Windblown

Windblown

Ginny always maintained that something went wrong that night in the Chamber of Secrets. Harry was not supposed to be stabbed in the arm by the basilisk. He was not supposed to lie twitching on the ground as Tom slowly advanced and placed a nearly corporeal hand on his forehead. His scar was not supposed to burn with a sickly green light as Tom sucked out the rest of his rapidly dwindling life force. He was not supposed to stare at the ceiling with vacant eyes as Tom put a hand to his now-solid face and smiled. Harry was not supposed to die.

Ginny dreamt for years of feasts and balls, classes and trips to Hogsmeade, tournaments and summers at home. In these dreams Harry was alive and the world was the way it should have been. People smiled and laughed and Ginny was not afraid.

Ginny didn't dream anymore.

* * *

"Weasley." Ginny blinked but did not turn as a voice called her name. She fancied that the wind blowing across the tower grabbed the word and tossed it across the stone parapet and off the edge. Her name would dance in the breeze until it landed in a place where there were no more tears. "Weasley." The voice was more insistent this time, and the wind was not strong enough to save her.

Ginny turned slowly, belatedly recognizing the voice. "Malfoy," she responded dreamily. The blond frowned and strode across the top of what had once been the Astronomy tower until he stood next to Ginny. The wind gusted again and Ginny's nightgown twirled prettily around her legs.

"Weasley, you're going to kill yourself standing out here like that," he proceeded gruffly, shrugging of his jacket and tossing it around her shoulders. "If you're trying to kill yourself, at least put some clothes on and do it properly."

"I'm dressed perfectly fine," Ginny protested, wondering if she should work up some amount of indignation. She decided against the idea and turned away again so she could look out into the gathering gloom of night. If she concentrated hard enough, she could make out the decaying hoops of the quidditch field and the ghostly glimmer of the lake. "It'll be frozen soon. Winter is coming."

"So I'd noticed. You ought to come in. He noticed you weren't at the feast."

"Feast." Ginny frowned. For a moment she remembered golden plates and chatter and the twinkle of Dumbledore's glasses before the memory slipped back into the recesses of her mind. She was still standing in the cold. "Oh yes. To celebrate the sixth year since our Lord's return. I was just remembering, you know. The day he came back."

"Really," Draco responded dryly. "So you actually remember. They always said you were unconscious when Potter found you."

Ginny shrugged and stared into the sky. "I was. I still remember though."

Draco snorted and ran a hand through overgrown blond locks. Ginny remembered when his hair was slicked back and never out of place. She tried to remember when he stopped wearing his hair like that, and decided the change occurred when Lucius Malfoy was tortured to death and hung between two spikes for the Thestrals to gnaw on. She supposed he didn't want to remind people that his father had been a traitor. Her Lord didn't like to be reminded of failures, his or anyone else's.

"So how can you remember if you weren't awake? You know what, never mind. I probably don't want to know. Would you come in now? It's bloody freezing out here."

"In a minute." Ginny wanted to stay and listen to the wind.

* * *

The castle was always busiest after a battle. The Great Hall was filled with bodies of the dead and dying and the sound of their moans echoed up to the rafters. Healers dashed up and down the orderly rows of bodies, applying charms and potions where necessary but rarely staying in one place for any lengthy amount of time. After the healers had finished with a row of the stricken, black-robed witches knelt by the bodies and closed the eyes of the dead before levitating the bodies out of the Hall. Children wept and widows screamed when they recognized the body of a loved one lurching out the doors.

Ginny entered the hall and drifted up and down the rows of bodies, glancing curiously down every once in a while. The faces all seemed the same after a while, and even if they belonged to people Ginny had once known, she did not recognize them now. One of the Healers bumped into her as she walked and barked in annoyance, "Out of the way, girl! Why aren't you helping and making yourself useful..." the minute he got a clear look at her pale face and flaming red hair he flushed and made his excuses before slinking away. Ginny watched in bemusement as the rest of the Healers kept well away from her. She didn't understand why she always had that effect on people.

Ginny made her way down one row and was halfway up the second when a hand grabbed at her leg. "Weasley." She knew that voice.

Ginny looked down and for once she recognized a face. Despite the blood intermixed with dirt and dust, Draco Malfoy was easily identifiable. She stared at him for several minutes, taking note of the deep wound in his side that was still sluggishly bleeding onto the flagstones. "You look a mess, Malfoy. What have you been up to?"

