Rating:
PG-13
House:
The Dark Arts
Characters:
Dudley Dursley Ginny Weasley
Genres:
Angst
Era:
Multiple Eras
Spoilers:
Philosopher's Stone Chamber of Secrets Prizoner of Azkaban Goblet of Fire Order of the Phoenix
Stats:
Published: 04/24/2004
Updated: 04/24/2004
Words: 4,020
Chapters: 1
Hits: 977

Loyalty

Ginnysdarkside

Story Summary:
He was the most loyal. The only one who remembered how she used to be. Warning: Severe Angst and Multiple Mentions of Character deaths.

Posted:
04/24/2004
Hits:
977
Author's Note:
This fic was written for Kaz814's Ginny Fic A Thon. The pairing was Dudley/Ginny. I tried to write it without making it squicky, but whatever the case I think it may be unique in the fandom. It takes a dark and twisted look at the possible future. This fic was written for JennyMalfoy, one of my Slytherin sisters, and wouldn't have been possible without Kaz, who betaed it and held my hand through the typing process.


Title: Loyalty

By: Ginnysdarkside

If anyone had known, it would have been the death of both of us. A quick death for her, poison perhaps, or that killing curse of theirs, but for me it would have been slow torture; curses and flogging and at last, the sweet stillness death when I couldn't take the pain anymore. I'd seen it happen to other slaves who had grown too close to their owners or who had erred in some other manner, however small. Many of the slaves killed themselves at the beginning. The first few years there were many bodies cut down from attic rafters, or bloody spatters scrubbed off of cobblestones. The ones with skills, the doctors, the artists, and others, were allowed to continue their lives as second class citizens of a kind, but those of us with little talent were enslaved and put to work in wizard households or businesses.

No matter how little love I bore my cousin Harry growing up, there are still many nights when I lie in bed thinking how different the world would have been if he hadn't died. We didn't know what it all meant at first, we ordinary folk, we "Muggles". Shortly after Harry died, a change came over the land. At first, we thought it was terrorists; some people thought it was an alien invasion, but when our King and Queen were found murdered in their beds, not a single mark on their bodies, I knew something was terribly wrong. It was us and them, and despite our most valiant efforts, it was only a matter of time before they won. Our armies were destroyed by fiery bolts of lightning, and their own weapons turned on them or changed to acid in their hands. Whole cities were leveled, and when the dust had settled, we survivors were left to the mercy of the wizards.

We were rounded up and taken to camps, great sorting houses where the old and infirm were put to death, and our value to the wizards was determined. I had no reasonable skills; I'd been working in the mail room at my father's drill factory, spending my nights in front of the telly, so I was assigned to menial labor. There were wizards at the camps too, Muggleborns or half bloods. Their magic had been stripped from them, and they were treated even worse than we, if that was possible. I have no idea what happened to my parents. The thought should sadden me, but it doesn't really. It was the way the world was, there was nothing I could have done to save them.

I was assigned to a household. I lasted there a month. My next household sold me in even less time. It was no wonder really; I had never had to do anything for myself before, and unlike some of my fellow servants, the beatings and starvation did little to motivate me. Once I would have given anything for a chocolate biscuit, now, however, I just wanted to crawl into a hole and die. The wizard at the slave market beat me severely each time I was returned. I lost count of the places as the years went by. Eventually, I was sold back to the trader after the worst and final place, a coal mine in Wales. By then, I was a shadow of my former self. My bones stuck out at hideous angles, and my tattered clothes were caked with dirt and sweat. He tried to fatten me up a bit, hoping to sell me out of the country, to Portugal or Spain perhaps, where I could be worked in a field until I dropped. I would push the bowls of broth and the maggoty bread back through the bars, however, and as the days went by, I felt a sense of peace settle around me. I was all right with dying; the afterlife couldn't be any worse than the world I was so eager to leave.

It was the first day the slave trader had decided to stop bothering to even try to feed me. I was seeing the world with an odd, almost lucid, calm at that point. When she first walked by me, I paid her no attention. But then, as she stood silently, her brown eyes sweeping over cage after cage of miserable humanity, I recognized her. She had been a friend of Harry's. Her bright red hair was as vibrant as ever, but her face was pale and drawn, old beyond her years. She was with a man, a cold blonde man, who peered into the dank, shadowy cages, his terrifying grey eyes making my blood turn to ice.

