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Roses In December
Part II
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There were no windows in his room. She shivered as she noted this, watching the walls that kept her captive warily. She did not know how she could have fallen asleep, how she could have relaxed enough to let her mind drift into a state of peace.
She did not bother wondering where Draco was. His roommates were gone, that meant it was late morning.
Her fingers were pressed against the cut he had given her the night before, and she now saw the dried blood gathered at her finger tips. She thought only of escape, but even that was not a satisfying thought, for escape seemed such a fruitless attempt.
It turned out that in fact, he did need spells to get what he wanted, for the door to his dorm was ridden with countless charms to prevent her leaving.
Her eyes drifted towards the pocketknife still on the table next to her. Staring at its glinting silver blade, she wondered whom it had been that he had murdered. His face had registered familiar, but not distinct. And for what had he been murdered? How could no one know yet? All questions, but no answers. She cruelly imagined him lashing out violently because the poor boy had merely bumped into him. It seemed perfectly plausible now, as she cursed Draco Malfoy in every way she knew. If thoughts could kill, he would have dropped dead long ago. Too bad they did not.
More anger flooded through her at this thought. Anger that someone so inhuman should be unpunished, undiscovered of crime he had committed. She hung her head, feeling like a coward, and for a moment, she thought about gripping the miniscule knife tightly in her hand. She entertained the thought of behind able to strike him with it as he entered the room.
She did not have long to wait before he returned, looking deathly pale and perspiring slightly. Her fingers retracted from the direction of the knife altogether. He did not notice.
"Come with me," he ordered, and said nothing more.
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By the time they reached the door, the stench was unmistakable.
"What are you doing?" she asked, gagging from the smell. He stood in front of the door, one hand holding a wand to shine light. She noticed a long coil of rope stuffed messily inside the pockets of his loose robes.
"Where are we?" He answered neither of the questions however, and simply muttered under his breath. The door swung open to reveal a broom closet. Ginny blinked at the anticlimax. She had been awaiting some dark, grand room to hold all of Malfoy's sinister secrets; not a silly broom closet.
The closet itself was not what made Ginny cry out, after realizing what was contained inside the closet. Covering her mouth, for bile was quickly rising to her throat, she ducked and turned away. There it was-the body of the dead boy himself. His face was covered lightly in crusting blood and though she racked her memory to match the familiarity with a name, she could not. His eyes still stared unblinkingly. Someone should close them, she thought with pity. Just not me. She couldn't bear the thought of touching his body.
"Stop crying, Weasley. I can't have anyone hearing," Draco said as firmly as he could manage, but even still she caught a slight tremble in his own voice.
"I thought you would have gotten rid of it by now." It was all she could currently say on the matter. There was not much else you could say about a dead and rotting body; she could not bother being sympathetic to the boy at the moment, and merely wished it out of her sight. When he answered, his voice was tense.
"Well, obviously I haven't," he ground out through clenched teeth. "But I didn't bring you with me for company, Ginny."
"And what is that supposed to mean?" Her voice turned slightly shrill at his implications. She would not have anything to do with a corpse.
"You're going to help me hide the body," he said wryly, giving it a soft kick so that it rolled over on its back. Ginny's face paled. She was silent for a minute.
"No," she then decided vehemently, as she thought of what his request meant. "I won't, Malfoy." She looked up at him with a tight jaw. "You can save your arse yourself. This is going too far."
She made to walk away, her heels clicking loudly on the ground.
She half expected he would catch up to her, and he did.
"You're in no position to deny me anything, " he said nastily, but she could see the desperation in his eyes. "You're going to reopen the Chamber of Secrets for me, Weasley. We're going to hide my secret deep beneath the school, as you had once hid yours."
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She had cried the whole way there, as she let herself be dragged to the location of the Chamber. She didn't know how he knew about her first year at Hogwarts, she didn't know how he knew about the Chamber of Secrets, except deep inside, she thought she did know.
