Author's Notes:
I'm back with more of our story. My apologies for the delay. It took much longer than expected to wrestle this chapter down. Much gratitude to everyone who left such wonderful reviews and to all who have returned for more of this tale. A special thank-you to Marcia, my beta, for the support and the encouragement and the awesome, awesome beta.
Chapter 15
Crazy
"Draco?"
Come on in, Ginny. I'll be right there," he called out, ducking into his closet in a scramble to finish dressing. He tucked in his shirt, pulled on his boots and threw on his robes, not bothering to fasten them closed.
What did Healer Topman say?" he asked, emerging from the closet with one hand running through his silky platinum locks. When he looked up, his heart lurched at what he saw before plummeting south, straight into the churning, acid-filled pit of his stomach. Ginny was staring at a small picture frame in her hands.
That's Rose," he said quietly.
Ginny turned around and looked up at him. "She's lovely."
"She's no one, Ginny."
Ginny nodded before tucking the forgotten picture back onto his bookshelf. "She's a lovely no one."
What could he say? Rose was his salve, the thing he put on his gaping wound to ease the excruciating pain, but that's where her magic ended. She was incapable of healing the festering thing. There was only one witch capable of healing the wound in his heart, and he suspected she had no intention of sticking around long enough to do so.
Lovely? No, Rose wasn't lovely. She was stunningly beautiful. She was the pureblooded witch who turned every wizard's head when she walked into a room, the ultimate trophy for his arm and his bed. If Draco couldn't have the witch he wanted, he would have the witch every other wizard wanted.
"Ginny… " Draco said, reaching out for her. But she evaded his touch and continued sauntering around his private space, studying it, memorizing the titles of the books on the shelves, the placement of his broom and the way the light filtered in through the windows splashing onto his tangle of empty sheets.
Her finger ran down one of the dark mahogany bedposts, tracing its intricate pattern. "Healer Topman says I'm fit to go home."
"What?"
"I'm fit to go home."
"No."
"He didn't say I was a hundred percent. He said I was fit to go home. I can finish recuperating there."
She was home. Didn't she realize that?
"No."
"This can't go on forever, Draco," Ginny whispered. "It isn't real."
Draco snatched Ginny's evasive hand off the bedpost and drew her to him. "Forever? Since when does one week constitute forever?" he snapped.
She looked up and he fell into her sad, colourless eyes. The damn things nearly paralyzed him.
Ginny," he sighed, "what are you doing?" She had the most screwed up decision-making process he had ever had the misfortune of being at the back end of. Crazy witch.
She didn't say a thing. She stood there staring at him, mute as the day she dropped into his life. If only he had known then what she would grow to mean to him, perhaps things could have turned out differently. But how could he have known?
She was beauty and fire and deadly desire, so close he could see the danger simmering in her dark eyes and feel the pulsing of her body. And he ached for her, this scintillating rebel and wife of another wizard.
What kind of love was this? It was an arse-backward, upside-down, inside-out one that left him hanging by his straining toes, scrambling for terra firma where none existed. Was there any other kind? Draco couldn't say. This tortured, fucked-up love was the only love he had ever known, and he sadly suspected he might never know another.
She slipped out of his grasp and turned away, wrapping her arms around her waist and staring out into the dreary winter day, the one with no sun and no sky, only an endless expanse of grey shuddering the world.
"I love you, you know that."
Her words were spoken quietly and without emotion, as though they might disappear without claiming an existence and the world would never know. No one would ever know. Hell, she wasn't even facing him when she said it.
"Ginny," he breathed, his heart soaring as he gently swung her around until he saw the look on her face. It slapped the silly, boyish grin off his mouth and shoved it into the pit of his stomach, where it landed in a stinking heap next to his heart. It was the most grief-riddled, godforsaken look of utter misery he had ever seen. Then he understood. He was as much an affliction to her as she was to him. If she could have ripped him from her heart, she would have. But she couldn't. He lived within the beating walls of her heart as she lived within his, entrenched, unyielding and kicking up a bloody racket loud enough to unveil the dead.
