By Katherine
Christmas at the Weasly’s was always a jolly affair, and this year was no
Exception.
Ginny strung the last paper chain over the mantelpiece and stood back to
admire her work. Crookshanks entwined himself around her ankles, his warm body vibrating with each purr.
“Good work, little sis.”
Bill appeared behind her and clapped her on the back, and she grinned,
savouring this small bit of praise from her favourite brother.
“Ginny?” Mrs Weasly appeared at the door.
“Are you done in there? Come get some carrots for Christmas day.”
”But – “
”No buts now, Ginny. Now come on, quickly before nightfall.”
Ginny reluctantly put on her galoshes and slipped out the back door.
The wind was sharp and fierce – it stung at her pinched-red cheeks and
whipped and her clothes and hair.
She finally reached the shelter of the hedge surrounding the vegetable
patch.
Bending down, she scrabbled at the damp soil with her fingernails.
The soil was infuriating – in seconds her fingernails were as black as soot
and the knee of her tights were soaked through.
Grumbling furiously about the state of her tights under he breath, she swept
her fringe over her forehead, and put her head up.
RUSTLE, RUSTLE
Did she hear a rustling sound in the bush?
RUSTLE, RUSTLE.
Curiously, she dropped the carrot haphazardly into the bulky metal bucket
that stood beside the vegetable patch – it made a reverberating clanging noise-
and pulled herself off the wet soil to explore further.
RUSTLE, RUSTLE
She could swear it was coming from the top of the garden. She sprinted there
as fast as a girl could run in galoshes.
As she drew nearer, the rustling grew louder.
RUSTLE. RUSTLE, RUSTLE, RUSTLE, RUSTLE,
It was like it was trying to attract her attention!
She reached the other side of the garden and pulled back the bristles of the
hedge only to find…
Ginny gasped in surprise, hardly believing what she was seeing.
Draco Malfoy was standing there, in the middle of the drenched bushes.
He didn’t look good – droplets of water trickled off his blonde hair; his
sharp features were pinched ruby by the callous wind.
Draco Malfoy, Ginny could tell, had changed lots in the past months.
His eyes were encircled with shadows; mud was streaked with mud and –maybe
the most disturbing sight of all – was Draco Malfoy’s cheeks.
Hollowed, emaciated, gaunt.
Wasted away to the extent that the cheekbone was visible under his pale
skin, jutting out alarmingly.
They stared at each other for what seemed like a thousand years, and then
Ginny – with more harshness that she had intended in her voice, asked:
“What are you doing here?”
Malfoy seemed to still be reeling from shock.
“Does – doesn’t Hephzibah Smith live here?” He asked; his voice was hoarse
as if he had not spoken for an extended period of time.
“No.” Ginny said. “She lived in the house up our lane, and anyway, she died
years ago-“
She stopped at the look on Draco Malfoy’s face.
He looked like he was going to cry, shout and be sick all at once.
“Was she related to you?” Ginny asked, slightly circumspectly in case he
did cry, shout or be sick.
Malfoy looked at her contemptuously.
Ginny flushed with ire.
“Well, look, I’m only trying to help you!” She raged, stomping away from
the bushes in her galoshes and heading back to the house.
Malfoy seemed to be steeling himself to say something that was against all
his principles.
“Wait – do you know who lives in her house?”
He called at her back.
“Someone bought it.” She said, turning around slowly.
“I dunno who though.”
To her immense surprise, Draco Malfoy whimpered, and collapsed onto the
dew-sprinkled grass, his head in his ashen hands.
“What’s up with you?” Ginny asked him, walking briskly over and gazing
uncomfortably down at Malfoy.
“Oh, just everything.” He groaned. “You have no idea.”
“ I never will if you don’t tell me.” She said, her voice sounding uncanny
to Mrs Weasly’s.
“Alright.” Malfoy said, sitting up and brushing a blade of frosty grass off
his robes.
“I’ll tell you. But it’s not like you can help.”
“Try me.”
“It’s terrible.”
“Try me.”
“It all started when my Father was sent to Azkaban, as you all to well know.
”
His voice was beginning to regain a certain air of contempt, and Ginny shot
him a warning look.
“Anyway, my Mother was grief-stricken and eventually she died from grief.
Just last night.”
He said this in a colourless voice, as if he hadn’t come to terms with it
yet.
“Hephzibah was our only living relative. We can’t seem to find Bellatrix
Lestrange so we have no where to go, and my sisters-“
“HOLD ON!” Ginny yelled. “Two sisters?”
“Yes, Lycathia and Maria-lee.”
“I never knew you had sisters!”
“They are very young. Lycathia’s 10 and Maria-lee’s only 4…”
His voice trailed away, and faded.
