The Quick and the Dead

"Ron." Harry's concerned face came into focus above him. "Ron, are you all right, mate?"

Ron tried to answer, but he couldn't seem to speak. He tried to sit up, but his body was completely drained of strength. He flopped back down onto the sofa.

"I shouldn't have done this," whispered Harry. "It wasn't safe."

"Move," said a brisk voice that Ron had some trouble in identifying as Luna's. Long blond hair brushed his face as she bent over him. "I've been trained in this at school." Ron scarcely had a second to wonder what she meant before her mouth came down on his.

Her felt the warmth of her lips on his own, and she tasted of some indefinable bittersweet herb or fruit. She pushed air into his lungs, and she smelled of the little white flowers that used to grow around the edge of the lake at Hogwarts in the spring. The room came into focus around her worried face.

"'M all right," mumbled Ron, having allowed her to keep up the contact longer than was strictly necessary. She helped him to sit up.

"I knew mouth-to-mouth resuscitation would be valuable, sooner or later," Luna said, beaming.

"Are you really all right?" asked Harry.

"Fine," said Ron. "My head hurts a bit, I suppose."

"I'll make some willow bark tea," said Luna happily, and she bustled off to the kitchen. Ron sat up, feeling rather as if the dwarves he'd imagined prospecting for gold in his head a few days ago had moved around to the back of his skull and had now started to strip-mine. Harry looked at him soberly.

"I'm sorry," he said.

"Nothing to be sorry about," said Ron. "I was more than willing to do it. Could've said no."

"Did you... see anything?" Harry asked, his voice quiet. Ron could hear Luna moving dishes; she would clearly be back in the living room at any moment. He looks so concerned, thought Ron. He cares. He's worried about me. So's Luna. I must be very careful now. Very cautious...

"No," said Ron. "Not really," he added, feeling that the simple negative sounded less than convincing. "A whole bunch of images that didn't make much sense. Just random things. They were all from sixth year, though."

Harry sighed. "So there wasn't even any point in putting you through that, then."

"Keep trying," said Ron. "Keep working on it. You never know what you might find out."

"I suppose so. Listen, Hermione wants us all to meet next week--she said Millicent had told her she had something on Pansy Parkinson. "

"Oh yeah, sure. Let me know," said Ron. By next week, we won't need to find out about Pansy Parkinson or anybody else. I don't need to find out anything else now. I know. But I mustn't let Harry and Luna know that I know... they'll try to stop me if they do...

Luna returned with steaming cups of tea.

"Can't have any, sorry," said Harry, getting up and shouldering his backpack. "I'm already going to be late for night tracking class. I'll owl you, Ron."

Ron said goodbye and then sipped at his tea, grateful for the chance to hide his face from Luna for a few moments. He'd always been afraid that she saw too much, and her big, unblinking blue eyes were certainly trained on him now.

"Thanks for what you did, Luna," he said, after a few minutes of silence that made him very nervous.

"It was nothing," said Luna serenely. "I think you would have been all right anyway. But it was a good chance for me to practice the technique."

"Uh--yeah. Right." Ron could still feel his mouth tingling where she'd touched him. Other parts of him were tingling as well, when he looked at Luna. But that was far from the only sensation ripping through him right now, and the others were all dark and vicious and violent, and focused on Draco Malfoy.

"You don't look well," observed Luna.

Ron got up, leaving his tea half-finished. "Goodbye, Luna," he said, and he hurried out the door, pulling on his jacket as he went.

+++

Ron knew that if he thought about what he was going to do, he wouldn't do it. It seemed that he could hear a shrill, frightened voice in his head, begging him to stop, to reconsider, to talk to Hermione first... in fact, he thought, it sounded rather like Hermione's voice. But he ignored it. If Hermione had been there, she might have been able to talk him out of what he planned to do. But she wasn't there.

He walked through the streets around Diagon Alley until very late that night. Each streetlight cast a deep pool of orange onto the silent pavement, and he passed in and out of them, his thoughts moving further and further into darkness. Then he sat at a table in a dim little bar in Knockturn Alley for a long time. It was crowded, but the other patrons took one look at his face and left him alone. He sat at a tiny table, brooding over one nursed drink, and then he went home.

The sky was beginning to lighten when he returned to the Burrow. The house was dark and empty. Arthur Weasley was probably working another all-nighter at the Ministry, Ron decided. A hurriedly scribbled note on the kitchen table told him that his mother had gone to stay with a neighbor, one of the few magical ones they had. Nita's daughter is ill, poor dear, and she's worn to a frazzle, Ron read. I ought to be back by noon Saturday. Tea's on the stove, and look in the basket for the fresh peach muffins.

