To Find What is Lost

Chapter 42: History

...Emmi says sorry for not posting so long and for writing such short chapters... She's too ashamed to get out from under her duvet, so instead it's me, Definitelynotemmi :)   

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Will's POV:  "Nico!" Will was desperate, he could hear yells, screams, fighting, and yet he was lost. He couldn't help his boyfriend. He was helpless.

"Nico, where are you!" it was almost a sob as he scrambled over yet another pile of junk, scattering everything recklessly.

"You're going to kill yourself!" Ginny reproached from behind him, "these things are unstable!"

"I don't care!"

"You should!"

She glowered as a silver tea pot almost caught her on the head. "You can't help your boyfriend if you're concussed on the floor."

She was right of course, but Will didn't have time for sense.

"I need to find him!"

Ginny could see the boy was terrified and desperate, and she tried belatedly to calm her harsh tone, "I know, I know, I need to find Draco too, but we can't just run around like mad people. If we wait for a minute to look around, maybe we can spot something."

Will swallowed, "fine."

Ginny took the lead as they climbed to the top of a tall hill. They stood for ten seconds or so, too long, far too long. Every second that slipped by Nico could be injured and in need somewhere where Will couldn't get to him.

"There!"

And they were racing to the site, the horror. Will wanted to scream in terror for the love of his life; he had only looked at the scene for a fraction of a second but it was plastered to the backs of his eyes. The metal, a cage, like evil snakes, a trap, Nico bound and writhing.

Ginny's POV: Ginny was racing now, tearing her legs off as she ran. She was deathly pale, and the same image was behind her own tawny eye lids. The snakes, the wires, her love standing next to that cold lady. Tears. She didn't know how she could see from so far away, but she could. She saw his tears.

In a millisecond the realisations of a million lifetimes flashed before her consciousness. She felt in her heart what had happened. She couldn't know- and yet...

Draco had hinted. He cried when he thought she was gone. He talked in his sleep. He was gone for days at a time.

It was a cruel repetition of history, everything was there. She could remember this so clearly it burned, every feeling, every day she wished with a passion that she could know where Draco had gone, every time she begged to know why he was so sickly. Their sixth year, before all this horror came for them. Before she knew the truth.

How many times Ginny wished he had just told her, just trusted her enough to let her help, but of course that wasn't Draco. Draco would hide and suffer in silence if he thought it would protect those he loved.

"Idiot," she whispered, wiping away a tear. "Idiot."

Ginny knew what Malfoy was like, she knew the signs, how could she not have been able to tell? How could she never have noticed? She should have done something. She knew his past, she knew what he had and was still going through and yet she had done nothing when she saw he was struggling.

It had taken weeks after the war ended to find and console Draco, to convince him he wasn't a monster; after all that she couldn't let him destroy himself.

If anything happened, if this was unforgivable, she would blame herself forever.

What had he done? What on earth had that boy done?