**Author's Note: This is a sequel occurring after "Come to Me" and "Even I Have Pride." My beta has me turned on to Prince lately, and so to close out the trilogy I started with "Come to Me," I chose another song I felt resonated closely with the story taking place in my head-"Thieves in the Temple" by Prince. I thank everyone who has taken the time to read these stories, and I hope you enjoy this last one. This first chapter contains no song lyrics, as it's only a prologue. Happy reading!**
She'd come there to understand him, come there to, in her own way, help.
Now that they were helping him, she wanted them to stop. After all, the Healers wouldn't let her in the room while they evaluated him, and the act of being apart from him while she knew he was suffering was killing her.
Ginny walked back and forth outside the door of the examining room, chewing on a thumbnail as her steps carried her away from the doorway, back to it, and away again.
"They'll take good care of him, you know." Narcissa's voice was quietly chastising as she watched Ginny maul her fingernails. "I… well, if they hadn't taken care of me, it doesn't seem as though I'd be addressing you at all, does it?" Unconsciously, she rubbed her wrist, easing a phantom pain that still plagued her from time to time. Yes, they had healed her, but there were scars that would never be healed.
She suspected the same was true for her beleaguered son.
Ginny spared Narcissa only a glance, feeling more than a little guilty. How long had she been waiting for her son to come? How long had she been waiting, prescient and aware and alone?
"It doesn't seem so," Ginny finally said, but she turned on her heel to continue her circuit of the floor.
"Virginia Weasley!" Molly's voice echoed down the corridor, and Ginny stopped without turning around, her back stiff. If they'd found her here, then it meant they knew more than she'd told them.
"Mum," she answered, turning with her chin held high. She wouldn't be ashamed of her associations, especially not to her family. "You didn't have to come." And, indeed, the whole crowd of them had came, each of them looking angrier than the last. Bill stood in the back, his expression mild, and she felt her heart swell.
"It's good and well I know that, missy. I didn't have to come, that's true, but it's unlikely I'd be letting my only daughter make such a grave error of being here." She reached out as though to make a grab at Ginny, but her daughter stepped back.
They'd gone back to the Burrow after seeing Draco, their suspicions running high and their confusion limitless; they had found it in a shambles, torn wallpaper, torn hangings, curtains in pieces, holes blasted in the walls. And there was no doubt in Molly Weasley's mind who had done it.
Molly Weasley's mum hadn't raised any fools.
"I'm not leaving," Ginny said through clenched teeth. "I know you're burned because I didn't tell you, but can't you just trust me on this?"
"It'd be a hell of a lot easier if you hadn't been consorting with the enemy," Charlie put in, glancing worriedly at Arthur. The Weasley patriarch looked pale, his face drawn with worry.
"She was only trying to help," Narcissa said, standing from the seat a Healer had conjured for her.
The Weasley family all stopped talking at once to look at the woman, eyes narrowed. Even Fred and George seemed at a loss for words, their eyes darkened with unfamiliar worry.
"Narcissa, my wife and I would appreciate it if you would not try and teach us how to parent," Arthur said, his voice strangely different from his usual excited tone. He felt as though something in him had shifted off-kilter. His little girl… he winced, stopping the thought before it fully formed. He turned shadowed eyes to his daughter then. "It pains me to think you had to lie to us," he said stiffly, and for Ginny, it was Percy all over again, Percy's betrayal and Percy's denial and the brief alienation Percy had spent from his family.
She was the stupid git they'd all be cursing about now.
But Bill spoke where none of the others could. "You'll come home, won't you, Gin?" His eyes implored her, and both of them knew the choice she made was crucial.
Though she was hardly aware she did it, Ginny glanced at Narcissa, and seeing the woman nod slightly, she nodded at her family. "I'll come home tonight," she said, feeling her heart sink.
It would be the first full night she had spent away from Draco.
~~~
"I don't want to."
His jaw was set firmly and his eyes were cool on the pair of Healers standing in front of him.
The young witch, a Healer-in-Training, looked anxiously at her mentor and back at Draco. "You know, there have been progressive steps taken in Pensieve therapy, and it isn't as though you'll even realize-"
"Are you not listening to me?" he asked in a near-roar, watching Ginny's shadow pass back and forth through the tinted glass. "I don't bloody well want you to take my memories and scrub them clean." They were his only guidepost-his only way to know when, exactly, he was crossing the line, and they were telling him those same memories made him sick.
They were the only way to know when he was being his father's son.
"I want to go," he said thickly. "If I want help, I'll bloody well ask for it." He stood and pushed past them, his broad shoulders forcing them to move out of the way. He jerked open the door hard enough to have it bouncing against the wall, and then immediately wished he hadn't come out.
The entire Weasley family stood glaring at him, his mother, and Ginny, and Draco once again entered the world he'd been so desperate to escape.