Rest In Pieces

Chapter 2: Wands

Ginny Weasley was a pile of emotional shit. She had been practically ripped away from everything that had ever been her. Still resting her head on her arms on the cheap sprucewood table, she sighed silently, upon seeing herself confronted with strange semi-philosophical questions such as If I am to die here, alone, and nobody will ever find me, then did I exist at all for the world out there?

There were some things that could be said about her that everybody at the school knew if asked about it. She probably was nice, although, to be completely honest, nobody could really tell since she was kind of a loner, living in a self-imposed exile of little socialising. She was childishly infatuated with the one and only Harry Potter, supposedly following him around like a lovesick puppy. She was Ron Weasley's little sister. She had red hair.

But at the moment, all of that didn't matter. Harry Potter was far, far away, as was his best friend, Ron Weasley. And there wasn't really anybody to talk with, except for the evil, devilish, dastardly handsome Draco Malfoy, who was sitting gloomily in the darkest corner of the room at the moment, trying to have a glaring contest with the opposite wall, and to his utter dismay, but not surprise, it looked as if the wall was winning. Not that he was so stupid as to think it was possible for him to win, but he had a reputation to maintain, and §3.2.2 of said reputation read "Draco Malfoy can possibly outstare a wall".

Not that he cared, anyway. He didn't worry that much about keeping up his reputation, since it was not a façade he had to put on like a glove. It was just him. He did whatever he pleased, and lately that had revolved mainly in finding cunning ways to get girls into his bed and getting them out of it again once he had his way with them. And he was really good at it. Draco Malfoy did not care about other people. He treated them as if they were something you had to put up with, and in certain circumstances they were even useful. Just like spiders. They crawled all around you, in the dirt, over you shoes, everywhere, but you often let them, because they killed the mosquitoes.

He didn't care, he was indifferent. He was cruel, and he was a sick bastard. The only person he did actually care about was himself. He was mean. And at the moment he was in deep shit. One of them was going to die within the next 24 hours.

Die...die...die...the words bounced off the inner walls of his head like a word softly spoken in a voluminous cave. One of them was going to die. And it wasn't going to be him. He would make sure of that. He could just kill her and that would be the end of it. But he was a troubled teenager. At the ripe age of 17 he had just stumbled over something he had never really grasped the meaning of before. It had always been something exotic that happened to others, a disease that only the mentally unhygienic could fall victim to. But here he was, struggling with the thing that was dreaded most by his peers: his conscience. And it tore him up from the inside. It wasn't even a very strong conscience. In fact, it was ridiculous. He had just sat there, thinking of how to dispose of the Weasley girl, when all of a sudden this tiny voice that sounded so very like his own but still so different had piped up in his mind. It hadn't even said much. What gives you the right to judge over the life of somebody else? was all it had said. But that was not what had scared him. Yes, he was scared. But not because of the content of that very simple question. The fact that he was able to think something along these lines had seared through him like a knife ripping open his very core. I'm going to be just like Potter, he thought with a sudden surge of panic. It can't be happening! And it won't be happening. I am going to kill her.

Having decided upon that, he surveyed the room with cool detachment, searching for something to do the deed with. A cheap but solid-looking table. Bang her head against it? Probably a little awkward position for him. Two equally constructed chairs. Break off one of the legs and hit her over the head with it? Perhaps not a good idea. Would be kind of embarrassing if he didn't get the leg off. A guttering torch. Set her on fire? Nah, too smelly and messy. A comfy-looking mattress. Shag her until she dies of exhaustion? Nah, scratch that.

Taking one last calculating look at the room, he turned his gaze at his own hands. That was probably the last and best method, and besides the only one he had left. He sighed quietly but dramatically. He'd never thought she'd be the first person to do this with. He had actually counted on Pansy being the first woman he would ever strangle. That was one of the things that brightened him up whenever he had to endure her dull and nerve-straining company. He had even practised on a really big sausage pretending it was Pansy's neck so he was prepared for the feeling.

Trying to push the thoughts of strangling Pansy Parkinson into a distant corner of his mind, he tried to focus on strangling Ginny Weasley. He got to his feet with feline grace, and walked over to where she was sitting, apparently deep in thought. Her last thought, his mind added. Taking a steadying breath he said the mantra This is alright, just like killing Pansy, come on, you hate the girl anyway, over and over in his head again. Draco Malfoy was a good liar. He was almost able to convince himself.

"Okay, Weasley, let's get this over with," he muttered, lifting his hands.

Upon hearing him say something, Ginny was violently ripped out of her thoughts and so she jerked up and turned to him in surprise. When she saw what he was trying to do, she let out a scream and jumped away from him just in the moment when he made a grab for her neck, but unfortunately she stumbled over her chair. Malfoy was on her in a second, catching her before she fell to the ground, then pressing her to the wall and closing his fingers around her neck, applying as much pressure as he could.

Her eyes widened in horror as the full realisation of what he was about to do hit her and she tried to scream again, but nothing came out of her throat. In a desperate attempt to save her endangered life she clawed at his hands and tried to kick Malfoy in the shins, but he dodged her flailing feet easily, and didn't pay any attention to her fingernails that were digging painfully into his hand.

The pain in her lungs and her throat was getting more and more unbearable with every second that passed. She was getting slightly dizzy by now and just when she thought she was going to pass out she felt the pressure on her throat go away and she watched as Malfoy was thrown across the room by some invisible force.

