Unforgivable

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Late that night, she heard a sound in the corridor outside her room. She opened the door to find him wandering past. "I still can't sleep, sometimes," he said, shortly. "I wasn't stalking you or anything of that sort. You don't have to worry about that, Weasley."

"Why do you still call me by my surname?" Ginny asked.

He laughed, short and sharp. "Isn't it obvious?"

"Seems a bit silly." She leaned against the wall, crossing her arms. The corridor was silent with the heavy grey silence that comes just before dawn. "I mean, after all, we've... well..."

The words hung in the air. It was the first time either of them had referred to the events of that afternoon in the abandoned room after the Christmas holidays, even in the most oblique of ways. Draco's face had been very pale, but it whitened even further. He said nothing.

"I could still send you to Azkaban for that," Ginny said.

"I imagine you could."

"Aren't you going to ask me not to?"

"No, I'm not going to ask you any such thing."

She turned away. Draco watched her face intently. It was now lit by a shaft of moonlight from a high window, and looked almost unearthly. "Malfoy?"

"Yes?"

"Why did you taunt me the way you did before I put Cruciatus on you? You had to know the things you said would goad me into doing it. I doubt I would've otherwise." She watched him closely, waiting for his reply. He was lit by the moonlight as well, and the sight made her wonder if he could possibly be human. Surely he was a changeling, a fairy child, spirited away from the cold, bright beauty of his native world and trapped on this dreary earth, never able to reconcile the two.

"For the same reason I'm not going to ask you not to send me to Azkaban," he said.

"Oh."

"But I do wonder about one thing. Will you tell me the answer?"

"If I can."

"Have you told anyone about exactly what happened on that afternoon?"

"No," said Ginny. "Hermione figured out on her own that--that something had happened, and then Madam Pomfrey examined me, and they knew. Ron learned that it had been you by asking the right questions, and by piecing things together. But I never actually told anyone anything. Is that the question?"

"No." Malfoy turned towards her. His grey eyes were bright as silver. "I want to know why you haven't told anyone, Ginevra Weasley."

She leaned against the cold, rough wall. "I don't know. But maybe it's because I don't really know--I mean, I'm not exactly sure--what happened, myself."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that I want to think it out--and I never really have. I want to understand what it was that you did to me, and I still don't." She turned to face him squarely. "Was it rape, Malfoy?"

His face was utterly expressionless, but something was moving in his eyes. "Was it?"

"I don't know." Ginny collapsed against the wall, hoping she had the strength to get through the next minutes. "I don't know. Sometimes I think it was. Sex with you wasn't anything I would have thought I wanted, or anything I sought out. But what I keep coming back to is the fact that I didn't scream. I didn't struggle. I didn't even really try to get away from you. So I don't think I can call it rape. I don't think the word covers it." She had moved closer to him without even realizing it, and now they stood only inches apart. "But it was violation, wasn't it, Malfoy?"

"Yes," he said. "It was."

"Why?"

"I'd caught you off guard. You were affected by the Dark magic that was building at Hogwarts then, through those reciprocal Portkeys most of the Slytherins had, even though you didn't know anything about them. Your defenses were down. I'm much more experienced than you are. I used what I knew about girls, and about your own body's responses, in order to seduce you."

"I'm not asking why you were able to do it," she said. "I'm not asking how. Why did you want to? You could get anyone at all to sleep with you, anyone you wanted at school, if even half the stories I'd heard were true. Why me?"

Draco did not reply.

Ginny drew her hand back and slapped him across the face as hard as she could. His head jerked back, but he made no sound. She turned and went to her room. He did not follow her.

The next night, Draco was staring up at the ceiling and thinking that an irregularity in the stucco looked remarkably like a sinister face when his door opened. His eyes widened when he saw Ginny Weasley in a white nightdress trimmed with lace. Yet he knew that he was not truly surprised.

"Come in," he said.

She marched over to the bedside and sat in a chair. "There are some things I forgot to say. And ask."

"So you decided you'd drop by at three in the morning. Charming time to visit."

"Well, you're obviously not asleep."

"No, I'm not. What do you have to say?"

She took a deep breath. "There are some things I wonder about, that's all. I've never been able to figure them out. I think it's because nobody ever touched me before you, Malfoy. So there are things I don't really understand. Did you know that?"

"That there were things you don't understand, you mean? Or that--"

"Well--" Ginny blushed. "That I'd never been with anyone before. That you were the first."

Draco cradled his head in his linked hands, continuing to stare at the ceiling. "I knew. But not until it was too late. I must say, I was surprised."

"I was still only fifteen years old then, Malfoy."

"But I'd thought that somewhere along the line--with Michael Corner, surely, or Dean Thomas--"

"Obviously not," snapped Ginny.

"Oh," said Draco.

"Well, that was no loss.... But what I want to know is if it would've made any difference, that day. If you'd known that I wasn't--experienced."

