A Stone's Throw From The Soul
Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.
Summary: Sequel to Rest In Pieces. After the events in the chamber, Ginny is locked up for her own good in St. Mungo's. But when Draco gets accused of being responsible for everything, she runs away to find the truth herself, with unexpected help.
Author's Notes: I repeat again: I will not resurrect Draco. There will, however be D/G interaction, believe me. Actually I was very tempted to make this story NC-17. I can still change the rating if I do intend to go that far. I know what I'm going to do with Draco in the end, but I'm a little unsure as to what to do with Ginny, honestly. We'll see. I just hope you enjoy this as much as I enjoy plotting and writing it.
Chapter 1: Accusations
"Now, Miss Weasley, I know that this is going to be hard, and that it will take great effort from your side, but one day you need to tell me what happened in that chamber," the elderly man sitting on the sofa opposite from the redheaded girl that was currently reclining in a comfortable chair, staring out of the window defiantly, said, doing his best to suppress a sigh. He could tell that she was a hard one.
"I'm not a lunatic," Ginny snapped, her eyes blazing and now directed at him.
"Of course you aren't," Dr. Syskovitz replied amicably. "But still it is very important that you tell me what happened. We need to understand what happened," he said, twirling his quill with his fingers. Oh yes, they did. Today's headlines had not exactly proven helpful with finding out the truth about what had passed in the 24 hours the distressed girl had been locked in that strange chamber. Because even though he wanted to believe what the daily prophet had declared in screaming letters, the doctor had his doubts. It would be too easy, wouldn't it? It was so sensible and logical that it lacked sense and logic again. And then there was the fact that she had survived...
"You don't know anything," Ginny, who had calmed down again, droned monotonously.
"No, we don't, that's right," he confirmed.
Ginny sighed and played with the stone in her hand. How had she got herself into that mess? She hadn't asked for any of this when taking a late night stroll on the Hogwarts grounds. She had sought solitude and found... what had she found exactly? A boy - no, a man, really, despite all his quirks and oddities that other people would have chalked up to puberty - who had managed to frighten her to death, to make her think about her values (and even though what he had wanted to do was make her question them, she was even more convinced of them now), who had touched something deep within her, feelings that she had long ago buried never to see them again, feelings she could not give a name to. They were not love, not hate, not elation, nothing she knew other than by feeling them. The best way to describe them was by saying that they were a mixture of acceptance and understanding, even though neither of the two could be called emotions. And then there was the other thing...
Ginny blushed at the thought of that, and even though Dr. Syskovitz had no idea what she was blushing over, he made a mental note to himself to remember that for later.
Nobody had ever told her she could feel like that. Oh, sure, she had heard girls giggling over it, but they had all been to profane and mysterious about it for her to understand what was so grand about it. Not that it had happened anyway. Only very nearly.
It? Oh, come on Ginny, how prudish are you? she thought absently. Call the donkey by its name.
Ginny was not aware that the man in front of her was watching the expressions fleeting across her face with great interest while she was struggling with herself.
Say it! Sex, sex, sex, sex...
Ginny squeaked. Oh Lady, she was thinking about...sex while talking to a doctor. Well, almost-sex, that is. With Draco Malfoy.
And that was when the full force of the thoughts she had been trying to block hit her again, and a sob rose in her throat. She tried to quell it, as much as she tried to quell the thoughts, she really did, but it was too late.
Memories of what had passed in the chamber just before she had left it floated before her eyes, tauntingly, just so far out of reach that she could not brush them aside. He had practically told her to go. Had he gone with her, he would not have died. Had it even been possible for them both to leave the chamber? Had he known what would happen as soon as she left the chamber? Surely he couldn't have, or else he would have told her to stay. She had not known herself. And still she felt as if she had killed him.
Ginny was not even aware of her own body convulsing with sobs and of her own tears raining down on herself, or the big and hulky medical guard gently carrying her to the room that she had been given for her stay at St. Mungo's.
She only fleetingly noticed that she was lying on her bed, but could not dwell on this long enough, as other, more persistent thoughts were crashing down on her.
