So much nothing has happened in the past month that Harry finds himself stunned to realize that the school term should have begun four days ago. He's shocked that he could have let himself forget. Without anything to keep his time against, he has slowly drifted away from reality and almost any sense of time, slowly unmooring himself from the real world. He discovers that Bill and Fleur's wedding was five weeks ago, and five weeks ago Ottery St. Catchpole was razed to the ground. Snape's corpse was found just over a month ago, battered and beaten in a grove not terribly far from Godric's Hollow. He moved out of the Dursleys' about two months ago, and he left school for what he now understood to be the last time shortly over three months ago. Dumbledore has been dead for three and a half months, and though it still stings as if it were yesterday when he thinks on it, he is appalled to realize that he hasn't been thinking of it at all, really. He has been drifting in this dreamy half world of endless nights alone.
Only now his nights aren't alone. Well, they are in the literal sense: he's had no visitors since Remus two weeks ago, but he can hear other people in the building now, an odd feeling after his isolation for so long. He can hear Alexandre walking in his room just a few doors down, and he can hear the other boy dressing and undressing. He can hear through the walls as the other boy bathes for hours every few days, and the heavy, muted sound of fabric that has just slid down legs to land on the floor. Harry imagines that if he were to listen hard enough, he could hear the rasp of zippers or the popping sound of buttons slipping through thread ringed holes.
One thing he hears a lot of is wanking. He doesn't know if this is just his overactive imagination, but he can hear the other boy groaning, the old bed in his room groaning, the wood floors groaning, and it makes him hopelessly hard. Alexandre himself doesn't turn Harry on—he finds the boy odd and more than a little bit creepy—but the humanity of hearing someone else wanking just seems to work for him these days. Listening to Alexandre get off makes him hard, so he wanks, too, and as he lies in his own bed, sweaty bed linens nested around him and his fingers trailing through puddles and streaks of come on his belly, he imagines Alexandre getting hard from listening to him, too.
Mostly, though, what he hears are perfectly innocent, innocuous noises, like a body moving quietly in the distance or the low buzz of the boy's voice as he talks to himself. That's one of the odd things about the French boy: he talks to himself often. There have been more than a few times when Harry goes into the hallway expecting to see him talking to another guest or the proprietor, only to find him sitting in the hall outside his door talking to himself. Alexandre's odd eyes light up at the sight of him, and often Harry finds himself badgered into another conversation with the boy about something or another that Alexandre has encountered during the day. He always falls for this, Harry thinks, and he wonders if it's because he secretly wants to talk to Alexandre or if he is so desperate for someone other than himself and the odd boy to talk to that he will try every chance to replace him. Harry never really listens to the boy with more than half an ear, anyway. He suspects Alexandre makes his experiences up, or at least their inherent non-French qualities. Alexandre makes him feel uncomfortable, and he cannot help but be on his guard around him.
::
It's a calm sort of feeling, Draco realizes, to be sitting on the floor of a decrepit inn room drinking tea with your worst enemy. There's liquor in the tea, and the combination of Potter's conversation and the tea fills him with a warm glow. He can feel the goofy smile on his lips, can taste the bitter leaves of poorly brewed tea on the back of his tongue, can hear the other boy's throat working as he gulps the tea back. Potter's crude and ill-mannered and the tea is terrible, but he finds him occasionally interesting and certainly better than no one. The dull fug that filled Draco's days before his forced friendship with Potter is all but gone now, and it's easy to forget that he'll be out on the streets again in less than two weeks.
The pub below them is loud enough to be heard on the fourth floor, and Draco is startled to discover that this is the first time he and Potter have been awake during the Leaky Cauldron's operating hours. Potter has been avoiding those hours because he doesn't want to see people. Draco has been avoiding them because the smell of food makes him hungrier than he already is. It's been tempting to spend some of the last of his money on food; it would be too easy to go down to the market and waste the last of his gold. Hungry as he is, it's possible that he'd lose it all on nothing but one large meal. Instead, he waits for tea with Potter.
