Left Behind

Dark Illusion

Rating: G
Genres: Angst
Relationships: Draco & Ginny
Book: Draco & Ginny, Books 1 - 4
Published: 26/10/2004
Last Updated: 26/10/2004
Status: completed

They used to say that Draco Malfoy could not love but he still sees her sweet face every time he dreams and her voice remains in his head. Years on, she’s still his faith.

Chapters

1. Residue

1. Residue

Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or any of the characters you recognise in this fictional story belonging to Joanne Kathleen Rowling, Warner Bros., and whoever else…Bloomsbury and Scholastic.

Summary: They used to say that Draco Malfoy could not love but he still sees her sweet face every time he dreams and her voice remains in his head. Years on, she’s still his faith. D/G. one-shot.

Author’s Note: This was actually going to be written in such a way that it wasn’t going to be within my comfort zone, but somehow it morphed back to what I usually write.

Left Behind

He seats himself on the bench in the park everyday, thinking about everything she had ever said to him. He remembers the times when they used to come to the park at night and sit on the swings til the break of dawn, just because they both had their own demons to avoid. He remembers her face, always tear streaked and her voice always soothing.

She had always been there for him.

When he turned his back on all he believed in, she had been the first to know; she had been the one to see. She made him realise just what life could mean when you have the freedom to choose.

But by all means, she had not been the one to change him. She had never desired it either; she has said it would have been unethical, he would have agreed.

She had come into his life at the near end of an era, when he had believed that no side could have possibly held the truth. She had been civil and patient.

She taught him that you can’t control life; every one is able to choose their end. It was the everyday decisions that told others what kind of person you were, she had told him. You aren’t born a person with a destiny; you’re born a person with a choice. It might all end the same, with death; but within a lifetime’s span, she had told him that anyone could achieve the world.

She had told him that when he had needed it the most, when they had looked upon him with disgust when he had turned to her, when they reluctantly let him help their side.

There was something in the way she had led him to reaffirm his beliefs and decisions that amazed him, he didn’t even know such a person with such compassion ever existed.

She had helped him become a better person. By more than she could have ever realised.

She had become his faith…

He remembered that one day, it had rained as heavy as she had been crying and he had chased her out onto the streets. She had told him she loved him. And he had stopped breathing properly.

They had all seen her adoring glances toward him from the start, sometimes he wished he had.

She stopped talking to him for a week after that day. But he hadn’t thought he had much to say anyway, even if he had lived with her and her parents.

The day she started talking to him was the first day she had started to make breakfast for him. He had woken up early only to find her there in the kitchen by herself.

He had watched her there, peeking around the corner, taking in her demeanour as she sleepily worked her way around

He didn’t think he had been more embarrassed in his life when she set out a place for him on the table and looked toward his direction, telling him that this was where he could join her.

Every morning since then was a regular past time, and at present its sentimental value went beyond words he could even utter. Just like many things had become over the years.

The announcement of war had given her nightmares. She had cried to him that night saying that it was only a pronunciation of death.

Their goodbye was his tender kiss on her cheek. He had told her he would see her later and as soon as those words left his mouth she had burst into tears; when he had cried out to her in the rain, all she could do was run away.

He thought she had run before he could have told her he loved her, because she wouldn’t have believed him. She, above all people would have believed that he was able to love, but she would be the first to know if he ever did; even before he knew himself.

War had raged on after that day and it had no longer rained at all. Years had passed until he saw her again.

It was the day the war had ended.

When he found her she was bleeding.

She wasn’t able to scream in pain anymore and her agonising sobs were more than he thought he could take. She was dying in his arms.

He had held her close, he had promised to never let her go and had begged her stay; but she wouldn’t.

And at some point they both knew she couldn’t.

When her breathing slowed down, her tears came to cease and her eyes drifted closed before she ever got to see his tears.

He had remembered the way his tears had drowned her blood stained cheeks, the way he had murmured her name again and again when he could no longer feel her breath. When it had started to rain on the battlefield of the dead, his tears had already cleansed her face clean.

She hadn’t looked like she was in pain when she went, which was good. Looking back, he had wished that she was able to just smile for the last time. She was going to a better place but he knew why she had never smiled; she had remembered who she had just left behind. Just as he.

It could never be the same. She had died suffering for a life she couldn’t have known long enough to love. But then they said that such things could not have ever mattered to her. She had died a heroine in everyone’s heart except for his.

Her brothers had been grim and brave, they had boasted. Yet her brothers had protected everyone but their own sister, they had grieved. And so they had vowed to never forgive themselves, they had vowed this upon her death.

They had all said he was not capable of loving anyone. He had heard every single snipe, how he should have seen her for who she was, how he should have appreciated her more and how he should have loved her back. They thought it a crime.

Like a crime he had been guilty. Yet not left unpunished, like they had spat at him in fits of emotional distress.

And if he had ever hurt her then he was sorry. They had to understand that he would have had no motive for this crime he had committed against her: Ginny was his only friend. Like the when time had stood still for those single moments they all said goodbye to her, he had stood alone.

They should have understood, just as he should have realised just how much any of them didn’t deserve her.

She was the best person he had ever known. If she could love him then well, he didn’t really know.

Was the fact that she was able to love a person like him supposed to tell him something?

Maybe it didn’t matter now, maybe it was never supposed to; he never knew.

He had challenged them to ask him why he didn’t love her back; once, when he was drunk. They had gotten angry, and then he told them that her cries that day were the last thing he would hear at night.

That day he had planned to leave their home but then they had apologised and he had gotten angry. So when he told them that he would sleep on her bedroom floor that night, they let him.

He would never be able to talk to her while eating her breakfast or walk with her in the dark, but he still sees her sweet face in his dreams at night and her voice remains inside his head almost everyday. He may have been there to see them bury her but she never died.

Inside, Ginny was very much alive.

He lays a single white rose on her grave every morning just before sunrise. It’s the first thing he does and the last thing he sees each day. Everyone after the war was bound by those they had lost; those that had sacrificed so much without meaning to.

With every breathing moment he questions why he couldn’t have taken her pain away as easily as she did his. They used to say it was because she loved him but to say he had not loved back was never discussed anymore. They used to say that Draco Malfoy could not love…

He used to believe them.

The End