Getting Personal

CHAPTER 14 Losing It

"You shouldn't be here."

"Dumbledore said I could stay."

"It will just make things worse for her family."

Ginny struggled to open her eyes.

"Ginny!" Draco's bruised face came into view in front of her.

"Mr. Malfoy, you need to get back in your own bed right now!" Madam Pomfrey's voice announced crossly.

Ginny struggled to sit up. "What happened?"

"See what you've done?" Madam Pomfrey said, frowning.

"No! Tell me."

Draco sat down on the side of her bed and closed his eyes. He had scratches on his cheek, cuts along his arms, and his robes were in shambles. "Ginny, it's not good."

"This is not the time, Mr. Malfoy, now-"

"Stop!" Ginny snapped. "Let him tell me."

"When we got there, everything was already a disaster. Dumbledore got there right after us. It's a good thing, Harry, he can't take him, I just . . ." Draco took a deep breath, but the only color on his face was the two pink spots of color in his cheeks. "Your brother went first. He insisted on going first out that trapdoor into Honeydukes, and it was a trap. They were waiting. We could hear someone scream that curse all the way down the tunnel. Even Neville tried to . . . I'm sorry, Ginny."

Ginny could say nothing. No air was reaching her lungs.

Draco reached out and circled his arms around her back. "I'm sorry. I tried to get there as fast as I could." His voice cracked, but Ginny remained still.

Ron. Ron. Ron. Her brother. He wasn't gone. He couldn't be. She didn't believe it. "No."

"What?" Draco looked up and Ginny saw that his eyes were wet.

"No! NO! NO NO NO NO!"

"So you have told her?" Professor Dumbledore was standing on the other side of her bed. "He wanted to check the area for Harry, Ms. Granger told me. He saved Harry."

Ginny didn't care. Harry should have gone, not her brother, not her Ron. She had barely spoken to Ron in weeks, and now he was gone. Her stomach began to churn violently.

"Ginny," he said softly, "this is a difficult time I know, but no place is safe now. You and your family are going to stay at Harry's house. Your parents are already there. Remus and Tonks are coming to get you."

Ginny stared blankly, letting tears fall rapidly.

"I know your family may not understand my decision yet, but Mr. Malfoy will be going with you. He is in as much danger as any of you."

"Where am I going?" Draco asked.

"Did they see you?" Ginny managed to ask.

Draco nodded. "My father saw me."

Ginny felt like a hippogriff had sat down on her chest. The room began to grow dark and Dumbledore's voice faded.

***

When Ginny awoke she was falling. She hit the floor with a painful thud, and quickly scrambled up, disoriented. Tonks was staring down at her, her eyes as red as her hair. "Where am I?"

"Knight Bus," Tonks trembled. "Going to the Order's house."

"Where's Draco?"

"There."

Ginny looked and saw him leaned against a window, staring moodily out. This isn't real. No, it's not real at all.

"I'm so sorry," Tonks reached out to hug her. "So, so sorry."

When they reached number 12, Grimmauld Place, Ginny saw Draco glance at a scrap of paper and repeat the address. Not knowing what else to do, Ginny reached out and picked up his hand. They entered the house tentatively and found it dreadfully quiet. Ginny was relieved to see that it had been cleaned up though, and there were no mounted house elf heads or screaming portraits. No! You can't think about those things! Focus! Your brother is gone. But Ginny couldn't think about that. Instead she wondered why the house was so silent, where everyone was.

Hermione and Harry were in the living room. She was sitting on the couch, sobbing into her hands and Harry was staring blankly into space. Draco's grip on her hand tightened, and behind her, Lupin cleared his throat.

Harry's eyes slowly slid into focus, but Hermione never looked up.

"Charlie will be here soon," Lupin said slowly.

Harry nodded, looking as disconnected from his body as Ginny felt. "Thanks."

It took Ginny a moment to realize he was talking to Draco.

"Thanks for helping us," Harry told him.

Draco nodded stiffly. "Thanks for letting me stay at your house."

The room fell silent again, except for Hermione's sobs, and Ginny dropped Draco's hand and went to put her arms around the girl, holding her and willing herself to join in the sobs, but none came.

When Ginny finally pulled herself away from Hermione, both Harry and Draco were gone. "Come on," Ginny tugged Hermione's robe. "Let go to our room. You should sleep."

Ginny settled Hermione in the bed of the room they had shared two summers before and left to find Draco.

She crept up two flights of stairs to the room Fred and George had once stayed in and found Draco sitting in the window seat, staring at the night sky. He didn't turn to face her as she came in, so she shut the door behind her and edged up to him, sliding her arms around his waist.

