**Author's Note: I just wanted to thank everyone who voted for any of my ridiculous ramblings at the PK Reader's Choice Awards! Wonderful readers are worth their weight in Galleons.**
CHAPTER FOURTEEN - Rash Action
He wanted many things.
He wanted to scream himself mute, which he'd nearly already done. He wanted to break something.
But more than anything, he wanted to find her. He needed to find her.
All he had done, all he had concealed, had been in vain if he had lost her.
Draco walked the length of his flat, hands thrust into his hair, fists pulling at the blond strands, making his head ache even more. Where had she gone? He didn't know, couldn't even begin to predict. He could barely discern where he wanted to go, much less try to guess the actions of a woman-his woman-unpredictable, temperamental, and-
Broken.
She'd looked so fucking broken, and he'd done it.
He'd never meant to hurt her, but how could he possibly do otherwise, being who he was? Being what he was?
She'd not left enough powder to Floo anywhere, and he didn't trust himself to Apparate, not when his hands were shaking too badly to even hold a wand still.
There was no time to think about where she was, no time to put himself in her shoes and try to determine where she had gone after she'd flown from his flat, ash-smudged and wide-eyed. He did as she had and simply went, vowing to think about it on the fly.
He went to her flat first, at a dead run the entire way there, pushing more than one witch and wizard out of his way. It was the most logical place, and yet the least likely. He knew she was not there-she was too smart for that, and she'd seemed too determined. A woman like Ginny didn't go to her flat and stew when she was upset. She acted. But he went, anyway, because it was the only way he knew to get to the one place she might have gone. He needed to go somewhere where he could think, where he could smell her, where he could sense her.
Where he could think about her without that look on her face.
He stood in her empty flat for only a moment, listening to the sound of it without her, feeling how it felt-always like a home, her places were, even when she wasn't there.
His place only felt like a home when she was there.
Very suddenly, very keenly, he wanted his mother, and could not help but think of the woman she had been as a Muggle-still beautiful, still strong, and the only guidepost he'd had.
Mother.
Home.
Draco closed his eyes and let out a sigh, his hand running over her mantelpiece, nudging aside a picture of her family and a picture of the two of them he'd long since memorized-the seventh-year version of himself tugging at a lock of her hair while the sixth-year version of his Ginny rolled her eyes and swatted his hand away-and another photo he'd looked at with foreign curiosity more than once, a picture of-
"The Burrow," Draco said certainly, casting a handful of powder at his feet as he stepped into the fire.
It would be his first time there.
He always knew he'd be afraid when he went, but he had no idea he'd fear for so much.
~~~
"What are you doing?"
The twins had exchanged looks as though afraid to question her when she'd delivered her news, her warning. Charlie and Percy had hopped immediately into lecture, telling her to go to their parents' house and stay for the evening.
Only Bill, with Ron's quiet concern beside him, had asked her anything. She wanted to answer him even less than she wanted to answer everyone else, and when she did turn and answer him, she had no way of knowing her cold-eyed countenance chilled him.
"I'm quitting," Ginny said. "I'm quitting the Order."
She kept her eyes pinned on his, wanting his pity to fuel her rage, and as she stared into her oldest brother's eyes, she Disapparated.
She wasted no time, did not Apparate to a walking distance, but Apparated instead at the front gate of her destination. It was a place she had seen only in its Muggle incarnation, a home she'd seen only through the stories of her lover, of a man who had not cared enough to give her his honesty, of a man she had not known at all.
But whether she had known him or not, Draco had been honest about this, about the home of his boyhood.
Malfoy Manor looked precisely as she had imagined it, and she felt absolutely nothing as she pushed open the gate.
~~~
He stepped out of the Floo wild-eyed and desperate, her name already on his lips. He wasn't looking right in front of him, was already looking left and right for her, his eyes blinded by the ashes he'd been able to keep from them.
Her name-her full name, carried in a throat already raw from shouting-got lost in a cough of ashes and he ducked his head, eyes watering.
You can't afford to close your eyes, he thought frantically, and stepped forward blindly.
