Shades of Grey

Shades of Grey

Chapter Three: Yin-Yang

June 11, 1998.

I suspect my jailer is dead. I had hoped that the bloody wanker would die, but I would have rather had it happen after my release not during.

I have not received a meal for the past two days. Perhaps they have left me here to die. I haven't yet decided whether I shall go silently or not.

Draco put down the journal as he heard a distinct warping noise, like the shaking of sheet metal, outside his window. He quickly plastered his face against the glass, searching for the maker of the aforementioned sound. He then spotted a small figure in a dark hooded cloak, who had, apparently, Portkeyed onto the grounds with suitcases in hand. The cloaked person then wound his or her way up the grounds, head lowered, hood raised. He wagered that it was a woman - the shape and size was far too petite to be a man.

He sat down on the bed and put a hand to his rumbling stomach. As much as he disliked the unpalatable food (it was pure tripe) that he had been served for the past month, he starved for it now. Perhaps this girl was to be his previous jailer's replacement ... or the guard's doctor. He still had no idea if the man had just buggered off or dropped dead.

If she is the replacement jailer, she certainly took her bloody well time in getting here! he thought to himself, grimacing.

He glanced over at the mirror and studied his face. His eyes were dark and sunken as black rims lined the hollows of his pewter-coloured eyes. His skin had a pale greyish tinge to it. He looked tired, gaunt, and malnourished.

He went over to the sink and washed his face, training his fingers through his platinum-blond hair that now hung limply down the nape of his neck, just reaching his shoulders. He looked aimlessly for something to tie it back in but found nothing.

He rinsed his fingers in the water again and slicked back his hair some more. He had not been able to have a proper shower since there was no bath. He had only the sink basin and the soap provided to wash himself daily. He refused to appear like some dingy commoner in the presence of a woman, no matter who she was. It was only proper.

He stopped and listened. He had not heard the woman enter the house. He put an ear against the door. He knew that there were no silencing charms placed on his cell as he had often heard his former guard coughing or scuffling about the room outside his door. He never spoke. He assumed that if he did, he talked in another room far from his cell, perhaps on the top floor.

Then he heard it: the sound of a soft feminine voice sighing and the sound of luggage dropping to the floor. He jumped back. It had been a while since he had heard the sound of another's voice, especially a woman's. His former jailer had only dragged his feet about like some hapless dwarf.

Draco heard the soft click of heels approach the door. He quietly ran over to the bed to grab the diary, to hide the precious contraband. His fingers slipped on the soft leather, and it fell to the floor with a snapping sound. He cursed under his breath, knowing that the woman had heard it as her footsteps had suddenly stopped. He reached down to pick the book up and hide it under his pillow, when he noticed the red writing on the open page.

He gingerly picked the journal up by its leather cover and turned it over. There was writing on the very last page, upside down, written in red ink. He slowly leafed through the pages at the back. There must have been twenty some odd pages of tiny writing and scribbles. The person was obviously working his or her way backwards toward the front of the journal.

So it wasn't his diary after all; it had been someone else's.

He heard the footsteps resume their course towards his cell, and he hastily shoved the diary underneath the pillow. He grabbed the copy of Crime and Punishment off the bedside cabinet and plopped down on the bed, propping his back against the pillow. He opened the book and stared down at the pages, attempting to look engrossed in his reading. He wanted to appear casual and non-affected. He glanced up momentarily as he heard her steadily say "Alohomora" outside the door.

The knob turned slowly, and in walked a stately-looking woman of an undetermined age. He refused to look up, but he could see her out of the corner of his eye. Her hood was covering most of her face. She cleared her throat, and he finally glanced up only to cock an eyebrow at her, looking both thoroughly annoyed and disturbed.

She was quite small, just barely over five feet tall - five-foot-two at the most. She was almost doll-size. She had a waif-like form, yet he could detect subtle curves underneath her light-weight navy blue cloak, worn for rainy days such as these, he supposed. The cloth was poorly cut and was neither old nor worn; it was just cheap. She wore the inexpensive fabrics well though. She had tiny, pale hands with a pink hue to them, and he could see rose-budded lips peeking out from beneath the length of her hood.

