Vain Tenderness

Chapter One: Flood of Remembrance

SOFTLY, in the dusk, a woman is singing to me;

Taking me back down the vista of years, till I see

A child sitting under the piano, in the boom of the tingling strings

And pressing the small, poised feet of a mother who smiles as she sings.

In spite of myself, the insidious mastery of song

Betrays me back, till the heart of me weeps to belong

To the old Sunday evenings at home, with winter outside

And hymns in the cosy parlour, the tinkling piano our guide.

So now it is vain for the singer to burst into clamour

With the great black piano appassionato. The glamour

Of childhood days is upon me, my manhood is cast

Down in the flood of remembrance, I weep like a child for the past.

~The Piano, D.H. Lawrence

5^th January 1996

The silence was deafening.

Across the Lake Draco could see her: she was the lone figure in black, red hair so bright it seemed to bleed into the blinding white of the snow.

"Tommy!" Ginny had screamed -- in all her helpless sight, the boy fell, his face frozen in shock, fear, disbelief...

Pain.

She was bent forwards, facing the headstone, which was identical to the others throughout the cemetery, newly christened after the first direct attack Hogwarts had ever endured.

Ginny holding the boy to her, sobbing madly, her lips buried in his hair.

"Tommy..."

"Ginny." Draco was directly behind her now, a few metres diagonally from the headstone.

Thomas Gray, 7^th September 1981 - 1^st January 1996

It was difficult to keep the pained strain from his voice.

"Draco." Her voice betrayed nothing.

She was still facing the headstone, and now Draco could see that she held a white rose, glowing in its purity, in her black-gloved hands.

"What did - what did he mean to you, Ginny?" Draco's voice sounded strangled even to himself, desperate. His breath came out ragged; his eyes ached from having watched her from afar for so long, and having not slept at all for the past days that he had not seen her.

"Nothing." Ginny's voice was devoid of emotion, a blank.

"You held him like you would a lover." It was a statement, a truth, and not a question. Draco knew he could not add the words that hung in the air like a thick fog between them: you held him like you would me.

Or what would you have, Ginny?

Draco closed his eyes, trying to stifle the voices in his mind.

"I love you, Draco Malfoy."

"Then I think that there is nothing for us to talk about, Malfoy." This time her words were chosen less carefully, and the bitterness pierced through his very essence.

This is the end, as I know it, is it not?

Or did we really have anything to begin with, Ginny?

Ginny?

Still refusing to open his eyes, Draco whispered, "Ginny."

This time she did turn - he sensed it, and immediately his eyes flew open. "Ginny." It was a plea, this time.

"Take back the necklace, Malfoy." Ginny's eyes betrayed nothing, dark against the shade of the threshold of the Forbidden Forest nearby.

The pain was irrevocable. Draco struggled to speak.

"I will not. Never."

"You do not really love me; you cannot really love me."

I love you with every thread and fibre of my being, Virginia.

Ginny.

Draco had regained a false mask of control. Voice quiet, he retorted, "You say that, Weasley, because you cannot say that you do not love me yourself."

Her silence was answer enough. Draco moved forward, unable to hold back any longer, needing her, wanting her, being unable to breathe without touching her, having to tell her, again and again...

But instead she turned, abruptly, away from him, away from the headstone, walking slowly towards Hogwarts, circling the Lake, not once turning back. And Draco, numb, watched her, not quite realising that Ginny Weasley had left him.

"I love you." Draco Malfoy whispered, but his words were stolen by the wind.

~

15^th December 2003

He had to return to the Malfoy Manor first, of course. It would be the first time he had since more than eight years ago - again he felt the same dread and hope that ran through himself, and then he hated himself for this extremity that was within him, because he had tried to purge himself of it long ago.

It was the old emotion that had captured him in those fast-slipping memories: how he used to wait, at the old abandoned Chamber where he had first seen her, alone, his twelve-year-old eyes feeding on the strange myriad of want and need and self-abomination and self-loathing and fear and sorrow and non-comprehension and lost innocence that was her at that time, not once taking in the sight of the Basilisk or the ghost of Tom Riddle into significance; how he would be alone himself in the Chamber, all those years afterward, when they had thought themselves to have closed the Chamber - how he would curl himself inwards, tightly, when he needed to forget, and when he wished that she was still there so that he could watch her and forget himself. And how she had finally come, entirely on her own volition, in his sixth year, with him. The Chamber had been their place, as the Malfoy Manor was once Father's and his.

