The Curse-breaker's Sister

The Curse-breaker's Sister
Chapter 8

Draco Apparated from his cottage early the next morning, appearing on Bill's front porch with a pop. He knocked on the door and found himself looking forward to seeing Ginny's face again. He'd slept soundly last night, better then he'd slept in about a week. His dreams had been filled with a red-haired woman whose face he couldn't see clearly. Draco suspected the dream was inspired by the many hours he'd spent with Ginny yesterday.

Ginny didn't answer the door but called out to Draco to come in. He entered the cottage, placed his bags on the ground, and hung his cloak up on the rack.

"Ginny?" he called out. "Where are you?"

"I'm in the back room," she replied. "Come on back."

He made his way through the house, smiling at the occasional waving portrait on the wall, and found Ginny hunched over a golden cantaloupe in the back room.

"What's that?" he asked.

"It's amber," she told him, not looking up from her work. She was chipping out a curved line with a tool Draco didn't recognize.

He pulled up a seat beside her and for a while, he watched her work in silence.

"What kind of tool is that?" he finally asked.

"It's a bur. I'm using it to chip out the design."

The chunk of amber, which had been smooth yesterday, was now covered in shallow, swirling lines. Chips of amber littered the table and a few clung to Ginny's hair.

"What are you carving?"

"A Snitch. I'm going to fashion a pair of wings for it out of gold."

Draco stiffened. "Is it for Harry?" he asked in a somewhat strained voice.

Ginny looked up from her carving. "No, it's not for Harry. I don't know who it will be for but a Snitch is what I see in the stone so a Snitch is what it will become." She put down her bur and wrapped the amber up in a soft cloth. "Have you had breakfast, or are you ready to work?"

"I'm ready to work. I've brought some more books with me. A few of them are about Mesopotamia and Ur. I think they might help us translate some of the icons."

They moved into the living room. Ginny brought the tablet out from its hiding place and spread the papers out on the table. Draco unpacked his books, a few of them had pages he had marked the night before.

"I recognized some of the symbols and looked them up before I went to bed. I've done a bit of reading and I think the symbols over here represent ancient moon gods."

"What about the cuneiform, and the incantation?" Ginny asked.

"That's what I'm not so sure about. The cuneiform used on the tablet is a variation I'm not familiar with. Some words I'm not sure of. See these slashes here... and above this triangle... those three dots?"

Ginny nodded.

"These are accents on certain words and I'm not sure if they indicate inflection while speaking or a different meaning for the word altogether. These are going to take time."

"Well, I won't let that get me down. What about the things you do recognize? Let's start from there. Just tell me how to help. I feel so useless! And I hate that you are doing all the work."

"Ginny, relax. We will figure this out. We will find your brother." He placed a reassuring hand on her shoulder. "And you're a great helper, Gin. Look at all the notes you took yesterday and the sketches you made. You can do the same today. Your writing is a lot better then mine!"

"Thank you."

"You're welcome. Now, let's get back to work! See this icon right here...? It's the symbol for the ziggurat of Sîn. And this one...?" He pointed to two oval shaped indentations. "These are the eyes of Ningal. If I'm not mistaken, there were two lumps of onyx placed in here once, representing the eyes of the goddess. Ningal and Sîn were moon gods. They were married to each other, but worshiped separately. Sîn had a temple in Ur, but the location of Ningal's temple is unknown."

"Do you think Bill is at these temples?"

"I'm not sure. We could go to the temple of Sîn, it's a ziggurat actually, and find out."

"These gods are still worshiped today?"

"Oh, no. Some temples are still around, but the gods and goddesses they belong to are no longer worshiped. Ningal's cult lasted long into the first millennium, but it died down eventually. They all did."

The day progressed much like the last one. Ginny took copious amounts of notes. They both read through many of the books Draco had brought with him. Ginny conjured up lunch at one point and they ate while they worked. Draco helped with dinner.

The clock on the mantle chimed midnight, though neither of them heard it. Draco had sketched out a rough looking map of places described on the tablet. Ginny was flipping through a Mesopotamian Encyclopedia, trying to see if these places still existed today. Her eyelids were heavy and her neck felt like it could no longer hold her head up. She leaned back against the couch, resting her neck for a moment. Her eyes closed inadvertently and when Draco looked over at her a few minutes later, she was asleep.

He smiled warmly at the sleeping woman beside him. Asleep, he could stare at Ginny all he wanted without her blushing or looking away from him. She really was quite beautiful, and Draco wondered why he had not noticed that before. There were a few stray chips of amber in her hair, left over from her carving that morning. He gently picked them out of her red locks, careful not to wake her up, and then went back to the translation he was working on.

Draco didn't feel very tired and decided he would work on the tablet for a little while longer. The sooner they translated it, the sooner they could find Bill. The sooner they found Bill, the sooner his name would be cleared. Draco wondered what Ginny would think of him when it was all over. Would she be angry with him for not telling her the truth?

But I haven't lied to her, he thought to himself. That was the Malfoy way of thinking. A lie by omission is not a lie. He wrestled with his thoughts for a while and then followed Ginny into sleep.

