CHAPTER SIX
His petulance would have better suited a ten-year-old, and she didn't hesitate to tell him as such.
After all, she'd given birth to him. It was her right to tell him when he was being unreasonable, and Narcissa Malfoy feared she'd not exercised that right nearly enough when her boy had been smaller. But they'd both been under the long, elegant, cruel and sick thumb of Lucius at the time.
Who needed discipline when they barely had room to breathe?
Now that her son sat before her, however, head hanging and eyes downcast, his usually eloquent response pared down to one-word rejoinders and grunts, Narcissa found the patience she'd gained in St. Mungo's wearing thin.
"You could have asked her to stay," she persisted, trying to catch a glimpse of his telltale silver eyes. Those eyes showed everything in their range of color, from flint to steel to the purest sterling, but he was hiding them from her.
"I could have, had I wanted to," he responded, picking at the supper before him. "You know how it is with those Weasleys, mother, you feed them and they'll keep coming back." He did raise his eyes then, the sarcastic sheen in them failing to affect her.
"If you're so determined not to be like your father," she said, stressing the last two words, "Then I'll make a suggestion. Don't push at her only to pull her back in, if you truly want her gone."
With a harried sigh, he scourgified the nearly-full plate and sent it winging back into the antique cupboard that sat behind him. When he finally spoke, his voice was both weary and wounded and intending to wound. "Don't compare me to him, Mother. In case you haven't noticed, you've been gone for the past several years, so I hardly trust your basis for comparison."
It marked the first time her son had ever spoken against her. But it was encouraging to Narcissa-- it meant she'd stricken a nerve, and an exposed one at that.
"Well, I know what it was like to have my entire life become someone else's 'necessity,'" she said. "Don't think she can't be needed elsewhere." Loftily, she scourgified her own plate and thought of how liberating it was to be here, now. Free of her husband and, after recuperation lengthy enough to drive a saint mad, free of usual manners.
Now that Lucius was gone, who gave a damn what everyone thought?
But Draco didn't notice her smug smile or her studying eyes. Her last words were sticking in his brain, and he wondered if they were true.
Could Ginny be needed elsewhere? And what was more, would she let herself be needed elsewhere?
The Weasley crown jewel had come to him of her own accord, yes, but she'd left him of her own accord, as well. She'd known no one else in America, but knew everyone back here in England.
What if, now that he needed her, she didn't need him at all?
"I'm going out," he said, pushing back from the table. After summoning his cloak, he was out the door and into the cool night air, tilting his head back as the cold air lifted and stirred the hair that fell to either side of his face.
He doubted, and just as everything was with Draco Malfoy, the doubts consumed him. In consumption, he lost his certainty.
This whole thing had started with being consumed, he knew, being consumed by her, by the witless Weasley who'd never had the sense to fear him, to respect him, and now she hadn't the sense to stay the hell away from him when he was nothing but bad news.
He needed her with him now, more than ever, but consumption didn't mean stupidity.
He would have her tonight, but he would have her somewhere safe.
It took little time to send her an owl, a simply stated message he was sure she would understand.
Draco was not, however, sure she would come.
He stood in the ground that had once held his mother's pride and joy, her extensive gardens, the only living things she'd been allowed to see to. Now that ground was barren as though waiting for her touch, and though unbidden, an image of Ginny in these gardens came to him, Ginny with the ends of her magnificent hair teased out by the wind, her mouth laughing for once.
It struck him then-he'd never once seen her laugh.
The stirring of wings caught his attention, and annoyed, he tore his attention away from the image his yearning mind had created and shot a glance at the owl.
"Lost already, you stupid bird?" The words were hardly out of his mouth before he saw it wasn't the same owl at all, but a bedraggled, public owl with bare patches along its too-thin body, its beak chipped and wickedly hooked.
A little disgusted by the filthy creature, Draco unburdened the beast of its message and sent it on its way as he unrolled the greasy-feeling piece of parchment.
You must call us if you want us-call us as He would have, with glorious burning pain.
We are ready to serve, but you must prove yourself first.
The rightful will rise and the wrong will fall.
The writing was jerky and blotched, signed with the mark of the Death Eaters, and in his mind's eye, Draco could see the painfully thin, overeager hand that wrote the message, shaking uncontrollably with-what? Hunger? Rage? Insanity?
"Incendio," he muttered, and the horrifying message went up as though it were nothing more than tallow. Was this, then, what his father had given his life for? What he'd nearly taken Narcissa's life for? A handful of power-maddened masochists who would stop at nothing to see their feverish nightmares made whole?
