Author's Notes: Heartfelt thanks and much gratitude for the wonderful reviews everyone left after the last chapter. They helped keep me writing. - fallenwitch
Chapter 10
That Piece of Trash
"Well?"
Draco studied the pictures, one at a time, double-checking to make sure they were wizard and not Muggle because there was no movement. None. They were either unconscious or dead. In any case, these wizards were no friends of his. A minute later, he threw the stack back on Bella's desk and shook his head.
"Should I know them?" Bella raised an eyebrow and put down her quill.
"Those Bulgarian Death Eaters were found dead in your flat yesterday morning, all four of them."
"Really?"
"They were Avada'd, and the signature from those curses led back to Cissy's wand. Your flat. Your mother's wand. I thought you might know something about it."
Draco's eyes dropped from Bella's as he lowered himself into one of her uncomfortable chairs, groaning all the way down. Merlin, with the way his arse was feeling these days, maybe he would be better off standing for the rest of his life. He wasn't a troll, and, unfortunately, he knew she wasn't one either.
"Ginny."
"Yes, it seems your runaway trinket hasn't lost her lethal touch, has she?" Bella tapped her annoyed fingers on her desk until Draco glanced up at her furious face. "Why don't you tell me what she went back into your flat to retrieve? What was important enough to risk everybody's life over?" Draco sighed and ran his hand over his exhausted face. It wasn't even ten o'clock in the morning yet.
"I don't know."
Bella snorted at his calmly spoken answer and stood, slamming her infuriated fist down on the desk, rattling it from top to bottom and almost tipping over her inkpot.
"Of course you don't know because you don't seem to know a damn thing about anything that's been going on right under your bloody Malfoy nose, do you? Your idiocy and your prick are going to get us both killed." Charging at him from around her desk, Bella grabbed Draco by the collar of his robes and shook him while jerking him halfway out of his tender seat. "The next time an assassin from the Order falls into your lap, think twice before taking off your pants." She thrust him away with a grunt of disgust, landing him back on that sensitive spot. "She used you, boy, you and your foolish heart. Don't think I don't know that you fancy yourself in love with the tart. Well, she doesn't give a flying fuck about you. She used you and left you to roast in your own juices."
The boy might hold the Malfoy name, but he was Cissy's son, right down to his terminally weakened core. He had her defiance and her ridiculous attachments of the heart, the same lethal combination that led to her untimely death. If Bella wasn't careful, she would be looking at her own death as well. She might be bound to the boy, but she had no intention of being taken down by his genetic defect.
Deciding that it was getting a little too crowded for his taste, Draco leaned back in his chair and continued watching Bella rave an inch from his face. The group bondage situation really didn't seem to agree with her. In fact, it was making her down right cranky. He held back a sneer and the desire to laugh out loud.
What did you expect? That he would go and cower in a corner? He knew what he was getting into when he decided to protect Ginny, marriage or no marriage. He fully anticipated the fall out from his public declaration of his involuntary attachment to her and, hence, Bella's as well. She could rant all day, but it wouldn't change a thing, his heart or their mutual bond to Ginny.
So he sat there and watched as Bella attempted to chew out his half-beating heart and spit it out wretched bit by wretched bit. He didn't have a blessed thing to say. Nope. Instead, he shifted a bit in his uncomfortable chair and continued counting the growing wrinkles on her enraged face. She was frightening enough two feet away, but the whole thing was a true horror show two inches from his face. Good lord, couldn't someone do the wizarding world a favor and throw her arse back in Azkaban?
----- ----- -----
Veritaserum anyone? Draco schlepped over to the Romanian Ambassador's home for his scheduled Veritaserum test, to prove what he already knew - that he wasn't lying. No, he didn't steal her from Levski's prison. Yes, he obtained her a bet over a game of Wizard Chess in Sofia. No, he couldn't remember the name or the face of the wizard he obtained her from. Why? Well, he was too damn drunk at the time. No, he didn't have a hand in her "escape" from his custody. And, no he didn't kill the four Death Eaters found dead in his flat. However, it was his flat, and they had no bloody business there. They deserved to be Avada'd, and he would have done it himself had he been there. Yes, he suspected Ginny killed them on her way out. Not only did he support her right to protect herself in her own home, but he was also damned impressed as well.
Two hours later, the results of his Veritaserum test were ported over to Alexandar Levski, and, more importantly, the results of Levski's Veritaserum tests, given by the Romanian Ambassador to Bulgaria, were ported over to his Uncle. The finger pointing and accusations by both Levski and Draco could be expeditiously settled by two simple Veritaserum tests, given by a neutral third party - the Romanians.
"Have a seat, Draco," his Uncle said. Draco stared at that chair, knowing his arse wouldn't appreciate being impaled again, but he did it anyway. His sat his excruciatingly tender arse down and waited. His Uncle pushed the piece of parchment across his desk and into Draco's hands.
Draco studied that parchment as though he were preparing for the N.E.W.T.s of his life. Levski had no knowledge of Ginny's escape from the Manor nor did he have a hand in it. He also had no idea where she was now or where she was headed.
Draco looked up as the implications of those results sank in. In other words, England and Bulgaria were equally screwed where Ginny was concerned. Nothing like an equal opportunity screw over to make one feel better. Draco breathed a silent sigh of relief. He didn't give a damn if he didn't have her as long as that sodding bastard, Levski, didn't have her either. Hopefully she had the sense to hole up somewhere safe until the furor blew over before venturing out again.
----- ----- -----
Since when were detective skills a prerequisite to marriage? Was he mistaken or was it unusual for the groom to have to track down his bride's freckled arse before he could drag it down the aisle? Running a hand through his already tousled hair, Draco stared at his flat, the one he abandoned the moment the Bulgarians marched into town. He wasn't leaving the newly created dump until he had an inkling of what she was after. What was so damn important that she would risk both their lives in order to obtain it?
