♥ black_alnair wrote "Prelude to a Journey East" for derryere 4/4 ♥
Title: Prelude to a Journey East 4/4
Rating: R (for brief language)
Possible Spoilers/Warnings: Fully compliant except epilogue
Summary: “The riddle is simple enough. Seek the grey-eyed king where he was born.” But Ginny soon learns that nothing involving Draco Malfoy is simple.
Prelude to a Journey East 4/4
Chapter 7 - The Happy Valley
The rain drips down through the forest into the eerie quiet underneath. She remembers reading about this forest in her Muggles Studies course, about the hundreds of undiscovered animals that live in the Amazon. She wonders if any of them are here in this place that is the Equator but not the Equator. However, she does not hear the sound of another creature. It is quiet except for her shallow breathing and the rain breaking through the canopy.
She has to set Draco down - her arms and back are aching from dragging her companion through both forest and destroyed cropland. From what Draco has said, all the burnt patches and abandoned land reflect the actual topography of their dimension. It is a pity that Muggles would destroy something so beautiful.
She rests under a tree but keeps a firm hand on him to ensure he won’t run away. Reaching out with her other hand, she touches the bark of the tree she rests against, feeling its rough texture underneath her fingers, and marvels at its breadth and spiralling height. She frowns though as she thinks of how the Equator feels like some backward dream and wonders if the tree is even real, if any of this is really real.
Mostly, she wonders if her perceived relation to the world is real, if she is who she thinks she is. She sighs, wishing that the charms on Draco have worn off already. Somehow she feels like she can talk to him about her misgivings. She’d never contemplated the possibility that she would not find the root before but as their time here continues like an hourglass on hold, it’s hard not to question herself. She had been trying Anabelle’s method - of coming up with ideas, plans and she thought she had been right about the River of Forgetfulness but she has since learned that there are other ways to forget. That sometimes there is no greater inducement than the human mind willing it as was the case with the lone conquistador seeking adventure. Or, Ginny thinks with some disgust, scantily-clad Amazon women casting charms.
Physically hauling a vacant-eyed Draco Malfoy from a tribe of crafty misandrists is no easy task. She sighs and pulls at his arm, trying to get her to follow her with a crook of her finger. His easy compliance is so unnatural it makes her shiver in the hot air.
However, as she gets him further and further away from the Amazonians, he becomes a bit more lucid until finally he is walking sullenly beside her. His cheeks are flushed bright pink with embarrassment and when they wait out a storm under the broad leaves of a tree, he mutters to her, “Not a word. Not to anyone.”
“You looked like a happy pup going to the slaughter,” she teases him.
“Not my fault!” he retorts.
Despite his childish behaviour and the ache in her arms, she feels relieved that she has managed to get him away and generously changes the subject. “Are these tests often this long?”
“Sick of me already, Weasley?” he asks in a mock-hurt tone.
“No, I’m afraid I’m actually starting to tolerate you.”
“Then I’m not doing my job right,” he says and for what perhaps he thinks is good measure, he tickles her.
His fingers are light against her sensitive skin and she laughs because she is ticklish but also because it seems like a silly way to annoy her. He must be drained from his run-in with the Amazonian women. She skips out of his reach and holds up her hands in surrender. She is still laughing when he walks up to her.
“I’ve been thinking,” she says when he reaches her.
“Congratulations on the occurrence of this rare event.” Draco says, moving back under the shelter of the tree. He pauses when he realizes she has not followed him. Looking over his shoulder, he asks, “What’s the matter?”
“Why do you think the Amazonians are here?”
“They don’t exist today as far as I know. Maybe they -” He gestures with one hand as he fumbles for the correct phrase. “Wanted to preserve their society?”
“But they can’t live forever, can they? Time may be different but it still exists.”
Draco shrugs. “I’m afraid we can’t crack all the mysteries here. You have one, in particular, that needs resolving,” he says pointedly.
“I know,” she says, frowning deeply. “That’s what I’ve been thinking about.”
“Oh?” he prompts when she continues to stand in the middle of the forest.
It feels nice actually, to stand under the warm rain, to have the feeling of the elements sliding over her skin. She savours it for a moment, letting her anxious mind rest while her senses take over. But the moment does not last. Draco is poking her and she opens her eyes to find his grey ones staring at her.
“Do you really think I can find the Root of Happiness here?” she sighs.
“Of course,” he says immediately. “No one’s ever had a problem before. The cards are tailored to this place.”
“You said a trainee had to come back before she finished the task,” she points out to him.
“Yes, but it wasn’t for the same exam. And you’re a different girl,” he replies.
“I don’t know how we can even find it!” she cries, throwing her hands up. “No one here seems to be happy. They’re all stuck here seeking something they can’t find. If a Root of Happiness does exist, wouldn’t people be happy?”
“Maybe all the happy people have already left,” Draco offers.
“Well…okay, yes,” she admits. “But I don’t want to just stumble across it after going around the Equator four or five times. I want to find it. I want to figure out how I can track it down.” She is not merely interested in the end result anymore. She wants to know how a real Auror would do this in the field and she wants to be able to do it right. She kicks at the mud petulantly. “I wasn’t even right about the river.”
Draco seems to hesitate for a moment. He opens his mouth and closes it again and Ginny braces herself for whatever critique he has to make. “You’re intuition isn’t always right. No one’s is. But,” he says, reaching out and tilting her chin up so she is looking him in the eye, “I think you’re right about the river.”
Though they are close, Ginny has to peer at him through the humidity. “No, I was wrong. There are other ways -”
“Of forgetting, yes. The river, the lotus flowers happen to be ways of forgetting that are more happenchance than other ways. It doesn’t mean you’re wrong. It just means there are other answers, other explanations. There always are.”
“C’mon,” he says, taking her hand and tugging her forward. “Let’s keep going. You’re no fun when you’re sad.”
***
The character of the forest is changing - it is denser and darker here, the foliage seeming to wrap them in a tangled blanket. She has taken the lead but she holds onto Draco’s hand tightly as they weave in and out of the trees, going deeper and deeper into the pitch black. “Can we look at the map again?” She asks, trying to keep her nervousness clamped down. She is glad that Draco lets her hold onto him.
He nods, though she can barely see the movement of his head in the dark. It is his hair that burns silver in the dimness she sees.
They fit themselves into an alcove created by the root of two trees coming together and peer at the map in the dim refracted light that peeks through the heavy canopy from far far above. “I think we must be in Colombia. I can’t believe we’ve travelled so far on foot.” She continues looking at the map, reading each and every mark again. They have walked across most of the South American continent that crosses the Equator and still…
“Nothing,” Draco says shaking his head. But Ginny is not willing to give in so easily. She continues looking. All these places of warning but nothing that would seem to yield a Root of Happiness. Unless, Swashy was paranoid enough that he wanted to hide these places from his illiterate crew.
“What’s this?” she asks while pulling the map away from Draco. She brings it close to her face and Draco leans in to look at it too.
“I don’t see anything.”
“Here,” she points with her finger. The faint scratches resemble round mountains. “It’s in Ecuador.”
It is hard to read Draco’s expression because he is so close to her. He gives an agreeable mutter. “Didn’t that book, Rasselas, say that the Happy Valley is surrounded by mountains?”
“Exactly,” Ginny says triumphantly as she flips the map. The random dots along the mountain range which seem to be merely stylistic are perfectly placed eyes on top of round half-smiles when viewed upside down.
***
Beyond the clouds rises the peak of Volcan Cayambe, the highest point in the Equator. Its snowy white cap burns bright against the grey fog that dances in long vanishing mists around it. Ginny eagerly walks forward. Somewhere at its base is the entrance to the Happy Valley.
Draco is behind her, dragging his feet, moaning about calluses. Ginny shakes her head and does not wait for him. Sometimes, she cannot make sense of his behaviour. At times, he is an utterly obnoxious prat, calling attention to himself, and at other times, he’s charmingly snide but astute and understanding. Having spent so much time with him now, she also notices that the annoying Draco, the one she remembers from Hogwarts, comes with a lot more effort - like an overplayed character.
She looks over his shoulder to find that he too is inspecting the mountain. When he catches her looking at him, he goes about kicking the rocks idly. Men, she shakes her head. Pulling out the copy of Rasselas she took from the River of Knowledge, she rereads the paragraph describing the entrance: “The only passage by which it could be entered was a cavern that passed under a rock, of which it had long been disputed whether it was the work of nature or of human industry. The outlet of the cavern was concealed by a thick wood, and the mouth which opened into the valley was closed with gates of iron.”
A rock, Ginny sighs. Large rock in which people can pass. She looks at the breadth of the mountain. It seems to stretch on each side forever. Well, she hasn’t gotten too far to give up now. She starts climbing but she moves transversely so that as she ascends, she is sure she has covered all the necessary ground she can. She does not need to check if Draco is behind her. She smiles wryly, of course he is. It is some time, when she is fatigued and hungry, before she stops.
When Draco sits beside her, she looks at him expectantly. He shakes his head at her. “Everything’s dead here.”
“Oh?” she says, blinking at him. She has been looking for an inanimate object all this time and so narrowed has been her focus, she has not noticed. But when she does look around, she sees that what he says is true. Everything is black and charred.
“Can you Transfigure any of this into food?” she asks hopefully, picking up a rock and handing it to him.
He takes it wearily, letting the stone weigh down his hand. “I’ve tried.” He takes his wand out anyway and taps it against the rock. Nothing.
“You’re kidding!” she gasps, taking out her own wand. The rock explodes in his hand. She sees Draco scrambling back, shielding his eyes with his other hand, right before she ducks to avoid any stray pieces of rock.
“Weasley! Is that the only thing you can do?” He is yelling and cradling his hand to his chest.
“Are you hurt?” she asks, trying to see his hand.
“No, it’s just a flesh wound.” His voice is heavy with sarcasm and his stance defensive. She can’t blame him but she is irritated that he won’t let her look at it.
“Stop being a baby. Let me look at it!” she cries, reaching for his hand again.
“What for? So you can sever it?”
“Fine! I don’t care,” she says, moving away from him. In her peripheral vision, she sees him dropping his hand to look at it and she turns back swiftly, grabbing his hand.
“Hey!”
“Don’t drop your guard, Draco,” she simply says while inspecting his hand.
“Put your wand away,” he insists. He is not struggling get his hand back anymore but he is still eyeing her warily.
She has to agree. She is tolerable at Healing Spells but her magic seems so volatile here that she doesn’t want to risk anything. She winces when she gets a good look at the wound. It is deep with pieces of rock embedded in his skin. “We’re going to have to clean this,” she says as she looks up at the Cayambe.
“We’re a far way from the snow line,” he replies, following her gaze.
“I know,” she frowns. Draco is not going to like this she thinks before she says, “I’m going to have to spit on you.”
***
The entrance to the Happy Valley is surprisingly obvious. When Ginny sees the huge rock jutting from the face of the volcano, she checks it wearily, thinking that a hidden passageway would never be behind such a conspicuous feature. She only manages to let out a squeak before she is sliding down into it.
“Oh bugger,” Draco says from above. “You alright?”
