The Quick and the Dead

"How could you be so stupid?" shrieked Hermione. "Oh, you've done idiotic things before. But this--this--"

Harry did not answer her. She advanced on him until his back was to the stone wall of the long, narrow room at St. Mungo's, stabbing her finger into his chest to emphasize each word. "If Ron never wakes up, it's your fault. All your fault."

He could only look at her helplessly. There were no words to say. The truth of what she had said tore into him, and he could not even try to dispute it. He knew that he fully deserved every bit of blame she could throw at him; the fact was written in every line of his face.

"Hermione," said George quietly, walking into the room. He took her hand in his and drew it gently down from Harry's chest. "I could hear you all the way down the hall. Is Ron all right? Anything changed?"

"Oh, no, nothing's changed," said Hermione bitterly.

"What's all this, then?" asked George.

Harry let out a long sigh and slumped against the wall, as if Hermione's accusing finger had been the only thing holding him up. She gave him a look of disgust. "If you think I won't tell him, Harry, you're wrong. I will."

"I wouldn't ask you not to," Harry mumbled.

George looked from Hermione's furious face to Harry's miserable one, and then, as if drawn to a magnet, to the little white-sheeted bed at the edge of his vision, where Ron lay in his unshakable sleep. He wrenched his attention back to the pair in front of him. "What's going on?" he asked in a calm voice.

"You want to know what's going on?" asked Hermione, grabbing Harry's bag from the floor and pulling something out of it. She thrust the crystal ball out in front of her. "This! This is what's going on."

George stared into the dark globe and felt prickles run up his back. "I don't understand," he said. "It's only a crystal ball, isn't it?"

"It's more than that," said Hermione grimly. "Harry's modified it. Illegally, I might add! And then he got Ron to look into it. And the next day--the very next day--" Hermione's voice broke.

"We found Ron in this state, in Wiltshire," George said slowly.

"It's all my fault," said Harry, with a dreary, hopeless heaviness. "If I hadn't asked him to look into that ball--"

"None of this would have happened!" Hermione finished his sentence for him, and Harry blanched as if in unbearable pain.

"All right, all right." George held his hand up. "Look, I still don't understand a thing, and I need to. How did you modify it, Harry? Tell me!" he added, his voice sharpening a little as Harry kept staring at the wall.

"I modified it so that it showed past events," Harry said in a monotone. "Things that had happened at Hogwarts, even if we weren't actually there at the time. But I could only see flashes. I thought Ron would do better through a Familial bond. I thought he might see Ginny, might get some clue about what actually happened to her. So I showed it to him a couple of days ago, the night before--before you found him in Wiltshire."

George closed his eyes and took several deep breaths. He was used to being the calm one, the mediator, the buffer between his brilliantly unbalanced twin and the world. But he felt himself perilously close to losing control now. He looked at Harry. I really don't like you very much, he thought. Fred does. He sees the same recklessness in you that he has himself. I don't, though, and I never have. You don't know anything about me, and you've never bothered to learn. You've never been able to tell me apart from Fred even once in all the years you've known us. So I don't like you, Harry Potter... but I'll never let you know it.

"What did Ron see?" he asked.

"I don't know," said Harry. "He said he didn't see anything. He came over a bit queer, though. I shouldn't have let him leave--"

"Nice to see you realizing that now," snapped Hermione.

"Hermione, you're not helping," said George. He didn't allow the slightest tone to enter this voice that might have given a clue as to just how thoroughly he agreed with her. "Have you ever read anything about this sort of modified crystal ball?"

"No," she admitted, almost angrily. "They're not supposed to be capable of being modified. I've never heard of this happening before."

George rapped his knuckles against the little table, thinking. "And if you don't know, Hermione... I can't think who would."

"Somebody at the Auror college might," she said. "George, we've got to tell them. You know we have to." She shot a glance at Harry as if expecting some objection from him, but he offered none.

"Yeah, we do," he said. "Except... except that if we do, Hermione, Harry's going to get into terrible trouble. Trying to modify crystal balls is illegal, and the Ministry doesn't joke about that sort of stuff."

"How do you know that?" she asked.

George gave her a faint smile. "Oh, Fred tried it once, of course."

"Of course."

"But, Hermione--think. Do you really want to get Harry into that type of trouble?" George pressed her.

