Title: The Protagonists
Chapter: The Warning
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: The Bread will mold, Bananas can rot, The Plot is mine, The Characters not.
Summary: More complications, and Ginny begins to understand what might be happening to her. The Dream Team approaches their destination.
A/N Mostly a suspension-builder for next chapter. More tension, more revelations to be expressed in next chapter. (Which will be absurdly long compared to this one.)
***
The doorknob turned and Narcissa laid her hands flat against the mirror, pushing slightly. There was a sudden pull, as if she had touched a portkey, and she was engulfed in darkness. Letting out a mute sigh, Narcissa smiled. Her mouth moved.
What the hell? She wasn't supposed to be anything-smiling in this world should be no more then a thought. And yet she had felt her facial muscles move. She flexed her fingers to verify that she had substance, and more importantly, a body. Slowly, she opened her eyes.
She was lying crumpled on a hardwood floor at the foot of a bed. The bed, unlike hers at the Manor, was red. What's more, it was half the size she was used to and was bordered by maroon curtains and a brass headboard. Straightening, she turned toward the mirror opposite her.
Chocolate brown eyes blinked back at her from a pale, freckled face. Masses and masses of vermilion hair had been pinned up inexpertly with a thin twig and a wand. Her robes, rather than being made out of the finest silk, were obviously hand-me-downs and were patched with multicolored scraps of fabric near the hem. The right hand sleeve was rolled up to her elbow, but the left arm's covering draped uselessly four inches from her fingertips. Her nails were cut short and had no polish. She wore no make up. G.W. was picked out in fraying golden threads across the collar of the decomposing robe.
"Oh no." Narcissa murmured. "It wasn't supposed to go this far... How could it have gone? I just wanted to get away from Lucious. All she was supposed to get were bad dreams. Remnants of memories best forgotten and terribly realistic dreams blended with reality. Hopes and wishes forever crushed in his hand. Now she has to endure it, but not in dreams. This time, it's real. Those bruises-they were from Lucious! What a fool I am, to have brushed it aside. Oh, god... Poor girl... I never meant to! I never meant to, damn it!" She ranted, pounding her fists against the offending mirror.
"I saw her when I was looking for Draco with that scrying spell I found. She was so defiant! So full of life! And close-connected with Draco. I thought if I used her, she would serve so many purposes, all for the good. She would relieve me of my pain. Perhaps she would figure out what was happening and tell Albus what Lucious was doing to me. And perhaps she would teach Draco a lesson in the process.
"Please, don't let Draco become like Lucious. Let him learn, let him learn... Let him learn to love, don't bring another person like Lucious into the world. Don't let him be my Draco! Draco..." her voice trailed off in half-hysterical sobs. With one final burst of furious energy, she punched the mirror as hard as she could with Ginny's fist. The glass shattered and Narcissa fell into unconsciousness.
***
Ginny bolted awake screaming her lungs out. The Man With Beautiful Hands had been in her dream again, but this time she saw him as a person. And she felt the pain again. It hadn't stayed with her this time, unlike the library incident, but it had hurt enough in the dream. And what the man had done to her...
Dreams weren't supposed to be so real. Dreams weren't supposed to hurt. And dreams certainly weren't supposed to knock you unconscious to get to you. Ginny was honestly scared. It had started with the 'Protect Hogwarts from Evil Team' being founded, and it hadn't stopped yet. Despite her spontaneous fainting fits, she was getting very little sleep, and didn't have any appetite at all.
She turned to regard herself in the mirror, only to find it in pieces. The slivers of glass coated the floor. They varied in size from shards as big as your fist to fine silver powder. Bending, she scooped up a handful of the shattered mirror. She let her fingers open a fraction, and the glass-dust ran through the cracks, as if through a sieve. She caught the powder in her other hand, casting out the larger splinters.
Then, with a sudden motion, she flung the dust into the air. It sparkled eerily and she watched it, fascinated. 'Mirrors' she thought. 'Mirrors are the key.' Every time I fainted I was staring into a reflective surface. The first time had been the silver bracelet she wore on her wrist. She had glanced down on it and fainted. The second time had been Draco's eyes. This last time had, of course, been the mirror in front of her bed. That mirror had probably been the cause of the dreams that plagued her at night, too.