With a swift and fluid motion, she took a deft hand and pulled the cover back, allowing for the glory and splendour of rich full waves of blood-copper curls to spill out onto her shoulders and back, dramatically contrasting against the deep navy colour of her cloak. Cinnamon-coloured freckles lightly powdered her porcelain-like skin, reaching towards her deep amber-coloured eyes, which were almond-shaped and cold.

He recognised the hair and face right away: Ginevra Weasley.

"Malfoy," she addressed him in a regal tone, looking down her nose at him. "I will be your guard for the next month." She sniffed about, scrunching her face in an unattractive way as she took in a whiff of the stale, pungent air.

He brought his attention back down to the book in his hands, ignoring her completely. So Potter had sent his girlfriend. How intimidating. That's how much of a threat Boy Wonder believes him to be? He wondered how the girl was able to use magic with all the wards that this place had. He guessed that she had been granted some kind of immunity, like the powers a Secret-Keeper would be given or something to that effect.

"I would have assumed someone like you to have been more hygienic," she commented, her nose still in the air, letting her delicate fingers trace over the lines of dust until they met the bookcase.

She frowned, scouring the sparse selection of literature that he had been provided with.

He chose not to let her goad him into a response. It was his sensible twin stepping forward, the one who chose his battles wisely. Of course, he had no real say over his conditions. He made do with what he had, which was better than how others would have turned out, including her. He could counter her slurs by hurling back a few scathing epithets of his own, but that took effort. Besides, the yin twin had noted the Weasley's lack of sensitivity and filed it under 'Weapon to Use Later'.

"Don't feel like talking then?" she asked, beginning to become slightly disturbed by and annoyed with his lack of response.

She had begun to slowly stalk towards him with a smug look of superiority plastered on her - at once - beautiful yet ugly face.

He continued to ignore her, looking down at his book, turning the page.

"You know, I absolutely despised you in school," she stated almost wistfully. "You always sauntered about like some cock of the walk as though you owned everything and everyone." She glared down at him, and he looked up, staring through her as though she didn't even exist to him. "And where are you now?" She snorted with her arms outstretched, motioning at his dismal surroundings.

He almost retorted. He wanted nothing more than to put the sanctimonious little blood-traitor in her place. The yang was burning like a fire inside; however, he had to remind himself that she was the weak one, coming in here to boss him around while he had no power, no means of defending himself. There would be no court trial for her should she decide to torture him. After all, she was the one with the wand.

She, on the other hand, seemed positively livid that he was not even dignifying her with a grunt in response. There were no Malfoyisms, no snarky retorts, no bigoted and derisive comments. There was just silence.

"You almost killed Katie Bell!" she shouted suddenly and unexpectedly, allowing for his eyes to make brief contact with hers. "You poisoned my brother!"

Draco frowned slightly, narrowing his eyes. Ah, yes, a tirade. He wondered what took her so long to have an emotional and irrational outburst.

She took in a deep breath and rounded on him with a pointed finger, launching into a predictable, abusive diatribe.

"You let Death Eaters and Fenrir Greyback into our school!" she cried, her voice becoming shriller as she continued. "You tried to kill Dumbledore!" She began to hiccup as she held back angry tears. "You held Luna Lovegood, amongst others, prisoner in your own home!"

She then grew silent, and her eyes narrowed.

Wait for it, he thought to himself.

"You tried to kill Harry Potter!"

There we go.

Her voice had become hoarse from all the chastising, and yet he still maintained a front of appearing unaffected, refusing to respond. He didn't even blink. He simply let her throw her tantrum, and once she was finished, he looked back down at his book.

Infuriated, she reached his bed in several quick strides, glared down at him, and slapped the book right out of his hands.

"You think lying there, reading books, is going to help you wait out your sentence?" she shouted. "This is not some game, some fantasy world. You will reap what you have sown, Malfoy!" She snapped her fingers in front of his face, and he looked up. "You will bloody well look at me when I talk to you!"

