Ch Three Apocalypse Rose The Failure ffnet

Saturday, April 11th, 1998. Two days before Eostre.

A mist of color spread over the flower field at the very edge of the Forbidden Forest. The first taste of spring at Hogwarts was green seedlings, the yellow peep of aconite, the white of snowdrops, the pale pink and purple of early crocuses, the deep gold of daffodils. A fresh green flush of leaves was starting to creep over the abandoned rose garden, the bushes starting their preparation to burst into flower in June. Ginny stared out the window of the tower over the awakening landscape, seeing none of it.

There were times in the past four weeks when that awful creeping feeling struck her as never before, when she had a moment free from her frantic busyness of Quidditch and DA meetings and cramming for tests and trying to avoid the Carrows, when a dull, gray cloud sank down over her. You are a failure, Ginny Weasley, beneath the brisk bright surface you show the world, it whispered to her. But it had never been so hard to push that voice aside. She didn't think she could do it at all, now. What made it so much harder, indescribably harder, was that she really had failed. The sword had been a fake; the attempt to steal it nearly a month earlier had been useless. And two days after that, Luna had gone home in response to a frantic owl from her father. She had still not returned. Ginny's own owls sent to Luna's home had returned without a reply. Nobody knew where Luna was or what had happened to her, and there seemed no way to find out. True, she herself had a strange, sure feeling that her friend was all right, that nothing terrible had happened to her, but Ginny didn't know if she trusted anything she felt these days.

She poured dark liquid from a sealed bottle at her side, raised the cup to her lips, and drank, grimacing. Ugh. I don't think I'll ever try anything that Colin Creevey brewed again. The rough spirits weren't helping, either. The voice still whispered on. You can't stop what's happening all around you. You can't protect your friends. You can't even protect yourself. When you tried to do it, you failed. Might as well give up trying.

A shadow loomed over her. She knew who it belonged to before she turned round. She didn't know how he had approached so silently, why she hadn't heard a single footstep, but Draco Malfoy was standing right behind her, on the other side of a battered old sofa. She gulped and put down the cup. "What are you doing here, Malfoy?"

He shrugged. "I came here to be alone for a bit, Weasley."

"Well, I'm not leaving," she said aggressively.

"I didn't ask you to." He sat at her side, on the old rug spread over the stone floor. "How did you find this tower?"

The question seemed to hold a sort of strange intensity that Ginny couldn't define. "What do you mean? I've always come here."

He looked at her sidelong. "So you've always been able to find it?"

"Of course," she sighed. "Why on earth wouldn't I be able to find this tower?"

"No reason at all." Malfoy picked up the cup and sniffed it, his nose wrinkling. "What sort of swill is this?"

"Never you mind," she snapped. It was strangely freeing to speak to someone to whom she could show her rudeness, and her sadness.

He shook his head. "Never drink alone, Weasley. Especially not rubbish like this."

"What do you know about it?"

He stretched out his legs in front of him and leaned back against the sofa behind them. "More than I would like."

She shrugged and leaned back too. "I guess you could say I'm drowning my sorrows."

"Is it working?"

"No," she admitted.

Malfoy gave the cup a dubious look. "What is that, anyway?"

"Colin Creevey brewed it. He's experimenting with distilling grains."

"Hasn't had much success, has he?"

"Not really."

He lifted an eyebrow in a gesture she had come to think of as utterly Malfoy-ish. His eyebrows were a darker blond than his hair, she saw, arching and smooth against his pale skin. He pulled a bottle from the large black satchel at his side. "I've got something better, if you like."

"Old Ogden's Firewhisky, Private Label," she read aloud. "Sure. Why not."

"Why not, indeed." He rose to his feet with a graceful gesture and started across the small room.

"There should be glasses over in that cupboard next to the fireplace," she called. But he was already opening the cabinet and taking out two tumblers.

"I've spent time in this tower as well, Weasley; I know where everything is." He sat back down next to her. "It's very like one at the manor, and I've always liked it. Ever since I was a small child, I've gone there a great deal to think, to get away from everyone else."

"So are you going to that tower a lot now?" she ventured.

"Yes," was all he said.

