"Troy Town," Ginny/Tom, PG-13
Title: Troy Town
Author: kethlenda
Rating: PG-13
Characters/Pairings: Ginny/Tom, Lucius/Molly, Tonks
Warnings: Darkfic. AU. Crossover with Pan’s Labyrinth. Spoilers for Pan’s Labyrinth. Gratuitous mythological references.
Word Count: ~3000
Notes: Um, this is dark. As if Pan’s Labyrinth wasn't dark enough to begin with, I’ve subverted and twisted a lot of what was beautiful and redeeming about it. Sorry.
Dedicated to vanitymachine.
Once upon a time, when Britain was young, there lived a great Queen. Her name was Gwenhwyfar, and throughout the land she was renowned for her beauty, wisdom, and power. It was said that her husband the King, great man that he was, could never have held his throne were it not for her. Indeed, it was when she turned her face from him that the kingdom fell.
In due time Gwenhwyfar, like all women, grew old and died. Yet it is said that in times of great need, when the very land cries out for succor, the Queen is born again among mortals. She is Dame Sovereignty, she is the Lady of the May, and legend holds that he who claims her shall win the kingdom as well as her hand.
***
Eleven years have passed since the victory of the Knights of Walpurgis. Their erstwhile commander, Lord Voldemort, had at one time changed their name to Death Eaters, but with Voldemort fallen, those who remain have reverted to the older sobriquet. It is not seemly, they murmur, to wear so boldly on their sleeve the distasteful deeds that were required to ensure their ascendancy over the Muggles and Mudbloods. They wish to think of themselves as a chivalrous order, a brotherhood of gentlemen, and the name "Knights" strikes just the right tone.
Their leader, of course, is Lucius Malfoy, who from his high seat in the Ministry of Magic reigns over wizards and Muggles alike. Nominally, Malfoy stands as regent, not ruler; he holds the throne in the place of his absent master. However, it is an open secret that Malfoy has scarcely lifted a finger to search for Lord Voldemort, and in fact would not be much aggrieved if Lord Voldemort remained missing in perpetuity.
Malfoy is not without his private griefs, however; it has been but a few short months since the untimely death of his son and heir. In the normal course of things, this would be a personal tragedy but not a dynastic disaster, his beloved wife Narcissa being still young and presumably fertile. Yet tragedy saw fit to strike the House of Malfoy a second time. Narcissa, distraught at the loss of her child, died by her own hand some two months past.
This leaves Malfoy in a quandary, of course. He has no desire to replace Narcissa, but the needs of the family outweigh his desires in this matter. He must have an heir. Therefore, he must have a second wife.
The woman he has chosen is not wealthy, and she has not the classic beauty Narcissa possessed. Her family's politics, too, have always had a whiff of the unsavory about them. In the purely physical sense, though, her breeding is above reproach. Furthermore, her fertility cannot be gainsaid. There are those who have forgotten her astounding fecundity, since every last red-haired son died during the ravages of the War along with the woman's hapless husband. Yet she had borne them, as easily as any sow or mare. And even more happily, now that all are dead, there are none to challenge the birthright of the son Lucius will have by her. She is exactly what he requires.
It is one of the first crisp days of fall when the thestral-drawn carriage trundles up the drive of Malfoy Manor, carrying his intended bride and that pestilential daughter of hers. The girl will be a nuisance, but maybe in a few years he can marry her off to one of his lesser vassals. Even the stepdaughter of the Minister would be a stunning prize for a man of little wealth and position. And being a girl, she will have no right to contend with Lucius's future heir for his rightful patrimony. There will have to be a dowry, of course, but Lucius is confident he can spare a little gold for that.
He watches, smiling, as his misbegotten niece curtsies to the newcomers and helps them unload their meager belongings from the carriage. He has always appreciated a woman who knows her place.
***
Mother is lost to her.
Ginny is used to Mother being distant, used to watching her eyes glaze as she speaks of brothers and sons long-gone. But before, even when Mother wandered through the halls of memory, she had always been there in body: her ample breast a pillow, her warm breath on Ginny's cheek. These things had ended when Mother married Mr. Malfoy. Now Mother is needed all the time to soothe his temper with soft words, to pour his tea and his brandy, to bring him his slippers like an old faithful dog.