When she looked into my cage, her eyes widened for a fraction of a second, and then she looked away. I felt my stomach twist. Had she recognized me? Was there a chance that she had glimpsed in my skeletal frame the chubby boy who had once existed purely to torture her old friend? The man she was with was arguing with the trader over the price of a pretty girl. He asked about her skills, going into graphic and vulgar detail of what he would require her to do. I eyed the woman speculatively, expecting her to be angry, but her lips quivered only slightly, her eyes deliberately looking away, as if by ignoring the conversation, she could pretend it wasn't happening. I suspected that was only way she could accept his unfaithfulness with any kind of grace. Later, of course, I learned she was only grateful, for the slave women distracted him from her.

Slowly, after checking to see that her husband, I assumed he was her husband, wasn't looking, she approached me. I shrank to the back of the cage, expecting to be punished for my impudence, my muscles automatically twitching in anticipation of what we slaves called the crux curse.

"It's all right," she said. Her voice was soft and gentle. "What is your name?"

"D," I told her. We were called only by initials, as if somehow using our given names would place dangerous ideas inside our heads. Her eyes narrowed. "I thought so," she said. "Tell me. Do you know anything about flowers? Lilies, perhaps, or petunias?"

My breath caught in my chest. She had recognized me. "Yes, ma'am," I replied. I hadn't spoken voluntarily in months, and my voice sounded foreign to my ears.

She cocked her head to the side as if thinking. "Very well, then." She turned to the blonde man. "Draco, I would like this one for my garden if you don't mind."

I rolled the name around in my head. It didn't sound familiar, but still, I held onto it for future reference. The man looked irritated at being interrupted. "Not that one, darling." His voice was a bored, contemptuous drawl. "It's at death's door, just look at it. We'll find you a better one that that."

She lifted her chin. "I want this one. He tells me he has experience with roses. Have you forgotten how the last one you purchased killed my entire line of Duchess of Portlands? Not to mention what he did to my Ghislaine de Feligonde in the arbor."

Now she had the man's full attention. The look of barely controlled anger in his eyes made me flinch for her. "You hardly need remind me, Darling. I punished him for you after all. Now really, be sensible. We'll find you a skilled landscape architect."

The frightened looking owner stepped up obsequiously, his eyes reluctant to meet those of the man. I'd never seen him like that and wondered who her husband was that he was so attentive to his needs. "Your husband is right, Lady Malfoy. This one is due to be destroyed next week. He'll be useless to you. On the other hand I have a -"

"No." Her voice was like ice and sent a chill down my back. "I will take this one. You will have him cleaned and sent to our manor." She gave her husband a meaningful look. "I'm not questioning your purchase ... Darling."

A look of rage crossed the man's face, and for a moment I thought he would strike her, but he merely turned back to the trader with a disparaging stare that in my mind seemed to promise her he would discuss this with her later. "Very well, Virginia. Do what you wish. Your foolish idiocies are no concern of mine. Just remember it's coming out of your own pocket money. I'll have nothing to do with it."

She gave the trader the money without even looking at me again and left, her velvet robe trailing in the saw dust behind her. "Fiery little one, your wife, Lord Malfoy," said the trader, as he led the slave girl out for the man to examine further.

Lord Malfoy let his eyes fall on the trader, a cruel, predatory look I have never forgotten. "Yes." He slowly began to run his hands over the girl's body as if she were an animal to be purchased. "But she never forgets that she's mine."

So I became a member of the Malfoy household. I was cleaned up and fitted with their livery, and that night I slept in a not incredibly soft, but still wondrously warm, bed in their servant's quarters. I didn't see my mistress much except in passing, but the food was plentiful, and as I gained back my strength, I was assigned to help another slave in the gardens. It was difficult work, but not terrible, and often, when I had my hands deep in the loamy soil, the sun warm on my back, I could almost close my eyes and pretend I was in my mother's garden. The remembered scent of cut grass and bubblegum would fill be up, take me back to some long gone sun drenched time. If I had to do it over again, I would have helped my mother out there, not just watched while Harry did. She loved her garden so, and as time went on, I felt like the Malfoys' garden was almost my own, or at least something special given into my keeping.

I had been several months in the household when, for the first time, my mistress came to check on my work. She told me within hearing of the other gardener that she wanted my opinion on her roses. I followed her out to the elaborate formal gardens down by the lake. We walked quietly for a time, our feet making little crunching noises on the raked gravel paths, and finally, when we were out of sight of the house, she paused and knelt by a long expanse of rose bushes and spoke low under her breath.

Her fingers were delicate on the green stems. "They will bloom soon." Her voice was hushed and raspy, and I wondered then at the scarf wrapped tightly around her throat even on this hot May day. "I have put a book on their care in the potting shed. I would suggest you retrieve it and study it, lest my husband begin to suspect you."

