Of Daisies and Damages

Ginny was digging at the ground with such ferocity, one would think she had taken personal issue with it. The hole was now deep enough to engulf the daisy cutting she had intended it for, but it was a therapeutic action. These days you were jailed for hacking at rich, good-looking, famous wizards with a trowel.

Girls had spoken to her on the subject, gushing about how fantastic it was to have two gorgeous, rich men after her. As if all that it meant was getting to chose the one she preferred the look of, and from there it was just a matter of happily ever after. They didn’t understand that in reality there was no possible way to make a choice without facing consequences. Love was a torrid, messy affair as far as she was concerned; it was starting to hurt her. It was so much about the competition that she’d lost sight of all that was important. She was losing sight of all that she was.

And now they had come to her cottage, her sanctuary. For men that were supposed to love her, they didn’t seem to realise that they were behaving like complete and utter pricks.

“Gin-bug,” Harry called plaintively. She hated the nickname, even though he seemed to think it was for very special occasions.

“You can’t ignore me forever, Gin,” Draco added. Now he used her real name in the same way Harry used ‘Gin-bug’. It must be serious. “Although you can ignore him all you like.”

She was sweaty, dirty, and wearing her ratty gardening clothes. There was a great big tear in the back of one knee of her jeans and the white tank top showed every bit of grime. Usually she liked to be feeling pretty when she was forced to deal with her duelling lovers. At the very least she needed a pair of heels if Draco was around. She was beginning to think he had giant in him. With her feet bare, he towered over her, almost threatening, whereas Harry’s earnestness turned her stomach. Having gained her feet, she turned a withering glare on the two of them. “Fuck off.”

Harry frowned. Draco grinned.

This only infuriated her more. One would think that they were so diametrically opposed that a decision between them would be clear cut, but it had been infinitely difficult. They had such a range of traits between them. Draco would take her to nice places, but Harry was great with her family. Draco seemed to revel in the aggression and wickedness and mischief that spilled out of her so spasmodically, but being around Harry made her a better person. Harry wanted kids but didn’t know what to do with them. Malfoy was surprisingly excellent with children, but she wasn’t sure where he stood on that issue.

When she hadn’t been able to decide after weeks and weeks, when it was becoming unfair to them and painful to her, she had rebelled against the concept. Who said that she needed to pick one of them? She didn’t need either of them. Ginny had never needed a man to define her, to complete her, to make her days worthwhile. Until they grew up, she was ready to do without, and she had told them just that. It was a decision, wasn’t it?

Apparently, they didn’t think so.

“Would you just let me talk?” Harry demanded. He looked deeply unhappy, hating the confrontation. Draco was pacing, stalking, ready for an opening to dive into the fray.

“Would you please leave me alone?” she said through gritted teeth.

Her eyes flicked up to Draco’s but he was watching them with narrowed grey eyes, watching everything, seeing where he could get an advantage. He had no idea how sexy he was when he was scheming. She pushed the unbidden thought away. It was not helping.

“Let me talk,” Harry repeated, his great green eyes beguiling. “You want to hear what I have to say.”

She sat down on an old stone bench and raised her eyebrow, willing him to get it over with.

He sank before her on his knees, taking her hands. He raised one knee. Ginny felt like a weight had been dropped on her chest.

“Ginny,” he began, his voice shaking a little. “I know we haven’t always had the steadiest relationship, but I love you. I can hardly remember not loving you. We’re meant to be, Ginny. It would be an honour if you would be my wife.”

He reached into his robes and pulled out a small ring box, opening it, offering its contents to her. The ring was gold, a huge ruby augmented with several smaller stones to form a heart. Rubies and emeralds were wound alternatively into the band. It was hideous.

Draco was staring at it with unabashed horror. Without waiting for anything else to be said or done, he marched forward, seizing her knees, swinging her bodily to the side so that she was now facing him. He got to his knees also.

“You can’t be serious,” Ginny whispered, feeling faint. “What are you doing?”

“Upping the ante,” he replied innocently, flashing a wicked grin. She wasn’t sure if it was premeditated on his part to allude to poker. They had so many games of poker between them. There had probably been a lot of other people there, at some party or other. Ginny and Draco were masters of the game though and when all others folded they may as well have been alone. Draco would watch her with such focused, probing eyes. He sometimes even looked for tells. She’d run her fingers slowly around the rim of her glass, her toes up his ankle. She felt like the only thing in his universe sometimes. The cards were irrelevant. The game was irrelevant. They were competing on a different plane. They sat. They stared. They existed. But each was determined to do it better.