Potter is casual about it, in a way that must rankle with Weasley: after the first few awkward days, when Draco abstained from the tea as long as he could before his stomach growled, the tea is always half consumed before he gets there. Potter always tries to fob the "remains" off on him, but every day there are a few more biscuits or scones than the day before. Draco always tries to pretend he's not hungry, but when he looked in the mirror yesterday he could see the smears of shadow between his ribs like zebra stripes. He looks like a prisoner of war, and he imagines he is, in a way.
Their conversation is always light. Draco tries to remember what it was like to visit Britain the first time from the family home in Nantes and makes up his stories based on that, but Potter doesn't really seem to listen, anyway, so he doesn't try too hard. And if his accent slips a little bit every now and then, Potter never catches him on it, so eventually he begins to let it fall to his own real accent rather than the ostentatious slur he'd originally put on. He finds himself relaxing around Potter, and often has to bite his tongue these days to keep himself from talking casually about Spinner's End. It takes him longer and longer each time to remember why he shouldn't talk about it, and this worries him. He finds it would be entirely too easy to slip into the life of this French boy he's made up.
::
Ginny knows it's bad to hate, but she can't help it. Her hatred is irrational; she knows this, too. She has no reason to look at her and see crimson creeping in on the edges of her vision. She isn't supposed to hate her best friend—the only friend she has, really, since the other girls think she's creepy after that diary.
Hermione cried for two hours in the loo yesterday, and Ginny doesn't know if it's because she found the moldy cheese she'd hid in Hermione's trunk or because she overheard Ginny telling Molly about the condoms in her purse. Ginny doesn't even know why she said anything. She feels torn in twenty different directions, crammed into this house with her family and Hermione. There's no privacy in the place except the bathroom, and even then your privacy is bought in ten minute increments.
The close quarters are affecting all of them terribly. Ron is tense, as if there is a spring within him that is being wound tighter and tighter. His face is grim, and his eyes flash dangerously over petty problems. The chess set has already been set afire, the plaster walls behind every door have fist-sized holes, and the light bulbs have channeled so much incendiary magic that half of them are burned out.
There is a slow drizzle of rain trickling down the only window the family is allowed near—it faces the back lawn and looks to be boarded up from the outside—but Ginny has been staring out of it for hours. She has her transfiguration textbook on her lap because Mum insists that she must study even though she can't go to school, but she hasn't opened it all day, not even to read the Quidditch book she has hidden inside. It sits on her leg, a comforting weight as she thinks silently about the world outside. She knows she's been in a bit of a mood recently, and not even the twins will have anything to do with her.
Tonks and Remus supposedly live in the house, too, but it's the full moon on Thursday and Tonks has been absorbed with work recently. Ginny wishes halfheartedly that she could talk to them. It doesn't matter which; she just wants to see a face not topped with ginger fringe and spattered with freckles, and since she has decided to hate Hermione, Remus and Tonks are the only ones available. She feels strange in this dusty old house, like a porcelain doll that has been left behind.
::
The first time it happens, Harry's convinced it was an accident for a full hour. It's like this: Alexandre is laughing, his greyish hair almost falling into the teacup he's holding. Harry is beginning to suspect he's added too much booze to the tea, because he feels giddy, too, and there's a hysterical laugh building in his chest as he watches the other boy. Sighing, he throws himself at the floor but misses and jostles Alexandre's knee. There is a searing moment of pain as the tea spills onto his shoulder and Alexandre mutters, "Oh, shit!" before giggling and leaning over him. He has a handkerchief out and Harry notices something vaguely wrong with it before Alexandre is suddenly on top of him, his very warm lips pressed against Harry's. Alexandre smears his mouth eagerly and drunkenly across Harry's face and, stunned, Harry simply stares up into messy brown hair. There is a sharp nip of teeth on his chin that draws a noise of pain from him and reminds him of what's happening.
"Alexandre," he says, shoving ineffectually at the boy with his shoulder. "What are you doing?"
