Full Circle

Chapter 15 - Between a Rock and a Hard Place

The last six weeks passed by in a relatively uneventful way. A new year had begun and the blistery winter weather of January was starting to fade into a mucky February. Before the break had ended, Ginny had helped Hermione pack up the contents of her dormitory room and move her life into a secluded sanctuary far away from the eyes and ears of the Hogwarts population.

Hermione's father has fallen deathly ill - a serious sort of muggle condition it seems. Professor McGonagall thought it would be best for her to take a semester off from school in order to help her mum at home." This was the explanation Ginny gave the Gryffindors when they returned home from the winter holiday. No one really bothered to question the situation any further.

Since Ron had returned to Hogwarts the morning after he had learned the truth about Hermione, he found that he had nothing to say to his sister or any desire to visit his former best friend. His demeanor was brisk and his patience was limited, so that any attempt Ginny made to speak with him was immediately cut short.

"There is nothing to talk about," he would reply firmly as he turned his attention back to his textbook. Ginny noted how unusual for Ron to spend so much of his free time studying, but she knew there would be no point in questioning him further.

Frustrated, she would climb the spiral staircase to Hermione's room after dinner each night, hoping to convince her friend to talk about her problems. The pregnancy was evident since she was more than six months along now and the baby was starting to weigh heavy on her relatively small frame. Unfortunately most nights, Hermione was also too busy studying to discuss things with Ginny. She either spent her evenings with her nose deep in thick books like The Encyclopedia Wicanica's History of Central European Witch Burnings or sitting uncomfortably at her desk writing essays on scrolls of parchment. Any interruption only made her more irritable in her solitude.

Finally at the end of the day, Ginny would return to her own dormitory and waited until her roommates fell asleep before slaving over her own parchments - writing letters without knowing if the recipient ever read them.

Dear Harry,

Where are you? If you get this letter, please respond to me immediately so that I know it was delivered ok. I wish you had spoken to someone before leaving so hastily that night. There are things going on at Hogwarts that I think you should know...

But then Ginny paused. This wasn't really the sort of news you could write about in a note, especially if this letter gets intercepted by undesirable people. She sighed and used a spell to erase the last line.

I hope everything is doing well in your life. We miss you here and hope you return soon.

Love,

Ginny

The tangled web that had been created in his absence made it difficult for Ginny to sleep at night. The sad part was - she knew the other three were also tossing and turning in their own beds and yet for some reason, none of them could turn to each other in this time of need.

"I'm just going to take a quick shower and then I'll meet you guys for dinner," Lavender called to Tina and Antoinette before turning the corner to the Seventh Year girls' dormitory. Quidditch practice had started again and the mild weather made it possible for them to play outside on the pitch. On a whole, the team had been terribly rusty this afternoon, but Lavender was extra frustrated at not being able to find the snitch. The muscles in her back and arms screamed in pain from lack of use and she was disgusted that her uniform was damp with sweat. Merlin, how she hated being dirty, but it was an unavoidable state when playing sports.

Not only had practice been a flop, but Lavender had grown ever more irritated with the status of her relationship with Ron. Any romantic inklings that seemed to exist between the two of them before the holidays had all but fizzled out with her return to Hogwarts. She had been surprised when she found herself attracted to Ron Weasley in the first place; he's hardly what she considered to be her type. Now she was even more confused as to why she felt so rejected by his actions.

The two had lingered outside in the cold the morning she took the Hogwarts Express home for Christmas. He stood in front of her in an awkwardly delightful fashion, his cold hands shoved into the pockets of his robe. The brisk wind had begun to chap the exposed part of his cheeks, yet he continued to smile at her. She reached out with her own gloved hands to tighten the scarlet and gold scarf around his neck. For a moment, their eyes met and she had every desire to lean forward and press her lips against his.

He started to lean down to her when Professor Delacour requested that the remainder of the students please board the carriages at this time. Lavender smiled at Ron and simply said, "Owl me over the holidays, ok?" He nodded and watched her climb into the last departing buggy. She remembered glancing out the window as he grew smaller and smaller in the distance. Who would have ever thought she would have feelings for Ron Weasley?

