House Unity: Unified

**Author’s Note: Following is a very short prologue for “House Unity: Unified.” I realize, in one of my author’s notes of HU fics past, I referred to this story as “United.” I had to pick one or the other. I’m a spazz. Anyway, this story is D/G and takes place two years after the first two House Unity stories. Happy reading. I truly hope you enjoy it.**

Prologue – The Things That Unify

Trust.

It has no definition here, among these people. They have no concept of the word. A twisted sense of loyalty is the closest they can come, and even that does not extend to one another, but only to him, to the Dark Lord.

In darkened corners accustomed to many wayward dealings, a wizard sits. He may as well be part of the shadows, so still is he, so dark is his hooded face.

He waits for another, a trustless acolyte, and fancies himself deepening with the shadows as the light from the windows wanes with dusk.

His mind is deepening, too, for he has a task at hand.

When his companion comes—friend, they whisper, standing lip to ear, and what mockery, what ill use of the word!

They sit.

One of them will not rise again from his chair, and his essence will never leave that corner.

Mistrust.

They are unified in it, and the death of one of their own is one more bond.

~~~

Two years.

Many things could happen in two years, and many things did.

Marriage—Ron and Luna, in formal black and frilly white respectively. Ron had looked somewhat confused, a little awed when Luna had come walking down the aisle. In the end, though, he’d done just fine and hadn’t missed a single word. Well, almost hadn’t.

Birth—Harmony Jane, a squalling child with a prodigious head of curly black hair and pretty hazel eyes. Hermione had sworn herself too rational to come unglued during childbirth—she was a modern woman, she insisted, pointing out her and Harry’s unmarried status as an example— but Ginny had been forced to take away the witch’s wand for fear she would emasculate Harry with it.

Death—Minerva McGonagall had lived and served more than people who lived to be thrice her age, and it was said the heavy Stunning she’d gotten signaled the beginning of the end.

War—No one could say how it had started, really, only that it had, creeping into their lives with a slyness that surprised only the unprepared. The Order, among others, were prepared as they could be.

Secrets—Though in days of war they were common, there were two who had the most secrets, who had the biggest secret. Though Ginny’s family knew about Draco, albeit begrudgingly, his father still had no idea, nor would he ever. Draco had vowed upon his return from the life of Drake Mallory that those two parts of him would stay separate. His family would never mix with Ginny. Nor would his family’s loyalties.

Lies—With any secrets, there are plenty of these, and though Ginny hated living them, she appreciated what liberties they afforded her.

Two years passed, Draco and Ginny had both graduated, and a war was upon them.

Though houses had been unified, there was now a much bigger division at stake.

CHAPTER TWO – The Messenger and the Prodigal Son

“Just for the record, I think the twins should do it.” Molly Weasley’s statement sounded less like an opinion than a command, but Albus Dumbledore looked at the small hourglass in his hand, then over his glasses at the young woman before him, heedless of her mother’s opining. She’d grown up more than a little since her sixth year at Hogwarts, her hair darkening a bit, her eyes showing much more maturity and experience than her years should have allowed.

Ginny shifted her weight from foot to foot, running through the route in her mind. Now, at this moment, it didn’t matter that her mother repeatedly protested her wishes to participate in the Order; it didn’t matter that her love had no clue where she was right now, or that she and her family were fighting against him and his.

What mattered was that there was a war on, and while she might not have been front line or cavalry material, Ginny Weasley knew she could fulfill this particular need. All good forces needed a messenger. Smart, secretive, swift and certain. The twins had already run the assigned route, and mix and maze of alleys, shops, and some Muggle locations where magic had to be limited.

The one thing she’d found most helpful—and the one thing she never talked about—was the slight, niggling feeling of precognition she sometimes got just before Apparating, the skill most helpful when she was in a hurry. She figured that particular mental glitch was going to shave a few minutes off the twins’ time and help her avoid plenty of bumps and bruises. She balanced on her toes, waiting for the word.

“Go, then,” Dumbledore said conversationally, and she was darting down the front walk even has he turned the glass over. When she hit the end of the walk, she Disapparated, air rushing in to fill her void with a snap.

Molly sighed and stomped into the house, knowing she’d be defeated. Arthur refused to disagree with Albus, and her daughter was just as stubborn as she.

Molly wondered if they’d given her too much freedom, too much lead of her own. They should have put their foot down when she’d come to the Burrow announcing her love for that odious Malfoy. But she’d made a good case, pleading house unity, his distaste for his father, and most of all, her love for him.

It was a far cry from the union with Harry Molly had once imagined for her daughter.

They’d seen it as a phase, Molly thought, listening with only half an ear to the twins squabbling and hashing over what had slowed them down. They all—including Gin’s brothers—had thought her so-called ‘relationship’ with Draco would pass.

But two years had gone by, and Molly knew her daughter’s flat in Diagon Alley stood empty most nights, and when it didn’t, there were two people occupying it.

Not a phase, but it was too late to stop.

In the end that year, the year of Ron’s graduation, Gin’s sixth year, it hadn’t been any of Ginny’s pleadings that had allowed her to be with the Slytherin she claimed to care for. No, it hadn’t been her words which had finally convinced the Weasley family to sheath their wands and their legendary tempers.

It had been the quiet voices of reason in Albus Dumbledore and Severus Snape. They had made their points quietly, inarguably. Lucius Malfoy hardly saw his son as more than an ignorant boy, and thus Draco had no involvement with the Death Eaters. Lucius barely trusted his own wife, so it was unlikely he would turn to his son. And Severus’s final words that heated evening at Grimmauld Place—“If you trust one such as me, surely you can find it in you to trust a mere boy.”

Years had passed, and passed again, Molly thought.

And so Draco Malfoy was no longer a boy, and if her daughter was engaging in the war on her end, what was he doing on his?

Shouts of disbelief and mirth rang up from the porch, and Molly heard her daughter laughing breathlessly as she handed a message to Albus, obtained from the end of her route and returned with urgency.

Molly had lost the argument.

~~~

“Your mother tells me you’ve been very busy at the Ministry.” Lucius Malfoy looked down his nose at the cup of tea in front of him and felt his stomach turn over. He didn’t feel like eating or drinking, hadn’t for several days. There were too many things on his mind, weighty things. To console himself, he mindlessly stroked his arm through his robes, feeling a pleasant little shiver each time his fingers passed over the Dark Mark.

Draco considered a lump of sugar for a moment, shrugged, and popped it into his mouth. Ginny’s baking—one of the things he was glad she’d inherited from her mum, unlike her temper—had given him a wicked sweet tooth.

“Long hours,” he finally said, noting his father’s ridiculously obvious behavior. It wasn’t embarrassing enough, Draco supposed, that Lucius had been imprisoned, but upon his release, he had to be absolutely blatant about his loyalties, such as they were. Draco had his doubts his father held any loyalty to anyone but himself, but a good leader, a smart one, should never make his alliances so transparent. “It isn’t as though they would give me a post and let me remain idle.”

Lucius said nothing, and Draco suspected he could have announced to his father that he’d gone to work nude the previous week without garnering any remark.

“If you’re busy, Father, don’t waste time on my account.” Please don’t, he added mentally.

Lucius looked at his son and narrowed his eyes. The weekly teas together hadn’t been for bonding purposes, obviously—Malfoy men didn’t bond—but Narcissa had insisted, and eventually Lucius had started using the time as an opportunity to feel his son out for information. Today, however, his son could tell him nothing he cared to know.

Weighty things afoot. Weighty things, indeed.

“It does happen there are things I’m pressed to finish,” Lucius said at length, standing up. “Give my best to the Minister.” With no more farewell than that, Lucius got up and left the room.

“Is there anything I can be getting for young master?” A house elf appeared at his elbow, and though Draco contemplated telling it to bugger right the fuck off, he didn’t. the last time he’d acted as such—at his own flat, no less—Gin had boxed his ears.

“No,” he said, then swiftly changed his mind as the elf started to trundle off. “Wait. Is my mother home?”

“Madame isn’t being here,” the verdict came, then the squeaky voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper. “Madame is not being here much of late.”

Good, Draco thought. It was very good.

He smelled madness in his father’s wake.

~~~

Severus Snape was not often surprised.

This particular gathering of Death Eaters, however, surprised him. It was rare for the group to admit any sort of weakness, so this was particularly delicious, in a peculiar sort of way.

For one of their ranks was dead. Poisoned, as near as they could tell.

He felt the eyes on him beneath masks; despite his own cover, his face was impassive. The Potions professor was used to suspicion. Let them heap it on. If anything, he thought more clearly under pressure.

But the Dark Lord apparently had no qualms, no outward suspicions, at least, for he addressed Severus casually. “You will try to determine what did this, yes? What poison, and how difficult it would be to concoct?”

It wasn’t as though he thought lives were precious, but he needed numbers. He needed lives. If anyone was going to take them, it was Lord Voldemort.

“Yes, my lord,” Severus said, and allowed himself a smirk.

Even the most faithless could be believed in within this twisted and trustless realm.

~~~

He Apparated to his own flat first for several reasons: to see if Ginny was there, and to complicate anyone who was trying to track or follow him.

The last thing Draco Malfoy wanted was to be predictable.

When he saw she wasn’t there, he sneaked one of the shortbread biscuits she’d made out of its tin, eating it quickly before flooing to her flat. It may have been a dirtier mode of transportation than he preferred, but he wasn’t taking any chances these days. Not after things he’d heard, rumors and whispers not only from his father, but from inside the Ministry, as well.

Her flat was quiet when he got there, and he wondered for a moment where she was. But they didn’t ask those things these days, preferring not to know.

For his part, Draco thought it would be much easier not to know her every move, for if something went wrong, he wouldn’t immediately know, wouldn’t immediately come apart.

But in his heart, he thought he would.

He would feel it, if anything happened.

He sat down on the threadbare, overstuffed divan for which she’d fashioned a slipcover, leaning his head back and staring at the ceiling. Time with his family had started to exhaust him, and he’d found himself thinking of that other world more than once when he sat down with his father.

Draco truly feared what would happen if Lucius found out about Ginny. He could make excuses, certainly, but for how long? And with how much conviction?

It was foolish to continue the risky relationship, but he wasn’t about to stop it.

He loved her, in as much as he knew what love actually was, and he wasn’t going to toss that away, send her into a world where some man not half good enough for her would snatch her up and leave her loveless.

He’d seen what happened to an unloved woman in a cold marriage.

Draco let his eyes drift shut, smelling the lingering remnants of Ginny’s perfume in the flat. He’d rouse when she Apparated, he told himself. He just needed a few moments…

Ginny let herself in the front door, rolling her neck as she closed the door behind her, charmed by the feel of doing something by hand when she could use magic just as easily. She’d rushed so much in the time trials that she’d needed to take her time getting home, and she never really looked forward to an empty flat, anyway. Saturday afternoons meant no Draco, at least not for another half an hour or so, and she simply didn’t want to sit around, wondering where he was, what he was doing, who he was with.

She trusted him. She just didn’t trust those he’d once called housemates, those he still called family.

Ginny shut the door, letting her heavy robe slide to the floor beside the door—I’ll pick that up later, I swear, she thought defensively, knowing Draco would chastise her for it later—and she stepped farther into the flat, feeling the weight of the day’s actions settling on her shoulders.

She’d volunteered. She’d needed to. She was a Weasley, after all, there had never been any questions as to what she would do when the time came, what side she would be on, whether or not she’d fight.

But it added a whole new dimension of omission to the one relationship she held closest to her heart.

A soft exhalation, the name of another carried on a whisper, had her jerking to a halt on her toes.

Damn him.

She couldn’t be mad at him when he whispered her name.

Gen wasn’t all that far off from Ginny, anyway, she thought with a soft smile. And the intent was the same.

Wanting a distraction, needing one, and sensing he did, as well, she crossed the room on silent feet, marveling at his continued sleep. He was a light sleeper, catlike, and rarely ever was she able to surprise him. But he dozed on, his fair hair falling across his eyes, calling to mind a disheveled boy with a penchant for messy clothes and cigarettes.

She hiked up the knee-length flowered skirt she wore and placed a knee on either side of his, startled to the point of concern when he didn’t open those smoky eyes of his. But he moved a bit, sinking farther back to accommodate her, the hands he’d had at his sides now settling on her upper thighs.

Enjoying the moment, fiercely grateful for the lightheartedness of it, she whispered his name and caught his bottom lip between her teeth, tickled when his eyes shot open and all he could manage was a muffled yelp.

She soothed the spot she’d nipped with her tongue, lapping at his lips and feeling the tension of only moments before ebb away. “Do I need to wear bells next time?” she asked, resting her elbows on his shoulders and teasing his hair with her fingers.

How had they come to this point, she wondered. It seemed it hadn’t been so long before they’d only been able to come together in anger, in spite.

How had they fallen in love, exactly?

House unity, fate, family troubles. Ultimately, it had come down to decisions—mostly his.

And he’d chosen her.

She felt she had the right to be tender with him, no matter how tough he wanted to appear.

“You were calling out for her again,” she said, trying to make the pout convincing, to sound angry.

She was playing with him like a damned cat with a mouse, and damned if he wasn’t liking it. Draco shifted under her a bit, tugging so her knees pressed solidly against the back of the sofa, and he tried to clear his mind. There was something a bit unnerving—if wholly pleasant—about waking up with a woman atop you.

Especially when you knew precisely what she was capable of.

“I just liked her uniform, I swear,” he said sleepily, sliding his hands up the backs of her thighs, his fingers sneaking under her knickers to knead the flesh of her buttocks. “Can’t control my dreams, you know.”

And he had been dreaming of her in that uniform, of the too-short skirt and the long, long legs, the coy glances she’d sent over her shoulder without an inkling of how much damage looks like that could do.

Now she knew damned good and well what those looks did, because he’d taught her.

Ordinarily, there would be words here, explanations, whispered queries and responses regarding the day’s activities, but this couple kept their secrets and allowed one another’s secrets to be kept.

Draco arched up under her, the buckle of his belt catching in the folds of her skirt, pulling the material tight against her bottom for a moment, and then the folds were pulled free and he pressed to her, enjoying as he always did the knowledge he saw in her eyes as she felt his arousal.

The words they would usually say turned into wordless whispers, nearly inaudible moans—

I missed you—

And he moved his lips under her chin, lapping at the soft skin there as she tilted her head back and moved into him, bringing them both to a fevered pitch with minimal movement.

Unwilling to lay her back, to move apart, to lose her heat even for a moment, Draco moved one hand between them. Her skirt was now completely up, her dark pink underwear made even darker by the dampness working its way through the cloth. She leaned back, her lips brushing over his forehead as she looked down to watch what he was doing, to add her own hands to the mix, unbuckling his belt and unzipping his pants.

I dreamed of this—

He moved his hands to her waistband and she shoved them away, putting one hand to the back of his neck for leverage and using her other hand to move the soaked satin of her knickers aside, red under pink, ginger under the slick mauve fabric, and they both watched as her fingers danced over tight curls and slick flesh.

A breath, indrawn, sharp, from one of them, both of them, and she pulled, her slim fingers pressing tight into the back of his neck. He put one hand to her hip and with the other cradled the back of her head, letting her neck fall back along his arm as he buried himself in her, his hips rolling slightly even as she rolled her own, setting a give-and-take rhythm.

His eyes locked to hers the moment he was fully seated inside her, and even as her lashes started to flutter, he did not break his gaze. He loved watching her, watching the honey highlights in her eyes darken, her red-gold eyelashes flying wide just before she came. She drew her bottom lip between her teeth, a restless tug, a long pull, a hold as he angled his hips, hitting a spot that made her see stars, and she knew her lip would be swollen tomorrow.

His lips were parted, one corner half-lifted in a smile as she bent her elbow, leaned in toward him, pressed her breasts against him through her shirt and his as she tried to get that angle that would rub him against the bundle of nerves just above her opening, not bothering to be secretive about it, desperation coming and going in her eyes in the same rhyth he'd adapted, and he let her try, didn't help her.

He loved watching her get desperate just as much as he loved being desperate within her.

Ginny drew back, moaning in disappointment even as she guided him out of her, and wrapping her fingers around him, she teased the head of his erection over the most sensitive part of her, a thin imitation of a scream escaping her lips as she tortured herself and him.

No words still, though the ones Draco wanted to use were impolite, indeed, as he felt the hard little nub chafe against him, her five fingers sliding in their combined wetness, pleasure almost painful as she held too tightly to try and satisfy herself.

With the last of his strenght, rationale, and control, Draco thrust his hips up sharply, filling her completely just as she reached her climax, sending him toppling right after her, kissing her softly and tasting her sweat.

And just as though she'd never been gone, it didn't matter where either of them had been.

CHAPTER THREE - Skirmish

They had ended up spooning on the couch, each of them removing one item of clothing from the other at a time until they were both naked and all but buried in the deep cushions of the couch.

Her day should have felt a triumph, an accomplishment. She'd stepped up to take a part in defeating the one man who had scarred her, hurt her most, before she ever should have known what true fear and true hurt were. But she didn't tell him.

He thought of his father's absurd behavior, wished she could find it as amusing as he, and let it go. There was no way to describe to her how his father had behaved, no way to tell her any alarm would be overreaction. Because the hell of it was, for her, it might not be.

"I can't stay," he said as it started to grow dark outside. "Not the way things are."

She stiffened, and he sighed, knowing there was no way to tell her anymore. He steeled himself for a fight, but none came.

Ginny stared into the fire in the fireplace and wondered if she could keep two parts of her heart separate for the duration of what could be a very long war.

~~~

Wake up.

She turned her face into the pillow, her hand stretching out along the expanse of the bed, only to stroke cool, empty sheets where she’d expected—wanted—to find Draco.

“Ginny, wake up.”

What was the point? She was by herself, after all, and she didn’t have to work on Saturday morning, so why get up early? Why wake up?

A hand shook her shoulder roughly and Ginny sat up, gasping, eyes adjusting quickly to the dark. Bill stood at the side of her bed, his hair half-sliding from its tie, his eyes sober. “I hope you’re prepared to be the messenger. Tiberius Flint was found dead, Gin. The Death Eaters are tearing through the city, leaking over into Muggle neighborhoods.”

Ginny’s mind raced as she thought of how Draco had dropped a kiss to her bare shoulder, sliding a nightshirt over her head just before he’d left. What time had he gone? And where had he gone?

The Death Eaters are tearing through the city.

Please, no, she thought. “I’m ready,” she told him, forcing a calm she didn’t feel.

Bill sighed through his nose, his lips pressed tight together, and he leaned to kiss his sister’s forehead. “I wish you’d let someone else do this,” he said quietly. After a moment of silence, he leaned back. “Get dressed. We’re going.”

~~~

Wake up.

He’d been lying awake, thinking of her, his mind so occupied he thought he’d imagined the whisper at first. He was accustomed to the sounds of her breathing, the soft little murmurs she made in her sleep, and the whisper, either imagined or real, had him alert, ready.

“I said, wake up.” A brilliant light shot from the end of the wand, illuminating the room and making Draco wince. When the spots had faded from his eyes, he saw his father sitting at the foot of his bed, his face contorted and ugly.

He knows, Draco thought, the pace of his heart picking up. He thought of this man in another capacity, this man robbed of his magic, holding a little black box that could somehow destroy lives. He knows about her.

“My gratitude for forgoing the usual procedures of waiting until daylight and knocking on one’s door,” Draco drawled, sitting up slowly and forcing nonchalance. “I do find them so very tedious.”

“Tiberius Flint is dead,” Lucius hissed. “Murdered, no doubt, by some Muggle-loving swine with more sentiment than sense.”

Draco swung his legs over the edge of the bed, shoving his hair back from his forehead and rubbing his face. “Not news I like to be wakened with,” he said. “So what would you have me do?”

Lucius rolled his eyes and brought his cane down on the top of Draco’s bed, the finely woven cotton snapping as the ebony hit it. “You’ve the joys of a low profile,” he said, looking at his son intently. “Or, as low a profile as a Malfoy can manage. Do you think you can take time from your precious life and your precious Ministry to keep your ears open, hm?”

“I don’t see that being too much a hindrance,” Draco responded. It wasn’t as though his father was particularly saddened over Flint’s death; if he’d heard Lucius say once that Tiberius Flint was a snaggle-toothed sycophant, he’d heard it a thousand times. But it was a matter of principal. No one got the better of a Death Eater, and no follower of the Dark Lord was to die without purpose.

“What is being done?” Draco asked slowly, knowing something had to be happening, knowing no blow went unreturned. When Lucius cut his eyes away, toward the door, Draco grasped the edge of the cane and pushed, sending the head of it into Lucius’s side. “Don’t evade me, Father,” he said coldly. “I’d rather be prepared than sheltered.” He narrowed his eyes. “Or worse, not trusted.”

“Get dressed,” Lucius said flatly. “And I’ll show you.”

~~~

She’d never seen such a flurry of activity at Grimmauld Place. Their efforts before had been scattered, unified in their meaning but segmented in their bases. This was true war, however, and Grimmauld Place was where they took their orders.

Albus Dumbledore looked at once older and younger, pacing the floor and standing tall to bark out orders. This was nothing, he said, small insurrection, the flex of a muscle. The Death Eaters would stop by morning, no doubt, but they could not stand by idly.

“We need to know where they are, what sort of damage they’re doing,” Remus said tiredly, casting his eyes about. “Severus is already out, finding out what he can.”

“I’ll go,” Ginny said, running through her mind the places she’d sometimes imagined Draco in, those places his father frequented. When several pairs of stern eyes turned to her, she shook her head. “Don’t you have Order members already out there? What if they need to tell you what’s going on? Do you feel they should stop, perhaps send you an owl?” She turned to her mother, her eyes wide and helpless as she thought of sitting here, doing nothing as she imagined her brothers in the thick of the fray, or her lover on the other side of things.

If she sat still, she would surely go mad.

“Go,” Albus said, raising his hand. “Be our ears, Ginevra. Our eyes.”

She turned swiftly, pausing only to press her lips to her mother’s cheek. “I love you,” she whispered, and then she was gone.