The boy above him stills awkwardly, then pulls himself into an upright position. His cheeks are flushed, and Harry can't tell from Alexandre's expression if it is passion or drunkenness. Alexandre skitters back, laughing, but stands up and excuses himself to go to sleep. It takes Harry almost a full hour to remember that he'd not added anything to the tea that night.
::
Draco sleeps fitfully for three days before he decides it's okay to visit again.
::
When Alexandre shows up a few days later looking half sick from hunger, Harry could almost kick himself. When the boy moves so nervously around him that he almost trembles, Harry feels an odd twist in his stomach and almost trips over the tea set he's already laid out on the floor. He's set it out every day since it happened, and his heart has panged every time with the knowledge of how comfortable he has become with the other boy. He misses Alexandre immensely, even as he stands in the doorway, blushing and standing on the sides of his feet. Harry's mouth goes dry as he looks at this boy—not his friend, but somehow grown indispensable.
"Come in," he says, "Please."
Alexandre's cheeks flush slightly and he nods his head a little, following the movement of Harry's hand toward the tea set. Ten minutes later they are sitting side by side, so close that their knees brush when Alexandre reaches for the lemon. The air is tense, and Harry can feel the weight of it on his shoulders, pressing him to the floor.
"Er," he begins, "So what did you do in London today?"
Alexandre pins him with a steady gaze. "You're not an idiot, Harry. Neither am I. I didn't go into London today."
Something in Harry's stomach flips at the information so bluntly acknowledged. He stares at his tea for a minute, wishing he remembered how to divine steam. I knew that, he thinks. I didn't care, he realizes. I still don't. The tea leaves drift in lazy circles at the bottom of his cup. "What would you have done? If you'd gone to London, I mean."
Alexandre looks at him with an unreadable expression on his face, but his eyes are perfectly clear: the irises shift, thinning as the pupils dilate. Acquiescence. "I'm not sure. Perhaps Trafalgar?" Alexandre takes a long, measured sip from his cup. The tension is broken as Harry's unspoken apology is accepted.
"I've never been," Harry admits sheepishly.
"That makes two of us," Alexandre replies with a wry twist of his lip.
"Where are you really from?" Harry asks, turning to face him. Their faces are close enough to kiss, and after a minute they do. This kiss is entirely different from the one before, most notably because this one is being reciprocated. There is a lot of fumbling as Alexandre grips his shoulders, perhaps to keep him from bolting. Their teeth clack together and Alexandre draws back, breathless.
"I…" His eyes are dark, pupils almost completely obliterating the iris around them. Harry leans back until he is lying on the floor and Alexandre follows him, turning on his side to face him. His long lashes, some of which are as white as snow, flutter over his cheeks and they revel in the comfortable silence.
"Let's play a game, Harry," Alexandre says at last. "The rules are: I'll tell you three things. Two are true and one is a lie. You have to guess which one is untrue." His eyes are cool and guarded as Harry turns to look at him. "One: I went to Hogwarts. Two: I've killed someone. Three: I was born in France."
The uncomfortable tension is back as Harry is silent. Something inside of him cheers in vindication, but the rest of him aches with the knowledge that whatever it is he has with Alexandre will be forever different. He holds his breath for a moment, composing himself, then answers, "Don't do this…"
Alexandre's eyes go hard. "Guess."
Harry pleads, "Draco…"
A few days later, when Draco hasn't come back but Harry can hear he's still there, Hedwig brings Harry a letter from Remus. It's as good an excuse as any to get out of this room that's grown uncomfortably close, so he takes it.
::
Ginny looks in the mirror more than she ought to, Molly says. It'll make her vain. Ginny doesn't see how, really, because she's quite ugly. Her eyes are fever bright as she catalogues her face: her eyes, listless, brown; her cheeks, fat and speckled with brown dots; her lips, bitten and chapped with cold; her skin, pale and wan with lack of sun; her jaw, slowly growing large and horsy and hideous. There is no one in the house to impress, really, but this doesn't stop Ginny from standing in front of the mirror for hours, carefully applying smooth cream foundation and pearly coral rouge. She slicks her lips with waxy lipstick until she looks just-kissed and dewy. She paints a watery blue on her eyelids and coats fluttery ginger lashes with thick black mascara.
