A Gracious Silence

He is lost in his meditations, but he finally realizes that the bruised purple of twilight has given way to the full darkness of night...and he is alone. She is not here. A check of his watch reveals that an hour has passed.


She is never late. His gut aches. He thinks it is with want, and realizes, after fifteen minutes and the application of honesty, that it is with worry. He goes home and wanders the house, generations of men and women with sharp features looking down on him. It feels very empty. He feels empty. He sleeps badly in his bed in his room that has been his from childhood, and wakes tasting tears in his mouth. It is perhaps some flaring of imagination that causes him to go to Flourish and Blotts the following day. A murmur of appreciation, like the sea on the sand, follows him, and as he looks for a book to purchase, he scans the room for a flash of copper hair. He does not see it. When he gets out, he realizes that he has absentmindedly purchased a book on basic herbs, and tosses it discreetly into a trash can.



Her chest has hurt for months, the cough finally overcoming the spells she cast to stop it at work....it bothered the customers. It hurts less when she sleeps, but when she sleeps, she dreams of Tom.


It smells of mold and blood and old water down there, and he is sixteen forever, beautiful and perfect. He has a lovely smile, and his hands are cool on hers.


\"It hurts,\" she says, looking at him. He smooths her hair back from her face, and smiles.


\"Life hurts,\" he says. \"I always found physical pain much simpler to bear...\"


\"Yes,\" she says. His kiss tastes of blood and she wakes, coughing copper, her body aching to be touched. She is too tired to rise this time, and wonders if this is what dying feels like. It feels vastly uncomplicated. There was somewhere she was supposed to be. There is nowhere she wants to go right now. Darkness slides in like an old lover, and she relaxes.



Over a glass of firewhiskey in the exclusive club he belongs to, as did his father and grandfather before him, he crafts himself a little location spell. A strand of her hair, left on his robe from last time. A few ingredients, obtained by silent-footed servants. He can feel the spell\'s tug immediately, and so he finishes his drink and follows it.


The door is small, almost invisible, there at the side of the store. He is attracting curious glances. A simple glamour, then, and he is another anonymous figure going up to the flats above Flourish and Blotts.


At first, he thinks he has miscast the spell. The room is heaped with boxes and filled with dust. A cracked mirror at one side mutters a disjointed phrase in an equally cracked voice. And then he realizes the pile of blankets on the sagging sofa is occupied. She coughs, and moans in pain afterwards. Another cough, another series of them, her body spasming with a wheeze, and he moves to kneel beside her, arm around her to hold her up while she coughs up grey-green sticky mucus flecked with blood.


Finally, she takes a cautious, shallow breath, and looks at him. \"Draco,\" she whispers, and leans her head on his shoulder, just as his mother did.



She is very light in his arms when he apparates.




When Ginny wakes, she is not sure whether or not she is awake. Being awake should hurt. It has hurt for a long time now. She feels rather battered, but an experimental deep breath is clear. And then she realizes that there is too much light, even though outside it is a grey and overcast day. She boarded up the window in her room when she moved in. So, not in her own room. Where, then?


There are footsteps, and the curtain is pulled back. It is him, wearing simple robes, the cuff of his shirt inkstained. He looks tired.


\"Are you hungry?\" he says. \"I\'ve told the house elves to bring you some soup.\"


She is not really hungry, or, rather, the hunger is not for food. He looks like an angel with the cloud-filtered light in his hair. But she eats when it is brought her, and sleeps afterwards.



The letter he sent has been answered by her brother. It took him four tries to write it. He came the following day.


\"I...thought she was dying,\" he said, after the greetings and the acceptance of a glass of whiskey. He sips it like someone who knows what he\'s drinking, and appreciates it. Draco is unsure why he offered it...it is his private stock, not his father\'s blend, still in the decanter on the desk.


