Windfallen

He wondered if it were possible to drown in a rainstorm. If you grew tired enough, if you slipped and fell. If you were hiding and you had been for hours and mud had soaked through your clothes — could you fall asleep, maybe, and the rain fall into your face, mouth, nose? You could drown and never know it was happening, it would be slow and subtle, a slow drowning. Water sneaking into your air passages.

Harry risked a deep breath, the sound of it muffled under the rain. There was a distant flash of lightning and he flinched. How long had he been crouched here, in this underbrush? Hours, maybe days. Probably mere minutes.

But the people he was hiding from, their voices were fading away now, distant. All hell had broken lose and he’d been hiding from them ever since.

The voices were fading into the distance, and his muscles were cramping. He had to move, to retreat. It hadn’t worked, the mission had failed, he’d have to report back to the Weasleys, to Ron, and tell him… Tell him it hadn’t worked out, that there would be other chances, that of course it didn’t mean there was no hope. It was a retreat, not a surrender. Ginny was still alive. She had to be. And they’d find her.

He glanced around carefully before darting out of the underbrush and over a fallen log, the wet pine needles covering the ground making his passage nearly soundless, just another shadow, brushing through an inky blackness of shadow…

Until he slammed into something that hadn’t been in his path a moment ago. He reeled from the shock and slipped in the mud, coming down hard on his back, and for a stunned moment, he lay that way, rain running into his nose and mouth and stinging. Then, he rolled over and crawled onto his hands and knees, blinking hard to clear the rain out of his eyes.

“Ginny.” Through the mud and the darkness and the blood, he recognized her. She was lying there, very still, but she had been moving when he ran into her… She had to be alright.

Slipping in the slick mud, he crawled over to her. “Ginny, Ginny, you’re not dead,” he chanted, his sticky hands pushing her hair out of her face. She was breathing, and just as he was about to crush her to him, he became aware of someone standing nearby, watching. Harry lifted his head and saw a shadow there.

He reached for his wand, fully prepared to defend himself with the Death Curse if necessary. A flash of lightning illuminated the shadow, however, and it felt as if the bottom had fallen out of his stomach. It was Draco Malfoy, his silver eyes narrowed in a calculating sort of way. He was watching how Harry crouched protectively over Ginny, and he was frowning thoughtfully.

But the men who’d been out searching had heard Harry call her name and they were circling back around, their calls loud, furious.

Harry glanced back at Ginny, unconscious in his arms, and then back at Malfoy. He’d have to do it. He’d have to kill him. It shouldn’t be that big a deal, Harry had killed before. In his line of work, it was necessary.

‘It's Malfoy!’ his mind kept shrieking. And for one disorienting second, Harry couldn’t figure out if that was a reason he should kill him, or the reason he couldn’t possibly.

“Run,” Malfoy hissed, and then he was gone. “Over here!” he shouted to the men who were searching, and Harry thought, for one second, that he was bringing them straight to them. But he wasn’t, he was leading them away.

It was too strange and alien to even consider, and he was wet, muddy, and so very tired. Ginny was in his arms, and he was bringing her home. Finally, he was bringing her home.

He lifted her easily, she barely weighed a thing, and hurried soundlessly in the opposite direction Malfoy had taken.

***

“Is she alright?” Harry asked anxiously, the second Ron slipped out of Ginny’s bedroom and down the stairs.

“She’s… she’s alive. Harry, you found her,” Ron replied, in a voice heavy with shock and awe and tears. “I didn’t… I was so scared… she’s…”

“Hey,” came the gentle response, as Harry clapped a hand on Ron’s shoulder. “I told you I’d find her. I told you. But how is she?”

“The doctor says she’s weak and… and it looks like she’d been beaten. Or… or something. We don’t know what happened to her. But he says she’ll live. He’s healing the injuries and everything.”

“Is she awake?”

“…No.”

“Well, of course, I mean, she has to be exhausted, from everything…” Harry trailed off, not voicing his worry. Ginny hadn’t moved or made a sound since he’d run into her, hadn’t regained consciousness.