It is even worse now that she is pregnant. Now Mr. Malfoy (Ginny refuses to call him Father even though it makes Mother cry) insists that, for the safety of the child, Mother must remain confined to her rooms anytime he does not require her services. Ginny stays by her side for the first few days of this treatment, but her feet itch to roam and her voice to speak above a sickroom whisper. It’s Mother, finally, who urges her to run along and play.
So Ginny takes to wandering the grounds of the Manor. It is winter when the maze becomes visible through the now-bare boughs of the trees. She doesn’t know it’s a maze, not at first, only that there is some sort of wall made of boxwood and that she wants desperately to know what lies behind it.
She walks along the hedge, trailing her fingers through the rough branches, until she comes to an opening in the wall. Peering in, she sees that it leads to a little crossroads of diverging paths. Curiosity gets the better of Ginny, and she takes three hesitant steps into the maze.
"Miss Ginevra?" calls a voice, startling her from her adventure. "Miss? Is that you?"
Ginny turns to see the housemaid, Dora, watching her from the opening in the hedge with concerned eyes. Ginny likes Dora. She’s sort of dull and mousy to look at, and seems sad most of the time, but she always has a smile and sometimes a sweet for Ginny when she sees her. "Yes," she said.
"You'd best come out of there, Miss. Mr. Malfoy wants you at dinner."
Ginny sighs. She’s grateful, though, that Dora has the sense to give her a real reason and not some vague caution about the maze being dangerous. She is tired of being cautioned. If you let everyone tell you what’s dangerous and what’s safe, sooner or later you end up like Mother, getting pushed about in a wheelchair even when you can walk perfectly well on your own because walking might be dangerous.
"What is it?" she asks Dora as the two trudged back to the Manor.
"They call them Troytowns," says Dora. "My mum told me all about them. They were part of the May revels. The Queen would stand in the center and all the men would try to win their way to her."
Dora’s mother sounds a lot like Dora except with more stories. "I'd like to meet your mum," Ginny says.
"She's dead," says Dora, and the veil of sadness falls over her features again.
***
Winter at Malfoy Manor is even more boring than fall. Mother takes entirely to her bed and says little when Ginny comes to visit her. Mr. Malfoy stamps about the place, always seeming on the edge of rage, and once Ginny sees him whipping Dora in a shed. Ginny opens her mouth to cry out, but Dora catches her eye and frantically shakes her head no, wordlessly forbidding her to cross the master.
It wouldn't be so bad if she could go away to school, but there’s no school anymore. There hasn’t been, not since the war ended. Mother used to tell stories about Hogwarts and the good times she'd had there as a girl, but Ginny knows the castle is a burned-out hulk now where only ravens meet.
The wide expanse of the grounds becomes Ginny's solace. Wrapped in two cloaks, a scarf keeping the wind from her nose and ears, she runs its acres like a wild thing, and when she feels particularly brave, ventures again into the maze.
One night she finds someone else there.
He is not anyone she's ever seen before about the property. He is young and handsome, with dark, dark hair. His eyes look a little red but Ginny decides that’s just a trick of the half-light. He smiles. "Ginevra," he says softly. "I've been waiting for you."
"For...me?"
"My Queen," he says with a bow of his head.
"You must have the wrong Ginevra, whoever you are."
"I assure you I do not," he says. From the shadows he produces a heavy leatherbound book and presses it into her hands. His hands, where they brush hers, are chilly. She wonders if she should bring him some gloves next time she comes to the maze.
"That won't be necessary," he says with a slight laugh. "Just take the book, my lady. read it only when you are alone. In that way I can speak to you, and teach you to reclaim your birthright."
Ginny doesn’t for a moment believe him, but he seems nice enough, and she sees no harm in being polite to the young man. "Thank you," she says, and "Good night."
He gives her another little bow and slips away into the darkness.
She takes the book home and finds its pages blank. She stows it under her bed and forgets about it.
When she remembers, it’s almost spring, and she’s bored enough to read an empty book. She takes it into the bath with her and eases the heavy leather cover open. As if from some sea of ink beneath the page, blackness rises to the surface and flows into letters, then words. Ginny reads, enthralled, her bath forgotten.
***
Ginny slips away while Mr. Malfoy is "hunting" on his estate. She is no fool. She knows what sort of hunting he does. His prey is not the sort that runs on four feet.
The thunder of the horses' hooves echoes through the forest. It is impossible to tell how near or far they are. She prays they will not see her.
