"I don't think you should go."

Ginny nearly snorted but held it back out of respect for Neville. They were seated around a table, off in the back corner of the common room where younger students couldn't overhear. "Well I don't want to go," she replied, playing absently with her quill and completely disregarding the homework in front of her. She had wanted to go talk to Luna about this but interhouse conversation was so strictly guarded it would be next to impossible. So she had foolishly told Neville – foolishly because the kind boy was so overprotective. His face had nearly drained of color when she had told him of her detention.

"Ginny stop joking," he worried his bottom lip between his teeth and Ginny sighed. Neville looked tired. He probably had not slept well in weeks, if Ginny was being honest. She had been shocked when upon the apparent absence of the Golden Trio, Neville had stepped up to face off against the Death Eaters. She shouldn't have been.

Neville was perhaps the bravest person she knew, including Harry, and he was born to lead, even if he never realized it. It was he who had first stood up to the Carrows; he who had received the first detention; he who had given the speech about fighting back upon his return, bloody and beaten but still standing. He was truly in charge of the feeble resistance they were leading here, more so than her or Luna. And it showed.

Dark rings circled his eyes, and his skin was alarmingly pale. It sent a pang of guilt through Ginny. "I mean it, Ginny," he rambled on, eyes glazing over as he undoubtedly went to his own dark memories of time spent in the dungeon. "It's one thing letting you and Luna face off against Crabbe and Goyle, but Malfoy…"

"Neville," she sat forward and waved a hand in front of his face to draw his attention back to the here and now. His eyes focused quickly on her face and he smiled half-heartedly, no doubt at the serious expression crossing Ginny's face. "I know you want to protect me and Luna, especially Luna, but we know what we're doing."

Neville blushed and shook his head. "But Malfoy…"

"Is a right git, just as he's always been," Ginny sighed and sat back, folding her arms across her chest. "I can handle him Neville. And even if I couldn't, I would have to. Detention isn't optional."

"Maybe we could grab some Polyjuice from Luna. She just made a new batch today. Then I could take it and…"

But Ginny was already shaking her head, half amused and half frightened. "No Neville, you know we couldn't. I have detention before dinner, so there's no way to even meet up with Luna without sneaking around, which is an unnecessary risk. And I wouldn't let you go in my place, besides. Didn't you just serve a detention yesterday?" The last was a rhetorical question. Ginny could see the fresh cut decorating Neville's brow, and she was sure that wasn't the only physical mark, and it surely wasn't the only harm done to him. The Cruciatus curse left marks unseen but not unfelt.

Neville waved his hand dismissively. "That was just an hour with Goyle, bumbling idiot that one. I could handle four hours with him, wand or no wand." Ginny smiled, knowing Neville to be right, but she sobered when his face dropped and his eyes hardened. "But Malfoy, Gin," Neville sat forward, hands coming up to clasp under his chin as his lips turned down in a frown, "I couldn't even take ten minutes with him. His mind…it's dark, Gin."

Ginny repressed a shudder, though she too remembered well Neville's one and only detention with Malfoy. He'd been left unconscious in the dungeon, only discovered because Filch had reported it to Ginny. That had been the first and last time Malfoy had been assigned detention duty – until Ginny's performance this afternoon.

She sighed and leaned forward once more to grasp Neville's hands and squeeze them. "I would be lying if I said I wasn't scared Neville," Ginny kept her eyes focused on his, hoping to convey her seriousness on the subject, her complete honesty here. "But I have to go, and I won't let anyone go in my place."

Neville sighed, though he gripped her hands right back. "Of course you won't. Bloody Weasley, too noble the lot of you."

Ginny grinned, thinking of her brothers, all running about being foolishly courageous. She wouldn't have it any other way.

"Just be careful alright? And maybe he'll go easy on you, being a girl and all."

Ginny highly doubted that, but at seeing the fear still in Neville's eyes, she did not voice her thoughts. Instead she put on a joking air and teased, "Maybe I'll go easy on him, being a ferret and all."

