Burnt
By Pisciculus
Summary: Due to the mysterious disappearance of Lord Voldemort, Ginny becomes part of an alliance fighting Dark wizards who've remained suspiciously active. When she meets Draco Malfoy joining the cause she finds a reason to believe that he might not be as horrid as everybody believes. But who can she convince?
A/N: No, to answer any questions of this nature that might arise, I have not and do not plan to abandon Black Diamond Prophecy. Ever. End of story. It's just that I have to be really careful about the writing in that story because it's all so carefully laid out that if I forget something, I'm screwed. I never said those chapters would be out quickly.
I feel the need to give PhoenixFirebolt from FF.net (she might post here, too, or so it said in her profile) credit for the initial idea of this story. "The Heirs of Hogwarts" was one of the first stories I ever read with Ginny/Draco as a pairing, and it was the first scene between Ginny and Draco in this story that gave me the image of Ginny and Draco arguing over Draco's worth in a tent. Don't ask me how that happened - it just did. And that scene should show up in one of the earlier chapters, hopefully.
Please bear with me, as this is the first Ginny/Draco story I've ever even thought about writing and I know next to nothing about the commonly accepted dynamics of their relationship. Anyway, please leave a review telling me what you think! I'm a glutton for punishment, so stuff me full of constructive criticism and I will be eternally grateful!
Prologue: The Fall of Voldemort
"Ginevra Victoria Weasley, I absolutely forbid you to go out there!"
"But mum! I'm perfectly capable of defending myself! And it's not like I've never been involved before. You can't just-"
"I can hold you back as long as you're a child, my child, and you-"
"I'll be seventeen in two days!"
"And by the grace of Merlin let us hope that the battle - the war - will be over by then!"
Ginevra Victoria Weasley, so-called by her mother and absolutely no one else lest they find their heads being bitten off by her fierce, trademark Weasley temper, stormed out of the Hogwarts Hospital Wing, more furious than ever at her parents for having her on August 11th instead of August 9th seventeen years ago. Her long red hair was in disarray from the panic that had spread when news came that Voldemort had attacked. Her eyes were red and swollen, puffy from crying.
Outside of the Hospital Wing, however, there was nowhere else to go - the corridors were blocked off by solid, invisible walls. Ginny paced the hallway, kicking at the stone floor angrily. Everybody under seventeen lurked in the Hospital Wing, either cowering within each other's arms or having the same argument with the chaperones Ginny had just lost with her own mother.
It wasn't fair, Ginny thought, still pacing and growling every few moments. She ranted and raved but nobody would listen to her. "You're just a little girl, Gin, you wouldn't last five minutes out there. Stay inside where you're safe." That's what Ron, the youngest of her elder brothers, had told her when he shoved her behind the solid barrier. "I love you. Goodbye."
Like he expected to die in the battle that followed. Ginny would have given anything to be out there with him, even if she did get injured or...or worse. She could accept that it was dangerous, but she couldn't accept that everybody, absolutely everybody, treated her like some absent-minded first year Hufflepuff.
"It's not fair," she said aloud, listening to her voice as it echoed off the stone walls, the barrier, the ceiling. The Hospital Wing suddenly seemed more like a prison than an infirmary. "Why can't I fight with them? I could make a difference, I could defend myself. I can't take this much longer!" She stopped pacing suddenly and looked around the hall expectantly as if hoping somebody might come out and sympathize with her.
After a moment of silence, Ginny made a low growling sound deep in her throat, clenching her fist at her sides. "Damn it!" she yelled, hoping somebody would hear her, admit she existed. "Damn it, damn it, damn it, damn it, DAMN IT!" But no matter how loud she got nobody opened the door, nobody asked her what was wrong. Didn't they understand? She wanted out.
Her mother insisted that the battle wouldn't last two more days, but Ginny secretly hoped that it would. Already Madam Pomfrey had crossed off half a week on her calendar, and presumably there was still fighting going on outside. Perhaps it had already reached the castle corridors. Ginny felt the need to join the fray coursing through her veins, making her nerves jump. It'd been like this for three days. Three long, agonizing days worth of comforting first years and fighting with her mother, with Flitwick and Slughorn and all the teachers who'd not gone out to battle.
There was a constant stream through the fireplace in the Hospital Wing of people, strangers mostly, coming in with the wounded. Ron had been in with a broken arm that didn't want to heal for several hours, but he left the day before.
"You know, the third years have started spreading rumours that you're going mad."
Ginny jumped, whirling around in surprise. Despite how much she wanted somebody to hear her, she hadn't actually expected it now that she'd fallen silent, staring furiously at the wall as if fervently wishing it would burst into flames. She met the eyes of Luna Lovegood, a Ravenclaw in her year. Though Luna was older than Ginny by two months, she'd been blinded within the first three hours of battle. No matter how hard the healers had tried they could not lift whatever spell had been cast.
Luna's once large, dreamy blue eyes were fogged over completely, making her look like a walking, living corpse. It didn't help that her long, scraggly blond hair and usually healthy skin tone had turned almost grey in colour, a side effect of the spell that made her blind, the healers said. Luna moved slowly out into the hall, closing the door behind her and clinging to the frame so as not to lose her balance. Ginny felt a pang of sorrow shoot through her, wrapping itself thick around the ball of fury and dousing her in guilt.
At least Ginny could fight. Luna very likely would never see again; she'd never fight or even live normally after all the fighting was over, and that made Ginny feel horribly self-centred. She sighed heavily and attempted a smile, which came off as more of a grimace. She was glad Luna couldn't see her expression.
