Author's Notes:
Schlepping back with another chapter for your consumption. I hope this one doesn't give anyone indigestion like the last one did. Sorry about that.
Much gratitude to everyone who left such wonderful reviews and to all who have returned for more of this tale, especially Cas121689, Sailor Universe, moogle, persephone33, akt5us, MarenKPotter, Crookshanksgranger, jabba, Pixie Devil, sevenofseven, Alexandria Malfoy, NicholePotter86, english-rose, bellas blanky, PrincessEmalia, HP Lover 01, and DracoObsessed17.
A special thanks and a big hug to Marcia, my beta, for whipping this one into shape.
Chapter 16
The Supreme Arsehole
The steady echo of his boots on the stone floor mixed with a maelstrom of tumultuous thoughts as Draco made his way through the dimly lit dungeon toward the holding cells that had not seen life since the final days of the War. The biting chill of the dank, stale air sank into the tender muscle of his newly revitalized heart, wrapping a sense of foreboding around it that he could not shake.
His boots came to a halt in front of a large wooden door. It wasn't his heart that stopped him short. It was his gut, screaming at him like a bloody Banshee in heat. He wanted to run, to flee, to grab Ginny and get the hell out of the wizarding world before one of them died.
Draco threw open the heavy wooden door, banging it against the stone wall and rattling its ancient iron handle. Storming inside the windowless room, he grabbed the seated intruder by the throat, pulled him up and shook him.
"Who the fuck are you?" he glowered, wand firm against the stranger's throbbing jugular. Given the situation, this welcome was as cordial a greeting as the intruder could hope for and preferable to the one Draco had in mind, a greeting that involved sticking his wand someplace else and firing without warning.
"Petk..." the grey-haired wizard squeaked out in a hoarse whisper as Draco's hand clamped down on his trachea, bringing the intruder to his knees. When he reached up to rip Draco's hand off his throat, half a dozen wands stopped him. Draco eased up enough to allow a minimal flow of oxygen into his captive's straining lungs. The furious wizard spat out, "Ilian Petkov, you pig!"
Draco raised an eyebrow at the notorious name. "Well, Mr. Petkov, what brings you breaking into my home?"
"The Bulgarian Minister of Magic, Christo Chervenko, sent me to deliver a message to his wife and to escort her home," Petkov announced through gritted teeth.
Draco stared at the abomination of wizarding filth stinking up his dungeon. If the Dark Lord was a sick fuck, than this monster was his incompetent twin, incapable of crafting a coherent strategy on his own, but when pointed in the "right" direction, was capable of reeking unimaginable human misery and death. The wand in Draco's hand began to twitch at the thought of the entire Death Eating population in Bulgaria tortured and annihilated under his command. The Commander in Chief of Chervenko's armed forces was on his knees waiting for justice to be served to him at the end of Draco's wand.
"Anything wrong with the front door, Mr. Petkov?" Draco hissed, thrusting aside the wily wizard, who tumbled onto the floor. "You Bulgarian rebels do know what a front door is for, don't you?"
The intruder let out half a snort and rose. "My orders didn't include a front door, Mr. Malfoy, just a Portkey."
Draco followed Petkov's line of sight to Frank, who stepped forward to place a distinctive brass paperweight in Draco's hand. It was the damn Portkey Ginny stole over a year ago to make her escape.
"Care to tell me the contents of your message, Mr. Petkov?" Draco asked, his hand in a tight fist around the Portkey.
Petkov shook his head. "My orders were to speak directly to Mrs. Chervenko."
"Very well." Draco nodded and withdrew, turning to Frank. "Show Mr. Petkov upstairs. I don't want Mrs. Chervenko seeing this pit." He never wanted her to see another place of imprisonment, especially not one in his home.
Turning on his heels, Draco left the Bulgarian where he wanted to leave every last one of them, in a stinking dungeon devoid of life. They had twice fucked him over and he suspected today would make it thrice.
----- ----- -----
"Your husband has come calling for you," Draco said softly, stepping inside and motioning to Sam, who left her bedroom and closed the door behind him.
"What?" Ginny exclaimed, rising to her feet. "Christo's here? In England?"