The tree is just where the book said, and Ginny is able to slip into the crevice between two exposed roots and down into the cavern below. She moves carefully, gingerly, so as not to crush the delicate hen's egg in her pocket.
She finds the great toad sleeping. She bites her lip and wills her feet to be as silent as a cat's. She pushes the egg into the mud of the toad's bed, gently, slowly, and nudges it up under the creature's bloated body. Her exhalation of relief the only prayer she dares utter, Ginny turns back to the cave entrance.
She emerges from earth's womb caked in mud, dripping with primordial slime. When she returns, Mr. Malfoy and Mother both scold her for ruining her pretty green robes, but all that matters are the words of praise that write themselves across the secret pages of her book.
***
Lucius drags the Muggle trespassers from the dungeons in the morning, herding them squinting and staggering into the light of day. He nods in satisfaction as Mulciber and Carrow use their wands to suspend the filthy creatures in midair, tethered only by magic. "Do what you wish with them," he says.
Their screams echo through his study as he busies himself with his accounts. Lucius rolls his eyes and shuts the windows against the noise. Ill-mannered of them, really, to carry on like that while he is trying to work.
He never sees the lone woman who creeps out into the courtyard after nightfall, when Mulciber and Carrow are gone. He never hears her crooning to their broken bodies, misses the whispered mercy that flies green and swift from Dora's wand.
***
The gaunt man sits utterly, horribly still, his eyes shut tight. Before him the table groans with delicacies: rosy hams, round pomegranates, grapes burgeoning with juice. All red, these things, and Ginny smells rot beneath the seductive aroma of food.
A pile of shoes is heaped high in one corner of the room. Children's shoes. She sifts through them, and as she touches them, she imagines she can see their owners gathering around her: all those pale princes, freckled skin turned grey and ashen, fiery hair dulled to rust. All those eyes staring, watching her, mouths opening and closing and no sound coming out.
My brothers.
One taste of the fruit and she will know them at last, will slip between the veil that parts this world and the other, and what does it matter that she will be grey and staring like them if it means she will be with them? She takes a grape, biting into the firm flesh. The juice explodes on her tongue and tastes like wet dust.
The gaunt man's eyes open and they're red and lurid and Oh Merlin she knows them from somewhere but she can't remember where, only that she needs to get out of here yes get out of here NOW--
***
In June there comes a day when the book yields no words. The ink is red that morning, blotches staining the page in the shape of horns, in the shape of a woman's parts, and then there is red and red and more red and the sense of the picture is lost entirely.
Ginny screams.
Lucius strides into his wife's room. Molly's teeth are gritted; her face is sweat-slicked and bloodless, her hand clammy as it clutches at him.
The Healer shakes his head. "They will both die, my lord."
"Lucius," Molly whispers. "I'm sorry."
"That's Mister Malfoy to you," he says. "Sectumsempra." He lifts his newborn heir from the mess of blood, and Abraxas Malfoy the Second’s first cries rise to mingle with Molly’s last.
***
Ginny steals little Abraxas from his cradle, as the book directs, and carries him by moonlight into the winding corridors of the maze. The young man, her only friend, is waiting for her, just as he promised.
“Well done, my lady,” he says. His smile is slow, serpentine. He seems to have more color in his cheeks than he did when last she saw him, though maybe it’s just that the moon is full tonight.
“I…I brought him,” she says. “Are we escaping together?”
“You and I, yes.”
His eyes shift, flick, and Ginny almost thinks she sees a red glint in them, and suddenly he reminds her of the gaunt man in the catacombs, and suddenly the warm weight in her arms isn’t a Malfoy brat but another red-haired prince like the ones in Mother’s tales. “What’s going to happen to him?”
“What do you care?” The young man shrugs.
“I just do, all right?”
“Very well, then,” says the man. “I will take that puling brat you now hold--the usurper for whom your mother abandoned you, mind-and I will take his life into myself, my dear Ginevra, and be flesh as surely as you are.”
“What do you mean, take his life into yourself?” She clutches Abraxas closer to her chest.
He laughs a high, cold laugh. “I shall feed upon the seed of my unfaithful servant and rise again. Here, let me take him. It will be painless, I assure you.”
“No,” says Ginny.
“Ginevra, Ginevra, beloved, you must trust me. Only in this way can we fulfill our destiny. One life snuffed out, and you shall have all you have ever dreamed of.”
