Chapter 2
His Newly Realized Hell
He did not see her again for two and a half years. The intervening time had been brutal to the Slytherin. When he looked in the mirror, he no longer recognized the wizard staring back at him. It was an existence far colder, sicker, and more twisted than he knew himself capable of enduring. That part of him which could not endure, simply died, withered away from the stench of the war, never to be resurrected again.
A certain series of events forced the Slytherin out of the shadows and into the burning light of the Order. He entered their heavily veiled and warded camp burdened with the enormous responsibility of providing crucial information from the Dark Lord's den to help turn the tide of the War. These were the tenuous closing days of the War, and they knew the young Slytherin could help them secure a win, if he managed to stay alive long enough to be of use.
On the way to the small hut containing the core leadership of the Order, he passed rows and rows of multicolored wooden shacks with makeshift chimneys spewing smoke. Children were yelling and screaming and playing games across the grounds. Scattered women and the elderly were engrossed in the tasks of war as well as with the raising of the many children shielded there, most not their own.
Draco had not seen a wizarding child for over two years before coming here. What about the other children, the Death Eaters' children? He suspected the Dark Lord had them ensconced somewhere as leverage against any parent with a touch of ambivalence about his methods or mission. The sound of children playing and their innocent laugher were music to his soul, which had been trapped in darkness for too long. He watched their forgotten world with some fascination. Their existence was a potent reminder of the fragile nature of wizardkind's future as the Dark Lord raged against all reason and sanity and hope.
His purposeful stride arrested mid-step. Ginny? Surely not, but there she stood, no more than fifty feet from him, and his starved eyes locked in on the sight of her, refusing to let go. Those distinctive scarlet tresses and those remarkable dark eyes belonged to one witch and one witch only, his witch.
He saw her standing with her arms thrown absent-mindedly around a small school aged child in front of her, while she kept a watchful eye on several others, running and playing. She was even more exquisite than his war weary mind remembered her to be.
So this is where they had been keeping her. She was safe and sound and very much alive, right here at the heart of the Order, the place where they kept their most treasured and sacred possessions.
He threw off his invisibility cloak as he approached her. The sound of her laughter floated out across the grounds. It was a sound he had not heard in many years. His long dormant heart lurched.
"Ginny!"
She looked up at the calling of her name.
He rushed to her, a much changed wizard. His elegant frame was draped in fine Death Eating robes, the Dark Mark indelibly imprinted on his left forearm, and his beautiful face chiseled by the mark of time. But his unmistakable frame was still tall, lanky, and lean; his eyes were still that strange iridescent shade of grey; and his heart still held the same burning passion for her it had when he saw her last.
Her searching dark eyes went wide as they caught his, igniting on contact, now less than a dozen feet away.
"Draco," she whispered, eyes locked firmly on his.
He returned her glorious gaze for one heartbreakingly long moment, drowning in the wonder of her all over again. Suddenly, the child she was holding broke loose, brushing past Draco in pursuit of a loose ball thrown his way.
Draco stepped forward to take his witch into his aching arms. When his eyes fell to her now unobscured figure, confusion and disbelief fell over his face as his entire world shattered, goddamn shattered. He stood paralyzed, unable to move or think or react. When movement finally returned to his uncooperative body, he tore his pain-riddled eyes from hers and abruptly turned away, stumbling toward his original destination without another word, without another glance, without another breath.
He left the nondescript shack, containing the headquarters of the Order, two hours later, striding full speed toward the Apparation point, all the way on the other side of the goddamn camp. Of course he saw her waiting under a large oak tree, staring at him. He refused to acknowledge her. When she called to him repeatedly, he ignored the growing desperation in her voice. He didn't give a damn. The Slytherin dismissed her as though as were nothing to him and continued walking toward the Apparation point. He refused to meet her foul gaze again, ever. His eyes never wavered from their objective, to get the hell out of the filthy place. No, he never looked back at her miserable figure again. He couldn't. When she rushed after him in a panic, he merely Disapparated before her eyes.
Draco collapsed into the nearest chair, amazed he had managed to Apparate home without splinching himself. He had waited the entire War for this miserable day. Over the past two and a half years, he searched every bloody day for some sign of her, anything. Nothing. Not a goddamn thing until today. He groaned, wishing he had never seen her, wishing he had never known her, wishing he could simply blow his fucking head off.
