Fic: The Dragon's Keep 3/3
Title: The Dragon's Keep (3/3)
Pairing: Draco/Ginny
Chapter Word Count: 4839
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Ginny is given a second chance at life and love when she heads a small dragon preserve on the grounds of Malfoy Manor.
Notes: Written for the dgficexchange and nominated for Best Line and Best Ginny. Yay!
Beside herself with excitement, Ginny watched Draco jog down the path from the Manor. In a black robe, loose pajama bottoms, and black boots, only his rumpled hair and white skin were visible in the moonlight.
"Ginny! Your owl almost broke through my window." He took the lantern from her hands and pulled her close to ravage her mouth. "Is this really it, or could I be so incredibly fortunate to be pulled out of my bed in the middle of the night just because want me and you want me now?"
She giggled, almost giddy. "I do want you, but sorry, handsome." Her mouth tingled, and she indulged herself with another kiss before pulling open the door of the West Barn and tugged him inside. "This is it! Scarlet's egg is hatching!"
Whispering, holding hands, they crept up the aisle to the brooding dragon's pen. Next to the gate, the overturned keg Charlie had used earlier for a stool sat waiting, but Ginny knew sitting on something that low and hard would hurt her hip, so she left it for Draco and crouched as best she could near the gate for a good view.
"Eeep!" she squeaked when Draco grabbed her and pulled her back onto his lap. Inside the pen, Scarlet chuffed in irritation.
"Sorry," he whispered in her ear. "The best seat's right here."
Mute, she nodded, eyes fixed upon the first egg to hatch at the Wiltshire preserve.
A series of yellow cracks had formed across the egg during the afternoon, first spotted by Hagrid and confirmed by Charlie. Ginny knew her two assistants were in the bunkhouse, wishing they could be here to witness the birth, but Ginny felt this moment was sacred and special. The only person in the world she wanted to share it with was Draco.
His arms crossed over her stomach, holding her close, and she covered them with her own. "Thank you for being here," she whispered.
"Thank you for wanting me here," he whispered back.
Over the next hour, they watched the unborn dragon squirm in its shell, looking for a way out. Scarlet blew a steady stream of steamy breath over the egg, and the hatchling strained upward, pushing the fractured shell out in search of heat. First a talon, than the pointed tip of a small tail, than an elegant snout broke pieces of the egg off the whole until, with startling suddenness, the rest of the egg fell away.
Ginny could have cheered.
Scarlet's blistering tongue scraped goo off the hatchling and the pint-sized dragon sneezed and fell backward. Ginny and Draco both laughed out loud, but when Scarlet cast a murderous eye upon them through the wards, they clapped their hands over their mouths and retreated to the storage room.
"It's like a miracle, isn't it?" Ginny wrapped both arms around Draco as he shut the storeroom door and hugged him tight. "I'm so happy!"
"You should be. This happened because you're taking such good care of Scarlet." He swayed Ginny back and forth, careful to not hurt her leg. "I would have brought a bottle of champagne with me for a celebration, but your kamikaze owl distracted me."
Ginny laughed and broke free of his arms, too excited to be still. She chattered happily as she wandered aimless through the small room, sometimes stopping and hugging herself in an effort to contain her joy. Eventually, though, she became aware that Draco was just sitting on a workbench, swinging one foot and gazing at the floor.
"Draco?"
"Hmm?"
Ginny stopped between his legs and tipped his chin up. "Are you all right?"
He smiled and dropped a kiss into her palm. "I'm fine. It's just…a new life. Their home's been taken from them, but life goes on. It's amazing, isn't it?" She nodded, and he continued. "That's one innocent little dragon out there. Will it grow up to be a good mum like Scarlet? A sweetheart like Friction? Or will it grow up and eat crusty old MacFustys for breakfast? We're all innocent in the beginning, aren't we? It's just…it makes you think."
She bit her lip, but there was something she wanted to ask, something that had been on her mind since the first morning after Draco had spent the night with her in her little house and Charlie had watched him walk home.
"I hope you know what you're doing, Gin," her brother had muttered. "Hagrid may think the git's gone respectable, but he's still a Malfoy."
"Draco, do you ever have any regrets?" He raised one eyebrow, so she clarified. "I mean, are you ever sorry for the choices you made back then, back when we should have been innocent but that blasted war wouldn't let us be?
"Sometimes I am," she answered her own question before he could speak. "I'm sorry I started dating Harry again. I'm sorry I kept my feelings for you a secret for so long." Her cheeks pinked in the dim light. "I'm sorry I didn't stand with you when your father was arrested or testify before the Wizengamot about the way you warned me Death Eaters were coming to the Burrow."
Draco looked down at his empty hands. "Your brother had just been killed."
"Not by you."
"By Death Eaters, though." Reflexively, he touched his left forearm where Ginny knew the faded remnants of the Dark Mark still marred his skin.
Ginny covered his hand with hers. "I'm still sorry."
"I think I've become a better man than anyone would have guessed I could be." He was so quiet Ginny could still hear tiny moths striking the lamp above their heads. "If I had made other choices, maybe my life would be easier. If my father had made different choices, maybe he wouldn't have died in prison and my mother wouldn't be…" He trailed off, sighing.
"But, no. I don't have any regrets." His hands curved around her waist and drew her close until she was flush against him. "I won't-I can't be sorry for who I was. I hated everyone and I was proud of it. But you should know, Ginny," he pressed the sweetest kiss to her brow, "that who I am…and who I've become is because I loved you." He kissed his way down her nose, over her cheeks and jaw, before finding her mouth. "I love you still." His lips grazed hers as he spoke and she could feel his words down to her soul. "I never stopped."
"Draco…Draco…" Ginny pulled him off the bench and into her arms, and they sank to the floor together.
*
"Ew."
"Don't be a baby, Malfoy." Charlie folded his arms along the gate and smirked at the blond. "Dragon's aren't mammals and they aren't vegetarians. What did you think little Firebolt would eat?"
"Whatever I may have thought, it wasn't regurgitated venison." Draco curled his lip and turned his head away from the sight of Scarlet feeding her hatchling.