Draco shook his head. "No, he sent Ilian Petkov to fetch you."
"Ilian? How?" Throwing her hands up in the air in a sweeping gesture, she said, "I thought the Manor's wards were impenetrable. At least that's what we've always been led to believe."
"Petkov didn't brake the wards. He slipped in through the backdoor courtesy of your husband."
"Backdoor? What backdoor?"
Opening his hand, Draco revealed the brass Portkey she had stolen from him.
"Sweet Merlin," she muttered, her eyes fixed on the Portkey. "Draco," she drawled, her incredulous eyes slowly rising from the Portkey to his steady gaze, "don't tell me you never warded the Manor against it."
His eyes went south to avoid hers, but she followed him, bending over and looking up into his reluctant eyes.
What did she want from him, a written confession of the crime he committed? No, he never warded the Manor against it or reported it stolen. So what? It was his neck on the line, not hers. Why didn't he ward against it? Because he had this crazy notion that it might one day bring her back to him, or in lieu of that, that it might save her life on some insane foreign battlefield. It was his only remaining link to her. He never imagined it would take her away from him a second time.
"I couldn't," he said, shrugging his shoulders.
"That was a stupid, foolish thing to do. You can't save me, Draco. They don't let Death Eaters into my playground. They kill them. Lock the doors. I can take care of myself." Then she reached up and kissed him on the cheek.
She was the only person in the world who could reduce him to a pile of shit faster than a Blast-Ended Skrewt could fart.
"What did Ilian say?"
"He didn't."
----- ----- -----
"Ginny," Petkov called with outstretched arms. She went to him, and he wrapped his filthy, soiled Bulgarian arms around her, drawing her to him as though she were a child. He whispered in her ear and kissed both her cheeks before holding her at arm's length, admiring her newly resurrected form.
Since when did that monster morph into a fatherly figure? Bella would string Draco up by his balls if she knew Petkov was in Malfoy Manor being treated as a guest rather than down on his knees having the shit Crucio'd out of him. All of wizarding Europe would give a king's ransom to have the sadistic bastard captured and killed.
But Draco didn't need another fortune. The only thing he needed was that priceless object in Petkov's arms, the same one everyone else needed. Petkov was stroking Ginny's hair and peppering her with questions spoken in soft Bulgarian. She was nodding and answering.
Draco stood there staring at Ginny as she allowed herself to be fussed over by the wizened arsehole of a wizard. Why was she treating this incarnation of evil as some sort of gentle father figure? Why did she let him run his hands over her curves and look at her with concern in his dark eyes? Why was she soothing his worries?
Draco gathered his thoughts and turned around, closing the door as he left unnoticed.
----- ----- -----
"Mr. Malfoy!"
Draco looked up at Frank, who came rushing at him.
"She's fainted, sir!"
"What?"
Draco jumped up from his perch atop the grand spiral staircase, flew down the stairs and burst into the sitting room. Ginny was lying on the floor, her head in Petkov's hands.
"What the hell did you say to her?" Draco hissed, an inch from Petkov's protruding nose. Both wizards were hovering over the unconscious witch.
"I told her it was time to come home," Petkov answered evenly, concern in his rat's eyes.
"She's too goddamn sick to go back to Bulgaria now. Can't you bloody well see that?" Draco pushed Petkov aside, scooped Ginny up into his arms and Disapparated them to her bedroom, leaving the obnoxious Bulgarian behind where he belonged, where they all belonged.
Draco sat his furious arse down by the side of her bed, staring at her. She was unbelievably frail: pale, rail thin, and drowning in the fine wizarding robes he'd had made for her. She didn't need a week of convalescing. She needed months of it.
The close-up scene wasn't all that different from the day she'd crash-landed in his flat or the day she collapsed after her Quidditch match or the night she'd tumbled down Blaise's staircase. But the wide-angle view was a killer. It showed Chervenko in the wings, waiting to whisk her away to some foreign wasteland, away from her home and Draco and the life she was meant to lead.
Some minutes later, she opened her eyes, disoriented and squinting at the filtered sunlight streaming into the room, blinding her. They settled on his worried face, blank and staring.
"Ginny?"
