The Truth About True Love
by seven years

Rating: R
Ship: Draco & Ginny
Canon: Books 1 - 6
Genre: Romance
Status: Complete
Length: 3,058 words in 1 chapter
Published: 17 Sep 2005
Last updated: 17 Sep 2005

Ginny has a few preconceptions on what true love should be. Little fragments of Draco and Ginny's relationship, all the
way from how it started, to how it never ended. One-shot.

From the Unofficial Portkey Archive: https://portkey-archive.org/story/5124/

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1. The Truth About True Love

______

“That’s right,” the fox said. “For me you’re only a little boy just like a hundred thousand other little boys. And I
have no need of you. And you have no need of me, either. For you I’m only a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But
if you tame me, we’ll need each other. You’ll be the only boy in the world for me. I’ll be the only fox in the world for
you…”

- The Little Prince

______

1.

Once upon a time Ginny had been young and swinging her legs sitting in her chair as she watched her mother bake apple
pies, the sweet taste of those freshly picked fruits dribbling down her chubby chin. Mornings bloomed bright yellow and
orange and the gardens were green. There was plenty of hope at night when the lightning bugs came out, that love was
pure and unstained by what was beyond the restraints of her fairy lit home. Prince Ravishingly Wonderful waited in the
near future, just for her, just for all good girls. And then there was Harry Potter. That had just been the way things
were back then.

2.

It had begun very simply with a fleeting idea. It was 6th year and she was very lonely in the library, sharing a snowy
night with no one but the musty books around her. The truth was that she missed Harry, who she had long ago started to
call hers. And one thing always led to another, and she was wondering about Draco Malfoy. Draco Malfoy who Harry had
said cried in front of transparent ghosts, who cried in front of mirrors as if mesmerized by the sight of his own tears.
Draco Malfoy, whose mother was dead and his father’s corpse rotting in prison, Draco Malfoy who may or may not be alive
depending on Lord Voldemort’s whims. Draco Malfoy, who had never really asked for any of this. And at this Ginny was
reminded of how alike she was to Harry; pity moved her to remember a boy who was so distant to her own self and life.
She looked out the criss-crossed windows and wondered if Draco trudged on under this same lonely winter sky. Maybe not
everything was as perfect as The Burrow, or her brightly colored childhood. By now she surely knew.

3.

Ginny saw him five years later, walking aimlessly through the street at dusk. “Oh fuck,” she said, before he tumbled
into her outstretched hands. He smelled like piss and helpless depravity, and for a surprising moment she thought she
loved him. So she took him home.

4.

“Why the fuck are you doing this?” He slapped her hand away from his forehead, where a cool towel lay. “I don’t need
your charity.” Angry, angry sour words. Ginny was nonplussed. Years later, she would reflect that she was blinded by her
need to feel compassion. So many had died. Not Draco, though.

“Are you deaf, Weasley? I’m fine now. I don’t want your filthy hands on me--get off!” His pale, sharp face was exhausted
and lined still with the scowls of immaturity. Ginny pursed her lips and for a moment; was almost angry. Then she placed
her hands firmly around his face, rubbing her thumbs over his cheeks. She wanted to shout, ‘it’s okay. You cried that
one time, remember? I know. You’re hurt. It’s alright.’

“Of course you need me right now,” she said instead. “I’m only trying to help. The war’s over, Draco. It's all over.
It's okay now.” Soothing, trained words.

“Fuck you,” he yelled, spits of anger crossing his eyes, his brows. She leaned down and covered his head in her embrace.
She kissed his greasy hair. His shoulders did not heave as he supposedly released those feelings he had supposedly kept
in for so long, but she pretended. Ginny missed Harry, and she looked up at the sky and felt pride at saving someone.
She was selfish and ignorant. She was a philanthropist. She touched him with her self-proclaimed goodness. Believed with
her big and stupid heart that he was happier, cleaner. Then she would leave, move on to the next un-helped soul. She’d
find her Harry.