“Yes,” Ginny says, dusting herself off. She looks around her. She hasn’t slid very far down and the tunnel is fairly short. In fact, she can see the iron gate. She blinks in surprise. After all this time, she thought she would have to fight her way through a dark cavern of snakes with red eyes or something. She is surprised to find that she is disappointed that her fears will not be tested. “Come down here,” she calls up to Draco.
Draco’s descent is much more graceful but careful. He takes small steps, first testing the steadiness of the rock below before actually putting his weight onto it. She frowns at the makeshift bandage around his injured hand. It’s soaked with blood. The faster they get out of here, the sooner they can get that wound probably cleaned and healed.
She tilts her head towards the gate. “That’s the entrance.” She walks towards it, feeling eager but cautious too. Anabelle would be proud that she is not recklessly rushing ahead. When she reaches it, she scans the opening and edges carefully forward. There doesn’t seem to be any traps. All she has to do is figure out how to open the gate.
Bending down, she looks at the lock. It looks simple enough but then, that’s what she thought when she first set out to find the grey-eyed king. She touches it tentatively and she falls back in surprise when the gate opens. She turns to Draco who also looks astonished.
“Does this worry you?” she asks him.
“Yes.”
***
Ginny has been down dark corridors with a phantom ghost that whispers into her ear about death and destruction so she knows what it feels like to be in the presence of Death. And not the Death you meet in old age, in the quiet of your sleep, but the kind that exerts authority over you, the kind that makes you plead for oblivion.
Though the valley below her seems to be a faithful rendition of the utopian Abyssinia, she knows it is not. This is an illusion, a lie, a place that one does not escape.
The iron gate behind them slams shut. Draco and Ginny have no choice but to descend into the Happy Valley.
***
Their progress is slow. The slope is steep and Draco can only use one of his hands to keep balance. They are silent as they move from tree to rock to tree to shrub - anything that will obstruct a person’s view if they are looking up at the ragged mountain. Ginny feels as though every sound they make - though miniscule - echoes loudly in her ears. There is something wrong here and she doesn’t know what it is.
When she reaches the bottom, she scans the open field for any sign of life. There is a babbling stream running through the valley, heading into the woods on the other side. Thirty paces above the surface of the lake, just as the book says, is the palace, made of stone, yet gleaming in the sunlight. It reminds Ginny of pictures she’s seen of a place also in the clouds called Manchu Picchu. “Draco,” she whispers when he joins her. She points to a tall white bird with thin stick-like legs walking about. “It’s the first animal I’ve seen here. Isn’t that strange?”
“Everything here is strange. Let’s find your root and -” Draco does not finish his sentence. From the wooded area behind the palace emerge several wasted beings - so emaciated that they can barely be called human. Though they are dressed in colourful tunics with geometric shapes and birds sown into the fabric, their open sores are visible. And when they move, it is without purpose, without awareness and Ginny thinks for a moment they must not be conscious of the world around them until one spots her and stares at her with desperate and hungry red eyes.
She takes Draco’s hand and they begin to run as the half-dead lurch towards them. They do not look behind to see if they’ve really given chase. They just need to get out of the valley - a valley where happiness was destroyed very long ago.
Ginny is no longer cautious in her movement. She is stumbling over rocks and nearly hitting trees but she is not slowing down, the ground rushing past her quickly. Then, she is climbing up the other side of the mountain, fast fast fast, and though her lungs burn and her legs ache, she keeps on going. She is moving up the face of the hill so fast she doesn’t realize she’s in the clouds until her vision is filled with grey.
“Draco!” she calls. She turns and sees he has stopped a short ways from her. He is looking down at the valley below.
He points to the cluster of beings at the base of the mountain. “They seem unwilling to follow us out,” he observes.
“Fine by me,” Ginny replies between deep breaths. “Were those Incas?”
“Incas?” Draco asks as he turns away from the valley and climbs up to where she is.
“Yes. They were mostly in Peru, but their territory once spread across the entire western coast of South America. And the palace,” she says as she peers down but she can no longer see the valley anymore, “it looked like other buildings that were attributed to them.”
“Sounds like you weren’t asleep through all of Muggle studies,” he says between breaths. He leans over on his knees. This is the first time his tiredness is visible.
Ginny shrugs. “My oldest brother, Bill, loved ancient Muggle buildings. There was a time when I was interested in everything he was interested in. They looked sick, didn’t they? Do you think they came here to escape poxy or whatever disease the Europeans Muggles brought over?”
Draco lets out a short laugh and grins at her. “I was a bit too busy running to figure out a theory, but that does sound like a good one.”
Ginny smiles back at him but with effort. The fog is thickening, looking the same now as it did when she first entered the Equator. Yet, it feels so different. “They are probably the only ones here who have found what they came looking for,” she says.
“What?” Draco’s voice sounds far away and muffled in the thick mist. “If they found what they came to seek, they wouldn’t be here,” he argues.
Ginny shakes her head though he probably can’t see her. “If they are here trying to escape Death, then they have gotten what they came here for,” she says grimly.
She reaches out blindly through the deep grey, not knowing if she will find Draco’s hand or not, but she does. And they continue on their journey.
***
Chapter 8 - The Starfield
The air becomes colder and denser as they climb but the shift from fog to snow is so gradual that it sneaks up on Ginny like a child at play. Before she is fully cognizant of the change, she is in the midst of a snowstorm - white and blinding. Each step is a laboured exercise, each breath a fight against the onslaught of the elements. Her exposed skin burns from the cold. The compass around her neck hangs like a leaden weight. All she has is Draco’s hand in hers keeping her grounded, keeping her going.
She tries to keep her mind active, but it keeps halting like one of those Muggle music boxes her father has. Before she left for her second year at Hogwarts, he had asked her to choose one. She’d immediately reached for the one with the ballerina trapped inside. Late at night, when she couldn’t sleep, she would wind it up and watch the dancer escape from her glass prison.
Each time Ginny tries to start up again, to think of something warm, something she wishes for in the future, her mind keeps sliding back instead. Back, back to a time when she first knew what it was to be lonely. She wants to tell that girl that it will be alright, that she does not need a boy with a phantom smile, that she can do very well on her own, that she has proven herself but she wonders whether that would be a lie.
And then, suddenly, they break out of the storm. Draco falls to his knees and curses with feeling. She kneels down beside him and pushes his hair from his eyes to see if he’s alright. She doesn’t immediately notice that they’ve entered the sky. At least, that’s what she thinks they’ve done when the tail end of a falling star catches her attention. She helps a coughing Draco stand but her eyes are now roaming the star-studded black night spread before her.
It feels like she can reach out and touch the spinning constellations with her fingertips. There seems to be millions of them, burning and circling and shifting. She knows the sky is active, constantly changing, but from up close, it seems like it is reborn at every moment. She can even see all the colours she can’t decipher when she used to watch the sky from the Astronomy Tower.
“Have you ever seen something like this?” she marvels.
“Have I ever climbed a mountain into the sky? No,” Draco replies. “It’s something though, isn’t it?”
“How are we going to get down? I don’t think I’m going to find any root here,” she laughs. She doesn’t really want to leave but she supposes they’ll have to eventually.
Draco shakes his head. “Who knows? We’ll figure it out.”
They continue walking in companionable silence. As Draco’s inquiry into her Muggles Studies courses attest, her memory of her Hogwarts lessons is vague. However, her interest in Astronomy has kept some of that information fresh. As she marvels over the orbiting moons and the multi-colour nebula, she realizes it has been a long time since she’s savoured something. She is always rushing so determinedly into the next moment that pausing almost seems like moving backwards. She slows her pace and Draco accommodates.
“Look,” she exclaims, pointing at a massive light mass. “Plaskett’s Star! It supposedly consists of over a hundred suns put together.”
Draco laughs, his white teeth gleaming. “You seem to know a lot about Astronomy.”
“I like it,” she admits. She only realizes now that none of her family knows this about her. That she can sit and watch the night move for hours. She thought she no longer needed it to calm her spirit and she hasn’t done it in years but she is starting to think that sometimes, this is exactly what she needs. “Don’t you know a lot? Your family is obsessed with stars,” she says conversationally.
“For good reason. Our fates are spelled out in the stars,” he says snottily.
His tone of voice make Ginny laugh. She would have found it irritating not so long ago. “I didn’t realize you took Trelawney seriously.”
“I didn’t, but Divination is taught for a reason. It’s not often taught well but it is far from meaningless. I bet you are a Leo.”
“Um, yes,” she says, surprised.
Draco casts his eyes around for a bit before he spots what he is looking for. “There,” he says, pointing.
She recognizes the Leo constellation immediately. It contains many bright stars, including Regulus, the lion’s heart.
“A classic fire sign,” he says. “Leos are temperamental, bossy and stubborn. That’s definitely you.”
“Hey,” Ginny cries, swatting him on the arm. “And what about you?”
“I’m a Gemini. I’m engaging, witty and charming,” he replies in the same lofty voice he used earlier.
“It sounds like you have only one marginally good character trait and saying it in different ways,” she replies dryly. “Where’s the Draco constellation anyway?” she asks, looking around. She’s never been particularly interested in that one. She’s never had a reason to be before. But now, she is curious how it represents Draco.
“I’m offended,” he sniffs. “I thought you were the Astronomy expert and you know nothing about my namesake?” He lets out a long drawn-out sigh before gesturing to his right. “It’s fairly far north. You would actually get a better view if you were flying above London. Its brightest star,” he says, taking her hand and pointing at a glowing orange light in the distance, “is Eltanin or the Zenith Star. It’s directly over London.”
“What does that say about you?” she teases. She thinks he will give her a cheeky answer about his undeniable greatness but he does know a lot about astronomy.
They sit down on the seamless black night as he explains, “Our fates aren’t spelled out in the stars like a book you can just open and read from beginning to end. It’s complicated. For instance, I’m a Gemini, right? That tells you some of the basic underlying personality traits I possess but I say basic because I’ve inherited traits from my parents. So you have to read my astrology sign with my parents’ signs.”
“And you have - what? a dozen brothers? When you were born, your fate becomes intertwined with theirs. You change their map of the sky. If you had a younger brother, he would’ve changed your map.”
“You see,” and he gestures at the spinning night for emphasis, “the stars are always moving, always changing but most of the time we’re not paying attention. It is changing all of our lives as the people that enter it change it and as we make choices in life.”
“It doesn’t sound like we can read our fate in them at all,” Ginny replies, frowning.
But Draco is shaking his head at her. “That’s because you have a fixed idea of fate. There are multiple ways we can get to where we are going. The stars help guide the way. Anyway, like I said, it’s complicated, people devote their entire lives trying to decipher the meaning of the stars. Maybe it’s a good thing we haven’t figured out all its mysteries yet,” he shrugs and wraps his arms around his knee. It is a child-like position, the same sort of position she used to sit in late at night and it makes her wonder what Draco thought his fate was when he was a child or whether he knew, whether he read it in the stars. She can’t imagine he ever thought of being an Auror.
“Why did you become an Auror anyway?”
He arches his brow at her. “Why the sudden interest?”
