all the slander and double-speak were only foolish attempts

to show you did not mean anything

but the blatant proof

was your lips touching mine in the photobooth.

1.

Ginny remembers stages and stories. She looks back and pieces together memories to form a coherent story. Her life will never have tidy endings and literary themes. The least she can give herself is a beginning, a middle, and an end.

She first met Draco Malfoy in a crowded bookshop. She was in love with the Boy Who Lived. He was the son of Lucius Malfoy.

They sneered at each other, and he said something and she said something and their fathers fought and that was that.

About eight months later, he found her in the North Tower, where she often went to think and brood and cry. It was a week after Harry had saved her, and she still winced every time she thought of waking up to Harry's concerned eyes. She hated the word saved. She hated that she was the object of the verb.

His hair was impeccably gelled and his robes draped perfectly, but she sensed a waver in his voice when he said "I didn't know about it" in a studious voice, as if he'd practiced it in front of a mirror.

Ginny felt a burst of sympathy. "It's alright, Draco. I'm sure-"

His face changed minutely. Eyes narrowed slightly, lips tensed. He sneered. "I had just hoped my father would choose somebody worthier to open Salazar Slytherin's chamber."

Ginny realizes that he regards sympathy the same way she regards being rescued. She withdraws, and he leaves. Who knew, underneath the names of their families and houses, that they had something so important in common?

2.

Towards the beginning of fourth year, something happens. She's not sure what. She's dating Michael now, but every so often she looks up in the Great Hall and sees him watching her. The way he holds his mouth isn't so tight then, isn't so unpleasant. He has changed over the years and she never paid enough attention to notice.

She tells herself not to be surprised when she runs into him one night after detention with Snape.

"Hullo, Malfoy," she says in a carefully pleasant voice. He looks at her.

"How's your boyfriend?" he asks offhandedly. She's shocked that he knows - but more shocked that he has treated her like most other boys do. Casually. She has never associated the word with Draco Malfoy.

She stops and glances carefully at him. "Fine, I suppose."

His grin is feral. She raises an eyebrow.

"You're up to something."

He doesn't respond.

"What's your cunning plan this time, Malfoy? Landing the Trio in detention?" She places her hands on her hips and narrows her eyes. "Plotting ways to poison Mrs. Norris? Overthrowing the Ministry? Taking over the world?"

"How about shagging a Weasley?" he responds mildly.

She slaps him. The corners of his eyes wrinkle and her breath catches and she realizes that this something has just begun.

3.

Ginny is a practical girl. She knows from the moment that she first kisses Draco Malfoy that there will be an end. They catch minutes from nights. He finds her in deserted hallways and neglected rooms. She gives up her first time in the North Tower on a cloudy night; he is slow and careful but would never say so.

But there’s a carefully constructed barrier between them and affection. She insults his father; he insults her poverty. She is a Weasley, and he is a Malfoy. If nothing else, he will grow up and fight against her, kill members of her family if need be - and she will grow up and do the same.

She doesn’t know why she does it. Perhaps because she knows there are no consequences, no strings attached. Perhaps she is sick of the way that the school has divided itself into two sides and has forced her to choose. And forced others to choose, she believes, when they were not ready. How many have they lost to Voldemort simply because they shunned Slytherins in the past?

But these are all rationalizations for the real, selfish reasons she doesn’t admit to herself. She likes the way he lets her be. The way he focuses on her like she is the only other person in the world. Maybe she even likes their verbal war, the way he doesn’t treat her like glass or some emotionally damaged little girl.

But Ginny is practical, and she knows there will be an end, and she can feel it hurtling towards her when she is in Umbridge’s office with him and she realizes that the time has come to choose. And despite what she has been doing for the past six months, she knows what she will do. She casts the hex and flees with the others.

They meet a week later. She has heard Harry hoarse with grief and rage, has watched Lupin hang on by mere threads, has seen time and the universe and death, and she still delays this particular ending.

"How was your week?” she asks lightly. He is sitting on a desk, elbows on his knees, staring off into space.

“I’ve had better, Weasley,” he sneers. “How was not having any money?”

“You really need fresh material, Malfoy,” she retorts. “How about this? I hexed a Malfoy who was being an arse. Left a Headmistress to the centaurs. Flew on thestrals to the Ministry of Magic. Dodged hexes from Death Eaters. Broke my ankle. Had a good friend apparently die on me, although nobody’s telling me how because they start crying every time they try.”

He looks at her, eyebrows raised. “You’re being melodramatic,” he says flatly.

“Yes.”

“So?”

“You’re a Malfoy. I’m a Weasley.” He looks ready to interrupt her, but she curls her hand around his mouth. “Let me finish. I have an impressive speech to give.” She can feel his smile on her palm, and she quickly takes her hand away, shaken by the jolt in her stomach.

“As I was saying,” she says to recollect her impressive speech. “You’re a Malfoy. I’m a Weasley. I’m going to join in the fight against Voldemort as soon as I can, and there’s no way I can’t because that’s who I am and I need to, just to make peace with what I did four years ago.”

“Ginny…” he says slowly. She doesn’t know what he will say, but she is afraid to hear anything that might make him accessible, a human being, instead of a boy she meets every week or so to fuck. She cuts him off.