Yet weeks later, he had barely spoken more than two words to her. Lavender had hugged him the morning she returned to Hogwarts, but he had stiffened in her arms. He did not inquire about her vacation over dinner that evening and avoided her in the common room later that night. Now he spent most of his time studying or holed up in his dormitory by himself. Then today at practice, Ron had been even more aloof, if that were possible. There had been no pep talk or helpful hints this afternoon and it was obvious how distracted he was - he let the chasers score on him eleven times!

Lavender sighed to herself as she opened the door to the dormitory. She just didn't understand the male species sometimes.

"Oh shit!" she heard someone yell as a blanket covered body rolled onto the floor. Parvati sat straight up in her bed, clutching the sheets to her naked body.

"Lavender!" she cried when she saw her roommate.

Lavender raised her hand to cover her eyes. "Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't know-" she said until she recognized the person now cowering by the side of the bed.

"Seamus! What the hell is this?"

He popped his head over the covers. "Oh...hey, Lavender. What's happening?"

Lavender dropped her broom and gym bag onto the floor. "My ex-boyfriend is having sex with my best friend in my bedroom - that's what's happening!"

"It's my bedroom too, Lav." Parvati sulked.

"That is beside the point! You were the one who told me to dump Seamus because he was being too pushy about trying to get me to sleep with him! Now here you are shagging him like a carpet!"

"Well," she replied, pushing her dark mussed hair out of her face. "I guess he just needed someone more up to his speed."

Lavender just stared at them with disgust. "Go to hell. Both of you," she said and slammed the door behind her. A few heads poked out of various other dormitories as Lavender stormed through the hallway and down the staircase to the common room.

"This is un-fucking-believable!" she yelled to no one in particular. "Of all the boys in Hogwarts and all the places besides my dormitory..." Whipping around the corner, she ran smack dap into a very confused looking Ron.

"Hi, Lavender."

"And you!" Her voice raising a decibel with every word she sputtered. "I thought you bloody liked me, you pompous ass!"

Ron furrowed his eyebrows. "Well, I ...."

"For months you had been so nice to me and made me feel better about this whole Quidditch thing and once even implied I was pretty - or at least that's what I thought you meant. But ever since I returned from holiday you've been spending all your time reading. READING? Am I that boring that you'd rather study than talk to me? Merlin, I am so stupid for liking you in the first place." She ducked from under his potential grasp and headed out through the portrait opening.

For a moment Ron stood there, not fully comprehending all that he had just heard. Once it had finally sunk in, he quickened his pace to follow her into the hallway.

"Lavender, wait!" he called. She continued for a few more steps before turning back to him. Her blond hair, once contained in a ponytail during practice had all but fallen from its updo into frizzy strands around her sour face. Her face was splotchy red in anger - or perhaps embarrassment - and her hazel eyes squinted at him from above her up-turned nose.

"WHAT?" she yelled in reply.

"Tell me what this is all about."

Lavender sighed. "Are you that dense?"

Ron thought for a moment. "Yes I am. But I also know there has to be more to this than what is on the surface."

She stood squarely in front of Ron with her shoulders heavy from the weight of defeat. "I walked in on Parvati and Seamus and let me assure you, it was the last thing I wanted to see on a day like today."

"What were they - oh wait a minute....nevermind." He blushed slightly at the thought.

"But what hurt me so much was that Seamus and I dated on and off for over a year! During the course of our relationship, our lack of sex was at the root of all our problems - to the point where I had to break up with him. Now he's sleeping with my best friend - or who I thought was my friend. You can't imagine how much this kills me!" She started to walk away again.

Ron face grew strangely somber as he placed his arms on Lavender's shoulders and turned her back to him. "I understand more than you think I do."

Shrugging him off, she spat, "I don't want to talk to you, Ron."

"Umm...well." He was at a total lost for words. "Just so you know - you are better than studying."

Her heart stopped for a moment.

"What did you say?" she asked in a somewhat softer tone.

"You're definitely more fun than studying," he answered, glancing up at her.