Some ties were never meant to be broken, some memories were never meant to be remembered, but somehow they always stayed in his mind, long after Father had gone and Ginny had left.

Draco left a formal but unnecessarily brief and necessarily vague note on Croaker's desk, deciding that he had at least four hours' head start if he did so, rather than send Croaker a letter by owl - it would be likely that the owl would reach his uptown Muggle apartment in Chelsea in a matter of minutes, and should Croaker be awake at this hour, he might decide to be pesky enough to chase after Draco.

Sir:

It has come to my attention a certain matter of importance, which I will have to attend to personally. Please note that I will thus be taking leave until the 22^nd of December, when I will report back to work at 10.30 am sharp. Cases #087-923892 and #175-068691 have already been documented. Thank you.

Yours faithfully,

Draco L.V.I.J.A.B. Malfoy

If Croaker wanted to complain in any way, Draco knew he could not. For one thing, Draco had never before taken a single day's leave before this; for another, no one else was even interested in his job. And Draco had always done it well, with a kind of clinical, meticulous efficiency which Croaker had become all too in love with. His disappearance would be forgiven, dismissed, and soon forgotten.

For a while Draco even wondered why he bothered to mention his leaving to Croaker: as much as the wily old fox would probably smell his disappearance even before he had entered the Headquarters, he had a kind of disregard for Draco's well-being that was undeniably appreciated on Draco's part. To Croaker, should anything have happened to Draco, he would surely hear of it in the space of a few days, at which he would decide whether to send his condolences for the dearly departed, or send a curt get-well card.

But he was still only Croaker's second-in-command, and there was a courtesy he had to pay the older man in such a relationship.

Relationships. He had always paid too much care to those that had entered his life.

He still remembered what Blaise Zabini had said, in one of the three conversations the both of them had shared in the time that they had shared the same dormitory, and the same classrooms. He couldn't remember what the context was, but that particular remark from Zabini just never left him.

"You are always too needy, Malfoy," Zabini's pale violet eyes were distantly aloof, perfect amethysts.

It had been just before Zabini had informed him of Father's death.

"And Malfoy," Zabini was a few metres away from him now, but his sloping eyes were oddly shaded, "I just received the news. Your father was killed when he had attempted to escape Azkaban an hour ago."

Draco still remembered clearly how Zabini had stood, his usually arrogantly-held head bowed slightly, the dark ash-blonde hair falling over his face, in the first and last singular act of some kind of respect that Zabini had ever paid to Draco. And then he had turned, abruptly, walking in his nonchalant, modulated way, down the Slytherin corridor, never once looking back.

For a while, nothing had registered. And then everything around him seemed to close itself into a world of nothingness, as if what was around him was surreal, a virtual reality that was not reality. The murmur of talk in the Slytherin common room had become both too loud and too soft, and finally became indistinguishable.

He could not recall when he had cried. Not too long after, Snape had come, and numbly, he had followed him, blind and with tears streaking down his face in silent gullies. And the next day he had been returned to the Malfoy Manor, Snape still by his sixteen-year-old side, watching Father being lowered six feet under, and then numbly placing a white rose - the only one - on the coffin, which was lacquered black and incongruous, somehow, in its opaque colour to the shifting hues of the autumn leaves. Seeing Father through the glass of the coffin was like seeing himself, eerily older, eerily unmoving.

I am now the last true Malfoy, he had thought.

And then he had returned to Hogwarts the next day, by then dry-eyed, and he had seen the looks in their eyes, and knew that they remembered another of Father. He would remember Father as Father. They would remember him as a great many other things: Lucius Malfoy the Death Eater. Lucius Malfoy the one who Tortured my cousins. Lucius Malfoy the one who Bribed his way around the Ministry. Lucius Malfoy the Sinner. Lucius Malfoy the Bastard.

