Rest In Pieces
Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.
"Schrei nach Liebe" belongs to "Die Ärzte", a German band.
Summary: What would you do if somebody locked you into a room with your worst enemy, and you were told that at the end of 24 hours, one of you'd be killed. But you don't know who? A question Ginny and Draco have to ask themselves when facing a very difficult situation.
Author's Notes: Okay, I know that this chapter took ages, but here it is at last, and I have decided to make this chapter kind of as a songfic, but not really…er. Well the title (which is German btw and means "cry for love") is actually the title of a song sung by the German punk band "Die Ärzte". Go listen to them, even if you don't understand a word they're saying. Stop, bad idea. They're so popular in Germany and Austria because of what they're singing about. Go, listen to their songs and ask for someone to translate the lyrics for you!
Chapter 4: Schrei nach Liebe
She was sure she was going to die of embarrassment. It wasn't as if it were something to be ashamed of, being a virgin, but still…you didn't talk about that. Well her peers anyway. Hell, she was sixteen, not twenty, or 25, or whenever you started having sex. She really had no idea. And she'd lived quite happily without it, up until now, thank you very much. And she'd have gladly continued like that, but nooooo, he just had to bring it up. It was so like him. At least she suspected it was so just like him. After all, she only knew what everybody knew about him, that he was a sick and twisted bastard, delighted in torturing other people and small fluffy animals (well, nobody knew that for sure, except for Blaise Zabini, who, being the only thing close to a friend he had, wouldn't affirm their suspicions) and that approaching him before he had his daily dose of caffeine was plain suicide, and even if somebody really had enough of his life he'd most likely prefer just jumping out of a window than to confronting Malfoy at two-minutes-to-coffee am, because, seriously, being suicidal really didn't imply one wanted to extinguish everybody who was so unfortunate as to be in a twenty feet radius of Mr. Personality.
Ginny was getting a little queasy after realizing that she had been abducted somewhere in the wee hours of the morning, which meant that the last breakfast he'd had was probably quite some time in the past. She pushed the thought of what might happen when he was finished smirking at the wall to the back of her head and tried to think about something more pleasant, like, say, a fit of diarrhoe during a Quidditch match. Poor Ron.
She was startled out of her reflections by a movement to her left. She turned and found herself staring into a pair of steel gray eyes that seemed to pierce right through her. Somehow, she felt transparent at his intense gaze, and the sensation made her shudder. He didn't even seem to notice, and just continued to fix her with his chillingly beautiful eyes, and Ginny started fiddling with her sweater nervously, confused and delighted at the attention she was getting. Somehow the silence in the room seemed too much for her to bear, so she decided to break it.
"What's wrong Malfoy? There a spot on my nose?" she asked, laughing uncertainly.
He took his time with answering, and when he did it was just a laconic "Thanks". He didn't even blink once.
"Wha?" Ginny asked stupidly, not quite comprehending his sudden change of behavior.
Finally he stopped his visual assault and dropped his gaze to the floor, the word "thanks" flowing from his lips again, but this time it was more of a whisper.
"Did you just thank me for something? Did Draco Malfoy just say thanks?" Ginny asked incredulously, eyeing him questioningly. "Thanks as in 'Thanks for saving my life'?" she added tentatively.
He looked up again and just said, "Yeah, appreciate it"
She cocked an eyebrow in a very Draco-like fashion. "You do, do you now? You know, perhaps there is some kind of decent person, buried deep within all that dry ice that is Draco Malfoy…" she mused amusedly.
He snorted in response. "Oh, come off it, I just said thanks. No big deal," he snapped when she dared to smirk at him, him! The nerve of that woman!
"To me it is," she said quietly, her eyes turning serious at his nonchalant words. "And you're really not that evil as everybody makes you out to be," she added, and he wasn't entirely sure if it was just to vex him or because she really meant it. He dearly hoped the latter was not the case. Because that would mean he'd be trapped with a madwoman.
"Excuse me, but did you notice I tried to kill you not thirty minutes ago?" he asked tersely, narrowing his eyes at the penetrating gaze she was fixing him with at the moment.
"Kind of hard not to," she replied, rubbing her neck absentmindedly, "but I don't think you did that because you wanted to be evil!" The way she said the word 'evil' nearly made him flinch. It sounded ridiculing, judging and condemning at once.
"You, Draco Malfoy, are nothing but a scared little boy deep inside, who hasn't been allowed to express his feelings, his fears from the beginning and knows no other way to cope with them than to make others suffer the same pain, the same fear that you are experiencing," she said, advancing on him slowly, her voice getting more quiet with every word that left her lips, lips that would have seemed apalling to him yesterday, but somehow, despite her harsh words, he couldn't help but stare at them with fascination, watching their every move, the way she bit them when she seemed nervous, which she clearly was right now.
Draco pulled his gaze away from her lips, or rather focused on her whole face when he realized she was looking at him imploringly.
"Huh?" he asked confusedly when he noticed two things: firstly, that she must have asked him something by the way she was looking, and secondly, that her nose was barely an inch away from his, and somehow, although he knew he really shouldn't, he wasn't resenting the feeling of her so close to him. He was certain that, had he not nearly died ten minutes ago he'd be able to think a little more straightforward, and he'd push her away and make a scathing remark, but he couldn't. He couldn't, and he was hating himself for it. He couldn't, and he wouldn't. Not here, where no-one but her was watching, not now, when he was feeling so uncharacteristically weak, not when she seemed like she was the only female figure he'd see during the next hours, and perhaps the last. The implication of that thought seemed to weigh heavier than lead in his stomach, and all the while he was staring at her, and she was staring at him, waiting, waiting for him to break her gaze, or to say something, and he felt so weak, so unbearably weak. And still all this was such a sweet sensation.
