Bewitched Times
Chapter 6: Uninvited
AN: Finally, we've gotten to the actual D/G interaction. I hate to rush things so thanks for bearing with me while I filled in background. Appreciate all reviews! Enjoy!
~Adrial
"I'll ask you again, Weasley," Draco said, ignoring the glare of warning from his cousin and addressing Ginny with a look of utter disdain. "Lost, are you?"
Ginny squared her shoulders. She felt Adrien tense at her side like a tightly coiled spring, read to defend her. She laid her hand gently on his elbow, refusing to allow Draco Malfoy to intimidate her again.
"Not at all, Malfoy," she countered. "Your cousin has been a great guide so far."
She steeled her beating heart and swept her arm over the room with a smile of appreciation. "It's lovely to see you're doing so well for yourself."
Draco relinquished Ginny of his ice cold stare and turned it on his cousin.
"I want her out of here, Adrien," he said through gritted teeth. "Now."
Ginny hadn't noticed before, but Draco was much taller than Adrien, towering over him by at least four or five inches. However, where Draco was light and agile in body form, Adrien's black dress robes bulged with the curves of a muscular body.
"Ginevra is my guest, Draco," he said, his face straining to remain relaxed so as to keep appearances. Across the room, a woman with dark blonde hair and an air of aristocracy that Ginny instantly recognized watched them with piercing grey eyes, much like her son.
"Come now, have another drink and let's enjoy ourselves shall we?" Adrien waved over an attendant carrying a tray of champagne goblets and shoved one into Draco's hand. On the pretext of leaning in to grab a glass for himself and Ginny, he whispered fiercely into Draco's ear.
"If you want to cause another embarrassing scene in front of our guests and screw up months of preparation, I swear you risk losing more than your dignity this time, Draco-what is she to you anyway?"
He swept up a pair of goblets and returned to Ginny's side. His face was smiling and jovial, betraying no sign of agitation whatsoever. Ginny took her goblet silently. Draco was fuming.
He looked as if he were about to unleash a scathing rebuttal, but a cluster of rosy-cheeked wizards that Ginny vaguely recognized as Ministry officials were bustling over and he clamped his mouth shut.
"Draco Malfoy!" A round-faced wizard with emerald green robes and a wispy black beard clapped Draco on his back. He was joined by a pair of similarly dressed men, both wearing an air of utter boredom.
"M'boy, that mother of yours has outdone herself this time," he lifted his goblet in a salute. Draco's face was strained as he gave him a curt nod.
"Many thanks, Roldwin," he said. As soon as she heard his name, Ginny's ears perked up. Edward Roldwin was the Secretary of Magical Law Enforcement and, most notably to her, Hermione's boss. She vaguely remembered him from a Christmas party long ago, but she was surprised when he turned glassy eyes to her and gave a yelp of surprise.
"Why, Ginevra Weasley, isn't it?" Edward reached and wrung her hand in his own. Ginny smiled awkwardly back. "I've heard more about you, m'dear, than I would care to admit." His red face shined as he chuckled deeply.
"Every time I walk past that Granger's office, she's blathering on to someone about elf-made wine and that extraordinary journalist who helped her win her case against the Wizengamot last fall."
"Oh, well, Hermione and I are very close friends, sir," she said. Adrien smiled down on her, wrapping his arm around her waist possessively.
"Ah," Roldwin said, not failing to notice the gesture. He winked at the pair of them. "And you, Monsieur Cordier, making quite a splash at the Ministry as of late, aren't you?"
Whilst Adrien chatted animatedly with the man and his comrades, Ginny let her eyes wander. Draco was few feet off, having slipped away during their chat and caught up in a conversation with a woman that made Ginny's stomach curl in contempt.
Pansy Parkinson. She was dressed in scarlet robes that clung to each curve and crevice of her body in such a way that left little to the imagination. Her face was screwed up in laughter at something Draco had said, a scene that was so reminiscent of Hogwarts days that Ginny had to smother the urge to roll her eyes. She wrapped a set of talon-like fingernails around her goblet of red wine and leaned toward Draco, running her hand up his arm.
Pansy had never formally joined ranks with Voldemort, Ginny knew, but nonetheless, her wand had sent several students to St. Mungo's after that battle and she'd spent six months in Azkaban to pay for it.