Lavender sighed in defeat. "Well, you certainly have a funny way of showing it."

"I'm sorry, but what do you expect - I'm just a pompous ass like you said."

A smile started small, like a tickle underneath her lip, but it finally grew into a full fledged grin as a result of Ron's honesty. She disliked giving in, considering how he had been behaving as of late, but somehow she could help it.

"How is it that you can always find some way to cheer me up when I'm miserable or pissed off - even when you're the cause? I hate that about you." But she laughed as she spoke those words.

Ron took a few steps closer to her. "Then I'm just going to be the guy you love to hate."

"Or perhaps..." she said tilting her head slightly, "you'll be the guy I hate to love." Strangely confident, Ron leaned in and pressed his lips firmly against Lavender's in a way he had been picturing in his head for the last three months.

"It's about time you two got together," said Luna Lovegood, interrupting the couple's romantic moment. "The Ravenclaw Quidditch team has been placing bets on this since November. Not that I was involved in any of that."

Outside of Luna's eyesight, Lavender rolled her eyes and held back an irritated sigh.

"Uh, hello Luna," Ron replied. "Nice slippers."

Glancing at the fuzzy bunny slippers on her feet, Luna smiled. "Thanks. I'm a person that truly believes in physical comfort at all times. So, is your sister around?"

"Umm...no actually. I think she has piano lessons on Monday afternoons. You might want to check for her in the music room downstairs."

Luna adjusted the quill that was tucked behind her left ear (since she had fortunately stopped sticking her wand there for safety reasons) and thought for a moment before thanking "Ronald" for being so helpful. She started to explain why she had been looking for Ginny in the first place (an extra credit assignment in Herbology), but then interrupted herself mid-sentence and said she had to go. Ron and Lavender just shrugged their shoulders and headed back into Gryffindor Tower.

Downstairs in the music room, two witches sat beside each other on the piano bench practicing the melody and harmony parts of a piece called "The Celestial Duet". On the right hand side was Ginny Weasley, effortlessly gliding her fingers along the porcelain keys. On the left, Narcissa Malfoy, beaming at her pupil while thoroughly enjoy their lesson together.

When the two had finished, Professor Malfoy congratulated Ginny on her performance. "Great job today, Virginia. It was pure magic. You know, it's a real shame that Hogwarts doesn't host any more concerts here. Talent such as yours shouldn't be hidden away; it deserves to be shared with others."

Ginny began to collect up her sheet music. "Professor Malfoy? What was the music department like when you attended Hogwarts?"

"Small, but dedicated. We used to put in an hour rehearsal at least three times a week in order to prepare for the winter and spring performances. What was really strange was how a common love of music brought together three people who would normally never even talk to each other. My friends from Slytherin would have never let me live it down if they knew I hung out with the likes of Liu Chang and Lily Evans."

"Lily Evans?" Ginny perked up. "Wasn't that Harry's mother?"

Narcissa sighed. "Yes...hard to imagine, isn't it? There I was - one of the prettiest, most popular girls in my class, well-liked by all my professors and always had a boyfriend. And yet, in this very room, I spent afternoons gushing about music with Lily - who was a year younger, a Gryffindor and a mudblood."

Ginny cringed at her professor's choice of words. "So no one knew you were friends with her?"

Mrs. Malfoy laughed politely. "Well, I wouldn't go so far to say that I was friends with Lily. We just shared a hidden bond. Being friends with someone like her would have destroyed the world that I had worked so hard to create. I certainly wasn't about to risk it." Suddenly she glanced up at Ginny and frowned. "Tisk, here I am prattling on about nonsense to a student." She walked over to the cabinet and started filing some miscellaneous music.

"I wouldn't call it prattling, Professor. I'm actually interested in what you have to say. Please tell me more."

Ginny noticed the age lines that were beginning to form around the older witch's tired blue eyes and stern pout. Narcissa Malfoy was a woman obviously torn between the beautiful yet snobby elitist she had been in her youth and the scared and isolated single mother she had become. She finished her filing and sat back down beside Ginny.