What she’d never expected was for him to touch her back. His long, skinny fingers wrapping around her spine, throat,
heart, like black curling vines.

5.

One night, after weeks of being in her presence, he looked at her lucidly.

“Thanks, I suppose.” Her heart beat so so so so so so fast, she was going to die and he was going to live and why did
she find wounded things so beautiful?

6.

He had never really left. It was two years later, and he was strong and this was his home, not hers. His things lay
strewn around the living room, while she kept her belongings orderly and out of sight in wooden cabinets and desks.

“You hungry?” Ginny asked emptily. She was bored and lonely. Draco ruffled his newspaper importantly. She saw his
grimace behind the fluttering papers. “Just a simple answer, Draco,” she said, her voice cracking. “Would you like
something to eat?”

He threw the Prophet down and glared at her. “Will you stop pestering me? I don’t know if I’m hungry. Maybe I’m
starving. If I were, I’d tell you. Maybe I’m so full, I’ll die if I ate another fucking bite of your unrefined Weasley
cooking. And if I were, I’d tell you. But you tell me this. Why am I still here? Ever ask me that? Why do you always ask
the wrong questions? Why am I here, Weasley?" He stopped, and his pretty face screwed itself into an ugly and pained
glare. Nasty, evil, cruel.

"It’s not like I even love you," he said quietly. "In school you were just like the rest. That’s worse than being hated,
Ginny—to fade into the background of a hundred others. It’s just that my life has no direction, isn’t it? What do I have
left? I’m here because you dragged me here. I never asked for this.” He stood and paced, his eyes distressed and his
lips gaping as he held his shining head between his hands. “I never asked for this. I didn’t.” His footsteps were
earthquakes when he walked out. These were hard times in between the bland times and indifferent times.

Then Ginny was left to sit forlornly in her modern sage-green chair next to the rack of wine that they never drank. She
was crying again. Why was it so hard for him? When would the moment come, when he’d break into that flood of expression
she yearned for. So she wouldn’t feel so foolish when she poured her heart and soul into his corduroyed lap. I need
that, she wished desperately. I need him to Break, break, please, because I think by now I love him and I can’t help it.
In her mind she was chanting. I never asked for this. I never asked for this. I never asked I never asked I never ever
ever ever fucking asked for this. Not this.

6.

But it was her own fault, after all. Her own disillusionment. Her inability to eradicate her astounding naïveté. All
pretty little girls with noble
boyfriends-who-promised-to-come-back-when-things-were-safer-but-then-fell-in-love-with-lovelier-women wanted to save
things. This was why she loved Harry because she was he and he was she. Hermione had said it, and she was right. People
who had Saving People Things were destined for one another. Harry was a rebel. All pretty little girls wondered if they
were pretty enough to be beautiful, beautiful enough to turn stone to gold. Was she wondrous enough to make Draco Malfoy
cry again, was she marvelous enough to make him scream love and emotion, suddenly unafraid and unabashed of being a
sensitive loverman. All pretty little Ginny had wanted was to make him make her feel different; I morphed you, I changed
you, I opened you. It’s me you love, babe. Me.

But also, Draco was Draco. Darkly she knew this, subconsciously, unconsciously. Old habits died hard, but at least they
died. You are born the way you are. Draco wasn’t a habit. Draco was born bitter. Draco was born to breathe--not fire, as
his name suggested--but smoke. Its rank smell invaded her nose and stung her eyes, wickedly persuading them to produce
fat rolling tears in the wake of their newfound blindness.

7.

Mentally, she made a list. Things Draco Was Not: 1) Mr. Reformed And Kindly Boyfriend (Because He’s Found Love Now, And
It’s All Better), The Kind Who Doesn’t Cause Your Heart To Break As Often As Day Breaks And The Type Who’d Maybe Give
You Sensuous Massages After A Long Day At Work Because He Is Empathic When It Comes To You.

Things Draco Was: 1) Mr. Acid Acid Burning Tongue, Says Things He Probably Does Mean (But That Doesn’t Mean They’re Not
Rude), Then Comes Back Days Too Late And Mumbles Apologies To A Girlfriend Who Will Always, Always Accept Them.

