Part 2: Pretending
The baby is born a bit early, right after she finishes her 6th year, at the end of June. He is whisked away before Ginny can properly hold him and count his fingers and toes and shower him with love. She is upset, but says nothing. After all, she grew the baby, felt him kicking and poking and twisting inside of her as he developed, but he is taken to be named, Lynxiun Draco Malfoy. What a stupid name, she groans inwardly, but says nothing still. After all, she is only his mother.
Draco becomes more attentive and spends his time with Ginny. They swim, they lie in the gardens and watch the stars, they share Draco's bed. She knows, she can feel it deep inside, that Draco is anxious of the looming events. She tries to talk to him about it, to ease the silent tension that radiates from him, to convince him that he does not have to follow in his father's footsteps, but he silences her with a look and that is that.
She is finally permitted one single day to go see her family. She knows that it is the day Draco will receive his Dark Mark, and she can barely function. They want her out of the way, so with a wet nurse in tow, and strict instructions from Narcissa, Ginny goes to the Burrow with a heavy heart. Her son is nearly a month old and she has barely held him. He spends his time in the nursery, where Ginny is shooed away. They expect her to learn to be like Narcissa, to be a socialite and a gracious hostess, but she can't. She is still bitter because she is not permitted to finish her schooling, because she was forced into marriage and her husband is being forced into the Dark Lord's service, and because she is not even permitted to be a good mother.
Her family, of course, is horrified, but they can do nothing about it. The magic was there, permanently binding Draco and Ginny. She lets her mum fuss over her, and then the baby, who she calls Lyn when she is, on rare occasion, alone with him.
"You can come home Ginny," her mum tells her finally, after she has rocked the baby to sleep and shooed the nurse out to run errands.
She looks at her mum with tears glittering in her eyes. "They'll keep the baby."
"They won't," her mum insists. "We won't let them."
Any attachments to the baby Ginny had felt have already begun to fade away. "I do love Draco, but I didn't want things to be like this."
Her brothers and father come home for dinner, and Ron is so incensed at her lack of enthusiasm for Lyn, her apathy at the insane plans to break her away from Malfoy Manor, and her refusal to talk about Draco or Lucius and the Death Eaters, that he is not speaking to her by the end of dinner.
Ginny feels sick the entire day, wondering about Draco.
He is not home when she returns, and she paces the floor well into the night. Finally she crawls into his bed, and prays that he will not be angry when he arrives.
She awakes to find him staring at her in the darkness. He is different. She can see it in him, in his aura.
"Come to bed," she whispers nervously.
Silently he slides in beside her, careful to keep the right side of his body turned away.
"Are you alright?"
"No." His voice is wound tight.
"Did you . . ."
His silence answers her. Her husband is now a Death Eater. Tears escape her eyes and roll down her cheeks, leaving puddles on the pillow. She cries for Draco and for her son who will be expected to follow in his father's footsteps some twenty years from now. She cries for herself, for giving up her freedom and losing her identity. She cries until she can't breathe and although her silent sobs shake the bed, Draco remains stiff, unable to comfort her. In the wee hours of the morning, when she is able to fall asleep, she dreams of scarred, burning flesh.
*****
Draco finds Ginny in the library when he returns home. It had been two years since they'd moved from his parent's side of the house into their own wing on the west end of the mansion.
"How was your meeting?" she asks him coldly.
"Where is Lynxiun?" he inquires.
"I don't know. With the bloody nurse I assume."
"He's not."
There is a flicker of hesitation in her eyes and Draco knows she is lying.
"What have you done?" he demands.
Ginny meets his fierce stare. She won't back down. She won't tell. She knows what her husband does during the nights he is gone. He kills and tortures and tracks down those loyal to Dumbledore. He tracks her family. He follows the Dark Lord.
"I promised you," Draco tells her heavily, "that you would be safe with me. I have not let you down. Why are you doing this?"
"Lyn will not be like you," she answers calmly.
Draco freezes.
"Neither will anyone else."
It takes a minute to absorb her words.
"Are you expecting another one?"
"Not anymore."
"What have you done?"
She stands to her feet. "I know you won't give me a divorce, but I want out of this relationship. I want to go home."
He stares at her, his expression a confused little boy. "But you are safe here. You won't be safe . . . anywhere else." His words leave the unspoken hanging in the air. What if she has no family to go back to? She hasn't been in contact with them in over three years, not since the Order had to go into hiding. She really doesn't know whether or not they are still alive.
Ginny takes a deep breath and ignores the innuendo. "You don't love me. So why keep me here?"