Luna had told her once that some people would consider a game of Texas Hold ‘em between Ginny and Draco to be their equivalent of foreplay. Ginny had scoffed and said that some people must have very tragic sex lives. But then the next game she played she realised how fast her heart was beating even as she sat languid and unconcerned before Draco’s hot stare.

She realised he was toying with another small box. He hesitated for a moment before giving it to her. Draco fidgeted as he did when he knew he was going to have to fold. Frowning and frightened, she opened the box. Inside was a ring of white gold. The cut diamond was iridescent, sparkling, playing the line perfectly between being captivating without being ostentatious. The setting for the stone was unusual, the gold delicately worked into twisting vines, leaves and thorns, three tiny roses sitting on either side of the stone.

“Draco, you don’t want to get married,” she murmured.

“No,” he admitted, “not really. At least, not yet. I just didn’t want Potter to get the advantage from flashing around promises.”

“That gives you a clear choice then,” Harry interrupted, pulling her back towards him, “because I want to marry you. As soon as I can. It’ll be great, Gin-bug. I don’t want anything more in the world than to come home to you every day.”

Draco scoffed. “If she doesn’t want either of us, what makes you think she’s going to be so keen on marriage?”

“If you think its so stupid what are you here for?” Harry replied. “You only went on a couple of dates-“

“You don’t need to go on dates to love someone,” he shot back. “Just like you don’t need a ring to prove it.”

“That still doesn’t explain what you’re doing here!”

Draco said nothing in return. Arguing with Harry turned to blows quickly, and she expected he wanted an answer out of her. Besides, Harry’s broken childhood meant that marriage and a baby was the pinnacle of familial bliss. Draco would never convince him of his theory that weddings were the least romantic thing ever. He viewed it as obligation, a shackle to keep you together once the love had run out. It was far more romantic as far as Draco was concerned to remain completely free. That way, you knew that someone was with you because of bonds of love rather than law.

He also had an hour’s worth of ranting prepared about how women perverted the wedding to the point where it was all about other people rather than the bride and groom. Draco had rants on many things.

Ginny stared at Harry, and then at the garish, hideous gold ring. Her mother might have liked it. She loved tacky, sickly sweet things like ruby hearts. But it was so beyond Ginny’s style, so far from her end of the spectrum, it hurt her to see it. She had never been the girl to whine about marriage or give him the impression that she intended to give up her career at his word. She would have been happy to live in sin with bastard children. All she had ever wanted was love, a promise. This man wanted her to spend the rest of her life with him. He didn’t love her, he didn’t even know her! He either thought she was the girl who wanted this ring, which hurt, or he wanted her to be the girl that matched this ring, which was nauseating.

She’d always known that they hadn’t clicked precisely. But she’d ignored it, because he was Harry Potter, and she loved him, and he would come to know her once he began spending as much time with her as he did Ron and Hermione. But that day had never come, and he still hated that she thrived on conflict, swore, smacked her brothers and worked as an Auror. He wanted her to be a cross between Hermione and her own mother, a domestic goddess full of high moral discipline.

As that ring winked and glittered at her grossly, she had to admit it. Harry did not understand her and never would. He did not want to, because he doubted he’d like what he saw in her fractured soul. He, like Ron, Hermione, and her mother would rather ignore that unpleasantness. Pretending was good enough.

There was never pretence with Draco. It was always raw, brutal honesty between them. It wasn’t sweet or tidy or magical. It was real.

Harry did not understand her. And Draco did. It was a very clear choice.

Her eyes were hot and vulnerable as she looked sideways at Draco. As if to emphasise the injustice of the universe, Draco seemed to understand everything in that one little look.

“Thank the gods,” he uttered, letting his head fall against her shoulder in his relief.

“What?” Harry demanded, looking panicked and confused as Ginny sagged, the weight of the decision off her shoulders. “She hasn’t said anything, Malfoy, get the hell off her!”

“Harry,” Ginny said, putting her hand out to calm him.

“Ginny.” Ever full of hope, he took the ring out of the box, reaching for her hand.

“Harry, I can’t marry you.” She snatched her hand away as if his skin was acid. The words were firm and strong. She could barely believe she’d said them. Draco’s warm, solid presence bolstered her strength. He, at least, would love her after she rejected the Boy Who Lived. He’d love her more for it.

“But… you can’t marry Malfoy! Anyway, why can’t you marry me? What does he have that I don’t?”

She put her hand over Draco’s mouth before he could make any lewd or cutting remarks at Harry’s expense. The look on his face suggested that she knew him too well. He pressed a kiss into her palm.

“Harry, we aren’t suited for each other, you know that.”

