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-What Time Knows Not-
She couldn’t seem to get enough air.
“Goodness, Ginny. Calm down and breathe.” Hermione’s hand squeezed her bare shoulders reassuringly.
“I can’t do this. What am I thinking?” She pulled away from Hermione and began pacing again, back and forth in the small bedroom where she had spent all of her childhood days, though the voluminous skirt of her white gown constricted her movements considerably.
“It’s just pre-wedding jitters. Almost everyone gets them,” said Hermione soothingly.
With a swish of satin, she spun to face her sister-in-law. “Did it happen to you?”
“Well, no. But—”
“It could just be a case of Wrackspurts,” piped up Luna with the eagerness of someone who intended to be helpful.
Ginny smiled wistfully in the direction of the blond girl perched on her bed. She envied her friend’s ability to remain so carefree no matter what life threw at her.
Hermione huffed impatiently before gently turning Ginny back around to face her. “Harry adores you, and you’ve loved him since forever. So there’s absolutely nothing you need to worry about.”
“Actually, I—”
“It’s time girls!” her mum called out excitedly as she bustled into the room, overwhelming the small space with her lilac perfume. Ginny sighed in resignation at what she was certain would come next.
Three...Two...One...On cue, her mum burst into tears to the surprise of no one. Ginny struggled to keep from rolling her eyes. She knew her mum meant well, but this was already the tenth time today that she had to deal with the emotional display.
“Oh, Ginny. My darling little girl.” Molly Weasley sniffed as she planted warm hands against her daughter’s cheeks. “I am so proud of you.”
Proud. The word did not sit right with Ginny. Her sense of unease about this whole affair only grew, but as she struggled to give voice to it, her veil was set into place, and she was being led out into the landing and down the stairs.
Nerves. It was just nerves. Right? Oh Gods, nothing made sense anymore, not since—
She slammed her mind down on the dangerous thought, cutting it off before it could further ruin her day. That chapter of her life was over. Today was a day for moving forward.
“Alright there, Gin-bug?”
She smiled determinedly at her dad. “I’m fine, Dad. Just, you know, nerves.”
He gazed at her with a contemplative look in his eyes. “This may be nothing, but...”
“Yes, Dad?” she prompted him, puzzled by his hesitancy.
He smiled at her. “I don’t think I was ever ready for this day to come, but as long as you’re happy, that’s all that matters to your mum and me. You know that right?”
She swallowed hard and nodded.
“Arthur?” came the shout of her mum. “Hurry up and get out here with Ginny. We’re about to start.”
Father and daughter glanced at each other and shared a brief bout of laughter that relieved some of the tension coiled in her stomach.
“Ready, sweetheart?” her dad asked as he held out a hand to her. She stared at his pale, callous palm and inhaled deeply.This was it. Time seemed to slow down as if to mark the momentous occasion. With bated breath, she raised her hand to place it in his, but then everything went black.
A sudden pressure squeezed at her from all sides. Ginny failed to place the sensation until her feet hit solid ground. She fought back the nausea of Apparition as panic surged through her. Seconds ago she had been standing in the cozy, sun-lit living room of the Burrow, but now blue-black shadows engulfed her in a musty space that smelled of damp and mildew. She became aware of the hand tightly gripping her elbow and wrenched herself free as she fought frantically through too many blasted layers of tulle and lace to get at her wand.
“Accio Ginny’s wand,” spoke a voice close by. She stiffened in shock, too stunned to even think of grasping her wand as it flew through the air. She knew that drawling voice, knew it as well as her own.
The recognition took a sledge hammer to her thoughts and emotions, to memories she’d buried with a vengeance to the depths of her heart. As if a floodgate had been opened, they tumbled over one another in a rush to the forefront of her mind, leaving her gasping with the force of their return.
“What the—I don’t even—” Her thoughts were as incoherent as her attempts to speak them. She clenched her eyes shut, breathing deeply as she willed herself to calm down, but it didn’t work. The confusing flurry of emotions continued to rock her, so she seized upon the familiar and reliable anger to pull her through.
“Draco. Bleeding. Malfoy,” she bit out through gritted teeth. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
A wall sconce flared to life near her head, the red-gold flames casting a flickering light over the moss-covered stone walls and rusted metal bars. A dungeon cell. He’d brought her to an effing dungeon. Bloody unbelievable. The nerve of him to walk out on her without a word, without a single owl in these last five years, and to now have...
She watched as he stalked around the perimeter of the sizable cell, steadfastly avoiding her eyes as he flung spells of concealment, one after another. A shining, silvery cloth on the floor provided the clue as to how he’d gotten this far in the first place. Most other witches would have been trembling in fear to find themselves abducted on their wedding day, but not Ginny. Not with this man. Not after everything that had happened between them years ago.
