**Author's Note: This is the longest chapter I've ever posted. Why? Because I said one chapter would finish this, my epic. There will not be a sequel, no matter what 'open ends' may be discerned from this pile of words. I would like to take a moment to explain my goal in these three pieces, and so if you'd like, you can skip along to the story. These three stories, "Come to Me," "Even I Have Pride," and "Stolen," represent to me the three stages of a volatile but lasting relationship: lust, need, and love. I hope I've accomplished at least a little of that. Small warning-there is violence ahead, and so be warned. I hope you've enjoyed reading these stories, I know I've enjoyed writing them immensely. Once you finish, I highly suggest cranking up "When Doves Cry," by Prince. It's my all-time favorite song to think of our fair-haired boy to. Happy reading.**
CHAPTER TWELVE
Draco's chin tilted into the air and, remarkably, he gave his 'followers' a bit of a smirk, the façade made complete by the single, trademark cocked eyebrow. He stayed silent as Pansy approached him, her head tilted thoughtfully. She looked, he thought, rather like a woman trying to decide between two different sets of robes.
She was slow to strike, first walking back and forth in front of him, talking in a high, dreamy voice about the trials and tribulations they'd decided he must go through. An instant before she struck, he saw her bloodstained fingers tighten around the thumb's-width branch she held and he steeled himself for the blow. It came, predictably, to the side of his head, and Draco's vision doubled and trebled with the strike, then cleared quickly.
A snake's-head walking stick could do so much more damage, he thought, staring coolly at the mere girl in front of him, backed by the two ogres who once had protected his every stride, shadowed his every move. They stared vacantly at him, silvery lines of drool escaping from their lips as they tittered, tittered, tittered to themselves like a couple of rats.
Pansy, however, seemed to take his lack of reaction personally and swung the branch again, backhanded this time, swiping him across his cool, unmarked expanse of cheek and splitting it open.
Draco let his head hang only for an instant, thick strands of platinum hair dangling in his eyes and sticking to the blood that was now flowing freely down his left cheek. Then he looked up at Pansy through long, pale eyelashes.
It hurt, of course, but there was a part of Draco, behind the gritted teeth and the resolute gaze, that welcomed the pain. The part of him that had stood back, horrified, and watched as he'd taken Ginny in anger now stood back and smugly thought You deserve this.
So he met his torturer's gaze forthrightly, determined to make the most of his trial. In pain, there were no voices, none of the smooth, sliding timbre of his father's vocalizations. There was only clarity, and the knowledge that he'd surely brought himself to this point, and the knowledge that at that moment, he wanted Ginny very badly.
"You're not even crying out," Pansy whispered, letting the branch clatter from her fingers as she neared him, her starvation-diminished lips turning into a parody of a pout. Her words reached only his ears, escaping those of the lackeys behind her, and she stood on tiptoe to search his face with her faded, murky eyes.
"You don't want me to, do you?" Draco asked, his breaths running deep but even. "A dark lord does not show his followers weakness." But those eyes that were fastened on him were not quite as mad as he'd first thought. Angry, perhaps, but a great deal saner than he'd estimated, which made him wonder-what the hell was she playing at?
She raised the hand holding the piece of glass, floating it almost as though it were levitating, and never took her eyes from his. "Weakness? I already know about your weakness." And she moved then, cutting away his robes with a minimal amount of fuss, never glancing away, never releasing him.
She'd been more vacant back at Hogwarts, less intent. It had been, he remembered, one of the many things he'd thrown in her face. Slytherins weren't supposed to be so absent.
They were supposed to be focused, exactly as she was now.
Exactly as he was.
He was bare-chested in a matter of minutes, Crabbe and Goyle laughing uproariously at his near nakedness. He wore only a pair of black boxers by the time Pansy was done, and even then she hovered over the waistband.
"Very regal," she hissed, bringing her lips close to his ear. "You whoring, weaselly, bastard." She thrust the glass into his side, and Draco's lips opened in a silent pant of pain.