When her makeup is done, she carefully unwraps the long stockings, unfolding them so slowly that sometimes it takes as long as twenty minutes just to pull one free from the paper. She tugs on her satin gloves, smooth so they won't snag the gorgeous stockings, and gingerly pulls the silk up her legs one at a time. After making sure that the seams are razorblade straight, she carefully clips her garters to the tops, smoothing her hands slowly over her legs. Then she lifts the pretty white bra from her bed. It's simple, with a little rosette between her breasts. She slides the straps up her arms, then scoops up the mounds of flesh on her chest and rests them in the cups as she reaches behind herself to close the hooks.
Ginny stands in front of the mirror examining every angle of the stunning image. The girl in the mirror isn't her; the girl has shimmering liquid copper pooled over her shoulders and spilling onto her breasts, barely restrained by a lovely scrap of white lace. She has a thin, flat stomach that leads the eye fluidly to her wide hips that frame a delicate pink triangle covered lightly by wispy curls. Her legs fall for miles and miles encased by sheer white that hugs her curvy body all the way down to pretty pink toes that cause the fabric to blush the palest pink. She looks like the most beautiful girl in the most expensive fashion magazines.
Ginny, on the other hand, has scraggly orange strings hanging from her head like a rag doll. Her hair sticks to the sweat gathered between her breasts, pinched in a bra that is too old by far and ill-fitting. Her stomach is emaciated, and her ribs and hipbones jut sharply from her pasty stomach. She has an enormous arse from sitting around all the time, and her legs look silly, like sausages bursting in their casings of silk. Her cunt is furred over with a ginger forest of curled wire. She will stand in the mirror for an hour, touching herself until the girl in the mirror shakes with pleasure, and then she will carefully deconstruct the beautiful picture. She takes off the stockings slowly, then the bra and makeup. Then she dresses up like Ginny Weasley again, her crisp shirt covering her breasts and the dowdy skirt ghosting her knees. The girl in the mirror goes away until the next time Ginny comes to visit her.
One day, as she and Ginny shudder together, there is the glimmer of eyes in the doorway. Ginny flushes pink, her cheeks and forehead going hot with shame and embarrassment, but the girl in the mirror meets his eyes evenly. She looks beautiful, shaking and blushed with sensual pleasure, and he flees from her knowing eyes. That night, Ginny wears her makeup to dinner. Fred and George laugh at her, Hermione looks at her pityingly, and Molly tells her to go wash her face because she looks like a tart. Even as she stumbles into the hall, hot tears of mortification streaking down her cheeks in blue and pink and black lines, she can feel his eyes hot on her.
::
When Draco, mollified by time and hunger, knocks on Harry's door again, it is opened by a fat man in a ghastly night cap. He stands there numbly as the man berates him for bothering him at this time of night then goes back to his room. He has three more days left in his room, and he spends them sitting in his bed pretending he's waiting for tea time.
::
The sightings begin to pour in the closer it gets to Halloween: Death Eaters in Dorset; Bellatrix Lestrange on Knockturn Alley, buying potions ingredients; Malfoy blonde spotted in Muggle London in the subway. After Tonks bursts into tears over the Black Malfoy case, she is assigned to these hoaxes, reports filed by little old ladies who see bogeymen lurking in every darkened corner. She knows it's the job they give the Aurors who have little breakdowns like hers, but it means she can spend more time at home with Remus.
When she goes home for the first time, she is surprised at the sheer number of people living in the house. She knew academically that the Weasleys had moved in, but the sheer number is still overwhelming when she wakes up late the first morning and staggers down the stairs to the kitchen in one of Remus's old shirts to be confronted with the embarrassed grins of four young men. When she heard footsteps behind her and turned to greet her boyfriend, Arthur Weasley had been adjusting his tie. After seeing her state of dishabille, he'd raised an eyebrow but cheerfully greeted Molly and accepted a cup of coffee. Finally Remus had come in, and by that time she'd been so thoroughly embarrassed that she'd rounded on him fiercely and stormed out of the room to get ready for work.