The sun woke them both up the next morning. Ginny was leaning against Draco's shoulder, the giant book still in her lap. Draco's feet were propped up on the coffee table. His right hand was protectively covering the tablet, the left placed over Ginny's hand.

"Good morning," Draco muttered, his voice was rough with sleep. He had been watching Ginny sleep for the past twenty minutes, watching the flutter of her eyelids as she dreamed.

"Hi," Ginny said sleepily. "I guess we fell asleep."

Draco yawned. "Looks like it. You have ink on your face." He reached up rubbed the smudge of ink on her cheek.

Ginny pushed his hand away from her face. She wasn't used to people touching her or staring at her like he was now. She wasn't sure she liked it. The first person to touch her like that was Tom and the last, Hugh. Both unpleasant men, both unpleasant memories that overrode all memories of men in-between.

"Shall I make breakfast, then?" Ginny had placed the heavy tome she'd fallen asleep with on the coffee table and was now walking briskly towards the kitchen.

"Sounds," Draco yawned again, "wonderful."

"The bathroom's off the back room where I was carving yesterday, if you want to freshen up," she told him. And then she was gone, off to make them breakfast and hide from Draco's stares.

Breakfast was a subdued affair. Ginny tried to talk about Mesopotamia. Draco refused to talk business over breakfast. Instead they talked about life after the Second War.

"I knew Pansy was cheating on me, so the breakup was inevitable, but I was definitely shocked to find out who she was cheating with."

"Who was it?" Ginny asked. She couldn't help herself.

"Millicent Bulstrode."

Ginny choked on her bagel. "You're pulling my leg, aren't you Draco?"

"Don't I wish!"

Ginny smiled at him and then started to laugh. Soon, Draco was laughing as well. The breakup had hurt at the time, but even he had to admit that it was funny.

"I'm sorry," Ginny said when she had stopped laughing. "I shouldn't laugh."

"It's all right." Draco grinned. "I'm laughing too. What about you? I remember reading about you getting engaged to be married but," he picked up her hand from where it lay on the table, "I see no ring on your finger."

"You obviously didn't read the follow-up story detailing my failed wedding and subsequent vacation?"

Draco toasted another bagel with his wand then heaped it with cream cheese. "No, I didn't." There, another lie of omission. He didn't read about it, but he had heard about it. The Weasley Wedding Scandal had rocked the wizarding world. With the war over, the newspapers were scrambling for things to write about and unfortunately, Ginny had been one of them.

"Well, you didn't miss much. I left my groom at the alter, fled on Harry's broom and took a very long vacation."

"I suspect you just told me the much-edited version. What really happened, Ginny?"

"I didn't love him." Her voice was curt and cold.

"Then why did you agree to marry him?"

Ginny sighed. "The Second War was in full swing. What was I supposed to do? Hugh was a friend of Percy's from the Ministry. Another one of Fudge's puppets. I didn't really like him, just liked that he showed interest in me. When he proposed, I was caught by surprise. I didn't know what to say, so I just said yes. I figured since the war was on, one, or both of us, would die before it was over and it wouldn't matter anyway. Why not make him happy?

"Unfortunately, the war ended, Voldemort was gone, and both Hugh and myself were still alive. I was stuck being engaged to him. I found myself caught up in this farce but didn't have it in me to stop it. My Mum...my Dad...they were so happy for us. I couldn't break their hearts...couldn't break Hugh's."

"You obviously did break somebody's heart or you would be married right now."

"Thank Merlin I'm not," Ginny said fervently. "The day of my wedding arrived and everything was ready and as I walked down the aisle I found myself thinking of the future. I like to think my inner Weasley came out in full force. I couldn't imagine a future married to a spineless simp who was intimidated by all but one of my brothers. So I turned around and ran out of the church. It was like...it was like a dream! Everybody started yelling and calling my name, but I kept running. I could hear Fred, George and Harry laughing."

Draco was laughing himself. He'd met Hugh several times and found him to be more odious and self-centered then even his father had been. How Ginny tolerated him for as long as she did was beyond him. "What happened next?"

"Oh, nothing major. I Apparated to the Burrow, borrowed Harry's latest broom and took off for parts unknown. Hugh was livid, of course. Things are still rocky between Percy and me. Bill found me first, and I explained it all to him. He helped me talk to Mum and Dad and then after that, everyone else. And now I live my own life, do what I want to do. Hugh visited me. Just once. He scoffed at my "bohemian lifestyle" and mocked me for being a starving artist. He's married now. Got married less then a year after I left him at the altar."

"Wow, that sounds like a story straight out of Witch Weekly Magazine."

Ginny chuckled at the thought. "It does, doesn't it? Maybe I should exchange my carving tools for a quill and become a writer rather then an artist.

"How does the story end?" Draco asked, smiling at her. "What happened to our intrepid heroine next?"

"Right now she spends her time getting kicked out of Gringotts, searching for her brother, and sending Howlers to his boss in the hopes that they'll do something about his whereabouts."

"What, no happily ever after?" Draco joked.

"Finding Bill alive will be the happily ever after."