Ginny felt the taste of putrid hate mingle with her champagne as she forced herself to take a sip and look unfazed. She tore her gaze away from the pair and finally took in her surroundings for the first time. The rest of the room was swarming with wizards whose rumored dark pasts flitted across her mind like movie stills as she surveyed the room.
Most Death Eaters had been locked away in Azkaban, but those who, like Draco, had managed to face only exile, were enjoying their newfound freedom and return. Suddenly, feeling quite vulnerable, she realized that she had blindly dived into a pond full of sharks.
Everywhere she turned, hooded eyes and glares met her gaze. Guests stopped their conversations to stare at her, appraising her presence as one would a cornered rodent, wondering how best of get rid of it.
Feeling a bit light-headed and very upset at her own naiveté, she sought refuge by the refreshment table. Picking up a glass of a bubbling purple liquid, she sipped it, barley tasting the sugary liquor that touched her lips. Here she was, the daughter of two members of the Order of the Phoenix, thinking she could waltz into a Malfoy's party and somehow fit into the crowd. She might as well have come in wearing a lightening bolt scar and a t-shirt with Harry's face plastered across it.
"Are you all right?"
It was Adrien. His hand fell on her shoulder and gently prodded her until she turned around.
Ginny leaned against the table, folding her arms across her chest defensively.
"I shouldn't have come."
"Oh, do not worry about Draco-"
"This isn't about Draco," Ginny said, straining to keep the frustration out of her voice. She realized that many pairs of eyes were still trained on her. In a last minute effort to escape, she caught sight of a set of glass doors leading to an outdoor patio and headed for them.
People dodged her as she made her way through the crowd, as if they feared to touch her. Some sneered, but she ignored them. Once outside, she drank in the fresh air and did not stop walking until she was leaning over the railing, fifty stories above the ground and overlooking a sprawling display of city lights.
When she heard Adrien's footsteps behind her, she wheeled around.
"Did you see them? All of them, staring at me as if I was some kind of muck on the bottoms of their shoes?" Ginny said fiercely, relieved to see that they were quite alone on the terrace. The summer breeze that ruffled her hair had a bite of chill in it.
Adrien tried to touch her arm but she pushed him away and began pacing. Her temper was flaring up again; she could feel it lapping at her insides, aching to be released.
"You don't get it, Adrien, you don't," she said. "I watched hundreds of them die there, all of them fighting and falling at the hands of those cowards."
"My friends, my family," she paused and drew a deep breath, "And here I am, sipping champagne with the very wizards responsible!"
"Ginevra," Adrien said, though he did not reach out to her again. "I understand your discomfort, but that was years ago. It is behind you now, isn't it?"
Ginny turned her fiercest glare upon him and thought she might have finally scared him, but she didn't care.
"It will never be behind me, Adrien! Not after what I saw, not after I heard them screaming and watched them die and could do nothing, nothing at all to stop it." Ginny's chest was straining with the effort to control her breathing.
"I can't imagine what that must have been like," he said after a while.
"No, you wouldn't, would you?" She said scathingly. "Didn't see much of the French at the time, did we?"
Adrien tensed his shoulders and glared back at her. Whatever spell or charm he possessed that made him such a crowd pleaser instantly melted.
"You have no idea what you are talking about," he said. "Our Ministry was not about to risk hundreds of lives without knowing for sure that the Dark Lord had returned."
"Oh, that's pure bollocks," Ginny spat. "The Ministry knew for two years what we were facing and when Scrimgeour called for help you all turned up your noses and hid like cowards."
Before Adrien could get a word in, she cut him off again.
"I don't know what you think you're doing here, Adrien, honestly I don't. You can kiss every arse in the Ministry all you like for as long as you bloody well please, but it won't change a thing." She got very close to him, close enough to see his green eyes darken with bottled anger.
"If you expect those of us who lost in the war to just forgive and forget when you know the truth about what happened and you know that your ministry made a mistake, then you might as well hop on your fancy little broomstick and bugger off back to where you came from."
She felt his body quaking slightly next to her, trying to quell his fury. Ginny's own words were bouncing back on her ears and she felt as if a huge weight had finally been lifted from her shoulders.