"Malfoy," she whispered, and he turned to look into her eyes, realizing for the first time, that they were of a rich hazel color, "Am I right, Malfoy?" she continued, never turning her gaze away from him. "You can tell me here. Nobody will ever know what happened in here, you know. You can tell me, because only one of us will leave this room, erect that is. And if it is me, I sure as hell am not going to tell everybody about your last moments, last hours, because they are yours. And if it should be me who won't be around to tell there'll be no problem, will there? But I need you to tell me. You're afraid, aren't you? You don't want to die, right? I don't want to die, and I'm afraid, but are you?"
He wanted to close his eyes, but he couldn't. He'd never felt so torn in his life. He knew what he should say, should do, but he couldn't, because she was right, because for once in his life, he felt like he could do what he wanted to do, and he wouldn't know about it, ever.
And so he opened his mouth to speak, for once, the truth, but it was so hard to speak when your voice was so very hoarse. But he managed, eventually, to rather breathe than speak his answer. "Yes."
Ginny who had, up until now, regarded him as intently as he had her cracked at his simple statement, and with a choked cry tears started spilling from her eyes, and sobs from her throat. She rested her head against his neck and fisted her hands into his shirt, her whole body wracking from her crying.
He was overcome by a lot of unknown sensations that very moment, like their closeness, her whole body that was pressed up against his made him feeling slightly ill at ease and still so very comfortable that his head started to spin, and the fact that she seemed so fragile this moment and he wasn't trying to break her was greatly disturbing in his eyes. What was he doing? What was she doing to him? He didn't even take the time to think that perhaps he was just as breakable as she was that very instant, and that she could have easily snapped him in half, mentally, but she didn't. And he was afraid, oh, so afraid. He wasn't even sure what he was more afraid of: dying here, in this sombre room, or her letting go right now, leaving him alone even though she was still there.
At this moment, there really wasn't anything that he wanted more than for her to calm down, and so he started to draw slow circles on her back with his hand, which after a few minutes seemed to pay off, since her sobs were getting less violent and her breathing seemed to go a lot easier than earlier. And he was relieved that her pain seemed to subside, and he hated her for it. But again, he didn't. He was so tired, he felt like he couldn't keep his head any longer, so he let it fall so that it was now enveloped in her soft, red hair, and some distant part of his brain registered that she smelled of honeysuckle, a smell that reminded him of happier times somehow, but he couldn't quite pinpoint the feeling. So he just buried his nose deep in her neck and let himself flow in the sensation. She started a bit at first at the contact, but then relaxed against him, and they stood like this until she lifted her head to his ear and murmured his name as to get him out of his trance-like stance. It took a while until he realized that she'd called him Draco, and not Malfoy. He looked up in wonder and tried to ignore the stiffness in his neck from having his head in one and the same position for a long time.
And again, he found himself staring down into the eyes of Virginia Weasley, the girl he hated and wanted most at the same time, and felt an unfamiliar clenching in his stomach, which he couldn't quite place. They stood like this for what seemed like an eternity, staring at each other. He never knew what made him do it, not even with what would be his last breath, he just knew that he did it, and that was all there was to be said about it in his opinion. Although no other living soul except for him and her would ever know, of course. But that minute, in that spartanically furnished room in all it's gloomy lighted glory, he, Draco Malfoy, inclined his head just a little, so that their lips were touching ever so lightly, and he was thanking the fates for every square millimeter of her skin that he was able to touch.
To be continued!
This chappie here is really bad, and I kind of wrote the biggest part of it in a slight fever, and I kind of got the feeling that it reflects my current feelings. Feverish, I mean. Perhaps it doesn't. Also, most of it is written in Draco's POV, and is more like an inner monologue.Hope you don't mind. Anyway, here's some D/G action for all of you who've begged for it. Altough I just think that after this chappie nobody's gonna read what's happening next. Dunno why I'll even be posting it.
Oh, and sorry that this chapter was so short, but I started writing something else today which'll appear here on portkey soon, but I'm not finished with that one yet. Anyway, it's gonna be an NC-17 one-shot, and neither my beta nor me have ever done anything like that, so if anyone who has would help me out and tell me what they think about it before I post it, I'd be very thankful. Just e-mail me at szaranea@hotmail.com, the story should be finished either tomorrow, or at the beginning of the christmas hols. Thanx!
Thanks to:
Frecklegirl87, michou, crazy_kitten, Crystal, sexytexy (little correction there: I'm not an Aussie, since I'm not from Australia, but Austria. People tend to confuse these two. And actually I'm a May babe…), Calliara Cenei, Satine 501 (yes, toilet paper. D'you speak german? In that case, there's a band called 'Wohlstandskinder' who wrote an entire song about toilet paper. You might want to check that one out, *winks*), jane_valar, Crystal (who seems to have reviewed twice and simply forgotten?), TrinitYMalfoY527 (I just realized that I was determined to get some despair into this chapter after you left that review…and then I had some stressful weeks full of tests since this is my last school year, and I forgot all about it. Sorry…), Draconia and Clair (I know that the guy is kind of, er, stretching the capacities of one single personality. I'd lie and say that perhaps he's a schizo, but in truth, I er, haven't quite decided on who he is, see, and sometimes my mind tells me that he's that person, sometimes this, fact is, I can't help it, but my description varies a lot. No cloaked guy in this chap anyway, thank the fates…he's a nuisance)