CHAPTER ONE
Love - come quick
Love - come in a hurry
There are thieves in the temple tonight
His recollections of the day were spotty, skipping like a stone over water. He remembered waking up wanting her, waking up without her. After that, all he possessed were impressions, fleeting shots of a house that had to have been the Burrow, Arthur Weasley's face levered close to his own, Ginny in an alleyway, tears streaming down her cheeks.
And then it all focused to a point, crystal clear and painfully bright, of Ginny with his mother and his own hand grasped crushingly around her fine-boned wrist. He remembered sliding to the floor, his arms around her waist, starkly relieved at her presence.
And then the Healers had come, coaxing him into a room, and for Ginny's sake, he had gone. He had gone to alleviate that wide-eyed look of fear in her eyes.
But now all the eyes were on him, accusatory and narrow. Though he longed to step to Ginny's side, he instead stepped back, away from her.
Ginny turned her head to look at him, her eyes wide. In that single moment, her family didn't matter; she stepped toe-to-toe with him, her voice low and concerned. "What did they say?" she asked, lifting a hand as though to touch his face.
He withdrew, his gray eyes jerking to her family, and gave a nearly imperceptible shake of his head. "You should go," he said flatly, refusing to look at her. She'd left him once, less than twenty-four hours ago. Surely it wouldn't be hard for her to do it again.
"At least the dotty bastard shows some sense," George opined loudly. "Come on, Gin, he doesn't want you here."
She kept her eyes on his, hot and insistent, until he was forced to look at her. In the brief meeting of eyes, she saw shame, confusion, need, and most of all, truth-a different truth than the words he was speaking.
"Fine, then," she finally said, jerking her arm away from his. "I'm about as likely to stay where I'm unwanted as I am to stay in a room that's on fire."
She could feel his eyes on the back of her head as she walked away, and knew she'd given her own truth to him as best she could.
~~~
They Disapparated home together, the Weasleys together again like one big, happy family.
"I should have socked the bloody little bastard when I had the chance," Charlie ruminated, flexing and relaxing his fist while staring at a wall in the Burrow and imagining Draco's sour face.
"You know, we knew he was a clever little git-" George started, his train immediately picked up by Fred.
"-Though not as clever as us-"
"-But we never thought he'd get the better of a Weasley. What's the matter with you, Gin?"
"It's really quite irrational," self-righteous Percy put in, pushing up his glasses.
At her wit's end, Molly sat down in front of her silent daughter. "Virginia, darling," she said gently, trying another tactic. "It isn't as though he loves you." That got Ginny's attention, and she turned large, shocked eyes on her mother.
She was speechless; she had no real retort to that.
It really wasn't as though he loved her. That particular emotion and concept had never become part of the vocabulary of their relationship. They vacillated between heat and hate and occasionally need, but love?
Absurd.
"I'm going to fix up the house and go to bed," she said, wondering why it felt as though the pit of her stomach were hollowed out.
Her family watched with confusion and sadness in their eyes as she trudged up the stairs, her wand pointing here and there and patching up the damage Draco had done. From his place in the corner of the room, Ron watched her go with futile anger smoldering in his eyes.
~~~
"It's a load of shite, 'swhat it is," he burst out, pacing the floor. "Y'know, I don't remember him as ever being particularly useful in any other time. Would anyone really look crossways at us if I turned him into a toad?"
Hermione felt her back molars grind together as she prayed for patience. "Ronald, with your magical aptitude, I think that's unwise."
"I have to go back to work on Monday, you know. How'm I supposed to go back to calling Quidditch games when that-" at a loss for words, Ron shuddered theatrically. "He touched my sister, Hermione. She never said that, but I know. I'm not ignorant."
"I'm hard pressed to judge that particular matter," she said, laying her head on her kitchen table.
"I just wish there were something I could do," he said, thumping his fist on the table and making his girlfriend jump. Futility was very nearly an ingrained part of Ron Weasley's nature. With five "perfect" older siblings, The Boy Who Lived for a best friend and a genius for a girlfriend, it was hard to feel particularly effective at anything.
"If I give you something to do to fix this, will you stop talking about it?" Hermione finally asked acidly, focusing a jaundiced eye on Ron. Lately it seemed more and more unlikely that she'd been in her right mind when agreeing to date such an oaf.
