Draco Malfoy and the Denial of Reality

Chapter Four – Explanations

Ginny’s bedroom was silent, save for the sound of her footsteps as she paced back and forth.

She thought about how Draco had snuck somehow into her bedroom. She thought about the odd behavior of her father, and the sadness in his eyes.

She tried very hard to think about anything other than the package lying on her bed.

She knew that her father was deeply troubled by the letter she had read. She noticed that the Silencing Charm on her bedroom was still intact, and she suspected that her father would make sure she was not disturbed as she opened the strange package on her bed.

She didn’t want to open the package.

She sat on the edge of the bed, staring at the package, before reaching out to pick it up. I had a firm weight to it, as if it was a box of books, but she still was able to lift it without trouble.

Her father had not been able to budge the package so much as a millimeter.

Half-remembered muggle fairy tales swirled in her mind.

Come on, Alice, let’s go down the rabbit hole.

She tore at the wrapping, only to find a thin-paneled wooden box. As she opened the lid, she saw a folded letter on top of several wrapped bundles.

Read me first

Ginny unfolded the letter, and her life would never be the same.

My darling Ginny,

I love you.

I love you.

I love you.

Above all else, you must know that, and remember that.

Ginny felt a shock through her heart. She had allowed herself to be charmed by Draco Malfoy six months earlier, but never thought she would fall in love with him. Their relationship had matured quickly, and she liked to think that Draco was changing for the better – but she kept telling herself not to expect too much.

She had known she was falling in love with him, but she had not even dared hope that Draco could love her back. He was so badly damaged from a lifetime of hiding his emotions. She felt a warm wave of relief through her; whatever else the letter said, it couldn’t be too bad.

I have loved you since I was seventeen, and anything decent I have done in my life is a result of you taking a chance on me.

Ginny frowned. Draco WAS seventeen, it hadn’t been THAT long!

There’s no easy way to say this, Ginny. I am not the Draco you go to Hogwarts with. I am twenty-seven years old, worn and tired. I’ve quite literally moved heaven and earth to get this package to you, across time.

I hope you believe me. You must. If you don’t, all is lost.

I am lost.

I’ve prepared various enchantments to help prove what I say is true; if necessary, go get your father and give him the envelope that came with this package. Alternately, Hermione Granger is capable of casting the necessary spells, as is your brother Bill.

Ginny felt a sense of unreality wash over her. Magic was one thing, but communicating with the past? She knew dimly that it was possible, but it was never something she had thought about.

I know this is difficult to bear. For now, you cannot tell anyone of what I am about to reveal, but if you need to talk about how I did this, you may want to consult Hermione in an abstract fashion. Coach your questions in terms of an assignment; else her relentless curiosity will cause her to extract the truth from you – and we really can’t have that, not yet.

Hermione is very well versed indeed on the subject of mucking about with time travel.

Anyhow, where was I? Oh yes.

I love you.

It feels a bit odd, knowing that you’re most likely sitting in your bedroom, a seventeen-year-old girl. I’m really much too old for you now.

That was a joke.

I have a story to tell you, and a sacrifice to make. Short version, you changed my life in ways I cannot even describe, and gave my life meaning. You taught me to love, and believe me, that was NOT easy.

You even got me to become friends with Harry Potter, and believe me, that was pretty amazing.

The world – the time – I am writing from is an unspeakably horrible, evil place. Oblivion would be more merciful than living in this hell.

I’ve taken steps to change that. I don’t know if they will work. I do know one thing.

In order to prevent this future from coming to pass, I must sacrifice my life with you. I must repudiate everything good I ever did in my life.

I am Draco Malfoy, and once upon a time, I was proud to call myself your husband. I have always been proud – sometimes too proud – but I have never been prouder than when I would walk into a room with you on my arm, and the world would see that I had somehow been graced with the most beautiful, strong, loving woman in the world.

Now, that will never happen. But I’m still selfish, Ginny. I don’t want to be remembered for the things that the Draco Malfoy of your time is going to have to do. Even if you are the only one, I am selfish enough to want one person to know the truth.

I curse my selfishness. I rationalize it away by telling myself it is necessary, that I cannot trust anyone else with this burden, that you are my fall-back plan to prevent the world from falling into darkness.

Right now, as you read this for the first time, it is the crucial point. The timeline must diverge now; it cannot diverge later.

I can only go back once, and I have no one else. In your time, I’m not close enough to Harry or Ron yet for them to believe such a letter.

These things are all true. But the deeper truth is that I was never quite worthy of you, and I feel that I am proving it all over again by tell you what is to come.

