Unforgivable

January 17^th, 1997

Hogwarts

After the Christmas holidays of Ginny's fifth year, everyone returned to Hogwarts, and school went on as usual. Nothing had changed in the accustomed schedule of classes and meals and Quidditch practices and trips to Hogsmeade that made up the daily round of life at Hogwarts that January. Dumbledore's Army still met in empty classrooms or Rooms of Requirement, although there was no longer any need to do it secretly, of course, since there was no longer any Umbridge to defy. There were no new threats that the steering committee of Ron, Hermione, and Harry could point to, no new forces rising against them that they could prepare everyone for. But something had changed, and was changing. A great shift was taking place, invisible as yet, but real.

"I can't shake the feeling that something's going to happen," Hermione said thoughtfully one morning at breakfast. "Something big."

"Oo addib ing," said Ron dismissively. He swallowed what appeared to be three or four eggs in one bite. "Sorry. I mean that you're imagining things, Hermione."

She rolled her eyes. "Another expert opinion from Ronald Weasley?"

"Stop it," said Harry, poking at his toast. "If I have to listen to any more sniping from the two of you today, I'll go mad."

"See!" said Hermione triumphantly. "Harry feels it as well."

"Don't drag Harry into your little--" begins Ron.

Harry held up a hand. "She's right, Ron. I don't know how, or why, but she's right."

Ron applied himself to the remainder of his eggs, considerably subdued.

"What is it?" whispered Ginny, sliding into her seat.

"Nothing," her brother said. "Nothing you need to worry about."

The great black Malfoy eagle owl, Claudius, dropped a parchment next to Draco's plate. He opened it with elaborate casualness as he watched the contretemps at the Gryffindor table. He already knew what it would say, and a glance only confirmed that prior knowledge. Most of the Slytherins had received similar owls over the past two days, carefully staggered in time and place to avoid suspicion. He was far more interested in Ginny, who had a mutinous look on her face, he saw. Her red-gold hair caught the light from the sun-splashed ceiling of the Great Hall and glowed like a mysterious jewel. He folded the parchment carefully and watched Ginny Weasley, thinking of what should never be, and now never could. Or could it? Perhaps... just once? His eyes narrowed thoughtfully.

It was fate, Draco told himself later, during the endless nights he spent staring up at the carved oak ceiling of his canopy bed at Malfoy Manor until dawn forced him to rise, still exhausted. It was obviously meant to be, what happened that afternoon in an abandoned room of the unused wing just outside the entrance to Gryffindor Tower. Otherwise, Ginny would never have wandered into the little chamber where Draco had gone to be alone to think for a few hours before the summons came. Actually, he had not precisely been thinking, only staring out the dusty window at the snow-covered field far below, letting a complex mixture of impressions rush through his mind as they would. His father's face at the end of summer, just before he'd returned to Hogwarts. The time is coming soon, Draco... soon. Watch, and wait. His mother's face, calm, serene, expressionless as always when she saw him off at King's Cross. She had embraced him with a sudden, strange fierceness he did not understand; she was certainly not given to public displays of affection. And she had said not a word. Ginny Weasley's face when he saw her on the train. That was a dangerous memory, but he could not seem to get it out of his head. He needed all his energy for what lay ahead, so he did not try very hard.

"I've lost Princess," Ginny's roommate Zoe had sobbed after lunch. "She's gotten out again!"

Ginny had sighed. "Zoe, do you think it's really a good idea to try to keep a pet bobcat in Gryffindor Tower?"

"She hasn't bitten anyone in simply ages! Except for Colin Creevey. But he wouldn't stop taking pictures of her, and--"

"Never mind! I'll see if I can find her a bit later."

It turned into a dull, grey afternoon. History of Magic was even more boring than usual, if such a thing were possible. Quidditch practice had gone about as well as it was likely to go with Harry, Ron, Fred, and George off the team. Ginny hoped that with time she'd turn into a competent Seeker, but at present she was simply struggling to hang on, and it was hard work. Angelina Johnson had a way of looking at her reproachfully whenever she missed the Snitch, as if she were continually surprised that the other girl had replaced Harry. Ginny knew that she hadn't played as well today as she was capable of doing, though. A strange restlessness had set her on edge all that day. Certainly, the last thing on her mind was her roommate's bobcat. She had almost forgotten her promise to Zoe, who seemed to think she had some sort of magical affinity with Princess simply because she'd once figured out that luring her from a hiding place with meat would probably work.

