My Mate

My Mate
Chapter 33: Remembering the Past


“Draco.”

“Hmmmm?”

“Would you tell me what happened during the war?”

His whole body went rigid and for a minute, she thought she had lost him and he would refuse to say anything at all.

She gently stroked his chest, hoping it would soothe him.

“You don’t want to know Ginny. Trust me you don’t.” His voice was hard and as cold as the snow falling around them.

“I was in the war, Draco, I know how bad things were. I can handle it.” She tried to reassure him.

“You have NO idea what it was like!”

In one quick motion, he jumped to his feet and started pacing around the confines of the gazebo. Ginny didn’t say anything. Just watched him impassively. Waiting patiently for whatever it was that he seemed to be struggling with. Finally, raking a hand through his hair, Draco burst out with,

“You saw the heat of battle, yes. Life and death, yes. But that was nothing compared to what Voldemort and the Deatheaters were capable of. You didn’t see the atrocities, they committed.” His face was grim.

“I saw pictures of some of the things they did. The people they killed.” Of course she knew what it was like! She’d seen the newspapers. Seen some of the bodies.

“Pictures, Ginny!” He gestured wildly. “Pictures.” His head bowed and she suddenly saw just how much this was weighing on him. He was such a good actor most of the time that she hadn’t even had an inkling that this was a problem for him.

“You didn’t see it first hand. You weren’t standing there, watching while people were tortured and murdered before your very eyes.” He prowled around the gazebo like a panther.

“You didn’t have to hurt people to prove your loyalty to a madman! You didn’t ‘Crucio’ anyone. You didn’t have to see them writhing in agony. You don’t have to take Dreamless Sleep Draughts to quell the nightmares.” He shuddered.

“But even that doesn’t always help because you can still see their faces when you close your eyes.”

Ginny wrapped her arms around his waist from behind, not letting go, even when he stiffened. Her heart was breaking at the anguish in his voice.



“I have to live with it Ginny. With the guilt.” His voice cracked, and Ginny had to suppress the sobs she felt in her throat. “I remember every one of their faces. Every scream.”

“Tell me.” She whispered. “I need to understand. Let me carry it with you.”

“No!” He hissed vehmenently. “I can’t pollute your mind with it. I can’t do that to you. “ He had spun around in her arms, his eyes boring into hers with a wild intensity. “Don’t you understand?”

“I understand.” She said gently. “I understand that I need to share everything with you…” She cradled his face into her hands and looked deeply into his stormy eyes. “…even this.”

He flinched.

“I understand that this is eating you up inside and you need to talk about it. You need someone to listen and tell you that you’re not a bad person. That you didn’t have a choice. That you are a good man. And that I still love you.”

With his eyes still boring into hers, she took his hands and pulled him back down onto the quilts. Something cracked in his face and it all came spilling out as he hung on to her like a drowning man, so tight her ribs hurt.

He told her everything. From the day he had gone to Dumbledore and said he wanted to be a spy, to when he had taken the Dark Mark and the horror and revulsion that had filled him as it was being painfully burnt into his flesh. Then afterwards, when he had his initiation and found out that Blaise and Simeon were also spies. How close they were and how they had watched each others backs and tried to save as many people as they could without giving themselves away. And all the revels that had turned into exhibitions of depravity and torture.

As he talked, Ginny’s horror mounted with each sentence. Nothing had prepared her for how cruel and sick, Voldemort and the Deatheaters truly were.

She hadn’t really understood what Severus and Draco and the other unnamed spies had actually gone through. She had likened it to…well, to her experiences, she guessed. Or perhaps she’d only thought about it in an abstract way without really any comprehension.

These were the people who really should have gotten the Orders of Merlin. She thought dimly through her shock. They were the ones who should have been hailed as Heroes. But they hadn’t been and only now did Ginny really see how grossly unfair that was and her anger surged. Partially against herself because she was just as much to blame as the others who never gave them a thought. She forced her thoughts back to Draco and what he was saying.

“The children were the worst.” His voice broke and she held him tighter and stroked his hair away from his face, catching the few stray tears that had leaked out of the corners of his eyes. “I retched for hours afterwards. I wanted to murder those sons of bitches. Choke the life of them with my bare hands. Ginny!”

Draco broke down into sobs. “Little girls and boys and babies! One of them, I killed!” He sounded like he was being ripped apart and she pulled his head down to her breasts and wrapped her whole body around him and cried too.

“They were going to do horrific things to him before they killed him! He was already dying, but slowly and so painfully! Ginny! I was supposed to…to… He’d already suffered so much and as I stepped up to him, I looked into his eyes. I’ll never forget how blue they were. Like glittering sapphires and he was crying so hard, already in so much pain! I couldn’t let them do it. I should have tried to save him somehow, but I couldn’t fight them all off and we couldn’t Apparate and there wasn’t any cure for what they had done to him and…Merlin! Ginny, I killed him! I killed a child! I deserve to go mad!”

