Chapter seven: Diverted

“Well, the two of you seem cosy,” a familiar voice remarked, and Ginevra peered around Draco’s protectively crouched form to see Lucius enter the room.

Narcissa followed her husband through the doorway. “Lucius,” she reprimanded, turning to her son when she saw him helping Ginevra to her feet. “Your attire is entirely inappropriate, dear,” Narcissa scolded, despite her faintly gleeful expression – no doubt she was incorrectly assuming that this Draco was being somehow affectionate toward Ginevra. I wish.

“Mother,” Draco said as he rushed to pick up his discarded garments and dress himself before turning back to his parents. “You took us by surprise, coming in without a word of warning.”

Lucius offered Draco a look that Ginevra knew was the equivalent of an unrepentant shrug. “The Ministry has finished its investigations here, but have posted some Aurors and several offensive spells on the grounds, in the event that you ‘return’ to the Manor. Gudgeon and Potter were rather chagrined that no clues were uncovered to your whereabouts apart from more than a half dozen eyewitnesses claiming you’d taken off to the Continent with Theodore.”

Ginevra moved to sit on the lounge as she worked to stifle her relief at the news, and one look at Draco’s expression told her he also knew their work wasn’t finished yet.

Lucius was two steps ahead of them. “Now, Miss Weasley. Would you care to explain yourself?”

She flushed at the tone he had taken with her – she hadn’t heard it since she was seven years old and played dress-up with the house elves.

“Wait,” Narcissa cut in, moving to Ginevra’s side to take her hand, just as she had that fateful day – though Ginevra didn’t miss the way Narcissa gently straightened her engagement ring on her finger. “Oh, that’s better,” Narcissa murmured absently as she tucked her hand firmly into Ginevra’s. She paused, then glanced back at the men with a more focused gaze. “I will explain. Draco, Lucius, please wait until I’ve finished before interrupting.”

The two men exchanged a dubious glance, though after a moment each took a seat on the opposite lounge and Lucius waved his hand for her to continue.

“As unbelievable as it may seem,” she began, her expression more serene than Ginevra had ever seen it in this new reality, “things are not the way they should be. The world, as you both know it, is... wrong. Drastically altered from what it would have been.”

Ginevra gasped, shocked at what Narcissa was saying, though it was precisely what Ginevra had begun to suspect. “But Cissy, if time really had been... rewritten, we can’t just tell –” She abruptly stopped speaking when she caught Draco and Lucius’ open-mouthed expressions.

Every wizard knew the rules when it came to the kinds of spells capable of altering reality on such a large scale: tell no one. Narcissa’s weighty sigh told Ginevra that she remembered it well. Their circumstances must be dire indeed.

“I believe time really has been rewritten,” Narcissa continued, raising her hand to silence Lucius, who was clearly about to interrupt. “In fact, I am absolutely sure of it.”

“How?” Draco asked as he crossed his arms, his hard expression telling that he had had fallen comfortably into his role as Auror.

“If I knew how, I wouldn’t have involved the two of you,” Narcissa answered, and Lucius scowled, clearly disgruntled by the admission.

“Ginevra,” Draco muttered with a frown, as though he was recalling an errant fact. “And your headaches. It’s not a coincidence. How is it –?”

“The ring,” Narcissa had anticipated his question. “There is old magic here. Ancient magic, that I suspect may leave a mark on any who wears it.”

“What kind of mark?” Lucius asked, his concern for Narcissa temporarily overriding his irritation at being left in the dark.

She offered him a tight smile. “I remembered too much. I awoke with two pasts, one too many lives for a person to live all at once. The ring helps me sort through the memories; it clears my thoughts.”

“Then take it –” Ginevra began, but Narcissa’s grip tightened on hers.

“No,” Narcissa told her firmly. “We don’t know what will happen to you – to your memories – if you remove it. And you will need them if you’re to go back; back to when everything changed.”

There was a long silence, and the blood rushed from Ginevra’s face at Narcissa’s choice of words. If you’re to go back...

“Nothing good can come of this,” Lucius said as he pinched the bridge of his nose.

“Wait.” Draco’s eyes fixed on Ginevra and she suppressed the urge to flinch under his calculating gaze. “Are things better in this world? Worse? Who are we to say that this isn’t the way things were meant to be?”

Ginevra carefully hid the pain that threatened to mar her features as she steadily held his gaze; his earnest question struck her harder than any physical blow, but Ginevra had been raised better than to allow people to see her weaknesses. Draco wasn’t thick, not by a long shot. She could tell from the way he looked at her now that he had put two and two together - and that he wasn’t a bit happy about it. That’s how much this stranger named Draco Malfoy despised “Ginny” Weasley.

