Shades of Grey

Shades of Grey

Chapter Seven: Breathe

Just breathe, Ginevra told herself, pacing the length of the bedroom upstairs.

She had been trying to mollify her anger the moment she stormed out of Malfoy's cell. She had not meant to berate him like that. Sure, he was an evil git who deserved to be punished for what he has done in the past, but in the entire two months he had been her prisoner, he had not once said a word against her, never provoked her in any way. She knew full well that it was she who had been picking fights, and he had done and said nothing to stop her. In fact, he had let her berate him, brooking the humiliation.

Ginevra finally stopped pacing and sat down on the bed, hanging her head in her hands. She sighed. Why did she let him get to her so easily? What had she expected from him, an apology? This was the same Draco Malfoy from school, the boy who teased her relentlessly and thought that he was Merlin's gift to the wizarding world. She should have known that prison would never humble a Malfoy. It was stupid and foolish of her to get worked up over such trivial things, especially over him not talking to her.

Ginevra stood up and stretched her back, shaking her head as she tried not to think about the grey-eyed blond downstairs and what she had said to him in anger. Like it affected him on any level. Nothing she had said had filtered through. He probably blocked out every word she uttered, so she really had nothing to feel guilty about. She had to remind herself that he deserved to be locked up, and that she was justified in her treatment of him. Still, he had done nothing to her. He had been a model inmate his entire incarceration.

She turned to the door and stepped out onto the landing to begin her descent down the stairs towards the kitchen. She flicked on the light and headed over to the refrigerator to open the door and peer inside. She then began to rummage through the cupboards, gathering what she needed. She put together a simple meal in hope that delivering this offering of truce would assuage her feelings of guilt, what she wasn't supposed to be feeling but did. She wasn't sure why, but the need to apologise in some small way seemed necessary.

She walked over to his cell and fished her wand out of her pocket as she juggled the tray with her other hand. She unlocked the door and balanced the tray on her hip, opening the door so she could step inside. The plate of food and the glass of milk crashed to the floor.

"Malfoy!" Ginevra gasped, rushing over to his bed.

Draco Malfoy was propped up against the bed with his arms dangling limply at his sides. He was surrounded by shards of broken glass and a pool of crimson liquid that soaked his white shirt and the floor he sat on. It looked to be blood. His face was covered in it.

"What did you do?" she asked helplessly as she fell to her knees, trying to staunch the bleeding with her fingers.

He moaned slightly and turned his head. The blood was so dark that it almost looked black. She did not know how deep the gash on his face was, but she did not see bone; however, that wasn't exactly encouraging.

She got back up on her feet and ran over to the sink to turn on the faucet, filling a small bowl that she found on the counter. She turned off the tap and grabbed a face cloth and towel, hurriedly stepping back over to the blond-haired boy, who was still slumped in front of his bed like a dead bumblebee.

"What did you do?" she asked again, softly this time, dipping the face cloth in the water and wringing it out.

She dabbed at his face tenderly, trying to remove the blood.

"You do have a wand," he remarked blandly with a hint of sarcasm, breaching the silence, and she almost laughed at her own stupidity.

"Right." She drew out her wand from her back pocket. "Tergeo," she muttered, washing the blood away from his face with her wand.

She could see a nasty inch and a half long gash from just below his right eye reaching to the parallel of his upper lip.

"Episkey!" she said, pointing her wand at the wound as it began to knit and heal.

She then directed the same spell at his fingers and looked back up at his face again, touching it gently, almost tenderly. She could see that there was still a distinct scar on his face, so she jumped up and ran into the parlour where she kept a bag of medicinal herbs. When she returned with the dittany, she got back down on her knees beside Draco, bringing her hand down to his face to administer the salve.

He caught her arm in one swift motion, clasping onto her wrist with his iron grip. "Leave it," he said darkly, both steel-grey eyes fixed on her, the right eye bloodshot.

"Why?" she asked, surprised by his lack of emotion or pain.

The gash was deep and undoubtedly painful. If she did not put dittany on the wound now, he would be scarred for life.

"I will not be alone," he replied softly and then turned his head to the side, looking down as he released her wrist.

"Alone?" she queried, a puzzled expression on her face.

She did not understand how not being alone meant to be permanently scarred. She couldn't fathom why he had cut himself. She then followed his gaze to the floor where she spotted the leather-bound book that she thought she had seen a glimpse of the first night she arrived here. The journal pages were spotted with blood, both fresh and old. Familiar loops of writing looked up at her, and it was then that she knew.

The silence between them both was both pregnant and poignant until she finally breached the quiet and gently took his hand in hers, causing him to look up at her in apprehension and wonder.

"You are not alone," she whispered.

The words tumbled out of her mouth before she could take them back. His hand was held in hers, and there was no turning back. She saw the look of pain and regret in his eyes, and she knew that she had to save him. She had to offer a piece of herself, something he unknowingly already had: her diary.

"I know what you are going through," she began, and he snorted, letting his hand go limp in hers but not trying to remove it. "There was a darkness inside me that I thought I could purge. There was an ugliness inside my soul that I wanted to rip out of me."