“I’ve always been interested I suppose. I just never thought I’d ask.”
“I really haven’t been doing my job if you feel free to be nosy,” he grins. “Why do you want to be an Auror?”
“Hey, I asked first!”
“Now, you’re asking me to be fair? You’re very demanding,” he remarks with a customary raise of an eyebrow.
“Will you please tell me why you decided to become an Auror?” she says instead.
The corners of Draco’s lips quirk before relaxing into a full smile. “Well, since you asked nicely for once, alright. I’m afraid this is going to shock you.” He pauses for effect. “It was Potter.”
“Harry?” After the adventure they’ve been through, she doesn’t think anything could surprise her anymore. Apparently, there’s no limit to the unexpected.
“Ugh, you’re forcing me to admit that Potter’s saved my life a few times too many,” he says dramatically. He even lies down and drapes an arm over his head.
“Oh, Malfoy, do you always have to make such a scene?” she asks, leaning over him. She pulls at the edges of his robe. “What? Did Harry call in a wizard’s debt or something?”
“I’m sure he could’ve but it’s Potter. He wouldn’t have resorted to that. He just…asked me to join the Academy. For whatever reason, he thought I would make a good asset to the force. Voldy must have tinkered with his head a bit too much because he had faith I would do things right,” he scrunches up his face in disgust. “Still, I think he was surprised how easily I agreed. Like I said though, he saved my life and vouched for me at the end of the war. And it was just not me - he saved my parents from a certain sentence at Azkaban. I can’t say I was reformed,” he snorts, “because of his generosity. But it’s hard to forget something of that magnitude.” He points upward. “Anyway, I knew the stars were changing.”
Ginny sits back on her haunches. She vaguely remembers the Malfoy trials. Some people had been angry that they had received nothing more than a slap on the wrist, others didn’t care - they just wanted to move on. She didn’t know back then that Harry had vouched for them. She blinks, thinking of how she never really knew Harry, never bothered to know him the way she should. The stars had been changing without her ever realizing it.
“Did you ever want to forget? Or not know what he did for you?” she presses him, thinking of how much Harry and Draco disliked each other in the past.
“I never thought of it,” Draco frowns. “What’s done is done. But I suppose, if I had a choice of knowing or not knowing, I would rather know. What? Is there something you rather not know or forget?” he asks, eyeing her sharply.
She thinks he might be referring to the Chamber. He isn’t afraid of dredging up things from the past the same way others are around her. Of course she wants to forget. But also, she doesn’t because it’s who she is. “No,” she responds even though she is still rolling the thought around in her mind, in her mouth. “I don’t want to forget,” she says with more conviction. “I want to become an Auror so I won’t have to forget.” Her conclusion sounds definite and solid and she feels it is too though she doesn’t think she knew this before.
He nods at her. “You’ll going to be a good Auror.”
She flashes him a genuine smile. He does not give compliments easily so she knows this is one she has earned. “Draco Malfoy, I think you’re a good man,” she says impishly at him.
Draco rolls his eyes. “Don’t tell anyone that. It’ll ruin my reputation.”
***
They exit via a rough stone stairway cut in the velvet night and for the first time since she’s arrived, she is reluctant to leave and move on to the next place. But still, she has a mission to complete. As they leave the sky behind, she pulls out the map and studies it. “We’re going to reach the sea soon. What if I can’t find it?”
“Have you given up?”
“No,” she says resolutely, putting the map away.
“I didn’t think so,” he grins. “You’ll find it.”
And then the snow swirling around them muffles all their conversation. The trek down is slower and more precarious but when the storm leaves them behind, the rest of the way is relatively easy. Draco does not say much, trudging on wearily and occasionally resting his elbows on his knees.
Ginny’s own limbs and muscles are aching but it seems that Draco is exhausted. Ever since they escaped the Happy Valley, he has shown signs of fatigue. She eyes him with concern as he practically slips down the hillside without any caution. He also isn’t holding his hands out as he should - to keep balance. She wonders if his injured hand is bothering him. She is about to say something when Draco collapses and tumbles down the last few meters.
No, no, no echoes loudly in Ginny’s head as she scrambles down the rest of the way to him. Blood and fear are pumping in her veins. He has landed on his back but there are red scratches on his face from his fall. His eyes are wide, his pupils dilated, and he is gasping for breath. He tries to talk but every time he does, it sounds like he is taking his dying breath and she waves from him to stop.
She pushes his hair out of his eyes. The back of her hand brushes his forehead and it is then she realizes the idiot has a burning fever. His hand, she thinks. She gingerly picks it up. The cloth she had tied around it earlier has unravelled, revealing green infected skin beneath. She tries to tear at her robe but the fabric is too strong. She pulls the ends of her shirt out of trousers and rips that instead.
She spits on his hand, trying to wipe the dirt and excess ooze from it and he is wincing and twitching under her ministrations. She tries to ignore him as she wraps his hand tightly in the torn cloth. Once she has done that, she doesn’t know what else she’s supposed to do. She doesn’t dare use a spell for fear she’ll cause him to explode.
Taking off her robe, she wraps as much of it around him as possible. He is shivering now and his eyes are rolling into the back of his head. She grasps him under his armpits and pulls. She needs to get him under the trees at least. They are lucky that it is not raining right now but it will, sooner or later.
Once they are under a broad leaf tree, Ginny puts his head in her lap and rearranges her robes around him. He shivers in her arms and she clutches onto him tightly while her mind is frantically whirling faster and faster like the wings of a Snitch. She doesn’t know how to treat him without her wand. She’s already done everything she can.
“Shhh,” she whispers against his clammy skin. “You’ll be alright.” But a black fear is clutching her heart - she isn’t sure if he will be. They have to get out of here, they have to get back. She fumbles through her robes, trying to find the map, while keeping the cloth around Draco. She touches something hard and rectangular. The books she has taken from the River of Knowledge. She is about to move on when she remembers that one of them is on plants, perhaps plants that can treat fever.
With trembling hands, she pulls it out and flips open the cover. Her eyes scan the page but she is not really seeing what is before her. She has to force herself to concentrate. “C’mon, Ginny, Draco needs you,” she mutters under her breath. She makes her way through each page methodically until she comes across a flower that treats infection. It isn’t what she was originally looking for but maybe this is what she needs. She reads the description more thoroughly - excited but half-afraid that it is not what Draco will need, that the plant grows in Columbia, not Ecuador.
But it is. Ginny’s nerves calm down for a moment until she realizes - she’s going to have to leave Draco.
***
She is running, tripping, falling through the forest but she does not care. She has to find this flower - an orange sunburst called Nasturtium. She is not cognizant of pain or exhaustion, just need. The sound of thunder rolls threatening across the sky and she does not want Draco to be alone when the rains start. She is shifting through the heavy foliage when she comes across a plant with yellow berries, each berry with a smiley face seemingly painted on it. Her breathe catches, the berries bouncing up and down on their boughs, laughing at her, taunting her. She reaches out for it but stops herself. What if she returns to Odessa without Draco? How would she find him here again even if she was able to get help? She can’t risk it.
She turns away from the Root of Happiness without another thought.
***
Chapter 9 - Fate
Thence come the maidens
mighty in wisdom,
Three from the dwelling
down 'neath the tree;
Urth is one named,
Verthandi the next,--
On the wood they scored,--
and Skuld the third.
Laws they made there,
and life allotted
To the sons of men,
and set their fates.
~ Poetic Edda from Old Norse poetry
The sunlight filters down into a clearing dominated by a large tree where three women stand, spinning yarn. They do not look up even when Ginny steps into the open. They look familiar but she cannot place their faces. They are not identical but their features are very similar.
“You’ve finally come,” says the eldest looking one.
“I told you she would,” says another. Neither of them are looking at her and so Ginny does not know they mean her until the slightest, a white-blond girl, steps towards her. Ginny gasps when she sees her silver eyes.
“I am known as Skuld or Clotho or a number of other names. I am a Norn, a Fate, one of the Weird Sisters and I have taken form in a shape that seems familiar to you,” she explains in a bell-like voice that is soft but echoes around the clearing. “These are my other sisters. We were just looking at Draco Malfoy’s thread line.”
“Don’t cut it,” she bursts out.
Skuld tilts her head and raises an eyebrow in an achingly familiar way. “Do you believe in Fate? Or do you believe in choice?”
Ginny is about to tell her, of course, she believes in Fate, she believes in them, but she can taste the lie like blood filling her mouth and she can’t say it. Before, she used to think she believed in choice - that she could simply choose to be whoever she wanted to be. Now, here, Draco’s voice is telling her that both can exist. That there is choice and there is Fate and they intertwine in a mysterious way that keeps life teetering on the edge of uncertainty, of excitement, making each succeeding moment worth fighting for. “Both,” she finally says.
“Good answer,” the silver-eyed one smiles. She steps back, towards the tree, and Ginny can now see there is a door into the tree. Skuld opens it and gestures for her to enter.
Inside, the tree is perfectly hollow. Ginny walks to the centre and turns to the three sisters who file in one after the other. Skuld stands in the middle. “Ginny Weasley, what do you seek?”
“A cure for Draco Malfoy,” she replied immediately.
“No,” says the tallest and eldest sister. “What is it that you seek?”
Ginny is bewildered. She doesn’t want anything else.
“What do you seek for yourself?” probes the second.
“Do you mean the Root of Happiness? That’s why I originally came here.” Ginny is starting to panic again. She does not have time to answer their roundabout questions. Draco needs help.
“No. This is not why you originally came.”
“I don’t understand what you mean,” she says, vainly trying to keep the frustration out of her voice.
Skuld steps forward with her arms open, her hands turned up as though in supplication. “Ginny, the answer is inside you.”
But this does not make sense to her either. “No more riddles,” she pleads, shaking her head for emphasis. “There is a man dying out there. This is more important than a riddle.”
“What is more important than your riddle, Ginny Weasley?
“Him. He is!” she cries, her frustration starting to manifest itself in hot, salty tears streaming down her face. She never lets anyone see her cry. Tom was the last, she had promised herself. But she doesn’t care now. She lets the thick wet drops fall fall fall and she does nothing to stop them or hide them.
“Why?” each of the sister’s ask, one after the other, creating an echo effect.
“Because he’s a man, not an object that I’m assigned to find. His life is more valuable than a riddle or an exam.”
“But isn’t it true that you need to pass this exam to be an Auror? Isn’t that what you want? To be an Auror?”
“What kind of Auror would I be if I put myself above others?” she replies, bewildered.
“But being an Auror is for you, yes? You want it for yourself, to prove yourself to others,” argues the eldest.
Ginny wants to deny it but she can’t. It is true - this is why she had wanted to be an Auror. But it is certainly not the only reason why and standing here, letting time pass, while Draco’s life is slowly being consumed by fever makes her certain that she would never want to be that kind of Auror, that kind of person even.
“Please, if you can’t help, let me go. I need to find a way to help him. He’s important to me.” Ginny moves towards the door but Skuld halts her with a slight touch on her wrist.
“You can save him when you find the Root of Happiness.”
