Dark Before the Rising Sun

Chapter One

"Weasley?" His voice was disbelieving, his gray eyes widened with shock at the sight of her in his bedroom. "Not that I don't appreciate finding a girl waiting for me in my room, but now really isn't the time. What the hell are you doing here?"

She stepped out from behind the thick velvet curtains, into the pool of silver moonlight. "What the hell am I doing here? Your bastard of a father has my brother here in his stupid dungeons, why else would I be here?"

"Weasley, you idiot, did you really think I'd let that overgrown brother of yours die? I was going to take care of it. Get the hell out of here."

"No! He's my brother. I won't leave. I'll - I'll help you."

"Your brother saved my life once, Weasley. I'm bound by that debt to save him in return, or die in the attempt. And as I have no intentions of dying, at least, not so soon, I'll get him out of here. My father will kill you, you know, if he finds you here at Malfoy Manor."

"You're not afraid, why should I be?"

"Don't be an idiot. He doesn't suspect me yet. But you're a Weasley. He'd kill you on sight."

"Why are you so damnably arrogant? You're going to make a wrong move one of these days, Malfoy, and that's the end of this whole operation. As well as you. In another time, that wouldn't be a bad thing, but, unfortunately, you're position as spy is very crucial at the moment."

"I don't need you as well as every other bloody Gryffindor goat digging their nails down my back. I know what I'm doing. I realize how important I am to the operation, I'm not going to screw it up."

"Lion, not goat," said Ginny, automatically. "Malfoy" -

The door opened slowly. A square of yellow light fell on the floor of the darkened room. "Draco?" came Lucius Malfoy's cold voice. His tall figure filled the doorway, and he blinked as he tried to adjust his eyes to the darkness of the room.

Ginny felt her heart leap in her throat. Her whole body went cold. Hell, she thought. Hell, hell, hell, hell. Her mind was frozen with terror.

Not so Draco. He pulled her into his arms, tumbled them both onto the big bed, and began to kiss her.

For a moment, she was too astonished to think. Draco tightened his arms around her and moved to kiss her cheek and her hair, and Ginny promptly forgot that they had an audience.

"Make it look real," he whispered into her ear.

Ginny leaned into him as he kissed her again, her arms around his neck, her thoughts racing. Every nerve of her body was on fire. It was real. She didn't have to pretend.

"Draco!" came Lucius's voice again, this time shocked, though not necessarily displeased.

Draco lifted his head from the curve of her shoulders lazily. "If you'll excuse me, father . . ." he said, his voice arrogant. "I believe I'm busy."

"Draco, now is not the time for your, er, liaisons. We have the Weasley boy to deal with. Potter'll be here soon to rescue him. We have to discuss The Plan."

Draco sighed, stretching cat-like. The bedsprings creaked as he stood. "Wait for me here, darling," he drawled at Ginny. "I'll come back." As he leaned down to give her another kiss, he hissed into her ear, "Now get the hell out of here the minute we're gone."

Ginny lay rigid and trembling on the bed, watching with a furiously pounding heart as he left the room. When the door closed behind him, she closed her eyes and touched her fingers to her lips. She could still feel his kisses there.

"Ginny?"

Her mother's voice, roughened and weakened by disease, startled Ginny from her reverie. Blast, she thought guiltily. You'd think that after ten years, I'd be able forget, but no . . . Oughtn't his face have faded from her memory just out of common decency? Yet she could still see the arrogant smirk he gave her just as he walked out his bedroom door.

"Yes, mum?" she asked, gently, feeling a lump beginning to build in her throat as she looked down at her mother, all thoughts of the days of the war fading fast. Molly Weasley, once so plump, so cheerful, so ebullient, now laid wasted and listless in the white hospital bed of a crowded room at St. Mungo's, the best that Ginny could afford for her. When her husband and five of her six sons had died in the war, she had never fully covered. In a way, some part of her had been buried with them.

"Water . . ." Molly whispered hoarsely. "I need water . . ."

As Ginny handed her mother a glass of water, Dr. Clark beckoned to her to leave the room. Once they were outside in the corridor, he said gravely, "Let me be frank with you, Miss Weasley. Your mother is very, very ill. She may be - she may be dying. Unless you can get her an operation . . ."

His voice trailed off. Ginny froze. "Op - operation?" she breathed.

