CHAPTER EIGHT
She didn't know why it hadn't occurred to her before.
Ginny had fallen asleep with the fervent wish for guidance burning through her mind like a mantra, and when she'd arisen the next morning, inspiration had hit her like the Muggles' proverbial ton of bricks.
Whatever that meant.
If there was anyone in the world other than Ginny herself who understood Draco, who knew what preyed on him even though he'd been given back the one thing he'd thought he lost, it was his mother. Narcissa, the one thing Draco had truly wanted back, was bound to understand at least a few of her son's inconsistencies.
She ate breakfast quickly, giving her mother no excuse and no indication where she was going when she left; when she was walking through the gate and up to the steps of Malfoy Mansion, however, Ginny was forced to admit she hadn't quite thought the matter through.
After all, what was she going to say? "Excuse me, ma'am, but your son wouldn't have sex with me yesterday."
Somehow, Ginny didn't think that was the proper approach. So, as she used the doorknocker to announce her arrival at the mansion, she tried to formulate the words in her mind.
Any words she'd compiled flew from her mind when Draco answered the door. He was impeccably groomed, as always, his robes in place, a smile fixed on his face.
"Virginia," he said in a purr, lounging against the doorjamb in a pose that looked negligent but was, she knew, carefully choreographed.
So why did it make her feel like her heart was in her throat?
He took her hand and tugged her into the house, wondering how she'd come to be there at exactly the moment he'd wished for her. Ruminating on it for a moment as he pulled her to him and breathed in the scent of her hair, he figured it wasn't that big of a miracle.
Draco wished for her nearly every minute of the day, it seemed.
He kept the smile on his face as he set her back from him so he could look at her, but he knew it didn't touch his eyes, and he wondered if the glamour spell he'd cast on himself only moments ago was amply hiding the dark shadows that had started to nestle under his eyes.
He'd not slept at all upon coming home from Flourish and Blotts, but had instead sat straight up in bed, eyes wide, listening for the voice of his father. Sleep meant vulnerability, and in vulnerability, the whispers started.
He could not-and would not-stand to hear the sibilant suggestions about 'the queen.'
His father had no right to speak of Ginny. He'd been dead long before she came to his son, and dead he should have stayed.
"I wanted you," he said finally, drawing her back into his arms and finally kissing her properly, tongue flitting over tongue, teeth nipping at lips. "I came home wanting you, and the damnable itch looks as though it hasn't abated."
She winced inwardly at the harshness of his words, but brushed the sting aside. "No fault but your own," Ginny said, putting her hands to his chest and wondering fleetingly where Narcissa was. No matter how enjoyable this interlude was undoubtedly going to be, it wasn't what she'd come for.
But perhaps there wasn't any harm in asking-at the very least, he'd never lied to her.
"I was worried about you last night," she said, feeling his arms stiffen defensively around her. "What's going on?"
Here's what happened, Ginny, I came home and these lunatics-you went to school with them, too, surely you remember them-concluded I was their new leader. Completely cracked, eh?
For a moment he could hear himself saying it, confessing it all to her in a relieved, lighthearted spill of idiotic words, and if he were someone else, if the people who had come to him with lunacy in their eyes and darkness in their hearts were not so dangerous, they would laugh at the whole thing later.
But he was Draco Malfoy, son of the most loyal of the Death Eaters, most hated among his classmates, and there would be no laughter about a topic such as this.
'Cause me and you could have been a work of art
Thieves in the temple
"I don't think this is a matter for me to get involved with." Harry felt a cold, clammy sweat over his brow and found himself wondering about all those prophecies lined up in a room, gleaming, dusty balls with eerie, portentous words trapped inside. Was there one for Harry and Draco? Could they, too, only co-exist in war and impossibility?
Hermione took his hand impulsively. "Harry, listen. It's everything we-everything youÂ-fought so hard against. What if they came back, and so soon? It's not even been three years, Harry."
"She's tons of brothers, 'Mione. They can all help her just as well as I can. She'd be daft to believe I was only after her for my own personal feelings." Especially considering I don't know how to properly show interest in a girl other than the one standing right in front of me, he thought. "Why don't you ask Ron?" he asked, feeling the green tendrils of jealousy gripping his insides none too gently.
"Because when it comes down to it, there are things in this world I wouldn't ever depend on Ron to do!" Hermione burst out, then clapped a hand over her mouth. "I'm sorry. Forget I said that."
On the contrary, I found that quite heartening, Harry thought to himself. Fuck me silly. "I'll go," he finally said. "But I've no guarantees, Hermione."
To both of their surprise, she leaned over and gave him an overly enthusiastic kiss that landed more at the corner of his mouth than his cheek. "Brilliant," she said with a fierce whisper, the starts of her first victory already tasting sweet in her mouth. "Molly says she's likely at Malfoy Mansion now."
~~~
He was trying to think of something-anything to say in response to her heartfelt query, and a knock on the door made them both jump.
His eyes went wide, and molten silver fastened on tawny chocolate as he fixed her with his frightened gaze.
They're here, he thought inexplicably. Of course they would come when his mother was gone to therapy at St. Mungo's, preferring their secrecy and their games as they always had, and their parents before them had.
"Upstairs," he hissed, shoving her with enough force to make her trip. He wanted her away from them, away from the door, away from him, even, but for now that could not happen. They stumbled up the stairs together, and Ginny asked no questions.
