CHAPTER FIVE
She let Harry walk her as far as the Burrow's front door, then sent him away with no more than a press of cheek-to-cheek, shooting to kindle in him the brotherly feeling he'd had for her all along.
Ginny stood outside until he'd Disapparated back to Hogwarts, then carefully composed her face before going back into the house.
"Mum," she said, nodding her head slightly. Her brothers and her father had thankfully scattered to their jobs, leaving her alone with the only other woman in the family.
"Did you have a nice visit with Harry, dear?" Molly asked, keeping her voice light. It had been promising to see her youngest with a man like Harry, a man who had proven himself time and again to be steady, dependable, thoughtful. A man who at least had the decency to come to the Burrow rather than spiriting Ginny away to another country so he could corrupt her mind.
But Molly knew that wasn't the truth of the matter. She'd seen time and time again the evidence of her own strength in her daughter, her own obstreperousness, her backbone in her daughter. Ginny had ended up a great deal more like Molly than any of them would ever have guessed, and now that she was faced with her own greatest qualities, Molly hadn't the slightest idea of how to beat them.
"I did have a nice visit," Ginny said, calm washing over her as she thought of what she was about to do, what she should have done in the first place. "And now I'm going to go have a nice visit with Draco."
Harry had lent her his calm, his strength, his stability. He had faced far worse than a misunderstanding family, and Ginny couldn't possibly see why she couldn't do the same. If she wanted to prove to her parents she was adult enough to make her own decisions, then she thought now was the time and place to display it.
Molly's face blanched, then flushed, and she opened her mouth to say something, only moments later shutting it when she found herself speechless.
What sort of answer did one give to such forthrightness?
"Take an example from Bill, Mother. He sees that I'm happy-or I was before I made the mistake of coming back here." It was as though someone else were speaking, someone else's voice coming out of her mouth. But the pained wince on her mother's face brought the words back to her, gave the responsibility generously back to Ginny.
Things changed, but they would never change enough for her to tolerate her family in pain. Trying to be brave, she stepped forward and put a hand to her mother's trembling arm. "It wasn't a mistake to see you. It was my mistake for not being honest. But I'm being honest now, and all I want is some patience in return. Some faith."
"Faith?" The word came on the tail of a trembling little laugh from Molly's lips as she raised her hand to touch the wet corners of her eyes. "Faith in you isn't the problem, Ginny, love. It's faith in him we don't have. Faith in the son of a Death Eater who has done nothing upon his return to prove he's any different from the man who spawned him." Molly's chin rose in the air. "I'd not lie to you to tell you I trusted him."
"Do you trust me?" Ginny retorted quickly, and she only needed the split-second hesitation to discern her mother's truest answer.
Why should they trust her? After all, it had been she who had nearly brought them all down, she who had opened the Chamber and she who had brought forth the darkest wizard the world had ever seen.
What place had trust with a girl such as that?
"I'm going," Ginny said, letting go of her mother's arm. "You'll just have to trust that I'll come back."
As Ginny walked out of the door with her head held high, Molly couldn't decide whether to feel proud or crushed.
I feel like they're looking for my soul
Like a poor man looking for gold
There are thieves in the temple tonight
She wanted to walk to clear her head, but her eagerness wouldn't allow it, her feeling of liberation, no matter how small her triumph had been, causing her haste. She Disapparated once she was out of sight of the Burrow and Apparated at the front door of the Malfoy domicile.
She'd not gotten a good look at the newly inhabited mansion upon her entrance the night before or her exit early that morning, but the change was unmistakable. A smile tugged at Ginny's lips as she lifted the new doorknocker, a plain, hammered silver ring that replaced the once-garish snake's head that had previously adorned the door.
Ginny sincerely hoped Lucius Malfoy was rolling over in his grave, or at the very least, laboring extra hard in hell.
Her cocksure smile faltered when she saw that the blonde who opened the door was neither tall nor male, but was delicate and very female.
"Ah… Mrs. Malfoy," Ginny said awkwardly, cursing her fair skin as she felt it burn in a blush. "I…"
"You came by to see Draco," Narcissa finished. If things were left up to the youth of the world, they would never get done. Pride, sheer pigheaded pride, had held too many people apart for too long.
Having no pride left to speak of, Narcissa hadn't the slightest problem sticking her nose where it didn't belong. She cast her eyes up the stairs, to the banks of rooms lining the open hallway. "He's lying down." It did her heart good to see the girl's brow beetle in worry, and the young Weasley all but pushed past Narcissa to get into the house.
"What's the matter?" she demanded, her eyes burning as she looked at Narcissa. "Is it…?" She left the words unsaid, but her heart twisted viciously as she thought of her lover on his knees.
I am my father's son. I am my father's son.
"He's just tired," Narcissa said, biting the inside of her cheek and arching a finely shaped eyebrow as she thought of the pops she'd heard late into the night and early into the morning, the telltale sounds of displaced air. "I think perhaps last evening was a bit restless for him." She was rewarded with Ginny's face turning more or less the color of her hair.