Ginny Weasly had the uncomfortable feeling that she was being forced into a
situation that she was reluctant to be a part of…
No matter how changed The Malfoy’s were, she didn’t feel she could stick
them living in the burrow.
“Hang on!” She exclaimed. “What’s wrong with Malfoy Manor?”
“That old thing?” Malfoy snorted. “It’s been uninhabitable for the past
month. We’ve been living in Hogsmede. And you know…”
She shot a sympathetic glance at Ginny.
“The Malfoy Gringott’s account has suffered greatly since Father got locked
up.
And the fact that The Dark Lord is after us doesn’t really make things any
better…”
“Go to Dumbledore!” Ginny said, but it dawned on her that there was no
Dumbledore anymore…
No Dumbledore to make things better.
“We do have one relative left.” Malfoy said, abruptly breaking the mournful
silence.
“Who?” Ginny Asked.
“Seraphina Gywn.” He said.
“My Mother doesn’t really get on with her – she’s her Godmother, she lives
outside Hogsmede – well, she did last time I went to see her which was
nearly three years ago. I suppose there is a chance she might be still there.”
“Can you apparate?” Ginny asked.
“Yeah, but I don’t know exactly where – “
“It doesn’t matter! Just apparate somewhere outside Hogsmede and go from
there! Go on!”
And, twirling on the spot and disappearing with a pop and leaving behind a
stillness that seemed to ring through the frosty garden he was gone, leaving
behind him imprints of there his foot had tread the ice-encrusted grass and a
black jacket lying on the damp ground.
Ginny turned her back on the hedge and went back to pulling carrots out of
the muddy, saturated soil.
Chapter 2: Lycathia and Maria-Lee
Ginny peered through the net curtains of her bedroom, gazing 0ut over the
snow-covered garden.
It had been a week and a couple of days since Christmas, a week since she
had last found Draco Malfoy in the hedge outside her garden, homeless and
parentless.
Why did she feel a gnawing sensation in the pit of her stomach?
Why did she feel as if she was carrying a boulder around in her belly?
She decided, as she watched a gnome shaking frost from its ugly bald little
head, and decided that it was concern, and nothing else.
‘He does have two young sisters’
She thought, as she tore her eyes away from the window and descended the
stairs.
‘Its only natural to feel worried about little girls so young.’
‘Its not like I’m care about him.’
She assured herself all the way through dinner.
‘I just don’t want to see him getting hurt.’
After dinner she retreated back to her bedroom, and assumed staring out into
the garden.
After waiting and waiting for what seemed like hours and still not seeing a
flash of blond hair, a trace of a skeletal cheek, she decided to take matters
into her own hands.
A couple of minutes later, she trod out onto the snow-covered lawn,
galoshes-clad and wearing a lumpy, hand-knitted bobble hat (Hermione’s Christmas
present)
The garden had completely changed – the grass was adorned with ice and
crackled underfoot, snow fell of the branches of trees at odd moments, drenching
the unlucky soul that happened to be underneath that particular branch, and
both weeds and flowers alike were unrecognisable underneath a deep layer of
snow.
Smoke issuing from her mouth like eerie dragons, dancing and circling in the
harsh winter light, she hurried over to the exact spot were Malfoy had been,
marked by a snow-covered jacket lying on the ground.
Pushing back frosty bristles from the hedge, Ginny started to search within
the hedge.
A strong aroma of pinesap overpowered Ginny as she trudged in through the
strangely dry needle-strewn track.
After a while she heard a whimper, a cry coming from a short distance away.
Quickening her pace, she reached what looked like a nest made of twigs and
leaves.
Huddled in the middle of it, with some thin woollen blankets wrapped around
them, were two young girls, petrified with terror.
“You idiot!” A girl with dancing grey eyes and short light blonde hair
hissed to a girl who had a gleaming sheet of butter yellow blonde hair and big,
startling cornflower blue eyes, and who looked to have only come out of
infancy.
The little girl’s eyes brimmed with tears.
“I didn’t mean to!” she quavered, clutching a scruffy rag for comfort.
The girl with the dancing eyes stood up, and said, trying not to let her
voice tremble:
“Please, don’t hurt us!”
Ginny, who was wondering where she acquired this violent image from; when
she realised she was pointing her wand at them.
“Sorry.” She said, storing her wand in her back pocket, and kneeling down
beside them, a benevolent expression on her face.
“I’m not going to hurt you! Are you Lycathia and Maria-Lee Malfoy?” She
asked, suddenly recalling Malfoy’s words:
“They are very young. Lycathia’s 10 and Maria-lee’s only 4…”
The two sisters didn’t look persuaded, but the youngest (Ginny assumed that
this must be Maria-Lee) said, in a girlish, youthful voice:
“Do you know where our big brother is?”