"Lupin said to tell you that your parents are in their room on the top floor, but they've been given a dreamless sleeping potion." His words were careful and even.

Ginny pressed her head against his back and nodded. "Tell me what happened."

"What?"

"Just with . . . your father."

"Oh. Right. It was a big mess." He hesitated, as if hoping she would change her mind. "Longbottom and I went running . . . Potter was battling with You Know Who and that left Granger, she was trying to fight all those Death Eaters. We didn't even have time to think. We got there and had to start fighting, but Dumbledore showed up pretty quickly. He got rid of most the Death Eaters, and was battling You Know Who and trying to keep Potter out of it." There was a long silence. "When the Dark Lord decided he wasn't going to win, he told his people to leave, but . . . my hood slipped off, and . . . my father looked up. I knew it was him. He saw me. He didn't say anything, didn't try to curse me." Draco paused. "He just looked at me."

Ginny chewed the inside of her lip and waited.

"But when they were leaving he told me that I wasn't his son anymore."

Ginny froze. So Draco had lost a family member yesterday also. She didn't know what to do anymore. She was lost inside her head, lost in this huge house. Draco shifted in her arms and leaned down to kiss her forehead.

The abandoned, vulnerable expression on Draco's face matched the tangled feelings in her chest, so she stood on her tiptoes and kissed his mouth, trying to make some sense out of her emotions.

"Ginny," Draco whispered after several moments, "I-"

"Let's not talk," she begged. Please don't stop, she added silently. Please give me something, give me anything to fill up this numbness in me.

He nodded, staring at her red, streaked face and wished he could make all her pain go away. If this was what she wanted, he would be glad to help out. He pulled her gently towards the bed, kissing her over and over, closing his mind until he was focused on Ginny and Ginny only. Her fire colored hair, her freckles and how much he wanted to kiss each and everyone of them, the way her lips tasted and the way she arched her back beneath him.

She let him slip her clothes off and made no move to stop him when he began to tug on her underclothes; instead she reached back and undid his trousers, grabbing his waistband and pulling down his them and boxers in one quick move. She stretched open her legs beneath him and he fit perfectly against her.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes," she whispered. "Please, I want this, I want you." I am a horrible, horrible person. My brother is gone. My brother was killed. He's not coming back and all I can do is lose my virginity to the boyfriend my brother hated.

Slowly, carefully, painfully Draco pushed into her until they were joined together, fitting together so well he didn't know where he stopped and she began. He lost himself in her heat, lost himself completely in Ginny.

Ginny tried to hold her breath and relax at the same time, pain searing from her thighs and roaring across her body. This is what you deserve. This is exactly what you get for disrespecting your brother's memory, she told herself.

"Are you okay?" he asked as she gasped in a sharp breath.

"Yes," she whispered, "just . . . be still a minute."

He waiting, kissing her forehead. "We don't have to do this. I don't want to do anything that-"

"Shh," she hissed.

He closed his mouth and watched her, kissing her lips and ears and neck and until she was relaxed and moved beneath him like she had been made for this, made just for him, whispering his name again and again, until he could no longer hold back and let go of himself inside of her, ensuring that she would always he his.

CHAPTER 15 Muggle Toys

The first morning they were there, Ginny and Draco went down to the kitchen in their bed clothes and no one even noticed. Tonks, Lupin, Harry, Fred, Snape, and Moody were sitting at the table, eating, or at least picking at their food in silence, and no one even gave them a second glance. Ginny supposed she should be glad, because she had expected a bit more fireworks for having a Malfoy as a boyfriend, but she knew that each of them was coping with the loss of Ron in their own way, and when they had come to terms with that, the explosion would undoubtedly come.

The summer would have dragged by like an Azkaban sentence if Draco had not been there. Ginny's parents barely spoke, both of them immersing themselves in planning for the Order to defeat the Dark Lord, not speaking Ron's name except late at night when they thought everyone else was sleeping. Harry, Hermione, Draco, and Ginny made their own plans, practicing spells and hexes and curses, until Ginny was certain she could kill someone with Avada Kedavra if she tried. Fred and George threw themselves into their work, while Bill, Charlie, and Percy only came around to help with the Order, unable to deal with the obvious lacking presence of Ron. No one seemed to notice, or even care, that Ginny and Draco slept in the same room every night. Her mother had hugged Draco tightly after Dumbledore told her parents how he helped fight the Dark Lord in Hogsmead. Her father had thanked him, but Ginny didn't expect much more from him. He barely spoke to anyone.

Ginny was convinced she was a horrible person. While every other member of her family spent their days and nights crying, she spent her days hiding with Draco and her nights sleeping with them. She tried to make herself cry, but she couldn't, so instead, she punished herself by not eating, selfishly unwilling to give Draco up.

