Chapter 3: Not Ready To Make Nice
Congrats to those that got the titles correct. No one managed to get the story title however. It's a song by Justin Timberlake of the same title. Accidental Babies is by Damien Rice. Dream On is by Aerosmith. And Losing My Ground is by Fergie.
I'm sorry this took so long! In my free time, I've been reading Marianne Curley's Guardians of Time trilogy. It was so engrossing, I loved it, and I completely recommend it. Also her other book Old Magic. After that, my personal life began to take a serious dip concerning my boyfriend and my health simultaneously. I was in the hospital briefly, and the following weekend I was in a car that ended up full-force into a pole so I've been less than creative so this was put on hold until I began to feel better physically and emotionally.
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The pompous man that the two women had been following came to a halt in front of two large double doors. He turned both doorknobs and pushed through them, opening them with a dramatic creak to reveal the office to Ginny and Joy. The room that posed as the main office surely could fit the entire restaurant in the middle of the room, twice. It was at least a whole floor, or at the least had a charm on it to make it larger than it appeared. It was furnished with rich dark wood. Everything was dark wood; the chairs, the tables, the desks, the doors, the baseboards, even the floor.
"Ladies." The man inclined his head towards the two before closing the doors, with him on the other side.
"Well, I see Malfoy employs people just like him; pompous airheads with a wand up their arse." Joy said to Ginny, not bothering to keep her voice lowered. She'd heard stories of Draco through Ginny, and had had run-ins with him during her time at Hogwarts, so she knew his reputation easily to be a womanizing prick.
"A wand?" Ginny inquired, "I'd go with something a lot longer, and lot thicker, knowing Malfoy."
"I just hope Silas isn't anything like him. Having him like you is bad enough for the entire country." Joy smirked lightly as she twisted her body to face Ginny, then twisting it the other way in a nervous, and slightly bored, manner.
"I must agree with the lady. I quite remember you were a lot like your jokester brothers back at Hogwarts." A rich voice said to the left of the women as its owner stepped out of the shadows.
Ginny smiled softly, "And I remember it was your business partner's habit to lurk in the shadows, not yours Mister Zabini." She retorted as she turned herself to face the man fully, holding her hand out for him to shake formally as she slipped into her businesswoman demeanor. Or, at least the one she attempted to copy from the real businesswoman of the duo. After Blaise had smiled and nodded his head towards her curtly while shaking her hand, Ginny blindly motioned to her right where she assumed Joy was, "Mister Zabini, Joy Davenport." She went ahead with introducing her partner, as she knew Blaise on a slightly more friendly level. They'd tried to hang out and be friends for awhile at Hogwarts. That was how she'd gotten so close to Draco in the first place to develop feelings for him long before they met years later in a club. Unfortunately though, Ginny's brother and house rivalries got in the way and they ended their friendship. It took her a moment to realize that Joy hadn't said anything, and turned to look at her friend who seemed to have zoned out with a slack expression on her face as she stared at Blaise. "Joy." Ginny said a little harshly, "This is Blaise Zabini."
Joy shook herself slightly, not catching the bemused expression on Blaise's face, or the eye roll from Ginny as she stepped forward with her hand outstretched, "Right. Sorry. Hello Mister Zabini."
"Blaise, please." He insisted as he shook her hand, "I'm no older than the two of you. Formalities such as that are for elders." He flashed the two women his charming smile, and flourished with his hand towards the back center of the room where a more personal circular table with six chairs around it was. It was a lot better than the huge oval one at the right of the room that seemed like it could seat all of the Ministry workers, and then some. "Shall we?" He inquired, walking towards the table, "My other associates should be here soon."
"Associates? As in plural? I was only expecting to meet with you and Mister Malfoy in regard to the deal he made last night." Joy said, a nervous quiver entering her voice, not moving a muscle towards the table. If things weren't going to go the way she thought, she was gonna book and bad fortune be damned. "If you're bringing in someone else to oversee matters, I'd like a little more time to prepare and bring in my own counsel."
"It's just a formality. Draco and the company lawyer will be along shortly. The latter only has to be here to make sure that all of us understand the terms of what Draco's blindly done like a fool." Blaise stated, a bit of a sour expression and note taking over his business demeanor. He quickly flashed his smile again however and added, "Though, I'm sure we would've signed on as an investor. I just wish Draco hadn't rushed into it as such."
