Reclaiming the Trio

Chapter 3: Leaving Hogwart's For a Change of Pace


"Poppy? Are you here? Can you check me out ~-- I'd like to leave, if at all possible. Did I miss graduation?" Hermione called out, staring around the stark infirmary. A few cubicles had the curtains drawn, and Hermione heard crying coming from one at the far end of the room. She headed down towards the curtain, but a redhead came flying out of it before she could get there. "Ginny? Why are you crying?"


Ginny stared at her best friend in the world in disbelief. She'd forgotten what the Headmistress had said, but she remembered to play along. She shook her head and tried to smile.


"Just . . . tears of joy," Ginny said, her heart breaking. To lose her brother, her lover. . . and now her best friend, in a way.


"Who were you visiting, Gin?" Hermione said, trying to step around Ginny to get to the other curtain.


"You don't need to know, 'Mione," Ginny said, and she grabbed Hermione's arm. She had to get Hermione out of the infirmary before the one person who could shatter her mind had a chance to rear his ugly head. "Come on, Si~-- Harry and Ron went to see MacGonagall, and you should be refreshed when they get back. Let's get you showered and changed in your room, and then you can come back here to wait for them."


Hermione nodded, but she was still uncertain. She let Ginny lead her out of the infirmary and up the familiar path to the room she'd occupied as Head Girl. Ginny asked her if she would be able to find her way back to the infirmary, and Hermione nodded. Before Ginny left, Hermione asked her one last question.


"Ginny, where's Poppy? I need her to clear me so I can stay out of infirmary."


Ginny took a breath and decided to tell Hermione her first truth since awakening.


"When Voldemort attacked the school, she stayed to help the wounded. MacNair found her, and then he~-- and then she~--. . . She didn't make it, is the best way to say it," Ginny said, closing the door after herself.


Hermione shivered as she disrobed and climbed into her shower, thinking.


Surely the boys tried to save her. I'll have to ask. We should have had Remus and Sirius there to help. Maybe they could have saved Poppy.


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"Ginny!" Ginny groaned at the sound of her name coming from Sirius Black's voice. "Wait, I need to talk to you!"


"We need to talk to you," Remus Lupin joined Sirius, and they managed to corner her as she turned down a corridor. "You are the only one who can tell us about the Golden Trio. We're just trying to help Hermione, and we need your assistance."


"How can I help you be my brother," she said to Remus, "and my boyfriend?" she said to Sirius. The men shrugged, and Ginny was shocked to see not only how alike they were, but how much they reminded her of the two younger, dead men. She shook her head. They always did spend too much time together.


"We just need information from you on how Ron and Harry acted with each other, and with Hermione. Surely that can't be hard?" Sirius smiled at her, and Ginny felt her resolve crumbling. As much as she hated the idea of them posing as Ron and Harry, she wasn't going to let that stand in the way of getting Hermione back to herself. "Basic things, what foods they liked best, and we know they loved Quidditch, favorite colors, music, what they all did together for fun."


"Fine. But we do this on my terms," Ginny said, and the men nodded. Full-grown wizards they were, but everyone feared Ginny's hexes. "First off, wait down at the infirmary for Hermione. She's freshening up right now, and then she'll be back down. She knows Poppy's dead, but that's about all. Take her with you to Grimmauld Place, for now, not Lupin's Quarry. She's never been there before, and neither have the boys. It isn't someplace they'd take her, at least not right now."


Sirius and Remus shared a look, but they nodded. Ginny held all the cards, and they all knew it.


"Anything else? Would you care to come with us?" Sirius said carefully, and Ginny shook her head. "I thought not. Will you at least help us to settle her in? I know there is a room set aside for her, but I still think she'd appreciate the company for a bit."


"I'll go with you to get her there, but I won't stay. I can't stay around her right now, not with her talking as if Ron and Harry are going to come running in any minute with some new hare-brained scheme or wanting to sneak to the kitchens for a treat. I'll say something, or cry, or maybe say something in my sleep. And she can't hear that from me, not yet," Ginny said, and Sirius reached out to her; it was Remus who held her though. "Enough. I'm not crying on you two. I still have brothers left. And they'll kill you if they know you let Sirius in the same building as me, Remus."


