Chapter 17
'Just say goodnight
I'll be gone tomorrow
Just close your eyes
I can't take the sorrow
Just walk away
You know I can't stay
There's no easy way to say goodbye
So just say goodnight.'
Ginny could feel her breathing coming out in loud gasps. Desperately, she tried to control her breathing and muffle the sounds with her hand. But unfortunately for her, a sharp nudge from Draco informed her that she was not succeeding very well. She was... hyperventilating, if you could call it that. Never before in her life had two Death Eaters cornered her to a wall, literally. She figured they probably were in Voldemort's 'inner circle', due to their extensive knowledge of the Death Eater activities.
Parkinson and Nott; Ginny could recognise them clearly, walked closer to an invisible Ginny. All at once, Ginny tensed up, reason being that she was afraid that they would somehow get caught and also because she had a hard time suppressing the chills running down her spine which was the result of Parkinson and Nott's topic of conversation.
"The Dark Lord isn't too happy with your father's performance lately, I've heard." Parkinson's simpering voice said. "What did he do again? Mess up the Dark Lord's plan, as per usual?"
"How am I supposed to know?" Nott snarled. "That's top secret."
"Really, Nott..." Parkinson drawled, running her long perfectly manicured fingernail along Nott's cheek. "How naïve can you get? Have you heard of the word 'rumors'? And you must know, unless you are Crabbe or Goyle, that I know all the gossips there is to be known. Plus, I know whether it's a fact or just another useless rumor."
"If my father did not even tell me, how can you find out?"
"He didn't tell you..." Parkinson asked. "Why not? Too humiliated that he let the Dark Lord down again?"
"Don't talk about what you don't know, Pansy." Nott glared venomously at her. "He looked horrible, with all the bloody gashes on his back; there was hardly any skin left."
Parkinson laughed, a loud, horrible high-pitched, keening sound, which reminded Ginny of a banshee. "Those who fail him, incur the Dark Lord's horrible wrath." She droned on prophetically, sounding akin to Professor Trelawney.
"You are sounding like Trelawney." Nott snapped. "And Merlin knows how much stupid and useless the old hag is." Nott stopped in his tracks, pulling Parkinson along with him. "Do you know the reason my father was punished?" He asked, his eyes hooded.
"Are you asking me to tell you why?" Parkinson stopped laughing and smirked at Nott. "You don't know yourself? Seriously, I pity the girl who's going to marry you." She glanced at Nott. "Why should I tell you anyway?" While he didn't answer, she continued, "I do suppose you ought to know the answer, since it's your father. As I would like to know if anything happened to my father," she muttered more to herself than to Nott. "It would make it much easier to plan my steps to ascend to the highest ranks the Dark Lord's army has to offer. You father? Well, he was punished because he failed to guard one of the prisoners properly. That prisoner, a member of the Order of Phoenix, managed to escape under your father's watch and went to Dumbledore with news on the Death Eaters. I heard that the Dark Lord's fury was terrible to behold that night." She shuddered involuntarily.
"Merlin. No wonder he hardly comes home nowadays; Mother told me." Nott cast a dark glance at Parkinson. "And when we get back into the common room, you better shut up about all these Death Eater talk. Someone might mistake you for one."
Parkinson glared at him. "I am not the one who talks as much as you. And besides, we are not Death Eaters... well, at least not yet."
"You know something..." Nott drawled lazily. "I'm beginning to doubt the loyalty of some of our friends... Have you noticed that more Slytherins are not planning to aid the Dark Lord in war?"
Parkinson frowned. "I guess..." Then, as if she had a brilliant idea, she smiled cheerfully. "At least we still have Draco, that counts for something."
"Yeah..." Nott agreed, rubbing his chin. "He has it all; the brains, good family relations to the Dark Lord, and of course, the gold."
Beside her, Ginny could practically feel Draco shaking with suppressed rage. And she didn't blame him one bit. She could not imagine what it would be like if her friends said that about her. If she had 'the brains, good family relations and gold', that is.
Parkinson grinned evilly. "Yes, the gold. But I have noticed that he doesn't seem too interested in me nowadays." She frowned. "He's not the same as before; hardly paying me any attention these days. And he does not seem to excited when his father Floos over too."
"Between you and me, who can be excited when Lucius Malfoy Floos over?"
"That's true..." Parkinson pouted, and Ginny could feel the bile rising in her throat. "Do you think Draco would ask me to marry him once we leave school?"
Nott laughed loudly, his laugh echoing eerily down the long passage. Ginny felt Draco flinch beside her. "Are you marrying him for the gold, or because you really like him?" He asked, a mocking grin on his face.
"Gold, of course. I'd be a fool not to want it. Plus, there's the added bonus that he's handsome."