I could try to spare you – but I won’t, because I need just one person to know what I was.

I’m so sorry, Ginny.

Ginny’s head was a mass of conflicting emotion – but for some reason, she didn’t doubt the truthfulness of what she was reading. She was shocked and hurt; here, in black and white, Draco was proclaiming that they would never be together.

She tried not to dwell on what he was saying about the world at large.

She loved Draco. She also knew how possessive he was, and took a bit of pride in that herself – she loved how Draco made it clear that she was with him, and he with her.

She also knew how Draco hated to give up what he wanted.

What could be so terrible that he could reject her, even as he stated that he loved her?

Ten years in the future...did they have children?

The unopened smaller packages in the box beckoned her. Some of them appeared to be framed pictures, wrapped in papers.

If she were to tear the paper away, what would she see?

It took a strong act of will not to pick up one of the small wrapped packages and go back to the letter.

I suppose I should start at the beginning.

I don’t need to go into how we came together; it’s still fresh in my mind, over ten years after the fact, so I hope you remember it as clearly.

You won, Weasley. As I recall, I attempted to mend fences with Potter three times before the stubborn idiot responded to my overtures.

I only did it to make you happy. Lord, how I despised him.

Count that down as another one of your gifts to me. In your time, Potter and I had finally progressed to being civil to each other. By now, he is my closest friend – or was, before he died.

Ginny gasped. Harry, dead? She thought wildly to herself, it hasn’t happened yet maybe Draco will tell me how to stop it.

Ice gripping her heart, she continued to read.

After leaving Hogwarts, a choice had to be made. I could either become a Death Eater, or join Dumbledore. For a Malfoy, there would be no neutrality.

The fact that my father was wondering when I would get around to taking the Dark Mark was also foremost in my mind.

Well, I avoided that. Much to my amazement, Dumbledore and the Order were able to protect me long enough for me to enter Auror training.

Becoming an Auror with Harry and Ron was an honor – but it was nothing compared to the joy I felt when you became Virginia Malfoy.

We Aurors fought Voldemort together, and sundry other unsavory types, but you did research – you were not active in the physical aspects of the fight.

It would have been too difficult – that Weasley fertility. You gave me three wonderful children, very quickly.

Ginny had always wondered, would she go out and do crazy things, or become a younger version of her mother, staying at home, raising children? Now, she had her answer.

Seven years after we left Hogwarts, Harry beat Voldemort for good, with a little help from his friends – including, of course, your dashing husband, who looked very well poised for a pleasant career in politics.

We didn’t realize what the backlash to Voldemort’s hatred would cause.

Somewhere, a very brilliant, very disturbed man was thinking that there was only one way to prevent Voldemort’s racist claptrap from rising again – this nutcase would act on his own special version of racist claptrap.

This crazy, brilliant Muggleborn – we never found his identity – decided that the smartest thing to do would be to kill every Pureblood that he could.

It was ludicrous. He managed to attract some followers – not many, but a few. We later found that he was using some warped version of Imperious that made the target very susceptible to suggestion. Unlike Imperious, it did not totally control a person’s action, but merely reinforced a suggestion that a person should behave a certain way.

Or, in the case of the Rectification, follow a certain cause.

He struck on the first anniversary of Voldemort’s death. Twelve wizards and witches killed seventeen purebloods in the grand name of his “Rectification.” He struck at the combination memorial service and celebration for the end of the Voldemort war.

The next day, his Manifesto of the Rectification was owled to the Daily Prophet. It was, of course, quite insane. It called for “rectifying” the state of magical society by getting rid of the purebloods and by somehow giving magic to the Muggles.

We didn’t realize that his “pureblood elimination campaign” was the lessor of the evils he was planning. He was determined to give magic to the Muggles – whether they wanted it or not.

While the Aurors were running all over England and Scotland trying to find the leader of the Rectification, he was busy on another continent. Africa, to be specific.

The second phase of his plan made the mere slaughter of a few purebloods look like afternoon tea.

Remember I said he was brilliant? He was. We don’t know much about him – we know he fought in some capacity against Voldemort, and that he wasn’t a member of the Order of the Phoenix.

We knew he was Muggleborn.

We knew he had Spellsearcher abilities that were unparalled. You know that Spellsearching is difficult – not every witch or wizard has the gift to create new spells – well, our enemy was one of the best Spellsearchers that ever walked the earth. We learned that the hard way.

He wasn’t kidding about wanting to give magic to the Muggles. It didn’t work out quite as well as he wanted, though.