"No," he said. "I might have been gentler with you, that's all. I remember hoping that I hadn't hurt you, because--well, I didn't want to do that."

Ginny's blush deepened. "Not very much, really," she mumbled. "I remember how surprised I was that it scarcely hurt when you--well, anyway. I only felt pain later."

Her words sank into the deep dark silence of the night.

"I'll tell you what I don't understand," Ginny said. "I didn't want to tell you. But I have to. I don't know why, but I have to." She moved so that her face was entirely in shadow. "I expected to feel pain," she said quietly. "But I didn't expect the pleasure. You made me feel that. You made me want you, even when I didn't want you at all. I think that's what gave me the nightmares--" She shuddered, then jumped when she realized that Malfoy had laid his hand over hers. It felt very warm.

"What were they?" he asked.

She closed her eyes. "They were all set in the Chamber of Secrets," she said tightly. "I'd dream about Tom Riddle. I'd dream about the things he actually said to me, and the things he really did do to me. And the memories would get all mixed up with you, because he made me feel pleasure, too."

Draco's head jerked up sharply. "You mean he..."

"Of course not. I already told you that I was a virgin when we--did what we did. Unless you think I was lying to you!"

"Did you hear me accuse you of lying, Weasley?"

"Well, I wouldn't be surprised if you did think that. There's no particular reason you should trust what I tell you," Ginny said, "any more than I should believe the things you say, Malfoy."

"I know you're telling the truth now," Draco said, his own voice growing tight, "because I know what I felt, that day. People can lie, and they do, all the time--but their bodies don't."

"Oh," Ginny said lamely. She had leaned towards him during their argument, and now realized that she had ended up much closer to Malfoy than she had ever thought she could endure to be. But some small, indefinable thing seemed to have changed between them. Certainly, his words should have embarrassed her horribly, but for some reason, they did not. She picked up the conversation as if its thread had never been dropped.

"I wouldn't have been a virgin eight months ago, though, if Tom had gotten enough power together to really take form, in the Chamber of Secrets. He only touched me." The shiver was deeper this time, all through Ginny's body. Unconsciously, she edged closer still to the blond boy sitting silently on the bed. It was as if a force had previously repelled her from him, but its simultaneous pull was proving stronger. "That touch. I wasn't even twelve years old... That touch.... I hated it. I loved it. I've never forgotten it." She was shuddering so violently that she could no longer sit upright, but sprawled across the bed, hugging herself.

"Shh," said Draco. Tentatively, his arms went around her. She scarcely seemed to notice, but her hands crept up and went around his waist, holding him so tightly that it was almost painful. "Shhh," he said again, stroking her hair, staring into the darkness.

"You'll be ready to return home tomorrow," twittered the plump mediwitch the next morning, fluffing the pillows on Ginny's bed. "Aren't you excited, dear?"

"Yes," lied Ginny. She continued to look out of the window. A plan was forming in her mind.

A frazzled-looking screech owl dropped a parchment into Draco's soup bowl at supper and then flew away, banging into several walls in the process. He picked up the roll of paper with a frown, unable to imagine who would be writing to him. His father was dead. His mother had been taken in by some of the more distant Black relatives, and they reported that she wasn't speaking yet, and spent most of her time crying. His aunt Bellatrix had been returned to Azkaban, and was supposedly utterly mad now. There was Sirius Black, of course; he was Draco's closest living male relative at this point. But they'd never exchanged ten words. He let the letter fall open.

Draco,

Come to my room at ten o'clock tonight.

Ginny.

The more he thought about it, the more the sending of this cryptic message was like her. He smiled, not realizing that it was the first time in over a year he had done so. He wondered if she even realized that she had addressed him by his first name.

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Draco rapped on the door lightly at the stroke of ten. Ginny swung it open. Her jaw was set into determined lines. "They've told me that I can go home tomorrow," she said without preamble.

"I suppose I'll get the same news very soon as well," he replied. "May I sit down?"

"If you like. Where will you go?"

He shrugged. "I don't really know. I suppose I could stay at Twelve Grimmauld Place. I'm Sirius Black's cousin, did you know?"

"Yes, he showed me the family tree tapestry last summer."

"But I don't think I want that. Malfoy Manor was confiscated, and anyway I doubt I could ever live there again. There's a very nice flat in London that Mother owned, though, so they couldn't take that. I imagine I'll end up there. And you?"

"Well, there's always the Burrow," sighed Ginny, "where Mum will fuss over me twenty-four hours a day and drive me utterly mad."

"Mmm." Her words sent a pang of pain through him. "That doesn't sound so very bad."