Remus laughed while Sirius looked harassed. Ginny laughed and left them to go somewhere else. She often went off on her own, but she always ended up back in the infirmary, never telling them who was behind that curtain.


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"You know, you could just leave and let me die in peace," Ginny's companion said, rolling over on his side so he didn't have to look at her, see the pity in her eyes.


"You're not dieing, and you know it. You just want all the drama you never got before, right?" Ginny said sarcastically, tossing her hair back with a flick of her head. "I just can't understand why~--"


"Why I'm still here and he isn't, hmm? Well, I can promise you that this wasn't how it was supposed to happen, from either side," the patient said viciously, a perfect image of his namesake. "Draco Malfoy, apprentice spy and the one who should have died, hmm?"


"I never said that. I just find it hard to believe that you managed to escape the wrath of the Deatheaters and Voldemort when Harry and Ron couldn't," Ginny said, a bit of her old fire rearing up. "I could care less about you. I just want to know why them."


"I can't tell you that. Resurrect the spirit of Voldemort, or perhaps my dear old Daddy can tell you. Why don't you go find yourself another cursed diary and we can have a nice little séance, right here, you and me. Pitiful excuse for a woman," Draco muttered the last under his breath, but Ginny heard him and smacked him soundly across the cheek.


"You've no right to talk to me after all you've done!" Ginny screeched. "Your father gave me the diary, slipping it into my books when I was a first year. Your family helped Voldemort, and you've done nothing but torment my brother and me the entire time we've known you!"


"Shut up, I don't want to hear this from you. You think you had it so bad, did you? I could tell you things that happened to me that would make even your hair curl like Granger's. Where is the little miss, by the way? If you need no comfort form the likes of me, perhaps I could offer my services. . . " Draco said, his grey eyes hard as slate. He was going to bait Ginny into leaving if it killed him. By the look on her face, it probably would. "Besides, if I'd tried to treat you lot any differently, how could I have spied for Dumbledore? You want to blame someone, dig up the old coot and bitch at him. I've no time for you."


Ginny just smiled grimly and turned on her heel, leaving, before she remembered why she'd bothered to visit Draco again after how bad he'd been the last visit.


"If you do run into Hermione, which you probably won't, you can't mention that Ron and Harry are gone. She doesn't know," Ginny said quietly, wincing inside at the deception and the cruelty of Draco's past words, rearing their ugly heads.


"What do you mean, she doesn't know? She was there, Ginny. She saw it happen," Draco said, abruptly sitting up and grabbing his side. "Aargh!"


Ginny raced back over to Draco, helping him prop himself up with fluffy pillows while she gently probed his side, checking out his ribs.


"Git. Those ribs had just started to re-knit, too. You'll be stuck here a while longer, then."


"Ginny, why doesn't Hermione know?"


"What the muggles call 'Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder'. Her heart can't bear the loss, so her mind has hidden the loss from her via slight amnesia and created memories of a different outcome. Sirius and Remus arrived too late to save Ron and Harry, but not before they could promise to help Hermione. They were the first faces she saw when she woke up, and she had obviously been expecting Ron and Harry. As a result, she thinks that Sirius and Remus are Harry and Ron. Minerva and the healers say she'll come to the knowledge on her own, but for now she has to be coddled a bit."


"Fine. She can do that right here. We'll need her brain to fix all the consequences. I can keep my mouth shut, and we can just charm your mouth shut, and she can stay here, working with everyone and learning that way," Draco said, and Ginny shook her head.


"She has to have a change of scenery, or she'll never make new memories or remember the ones she hid from herself. Remus and Sirius are taking her from here to Grimmauld Place tonight. I won't be back to see you before you go to sleep, but I'll make sure someone sends you a meal. You're still not popular, so I'll probably have to threaten someone, but you won't starve," Ginny said, smiling slightly. She turned to finally leave, but Draco's hand shot out and grabbed her arm. She turned to look at him and was about to call him a nasty name when he spoke first.


"Why are you helping me, Ginny?" Draco said in a dangerously quiet voice. "What do you want from me?"


"No-one's ever helped you on their own, Draco, without wanting something in return. Isn't that enough?"


He dropped her arm and let her leave, thinking on what she said.


That's not true. A voice in his head said. They always want something in return, a piece of your heart, your mind, you body, your soul. Don't trust her!


Draco thought about that for a bit before he gave up on thought and let sleep draw him down.