Ron grinned tiredly. “I’m so thankful, Harry.”

Feeling uncomfortable, Harry shrugged. “I told you I’d find her.” He didn’t tell Ron about how he had found her. In the company of Draco Malfoy, who’d let her go. Helped her get away. It still didn’t make sense to him.

But then, nothing about Draco Malfoy had ever made sense to him. Not even in school, and certainly not now, now that the war was on. He hadn’t actually seen Malfoy since leaving school, which he was rather glad of. He hadn’t wanted to have to kill someone he recognized, not even someone who’d made his life Hell, someone fighting for Voldemort.

He’d killed. They’d all killed. Sometimes he woke up itching from all the blood he felt still stained his hands, arms, face. It tasted like copper, he knew. Blood of his enemies tasted the same as his own. Same as his allies. Pureblood, Muggle-blood, Mudblood. All the same and hardly worth fighting over, or even fighting for.

Charlie came flying down the stairs, his hair wild, almost as wild as his eyes. “She’s awake,” he said. “We think. Sort of. She made a sound, a word. She’s talking. The doctor said it wasn’t lucid, but… it was a sound. She’s waking up… Ginny’s waking up…”

***

But she wasn’t, not really. Ginny was far, far away, in a dark place where snippets of words and memories were blending into some false reality. She didn’t know which way was up anymore, it was like being swamped by a huge wave that tore the ground from under her feet and flipped her around so many times that she couldn’t remember which direction the sky lay. Up or down? Maybe to the side. Front or back? She couldn’t tell, and she didn’t care.

Soft and gentle fingers were stroking her face, feeling for a fever—no, no, that was wrong. They hadn’t been feeling for a fever, they’d been…. Touching…. Tracing tiny circles over her skin that had made her giggle. Over her cheekbones and down her neck, over her collarbone, her chest, her stomach, lower. Breathless giggles, soft circles over her skin…

“Miss Weasley? Miss Weasley, can you hear me?”

No, no, that wasn’t right, that hadn’t been the words, whispered in her hair, lips brushing her ear. What had the words been?

“Ginny, Ginny, do you need me?”

“Yes.”

"She spoke. Did you hear that? I heard her… she’s coming around…”

Ginny shifted and whimpered, trying to force the voices she didn’t care for away, to bring him closer. Because she needed him, she couldn’t not need him… And oh, how she’d tried.

“Please,” she called out, because he was slipping away.

Someone took her hand. Rough, clinging, desperate, sweaty. Wrong, it was all wrong.

“It’s alright, Miss Weasley, calm down. You’re safe now, it’s alright.”

“The Malfoys will never touch you again, Ginny, I swear it…”

Never again? It wasn’t bearable, and she pushed it all away, falling deeper into darkness where a stranger’s words did not distract from the fingers stroking over her pale skin, the soft, breathless giggles, and the whispers…

“I need you…”

And if she never left this darkened place, he could have her, all he wanted.

***

She couldn’t remember if it had really happened that way, or if her mind had warped it into a fantasy, a dream.

“Drink this, it will calm you.”

Silk, she’d never liked silk. His voice was that way, silken smooth and flawless. God, she’d never liked silk.

Her eyelashes fluttered; she was so afraid. He pressed a glass of white wine into her trembling hand.

Ginny had never had wine before. Funny that the first time she was to taste it wouldn’t be in a fancy restaurant in her finest robes. It would be shaken and terrified, a bruise making one side of her mouth ache, her robes filthy, torn. Fancy wine that felt like cold silk on her tongue. Everything about him was like silk. Ginny loathed silk, in the beginning.

“You’re trembling.”

“I’m scared.” Rash impertinence, but Ginny had always said, if she was to die, she’d die defiantly. One was not born with flame red hair and a coward’s spirit, after all, her mother had always said.