But she remembered when she heard a faint meow, and saw a tufted tail disappearing down the corridor. The cat scampered around the corner, seeming to pick up extra speed. Ginny scampered after her and up a set of unused stairs to some abandoned classrooms. She paused, heart thudding from the exertion, and glanced from side to side. Night was falling fast, the way it always did in this part of the world so close to midwinter. The hall was very dim, and the doors lining it took on odd, menacing shapes in the near-darkness. One was just slightly ajar, and she jumped back, hand to her heart, when it swung towards her. Don't be stupid! Ginny sternly admonished herself. It opened because that idiotic cat brushed past it, that's all. She took a deep breath, and stepped into the room.

"Kitty?" she said, her voice high and quavering. The room was almost pitch black, the only faint light coming from a very small, high window in the far wall. "Here, kitty, kitty, kitty, kit--"

She stopped short. Someone else was in the room with her, and it was not the cat. A figure sat in a chair pulled up the window, its head and shoulders a dark outline against the grayish half-light. A boy, she thought, but she could guess no more about his identity. She stepped closer.

"Hello?" she said tentatively. "I'm awfully sorry. I didn't know anyone else was here. I'll just--"

He stood and was at her side in an instant in one fluid motion. "What--" she barely had time to say before his fingers were at her throat. There was no time to struggle, no time even to be afraid, before he had removed her school tie from her neck and bound it around her eyes. The dim greyness became total blackness.

A little thrill of fear raced through her. Sternly, she tamped it down. Some idiot or other had clearly decided that it would be clever to play a joke on her. It's Colin Creevey, I'll bet. Oh, I'm going to get him for this!

"Colin, is this supposed to be funny? It isn't." She tried to whirl to face him, or at least to face where she thought he was. Bit of a silly gesture, considering that I can't see anything! "Colin--" She stopped short. He had kissed her once that winter, before everyone left for the hols, and put his arms around her. She'd felt Colin's hands fumbling at her before she broke free of the embrace and hurried down to the carriages outside Hogwarts, waiting to take them all to Hogsmeade. The hands moving down her shoulders were not the ones she remembered. They were too long, too slender. And they moved with far too much grace.

"Colin?" she asked, hearing her voice crack.

She felt a whisper of hot breath at her ear, and the lightest possible touch of a moist mouth. "You don't know who I am, do you, Ginny Weasley?"

"You're not Colin," she said.

"Got it in one." The voice held a hint of amusement. It was low and rough, as if the speaker were deliberately trying to disguise his voice. It was naggingly familiar, but she could not place it.

"Who are you?" she whispered.

"That's for me to know, Weasley. And for you to never, never find out. Not that it will matter, not after tomorrow..."

A tall, lean body moved towards Ginny, crowding her against the wall. The hands were encircling her waist now, and beginning to smooth down the curve of her hips.

"If this is supposed to be some sort of joke," she said, her voice sounding very high and far away even to herself, "it's not very funny." The hands moved further down still. "My--my roommate knows where I am," she said. "I told her I'd be coming back in five minutes. She'll start looking for me." The hands began to move back up again, warm and firm and very sure. A sob caught in Ginny's throat.

"Let me go," she said. "Please, please just let me go--oh!"

The long, strong fingers had eased under her skirt . They rested on the edge of her knickers, moving no further for the moment, only touching. The warmth seeped into her skin.

A sort of bright, paralyzing terror had filled her between one heartbeat and the next. A sickening realization that this was no joke. She had known that already, she realized. But her mind had refused to allow her to admit the fact until the moment came when she could no longer avoid it, and that moment was now.

One finger ran around the elastic waistband. Then it slipped against her stomach, and began moving downward. Ginny writhed frantically, tiny sobs fighting to make their way out of her throat. Later, much later, she will wonder why she didn't scream. She never does find an answer that satisfies her. She hit out wildly, a grunt of pain telling her that at least one of her blows had connected.

