**Author's note: A bit of a longer chapter following. It's been hard to get chapters out, as I'm really getting into the crux of things, and I appreciate the faithful reviews I've been getting. You don't know how much it means to get good feedback on work. Happy reading!**
CHAPTER ELEVEN- The Needs of the Compelled
The most momentous events of your life are the ones which most often go unnoticed in their time. Most people never realize the moment they fall in love, the moment they find their calling, the moment they find themselves.
Most people never realize the moment in which life as they know it begins to fall apart.
Our lives are like buildings, built carefully brick by brick until we're familiar with the shape, familiar with the structure. It is as well-known as one's own house, every angle, corner and wall both loving and loved. And then things happen, and you are forced to change the plans of the house, forced to move the bricks, forced to catch pieces of the house as they fall.
We are constantly rebuilding, and sometimes we never realize it.
I was re-laying my life brick by brick in an entirely different pattern, rebuilding my life in a structure that encompassed things I never meant to encompass.
And so when my life began to fall apart-when my life began to change-I was already knee-deep in mortar and too busy with my bricks to notice.
~~~
She'd been expecting it for weeks. After all, this was where the girl had been heading, theoretically, though Glynnis Gylfoyle would have counted herself the world's biggest fool if she believed Ginny Weasley's intentions were singular in nature.
Now the girl sat in Glynnis's office, her eyes forthright above the dark shadows of sleeplessness that marred her skin.
"Well, Miss Weasley, you've something to tell me?" And plenty you won't tell me, Glynnis remarked internally.
Ginny nodded and leaned across the desk, intent on seeing out the task she had started.
She had sought information, and information she would give.
"I don't know if any of this will help," she said, thinking of Luna and Tonks and the dozens of others stricken in the wards. "But anything which was done by Draco Malfoy's wand was done because of his father."
It was a leap she'd made blindly, an assumption she'd made after three days of listening to him talk. He was miserable; any fool could see that. And what was his tie to the Dark Lord, to the wrong side of the last war?
His father.
"He acted from a warped childhood, a loveless childhood. I am convinced he hardly knew any better than to act as he did. If a curse with marks of guilt, a curse with marks of happenstance, bears any difference from a fully-intended curse, then-" She shrugged and looked pleadingly at Glynnis.
What she wanted to hear was that the victims in the Malfoy section could be healed, that the majority of what Draco had done could be reversed. She wanted a lessening of the crimes of Draco Malfoy, whether she realized that or not.
And even if Ginny didn't realize it, Glynnis Gylfoyle did. "Are you telling me this to aid a healing or to ease his conscience?"
Hearing the truth uttered so casually shook Ginny, but she didn't show it. Instead, she folded one hand over the other and kept her eye contact unwavering. "If one happens to coincide with the other, what possible difference does that make?"
Clever girl, Glynnis thought. "Not a whit."
But Ginny thought of Glynnis's question-and the mystery of the real answer, shrouded somewhere in her own heart and mind-all day as she went about her rounds.
She slipped into the long-term ward to check on things, fluff pillows, check on any potions that may have been administered, offer what comfort she could. As she did so, she felt her mouth dry when she saw who was there.
Though in her first days at St. Mungo's it had taken several tries to enter Frank and Alice Longbottom's section of the ward, Ginny had started to see them as something entirely apart from her job-a pilgrimage of sorts to the people who had made such a wonderful boy.
But in all the times Ginny had visited, Neville's grandmother had never been there.
"H'lo, Mrs. Longbottom," Ginny said, waving her wand to refill the pitcher on the bedside table and to freshen the ever-present vase of flowers, feeling the acute need to keep herself busy.
Neville's gran peered at Ginny through small, unreadable eyes. A lovely girl, she thought, with a good, strong family. But…
"You're the one who's been visiting my grandson's murderer," she stated, her voice betraying no particular emotion.
For the briefest-and most painful-of moments, a picture of Neville's sweet, smiling face slashed into Ginny's mind, and she put out a hand to steady herself, small fingers grasping the edge of the bedside table. "Yes, ma'am."
Sometimes there was nothing to say but the truth.
Mrs. Longbottom lifted herself out of the chair as though hefting the weight of her many years and her many grievances; Ginny supposed she was, in a way-what must it be like to outlive not only your children, but your grandchild, as well? When she'd pulled herself to her full height, ghastly hat and all, she stared Ginny in the eye.
"My grandson was too young to die, and a boy too young to die is a boy too young to kill." Without waiting for an answer, she nodded her head, sending the innumerable plumes and knickknacks of her hat waving, and then exited.