Already she could feel them, the painful cracks branching through her heart. She seethed, anger burning her white-hot. How dare he?
He had her wand, but she didn’t need it to dish out the punishment he deserved. She flipped her veil back and waited until he had his back fully turned to her before she rushed up and whipped him around with a forceful pull on his shoulder. He only had time to widen those deceptive grey eyes of his before she decked him across his cheek with her knuckles. She might have been a girl, but she’d grown up with six older brothers. She knew how to throw a proper punch, and Merlin knows the skinny bastard before her didn’t know how to take one.
He stumbled backwards and swore as he clutched at his face, dropping her wand in the process. She yanked his wand from his other hand before pouncing to snatch her own up from the floor. His she threw forcefully over her shoulder, while hers she jabbed hard at his chest. Her other hand gripped his shoulder, pinning him against the cell’s metal bars.
“Explanation now or there won’t be anything of you left to explain,” she hissed.
He blinked at her, still dazed from her blow. She took the time to examine him, taking in his wrinkled, half-buttoned shirt; the mussed platinum blond hair; the bruise beginning to bloom on his cheek. In short, he was a mess, unnervingly so after the years she’d known him to be nothing but impeccable at all hours of the day. Up close, she noticed something else as well; her nose crinkled from the smell of it. He reeked of alcohol.
“Are you drunk?”
He shook his head. Whether it was to clear his head or answer her question, she didn’t know. He started to move, so she dug her wand in harder, eliciting a wince from him.
“Start talking, Malfoy.”
“So it’s Malfoy now? Whatever happened to Draco?”
“You lost that privilege a long time ago,” she spat.
“A privilege was it, Ginny?” The daze was gone from his eyes. They hardened into the sickeningly familiar steel she’d seen one too many times from their past fights.
No. He had no right to turn this on her. “I shouldn’t even be talking to you right now. You better have a damn good reason to give me in the next three seconds, or I’m out of here. Have fun dealing with the Aurors.”
“You should be grateful I’m saving you from that marital trap you were about to fall into,” he muttered.
He might as well have shot a Stunner at her. Ginny opened her mouth but found herself speechless. She snapped it shut before gathering her rage to try again. “What were you thinking, Malfoy? That you could just show up out of the blue and whisk me away without any consequences? That I would still want to come with you?”
Do you? asked that terrible voice in her head, the one she thought she’d snuffed out for good years ago.
“That’s just it. I wasn’t thinking at all,” he blurted out and visibly cringed from his admission, shutting his eyes as he swore.
She stared as he brought up a hand, the one whose shoulder she didn’t have pinned, and ran it through his hair—a frustrated, distracted gesture. Malfoys didn’t have frustrated, distracted gestures.
“Who are you and what have you done with Draco Malfoy?” she asked in disbelief. He had to be an imposter. Taking everything into account, there was no way the real Draco Malfoy would have shown up before her like this—disheveled and, dare she say it, seemingly almost desperate.
He gave her a little sad smile—not a grin or a smirk, but a hesitant tilt upwards at the corners of his mouth. Her traitorous heart quivered dangerously. When he opened his eyes, the steel was gone from them, replaced by a depth that spoke volumes.
“I’ve missed you, Gin,” he whispered hoarsely.
The frank admission was her undoing. The heat of her anger dissipated, leaving her cold and hurting. Her throat constricted, and the back of her eyes began burning with other emotions altogether.
No. She closed her eyes to those blasted grey orbs that spoke too much but belonged to a man who left too many things unsaid. She closed her ears to the silver tongue that could extract the world from her but could not tell her what she needed to hear. Lastly, she closed her heart, hardened it to stone. She wouldn’t let him do this to her, not again.
Releasing his shoulder, she stepped back.
“No.” He gripped her hand, keeping the wand pressed into his chest. “No,” he repeated.
She exhaled and opened her eyes, keeping them trained on the point where her wand tip ended and he began. “Let me go, Malfoy,” she said quietly. “It’s over. We were done the moment you decided to walk away that morning, after I was prepared to give you everything. I’ve made my peace with your decision. Now you need to do the same with mine.” Finally she found the strength to look up at him.
He had never appeared so open to her, allowing his every emotion to show in his features. He shook his head. “I can’t. I can’t do it.” The voice that had been cold and cutting, charming and suave, smug and assured in all the years she’d known him seemed ready to fall apart.
She knew the depth of her feelings then. It was hard to lie to herself when even after he’d broken her heart, smashed it to smithereens, still here she was, digging her nails into her palms to fight the urge to comfort him. How maddeningly fitting, considering how they’d gotten together in the first place—two broken people who collided from a push from fickle Fate, left to pick up the scattered pieces of themselves and accidentally found their missing parts in the other. Or so she had believed.
Damn it, Draco. It had always been this way. There was never any peace with him in her life. She shut her eyes again at the memories that began flooding her.
