Sick

**Author’s Note: This originally started out as a songfic, and was posted as one in its beginning stages. If it looks familiar, you may have seen it before. This is Sick’s first run here at Portkey, however. The song this was inspired by was Matchbox20’s “Disease.” Now… go read. Enjoy!**

CHAPTER ONE - Dancing

“I feel obligated to point out how ridiculous this is.” The room was packed from side to side with people in all states of dress and condition, ranging from stone cold sober to just plain stoned.

In Draco’s opinion, they didn’t know a damned thing about how to have a good time, and they wouldn’t know class if it bit them in the arse.

His “date” was no exception.

“And I feel just as obligated to point out it’s your party.” Pansy Parkinson sipped a concoction that was an unlikely shade of pink and raised her eyebrow. “What’s the matter, darling, don’t like mixing with the ministry?” She snickered and shook her dark, sleek bob of hair back from her face.

He didn’t even look down at her, because he knew those blue eyes would be widened in a sickening pretense of guilelessness. She was so very predictable. “I’m not like you, Pansy, I don’t like ‘mixing’ with anything on two legs.” But the truth of the matter was, Draco didn’t like having to kiss the Ministry’s arse at the direction of his board.

He didn’t like having his hands tied by his father’s reputation. Being an heir was supposed to be about wealth, not ill will.

His insult, veiled or no, didn’t bother Pansy in the least. They each were the closest thing the other had to family, and she’d have been mightily worried if he’d not been snarking about something. Besides, he’d spoken no more than the truth.

“At least the music’s good, love.” She tucked her arm through Draco’s as the music slid higher in volume, the heated guitar licks making people unconsciously move before the rest of the line kicked in.

“It’s too fucking loud,” he groused, though his words were swallows up in the drums and the bass and the anticipatory rhythm leading in for the singer. A split second before the wizard’s voice flooded the room, however, there was something else—a set of murmurs, shocked whispers, gasps, clucking tongues.

It was a combination Draco had heard only once before—a year before, the first time he’d entered a room as the only remnant of a powerful pureblood family, the twenty-year-old sole legacy of a much hated empire of sorts.

The murmurs made him uncomfortable, and in his discomfort, he quickly sought out the source of the sound.

“Oh, yum,” Pansy drawled, licking the rim of her glass none too subtly.

“Oh, fuck,” Draco breathed.

~~~

She’d always wondered what it would be like to make this sort of entrance. The song was perfect, spicy, hot, sinuous. A week ago, she’d have seen the announcement for the Malfoy/Ministry mixer and deemed it ridiculous.

Now, however, it suited her and her purpose just fine.

She took a bright red drink off the tray of a Malfoy intern who was not passing—he’d merely stopped and stared at her, mouth agape.

And as she pursed painted red lips to the rim of her glass and tilted the whole thing back, Ginny Weasley winked.

~~~

“What is that doing here?” Draco’s voice was stiff as he watched her set down the empty glass and start to move in time with the music, the sin-red dress she wore clinging to her curves, hardly covering her breasts and back, stopping in asymmetrical jags well above her knees.

If Draco Malfoy had had a real nemesis and not just the fame-ridden sham of Harry Potter, it had been this woman.

Her hair, he thought nastily, clashed with her dress.

“She does work for the Ministry,” Pansy noted, rubbing her leg against Draco’s to give herself some sort of contact. “Though she has to be Potterless or she wouldn’t be here.”

The obviously randy tone in Pansy’s voice, the purr, made Draco smirk. “Pansy, my dear, did you break up the betrothed prince and princess?” He couldn’t take his eyes off her—she most assuredly had to be without—permanently without— her high-profile fiancé, he thought, watching the way she cozied into some Ministry hack’s arms, rubbing her back against his chest.

Pansy tilted her head consideringly and put her lips to the host’s ear. “Nonsense, love. I wouldn’t know been able to choose which of them to seduce.”

~~~
It was good, Ginny thought, throwing her head back and laughing as one of Malfoy’s employees—recognizable by his green silk tie and handkerchief—pulled her away from poor Thaddeus Fletcher.

But not good enough.

“Be a love, would you?” she spoke into the Malfoy representative’s ear, moving her lips just close enough to leave wicked little lipstick marks on his earlobe. “Take me to thank the host.”

~~~

“The closer she gets, the better she looks,” Pansy noted, and it wasn’t just envy in her voice.

No, Draco thought, she’d lust after anything that triggered her animal instincts, and for some reason, her lack of discernment was bothering him this evening. That could simply be because he couldn’t disagree with her. The youngest Weasley looked positively evil, and it suited her. The red dress was a poor choice, a scandalous choice, and she was currently about to send one of his employees running to the loo with an embarrassing condition.

Interesting, he thought. He’d even go so far as to say intriguing.

She already had her hand out as she approached him, fingers limp, nails painted the same red as her dress. “Wonderful party,” she said, her voice too husky to carry well over the music.

She was bloody obscene, he thought, taking her hand and pressing sneering lips to it. If her mother had been anything like her, it was no wonder there were so damned many of them.

“I’m not surprised you like it,” he said back, holding onto her hand simply to see if she would pull back.

She didn’t.

He’d changed, she was thinking. Not a great deal, just enough to make a difference. The thuggish, mindless insulting was gone, replaced by a sly look in his eye that made you think he knew more about you than he really did, the robes were gone, replaced by a simple pair of slacks and a dove-gray shirt.

Arrogant of him, she thought, to dress so casually when every one of his employees was dressed in suits.

Even if it did suit him. That had never been his problem, she reckoned, mentally calculating the seconds passing as he held onto her fingers.

A few more seconds would make just the right impression. She ticked off exactly two and then pulled her hand back slightly.

“Pansy, isn’t it?” she asked, turning to the other Slytherin graduate and smiling.

“Fabulous dress,” Pansy said without answering her, using the garment as an excuse to look Ginny completely up and down.

Weasley or no, the girl had put some curves on her skinny body, and her legs made Pansy nothing short of jealous.

Well, a little licentious, perhaps, but still jealous.

Ginny smiled and shook her hair back from her face, breathing deeply and feeling the dress cut into the tops of her breasts dangerously. It hadn’t been that low-cut to begin with… but then again, it hadn’t been that color to begin with, either.

“Thanks,” she said, her grin crooked and impish. “It was going to be my wedding dress.”

That managed to shock even Pansy, but Draco kept his expression still.

“Potter’s head finally get too large for the two of you to share a flat?” he asked, signaling one of his interns to bring him a drink.

Talking about Perfect Potter always made him feel like getting a little tilted.

Ginny laughed, surprising him into jerking his drink just a little. “I decided I didn’t want him,” she said sharply, and something in her tone made the hair rise on the back of Draco’s neck. She took another one of the clear crimson drinks from a tray and looked at him over it.

“I’m sure he’s broken-hearted,” Pansy said, eyes glinting greedily. It was good gossip, and the more singles floating around, the better for her.

“I’m sure he is,” Ginny agreed, fighting the urge to roll her shoulders. This was harder than she thought it would be, picking up a life without Harry. But the reaction she was getting was just too perfect.

This was the right place to start, and she wouldn’t turn back.

As she struggled with what to do next, secretly very out of her element, Draco watched her, her still face belying none of the turmoil beneath, and he started to think ahead, as he always did. Careful planners made for good businessmen, and Draco’s mind was already on the future.

Not Harry Potter’s castoff in front of him, but Harry Potter’s rejecter.

So he spoke.

“Care to dance?”

CHAPTER TWO – Drawing Attention

The smirk she leveled at him made him uncomfortable; he was acutely aware she’d been on the receiving end of a few of those smirks from him… too acutely aware.

“I’m obviously not finished with my drink,” she said offhandedly, and Pansy bit the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing at the expression on Draco’s face—anyone who knew him less wouldn’t have seen the exasperation, the disbelief, the confusion.

Poor baby hardly ever got turned down, Pansy thought. “I’d dance with you, Draco,” she said loudly, sliding her eyes sidelong to Ginny. “But you never touch me how I like to be touched.”

Ginny almost spit her drink back into her glass, exceedingly relieved when she managed to keep the fruity liquid in her mouth.

“Shame on you, Malfoy,” Ginny said when she was sure she wouldn’t choke on her words, her laughter, and her drink.

Annoyed—and wondering more than a bit if the smallest Weasley was going to continue to allow Pansy to peddle her wares in front of her—Draco took Ginny by the arm and out to the floor.

Pansy let her laughter bubble out, not caring whether they heard her or not. He was so obvious, so obviously turned on not by Ginny Weasley, but by her actions, by her casual shunting of all Draco had ever envied.

Revenge might be a dish best served cold, Pansy thought, but she wondered if anyone had told Draco this particular vengeance had already gone stale.

He was touching that woman for all the wrong reasons, and Pansy sighed in disappointment. It didn’t matter how many times she tried to teach him, he never learned.

“Ah-ah-ah, where do you think you’re going?” Pansy asked, literally grabbing the Malfoy rep by the collar. Poor git had lipstick all over his ear. Pansy figured, all things considered, she could even things out for him a little.

“Grabby, aren’t we?” Ginny kept her voice level and the hand holding her drink outstretched, away from both of them. She had a feeling she was going to need every drop of what was left in the glass if she was going to survive the rest of the evening.

Draco put one hand to the bare small of her back and rested the other on her hip, using the pose as an excuse to get within talking distance. As she placed one hand to his chest and kept the other wrapped firmly around her drink, he spoke in her ear. “What are you really doing here, Ginevra? Feeling your oats now that He Who Lived is out of the picture?”

He expected something—a shudder, a shake, a glare, a curse—but instead she tilted her head back to look at him with dry, assessing eyes.

Her entire body had broken into gooseflesh when he’d said her name like that, whispering and insinuating and devious, but she wasn’t about to let on. “I don’t suppose that’s too far from the truth,” she said, wondering if the itch at her back meant people were staring.

Let them stare. She welcomed it.

“Besides,” she added, curving her arm to take another sip, leaving her eyes on him, “No one else from the Ministry Medical Office was coming, and I was wondering what had become of you. No lasting scars from any of my curses, I see.” She smiled then, catlike and cunning. “Pity.”

“Are you sure you’re not just here trying to make Potter jealous?” He watched her eyes to see if the barb hit home and saw that it didn’t. She rolled her eyes and stepped closer to him.

“Perhaps you’re as poor a listener now as you were back at school, Malfoy. I called things off. It would hardly make sense for me to want to make him jealous.”

And that was most of the truth, she thought. But it worried her to know Malfoy smelled a rat, as it were, that he had figured out her intentions were not completely innocent.

Just this night, she thought. Just this one night, even if it meant listening to the blond-haired brat try to pump her for information on Harry with little finesse. She was a Weasley and had never been any more than trash to this man and his ilk, and she doubted a fancy dress and a new set of knockers did a hell of a lot to change his mind on that.

No, his eyes had gone from warning to welcome when he’d heard she’d dumped Harry. She wasn’t fool enough to believe otherwise.

But it didn’t change things a bit, didn’t change the way his long fingers were mindlessly kneading her hip, the way his eyes were focused on hers.

She’d have been a fool if she thought his attention was genuine, but she’d have been dead if she hadn’t found him attractive.

“Manners, manners, Miss Weasley. You’re a grownup now, a representative of the Ministry, after all, it will hardly do for you to insult me.” He grinned against her ear and looked down, down the pale expanse of her bare back, and raised his eyebrow. “Something tells me Potter’s going to be jealous, anyway.”

Because he couldn’t see her, Ginny allowed her eyes to slip shut, just for a moment, for the façade to falter. Only a moment, only a matter of seconds, and then she stepped back, raising her glass in a jaunty, irreverent salute. “Well, how unfortunate for him, eh? Shall we drink to Potter’s jealousy?”

What had changed? Draco felt her stiffen in his arms just a second before she pulled away from him, some change in her demeanor.

Suspicious, suspicious, and all the better for him to reap the rewards.

“The song isn’t over,” he noted, curling his fingers easily around the wrist holding the drink and holding her still. She wouldn’t make this easy for him, of course, wouldn’t make it easy for him to get the only thing Potter had been unable to obtain and keep.

Potter had failed to find the Snitch, and Draco was more than prepared to end the game with the points.

“Malfoy, you’re so obvious,” Ginny said, forcing the laughter into her voice and wondering if perhaps she’d gone a little too quickly, stricken a little too deeply on this first foray. “Still a Slytherin to the very core, aren’t you?”

They were attracting an audience, the only two people on the floor standing still, moon-white and flame-bright, bitter enemies now face to face. Hungry for scandal, the onlookers drank in all the details—Draco’s bemused expression, the way his thumb was caressing the underside of her wrist, the tiniest tremble of the drink in her hand, the prurient dress.

Though Rita Skeeter was long since gone to America with a gaggle of others who’d been too afraid to commit to a side in the war, her spirit was alive and well. Gossip survived all situations.

“People are staring,” he noted pleasantly, but far enough under his breath that only she could hear. Now and only now he let his eyes travel down, dip into her décolletage hungrily, then back to her eyes. “Not that they can be blamed.”

The song came to its final strains even as he stood eating her alive with that glance, that silver stare no different than if he’d been looking at an object.

Her smile now hard and glittering rather than warm and inviting, Ginny tightened her fingers on the glass and let it tilt, its contents spilling out of the glass and onto Draco’s shirt.

Escape was all she could think of, survival. Escape had been too much of a driving force in Ginny Weasley’s life to ignore. She’d escaped Tom Riddle—only by the grace of Harry—she’d escaped the mediocrity of her family with a knack for healing and a position at the Ministry. She’d escaped loneliness by the grace of Harry, as well.

And most recently, she’d escaped Harry and everything he meant.

And this party, this fete? Her dress, her attitude, her looks?

Well, Ginny supposed she was escaping herself.

Draco jerked back, but not nearly quickly enough; his reflexes had been dampened by that look in her eyes, that desperate, faraway look, trying to calculate what it meant for him and for his plans.

A splash of red soaked quickly into his shirt, drawing forth a gasp from the gathered crowd and a muttered curse from him. He looked up, saw all of them staring, and waved his arm irritably. “What in the bloody hell are all of you staring at?” he asked. “Is this so incredibly boring that you’ve taken a vested interest in my laundry?”

He’d released her wrist as soon as he’d seen her intent; now, he snatched the drink away from her and thrust it at a young waitwitch passing with a tray. “Take that,” he directed at the witch just before reclaiming Ginny’s wrist. “Old times’ sake?” he asked with false sweetness, taking her chin in his hand and tilting her head back. “Didn’t have enough of playing foolish tricks at Hogwarts?”

And oh, that stung him to think of her then, to think of how she’d bested him more than once, the scrawny little gadabout she’d been completely different from this sleek, poised woman.

A good means for revenge she might be, but she’d certainly caused him plenty of misery herself once upon a time. It was easy, all too easy to remember her brand of superiority, morality.

As though he’d been any more able to change his birthright than she’d been to alter hers.

“It was an accident,” Ginny said stiffly. “If you’re feeling particularly handy, Draco, soda water does wonders. If you’re not, I’d certainly think you were still capable of a scourgifyng spell.” She hadn’t counted on him grabbing her again before she could dart away, and she wished for anyone—hell, even Pansy Parkinson—to interrupt this little tête-à-tête. Determined, she used her free hand to finger the material of his shirt, purring slightly under her breath. “You know, it’s not nearly as hard to get out of that material as, say, lipstick.”

“I have more shirts,” he said, letting his temper bump back down in time with his pulse. Who was playing the game here, him or her?

He was certain she thought she was, and he was certain he knew he was.

“Shame,” she said. “I was rather hoping you’d take that one off.” The tone was loud, and those who had turned away guiltily at Draco’s earlier outburst heard her with startling clarity.

The Weasley girl had really changed, and when had that happened?

The timing couldn’t have been more perfect; the moment couldn’t have been more opportune. A flashbulb went off, the crowd tittered madly, and an overeager young photographer waved his camera madly, babbling about how perfect of a picture it was, the unification of Malfoy, Ltd. and the Ministry of Magic.

“It looks as though you’ve had a little accident there, Mr. Malfoy,” the young wizard said, his big ears turning red with the excitement of his first big event.

Ginny wanted to twist his ears until he yowled, the little brat, but at least he’d gotten Draco to release her.

“It’s no matter at all,” Draco said easily, putting his hand lightly to Ginny’s back to play to the camera and to seal in what he was about to say. “Miss Weasley has so kindly invited me for dinner one evening this week to make it up to me.”

CHAPTER THREE - Escape

The nature of scandal-lovers was, at least in this situation, beneficial to Ginny’s escape. After Malfoy had so outrageously lied to the press and the public, the guests had swallowed them up, separated them by sheer force of their questions and nattering and bothering, and Ginny was finally able to duck out the doors, a room-span away from Draco Malfoy.

Once she was outside, she ducked to the side of the tremendous office building, laid her back against the cool black marble, and took a deep breath.

What the hell had just happened?

It would have taken someone a great dealer smarter and savvier than her to really sort it all out, but Ginny Weasley was fairly sure several things had just happened.

She’d made her debut without Harry Potter, and had more than sufficiently let the world know they were apart.

She’d been flirted with by Pansy Parkinson.

She’d managed to get Draco Malfoy’s attention.

It wasn’t that she hadn’t wanted to, exactly—she’d been intentional from the moment she’d walked in the door—but there was something the matter, something not quite wise about trying to use a user.

She may not have been Hermione, but she could at least see what was thrust right in front of her nose. Draco Malfoy hadn’t a genuine bone in his body, and his hatred of Harry had spanned a great deal of time. Long enough, it seemed, to still want everything Harry had. Or better yet, to prove he could get what Harry didn’t have.

Well, Ginny thought, looking left and then right before preparing to Apparate. She’d let him think he could get whatever he wanted.

She’d play the fool for him just long enough to turn the tables and seal her own deal, of sorts.

~~~

His mood could not have been fouler.

The bloody press and the bloody public, plebes all of them, had mobbed him. People had had the gall to touch him. As though being seen with a Weasley made him approachable. Pah. He felt filthy. And what was more, the little bint had actually managed to escape without him noticing.

Draco Malfoy didn’t like things happening without his approval, or at the very least, his attention.

But he fully intended not to let that slip by him. Oh, no, there was plenty of follow-up to be done with Miss Weasley, he thought as he turned the knob of his offices, kicking open the door. He had already shed his tie, tossing it on his desk as he headed for the massive private bathroom that occupied one corner of the penthouse suite, and was working on kicking his shoes off when he stilled.

He sensed her. He smelled her before he heard her, and he heard her before he saw her.

“Parkinson,” he said, leaning down and switching on his lamp. “How many fucking times do I have to tell you my office is not your hotel, not your bloody apartment, not your home away from home, and not…” he trailed off, looking at the state of her clothes, the other tie still left on the floor, and the way she was sprawled lazily on the black leather couch against the wall. “Your boudoir. Perhaps I should have put that one at the top of the list, eh?”

Pansy stretched, pointing her toes at one arm of the couch while scratching her chartreuse-lacquered fingernails against the other arm. “It wouldn’t have mattered,” she said, not bothering to move as he wrapped his fingers around her ankles, lifted them, and sat with her legs across his lap. “I wish I’d gotten his name, though, he really deserves a promotion.” At his glare, all Pansy could do was laugh, full-breathed and unapologetic. When the laughter—but not his chastising look—had died down, Pansy bit the inside of her cheek and continued to talk, knowing he wouldn’t unless goaded. “Why aren’t you with Miss Weasley? You know, I would have vacated the couch if you’d wanted it.”

Draco made a chuffing noise anyone else would have taken for disgust.

Pansy decided it was much more fun to see it as avoidance.

“Or you could have gone back to her place.”

Draco stood, dumping her feet rudely to the floor. Leaving her skirt hiked up much higher than was decent, Pansy crossed her legs and watched him pace the floor. “You know,” he said, brushing one hand over his hair, “You think about sex more than any man I know.”

“Thank you,” Pansy answered sincerely.

“It wasn’t a compliment.”

And all she gave him in return was that damnable, predatory grin. It would be so much easier to be worried about her, to feel protective of her, if she didn’t look as though she’d chew up anyone she wanted to.

“I know what you’re doing,” Pansy said, though he hadn’t asked and certainly hadn’t encouraged the topic. “Don’t you think it’s a bit late for these childhood squabbles, love? You have to have the toy Potter just… couldn’t… get?”

It boiled his blood to hear her say it out loud, to ridicule it like that.

“It’s not that,” he lied. “Or not just that. Damn it, Pansy, where’s the Slytherin in you?”

She stood then, crossed to him, put her hands to his shoulders.
For a moment, he thought she’d say something serious.

Then she ruined it.

“Oddly enough, the only Slytherin I had in me was Marcus. Good man, Flint. Poor lover.”

He pushed her away, trying not to crack a smile. But this time, she stepped back to him, assumed the same pose, and he knew she would be serious this time.

“The only reason I was ever a Slytherin is because I would do whatever it took to please me. Clearly I’ve mastered that. We’ve graduated, Draco, some years ago. We’re done with those days, and it’s not about a house anymore, or about school. It’s not even about who had the bigger broom.” She raised an eyebrow, unable to resist. “You’re a grown man, act like one.” She kissed his cheek, then pinched it as she leaned back. “Don’t pout, baby. You and Harry are equally pretty.”

She was nearly out his door before she turned and added, “But that Weasley? Honey, she’s much prettier than both of you combined.”

Her headache was excruciating.

If it had been a hangover, she could have blamed herself and had done with it. But she’d only had the two drinks the night before, so that wasn’t it.

No, the Sunday-morning headache came from two things. Stress… and family.

“I realize,” Molly’s head was saying carefully from the fireplace, “That Draco Malfoy is now a contributing member of wizard society, and the rules of polite society indicate you have to get along with him because of your position, but darling, dinner?”

It wasn’t about what she was saying, really… that came as no surprise to Ginny. It was about what was between the words, that underlying disappointment that seemed to lie in the ashes just beyond her mother’s talking head, that seemed to shine from Molly’s eyes with every other word.

Why aren’t you with Harry anymore, dear? Why won’t you tell us what happened?

Why won’t you let us decide your life for you?

“It was an accident, Mum,” Ginny said wearily for was seemed like the thousandth time. “Just an accident. I couldn’t say to the press ‘Oh, I’m a clumsy git and don’t mind that I just spilled something all over the wizarding world’s richest man.’”

“But you could indicate to the press that you and Harry were apart?”

Ahh, and there it was, that nearly shrill tone. Molly was almost to the point of saying exactly what she meant, but Ginny knew she wouldn’t.

No, not on this topic. Not with the baby of the family, and not about Harry. Harry, the celebrity, Harry, the surrogate son, Harry, who was currently brokenhearted about what had happened with Ginny.

Harry, who didn’t belong with her, Ginny thought. Well, she had her reasons. And she’d be thrice hexed if she shared them with anyone else. She didn’t want to share them.

“Can you just… be with me on this?” she finally asked her mother, afraid of what the answer would be. She was afraid they’d pick Harry over her, if they had to choose.

She was afraid her mother would say no.

But Molly said nothing, nodding instead to indicate her acquiescence of sorts. She said her goodbyes, popped out of the fire, but she looked back in just a bit later to watch her daughter napping on the couch in her flat, and to wonder what was going on in that pretty red head.

Perhaps all she needed was time.

CHAPTER FOUR – Dealing With the Aftermath

She was right.

He hated her for that—had to hate her for something, really, because Pansy wasn’t exactly a likeable young woman—for being right about Weasley and Potter and the whole sordid mess. It was far too easy to see her point in the light of day, in the immense quiet of the deserted office building. He had no use for Sunday, no use for the day of rest spent at an empty home. His mother wouldn’t be there, and he couldn’t blame her. She had plenty of lost time to make up for. He wouldn’t begrudge her that. But nor would he sit in an empty house, playing lord of the manor while there was work to be done.

So he worked.

It had been easy, far too easy, to buy up property with the wealth his father had left, channeling dirty money into clean expenditures and turning a clean, if somewhat ruthless, profit from his ventures. It had been much easier than, for instance, making a living playing professional Quidditch. Not that he really wanted to play a game for a living, like that idiot Potter.

But just… for example.

Draco pushed aside the contract he’d been reading and used his wand to float the next stack of parchment from his ‘in’ tray. Predictably, the topmost envelope on the pile had a garish magenta kissmark on the front, as all the legal documents that crossed his desk did.

Fucking Parkinson. He didn’t know why he’d ever given her a job.

He couldn’t decide whether to ignore the advice, such as it was, she’d given him about the Weasel and Scarhead and do as he pleased, or take her advice quietly so she couldn’t prove she’d been right.

And of course she’d been right. He could taste what he’d wanted for too long—the kind of rightness he’d wanted since the lines had been drawn starkly and clearly between good and bad, between right and wrong, between bloody Gryffindor and Slytherin.

Since it had become all too obvious who the golden boy would be, and who would become the black sheep.

And then there was her, the princess, the golden boy’s paramour, and she fascinated Draco. Why had she left? What business had she had when she’d approached him at his reception?

This one blurred the lines. The beloved redhead had never been all good and never been all bad. She had somehow avoided the broad brushes wielded in the days of war and came out triumphant.

And sexy. Yes, somehow she’d emerged from the whole thing looking far above her station and far above her means.

“Tricksome witch,” he muttered, flipping over Pansy’s envelope to obscure the ridiculous lipstick stains.

He would forget it. The last thing he wanted was to look as though he were basking in Potter’s leftovers.

He would just… let it go.

He found he couldn’t concentrate for a damn on the rest of his work.

~~~

They could titter all they wanted, sneak glances all they wanted, but they didn’t know. They had no way of knowing what she was thinking or feeling. Had they ever cared to know?

Probably not, Ginny reckoned, slinging the leather tote the twins had gotten her over the back of her chair. Though she couldn’t see it, she knew well what was inside—the latest edition of the Daily Prophet, complete with a reprint of the Sunday Prophet picture of her with Draco, and the added bonus of a picture of a very forlorn Harry after his Quidditch match Saturday.

She was the villain.

To all but a few of the ministry people, however, at her best moments she’d been only the daughter of Arthur, the sister of Percy. At her worst moments, she’d merely been a set of Healing credentials with good office skills.

She’d never really been someone, but she certainly was now.

“You looked smashing at the party, darling,” a matronly witch called from the hallway, her tone suggesting she was going to amend that compliment to the first person who would listen.

Ginny sighed and fingered the flap of the bag, both wanting and not wanting to read what was inside. Torn, she barely registered the squeak of the floorboard before the voice followed it.

“You could silence that, you know. I’d give it a go, but I’m as bad as I ever was with that sort of thing.” Ron spread his hands in a gesture of helplessness and grinned at his baby sister, his hair unruly and falling over his eyes.

He’d missed her.

He hadn’t seen her for two weeks, and though that wouldn’t have ordinarily been a long time, he was worried about her.

Two weeks ago, she’d packed up the things that had inevitably accumulated at Harry’s flat and moved back to her own place without so much as a word of warning or explanation to Harry or any of her family.

And Ron felt trapped between them.

“Ron!” She nearly tripped over her robes trying to get to him, and being embraced by him felt right. She’d missed him horribly, wanted to talk to him innumerable times, but found she couldn’t do it.

She wouldn’t do it.

Harry needed Ron, and she wasn’t going to take that away from him.

