Outside

Ginny and Draco walked through the Malfoy Family Gardens, careful to skirt the really dangerous plants. If Draco had been Mordrin, they would have been walking arm in arm, but Mordrin had kissed her on the cheek and gone off to work for Gringotts, and Draco never came near enough to touch. No kisses on the cheek like his mother, or kisses on the hand like his father. It wasn't too weird, though--after all, Draco Malfoy never touched just anyone. Ginny had adopted that same rule: no touching, except by order of the Dark Lord.

The weather was perfect--overcast and cloudy, but not too windy and not too cold. There was a hint of rain. Ginny lifted her face to the sky and took a deep breath. Flowers, herbs, grasses; it was a nice change from the Potions dungeon--and Gryffindor Tower's oppressive disapproval. Only one other Gryffindor had stayed at Hogwarts for the summer, a third year, and she sniffed disdainfully whenever she and Ginny ran into each other.

"Have you decided yet?" Draco broke off a stem of what Ginny identified as mint, but it smelled faintly of cardamom. "My father is impatient to know."

"The proposal from St. Mungo's looked interesting. I'd be working under some smart people, and I'd be making enough money to live on. And it's prestigious."

"But?" prompted Draco.

"But I'd have to commit to them for five years because it's a true Apprenticeship. And Professor Snape is debatably the greatest mind in the Wizarding world when it comes to potions-making." Ginny stopped at their usual bench and twisted a lock of hair around her fingers. "I'd be able to do a lot more to further our cause there; I wouldn't have to worry about food or housing or where to spend the hols..."

Ginny could tell Draco was biting his tongue to keep from saying anything about her family. "And," she continued, ignoring the faces he made, "it's worth it to me to stick around Hogwarts if it means that practicing the Dark Arts will be excused as academic. There is no point in being pursued by the Ministry when I'm not active as a Death Eater. It's just asking for trouble, I guess."

There was a muted noise in the distance that sounded like a crack of thunder, and Ginny looked around uneasily. Being caught in the Garden during a thundershower was not on her list of things to do, especially while wearing her only set of dress robes.

Draco stared coldly at her. "Do you really think you'll ever be a Death Eater? You're a Weasley."

Ginny blinked rapidly, surprised. "Well, that was unexpected. Of course I'm a Weasley. That doesn't mean I can't--"

"That does mean you can't. The Dark Lord may tolerate your presence and may play with you, but you're never going to--"

Suddenly Lucius was standing next to Ginny, arm around her. Ginny deliberately smoothed the frown off her forehead--the "thunder" must have been Lucius Apparating, far enough away from she and Draco that he could come closer to eavesdrop without being seen. But Draco had noticed him coming up--hadn't he?

"Draco."

"Father."

"Draco, we do not presume to second-guess the Dark Lord. If he decides Virginia may take the Dark Mark, she may then take the Dark Mark. It is up to neither you nor I. Cease your blathering at once." Lucius took Ginny's arm. "Come along, Virginia. The Dark Lord has commanded your presence."

As Lucius steered Ginny through the garden, she turned her head to find Draco. What the bloody hell had brought that on? But when she caught Draco's eye, he didn't look angry--

And he winked.

#

Ginny sometimes wished for a deus ex machina. She learned in Muggle Studies her fourth year that Muggles used that term to refer to something decidedly unexpected happening at the end of a play or book, in order to solve a previously unsolvable problem. For some reason they never used it to refer to historic events, only literature, which struck her as being illogical, although Muggles, of course, did not have the big picture view that Wizards did--just as Wizards didn't have the big picture view the centaurs and other creatures more mystical than humans and wizards did.

All she wanted was something or someone to fall out of the sky and give her all the answers--and ten minutes with Snape and his transfigured wand. Someone or something who/that wasn't the Headmaster of Hogwarts, because she wanted the real answers, and she'd seen what happened every time Dumbledore gave Harry all the "answers", and she was watching with her own two eyes what was happening to Hermione.

And something was definitely going on with Draco that Dumbledore had a hand in. Ginny didn't know how she knew it, but it was so there, for anyone with eyes to see. Draco had all the same weird symptoms that Hermione did: he was losing weight; he wasn't interested in anything anymore; he never touched anyone, even casually; he mouthed the rhetoric of his chosen side, but there was none of his trademark bitterness or vitriol; he had the same pasty pale skin as Hermione--he'd always been pale, but it had been a marble sort of paleness, where now it was almost... sickly. He had not even, all summer, uttered the phrase, "My father..." Or if he did, it wasn't within Ginny's hearing.

Yes, Dumbledore definitely had something to do with whatever was going on with Draco and Hermione. If he didn't, he'd be asking her more questions about Draco's weird behavior.

Ginny decided there was no way, even if Dumbledore and the Dark Lord both sat her down and told her Draco had switched sides, she would take Draco into her confidence. Draco was loyal to no-one but his father, and sometimes not even that, and whatever was happening to him was playing havoc with his evilness. Darkness. Whatever it had been that made Draco so insufferable in school--his admiration for his father, his hatred for Harry Potter, his stupid, lumbering friends--was gone. He was a tolerable human being now, and nothing made Ginny more suspicious of him than his solicitiousness towards her, except for maybe the fact that he only taunted her when someone else was with them. And that bloody wink.

And Dumbledore... Ginny knew he had his own agenda. What that was, she couldn't say, but he was manipulating everyone and everything and if nobody else could see that, Ginny didn't know what could be wrong with them. But something was wrong with everyone anyway.

For one thing, if the Death Eaters believed, truly believed, that Severus--Snape--was loyal to Voldemort, they were incredibly stupid. Se--Snape was a practicioner of the Dart Arts, introverted, abrasive, and offputting, but he was clearly not evil.

Which meant either the side of Light was also incredibly stupid, because who couldn't have defeated these buffoons already?, or that the Death Eaters knew Snape wasn't loyal, and therefore she was under suspicion as well. As a Weasley, she would always be under suspicion with the Death Eaters, though, and she was known for being eccentric anyway.

Well, she would be known for being eccentric, if anyone had ever bloody noticed her.

Yes, Dumbledore was definitely up to something. So was Snape, for that matter, but that was a different situation entirely. He had to know that the Hogwarts package was at least twice as good as the St. Mungo's package--it was like comparing Mad Eye Moody's skill as an auror to Gilderoy Lockhart's. But they must have wanted her to have the choice: why?

So that, of course, she could be called in front of Voldemort and told to stay at Hogwarts and help Snape develop the potion that would bring Voldemort out of the spirit world and fully into flesh.

Ginny shuddered. She wanted no part of that; Voldemort was definitely no Tom Riddle. It was like... well... comparing Gilderoy Lockhart to Mad Eye Moody.