“No.” She looks around for an avenue of escape, but the moon has slipped behind a cloud and the paths disappear into the black night.
“I shall ask you one more time,” he says. His voice is higher and more shrill now, and his smile cruel.
“Take me, if you want. He’s innocent.”
He shakes his head, a sad smile playing about his lips. “If you insist.” He reaches for her; his fingers are icicles against her cheek.
She is drowsy now; a grey haze begins to cloud her vision. If this is death, so be it; in the grey is where Mother and Father wait, and the pale princes...
***
“What are you doing with my son?” demands a voice from behind Ginny; startled from her stupor, she whirls to find Malfoy emerging from the bowels of the maze. He wrests Abraxas from Ginny’s arms and raises his wand. “You’re nothing but a thorn in my side, Weasley. Avada Kedavra.”
Her body falls, slumps to earth; the young man, cheated of her essence, flickers, wavers.
It is then that Lucius finally notices him. “L-Lord...” he stutters, but Voldemort blinks out of existence like a guttering candle.
***
Lucius staggers through the labyrinth, dazed from his near brush with fate. His son almost lost to that mad blood-traitor of a stepdaughter-the Dark Lord on the verge of returning but thwarted by nothing but Lucius’s own luck-he feels his body shake, and wipes tears from his eyes as he grasps his son tightly with the other hand.
There is a roiling, red-black glow ahead as Lucius reaches the gateway. He chokes on soot. Fire. No.
The Manor is ablaze; centuries of tradition and wealth are blackened flecks on the wind. A cry escapes Lucius’s throat; he wants to run to the house, salvage anything he can, but a wall of flesh and blood blocks his path. Mudbloods and Muggles, servants and beggars, werewolves flushed from their forest lairs; they stand ragged and defiant, daring him to take another step.
At the head of the army stands Dora. Her hair is as red as the flames that lick the sky, as red as vengeance, as red as Ginny Weasley’s own hair.
The Minister’s reign has ended.
***
In the shadowed realm beyond our own, Mother waits, and a father she doesn’t remember. Lost brothers run to embrace her; lost uncles lean in to whisper her name.
And so she finds rest, and there she waits; there she will wait until the turning of the earth calls her forth again.
Fin
Author: kethlenda
Rating: PG-13
Characters/Pairings: Ginny/Tom, Lucius/Molly, Tonks
Warnings: Darkfic. AU. Crossover with Pan’s Labyrinth. Spoilers for Pan’s Labyrinth. Gratuitous mythological references.
Word Count: ~3000
Notes: Um, this is dark. As if Pan’s Labyrinth wasn't dark enough to begin with, I’ve subverted and twisted a lot of what was beautiful and redeeming about it. Sorry.
Dedicated to vanitymachine.
Once upon a time, when Britain was young, there lived a great Queen. Her name was Gwenhwyfar, and throughout the land she was renowned for her beauty, wisdom, and power. It was said that her husband the King, great man that he was, could never have held his throne were it not for her. Indeed, it was when she turned her face from him that the kingdom fell.
In due time Gwenhwyfar, like all women, grew old and died. Yet it is said that in times of great need, when the very land cries out for succor, the Queen is born again among mortals. She is Dame Sovereignty, she is the Lady of the May, and legend holds that he who claims her shall win the kingdom as well as her hand.
***
Eleven years have passed since the victory of the Knights of Walpurgis. Their erstwhile commander, Lord Voldemort, had at one time changed their name to Death Eaters, but with Voldemort fallen, those who remain have reverted to the older sobriquet. It is not seemly, they murmur, to wear so boldly on their sleeve the distasteful deeds that were required to ensure their ascendancy over the Muggles and Mudbloods. They wish to think of themselves as a chivalrous order, a brotherhood of gentlemen, and the name "Knights" strikes just the right tone.
Their leader, of course, is Lucius Malfoy, who from his high seat in the Ministry of Magic reigns over wizards and Muggles alike. Nominally, Malfoy stands as regent, not ruler; he holds the throne in the place of his absent master. However, it is an open secret that Malfoy has scarcely lifted a finger to search for Lord Voldemort, and in fact would not be much aggrieved if Lord Voldemort remained missing in perpetuity.
