In his twenty-eight years of living he had never had a birthday quite like this before. He remembered being young and attending stuffy balls that consisted of mostly older witches and wizards parading around his parents. His classmates, the Slytherins of course, were the ones he had known since before he could remember. They would all be in their nicest dress robes, sipping on champagne and talking politely like their parents. He had Malfoy birthdays, and apparently they were unique.

Ginny stood handing him a long stick with an amused look on her face. “Whack it, Draco,” she commanded, pushing the stick at him.

“Excuse me?” he had to ask, eyeing the wooden thing warily. “I don’t think ‘whack it’ is a very polite command.”

She rolled her eyes at him and pulled the stick back as she held it firmly in between her hands. She turned her body away from him and moved towards the paper mache snake magically dangling from the ceiling. “You hit it like a sliotar,” Ginny told him, trying to clarify the act, but hopelessly failing.

“Sliotar,” he stated deadpanned watching her swing at the poor inanimate object. He kept his eyes firmly planted on the move of her body, the twist of her hips as she swung.

“Don’t tell me you haven’t played baseball either!” Ginny said exasperatedly as she turned to eye him incredulously for the billionth time in the hour since he had arrived at her flat.

When he had arrived he was tempted to turn around and leave again since he didn’t recognize the usually messy spot that Ginny Weasley called home. There were streamers hanging from corner to corner, and a banner stating ‘Happy Birthday’ on it. The snake was hanging from a wooden rafter and a poster holding a moving donkey was pasted on the wall. He didn’t recognize this excuse of a celebration. When Ginny had first mentioned giving him a Weasley party he had braced himself for redheads galore, but this was nothing like he had expected.

The temptress was walking around in black stilettos and a short emerald green dress that flirted on showing her prize possessions on top and bottom. She had sauntered in at hearing his entrance and threw herself at him while singing Happy Birthday. Draco was excited and mortified.

“You’ve never had a proper birthday party before,” she had told him like it was the most obvious thing on the planet. “You were sipping wine from flutes that cost more than my monthly rent, and talking about Quidditch statistics like it was the most important topic in the world, when you were only five! Weasleys do it all quite differently. We whack piñatas and pin the tail on the donkey. When I was ten we took a trip into London to go ice skating. We went camping when I was twelve, and had an outer space party when I was seven.”

Draco tipped his eyebrow up at her in a way that asked ‘is that necessarily celebratory acts’. That made him on the receiving end of a light whack with the stick that was then offered to him.

“Go ahead, Draco. I won’t tell anyone if you laugh,” Ginny stated as she placed a nice smirk on her face.

He gripped the stick in his manicured hands and lined up to swing at the animal that was already leaking some candy from it. Lining up his shoulders he took a deep breath and swung, and missed. A growl slipped from his throat as Ginny collapsed on her loveseat laughing.

“It’s right there! How could you miss such a thing? Weren’t you a seeker? I believe that would’ve taught you some hand-eye coordination,” she said, although most of the words were interrupted with huffs of laughter.

Draco growled again and took out his wand to explode the snake. He didn’t hear the laughter emanating from behind him so he turned to see what happened, and was greeted by a very upset face.

“You cheated,” she said on the verge of tears.

He rolled his eyes and let out a sigh. “You said to break open the poor animal.”

Her chest heaved as she looked at the little pieces of paper and candy littering the floor. “But you took the fun out of it.”

“I always thought it was fun to see things blown up,” he explained smoothly.

Quickly Ginny’s eyes turned from sad to hurt to angry. She flicked her wand and all the decorations and games were gone. “Fine. You don’t want a Weasley birthday; you don’t get a Weasley birthday. You should’ve said something when you came into the door so I wouldn’t get my hopes up that you could act normal on a day like this.”

Draco heaved an irritated sigh as he watched her walk into the bedroom and slam the door. He drew his hand down over his face exasperated and then took it through his hair. When he had signed up to date Ginny he had told himself he would deal with all of her quirks. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath as he realized that it meant he would have to entertain her on his birthday.

“Ginny,” he said quietly as he walked to the door. He placed his head against it and listened to see if he could hear her. “I’m not good at these fun things, you know that.”

There was no noise for a little bit, but then he heard her whisper in a child’s voice, “I know.”

“Come back out and I’ll whack the snake for you,” he said uneasily as he snickered at his double entendre. A smile swept over his face as he heard her giggle too.

Ginny’s face appeared through the crack in the now slightly opened door. “I have some more presents for you.” Her voice sounded so innocent at that second.

Draco took a deep breath to brace himself for more childish games. “Alright, what do these entail?”

Ginny opened the door the rest of the way to reveal herself still dressed in her black stilettos and nothing else. She laughed and pulled him in as he had stood there stock still with his mouth gaping.

“I can deal with this kind of game,” he said gruffly as she pulled him into the room.

“Happy birthday, Draco,” was the last thing she said as she kicked the door shut behind her.