"Don't you have enough gold to last you three lifetimes?"
"One can never have enough money." Parkinson said with a smug grin. "Anyway, I saw this beautiful dress that day, which I'm going to bug Draco to buy it for me."
"Has he bought you anything before?"
"Never." Parkinson said, grimacing. "Even when he was interested in me, he never did bought anything for me. Not once, the lousy miser. I'm going to get him back though. There have been rumors that he's seeing another girl, and when I find out who exactly that slut is, she'll wish she'd never been born."
"What are you going to do to her?" Nott replied, interested. "What if the rumors you heard are not true, anyway?"
"My sources are reliable." Parkinson said proudly, jutting her chin out haughtily. "And if you really want to know what I am going to do to her, you shall find out on the day I catch that lying little whore."
"Glad to know I am invited," said Nott sarcastically. "It's going to be a party."
"Let's get back to the common room." Parkinson snapped. "I do have to catch my beauty sleep, you know. Even Death Eaters-in-training need to sleep, we are not some bunch of walking sleepless zombies." With that, she strode off without Nott, not looking back at all.
"Like beauty sleep is going to do much for her looks." Chuckling at his own joke, he made his way towards the common room.
Once making sure they were really gone, Draco pulled the cloak off in a swift movement. Ginny knew he was upset over what was being said, and she did not blame him one bit. She herself was upset at what they said. Less people was joining the Death Eaters, which was good news. But the bad thing was that now, everyone would be counting on Draco to join Voldemort, and if… if he refused, the consequences would be more severe.
"Ouch!" Ginny grumbled, rubbing her cheek where the cloak had smacked her as Draco had yanked the cloak off so roughly in his anger. "You needn't be so rough..."
He glanced at her, and a guilty look crept into his eyes. "Sorry." He said shortly and started walking towards the lake alone.
It was obvious that it was his first time apologising to anyone. Ginny laughed inwardly. Well, at least he had tried. She made after him; already a dark shadow in the dim lighting. "Hey!" She called. "Wait up, Draco!" He turned, and stopped walking, waiting for her to catch up. Ginny could tell that he was slightly embarrassed, due to his apology, which proved he was actually quite humane.
The rest of the walk to the lake was short and in a few minutes, they were there. Draco made his way to the tree that was 'shared' between them and sat down, with Ginny following suit.
The whole atmosphere of the place was so different at night. The full moon could be seen, surrounded by grey puffy clouds. The round moon glowed silver in the dark, reminding Ginny fleetingly of Draco's whole silver orbs. The forest was a dull grey in the night, with the trees swaying to and fro, like they were doing a dance. The light of the moon was reflected clearly onto the surface of the lake. It was beautiful.
After a few minutes in silence, Draco spoke. "Well, that conversation was quite... enlightening." He was referring to the conversation between Parkinson and Nott. When Ginny looked at him in the eye, he saw himself reflected in those brown eyes of hers. With that, his resolve to tell her exactly what he wanted to say to her faltered. He couldn't, but he must.
"Yes, well... They are not your friends, are they? And friends meaning someone like Blaise."
"Of course not." He frowned at her. "Do they seem like the type to be best friends with? Pansy is merely using her father to ascend the ranks of Voldemort's army and is also using, well me, to get her whatever she wants. And Nott is using her to get information on his father and of the Death Eaters. And just to let you know, I'm never going to marry her." Draco shuddered. "Merlin knows how poor I'd be then."
"All this 'making use of people thing' is starting to give me a headache." Ginny whined. "Why can't everyone just live in peace? And I'd die laughing if you ever married Parkinson. Imagine your kids: as manipulative as her and as spoilt and arrogant as you. Oh the horror of it all! The world would then come to an end."
"That's disgusting." Draco made a face in disgust. "I'd never marry her, much less have kids with her. Malfoys have the reputation of being smart and intelligent, however evil or mean they there. With her as the mother of my kids, I can't even imagine how incredibly stupid they would be."
"Yeah..." Ginny laughed. "And not to mention –"
"Can we just get off this topic? It's really making me feel sick."
"Fine." Ginny crossed her arms over her chest. "You are such a spoilsport." She stuck out her tongue at him. Grinning, she asked. "Why do you call him Voldemort? I thought usually people called him You-Know-Who or in the Death Eaters' case, The Dark Lord. Very few people call him Voldemort. But there are exceptions, of course." She finished, thinking of Harry and the Order.
There was a long pause. "Is there even an answer to that question?"
"I guess not..."
Draco chanced a look at her. "I don't think the title of being a Lord befits him very well. But, as you can see, other Death Eaters might not think so."