“You, I admit, will probably get that Dark Mark on your arm once you graduate, perhaps sooner. But your father is in prison. You have a choice, Draco. I know you’re a Malfoy and a Slytherin and making the right choice would be living hell, but… I’m just asking you to think about it.”

He looks at her, smile gone. She looks back at his grey eyes and golden lashes, and realizes that maybe she will miss him.

“I have as much of a choice as you do,” he says finally. “You were born and raised to do what you will do.”

“But your father…”

“Do you think that my father’s imprisonment makes me free of the Dark Lord’s grasp?” he replies sharply. “Do you think that my Death Eater connection suddenly vanishes?” His voice takes on a mocking tone. “Wake up, Ginny. I am a Malfoy. I am a Black.”

“Sirius isn’t a Death Eater,” Ginny replies automatically.

“You forgot the past tense, Weasley,” Draco says harshly. “Wasn’t. And it did him a lot of good, I see.”

“There’s always a choice,” Ginny whispers, but there’s no conviction behind her voice.

“I’ve been tied since birth,” he replies softly. “And every year, in new ways, they deepen. This is who I am. Just like who you are.”

He grabs her as she moves to leave and kisses her fiercely, almost violently. She is attracted to the possession and hates it.

It is not until she undresses that night that she finds the scrap of paper in her pocket. It reads, WestQuay Mall, Southampton. Marks & Spencer entrance. 6 July, noon.

4.

Michael Corner is out by May and at the leaving feast she can’t help but notice that both Draco and Harry are gone. Dean Thomas sits across from her and flirts with her after they eat. He’s fairly attractive, and Ginny decides that she might as well say yes when he asks if he can write her during the summer.

His first letter comes on July 6th just as she is leaving to meet Draco. She avoids Fleur and her attempt at conversation, tells her mother she is going to Fred and George’s, tells Fred and George she’s running to the bookstore, and takes the Knight Bus quickly to the Muggle shopping mall. Her heart is jackhammering in her ribcage as she looks for a familiar blond head.

There is nobody except a man with Draco’s figure leaning against the wall. She squints, but he has brown curly hair and the face is shaped differently. Still… she would recognize that lazy grace anywhere. She walks up to him.

“Your disguise is horrid,” she remarks lightly. He smiles.

“Good enough to fool Crabbe and Goyle,” he replies, “who are the two dimwits Voldemort set to follow me.”

“Oh.”

He steers her quietly into the mall, and they meander, an invisible wall between them. At one point on a crowded escalator, they bump against each other but Draco stiffens and Ginny leans away. By the time they’ve gone through two department stores and a dubious record shop, Ginny is exasperated. She spots the tattered red velvet curtains and the garish bulbs of a photobooth and snatches Draco’s hand.

“Got any Muggle money?” she asks as she steers them both towards the booth.

“I think… I have a few… pounds?” he squints at the money he’s fished out of his pocket. She giggles.

They cram into the photobooth and manage to sit down. The walls are covered with hearts and promises and lovers’ names and Ginny feels safe. Draco manages to stick his money in and takes off his glamour charm before she even asks him to.

“Smile!” Ginny squeals as the machine takes pictures. She feels Draco stiffen and then slowly relax.

She blinks the photo flashes from her eyes as his arm slides around her waist. Later, she can never remember who moved first but then they’re kissing- not snogging or making out like they usually do, but kissing. His lips are warm and desperate against her, and she’s sure that she tastes like regret.

“I might have fallen in love with you,” she mumbles against his lips. “If there was more time -”

He kisses her lightly one last time in response, a ghost across her lips. They silently collect the pictures and leave the booth, his arm slung across her waist. As he hands one of the photo sheets to her, his arm withdraws and a sneer spreads across his face. And Ginny realizes that this is it, this is the end.

“You were a nice fling, Weasley,” he sniffs. She doesn’t even bother to be hurt. She can see what’s in his eyes and she’s learned her lesson since that night in the North Tower. He won’t rescue her. She won’t offer sympathy. So she draws up a sneer to match his.

“I’m sorry I can’t say the same of you, Mal-ferret,” she snaps back.

“Maybe if you charged for your services you could earn a bit of money,” he replies arrogantly. “Although once word got around about the quality, I don’t know if you would’ve had have many customers.”

“Fuck you, Malfoy,” she retorts, and walks away from him. He says nothing and she forces herself to not look back.

The literary, poetic part of her wishes there could have been one last kiss, some romantic farewell. But this is life, and life is not literary or poetic - and one of those endings would have cut into her like a knife. This ending just aches persistently.

She goes home, and the next week Hermione arrives. A few weeks after that, Harry arrives and life goes on. And every time she sees Draco after that as the years go on, she reminds herself: I never loved him.

But every time she draws a strip of four small photos from their hiding place and studies their faces, she remembers what she said and didn’t say in that photobooth. If there was more time…

... I could have.

And she puts the pictures carefully back and keeps moving on.


and everything that I said was true

as the flashes blinded us in the photobooth.

you were so condescending,

and this is all that's left, scraping paper to document.

I've packed a change of clothes and it's time to move on.

Author notes: Feedback is well-loved. If that doesn't sway you, this is also my very first story posted here. Have a heart and leave some words!