"Personally I wish he hadn't rushed into anything." Ginny grumbled as her eyes scanned the room. She quickly noticed the side table with a crystalline jar of scotch and four glasses. Despite her earlier exploits with the toilet and a hangover from the night before, Ginny knew that if she wasn't at least buzzed, that she wouldn't be able to make it through the meeting sitting across from her son's father. "Do you mind?" Ginny asked as she walked towards the table without waiting for an answer.
Joy sighed with her eyes shut tightly. She knew she should stop Ginny before she drank the whole canteen, but Ginny was an adult, and Joy shouldn't have to continuously baby sit her. She already baby sat Silas, and that was as much as she could handle. So Joy looked at Blaise and let out the breath she'd been holding, shaking off Ginny's current actions involving scotch and the impending arrival of the redhead's ex. "So, Mister Zabini, about that lawyer of yours…"
Ginny downed the first glass of scotch in two gulps. It burned on the way down, settling uneasily in the pit of her stomach. She felt it churning around and it made her feel sick all over again. Her only solution for it was another glass of scotch. By the time the doors banged open as Draco and his lawyer entered, Ginny was half way through her fifth glass. She turned around quickly, her drink sloshing over the glass and onto her hand slightly. She froze as soon as her eyes connected with Draco's. Rage rolled through her easily as the memory of his threats returned to the front of her mind. However, the slightest hint of dormant lust seemed to spark too. She caught herself, shaking her head slightly as she looked from him, to her fifth glass of scotch incredulously. Maybe it'd worked too well.
"Okay, shall we take a seat?" Blaise inquired, gesturing towards the table where Draco and the company lawyer already sat. He pressed his hand against the small of Joy's back lightly as he guided her towards the table before looking over his shoulder at Ginny, "Miss Weasley," he said with another gesture towards the table. He wasn't sure if the woman could make it on her own, so once Joy was seated, he went and did the same to Ginny. After all, she had drunk almost six glasses of the finest Scotch Malfoy and Zabini money had to buy.
Joy watched with a crimson stain to her cheeks as Ginny stumbled into a chair next to her, "You okay there, Gin?" She asked kindly, pinning her counterpart with a pointed look.
"Hitting the booze there? Do that quite often?" Draco drawled with a smirk as he watched the redhead's tipsy antics of making it across the room to the table.
Blaise noticed the red draining from Ginny's face, and remembered that personally as calm before the storm. "How about we leave the childish antics to the children, and act like adults for a few moments so we can figure out with in the bloody hell you got us into, Mister Malfoy." Blaise cut in sharply, pinning his counterpart with his own look. After a beat, no one said anything, and Blaise sighed swiftly before plastering his smile back on his face, "Alright then. Mister Raines, can you please explain to us the details about the pact Draco made?"
"Well," Mister Raines, a late 50's balding Wizard with large coke-bottle glasses, drew out slowly as he looked down his nose at the pages in front of him on the wood tabletop. "Mister Malfoy, you have entered a magical contract with Miss Davenport through means of an ancient method of the handshake, used centuries ago as the show of trust for someone to not go back on their word. It was said that the two that broke the pact would have bad fortune for the last of their days. As you all are aware, you're in this predicament now. If Misters Malfoy or Zabini break the contract through Misses Davenport or Weasley, your financial stability will crash, and you'll lose all things you possess. Your businesses namely. Anything you buy during the duration before the break of contract will disappear from existence." He looked up and took a deep breath, "There's no other way out of this contract, I'm afraid." He stated solemnly, sending a sympathetic look towards Ginny who let out a frustrated sigh.
"That's good news." Draco said pointedly at his lawyer, making sure that his tone wiped the sympathy from the older man's face.
"Says you!" Ginny growled ferociously. "You've only pulled this scheme out of your arse so that you can get closer to my son!" She was standing out, her hands pressed flat against the tabletop with her shoulders squared as a fire swam through her eyes.
Draco remained seated, his expression that of practiced calm although his body was obviously rigid and tense, "In case you've forgotten, that's my son as well, Miss Weasley."
"It's hard to forget when his eyes mirror those of the greatest mistake of my life." Ginny spat, instantly regretting it. She knew that meant on some level that she thought of Silas as one of her mistakes, as being with Draco had resulted in her son. He wasn't a mistake though, he was her greatest gift. It was just unfortunate that his father was the man sitting across the table as if he hadn't a care in the world. The same man she'd hated with a passion every time a memory flashed through her mind since that day on his doorstep.
