*Author's Note: I am sorry for this chapter being so delayed. A member of my family has been in the hospital for eight days (counting today). As a result, I have gotten very behind in posting. However… I will post two chapters at once in the hopes of making up for it! Thank you so much for reading…*
CHAPTER ELEVEN - Arranging Meetings
He was having a hard time looking at his assistant without seeing her lip-locked… or worse… with Pansy. As though he needed any more distractions, Draco thought.
"Yes, Octavia?" he said impatiently, shoving some parchments to one side of his desk so he had an excuse to turn three-quarters away from her and study those instead of dwelling on what, exactly, she might look like spread out under-
"What do you want?!" he burst out, throwing his hands into the air. Thinking about sex was only going to get him one thing, and that was thinking about the Weasley brat. He'd successfully avoided that particular train of thought for most of the day after coming to his superior conclusion that he'd just… let it go.
But gods, what a picture it had made, what a visual, the virtuous Ginevra Weasley spread-eagled on a table, growling and snapping at him-
A parchment landed right in front of his face and Octavia stood with her hands on her hips in front of his desk. "If you want me to tell you immediately what I'm here for, sir, I'd thank you to listen. You… have… a… response… from… Miss… Weasley." She over-enunciated each word as though he were a child, annoyed because she'd been standing there repeating herself for several long moments as he completely zoned out.
It had been on the tip of his tongue to say something to her about behaving like Pansy, but her words finally registered with him and he looked up at her, eyes wide. "I should have no response from Miss Weasley. You did inform me her earlier owl was returned, correct?" When she nodded, he drummed his fingers on the desk, his stomach wending its way into knots.
A response from Ginny. He hadn't wanted a response, hadn't wanted to see her again. Hadn't wanted to put himself back into a position where he might possibly lose control.
"That's correct. Sir, the owl is addressed to you, whether you expected it or not."
"I see that, Octavia," Draco sniped back with an amplified version of her factual tone. Finally, through his discomfort and complete unwillingness to open the parchment in front of him, he remembered what he'd been about to say to her. "If you're going to see my barrister, that's fine, but I can only beg of you not to act like her."
That got a smile from her, and she looked a little sheepish as she sauntered out of his office.
He considered incinerating the message, just forgetting all about it. That was what he'd decided to do, damn it, and no matter what the parchment said, he didn't want to know about it.
He cracked open the seal and unfolded it anyway, feeling ten kinds of a fool for even starting this ridiculous farce.
Draco,
I will be available to have an evening meal-and a meal only, Saturday evening. I think it is imperative we sort out what has happened and make certain there are no misunderstandings.
There were inkblots here, as though she'd tapped quill to paper while writing, and his brows drew together as he visualized her sitting behind a desk, deep in thought, dotting the parchment as she thought of something else.
Your 'employee,' such as she is, seems to be laboring under the severe misconception of something going on between us. I would very much like to clear up any such notions.
~G.M.W.
"My what?" he asked out loud, reading over it again. As he re-read, he crumpled the parchment up and wondered why he hadn't just gone ahead and throttled Pansy, wrapped his hands around her neck and squeezed.
Interfering bint.
"My employee," he said mockingly, his voice rising to falsetto. So she'd… what? Taken his original message and hand-delivered it to Ginny's flat?
Perfect. Bloody fucking perfect.
He placed his hands flat on his desk to try and stem the vertigo that wanted to swamp him. It was only a meal, after all. Granted, they'd not managed to have any sort of a normal meal the evening before, but they were civilized adults. Well, certainly they were at least adults. Or, Draco amended, he was. Never mind that he'd brought everything to shambles at her flat.
"I am Draco fucking Malfoy," he said aloud, taking a deep breath through his nose and exhaling through his mouth. "I am cunning. I am ruthless."
He thought of her, of the way she'd looked strolling through his party clad in scarlet material, unapologetic, and the way she'd looked at him as he'd left her flat, shocked and reproachful and frightened.
He thought of the way he'd taken her mindlessly, not because of bloody Potter or a vindication he'd been searching for. Not because she was anyone's object. Just because she was. He had taken her, quite simply, because he'd had no other choice.
And as he thought of this, the vertigo was gone, and he knew with a dreadfully certain hunch that he would find no respite in his thoughts.
He was mixed around. He was sick. He was infected, and he needed to get it out of his system somehow.