Ron sipped tea and ate one of the warm muffins from the wicker basket mechanically, without tasting a bite of it. He went upstairs and found a lock of Ginny's hair that he'd carefully preserved in a folded slip of parchment and stuck between the pages of one of her sixth-year textbooks. He wrote a note to his brother, George, and set a time-delay on it so that Pigwidgeon wouldn't deliver it until the next day. Then he took bread and salt and charcoal from the kitchen, and carefully poured a small glass of red wine. He tied his woolen balaclava firmly round his neck and went outside through the back door.

His breath puffed out in front of him, and his feet made little crackling sounds in the frozen grass. Dawn was coming fast, but it was still bitterly cold. He stopped at the end of the yard, beneath the apple trees. Their boughs were black and leafless against the grey sky. Twelve Grimmauld Place had a magical orchard past the end of its backyard, Ron remembered. Wish I could try this there, he thought. It might work better. But he knew where he had to go, and he concentrated his thoughts and his will and Apparated to a field in Wiltshire, just outside Stonehenge.

So far, so good, thought Ron. I wish I had something of Malfoy's, though. I don't know if this spell will work without it... but I have to try.

Ron drew a circle around himself on the dead grass with the charcoal, trying not to leave any gaps. He laid out bread, salt, the wineglass, and the lock of Ginny's hair at the four points of the compass. He straightened up, and drew his wand. "Through bread and salt," he whispered, "through earth and wine, through common and uncommon things together... let me find Malfoy Manor."

+++

At noon the next day, George Weasley heard a rapping at the windowpane looking out into the alley just behind Weasley's Wizard Wheezes. He put down his quill and set aside the ledger he'd been working on. When he opened the window, Ron's tiny owl flew in.

"Thanks, Pig," he said absently, rummaging for a miniature owl treat. He unfolded the parchment, his expression darkening as he read it.

George,

I'm in Wiltshire, doing what I have to do. Near Stonehenge. I won't say any more. Only--if something goes wrong, I wanted you to know where I was. Nobody else.

Ron

Pig hooted happily and zoomed around the room like an enthusiastic, slightly oversized moth. Iris, the twins' ill-tempered barn owl, glared balefully at this new intruder. George leaned against the desk, thinking. Then he picked up his quill again and began to write on a spare bit of parchment.

Ron,

What in Merlin's name have you done now? You haven't tried anything spectacularly stupid, have you? Please say you haven't. Owl me now, and put my mind at ease.

George

Pigwidgeon let George strap the parchment to his leg, and took off in an obliging manner, but then he circled the room aimlessly. He tried flying out the window, but returned immediately. He perched on George's hand, twittering confusedly.

George groaned. He wrote another letter, dashing it off in quick, slanting strokes. Then he tied it to the owl's leg. "Take it to Hermione Granger, Pig," he said. "As fast as you can." He hated to burden her with this, but he couldn't think of anyone else he trusted half so much to help him figure out what had happened to Ron--even though he was afraid he already knew. George and Hermione had kept in casual contact for the past year, long after she had stopped talking to his brother, so he knew that she at least wouldn't be shocked at receiving an owl from him.

He stood in the centre of the room for a very long time after the little owl flew out the window, hardly hearing Iris's angry hoots at not having been chosen to carry his letter.

+++

"He couldn't be this thick," said George. "Yes, I know it's Ron we're talking about here. But he just couldn't." It was not the first time during the next morning that he had made that statement, and the tone of his voice made it quite clear that it did not believe a word he was saying. .

"I don't know enough about Ron anymore to say what he could or couldn't be," Hermione said tensely.

"Aye," said George. "Don't think I do either."

They walked in silence for a while.

"Are we anywhere near the property, d'you think?" he asked.

"I don't exactly know," said Hermione, sounding very pained at having to admit such a thing twice in ten minutes. "I mean--" She gestured at the billowing mists that surrounded them. "I do think that we've got to be close, or we wouldn't be seeing these at all; we'd still be wandering around Stonehenge. Just the presence of Obfuscating Fog has to mean something."

"Wards are NEWT-level. I didn't get to them until seventh year, how'd you--" George stopped. "Why am I asking you a question about how you know anything, Hermione?"

She smiled briefly, faintly. "Well, why do you know? I didn't think you and Fred took any NEWT-level classes before you left Hogwarts."

"Fred didn't," George said, a bit awkwardly. "But I did. I was halfway through when I had to leave."

"I didn't know."

"I didn't talk about it much. I finished the Wards class on my own, though. Studying independently, you see, in the evenings, after we'd started the shop."

"Oh," said Hermione.

They walked a bit more, using their wands to scan the mists ahead of them.

"Anything?" asked George.

"No," said Hermione.

"But then, I don't know if we'd pick up anything from the Malfoy wards. Would we?"