~~~

Bloody hell. It was absolute chaos, Draco thought, and absolutely appalling what such a small group of unfocused witches and wizards would do. It wasn’t as though they’d ever be able to band together as a single force, so at cross purposes were all of them.

But he strode untouched through occasional fires, through minor skirmishes between lesser magics, and his heart twisted, his eyes seeking.

Where was she? She wasn’t at her flat; that much he knew. He’d been unable to return to bed once his father had left his chambers, and he’d gone to her flat and practically turned over every stick of furniture she had. She was nowhere to be found.

And for her to be missing just shy of three in the morning was not just unusual, it was unsettling.

Idealists, he’d thought desperately as he’d pressed his head to her front door, trying to decipher where in the hell she’d gone. Bloody idealists and their crusades. And so now he walked the streets, heedless of the violence around him, his long coat undulating about his ankles, the high-necked black sweater he wore making him paler than he already was, more dramatic than he truly meant to be.

He only had eyes for her, but in this mess, who could tell?

He ducked between two buildings as two wizards in Death Eater masks rushed by, shouting threats at a young witch and wizard who fled hand-in-hand.

There were ways, he knew, to reach out for her, and he tried with his mind to find hers, but the moment he opened up, his consciousness was bombarded with thoughts from every corner—

Rape murder kill Muggle loving filth a life for a life an eye for an eye my life for him, for him, for him—

Run, the masks are evil, run, dirty evil hate worshipping fiends crazy fire help—

He rapped his head against the bricks behind him, the taste of blood from his bitten tongue filling his mouth instantly and bringing him to.

His eyes fluttered just a bit and he struggled for control as someone ran past the mouth of the alley, cloak fluttering behind them—

Her?

—and he bolted from the alley, blood gathering unheeded now at the corner of his mouth as he tried to find where the person had gone. Had it been her, or was he going mad?

~~~
She was trying to keep her eyes focused, alert for Order members, but she couldn’t help but look for him, left to right like a child lost in Flourish and Blotts, searching aisles of dusty pages for a parent.

Fearing she’d be spotted, Ginny Disapparated and came up down the street, where she grabbed the sleeve of a fierce-looking Tonks. Her hair was a bright red-orange, her pretty face molded into a scowl. “Pigs,” she said, not missing a beat as she was pulled aside. “Swine! They’re doing damage like hooligans more than anything else, but who knows where they’ll stop?” Without so much as skipping a beat, she let out a yell like a war-cry and shot a spell at a wizard whose mask was slipping off in his childish glee, incapacitating him and then binding him before she turned back to Ginny. “Go back and tell the house it will not take much to stop them tonight, but that they smell blood, taste it.”

Tonks took down another Death Eater, this one female, and very young, a sick Ginny noted. When she turned back to Ginny, her face was grim. “Go,” she repeated, and would say no more.

She stood shaking for a moment after Tonks ran back into the street, wondering if she’d made the wise choice.

The shaking had stopped by the time she delivered her first message, and it wouldn’t return for the two hours she stayed out.

~~~

He vowed to stay out until he found her, until he knew where she was, but only one thing could send Draco Malfoy back to his flat.

His father’s voice, ringing through the rioting crowds even through the mask he wore, regal and mad and powerful.

“Fools!” he roared, his voice both amplified and somehow indistinct through the mask. “Did you think we would not find out? Do you think we will not find and punish the guilty?” He grabbed a hooded witch from the doorway of a store, and for a moment, Draco’s heart rose into his throat. He had been certain it was Ginny, but her hood fell back, revealing a cloud of blond, curly hair.

Not her. This time.

Where are you, dammit?

He didn’t want to stay, but he knew he couldn’t go.

If she were there, and his father got her…

He would stay.

He stayed until his father had passed, until the Death Eaters rallied behind him, and then he Disapparated, headed to her flat, knowing it would be empty, needing to check. He wanted to leave her a note, but, fearing it might be found, wrote on a piece of parchment, “Where is my tutor?” and left it on the floor just inside her front door.

It would have to do.

~~~
She paced around his flat, scowling at his stupid, big bed and his stupid expensive dustcatchers.

She knew whose money had bought them those things, Ginny thought, wiping a dirty hand over an equally dirty, sweaty face. She’d been in fireplaces, in back alleys, in open streets and Muggle backyards, and now that the skirmish was over, all she wanted was to make sure he was home safe, make certain he was all right, not—

Killed by a do-gooder who knows what he is.

Her knees went weak, all the shakes that had built up wracking into them one after the other, and she sat on the floor, unable and unwilling to dirty his bed with her filthy robes.

When the doorknob turned, she was all eyes, her gaze wide-eyed and mistrustful, unmoving in her spot on the floor. If someone had come for her, then let them come. She would not move from this spot.

But move she did, to her hands and knees and then to a swaying stance as she saw him, his pale hair messy and matted, a trickle of blood at the corner of her mouth, and she wanted to scream, wanted to cry, wanted to tell him No, for Merlin’s sakes, damn it, no, but she said nothing, knowing he must be thinking the same thing, with her filthy clothes and her scratched face, and so she stumbled to him, put her hands to his chest, and kissed him to taste his blood.

Draco wrapped his arms around her, squeezing his eyes shut, and breathed deeply of the smell of her, soot and filth and sweat, and he thanked the gods she was unharmed.

This time.

He felt her silent sobs shaking her body, no tears, no sounds, only the breadth and depth of emotion she couldn’t speak and he couldn’t hear.

When she was finished, more dry-eyed than when he started, when the feel of her pressed to him had him wanting to pick her up and carry her to the bath and then straightaway to bed, he smoothed her hair back from her dirty face, kissed her forehead, and set her away from him.

Dawn was breaking.

It was time for her to go home.

CHAPTER FOUR – Going on With Life

He knew each of the faces, each of the names. He thought he knew each of the people, knew their hearts, their minds. He needed to, after all, to discern their loyalty.

But Albus Dumbledore could not say with certainty that none of the Order had killed Tiberius Flint. As much as he would have liked to state it without doubt, he could not. There were many who had their reasons, he supposed, for hating the Death Eaters, for going after them subversively.

The whole point of the Order, however, was just that—order. And rogues, people who took life into their own hands, risked the danger of being vulnerable to the very things, the very points that drew Death Eaters in. Power, revenge, a twisted sense of justice.

He did not know who had done it.

Albus pushed back his hat and rubbed his forehead, trying more to ease his mind than to bring any sort of thought to the forefront. A blank mind would be a blessing, if only for a moment, but he knew that was not to be.

At the moment, what was to be was his DADA professor in the adjacent corridor arguing with the young man on whose shoulders fate rested. A baby gurgled happily in the background, and Dumbledore wondered if Hermione was carrying Harmony in that clever little backstrap contraption she often wore. He would not listen to their argument, however, for it was not his to listen to, and so he threw a muffling barrier around his office.

“You’re not helping,” Harry said. “Blast, Hermione, listen to me. For once in my life, I’m not being selfish—”

“You’re not being selfish?!” Hermione blustered. “Oh, well, certainly sheltering me to the point of asphyxiation is for my own good. I know you’re worried about losing someone else you love, Harry, but sacrifices must be made, and if I am to be one of them, then so it is.”

Harry winced and felt his stomach plummet. No matter what her accusation, his sheltering had nothing to do with her, with them—but her words certainly did not help. He couldn’t imagine life without her, without their little girl. “Hermione, please,” he said quietly, knowing Hogwarts was full of ears.

“Please what? Please listen to a man who loves me so much he can protect me but doesn’t love me enough to wed me?” Hermione’s voice grew shrill. “Bloody hell, Harry, not even our daughter has your last name.” As though in response to the statement, Harmony’s gurgle turned into a hitching hiccup, a precursor to a sob.

Harry felt as though someone had twisted a knife in his stomach. He knew she was under an immense amount of pressure, and he knew she wanted to take on even more. He knew it colored her rationale and tinted her statements. But it didn’t change the hurt.

“You know she can’t be legally mine, Hermione, nor can you. If he finds out—”

“I’m sick of our lives being ruled by the decisions he makes. Almighty He Who Cannot Be Named. He can’t be named, but he can rule our entire existence.” She shoved her hands through her thick hair, making it wild. “We may as well fucking surrender, because he’s already won,” she said, pushing past Harry as their daughter kicked her legs and waved chubby hands at her da.

“I love you, Hermione,” Harry said, knowing at times like this, there was little else he had to offer her. A ring given in private, a promise whispered in secrecy, a child born out of union. He’d given her all those things, but at times like these, they hardly mattered to a woman pushed past her mental means. “I love you,” he repeated more softly as she walked away from him.

Her words floated back to him over Harmony’s babble.

“I know.”

~~~

Monday morning had to be a morning like any other morning. There could be no pauses, no stutters. She could not look as though she’d been up most of the past two days running messages for the Order, and she certainly could not look as though she’d spent the rest of the night crying in her own bed, missing the man she loved, worrying about where he’d been while she had been warring in the only way she knew.

Ginny knew most of the people at the Ministry were good people, people who would choose the right side when it came time to choose. But it was difficult and ill-advised to trust everyone implicitly.

It wasn’t as though she was new to keeping secrets in the workplace. She’d been doing it for months, since the first moment she’d started working for the Ministry. Of every witch and wizard who worked there, only Percy and Arthur knew she was with Draco, and she intended to keep it that way.

She sorted through the contents that had been stacked in her owlbox, ignoring the general Ministry announcements that would undoubtedly be posted all over the place, anyway. She had one from Hermione, who was hardly allowed out of the castle these days, and one from Luna, who was off reporting with the Quibbler. Ginny decided she’d leave that one for last; it was sure to be full of incomplete sentences and random words Luna had included in the margins, and Ginny knew she’d need a laugh after reading through the rest of her things.

Head down, she continued down the corridor, her hair sliding down over her shoulders and obscuring her peripheral vision for just a moment. She passed one person, two, and then a long-fingered hand slipped into her field of vision, depositing a sealed parchment on the top of her pile.

She didn’t have to turn to see who had given it to her, no matter how much she wanted to see him, to see his facial expression. She wanted, needed, to know he was all right. There had been blood, that much she remembered.

Ginny didn’t think she could bear it if he wasn’t okay. But she didn’t think she had it in her to find out what had happened.

She dumped the post on the tiny desk she’d been given, toppling a tea mug to the floor. She managed to stop it in midair just a moment before the inevitable crash, letting it down gently as she tore open the black wax seal he’d put on the parchment.

The parchment was blank for a moment, then words spread across it, making her stomach turn a bit. It reminded her too much of a diary long ago, of writing words to have them answered in phantom text.

You need to be careful, it said. I want you safe.

She traced her fingers over the black ink, sighing as it withdrew the minute she touched it.

“I want you safe, too,” she whispered.

“Because that’s your job,” Percy said brightly behind her, clapping his sister on the shoulder in an awkward, affectionate way. “Keeping all of us safe. But talking to yourself’s a bad sign, love.” He looked around.

She crumpled the parchment though it was already blank and dropped it into the waste bin. “Just giving myself the Ministry Security pep talk,” she said brightly, leaning forward to kiss him on the cheek. As always, he turned red, looked around as though he thought someone was going to pop out of a door and reprimand him for being unprofessional, and scurried away.

“Ginevra!” The hoarse bark of her supervisor made Ginny wince, and before she could respond, the witch rasped out an order as she usually did, without waiting for any sort of acknowledgment. “All of my quills are missing. Be a good girl and scare some up.”

On second thought, Ginny thought, scowling at the wall between her desk and her supervisor’s, maybe all Ministry people weren’t good.

She had barely stepped into the supply closet when the door slammed shut and she was pulled up hard against a body she knew well.

Draco kissed her before he said anything, letting the handful of quills he’d nicked fall to the floor. “Took you long enough,” he whispered, putting his hands to the sides of her face just to feel her, just to make certain she was there. He’d had dreams in the little sleep he’d gotten, dreams about her standing before the Dark Lord, familiar with him as she once had been.

Ginny pushed him a little, her heart pounding in her chest, and she nuzzled into his neck, not giving a hang that they were in the Ministry’s closet and could be caught. She’d wanted to be with him, couldn’t sleep without him.

At what point had she started needing him to function?

“Promise me you’re careful,” Draco said, kissing her temple, her cheek, the spot behind her ear. His hands slid from her face to her shoulders to her arms, where he held tight and gave her a little shake. “Promise me.”

His eyes were fierce, icy, and Ginny shivered. “I promise,” she said, tilting her head. “Draco, what’s gotten into you?”

He’d been thinking about it too much, and the dreams…

They’d been so real.

“You could leave,” he said. “I have enough money to send you somewhere until it’s all over.”

And oh, how good it sounded. How tempting, and how fitting for him to tempt her. Hadn’t he always?

But part of her remembered the wild-eyed witches and wizards she’d seen spilling into the streets the night before, and she steeled herself against the thoughts she had of abandoning. “Only if you come, as well,” she said, and it was as though she’d slammed a door between them. He took his hands from her, shook his head, the fire suddenly gone.

“You know I can’t—”

“And I can no more than you,” Ginny said. “This isn’t school any more, Draco. We can no longer skive off. It isn’t that simple.” She could have said more, would have, but he put his fingers to her lips.

“Stop,” he said wearily. “Before you offend one or both of us.” And the hell of it was, part of the reason he loved her so bloody much was because he’d known she would react just that way.

His noble princess.

“It was worth a try,” he said, his lips smirking even though his eyes stayed sad. “I could have saved the time and just spent it snogging.”

She wanted to weep, but didn’t. She was at work, after all, and Weasleys were the utmost in dependable on the job. “I have to get back,” she said, putting one hand to the back of his neck and kissing him fiercely, tracing over the bump in his tongue where he’d bitten it the night before. “I love you,” she said, turning away from him and jerking open the door.

It was no wonder she was already exhausted when she got back to her desk.

She had wanted to stay in there all day.

CHAPTER FIVE – Distracted and Distressed

It was, in its own way, a quiet day. There had been talk, of course, of the evening before, whispered gossip about the Death Eaters’ rampages, who might have been responsible for Flint’s death, who was and wasn’t a Death Eater.

“You know, I’m positive we’re all okay around here,” one witch had said, casting her eyes around furtively. “Except maybe for Malfoy. You know he’s only here because the Minister was afraid to tell him no.”

“Like we need his kind here on the inside,” another voice had joined in, and Ginny had been required to force herself to walk away so she wouldn’t open her mouth and say something completely obvious.

They hadn’t spent two years keeping themselves a secret just to have it all toppled by a moment of Weasley temper.

Those years may not have been the easiest, between fighting with her family and hiding from his, but in retrospect, considering things as they were now, Ginny supposed they hadn’t been all bad. It had been romantic at first, the sneaking around, the look at a different lifestyle. Then, after he’d graduated, things had started to grow tense, to change. Holes gapped in their conversation, opened up because there were things they would not talk about. His job at the Ministry—gotten through Dumbledore and not out of scare tactics, no matter what busybodies claimed—had given them something to talk about, but it never expanded to fill the spaces of the impending war. But it had never been as it was now, separated and fearful and panicked… and the war wasn’t half as bad as it could be—and likely would be, before it was all over.

Ginny packed up her things at the end of the day, stooping surreptitiously to tug the parchment Draco had sent her out of the waste bin. She flattened it out and slid it into her folio, feeling more than a little like a foolish little girl with a love note.

“Ginny.” It was rare for Percy to approach her more than once a day at work; he liked to keep family and business separate, something the twins hadn’t ever subscribed to. She jumped guiltily at the sound of his voice, thinking he must have seen her rummaging through the bin.

“Percival,” Ginny said back to him, tucking her folio under her arm. Really, she could have just told him it was a note from Draco, but… he persistently got a sour look on his face any time Draco was so much as mentioned, and she could all but see the struggle he had convincing himself it was simply best not to make a scene.

“I have a message for you,” he said, pursing his lips and blowing a restrained sigh out his nose. “Confidential,” he added in a whisper, and she barely kept herself from the urge to retort “No, really?!” in mock shock at her brother’s obviousness.

He was such a lovable git sometimes.

She broke the seal on the outside of the parchment—a Ministry seal, which was odd; they never sealed internal documents—and saw her father’s handwriting. It was a bit of a disappointment. She’d been hoping for another note from Draco, no matter how foolish that would have been.

“Number Twelve, directly after work. Don’t be late.” Her eyes were drawn to the bottom of the page, where Arthur had written a postscript. “This is written with a Muggle pen. It’s called a ballpoint. Positively fantastic!”

Even in war, some things were still worth smiling over.

~~~

“You are distracted.” Narcissa Malfoy frowned at her son’s full plate. “Really, Draco, I don’t maintain the best elves in the wizarding world simply to make ornamental culinary bits. It’s food, my dear. You eat it.” As though to prove that, she put a bite of her filet mignon in her mouth and chewed it elaborately.

“I’m not distracted,” Draco said hollowly. He’d been looking at his mother, though, and thinking of Ginny. Wondering if a few decades from now Ginny would be this woman, trying to nurture their son as best she could despite a controlling, cold bastard of a father.

“I know distracted. I’ve lived with distracted, my darling, before you were even an heirlet in your father’s ego.” And it bothered her a bit to see her son in the same situation. Really, Lucius’s ambition had been an asset once, even an aphrodisiac. These days, it just seemed self-destructive.

She would destroy herself before she let her son destroy himself. It was a privilege of motherhood.

“Is it a woman?” Narcissa asked, reaching across the table and nudging her son’s elbow. She had a right to wish for grandchildren, no matter what the political climate. That, too, was a mother’s privilege. A son’s curse, perhaps, but no matter.

Draco’s eyes cut to his mother and his brows drew together. It was hard for him to remember this wasn’t the same woman who had taken him aside, asked him if losing his love was worth the money it would get him. It was so hard. “It isn’t a woman,” he said, not entirely lying.

He didn’t miss the mammoth sigh that brought from his mother. They ate in silence—or rather, she ate and he pushed his food around his plate, feeling more than a bit like a petulant six-year-old—and that was all right with him. Time spent with his mother never felt wasted, or constricting, as time spent with his father did.

He knew she felt it, too, the companionship of the silence, and he wondered if having a child had been more like bringing a friend into the world, desperate for a connection with anyone, desperate for a piece of Lucius he couldn’t walk away with.

And thoughts like that made Draco hate being an adult.

He kissed the top of his mother’s head before he left.

~~~

“I have thought for many hours on the matter, and there is only one conclusion to come to about the death of Tiberius Flint.” Albus Dumbledore paced the floor and looked at all the faces he’d been running, reached out a bit with his mind and tried to probe.

He caught snatches of thoughts, feelings, doubt, lust, grief, exhaustion, but no guilt. Not over this. And no triumph, either.

“Would the one conclusion be that’s one less Death Eater for us to deal with?” Charlie Weasley asked, leaning back in his chair and crossing his feet at the ankles. He’d forgotten to scrape his boots at the door, he noted worriedly, hoping his Mum wouldn’t notice.

Albus stifled a snicker at the unbidden mental image Charlie projected of Molly boxing him in the ear.

“The conclusion,” Albus said correctively, “Is there is no way of knowing who did it, but I feel fairly certain none of us did.”

“That’s too bad,” Mundungus Fletcher said, only to be cut off by Snape.

“Actually, you old fool, you’d have been better off by far if Flint were still alive. Do you wish to push them into attack before you are prepared for it?” Snape glared at the robust man. “They need little more provocation than existence.”

“Tell us what you know, Severus, do not lead us into a fruitless argument.” Albus was too tired to listen to that particular discussion blow into a tirade between Severus and everyone else. “If you please.”

“What I know,” Snape said stiffly, clearly feeling chastised, “Is that Flint was to be meeting another Death Eater. No one quite knows who, and no one has come forth yet. His wand is missing, and he was poisoned.” He wished to withhold his next statement, but knew it must be said. “I have not yet been able to determine what potion was given him.”

Fred and George tried valiantly to stifle their smirks.

They failed.

“I wish for each of you to be listening, be thinking. We haven’t much time.” He looked at Severus for confirmation. “Eventually, they will engage us in battle, and our jobs will cease to matter. Our daily lives.” As much as he hated it, Albus looked at Ron sitting in the corner with Luna on his lap, at Harry holding his baby girl. “Our greatest loves. None of it will matter in the face of danger. If we lose, we may well wish we had expired.”

His words left them all uncomfortable, and he sat, feeling old, creaky, arthritic. When would it be time for someone else to take the helm?

Not yet, he knew. His time was not yet through.

Molly cleared her throat and clapped her hands briskly. “There’s food in the kitchen,” she said, her tone neither bright nor dark, only very factual. “Let’s move, now, be careful with the furniture.”

No one thought to disobey her, especially when they saw her deliver a particularly merciless cuff to the side of Charlie’s head.

She’d caught sight of the muddy boots.

Albus caught Ginny’s elbow as she passed, motioning with his head for her to follow her back into a long-since abandoned bedroom of the house. “I wished to speak with you alone,” he said. “I have concerns I would like to share with you.”

Ginny nodded, her eyes wide. She couldn’t seem to quell the bird in her stomach, the one made of fear, the one whose wings were scraping madly against the insides of her stomach, against her ribs, feathering her lungs and making it difficult to breathe. Did he know something? Something about Draco? “I should like to hear your concerns,” she said breathlessly, wondering why he didn’t proceed.

“Ginevra, your relationship with—” Tom, he’d nearly said. Your relationship with Tom. He’d have sooner bitten his tongue out than made that particular error. “Young Master Malfoy. It concerns me. He could be in danger, in more ways than one.” He could die at the hands of one of the Order. He could die at the hands of a fellow Death Eater.

He could allow himself to be taken into servitude for them. Or he could have already done so.

