Jewel of the Harem: The Grindelwald Continuum Book One

Chapter 12.

Compulsions.

Tell all the truth, but tell it slant

Success in circuit lies.

Too bright for our infirm delight

The truth's superb surprise.

--Emily Dickinson, Tell All the Truth

He remembered the smell of her skin in the overheated darkness of a coffin near the port, her
fingers locked across the small of his back. All the meat, he thought, and all it wants.

--Case remembers Linda in William Gibson's Neuromancer. Gibson is NOT talking about an actual coffin, btw.

A/N: I am just amazed by the quality of the reviews lately. They've been getting better and better and better. Special thanks to

Syndey Lynne ( a fabulous review, as always! Yes, we will find out more about Marie-France... very soon...
mwah ha...) , Tien310, Kittylioness,PhantomSoula, Jane_Valar, Cranecreator (um, yes, now that I think
about that quote I guess it WAS from Star Wars,) Pasunchica (oh, there's irony everywhere in this
fic!), Kureneko Kashikoi, chocagirl23 (and her wonderful review!), goodgirlsbadboys (hope we all get
to read your fic soon!), Gin The Gemini, Peeler (many more updates about everyone else coming
soon-very-soon,) Nina-na, SlytherinPsyche, hazel_eyes18 (who wanted to know what happened on the
train. It's in this chapter!), Sare, Mara Jade (much more of Pansy soon!), fanatic, Wednesday Blue, Katja
(who always has the most... amazing, astounding reviews,) Neekerbreeker (ANOTHER great review-- oh yes, much more D/G action coming soon,) waterlily12, Verbal Abuse (yup, something exciting this way comes,) and last but certainly not least, Praetorian Guard, who left the kind of concrit review we ALL dream of. :), and paranoid.

BTW, if your library carries the fall/winter issue of *Southern Exposure* magazine (a publication of the Institute for Southern Studies,) pick it up. My article's featured!!! The cover story, one might even say. Yippee skippee, unpaid print publishing again! If it's a college library, you're more likely to find it. I know for SURE that it's archived at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and at Berkeley, and I'm PRETTY sure it's at the University of Minnesota. That kinda place, you know. It's not online, but if you ever DO want to see some of my non-fiction stuff that is, it's on the news service Alternet. Just search under my name.

Also. Some have been wondering about the redeemed-Draco thing. So, a few words on the issue. At this point, that would be pretty OOC, to say the least (and I don't think I'm the only one who feels this way. Peeler has a great phrase for that unfortunate kind of character-- GoodyTwoShoes!Draco. AKA BackstreetBoy!Draco.) So I feel very strongly that he's not redeemed right now. Not a good guy. At all. Bad to the bone. He swore himself to the service of a dark spirit less than a week ago, remember. He will NOT start skipping around doing good deeds while followed by fluffy bunnies and twittering birds and Mantovani's Thousand-String Orchestra. Oh, just wait and see...

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It was the darkest part of the evening, past sunset and not yet moonrise. In a few hours, the full moon would be riding high in the night sky. It would be nearly as bright as day, then, thought Ginny. They'd be able to see everything. But now, the collections of buildings before them formed one great sleeping shape, long and indistinct. Like a dragon, tossing and turning in uneasy dreams... The image coming up so suddenly in her mind made her stumble over a pile of loose rocks in the overgrown path that wound through the edge of the graveyard. Draco put out an arm to steady her.

"There are probably holes and ditches everywhere, here," he said. "Take care or you'll trip and fall into one."

"I won't," she said. "What are we looking for?"

"Sleeping quarters for the people who lived here. Monks and nuns, you said? Or perhaps a guesthouse. I really hope that they weren't destroyed when all this damage was done."

They had picked their way all through the abandoned graveyard. The moon still hung low, but the first stars had come out. Ginny paused and let out her breath. She wasn't sure how long she'd been holding it, like a terrified child listening to ghost stories in the night. She looked up at the main building looming over them. How frightened she'd been before. Now, she felt weirdly calm. Here they were, near to the center of the thing she had feared, although, she sensed, not quite to the core yet. The time to be afraid and apprehensive had been on the Pilgrim's Way, before they arrived, when there was still a chance to change things. But now, whatever would be, would be.

"What is it?" asked Draco, beside her. "Did you see something?"

She shook her head. "It's only that-- well, from this angle, just the one where we are, it almost looks whole."

Knowing what she meant, Draco nodded. "It does. But it's only illusion. Trompe d'loeil. See?" He took one step to the side, beckoning for her to follow him with a light touch on her wrist. With even the slightest shift in perspective, the church and abbey crumpled back into a ruin of gaping windows and collapsed walls.

"Trompe d-- what does that mean?"

"Fool the eye. Like a stage set, or an optical illusion."

"Well, that's French, isn't it? I thought you said you didn't speak it."

"It's a common expression. And probably fifty percent of the words in the English language have the same common base that French does, I'm not going to go through and root out every one." He spoke abstractedly, his mind obviously on something else. They had reached one of the crumbling outer walls and started moving along it. Draco peered around doorjambs or through more gaping windows and shook his head each time.

"Maybe it's not here anymore. Where they lived, or where they put up guests, I mean," said Ginny. "It isn't there in 1996. But I suppose that doesn't mean much. It's funny, though, how much this looks the way it did then... from the train, it really looks almost exactly the same."

He wondered when she could have seen it from a train, and what train it had been. But the thought passed through his mind quickly; he was concentrating on the elusive feeling he kept trying to grasp. Something was pulling him, something in this vast, cavernous, almost-ruin. He was following a path of a different kind now, almost like a shadowy map in his head.

They reached a large door, the wood hanging off its hinges, and Draco put a finger to his lips for silence. "There could still be someone here-- we'd better be careful," he whispered.

"Malfoy, this isn't a guesthouse, it's the--"

""Shh."

They stepped into the vestibule, and this time he was the one who drew in his breath, sharply. Draco walked into the most beautiful space he had ever seen. He stopped after taking a few steps into the transept, feeling as if he were standing not in a building, but a heart. He stared down the nave at the altar, then over at the monk's choir, up at the windows, along the great Gothic arches that somehow managed to be weightless nonetheless, flowing together, melding into each other organically. Not having any clear idea of what he was looking at, Draco had nothing to compare it to. He could only think that it was like some unimaginable fantastic beast embroidered on one of the vast medieval tapestries that hung in the oldest part of Malfoy Manor, where he had wandered sometimes as a child. The unknown architects who had designed this church had shaped stone and wood and glass into a thing of air, and the ruined roof only caused it to soar upwards towards consummation with the sky. Yet it was a sad, ruined thing. Damaged statues peered out at them from niches in the walls, some overturned, their hands or heads snapped off. Splintered remnants of stained glass clung to the carefully tooled stone grooves of the windows. Coming forward, Ginny saw it all too, and her heart caught in her chest. The bare shapes of the stones looked pitifully naked without timber, lead, glass, gold, and rich fabrics. There should have been candles flickering in little red glass cups before the statues, she thought, as she'd seen at Our Lady of Lourdes. But no pilgrims had come here seeking indulgences or sanctuary in a long time. It was a broken place, and derelict.

"What is it?" he whispered.

"Malfoy, it's a Muggle church. A Catholic church. You mean to say you've never seen one?"

"No...not from the inside, anyway... " His voice drifted away from her as he wandered down the side aisle, staring at the Stations of the Cross. The silence and the stillness pressed in upon her where she stood, and the darkness crept towards her like some black liquid spilled from a cup. She shivered, and hurried after him, her footsteps very loud and echoing.

"Come here," she heard him calling, his voice muffled. "I think I've found something."

A door at the far end of the church led to a long roofed corridor. One side was composed of Gothic arches that had probably once held stained glass. The other side of the wall was paneled in richly carved wood, and the flagstones of the floor had been carefully shaped and laid. “It’s easy to see that there was a lot of money at this abbey, once,” said Ginny, her nervous voice echoing down the hall. She wasn’t sure if it was better to hear those whispery echoes or to keep silent, but once she’d started talking she was afraid to stop, afraid of what she might hear if she did. “It’s a pity it got ruined the way it did. But I
do wonder why there aren’t any people here from the local villages, even. I mean, it is Christmas. Awfully important religious holiday for them. You’d think they would have come back to the church for that; so much of it is still intact. “

Draco nodded abstractedly from time to time, stopping to look through doors that connected off the main corridor. Ginny finally shut up; it sounded too much as if she were talking to herself. He wasn't ignoring her, but it was as if he were listening... listening for the same thing she was afraid to hear, she thought with a sudden chill. They found the monks’ quarters, which Ginny recognized from one of Arthur Weasley's long excited lectures about architecture. And the remnants of another small attached building that must have been where the nuns lived. But there was nothing left in either. The very walls had collapsed for the most part, and only some beds and splintered remains of simple furniture provided clues to what these places had once been. There was a building that must have been the refectory; there were still some long tables left, and the ruins of large fireplaces with iron cooking spits still stuck in them. Then there were rooms and alcoves neither of them could guess the purpose of, but all destroyed, all crumbling. The pair of them stopped for a moment after going through what Ginny guessed had been a side chapel, and they sat on a pile of rubble, catching their breath.

“I don’t think we’ve found anywhere we can stay yet,” she finally said.

“Not yet,” he agreed.

She wanted to add that they really would have been better off staying in the hayloft at the Thistle and Lion, but on second thought she didn’t quite dare. He seemed to be in such a strange mood now. It wasn’t hostile, but there was certainly nothing teasing or light-hearted about it. There was a distant courtesy in all his words to her; he watched her steps carefully and caught her if she stumbled over loose rocks or fallen timbers, and he listened politely when she spoke, nodding or replying with some thought. This was probably better behavior than she could ever have expected from Draco Malfoy, and Ginny knew that she might as well be happy with it. But it worried her, too. They were so close to Leith. Well! She should really enjoy the peace and quiet before all hell broke loose, as it undoubtedly would do soon.

Draco had picked his way through a little chamber almost choked with fallen stone, and Ginny had lingered behind, looking up at the night sky through the broken roof. The moon had risen and winked down at her. She rubbed her head, swaying, tiredness descending on her all at once. His hand reached out to her from the other side of an open door, and he stuck his head out to look back at her. In the shaft of moonlight from above, Draco almost seemed to glow, his gilt hair and pale skin and silvery eyes lit from within. Like an angel, Ginny thought vaguely. Or one of those statues we saw in the church... St. Draco... the patron saint of fallen angels. Oh, I'm so dreadfully tired and I'm thinking such appalling rubbish...

