Chapter 14
Of Letters and Photographs
A dark haired woman in her mid-forties walked into the ornate office. "Mr. Minister this came for you while you were at lunch. When I didn't recognize the handwriting, I tried to open it but it wouldn't budge. I had the curse breakers check it and they say it's clean. There is only a charm on it that requires you open it apparently."
Arthur Weasley took the proffered envelop from his assistant. The address was written in black ink in a flowing script across the expansive of the envelope. "Thank you Annett. Could you see that Harry remembers I wanted to see him sometime this afternoon please?"
Annett gave a small curtsy as she moved to leave the room. "Of course Mr. Minister."
He looked at the address. It wasn't the first time someone had opted to drag out the address in such a formal way. In fact most of his letters were addressed in a similar fashion. But there was something about the handwriting that seemed so terribly familiar.
Mr. Arthur Weasley
Minister of Magic
Ministry of Magic
London, England
He turned the envelope over in his hands; it seemed a tad heavy to be just a letter. He should probably have someone else here when he opened it, but for the life of him he couldn't place why he didn't feel the letter offered any kind of threat to him. When he ran his thumb over the seal of the letter, he felt the charm give way and the letter open. `I've got the magic touch,' he thought to himself with a little grin.
Opening the flap of the envelope, he pulled the folded stationary out. The flutter of something falling to the floor caught his attention. At his feet lay half dozen muggle photographs and one wizarding one. The chocolate brown eyes and fiery locks of his daughter's hair were unmistakable. "Ginny," he whispered.
He leaned down and gathered up the photos before walking behind his desk and dropping heavily into his worn leather chair. Laying the letter to the side he stared at the faces in the pictures. Flipping through them he noticed that in one she looked like she had the day she went missing save for the fact that she was heavily pregnant, standing in what looked like grapes. "Oh sweet Merlin."
In the next one a few years had obviously passed there was a small boy with unmistakable Malfoy features standing between her and a man that he could only guess to be the supposedly dead Draco Malfoy.
The next was a wizard photo and though he couldn't place the location, Ginny, the possible Malfoy heir, the boy now older, and two girls that were the spitting image of Ginny only with slightly curling blond hair were all standing together looking around happily. The boy had on school robes but the crest was entirely too small to make out what school it represented.
The last in the pile was a formal picture. Ginny was sitting next to the blond man on a small bench, the boy stood centered behind them, and the two girls on the floor in front of them. He couldn't tell anything about the room around them, except that it was heavily ornate.
Finally reaching for the forgotten letter he opened the folded stationary.
Dear Daddy….
DG DG DG DG DG DG DG DG DG DG
"So Gin do the pictures I selected seem suitable?"
"They are perfect Drake." Ginny took a set behind the large carved oak desk, removing a fountain pen and piece of stationary from the right hand drawer.
"Dear Father. No that doesn't work it sounds too cold." She flicked her wand at the page and watched as the words melted away. "Dear Dad." "Not that doesn't either." She flicked her wand at the page once more.
"What did you call him Gin?"
"Daddy."
"Then there you have it. Dear Daddy. See not so hard."
She put pen to paper for the third time. `Dearest Daddy.' She sat pen poised over the paper looking terribly lost. "I don't know what to say Drake. How the hell do you write a letter to someone you haven't seen in seventeen years?"
"You tell him what's in your heart Gin."
A tear leaked out of the corner of her eye. `Yes, daddy it's me, your little Gin Gin. Oh daddy how I've missed you. I know this letter comes as a shock since it's been seventeen years since you last saw me. I know that is almost solely my fault and it's a mistake that I now find I'm gravely sorry for making. I know it's no consolation, but at the time I truly felt it necessary to make the decision I did. But as they say, hind site is 20/20 (it's a muggle saying dad). It means that an event is always clearer in retrospect rather than at the time it's taking place. Oh daddy I've missed you and mummy so much. I honestly felt I needed to leave when I left.
"Gin, perhaps you should tell him now why you left in the first place. That might be easier if you said it now instead of having to answer that question when we get there."
She thought for a moment. "That's probably a good idea."
I guess the first thing I should explain is that I did in fact leave. I was not kidnapped. It was set up to look that way on purpose. One of the photographs that we included is of me pregnant. I'm sure you noticed I didn't look a day older than when I left in that image. It's because only seven months had passed between the time that photo was taken and when I was supposedly kidnapped from the Burrow. I left home because I was pregnant with Isaac, Dad (he's the boy/young man from the photos).
To make a very long story short, not long after the end of my fifth year while we were staying at number twelve Mum sent me down the street to fetch something from the muggle market. Milk perhaps I don't really remember to be honest. The market was several streets over so I always cut through back alleys to get there faster. This particular day I stumbled across someone who had been beaten nearly to death. I couldn't just walk on and leave him there. I cast every healing spell Mum had taught me. I managed to get Draco (yes that is Lucius's son in the photographs) to the point where I could move him without him dieing on me. There was an empty muggle warehouse nearby. I helped him in and found that there were lots of homeless muggles already staying there. I finally got to the store and picked up what Mum needed along with some things for Draco with what little pocket money of my own I had on me.
It would take over three months for him to heal. During those three months I snuck out or stopped by when I was sent to the market everyday. When clothes from one of the boys would go missing it was because I swiped them for him to have clean clothes to wear. When the leftovers were gone before anyone could touch them it was because I had grabbed them to take to him. When potions went missing it was because I took them.
I guess I should have brought him to the Order, but I just knew that if I did that he wouldn't be given a chance to prove that he wasn't some Deatheater. Everyone was afraid of their own shadow back them. To bring in the son of a known Deatheater it wouldn't have gone over well no matter how he had come to be so close to death's door.