"I'm not a follower at all," she said, dragging her lips from his ear and through the blood on his cheek, flicking her eyes back to the entranced Crabbe and Goyle. "Darling, I'm a leader."
His eyes watering from the pain, Draco lashed his head from side to side, his teeth bared as he tried to catch her, any part of her, that he could tear into.
By way of an answer, she withdrew her head like a snake, slipping her hand between them to dig sharpened nails into mauled flesh.
"Cry out, won't you, my darling?" she asked, twisting her fingers and feeling blood-slick tissue give and tear. "Cry out for her."
She always comes just when I wish for her most, Draco thought desperately, his helpless fingers clenching and relaxing around the phantom feel of her hair sliding through his fingers. Grimly, knowing he would cry out for her, call her to him, if given any more incentive, hating himself-
Think of what you've done to her, and know that you belong here-
-Draco reared his head back, slamming it into the dirt-encrusted wall behind him and sending himself into blessed darkness.
~~~
"I-I don't know," Harry said, his jade eyes crossing to follow the tip of the wand.
"Virginia!" Arthur gasped, but there was a touch-just a touch, he wouldn't admit to more-of pride in that shocked vocalization.
"I'm not asking you, Harry," Ginny said calmly, forcing her hand to be still. Keeping her wand pressed into his skin, she skipped her eyes to Mad-Eye. "Tell me."
But Mad-Eye said nothing, only grunted and shrugged. He'd die himself before he'd let the secret go.
But not Hermione.
Faced with the choice of possibly losing her job or endangering Harry-even though her rational, logical, unfailingly Hermione mind told her Ginny wouldn't do it-Hermione broke down.
"Stop Ginny, stop it!" she said, her voice rising into octaves of panic never before reached by the level-headed young woman. "Professor Moody!" she said pleadingly, unthinkingly reverting to the title he'd never even used. But her mentor remained unbending, and she turned back to her best friend. "They've been tracked underground before, near the sewers between Knockturn and Diagon Alleys, but never with him. He's never been with them before, so I can't honestly say if that's where they are now. I can show you, just please-stop. Don't harm Harry." She spoke in a rush, and Mad-Eye's face grew harder and harder by the second.
Ginny heard the desperation in Hermione's voice, heard how closely it matched the desperation in her own, and for a moment she felt very, very sick. Her brother, miles away, traveling with the Quidditch games.
Did he know all that time Hermione was looking elsewhere?
"You're both pathetic," Ginny said angrily, whisking her wand away from Harry's face and stowing it in her sleeve. She had to curb the urge to draw it out again when Hermione's hands fluttered to Harry's face, her long fingers tracing the small indentation Ginny's wand had made between his eyebrows.
But then her mother's words came back to her. It isn't as though you choose who you love.
"Inconvenient time to think of that," Ginny said under her breath. "Not too harsh on Ron, Hermione? Please." When all she got was a wide-eyed nod from Hermione, she looked at her father. "Do you know where they are?"
Arthur winced, looking from Alastor back to his daughter. "I know where they're talking of," he said, clearing his throat.
Ginny needed no more encouragement than that.
And while Mad-Eye roared and ranted and tried to rally up enough Ministry members to go after the Weasleys and stop them, Harry closed his fingers over Hermione's and said nothing.
~~~
They were in Boston.
She sat on top of the dining room table, legs dangling over the edge, and eyed him with frank curiosity. Though she was more the oddity-her red hair tousled around her bare shoulders, falling into wide, sleepy eyes as she snuggled farther into his bathrobe and sat on the damned table like an urchin-she watched him as though she'd never seen anyone eat before.
"I realize in your family, it's rare to see anyone use silverware, but must you stare?" The Young Master ate another bite, secretly self-conscious under her gaze.
What was she seeing when she looked at him?
"Relax, Mal-" In those days, those early days in Boston, it was so hard not to revert to old habits, to call him by the name he most despised. "Draco. I just…" She shrugged, not knowing how to finish her sentence without feeling the fool.