He had kissed her shortly before she'd left. Why had he kissed her? Why had she kissed him back? So many questions unanswered.
Why had they been there in the first place? Who had put them in that situation? Did she even care? She had killed another human being. Somebody whom she had felt strongly for, nonetheless. Granted, it was hate that she had felt for him, even as he had kissed her she had kissed him back with every ounce of hate in her, and she was sure he had felt the same, but hate was stronger, more important than the emptiness of indifference, in her opinion.
And still, despite their mutual feelings of detestation for each other, they had shared moments with each other that were more intimate than moments she had shared with people she loved. It had bean weariness that had made them retract their verbal and physical claws, and weariness that had made them see the other for what they were when stripped down to their very bones. Christian Muggles believed that to their God, they were all naked. Ginny did not believe in any kind of religion, for she knew what moved the world, but she did believe that at some point, Draco Malfoy had been something like God to her, and vice versa. Somebody to see them as what they were when not influenced by the outside world, by harsh reality.
Although she was not at all happy with most of what she had seen then, Ginny had discovered the one thing that had redeemed Draco in her eyes - he was human. He was not the evil, malicious entity of bad faith as she had always pictured him before getting to see underneath his carefully applied layers of pretense, no. He was a bastard, a lying, sneering, obnoxious, malicious human git.
Or had been. Now, all he was was a never-ending series of thoughts that plagued her, and Ginny found it slightly ironic that he would continue with his favourite pastime, namely tormenting people, even after he was dead.
It was then that she realized that her body had calmed down again and that her breathing was slowing down to normal. Sighing she rolled over so she was lying on her back and silently bemoaned her situation once again.
She didn't need stupid St. Mungo's, and much less did she need Dr. Syskovitz whose only purpose in life seemed to be to invade other people's privacy. Probably hasn't got a life of his own, she thought a little meanly.
"Hello Gin," a cheery voice interrupted her thoughts, making her sigh for the millionth time that day. Oh, great, just what she needed. Or rather, who.
"Hey, Ron," she greeted her brother, trying not to squirm as he enveloped her in a bear hug. She didn't really feel comfortable with touching other people at the moment. It distressed her, but Ginny didn't have the heart to tell Ron that, as he was always so happy to see her.
She had heard that he had thrown fit after fit while she had still been lying in the Hospital Wing, and it touched her that he had been so concerned about her.
"I brought you some chocolate." Ron smilingly handed her a box of chocolate frogs. "Perhaps you'll find one with Oliver Wood on it," he added with a twinkle in his eye, that made Ginny's heart constrict. She had, at one point, collected chocolate frog cards with the Quidditch player on it like other people collected stamps, but somehow she didn't want to think about Oliver now. He'd been just one of her many silly schoolgirl crushes, nothing real, nothing tangible.
Ginny made room on her bed for Ron to sit down and started listening to his banter, making the odd comment this and then. He was really trying his best to cheer her up, and she could see that it was not easy on him. There was one subject he never touched, not even came close to, but she could see that he desperately wanted to know what had happened.
"Fred and George blew up half of our living room yesterday. Mum was in a right state, I tell you," Ron continued his tale of what was happening in the casa Weasley, making Ginny smile against her will.
She knew she was being foolish and childish, but somehow Ginny did not want to smile, and it always made her feel guilty when she did, these days. Not that she had much to smile about. Ron's daily visits that were occasionally accompanied by Harry or Hermione, or sometimes even both were about the only happy spots in the dreary and depressing time she'd spent at St. Mungo's.
Of course her parents visited her too, but she had the sickening feeling of being coddled by them, as if she were being locked in - which, in some way, she was, as she was not allowed to leave the tract she was in at St. Mungo's - a feeling that she had never been able to tolerate, and was even more sensitive to lately.
When Ron finally left, Ginny wandered about in her room for some time, crossing it again and again and again without purpose.
If she could just do something to get her mind off things.
On one side, she could not stand company at the moment, on the other she feared being alone, because that was when the thoughts that she did not want to face would come back and torture her until she either fell asleep from exhaustion or managed to get a hold on herself after some time.