But she couldn't hear him. She was drowning, drowning in a searing hot cauldron of fear and confusion and sinking despair. Her body arched forward as she stretched her flailing arms upward in a desperate attempt to reach the surface of the boiling mixture and the life saving world on the other side of its glass-like surface.
"Ginny, no -"
"Ginny, please - "
"Ginny, it's Draco. I'm right here," he begged, dropping to his knees beside her, panic in his voice.
There was no response. Instead, she lay there mute and staring.
Draco stood, rushed to her bedroom door, and threw it open, calling for Frank.
Her lungs were bursting, bloated with stale oxygen-deprived air, threatening to explode. As she writhed and clawed against the impenetrable surface, burning liquid seeped into her nose, scorching her throat as it trickled down into her hungry lungs.
"What the hell did he say to her?" Draco asked, furious and wondering what news would cause her to not only faint but to also sprint back to the scene of some previous crime, locked in the custom-made torture chamber in that fragile head of hers.
"He said Minister Chervenko was struck down in a failed assassination attempt early this afternoon. The Healers don't think he'll last the day, but he continues to ask for her. Petkov was sent to bring Mrs. Chervenko back to Bulgaria. He says she's needed there."
Draco nodded. Now that he thought about it, something did come to mind. The possibility of her heroic, martyrific husband dying and being torn from her might do the trick. Well, it was a horrible thing, wasn't it? To have the one you love taken from you - be it by death or by marriage to an arsehole - really, what was the difference?
Perhaps there was some justice in the wizarding world after all. As much as Draco would have liked to accept the congratulations for such a wondrous feat, the felling of that terrorist superstar, it wasn't his doing. He was too busy saving Chervenko's wife to be bothered killing the bastard.
The cauldron exploded, and Ginny rose to consciousness, sitting bolt upright and gasping for air, lungs exploding, hands clutching her chest.
"Ginny," he called, rushing to her side and placing a steadying hand on her pale, terror-tight face. Her wide and dilated eyes were fixed on his. "Are you alright?"
She nodded and he drew her to him. Ginny laid her head on Draco's shoulder and stared out, terrified for her life and watching the dripping sunlight spill in a scorching mess across the floor. She continued to lean against him, arms dangling at her side, while he held her close, wondering what demons ruled her world.
----- ----- ----
Twenty minutes later, he dismissed the house elf who'd led him to her. She was standing in his closet, shuffling through his things, calmly nicking one of his fine, winter cloaks followed by his Slytherin green scarf, the replacement scarf for the one he destroyed, the one that held her scent and his tortured memories.
"What are you doing?" he asked. "I've floo'd Healer Topman."
She turned around and shook her head. "I don't have time for Healer Topman." The cloak fell around her slim shoulders and tumbled to the ground, dragging. "You don't mind, do you?" she asked, tossing the excess material to the side.
The hem shortened with a wave of his wand. "I won't let you go, Ginny."
Her thieving hands methodically folded the scarf and tucked it into one of the many pockets in his cloak then smoothed the outer surface, leaving no trace of her contraband.
What the hell was he supposed to do? Let her go running back into that swirling cesspool of political intrigue and danger? For what? For some dying, two-bit terrorist husband and a shaky, fledging government with no allies in the wizarding world? It was as close to suicide as she could get without placing a wand to her own throat.
Draco pulled her tense figure into his arms and held her tightly, but she would not relax. He ran his hand over her silken tresses and buried his miserable face in the nape of her neck, surrounded by her scent. "Stay, Ginny. Don't go. It's suicide." When she didn't respond to his words or his touch, he continued. "If Chervenko dies, you'll be next. There's nothing more powerful than the widow of a martyr, Bulgarian or not."
He felt her weight shifting away from him. "Don't, Draco," she admonished softly, placing a hand on his chest and pulling away from his desperation. "Don't make this more difficult than it has to be."
"It doesn't have to be anything, Ginny. Don't you see that?" How many times would she make the wrong fucking decision? Until it killed her, it seemed. "I won't let you kill yourself." Not over that piece of crap, regardless of any questionable emotional affiliations.