Think of what his Father is. Think of what he'll soon become, if not already. Of course he would have found out about the whole ordeal.
The thought that she was under control of a Death Eater no less made her all the more exhausted with the entire predicament. Why did she seem to attract these dark men? She wished nothing more than the cool and soothing touch of her mother's hand, or the cheerful humor of her brothers, and the enthusiasm of her father.
With swollen eyes and a blurry vision, she found herself once more in Moaning Myrtle's bathroom, a place she had avoided for all her years at Hogwarts since the first--something she would never admit to anyone. The bathroom was deathly quiet. Ginny frowned through her tears.
"I thought I told you to stop crying," he said to her, his voice wound up like a spring ready to pounce. She did not shrink back. How dare he drag her into this like this? Who did he think he was, to do this to her? She began to wish more than anything in the world that she had not been right then and there, been there at the perfect time to watch his murder…Anything, for the bliss of ignorance.
"I won't have you telling me what to do, Malfoy," she shouted hoarsely, before her yell morphed into a cough. "Don't tell me to be like you; unfeeling and completely detached from emotion," she paused. "I'm sorry I can't be heartless, and I'm sorry that you are."
"Shut your mouth now, Weasley, it's something I highly advise," he warned her softly, and his quick strides brought him near to her. He held her wrist tightly to prevent her from backing away. "Don't talk about me like you've known me all your life."
"I have known you all my life," she corrected him. "I've hated you all my life."
"If you think that's getting to know a person, you're stupider than I imagined," he said heatedly, and she could see his eyes were burning with anger. Before she could ask what he meant, he turned around.
"Stop wasting time," he said. "Open it."
"I'm not a parselmouth, I told you I can't-"
"How do you know that?" he challenged, whirling around to face her with a strangely sure expression on his face. He seemed to be on the brink of insanity, ready to plunge into its depths with one push. She gazed at the thin sheen of sweat that covered his face. "How do you know you can't?"
She was about to speak, them clamped her mouth shut. She liked to think she was not justifying his immaturity with an answer, but truth be told, she did not have a single retort. Was it possible that she could be a parselmouth? She had heard from whispered, overheard conversations about marks that the dark lord tended to leave upon someone.
"Dumbledore has probably destroyed it," she reasoned, although her voice did not have the convincing tone to it.
"How could Dumbledore do that?" Draco rebuked. "Only parselmouths can open it-and the only people who know where it is is you, Potter, and his group of friends. The monster within has been destroyed, so what's the point?" he asked her, unblinkingly. "It's probably indestructible. Salazar Slytherin was no idiot."
When Ginny stood like a statue, facing the sinks, his shoulders slooped and he sighed.
"Just open it," he said again, but this time, his voice sounded more coaxing than demanding. Ginny gave another half sob, before giving a mirthless laugh.
"Well," she said. "It seems like you're not giving me a choice."
"I never gave you a choice in anything," he said irately. "And I never will, Weasley. Do as I say now, before I lose my patience." She narrowed her eyes and glowered at him with as much intensity as she could muster.
"What if I don't remember how?" she gave a last half hearted attempt. She knew she was kidding herself, and perhaps he did too. She knew exactly which sink it was, like she had only opened it yesterday. Though she had very little memory while she was possessed by Tom Riddle, she did remember this clearly enough. Sighing desolately, he turned towards the sink with the intricate miniscule snake etched underneath it, and opened her mouth. Please don't let it open, please don't let it work, please, please…. She closed her eyes and her hands clenched shut.
"Open up," she whispered softly. Her voice came out like a quiet steam of air. She opened her eyes again, and her heart immediately sank, as a slow rumble began to take place. She watched Malfoy's expression of delight.
Ginny felt her body shake as she watched the sink slowly open up to reveal the pipe leading down to the chamber, a deep chasm that lead only to more darkness.
So she did have a bit of Tom Riddle in her.
"See?" he said softly, a strange look upon his face. "You do underestimate yourself."