Even remembering it made her cheeks flush. She knew that what she'd done had been horrible and out of her norm, but she'd been so out of sorts recently that she secretly feared she was becoming slightly unbalanced at best, completely unhinged at worst. When Remus told her that he'd encouraged Harry to come stay for a week or two, she'd had to suppress a shudder, as she did now. She hasn't yet told Remus about her aunt's death, and she imagines he'd think her recent behavior was because of it, but she knows that isn't true. At least, it's not completely true, she reasons with herself. Most of the problem is as simple as this: she's late, and it's illegal to mate with a werewolf.
::
The reception he gets when he moves into number twelve is cool at best. Grief makes Molly distant, Fred and George are busy working on new Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes, and Ron can't look at him without light bulbs popping like corn. Bill and Fleur must still be on honeymoon, Harry thinks, but a niggling feeling in the back of his mind tells him that no, they're not. After the first day, his stomach ties itself into knots and he finds he cannot sleep. When Remus greets him in the morning, he goes half-hard at just the sight of the man's hair and has to spend thirty minutes in the loo having "personal time" with his left hand before he's able to join decent society again.
The house creaks and groans in odd ways, sighing here and there in a way he doesn't remember from two summers ago. There aren't any doxies anymore and Kreacher is long gone, but late at night as Harry lies on his back staring at the bed curtains, he can hear little feet running down the halls, giggles, and muffled words. He wonders if there is a brownie in the house, and begins to leave milk and bread out on the hearth in his room, but it is never touched. Then he remembers that it should be oatmeal and switches, but food is tight in the cramped quarters and he stops after less than a week because he feels guilty.
He tells himself that he only misses Alexandre, not Malfoy. Alexandre was charming, in his own way, but Malfoy is a prat and Harry thinks somewhere in the back of his mind that the worst thing Draco Malfoy has ever done is not try to kill Dumbledore but instead try to make Harry fall for him. Which he didn't, Harry reminds himself, but it's impossible to believe that he didn't like the made up boy just a little when he finds his cheeks growing hot every time he sees Remus. An icy cold stab of jealousy grabs him one morning as he sees Tonks leaving the room she shares with Remus and he can't help being touchy and irritable for the rest of the day.
Ron still won't talk to him. He seems to be funneling all of his attention through Hermione, and the first time he catches them together—Hermione, spread out on the desk like a book with a cracked spine, Ron's fingers squelching loudly and wetly between her legs—Harry all but runs away from the scene. It's not intimate at all; Ron is attacking her with such violence that Harry can't even imagine it would feel good and Hermione is sitting dispassionately on the edge of the table apathetically looking down at Ron's shiny fingers, looking for all the world as if he is using someone else's body. When her eyes catch his in the doorway, Harry feels sick to his stomach and has to leave. The image won't leave his mind but he can't be sick because someone is in the toilet for twenty minutes. It turns out to be Ginny, who is still flipping the pages of her fashion magazine, several years out of date, as she walks out.
Harry wonders how he ended up through the rabbit hole.
::
Bellatrix is beautiful, haughty, and rich. She has never had anyone deny her anything, and she isn't about to start, so when the little shop keep at the potions shop refuses to give her service, her hand shakes with the desire to scratch his eyes out with her long red nails. She shakes so much in her fury that she must clutch her elbows, but her voice is deadly level.
"You will sell me those ingredients," she informs him, a chill hanging in the air from her tone. She pulls a bag heavy with gold taken from the stack Narcissa kept in the drawing room and lets it fall to the counter with a clink.
"Are you trying to bribe me?" the boy asks, and Bellatrix recognizes him as a Slytherin, class of 1994. Flint, or something like that. He's got a money-hungry expression and she almost twists her lip up in a sneer at his eagerness.
"I am prepared to pay," she weighs her words carefully, "handsomely for these items."
