Remember, italicized is a flashback.
Standard fanfic disclaimer applies. Not my world, I just play in it.
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Chapter 7: Not the right shade of grey
She’d begun to resemble a frightened little rabbit, she thought to herself with a detached amusement as she sat in her dark apartment. She felt painfully numb, her face swollen and eyes bleary from tears, a dull ache in her head from the unintended use of magic as her emotions had kicked in, making her sensitive to light. She was sitting on the floor, well hidden in that corner by the sofa. She heard a key click in the lock of the front door, and had to contain her fear from exploding as she jumped involuntarily at the sound. If they have a key, it’s someone I know, she thought, and the tight grip of panic around her stomach relaxed slightly.
“You broke three windows in your parents’ house,” a voice in the dark called out. Ginny was startled when she recognized it as Harry’s. Of all those to send after her, he seemed an unlikely candidate. He was also a particularly dangerous candidate, as he seemed to have this knowing look whenever their eyes met – he quietly understood her, and he kept it to himself. If he’d willingly come after me, she thought, I must look worse than I imagined.
“It seems your powers have returned to their full strength. I guess that means you’ve fully recovered,” he said, sounding uncomfortable and awkward, as he attempted to make conversation as he wandered slowly in the dark. She heard a thump and a muttered curse, before a faint light illuminated the room as he used his wand to search for her.
“Yes. My body healed, my powers healed… that seems to be all that anyone cares about,” her ragged voice cut through the quiet room like a jagged hacksaw. Harry spotted her and closed the distance between where he stood and where she was crouched, kneeling down on the floor in front of her.
“They all seem to forget that your heart could use a little bit of healing too, eh, Gin?” he prodded gently. She felt a fresh batch of tears well up behind her eyes, and blinked rapidly to keep them at bay – but they were tears of relief more than anything else – relief that the person sitting in front of her hadn’t come to fight with her, lecture her or point her in a direction she wasn’t ready to go in quite yet.
“Harry, who am I?” she asked, a painfully perplexed expression on her face. Harry’s eyes widened in fear as he absorbed her question, and he sat gaping at her for a moment.
“What do you mean, Ginny?” he asked.
“Who am I?” she sniffed, looking at him blankly. “Who have I become? I’m sitting here, crying in the dark, hidden corner of my apartment because I’m too afraid to sit out in the open! I’m a paranoid, self-pitying pathetic mess, and I don’t know how I got this way.”
“What are you afraid of, Ginny?” Harry asked, his gaze steady. A tear slipped down her face, and sniffed slightly, and used her sleeve to wipe her face.
“I don’t know. People, their questions, the way they look at me now. God, this isn’t who I am! I’m not supposed to break down like this, Harry! I was the one they would send in when some crusty old self-important politician was being difficult and needed to be brought down a few pegs – either through my charm or through verbal intimidation. I faced off with notorious Dark Wizards who’d escaped conviction and had risen to powerful positions, using their social power to block stricter Dark Arts laws. I’ve been threatened, attacked, almost killed…I was never afraid of any of it; for years I lived for it…until Draco, and I learned how ridiculous I was being. And here I am, afraid of my own shadow!”
”You were quite the scrappy little fighter,” Harry said fondly. “But you almost died, Ginny. It makes you question things, makes you rethink things about your life, about who you are.”
“Did I?” she asked, with a far-off look in her eyes. “Did I almost die? I remember so little from that day.”
Harry shifted uncomfortably in front of her, but she ignored him and continued to speak, as if he wasn’t even there.
“There was this one morning that I can never forget, because it was one of the most poignant moments of my life. It was the Sunday morning of the first weekend that we were able to spend together – the entire weekend, without any interruptions. I had forgotten to close the bedroom window and shut the blinds the night before, and the room was filled with sunlight as soon as the sun began to rise. You know the way that sunlight looks in the morning? It seems brighter or cleaner than it does any other time during the day. It was filtering into the room, bright to the point of almost blinding us, and the breeze coming the window had that scent that the air always gets around the beginning of spring. We were lying there together, both of us pretending to be asleep so that we could stay like that as long as possible, not caring about anything other than the rhythm of the other’s breathing. Nothing else mattered in the world, because there was nothing else in the world, just the two of us and the way it felt to be together, warm and soft and complete.”