"So, this is Harry's house, right?" Draco asked her during their second week.

Ginny nodded and looked up. "Sirius left it to him."

"So he doesn't have to stay with his Muggle family?"

"I'm not sure. I think he'll have to, but only for a week or so."

"Why? If this is his house, why can't he stay here?"

"It's something about his mother's blood protecting him, and since he lives with his mum's sister, that is a power that keeps him safe. I don't really know."

Draco crossed the room and stared out the great window in the living room. "What do you think is going to happen to us when we go back to Hogwarts?"

"What do you mean?" she asked, watching him.

"I don't think I'm going to be welcome back in Slytherin."

That thought hadn't occurred to Ginny. "Why not?"

"A lot of their parents are big supporters of the Dark Lord. I'm sure they'll have heard about what I did."

Ginny nodded and picked up the day old copy of the Daily Prophet. Attacks, attacks, and more attacks. The Order was making progress; they were capturing Death Eaters and their supporters everyday, but it was hard to contain them, since there were no Dementors to ensure their stay in Azkaban.

"I don't want to fight anymore," she said finally. "I just want this to be over. I don't want to lose anyone else."

"That is what we all want."

Ginny turned and saw Tonks standing in the doorway.

"Here." Tonks crossed the room and handed Ginny a large paper bag. "I thought you might need some entertainment."

"Thanks." Ginny looked in the bag and found a deck of wizard playing cards, chess pieces, several books and comic books and a small bottle in the very bottom. "What's this?" She pulled out the bottle and held it up to the light.

"Put that away," Tonks hissed. "Someone could walk in here."

Draco reached for it and glanced at the bottle.

"I figured it was the least I could do to keep another disaster from happening in your family. You take two swallows on the same day of every month. So if you start today, you take your next drink on the 15^th of next month." A sly smile was forming in the corners of her lips, and Ginny felt her face heating up.

"Is this anti-pregnancy potion?" she asked quietly.

Tonks nodded and then laughed. "Why are you so embarrassed? It's not hard to figure out when you're staying in the same room."
"No one else has said anything," Draco pointed out.

"Well, they have other things to be concerned with," she shrugged.

"You're not here at night," Ginny said suspiciously.

"No, but Lupin is."

Ginny felt like a firework had gone off in her skull, even her ears and the back of her neck were burning painfully.

***

Harry left without warning in the middle of the summer to go stay at his Muggle family's house for a week, and Hermione was so distraught, Dumbledore sent her home to her parents.

Neither Ginny nor Draco were allowed out of the house, so they spent their days searching the house for remnants of the Black family's past, and occasionally finding pieces of the family history, and they spent their nights clinging to each other, trying to fill the emptiness inside.

"I think you would have liked Sirius," Ginny told Draco one afternoon. "I did. I loved him."

Draco nodded. "My mum thinks the world of him."

"She does?"

"Yeah. Of course, not in public, but in private. Mum hates Bellatrix, but she didn't want to be disowned like Andromeda."

Ginny sat still, taking in this new information. "So why did your parents get married?"

"My father wasn't always like this, mum says. She says he used to be . . . different. But when his older brother was killed, the family fortunes fell to him. Mum says money corrupts."

"I wouldn't know," Ginny gave a light hearted shrug.

The beginnings of a smile curled around the edges of Draco's lips. "Fred and George would."

Ginny laughed. "They are doing so good, even with the war going on and all. It kills mum to admit to how successful they are when this whole time she was always after them to do good in school."

When Harry came back he brought with him a present for Ginny. "To keep you entertained."

"You shouldn't have gotten anything," she said, shaking her head. "We aren't allowed out of the house, so I can't get even you anything for your birthday."

"You can order something," Draco reminded her lazily.

Harry's lips attempted to curl into the first hint of a smile Ginny had seen all summer. There were only three weeks left before they would head back to Hogwarts, and again, things were different. If a stranger looked at her family, they might not guess that they were missing a family member, just maybe that they weren't very talkative.

Ginny peeled the wrapping off and then stared at the large box. "This is . . . is this a Muggle television?"

Draco sat up and frowned. "A what?"

"Close," Harry admitted. "It's a DVD player."

"What does it do?" Draco asked.

"I thought you didn't like anything to do with Muggles," Ginny teased.

He shrugged and focused on Harry.

"It plays movies," he explained.

"Oh. We watched one in Muggle studies," Ginny recalled.

"Watch." Harry pulled it out of the box, opened a plastic case and took out a thin, round, silver disk. Carefully he set the disk in the machine, closed the lid, and pressed several buttons. Draco nearly jumped in shock as sound emitted from the machine.

"And it's for me?" Ginny asked.