"Ginny," he whispered, his brilliant eyes touched by a softness and transparency she had never seen, "loving you could kill a lesser wizard. And it may be the death of me yet, but I cannot stop loving you, however life-threatening it maybe."
Draco held his miserable witch close and buried his face in the nape of her delicious neck, where he wanted to live out his days and die a contented wizard. Since that was too fucking much to ask of the world, he would simply love her, stolen moment by stolen moment, until there were no more moments to steal, and she was gone.
----- ----- -----
Late that the afternoon when he was alone, Draco took Rose's picture and shoved it into the back of his dresser drawer, bottom left, where it took its place of honour among all of the other infamous things he didn't want to be reminded of. Since his childhood, such things had lived there. Satisfied, he was closing the drawer when he caught sight of a pair of laughing, dark eyes.
Draco cautiously withdrew something he had forgotten about, something his heart and his mind couldn't tolerate remembering. It was the photograph of a deliriously happy, laughing Ginny in Chervenko's arms, his lips on her porcelain perfect skin. This was the Ginny Draco had never known or even glimpsed. Why? Because he wasn't capable of lighting up her world in such a breathtaking fashion, that's why. Draco's heart stopped beating and his fast-constricting throat collapsed upon itself.
Why hadn't he thrown the damn thing out? He couldn't say. He had destroyed everything else that reminded him of her, and when he was done with that, he had sold his flat and bought another, one with no vestiges of her or of their miserable, soiled life together.
But that didn't stop her haunting of him. On that point, he was mistaken. However, it did stop his recurrent episodes of utter humiliation. There was no physical possibility of waking up from a drunken stupor in her bed or rummaging around for the scarf she use to nick from his wardrobe, searching for her scent like a fucking dog.
With the physical gone, he had been left with an emotionally scarred psyche, one that played a certain Ginny-induced stress tune over and over. At night in his darkened, sweat-drenched bed, she screamed for him with terror in her dying voice as he frantically scoured every inch of Bulgaria for her, never finding her. He reached for her with morning's first rays, only to wake alone and shaken, convinced she had met her end on foreign soil without him. Her face was on every street corner and her voice in crowded places, until he'd felt he was losing his mind.
Then she was back, delightfully intact and spinning wondrous tales of her heroic love for him, rendering him amnestic to the bitter memory of her stinging rejection. Yes, he basked in the glory of her attention, believing the nightmare was over. Or was it?
Draco's trembling hand dropped the horrid picture back into the drawer and slammed it shut, but it was too late. Now he knew why he had kept the damn thing, to remind him of the blinding follies of the heart and to never fall prey to them again.
Good lord, what had he done? Draco glanced around his room in a panic. What the hell had he done? She had no undying love for him, only for her terrorist husband and their ridiculous campaign to free the wizarding world from the "horror" of the Death Eaters' reign. That photograph was proof of her treachery. She was in Chervenko's filthy arms, with that look on her face, less than two weeks after she fled the Manor. Draco was no relationship expert, but even a bloody troll could intuit that one.
She never loved him. He was still the same fucking joke she had laughed at once before, pliable and gullible to her winsome ways. No wonder she was in such a hurry to leave, to be rid of his company and his repulsive touch. He had given her a week of unsupervised freedom in his home to plant whatever magical mischief she pleased. Had he just given Chervenko an open invitation to England?
----- ----- -----
She gazed out one of the enormous floor-to-ceiling windows flanking the outer wall of her bedroom with a childlike hand pressed against the chilled windowpane. He stood there for too many minutes, drinking in his fill of her toxic presence until he felt his weakened heart would burst. Then he knocked sharply on the open door. She startled and swung around, holding her hands to her chest and letting out a winded laugh and a smile.
"Merlin, Draco, you scared me," she said, greeting him with relief, her sparkling, cinnamon eyes alight.