"Yes. It's a very expensive operation, I'm afraid; it isn't covered by your insurance plan, and it could cost you up to sixty thousand Galleons for the surgery itself, plus another twenty-five thousand for follow up treatment. You understand, Miss Weasley, that your mother has a very rare form of Chandler's disease."

Sixty thousand Galleons! thought Ginny dizzily. It might as well be a million. Where could she come up with sixty thousand Galleons? Despair filled her heart as she listened to the doctor's coolly professional advice.

"Oh, and Miss Weasley? The operation must be performed within the month. After that - I'm afraid . . ." The doctor shook his head. "I'm so sorry, Miss Weasley. I wish this wasn't the case. But" -

Ginny cut him short. "It - it's not your fault," she said, dazedly. Her mother's illness had already swept away the scant savings of over five years. Ginny had nothing left with which to do anything more for her.

She turned away and walked blindly down the corridor, heedless of the kindly old doctor's worried look. Sixty thousand Galleons! she thought bitterly. Even if Ron's research company hadn't gone bankrupt last year, they could still not scratch up sixty thousand Galleons. Harry - no, she mustn't beg for money from Harry . . . he had a wife and a son now, what with Hermione losing her job after the crash of the Magical Stock Exchange last year, and on the salary that Aurors were getting these days . . .

Sixty thousand Galleons!

If only they were not so desperately poor! Ginny's bitterness overflowed her soul with the thought. Everywhere around her was evidences of wealth - wealth often lavishly and foolishly spent - and she could not get enough money anywhere to save her mother's life!

Ginny hated crying in public, it made her nose pink, but she couldn't help it. The tears began to gather in her eyes. She blinked them back savagely, but it was no use; they trickled slowly down her cheeks. She picked up the pace of her footsteps, moving swiftly, if somewhat drunkenly, down the long white corridors. Her vision blurred, and she did not see the man until she had walked right into him, nearly bouncing off his chest.

"Watch where you're going," snapped a clear, cultured, arrogant voice from somewhere above her head.

"I'm sorry," she choked out, and would have kept on going if the man had not suddenly grabbed her elbows and spun her around again to face him.

"Weasley?" he asked.

Ginny looked up to find herself staring into Draco Malfoy's diamond-hard gray eyes.

***

"Good morning, Grandmother." Draco sat resignedly down by his grandmother's white hospital bed, prepared for a morning of verbal sparring. These visits to St. Mungo's, few and far between as they were, were still the bane of his life.

"Good morning indeed! It's snowing outside, it's freezing in here" - which was fiction, by the way, Draco could feel his bones melting in the heat - "the nurses are all young fools, and you - you insult me by coming in here dressed like that!" She waved her thin, blue-veined hands at Draco's Muggle clothes.

Draco leaned back, insolently, and studied the hospital room. Money, he thought, could buy you an awful lot. This room hardly looked like a sick room. It was private, opening over the hospital gardens, and was filled with the scent of flowers instead of the usual nauseous smells of medicine and ointment.

"I'm very well, Grandmother, thank you for asking."

The old woman snorted. "Trying to best me at my own game, boy?"

"Oh come now, Grandmother, no one has been able to do that yet."

Sabrina Malfoy smiled. It was not a smile that Draco liked. Never being one to beat around the bush, she began abruptly, "Well, I didn't ask you to come so that we could talk about the weather. I wanted to see you, Draco, to tell you about the new condition I've added to my will."

Draco stiffened imperceptibly in his uncomfortable chair. "Condition?"

"Yes, boy. Condition."

"Don't you think it's time you stopped calling me boy? I'm nearly thirty, you know."

"Don't be ridiculous, boy! Don't you want to hear about the condition?"

Draco shrugged carelessly. "I'm listening."

"Don't slouch, boy, it makes me nervous." Draco, with a groan, sat up very straight. Women!

His grandmother smiled wolfishly. "Malfoy Manor," she said, sounding like a very contented cat, "belongs to me."

"I'm fully aware of that, ma'am," said Draco, in a bored tone.

"And when I die, it goes to whomever I please."

Draco sat up at this. "Come again? Aren't I next in line for the estate, since my father had to go get him killed supporting some crack head in the War?"

"That's how the original will reads. However, I've added a clause. The estate goes to your cousin Terence unless you marry" - she paused and gazed at him sharply over the edge of her spectacles - "by the end of the year."

"By the end of the year! But why?" demanded Draco, shocked out of indifference. "Terence isn't even a Malfoy. Malfoy Manor belongs to the Malfoys."