"Found it," he said, his voice quietly triumphant. "I knew I would." He watched intently as she picked her way over the rubble, and then led her into the room he had discovered.

It was almost entirely undamaged; only the small, high windows were missing their glass, as all the rest were, and part of one wall had crumbled to reveal the stone beneath. The walls were linen fold paneling of some dark wood, elaborately carved, and the high ceiling was vaulted and carved as well, or maybe enamelled with some sort of design. Ginny craned her neck up to look at it. There was a clothes-press against one wall, a table in the middle of the floor with two chairs pulled up to it, and a chest pulled near the stone fireplace, which actually still had wood neatly stacked next to it. Opposite the fireplace was another doorway, leading to a recessed alcove

"Wonder why this wasn't destroyed with the rest," said Ginny. "Ooh, look, a fireplace!"

"It must have been a chamber for important guests," said Draco, his voice more remote than ever. He scanned the room, tapping one cheek with a finger. "Build a fire, Weasley. It's freezing in here."

She reached for her flint and tinder with hands made clumsy by cold and saw Draco moving around behind her, laying down the sack on the table. Hopefully there was some food left, and whatever else he'd gotten earlier in the day. The thing he'd bought from the peddler at the Thistle and Lion was certainly in it, and she wondered what it was. But then she became thoroughly absorbed in the task of getting the fire started, and it was several minutes before a sound from behind her caused her to turn around. It was Draco clearing his throat, a little awkwardly, she thought, or at least there was something a little strange about the noise. When she turned around she didn't see him immediately, and realized that he must be in the alcove room off the one where the fireplace was.

There was one bed in it. One enormous bed taking up nearly the entire room, with wood-paneled doors that could be closed and a great puffed mattress that looked to be in perfect condition. He was sitting on it, and he put one of his hands down, testing the mattress without taking his eyes from her. It looked springy and soft; a featherbed, perhaps. The little fireplace in one wall had fallen in, but with their blankets and plaids they'd sleep warmly enough that night, and lying on that mattress would be like sinking into delicious clouds. Because they would be sleeping in that bed tonight, of course. She... and Draco... in one bed. Ginny swallowed hard; she was walking towards him, but the distance seemed to be doubling with each step, and surely there had never been anything so large on this earth as that bed.

On a dirt floor or in a hayloft was one thing; the idea of anything-- well-- happening in settings like that was ridiculous, but... a bed. Getting into a bed, stretching themelves out on a bed. Together. It seemed so deliberate and calculated, the idea of climbing into that enormous bed with him, and knowing that she'd have to do it within the hour was like watching a clock count down to some mysterious thing of delicious terror. All the phrases Ginny had ever overheard that contained the word "bed" chose that moment to come back to her. She sat down next to him, her legs suddenly growing weak, and they raced through her head. Let's go to bed. He took her to bed, and then they... Well, you didn't have to go to bed with him, now did you? Come to bed with me. My bed or yours? Bed... bed... let's get you up to your bed... Unbidden, the image rose, the one she had tried to forget. One of many such in her life, of course. The night that September, just after start of term.

There'd been an huge party in the Gryffindor common room with illegal Muggle alcohol sneaked in; almost nobody was used to it, aside from a couple of the Muggle-borns, and the Smirnoff's vodka had floored everyone. Hermione and Harry were both trying to drag an insensible Ron off to bed. He kept coming round for a moment and insisting that he was just fine; they didn't have to carry him like a baby, thank you very much, and then passing out again and knocking his head on the floor. The other two both looked as if they were about to collapse next to him at any moment themselves.

Ginny would have helped them, but she'd felt so light-headed, and everything had looked very bright and small and far away, as if seen through the wrong end of a telescope. "Let's get you up to your bed, you're about to pass out, Ginny," Colin had said, and she'd let him support her all the way up the stairs to her room, feeling her head lolling on her neck but utterly unable to control its movements. None of her roommates had been there, and she'd let him ease her down to the bed, clutching onto him for support. He'd pulled the curtains around them with a Silencing charm and started kissing her and she hadn't minded; she'd barely felt it, really. But then his hands moved someplace that frightened her, even through the haze that seemed to be covering everything she experienced, and she'd tried to move him away. His fingers had only kneaded her breasts more firmly, and he'd pushed her up against the wall, his kisses trailing down her neck. "No," she'd whimpered. "Colin, please, don't, I don't want--" But he seemed to be in a daze himself, not even hearing her words.

"Let me," he'd whispered. "You've got to let me."

"No."

"If you did, if you wanted to, you could save me, Ginny. Save me from what I've promised. Save me from what I'm becoming...."

"I-- I can't," she'd said, not understanding anything of what he'd meant, only feeling a slow, creeping horror spreading through her.

But he wasn't listening, and he responded to nothing she said, only mumbling more things that didn't make any sense to her, and that she didn't remember. One of his hands clamped so hard over her breast that she had purplish bruises the next day matching each of his fingers. The other moved down under her robes and fumbled at the waistband of her skirt, unbuttoning it, moving down her hip to grasp her thigh. Ginny gasped, stiffened, and made a noise in her throat like a choked scream. Her knee flew up into his groin.

Colin had rolled off the bed then and hit the floor with a thump, giving a muffled moan. Ginny closed her eyes. She heard him getting to his feet and leaving; she knew that she really should lock the door, but nothing was going to get her off the safety of that bed now that he was gone. She had drifted off into sleep, and the next day it was as if the incident had never been. Except that Colin never could look her straight in the eye after that, and seemed to be spending most of his free time with Ivy Parkinson all that autumn. She hid the bruises from her roommates. After all, she had all but invited him up to her room, hadn't she? It had surely been her fault; she must have driven him, somehow, to do what he had done. Not that anything had really happened, anyway. She had overreacted; she was too sensitive, too easily hurt by meaningless things. And Colin had said he was sorry. He'd been drunk, he told her, and hadn't known what he was doing; he'd begged her not to tell Ron. She had never told anyone. And she had said that she was still his friend, but she had tried never to get caught alone with him, after that. Until a few days ago, she never had...

"Weasley," a voice said, tinged with impatience.

Ginny blinked. "What?"

"That's the third time I've called your name." Draco got up and walked into the other room, gesturing for her to follow him. "Don't fall asleep on me yet."

Resentfully, she got up. Maybe she really had been going to sleep. If so, that fateful moment of getting into a bed with him in it would never have had to become a conscious choice.

They sat at the little oak table, eating bread and cheese. Occasionally, Draco would say a few words, and then his voice would drift off. She would say something that was not quite a reply, and then there would be a few moments' awkward silence. They were having the sort of conversation that, to any outside listener, would have sounded disjointed and senseless. Each would start on a topic of conversation and then remember how it led to another topic they were trying to avoid.

"How far are we from Leith now?" he asked.

"Depends on which way you go," she answered. "If you take the King's Road, well..." Ginny wondered if they would keep staying off the main road. Soon, they couldn't. Not if they were going to get to Leith. Was he planning to meet up with his father and the rest of the Death Eaters? Or was he trying to avoid them?

"I don't know," he muttered. This was not something he wanted to discuss or even think about, yet the awareness that soon he would have to decide what to do about Lucius Malfoy was a dark weight in his mind. "Not far, though?"

"No, not really." Should she try to get them both lost in the woods? No. He'd figure out what she was doing rather quickly, and the thought of his reaction was not an appealing one. Stuck in the middle of nowhere with an angry Draco Malfoy... it really didn't bear thinking of.

"So you saw Melrose Abbey from a train?" he asked as they chewed on slices of bread. Did the Hogwarts train go up to the coast? When would she have taken it to Leith? Not last year, certainly. The two of them had travelled on the same train for quite a long way then, he had seen her just before she got off at King's Cross-- no, he wouldn't think of that.

"Yes," said Ginny in a clipped voice. "A Muggle train that I took with my dad once." She, too, refused to allow herself to remember last year's train trip on the Hogwarts Express.

He cut a little dried meat for her from the bag. His cloak had fallen back and she watched his wrist, covertly. It was smooth and unmarked except for the two scratches, one deeper than the other. That reminded her of when she'd seen him on last year's train, too, but what Ginny was really wondering about was where the flickering red web of symbols on it had gone. She knew she'd seen it earlier, after she'd pushed him down and he'd gotten up and stared at her for so long, holding her wrist, an unreadable expression on his face. It couldn't be like the Dark Mark, then, or at least what rumours she'd heard about it, mostly from listening to Harry and Ron and Hermione when they didn't know she could hear them. What was a Hexensymbol? What did it really mean to have one, and to be bonded to Draco Malfoy, of all people, in this way? But she couldn't ask any of those questions.

"Is your wrist all right?" she finally said.

"Why wouldn't it be?" Draco's expression was guarded. Maybe she knew more about the nature of the Hexensymbol than she was letting on. Maybe she was trying to trap him into admitting something she could use, could bring to her brother once they reached Leith... maybe she knew what he didn't know, had figure out how to escape it, to use it against him...

"Well, those two scratches. The one looks rather nasty. How did you get it?"

"That's for me to know and you to never find out." What did Ginny Weasley know? Was she ensnaring him in some way so subtle that he couldn't see it, like a cage woven of invisible bars? He began watching her alertly, sensitive to the smallest change in voice or posture that might provide a clue to what she planned.

They passed the leather skin back and forth, sharing the last sips of small beer.

"I'm horribly tired," sighed Ginny, leaning back in the chair. "My feet are getting ready to come off, I think. Thank you for the boots, and the cloak. I never could have made any time without them."

"That's true," Draco said noncommitally.

"I'll be--" and she yawned in the middle of the sentence "--awfully glad to get to bed tonight." She threw back her head, running a hand through the tangles of her hair; the firelight played over her face and she was all rose and copper and pale gleaming gold.

To bed...