“You look good,” he said, and it puzzled him, because she really did look good. He’d expected… well, he didn’t know. Something wrong, visibly and obviously wrong. Ginny didn’t do things like this. She didn’t leave Harry, and she didn’t enjoy flirtations with Draco Malfoy.

But she had, and he was just going to have to come to grips with that.

“I’m on my way to the shop,” he said, referring to the Quidditch supply shop he’d opened with money lent from the twins. “I thought I’d—”

“Sneak by?” she asked wryly, her lips quirking. “It’s okay. I know…” I seem crazy? I know I’ve disappointed all of you? I know I’m just going to have to do this on my own? “This is hard for everyone,” she finished, shaking her head as though to warn away tears. “Go, Ron. You don’t want to be late.” She kissed his cheek, lingered there for a moment, feeling the familiar warmth, smelling the soap he’d used since… forever. “You take care of him,” she said, straightening and stepping back to herself.

Ron started to say something, feeling his own throat tighten a little. Things were just… so skewed. “Ginny—”

“I can take care of myself,” she said firmly, and wondered if she was convincing him any more than she was convincing herself.

~~~

Pansy walked into his office without knocking and left the door open, an action she considered her second-favorite pastime. Few things rivaled the sheer enjoyment she got from seeing Draco Malfoy’s faultless face mottle red with annoyance.

She had yet to catch him doing anything truly untoward, though today was a close call.

“Love, you missed an entire page.” She stood in front of his desk and took her sweet time leaning over to pluck the offending piece of newsprint from his lap. He’d shoved the rest of the paper untidily into the center drawer of his desk, where photographed wizards squawked in outrage as the corners of their pages poked out of the drawer. “You weren’t reading that drivel on the front, were you? What was the headline?” She pretended to think about it though she knew they both could state it by rote. “‘Quidditch Player’s Woman Woes’?”

He bared his teeth at her and snatched the last piece of the newspaper from her hands. “Is there anything else you had, Barrister?”

“I have plenty more, darling,” she purred, leaping back at the threat in his eyes. He wouldn’t hit her, but she didn’t trust him not to hex her just a little. “You need to sign this with a witness at the Ministry. We don’t have a Ministry person in our pocket… yet.”

“Pity,” he snarled, truly embarrassed that she’d caught him poring over that damnable newspaper. It was just press, he told himself. His people would manage things, it would all be swept behind him. “Well, never to worry,” he said, forcing himself to recover. “If I haven’t a Ministry person in my pocket, surely you’ve one in your pants?”

Pansy raised an eyebrow and dropped her eyes to her thighs, on which her pinstriped skirt stopped at an alarming height. “Well, not at the moment,” she said indulgently. “Check back later.”

She shoved the parchment across his desk with one finger—today tipped in a bizarre shade of metallic red—and made a shooing motion with her hand. “Go on, boss, be a good boy. Get over to the Ministry.” She turned and started to walk out, not bothering to add a little swing to her step—he didn’t appreciate it, anyway. “If you hurry, maybe you can catch her reading her copy, too.”

She considered it a very lucky thing hexes didn’t go through doors.

CHAPTER FIVE - Vulnerability

“Could someone find me the facts on the new wing again? Please?” Ginny didn’t really know who she was calling out to; after all, she was more or less shouting into a giant filing cabinet which seemed to have eaten her entire file on the upcoming expansion of St. Mungo’s.

At the moment, the only fact she could remember was who had funded the new wing.

Bloody convenient.

Any plea she made for help had to have looked ridiculous, she knew, with her rear end waving out of the filing cabinet and the entire upper half of her body obscured. But she’d been looking for damned near a half an hour, and she was sick of looking. She was the head of her department, damn it, she could just call up a file and have someone find her some information other than the wing being a product of Draco Malfoy’s money and Draco Malfoy’s guilt.

Immediately after she thought it, Ginny felt guilty and dove back in to look one more time. A bit of self-regulation, penitent activity.

The truth of the matter was, she was being petty and she knew it.

He’d always managed to bring out the worst in her, and a few years’ time seemed to have made no difference at all.

But then again, that’s what she’d been hoping for—nay, counting on.

She’d read the article in the Daily Prophet a few times, never certain where to look. The words didn’t captivate her; the pictures did. Draco with his stained sleeve, alternately scowling and acting proprietary with her. She couldn’t even bear to look at herself. She looked ridiculous.

And Harry.

She looked at Harry the longest, perhaps, looking at the features she hadn’t forgotten.

And looking at them, it was her turn to feel guilty.

Looking inside the fathomless, dusty depths of the cabinet was preferable by a kilometer.

“Why can’t I ever find what I’m looking for?” Her moan was dejected, and not for the first time, Ginny wished the Ministry’s budget would stretch enough to allow an office where all of her department could be together. It would make communication ever so much easier.

“If it’s so urgent, my office can certainly owl you the information.” He’d been standing there far too long, Pansy’s idiotic words zinging through his head like a flock of Cornish pixies, brightly colored and obnoxious and vicious and impossible to ignore.

Not much different from Pansy herself, then.

Walking down the halls of the Ministry, he’d not known it was her office until he’d heard her call out for the file on the new wing, and by that time, he was in her doorway and had a fantastic shot of her rear end sticking out of the cabinet.

Her skirt was marginally longer than Pansy’s had been, but caught his attention with much more expedience.

A Weasley, he reminded himself. And Potter’s Weasley, no less.

And no matter how hard he tried, Draco couldn’t keep his brain from throwing in former. She was no longer Potter’s Weasley.

She was her own woman.

For the moment.

She stood upright the moment he spoke, and though he had rather hoped she would rap her head on the cabinet, she didn’t. Instead, she looked up at him with wide, shocked eyes hidden behind masses of unruly red hair.

Ginny shoved her hair out of her face with one hand and slammed the drawer of the filing cabinet with the other—directly onto her thumb.

“Damn it!” she yelled, yanking her hand out and glaring at the cabinet, which shut itself perfectly.

If a magical filing cabinet could look smug, Ginny would have sworn this one did.

“What?!” she shouted, cradling her throbbing thumb to her chest. She wished she had… a blanket, a hole in the floor, a train ticket to elsewhere. A hammer to hit him with. “Have you not caused enough trouble, Malfoy? My entire family thinks I’m brainwashed, must you make a public display of your asininity?”

“I heard someone shouting,” he said dryly, casting an eye down to her waste paper basket, where the newspaper was stuffed.

He could at least tell Pansy she’d been wrong about that.

“I thought perhaps the person shouting might need some help.” He came around her desk and looked down his nose at the piles there. “And clearly I was correct, though any help you need is quite beyond my means.”

Ginny performed a spell as discreetly as she could to ease the pain in her thumb, then slipped behind her desk. She wasn’t using it as a shield, she thought defensively. It was just more official. She was at work, after all, and people were already talking.

“I need no help,” she said levelly. “Though I thank you for your willingness to be of service.”

Wrong choice of words, she figured as his smile spread over his face.

He was uncomfortable. Really bloody uncomfortable. But he wasn’t about to show her that. No, this was all about keeping her off her balance while figuring out what her game was, exactly, and why she had left the immeasurable, unequalled Harry Potter.

He needed to know, and he couldn’t avoid her. She was Ministry and he was Malfoy. So he would mingle.

“Don’t be too grateful,” he said, planting one long-fingered hand on her desk and nudging her waste basket with his foot. “You still owe me dinner.”

Her eyes darted to the basket at his feet and back to his face, and he felt a flush work its way from his toes up. Something about her uncertainty, something about that hesitation, had his gears turning.

Something about Ginevra Weasley’s vulnerable side was awfully bloody appealing to Draco Malfoy.

And he didn’t like it one damned bit.

“I don’t leave deals or promises uncompleted,” Ginny said through her teeth, wondering why she hadn’t just burned the damned paper. “We can’t all be unscrupulous, you know.”

“You could have fooled me,” Draco said thoughtlessly, falling into banter as easily as he fell into work, as easily as he’d once mounted a broom. “You certainly didn’t look as though you were really discerning at the party this weekend.”

His voice was low, pleasant, and undoubtedly inaudible to anyone outside her office. She wanted to rail, to scream, and could have thrown up a silencing charm, but it would have been obvious.

When had she last given into the urge to be emotional?

Before she’d left Harry, that much was certain, and even those indulgences had been in the dark of night, in the hours just before dawn, sitting in the loo with her knees drawn to her chest and her mouth buried in the flannel of her nightgown to stifle her sobs from Harry, sleeping just on the other side of the door—

“You’ll have your dinner,” she said faintly, finding she was too breathless to scream at him now. “I’d thank you to leave now. I’ve work to do.”

He gaped. He couldn’t help it. It was as though someone had doused a candle in water, so drastic was the change. Hell, he’d nearly even heard the hiss as the flame went out. She’d looked ready to spit on him one moment, and then the next?

The next, it was as though he’d hit her.

This Weasley wasn’t nearly as much fun as the angry one. No, this Weasley only brought forth more questions, and more vulnerability. And vulnerability? Well, Draco didn’t like that he seemed to be vulnerable to hers.

He thought of something to say, decided she wasn’t listening to him, and walked out the door, leaving her staring fixedly at her hands clasped together on her desk.

Why had he even bothered?

Because he couldn’t help himself.

When he was finally gone, Ginny cast the silencing spell around her office, just for a moment, and let out a scream. It wasn’t anger, though, but something else entirely, a mix too complex to put a label to, and as soon as it was out of her, she pulled herself together and took the barrier off her office.

No one would ever know.

~~~
“Shut your fucking mouth. I don’t care what you were about to say, I don’t want to hear it.” She was standing outside his office like a vulture, and it was all Draco could do not to voice the fervent wish that every woman he knew would disappear, at least for a day.

It would be so peaceful.

“I was only preparing to ask your secretary for a parchment, love, you needn’t get so defensive.” Pansy kept her tone quiet, solicitous.

He looked shaken. Shaken Draco, in Pansy’s opinion, was a very good thing. It certainly beat emotionless Draco, which had prevailed for quite some time after Lucius’s death.

Emotionless Draco was a dead fucking bore, not to mention Pansy was fairly certain that wasn’t healthy.

“Octavia,” he called to his secretary without checking to see if she’d heard. “Owl a draft of everything you have on the St. Mungo’s project to the Ministry. Use a fast owl and send it to the Department of Magical Medicine.” He could feel Pansy’s eyes on his back, so he swung to face her, shocked to see she wasn’t smirking at him. “What does a woman want when she approaches you with intent in her eyes, pulls away with anger in her voice, then looks at you with fear written all over her?”

Pansy considered this for a moment, filed the observations away for her own perusal later. “Isn’t the more appropriate question what you want from a woman who would do those things?”

“Fuck!” he said, giving her a dirty look. “You’re absolutely worthless.” But he’d felt like a fool, like for a moment she’d known exactly what he was thinking, known exactly what he was planning, and had just… rolled over to it.

It wasn’t that, exactly, he knew, but he couldn’t put his finger on it.

It should have been easy to want two very simple things.

Sex was simple.

Revenge was simple.

Being who he was, certainly he could mix the two. But he had to figure her out, and for now, that wasn’t going very smoothly.

“Contact Ginevra Weasley’s flat, Octavia,” he said in a low voice, holding out one hand with his index finger extended to keep Pansy quiet. “Arrange dinner.”

CHAPTER SIX – Cleaning House

Two days. She had two days to prepare to have him over for dinner Thursday evening.

Hemlock suddenly seemed like a really wonderful choice for seasoning chicken.

Ginny didn’t know where to let her anxiety begin. What was worse, the simple fact he was coming to her home or knowing he had an army of house elves to cook for him on any other night? Was she nervous because she’d completely forgotten how to entertain, or nervous because she’d gotten herself in too deep?

Did she panic because her flat was too modest, or did she panic because she didn’t want him anywhere near her?

Or did she panic because she did, on some level, want him near her?

She thought the last thing was as good a place to start as any. Attraction couldn’t be helped on an elemental level, but it could be helped beyond that. Worrying about what he thought of her was a waste of time, a waste of energy, a waste of emotion.

Two days.

Well, she thought, changing out of her office attire and into more appropriate attire for cleaning, two evenings was more like it. She still had to work, after all.

She could have cleaned by magic and had things done much quicker, but she needed an excuse to think, needed the mindless menial labor that would allow her brain to click along and sort things out. But Ginny didn’t really think there was enough cleaning in the world to help her figure out what she was doing.

She should have just moved away, and she’d considered it more than once when she’d left Harry. But she couldn’t leave her parents, her brothers, her work. She couldn’t leave the only place she’d ever known.

She might have deserved to be alone, but she just couldn’t bring herself to make that cut.

She had scrubbed and mopped her way through the tiny kitchen of the flat before it was time to eat something, and because she’d cleaned, she took a sandwich standing over the sink, indulging herself in a glass of wine.

Bottle of wine, she made a mental note. She’d certainly have to get some of that for dinner, if only for form’s sake.

Or sanity’s sake. She wondered if dinner would be easier if she got completely pissed before the main course.

Sighing, she set the glass aside, restricting herself at one, and looked into the den. “This looks awful,” she said aloud, biting at her lower lip. The furniture was all haphazard, just in the position it had been upon move-in, when her brothers had dropped it wherever it would fit. She’d decided she liked the asymmetrical feel, but now it looked slovenly, ridiculous. Two crates of her things from Harry’s flat still sat just inside the doorway; she hadn’t quite gotten the nerve to go through them yet.

Dismayed, grabbed her wand and started moving furniture, accidentally tipping a shelf in the curio and nearly breaking everything on it, nearly demolishing a set of matching chairs, and completely upending two of the cushions on her sofa. “Dammit,” she muttered, growing more frantic by the second.

Why couldn’t she have been a better housekeeper, like her mum? Did she have to be so bloody busy, so absentminded, so sodding stupid about these things? How had Harry ever lived with her?

The thought wrenched at her and she squeezed her eyes shut, daring the tears to come. When they’d subsided, leaving her eyes hot and dry, she yanked one heavy wooden crate from the corner and started digging through it.

There were clothes there, things he’d given her, things she’d merely taken over there. A tatty robe he’d teased her about more than once. A photograph of the two of them, laughing and kissing at the Burrow. She tore that one in two, closing herself off from the reactions that took place inside the photograph. With a shaky sigh, she started pulling things out one after the other, hardly paying attention to what they were, only knowing what they meant, what they stood for. Within moments, she was surrounded by clothes and fragments of letters and photographs.

She pressed the back of one shaky hand to her forehead, her breath coming in pants and pained whispers.

The smack of the doorknocker tore her breath from her in a gasp, and though she knew it wouldn’t be Harry, for a moment that was all she could think of.

She’d made it more than perfectly clear he wasn’t to come after her, and he had done nothing but agree.

It was her mum, no doubt, or the twins come to cheer her up or dog her for the incident with Malfoy. Mustering as much breath as she could, she yelled in the direction of the front door. “Go away!”

Rude, yes. But succinct. She simply couldn’t deal with anyone right now.

A muffled voice on the side of the door, the slight trembling of the lock, told her exactly what was happening. “Dammit, not right now!” she said, gaining her feet and stumbling to the door. She’d sat wrong, and now her feet were asleep. She grabbed the lock to keep it from turning with the spell, putting as much force as she had into it. “Fred, George, I swear,” she started, and the lock slipped from her fingers. She had just enough presence of mind to step back before the door opened.

“That’s better,” Draco said, stepping in and shutting the door. He wasn’t oblivious to her condition—she was standing there looking at him as though she would either cry or scream or fall completely to pieces, and the room was an utter wreck. Though she was a Weasley, he had his doubts it looked like this all the time.

“Get out of my home,” Ginny ground out. “You were given your invitation and no other leave to be here. You can’t just break into places whenever you—”

She recoiled as he reached toward her and he raised an eyebrow. “A little unsettled, are we?” he asked, plucking a scrap of a photograph from her shoulder.

He’d come to tell her to forget dinner, or rather, to talk her into canceling. The papers would be much kinder to her than to him, he thought, although the press’s recent resurgence of Potter-worship certainly made things harder for both Draco and the little Weasley.

But now that she was standing here in front of him in, for Merlin’s sakes, a pair of torn-up denims far too large for her and a tee-shirt edging up on too small, her hair escaping its tie and falling down around her face, he was having a hard time insisting she do anything but change clothes.

And it was all back to the vulnerable. He saw the piles of clothes, some of them feminine and frilly, a few Quidditch jumpers with Harry’s name and number stitched to the back.

“Are we housecleaning or reminiscing?” he looked down at her and asked, his tone of voice suggesting either was equally distasteful.

Her midriff was showing. Bloody nuisance.

Ginny followed his cool quicksilver glance and crossed her arms over her stomach, feeling sick at heart and utterly beaten. “Housecleaning,” she bit out. “What in the hell do you want, Malfoy? Could you not go one day without making my day hellish? Have it out and have done with it, for I’ve no patience to spare for you.” And, she thought, she didn’t have enough strength to make it through this visit if it lasted much longer.

Standing in a room with Malfoy among the things that were hers and Harry’s made her feel absolutely crazy.

“I came to give you the chance to change your mind,” he said, but his tone was absent as he wandered around the room and made himself insanely at home, picking up clothes with two fingers and shifting them to look at her furniture, a few books on planning a traditional wizarding wedding, and the pictures. Draco saw Potter in a few of those pictures and wondered what, precisely, had brought on such a tantrum if she’d been the one to leave him.

Ginny smacked a string of pearls out of his hand, somehow satisfied at the ugly clattering noise they made when they hit the wall. “I’m not changing my mind,” she said, loving the rage he was banking in her, loving how it could burn everything else down and clean it up.

This was good.

“If you think for one moment you can make me back down by your presence alone, you’re wrong. And if you think poking through my things and making snide insinuations is going to make me be the bad guy and cancel, you’re wrong.” She pushed her hair out of her eyes and succeeded in making more strands fall from her haphazard bun. “Now get the hell out of my house,” she said, pointing at the front door. “And don’t come back until you’re bloody well invited.”

It was a good speech. Or she thought it was.

But he didn’t move toward the door.

He moved toward her instead, and this time when he reached for her, she didn’t flinch. He put his fingertips under her chin and forced her to look him in the eye. “What is it you think you’re doing, princess?” he asked, and when she started to step back, he stilled her with one hand on her bare waist. She was radiating heat, and he resisted the urge to slide his hand to her back, sink into that warmth. Merely a physical reaction, of course, but he wasn’t about to give into it.

“I asked you to get out of my home. In fact, I asked you not to come in at all.” She kept her voice steady but her eyes moved down and away, her eyelashes shielding her from his stare.

“You came to me first,” he said, ducking his head so his lips grazed her cheekbone and settled above her ear, his breath hot and suddenly short. “I’d ask you to keep that in mind.”

She smelled of her office, of paperwork and ink, but she smelled of some sort of lemon cleaner, and underneath it all, a perfume or a shampoo, something lingering under all of it.

And not for the first time, he wondered what Potter had done to screw things up with this one.

He let her go abruptly, stepping back and flexing his fingers to forget the feel of her. But the look of her—eyes half-closed, lips parted, just on the edge, the brink between anger and something else—would stay with him for quite some time.

“Expect me on Thursday,” he said. “And I don’t believe in being late.”

She didn’t let out the sob until the door had shut behind him.

CHAPTER SEVEN – Hell in a Black Dress

“Hey, Weasley, when’s the big date?” A piggish intern with no manners and even fewer brains clung to the edge of a doorway, swinging out just to ask her that one, asinine question.

“Tonight,” Ginny answered, slamming into the young man’s shoulder with her own as she passed, making him lose grip of the doorframe and fall stumbling into the opposite jamb. Arse.

She caught a glance, just a glance, of her father looking reproachful as he walked by, glasses ever-sliding to the tip of his nose, eyes ever-watery from staring at too many pages, too many contraptions, too many everything. The twins had joked more than once—and with some seriousness—that Arthur’s eyesight had started to falter when he’d watched his wife have a baby boy… and seen double.

She’d never been so bloody relieved to see her own office, confining or not.

Truth be known, she’d seen precious little of anything but her flat and her office for two straight days, cleaning and purging her life of reminders of Harry. No photographs remained, no articles of clothing. The only reminder she had was her own persistent memory, intermittent and painful and unrelenting.

Now she just had to make it through the evening, and she’d be home free.

~~~

“What are you wearing?”

She’d been standing in his office for several minutes, and he’d treated her silently, knowing she’d either leave or finally speak up. If there was anything Pansy couldn’t abide, it was silence. Or perhaps abstinence. Draco strongly suspected to Pansy, they were very similar. She was a woman who got off on the sound of her own voice, he thought, or else she wouldn’t talk so fucking much.

He put down his quill and rubbed his eyes, loathing the thought that he’d eventually need reading glasses. His sense of vanity was absolutely appalled at the notion. “Regardless of whether that question was leveled out of genuine curiosity or prurient interest, Pansy, I should think the answer quite self-evident.”

He was tempted to ask her what exactly she was wearing, as the skin-tight white ensemble was quite beyond his comprehensive abilities to label, but he decided he didn’t want to know the answer. He could practically see her—

“Not right now, you great git,” Pansy sighed theatrically, boosting herself onto the edge of his desk and swinging her feet like a spoiled child, knocking the chunky white heels of her shoes against the side of his very expensive desk. They might have been uncomfortable as hell, but Pansy found Muggle shoes positively darling.

Besides, they made her legs look bloody fantastic.

She turned her head so she could keep her eyes on him—he’d poked her in the rear with an ink-laden quill once when she’d sat on his desk, and Merlin knew she didn’t want black ink all over her new white suede mini—and pursed her lips. “What are you wearing tonight, you thick-headed goat?”

Draco looked up at her. “Are you going to help me choose something, Parkinson? Please do. I often feel there isn’t enough gaucherie in my wardrobe.” He contemplated commenting on the amount of his desk she was taking up, but the last time he’d done so, she’d actually taken offense and nearly cursed him bald.

It wasn’t as though he’d really meant to imply her arse was big.
“I hate you,” Pansy responded, checking her French-manicured nails.

“Do you really mean it?” Draco asked, sounding obscenely hopeful. When he didn’t get an answer, he went back to the list of people he needed to owl before the day was out, striking several of them merely out of spite. They didn’t get follow-up owls if they couldn’t owl him in the first place. He wasn’t their bloody nanny, after all.

“I won’t dress you unless I get to undress you,” Pansy said, spinning around so she faced Draco, one of her legs bumping his arm as she kicked her feet. “Now, what are you wearing this evening?”

The tip of his quill broke off when he pressed on it just a bit too hard. He’d really been trying not to think about the evening’s engagement until he absolutely had to. He’d also been trying not to think of the heat of her, of how beautifully a mess she’d looked when he’d burst into her home.

His own home had always been spotless, his own mother impeccable. There had been no playing in the gardens for the sole Malfoy heir, no dirtying the knees, no play clothes. That explained his preoccupation, he thought. It was simple novelty.

“It doesn’t matter if I showed up in my pajamas,” he snapped, “I’ll still be better dressed than the Weasel. So I believe, dear Pansy, I’ll just wear what I have on.”

Pansy slid forward to pat Draco on the cheek, fully aware her skirt was clinging to the desk and riding high on her thighs. “Draco, honey,” she said, stroking his cheek lightly and seeing exactly how tired, how mixed up the poor baby was.

Then she pinched his cheek hard enough to have him yelping. “You’re an insensitive bastard,” she said decisively, playfully slapping the sore spot she’d left with a stinging swat of her palm. “Don’t wear your work clothes.” She hopped off his desk, helped herself to one of the toffees he kept in a dish, and shrugged. “Unless, of course, you’re planning on taking them off directly after dinner.”

“I loathe you,” Draco said, his hand pressed to his throbbing cheek.

“Do you really mean it?” Pansy asked sweetly, popping the toffee into her mouth and knowing with a certain satisfaction it would probably settle straight in her arse. “Put a cooling spell on that cheek, love. Wouldn’t want it to bruise for your big night.”

She sauntered out, her hips rolling, and she tapped her fingers against the doorframe consideringly. “Don’t go empty-handed,” she added. “Sometimes a pretty face just isn’t enough for a girl, love.”

He’d have called her foul names, but she’d already cast a silencing spell around his office.

~~~

She refused to be nervous. She had taken off work simply because she had the hours coming, darn it, it had nothing to do with him or her nerves or her stomach or the fact that she didn’t really know if she could manage to fix an entire dinner in an hour and a half. Ginny Weasley certainly wasn’t stressed about her clothes, about what to wear.

She wasn’t throwing shoes all over her room. It was her fucking flat, for Merlin’s sake, she’d go bloody barefoot if she wanted. She paused in mid-toss, a shoe poised in one hand. Barefoot, indeed. She needed to be comfortable. She needed the upper hand.

She painted her toenails a deep, racy scarlet and figured it was good enough. He couldn’t expect her to be dressed to the nines when she had to fix His Highness’s bloody repast. She threw her hair into a sloppy bun, rather enjoying the irreverence of it, of dressing down. No doubt he’d show up in clothing so expensive it would put her whole wardrobe to shame, and she hoped he felt uncomfortable. Not that anything made that bastard uncomfortable.

Once she was dressed, it was nothing at all to lose herself in the cooking, in the familiar rhythms instilled in her by her mother, the soothing patterns she’d known since birth.

She’d cooked for Harry occasionally, when he’d taken the time to eat, when he’d had time to sit down with her rather than whisking her to some Quidditch reception or insisting they go to the Burrow instead. He’d always been on the go, that one, and sometimes she missed the bustle.

Ginny shuddered and pushed the thought away from her.