It is strange how the human mind cannot remember enough of a dead person beyond a fixed picture, a scene or a frame in time when he was somebody of his many facets. Draco could not see Father as anything else. Others could not see Lucius Malfoy as anything else. Draco knew the truth in what they thought, but he also knew that what he thought was also true, and that made it all the more difficult for him to reconcile with the looks in their eyes, the lack of pity. He abhorred pity, had been taught to abhor it, but somehow he still wanted and still expected some semblance of it. But he saw nothing of it, even amongst the Slytherins - Pansy Parkinson just became quieter, and spoke less and less to him, not meeting his eye; Blaise Zabini never again looked at him; Theodore Nott seemed to see right through him; Crabbe and Goyle just shuffled about...and then he had met Ginny Weasley, and had finally seen the pity in her eyes.

She understood.

It was the most beautiful and the most heart-breaking thing that he had ever seen. That she could see beyond their side, that she could see his. Draco, of course, knew how Father had once had a hand in almost murdering her. But somehow he could also see how she would understand - she had been to the far side, had lost someone, and lost herself as well before, and she could see herself in Draco.

He remembered, how, months later, they would be in the Chamber, clinging to each other - he could still remember her cold fingers in his, how he burned when he felt her red hair, deep and bright like blood, how her touch was almost rough in texture just under the joints of her fingers, and their bodies falling together against the hard marble walls of the Chamber, and she kissed him first, devoid of all inhibition, a burningly painful ecstasy, all soft and velvet and leather and wrong and right all at the same time.

"I love you, Virginia Weasley." He had confessed first, when she had pulled back, her brown eyes amber and gold, wide. She had not said anything, her breath quick and shaky, and he had kissed her, much more tenderly: cautiously, almost, and he had felt her small physique melt into his and all he knew was that he just wanted to die, because it was too excruciatingly beautiful.

He had always loved beautiful things. He still loved beautiful things.

"I love you, Draco Malfoy." She had finally whispered, quiet against his ear, and if he closed his eyes now he could still feel the syllables form themselves near his skin, snake-like, ghost-like, but still immeasurably ironic, immeasurably beautiful, frighteningly real.

And now, as Draco Malfoy Disapparated away from Croaker's desk to the last place he had thought he would ever return to, he could only wish she had meant it.

At least at that time.

~

15^th December 2003

Ginny Weasley opened her eyes to an abyss of black.

Maybe I'm going mad.

She remembered the first time she had seen someone mad - Alice Longbottom, who had finally been relieved of her insanity when the Death Eaters had stormed St. Mungo's. Neville had been sick with grief: Frank Longbottom had been found severed in half, next to decapitated Alice. No one had eaten for days after that, Ginny remembered. Harry had looked haunted long after that, as had Ron, and Hermione, and Seamus, and Lavender, before she herself had been killed by Theodore Nott just two days ago, or at least what Ginny thought was two days ago...Theodore Nott, whom Lavender - sweet Lavender, pretty Lavender, true Lavender - had not so many years ago said could have been a handsome boy, if he would only stand up straighter and went out into the sun more and stopped looking so sickly, because he had such delicate features, especially so with his black hair and dark blue eyes.

Ginny's heart still ached painfully for Lavender: her lively forest-green eyes, and fine strawberry-blonde hair, and her frivolous laugh, and how she would hug everyone at every other turn, even if she never did understand why they cried.

Lavender Elendriel Brown, 24^th August 1980 - 13^th December 2003.

Beloved Friend and Daughter.

Anthony Goldstein, her boyfriend who had seen her fall, could not stop weeping. Ginny had stood opposite him, and it was horrible, because Ginny could not cry; could only feel how terribly dry her eyes were. Seamus, who was Nott's cousin - his mother was Nott's father's sister -- had been silent the entire day, his fair Irish skin almost devoid of colour.

And then there had been Blaise's mother. It had been fours years into the Second War - Blaise, who was the only Slytherin other than Snape who had joined the Resistance, had saved both himself and her when he had holed themselves up in Georgia in a forgotten, Unplottable Zabini fortress. There Ginny had met Blaise's only surviving relative. Tamsling Zabini must have been in her forties at that time, but in her divorce from the world, lingering in her lonely tower, time had stopped the aging of her appearance, and she was an insane soul trapped in a young woman's body. Somehow that had made her seem even scarier to Ginny, but thankfully she had Blaise, as much as his only words to her throughout the month that they had been there together were: "I'll return a favour with a favour."