"I wish we coulda named her Edwina," Hagrid said apropos of nothing. "She looks more like an Edwina than a Firebolt ter me."
Ginny rested her head sleepily against Draco's shoulder and smiled. "Sorry, Hagrid, I already promised Draco he could name her. You can name our second hatchling."
"She's clearly a Firebolt." Draco glanced at the gorging hatchling and nodded decisively. "Anyway, what kind of name is 'Edwina the Dragon'? Might as well name her-"
"So this is where you've been, Lucius. For shame."
Draco froze, his face falling into expressionless lines, but Hagrid and Charlie both gasped. When Ginny turned, she understood why and also knew that Narcissa Malfoy was very ill indeed.
Draco's mother stood weaving in the doorway. From her white-blonde hair, braided and tied with girlish ribbons, down to her feet, in their incongruous high-heeled green dress shoes, Narcissa was a portrait of madness. A winter-weight robe slipped from one skeletal shoulder when she held out her arms to her son, and Ginny realized the older woman was naked underneath. Draco flinched, and when Ginny tore her eyes away from Narcissa long enough to look up, she saw his eyes were squeezed tightly shut.
"Lucius, how could you? Consorting with blood traitors and-" she looked at Hagrid, her lip curling into a Bellatrix-like sneer, "-beasts of all sorts. Throw them out!" Narcissa raised her arms above her head and shimmied in a bizarre dance. "Throw them out, my love, and we'll return to the Manor and bar the gates!"
"Mother." Draco left the others behind and walked toward his mother. "Mother, I'm not Father. I'm Draco."
Narcissa froze, arms still raised, robe billowing bat-like around her body. "Draco…Draco, yes, of course, you're Draco. Lucius would not have let this happen." She began to cry, and Ginny felt her stomach turn in revulsion and pity. "Oh, how can you be so ungrateful?" Narcissa wailed. "After everything I did for you, how can you let these foul people bring their monsters here?"
"Mother…" Draco was close enough to touch when Narcissa's eyes blazed with a sudden hatred so intense Ginny had not seen the like since she fought this woman's sister during the Final Battle. Ginny cried out even before Narcissa's hand fell, but it was too late.
Draco never flinched as his mother's nails gouged his cheek.
"You want them to get me," Narcissa shrieked, backing away. Inside their pens, the dragon's stomped their feet and roared out warnings. "You want them to get me, so everything will be broken and you'll be free to forget. I won't let you, I won't let you!" Alternately screaming and wailing, she turned ran back up the path.
"Merlin's balls." Ginny heard her brother's whispered exclamation, but she was already running to Draco's side.
"Draco!" Ginny flung her arms around his shaking body. When Ginny pressed her face against his chest, she could hear sobs hitching his lungs. "Oh, Draco. Why didn't you tell me?" Her own hand shaking, she reached up with gentle fingers to staunch the blood dripping from his cheek. "We'll help her, we'll Floo St Mungo's right now."
"No!" Draco pushed her hands away. "She doesn’t need St. Mungo's!"
"She needs somethin', Malfoy." Hagrid's beady black eyes were wet with sympathy. "A Healer's a good place to start."
"No! She has a Healer, and there's nothing anyone can do. I promised her she'd never have to leave Malfoy Manor. I promised her." Draco's voice broke, but when Ginny tried to embrace him he shrugged her off again.
"Stop it! Something happened to her when my father died, but she was all right until you showed up with these things." Draco grabbed a fistful of gravel and hurled it through the open barn door. Already agitated, the dragons roared again, and Firebug began slamming her tail against the sides of her pen. Charlie swore and disappeared back into the barn, wand raised.
"Draco, please!"
"I shouldn't have stopped." Draco raked his hands through his hair until it stood on end. "I should have kept fighting the Ministry until someone listened to me. Bloody hell, I could have bribed someone." He backed away from Ginny. "But no, I wanted you. I put you ahead of my family, and it broke my mother." He choked and turned on his heel, sprinting in the direction his mother had run.
"Stop!" Tears were already sheeting down Ginny's face. Before she could follow more than a few steps, however, Hagrid's massive hand gently pulled her back.
"Let 'im go, Ginny. Jus' let 'im go. He needs t'be with his mum right now."
"But Hagrid…" Ginny felt like panic had constricted her throat down to a pinpoint. "He needs me, too. He…I…I love him."
"I know yeh do." He smoothed her hair down in the morning sunshine and let her cry.
*
Ginny shifted in her bed until she felt less pressure on her bad leg. Her movement knocked a small cascade of crumpled tissues to the floor.
On her bedside table, next to a photograph of Draco leading Friction out to the flight paddock, the hands on her clock slowly changed from one to two.
Ginny scrubbed fresh tears away with another limp tissue. Draco had not returned to the preserve after running away that morning. Her owl, letter unopened, had been sent back looking like it had been hexed.
Charlie's contact in the Dragon Research and Restraint Bureau reported that the Malfoys had filed eight new complaints about the preserve today: a new record for the department's 600-year history.
Ginny rolled onto her back. How could he be so stupid, she wondered. Why was he acting like this? She promised herself that tomorrow she would storm the Manor if she had too. She would-
Scarlet roared, and the sound pulsed through Ginny's open window, prickling her flesh with goose bumps and lifting her head off her pillow. She had never heard a roar like that before. She listened intently, but everything was calm…
---until the night was shattered by roars of pain and fear from the West Barn.
"Ginny!" She heard her brother scream.
Ginny threw herself out of bed and staggered to the window. The scene before her was like something from a nightmare.
The West Barn was burning down.
Ginny raced through her house and out the door faster than she thought she could run. Her wand was clutched tightly in her hand, but she already knew it was hopeless. There was only one kind of fire that could burn through the fireproof materials and wards protecting the building. There was only one kind of fire that could burn her dragons until they shrieked in agony, their cries tearing at her heart. It had to be Fiendfyre.
Demonic hands of fire clawed at the barn's roof. Enemy dragons sculpted from flame slammed into the walls, tearing them down and spreading destruction. Worst of all, a hissing flame snake slithered through the grass, burning everything it touched until it reached the corner of the storehouse and set it alight.