Words began tumbling out of him as if he couldn’t speak fast enough. “I can’t—I won’t let you go. You can’t marry him.” He worded them as commands, but even in their most intimate moments, she’d never heard a more sincere plea in his voice, sincere and desperate.
Crack went her heart. Crack went the walls she’d built. Damn him.
She snapped her eyes opened and pierced him with her gaze. “Then why did you leave me?” she demanded even as she struggled to keep her voice steady. “I chose you first, and look what happened. Why should I believe you now?”
“I was out of my mind,” he choked out but said nothing more.
It was the same old story. She would excuse him and they would fall back together only to fall apart again. Except not this time. She shook her head sharply. “That’s not good enough.” Ginny pulled back, but he only tightened his hold on her hand. She twisted herself free and stomped to the cell’s door, knowing Apparition wouldn’t work for her on Malfoy lands.
“I was afraid alright?” he threw at her back. She froze before turning to face him. He had slumped to the floor, both hands digging into his hair. “I mean, look at us.” He gestured wildly between them. “That we could even be together. It’s completely insane to even think about. We had been seeing each other for an entire year Ginny, and still you were afraid to let anyone know.” She started to protest, but he hushed her. “No, I’m not blaming you. Don’t start. I know I was guilty of the same. The point is that, given that reality, the idea that we could last was...”
He trailed off, and she supplied the word for him. “Impossible.”
With a sigh, she slid down to the cold stone ground as well, too emotionally exhausted to stand any longer. Her wide skirt billowed up like a cloud as she sat.
Across from her, he visibly swallowed and nodded. “So that night, when you told me that you...that you l—”
“That I loved you,” she whispered. Their eyes locked, exchanging heated messages for which there were no words.
He spoke then as if in a trance, “It bowled me right over. Until you said it, I had no idea, no idea what you had come to mean. And suddenly I couldn’t bear it. If it all came undone...and we had no guarantee Ginny, none at all. I—I had to save myself.” He looked away then, unable to meet her eyes.
She brought up her hands to massage her pounding temples. “You’re a selfish bastard, you know that?”
“I know,” he said, barely audibly. “And you know it. What you don’t know is that, for once, in these last several months, I tried not to be, for you.”
Their eyes met again. “What do you mean?”
“I won’t lie. I tried hard to forget about you.”
She shrugged. It wasn’t like she had expected anything different. At least now she understood his logic for doing so, as twisted as it was.
“But none of it worked.” He gave a bark of laughter. “You got to me good and proper Ginny Weasley.”
Lurched went her perfidious heart.
“When I read about your engagement in the paper, I had an International Portkey arranged within the hour. It was maybe fifteen minutes until my scheduled time when I saw a woman with flaming hair like yours. For a second, I thought she was you. It wasn’t of course, but she was with another man smiling, laughing. I thought about the state in which I had left you and I...so when they called my name for departure...”
“You didn’t go.” She laughed mirthlessly with disbelief. “Did you know that I half expected you to show up that week in a jealous rage, as ridiculous as the notion was after four years of silence? But it passed, and that was the moment when I finally, completely gave up on you.”
Crestfallen was the only word to describe him just then. He dropped her gaze. With an unsteady voice he continued, “When the sun dawned on your wedding day, I was already blitzed out of my mind.”
“So what happened?” She held her breath, somehow knowing his answer would decide it all.
“I saw the Prophet, an old copy from a couple weeks ago that some other patron left at the bar. And there you were, staring out at me from the front page.” He paused and heaved a shuddering sigh. “You were on his arm, looking sexy as hell, and surrounded by your enormous family. Even through my alcohol-induced stupor, I knew then that I couldn’t let you go on with it.” He looked back up, the plaintive pools of his eyes beseeching her.
There was a time she would have given almost anything to have him brought low before her, but now she could find no joy in it, no sense of triumph in being the cause of reducing such a prideful man to this state. Experience, no matter how brutal, had failed to make her as callous as she wanted, pretended to be.
“Draco—”
“You were miserable, Gin,” he said, almost angrily. “You flashed your stunning smile at the cameras, but I could see it clear as day in your eyes. Yet no one around you knew. How could they not know?”
There it was. The truth she’d known deep inside all along. A tear escaped, tracing a salty trail down her cheek. He closed the distance between them in seconds. Kneeling before her, he hesitantly extended a hand towards her face. When she didn’t move away, he closed in and brushed the droplet away.
“Don’t cry. I can never stand it when you cry.” He started to remove his hand, but she stopped it with her own and held it fast to her cheek.
The tiniest of sparks leapt in his eyes, and as he spoke, his fingertips exerted a gentle pressure against her skin. “Don’t marry him. Don’t do it, Ginny. I don’t know how you got suckered into it in the first place. Maybe it was my fault, but you don’t deserve to be unhappy.”