"Ma'am," Flint simpers, fluttering his lashes in a way that could be called coy in a girl, but on him merely looks ridiculous, "I've been instructed not to allow, erm, 'his' people to purchase anything. I could lose my job."
Resisting the urge to roll her eyes, Bellatrix turns on her most syrupy voice. "What will it take to make it worth your while?" she asks, already counting out how many galleons she can afford to pay before it becomes ludicrous.
"Well," Flint seems to ponder for a moment, but his eyes glitter triumphantly. "Ma'am, I don't think I could take money under the counter like that. It's just not fair to all of the other people I've had to turn away." Bellatrix's mouth drops open slightly, stunned. She turns on her heel sharply to leave, but Flint grabs her sleeve quickly. "But Ma'am," his tone is smooth as silk, "if you don't mind the compliment, you've got fabulous tits." This is how Bellatrix ends up on her pureblooded knees sucking cock like a two sickle whore in a storeroom on Knockturn Alley, but it's also how she ends up with three months' worth of bicorn horn.
::
One day, as Harry is lying in bed after a long wanking session, feeling the sweat cool in his armpits and the come congeal in his belly button, the doorbell rings. This is odd because he has never known anyone to ring the doorbell to number twelve before. In fact, he hadn't known there was a bell. He uses a dirty sock to wipe himself clean and tugs on his jeans, heading down the stairs to see who it is. The familiar shock of blonde hair surprises him as Remus opens the door, and Ron rushes forward to shove Draco back into the street. The fierce push unbalances him and suddenly Draco's sprawled on the front step all bones and dirt.
"Oh my God," Molly's soft cry is audible upstairs as Malfoy's sleeves fall up, revealing knobby elbows that look like parchment stretched over bones too large for his body.
"Cor," Ron mutters when Malfoy's shirt slips to reveal a sharply jutting collarbone lined with dirt, bruises, and dark shadows. It has been almost two weeks since Harry last saw Malfoy, but it looks like a hundred years. Draco is ushered in, despite Ron's protests, and given a cup of tea while Molly looks for something to feed him with. It's another mouth to feed—another stretch to their already thin menu—but Molly doesn't care as she gives him the broth she'd been planning to cook dinner with. After eating only half a bowl, Malfoy asks to use their shower and Molly takes his filthy clothes. They're stained and the stench coming from them reminds Harry firmly of the stink of dead things mixed with the smell of Mrs. Figg's house.
He runs into Malfoy in the hall outside the shower and he watches a drop of water fall from the other boy's earlobe, tracing its path down his shoulder and across his chest with his eyes. Malfoy clutches a towel around his hips and they can hear Molly and Arthur arguing downstairs. The muted whisper-shouts are interspersed with words like "Death Eater," "Snape," and "Dumbledore," but Harry can see clearly that his forearm is not marked. Malfoy won't meet his eyes, but Harry leads him to his own room, where Charlie has transfigured the bed into two beds and Molly has left an old set of clothes, hand me downs from Ron's third year. Draco doesn't turn away to drop his towel and dress and Harry doesn't look away. Greyed cotton pants are pulled up over skeletal hips. A pair of faded school slacks follows, the charcoal color flattering nicely the color of the greenish bruise on a concave stomach. The shirt is no longer crisp and the robes are ragged at the hem from being passed down for more than ten years, but the jumper that Molly left for him puddles around his elbows and Draco looks like a small child playing in his big brother's clothes.
"Draco," Harry says. Grey eyes flash quickly up to meet his and the room is tense again. Draco turns on his heel to go downstairs.
::
The air is beginning to frost over and Halloween has come and gone without any of the dire predictions made by blue haired biddies coming true. Tonks is still at work sorting through dozens of false reports when she comes across one that's odd. The witness, a squib cousin of one of Tonks's roommates in school, claims she saw Severus Snape in Yorkshire. The whole incident has left the woman very shaken up, and Tonks suspects that there may be someone out there polyjuicing themselves into the intimidating—and currently very dead—Hogwarts professor, but when she reports the case to her supervisor, she gets a noncommittal noise and a nod of the head, quickly followed by a soothing smile. She is growing frustrated with her job, but can't bring herself to talk to anyone about it because she knows that all of her secrets will pour out once she opens her mouth.