It would spread until the entire preserve was destroyed.
"Expecto Patronum!" Charlie's Patronus shot past almost faster than she could see, on its way, no doubt, to bring the Ministry to their aid.
Over the flame's rampage, Ginny heard Blackjack and Tinder roaring in the untouched East Barn. The males could hear the desperate cries from the females, she knew. "Hagrid!" she screamed. "The East Barn! Get them out! Hurry!" The smoke was almost too thick, but she glimpsed Hagrid's unmistakable silhouette racing toward the stud barn.
Behind Ginny, Scarlet screamed again.
Scarlet, Firebolt, NO! Ginny ran for the East Barn, spotting Charlie casting one ineffectual defense charm after another on the structure. A sound like cracking timbers was heard, and Firebug suddenly crashed through the weakened wall. Her leathery black wings were engulfed in Fiendfyre and she bucked wildly, trying to escape the pain.
"No!" Desperate to help, Ginny ran heedlessly close to the tormented dragon, but Firebug had already spotted Charlie and decided to direct her rage at him. "Charlie, look out!"
"Get back, Gin!" Her brother danced out of the way of Firebug's thrashing tail. "Don't go in there!"
But Scarlet screamed again, so much weaker than before, and Ginny ran through the hole Firebug had left in the barn.
Inside, the smoke was as black as evil's heart and impossibly thick. Ginny cast a Bubble-Head charm so she could breathe, but she was still blind and groping along blistering hot walls to try and find her bearings.
"Ginny!"
No, she told herself. It couldn't be Draco.
But a spell unlike any she had ever heard, a combination of song and poetry in a mix of languages she couldn't identify echoed eerily though the barn. It was sung in Draco's voice, and before it, the Fiendfyre began to recede.
"Scarlet," she whispered hoarsely. Finally finding the dragon's pen, Ginny pulled herself up onto the gate and peeked inside.
What had been her favorite dragon, the start of the breeding program, and the focus of Ginny's dreams was now a lifeless mound of sizzling flesh. It was too hot for tears. Ginny could only stare and let Draco's song wash over her.
A violent cracking split the night as the Fiendfyre, as if in a last-ditch effort to overcome Draco's countermagic, tore the roof from the barn.
Draco abandoned his song in a scream of denial, and Ginny looked up in time to see a fiery timber, as long as a Hebridean Black, falling straight toward her. She knew she couldn't dodge. She raised her wand and shrieked, "Reducto! just as Draco body-slammed her and they both went skidding down the aisle.
The floor was so hot, Ginny could feel blisters rising and bursting on her skin at the contact. Around them, glowing fragments of the timber fell like meteorites, and she heard Draco hiss in pain as the embers struck his back.
"It's all over," she choked out. "Are you happy now?"
He knelt above her, and in the hellish light of the fire she could see his lips moving: Sorry…sorry…I'm sorry. But Ginny heard nothing as unconsciousness claimed her.
*
Ginny had never again expected to wake up and have Harry's face be the first thing she saw, but she couldn't say her ex-boyfriend's appearance was unwelcome. She struggled to sit up and felt every bone in her body protest.
"Easy, Ginny. You're going to be fine, but you have some burns and a bad blow to the head." Harry put his arms around her and helped ease her up. Once he was sure she was stable, he took a step back, and Ginny was able to take her first good look around.
She sat on a makeshift bed on the front porch of the bunkhouse, and from there she could see the charred and smoldering ruins that had been the West Barn, the storehouse, and her own little home. Teams of Aurors, in the same dark robes as Harry, and Ministry workers in the green robes of the Beast Division swarmed over what was once Ginny's preserve. Several of them were working together to try and shore up the roof of the East Barn, the only part of the structure that appeared to have been damaged by the Fiendfyre.
Heartsick, she put her head down on her knees so she wouldn't have to see anymore.
"Charlie and Hagrid?" Her voice was muffled against her legs.
"They're fine." Harry sat on the bed next to her. "Charlie had to have a couple broken bones fixed, and he has a few new burn scars for his collection, but he's already working in the barn. Hagrid got most of his hair and beard burnt off, but he's fine too. He's somewhere around."
Ginny nodded and turned her head until she could see Harry. "Could you find Draco and ask him to come talk to me?"
He sighed. "Malfoy confessed to starting the Fiendfyre, Gin."
She groaned and sat back up. "Yeah, I know. Of course he did."
Harry looked startled. "You think he did it? Because both Charlie and Hagrid are fingering Malfoy's mum."
"And I agree with them. It doesn't surprise me at all that Draco would try and take the blame, though." Briefly, Ginny described Narcissa's strange behavior yesterday morning and everything Draco had done to fight the fire.
"That pretty much confirms what Charlie and Hagrid said." Harry stretched out his legs. "Malfoy must have devoted a lot of time to learning how to fight Fiendfyre after watching it kill Crabbe. Without him, we would have had a much harder time tonight." He smiled sideways at her and pushed his glasses back up on his nose. "Once he was certain you were safe, he ran everywhere casting that charm of his." He shrugged. "Then after he was done, he came over, turned himself in, and confessed to starting the fire he had just risked his life fighting."
Ginny used Harry's shoulder to pull herself to her feet, gasping when her right leg felt like it would crumple under her weight. She had seriously overextended her muscles tonight. "I need to go find him."
"Um…" Harry's cheeks pinked. "He's under arrest."
"What?!"
"I know, I know." Harry held up his hands as if he expected Ginny to punch him. "I don't think he's guilty, but we have a crime and a confession. We're looking for evidence, but right now there's nothing that links Mrs. Malfoy to the fire except for her weird behavior yesterday." He paused for a moment. "So, it's you and Malfoy now, huh?"
She lifted her chin. "It's always been me and Malfoy. Now let him go!"
Harry grinned. "Oh, wait until Ron finds out."
She did punch his shoulder then. "Harry, please."
"We're doing our best, Ginny. I'll try to make this work out for you." At that moment, Charlie and Hagrid thundered up the steps and a middle-aged Auror yelled for Harry from the corner of the West Barn. "Gotta go, Gin." He dashed off and her assistants took his place.