She snorted. “Not everything’s about you, you idiot.” She tried but failed to muster much of a bite in her retort.
He didn’t answer and instead seemed fixated on running his fingers over her cheek.
She sighed and stilled his touch with a squeeze of her hand. “What were you thinking, Draco? They’re probably storming the Manor as we speak. I was tired of keeping our relationship a secret, so even though you’d left, I told everyone. I don’t doubt they’ll make the connection to you soon enough if they haven’t already.”
“That’s just it—I wasn’t thinking,” he said, his tone quiet and soft. “I just knew I had to stop you.” As she continued to watch him, his eyes slid from hers down to her lips, and then he was leaning in.
She should stop him. She should push him back and turn away.
He exhaled, close enough now that she felt the warm breath fan over her lips.
What are you doing, Ginny? You’re engaged. You’re about to—
But the moment his lips closed over hers, she knew she was lost. No, not lost, but found.
For a long moment, he held himself still, soft lips sinking into hers. Her eyes fluttered close as she savored the feel of him, close again, breaths shared. It shouldn’t make sense, but it did. Suddenly the world felt right—not an undoing, but a coming together.
And soon it wasn’t enough. They were too far apart and had been for so long. She couldn’t tell who moved first, but in the next second he was lowering her down to the cold stone floor, or maybe it was her that was pulling him down. The end result was the same either way. Her hand found purchase on his back, holding him close as his fingers delved into her hair while the soft pads of his thumbs continued to stroke her cheeks. His nose nuzzled her skin as he caught her upper lip between his, once, twice. She sucked on his lower lip in return until she could no longer deny his persistent tongue.
In an instant his kiss turned hard, bruising, and demanding. It was a kiss that said, I want you. I’ve missed you. And then it slowed, turned so gentle and regretful, she almost couldn’t bear it. I’m sorry, it said. I’m so, so sorry. She had almost forgotten how expressive his kisses could be, the one action in which his emotions could never be fully hidden from her.
And then he was whispering it against her lips, so softly she couldn’t be sure she’d actually heard the words, but she felt them all the same as they reverberated through her chest along with the pounding of her heart.
I love you.
His lips left her mouth as he buried his face into the curve of her neck. His arms curled under and around her to hold her close.
Too many thoughts crowded her mind as she lay there with his warmth wrapped around her, but the decision before her was clear. Even without Draco in her future, she knew her reasons for going forward had been all wrong. Harry deserved better, and so did she. Her family would be puzzled and confused, but eventually they would understand. That was the Weasley way, and she had never been so thankful for it. As for the rest of the Wizarding world, she couldn’t care less what they would think. It was going to be messy and awful, and everyone was likely to deem her mad over what she was about to do, but if so, she knew it was a madness she couldn’t live without.
“Took you bloody long enough,” she muttered, finally breaking the silence.
“Not too late?” he mumbled against her neck. She felt his body tense and his hold on her tighten as he waited for the answer.
She debated torturing him for a little longer given the extent of the wringer he’d put her through, but figured that since he’d already given her enough to lord over him for the rest of his life, she would settle for a threat instead.
“I swear there will be nothing of you left if you pull a stupid stunt on me a second time, do you hear me, Draco Malfoy?”
He pulled back to look down at her, relief and the most giddy smile she’d ever seen openly displayed on his face.
“Loud and clear,” he said before diving down for another kiss. She pressed her finger against his lips to stop him. He kissed her finger instead before frowning petulantly down at her. She couldn’t help her smile at the sign of him returning to his usual self.
“The media is going to rake us over the coal fire for this.”
He smirked at her. “Easy. I’ll pay them off, and we’ll take off until it dies down. Where do you feel like going?”
“And my family? Are you prepared to be hexed within an inch of your life?”
He looked aghast. “You’re not just going to spring me on them, are you?”
“Maybe. You would deserve it.”
At the panic flitting through his eyes, she couldn’t hold in her laughter.
“Ginny—”
She raised her head and shut him up with a swift kiss. A second one promptly followed, and soon he was trailing insistent open mouth kisses down her throat. She felt his hand fumble at her back. He grumbled, agitated as he undoubtedly made out the tightly cinched laces of her corset top.
Propriety demanded that she stop him despite the wanton shivers shooting through her body. You’re technically still engage for goodness sake! But before she could decide either way, they sprung apart, startled by an explosion coming slightly muffled from somewhere overhead. He swore.
“Better get up, love,” she teased. “They’ll probably murder you outright if they catch you like this.”
When he made no move to do so, she hastily did it for him, shoving him back as she got to her feet, forcing him to follow. After all, she needed him intact to make it up to her for the rest of their days.
She couldn’t seem to get enough air.