They stood together at the railing of the second floor, looking down, down, down along the tall walls at the now ominous front door. His fear was so tangible that it had leaped into Ginny herself, her heart was in her throat and she dreaded the person-or monster-on the other side for reasons she could not comprehend; so tightly were his emotions bound to hers that she felt no need for reason at this point.
The door creaked open and Ginny's breath left her in a small whimper. Draco put his hand over her mouth, his panic wiping away the idea of a Silencing Charm.
We've come to see our lord and his queen, the voices bounced around in his head, and involuntarily, he took his hand away from Ginny's face and put both hands over his ears, shaking his head.
And then Harry Potter came through the front door.
"Gin?" he called out hesitantly, not quite stepping into the mansion. He'd never been here, never wanted to be.
Damn you, Hermione, he thought, but the oath lacked heat. He stepped into the mansion, letting the weighty door swing shut behind him. He'd heard voices-specifically, Draco's and Ginny's-only moments before he'd knocked.
Draco had thought for a moment his eyes were playing tricks on him, when the bloody Boy Who Lived walked through the door. But then he'd called out for Ginny-my Ginny, Draco thought-and Draco had turned now-cool grey eyes to his lover.
Ginny was half-leaning over the railing, her eyes flicking from Harry to Draco and back again, as though she could not rationalize the existence of the two in this same place.
"I just came by to see how you were, Ginny, after you left so suddenly last night…" Harry's eyes swept left, right, but never up.
He never thought to look up.
Ginny's cheeks burned with two high, heated spots of color, Harry's words damning her just as surely as any sin, and she could feel those accusing silver eyes on her as bloody Harry nattered on about how she'd run out of dinner, and how he'd wanted to speak with her, to expand upon their conversation from before.
He moved suddenly, his specialty, and before she could even offer up an apology or call out to Harry to leave, Draco was behind her, his arms caging her, his breath hot and heavy on the back of her neck.
He'd been expecting the end lying behind his front door, and what he'd gotten was worse. Draco had gotten the bloody lion behind his front door, the bloody hero.
The bloody thief, and she'd never said a fucking word.
How was he ever supposed to change if everyone kept provoking him?
"What is he doing here, Ginny?" His whisper was low and sliding, smooth and misleadingly quiet. His lips brushed her ear, and his voice did not reach Harry directly below them.
Ginny shivered and turned her head slightly, ducking it as she did so, bringing her mouth close to his. "Draco, I'm sorry. It's nothing-"
"I will not compete with him anymore. Not now. Not for you." His hands snaked around her and she forced herself to still the indrawn breath that wanted to hiss through her teeth. His hands slipped inside her robe, spilling the thin fabric first off one shoulder, then the other.
"Draco, not here," she whispered pleadingly, her eyes flicking back to the dark-haired man walking around the first floor as though lost.
"Keep your eyes on him, Ginny," Draco said ruthlessly, his anger channeling into lust, his rage making him more cunning, cleverer, more creative. This brain was like his father's, manipulative and keen, finding any way to make a point.
He certainly had a point to make, Draco thought as his long-fingered, calloused hands found her breasts and kneaded them roughly. "Best keep quiet, my Ginny, or you'll alert dear Harry as to our whereabouts," Draco whispered nastily.
Twin tears slid down Ginny's cheeks as his hands slid down her stomach possessively, bringing a flock of butterflies floating up to his fingertips, the quivering sensation quaking the length of her abdomen and to the center of her.
Not here, not now, she thought, but when had it ever made any difference, to him, or even to her, in her deepest places?
It never had, for he held the magic in his hands, the tenuous magic that danced between them every time they were close.
"You never told me," Draco said, and suddenly the rage had left him, replaced by desperation so sick it made him shake.
Had she let herself be needed elsewhere?
"It's nothing," she repeated, but her voice was hitching in tiny little gasps as his fingers pressed points of mixed pleasure and pain along her abdomen, her thighs. Hands slid around to caress her buttocks, squeezing and pinching and stroking away any pain that may have been incurred, and slowly Draco pulled the remainder of her robes away, leaving her in a bra that had seen better days and a pair of black panties so brief they may as well not have existed.
"It's everything," Draco said, feeling tears wet his own eyes. How could he have let this happen? "You're everything," he said, leaning forward and wrapping his arms around her in a strange hug that didn't seem out of place in the least.
In this madhouse, everything could fit.
"Now shhh," Draco said, slipping one finger to the aching bundle of nerves at her core and thrusting into her from behind. She arched back, the tears sliding toward her hairline as he slid his length in and out of her, their breaths silenced by their secret, the young man on the floor below needing only to look up to find his quarry.
Draco matched his short, fast thrusts with the stroking of his finger, feeling her body tense and relax with every motion forth and back. She was close; they both were, and he bent her over a little farther, forcing her to grasp the railing for support, her hands slapping limply on the dark wood, her entire torso now displayed for anyone to see-
But still Harry did not look up.
Draco stilled his hands and stilled his thrusts, staying buried deep within her as he leaned forward, covering her hands with his, his voice shaking with grief and fear and self-loathing.
What had he done?
What was he doing?
"You're mine," he said at length, and with one final thrust and one final stroke, sent them both into silent, spiraling climax as his own tears coursed their way down the unmarked skin of his cheeks. Biting his lips to stifle a sob-What son of mine cries while taking a woman?-he drew her back, away from the edge.
And on the ground floor, upon hearing a single, shaky gasp, Harry looked up in time to see only a flash of red hair.