Ginny stepped away from Draco. "I'm his wife, Draco. Closimir didn't abandon me when my safe house was attacked. Christo didn't forget about me while I was imprisoned; he risked his life rescuing me from Levski's prison. Christo needs me. I have no choice."
"He's not the only one who needs you, Ginny," Draco spat out. He could need her until he fell to the floor blue in the face, dying from a Basilisk bite in the arse, and she would still walk out that door.
If he had the power to magically bind her to him, would he? No, he would not. Look at what happened the last time she was "bound" to him. She ran off and married that Bulgarian jerkoff and landed them in the bundle of joy they were in now. Besides pissing her off, there was no telling what would happen if he attempted to force her to do something against her will. He imagined she would find another way out and back to Bulgaria, one far more dangerous, per her usual sneaky, underhanded ways.
He knew her days of being held prisoner and subject to another's wants and whims were long over, and he'd sworn to himself that he would allow her to be her own witch once she was married. Of course, when he'd made that altruistic statement, he assumed she would be married to him, not some terrorist with a bull's-eye attached to his ape-like forehead.
"This isn't about us, Draco."
When was it going to be about them? Or were they a perpetual non-entity? Yes, they were. More specifically, he was the non-entity. The world was tripping over itself to get to her.
Where the hell did her loyalties lie, not to mention her heart? Chervenko's father was dead. Hadn't Ginny repaid her debt to those arseholes a thousand times over by laying her life on the line every day of Chervenko's bloody revolution? Fighting and hacking her way through Bulgaria at his side for over a year? Hell, she'd been one breath away from dead when Draco took her home this last time.
And what about the wizard's debt she owed him for saving her dying arse twice? Why did that feat never come up or deserve mention? Why did Christo-bloody-Chervenko hold an unending trump card in his back pocket? Draco's head was spinning, driven by his illogical heart. It had only one goal in life, and she was walking out the door, again.
"Take this with you." Draco reached over and enclosed Ginny's throat in a simple silver chain with a small, nondescript medallion in a desperate attempt to hold onto whatever part of her he could. What did a wizard have to do? Slay a fucking nation and lay it at her feet?
She looked down at it, fingering the medallion. "What's this?"
"It's the Portkey. I've Transfigured it to be unrecognizable. It's set to bypass the wards and return you to the Manor, but you're free to do with it as you will. I'd prefer you back from your terrorist adventures in one piece, married or not."
Then he tapped the engagement ring he had given her, Transfiguring it back into the trinkets Chervenko had given her when they married. He felt as if he were placing shackles on her.
"Draco..."
"Don't say it, Ginny. Let a wizard have his fantasies, will you?"
"This isn't about love. If it were about love, it would be simple, wouldn't it?"
Draco sighed, "It is simple, Ginny."
----- ----- -----
Minutes later, Draco watched a pale and tense Ginny, now fully cloaked and hooded, take her place beside Petkov. She peered out from under her protective cover, watching Draco as Petkov withdrew his Portkey.
"Ginny?"
Ginny turned her head at the question and stayed Ilian's hand from activating his Portkey. Then she rushed to the infamous foreign Death Eater and threw her arms around his neck, holding him tightly, her terrified face buried in his neck.
Draco wrapped his arms around Ginny, and Petkov heard pained whispering, too quiet to decipher what was being said but their heartbreaking intensity was clear. Ginny placed her shaking hands on Draco's face, unable to tear her eyes and her heart away from him.
Screw Chervenko and Petkov and fuck every last arsehole in the wizarding world. Draco leaned into Ginny's hands, landing his aching lips on hers and plunging his hand into her sacred scarlet tresses in a final farewell.
As their reluctant lips parted, Ginny dropped her hands and picked up her leaden feet, taking her place at Petkov's side again. Draco's eyes followed Ginny and never left her, not until she was ripped from him when Petkov activated his Portkey, taking her out of his life and back to Bulgaria for the second and final time.
Yes, it was a horrible thing to have to the one you love irreversibly taken from you. Draco took a moment to stare at the place that no longer held his notorious witch and to wish her husband, the supreme arsehole, all the worse. That bastard couldn't die fast enough for Draco. Then he sighed, turned around and began shouting orders for the Manor to be searched for signs of magical mischief.
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