CHAPTER FOURTEEN- The Marks of Those You Pass
Life has many marks.
The first time Dad came home full of Muggle phrases and Muggle oddities, he'd given us the idiomatic gem of "making your mark on the world." How the twins had giggled over that one, how they'd laughed and started dreaming up ways to literally brand this earth we lived on.
If anyone could do it, it would certainly be them.
But then Harry came back to us, came back to the magic world with his reputation, his history, and the mark on his forehead, and suddenly the idea of making or leaving one's mark didn't seem quite as funny.
We pass one another in this life; we pass and we touch, we meet, we speak or we do not speak, we act or we do not act. Think for a moment of how many people you know. Think for a moment how many people you've ever met.
Each of us changes each person we meet, whether that change is good or bad, big or small. We make marks, indelible, unwavering marks that in some instances can be just as visible as a scar, or just as visible as a patch of freckles.
Those marks stay with us for as long as we live, telling the story of not only our lives, but of the lives of those who have touched us.
Draco Malfoy had been much marked before we began our etchings on one another.
So had I.
~~~
It had a different feel to it, this Saturday visit. Gone were Ginny's ever-present green robes, replaced with a set of soft, dove gray, ashes to the fire of her unbound hair. This visit wasn't to be as much a confession, but a bit like conversation, and the difference was apparent in the first moments he awoke.
Sitting on the floor in front of her, the irony escaped neither of them; once upon a time, she had been peasant to his king, and he had looked down on her.
Now, he was allowing the reverse to happen, his eyes wide and frank on hers, his head tilted back proudly even from his position on the cold stone.
Ginny laid the newspaper on the floor, never taking her eyes from him, and then poised her hands lightly on the arms of the chair, waiting for him to begin that day's tale.
But because nothing else that day had been ordinary, he did not start a story. Instead, he asked her a question.
"Did Professor Snape survive?" The words were uninflected, bland, but Ginny could see the hope in his eyes, and the despair that rode closely on its heels.
She hadn't the skill or the reflexes to hide her reaction; her mouth dropped open in a wordless gape and her stare turned to one of surprise. Why, she wondered, had she assumed he would know these things already?
Because she didn't immediately answer, he kept talking. If he did not fill the silence, the answer he least wanted to hear would come, he knew. And so he spoke.
"Professor Snape was the closest thing I had to a friend," he said, and though his voice was decisive, it was a recent revelation for him. He had, as a student, always assumed the Potions Master favored him because of Lucius. He could never have guessed that he had been favored by a man who hated his father enough to deceive him.
Listening, Ginny let her eyes drift shut and envisioned the tall man, the black-clad, sour-faced professor who had not paused to strike down those whose sides he had stood by for many years. He struck down foes whom he had once called friends, and it had been he who had delivered the blow that had forced Lucius Malfoy to retreat, and more likely that not, to death.
Watching her eyes shut, Draco feared the worst, and he kept talking, speaking to fill the void he knew he had helped to create.
"That's what I should have been," he said fiercely. "Only I was too scared. He had us all fooled, you know. He had everyone fooled, and we all thought he was the most loyal of the Death Eaters," he spat hatefully. "But he was more than that, and that's what I couldn't do."
"You didn't know," Ginny said, opening shining eyes to look at him. It seemed a poor response, a weak one, but he answered nonetheless.
"Would it have mattered had I known? Do you honestly think, Weasley, that knowing his true nature would have changed mine?" What he wanted to hear from her at that moment was a rousing, certain "yes." He wanted her to tell him what he himself didn't believe.
But instead she only gave him a small smile, a sad smile, followed by the news he hadn't really expected to hear.
A chronically unhappy boy had grown into a chronically hopeless man, and so he hadn't expected to hear that his professor, his Head of House, had lived.
"Professor Snape is now Headmaster Snape," Ginny said, forming the words carefully. It was something she'd only heard in hearsay, and something Hermione had spoke of at length earlier. "Professor Dumbledore retired after… after everything." He'd retired, he had claimed, because he'd finally seen righted what had been wronged so many years ago under his tutelage. He had felt more than a little responsible for the rogue wizard, Tom Riddle.
It was his turn to be shocked, and Ginny watched with a mixture of pleasure and pity as the amazement washed over his face. He scrubbed a hand over his features, some of the tiredness lifting from them.
And then the bitterness, the hardness, set in again. It was almost as though a door had slammed shut, so firmly it made Ginny flinch. His face closed down and his mouth set in a firm line.