Yes. She was love-struck; his words struck like lightning the shape of Harry Potter's scar.

8.

And on other days her skin was crawling at the sight of his dirty socks scattered across their home like a trail that
led to leprechaun gold. Every scent and reminder of his existence made her feel cold. Her body, racked with chills,
shivered despite the warm late-summer weather. Why, How, When, but mostly Why. Nearly a decade ago she had been sixteen
and her mind swimming with thoughts of living with the Boy-Who-Lived. That girl would have laughed at her now. She
laughed too, but hers was a nostalgically tragic giggle, equal parts sad and maniacal. She wanted to scream at him,
“This is kind of screwed up, isn’t it?!” How in the fucking world had they ended up together. What cruelly ironic twist
of destiny, of whatever controlled their lives. What brand of faith had led them here, to be sitting in this sad little
house together with nothing to say between them? At times like these Ginny wondered, this isn’t love. We stay because we
are co-dependent. Two wounded little brats too cowardly to look beyond what has found us. Once upon a time we happened
to run into each other. The world is so big that the people are so spread out that he was all I had, and I was most
certainly all he had. Yes. Yes. He loves me only as much as he needs me. This deafening truth was only comforted by the
assertion that all love was based in need. I love you so I need you. I need you, so I love you. Come now, Ginny, the
night wind crooned. Everyone’s lonely. It isn’t so bad.

9.

He stumbled through a week later with three crumpled roses in his hand. She knew that they were from the corner
vendor-woman who sold them at a mere knut because they were weak and dying and black around the edges. Ginny is
good-hearted, though, and she pretended so hard that those flowers were fresh and foreign that she almost believed it
herself.

“Thank you,” she breathed pathetically. Draco’s eyes were on the floor.

“I...I don’t think I should have said the things I said.”

“It’s okay.”

“Hey.” He lifted up her chin with his hand. “You know me. I’m hot-tempered. But you know I’m here by choice. You and I,
we stick together. What d'you say to eating out tonight, Gin? I'll make it up to you.”

Outside on the streets they walked hand in hand. The rose-woman looked at Ginny knowingly, with the big sad eyes of
someone who had traveled much of the world. The blue hues of evening were beginning to set in. Behind a tall building,
there was a burst of an orange-red sun. Draco’s pale face was illuminated by it, illuminated by sudden strangeness.
Strange as in, how the two of them had ever ended up walking alone together. The Earth was big. They were so tiny.

10.

At the restaurant, a small shabby place with other small shabby people, Draco kept shooting her glances. He was in a
mood.

“I love you,” he said over his plate of food. Ginny’s smile bloomed bright unlike the plants scrunched in her palm, the
soggy thorns melting against the dampness of her perspiration.

“I love you too.” He looked at her anew. Ginny felt blessedly cursed. In her silly worn heart there was hope again that
maybe, he could really change. Maybe, she had really done it and there’d be no more fights, no more questioning their
love, the validity of their companionship. Maybe.

“And when we get home,” he said with a grin, picking up his salad fork, which also doubled as his meat, noodle and
anything in-between fork, “I'll fuck you. You'd like that, wouldn't you?” Ginny teared up like a sap at his words,
because this confirmed her fears. He was both wonderfully terrible and terribly wonderful.

11.

True to his word, he had her pressed up against the wall of their flat before Ginny could reach into her purse for the
keys.

“I want to go,” she whined against his lips, the scratchiness of his unshaven chin. “The bed, Draco. I like our bed.”

