Brightside

A/N: This is what happened when I spent 4 solid days listening to Mr. Brightside by the Killers on my iPod on constant repeat. I don't write song fics & I don't really read them, but I don't know if this is a typical song fic. I hope you like it & leave me your comments & thoughts. So, it goes without saying that all the lines you recognize don't belong to me!

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Brightside #1

He was heading to Ginny's flat. It was late, later than he normally went to her place, but he didn't care. He had flowers, chocolates, and bubble bath - not that he expected the two of them would put the bubble bath to good use any time soon, but he could dream. She had been so tired lately, falling asleep as soon as practice was over. He kept telling her to go see a mediwizard, but she wouldn't. If they had been sleeping together, he would have been afraid she was pregnant.

He was only several feet away from the entrance to the building where Ginny lived, when she dashed out the door. He stopped and very nearly called out her name, but something kept him silent. She paused at the edge of the walk and then a taxi pulled up to the curb. He watched in confusion as Ginny jumped inside the Muggle taxi and it sped away.

He stood in shock at the curbside, wondering what in the bloody hell was going on. Slowly he turned away when he realized she wasn't coming back any time soon and apparated back to his flat. But he couldn't sleep. The image of his fiancée jumping into the back of the taxi and dashing away was haunting his vision.

The next morning, he was dying to ask her about it. She was the one who always went home as soon as practice was over to sleep. He thought she was sick. She looked pale so often, and even Coach asked if she was alright when she forgot to glamour away the dark circles under her eyes. But no matter how peaky she looked, she always played at the top of her game.

She greeted him with her usual good morning kiss on the cheek. “Hey you.”

“Hey,” he answered, biting his tongue.

“Wood! Get up there!” Coach shouted. “Weasley!”

“I'm going,” she called, mounting her broomstick.

He played like crap that day.

“Now look,” Coach said crossly, later that afternoon. “Puddlemere's got a good chance at the cup this year. Wood, I don't know what's on your mind, but you better get it off.”

“Right,” Oliver muttered. He had allowed about 15 goals in today, all scored by Ginny, of course.

“Do you want to come over for dinner?” Ginny asked him as they prepared to leave.

“Sure,” he agreed, feeling better. He'd ask her about it tonight. It was probably nothing at all.

Dinner was nice, and they sat in front of Ginny's Muggle television and watched a movie. But he never asked, and when she fell asleep on his shoulder, he tucked her into bed and left. But he stood on the street side, watching, waiting. And an hour later, the taxi pulled up, she jumped in and was gone. The same thing happened the next night, and he realized that there was someone else in backseat of that car.

On the fourth night, he borrowed his Muggle cousin's car and followed her. The taxi drove across London, stopping at a rather seedy looking Muggle pub. He watched as a tall figure got out, and then helped Ginny out, holding her closely between his arms, engulfing her in the most passionate hug Oliver had ever seen. Quickly he parked the car and followed them inside.

Oliver couldn't believe it. Inside the crappy pub, Draco Malfoy, known Death Eater, was lighting a cigarette, and his fiancée was taking a drag. My stomach is sick. He had to be dreaming. There was no other explanation. He seated himself in a corner booth, ordering a beer, and watching. He had to be dreaming. Lord Morpheus, he begged silently, wake me from this dream. Open my eyes. It has to be all in my head. It has to be!

Now his fiancée was sitting in the Death Eater's lap, her fingers touching his chest. Oliver bitterly remembered the party several months back at the end of last Quidditch season. They had been in a pub - better than this one - in Ireland, celebrating a good season. He had been standing there, just proposed marriage to Ginny hours before, laughing with her and several teammates, when someone walked into the pub, stared at her and said, “I can't believe you said yes.”