I managed to control my surprise that she had given any thought to me at all. "As you wish, Mistress." I knelt next to her to examine the plant, looking carefully at the tiny forming buds to avoid meeting her eyes. "If it is not too bold of me to ask, why are you doing this?"

She was silent for a long time before finally speaking. "You were set to die. You know that, don't you?"

"Of course, Mistress."

Her fingers reached out and grasped the stem hard, until the thorns penetrated her fingers. I stared at her hand, unable to move, and watched the tiny drops of blood drip down onto the stem of the rose. Her face was expressionless as she wiped her bloody hand on her dark robe.

"I saved you," she said. "Because it would bind you to me." Our eyes met for a moment, and then we both looked away. Her voice was low and cold, but sounded strange coming from her lips, as if the harsh words were in a foreign language she'd been forced to learn. "I want someone who will be loyal to me and only to me. Not because they have to, because they want to. All the others ... they're all his. Do you understand?" She looked at me again, and I felt a strange understanding pass between us. Despite the sadness on her face, there was also anger there.

I looked at her then, and I knew I was hers. How else could I pledge otherwise? If I didn't, she could have me killed, but more importantly, I didn't want to say no. There was nothing of beauty or purpose in my life, nothing to remind me of the time before there was only this pain and fear and this desperate aching longing. Nothing until her garden. Nothing until her. "Yes, Mistress," I said. "I understand."

She bent over the rosebush again and whispered. "Dudley ... my name is Ginny. Not Virginia. Not Mistress. Ginny. Even if you never say it aloud, could you ... could you call me that in your head when you think about me?"

"If you'll do the same for me." My voice broke then, and I had to look away. She looked at me with narrowed eyes, then nodded once and stood up, brushing the soil off of her hands with little brisk pats. "That is all then," she said. "I will check on the roses next week."

I watched her walk away, before going to the potting shed and stealthily retrieving the book. No one noticed the slight bulge that nestled under my tunic the rest of the day. Late into the night, I stayed up reading, squinting in the light of a single low burning candle. I had never been interested in books before, but having not seen the written word for over three years, I found myself eagerly diving into the dusty tome. I started with roses first, then other aspects of gardening. Book by book I learned, and as time went by, my mistress and I would converse as we strolled in the garden. It was only once or twice a month that I saw her - less in the winter when they were in the city. But each time we met, I called her Ginny in my mind and recalled a laughing, red haired girl hugging my cousin in a train station.

I saw my master less. In the slave quarters, there was always talk of him, whispered talk admittedly, low voices gathered around the fire late at night, lest word of our gossip should get back to him through his own most trusted servants. We feared him, and with good reason. I learned that he was one of the leaders of the wizarding world. He'd taken his father's place upon his death and sat at the right hand of the Dark Lord himself. One of the few times I saw him, he was swimming in their pool. I was clipping hedges, the sharp clacking noise of the clippers in perfect synch with the motion of his arms as they emerged from the water with each stroke. Snip. Stroke. Snip. Stroke. Each time his left arm came out, I would catch sight of the black mark on his arm. It seemed to poison the very air around him, coalesce it until I found it almost impossible to breathe. When he got out of the pool and finally walked away, I stepped out from behind the hedge and stared after him, feeling as if I'd just glimpsed the very heart of the devil himself.

Our master, it was said, had married our mistress against her will. Certainly, it was no secret that she didn't love him, and we all knew they slept in separate rooms. She owed her life to his lust for her, the other slaves had told me. It was the only thing that saved her. The rest of her family had been murdered, or executed rather, under the Dark Lord's order. She had been saved because Draco Malfoy had wanted her, and also, it was said, because the Dark Lord himself had a strange, almost fond, regard for her, that had made him turn a blind eye to her past allegiances.

I don't know if an unhappy life is a fair exchange for being alive. I know I had spent many sleepless nights thinking of how death would have been far better than the existence I led. They had broken her, this much I knew. For all public purposes, the master doted on her, and he may well have loved her in his own cruel way. There were many mornings though when the maids would sweep up broken glass, and the mistress would spend the next few days closeted in her suite of rooms, only to emerge hesitant and pensive, the bruises barely visible save for a vaguely sick yellowish tinge.

I thought she was broken by then. I didn't know there was more that they could do. One night, I was driving the lorry back late from the village, a load of fertilizer and some seedlings in the back, when I saw a flash of white in the middle of the road. I swerved and skidded on the wet road, and when I looked in my rear view mirror I saw her. The rain was pouring down in sheets, yet she was walking in a daze, seemingly unaware of the wind howling around her or her white night robes drenched through to the skin and splashed with mud at the hem.