Ginny swallowed a large mouthful and began to splutter and cough. "Careful," he said just behind one of her shoulders, his lips disconcertingly close to her ear. "You're not used to firewhisky; it's a bit much at first."

"I've had it before," she said defensively. "I'm not a baby, you know."

His mouth turned up at one corner. "Oh, I know. Try it a bit more slowly."

She took smaller sips, beginning to enjoy the smooth rich flavor, and the world looked a bit brighter. She didn't look at Malfoy, but at her side, she could hear him drinking too.

He put down the tumbler. "So, Weasley. Why are you here?"

She shrugged. "I… tried to do something, and it didn't work very well. I suppose I just wanted to be alone."

"That's quite vague, and not much of an answer," he pointed out. It was true. She hadn't really answered him. She shot him a sidelong glance, assessing his hooded eyes, his carefully expressionless face, his deliberately casual manner. Why exactly was he here, anyway? The memory of the way he'd gathered lichen from the ring of standing stones that day several months ago and then put it into that very same satchel still gnawed at her, The only thing she'd been able to find out between then and now was that certain types of lichen could be used to either cure or cause respiratory diseases, which didn't seem very helpful. But she still believed he'd been doing it for a purpose. She wished she could come up with some excuse to rifle through that satchel now.

Ginny took another sip of firewhisky. "Why do you want to know more about why I'm here?"

"I'm curious," he said, putting his tumbler down on a small side table.

"I'll bet," she muttered. What did he want from her? Information about the student resistance, maybe? That thought stiffened her spine. It seemed all too possible. Why else would he be continually trying to talk to her every single time he came back to the school?

"You know, Weasley, there's a deep-seated belief in many cultures that saving another person's life means that you take on a sense of responsibility for them," he said.

"You didn't save my life, Malfoy," she almost snapped. "And you're not responsible for me in any way."

"Perhaps not. But I saved you, nonetheless."

"All right; I suppose you did," she said ungraciously. "I could have handled Theo Nott on my own, though."

"Are you sure?" he asked softly. His eyes held her gaze, a shaft of afternoon light playing across their silvery depths.

No. She wasn't sure. She didn't really know what would have happened if Crabbe and then Malfoy hadn't come along. All she knew was that she would have happily died before allowing Theo Nott to rape her, although she would have greatly preferred to skewer him with a sharpened broomstick first.

Draco Malfoy had been looking at her for a long time, and the realization rattled her badly. She took another long sip of firewhisky to cover her confusion, determined not to let him rattle her.

"More?" asked Malfoy, holding the bottle over her glass.

"Malfoy, if you think I'm going to give you something in return, you can forget it," she blurted.

"In return for what?" His voice was light and drawling. "Giving you firewhisky, rescuing you from the Carrows, or helping to save your virtue from Nott?"

Ergh. Ginny could feel the color rushing to her face.

"Really, Weasley; I'm only asking." The eyebrow went up again. "And exactly what is it you think I'm trying to get?"

They had somehow ended up sitting very close to each other, both leaning back against the couch, she realized. The nearness flustered her.

"I don't know. Information." She waved a hand in the air in a vague way.

"Oh, you mean tidbits about whatever that Dumbledore's Army rabble of yours is trying to accomplish?"

She gasped. "How did you know—"

He smirked at her, seeming to enjoy her confusion. "Weasley, I'm in a position to know a great many things."

"Oh." She dropped her gaze. It was the first time she'd even thought that he might be referring to where he was and what he was doing during the school year, and she did not know what to say in return. But there was something she had to ask, no matter what his response might be and no matter how much trouble she might be getting herself into by bringing up the question.

"Does this mean that Voldemort knows?" she asked point blank.

His eyes grew veiled. "Not from me, although I imagine Snape has kept him informed. But you can't seriously think that the Dark Lord would have any interest in the nonsense you've been getting up to, in any case."

She remained silent. Had he just admitted that he was in a position to tell Voldemort anything, that he was a Death Eater? But was there even anything to admit? She'd known that already, really; if it came to that, Harry had told them all at the start of last year that Draco Malfoy had taken his father's place. So why did it feel so wrong to hear it, so… disappointing to actually be forced to admit that she knew? Ugh. What's wrong with me?