"Probably not, if they're half as good as I think they are," said Hermione grudgingly. "And I can't think why Malfoy wouldn't have the best."

George grimaced. "Right--the rich bastard. Anyway, I'm scanning for Ron, not for the wards themselves."

"So am I." She looked at him with respect. "Clever of you to think of that."

George shrugged. "Well, I don't know about that," he said. "That sort of information was in the book for that class, that's all."

"It was an awfully good idea to finish the class even though you'd left school," said Hermione. "It can't have been easy, though, what with setting up the shop and all."

"It wasn't," said George. "I had to arrange for the practical end of everything--the rent, the lease, the terms, the suppliers, the invoices, the budget, the ledgers... research, development, double-blind tests on all those Kneazles..."

"I see," said Hermione.

"Look, Hermione," George said abruptly, "I don't want you to get the wrong idea. Fred's far more clever than I am, really. He's the one who comes up with almost all of the ideas in the first place. D'you think I could have invented Skiving Snackboxes, or Nosebleed Nougat?"

"I seem to remember that Katie Bell almost bled to death fifth year from a Nosebleed Nougat," Hermione said quietly.

"You don't know anything about it," G eorge said angrily. "You weren't even there that day, on the Quidditch pitch."

"No, I wasn't." Hermione fell silent. They walked some more.

"I'm sorry," said George.

"There's nothing to be sorry about," said Hermione, in a clipped voice.

After a few minutes, she said, "We've walked far enough now so that we should have picked up some sign of Ron, if he were really here. Do you think you might have been wrong? Is there any other reason why he might have come to Wiltshire?"

"Nothing could make me happier," said George. "But I'm afraid--well, you know what I'm afraid of."

"What could have happened to set Ron off?" asked Hermione. "There had to be something, don't you think?"

"I agree," said George with a frown. "I mean, he's thought--fuck, he's been sure that Malfoy had something to do with Ginny's disappearance ever since it happened. Sorry, Hermione. But I never thought he'd try anything like this, and he hasn't, up to now."

"I've kept track of what Ron's been doing," said Hermione. "As much as I could. I just felt--well, it got to the point where there was no talking to him anymore. Harry felt the same."

George sighed. "I know it all too well. He was impossible to live with last year. A nightmare. Fred didn't talk to him for over six months. "

"What on earth caused that--oh!" The mists were growing thicker now, and Hermione had stumbled on a rock that rose up out of the ground. George reached out to steady her.

"It happened when Ron was at his absolute worst," he said. "Around the beginning of last summer. All three of us had a fight, and Ron, uh, told us that what happened to Ginny was our fault. If we just hadn't left school early and started the joke shop, then we would've kept a closer eye on Ginny."

"Oh, George, no!" exclaimed Ginny. "That was cruel--and it doesn't make any sense. The two of you wouldn't have been at Hogwarts during Ginny's sixth year, no matter what."

"Well, mostly Ron blamed me," George admitted. "Because I'm the practical one, you know? If I hadn't spent all my time and energy on the shop, I would've paid more attention, and been able to catch whoever kidnapped Ginny before they actually did it." He tried to laugh. "Ron as much as said that he couldn't have expected anything better from Fred. We couldn't figure out who he meant to insult more. Fred was so furious that he didn't speak to Ron at all until about a month ago."

"Did--did you talk to Ron, though?" Hermione asked.

"He sent back all my owls for a long time," said George. "But I tried. I couldn't not try."

The mists had risen so high that they could scarcely see one another, even though they were walking right next to each other. Hermione jumped when she felt a large, strong hand in hers.

"It's only me," said George's disembodied voice. "I don't want to lose you, Hermione."

She said nothing, but tightened her hand in his.

The path curved. George and Hermione rounded the bend. A high, steady wind blew up suddenly. The drifting mist seemed to dissolve, but a solid wall of silvery white loomed up before them, stretching into the distance as far as they could see. George gave a long, low whistle.

"The Malfoy wards," he said, and Hermione nodded.

The fog that clung to the ground was more tenacious than the drifting clouds had been. Hermione would spend much time later obsessing over what might have happened if she hadn't been looking down at that particular moment, at the base of the wards. But she was, and so she saw before George did. She stopped short, and gave a little cry of shock and dismay.

"What--" began George as Hermione ran towards the ward-wall. Then he saw, too.

Hermione dropped to her knees and felt frantically for a pulse in Ron's throat. He lay next to the wall of mist, white and still as death. For a moment, George looked at Hermione kneeling over his brother, her face wild. Then he drew his wand and scanned Ron, who gave a spasmodic little jerk.

"There's no pulse--none!" cried Hermione. "And he's not breathing! Oh, George, I'm afraid that he's... dead..." Her voice broke on the last word.