A corner of his mouth winged up and he pushed his plate aside, suddenly not hungry for his food. "Fancy watching me eat, then?"
"I was just watching," Ginny said crossly, cheeks burning. She placed palms flat on the table, ready to push off and leave-she was growing particularly fond of the house's mammoth library-when he slid his chair over, placed his hands on the tops of her thighs, and grinned up at her maniacally.
"Going somewhere, Virginia?" he asked, ducking his head to press a kiss to the spot high on her thigh where the robe had slipped open.
"I'm going to leave you to eat in peace, you bloody tyrant," Ginny said, raising her chin in the air but watching down her nose interestedly at his progress. Those long fingers encircled her thighs and he closed his teeth over the smooth skin he found above her knee, sending long, shuddering waves of shock up the long muscles in her thighs and straight to her center.
"I'm done eating," he said simply. "My food, at least."
Shocked at her own reaction, embarrassed by his reference, she tried to twist away, only to have him yank on her thighs, sending the oversized robe bunching around her waist as she tumbled gracelessly into his lap.
He released one of her thighs to unfasten the slacks he wore, only to find her hands already there, fumbling with the catch as her lips raced over his face, his lips, his throat, and it seemed she couldn't have him fast enough, to get him into her and out of her system, knowing she'd only find him there again next time she looked up, next time she blinked, next time she breathed.
And as he entered her, his name slipped from her lips, still new in those days of America, but as sweet as she'd ever been…
"Draco, love…"
But that was wrong-Ginny had never called him "love," and the word jarred Draco's memory, jolted the reality he'd let himself regress into.
"Draco, love, it's not time to sleep yet," the voice came again, not the sometimes soft, sometimes salty voice of Ginny, but the harsh, jealousy-ridden voice of an old school chum.
When he didn't respond to her, she jammed her handy wooden staff into his ribs, sending his eyes wide and a sharp pain shooting through his lungs.
Draco emitted a single, sharp cough, regretting it greatly, and stared at her balefully through an eye clouded by blood and sweat, the other eye swollen nearly shut. While he'd been out, Pansy had apparently been a busy little bitch.
"No rest for the wicked, eh, Parkinson?" Draco lipped, the small chortle of black mirth he indulged himself in sending more spasms of pain through his lungs and filling the back of his throat with the terrible, clinging, metallic tang of blood.
He would die here in this filthy hole with this rotten bint and her crazy beasts, and no one would ever know, because he'd lied, lied, lied, and sent them all away.
But he wouldn't do it idly. "Well, come on then," he said, rolling his eyes as best he could in the confines of injury. "You're certainly not a good conversationalist, Parkinson, and you're not dropping your knickers for me, so you'd best do something before I bloody well die of boredom." The defiant sentence ended on a wheeze, however, and as black spots swarmed at the edges of his vision, his whole being yearned to talk to Ginny.
"I have a present for you, my lord," Pansy said, making certain to pitch her voice loudly for the benefit of Crabbe and Goyle, who stood on the balls of their toes, waiting for her beck and call. One of them produced the shabby owl he'd seen once before, and the other a quill and parchment.
"You can write for help," she said sweetly. Crabbe sent the owl to perch on Draco's shoulder with a flick of his wrist, and Pansy took the quill and filthy parchment to Draco herself. "You can write to her for help," she said, eyes widened in mock innocence. "Maybe she'll come and turn you into a cowardly fool who runs away from his obligations and his loyalties. Oh… wait, that's already happened." She thrust the parchment in front of him, hovering it near his hand, and then jammed the sharpened end of the quill into his side, wetting it with fresh gouts of dark, clotting blood.
She held it up in front of him, his gore matting the feather together and dripping down her arm. Using her wand to loosen the cords binding his hand, she thrust the quill into it.
"Go on, write her a love letter." When he cast the quill back at her, she 'tsked' at him lightly, casting the quill back at him as she aimed her wand. "Imperio!"