"I heard all about your idiotic stunt with stealing the sword of Gryffindor, by the way," he said, breaking into her thoughts. "So you needn't act as if it's a secret."

I should have known that he'd already know. "It wasn't idiotic," retorted Ginny. 'I succeeded at it, didn't I? We came out with the sword, didn't we?"

"You got caught, didn't you?" he asked.

"Er…"

"And the sword was a fake. Wasn't it." His words were not a question.

She had no answer to that. After all, she'd already known that she had really failed.

"That attempt to make off with that thing—which anyone ought to have known was going to be an imitation, by the way—sounded like one of the worst wastes of time and energy I've ever heard of," he went on. "Really idiotic. You should know better, Weasley."

"I don't need you to tell me how to behave," she snapped back.

"Someone ought to," he said. "You might get yourself in trouble otherwise."

She flushed. Now they were sitting closer than ever. "What do you mean?" she blurted out, too disturbed by his nearness to be diplomatic.

"Nothing," he said softly. "Nothing at all. Tell me, Weasley, were you punished for the attempt?"

"Not as much as I'd thought we'd be," she said, looking down into the golden liquid in her glass. "Snape only sent us to the forest with Hagrid." It occurred to her that Draco Malfoy had gone to the trouble of finding out about the sword incident and then asking all of these questions because he cared what had happened to her, but she dismissed the ridiculous idea as quickly as it had come to her mind.

"It wasn't bad," she hurried on. "Not at all, really. Luna tried to warn us about the Greasy Gibgobulabs that flew up from the lake at midnight, and well, we laughed it off."

"What happened then?"

"We were, er… attacked by Greasy Gibgobulabs flying up from the lake at midnight," she sighed, glancing out the window at the lake, which she could just see in the distance. "It took forever to pry them off our noses. Don't worry, Malfoy; they never come out during the day, so you won't have to worry about them ending up over here."

He scanned her. "They don't seem to have done any damage to your face," he said.

He had thought about her face, she realized. Draco Malfoy had actually noticed something about her looks.

"Did anything happen after that punishment?" Malfoy asked.

Ginny swallowed down a sudden tightness in her throat. "Luna—went home and didn't come back. It was three weeks ago."

"Ah."

She glanced over at him. Malfoy's eyes were silver mirrors that reflected everything, showing nothing of whatever it was he felt (if he has any feelings at all, she mentally added.) "Nobody knows what happened to her," she said tentatively.

He simply nodded.

Was he being just a bit too elaborately careful to not give anything away? She wondered. Could he possibly know anything about where Luna was now? Even if so, she couldn't imagine how she'd get the information out of him.

Ugh. She needed to think about something that was actually important, which was to remember to tell the others that Draco Malfoy knew about Dumbledore's Army. She felt foolish for not realizing earlier that Snape would surely have told Voldemort about it, but she wouldn't have guessed that Malfoy knew. What she couldn't figure out was why he had told her.

In the distance, the clock tower chimed five. Malfoy shifted at her side. He's going to leave, she thought, with a silly sinking feeling. It shouldn't make any difference to her whether or not he left for some dark, Death Eater-y task or other. She should be happy that he was leaving; she should wish he had never come to the tower at all. But she wasn't happy at the thought, and she couldn't wish that he would leave.

But he didn't make any move to get up, and she was absurdly glad. He only rubbed his forehead, grimacing slightly. "Are you all right?" something made her ask.

"Yes. Just tired." He raised his glass to his lips again. They were surprisingly full lips for his long, narrow face, she realized. He seemed distracted for the moment, and she took the opportunity to study his face, the weary, drooping grey eyes, the pale cheeks and pointed chin. He did look exhausted, she thought, even more than the last time.

"You do look tired," said Ginny.

"Oh, I am," said Draco. "Exhausted."

They both sat back against the sofa, a strange, dreamy silence between them. Ginny took yet another sip of firewhisky and realized that she was starting to get drunk. Every sensation seemed heightened, the colors brighter, the coolness of the room pleasurably prickly against her skin… and the warmth of his own skin so very close to hers.

"You've looked more and more tired every time I've seen you this autumn, Malfoy," she said aloud, which she hadn't planned to do.

"I suppose I have done." He paused, staring at the ceiling. "I'm not sleeping very well, this year."