“They say that when you are dying, your life is supposed to flash before your eyes. You’re supposed to recall precious moments in your life, the kind of memories that will give you strength to carry on through whatever awaits you after your life slips away. I always knew that the memory of that morning would be the one that I would hold closest to me, the one I would call upon, if I ever came close to death. It is the one moment in my life I wanted to think about in the last seconds before I died.”
“Ginny…” Harry trailed off, at a loss for words.
“And then I did almost die. But that memory never came to me. Nothing did, except the knowledge that I was in a great deal of pain, and probably about to die, and as silly as it sounds, I’ve been questioning whether or not I actually came that close to death ever since then. Everyone keeps telling me that I should have died, there should have been no question about it, my wounds were so severe, I should have died. But I didn’t. Why is that? Why didn’t I die?”
“That’s what has always bothered me about it, too, Ginny,” Harry said quietly. Ginny met his eyes, and nodded tentatively, as if afraid to acknowledge where this line of thinking could lead them. “It just doesn’t make sense to me, Ginny. Malfoy’s a self-serving bastard; he wouldn’t put himself in danger or risk his life for anyone. Except for you, which he’s done a few times, in Bulgaria with the incident with Neville. There was nothing to gain by hurting you, either.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of. That’s why I’m hiding here in the dark, terrified of my own shadow. Because if you’re right… I’m scared of hoping for something, and having my heart crushed again,” she said, and then groaned with a wry laugh. “That was terribly cliché, wasn’t it? God, I’m turning into a melodramatic sap.”
“I’m going to help you out with this, Ginny. We’re going to find out what happened and why you didn’t die, because none of it makes sense to me. There is more going on here than meets the eye,” Harry said decidedly. Nothing is as it seems, he used to say to her, breath warm against her neck, his deadly serious. Challenging her, forcing her to look beyond the situation, to keep her emotions, to search for the order underlying the chaos.
“Thank you,” she breathed, although not entirely sure she was addressing Harry. All she was certain of was the fact that a very heavy weight – a weight that had been crushing painfully against her chest – was eased, ever so slightly, and she wanted to weep with the relief it brought.
“I should get back and let your parents know that you’re all right,” he said, standing up.
“Am I all right?” she asked dryly.
“You’re going to be,” Harry said, with his characteristic determination.
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“Well, little Ministry witch, I would never have thought I’d find you here, completely sotted,” he said dryly. She scoffed at his tone, hearing the carefully concealed strain of anger. They were far too similar and she knew one of them inside and out, any attempts Darien made to hide things from her were therefore useless.
“I’ve had one glass of wine, you bloody mother hen. What difference does it make to you, anyway?” she sneered grumpily. She was exhausted, empty of the ability to control the emotions that were jumbled so tightly she couldn’t sleep. So she sat up, staring at a collection of papers, mulling over a glass of wine, hoping an answer would appear.
“It makes a difference because you matter to me, and seeing you like this is rather disturbing. What happened to the hard-nosed little hellion who could freeze me with a simple glance?” he asked, his voice low and serious.
“Didn’t you get the memo, Darien? She died a few months ago. You’d be much better off if you found someone else to worry about,” she said stiffly, standing up on shaky legs as he made a move to sit down next to her.
“Ginny, for gods’ sake, you can’t do this all alone! Let me help you!” he cried out, grabbing her arm and forcing her to look up at him.
“When you don’t know who to trust, trust no one. Right now, I’m the only one I can trust, and even that’s a bit questionable at times. So, just leave me alone, Darien, you can’t get what you are looking for from me,” she cried out. His face froze, his eyes widened, betraying his surprise.
“And what is it that I’m looking for?” he asked, his voice dangerously low and calm.