"No, no, he's alive," said George, with a great sigh of relief. "But we've got to get him out of here right now. He'll drain a lot of magic, but I think we can do it. Come on, Hermione--you've got to pull yourself together or you won't be any help to Ron."

Hermione had begun to sob, but she dashed away her tears almost angrily with the back of her hand. She and George both raised their wands, and Ron's body slowly lifted off the ground. Then they started back to the Apparition point, Ron drifting between them. The mist was still very thick, but George did not try to hold Hermione's hand again.

+++

Draco crouched in the tiny alcove at the very end of the little corridor in the Malfoy library. It could only be reached by teetering on a ladder and tapping the fifth book from the left on the very top row of books in a little-used back room. All of the books in here were dog-eared and musty with age, their print or calligraphy faded, their leather covers cracked. But it was the one place in the library he hadn't yet looked. He turned the pages of the book he held. A Treatise on Pemberton's Theory of Magical Places winked up at him from the spine of the book, lettered in gold.

Now we must turn to the deepest magics, which, of course, frequently implies those most heavily steeped in what are popularly known as the Dark Arts, Draco read. Finally! he thought. After six hundred pages of rambling about Divination and Stunning spells! He flipped the page eagerly. In no school of magic do we find such a strong association with place. Quite commonly, the most complicated spells will not succeed to the slightest degree without tapping into power previously contained in the area in which they are cast. Places that have long association with the usage of Dark spells are often most suitable...

"I know that," said Draco, to the dusty and silent little room. "That's why I've already tried to see a bit more from my book everywhere in this house! Merlin, you'd think Malfoy Manor would count if anyplace on the planet would. The number of Dark spells that have been cast around here..." He rubbed his nose and went back to reading. He was getting a headache from trying to decipher the crabbed, old-fashioned typeface, but he also felt instinctively that he was getting close to finding out what he needed to know.

In most cases, a number of rooms or spaces must be tried. The witch or wizard involved must be careful not to give up the effort too soon. In this matter, we would all do well to recall Ignatius the Impatient, who cast a Dark spell meant to re-animate his favorite pet cat in his famous castle on the Isle of Man, which had 1,000 rooms. After the 999^th room, he gave up. Too soon, as it turned out, and the time period for the spell's success expired at midnight. And, most unfortunately, the cat's ghost haunted the castle from that point on. It had a most disagreeable habit of yowling quite loudly at three in the morning, which it did for the next hundred and fifty years...

"I know that as well!" exclaimed Draco aloud. "I tried reading the book in the same room where I actually raised Ginny; I tried it in the room where she lay on a cot for two years, I tried it in the potions rooms, the dungeons, the bathrooms, the bloody greenhouse..." He sighed, and turned back to the book.

Yet the location of the only room which Ignatius did not try is perhaps the most significant point of all, and provides an important clue to those who would try to decipher the more obscure Dark Arts spells.

"Ahhh," said Draco. "I knew it. Here it is..."

The 1000^th room was Ignatius's father's private study, in which much Dark magic had been done. He did not go into it because he had murdered his father in a drunken rage the year before, and feared his father's ghost. Yet on the whole, it yowled less than the cat's. It can be reasonably said that a wiser course of action might have been to--

Draco shut the book. He got up slowly, rubbing his hand across his mouth. Then he walked to the tiny, dusty window that overlooked the east grounds and stared out of it for a long time.

He would have only one shot, one chance to find and read what he desperately needed to learn from that book. He knew that he had to get it right. There was no margin of error, no room for the slightest mistake. And Draco knew how vital location might be to the success or failure of this sort of magic; he'd known that before he ever saw the information in the library. Where he chose to read the book on the night of the full moon could be the detail that made all the difference. He had suspected this for a long time He ought to have been able to find out some sort of additional information from the book by now--a hint, a clue, a word flashing on one of the blank pages. Something. But it had been a week, and the fact that he hadn't seen anything at all had really begun to worry him. He'd spent hours every day closeted in the Malfoy library, searching through ancient texts, trying to find some sort of answer that would guarantee success on his first try. I won't get another, he sometimes thought. He could not even imagine what might have happened, where he could be, or what he might be doing by the next full moon. But now that he had found the clue he had been looking for, he almost wished he had never seen it.

In his mind's eye, Draco saw his father's study once again, panelled in dark teakwood, dominated by a massive ebony desk. He could almost smell the thick scent of the cigars his father smoked there. He remembered the way the smoke would curl up through the dim lights, and the taste of warmed Napoleon brandy on his tongue the first night his father had brought him there, just after his seventeenth birthday. You are of age now, Draco... he had said. Draco had nodded and sipped his brandy and tried not to breathe. The truth was that just being in the room frightened him, although he would never have admitted it. There had been so much forbidden magic done there, so many secret Death Eater plans discussed, such frequent Dark rituals performed.