“Goodness, Ginny. Calm down and breathe.” Hermione’s hand squeezed her bare shoulders reassuringly.
“I can’t do this. What am I thinking?” She pulled away from Hermione and began pacing again, back and forth in the small bedroom where she had spent all of her childhood days, though the voluminous skirt of her white gown constricted her movements considerably.
“It’s just pre-wedding jitters. Almost everyone gets them,” said Hermione soothingly.
With a swish of satin, she spun to face her sister-in-law. “Did it happen to you?”
“Well, no. But—”
“It could just be a case of Wrackspurts,” piped up Luna with the eagerness of someone who intended to be helpful.
Ginny smiled wistfully in the direction of the blond girl perched on her bed. She envied her friend’s ability to remain so carefree no matter what life threw at her.
Hermione huffed impatiently before gently turning Ginny back around to face her. “Harry adores you, and you’ve loved him since forever. So there’s absolutely nothing you need to worry about.”
“Actually, I—”
“It’s time girls!” her mum called out excitedly as she bustled into the room, overwhelming the small space with her lilac perfume. Ginny sighed in resignation at what she was certain would come next.
Three...Two...One...On cue, her mum burst into tears to the surprise of no one. Ginny struggled to keep from rolling her eyes. She knew her mum meant well, but this was already the tenth time today that she had to deal with the emotional display.
“Oh, Ginny. My darling little girl.” Molly Weasley sniffed as she planted warm hands against her daughter’s cheeks. “I am so proud of you.”
Proud. The word did not sit right with Ginny. Her sense of unease about this whole affair only grew, but as she struggled to give voice to it, her veil was set into place, and she was being led out into the landing and down the stairs.
Nerves. It was just nerves. Right? Oh Gods, nothing made sense anymore, not since—
She slammed her mind down on the dangerous thought, cutting it off before it could further ruin her day. That chapter of her life was over. Today was a day for moving forward.
“Alright there, Gin-bug?”
She smiled determinedly at her dad. “I’m fine, Dad. Just, you know, nerves.”
He gazed at her with a contemplative look in his eyes. “This may be nothing, but...”
“Yes, Dad?” she prompted him, puzzled by his hesitancy.
He smiled at her. “I don’t think I was ever ready for this day to come, but as long as you’re happy, that’s all that matters to your mum and me. You know that right?”
She swallowed hard and nodded.
“Arthur?” came the shout of her mum. “Hurry up and get out here with Ginny. We’re about to start.”
Father and daughter glanced at each other and shared a brief bout of laughter that relieved some of the tension coiled in her stomach.
“Ready, sweetheart?” her dad asked as he held out a hand to her. She stared at his pale, callous palm and inhaled deeply.This was it. Time seemed to slow down as if to mark the momentous occasion. With bated breath, she raised her hand to place it in his, but then everything went black.
A sudden pressure squeezed at her from all sides. Ginny failed to place the sensation until her feet hit solid ground. She fought back the nausea of Apparition as panic surged through her. Seconds ago she had been standing in the cozy, sun-lit living room of the Burrow, but now blue-black shadows engulfed her in a musty space that smelled of damp and mildew. She became aware of the hand tightly gripping her elbow and wrenched herself free as she fought frantically through too many blasted layers of tulle and lace to get at her wand.
“Accio Ginny’s wand,” spoke a voice close by. She stiffened in shock, too stunned to even think of grasping her wand as it flew through the air. She knew that drawling voice, knew it as well as her own.
The recognition took a sledge hammer to her thoughts and emotions, to memories she’d buried with a vengeance to the depths of her heart. As if a floodgate had been opened, they tumbled over one another in a rush to the forefront of her mind, leaving her gasping with the force of their return.
“What the—I don’t even—” Her thoughts were as incoherent as her attempts to speak them. She clenched her eyes shut, breathing deeply as she willed herself to calm down, but it didn’t work. The confusing flurry of emotions continued to rock her, so she seized upon the familiar and reliable anger to pull her through.
“Draco. Bleeding. Malfoy,” she bit out through gritted teeth. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
A wall sconce flared to life near her head, the red-gold flames casting a flickering light over the moss-covered stone walls and rusted metal bars. A dungeon cell. He’d brought her to an effing dungeon. Bloody unbelievable. The nerve of him to walk out on her without a word, without a single owl in these last five years, and to now have...
She watched as he stalked around the perimeter of the sizable cell, steadfastly avoiding her eyes as he flung spells of concealment, one after another. A shining, silvery cloth on the floor provided the clue as to how he’d gotten this far in the first place. Most other witches would have been trembling in fear to find themselves abducted on their wedding day, but not Ginny. Not with this man. Not after everything that had happened between them years ago.
Already she could feel them, the painful cracks branching through her heart. She seethed, anger burning her white-hot. How dare he?