“A way to make up for what you think are your mistakes, to redeem yourself, to get rid of your guilt.”
“And what exactly do I feel guilty about?” he sneered, his grip on her am tightening painfully. “That is, if you don’t mind sharing your sudden insights with me.”
“About Danika, the fact that you couldn’t save her from herself. And the fact that you didn’t warn me about Draco’s connection to the Medrauts. You tell me all the time that you feel responsible for what happened because you didn’t share the information that might’ve stopped all this from happening. By hovering around me, you’re not going to make it better. I don’t need you to protect me, and protecting me isn’t going to make you feel any better,” she cried, cursing inwardly as tears burned her eyes. It was inconceivable that she even had tears left to cry.
“Is that why you think I’m here?” he yelled, letting go of her arm so suddenly, she stumbled backwards. “For all he claimed that you were a rather clever witch, you’ve proven yourself to be rather thick.”
“Then why are you here?” she demanded.
“It’s not some displaced attempt at redemption. I know I’m not to blame for Danika – nothing could have saved her, she had the same disease that seems to infect certain members of the Malfoy family – her, Lucius, his son. I’m not here out of guilt,” he spat at her angrily.
“Then why?” she cried desperately. He stared at her, his grey eyes burning with some emotion she didn’t recognize. His body was poised to move, but he seemed to hesitate.
“Fine,” she spat out. “Keep your secrets. I don’t care! But you’re not to hover around me anymore, you will stop coming by here whenever you wish and interfering with my life.” He remained stone-faced and immoveable as she spoke; tears of anger were slipping down her face as she stared at him, waiting for some kind of movement. Her arm slipped around her stomach, holding the still-healing scar his cousin had left upon her flesh. “I’ve had more than enough Malfoy secrecy to last a lifetime and I’ve paid the price for it.”
She was about to walk away, when his voice stopped her.
“You. You’re the reason. The only reason,” he said softly. She stared at him in shocked disbelief. “You came into my life, this annoying gnat who wormed her way into learning our family secret, something that could have destroyed us, and you fought to keep it a secret, you changed the way I thought about a great number of things. And you belonged to him, long before I even laid eyes on you, and this – this – is what he’s done to you.”
“Cousin, she definitely is not the type of girl I ever expected you to bring home,” Darien said as he sidled up to where Draco was standing. Draco peered at him with a raised eyebrow out of the corner of his eye; disgruntled that he was disturbing his thoughts. The memory charm had worked, as far as Draco knew, but he could sense Darien’s predatory inclination towards Ginny, and it worried him.
“And what type of woman would you have me with, Darien?”
“The trophy wife, of course. Beautiful, obedient and senseless, but with enough wits about her to know her place and not interfere. This Weasley of yours is trouble, Draco, I can feel it. Look at her, she’s won over half the room, and it’s only been an hour. That Parkinson girl that you were seeing, she is more suited to your lifestyle, what happened to her?” Darien asked, as he watched Ginny, deep in conversation with Vincent Malfoy, with a sneer on his face.
“She was dull.”
“But at least she was gorgeous. I suppose I could make certain concessions for this little notion of yours, involved with a Weasley, if only she was beautiful. Weasley is just so plain. She’s far too small, pale – and that terrible red hair, she’s not even pretty. I don’t know what you see in her,” Darien said.
“That’s because you haven’t seen her at all,” Draco said softly. Frowning, Darien looked from Ginny to his cousin and back again. In the dimly lit ballroom, the candlelight had caught the shimmer in her dress and the sparkle in her eye as she laughed at something Vincent was saying, and Darien became silent – suddenly, inexplicable unable to speak.
He strode forward, his eyes never leaving hers, even as they reflected deep shock and confusion. She was watching this scenario outside of herself, detached from the reality of what was happening. None of it was registering, even as he took her face in his hands and lowered his lips towards hers.