\"She was,\" Draco says, and wonders at the obvious lack of surprise on Bill Weasley\'s face. \"She\'s not sick now.\"


\"That depends on your definition.\" he said. \"The kind of broken she is, you can\'t fix unless the person wants to be fixed. Because all we can do is hand them the wand. They have to cast the spell, and it has to be their will backing it up.\"


Draco realizes that Bill has had his hand out to Ginny for a long time. By now he is grateful that she took anyone\'s hand, he sees...not resentful that it should be the hand of a Malfoy. He suddenly realizes that there is no simmering resentment in the man seated across from him, legs crossed casually. Resentment and red hair have always gone together, before now. He is not sure when it left.


\"You don\'t...\" Draco says, and cannot complete the sentence. Bill smiles, and sips the whiskey.


\"I\'m not my father, and you aren\'t yours,\" he says. \"I never saw it in any textbooks that we were required to be enemies.\"


\"Is it really that easy?\" Draco says, and Bill laughs.


\"Well, we\'re sitting here in your study, and drinking a truly brilliant whiskey, and neither one of us is cursed into being here...I think it might be,\" he says. \"But the worst curses are sometimes those that people believe in themselves.They make them true, and inescapable.\"


Draco sips his whiskey rather than answer. It is a single malt. His father liked blends.


\"Do you want to see her?\" Draco asks, makes a motion to sit up. The leather chairs in the study tend to swallow a man. Bill shakes his head.


\"No. She\'ll have to ask for me. Her time, her space. If she asks, tell her I was here, and that I love her. She knows where to send an owl.\"


And he drains the whiskey and rises, and smiles at Draco.
\"You can\'t be all bad if you keep stuff this good around.\"


And he is gone, and Draco realizes that the rain has broken. The sun is shining, and he opens the curtains to it, and the window, and brings the smell of a world washed clean into the study. He tells the elves to air the house, and to clean the master bedroom and put his things into it.He sleeps very well that night in the bed he was conceived and born in, and there is no taste of blood in his mouth in the morning.



Two days later she is strong enough for dinner with him. She wears black, and is too thin for beauty.


\"Why am I here?\" she asked, after the soup.


\"You were dying,\" he said, not meeting her eyes. \"According to the mediwizard, if I hadn\'t gotten you treatment, the cough would have killed you in another week.\"


After the fish, she told him she didn\'t want to live. She has never mentioned that small fact to anyone yet.


He just nods. \"I know,\" he said. \"But there\'s faster ways to go than drowning in your own phlegm.\"


She knows this. But while dying by inaction was permitted, somehow the faster methods weren\'t. The house feels silent around her. It is a good silence.


After the roast, he says, \"You don\'t have a job any more.\"


She nods. \"I expected that,\" she comments.


And words tremble on his lips, but he eats his dessert instead. It is very good, but somehow Ginny cannot allow herself that pleasure, and pushes it away after the first bite.



They take coffee in the green sitting room. She is cold, and the house elves bring her a shawl to lay over her shoulders. It is soft and warm, and the coffee warms her hands, and she is not cold anymore. He lights the fire, and it makes the shadows retreat to the corners of the room. Between them, there is only golden light, and a silence that demands nothing of either of them. He looks at her, and smiles, a little. \"This is nice,\" he says. She knows he doesn\'t mean the coffee. And she finds that is all right, too.



That night, she dreams of Tom. His hair is disheveled just enough to be sexy, and his eyes are as dark as death.


\"It wasn\'t sweet!\" she rages. \"It HURT.\"


\"It always hurts,\" he says, and smiles at her. \"But the pain is simple, isn\'t it? Familiar.\"


She turns her back to him, and he puts a hand on her shoulder. \"Life always hurts,\" he whispers. \"I haven\'t ever lied to you, have I?\"


He kisses her, and his mouth tastes rotten, and she ends it, turning and walking away.


\"It\'s not that easy...\" he says, and she invites him to fuck himself before walking out, walking out of the dream, changing it for the first time.

Falling is easy. She ignores his hand. He shivers and shatters and she is swimming up to consciousness.


There are tears on her cheeks when she wakes, and she gets out of bed. It takes all her strength to open the curtains to the morning light, the window to the dawn\'s breeze.


Draco finds her sitting there on the floor of her room, still in her nightdress, turning her face to the sunlight, and he does not raise her up, or speak. They sit there together, in the light, and when the sun no longer floods the room, they go to find it. They do not let go of each other\'s hands.