Tonight was about pushing it all away.

~~~
He’d been knocking the doorknocker for the better part of a minute, and was starting to wonder if it would really be untoward to let himself in. The only problem was, an arse-brained reporter from the Prophet was lurking behind him, snapping a picture of him on the doorway.

Draco contemplated tossing a bottle of wine at him, but refrained, imagining what glee Pansy would take over that.

Sadistic bint.

Finally, at his wits’ end, he tried to look casual about putting his mouth near the Muggle-style post slot in the door. “Weasley, bloody let me in before I’m photographed by the entire country.”

And when she opened the door, he wished she hadn’t.

The black dress she wore certainly couldn’t have been approved by any of her brothers, or her ex fiancé, for that matter. It wasn’t really all that short, he thought, thinking of Pansy’s usual fare, but it was snug as hell from her breasts to just above her knees, and though the sleeves were long and belled, there was absolutely no back whatsoever to the garment.

Her legs were bare, no stockings to speak of, and her feet were also bare.

For the devotion of all that’s good and magical, he thought. Her fucking feet are bare. Except, of course, for the tarty red paint she’d put on them.

“Surely Potter could afford to get his mistress shoes,” he said before he really thought about it, and for the second time in the day, his cheek was accosted by a scantily clad female.

“Shut your fucking mouth about Harry,” Ginny said, her voice low and dangerous. “Unless you brought another bottle of wine, neither of us is going to get drunk enough to tolerate the consequences of your disrespect.” She’d been poised and collected right up until that moment.

Dammit.

He looked magnificent, of course, the charcoal suit underscored by the pale gray shirt he had under the jacket, throat unbuttoned, no tie to be found. She could see the dip of his throat and wondered if she could charm a knife right into that spot sometime during the main course.

“Make yourself at home,” she said, turning her back to him to compose herself and pop the cork on the wine. She wasn’t accustomed to being around a man, even one so vile as Malfoy, and it was shooting her nerves to hell.

She couldn’t do this.

What he wanted was to stand right where he was and rub his abused jaw. But that would be completely uncouth, not to mention at cross-purposes with his intent, so he sauntered up behind her, placing his hands to either side of her on the sideboard, his breath skimming along her neck. The occasional soft, wayward curl stirred under the motion and nearly distracted him. “What say you to a truce, Ginevra? That way I don’t end up with wine on my clothes tonight.”

His thumbs brushed her hips and Ginny shuddered, wishing the only fantasy she was entertaining was to bash his head in with the wine bottle.

“Never to fear about your precious clothes, Malfoy,” she said, turning uncomfortably in the cage of his arms to hand him a glass of wine. “Not a stitch will be touched.”

He was starting to sincerely hope that wasn’t going to be the case, and he refused to listen to Pansy’s snide voice in his head, talking about shedding his clothes just after dinner.

So what of it if things progressed in that direction? That’s where he wanted things to progress to. All the better to bring it down from there, to watch Prince Potter tumble from his exalted throne as he realized what he’d handed over, what he’d lost, how he’d been bested by Draco.

“Sit,” she insisted again, moving one of his arms to walk toward the kitchen even as she gestured to the table she’d dragged into the living room. “I’ll bring out the food.”

He gaped at her for a moment, never once having thought of her serving things herself. She didn’t have a house elf… and he’d never thought twice about it. He was going to have to eat something she had cooked?!

In the kitchen, Ginny laid her forehead against the cabinets and took a deep, unsteady breath. The feel of him, warmth, and the smell of him were enough to set her teeth on edge, to put her right at the edge of quavery tears. She just wanted it over with, wanted to complete the picture she’d started to paint. The photo opportunity would have done that, of course, would have completed her status as villainess.

But she didn’t want to use him. She didn’t want to use anyone.

She pasted on a polite, if chilly, smile as she carried dishes back into the main room, startled when he stood to help her set them down. At her visible shock, he raised an eyebrow, daring her to challenge his aid, so she said nothing.

They settled into the meal with interspersed silence and casual conversation, Ginny occasionally glancing across the table at him and feeling terribly guilty for the handprint she’d marked his face with. But she couldn’t stand to hear Harry’s name from anyone, much less from his lips.

She needed a change of subject, and fast. “Are you… do you…” She thought about how she wanted to say it, then tried for the most direct tack. “How long have you and Pansy been together?”

The wine slid smoothly down. Only it slid smoothly down Draco’s windpipe when he registered her question, and he began to choke, his skin flushing to match the wine he’d inhaled. When he finally stopped coughing long enough to open his eyes, he saw her looking at him with frank curiosity and no alarm at all. “Bloody hell,” he managed. “She’s my barrister, Weasley. She’s in my employ.”

She merely gave him a look that clearly said “so?”

“We’re not fucking shagging, Weasley, if that’s what you’re trying to imply!” he shouted a bit more loudly than he’d intended. “For Merlin’s sake, just because she’s a tart doesn’t mean I have to drop trou for her, as well, you know.”

Ginny held her hands up, biting back a smile. It was rather funny to see him so defensive. After all that coughing, even his hair was a bit out of place.

“How long were you and Potter together?” he asked, slamming the wind right out of her sails and reminding her all too keenly of why he was here, of what his motivation was. She might not want to use him, but he certainly wanted to use her, and well she knew it.

And wasn’t that the way of things? She wasn’t really wanted for who she was, precisely. It was more a matter of associations, of expectations.

“A year,” she said quietly, finding it hard to breathe. She took a deep breath as though about to add something and let it out slowly, needing the heavy silence. “I believe I’ll get dessert.”

He didn’t anticipate the rage, didn’t anticipate the sheer, blinding crimsonjade feel of it, anger and envy at her reaction, at how beaten she’d seemed the moment he’d said his name. “Are you thinking about him, then?” he asked, forcing brightness into his voice. “When you’re sitting across the table from me, is it easier to stomach if you’re thinking of him?”

CHAPTER EIGHT – What You Wanted

The color dropped from her face at his accusation, and she hated to think, even for a moment, that it was true. “I’d never compare the two of you,” she finally said, standing slowly. She wanted to say there was nothing to compare, but they were more similar than either of them would ever have liked to admit. Instead, she looked at him in a haughty way her mother had mastered long before when chastising one of the Weasley men. “As I said before, I’ll fetch dessert. I think you need something to sweeten that poisonous tongue of yours.”

Her words mobilized him, had him up and out of his chair before he even realized he wanted to move. He wanted to show her, wanted to wipe him out of her mind for a moment, wanted to brand her so she’d quit fucking acting like someone else’s, because one didn’t tempt and tease a Malfoy and go no further with it.

She would be his.

Besides, she said he needed to sweeten his tongue, and he had just the remedy right in front of him.

“I think I’ve got something sweet enough right here, pining over her lost fiancé,” Draco said, grabbing her by the arm and spinning her to face him. She didn’t looked shocked or surprised at his movement, and when he jerked her to him, she didn’t resist, but immediately moved her hands to clench in the material of his shirt so she could tug him closer.

Analytically, she had thought the whole thing through, had anticipated his reaction and had timed the whole thing in her head, ready to react in the way she’d formulated. But she hadn’t counted on the heat behind his kiss, his tongue immediately tracing the line of her top lip before parting her lips and stroking over hers to draw it in. She hadn’t counted on him propelling her to the wall, pressing himself into her and tugging her bottom lip between his teeth.

Analytically, she had anticipated much. Physically, she was flat bloody unprepared for the assault.

Is this what you wanted? he wondered as he pinned her against the stone wall next to her fireplace. She canted her hips a bit, rubbing her thighs along his, and he jumped, biting her lip just a bit too hard.

Ginny pushed a little harder, had him moving back, turning away, and now his back was to the wall, his shirt shifting in her fingers, a button popping off.

Now she could get her wits about her. She had to.

“Draco,” she moaned, shaken by how real it—

was

—sounded. He did not stop kissing her, only moved his lips and tongue down, biting her chin and jawline and neck as her slim fingers shook and reached for something beside them.

Steady, she told herself, a gasp tearing between her lips as he sucked on the hollow of her throat. What was she allowing here?

Her fingers found purchase, grasped into a fist, and she broke from his hold, both of them panting, mussed, shocked, eyelocked with one another.

“You think I can’t tell what you’re doing?” she hissed, humiliated at the surety of her knowledge. “You think I don’t know you wouldn’t look at me twice if I hadn’t been his?”

He bared his teeth but said nothing. He could barely think straight; the smell of her had crowded his head, the feel of her had crowded his body, and now she was bringing up bloody… fucking… Potter again.

You think I can’t tell what you’re doing?

Of course she could. Somewhere along the line he’d gotten too hungry for it, lost his cunning, and he remembered Pansy telling him their days of being thrown into certain houses were over.

Who was cunning now?

“I don’t want to be your revenge, Malfoy. I don’t even want to be the witch you use to scratch your itch.”

Oh, but her body spoke differently, her breath still short, her pulse still skittering and fleet.

He would have spoken, attested to her duplicity, but he wasn’t given the opportunity, didn’t notice where she’d positioned him.

“Go home,” Ginny said, slapping a powder-filled hand to the middle of his chest and shoving him into the Floo.

His mouth was agape—to cough, to curse, she didn’t know—and then he was gone, swirling away in the ashes and embers, and she wished she could say the same for the thoughts he’d tangled through her brain, the heat he’d slid just under her skin.

He came out of the ashes filthy, cursing, his shirt half-unbuttoned. He was already reaching for his wand as both feet his solid ground. The conniving bint had better be ready for him, he thought, because he was going straight back to her flat and—

Bloody. Fucking. Hell.

It had only taken a moment for his eyes to clear, for him to blink the soot from his long, pale eyelashes, but by the time he did, he wished he hadn’t.

Three Weasleys, the Mudblood, and Potter were staring at him.

From a kitchen table.

In someone else’s home.

“Go home,” she’d said.

Oh, you fucking bitch, Draco thought, his head spinning as he tried to puzzle out whether it had been intentional or accidental that he’d ended up in the Burrow..

“Well?” he snapped regally, treading out of the fireplace as though it were the most natural thing in the world. “What are all of you staring at? It isn’t as though I asked you for your supper, is it?”

Before any of them could answer, or more likely, kill him, he’d stomped past them and out the door, too angry to be embarrassed.

He hoped like Merlin’s dungeon she was ready for him this time.

~~~

She turned off the Floo immediately, afraid he’d only pop right back into it if she didn’t. It would have been rational, she supposed, to want to cry, but instead all she felt was… unsatisfied.

If Ginny were well and perfectly honest with herself, the one thing she most felt like doing at the moment was taking a long, hot bath and working to ease the kinks in her back and neck and working to finish what he’d started just moments ago with his uncouth handling and talented tongue.

It was healthy, she insisted, to want sex. Her mother had explained as such in horribly starched and stiff words years ago, and she’d not abused that advice. She’d only slept with two people, and a fumbling, awkward, but wholly sweet first time with Neville really barely even counted as that first one.

She levitated the table back where it belonged, letting the dishes drop to the sink with an unsafe clatter. She simply didn’t feel like cleaning up, didn’t feel like doing anything but rewinding the night and starting over.

It didn’t occur to Ginny that she didn’t feel like rewinding everything and avoiding Draco.

She simply wanted things to have been a bit more civil.

Never mind that more civility would have likely landed her in bed rather than doing dishes.

She was still debating that fine point when the door burst open, splintered at the lock.

It should have been humorous, and maybe years from now, it would be. Draco Malfoy, incredibly filthy, half-dressed, impeccable hair now at all angles and streaked with soot. But the look he was giving her robbed any levity from the situation.

“Go home, Weasley? If you only knew,” he said, his voice so low she could barely hear him, “That was your home, and it was positively everything I’ve imagined it to be.”

She’d been rooted to the spot from the moment the door had sent splinters scattering to the floor, but as he started taking deliberate, paced steps toward her, Ginny backpedaled, pulling chairs and a standing vase in front of her, between them.

And she had absolutely nothing to say in her defense.

He moved the chairs out of the way as though he had all the time in the world, and when he finally reached her, she’d done his job for him and backed herself right into the kitchen table.

“Your family, my dear hostess, was eating supper with the favored son.” At the confused look on her face, he took her chin in his hand. “Potter, Weasley. Your family, ever so loyal to the ways of your whims, is having dinner with Potter.” He put his lips to her ear. “They look to be doing just fine without you.”

She swallowed back tears, knowing he would lie to his own mother if the purpose suited him; this, however, felt true. Of course they were eating with Harry, he’d become part of the family.

But it also frightened her that they might forget her completely and pick Harry up in her place.

“You’re despicable,” she said, but she wasn’t sure who deserved that more, him or her.

He buried one hand in her hair, knotting it into a fist to feel the strands between his fingers, folded in the crease of his palm, but he did not kiss her. Instead, he kept his eyes unwaveringly on hers, licking her lips without touching his to her at all.

She trembled beneath him and parted her lips, shock ricocheting through her as he slid his tongue between them, sliding and withdrawing, sliding and withdrawing, an insinuation of penetration that made her wet, made her knees go loose underneath her, forcing her to put her palms to the edge of the table just to hold herself up.

Ginny’s eyes started to flutter shut; she couldn’t hold them open, and she couldn’t bear to look at him any longer. It was like looking into the sun, too bright, too painful, too unbelievable. But the second she did so, his hand tightened again, sending stars of pain behind her eyelids, and she opened them again.

“You fucking bastard,” she said, tears of pain gathering at the corners of her eyes, but even her protests were panted, moaned. He continued to pull, forcing her head back, forcing her to lean, and she slapped at him, scratched at him, trying to get him to stop.

Draco looked down at her, his lips parted with the force of his breathing, and as she leaned back onto the table, her breasts thrust out, he grew harder than he had been only moments before, when she’d been sucking on his thrusting tongue.

He let go of her hair abruptly; she was nearly laying on the top of the table they’d been eating at only minutes before. Draco shoved up the knee-length skirt of the dress, felt the knit material cling to his wrist as he pushed up, past the resistance of her loosening thighs, and covered her mound, pushing slightly and sending her laying full-out on the table. The crook of her knees just hit the edge, her pale feet with their painted nails dangling over the side.

His palm came away damp, a fragrant sign of her arousal spread evenly by the silky material of her knickers, and he couldn’t help but breathe in her smell, the smell of fear and anger and sheer want that sent a lick of heat, a spot of wet, through him to match her.

Ginny found herself entranced now, watching his every move because all she wanted was that hand on her again, wanted something covering her, something touching her, because when he’d touched her she’d wanted to shatter, and when he’d taken his hand away, she’d wanted to weep.

Was this why she had left Harry? Because deep down, she had wanted something else? She didn’t know, could barely even remember her own name, much less her past, and she wasn’t comparing, couldn’t compare, because it had never been like this, never ever.

Mindlessly, she reached out, anchored her hands at the back of his neck, forced him down to her with the pressure and sharpness of her nails, digging furrows just at the nape of his neck where the silky hair stopped, and she wanted to see those red marks she’d left amidst porcelain skin and flaxen hair, but she was too busy trying to nip at his jawline, press her tongue into the hollows of his cheek, of his throat, trying to push him inside her through his clothes and hers.

Draco cursed behind gritted teeth as she arched underneath him, as her thighs fastened around his and she began rubbing herself against the bulge in his trousers, trying to fuck him senseless without taking his clothes off. “Ah, Merlin,” he said, his voice high and fraught, his anger long since replaced by its close cousin desire.

He finally managed to stop touching her, to stop using every bit of strength he had to hold himself up as she attacked him with her mouth, and unfasten his pants. His hair fell into his eyes, sweat stung in his eyelashes, and for a moment, as hot and frenzied as things were, he considered stroking himself and finishing it right there as his hand played over his throbbing erection. “Is this what you wanted?” he asked, his face turning red with the effort of self-restraint, the cords in his neck defined in his battle with himself and her.

Ginny tossed her head from side to side, not a negation but a censor. “Just do it,” she answered, her voice low, animalistic. It would have been unrecognizable to everyone who knew her, even Harry. “Fucking quit talking and do it.”

Later, when his brain was actually functioning and he could see more than her face and her eyes and a red haze over everything else, he would think it had all happened so fast, so unbelievably quickly. But all he knew the moment he entered her, and all she knew the moment he tugged aside her knickers, sending seamwork into shreds as he plunged into her, was—

This. Right here. Yes.

CHAPTER NINE- Skiving Off

He was, quite simply, perplexed. If he were to flatly assess the situation, Draco would come to the conclusion that he was laying on a kitchen table. To be more precise, he was laying on top of Ginny Weasley, who was, in fact, laying on the table. And just to get all the details in order, he was buried to the hilt in her, and he could still feel every flex and squeeze of her muscles.

But he wasn’t able to be so blasé about it, especially with those wide brown eyes on him, unblinking, unfazed.

All he could think was Curse… curse upon fucking curses, I’ve gone and done what Pansy said I would. And none too gently, either. Fuck. “Are you all right?”

Loaded question, she thought, finally blinking.

Physically, she felt fine. In fact, to be fair, she felt excellent in that manner. But emotionally? Well, she’d not been feeling emotionally well for quite some time.

“If I weren’t, you’d know it,” she said, raising a hand to brush her hair from her face. “You’re not going to cry, are you, Malfoy?”

He blushed, which was nigh to amazing to her. “I didn’t mean for this to happen,” he said stiffly, trying to clamber off her and the table with as much grace as he could muster. At the moment, it wasn’t much.

His movement sent another ripple through her, like fingers racing up her spine, and she tightened her legs around him for the barest moment, clinging to the sensation, a trapped moan sounding behind closed lips.

The movement—or perhaps it was the noise, the sheer, wanton sound of her—milked one last spasm from him, and he slid bonelessly off her, clutching the edge of the table to keep his knees about him.

Once he was there, he decided it was a mistake, as now he was afforded an unobstructed view straight up her skirt, at her ruined knickers and the swollen, shining lips of her sex surrounded by—no big surprise—ginger curls.

Ginny let her head drop back to the table. “Well,” she said, quashing the hysterical giggle that wanted to tremble from her lips, “This was more or less what I expected.”

Less?

Had she actually said less?

He tried not to be offended, but bared his teeth for a moment anyway, caught with that expression when she propped herself up on her elbows.

She started to smile, knowing exactly what the feral, defensive appearance was about, and then froze.

Was she honest to Merlin sitting here comfortably post-coitus, ready to smile at a Malfoy? A Malfoy whose intentions she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt, no less. And was he honestly looking up her skirt?

It was her turn to be embarrassed, and she straightened one leg, planting her chilled, painted toes just under his chin, tilting his head so he was forced to look at her. “Now that we’re done using one another,” she said, keeping her tone flat, “I think you can run along and rub Harry’s nose in it.”

He didn’t know what he hated more: that she’d admitted to using him, or that she’d seen through him. But he kept his anger in check, having spent his day’s worth of fire bursting in her door and getting her in the position she was in now.

Now was the time to keep his cool.

He ran one hand from the back of her knee all the way up to her ankle, plucking her foot away from his chin and holding it aloft. He nearly dropped her leg when he realized there, in that position, he could smell sex, pure and simple, the evidence of what had transpired in a few moments of anger and heat.

He really, really hated that Pansy had been right.

Not willing to give away his uncertainty, he kept his eyes on hers, ducking his head to close his teeth around her smallest toe. His laughter was genuine when she jerked her foot away from him, her mouth dropped in a horrified gape.

“Suddenly shy?” he asked. When she didn’t reply, he turned his back on her and made his way through the room, buying time by straightening the chairs and vases they’d upended and uprooted.

Ginny drew her legs up, hugging her knees and rubbing her foot absently. He was just bloody insane, as far as she could tell, one minute some raging angry madman, and the next minute straightening her house like a bloody mother hen. And he’d put his mouth on her foot. “It isn’t as though you’ve any need to pretend at this point,” Ginny said, sliding off the table and immediately regretting it; her choices were either to clamp her legs together to keep her knickers from falling to the floor, or to pause and take them off.

Since his back was to her, she bent to slide them down her legs.

Of course, he turned ‘round to look at her right then, looking over his shoulder with a smug, bemused smirk on his face.

She felt like throwing them at him, but the barmy bastard would likely keep them.

“It seems I owe you,” he said, ignoring the hot twist of want that had punched through his gut watching her step out of the tangle of wet satin. He put his hand to her door, which was shut and magically locked despite the sunburst of splinters the lock had torn into the jamb. “You repaid my ruined shirt with dinner, so what’s the price of a door and lingerie?”

“Free,” Ginny said, sidestepping just enough to throw said lingerie into the waste bin. “Absolutely free.”

“I pay my debts,” he said quietly, taking a shard of wood and holding it between his fingers. That much was true. After his father had died, there had been plenty of debts there. Plenty of ways he’d needed to prove himself.

He was still repaying those.

“I think staying out of my life would be ample restitution,” Ginny said, wondering where she could go in her own house that wouldn’t be an inconvenience right now. She didn’t want to look at him, but she didn’t want him out of her sight, either.

“That’s not restitution, that’s a poor answer,” he responded, turning and taking a step toward her. When she flinched but didn’t move, he felt his stomach drop. “Was it really so distasteful?” He tried to sound flippant and was completely unable. Things had gotten entirely too out of control here, he admitted to himself. Entirely too out of control.

“I never pegged you as the type of man who would need to talk about his feelings after sex!” Ginny burst out, shoving her hands through her hair and finding a few sore spots where he’d tugged a bit too hard. “Can’t you just… toddle on out my lovely, ruined door and back to your palace so I can get a bloody shower?!”

“I never pegged you as the sort of woman to completely avoid a question when it’s directed at her,” he said. “But I’ll leave when I’m asked—” He saw her smirk and was all too aware of the irony of that particular statement, but he wasn’t even going to try and justify it. “As long as you’ll let me repay you in whatever way I see fit.”

“More sex is not repayment,” Ginny said incredulously, crossing her arms over her chest.

Though truthfully, it had been really good sex.

Not that she was at all surprised about that. Some men, you could just tell.

She decided she hated her mind for wandering.

Annoyed with her circumvention and his own stupidity for being there in the first place, Draco rolled his eyes, turned on his heel, and went to the door. He stood with his hand on the knob for just a moment, then turned and looked at her. “No, Weasley, more sex is simply an additional benefit.”

He Disapparated from her front step before she could throw something at him.

~~~

She was, in no uncertain terms, a coward.

It would only raise more questions, she knew, but Ginny simply couldn’t deal with the gossips, the snide remarks, the insinuations.

So she owled in sick to work.

She figured—at the very least, she hoped—people would figure out that Draco was hard at work at Malfoy, Ltd. and not playing hooky with her. She hoped.

She went back to bed directly after sending the owl off, her exhausted mind and her sore muscles needing the rest. She slept peacefully, if a bit dreamfully, until she was awakened by the weight of something dropping onto her chest.

The last thing Ginny Weasley wanted to start her Friday morning off with was a Howler.

She’d managed to get through all of her schooling without a single one, and now, here was one sitting no her chest. Knowing the possible repercussions that would come with procrastination, she opened the Howler and tensed.

“Ginevra Molly Weasley!” Her mum had spared nothing on this one, Ginny thought, automatically plugging her ears. “Get those freckled fingers out of those freckled ears right this instant.” As though Molly were actually there, Ginny dutifully dropped her hands to her sides.

“Young lady, you had better not be… be skiving off with that… that Malfoy. So help me, Merlin, if I find out you are at his house or he is at yours, you are moving back here.” The Howler took a deep breath. Ginny wasn’t fool enough to think that signaled the end.

“It isn’t enough for that delinquent to come popping through our Floo last night—and he had to have come from your flat, young lady—but for your father to tell me you’re not at work?!?! You had better be sick, young lady, just falling… down… sick!”

Her voice softened a bit, and Ginny risked cracking one eye open cautiously. “If you are sick, love, please let me know. It’s nothing Mum can’t fix.” With that, the Howler went up in a shower of ash.

Ginny let her head thump back on her pillow with a groan. She’d sort of forgotten she’d sent him to the Burrow. What had he said again? Her parents… Ron… Hermione… and Harry.

She wondered how many Howlers she was going to get before the day’s end.

A Friday. That meant, Ginny thought gratefully, Harry would already be up and at practice. Away, that meant, from all the gossip.

She tried to remind herself it wasn’t any of her concern any more. She’d made that blatantly clear the evening before.

With a sigh, Ginny climbed out of bed. There was no way she was going to get any more sleep now.

~~~

He’d been staring at the same piece of parchment for an hour.

It wasn’t as though it really mattered; he called the shots, and so no one was about to discipline him. It just made him feel like a fool.

Draco looked at the clock on the wall again and winced. Pansy was known for strolling in right around nine o’clock—an hour after the rest of the staff, including Draco himself—and it was five after. He wondered if he’d locked his door on the way in.

He wondered if it was perhaps too late to fire her.

When he got through a half an hour—and finally, one document—without being interrupted by Pansy, Draco decided the coast was clear. Amplifying himself directly into the anteroom of his office, his assistant’s area, he spoke precisely. “Octavia, if you wouldn’t mind coming in here, I’ve some dictation.”

She was prompt as always, if a bit less immaculate than usual. Her dark, tight curls were down around her shoulders rather than back in a bun, and though she never looked unfriendly, today she looked downright ecstatic.

Fridays, Draco thought. They made everyone nutty.

“I would like you to owl Miss Ginevra Weasley again. Contact her regarding availability for lunch or dinner, I’ve no preference.” He drummed his fingers on the desk. “Owl her at the Ministry, please, as I’ve need for an answer as soon as possible.”

Octavia nodded and flounced out of his office.

Draco thought he might start hiring all men.

It hadn’t been a long night, or a short one. In fact, he was surprised at how well he’d actually slept, considering how much he felt like a prat after his decidedly coarse conquest of the evening. It had been, he thought, the perfect example of things going from bad to worse. Though he hadn’t really felt indebted over the door and the knickers—mustn’t think about those too much, mate, he reminded himself, a blot of ink dotting from the end of his quill—he had felt indebted over his manners.

There was a fine line, and he’d certainly been walking it. And for what? Jealousy? Lust? Power?

Or had it been simple confusion?

She had him all turned around, and he wasn’t at all pleased with that.

Had the encounter happened with any of his past lovers, all pureblooded young ladies with high hopes and cold hearts, they’d have likely spilled it all over the wizarding world with a mixture of glee and offended sensibility.

He supposed he was lucky it had happened with Weasley, a pureblood with no regard for societal trappings. A hardy girl. An absolutely fantastic fu—

“Sir, your owl has returned with its parchment and a message from the Ministry that Miss Weasley is unavailable today.” Octavia stood in the doorway, looking completely at ease with the black owl perched on her arm.

“Hello, ‘Tavia, my love. I’m positively shocked to see you looking so energetic today.” Draco watched in horror as Pansy swatted his secretary’s arse.

His horror grew as Pansy leaned over and snogged his secretary. With tongue. Lots of it.

“For bloody fuck’s sake,” he burst out, standing and knocking his knees on the underside of his desk.

Pansy turned with a sly, satisfied grin on her face and sauntered to Draco’s desk. “I’m sorry, darling, did you want one, too?”

His upper thighs throbbing from the force with which he’d knocked into the desk, Draco dropped like a rock back into his seat, his face flaming red. He couldn’t look at Octavia, so he simply waved her away, staring at his desk.

“I ought to fucking fire you,” he muttered, not certain which one he was talking to. “This is a bloody madhouse.” Finally, he looked up at Pansy, who had one indigo-tipped finger resting at the corner of her mouth, the very fucking picture of concern. “It’s like you’ve set out to make me positively raving mad. You have, haven’t you?” He knew there had to be a reason for her behavior, knew he ought to be a good friend and take the time to discern that reason. He just couldn’t think straight, however, if she was snogging his bloody secretary in his office.

Pansy picked a piece of fuzz from her black corset top and regarded Draco with a sigh. “I was rather hoping you’d find it titillating. You get so little action as it is.”

He opened his mouth to protest, then shut it and narrowed his eyes. “What in heaven’s name would you know about what action I get and don’t get, Pansy? I mean, I do realize you’re practically the gatekeeper of all things sexual in the greater United Kingdom, but surely a man can have sex without it involving you?”

Pansy considered. “Not in most cases, but I’ll give you that small margin. Besides, if you’ve had sex, you show it all over. And you are, of course, showing it all over.” She could practically smell it, the relaxation mixed with the jumpiness, the eagerly sent owl to the Ministry.

The fact that Miss Ginny Weasley had apparently owled off work for the day.

It was absolutely delicious.

“Wish I could have watched,” she added, relishing the shocked look on his face.

“There was nothing to watch,” he said, wondering why his voice sounded so stilted. Normally, he was an indiscernible liar.

She raised her eyebrow at him. “Oh, honey, what a shame, I didn’t realize you had such troubles—” She burst into giggles when he actually growled at her. “Anyway, I heard the wild Miss Weasley isn’t at work today, which gives my imagination plenty to work on.”

She watched him surreptitiously, saw the tautness of his expression, the struggle he was clearly waging. She wondered if her darling boy had somehow gotten a conscience, or if he’d just been thoroughly whipped on his first trip out.

