CHAPTER THIRTEEN - To Fight
She walked without looking around her, though her steps were deliberate, each one carrying her farther away from him, from his flat and his mask and his Turkish rug. She tasted bile in her throat, but would not stop to let it sicken her, instead spitting on the ground in the way Charlie had taught her when she was very small.
Oh, how that had infuriated her Mum.
It didn't matter how many times she cleared her throat, she still thought she was going to vomit. She would have to tell them, and what would they say? Would they tell her she had once again wasted her trust, given it foolishly? Ron and Luna, his wife. Harry and Hermione and their bright-eyed little girl, their symbol of hope. Her brothers. Her parents. She stumbled, clung to a wall, wrapped herself around a corner and hung on for a moment while the world tilted around her.
"Owl Malfoy." The name made her jump even as the phlegmy, guttural voice made her skin crawl. With an ill sort of excitement, she realized she was hanging at the mouth of Knockturn Alley, but she'd been paid no mind. Hooded witches retching in corners were the norm rather than the exception here.
"Tell 'im Ignavius Avery's in here, stiffer'n a board and less conversational. And tell 'im I'm weary a'findin' his arse-lickers washed up dead in my place."
Her heart was pounding so hard she was certain they could hear it. Another Death Eater had plied his craft, had died ignominiously. Not now, she thought dully. Not tonight. I cannot fight. I cannot fight him.
She did not want another battle.
She wanted them all to stop.
She Apparated to Grimmauld Place, her head and heart and stomach aching, ready to do the most minimal part of her duty.
It was all she had left to do.
~~~
He thought his head was going to split open.
As though pulling something out of murky water, Draco's mind supplied a memory of Severus Snape hitting that ponce Lockhart with a disarming spell that had somehow knocked Lockhart entirely off his feet.
He absolutely had to learn how they did that. Hell and curses, it was probably the first thing they taught little girls, girls who would grow into women with fine hands and builds too slight to defend themselves.
His eyes fluttered, flew open, and though his skull nearly wept for mercy, he staggered to his feet.
Ginny. She'd not hesitated to use her wand on him. He was proud of her for that.
He was grieving for that.
How long had she been gone? He had no way of telling. And as to where she had gone, well, that was another enigma.
I want to kill them all, do you understand me?
I would rather see you dead than a puppet!
I cannot fight against you. Not against you.
There were too many things for his head to settle on, and he squeezed his eyes shut as he thrust his hand in his pocket, digging for the wand he hadn't even thought to draw against her.
"Accio headache powder," he called hopefully, feeling only slightly relieved when a packet hit him in the chest.
The things she had said-there was no way to tell, when she was like this, what she might do. He loved her, he knew her, but he had not anticipated this. He had been a fool and he had not allowed himself to admit, even to himself, that it would ever come to this.
Events had been set into motion, and he was afraid she would thrust herself into the thick of them without the slightest knowledge of what to do once she was in them.
I cannot fight against you.
What did that mean?
She had stressed no word in particular, so what did she intend?
Kill them all.
"Please," he said to no one in particular, to everyone, to anyone who would listen, the whisper building into a shout as he repeated it. "Please!" Please be safe, please give me some sign, please…
He kicked the mask, that stupid fucking mask, relishing the scar it left in the leather of his boot, the ugly scrape it tore across the floor, the point that bent when it hit a cabinet.
"You are not infallible," he shouted, and there was no limit to the number of beings to whom he could be speaking.
He had to find her before she talked, and failing that, before she acted.
~~~
She strode through the house, her face fierce and disturbing what little peace the dreary residence usually had.
Hermione, a nearly permanent fixture in the house as she was waiting, waiting, always waiting to be of some use, leapt
to her feet.
"Ginny, what?"
"Sit down," Ginny said harshly, not stopping. If Hermione wanted her chance, she could have it soon enough.
The Order would be one member less just as soon as she finished this small duty and started on muting her soul.
She had things to do, and they did not involve her companions here.
"Ginny!" Harry said, casting a shocked countenance toward Hermione. "I don't know what's gotten into her-"
"Listen to me!" she commanded, painfully aware how much she sounded like Draco at that moment. Hadn't he asked the same of her?
She had denied him that.
There would be plenty of time for listening later, words dropping from lips that did not, could not mean what they said.
He would not want to speak to her later, of that she was certain.
Remus came out of the kitchen, his head slightly bowed as though he expected a blow of some sort; Severus came down the stairs, his back stiff, prepared, as ever, for the worst.
So, Ginny thought. They had not yet been called for the death of their comrade.
"Another Death Eater has died," she said sharply. When Hermione leaned over to murmur something to Harry, Ginny's eyes snapped to her. "I will be done soon enough," she said, watching Hermione's cheeks redden.
Good.
Let them all be embarrassed.
Ginny wanted the whole world to hurt, and she hated herself for it.
She wanted the whole world to burn down.
She'd felt this rage once before, though before it had been guided by another hand, stoked by another person's flame, pumped into action by the words of a nonexistent man. She had been primed for this sort of wrath. Now she would wield it as she wished.
She would pay the consequences as they came.
"Ignavius Avery," she said, seeing Severus's eyes light in recognition. "There may be battles tonight."
"There will be battles," Snape corrected her coolly, but he suppressed a shiver at the uncertain nature of her statement. She sounded so sure that it wasn't sure.
This wasn't the same girl they were accustomed to seeing here, the halfling-half ally and half not, half of her belonging to someone other than the cause. This woman that stood before them was a warrior worthy of the amazons. She looked, Snape would have admitted grudgingly, worthy of the Gryffindor sorting.
"There may be battles, Severus," Ginny used his first name coldly. "And if Malfoy the younger should cross your path, don't treat him as a friend."
Harry jumped to his feet, words of hatred already coming from his mouth, vengeful words that passed by her ears, because Harry didn't know what it felt like for her to say those things.
He did not know she had killed part of herself simply to say those words.
"But-" Snape's face, for once, showed his thoughts, and confusion was writ clearly over the sharp lines there.
"I'm going to my brothers," Ginny stated, not wanting to hear what he had to say, not wanting to hear one Death Eater defend another. "And then I have things to do." She looked sidelong at Hermione and refused to let herself feel the pang of pity, the insistence that this young mother stay out of it. "You be the messenger now, 'Mione. I'm certain you'll excel at it, as you do everything else."
"Where are you going?" She would not-could not-have stopped for anyone else, but this gentle voice stopped her. She could not bear to ignore Lupin, so ignored had he been everywhere else.
"To fight," she said, feeling more drained than she'd ever felt in her entire life.
She allowed them no more time for questions.