**Author's note: All my apologies for the delay in posting; I just want to express there are so many more pleasant things in this world than having to reformat your entire hard drive. The whole thing. Zap. Instead of thinking about the travesty that is technology, I present to you… story. Happy reading!**
CHAPTER EIGHT- The Statement of the Obvious
I could have stopped then.
Laying aside the question of destiny for the moment, I tell you I could have stopped then, said I'd tried my best, and moved on, shaken but for the most part unchanged.
But the fact of the matter is, everything I am-everything I was then-did not allow me to cease at that point. I had made him speak, and in that there was a kind of magic all its own, a fierce magic of no wands. The thrill of moving something-or in this case, someone-into action, of being the first, of discovery.
Oh, we are competitive creatures, and our competition is in no way dimmed by fear, or lack of understanding, or uncertainty.
And our curiosity, too, drives us, for what else causes people to wake up day after day? If you love and have a love, then it is your love who wakes you up, who calls you to them. If you are alone, however, it is that stunning, shining, mysterious prospect of "What now?"
From his words, both piercing and provocative, mysterious and maddening, I knew one thing.
I was not loved, but hated. No big surprise there.
So… what now?
~~~
In some ways, the wizarding world, broadened by its knowledge of the true nature of things, is also smaller than the outlying world of the blissfully unaware. It is an entire network oh-so-compressed by the things taken for granted, by the circles in which its people move.
And as one looks over this world both broad and narrow, where a troubled young wizard has troubled a young witch, we can see the owls begin to fly, the fireplaces flare with the news that one has spoken.
They do not have telephones, these witches and wizards, but they have there ways, and gossip is ever-popular. This is human nature.
When she let herself into the Burrow that evening, shaking remnant jitters off the way a woman might scatter rain, Ginny knew certainly that any private thinking time she may have had in the matter of one Draco Malfoy was over.
Just as well, she thought, taking the time to shed her Mediwitch robes and scourgify them. Her private thinking time had garnered her no explanations, no conclusions at all, but only a persistent curiosity that had not yet been sated. If anything, his words had only made it deeper and more determined.
She steeled herself for the worst, listening for her mother, father, and brother-
- And was promptly knocked arse-over-teakettle.
"Dad?" she managed, untangling herself from the mass of shambling limbs and shabby clothes which had nearly flattened her.
Whatever she'd been expecting, it wasn't this-Arthur laid two rough-palmed hands to his daughter's cheeks and laid a giant, smacking, awkward kiss on her forehead.
"You're brilliant, love. What did he say? Anything important? Anything helpful?" His eyes were shining with that curious glee that always accompanied his fascinations, and he didn't wait for a response before releasing her and Disapparating.
Though she knew well where he'd gone, Ginny looked up at the clock on the wall and watched the hand for her father move to "Azkaban."
Before she could prevent it, a slow, sneaking stiletto of envy pierced through Ginny. He talked to me, she thought. Me. But would he talk to just anyone? And did it really matter?
She looked around the empty kitchen, stricken momentarily motionless by her train of thought.
"Well, love, what did he say?" her mother's voice, notably less enthusiastic than her husband's, jarred Ginny from her thoughts, and she felt the half-truth, selfish and clinging, rise in her throat and flow casually from her mouth.
"Just that he was guilty," she said. "That's all."
Molly tilted her head as though she saw deeper, and as a mother, as a woman, she did. Her daughter's eyes were troubled, shifting, and a simple admission from a murdering whelp should not-could not-have done so much to unsettle the steadiness of the youngest Weasley. Swamped with worry and love for her only girl, Molly put gentle hands on her daughter's shoulders.
"Did he hurt you somehow?" she asked, her eyes intent. The query was ridiculous, she knew, but she had to ask.
And her daughter, with the eyes of a woman instead of a girl-When did that happen? Molly wondered-patted her mother's hands with love.
"I'm not hurt, Mom," she said, and then finally spoke a truth that was intact. "It's good to be home for the night."
~~~
The hospital was abuzz the next day, and Ginny felt the starts of a headache nestling in her head before she'd even made it through the main lobby. Everyone was talking about her, but no one to her. People glanced sidelong at the petite redhead, but none of them actually made eye contact with her.
She'd seen those looks before, of course, the sliding, suspicious, strange, curious looks that spoke of volumes of gossip that had come before and would continue long after she'd disappeared down the corridor.
This time, she didn't care. This time, she'd not done anything wrong, unwittingly or otherwise. She wouldn't hang her head because people were curious.