“Why?” Draco snarled. He was an animal, at times. A dirty mindless animal. This too she loved, however. “I’ve never
taken you in our hallway before, have I? Why shouldn’t I? I think you’re mine. ”

But Ginny had found her metal keys. Metal comfort. They found its home, fitting into the doorknob and releasing the lock
until Ginny could fall backwards into their humble foyer. She grabbed him by the same tie he always wore and led him to
the bed he rarely slept on. In five minutes she would have her legs splayed by her side, stretched so wide that it would
be impossible for her to be not broken. But being broken by Draco was better than being not broken at all, wasn’t it.
She was savage with him, then. Something about the shape of her body, her back pressed roughly against the wooden
headboard, and her eyes rolling to the back of her head as he slammed thrust slammed into her very core. “Oh God Oh God
Oh God.” She panted the muggle expression wrought from her muggle-loving father. Yes, God. Deity. Omnipresent being.
Yes, help me God. Anger and loving were so close in these moments. Ginny could feel Draco alive within her, his emotions
swirling in the form of milky white semen, not tears. It would do for now.

12.

In the afterwards, he allowed her to stroke his damp hair. He was not one of those types that fell asleep after sex. He
tried. But being emptied made him feel empty. He was melancholy and lonely and it was another starless night. When he
reached, Ginny was there. Ginny, not anyone else. Ginny Molly Weasley. He felt it an out-of-body experience every time
he touched her body.

“I love you,” she whispered passionately, her cheeks flushed and her arms sweetly aching. He looked at her elbow. Her
knee. Her neck. But not her face.

“Don’t you love me anymore?” Ginny prodded gently.

Draco found himself irate, and answering before he could stop himself. It was father nature. “I guess I don’t,” he said
childishly. “Why are you always so needy?” Ginny’s face tightened as if she’d been slapped. But she did not retract her
hand from his head. Draco sighed through clenched teeth. If she started crying….

“Look, I didn’t mean that. You’re not needy…just, un-confident. I don’t blame you.”

Ginny shook her head strongly. When she spoke, her words were strangely acerbic. “No. Don’t treat me like an idiot. I
know how things are. I can’t change them.” Her breath smelled bitter. Draco tensed up, then buried his nose in the
warmth of her embrace.

“Don’t leave me, Ginny,” he pleaded, suddenly sounding a little bit frightened. “Not tonight.” Ginny’s breathing
jittered for a second.

“I won’t,” she promised solemnly. But secretly she thought that he knew that she could never leave him now, not in a
million eternities.

13.

Then again, in the twilight of some other nameless day, she walked past the rose vendor once more. This time, she
stopped to smell them. This time, she spoke.

“He’s yours, isn’t he?” asked the woman, her big ancient head nodding towards Draco, who was idly wandering nearby.
Ginny paused and thought. She licked her lips, and when she answered, the words tasted refreshingly ripe. Just like
those childhood apples of forever ago. She smiled. The old lady looked at her with sage eyes that said, ‘Then what are
you waiting for?’

Ginny paid her, and then strode over to what was, by now, more than rightfully hers—more hers than any silly Harry-crush
had been, and linked her arm through his. Because no one else in the world knew him or cared for him as completely as
she did. And that made him hers. That. Was that all there was to it? Around them the trees were tinged a brittle golden
brown. The city was breezy, the buildings were towering, and perhaps probably, Draco was her true love. What came to
mind at fated, destined love was different from what she'd expected for so long. True true honest love was true for its
likeness to everything else that was raw, real, and therefore warped and flawed and erroneous. Truth was messy, truth
was hard, truth was necessary. This was truth. Accepting this. Letting go of her princess-fairy stories of age five
through sixteen, she was suddenly gladdened by the vastness of her planet and all the hurts and pains were needed and
essential and trivial and gorgeous in their own right. There was no fated love, no one real prince charming to put the
glow in her life. She had chosen him, she had met him and known him and kissed him and hated him all until he became
every single person in the universe for her. That. Was. Love. Sensational, and out of her control. The wind felt so good
against her face.

“Are you okay?” Draco asked, raising an eyebrow. Ginny grinned up at him before pushing her blowing hair back behind her
ear. For once she was not reminded of the strangeness of his presence. Where else would he be, but next to her?

“I’m fine,” she said assuredly. She reached up and touched his wind-chilled cheek. “Come on. Let’s go home.”