It was as if his body and brain had been pulled up to a pitch of sensation, studying her where she sat, thinking about her and him in that bed. Excitement had been yanked to the surface, yes, and arousal too; he couldn't help his response to her in that way, it would have been like expecting a magnet not to jerk round to metal. Yet his mind was running on overdrive as well. Was that her game? Both of them in that bed, close together for warmth against the icy chill of the midwinter night, one thing would lead to another; oh, Draco could imagine it all too well. And he couldn't stop himself from imagining those things, didn't want to; that was the most bitter part of all. If she really wanted to seduce him, she'd be striking at his most vulnerable spot. He had no resistance there. Did she know it? He could hardly control the impulse to ask her, to blurt out questions; but maybe she was waiting for that, too. No, he wouldn't tip his hand that way.

They'd finished eating. The hour grew late, and the fire burned low. The great shadowy figure of the bed in the small attached room loomed behind them. For separate reasons, each of them was delaying the moment when they would rise from the table and walk into the other room for the night. Ginny looked at the stone floor in front of the fireplace and wondered if she should try sleeping there. Draco tapped his fingers restlessly on the table, thinking of the taste of smoke, and the long dark dirty cinnamon rush of nicotine. Her eyes were drawn to the movement of his hands.

"Why are you doing that?" she asked carefully. Maybe he was getting ready to jump on her. Don't touch me, Malfoy. Don't ever touch me. No fear of that, her memory mocked her. No, surely not. He probably planned to bed down on the floor without her!

He let out his breath in a long sigh. "Damn, I wish I had a cigarette."

"You smoke?" she asked, surprised. "Really?"

"Yes, really. It's one of my bad habits."

"One of many, I'm sure."

"You're right about that," said Draco, the crooked smile curving up one side of his mouth.

"It's only that I never would have thought it of you, Malfoy. Such a Muggle habit."

"You don't know me very well," he said softly. "In fact, you don't know me at all." All you really know about me is that your brother hates me, and Potter hates me. And, of course, your entire family does as well. Although I do wonder if you know what I do; I wonder if you know why. Everyone you love, hates me and mine... but even with that knowledge, you couldn't begin to understand anything of what I really am. If your brother knew you were here with me, about to get into a bed with me, he'd devote the remainder of his life to hunting me down and killing me as painfully as possible. And that's without his knowing what goes through my head every time I look at you, or think of you. What the hell is it? Do you know; are you laughing at me behind your hand, Ginny Weasley, do you think that you've got me under your spell? Or are you an innocent victim of this thing as well? Whatever it is? This isn't desire; it can't be, I've been caught on the teeth of that before, over and over again. This is something that goes so deep, it seems to have no bottom to it... and if your brother loves you, maybe he'd be right to kill me so I couldn't lay hands on you, and pull you into the whirlpool with me.

"Well, Weasley?" he continued. "What makes you think you'd understand enough about me to guess my habits, bad or otherwise?"

Because I've watched you sometimes, when you didn't know I was there. I would sit in the stands at Quidditch matches and track your every move, playing Seeker against Harry. I told myself I was watching him, and I really believed it at the time. I told myself that I loved him, and I'd hate what-- and who-- he hated, so I hated you, Draco Malfoy. There were days when that brilliant blond head of yours seemed to follow me everywhere I went at Hogwarts, to haunt me like some sort of demented drawling ghost. I could never rid myself of you, no matter how hard I tried. But you're right. I don't know you.

"Nothing," said Ginny. She pulled at her hair again, nervously. "I don't know you at all. Ouch!" A tangle yanked at her scalp and tears sprang to her eyes.

Draco pushed his chair back abruptly from the table. "That's it, I can't stand to spend one more minute watching you do that." He moved behind her, taking something out of the leather bag.

"What are you doing?" she demanded, turning round in her chair to follow him.

"Sit still, can't you?" He sat in the other chair and pulled it up to her. The thing was wrapped in blue cloth; the rawhide thong holding it together fell away, and Ginny saw that it was a wooden comb, carved with the figure of a bird in flight. Draco began working it carefully through her hair, holding the length up to avoid tugging at her scalp, just as he had yesterday, when she had turned round and seen him rubbing a strand of her hair against his face. She sat motionless beneath his hands.

"Is that what you bought from the peddler yesterday? At the Thistle and Lion?" she finally asked.

"As always, your powers of deductive reasoning amaze me, Weasley."

"Thank you." She continued to sit very still, but then she leaned back slightly, slowly, feeling her head barely brush his waist. Her hair grew smoother under the comb, straightening itself out into ripples of red-gold that flowed over her shoulders like a cloak. "You're very good at this, Malfoy. I wouldn't have thought, since you don't have sisters...do you? I think I would've heard, if you did..."

He kept combing and combing, the rhythmic touch of his hands on her head and neck almost sending her to sleep, or a state of trance. The mood between them seemed to ebb and flow according to some law of its own. So the peaceful crackling of the fire, the lateness of the hour, and his gentle, precise touch had conjured up a fragile comfort again, now.

"I used to do this for my mother, sometimes," he said. "When I was younger. Especially when we were at Linz." Ginny Weasley already knew about that; no point in keeping it secret. And he grew tired of guarding his words with her all the time. What a relief it was to stop doing it, however briefly. "Over the summers, when I was there... we would sit in the rose gardens, and I would comb her hair with a golden comb. Her hair was like spun gold itself, in the sun..."

His voice was so tender when he spoke of Narcissa Malfoy, she thought. He never seemed to mention his father. Ron had said once that he'd only seen or even heard of Draco Malfoy behaving decently on one occasion in his life, when Harry had insulted Malfoy's mother, and Draco had tried to hex him. Of course, seeing that piece of slime get bounced up and down the hall by Moody was the high point of my life up to then, Ron had said. Even though it really wasn't Moody. I reckon that Barty Crouch couldn't have been all bad... Still, I have to admit, I didn't think the little ferret had it in him. He actually loves his mum. D'you reckon that makes Malfoy human after all? What was that, Harry? You say that Hitler loved his mother, too? Who? Oh, a Muggle.

"She's very beautiful, your mother," said Ginny. "I saw her once. Just a glimpse, really."

"At that Quidditch World Cup two years ago?" Draco asked.

"No, although I suppose she must have been there, because you were."

"So you were there, as well." Draco kept his voice carefully noncomittal, running the comb through a strand of hair near her temple that was paler than the rest. He remembered how something in his chest had seemed to leap and sink at one heartbeat when he saw all the Weasleys sitting in front of his row in the top box, how a shimmering red-gold head had seemed to hang in his field of vision all that day, hovering just out of his reach like a malignant Snitch, and the nearly irresistible urge he'd felt to reach out and grab it...

Ginny snorted. "Yes, I was there, not that anyone probably remembers it except Mum and Hermione. I'd be surprised if any of the boys in that entire stadium even remembers there was a Quidditch match. After seeing those veela, I mean."

"You're probably right about that," he replied automatically, pulling part of her hair back over one ear.

"No, I saw your mother last year, one day over the holidays when Dad took us into Muggle London to see a Christmas pantomime. She was walking down Piccadilly with another witch, a friend of hers I suppose. They were wearing Muggle clothing, but you know how you can always tell. Mum looked at her as if she knew her-- I asked if she did, and she said the woman was Narcissa Malfoy, but that she didn't really know her to speak to. I knew which one of the two had to be your mother. She had such golden hair, and her friend was darker, brown hair, brown eyes...they walked past a Christmas display and then disappeared, I remember..." Ginny's voice drifted off. She knew that she was probably starting to babble, but there was something about the growing warmth of the room and the caressing touch of his hands that made her want to talk, and this subject seemed safe enough.

"Mm-hm." How odd. I thought that Mother was in Linz by that point last year. How could anybody have seen her in London? Mrs. Weasley must have got it wrong; Merlin knows, she doesn't look like the brightest candle on the Christmas tree. But in truth Draco had barely heard her; his mind was still running over the last things Ginny had said. That was it, that was what had been bothering him, what he'd been trying to remember. That was what the sensation he'd felt earlier had reminded him of, the feeling that had rushed through him when he looked at Ginny Weasley.

The veela.

A physical pull that could not be resisted, that was outside of thought and will and volition.

The gold and copper of her hair, glimmering and molten in the firelight, and the complex speckled gold of her eyes beneath bronze lashes, not quite turning to look up at him, cast down, towards the floor.

A long winter's night in the South of France one year before, a rose boudoir, a cup of chocolate, the touch of a white hand on his thigh...

The bed in the next room.

Her soft voice had been speaking for some time.

"--we'd usually have a snowball fight about now," Ginny was saying. "Four against three, but Fred and George would always fight on my side, so we'd usually win. Then we'd come indoors and drink hot cider."

Christmas. She was talking about Yule again, the holidays in her idyllic village home stuffed to bursting with Weasleys; she must be. But it was the most innocuous conversational topic he could think of just then, and Draco grasped at it. Anything to keep those thoughts out of his head. "Tell me more. What else did your family do?"

"I didn't think you'd be interested," she said. "We didn't exactly travel to exotic places or hold exclusive parties."

"Well, I am. I'm fascinated. I want to hear about every disgustingly cheerful poverty-stricken little Weasley custom-- come on, tell me!"

She drew back against the chair a little, slightly alarmed by the near-desperation in Draco's voice. God only knew what they did at Malfoy Manor for the holidays. Tortured a different prisoner brought up from the dungeons for each of the twelve days of Christmas, probably. "Well, er, we used to eat Snapdragons after the cider. We'd soak raisins in firewhiskey overnight and then Dad would light them with his wand. They'd dance around the table and turn cartwheels before going out, and then we'd eat them. We had little currant and saffron cakes, too; you couldn't eat your own, you had to eat someone else's, and I always ended up with Ron's--" Ginny talked on and on, dredging up every aspect of the Christmas celebration she could think of, until her voice grew hoarse and she had to stop. Wasn't he going to give any sort of a reply?

"Sounds like fun," Draco finally said. Scarcely a word she'd said had registered, and the sensations of panic and dread were still running through him, stronger than ever. But the sound of her voice pleased him, and soothed him as much as anything could soothe him. He wanted to keep hearing it. "Sorry I've made you miss it all."

That marked the second time in two days that he'd apologized to her. Ginny looked at Draco suspiciously. "It isn't as if I'd be at home if I weren't with you. I'd be, well--" Her voice faltered; where would she be? That question could not be answered, as it relied on far too many unknown factors, and too many incidents that she did not quite remember. "Somewhere preferable," she finished lamely.

"With someone else, I suppose."

"Well-- yes." With Ron. Oh, with Ron...