The corner of his lips turned upwards, a cool smile, cold eyes blankly tossing her own reflection back at her. “You should be. Drink your wine and eat. I will return with clean robes later.” He had stood, his robes (her memory was playing tricks on her because in the memory, he wore silk, but she knew that he would never wear silk. Too garish, it reflected too much light and he liked his clothing to absorb light, never reflect. Velvet, mostly. It whispered when he walked.) fluttering around him. He glanced over his shoulder at the door and she tensed, waiting for something, some hint of what was to become of her. There was nothing in his eyes but an empty coldness and her own reflection. “You shan’t come to harm while under my protection.” And then he had turned and left her there, alone in the most opulent bedroom she’d ever seen, wine glass in her trembling hand…

“Ginny.”

She jumped and a bit of water sloshed over the edge of the tumbler she was holding, wetting her fingers. Ron stood in the doorway, looking worried. He did that now, ever since she’d been brought back. Randomly came and checked to see if she were still there, still alright. It vexed her, truth be told. He interrupted the remembering.

Ever since she had woken up, two days before, Ginny had found this reality harsh, grating, and jarring. There were no flutes of white wine nor velvet and silk in this house, her childhood home that belonged to Ron and had since her parents had been killed the year before.

“Are you alright? You looked a million miles away,” Ron said, and Ginny blinked very slowly. Everything she did seemed slow these days, and she wondered if it was just that time had moved differently there. If it had fallen in slower patterns, lazy patterns, and everything here just moved too fast.

Her lips twisted in a smile, forced and slow, but an effort. “Fine,” she replied, holding out the glass of water. “But I… I don’t think I want this.”

He took it automatically and set it aside. “Do you want anything else?” he asked anxiously. Ginny wasn’t allowed to get out of bed just yet.

Idly stroking her throat, eyes distant, she asked softly, “Have we got any wine?”

If he replied, she did not hear it, because the remembering was coming back, and the harsh and grating reality fell away like a silken bed sheet.

***

“It’s not getting better,” Ron moaned, flopping onto the couch near Harry. “She’s still disoriented and strange. What if she doesn’t get better?”

“She will.” Charlie’s voice was sharp, and Harry fought the urge to blush or flinch or… or something. It wasn’t his natural inclination to react to Charlie’s voice, but he felt, somehow, that it was his duty. “You remember how long it took after the Chamber of Secrets, Ron. Mum wouldn’t let us take her to St. Mungo’s then, and she was fine.”

“What if she wasn’t?” Ron snapped. “What if she was still broken and she hid it well and whatever happened while she was gone, it just broke her again? What if she doesn’t get better?”

“She will,” Charlie snarled.

Harry, for the most part, felt forgotten. He hadn’t been here after the Chamber of Secrets incident, he didn’t know how to help Ginny now. He’d done his part; he’d gotten her back, both times. This…this healing, it was beyond him.

“She wants… she wants wine. I’m going to see if Mum left any in the root cellar,” Ron mumbled, slipping from the room.

“Ginny doesn’t drink wine,” Charlie said.

“Apparently, now she does.” With one last glance over his shoulder, Ron was gone, and Harry was left alone with Charlie. He’d been trying to avoid that for weeks now.

Awkward silence fell, and then Charlie touched Harry’s leg, right above the knee. “Hey,” he said, and his voice was soft, hesitant.

Harry did not like being touched. He’d never been touched with anything other than brisk disgust as a child, and then… after that, the only one to ever touch him for any prolonged length of time, that… that had been Charlie. Harry didn’t like to think about that.

“Yeah?” he asked shakily.

“I meant to talk to you.”

No, no, Harry didn’t want to talk. “About what?”

“That night… I… haven’t had the chance to apologize, someone always seemed to be hanging around.”

There was a reason for that. Harry hadn’t wanted to talk. “I… forget it.”

But the hand was still on his knee. “No, really, Harry.” Charlie sounded earnest, pleading, and Harry closed his eyes.

“I’d drunk so much and I was so angry, I let it get out of hand, and you were just trying to help. I took advantage of you.”

