CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO - Speaking the Truth
She didn't know why the Ministry and St. Mungo's couldn't do anything on a small scale. No, they'd erected sawhorses and made everything around the hospital's entrance look like a Muggle construction area so they could magically cordon it off and invite dignitaries to come and listen to…what? A few words from the hospital administration, a few words from her?
Maybe a few words from Draco Malfoy?
Perched on a hard wooden chair they'd given her, Ginny wiped her sweaty palms on a handkerchief she'd been clutching from the moment she'd walked on site. She wasn't nervous, exactly, it was only that there were so many people already gathered…
And that she didn't see Draco yet. If she were to be completely honest with herself, she didn't know which would be worse: for him to show up, or for him not to show up.
"We'll be starting in a few moments." The hospital's executive director leaned down to speak right into Ginny's ear, and she fought against wincing. He was truly a wonderful man, a legendary healer, but he was hard of hearing and thought everyone else was, too.
Healer, heal thyself, Ginny thought, the smile she gave him genuine.
If people could tolerate listening to him shouting out a speech, they certainly couldn't mind what she had to say. But his next words had her fumbling again, the small margin of confidence she'd regained sliding right down to her feet once more.
"Mr. Malfoy has seated himself in the back. Strikes me as a rather shy sort of boy, don't you think?"
Several witches and wizards turned at the director's shouted speculation, and Ginny clasped her hands together, turning slightly so as to keep from facing all those curious eyes and in a completely futile attempt to muffle Healer Warwick's ringing voice.
"I wouldn't know," she murmured, casting a furtive glance over her shoulder. Whatever happened to starting in a few moments? The last thing she wanted was to be caught gossiping about Draco Malfoy with a man loud enough to wake up the whole of London with his voice.
"Wouldn't know?" His voice rose with his mirth and he clapped her on the shoulder hard enough to have her tottering on the heeled shoes she wore. "Nonsense, my dear, I never forget something I've read! The two of you were quite cozy at that party here not too long ago, weren't you? Young love!" he proclaimed, slapping her on the other shoulder.
She wondered idly if mercy would have him knock her off the dais so she could break her neck and be done with this humiliation.
"Sir!" Warwick's assistant tapped him on the shoulder. "It's about to start."
"Very good!" he shouted at the young man, and as the assistant scurried off, Ginny saw he had taken the old-fashioned remedy-he had cotton ticking stuffed in his ears.
"Welcome!"
As the director began to speak-or rather, crow-Ginny slunk back to her chair and slid down into it, her eyes flitting around the assembled crowd for some sign of him, even just to figure out where he was sitting would be a comfort. But it wasn't to be, and as the director's speech started to come to a close, Ginny started feeling very, very ill.
"I'm pleased to introduce Miss Ginevra Weasley, on behalf of Ministry Medical Affairs."
The applause was somehow louder than his voice, and she felt as though she would pitch forward onto her face as she stepped to the podium they'd erected for her, something to hide behind. For a moment, she had the urge to do just that-crouch down and hide behind the podium until she could Disapparate and be back in her flat, safe and sound and in her pyjamas, curled up with a book.
Or looking at the book he left.
Sometimes she really hated that internal voice.
"Good morning, everyone, and thank you for coming." Ginny cleared her throat, looked at the expectant faces, and realized she had not amplified her voice. "Sonorus," she said.
Timing was, as per usual, not on her side. No sooner than she had increased her volume than her eyes traveled to the very back of the crowd, to a shock of pale hair sitting atop that smirking face, his arms crossed over his chest, and she gasped.
Loudly, of course.
~~~
Of course they'd asked him to speak. They always did.
His reasons for declining had nothing to do with her, nothing to do with that deep violet suit she wore, those long legs stretching below the skirt's hemline. It had nothing to do with how she sat up there fidgeting as though she'd rather be at home relaxing with a glass of wine or a cup of tea.
He declined because he had nothing to say to these people, because anything he said to them would simply be construed once more as his attempt to buy himself into the community's good graces, one more attempt to explain away the sins of the father and the guilt of the son.
But she didn't look as though she'd been working herself to the bone, and her suit didn't look like it was bagging on her. On the contrary, he thought, his mouth hardening into a defensive smirk, she looked as though she had been eating just fine.
But he couldn't tune out her words, couldn't ignore that voice, and as she started to speak, his smirk started to fade.
~~~
It angered her that he sat in the back, that they allowed him to sit in the back. He had financed an entire wing of a hospital that had seen more patients in recent years, a hospital that had been in desperate need of renovation, a need he was filling. They should have been facing him, asking him to speak.
It didn't matter who he was-who they mistakenly thought he was-they should have been lauding him.
She drew herself to her full height and looked out at all of them, wondering why they were looking at her and not him.