"If we had time, Weasley," the voice whispered, "I would show you all the interesting things you could do to me with those little hands of yours. But we don't." She made a wild grab for him, guessing where he was from the sound of her voice. He grabbed her wrists and knotted something around them. His school tie. It had to be. She struggled to pull her hands down, but it was impossible; they were tightly bound together and he had raised them over her head.

"Now, let's see," he said. "Where were we?"

Slowly, carefully, his fingers pulled her knickers down past her hips, her thighs, her knees. They dropped to the floor. And his hands touched her where only her own had ever gone before, during those long dark solitary nights in her bed in the Gryffindor dormitory. She gasped harshly.

"Shh," he said. "I don't want to have to bind your mouth. Not really." He chuckled softly. "I like hearing the sound of your voice, Weasley..."

She bit her lip so hard that she felt blood running down her mouth. His hands moved further and further, deeper and deeper into the core of her, and she fought to keep her hips still. It was impossible.

"Stop," she said, breathlessly. "Whoever you are, whyever you're doing this--please, please just stop--"

He laughed, softly. "No, ah, no. I really don't think that's what you want me to do, now is it?"

"Please--"

The first twinges rippled between her legs.

It is impossible, she thought with horror. It cannot be. Not under this attack by a faceless assailant. No. This can't be happening!

She tried to twist away from his hands. He leaned even further into her, pinning Ginny against the wall so hard that the rough stones against her back would be painful, if she were capable of feeling pain right now. The pleasure licked through her, building higher and higher. He seemed to know her better than she had ever known herself. Her traitorous body was responding to him.

"Please," she whispered.

His hands moved relentlessly, expertly.

"Please."

He drew her just to the brink. Then he pulled back, still keeping her firmly against the wall. Ginny moaned.

"Don't," she whispered, trying desperately to hold onto some shred of dignity.

"Too late," he said, and his hands were on her again.

The ecstasy hit Ginny like a train derailing, jumping its tracks, smashing into a stone wall and exploding in a fury of destruction. She cried out, a high, thin, keening sound, and her little body arched like a bow against him. He held her fast, and no sooner had she begun to recover from one orgasm than he forced her through the convulsions of the next. Over and over. Again and again. The unholy, scalding pleasure tortured her unwilling body and mind. If this happens again I'll go mad, she thought almost calmly. Just once more and it will be too much. I'll go mad, and it will almost be a relief...

She had sunk to the floor, she realized. Her heart beat so loudly in her own ears that it sounded like a huge drum. She gulped, choked, and began to catch her breath, trying to reach down in order to pull her torn robes together. But a hand stopped her.

"What--" she asked, falteringly.

"Did you think we were done?"

Her robes fell off her shoulders. She gave a little squeak of alarm. His fingers were undoing the buttons of her blouse, then her front-closing bra, and pushing them both back so that she felt the cool air of the room strike her bare chest.

"We've barely begun, Weasley," he said. Then she heard a rustling sound. More clothing hit the floor. His own.

"Let me go now," she said. "Please. Please. I won't tell anyone. I--I swear I won't. I don't know who you are anyway."

"I'm afraid I can't let you do that." He moved forward, graceful as a cat. His mouth closed over one of her nipples.

"Oh!" Ginny jumped as if she had been shot through with electricity. He laughed again, a very low, intimate sound. That laughter was familiar. If she could only place it--if she could only remember who--

Her nipples seemed wired to the most traitorous part of her. The pulse between her legs throbbed in time to his erotic suckling, to each movement of his tongue and teeth and lips. A tear rolled down her cheek.

"Liked that, didn't you?" he asked with a hint of a sneer in his voice. "I know when a girl likes it, Weasley. Don't think you can fool me."

"I can't feel my wrists," she whispered. She could say nothing else.

He reached up to untie her arms. She shook them, trying to get some of the circulation back, and he seized them again.

"But I'm afraid I can't let you have your hands free, Weasley," he said. "No telling what you might do with them." He leaned forward, trapping her fingers between his, and then pushed her to the floor so that she lay upon her back, his hands holding hers down firmly.