No matter. The mirror had been destroyed by the same force that utilized it now, and could haunt her no longer. A thought drifted innocently across the steady stream of her mind and was caught by the net of her ever-growing paranoia. Mirrors had prevented death-by-basilisk in her first year. Now they were killing her. Mirrors, Ginny thought wryly, were as fickle as people.
***
Ron had discovered a new and fascinating sport: Annoying Hermione. One point for an eye-roll, two for a glare, three for a moan, four for a shriek of aggravation, and five if she tried to physically hurt you. It was just as fun to play alone as it was when Harry was taking sport. Harry had quit early because Ron kept getting knocked off his broom by a furious Hermione. He was currently flying directly under his male best friend in case Ron scored a five again. (Hermione had managed to find a duplicating spell in one of the heavy volumes she had dragged along. Tired of sharing a broom with her increasingly annoying best friends, she created herself a new broom. It was illegal to duplicate a copyrighted object, but she could always plead temporary insanity.)
A trip downward was inevitable as Ron was currently singing, "Little Bunny Foo-Foo/ Hopping through the forest/Scooping up the field mice/And Bopping them on the head./Then along came the Good Fairy,/And she said/'Little Bunny Foo-Foo,/I don't want to see you/Scooping up the field mice/and bopping them on the head./I'll give you three more chances/and then I'll turn you into a Goon...'"
Both times he sang the word 'bopping', he flew up and tugged a lock of Hermione's hair. Just as he reached the last line of the monotonous tune, ('And the moral of the story issssssssss... Hare today, Goon tomorrow!) Hermione wheeled and pulled out her wand. "Look, Ron, I appreciate your saving my life, but enough is more than enough. Stupefy."
Ron toppled off the broom, into Harry's waiting arms. The Boy-Who-Lived sighed, pleased. "You know," he said, "I think I'll side with you on this one. There are only so many times you can listen to 'The Itsy Bisty Spider' without going clinically insane. How does he even remember all those?"
Hermione shrugged. "I don't know, I don't want to know, and I'm just glad he's silent for once. We're one day away and I need to concentrate." She informed him matter-of-factly.
***
Narcissa stood up shakily. She blinked several times and turned. The mirror had been shattered. She might have thought that it was a direct result of breaking the mirror in Ginny's body, but Lucious could have been the cause of destruction as well. The second theory was just as plausible as the first since her room was in a state of utter disorder. A chair lie splintered in one corner of the room, the chandelier had been knocked from its chain and lay in shattered pieces on the floor. Her vast collections of perfumes were stinking up the bedside table where they had been destroyed by the aforementioned ravaged chair.
Vaguely, she noticed that she was bleeding from several different places where Lucious or the broken glass had cut her. Rapidly forming purple-and-green bruises bloomed on ninety percent of her body. Gingerly picking up a remnant from the mirror, Narcissa tilted it so she could look at herself.
Her makeup was ruined, her hair was matted and caked with blood, and the black eye was certainly not attractive. She had a lot of work to do-both on her room and on herself. And after that... Well, she doubted the young Ms. Weasley had managed to clean up every miniscule shard of glass. As long as one piece of the mirror was left, Narcissa could still contact the girl.
Still slightly dizzy, Mrs. Malfoy picked up her wand and pointed it toward the empty frame that had once contained her 'Magic Mirror'. "Reparo." She said.
***
Mirror, Mirror,
On the wall,
Who's the fairest
Of them all?
Mirror, Mirror,
Which holds my face
In it's reflecting light:
Show me beauty,
Show me glory,
Give me sight.
***
A/N Poor Narcissa... She's had a hard life... Are you supposed to cry at your own stories? ... I'm sorry if this gets a little too depressing at times. One more chapter and I'm done with the angst scenes, I promise!
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Draco and Ginny belong to JK Rowling, Bloomsbury, Scholastic, Warner Bros and various other corporations. They are being used here without permission and/or affiliation with the above. None of the authors listed here make any profit from these stories.