At first, they didn't know who it was. The stranger had a hooded cloak that kept his face in shadow. But when he walked calmly up to Ginny, grabbed her waist and kissed her, hard, his cloak fell back to reveal none other than Draco effing Malfoy. The entire pub went silent. No one moved. No one thought to stun or curse or even kill the most notorious Death Eater to date. Draco Malfoy was known for not only following in his father's footsteps, but becoming a hundred times more wicked. Rumors flew of the people he killed and the people he tortured and maimed and defiled families ruined, scandals; the list was endless.

The entire team was absolutely stunned, including him, watching his new fiancée get kissed. At the time, he thought she hadn't kissed back. Looking back, he knew differently. After what felt like an eternity of lifetimes, she shoved Malfoy away and hissed, “Stop!”

He pulled his hood up and apparated from the pub, and that was that. Ginny shook her head and said, “The things that go with being slightly famous.”

Their teammates laughed, and it was over. Or so he thought.

The next day at practice, he wanted to simultaneously throttle her and throw himself at her feet and cry. She played like the professional she was, and he managed to block every quaffle, imagining it was Malfoy's head.

“I'm so tired, love,” she told him with a yawn after practice. “I'm gonna go back to my flat and rest before we go to dinner.”

“Oh,” he lied, “I can't make dinner. I'm sorry. My mum . . . she's coming over. Bringing some wedding stuff.”

“Well, shouldn't I be there?”

“It's okay. You rest and I'll bring it over later.”

Anyone could have seen the lie, but Ginny nodded again. “See you in the morning then.”

Oliver waited outside her flat again, and shortly after 10, the taxi pulled up. This time he followed them to a small hotel on the outskirts of town. At first he thought luck was with him; they entered a ground floor room through an outside glass door, then he realized what he was about to witness and he felt dirty and uncomfortable.

Malfoy was sucking on a cigarette, which Ginny skillfully plucked from his lips and placed in her own mouth as she began to undo his shirt. Her fingers skated across his chest, and suddenly Malfoy had snatched the cigarette, dropped it into a tray and was taking off her dress.

Jealousy ripped through him. His fiancée was being undressed by a Death Eater. She hadn't had sex with him yet. Sure, they had fooled around, but there was just a mutual understanding that their wedding night would be the first night. It was only a kiss, he thought resentfully. That's what Ginny said when I asked her about Malfoy that night in the pub. It was only a kiss. So, how did it end up like this? They were getting in the bed. Only a kiss. Oliver turned his head. It hurt far too much. I can't look.

The look in Ginny's eyes, he thinks, gods, she'd never, ever looked at him with such unabashed lust and adoration. The longer he stood there, the more certain he became that she never would look at him that way.

She came to practice still smelling like cigarette smoke and expensive men's cologne. Does she think I can't tell? Or does she not care? He hated himself for this. For being too afraid to ask her about it, about him, for still loving her and wanting her to say she had been under the controlling curse, wanting her to ask for forgiveness. He would give it to her.

“Are you alright?” he asked. Her hair was in a messy ponytail and her eyes were bloodshot.

“Just tired,” she sighed, leaning on her broom. “I had a hard time sleeping. My neighbors were really loud.”

Her words stuck in his throat and he felt as if he couldn't breathe, as if he would choke to death right there on her alibis. “Oh.”

The last image he had seen last night pounded in his head. Ginny, with her head flung back in absolute rapture, naked and flushed to perfection, riding atop that damned Death Eater. She had been gorgeous, some pagan sex goddess, with her perfectly round breasts and cream smooth skin; her long red hair tumbled loosely down her back as Malfoy's lips and hands explored her body. From his spot outside the door, Oliver could see the point where his fiancée became one with that bastard Malfoy. He couldn't look anymore. It was going to kill him. Maybe it would have been easier to bear if he had thought Malfoy was just using her and she was stupidly letting him. But what they had between them was so obvious, so apparent, it radiated from them - the love and the lust and the need and the raw desperation.

They said jealousy was a green-eyed monster, but Oliver could only see black. The black Dark Mark on Malfoy's arm. Ginny had been grasping that arm with her hand, her fingers only millimeters away from that vile mark.