The news was almost as bad as Ginny had feared. Thousands of galleons worth of supplies had been destroyed when the storehouse burned; her office was a total loss and so were most of her possessions. Worst of all, of course, was the confirmation that Scarlet was dead and the news that they had also lost Siena and Firebug. The good news was that the males were fine, if still spooked, Friction had survived with severe burns but would recover with care, and that Firebolt was alive and unhurt. Hagrid had found the hatchling under Scarlet's body, kept safe from the fire.
Ginny put her head on her brother's shoulder and wept.
"I'm sorry to interrupt." Ginny, Charlie, and Hagrid turned and saw that Harry was back, accompanied by a gaggle of Aurors who appeared to be guarding a small bag. Ginny's breath caught because she recognized the look on Harry's face; it was the bright, excited look of an Auror about to catch his prey. She dashed the tears from her cheeks.
"Could you describe for me again what Mrs. Malfoy was wearing when you saw her yesterday?"
Together, Ginny and the others went through the details: the pink ribbons in her hair, the robe, and the sparkly, high-heeled, dress shoes.
Harry grinned. "Do you still have trouble in high heels, Ginny? Are they bad for your leg?"
"Yes." Ginny's heart was pounding. "I don't even own a pair anymore."
"We found footprints all around the back of the West Barn, where the fire began. It's like someone was dancing back there or something. The prints are of a woman's high-heeled shoe. And then Johnsson found this." Harry took the bag and pulled out a broken heel, long, sharp, and shining Slytherin green.
"I think we've got her now," he said simply.
*
A suspicious house-elf with wriggling ears led Ginny through Malfoy Manor to a large solarium. Standing there with his back to the door, Draco was a dark shadow in a room of light. She stared for a moment, loving the sight of him after weeks apart.
There would be no trial for Narcissa Malfoy. Draco's mother had been judged insane and confined to St. Mungo's. Since the judgment, though, Draco had shut himself in his home and refused all contact with everyone. Even Ginny.
So she had come to him, making the long trek from the preserve to the Manor. Saying nothing, she crossed the room and stood beside him, looking through the windows at a field of roses. Red, yellow, white, and pink, the flowers and dark foliage grew together in a riot of color. There was no rhyme or reason to the plantings, as far as Ginny could see, no sedate paths through the garden that could be walked. It wasn't something she would ever have expected to see through a window in Malfoy Manor, but it was beautiful just the same.
"This was my mother's garden." He stared straight ahead. "When I was younger, she maintained it so carefully. When my father died, she stopped going out there." He swallowed hard. "It's a thicket of thorns now."
"But it's still beautiful." She reached out to touch his arm, but he shied and put distance between them.
"My mother's going to die locked up in St. Mungo's just like my father died locked up in Azkaban." His eyes looked dead in his white face. "I was such a disappointment to them. I could never be the Malfoy they wanted me to be, just like I could never be enough for you either." He pointed at the door. "Just go."
She wanted to follow him, but for every step she took, he took one back. "Draco, please. I'm so sorry for all that's happened, but we can rebuild just like we did before."
"'It's over,'" he quoted. "'Are you happy now?' Everything we had between us burned in that fire, Ginny."
"That's not true! Draco, I was crazed and hurt. I was talking about the preserve, not about us!"
He turned his back and leaned against the window. "There's nothing left, Ginny."
Ginny's eyes blurred with tears. She wanted to scream "why?" She wanted to shake her fists and rail at the heavens. Why would Fate kick her down again? Did everything really need to come down to time and chance? Would it always happen that they would be together only to be torn apart in the end?
She took a deep shuddering breath. "The fire hurt the preserve pretty bad. We lost half our dragons. We lost buildings. Everything I had burned in my house, including irreplaceable things like my pictures of Fred. I'll never get them back, they're lost forever." She swallowed back a small sob. "It's not as beautiful as it once was; everything's scorched, and the flowers and grass are pretty much gone."
She crossed the room and took his arm then, turning him to face her. "But do you know what's still there? What the fire couldn't touch? The walls of your family keep. They're still standing, just as they have been for hundreds of years." He closed his eyes, and Ginny cupped his face between her hands.
"The way I love you is like those stones." Her voice was choked with tears but she pushed on. "It's indomitable, this love I feel for you. It's eternal. War couldn't destroy it. No fire could burn it away. Together, we could use it to build a future." She pressed close, despairing when his arms remained at his sides. She pressed her lips over his heart. "I love you," she whispered.
And she let him go and walked away.
*
Ginny levitated fireproof shingles to the roof of what would become her new cottage, nodding in acknowledgement when Charlie yelled down his thanks. Rebuilding was exhausting work, made all the harder by the fact that they still had dragons to take care of, one of whom was an orphaned hatchling.
She sighed and rubbed the back of her neck. Did she want to make the thick liquid venison mixture Hagrid called a deer milkshake for Firebolt, did she want to magic liniment onto Friction's burns, or did she want to tackle the mountain of paperwork and grant requests waiting in her temporary office in the bunkhouse? If she were honest, she would admit all she really wanted to do was crawl into a hole and cry for a hundred years.
She wished she could recapture some of her enthusiasm, some of the pleasure she used to take in the preserve, but she was too heartbroken.
It had been a week since she chose to give Draco space, and she'd heard nothing from the Manor.
In the flight paddock behind her, Friction chuffed and gave off a fluting trill. Astonished, Ginny turned toward the normally taciturn dragon.
Draco stood next to the paddock, one hand resting on the wards as Friction happily butted her head against them. Ginny wavered on her feet, wondering if this was a dream. His voice reached her, calm and affectionate. Dressed in jeans and a blue work shirt, he appeared casual and relaxed in a way she thought he might not have been since before the war. He glanced back and smiled when he met her eyes.
Shaken, Ginny walked to him, and when she lay one hand on the fence rail, he covered it with his own, blessedly warm and familiar.
"So, we're rebuilding?" His voice was gruff with emotion. "Do you really think it's worth it?"
"Yeah, I do."
"It'll be a lot of hard work, I'm afraid."
She pulled her hand out from under his and stepped into his arms, hugging him tight and blinking back tears when he hugged her in return. "We have a strong foundation here. I think we'll make it."