After what seemed like an eternity of squirming, uncomfortable silence, Narcissa gestured upstairs. "Go. He needs you." Her second reward in moments was the thinning of Ginny's lips and the exasperated expression that replaced embarrassment.
Narcissa knew what it was like to be needed, and knew what it was like to want more.
~~~
He smelled her before he fully registered she was in the room, the smell that haunted him, made him want even when the
wanting made him crazy. He did not turn, but kept his face to the wall, his long legs stretched out over the expansive
bed.
"Are you not feeling well, then?" Ginny sat on the edge of the bed and reached out a hand to touch, tentatively, the bright hair atop his head. The casual touching was something she'd longed for and had yet to really grow accustomed to. In Boston, there had been a boy, a shying, retreating boy who mistrusted any hand that reached out without obvious reasons.
Now, though much of the mistrust had been shunted back, he jerked his head away from her touch and kept his eyes on the stones, counting one after the other in the wall to keep the sickness at bay, to keep the fears from devouring him and moving onto her.
"What are you doing here?" he asked, his voice bitingly cool.
Ginny's fingers curled into the palm of her hand and she steeled herself with the same resolve she'd shown her mother. "I'm seeing you, aren't I, ungrateful prat that you are."
His speed, the sheer lithe rapidity with which he sometimes moved, should have ceased to surprise her. He'd bested her more than once simply by moving so quickly he shocked her into paralysis, and this time was no different.
Draco drew his knees up as he turned to face her, his hands on each side of her face, the long fingers tangling roughly into her thick, wavy hair. His eyes were urgent as they bore into hers and he forced her to stare straight at him.
"Why did you come here?" he asked, leaning into her. "Did you tell anyone you were coming?"
She winced in pain and covered his hands with her own, attempting to lever his fingers out of her hair; her scalp burned in several spots where tendrils were tugged too harshly. "Draco, stop."
"Did you tell anyone?" he shouted, rising to his knees and looking down on her.
The desperation in his voice frightened her and tears rose to her eyes. "No… yes. Draco, I can't think when you're-"
"Who did you tell?" Do they already know you're here? Are they following? Are they ready to see if I'm ready? Are you ready to run?
And then one thought cut through the panic, making him loosen his fingers slightly.
I will not use you as a shield, but would shield you instead.
Not his father's son.
"Ginny, who did you tell?" he asked, shifting his weight and still holding her head.
"My Mum!" She twisted away from him and scrambled off the bed, scrubbing her hands up her cheeks to allay her panic and stem her tears. When would she ever learn? There was no predicting such a man.
Such a man couldn't even predict himself.
Anger boiled up in him, rage at the knowledge that her simple carelessness-naïve Weasley that she was-could end up harming her, and he slid off the bed, prowling the room, stalking her in the chamber of marble, stone, and satin.
"And what did she tell you, Ginny? Not to come?" He didn't need her answer to know it was the truth. "Did you ever stop to think she might be right?"
What the hell was going on? Ginny wondered. Was this the same man who'd taken so much time with her this morning?
So much time, only moments before kicking her out.
"No."
"You're too fucking trusting, Weasley!" His voice rose to a near-shout and he aimed a kick at the unlit candelabra in the corner. "Too trusting. You don't know me," his voice dropped to a dangerous whisper. "You don't know me, Ginny."
You don't know the Chosen One. Merlin, what am I going to do?
And when he stepped to her, his face occluded with the confusion, the wrath, the anxiety, he hoped she would step away.
But instead she stepped into him and drove her fist into his stomach.
As though he didn't have enough fucking problems.
He doubled over, unprepared for the blow, and as he opened his mouth to shout at her again, she clenched her own fingers in his hair, yanking mercilessly and making his eyes widen.
"I don't know… what the bloody hell… has gotten into everyone… but they can just get bent," Ginny said through clenched teeth, frustrated into action by everyone around her.
It would be quite some time, she reckoned, before anyone else treated her like a child. That, at least, was a courtesy Harry had given her-treating her as an equal.
Draco's mouth gaped open as he tried to catch his breath and she covered it with her own, stroking her tongue over his teeth and his tongue, the hunger and heat and anger melting away as she concentrated on him. Not his father, not his past, not the structure of stones they stood in, and for a moment it all fell away.
"I'll come back tonight," she said, breaking the kiss off with no finesse at all. "Since you need me so fucking much." Brutal honesty had a place and time, and this was it.
"Ginny-" Draco started, not knowing where he was going to go with that particular plea. But she cast him one look over her shoulder, rolling her eyes, and was gone.
Half-mad with memories of the past, voices of his peers, possible heir to the most undesirable throne he could think of, besotted with a Weasley, and socked in the gut. Not for the first time, Draco Malfoy was certain he'd died and gone to hell.