The Broken Ones [ENG]

“That I haven’t told anyone about. And I’m thinking I need to.”
“Are you pregnant?”
“Why do people always think I’m pregnant?” She blushed as she noticed people looking at her funny. A young woman with a friend on Brighton Pier, screaming about her not being pregnant – something to discuss at the dinner table. “I’m not. It would be easier than this.”
“Not necessarily. You being pregnant would cause a great scandal, both with Harry or with someone else.”

Skrattar Så grymt braaaa!! Jag loggade in och såg ögat lysa, tänkte: JAA HON HAR KANSKE UPPDATERAT BROKEN ONES! Och det hade du!! Glädjen när jag såg kapitel 7 - underbart. Jag såg att du tyckte att det var lite mycket dialog, men jag tyckte ändå att det behövdes. Älskar speciellt Ginnys och Hermiones konversation.
Längtar redan till nästa!!

Piggelinisen agneStina sanna1324567 emm!z

... jag fick nyss tårar i ögonen av era fina kommentarer. Jag känner mig tjatig när jag säger Tack hela tiden, men jag vet inte vad jag ska säga annars = ni är så fina och jag blir så glad!! ♥

ALLTSÅ ÅÅÅH VAD BRA DU ÄR

♥

Hej igen! Ni får hemskt gärna försöka hålla lite liv i tråden så att fler hittar hit, hehe. Förlåt om jag är jättejobbig!

Jag var borta på dop i helgen! Det var fint, men det tillsammans med att jag använde timmarna i bilen till att äta godis, lyssna på Pettson och Findus(...) och plugga, har gjort att skrivandet gått lite segt.

Men nu är det igång igen! Har ett långt och spännande stycke i slutet här, som jag skrivit en hel del på idag och ska fortsätta med imorgon, så det kommer, jag lovar

♥ *Kom hit gott folk, världens bästa fanfiction här!* ♥

Råkade precis hitta denna och sträckläste... Helt fantastiskt va bra du skriver!

Merci beaucoup :*

Jag har äntligen skrivit klart kapitel 8, så här får ni det! ♥


Chapter 8; Cry

--~flashback~--
No one had ever walked past Malfoy Manor without thinking, “Here lives rich and wealthy people.” It was almost as if the manor had been built for that sole purpose. To wake jealousy. Wake respect.

Draco Malfoy spent his childhood getting lost. He got lost in the endless corridors, never knowing which one of the twenty-eight abandoned rooms he walked into. He got lost in the two square kilometer big garden, an endless maze of trees and flower gardens. The old gardener, William, taught him the names of every flower that grew there, and he forgot the names as soon as he’d learned them. There were only three places he always knew how to find – his swing, his room and the kitchen. If their cooker was in a good mood that day, willing to sneak him an ice cream or let him taste the cake batter, three places were also good enough for the young boy.
Because every moment he spent in a room with his father was a moment filled with fear and tension.
An architect would’ve looked at the blinding white and stunningly impressive manor, and said that this was a piece of art.
Draco Malfoy looked upon the house and thought that this was the scariest place in the world.

It was night. He knew that much. He should be sleeping. He knew that too.
But Draco could hear his mother and father downstairs, the lather of them screaming at his mother, the ugly words the boy learned more of every other night. He could hear his mother crying.
And it’s so hard to fall asleep to the sound of your mother’s panicked cries.
It’s so hard.