Belatedly, he wished to call his own owl back, to negate the message he had sent along to Ginny. It was already sent, however, and he'd be damned-more than he already was, that is-if he would let her wander about alone.
Voices from the sky
Say rely on your best friend to pull you through
But even if I wanted to I couldn't really truly
'Cause my only friend is you
If Molly was surprised at how quickly her daughter came back to the Burrow, she didn't show it. Instead, she set the one place at the table that she hadn't set in a very long time and went back about preparing dinner.
In moments, Ginny was beside her, performing actions both manual and magical, trying to set her mind-and her mother-at ease.
There was something lurking under the surface of-well, of everything, Ginny reckoned, effortlessly peeling a potato. Though Draco wasn't precisely what Ginny would have ever called predictable, or rational, or even stable, of late he seemed-
Tormented. That had been the problem in the first place, though, the one that had sent her running back to England, back to familiarity.
No, she corrected herself mentally, smiling up at her mother as their potatoes bumped in midair. You left because you couldn't stand that his mind wasn't on you. You left because you'd sacrificed every bit of your pride and he let you do it.
He'd let her do it and had never sacrificed any of his in return, saving those sacrifices for his vulnerable moments of sleep.
But the methodical, heartless element of planning that Draco always exuded seemed to have been extinguished, his behavior becoming erratic, panicked. What was he so scared of?
"Harry's coming over for dinner," Molly finally said, breaking the silence between them.
And though the smile Ginny gave her mother was thin, absentminded as she thought of other things, Molly was heartened.
Things could still turn out for the best.
~~~
He scoured every nook, every building with his eyes, keeping himself concealed in shadows as he stealthily made his way through Knockturn Alley and Diagon Alley. If there was trouble to be had tonight, he would draw it upon himself. He had chosen the evening's meeting place urgently, out of a need for safety, and so he would see to it that it was safe.
He crept in corners and listened with sharp ears as he visited each of his father's old haunts, and for all his care-for all his constant vigilance-not once did Draco feel the eyes upon him, one still and penetrating, the other rotating and all-seeing.
~~~
She had nearly finished eating when the owl came to the window, and Ginny Weasley couldn't think of a time in her
life where a distraction was more welcome. Harry was sitting across the table from her, grinning like a colossal
idiot-a look that would have been far better suited to Ron, who was back on the job, thankfully miles and miles away.
It looked as though someone had slipped Harry some sort of mentally debilitating potion through the course of the meal,
and if the twins had been there, Ginny wouldn't have doubted it for a moment. But they, too, were back to work, no
doubt entertaining a few good-humored ladies in their flat above the shop.
As a result, what Ginny had been forced to endure was an uncomfortably intimate meal with only her parents and Harry.
Torture.
When the black owl came to the window, Ginny started so violently she nearly choked on her food. "I think I need a glass of water," she said, hearing the odd, stilted pitch of her voice but unable to stop it. It took only a moment to nudge open the window and unclasp the sterling clip on the black owl's leg.
"Need a hand, Gin, darling?" Arthur asked cheerfully as Ginny started to return to the table with an empty glass.
Now who looked like the dolt, she wondered. "Ah… no, you know, I think I'll just slip into the loo-"
"Don't say loo in front of guests," Molly corrected automatically, all the world as though Ginny hadn't been gone a single day. She would have been offended, only Molly still corrected the adults of the family in the same manner.
No wonder they're all so bloody shocked about Draco, Ginny said as she ran up the stairs, We've none of us grown up in this family, only been mothered our entire lives.
She slipped into the brightly-tiled, mismatched bathroom and laid her back against the cool wall, her fingers trembling slightly as she unfolded the message.
It was easy to expect the worse when you didn't know precisely what to expect. He'd shoved her away, after all, and she'd given him one of her best punches, saved up from years as a beleaguered little sister.
Where words were first exchanged, when nightfall comes.
She burned the note, though it bothered her to do so, and clattered down the stairs. With a single, wide-eyed glance at Harry, she momentarily cast them all back into a moment years before.
But this time, Ginny Weasley wasn't starstruck, she wasn't even thinking about the famous Harry Potter.
"I beg your pardon, I just remembered-there was something I needed at Flourish and Blotts." She rushed past the table and bent down to brush an absent kiss over Molly's cheek. "Be back later."
She was gone before any of them really realized it, Harry's offer to go along with her dying on his lips.
"So," Molly said with forced cheer. "Who's up for dessert?"