Traitoress

Bloody Defeat

"Did Potter know you cheated on him?" Draco asked, his mischievous smile only serving to annoy Ginny even more.

"No, he doesn’t," she hissed, and turned her back on him.

Neither of them had mentioned the drunken kiss the night before since that morning, and neither was planning on bringing it up.

"What do you think it would do to him if he found out about it now?" Draco continued, a glint in his eyes that succeeded in winding Ginny past common sense.

She drew her wand and said menacingly, "Merlin help me, Malfoy, I’m about this close to hexing you ‘til you don’t know which way’s up and which is down."

He laughed, and she noticed how much more relaxed he was out of the Manor, and allowed herself to smile a little.

"Would he cry, do you reckon?"

"For Christ’s sake!" she cried and aimed a hex at him. He ducked and almost collapsed with laughter onto the pavement of Diagon Alley.

She left him trailing behind and walked into the Apothecary, wand still out. "Mr Forbes," she called out and paced slowly up to the till.

A curse shattered a glass of dragon’s blood above her head and it stained her black robes. Another curse cut across her arm, opening up a deep cut that began to bleed as well. She ducked and began to shoot curses in the general direction of the attacker.

Draco entered the shop, still laughing slightly, only to be thrown off balance by the shield charm Ginny had cast deflecting a hex. He drew his wand and ran towards where she was crouching, clutching her arm.

"What’s going - Flaming Heck!" he exclaimed as he saw her bloodstained robes.

"It’s nothing, Draco, it’s dragon blood," she explained, not bothering to mention the wound on her arm that had cut into the muscle and that she couldn’t move her hand without a crippling pain seizing her.

"You stay here and watch my back," he said, and began to move towards the back of the shop, the source of the curses.

"Okay…" she whispered, and struggled to keep herself steady as she brushed a hair out of her face with fingers stained with her own blood. She leant against the wall, her vision shaking, and slid down it, a dark stain of human and dragon blood painting it dark red.

Draco hadn’t noticed Ginny fading away and was almost in the back of the shop. No curses had been fired off since he entered the shop, so he entered the storeroom.

It smelt musty and was dark and chilly. Peering into the shadows, Draco couldn’t see anyone, but there was no way out.

"Petrificus Totalus!" Hermione Granger cried, leaping out from behind a barrel of dissected frog eyes, and Draco deflected it easily, sending the spell rebounding into a glass jar that shattered and showered her with shards of glass.

Harry and Ron leapt out of hiding as well, and, outnumbered, Draco shouted, "Back-up! BACK-UP!"

"You aren’t going to get any back-up," Ron sneered, and Draco finally recognised him.

"Weasley," he sneered. "Where’ve you been hiding out, then?"

"I could tell you, because you probably won’t live long enough to do anything with the information," Ron smirked.

"We Malfoys are notoriously tricky to kill."

"I’ll bear that in mind, scumbag."

"Mind, Weasley? You mean you have one?" while exchanging insults with the Golden Trio, Draco edged into position to see what was happening in the shop front. To his horror, he saw Ginny was lying unconscious in a pool of blood. He flicked his wand and several glass jars shattered across Harry, Ron and Hermione, and he immediately then aimed several spells at Ginny, to change her appearance. Her hair went black and although he couldn’t see it, her eyes had gone blue. Her face was stained in blood so it was difficult enough to recognise her without the quick changes Draco had made to her appearance.

The three Gryffindors had sheltered themselves from the glass and had now got their wands trained on him. He saw Ginny stirring in the front of the shop, and prayed she would wake up in time.

"Don’t bother fighting, Malfoy," Harry snarled. "It’s three against one."

Ginny pulled herself to her feet, looked around in a daze, picked up her wand and met Draco’s eyes. In an instant she understood she was to go for the ambush.

"Numbers don’t win a fight, Potter," Draco stated calmly. "Although I don’t remember you taking on anyone without your little crew for back-up."

Ginny crept closer to the room, biting her lip so hard she drew blood to keep herself quiet as she jolted her arm. Her vision was spinning again but she forced herself to stay awake.

"One curse, Malfoy, and we take you down, dead or alive," Harry growled.

"I hardly believe you’ll kill me, Potter," Draco drawled. "You obviously want me for some reason, and I’d be much more useful alive for that."

Ginny trained her wand on Harry’s chest.

Harry struggled for words for a minute, before coming out with "There’s no reason to leave you alive for any longer than necessary."

Hermione glared at Draco. "And there’s no ruling out torture."

"Did you say something, mudblood?" Draco asked. Ron let loose a stunning spell that Draco deflected easily.

"Where’s Ginny?" Hermione asked furiously, pushing a strand of hair out of her face.

Draco’s face was icy calm. "The blood traitor brat? No idea."

"We know you have her!" Ron roared. "Give me my sister back!"

"Is she the slutty one who looks a bit like you?" Draco shot at him.

Harry and Ron both shouted in anger but before they could curse him, a jet of light flew from the doorway and hit Harry in the chest. He was thrown backwards into a pile of wooden crates, while another hex immobilised Ron.

Hermione grabbed hold of the two boys, looked up at Ginny and frowned, and disapparated with a loud crack, leaving Draco standing alone in the room, while Ginny leant against the doorframe, her vision blurring and her arm aching in agony.

Her legs gave way and she felt Draco’s arms grab at her healthy arm as she fell.

"Get off…M’okay," she muttered, but it came out garbled and almost impossible to understand.

"Ginny, listen to me," his voice seemed to be coming from far away. "Where are you hurt? I can’t see through all the blood."

"My arm…my forearm," she whispered, but it came out incoherent and she tried again desperately. "My forearm…"

She felt his hands on her arm and a ripping noise as he murmured, "Oh, shit."

"Is it bad?" she managed to say, and caught sight of him holding strips of his shirt and folding them for a bandage.

"I won’t lie to you," he said, then paused for a minute. "It’s pretty crap."

"Shit," she croaked.

"Tergeo!" he used his wand to siphon off some of the dried blood, but the wound kept gushing. "We need a Healer," he admitted.

"No!" she said clearly. "We’re secret…no, job’s secret…Dark Lord’s secret…no he’s not…"she lost track of what she was saying, trailing into silence.

"Ginny, I’ve bandaged your arm, and I’ll get you to the hotel, just hold on, okay?"

"Hotel?" she asked, before losing her grip on consciousness and watching everything fade into black, hearing him repeat her name several times until that too faded away.