Once, during the summer before his seventh year, he had seen a ritual of power done in that room that involved masked Death Eaters and a naked girl bound to a stone altar. They had all taken her, one by one, and she had scarcely moved or made a sound. She might have been dead, but for the pulse beating blue-veined in her throat as one Death Eater after another rutted on her, scraping her bare back against the stone. Her long red hair streamed down behind her, and Draco could not stop looking at it. None of them knew he was there. He might have participated, but he had fallen ill that day and been confined to his bed. His throat still felt gritty and he was shivering so hard he could barely stand, but he had crept to the study by hidden ways and was watching through a peep in the wall.

She must be willing, he told himself. I'll bet she is. Some slag or other they picked up. She probably begged them for it. She's probably having the time of her life.

The girl's eyes were closed, and her cinnamon-coloured lashes fluttered against her skin. She had begun to make little whimpering sounds, but there were no words in them.

She didn't look anything like Ginny. But Draco's mind had suddenly superimposed Ginny's face and body over hers. I might have been leading this ritual tonight, he thought. What would I have done if it were Ginny lying there, naked, bound spreadeagled to that altar, helpless, unable to refuse me? Only me... none of the others here, I wouldn't want them here. She might beg me to free her, to leave her alone, to go away... but I wouldn't have to do any of these things. She would be at my mercy, wouldn't she? What then?

A little voice seemed to whisper in his ear. Why, you could have her in any way you wanted her. No-one could hear her scream, and she couldn't struggle. You could sate yourself with her body as much as you liked. That's what would happen then.

"Oh, bloody shut up," he whispered wearily. He turned away abruptly as a profound sickness rose in him, and staggered back to his room. He had not got out of bed at all until the next day, and he did not even try to find out what had finally happened to the girl. He had not gone into his father's study once since that day.

I can't go in there now, he thought, looking out the little window. I just can't.

He looked down at his watch. It was two o'clock, and he had promised Ginny to show her the picture-gallery at three. Draco gave a long sigh, and started down the little corridor.

Whenever Draco wasn't in the library, he was with Ginny, although he was very careful about his contacts with her. He did not dare to watch her naked again. He left standing orders with one of the house-elves to notify him when she was swimming in the bath, and he always came into the master bathroom after she had put on one of the bathing suits he bought for her. Draco did not touch her, and he dared not let her touch him, so her presence was both delicious and painful. Yet simply being near her made him happier than he had ever imagined he could be. He ordered more clothing for her, and enjoyed her childlike pleasure when it arrived.

"Ooh, it's so lovely," she breathed when a fox-fur cape was unwrapped from its golden paper on the morning after Draco had learned unwelcome information in the library. She ran her hands down the soft pelts, sighing luxuriously.

"Put it on for me," said Draco from the bedside chair.

She drew it up over her indoor robes and snuggled into the fur, just a shade darker than her hair. She pulled the collar up around her white neck and twirled round, laughing joyously. "How do I look?"

"Beautiful," he said honestly, feeling his heart pound in his chest. He had a sudden vision of the fox cloak spread out on the bed like a coverlet, and Ginny's naked body writhing on it, little sighs of pleasure coming from her throat as he stroked her skin.

She fingered the fur thoughtfully. "This is meant for going outside, isn't it?"

"Yes."

"I'd like to go outside," she said wistfully.

"I don't know if that's wise," he said.

Her face fell. It was painful for him to see. "Haven't you liked the parts of the house I've shown you?" he asked.

"Yes," she said sadly. Her lips drooped, and her skin no longer looked so creamy and radiant against the fur.

"Didn't you like the picture gallery?"

She nodded. "It looks out over the rose gardens," she said in a subdued voice. "What are they like in the spring, Draco?"

"Beautiful," said Draco, thinking. What difference would it make, really? That's why Father had the best wards money could buy put around the property in the first place. "Well, maybe we could go outside just for a bit," he said.

Ginny clapped her hands. "Oh, thank you!" she said joyously. And he realized that he could deny her nothing she asked of him.

They walked along the field that abutted the wards to the east side of the estate, the ones closest to Stonehenge. Draco had walked these paths for years, even though his father had told him that this wasn't necessary, that there were certain house-elves whose only job was that sort of thing. The solitary walks soothed him, somehow. He had always liked best to walk in the winter. This day was like the days he had loved most, the sky a silver-grey lid over fields of brown stubble, the forest a tangle of distant black limbs, and the misty ward-wall a constant presence at his side. But in the old days, he had loved it all so much precisely because he felt utterly alone in a frozen world. And now, Ginny Weasley walked next to him.