He crawled on top of her as gracefully as a cat. She made one last effort to squirm away from him. It was impossible. He was much taller and stronger than she, and he had the advantage of leverage. She rocked her hips this way and that, her mind trying to block out the knowledge that he was naked, completely naked, and his warm skin was pressing against hers, his slender strong body was pinning her to the floor, and something hard and hot as a brand was jammed against her upper thigh--

Ginny gave a strangled shriek. He covered her mouth with a kiss. His tongue and his lips were hard and demanding; he sucked on her tongue and she opened her mouth further to him, unwillingly; she didn't know why she was doing it and he covered her completely; no matter how she struggled she had no chance of getting away. The kiss seemed to go on forever and she gasped when he finally moved down to her throat, softly biting at the pulse that leapt in her neck. One of his knees came up between her legs and began to part them.

Ginny was crying. The tears were sticky and wet on her cheeks, and she was wet elsewhere too, treacherously wet, horribly ready. Her own body had turned against her. "Please don't," she whispered one last time. "Please don't."

He pushed her thighs wide apart, exposing her to him completely. "I have to," he said almost tenderly. "It's my last chance. The only chance I'll ever have. Unless I keep you for myself, after it's all over. But who knows what will happen before then?"

She gave one last hopeless sob, and then he lowered himself upon her. She was utterly open to him, unable to move so much as a muscle, and yes, she was embarrassingly wet, so well prepared that he slipped into her body the first tiny bit without the slightest resistance. She stared into the scratchy blackness of the blindfold. He reached a hand between their joined bodies and rubbed at her in slow, tantalizing circles, and her hips jerked upwards slightly.

"What do you say now, Weasley?" he whispered.

"You could stop now," she said. "It's not too late. You could still stop." Her words no longer carried any conviction, even to her own ears.

"So that's what you want?" he asked mockingly.

She did not reply.

"I can't, anyway," he said almost gently. Then he began sliding into her body as relentlessly as a boulder rolling down a hill.

Once, when Ginny was a small child, she'd tried to climb the huge old oak tree in the back yard of the Burrow. A large splinter of wood had run into her hand when she grasped a branch, and she had started to cry before it went all the way in, before it even really hurt very much, because she knew what was coming. She stiffened like a board and cried out now at the start of the splintering stab between her legs, her fingernails biting into his palms where he held her hands.

"Weasley?" he asked, his voice sounding, for the first time, almost uncertain. "What--"

She drew her knee up in an instinctive effort to protect herself from the deepening pain. He made a startled movement with an elbow, and lost his balance above her. Ginny's body broke his fall.

She tried to breathe, but could only manage gasping, shuddering sobs. He had invaded her so suddenly, so fully. She was filled with him. Whoever he was, whatever he was, he had become a part of her. Her body and mind ached with the intrusion.

"I didn't know," he said, after a long pause. "I didn't--and I wouldn't have thought-- But it's too late now." He began to move in her then, and the pain lessened, reached its end, and faded away, absorbed within her.

"Ginny," he whispered harshly in her ear, as if the word had been torn out of him against his will. "Ginny. Ginny. Ginny..."

She did not answer, but her hips moved up to meet every one of his thrusts. Her body no longer seemed to belong to her at all, however, so that did not bother Ginny very much.

He paused, went rigid, thrust painfully hard, and gave a long, deep groan. He sank down onto her body, and she felt the thin layer of sweat that covered his own. Then he lay still on top of her for a long time, his heartbeat fast and erratic in her ears.

She heard him move around the room and pick up his clothing, put on his shoes. Her hands were not bound. She could get up and take off the blindfold around her eyes, Ginny thought. She could chase him down the corridor, tackle him to the floor, scream for help. She could watch her brothers beat him to death, once they knew what he had done to her.

She did none of those things.

She waited until his footsteps died away. She thought later that she might have waited for a very long time after that as well, but she could never be sure. Then she reached up and took off the makeshift blindfold. The room was very dark. "Lumos," she whispered, and the tip of her wand glowed orange. She carefully gathered up her clothes, pulling her torn robes around her.