Many miles from Malfoy Manor, in a village called Ottery St. Catchpole, slept a four year old girl with flaming red hair in her bed. The bed was significantly smaller than Draco’s, but fit Ginny well enough. It felt safe, sleeping in a narrow bed with odd blankets and pillows everywhere. She had spent the day playing with her brothers, playing pranks on Percy and Ron, the most sensitive targets. She had not felt alone for a second throughout the day. She knew every inch of her house and found her way through the garden without trouble. She had never heard her father scream at her mother, knew they loved each other dearly, and knew she was loved by them both. She rarely had nightmares, but if she did, she went over to one of her brothers and shared a bed with them.
Ginny Weasley had never fallen asleep to the sound of her mother’s panicked cries.
--~end of flashback~--

The signal from her two-way mirror felt like someone next to her using a Sonorus charm. It woke Ginny Weasley up from her sleep, and it caused her to tip her glass of water over in her sleep-walking search for it. A loud bang and a crash when the glass splintered was heard.
“Hello?” She barely recognized her own voice.
“Ginny!” Hermione was at the other end, sounding strongly affected by either caffeine or some energy-boosting spell. “I remembered something. Something important.”
“What time is it? I was asleep…”
“It’s two in the morning, I think. I needed to call you about this, I can’t believe I didn’t remember it…”
“What is it?” It felt like a force was pressing down her eyelids, and she used every last bit of willpower to keep them open, not letting herself go back to sleep before hearing Hermione out.
“About Draco and Astoria. They’ve been married, for three years.”
“I know. You said it before. They share the same last name, it’s not that hard…”
“Do you realize what this means, Ginny?”
“It’s two in the morning and I was sleeping…”
“They have to get a divorce. Which is pretty unusual in the Wizarding World, and if our theory about their relationship is true… “She paused for a moment. “I have a distinct feeling it will be a bit problematic to, ehm, have both parts sign that paper.”
“Shit.”
“We need to visit Astoria and talk to her. Soon.” The call ended. Ginny would’ve reflected over what Hermione had reminded her, but the exhaustion had won before she’d even let go of the two-way mirror.

~--
Draco’s first impression of the psychologist was that he looked remarkably normal. Short brown hair, blue eyes, neither short nor tall, neither skinny nor fat. Normal clothes. Everything about him radiated normal.
“Hello, Draco. My name is Bob. How are you?”
“I just got out of a hospital bed after harming myself so badly I became unconscious. What do you think?” He couldn’t stop the sarcasm. Merlin’s beard, he really needed to stop the sarcasm. But Bob only laughed.
“At least you’re not lacking a sense of humour. That’s great, Draco.” Bob dragged his hand to his almost non-existent beard. “What do you want to talk about?”
“What do you want me to talk about, what am I here to talk about? I didn’t come here by choice.”
“You can always apparate out of the room, I can’t force you to stay. But you’re still here, so there must be something.”
“I want answers.” Draco made his voice as clear and demanding as he possibly could.
“Answers?”
“They said you knew how to kill the monsters.”
“Ah. The monsters. I see.”
“And please don’t give me some big fat book to read that’s supposed to give me all the answers. They never do, they just give me headaches.”
“Fair enough.” The psychologist twinned his fingers together, still smiling at him. Draco felt almost annoyed by his cheerfulness. “You think of this as monsters. May I ask you why?”
“They must be, it’s the only possible explanation.” He was repeating what he’d told Ginny the day before. “Creatures who attack your brain through some sort of advanced legilimency and send out evil thoughts that make you crazy. Am I getting warm?” He asked, but Bob only laughed.
“No. I will tell you about something called anxiety, and something called mental illnesses. But first, I must know a few things about you. I’m forbidden by law to discuss my clients outside this room, so I promise you that you can tell me everything. So… do you think you could tell me about your childhood?”


Draco only managed to talk for a few minutes before he started crying. He wasn’t used to talk about this, wasn’t used to talk about feelings at all.
But there was something about Bob, something about the aura in this room that made talking feel so right.
He didn’t notice when his 45 minutes long appointment was over, and Bob didn’t remind him.

~---

Ginny Weasley had just bought her first own apartment. It felt ridiculously overwhelming.
From now on she had her own 2-bed apartment. An apartment to which she owned the only set of keys. An apartment she could furnish and decorate for only her own taste and opinion. An apartment she would be the only one living in. She had never lived by herself before.
The apartment was fantastic, too good to be true, and she knew she was lucky to have found one so quickly. It would be great, once she moved all of her stuff here and got used to living alone, for real this time.
It would be great. So why couldn’t she stop herself from crying?