“I just want to go home,” Ginevra hissed quietly, afraid that breaking their gaze might snap the already taut thread that was keeping her together.

Narcissa’s gentle hand on hers gave her some kind of strength to maintain her composure, just as it had always done since she was little. “Whereas my two timelines seem to have converged, Ginevra’s first timeline has been replaced with a second. Logically, one would assume that the initial timeline would be the correct one.” She cast a sharp eye over Draco. “I am Narcissa Malfoy, and I will be damned if I allow my family to be ruined by a circumstance of fate.”

Draco couldn’t tear his eyes away from Ginevra Weasley. This had to be a mistake; surely the evidence he had slowly gathered couldn’t point to this.

Why, darling, who else would have my ring?

Ah, yes, who am I supposed to be? A peasant Muggle-lover, or some such rot...

The ring was given to me by someone I love very dearly...

She had laid the pieces down for him, but he had been too obstinate to put them together. He’d allowed his austere reason to be swayed by prejudice. Unacceptable.

On the one hand, Ginevra Weasley looked just the same as she always had. The smattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose was just the same, not to mention the stubborn set that had always seem to underlie her every expression. He took her in, looking for... well; he wasn’t sure what, if he were perfectly honest. A sign, he supposed grimly as he examined the vibrant, typically Weasley mess of hair cascading over her shoulders, a reason why her luminous brown eyes seemed to glint gold at him as she steadily held his gaze.

Though Draco had suspected there wasn’t something quite right about this Ginevra Weasley, he really hadn’t been able to figure out what it was. Perhaps he had been looking too closely, clouded by preconception.

Perspective and objectivity. That’s what he needed.

Draco leant back, not examining Ginevra in parts, but as a whole – like a riddle that needed to be seen from several angles before a solution could be found.

As he watched her, there were few words he could attribute to the perfect way Ginevra held herself: sophistication, poise and dignity. Definitely nothing synonymous with the word “Weasley”. Like a lens coming into focus, he saw his mother sitting beside her, the very same tilt of her chin as though the pair had memorised it from a textbook... Or as though Ginevra had learnt the very same behaviour from the older witch. A surprise, to say the least.

Then he recalled the circumstances in which he had first found her. When his team had been alerted to the use of an Unforgivable, Ginevra Weasley was certainly the last person he had expected to find on the other end of that wand. Yet, there she had been, cursing Potter like he was the filth beneath her shoe, and on a street full of Muggles, no less.

That alone had been enough to make him curious. It wasn’t until she’d awoken in her cell, going from elated to wary within seconds of seeing him – morphing into a look of pure terror as he’d spotted the ring. As if their brief conversation hadn’t been indication enough.

She was no longer an acquaintance – the sister of a childhood rival, the girlfriend of a co-worker. Ginevra Weasley was a stranger.

He scowled when he saw her raise her chin defiantly, supposing that she had correctly guessed the conclusion he had reached based on some change in his expression. He detested that she could read him so easily; that she had been doing so from the moment she’d woken up in that cell, as he realised belatedly.

Narcissa seemed to have caught the change too, though he wasn’t sure why she would look so surprised by his thoughts. “Now, Draco –”

“Mother, leave it.”

“– I understand how you might be feeling right now –” she continued, but stopped when he leapt to his feet.

“You don’t understand,” he said in a level tone. “What am I to do, Mother? Just accept that some version of me lo– fancies a girl from a family that the Malfoys have despised for centuries? A penniless witch who happily attempts to ruin my life at any opportunity because of my father?" Lucius had the grace to look uncomfortable at that remark, and Draco didn't care that he'd pointed a well-deserved finger at the man.

"I'm not asking you for anything," a detached voice said, and Draco's gaze flickered toward Ginevra as she slowly removed her hand from Narcissa's. "You know I'd do anything for you, Cissa, but this is too much. I refuse to be the cause of discord in this family." Ginevra stood, then walked over to the bathroom with her head held high.

“I won’t pretend to be pleased about this,” Lucius commented once the woman disappeared behind the curtain.

Narcissa nodded. “Of course. But you must understand that here, the Malfoys are considered less than worthless. In the other... reality, shall we say? We command all of the influence and respect that belongs to the Malfoy family by right of birth.”

“I see that you’re eager to return to your other family,” Draco’s father remarked coolly, and Draco was overcome by an overwhelming sense of sadness.

His mother shook her head, taking each of their hands. “You are the same, in this world and the next, and so is my love for you both – just as a wife and mother’s love should be.”