She wore the fox-fur cloak in its shades of rich chestnut brown and red and muted gold, and Draco congratulated himself on how well he had chosen for her. He'd ordered Polly to dress her in warm woolen robes that morning, and then he'd arranged the cloak around Ginny himself. He carefully wrapped a gold scarf around her throat. His fingers brushed her creamy skin, and he drew them back. He handed her a pair of supple boomslang-leather gloves.

"Draco," she said excitedly, "we're really going outside, aren't we?"

"Yes," he said, enjoying the sound of her voice. "You'll like that, won't you?"

She nodded, her eyes shining.

He led her through the winding maze of corridors that led to a little side door opening into the side gardens. Once they stepped outside, Ginny closed her eyes and breathed deeply.

"Are you warm enough?" Draco asked, watching her closely. "Is that scarf tied too tightly?"

"No... and no, I'm not too cold..." She looked around, clearly drinking in the winter landscape.

"Come on, Ginny. I want to show you where I always loved to walk," he said. She reached for his hand, and his heart leaped. Without thinking twice, he took it. She's wearing gloves, he told himself once he realized what he had done. So it's got to be all right.

Now, her cheeks glowed pink in the brisk winter air, and her mouth was curved in a bewitching smile. She gasped when a flock of sparrows flew up in front of them, and watched the little birds fly about with delight on her face. She pulled the fox-fur hood up around her head when the cold wind blew, and snuggled into its warmth, rubbing the soft fur on her cheeks with a childlike sensual pleasure.

"So you like this?" Draco asked, rather smugly.

"Yes, oh yes! I always loved being outside," said Ginny.

"Oh? What do you remember about it?"

"Flying," she said. "Isn't that funny? I remember flying. Did I used to fly?"

"You did," he said.

"How do you know?" she asked.

He did not feel quite up to answering the question at this particular moment, so he only shrugged.

She frowned a little, looking at him. "Draco?"

"Yes?"

"Who are you?"

His blood froze in a way that had nothing to do with the winter cold. "I don't know what you mean," he said. "You know who I am, Ginny."

"I know that you're Draco Malfoy," she said. "But who is that?"

"You don't remember?" he asked carefully.

"No," she said sadly. "Not a thing. But you knew me before, didn't you?"

"Yes. Yes, I did. But I can't tell you any more, Ginny. Not now."

"All right," she said.

She was starting to sound a little tired, he thought. Perhaps they should go back. After all, he didn't really know what her stamina was like. She probably shouldn't be out in the cold too long. I'll make hot tea for her, and she'll wear those pyjamas I like... the flannel ones... I'm a bit tired as well, come to think of it. I can lie down and she can read to me...

Draco was just about to suggest that they turn round and return to the house when the path curved, and the great misty ward-wall stretched out straight ahead of them. He saw the gap at its base.

He walked forward and ran his wand along the gap. It quivered in his hand. "Somebody's been here," he murmured.

"Who?" asked Ginny.

"I don't know. I'm trying to find out." He whispered Dark spells that he had learned from his father, spells that were part of the magic of the ward-walls. There wasn't enough information to discover the intruder's identity, although Draco thought that might be possible, given some time. He--and Draco felt quite strongly that it had been a he--had either left or been taken away after only a couple of hours. Draco thought it far more likely that he had been taken, since the power of the ward-walls would have certainly rendered him unable to move on his own. And whoever the person was who had tried to get onto Malfoy grounds, he had felt great anger, great malice, and great desire. A desire for... for...

"Revenge," whispered Draco.

"Draco? What is it?" asked Ginny.

He straightened, and tucked his wand back into its holster, and looked at her. She seemed utterly guileless. She couldn't have known, he told himself. It's not possible. She's innocent.

Oh, is she? whispered the little voice.

"Once and for all, shut up!" he snarled at it.

"Draco," said Ginny, her voice hurt. "Why are you telling me to shut up? I didn't say anything!"

"I didn't mean you," he said, taking her hand in an iron grip. "I wasn't talking to you."

"Then who were you talking to? There's nobody here but us."

"Never mind," said Draco, seizing her fingers so hard that she winced. The world was shrinking, and he and Ginny were at its heart. He could not shake the feeling that time was running out for them.

Ginny looked up at him, shivering. "Draco? Everything's all right, isn't it?"

"Yes. Everything's going to be all right, Ginny. But someone came here, trying to get in, trying to find you. A bad person. Very bad."

"How do you know they're bad?"

"I know," Draco said grimly.

"But--what if they didn't mean any harm, what if all they wanted was to see me?" Ginny asked.

"They didn't only want to see you," Draco said fiercely. "They wanted to take you away from me."