“What?” she exclaims, her eyes wide. “I did!” She did find it and then she had walked away.
“No,” the silver-eyed Norn says. “Trust your intuition.”
Before Ginny can respond, she suddenly finds herself being gently pushed out of door. The sunlight blinds her and when her vision returns, the door to the tree is gone and along with it, the three Fates. Ginny feels sorrow filling her up like a balloon, choking her from the inside out, pushing her tears out out out. She pulls out her wand, ready to destroy the tree when she notices that the tree is not the same one that she was in moments before. That it resembles a tree she knows well - not because she has seen it in real life but in a picture, on the face of a card. Ginny takes a step back in wonder and it is then she sees a very bewildered looking Draco Malfoy sitting on a swing hanging from the outer branch of the tree.
“Draco!” she cries, running towards him. He turns to her, his grey eyes wide in confusion. He is about to get up but she is already before him and she flings her arms around him to make sure he is real, to make sure he is solid. And she is still crying crying crying but this time, it does not hurt her to cry.
“Did I miss something?”
Ginny only pulls slightly back. She keeps her arms still wrapped tightly around him. “How did you get here?”
“I don’t know. The last thing I remembered was falling down the mountain.” His brow is furrowed in confusion.
Ginny reaches down to smooth out the crease. His forehead is cool now and there are no scratches on his face. She cannot help but touch every part of his smooth porcelain skin.
“Um, Weasley?” he says a bit breathily. “What happened?”
“I was talking to the Fates.”
“The Fates?” he asks, his voice rising in surprised excitement. “Where are they? What do they look like? What did they tell you?”
“They told me how to find the Root of Happiness,” she replies, feeling like she finally understands what they mean, what it all means as she looks into his wide grey eyes that are open and mysterious all at once. She leans down. Even if her intuition is wrong, Ginny thinks as her lips brush his, she is okay now with taking another trip around the Equator to figure out what is right.
***
And it feels like she is falling through a cascading dream, rolling over and over again until she can’t tell the difference between reality and fantasy. Her head is spinning through the descent and she thinks maybe she needs to breath but Draco is her air and she continues kissing kissing kissing him. This is happiness. This is happiness.
“Oi, Malfoy! That was not your assignment!”
What the hell is Ron doing in her dream? She pulls back to find that it is not a dream, that Draco is holding her above him, his arms tightly around her waist while her hands are in his moonlight hair. They are no longer in the Ecuadorian forest but bloody hell - they are on the steps of the Ministry and a very red-faced Ron is storming over to them.
Draco smirks at her. “I guess we’re back.” He lowers her just as Ron reaches them and pulls Ginny away from him.
“You better have a good explanation for this,” he says, waving a finger at Draco. “C’mon, both of you, Kingsley’s office, now.”
Ron hurries them along the Ministry corridors and Ginny has no time to process it all. How did they get back? What was Ron talking about? Was she going to fail the Academy? And though these questions are plaguing her, all she really wants to do is look at Draco and talk to Draco.
Ron enters Kingsley’s office without knocking. The black man looks up at his intruders. “Back so soon?” he asks, looking at Ginny and then, Draco. “How did it go?”
“He almost died!” Ginny bursts out.
“You did?” Kingsley asks, turning to Malfoy.
“Well, just a little,” he says, shrugging. “I think. I got sick,” he explains, “but I don’t remember it and there were a couple of close calls but obviously nothing bad enough to activate the compass.”
Ginny blinks and brings her hands up to the compass that still hangs around her neck. What were they talking about?
Ginny’s confused look prompts Kingsley to explain. “The Equator is a good testing location because of the way time functions there but as I’m sure you can appreciate now, it is an uncertain place. In case one of you were in grave mortal danger, the compass would Portkey you out of there.”
“I think you need to redefine ‘grave mortal danger,’” Ginny replies dryly, her mind rapidly flipping through the encounters they had, from pirates, to snowstorms, to Amazon women and devastating illnesses.
“Hey, can I talk now?” Ron interrupts, waving his hands frantically. “I think we need to re-administer the test. Ginny can pass it, I know she can.” He points a finger at Draco. “Malfoy wasn’t following instructions. He was seducing my sister!”
“No, he wasn’t!” Ginny protests, feeling her face flush red.
Kingsley sighs and rubs the bridge of his nose. He looks at Ron and says, “Auror Weasley, you know very well what Auror Malfoy’s assignment was and if he felt that the purpose of the exam was better served by seducing Trainee Weasley, it was in his discretion to do so.”
“What?” Ginny gasps. Though she is no longer at the Equator, it feels like the axis has shifted from underneath her and she is falling falling again in the unknown. “What do you mean?” It was a lie, it was all a lie.
“Ahh, you’re not going to like this, but given that Auror Malfoy is in one piece, I imagine you successfully passed your exam.”
“She did as my full report will reflect,” Draco says.
Kingsley nods before continuing. Ginny is trying to listen but it sounds like everything he is saying is from underwater because she is drowning from the inside. “I imagine you were surprised by the assignment Tasha gave you. What was it?”
Somehow her brain is still functioning. Tasha? She deduces it must be the Roma woman in Odessa. Instead of answering, she pulls out the card - the Root of Happiness - with the faces, laughing at her.
Kingsley lets out a low whistle when he sees it. “She gave you a tough one. You didn’t piss her off, did you?” Kingsley asks as he tosses the card down on his desk. “It doesn’t matter though,” he continues with a wave of his hand. “You were never actually expected to track this down. If you managed to, congratulations, but it was not necessary. It was merely a decoy.”
“Then…I…” What? She asks, staring at Kingsley with wide eyes, trying to understand and trying not to cry or think of another wizard standing just a few meters from her.
“There’s something more essential to success as an Auror than having all the necessary detective skills. Skills - like tracking - are of course important but they can be taught. It has been in my experience that this kind of job attracts rash, hot-headed,” and here, Kingsley looks at all of them, one at a time, “individuals who, while care about the greater good, like to do things their way and like their egos fed. Aurors, as you know, often work in pairs or teams. They need to be able to depend on each other, trust each other and be willing to listen to each other. In particular, I have had problems in the past with junior Aurors disrespecting senior Aurors. You are not supposed to be competing with your fellow Auror. You are supposed to be focusing on the bigger picture.”
“I hope you don’t think I’m singling you out exactly, Ms. Weasley. Everyone is subject to a behavioural exam before they can pass the Academy. However, I think you know that you have a track record of being a bit impulsive and of not listening to your superiors. I specifically had Auror Malfoy administer this test because,” and here, Kingsley grins apologetically, “he’s good at pushing other people’s buttons. He’s also good at getting people in line when he feels it is necessary or testing their limits. He’s even good at getting them to see the bigger picture if he feels like it. Best person I have on the field for these kinds of things.”
“Ugh,” Ron moans. “Can we stop praising Malfoy?”
Kingsley only rolls his eyes at the redhead before continuing, “Well, you haven’t hexed me yet, Ms. Weasley. I think this is a good sign. I’ll have you both report back to me in a few hours after you’ve rested. I’m sure you’ve both had quite the adventure.”
He waves them off but Ron is not done with Kingsley yet. He is saying something about the appropriateness of Malfoy’s actions but Ginny does not care - she is out the door. She does not get very far before Draco stops her though. “Hey, are you okay?” he says, leaning in, crowding her.
She tries to move back but there’s a wall behind her and he follows, his breath tickling her ear. “You were having me on,” she accuses, her voice breaking, her face averted.
“Well, yes, that was my assignment. You did very well near the end. I would try to irritate you but you seemed amused by me. It didn’t matter really - halfway through, I was satisfied with your performance.”
“Halfway through?” she flushes angrily. “Why did we keep going then?” She looks at him finally. She hopes she is glaring some fierce daggers at him.
She realizes too late that she has just given him an opportunity to probe her mind. She is lost in his rainstorm eyes before he pull back and blinks, breaking the connection.
“You believed what your brother said about me trying to seduce you?” he asks, incredulously. He stares at her for a long moment and she feels like she is on the edge of abyss, waiting for him to admit it, waiting for him to tell her that it was all part of a ruse. Instead, he grins boyishly at her. “I can’t believe you thought I was being charming. You must have it worse for me than I thought.”
He pulls her close and says, “If it had been my choice, you wouldn’t have found the Root of Happiness until we circled the entire Equator. But I suppose I can’t complain. It was a real adventure,” he laughs. “I don’t think I’ve enjoyed myself that much in a while.”
Ginny looks into his eyes. Though she is no Legilimens, she thinks she can read the sincerity in them. “You kept me there so you could spend time with me,” she says a bit in awe.
Draco flushes a little and Ginny can’t help but smile cheekily at him now that she knows she can affect him too. He leans in and says while nose-to-nose to her, “You have good intuition, Ginny Weasley. And by Merlin, you never give up. That’s what I like about you. As I’ve said, you’re going to be a great Auror.”
Ginny’s smile softens and she tilts her head up to press a chaste kiss to the side of his mouth. He is solid and real under her lips and it makes her feel calm and at peace as though the last piece of a puzzle that she didn’t even know was missing has fallen into place.
“What do you say we grab a quick bite before we have to be back here again?” he says pleasantly as he brings up a hand to move his hair out of his eyes. She stops him from doing it and he smirks at her. She finds herself inexplicably glad that not all of his conceit is just pretence. It is part of who he is and she likes it.
“Actually,” Ginny says as she smirks back at him and picks up the compass that is still hanging around her neck. She holds it up between them. “I have a better idea. What do you think about going…”
“East,” they say at the same time as their hands lock together over the compass.
***the beginning***
A/N: First, I must thank my wonderful wonderful beta, 7veilsphaedra, for putting up with me. I know it may seem impossible given the length of the fic but this was written very quickly and sporadically. She has read this more times than I have (no, really, you did) and has given lots of wonderful suggestions that I told her in no uncertain terms that I did not have time to include. I stole her idea for using Gilderoy Lockhart’s face for Swashy Vane. (Btw, I actually got the name by entering “Draco Malfoy” into a pirate name generator - who would’ve thought, huh?) Anyway, thanks so much! Other references include Homer’s Ulysses, Samuel Johnson’s Rasselas (my deepest apologies for what I did to his Happy Valley), Anna Akhmatova’s The Grey-Eyed King and Monty Python (“It’s just a flesh wound!”). Wikipedia has been a great tool as well!
Secondly, thanks so much for reading! All plot holes and thin literary devices are the product of working on auto-pilot and my own limitations. I was sad that I could only give my conquistador one line. And don’t you think Christmas elves escaping to the Equator would have been hilarious? Maybe D/G can run into them the other way around. :)
| One | Two | Three | Four |
ORIGINAL REQUEST:
What would you like to receive? An adventure would be very awesome. Something unexpected -- can be crazy, can be an action fest, emo-rollercoaster, I'll take it all! As long as there's some excitement :D
The tone/mood of the fic: Gimme some mystery!
An element/line of dialogue/object you would like in your fic: I'd like to see Draco make a heart-shape with his fingers <- that counts, right?
Preferred rating of the the fic you want: Any
Canon or AU? Either!