The cryptic nature of the statement puzzled Ginny, but as she looked at the two people lying side-by-side in the beds they would forever be doomed to, Ginny thought she understood.
No one their age-Neville's age, Ginny's age, Draco's age, even-had any business mixed up in a war.
No business dealing in life and death.
All the same, Ginny couldn't fight the feeling of sickness that swamped her, and she sat down in the chair Gran Longbottom had vacated, putting her hands over her face and weeping to the accompaniment of the labored breathing of two martyrs of the first war.
~~~
It would have been easier, ever so much easier, to just pretend it wasn't an issue, pretend it wasn't happening. He'd been good enough at that once upon a time, playing "ignorance is bliss" right to the hilt. Daily dalliances with the twins kept that particular brand of bliss sharp, but with the close of the war, Ron had changed. No matter how hard he tried to ignore that, it was the truth.
This day, as he worked side by side with the friend who had become a brother to him, Ron could no more ignore that truth than he could ignore his best friend.
"I'm going to go up there," he said, turning a can of exploding sardines so the label faced front and center.
Harry made a noncommittal noise and made a tick next to the sardines on the inventory list. Even if he'd been a fool-which he'd been at some points in his life, surely, but not now-he'd have noticed Ron's silence of late, the long periods of completely uncharacteristic pensiveness, the scowls into space.
Harry hadn't seen Ron so perplexed since he'd started trying to figure out the puzzle that was Luna Lovegood in sixth year.
So it was with no surprise that Harry took in Ron's declaration. Of course he was going up to Azkaban.
Harry just hadn't figured out why yet.
"Mum and Dad want me to tell Ginny I want her to stop goin'," he said, busily arranging tins and boxes with his long, slender fingers, his features pulling into an expression that was uniquely Ron.
That, too, was no particular shock for Harry; the twins had made no secret of the family wish for cessation of visitation. But something about the reluctant way Ron said it did serve to shock Harry, and the slender, serious brunet stopped taking inventory to regard Ron.
"What?" Ron asked peevishly, stacking a box with slightly more force than necessary and igniting something inside.
"Nox," Harry said patiently, extinguishing the small lightshow that had erupted from the box. "Well, out with it, then," he said, leaning on the counter. "I'd hate to see what the twins would devise if we'd not finished inventory by the time they got back."
"Until I went to Hogwarts, Gin was my best friend. I'm not tellin' her to do somethin' like a bloody idiot tattletale." And that, really, was the gist of the matter. If people didn't want her to do something, they could tell her so himself.
It felt just a mite degrading to be used for your status as a victim.
Good for you, mate, Harry thought. It didn't take a genius-or the Boy Who Lived-to realize that Ron had spent far too much of his life doing as others had told him, living in the shadows and commands of others.
If he wanted to stand up now, Harry thought it was a fine time to do so.
~~~
She was late.
When each day was identical and there were no outlets to the world outside, there were also no reference points. Time took on an entirely different quality, shifty and inimical, sneaky and changeable.
Meals, though they came three times a day, were barely noticed. Minutes stretched into hours while days were over in a snap.
She was his only reference.
In a stretch of day barren and dark, she was the only way to differentiate time. She was noon, straight overhead, unmistakable and scorching.
Time for the prisoner in the first cell on the right had boiled down to two things: the time when she was there, and the times when she was not.
And as Draco sat in his cell, he knew-he felt-that it was supposed to be the former but had somehow become the latter.
He was edgy but forced himself to stay still, his hands folded together in the perfect composition of calm, his eyes trained on the wall. He'd done it for weeks before she had come, and he could do it now.
Damn her for spoiling a routine, for spoiling the quiet.
He breathed rhythmically, in through his nose, out through his mouth, practicing in the cell-roughly seven paces by seven paces-the techniques he'd practiced while huddled under thick silk and velvet covers as his father did one more crazy thing, then another, then another, one more abusive, horrible, frightening thing.
He had made it through much worse than the absence of one of the good ones of the world.
Had his world shrunk so small that even the absence of a Weasley would affect him so?
In through the nose, out through the mouth.
Seventy-three breathing cycles had passed since she should have been there.
At a hundred and eleven, he heard the heavy thump of the iron door being unlatched, his only sign of recognition the slow unfolding of his long fingers, the quickening of his breathing.
But the steps were not hers, that much he could tell immediately. The chair summoned was different, bigger, the sounds of the footsteps longer and heavier, but more hesitant. There was none of that fast, graceful clip to be had here. This person was about to stumble over his own fear, and Draco could all but smell it.