He had her wand, but she didn’t need it to dish out the punishment he deserved. She flipped her veil back and waited until he had his back fully turned to her before she rushed up and whipped him around with a forceful pull on his shoulder. He only had time to widen those deceptive grey eyes of his before she decked him across his cheek with her knuckles. She might have been a girl, but she’d grown up with six older brothers. She knew how to throw a proper punch, and Merlin knows the skinny bastard before her didn’t know how to take one.
He stumbled backwards and swore as he clutched at his face, dropping her wand in the process. She yanked his wand from his other hand before pouncing to snatch her own up from the floor. His she threw forcefully over her shoulder, while hers she jabbed hard at his chest. Her other hand gripped his shoulder, pinning him against the cell’s metal bars.
“Explanation now or there won’t be anything of you left to explain,” she hissed.
He blinked at her, still dazed from her blow. She took the time to examine him, taking in his wrinkled, half-buttoned shirt; the mussed platinum blond hair; the bruise beginning to bloom on his cheek. In short, he was a mess, unnervingly so after the years she’d known him to be nothing but impeccable at all hours of the day. Up close, she noticed something else as well; her nose crinkled from the smell of it. He reeked of alcohol.
“Are you drunk?”
He shook his head. Whether it was to clear his head or answer her question, she didn’t know. He started to move, so she dug her wand in harder, eliciting a wince from him.
“Start talking, Malfoy.”
“So it’s Malfoy now? Whatever happened to Draco?”
“You lost that privilege a long time ago,” she spat.
“A privilege was it, Ginny?” The daze was gone from his eyes. They hardened into the sickeningly familiar steel she’d seen one too many times from their past fights.
No. He had no right to turn this on her. “I shouldn’t even be talking to you right now. You better have a damn good reason to give me in the next three seconds, or I’m out of here. Have fun dealing with the Aurors.”
“You should be grateful I’m saving you from that marital trap you were about to fall into,” he muttered.
He might as well have shot a Stunner at her. Ginny opened her mouth but found herself speechless. She snapped it shut before gathering her rage to try again. “What were you thinking, Malfoy? That you could just show up out of the blue and whisk me away without any consequences? That I would still want to come with you?”
Do you? asked that terrible voice in her head, the one she thought she’d snuffed out for good years ago.
“That’s just it. I wasn’t thinking at all,” he blurted out and visibly cringed from his admission, shutting his eyes as he swore.
She stared as he brought up a hand, the one whose shoulder she didn’t have pinned, and ran it through his hair—a frustrated, distracted gesture. Malfoys didn’t have frustrated, distracted gestures.
“Who are you and what have you done with Draco Malfoy?” she asked in disbelief. He had to be an imposter. Taking everything into account, there was no way the real Draco Malfoy would have shown up before her like this—disheveled and, dare she say it, seemingly almost desperate.
He gave her a little sad smile—not a grin or a smirk, but a hesitant tilt upwards at the corners of his mouth. Her traitorous heart quivered dangerously. When he opened his eyes, the steel was gone from them, replaced by a depth that spoke volumes.
“I’ve missed you, Gin,” he whispered hoarsely.
The frank admission was her undoing. The heat of her anger dissipated, leaving her cold and hurting. Her throat constricted, and the back of her eyes began burning with other emotions altogether.
No. She closed her eyes to those blasted grey orbs that spoke too much but belonged to a man who left too many things unsaid. She closed her ears to the silver tongue that could extract the world from her but could not tell her what she needed to hear. Lastly, she closed her heart, hardened it to stone. She wouldn’t let him do this to her, not again.
Releasing his shoulder, she stepped back.
“No.” He gripped her hand, keeping the wand pressed into his chest. “No,” he repeated.
She exhaled and opened her eyes, keeping them trained on the point where her wand tip ended and he began. “Let me go, Malfoy,” she said quietly. “It’s over. We were done the moment you decided to walk away that morning, after I was prepared to give you everything. I’ve made my peace with your decision. Now you need to do the same with mine.” Finally she found the strength to look up at him.
He had never appeared so open to her, allowing his every emotion to show in his features. He shook his head. “I can’t. I can’t do it.” The voice that had been cold and cutting, charming and suave, smug and assured in all the years she’d known him seemed ready to fall apart.
She knew the depth of her feelings then. It was hard to lie to herself when even after he’d broken her heart, smashed it to smithereens, still here she was, digging her nails into her palms to fight the urge to comfort him. How maddeningly fitting, considering how they’d gotten together in the first place—two broken people who collided from a push from fickle Fate, left to pick up the scattered pieces of themselves and accidentally found their missing parts in the other. Or so she had believed.
Damn it, Draco. It had always been this way. There was never any peace with him in her life. She shut her eyes again at the memories that began flooding her.
