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.
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: Tonight I was sleeping in my brother's room, as the guest room which I have claimed for the summer was occupied and my brother's in Germany at the moment. I couldn't sleep, and therefore I started my brother's computer up and wrote this chapter. Bear with me, it was written between quarter to two am and quarter past three am.
Chapter 8: Sunset
An hour. That was all they had left. Things were definitely going critical now. One of them would not be breathing in an hour. 60 minutes. 3600 seconds. How many thoughts was an hour? How many dreams? How much was an hour worth, if it was the last you'd got?
Draco's as well as Ginny's thoughts were running rampant. Draco's more so than Ginny's, as hers were mostly of the "Oh my God, I'm going to die" sort, whereas Draco was thinking about many things. Things he hadn't thought of in a long time, or at least not consciously so.
Hell, actually this was the first time in his life he was trying to remember every last beautiful detail of the sun setting in Northern England, painting the horizon in many a warm colour: red, orange, sometimes a last tint of yellow, bathing the landscape in their rays of fiery beauty, making the world seem beautiful as a whole in the short time the spectacle lasted. And once the sun was completely gone, there was only darkness left, that made what had seemed so beautiful only moments ago seem even uglier than it would have been had the sun not gone down.
"I don't wanna die," Ginny whimpered beside him
"I know, Weasley," he said impatiently. The magic of the moment they'd shared before the violent intrusion of their kidnapper, so to say, was gone like the faint scent of flowers in the air when a breeze came up: abruptly and stirring lots of dust.
"But if I die," she continued without listening to him, or at least without taking offence, "can you do me a favour?"
"No," he barked disgruntledly.
"Tell my brother it's in the pantry under the loose floorboard, a little to the right," Ginny said, ignoring him once again.
"I won't. What is?" Slowly but surely he was losing his patience.
"That'd be so great if you did that," she said airily while getting up.
"Well, I won't," Draco snapped, also rising and dusting his robes off.
"Thanks ever so much," Ginny told him earnestly, as if he had actually agreed on doing it.
Somehow he didn't feel like correcting her, because talking to her was beginning to give him a headache. He didn't want to die with a migraine, after all.
"I'm going to sleep," she suddenly announced, flopping down on the mattress.
"Suit yourself," Draco mumbled, sitting down again, took a piece of the bread she'd conjured earlier and started tearing bits off it and munching on them thoughtfully.
Thinking over everything that had happened in the past 23 hours Draco vowed that, as soon as those 24 hours were over he would not rest until he found the man who had done this to him.
He had been put in a situation where he was left absolutely helpless, and he couldn't do anything about it but wait and see. Draco hated few things more than being helpless and at the hands of others, and it was giving him great pains that he was being played with. He should be manipulating people now, not the other way round.
It should be him torturing 'innocent' people. It should be him mocking his victims. It should be him, as it had always been.
But it was not him, and for the first time in his life the high and mighty Draco Malfoy had to acknowledge that not everything was about him. He knew that the world would not stop turning should he die today. It would continue in its seemingly slow path, spinning around its axe.
He had never given dying much thought until that moment, at least not in scenarios where it was him who was going to get visited by the Grim Reaper. And now that he was forced to do it, Draco admitted that he didn't like the thought. Not at all.
And to think that his probably last meal were some crumbled pieces of bread. The last person he'd see was somebody he could live without, or could have lived without before everything had gone downhill because some sadistic lunatic had decided to have some fun.
Now he wasn't so sure about her anymore. Ginny Weasley, what are you to me? He thought, narrowing his eyes.
Was she the enemy? - Surely not. That was reserved for Potter and perhaps her brother. People usually had a reason, a personal reason for being enemies. Potter was an arse who had refused his friendship. The Weasley King was a git by nature, and was a friend of Potter's. She was merely the sister of the friend of an enemy. Did that justify calling her an enemy?
Was she an acquaintance? - If asked, Draco could have not told anybody her favourite colour, or the dish she despised most. He had no idea whether she had any middle names, or how many brothers exactly she had. But he was quite sure that she had shared some things with him that she had never shared with anybody. Or was that too little for not calling her an acquaintance?
Was she an accidental lover? - So they'd shared one kiss. And he had got her all riled up and turned her into a moaning and gasping pile of hot flesh and peanut butter at one point. But she had never really returned anything, except for that kiss, and that only in the beginning. She had thrown everything back at him. But then again, he had never given her the chance to rectify that, had he? So did all that one-sidedness stand for something?
And only when she turned around and the he saw her hair fanning her face like a red and orange halo in the strange light of the torch he was reminded of a train of thought he'd had earlier, and suddenly he knew what she was to him.