Fin
Pairing: Draco/Ginny
Chapter Word Count: 4839
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Ginny is given a second chance at life and love when she heads a small dragon preserve on the grounds of Malfoy Manor.
Notes: Written for the dgficexchange and nominated for Best Line and Best Ginny. Yay!
Beside herself with excitement, Ginny watched Draco jog down the path from the Manor. In a black robe, loose pajama bottoms, and black boots, only his rumpled hair and white skin were visible in the moonlight.
"Ginny! Your owl almost broke through my window." He took the lantern from her hands and pulled her close to ravage her mouth. "Is this really it, or could I be so incredibly fortunate to be pulled out of my bed in the middle of the night just because want me and you want me now?"
She giggled, almost giddy. "I do want you, but sorry, handsome." Her mouth tingled, and she indulged herself with another kiss before pulling open the door of the West Barn and tugged him inside. "This is it! Scarlet's egg is hatching!"
Whispering, holding hands, they crept up the aisle to the brooding dragon's pen. Next to the gate, the overturned keg Charlie had used earlier for a stool sat waiting, but Ginny knew sitting on something that low and hard would hurt her hip, so she left it for Draco and crouched as best she could near the gate for a good view.
"Eeep!" she squeaked when Draco grabbed her and pulled her back onto his lap. Inside the pen, Scarlet chuffed in irritation.
"Sorry," he whispered in her ear. "The best seat's right here."
Mute, she nodded, eyes fixed upon the first egg to hatch at the Wiltshire preserve.
A series of yellow cracks had formed across the egg during the afternoon, first spotted by Hagrid and confirmed by Charlie. Ginny knew her two assistants were in the bunkhouse, wishing they could be here to witness the birth, but Ginny felt this moment was sacred and special. The only person in the world she wanted to share it with was Draco.
His arms crossed over her stomach, holding her close, and she covered them with her own. "Thank you for being here," she whispered.
"Thank you for wanting me here," he whispered back.
Over the next hour, they watched the unborn dragon squirm in its shell, looking for a way out. Scarlet blew a steady stream of steamy breath over the egg, and the hatchling strained upward, pushing the fractured shell out in search of heat. First a talon, than the pointed tip of a small tail, than an elegant snout broke pieces of the egg off the whole until, with startling suddenness, the rest of the egg fell away.
Ginny could have cheered.
Scarlet's blistering tongue scraped goo off the hatchling and the pint-sized dragon sneezed and fell backward. Ginny and Draco both laughed out loud, but when Scarlet cast a murderous eye upon them through the wards, they clapped their hands over their mouths and retreated to the storage room.
"It's like a miracle, isn't it?" Ginny wrapped both arms around Draco as he shut the storeroom door and hugged him tight. "I'm so happy!"
"You should be. This happened because you're taking such good care of Scarlet." He swayed Ginny back and forth, careful to not hurt her leg. "I would have brought a bottle of champagne with me for a celebration, but your kamikaze owl distracted me."
Ginny laughed and broke free of his arms, too excited to be still. She chattered happily as she wandered aimless through the small room, sometimes stopping and hugging herself in an effort to contain her joy. Eventually, though, she became aware that Draco was just sitting on a workbench, swinging one foot and gazing at the floor.
"Draco?"
"Hmm?"
Ginny stopped between his legs and tipped his chin up. "Are you all right?"
He smiled and dropped a kiss into her palm. "I'm fine. It's just…a new life. Their home's been taken from them, but life goes on. It's amazing, isn't it?" She nodded, and he continued. "That's one innocent little dragon out there. Will it grow up to be a good mum like Scarlet? A sweetheart like Friction? Or will it grow up and eat crusty old MacFustys for breakfast? We're all innocent in the beginning, aren't we? It's just…it makes you think."
She bit her lip, but there was something she wanted to ask, something that had been on her mind since the first morning after Draco had spent the night with her in her little house and Charlie had watched him walk home.
"I hope you know what you're doing, Gin," her brother had muttered. "Hagrid may think the git's gone respectable, but he's still a Malfoy."
"Draco, do you ever have any regrets?" He raised one eyebrow, so she clarified. "I mean, are you ever sorry for the choices you made back then, back when we should have been innocent but that blasted war wouldn't let us be?
"Sometimes I am," she answered her own question before he could speak. "I'm sorry I started dating Harry again. I'm sorry I kept my feelings for you a secret for so long." Her cheeks pinked in the dim light. "I'm sorry I didn't stand with you when your father was arrested or testify before the Wizengamot about the way you warned me Death Eaters were coming to the Burrow."
Draco looked down at his empty hands. "Your brother had just been killed."
"Not by you."
"By Death Eaters, though." Reflexively, he touched his left forearm where Ginny knew the faded remnants of the Dark Mark still marred his skin.
Ginny covered his hand with hers. "I'm still sorry."
"I think I've become a better man than anyone would have guessed I could be." He was so quiet Ginny could still hear tiny moths striking the lamp above their heads. "If I had made other choices, maybe my life would be easier. If my father had made different choices, maybe he wouldn't have died in prison and my mother wouldn't be…" He trailed off, sighing.
"But, no. I don't have any regrets." His hands curved around her waist and drew her close until she was flush against him. "I won't-I can't be sorry for who I was. I hated everyone and I was proud of it. But you should know, Ginny," he pressed the sweetest kiss to her brow, "that who I am…and who I've become is because I loved you." He kissed his way down her nose, over her cheeks and jaw, before finding her mouth. "I love you still." His lips grazed hers as he spoke and she could feel his words down to her soul. "I never stopped."
"Draco…Draco…" Ginny pulled him off the bench and into her arms, and they sank to the floor together.
*
"Ew."
"Don't be a baby, Malfoy." Charlie folded his arms along the gate and smirked at the blond. "Dragon's aren't mammals and they aren't vegetarians. What did you think little Firebolt would eat?"
"Whatever I may have thought, it wasn't regurgitated venison." Draco curled his lip and turned his head away from the sight of Scarlet feeding her hatchling.
"I wish we coulda named her Edwina," Hagrid said apropos of nothing. "She looks more like an Edwina than a Firebolt ter me."
