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Ginny had been jogging for about two months when she first saw him. He passed her on the left, going the other direction, wearing the same sort of silly Muggle exercise shorts that Harry had bought her.
Ginny liked him straight off because his receding hairline made her think that he was about her age, and because the stress wrinkles around his eyes mirrored her own. She knew him from somewhere, and she thought that the way he averted his eyes meant that he remembered her, too. This was the kind of thing that she was supposed to remember, but as hard as she tried she had no idea who he was, even though she passed him everyday and studied him as he averted his eyes.
Her memory was going, slowly but surely. Hit with a nasty memory charm on Auror business, she was incapacitated, reduced to the status of bumbling housewife as her memory faded away. She and Harry tried to joke about it. Harry called it Alzheimer's or something like that. It was some kind of Muggle disease that whittled away at your memory, just in the way that the memory charm was slowly degrading Ginny’s.
Most of the time, when she couldn’t remember something, Ginny could dig and dig in the back of her head until she got it. She usually remembered Ron’s favorite Quidditch team about five seconds after he disappeared through the Floo, and she usually remembered the name’s of Bill’s children just in time to greet them. This was why it was so baffling to her that she couldn’t remember the name of the blond man with the shiny grey eyes who she passed each morning on her run.
Ginny ran to hold on. When it was just her and her hair in a ponytail and the slap of her tennis shoes on the concrete, Ginny felt like she could remember. All she had to do was think about whatever she wanted to and that was enough. She didn’t feel the pressure of people watching. Most of all, she didn’t feel the pity.
So a little piece of her hated this man who she couldn’t remember, just because he was throwing everything back in her face.
“Do I know you?” she blurted out one morning, when she couldn’t stand it any longer. For a moment he kept running, passing right by her, eyes skimming the ground. But then he stopped and turned, grey eyes flat and dull.
“I— I don’t think so. No,” he said quietly, testing the waters. Ginny smiled. She hadn’t forgotten him, she’d never even met him.
“Oh. Well, nice to meet you.”
He smiled back, running a hand through that thinning blond hair. “You live down at the end of the road, yes?” he inquired, gesturing back toward the house at Godric’s Hollow.
“Yes,” she said.
“Nice to meet you, too.”
Draco was married. And he hadn’t forgotten Ginny Weasley. And he knew it was wrong to take advantage of her failing memory. But when she looked at him with those kind eyes, he crumbled.
Over the next few weeks they jogged together, talking and laughing, and when he told her stories about her childhood (which was also her childhood) she never seemed to realize and she never seemed to mind. He held her hand, sometimes, when they sat on the wooden bench in the park, and even though he was sure that she could feel the cold metal of his wedding band in her palm, she held on tightly.
Draco was unhappy. He was lonely, and his wife offered little in the way of comfort. His son was a beacon of warmth, but rarely did they spend time along together. Rarely did Draco get a chance to be the father that his father never was.
He’d always held a candle for her. She was a Blood Traitor, yes, but those sorts of things meant nothing to him anymore. She had always been beautiful, fiery and passionate, and her memory loss had been a blow. The entire Auror department had turned out for the goodbye party, where she had smiled weakly from a chair at the head of the table and clasped onto Harry’s hand so tightly that her knuckles turned white.
Draco had taken up jogging to get away. His wife never liked to come with, and the air smelled fresh. He could just forget. Everything. Until the day that Ginny started jogging, too, and they passed each other in the morning on the empty street.
He should have switched routes after that, after he’d seen the pain and confusion in her eyes as she tried to pick him out of the memories in his mind. But he couldn’t give up the chance to see her. He couldn’t say ‘no’ to the rush of warmth that spread through his chest when her bouncing red ponytail flickered through is peripheral vision.
That was the cause of all of it.
That was why his lips had opened dumbly and he’d answered ““I— I don’t think so. No.”
And that was why, after they had been jogging together, really together, side by side and laughing, for over a month, he grabbed her by the waist and tugged her close and kissed her.
It was a stupid, stupid thing to do, when she was vulnerable and married and deluded into thinking that he was something he was not. He was afraid after that. Not that Harry might have seen or that Astoria might hear from one of the women she played Bridge with. He was afraid that Ginny would remember him, and then everything would have to end.
Harry was worried about his wife. Not because of her memory loss but because she was spending more and more time jogging, and less and less time at home. He missed her, and everything he was alone in the house with the children, he couldn’t help but think that it would be like this when her memory got too far gone to manage.
He tied his tie carefully, something he’d learned to do because Ginny was spending so much time away, and often couldn’t remember how to do it for him. He combed his hair and polished his glasses, and then he called her name.
She appeared in the doorway, her plain, pink sundress falling in pleated folds around her toned legs.
“Ready to go?” she smiled, and Harry nearly fell apart. He couldn’t get over her bravery.
He folded her into a tight embrace. “Yeah,” he whispered. “I am.”
It was the twentieth anniversary of Dumbledore’s death, and the celebration was supposed to be spectacular. The crunch of the grass on the Hogwarts grounds was comforting, and the warmth of Ginny’s hands and the babbling of his children made Harry feel at ease. Despite the somber occasion, everyone was merry. Dumbledore never would have wanted a memorial for him to be a somber affair.
Minerva spoke, and Harry himself, recounting the tale as he’d seen it. He talked about Malfoy, and Snape, and Dumbledore’s final words. He spoke about the memories that exonerated Snape, and when he finished speaking more that half of those in attendance were dissolved in tears.
Harry considered his job well done, and he thanked the crowd, wishing everyone a lovely day. When Aberforth took the stage, grinning in earnest, Harry took his seat next to Ginny.
“How’d I do, love?” he asked, glancing at her after she didn’t answer. She was chewing her lip, staring straight ahead with wide eyes. “Ginny?” he prodded.
She grabbed him by the collar and pulled him into a deep, earnest, kiss. “I love you, Harry Potter,” she said firmly, staring him right in the eye.
Harry blinked and turned back to watching Aberforth, deciding that Ginny must have liked his own speech quite a bit. He didn’t notice her go back to staring off into space, biting her lip to hold back her tears.
Ginny had only been jogging for a few minutes when he caught up to her.
“Hullo,” he said cheerfully.
“Excuse me?” she said, furrowing her brow.
“It’s me. Draco,” he said slowly as fear began to seep into his heart.
“Who?” she asked. And then she fled, red ponytail dancing away. Ginny ran the whole way home, crumbling into a heap on the sofa.
She was terrified. More terrified than she had been in a long time. Not because of she was afraid of forgetting, as she had been so often over the past years. No, for the first time in years she had more than enough memories. Two sets.
Draco calling her name, running to catch up to her; Draco shouting ‘Mudblood’ at Hermione’s retreating back. Draco kissing her in the park as the leaves fell around them; Draco snogging Pansy Parkinson in the corridor after the Yule Ball. Draco with his face sweaty and flushed from a run; Draco with his face ashen, dashing after Snape across the Hogwarts grounds.
No, she was not afraid of forgetting.
The only thing that Ginny Weasley was afraid of was remembering Draco Malfoy for the rest of her life.
The End.
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