Pansy figured he needed a little of both. The poor git was still thinking too much like his father: the only things in life were power and money. “And speaking of not being at work, love, I had a long night.” She looked pointedly toward the door to the anteroom. “And I was wondering if I could take the rest of the day off.”

Ah, yes. A safe topic. One that didn’t involve his sex life. He was almost relieved she was trying to walk all over him. It was a change from her trying to watch his intimate moments. And right now, he’d do anything to get rid of her, up to and including giving her the rest of the day off.

But not without a little argument.

“Why, Pansy, I’d love to give you the rest of the day off,” he said heartily, standing and clapping her on the back, acutely aware the spot he’d lit upon should have had a bra strap beneath it. “In fact, since you’ve done nothing since you got here, I should have suggested that you take the rest of the day off!”

“I’ve the greatest boss in the world,” she sing-songed, leaning down to press a surprisingly gentle kiss on his forehead. “Don’t mess things up, all right, love?” she said quietly, and decided she’d let him determine whether she meant the office or his love life.

As for her, she’d quite decided it was time for a little bonding time with the only other person she knew was skiving off from work.

CHAPTER TEN – Paying Visits

Shower. Shower, shower, shower.

That was what she wanted more than anything else in the world. Ginny thought, considering the last evening’s activities, she’d probably promise her soul for a shower. It didn’t matter that she’d taken one immediately after he’d gone, she wanted another one.

But if she waited one more second to send a reply to her mother’s Howler, she knew she would later regret it. Ginny padded her way into the kitchen, wracking her brains for the location of her parchments and quills. If she recalled correctly, she had one properly functioning quill in the house, and her parchment…

Where in Merlin’s dungeons were her parchments? She rooted through the kitchen cupboard, the tip of her tongue peeking at the corner of her lips as she tried to concentrate, to remember. This was why she hated tidying, she thought. It seemed every time she tidied for company, she was never able to find anything for days and weeks on end.

With a small exclamation of triumph, Ginny pulled a battered parchment out of the bottom of the cupboard, wondering if she’d originally meant it as a liner, or if it had just ended up there. A quill followed shortly, operable if a bit straggly, and she plopped the parchment on the first flat surface available to pen her answer.

Dear Mum,
I’m not ill, nor am I doing anything with Draco Malfoy.

“Not at the moment, at least,” Ginny said, a frown flitting across her features.

I’m simply taking a day as a holiday, for me. I think, considering everything, a day to myself was just the trick.

“Among other things,” she added, wondering what else to write. She had nothing else to write, couldn’t think of another thing she could safely tell her mother without lying or without spilling everything. So she rolled up the parchment, whistling for the vagabond owl that frequented the flats along her row. At a total loss as to where her sealing wax was—and where was her wand, for that matter?—Ginny took the hair band from her messy ponytail and bound up the parchment with it.

Only then, after clearing away, did she realize where she’d written a parchment to her mother.

Right on the kitchen table. Up until the evening before, the most tawdry thing that table had experienced was a little leaning here and there when Harry had wanted to sneak a snog.

The color draining from her face, Ginny stared at the table as though she’d never seen it before. All thoughts of a shower drained from her mind, and she thought of the table, of eating there, of carrying on meals by herself there. The lonely meals she hadn’t so much minded, hadn’t even thought of, until now.

While her parents had sat around their own kitchen table with her brother and the man she’d loved and the woman who was truly worth the man she’d loved, Ginny had sat atop her own kitchen table and gave herself over to something she didn’t even understand.

She wanted to gag but stifled it, swallowing hard to try and still her upset stomach as she dashed for the tap, running cool water to splash on her face. She didn’t pause to pat her face dry with the dishtowel, didn’t even think of it. Even as her freckled nose dripped water back to the drain, Ginny blinked water from her eyelashes and jerked open the drawer next to her, digging for the first thing she found. It was an apron, but it didn’t matter, not now.

She soaked it in water, holding it under the flow with one hand, the other busy pushing her hair from her wet face. She left the faucet running, dripping water all the way across the floor to the table before slapping the sopping apron to the tabletop, scrubbing at the table, leaving wide, wet, messy trails that would undoubtedly leave spots as it dried.

What have I done? Her mind made the four words a mantra, a panicked tattoo, and she didn’t know how long she scrubbed before her fingers were sore and puckered, the nausea long past.

She’d done just what she’d out to do, she thought, no longer feeling like a shower but needing to do something.

She’d become, at least in her own eyes, completely unworthy of Harry.
~~~

With the she-devil sent home for the day, Draco ruminated, it was much easier to concentrate on the important things.

Like the fact that Ginny had not appeared at work.

He rather detested that foreign little flash of worry he felt upon that particular announcement. Not only was it absurdly misplaced, it was completely ridiculous. She was a grown woman—he’d certainly seen that for himself—and perfectly capable of taking care of herself. If she wanted to skive off work, that was her business. Lazy little tart.

And then, horror of all horrors, he felt bad for thinking that. Perhaps conscience was contagious.

He opened his mouth to roar for Octavia, to command her to send the owl to Miss Weasley’s house, be damned her unscheduled little holiday. He had something to prove, damn it, and her stubbornness wasn’t going to get in his way. She thought she had him pegged? He would certainly prove her wrong. If she thought he was going to gad it about town that he’d shagged a Weasley, she was all wrong. And if she thought she’d seen the last of him, she was all wrong.

But…

It was an attractive idea, just to let it go, just to let her have her three-day weekend, her time to hide, and when Monday rolled around, they’d both have forgotten about it.

And he wouldn’t have to worry about her, or propriety, and he could chalk it up to his own confidential triumph. Talking the worshipped Weasley into bed, figuratively speaking, after only one date.

Draco refused to dwell too much on the verbiage, the term “date.”

He’d simply keep it as his own private “notch,” as it were.

It was enough to know he’d gotten what Potter could no longer have.

It would simply have to be.

~~~

The door was broken.

Pansy raised an eyebrow and ‘tsked’ at that particular observation, part of her thrilling at the intimation that bare strip of wood gave. Then again, she might be attributing the wrong things to it. She’d been known to put a bit of a prurient spin on things a time or two.

Only one way to find out.

She knocked, three short, sharp knocks, and waited expectantly for an answer. There was none, which didn’t surprise her in the least. If you played sick, you’d be a fool to answer the door. It could be your boss, after all. Of course, Pansy thought, she’d never really experienced anything like that herself. She’d always been nothing short of painfully honest with her boss.

Mostly because hearing the truth seemed to anger him even more than hearing a soft little lie every now and again.

“All right, my lovely,” Pansy said, looking over her shoulder before taking out her wand, “I know you’re in there somewhere.” As she magically unlocked the door, she wondered why Draco hadn’t thought to do the same. Assuming, of course, it had been Draco who had broken the lock.

She really loved assuming that.

She didn’t bother sneaking into the house, she simply sailed in and slammed the door. “You’ve company, love, but I don’t come toting a boss, so all’s clear.” She heard a thud, a startled curse, and Pansy ran her tongue over her teeth.

It seemed the woman still had spunk, and no shortage on blue words to spout now and again. Pansy filed this away as considerably useful knowledge.

It helped to know Ginny could talk dirty.

“Take your time, honey, I’ve the day off,” Pansy called loudly, looking for a place to sit. Accustomed to sitting on all the inappropriate furniture, Pansy strode into the kitchen and slid onto the table, crossing her legs and swinging one foot back and forth, the heavy wedge of a heel lending her foot momentum.

Ginny came out of the bathroom and immediately regretted her choice of clothing. She’d figured her tatty little terrycloth robe wouldn’t offend another woman—through the muffle of a bathroom door, she’d rather thought it might have been Hermione letting herself in. But this was another matter entirely. Wearing a robe that barely came to mid-thigh was acceptable in front of a friend. It was not acceptable in front of a total predator.

“What in blast are you doing in my flat?!” Ginny exclaimed, her voice running into a shrieking register Ron had mocked her for more than once. “You most certainly can not be here.” She noted, altogether too belatedly, exactly where Pansy had her plump rump perched. “You most certainly can not be there!”

Pansy raised an eyebrow and looked at the table. “Honey, trust me. It takes a lot more than a girl like me to break down a table like this. I’d at least need another girl like me and a man.” She wrapped her hands around the edge of the table and gave a little bounce. “Solid as a rock.”

Ginny didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

Or hide. She thought hiding was a perfectly valid option.

“I just came by for a little girl-on-girl…” Pansy paused quite deliberately and leaned forward, her breasts swelling dangerously over the top of her eggplant-hued dress. “Talk,” she finally said, one corner of her mouth turning up insouciantly.

Ginny could not discern whether Pansy was making a pass at her or threatening her. She decided she preferred the latter. “If this is about Draco, you’ve nothing to worry about.” Ginny considered herself a scrapper, but if Pansy wanted to fight, she wasn’t so sure she could take her. Her thighs could probably break bones, for Merlin’s sake—

And then Ginny realized she was actually getting caught staring at Pansy’s thighs.

She wished she’d gone to work.

Remarkably, Pansy started to laugh, and Ginny was stricken by how nice it sounded. It wasn’t at all the harsh, degrading caw she remembered from school. No, this was the laugh of a woman who knew how to have fun on her own terms, without making it at someone else’s expense.

It seemed Parkinson had changes more than her sexual preferences over the years.

“If there’s a single man on this earth I don’t want,” Pansy said between laughs, “It’s Draco Malfoy. He’s like my brother.” When Ginny simply raised an eyebrow, Pansy’s giggles dried up, albeit reluctantly. “Oh, come off it, Weasley. I’m legendarily unscrupulous but I’m not likely to fuck family.” She gave a wolfish grin, determined to make the redhead uncomfortable enough to spill details. “Unless you want to play
pretend.”

“No!” Ginny said, edging back farther into her kitchen. “You… are very, very… bad.” She was simply at a loss for words. The former Slytherin was just unstoppable. “You’ve no manners.”

“They get in the way,” Pansy said. “Though I had enough manners not to dismantle your door.”

Ginny felt her fair skin flush even as Pansy mentally ticked off a point. Score one for me, she thought. Or rather, score one for Draco.

Pansy boosted herself off the table and took a step toward Ginny, both loving and being exasperated by the way Ginny cringed. So naïve. So paranoid.

“Relax, inamorata, I don’t bite unless asked. I brought you something.” Pansy reached into the small purse she carried, looking up through long black lashes at Ginny. “Other than me, of course.” She withdrew a parchment and held it out. “Hand-delivered. The service doesn’t get much better than that.”

“Somehow I doubt that,” Ginny muttered, cracking the smallest of smiles.

Pansy pressed one hand to her chest, widening her eyes. “My goodness, did La Weasley make a joke? One with the tiniest bit of innuendo?”

“Don’t act shocked, Parkinson. An orgy of Hufflepuffs wouldn’t even shock you.” Ginny cracked the seal on the parchment and grew distinctly uncomfortable for two reasons.

One was that she was being watched, and she hated reading while being watched.

The other was that Pansy didn’t seem to find the Hufflepuff orgy so unlikely, and Ginny was somewhat fearing Pansy may have orchestrated something along those lines.

“Oh,” she said, her voice suddenly small. Lunch or dinner with Draco. She flipped the parchment over, saw it had been addressed to her office, and looked up at Pansy. “How did you get this?”

Pansy shrugged expansively, pushing the topmost button of her blouse to its limits. “A girl’s gotta have a secret here or there, Ginevra. Merlin knows I don’t have many left.” She glanced at the clock on the wall. “He’ll be in the office for a while yet, you know.”

Ginny placed the parchment on the counter, not feeling a whit like joking anymore. “I’ll not see him again.”

“First impressions are important,” Pansy said as though that’s what they’d been discussing. “But no one is as they seem on a first impression, you know?”

Ginny frowned as Pansy sauntered back toward the front door, and she moved to catch up with her, to put a hand on her arm and turn her around. “What does it matter to you?” she asked. “Why would you come here, bring this to me?”

Pansy looked down at the hand on her shoulder, smiling coyly up at Ginny until she jerked her hand back as though it had been scalded. “Because,” she said lightly, “If he’s never going to be getting sex from me, he ought to be getting it from you.”

She put a hand on the front door, shaking her head in pure admiration at the mess he’d made of it, and then she added an afterthought to the shocked young woman standing in the middle of the room. “And gorgeous, if I’m not showing you a good time, you really ought to learn one from him.”

*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.

*Author’s Note: This is one of two new chapters posted today. If you haven’t read the previous, go do that first. :-) *

CHAPTER TWELVE – Voldemort’s Soufflé

She stood with her head high and her shoulders back as she gave three polite raps on the door of the mansion that had once represented everything she had once feared as a child, and everything that had once loathed her.

She wasn’t certain those feelings had ceased, because as the seconds ticked by and she waited for someone to answer the door, she could feel the fear, the anxiety, creeping through her, sliding in jittery fingers up her straight spine, threatening to send a shudder wracking through her. Certainly meeting with her brother hadn’t helped to mind at her ease, it had only made her less sorry for what she’d done. It couldn’t be helped, damn it—she hated them for thinking uncharitably of her, the Golden Trio. Or two-thirds of the trio, at least. At least Ron had the stones to be honest with her, up-front with her.

Thinking of Hermione— in love with Harry, and for how long?—made Ginny a little sick at heart. It was simply so right, the two of them. And somehow, that rightness made things final. If she'd not been completely shut of Harry before, she was certainly shut of him now.

Now, his life would start to work out as it was undoubtedly meant to.

The door jerked open far too quickly, startling her and making her toes curl back in her sensible, closed-toed black shoes. When her breath recovered from her gasp, she leaned forward and spoke. “You answer your own door?” she asked incredulously, unable to think of anything suitable to say. She’d expected a house elf, and instead what she’d gotten was an irked-looking Draco, his white shirt rolled up to the elbows, his black slacks dusted with something white and powdery. It was his turn to have bare feet, the long, strong toes of one foot tapping impatiently on the cold tile entryway.

“Yes, I answer my own door,” he said tersely. He was none too fucking happy about it, either. He wasn’t really all that pleased with how the entire evening had turned out, and greeting her with pants in need of a good scourgify and bare feet wasn’t his idea of playing a good host, or even making a good representation to a woman you’d shagged. Dammit, he’d not wanted her to accept, anyway, and now she was standing on his doorstep looking prim and proper in a black sweater, high of neck and long of sleeves, and some sort of denim skirt that went all the way to the disgustingly prudish shoes she was wearing. Taking no chances, he thought with a smirk. As though he’d repeat his mistakes. He’d not be beholden to her again. “Are you coming in?”

“Where are your house elves?” Ginny asked, craning her neck to look around him. A Malfoy answering his own door. It was just weird.

Draco heaved an exasperated sigh and stepped back from the door, leaving it hanging open in case she figured out how to step over the bloody threshold.

“My mother has taken them to France,” he said, his inflection alone making the country name sound like an insult. “So they can carry her bags as she shops.”

Ginny finally stepped into the foyer, reluctant but unable to hear him very well standing outside like a lunatic. His mother was in France, the house elves were gone…

“Were you hoping for a chaperone?” he snapped, stepping around her to swat the door with one hand. It slammed shut, its noise echoing up the multiple stories, making him wince and her jump.

“No,” Ginny said, drawing herself to her full height. “I was wondering who cooked dinner, if your elves are gone.”

Who cooked dinner? How the bloody fuck did she think he’d managed to get flour all over his slacks if he didn’t cook? “Lord Voldemort,” he said dryly. “He’s a temperamental bastard about his kitchen, but his soufflés are unparalleled.”

Ginny gaped at him for a moment and saw the unthinkable—the beginnings of a smile twitching at the corner of his mouth. More likely it was only a smirk, but in its beginning stages, it certainly looked like a smile.

“Me!” he finally shouted. “For Merlin’s sake, I’m cooking!” If she wasn’t going to come to the conclusion, he’d bloody well tell her. He wanted credit for roasting his arse off in that behemoth of a kitchen trying to figure out how to do the simplest things.

“That explains the flour,” she retorted, her eyes skipping down to his slacks. It was an easy gesture, a natural one, if a bit awkward once she’d skated her eyes down. She knew a bit too much about what lay that way, so she looked back up at him and laughed, rolling her eyes.

It was too easy, she thought, to look at him like this, in his bare feet and his smudged pants, that half-smile, and feel all right. It was too easy to feel comfortable.

So she toppled that particular tower with the simplest nudge. “Before anything else happens, I want to apologize.”

He’d started to turn, to head back to the kitchen to make certain the ham he’d attempted to glaze hadn’t actually turned into a live pig or something equally probable. Her words stopped him in his tracks, and he felt his molars grind together independent of his will.

She was apologizing, was she?

He just imagined he knew what for. Instead of giving into the certainty that she was about to apologize for participating in a particularly memorable shag, he continued walking toward the kitchen, hoping she didn’t notice the hitch in his step. “Did you finally see the light, then? Feeling guilty over all those hexes back in fifth year?”

Ginny scurried to keep up with him, her cheeks burning with the effort it took to muster the words she wanted to say. “For using you,” she said. “For the other night. I should have—I could have—said no.”

That did stop him, and he turned on her so quickly she recoiled. “Could you?” he said, his voice set in a tone of deceptive mildness. When she didn’t answer, his jaw set firmly and his eyes narrowed. “Save your post-coital guilt for someone else, Weasley. If I feel I have been wronged, you will know with unequivocal certainty.”

It quite ruined the dramatic effect, he thought, when he had to lean down and pull a ridiculous pig’s carcass from a heated box with a pair of insulated gloves. He’d tried moving the food with his wand at first, discovering altogether too late that floating a pan of potatoes was not quite like floating a quill. For one, a quill did not care if you tipped it from side to side.

For another, a quill was not ruined if you dropped it on the floor.

Ginny chewed her lip restlessly in the doorway of the kitchen, wondering what in dungeons she was going to say now. He’d thrown off the whole carefully planned apology she’d formulated, and now she was stuck with the altogether not-unpleasant-enough task of watching him cook.

“Would you fancy a bit of help?” she asked, nearly desperate to say something.

And to be needed would be nice, she thought before she could stop that particularly dangerous idea. To be needed just a little bit.

It’s only Harry that’s bothering you, she told herself as she waited for his answer. At the moment, he seemed to be far too busy settling a ham big enough to feed forty-five people atop the stove. Finally, once he’d managed that seemingly Herculean task, he turned to her.

“I’m doing fine,” he snapped, annoyed with her presence, annoyed with her bloody apology, and annoyed with the prospect that she’d have had a very clear view of his arse only moments ago, if she’d cared to look, and of course, she didn’t because she was hung up on Potter and a bloody prude, to boot. “Besides, how am I to know you’ve any culinary skills?”

“I cooked dinner for you just nights ago,” Ginny retorted, stepping forward to nudge the ham to the side so it didn’t drip all over the pudding perched beside it. “And while it may not have been the most memorable cuisine you’ve ever had, I’d think certainly you could remember it.”

“Perhaps I could,” Draco said, putting his quilted-mittened hands to his hips and glowering down at her. “If there hadn’t been other things going on.”

How tempting would it be, he wondered, to just kiss her right here, where they were face-to-face and she wouldn’t be taken by surprise, where it was already warm and heady from the smell of her added to the smell of what he’d cooked?

So easy, he thought, trying to hold onto that scowl.

“We are not having sex,” Ginny said matter-of-factly.

“Well, no, not right at this given moment,” Draco said back, cursing inwardly. She was a ball-breaker if ever he’d seen one. Pansy at least made a man feel like a king before asserting her queenliness.

And what the bloody blue blazes did it matter to him what sort of activities Ginny Weasley got up to with balls, anyhow? It wasn’t as though he wanted her mucking about with his.

Though the thought nudged the temperature in the kitchen up incrementally.

“Tonight!” Ginny exclaimed exasperatedly. “We are not having sex tonight! Or any other night, for that matter!”

“Except the other night,” Draco shot, wanting to wrap his gloved hands around her neck and throttle her.

Why in hell was he still wearing those gloves?

No wonder she didn’t want to shag him.

“We are not having sex any night in the future,” Ginny said through her teeth, wondering how the conversation had managed to get so single-tracked and completely off the level at which she’d intended to keep it. Respectful, she’d told herself. Apologetic.

Not snappish and juvenile.

“Well, you may have already gone through your entire repertoire,” Draco said, shoving past her with potatoes and slamming them on the massive table in the dining room, “But I assure you, I have not.”

He didn’t really know what had gotten into him, only that he agreed with her, and it brassed him off to no foreseeable end. It was all well and good for him to decide things had been a glitch, and that things, such as they were, were over. But it was certainly not all right for her to decide it and be in total agreement with thoughts he hadn’t even voiced yet.

Those were his thoughts, damn it. And he’d thought women were supposed to cling after sex, not proclaim their independence. He was afraid he’d chosen the wrong woman in whom to seek old-fashioned behavior traits.

So, just because it was his prerogative, as a Malfoy and as a man, he did what seemed most rational to him.

He decided to switch sides completely and disagree with her.

Just for the sake of argument.

Not because he really thought they should have sex. He made a ham, after all. They’d have ham.

He was losing his mind.

“Draco, honestly, I’m not trying to make this difficult.” Ginny eyed him slamming dishes onto the table like a man possessed and wondered if perhaps he’d spent too much time in the heated kitchen. He looked positively feverish, if not downright mad. “I’m certainly not trying to offend you—”

“Careful, Ginevra, if you’re worried about offending me, you might actually end up liking me, Merlin forbid,” Draco said, throwing down a handful of silverware and trying to remember in what idiotic configuration the house elves had been setting it in. It seemed as though every week, the silver took on a new placement in order to “facilitate good fortune,” one of them had proclaimed, much to Narcissa’s delight and Draco’s disgust.

He grasped a fork between the thumb and hand portion of the quilted mitten and dropped it on the floor.

Just watching him was painful, Ginny thought, and wondered why. It had to be the horrible clumsiness in the kitchen, ineptitude of a magnitude she’d never witnessed, not even in Ron. She stepped forward, shaking her head, and grasped the ends of the mitts he had on, drawing them off and laying them to the table.

Before she could pull her hands away, he had them trapped in his.

Now he was comfortable, he thought. With his hands on hers, and that wary look in her eyes, he felt much more in control. And just to be contrary, just for argument’s sake, he wondered if he could make her warier.

He skimmed his lips over the backs of her hands and waited to see what happened.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN - Overnighter

Ginny let her eyelids droop, let herself feel the sensation of his lips, surprisingly soft against the backs of her hands. For the moment, it didn’t matter who he was, who she was, with whom she’d been.

It didn’t even matter what had already transpired between them.

She felt something within her stir, and she opened her eyes wide. Ginny jerked her hands away from him and pressed them to her cheeks, which were suddenly heated, searing hot like the oven behind them.

Draco reached for her again, his brow furrowed in annoyance at her impertinent interruption. He’d wanted to pull her closer, wanted to kiss her just to try it out when they weren’t both scratching at one another. He’d be hexed if he’d let her stop him.

“Don’t,” Ginny said quietly, seeing the determined intent in his eyes. “Please.” She was willing to beg, if it would stop him from going through insincere motions of tenderness. She wouldn’t be played the fool. She had allowed him to use her anger to trigger her lust, but she wouldn’t allow him to use her loneliness the same way.

“Why not?” He sounded every inch the petulant, spoiled brat he’d once been. Really, only moments before he’d thought touching her the very epitome of a bad idea. Now, however, he had changed his mind. That was well within his right, wasn’t it?

Even if she did look so… broken.

“I’ve never known you to act in any way you didn’t mean,” Ginny said, taking several steps back and sitting in one of the dining room chairs. “I beg of you, don’t start now. I think—”

“There’s the problem,” Draco said, unable to keep the snide remark in check. He held up a hand before she could continue her protest—tirade, barricade, his mind supplied a dozen similar words. “We’ll eat,” he said, but she wasn’t nearly daft—or flustered—enough to miss that it wasn’t a concession.

She hoped, after some food, some conversation, he’d forget that tiny detail.

He refused to let her help serve, instead making a complete mess of things while stubbornly trying to carve the ham. A dozen scourgifies and a mangled ham later, he’d managed to fashion a half-dozen usable slices.

Seeing him struggle was almost enough to lift her spirits.

Ginny kept her eyes on her plate and took a bite, careful to keep her face blank. She didn’t want to provoke his ego or his ire, depending on the condition of the food he’d prepared. He’d worked so hard, she was likely to compliment him even if—

“Bloody hell!” Her head snapped up at his epithet and she looked at him just in time to see him toss his fork down and snatch his goblet of wine, gulping it down. “What in Rowena’s realm is wrong with that?”

Ginny watched him watching her as she sampled a bite. With some difficulty, she managed to chew and swallow. “I think,” she finally managed, “You may have gotten carried away with whatever you used for a glaze.” The ham was cloyingly sweet, the outer part of it tasting almost candied.

She took a sip of her wine and watched as his face turned a dangerous shade of red. His expression was completely unreadable, and she couldn’t determine if he was embarrassed, angry, or simply upset. “Here, hang on,” she said, suddenly feeling quite awful for him. He was trying, she couldn’t fault him for that.

It was just that he was trying too many things.

Unthinkingly, she leaned across the table, took his knife and fork up from where he’d dropped them, and began to cut the edges off his ham. It was something her mother would have done for any of the children, or even for her husband if he looked to be daydreaming too much to do it himself.

Draco watched her, the hard blush of pure frustration fading from his cheeks as she made short work of the ham he’d cut. He wanted to be offended that she was touching his plate, but instead he was simply fascinated.

She kept her neck craned stiffly as though to keep the hair from falling over her shoulders, her thin, pale wrists just peeking from the belled sleeves of her jumper as she crossed his knife over his fork and set them on the edge of his plate.

He wanted to reach out a finger just to stroke the fragile-looking bone at the joint of her wrist, but instead he nodded stiffly. “I could have done that, you know,” he stated, but it lacked the heat it usually did. Instead of snapping back, she simply shrugged and sat back down.

After a silence tense enough to cut right along with the ham, Ginny giggled. She bit her lip when he looked up at her, but it was as though a dam had broken. She shook her head, picking up her wine and holding it in front of her face like a shield so he couldn’t see her.

Like anyone uncertain of a situation, he immediately assumed she was laughing at him, but her head-shaking negations indicated otherwise. Finally, when she’d calmed down save for a few spurts of giggles, she spoke.

“If we’re lacking for dessert, we can just have this glaze.”

It was getting difficult for Draco to keep up. It was quite uncommon for a woman to come to his house, apologize for shagging him, completely reject him, and then make a joke at his expense.

He really wasn’t sure what he thought of that, exactly. “I can’t be perfect at everything,” he finally settled on stating, surprised when her laughter tapered off into a smile without even the smallest retort.

She wondered if he’d have been able to admit that when they were still at Hogwarts.

“Pansy’s an interesting woman,” Ginny said, busying herself by taking a helping of potatoes that she’d just barely deemed edible. It seemed a safe enough topic.

She’d completely forgotten what she’d written in her owl.

“Pansy,” Draco drew the name out, putting volumes of meaning into the two syllables. In those two syllables, Ginny could hear love, detestation, impatience, worry, and… a question.

She didn’t want any questions.