Ginny rested her head sleepily against Draco's shoulder and smiled. "Sorry, Hagrid, I already promised Draco he could name her. You can name our second hatchling."
"She's clearly a Firebolt." Draco glanced at the gorging hatchling and nodded decisively. "Anyway, what kind of name is 'Edwina the Dragon'? Might as well name her-"
"So this is where you've been, Lucius. For shame."
Draco froze, his face falling into expressionless lines, but Hagrid and Charlie both gasped. When Ginny turned, she understood why and also knew that Narcissa Malfoy was very ill indeed.
Draco's mother stood weaving in the doorway. From her white-blonde hair, braided and tied with girlish ribbons, down to her feet, in their incongruous high-heeled green dress shoes, Narcissa was a portrait of madness. A winter-weight robe slipped from one skeletal shoulder when she held out her arms to her son, and Ginny realized the older woman was naked underneath. Draco flinched, and when Ginny tore her eyes away from Narcissa long enough to look up, she saw his eyes were squeezed tightly shut.
"Lucius, how could you? Consorting with blood traitors and-" she looked at Hagrid, her lip curling into a Bellatrix-like sneer, "-beasts of all sorts. Throw them out!" Narcissa raised her arms above her head and shimmied in a bizarre dance. "Throw them out, my love, and we'll return to the Manor and bar the gates!"
"Mother." Draco left the others behind and walked toward his mother. "Mother, I'm not Father. I'm Draco."
Narcissa froze, arms still raised, robe billowing bat-like around her body. "Draco…Draco, yes, of course, you're Draco. Lucius would not have let this happen." She began to cry, and Ginny felt her stomach turn in revulsion and pity. "Oh, how can you be so ungrateful?" Narcissa wailed. "After everything I did for you, how can you let these foul people bring their monsters here?"
"Mother…" Draco was close enough to touch when Narcissa's eyes blazed with a sudden hatred so intense Ginny had not seen the like since she fought this woman's sister during the Final Battle. Ginny cried out even before Narcissa's hand fell, but it was too late.
Draco never flinched as his mother's nails gouged his cheek.
"You want them to get me," Narcissa shrieked, backing away. Inside their pens, the dragon's stomped their feet and roared out warnings. "You want them to get me, so everything will be broken and you'll be free to forget. I won't let you, I won't let you!" Alternately screaming and wailing, she turned ran back up the path.
"Merlin's balls." Ginny heard her brother's whispered exclamation, but she was already running to Draco's side.
"Draco!" Ginny flung her arms around his shaking body. When Ginny pressed her face against his chest, she could hear sobs hitching his lungs. "Oh, Draco. Why didn't you tell me?" Her own hand shaking, she reached up with gentle fingers to staunch the blood dripping from his cheek. "We'll help her, we'll Floo St Mungo's right now."
"No!" Draco pushed her hands away. "She doesn’t need St. Mungo's!"
"She needs somethin', Malfoy." Hagrid's beady black eyes were wet with sympathy. "A Healer's a good place to start."
"No! She has a Healer, and there's nothing anyone can do. I promised her she'd never have to leave Malfoy Manor. I promised her." Draco's voice broke, but when Ginny tried to embrace him he shrugged her off again.
"Stop it! Something happened to her when my father died, but she was all right until you showed up with these things." Draco grabbed a fistful of gravel and hurled it through the open barn door. Already agitated, the dragons roared again, and Firebug began slamming her tail against the sides of her pen. Charlie swore and disappeared back into the barn, wand raised.
"Draco, please!"
"I shouldn't have stopped." Draco raked his hands through his hair until it stood on end. "I should have kept fighting the Ministry until someone listened to me. Bloody hell, I could have bribed someone." He backed away from Ginny. "But no, I wanted you. I put you ahead of my family, and it broke my mother." He choked and turned on his heel, sprinting in the direction his mother had run.
"Stop!" Tears were already sheeting down Ginny's face. Before she could follow more than a few steps, however, Hagrid's massive hand gently pulled her back.
"Let 'im go, Ginny. Jus' let 'im go. He needs t'be with his mum right now."
"But Hagrid…" Ginny felt like panic had constricted her throat down to a pinpoint. "He needs me, too. He…I…I love him."
"I know yeh do." He smoothed her hair down in the morning sunshine and let her cry.
*
Ginny shifted in her bed until she felt less pressure on her bad leg. Her movement knocked a small cascade of crumpled tissues to the floor.
On her bedside table, next to a photograph of Draco leading Friction out to the flight paddock, the hands on her clock slowly changed from one to two.
Ginny scrubbed fresh tears away with another limp tissue. Draco had not returned to the preserve after running away that morning. Her owl, letter unopened, had been sent back looking like it had been hexed.
Charlie's contact in the Dragon Research and Restraint Bureau reported that the Malfoys had filed eight new complaints about the preserve today: a new record for the department's 600-year history.
Ginny rolled onto her back. How could he be so stupid, she wondered. Why was he acting like this? She promised herself that tomorrow she would storm the Manor if she had too. She would-
Scarlet roared, and the sound pulsed through Ginny's open window, prickling her flesh with goose bumps and lifting her head off her pillow. She had never heard a roar like that before. She listened intently, but everything was calm…
---until the night was shattered by roars of pain and fear from the West Barn.
"Ginny!" She heard her brother scream.
Ginny threw herself out of bed and staggered to the window. The scene before her was like something from a nightmare.
The West Barn was burning down.
Ginny raced through her house and out the door faster than she thought she could run. Her wand was clutched tightly in her hand, but she already knew it was hopeless. There was only one kind of fire that could burn through the fireproof materials and wards protecting the building. There was only one kind of fire that could burn her dragons until they shrieked in agony, their cries tearing at her heart. It had to be Fiendfyre.
Demonic hands of fire clawed at the barn's roof. Enemy dragons sculpted from flame slammed into the walls, tearing them down and spreading destruction. Worst of all, a hissing flame snake slithered through the grass, burning everything it touched until it reached the corner of the storehouse and set it alight.
It would spread until the entire preserve was destroyed.