Draco gritted his teeth and managed to sound condescending and haughty even as he lay in a pile of his own sweat and blood. "Weasley, are you going to stand there all day and watch me bleed to death or are you going to help me?"

Action. Ginny was not one for acting of her own accord. She preferred to drift through the days like the windblown leaves that flew by the castle windows, simply reacting to stimulus. Those that acted, she had quickly learned, always lived to regret. Or they learned to die.

"Weasley, please. Any day now would be fine with me."

Malfoys, as far as Ginny knew, did not typically beg. And besides, Draco was the only person, aside from her Lord, of course, who ever spoke to her. "I don't believe I can carry you."

Draco groaned. "Are you a witch or not? Just levitate me out of here."

Ginny rarely performed magic anymore. The words Wingardium Leviosa sounded strange on her tongue, twisted. Ginny left the hall without another word, Draco bobbing gently behind her like a cork set adrift in the sea.

* * *

Ginny's room was located in the block of rooms where the professors used to have their quarters. When her Lord first installed her there, the room had still been filled with spell books and broken quills, half corrected quizzes and lesson plans. Ginny had carefully stored away Professor McGonagall's possessions in case she came back for them. Ginny forgot that the professor was already dead.

Draco lay on her bed like it had been made specifically for him and directed Ginny in the creation of a general healing draught. Ginny was content to have him tell her what to do. She was very good at taking orders. They made life simpler, somehow.

Once the potion was finished, Draco gulped it down in one large swallow, making a face as the liquid burned its way down his throat. "What should I do now?" Ginny asked, drifting from the window over to the bed back to the dresser over to the window again.

"Well for one you could sit down and stop going in circles. You're making me dizzy. Honestly, it's no wonder most of the kids think you're a ghost. You walk around in that bloody nightgown, paler than a piece of parchment, looking like you have no idea where you are or what you're doing."

"But I don't know," Ginny replied, sitting on the edge of the bed and folding her hands demurely in her lap. Her Lord liked her much better when she was quiet and ladylike. "I never know. I just go where the wind takes me."

Draco rolled his eyes and they lapsed into silence. After several minutes he looked back at Ginny and sighed. "Well, I suppose there's no putting it off. I need you to peel off my shirt so we can dress my side."

Ginny was very glad her Lord was not in the castle, because he probably would have been upset to see her sitting on the same bed with a half-naked Draco Malfoy. Ginny twisted the bloodstained cotton in her hands and tried to avoid looking at the pale expanse of chest before her. Instead she stared with interest at the wound. Draco dabbed at it with a wet cloth and tried to wash away the dirt and blood. As far as wounds went, it wasn't life threatening, as long as infection didn't set in. Ginny politely ignored the litany of curses that poured from Draco's lips.

By the time the dressing was completed, Draco was trembling with shock and exhaustion. Ginny thoughtfully draped a blanket around him as he fell asleep decided she liked him much better when he wasn't awake. In sleep, the visage of disdain and superiority and the air of tenseness and doubt melted away to leave simply a boy of eighteen.

Ginny clutched again at the shirt and blinked. On the inner side of the shirt her fingers ran over a thicker piece of fabric. A pocket. She reached in and pulled out a note, written in small, spidery writing.

We are moving soon. It will be no less than two weeks, possibly three. We will contrive to send you a sign when the day comes. Be sure that the wards are only down in one place, or they'll be sure to suspect. Hermione finally worked out what spell it was that Tom used to kill Harry, and how to reverse its effects. She'll need at least five minutes once she actually finds him. You must allow us enough time to get in and out and perform the spell.

A.D.

That was interesting.

* * *

Ginny always knew when her Lord returned to Hogwarts. There was an air of undeniable electricity that ran through the castle, not unlike the feeling in the air before a devastating thunderstorm. The wind always slowed and stopped when he was there.

He called for her on the second night. Ginny put on her nicest robes and brushed her hair for the first time in weeks, methodically working out each tangle. The house-elf announced her presence with a trembling voice and bolted just as the door to Dumbledore's old office swung open.

Ginny walked in and kept her eyes fixed firmly on the ground. Tom Riddle sat behind the desk and regarded her with an amused expression on his face. He looked no older than when she first saw him in the diary, still a pale, dark-haired teenager of seventeen. They were the same age now.