Malfoy is not without his private griefs, however; it has been but a few short months since the untimely death of his son and heir. In the normal course of things, this would be a personal tragedy but not a dynastic disaster, his beloved wife Narcissa being still young and presumably fertile. Yet tragedy saw fit to strike the House of Malfoy a second time. Narcissa, distraught at the loss of her child, died by her own hand some two months past.
This leaves Malfoy in a quandary, of course. He has no desire to replace Narcissa, but the needs of the family outweigh his desires in this matter. He must have an heir. Therefore, he must have a second wife.
The woman he has chosen is not wealthy, and she has not the classic beauty Narcissa possessed. Her family's politics, too, have always had a whiff of the unsavory about them. In the purely physical sense, though, her breeding is above reproach. Furthermore, her fertility cannot be gainsaid. There are those who have forgotten her astounding fecundity, since every last red-haired son died during the ravages of the War along with the woman's hapless husband. Yet she had borne them, as easily as any sow or mare. And even more happily, now that all are dead, there are none to challenge the birthright of the son Lucius will have by her. She is exactly what he requires.
It is one of the first crisp days of fall when the thestral-drawn carriage trundles up the drive of Malfoy Manor, carrying his intended bride and that pestilential daughter of hers. The girl will be a nuisance, but maybe in a few years he can marry her off to one of his lesser vassals. Even the stepdaughter of the Minister would be a stunning prize for a man of little wealth and position. And being a girl, she will have no right to contend with Lucius's future heir for his rightful patrimony. There will have to be a dowry, of course, but Lucius is confident he can spare a little gold for that.
He watches, smiling, as his misbegotten niece curtsies to the newcomers and helps them unload their meager belongings from the carriage. He has always appreciated a woman who knows her place.
***
Mother is lost to her.
Ginny is used to Mother being distant, used to watching her eyes glaze as she speaks of brothers and sons long-gone. But before, even when Mother wandered through the halls of memory, she had always been there in body: her ample breast a pillow, her warm breath on Ginny's cheek. These things had ended when Mother married Mr. Malfoy. Now Mother is needed all the time to soothe his temper with soft words, to pour his tea and his brandy, to bring him his slippers like an old faithful dog.
It is even worse now that she is pregnant. Now Mr. Malfoy (Ginny refuses to call him Father even though it makes Mother cry) insists that, for the safety of the child, Mother must remain confined to her rooms anytime he does not require her services. Ginny stays by her side for the first few days of this treatment, but her feet itch to roam and her voice to speak above a sickroom whisper. It’s Mother, finally, who urges her to run along and play.
So Ginny takes to wandering the grounds of the Manor. It is winter when the maze becomes visible through the now-bare boughs of the trees. She doesn’t know it’s a maze, not at first, only that there is some sort of wall made of boxwood and that she wants desperately to know what lies behind it.
She walks along the hedge, trailing her fingers through the rough branches, until she comes to an opening in the wall. Peering in, she sees that it leads to a little crossroads of diverging paths. Curiosity gets the better of Ginny, and she takes three hesitant steps into the maze.
"Miss Ginevra?" calls a voice, startling her from her adventure. "Miss? Is that you?"
Ginny turns to see the housemaid, Dora, watching her from the opening in the hedge with concerned eyes. Ginny likes Dora. She’s sort of dull and mousy to look at, and seems sad most of the time, but she always has a smile and sometimes a sweet for Ginny when she sees her. "Yes," she said.
"You'd best come out of there, Miss. Mr. Malfoy wants you at dinner."
Ginny sighs. She’s grateful, though, that Dora has the sense to give her a real reason and not some vague caution about the maze being dangerous. She is tired of being cautioned. If you let everyone tell you what’s dangerous and what’s safe, sooner or later you end up like Mother, getting pushed about in a wheelchair even when you can walk perfectly well on your own because walking might be dangerous.
"What is it?" she asks Dora as the two trudged back to the Manor.
"They call them Troytowns," says Dora. "My mum told me all about them. They were part of the May revels. The Queen would stand in the center and all the men would try to win their way to her."
Dora’s mother sounds a lot like Dora except with more stories. "I'd like to meet your mum," Ginny says.
"She's dead," says Dora, and the veil of sadness falls over her features again.
***
Winter at Malfoy Manor is even more boring than fall. Mother takes entirely to her bed and says little when Ginny comes to visit her. Mr. Malfoy stamps about the place, always seeming on the edge of rage, and once Ginny sees him whipping Dora in a shed. Ginny opens her mouth to cry out, but Dora catches her eye and frantically shakes her head no, wordlessly forbidding her to cross the master.