His fingers snapped shut like a trap over the quill, and Draco jerked his head away from the parchment as the quill scratched over it slowly, etching letters in his own blood. After a few moments, the quill fell from his fingers. Pleased, Pansy snatched the parchment from thin air and gasped.
Fuck you, it read in scrawled writing, and when she turned surprised eyes back to her prey, Draco spit a mouthful of blood into her face.
"You think that's not the first thing my father taught me to fight?" Draco asked, his strength ebbing away in leaps and bounds. "I'd not drag Ginny into this stupid, immature game of yours if it was the last thing I did." He could feel the last of his blood trickling out of the wound in his side and the gashes on his face, one particularly bad slice to his head dripping steadily into his eye; every breath was blocked with thick blood. He reeked of death, and the three people staring at him stunk of madness, each a different brand.
He would die knowing he'd made the right decision, though; he'd left Ginny in peace as he died, because he loved her too much to use her as a shield.
Furious with the fact that he'd thwarted her, even in the tiniest of ways, and angry that her pretty puppet wasn't performing as she wanted him to-as she'd wanted him to for many, many years-Pansy reclaimed the long shard of glass she'd started out with and, with grim concentration, began carving the Dark Mark on his chest.
"You will die with the mark of the ones you betrayed," Pansy said. "Running off like a castrated dog to rut with a poor, filthy, breeder of a Gryffindor."
"Thirty times… the woman… you ever were…" Draco responded, unable to conjure up more than a wheeze as she jammed the glass into his chest harder.
"Bloody stupid sewer grates!" The voice was irritated and hesitant, and if Draco had retained consciousness for a few more seconds, it would have been familiar. "Alohomora," Arthur Weasley said, and was promptly knocked aside by Narcissa and Ginny.
Pansy had turned reluctantly from her work at the sound of Arthur's voice, her hand still clasped possessively around the glass. Crabbe and Goyle stood staring incomprehensibly at the intruders.
"Bloody do something!" she shrieked, watching with the motionlessness of one who truly believes they cannot be harmed. She had a vision, and a mission, and it was all coming to a head, with that Weasley harlot standing in front of her.
"Stupefy!" Arthur and Narcissa were of a mind on that particular spell, stopping the already slow, lumbering young men that were advancing toward them with wands drawn and brows furrowed.
Ginny had moved no farther than the entrance, her eyes fixed on Draco. He was barely recognizable, the pallid stretch of muscular white chest disfigured with more than half of the Dark Mark, myriad bruises stretching from one side to another. A cavernous wound spanned one side of his body, and his face was little more than a bloody mass.
"Doesn't look so good now, does he?" Pansy said, eyes narrowed catlike as she regarded this, her great challenger, her idiot savant of a competitor. This was what had kept their most promising heir away, what had kept Pansy's lifetime of want in America.
This redheaded, freckled, dirt-poor, good-for-nothing Weasley.
As Ginny watched, Pansy kept eye contact with her and made a single downward stroke, completing the Dark Mark.
It was just enough to propel Ginny out of shock and into action, and she thrust her wand with magical fervor she hadn't felt since the end of the war. Her actions were mechanical, calling upon training she'd refused to use for years, fueled by pure, dogged emotion. "Wingardium leviosa," she chanted, yanking the glass from Pansy's hand, opening a single diagonal slash across the young woman's palm as she did so. That broke the Slytherin's concentration, and she looked down at her spilled blood with the gasp of a wronged child.
"Look at me," Ginny commanded, her voice thick as she noted a fresh trail of blood snake its way from her lover's-her love's-mouth, down his chin to join the other blood running down his chest. When Pansy complied, reaching for her own wand, Ginny reacted, slashing her wand horizontally, eyes already hot with the tears of the guilty as the piece of glass zinged in a straight line, cutting Pansy's throat.