She sat on the living room floor, nothing but empty space around her, and she rocked herself back and forth, crying.
She hadn’t cried since her conversation with George that day, but now she was.
She felt lonely, lonelier than ever. Media still hunted her for interviews day and night, people at the streets and at work still looked at her funny. Harry hadn’t spoken to her for a week, and to add up on all this, she had taken on the responsibility for saving a man she had no real reason to save. In two hours, she would meet up with Hermione on a mission to talk to a possible psychopath.

What had even happened to her life?
--~--


“Okay, Hermione, let me just get this straight. We’re just going to knock on her… their… apartment door and confront her? With what?”
“I talked to her at work and said I’d like to come over for afternoon tea someday. We’re practically invited, Ginny!”
“So we’re going to enter the apartment and say what? ‘Hi Astoria, are you abusing your husband like the rumours say?’” Hermione stopped abruptly at Ginny’s remark, looking embarrassed.
“I haven’t thought about that.”
“I believe that’s the first time in my life I’ve heard you say those words.”
“There’s a first time for everything”, Hermione muttered. “We’ll improvise.”

Draco and Astoria Malfoy lived in one of the fancier areas London had to offer. Their apartment was located at the sixth floor of a grand, marble white eight-storey building, with what must probably have been a breath-taking view over the Thames from their balcony. It all reminded her a little of what Harry had told her about the Malfoy Manor. Had Draco perhaps wanted it to look like home?
“I would’ve considered myself quite lucky if I lived here”, said Hermione and bent down to take a closer look at the flowers, professionally composed in the flowerbed. “I guess the outside says very little about the inside. It’s a good disguise.”
“Are you sure Astoria’s home?” Ginny shifted her weight from foot to foot, feeling both nervous and restless. She wanted nothing else but to get this over with, even if she had trouble comprehending what ‘this’ was.
“She said she’d be.” Hermione stood straight again. “You don’t need a code or a key to enter the lobby, Astoria said. Let’s go.”
The friends entered the lobby together, neither of them knowing about the chaos that was about to happen. Ginny took the stairs running, always applying her quidditch player habits onto the real world, and Hermione followed her in a softer pace.

“Hermione.” Astoria opened the door in a rapid motion, and Ginny suddenly felt how little she had prepared herself to stare right into the light green eyes of Draco’s wife. “And… Ginny Weasley.”
“I brought a friend. I hope that’s okay.” Hermione smiled politely. “Can we come inside? I brought cookies.” Astoria stepped back to let them enter the apartment, and Ginny reflected over how beautiful she was. Tall and slender, with gorgeous features and golden hair nearly reaching her navel. She felt self-conscious about her own appearance in Astoria’s company, about her average length and her muscular rather than slim body, about the red hair that was in desperate need of a wash. Astoria glowed of confidence, and she felt herself shrink.
“Totally. Make yourself at home in the living room and I’ll make some tea.” She strutted off to the kitchen, and Ginny tried her best not to let her mind wander away to Draco, to the fact that this was Draco’s apartment, as she sat down in the white leather sofa. Everything was white in this apartment, different shades of the clean and pedantic colour. Was it even possible to eat chocolate here? She felt naked and exposed in her red and blue clothes, like she wasn’t meant to be here. She probably wasn’t meant to be here. She could understand why Draco seemed so unwilling to go back to living here, almost even understand why he preferred the cold and dirty streets over this. She hated it.
“Tea.” Astoria was back, now with a teapot and cups in the same flowered pattern. She put it all down at the sofa table, and sat down in an armchair across from her guests.
“My cookies”, said Hermione quickly, and pulled a plastic container out of her handbag. “Home-made, yesterday night. I had to put a charm on the batter to stop Ron from eating it all, but it shouldn’t have any effect on the cookies. I think”, she added, seeing Astoria’s and Ginny’s doubtful looks.
“It’s fine. I’m on a diet anyway”, said Astoria and touched her perfectly flat stomach.
“I just ate”, said Ginny quietly, and hoped her stomach wasn’t going to admit the truth anytime soon. “But I’m sure they’re great, Mione.”
“Okay, I’ll just eat them all myself, then.” Hermione reached for a cookie and bit in it, hiding her grimace as she chewed. “So, Astoria, how’s it going with your law about…what was it… hippogriff care?”
“Fine, just fine. And I know you’ve had great success with your laws about house elves.”
“Stop it.” Hermione blushed. “I mean, they’re talking about bringing them into the law book, but it’s not decided for sure yet.”
“Have you written an article about these laws yet, Ginny?”
“Eh, it’s not my subject. I write about quidditch”, answered Ginny.
“Of course you do.” Astoria leaned back, a pleased smile on her face. “Of course.”
Ginny felt her heartbeat speed up as the tension rose. This woman was unpleasant, unnerving. She touched her wand in her pocket, making sure it was close at hand.
“I bet your laws will get accepted much faster than mine”, said Hermione in a quick attempt to ease the tension.
“Oh, don’t degrade yourself.” The way too sweet, way too polite smile, appeared again. The tension in the room kept on rising, and Hermione nudged Ginny in the side, as if she was hinting something. Ginny ignored it, keeping her focus on Astoria’s every move, every expression.