"I think we are done here," he said at last. "Good evening, Ginevra."
Ginny could tell he still had plenty to say, but something kept him from doing it. Whether it was fear that she might hex him or pure indignation, she knew not. He stalked off in a huff, leaving the faint smell of cologne and champagne lingering in the air.
She turned and leaned against the balcony again, and as her relief turned slowly to regret, she bit her tongue to keep from growling in frustration.
She'd really made a mess of things here, she knew. Adrien was her one sure source to Draco and she had run him off recklessly. Now she was left even more vulnerable before, a lone fox cornered in the cave housing a pack of wolves. The partygoers' animated chatter was muffled behind the thick glass doors. She was preparing to give up and Apparate directly from the patio, praying to God that Malfoy hadn't installed Anti-Apparition charms, when a movement to her left stopped her in her tracks.
"It won't do you any good, Weasel." Malfoy emerged from the shadows as if borne from them. Ginny clenched her fists at her side and forced herself to face him.
"I see you've taken to spying now, have you?" She said, more annoyed than ever.
"It's my property, I'll do as I please," he said with a casual shrug. He wasn't glaring at her like before, but Ginny kept alert with her hand ready at her hip to wield her wand if he made any sudden movements. She liked him better when he was spitting fire and acting like the prat she knew he him to be. His silence unnerved her.
"Well, I was just on my way out, actually," she said, forcing her legs to move her toward the door.
"I know what you're here for, Weasley," Draco said, effectively stopping her in her tracks. She hated him for being able to do that. Stealing herself, she craned her neck slowly around to look at him. He was standing in the full glow of the moon and streetlights now, his eyes cast in shadow.
"You want a story."
"I don't know what you're on about, Malfoy," Ginny said evenly, though her heart was banging against her ribcage.
"Don't you?" He stepped closer, near enough that she could feel the heat of his body through his dress robes. A gust of wind swept over them, whipping Ginny's hair into her face so that she had to rake her hands through it to see.
"Malfoy, would you stop with the dark and mysterious act already?" She spat, annoyed at her rebellious locks. "It's hardly effective."
"Admit it," he said, ignoring her. "You are dying to know where I've been these past eight years, what I've been up to, if I've been plotting the mass downfall of the Ministry in my spare time." His eyes gleamed and Ginny swallowed and composed herself.
"As if you've got half the bollocks necessary to do anything of the sort," she said huffily. "It's a pity you came back at all, really."
"Is it?" He took a firm step toward her. Ginny resisted the urge to take one back. "Are you so sure everyone would be better off without me?"
"What do you mean?" She asked, sensing an underlying tone in his voice. She didn't like it.
"You had the gall to stand there berating a man for facing his enemies when here you are, a bloody Weasley of all people, parading about a room full of wizards who ten years ago would have liked nothing more than to see you cold and broken in a heap along with your other blood traitor friends."
Ginny's mouth twitched with words she couldn't quite force out. She was supposed to have the upper hand here, wasn't she, being the good guy facing the bad guy. Then why had he suddenly made her feel very small and pathetic?
"Let me ask you a question," he said, inching towards her until she couldn't resist and had to step backwards until she felt her back press against the cool, metal railing. "What is it you were hoping to find here, Weasley? Proof that I've been toiling in the dark arts in a dungeon, laboring all this time under some delusion that I would one day avenge the Dark Lord's defeat?"
"That's not what-"
"Or perhaps you thought my mother and I were simply grateful for the excuse to run off at war's end and lick our wounds in the Riviera?"
Ginny pulled herself to her full height and tried to still her quaking knees. She barely came up to his chest, and she found her palms balmy as they slipped against the railing that kept her from tumbling over the edge.
"You seem to forget," Draco pressed on, ignoring the sliver of space between them, wanting to get as close to her face as possible that she may see the gravity in his eyes and understand the truth. "Blood traitors weren't the only ones who suffered losses during the war."
"But you chose your own path, Malfoy!" she said, finally retrieving her oratory abilities. "Don't expect me to pity you. You had the chance to join us like everyone else and fight for the right and yet you decided to follow in your father's footsteps and just look where it got him!"
