CHAPTER TWELVE- The Actions of a Friend
It is truly amazing how much can be said in the absence of words. In truth, it seems as though we say more to one another when we're not talking, for in muteness, there is no dishonesty. There is no farce.
He said much to me that day, eloquently unspoken as I read out loud the words of the paper, in awe of my own ability to focus on the words that seemed ever-moving, ever-changing. He said much with those guarded silver eyes, eyes that watched me turn pages and watched me hurt.
That night… those moments… perhaps those were the only ones I really realized for what they were while they were happening.
In those moments, in his attentive silence, he began to apologize for the wrongs he'd committed.
Perhaps I should have found that strange, or wrong. Perhaps I should have seen more than just a sorrowful gaze. After all, since when did the great Draco Malfoy apologize, if only with those strange starshine eyes?
And is it so hard to understand why I did not want to speak that day, why I was so filled with self-doubt and even some self-loathing?
For whether he intended to apologize or not, I had already started to accept his apology, this man who had killed a friend, harmed countless others, and had almost torn my family apart.
I had already started to forgive him.
~~~
Ginny was, as ever, true to her word. Once she'd finished reading the newspaper in wounded, raw tones that were somehow dulcet, she'd folded it, risen, and walked out, leaving the man behind the glass to try and solve the enigma of the words she'd not spoken and the words she'd not allowed him to speak.
She Apparated home, having no patience for the walk and no wish to tolerate her own company.
Being in her own company only presented her with the opportunity to question herself, and with more questions only arose more doubts.
She Apparated in the yard, hands tucked in the sleeves of her robe. She'd taken to giving herself these moments, small moments of pretense where she could gather her thoughts and present herself to her family looking ordered and calm.
She used these moments to recoup her sanity.
Her sanity nearly flew the Owlery this night, however, when a hand descended on her shoulder, sending her heart rate thundering and her breath whooshing out of her.
"Oi, little sis, take it easy," Ron said, stepping back and holding both hands up. "Never one to fight, you know."
"You scared me nearly to Petrification, Ron," she responded, taking a swing at his shoulder. What had she expected, really? What was there to fear in these days of good, in these days of justice? "What are you doing?"
In the wavering, cloud-stippled light of the early night, Ginny saw Ron shrug his shoulders, and though his gesture was typically vague and somehow careless, she knew what was on his mind.
He'd said he didn't want to talk, and that had surely been a lie.
"I wanted…" Ron trailed off, uncertain of how to handle this. He'd originally intended to get it out in the open in front of everyone-everyone, of course, meaning Molly and Arthur-but somehow, it just didn't seem right to do that to her.
This was a matter between the two of them, and he'd settle it as such.
Besides, if people thought a Howler from Molly Weasley was bad, they'd never been a firsthand victim of one of her rants. Just thinking of it made Ron shudder.
"I wanted to see how you were," he said honestly. "And ask you a question."
Moving in unison, attuned in their own version of the twins' eerie synchronization, Ron and Ginny sat on the sinking stoop of the Burrow, knee to knee.
"Well, Ron, we all know how good you are at opening that great gaping gob of yours," Ginny said lightly, but her voice sounded vacant in the shadow of her anticipation. "Let's get it done, then, eh?"
"If I asked you to stop visiting him, would you?" It had been the other half of his puzzle, the one other gambit on the board. He had needed one answer from each of them, and he'd gotten it already from Malfoy. Now he just needed one word from his sister, this young woman who had looked so much like him as a child, this young woman who had grown to be beautiful in her own right.
Thunderstruck, Ginny opened her mouth, closed it, then blew out a breath. "Yes," she said honestly, but the single syllable was drawn out, reluctant. She'd meant to say it tersely, to tell the truth and get it over with. Before responding, she hadn't realized she even had any hesitance on the matter.
What would it be like, then? To just stop visiting him, to never see him again, to relieve herself of that burden? To deprive him of his savior?
It was beyond her imagining.
But her family was her life, and so she knew she would stop her visits to the prison if she were asked to.
But Ron had said "if," and she was leaning mightily on those two little letters. And so she listened to him breathe the cool night air in and out, but she kept her eyes on the stars above them, not wishing to see his expression.
She did not wish to see his forbiddance.
Satisfied with Ginny's answer, no matter how diffident it had been, Ron looked at his parents. "Well, that settles it." A cold coil of fear slinked through Ginny's stomach at his words; its iciness doubled when she realized she truly was afraid to stop visiting.
"Settles what?" she managed to ask, feeling the muscles in her shoulders and back stiffen with dread expectation.