Hermione lapsed into silence. She turned her head to stare across the room, at Ron's bed. He had not moved once since the argument had begun, or, indeed, since they'd brought him to St. Mungo's a few days before. All of the mediwizards were pessimistic about his condition. Their consensus was that the Malfoy wards had been interwoven with several untraceable Dark spells, and those had no antidotes. The best hope was that Ron had only been Stunned so deeply that it would take him several weeks to recover, and that he might awaken at any time. But no-one knew when. Her brows knitted into a thick, dark scowl as she looked at Ron's motionless, white face, and his chest rising and falling so shallowly with each of his breaths. Then she turned and looked at Harry, scanning his face. His brilliantly green eyes did not quite seem to see her, as if turned inward upon a private vista of pain.

"No," she said. "I couldn't do that."

"I didn't think so," said George.

"But then what do we do?" she burst out. "We can't just keep quiet. If telling someone could help--"

"I'm not about to 'just keep quiet,'" said George. "That's my brother in that bed, Hermione! If there's anything I can do to wake him up, d'you honestly think I wouldn't do it?" He stopped, trying to control his unruly emotions, and to keep them from showing through in his words. I have to stay calm here, he thought. Merlin knows, no-one else will. "There's a solution you may not have thought of," he continued. "Why not ask Moody for help? He wouldn't tell anyone else, would he?"

"No," said Hermione, slowly. "He wouldn't. And he'd know about this sort of crystal ball, if anybody in the world would."

"All right, then," said George.

"You stay here, both of you," Harry said. He hadn't spoken a word in several minutes, but now he stood, swaying a little. His mouth was compressed into a firm line. "I'll go and tell him myself." Hermione gave a short nod. She sat in a chair at the side of the narrow little bed, holding Ron's hand and talking to him softly, although he made no response.

"Thanks," said Harry to George as he put on his cloak.

George shrugged. He did not really feel up to the task of talking to Harry at that moment.

"Look," Harry said. "I'm not thanking you because telling Moody keeps me out of trouble. Whatever happened to me, I'd deserve it. But Moody is the only one who really might know, and otherwise I don't think we'd ever find out."

"Yeah, well--once Moody finds out what you did, you might prefer a stint in Azkaban," said George dryly.

Harry flashed his sudden grin, the one that always transformed his rather haunted-looking face into something heartbreakingly sweet. "Maybe," he said. "But--thanks anyway, Fred."

George sighed as he watched Harry walk down the corridor. I know why people forgive you so bloody much, Potter, he thought, without even being entirely sure of what he meant. Then he turned back to his brother's bed, and Hermione sitting beside it, her glossy chestnut hair falling across her face. He saw her lips moving, although he could barely hear her voice.

"What are you saying to him?" he asked.

"Oh--nothing, really." Hermione turned her head towards George. She smiled, but the smile did not reach her eyes. "I suppose it's a bit silly. The mediwizards told me that Ron can't hear me. But you never know. I've studied what happens to Muggles in comas; I bought a book about it earlier today, and I did some research on the Internet as well."

"The what?" George pulled up a chair and sat next to her.

"Oh--a Muggle thing," said Hermione. "Anyway, I found out that if--when--people come out of comas, they frequently remember things they heard while they were supposedly completely unconscious. So maybe Ron does hear what we're saying."

"Maybe he does." George stared down at his brother. Ron's cinnamon-coloured eyelashes were very still against his white face, and each one of his freckles stood out like a splash of orange paint.

+++

Draco ran down the dark road by night, his heart pounding, each of his breaths torn out of his chest in gasping agony. He could never escape what followed him, and yet he knew that he could never stop running from it. He heard its steady footsteps behind him, each one echoing separately, as if some great beast chased him. But he knew that if he turned, he would see his father.

So he couldn't stop. Couldn't turn. He could only run, and run, and run.

"You have called on me, Draco." said the voice of Lucius Malfoy. "I have come."

"I--didn't--call--- you," Draco gasped.

"Didn't you?" The voice mocked him. "Why won't you come into my study, Draco? I have something to show you. Are you afraid? You were always afraid, weren't you, Draco?"

"I'm--not," said Draco, through gritted teeth. "I swear, I'm not--"

"Then why won't you come?"