" Are you trying to tell me that I'd be at the very bottom of your list of companions for the Christmas hols?" Draco asked, his voice flippant.

"Are you kidding?" she scoffed, hoping that sarcasm might keep her from breaking into tears at the thought of her brother. God, but all her emotions seemed so close to the surface right now! "You wouldn't make it onto the same continent as the list."

"Ah, you cut me to the quick, Weasley. And to think that the Yuletide spirit was starting to wash over me at last. If I fail to grasp the true meaning of Christmas, it'll be all your fault." Draco shook his head sadly.

Ginny rolled her eyes at him. "I'm sorry if it hurts your feelings, but I can honestly say that I never planned to spend Christmas night with you, Malfoy, here or anywhere else. But then, how could I have expected any of this?"

He pondered her words for a long moment before answering. The truth was that, to him, it was starting to feel not only insane, but inevitable. L:ittle things, inconsequential in themselves, like a word exchanged with her; a look; a glimpse of her fiery head in the corridor between classes, had now turned, and revealed themselves in a new light. A chance meeting on the Hogwarts train. An artless touch of her hand. The strong profile of her face in the late winter sunlight of the fields past the Quidditch pitch, carried with her as she stole towards the clock tower.... (what made me think of that? I can almost, almost remember...) These things might have seemed unconnected and random when they happened, but he had a sudden feeling that they were really like the loose threads on the wrong side of a tapestry. When it was turned, the pattern would be revealed. And if he could see it before she could, the knowledge might be a weapon in his hand. Maybe this was what the voice had meant when it spoke to him at the crossroads; maybe he would have to make his own opportunities, and then the solution to his problems would drop into his lap.

She was staring into the fire. Draco ran the comb through the side part of her hair one more time; all the tangles were gone, but the feel of it sliding through the glistening dense mass of hair pleased him too much to resist. His hand touched the side of her cheek, lightly, as if by accident. She shuddered, a movement so tiny that it was barely perceptible. Ginny Weasley was so vulnerable right now, he sensed, open to all her memories of the past, of joyful Christmases gone beyond her reach, of the searing pain of happiness that could never be grasped again. If he pushed her in exactly the right way, oh, the things he could learn-- but he would have to be very, very careful.

"I don't think either of us would have expected this," Draco said, pulling the softest bit of hair into an intricate French braid over her ear, his fingertips brushing over the shell-like whorl of it. She shivered.

"What are you doing, Malfoy?"

"It's a Bavarian Christmas tradition," he lied. "All the women in the house have to have their hair done this way. It's pretty when it's finished; will you let me?"

"All right..." Her voice was very soft.

He probably could have told her that it was a hairdo transmitted directly from beauty salons on the planet Jupiter, and she would have given the same response. There were lavender shadows under her eyes, and her lids drooped almost closed. How exhausted she must be. And not thinking as quickly as usual, doubtless.

"What I don't understand is how it all started," she said dreamily.

Damn. This was almost too easy.

"I don't understand either. And I want to." His hands caressed her neck, just below her hairline. It might still have been because he was weaving little strands of red-gold into the braid. The tiny hairs on the delicate first knob of bone on her spine all stiffened. "Wouldn't you like to?" Draco asked.

"Yes... I suppose..." His hands moved downward, began kneading her shoulders. "What are you doing?" she repeated, her voice a little frightened.

"Your muscles are terribly tense. You'll wake up with a dreadful headache if the points of tension aren't worked out, and then we'll never get to Leith on time," Draco said truthfully. "Do you know how to take care of it?"

"No..."

"Then let me."

"Okay..."

He might have begun to speak again then, but on balance he decided that it was preferable to let her bring up the subject first.

"All I really remember is coming out of the Forbidden Forest," Ginny said.

"When we woke on the riverbank."

"And I tried to get away from you. Yes, I remember that very well." Her face darkened. "I've still got the bruises."

"You know I didn't mean to do that." Draco rubbed the knotted little hollows where her neck met her shoulders,and Ginny felt herself dissolving. Becoming boneless under his hands. It was a very pleasant feeling. Yet a little voice in her head was screaming a faint and distant warning. He's trying to find something out from me. He is! Oh, he thinks he can get round me so easily; I'll show him... but I don't know what he's trying to find out... there's still so much that I don't know, and maybe he does. Maybe I can turn his little tricks against him, and learn some things myself.

"You were so angry," she said. "I wonder why."

"Yes-- well-- why don't you tell me more about what you remember? Before we woke up, I mean?" There was a little spot right at the base of her skull, difficult to find, but if he could do it she'd be putty in his hands. Damn, where was it?

She shifted away from him. "That's too hard, Malfoy."

He forced his fingers to move more gently, fought to regain control over himself. "How about that?" he asked, his voice as calm and soothing as he could make it. And her muscles relaxed, just as he hoped they'd do.

"Nice..."he heard her say in a muffled voice. But then she went on. "It's as if I remembered what had happened when I first woke up, and then I didn't. Like a dream. But you chased me and tackled me on the riverbank; I do remember that..."

"Yes, yes, Weasley, but we're not talking about that, what about earlier?"

"I'm not talking about earlier. Whyever did you do that?"

There had surely never been anyone on the face of the earth so irritating as Ginny Weasley. Her voice was no longer soothing but more like splinters under his skin, and Draco's own voice rather lost its soothing, hypnotic quality. "Because you were trying to get away from me!"

"Why'd you want to catch me in the first place?"

"Because--" Draco clapped his mouth shut. The conversation was definitely getting away from him, as it always seemed to do when he spoke with her for any length of time. "I don't want to talk about that. I want to talk about what happened in the Forbidden Forest, the Dreamtime, before we ended up on the other side of the river. That's what I want to know."

"You mean you don't remember?" she asked innocently.

"No!" he exclaimed. "I don't. I don't." Draco began speaking faster, as if racing against some part of himself that would spring to life at any moment and remind him that he needed to shut up, that his clever little plan to find out what she knew without revealing anything on his own account had gone horribly wrong, somehow. "After I woke, I felt like I'd been in a mad dream-- or a vision-- and it just faded from me, I couldn't remember it! I felt as if it were incredibly important. There was a clock tower..."

Ginny gave a violent start. "I dreamed of that. The clock tower at Hogwarts-- or it was something like a dream-- when I was going through that strange place on the edge of the Forbidden Forest, on the way here. On the other side of the stream... before I woke up....." She looked up at him. In the flickering light of the fire, she was every shade of red and gold. "Malfoy, you were in it. Dream, or vision, or whatever it was. I can't ever seem to quite remember any of it. But you were there. I'm not mad, I know I'm not."

Slowly, he shook his head. "If you're mad, then so am I. Because I remember being there, too."

"Where was it?" she whispered.

"I don't know. I'm trying to think."

"You weren't just in it, Malfoy." Ginny put her shimmering head on her folded hands, staring into the fire. "You were with me."

Draco swallowed hard, not trusting himself to speak. He felt exactly as if he were inching out further and further onto a limb on the point of breaking. "Doing what?"

"Well, that's what I don't remember. But I almost felt as if you were...." Ginny looked down even further. "Inside me. And then you weren't," she mumbled. "And if you laugh at that I will smack you, Draco Malfoy!"

"I didn't say a word. You're the one with the dirty mind." But he couldn't suppress the smirk on his face; it was too much of a relief to have the mood lightened a little, a very little.

"Oh!" She turned back towards him, sitting up, her hand swiftly raised to him. He caught her arm in mid-air. Her mouth fell open into an O of surprise. Something crackled between them, wrist to wrist, hand to hand. A sizzle of red. It happened so quickly that it was possible to pretend it hadn't happened at all. It was over before either of them had had time to register it. Their minds, on balance, decided to ignore it. Their bodies could not. He did not drop her hand, and she did not pull her own away.

"Malfoy, I think I saw something," she whispered. "A memory, I mean, of what happened."

"What was it?" he asked softly.

"I don't know if I can describe it. It was nothing specific, not even an image. It was a feeling. I know where I was before I woke up on the other side of the riverbank. I don't see how this is possible, but I do know..."

"Where?"

She spoke very slowly. "It was in the place of my worst fears, and my greatest pain. So I know where it had to be."

"The Chamber of Secrets," Draco said. At her little start of surprise, he said, almost impatiently, "You told me. Last night, when we talked, after we'd both woken."

"The dream that wasn't a dream." Ginny bit her lip. "Yes, I know. I can't believe I thought it was one. I never would have done, except that in it-- well-- you were so kind. The way you spoke to me. The way you--" she hesitated. "The way you held my hand."

Draco dropped her wrist and moved further behind her, stepping almost entirely into the shadows beyond the fading firelight. "How is it possible that you were in the Chamber of Secrets? You were walking through the forest, and so was I."

"Well, I don't know, but that's where I was. Now you know and I hope you're happy. You might as well know the rest, I suppose. The dark lord Grindelwald was there, too." Ginny sensed rather than saw his violent start, behind her, but she kept speaking."I was facing something unendurable, at his hands. Something that couldn't even be contemplated. And you--" Her brow furrowed, and she spoke wonderingly, the bitterness leaving her voice. "You pulled me out of it."

He looked away, into the darkness entirely, so that she couldn't see any of his face at that moment. "Did I?"

"Yes. I don't know how. I don't pretend to understand any of it. Nothing seemed to make any sense in there, in that place that-- that I heard called the Dreamtime. But it's what you did." She listened for a long time, but there was no reply.

He had the information he'd wanted now, thought Draco. He would have given a great deal not to know it. He wanted her to shut up. He wanted her to go away. He wanted never to have found her, never to have captured her, never to have bonded himself to her. He wanted to push her down on the bed and stop her talking with his own mouth, to leave no square inch of her body untouched by his lips, until all speech had left both her and him, and only cries and moans and incoherent whispers remained. But even though her voice had lapsed into silence, her words seemed to go on and on, gentle and inexorable. It might have comforted him a little to know that Ginny was as shocked at what they'd learned as he had been; but then again, it might not have done.

He turned towards her. "We're not going to talk about this anymore."

"But-- but there's more. Much more. I think it might be important--"

"What did I just say to you?""

You started it, Malfoy. You pushed me to tell you what I told you! I didn't want to-"

"Let's get some sleep, Weasley."