She remained motionless, her eyes wide open with fright. He pulled away, looking down on the small woman staring back at him with an expression of such confusion and distress that he immediately regretted his actions. All she saw were familiar grey eyes, and with the sensation of the touch of his lips still fresh, she needed to feel something – anything – and all that mattered was that the person staring back at her was looking at her through those grey eyes. So she closed her eyes, and reached out, pulling his lips back to hers.
He reacted immediately, pulling her close to him, deepening the kiss. She waited, as he moved against her, for the spark to ignite, for the familiar wave of need and passion to flood throughout her body, and responded desperately to his touch, needing for it to consume her. It never came; and she was fighting the urge to push him away. He was awkwardly possessive, his grip on her arms too tight, his lips abrasive and foreign; a harsh contrast to the slow knowing touch of his cousin, from who a simple brush of the lips could set her pulse racing.
Her hand slid down from his neck to his forearm. As her hand brushed over a certain area of his arm, a jolt of pain made her jump away as if she’d been burned. The Dark Mark. He was the one with the Dark Mark. She’d been kissing a Death Eater; someone who shared the same colour eyes as Draco Malfoy, but as much as she wanted to believe they were alike, there were many important differences she just couldn’t forget about.
“Ginny? What’s the matter?” he asked, breathlessly. She looked away, unable to meet his eyes.
“You’re not Draco,” she said tearfully. “I’m so sorry, Darien, but you’re not him, and you never can be and I can’t pretend that you are. He’s the only one – that was decided for me a long time ago and I can’t change that. I’m sorry.”
Darien stared at her, his eyes hard and cold. He finally looked away, scoffing harshly.
“Fine,” he said, backing away from her. She watched him leave and flinched when the door slammed shut behind him. Guilt, and a rather large measure of intense relief, washed over her as she sat down, placed her head down on the table, and for what seemed like the millionth time that day, cried.
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AN: the flashback in this chapter comes from Chapter 17 of The Visible Invisible.
Thanks for all the feedback. I swear, soon EmotionalWreck!Ginny will have run her course, and Smexy!Draco will make a triumphant return. Check out my livejournal (linked from my author’s page) for fic bits and future chapters. I always post there first.
Standard fanfic disclaimer applies. Not my world, I just play in it.
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Chapter 7: Not the right shade of grey
She’d begun to resemble a frightened little rabbit, she thought to herself with a detached amusement as she sat in her dark apartment. She felt painfully numb, her face swollen and eyes bleary from tears, a dull ache in her head from the unintended use of magic as her emotions had kicked in, making her sensitive to light. She was sitting on the floor, well hidden in that corner by the sofa. She heard a key click in the lock of the front door, and had to contain her fear from exploding as she jumped involuntarily at the sound. If they have a key, it’s someone I know, she thought, and the tight grip of panic around her stomach relaxed slightly.
“You broke three windows in your parents’ house,” a voice in the dark called out. Ginny was startled when she recognized it as Harry’s. Of all those to send after her, he seemed an unlikely candidate. He was also a particularly dangerous candidate, as he seemed to have this knowing look whenever their eyes met – he quietly understood her, and he kept it to himself. If he’d willingly come after me, she thought, I must look worse than I imagined.
“It seems your powers have returned to their full strength. I guess that means you’ve fully recovered,” he said, sounding uncomfortable and awkward, as he attempted to make conversation as he wandered slowly in the dark. She heard a thump and a muttered curse, before a faint light illuminated the room as he used his wand to search for her.
“Yes. My body healed, my powers healed… that seems to be all that anyone cares about,” her ragged voice cut through the quiet room like a jagged hacksaw. Harry spotted her and closed the distance between where he stood and where she was crouched, kneeling down on the floor in front of her.
“They all seem to forget that your heart could use a little bit of healing too, eh, Gin?” he prodded gently. She felt a fresh batch of tears well up behind her eyes, and blinked rapidly to keep them at bay – but they were tears of relief more than anything else – relief that the person sitting in front of her hadn’t come to fight with her, lecture her or point her in a direction she wasn’t ready to go in quite yet.