He slowly turned his face upward, searching for truth in her almond-shaped eyes. His face read both confusion and recognition.

"That diary is mine," she explained, swallowing hard as she pointed to the bloodstained journal on the floor. She had never opened up to anyone like this, and the last person she had expected to start with was Malfoy. "This ..." She paused. "I wrote it last year."

Draco raised his left eyebrow, causing his right cheek to lower, allowing for a tiny droplet of blood to escape from the newly-mended wound.

"Were you not ... possessed by Lord Voldemort in your first year?" he asked somewhat hesitantly.

He recalled something about her being possessed by a diary, by the Dark Lord's journal. Was this the same book?

Ginevra nodded her head in affirmation to his question. She assumed that he knew about the diary and the possession through his father since he was the one who gave her Riddle's diary.

"Yes, I was," she answered. "And I vowed to never keep a journal again after that." She looked down and smiled sadly. "But never is a long time, and I grew restless on my own."

She had stayed at the school until Easter holidays, until her parents forced her to go into hiding. In those seven months before, however, she had seen and done some terrible things - things that she would have rather forgot.

"Restless?" he asked.

"I spent most of my time with Neville and Luna and other members of the DA that we could muster, but ..." She paused. "There were some times when I was alone with ... people that I would not like to have been." She was still looking down as she said this, failing to meet his eyes that had narrowed in disgust, accentuating his marred features.

"Who hurt you?" he asked, his voice rising slightly.

She looked up, startled. "Oh, the usual bunch, mainly Slytherins," she replied softly.

Draco rolled his eyes. "So all of us are a bad lot then?"

"No," she responded hesitantly, and now he looked up. "Zabini and Nott were never especially unkind nor were Davis and Greengrass. They had to maintain a front, I think, but they never did anything more than insult."

"There was more than insulting?" he asked, his voice somewhat on edge. "They beat you?"

"No--well, yes, I suppose ... as an end result," she replied, fumbling for words.

She glanced up to see him staring into her eyes with a certain knowing look. It was a look that made her uncomfortable and exposed, one that made her wonder if he could see right through her.

"Their sole objective wasn't to physically hurt me," she stated, and, again, he stared at her long and hard.

"So that is why your thoughts are so dark in the journal," he stated quietly. "These people did things to you that made you feel dirty and ugly."

Ginevra winced at the familiarity he had with her now because of her diary. How much did he know? Did he know about how many times she had to serve 'detention' with the Carrows, how often she had come back, bloodied and shaken, and not because the Crutiatus Curse had been performed on her? No one knew these things. No one had ever entered her mind, her thoughts, after Tom. But now Malfoy had because he had read her innermost fears and desires that she had so foolishly -

once again - recorded on paper. She suddenly felt quite naked and vulnerable sitting before the bloodied and scarred boy.

"Yes, but ..." She paused and then scowled. "I wasn't a wallflower, you know. I wasn't some damsel in distress waiting for my knight-in-shining-armour to show up and save me!" she cried defiantly with her chin lifted high in the air.

"I've noticed," he retorted blandly yet softly, causing her to lower her defensive guard somewhat.

"I fought back," she answered and frowned. "I did some equally terribly things ..." She paused, drifting off. "And I liked it."

His eyes momentarily widened at her revelation.

"It was like with Tom," she explained with a hint of revelry and excitement in her tone. "He had given me power, allowed for me to see the darker side of myself, my potential." She took in a deep breath and looked down, trying to control her animation. "Oh, I tried for so many years to convince myself that it was his spell over me - old magic." She laughed bitterly. "I suppose, in some way, it was. But the hunger for that power and the thirst for the feeling of being free to do whatever I wanted - those feelings were a part of me. I craved the darkness and the danger of it all, with Tom, at the school. I didn't care about the others or what they did to me. Danger became my drug; it was an adrenalin rush combined with a sugar high - so delectably divine."

Draco watched in abject amazement and horror as she told her tale. The entire time she had been talking, her voice and face had subtly altered. When she spoke of Lord Voldemort and of the power and darkness that haunted her, she almost appeared to be giddy with remembrance. She seemed to be an entirely different person.

After a brief pause, he finally spoke up. "And so now that is over?" he asked incredulously. "Has being with Potter changed it all for you?" There was a hint of bitterness and annoyance in his tone.

"No," she replied honestly, frowning now as she looked down at her hands, seeming to come to from her reverie.

Draco nodded his head and looked down at his own hands, feeling a sense of calm and accomplishment in their mangled remains and the blood that pooled beside him. For the time-being, they had nothing more to say to one another, so they sat together in the silence of a mutual understanding: feeling pain was better than feeling numb, better than feeling nothing at all.

~*~

Author notes: For once, Ginny was not a bitch (yay!), and maybe we have discovered one of the reasons why she has been. You will find out more about what happened to Ginny in her sixth year at Hogwarts in the next chapter.

Tergeo - "to wipe, scour, clean". Siphons material, like blood, from a surface.

Episkey - "to repair, restore". Used to heal relatively minor injuries.