“I’d be a fool if I didn’t realize that already,” Ginny said, her head swimming. She hadn’t even spoken with her parents about that possibility, nor had she spoken with her friends, with Harry or Hermione or Luna…

“I felt I should avail you of these concerns before others start to share them,” he pressed gently, aching for her. He had hoped… he had hoped this young woman might be Draco’s redemption.

It was a hefty weight to put on such a small young woman.

“And what?” Ginny said, feeling her face flush bright under his eternally inscrutable gaze. “You’d like me to step away from something your actions started? Was your experiment so fleeting, then, Headmaster? To prove you could thrust students into situations that would alter their entire lives, just for a temporary fix to your school?”

He did not speak, merely templed his fingers and felt pain, pain, pain at the possibility that something he had done had misled a student.

“This… we… are no longer any of your concern,” Ginny said, spitting the words out. “You may think this war supercedes our greatest loves, as you so put it, but I do not.” The pressure of the previous evening and the entire day built up, exploded like an acidic bubble in her chest, in her heart. “My greatest love has nothing to do with this war. And my greatest love has nothing to do with you.”

His expression was no longer unreadable, had she cared to take note of it. His face was drawn, his eyes incredibly aggrieved.

“I shall keep myself and my secrets… your secrets… safe,” she said. “But aside from that, you may lay any concerns you have to rest. I have no respite to offer you.”

She left the house, ignoring the calls of her parents, of her brothers, wondering when she would find respite for herself.

~~~

How many kilometers was it? She hadn’t the foggiest notion, this trip made of a conglomeration of wizarding travel and Muggle travel, the winding streets of Muggle London, the moisture gathering at the hem of her heavy cloak as she grew nearer to her destination.

It was a small house, humble, though it was likely sturdier than her own. The small building that stood behind it was her destination, however, and as she held the small key clumsily between gloved fingers, Ginny said a silent prayer, a hope that she’d find what she was looking for here. It had been months she’d been here, months since it had been necessary for them to get away here. It had come in handy early in the relationship, when he had still lived at home and she had still been in school, but somewhere along the way they’d outgrown this, become too busy.

She turned the key and stepped into the small building with its huge wall-sized door at one end and looked at the strange automated carriage sitting in the middle, the green metal contraption she had memories of from another life, memories of Drake and this beloved Muggle machine.

But he was not here, and the garage felt cold.

Ginny walked around the auto, running her fingers over the sleek silver feline affixed to it, and opened the passenger door.

She climbed in, drew her knees to her chest, and let herself weep, let her sobs echo off the cold concrete floor and soak into the soft leather interior of the car.

CHAPTER SIX – Moments Together

“You’re not supposed to be here.”

A whisper, hidden somewhere in the shadows.

“Neither are you.” An answer, a response, nothing short of the truth, though laden with suggestion. The whisper traveled as the whisperer passed, the conspirator, hidden by a heavy, hooded cloak and the objects between them. “I have my reasons, what are yours?”

Ginny bowed her head under her own hood, her fingers tracing the spines of books, small beads of sweat gathering at her temples as she saw him move on the other side of the shelves, over the tops of scores of books. A shift of cloth, the flash of one silver eye.

Draco moved behind her, closing his eyes and inhaling the smell of her, memorizing her. It had been nearly four full days since they’d been alone, since they’d been together in her home. He needed her, craved her more than he craved his safety. And Merlin help him, he sometimes craved her more than he craved her safety. He did not want to risk her, but he did not want to refuse her, either.

He could not stop breathing.

Draco twitched back one side of her hood, moving to hide her face with his, rubbing his lips over the curve of her ear and feeling the heat, the power, bake off her in waves even through the hooded robes.

He’d left the Ministry slowly, casting one look at her, knowing she would see his need.

Knowing she would know his intent.

She’d made her excuses well, he trusted. His Ginevra could be as sly as a Slytherin when she needed to be, and he’d felt her just a few steps behind him all the way to Diagon Alley.

He’d given no indication of his destination, but she had known immediately where he was going. If she’d wanted to, Ginny could have arrived there before him, but she held herself back, enjoying the game of cat and mouse.

Draco appreciated irony, she thought, appreciated sarcasm, so it was no wonder he’d led her here, to Flourish and Blotts. It was here, she thought, not at the fictional Holforth, not in the office of a slightly surreal Alfred Dunmore, that things had started, both for ill and for good. It was this bookstore that had led to her brief and unintentional affair with evil. It was this bookstore that had nearly killed her.

And it was this bookstore where they had first exchanged words and glances.

She’d followed behind, though, instead of running ahead, enjoying the time she had to watch him, with only the oldest and youngest milling about the shops. Students and professors alike were at Hogwarts, and everyone else was at their jobs, fulfilling their vocations.

For good or for evil, life went on, jobs went on, people kept up their appearances and pretenses and went about their days, giving them this opportunity.

Giving them the opportunity to hide in plain sight.

“What would you have done if I hadn’t followed?” Ginny asked, letting her fingers curl on the edge of the shelf as he pursed his lips, blew cool air to stir the hair laying against her neck. His answer didn’t matter, it was only his voice that mattered, hearing him speak to her and not some Ministry underling.

“I would have taken you away,” Draco said, feeling keenly the wish for just that, to take her away.

He was a Malfoy. He had never done anything he’d been ashamed of, and he wasn’t ashamed of her. He didn’t want to hide her, didn’t want to have to hide her.

But his father had brought her to harm once before with the same sort of casualness he would have cast away a broken quill.

Draco would not bring her to harm again.

Unable to let him do as he pleased, unable to exert her own will, Ginny turned her head and slid her lips to his, from corner to center before parting her lips to share a sigh, to breathe in his as she breathed in hers before stroking the underside of his upper lip with her tongue. Their hoods met, forming a barrier they didn’t need.

They’d had so little time together, distractions fell away instantly.

Draco raised his hands, sliding them beneath her hood, his palms touching the silk of her hair, his knuckles grazing the wool of her hood. She turned to him, one hand remaining on the shelf, and tilted her head back, the hood falling back.

Ginny rose to her toes, feeling those long, marvelous fingers running through her hair, gently massaging her scalp, and she waited for that familiar feeling, the stab of heat, the damp urgency, the tremble that ran from the top of her spine all the way through her body.

But the reaction didn’t come, the sharp want didn’t happen. What she felt instead was an ache, deep and sweet.

It was want, only a different kind of want.

It was wanting something she knew she couldn’t have.

He tasted her tears before he knew she was crying, but when he pulled away, he saw she was smiling.

“You’ve finally lost your mind completely, haven’t you?” he said softly, resisting the urge to look over his shoulder.

He wouldn’t waste a moment, not for the sake of fear.

“It’s come to the point where we’re snogging in a bookstore like a couple of deranged schoolchildren,” Ginny said, raising a hand to brush her tears away.

He beat her to it. “Leave it to you Gryffindors,” he said, smirking, “To decide the good place, the adventurous place, for an assignation is a bookstore. If you snuck away here with someone, I’d not hear about it.” He could almost see her, younger, eyes a bit brighter, giggling and ducking behind the stacks of books.

And because he was only human, he wondered if perhaps she still had her Hogwarts uniform.

“You picked the assignation location today,” Ginny reminded him, raising her hands to wrap her fingers gently around his wrists, to feel the skin and muscle and bone shift as he rubbed his thumbs under her eyes.

Memorize every little thing, she told herself.

He scowled even before she spoke, and she thought he was sometimes still every inch the spoiled boy, the rich young prince. “You’re going to say you ought to go, aren’t you?”

“I ought to go, love,” Ginny said, brushing her fingers over his forehead to soothe the wrinkles that had formed there with his scowl. “You’re not attractive when you pout.”

“I can’t look perfect all the time,” he said, marveling at the normality of it, seething with the knowledge that normality was a rarity.

He hoped that would cease soon.

She genuinely laughed, the sound of it absorbing quickly into the pages of the Wizarding History section, and she shook her head. “Race you to the office?”

And as easily as that, she saw him close himself off from her. His eyes went from smoke to ice, his shoulders squared even as she felt her own droop. “You’re not going back to the office,” she said, her voice detached. When he started to speak, she held up a hand. “It wasn’t a question.”

“I have something I should do while I’m out,” Draco said tightly. “I just… don’t want it to touch you.”

Ginny tossed her head back, her eyes narrowed. She didn’t appreciate being treated like she was fragile, like she was incapable, like she was breakable. A few tears did not a weakling make. “As long as you’re touching me, what you do touches me.”

She put her fingertips to his chest and gave him the slightest shove. “It holds true in reverse.”

He couldn’t help it, couldn’t help himself. He grabbed her fingers, kissed them, and watched her turn on her heel and walk out with her head held high.

Draco slumped against the bookshelves and drew in a gusting breath. The littlest Weasley. She was such a spitfire, such a mouthy little heathen.

He figured that was how they were going to get through this.

~~~

“He talks to you more than he talks to me.” Lucius prowled across the sitting room, sneering at the filigree and ridiculous pretty things his wife had felt the need to fill the space with.

He hadn’t the slightest idea, Narcissa thought, that he sounded like an ill-tempered little boy. “You’re upsetting my digestion,” she said, feigning ennui. He was vastly entertaining like this, and as long as he was pouting over their son’s stoicism, he wasn’t out playing dress-up with his cronies.

Narcissa had grown tired of that intrigue quite some time ago. If she’d had to pinpoint it at an exact time, she would have said when she’d grown pregnant.

Because a child changed everything.

“Has he said anything?” Lucius asked, slamming his hands down on his wife’s table and nearly toppling her teacup. The look she gave him, though weary, would have been enough to freeze the blood of a lesser man.

He didn’t even notice.

“He said ‘Good evening,’” she said acidly. “Should I analyze the tones? He’s a young man, Lucius, in his first job. While you are undoubtedly busy with other things, that is quite enough for someone his age to follow. You should be proud he works when he doesn’t have to instead of living off your money and your name.”

It didn’t have to be said, her implication was clear enough. Draco wasn’t living off Lucius as Lucius had lived off his own father.

He stared at her for a long moment and Narcissa gazed back at him calmly, wondering if she’d ever again be able to rouse the ire, the fire that he’d once had so easily, that had excited her once.

But he turned and walked out, leaving her with a table set for tea and positively no appetite.

Proud, she’d told him. Proud of his son.

Narcissa didn’t think her husband had any concept left of what pride truly meant.

**Announcement: I know you’ve seen it all over the place, but Portkey is holding its Readers’ Choice Awards, and D/G is making a weak showing, as are R/Lu and J/L. Please, readers, there are TONS of unbelievable writers out there!!! Certainly there is a story out there you’ve read that knocks your socks off—I can think of several myself—so go nominate your favorite, complete non-H/Hr stories! Fandom solidarity… it’s a beautiful thing. And what better holiday presents for the authors you love than to nominate their fics? And no, I don’t mean me, lest people think I’m trolling… this story isn’t complete and therefore isn’t eligible. But be thinking of ones that are!!!!**

CHAPTER SEVEN – The Motions of Fear

Narcissa heard the door slam and stilled with her cup halfway to her mouth. Either Lucius had forgotten something—somewhat likely—or he’d realized how foolish he was being.

Very unlikely.

“Lucius?” she called out, setting her cup down and standing. He’d been gone for nearly a quarter of an hour, leaving the house silent and her thoughts clamoring. But he did not respond, if it was him at all.

She stepped into the foyer, ready to chastise a house elf if they’d been slamming the doors—and it wasn’t as though it would be the first time they’d engaged in that particular game, for reasons she could never fathom—and she felt her breath catch.

“Draco,” she said, stepping forward with her hands out.

He looked terrible. He should have looked impeccable as usual, for his clothes and his hair were neat, not a bit out of place, but his shoulders were slumped, his eyes desolate.

She’d told him he was preoccupied, distracted, and today he looked positively absent. It frightened her, that empty look, and she put her hands to her son’s shoulders and gave a like shake. “Draco, what are you doing?”

He wanted to lay his head to her shoulder. It was stupid, he knew, but he wanted the only person who had ever told him everything would work out for the best to tell him that again. He wanted to hear it from her.

He was tired of being tired, and he was tired of hiding things, both from his family and from his lover.

Not that they were really much of lovers these days, he thought bitterly, sliding his mother’s hands from his shoulders and holding them in his own hands, amazed at how small his mother was. If she could handle things, surely he could.

It simply didn’t feel like it.

“I need you to tell me something,” he said at last, looking down at her, searching her eyes for an answer, for the precise amount of information he could get away with telling her.

Nearly none, he knew. If he did not want to endanger Ginny, or endanger himself, he could tell her nearly nothing.

You should be at work, Narcissa wanted to say, the panic that came solely to mothers clutching sharp claws into the soft tissue of her stomach. “Tell you what?” she asked instead.

When had he become a man? When had it no longer been guaranteed her son would be safe based on his age, based on his status as a child?

“You will love me no matter what happens in my life, won’t you?” He’d been thinking about it, and thinking about it too much. “Won’t you?” he repeated, holding her hands up and pressing his forehead to the backs of them. “No matter what I do, no matter whom I fall in with.”

She thought of the Dark Mark, sometimes dormant and sometimes livid on her husband’s flesh, of Lucius stumbling home one night smelling of firewhisky and burned flesh, and she closed her eyes. “Yes,” she said. “You know I will.”

She was ready to gather him in her arms, to pretend, if only for a moment, that he was still a child, and that things really would turn out all right, but the door swung open, letting in a brisk wind that slammed the knob back into the wall.

“Get back to the Ministry,” Lucius said in a low, controlled voice.

“Lucius—”

He cut her off. “Get back to the Ministry!” he shouted at Draco, pointing his cane toward the door.

Draco felt his stomach turn, his face go clammy, and for a moment, he was certain his father knew. “What has happened?”

Lucius did not waste time. He crossed to his son and grabbed him by a fistful of robes. “Cullen Mulciber has been killed. Poison, his wand stolen, just as Flint. Now quit whatever whinging you’d come to do and get back to the Ministry now.”

Was it wrong to be relieved? He wasn’t certain he cared if it was. With a last glance at his mother, he was out the door, Disapparating before his father could say anything more to him.

“What was it?” Lucius asked Narcissa, his voice low. He was, for the first time in a long time, perplexed, even anxious. He did not like being played the fool, but with two of his companions dead, he had no choice but to think that was precisely what was happening.

Someone was targeting Death Eaters. He had no fear for himself; he wasn’t fool enough to be poisoned by some vigilante Muggle-lover, after all. But he had a wife, and a son, neither of whom he trusted to keep themselves alive.

“It was nothing,” Narcissa responded finally, pressing the backs of her hands to her cheek and feeling how cold, how cold Draco had left them. “He only came to say hello.”

Please, she thought, looking up at her husband. Please don’t let them take my son with the same lies in their mouths that stole my husband.

“Just to say hello,” she repeated faintly, and for Lucius, that was enough. There were too many things to worry about, too many problems. Too many questions.

“Stay inside,” he said stiffly, giving her the first indication in a great long while that he’d any concern for her at all.

And once he was gone, Narcissa wondered what her son had been so afraid of.

~~~

Draco Apparated outside the Ministry, pulling out his silver watch fumbling it as he tried to gain entrance. The polished silver chain seemed to come to life in his hands, sliding through his fingers and sending the watch tumbling down his side, jerking back and forth on the links that held it.

“Bloody fucking…”

He needed to see her, and he needed to catch her before she left. She had to know, and he should have thought of that, should have thought to tell her to be careful when they’d separated earlier, but he’d forgotten. He’d been too stubborn to tell her to be careful, or that he loved her.

He hadn’t told her he loved her.

His father had been livid, and what was more, he’d been shaken.
There would be hell to pay tonight, and he didn’t want her to have to pay it.

The timepiece clicked open and he repeated his entrance words impatiently, watching the seconds tick by. Unless she’d left early, she would still be there.

~~~

She’d gotten nothing accomplished all afternoon, her mind endlessly circling back to his remark that he didn’t want things to touch her.

She was fragile, apparently, she thought, slamming her filing drawer just to hear it bang. Liking the noise, she did it again.

Bang!

“Miss Weasley, if you please, is there something in your files that needs to be exterminated?” Her boss’s sniff was audible and Ginny slunk in her seat, seething.

And aching. Oh, Merlin, how she ached for all this to be over. She ached not to feel selfish, not to feel as though her life were more important to the war that was ready to burst forth at any moment, but each night without him took her farther and farther away from her convictions.

Each time he kept a secret from her, or she from him, she resented the factions more. There were times, she thought, though she would never admit it to anyone else, that she hated the Order just as much as she hated the Death Eaters.

And there were times when she wished her biggest problem was a prattish Muggle boy with an automobile far too dangerous for him.

Thinking thoughts like that made her loathe herself, made her wish she could loathe him.

There were murmurs on the other side of the wall, her boss mumbling to someone in that odd voice of hers, croaky and never quite managing to be a whisper. Ginny’s brows drew down as she heard her name, and she strained to hear, but there was nothing, only an indeterminate whisper. Finally, her boss’s voice came, so loudly Ginny sat back in her chair with wide, shocked eyes.

“Fine, then. But she can’t do anything about it today. She’ll not stay after working on some other department’s overflow.”

“That’s perfectly acceptable.” Draco’s voice reached her ears just a moment before the sight of him reached her eyes, and with a single glance back, he knelt down beside her chair.

“What are you doing?” Ginny hissed, turning panicked eyes to the wall, to the corridor. “Someone could—”

He put a finger to her lips, shaking his head. “Things will be bad tonight,” he said, knowing each word could seal his fate, one piled on top of the other like stones sinking him into a lake. But for now, it didn’t matter. “I want you to be careful.” I want you to stay in tonight.

What about you? She didn’t ask, knew he wouldn’t answer. Every single question she wanted to ask would yield no response, well she knew.

“I love you,” he mouthed, feeling it more clearly than if he’d actually voiced it, the silence of the statement making it more powerful. He kissed his fingertips and stood just as the clocks all clicked to five, and just before the rush of witches and wizards eager to leave their posts for the day, he brushed them over her forehead.

And then he was gone, swept up in the flood of the departing Ministry employees, and Ginny wondered why it felt so much like goodbye.

She gave herself only a moment, replaying his words in her head. Things will be bad tonight. She wanted every word, every syllable, every pause and hesitation, to be hers and hers alone. She wanted to hoard his thoughts and steal his speech. But she was a member of the Order. She left the Ministry and went straight to Grimmauld Place, where she sounded the warning.

“Battles tonight,” she told the few members loitering about the kitchen, and she pushed her sense of self away. “I’m going to gather the others.”

CHAPTER EIGHT – Facing the Enemy

They were not taken by surprise this time; the Order members were out and about in the streets, wearing their everyday robes and their everyday expressions, waiting for trouble to find them. A few of them were willing to find trouble, those of them thirsty not for blood, but for vengeance, for the end of the war, for the end of the terrorism that had crept into their lives without so much as a proper warning.

There were new warriors this night, and tested warriors who were commanded to stay back by their general, by a wizard who undoubtedly needed nothing as much as he needed one night’s selfish rest.

The messenger of their front slipped among browsing crowds in Diagon Alley, inconspicuous save for the bright beacon of her hair. It gave the members something to look for, something of which to be aware, but it would be covered when the battles began, hooded, the flame momentarily extinguished as a sort of disguise.

Ginny walked alongside her brother, her hand slipping into his for just a moment, mirroring the people they’d been not so long before. She hadn’t wanted him out tonight, had pleaded with her mother to make him stay, had pleaded with Dumbledore to allow him just a bit more time with his wife.

But her mother would not listen to her pleas, listening with a hardened face and deaf ears as Ginny plead her case; Molly had begged much the same of her daughter for her daughter and been denied. She would beg no more cases for herself because she saw she would lose, and she could not stand the thought of losing both her pride and her children.

And Dumbledore was no better, shunting Harry into back rooms of the Black house, reminding him he needed to be whole for the final battle, whenever it might come. It seemed coarse to Ginny, though she knew it was true, and as she’d stood waiting for direction, waiting for the maneuvers, she’d seen in the headmaster’s eyes that his own callousness hurt him, that doing what was best for the greatest good was paining him.

It pained him to see the people he had taught, the witches and wizards who had once been young, so young, too young to know these things, as mere soldiers.

And that was what he had seen Ron as, sending out another able-bodied, unfailingly loyal Weasley into the ranks because he knew it would do them good.

As they approached a corner, Ginny squeezed her brother’s hand once more before letting go and slipping down the alleyway, determined to get any last words—bad choice of words, Gin, she told herself—from everyone else before things exploded.

She had made it only halfway through the few wizards and witches on the Muggle side of things before it all happened.

She had been speaking with Kingsley when she’d seen it, the Dark Mark, floating in the sky in plain view of Muggles in a clear show of defiance, in a show of promised vengeance, in a show of threatening horror.

Kingsley shoved her so roughly she stumbled, putting her hands blindly in front of her to catch herself, both palms hitting the boot of an automobile. She started to look back, only to have him roar at her.

“Back home!” he yelled, and his meaning was clear enough.

Their leader would need to know.

She felt something—Merlin, a spell, a spell, but what kind?—throw heat onto her cheek, and her stomach rolled even as she Disapparated with the perfectly valid fear that she might Apparate right into the path of another spell. It was likely, it was so likely in a situation like this, and for one of the first times, she felt fear for herself.

She Apparated directly in front of where the house would be, waiting until she was positive the coast was clear before speaking the words that would allow her entrance.

She was breathless when she entered the house, but she had no need for words, no need for speech to these people, to Harry and Dumbledore, Luna and Hermione and a few others who had been grounded for the night, if for nothing else than to defend the headquarters, if it came to that.

Hermione was on her feet before Ginny could even get her bearings, her fingers pressed to Ginny’s cheek. “What is that?” she asked tightly, and though it was on the tip of Ginny’s tongue to tease Hermione for already learning to nag like a professional mother, the irreverent remark dried up when she saw the hard look Harry was giving her.