Draco upper lip twitched. He had thought he wanted a reprieve from his solitude, but he had not expected his anchor to the communicative world to be the vindictive and spiteful Weasley girl, full of piss and vinegar. He smiled internally at the thought. Even though the little bint was being overly abusive towards him, he believed that his incarceration with the She-Weasel would be - at once - both infinitely horrible and oddly entertaining.

It would be horrible because she was obviously a bitch of a Gryffindor - your typical dogmatic sore winner. On the other hand, it would also be entertaining because as desperate as she was trying to goad him, he found that she was much easier to set off, and she, apparently, absolutely despised being ignored. He could have a lot of fun with that. It would make up for his lack of entertainment.

Strangely enough, he also found that he could wholeheartedly empathise with her need to lash out and reprimand the reprobate. He would have done the same had their situation been reversed; in fact, he most likely would have been doing a lot more than verbal berating. Whereas her claim to chide was based on supposed moral superiority, his was founded on good old-fashioned class superiority.

"I'm your karma, Malfoy," she growled, stirring him from his melancholy, "coming back to haunt you."

He let the ghost of a sneer adorn his face, and she returned it with surpassing vigour. He knew it was a mistake; he was just adding fuel to the fire. Old habits died hard.

"Back then, at Hogwarts, you had all the power. You had your minions and half the staff in your pocket. Now, you see," she said quietly, leaning down, "I am the one with power."

She reached into her pocket and pulled out a hawthorn wand about ten inches in length. His eyes slightly widened, and his heart began to beat loudly in his chest. She had his wand, and he was almost salivating at the thought of it in his hand. He knew that this was not possible though. His mind instinctively knew that this was, most assuredly, a trick.

She smiled, almost warmly, at the painful expressions conflicting on his face. She began to extend the wand to his fingers, and he tentatively reached out to receive it. Then her smile contorted into a ghastly and malicious grin, and her eyes narrowed and turned cold. She quickly drew the wand out of his grasp and brought it down to her knee. In one swift motion, Ginevra Weasley had broken Draco Malfoy's wand in half.

His mouth opened in silent protest and disbelief. His heart sank in his chest. There was no anger in his eyes, only defeat. She had broken a piece of him.

"Do you hate me?" she asked with a smug smile of satisfaction tugging at her lips as she absently dropped the splintered pieces of wood to the floor.

"Yes," he replied tonelessly, his voice barely above a whisper.

His pewter-coloured irises were dull and listless, staring intently at the two broken halves of his being on the floor.

"Already?" she queried with a snort as she brought her arms across her chest. Her body was rigid, and her countenance was domineering as she stared down at him. "Liar."

~*~

Author notes: So this is their first encounter. Lovely, wasn't it? Don't you want to slap dogmatic Ginevra senseless? Here we see the positive zodiac traits of Draco, the Gemini, shine through (plus he's far less melancholic this time around). He is adaptive, versatile, and still has a sense of humour and wit about him despite the dire straights he has been placed in. Also, like a Gemini, he is unsure of his course of action but is fluid and natural in his reactions (the yin-yang of his twin element).

Ginevra, on the other hand, is displaying all the negative traits of a Leo: bossy, patronising, uncompromising, and unforgiving. This is a side we have never seen of Ginevra nor of our Harry Potter 'verse heroes. This is the way that conquerors treat the conquered. There is a reason why only victors write the history books.

Notes on yin-yang: Yin-yang are opposing principles that are rooted together. They are compatible opposites. One cannot exist without the other. (They are not symbols of good and/or evil. They are related yet opposed concepts rooted in nature).

Yin is receptive, yielding, negative, and nurturing. It is associated with night, death, femininity, valleys, rivers, streams, water, metal, and earth. (It is the black part of the symbol).

Yang is active, dominating, positive, and initiating/creating. It is associated with day, life, masculinity, mountains, hills, fire, wood, and air. (It is the white part of the symbol).

*JKR has never revealed the length or core of Draco's wand, just what wood it is made of. I took creative license and liberty with its length.