There were obvious signs of a scuffle. He pulled up tables and chairs and righted a sofa or two while walking around, taking in the disheartening sight. Merlin, what a bloody mess, in everyway. Some minutes later, he was staring at the remains of her door, bits and pieces attached to the hinges. The rest had been blasted, in one piece, halfway across her bedroom.
Stepping over her belongings scattered across the floor, he rolled up the sleeves of his robes. If he had to turn the bloody place over himself, he intended to find out something, anything that might help him find her.
He stopped mid-search and stood in her closet, staring at the damn thing over and over again. Where the hell did that ruddy thing come from? Reaching out, he lifted the hanger off the closet bar with one finger and held it up against the late afternoon sunlight streaming in her windows. Merlin, there was barely enough fabric there to cover the essentials, much less anything else. And he most certainly did not authorize the purchase of this scandalous outfit.
Searching the inside of the robes, he found the label of the maker as well as the size. He raised an eyebrow at this revelation. It was her size, but not his maker. It was from an exclusive witches' boutique, one that his mother frequented when she was alive, but not somewhere Ginny would shop and not without his expressed permission. It was the most expensive set of robes, per square inch of fabric, of any in her closet. Where the hell did that thing come from?
What else was going on behind his back that he didn't know about? Draco threw the blasted thing back into her closet and kept riffling through it, looking for the next unpleasant surprise. And he found it a minute later, when he stepped back and tripped over the uneven flooring, landing on his bum with his back scrapping against the wall of the closet. Shit.
The loose board in the wooden flooring pulled up with no resistance, as did the next one and the next one and the next one, until he was looking into a gaping hole in the floor.
"Lumos."
Now on his hands and knees, Draco peered inside. Yes, this was definitely what she had come back for because the goddamn thing was empty. Whatever she had hidden in there was gone and with it more of her secrets.
Draco stood and brushed off his robes, disgusted. And that's when he saw the broken picture frame on her bedroom floor.
"Reparo."
He bent down and picked it up. It was a windblown Ginny flanked by two broom-toting Quidditch players, both with one arm thrown around her waist, all three smiling. It was Draco and Ginny and Blaise. Blaise winked and leaned over, kissing Ginny on the top of her crimson locks. Draco snorted and almost put the picture back on Ginny's bedside table. Almost. That was before he stared at it a second time, grabbed those indecent robes from her closet, and Disapparated, furious.
----- ----- -----
"What the hell is this?" Draco asked, grabbing Blaise by the collar of his robes and shoving him against the nearest wall while holding up the indecent robes in the other hand.
"Good to see you too, mate," Blaise said, taking a look at the robes. "For Salazar's sake, Draco, calm down." Blaise pried Draco's hand from his robes, allowing him to breathe again. "That looks like a set of dress robes," he said simply.
"Did you give this piece of trash to Ginny?"
Blaise sighed. "Of course I gave those to her." Draco threw the trash on the floor and raced up the grand spiral staircase at the Zabini Estate, taking the stairs two and three at a time. Blaise watched him go. "Where the hell are you going, Draco? Draco! Bloody hell."
Rolling his eyes, Blaise took off after his insane, inane, over-possessive mate, taking those same stairs two and three at a time. By the time Blaise caught up with Draco, he was throwing open every door in Blaise's bedroom - the closet, the bathroom, the sitting room, the adjacent study. Blaise crossed his arms and leaned against the doorway. "Enjoying yourself? There're five dozen more doors out here, not to mention what's going on downstairs and up. Don't let me stop you."
"Where is she, Blaise?"
"Where's who?"
"Don't be an arse. Ginny. Where's Ginny?" Blaise's eyes went wide.
"Ginny? How the hell would I know where she is?" When Draco grabbed Blaise by the collar of his robes again, Blaise held both hands in the air in a sign of surrender. Draco was out of his paranoid mind.
"Don't fuck with me, Blaise."
"Draco, I don't know what's going on, but she's not here. She hasn't been here since your birthday party. Honestly, mate, I swear on the grave of my father and all six of my stepfathers." Draco thrust Blaise away from him. Shit.
"What is that piece of trash all about?"
"The dress robes?"
"Yes, that trash." Blaise sighed.
"It's a replacement gift for the robes I destroyed on the night of your birthday party. That's all." Draco's incredulous eyes went wide.
"That trash isn't even close to ones you destroyed."
"I know, but I thought I'd get her something nicer and a bit more... flattering."
"Flattering? By whose definition?"
"By any wizard's definition. Oh, come on, Draco, half the witches you date wear far less than that. It's downright modest by comparison. Let the witch have a little fun, would you?" Draco shook his head. Screw this noise.
"It doesn't matter. She's gone."
"Gone?"
"Gone. She left."
"What the hell happened?"
"It doesn't matter. She's gone. I thought she might have come here." Blaise looked surprised.
"Here? Whatever for?"
"You know." Blaise shook his head.
"I don't know what's going on between the two of you, but she's not here. Don't worry. She'll be back."
"No, she won't. You don't know her."
"I know her, and I know women. She'll be back." Draco laughed, a sick, gut-wrenching laugh. Blaise might know women, but not this woman. Hell, he didn't know her, and he had lived with her.
"Blaise - "
"What?"
"Did you ever see her in those robes?" Blaise laughed.
"Are you kidding? She said you'd kill her before you'd let her wear it. I told her to wear them anyway. So much the better to surprise you. Accio Ginny's robes." Blaise gave the trash back to Draco. "Here. She'll look great in this when she comes back." Draco took the robes, knowing full well that Blaise didn't know his arse from a hole in the ground when it came to her. Nobody did.
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