Draco brings his hands to his face. "I do. I do love you. That's why I keep you here. I want you to be safe."
"Then why do you do this?" she screams, rising to her feet. "Why do you follow him? You know it's wrong. It's not fair to do this to your family!"
He steps forwards and cradles her face. "I cannot change my destiny."
"Yes!" She is slapping him now, hitting him, beating against his chest with her fists. "You can! There is no such thing as destiny!"
Draco looks at her sadly, allowing her to continue pummeling him with her small hands. "Why do you think I was born? I was created for serving the Dark Lord."
His words stop her like a Hippogriff to the chest. "But you don't have to," she whispers, her voice strangled as she chokes back a sob and struggles to keep upright.
He pulls her closer, supporting her too thin frame and trailing kisses across her face. His breath smells of tart green apples, when it should smell like the death of the night's activities. "I gave you the wrong potion."
"What?" Her mind is rolling now, convincing herself that he wouldn't slip her Veritaserum or use that horrid curse to drag the truth out about where their son is.
"At school," he continues, "and for the past few months."
"The wrong potion?"
"It wasn't birth control," he whispers, planting kisses on her forehead. "It was just vitamins."
"Vitamins?" Her voice is high and unrecognizable, a mixture of panic and realization and tears.
"I had to keep you. I couldn't let you go. I won't. I can't."
"So you got me pregnant?" she shrieks, the realization setting in on her. "You took me away from my family!"
"I need you Ginny." His voice is raw and desperate. "You're the only thing that keeps me from going to them. That darkness, it's there, always, but you keep it at bay. You save me."
"I don't! You still, you serve him! You have that horrible . . . thing on your arm!" She is hysterical now, her heart pounding against the expensive material of her shirt.
"But I love you." He repeats these words until she is spent, dangling limply in his arms, and then ever so gently, as if he is dealing with a small child, he lays her down on the couch, and undresses her, then crawls on top of her.
"No," she protests weakly. "Don't."
"It's okay, it's okay."
She is torn between love and hate, torn between his hands moving in small circles across her bodyand creating shocks of pleasure that cross her bare skin and knowing that those hands have killed before. She is torn between the lust that is inspired by his lips as they moan her name, and knowing that he has used those same lips to tell lies and be cruel and cause death and destruction. She lets him take her just like she always does, the lust winning over the fear. Lust telling her that her husband would never to a thing to hurt her, and fear sobbing that he already has.
He undresses her with great gentleness and explores her body with his mouth and hands, finding all the spots that make her cry out and moan and shake with desire.
She lifts one leg over the back of the couch, giving him all the access he wants, and it is seconds before he plunges inside of her, filling her up before slowly withdrawing and repeating the process. It is slow and unhurried, as it has been very few times before, just once on their wedding night and once when she so willingly gave him her virginity. Draco's moves are languid and leisurely, assuring her once again that she really is safe, that nothing bad can happen to her here, that Draco won't ever take their son or unborn child to the Dark Lord.
She rides the waves of her orgasm, crying out his name, begging him for more.
Ginny shutters beneath him, and he pauses, moving only the smallest bit as he waits for her. He moves his hand to the small space where they join and rubs his finger across her clit, making her shake with the electrical jolts that course through her body. "Where is our son?"
Ginny freezes. Of course. She's nothing more than a simple minded fool, she decides, always letting her emotions overtake her. It always comes down to what he wants. "You don't love me," is what falls from her lips.
"I do. I do." He raises his hips and slams them down, and Ginny bites her lips to keep from crying out.
"Where is he? I know what you did. The Fidelius Charm. Where is he?"
She closes her eyes but the tears spill anyways and Draco pounds into her again, and again, until she feels him shutter to a stop and collapse onto her, utterly spent.
After several moments, he pulls himself out of her, stands and fastens his trousers, then turns on his heel and leaves, and Ginny buries her head in the arm of the chair and cries.
When he finally returns, he is visibly shaken. "Where is our son?"
"Why do you even care?" she snaps, her voice a mess.
He kneels beside her and gives her a weak smile. When he speaks again, his voice is different somehow. It is deeper, darker, and ancient. "Oh my little Gwynhyfar. How much I've loved you for a thousand life times. Can't you see this is only one step in our destiny?"
She is utterly confused and yet manages to say, "I don't believe in destiny."
"Ah, no more. To kill your brother . . ." Draco's eyes are glazed and Ginny is not quite sure he ever knows he's speaking.
