CHAPTER THREE - Skirmish
They had ended up spooning on the couch, each of them removing one item of clothing from the other at a time until they were both naked and all but buried in the deep cushions of the couch.
Her day should have felt a triumph, an accomplishment. She'd stepped up to take a part in defeating the one man who had scarred her, hurt her most, before she ever should have known what true fear and true hurt were. But she didn't tell him.
He thought of his father's absurd behavior, wished she could find it as amusing as he, and let it go. There was no way to describe to her how his father had behaved, no way to tell her any alarm would be overreaction. Because the hell of it was, for her, it might not be.
"I can't stay," he said as it started to grow dark outside. "Not the way things are."
She stiffened, and he sighed, knowing there was no way to tell her anymore. He steeled himself for a fight, but none came.
Ginny stared into the fire in the fireplace and wondered if she could keep two parts of her heart separate for the duration of what could be a very long war.
~~~
Wake up.
She turned her face into the pillow, her hand stretching out along the expanse of the bed, only to stroke cool, empty sheets where she'd expected-wanted-to find Draco.
"Ginny, wake up."
What was the point? She was by herself, after all, and she didn't have to work on Saturday morning, so why get up early? Why wake up?
A hand shook her shoulder roughly and Ginny sat up, gasping, eyes adjusting quickly to the dark. Bill stood at the side of her bed, his hair half-sliding from its tie, his eyes sober. "I hope you're prepared to be the messenger. Tiberius Flint was found dead, Gin. The Death Eaters are tearing through the city, leaking over into Muggle neighborhoods."
Ginny's mind raced as she thought of how Draco had dropped a kiss to her bare shoulder, sliding a nightshirt over her head just before he'd left. What time had he gone? And where had he gone?
The Death Eaters are tearing through the city.
Please, no, she thought. "I'm ready," she told him, forcing a calm she didn't feel.
Bill sighed through his nose, his lips pressed tight together, and he leaned to kiss his sister's forehead. "I wish you'd let someone else do this," he said quietly. After a moment of silence, he leaned back. "Get dressed. We're going."
~~~
Wake up.
He'd been lying awake, thinking of her, his mind so occupied he thought he'd imagined the whisper at first. He was accustomed to the sounds of her breathing, the soft little murmurs she made in her sleep, and the whisper, either imagined or real, had him alert, ready.
"I said, wake up." A brilliant light shot from the end of the wand, illuminating the room and making Draco wince. When the spots had faded from his eyes, he saw his father sitting at the foot of his bed, his face contorted and ugly.
He knows, Draco thought, the pace of his heart picking up. He thought of this man in another capacity, this man robbed of his magic, holding a little black box that could somehow destroy lives. He knows about her.
"My gratitude for forgoing the usual procedures of waiting until daylight and knocking on one's door," Draco drawled, sitting up slowly and forcing nonchalance. "I do find them so very tedious."
"Tiberius Flint is dead," Lucius hissed. "Murdered, no doubt, by some Muggle-loving swine with more sentiment than sense."
Draco swung his legs over the edge of the bed, shoving his hair back from his forehead and rubbing his face. "Not news I like to be wakened with," he said. "So what would you have me do?"
Lucius rolled his eyes and brought his cane down on the top of Draco's bed, the finely woven cotton snapping as the ebony hit it. "You've the joys of a low profile," he said, looking at his son intently. "Or, as low a profile as a Malfoy can manage. Do you think you can take time from your precious life and your precious Ministry to keep your ears open, hm?"
"I don't see that being too much a hindrance," Draco responded. It wasn't as though his father was particularly saddened over Flint's death; if he'd heard Lucius say once that Tiberius Flint was a snaggle-toothed sycophant, he'd heard it a thousand times. But it was a matter of principal. No one got the better of a Death Eater, and no follower of the Dark Lord was to die without purpose.
"What is being done?" Draco asked slowly, knowing something had to be happening, knowing no blow went unreturned. When Lucius cut his eyes away, toward the door, Draco grasped the edge of the cane and pushed, sending the head of it into Lucius's side. "Don't evade me, Father," he said coldly. "I'd rather be prepared than sheltered." He narrowed his eyes. "Or worse, not trusted."
"Get dressed," Lucius said flatly. "And I'll show you."
~~~
She'd never seen such a flurry of activity at Grimmauld Place. Their efforts before had been scattered, unified in their meaning but segmented in their bases. This was true war, however, and Grimmauld Place was where they took their orders.
Albus Dumbledore looked at once older and younger, pacing the floor and standing tall to bark out orders. This was nothing, he said, small insurrection, the flex of a muscle. The Death Eaters would stop by morning, no doubt, but they could not stand by idly.
"We need to know where they are, what sort of damage they're doing," Remus said tiredly, casting his eyes about. "Severus is already out, finding out what he can."
"I'll go," Ginny said, running through her mind the places she'd sometimes imagined Draco in, those places his father frequented. When several pairs of stern eyes turned to her, she shook her head. "Don't you have Order members already out there? What if they need to tell you what's going on? Do you feel they should stop, perhaps send you an owl?" She turned to her mother, her eyes wide and helpless as she thought of sitting here, doing nothing as she imagined her brothers in the thick of the fray, or her lover on the other side of things.
If she sat still, she would surely go mad.
"Go," Albus said, raising his hand. "Be our ears, Ginevra. Our eyes."
She turned swiftly, pausing only to press her lips to her mother's cheek. "I love you," she whispered, and then she was gone.
~~~
Bloody hell. It was absolute chaos, Draco thought, and absolutely appalling what such a small group of unfocused witches and wizards would do. It wasn't as though they'd ever be able to band together as a single force, so at cross purposes were all of them.