“Close call,” she said, and even as she admitted it, her knees gave a hard shake, a single buckle, nearly spilling her to the floor before she could control it.

“Everyone has their instructions,” Dumbledore said, pointing at a large, comfortable chair he’d summoned. “Your orders are to stay here now.”

Ginny saw her sister-in-law’s wide eyes, the ever-curious eyes of the perpetual journalist, and knew she could not stay. For Luna’s sake, she would go back out. She would find out what was happening to Ron, and to the others.

And much of it was selfish, as well. She could not stand to sit idle in the face of all that worry, because it would only infect her.

And she needed to know about him. Would she know him behind his mask? Would she be able to feel him slashing his way through the crowds with his wand? What would he look like under that mask? Grim? Excited?

“I have to go,” she said thickly, and she went out the way she came in, weak-kneed and sick.

She had to know.

~~~

Nothing.

They all had nothing for her, and she could easily see why, she didn’t hold it against them. They had no words, for they had ceased to become beings with words and had instead turned into animals of survival. That, she thought, was why they needed her. Because her survival was made more secure by her own compliance, by her pacifism. She was their words, and they wanted their words to live.

She felt impotent instead of important, however, as she watched with a scream locked behind her lips—not a message, mustn’t release it—as a barely misdirected spell sent a shower of stone shards down on Charlie, scoring his hairline and sending a thin trickle of blood down his face.

But she couldn’t resist, couldn’t keep from watching every single attacker that passed her with her heavy cloak, passed her for more favorable targets, to pluck off those most obviously doing good.

Is that you?

Has it come to this?

But none of them felt like him, none of them moved like him. Or perhaps that was just wishful thinking.

But she could not stand it, could not stand the ignorance and could not stand the impotence, and suddenly, she could not stand the thought that they had done this to her, not only once, but twice now, twice they had shorn her life to nothing but bare bone, taken the man she had trusted and revealed him to be someone else, and the scream finally loosed from her lips, keening even through the melee of battle, bouncing off walls, and she sent forth a blast from her wand, knocking a masked Death Eater from his broom.

He had been seated much too clumsily to be Draco.

Her battle cry rung in her ears because of the constriction of her hood, and she started to throw it back, ready to let fly another spell, even if it were only a stunning spell, she needed it, damn it, she hated these people.

And as long as she knew she wasn’t hitting him, she would be fine. Things would be fine, she insisted to herself, taking a deep breath to stun—

The breath was knocked loose from her as a hard arm anchored around her stomach and a large hand clamped over her mouth.

~~~

It was ironic, he thought, that it would take no more than a sartorial change to take him from the ranks of innocents to the ranks of imps. A robe, a mask, they made all the difference.

And the actions, of course. The actions made all the difference.

And it was even more amazing that the clothes made no difference in some instances. In some instances, you could the nature of the man—or the woman—even through the clothes.

He hauled her back against him, his lips to her ear, and he spoke loudly, knowing he would never be heard over the screams—Merlin, those screams, he didn’t know how much longer he could stand them—all over the city.

“What do you think you’re doing?” he shouted in her ear, turning her and shoving her into a shop the shopkeepers had abandoned at the first sign of trouble.

Ginny raised her wand against him as he slammed the door and faced her, unsure of why she even did so—residual fear, helpless anger, leftover childishness, perhaps.

But for one brief, brief moment, she wanted to hex him.

And he could see it.

His breath was stolen from him, and he merely eyed her with the same steely stare he’d used on her when she’d raised her wand to him years before, but he was hurt, oh so hurt.

“I told you to be careful,” he finally said, his throat raw.

“I need—” What was she going to say?

“Go home,” he said, and now he sounded very near to weeping. He had seen her hex Pansy’s uncle, a troublesome old bastard with a ridiculous fondness for brooms, had seen her movement, the way her body stilled, the way her left leg cocked back, the way she threw her head back just before stunning him. Even without the cry coming from her lips, he had known it was her.

And for a bitter moment, he’d wondered if she would have done the same to him. Thinking of her wand raised against him, pointed at his heart, he thought he had his answer.

A not-so-small part of him wished she’d gone ahead and done it.

It would hurt far less.

“What about you?” Ginny asked, and she could hear the tears in her voice, the weakness, and she wondered how much more of this she could take. How many tears could you cry over someone who still loved you?

Or perhaps she was supposed to wonder how many tears she could cry over a Death Eater?

“What about me?” he asked incredulously. He’d watched, he’d waited. He’d spent more time watching for her than doing anything else, and had spent more time doing that in the past days than he had doing anything else, because he loved her and knew her and knew she would not be careful.

He had wondered, in a few moments of better temper, if she simply did these things to be contrary to him.

“Me?” he repeated again. “I would die if anything happened to you. So as long as you’re being careless, it matters fuck all what I do.”

She eyed him wordlessly, her eyes wide and suddenly dry, and she stepped forward and balled the material of his robes in her first, thinking it was not so different than hers, dark and nondescript.

It was not so different from theirs, though.

She kissed him without any thought to gentility, her teeth scraping his lips, pressing his lips back into his own teeth, and she tasted blood and the stale, bitter taste of fear under there somewhere, and she bit his lips as she let him go, her eyes fierce.

“I would kill them if anything happened to you,” she said flatly, and Disapparated.

He stood where he was for a moment, and hanging his head, he let the mask slip from inside his sleeve.

CHAPTER NINE – A Day Away

“Closing the Ministry is simply giving in to what Voldemort wants,” Ginny insisted, pushing her hands through her hair and pacing from one of the room to the other. “It’s as though he’s simply pulling the strings as he wishes!”

It had been closed for two days, and with each passing hour, Ginny’s lament grew. She needed to work, needed to keep herself busy. She also knew all too well a good portion of her agitation stemmed from her inability to see Draco. She regretted ever thinking just seeing him wasn’t enough, because now that she couldn’t, she would have given anything for just a glimpse.

Perversely, she’d even hoped for skirmishes to break out on the infinitesimal chance she’d run into him.

And then there was the issue of control. She’d not let Tom—Voldemort—have control, if there was anything she could do about it. These people, these gathered witches and wizards who meant well, didn’t know how much control had already been given, and how much she herself had given over to him.

Enough to destroy lives, she warranted. And now, with her brothers, her best friends, and her parents fighting, and her lover—

Well, she thought the least that could be done was the Ministry remaining open so they didn’t look like a bunch of spineless cowards.

“It’s only for a few days,” Arthur said, smoothing a hand over his hopelessly mussed hair. He’d told her this a half dozen times already, but he would tell her another half dozen, if need be. “The Ministry itself has sustained some minor damages, and the assembly they are holding is necessary, Ginevra. A meeting of minds on what to do.”

“They should have decided what to do months ago,” she snapped. “Years, even.”

“A contingency plan would have been a good idea,” Hermione piped up shyly. She so rarely felt as though she were of any worth these days. No, she was simply the mother of Harry’s child, more often than not. She knew it was irrational to feel that way, and being Harmony’s mother was, in Hermione’s opinion, her biggest accomplishment. But…

Arthur nodded and held up a hand. “Hindsight,” he said tersely. When had these girls become women? When had little, bookish Hermione became capable of motherhood? And when had tomboyish Ginevra, his baby, his little girl who had stood on his toes and held her hands up to his for dances once upon a time, become a warrior?

When had she started to get that look in her eyes, that look that spoke of recklessness and bravery and passions?

When had something in her changed enough to fall in love with a Death Eater?

“It’s only today,” he said softly. “Then we will have the weekend to recoup. For now, it’s best you go home. We must maintain—”

“Our daily lives,” Ginny snapped, feeling her patience worn all the way through in a few spots. “Fat chance of that for me, eh? I can’t maintain my daily life because a huge bloody part of it is held apart from me.” And held against me, she thought, her eyes going from the weary ones of her father to the guarded ones of her mother to the faintly angry, disappointed ones of Harry, and finally to Hermione’s pitying gaze.

“It’s not easy for any of us, love,” Molly said quietly, but her daughter would have none of it.

At that age, Molly thought, she herself wouldn’t have, either.

“I’m going home,” Ginny announced. “Perhaps I’ll take a nap and pretend there aren’t people out there right now planning how to kill us, because that’s the normal thing for me to do, right?”

She was tired of feeling angry, so angry and helpless. She was also tired of crying herself to sleep, feeling as though she were dying of the need to have him with her, wasting away at the dearth of his touch, consumed by worry and destroyed by want.

It was stealing her days now, as well as her nights, and turning her against her own family.

Wasn’t that what they’d been afraid of? That her love for a Malfoy, for an enemy, would turn her against them?

She let herself into her flat, feeling as though she were warring with herself now, as well, because there simply weren’t enough battles going on, she needed to spark one in herself, as well. Battles, battles, everywhere and not a chance to think, Ginny thought with a smirk, twisting around the poem they’d studied in Muggle Studies.

Of course, the man in that poem had carried his burdens, as well.

She laid down on the sofa, her eyes focused on the fireplace, and tried to see within the low flames how long this could all go on, how long she would have to wait to get what she wanted.

And as she stared, the precise thing she wanted popped his head through the fire.

Ginny sat up with a scream, one hand pressed to her mouth. Immediately, she got on her hands and knees to look into the fire, to be closer to him.

“You’re going to light yourself on fire,” Draco said flatly, but he wanted to touch her, wanted to go all the way through the Floo and step into the room with her, put his arms around her.

“I don’t care,” Ginny said, raising a hand as though to touch his face. “Why are you—you shouldn’t—”

“I’ve a holiday today, as do you,” he said, and he looked back as though looking over his shoulder. “Pay attention, all right? It’s going to be quiet tonight, and there’s somewhere I want you to go.”

She listened carefully, never taking her eyes from his.

~~~

It was utter chaos, the cacophony of sounds barely classifiable as music because of the sheer volume of it. The lights made her squint, all violent purples and screaming magentas and acid greens, swinging around the room in arcs, occasionally bursting into a strobe-pattern, sometimes focusing on dancers here and there.

Another Muggle club, she thought with a small smile. It seemed appropriate, somehow.

And it was a good hiding place.

Her fingers toyed with the hem of the black dress she wore. It was perhaps not as trendy as the clothes he’d once given her, but she’d taken pains with how she looked, leaving her hair long and straight over her shoulders, eager to make a good impression when she found him. It was almost like meeting for the first time all over again.

The bare skin on her legs chilled as the song pounded straight into her bones, and she couldn’t keep her fingers from tapping time against her thighs, heating with the motion and with the music.

This felt good.

A hand rested on her hip, and she started to turn, only to be stopped by the feeling of lips—his lips, they could be no one else’s, no one else knew just that spot—on her neck.

“Hello, Drake,” she said, her voice low and thick, and she put one hand to the back of his head, letting her fingers slide through the silky strands. It was longer than it had been when he’d been Drake, when he’d been under the rules of his father and the rules—well, at least somewhat—of his school. Those lips, that mouth, that tongue, had grown a bit more talented, but the technique was the same.

Burn to the ground, she thought, letting out a shaky sigh. His technique could do that.

“Genevieve,” he said in a growl, and something about calling her by that other name, answering to his other name, always made him feel heady, excitable.

It was like living another life, only this one didn’t come with dangers attached. Foolish Muggles with their complete ignorance of the risks around them.

It felt good to be one.

She felt years away from the woman who had calmly stated her intent to kill if any harm befell her man, years away from it as he turned her in his arms and propelled her into a dance.

This time, they could touch, and they did. He had his hands on her hips, sliding over her back. Knowing words could only bring knowledge, and with knowledge, grief, Ginny stroked her fingers over the planes of his face, over his arched, pale brows, fingertips flicking at the length of pale eyelashes, one fingernail skidding down the straight bridge of his nose. She laid three fingertips of one hand to his lips, feeling his breath ghost out over them, and when his mouth formed into a kiss, she did not move.

Draco kissed her fingertips lightly, his eyes pinned on hers, hot and unguarded as her hips moved sinuously beneath his hands. It was like this, in a situation like this, where she’d captured his imagination, garnered his want in a way no one else could have, and she still had it, had all the want he had to give.

One knee slid between his and he parted his lips, catching one finger between his teeth and attempting to trace every line, every dip of her fingerprint, uniquely her, just like her taste.

She brought her lips to his ear so he could hear her shaky exhale, feel the shuddering breath even as he heard it, her lips trembling on his sensitized earlobe. “My knees,” she said, breathless and half-laughing.

He insinuated his thigh a little higher between her legs and bit her fingertip, feeling her pulse throb in the end of it. Finally, he released her, momentarily satisfied that she was still his, and he stooped, cupped her knees in his palms before straightening, his hands trailing along her thighs and rucking the skirt of her dress up a bit. “What about them?” he asked, grinning fiendishly, and she demonstrated for him by letting them unlock, her weight sagging in his arms.

“Plenty of places to sit,” he said by way of answer, and he supposed that was best.

His knees were feeling a bit weak, as well.

**Author’s Note: Song lyrics in this chapter are from the song “Sweet Dreams” by the Eurhythmics. This song was also featured in “House Unity: Lessons”. Happy Reading!**

CHAPTER TEN - Together

“I missed—” It was bad enough she nearly had to shout the words as he herded her to a mangy-looking table in the corner, but as soon as she was sitting, he placed his finger over her lips.

“I know,” he responded over the music. “But Genevieve, it’s only been a few days. Surely you can live without me that long.” The stress on the name didn’t go unnoticed, but before she could comment on it, he was kissing her again, sweetly, lightly, reminding her they were bound by more than lust, by passion.

This was a protective kiss. This was a loving kiss, and her heart turned over in her chest. He was right. There was no need for words, and time had no bearing on them. They were here now, and she wouldn’t think of anything else.

“Surely I can, Drake.” It felt funny, and she smiled against his lips. It was almost easy to forget she’d nearly cursed him a few nights before, had her wand pointed at his heart.

I couldn’t hate what we’ve become if I didn’t love you so much.

He stiffened and put his hands to her hips, jerking her toward him and onto his lap, the skirt of her dress crowding up around her thighs.

Now that was more like Drake, more like the randy teenager he’d once been. “Draco,” Ginny hissed, shoving at her skirt. “What are you doing? We in pub—”

“Kiss me,” he interrupted her, putting one hand on her neck, his fingers insistent and gripping as he made his demand. When he saw the puzzlement in her eyes, he kissed her forcefully, pulling her close to him. Her legs now dangled on either side of his chair, but she couldn’t wriggle from his grasp to make herself decent. When she tried, he put his lips to her ear, thrusting his hand into her hair and moving her head so her lips lined up against his neck.

“Theo Nott is here,” he whispered in her ear, the words feeling like a sob.

Even here, he couldn’t escape.

Ginny froze then, her thighs clamping around his, and she felt a fresh surge of mingled terror and anger surge through her. Instead, understanding the importance of her anonymity, she kissed him again, putting her hands to the side of his face to hide as much of it as possible.

“Hair color,” he said between kisses, his pale eyes straining to their corners to follow Nott’s progress through the club.

“We can’t change it, Draco, the Mug—”

He interrupted her again and she felt the length of his wand pressed against her arm. “I’ll do yours if you’ll do mine,” he said, the words a breathless chuckle in her ear. Even at a time like this, she thought, he could be a cocky git.

She nodded, however, her lips moving against his, and she moved her wand to point up.

The spells got lost in the sound of the music, the movement of his lips against hers, and the completely inappropriate feel of him pressed against her through the satin of her knickers.

Sweet dreams are made of this, who am I to disagree?

The song pounded in her ears and she gasped as his hips bucked, limning his hardness brushing between her thighs. She shook her head as though to clear it, succeeding in tangling his long fingers more firmly in her hair, and much to her disbelief, the song played on.

Traveled the world and the seven seas, everybody’s looking for something.

Beyond them, she heard cries of outrage and Nott’s slightly mad laughter jagging over the music, and though she knew he was likely shoving Muggles left and right, or worse, Draco would not allow her to turn her head, instead keeping his hand fisted so tight in her hair she couldn’t move.

“Here,” he said, and she wasn’t sure whether it was an offer of himself or a command to stay, but he used his free hand to press the small of her back and move her against him, rocking her body and making her legs flex and relax in rhythm with the song (their song) and his movements.

This was what she had wanted, upon first hearing those words—

Some of them want to use you, some of them want to get used by you…

—She had wanted to be against him, wanted to be on him and in him and around him, and Ginny cried out as a hard edge of denim—Gods, wasn’t that uncomfortable for him?—chafed her through her underwear.

“I need… you to…” She couldn’t find the words, either from shame or from mindless arousal, he couldn’t tell, but Draco felt as though he’d been split cleanly in two, one half of him worrying about the Death Eater wandering among them and the other half of him consumed by desire for the woman he’d waited so long to touch.

She was on fire in his arms just as she’d always been, sparking and burning at the slightest of his touches, and he thought fiercely if only people could see her, if only people could watch her at her peak, they would never question his decision.

This woman in his arms was a woman to die for, and it didn’t matter who she was or what her name was or what her beliefs were.

Knowing what she needed, knowing what he needed, careless of their location or the danger they could be in, he slid his hand underneath her, under the roundness of her bottom, underneath her skirt, his fingers brushing her damp knickers, fingertips grazing her swollen lips from behind.

A broken moan left her lips, shock and need mingling together as her mind dimly registered the fact that they were surrounded by people, by writhing bodies, by dancing fools who had no idea of the monsters in their midst or the lovers in their throng. Her head fell back and he growled in her ear.

The half of him tracking Nott and his cohorts through the club reared its head and he picked her up, not wanting her face in full view, not wanting to put her at risk. My brave little fool, he thought, but it was obliterated by the rush of blood through his ears, the song still wrapping itself around him as he stood and turned her.

Some of them want to abuse you, some of them want to be abused.

Her back hit the painted-black wall and her shout reached his ears, made him wince, but her legs were already wrapped around his waist.

Everyone can see this, he thought wildly, sinking his teeth into the white skin of her neck and feeling her hands race down his body, plucking at buttons and snaps and zips and leaving parts of his chest bare and gleaming with sweat, releasing him from the thick, unfamiliar denim, springing hot into her hand.

Wrong, wrong, so wrong, she thought, knowing they could be seen or caught or worse and her possessiveness doubled, trebled, and she bared her teeth as he thrust against the barrier of her knickers.

Mine, she thought proudly. And I could show everyone just like this, could show them all what this is and what we have because I am not ashamed.

I am not afraid.

Had she said it or only thought it? She didn’t know, couldn’t tell as his eyes blazed wide then slid into a squint with the sting of perspiration falling into them.

“Love you so much,” he managed, knowing she knew it but needing to repeat it before completing their coupling.

“Mine,” she said it out loud, her mind now working with more than one syllable at a time. The head of his erection nudged the sensitive spot at the top of her cleft, and she thought if she spoke more than one word at a time, the whole fantasy might unravel, her love gone from her arms. She needed him here, needed to be him, needed to be one with him, in case—

In case this was the last time. “Yours,” she whispered, laying her forehead to his and linking an arm around his neck as she pulled her knickers aside and took him into herself.

If it was to be the last, she would accept nothing but this, nothing but the passion and the heat because this was them.

She moved her hand between them, positioning her first and second fingers around his base where they were joined, feeling him leap beneath the added touch and feeling the crispness of her curls tickling her fingertips.

“Witch,” he managed, risking the precipitous hold on her to grasp her wrist and pin her hand above her head. She’d finish it before it started, sneaky, manipulative Weasley.

She should have been a Slytherin.

And that voice, that voice, that song soaring over them rang in her ears and her nearly-shouted moan echoed it, was hidden by the song, and her ankles locked together convulsively, her heels drumming into his back. He braced one hand against the wall and leaned into her, pinning her there with his weight and thrusting into her with alternating thrusts, shallow and deep, rhythmic and at the end sporadic, and he spilled himself into her as the song wound to a close.

They stood that way for several long moments and he could hear her gasping for breath, sounding like sobs and laughter interspersed, and he reached behind him to unlock her legs from around him, those long beautiful legs. “I’m sorry,” he said, kissing her forehead as she tried out her legs, wobbling a bit. He’d merely meant this as a getaway, not some sort of demand for sex, and certainly not to take her against the wall like some kind of—

“I’m not,” Ginny said, reaching between them to zip up his jeans, letting her hand linger for just a moment longer than was probably necessary, pressing against him through the denim. He found the weight of her hand somehow comforting, and he captured her lips with his, kissing her with his lips only.

By tacit agreement, they linked hands and started for the doors on unsteady feet, knowing they needed to escape before anything happened, before Nott’s presence drew others of his ilk—

Others like me, Draco’s mind supplied nastily.

—and when the cold evening air hit them, Ginny looked up at him.

“Well,” she asked, looking up at the chestnut silk of his glamoured hair. “Do I even want to know what color my hair is?”

He felt something constrict in his chest and he brandished his wand as though removing a glamour. “It was brown,” he said simply, taking her hand in his and wondering how long they could stroll along the streets before something called one of them back.

He couldn’t bring himself to tell her he hadn’t changed her hair color at all.

He hadn’t had the heart to dim that flame.

CHAPTER ELEVEN – The Nature of Love

Men, Narcissa ruminated, thought women knew nothing. They thought a simple statement or two would satisfy a woman’s curiosity. In this particular matter, her son was no different.

So, by the time he came to see her again, she had already theorized her way through several explanations for his decidedly alarming and completely uncharacteristic behavior.

It was simple, really; only two things could make a man—especially a Malfoy—act so dotty.

Fear was one.

A woman was the other.

She had decided it was the former based on the things he’d said, the urgency with which he’d grasped her hands, the climate of the world around them. He was afraid, the dear boy, and was it any wonder? He had never seen, experienced war before.

But when he appeared for tea with her looking relaxed and sated and positively lambent, she was forced to reevaluate.

Perhaps it was a woman. Because if only fear and females could garner that wide-eyed, stumbling, foolish panic, a woman alone could bring about that lax, limpid state of satisfaction.

Thus, it was no wonder she was a little misty-eyed when she greeted him with a kiss on the cheek. Her little boy, her baby. In love. Or, at the very least, on his way to being so. Any woman capable of giving him that lightened step and squared shoulders would certainly be more than capable of snagging him for good.

“Mother?” Draco narrowed his eyes at his mother, wondering what she was looking so faraway about. It wasn’t all that unlike the fond look Ginny had given him just the evening before as they’d stood in the alley that ran along her block of flats, trying to say goodbye without actually saying it.

“No matter what,” she’d said, and at his puzzled look, she had stood on her toes and kissed him on the tip of his nose. “I love you no matter what.”

It should have made him smirk, but instead it had made him ache, both the sweet, cavernous ache he’d missed and the bitter, sharp ache that made him want to question what she claimed.

“Who is she?” His mother’s voice laid an intrusive but gently path straight through his memory, and he started despite himself. These days, it was so much harder to hold onto the image, the expressionlessness that had carried him through school. Lack of sleep, lack of warmth, the constant edge of expecting to look over his shoulder and see his father or her father or some nameless do-gooder with wand at the ready—all these things made it harder to maintain pretense, along with the steady, unflagging, consuming need for her.

“Who is who?” He made himself sit down, crossing his long legs at the ankles and selecting a biscuit from the tray. Give her very little, he thought, but there were so many emotions, so many things he felt and thought. Want, the sheer want to tell her everything. And relief. There were worse questions she could ask.

“I refuse to let this become a game of semantics,” Narcissa said airily, trying to suppress a decidedly unladylike snort. If her son thought he could talk his way out of a straight answer, he had some real soul-searching to do. She’d made tougher and older wizards gab like first-year Hufflepuffs, not the least of those wizards being Lucius himself.

Narcissa did so love a challenge.

“I recognize a man well-loved,” she said, though it took every last ounce of her breeding and self-control not to blush as she said it. Her son, for Salazar’s sake, her baby. When he was thirty, he would still be too young to be well-loved.

Draco regretted picking up the biscuit as it lodged in his throat, strangling him. His brain had voiced an indignant exclamation, but all he could issue was a dry, crumb-filled wheeze.

Narcissa folded her hands in her lap and regarded him flatly, a tiny, enigmatic smile on her lips.

She wanted to pinch his cheeks.

“What you recognize,” he finally said after swallowing most of a cup of scalding tea, “Is a man overworked.” What, was he wearing a bloody sign? One that perhaps read ‘I had a fantastic shag last night’?

Well-loved, he thought. Yes, in more ways than one.

“You didn’t work yesterday,” Narcissa stated, buttering a scone. “If you won’t tell me who it is, then I’ll simply be forced to guess.” It felt lovely, to be able to tease her son as though they’d a normal family.

He talks to you more than he talks to me. Has he said anything? Lucius’s demanding voice, almost a childish pout.

She sniffed at the recollection. She had things to worry about other than a man-made game of chess wherein her husband willingly took whatever part he was told. This was more important.

Poise. He was always unguarded with his mother, and he felt perhaps he had erred in that. Proper poise took only a moment. He could spare a moment.

If his mother thought she read him with little more than a glance, she had some real soul-searching to do. He’d managed to dupe the discerning eyes of tougher witches and wizards, not the least of those wizards being his own father.

“Feel free to share your theories,” he said, graciously bowing his head and extending a hand in a go-ahead gesture. “At the very least, I’ll have some entertainment with my tea.”

He was so like his father, she thought, both loving and hating it.

“I believe I will feel free, being as this is my house,” Narcissa told him, but the coolness in her voice was manufactured. “I know it isn’t that dreadful Parkinson girl,” she dismissed Pansy right off the bat. That made Draco slightly uncomfortable; he’d rather hoped his mother would assume he was dallying about with Pansy and have done with it. “She’s far too predictable… far too safe… for you to be acting as you are.”

“So I’m not seeing Pansy,” Draco said, trying to keep his voice smug as he crossed his arms over his chest. He wasn’t about to eat or drink anything else; she’d simply choke him again somehow. “Wonderful to know. She was always a bit clingy for my tastes.”

“I suppose it could be the Bulstrode’s youngest. Who knew impending adulthood would do her looks so much good?” She watched Draco’s face carefully, but he betrayed no reaction. He was good, this one.

“I could be dating Millicent,” he repeated in the tone of voice that suggested a student taking notes. “Do continue.”

“Also too safe,” Narcissa said. “So shall we skip over your classmates entirely? If you were dating any of them, you’d not bother to hide it from your father and you’d certainly not bother to hide it from me.”

“Perhaps I’m dating a Muggle,” he said, widening his eyes. “How positively shocking that would be.” And he did expect her to be shocked, but she merely shrugged.

“You wouldn’t be the first of your line to do so.” When it was his turn to be surprised, she raised an eyebrow. “Oh, don’t be so naïve, Draco. That which is forbidden is most often too appealing to deny.” That got her a reaction, and her heart gave a little start in her chest.

Perhaps he was more like her than she’d thought. Once upon a time, she’d been Narcissa Black, and though Lucius Malfoy had been a pureblood, he hadn’t been nearly good enough by her family’s standards.

Together, they’d made him good enough. Together, they’d made their name overshadow all others, including her family name.

Suddenly, she’d lost the will to question him, to torture the answer out of him using his anxiety. What if he truly was only tense, anxious because of the war, because of his tenuous balance between that which was Ministry and that which was Malfoy?

“You’ll tell me when you’re ready,” she stated, trying to sound certain, trying to sound casual.

“You will love me no matter what happens in my life, won’t you? No matter what I do, no matter whom I fall in with.”

The fear she’d let herself forget leaped back into her throat and she reached across the table to pat his hand. “There are no secrets a mother cannot keep,” she managed.

She hoped, for his sake, that was the truth.

