eyes bulging.
He coughs, spluttering, and Ernie thumps him between the shoulder blades, leaning in to whisper conspiratorially, "If ye want tae impress a lass, Creevey, learn tae hold yer liquor."
Dennis blushes, hard, and without a look back at Ginny, bolts towards the garden.
"Can't blame a lad fer tryin'." Ernie says, jumping over the back of the sofa to sit next to Ginny. He gives her a frankly appreciative look. "Finnigan's a lucky bastard."
"Shut up," she says, hitting him with a decorative pillow and laughing despite herself. "You're a fucking flirt, Ernie MacMillan."
"Mmm, ye hae a dirty mouth, Ginny Weasley." Ernie says, leaning in. "Say ma name like that again."
Cho crosses the room in a studied, casual manner, but she isn't fooling anyone really. She dances her fingertips across Ernie's shoulders, shooting Ginny a warning look. "Quit blatherin' on, ye fool," Cho says. "Ye'll put our Ginny right back tae sleep. Come help me in the kitchen. I don't want our important guest tae think we've become complete Muggle savages."
Ernie opens his mouth to protest, but Cho clamps her hand on his wrist and tugs him up. He leans down, and before Cho can stop him, brushes his lips across Ginny's ear.
"If yer lonely, ma room's the first one at th' top o' the stairs. It'll be open tae you all night." With a wink over his shoulder, he follows Cho out of the room.
When they are gone, everyone looks at each other and smirks, then conversation resumes.
Ginny finds her hands are cold, and she wraps herself in Seamus' jacket again. It smells of peat and mist, it smells like him. Will he talk to Alec first, will he go to Granny Mab's? She hopes beyond hope that he will come through the door, surprising everyone. And then her mind loops around, thinking of Thorfinn, of how they've come full circle. He saved her life, and she saved his. Does this mean that they will never see one another again, that their time has ended? This world can't go on. Neville's words echo in her ears.
It can't.
•••
Thorfinn hates the Manor, and especially without Narcissa there. Before, it was stuffy, sterile, and entirely too 'old money', so a person was afraid to put his boots up on the table lest he scuff up some precious family artifact. Now, it is the same, only different - for it has lost its heart.
He finds Lucius in the greenhouse, sitting next to a silphium, a plant from ancient times that the Muggles drove nearly to extinction. They are rare things, silphiums, though it should not surprise him that the Malfoys lay claim to one - they are collectors of many dark artifacts, and the heart of the silphium may be one of the darkest. The Muggles in times of old used it for love and even currency, never guessing the heart of its mystery lay within the very deepest part of its germination.
For they say it is the true key to immortality - beyond even Flamel's stone - for it bestows youthful vitality as well, and cures any malady at the height of its flowering. It cannot be forced to flower, especially magically, for once interfered with, it will wither, sending out a spore that upon entering the bloodstream, destroys the magical core from within. And there is no cure.
Yet, with its heady, intensely sensual scent, the little plant is quite the lure.
It blooms only once a century, and then dies. It is still a tight bud, furled in on itself, like a blushing virgin before the bedding ceremony. Outside the glass, Astoria Greengrass is sitting beside the black marble fountain, braiding roses and forget-me-nots into her long pale hair.
"Narcissa planted this on our first meeting, she told me. I didn't know I would marry her then." Lucius stares at the flower. "Now, here we are, not even a quarter century wed, and she is gone." He turns his gaze to Thorfinn, and his eyes are those of a dead man. "Not deceased, for then I could grieve. No, she lives, yet she is gone - and that is crueler than death could ever be. A broken heart may kill a man, but fragile hope will ensure he suffers for many a long century to come."
Lucius turns back to his contemplation of the flower, and there are tears glistening on his pale cheeks. "Sometimes I wonder if she will wake when the petals open. Will I be alive then? Is this my punishment for turning my back on Lord Voldemort?" He does not say it, but he does not have to - Thorfinn was there. His son made his choice, and Lucius took the blame.
Would any father do less for his own child?
Well... Maybe Thorfinn's.
Thorfinn remembers, without wanting to, how stiff and formal his father became after the death of his mother. How everything in their home became absolutely correct, right down to the last tradition. How the house had seemed so empty, once her light had gone from it - his older sisters, all three married so soon, and he, the only son, could not bear to be in the echoing house with only his father and the house elves for company. How he'd thought he'd found a family in his fellow Death Eaters, only to realize at the end that they weren't really a like a family at all, that all the men he so casually called 'brother' felt just as empty as he. That the only time he really had felt a part of a family was with...
"Fuck, bigger, shite," Thorfinn says, leaning back in his chair. Star. The sound of the explosion, her scream of Apparate, the heft of a battle axe in his hand. Aegishjalmur, Vegvisir, Valnott. Where did that come from?
"Yes, I quite agree." Lucius rises, his lips thinning in pain, and Astoria rushes into the greenhouse, roses and vines forgotten as she links her elbow through his. "Thank you, Miss Greengrass, but I'm not such an old man as all that."