“You mentioned her in your owl,” Draco said, rather pleased she’d managed to bring the subject around to matter a little less staid than the weather. “Unless you meant another employee of mine knew about us.”

“There is no ‘us’,” Ginny answered automatically. “Pansy seems to have a ridiculous notion to the contrary, however.” She took another bite of ham and was surprised to find herself enjoying it.

What she was not enjoying was the conversation.

“Why is that ridiculous?” He didn’t particularly appreciate her tone. It was as though entertaining even the idea of a relationship with him aroused her ridicule. He was Draco Malfoy, for Merlin’s sake. He had money. He had prestige. He was, no matter what Pansy said, much prettier than that Potter twit.

I’ve drunk too much too quickly, he judged, though he knew that was hardly the case. He was just… sick. He knew that already. It would pass.

“It’s just ridiculous, Draco. We barely know one another, and we can barely stand one another.” She couldn’t even feel embarrassed now. It was just sad and stupid that she’d allowed what she had, considering they couldn’t even come to an agreement over a meal.

“We had sex,” he stated flatly, as though that explained everything. He’d have figured, for someone like her, it would explain everything. She didn’t seem like the type to just casually shag a fellow and then stroll along.

“Everyone has sex,” Ginny nearly shouted, exasperated. Why had she even brought Pansy into the conversation?

“Everyone doesn’t have sex with me,” Draco said, his eyes narrowed as he sat back in his chair with his glass clasped in one hand. “So, Miss Weasley, it seems we’re at an impasse with our opinions.”

He watched her flounder, flush, and grow flustered, and Draco thought about how he always enjoyed regaining the upper hand.

~~~

How it turned into a debate, she didn’t know. She’d simply stated she thought they should come to a clear agreement about what they were—acquaintances—and what they weren’t—lovers.

But he had to get all hung up in the technicalities.

Her head was reeling from wine and argument and the heat of the fireplace and quite possibly a near-coma brought on by all the sugar he’d dumped into his food, and after sinking into one of the sinfully comfortable chairs in front of his fireplace with the proclamation, “One failed spell doesn’t make a Squib, and one fluke night doesn’t make lovers!”, she didn’t realize until eleven at night that she was swiftly losing ground in the argument and that it was, indeed, night.

The enormous clock on the wall sang the time in a sweet, alto voice, cutting a swathe through their clamoring voices.

Ginny started and sat up, setting her wine on the arm of the chair and almost toppling it off before Draco grabbed it. “Merlin’s knickers,” she breathed. “It’s that late already?

Draco wondered where a house elf was to take the glass from his hand and then cursed inwardly.

No house elves.

And all those dirty dishes were still on the table.

“It’s that late already,” he said finally. He’d been watching her the whole time, pleased with how she’d lashed back at him, with the gusto with which she argued. She seemed ebullient even in her annoyance, seemed whole for once. She was wrong in her side of things, of course, but it had been fun to argue with her. The wine had loosened her a bit, made her relax, cross her legs akimbo in his chair, her fingers mindlessly stroking the soft fabric of the arm as she made some point or other.

He’d watched the clock with half an eye, wondering if she’d notice the time. Now that she had, he regretted it, but he wasn’t going to swallow his pride and ask her to stay, not after the argument she’d just given him.

“I should go,” Ginny said, standing. She was proud of herself for not weaving. Her head felt a bit heavy.

Don’t be in such a hurry, he thought, crossing to the window to see what the weather was like.

“Oh, bugger,” he said, twitching back the heavy drapes. One of the big-eyed, wet-eared kids from the newspaper was sitting comfortably on the bench across the way, an improbably large camera slung around his neck.

He winked and waved at Draco, who shut the drapes quickly. How in the fuck had the little vulture known to come? Hadn’t they already gotten the photo ops they’d wanted?

“We’ve a problem,” Draco said slowly. “There’s a reporter practically resting his arse on my stoop. You walk out this door at nearly midnight, he’s going to start snapping shots.” His mind worked ahead quickly, and he muttered a curse under his breath. It was one thing to make an appearance at a gala, but an entire other realm for someone to be posting articles about his tawdry love life.

He wasn’t even getting any sex tonight, for Merlin’s sake, he’d be damned if they printed it. It was like rubbing his nose in it.

“I’ll Floo home,” Ginny said slowly, as though speaking to a small child. “Don’t be so overdramatic.”

“I’m only networked to my offices,” he said, rubbing his eyes.

“How social of you,” Ginny said, trying to hold the sarcasm at bay and not quite succeeding.

She did not want to be imprisoned here.

Of all the ways she could have stayed, this wasn’t quite what he’d imagined. Not that he’d been imagining her staying the night. Theoretically speaking, of course, this hadn’t been an option.

Bugger.

“You called the newspaper,” Ginny finally said, feeling quite sober suddenly. What would it look like if she were to walk out those doors? To her mum, her dad? To her brother? To Harry? “Unbelievable.”

“Yes!” Draco proclaimed. Shite, his confidence in his sexual prowess wasn’t so lacking he felt he needed to call for backup. “I was so intent on making you stay here that I called a bloody reporter. Get off it, Weasley, even shagging you isn’t worth risking my company’s image.”

Now why, she thought, should that hurt her feelings?

“I should have gone home—” When? She couldn’t even think of a pausing point in their conversation, they’d simply played off one another and let the whole thing snowball. It had gotten quite beyond their control, and now she was stuck in Malfoy Manor with the lord of the manor himself.

They stared at each other, Draco offended at her accusation and her blatant equation of staying a night there with a death sentence, and Ginny humiliated beyond any sense of words.

“I’m not sleeping with you,” Ginny finally said. He had dozens of rooms, he could spare one for her, certainly.

“I should think not. You’d probably smother me in my sleep,” Draco sneered in response.

Though smothering someone, he thought, sounded like a positively capital place to start when he next saw Pansy. Meddling bint.

Declaring you weren’t going to sleep with someone was all well and good, Ginny thought, if you weren’t entirely at his mercy.

But the fact of the matter was, she was at his mercy.

“Is this room good enough for you?” Draco asked, sweeping his arm in a wide arc to display the gratuitously resplendent room to which he’d led her. He hadn’t looked back at her once, instead choosing to stalk heel-toe down the hall in his polished black boots, his head down and his hands thrust in his pockets.

She didn’t feel it was an appropriate time to note how much he resembled Snape.

Now, she looked around at the bedroom and uttered a meek, “Yes,” feeling seven kinds of a heel. She should have insisted on sleeping on the divan instead of putting herself in his debt. But no, she hadn’t thought of that, she’d simply followed him like some sort of subservient twit.

He pushed past her, careful not to touch her as he did so, knowing if he did he’d likely just go mad, but he couldn’t turn and walk down the hallway.

She was staring at him.

“What?” he asked, throwing his hands in the air. “And if you’re recanting your refusal to sleep with me, don’t bother.”

It was as though he’d turned into a petulant thirteen-year-old. He couldn’t seem to help himself.

She mumbled something under her breath, looking none too mature herself, scooting her foot along the carpet, her head ducked down, the thick curtain of her hair stirring slightly as she toed off her shoe and buried her toes into the deep pile.

“Speak up, Weasley, you’ve never had any trouble with it beforehand.” He hated that she was appealing like this, just as appealing as she was when she was sniping at him, and worlds more appealing than she had been at the gala, when she’d been coming onto him obviously and intentionally.

Her natural self just worked better.

And for the moment, he wasn’t even going to touch the thought of being attracted to the Weaslette as she truly was.

“I said I need something to wear for pyjamas,” Ginny said, looking up at him and shoving her hair back from her face. “I’d transfigure what I’m wearing, but they’re Muggle-bought—”

He snorted, unsurprised.

“—and they don’t transfigure for shite,” she said loudly, over any comments he might feel inspired to make.

“Help yourself to whatever’s in the closet,” he said, feeling his stomach twist as he said it. “Bathroom’s there to the left of the bed. I’ll be down the hall a few rooms down—” If you need anything. If you change your mind. “So if you decide to sneak out, do it quietly so you don’t wake me.”

There. That felt much better.

But her mind was already racing ahead to the closet, and Ginny crossed her arms over her chest. “Fine,” she said tersely, imagining the closet full of robes and gowns and naughty nighties from his past ingénues and ‘overnight guests.’ He was probably stocked to the gills with things in which to dress his tarts, and why that made her angry, she simply couldn’t say.

She stalked over to the closet and jerked it open, not giving two damns if he was still standing there or not.

Ginny was left standing dumbfounded, her mouth hanging slightly agape, and she dimly registered he couldn’t be standing there any longer, because if he had been, he’d certainly have something to say about the daft expression on her face.

The closet was filled from left to right with men’s robes, from casual to business to dress, alternated with crisp white shirts and perfectly pressed slacks.

No nighties.

Taking out a hanger holding a white shirt, Ginny turned and surveyed the room one more time. It was a large room, the bed in the middle a large, ebony four-poster. The duvet was a deep green with a gold pattern running through it, matching the drapes and carpet. It looked like a guest room, as immaculate as it was, but why on earth would he have his robes in the guest room?

Because he’s a spoiled brat. Probably every closet in this house is filled with his things. Ginny sighed, knowing how far off the mark that assessment likely was.

It didn’t matter. It was his house. He could fill it with neckties is he chose to, and she had no say in the matter.

She ran one hand down the length of the closet, left to right, enjoying the feel of the material under her fingers, but enjoying more the smell of him, faint but there, that rose up to her nostrils.

Robe, shirt, slacks, robe, shirt, slacks. She got to the end of the closet after what seemed like ages—it wasn’t enchanted, only a very large closet—and expected to brush her fingertips over a pair of flawlessly folded slacks.

Instead, what she encountered was another shirt, softer than the starched ones she’d laid hands to; her curiosity got the better of her and she tugged it free.

A dove-grey shirt with a dull red stain on the sleeve.

She looks into his eyes before she tilts the glass, feeling frantic and trapped—

Unconsciously, her stroking fingers turned to a fist, balling the material up in her hand. He’d kept it and not cleaned it. She could think of no reason why, but she could think of no reason why they persisted in this strange little dance with one another. Dinners with one another as though they were peers, equals, as though they’d not stood on uneven, rocky ground since even before their births. Ground stained with the hatred of years, made even bloodier by the enmity they’d willingly carried throughout their school years, hexes and insults, hurtful words and harmful intentions.

For the first time since the whole absurd thing had started, Ginny wondered what those years had been like for him.

“First impressions are important. But no one is as they seem on a first impression, you know?”

Ginny heard Pansy’s words in her head and heaved a sigh. Which impression was she supposed to remember, then? The boy who had taunted her, the man who had taken her on her own kitchen table, or the man who had struggled his way through cooking her dinner, only to put it all down and lay his lips to her hands?

Before she fully registered what she was doing or why, she had shed her jumper and shrugged into his shirt, closing her eyes as the material slid close to her skin, clung to her curves. Her long skirt followed, no longer necessary as the shirt came mid-thigh on her, and she climbed into the big bed, feeling small in more ways than one.

“Thank you,” she whispered to no one in particular, and she closed her eyes.

~~~

She’s feeling ecstatic—there’s simply no other word for it. She’s told everyone she knows about the engagement, else she’d be Flooing or owling to someone else, shouting it off the rooftops.

She’s going to marry Harry Potter.

It isn’t as though it’s a surprise—they’ve been together for over a year, living together (unofficially, of course) for most of that time. But there are so many things to be done, she can hardly wrap her head around them. There are things to decide, place, colors, theme, date. There are clothes to consider, and food and flowers…

There are invitations to think of, relations she hasn’t seen in forever. She’ll have to treat that sensitively, she knows, for Harry’s family—

Well, Harry’s family will be there, she thinks firmly. Hagrid and Remus and Dumbledore, McGonagall and Tonks and Kingsley.

She needs to write these down before the time comes, because she doesn’t want him to feel as though he has no one.

He is Harry Potter, she thinks, setting quill to paper. There are so many people who love him, she thinks his invitation list shall end up being longer than hers.

She hears the door slam and she slams the small leatherbound journal at the same time, not wanting him to see that she’s planning for him, knowing the thought of family inevitably touches his heart, makes him sad.

“Hello, love,” he greets her, unwinding the scarf from around his neck and bending down to kiss her. “What’s that, then?”

Ginny scoots the book closer to her and smiles up at him. But he’s not smiling back.

“Just a journal, Harry.” She sees the concern flicker over his features, sees his brow furrow just where his scar is, and she feels her breath leave her.

Just a journal.

A diary, if you will.

“Oh, Harry,” she sighs, and she wants to laugh but can’t find it in her. That particular corner of laughter, she thinks, has been stolen long ago, by another young man with dark hair and intense eyes, with a destiny bigger than his adolescent body could hold.

She reaches out a hand to him with the fear he won’t take it, but he does, laying his cheek to it. “You must think I’m stupid,” he says quietly, and she stays silent.

You must think I’m evil, she thinks, and she closes her eyes.