Dinner tomorrow night. He would repay her the favor of a meal and send her on her way. Balancing the scales, he thought, would purge the system.
He sure as hell hoped it would.
~~~
She wondered if the witches in America, in Salem, felt this way just before being put to death.
Ginny kept her gaze on the table in front of her, waiting for her brother to show up. He hadn't sent a Howler, but the terse, somehow disappointed note he'd sent her had been much, much worse.
"Hello, Gin." Ron slid onto the chair across from her, glancing around the tea shop. The last thing he wanted to do was have an extremely private conversation in an extremely public place, but this was neutral ground.
"Ron." She bit back a sigh, anticipating what he was about to say. Ronald Weasley wasn't precisely known for his tact, and Ginny knew he'd be extra blunt with her. They were perhaps not as close as they'd once been, but their bond was unbreakable.
Or Ginny hoped it was. She was afraid recent actions might have put a strain on that which she had always found completely unquestionable.
"Everyone is worried about you." And that, Ron thought, was the simplest way to put it. Their parents thought she'd gone nutters, and Harry and Hermione hadn't a single nice word to say after Draco Malfoy had turned up at the Burrow. As for himself, Ron was reserving judgment.
He wanted his baby sister to be happy. If that wasn't going to be with his best friend, he would simply have to handle that.
Besides, it wasn't as though Ron had ever had full faith in that relationship. Ron
knew Ginny had felt like an outsider more often than not, and the last thing she needed to feel like in a relationship,
in a marriage, even, was an outsider.
But going from an outsider to a complete outcast-well, he wanted to prevent it if he could.
"There's no need to be worried." They'd be not only worried but livid if they'd had any inkling of what had happened with Draco, and their ignorance was one of the only things relieving Ginny. "Truly, Ron, there's not. I'm moving on with my life."
"With Malfoy."
It wasn't a question, but a flat statement, and Ginny couldn't lie to him. But neither could she tell him the whole truth. "He was just… someone I ran into, Ron. Hogwarts has been a lifetime ago. I feel I can be social, if for nothing else, then for the sake of St. Mungo's."
"Harry thinks you left him for Malfoy." Ron hated saying it; the words being forced out made him feel sicker than if he'd just left them in. "I know you didn't-"
Ginny felt her cheeks heat, and she knew she'd made that particular bed on her own. She'd done it intentionally, every step of it. "Thanks for your confidence," she said, and though she'd meant it to sound spiteful, it only sounded pathetic.
"But Ginny, no one knows why you did leave. You can't blame 'em for jumping to conclusions."
"No, I can't. I can blame them for deciding what would be right and wrong for my life. I can blame them for being judgmental based on things long past. Are we all not different people now?" For some idiotic reason, she felt like sticking up for Draco. After all, she was starting to see what it was like to be on the other side of the Terrific Trio.
It wasn't pretty, and it felt, quite frankly, like shite.
But she'd always been apart from them, hadn't she?
"We're all different people," Ron agreed. "You most especially." At her shocked glance, he covered her hand with his. "All he wants to know is why you aren't with him."
Exasperated, looking for some way, any way, to make him understand her, she grabbed his hand and pressed it flat between her palms. "Ron, listen to me. Try to put yourself in my shoes." When he merely stared at her, she sighed. "All right. Why aren't you with Hermione?"
He spoke before he thought, not even pausing. It was an easy answer, on the surface, though probably not the best one for the situation. "Because she's in love with Harry." When he realized what he'd said, his face turned the same color as his hair. "Oh, hell. Shouldn't have said that."
Despite the sudden queasy wave that pitched through her stomach, Ginny smiled faintly at her brother's unintentional echo of a certain half-giant.
"Well, not the answer I was looking for," she said. She knew the answer she'd been looking for-she'd wanted him to talk about Hermione, about her attitude, about her perfection.
It all related. She could make a point like that.
But she hadn't expected him to say that. But it should have been obvious. After all Ginny thought, she'd never been one of the trio.
And Draco had told her just Thursday that her family had been eating… with Hermione and Harry.
The trio together again.
Ron was busy trying to think of every applicable insult to apply to himself for saying that. It wasn't really his business, to be telling Gin things like that. But she had split with Harry. He hadn't expected her to look so… torn over it. "It's nothing," he said.
He was a poor liar.
"You're right," she said back to him, distracting herself by plopping sugar into her tea. "It's nothing."
She was a much better liar than he was.