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The hiding of the body was messy and nothing she wanted to go through again. The feel of the boy's ice-cold skin made her wonder if, in life, he had perhaps had ice water run through his veins instead of blood. As they dragged him down the pipe, the deed made her feel faint and contaminated, and she felt as though death itself had rubbed off on her.
"What if they find it here?" she asked, not bothering to mask her hope.
"Then they find it," he said simply. "But I highly doubt they will. Stop asking stupid questions." He was nervous, however. In the dim light filtering in through the opening at the top, sweat was freely rolling down his temples. They quickly reached the bottom, where the pipe gave out to a small opening.
"Stuff it here," he grunted. Ginny raised an eyebrow at him. Didn't he want to be more discreet, and hide it in a deeper section of the chamber? Or perhaps it could be that he was perturbed by the act, just as much as she was, if not more. She quickly brushed the thought away. It was already established that he was clearly not feeling the slightest guilty about any of this. He has probably never felt guilty for anything. With one last freeing push, she took a large step back.
"Get me out of here," she sucked in a breath, not wanting to breathe any more of the foul air down in the chamber. He nodded mutely, kicking the body roughly aside and working clumsily to cover it up the best he could with the bones and garbage lying around. Then, he reached for the rope that he had secured up on the other side.
" We're climbing up?" Ginny asked incredulously. She gulped nervously.
"The stupid questions once again," he growled. "How else do you propose we get out? Unless you have a broomstick hidden somewhere down here? And even then, how do you mean to maneuver us out?"
Ginny said nothing as he swiftly disappeared into darkness. A few minutes later, she heard his voice calling down.
"Damn it, Weasley, hurry up!" Wiping her sweaty hands on her robes, she gingerly grabbed onto the rough rope, before hoisting her feet up onto the big knot at the end. Wrapping her legs around the rope, she began to move her hands, pushing upwards at a slow pace.
No sooner had she moved, that her hands began to burn and her arms tired.
"Weasley, if you don't come out of there-"
She halted to a stop, feeling all the last strength drain out of her. She looked down. She was only about halfway up.
"I can't," she said faintly, but her voice carried through to him. "I can't."
"What the hell do you mean, you can't?"
"What do you think I mean?" she groaned. Her hands were much too slippery. She was slowly falling down already. Oh, it was going to take forever to get out! "I can't climb anymore, that's what I mean! Oh, God-I'm going to fall, Malfoy. Help me!"
For a good moment or two, Ginny thought he had left her. She could not hear his angry remarks, or his footsteps, or anything else for that matter.
She let out a barely audible sigh of relief as she saw him coming back down, slowly, for she was still too far down for him to reach down and grab her hand. Giving her a look of utmost contempt, he grabbed her arm and pulled her up slightly to his level, before grabbing around her waist so as not to lose her. Face tense and slightly pink, he slowly made his way back up and out of the hole. Ginny felt disgusted at herself even as she clung to his shirt for dear life. She, asking help from Draco Malfoy, and he-he gave it to her. She wondered for a moment why he had not really left her down there. It would have gotten rid of her, certainly.
Ulterior motives, she murmured to herself tiredly.
When they reached the top and climbed onto the bathroom tile, he instantly let go of her.
"Can't even climb a bloody piece of rope, can you?"
"A little gratuity never hurt anyone, Malfoy," Ginny said bitterly, feeling filthy at the dirt and grime that clung to her stubbornly. "I only helped you hide the body of the person you've killed." Her face was beet red; she could tell by the way heat radiated from the general area of her cheeks.
"You only helped me because you had to, Weasley," he said with a silent fury. "Don't think I don't know that."
"This isn't at all about justice and fairness and owing people." Ginny shook her head at the revelation. "So, I don't even know why I'm arguing with you."
"I don't either," he agreed for once. "But you Gryffindors seem to like keeping score."
"Well," she scowled at him. "We're even."
But as she began to turn away, she thought she saw his expression slightly soften, before muttering, "Hardly."
She pretended not to hear.