First impressions.

~~~

He slept poorly.

There were any number of reasons for that, but he thought he’d just settle squarely on the fact that she was sleeping under his roof. That was reason enough to sleep poorly. A Weasley sleeping in Malfoy Manor. Perhaps there was some sort of curse against him. Any Malfoy who let a Mudblood-loving redheaded fool sleep under his roof was cursed to a sleepless night.

Blast her, she’d been responsible for quite a few of his restless nights, and it had only been… what? A week? Week and a half?

He refused to pluck his watch up off the bedside table, knowing it would be the hundredth time he’d done so. Refusal or no, however, his hand was midway to the silver watch when he heard a noise. He froze, not out of fear, but to better listen.

A few moments, a gasp, and a noise again. A sob.

A sob?

Imagination, he told himself, the timepiece forgotten in his vigil. A whimper added to the gasp, and another sob.

She was crying.

He was out of bed before he even knew why, trying to determine what would be making her cry. Was she having a nightmare? Did she want to go home? Had someone hurt her?

Never mind there was no one in the house but the two of them.

He let himself into the bedroom without knocking, feeling a foreign sort of bloodrush any Gryffindor could have identified as chivalry. A glance at the bed told him she wasn’t there and his face went hot with panic.

Calm down, he derided himself. Check the loo.

He leaned against the door with a bit more force than was necessary, seeing as how she hadn’t locked it, and he stumbled on the slick marble tile when the door flew inward.

For a moment, he couldn’t find her—Why is this bathroom so fucking big? he asked himself for the first time in his entire life—and then he spotted her, sitting between the claw-foot tub and the basin, her bare legs folded up, her knees to her chest. Had he been the least bit inclined to, he could have seen her knickers, but the thought never occurred to him.

She had him pinned with those eyes of hers, huge and dark and still streaming tears. Her hair was a tangled mess about her face and the arms of the shirt—his shirt—were wet with tears.

“Get out,” she said finally, turning her face away from him. To be found like this by anyone was humiliating enough, but to be found like this by him… well, it just topped off the entire experience.

“No. ’S my house,” he said sullenly, feeling somehow threatened by her tears. What was he supposed to do? His options, he thought, were fairly limited.

Ginny looked up at him, tears momentarily stopped, eyes wide. Harry had never, not once, disobeyed her when he’d found her like this.

He’d always turned and walked out and soothed her later, after the fact. He had held her and told her everything was fine when he hadn’t a clue what the actual problem was.

“What’s the matter, then?” Draco asked impatiently. He crossed his arms, then decided that looked too rude, so he put his hands on his hips. Too effeminate. Clasping hands behind the back? Coy. Shoving his hands through his hair? He gave that one a try. It felt damned good, so he did it again.

She couldn’t believe the gall of him. The sheer and utter gall to burst into the bedroom he’d given over for the night, and to come into the loo like a madman and confront her when she was barely dressed.

Which of them was madder, she wondered? Him with his hair standing on end or her with her tears for someone she had left of her own volition?

“Nothing I think you could begin to comprehend,” she finally said, trying to get off the floor with a little bit of grace. She hadn’t been able to help it, hadn’t been able to stop the tears. It was the first time she’d dreamed about it, and suitably, she’d dreamed about the first time it had happened, the first time she’d seen the chasm that lay between her and Harry.

There had been times after, of course, when people would ask questions about how he defeated Voldemort, or when Harry, Ron, and Hermione would talk about those years past, about the things they had done, the ways they’d narrowly saved the day.

“You’re sitting half-starkers on my bathroom floor,” Draco said, figuring now it was appropriate to cross his arms at her. “I’ll perform intellectual acrobatics, if I must, to try and comprehend why this is the case.”

It was his tone, haughty and superior, condescending, that had her pushing herself off the floor and launching herself at him.

She pushed him, making him uncross his arms and stumble back a bit before righting himself. When he did so, she ducked her head and pushed him again, her hair whipping around her, the rolled-up sleeves of his shirt—he saw now all too well what shirt she’d chosen, and he damned himself for keeping it—falling down and flapping down over her fists in swinging swathes of cloth.

“Do you have any idea what it’s like to be with someone who is better than you in every conceivable way? Someone who looks faultless next to you? Someone with whom you will never be an equal, to whom you will always be suspect?” She punctuated her tirade by pushing at him, though her force had greatly decreased and she was doing little more than pounding her cloth-covered fists on his chest.

He kept his arms at his sides simply because he wanted to touch her. His hands itched to catch her fists, to stop her tirade for her own sake. He looked at her in his bedroom, in his bathroom, in his shirt, and he thought about the rhetorical questions she’d just asked him.

“Yes,” he said softly as she hung her head and left her hands resting in tiny fists on his chest. “I have some of idea of what that must be like.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN – Trustworthy

Once the words were out of his mouth, he wished he could take them back. Wished, in fact, he could Obliviate her so she wouldn’t recall those words and possibly connect them to herself ever.

What was he thinking?

He looked at her, so close to being in his arms that all he had to do was raise them and wrap them around her, and he knew he wasn’t thinking at all.

Blessedly—and oh, he could apply that word to so few aspects of his life at the moment—she did not seem to notice what he had said. If she did, she did a marvelous job of completely ignoring it, which only served to make him more irritated.

It was as though he had run totally mad, Draco thought. Foaming at the mouth mad.

Ginny stepped back from him, pressing her hands to her eyes. Oh heavens, had she really just done that? She’d fallen apart, shoved him around. She’d told him what had made her leave Harry.

She hadn’t told anyone that.

“I—I need to leave. I should go.” Humiliation branded her cheeks, guilt and terror. She was only here because of Harry, after all. She was only here because she’d needed some way to make Harry hate her, and Draco had seemed an easy way. As long as Harry hated her, he wouldn’t hurt for her.

She didn’t think it had worked. Oh, of course, Harry probably did hate her now. But he’d probably never hurt for her.

She turned away from Draco, feeling as though her head was being squeezed in a great, unwavering vice, as though she’d swallowed Pepper-Up Potion and corked her mouth and her ears so all the steam and heat boiled and bubbled in her stomach.

Jumper, skirt, shoes. She gathered them against her chest with one arm, swiping at her eyes with her other hand so she wouldn’t be blinded by her own tears. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Confiding in Draco Malfoy was probably the dumbest thing she could imagine doing.

Other than confiding in Lord Voldemort. A hysterical little laugh left her lips and she turned to head for the door, ready to bolt—

And ran straight into him.

“Sorry,” she said, keeping her head down. She’d probably made him hate her, as well. It wouldn’t be much of a stretch, really—Malfoys had always hated Weasleys—and he was a smart man, certainly he could tell when he’d been used.

A hand grasped each of her forearms and she winced. “Dammit, that hurts,” she spat, turning her eyes up to his. “I’m leaving, you don’t have to manhandle me.”

At the anger, he felt a surge of relief, ridiculous and sweet. He didn’t think he liked watching her with her head bowed in shame. In shyness, perhaps—somehow that suited her—but shame? It made him sick to his stomach to watch her wiping her tears away and stumbling about his bedroom like a woman possessed.

Fucking Potter, Draco thought for what must have been the millionth time in his life. Stupid, fucking, scarred… Scarhead.

“That’s better,” Draco said, giving her a little shake. “You’ll not leave. It’s half two in the morning, and you’re—” Upset. “Undressed,” he said thoughtlessly, swallowing the lump in his throat.

Now that he’d said it, her state of undress was too prevalent to ignore, those long, freckled legs stretching below the hem of his shirt, her slightly knobby knees, the blue veins that ran haphazard over her pale feet.

“What on earth would you want to leave for?” he managed irritably, cursing himself for not providing her with a bloody robe or something. Hadn’t she any shame? He wished she would grab a sheet off the bed and wrap it ‘round herself, but she seemed unperturbed by her own nudity.

He wondered if she was ticklish behind her knees.

Upset woman! he reminded himself forcibly, snatching his hands away from her arms and stepping back as though burned. Not the time to be testing her funny spots. That little voice in his head sounded panicked, and he didn’t like that one bit.

Ginny pushed her hair from her eyes and sighed. Of course he’d make her state it out boldfaced. A man like him wasn’t satisfied with knowing he was in the right, he had to hear it. “Because I shouldn’t be here, Draco. I wouldn’t even have approached you if—if—”

Damn it all, she couldn’t do it. She was afraid to hurt his feelings, and she thought about what he’d said earlier in the evening.

“Careful, Ginevra, if you’re worried about offending me, you might actually end up liking me.”

“If you hadn’t been playing a part for Potter’s sake?” He rolled his eyes and crossed to a bureau, opening a drawer without looking and throwing a pair of flannel pyjama bottoms at her. He watched her fumble the pants, nearly drop them, and turn big eyes up to him.

Damn her and those big eyes.

“You wouldn’t have been here if I hadn’t been looking for a bit of revenge against Potter myself,” he said tightly, and he couldn’t help wondering if he’d told her that to put her in her place, or if he’d told her that because those big doe eyes of hers made her feel like being honest. Truly, they made him feel a hell of a lot more than that.

Ginny rubbed the soft fabric between her hands unthinkingly—it would not occur to her until later that she was stroking an article of clothing that would ordinarily have been on his body—and stared past him at the bureau.

The bureau, the closet, the décor of the bedroom.

“This is your room,” she said stupidly, balling the pants in her fists and tangling her fingers in the ties at the waist.

Draco imagined her tangling her fingers in those ties while he was wearing the bottoms and nearly threw her on the bed. His bed. “So?” His tone was a great deal more defensive than it would have been if she’d simply gone and covered her legs up.

When she continued to stare at him, all daft like the Weasley she was, he took her by the arm once more. “Come on,” he said roughly. “You need a good stiff—” Snog? Shag? Fuck? “Drink,” he croaked.

Dazed, Ginny leaned down and put on the pants one leg at a time, stumbling a little as he dragged her toward another room in the house. She hadn’t precisely thought it through ahead of time, though having him look back while she was one-leg-in, one-leg-out of the pants wasn’t exactly bolstering.

Now, he thought, he was in a good frame of mind to check out her knickers. Blue, he thought cheerily, grinding his teeth. Brilliant.

She seemed to hear his thoughts, her cheeks turning red again, and he turned away, releasing her and leading the way to his study without taking a single glance back at his unmade bed, the sheets rumpled from her body and from her sleep.

Damn it.

Ginny followed after him, trying to find the appropriate words. Nothing seemed appropriate. She’d nearly berated him all night, he’d stayed civil. She had more or less accused him of wanting nothing more than sex, and he’d offered her his room. She had fallen to pieces on his bathroom floor, and he offered her a drink.

Something was not quite on here.

Suddenly suspicious, she followed him into the study. Her suspicions were forgotten as she looked around the massive room and caught her breath.

There was a serpentine silver wine rack in one corner of the room, nearly two dozen identical bottles perched in its decorative grasp; the bookshelf beside it held ten pristine copies of Harlan Humdinger’s Dirty Quidditch: A Guide to Bending the Rules (And Your Broom!). A long shelf along the wall held bottle after bottle of Fairywing Firewhisky, and below that, a multi-tiered broom rack displayed eight specimens of the same broom.

Her discomfort was forgotten in the face of her curiosity, and she couldn’t help the openmouthed gape that came as she turned in a circle, taking in the room. “Draco?” she asked, his name drawn out curiously as she saw that each item was replicated.

Draco put a hand on his desk and sighed, closing his eyes. He was tired, damn it all, and he was more than a little frustrated. He hadn’t exactly thought about the repercussions of bringing her here, to his space, about the questions. He was just so used to it. “It’s nothing,” he said tersely, pulling down a bottle of Firewhisky and wistfully wishing he could down the entire thing.

“Are you going to replace that tomorrow?” Ginny asked, partly curious and partly chiding. This was an idiosyncrasy if she’d ever seen one, and she’d never considered Draco Malfoy might have quirks aside from his general pratishness.

Somehow, it made him more human.

“Yes,” he snapped, hitting the neck of the bottle more sharply against the glass than he’d intended. “I am. What of it?” As she crossed to him, he thrust the glass in her hand and poured himself one.

Ginny’s brow furrowed and she tried to catch his eye, but to no avail. He tossed back his drink and looked expectantly at her. “You were the one with the delicate nerves, Weasley, the least you could do is make a token effort to dispel your nocturnal depression.”

He felt like a fool when he saw her stricken expression, but she drank the inch in her glass in two steady swallows, and when she regarded him over her empty glass, her eyes were dry and steady.

“‘Delicate nerves’?” she repeated. “More like…” She trailed off, uncertain of what she felt.

“Broken heart?” he snorted, debating on whether to pour another glass or not. “Surely leaving someone who was too foolish to trust you isn’t worth all that. Worse, I should think, to stay with someone who doesn’t trust you.” Trustless relationships, he thought. The entire span of his youth had been spent on those sorts of relationships, and the world of business was no more earnest.

“No worse than conversing—or more—with someone who doesn’t trust me,” she said, looking at him pointedly. And whom I don’t trust. She didn’t say it, but it was easily implied.

“Who says I don’t trust you?” Draco asked, sliding one leg onto his desk and looking as comfortable and commanding, Ginny thought, as he would have in dress robes.

His question made her want to squirm. She should have just run when she’d had the chance, and not looked back. There was something dangerous about this sort of conversation. Something more intimate than holding him between her thighs on her kitchen table.

He rocked the tumbler back and forth in one hand, watching the way the light caught it instead of watching her reaction. He didn’t want to see her reaction.

He simply wanted her to see her precious Potter could be wrong.

“I’ve had few occasions in my life to know a trustworthy person,” he said slowly, fighting the urge to look her in the eyes. “But I’d certainly say you qualify.”

Her glass came into his field of vision as she set it atop the desk blotter, and when he finally looked up, her face was unreadable. “I think I can sleep now,” Ginny said softly, pressing her lips together to keep from crying. Why cry? It felt foolish and ridiculous to be so upset.

She was bloody well tired of being upset.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN - Earning Trust

She left the study before he could see her reaction—it was simply her eyes watering from the spirits, that was all, she’d not cry over his profession of trust, for Merlin’s sake—and she wended her way back to the bedroom, his bedroom, with ease.

It completely slipped past her notice that he was right behind her.

She reached the bedroom door and stepped inside, ready to turn and close it, lock it, lock herself in and… and what? Lock him out?

She really saw no need for that.

Perhaps she trusted him in return.

Trust or no, a scream jolted up from her lungs as she saw him standing in the doorway, preventing her from closing it. “I’m fine,” she insisted, holding onto the doorknob tightly. He was staring at her with those silver eyes, and it was disconcerting, the way he was looking at her purposefully.

“Maybe,” he said, shouldering his way into the room and putting his hand over hers. For a moment, she left her hand where it was, her head swimming, and then she realized he wasn’t doing it to touch her.

He was doing it because he wanted a grip on the doorknob.

She jerked her hand away without thinking of what would happen next, her cheeks hot. Would he never stop embarrassing her? There was something so prurient in every mood he made, she felt indecent just being in his presence.

When he stayed inside the room and shut the door, she raised an eyebrow.

When he locked it, her jaw dropped open.

“What are you doing?” She crossed her arms over his chest, pressing the fabric of his shirt against her bare breasts and ruthlessly ignoring how soft it felt. A few steps backward would give her some space, she warranted, only she nearly stumbled over the too-long legs of the pants he’d given her.

His pants.

His bedroom, his bathroom, his shirt, his pants.

He didn’t have to try to consume her. He already had.

She frowned and turned slightly away from him, needing a bit of herself back as she waited for him to answer her.

“Maybe you can sleep,” Draco said, biting off the words tersely. She was edging away from him like she was scared of him. It was ludicrous. “But I can’t. That’s my bed you’ve got there, and I intend to sleep in it. It’s big enough for the both of us.”

She let out an affronted huff.

“We won’t even have to touch,” Draco said, his voice all manufactured sweetness and eye-rolling sarcasm. “Your virtue, or whatever is left of it, can go the night untarnished.”

“I’ll be the keeper of my virtue, I thank you,” Ginny retorted, and to prove it, she shucked off the pants he’d given her and threw them at him. “I don’t need those,” she added, mimicking his faux sweetness.

He caught them high because she’d thrown them high, and when he clasped his hands around the soft material right in front of his face, he regretted it. She’d been wearing them fifteen, twenty minutes at most, and they already smelled like her.

I am Draco Malfoy, he thought, but the confidence that statement usually carried was gone. So he added to it with a sentence he knew to be true. I am a masochist.

So he extinguished the lights and climbed into bed as she climbed in on the other side.

Ginny turned her back to the middle of the bed, her hands tucked up under her cheeks. He was silent as he pressed the bed down with his weight, but the room felt warmer with him there, and somehow less… empty.

If she could only fall asleep, she thought she would not dream of Harry.

But her thoughts were racing, tumbling one over the other, and she knew she would find no slumber as long as she was thinking about the past week, about the things he’d said, about the things she’d said.

“Do you have any idea what it’s like to be with someone who is better than you in every conceivable way?

“Yes, I have some of idea of what that must be like.”

“I’ve had few occasions in my life to know a trustworthy person.”

She fought the absurd urge to cover her ears, as though the voices were real, audible.

He did not stir behind her, and she hated him a little for that. She felt like tossing and turning, why didn’t he? He’d been just as much a party to what had happened between them as she. He shouldn’t be restful.

She wanted him to be stirred up, if only just a little.

Draco laid with his hands behind his head and wished she would quit sighing. It was putting him on edge, those little sighs. What could she be thinking of, to sound so?

Likely bloody Potter, he thought uncharitably, and he resisted the absurd urge to reach over and give her something else to be preoccupied about.

He already knew how she reacted, how she responded to him. It would only take a touch to put her mind on him, he knew.

Only a touch.

So he kept his damned hands to himself and thought of all the names he’d like to call her.

“Draco?”

It slipped by him at first, unheard over the mental rant he was executing just to make himself feel better.

“Draco?”

A bit more insistent this time, accompanied by a shift of the large bed that told him she’d rolled over. He bit his tongue for an instant and reminded himself of all the self-control he had.

“You said you could sleep,” he answered coolly, staying on his back.

He would not turn to face her.

He would not turn to face her.

When he was certain of that, he congratulated himself inwardly and waited for her response.

“Did you mean it?” Ginny worried at her lip and wished for a little more light in the room, or a little less. She could see his profile, see the rise and fall of his chest under the thin white undershirt he wore, but she could not read his expression. She could see the pallor of his hair lit by moonlight, but no more than that. It would be so much easier to simply say what she wanted or decide to shut up if only she could see him completely or not at all.

He waited, not saying anything, half hoping she’d quit her nattering and fall asleep so he could lie where he was and breathe in her scent, and half hoping she would finish her sentence without any encouragement.

“Did you mean it when you said you trusted me?”

She sounded so far away. He wanted to roll over and pull her toward him so he could better hear her, but he stayed perfectly still. “I don’t waste time saying things I don’t mean.”

Ginny closed her eyes and drew in a breath, one that was a great deal lighter than it should have been. When was the last time she’d felt truly trusted?

Her brothers had never trusted her. Loved her, yes, but trusted her? She was a girl, to be protected and sheltered, not confided in. Not entrusted with the truly important things in life.

Her parents? They loved her, as well, certainly. But she’d never been allowed to fight as her brothers had, and she’d never been told the things they had been told.

She could go on for days if she truly thought about it, but she didn’t want to.

She simply wanted to think about this, now. A man who should have had no idea what trust truly was trusted her.

Draco nearly jumped out of his skin when a hand—not his own—lit lightly on his stomach, the fingers testing the weight through the thin cotton of his shirt.

“What are you--?”

He struggled to sit up, only to have her push him back gently, her face now near his, her hair tickling one of his arms. “Just trust me,” she said, and unless he was much mistaken, she was taking some sort of joy out of handing his admission back to him.

She kissed him as though testing herself and him both, as though trying to find something, to figure something out, and he struggled to keep his hands where they were. She needed this somehow, and he figured he would let her have it. There was a determination in her voice, a promise behind the way she sucked lightly on his bottom lip before releasing it at the end of the kiss, that told him he didn’t need to hurry things.

Her hands moved over his chest, rubbing over his muscles and the hard points of his nipples in a way that should have been innocent but was anything but. She squeezed here and there—testing again—and scraped gentle fingernails over his shoulders, against the skin of his arms.

He watched her explore, kept his eyes open as she placed tight-lipped kisses against his cheeks, against his chin, the moonlight making her hair an odd violet color, shifting to redder then bluer as she moved.

She pressed a kiss to his forehead, her hair tickling his ears and his nose, and then she moved her way down once more, kissing his lips. He wondered what she tasted there, and when she sighed and moved closer to him, sliding a leg over one of his, he stifled a groan.

Surely she knew what she was doing. She had to know.

He trusted her to know.

She felt powerful.

She knew he could stop her anytime he wanted to, knew he could take control of the situation as easily as he’d taken control of her at her own home, but he wasn’t doing it. He wasn’t going to. She moved her hands to the hem of his shirt, not ready to remove it; she lifted her wrists and ran only her fingernails over the slim strip of flesh exposed between shirt and pants, watching in the dim light the muscles there jump and flutter at her faint touch.

She scratched a circle lightly around his navel, her eyes widening as he sucked in a breath and made his stomach a concave fascination of muscles and ridges and unsteady shudders.

“Ginny…” It wasn’t an inquiry, wasn’t an interruption, he just needed that one word, needed to reassure himself who was touching him, whose fingers were even now moving over his ribs, slipping cool and uncertain under his shirt.

She did not answer with words, but instead moved both down and over, positioning her legs between his so she could move more freely, so she could touch closed lips to his stomach, so she could feel the crisp, gold hairs there bristling against her lips.

Draco took a handful of the pillowcase in each hand, his head tilted up slightly so he could watch her—Merlin, could he really stand to watch her torturous exploration?—as she pushed his shirt up inch by inch. She nudged her nose along the line running the middle of his abdomen, separating the muscles there, smelling him, elemental and male and faint cologne that made her want to weep somehow.

This was how he smelled, she thought.

This was how he looked and tasted and smelled when he let his guard down.

Something in her teetered and she ignored it ruthlessly, pushing his shirt higher and listening to his breath quicken as she did.

He felt his pulse accelerate and marveled at it a bit. He wasn’t aroused—not yet, not really—but he felt if he didn’t move right now, if he didn’t speak or shout or shudder, he was going to fall apart.

But he checked it mercilessly, feeling himself start to tremble beneath her hesitant touch.

Ginny found herself face to face with him once again as she pulled his shirt over his arms, and she couldn’t resist kissing him again, looking in those eyes and not caring what he was thinking.

She propped one hand on the pillow next to his head, moving her thumb back and forth over the pillowcase and catching a few strands of his hair, shifting the strands over one another and over the linen as she did so. She put her weight entirely on that one hand and sightlessly unbuttoned the overlarge shirt with deliberate, paced movements.

You don’t have to—

But he wasn’t about to say it out loud. The moonlight was both kind and unkind, and he couldn’t see the small patch of freckles between her breasts as well as he might have liked. He finally moved to touch her, moving one hand with the intention of pushing the shirt off her shoulders, but instead he thrust his hand under the heavy mass of her hair, anchoring at the nape of her neck and kneading a bit, pulling her down so her chest pressed to his.

Another kiss shared melted into several, and by the time she pushed away from him, they were both dizzy.

This was so different from what had happened before, Ginny thought. She was making it different.

She sat back on her haunches, shaking back her hair and watching him watch her. What would it take, she wondered, to shake that unflinching look on his face? She walked her fingers up his thigh and rubbed her palm over him, pleased when she felt his hips thrust up, when heat pressed into her palm. As the weight of him changed, grew more insistent, she felt a matching tug, a bit of give that made her face hot.

She moved her hand away from him, gratified when he thrust his hips forward as though missing her touch, and she moved her knees as wide as she could, now outside the narrow span of his legs rather than between them, straddling him to meet give with take, settling herself lightly to feel his heat and rigidity through his pyjamas and her wet knickers.

Draco groaned as she began to grind herself against him, her wet knickers affording no question as to her reaction to him, her folds clearly defined somehow despite the barriers between them, the cleft of her sex lining unerringly along his length.

His back arched and he pressed his head into the pillow, knowing he’d done more than enough wicked in his lifetime to deserve something so dastardly as this but wondering what he’d deserved to feel this damned good, and he couldn’t believe she was holding out this long—one touch, he had thought, would have her undone, but she was outpacing him by far, her movements slow and measured. If he’d only been watching her face, he would have thought her unaffected, but he could feel her against him and he knew differently

When she finally pushed his pants off him, pausing to blow feather-light breath over his jutting erection, he conceded the point to her, whatever that point might have been. Sure, he had taken her on her kitchen table, but this?

She was ruling him completely, and for some reason, he was letting her.

He was completely bewitched.

He held back a shout as she slid off the edge of the bed, taking his pants along with her, but when she hooked her thumbs into her blue underwear and tugged them down, he breathed a silent thank-you.

His hips were already moving, setting a small, unconscious rhythm as she remounted the bed, crawling toward him. He could simply thrust against thin air, watching her like this, and find completion, but he wanted to be in her, wanted her around him.

He expected her to pounce, as predatory as her posture was, but she took her time, kissing one knee and then the other, pressing two fingers to one hipbone, then the other. When she finally lined up with him, her curls rubbing brashly over his, her lips came only to his throat and she dipped her tongue there slowly as she rocked first forward on her knees and then back, the shallow penetration she achieved fitting perfectly with the advance and retreat of her tongue where his pulse was now roaring.

She did not ride him, but raised her hands to link with his, gentle, patient fingers prying open stiff fists as she pressed her knees into the softness of the bed and took him into her, the hem of his shirt tickling his sides as she rose slowly up and down, her eyes on his in the unwavering moonlight.

He wanted to kiss her, found he could not reach her, and so kissed her forehead as she murmured his name, otherwise soundless in the coupling she’d initiated.

His climax was silent, his head thrown back, muscles of his throat working with his convulsive swallows as his back arched and his breath left him and then returned to him in a gasp. It went on for long moments, a plateau rather than a peak, and as it coursed through him in long, blinding jolts, he banded his fingers tight around hers and willed her to come along.

She dropped her head to his chest and pressed her lips there, and though he could feel her clench tight around him, the one thing that made him most certain she had reached completion was the quiver in the soft lips pressed just near his heart.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN - Morning After

He had work to do.

It was his first thought upon waking, as it usually was, though this time, he truly meant it. He’d gotten nothing done all week, and he knew precisely why.

He opened his eyes and looked at her, her face relaxed, soft mouth slack with sleep. She’d stayed facing him all night, never moving enough to wake him, her sleep apparently more restful than it had been before he’d found her crying in the loo.

Had she said things to him last night with that soft, sleeping mouth, during…? No—he recalled complete silence, aside from sighs, gasps… her whispered name from his lips.

No, she had not spoken once he had given her leave. She had only said things with her actions, made promises with her eyes. He did not want promises, nor was he likely ever to want promises.

Sharp ears caught the change in her breathing, and he spoke, a night of sleep robbing him of his usual acidity. “You can open your eyes.”

Damn, Ginny thought. She’d drifted up slowly from sleep with the feeling of his eyes on her. It wasn’t altogether unpleasant, which was more than she really wanted to dwell on. All in all, she didn’t want to wake up yet.

It had been a long while since she’d slept so well.

She opened her eyes and her lips canted up in a slow smile, making him regret his command to stop playing dead. That smile was far too knowing for his liking.

She felt better than she had in quite some time, and that, Ginny thought, was a bit of a shock. Of course, up until this morning, she’d been waking up alone. Not that she’d correlate one thing with the other, but there was apparently something to be said for a good night of consensual sex followed by a hard sleep.

“Good morning,” she finally said, grinning at him with a bit of feminine satisfaction she hadn’t ever reveled in before.

Draco felt something tighten in his stomach, too high to be lust and too low to be breathlessness.

Damn it, he didn’t have time for stupid games and whatever… playful idiocy she was trying to engage him in. He had to do two things and two things only. No time for… detours.

First, he had to make certain she wasn’t getting ideas.

Second, he had to go to work.

At no point did that plan include analyzing whatever malady was breeding in his abdomen or leaning over and kissing her or hiding her clothes so she couldn’t get dressed.

No point whatsoever.

That didn’t mean he wasn’t a little irked when she climbed out of bed, taking her out of reach for the kiss he wasn’t going to give her, easy with her nudity and slipping into the clothes he wasn’t planning on hiding. The least she could do is give him the opportunity to exercise his right not to do those things.

You didn’t get enough sleep last night, he scolded himself internally. Exhaustion always made him a bit dotty.

“No need to rush off,” he said, and he fully meant it to sound sarcastic—he had things to do, after all—but it didn’t quite translate.

He rubbed a hand over his hair, watching her carefully as he gave up on trying to locate his pants and wrapped a sheet around his midsection instead.

“I’m sure you have things to do,” Ginny said, glancing at him sidelong and leaning over to put on her shoes. Cursed if she didn’t feel good. It did something for a woman’s self-confidence, she thought, to look at a man who looked like Draco clasping a sheet around his waist and know she’d been with him the night before.

She’d never quite been able to enjoy that with Harry.

It had always seemed like some sort of cosmic accident.

He was still trying to figure out what to say when she started to walk out of his bedroom.

Draco scowled, trying to remember if she’d gotten all her clothing. Had she even put her knickers on? What kind of woman could walk out of his house without her knickers without saying more than three sentences to him?

“Hold on a tic,” he said, trying to catch up with her as she unlocked the door and made her way into the hall.

The sheet was a bit longer than most clothes he was accustomed to, however, and he tripped, catching himself on the doorframe and cursing loudly as he lost hold of the sheet.

“You don’t need to see me out, for Merlin’s sake,” Ginny said, turning around and looking at him curiously. Honestly, she’d thought the study a bit odd, but his behavior so far was edging up on disconcerting. She’d taken him for the kind of man who could be completely casual upon waking up with a woman. She didn’t know whether she’d love finding out that was untrue or hate it.

Draco considered grabbing the sheet and thought better of it. It was his house, damn it, and if he wanted to walk around absolutely fucking starkers, he’d do it.

As long as his mother wasn’t home, that is.

“Before you go running out of here like a frightened rabbit,” he started, crossing his arms over his chest and enjoying the look on her face—there, that look that said he’d annoyed her or put her off-balance, that’s what he’d been missing all morning, damn it—“I just want to make something perfectly clear.”

Ginny tilted her head and looked at him through narrowed eyes. Frightened? She hadn’t been the one tripping over a sheet. “You’re naked,” she said flatly.

“Didn’t seem to bother you last night,” he noted, his tone a mix between smug and cross.

“Not bothering me now,” Ginny retorted, mirroring his stance and crossing her arms over her chest.

She wondered if he realized how completely unbelievable he looked. It was really quite unfair. Surely he had to look ridiculous at some point, but the body she’d spent long minutes working over last night looked just as good as it had felt.

Her cheeks went hot with the thought and she forced her eyes back up to his.

Maybe it was bothering her.

“I just think you should know, before you go waltzing out of here on a pink cloud of loveliness—” He was going to ignore her snort. He absolutely was, as he was being sarcastic— “That last night… what I said…” He trailed off, watching her eyes dip again.

“Which part?” Ginny asked, tapping her wand against her thigh and trying to think of all the household cleaning spells she knew, just to put her mind on something.

“What I said about trusting you,” Draco said, his voice at a slightly quicker clip than his usual drawl. “That… didn’t mean anything. Not anything more than what I said, I mean.”

Ginny raised an eyebrow, and he wondered how that made him feel approximately two inches tall. He knew how birds were. He knew how birds like Ginny were, to be precise. Old-fashioned girls who’d been trained by their mums to read between the lines and entangle a man until he couldn’t think straight and turn his words back around on him until he was nearly convinced he’d confessed to every transgression known to man and promised everything under the sun—

“Oh, that,” she said negligently, and his brain fell flat at her nonplussed tone.

“What?” he asked stupidly. He was expecting an argument. Tears. Clinginess? Anything?

And bloody bugger it all, he was naked and it was too late now to retrieve the sheet, he’d simply look like a fool.

Ginny looked at him—really looked at him, his expression, his face—and felt a little pity. He was afraid of her, she saw. Of course he was. His money, his looks. How many women had glommed onto that and tried to possess it?

But for heaven’s sakes, he was a Malfoy. It wasn’t like she was looking for a commitment.

Her stomach felt sick at the prospect.

“You said you trusted me. Trust. It’s a five-letter word, Draco, not four.” Though he didn’t seem to be in a particularly coherent state, the raise of his eyebrows made it perfectly clear that he understood her.

“Well,” he drawled, feeling particularly stung for no apparent reason. He was just itching to get to work, was all. That was all. “Good to see your arithmetic skills are intact.”

Ginny rolled her eyes, dually grateful for and annoyed with his ability to turn things back to their usual tenor. “I abhor you,” she said. “Now that’s a five-letter word.”

He followed her to the end of the hall, not wanting to wander in front of the windows completely bare-assed naked. He was trying to think of other five-letter words but came up short as she glanced out the window, saw there was no photographer, and breezed out the door.

Once she was gone, all he could think of was an entire plethora of four-letter words.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN - Other People

If he’d been just a little angrier, he’d have gone to her flat naked.

After all, in the small corner of his mind he could actually manage to clear, Draco Malfoy was becoming concretely certain his barrister was the cause of all of his problems. Every… last… one of them.

Even if he couldn’t blame her for the entire shambles of his life, or the way he couldn’t concentrate on anything at all other than the thought of Ginny wrapped around him, of her hair trailing over his chest, of the sounds she made as she neared climax, he could blame her for many things.

It was easier to put two and two together when there weren’t distractions, when that redheaded minx wasn’t around to cry on his floor or crawl all over his body.

And what two and two added up to was a very duplicitous Pansy Parkinson, and while that brassed him off a great deal, he wasn’t about to give her the satisfaction of seeing his bits after all her years of trying.

So he barely got dressed, throwing on a pair of cotton warm-ups he’d nearly worn out at Quidditch practices and a short-sleeved shirt. He could care less if she thought he looked like bloody hell, because bloody fucking hell was what he felt like, and he was about to share some of the joy.

KnockknockknockknockKNOCK!

He gave her exactly two seconds to answer the door.

“Alohomora,” he said, jabbing his wand at the door testily. The lock gave way easily and he stepped inside, sneering with disdain at how dark the place was.

It was half nine, for Merlin’s sake, how late did she plan to sleep?

“Pansy!” he yelled, and a less charitable soul might have noted how much he bellowed a bit like he’d been poked with something hot. “Get your arse out here, Parkinson, I’m not digging you out of that bedroom!”

He’d never actually been inside her flat before, preferring always to stand outside the door and wait for her. He considered himself a sensible man—or he had been, until lately—and a sensible man did not want to know what went on in Pansy Parkinson’s flat.

“For the love of all things magical, lower your voice.”

He wheeled around at the voice and felt his misery triple. She was wearing a very poor excuse for a robe that was belted so tightly it had cinched the skirt up and yanked the satiny material so close to her breasts she looked ready to burst out of it. She clearly hadn’t removed her war paint from the evening before, and black mascara smudges stood out around her eyes like stamps of her debauchery. “You,” he growled, pointing a finger at her face, more than careful not to point it at her chest.

She was trying to ruin his life. He wasn’t going to help her do it.

“Very good, sweetheart, this is me!” Pansy said brightly, peering at him as she leaned forward to pat his cheek. She grinned when he jerked away. “Oh, honey, did last night not go well?” She clucked her tongue. “I had rather high hopes you’d enjoy yourselves.” Her tone was chiding, but her eyes were sharp.

She really had had high hopes. Looking at him and those horrid, slummy clothes he was wearing and his obviously jolly attitude, Pansy thought the evening before had either gone swimmingly well or hellishly poorly.

Knowing him, he’d done something to make it go hellishly poorly.

How he could waste a perfectly willing woman was beyond her.

Draco shoved his hands through his hair and thought he might scream. Being verbally slapped down by La Weasley had been his idea of an absolute shite of a start to his day. Following it up with caramelized condescension wasn’t his idea of a good way to improve things.

“You called that reporter!” he burst out. “You had to have, and here’s why—”

“I’m not denying it, love, please don’t be tedious and try to prove to me what I already know or prove to yourself what I’ve already admitted.” Pansy raised an eyebrow and wondered if she had any biscuits about. She enjoyed eating while she watched a show.

He could feel his eyes widening and forced himself to stop. A Malfoy didn’t do something so plebian as letting his eyes bulge unattractively.

He was going to fucking kill her. Ginny had driven him halfway mad, and this bint was going to finish it off for her.

“She went dotty last night!” he shouted, apropos of nothing. “And when I tried to listen to her—because I thought that’s what a bloke was expected to do—”

“Perhaps a Hufflepuff bloke,” Pansy inserted, ducking as he picked a jade-toned pillow off of an overstuffed purple chair and threw it at her.

“Bitch!” he interjected in a growl, but took a deep breath and continued, “And then, after I tried to talk to her, she attacked me! She decided—she decided!!—we should shag!” He winged another pillow, just to make himself feel better.

He was obstinately satisfied by the eyebrow raise his statement earned him, but he could feel his ears ringing and a peculiar, hot sensation on his neck, his scalp, needling through his stomach. He felt nervous, as though he’d forgotten something or done something wrong.

He’d identify it later. His stomach had been buggered since last night, anyway.

Probably that fucking candied ham.

“She decided you should shag?” Pansy asked slowly.

“Crazy, isn’t she? Absolutely off her bloody skull!” He just wanted someone to agree with him, damn it.

The night had been complete insanity. If he could write it off as such, things would be fine.

“She decided you should shag and you’re over here complaining at me?” Pansy slid onto the seat he’d kindly vacated of pillows and snorted. “Perhaps Blaise was right. Maybe you really are a complete pooft—”

He drew his wand on her, effectively silencing her. He figured the peace would last all of fifteen seconds. “She brushed me off this morning,” he said in a low tone. He’d meant it to sound dangerous, but instead he simply sounded dangerously close to melancholy. He really was getting ill. “What Weasley brushes off a Malfoy, I ask you? And what… what woman runs off after a night in bed as though it’s absolutely nothing?!”

Pansy regarded Draco silently, her eyes growing rounder with each word he said. “Oh,” she finally breathed, completely unmindful of his drawn wand as she giggled. “Oh, my. She didn’t want to cuddle and talk, and you’re upset. Oh, love.” Her face grew suddenly serious. “Got quite the case, haven’t you?”

“It’s none of your fucking business!” Draco snapped. “Which is exactly what I came here to say. You’ve enough sex life of your own to tend to! Stay out of mine!”

He took a few steps toward the door, paused, and turned back to look at her, desperate to regain some dignity. “And lose some of the pillows. It looks like a bordello in here.”

Pansy kissed the tip of her index finger and blew him a kiss, smirking as he all but ran from her flat.

She noticed he hadn’t simply answered her question with a simple “No.”

That pleased her immensely.

She heard a noise behind her and turned her head. With a roll of her eyes, she regarded the wide-eyed young man in the doorway as he stood, clutching his clothes—and his camera—in front of his more pertinent parts.

“Don’t look so frightened, lamb,” she purred to the less-than-intrepid reporter. “He’ll forget you were even there. He’s bigger things on his mind.”

~~~

She was torn between feeling furious and feeling fabulous.

She’d started off the morning feeling fabulous, sated and sleepy and just a bit sore. It had even been amusing, in its own manner, to get out of bed and see the shock on Draco’s face that a woman would want to leave before he’d given her permission to go.

It wasn’t hard to suspect he had women who waited for his command before they did anything.

Ginny muddled over that as she walked around the corner and toward her flat, wondering why that should make her feel a bit angry.

Just misplaced fury, that was all. Some free-floating anger making its way into the good part of the day.

And from where had that anger stemmed, exactly? From being treated as though she were some empty-headed, gold-digging, pureblood-sniffing Slytherin groupie who expected love, devotion, or at the very least, gifts, from a night spent with the inimitable Draco Malfoy.

Well, Ginny thought, forgive me if I don’t grovel, oooh, and aaah.

After all, she thought proudly, flicking her wand at the door and muttering the series of advanced charms her father had insisted she ply upon the locks, she had been the one to initiate things. For once in her miserably out-of-control life, she’d had control over something.

She’d had control over him.

It sent a shiver through her, one she was letting drain out through her toes as she shut the door behind her.

Perhaps she really was feeling more fabulous than furious.

“Hello, Ginny.” She screamed and jumped, the once-familiar voice now nearly foreign to her, his quiet, uncertain way of speaking a mystery to her, his presence in her flat something she’d long since given up, and something she’d just started learning to live without.

Remarkably, no matter what tears she’d shed, or what wishes she’d wished, she didn’t want him here now. But ties were ties, and she couldn’t be rude.

“Hello, Harry.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN - Safe… And Happy

He said nothing, merely stared at her, so Ginny stepped around him, unconsciously giving him a wide berth so she wasn’t in arm’s reach and wouldn’t accidentally brush up against him. She didn’t think she could stand that, not right now. Every inch of her skin felt sensitized, and she had the irrational fear that touching Harry would only hurt.

“Glad you let yourself in,” she said, trying to sound light, casual. “I’d certainly have hated for you for you to be kept waiting.” Damn it. It simply sounded snide, sarcastic, and she couldn’t help but wonder if it was because of the company she’d been keeping. “How long have you been here?”

Harry turned to look at her, his hands shoved in the pockets of his pants, his eyes unreadable. She was suddenly acutely aware of how rumpled her clothes must have looked, how messy her hair was. She could have—and should have—taken the time to cast a tidying spell or two, but she’d sort of been enjoying the free feeling of it, the carelessness of leaving your clothes wrinkled because they’d spent the night on someone else’s floor.