The conversation between Astoria and Hermione kept on going for a while, Ginny never really managing to get involved. She was thinking about Draco, thinking about how this was his home too, thinking about how this was his sofa and his bookshelf and his floors. Thinking about the matter in which she was here. Thinking about what she had to do, and the fact that she still didn’t know how.
It appeared she didn’t have to bring it up.
“Where is your husband?” asked Hermione, in a way that sounded casual but had probably been rehearsed. “Draco? I was looking forward to meeting him, I thought he would be here.”
“He’s not home.” Just like that, the sweet and polite smile had disappeared. “Not right now.” Astoria’s tone was now colder, shorter.
“Will he be home anytime soon?”
“You can stop this.” Astoria stood up, looking at Hermione. “I’m not buying it. I know you’re not here because you think I’m nice to talk to.” She looked at Ginny. “And I know what you’re doing. I know what you two are doing.”
“And I know what you’re doing”, said Ginny. “I’m no fool. I’ve read about abusive relationships. And I think I understand.”
“You. Don’t. Understand. A. Thing.” She was whispering the words, in a way that reminded Ginny way too much about how Lord Voldemort had talked. It was the way evil people talked.
After that, everything accelerated and went too fast. Ginny wouldn’t even remember it when trying to tell people about it later.

Astoria grabbed her wand. Hermione and Ginny both did the same. Neither of them remembered which spells were cast, or who cast them, not until the last one.
“Sectumsempra!” They hadn’t heard this spell in years before Astoria used it.
It was the worst pain Ginny had ever experienced, before everything went black.
_______________________________________________
There you go! :* Säger som förra gången, berätta gärna vad som var bäst/sämst, om någon karaktär är extra bra, någon detalj, något citat. Det är verkligen SÅ roligt att få höra vad ni gillar!

Ni som gör reklam för den här fanfictionen, ni är så fina ♥ Och alla som läser; KRAM PÅ ER NI ÄR BÄST

Vet du om att det där var underbart? ♥

A.M.A.Z.I.N.G

??? VARFÖR ÄR DU SÅ BRA

Ärligt. Jag blir alltid så glad när du uppdaterar för det du skriver är alltid så bra.
Och jag måste bara säga att Astoria är så perfekt här!! Jag tycker att du har skrivit henne på ett underbart sätt, verkligen.
Och resten av kapitlet var ju inte sämre kan jag tala om, helt fantastiskt!!