"Expecto Patronum!" Charlie's Patronus shot past almost faster than she could see, on its way, no doubt, to bring the Ministry to their aid.
Over the flame's rampage, Ginny heard Blackjack and Tinder roaring in the untouched East Barn. The males could hear the desperate cries from the females, she knew. "Hagrid!" she screamed. "The East Barn! Get them out! Hurry!" The smoke was almost too thick, but she glimpsed Hagrid's unmistakable silhouette racing toward the stud barn.
Behind Ginny, Scarlet screamed again.
Scarlet, Firebolt, NO! Ginny ran for the East Barn, spotting Charlie casting one ineffectual defense charm after another on the structure. A sound like cracking timbers was heard, and Firebug suddenly crashed through the weakened wall. Her leathery black wings were engulfed in Fiendfyre and she bucked wildly, trying to escape the pain.
"No!" Desperate to help, Ginny ran heedlessly close to the tormented dragon, but Firebug had already spotted Charlie and decided to direct her rage at him. "Charlie, look out!"
"Get back, Gin!" Her brother danced out of the way of Firebug's thrashing tail. "Don't go in there!"
But Scarlet screamed again, so much weaker than before, and Ginny ran through the hole Firebug had left in the barn.
Inside, the smoke was as black as evil's heart and impossibly thick. Ginny cast a Bubble-Head charm so she could breathe, but she was still blind and groping along blistering hot walls to try and find her bearings.
"Ginny!"
No, she told herself. It couldn't be Draco.
But a spell unlike any she had ever heard, a combination of song and poetry in a mix of languages she couldn't identify echoed eerily though the barn. It was sung in Draco's voice, and before it, the Fiendfyre began to recede.
"Scarlet," she whispered hoarsely. Finally finding the dragon's pen, Ginny pulled herself up onto the gate and peeked inside.
What had been her favorite dragon, the start of the breeding program, and the focus of Ginny's dreams was now a lifeless mound of sizzling flesh. It was too hot for tears. Ginny could only stare and let Draco's song wash over her.
A violent cracking split the night as the Fiendfyre, as if in a last-ditch effort to overcome Draco's countermagic, tore the roof from the barn.
Draco abandoned his song in a scream of denial, and Ginny looked up in time to see a fiery timber, as long as a Hebridean Black, falling straight toward her. She knew she couldn't dodge. She raised her wand and shrieked, "Reducto! just as Draco body-slammed her and they both went skidding down the aisle.
The floor was so hot, Ginny could feel blisters rising and bursting on her skin at the contact. Around them, glowing fragments of the timber fell like meteorites, and she heard Draco hiss in pain as the embers struck his back.
"It's all over," she choked out. "Are you happy now?"
He knelt above her, and in the hellish light of the fire she could see his lips moving: Sorry…sorry…I'm sorry. But Ginny heard nothing as unconsciousness claimed her.
*
Ginny had never again expected to wake up and have Harry's face be the first thing she saw, but she couldn't say her ex-boyfriend's appearance was unwelcome. She struggled to sit up and felt every bone in her body protest.
"Easy, Ginny. You're going to be fine, but you have some burns and a bad blow to the head." Harry put his arms around her and helped ease her up. Once he was sure she was stable, he took a step back, and Ginny was able to take her first good look around.
She sat on a makeshift bed on the front porch of the bunkhouse, and from there she could see the charred and smoldering ruins that had been the West Barn, the storehouse, and her own little home. Teams of Aurors, in the same dark robes as Harry, and Ministry workers in the green robes of the Beast Division swarmed over what was once Ginny's preserve. Several of them were working together to try and shore up the roof of the East Barn, the only part of the structure that appeared to have been damaged by the Fiendfyre.
Heartsick, she put her head down on her knees so she wouldn't have to see anymore.
"Charlie and Hagrid?" Her voice was muffled against her legs.
"They're fine." Harry sat on the bed next to her. "Charlie had to have a couple broken bones fixed, and he has a few new burn scars for his collection, but he's already working in the barn. Hagrid got most of his hair and beard burnt off, but he's fine too. He's somewhere around."
Ginny nodded and turned her head until she could see Harry. "Could you find Draco and ask him to come talk to me?"
He sighed. "Malfoy confessed to starting the Fiendfyre, Gin."
She groaned and sat back up. "Yeah, I know. Of course he did."
Harry looked startled. "You think he did it? Because both Charlie and Hagrid are fingering Malfoy's mum."
"And I agree with them. It doesn't surprise me at all that Draco would try and take the blame, though." Briefly, Ginny described Narcissa's strange behavior yesterday morning and everything Draco had done to fight the fire.
"That pretty much confirms what Charlie and Hagrid said." Harry stretched out his legs. "Malfoy must have devoted a lot of time to learning how to fight Fiendfyre after watching it kill Crabbe. Without him, we would have had a much harder time tonight." He smiled sideways at her and pushed his glasses back up on his nose. "Once he was certain you were safe, he ran everywhere casting that charm of his." He shrugged. "Then after he was done, he came over, turned himself in, and confessed to starting the fire he had just risked his life fighting."
Ginny used Harry's shoulder to pull herself to her feet, gasping when her right leg felt like it would crumple under her weight. She had seriously overextended her muscles tonight. "I need to go find him."
"Um…" Harry's cheeks pinked. "He's under arrest."
"What?!"
"I know, I know." Harry held up his hands as if he expected Ginny to punch him. "I don't think he's guilty, but we have a crime and a confession. We're looking for evidence, but right now there's nothing that links Mrs. Malfoy to the fire except for her weird behavior yesterday." He paused for a moment. "So, it's you and Malfoy now, huh?"
She lifted her chin. "It's always been me and Malfoy. Now let him go!"
Harry grinned. "Oh, wait until Ron finds out."
She did punch his shoulder then. "Harry, please."
"We're doing our best, Ginny. I'll try to make this work out for you." At that moment, Charlie and Hagrid thundered up the steps and a middle-aged Auror yelled for Harry from the corner of the West Barn. "Gotta go, Gin." He dashed off and her assistants took his place.