Ginny left the room and walked towards Gryffindor Tower, her feet moving mechanically. Her mind seemed to have detached itself from her body. Perhaps it was actually floating somewhere near the ceiling. For an instant, she had the odd feeling that she was looking down upon herself--a small girl with disheveled hair drifting along the corridor, her robes clutched in disarray around her, the aftermath of something unbearable creeping up on her like a monster in the dark. A monster in the dark. Wasn't that what had just come to her?

Or was it? Perhaps she'd imagined the whole thing.

She walked slowly to her room. It was empty, as was the adjoining shower. She supposed that she must have given the password to the portrait of the fat lady, but somehow she couldn't quite remember doing it. Perhaps she hadn't done it all. Perhaps she'd gone back to the common room rather than turning up towards that abandoned set of stairs towards that deserted room, and finding what she found there. Perhaps it had all been some sort of bizarre dream. Mechanically, she stripped off her robes, her skirt, her blouse. She stepped into the shower, wincing. There was a sharp ache between her legs. It hadn't seemed this bad before, not even when the faceless boy took her... or she thought he did... or she'd imagined the entire thing... or...

She looked down. Her thighs were smeared with blood, and with something else as well. A shivering shock seemed to go all through her. She stood under the needle-sharp spray for so long that her fingers and toes began to shrivel, keeping it as hot as it would go. Clouds of steam rose around her. Then she stepped out, toweled herself dry, and lay down upon her bed, staring sightlessly up at the ceiling. I don't feel upset. Not the least bit. I don't feel anything, really... strange, you'd think I'd feel something, but I don't...

*****

She awoke to find Hermione sitting at her bedside. "What are you doing here?" she asked. Why, my voice sounds perfectly ordinary. That's funny.

"Ginny." The older girl's eyes were warm with concern. "It's past noon. You've missed supper last night, and breakfast, and they're through serving lunch now--and you haven't come down for any of your classes. Are you ill? Whatever's wrong?"

Ginny stared past her friend's left shoulder. There was a frightening pattern in the whorls of the wood of the bedstead that she'd never noticed before. It looked almost like a face with cold eyes and a sneering mouth. Tom Riddle's face, as she remembered it, as she would always remember it, from the Chamber of Secrets, when he came so very close to a fully human form. Now its mouth seemed to be moving... no, that couldn't be right...

"Unripe fruit, little Ginevra." The very words he had said in the Chamber, when she lay bound and helpless before him and his almost-solid hand stroked her thigh. "Unripe fruit. But everything ripens, in time."

And then that memory melded into another. The stranger in the abandoned room, who had grabbed her and bound her school tie around her eyes, so that Ginny couldn't see him. Then he had bound her wrists together. Then... then...

Hermione hesitated. "I was a bit worried about you anyway. I saw the strangest thing earlier, and I couldn't understand what--well, maybe you can explain it, I'd feel ever so much better if you did, and I'm sure there's got to be a rational explanation. You know that staircase nobody ever uses, the one that leads up to the abandoned wing? Just outside the entrance to the common room? Well, I was going down to supper, and I saw someone hurrying down those stairs."

"Did you see who it was?" asked Ginny.

"No. I didn't think to ask until later, and all I really saw was the back of their robes. I'm not even sure if it was girl or boy. Then when I came up to try to find where you were, Colin said he'd seen you coming down the same stairs a bit later, looking quite upset--"

Someone was sobbing. Ginny heard the sound as if from a very great distance. Hermione's voice was growing more and more alarmed, but that, too, did not quite seem to be wherever she herself was.

"Ginny! What's wrong? Did--did something happen? You've got to tell me, or I can't help--"

And now, she vaguely heard the sobbing turn to screams, high, shrill, and repetitive.

They found her robes and skirt, smeared with blood. She learned that much later. Madam Pomfrey examined her when she was taken to the hospital wing, and she learned that later on as well. There was a standard procedure for rape victims at the school, and they doubtless would have followed it, if the thing hadn't happened less than an hour after Ginny was moved to the narrow little white bed in the infirmary.