"Oh, you don't have any idea... She means well, but she'll knit me wool socks to wear in August so my feet don't get cold. She'll deluge me with frantic owls to ask if I'm lost if I go to the far end of the back yard. She'll wake me up in the middle of the night to ask if I need a sleeping potion." Ginny shook her head decisively. "I'll endure it for the summers, finish at Hogwarts, and then get my own flat. Share it with a roommate, maybe."

"Oh."

"Do you want some tea, Malfoy?"

"That would be nice." Apparently, she didn't remember addressing him by his first name in writing.

Ginny poured the steaming liquid into cups busily, as if its consumption were the real purpose of the visit. She sipped at hers, then sat back with a long sigh.

"I suppose we won't see each other until the beginning of term."

"I suppose not," Draco agreed.

"Then at Hogwarts--that's assuming it re-opens in time, and they ever allow either one of us back--we can hardly start acting like best mates."

"True." A sort of vision of Hogwarts rushed past his inner eye. Strangely, it was not the interiors he remembered, the classrooms, the corridors, the dormitories, but the brooding, stark beauty of its natural setting. He remembered looking down from the Astronomy tower into the valley, and the sun shining on the meandering river that ran through it. He remembered the dark majesty of the mountains rising so steeply on every side. He remembered the monolithic standing stones at the bottom of the path that led to the edge of the Forbidden Forest. He had liked to sit there with Crabbe and Goyle sometimes on sunny days, holding forth about something or other... that was where Hermione Granger had punched him in the face during third year, as well, and where Pansy Parkinson and Xanthia Morgan and the rest of his girlfriends had often allowed him to kiss them. If you followed the little track behind the two largest rocks, it wound around behind Hagrid's cabin to the clock tower. He tried to picture walking that path with Ginny, or sitting with her under the stones, feeling their vast calm presence, forgetting everyone else who had ever been there with him.

"So there was something I was wondering about," Ginny said.

"Were you."

"Trying it would be a sort of scientific experiment."

"Would it."

"But first I have to know something." She set her teacup down so hard that it splashed over into the saucer. He noticed that her wand was out, and lay upon the little side table next to the teapot. "I have to ask you something."

"Ask away," said Draco.

"You did something to me eight months ago that was against my will," she said. "Never mind that you made me like it. Never mind that you made me want it. That was no excuse for what you did."

"No," agreed Draco. "It wasn't."

"You violated me. Then... I suppose I violated you, in a different sort of way. That's what an Unforgivable is, isn't it?"

"Yes," agreed Draco. "It is."

"I could send you to Azkaban." Ginny stared across the bed, at the stone wall. "And you could send me. Neither one of us has done it."

"Neither one of us has."

"So how do you feel about it now, what you did? And don't think you can get away with lying to me," said Ginny. "I'll know if you try. In fact, I don't think I would trust you if you said you were sorry."

"Then why are you asking me?"

She looked at him belligerently. "Because I have to know."

Draco sat back in his chair, steepling his fingers together. "All right. You want to know the truth? I'll tell you the truth. If you think you can handle it."

"Oh, I can handle it."

They squared off from each other, like enemies.

"First, Malfoy, tell you how you felt about it right after you did it."

"Not the least bit sorry," he said promptly.

"Well, you're braver than a lot of people always thought you were at school, anyway..." Ginny looked pointedly at her wand. "Tell me more."

"All I could think about was the pleasure I'd felt when I had you, and how it was all mixed up with the pleasure I knew I'd forced you to feel. It all filled me-- filled my mind and body. Even now I think of it sometimes. And even though it's--tainted--by the knowledge I have now, it possesses all my senses, all my powers of memory."

"What do you mean, the knowledge you have now?"

He did not answer her question. "There's still something pure and good about that memory. That's as wrong as it can possibly be, I'm sure, but it's still true. But something started creeping in, poisoning it."

"What was that?"

"The dreams. The dreams of you. Your eyes, your face, some indefinable essence of you that had got under my skin." Draco leaned forward. "Night after night I dreamed about you, and day after day I tried to forget you. And then the next night it would all begin again. You haunted me. You tortured me. The memory of your pleasure was burned into me, Ginny. But the memory of you begging me to stop touching you racked me with pain so terrible that the Cruciatus curse was a relief by comparison. This isn't a matter of conscience. It isn't. It isn't. Surely you don't think it is?" He grasped her hands. "If I thought Obliviating myself of everything I've ever known would take these memories out of my head, I would do it. But it wouldn't help, oh no, I know it wouldn't help; even Cruciatus didn't do the job. They are carved into me more surely than the Dark Mark was ever carved into a Death Eater's skin. They have damned me, Ginny, and I can never be forgiven. But if it would do any good--any good at all--"

The silence in the room was absolute, as if the fabric of reality itself had stretched thin, waiting to hear what Draco Malfoy would say next.

"I would ask you to forgive me, Ginny," he mumbled into her blessedly cool hands, the sweet small soft hands that had cupped themselves around his forehead when he fell forward. "Forgive me."