"Ginny." Joy cut in before Draco could get any sort of chance to retort and call her out on what she'd just said, rising from her chair to place a hand on Ginny's elbow, "This isn't the time or the place…"
"Bullocks! This is five years coming. Since he threw me off his property with a sock full of galleons." Ginny roared, turning on her best friend as she insisted on continuing her drunken explosion.
"You what?" Blaise asked incredulously, turning to stare at Draco in shock, "Gods mate, that's just cruel. I know you were supposed to live up to some womanizer reputation back then, but bloody hell, why'd you do that?" Blaise asked quietly as Joy and Ginny bickered in the background. He'd known Draco since they were young. Even before Hogwarts, but he'd never heard Draco doing something that cruel to a woman as means to get rid of her; paying her and releasing her like nothing.
Draco turned his slack expression to one of an angry glare aimed at Blaise before he growled out in a response, "You know why, Blaise. Think back five years ago and see if anything goes off in that thick head of yours."
Joy chose that moment to interrupt the two, "Ginny's had a few too many scotches. I'm going to take her home. If you wish to discuss more business matters, I demand you go through me and not Ginny. I'm the primary owner, and I handle all financial records and all that you'll need to know about your investment. Also, any contact Mister Malfoy wishes to have with Silas is only on Ginny's terms. You will not make surprise visits simply to 'check things out' as an excuse to catch a glimpse of her son. I will not hesitate to break the magical contract if you do that. I barely make ends meet as is; it wouldn't be much difference for me to become poor. Think of how the two of you will manage though." With that said Joy stuck her nose in the air and walked back over to Ginny, grabbing the girl and Apparating out.
"Well that was eventful." Blaise said with a tired sigh as he stood from his chair, unbuttoning the two buttons on his jacket as he relaxed now that the meeting was over. He noticed the cowering wizard of their lawyer waiting for instructions, frozen to his chair with his nose in the papers on the table as he appeared to look as if he weren't listening. Blaise waved a dismissive hand, "You're dismissed Mister Raines."
"How dare she think she has any say whether or not I see my son!" Draco fumed now that he and Blaise were in private, as the doors closed behind their skittish lawyer.
"She is his mother." Blaise pointed out as he made himself a glass of what was left from the scotch.
"Not Ginny. I fully expect her to do that. But that… heathen she was with. She has no right to make that sort of threat, to break the contract if I go anywhere near my son."
"You can stop stressing the words, Draco. I understood them all twelve hundred times you stressed them last night at three in the bloody morning at my house." Blaise said sourly at the memory of being rudely awakening by the sound of a furious Draco Malfoy Apparating into his bedroom. Thankfully, he'd been sans female company for the evening, so at least he'd been dressed when his best friend rudely intruded on his sleep. His drunken best friend, at that. "Look, from what I gather, Miss Davenport is Ginny's best friend, which makes her close to Ginny's son, so she's trying to protect them."
"Ginny's son? Ginny's son?! Have you forgotten that without me there'd be no son?" Draco exploded, taking his frustrations out on a glass that he picked up off the counter and threw at the wall.
"Just because you created him, doesn't mean you're his father. You of all people know that Draco. Everything with Lucius should've taught you that. You can't see him as property. He's a human being that you helped create. Not a piece of stock that's the ticket to the next Fortune 500. He's a living, breathing, human being that if you have any part in his life, will hopefully be the biggest pain in your arse for the next 13 years that you'll ever imagine." Blaise stated pointedly, as he began heading towards his desk, sitting in the large leather chair.
"That's if she lets me have any part in it." Draco admitted under his breath.
"If you stop being such a prick, maybe she will." Blaise responded, before shaking his head in slight irritation, "Now. If you'll excuse me, I have loads of paperwork to sift through because of you and this deal you arranged without any recon work on what this place is like financially and otherwise. Goodbye Draco."
Draco sighed uncharacteristically and sulked out of the boardroom. Though, if anyone asked, he wasn't sulking. He was just making sure that the floor was in pristine condition for his business headquarters.
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"No more Firewhiskey or Scotch for you, Ginevra." Joy said as she rubbed the groaning girl's back as the redhead lay pitifully on her bed in her flat.
"Thank you Mum." Ginny bit back, though it lost its sarcastic edge as it was muffled through her sheets and comforter. "Where's Silas?" She groaned out, before becoming alert, "Where's Silas?" She asked frantically, worried that while she'd napped after the meeting that Draco had came and taken her son away from her.
