Thorny Remnants

It is dark and the stars are hidden beneath the clouds, but Ginny does not stumble. Draco walks assuredly in front of her, and she keeps up, though she isn't as confident.

"You'll learn things you never dreamed existed," he'd told her.

Ginny had protested, saying she didn't need to learn, that she was fine as she was.

"Do you really want to be that vulnerable?" Draco had asked, pleaded. He did not have to speak of the diary.

She'd agreed.

*

"You brought the girl."

Ginny remembered the voice as shrill, maniacal, but here in the nighttime it was husky and sedate.

"I told you I would." Draco is now the shrill, annoyed one. Ginny stays in the shadows.

"Is she really capable of learning? She looks too innocent." Bellatrix stepped closer, into the edges of the light cast by Draco's spell.

Her eyes are in shadows, and her tongue flicking across her lips as she sways slightly is captivating.

"She's capable," Draco says.

Ginny does not step into the light.

Bellatrix agrees to teach her.

Ginny feels more like prey than student.

*

After, they meet in underground darkness and shadows. Draco and Bellatrix seem to thrive in absence of light, pale skin and piercing eyes and exaggerated movement.

Ginny cannot see how she too blossoms.

When they begin to tear into her mind (at her request at her request she repeats like a mantra) she is terrified.

She doesn't want them to see the charred, blackened pieces she keeps hidden. The thorny remnants of love and devotion. The wilted blossoms of hope (he might return he might love her).

She pretends like their barbs about her family still sting.

It keeps them away from anything real.

*

Once, exhausted, she falls asleep on the cold hard floor.

Bellatrix's spidery fingers stroke her hair.

She dreams of childhood.

*

Bellatrix wants to know how they met, how they came to this... arrangement.

"By chance," Draco explains, "and fortune."

Ginny remains silent, though the words in her head are 'rebellion' and 'lust' and 'dissent.'

(She seldom speaks, not nearly often enough, and Bellatrix is wary of her.)

Bellatrix explains that she thinks Ginny is too weak to learn these things. That she is soft and ought to be with her family. The enemy.

Ginny remembers her family, and the good and the holy and the sacred, and does not miss them. Remembers the easy way they (forgot her) allowed her to slip into his enchantment. The way they sheltered her. The way they subtly turned against her. (She could see it, she could understand what their words meant, not what they said.)

When they next work on fortifying her mind, she lets them get in deeper than ever.

Bellatrix's eyes are wide when she realizes who the beautiful boy she'd glimpsed before (smiling and cheerful, now red-eyed and threatening) truly was.

Draco had known (he had to have, it was his father's fault) but he is more wary as well.

Ginny laughs.

*

At first, she thought Bellatrix and Draco were opposites- dark and light, fervent and sedate- but the more time she spends here, the more she sees how close they are.

Sometimes Bellatrix's hands rest on Draco's shoulder for (she counts) minutes.

Sometimes Bellatrix leans in close to whisper something (a secret) into Draco's ear, lips brushing fragile skin.

Ginny thinks it's ridiculous to feel jealousy.

They're family, after all.

*

Ginny knows why she should hate Bellatrix, why she should demand to Draco that these lessons (oh the things she's learning, the things that no one else would dare speak of) stop. Neville crying and Sirius dying and the lost, empty eyes of former Aurors.

The thought of knowledge (Tom would be proud) is what keeps her careening down this path.

She does not love Draco (she doesn't think so, at least) but the first time she sees him with Bellatrix, pale hands in dark hair and mouths clashing and gasping, gasping like he does with her, Ginny thinks about casting one of the dark, painful spells Bellatrix thinks she does not have the passion for.

She does hate Bellatrix, but nothing would drive her away.

She will not abandon Draco (she doesn't love him she doesn't) to those mad eyes and feral grins.

*

Ginny's eyes snap open when she feels a hand on her throat.

"Do not move, little child." Bellatrix's voice sends shivers down her spine, and she realizes that the woman is straddling her, hand at her throat and grinning down at her.

"Stay away from him," Ginny hisses. The hand does not tighten. She tries to twist her arm to reach her wand, she'd slept with it up her sleeve for just such incidents, but Bellatrix holds that hand still.

This causes her to lean closer, and closer still as Ginny attempts to wiggle free.

Bellatrix's smirk is infuriating as she pecks Ginny on the lips.

"You don't have to be jealous," she says, then is up and gone before Ginny can think of an appropriately nasty curse.

*

Draco treats her as he always has treated her (has he always been fucking his aunt? Ginny wonders.)

Bellatrix is more smiles and laughter, and she touches Ginny (hands on her shoulders, wrists) more than ever before.

Ginny tries not to stiffen, but she thinks Draco notices.

*

When she is with Draco, Ginny imagines he is imagining her.

*

"I thought she was willing to learn," Bellatrix says to Draco one day, standing behind Ginny with her hand stroking Ginny's hair.

"She has been learning," Draco replies.

Ginny gasps as Bellatrix slowly licks her cheek. "Not fast enough."

Ginny tells herself the tremors in her stomach are disgust.

*

"So you know," Draco says starkly one day. There are potions ingredients spread across the table, and he does not look up from his stirring.

"How can you?" Ginny replies. Counterclockwise, seven times.

"She's... and I'm..." Draco says. Shiny silver drops of unicorn blood into the cauldron. A pause before stirring clockwise six times. "You could be part of this fully, you know."

Ginny hands him the vial. "I know."

*

Ginny knows where Bellatrix sleeps.

She knows how to deactivate the charms and warnings that have been painstakingly constructed around the room. Bellatrix taught her how. (She put the pieces together.)

Inside, quiet as a mouse, she stands over the witch. Sleeping, she looks older. Fragile.

Ginny carefully straddles her, knees sinking into the soft bed, and wraps her hands around her throat.

"I've reconsidered," she says when Bellatrix's eyes snap open like bared teeth.

"Have you?" The voice is scratchy with sleep and satisfaction.

Ginny kisses her roughly. She doesn't yield until she tastes blood.

*

Bellatrix is as much a teacher here as she is with spells, Ginny notices after the first fevered rush of elation.

It is odd to recognize the actions of someone so foreign.

*

Draco is calling her name in the hall, and before he enters he says, "Bella, I can't find Gin."

His eyes, Ginny laughs, are like saucers.

"Nephew," Bellatrix purrs. Ginny shudders at the feel of the words. "Join us."

Draco does not last long.

*

Ginny had not been looking for happiness.

When she manages to break into Bellatrix's mind, she is delighted to see images of herself, flushed and beautiful.

She notices that Bellatrix has held close the memories of Tom she has stolen from Ginny.

She recognizes the tone Bellatrix uses to speak of the Dark Lord.

She doesn't mind, so much, now.

*

There are brands on both her lover's arms. Ginny licks Bellatrix's as she licks Draco's.

The scars He left on them all run deep.

Ginny wishes this could last forever.

*

One day, Ginny wakes and there are no other bodies sprawled on her bed. She curses her unmarked arm, and wishes she knew where they were. How to find them. How to join them.

Days pass and they do not return, and she must leave. There is nothing for her here without them.

Outside their sanctuary, Ginny is blinded by the light, and blinks, but it does not clear her vision.

She smiles to her family, joyful at her return, but it is hollow.

The war ends before she puts her knowledge to use. She does not ask what has become of her lovers. She cannot bear to hear it, not yet.

She still waits for them in the night.

She dreams of them.