As she watched the destruction her wand had wrought, a single, harsh sob tore from Ginny and she let her wand splash into the cloudy water flowing beneath her feet. She took one, two steps toward Draco, her knees buckling and sending her sprawling into the mud.
Is he even still alive? She saw no rise and fall of his chest, no sign that he was breathing, only the blood flowing sluggishly down skin that was marble-pale. She reached up to the lowest of his constraints, thin silver chains binding his ankles, and pried at them fruitlessly, her brain refusing to work properly, to command her to get her wand. Ginny wrapped her hands around his feet, feeling for the pulse of life, anything, and then slid her arms around his ankles, tears streaking her face as she pulled herself up, feeling along his body to assure herself that he was there-trying to assure herself that he was alive.
If she'd stayed, if she'd only stayed with him instead of storming out in anger, then she could have saved him.
She could have saved every last one of him.
"Ginny," her father said from behind her, his own voice thick with tears. In all his years of living, he thought this was the one thing he'd least wanted to see. He'd seen wizards and witches ravaged by war, but none of them so brutally as this, so manually.
None of them had made his little girl look so bleak, so blank in the eyes.
He'd watched his little girl, his baby, kill a woman, and all for this man-a man who might not even be alive.
Narcissa slumped against the far wall, her legs drawn up to her chest, cast back into a stupor she'd abandoned long ago at the sight of her son.
They'd reached him too late, she thought, and had sat down on the cold, wet ground.
"I'm sorry," Ginny said, "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I'm sorry," she repeated as her father released the Binding Spell, her hands pressed against the marks on Draco's chest, her tears salting the open wounds. And who was she apologizing to, after all? The man she loved or the woman she'd killed?
Or was it herself?
And then he coughed, turning his head aside and sending blood along the ground, mingling with the pints he'd already shed, mingling with the blood of his torturer.
"Draco!" Ginny's voice came out in a thin scream, bouncing off the cavelike walls, echoing back to her in a maddened, frantic rhythm.
"Leave," he said, his voice little more than a single expulsion of breath, answered by a single indrawn breath on Ginny's part, a sharp gasp. "Leave before she… kills us both. You weren't supposed to come." The more he talked, the more blood, impossible amounts of it, left his mouth, and Ginny pressed her hands against his lips, trying to still his words.
"Dad," Ginny said helplessly, her face contorted by confusion and grief. "Dad, help him."
He opened the one eye that wasn't swollen shut, expending great effort to stay her with the steady, grey gaze. "I didn't need you," he said at length, sure he was dead.
Why else was she there?
"Don't be stubborn just now, okay? Have a little nobility," Ginny choked out, watching as her father ran to the end of the tunnel and sent out a wand flare for mediwizards. "Be a bit of a Gryffindor."
He smiled then, his lips curving under her fingers, under the thick coat of blood. "I am. Don't you see? I loved you too much to need you." He shut his eyes then, and Ginny hoped against hope that they would come soon, come and help him.
She didn't know how anymore, and any help she'd ever given him had been too wrong and too late.
"I'm not my father's son," he said, and Ginny laid her forehead to his, feeling her blood wet his face.
"I love you," she said, wondering what the point was of saying the words now, when he'd needed them long before.
His needs, she knew now, were many.
EPILOGUE
"The Wizengamot, Wizards High Court, hereby finds Virginia Weasley, daughter of Arthur and Molly Weasley of the Burrow, cleared of any and all charges relating to the rescue of Draco Malfoy and the capture or elimination of three fledgling New Order Death Eaters."
Amelia Bones smiled down at the young witch in front of her; the smile on the young woman's face had been there even before the charges were cleared, and Amelia thought it possible Virginia Weasley would have kept on smiling even if she'd been sent to Azkaban.
As far as Ginny was concerned, it was reprieve enough that Draco was alive, albeit trapped in St. Mungo's, along with his mother, for a good long while yet, disallowed his bad attitude, his chronic snitting, and conjugal visits.
He was especially vocal about that last rule.