"No offense, Hermione, but not even you can fix everything."
"You'd be surprised," she said absently, already working on a plan.
~~~
They stood close together, arms brushing, eyes wide as they stared at the behemoth of a mansion they'd once called home.
He spoke first, swallowing hard and making his Adam's apple bob. He hadn't expected to feel anything-did he ever?-but what he felt was nervous, scared, and more than a little sick. "I've money back in Boston," he said, looking at his mother desperately. "I can get it, we won't have to stay here."
But Narcissa was calm, her head tilted assessingly. She took his arm, tugging him forward through dried, dead grass and leggy, straggly weeds that whispered in the breeze as though emboldened by years of abandon.
"Money's not the reason we have to stay here," she said firmly, tightening her fingers on his arm as she felt him tense. "It's time for you to make this mansion your own, Draco." Once in the doorway, she turned and looked at him, her eyes tired but gentle. They'd always been gentle, even in her worst moments, even when the gentility was hidden under other things. "It's time for you to make your own memories. With her." The last two words had been a bit of a long shot-she'd been thinking of young Virginia since they'd left St. Mungo's.
"She's not coming," Draco said, jerking his arm from his mother's grip and storming through the doorway into the dark mansion. His eyes scraped up the walls and to the second floor balconies and overhangs, and then up to the ceiling, where owls from the top floor owlery flitted to and fro. "You heard her."
"I heard," she agreed, watching her son prowl with long, sliding steps, so unlike the commanding cane-aided gait of his father. She had also heard more than just words pass between them, but who was she to judge?
She was a sick woman, or so everyone had told her.
"Who's up for a spot of housecleaning?" she asked then, and was pleased to see the starts of a smile, albeit a wry one, flit over her son's features.
~~~
She Apparated blindly, from the dark of her room to the dark of the mansion, not wanting to risk the light of a simple lumos. Hope coursed against reason as she crept through the expansive halls of the newly-cleaned mansion, her eyes trying to adjust with the help of candles placed here and there along the hallways.
Ginny let her feet carry her where her heart led, the feel of him somehow permeating thick stone walls and directing her through the labyrinth that was his home. She entered on cat's feet, silent and yearning, and when she disrobed slid into the expansive bed beside him, his arms were open for her.
There were no words between them, no spiteful words and no whispered sweetness, only her hands brushing desperately at his hair, her lips lighting lightly over the planes of his face. He stretched along the bed as she straddled atop him, his hands spanning her waist easily, a thin sliver of cold brushing above her hip as his ever-present silver ring made contact with her skin.
As his fingertips brushed together, he marveled at her slight size. His need was so great, and she was so small. It seemed unreasonable, he thought as he arched up to press lips and tongue in the hollow between her breasts, his teeth nipping at skin he'd woken up wanting that morning.
A single tear slid down Ginny's cheek as she leaned over him, pressing her hands to either side of his head, her tongue darting out to lick his lips.
"I came," she said, pulling his lip between her teeth and snaking a hand between them to slide over taut abdominal muscles, sharp hipbones, and the heavy heat of his arousal. His response was a quick jerk of the hips, a primal groan tearing from his lips as he buried his hands in her hair.
"You shouldn't be here," he managed, his fingers digging into her sides as she sank down onto him, her slickness enveloping him perfectly and completely. She withdrew from him then to sit up, knees balanced precariously on either side of him.
"I don't need orders from anyone else," she said fiercely, digging finely shaped fingernails into the skin of his fluttering stomach, her rhythm smooth and rocking as she took him deeper and drew away, impaled herself again, and drew away.
The fire of her hair brushed his chest as she let her head hang, intent on the movement, intent on the friction building between them. As she felt herself near climax and felt the tightening of his entire body, she raised up on her knees, keeping only the tip of him inside her.
Poised in that precarious position, Ginny drew her head back and looked her lover square in the eye, searching for words she knew she would not receive.
Draco watched the mystery pass through the eyes he'd come to well know, watched the need that surpassed the hasty physicality between them, and hadn't the slightest idea how to assuage it. His body responded for him, pistoning up and into her as he grated out the only words he had.
"I need you, Weasley. Don't forget that."
As the heat speared up and into her, Ginny dropped her head, her forehead resting above his beating heart. How could she forget it?
It was all she had.