“I let you,” Harry said softly. He shifted away, and the hand fell from his knee. “Just forget it. It’s not worth thinking of.” It was a subtle way of phrasing it. A gentle rebuke. It would not happen again. Oh please, oh god, don’t let it happen again. Harry didn’t think he could bear it.

He didn’t blame Charlie, it hadn’t been rape. It had been a mistake, a drunken mistake, and sure, Charlie regretted it. He had been frantic and worried and feeling helpless and Ron had been out. Harry had come by to see Ron after a mission, and Charlie had been crying, so Harry had come in to talk, to try to comfort him. After all, Ginny’s disappearance was his own fault.

And then Charlie had kissed him and if that was what he needed, though it was strange and new and Charlie, Harry had kissed him back. He had noticed that Charlie was attractive, in a distant sort of way. If Harry was gay, he didn’t know it. If he was straight, he didn’t know it. He had had no experience with either to know how to define himself. So he had let Charlie kiss him, a desperate sort of hunger in the man’s mouth that Harry musingly tried to reflect back at him. If he failed at it, Charlie didn’t seem to mind.

After that, after his initial surprise had faded and he’d returned the first kiss, it was all too easy to let it go on. And then he was underneath Charlie and Charlie was doing something that Harry didn’t understand, hadn’t been aware of even being possible and certainly hadn’t wanted and hadn’t known enough not to want. He twisted and cried out but the sound was caught in Charlie’s mouth, more hot kisses that were suffocating and sloppy now and Harry thought he would panic and choke on his own tongue because everything was flipped around somehow and he was flipped inside out and the whiskey on Charlie’s tongue was soothing, somehow. And then it was done, and Charlie was whispering drunken apologies, trailing drunken kisses over his face, and Harry… was glad. That it was done. That Charlie wasn’t crying for his sister anymore. That Charlie had something else, something of lesser worth, to cry over.

That Harry himself was broken and aching and crying, that didn’t seem to matter quite so much.

“I wasn’t thinking,” Charlie whispered.

“You weren’t in a position to think. You were worried about Ginny, we both were. It was… a mistake, but it’s over, alright?” Now stop talking about it because if I have to console you even a little bit more, I’ll fall apart…

He smiled and Harry returned it and then Charlie was on his feet and leaving the room. Relief was warm and cradled Harry for a long moment, before he got up and went upstairs to visit Ginny.

She lay on her bed with faraway eyes, humming softly, and Harry watched her until Ron came up with a tumbler of brandy. “It was the best I could do,” he told Harry quietly. “I’ll send Percy out for wine later. It’s…strange. Like she’s a stranger.”

“She’ll adjust to being home again, Ron. You’ll see,” Harry promised. “But I’ve got to go. I just stopped in for a while on my way to meet with the others.”

Ron’s eyes brightened with a mixture of worry and envy. “There’s a mission, is there?”

Nodding, Harry replied, “There’s to be a battle tomorrow night. By Godric’s Hollow.”

“Good luck,” Ron whispered, his voice heavy with a yearning to be there. Harry didn’t reply to it; he never knew what to say.

It wasn’t a battle so much as a slaughter. Harry could not help but think of how much cleaner war would be if the Killing Curse did not sap so much energy. In order to conserve strength, it was only used rarely. The rest of the time, they relied on spells to cause physical harm. Blood and painful screams, flashes of light, it was a nightmare.

It had been a planned ambush. Dumbledore’s spies had reported that a unit of Death Eaters was planning an attack on a Muggle-born family in Godric’s Hollow, and Harry and his unit were sent to wait for them.

They’d have Dementors with them, Death Eaters had begun bringing at least two Dementors with them on every mission, ever since they had made an alliance with the creatures the year before. That was Harry’s purpose to his unit. Every unit was equipped with at least one person with a strong Patronus, who would attack first and scare the Dementors away before they could seriously affect the other members of the unit.