Deal Breakers (what don't you want?): No pre-existing relationship. Gonna make you sweat for this one!
Rating: R (for brief language)
Possible Spoilers/Warnings: Fully compliant except epilogue
Summary: “The riddle is simple enough. Seek the grey-eyed king where he was born.” But Ginny soon learns that nothing involving Draco Malfoy is simple.
Prelude to a Journey East 4/4
Chapter 7 - The Happy Valley
The rain drips down through the forest into the eerie quiet underneath. She remembers reading about this forest in her Muggles Studies course, about the hundreds of undiscovered animals that live in the Amazon. She wonders if any of them are here in this place that is the Equator but not the Equator. However, she does not hear the sound of another creature. It is quiet except for her shallow breathing and the rain breaking through the canopy.
She has to set Draco down - her arms and back are aching from dragging her companion through both forest and destroyed cropland. From what Draco has said, all the burnt patches and abandoned land reflect the actual topography of their dimension. It is a pity that Muggles would destroy something so beautiful.
She rests under a tree but keeps a firm hand on him to ensure he won’t run away. Reaching out with her other hand, she touches the bark of the tree she rests against, feeling its rough texture underneath her fingers, and marvels at its breadth and spiralling height. She frowns though as she thinks of how the Equator feels like some backward dream and wonders if the tree is even real, if any of this is really real.
Mostly, she wonders if her perceived relation to the world is real, if she is who she thinks she is. She sighs, wishing that the charms on Draco have worn off already. Somehow she feels like she can talk to him about her misgivings. She’d never contemplated the possibility that she would not find the root before but as their time here continues like an hourglass on hold, it’s hard not to question herself. She had been trying Anabelle’s method - of coming up with ideas, plans and she thought she had been right about the River of Forgetfulness but she has since learned that there are other ways to forget. That sometimes there is no greater inducement than the human mind willing it as was the case with the lone conquistador seeking adventure. Or, Ginny thinks with some disgust, scantily-clad Amazon women casting charms.
Physically hauling a vacant-eyed Draco Malfoy from a tribe of crafty misandrists is no easy task. She sighs and pulls at his arm, trying to get her to follow her with a crook of her finger. His easy compliance is so unnatural it makes her shiver in the hot air.
However, as she gets him further and further away from the Amazonians, he becomes a bit more lucid until finally he is walking sullenly beside her. His cheeks are flushed bright pink with embarrassment and when they wait out a storm under the broad leaves of a tree, he mutters to her, “Not a word. Not to anyone.”
“You looked like a happy pup going to the slaughter,” she teases him.
“Not my fault!” he retorts.
Despite his childish behaviour and the ache in her arms, she feels relieved that she has managed to get him away and generously changes the subject. “Are these tests often this long?”
“Sick of me already, Weasley?” he asks in a mock-hurt tone.
“No, I’m afraid I’m actually starting to tolerate you.”
“Then I’m not doing my job right,” he says and for what perhaps he thinks is good measure, he tickles her.
His fingers are light against her sensitive skin and she laughs because she is ticklish but also because it seems like a silly way to annoy her. He must be drained from his run-in with the Amazonian women. She skips out of his reach and holds up her hands in surrender. She is still laughing when he walks up to her.
“I’ve been thinking,” she says when he reaches her.
“Congratulations on the occurrence of this rare event.” Draco says, moving back under the shelter of the tree. He pauses when he realizes she has not followed him. Looking over his shoulder, he asks, “What’s the matter?”
“Why do you think the Amazonians are here?”
“They don’t exist today as far as I know. Maybe they -” He gestures with one hand as he fumbles for the correct phrase. “Wanted to preserve their society?”
“But they can’t live forever, can they? Time may be different but it still exists.”
Draco shrugs. “I’m afraid we can’t crack all the mysteries here. You have one, in particular, that needs resolving,” he says pointedly.
“I know,” she says, frowning deeply. “That’s what I’ve been thinking about.”
“Oh?” he prompts when she continues to stand in the middle of the forest.
It feels nice actually, to stand under the warm rain, to have the feeling of the elements sliding over her skin. She savours it for a moment, letting her anxious mind rest while her senses take over. But the moment does not last. Draco is poking her and she opens her eyes to find his grey ones staring at her.
“Do you really think I can find the Root of Happiness here?” she sighs.
“Of course,” he says immediately. “No one’s ever had a problem before. The cards are tailored to this place.”
“You said a trainee had to come back before she finished the task,” she points out to him.
“Yes, but it wasn’t for the same exam. And you’re a different girl,” he replies.
“I don’t know how we can even find it!” she cries, throwing her hands up. “No one here seems to be happy. They’re all stuck here seeking something they can’t find. If a Root of Happiness does exist, wouldn’t people be happy?”
“Maybe all the happy people have already left,” Draco offers.
“Well…okay, yes,” she admits. “But I don’t want to just stumble across it after going around the Equator four or five times. I want to find it. I want to figure out how I can track it down.” She is not merely interested in the end result anymore. She wants to know how a real Auror would do this in the field and she wants to be able to do it right. She kicks at the mud petulantly. “I wasn’t even right about the river.”
Draco seems to hesitate for a moment. He opens his mouth and closes it again and Ginny braces herself for whatever critique he has to make. “You’re intuition isn’t always right. No one’s is. But,” he says, reaching out and tilting her chin up so she is looking him in the eye, “I think you’re right about the river.”
Though they are close, Ginny has to peer at him through the humidity. “No, I was wrong. There are other ways -”
“Of forgetting, yes. The river, the lotus flowers happen to be ways of forgetting that are more happenchance than other ways. It doesn’t mean you’re wrong. It just means there are other answers, other explanations. There always are.”
“C’mon,” he says, taking her hand and tugging her forward. “Let’s keep going. You’re no fun when you’re sad.”
***
The character of the forest is changing - it is denser and darker here, the foliage seeming to wrap them in a tangled blanket. She has taken the lead but she holds onto Draco’s hand tightly as they weave in and out of the trees, going deeper and deeper into the pitch black. “Can we look at the map again?” She asks, trying to keep her nervousness clamped down. She is glad that Draco lets her hold onto him.
He nods, though she can barely see the movement of his head in the dark. It is his hair that burns silver in the dimness she sees.
They fit themselves into an alcove created by the root of two trees coming together and peer at the map in the dim refracted light that peeks through the heavy canopy from far far above. “I think we must be in Colombia. I can’t believe we’ve travelled so far on foot.” She continues looking at the map, reading each and every mark again. They have walked across most of the South American continent that crosses the Equator and still…
“Nothing,” Draco says shaking his head. But Ginny is not willing to give in so easily. She continues looking. All these places of warning but nothing that would seem to yield a Root of Happiness. Unless, Swashy was paranoid enough that he wanted to hide these places from his illiterate crew.
“What’s this?” she asks while pulling the map away from Draco. She brings it close to her face and Draco leans in to look at it too.
“I don’t see anything.”
“Here,” she points with her finger. The faint scratches resemble round mountains. “It’s in Ecuador.”
It is hard to read Draco’s expression because he is so close to her. He gives an agreeable mutter. “Didn’t that book, Rasselas, say that the Happy Valley is surrounded by mountains?”
“Exactly,” Ginny says triumphantly as she flips the map. The random dots along the mountain range which seem to be merely stylistic are perfectly placed eyes on top of round half-smiles when viewed upside down.
***
Beyond the clouds rises the peak of Volcan Cayambe, the highest point in the Equator. Its snowy white cap burns bright against the grey fog that dances in long vanishing mists around it. Ginny eagerly walks forward. Somewhere at its base is the entrance to the Happy Valley.
Draco is behind her, dragging his feet, moaning about calluses. Ginny shakes her head and does not wait for him. Sometimes, she cannot make sense of his behaviour. At times, he is an utterly obnoxious prat, calling attention to himself, and at other times, he’s charmingly snide but astute and understanding. Having spent so much time with him now, she also notices that the annoying Draco, the one she remembers from Hogwarts, comes with a lot more effort - like an overplayed character.
She looks over his shoulder to find that he too is inspecting the mountain. When he catches her looking at him, he goes about kicking the rocks idly. Men, she shakes her head. Pulling out the copy of Rasselas she took from the River of Knowledge, she rereads the paragraph describing the entrance: “The only passage by which it could be entered was a cavern that passed under a rock, of which it had long been disputed whether it was the work of nature or of human industry. The outlet of the cavern was concealed by a thick wood, and the mouth which opened into the valley was closed with gates of iron.”
A rock, Ginny sighs. Large rock in which people can pass. She looks at the breadth of the mountain. It seems to stretch on each side forever. Well, she hasn’t gotten too far to give up now. She starts climbing but she moves transversely so that as she ascends, she is sure she has covered all the necessary ground she can. She does not need to check if Draco is behind her. She smiles wryly, of course he is. It is some time, when she is fatigued and hungry, before she stops.
When Draco sits beside her, she looks at him expectantly. He shakes his head at her. “Everything’s dead here.”
“Oh?” she says, blinking at him. She has been looking for an inanimate object all this time and so narrowed has been her focus, she has not noticed. But when she does look around, she sees that what he says is true. Everything is black and charred.
“Can you Transfigure any of this into food?” she asks hopefully, picking up a rock and handing it to him.
He takes it wearily, letting the stone weigh down his hand. “I’ve tried.” He takes his wand out anyway and taps it against the rock. Nothing.
“You’re kidding!” she gasps, taking out her own wand. The rock explodes in his hand. She sees Draco scrambling back, shielding his eyes with his other hand, right before she ducks to avoid any stray pieces of rock.
“Weasley! Is that the only thing you can do?” He is yelling and cradling his hand to his chest.
“Are you hurt?” she asks, trying to see his hand.
“No, it’s just a flesh wound.” His voice is heavy with sarcasm and his stance defensive. She can’t blame him but she is irritated that he won’t let her look at it.
“Stop being a baby. Let me look at it!” she cries, reaching for his hand again.
“What for? So you can sever it?”
“Fine! I don’t care,” she says, moving away from him. In her peripheral vision, she sees him dropping his hand to look at it and she turns back swiftly, grabbing his hand.
“Hey!”
“Don’t drop your guard, Draco,” she simply says while inspecting his hand.
“Put your wand away,” he insists. He is not struggling get his hand back anymore but he is still eyeing her warily.
She has to agree. She is tolerable at Healing Spells but her magic seems so volatile here that she doesn’t want to risk anything. She winces when she gets a good look at the wound. It is deep with pieces of rock embedded in his skin. “We’re going to have to clean this,” she says as she looks up at the Cayambe.
“We’re a far way from the snow line,” he replies, following her gaze.
“I know,” she frowns. Draco is not going to like this she thinks before she says, “I’m going to have to spit on you.”
***
The entrance to the Happy Valley is surprisingly obvious. When Ginny sees the huge rock jutting from the face of the volcano, she checks it wearily, thinking that a hidden passageway would never be behind such a conspicuous feature. She only manages to let out a squeak before she is sliding down into it.
“Oh bugger,” Draco says from above. “You alright?”