"Draco!" called an urgent voice. It was higher and lighter, and not triumphant, but fearful. "Wake up--please, please wake up!"

He blinked into the darkness, unable to tell the difference between dreaming and waking. "Turn on a light!" He had meant to give this order in a tone of command, but even to his own ears, he sounded as high and squeaky and terrified as a child.

"Yes, yes. I will," said the voice soothingly, and the bed was suddenly lit with a comforting orange glow.

He stared at the bedclothes, and the bedhangings, and his pillows, and finally at the girl who lay next to him, propped up on one elbow, her red-gold hair hanging in her face, and her golden eyes filled with concern. Ginny.

"Are you real?" he asked fearfully. "Is it really you?"

"Yes," she said, and then she took him in her arms. He smelled the faint scent of jasmine that drifted from her hair, and the warmer, more complex smell of her skin. He drew in deep, shuddering breaths, trying to fight the sensations flowing through him at her touch.

"It's all right," she said, stroking his lower back with her hands.

"No," Draco said. "No, it's not. We can't--" He struggled to move away from her, knowing even then that he was only struggling against himself. Her arms and legs held him to her like sleek, living ropes, ready to drag him down into destruction.

"It was only a bad dream," she said, smoothing his hair back from his forehead.

"Don't--"

"When I have a bad dream, I try to think of something happy. Something silly or funny, maybe-- something to take my mind off it--"

"Let go of me!" Draco braced himself against her chest, trying to push her away, and lost his balance. He fell against the entire length of her body for one heartstopping moment, and he groaned.

Ginny giggled. The sound splintered through Draco's tormented mind like a thousand shards of glass.

"I know what that is, what I just felt," she said.

"What in the world are you talking about?" he asked tightly. He was fully awake now; the last shreds of the nightmare were drifting away from him, but that fact was no consolation.

She rubbed against his lower body, just once. To Draco, it felt like being touched by fire. "What's pressing against me," she said.

"Ginny, you shouldn't; don't--"

"I've heard it called a hard-on. Also a stiffy. And an erection." She giggled again. "I always thought that sounded dreadfully clinical. All the boys used to talk about it--"

"All what boys?"

"The boys in the house."

"Who were they?" he snarled. Her lovers, he thinks, his mind consumed by lust and frustration and molten anger. She didn't keep herself pure at all. I was a fool to think she would have done. I know how many boyfriends she had. And I know about Potter... although not as much as I'd like to know, and not nearly enough... She probably gave herself to every male over the age of thirteen in Gryffindor House when I wasn't watching her, the slut. But I don't care about them, they don't matter. Only what happened between her and Potter... I don't know, and I'll never know... And I can't have that well-used little body of hers, I can't even touch it. And gods help me, I still want it no matter what she's been or done, or even with whom, I still want her--

"I don't know," she said. "But there were six of them, I think. They all had red hair. I used to listen at their bedroom doors sometimes, and try not to laugh. And they teased me all the time, and wouldn't let me use their broomsticks."

Her brothers. That's all she meant. She wasn't talking about lovers. What's wrong with me? I don't know quite what happened to me for a moment. I was thinking absolutely mad things. The wave of relief that went through him was staggering. But at the next moment, a very unpleasant thought struck Draco. She remembered her brothers. That means... that means that she's starting to remember more. Where will it end?

"You're upset, Draco," she said.

"No, I'm not."

"Your face is all red," she insisted.

He gave a deep sigh. "I'm fine," he mumbled into his pillow. "Everything's fine."

"But you're not happy," she said anxiously. "How could I make you happy again, Draco?"

He looked up at her. "There is one thing."

"What do you want me to do?"

"It's not what I want you to do, but what I want you to say."

"Well, what is it?"

"Say..." He thought for a moment. There was only one thing he could hear from her that might relieve this awful fear and tension in him. "Say that you're mine, Ginny. That you belong to me, completely."

Her face fell. "I--I wish you'd ask me something else, Draco. I don't think I can do that--"

"Say it," he insisted. "Say, 'I belong to Draco Malfoy.' I want to hear the words."

"But I don't think that's right. I don't think that one person can belong to another, Draco."

"Yes, yes they can."

"No, they can't."

"Well, I want you to say it anyway."

"No."