She regretted the words before they dove off her lips and into reality, but it was too late. Draco's dark grey eyes hardened to twin slabs of steel. Inside his robes, his wand let off a jet of sparks that singed the silky fabric, and his hands were clinched so tightly into fists Ginny was sure she saw sparks fly from them as well.
"You. Know. Nothing," he said through gritted teeth.
"Malfoy, I-" But she could find nothing to say. That night came crashing back to her again, and she tried to match the man standing before her with the terrified boy she'd watched then. They were one and the same, she knew, but so much had changed since the war-had she been a fool to think a Malfoy incapable of the same?
"You're right," she said, swallowing over her parched throat. Draco was silhouetted by the golden glow of the room behind him, but she could practically see the rage steaming from his pores. "I don't know anything more than what I saw then. I was so scared of everything and of you and I just ran away and never looked back."
She forced herself to go on before he gathered his senses and cut her off. "When-When I saw you at the vineyard, it was like everything came rushing back to me, all that I had been trying to push from my mind for so long."
Draco wasn't speaking but he wasn't moving away either, which shocked her more than his silence.
"I can't imagine what it must have taken-"
"Draco, what's keeping you?" Narcissa Malfoy's lithe frame appeared in the doorway, her glittering robes reflecting the city lights. "We've a room full of guests wondering where their host has gone."
From her vantage point, Draco's mother only saw the back of her son overlooking the skyline, effectively hiding Ginny with his larger frame.
"Coming, Mother," he said, his voice barely betraying any tension.
"Really, Draco, I must insist you-"
"I said I am coming!" Draco turned to face her and Narcissa appeared stricken by his harsh tone. But then Ginny realized that she had finally caught sight of her standing there behind her son. She immediately wished to disappear and damned Anti-Apparition charms to hell.
Draco had inherited his glare from Narcissa Malfoy, no doubt, for she laid such a look of disdain upon the younger witch that Ginny felt her insides squirm with unease.
"Very well, son," she said with much effort. Ginny let out an involuntary sigh of relief when Narcissa slipped back through the doorway and vanished.
But when Draco turned back to her, she felt his penetrating stare was far worse than any death-wish laden glower from Mrs. Malfoy. Was she insane for trying to open up to him?
"I have no one to answer to for my actions," he said, though his tone was devoid of its earlier bite.
"I'm not asking you to."
"You want to know why I did it."
"I don't know what I want, Malfoy."
"I had never killed before."
"None of us had, we were all young and-"
"Scared shitless, I was."
"You had to be."
"I don't know why I am telling you this right now," he said, moving along to stand beside her as if being that close to her face was difficult for him.
"You don't have to if…I mean, it's all right if you don't."
Ginny was holding her breath. The unlikely pair fell into a deep stretch of silence that felt more like hours than seconds, and she finally remembered to exhale when she began to feel lightheaded and wobbly on her feet. The night air tickled her throat.
"He was going to kill her." Draco's voice was devoid of emotion. He wasn't looking at her but at some nameless point on the horizon. She took the opportunity to gather her wits but was too afraid to say anything lest she disturb him.
"You didn't see it all," he said. "She was cowering by a tree behind me. We were at the edge of the Forbidden Forest, and he came bursting out, looking mad. I thought he'd gone mental and completely lost his senses, and Mother was injured and bleeding. Blood was all over the place…I was trying to help her get to where we could Apparate to find help, but then he came running toward us."
Ginny clamped her mouth shut and squeezed the railing with her hands to relieve some of the tension running thick through her veins. She stared at his profile, roving her eyes over every detail while he gathered his thoughts. His nose was sloped and long, balancing the pointed chin that anchored the rest of his face. His skin was so translucent she was sure she might see his veins pulsing beneath it if she got close enough.
"I don't think he was himself, I think he had been Imperiused. It all happened so fast, and when he lunged at us the first curse nearly got me."
Ginny remembered stumbling along that night in the forest, her legs badly bruised and slick with her own blood. She'd been sobbing, having just come upon the cold body of one of her classmates, and she longed to find her family and feel safe again. Tangled in tree branches, she fought her way through and had finally emerged on the outer edge of the forest when a flash of green stunned her out of her mad dash. She instantly froze and ducked back behind a sapling, clamping her hand over her mouth to silence her whimpers.