Really? Between the two of them, he considered her the scarier one, in every aspect. Without waiting for an invitation, he crossed the threshold and closed the door behind him, prepared to mount a wounded dismissal of the wily witch. Wounded? Yes, wounded, because, Salazar help him, he loved her too much to give her what she really deserved.
"Why?"
"Why what?" she asked, her smile fading at the cool tone in his voice.
"I did the best I could, Ginny. I treated you with respect and gave you as much of a life as I could under the circumstances. I never asked for ownership of you nor did I ask to be dragged into the political thunderstorm surrounding you. However, I was willing to go through all of that and more for you. I was even foolish enough to take you back into my home a second time." Draco paused as he grit his teeth and clenched his fists. "Why do you continue to lie to me and deceive me at every turn? What the hell have I ever done to you to deserve this?" Why didn't she whip out her wand and fucking Crucio him while she was at it? Wasn't that how she got her jollies? Torturing and killing Death Eaters? Well, he had certainly provided her with his share of entertainment. Ungrateful witch.
Ginny's face went pale. "What are you talking about?" she asked, grabbing onto the back of a chair for support.
He wanted to scream into her lying face, scream and scream until he couldn't scream anymore, until his voice was snatched from him, stopping the ridiculous flow of emotional garbage from spilling out of his lovesick mouth. Instead, he thrust the photograph into her hand.
"When were you going to tell me, Ginny? Or were you planning on owling me from your husband's bed?"
Did she flinch at his words? He couldn't tell. Her head was bent. Her deceiving eyes focused on the incriminating picture.
"Where did you get this photo?" she asked, her face rising.
"Does it matter?"
She reached out and grabbed the lapel of his robes, crushing the photo as she jerked him to her. "Where did you get this picture, Draco?"
Well, this unwanted disclosure certainly got a rise out of her, didn't it? What other nasty surprises did she have hidden up the sleeve of her robes? "Bella sent it to me from one of her operatives, confirming your marriage to Chervenko."
Her face was in his, anger hot in her voice, "It's not true, Draco. It's a lie."
Draco snorted at her protest and pushed her vile figure away, her filthy touch burned his vulnerable skin. "That picture's no lie, Ginny. I had it verified - twice."
She shook her head in frustration. "Not that kind of lie. It's true but it's a lie."
"Make up your mind, Ginny. Is it the truth or is it a lie? You do know the difference, don't you?"
"Of course, I bloody well know the difference," she hissed at the dripping sarcasm in his voice. "That picture was taken over four years ago. Yes, Christo and I were lovers. Yes, I fancied myself in love with him once. Yes, it was the truth - years ago, long before you, before Levski, before everything." Ginny heard the sound of her crippled world beginning to implode upon itself.
Draco stared at her. Was she speaking the truth or simply in tongues?
"It was Christo, Draco," she began, her voice weary beyond belief. "He put that picture into the hands of Bella's informant knowing it would end up here. He wanted to make you believe our marriage was more than real. He wanted you to see our relationship the way was. He wanted to... " Her exhausted tirade frittered to an unsteady end.
Draco took the crumpled photograph out of Ginny's clenched fist and stared at it, hearing her laughter, seeing the delight on her face, feeling Chervenko's arms around her, his lips on her skin. Every muscle in Draco's body exploded at the thought of that bastard with his Ginny, spinning her world upside down and inside out.
"… he wanted to drive you crazy."
Draco looked up at Ginny.
"He knows," she whispered, her shoulders sagging in defeat, straining under their invisible weight. "He knows I love you," Draco heard the resignation in her exhalation, "and it drives him crazy."
Crazy? That terrorist arsehole couldn't begin to fathom the definition of the word. Chervenko had her, had her in a way Draco would never have her. He woke up with his arms around her and went to bed with his arms around her and made love to her and cared for her and would do so until the day he expired in her glorious arms. What the hell was driving that bastard crazy? Chervenko wasn't the one in love's exile, that desolate place where Draco would live out the remainder of his days without her. No, Chervenko was too busy fucking her to be fucked by his love for her, to understand the true meaning of the word "crazy".