He mounted his broom without another word and soared quickly to the goal posts. Suddenly, the story of St. Fliayra flew into his mind. She was the patron saint of the broken hearted, if he recalled correctly. She had flung herself into the sea when she found that her husband was not only bedding her enemy, but loved the other girl as well.

He wasn't about to throw himself into the sea, but he wasn't above throwing Malfoy into the sea.

After practice, he invited her over. He would tell her that he knew, and tell her he would forgive her. After all, he loved her. More than he should. He just wanted to know why. That was all; just the explanation and the admittance of her wrong doings, and it would be done, over, forgotten.

“Dinner at my place?” he asked.

Ginny yawned. “I'm really tired. And I stink. I'm just gonna go home and relax. How `bout tomorrow? No practice. We'll spend the whole day together.”

He doubted it. He knew she'd go to Malfoy tonight, and spend the better part of tomorrow sleeping, and then floo him in the evening. “Sure. Sounds good.” Again, he felt her lies stick in his throat. Is this the price to pay to have Ginerva Weasley? To share her with the man she can't have? He hated himself for those thoughts, but felt the undeniable truth in them.

Oliver had hoped that the wedding - and the wedding night - would change things. His hopes sank when he saw the tears in her eyes as she reached the alter. His mum had assured him that all women got wedding jitters, and the forced smile that didn't reach Ginny's eyes meant nothing more than nerves. But when he looked across the smiling crowds and saw one lone figure in the very back, his face in shadows, he knew that his wife would never belong to him in anything other than name. When the Justice of Peace asked for objections, to speak now or forever hold their tongue in peace, and the room was silent, a single tear fell from Ginny's eye. And when he pronounced them man and wife, and instructed Oliver to kiss her, the figure beneath the cloak walked out. He could taste the saltiness of her tears as he kissed her.

She lay beneath him, stiff and unmoving, in their wedding bed. He wished he was naïve enough to think she was a scared virgin, but he could clearly remember the ecstasy etched into Ginny's face, when she was naked and alive with passion, tangled in the arms of that Death Eater. It wasn't until she squeezed her eyes close that she began to come alive beneath him, and he knew she was thinking of someone else.

One evening, during dinner, he asked, “If you weren't married to me, who would you marry?”

She gave him a slight frown. “What are you going on about?”

He forced a laugh, something he does a lot lately. “Just asking. Like if you never met me.”

“You mean besides Robert Boyd?” she laughed.

“Who is Boyd?”

She shrugged. “Some Muggle model. I saw him on the television.”

“Oh.” He remembered to smile. “Yeah, besides him.”

“No one.” She sat down her fork and suddenly looked very sad. “There's no one else I could marry.”

He didn't fail to notice that she said could and not would.

When Ginny became pregnant, she quit the Quidditch team, and Oliver knew that some of those days she spent away from their house. He could tell by her flushed face and happy eyes and that slight scent of cigarettes who she had been with. He wanted to die.

When the baby was born, his mum swore that Oliver looked just like that when he was born. Ginny's mum said their new son had the Weasley nose and the Wood eyes. Charlie said Ginny's hair had been quite pale when she was born. Hermione raised her eyebrows and said nothing. Harry bit his lower lip and glanced at Ginny. Oliver thought his baby looked just like a Malfoy.

But he still loved Ginny.

When he should have been sleeping and felt her creep from their bed and out of the house, he would make his way to the window and watch as she climbed into the waiting taxi. A flicker of a thought passed his mind and he wondered if she thought he didn't know or if she just didn't care.

Even when baby Lukas grew into young man Lukas and only a blind person would fail to notice his pale coloring and white blond hair and silver Malfoy eyes, Oliver still loved him as well. It wasn't Lukas's fault.

Part of his was desperate to believe it wasn't Ginny's fault either.