"Yes! Say that I own you! Say it!" He sat up in his excitement, stabbing his forefinger almost, but not quite, into her chest under the nightgown.

She folded her arms and glared at him. "I won't," she said mulishly. "And you can't make me."

He clenched his fists, glaring back. Then he turned away and laughed mirthlessly. "You're right," he said. "I can't."

"Fine." She settled back under the sheets. "Can we go to sleep now?"

"No." He did not turn back towards her. "Get out of this bed, Ginny."

"Wh--what?" Her voice sounded uncertain and afraid. Good, he thought.

"Out," he repeated.

"But where will I go?"

"I don't care! I don't want you in this room." His voice was as cold as he could make it.

He could hear her getting up behind him, and wrapping her robe around herself. He thought he heard a frightened sniffle, but he still did not turn round. He was consumed by fury so cold that it felt like no emotion at all.

Ginny left the room. Doors opened and then closed down the hall. He didn't know where she'd gone. And I don't care, either, he repeated to himself over and over. He lay back down and stared up at the ceiling, sure that he could no more fall asleep that night than he could fly to the moon on his broomstick. But somehow, he did sleep. And he fell back into nightmare.

His father was chasing him down the dark dirt road, his voice booming, his steps thunderous, a fearsome ghost-god. He had gained on Draco now, and was closer than ever before. And Draco heard his father speak again, continuing their conversation as if it had never been interrupted.

"Come to me, Draco!" His voice was a raspy, gritty parody of what it had been in life, as if filled with dirt from the grave. "You can't escape. Turn round and look at me. Aren't you glad to see your father again? You damn well ought to be. I rotted in Azkaban for you, boy. I tortured for you, and killed for you. Everything I did was done for you..."

"No," gasped Draco, running, running, running. "I had nothing to do with any of it--"

His father laughed. "Too late to claim innocence, Draco. No-one is innocent. In the end, we all swing."

"But I haven't done anything... ever..."

"Look down at your hands, Draco," said Lucius Malfoy's mocking voice. And when Draco glanced down at his palms, they dripped with blood.

He ran until his heart seemed ready to burst from his chest, but he realized with a burst of terror that he had got nowhere at all, and his father was gaining upon him. He cried out his fear into the sinister night and the nightmare landscape, and the heavy air pressed in upon him, smothering him, cutting off his breath, choking his sobs in his throat--

"No!" he shrieked, fighting the spectral hands that dragged him down, kicking and thrashing even though his arms and legs were trapped by sluggish weights. Still, he fought, and kicked, and--and---

Slowly, he opened his eyes to the darkness of his bedroom. He was completely entangled in blankets. He clutched at the edge of his coverlet and sat bolt upright, whipping his head from side to side, scarcely daring to breathe. A figure in a nightgown stood uncertainly at the open door of the closet.

"Draco?" she said tentatively. "Is something wrong? I heard screaming..."

"Ginny," he said, trying to sound calm, seeing the marks of dried tearstains on her face. "Come here."

"I thought you were angry at me. Do you really want--"

"Get into this bed!" he burst out, feeling control slip from his grasp, no longer caring.

She slid between the sheets on the other side of the bed, where she always slept about a metre away from him so that they didn't touch accidentally during the night. He grabbed her by the waist and pulled her into his arms. She gave a little caught breath of surprise, but she allowed him to do it.

"Ginny, where were you?" Draco seized one of her hands with his, feeling the warmth of her soft, slender body. He felt her pressing against him thoroughly at every point, breast and waist and thigh and knee. When she had held him earlier that night, it had been nothing like this. That was like letting a single drop of liquid fall from an eyedropper onto the lips of a man dying of thirst. This was like an inexhaustible spring of cool, clear water. He pressed himself into her as closely as he could, feeling his body drink in hers.

"In that little closet," she said, a little breathlessly.

"Am I holding you too hard?" he murmured.

"No... anyway, I found a cot there."

"I don't want you going there! Not ever, do you hear me?" It chilled him to think that her living body had lain where her dead one had rested for over two years. "Tell me you won't go in there again."

"I won't, I promise I won't." Her fingers stroked the back of his hand, soothingly. Then she dropped them.

"Why did you stop? I didn't tell you to stop doing that!"