Harry nodded. "I figured it would keep us entertained since we're not allowed to leave, you know."

Draco poked the screen with his finger. "Maybe Muggles know more than my father gave them credit for."

Harry, however, wasn't as interested in the Muggle toy as Ginny and Draco were. He spent most of his time with Lupin, except in the evening, when the Order met after dinner to discuss their plans. At first, Ginny assumed Fred and George would let them know what was going on since they had officially joined the Order, but they took themselves seriously for the first time in their lives and remained quiet. Ginny also had the sneaking feeling that being around her reminded them too much of Ron, and that they couldn't stand the fact that Malfoy was there, as her boyfriend.

Draco and Ginny spent their remaining days shut up in their room, the window wide open since they were not allowed to go outside, and the Muggle movie machine playing almost all the time. Tonks brought them new DVDs every week. Instead of helping Ginny though, they seemed to have a numbing effect on her.

"You have to eat," Draco told her crossly one evening. "When was the last time you did?"

"I don't know," she muttered, staring at the tiny screen.

"It was yesterday, wasn't it?"

She shook her head.
"Damn it!" he shouted, snapping the cover shut. "Look at me."

Slowly, she let her eyes travel across the space to Draco's red face.

"When was it?"

"I don't know. When Dumbledore was here."

"That was three days ago."

"Okay." Her eyelids were falling downward. If she couldn't watch her Muggle movies, well then, she wanted to sleep.

"Get up!" he snapped. "You need to eat!"

"I just want to sleep, Draco, okay?" she pleaded.

"You are going to waste away in here! Come on!"

"My brother," she whispered, pain hitting her in the chest. "My brother is gone."

Draco sucked in a large breath and leaned down, cupping her face in his hands. "Ginny, he's been gone all summer, baby. You already know this."

Tears piled up in her eyes. "No." She had known that Ron was gone, but it had just hit her so hard it physically hurt, Ron wasn't coming back. Ron who had been mad at her. Ron who she had barely spoken to. He was gone. "No."

"Come on. You have to eat," Draco insisted, pulling her from the bed.

She shook her head, sobbing. "I can't."

Draco let go of her hands in disgust and stomped out of the room. Minutes later, he was back, Lupin and her mother in tow.

"Ginny, honey," her mother's voice weary reached her ears. "What is it?"

"He's gone," she sobbed.

"She hasn't eaten in three days," Draco told them, his words coming out helpless and anxious. "She acts like she just realized . . . what happened."

"Oh, honey," Mrs. Weasley choked back her own tears and put her arms around Ginny's small body. "He's not gone forever, you know. Death, well, death is not the end."

Draco's eyebrows knitted together in confusion.

"You're not going to make things better by starving yourself."

Lupin put his hand on Draco's arm and motioned for him to follow. "Let's give them some time," he whispered, once they were in the hall.

Unsure of what else to do, Draco followed Lupin down to the kitchen and dropped into a chair at the long table.

"What's going on?" Potter asked.

Draco jumped slightly. "Sorry, I didn't see you. Ginny's . . . upset."

Lupin sat between them and passed out bottles of butterbeer. "The reality of the situation is setting in," he said softly.

"Oh," Harry nodded and focused on the invisible dirt specks in the tabletop. "Oh."

Lupin cleared his throat and looked around. "So what will you be doing when you finish your N.E.W.T.s, Draco?"

Draco looked up again, startled. "Um, I'm not really sure. My father . . . well, my father wanted me to, uh, follow in his footsteps, but I'm pretty sure he's officially disowned me, so I guess I'll just see what I . . ."

"What you?" Lupin prompted.

"I guess I'll just see what I do well in." He stared uncomfortably at his hands. What was going on? When in his life, had anyone ever asked him what he wanted to do with himself, except for Professor Snape, when he had been required. He had no idea, at least, no idea he had ever shared out loud. "I'd like to play Quidditch." There, he'd said it. He braced himself for Potter's laugh.

But Harry nodded. "Me too."

"I thought you wanted to be an Auror," Lupin asked mildly.

"Yeah, I do, but once Voldemort is gone, that's what I'd like to do."

Draco stared at Harry. He spoke so calmly, as if defeating the Dark Lord were simply the next item on his list.

"You can stay here, you know."

"What?"

"You can stay here," Harry repeated flatly. "I mean, this house is pretty big. There are plenty of rooms. Ron was going to be my roommate but, well I'll be needing one now."

"What about the Order?" Draco asked, unable to believe what he was hearing. Why in the bloody hell would Potter offer his house to him?

"They can still come. Like I said, plenty of rooms. If you have other plans, though-"

"I don't," Draco stated bluntly.

"Well then," Lupin interjected. "Settled."