Her shoulders went down in a defeated way; she seemed deflated, somehow, as if she'd hoped for something she had not received from him. "I'm not tired yet. I should be so exhausted from all that walking, but I'm not. Besides--" she glanced around the cavernous room, the shadowy ceiling lit by the flickering fire, the blackness beyond that, stretching into the ruined walls they could not see-- "I don't want to be in the dark, here, just yet."

"Well, I'm very tired, I don't care if you're not."

Ginny glanced at the edge of the great four-poster bed, peeping out from the alcove room, and then looked away. "Where are you going to sleep?"

"You're looking at it."

"Oh." Her voice was very small. "But--I thought-- on the floor--"

"Weasley, you're not sleeping on the floor."

"Well, no, but I thought maybe you--"

The look he gave her at that was answer enough. A blush stained her cheeks. His voice grew impatient.

"You're not going to haul out the maidenly-modesty song and dance routine, are you? It's a damn cold night and it will get colder. There are holes in the walls you could throw a cat through, or haven't you noticed? And I don't think that fire is going to make much difference. We've got nothing to keep us warm but some horse blankets and each other. I need you in that bed-- now get in it."

She averted her face at his last words. "I have to take care of the fire first." Ginny went about banking the fire to its embers for the night, dimming the light to a ruddy glow. Draco got into the bed himself and watched her from it, smoothing out the plaids and extra blankets around him. The shadows at the edge of the fire lengthened suddenly, taking on sinister mass and weight, and he understood all too well what she had meant about not wanting to be in the dark of Melrose Abbey. It was all making him a little afraid, too. Not that he would ever admit it. Draco had slept with a magical teddy bear that told stories and sang to him until he was ten years old, less than a year before he'd come to Hogwarts, but that was another thing that she just didn't need to know. Ginny Weasley as a substitute for my old Teddy... The thought made him smile, and she turned towards him at that precise moment. She didn't say anything, and he was secretly grateful. But she smiled too, quietly, unwillingly, in response to him. It was a smile more of the eyes than of the lips. Now what does that remind me of... some other time when I saw her smile that way...

Two opposing facts lay between them, so utterly at odds with each other that it hardly seemed possible for the tiny room to contain them both. They were and must be bitter enemies, he and she. And within a matter of moments, they would be lying down together in one bed. These facts converged into what he knew and she dimly suspected. All the arguments that both of them had been running in their heads were shadow shows, without form or substance. For warmth, for comfort, for the touch of another human being in this vast cold haunted place, or for whatever other reason there might be, the inexplicable thing that had taken shape between them would exert a pull too strong to be fought; one might as well expect a stone to hover in the air instead of dropping to earth. Draco would take Ginny in his arms, and she would not resist him.

He pulled back the blankets for her, and she crawled between them, giving a long sigh of relief. "It's so cold..." she murmured. He shifted slightly until one arm was over her shoulder and he'd pulled her back towards him, feeling her body pressed all along his. They both felt the shivering salute of flesh to flesh, even through layers of cloth, like two boats coming to ground at the same moment, and they both pretended that their senses could not be trusted in this matter. Pressing so closely together was, after all, the only sure way to stay warm.

"Do you really want to go to sleep just yet?" Ginny asked.

"No. I thought I did but now I don't."

"What do you want to do, then?"

Either you already know, Weasley-- in which case I'm not going to give you more ammunition to use against me, even if it kills me to keep from taking that poisoned gift you would offer-- or you don't. In which case you don't want to know. Believe me, you don't. You'd be better off sleeping out in the snow than here with me, I who might corrupt you, and destroy that innocence I am sometimes so sure I see in your eyes. "Let's talk for a bit," he said. "But not what we were talking about before. Something else. Let's talk about Christmas. Tell me more about Christmas at your house."

"All right. I think I've told you everything, though."

"Tell me about the first thing you'd do for the holidays. The very first. You haven't said that."

She was silent for a long moment, silent until the darkness began to press in upon them both and frighten him in a way he would have died before admitting. "I'd get on the train. I always felt that that was when Yule really started, with getting on the Hogwarts train. Knowing I was headed for home..." And the memories rushed over her; there seemed to be no way to avoid remembering this anymore and she was too tired to try.

It was an early winter evening one year before, the end of a long, cold, grey, winter's afternoon, only two days before Yule. They were bundling her onto the train, Harry and Ron and Hermione, tucking extra scarves around her as if she were an invalid, helping her up the little steps as if she'd stumble otherwise. Ginny wanted desperately to go home, but she wished she could Apparate and simply be there. They were all going to have to take this long, long train trip together, and none of them seemed able to look her straight in the face. She was stepping into their shared compartment-- for once, Ron had insisted that she ride with them--when she saw the shining head out of the corner of her eye, far down the corridor, and her mind marked it out without her knowledge or volition. He raised one of his long graceful hands to guide Pansy Parkinson onto the train, and Ginny saw that there was a bandage round it. Malfoy. What had he done to his hand, she wondered. Of course he would be taking the Hogwarts Express as well; he'd certainly been to the Yule Ball, as she remembered seeing him with Pansy. She turned away, rubbing her head. There was a dreadful headache hovering just behind her eyes, and it felt more likely to pounce now.

"Yes, I suppose I always felt that as well," said Draco. "That the train trip home was really the beginning of the holidays."

He had been tired beyond exhaustion, and he would have given damn near anything to get Pansy Parkinson to shut up. Last night, sleep had been even more elusive than usual, and he knew why. The clock tower had become his lair, a place to go to ground, a solitary sanctuary in those long twilight winter afternoons. And yesterday, the door had been locked. Locked, for the first time in all the times he'd ever gone there. He'd rattled at the doorknob in fury and frustration for a few moments, and then gone away again, pacing back and forth down one of the abandoned corridors in the dungeons off the Slytherin common room, clenching and unclenching his fists. All he wanted now was to find their compartment, their private compartment, thank all the gods for that, and sink down into soft cushions and sleep and sleep. If he could. But Pansy kept babbling on about some idiotic thing or other-- the coming party at Malfoy Manor, that was it. The one that was always held on his birthday. She'd been talking about the robes she planned to wear. "Pink shantung silk," she was saying, as if he gave a single damn. "With a slit up one side, and black heels--"

"You can come to the fucking party naked, for all I care, Pansy," he said impatiently. She'd turned towards him at the door to the compartment, her black-cherry eyes on him, her dark hair falling about her face like black water as she moved. "Really," she purred. "Would you like that, Draco?" Her words provoked an animal response in him, as they always did. He hated himself for it. She knew how to jerk him around on a short leash, how to feel her power, and he hated her even more for that. And as he'd looked at her narrowly, appraisingly, oh, he was getting good and goddamn sick and tired of her teasing games, Draco had seen something moving at the very edge of his vision. Something red and gold. His head turned towards it without thought. Ginny Weasley, following her brother through one of the sliding doors. She looked at him as well, for a fleeting moment only, and then dropped her gaze. Pansy's mouth twisted into an unpleasant shape. Without a word, she'd pulled him into the compartment.

"Last year, when I--" Ginny began, and then stopped.

Her brother and Harry and Hermione hadn't really wanted her in their compartment, she could tell. They never actually did, but somehow this year was different. She was cut off from them in some inexplicable way. Ron avoided her gaze, Hermione kept flashing her quick looks of something very like pity and then looking swiftly away, and Harry stared out the window as if he'd never seen anything quite so fascinating as the bleak landscape passing outside. Neville wasn't there, thank God; he was going home a day later, and Colin was staying at Hogwarts for the remainder of the holidays. The headache was pounding at her temples like someone hammering at a door.

"Are you all right, Ginny?" Hermione asked softly. Of the three, she seemed the least eager to avoid her.

"Headache," Ginny said briefly.

Hermione searched in her bag. "I don't have anything." The two boys had shaken their heads, again without looking at Ginny. She jumped up. "The witch with the trolley always has something. I'll go ask her."

"Oh no, Ginny, let me," Hermione said. "You stay and rest--"

But it was too late, Ginny was already out the door, nearly running, feeling as if she'd fled a jail. She was moving so fast that she tripped halfway down the corridor, falling against a closed door with a thump. Then, catching sight of the plump witch with the food trolley about to turn at the end of the hallway, she picked herself up and stumbled on.

"Last year, when you what?" asked Draco.

The compartment was utterly private, and there was hardly anyone on this train; the cold landscape of late afternoon sped by them outside, and it was possible to create the illusion that they were entirely alone. He'd pulled Pansy to him as soon as she slammed the sliding door shut, and they'd stumbled across the room and somehow now he was kneeling on the floor and guiding her head down to his from the seat above, and she was leaning forward and letting him kiss her. They kissed roughly, ungracefully, without much real pleasure on either side, Draco responding only to a kind of animal urgency that had something desperate in it, something burstingly frantic, and something empty as a seed-pod in the wind. He didn't like the feel or taste of her lips, and her hair was too fine and slippery under his hands. Her body was too thin, too small for his taste, and, as always, she seemed to be all unwelcoming sharp edges. He didn't like or want or desire her, but there was something he was trying to get through her, something that she kept dangling just out of his reach, something that gave her the whip hand over him at these moments. But there did seem to be something different about her this time, and he might have wondered what it was, if he'd been able to think at all just then.

They both stopped for a moment, and the sound of Draco's breathing was very loud in the still air. Hers was still unhurried. But then she never seemed to respond to him very much, or to what he did to her in these snogging sessions of theirs. Yet another thing he didn't like about her. How much more fun it would be to do this with a girl who let him know that she liked what he was doing, or even that she didn't like it, so he could do something different-- any sort of response had to be better than this. But he still felt the pull towards that instinctive animal need that came through her, and unsatisfactory as this always was, Draco still wanted more of it.

They had kissed, he had slipped his hands under her wool robe in front and felt under her blouse a little, and they were reaching the point, now, where she would always stop him. Draco looked up at her almost belligerently, thinking how bloody annoying it was that her face was still expressionless, smooth and calm. How jittery he felt, how restless and --well--itchy was the only word he could think of to describe it; he'd really welcome a bitter snarling fight right now if he couldn't get anything else. Deliberately, he moved one hand to her knee, beneath the dark folds of wool that fell to the floor. "Well?" he said, his voice drawling. "Isn't the part where you slap me, Pansy?"

