Chapter 7 Breaking Free
Draco stumbled in through the door and cast several locking charms on it. Just to be safe. Safe with his crazy thoughts…jumbled nonsense…love, love, love. How could he possibly love? Love was dead.
Love was the sweetness of Christmas Candies in his mouth as he sat with mother in the drawing room waiting for father to come home from…whatever he was doing. Love was the way his father looked at him when he was proud, in one of those rare moments when Draco did something well, excelled at something and proved his worth.
He laughed, hoarsely, and flung the objects from the desktop across the room.
All he could think about was how beautiful she was, how strong. He was sure it wasn’t her real appearance because she had confused him many times by changing her hair color or her eye color, but she was still the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen in his life. He remembered almost touching her when she was in that cell, almost reaching out and holding her; and actually feeling jealous of Theo of all people.
“Are you listening to me Draco?” Theo who always spoke in a half-whisper, but said precisely the things that hurt the most was yelling now. “Are you listening? Look at what you’ve become! ...he killed your parents, Draco, he killed your mother, not Lucius and now he’s making you do it too, don’t you see how sick that is?”
Draco turned away from him. There was nothing left in the world anymore. He did not want to think, and reason and argue. He just wanted to kill…maybe then it would all make sense again.
“Leave him, mate, he’s not coming with us.”
“Are you mad?” Theo turned to shout at Blaise now, “Are you completely insane? I can’t just bloody leave him here!”
Blaise grabbed Theo’s left forearm, eliciting a sharp hiss, and pulled him out the door. “Look for us when you’re sane again…brother.”
It was funny that the first time either of them would use that name for him it had to be filled with so much venom.
Draco jumped up out of his chair and clutched his forearm. It was burning. Maybe he would see her again in the battle if they had managed to heal her and she had managed to get away from that blasted castle.
He unlocked the door, and walked out to battle slowly, because Draco Malfoy did not need to scurry to the scene anymore - and she probably wouldn’t be there yet. And he didn’t know if he really wanted to look at her anymore after he’d heard those words, stood there and done nothing while she fought even against her own people for what she believed.
Then he saw his own face, mirrored in a poster at the street corner and it was like poison, driving out all sanity and leaving him with only the picture of mother dead, and father holding the wand that had killed her.
…
“Charlie!” Ginny hissed when she saw that Madam Pomfrey, and everyone else except for a little boy she didn’t know, had left the infirmary.
He took his time strolling over to her bedside and he had a slight grin on his face. “Nice speech,” he said and she cringed at the memory of the heated words she’d spoken earlier, “You alright?”
“How…” she sighed, “Did you know all along then?”
“Yes, Gin, I saw it in your eyes that day, I knew you were going to escape and I glimpsed you once on the streets of some Muggle town when your hair-changing charm was wearing off. Besides, you forgot this when you decided to fake your death.”
It was the clock. The clock mother had charmed to tell her where each person was at all times. Ginny had never expected that to survive the fire.
She pulled out her new wand with the vague idea of blowing it to pieces, but Charlie shrunk it and tucked it away in a pocket. “No one will see it, Ginny. I went for it as soon as we got to the house, because Mum had said something about the chrams she’d placed on it and how it would tell her the truth. She was still in denial about your ‘death’, you see.”
Ginny did not speak. Out of everyone in her family and everyone she had known Charlie had been, surprisingly, the only one to support her in her need to get out and fight. “But no one else knows, right?”
“Of course not, Gin, they all feel so guilty for leaving you there and Fred and George haven’t stopped blaming themselves. But after I realized that you were being targeted in that attack I couldn’t say anything about it. It’s better that you stay out of sight until this stupid war is over.”
She placed her hand on his arm, unable to convey her thanks properly. “Even Bill?” she finally asked – he always told Bill everything.
He laughed: “Even Bill.”
There was an awkward silence and Ginny studied the other patient. He was so tiny, poor thing. Suddenly, as Charlie burst into loud coughs, she realized that something about the boy’s eyes was off. She looked to Charlie questioningly. He just waved a hand over his eyes and shook his head. The boy was blind.
“How’d you get out that day, Gin?” Charlie finally asked, “I left you at home and I knew you’d trick the twins into thinking that I was still there so you could escape, but I didn’t know the letter was fake, I wouldn’t have left if…”
“It’s alright, Charlie, I found some help in an unexpected place. I’ve got some Wizarding friends as well as Muggle ones that I can rely on if things get tough.”
“Well, you’re not leaving until Madam Pomfrey’s done with you… I wish... Mum’s devastated.”
“If I don’t ever come back, if I die in the war before I can talk to them properly again, you know what to tell them, right?”
Charlie got up and walked over to the window. “Are you studying?” he asked suddenly.
“Yes, mum,” she muttered, “I’m learning a lot more from experience than I ever did in a hundred DADA classes.”
“I didn’t mean DADA,” he said, “There are other subjects you know, like potions, and Herbology and ancient runes…”
Ginny groaned. “Have mercy on a dead woman, Charlie,” she said theatrically then she decided, since the boy was clearly awake to include him in the conversation, “What do you think – I’m sorry, what’s your name?”
“Me?” the boy turned towards her, but it was obvious he couldn’t really see her, because he was staring fixedly at a point slightly to her right.
“Yeah.”
“Liam.”