Words began tumbling out of him as if he couldn’t speak fast enough. “I can’t—I won’t let you go. You can’t marry him.” He worded them as commands, but even in their most intimate moments, she’d never heard a more sincere plea in his voice, sincere and desperate.
Crack went her heart. Crack went the walls she’d built. Damn him.
She snapped her eyes opened and pierced him with her gaze. “Then why did you leave me?” she demanded even as she struggled to keep her voice steady. “I chose you first, and look what happened. Why should I believe you now?”
“I was out of my mind,” he choked out but said nothing more.
It was the same old story. She would excuse him and they would fall back together only to fall apart again. Except not this time. She shook her head sharply. “That’s not good enough.” Ginny pulled back, but he only tightened his hold on her hand. She twisted herself free and stomped to the cell’s door, knowing Apparition wouldn’t work for her on Malfoy lands.
“I was afraid alright?” he threw at her back. She froze before turning to face him. He had slumped to the floor, both hands digging into his hair. “I mean, look at us.” He gestured wildly between them. “That we could even be together. It’s completely insane to even think about. We had been seeing each other for an entire year Ginny, and still you were afraid to let anyone know.” She started to protest, but he hushed her. “No, I’m not blaming you. Don’t start. I know I was guilty of the same. The point is that, given that reality, the idea that we could last was...”
He trailed off, and she supplied the word for him. “Impossible.”
With a sigh, she slid down to the cold stone ground as well, too emotionally exhausted to stand any longer. Her wide skirt billowed up like a cloud as she sat.
Across from her, he visibly swallowed and nodded. “So that night, when you told me that you...that you l—”
“That I loved you,” she whispered. Their eyes locked, exchanging heated messages for which there were no words.
He spoke then as if in a trance, “It bowled me right over. Until you said it, I had no idea, no idea what you had come to mean. And suddenly I couldn’t bear it. If it all came undone...and we had no guarantee Ginny, none at all. I—I had to save myself.” He looked away then, unable to meet her eyes.
She brought up her hands to massage her pounding temples. “You’re a selfish bastard, you know that?”
“I know,” he said, barely audibly. “And you know it. What you don’t know is that, for once, in these last several months, I tried not to be, for you.”
Their eyes met again. “What do you mean?”
“I won’t lie. I tried hard to forget about you.”
She shrugged. It wasn’t like she had expected anything different. At least now she understood his logic for doing so, as twisted as it was.
“But none of it worked.” He gave a bark of laughter. “You got to me good and proper Ginny Weasley.”
Lurched went her perfidious heart.
“When I read about your engagement in the paper, I had an International Portkey arranged within the hour. It was maybe fifteen minutes until my scheduled time when I saw a woman with flaming hair like yours. For a second, I thought she was you. It wasn’t of course, but she was with another man smiling, laughing. I thought about the state in which I had left you and I...so when they called my name for departure...”
“You didn’t go.” She laughed mirthlessly with disbelief. “Did you know that I half expected you to show up that week in a jealous rage, as ridiculous as the notion was after four years of silence? But it passed, and that was the moment when I finally, completely gave up on you.”
Crestfallen was the only word to describe him just then. He dropped her gaze. With an unsteady voice he continued, “When the sun dawned on your wedding day, I was already blitzed out of my mind.”
“So what happened?” She held her breath, somehow knowing his answer would decide it all.
“I saw the Prophet, an old copy from a couple weeks ago that some other patron left at the bar. And there you were, staring out at me from the front page.” He paused and heaved a shuddering sigh. “You were on his arm, looking sexy as hell, and surrounded by your enormous family. Even through my alcohol-induced stupor, I knew then that I couldn’t let you go on with it.” He looked back up, the plaintive pools of his eyes beseeching her.
There was a time she would have given almost anything to have him brought low before her, but now she could find no joy in it, no sense of triumph in being the cause of reducing such a prideful man to this state. Experience, no matter how brutal, had failed to make her as callous as she wanted, pretended to be.
“Draco—”
“You were miserable, Gin,” he said, almost angrily. “You flashed your stunning smile at the cameras, but I could see it clear as day in your eyes. Yet no one around you knew. How could they not know?”
There it was. The truth she’d known deep inside all along. A tear escaped, tracing a salty trail down her cheek. He closed the distance between them in seconds. Kneeling before her, he hesitantly extended a hand towards her face. When she didn’t move away, he closed in and brushed the droplet away.
“Don’t cry. I can never stand it when you cry.” He started to remove his hand, but she stopped it with her own and held it fast to her cheek.
The tiniest of sparks leapt in his eyes, and as he spoke, his fingertips exerted a gentle pressure against her skin. “Don’t marry him. Don’t do it, Ginny. I don’t know how you got suckered into it in the first place. Maybe it was my fault, but you don’t deserve to be unhappy.”
She snorted. “Not everything’s about you, you idiot.” She tried but failed to muster much of a bite in her retort.