My hands were trembling as I backed up and rolled down the window. "Mistress, get in." She just shook her head wildly and kept walking, her legs moving in jerky little steps. I turned off the lorry and ran out into the storm. The howling wind and the crash of thunder drowned out my voice as I shouted after her. With a muffled curse, I began to slog through the puddles after her. I caught up to her quickly. She was weak, almost falling over by the time I reached her. I grabbed her arm, and she struggled against me.

"Mistress, wait, it's me. Mistress ... Ginny," I said. When I said her name, she stopped fighting and instantly crumpled to her knees in the mud. She didn't say a word when I picked her up in my arms and carried her back to the lorry. Her body was like swan's-down in my arms, her pale cold flesh consuming the warmth from my body. I placed her inside the lorry then climbed in beside her and put the heater on as high as it would go.

She sat there shaking for a time, her teeth rattling violently, her eyes blazing like embers in her otherwise pale face. We were nearly five kilometers from the manor, almost halfway to the village, and it wasn't until then that I realized that her feet were bare.

"Mistress -" She stopped me with a single look. "Ginny," I tried again. "What happened?"

She began to sob, great wrenching sobs that shook her frail body. I never realized until I held her how thin she was, and I looked at the harsh shadow of her collarbones underneath her robe and felt my heart twist. I felt bulky and strange next to her in the cab. Certainly, I was no longer fat like in my youth, but the years of hard, manual labor had hardened my frame, so that next to her I felt like a giant.

I patted her arm awkwardly whole I waited for her to stop crying. Finally, when she began to calm, I looked at her, my voice serious. "We have to go back, you know?" I said. "He'll send someone after you."

"He's not there," she said. She shook her head dully as if awakening from a dream and stared out the window. "They left after ... After they killed her." Her voice was dead and cold.

"Killed who?" I asked. I took my hands off the ignition key and stared at her.

"Hermione," she said, not taking her eyes off the storm outside. "They killed Hermione and made me watch."

"Wait." I grabbed her arm tightly. Even in the slave quarters we had heard of the resistance. Here and there were a few pockets of people who had survived the war and still, in secret, fought the evil that was the Dark Lord. "Do you mean Harry's Hermione?"

She only nodded in response, and my heart sank. "There are still others, I'm sure," she said. "Others in the resistance, but ... oh, what's the use, really?"

I started the truck, and we drove in silence, until the high pointed roof of Malfoy Manor loomed ahead of us through the sheets of pouring rain. I stopped and turned off the lights, my eyes focused straight ahead. "Don't say that," I whispered. "You can never give up hope."

Her laugh was cold and mocking, his laugh, refined through years of shared hatred into her body. "Listen to you," she sneered. "How would you know ... slave?"

My fingers gripped the steering wheel convulsively, and I managed not to wince. "Is that all I am to you?" I asked.

I turned to look at her, and there was a look in her brown eyes that made hope stir, however briefly, in my heart. Did she remember, as I did, the long walks in the garden? Did she regret how she had always helped me without letting anyone else suspect? Did she realize that it was I who made the flowers for her room each day, and on the days when the maids swept up the broken glass the replacement flowers were always the most beautiful and fragile in the garden?

Her lips parted slightly, and I could hear the sound of her breathing. "Dudley," she said. "This is ... you know it is. He'd kill us both."

Suddenly, that was the last thing on my mind. I didn't care what happened to me. I didn't care if I lived or died. What I did care about, all, I cared about, was her.

When Draco Malfoy died, the wizarding world was aghast. How tragic, the papers said, that one so young should die in such a manner. His blood was found on the edge of the pool, his body found floating at the bottom by his inconsolable wife and one of their slaves. It was fortunate that wizards knew nothing of Muggle forensics, for if they did, they would have realized that it was really a shovel to the back of the head that killed him. The shovel of a loyal slave who was digging in the garden when he saw his mistress, the woman who had once been the laughing red haired girl, on her knees begging for her life.

His body had slid under the water easily, his blood splattered on the edge with a wave of her wand. As the water closed over his head and he disappeared into the eerie blue world below, our eyes had met, and we had smiled.

My mistress lied and connived her way into her husband's palace, distilling the cruelty he had taught her into a poisoned thorn bent on the destruction of the Dark Lord. It took a long time for the world to go back to the way it was. Decades in fact, but slowly, the Dark Lord was defeated from within, and just as slowly, the Muggle world awoke as if from a dream, and life went on. I never went back to the Muggle world. It's strange; my upbringing taught me to abhor magic. She taught me that not all magic is bad. Some of it doesn't even require a wand. It only requires that you believe.