He contemplated driving a stake through his heart before he stopped himself, realizing she had already taken care of that for him. He hung his head and closed his eyes as he saw her previously magnificent figure before him. What the hell had she done?
Pregnant? Who's fucking child was it that she was carrying? Unless she had managed to obtain a Time Turner, it wasn't his child. Goddamn it, Ginny. Could she not have waited for the War to end before moving on with her life in such a manner?
What about the blessed vow she had made to him? Was the whole thing, including the Slytherin himself, a fucking joke to her? Evidently, the joke was on him. He never believed her capable of sinking so low, of running off and finding another while his back was turned. Where the hell was her Gryffindor nobility now? Who was this wizard who had stolen her out from under him? If he had the means of finding the bloody bastard, he would kill him with his own goddamn hands, forget a fucking wand.
No, he had no idea when the blasted War would end, and the last time he checked they weren't operating on his goddamn schedule. But he had waited for her, fully intending to wait the rest of his worthless life, if needed. What was he to do now? She had betrayed him, failed him, and found another.
While he was fighting and scraping to doggedly hold onto his cursed life in the midst of the Dark Lord's growing insanity, she let go, erasing all meaning in his current situation. He had purposely hidden his involvement with the Order from her prying eyes, fearing for her safety. It was for her and her alone. Everything in his wretched life stemmed from his unquenchable desire to be reunited with the damn witch. He had schemed and plotted and sold his ever loving Slytherin soul for her. Now he found himself irreversibly trapped in a perilous web of lies and intrigue, tenuously holding on, hoping to purge himself of its filth with the fall of the Dark Lord and the end of the War.
Without of his knowledge, she had cut the only thing which tethered him in a world gone crazy. He was now adrift and broken, utterly lost without her. She had propelled him forward through the dangers and the intrigue, embueing him with the strength and the will to survive and to continue attempting to right the wizarding world, to bring it back in line with the axis which had ruled its existence since time immemorial, out of the hands of that filthy, twisted half-blood, to do what needed to be done to allow them to go forward, together.
He bitterly recalled the price he extracted for his treacherous allegiance to the bloody Order, which seemed like a bargain at the time. They gave the Slytherin their word, Ginny would be kept safe throughout the War, away from the fighting, untouched by the stinking filth of the Death Eaters' malignant ways. He desperately wanted her soul to retain its innocent purity, to never be tainted by what he had only begun to glimpse at that point in time. He had no intention of turning traitor only to find her dead or maimed or tortured beyond recognition, not if it was within his power to keep her safe. When he sold his soul, he had no hesitation or second thoughts, recalling the incredible rush of relief that flooded his world when he shook hands with them, knowing only that, regardless of what happened to him during the War, she would go on, untouched, until they met again. Whether it was on this side or the other side of the Veil, mattered little. Her life was all he cared about.
He had trampled on his precious Malfoy identity, turned traitor on his family, and thrown away his legacy for her. Of course he was prepared to give up his life should he fail and the Dark Lord reign supreme at the end of the War. Why would he want to live in a world which existed without her? That would be no life, only an endless sea of torture. Here he was, a traitor adrift in that torture, now royally screwed no matter which way the War ended. His whole fucking existence was a bloody joke.
What was it about him that was so vile to her now? Was it because she believed him to be a Death Eater with no remorse? Was that what had led her heart to abandon him? She was his, and he knew her as no other could. She would never engage in something of this magnitude without belonging heart, body, and soul to the lousy wizard.
He groaned, remembering how he had recklessly pursued her against all reason, stalking the unreasonable witch until he managed to wrestle her protesting figure into his web and entangle and ensnare the sense out of both of them. He knew it was a dangerous gamble, but his heart would not be stopped. All reason flew out of his pathetic excuse for a brain at the sight of her. He had been sick for her. What they had engaged in was nothing short of complete insanity, filled with an illness so deep, he would never fully recover. He was afflicted with the witch, never realizing it was fatal, mistaking it instead for a lifesaving toxin.
As he sat in his newly realized hell, in a place void of all hope and with no possibility of redemption, the Slytherin knew that the bloody fight of his life was over, and he never had the opportunity to lift his goddamn wand off the ground. She was gone, irreversibly and forever gone from his life, and he was absolutely devastated.
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