Did she love him?
"Draco," Ginny begged, wrapping her hands around his miserable face, pulling him out of his agony and into hers. "Don't… please." This time when she touched him, he didn't push her away. He couldn't. He wanted to believe her. He wanted her to tell him she loved him. He wanted to hear it over and over again. Worse yet, he didn't give a damn whether or not it was true.
His pained, uncertain eyes roamed hers, looking for some sign of something, but all he saw was his own confused reflection staring back. She had him by the balls, cornered and paralyzed, unwilling and unable to move from her touch but afraid to jump in with both feet.
Her unbearably soft cheek brushed his as she whispered into his ear, the heat of her words sending a distinct tingle down his back to the base of his weakened spine. "I love you, Draco." This was followed by a dastardly, outlandish nuzzle in the hollow of his neck, where her scent assaulted him on a second front. "I do."
This time there was no defeat in her voice or anguish on her face. There was only an urgency that spread from her words to her touch as she began kissing his neck. She kissed him and kissed him, tantalizing, unholy kisses, as wicked sweet as any confection he had ever tasted. Draco went weak in the knees, stumbling back a step or two and crash-landing them into the nearest wall.
His arms flew around her, steadying her, lest she fall. He couldn't have that, could he? He would sooner lay down his pathetic life than have anything happen to her. How ridiculous. How stupid. How utterly insane.
She loved him. She loved him not. She loved him. Draco repeated it over and over again like a fucking mantra. Here she was, in his arms, soul-to-soul, close enough to hear the wild beating of his heart and feel the surging heat she generated in him.
"I love you." "I love you." "I love you," she exclaimed, her breathless proclamations punctuated by her searing lips capturing his and holding them hostage for too short a time. Of course she loved him, he told himself as his aching lips touched down and melded into hers and his hands greedily, possessively roamed her much-changed figure with its muted but still glorious curves. With no hesitation, Ginny reached out to meet his wanton touch, pushing aside the terror and the pain and the misery of life without him. He welcomed her desperate, passion-filled kisses, kisses that allowed him to savour the long forgotten richness of her potent, overwhelming desire for him.
Draco would have marked her as his own if he could have. Yes, he would have seared her precious, freckled skin to let Chervenko know where her heart lay and to whom she truly belonged.
What the hell? There was an outburst of shouting and frantic running in the hallway outside Ginny's door, shattering the normal silence.
In one fluid movement, Draco pried himself out of Ginny's frenzied grasp and threw himself in front of her. He was shielding her, wand drawn, when the bedroom door flew open. Sam rushed into the room, speaking to Draco in hurried, hushed tones, his wand also drawn.
"I know she's hell with a wand in her hands, but keep an eye on her, Sam." Turning, Draco wrapped a protective arm around Ginny, kissed her on the cheek and whispered into her ear, "It looks like we have a visitor. I'll be right back."
"No, Draco! No!" she called out, panic rising. She rushed to stop him, reaching the opened door as the back of his robes disappeared, but Sam put a firm, restraining hand on her, bringing her brief chase to an end. Ginny yanked her arm out of Sam's reach and spun around, furious. "What's going on?"
"We have an intruder, Mrs. Chervenko."
"An intruder?" Ginny's eyes widened. "One or more than one?"
"One, so far, but we're sweeping the Manor and the grounds a second time."
Ginny ran to the window and scanned the empty grounds. The Manor was a fortress. Everyone knew that. What force had managed to break through its ancient wards?
"Mrs. Chervenko, if it's all the same to you, I'd appreciate your cooperation. I know you don't need my protection, but I'll lose my job if you step out into the fray."
"You're mistaken, Sam," she said softly, turning around and staring at him with her dark, penetrating eyes, the ones that made him shift in his uncomfortable boots. "I need your protection now more than ever." With that announcement, the notorious assassin and wife of the most powerful terrorist in modern times took a seat away from the window and waited, her wand holstered.
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