"Well, I was the youngest of three daughters born to Cepheus and Cassiopeia Black," she said in one continuous breath, as if she had been holding in the air for most of her life. "Andromeda had been the oldest and originally started off at the pride of the pure-blooded Black family. Attractive and smart - she had everything going for her until at the age of twenty; she had the gall to marry a muggle. Such a disgrace it was for a pure-blood to sink so low, my father nearly flipped his lid and my mother practically fainted dead away when they heard to news. This was when all the problems in my family began. I had only been twelve at the time and my sister, Bellatrix had been sixteen, both of us students at Hogwarts.

"Once my parents had disowned Andromeda, Bella, who had formerly been the teenage rebel, did everything possible to gain favor with my family. She ended up marrying Rodolphus Lestrange, pure-blood that pleased my father and French-born that pleased my mother (her maiden name had been Beauvais). This was when she became a servant of the Dark Lord, which at the time wasn't really a bad thing."

Ginny's jaw practically dropped on the floor, but Mrs. Malfoy was quick to make excuses. "Things were different in the 1970's, Virginia. The wizarding world was very chaotic. After Grindelwald was defeated in 1945, there was a twenty year period of social prosperity. Some magical folks began to immerse themselves among the muggle community, leading to mixed marriages and a significant population increase. But during the 1960's it began to fizzle out. Suddenly, many people unemployed and our money was loosing value. Times were changing and people were quick to blame muggle-born and half-bloods as a source of the tension. Amongst the confusion, one wizard began to rise above the rest - promising the restore the wizarding world by purifying its members and returning power to the pure-bloods. This was how the Lord began to actively recruit passionate and dedicated new members.

"By the time I graduated from Hogwarts in the mid-1970's, it was practically expected that I marry not only a pure-blood, but also prestigious member of the Lord's campaign. In comes Lucius Malfoy, several years my senior and very impressed by my attractiveness. When my father met him, he was beside himself with delight because not only did he possess the previously mentioned traits - he was incredibly wealthy. At the time, I was not aware of how bankrupt my own family was as a result of my father's drinking and gambling. He had lost all of my mother's fortune and most of his own. When he finally told me, I knew what I needed to do - I had to marry Lucius Malfoy if I was to ever live the life I had grown accustomed to. If I was to ever restore prestige to what remained of the Black family..."

By this point, Mrs. Malfoy seemed to be hardly aware of Ginny's presence as she reminisced. "For a long time, I was happy. I lived in a beautiful mansion, I owned expensive clothes and I hosted elite parties. My husband showered me with attention, lavished me with pricey gifts and only insisted that I give him one son - a boy I didn't even have to raise myself..." her voice trailed off. "Everything had been perfect for awhile."

Remembering the conversation that Neville had overheard at the Halloween party, Ginny couldn't help but ask, "Was there ever anyone else that you had wanted to marry?"

Mrs. Malfoy snapped out of her reverie. "Not seriously, no. There was a boy once that said he had wanted to marry me, but I doubted I would have ever taken him up on that offer. Frankly, I had found it rather insincere. The two of us had met in the Slytherin common room when he was just a First Year. I had been reading a Dunwich book on advanced potion formulas and he was immediately interested. I have to admit, he was one of the few people I could really talk to at Hogwarts. I had plenty of friends like Madeline Duncan and Tabitha Rue, but my relationship with them wasn't quite the same.

"For example, this boy used to come to watch me practice the piano after school sometimes. He would lie down on the sofa over there in the corner and just listen to me play - just sit and absorb the music. Couldn't play a lick himself, but he enjoyed the sound. But one day I arrived late to afternoon practice, only to find him chatting with Lily Evans. Somehow he managed to make her smile with his awkward anecdotes. Obviously, I was slighted when he began to visit more for her than for me. So when the time came for me to pick a husband, nothing stood in the way of me marrying Lucius Malfoy."

"And yet twenty years later, you insist upon hiding from this man..."

Ginny and Mrs. Malfoy looked up from their private conversation to see a man with white blond hair and satiated expression glaring at them from the doorway of the music room.

In a strained high pitched voice, Narcissa gasped, "Lucius! What are you doing at Hogwarts?"