He didn’t answer and instead seemed fixated on running his fingers over her cheek.
She sighed and stilled his touch with a squeeze of her hand. “What were you thinking, Draco? They’re probably storming the Manor as we speak. I was tired of keeping our relationship a secret, so even though you’d left, I told everyone. I don’t doubt they’ll make the connection to you soon enough if they haven’t already.”
“That’s just it—I wasn’t thinking,” he said, his tone quiet and soft. “I just knew I had to stop you.” As she continued to watch him, his eyes slid from hers down to her lips, and then he was leaning in.
She should stop him. She should push him back and turn away.
He exhaled, close enough now that she felt the warm breath fan over her lips.
What are you doing, Ginny? You’re engaged. You’re about to—
But the moment his lips closed over hers, she knew she was lost. No, not lost, but found.
For a long moment, he held himself still, soft lips sinking into hers. Her eyes fluttered close as she savored the feel of him, close again, breaths shared. It shouldn’t make sense, but it did. Suddenly the world felt right—not an undoing, but a coming together.
And soon it wasn’t enough. They were too far apart and had been for so long. She couldn’t tell who moved first, but in the next second he was lowering her down to the cold stone floor, or maybe it was her that was pulling him down. The end result was the same either way. Her hand found purchase on his back, holding him close as his fingers delved into her hair while the soft pads of his thumbs continued to stroke her cheeks. His nose nuzzled her skin as he caught her upper lip between his, once, twice. She sucked on his lower lip in return until she could no longer deny his persistent tongue.
In an instant his kiss turned hard, bruising, and demanding. It was a kiss that said, I want you. I’ve missed you. And then it slowed, turned so gentle and regretful, she almost couldn’t bear it. I’m sorry, it said. I’m so, so sorry. She had almost forgotten how expressive his kisses could be, the one action in which his emotions could never be fully hidden from her.
And then he was whispering it against her lips, so softly she couldn’t be sure she’d actually heard the words, but she felt them all the same as they reverberated through her chest along with the pounding of her heart.
I love you.
His lips left her mouth as he buried his face into the curve of her neck. His arms curled under and around her to hold her close.
Too many thoughts crowded her mind as she lay there with his warmth wrapped around her, but the decision before her was clear. Even without Draco in her future, she knew her reasons for going forward had been all wrong. Harry deserved better, and so did she. Her family would be puzzled and confused, but eventually they would understand. That was the Weasley way, and she had never been so thankful for it. As for the rest of the Wizarding world, she couldn’t care less what they would think. It was going to be messy and awful, and everyone was likely to deem her mad over what she was about to do, but if so, she knew it was a madness she couldn’t live without.
“Took you bloody long enough,” she muttered, finally breaking the silence.
“Not too late?” he mumbled against her neck. She felt his body tense and his hold on her tighten as he waited for the answer.
She debated torturing him for a little longer given the extent of the wringer he’d put her through, but figured that since he’d already given her enough to lord over him for the rest of his life, she would settle for a threat instead.
“I swear there will be nothing of you left if you pull a stupid stunt on me a second time, do you hear me, Draco Malfoy?”
He pulled back to look down at her, relief and the most giddy smile she’d ever seen openly displayed on his face.
“Loud and clear,” he said before diving down for another kiss. She pressed her finger against his lips to stop him. He kissed her finger instead before frowning petulantly down at her. She couldn’t help her smile at the sign of him returning to his usual self.
“The media is going to rake us over the coal fire for this.”
He smirked at her. “Easy. I’ll pay them off, and we’ll take off until it dies down. Where do you feel like going?”
“And my family? Are you prepared to be hexed within an inch of your life?”
He looked aghast. “You’re not just going to spring me on them, are you?”
“Maybe. You would deserve it.”
At the panic flitting through his eyes, she couldn’t hold in her laughter.
“Ginny—”
She raised her head and shut him up with a swift kiss. A second one promptly followed, and soon he was trailing insistent open mouth kisses down her throat. She felt his hand fumble at her back. He grumbled, agitated as he undoubtedly made out the tightly cinched laces of her corset top.
Propriety demanded that she stop him despite the wanton shivers shooting through her body. You’re technically still engage for goodness sake! But before she could decide either way, they sprung apart, startled by an explosion coming slightly muffled from somewhere overhead. He swore.
“Better get up, love,” she teased. “They’ll probably murder you outright if they catch you like this.”
When he made no move to do so, she hastily did it for him, shoving him back as she got to her feet, forcing him to follow. After all, she needed him intact to make it up to her for the rest of their days.
Author notes:
I would love to know what you thought of it. I always welcome constructive critique as well, so feel free to share if you have any. And thank you Pam (cherryredxx) for the beta-reading!
The End.
SunnyStorms is the author of 8 other stories.
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