"I won't ask you to stop going," Ron said, slinging his arm companionably over Ginny's shoulders, feeling them slump and tremble with relief. "And because I see you're going to ask why, it's because I think he's harmless." And, in truth, because Draco Malfoy had stood more honorably than any of his cohorts in those last moments of the war, had stood face-to-face with him and fought honestly.
Draco had done what no one else, including Ron's own closest friends, had; he had treated Ron as an equal.
Ron grinned a boyish grin, completely at odds with the seriousness of the situation. Everything inside him, however, trembled in time with his sibling's shoulders as he recognized the sheer depth of her emotions.
What, he wondered, would she have done if he'd decided she shouldn't go?
~~~
If she'd been distraught the day before, tear-streaked and shaken, today he thought she looked calm, remarkably more so than she had on any of his visits. Her steps down the corridor were leisurely, so much so he nearly didn't recognize the sound of them.
She sat down in the large velvet chair provided her, crossing her long legs under the horrible green robes she wore. He was, he reckoned, getting nearly as sick of that sickly green as he was of his own scarlet.
She made no move to touch the newspaper, only crossed her hands in her lap and regarded him. It was something she hadn't done much lately, choosing instead to look at her own reflection in the glass, choosing to try and solve her own mysteries.
Now, however, it was as though her brother had lifted a bit of a weight from her. He'd always tried to do that for her, had always been a spectacular older brother. For once, his help had been welcomed by Ginny. The small gesture had amounted to his acceptance, and acceptance was what she'd so badly needed.
He looked thinner to her, but somehow stronger, the angles of his cheekbones more prominent, his eyes larger, more dominating in the cell that was so little but held so much.
The cell was, of course, the same size it had been nearly a month ago, but it seemed smaller to Ginny, more pitiful. The bright robe, which would be unmistakable to anyone and everyone should the prisoner wearing it escape, seemed contrived in the dreary space, as misplaced as a unicorn at a deathday party.
The small cot he sat on sagged more, and in her mind's eye, she could clearly see him spending sleepless nights on that cot, hands laced neatly over his chest, slate eyes focused on the ceiling.
Now those slate eyes were focused on her, and she gave him the same courtesy.
If she was going to listen, she wasn't going to do it halfway.
He wanted to ask her what had happened between yesterday and today, but didn't dare do so. It broke the pattern of things, broke the rhythm.
Would you hurt her, then?
She was his salvation, wasn't she? And he had to make sure that was intact, that was all.
That was all, and so he forced himself away from the issue of her feelings and plowed on with his own.
"I had… have… no friends," Draco began, watching her intently, watching the range of emotions shift over her face. He nearly rolled his eyes, so clearly could he anticipate her next words.
"That's not true," Ginny retorted, thinking of the past tense-had-and of his constant companions in the days of yore.
"Oh, I'm sorry, Weasley, were you about to volunteer?" Draco asked, arching an eyebrow at her interruption and aching at the simple truth behind his own statement.
"No," she snapped back, embarrassed at the telling look he'd given her, ashamed of her own presumption. "I only assumed-"
"How many friends had you then, Weasley?" Though his tone was snide, the curiosity was authentic, his eyes frank and straightforward.
For a moment, she merely gaped at him. He'd not once invited her participation during his yarning, and that had been best. After all, what part did she have in his confessions?
And since when had the confessions lapsed into conversations?
"Just a handful," she answered, embarrassed and wanting to downplay the whole thing, let him get back to talking, back to the rhythm of things.
He looked pointedly at her slim fingers resting lightly on the arms of her chair and his expression was one of cool amusement.
"I believe, then, that this glass must make your hands look much smaller than they are."
At a loss for any other kind of response, Ginny laughed, and behind the glass, something akin to a smile ghosted across Draco's face.
Down the hall, Kingsley Shacklebolt closed his eyes and tried to ignore the feeling, the hunch, the sneaking feeling of bad that coursed through him at the sound and feel of the odd amity.
Things were amiss at Azkaban, and Kingsley wondered how wrong they could possibly get before things turned completely upside-down.
~~~
Is it possible, you ask, to form a friendship under circumstances like that? Is it possible for the friendless to finally find a friend when he cannot even touch the grass or breathe fresh air?
I would say no.
Friendship is too ordinary a word, too commonplace and too simple to be had in a prison, in a chamber of the entrapment of the mind, the entrapment of the soul, the entrapment of the body.
Forming a friendship loomed as an impossibility, but being a friend seemed viable enough.
Merlin knows we needed viability, life and the living, and how badly we needed it in those days.
How badly we all need to live.