She heard a voice that sounded distantly familiar to her ears and, fearing another of her friends was facing off with a death eater alone, she crept from her hiding place, wand clutched tightly in her shaking fist.
"I heard you," she said, startling herself with the sound of her own voice. "I was a little ways away, and I thought someone needed help so I came closer."
"Mother tried to stop him but I threw her behind me, and when he lunged for her…" Draco stopped and bowed his head slightly. He was leaning over the railing, both hands gripping the cold metal as if it were the only thing anchoring him to the ground.
"I just did it. I killed him. He was gone and that was it."
A sudden burst of adrenaline shot through Ginny's body and jerked her hand forward until it closed softy around Malfoy's. He flinched.
"I'm sorry, Draco," she said, unsure if it was even her voice she was hearing. Everything felt different to her, as if she'd been flipped inside out and left raw and exposed.
A few moments passed before he said anything. The din of late night traffic below sounded far away.
"That's it, Weasley," he said suddenly, stepping away from the railing and from her. Ginny's hand closed around cold metal. "Now you know. I'm just another Malfoy with blood on his wand."
"But it was in defense," Ginny said, wheeling around to face him until he had to look at her. "You said it yourself. He was going to kill your mum and maybe you, too, if you hadn't stopped him."
"And what difference does that make?" His right arm swung forward and for a second Ginny thought he was going to strike her. But he threw back the sleeve of his robes, exposing his white flesh to the night and the dark imprint of a serpent writhing upon it. "It was one death eater killing another. No great loss would have been felt whether it was me lying dead on the ground or him."
He laughed wryly and though Ginny had never actually heard him do so before, she could tell it wasn't natural.
"The damn Ministry couldn't tell whether to lock me up in Azkaban for using the curse or award me a medal for saving them the trouble." He shook his head. Several thick strands of white blonde hair fell across over his eyes. "In the end, they decided eight years in exile would serve me right."
The journalist in Ginny was dying to know more, to pummel him with question after question of how he handled his sentence, how his mother had learned to forgive him, how he'd managed (or not managed by the sound of him) to forgive himself. But again she remained silent, not wanting to scare him off. He was nearly human to her now, which was a huge leap from only an hour before when she would rather have eaten a vat of troll bogies than be within a foot of Draco Malfoy.
"It makes a difference, Draco," she said. "You weren't like him."
He turned to look at her and she felt as if she might crumble under his gaze. His eyes bore into her so fiercely she felt more vulnerable than ever and wrapped her arms around her waist protectively.
"How can you be so sure?" His eyes had glassed over and Ginny was amazed to see a shadow of vulnerability flash across them, exposing the seventeen year old wizard who was fighting to move on.
"I can tell, that's all," she said, gathering her wits but still holding his gaze. "That wasn't the only time I'd seen you that night you know. You were there in your black cloak and mask with the rest of them, but you were stunning, not killing. I should know, I had to dodge a dozen of those spells at one point."
She smirked up at him. The corner of his mouth twitched ever so lightly but it was fleeting.
"So I suppose you've got me all worked out now, have you?"
"No, but I'm beginning to think you weren't as bad as you wanted us all to believe," she said. "A cowardly and prejudiced git, sure, but not a blood-thirsty killer."
She had to stop and resist the urge to pinch herself. Was she really standing on Draco Malfoy's balcony, almost sort of conversing with him about being a death eater and killing his own father?
"What are you smiling about, Weasley?" She hadn't realized she'd been grinning stupidly to herself, lost in her own musings. A blush crept up her cheeks and an awkward chuckle escaped her lips.
"Just life, I suppose," she said. Draco stared at her intently for a while before nodding slowly.
"You do understand that we just had a civilized conversation with one another, don't you?"
Draco was silent for a moment before he straightened himself to his full height again. The flicker of a younger man disappeared. Ginny was sad to see him go.
"Go on and write whatever story you want about me, Weasley," he said. Ginny noted the familiar bite to his words. "You have no reason to believe anything I told you tonight."
"But I do-"
"All I ask is that you leave my mother out of it," he said, bowing his head slightly. "She's dealt with enough already."
Ginny leaned forward to reach for his arm again, but he swept past her and back through the doors, leaving her stunned and alone with her hand stretched out and nothing to hold.