"They don't think at all," said Ginny, laughing slightly.
"Most Slytherins do not have the capacity to think. There are, obviously, a few exceptions."
"Indeed. You are one of the exceptions, I suppose."
"Naturally." Draco smirked arrogantly. "Though Blaise isn't too bad himself." Draco said, after a second thought. "I've been wanting to tell you something." He hesitated. "That's why I asked you to meet me. I've been thinking..." He looked at her for her reaction, but she just nodded calmly. He opened his mouth, and closed it again. It was hard... Never in his life had he thought that there would be a day where he would actually be tongue-tied, in front of a Weasley no less. Then again, there was always a first time for everything. "I don't think this is going to work out." He dropped the statement bluntly, seeing no other way to say it. Draco avoided her gaze deliberately for a while, but in the end, he turned and looked at her.
Draco had hoped he had not reduced her to tears, just like he did to a lot of girls (he did not count exactly how many) at Hogwarts, but to her surprise, she was not even crying at all. Her face was just an impassive blank, and he recognised it to be a look he always wore in front of everyone else. He was really rubbing off her. He took it as a sign to continue. "I mean, we are too different... You are going to be in the Order, and I'm going to be a Death Eater. You're a Weasley, I'm a Malfoy. We are on the opposing sides of war, for crying out loud. Even if there was no war, our families hate each other. Do you think they would agree to us seeing each other?" He sounded as though he was trying to convince himself, rather than Ginny.
Ginny was silent. Even her eyes were masked, with no emotion whatsoever.
"Are you listening to me? Good God, Ginevra, could you say something?" Draco asked. Her silence made it all the more worse for him. Usually, he would be done with his 'I-want-to-break-up-with-you' speech and would probably be walking off to his rooms by now, leaving the poor girl, whoever that was, to her weeping, but... but Ginny's silence was just... compelling him to go on. Go on about what, he had absolutely no idea. He went on when she didn't say anything. "We should just pretend nothing happened. That this whole... relationship didn't start at all. That we still don't like each other even though our best friends like each other and drag us on their dates sometimes."
Draco was rambling, he knew it. But he did not know what to say and Ginny's complete silence was not helping either. And once he started, he couldn't stop himself. "That I don't find you as irritating as the other Weasleys. That I think you are the nicest girl I have ever met. And if we go on pretending that nothing happened, we might start believing it ourselves. And we'd do just fine without each other. That –"
Ginny cut into his rambling. "But what if fine isn't great enough? And what if we wanted extraordinary?"
"Then... then we'd just have to make do..." Draco was glad Ginny had said something at last. For one moment there, he thought she had gone mute. Her silence just now had almost killed him. It was like driving a stake though his heart, for some reason or the other.
There was an awkward silence. Draco didn't remember silences as being awkward for him. He would usually fill it up with sarcastic and witty remarks or let the other person suffer the awkwardness of the silence, as he had no qualms about it and did not feel uncomfortable at all. Regret seeped into every pore of his being as he looked at Ginny.
"Ginny, you know why we cannot be together." Draco filled up the silence. "You heard Pansy yourself, didn't you?"
"I heard her, Draco." Ginny said evenly. "I was there, remember? Or have you already forgotten about me?"
Guilt washed over Draco and he really felt sick. He had never experience this feeling before. His head was spinning. Taking deep breaths, he tried to curb the urge to throw up.
"You are in love with someone else, aren't you?" Ginny said somewhat knowingly.
"Yes, I'm in love with someone else." Draco forced out, still trying to resist throwing up his insides. It would make the situation worse than it already was, seeing his vomit would land on Ginny, as she was seated next to him. And that was definitely not good news.
"Well, then... If that's what you want..." Ginny said, her voice wavering. "I... I should go." Ginny stood up, brushing the leaves off her skirt; she turned and looked at him. "Goodnight, for the last time," she said softly. "Goodbye, Draco."
"Goodbye, Ginny." Draco watched as her retreating figure, and once she was completely out of sight and in no view to see what was going to happen next, his restraint broke. He threw up all his dinner; his mincemeat pies and everything else he ate. Feeling sickened and revolted at himself, he paused for a while to breathe before throwing up again.
Ginny walked towards the Great Hall for dinner. Not that she ate much. Since Draco had told her what was on his mind, she didn't really feel the need to eat anymore. Still, she forced herself to. It was essential in keeping up the charade with Harry, Ron and Hermione, and of course, in order to hide her disappointment from Draco himself too. She had hoped he would be different, but unfortunately, he turned out just like the others. Useless and disappointing.
She sat at her usual spot and tried to be herself; chatting with Luna and the Golden Trio. Luna, of course, knew what happened. And that meant Blaise knew what happened as well.