It wouldn't be so bad if she could go away to school, but there’s no school anymore. There hasn’t been, not since the war ended. Mother used to tell stories about Hogwarts and the good times she'd had there as a girl, but Ginny knows the castle is a burned-out hulk now where only ravens meet.
The wide expanse of the grounds becomes Ginny's solace. Wrapped in two cloaks, a scarf keeping the wind from her nose and ears, she runs its acres like a wild thing, and when she feels particularly brave, ventures again into the maze.
One night she finds someone else there.
He is not anyone she's ever seen before about the property. He is young and handsome, with dark, dark hair. His eyes look a little red but Ginny decides that’s just a trick of the half-light. He smiles. "Ginevra," he says softly. "I've been waiting for you."
"For...me?"
"My Queen," he says with a bow of his head.
"You must have the wrong Ginevra, whoever you are."
"I assure you I do not," he says. From the shadows he produces a heavy leatherbound book and presses it into her hands. His hands, where they brush hers, are chilly. She wonders if she should bring him some gloves next time she comes to the maze.
"That won't be necessary," he says with a slight laugh. "Just take the book, my lady. read it only when you are alone. In that way I can speak to you, and teach you to reclaim your birthright."
Ginny doesn’t for a moment believe him, but he seems nice enough, and she sees no harm in being polite to the young man. "Thank you," she says, and "Good night."
He gives her another little bow and slips away into the darkness.
She takes the book home and finds its pages blank. She stows it under her bed and forgets about it.
When she remembers, it’s almost spring, and she’s bored enough to read an empty book. She takes it into the bath with her and eases the heavy leather cover open. As if from some sea of ink beneath the page, blackness rises to the surface and flows into letters, then words. Ginny reads, enthralled, her bath forgotten.
***
Ginny slips away while Mr. Malfoy is "hunting" on his estate. She is no fool. She knows what sort of hunting he does. His prey is not the sort that runs on four feet.
The thunder of the horses' hooves echoes through the forest. It is impossible to tell how near or far they are. She prays they will not see her.
The tree is just where the book said, and Ginny is able to slip into the crevice between two exposed roots and down into the cavern below. She moves carefully, gingerly, so as not to crush the delicate hen's egg in her pocket.
She finds the great toad sleeping. She bites her lip and wills her feet to be as silent as a cat's. She pushes the egg into the mud of the toad's bed, gently, slowly, and nudges it up under the creature's bloated body. Her exhalation of relief the only prayer she dares utter, Ginny turns back to the cave entrance.
She emerges from earth's womb caked in mud, dripping with primordial slime. When she returns, Mr. Malfoy and Mother both scold her for ruining her pretty green robes, but all that matters are the words of praise that write themselves across the secret pages of her book.
***
Lucius drags the Muggle trespassers from the dungeons in the morning, herding them squinting and staggering into the light of day. He nods in satisfaction as Mulciber and Carrow use their wands to suspend the filthy creatures in midair, tethered only by magic. "Do what you wish with them," he says.
Their screams echo through his study as he busies himself with his accounts. Lucius rolls his eyes and shuts the windows against the noise. Ill-mannered of them, really, to carry on like that while he is trying to work.
He never sees the lone woman who creeps out into the courtyard after nightfall, when Mulciber and Carrow are gone. He never hears her crooning to their broken bodies, misses the whispered mercy that flies green and swift from Dora's wand.
***
The gaunt man sits utterly, horribly still, his eyes shut tight. Before him the table groans with delicacies: rosy hams, round pomegranates, grapes burgeoning with juice. All red, these things, and Ginny smells rot beneath the seductive aroma of food.
A pile of shoes is heaped high in one corner of the room. Children's shoes. She sifts through them, and as she touches them, she imagines she can see their owners gathering around her: all those pale princes, freckled skin turned grey and ashen, fiery hair dulled to rust. All those eyes staring, watching her, mouths opening and closing and no sound coming out.
My brothers.
One taste of the fruit and she will know them at last, will slip between the veil that parts this world and the other, and what does it matter that she will be grey and staring like them if it means she will be with them? She takes a grape, biting into the firm flesh. The juice explodes on her tongue and tastes like wet dust.