“You wouldn’t guess Ron and Hermione are suited to each other-“

“No, you wouldn’t, but they are. You’d think we’d be suited to each other, but we aren’t. Besides, I’m not marrying Draco.”

“Why the fuck not?” Draco demanded, shooting up to his feet.

“Because you don’t want to. Don’t you think that’s a good reason?”

“Yeah, but I’d rather marry you than not have you at all.”

“Give me a couple of days. Maybe a week. If you’re lucky, I’ll consider going out with you.”

“I was so sure the ring would win you over,” Harry said in a rueful, self-pitying tone.

“Perhaps if you beat her over the head with it, she might be brain damaged enough to accept you.”

“You’re just jealous because yours was smaller. I had the twins guarantee that she’d love it. Mrs Weasley cried when I showed it to her.”

“The twins?” Ginny said, incredulous. “Harry, they were having you on, that thing is… my lord, it hurts my eyes.”

“Look away, the nausea passes,” Draco comforted.

“But… why would they do that?” Harry cried, aghast.

“They probably took offence to the way you destroyed her self-esteem and pushed her into depression every time you decided you wanted a ‘break’,” Draco spat.

“What?” the two of them said, clueless.

“Er.” Draco was caught out by Ginny’s ignorance of this grudge. “You’re aware that Fred and George threaten anyone vaguely interested in you?”

“Yes.”

“They told me as long as I treated you better than Potter I could keep my testicles.”

“You’re lying,” Harry accused.

Ginny looked at him guiltily.

“You do kind of make me depressed and self-hating,” she admitted. The only reason Harry dared to come back to her so many times was because he always broke things off between them for her safety; first with the war, and then the Death Eaters had retaliated for years after Voldemort’s defeat. But Ginny was an Auror. It was her job to deal with the sort of danger he was protecting her from. Did he really think so little of her?

Mentally, Ginny shook herself. That train of thought lead nowhere pretty.

“How do I make you feel?” Draco asked curiously.

She sighed softly. He made her feel bright and sexy, at least on the surface. But beneath that, he reminded her she was broken, and at the same time he convinced her that this wasn’t the worst thing in the world.

“Wicked,” she whispered.

“I’m going to go,” Harry said a little crossly. “We’re still going to be friends, right?” He was snapping now, to regain her attention.

“Yeah.”

“Okay. And because we’re friends, we’re going to tell your mum together.”

“I suppose.”

“I’m going to go and return this hideous ring.”

“Don’t let us keep you,” Draco added.

There was a cross crack and a puff of smoke as he made his exit.

“I’m going to go too,” Draco said, standing up, drawing her up with him. “But… if you don’t want me, or you don’t want to marry me, or you wish I was just gone… whatever you decide to do with me, I want you to know that I love you. Completely, jealously, unconditionally... and a little maniacally. I love you.”

“Dear lord,” she groaned, smacking her head on his chest. “Do you have a book of these lines? ‘How to convince women to have their way with you’.”

“Your wicked way,” he corrected, sounding pleased, tucking a strand her hair behind her ear. “And that one was an original.”

“I didn’t mean wicked in an entirely good way.”

“You wouldn’t be you if you were entirely good. And then I wouldn’t love you. Not as much anyway.”

She snorted, pleased, crossing her arms and turning her back on him. “Go away then.”

“Okay. Ginny?” he added a little meekly.

“Hmm?” she turned again.

He was a few steps from the Apparition point, fidgeting. “Do you… do you feel anything for me? Even a little bit?”

His face was so vulnerable, so full of yearning. They were so rough with each other that she had forgotten what a step it was for him to declare himself like that to her. She had mocked him, yet there he was, open, hoping, unconditionally loving. She had to wonder in that moment what she had done to deserve him.

“Draco,” she gasped, surprised to find she was almost sobbing. How was she supposed to put into words what she felt? She couldn’t. She missed him, but she was not dependent. Sometimes she wished they could have stayed completely platonic but she enjoyed the tension that crackled between them. She loved him. But she hated him too. He was trouble. Being with him was asking for trouble, for hurt. And yet she got high on the way he smelled and the way his arms felt around her. She loved him.

“I’ll go,” he said hastily, storm clouds beginning behind his face. She ran and tackled him, landing with her knees thudding into the earth on either side of his waist. The kiss was scorching.

Once she climbed to her feet, he babbled something incoherent, still on his back.

“Suck it up, Malfoy,” she replied, smirking.

“Okay,” he whimpered. “May I pick you up next Friday then?”

“Yes,” she replied, swaggering back to her daisy cutting. Once she heard the crack of his Disapparition, she flung herself backwards onto the grass, laughing.