~~~

He looked so… official. So competent.

Looking at him, Ginny wondered if she were merely playing at helping, playing at being part of the Order.

For the first time since… well, since ever… Ron looked as in control with something as he did while playing chess. He had taken over a blank wall of the first floor, moving his wand over it, and Ginny watched as a detailed map of Diagon and Knockturn Alleys spread itself over the wall. With one jab, a green dot appeared on the map that said Nott. With another jab, Mulcibre.

“Spelled that one wrong, love,” Luna said absently, her brow furrowed.

He glanced over his shoulder, ready to retort, and then he softened and changed it, muttering his thanks. Mulciber.

A calendar appeared beside the map, the dates the men were found highlighting themselves in green.

If there was a pattern, Ron would find it. That was what he excelled at, patterns and move anticipation and seeing things as they would be seven more steps down the line. Now, however, he could see no real pattern. Comparisons, of course… Two men, two Death Eaters, both in various levels of power within their own dishonorable ranks. Both men had been found in Morgana’s Mortar, a dim, avoid-at-all-costs pub in the darkest stretch of Knockturn Alley. Their wands had been taken and two tankards, both empty, had been left on each table.

“Here’s what we can surmise,” Ron sad, tapping his wand against the map and making a bright white light flare each time he did it. “If it happens again, it’ll likely be another one of You-Know-Who’s lackeys.”

“Hard to feel bad about that, really,” Harry snorted. Hermione rolled her eyes at him but twined her fingers with his. It didn’t matter if she didn’t agree with him; solidarity wasn’t optional at this point.

Albus sat in one corner of the room, popping peppermint candies into his mouth and nodding soberly.

Ginny felt her stomach roll over. Was it someone in this room? There was hatred in more than one pair of eyes, feelings that said they would provoke, they would attack without being attacked. More than one of these gathered witches and wizards would approve of such a vigilante show of violence.

“The raids have happened directly after each killing. We ah…” Ron fumbled for the first time. “Found out about the last attack before it actually happened.” His eyes went to Ginny’s, wide and apologetic.

“And?” Charlie leaned against the wall, his arms crossed over his barrel of a chest. “All that did was get us all out for them to look at. We didn’t get half as many as we’d liked, and we can’t do anything unless we kill them.”

Ginny gripped a corner of the wall, trying hard not to sway. Could she really listen to this? People were watching her now, watching her because she’d told them all the attack was coming.

“You never told us how you knew, Miss Weasley.” Dumbledore’s voice was insistent but quiet, and she felt her head loop around itself like Errol when he was quite tired and dizzy. He knew how she’d known. They all knew—they’d all been told upon her acceptance to the Order. It had been humiliating, exposing, for them to discuss her heart’s blood when considering the sacrifice she was willing to make for them.

“Is that even a matter to consider?” Severus’s voice, that auditory derision, made more than one Order member wince. “Had Miss Weasley not informed you, I would have. There’s hardly any need to duplicate efforts, and we’ve no need for another double agent.” Granted, he’d had his reservations about Weasley and Draco in the past, but Severus Snape was not a man given to flights of fancy. What was simply was and he would not question it.

He had no hopes for the two of them, and no hopes for Draco’s redemption. He’d heard far too much from Lucius to have such ridiculous hopes. Had it not been for the Ministry, Draco Malfoy would have already been official, seal of ownership and all. Severus’s hand crept to his forearm and he stared unwaveringly at Ginny.

For a moment, she’d had the bizarre urge to hug him, just hug him for stopping the line of questioning they’d started. But then he’d looked at her and touched his arm and she’d simply felt sick.

She closed her eyes and kept her hand at the corner of the wall, imagining that hand resting on Draco’s arm as it went feverish and insistent and nearly vocal in its pain—

A steadying hand pressed against her back and she leaned into it, grateful but bitter because she knew it wasn’t who she wanted it to be.

He could not be here, home of his ancestors or no.

She opened her eyes slowly, feeling vertigo roil through her, and turned to look at the person who had braced her. Remus Lupin had one fine-boned hand pressed to her back, the strength of it surprising, considering how weary he often looked. He waited until the conversation began bouncing around the room once more, and he ducked his head, his moss-green eyes kind.

“Those whom we love the most are often capable of surprising us in wonderful ways,” he said quietly. “Even great heroes have been mistaken as murderers.”

She wanted to thank him, felt her throat grow thick, and closed her mouth as tears started in her eyes.

She wanted to believe him, but all she could see in her mind was a young man in the thick of things, dressed in the dark robes of his cohorts. A young man whose upbringing afforded him no choices, whose secrets seemed to grow weightier by the day.

Great heroes.

She closed her eyes once more as Lupin continued on his way through the room, and she decided she did not want a great hero. She wanted the man who held her tight and stared at her fiercely and communicated everything he meant without saying anything at all.

Heroics be damned.

**Author’s Note: Now’s a good time to recommend songs. The song that got this whole story started, unbelievably, was an instrumental song called “Explosive” by a group called Bond. Check them out.**

CHAPTER TWELVE – Driven Away

Draco drummed his fingers on the table and glanced at his pocketwatch, his levity slipping away with the minutes.

“Are you tardy for something, my dear?” She’d been more than a little lost in her own thoughts, trying to determine with whom Draco was keeping secrets. But it hardly mattered now, as the bright-eyes young man who had come to have tea with her had fled, replaced in a matter of moments by the shifty-eyed, anxious being in front of her.

“I’ve a meeting,” he said, throwing her a mere shade of his usual lopsided grin.

“On a holiday?” Narcissa folded her napkin in her lap and purposefully

“It’s not a holiday,” Draco snapped more forcefully than he’d intended to. “It’s the Ministry cowing, once again, before things they will never comprehend.”

Narcissa simply nodded, a stiff incline of her head, then reached out and gripped his forearm. Though her grip was brutal, she kept her voice soft. “Being your mother—and a woman—does not exclude me from your games, and it does not exclude me from your euphemisms. If your woman is worthy of you, she will not be excluded, either. She will know.” It was a risk, she knew, to be so openly stating what she had no certain knowledge of, but this was not a certain time. This was not a safe time.

She had never, and would never, openly disapprove of her husband’s “hobby,” but she despised being treated as an ornament. Even a stupid Muggle hack had recognized Lady Macbeth and the power of a woman’s ambition, which was more than she could say for her husband.

Draco thought he was going to be sick.

Later, he couldn’t remember if he had kissed her or not as he had raced out the door with her words ringing in his ears.

She will know.

~~~

The triple threat, they called themselves before dispersing. Bloody idiots, she’d have said, though she couldn’t help but think of them fondly. It was good to see her brothers unified, to have Percy back among them, but for how long? With all of them patrolling, standing watch in various points throughout the city—the twins paired together just west of Grimmauld Place, Percy and Charlie to the east of St. Mungo’s, and Bill and Ron trying to hold down the entirety of south London—she wondered what the likelihood was that they’d all come out unscathed.

She wanted to fight, wanted to take up a position and put Weasleys at the cardinal points of the compass. Moreover, there was a draw to Apparating to another part of the city, simply heading east and then… maybe just continuing to head east until she hit ocean. Or perhaps she just wanted to hide herself among the Muggles, plug her ears and play pretend until her side—or his—had won.

She had never expected him to fight against his father, she knew that in her head. After all, he had never expected her to fight against hers. But in her heart, she had deceived herself into believing she would never have to fight against him, either, and that the tragedy of their farce of a union had existed only for romanticism.

Fool.

She had been a fool about many things.

She lay on the sofa in her empty flat, wishing for him to be there, even sleeping, only sleeping while she watched, and she put her head in her hands and asked herself the questions he’d wanted to ask him so many times.

“What if there is no right and no wrong, only habits? Only traditions that no longer matter and ties passed on by those we love?

And her own question, the one she wanted only for herself.

What if there was no Voldemort, only a sick young man without the capacity to love himself and to love what he was?

Ginny stretched out on her side, her eyes following the dance of flames, thinking of him appearing there and beckoning her to meet him. He wouldn’t do it twice in a week, she knew that.

But was it fair for him to take all the risks?

She cursed herself for a fool again. He’d arranged the tête-à-tête in the bookstore, and he’d drawn her out among Muggles just to be with her, and she had waited to follow his lead.

She hoped he hadn’t closed the Floo off.

She scrambled off the sofa, casting one glance behind her, hoping there were be no need of her within the Order, at least not for an hour or so. She only needed to see him. Just for a moment.

A handful of powder, the steady statement—“Draco Malfoy’s flat”—and she was swept away, no barrier, no block, and before she even fully landed, her heart swelled with relief and joy.

He hadn’t closed it off.

She wiped a smudged hand over her face as she stepped in, wondering how on earth he always managed to look so damned impeccable no matter what mode of transportation he used. Out of habit long formed, she Scourgified the ash from her shoes and stepped onto the big Turkish rug that stretched from side to side in front of the hearth, all blacks and greens and dark, supple grays.

“Draco?” She was nervous suddenly, and almost sick with it. Could his father be there? Could Lucius walk in any minute?

Could someone else?

She drew her plain black robes around her and lowered her voice this time, hating herself for the tremor in her whisper but unable to keep it from coming through. “Draco?”

A rattle at the door had her frozen, one foot in front of the other in the middle of the big, lush rug Draco’s own mother had chosen for him, and she wondered if there was time to rush back in, time to get back to her own flat.

You wanted to take the risk, so take it.

She pressed herself flat against the wall next to the fireplace, growing warm from the heat of it, sweat dewing in the small of her back as she cut her eyes to the door.

The door opened and her eyes could not take it all in at once, only a shock of pale hair, a line of black cloth, a pale, long-fingered hand holding—

A mask.

No light reflected from this mask, it eyes no more than two cruel gashes, the chin a wicked point, strange talon-like curves sweeping around at the temples.

She couldn’t breathe. She felt as though she were being pressed into two dimensions, her lungs flattened, her head compressed. Her blood roared in her ears, and if she could move, Ginny thought she would fall.

And then he pushed the door all the way open, and her breath came back, rushing into her in a noisy gasp and out of her in a ragged moan.

It didn’t matter what she’d feared. It did not matter what she had suspected.

She had not been prepared to see the man she loved holding a mask that swore allegiance to the one being she most hated.

~~~
He didn’t know how much more he could take.

His father had, for many years, saved the strongest part of his contempt for those who refused to choose one side or the other. He would rather, he had claimed more than once, be stuck in a world full of Muggles and Mudbloods than spines wizards with no conviction. At the time, it had made sense to Draco. Even when he grew to detest and mistrust his father, it had made sense. What good was someone who couldn’t choose between two sides when the world was coming down around them?

But now, with the world shuddering on its moorings, a very weary Draco thought he could understand the attraction of putting his head down, of crawling into bed and letting the war rage around him. A man who willingly chose war was a madman, he was starting to think.

He certainly felt mad.

He unlocked his door, letting his mask fall from his sleeve, no longer able to stand the feel of it pressed against the vulnerable underside of his wrist, no longer able to stand the point of the chin digging in where his pulse beat, at turns sluggish and swift.

He simply was not cut out to live separate lives, a life by day and one by night, a worker and a warrior, the facets he allowed his family to see and those he allowed her to see.

More than once, he had hated Dumbledore for the complications that had come along as a result of halfhearted house unity.

The noise drew his attention before anything else, a raw-throated moan, a sob, and the mask fell unheeded from his fingers, the points scarring the hardwood entryway floor with a dull clank like a barred door slamming shut.

She stood by his fireplace, smudged from head to toe, and his heart reached back, back for the ash-stained little girl who had shown him no weakness in a provincial little bookshop—

But her eyes were not fierce now as they had been then. They were wide and wounded and incredulous, soaking up every ounce of darkness in his flat.

And they were not focused on his face, but on the face he had dropped, the impenetrable face that lay on the floor.

“Gin…” What more could he say? There were too many places to start, too many things to say. “It’s not—”

She started to tremble at the top of her head, her ears felt as though they were burning, her eyes could not hold steady. Her lips started to shake with the force of the scream behind them, traveling down into her arms, her fingertips, and by the time the tremors reached her knees, she had to hold onto the mantelpiece to keep from falling onto the carpet, that beloved fucking carpet. She knocked the urn of Floo powder off the mantel, sending it to the floor--

Dropped it, she thought. Just like he dropped that mask.

“It’s not what?” she managed, the scream imploding into a whisper that scored her throat. “Not what it looks like? Give me some credit.”

She will know, his mother insisted.

Of course.

“Not a surprise?” she tried, putting her hand over her eyes. It wasn’t a surprise. She just couldn’t look at it. She couldn’t stand it.

She couldn’t pretend when he had taken her pretense away.

“Listen to me,” he said, his own voice loud enough for the both of them. Anger was good, he thought. Anger could carry them through this, and could perhaps hold her there.

How much to tell her?

How much could he trust her with?

How much could he trust himself with?

“No!” she exclaimed, turning her face away from him. “You’ve changed my mind about so many things, what do you want me to say? That I’ve changed it about this, as well?”

“You don’t have to say that, you don’t have to say anything, just listen to me.” Her stubbornness, something he’d certainly loved before, was going to break them.

Bend a little please, just for thirty seconds, he thought.

He took one step forward and finally, she found her voice.

“No!” she screamed, the ashes standing out starkly from her pallor. “I want to kill them all, do you understand me? I want to kill them all for doing this to you and I would rather see you dead than a puppet!” She didn’t know where the words came from. “I would like to see them all dead, but I can’t do that. I cannot fight against you,” she finished at a full scream. “Not against you.”

When he stepped forward, she acted on instinct, shooting an Expelliarmus at him and knocking him backward with the force of it.

Draco’s back slammed into the door and he coughed, his breath escaping him, and through dazed eyes, he watched her desperately scrape Floo powder off the floor.

His head lolled back against the door and he strained to hear her destination, but—

She was gone, and he closed his eyes.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN – To Fight

She walked without looking around her, though her steps were deliberate, each one carrying her farther away from him, from his flat and his mask and his Turkish rug. She tasted bile in her throat, but would not stop to let it sicken her, instead spitting on the ground in the way Charlie had taught her when she was very small.

Oh, how that had infuriated her Mum.

It didn’t matter how many times she cleared her throat, she still thought she was going to vomit. She would have to tell them, and what would they say? Would they tell her she had once again wasted her trust, given it foolishly? Ron and Luna, his wife. Harry and Hermione and their bright-eyed little girl, their symbol of hope. Her brothers. Her parents. She stumbled, clung to a wall, wrapped herself around a corner and hung on for a moment while the world tilted around her.

“Owl Malfoy.” The name made her jump even as the phlegmy, guttural voice made her skin crawl. With an ill sort of excitement, she realized she was hanging at the mouth of Knockturn Alley, but she’d been paid no mind. Hooded witches retching in corners were the norm rather than the exception here.

“Tell ‘im Ignavius Avery’s in here, stiffer’n a board and less conversational. And tell ‘im I’m weary a’findin’ his arse-lickers washed up dead in my place.”

Her heart was pounding so hard she was certain they could hear it. Another Death Eater had plied his craft, had died ignominiously. Not now, she thought dully. Not tonight. I cannot fight. I cannot fight him.

She did not want another battle.

She wanted them all to stop.

She Apparated to Grimmauld Place, her head and heart and stomach aching, ready to do the most minimal part of her duty.