He fought his curiosity with his apathy, the apathy winning out easily even though he saw the flash of orangey scarlet that meant a Weasley was in the vicinity.
Ron stood on the other side of the glass, his gaze momentarily fixed on the plush tweed chair before him.
Now what, exactly, was he supposed to do with that?
He sure as Merlin's hat wasn't going to sit in it, if that's what they wanted. He was here to ask a question and leave. Though he wasn't about to condemn Ginny for it, Ron couldn't understand for the life of him how she could sit here and look at that git for extended periods of time.
He wasn't good with words, he'd never been particularly clever in that area. That, at the very least, had been Hermione's forte. Ron had been a good tactician, good at seeing the picture in the long haul, the chess board from above.
Now he saw only one move he could make, only one counter he needed to know.
And though he'd never particularly credited himself with bravery, either, Ron did what he had to do. Taking a deep breath, regarding the man he knew could hear him, Ron asked the only question he had to ask.
"Would you hurt her, then? If you had the chance, like you hurt me?"
Seconds spun by, five cycles of breathing, breathing so fast it made Draco's head spin.
What the bloody hell kind of question was that, anyway?
Muttering a swear, Ron kicked absently at the leg of the horrid chair that had been summoned for him and turned to walk away. "I'll take your silence for consent then, you feckin' bastard," he said weakly. Had he really expected anything else?
And as he turned back for one last look, a hint of an answer reached Ron's ears.
Silver eyes met his as they had one day on a battlefield months past, though the heat was long since past. There was no wand, only an equal looking at an equal, and on an exhalation, his lips formed the whisper of a word, more a breath than a vocalization as his mouth shaped the rounded syllable that carried his feelings. In the tomb-like silence, the puff of air seemed emphatic, commanding.
His answer was no.
And though Ron's assessment of his own mental faculties was somewhat bleak-he had to be nutters to believe Malfoy-he walked away from Azkaban with the only answer he needed, leaving the man who had nearly killed him sitting on a cell in a small stone room, breathing in and out in wait for her.
~~~
Four hundred and seventy four breathing cycles went by before the iron door sounded again, and this time the steps were fast and even, light and sure, familiar as his own pattern of breathing.
He turned to face her, his high noon, and eyed her with the gaze of an ingrate.
I was an ungrateful, spoiled brat…
And he still was, and he knew it. But it was hard to be grateful for being turned into a dependent.
Draco was fairly certain having his soul sucked out would be more merciful.
It was on the tip of his tongue to say something nasty about her punctuality problems, but that would only accentuate his desperation more, his neediness for this saving grace, this daily visit, so he kept his mouth shut but turned to regard her.
She'd been crying.
"I'm going to read the newspaper, and I'm going to leave," she said, her voice steady though her hands rattled the paper she held. It had been a bad day, filled with thoughts of Neville and his parents, filled with those last few moments, the sight of Neville falling, the sound, impossibly loud over the clash of other warriors, traveling to her ears so she could replay it for years to come.
Perhaps she hadn't replayed it enough, she thought as she shook out the first page of the paper.
After all, she was here, and now that she was here, it was impossible to see only Neville's face. She saw, as well, Draco's, then and now, the fierceness of the warrior and the weariness of the prisoner. Since when had that aristocratic beauty been weary? Since when had he looked so edgy? As she'd approached, his eyes had been fixed on the wall, as was his habit, but they lacked the blankness that was his trademark. No, this time he'd been staring at the wall as though that state of catatonia was just too hard to reach today.
Her wonderment of why only served to make her angry at herself.
The sight of the red streaks of grief layered over the light dusting of freckles did what should have been impossible: thwarted Draco's urge to speak for the night.
His story could wait, now that he had the power of her presence, and so he listened to her story, told between the lines of the newsprint, told between the shifting colors of the moving pictures.
He listened to her grief, and he concentrated on his salvation.
~~~
Do we ever truly know what we need? Or do we just know what we want, and do we want it so badly we don't bother to find the root of that want?
There are people in this world who always seem to know what they need. I, unfortunately, was not one of them.
I needed that sight of Neville in my mind, needed to remember him, needed to keep that at hand.
Or perhaps I just wanted it.
What I really needed, I found inside Azkaban, inside cold walls and glass rooms, inside that which I could leave, whereas others were trapped.
But at the time, I knew, absolutely knew with certainty that I didn't need to be there.
I just wanted it.
I wanted it like a prisoner wants freedom, like the guilty want salvation.
And now I realize that is need.