The wizard in charge of the Patronus would be stationed a distance ahead of where the others waited to ambush the Death Eaters, and Harry waited in a tree on the outskirts of Godric’s Hollow. Everything happened as planned, at first. They would bring any Death Eater that was left alive to Azkaban to await a trial, and the rest would perish in the fight.

What they didn’t count on this time, however, was that the Death Eaters had developed a new Unforgivable. It wasn’t an Unforgivable yet, of course, only because it had not yet been defined as such, but it would become one, as soon as Dumbledore and the ministry learned of it’s existence, and that was the night that they did.

He saw them coming, they weren’t exactly all that subtle, with their masks and all. Of course, most of the Death Eater’s power came from the terror inspired by those masks, and the marks that would scar the sky after their attacks.

Closing his eyes and forcing the sound of his mother’s screams out of his mind as the Dementors approached, Harry waited until the right moment, and then dropped from the tree, screaming the Patronus Charm. A stag flew from his wand and chaos erupted as his unit streamed from their hiding place, casting their body binds and their stunning spells, their firebolts and lightning blasts; the sky was lit with flashes of colour.

But then something else happened, something that chilled him straight through that he didn’t understand.

“Cassesprit!”

The flash that accompanied that curse was something like the Killing Curse, as oily and sudden and frightening, only it wasn’t green. It was violet and it shivered with a cold chill, and snapped like lightning, into one of Harry’s men, who fell over, as if dead.

It was a slaughter, after that. Harry’s men fell like flies to this new curse that did not seem to drain the energy as the Killing Curse, but have nearly the same effect. Mass chaos and screaming and they tried, so hard, but were defenceless against this strange new curse, and so many of them fell…

Harry fought with everything he had, had managed to take out a few, but it was useless. All his men were falling, and he was felt like he was the only one left… in a desperate panic, he lashed out with his free hand at the Death Eater nearest to him, knocking that mask to the ground.

Draco Malfoy stared back at him, startled at suddenly being unmasked. Harry was no less so. He had grown comfortable, killing and hurting men in faceless masks and here was proof that not only did the Death Eater have a face, it had a face Harry knew nearly as well as his own.

A hoarse shout from the darkness came. “Cassesprit!” Snakes of light hurled towards Harry, a nameless Death Eater from the dark aiming to curse him. Malfoy reacted almost blindly, it seemed; Harry was too stunned to react at all, and then Malfoy was trying to back out of the way but he tripped on someone on the ground and he stumbled forward, trying to catch his balance and… and it hit him instead.

Malfoy dropped to the ground and lay very still. All around, that stillness was reflected in the stunned silence that fell over the Death Eaters. Silver hair shone in the stillness, and Malfoy’s pretty, pale face stony against the dark, dark ground.

“Go,” someone hissed, and the Death Eaters were fleeing. They’d cursed Lucius Malfoy’s son, the punishment would be extreme.

Harry just stood there, staring in shock at Malfoy. And then someone spoke, a voice gritty and harsh with grief, fear, and hatred. “Leave him, Harry. Leave them all to rot. Someone will come take them to Azkaban in the morning. We’ve got to get our men back, maybe there’s something to be done… That curse…”

He helped them transport the fallen to St. Mungo’s, and after it was done, after he’d reported to Dumbledore everything he remembered about the new curse, Harry nearly returned home, ready to collapse with exhaustion.

He didn’t, however; he couldn’t. Dumbledore had told him that the new curse didn’t kill, those hit with it were still alive. Malfoy was still alive.

Apparating back to the road, he knelt over Malfoy’s body. After all, he owed him this, this one favor. Malfoy had helped him save Ginny, and Harry could not in good conscience leave him there on the road until morning, when he would be carted off to prison and maybe execution.

He’d hide Malfoy at his house until he recovered from this curse, and then he’d let him go, in return for helping with Ginny. Then they’d be even and the next time they met, Harry could kill him with no remorse.