Neville laughed and released her hands. He glanced at the clock and then back at Ginny, looking suddenly sheepish.

"Go," Ginny answered his unasked question, knowing Neville wanted to lead the Gryffindors down to dinner. "I can walk myself."

"Be strong Ginny." Neville stood, ruffling Ginny's hair once as he walked by.

"Tell Luna hi for me," Ginny called after him, knowing that Neville would find a way to talk to the Ravenclaw. He always did.

Neville smiled in reply, blushing again slightly, and then followed the crowd of students out of the porthole. They were all gone soon enough, dinner being mandatory these days, and the clock rang out five to six like a warning to the empty common room.

Ginny wanted to ignore it, her bravado failing her now that Neville was gone.

The first time she had ever experienced the Cruciatus curse was still scalded onto her mind, an unforgettable memory for all the worst reasons. It was during her first detention and no doubt weaker than average as Crabbe had been the one to cast it. But it had still hurt. She hadn't screamed, refusing with pure stubborn will, but she had almost wanted to.

And she knew it got worse.

Neville had gone unconscious under Malfoy's wand, and Neville was strong, good at resisting the curse after having undergone it so many times these past months. But Malfoy was dark.

It wasn't so much that he had become dark as the darkness around him had finally surrounded him completely, Ginny thought. She and darkness were intimately acquainted, and secretly, Ginny had always thought Malfoy wasn't truly dark. He was a coward, and he was persuadable, easily influenced by his cold father, but not dark. Not like Voldemort was.

Malfoy had always been relatively harmless, playing pranks and hurting with humiliation. But this year, upon his return, Ginny had felt the difference.

He was cold.

Freezing, in fact. Just looking at his empty eyes gave Ginny goosebumps. So empty, all of him, like the life had left, and black smoke had filled the gaping cavity of his body. He ran on automatic, never expressing anything and always thinking. Not like he was evil, but like he wasn't even here. He was just gone.

But Ginny had yet to express these thoughts to anyone, not even Luna. It sounded crazy, she knew, and only someone who had seen what true darkness looked like, what a person who was pure evil felt like inside, would understand. Maybe Harry, if he was here, but he was not, and so Ginny just listened as Neville and Luna expressed their worries.

They thought Malfoy was the worst of the bunch, and maybe he was. He had killed Dumbledore. He had let Death Eaters into the school. He had been branded with the Dark Mark. But he wasn't malicious like Ginny had thought he would be. He was surrounded by darkness and evil, but he was frozen to it.

And she had no idea if that was better or worse for her.

Absently, Ginny stood, mind still wrapped up in Draco Malfoy. She made her way through the common room, glancing back only once at the empty common room. It wasn't until she was halfway to the dungeons that she realized what she was doing.

And that was when the fear struck.

She paused, unable to help it, even though the clock was against her. She had to be there by six, and being late was suicidal, but she could not force her feet forward. Not right at that moment, not with ideas of Malfoy's cold brutality floating around in her head.

Whatever moron said that brave people felt no fear had clearly never been a brave person. Ginny was brave, of course she was. She was a Weasley and a Gryffindor. But she was afraid now. What if Neville was right and Malfoy was as dark as his father? Could she really survive such close contact with another person dark as pitch?

The very thought sent a tremor through her hands, and like a key turning in a lock, a wall slid forward and solidly clicked shut, severing those thoughts off and burying them. The fear stopped and the shaking, and it was gone. All of her negative thoughts and fears and feelings, like they had never been there to begin with.

It was a skill Ginny had mastered quickly after her first year, how to completely ignore thoughts that she did not wish to think. And she did it now in a matter of moments.

The wall held firm and Ginny did not spare another thought to Malfoy or torture or darkness.

Instead, she straightened her back and walked purposefully forward, off to the dungeon for the punishment she did not deserve but that she would take. Off to be like Neville. Off to be brave. Off to be a Gryffindor.