As we Aurors were hunting down what we thought was another garden-variety wizard murderer – albeit one with an original cause – our foe was experimenting.

Whoever the leader of the Rectification was, he was quite thorough. He came up with a way to give Muggles basic magical ability, and he gave them the means to spread that ability amongst themselves. He gave them the compulsion to spread it as well, using his ability to instill compulsions in people – remember the “warped version of Imperious” I told you about?

He was too smart for his own good. He struck first in an obscure African village, a place with no wizards, no electricity, no communication with the outside world.

He took human beings and turned them into something else.

No one will ever know how many experiments he performed to get to the skill level he acquired. All we know is that he somehow combined radically different magical disciplines to create a monster that could not be stopped.

He infected, for lack of a better word, a Muggle with his curse – and then he gave them the ability to transfer the curse via a bite, much like a vampire or a werewolf. The afflicted Muggle had magical sensitivity, and the raw ability to do magic – but no real training.

He already knew how to link multiple minds together in such a way to compel certain behaviors. The next step must have seemed obvious to him.

If he could touch minds and influence them, perhaps he could implant thoughts – perhaps he could control minds. Thus, the Hive-Mind was born. The magical ability of the infected Muggles was powerful and unfocused – so he focused on improving the ability that would most aid the spread of his curse.

Specifically, Apparition and Memory Charms.

Imagine, Ginny. Muggles, who when bitten in the night, are immediately Obliviated – until the curse matures, and their mind merges with the Hive- Mind.

The afflicted Muggles lost their power of independent thought – all they knew, all their raw brain power, was distributed in a telepathic network – many bodies, but one mind, all under the control of the Leader of the Rectification.

The result was a creature, a drone, in human form, who could Apparate anywhere, spread the curse, and them Obliviate the victim so that the next victim didn’t even know they were infected – until they started displaying symptoms.

It was a staggeringly efficient way of spreading the curse – or infection – or whatever you want to call it.

Of course, all these minds joined as one couldn’t be controlled for long. They absorbed the mind of the leader as well – his goal of giving Muggles magic was long forgotten, and was ultimately irrelevant to the Hive-Mind.

The Hive-Mind had desires of its own.

It slowly consumed isolated villages in Africa, building up its army, increasing its brainpower and numbers.

We only know this because one of the followers of the Rectification was there when the movement’s leader was consumed – this person then tried to warn the Ministry.

A study group was formed. A fucking study group. By then, it was already too late.

As the study group attempted to determine if the story was even possible, the Hive-Mind began to mutate – it took over its first true city, Bombay, India.

There was a high education level in Bombay – the resulting explosion of new intelligence gave the Hive-Mind more power than ever before.

Do you see, Ginny? Can you imagine everyone you know having all of their life experiences, all of their memories, all of their knowledge, combined into one malevolent mind bent on domination?

Ginny tried to imagine it – it must have been like the Dementor’s Kiss, only worse, for the afflicted. She wondered if the afflicted could feel their minds slipping away. She should have known that Draco would have an answer.

The Hive-Mind was brilliant, but not infallible. It had two weaknesses.

The process of assimilating a new mind was slow – it would could take anywhere from two weeks to three months to occur. For about a week prior to the mind being assimilated, the afflicted person would be disoriented and confused.

If your friend suddenly started babbling nonsense sometimes and making sudden outbursts, odds are that they were getting ready to have you for dinner within a week or so – and after biting you, they would Obliviate you, so that you didn’t even know you were afflicted.

All the better to give the curse time to mature. But, the period of disorientation also gave us a chance to identify the infected and kill them.

The other weakness, which we discovered later, was that by killing a large number of fully assimilated people, you could disrupt the Hive-Mind – kind of like getting it drunk. It would also lose the benefit of the knowledge that it had gained from those minds.

Later on, the Hive-Mind learned to distribute its memories, to make “backups”, so that bits of useful information were spread over the worldwide network of the assimilated. The Hive-Mind was nothing if not adaptable.

The Hive-Mind was sneaky, at first. It targeted communication centers – television stations, radio stations, newspapers – in Bombay, so that it could keep a lid on reports of people acting “odd.”

Once the entire population of Bombay was one with the Hive-Mind, it was truly ready to strike.

Ginny tried to remember. How many people lived in Bombay? A million? Ten million? She didn’t know, but she knew it was a lot.

She had to stop. She couldn’t read any more, not right then. She carefully put the letter back in the box, and closed the lid, before going downstairs to her father’s library.

She had something she wanted to look up in her father’s Encyclopedia of Muggle Culture.

More importantly, she just needed a break from reading about the end of the world.