"Hi, Ginny!" Colin said brightly as he settled down on the seat opposite hers.
'Hello." She said, giving him a false bright smile. There were lots of teeth in the smile, but no heart in it.
"I was thinking..." Colin said nervously.
Nothing good ever came out of that phrase, she thought. On the outside though, she said sweetly. "Yes, Colin?"
"WouldyouliketogotoHogsmeadewithmethisweekend?" He asked in a rush.
"What?" Ginny could hear Luna snigger next to her.
"Would you like to go to Hogsmeade with me this weekend?" Colin turned red. "You know, the day after the exam results are released."
"I would love to." Ginny said with a smile, before digging into her food. Colin smiled warmly at her before joining his friends on the other side of the table. Ginny, not saying anything continued eating.
"Ginny, are you trying to choke yourself to death?" Luna asked, eyeing all the food stuffed in Ginny's swollen cheeks.
"I just want this to be over with." Ginny said, after forcing herself to swallow. And it was not easy.
"Listen, Ginny. I know you are upset, but please, stop trying to choke yourself. I don't want a dead best friend," said Luna sympathetically.
"I'm not up–"
"Just do as I say." Luna said, in a voice that brooked no arguments.
Just then, an owl flew into the Great Hall, dropping a note into Ron's lap. Everyone was surprised; letters this late usually were delivered during breakfast in the morning. What could be so important that the letter had to be delivered now?
"What is this?" Ron said, with his mouth full of food.
Harry took it, and with Ron's permission, opened the letter. "It's a message from Dumbledore." The owl that delivered the letter ruffled its feathers and just flew away without waiting for a reply. "It says that you and Ginny have to meet him at his office right now. Oh, and me and Hermione can come along too."
"Well, what are we waiting for?" Hermione asked, at the same time reading the letter over Harry's shoulder. "It sounds urgent. I think we better go." Motioning to Ginny, she rose from her seat, dragging Ron up with her.
"I'll see you later." Ginny muttered to Luna and followed her brother and his friends to Dumbledore's office.
Soon, they reached the office and saying the password (it was written in the letter), they entered. Knocking on the door, they entered the office. Ginny had been inside Dumbledore's office a few times before and of all the times, it had not been good news awaiting her. A sense of foreboding crept into her as she walked towards Dumbledore.
"I have bad news for all of you." Professor Dumbledore said, his usually twinkling eyes now dark. He looked at them through his half-moon glasses. "I don't think this is a time for pleasantries, so if you would excuse me for the standing. I believe this would be of a shock to you."
Everyone went quiet.
"Mr Weasley and Miss Weasley, you'll be immediately Portkeyed to St. Mungos. It saddens me to say this but your father has yet again been seriously injured during the course of working for the Order. The good news, which I doubt you would really consider in such a time like this, is that Mr Potter and Miss Granger are allowed to join you if they consent to."
Ginny's heart plummeted. It was bad news after bad news for her recently.
"Of course we are going." Harry cried. "Mr Weasley is like a father to me, Professor. How badly is he injured, sir?"
"He was wounded by several Death Eaters, Lucius Malfoy, mainly. The injuries are serious, but he'll survive." Professor Dumbledore said grimly.
Thank Heavens. That was all Ginny wanted to know. But injured by Lucius Malfoy? Good Lord, that man was vicious. She began to tear, worried about her father's condition and of course, Draco. How could he have possibly survived living with a man like Lucius? It was a miracle. No wonder Draco behaved the way he did. It was not his fault.
"All of you will be excused for two days, starting tomorrow. Any messages you want me to pass to your friends?" Professor Dumbledore asked kindly, the question mainly directed at Ginny.
"Would you help me tell Luna, sir?" Ginny managed. When he nodded in response, Ginny thanked him.
"It's time. Here is the Portkey." He said, bringing out an old sock. "On the count of three, touch it and Molly will be there waiting for you. One. Two. Three." At three, everyone grabbed a hold of the old sock, the world started to spin around Ginny and uncontrollably, she felt a single drop of tear leak out from under her eyelids.
A/N: I've been planning out my chapters and I have decided, there are only going to be a few chapters till the end of this story. Not to worry, I've got a nice ending planned all for all of you!
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Pansy's being a tad bit possessive don't you think? With all her schemes to get Draco back. Eww. I cannot stand those type of people. Poor Draco, with all his vomiting...
Truth to be told, there has been quite a drastic drop in the reviews and you know, the feeling of disappointment kind of creeps in. I understand that you all are busy, but please, spare a few minutes telling me what you think.
I am planning on another story, but I am not really sure when it's going to be posted or what it's about yet. I need to think about it.
So, that's it for now!
See you soon!