Ginny gave Lukas everything he ever needed or wanted. Even though Oliver brought home a large paycheck, they couldn't afford the latest model brooms every season or the most expensive robes money could buy or the top of the line quills and cauldrons and scales and telescopes that Lukas received without fail. Oliver knew whose money bought them. He also knew whose money bought the hundred dollar knickers, the $500 shoes, the $1000 trousers, and the $5000 gowns Ginny wore so casually.

On dark occasions, Oliver wondered why he stayed with her. Why didn't he just let her go to him and be happy? Why didn't he allow himself a measure of deserved happiness. But the answers were many. She could never go to Malfoy. He was a wanted man, a Death Eater, a killer, a murderer. He couldn't stay long enough to settle down with her.

And he knew that in some way or another, Ginny loved him. She wouldn't have agreed to marry him if she hadn't. They had good times. They went on holidays once a year. She always greeted him with a kiss and dinner. She listened intently as he told her about his day and she was at every single Quidditch game without fail. The sex was good as well, although he suspected she was imagining someone else inside of her. Strangely enough, she was in her best moods towards him when he knew she had been with Malfoy.

So he stayed.

He loved her. And that was all that mattered.

Then it happened. One of his teammates brought the extra edition of the Daily Prophet to practice. Oliver took one look at the cover and apparated home. His wife was sprawled on her back across their bed, silent tears pouring down her face.

He sat down beside her and picked up her hand. “I'm sorry.”

“About what?”

“Him. His death.”

She merely looked at him, the tears still flowing.

“I know you loved him.” He knew she hadn't been with him lately. The acute absence of gladness, and the lack of cigarette smoke in her flame colored hair gave her away. It hadn't occurred to him that she was aware her husband knew about her secret. That hurt.

“The night before our wedding he said he was going to kill me. Said if he couldn't have me, no one could.”

Oliver looked away, her words cutting what was left of his heart.

“I hope it wasn't painful for him,” she whispered so quietly he almost didn't hear her.

He hoped it was.

When Lukas came back from school for the summer, Ginny took him out for the day, and when they returned, Lukas was very quite.

“Mum told me,” he said finally.

“I know,” Oliver answered numbly.

“Do you love me?”

He glanced at his son. “Of course I do.”

“Do you love mum?”

“Always.”

“I don't want the money.”

“The money?”
“Mum said I inherited lots of money. Lots and lots of it,” Lukas said dully.

So the Death Eater knew. Of course he did, Oliver thought.

Ginny and Lukas and Oliver were the only people at Malfoy's funeral. Ginny begged Oliver not to go, but he insisted. He needed this as much as she did. He needed to know that the only thing standing between him and his wife was gone. Ginny had used her wand to draw a black veil on her face, and as her tears fell, it stayed in place. They preacher gave a few meaningless words about death and forgiveness and moving on to better places and Ginny's tears streamed silently down her painted on veil, puddling at the base of her neck and then disappearing under her expensive black dress.

The preacher left, and Ginny didn't move. Lukas shifted uncomfortably from one foot to another. Out of the corner of his eye, Oliver saw Harry making his way between the graves.

Harry reached out to shake Oliver's hand, then Lukas's, and finally, silently turned to Ginny. He tried to hug her but she shrugged out of his grasp.

“I know . . . you . . . cared about him,” Harry said at last.

“Then why did you two do it?” she asked softly, turning on her heel and walking back to the road.

Harry glanced at Oliver and Oliver felt the world closing in on him.

Oliver thought the funeral would bring him closure, a finality that meant he could get on with his life, but it didn't. He could only recall the look of absolute rapture on his then fiancée's face when she was in that hotel room with Malfoy. She was happy then. She was in love.

He should have let her go. Destiny was calling then, and he should have just let her go.

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A/N: The veil idea is not mine. It belongs to Neil Gaiman; it's what Barbie did for a funeral in A Game of You. There will be at least one more segment of this from Ginny's POV & possibly one from Draco's POV.

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