She looked at him, considering. "No," she said. And she didn't stop him as his hand moved further up her leg. But she was still astonishingly unresponsive to his touch, running his hair through her hands briefly, skimming her fingers down his shoulders and along his chest, but with seemingly no more interest than a baby examining an unwanted cracker. There was a very small voice in Draco's head telling him that this wasn't right, that it wasn't what he had wanted, but he silenced it. This was the best he was going to get.

"Shit!" he swore, yanking his hand back and wringing the knuckles. He'd knocked his injured hand on the hard metal edge of the seat in his haste. But that wasn't loud enough to have made the sound he'd heard, like someone bumping against the door of the compartment, falling against it perhaps, and then scrambling up again. His head was turned in that direction and Pansy's was too; for the first time, she looked alert, like an animal scenting danger. And suddenly he knew what the noise was that he'd heard, and who had caused it, although he couldn't have said how he knew. She was like a violent streak of color in a world that had been shades of grey, Ginny Weasley, and he felt her presence without needing to see it. Draco rose to his feet.

"Oh--what is it, Draco?" asked Pansy, trying and failing to catch at him. She looked at the clumsy sticking-plaster and bandage. "However did you do that? You ought to have it looked at-- Madam Pomfrey never put that dressing on."

"Never you mind," he said curtly.

She looked up at him, her mouth an O of surprise. "Where are you going?"

"Out." His head was pounding in time with his throbbing hand; he could feel a dreadful headache starting. The only hope was to find some Naproxis powders, right away. The witch who pushed the food trolley generally had some.

Ginny had said nothing for a very long time. Her voice was very soft in the cold darkness when she did speak, her lips so close to Draco's ear that he could feel the warmth of her mouth. "When I saw you on the train. When we-- met." What an incredible relief it was to stop avoiding that subject.

"You're in luck, dearie," the witch had said. "Let me see... one last packet, I think... yes, here it is." She fished out the sparkling gold paper packet labeled "Dr. Fizzwhig's Naproxis Powders-- Guaranteed Relief in .0003 Milliseconds or Quintuple Your Money Back!", and Ginny had taken it, gratefully. But once the plump, grey-haired witch had wheeled her squeaking trolley further down the corridor, she'd leaned against the wall, holding the accompanying glass of water in her right hand, oddly reluctant to pour in the opened package and drink the concoction. Naproxis powders erased even the worst headache and the fizzy sensation that wriggled down to one's stomach was very pleasant, but they also had a way of fogging up one's thinking. Ginny couldn't decide if she wanted that or not. Perhaps she did. The shadowy half-memories from the day before were a torment; there were so many things that she could almost remember. The clock tower. The snow, the bare black branches of the trees against the sky... but seen very high up, as if from a small window. Harry's voice. Why me? Why is it always me? And something else she'd seen from that great height; a fair head against a black cloak, brilliantly silver-gilt even when silhouetted against the snow...

Mulling over the things she could not quite remember, Ginny hadn't heard the footsteps coming toward her until it was too late, until the same blond head was thrust into her field of vision, and the same elegant, patrician face confronted hers. But then she could only think that she should have known, should have felt his presence in the corridor. There was something about Draco Malfoy that was like a discordant note of music in a symphony, or a jarring tritone in a group of sedate major chords. He's so pale, she'd thought. Even paler than usual...I wonder if he's ill, or in pain, he almost looks as if he is. Yes, I think he is.

"All right, Weasley," Draco had said. "Hand it over."

"When we met," he said, tonelessly. "Yes. I remember that. I was dreadfully rude to you."

"Yes, you were," she said, turning her face away from him, towards the wall.

"Wh-- what?" she'd stammered.

"The last packet of Naproxis powders that you bought out from under me, that's what." Malfoy was still standing several feet away from her, as if she were so unimportant that his orders need only be given at a distance. Or, she'd thought, as if he's afraid I might get Weasley dirt on him. By osmosis or something.

"I paid for it! What on earth makes you think I'm going to give it to you?" Ginny glared at him.

"For Merlin's sake, Weasley, I'll pay you," he said impatiently. "I need it."

"I need it as well."

"Not as much as I do. Come on. I don't want to wait any longer."

He raised his hand towards her in an imperious, beckoning gesture, and she saw the bandage more clearly.

"For your hand, I suppose?" Ginny peered at it, curious in spite of herself. "That's the worst bandaging job I've ever seen. Must've been done by a house-elf drunk on butterbeer. How'd it happen, anyway?"

Draco's face had seemed to close at that question, and his lips had twisted oddly. "That's not your look-out, Weasley," he'd said in a voice that held a hint of menace. "I want those powders." He'd made a sudden movement then, as if to grab them out of her hand, but Ginny had swiftly thrust them down her robes and under her blouse.

"Now if you're quite done," she'd said icily, and turned to go back to her compartment. But he'd grabbed her wrist as she whirled round, pulling her towards him, and at the feel of his hand on her skin, the feel of the very first time he had ever touched her, she gasped, and looked up into his face.

Afterwards, Ginny couldn't remember anything clearly about this moment; she had a vague image of a glowering mouth, a pair of silvery eyes burning with anger, and one clear thought pounding even above the frightened beating of her heart. This was no longer a game, if it ever had been. Ginny thought despairingly that she was a fool. This was not the way she normally behaved; this wasn't like her at all. A burst of weird courage had flooded through her when he'd been so nasty, followed by a determination not to let anyone else get what she so desperately needed. Especially not him. She fully deserved whatever she got as a result of her stupid behavior. Why she'd thought that hiding the packet of Naproxis powders down the front of her blouse would do any good, God only knew, of course. As if that would stop Draco Malfoy.

"Give them to me," he hissed.

"No," she said in a small, trembling voice, backing against the wall of the train car.

A smile curved up one corner of his mouth, lending his pale face a more sinister look than ever. "Then I'll just have to take them from you." And she had stood stock still, watching his uninjured hand coming closer and closer to the front of her robes.

Behind them, a door was thrown open. Both of their heads turned, reflexively, toward the sound. "Just what in the hell is going on here?" a cold voice asked. The voice of Pansy Parkinson.

Draco stopped his forward motion, turning further towards Pansy, and Ginny took that moment to flee down the corridor and into her compartment. "Did you find them?" Hermione had asked as soon as she'd returned, and Ginny had only nodded, tipping the powders into the cup and drinking them down so fast that her nose and mouth stung for several minutes afterwards.

Every answer Draco could make to that seemed booby-trapped, and lined with spells to catch the unwary. "Yes," he finally said. "I remember that." It seemed the safest response possible. "I wasn't-- quite well at the time," he added, when the silence between them stretched on and on.

"And you didn't come back to Hogwarts right after the winter hols, did you, Malfoy?" Ginny asked, her brow puckering into a frown of concentration. "It seems like I don't remember seeing you until January was almost over. I think Ron found it dull without you hanging about and insulting him all the time... were you ill then?"

"Yes," he said. "Very ill."

"What was all that about?" Pansy had hissed as soon as the door to their private compartment slammed shut.

"Nothing,"said Draco, collapsing into a seat. His head had begun to pound with savage little pulses of spiked red pain.

"What was Weasley doing?"

"Nothing."

"What were you doing?"

"Nothing." Draco wondered if he could get away with killing Pansy and throwing her body out the window of the moving train. His father had always covered for him up to now; the matter of the hippogriff two years before had been an excellent case in point, but there might be limits to even Lucius Malfoy's influence.

She was looking at him oddly. "You didn't have that bandage the night of the Yule ball. I'm sure you didn't... I would have seen it when we were dancing. How did you hurt your hand, Draco?"

Draco did not reply. He didn't entirely trust himself to speak. If he opened his mouth, unpleasant truths might begin to fall out. It happened at the very end of the Yule Ball, after the dancing, after the drinking, after those endless conversations with all of your stupid Slytherin friends at the table, and don't think I didn't see the way you were glaring daggers at Xanthia and Milicent and Sadina, you're not as subtle as you think, Pansy. But you gave me one kiss at midnight and then said that was enough, that I wasn't getting any more out of you, that you wouldn't go out to the rose gardens with me for a breath of fresh air, that you knew what I wanted and it wasn't to see roses. Remember when I left you standing there and went out by myself and wandered through the rosebush maze, not knowing or caring where I went... until I saw them behind a marble fountain, and they didn't see me. Ginny Weasley, and that sniveling little bastard Colin Creevey. He kissed her. He kissed her, and she let him do it, and I couldn't reveal myself then. I only watched. Oh, I was doomed to watch those two, Pansy, like a ghost appointed to haunt them. And when she pulled herself apart from Creevey and they left, walking through a maze of pink roses, I watched that red-gold head until it disappeared. Then I turned and smashed my fist into the side of the marble fountain, as hard as I could. That's how I hurt my hand. It was stupid, stupid. I didn't go to Madam Pomfrey because I couldn't bear the thought of having to explain anything about it. So I bandaged it myself, as best I could, and it hurts like hell... but not so badly as it does to remember that moment, Pansy.

Pansy had crept up to Draco on the seat of the train then, putting her hand on his thigh, under his robes. He wondered if this was how it would feel to have a giant spider crawling on his leg, this skittery, unpleasant sensation. "Don't," he said. "Don't touch me."

She smiled mockingly. "You were happy enough to have me touching you a few minutes ago."

"Well, I don't want you doing it now." He moved away from her slightly. "Either leave off or go inflict yourself on someone else, Parkinson."

But she didn't go away, and although Draco kept his head resolutely turned away from her, he heard her soft laughter. She knew that he would change his tune soon enough, and so did he. Damn this weakness of the body, damn it to every hell there was. How he longed to turn to her and snarl out his real thoughts. If there was any other girl at Hogwarts or anywhere else who would please my father half so much, I'd be with her instead of you. But my father likes you, the gods only know why, and you're what he wants for me. There's got to be another way, there's absolutely got to be--but then there's that power you've got over me, or that you think you have. How I wish I could tell you that one touch of Ginny Weasley's wrist under my hand made me forget you walked the bloody earth. But I'll never tell you, or anyone, that. It is a secret I will keep locked within my mind, inviolate, untouched and untouchable, until the day I die.