“What do you think Liam?” she asked, “Should I be studying all the boring things I’m missing or just make up for it after the war is over?”
“I don’t know,” he said timidly, “I really like learning about Magic, Mr. – I mean Ron is teaching me how to do some really cool things and I like it because I’ve never done magic before!”
Ginny shot Charlie an incredulous look. Ron, teaching someone something, being in a room with a little thing like this without complaining loudly and acting completely insensitive; it was unbelievable! She didn’t say anything about it aloud, though, and asked the boy to show her some of the spells he knew.
…
The larger man’s hand pressed down on his throat and Draco began to feel the desperate pain of a man who has just woken from a long sleep to drowning. He struggled to get out of the man’s grasp, but the hand only pressed down harder.
“Tear him apart,” he heard.
He could not take his eyes off his captor. He could not remember how it had come to this and he couldn’t even really shake himself out of his cold, cold, stupor. He was insane and he was going to die.
Suddenly, as he stared into those striking blue eyes he began to see things that weren’t his own memories to see. Worst of all, he began to feel things so quickly and suddenly that it burned.
He was walking through the chaos and loud crashes and bangs thundered across his hearing. He knew what he was doing though, he was fighting these worthless Mugg-
Draco tried to pull himself out of it. He didn’t know what it was, exactly, because it wasn’t like Occlumency and he didn’t know who was causing it, him or the Muggle. But it was impossible and he drowned again, seeing his own memories mixed with another’s: so similar and yet so different. He wasn’t a Muggle, he was better than that, purer than that by far…
A figure was huddled behind a dilapidated wall and he made his way for it, through the shooting and shouting and death. He shot down five of them, those dirty fiends, on his way to the figure that had caught his interest. He put a hand on the small shoulder and turned the figure around, weapon poised, only to be met with wide, beautiful eyes. A cooking pot was hanging from a stake in the wall behind her face, distracting him, irritating him. He lifted his gun and shot it and she quivered beneath his grip, but didn’t scream.
No one had ever told him they were so beautiful. How could you kill something so gorgeous?
He looked down at his gun and turned his head a little to eye the carnage. Someone shrieked. They sounded entirely too young to be here. Were their children fiends too who only deserved death? Were they all as beautiful as this delicious thing in front of him?
He turned away and ran. All the way home to England he never once looked back, even to see whether she was dead or alive. Of course she was dead. It didn’t matter, though, her fate, he just wasn’t going back and that was all that mattered.
Draco came back to the present breathless, his mind reeling from the memories that were not his own. They didn’t make any sense, but at the same time they made all the sense in the world. It was then he realized that he would one day have to wake up from this stupor and change. Not for his beautiful, fiery angel, no - just for himself, because as soon as he could feel again it would hurt to be him. It would hurt to be a hundred times more than Lucius and a hundred times stronger and closer to the Dark Lord… and a hundred times the coward.
“No,” the man’s voice was level, deep, “If I kill you I’ll only be just like you, an animal; a sickening parasite. But if I see your blasted face again I’ll do it…I’ll murder you and it’ll be worth every eon I spend in hell for it.”
Draco fell to the floor as soon as he was released and picked up his fallen wand and fled. He walked as slowly as his feet would let him, tried to maintain a dignified, cool step, but his mind was in turmoil. He was a coward, a dirty coward and he was no better than this Muggle he was fighting.
He stumbled into the house a while later, he didn’t know how long, and locked all the doors again. He sat down at Mother’s desk and then got up and then threw things around the room, wishing he could as easily throw them out of his head. And finally, as the haze died away and his mind slowed to a pace he could keep up with Draco knew what he had to do. It was time now to become himself. It was time to do one thing for him, not because he wanted to please others or live up to others’ expectations.
He took out a chess set and quill and began to compose his freedom.
...
”This is Remus’s address, Ginny, and this one is Bill’s. You don’t have to tell anyone anything; they’ll never turn out anyone, Muggle or Wizard, who turns up at their doors. Promise me you’ll go if you need help!”
Ginny grimaced as she tucked the scrap of parchment with the addresses into her robe pocket and took out her wand. It was time to go now, whether Madam Pomfrey liked it or not.
”He’s changed so much since you’ve been gone, Gin,” Charlie whispered, “He’s learned not to keep people tied down by fear, he’s learned to give power to others.”
Ginny rolled her eyes. She did not really believe that Ron had changed that much. After all, he was one of those people who weren’t meant to change until they were fifty or something and realized they were getting old. It still helped her leave, and maybe that was Charlie’s intent, to know that Ron might be starting to grow up a little. She had also come to realize, whether she liked it or not, that they were all trying as a hard as they could, it wasn’t their fault they weren’t winning.
“Goodbye.”
The gates were so much more pathetic on the inside, but it still took her a while to remember the right spells and unlock it properly without attracting the attention of the patrol. And she was still getting used to the new wand Theo had obtained for her. It wasn’t a perfect fit, but it wasn’t like you could stroll into Ollivanders and spend hours trying one out. Theo had gone to a rather dodgy wand-maker by himself (she suspected they were stolen wands) and he had tried his best to get her something that would be suitable.
It was much darker on the outside, and so cold, but as Ginny stepped away from the Gates of Hogwarts she decided it really was so much better to be cold and useful; cold and free.