She never understood that, but then she never did understand Blaise.

But I must be going mad.

Ginny could not fathom how she had come to be here: She could feel the floor beneath her, sickeningly damp, and the air was musky, but she could see nothing. She felt a dull panic start to rise within her, and she groped around her body for her wand, which was always in her left pocket, because her left hand was her wand hand, but then she discovered that her wand was nowhere on her.

There must be something wrong, there must be something wrong, there must be something wrong...

Merlin, she needed Harry, needed his constancy, needed his contradictory infallibility, needed his brilliant green eyes, needed his gentle kisses.

I also need him.

She was afraid now, she knew - and there had only been one other person since her years in Hogwarts, now echoes away, who had been able to be afraid like her, and his fear would sooth her own when he held her.

He understood her; he could see himself in her.

In her heart of hearts, in the stifling black of her situation, she knew - she had always known.

And Merlin, she would always remember those silver eyes of his, the impossible myriad of emotions in them, his flawless white skin, cold against hers, warm against hers, his beautiful pianist's fingers, long and delicate and perfect, harsh and gentle and sensitive and callous.

'I love you, Virginia Weasley.'

If she closed her eyes now, she could still feel his soft, breathless words against her cheek, caressing her skin as his fingers once did, light and vapour-like.

The strangely shaped, rust-coloured pendant, smooth against her breasts, reminded her even more painfully of him.

But Harry loved her, and she him, now; he did not understand her, but he loved her anyway.

Did Draco not, as well?

But she had left him long ago, for the memory of another boy she had loved, in a way that was even more inexplicable as how she had felt for him, how she felt for Harry. And now, wherever she was - whether she was really going mad, whether the Death Eaters had caught her, whether she had died and was in hell - she was alone.

She really was alone.

~

25^th December 1995

Thomas Gray was quiet against Ginny's back, but Ginny knew that he was far from asleep. His heartbeat was calm and soothing, almost lulling in its dull repetition. She could almost see, in her mind's eye, Tommy's heavy eyelashes shuttering the light blue of his eyes, his red hair mingling with the stray strands of her own, not unlike hers in colour. His hands, which were as lightly freckled as her own, wound around her body, as the two of them lay in the position that they had adopted, Tommy against Ginny's back, under the same midnight skies. All since ten years ago.

As usual there was no verbal exchange - there never was. Ginny never told Tommy any of her fears, her dreams, her nightmares...all of which were haunting her, more and more so in the recent weeks. And lately, of course, she was not telling him about Malfoy, who, for all the strange understanding that she sensed the both of them shared, she still did not trust. Tommy himself hardly spoke during their meetings together: Tommy, after all, never did talk much. But his body next to hers was comforting enough: he allowed her to escape, not needing to explain herself, not needing to speak to deserve human contact. For all she knew, Tommy had always been her one haven all this while, with his slim frame wrapped around her, in an intimacy that went beyond words, and went beyond mere romantic - or even lustful -- notions. Sometimes, in a caught moment, they would kiss, but those were almost accidental, and Ginny never felt anything from them beyond blasé sweetness, at best a mutual sharing of wounds. But the kisses had matured as they both had: from the clumsy, immature kisses of their year before Hogwarts, when the both of them would spend the night at the forgotten tree house beyond the Burrow during Ginny's brothers' school terms, to the more tentative, hurt-induced (at least on Ginny's part) ones post-Riddle, to the more uncontrolled ones during their third and fourth year, to the more subdued, even tired and burdened ones come this year. A lot had happened, even if both Ginny and Tommy never spoke the words out loud. Which was also why they had met even more frequently this year, and how Ginny had let Tommy pull her closer and closer and more intimately against himself, because they both needed each other more than ever.

Because everything around them was starting to change too quickly for them, and they both knew it.

~

15^th December 2003

"How do we know that Malfoy will do it?" Harry's voice was exhausted as he repeated the same empty question that he had asked himself ever since the night before. The shock from Blaise and Hermione's story of the relationship between Malfoy and Ginny was starting to wear itself off, but the helplessness was still fresh.

He had always been there to save her, hadn't he?

He had spent the entire night not being able to sleep; Ginny's disappearance was like a Muggle tape on rewind, he could still hear her scream, searing in his ears, her fingers reaching hopelessly at the air as Lvov Petrovich Stunned her and Disapparated with her before Harry could move towards her, from ten feet across the halls of Durmstrang Institute.