“Yes,” Ginny says, dusting herself off. She looks around her. She hasn’t slid very far down and the tunnel is fairly short. In fact, she can see the iron gate. She blinks in surprise. After all this time, she thought she would have to fight her way through a dark cavern of snakes with red eyes or something. She is surprised to find that she is disappointed that her fears will not be tested. “Come down here,” she calls up to Draco.
Draco’s descent is much more graceful but careful. He takes small steps, first testing the steadiness of the rock below before actually putting his weight onto it. She frowns at the makeshift bandage around his injured hand. It’s soaked with blood. The faster they get out of here, the sooner they can get that wound probably cleaned and healed.
She tilts her head towards the gate. “That’s the entrance.” She walks towards it, feeling eager but cautious too. Anabelle would be proud that she is not recklessly rushing ahead. When she reaches it, she scans the opening and edges carefully forward. There doesn’t seem to be any traps. All she has to do is figure out how to open the gate.
Bending down, she looks at the lock. It looks simple enough but then, that’s what she thought when she first set out to find the grey-eyed king. She touches it tentatively and she falls back in surprise when the gate opens. She turns to Draco who also looks astonished.
“Does this worry you?” she asks him.
“Yes.”
***
Ginny has been down dark corridors with a phantom ghost that whispers into her ear about death and destruction so she knows what it feels like to be in the presence of Death. And not the Death you meet in old age, in the quiet of your sleep, but the kind that exerts authority over you, the kind that makes you plead for oblivion.
Though the valley below her seems to be a faithful rendition of the utopian Abyssinia, she knows it is not. This is an illusion, a lie, a place that one does not escape.
The iron gate behind them slams shut. Draco and Ginny have no choice but to descend into the Happy Valley.
***
Their progress is slow. The slope is steep and Draco can only use one of his hands to keep balance. They are silent as they move from tree to rock to tree to shrub - anything that will obstruct a person’s view if they are looking up at the ragged mountain. Ginny feels as though every sound they make - though miniscule - echoes loudly in her ears. There is something wrong here and she doesn’t know what it is.
When she reaches the bottom, she scans the open field for any sign of life. There is a babbling stream running through the valley, heading into the woods on the other side. Thirty paces above the surface of the lake, just as the book says, is the palace, made of stone, yet gleaming in the sunlight. It reminds Ginny of pictures she’s seen of a place also in the clouds called Manchu Picchu. “Draco,” she whispers when he joins her. She points to a tall white bird with thin stick-like legs walking about. “It’s the first animal I’ve seen here. Isn’t that strange?”
“Everything here is strange. Let’s find your root and -” Draco does not finish his sentence. From the wooded area behind the palace emerge several wasted beings - so emaciated that they can barely be called human. Though they are dressed in colourful tunics with geometric shapes and birds sown into the fabric, their open sores are visible. And when they move, it is without purpose, without awareness and Ginny thinks for a moment they must not be conscious of the world around them until one spots her and stares at her with desperate and hungry red eyes.
She takes Draco’s hand and they begin to run as the half-dead lurch towards them. They do not look behind to see if they’ve really given chase. They just need to get out of the valley - a valley where happiness was destroyed very long ago.
Ginny is no longer cautious in her movement. She is stumbling over rocks and nearly hitting trees but she is not slowing down, the ground rushing past her quickly. Then, she is climbing up the other side of the mountain, fast fast fast, and though her lungs burn and her legs ache, she keeps on going. She is moving up the face of the hill so fast she doesn’t realize she’s in the clouds until her vision is filled with grey.
“Draco!” she calls. She turns and sees he has stopped a short ways from her. He is looking down at the valley below.
He points to the cluster of beings at the base of the mountain. “They seem unwilling to follow us out,” he observes.
“Fine by me,” Ginny replies between deep breaths. “Were those Incas?”
“Incas?” Draco asks as he turns away from the valley and climbs up to where she is.
“Yes. They were mostly in Peru, but their territory once spread across the entire western coast of South America. And the palace,” she says as she peers down but she can no longer see the valley anymore, “it looked like other buildings that were attributed to them.”
“Sounds like you weren’t asleep through all of Muggle studies,” he says between breaths. He leans over on his knees. This is the first time his tiredness is visible.
Ginny shrugs. “My oldest brother, Bill, loved ancient Muggle buildings. There was a time when I was interested in everything he was interested in. They looked sick, didn’t they? Do you think they came here to escape poxy or whatever disease the Europeans Muggles brought over?”
Draco lets out a short laugh and grins at her. “I was a bit too busy running to figure out a theory, but that does sound like a good one.”
Ginny smiles back at him but with effort. The fog is thickening, looking the same now as it did when she first entered the Equator. Yet, it feels so different. “They are probably the only ones here who have found what they came looking for,” she says.
“What?” Draco’s voice sounds far away and muffled in the thick mist. “If they found what they came to seek, they wouldn’t be here,” he argues.
Ginny shakes her head though he probably can’t see her. “If they are here trying to escape Death, then they have gotten what they came here for,” she says grimly.
She reaches out blindly through the deep grey, not knowing if she will find Draco’s hand or not, but she does. And they continue on their journey.
***
Chapter 8 - The Starfield
The air becomes colder and denser as they climb but the shift from fog to snow is so gradual that it sneaks up on Ginny like a child at play. Before she is fully cognizant of the change, she is in the midst of a snowstorm - white and blinding. Each step is a laboured exercise, each breath a fight against the onslaught of the elements. Her exposed skin burns from the cold. The compass around her neck hangs like a leaden weight. All she has is Draco’s hand in hers keeping her grounded, keeping her going.
She tries to keep her mind active, but it keeps halting like one of those Muggle music boxes her father has. Before she left for her second year at Hogwarts, he had asked her to choose one. She’d immediately reached for the one with the ballerina trapped inside. Late at night, when she couldn’t sleep, she would wind it up and watch the dancer escape from her glass prison.
Each time Ginny tries to start up again, to think of something warm, something she wishes for in the future, her mind keeps sliding back instead. Back, back to a time when she first knew what it was to be lonely. She wants to tell that girl that it will be alright, that she does not need a boy with a phantom smile, that she can do very well on her own, that she has proven herself but she wonders whether that would be a lie.
And then, suddenly, they break out of the storm. Draco falls to his knees and curses with feeling. She kneels down beside him and pushes his hair from his eyes to see if he’s alright. She doesn’t immediately notice that they’ve entered the sky. At least, that’s what she thinks they’ve done when the tail end of a falling star catches her attention. She helps a coughing Draco stand but her eyes are now roaming the star-studded black night spread before her.
It feels like she can reach out and touch the spinning constellations with her fingertips. There seems to be millions of them, burning and circling and shifting. She knows the sky is active, constantly changing, but from up close, it seems like it is reborn at every moment. She can even see all the colours she can’t decipher when she used to watch the sky from the Astronomy Tower.
“Have you ever seen something like this?” she marvels.
“Have I ever climbed a mountain into the sky? No,” Draco replies. “It’s something though, isn’t it?”
“How are we going to get down? I don’t think I’m going to find any root here,” she laughs. She doesn’t really want to leave but she supposes they’ll have to eventually.
Draco shakes his head. “Who knows? We’ll figure it out.”
They continue walking in companionable silence. As Draco’s inquiry into her Muggles Studies courses attest, her memory of her Hogwarts lessons is vague. However, her interest in Astronomy has kept some of that information fresh. As she marvels over the orbiting moons and the multi-colour nebula, she realizes it has been a long time since she’s savoured something. She is always rushing so determinedly into the next moment that pausing almost seems like moving backwards. She slows her pace and Draco accommodates.
“Look,” she exclaims, pointing at a massive light mass. “Plaskett’s Star! It supposedly consists of over a hundred suns put together.”
Draco laughs, his white teeth gleaming. “You seem to know a lot about Astronomy.”
“I like it,” she admits. She only realizes now that none of her family knows this about her. That she can sit and watch the night move for hours. She thought she no longer needed it to calm her spirit and she hasn’t done it in years but she is starting to think that sometimes, this is exactly what she needs. “Don’t you know a lot? Your family is obsessed with stars,” she says conversationally.
“For good reason. Our fates are spelled out in the stars,” he says snottily.
His tone of voice make Ginny laugh. She would have found it irritating not so long ago. “I didn’t realize you took Trelawney seriously.”
“I didn’t, but Divination is taught for a reason. It’s not often taught well but it is far from meaningless. I bet you are a Leo.”
“Um, yes,” she says, surprised.
Draco casts his eyes around for a bit before he spots what he is looking for. “There,” he says, pointing.
She recognizes the Leo constellation immediately. It contains many bright stars, including Regulus, the lion’s heart.
“A classic fire sign,” he says. “Leos are temperamental, bossy and stubborn. That’s definitely you.”
“Hey,” Ginny cries, swatting him on the arm. “And what about you?”
“I’m a Gemini. I’m engaging, witty and charming,” he replies in the same lofty voice he used earlier.
“It sounds like you have only one marginally good character trait and saying it in different ways,” she replies dryly. “Where’s the Draco constellation anyway?” she asks, looking around. She’s never been particularly interested in that one. She’s never had a reason to be before. But now, she is curious how it represents Draco.
“I’m offended,” he sniffs. “I thought you were the Astronomy expert and you know nothing about my namesake?” He lets out a long drawn-out sigh before gesturing to his right. “It’s fairly far north. You would actually get a better view if you were flying above London. Its brightest star,” he says, taking her hand and pointing at a glowing orange light in the distance, “is Eltanin or the Zenith Star. It’s directly over London.”
“What does that say about you?” she teases. She thinks he will give her a cheeky answer about his undeniable greatness but he does know a lot about astronomy.
They sit down on the seamless black night as he explains, “Our fates aren’t spelled out in the stars like a book you can just open and read from beginning to end. It’s complicated. For instance, I’m a Gemini, right? That tells you some of the basic underlying personality traits I possess but I say basic because I’ve inherited traits from my parents. So you have to read my astrology sign with my parents’ signs.”
“And you have - what? a dozen brothers? When you were born, your fate becomes intertwined with theirs. You change their map of the sky. If you had a younger brother, he would’ve changed your map.”
“You see,” and he gestures at the spinning night for emphasis, “the stars are always moving, always changing but most of the time we’re not paying attention. It is changing all of our lives as the people that enter it change it and as we make choices in life.”
“It doesn’t sound like we can read our fate in them at all,” Ginny replies, frowning.
But Draco is shaking his head at her. “That’s because you have a fixed idea of fate. There are multiple ways we can get to where we are going. The stars help guide the way. Anyway, like I said, it’s complicated, people devote their entire lives trying to decipher the meaning of the stars. Maybe it’s a good thing we haven’t figured out all its mysteries yet,” he shrugs and wraps his arms around his knee. It is a child-like position, the same sort of position she used to sit in late at night and it makes her wonder what Draco thought his fate was when he was a child or whether he knew, whether he read it in the stars. She can’t imagine he ever thought of being an Auror.
“Why did you become an Auror anyway?”
He arches his brow at her. “Why the sudden interest?”
“I’ve always been interested I suppose. I just never thought I’d ask.”