Remorse, regret, pain, guilt, anguish, and self-hatred were bombarding her from every side and she was left gasping for breath at the sheer weight of his emotions. She couldn’t think of any word to express the torturous sorrow that he had been carrying around for so long.

“No!” Ginny buried her head in his neck. “You don’t! You don’t! You did the best you could in the circumstances you were in! More than others would have done and you saved people, Sweetheart. But you’re not God, you can’t save everyone! And you saved a lot of people. People who would have died horribly and you saved everyone from a world ruled by Voldemort.”

“That was Potter remember?” There was nothing left but weary resignation in his voice.

“You were crucial. All of you and Harry couldn’t have done this without you. He may have been the one to deliver the killing blow, but you and Severus and the others were just as important as he was!” She tried to use her eyes to make him believe.

“Even saving one person makes a difference Draco. Just one person makes it worth it. Believe me, you are a good man! You deserve to be happy and you deserve to be loved! I love you! Now more than ever and I don’t know what I did to deserve you!”

“No.” Draco said clearly and quietly. He sighed and shook his head. “You deserve a noble, brave Gryffindor without a dark past. Someone who doesn’t have ghosts haunting him and blood on his hands.” His words said the opposite, but she could feel his hopefulness and love and fear of losing her. Pulling his head down, she kissed him hard and long, tasting the saltiness of his tears mixing with her own.

“I think you are noble, brave, courageous, and a hero. You are the ONLY man I want and the ONLY man I could ever love. You are perfect for me and I think you are the greatest man I have ever known and I will love you till the end of our days and beyond.” She finished, as she held his face between her hands, staring deep into his eyes.

Draco groaned deep in his throat and crushed her to him in a frenzy of emotion and desire that swept over them like a flood.

“I wish we were already married.” Ginny gasped wistfully ten minutes later. Draco moaned.

“Bugger it!”

She could feel all of his muscles tense as he tried to control his mating instincts. Finally, he dropped his head on her shoulder, his breathing still ragged.

“Saturday can’t come soon enough.”

“It’s not that far away.”

“Anything farther away than right now, is too far away.”

They laid there in silence, except for their breathing and Ginny enjoyed the feel of his heartbeat.

“None of this had better be mentioned to a single soul, or I’ll make earlier seem like love pats.” Draco growled with a semblance of his usual sarcastic self.

Too happy that he seemed to be coming out of the darkness he’d been in earlier, she chose to ignore the sharpness of his tone.

“Draco Malfoy! How could you possibly think that I would tell anyone something that is private about you?” She kept her tone light.

“Women say that, but they tell their friends and tell them not to tell, and they tell their friends and tell them not to tell and…”

“Ok, I get it!” She laughed, then got serious. “I would never tell anyone, not even my best friends. Anything like this that is private, I will keep between the two of us. I promise you that.”

Slowly, her mate relaxed and gave her a mock glower. “And as for comparing me to noble reckless Gryffindors, you can just take that back. I’m no bloody Harry Potter.”

“If I say you are noble and courageous, then you are, but that does not mean that you’re also not sneaky, conniving, and manipulative. I know you well enough to think that you’re anything like Harry.”

That earned her a smirk.

“But you are going to have to figure out how to get along with Harry, just like with any of my brothers, because he’s a part of the family and you’re just going to have to come to terms with that. I’m not saying you have to be buddy buddy with him, but there’s not going to be taking potshots at each other. I won’t stand for it do you hear me?”

“You actually expect me to be nice to Harry Bloody Potter?” The offended look on his face was priceless.

“I expect you to be civil, which is the most I think I can reasonably ask for, because if you don’t I will hex both of you and with six brothers, I happen to be very very good at it.”

Draco grimaced. “Of course you are.”

Ginny grinned. “Ron and Harry will get the same treatment of course, and it will extend to your friends as well.”

An evil grin appeared on his face. “I’m almost looking forward to seeing them.” He glanced at her. “will Potter be at the wedding?”

“If our owl can find him, I’m sure he would be, but he’s almost disappeared. I really haven’t heard much from him since the war ended.”

“That’s pretty much how it is with Pansy.”

“Parkinson?”

“Um hmm.” Draco had gotten sidetracked with her neck. He really did seem to like it.

“Was she a spy too?”

“Um hmm.” Ginny got sidetracked too.



Author’s Notes:

Boy did I struggle with this chapter! I wrote it fast, but editing it took longer than I thought. If anyone spots a mistake or something that isn’t very clear, let me know for when I go back through to do the edits at the end. And I have to admit, I am curious if this chapter evokes any emotions from my readers. It did when I was writing it but it’s different when you’re imaging it versus trying to capture it on paper. I would like to see if I was effective at all in translating that emotion, so send me a review if it does!

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving!

Pegasus7