CHAPTER FIFTEEN - Parental Influence
He stepped into the corridor with his head bowed, and she thought it suited him- a position of subservience even though he was simply reading the message he'd been sent by owl.
"Lucius." Ginny's voice was cold, loud, nearly authoritative in this house not her own, but for the first time since stepping into Grimmauld Place and announcing, in a roundabout way, her intent, she wavered. His name on her lips made them peel back from her teeth, the taste of it loathsome in her mouth.
This man, she thought. Did she hate this man enough to do harm?
This man had stolen from her once, had given her a friend who had been taken in the most duplicitous and disgusting of ways. And now? She had, through some sickening, ill-fated turn of events, been given a lover, a love-only to have him taken from her in more duplicity, with more disgust.
And when the father of that love looked up at her and sneered, laughed, devoid of the fear her ought to have had, she knew she hated more than enough to harm him.
~~~
Molly's indrawn breath, prepared to hex, turned into a breathed oath-"Oh my charted stars"-and she regarded Draco with a mix of sickness, suspicion, and shock.
Arthur knelt, his eyes cast up to the boy-the man, he corrected himself-who had somehow wooed his daughter, the man who had gone on to hurt her, and… what? Who had murders his father's comrades, his own comrades? It made no sense. He scooped the wands off the floor and stepped back from Draco, casting a glance at his wife to make certain she would stand watch while he inspected the wands.
"Don't bother," Draco said, feeling drained. The words he'd spoken had taken more out of him than he'd anticipated, a confession he'd rehearsed in his mind hundreds of times, to different people, to different results, for different reasons.
He had wanted to tell someone, and found he could put no one in that danger.
"They're real," he said, looking at Arthur with tired eyes. Why hadn't he simply spirited her away, as he had wanted to? He could have.
He easily could have, and spared them both this misery.
"Why would you do this thing?" Arthur held his hands out in front of him, his big, workingman's hands that had never been well-suited to policy or pretense, the wands laid across them as though on display. He didn't-couldn't-bear to wrap his hands around those wands.
Greater wizards had been brought low by less.
"Is she here?" His voice, now quiet and scratchy, all the shout gone out of it for the moment, was more effective than it had been at a louder volume, but Molly was unmoved.
Her daughter had labeled this man an enemy. She wanted to know why.
"What did you do to her?" Molly asked. It didn't matter if he'd killed Voldemort himself, if he had done something, she would know it.
Draco wanted to tear his own hair out at the insipid questions, at the things that didn't matter, but he held himself still. "I didn't obtain those by asking for them, you know," he gestured to the wands, making Arthur jump a little, his eyes still wide and disbelieving. "I dressed as they dressed, masked myself as they do, and I dispatched them in the only way I could without endangering myself."
"Poison," Arthur said, looking up at Draco. "You made yourself a Death Eater and killed your fellow wizards."
That finally raised the sneer Draco was so known for, and he shoved up the sleeves of his robes, bringing yet another gasp from Molly.
His forearms were bare, no Dark Mark to be seen.
"I made myself nothing, nor does any man make me anything."
Except for her, he thought, wondering how many hoops he would have to maneuver before being told she was safe. She makes me everything.
~~~
"Well, now, a fighter for the white," Lucius drawled, and she wondered how something that sounded-or had once sounded-so innocuous, so teasing on his son, could sound so evil on him, could sound so slimy and serpentine. "Or have you come to fight for us? You have before, you know."
She felt it rearing up inside her, the rage she'd worked so hard to forget between then and now, between the chamber and now, the betrayal she'd felt upon seeing Draco standing with his mask, the sheer want she had for things to be right, for him to be back, and she couldn't stop it. It tore through her, immolating the few good intentions she'd had, and she swung her fist in a backhanded arc as though slapping him, not thinking words, not thinking spells, but thinking only hurt, hurt, hurt-
Lucius's eyes went wide a moment before his head snapped back, his pale hair flying in unsettled arcs, and he was knocked backward with the force of the blasting spell she hadn't known how to cast before it was out of her hand and off her wand. His back hit a wall and he used it to steady himself, the parchment dropping from his fingers to settle upon the floor, a small gash already seeping blood at his hairline.