"What a disappointment to him I turned out to be, then, eh?" And the eyes he lifted to hers were so cold she shivered, sleet on glass, snow on stone. "Just like I was to my dear da."
"Draco," his name slipped from her lips pleadingly, and she reached a hand to the glass once more; this time he turned his face away in a quick, denying movement.
It was the first time she had called him by his name. He did not respond to it-found he could not. When had he last heard his name spoken so?
And why must it be spoken here, in the midst of solid walls, unbreakable wards and broken laws?
Why from those lips he'd sworn to despise, from the one whom he'd held in inherited contempt? She whose visits he now depended on, whose very virtue held his own by gossamer strands of habit and obligation?
"You don't belong here, Weasley," he said, unable to dredge up the nastiness she undoubtedly expected from him. "And you don't have to bother soiling that pretty mouth with my name."
His face still turned from hers, he sat once more on the increasingly rickety cot and stared at the stones he'd counted numerous times before, waiting for her to leave.
Waiting for her to release herself from him.
And so he sat, counting and thinking as she read the paper from front to back. When she finished, Ginny folded it neatly, laid it over the arm of the chair, and stood in front of his cell where she knew he could see her from the corner of his eye.
"You say I don't belong here," she said slowly, watching for any change in his eyes, in his posture. "But your saying it doesn't make it so."
As she walked down the corridor away from him, her voice wafted back. "Perhaps it is you who doesn't belong here."
~~~
It didn't get any easier.
It should have, considering all the work she'd put into making it easier for herself and for others, but it was still difficult to walk the wards of the wounded. It was difficult to walk those wards and know none of her efforts were doing any good.
Sometimes it hurt Ginny a great deal to know she'd used these patients as an excuse to see him.
"Hello, Luna, love," Ginny greeted the girl cheerfully, brushing the thick, silky blond hair back from her face before securing it with a bit of ribbon. As Glennys had allowed, Ginny chanted a slow, mellifluous countercurse, waving her wand over Luna in long, gentle sweeps.
"The stones have secrets," Luna said conversationally, tilting her head back to look at Ginny. "Top to bottom, one hundred and eighty eight."
Ginny bit her lip and continued the countercurse, feeling helpless and hopeless and altogether flummoxed.
Nothing seemed to help, no matter how well she knew him, no matter how well she'd known Luna. Even Ginny's want, driving and bone-deep, didn't make a cure. The hauntingly lovely young woman continued to spout nonsense day after day.
"He stares at the stones and sees his sins," she lilted, rocking lightly from side to side. "The cobbles call for him to count his curses and find his faults."
Ginny's hand faltered, making the tip of her wand shiver in the air, but she shook off the sudden chill that had coursed through her and started the last stanza of the lengthy blessing.
"Poor boy," Luna said in a sigh. "Poor boy." And then, remarkably, she turned those wide, pale eyes to Ginny's. "Look! I see… love for the boy and stones and sins!" She nodded her head so emphatically, Ginny glanced around for help, afraid Luna would hurt herself.
"All right, darling," Ginny said, equally afraid of the young woman's words as she was of her actions.
They're only words, Gin, only nonsense, she insisted, helping Luna to lie down.
But the blonde waved one hand frantically in the air, her eyes casting about as though seeking a listener. "Love! Here! Love!"
Cho and another young Mediwitch came running over, eyes wide and alarmed.
"What happened?" Cho asked, using an immobility charm to keep Luna from struggling. But the patient didn't seem to be in any sort of discomfort; rather, she had the air of one who has discovered something.
"The bird in the cage," Luna said to Cho, smiling beatifically. "Love, how nice for him."
Face ashen, Ginny backed away from the bed, stuttering her apologies. She turned away, one hand pressed to her fluttering stomach, and Glennys Gylfoyle stood just beyond her, eyes wide with a mix of shock and suspicion.
The marks were becoming evident.
~~~
It isn't that I was unobservant, or even careless. It wasn't that I didn't know my own heart, or that I was in denial.
But the fact of the matter is, in those moments of frantic shouting, Luna Lovegood was growing better, sounder in her mind. She spoke the first whispers of sense since she had bravely faced the Death Eaters, and she spoke them in the same, true, honest tone she'd always had.
Sensing the connection between the man who had wounded her and the woman who was trying to heal her, Luna began to grow stronger.
And she told me things I had not realized.
You can run so fast the things around you blur, and if you push just a little harder, run just a little faster, you cannot see what lies directly in front of you.
You cannot see what lies directly in front of you, even if it is dangerous.