“I really haven’t been doing my job if you feel free to be nosy,” he grins. “Why do you want to be an Auror?”
“Hey, I asked first!”
“Now, you’re asking me to be fair? You’re very demanding,” he remarks with a customary raise of an eyebrow.
“Will you please tell me why you decided to become an Auror?” she says instead.
The corners of Draco’s lips quirk before relaxing into a full smile. “Well, since you asked nicely for once, alright. I’m afraid this is going to shock you.” He pauses for effect. “It was Potter.”
“Harry?” After the adventure they’ve been through, she doesn’t think anything could surprise her anymore. Apparently, there’s no limit to the unexpected.
“Ugh, you’re forcing me to admit that Potter’s saved my life a few times too many,” he says dramatically. He even lies down and drapes an arm over his head.
“Oh, Malfoy, do you always have to make such a scene?” she asks, leaning over him. She pulls at the edges of his robe. “What? Did Harry call in a wizard’s debt or something?”
“I’m sure he could’ve but it’s Potter. He wouldn’t have resorted to that. He just…asked me to join the Academy. For whatever reason, he thought I would make a good asset to the force. Voldy must have tinkered with his head a bit too much because he had faith I would do things right,” he scrunches up his face in disgust. “Still, I think he was surprised how easily I agreed. Like I said though, he saved my life and vouched for me at the end of the war. And it was just not me - he saved my parents from a certain sentence at Azkaban. I can’t say I was reformed,” he snorts, “because of his generosity. But it’s hard to forget something of that magnitude.” He points upward. “Anyway, I knew the stars were changing.”
Ginny sits back on her haunches. She vaguely remembers the Malfoy trials. Some people had been angry that they had received nothing more than a slap on the wrist, others didn’t care - they just wanted to move on. She didn’t know back then that Harry had vouched for them. She blinks, thinking of how she never really knew Harry, never bothered to know him the way she should. The stars had been changing without her ever realizing it.
“Did you ever want to forget? Or not know what he did for you?” she presses him, thinking of how much Harry and Draco disliked each other in the past.
“I never thought of it,” Draco frowns. “What’s done is done. But I suppose, if I had a choice of knowing or not knowing, I would rather know. What? Is there something you rather not know or forget?” he asks, eyeing her sharply.
She thinks he might be referring to the Chamber. He isn’t afraid of dredging up things from the past the same way others are around her. Of course she wants to forget. But also, she doesn’t because it’s who she is. “No,” she responds even though she is still rolling the thought around in her mind, in her mouth. “I don’t want to forget,” she says with more conviction. “I want to become an Auror so I won’t have to forget.” Her conclusion sounds definite and solid and she feels it is too though she doesn’t think she knew this before.
He nods at her. “You’ll going to be a good Auror.”
She flashes him a genuine smile. He does not give compliments easily so she knows this is one she has earned. “Draco Malfoy, I think you’re a good man,” she says impishly at him.
Draco rolls his eyes. “Don’t tell anyone that. It’ll ruin my reputation.”
***
They exit via a rough stone stairway cut in the velvet night and for the first time since she’s arrived, she is reluctant to leave and move on to the next place. But still, she has a mission to complete. As they leave the sky behind, she pulls out the map and studies it. “We’re going to reach the sea soon. What if I can’t find it?”
“Have you given up?”
“No,” she says resolutely, putting the map away.
“I didn’t think so,” he grins. “You’ll find it.”
And then the snow swirling around them muffles all their conversation. The trek down is slower and more precarious but when the storm leaves them behind, the rest of the way is relatively easy. Draco does not say much, trudging on wearily and occasionally resting his elbows on his knees.
Ginny’s own limbs and muscles are aching but it seems that Draco is exhausted. Ever since they escaped the Happy Valley, he has shown signs of fatigue. She eyes him with concern as he practically slips down the hillside without any caution. He also isn’t holding his hands out as he should - to keep balance. She wonders if his injured hand is bothering him. She is about to say something when Draco collapses and tumbles down the last few meters.
No, no, no echoes loudly in Ginny’s head as she scrambles down the rest of the way to him. Blood and fear are pumping in her veins. He has landed on his back but there are red scratches on his face from his fall. His eyes are wide, his pupils dilated, and he is gasping for breath. He tries to talk but every time he does, it sounds like he is taking his dying breath and she waves from him to stop.
She pushes his hair out of his eyes. The back of her hand brushes his forehead and it is then she realizes the idiot has a burning fever. His hand, she thinks. She gingerly picks it up. The cloth she had tied around it earlier has unravelled, revealing green infected skin beneath. She tries to tear at her robe but the fabric is too strong. She pulls the ends of her shirt out of trousers and rips that instead.
She spits on his hand, trying to wipe the dirt and excess ooze from it and he is wincing and twitching under her ministrations. She tries to ignore him as she wraps his hand tightly in the torn cloth. Once she has done that, she doesn’t know what else she’s supposed to do. She doesn’t dare use a spell for fear she’ll cause him to explode.
Taking off her robe, she wraps as much of it around him as possible. He is shivering now and his eyes are rolling into the back of his head. She grasps him under his armpits and pulls. She needs to get him under the trees at least. They are lucky that it is not raining right now but it will, sooner or later.
Once they are under a broad leaf tree, Ginny puts his head in her lap and rearranges her robes around him. He shivers in her arms and she clutches onto him tightly while her mind is frantically whirling faster and faster like the wings of a Snitch. She doesn’t know how to treat him without her wand. She’s already done everything she can.
“Shhh,” she whispers against his clammy skin. “You’ll be alright.” But a black fear is clutching her heart - she isn’t sure if he will be. They have to get out of here, they have to get back. She fumbles through her robes, trying to find the map, while keeping the cloth around Draco. She touches something hard and rectangular. The books she has taken from the River of Knowledge. She is about to move on when she remembers that one of them is on plants, perhaps plants that can treat fever.
With trembling hands, she pulls it out and flips open the cover. Her eyes scan the page but she is not really seeing what is before her. She has to force herself to concentrate. “C’mon, Ginny, Draco needs you,” she mutters under her breath. She makes her way through each page methodically until she comes across a flower that treats infection. It isn’t what she was originally looking for but maybe this is what she needs. She reads the description more thoroughly - excited but half-afraid that it is not what Draco will need, that the plant grows in Columbia, not Ecuador.
But it is. Ginny’s nerves calm down for a moment until she realizes - she’s going to have to leave Draco.
***
She is running, tripping, falling through the forest but she does not care. She has to find this flower - an orange sunburst called Nasturtium. She is not cognizant of pain or exhaustion, just need. The sound of thunder rolls threatening across the sky and she does not want Draco to be alone when the rains start. She is shifting through the heavy foliage when she comes across a plant with yellow berries, each berry with a smiley face seemingly painted on it. Her breathe catches, the berries bouncing up and down on their boughs, laughing at her, taunting her. She reaches out for it but stops herself. What if she returns to Odessa without Draco? How would she find him here again even if she was able to get help? She can’t risk it.
She turns away from the Root of Happiness without another thought.
***
Chapter 9 - Fate
Thence come the maidens
mighty in wisdom,
Three from the dwelling
down 'neath the tree;
Urth is one named,
Verthandi the next,--
On the wood they scored,--
and Skuld the third.
Laws they made there,
and life allotted
To the sons of men,
and set their fates.
~ Poetic Edda from Old Norse poetry
The sunlight filters down into a clearing dominated by a large tree where three women stand, spinning yarn. They do not look up even when Ginny steps into the open. They look familiar but she cannot place their faces. They are not identical but their features are very similar.
“You’ve finally come,” says the eldest looking one.
“I told you she would,” says another. Neither of them are looking at her and so Ginny does not know they mean her until the slightest, a white-blond girl, steps towards her. Ginny gasps when she sees her silver eyes.
“I am known as Skuld or Clotho or a number of other names. I am a Norn, a Fate, one of the Weird Sisters and I have taken form in a shape that seems familiar to you,” she explains in a bell-like voice that is soft but echoes around the clearing. “These are my other sisters. We were just looking at Draco Malfoy’s thread line.”
“Don’t cut it,” she bursts out.
Skuld tilts her head and raises an eyebrow in an achingly familiar way. “Do you believe in Fate? Or do you believe in choice?”
Ginny is about to tell her, of course, she believes in Fate, she believes in them, but she can taste the lie like blood filling her mouth and she can’t say it. Before, she used to think she believed in choice - that she could simply choose to be whoever she wanted to be. Now, here, Draco’s voice is telling her that both can exist. That there is choice and there is Fate and they intertwine in a mysterious way that keeps life teetering on the edge of uncertainty, of excitement, making each succeeding moment worth fighting for. “Both,” she finally says.
“Good answer,” the silver-eyed one smiles. She steps back, towards the tree, and Ginny can now see there is a door into the tree. Skuld opens it and gestures for her to enter.
Inside, the tree is perfectly hollow. Ginny walks to the centre and turns to the three sisters who file in one after the other. Skuld stands in the middle. “Ginny Weasley, what do you seek?”
“A cure for Draco Malfoy,” she replied immediately.
“No,” says the tallest and eldest sister. “What is it that you seek?”
Ginny is bewildered. She doesn’t want anything else.
“What do you seek for yourself?” probes the second.
“Do you mean the Root of Happiness? That’s why I originally came here.” Ginny is starting to panic again. She does not have time to answer their roundabout questions. Draco needs help.
“No. This is not why you originally came.”
“I don’t understand what you mean,” she says, vainly trying to keep the frustration out of her voice.
Skuld steps forward with her arms open, her hands turned up as though in supplication. “Ginny, the answer is inside you.”
But this does not make sense to her either. “No more riddles,” she pleads, shaking her head for emphasis. “There is a man dying out there. This is more important than a riddle.”
“What is more important than your riddle, Ginny Weasley?
“Him. He is!” she cries, her frustration starting to manifest itself in hot, salty tears streaming down her face. She never lets anyone see her cry. Tom was the last, she had promised herself. But she doesn’t care now. She lets the thick wet drops fall fall fall and she does nothing to stop them or hide them.
“Why?” each of the sister’s ask, one after the other, creating an echo effect.
“Because he’s a man, not an object that I’m assigned to find. His life is more valuable than a riddle or an exam.”
“But isn’t it true that you need to pass this exam to be an Auror? Isn’t that what you want? To be an Auror?”
“What kind of Auror would I be if I put myself above others?” she replies, bewildered.
“But being an Auror is for you, yes? You want it for yourself, to prove yourself to others,” argues the eldest.
Ginny wants to deny it but she can’t. It is true - this is why she had wanted to be an Auror. But it is certainly not the only reason why and standing here, letting time pass, while Draco’s life is slowly being consumed by fever makes her certain that she would never want to be that kind of Auror, that kind of person even.
“Please, if you can’t help, let me go. I need to find a way to help him. He’s important to me.” Ginny moves towards the door but Skuld halts her with a slight touch on her wrist.
“You can save him when you find the Root of Happiness.”
“What?” she exclaims, her eyes wide. “I did!” She did find it and then she had walked away.