He stopped when he felt the tip of a wand pointed at his heart.
Arthur Weasley pushed his wand harder, gratified in the wince of the young man in front of him. He didn't know what had been done-his daughter had not even spoken to them directly, which had only added to his apprehension-but he knew it had been enough to send his daughter into the Black house with harsh words on her lips for everyone.
And harsh words for this one whom she'd persisted in defending.
He had hurt her little girl, and he had been branded an enemy by a woman who had claimed to love him.
Arthur had not always been the stronger wizard, had not always been the better man. Not a perfect father, not a perfect husband, but he had done what he could.
He had not been able to defend his little girl in the face of a Malfoy's hatred before, but he could do it now.
He was shaking, trembling and he could not stop it, could not stop the fear and the rage that had started more than half a decade before when he'd been helpless, when the life he'd thrust upon his family had endangered his only daughter. Arthur clenched his teeth and ducked his head for a moment, trying to regain control, trying to remember his place, remember the cause. He tried to remember all the reasons he should not use an Unforgivable on a man whose position, whose power, had given him access to everything in the world, including an innocent too good for his ilk.
"Where is she?" Draco looked at her father through a shock of hair, now sweaty and streaked with ash.
"What have you done?" It was not Arthur's voice, but another, a voice so low and ugly it scarcely sounded female, and Draco felt a chill go up his spine.
If it were going to end here, this one would end it.
Molly Weasley would kill him.
He didn't think he could blame her.
But even with that understanding, even with the knowledge that he would deserve it, he could not bring himself to answer her. They could not see, they did not see there were more important things. They could kill him if they wanted.
He needed to know she was safe first.
"Where is she?" he roared, his voice a hoarse, growling burst from his injured throat. Sparks jumped from a shocked Arthur's wand, searing a hole through his robes and burning into the skin over Draco's heart, and Draco tilted his head back with a pained gasp, the tendons in his neck standing out.
Arthur jumped back, staring at his wand with a look of utter confusion as though he'd no idea how it had happened, and as Draco reached into the folds of his robes, Molly stepped forward with her wand to take her husband's place, her face mottled but her wand perfectly still.
Anything that came from this wand would be no accident.
But before Molly could hex him, before she could even register that he was moving, Draco withdrew a trio of wands from inside his robes.
~~~
She left the gate hanging open, her eyes focused on the big front door, the white door that had hidden so many black
things-pretty faces inside that concealed ruined hearts-and her steps slowed, deliberate and paced.
She raised a hand as though to knock at the door, her wand grasped in her fist and sticking stiffly to the side.
The door blew open, the frame and lock splintering and sending ugly, lightning-shaped splits through the wood, and Ginny stepped inside, face impassive.
"Is Miss here to see-"
"Get your master," Ginny told the house elf in a low voice utterly unlike her usual tone. She did not look down at the diminutive servant, did not really register its presence. "And do it now."
Your master who has a master of his own, she thought, continuing to walk. He would find her, of that she was certain.
Or she would find him.
I want to kill them all.
She would start here, then.
She would start with this one.
~~~
Molly took a breath, he felt the hex coming, the heat of it building, and he dropped the wands in front of them, trusting Arthur to know what they were.
A man of the Ministry would certainly recognize these three wands, wands with the Dark Mark branded just where the thumb would lie.
Wands that everyone in the wizarding world was looking for.
"Molly, no," Arthur breathed as Draco opened his fist and dropped the wands at Ginny's father's feet. They clattered and landed in an awkward triangle, the brands on two of them facing up. "Mulciber… Nott… Avery. What…?"
"What's the matter, Arthur?" The first name felt snide, sarcastic on Draco's tongue, and he couldn't change it.
This man standing open-mouthed before him, this man who didn't seem to know where his daughter was, was he worthy enough to have fathered her?
Was he worthy of his own daughter?
Draco wondered if anyone was worthy of her, not least of all himself.
His voice was barely above a whisper when he spoke, raspy and unrecognizable to his own ears.
"Don't you recognize the wands of wizards who have tormented the world for years?
"Don't you recognize the wands of the men I've murdered?"