And he would, he vowed. This didn’t mean he didn’t someday intend to kill Malfoy. It just meant that he couldn’t do it until they’d evened things out between them. It would be too like Malfoy to die with Harry owing him a favour, just to irritate him.

So he took Malfoy home, to his small flat in London, and laid him on the couch, straightening up and studying the other boy. It seemed so strange, Draco Malfoy on his couch, and Harry frowned, running his fingers through the silver blonde hair to straighten it, as if the incongruence lay only in that he was lying on Harry’s couch with messy hair, not that he was laying on his couch at all.

It didn’t help matters much, so Harry let his hand fall away, cocking his head and studying Malfoy again. Dumbledore and said that it seemed like a regular, if very deep sleep, from which they should waken naturally. Those struck with the curse from Harry’s unit were receiving careful monitoring at the hospital, Dumbledore was hoping there’d be no more effects of the curse. But then, he hadn’t felt it. It was dark and slimy and frightened him more than he cared to admit.

But Malfoy looked peaceful enough at the moment, and Harry was so exhausted. He got a spare blanket and tucked it carefully around the sleeping boy, before making his way to bed.

He was woken by ragged shrieks coming from the main room, where he’d left Malfoy. The painful, panicked screams sent him running from his bedroom, dressed only in his boxers and still struggling to put his glasses on.

Malfoy was on the floor, he’d fallen from the couch and the blanket was tangled around him. He was thrashing, his eyes opened but rolled into the back of his head, and he was screaming.

“Nightmare?” Harry whispered, falling to his knees and touching Malfoy cautiously. Calming somewhat even at that light brush of fingers, a strangled whimper was wrenched from Malfoy’s lips and his body stilled a bit, though his chest heaved with panicked breathing. As soon as Harry retracted his hand, a scream tore from Malfoy’s mouth, and he hurried to touch him again, this time pressing his palm against the other boy’s heaving chest. It soothed him.

Malfoy’s skin was burning with a strange sort of fever that didn’t seem quite physical, and Harry retracted his hand and ran to the kitchen to get a cool cloth to bathe his face. It no longer mattered that it was Malfoy who was here strictly because Harry owed him a favour. It was someone who was ill and Harry needed to help.

He hurried back, kneeling there and stroking Malfoy’s face. “Shh, it’s alright,” he soothed, and Malfoy calmed, his body relaxing with every stroke, every whispered word.

And then his eyes opened, slowly, fluttering weakly. As soon as they did, Harry tensed, because he was suddenly remembering who it was he was bending over; Only Malfoy had eyes that shade. “Don’t,” Malfoy rasped, grabbing his wrist. Then, his eyes narrowed in puzzlement, or maybe wonder. “Potter?”

“You’ll be alright,” was the automatic reply.

“Don’t let go of me,” Malfoy whispered. “Just don’t let go.”

If that had even been a moment of lucidity (Harry wasn’t sure it wasn’t some strange feverish rambling), it faded quickly, and Malfoy’s eyes closed and his breath hitched. He moaned, a frightened sort of moaning, and Harry was afraid to stop touching him, for fear that whatever it was, it would take Malfoy again, and make him scream. It was a terrible sort of desperate, lost screaming and he didn’t know how much of it he could stand.

But he was exhausted, he could barely move. The cool cloth whispered over Malfoy’s face, Malfoy rested nearly peacefully, and there was nothing to be done until morning. Maybe Dumbledore would know what was going on. Maybe this had happened to the others hit with the curse as well.

As for now, the only thing that seemed to help was if Harry were touching him. There was no help for it then; Harry dropped the cloth and lifted Malfoy’s body against his chest, grunting with the effort that took. He staggered back into his bedroom, lay Malfoy in his bed, carefully loosened the other boy’s robes so he did not turn and strangle himself in the night, and then Harry slipped into bed beside him, close enough to touch.

He was so exhausted that he did not even care about the strangeness of lying with Draco Malfoy pressed against his side, and Harry fell asleep quickly, Malfoy unconscious and quiet beside him.