“Long enough,” he answered cryptically. “I know how much you like to laze about on Sunday mornings, I rather thought I’d catch you.”

She couldn’t fight the blush, didn’t know if she even wanted to or not. His statement was intimate, his innuendo clear. “I had things to do,” she answered, pleased for not lying outright. What did it matter to him?

“When?” he asked, taking one hand from his pocket and rubbing it back and forth over his hair, tangling it and making it stand up. “Last night or this morning?” When she merely gaped at him, he shook his head. “Look at your clothes. Your skirt’s crooked, for Merlin’s sake. Your sweater looks like it took half a carpet with it.” He reached for her, his short, slender fingers reaching to pluck a bit of fuzz off her sweater. Clever hands, she thought. He’d always had clever hands.

He’d managed to swipe the piece of carpet debris without even pressing her skin.

“I was in a hurry this morning,” Ginny said stiffly, aware she was still telling the truth, to some degree. “Though I thank you for always thinking of what I might have done wrong. It is comforting to see some things do not change.”

“Exactly!” Harry burst out, pushing his glasses up on his nose and glaring at her. He stepped toward her and she did not back down, merely stood where she was. “Some things do not change, Ginny. Love, for one of them, doesn’t change. I did not change. You changed. You decided to leave. And for what?”

Ginny shook her head, knowing him well enough to know where he would go next. “Don’t, Harry. Don’t you dare.”

“Don’t what, Ginny? Say what’s right in front of my face because then you might have to admit to it?” He was at his wits’ end, his eyes desperate, but there was no love there, she could see that.

Now, she was afraid it was all about territory.

All about ownership.

He wasn’t hurt. He was simply selfish.

It should have broken her heart. Instead, it shut part of her down.

“You’ve never needed me to admit to my guilt before, Harry, you simply always knew.” A rush of blood rose to her cheeks and she felt oddly triumphant. There, she thought, feeling heady. I’ve said it.

“You’ve never fucked Draco Malfoy before,” Harry returned, his cheeks dotted with spots of high, bright color. “Is that what you wanted, then? Someone like him? Some Slytherin again, who would use you again?”

“Stop it!” Ginny screamed, reaching out and pushing him, hoping for a moment that he would trip and fall, stumble and bring himself low. Damn him for ruining this for her. Damn him and damn her for listening to him. “Some Slytherin again, eh?” she shouted, shoving her hands through her hair. “You… you were and are more similar to Tom than Draco Malfoy will ever be.” She saw him gasp in a breath as though he’d been punched and she nodded, filled with savage satisfaction. “Don’t you remember that, Harry? Those similarities everyone was so keen on bringing up? But I never mentioned it.”

She took a deep breath, and though she hated herself for her next words, she needed them. She needed to show him how he had made her feel.

“People thought you were the Heir, you know.”

Harry went completely pale and put the heels of his hands to his forehead, pushing them over his hair again. His eyes were bright when he looked at her, and he sighed. “How did it come to this, Ginny?”

“It started coming to this when I knew you didn’t love me,” Ginny fired back quickly, speaking without thinking, saying what she hadn’t even realized she knew. “When you proved you didn’t trust me, time and time again.”

Harry opened his mouth as though to deny her statement, to disagree with her, but his shoulders slumped, a huffed breath escaped him.

He couldn’t do it, Ginny thought, and she felt her own posture sag, her tension turned to weakness. “You can’t imagine how stupid I feel,” she whispered.

She had spent time, time and effort and a great deal of her own respectability, trying to make certain he would be able to let her go. She had set out to hurt him so he wouldn’t miss her, wouldn’t pine for her.

If it weren’t so bloody stupid, it would have been funny.

“I’d like for you to go,” she finally said, feeling more tired than tearful. “You had no business being here, Harry.”

Not even when we were together.

“I still care about you,” he insisted, frantically trying to save face. She was one of his best friends, for Merlin’s sake, and he did love her. He just… didn’t know how she expected to be loved, if not like a friend. “I want what’s best for you, Ginny. I want you to be safe.”

Ginny put her hand to his arm, taking in and letting out a single deep breath. She needed the contact now, needed to know she could do that much. “Why couldn’t you just want me to be happy?”

He looked at his shoes, then up at her through his eyelashes.

For him, they had always meant the same thing—safe and happy.

He had never dreamed it was any different for her.

She let her hand slide off his arm, feeling weary and so incredibly ridiculous. How had she spent so much time worrying about it? How had she ever thought he was in love with her?

Harry walked to her door, head down, trying to think of something, anything to say to salvage the vestiges of what they had once been, and coming up only with, “Is he better now?”

Ginny laughed softly and thought of the man who had taken her on a table like an animal, then let her have the opportunity to do whatever she had wanted. But she didn’t want to answer that question, so she simply shrugged. When he saw she wasn’t going to answer, Harry nodded, opened the door and started out.

“Harry!”

He looked up at her hopefully, and she wondered what, exactly, he wanted from her, what he expected.

“Did you trust me?” she asked, pressing her fingers to hr lips as she waited for his answer.

He looked puzzled, backlit by the white-gray, cloudy morning light, and finally, he said “With what?”

It was answer enough for her.

It was only right, he thought. He told her he owed her, and he hadn’t forgotten that.

He didn’t forget any debts, either those he owed or those owed him. It was one of the things that had made him a strong businessman.

His tenacity was another one of those things, and he wasn’t about to let her have the last word, walking out of his house after telling him she abhorred him. It simply wasn’t done like that. It didn’t matter if he had a “case” or whatever other foolish rot Pansy had been throwing at him like a stupid mind game, things simply weren’t done like that.

Unfinished business made him feel apprehensive.

So it was completely reasonable that he’d gone and bought a book on Wizarding Wares and How to Fix Them—he had to fix her door, after all, he had been the one to break it. That thought came through with just a touch of chest-puffing pride, and he’d thrown the book on the counter and said, “I broke a door” in the tones of a man who had really accomplished something.

He didn’t understand why the young witch behind the counter had looked at him so strangely.

And of course, he’d ruined her knickers, as well. Hard to forget that, really, and hard to forget the feel of them beneath his fingertips. Perhaps he’d loitered a bit longer in the witch’s wardrobe shop a bit longer than he should have, and perhaps he’d been overthinking it—after all, he hadn’t really needed to try and picture her in every single thing they had in the store, but he was trying to get it just right—and perhaps buying her five different sets of lingerie was overkill.

But he could afford it, and it was all repayment.

He was balancing box and book as he walked toward her block of flats, wondering what on earth was wrong with his stomach.

He was going to have to get it looked at.

With his arms full, he couldn’t very well knock on her door, so he kicked at the bottom edge. “Open the door, Ginny!” He was nearly shouting and didn’t realize it; it simply didn’t occur to him that he could have been advertising his presence to half the street.

When she didn’t immediately open the door, he sighed and shifted his weight. She had to be home. Where else would she go after leaving his house?

The thought niggled at him, bothered him. Where could she go?

Reflexively—and it was only that he didn’t like the idea of her not being there when he wanted to be, not out of worry or jealousy or anything of that nature, because why would he be worried about a Weasley, anyway?—he kicked the door harder, calling her name again.

He heard wood crack and splinter, and the lock, which had seen better days than the ones he’d put it through, gave way.

“Well, bugger,” he said, sounding more than a bit miserable.

He’d just have to fix that, too.

He stepped in the door, feeling oddly at ease doing so, and started to call out to her again. Her name died on his lips as he looked to his right and saw her sitting on the divan, her head in her hands, still wearing the clothes in which she’d left his house.

Box and book landed on the entryway floor without a second thought and he’d crossed the room to her in just a few large strides before she had taken her face from her hands.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, his voice harder, more panicked than he’d meant for it to be. He crouched down beside her to better look in her face, and at the wide-eyed look she gave him, he replayed his actions.

Completely nonsensical.

He stood brusquely, taking a step back from the couch. Distance was good. Distance was perfect. There was no need to get close to her, after all. She was just a Weasley. They weren’t even friends for Merlin’s sake, it wasn’t as though he was duty bound to sit beside her and move her hair away from her neck and massage the pale skin there and the tense muscles underneath—

“If you’re all right, you need to answer your damned door,” he snapped, taking another halting step back.

“What, and take away your excuse to break it?” Ginny asked, scrubbing her hands over her face. She was dry-eyed and had been for a while. She’d had her cry just as soon as Harry had left, but it had been short-lived, more an action of habit than of passion, and she’d needed the stillness in which to think, to think about Harry and to think about herself.

To think about Draco and what she was doing with him.

Trust, she thought, was a start. But it was no more the right thing than concern for her safety had been. It was just another part of a whole she didn’t understand, couldn’t see.

And then he’d come and kicked in her door like some sort of maniac.

Again.

She looked at the mess he’d made, at the beribboned box and the book that had fallen on its spine and opened to some random page, and she felt something like a sigh building in her chest, some sort of internalized pressure that made her feel like she needed to sigh.

“I brought you something.” He couldn’t help the testy note in his voice, the petulance, and he retrieved the box, frowning at the corner of it that had gotten mashed in. “Here,” he said, thrusting it at her and finally allowing himself to look at her fully.

Her eyes were red—not really bloodshot, just a bit pink—and her face had either been scrubbed or rubbed clean of makeup. She looked tired, but moreover, she looked sad.

She looked as she had when she’d finally gotten her arse off his bathroom floor.

Ginny’s eyebrows raised into her hairline, and she fought back a sharp slap of panic. A gift? He’d brought her a gift?

As though reading her mind, Draco reached down and pulled the ribbon off for her impatiently. “It’s not a present,” he said defensively. “It’s just what I said I’d do. I owed you… some things.”

He’d had sex with her, for crying out loud, and he couldn’t manage to say knickers aloud?

He needed some sleep.

The tightening in his stomach trebled and quadrupled when a corner of her lips turned up and she opened the box. He couldn’t stand it, couldn’t wait for her to say something, and his mouth spilled out the first thing he really wanted to know.

“It’s Potter you’re crying over, isn’t it?”

CHAPTER TWENTY – Not Enough

What could she say? Her fingers stilled over the silver and green paper the box had been lined with, her eyes glancing up to him. Of course, it was obvious she’d been crying, she simply hadn’t expected him to comment on it. And had she been crying over Harry?

Because of him, certainly, but not over him.

She had rejected one man because he didn’t love her enough, or in the way she thought she should be loved. So how could she persist with, even find joy with, a man who did not— and could never— love her?

The answer to that was simple, no matter how much she suddenly wished otherwise.

She couldn’t persist.

“Not entirely,” she finally answered, finding it a true enough response. She smoothed her hands over the tissue paper, wanting to prolong the unwrapping. The longer it took to open, the longer he would stay.

The longer she could wait before telling him he had to leave.

Draco considered her answer, felt his head grow warm, his back teeth grinding together slightly. He wanted to find Potter, wrap his hands around the scrawny bastard’s neck, and squeeze.

Of course, it wasn’t because she’d been crying. And it certainly wasn’t because she’d cried the night before, or because Potter was too much of a stupid fucking wanker to see what he’d passed up. Of course it wasn’t any of those things. It was just because Potter was Potter, and Potter always needed a good throttling. It was simply duty by this point. The rest, Draco assured himself, was purely incidental.

He shifted his weight, suddenly angry and uncomfortable with it. He wanted her to open her stupid box so he could fix the door and leave. Well, and so he could see the look on her face. But mostly, what he wanted more was to know what had set her off. She’d been fine when she had left the manor—better than fine, even. She shouldn’t even have been thinking about bloody stupid Scarhead, she should have been thinking about him.

“That’s one hell of a change of mood, then,” he snapped, irritated by his pervasive train of thought. “You were absolutely made up when you left this morning. You were all made up when you left this morning, what made you start sniveling between then and now? It isn’t as though you’ve had to see the four-eyed nob, for Merlin’s sake.” He saw her hands tighten on the edge of the box and felt everything within him tighten similarly.

When she didn’t say anything, he repeated himself, speaking deliberately. “I said, it isn’t as though you’ve had to see him.”

“How rude of me,” Ginny said finally, her voice a touch higher than usual. “I should get on with unwrapping this, eh?” She didn’t know why she was being evasive, why it even mattered. It wasn’t as though it mattered, as though he had any reason at all to care that Harry had been there. If he did mind, it was simply another incarnation of a feud too tiresome to be contemplated, the feud that had fueled Draco into this interaction in the first place. She supposed it was just, in some weird, twisted way, that the enmity that had motivated Draco to show interest would be the same one to drive him away.

He took the box away from her, set it on an already crowded end table, and stayed standing, towering over her. He pushed a hand through his hair, at a true loss for words.

Her answer—or lack thereof—could only mean one thing. And what were the implications of that exactly?

Had he come to her house? Had he forced his way in, hurt her in any way? He wanted to fuss, but only for a moment. He knew how capable she could be, if she wanted to. She knew how to freeze a man out, and though Potter was an idiot, he was far too noble to hurt his ex. Draco certainly hoped that was the case. He would truly hate, after all this time and reputation building, to have to kill the freakish, green-eyed bastard and ruin his reputation all over again.

But… then had she gone to see Harry?

The thought of her leaving his bed and going straight to Potter made black crowd around the edges of his vision, and his hands clenched reflexively into fists. That she’d go to her ex still smelling of the night before made him sick, it made him feel sick and angry and somehow… helpless.

“When did you see him?” he asked stiffly. “I won’t be played the fool here, Weasley, I won’t be your toy while try to win him back, or while he tries to win you back, or while the two of you make calf’s eyes at one another and take your sweet bloody time getting back together because you’re meant to be or some other such cack.”

Ginny merely gaped up at him for a moment, astounded at his reaction. “As though it’s any of your business,” she finally managed. “I should have thought, after my idiotic confession, you would understand I was not attempting to get back with Harry.” She narrowed her eyes and tried valiantly to ignore the fact that his accusation hurt and hurt very much. “You’ve nothing to be jealous of,” she stated.

He was intelligent enough—or paranoid enough, he wasn’t even certain himself which it was—to discern there were two ways of interpreting that. Either Harry posed no threat to him… or this thing with Ginny Weasley wasn’t anything he had a right to envy. “That is very true,” he rejoined, his mouth stiff.

Surprisingly, she gave him a wistful smile. “I’m so glad you see things my way.” Her voice was quiet, and he felt his internal balance, his mind and his stomach and his everything, pitch sideways at her tone.

No, no, no, he thought. She was not about to do what he thought…

“I think you should go.” She wasn’t going to cry, damn it, not again. She’d spent most of the morning crying over Harry and, yes, over this idiot. And what the hell for? A few good shags—well, one good and the other nearly downright evil—and some barely civilized conversation? It wasn’t worth crying over.

She could do this. She could tell him to leave. That’s what she did, wasn’t it? She sent them packing. It should be easy.

“What? No.” Draco shook his head emphatically. “You’re not using this as an excuse to toss me out. I have to fix the door—”

“If I wanted my door repaired, I’d have done it myself.” She liked the scar in the wood for some stupid, liked the light, raw wood against the dark stain on the outside. It made her feel desirable, powerful.

But right now, she couldn’t have felt any more powerless.

“Do you think I am happy like this?” Ginny asked, standing and burying her hands in her hair. “A good shag and some phony proclamation of trust?” It unnerved her now, with a few hours’ distance, how happy those things really had made her.

“It wasn’t phony!” he yelled, his face flushing. Happy. Had he even given it a thought? Did he even know what it was? He’d never thought about making her happy. He’d only thought about making her his.

“Oh, really?” She took a deep breath, scared to find she was trembling. This had gone too far, this dangerous game, too far and too fast. She thought she could play it as well as anyone else, fast and loose of body and completely absent of emotion, but she was shaking and afraid and sad all over again. “Try telling me that when you didn’t just accuse me of fucking you and then rushing off to Harry.”

The word suddenly seemed harsh to him now, and he jerked his head back as though she’d slapped him, nostrils flared. “You were fine before you saw him,” he said finally, looking down at her and thinking about how they both looked—unkempt, rumpled, well-used from the previous evening.

They’d done that to one another, and now they may as well have been a continent apart, for all the common ground they had.

“This is ridiculous,” Ginny finally said, shaking her head. “We’re adults. We had sex. That’s it.”

“That’s it.” His voice was completely without inflection, and her wishful thinking made her take the words as agreement.

“Thank you for coming to fix my door, and bringing me—” She swallowed and looked back at the box she had yet to open.

“Lingerie,” he said, and he couldn’t keep himself from his next words. “I hope the next man enjoys them.”

His own words made him want to pick up the box and shred its contents into threads. No man should ever see her in those. No man, that was, but himself.

Draco stepped close to her, his head bent so she had to crane her neck to look at him. His breath was coming in rapid, hard bursts, feathering over her lips, and for the tiniest moment, she let her eyes flutter half-closed.

“This was a mistake,” he whispered, little more than a hiss, and then he was gone, slamming her ruined door and leaving her with other ruins to take care of.

She wondered if he was referring to their time together, or the decision to part.

~~~

Ah, Mondays.

Pansy had never been particularly fond of them even on the most uneventful of Mondays, but this one seemed particularly unattractive. For starters, she could tell something had gone wrong the moment she’d walked in the doors of Malfoy, Ltd. Anyone who said you couldn’t gauge a wizard’s or witch’s mood by the energy in the air was simply full of shite, in her humble opinion. An angry wizard put off dark, angry energy. A depressed wizard put off thick, stifling energy.

Both were present here.

And on top of that, it was fucking cold.

So she started whistling a cheerful tune, a little ditty of nonsense notes, the minute she stepped onto the administrative floor.

“Cease your infernal noise, Parkinson.” He called out to her before she had even rounded the corner to head for his outer offices, so she stopped whistling.

And started singing.

“Cease!” he yelled, and when she did round the corner, the tiniest hitch carried into her step. Octavia was gone, the front desk left entirely empty, and Draco’s inner office doors were thrown open. The windows loomed large and blank behind him as he sat tall at his desk, imposing, frightening.

“Well, well,” she said, raising an eyebrow. “Now we all know how Snape went sour. I’m certain it started out just like this.”

Draco turned away from her wordlessly and plucked a small bottle off his bookcase. He uncapped it expressionlessly and dipped his quill in it, signing the parchment in front of him with a flourish.

“Signing with your own blood?” Pansy crossed her arms over her chest and let the insouciance fall away. It wasn’t like him to enter into such serious agreements, which were called for only by a smattering of magical entities. “My, my, we are in a serious mood today. Unless you’ve just signed over your soul, I’ll need to review that document. Goblins are notorious for their loopholes.”

“I had one of your underlings review it, as you couldn’t be bothered to make it into the office on time. If their evaluation was insufficient, you will still bear the brunt of the responsibility.” Before she could protest, he tied the parchment to the leg of one of his ten office owls and sent it away, finally sitting back to look at her.

He knew she would never be able to tell, from looking at him, that he’d been here for hours, that he’d shown up the day before after showering and had simply stayed, utilizing the changes of clothes he kept in the wardrobe in the corner of his office.

He’d let himself fall behind, and now it was time to catch up. He’d given himself enough time for foolishness. He liked to think it had rounded him out a bit, that he was simply experiencing one more thing to add to his list.

Now he had work to do.

“Did you fire Tavia?” It wasn’t what she wanted to ask, but she knew she would have to work her way up to that. The playful note from her voice was gone, and she was suddenly glad she’d worn the black suit today. It might have been sin-tight, but it was conservative—for her.

She needed the power of it today.

“No, she is in the loo, probably crying.” He pulled another document in front of him and forced the memory of Ginny sitting on his bathroom floor out of his mind.

“Did you brass Ginny Weasley off?” That was certainly closer to what she wanted to ask, and she felt her throat tighten a bit as a moment of something raw and unbelievable flashed over his face.

“No. It was simply a moment, Pansy. She fancied she was slumming it, and I know I was. Though I wouldn’t expect you to know it, it’s perfectly possible to have too much of a good thing, and perfectly probably to have too much of a completely mediocre thing.”

“Ahhh. Give me a moment to translate that from blokese into woman-speak. So you didn’t brass her off, you hurt her?” Or she hurt you, Pansy thought, wanting to lay a hand to his cheek but knowing he’d hex her before letting her touch him.

How did they expect him to know how to treat women? He’d never been shown how to do it correctly.

“You can’t hurt the heartless,” Draco said, looking up at his barrister. “You had best get to work. I’m in no mood for company.”

Pansy started to speak, frowned, and for once, thought better of it. She wanted to go over to the Ministry and pay a visit to the red vixen herself, but couldn’t bring herself to do it. She’d meddled more than was constructive already.

If things were going to work—and though she had her hopes, she had her doubts—one of them would have to make a move.

It broke her heart to suspect—to know—each was just as stubborn as the other.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE - Solitude

She had thought, when it was all said and done, she would feel as though the proverbial weight had been lifted off her shoulders. Ginny thought it over as she made a rough sketch of the section of the hospital where the new wing would be added; she supposed she did feel as though a weight had been lifted.

The only difficulty was, that weight… was Harry.

She’d successfully avoided thinking about Draco, for the most part, but she had to be realistic. If she was going to be handling the Ministry side of the hospital addition, she would have to interact with him, or at the very least, his people.

Draco Black Malfoy, she wrote across the top of the page, insisting it was for record-keeping purposes. He was funding that wing, after all, and it would likely be named for him.

“I had an idea it was bad, but I didn’t realize you were already to the point of putting his name all over your books.” The voice was female, faltering, and clearly trying for levity.

Hermione never had been able to joke in the ways that had been inherent to the Weasleys.

Ginny felt her shoulders stiffen, more out of habit than actually anxiety, and forced herself to relax. “Hermione,” she greeted as she turned. “I figure if a man gives enough money to expand the hospital, his name can go on the documents.” When Hermione said nothing, only fidgeted and made her discomfort apparent, Ginny cleared her throat. “What brings you by the hospital, then? Is everyone all right?” It shouldn’t have felt so awkward, she thought, for once they’d been close.

“Just ending a guarding shift,” Hermione answered, her voice immediately strengthening. She could talk about work; work was easy. “We caught a wizard trying to exhume Voldemort’s remains. Stunned him a little harder than we should have, I guess, so they’ve had to keep him here.” She flushed. “Sorry. I’m sure Ron’s warned you how boring my Auror stories are getting.”

Ginny smiled, both surprised and pleased that it felt genuine. “That wasn’t one of the things Ron warned me about.” At Hermione’s startled look, she sighed. It simply had to be mentioned—they couldn’t pretend Harry didn’t exist at all. “Hermione, you and Harry—”

Hermione’s eyes grew wide and she shook her head, interrupting Ginny with an outstretched hand. “No, no, no,” she said. “What did Ron tell you? We’re not together. Not like that.”

Ginny grabbed the hand Hermione still held up in a “stop” gesture and pressed it gently between her hands. “’Mione. ‘Not like that,’ or ‘Not like that yet’?”

Hermione looked completely and utterly miserable. “I don’t think this is appropriate,” she finally managed. “It’s just… he deserves to be happy, Gin, and you made him so terribly unhappy.”

“If I hadn’t made him unhappy, do you think he’d even be able to look at you?” It came out a bit sharper than she’d intended, and Ginny winced in unison with Hermione. “I made him unhappy so he could figure out what would make him happy.” She looked at the witch standing across from her and she knew in her heart that Hermione had always been a better idea than her. She’d always been a better choice. “All I ever wanted was for him to be happy,” she said, feeling her throat tighten a bit.

“Me too.”

Ginny moved to one side of the hallway, not wanting to have this discussion in the middle of a hospital, not really sure she even wanted to have it at all, but knowing she had to. When Hermione followed, Ginny ran a hand through her hair and started speaking before she could lose her nerve, before Hermione could get on a tangent and spend the whole day. “From the moment you and Harry stepped into mine and Ron’s lives, all I can remember was that I was supposed to be with Harry and you were supposed to be with Ron. And it seemed to be okay—Ron would have given you the moon and the stars back at school, and you know that, and so there we were, Harry and Ginny. Things just aren’t that neat, Hermione. Harry and I didn’t work, and you and Ron—”

“Could never have worked,” Hermione supplied. “He needs someone who consumes him, and I just can’t do that.” Her face, Ginny thought, was going to be burned if she flushed any harder.

She made a mental note to ask Ron what the hell that was supposed to mean, exactly.

“It’s all right,” Ginny said, half to herself, surprised that she could say it. “Hermione, things work out like they’re supposed to.”

So how, Ginny thought, had the whole mess with Malfoy ‘worked out’? It didn’t bear thinking on. It was simply over, and that was how it was supposed to have worked out.

But ever a believer in practicality, Hermione was already trying to make things ‘work out’ for everyone. Part of it was the need to assuage her own guilt, but part of it was the camaraderie she and Ginny had once shared insisting Ginny shouldn’t be alone. “You know, Ginny, there are plenty of wizards out there—good ones,” she qualified, thinking of the fuss over Draco Malfoy. “I still keep in touch with Nev, you know.”

Making amends, Ginny thought, certainly didn’t mean mending flaws. There were few things more embarrassing than a happily attached witch trying to happily attach you to anyone and everyone at her disposal. “I think I need to be alone for a while, Hermione. Just… let it be.”

She stepped forward, pressing her cool cheek to Hermione’s warm one. “Thank you for being the one he needs,” Ginny said. “I don’t think I could stand it if it were anyone else.”

When Ginny had headed down the hall, Hermione was left with one hand laid to her cheek, wondering how she’d ever hated her old friend.

~~~

The first two weeks of being alone were always the hardest, or so it had been said.

Ginny had already had her two weeks after Harry, so she didn’t know why that was crossing her mind now. Of course, nearly two weeks had passed since she’d pushed Draco out of her flat and out of her life, but that wasn’t the same. It didn’t matter that she’d left his book on the floor where he’d dropped it, or that the box of lingerie still perched precariously on her end table, tissue paper still obscuring the things he’d bought her.

It didn’t matter that she hadn’t had the heart to look at any of them—his exit hadn’t signified her solitude, so the two week mark meant nothing.

But she dressed with extra care nonetheless on that twelfth morning, the same morning she was to make an official announcement on behalf of the Ministry regarding the Malfoy wing of the hospital.

Professionalism, she told herself, turning her back to the mirror and craning her neck to inspect the unfamiliar lines of the plum-colored suit she’d donned. She wasn’t accustomed to leaving so much of her legs showing for work, but robes had grown passé for such formal announcements.

She’d have really preferred the security robes afforded her.

She looked at herself in the mirror once more before she left, and was satisfied with what she saw. She looked competent, confident, and calm.