Ginny Weasley was his sunset. He was not quite sure as to what that meant, but he knew she was. She'd brought a gentle touch of warmth to his icy life, and should she leave, he'd be colder than before, because he had experienced something other than coldness and indifference for once.
That was when he realised that, no matter who would die in there, the other would be miserable. She, because she was kind and compassionate, because she cared, and because she was pure. He, because he would be lost. He knew that he would carry on with his life as he had planned before everything had gone haywire. He would become a Death Eater and join Voldemort in his crusade to purge the wizarding world. But he knew that every night he would go to bed he would feel empty and drained, and he would probably think back to the twenty four hours he had spent in a place that was less real than a dream.
And still, while he was thinking all that, time was slowly but surely creeping away, the hands on an imaginary clock moving at snail's pace. But even snails reached their destination, and so time was bound to do so too.
Draco knew that their time had come when the wall to their left started glowing, faintly at first, but growing brighter by the second. He leaned over and shook the sleeping girl none too gently in order to wake her.
"I hate you," she grumbled without opening her eyes. And she did. She hated him, his family, his way to say things, the way he walked, everything. She hated what he had done to her earlier, and she hated herself for having been too weary to retaliate. Too weary, to humiliated and too scared. She hated them both for it. Even though she would have loved getting revenge for what he'd done, Ginny was aware that she would not have had the gall to do so, as she knew that he was aware that everything she did to him he would return tenfold, and she could not bare another scenario like the one that had passed earlier. And it was the knowledge of her own weakness that infuriated her the most.
"I hate you too, Weasley," he replied, giving her another sharp tug.
"What?" she finally snapped, turning around. When she saw the wall glowing in that strange, bright white light, Ginny gasped in shock.
"I guess one of us has to walk into the white light," Draco commented dryly, not taking his eyes off of her.
"What's gonna happen if somebody does?" she asked, trying to make out the source of the light.
"Where should I know?" he snapped, rolling his eyes. "I'm not a diviner. My guess is, one of us dies."
"Just like that?" She was looking at him now as if he held the answers to all her questions.
"I don't know. We'll just have to find out," he ground out, sounding less than happy with what he'd just said.
"I suppose we do. Or we could try to walk there at the same time," Ginny mused. "Give me your hand!"
"The hell I will. Who do you think I am? I'm Draco Malfoy, I don't hold hands. I'll stay put," he snarled.
"Well, I'll go alone then," Ginny said, swallowing.
She'd taken a few steps and was about to cross the barrier of light when Draco shot up and grabbed her by the arm, turned her around and slammed his lips down on hers, starting to kiss her rather violently.
What surprised him about the situation was that she did not struggle, that she did not even try to get away from him but rather pulled him closer. Trying to push his luck he nudged her lips apart with his tongue and almost sighed in relief when she opened up and let him in, interestingly enough slowing the pace of the frantic kiss down a little.
Draco didn't know what had possessed him to pull her back, but right now he didn't care, as he was enjoying the outcome of his actions. He moved his hands to the small of her back, rubbing over the fabric of his robe in small circles. Oh, his cloak. He'd forgotten that she was still wearing it. He might have to ask her to give it back before she went to uncertain death. But then again he might forget about that, after what she was doing with her tongue right now.
The temperature in the room rose as the kiss started to get more heated again and Draco moved his lips from her mouth down to her neck, suckling on her pulse point, eliciting small moans from her the harder he did it.
She was running her hands through his hair now, messing it all up, but he didn't care. His own hands were exploring her body, reacquainting themselves with it again. By the time he reached to unclasp the only thing that was covering her body at that time, namely his robe, they were feeling so hot they had to break the kiss, and Ginny actually almost fell to the floor, but Draco managed to catch her before she did.
And that was when they realised that their passionate kiss had not been the only thing heating them up. The light that had gained in intensity until it had reached its apparent peak had started to grow warmer and warmer, and the room was already uncomfortably hot.
"You've got to go or we'll both burn to death," Draco said, his face red with the heat.
"I guess," Ginny answered. "But you don't hold hands, eh?" she added with a coy smile.
"I don't," he replied curtly.
Ginny nodded. He didn't.
With that thought in mind, she turned around and stepped into the light.
Then, there was heat. There was noise. There was a scream - was it hers?
And then there was darkness.
Am I evil? I really, really hope that I am. But it's so much fun letting you all try to figure out who is going to die and who isn't. *cackles* Ah, well, you'll have to wait for the next - and last - chapter of this story.