She was silent.

" Is that what you want, Ginny? Do you want to go away from here and never see me again?"

"No," she said, falteringly. "No, I don't want that--"

"Well, that's what would happen. You could never be with me again, not ever, not once. We'd be separated forever."

"I didn't say I wanted any such thing. I just wondered who it might be, that's all."

"If that's what you want," Draco continued, the pounding sensation in his head growing stronger, "then I can bloody well leave you out here and go back to the manor by myself. I'll open the wards so you can get off the grounds, and you need never see me again."

"No," Ginny whispered. "No, oh, no, Draco! I don't want to leave you! No, please, no!"

He whirled on his heel and turned away from her. She grasped his hand and pulled him into a clumsy embrace. He felt the warmth of her body beneath the soft slippery fox-fur, and the steady, solid beat of her heart. In one sudden movement, his arms went around her, and she buried her face on his chest, against his cloak.

"I don't want to go away from you," she said in a very small voice.

"Don't, then," said Draco. He could feel himself shuddering deeply, as if with tears that he could not shed. "Don't ever leave me, Ginny."

She raised her hand to his face, and he let her stroke his cheek. I'm protected by the gloves she wears, he told himself. It's the same as embracing her when she's wearing the fur cloak. There's no skin touching. But when she moved closer to rub his cheek with hers, he stepped back.

"Ginny, Ginny, you can't touch me like that," he said sorrowfully.

Her brows drew together into a frown. "But I want to," she said. "Don't you want me to?"

He closed his eyes. "Yes..." he said thickly.

"When can I?" she asked.

"Ginny--"

"Well, when?"

"Soon," he said. "Very soon. At the full moon. I promise, Ginny. You can touch me any way you want, then, and I can do the same."

"All right," she said. Her voice still sounded sullen, and that pleased Draco very much. Yet even as he took her gloved hand and they started back towards the house, he knew that he had made a promise to her that he could not break. For the sake of his own sanity, or what remained of it, he had to learn the secret at the next full moon. I'm going to have to do it, he thought dully. I'll have to go into my father's study, and take the book with me, and see if I can read anything in it there. It's the only way to be sure everything will work when it needs to work. When I won't get any second chance... He shuddered.

"Are you cold?" asked Ginny.

"No," he told her.

"I am, a bit," she said.

"Oh--" He fumbled for his wand. "Let me cast a Warming charm."

"That's silly! Don't bother. I know an easier way." She giggled. "I'll race you to the side garden, Draco!" And she took off, running pell-mell in front of him, the fox-fur flopping wildly around her. After a startled moment, he ran after her, the wind bringing colour to his cheeks. And when they reached the house, they were both laughing.

The happy mood lingered while they ate dinner together in a little nook off the kitchen, and when they played Exploding Snap together afterwards, and when he tucked her into bed.

"I'll be in soon," he promised.

"How soon?" she demanded. "Can't I wait for you, Draco?"

"No," he said. "Go to sleep. I like to think of you sleeping peacefully in my bed, waiting for me to come back to you."

"Oh. All right, then." She laid her head down on the pillow obediently. He pressed a kiss to his fingertips and blew it to her from the doorway. She touched her cheek, and smiled, and closed her eyes. Draco felt a warmth spread all through him.

It passed off quickly, however, when he started down the corridor that led to his father's study.

Draco lingered in a little room he used for mixing potions longer than was strictly necessary. He carefully extracted the disturbance of the wards he had collected from his wand, and mixed it with a small cauldron of a dark, thick, oily potion. Then he stirred it three times clockwise, and covered it with a silver lid, and put it on a top shelf. He straightened a few bottles, and checked his stores of certain supplies several times over. Then he gritted his teeth, and stepped out into the hall again.

The little orange witchlights thrust into the wall flickered fitfully, casting pools of light and shadow over the dark wainscoting. Those are ridiculous, Draco thought. They don't cast nearly enough light. I ought to have them all replaced. I ought to sack these house-elves for allowing this dreadful lighting situation to carry on for so long. I could fall over and break my neck any second. And the carpet up there looks distinctly uneven. I'm sure it isn't the least bit safe to keep walking down this hallway.

He swallowed, and kept walking. The corridor seemed to stretch endlessly in front of him, stretching itself as if in a fever dream. He looked doggedly down at the carpet. The pattern in it seemed to writhe and move, like a nest of snakes. This is positively ridiculous. I'm in my own house. I won't be afraid of simply walking down a corridor towards my father's old study. I won't!

Something exploded above his head. He flinched. The patch of the hallway in which he stood had suddenly gone dark. He stood still, the sound of his frightened breathing reverberating through the hall. It was one of the witchlights. Only one of the witchlights. Damn house-elves. They're not replacing them often enough in this wing of the house because they know I don't come here. All I have to do is to reach up my wand and relight it. Just reach up my arm...