It was all she had left to do.

~~~

He thought his head was going to split open.

As though pulling something out of murky water, Draco’s mind supplied a memory of Severus Snape hitting that ponce Lockhart with a disarming spell that had somehow knocked Lockhart entirely off his feet.

He absolutely had to learn how they did that. Hell and curses, it was probably the first thing they taught little girls, girls who would grow into women with fine hands and builds too slight to defend themselves.

His eyes fluttered, flew open, and though his skull nearly wept for mercy, he staggered to his feet.

Ginny. She’d not hesitated to use her wand on him. He was proud of her for that.

He was grieving for that.

How long had she been gone? He had no way of telling. And as to where she had gone, well, that was another enigma.

I want to kill them all, do you understand me?

I would rather see you dead than a puppet!

I cannot fight against you. Not against you.

There were too many things for his head to settle on, and he squeezed his eyes shut as he thrust his hand in his pocket, digging for the wand he hadn’t even thought to draw against her.

“Accio headache powder,” he called hopefully, feeling only slightly relieved when a packet hit him in the chest.

The things she had said—there was no way to tell, when she was like this, what she might do. He loved her, he knew her, but he had not anticipated this. He had been a fool and he had not allowed himself to admit, even to himself, that it would ever come to this.

Events had been set into motion, and he was afraid she would thrust herself into the thick of them without the slightest knowledge of what to do once she was in them.

I cannot fight against you.

What did that mean?

She had stressed no word in particular, so what did she intend?

Kill them all.

“Please,” he said to no one in particular, to everyone, to anyone who would listen, the whisper building into a shout as he repeated it. “Please!” Please be safe, please give me some sign, please…

He kicked the mask, that stupid fucking mask, relishing the scar it left in the leather of his boot, the ugly scrape it tore across the floor, the point that bent when it hit a cabinet.

“You are not infallible,” he shouted, and there was no limit to the number of beings to whom he could be speaking.

He had to find her before she talked, and failing that, before she acted.

~~~
She strode through the house, her face fierce and disturbing what little peace the dreary residence usually had. Hermione, a nearly permanent fixture in the house as she was waiting, waiting, always waiting to be of some use, leapt to her feet.

“Ginny, what?”

“Sit down,” Ginny said harshly, not stopping. If Hermione wanted her chance, she could have it soon enough.

The Order would be one member less just as soon as she finished this small duty and started on muting her soul.

She had things to do, and they did not involve her companions here.

“Ginny!” Harry said, casting a shocked countenance toward Hermione. “I don’t know what’s gotten into her—”

“Listen to me!” she commanded, painfully aware how much she sounded like Draco at that moment. Hadn’t he asked the same of her?

She had denied him that.

There would be plenty of time for listening later, words dropping from lips that did not, could not mean what they said.

He would not want to speak to her later, of that she was certain.

Remus came out of the kitchen, his head slightly bowed as though he expected a blow of some sort; Severus came down the stairs, his back stiff, prepared, as ever, for the worst.

So, Ginny thought. They had not yet been called for the death of their comrade.

“Another Death Eater has died,” she said sharply. When Hermione leaned over to murmur something to Harry, Ginny’s eyes snapped to her. “I will be done soon enough,” she said, watching Hermione’s cheeks redden.

Good.

Let them all be embarrassed.

Ginny wanted the whole world to hurt, and she hated herself for it.

She wanted the whole world to burn down.

She’d felt this rage once before, though before it had been guided by another hand, stoked by another person’s flame, pumped into action by the words of a nonexistent man. She had been primed for this sort of wrath. Now she would wield it as she wished.

She would pay the consequences as they came.

“Ignavius Avery,” she said, seeing Severus’s eyes light in recognition. “There may be battles tonight.”

“There will be battles,” Snape corrected her coolly, but he suppressed a shiver at the uncertain nature of her statement. She sounded so sure that it wasn’t sure.

This wasn’t the same girl they were accustomed to seeing here, the halfling—half ally and half not, half of her belonging to someone other than the cause. This woman that stood before them was a warrior worthy of the amazons. She looked, Snape would have admitted grudgingly, worthy of the Gryffindor sorting.

“There may be battles, Severus,” Ginny used his first name coldly. “And if Malfoy the younger should cross your path, don’t treat him as a friend.”

Harry jumped to his feet, words of hatred already coming from his mouth, vengeful words that passed by her ears, because Harry didn’t know what it felt like for her to say those things.

He did not know she had killed part of herself simply to say those words.

“But—” Snape’s face, for once, showed his thoughts, and confusion was writ clearly over the sharp lines there.

“I’m going to my brothers,” Ginny stated, not wanting to hear what he had to say, not wanting to hear one Death Eater defend another. “And then I have things to do.” She looked sidelong at Hermione and refused to let herself feel the pang of pity, the insistence that this young mother stay out of it. “You be the messenger now, ‘Mione. I’m certain you’ll excel at it, as you do everything else.”

“Where are you going?” She would not—could not—have stopped for anyone else, but this gentle voice stopped her. She could not bear to ignore Lupin, so ignored had he been everywhere else.

“To fight,” she said, feeling more drained than she’d ever felt in her entire life.

She allowed them no more time for questions.

**Author’s Note: I just wanted to thank everyone who voted for any of my ridiculous ramblings at the PK Reader’s Choice Awards! Wonderful readers are worth their weight in Galleons.**

CHAPTER FOURTEEN – Rash Action

He wanted many things.

He wanted to scream himself mute, which he’d nearly already done. He wanted to break something.

But more than anything, he wanted to find her. He needed to find her.

All he had done, all he had concealed, had been in vain if he had lost her.

Draco walked the length of his flat, hands thrust into his hair, fists pulling at the blond strands, making his head ache even more. Where had she gone? He didn’t know, couldn’t even begin to predict. He could barely discern where he wanted to go, much less try to guess the actions of a woman—his woman—unpredictable, temperamental, and—

Broken.

She’d looked so fucking broken, and he’d done it.

He’d never meant to hurt her, but how could he possibly do otherwise, being who he was? Being what he was?

She’d not left enough powder to Floo anywhere, and he didn’t trust himself to Apparate, not when his hands were shaking too badly to even hold a wand still.

There was no time to think about where she was, no time to put himself in her shoes and try to determine where she had gone after she’d flown from his flat, ash-smudged and wide-eyed. He did as she had and simply went, vowing to think about it on the fly.

He went to her flat first, at a dead run the entire way there, pushing more than one witch and wizard out of his way. It was the most logical place, and yet the least likely. He knew she was not there—she was too smart for that, and she’d seemed too determined. A woman like Ginny didn’t go to her flat and stew when she was upset. She acted. But he went, anyway, because it was the only way he knew to get to the one place she might have gone. He needed to go somewhere where he could think, where he could smell her, where he could sense her.

Where he could think about her without that look on her face.

He stood in her empty flat for only a moment, listening to the sound of it without her, feeling how it felt—always like a home, her places were, even when she wasn’t there.

His place only felt like a home when she was there.

Very suddenly, very keenly, he wanted his mother, and could not help but think of the woman she had been as a Muggle—still beautiful, still strong, and the only guidepost he’d had.

Mother.

Home.

Draco closed his eyes and let out a sigh, his hand running over her mantelpiece, nudging aside a picture of her family and a picture of the two of them he’d long since memorized—the seventh-year version of himself tugging at a lock of her hair while the sixth-year version of his Ginny rolled her eyes and swatted his hand away—and another photo he’d looked at with foreign curiosity more than once, a picture of—

“The Burrow,” Draco said certainly, casting a handful of powder at his feet as he stepped into the fire.

It would be his first time there.

He always knew he’d be afraid when he went, but he had no idea he’d fear for so much.

~~~

“What are you doing?”

The twins had exchanged looks as though afraid to question her when she’d delivered her news, her warning. Charlie and Percy had hopped immediately into lecture, telling her to go to their parents’ house and stay for the evening.

Only Bill, with Ron’s quiet concern beside him, had asked her anything. She wanted to answer him even less than she wanted to answer everyone else, and when she did turn and answer him, she had no way of knowing her cold-eyed countenance chilled him.

“I’m quitting,” Ginny said. “I’m quitting the Order.”

She kept her eyes pinned on his, wanting his pity to fuel her rage, and as she stared into her oldest brother’s eyes, she Disapparated.

She wasted no time, did not Apparate to a walking distance, but Apparated instead at the front gate of her destination. It was a place she had seen only in its Muggle incarnation, a home she’d seen only through the stories of her lover, of a man who had not cared enough to give her his honesty, of a man she had not known at all.

But whether she had known him or not, Draco had been honest about this, about the home of his boyhood.

Malfoy Manor looked precisely as she had imagined it, and she felt absolutely nothing as she pushed open the gate.

~~~

He stepped out of the Floo wild-eyed and desperate, her name already on his lips. He wasn’t looking right in front of him, was already looking left and right for her, his eyes blinded by the ashes he’d been able to keep from them.

Her name—her full name, carried in a throat already raw from shouting—got lost in a cough of ashes and he ducked his head, eyes watering.

You can’t afford to close your eyes, he thought frantically, and stepped forward blindly.

He stopped when he felt the tip of a wand pointed at his heart.

Arthur Weasley pushed his wand harder, gratified in the wince of the young man in front of him. He didn’t know what had been done—his daughter had not even spoken to them directly, which had only added to his apprehension—but he knew it had been enough to send his daughter into the Black house with harsh words on her lips for everyone.

And harsh words for this one whom she’d persisted in defending.

He had hurt her little girl, and he had been branded an enemy by a woman who had claimed to love him.

Arthur had not always been the stronger wizard, had not always been the better man. Not a perfect father, not a perfect husband, but he had done what he could.

He had not been able to defend his little girl in the face of a Malfoy’s hatred before, but he could do it now.

He was shaking, trembling and he could not stop it, could not stop the fear and the rage that had started more than half a decade before when he’d been helpless, when the life he’d thrust upon his family had endangered his only daughter. Arthur clenched his teeth and ducked his head for a moment, trying to regain control, trying to remember his place, remember the cause. He tried to remember all the reasons he should not use an Unforgivable on a man whose position, whose power, had given him access to everything in the world, including an innocent too good for his ilk.

“Where is she?” Draco looked at her father through a shock of hair, now sweaty and streaked with ash.

“What have you done?” It was not Arthur’s voice, but another, a voice so low and ugly it scarcely sounded female, and Draco felt a chill go up his spine.

If it were going to end here, this one would end it.

Molly Weasley would kill him.

He didn’t think he could blame her.

But even with that understanding, even with the knowledge that he would deserve it, he could not bring himself to answer her. They could not see, they did not see there were more important things. They could kill him if they wanted.

He needed to know she was safe first.

“Where is she?” he roared, his voice a hoarse, growling burst from his injured throat. Sparks jumped from a shocked Arthur’s wand, searing a hole through his robes and burning into the skin over Draco’s heart, and Draco tilted his head back with a pained gasp, the tendons in his neck standing out.

Arthur jumped back, staring at his wand with a look of utter confusion as though he’d no idea how it had happened, and as Draco reached into the folds of his robes, Molly stepped forward with her wand to take her husband’s place, her face mottled but her wand perfectly still.

Anything that came from this wand would be no accident.

But before Molly could hex him, before she could even register that he was moving, Draco withdrew a trio of wands from inside his robes.

~~~
She left the gate hanging open, her eyes focused on the big front door, the white door that had hidden so many black things—pretty faces inside that concealed ruined hearts—and her steps slowed, deliberate and paced.

She raised a hand as though to knock at the door, her wand grasped in her fist and sticking stiffly to the side.

The door blew open, the frame and lock splintering and sending ugly, lightning-shaped splits through the wood, and Ginny stepped inside, face impassive.

“Is Miss here to see—”

“Get your master,” Ginny told the house elf in a low voice utterly unlike her usual tone. She did not look down at the diminutive servant, did not really register its presence. “And do it now.”

Your master who has a master of his own, she thought, continuing to walk. He would find her, of that she was certain.

Or she would find him.

I want to kill them all.

She would start here, then.

She would start with this one.

~~~

Molly took a breath, he felt the hex coming, the heat of it building, and he dropped the wands in front of them, trusting Arthur to know what they were.

A man of the Ministry would certainly recognize these three wands, wands with the Dark Mark branded just where the thumb would lie.

Wands that everyone in the wizarding world was looking for.

“Molly, no,” Arthur breathed as Draco opened his fist and dropped the wands at Ginny’s father’s feet. They clattered and landed in an awkward triangle, the brands on two of them facing up. “Mulciber… Nott… Avery. What…?”

“What’s the matter, Arthur?” The first name felt snide, sarcastic on Draco’s tongue, and he couldn’t change it.

This man standing open-mouthed before him, this man who didn’t seem to know where his daughter was, was he worthy enough to have fathered her?

Was he worthy of his own daughter?

Draco wondered if anyone was worthy of her, not least of all himself.

His voice was barely above a whisper when he spoke, raspy and unrecognizable to his own ears.

“Don’t you recognize the wands of wizards who have tormented the world for years?

“Don’t you recognize the wands of the men I’ve murdered?”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN – Parental Influence

He stepped into the corridor with his head bowed, and she thought it suited him— a position of subservience even though he was simply reading the message he’d been sent by owl.

“Lucius.” Ginny’s voice was cold, loud, nearly authoritative in this house not her own, but for the first time since stepping into Grimmauld Place and announcing, in a roundabout way, her intent, she wavered. His name on her lips made them peel back from her teeth, the taste of it loathsome in her mouth.

This man, she thought. Did she hate this man enough to do harm?

This man had stolen from her once, had given her a friend who had been taken in the most duplicitous and disgusting of ways. And now? She had, through some sickening, ill-fated turn of events, been given a lover, a love—only to have him taken from her in more duplicity, with more disgust.

And when the father of that love looked up at her and sneered, laughed, devoid of the fear her ought to have had, she knew she hated more than enough to harm him.

~~~

Molly’s indrawn breath, prepared to hex, turned into a breathed oath—“Oh my charted stars”—and she regarded Draco with a mix of sickness, suspicion, and shock.

Arthur knelt, his eyes cast up to the boy—the man, he corrected himself—who had somehow wooed his daughter, the man who had gone on to hurt her, and… what? Who had murders his father’s comrades, his own comrades? It made no sense. He scooped the wands off the floor and stepped back from Draco, casting a glance at his wife to make certain she would stand watch while he inspected the wands.

“Don’t bother,” Draco said, feeling drained. The words he’d spoken had taken more out of him than he’d anticipated, a confession he’d rehearsed in his mind hundreds of times, to different people, to different results, for different reasons.

He had wanted to tell someone, and found he could put no one in that danger.

“They’re real,” he said, looking at Arthur with tired eyes. Why hadn’t he simply spirited her away, as he had wanted to? He could have.

He easily could have, and spared them both this misery.

“Why would you do this thing?” Arthur held his hands out in front of him, his big, workingman’s hands that had never been well-suited to policy or pretense, the wands laid across them as though on display. He didn’t—couldn’t—bear to wrap his hands around those wands.

Greater wizards had been brought low by less.

“Is she here?” His voice, now quiet and scratchy, all the shout gone out of it for the moment, was more effective than it had been at a louder volume, but Molly was unmoved.

Her daughter had labeled this man an enemy. She wanted to know why.

“What did you do to her?” Molly asked. It didn’t matter if he’d killed Voldemort himself, if he had done something, she would know it.

Draco wanted to tear his own hair out at the insipid questions, at the things that didn’t matter, but he held himself still. “I didn’t obtain those by asking for them, you know,” he gestured to the wands, making Arthur jump a little, his eyes still wide and disbelieving. “I dressed as they dressed, masked myself as they do, and I dispatched them in the only way I could without endangering myself.”

“Poison,” Arthur said, looking up at Draco. “You made yourself a Death Eater and killed your fellow wizards.”

That finally raised the sneer Draco was so known for, and he shoved up the sleeves of his robes, bringing yet another gasp from Molly.

His forearms were bare, no Dark Mark to be seen.

“I made myself nothing, nor does any man make me anything.”

Except for her, he thought, wondering how many hoops he would have to maneuver before being told she was safe. She makes me everything.

~~~

“Well, now, a fighter for the white,” Lucius drawled, and she wondered how something that sounded—or had once sounded—so innocuous, so teasing on his son, could sound so evil on him, could sound so slimy and serpentine. “Or have you come to fight for us? You have before, you know.”

She felt it rearing up inside her, the rage she’d worked so hard to forget between then and now, between the chamber and now, the betrayal she’d felt upon seeing Draco standing with his mask, the sheer want she had for things to be right, for him to be back, and she couldn’t stop it. It tore through her, immolating the few good intentions she’d had, and she swung her fist in a backhanded arc as though slapping him, not thinking words, not thinking spells, but thinking only hurt, hurt, hurt—

Lucius’s eyes went wide a moment before his head snapped back, his pale hair flying in unsettled arcs, and he was knocked backward with the force of the blasting spell she hadn’t known how to cast before it was out of her hand and off her wand. His back hit a wall and he used it to steady himself, the parchment dropping from his fingers to settle upon the floor, a small gash already seeping blood at his hairline.

He coughed once, and the nasty weakness of the sound both unsettled and excited Ginny, whose breath was now coming in gasps and pants as she looked at the man before her. Once, she’d thought Draco had gotten his looks from Lucius.

Now, she could see nothing of him in his father.

“Fool!” he spit, his eyes dark and hot. “Do you think you’re hexing my son once more, back in school corridors guarded by an old man with more pride than power?” He could taste blood in the back of his throat, and he knew it would be hers before this was done. He had tried to kill her once and failed.

He would not fail again.

The Dark Lord had been taken in by this girl, this woman, and had spoken of her since more than once with rueful overtones to his hissing voice. He had wanted to possess her and had not.

Lucius would bring her to his Dark Lord, if only for the satisfaction of never having to hear that regret again. It did not suit one so powerful as Voldemort to regret.

He pointed his wand at her, his hate—and envy, oh, ill-concealed envy for this chit who had learned of his Lord as he had once been, this chit who had been allowed more than even the most loyal of followers—emanating from him.

“Avada—”

Ginny threw her hands out, her despair turned to desperation as she shouted “Protego!” She hadn’t an idea if it would actually work.

She’d never had call to try.

“Kedavra!” He threw the curse with a primal grunt, veins standing out on the sides of his neck, on his forehead, his face flushed dark with rage.

Ginny let out a howl of exertion, her body trembling with the effort it took to maintain the unfamiliar protective spell.

In another time, another place, the look of shock on his aristocratic face would have been comical, the sheer surprise that his effort had been thwarted would have been amusing.

But she could not take the time to find humor in it, only triumph and a rekindling of her distaste for him.

Ginny felt sweat pool between her breasts and trickle down to her navel, and her concentration nearly broke as she thought of her lover’s hands trailing that same path. Her shield wavered and she gritted her teeth, resolved to hold it.

Lucius panted, breathless with his failed effort and unable to hide it. “How?”

His query was barely audible over the roar of blood in her ears, but she saw his lips form the word.

Harry’s voice, Ron’s and Hermione’s, slid from memory into consciousness, speaking about Harry’s mother. About the love Lily Evans Potter had felt for her son, and how it had protected him.

“I don’t expect you to understand,” she said, her own voice little more than a whisper. “You sold yourself for dark magic, and it means nothing against what the poorest Mudblood could have.

“Dark magic, even your Lord’s, means nothing against heart’s blood. Against love.”

Unable and unwilling to hold the spell any longer, Ginny dropped her shield and faced her enemy with no defenses.

~~~

“Please,” he said, feeling gutted as they stared curiously at his arms, free from mark, free from blemish.

Free from condemnation.

“Please tell me where she is.”

Motivation had no place here, nor did explanation.

Draco did not give a damn that these people before him, these strangers but for one person who bound them together, could not possibly fathom—and might not ever fathom—why he had done the things he had done.

The things he had done had driven away the one thing he did give a damn about, and they would tell him what he wanted to know.

Molly looked him in the eyes, her brows drawn together, and she felt her heart stutter a bit in her chest.

He burned for her daughter. She’d be a fool if she couldn’t see it, and not much of a mother.

But she wasn’t about to tell him anything, not until she’d heard otherwise, not until she knew her daughter’s mind on the matter.

Arthur, however, was slow to stop reflex, and his eyes flicked to the clock on the wall.

“Oh, Merlin,” Arthur said, gripping Draco’s shoulder to support himself, the epithet drawing into a moan.

Draco looked at the clock; he would have dismissed it as sheer idiocy, as some Muggle fancy the dotty old man had worked over, but then he saw her name and got the answer to the question he had been looking for.

He knew where Ginny was.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN – Mortal Peril

“Love?” Lucius sneered, but he was panting, his hair hanging around his face in unruly strands. He had overexerted himself with the Killing Curse, had poured all of himself into it as he’d been schooled, as he’d learned from experience, and it had taken too much out of him for it to have failed.

He had underestimated her.

But he managed a laugh and straightened, raising his wand once more. She had let down her shield, and love or no love, he would end this thing now.

His laughter undid her, his mockery of what she held dear, his slight on her feelings for his son, and she slashed her wand at him once, twice, three times, backhanded then forward and backhanded again.

Rilascio, seiunxi, flamino.

She thought them more than she said them, the words little more than a whisper. Sparks flew, a cut slashed wide across his cheek, and with the last word, he was thrown once more against the wall, blood pouring down his face and under the collar of his robe from the wide gash she’d opened up.

Her ears rang with the explosion she’d wrought on the last pass of her wand, and the sight of his blood affected her dually; she felt herself reel a little, sway forward and back on her feet, and then she felt everything focus to a precise point and a feeling she could only associate with thirst, desperation, starvation.

So much had been taken from her, stolen. Moments and days that would have added up to months had been taken from her time with Draco, and now eternity stretched before her, the options limited to life with a Death Eater and life alone.

She may as well have been left in the Chamber, for all he and his had stolen from her, all he had left her to live for.

She wanted to see what she had stolen from him.

She wanted to look into his eyes, tell him what he had done, and she hoped he begged.

She wanted him to beg before she killed him.

“Your master tried to teach me the way your kind loves,” she said in a low voice, her clenched fingers snapping open in a convulsive move and loosing her wand with a rattle onto the floor. “By taking, by stealing, by sucking the life out of the person you love until they’ve nothing more to offer you.” She could feel it as she said it, could feel it as she had back then, the energy sapping from her in leaps and bounds, the free will draining from her.

“The strong prevail,” Lucius said, watching her face grow pale. Just a girl, just a Mudblood-loving girl. If he could only get his wand, but he, too, felt weak. Pain burst in bright, colored flashes behind his eyes, nausea fluttering at his stomach with tiny wings, and it took his eyes a moment to clear and see what had happened.

She had knelt… and she had slapped him.

His blood covered her palm, thick enough in spots to form drops, and she looked at it curiously. “How can this be his, too?” she asked, her voice thick. “How can he be part of you?” The thought made her sicker than the blood, the idea of Draco coming from this man, from this monster.

She’d never seen that much blood in one place.

Ginny kept her eyes on her hand, on her hand covered with his blood, the same blood that flowed through Draco’s veins, a bond, a chain, a restriction, and that thought enraged her even more.

Draco could never be hers as long as he was his.

She hit him again, her stomach rising up against her as the back of her hand met his bleeding flesh, and she bit back a retch.

His mouth was distorted into an ugly rictus, a stubborn mockery of the seriousness of his situation. “So that’s it?” he asked, spitting weakly. She hadn’t killed him, hadn’t even come close, but he couldn’t move, he couldn’t move against her. “You want to fuck my son and you think that can happen without my blessing as long as you kill me? You should have been a Slytherin.” The multiple sentences cost him both bread and blood, rivulets of it trickling down his cheek with every motion of his mouth.

“If that’s all I wanted, I could have stopped wanting a long time ago,” Ginny said, reaching back to grasp her wand, staining the fine-grained wood with the evidence of her violence. She raised her arm one last time to strike him down, thinking he had been correct.

She should have been a Slytherin.

Perhaps there had been one hiding in her even before Tom Riddle.

