Finding Color

Part Eight

Once the darkness was destroyed, Draco saw a flash of light as the cleaned magic left to become something wonderful.

Lucius Malfoy entered his son's room just when the fire encompassing his wife's sister killed her. Draco was sitting up in bed, looking at the burned husk that had been his Aunt with eyes that couldn't see.

"Draco?" Lucius asked.

"She was going to hurt Ginny," Draco whispered as tears gathered in his eyes and began to wet the gauze covering his face. "I've never killed anyone before," Draco added when his father didn't say anything.

"You cleaned up the magic," Ginny's soft voice said from where she was lying at his side. "Fire kills, but it also cleans and renews. Her magic can go to someone else who needs it now, rather than continuing to create something awful." Ginny slowly sat up and Draco felt her open her eyes. "You didn't kill her, you saved her."

Draco felt her hands at his head as she slowly began to unwind the bandage covering his eyes.

Draco didn't know why he felt expectant, but as one loop of gauze came off and the blackness didn't move he felt his heart drop.

The second loop of bandage coming off made his eyes twitch in his head, as if they should be seeing something, but weren't, and were confused by the mixed signals.

The third and last loop came off and Ginny's hands gently covered his eyes.

"Draco, look at me," she said softly.

"I can't, Ginny," he whispered. "You tried, but nothing can give me my sight back."

"How about a kiss? Would that work?" she said cheekily.

He grumbled at her. "This isn't a fairy tale."

"Trust me," Ginny giggled. She bent forward and touched her lips to his in a chaste kiss that was made all the more sweet by the fact that Draco was supposed to be dead right now.

He expected to feel her magic coursing into him at the contact, but Ginny was still drained and exhausted. All she sent down their newly established link was her love.

Her hands slowly moved from his eyes, caressing down his cheeks and neck until she left them resting comfortably on his shoulders.

Draco opened his eyes and the first color he saw was red.

Red: the brilliant, wonderful, lovely color of her hair.

Draco decided right then that he loved the color red.

They pulled away and Draco studied Ginny just as she studied him. Her eyes were the same milky shade of white with the black pupil in the center that appeared whenever she was around him. Her skin was still magically bleached white too. But her hair was back to its vibrant red shade that he detested in her brothers but loved so much on her. All the magical bleach had been wiped out when she drained her magic to heal him.

She was beautiful and she was his.

Ginny studied Draco too. He didn't look any different from her memories, his hair was still pale blond, his skin still pale peach, but she hesitated to look at his eyes for fear of what she would see.

She found the courage somewhere and looked up at his eyes where a great big, bleeding red slash had been the last time she was able to see.

There was no scar and no disfigurement. His flesh was healed. It was his eyes, though, that made Ginny gasp in wonder.

Before this disaster his eyes had been a deep blue-gray sort of color, but all that was gone now. Her attempt to restore his eyes had failed in such a way that the silvery color of his eyes had taken over even the white until all that was left were two mercury pools gently looking at her.