The gaunt man's eyes open and they're red and lurid and Oh Merlin she knows them from somewhere but she can't remember where, only that she needs to get out of here yes get out of here NOW--
***
In June there comes a day when the book yields no words. The ink is red that morning, blotches staining the page in the shape of horns, in the shape of a woman's parts, and then there is red and red and more red and the sense of the picture is lost entirely.
Ginny screams.
Lucius strides into his wife's room. Molly's teeth are gritted; her face is sweat-slicked and bloodless, her hand clammy as it clutches at him.
The Healer shakes his head. "They will both die, my lord."
"Lucius," Molly whispers. "I'm sorry."
"That's Mister Malfoy to you," he says. "Sectumsempra." He lifts his newborn heir from the mess of blood, and Abraxas Malfoy the Second’s first cries rise to mingle with Molly’s last.
***
Ginny steals little Abraxas from his cradle, as the book directs, and carries him by moonlight into the winding corridors of the maze. The young man, her only friend, is waiting for her, just as he promised.
“Well done, my lady,” he says. His smile is slow, serpentine. He seems to have more color in his cheeks than he did when last she saw him, though maybe it’s just that the moon is full tonight.
“I…I brought him,” she says. “Are we escaping together?”
“You and I, yes.”
His eyes shift, flick, and Ginny almost thinks she sees a red glint in them, and suddenly he reminds her of the gaunt man in the catacombs, and suddenly the warm weight in her arms isn’t a Malfoy brat but another red-haired prince like the ones in Mother’s tales. “What’s going to happen to him?”
“What do you care?” The young man shrugs.
“I just do, all right?”
“Very well, then,” says the man. “I will take that puling brat you now hold--the usurper for whom your mother abandoned you, mind-and I will take his life into myself, my dear Ginevra, and be flesh as surely as you are.”
“What do you mean, take his life into yourself?” She clutches Abraxas closer to her chest.
He laughs a high, cold laugh. “I shall feed upon the seed of my unfaithful servant and rise again. Here, let me take him. It will be painless, I assure you.”
“No,” says Ginny.
“Ginevra, Ginevra, beloved, you must trust me. Only in this way can we fulfill our destiny. One life snuffed out, and you shall have all you have ever dreamed of.”
“No.” She looks around for an avenue of escape, but the moon has slipped behind a cloud and the paths disappear into the black night.
“I shall ask you one more time,” he says. His voice is higher and more shrill now, and his smile cruel.
“Take me, if you want. He’s innocent.”
He shakes his head, a sad smile playing about his lips. “If you insist.” He reaches for her; his fingers are icicles against her cheek.
She is drowsy now; a grey haze begins to cloud her vision. If this is death, so be it; in the grey is where Mother and Father wait, and the pale princes...
***
“What are you doing with my son?” demands a voice from behind Ginny; startled from her stupor, she whirls to find Malfoy emerging from the bowels of the maze. He wrests Abraxas from Ginny’s arms and raises his wand. “You’re nothing but a thorn in my side, Weasley. Avada Kedavra.”
Her body falls, slumps to earth; the young man, cheated of her essence, flickers, wavers.
It is then that Lucius finally notices him. “L-Lord...” he stutters, but Voldemort blinks out of existence like a guttering candle.
***
Lucius staggers through the labyrinth, dazed from his near brush with fate. His son almost lost to that mad blood-traitor of a stepdaughter-the Dark Lord on the verge of returning but thwarted by nothing but Lucius’s own luck-he feels his body shake, and wipes tears from his eyes as he grasps his son tightly with the other hand.
There is a roiling, red-black glow ahead as Lucius reaches the gateway. He chokes on soot. Fire. No.
The Manor is ablaze; centuries of tradition and wealth are blackened flecks on the wind. A cry escapes Lucius’s throat; he wants to run to the house, salvage anything he can, but a wall of flesh and blood blocks his path. Mudbloods and Muggles, servants and beggars, werewolves flushed from their forest lairs; they stand ragged and defiant, daring him to take another step.
At the head of the army stands Dora. Her hair is as red as the flames that lick the sky, as red as vengeance, as red as Ginny Weasley’s own hair.
The Minister’s reign has ended.
***
In the shadowed realm beyond our own, Mother waits, and a father she doesn’t remember. Lost brothers run to embrace her; lost uncles lean in to whisper her name.
And so she finds rest, and there she waits; there she will wait until the turning of the earth calls her forth again.
Fin