Ginny held to that ideal, keeping her chin in the air to the point she hardly saw anything around her; when she nearly walked past Glennys, the older woman snagged her by the arm.
"Miss Weasley," Glennys said, her face sober but her eyes dancing. "A bit of pride is a good thing, but let us not allow it to hinder our steps, shall we?" When Ginny's cheeks burned red under her freckles, the Healer shook her head with a cluck of the tongue so like Molly's it made the blush recede. "I only wanted to tell you that the wand you brought to us several weeks ago is helping some." If it were possible for the stout women to look uncomfortable, she did so now. "And perhaps, too, would information. It's only that-"
Ginny shook her head not knowing what was coming next, not wanting to know. She didn't want qualifiers, she didn't want rules, and deep down, where she was intimidated by what was happening both inside and out, she knew that the more she was told 'no,' the more she would persist.
It was the Weasley way.
"I'm just helping," she said with a smile, and somewhere inside, she trembled.
~~~
She'd gone to St. Mungo's that morning with every intention of going home straight after, but as the day wore on, the glances grew longer and the voices grew louder in the corridors of the hospital.
"Little kiss-up, you know, running right out there to try and please Gargoyle Gylfoyle and get attention for her daddy's pet project."
"I heard there was an incident with You-Know-Who in her official records, so Merlin only knows what she has to talk to Malfoy about."
Don't you have any good, healthy fear?
That last voice, in her memories only, made Ginny cringe.
Plenty, she thought in response to the last evening's jibe from Draco. Plenty of fear, but not of you, and not of what people think.
Her surety wavered hours later when she Apparated to Azkaban only to find she'd popped up in the midst of a nearly crushing throng of reporters from the British wizarding press.
Her mind still astir from the Apparation, Ginny blinked owlishly as a young wizard with a horrifying amount of bushy blond hair thrust a notebook and quill in her face, his watery blue eyes avid. "Miss Weasley, Johnny Droner from the Daily Prophet. What can you tell us about the prisoner? Any quotes? Any thoughts?"
Yes, her mind supplied in a chipper tone matching the reporter's. I think your teeth are incredibly large and your hair is deplorable.
But she was unable to speak before another reporter shoved a quill in her face, and then another, and another.
"No comment." The voice was huge, as was the man speaking, and Kingsley Shacklebolt's passing cut a wide path through the reporters. In an instant, he had Ginny tucked under one unbelievably massive arm, sheltering her as he led her back to the prison entrance, slamming the huge iron door in the faces of the masses.
When he was sure they were out of earshot, he released her. "You shouldn't have come," he said sternly, but he went no further than that. Sometimes, Kingsley knew, there were things that would happen no matter what you said or did.
"I know," she said simply, and went through the visitation protocol with the ease of habit.
~~~
Though he'd not spoken to anyone since her departure the day before, he was ready for her and speaking before she even sat down; for a few moments, he'd thought she wasn't coming at all.
"And here, little Weasley, I thought you'd enough sense not to go where you're not wanted." She met his eyes and saw him tilt his bright head as though thinking. "Though were that the case, I don't suppose you'd have tailed Potter so closely for so long." His eyes narrowed as his lips perked into a smirk, and Ginny sat down, her face placid as she shook out the newspaper.
"Well, Malfoy, I'm shocked that you thought of me at all," she said, still inwardly shaken from the melee outside. This was a piece of cake compared to the reporters; she'd been dealing with the snotty spoiled brat for years. She sat down and opened her paper, but before she could start to read, he spoke again, his voice entirely different.
"I was an ungrateful, spoiled brat," he said contemplatively, as though the thought had just occurred to him, but he'd been thinking on it a while. Whether or not those words left his mouth depended entirely on one thing: whether or not she'd have shown up after he explicitly told her to go.
Here she was, and so he spoke.
~~~
I wanted to laugh.
Knowing now all the things I know, the laughter is still there, but it's hidden and hard to find. But hearing him say it-that he was a spoiled brat-so soon after I'd thought it… well, it struck me as funny. But there are times when you can sense the urgency of a situation, even if it is only a murderer standing before you, stating the obvious with a nearly indiscernible tremor in his voice.
What he spoke was obvious, but he spoke the truth, and it was just the beginning.
As he spoke the truth about himself, I heard the truth about me.
No one else heard anything but… what do Muggles call it?
They all heard static, and that's all he let them hear.