But he strode untouched through occasional fires, through minor skirmishes between lesser magics, and his heart twisted, his eyes seeking.
Where was she? She wasn't at her flat; that much he knew. He'd been unable to return to bed once his father had left his chambers, and he'd gone to her flat and practically turned over every stick of furniture she had. She was nowhere to be found.
And for her to be missing just shy of three in the morning was not just unusual, it was unsettling.
Idealists, he'd thought desperately as he'd pressed his head to her front door, trying to decipher where in the hell she'd gone. Bloody idealists and their crusades. And so now he walked the streets, heedless of the violence around him, his long coat undulating about his ankles, the high-necked black sweater he wore making him paler than he already was, more dramatic than he truly meant to be.
He only had eyes for her, but in this mess, who could tell?
He ducked between two buildings as two wizards in Death Eater masks rushed by, shouting threats at a young witch and wizard who fled hand-in-hand.
There were ways, he knew, to reach out for her, and he tried with his mind to find hers, but the moment he opened up, his consciousness was bombarded with thoughts from every corner-
Rape murder kill Muggle loving filth a life for a life an eye for an eye my life for him, for him, for him-
Run, the masks are evil, run, dirty evil hate worshipping fiends crazy fire help-
He rapped his head against the bricks behind him, the taste of blood from his bitten tongue filling his mouth instantly and bringing him to.
His eyes fluttered just a bit and he struggled for control as someone ran past the mouth of the alley, cloak fluttering behind them-
Her?
-and he bolted from the alley, blood gathering unheeded now at the corner of his mouth as he tried to find where the person had gone. Had it been her, or was he going mad?
~~~
She was trying to keep her eyes focused, alert for Order members, but she couldn't help but look for him, left to
right like a child lost in Flourish and Blotts, searching aisles of dusty pages for a parent.
Fearing she'd be spotted, Ginny Disapparated and came up down the street, where she grabbed the sleeve of a fierce-looking Tonks. Her hair was a bright red-orange, her pretty face molded into a scowl. "Pigs," she said, not missing a beat as she was pulled aside. "Swine! They're doing damage like hooligans more than anything else, but who knows where they'll stop?" Without so much as skipping a beat, she let out a yell like a war-cry and shot a spell at a wizard whose mask was slipping off in his childish glee, incapacitating him and then binding him before she turned back to Ginny. "Go back and tell the house it will not take much to stop them tonight, but that they smell blood, taste it."
Tonks took down another Death Eater, this one female, and very young, a sick Ginny noted. When she turned back to Ginny, her face was grim. "Go," she repeated, and would say no more.
She stood shaking for a moment after Tonks ran back into the street, wondering if she'd made the wise choice.
The shaking had stopped by the time she delivered her first message, and it wouldn't return for the two hours she stayed out.
~~~
He vowed to stay out until he found her, until he knew where she was, but only one thing could send Draco Malfoy back to his flat.
His father's voice, ringing through the rioting crowds even through the mask he wore, regal and mad and powerful.
"Fools!" he roared, his voice both amplified and somehow indistinct through the mask. "Did you think we would not find out? Do you think we will not find and punish the guilty?" He grabbed a hooded witch from the doorway of a store, and for a moment, Draco's heart rose into his throat. He had been certain it was Ginny, but her hood fell back, revealing a cloud of blond, curly hair.
Not her. This time.
Where are you, dammit?
He didn't want to stay, but he knew he couldn't go.
If she were there, and his father got her…
He would stay.
He stayed until his father had passed, until the Death Eaters rallied behind him, and then he Disapparated, headed to her flat, knowing it would be empty, needing to check. He wanted to leave her a note, but, fearing it might be found, wrote on a piece of parchment, "Where is my tutor?" and left it on the floor just inside her front door.
It would have to do.
~~~
She paced around his flat, scowling at his stupid, big bed and his stupid expensive dustcatchers.
She knew whose money had bought them those things, Ginny thought, wiping a dirty hand over an equally dirty, sweaty face. She'd been in fireplaces, in back alleys, in open streets and Muggle backyards, and now that the skirmish was over, all she wanted was to make sure he was home safe, make certain he was all right, not-
Killed by a do-gooder who knows what he is.
Her knees went weak, all the shakes that had built up wracking into them one after the other, and she sat on the floor, unable and unwilling to dirty his bed with her filthy robes.
When the doorknob turned, she was all eyes, her gaze wide-eyed and mistrustful, unmoving in her spot on the floor. If someone had come for her, then let them come. She would not move from this spot.
But move she did, to her hands and knees and then to a swaying stance as she saw him, his pale hair messy and matted, a trickle of blood at the corner of her mouth, and she wanted to scream, wanted to cry, wanted to tell him No, for Merlin's sakes, damn it, no, but she said nothing, knowing he must be thinking the same thing, with her filthy clothes and her scratched face, and so she stumbled to him, put her hands to his chest, and kissed him to taste his blood.
Draco wrapped his arms around her, squeezing his eyes shut, and breathed deeply of the smell of her, soot and filth and sweat, and he thanked the gods she was unharmed.
This time.
He felt her silent sobs shaking her body, no tears, no sounds, only the breadth and depth of emotion she couldn't speak and he couldn't hear.
When she was finished, more dry-eyed than when he started, when the feel of her pressed to him had him wanting to pick her up and carry her to the bath and then straightaway to bed, he smoothed her hair back from her dirty face, kissed her forehead, and set her away from him.
Dawn was breaking.
It was time for her to go home.