She has come home early to tell the Weasleys that they can go home now, but as she walks in the door she sees her cousin sitting in the parlor. His hair gleams in the gas lights and the portrait of Mrs. Black seems pacified by the presence of a true pureblood in the house because she only calls Tonks the product of a whorish Muggle lover rather than anything truly awful. Her cousin looks ill, but he has always been far paler and thinner than he should have, so she supposes it is relative to his previous poor health. His Weasley jumper has a large letter 'G' on it and Molly is standing protectively over him as the others sit around with various expressions of distaste on their faces. Ron looks as if his face might cook an egg he's so hot with anger, and Ginny has a placid doll-like expression of slightly bored apathy on her face as she stares at her feet. Hermione is curled away from Malfoy as if his touch is toxic, and the twins are eyeing him warily from the divan. Harry and Remus have twin expressions of warded concern in their faces, but Malfoy is deliberately avoiding meeting his eyes with Harry's studious gaze.
Tonks has learned long ago that with this group she should never be surprised by anyone who shows up, but since the last she'd heard Draco Malfoy was missing—presumed dead—she can't help the twist of confusion that must show on her face. Remus smiles apologetically at her and comes to take her arm, saying, "He came by today looking for help. He's been homeless since…well, you know," he says, making a lame gesture with his hand. "He was more than half starved when he showed up, and Molly's been feeding him every few hours since he got here. He was in the middle of telling us what he knows about," he pauses, "the case when you came in."
A bird has gotten caught in her chest as she looks at the boy on the couch with new eyes. "He was there?"
"No," Draco's voice is fragile and Tonks is forcibly reminded that despite everything, he is only seventeen. "No, but…I heard it. What happened. And then they made me help them move the," he chokes slightly, "corpse."
"They?" Tonks's tone sounds sharp, even to her own ears.
"Yes." His eyes close slowly, and then open just as slowly. They move to her, watching her face. "My mother and Aunt Bellatrix."
::
It has been a long day, exhausting. Ginny is curled in her bed on her side, dozing and thinking over the events and discoveries of the day. Her hair is sticking to her skin as she tries to sleep, but her mind is racing too fast for her to rest. She feels anxious, but she doesn't know why. She suspects she feels unsafe with Malfoy in the house, but in the state he's in, he couldn't even dream of hurting her. Between her fat arse and the sticks he has for thighs, she could see herself pushing him down the stairs if he threatened her. He'd probably shatter.
She caught him staring at her today, her admirer, staring with those eyes he'd used to watch her visiting the girl in the mirror. He'd been watching her arse and the way her skirt moved. She pretended not to notice, but the feeling of his eyes on her had made heat pool in her belly. Hermione is out of the room, probably whoring herself out to Ron, so Ginny lets her fingers slide between her thighs. She whimpers as they touch sticky wetness and there is a groan from the door. Behind her, there are heavy, masculine footsteps and a warm body slips under the blankets with her. He captures her wrist and pulls her fingers, gleaming in the moonlight, toward himself. She can feel his hardness pressed against her arse and her eyelids flutter. They both groan as he licks her fingertips, sliding his own calloused hand over her belly to her panties. His fingers toy with the bow on the front before dipping in to scratch through her damp curls. They seek out her clit like they've been here before. Ginny opens her thighs slightly and rides the wave of pleasure coursing through her body. He pants behind her, grinding his cock against her. She knows when he comes: he clutches her whole mound with his hand, pressing fingertips in almost painfully against her pubic bone as he shudders against her. Hot, wet pulses squish in the fabric of her nightgown and she lets out a soft moan. His hand slips away, smearing slime up her stomach as he pulls his fingers out of her panties. Shaking, he stands up and presses a kiss to her forehead from behind and sneaks out of the room before Hermione can get back. With her thighs quaking and her legs slipping against each other, Ginny tries to force herself to sleep.