“Harry, who am I?” she asked, a painfully perplexed expression on her face. Harry’s eyes widened in fear as he absorbed her question, and he sat gaping at her for a moment.
“What do you mean, Ginny?” he asked.
“Who am I?” she sniffed, looking at him blankly. “Who have I become? I’m sitting here, crying in the dark, hidden corner of my apartment because I’m too afraid to sit out in the open! I’m a paranoid, self-pitying pathetic mess, and I don’t know how I got this way.”
“What are you afraid of, Ginny?” Harry asked, his gaze steady. A tear slipped down her face, and sniffed slightly, and used her sleeve to wipe her face.
“I don’t know. People, their questions, the way they look at me now. God, this isn’t who I am! I’m not supposed to break down like this, Harry! I was the one they would send in when some crusty old self-important politician was being difficult and needed to be brought down a few pegs – either through my charm or through verbal intimidation. I faced off with notorious Dark Wizards who’d escaped conviction and had risen to powerful positions, using their social power to block stricter Dark Arts laws. I’ve been threatened, attacked, almost killed…I was never afraid of any of it; for years I lived for it…until Draco, and I learned how ridiculous I was being. And here I am, afraid of my own shadow!”
”You were quite the scrappy little fighter,” Harry said fondly. “But you almost died, Ginny. It makes you question things, makes you rethink things about your life, about who you are.”
“Did I?” she asked, with a far-off look in her eyes. “Did I almost die? I remember so little from that day.”
Harry shifted uncomfortably in front of her, but she ignored him and continued to speak, as if he wasn’t even there.
“There was this one morning that I can never forget, because it was one of the most poignant moments of my life. It was the Sunday morning of the first weekend that we were able to spend together – the entire weekend, without any interruptions. I had forgotten to close the bedroom window and shut the blinds the night before, and the room was filled with sunlight as soon as the sun began to rise. You know the way that sunlight looks in the morning? It seems brighter or cleaner than it does any other time during the day. It was filtering into the room, bright to the point of almost blinding us, and the breeze coming the window had that scent that the air always gets around the beginning of spring. We were lying there together, both of us pretending to be asleep so that we could stay like that as long as possible, not caring about anything other than the rhythm of the other’s breathing. Nothing else mattered in the world, because there was nothing else in the world, just the two of us and the way it felt to be together, warm and soft and complete.”
“They say that when you are dying, your life is supposed to flash before your eyes. You’re supposed to recall precious moments in your life, the kind of memories that will give you strength to carry on through whatever awaits you after your life slips away. I always knew that the memory of that morning would be the one that I would hold closest to me, the one I would call upon, if I ever came close to death. It is the one moment in my life I wanted to think about in the last seconds before I died.”
“Ginny…” Harry trailed off, at a loss for words.
“And then I did almost die. But that memory never came to me. Nothing did, except the knowledge that I was in a great deal of pain, and probably about to die, and as silly as it sounds, I’ve been questioning whether or not I actually came that close to death ever since then. Everyone keeps telling me that I should have died, there should have been no question about it, my wounds were so severe, I should have died. But I didn’t. Why is that? Why didn’t I die?”
“That’s what has always bothered me about it, too, Ginny,” Harry said quietly. Ginny met his eyes, and nodded tentatively, as if afraid to acknowledge where this line of thinking could lead them. “It just doesn’t make sense to me, Ginny. Malfoy’s a self-serving bastard; he wouldn’t put himself in danger or risk his life for anyone. Except for you, which he’s done a few times, in Bulgaria with the incident with Neville. There was nothing to gain by hurting you, either.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of. That’s why I’m hiding here in the dark, terrified of my own shadow. Because if you’re right… I’m scared of hoping for something, and having my heart crushed again,” she said, and then groaned with a wry laugh. “That was terribly cliché, wasn’t it? God, I’m turning into a melodramatic sap.”
“I’m going to help you out with this, Ginny. We’re going to find out what happened and why you didn’t die, because none of it makes sense to me. There is more going on here than meets the eye,” Harry said decidedly. Nothing is as it seems, he used to say to her, breath warm against her neck, his deadly serious. Challenging her, forcing her to look beyond the situation, to keep her emotions, to search for the order underlying the chaos.