"Come here." Tom always spoke quietly, but without the tiniest bit of doubt that his orders would ever be disobeyed. He didn't need to yell.

Ginny walked over and stood next to his chair. Her skin burned as he stroked her cheek gently. "You seem different, love. More awake. Has something changed?"

Ginny shook her head mutely. She did not want to talk about how Draco visited her almost every day. She did not want to get him in trouble. "I think you're lying to me." The finger continued to move along her cheek and down the curve of her neck. "You wouldn't lie to me, would you? You don't have it in you. There's hardly anything left in you at all." He smiled and seemed amused at his conclusion as his fingers continued to sear into her skin.

Somewhere deep inside her chest Ginny screamed and yelled and beat her fists against the walls and wept and swore in rage.

Ginny replied modestly, "I wouldn't lie to you. I am nothing but what you give me."

Tom smiled.

* * *

Draco was waiting when Ginny drifted back into her room. Her wind was gone and she was lost without it and her skin was crawling. She made her way to the sink and started methodically scrubbing away at her cheek and neck. She needed to wash away his touch. The wind would not come if it sensed him on her.

Ginny was vaguely aware when Draco ripped the cloth away from her. "Ginny, you're tearing off your skin! What happened?"

"It's the wind," she responded brokenly, looking into gray eyes that flashed with concern. "It won't come when he touches me. I need the wind. I just wish he wouldn't touch me!" There was hysteria in her voice, and fear, and loathing.

"Come on now, you're fine. He won't touch you anymore. I won't let him." There was a possessive note in his voice, and Ginny was used to being possessed, but somehow now she didn't mind. Slowly, as if afraid to provoke an unwanted reaction, Draco traced the line from her cheek down to her neck where the irritated red color marred pale skin. Ginny sighed and softened into his touch and wondered how his could be so different.

Ginny looked up at Draco's face and saw concern and something else hiding behind his eyes. He actually seemed worried, and Ginny really didn't want him to waste his concern on her, because he had other matters to worry about. So Ginny did the one thing she could think of to take his mind off the anxiety.

His lips were dry and light and pliant and reminded her of the wind rustling through trees in the spring.

* * *

He told her to stay in the room. He had come in with fire and hell in his eyes and ordered her not to leave. He wouldn't say what was happening, of course, but Ginny had read the letter and so she knew. He told her he would kill her himself if she left the room and kissed her with a fierce sort of desperation and then left.

Now Ginny crept out of the safe confines of her room and darted down the hall. The wind was strong and insistent and she did not float. The wind blew her past the great hall, which was filled with bodies upon bodies and smoke that curled towards the cloudy ceiling. The fighting wasn't over. Every once in a while Ginny would pass a fierce battle and wonder if she would be caught in the crossfire, but the wind kept her safe and brought her safely through every time. She was needed elsewhere.

The door to the office was already open, torn to pieces and barely hanging onto one hinge. Ginny passed through the opening and could hear voices. The wind stopped her at the entrance and she saw her Lord standing behind the desk, pointing his wand at Hermione, who was bruised and bloody and still defiant. Somebody lay on the floor.

Action. Ginny drew her wand and uttered Expelliarmus before Tom even realized she was there. This time the word was clear and crisp on her tongue and if activity led to regret, then so be it.

Hermione gaped at Ginny for a second, but wasted no time in uttering the spell. Ginny wasn't particularly interested in the words, but she was interested in the way Tom screeched as he melted away into nothing. He was there, and then he wasn't, and Ginny had thought that she only existed because he existed, but she was still there. He was gone.

It was then that the wind drew her attention to the floor. She dropped to her knees and cradled the blond head in her lap. "I know you told me not to leave," she whispered, "but I was tired of living in the cold."

Draco smiled and brushed a hand to her lips before he closed his eyes.

* * *

Ginny walked across the grounds of the school, a tiny jar clutched tight in her hand. She stopped at the edge of the lake and opened the lid. The wind pulled at her cloak and hair, playful and impatient. "You'll take care of him for me? Until I can come too?"

Of course, it seemed to say, and Ginny smiled as she turned the jar upside down. The ashes whirled in a circle around her, and she could hear his voice and see his smile before they continued across the grounds and into the distance.