Ginny shifted restlessly. They were pressed so close to each other for warmth in the great bed that Draco could feel every movement of her body. She hadn't spoken in several minutes, but he certainly could tell that she wasn't asleep. Perhaps that was a very clever move on her part, he thought. She was allowing him to remember every detail of that train trip a year before, to run over and over them in his head. Perhaps there was an invisible yet intricate web that she'd spun between then and now, perhaps everything that had seemed accidental was not, and everything that had seemed under his control was not only slipping out of his grasp, but had never really been in it. Perhaps... perhaps his father had been right, when he'd said the things he'd said during their long, strange conversation on the night of his sixteenth birthday at Malfoy Manor, one year before...

She turned her head towards the window then, and a ray of moonlight struck her face. A tear glistened on her cheek, and her eyes were wide and sad.

"What is it?" Draco whispered.

"Nothing, " Ginny said. She had kept the events of that train journey in her heart, and pondered them in the depths of the night, when she could not sleep. She had never admitted, even to herself, that she was doing so, and had nearly managed to convince herself that the entire thing was long forgotten. "I was only thinking of Christmas night," she said, not entirely untruthfully. "It must be nine o'clock by now, at least. My favorite part of the entire holiday. We would sing Yule carols..." Her voice caught, remembering those long winter nights at the Burrow.

"Tell me."

She began talking rapidly, desperate to keep her mind off everything that had pained her, knowing that it was a futile effort if there'd ever been one. "We'd sing from a little book called Secular Christmas Music for the Wizarding Family, mostly. Jingle Bells, Winter Wonderland, Frosty the Snowman, Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas. That sort of thing. Then we'd do some pagan carols too-- The Seven Joys of Mary was my mother's favorite. She has a sort of husky contralto; my father's a deep bass, Bill, Charlie, and Percy are all decent tenors. Fred and George mouth the words, since they couldn't carry a tune in a cauldron. I always liked The Boar's Head Carol best-- I'd sing duets with Ron--" And her throat closed at the thought of Ron's fiery head bent over the music book next to hers, his pure clear voice raised in counterpoint harmony with hers.

Draco's voice was very soft when he spoke again. "You can sing now, if you like."

Ginny shook her head. "No." I couldn't bear it. "I wouldn't want to sing without--without the rest of them. Especially Ron."

"You love your brothers, don't you," Draco said thoughtfully. "But him more than the rest, I think."

"Yes." Dimly, Ginny wondered if there might be something unwise about admitting this fact to Draco Malfoy. But surely he already knew it.

"Yet he seemed so cold towards you this year. So distant. He hardly ever spoke to you, did he? Didn't seem very loving to me..."

He was speaking her deepest fears, the ones she suppressed instantly whenever they threatened to surface in her narrow bed in the darkest hours of the night. After Ron had pushed her away in the past year, turned his back and hurried in another direction when he saw her coming, and spoken so briefly and coolly to her when he was forced to do so, awful thoughts bubbled up in her at those most vulnerable times. She remembered the terrible visions that had come to her when she'd been running through the Dreamtime, a single piece of memory dredged up from the swirl of half-remembered things. Ron had heard her calling after him but he didn't want her, thought her too scarred, too damaged. He had abandoned her to her fate.

"You don't know anything about it," Ginny said fiercely. "How could you possibly understand? I could never explain it to someone like you. He is-- it feels like more than a tie of blood, he's the brother of my heart--" She broke off, aware that she had said more than she'd meant to say. "I would die before I'd hurt Ron. I would. I would. You've never loved anyone or anything in your whole life. So you couldn't understand that, Malfoy." Even as Ginny said the words, she knew that they were not quite fair, because she did believe that he loved his mother. But she had said too much, and was dismally aware that she could not, now, take it back. She'd felt his body stiffen as if he'd been slapped.

"I'm sorry," she whispered.

"It doesn't matter," he said at last. "Maybe you're right, Weasley."

Ginny shivered. A draft had eddied in from one of the broken windows in the room, and it had suddenly grown quite cold. Draco pulled the blankets over them both, tucking the ends carefully under her. She lay very still. His hands were touching her as he moved, and despite everything she knew, everything she guessed, and everything she feared, the feeling was a good one. That was a truth that could not be denied, no matter how much she might long to do so. "Let's get some sleep," he whispered. Then he pulled her close to him, and she let him do it.

He knew that he would use her to get to Ron, if he could; use her to betray and hurt all her friends, if he might. She had just told him that she would die, first. The words had not been spoken quite so plainly, but they both were perfectly aware of what they had each meant. Yet Ginny Weasley laid her head on Draco Malfoy's shoulder and felt the warm firm corded muscles beneath his robe, and heard the beat of his heart, and let all her breath out in a long, long sigh, and, for the moment at least, was no longer afraid of the dark. She could pretend, if she pleased, that he was not who and what she knew him to be. He was another human being lying close to her; and, even if only for this night, that was all that mattered. Her eyes closed. "Sleep," he repeated in a whisper, his lips nearly against her ear, and he prayed that there would be no further speech between them that night. But Ginny said not another word, and her breathing slowed, becoming deep, even, and regular.

Lying next to her, Draco ached to follow her. To slip into whatever dreams might come. But he couldn't, he mustn't. He had to sort through everything that had happened and come up with some sort of coherent plan. Less than twenty-four hours from now, they'd be in Leith, and he had to know what he was going to do then. He supposed that he really should get up; pacing out in the cold center of the room would probably clear his head. But Ginny had intertwined her body with his; she had snuggled back into his chest and pulled his arms over her, scissoring her legs with his in the unconscious movements of sleep, and he knew he would wake her if he moved. So Draco only pulled back a little, staring into the darkness over Ginny's bright head. He tried to think.

First things first, as his father was so fond of saying. How could he use her to get to the others? He'd tried to get her to tell him where she and her brother had arranged to meet. She'd claimed she didn't know. A wave of something like shame washed over him as he remembered how he'd backed down at the last moment, hadn't been able to force her to tell. But that wasn't his fault; the Hexensymbol bond didn't permit him to use that kind of coercion against her. Ah, but there was more to it than that, wasn't there? a little voice reminded him. You didn't want to do it. You didn't want to hurt her...

All right-- so I didn't, Draco mentally replied. I can't make her tell me where her brother is. So how the hell am I going to find out? Any bright ideas about that?

But the voice, having spoken its piece, was silent.

He looked down at her, and watched her chest rise and fall with each breath. Her face was lit by the cool rich moonlight; he looked at the strong high cheekbones, the stubborn chin, the beautiful lines of her brow and lashes, all so marked and clear-cut, as if carved from marble. There was something rocklike about her, he thought; beneath her shyness and her temper and her moments of humor and intelligence and vulnerability, there was something always guarded. Not only in her body, but her mind, her soul, her spirit. She had built a Ginny-fortress and pulled the drawbridge up, long ago. Perhaps Tom Riddle had done that to her; he didn't know. Draco remembered what he had asked her the night before, when they had both woken in that dark hour before dawn, and what she had answered. The fact that he'd asked her at all had surprised him; her answer had not. He'd never really thought that she had been physically harmed by what happened to her in the Chamber of Secrets when she was twelve years old, but she had been hurt nonetheless, and her scars were no less terrible because they didn't show.

Strange thoughts sifted through Draco's head as he looked down at Ginny, sleeping beside him. He wanted to reach down within her and grasp some part of her that she had kept inviolate. He wanted to breach the fortress walls that had stood about her for so long and feel them crashing round him as he claimed her. Like the prince who pushed past the bower of thorns to rescue Sleeping Beauty from her prison of dreams, he wanted to penetrate to some heart of her that no-one had ever touched. Draco didn't know if wanted to rescue her or to capture her, and a shudder ran down his skin when he realized that he had already tried to do both. His hand trailed down her arm, just lightly enough to keep from waking her, and he watched it as if it belonged to someone else. He was trapped within a prison of his own making, and he realized it at last.

Draco turned away abruptly, forcing himself to stare into the darkness, away from Ginny Weasley, to ignore the soft breathing he could still hear. This is insane. Utterly, completely, totally insane. What is it that I think I'm going to do, anyway? Oh,I can just hear how this conversation would go...

Weasley, wake up, he'd say, shaking her shoulder.

Mmm.. what is it? she'd respond, one eye half-open, every red hair sticking out in a different direction.

I need to do something.

Well, can't you just do it, then, and let me sleep?

Ah, no, not really. It doesn't work that way.

For God's sake, Malfoy, just do whatever it is you need to do. I want to go back to sleep.

You want to be awake for this. Trust me.

A long, aggravated sigh. How long is it going to take? Could you get it over with in, say, thirty seconds?

No, I really couldn't. Could you give me, say, three hours? Or all night would be even better. Is a week good for you? How about a week? Of course, Weasley, you couldn't get out of bed during any of that time...

His own thoughts made him smile, even with the violent feelings tearing through him, and that was a bit of a respite. There had to be a way to get through this; there simply had to be. Logic. That was the key. Draco struggled to think as logically as he could, and even though the exercise was a bit like trying to remember Arithmancy tables in the middle of a hurricane, he managed to force this frantic, disconnected moment into some sort of order.

What he felt was not lessened; it still burned in him like some unbearably hot and heavy weight attached to every part of his body. But there had to be a way to shape it into something more impersonal, more removed from the specificity of this precise girl lying on the other side of the bed, this Ginny Weasley. Maybe it wasn't her body he wanted to feel, her hair he wanted to see falling around him like a shining mantle, her voice he wanted to hear, her breathing shaped into incoherent moaning words in his ear, but just... anybody's.

Draco turned back towards Ginny and looked down at her again. The answer was really very simple. Of course it was. A year of sleep deprivation. Torturous thoughts running through his head in the deepest part of the night, eyes burning, lying awake like a damned soul in the seventh circle of hell. Slipping further and further from the place that had always been waiting for him--the place he was created for--and nearly throwing it away out of stupidity and weakness and this idiotic desire he always had to do his own will, his disloyal failures of disobedience. Coming so close to getting it all back, and then, oh, and then, seeing it slip through his fingers. His teeth clenched when he thought of that; the pang of loss, what he'd had so briefly, with Lord Grindelwald, what had been taken away, and the gods only knew if he had any chance of ever finding it again.

Add all of it together, and it apparently came out to some sort of weird nervous breakdown.