"Mr. Draco Malfoy," she said, pausing for long enough to have them all shifting uncomfortably. "His generosity has made it possible for St. Mungo's to not only continue, but improve. Thrive. Not one of us gathered here today is ignorant of the strain this great facility underwent in recent years, but not one of us has been able-or willing-to make so great a gesture to the rehabilitation of not only the hospital, but the people of our wizarding community."
She avoided his eyes, keeping her glance moving, pleading with each person whose eyes she met to recognize what she was talking about.
The man who had gone overboard and bought her an entire box of lingerie, who had been determined to fix her door on his own, had generosity for people he didn't even know.
"Because of the contribution to the community as a whole-a community that so desperately needs to be whole again-the Ministry felt it necessary to thank Mr. Malfoy. While the contribution is, certainly, to the hospital, it is much appreciated."
She got that far before she started to feel her throat tighten, before his eyes drew hers like a magnet, before she could no longer pretend he wasn't there.
He looked tired, she thought. He looked tired and a bit worn, and her speech faltered as the thought ran through her head that Narcissa couldn't have been gone this whole time, gone with the House Elves.
He looked like what she'd been looking for.
So she kept her eyes on his, feeling as though the distance from the front of the crowd to the back drew to nothing as she finished her speech, words rolling now from somewhere other than the speech she had memorized.
"Draco, the changes you have made, the trust you have bestowed, are thought of fondly and often, and they shall not be forgotten."
Finally, the assembled witches and wizards turned to follow her gaze, turned to look upon the man of whom she spoke, and applause broke out once more.
Quieting her voice before it failed her completely and disintegrated into something desperate and babbling and blubbering, Ginny ran off the dais, casting one look at him over her shoulder as the crowd converged to shake his hand.
~~~
"Holy shite!" Pansy held the tiny earpiece tighter in her ear, trying to determine if she'd really just heard what she thought she had. Had the clever Miss Weasley slipped a bit of a personal message in there, or had she simply lost it?
"Damn it," Pansy growled. All she could hear was applause on the public service station of her wireless, and the idiotic announcer droning over the clapping about a wonderful speech by the lovely Ministry representative. Pansy'd have throttled the monotonous arse if he'd been right in front of her. She wanted to hear if Ginny was still speaking, damn it, or if the reporters were speaking to Draco.
The door to her office slammed and she jumped, the earpiece falling from her ear and past her fumbling hands as she tried to catch it.
No one ever came into her office without knocking. Ever.
She finally caught the tiny wireless transmitter between her thumb and finger and looked up, prepared to verbally mow some peon to the ground.
"How do I fix this?" Ginny said tremulously, her eyes steady even as her voice shook. "Tell me how I fix this."
Truly taken aback for what was perhaps the first time in her adulthood, Pansy looked uncomprehendingly at the transmitter in her hand, then to the woman she'd just been listening to on that transmitter. She was tempted to ramble, but Pansy Parkinson would take a few moments of silence before she would ever choose her words carelessly. "Lovely speech, darling, though you must have been in a terrible hurry to make it over here so quickly."
"You have to help me," Ginny said, feeling desperate. She'd been in front of a crowd, for Merlin's sake, and she'd nearly lost it with him sitting back there. What had she said? Had she said anything stupid. "I messed things up," she said, shoving one hand through her hair. "You egged this on, Pansy, you have to help me."
Pansy rolled her eyes, trying as hard as she could to conceal the joyous whoop that wanted to come rolling out of her throat. Instead, she walked around the desk, hips rolling in a move that had long since become permanent attribute rather than passing affectation. Clucking her tongue, she circled behind Ginny, walking her fingers over the girl's shoulders and thinking, not for the first time, that Draco was a lucky-if blind-bastard. She pressed herself against Ginny's back and strongly repressed the suffocating urge to just… suggest something here or there, help things along a bit.
Things didn't need helping, she told herself staunchly. By the looks of the two lovelorn fools, they'd be running to each other in no time. They were too obvious not to. "Darling, look at you," she said, running a hand down Ginny's side and speaking directly in her ear. "He'd be a fool not to want you." She sauntered back around to face Ginny, a little startled at how the younger woman's face was so drawn, so pale, so miserable. "I don't think you make a habit of bedding fools, do you, pet?"
"No," Ginny whispered. Never in a million years did she think she would be facing this woman one day, asking for advice. "I just don't know what to do."
Pansy put one hand to the redhead's shoulder and looked her in the eyes, completely pleased with what she saw, if a bit jealous-she'd never felt anything like that for a man, and likely never would have the privilege. She could tell her what to do, but in this instance, nothing would be right.
"Darling," she said in a lazy, drawling voice. "What I'm about to tell you to do will be the most difficult thing you've ever done."
Ginny watched her with wide eyes, ready to do anything if it meant a reprieve from her misery. "What?"
Pansy leaned in and spoke the single word in a whisper. "Wait."