Astoria flutters her pale lashes, her cheeks flushing a comely pink. She has a sprinkling of freckles on her collarbone that Thorfinn finds his eyes drawn to, and he notices Lucius has his eyes on them too, the randy old goat. "Of course, Lord Malfoy. How many times must I ask you to call me Astoria?"
"Only as many times as I must insist you call me Lucius," Lucius drawls, arching an amused brow at Thorfinn, as if to say, Can you believe this?
Astoria is cream and gold and coral, she is everything delicate and high-born that Thorfinn should want.
As another wizard's betrothed, she is forbidden.
Thorfinn has never developed the fear of danger that lesser men have. If he had, he wouldn't be where he is today. "Astoria, is it?" He asks, and the girl turns to him, moistening the 'O' of her lips with languorous darts of her little pink tongue. No wonder she's mesmerized Lucius. She's delectable.
Lucius's gray eyes are hard as flint when he looks at Thorfinn. He steps forward, effectively blocking his rival. "Astoria." He rolls the girl's name around in his mouth, and it spills from his lips in a deep-throated growl. The girl has begun to breathe quicker, a little rabbit trapped in the gaze of the fox. Her lashes flutter against her porcelain cheek, and she looks up at her soon-to-be father-in-law with a smoldering gaze.
Maybe Lucius is mourning Narcissa in his heart, but he certainly isn't mourning her in his bed.
Draco Malfoy is truly a fucking imbecile for trusting his father and his fiancée alone together. Maybe the boy doesn't care who fathers his heir, as long as it's sired by a Malfoy. Maybe Draco prefers the company of men. All Thorfinn knows is that if Astoria were his, he wouldn't let the witch out of his sight.
If she were Thorfinn's, he'd bend her over the table and fuck her until she couldn't walk straight.
"Lucius." Thorfinn clears his throat. He's enjoying this a little too much. "The Dark Lord's business waits for no wizard."
Lucius ignores him to lift Astoria's hand, pressing his lips to her knuckles. A breathy gasp escapes from her lips, and she curtsies prettily. "You look exhausted, my dear. Perhaps you should lie down before dinner."
"My lords," she says, turning to curtsey to Thorfinn in turn. He can see down her neckline nearly all the way to her knickers. "I think I will have a lie-down before dinner." She twirls a finger in her hair. "All alone, in that big, big, bed." She sashays from the room, pausing at the door of the greenhouse to fix Thorfinn with a small, knowing smile.
"Don't even think about it," Lucius barks at Thorfinn once she has gone. "No matter how much you want to."
Lucius strides out of the greenhouse, into the fresh evening air. "That's the thing about the siliphium," he says with a grimace. "It makes Draco's fiancé want to fuck. Not that I haven't wanted to have her six ways to Sunday, but it's the principle of the thing." He fixes a look at Thorfinn, daring him to disagree. "Are you a man of principle, Rowle?"
"I'm a Pureblood," Thorfinn says dismissively. He is uncomfortably reminded of his late father. Where is your honor, boy, your fire? Odin Rowle's voice sneers from memory.
"Not the same thing." Lucius Malfoy's cane tap-taps on the marble walkway, shining wet with spray from the fountain. He turns around, fixing Thorfinn with an intense scrutiny. "You say you are a Pureblood - but what does that mean about a wizard's nature? Are you honorable, are you proud, are you honest? Do you uphold your sacred duties?"
"I'm a loyal man." Thorfinn swallows. What a fucking shitshow all this has turned out to be. Who knew that after the war was over, he would be so fucking bored with peace?
"Wizards such as us thrive during turbulent times." Lucius shows his teeth. "We are not men of peace - we are wolves of war."
Wolves of war...Úlfhéðnar.
"Yes... Úlfhéðnar."
Thorfinn wonders if he's spoken the word aloud. And where did it come from? From a dream... When all the world was laid out before him, and the one thing he wanted most was what he could never have. "I'm a civilized wizard, Lord Malfoy. Not some werewolf savage, like Greyback."
Lucius chuckles. "Yet the beast lurks in every civilized man. Do we let the monster out, to ravage the countryside? No, for we may be monsters, but we protect what is ours, down to the bone." He raises a brow. "Do you not agree?"
Thorfinn thinks of his sisters - of proud Hella, of motherly Idunn, of fierce Skadi. And, unbidden, of her. "I'd throw every last man jack of you to the wolves if it meant saving -"
"Your niece and nephew?" Lucius smiles, as though kindness is an emotion he is out of practice with.
Perhaps it is.
XxX
A/N: so apparently ffn sucked away my notes at the end of last week's chapter, but I'm boneandfur on tumblr; although it is a multi-fandom blog. Check me out there, or come to Death Eaters Express on FB, which is a group run by Canimal, Freya Ishtar and Kittenshift17 and is all about yummy Death Eaters.
Eechie Ochie means "someplace or the other" in Scottish slang.