Not exactly a pleasant thought, but in its bizarre way almost a cheering one. When Draco remembered that morning in the hayloft, waking with Ginny Weasley still sleeping at his side, or worse yet, that afternoon on the cart track, wanting to throw her down and tear her clothes off in ragged shreds and take her right there in the dirt, wanting to hear her beg him for it, wanting to make her beg him for it... he felt exactly as if he were dangling one foot over the edge of the earth. Any sort of logical explanation was better than that, and this one did make sense. Perfect sense, he repeated to himself, curling a strand of her hair around one of his fingers, pulling it from the loose braids he had made. It was incredibly soft.

It wasn't her that he craved so much, not Ginny specifically. Of course not. But he was bound to want what he always wanted. He thought of these damn bodily desires that had so threatened to break his control over the past few years, the animal demands of biology, the crude call of meat to meat. It was a bit much to expect them all to conveniently disappear because he was with her morning, noon, and night. This was no different from all those godawful moments when he had broken down and snogged Pansy, each time feeling like a betrayal of himself. Of course it wasn't. The body always craved what was unwise. And so this part of him had simply gone wild, like a mad goat dragging its owner through hell, and twisted his reason and his will further than ever before. After an entire autumn of celibacy, made worse by that idiotic nonsense with Pansy Parkinson, it was probably inevitable. Thrown together day and night with a girl, any girl, he was bound to have this reaction. Unless she was an utter troll, and Ginny Weasley wasn't that. Knowing these things ought to lend him a bit of control. He only needed a few more days' worth, at most. If lust, the pull of flesh to flesh, was all he felt, and, of course, it was, well, that was something he could fight. Draco turned over in the big bed and looked at her appraisingly. It was a sort of discipline; a test, and he was cheered to find that he was simply examining Ginny, point by point, as he might watch a filly sleeping in a Kentish field.

As large as the bed was, her feet were nearly hanging off the edge. She was so tall. He'd never cared for that. Had he? Certainly, he'd never had anything to do with a girl that tall. ( Except for Marie-France Tessier-- but then, she hadn't been a girl, but a woman; and that was an entirely different sort of thing anyway. Draco pushed that memory back into its locked compartment.) Her shoulders were very square beneath the blankets, and her arms and wrists shapely and strong. He thought again of how she'd walked ahead of him all that day, of how differently she moved from the girls he'd seduced that year, Xanthia and Sadina and Millicent and all the rest. And of course Pansy Parkinson, although, thank all the gods, things had never gone that far with her. Ginny Weasley didn't have any of their coy, mincing, female-impersonator quality-- he shook himsef-- no, no, their delicacy, their grace. She could hardly have presented a greater contrast to someone like Pansy.

But she had a bold, almost boyish grace of her own. The memory of her strong, deliberate movements lent her a touch of the girl soldier or female Viking; a touch only, which her sleeping body effortlessly contradicted. She was slender in some places and voluptuous in others, taut as a piece of sculpture, but her strength only seemed to emphasize further what was feminine about her. The womanly S-curve of arm and breast and waist and hip and leg was more pronounced in her body than in any girl he'd ever known, more defined, and that was very nice indeed. He liked her height after all, he decided. The fact that she was nearly as tall as he oddly pleased him. Pansy in particular was so tiny and delicate that he'd always wondered if she was going to break under his hands by accident-- never mind what he wanted to do her on purpose-- but Ginny wouldn't feel that way. It made her seem like his equal. His match. Or perhaps more than that. What lurked behind that innocent face of hers?

If he woke her now, kissing her bared shoulder, or nipping at her smooth white neck with the edges of his teeth, would she only grin at him in triumph, her golden eyes sparkling with the victory she knew she was soon to grasp? Would she laugh in his face before stretching out on the bed, her hair spilling behind her like writhing snakes forged from copper and gold? Would she say, Yes, Draco Malfoy, I've more than matched you--I've won. So what are you going to do about it?

It didn't matter if she did, because he already knew what he would do. Knowing that he jumped off a precipice into a bottomless pit of fire, he would seize her in his arms nonetheless. And he would fall, and fall, and burn, burn, burn himself to ashes on the flame that was Ginny Weasley. He had no power to do other. And the worst part of all was that he didn't know why, and that the answer seemed so teasingly near to him, so thoroughly out of his reach. If he could have smashed his fist into the wall without waking her, he would have done it. Or any other violent, savage thing-- something, anything, to blot out the madness that was seizing him.

Draco took a deep breath, realizing that he was shaking from head to foot. Incredible that she still slept so peacefully, her lips slightly parted, her face smooth and untroubled. He would do nothing. Nothing. Clean, pure nothing. He was strong enough to fight this, and he would fight it. Ginny Weasley could never be anything to him at all. Not a lover, not a friend; not a companion, not a comrade. Not even a source of simple bodily release. And he knew why. He had always known why, even before that strange night one year ago, on his sixteenth birthday, when his father had finally told him the answer.

But there was one thing that she could be, after all; only one, and it was the one thing that she must be to him. His guide into sleep, the sleep that had eluded him for so long by then. Maybe this was weakness as well, but he knew he couldn't bear to return to the staring wakeful horrors that had marked every single night of the past year. Every one, that is, except for the last two. So Draco lay back down again, taking Ginny's body in his arms, feeling her under his hands, drifting into blessed, blessed oblivion. She calmed him so, which was strange, considering that he'd wanted to put his fist through a stone wall while looking at her five minutes ago. The terrible tension seemed to flow out of him once he was actually touching her. It'll all come right somehow, he thought, drowsily. The answers will come to me... I don't know how, but they will... they will.

Around him and her, on that icy Christmas night, Melrose Abbey lay sleeping too. Yet from the sleep of a place so long sacred, strange dreams came. There was a ghostly chanting about the room where they lay, as of long-dead monks and nuns moving in their long processions to the church, robed and veiled in black. Accépta tibi sit Dómine quæsumus hodiérnæ festivitátis oblátio: ut tua grátia largiénte, per hæc sacrosáncta commércia, in illíus inveniámur forma... Wandering at the razor's edge of sleep and waking, Ginny Weasley nearly heard the voices, and twitched restlessly. There was the murmuring sound of other voices, older ones, offering sacrifice and sacrament before the Emperor Constantine ever saw a fiery cross in the sky and converted his Roman legions to Christianity, but that was less distinct, more secret. Draco Malfoy almost heard those whispers, and shivered deeply, the magic that had been trained in him responding to a far older magic than anything he had ever learned. And it might well be that there were other voices too, other visions. To a certainty, there were luminous beings, perhaps dark and terrible, perhaps light and glorious, who walked a road east of the sun and west of the moon towards the pair that lay in the great bed in the guest chamber at Melrose Abbey. This way leading onto way had grown longer with the mortal years, since the world of man drifted further from the Dreamtime. Yet the veil between world and world wore thin, on Yule.

In the Hogsmeade-that-was-to-be, at the start of a long winter's night in the last days of 1996, a woman cloaked in green sat at a back table at the Three Broomsticks, a hood pulled over her head so that she lurked in shadow, set apart from the merriment and revelry in the room. Her hands were strong, pale, and graceful as she reached for her glass of mulled wine, and her face flashed briefly into the dim little pool of light flickering forth from a single candle stub on the table. As with most witches, it would have been impossible to guess her age; the pretty face with its bitter-chocolate eyes, high cheekbones, and slightly crooked nose was young, but with an overlay of maturity. The strand of hair falling out of her cloak was long and red-gold, and on her rose-petal mouth lingered a folded little cat-smile as she waited for Remus Lupin. Whoever she was, she had the look of a woman who will not need to wait much longer, and who knows that her time is at hand.

On that cold Yule night in 1566, the not-quite-tangible wheels of a carriage rolled past a hollow cupped into the side of the King's Road, and a girl huddled there in cloaks shuddered at the sound, wrapping them more tightly around her in her hiding place. She had traveled by strange roads that lent her feet great speed, and she knew that she would reach Leith before they did. Pansy Parkinson clasped the magical thing she'd made that day in its wrapping of coarse brown cloth, and smiled grimly to herself, sure that she would win this battle of wits. She knew more than they thought she did, Lucius Malfoy and the Death Eaters.

In a sleeping compartment of the carriage that trundled slowly on the road to Leith, Ron Weasley tossed, and turned, and wrapped his pillow around his ears in restless sleep. A head of red-gold hair was haunting his dreams, too. A face, pale as death; a pair of golden eyes turned up to him in desperate entreaty. And a voice, calling to him on a winter's road past the Forbidden Forest. Impossible to tell where it came from, or where it was going; impossible to know if it was real, or merely conjured from his own guilt. I am coming! Oh, wait for me! Wait for me! And he had not waited.

In a sitting room of the same carriage not a hundred yards from where he lay, Lucius Malfoy sat staring out into the night, hand wrapped around a dram of kobold-brewed peat whisky. The thoughts running through his head could not have been described. Deceit; dark magic; betrayal; revenge; the cold thrill of seizing powers forbidden to mortal men; the subtle delights of madness, so narrowly escaped. The face of his father, Michel. A blurry photograph of his grandfather, Gabriel, in the odd flounced robes of wizards in the French Pyrénées at the turn of the twentieth century, taken long before what had happened, had happened. It is you who must take revenge, my son, Michel had whispered to him, ah, so many times. You, and yours. For revenge is a dish best served cold, and its taste is sweet...

All things were converging into one another, Lucius sensed. Rolling towards an inevitable collision with fate, with destiny; the first of many. Not exactly as he had hoped, not precisely as he had worked for, but it was coming nonetheless. He wondered if any work of his hands could have shaped it otherwise.

Where did I go wrong with you, Draco? I wish I truly felt all the confidence in you that I expressed to Severus, but I can't. What misstep did I make, what wrong turning did I take that drove you to this thing? Ah, but then all roads lead from last Yule, do they not? Yet I only did what I must... Perhaps I should have taken you into my confidence, as you thought I did do. Tell all the truth, but tell it slant; success in circuit lies. I told you all I could on that Christmas night a year ago, Draco. All that I judged it was safe to tell you. But I did not tell you all I knew. Do I regret it now? I wonder. Regrets are useless. Soon...soon I will discover what stuff you are really made of, my son... soon I will know if I can truly trust you, in the pinch...

And perhaps this was why the echo of Lucius Malfoy's remembered words followed Draco into sleep as he lay in Ginny's arms at Melrose Abbey, shaping his dreams into the continuing memories of what had been, one year before. And it was into this dream, a dream of the event that had seemingly set all the other events into motion, the chain forged link by link that had shaped so very much of what he now was, that Draco Malfoy fell.