He coughed once, and the nasty weakness of the sound both unsettled and excited Ginny, whose breath was now coming in gasps and pants as she looked at the man before her. Once, she'd thought Draco had gotten his looks from Lucius.
Now, she could see nothing of him in his father.
"Fool!" he spit, his eyes dark and hot. "Do you think you're hexing my son once more, back in school corridors guarded by an old man with more pride than power?" He could taste blood in the back of his throat, and he knew it would be hers before this was done. He had tried to kill her once and failed.
He would not fail again.
The Dark Lord had been taken in by this girl, this woman, and had spoken of her since more than once with rueful overtones to his hissing voice. He had wanted to possess her and had not.
Lucius would bring her to his Dark Lord, if only for the satisfaction of never having to hear that regret again. It did not suit one so powerful as Voldemort to regret.
He pointed his wand at her, his hate-and envy, oh, ill-concealed envy for this chit who had learned of his Lord as he had once been, this chit who had been allowed more than even the most loyal of followers-emanating from him.
"Avada-"
Ginny threw her hands out, her despair turned to desperation as she shouted "Protego!" She hadn't an idea if it would actually work.
She'd never had call to try.
"Kedavra!" He threw the curse with a primal grunt, veins standing out on the sides of his neck, on his forehead, his face flushed dark with rage.
Ginny let out a howl of exertion, her body trembling with the effort it took to maintain the unfamiliar protective spell.
In another time, another place, the look of shock on his aristocratic face would have been comical, the sheer surprise that his effort had been thwarted would have been amusing.
But she could not take the time to find humor in it, only triumph and a rekindling of her distaste for him.
Ginny felt sweat pool between her breasts and trickle down to her navel, and her concentration nearly broke as she thought of her lover's hands trailing that same path. Her shield wavered and she gritted her teeth, resolved to hold it.
Lucius panted, breathless with his failed effort and unable to hide it. "How?"
His query was barely audible over the roar of blood in her ears, but she saw his lips form the word.
Harry's voice, Ron's and Hermione's, slid from memory into consciousness, speaking about Harry's mother. About the love Lily Evans Potter had felt for her son, and how it had protected him.
"I don't expect you to understand," she said, her own voice little more than a whisper. "You sold yourself for dark magic, and it means nothing against what the poorest Mudblood could have.
"Dark magic, even your Lord's, means nothing against heart's blood. Against love."
Unable and unwilling to hold the spell any longer, Ginny dropped her shield and faced her enemy with no defenses.
~~~
"Please," he said, feeling gutted as they stared curiously at his arms, free from mark, free from blemish.
Free from condemnation.
"Please tell me where she is."
Motivation had no place here, nor did explanation.
Draco did not give a damn that these people before him, these strangers but for one person who bound them together, could not possibly fathom-and might not ever fathom-why he had done the things he had done.
The things he had done had driven away the one thing he did give a damn about, and they would tell him what he wanted to know.
Molly looked him in the eyes, her brows drawn together, and she felt her heart stutter a bit in her chest.
He burned for her daughter. She'd be a fool if she couldn't see it, and not much of a mother.
But she wasn't about to tell him anything, not until she'd heard otherwise, not until she knew her daughter's mind on the matter.
Arthur, however, was slow to stop reflex, and his eyes flicked to the clock on the wall.
"Oh, Merlin," Arthur said, gripping Draco's shoulder to support himself, the epithet drawing into a moan.
Draco looked at the clock; he would have dismissed it as sheer idiocy, as some Muggle fancy the dotty old man had worked over, but then he saw her name and got the answer to the question he had been looking for.
He knew where Ginny was.