"Why?" she asked, which was yet another bad idea. She seemed to be having more of more of those each time she was around Draco Malfoy.

"Oh…" He shook his head, a bitter expression stealing over his features. "Things I don't want to remember, much less talk about." He ran his fingers over his forehead. "I've somehow managed to get a dreadful headache as well, and I've never been successful with casting charms against those."

"Neither have I, and I haven't got any willow bark," said Ginny. "But…" Oh, this is the worst idea yet. She took a deep breath. "There's something my mother used to do for me when I was a little girl and had a bad headache. It worked every time. Maybe I could show you?" If he scoffed or sneered at her, which he was sure to do, then that would be that, she decided. She'd get up and leave, which she doubtless ought to have done when she first saw him standing behind her.

"Would you?" he asked, his voice completely devoid of its usual drawling mockery.

I am absolutely dead drunk, thought Ginny. It doesn't feel that way. But I must be, or I wouldn't even think about doing this. She got up and turned so that she was kneeling on the floor in front of him, then reaching up towards him. He stiffened.

"Malfoy, you've got to relax, or this isn't going to do any good," she said.

"It's a bit difficult," he said.

She shifted position, facing him directly. "You've got to do it. Close your eyes. Lean back all the way against the couch."

He hesitated for a moment and then obeyed with a sigh, losing his stiff posture and letting his lids fall shut until he looked as if he had fallen asleep . How strangely innocent he looked, thought Ginny. She reached forward, almost losing her courage at the last moment, and took his head between her hands. Slowly, softly, she started to rub his temples.

"Ah," he sighed.

Her arms began to ache. "You're going to have to cross your legs, so I can get closer to you," she said. He did that, too. She moved even closer until she was kneeling directly in front of him. She could feel the warmth of his body now, and the fragility of his pale skin and thick soft hair under her hands. She rested her elbows on the top of his shoulders, feeling the muscles there.

"Is that helping?" she asked.

"Mm-hm."

She rubbed and rubbed, feeling him relax a bit, his breathing grow more even. It was impossible not to think that she was touching another person, and it felt good. The last time she'd laid hands on a boy had been at least a week before Harry's breakup with her that spring. That was how she'd known that something was wrong, some dark thing looming in front of them; he'd stopped kissing and touching her. And now she was touching someone else, someone who smelled like chocolate and musk, whose skin was warm, who melted into her touch with a tiny, shuddering sigh of relief. She felt his blood beat beneath the thin skin at his pulse points, and she wanted to move her hands to his face, to feel his cheeks, to trace the lines of his nose and jaw, to feel if they were as perfect and straight as they looked. Oh, gods, what's wrong with me? And why does that question always seem to keep coming up whenever I'm around Draco Malfoy?

She had stopped moving her hands. She held his head as if it were made of precious glass, infinitely breakable. He opened his eyes. They stared at each other, and neither said a word. How close she was to him. She could smell the chocolate scent that seemed to come off his skin. She could not stop looking at his lips, the top lip thinner and folded over, the bottom lip full and sensuous, ripe as a fruit she wanted to bite. Ginny felt herself leaning forwards, her own lips parting, and then-

"Ginnyyyyy!" a voice called outside. "Where arrrre you?"

She leaped to her feet and ran to the window. Colin was walking back and forth about a hundred yards from the tower, cupping his hands and yelling. She winced. He certainly did have a piercing voice.

"Colin's looking for me," she blurted, without turning back to Malfoy. "I have to leave."

"Yes. You do," he said in a flat voice.

She looked back just once. Malfoy had moved so that he was sitting in front of the cold fireplace now, hands wrapped round his knees like pale bandages. His face was blank. Almost. His lips twitched, and for an instant, she saw pain. She somehow didn't think that it was from what the two of them had done, but rather that the touching and the almost-kiss had unleashed an iron control in him, and the agony had slipped. In seeing his pain, she realized that she had halved her own by sharing it, and that the awful sense of being consumed by failure had gone. She wanted to help him, too. But she knew that she must not try.

"There you are!" exclaimed Colin as she approached him across the grass. "Where were you hiding? I looked for you everywhere."

"I was at the tower," said Ginny.

"What tower?"