"But you always said that I shouldn't touch you," she said.

"Forget everything I ever said about that," he said, unevenly. "I need you to touch me now."

"She hesitates. "I thought you didn't want--"

"Hurry!" he said urgently, as if the delay of even one more moment might bring his waking nightmares to life, and only her touch could keep them at bay. "Put your hands on me, Ginny, hold me, quick! Ah yes, fuck yes, yes..." Her arms twined around his chest as his words trailed off. He could no longer speak.

"Like that?" she asked.

"Yes. More. Keep touching me. Don't stop, don't stop for anything."

Her hands smoothed along the ridges of his ribs, prominent in his too-thin chest, and at last Draco let out a long, shaky breath. Her fingers skated across his stomach and thighs and hips, then back up again to his groin.

"Not there," said Draco, coming back to himself a little. That isn't safe. I must remember it. This has to be all right, though. There's nothing sexual about it, absolutely nothing. It's like the way I almost think I remember my mother touching me... except I don't think she ever touched me like this, or held me... once in a great while, maybe, when there was no-one around to see. Or maybe I only dreamed.

Slowly, he calmed under her touch, so unlike the way that anyone at all had ever touched him before. Certainly, no girl had ever touched him except as a prelude to sex.

"I've waited so long for this," he murmured.

"You like it?" she asked timidly.

"Yes, yes."

And he did, more than he had the power to say. Draco had never felt less sexual in his entire life. But just this, this little touching of hands and shoulders and thighs and innocent skin, was far more satisfying than any sex act he had ever experienced.

"I think I could sleep," he murmured. "Just hold me, and we'll both go to sleep."

And it was true. Deep, easy sleep was an undiscovered country to Draco, but he realized incredulously that he was drifting there.

"Good night," said Ginny drowsily, letting one hand rest on his chest, the other arm wound around his body and pulling him close to her.

"Good night," he said. And it is. It actually is. I can't do without this again. I must have it from now on, this touching, this closeness. How did I ever endure the way it was before... A quick shudder went through Draco when he remembered lying next to her unresponsive body night after night for the past two years. But I'll never have to do that again. Never. An odd thought struck him.

So why didn't I do this long ago? Or why... why didn't I try to have this from her when we were both at Hogwarts? His waking mind knew why, of course, but in these suspended moments before sleep, everything seemed possible.

Ginny wouldn't have given anything of herself to me then, he thought regretfully. I would have had to force her if I wanted her at all. I suppose I could have done. I could have surprised her alone in the prefect's bathroom or while she was walking somewhere secluded by herself, and cast a Silencing spell on her before she even realized what was happening. I could have thrown her down to the floor, or dragged her behind a tree, and taken her body in any way I liked...I'm so much stronger than she is, and she could have done nothing to stop me... but I didn't do it that morning two years ago. I might have done, and I didn't even think about it until now. He thought for a moment. I don't like that idea. I don't like it at all. I've never had to resort to rape. And anyway, if I had ever done that... well, she wouldn't have touched me like this, would she? So willingly. So tenderly. She wouldn't have nestled me in her arms, and held me so close and yet so carefully, as if I were made of something precious, and easily breakable. But now... now... His mind wandered into strange, unguarded paths just before he drifted off into blissful sleep, Ginny's body touching his at every point.

Ginny Weasley would never have touched me in life, her first life, that is. So do I regret killing her? The thought turned itself over in his mind, as he would never have permitted it to do if he were fully awake. I didn't mean to do it. I didn't. So it's not a question of regret. I didn't do anything wrong! I have nothing to regret! But... if it had to be... well, I could never have had her this way otherwise; I can see that now. I do regret one thing. When I brought her back here after the datura bath, I should have revived her right away, the moment I got home. Over two years, wasted! Could I have kept that secret from my father, though? I doubt it, somehow. Well, it doesn't matter now. I have her now, really have her... not just her body, but Ginny Weasley herself, as she ought to have been to me in life. She cries for me, and she smiles for me; she talks to me, and she listens to me. And she touches me. She touches me, and I never want to do without her touch again. I can touch her like this. I can be happy with this. I can go into my father's study when I like... anytime I like... and I'm not afraid... but maybe I don't need to go.

And by the time Draco had finally fallen asleep, he had almost convinced himself of this.