She would have been startled had she not been too preoccupied with breathing and nuzzling her abused neck. She was sure she'd have horrible bruises soon. But it didn't matter. What mattered was that she was able to breathe again, and breathe she did, hungrily and abundantly.

Meanwhile, Draco was lying at the other side of the room, rubbing the side of his head which had hit the wall quite hard. When he brought his hand away from his face he groaned at the sight of the blood that was all over his fingers.

*+*~*+*

The Forbidden Forest was silent today. But it was not the silence of creatures lurking in the dark, watching. It was the silence of creatures lurking in the dark, but miles away. There was only one living thing left on the clearing. You might think that this person was the cause for the veil of silence that was strewn over the forest, but that was not quite accurate. It was just that everyone and everything that had more brains than a hairpin had had this strange feeling of foreboding and as virtually nobody had felt the urge to go there they simply didn't. Even Crabbe and Goyle, who had probably less brains than a hairpin had not gone there, but that was probably more due to the fact that Malfoy was not around to tell them to. The person sitting in the middle of the clearing leaning its back against a dead tree stump was most certainly the cause for the sense of foreboding that everybody save Crabbe, Goyle and Professor Flitwick's cat Pampers had felt, but of course they didn't know that.

The lonely figure was at the moment glaring moodily at the box it held in it's hands, as if willing it to do something. When it finally did, a nasty smirk settled itself on his face, making him look quite eerie in the red light that the box was now emitting. "Let's go," he said to nobody in particular.

*+*~*+*

Ginny, after finally having breathed long enough for her body system to return to a normal mode of biological processes, was just about to do something - although she didn't know what, precisely - to Draco, or at least look for something that would help her to defend herself, Ginny was as surprised as Draco when all of a sudden, the cloaked figure appeared with a loud bang. It stood there for a moment and studied its surroundings, taking in every little detail. Ginny's tousled hair, her crouched position in the corner of the room, the ugly marks on the sides of her neck, the blood under her fingernails that were currently clutching her dirty robe, the panicked look in her eyes, the chair that had fallen over when she had jumped up, Draco, who was leaning against the opposite wall, his cheek already sporting a reddish-violet sort of colour, the blood on the side of his face, the torn backs of his hands, his disshelved hair, and the empty look in his eyes.

The man chuckled slightly. "My, my, boy, I think I forgot to mention something. This would be waaaaayyy less funny if one of you died before those 24 hours were over, so I installed quite a lot of protections and charms to prevent certain things, sudden death being amongst them. Also your use of magic in here is strongly limited," he almost sang, sounding as if he enjoyed this very much. He probably did.

"Yeah, we already figured, since you took our wands," Ginny muttered, giving the black cloaked figure an intense glare. Draco almost whistled through his teeth in surprise when he saw her doing that. He wouldn't have thought that the youngest Weasley was able to look that menacing. If he were a ninny such as Potter or her older brother or that mudblood he'd probably be scared of her. But then again, Potter and his cronies were so stupid not to be afraid of anything. Or at least they didn't notice.

The silk-like voice of their capturer interrupted his thoughts when he continued talking in that sing-song that had the kind of effect on Draco that asparagus usually had on little children. Especially when they'd had had spinach for lunch and they knew exactly that the neighbour kid would be on pancake cloud #7 at the very moment.

"Oh, yes, I forgot," the guy said, pulling something out of his pockets and resting it on the table. Upon closer inspection, Ginny realised it was their wands. At least she suspected it was their wands. She could of course recognise her own, by the tattered look of it and the marks that had been carved into the wood when Ron and her had had a "sword fight" with their wands back when they had been a lot younger. Actually it had only been last year, but Ron insisted on it being way back in the clouded mists of the past.

She guessed - correctly - that the other wand was Draco's, simply because it looked so...noble, compared to hers anyway. She was fairly certain that he polished his wand every morning and evening. Ewww, the naughtier part of her brain thought, that's gross.

"But do remember, the use of your wands is restricted to very simple charms here," the cloaked figure said, before informing them that they were of course not able to harm him, since he was only a projection of his real self and they'd only hit right through him, physically or magically.

"Any questions? In case not, I'll leave you to yourselves again," he continued, indicating clearly, that he did in fact not want to hear any questions. When no reply came, he nodded, and with another banging sound he was gone again.

"Actually I'd have a question," Ginny murmured more to herself than anyone in particular, "How the hell are we supposed to use the restroom in here?"

"You're not, Weasley," Draco growled from the other corner, "you're supposed to not go to the toilet and die of blood poisoning."

Ginny gave him a would-be evil look and went to pick up her wand, causing Draco to up and grab his wand, just in case.

"Don't be silly Malfoy, I'm not able to harm you with my wand, didn't you listen?" she asked, rolling her eyes, but then remembering his earlier actions and shutting up really quickly, retreating to her corner, watching him still standing at the table, silently daring him to cross the line she had mentally drawn through the room, separating what she figured was her part of the room from his'. Then she decided that it was worth a go to try and heal her bruises and cuts with a few simple spells. And, to her utter delight, these spells worked.

Draco, who had settled down in the opposite corner once again and was simply glaring at her, not tending to his wounds. He told himself that it was only because he thought he looked more intimidating with them, but really, who was he kidding? He simply was not able to do healing magic. He'd never had to learn how to, because he always let others do the dirty work where you could get hurt. He'd never admit that to himself though, and much less to her.

And so they sat there, each lost in their own thoughts, trying to ignore the fact that there was another person in the room, and deftly pushing away the one thought that kept creeping into their minds...they were trapped, and one of them was going to die.