"Oh—you know. That rather broken-down one right at the edge of the forest."

Colin gave her an odd look. "I don't know what you're talking about, Gin. I've never seen it."

"It's a bit tucked away. I like to go there to think. In silence," she said pointedly. "What's so important?"

"Oh, Neville wants to have a long talk before we leave tomorrow. He's got all sorts of plans, and he wants to go over them with us. He sounded a bit strange, but then, so does everyone else these days."

"Everything seems odd lately," sighed Ginny.

"That's one word you could use," said Colin. "Also awful, dreadful, hovering at the edge of doom, teetering on the edge of our own destruction…"

"Thanks, Colly; you've really cheered me up."

As they rounded the greenhouses, Neville came into view. "There you are!" he exclaimed. "I thought we'd never find you. And those damn Carrows were lurking about; I barely managed to avoid them."

"They seem to be doing a lot of that lately. I was just in that little tower; I don't know why everybody was so mystified." Ginny rubbed her nose.

"What tower?" asked Neville.

"You mean you've never been there, either?"

"No, I haven't. Where is it?"

"It's to one side of the standing stone circle, behind that field of flowers and the overgrown rose garden, right up against the edge of the forest. Honestly, how can nobody else know where it is?"

"Geographical features of Hogwarts are all very interesting, and I can't say that I know about that tower either," said Colin, "but don't we have a few things to talk about before tomorrow?"

"All right, then," said Neville, apparently dismissing the entire topic of the mysterious tower. "Here's the first thing. I heard a bit of news about Harry, Ron, and Hermione, from Cho Chang, who got it from someone else, who heard it from someone else."

"Sounds reliable," Colin said excitedly. "What was it?"

Neville shrugged. "Not all that much, actually. They're all okay, and the Horcrux hunt is still going on. There's really just one specific thing. Cho seemed to think that based on what her informant said, Hermione has some sort of separate angle going that she doesn't want the boys to know about yet. Some kind of plan to find valuable information in a book at Hogwarts."

"Did she say which book, or where it is?" asked Ginny.

"No," Neville said regretfully. "So I don't think we could do anything to help, even if we weren't all leaving tomorrow for break."

"Great," sighed Ginny. Still, it was a tremendous relief to know that the trio was doing all right.

"Second thing," Neville went on, "I want to tell you about one idea I had. Remember how we were trying to figure out that plan last autumn, the one that didn't work?"

"That's rather vague," pointed out Colin, "considering just how many plans we've had all year that didn't work out."

"You really didn't need to remind me of that," sighed Ginny.

"I know," said Neville rather impatiently, "but I think I have an idea of how this might actually might work. If you remember, we couldn't figure out how to get the Carrows to take some sort of Calming draft, or burn it as incense, or anything else. But I thought of a way that could we could manage it. What if the herbs were an airborne potion in some way, and they breathed it in? We wouldn't need to be anywhere near them; someone could be at the very back of the room with a sort of diffuser."

"It's a good idea," said Ginny.

"Well, yes, it is," said Colin, "but there's a slight problem with it. How do we keep everyone else from breathing the same air?"

"That's a drawback," Neville admitted. "I'm working on an antidote for everyone in the class."

"But what about the Slytherins? They'd be sure to find out and tell the Carrows."

"I'm working on it," Neville said through gritted teeth.

"Okay," Colin said hastily, clearly deciding to change the subject. "Wasn't there some other idea you had too?"

"Yes," said Neville. "If any of us needs to communicate with each other, let's use spelled galleons. They can get through when even owls can't, so I think they'd be dead useful if communication was interrupted for any reason. Don't you think, Gin?"

"What? Oh—right." Ginny smiled and nodded, but her attention drifted away. As they walked back towards the castle, she realized two things. One was that Malfoy's face was beautiful when he truly smiled, but perhaps it was even more so when he suffered. He had none of the rugged handsomeness of her own older brothers, but in a moment of any genuine emotion, he became too beautiful for a boy or a man, no matter how young. And when he was suffering, she wanted to comfort him, wanted to bring back that moment of happiness she had also seen.

The second was that she must never, ever think of Draco Malfoy again, except as an enemy. And she wouldn't. Really.

The next day, she went home for the Eostre holiday.