She didn’t look like she missed him at all.

~~~

He stepped back from the door of the wardrobe, narrowing his eyes at his reflection in the full-length mirror. He’d just had the suit tailored last month; why it looked large in places, he couldn’t really understand. Sure, he hadn’t been eating as well as he ordinarily did, but he’d simply been busy, that was all.

The reward for his hard work was a desk completely clear of pending documents and contracts. There wasn’t a blessed thing to read, to sign, to approve. There weren’t any mergers to be made, any flagging companies to acquire. All he had to do today was go and make nice at the Ministry, and then he could finally go home and sleep in his own bed instead of sleeping on the couch.

Or maybe he’d have some more work that had piled up in his absence. He didn’t really mind the couch all that much.

“The baggy look defeats the purpose of choosing a suit over a robe.” Pansy strode into his office uninvited, keeping her face completely composed so he couldn’t see how worried she was. She’d even taken to coming in early and leaving late, travesty of all travesties, just to see if perhaps she could outlast him. But he was a permanent fixture these days, and she was at her wits’ end trying to figure out what to do about it.

She stepped behind him, running her hands over his suit and plucking at the points where a little fabric had gathered. “Darling, if you get much thinner, I’ll have to stop fantasizing about you altogether.”

“You’ll use any excuse to get your hands on me,” Draco said, slapping her hand away and working hard to avoid getting those tangerine talons buried in his hand. “I’ve not lost any weight, but feel free to stop fantasizing about me at any point.”

She walked around him, trailing her hand over her shoulder and his chest, pausing a bit when she almost couldn’t fight the urge to slap him upside his head for being such a stubborn ponce. “Speaking of bags, my love, you may want to cast a bit of a glamour under those eyes. The dark circles don’t compliment that lovely gray.”

“If you think I look so untoward, Pansy, feel free to go for me. I’ve hardly the time or the inclination to go watch people pretend they’ve anything to do with a project I funded and instigated.” She’d hardly be presentable in the orange suit she’d somehow pried over her curves, but he couldn’t keep the tiniest note of hope from his voice as he said it.

She raised an eyebrow. “Oh, you know me. I’d never manage to say the right thing. Besides, there will be plenty of people there who want to see Draco Malfoy.” She sauntered toward the door, casting a glamour at him over her shoulder as she did so, knowing he would be too proud to do it.

She paused for a moment once she’d shut his door behind her, taking a deep breath. She wanted to cry. She wanted to send owls. She wanted to meddle, damn it.

Having willpower was hard.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO - Speaking the Truth

She didn’t know why the Ministry and St. Mungo’s couldn’t do anything on a small scale. No, they’d erected sawhorses and made everything around the hospital’s entrance look like a Muggle construction area so they could magically cordon it off and invite dignitaries to come and listen to…what? A few words from the hospital administration, a few words from her?

Maybe a few words from Draco Malfoy?

Perched on a hard wooden chair they’d given her, Ginny wiped her sweaty palms on a handkerchief she’d been clutching from the moment she’d walked on site. She wasn’t nervous, exactly, it was only that there were so many people already gathered…

And that she didn’t see Draco yet. If she were to be completely honest with herself, she didn’t know which would be worse: for him to show up, or for him not to show up.

“We’ll be starting in a few moments.” The hospital’s executive director leaned down to speak right into Ginny’s ear, and she fought against wincing. He was truly a wonderful man, a legendary healer, but he was hard of hearing and thought everyone else was, too.

Healer, heal thyself, Ginny thought, the smile she gave him genuine.

If people could tolerate listening to him shouting out a speech, they certainly couldn’t mind what she had to say. But his next words had her fumbling again, the small margin of confidence she’d regained sliding right down to her feet once more.

“Mr. Malfoy has seated himself in the back. Strikes me as a rather shy sort of boy, don’t you think?”

Several witches and wizards turned at the director’s shouted speculation, and Ginny clasped her hands together, turning slightly so as to keep from facing all those curious eyes and in a completely futile attempt to muffle Healer Warwick’s ringing voice.

“I wouldn’t know,” she murmured, casting a furtive glance over her shoulder. Whatever happened to starting in a few moments? The last thing she wanted was to be caught gossiping about Draco Malfoy with a man loud enough to wake up the whole of London with his voice.

“Wouldn’t know?” His voice rose with his mirth and he clapped her on the shoulder hard enough to have her tottering on the heeled shoes she wore. “Nonsense, my dear, I never forget something I’ve read! The two of you were quite cozy at that party here not too long ago, weren’t you? Young love!” he proclaimed, slapping her on the other shoulder.

She wondered idly if mercy would have him knock her off the dais so she could break her neck and be done with this humiliation.

“Sir!” Warwick’s assistant tapped him on the shoulder. “It’s about to start.”

“Very good!” he shouted at the young man, and as the assistant scurried off, Ginny saw he had taken the old-fashioned remedy—he had cotton ticking stuffed in his ears.

“Welcome!”

As the director began to speak—or rather, crow—Ginny slunk back to her chair and slid down into it, her eyes flitting around the assembled crowd for some sign of him, even just to figure out where he was sitting would be a comfort. But it wasn’t to be, and as the director’s speech started to come to a close, Ginny started feeling very, very ill.

“I’m pleased to introduce Miss Ginevra Weasley, on behalf of Ministry Medical Affairs.”

The applause was somehow louder than his voice, and she felt as though she would pitch forward onto her face as she stepped to the podium they’d erected for her, something to hide behind. For a moment, she had the urge to do just that—crouch down and hide behind the podium until she could Disapparate and be back in her flat, safe and sound and in her pyjamas, curled up with a book.

Or looking at the book he left.

Sometimes she really hated that internal voice.

“Good morning, everyone, and thank you for coming.” Ginny cleared her throat, looked at the expectant faces, and realized she had not amplified her voice. “Sonorus,” she said.

Timing was, as per usual, not on her side. No sooner than she had increased her volume than her eyes traveled to the very back of the crowd, to a shock of pale hair sitting atop that smirking face, his arms crossed over his chest, and she gasped.

Loudly, of course.

~~~

Of course they’d asked him to speak. They always did.

His reasons for declining had nothing to do with her, nothing to do with that deep violet suit she wore, those long legs stretching below the skirt’s hemline. It had nothing to do with how she sat up there fidgeting as though she’d rather be at home relaxing with a glass of wine or a cup of tea.

He declined because he had nothing to say to these people, because anything he said to them would simply be construed once more as his attempt to buy himself into the community’s good graces, one more attempt to explain away the sins of the father and the guilt of the son.

But she didn’t look as though she’d been working herself to the bone, and her suit didn’t look like it was bagging on her. On the contrary, he thought, his mouth hardening into a defensive smirk, she looked as though she had been eating just fine.

But he couldn’t tune out her words, couldn’t ignore that voice, and as she started to speak, his smirk started to fade.

~~~

It angered her that he sat in the back, that they allowed him to sit in the back. He had financed an entire wing of a hospital that had seen more patients in recent years, a hospital that had been in desperate need of renovation, a need he was filling. They should have been facing him, asking him to speak.

It didn’t matter who he was—who they mistakenly thought he was—they should have been lauding him.

She drew herself to her full height and looked out at all of them, wondering why they were looking at her and not him.

“Mr. Draco Malfoy,” she said, pausing for long enough to have them all shifting uncomfortably. “His generosity has made it possible for St. Mungo’s to not only continue, but improve. Thrive. Not one of us gathered here today is ignorant of the strain this great facility underwent in recent years, but not one of us has been able—or willing—to make so great a gesture to the rehabilitation of not only the hospital, but the people of our wizarding community.”

She avoided his eyes, keeping her glance moving, pleading with each person whose eyes she met to recognize what she was talking about.

The man who had gone overboard and bought her an entire box of lingerie, who had been determined to fix her door on his own, had generosity for people he didn’t even know.

“Because of the contribution to the community as a whole—a community that so desperately needs to be whole again—the Ministry felt it necessary to thank Mr. Malfoy. While the contribution is, certainly, to the hospital, it is much appreciated.”

She got that far before she started to feel her throat tighten, before his eyes drew hers like a magnet, before she could no longer pretend he wasn’t there.

He looked tired, she thought. He looked tired and a bit worn, and her speech faltered as the thought ran through her head that Narcissa couldn’t have been gone this whole time, gone with the House Elves.

He looked like what she’d been looking for.

So she kept her eyes on his, feeling as though the distance from the front of the crowd to the back drew to nothing as she finished her speech, words rolling now from somewhere other than the speech she had memorized.

“Draco, the changes you have made, the trust you have bestowed, are thought of fondly and often, and they shall not be forgotten.”

Finally, the assembled witches and wizards turned to follow her gaze, turned to look upon the man of whom she spoke, and applause broke out once more.

Quieting her voice before it failed her completely and disintegrated into something desperate and babbling and blubbering, Ginny ran off the dais, casting one look at him over her shoulder as the crowd converged to shake his hand.

~~~

“Holy shite!” Pansy held the tiny earpiece tighter in her ear, trying to determine if she’d really just heard what she thought she had. Had the clever Miss Weasley slipped a bit of a personal message in there, or had she simply lost it?

“Damn it,” Pansy growled. All she could hear was applause on the public service station of her wireless, and the idiotic announcer droning over the clapping about a wonderful speech by the lovely Ministry representative. Pansy’d have throttled the monotonous arse if he’d been right in front of her. She wanted to hear if Ginny was still speaking, damn it, or if the reporters were speaking to Draco.

The door to her office slammed and she jumped, the earpiece falling from her ear and past her fumbling hands as she tried to catch it.

No one ever came into her office without knocking. Ever.

She finally caught the tiny wireless transmitter between her thumb and finger and looked up, prepared to verbally mow some peon to the ground.

“How do I fix this?” Ginny said tremulously, her eyes steady even as her voice shook. “Tell me how I fix this.”

Truly taken aback for what was perhaps the first time in her adulthood, Pansy looked uncomprehendingly at the transmitter in her hand, then to the woman she’d just been listening to on that transmitter. She was tempted to ramble, but Pansy Parkinson would take a few moments of silence before she would ever choose her words carelessly. “Lovely speech, darling, though you must have been in a terrible hurry to make it over here so quickly.”

“You have to help me,” Ginny said, feeling desperate. She’d been in front of a crowd, for Merlin’s sake, and she’d nearly lost it with him sitting back there. What had she said? Had she said anything stupid. “I messed things up,” she said, shoving one hand through her hair. “You egged this on, Pansy, you have to help me.”

Pansy rolled her eyes, trying as hard as she could to conceal the joyous whoop that wanted to come rolling out of her throat. Instead, she walked around the desk, hips rolling in a move that had long since become permanent attribute rather than passing affectation. Clucking her tongue, she circled behind Ginny, walking her fingers over the girl’s shoulders and thinking, not for the first time, that Draco was a lucky—if blind—bastard. She pressed herself against Ginny’s back and strongly repressed the suffocating urge to just… suggest something here or there, help things along a bit.

Things didn’t need helping, she told herself staunchly. By the looks of the two lovelorn fools, they’d be running to each other in no time. They were too obvious not to. “Darling, look at you,” she said, running a hand down Ginny’s side and speaking directly in her ear. “He’d be a fool not to want you.” She sauntered back around to face Ginny, a little startled at how the younger woman’s face was so drawn, so pale, so miserable. “I don’t think you make a habit of bedding fools, do you, pet?”

“No,” Ginny whispered. Never in a million years did she think she would be facing this woman one day, asking for advice. “I just don’t know what to do.”

Pansy put one hand to the redhead’s shoulder and looked her in the eyes, completely pleased with what she saw, if a bit jealous—she’d never felt anything like that for a man, and likely never would have the privilege. She could tell her what to do, but in this instance, nothing would be right.

“Darling,” she said in a lazy, drawling voice. “What I’m about to tell you to do will be the most difficult thing you’ve ever done.”

Ginny watched her with wide eyes, ready to do anything if it meant a reprieve from her misery. “What?”

Pansy leaned in and spoke the single word in a whisper. “Wait.”

**Author's Note: This is the last chapter of Sick. I can't thank you all enough for the kind reviews and the patience. One of the reasons I was slow to update is that while I was editing this fic for public consumption, I was writing a sequel featuring the character who, in my opinion, stole the scene. So, if you are at all interested in reading about Pansy… and Ron… check out Slytherin Commons or my memories. Happy reading!**

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE - Sick

He needed familiarity, somewhere comfortable. The throngs of reporters and people wanting to shake his hand were just weird, just plain bizarre. He was descended from the second-most hated man in the wizarding world, for Merlin’s sake, why were these people lauding him?

It was just… embarrassing.

And she had done it.

Draco had managed to excuse himself politely after what felt like eons of chatter, his mind quite simply refusing to grasp what she’d done. She had… validated him.

A Ministry woman, a more than respected member of the wizarding world, her family impeccable, her reputation (until recently) completely unmarred. And she had validated him, had beseeched the people in front of her to notice what they would have otherwise tactfully ignored.

That ought to have been enough to get him thinking, Draco thought as he slammed the front door to his house, loosening his tie and growling at the house elf who tried to help him. After all, he hadn’t been good enough to remain sociably in her home, sure as hell hadn’t been good enough to offer her presents. Hadn’t been good enough to continue to be with her.

But he’d been good enough to praise in public, lavishly and unnecessarily?

The crafty witch hadn’t stopped there, though. He walked into his study, shoved his hands in his hair, and ignored his reflection in the long mirror that ran behind the mantel. She’d given him a message.

They were both intelligent. He refused to believe it had been anything but a thinly veiled personal statement to him.

“Draco, the changes you have made, the trust you have bestowed, are thought of fondly and often, and they shall not be forgotten.”

Shall not be forgotten.

It should have been enough that she would not forget him, but it wasn’t. He had been rejected, Merlin hex it, rejected. And she would not forget him?

He caught a glimpse of his own countenance in the mirror and let out a shouted oath, hating the thin cheeks and the tired eyes. Hated the man who had worked himself to distraction simply because he didn’t want to want a Weasley, and he didn’t want to be unwanted by a Weasley.

Draco took a deep breath, clenched his hands around the corner of the mantelpiece to steady himself, and rocked back on his heels, ordering himself to take a deep breath. Breathe deeply, count to ten, recite your defensive spells, anything to keep from losing control.

He’d been so remarkably under control for the last two weeks, it would be a bloody damned shame to lose it now.

He moved to take a bottle of Firewhisky down from the shelf, but his hand encountered empty space. He bared his teeth, angered by the interruption into his thoughts, angered by the missing bottle, angered by his failure to replace the missing bottle. It was unlike him to forget such a thing. Wanting to lash out, he snatched one of the remaining bottles and dashed it against the mantelpiece in a snap of juvenile temper, feeling the alcohol splash all over his hand and his arm as he roared for a house elf.

“Hildy. HILDY!” The sallow little elf appeared at his side, large eyes unreadable. “Why has my bottle of whiskey not been replaced?”

The squeak that was returned to him set his teeth on edge. “Master tells Hildy he is wanting to get the spirits himself always. Master is always getting what he wants.”

Draco put a hand to another bottle, stroking his fingers over the glass and resisting the urge to break it, as well. “Master is always getting what he wants,” he murmured, his voice bitter. “You may want to revise that statement as you clean that up.” The elf stood silently, and Draco finally moved, grabbing his suit jacket from where he’d left it crumpled on the bed. “I’m going out, Hildy.”

“Will Master be joining us for dinner, sir?”

Draco didn’t glance back. “Who the hell cares?”

~~~

A nap. That, she thought, could cure all ills. It was a good remedy for any malady, but it seemed particularly attractive now. She was fairly certain if she stayed awake much longer, the command of “wait” was going to drive her quite buggy.

She hadn’t slept well in weeks, waking up early after falling asleep late night after night, so she relished the soporific effect the day had inflicted on her. She started shedding clothing the minute she shut the door to her flat, kicking off her heels, peeling off her stockings, ridding herself of every scrap of the day before sliding into an enormous, battered Quidditch tee Ron had ordered for her long ago. He had claimed, she remembered, that she’d nicked too many of his and Harry’s, and that she deserved her own.

Ginny snuggled onto her sofa, feeling that napping on the sofa wasn’t quite so decadently lazy as napping in her bed. She stretched out her long legs, pointing her toes so the very tips of them touched the opposite arm of the couch. Somehow, she felt comfortable and on edge all at once, wondering what Pansy could have meant. Wait, she’d said. And the strangest part of it was, Ginny trusted her. She doubted anyone knew Draco quite like his old housemate, and whether she was a bit of a tart or no, she seemed to be genuine.

Ginny wiped the back of her hand over her eyes, irritated to find the starts of tears there. Damn him.

She hadn’t been ready to get tangled up with anyone else.

Knowing she wouldn’t be able to sleep just yet, Ginny got up to do one last thing before settling down to rest.

She fell asleep with the copy of Wizarding Wares and How to Fix Them loosely clasped in her arms.

~~~

He was with her.

She sighed and rolled over, her back aligned with the back of the couch so she could slide one bare leg between his, the fine cloth of his trousers smooth against her legs as she held him there for a moment.

Ginny arched her back, the worn, nubby fabric of her makeshift pyjamas chafing her nipples as she pressed against him, and he rewarded her with a little groan, a soft kiss to her sleepy lips.

He whispered her name and she whispered his, safe in dreams to be as tender as she liked, to let her head fall back as he traced his lips over the soft skin of her throat, to shiver vulnerably as his teeth grazed at her pulse point.

Her fingers moved over his shoulders, over the fine cotton of his shirtsleeves, and she smiled, her lips buried in his hair as she thought of him dressed in his suit among all those bystanders, looking wonderful and handsome and underappreciated.

He was so beautiful, even with her eyes closed, even in sleep.

One hand moved from the back of her knee to the back of her thigh, sliding up her shirt and covering one round buttock. She felt him stiffen and shiver as he discovered she was bare beneath the tee-shirt and she laughed, low and sultry and beautiful, the laugh ending on a moan as his hand slid between her thighs from behind and brushed over her, twining somnolence with hypersensitivity as he stroked her.

Ginny’s hands tensed, moving into claws to grip and scrape down his back as he teased her into arousal, dampening his fingers and bringing long, half-moaning sighs from her lips.

He curved one finger, the length of it pressing between her swollen lips even as his fingertip found the aching center of her, flicking against her with alternating rough and gentle strokes. She cried out in his ear, her fingers going tense then lax on his back as they slid down to his slacks, beneath his waistband, untucking his shirt and pressing to overheated skin.

“I need you,” she whispered, and she did not blush, did not cringe against how telling her own words were. She was secure here, she could say anything she wanted.

His answer was a stifled moan against the juncture of her shoulder and neck, and she pressed her lips tightly together, arching against him even as she tried to unfasten his slacks. It was uncharacteristic for him not to laugh, not to chuckle at her words, but her thoughts spun away as she finally freed him and hard length of him brushed against her, slid against the swollen heat of her, slid against his own probing fingers, growing slick and hot with her moisture.

“You, too,” he whispered, and she didn’t have any time to think on what that meant, because he slid his free hand beneath her shirt, kneading and stroking her taut, sensitive breasts even as he slid into her, his slight, rocking thrusts pushing her back against the back of the couch and finally tipping her over that last edge. She hadn’t the strength to scream his name as she felt she ought, repeating it instead in a reverent, sobbing voice as she wrapped her arms around him.

“Miss you,” she said as the last tight clench of her climax laid claim to him and brought forth his own finish.

“Miss you so much,” she repeated, and she felt his back shake beneath her hands even as she felt his tears on her neck.

Dreams, she thought, banding her arms tighter around him. “Shhhh.” How bizarre they could be.

~~~

She was falling off the couch.

It wouldn’t have bothered her—ordinarily, she could just scoot herself back over and be fine. But damn it, something was in her way. In fact, unless she were much mistaken, the same something that was shoving her off the couch was also the only thing holding her on.

Wait.

Ginny opened one eye, found herself face-to-face with a very awake Draco Malfoy, and screamed.

He winced and jumped, his arms and legs untangling from hers as the shock of her banshee voice rendered him graceless, and he dumped her arse-first onto the floor in front of the couch.

“Fuck!” Ginny yelped as her bum landed squarely on the book she’d been holding when she’d fallen asleep. The spine of the bloody thing had jammed right into her tailbone, for Merlin’s sake. “What are you doing?!”

Draco gaped at her for a moment. What in bloody fuck did she think he was doing?! He had come in, found her lying there asleep, gorgeous, half-naked, and holding his book. He’d laid down with her, and… “You were asleep that whole time?!” Gods. She’d told him she needed him, missed him, and she’d just fucking been dreaming, been asleep. It had meant nothing to her.

He’d been an idiot to think she’d changed her mind, anyway, and now he felt like a cad for having taken advantage of her.

“What?” Ginny looked at him, really took in the situation for the first time.

He smelled like whiskey.

“Are you drunk?” Thoughts occurred to her one after the other. “Oh, Merlin. Did you break my door down again? Did we just shag?”

He gaped at her, then sat up, bracing his elbows on his knees and putting his face in his hands. “I’m not drunk,” he said slowly. He’d taken her when she wasn’t even aware he was there. He’d broken into her apartment. “I’m just a fucking idiot.”

Ginny pulled her hair back from her face, holding it back with her hands as she regarded him. She remembered Pansy telling her to wait. She remembered falling asleep with his book, thinking of him.

And she remembered telling him she needed him, missed him.

And she remembered him crying in her arms.

“Oh,” she whispered. “Oh, my.”

Wait, indeed. Had he come to her, then, for more than just a bit of a kick on the sofa?

He stood, tugging up his pants and fastening them in the same motion, his eyes averted from hers. She’d call her brothers. They would kill him. They’d fucking murder him for doing this to her. He’d really rather do that himself, he thought, looking around helplessly. He’d lost his wand somewhere. He’d need that to defend himself.

Fuck, when had she done this to him? When had she made him this whinging, trembling mess? She’d gotten under his skin like a fucking disease, was it any wonder he’d gone completely mad and practically forced her to have sex with him? Twice, no less, he’d practically forced her twice. “I have… I can’t fucking stay here!”

He wished he actually were drunk, because intoxication, though Lucius Malfoy had claimed it a weakness, was an excuse, damn it, a totally valid excuse.

With no small amount of chagrin, he tugged his wand from between two couch cushions, thinking it damned lucky—or perhaps damned unlucky—he hadn’t rolled over on it and hexed himself. He raked a hand through his hair, looking at her in the eye for the first time. “Damn it, I didn’t mean for this to happen. Not like this.” He’d had a plan, he’d had things to say to her, and bugger it all, she’d just… looked so fucking perfect.

She cringed at his words, hating herself for that weakness, but hating the thought that being together with him, tender words between them, was an accident.

She’d waited, damn it, and he had come to her. How else was she supposed to wait again?

“Draco, wait.” She didn’t realize she was throwing the advice back at him until the words were out of her mouth. “Slow down, I don’t understand—”

“God, Ginny, I just took you while you were sleeping, you can’t want me to stay here!” He’d just been desperate, needy, preoccupied with her and needing to be filled with her.

“You didn’t know!” Ginny shouted, getting his attention. “Stop being such a martyr for two seconds and stand still!” He goggled at her then, one hand in mid-rake through his hair, blond strands poking in all different directions.

“I’ve been wanting you back here for two weeks. The least you owe me is an explanation.

“Why did you come back?”

She’d given him the opening, the opportunity he needed to tell her the things he’d planned to say, and he could only stare at her.

“I came because I was missing a bottle of whiskey,” he said finally.

Ginny’s brow furrowed, then she sighed, a frustrated laugh escaping her lips. “All right, maybe you were right,” she said stiffly. “Maybe you need to go.” She couldn’t believe she thought this might work. Sex between them—definitely workable. But she wasn’t settling, damn it, she would not do that.

She was wavering, he could see that. He stepped forward, grabbed her arms, thought better of the move, and stepped back, holding her only with his eyes. “You came into my study. You saw how I live.”

“Decadence,” Ginny said wistfully. Tens and dozens of everything. She’d never be able to understand that life, much less find a place in it.

“No,” he said, laughing. “Were that it were so simple.”

“Then what is it?” Ginny backed up, sat on the couch, felt it still warm from their time spent there. Not a dream, then. None of it.

She’d been so sad to think of waking without him.

Now, he thought. Now was the time to either let her in or close that door for good, a door he’d not be able to break down.

“I was taught early in life that the only things worth having were the things worth buying, but I learned the only things that truly hurt you were the things you couldn’t buy, couldn’t replace, and couldn’t have more than one of.”

Ginny steeled herself, made herself stay exactly where she was. She would not go to him. She needed to hear all of this, to know how it involved her.

“So when Lucius… when my father died, I told myself that was it. You cherish the things you can replace, the things you can have more than one of, and what difference will it ever make if one is missing?”

Ginny put a hand to her mouth, her eyes wide and growing wet. She’d never guessed the reason for his odd study, only figured him for a peculiar kind of spoiled. She ached for him, but stayed silent, knowing her pity was not welcome here.

“You hurt me, Ginevra. You hurt me, and you did nothing but… rub my fucking nose in it this morning as you spoke of me as though I were worthy of the words you spoke instead of too unworthy to stand where I’m standing now.” He was breathing hard now, his voice ragged. “I know I’m a bastard, Ginny, a right prick, but damn it, you can’t… you can’t say those things and not mean it. You may have turned me all around, but I’m still a Malfoy. I won’t allow myself to be manipulated.”

“And I’m a Weasley. I won’t allow myself to be wasted,” Ginny said, looking up at him with tears in her eyes. “I’m not trying to manipulate you, Draco. I’m only trying to save myself.”

“From what?” he shouted, exasperated with her and himself, with the unclearness of their actions and interactions.

Things were so much simpler when he was inside her, listening to her whisper his name. This? This was madness.

“You can’t love me!” Ginny shouted, standing up. “You can shag me from sundown to sunup, Draco, and that doesn’t mean shite about love! I’ve had a loveless relationship, and I’m too good for another!”

“Why can’t I? Don’t fucking tell me what I can and cannot do!” His face was turning a dangerous shade of purple, and he grabbed her again. “You’ve been trying to tell me from the very beginning of this who I am, what I do, what I do not do, and how is that any different from Potter, eh?” He gave her a little shake. “I’m certainly not schooled in what passes for love in the Weasley home, but I look at what I own and I know if there were ten of you, I’d want all ten. If there were a dozen, I’d want all of them, no matter how… stubborn and loud and stupid and freckly and Muggle-loving they all were. But there’s only one, damn it, so I can’t fucking replace you, and I can’t very well let you go somewhere else, can I? Is that enough?”

It was Ginny’s turn to goggle, and she did so even as he gave her another shake to put his point through. Her eyes were wide and shocked on his, and he continued to burn holes through her with that stare of his.

“Draco,” she finally said, bringing her hands up to his arms and wincing as he relaxed his fingers. She’d have bruises tomorrow, she knew. “What do you want?”

“You,” he said, looking at her as though she were thick.

“Do you want me to be happy?”

“Happy with me? Yes. Happy with someone else? Hell, no.”

She considered it, felt something churn within her, ruthlessly tamped it down.

“Do you want me to be safe?”

He rolled his eyes—actually rolled his eyes. “If I wanted you to be safe, I wouldn’t want you within a kilometer of me.”

“Why not?” She arched into him as he laid his forehead to hers, her voice now a whisper. It felt so good to have him here.

Why had she ever told him to leave?

“Because,” Draco said, kissing the spot above her top lip and letting his eyes drift shut. “I’m completely mad. Absolutely sick. If I were a healthy man, would I even be here?”

“You’re positively mad,” Ginny said, hoping against hope it wasn’t a dream this time. She’d be awfully brassed off if it were.

~~~

“Draco?”

He was rather enjoying her bed, since he’d never seen it before and since he’d slept fuck-all in the last two weeks—he figured she owed him at least a good night’s sleep after all the hell she’d put him through. “Mm?”

“I forgot something.”

Her hand roamed up and down his chest and he shivered. “Mm?” he repeated.

“I still have lingerie to try on for you.”

He grinned in the dark.

Sick, that one. Sick as they came.