Slowly, his hand went up. His eyes were on the dimmed globe. Something rustled stealthily, just at the edge of his hearing. He turned swiftly, staring into the dimly lit corridor. Had something moved in the shadows? Was there a dark figure just barely concealed around the next turn of the corridor?

And was it coming towards him?

Draco ran down the hall in the other direction as fast as he could, his feet pounding. He didn't stop until he was outside the door to his own rooms. Then he leaned against the wall, hands on his thighs, trying to catch his breath. He entered the room without turning on a light and slipped into his bed. On the other side of him, Ginny stirred and woke.

"Did you find what you were looking for?" she asked sleepily. She reached up to tap the bedside light, and it cast a faint glow over them both.

"No," he said. "I'll get it later. Tomorrow, maybe."

"Is it important? Very important?"

"I think it is."

"Then you'll have to try again, won't you?" she yawned. Then she turned over, and went back to sleep.

He propped himself up on one elbow and looked at her for a long time, filing away in his mind the faint smile on her lips when she had first seen him, and drinking in the sight of her creamy skin and tousled hair and peacefully sleeping face. She looked as innocent as one of the Christmas angels that Draco had heard were sculpted in ice at Beauxbatons, all untouched and unspoiled. But is she? A sly little voice in his mind asked. Is she really? How likely is it? She dated Potter for nearly a year, after all.

She's not that sort of girl, he told the voice in his head. The Weasleys may be blood traitors, but there's one good thing about that fact, at least. They don't follow the old ways, and they wouldn't have allowed their daughter to do so. They'd have told her to save herself for marriage or some such idiotic thing.

Ah, but then Potter was the one she had saved herself for, wasn't he? the voice continued. And all of the Weasleys loved him, didn't they? Do you really think any of them would have minded too much if she slept with him? Her mother would have given their rutting her blessing without a second thought. She probably sent Ginny a Contraceptive charm by owl once she heard they were dating...

No. No. I don't believe it...Uh... That psychotic brother of hers, Ronald, wouldn't have allowed her to go about shagging anyone, not even Potter, he told the voice desperately. And he was at Hogwarts with her.

But he was hardly around her all the time, said the voice. Plenty of opportunities for a determined pair of young lovers.

Don't call them that! It's not true, it was never true.

Don't you remember watching them snog all over the school? the voice whispered. Don't you remember the time Potter touched her breasts, and she moaned for him, moaned like a wanton little slut? And you watched from one of the peeps in the deserted corridor outside the classroom, and stroked yourself as she said his name?

That was only the once, said Draco, weakly. He didn't even have her robes off. And I never saw them do anything like that again.

Oh. I understand. You never actually saw anything worse. So surely it must not have happened...

It didn't! It couldn't have done!

Will you work so hard to win her, Draco, and then find out that Potter got there first? asked the voice.

I'm not listening, Draco told it. You're lying. She wouldn't have done it.

Ah, well. We'll leave it at that, then. It could have even been someone else, I suppose. Ginny was very popular with the boys, wasn't she? And you don't know what she did before you started watching her...

"I don't believe a word of it," Draco said aloud.

Ginny stirred and sat up. "Draco?" she asked with a yawn. "Did you say something?"

"I don't believe it..." he repeated, not quite hearing her.

"What don't you believe?"

He reached for her chin and turned her face up to his, scanning it. She looked as sleepy and innocent as a child.

"What is it?" she asked.

"Nothing," he said. "Go back to sleep."

What had come before this meant nothing, he decided. Not that anything much ever could have happened anyway. Ginny was a good girl. She wouldn't have given herself to Potter or anyone else, and she didn't, he thought. Still...

"There's only one way to know for sure," Draco whispered. And at the thought of finding out this truth about Ginny Weasley, something fierce and dark rose in him. It was some instinctive thing that claimed her; that wanted to seize her and take possession of her and make her so entirely his that she could never belong to herself again. It made him want to kill everyone who had ever touched her, ever kissed her, or ever made her happy besides himself, although he would not listen to the little voice so slyly wondering if anyone had ever done more than that. What he knew she had done with others was bad enough.

Draco doubted that this impulse could be called a good one. But he had very little conscience left to soothe by this point. I could make her happy. I do make her happy. And she told me today that she wanted to touch me, he said to himself, and the thought of her touch silenced whatever scruples he still possessed.

But there's still a problem in the way, now isn't there... With a sinking heart, Draco realized that Ginny was right. There was something he had to do before the consummation he so longed for was even possible, and that depressing thought followed him into sleep.

I'll have to try to get into my father's study again!