“Thank you,” she breathed, although not entirely sure she was addressing Harry. All she was certain of was the fact that a very heavy weight – a weight that had been crushing painfully against her chest – was eased, ever so slightly, and she wanted to weep with the relief it brought.
“I should get back and let your parents know that you’re all right,” he said, standing up.
“Am I all right?” she asked dryly.
“You’re going to be,” Harry said, with his characteristic determination.
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“Well, little Ministry witch, I would never have thought I’d find you here, completely sotted,” he said dryly. She scoffed at his tone, hearing the carefully concealed strain of anger. They were far too similar and she knew one of them inside and out, any attempts Darien made to hide things from her were therefore useless.
“I’ve had one glass of wine, you bloody mother hen. What difference does it make to you, anyway?” she sneered grumpily. She was exhausted, empty of the ability to control the emotions that were jumbled so tightly she couldn’t sleep. So she sat up, staring at a collection of papers, mulling over a glass of wine, hoping an answer would appear.
“It makes a difference because you matter to me, and seeing you like this is rather disturbing. What happened to the hard-nosed little hellion who could freeze me with a simple glance?” he asked, his voice low and serious.
“Didn’t you get the memo, Darien? She died a few months ago. You’d be much better off if you found someone else to worry about,” she said stiffly, standing up on shaky legs as he made a move to sit down next to her.
“Ginny, for gods’ sake, you can’t do this all alone! Let me help you!” he cried out, grabbing her arm and forcing her to look up at him.
“When you don’t know who to trust, trust no one. Right now, I’m the only one I can trust, and even that’s a bit questionable at times. So, just leave me alone, Darien, you can’t get what you are looking for from me,” she cried out. His face froze, his eyes widened, betraying his surprise.
“And what is it that I’m looking for?” he asked, his voice dangerously low and calm.
“A way to make up for what you think are your mistakes, to redeem yourself, to get rid of your guilt.”
“And what exactly do I feel guilty about?” he sneered, his grip on her am tightening painfully. “That is, if you don’t mind sharing your sudden insights with me.”
“About Danika, the fact that you couldn’t save her from herself. And the fact that you didn’t warn me about Draco’s connection to the Medrauts. You tell me all the time that you feel responsible for what happened because you didn’t share the information that might’ve stopped all this from happening. By hovering around me, you’re not going to make it better. I don’t need you to protect me, and protecting me isn’t going to make you feel any better,” she cried, cursing inwardly as tears burned her eyes. It was inconceivable that she even had tears left to cry.
“Is that why you think I’m here?” he yelled, letting go of her arm so suddenly, she stumbled backwards. “For all he claimed that you were a rather clever witch, you’ve proven yourself to be rather thick.”
“Then why are you here?” she demanded.
“It’s not some displaced attempt at redemption. I know I’m not to blame for Danika – nothing could have saved her, she had the same disease that seems to infect certain members of the Malfoy family – her, Lucius, his son. I’m not here out of guilt,” he spat at her angrily.
“Then why?” she cried desperately. He stared at her, his grey eyes burning with some emotion she didn’t recognize. His body was poised to move, but he seemed to hesitate.
“Fine,” she spat out. “Keep your secrets. I don’t care! But you’re not to hover around me anymore, you will stop coming by here whenever you wish and interfering with my life.” He remained stone-faced and immoveable as she spoke; tears of anger were slipping down her face as she stared at him, waiting for some kind of movement. Her arm slipped around her stomach, holding the still-healing scar his cousin had left upon her flesh. “I’ve had more than enough Malfoy secrecy to last a lifetime and I’ve paid the price for it.”
She was about to walk away, when his voice stopped her.
“You. You’re the reason. The only reason,” he said softly. She stared at him in shocked disbelief. “You came into my life, this annoying gnat who wormed her way into learning our family secret, something that could have destroyed us, and you fought to keep it a secret, you changed the way I thought about a great number of things. And you belonged to him, long before I even laid eyes on you, and this – this – is what he’s done to you.”