“And the husband and son that stand before you are to be erased,” Draco pulled his hand from Narcissa’s, “to become whatever we ‘were’ again, no questions asked?”

“What are our words, Draco?”

He scowled at her, but answered nonetheless. "Sanctimonia vincet semper. Purity will always conquer.” She remained silent, as though the conversation was finished. Draco looked to his father pleadingly. “They’re just words.”

Lucius gazed steadily at Draco, then glanced at Narcissa’s dainty hand where it rested in his, so delicately slender it seemed almost weightless. “They are more than words, Draco. They are our life, our blood and everything we stand for.” He took a deep breath, as though to steady himself, then turned to Narcissa. “We must understand the full impact of our actions if we are to travel to the past.”

“Father –”

“I am the head of this family, Draco, and you are not the only member of this family to consider.”

He knew he shouldn’t talk back to his father, but the words seemed to slip out before he could stop himself. “Just like you considered Mother and me when you chose to join the Dark Lord?”

Ginevra sat silently in the bathroom as the sins of this Malfoy family were laid out for her listening pleasure from the other side of the curtain. She knew that Narcissa needed the ring, but she couldn’t bring herself to witness the two men in her life fighting so aggressively.

She stalked over to the claw-footed tub, turning the taps so that the fall of scalding water would drown out their voices, then carefully arranged her robes as she sat primly on the edge.

And this is what Draco doesn’t want to lose? she thought to herself. Ginevra had meant what she’d said earlier; she had no desire to break up the family she loved so ardently... But it seemed as though her presence was merely the straw that broke the hippogriff’s back.

At a loss for what to do, she glanced down at her perfectly manicured hands. Well, formerly – now she had several raggedly torn and chipped nails, her fingers still sticky from the fruit she had attempted to cut this morning. Not so perfect now.

Was this what Draco saw when he looked at her? Not when he looked at whoever she had been before everything had changed, but when he had truly looked at her, just now? She’d seen that glimmer of acknowledgement in his eyes, as though he had finally recognised that she was different. But then she’d seen the resentment, a muscle steadily ticking away in his tightly clenched jaw, and that’s when she’d known that he didn’t want her. Surely whatever opinions he’d formed about the other Ginevra Weasley couldn’t be so permanently instilled in him?

So maybe her Draco had never truly loved her. Love was supposed to be the ultimate kind of magic, after all – strong enough to traverse time and space unscathed, resilient enough to conquer the darkest arts. She and Draco had been together for longer than she could remember – something akin to siblings, at first, until they had become friends, then lovers. At least, that was what she’d thought they were. Draco had never been one for meaningful words, and they had fought every now and then as two opposingly stubborn people were wont to do, but he had asked her to marry him, for Merlin’s sake.

She had always harboured a secret thought, deep in a place she had never shown another living soul, that Draco Malfoy was her one and only soul mate. Merlin, what a fool she was! To trust someone so implicitly like that? To think that being thrown together as children could grow into anything meaningful? And Narcissa and Lucius had been so happy at the engagement. It had been expected of them, of course, and perhaps that had been why Draco had done it.

Ginevra knew she was being unfair – after all, how could she think such a thing about her fiancé when there was a different incarnation of him similarly punishing her? – but at that moment she was hurting too deeply to care. She had never hurt so much before in her life, always sheltered by her foster parents, and the most pain she’d ever experienced was at the hands of the Wizarding society who had looked down on her as the daughter of a disgraced pureblood family – but there had been a small comfort that Ronald, Frederick and George had all shared that burden with her, even if she hadn’t known them well at all.

But this was so much worse than that, she thought as she let herself slide to the floor. To be rejected by the one person in this world she loved above all else? Worse than being paralysed, worse than the most gruesome death – worse than being a Mudblood or a Squib, even.

Ginevra plunged her hands into the bath water, hissing at the almost unbearable heat as she began to scrub her hands clean. She picked at her ragged nails, the polish gradually crumbling away and the ragged ends grinding against each other until she was left with raw-skinned hands with ugly, uneven nails.

“There.” Her hands were clean, and she had fixed them herself. They still weren’t perfect, but then again, nothing in the world was. Right?

Ginevra looked at the ring on her finger, the symbol of this Draco's resentment toward her. She felt the strangest impulse to pull the thing off and let it wash down the drain; but of course that would accomplish nothing.

But looking at the ring now, she could think of one way that it could solve their problems.

She took a deep breath. Ginevra had had her existential crisis, and that was enough nonsense for one day. She was sick to death of being told what to do, and clearly the Malfoys needed someone to straighten them out – it was time for her to make some tough decisions, whether they liked them or not.