~~~

“Where is she?” It didn’t escape Molly, the irony of asking him the question he’d been trying to ask them since the moment he’d come into their home. But that clock on the wall, pointing to Mortal Peril, had changed everything.

She’d seen the look on his face.

Draco gripped the edge of the kitchen table, the thick, scarred wood somehow the only thing in the room that seemed real, and he thought of her words to him.

I want to kill them all for doing this to you.

And the only one who had done this to him—the only one who could have made him a Death Eater, the only one who had ever singled her out, the live man who had saddled her with an unliving one.

“She’s at my home,” he said, finally standing, the moment he’d given himself to steady over.

He couldn’t afford any more time.

“We have to get help,” Molly said, already tucking her wand into her waistband and grabbing a cloak. “We have to get the boys, get Bill or Charlie or—”

“No.” Arthur’s quiet statement literally had her stumbling, and his face was ashen. “We cannot risk the rest of the—” He flicked his eyes to Draco, uncomfortable mentioning the Order in front of him, but unwilling to censor himself. He had killed Death Eaters. It had cost the Order some, that rash move, but it was too late to split hairs. “The Order,” he finished, and his wife’s eyes widened, either at his refusal or his show of trust in Draco. “Not for her. She is only one woman, Molly.”

“She is your daughter!” Molly hissed.

“You don’t need them,” Draco said, drawing his wand, his face pinched. Every second that passed risked her more. She could not stand against his father. “I’m his son. Don’t you think if anyone knows his tricks, it is I?” He turned and faced the fire, trying to draw his concentration.

“Don’t Apparate near the house,” he said, holding his wand in front of him, lined up between his eyes.

He Disapparated before they could question him further or respond to his command. Holding hands, Arthur and Molly followed suit.

~~~

Her lips trembled and she felt the wand start to slip from her blood-slick fingers even as Lucius’s eyes started to slip shut. She had never even whispered the words, only mouthing them in Defense Against the Dark Arts when it had been required of them.

How hard would the six syllables of the killing curse be?

“Expelliarmus.” Those five syllables were effortless, and the tenuous grip Ginny had on her wand was no defense for the disarmament. As though the wand had been her counterweight, she pitched forward, one hand landing on Lucius’s arm and holding up her weight as she turned and looked over her shoulder, her hair in her eyes, soaked in sweat and streaked with blood where the tips had brushed over her hands.

Narcissa Malfoy held both her wand and Ginny’s in her slim, pale hands, her face completely still.

This explained much.

My baby boy, she thought, her heart tearing in two for the thought of him with this young woman, this woman who loved him enough to kill for him. Who loved him enough, Narcissa thought, to give her wits up, her mind over to madness, for him.

“Leave him be,” she said, her voice betraying none of the panic she felt at the sight of her husband lying silently, stilly on the floor. He was pale, more so than usual, and she had made him bleed.

This girl had done what grown men had not been able to.

“Mere magic means nothing against my heart’s blood,” Narcissa said, seeing the young Weasley woman—Ginevra, a strong name, a queen’s name, Narcissa remembered—wince at her words being given back to her. “Against my love.”

She stepped forward and grasped the girl’s wrist with her left hand, like recognizing like as she felt the strength underneath the thin skin, the slender bones. She could not stand to see the woman like that, nor could she stand to see her husband underneath the weight of one who had brought him so low.

His fellows would be coming soon.

“He is a man, Ginevra, and therefore a fool in some ways.” Her voice belied no emotion, but she felt many—despair, worry, panic, and somewhere running underneath it all like a current, excitement. Her husband could be free.

If he were too ill, too injured to continue, he could be freed with some of his pride intact.

“My son is no different,” she added, watching the shift in the girl’s eyes, the way she could not stop looking at the gore she had brought forth. There would be sickness soon if Narcissa could not make the girl move.

Her son needed this woman, that she knew. She had guessed as much, she simply hadn’t guessed whom. She never would have guessed this.

She never would have guessed it would come to this.

“I—” Ginny shook her head, trying to clear it.

What had she done?

By all rights, the woman standing before her—Narcissa, Ginny reminded herself. A strong name, a name of beauty—should have killed her, but instead she was staring at her impassively while her husband bled on the floor.

“There will be no battles tonight. Tell your people and go to my son.” She thrust Ginny’s wand back in her hand, pushing her a little as she did so. When Ginny merely stared at her, Narcissa physically pushed her.

“I cannot tend to you!” she said harshly. “My man needs me and yours needs you, now go!”

Ginny made it outside the front door of the Manor before she was overtaken by her actions, her balance tipping over in one sickening roll and spilling her onto the front step in a heap.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN – Fathers and Husbands

He Apparated a quarter of a kilometer from the Manor, not trusting himself to get any closer. If he miscalculated, wasn’t concentrating, didn’t land just right, he’d be no use to either of them. He was running the moment he materialized, his feet carrying him down a road he’d never actually walked on.

He’d always been taken by carriage before.

How had she gotten there, and how would she leave? Draco thought of a funeral carriage and his feet faltered, made him fall to his hands and knees just as the Manor came into view. The pain would have been excruciating if he’d had it in him to feel it.

He looked up, hair falling in his eyes, and he was still trying to move, executing an awkward half-crawl as he tried to regain his feet.

The gate had been left open and he took a lurching step through it—

And fell once more when he saw her hair, all that flame spilling over the steps, her body still, her hands covered in blood, and he felt a scream tearing out, ravaging his throat. It was not grief, not yet, but rage, rage that his father would kill her and dump her on the step like trash. He made it through the yard, nearly sick, and crawled over her, reaching one hand up to the unlatched door and pushing it open.

He wanted to enter, wanted to strike down the first person who came to him, but he could not leave her.

“Oh, no… oh, my baby!” Though she’d not been nearly as fast as Draco, she’d been faster than he’d expected, and Molly took the steps slowly, her feet somehow sure, and she gathered her daughter in her arms.

Draco started to thank her, thank her for staying with the dead while he avenged the dead, but—

“Draco.”

Unless his ears had deceived him, he heard his name both from his left—whispered, raw, sick—and from his right—urgent, sharp, terse.

His lover was alive, and his mother was inside.

~~~
Narcissa held her husband’s head in her lap, watching with horror as his eyes rolled back in his head and his breathing grew shallow. A moment, damn it, she just needed a moment to think of where she was, what needed to happen, what had already happened.

It was easy to remain cool on the outside.

It was not so easy to maintain that on the inside.

The door swung open and she tensed, ready to hex anyone who stepped through the door and threatened her husband. She’d treated the young Weasley woman with more mercy than she’d have allowed anyone else who had done this to Lucius, but who was she to choose between her husband’s health and her son’s happiness?

One could be restored. The other, if she had killed Ginevra, could not.

Her breath left her in a shudder when she saw her son kneeling just outside the door, his head hanging, his eyes cast behind him at the young woman lying there. She’d not made it off the property, then, Narcissa saw. She’d collapsed, and well she should have.

She’d used enough magic to kill both herself and her enemy and had somehow managed to leave them both standing.

“Draco,” she said, running her hands through her husband’s hair, her mind now calm, things clicking easily into place.

He stood slowly, his motions reluctant, and he looked behind him once more, his lips tight.

Do not hate her for what she has done, Narcissa thought, looking at him imploringly. A woman will do desperate things if she finds herself in desperate times.

Brisk words had Lucius’s inert body floating in the air, and she knew she would have to move quickly. Others would have heard of Avery’s death by now, and they would come.

She did not intend to be here when they did.

Her son stepped into the house, his face contorting as he saw the blood spread over his father, and Narcissa knew her son well enough to see the quick, gratified flash that came and went on his face.

She hurt for that, for herself and her son and her husband, and for how little they had ever managed to know about one another.

“Do with this what you will,” she said, and it took the place of all the words she had and wanted to say, all the things she had no time for her, all the things that took second place behind the urgency of her husband’s injuries and the need for her son and his lover and his lover’s Mudblood loving parents to leave before things truly got bad.

She was not fool enough to think things could not get much worse in a short amount of time.

She pressed her hand to her son’s, and she could tell he thought, for a moment, she had not given him anything at all, despite her words.

“Go,” she said firmly, leaning forward and kissing him at the corner of his mouth, pressing her cheek to his as though it might be the last time. “You will not be able to find us for some time,” she whispered, her words insistent in his ear.

It was only after she’d rushed herself and his father out the kitchen entrance did he realize what she had pressed into his palm.

Strands of his father’s hair.

~~~
“Did I kill him?” Bloody hands grasped desperately at Molly’s shirt, and Ginny hauled herself close to her mother’s face to ask the question she least wanted the answer to.

She could not determine what she wanted that answer to be.

Draco would never forgive her, but she had put herself on his level. Certainly a Death Eater could understand a little murder among enemies.

She burst into tears, using what little strength she had left—Merlin, what had she done to herself? What had she done to him?—and shook her mother. “Did I kill him?”

Arthur laid a large, calloused hand on his daughter’s head and watched the tableau play out through the open door of the house. “No,” he said quietly, both grieving for and marveling over the actions his daughter had undertaken.

For a moment, they seemed both steeped in the war and separate from it, their lives dovetailing into the war in a notch all their own. There were things bigger than war, Arthur thought, feeling a shimmer of the power that had been released in the house.

Her breath was jerked from her as hands grasped her shoulders, lifted her, and turned her around. Her hands were curled into claws in front of her and she coughed as soon as he’d spun her around, her breath coming back in a whoop.

Would he kill her? Would he avenge his father, only doing to her what she hadn’t had the time to do to Lucius?

She waited for the words, fatal words, or even accusatory words, and she wondered if her parents would simply let him kill her.

Part of her hoped they would. She had lost herself, and this time there was no one to blame, no diary to destroy, no chamber to escape.

But no words came, at least not at first.

He shook her once, hard, then pulled her to his chest, what was left of the blood on her hands now on his shirt. When he did speak, his words were muffled by her hair, and when he leaned back, he was chastising her.

“Idiot! Idiot Weasley with your idiot temper!” He put his hands to the sides of her face, perhaps a bit more roughly than he’d intended to, and he kissed her hard, desperate to taste her, to know she was alive.

That she was alive was a miracle.

That it had come to this was folly.

Shocked, Ginny struggled in his arms, trying to get away from him. He was a Death Eater. She had tried to kill his father. If they’d been destined before, they were certainly not destined now.

“Ginny,” her mother chastised, simultaneously fascinated by and mystified at the sight of a Malfoy kissing her daughter in front of her.

“I’m not a Death Eater,” Draco said, as though it were as simple as that, but he could see his words were not getting through to her. Save for a moment of clarity in her eyes when he’d first turned her to face him, she’d been like a charmed parchment, soaking up what was put to her.

He should have said those words to her before it had come to this.

“This is your father’s blood,” Ginny said, her voice sounding muted to her. “Your father’s blood.” She wanted to keep repeating it to him until he understood what she had done.

“I know.” He laid his forehead to hers, hoping the contact would help.

“Your father’s blood.” It was only a whisper this time. She kept her eyes from meeting his, sure it would tear her into a million tiny, bleeding pieces to look at his soul from here. Instead, she looked at his arm, and instead of touching him, instead of using her hands to brace against his chest, she rolled back his sleeve.

What she did not see was like a slap, and she broke from his hold, pressing her now-tacky fingers to her lips.

“I’m sorry,” she managed, her ears ringing. “I’m so sorry.”

And all he could do was look at her with wide eyes, afraid she’d never come back to him.

“We have to go,” he said hoarsely. “Before they come.”

There would be time to explain it all to her later.

He needed to believe that.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN – Grimmauld Place

“I won’t do it.” Draco struggled against Arthur’s hand against his arm and tried to look over his shoulder at Ginny. She kept her head down, huddled under her mother’s arm and looking much smaller than she actually was. She would not look at him, and he could feel himself start to become panicked. How could he allow himself to be blinded and deafened—even momentarily—when she was clearly in need?

He needed to tend to her.

Arthur clamped his hands on Draco’s shoulders, forcing the young man to look him in the eye. It didn’t matter what Arthur knew, what he had found out, he still had to protect the Order’s identity as best he could. “You must do as I say,” Arthur said, his voice harsher than usual. “Her mother is taking care of her.” Though it broke his heart to see his daughter so silent, so listless. “If you do not let me do as I please, we will go without you, and you will never see her again.”

Draco swallowed hard but refused to cut his eyes back to her one more time. “Do it,” he said, his eyes steady on Arthur’s.

Arthur was merciful in his swiftness, casting a blinding spell and a silencing spell so Draco could neither hear nor see what was about to happen. In only a moment, Arthur had entered 12 Grimmauld Place with Draco in tow, his wife and his daughter trailing behind him.

“Take her upstairs,” he said, gesturing toward the stairs and looking back at Molly. “Now.” If she didn’t go before he rescinded the spells he’d put on Draco, they would never get what they needed from Draco, and they might never get Ginny to rest.

They had nearly destroyed one another while trying to shelter one another. He didn’t think he could bear to see them finish off the job. He waited until he had ushered Draco into the kitchen and Molly had taken Ginny to a bedroom before he freed the young man.

Draco looked around slowly when he got his vision back, taking in the dreary surroundings, the over-scrubbed walls and the threadbare furniture. It looked familiar, but he couldn’t put his finger on it.

He didn’t want to take the time to figure it out.

“I need to see her.” He tried to rise from his chair and found himself bound, faced by Remus Lupin, that Auror Shacklebolt, and somehow worst of all, Albus Dumbledore, all three of them calmly sipping tea as though nothing were wrong. “Damn it, you can’t—”

“You need to tell them,” Arthur said, understanding perfectly what Draco needed. He himself wanted to kiss his daughter’s forehead, tuck her into the bed, sit by her side and hold her hand. But as he had told Molly, she was only one person.

None of them, including Ginny, would survive if they couldn’t band together.

“Tell them where these came from.” The wands Draco had given Arthur appeared on the table. Remus and the big Auror both reacted detectably, Kingsley by muttering a loud oath and the werewolf by pushing his chair back from the table. Of those gathered, Albus was the only one to maintain his composure, merely raising a bushy eyebrow. “Some collection you’ve managed, my boy,” he finally stated. “Many people have been looking for those.”

Draco closed his eyes, inhaled deeply and exhaled. How many things could he worry about at once? He wanted to know where they had taken her, and he only wanted to justify his actions to one person—the one person they would not allow him to see. He did not want their judgment, their approval or damnation.

“Unbind me,” he finally said, sneering because he knew no other way to defend himself. “If I’m to speak to you, I will not do so under duress.” He felt a slight relaxation around his arms and wondered which of them had plied their silent magic. “I killed them,” he said flatly.

It was disgusting how much easier it got with each time he said it.

“You already know I poisoned them. It should be obvious why.” And it should have been, he thought. It should have been obvious to all of them. If he would betray all his family teachings by loving a Weasley, wasn’t it likely he would change other things? “They were Death Eaters. They ruled my life for as long as I can remember. I should have thought you would be grateful.” He heard footsteps and his defensive tone wavered. The door opened, and he leapt to his feet, hand reaching for his wand.

“Draco, no!” Arthur stepped in front of the young man, his eyes squeezed shut with the fervent hope he wouldn’t be fatally hexed.

“No?” Draco growled, shoving Arthur out of the way with strength the older man had not expected. “He isn’t what you think!”

“No,” Severus drawled, his tone nearly amused. “He isn’t what you think. And neither is my star pupil, it seems.” Severus poured himself a cup of tea and leaned over the table to inspect the wands. “Hm. Seems you were paying attention in Potions, after all. I had rather thought you were too busy sneering at Potter or ogling Miss Weasley.”

“Severus,” Arthur said sharply, uncomfortable with the statement.

Draco was too stunned to speak, his mind trying to sort out Severus’s presence here. “You… you’re a—”

“I think it best we bypass this part of the realization process,” the Potions Master said, “And get straight to business.”

~~~

What time was it? He didn’t know. He’d been in the kitchen for what seemed like days, among a constantly changing group of people. Molly was in and out, that idiot Potter had walked in a few times. Hermione Granger had put her thoughts in more than once, and Draco would have been more spiteful to her if she hadn’t been so worried about Ginny and if the baby hadn’t been so damned cute.

These people were worth saving.

He never knew they could be.

Every step up the stairs felt as though his feet weighed a ton, and he thanked Merlin, not for the first time, for his intelligence. A slower man would have been swamped—the Order of the Phoenix, being vouched for by Snape, Arthur, and Dumbledore simultaneously, the plans, the plots.

The inclusion.

It felt foreign.

And it fell away as he reached her door. They had things to do. They had people to see.

He had assignments already, and all the assignments of the woman who lay behind the door had been reallocated to others.

He let himself in, knowing it was his last opportunity to talk to her before things got ugly, before he was called upon to do in person what he’d been doing behind a disguise, behind a poisoned tankard and a black hood.

“Ginny.” He’d meant to be strong, had meant to be steady, but her voice came out in a near sob, and Draco collapsed at the foot of the bed on his knees. She wasn’t sleeping; her eyes were open, dark and wet and clear in the lamplight, but she said nothing, instead sliding her hands over the sheets as though trying to cleanse her palms.

Your father’s blood.

“Will you listen to me?” he asked, wondering if she heard him, if perhaps something had happened, if she’d done herself damage, if his father had done damage to her, but she nodded, finally reaching up to wipe a tear off her cheek.

So he began to talk.

He could have explained it all to the group that had gathered downstairs, but how long would it have taken? How many words? He hadn’t the energy to give it to them. But to her, he could.

He told her things she already knew, gave her the history she had lived with him, how he’d given up everything for her in another world, given up his heritage and his birthright, given up the only thing his father knew how to give.

He moved to the side of the bed, sliding his hand beneath hers and clasping her fingers so she would stop their travel along the sheet.

Still she had not answered him.

“How do you think it made me feel to come back here, to come back to a place where I never made that decision? Where I wasn’t free from my father and couldn’t be because he would kill me, and kill you?” He closed his eyes and felt her fingers squeeze more tightly against his, giving him the strength to press on.

“He was—he is my father, Ginny. It doesn’t matter how much I hate what he stands for, I couldn’t fight him face to face. He would have killed me.”

“Draco.” It was only one word, only his name, but he picked up her hand and kissed it, his eyes fierce.

Ginny swallowed hard and fought the tears that were sliding from her eyes down her temples and onto her pillow.

“You made that choice twice,” she said, her voice tremulous, uncertain. She had given up nothing for him.

She had taken away.

“I made the wrong choices,” she whispered.

“I made that choice twice,” Draco said, desperate to make her see, desperate to make her see before things were set into motion, “because it didn’t matter who we were, where we were. I loved you there, and I love you here. I had to make that choice.”

“I made the wrong choice!” she repeated, sitting up in the bed, her fingers convulsing around his and making him wince in pain. “Listen to me.”

He would have taken the memory from her if he could have, and for a moment, he wanted to, but time was short. So he kissed the backs of her knuckles until she was silent, tears streaming down her face, and as he leaned over to whisper, “I would have done it myself if I could have,” he slid into bed with her.

He needed rest, for an hour or two, and he could only find it with her.

CHAPTER NINETEEN - Give

She didn’t sleep.

Ginny knew it would be quite some time before she could close her eyes without seeing Lucius Malfoy, the hatred in his eyes, the murder reflected from hers. It would take time not to fear dreaming of his blood on her hands, or to walk in a nightmare where she did what she had truly wanted to do, putting her bloodstained fingers over his gore-slick face to cover his mouth and nose, to let the air leave him even as his blood left him.

She shivered and moved closer to Draco in the bed, feeling his arms tighten around her. He could sleep, she thought, and well he should. She knew little, but she knew him, and she knew the postures of a man with a purpose. He would leave her to go to the greater good, and that alone made her hate that greater good with a measure of selfishness she was dismayed but not surprised to find in herself.

How long had he been asleep? A few minutes? A few hours? She didn’t know. She turned over to face him, marveling at his face in repose. How many times had she taken the time to watch him sleep? Not many, she knew, for he always outlasted her, staying awake long after her, sometimes stroking her back or her hair, sometimes, staying up to do work he’d carried home with him.

He looked too good to be hers, fair hair and flawless skin, the aristocratic, finely pointed face softened in sleep. His lashes lay pale and long on his cheeks and now it was she who wanted to take him away from all of this, because it was her fault he was here.