“Cousin, she definitely is not the type of girl I ever expected you to bring home,” Darien said as he sidled up to where Draco was standing. Draco peered at him with a raised eyebrow out of the corner of his eye; disgruntled that he was disturbing his thoughts. The memory charm had worked, as far as Draco knew, but he could sense Darien’s predatory inclination towards Ginny, and it worried him.
“And what type of woman would you have me with, Darien?”
“The trophy wife, of course. Beautiful, obedient and senseless, but with enough wits about her to know her place and not interfere. This Weasley of yours is trouble, Draco, I can feel it. Look at her, she’s won over half the room, and it’s only been an hour. That Parkinson girl that you were seeing, she is more suited to your lifestyle, what happened to her?” Darien asked, as he watched Ginny, deep in conversation with Vincent Malfoy, with a sneer on his face.
“She was dull.”
“But at least she was gorgeous. I suppose I could make certain concessions for this little notion of yours, involved with a Weasley, if only she was beautiful. Weasley is just so plain. She’s far too small, pale – and that terrible red hair, she’s not even pretty. I don’t know what you see in her,” Darien said.
“That’s because you haven’t seen her at all,” Draco said softly. Frowning, Darien looked from Ginny to his cousin and back again. In the dimly lit ballroom, the candlelight had caught the shimmer in her dress and the sparkle in her eye as she laughed at something Vincent was saying, and Darien became silent – suddenly, inexplicable unable to speak.
He strode forward, his eyes never leaving hers, even as they reflected deep shock and confusion. She was watching this scenario outside of herself, detached from the reality of what was happening. None of it was registering, even as he took her face in his hands and lowered his lips towards hers.
She remained motionless, her eyes wide open with fright. He pulled away, looking down on the small woman staring back at him with an expression of such confusion and distress that he immediately regretted his actions. All she saw were familiar grey eyes, and with the sensation of the touch of his lips still fresh, she needed to feel something – anything – and all that mattered was that the person staring back at her was looking at her through those grey eyes. So she closed her eyes, and reached out, pulling his lips back to hers.
He reacted immediately, pulling her close to him, deepening the kiss. She waited, as he moved against her, for the spark to ignite, for the familiar wave of need and passion to flood throughout her body, and responded desperately to his touch, needing for it to consume her. It never came; and she was fighting the urge to push him away. He was awkwardly possessive, his grip on her arms too tight, his lips abrasive and foreign; a harsh contrast to the slow knowing touch of his cousin, from who a simple brush of the lips could set her pulse racing.
Her hand slid down from his neck to his forearm. As her hand brushed over a certain area of his arm, a jolt of pain made her jump away as if she’d been burned. The Dark Mark. He was the one with the Dark Mark. She’d been kissing a Death Eater; someone who shared the same colour eyes as Draco Malfoy, but as much as she wanted to believe they were alike, there were many important differences she just couldn’t forget about.
“Ginny? What’s the matter?” he asked, breathlessly. She looked away, unable to meet his eyes.
“You’re not Draco,” she said tearfully. “I’m so sorry, Darien, but you’re not him, and you never can be and I can’t pretend that you are. He’s the only one – that was decided for me a long time ago and I can’t change that. I’m sorry.”
Darien stared at her, his eyes hard and cold. He finally looked away, scoffing harshly.
“Fine,” he said, backing away from her. She watched him leave and flinched when the door slammed shut behind him. Guilt, and a rather large measure of intense relief, washed over her as she sat down, placed her head down on the table, and for what seemed like the millionth time that day, cried.
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AN: the flashback in this chapter comes from Chapter 17 of The Visible Invisible.
Thanks for all the feedback. I swear, soon EmotionalWreck!Ginny will have run her course, and Smexy!Draco will make a triumphant return. Check out my livejournal (linked from my author’s page) for fic bits and future chapters. I always post there first.
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