Ginevra turned off the water and strode out of the bathroom.

The Malfoys were still arguing in the manner that only the Malfoys could; the two men with calculated statements and cold expressions as Narcissa attempted to placate them both.

"That's enough," Ginevra said, though only Narcissa bothered to acknowledge that she'd spoken with a pleading look.

Well, if Draco expects me to act like an animal... Without considering her actions much further she picked up a plate from the table and threw it at the ground with more strength than she'd thought herself capable of.

As shattered china flew in every direction, all heads in the room whipped toward her, and she scowled as she noted that Draco and Lucius' expressions didn't hold a bit of surprise at her actions.

"Now that I have your attention; Lucius, if Narcissa and I explain more of where we come from, will you be content to help us fix whatever went wrong?"

"If the alternative timeline is amenable, then yes," he said after a moment's consideration.

Draco glared at the two of them. "I will not –"

"Draco," she cut him off. "Is your objection that you want to remain as you are now?"

He studied her for a long time before answering. "It's my main objection, yes."

"Ginevra, you do not have to do this," Narcissa said, seeming to understand exactly where she was going, but Ginevra wasn't deterred – what was the saying? If you love someone, you'll let them go.

Ginevra considered her words carefully before speaking again. "If you assist us in fixing the past, I will give you the ring so that you won't be affected once time is corrected."

She might have laughed at Draco's stunned expression if she wasn't feeling so cold inside.

"Draco –" Narcissa began after an uncomfortable silence, but her voice seemed to shake him.

"You jump to her defence, over your own son's," Draco remarked with a wry twist of his mouth before turning to Ginevra. "Swear it. Swear an Unbreakable Vow that you'll give it to me."

Ginevra managed to stifle her irritation that he would need to resort to something so extreme, but decided to take advantage of the opportunity this presented. “Lucius?”

He stepped forward as Draco and Ginevra both knelt before him, the couple clasping forearms so that he could seal the oath.

Draco took a deep breath before meeting her gaze. "Are you sure you want to do this?"

“There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for my family, Malfoy,” Ginevra replied with a tight smile, taking pleasure when he shifted uncomfortably.

Narcissa glanced between them with a disappointed expression. "I can't watch this," she said as she turned away, and Ginevra felt a pang of guilt that she and Draco were causing her such distress – but there was nothing to be done about it now.

The tip of Lucius’ wand hovered over their intertwined arms, and before Draco could speak, Ginevra began. “Will you, Draco Abraxas Malfoy, aid me in achieving my purpose to the best of your ability when we travel to the past?”

He narrowed his eyes at her, clearly not pleased that she had taken advantage of the situation. “I will,” he said, and a wisp of golden mist slithered from the tip of Lucius’ wand, snaking its way around them. “And will you, Ginevra Weasley, return the Malfoy family ring to me once your task has been completed?”

“I will,” she vowed, and a second wisp of silver joined the golden one, the two shining brightly as they merged together, flowing in a perfect circle around the place where their bodies touched.

“It is done,” Lucius said, and Ginevra felt the strangest sensation as the magic that sealed their oaths was absorbed into their bodies – not quite a shock, and not altogether unpleasant as her skin grew heated where they touched.

She made to stand, but noticed that Draco still held her arm as he stared at her curiously. “You can let go of my arm now, Malfoy,” Ginevra said, her disinterested tone entirely feigned.

His expression clouded, and he wisely said nothing as he let go of her, dusting off his hands as he stood.

Ginevra rose gracefully to her feet, feeling rather proud of herself that she’d managed to pull one over this Draco, shrewd and calculating as he appeared to be. “Let’s get down to business.”

Author notes: And that’s the next chapter! My apologies for the delay in posting, as this has been finished for a while, and I know that I’ve mentioned here and there in reviews and story updates that it wouldn’t be too much longer (I wasn’t lying, my beta just had a hectic few months and I’m unwilling to post this story unbetaed).

As always, thank you to Hannah Askance for putting aside Real Life to go over this for me, even though fanfiction is clearly more important.

There may be another slightly lengthy delay in the next update, which is only partly written, as I’m participating in the Summer Fic Exchange over at the DG Forum on fanfiction.net – Prompt submissions are open until the 14th of June if anyone out there is interested in entering. The Exchange closes on the 14th of August, and I’m hoping to be able to split my time between this and the fic I write, but I won’t make any promises.

Please review and let me know your thoughts, as this chapter was particularly tricky to write and I appreciate the feedback.

Haz