The news was almost as bad as Ginny had feared. Thousands of galleons worth of supplies had been destroyed when the storehouse burned; her office was a total loss and so were most of her possessions. Worst of all, of course, was the confirmation that Scarlet was dead and the news that they had also lost Siena and Firebug. The good news was that the males were fine, if still spooked, Friction had survived with severe burns but would recover with care, and that Firebolt was alive and unhurt. Hagrid had found the hatchling under Scarlet's body, kept safe from the fire.
Ginny put her head on her brother's shoulder and wept.
"I'm sorry to interrupt." Ginny, Charlie, and Hagrid turned and saw that Harry was back, accompanied by a gaggle of Aurors who appeared to be guarding a small bag. Ginny's breath caught because she recognized the look on Harry's face; it was the bright, excited look of an Auror about to catch his prey. She dashed the tears from her cheeks.
"Could you describe for me again what Mrs. Malfoy was wearing when you saw her yesterday?"
Together, Ginny and the others went through the details: the pink ribbons in her hair, the robe, and the sparkly, high-heeled, dress shoes.
Harry grinned. "Do you still have trouble in high heels, Ginny? Are they bad for your leg?"
"Yes." Ginny's heart was pounding. "I don't even own a pair anymore."
"We found footprints all around the back of the West Barn, where the fire began. It's like someone was dancing back there or something. The prints are of a woman's high-heeled shoe. And then Johnsson found this." Harry took the bag and pulled out a broken heel, long, sharp, and shining Slytherin green.
"I think we've got her now," he said simply.
*
A suspicious house-elf with wriggling ears led Ginny through Malfoy Manor to a large solarium. Standing there with his back to the door, Draco was a dark shadow in a room of light. She stared for a moment, loving the sight of him after weeks apart.
There would be no trial for Narcissa Malfoy. Draco's mother had been judged insane and confined to St. Mungo's. Since the judgment, though, Draco had shut himself in his home and refused all contact with everyone. Even Ginny.
So she had come to him, making the long trek from the preserve to the Manor. Saying nothing, she crossed the room and stood beside him, looking through the windows at a field of roses. Red, yellow, white, and pink, the flowers and dark foliage grew together in a riot of color. There was no rhyme or reason to the plantings, as far as Ginny could see, no sedate paths through the garden that could be walked. It wasn't something she would ever have expected to see through a window in Malfoy Manor, but it was beautiful just the same.
"This was my mother's garden." He stared straight ahead. "When I was younger, she maintained it so carefully. When my father died, she stopped going out there." He swallowed hard. "It's a thicket of thorns now."
"But it's still beautiful." She reached out to touch his arm, but he shied and put distance between them.
"My mother's going to die locked up in St. Mungo's just like my father died locked up in Azkaban." His eyes looked dead in his white face. "I was such a disappointment to them. I could never be the Malfoy they wanted me to be, just like I could never be enough for you either." He pointed at the door. "Just go."
She wanted to follow him, but for every step she took, he took one back. "Draco, please. I'm so sorry for all that's happened, but we can rebuild just like we did before."
"'It's over,'" he quoted. "'Are you happy now?' Everything we had between us burned in that fire, Ginny."
"That's not true! Draco, I was crazed and hurt. I was talking about the preserve, not about us!"
He turned his back and leaned against the window. "There's nothing left, Ginny."
Ginny's eyes blurred with tears. She wanted to scream "why?" She wanted to shake her fists and rail at the heavens. Why would Fate kick her down again? Did everything really need to come down to time and chance? Would it always happen that they would be together only to be torn apart in the end?
She took a deep shuddering breath. "The fire hurt the preserve pretty bad. We lost half our dragons. We lost buildings. Everything I had burned in my house, including irreplaceable things like my pictures of Fred. I'll never get them back, they're lost forever." She swallowed back a small sob. "It's not as beautiful as it once was; everything's scorched, and the flowers and grass are pretty much gone."
She crossed the room and took his arm then, turning him to face her. "But do you know what's still there? What the fire couldn't touch? The walls of your family keep. They're still standing, just as they have been for hundreds of years." He closed his eyes, and Ginny cupped his face between her hands.
"The way I love you is like those stones." Her voice was choked with tears but she pushed on. "It's indomitable, this love I feel for you. It's eternal. War couldn't destroy it. No fire could burn it away. Together, we could use it to build a future." She pressed close, despairing when his arms remained at his sides. She pressed her lips over his heart. "I love you," she whispered.
And she let him go and walked away.
*
Ginny levitated fireproof shingles to the roof of what would become her new cottage, nodding in acknowledgement when Charlie yelled down his thanks. Rebuilding was exhausting work, made all the harder by the fact that they still had dragons to take care of, one of whom was an orphaned hatchling.
She sighed and rubbed the back of her neck. Did she want to make the thick liquid venison mixture Hagrid called a deer milkshake for Firebolt, did she want to magic liniment onto Friction's burns, or did she want to tackle the mountain of paperwork and grant requests waiting in her temporary office in the bunkhouse? If she were honest, she would admit all she really wanted to do was crawl into a hole and cry for a hundred years.
She wished she could recapture some of her enthusiasm, some of the pleasure she used to take in the preserve, but she was too heartbroken.
It had been a week since she chose to give Draco space, and she'd heard nothing from the Manor.
In the flight paddock behind her, Friction chuffed and gave off a fluting trill. Astonished, Ginny turned toward the normally taciturn dragon.
Draco stood next to the paddock, one hand resting on the wards as Friction happily butted her head against them. Ginny wavered on her feet, wondering if this was a dream. His voice reached her, calm and affectionate. Dressed in jeans and a blue work shirt, he appeared casual and relaxed in a way she thought he might not have been since before the war. He glanced back and smiled when he met her eyes.
Shaken, Ginny walked to him, and when she lay one hand on the fence rail, he covered it with his own, blessedly warm and familiar.
"So, we're rebuilding?" His voice was gruff with emotion. "Do you really think it's worth it?"
"Yeah, I do."
"It'll be a lot of hard work, I'm afraid."
She pulled her hand out from under his and stepped into his arms, hugging him tight and blinking back tears when he hugged her in return. "We have a strong foundation here. I think we'll make it."
Fin