"And my name is Ginerva." But she is not mad, but confused. It is not as though he has called her by another woman's name, because he is so clearly speaking to her. His words have awoke something deep inside of her, and images that felt like those vague, confusing memories of something that may or may not have been a dream or even just déjà vu of a dream are stirring through her mind.
"Ginerva, Gwynhyfar, Gwendolyn, Guinevere, Galadria, they are all the same, aren't they? Although I have always like Gwynhyfar the best."
"What are you talking about Draco?" she whispered, her voice sounding unnaturally loud in the stillness of the room.
"You are forgetting, and to forget is to condemn your family to death."
"No," she hisses, "you are the one that condemns people to death!"
"In this lifetime, I suppose. But not in others."
She shakes her head in confusion, and the moment passes. "I am not the secret keeper," she lies, "and so even if I told you it would do no good."
"And the other one?" he glances at her stomach. "What have you done?"
"Gotten rid of it!" she lies defiantly.
"Do you really think I would hurt my own child? My own flesh and blood?"
"Why not? Your father did!"
"Am I my father?"
"I think so," she whispers. "You do what he does."
"Fine." Draco pulls out his wand and points it at her.
For a moment, Ginny is terrified.
He mutters words that her petrified brain cannot comprehend and she feels a flash of warmth. Her belly is glowing.
"I didn't think you had it in you," he mutters. "You wouldn't dare end our child's life."
Tears escape her eyes as she watches him, his expression smug.
He grabs her by the hand and pulls her, still naked, from the couch. The sticky essence of Draco is still between her thighs as he marches her silently to his office. With more force than she is used to, he pushes her down in his chair and pulls his wand out again. He taps it on top of a rather plain looking glass globe. The globe begins to change, turning into a map. "Lynxiun" he mutters.
Ginny's fear increases.
"So," he says finally. "You trusted our son to the Mudblood. The Malfoy heir is with the Mudblood."
Ginny bites her lip, but once again, the pain doesn't hold the tears back.
"Did you think I wouldn't have a tracking charm on him as well? That I wouldn't prepare for this day, a day I prayed I would never, ever see?" he demands. He paces the room and then kneels beside her. "Do you love me?"
She wants to hate him. But she doesn't. She never has, and she never will. "Yes. I love you."
"I love you too. But I will kill her if our son is not back here tonight. And if that doesn't work, I will go after your family." His expression is pained as he speaks, as if he does not want to say the hateful words coming from his mouth. "I need my son."
So, they are still alive.
"I don't want to live like this," she tells him finally.
"It's just one lifetime," he answers, taking her in his arms and rocking her back and forth. "The next one will be better. These things, these things you cannot change, they are just easier to give into."
When she finishes crying, he performs a glamour charm on her, helps her dress, then she wraps her arms around him. With a pop, they are on Hermione's doorstep.
Hermione opens the door with wild eyes and points her wand at Draco.
"Just tell him," Ginny says firmly, coldly, stepping between them.
"No," Hermione shakes her head. "I won't."
"Do it. I love you and I love my family, so do it."
Hermione finally, reluctantly, lowers her wand as Ginny's implications sink in. Her feelings towards Draco are evident as she hisses, "Ginny's son is with me, you fucking no good Death Eater. I hope you die! Harry and Ron will get you. You know that, don't you?"
"They haven't yet, now have they?" he says calmly, brushing past her as he is able to see his son now.
He scoops the sleeping boy into his arms and puts his arm back around Ginny.
"Thank you," Ginny tells her friend, knowing it's the last time she will ever be able to associate with her.
Draco tucks Lyn into bed, and then escorts Ginny to her own bed when they arrive home. "This is behind us now," he says finally. "We won't speak of it again."
Ginny's nods, her strength and resolve gone. "Will you sleep in here tonight?" It has been too long since they have shared the bed in order to actually sleep. "With me?" She wants to hate him, despise him, for what he has done to her, but she can't. She does love him, with a live that feels strong enough to really be able to last 1000 life times. So just forgives him, just like she knew she would.
"Of course." He tenderly kisses her forehead and then her cheek. "Of course I will."
Mostly, when he is with her, he is so kind and gentle that it is easy to believe he is not a Death Eater. As she drifts off to be cradled with Dream, she decides that life would be less painful if she could give in and pretend. She wants to be happy. So in the morning, she goes to the East wing of the Manor to see Narcissa who knows all there is to know about giving in and pretending.
fins
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A/N I took the name Gwynhyfar from Anise, cause she rocks. Thanks for the reviews, I just love them!
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