Ron had gone mad after that, cursing anyone in sight. It had taken Snape, Harry and Hermione's combined efforts to subdue him in the end, just before he could throw a Killing Curse at a quivering Pansy Parkinson.

They had caught more Death Eaters than they had expected last night, but none of them were part of Voldemort's inner circle. And they had lost Ginny.

Harry closed his eyes slightly - his fingers dug into his hands, knuckles whitened.

"He will have to. I'll make him, if he doesn't." The voice was fiercely vehement.

Ron. His freckles seemed even starker against his skin now; the grey-blue beneath his bloodshot blue eyes were apparent. Harry knew that he looked just as bad, if not worse.

They had already lost so many. Lavender, with her effervescent giggles. Padma, with her mock-disdainful looks, always ready with dry British wit. Hannah, with her steadfastness. Dennis, with his never-failing perkiness. Luna, with her other-worldliness, her eccentricity and her seemingly random kindness - Ron had stopped talking for a full month after that, and lost so much weight that he still looked the ghost of himself, even now that it was a year on from that tragedy. Owen Cauldwell, with his comically staunch, unwavering belief that the Second War would be over by Christmas. Wayne Hopkins, with his butter-fingers, and his easy laugh. Brian Summerby, who had been the Hufflepuff Seeker in Hogwarts after Cedric, with his propensity to fall prey to the flu come every change in season...even Zacharias. Zacharias Smith. The proud, snotty blond boy had become an asset in the end, a good friend even, in that awkward, haughty way of his, and he had fought bravely, even once saving Harry. But he had died in the end - under Voldemort's own hand.

And now Ginny was gone.

Ginny, Ginny, Ginny.

Ginny, Virginia, Gin.

If Hermione was right, then Ginny was still alive. If she wasn't -

Harry did not want to think about that.

"Malfoy will." This voice was clear, calm.

Harry knew this voice just as well, even without turning around. Blaise Zabini. Blaise lowered his tall frame into the couch next to Harry, and Harry could feel Blaise's cool, calculating eyes boring into the back of his head.

"He will, because he loved Ginny," continued Blaise, "still loves her, actually."

Harry wished that he would stop saying that. Ginny was his now, not Malfoy's: Harry's.

He had proposed only a week ago - Ginny had nodded, blushing, her copper-red hair falling into her pretty brown eyes, which glowed gold and amber in the evening light, and Harry had slipped the simple gold engagement ring into her finger, entwining his fingers in hers.

He wondered whether she still had the ring, wherever she was.

They were supposed to get married when all this was over.

When all this over.

Where are you, Ginny?

Where are you?

There was no answer.

"Anything which truly belongs to one will return in due time, Potter." Blaise's voice was still deceptively calm, quiet - but Harry sensed rather than heard the metal under the velvet of his control. Blaise had never liked him, Harry knew: eight years on from Hogwarts, seven years on from being in the Resistance with him, Blaise had never once failed to refer to Harry as "Potter".

"Stop being so sodding cryptic, Blaise," retorted Ron for Harry, but even Harry could see that Ron, despite his despair and grief and anger, was far from truly hostile in any way towards Blaise: he had in fact handed Blaise a cup of coffee as he had spoken, which Blaise had accepted. Ron had, strangely, become close to Blaise towards the end of their seventh year - Harry never understood why, and Ron never said.

Harry had always thought that Ron was the one who was transparent.

Merlin, he felt so -- so empty without her.

Blaise hadn't taken his eyes off Harry. Abruptly, he spoke again.

"You're not afraid are you, Potter?"

"What of?" Of course he was afraid. He was afraid for Ginny - he was so bloody sodding afraid that he would lose her.

"Afraid that Ginny still loves Malfoy?" Blaise's voice was casual, light.

Harry chose not to answer; his breath caught.

Blaise leaned forward, so much so that Harry could feel his breath against his skin. From his peripheral view, Harry could see Blaise's unblinking violet eyes somehow dangerously close to his own. Blaise's next words were so soft, even Harry had to strain his ears to hear them. When he did, he instantly regretted that he had.

"Because she does, Potter. I know she does."

~