She hadn't told anybody about this, as she was ashamed of her own fickleness, and besides she had a feeling that Dr. Syskovitz would want to know more about it, and would implore her to tell him about what was on her mind. She did not want to tell him what was on her mind. They were her thoughts, hers alone. They were her memories of Draco Malfoy, and nobody had a right to make her share them.
Tired of her incessant walking in circles, Ginny decided to treat herself to a cup of hot chocolate. She grabbed her baby blue robe to wear it over the ducky print PJ's she had been running around in all day, pulled her slippers out from under her bed, slipping them on and left the room making her way to the patient cafeteria.
"Hello Ginny dear," an old witch at one of the tables to her right said, flashing Ginny a nearly toothless grin.
"Hello Mrs. Mellowcombe," Ginny shouted, having picked up on the quirks and problems of all the patients on her ward already. It was hard not to, after spending two weeks in little other company than them, really.
"There's a picture of you in my book," Mrs. Mellowcombe, who had to be one of the oldest people Ginny knew, said, in her strange way of speaking that emphasized the 'i', 'u' and 'oo' in the sentence by, for lack of a better word, almost spitting them out.
"What book?" Ginny asked, frowning.
"Who did?" Mrs. Mellowcombe asked confusedly.
Ginny blinked and shook her head. "I asked: 'What book'," she then repeated, more slowly and loudly, plopping down in a chair gracelessly.
A few seconds later she was very grateful that she had done so, for she was sure she would have lost footage when she saw what Mrs. Mellowcombe was holding in her thin, sinewy hand.
There she was, smiling down at herself from the first page of the Daily Prophet. Her first thought was Gods, why did I wear the bunny sweater for the yearbook photo? but after a few seconds her mind kicked back in.
What was she doing on the front page of the Daily Prophet?
"May I?" she asked and reached for the paper with shaking hands.
And even a warning would not have prepared her for what the article was proclaiming in big, brazen letters.
Hogwarts scandal revealed: the full story on the kidnapping of Ginevra Weasley
Death Eater offspring kidnaps and rapes girl from his school
Hogsmeade - Draco Malfoy, son of convicted Death Eater Lucius Malfoy is strongly suspected to be responsible for the kidnapping and raping of a fellow student under the nose of Headmaster Albus Dumbledore.
This happened over two weeks ago, and it is probable that Albus Dumbledore wanted to conceal the goings-on in his school for prestige reasons. He, as well as Ministry officials refuse to comment this matter, but the Daily Prophet has been informed by a reliable source that Saturday before last, Ginevra Weasley (16) a Gryffindor, was found missing, as well as Draco Malfoy (17), Slytherin.
The next day the girl was found unconscious and naked next to a burning pyre. It is confirmed that the girl was raped and beaten multiple times by Draco Malfoy. Aurors suspect that the boy, after abusing the girl for about 24 hours on end, burned himself on the pyre in a fit of madness.
The whereabouts of Ginevra are unclear at the moment, although rumour has it that she is still lying in a coma in Hogwarts.
Investigation in this case is therefore very hard, as the prime suspect is dead and the victim in a state that she cannot confirm the gruesome suspicions, but accounts of Draco Malfoy's personality from many Hogwarts students indicate that he was an unstable and fanatic boy.
Ginny gently put the paper down on the table. She had never, in her whole life, read such a pile of rubbish. Raped? Beaten? Coma? Pyre?
Slowly she could feel the anger rising in her. They were accusing Draco of everything that had happened. She could not tolerate that. But neither could she tell anybody what had really transpired. That was a closed book that only she was allowed to look at.
But on the other hand, she couldn't let whoever had written that crap get away with it. And much less, the person who had really done all this to her.
Forgetting all about the hot chocolate, Ginny violently pushed her chair back, stood up and stalked back to her room, shoving her hand into her pocket to feel the safe calmness that the stone always created in her whenever she touched it.
Think Ginny, think, she told herself.
"Gods, what am I gonna do?" she murmured to herself.
"I'd recommend doing something about that hair of yours. It's horrible," a familiar, cold voice drawled from behind her.
Ginny turned around, and when she saw the owner of the voice, she dropped the stone in shock. It could not be possible, surely?