"Calm down. He's fine. He's with George and Lia. They took him to the London Zoo. He really wanted to see the penguins and the hippos." Joy said reassuringly, standing up from the bed and crossing her arms over her chest, quirking an eyebrow at the woman that lay unceremoniously across her bed, groaning like a child that hadn't gotten her way. It took her all of five extra seconds before she rolled her eyes and promptly slapped Ginny on the bum, and then followed by picking up a pillow and whacking Ginny's back repeatedly until the girl rose from the bed affronted. "For Gods sake woman!"
Ginny stared in both shock and outrage at her friend, "What in the bloody hell was that for?!" She cried, ignoring the dizzy feeling she'd gotten from standing up so fast. Joy was prone to spontaneous outbursts, but none that included slapping her butt and then the rest of her repeatedly with a pillow.
"You're moping! It's… Gods, I don't even know, but it's just…" Joy trailed off, holding her breath as she tried to articulate what 'it' was. She just ended up making a loud disgruntled noise. "Ginevra Molly Weasley! Your ex just waltzed back into your life more arrogant and smug than ever from what I heard through your sobs and pint of Ben and Jerry's. I understand it very well. But woman, make him regret it! You're walking around, drowning your sorrows in alcohol and being belligerent in front of him, and giving him absolutely no reason to regret giving you up! For crying out loud, be an adult! Be a woman! Parade in front of him what he could've had but can't anymore like any other rational scorned woman would!" Joy's face had gotten red through her tirade, and she emphasized a few words with stomps of her feet and throwing her hands in the air. "Be civil to him. Remind him that this isn't Hogwarts where you two can bounce back and forth with insults. Especially seeing as you share a son that will get caught in the crossfire. Show him you're all grown up, Ginny Weasley."
Ginny looked at Joy skeptically. Her plan had its finer points, but also had its downsides. Such as being civil to the man that broke her heart and left her alone as a single mother, unable to keep a man in front of her long enough to get out both syllables to 'mother'. She also wasn't so sure that Draco Malfoy was still interested in her after all these years. She knew from now on they'd have to tolerate each other, because once the anger wore off, Ginny knew she'd more than likely cave and let him be a part of her son's life in some way. That, and she knew him, and knew he was just as stubborn as her and would never give up. A thought sharply hit Ginny, as she shook off the plan and looked confused, "Why would I do that? It's not like I want him to be into me."
"Exactly!" Joy said as if the one word explained everything.
"Oh, right. Exactly. That sums up everything perfectly." Ginny retorted with a sarcastic lit to her voice.
"You're just reminding him, though he doesn't know you're doing it on purpose, of what he gave up. A happy life with you and his son, all because he was, or is, a wanker." Joy rounded the bed quickly, bouncing to stand in front of Ginny, grasping the slightly smaller girl by the shoulders, "It's perfect, really. We get an investor for the restaurant, you get to smash regret into Draco Malfoy like a ton of bricks, and I get to watch!"
Ginny giggled at her friend's face full of excitement, "You're a deliciously evil woman, Joy Davenport."
"I know. It's so much fun!" Joy said happily, turning around and bouncing out of the room.
Ginny sat on the edge of the bed and bit her lip nervously. She wasn't sure she necessarily wanted to go that route. Sure, he'd broken her heart, and left her pregnant and alone. But she knew that to do this plan, would have to require him to be around. Which meant him being around Silas frequently, and therefore getting acquainted with his son, something Ginny wasn't sure she wanted just yet until she decided whether or not fleeing the country and changing their names and appearances was off the table just yet. She sighed heavily, flopping back on the bed as memories from the past flooded her senses. It always seemed to be the bad memories that would flood back when undecided. The particular memory of Draco throwing a sock of money at her made her chest tighten painfully and her stomach roll with nausea. She sat up sharply, determination hitting her as she grabbed fistfuls of her comforter. "Joy! We need to go shopping! I need a new wardrobe for this plan." She could swear she could've heard Joy's jumping up and down in the kitchen.
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Completely and utterly unhappy with this chapter, but at least the hurdle is crossed and I can get on with what I've had planned since the beginning, so yes, this is pretty much a filler chapter of sorts so that I can get to what's going to go down. I have it all planned out in my head. I hope to go a realistic route with things. It's gonna get dramatic/angsty at points, but hopefully funny and light in most as I try to put them on the path I want them on. I have this issue though, when I write, the story goes its own way and doesn't listen to me when I tell it to STOP! My fingers have their own tiny brains in each one, working against me.
Please review. I promise the next chapter won't take two months.