“Yeah, I do! He’s in Hogsmede, looking for your Aunt Seraphina.”
Maria- lee looked mystified, until the girl with the dancing eyes.
(Lycathia, Ginny told herself)
Informed her: “That’s Aunt Gywn.”
Maria-Lee beamed, and squirmed with happiness. “Yey, Auntie Gywn!” She
cheered.
“But you have to wait for him to come back.”
Ginny said, a slight element of playfulness in her voice.
Almost as soon as the words were out, a she heard a ‘poof’ and Draco Malfoy
ran slightly maladroitly up to his sisters, who had clambered out of the
strange little nest and had clamped themselves to him almost the minute they had
glimpsed him.
Ginny grinning at his sister’s enthusiasm differentiated a change in his
appearance.
His gaunt cheeks were flushed.
His eyes were crinkled-up with happiness, so the shadows under his eyes were
barely visible.
His hair was tousled from where Maria-Lee had accidentally pulled it.
Altogether, he didn’t look so despondent and dejected anymore, he looked
like a brand-new Malfoy.
Waiting until his sisters were finished welcoming him, she asked: “Did you
find her?”
“Yes.” He panted, smoothing his hair back down again.
“She say’s she’d love to have us.”
“Well!” Ginny said, clapping her hands together.
“That’s it sorted then!” She grinned almost maniacally. “That’s you gone
then!”
“Yes.” Draco Malfoy said, shuffling his feet.
“That’s me gone.”
He turned to his sisters; they were tittering in thrill.
“ We’ll leave in the morning.” He said, patting them on the heads.
Ginny couldn’t really think of anything to say.
She was happy for them, she supposed, but she still couldn’t shake that
feeling of resent, bitterness and despondency.
“You left your coat!” She blurted out, and then ran across the snowy yard,
and in through the door, banging it behind her.
Of course when she got in she received the usual
‘Where have you been young lady?’ lecture from Mrs Weasly, but she insisted
she had been playing snowball fights in the front garden with Fred and
George.
She ascended the stairs to her room in an unpleasant mood.
She again resumed her post at the window overlooking the back garden, her
breath misting up the glass with her breath.
She saw a hand reach out from inside the hedge and grab the coat that had
been lying there, gathering so much snow that it was almost unrecognisable.
That night she tossed and tuned, she had a hot drink and a hot water bottle,
she read a good book and plumped up her pillows, she counted hippogriffs and
even ran around the room once or twice in a vain attempt to tire herself
out, but still she couldn’t get to sleep.
The next morning she saw the three sets of footprints leading out of the
hedge and she knew they were gone.
Gone without even saying goodbye.
3: Friends And Memories
It had been a year since she had helped Draco Malfoy and his sisters find a
home.
It seemed unreal now, a fantasy, a dream, like something out of someone else’ s life.
When she suffered from insomnia and couldn’t get to sleep, she thought of them.
Sweet Maria-Lee.
Feisty Lycathia.
The NICE Draco Malfoy, a side of him that had been undiscovered by her until
those couple of days in their company.
Oh, Those couple of blissful days in their company.
She did miss them, often she wondered where they were, how they were.
All those questions were answered one day in December, very near to
Christmas.
It was snowing heavily on the burrow; Ginny was eating her breakfast in the
Burrow’s warm kitchen when a handsome eagle owl swooped through the open
window and stood in front of Ginny, a letter clamped in it’s beak.
It was a Christmas card. An iridescent tree adorned the front cover, and
when Ginny opened it up she saw that a message, written in a blotchy scrawl, was
scratched on both sides of the card.
Dear Ginny,
It’s been a year since you last helped us escape, and I still cant say how
grateful I am.
I never said goodbye and I know I should have but I was too keyed up about
going to Aunt Gywn’s that I never thought. I’m sorry.
I’ll never forget how much you helped us – even if you didn’t really do
that much –no offence- but I would have never have remembered Aunt Gywn if you
hadn’t talked to me, and kept my feet on the ground.
I love it here at Aunt Gywn’s – she’s possibly the nicest adult I’ve ever
met, so I guess I haven’t met many.
If it wasn’t for you I would probably still have no home and my sisters
would still be in the nest made from leaves and sticks.
Aunt Gywn is the nicest adult I have ever met. Guess I haven’t met that
many.
As soon as father got out, he did some more muggle torturing so he’ll be in
Azkaban until he dies.
Why am I not bothered?
So it’s just me, Aunt Gywn. Lycathia and Maria-Lee, and that’s the way I
like it.
Gratefully,
DRACO Maria-Lee
Lycathia