“I can feel you watching me, little weasel,” he said softly, a smile curving his mouth, his eyes still closed. He hadn’t forgotten where he was or what had transpired; instead, he willfully ignored it, choosing to let his world shrink only to her, at least for a bit longer.

“Sorry,” Ginny whispered, and even she wasn’t certain of the scope of her apology, how much or how little she was trying to make amends for with the one word.

He didn’t let her explore it any further; keeping his eyes closed, he leaned forward and slid his lips over hers, catching her sigh between his lips and returning it with one of his own as he moved one hand to touch her, to stroke her hair away from her face. With his eyes closed, his hands traced their path using memory alone, using the perfect picture he kept in his mind. A ticklish spot at the back of her neck, her left shoulder on which there were more freckles than on her right. Down along her arm, where there was a scar from when three-year-old Ginny had fallen from a broom she’d pilfered from the twins, the hands that had set out to end his father’s life, the same hands that had done everything from rubbing his cheek to resting over his heart to bringing him to completion time and time again.

He moved one hand back up to caress her face, gently urging her to part her lips for him. “Draco,” she whispered, moving her mouth to his cheek so he could feel the words form. “What are you doing?”

“I’m loving you,” he answered simply, covering her mouth with his and feeling the way she kissed him, kissing as he had taught her, moving in ways he had shaped her, just as every move he made had been tailored by her and to her.

What had there been between them of late? Stolen time in a public bookstore, harried pretense in a crowded club. Possession, ownership, but not this. He had craved those times with her, but he had starved for this, too scared to open himself up to her like this before, too afraid in his most vulnerable moments that she would see his sins, would intuit his secrets and endanger herself.

Now his fear had settled in union with the fear and action of others, split and shared among the Order, and she already knew his sins and his secrets. He wanted this. He wanted to give himself over to her and give her all the vulnerability he could not have later when his life and hers would depend on it.

He moved his hands to her hips, rolling so she was on top of him, finding a sweet, slow rhythm to their kisses, an unrushed pace despite their time constraints.

His eyes were still closed.

Ginny stretched herself out, pressing her thighs to his, feeling him solid and warm beneath her, here where she’d never dreamed he would be, and she responded tentatively, kissing his closed eyelids and moving her hands to his chest. As she felt his heart beat under her palms, her need reared up within her, desperate and hot and crazed and now.

They would survive this. They simply had to, because she could not live without this and him.

She pulled her nightgown over her head, pressing hungry lips to the pulse in his throat, disconcerted but not discouraged by his refusal to open his eyes. He lifted his hands to cover her breasts, and the heat of his touch comforted her and made her glad.

They stayed like that for long moments as she tested his body with her mouth and he tested hers with his hands, long fingers dancing down the line of her back, sure hands pressing into sensitive spots and clusters of freckles.

She unbuttoned his shirt and spread it open, needing to feel her skin against his, her heart against his as he tapped his fingers—index, middle, ring, pinky, thumb, both hands in concert as though he thought he could leave his fingerprints on her, unique and his, just as she was.

Ginny unbuttoned and unzipped his pants with slow, steady fingers, finding this part incidental to the way he was whispering her name and she his, merely co-occurring with the way his arms were banding around her as though he’d always protect her, as though he would hold her forever.

His physical need had been greater at other times, but he had never yearned so much for someone as he did in the moment before she settled herself atop him, wrapping her fingers between his, arms stretched out, wrists to wrists and heart to heart so their pulses slowed, alternated, then mated; lip to lip so their breaths drew together.

She moved slowly and he did not hasten her, in no rush to leave this bed and this woman. His chest grew hot with the pressure and friction of hers; his forehead beaded with sweat and shared in hers as she rose and rested her head to his. She kissed him, and in the silent room, blackness to him behind his closed eyelids, the only sign he had that she was nearing completion seconds, moments, hours later was the tremor in her lips, the tiniest moan across her tongue, and he raised his hips to fill her as best he could, wondering if it was enough.

She whispered his name as she endured the gentle crest and gasped when he reached his own release. Finally, she released his hands and buried them in his hair, pressing gentle kisses to his forehead, his cheeks, his lips, his chin, her grip growing insistent and painful as she felt their time ticking away.

“You have to go now,” she said, her certainty robbing her of the privilege to make it a question, stealing from her the ability to pretend and be blissfully ignorant.

“Yes,” he answered, though he knew she had not asked. He rolled once more, laying her on her side on the bed as he kissed her cheek. When he finally opened his eyes, tears were standing in them.

It was the only time he had ever cried in front of her, and he did not want her to know.

~~~

She lay awake, perfectly still as she let the sweat soak into her skin, his essence mingle with hers, not wanting to move and waste the aftershocks of what they’d had.

She also did not want to know where he was going or what he was doing. Not just yet. She needed a few moments to absorb it, a few moments to truly think about what had transpired, about what he had done and said, about the things he’d given to her without her knowledge.

His loyalty, for one.

She had threatened him, had hexed him, and he’d been fighting with her instead of against her the whole time, in his careful, plotting way. And now he sat downstairs where she should have been, giving those plots over to her parents, her brothers, her teachers. Her heart swelled and she turned her head into her pillow to stifle the sobs that poured out of her, angry and confused and grieving, regretful and frightened and loving.

He had given so much.

The least she could do was what she had promised she would do.

~~~
“They’ll have to be told.” Arthur leaned across the table. “There are too many of them to risk not telling everyone what we are doing. Even the farthest outlying posts must be notified.”

They were all tired, and every one of them looked tired except for the two central players in the latest—and perhaps last—great scheme of the Order of the Phoenix.

Draco Malfoy and Severus Snape did not and could not look tired. Too many things depended on them.

“I’ll go,” Hermione said. “Molly, if you’ll watch the baby.”

Molly considered, then shook her head. “I ought to—”

“Watch the baby, Molly,” Arthur said sternly. He’d taken the proverbial backseat for the majority of his marriage, but if there was an opportunity for his wife to be safe, he would force her to take it.

He could be strong about many things, but Arthur Weasley knew he couldn’t live his life without his Molly.

“I’ll go,” Harry said, his brow furrowed in thought. “As long as Molly’s watching Harmony, there’s no reason why I oughtn’t take my broom—”

“No reason,” Snape said snidely, “Other than this is, technically, your fight. If you’re gallivanting about on a broomstick when the final battle comes, I’m afraid that will be chalked up as forfeiture and we’ll all be destroyed. Poor judgment, Potter.”

Draco found a smirk despite the circumstances.

“You mustn’t go,” Hermione seconded quietly. “Though I doubt we’ll be gone so long as to keep from helping in the end.” She threaded her fingers through Harry’s unsmilingly, any animosity they’d had over his role in the war and hers gone in their need.

“It’s easy enough,” Luna said, speaking up quietly. “I’d rather like to see Ron before…” She trailed off, her uncharacteristic honesty failing her for once.

“The three of us can go.”

Ginny’s voice had them all turning around, and she nodded toward Luna and Hermione. “We three can split the outliers and locals. We’ll tell everyone.”

“You don’t even know what you’re telling them,” Draco said, foolishly—selfishly—wishing she would stay behind. Even if it meant she were still feeling badly over things, still feeling weak, he wanted her to stay behind. But she shook her head.

“I suppose, then, you will just have to tell me.”

**Author’s Note: This chapter is the last full chapter of this story. If I had the words to tell you all how much I loved writing this story, I would give them to you. House Unity was originally supposed to be two stories—Draco’s and Ginny’s, and Ron’s and Luna’s. I had considered a H/Hr story, and one day while listening to the Bond album Classified, I got the perfect picture of Ginny running through the streets, Disapparating in mid-step, and I could feel Draco chasing her, wondering where she was. Thus, Unified was born. I recommend the cd to any and all. Happy reading, thank you to everyone who supported me in the PK Awards and with your reviews, and stay tuned for the epilogue to House Unity: Unified.**

CHAPTER TWENTY - Unified

She listened to them in silence, her face betraying none of her emotions. That was of no import to him—she may as well have been wearing a sign, because he could feel her fear, her tension, her determination.

For him, her heart would always be on her sleeve.

They started to move, each Order member with a purpose, knowing time was short, but Draco and Ginny stood still in the midst of chaos, his eyes begging her not to go, and hers begging him not to ask.

“Kiss her or say goodbye, Mr. Malfoy, but do it now. I’ve neither the time nor the patience to witness maudlin theatrics.” Severus moved at the stove, competent hands measuring, mixing, re-measuring.

But instead of kissing her or saying goodbye as his Head of House had suggested, Draco stepped back, head ducked down, a small smile on his face as he remembered slow strains of music, the woman before him dressed as a princess. He bowed low before her, taking her hand in his, and reminded her of the moment he’d chosen her no matter the consequences.

“Draco,” she said, her voice breaking. “Don’t. Not to me.”

“Miss Weasley,” Snape barked, his voice now urgent. The Dark Mark on his arm burned hot and painful, and it took every ounce of willpower he had not to spill the mug he held. “You will not want to be here for this.”

She let her hand slip from Draco’s and nodded, her lips pressed tightly together.

She walked out without looking back, not wishing for a moment to see the face of her lover turn into that of his father.

~~~

“You seem to be delayed.”

The voice—sliding chains, buzzing cicadas, hissing snakes—sent a chill down the newcomer’s spine.

Draco steeled himself against the invasion, against the violation he knew would come. For that, at least, he had been prepared. He had not been prepared for many things—for the men, once powerful, stooped low at a mere man’s feet; for the diminished legions whose lives meant nothing without servitude, pain now the only thing they looked forward to, the pain of being summoned; for the ruined wretch whom they all adored and followed and his cold, horrible countenance.

He had been prepared for none of it, so he shielded the horror and hate in his mind, blocked it off as though behind a wall so it could not be found.

And he walled off himself, walled off the son of the man he was portraying, forcing himself to think of adoration and adulation as he bent at the hems of the thing’s robes.

“My Lord,” he said, the voice of his father filling his ears, filling the inside of the mask and echoing. “Our delay has brought fruitful information.”

“We have found the lair of the enemy,” Severus said, and only later would Draco remember and marvel at the tone of amusement in the Potions Master’s voice.

The smooth, hard expanse of scar tissue above the slitted eyes raised in what might have passed for surprise on a human face, and Severus continued, somehow unaffected by the grotesquerie in front of him.

“They have been hiding in the home of one of our victims.”

As it turned out, Lord Voldemort’s way of expressing pleasure was in a hiss that continued as Severus told the gathered court where the Order of the Phoenix had hidden its flock.

~~~

She waited.

She had hoped there would be no time for waiting.

They had told everyone, every Order member in hiding, every Order member posted at various places throughout the countryside, every Order member hiding among Muggles. They had all been prepared, all been told, and somehow, there was still time to wait.

Come soon, she thought. Come soon and come safe.

But she was scared. She was afraid of what—and who—would come with him when he finally came.

A hand closed over hers and she jumped, expecting him. Instead, Ron stood beside her, one hand clasped in his wife’s, his eyes reflecting her fear, her uncertainty, her impatience.

She felt a quick lash of jealousy, anger at him for trying to understand. The woman he loved was standing beside him, right beside him with her fingers tangled cozily in his. He wasn’t waiting on her to come back from a den full of thieves and murderers. He couldn’t possibly understand.

“Be strong,” he said simply, and that was nearly enough to make her weak.

“Be strong,” Ron repeated, and squeezed her hand again, casting worried eyes to the west.

They were coming.

~~~

“There’s nothing here.”

Draco smirked beneath his mask, easier now in the absence of their “master,” more comfortable now that he felt the Polyjuice wearing off.

He kept himself quiet despite the urge to tell them precisely where the house was, loathe to let anyone hear his voice instead of his father’s. It was Severus’s duty to speak—his right, even, considering all he’d been through, but before he could, someone else did.

“There is something here, or at least there was.” Bella’s voice was harsh and triumphant, and she cackled. “Dear Auntie’s house,” she added, and her statement of the word “Auntie” made Draco’s skin crawl. “12 Grimmauld Place.”

There was a shimmer, a pulse, and Severus repeated the address, bringing the sagging old house into plain view for all of the gathered Death Eaters.

They needed no encouragement, Bellatrix leading the way as they streamed into the house, eager for this ambush, for the element of surprise, eager to have all of the Order in one place, as Severus and ‘Lucius’ had told them they would be, eager to cripple—nay, obliterate—their enemy and leave the final battle to their Lord’s glorious destiny.

So eager were they for bloodshed that they did not notice their informants lagging behind and slipping away.

And as their cohorts, their fellow Order members, Disillusioned themselves and became visible, Draco and Severus dropped their masks and joined their ranks.

Ginny watched with a mixture of horror and pride as Draco shed his mask, feeling cloven once again as she wanted to recoil from the mask and embrace the man who tossed it away.

There was time for neither, for as Draco stepped into place between her and Ron, the binding spells had already been fired.

~~~

There were people he knew in there, former students, former colleagues, and Albus Dumbledore wished fervently that there were another way, that it would not come to this. The Order had agreed long ago not to use Unforgivables in any circumstance, extending an unspoken exception only to Harry in the final battle.

But there were other ways, Albus knew, of permanent harm, and as he prepared to give the command, he looked across the way at the other defensive wing of Order members at Nymphadora Tonks, who would have to hex her own relatives, and Draco Malfoy, who would do the same.

Blood traitors, Albus thought, and he thought it proudly.

“Now,” he shouted, knowing his binding spells could not outlast his wish for peace.

It had to be now.

~~~

He pulled her to him just as the headmaster gave the command, his left arm around her waist, her back to his chest, and he kissed the top of her head as she covered his hand with hers, their wand arms extended together toward the house.

You don’t have to do this, she thought, but she knew he did, at least for himself.

They’d been placed into teams of sorts, assigned the spell they would aim at the house. For every blasting spell, there was an incendiary spell, and a select few, the sharpest of their ranks—Hermione, Draco, a few others—aimed bluebells through windows and tried to ignore the screams of those inside.

It took only a moment for the house to crumble, as roughly as it had been used over the years, both for ill and for good; as masked men and women tried to escape from the house to which they were bound, the roof started to cave in and the walls began to give way.

Harry stood in the back, his eyes focused on Hermione as he did what he was told—simply watched, for his battle was yet to come, and his strength was necessary. And though watching the demise of the majority of Voldemort’s Death Eaters lent him strength, it also sapped him of the little remaining innocence he possessed.

No matter how old he’d gotten, how many things he had gone through, he had somewhere, in the back of his mind, hoped those lost could be rehabilitated, had hoped those who fought for good would not have to bring things to this.

But he did not look away.

Ginny felt Draco tremble at her back and she squeezed his hand tighter, conveying in actions what she could not convey in words. He had done enough. When her own strength began to falter, she let her wand drop from her fingers, moving her wand hand to clasp over his and bring it down to his side.

“Enough,” she spoke, though there was no way he could have heard her. She turned into his arms as the beams of the house cracked and the roof fell flat onto the ground in flames, trapping those beneath it.

Draco wrapped his arms around her and buried his face in her hair, breathing in the smell of her instead of the smell of smoke and worse. Soon they would be gone, whether she wanted to go or not, for the few Death Eaters who had not been captured would know of their deception and would try to find him. There was but one battle left, and he did not intend to let her stay and sacrifice herself for a fight that had to be between two people.

Yes, soon they would be gone.

But for now, he held her and knew it was the first time he had held her completely as himself, taking her completely as herself.

They stood unified, all their secrets rising with the smoke toward the sky.

EPILOGUE – House Unity

How long did it take for wounds to heal?

For some, weeks. For others, years. And few knew better than those gathered that some wounds would never heal, no matter how much time you gave them. They simply became part of you, and you worked with them instead of around them. You felt joy despite them, or maybe partly because of them, because it is easier to understand joy when you have understood despair.

They had gone, as he had wanted to. He had taken her away as he had once claimed he ought to, and they had taken the time to learn the things about one another they thought didn’t matter. Family pride, individual traditions, the ways they’d each been taught to love, and the ways they had learned that love.

And when they had come back, they came back not two, but one and ready to become such in the eyes of everyone they knew.

~~~

She walked uncertainly down the aisle between the ranks of seats, enjoying the feel of the grass beneath the satin runner she walked on, charmed to stay down no matter who walked on it or tripped over it, as she was afraid she would do, no matter how many times her mother had told her she would be beautiful, she would be fine.

Harmony Jane Potter was a very nervous little girl as she walked with her mother’s wand, locked only into one charm for the morning, and every time the toddler waved the wand, white rose petals came fluttering out of the end of it.

She was so enamored with the charm that she had nearly made the aisle impassible with petals. But the beautiful man standing at the head of the aisle smiled at her, his hair pretty and bright and so different from her daddy’s, and she figured she had done well. Once she had reached the end of the aisle, she popped the wand in the pretty man’s direction, scattering rose petals across his toes with a pealing, bright giggle.

Hermione picked up her daughter and kissed the top of her head, smiling at Draco as she then passed the little girl to Harry.

Arthur walked down the aisle, sure on his feet despite the small cane he carried. He had long since gotten into the habit of telling people he carried it to keep Molly thinking he needed pampering.

Peter Pettigrew had caused that limp, but it had not been Arthur’s vengeance that had taken down Voldemort’s most loyal servant, nor had it been Ron’s, Bill’s, or Charlie’s. Percy had shown his devotion to the man he had once been ashamed of, holding up his wounded father as he felled the man once known as Wormtail.

After a series of slow, deliberate steps, Arthur stood before the man who had first hated, then loved his little girl and put his hands to his shoulders. Wordlessly, according to tradition, he lifted the hood of Draco’s summer-weight black cloak and settled it over bright hair, draped over his face and concealing his eyes in shadow.

He was already teary when he returned to his wife’s side.

At the back of the crowd, she stood waiting, looking at the yard of her childhood home transformed into something unbelievable. She watched her father hood Draco and stood with dry, grateful eyes as Narcissa Malfoy did the same for her, cloaking the sunstruck red and gold of her hair with the hood of the white lace cloak she wore over her mother’s dove grey robes.

She walked quickly over uncrushable rose petals up the aisle and to him; she could not help but smile at Draco’s witness—Severus looked more irritated than dour as he continually Confounded the Muggle priest the couple had insisted co-officiate with Albus Dumbledore. Though Albus had no qualms sharing the duties, it had been widely agreed that the priest would likely not be capable of coping with a ghost as a co-celebrant.

So far, he’d been too confused to notice.

Ginny took her place beside Draco, not trying to seek out his eyes under the large, draped hood, instead locking hands with him and facing those assembled there—on his side, the few Slytherin families and teachers who had not sided with the Dark Lord; Tonks and her family, some Ministry employees. On Ginny’s side, the cluster of ginger heads that comprised her brothers and parents; Hermione, Harry, and Harmony; an empty chair left out of respect for Remus and the sacrifice he had made.

They stood perfectly still for a moment, then turned and handed their wands to their witnesses, Draco’s disappearing deep into the pockets of Severus’s robes, Ginny’s stuck through the mass of curls piled atop Luna’s head.

Ron came first, standing before Draco and laying his wand to each of Draco’s shoulders. The twins came next, a wand to each of his shoulders. They lingered for a moment, exchanging smirks, and Molly shot sparks at their bottoms to get them moving.

Nymphadora came next to bless Ginny, her hair a subdued, dark chestnut, either in deference to the day or still in mourning for Remus. Grieving or not, however, Tonks smiled at Ginny as she blessed her.

They came to bless the loved one of their loved one: Bill, Charlie, Ted and Andromeda, Percy, Luna, Molly, and Severus.

And finally, Arthur and Narcissa stepped up simultaneously, he blessing the young man whose actions had somehow signaled the beginning of the end of the second—and last—war, she blessing the young woman who had nearly killed her husband, who had nearly killed the man who would be her father-in-law in only a few moments. She blessed her without qualm, blessed her without remorse. This young woman was taking her son, but she had given Narcissa back her husband, whether she had intended to or not. She would go back to him when this was over, and though she had no doubt he’d have nothing positive to say about the union that had taken place, she also had no doubt he would listen to every detail.

He had wounds he had yet to learn to live with.

Draco and Ginny accepted their wands in their left hands and faced one another, wand hands raised palm-out toward one another. Ginny moved forward, ready to press her hand to his when Draco broke from tradition, grabbing her hand and drawing it into the shadows thrown by his cloak, settling his lips softly in the palm of her hand. She let out a choked little laugh in the stifling silence, tears rolling freely down her cheeks and a smile flitting beneath the lace.

Draco finally released her hand to settle it—and his—in their proper positions, palm-to-palm, and they walked in a semi-circle, each ending up in front of the other’s family and friends. Ginny slid back Draco’s hood and stood perfectly still while he did the same.

It was the same as it had always been, but more intense; he watched her as he would always watch her, as though she were his beginning and end, his reason for existence, as though the rest of the people were not there, as though the validation process their families had just put them through meant nothing.

She would be his even if no one approved of it, and she had been.

And he had been hers.

Left hands moved wands to right hands as they linked their right arms, and in a gesture any Muggle would recognize, twined their arms together at the elbow and leaned in, touching their own wands to their foreheads before moving back, once more grasping hands with their wands now clasped between them, white light glowing at the tips.

“I love you,” Ginny finally said, breaking the silence. She stepped forward to kiss him, and he put a finger to her lips.

“Not yet,” he said.

Colin Creevey caught the best moment in a spectacular flash of film—Severus Snape rolling his eyes as he finally released the Muggle priest, who would simply be Oblivitaed, anyway.

“Do you, Genevieve Melinda Wesley, take this man to be your lawfully wedded husband?”

“I do.”

“Do you, Drake Byron Mallory, take this woman to be your lawfully wedded wife?”

“I do.”

For the first time, as tears gathered in his eyes, Draco finally let her see them.

They were hers, too, after all.

And floating above them, just higher than the priest’s line of sight, Albus Dumbledore sighed and pressed his translucent hands together.

House unity and a very large wedding cake.

What could be more beautiful?