“No,” the silver-eyed Norn says. “Trust your intuition.”
Before Ginny can respond, she suddenly finds herself being gently pushed out of door. The sunlight blinds her and when her vision returns, the door to the tree is gone and along with it, the three Fates. Ginny feels sorrow filling her up like a balloon, choking her from the inside out, pushing her tears out out out. She pulls out her wand, ready to destroy the tree when she notices that the tree is not the same one that she was in moments before. That it resembles a tree she knows well - not because she has seen it in real life but in a picture, on the face of a card. Ginny takes a step back in wonder and it is then she sees a very bewildered looking Draco Malfoy sitting on a swing hanging from the outer branch of the tree.
“Draco!” she cries, running towards him. He turns to her, his grey eyes wide in confusion. He is about to get up but she is already before him and she flings her arms around him to make sure he is real, to make sure he is solid. And she is still crying crying crying but this time, it does not hurt her to cry.
“Did I miss something?”
Ginny only pulls slightly back. She keeps her arms still wrapped tightly around him. “How did you get here?”
“I don’t know. The last thing I remembered was falling down the mountain.” His brow is furrowed in confusion.
Ginny reaches down to smooth out the crease. His forehead is cool now and there are no scratches on his face. She cannot help but touch every part of his smooth porcelain skin.
“Um, Weasley?” he says a bit breathily. “What happened?”
“I was talking to the Fates.”
“The Fates?” he asks, his voice rising in surprised excitement. “Where are they? What do they look like? What did they tell you?”
“They told me how to find the Root of Happiness,” she replies, feeling like she finally understands what they mean, what it all means as she looks into his wide grey eyes that are open and mysterious all at once. She leans down. Even if her intuition is wrong, Ginny thinks as her lips brush his, she is okay now with taking another trip around the Equator to figure out what is right.
***
And it feels like she is falling through a cascading dream, rolling over and over again until she can’t tell the difference between reality and fantasy. Her head is spinning through the descent and she thinks maybe she needs to breath but Draco is her air and she continues kissing kissing kissing him. This is happiness. This is happiness.
“Oi, Malfoy! That was not your assignment!”
What the hell is Ron doing in her dream? She pulls back to find that it is not a dream, that Draco is holding her above him, his arms tightly around her waist while her hands are in his moonlight hair. They are no longer in the Ecuadorian forest but bloody hell - they are on the steps of the Ministry and a very red-faced Ron is storming over to them.
Draco smirks at her. “I guess we’re back.” He lowers her just as Ron reaches them and pulls Ginny away from him.
“You better have a good explanation for this,” he says, waving a finger at Draco. “C’mon, both of you, Kingsley’s office, now.”
Ron hurries them along the Ministry corridors and Ginny has no time to process it all. How did they get back? What was Ron talking about? Was she going to fail the Academy? And though these questions are plaguing her, all she really wants to do is look at Draco and talk to Draco.
Ron enters Kingsley’s office without knocking. The black man looks up at his intruders. “Back so soon?” he asks, looking at Ginny and then, Draco. “How did it go?”
“He almost died!” Ginny bursts out.
“You did?” Kingsley asks, turning to Malfoy.
“Well, just a little,” he says, shrugging. “I think. I got sick,” he explains, “but I don’t remember it and there were a couple of close calls but obviously nothing bad enough to activate the compass.”
Ginny blinks and brings her hands up to the compass that still hangs around her neck. What were they talking about?
Ginny’s confused look prompts Kingsley to explain. “The Equator is a good testing location because of the way time functions there but as I’m sure you can appreciate now, it is an uncertain place. In case one of you were in grave mortal danger, the compass would Portkey you out of there.”
“I think you need to redefine ‘grave mortal danger,’” Ginny replies dryly, her mind rapidly flipping through the encounters they had, from pirates, to snowstorms, to Amazon women and devastating illnesses.
“Hey, can I talk now?” Ron interrupts, waving his hands frantically. “I think we need to re-administer the test. Ginny can pass it, I know she can.” He points a finger at Draco. “Malfoy wasn’t following instructions. He was seducing my sister!”
“No, he wasn’t!” Ginny protests, feeling her face flush red.
Kingsley sighs and rubs the bridge of his nose. He looks at Ron and says, “Auror Weasley, you know very well what Auror Malfoy’s assignment was and if he felt that the purpose of the exam was better served by seducing Trainee Weasley, it was in his discretion to do so.”
“What?” Ginny gasps. Though she is no longer at the Equator, it feels like the axis has shifted from underneath her and she is falling falling again in the unknown. “What do you mean?” It was a lie, it was all a lie.
“Ahh, you’re not going to like this, but given that Auror Malfoy is in one piece, I imagine you successfully passed your exam.”
“She did as my full report will reflect,” Draco says.
Kingsley nods before continuing. Ginny is trying to listen but it sounds like everything he is saying is from underwater because she is drowning from the inside. “I imagine you were surprised by the assignment Tasha gave you. What was it?”
Somehow her brain is still functioning. Tasha? She deduces it must be the Roma woman in Odessa. Instead of answering, she pulls out the card - the Root of Happiness - with the faces, laughing at her.
Kingsley lets out a low whistle when he sees it. “She gave you a tough one. You didn’t piss her off, did you?” Kingsley asks as he tosses the card down on his desk. “It doesn’t matter though,” he continues with a wave of his hand. “You were never actually expected to track this down. If you managed to, congratulations, but it was not necessary. It was merely a decoy.”
“Then…I…” What? She asks, staring at Kingsley with wide eyes, trying to understand and trying not to cry or think of another wizard standing just a few meters from her.
“There’s something more essential to success as an Auror than having all the necessary detective skills. Skills - like tracking - are of course important but they can be taught. It has been in my experience that this kind of job attracts rash, hot-headed,” and here, Kingsley looks at all of them, one at a time, “individuals who, while care about the greater good, like to do things their way and like their egos fed. Aurors, as you know, often work in pairs or teams. They need to be able to depend on each other, trust each other and be willing to listen to each other. In particular, I have had problems in the past with junior Aurors disrespecting senior Aurors. You are not supposed to be competing with your fellow Auror. You are supposed to be focusing on the bigger picture.”
“I hope you don’t think I’m singling you out exactly, Ms. Weasley. Everyone is subject to a behavioural exam before they can pass the Academy. However, I think you know that you have a track record of being a bit impulsive and of not listening to your superiors. I specifically had Auror Malfoy administer this test because,” and here, Kingsley grins apologetically, “he’s good at pushing other people’s buttons. He’s also good at getting people in line when he feels it is necessary or testing their limits. He’s even good at getting them to see the bigger picture if he feels like it. Best person I have on the field for these kinds of things.”
“Ugh,” Ron moans. “Can we stop praising Malfoy?”
Kingsley only rolls his eyes at the redhead before continuing, “Well, you haven’t hexed me yet, Ms. Weasley. I think this is a good sign. I’ll have you both report back to me in a few hours after you’ve rested. I’m sure you’ve both had quite the adventure.”
He waves them off but Ron is not done with Kingsley yet. He is saying something about the appropriateness of Malfoy’s actions but Ginny does not care - she is out the door. She does not get very far before Draco stops her though. “Hey, are you okay?” he says, leaning in, crowding her.
She tries to move back but there’s a wall behind her and he follows, his breath tickling her ear. “You were having me on,” she accuses, her voice breaking, her face averted.
“Well, yes, that was my assignment. You did very well near the end. I would try to irritate you but you seemed amused by me. It didn’t matter really - halfway through, I was satisfied with your performance.”
“Halfway through?” she flushes angrily. “Why did we keep going then?” She looks at him finally. She hopes she is glaring some fierce daggers at him.
She realizes too late that she has just given him an opportunity to probe her mind. She is lost in his rainstorm eyes before he pull back and blinks, breaking the connection.
“You believed what your brother said about me trying to seduce you?” he asks, incredulously. He stares at her for a long moment and she feels like she is on the edge of abyss, waiting for him to admit it, waiting for him to tell her that it was all part of a ruse. Instead, he grins boyishly at her. “I can’t believe you thought I was being charming. You must have it worse for me than I thought.”
He pulls her close and says, “If it had been my choice, you wouldn’t have found the Root of Happiness until we circled the entire Equator. But I suppose I can’t complain. It was a real adventure,” he laughs. “I don’t think I’ve enjoyed myself that much in a while.”
Ginny looks into his eyes. Though she is no Legilimens, she thinks she can read the sincerity in them. “You kept me there so you could spend time with me,” she says a bit in awe.
Draco flushes a little and Ginny can’t help but smile cheekily at him now that she knows she can affect him too. He leans in and says while nose-to-nose to her, “You have good intuition, Ginny Weasley. And by Merlin, you never give up. That’s what I like about you. As I’ve said, you’re going to be a great Auror.”
Ginny’s smile softens and she tilts her head up to press a chaste kiss to the side of his mouth. He is solid and real under her lips and it makes her feel calm and at peace as though the last piece of a puzzle that she didn’t even know was missing has fallen into place.
“What do you say we grab a quick bite before we have to be back here again?” he says pleasantly as he brings up a hand to move his hair out of his eyes. She stops him from doing it and he smirks at her. She finds herself inexplicably glad that not all of his conceit is just pretence. It is part of who he is and she likes it.
“Actually,” Ginny says as she smirks back at him and picks up the compass that is still hanging around her neck. She holds it up between them. “I have a better idea. What do you think about going…”
“East,” they say at the same time as their hands lock together over the compass.
***the beginning***
A/N: First, I must thank my wonderful wonderful beta, 7veilsphaedra, for putting up with me. I know it may seem impossible given the length of the fic but this was written very quickly and sporadically. She has read this more times than I have (no, really, you did) and has given lots of wonderful suggestions that I told her in no uncertain terms that I did not have time to include. I stole her idea for using Gilderoy Lockhart’s face for Swashy Vane. (Btw, I actually got the name by entering “Draco Malfoy” into a pirate name generator - who would’ve thought, huh?) Anyway, thanks so much! Other references include Homer’s Ulysses, Samuel Johnson’s Rasselas (my deepest apologies for what I did to his Happy Valley), Anna Akhmatova’s The Grey-Eyed King and Monty Python (“It’s just a flesh wound!”). Wikipedia has been a great tool as well!
Secondly, thanks so much for reading! All plot holes and thin literary devices are the product of working on auto-pilot and my own limitations. I was sad that I could only give my conquistador one line. And don’t you think Christmas elves escaping to the Equator would have been hilarious? Maybe D/G can run into them the other way around. :)
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ORIGINAL REQUEST:
What would you like to receive? An adventure would be very awesome. Something unexpected -- can be crazy, can be an action fest, emo-rollercoaster, I'll take it all! As long as there's some excitement :D
The tone/mood of the fic: Gimme some mystery!
An element/line of dialogue/object you would like in your fic: I'd like to see Draco make a heart-shape with his fingers <- that counts, right?
Preferred rating of the the fic you want: Any
Canon or AU? Either!
Deal Breakers (what don't you want?): No pre-existing relationship. Gonna make you sweat for this one!