"Stir crazy," Ginny agreed. "I'm going stir crazy. Those third years have the right idea."
"The fighting isn't as glorious as you think it is, Ginny," said Luna, her voice unusually grave. "Don't you think you should take advantage of what little time you have to stay out of it? Or you could help us find a way to redirect the floo so we can take the little ones to a safer place."
If anybody else said that, Ginny would have believed they were trying to make her feel (even more) guilty. But Ginny knew, having lived and paid attention to her father all her life, that there was no way to redirect a floo connection without access to the destination. Luna, instead, was offering Ginny something to do, even though they all knew it would lead to nothing.
Three days ago when all of them had been trapped and cornered in the Hospital Wing, they'd found out the hard way that the floo connection from there only lead to Hogsmeade, a place where the fighting still went on strong. That was why Ginny had been crying so much - because they'd lost Colin Creevey and Roselyn Locks, two of Ginny's best friends, and four first years.
Ginny had wanted so badly to fight after that. She needed to fight, for them, for Luna and her sightless eyes. She needed to fight for Ron and his broken arm and Harry and Hermione and Neville and her mom and everybody. But she couldn't - they wouldn't let her.
"I," started Ginny, wanting Luna to understand why she was so insistent, why she was acting so self-centred. "I...Luna, I don't. I know fighting's not glorious - I've participated in enough battles in my life to know. But...Luna, I need..."
Ginny never got the chance to say what she needed, because at that moment a pale purple streak of light shot through the barrier and hit Luna square in the chest. A small yelp escaped Luna's mouth, her eyes widening so far that Ginny half thought they might fall out of her head, and then she fell, slumping against the door with a small thwump.
"What the..." Ginny, in a state of mind she would later regret very much, did not rush to Luna, but rather turned and looked desperately for the source of the purple light. There was only a heavy silence that left a loud ringing in her ears. Ginny immediately reached for her wand, clutching it so tightly that her knuckles turned white and her nails left crescent-shaped marks in her hand. "Who's there?" she said, attempting to keep her voice sharp and steady.
Ginny thought she could hear laughter, shrill and high-pitched but far away, through the barrier. The blood in her veins turned to ice and Ginny forgot all about Luna. She knew that laugh, almost intimately even though it had been several years since she'd last heard it, echoing silently inside her mind. Possessing her rapidly with its confidence, its promise.
Now, though, the sound promised nothing short of pure fear, and Ginny couldn't move. She needed to alert the others, to tell them that something was coming. But for all her demands to go out there and fight, to get involved in the war she'd been a bystander of since she was eleven, this was not what she had expected.
The volume of the laughter grew, but there were shouts, too. Ginny couldn't see anything down either hall, but as the noises of trampling feet, screams, hexes, and, yes, laughter came so close that Ginny was suddenly sure that the barriers weren't truly invisible. The Death Eaters were right there on the other side of the walls, she could sense it.
Luna's groan might have alerted Ginny to the stupidity of her thinking, but at that moment the barrier to her left came crashing down. Ginny yelped and jumped back, cornering herself between the stone wall and, who else?, Lord Voldemort.
Ginny felt her insides fall from her body. The ice in her veins froze to even more impossibly chilling degrees, making it hard for Ginny to breathe. Her mind was clouded with a thick fog; it felt as if somebody had stuffed a wad of cotton in through her ears.
But the Dark Lord paid no attention to Ginny. He, in all his white-skinned, snake-nosed, red-eyed glory, stood in an offensive position, constantly moving and throwing hexes, facing Harry Potter. Ginny saw, to her horror, that Harry was injured, badly. He was wielding his wand with his left hand, for his left arm appeared to have been torn to shreds. Blood soaked through his cloak, his hair, covered every inch of his skin. His injured arm was thrown protectively over his torso, which was also bleeding profusely.
"Incendio!" screamed Harry, sending a blazing red streak towards his opponent. Voldemort easily cut the spell down and sent, and Ginny's scream finally joined the racket when she realized what it was, the Killing Curse towards Harry. Harry dodged out of the way and the spell hit a fighting wizard behind him.
A Death Eater shrieked out his triumph as Nymphadora Tonks fell to the Dark Lord's curse. Ginny shrank back against the wall, her hand trembling so badly she was afraid she might lose her wand. This was not how battle was supposed to be. Voldemort wasn't supposed to be standing less than six feet away from her, hurling hex after hex at the boy she lo- cared about very much.
Aurors weren't supposed to be falling left and right; Aurors and Order members who Ginny knew, had talked to on droll days back before her fourth year when everything seemed so far away. In the battle Ginny had always imagined herself fighting in, she was surrounded by strangers, blank faces who fell as they fought and struggled, but they were always part of a winning team. In Ginny's dreams, in her fantasies of grandeur.
"The fighting isn't as glorious as you think it is, Ginny."
Kingsley Shacklebolt, a dark-skinned brute of an Auror who Ginny had always liked, fell to the floor with a scream, writhing and moaning as some anonymous Death Eater laughingly cast the Cruciatus curse on him, again and again and again. But despite the Death Eater's distraction, she was not cut down by a fighter for the Light.
Ginny recognized the voice as that of Bellatrix Lestrange, but the vague recollection of battles past flew from her mind as her attention was caught by Harry and Lord Voldemort once again.
"Avada Kadavr-!" That was Harry's voice, Ginny recognized fearfully. But before he could finish the spell, the world exploded, turning such a blinding white that it made Ginny's head pound viciously.
And then…there was…
Nothingnothingnothingnothingnothingnothingnothing.