"You always were too headstrong and difficult, even as a baby. In and out of trouble, always answering me back. Impertinent brat you were, but I must admit I preferred your insolence to little Terence's sniveling virtue."

"Then why add the clause?" asked Draco, seething. He took a deep breath. He figured that having such a high blood pressure couldn't be healthy.

"Only thing that'll bring you around. Thought at first all I had to do was keep a tight rein on the purse strings, but no, you had to go out and win yourself a fortune in that blasted business of yours." Her voice was cold. "I'm still not certain I have forgiven you for ignoring me for two years. You didn't come to see me once, Draco."

"Obviously it didn't effect you too deeply, or you wouldn't be threatening me now. You resented the fact that I didn't have to depend on you for my every need, didn't you, Grandmother? I proved that I could support myself, and managed to acquire a fortune three times as large as that which I should inherit, but still you have to interfere with my life."

"I want to see your children before I die," she answered, pettishly. "I'm old, Draco, and I'm not going to live much longer." Draco didn't bother to contradict her. "I want to see you married and settled. Either that, or you lose Malfoy Manor."

"My freedom, or my heritage?" asked Draco cynically, of no one in particular. "I've betrayed the Malfoy name once, Grandmother. What makes you think I won't do it again?"

"You've never betrayed your name. Only your father, and he was a fool to join Riddle. Knew the chap when we were in school together. Creepy fellow, he was. It was courageous of you, to turn spy on your own father. Knew then that you had backbone."

Draco shrugged. "I do what I must. But this clause is ridiculous."

"Before the end of the year," repeated his grandmother.

"But that's only a month away!"

"Exactly!"

"Hang Malfoy Manor. I won't let you manipulate - "

"Do as you please, Draco. But remember, disobey me this last time and your inheritance goes to Terence. You wouldn't like it, would you, to see your cousin spending your money and living in your home, would you?" she taunted. "Terence, the heartless, the aspiring, and so jealous of you, Draco."

"Would you really have Malfoy Manor turned over to Terence?" demanded Draco, in a tight voice.

The old woman looked sad for a moment, then straightening her shoulders, replied regretfully, "You are angry with me."

"The hell I am!" interrupted Draco. She continued as though she hadn't heard him. "I fear I'll lose your love, boy, but I intend to see future Malfoys inherit all that your ancestors built. I'll not have our line die out. I do not want a Higgs to walk the halls of Malfoy Manor, but at least Terence has children, and our blood will continue through them," she said obstinately. "But I would prefer that they were your children, Draco. If it's left up to you, you will never marry, and I despair of your death before you can insure that our name will continue."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence," said Draco. His tone was biting. He stood up. "You've won this time, Grandmother. I'll be married before the New Year, and I will have Malfoy Manor. But don't expect me to forgive you."

The old woman's lips trembled as she spoke in little more than a whisper. "I never expected to have a complete victory over you, Draco. I knew I would lose something as well."

Draco looked away from his grandmother's face, tired and lined with age and disease, but alive with emotions. He did not feel guilty in the least. He knew this was only one more of her stratagems to bring him under her influence. He turned his gaze on her sharply and caught her watching him slyly, a smile curving her mouth. It quickly disappeared as he turned to her.

"I think we both know one another quite well by now," said Draco acidly. "After all, I am your grandson."

He turned, prepared to leave, but the door swung open before he moved to open it. Terence Higgs walked in, his smile of greeting fading abruptly as he saw the casually dressed figure of his cousin.

"Draco," said Terence shortly, a sour look on his face before he turned to accept their grandmother's hand, a smile of delight now lighting up his features. Draco felt sick at the way he fawned over her. He strode out of the room and slammed the door behind him. But before he could decide which way he was going to go, a small, slight woman that had been half-running down the hall slammed into him.

"Watch where you're going," he snapped at her, rubbing his ribcage. She had sharp elbows. The woman stammered out an apology and lifted a tear-streaked face to his.

A smooth, oval face, child-like in its purity, framed in wisps of gleaming auburn hair that was parted in the middle and plaited in two braids, one over each shoulder. Delicate dark brows arching over limpid, almond shaped brown eyes that slanted very slightly at the corners. A nose that, despite its pinkness, was decidedly pert and feminine. As she lifted a small hand to wipe away a tear that had the temerity to attempt a slide down her cheek, he realized with a start who she was.

"Weasley?"