I had expected to have to leave him to go back to school only to find out that they were in fact closing Hogwarts. It was one of the happiest days of my life knowing I wouldn't have to leave him. We had become such close friends over the summer. At some point we stopped being just friends. I'm fairly certain you don't need the details on all that. You do have seven children of your own after all.
About a month before I left Ron caught me sneaking out. He followed me to a muggle clinic several blocks away. I had been sick for days and suspected what was wrong so I needed to know. I knew if I went to St. Mungo's someone would tell you and Mum so I decided on the muggle doctor instead. I guess Ron had Harry's invisibility cloak because he apparently heard the nurse tell me I was indeed pregnant.
I stopped by the warehouse Draco was staying in on the way home and told him. I remember crying my eyes out. Not because I didn't want the child but because I was worried that everyone would turn against me for being so stupid. No sooner were my fears out of my mouth when Ron came out of the shadows and started raging on about how stupid I was to be having the child of a Deatheater. He went on and on getting in both mine and Draco's faces for ages.
Tears streamed down her face as the painful memory of her bother threatening Draco came rushing to her mind. Draco moved next to his wife and hugged her as she sat and cried.
He threatened to kill Draco where he stood if he didn't leave me alone and never saw me again. Draco made me promise to go home and never come back to him. He said he would rather me go and know our child was safe than risk Ron hurting anyone. I agreed against my wishes and left with Ron.
For three weeks I kept my secret and Ron didn't say another word to me. I know he told Harry and Hermione. Harry wouldn't look me in the eye and Hermione kept giving me these pitying looks that made me want to scream. I never could figure out why he didn't go straight to you and Mum and tell you, but to my knowledge he never did.
By week four I was going crazy. I couldn't stand being way from Draco. I truly loved him by this point. Being away from him knowing that I was carrying his child was more painful than I could tolerate. Finally I packed my trunks, hiding them in the closet so they wouldn't be seen, and snuck out once I knew Ron was asleep. I know because I slipped a sleeping potion in his drink while he was playing chess with Harry.
I went to Draco and begged him to take me away. Take me anywhere we wouldn't be found. He didn't hesitate to agree. He told me to find a way out of the house three days later. He would have a plan by then. I didn't question it. Three days passed, Mum sent me to the store again. Draco had a plan. Somehow he had contacted his mother and she agreed to send him to one of the closed up Malfoy estates and to place several vaults worth of the Malfoy fortune into a muggle bank. The next night I talked Mum into letting me go to The Burrow to get some things that I wanted.
Draco met me there. I was the one that made the place look so horrible. Draco sent up the dark mark. By midnight we were already out of the country. It took a few days time, but we finally reached the vineyard that his mother had sent us to, a rather large piece of property in Italy that had been mostly abandoned by the family due to Narcissa's extreme hatred for the place. The only thing that remained was some very healthy vines and the overseer's family who tended the vines even after the staff had been released.
He and I have been here ever since.
Ginny looked at her husband. "Should we tell him why everyone says you died in the final battle?"
"He's going to ask if we don't, might as well take care of it now."
The reports of him being at the final battle were correct. His mother, after apparently hearing from Severus, informed us the day before via owl. Even though I was eight months pregnant and the first harvest in twenty years was pending Draco said he had to go. I spent the next three days crying with worry that he wouldn't come back to me.
Obviously he did and in the process made it appear that not only had I gone missing, but now he appeared just as dead as I did. The picture of me pregnant was taken three weeks after the finial battle, barely a week before Isaac was born.
"All this talk of children he's going to demand to know if you made an honest woman out of me or not."
Draco laughed. "You an honest woman, never."
Just after Draco returned from the final battle we were bound in a true wizard binding under the full moon. Since we were living as muggles, Draco and I married in a muggle church with a muggle priest just a couple months after. The muggles here are very bad at looking down their noses on "unmarried" couples living together you see. As far as they knew we were just another muggle couple.
Outside of a very few people that's all we have ever been here. Just a muggle couple, with three children and a vineyard that is sometimes a bit more of a headache to run than we would like.
We really are happy here Dad. Draco and I have three kids as you've seen from the pictures. Isaac Draco is sixteen and is as much like his father as he looks, Serenity Grace is eleven and Molly Katharine is nine. All three of them seemed to have gotten Draco's white blonde hair, but the girls at least got a little curl from me and Mum. Sere has my eyes though. Kat is a wiz with a cauldron and Sere is equally as good with charms and transfiguration. Isaac, well he's just flat out smart.
Now to the nuts and blots of why I am writing; I'm sure you know that some years ago the headmasters changed the way the first year books call students. Because of those changes, Sere has received invitations letters from every magical school in Europe and several from the Americas. This past week she received her letter from Hogwarts, hand delivered by none other than Headmistress McGonagall and former Professor Snape.
Drake and I have agreed to let Sere go despite our fears about the reaction our return might cause. Oh Daddy I've missed you and Mum so much. Now after so long we are coming home.
Since Sere will need to board the train at Kings Cross on the first the same as any other student we will be coming back beforehand. In fact we have agreed to spend two weeks at home before her departure. Provided that this year's harvest goes as planned we will arrive at Malfoy Manor on the fifteenth of August and will remain there through the duration of our stay.
I know that with your new job.
"He might appreciate a congratulations for that."
"I don't know about that. But I was going to tell him anyway."
(Congratulations by the way.) I can only assume you will want or maybe even need to make some sort of formal statement about our disappearance, reappearance, involvement in the war, and whatever else. We would prefer if you could hold that off until after we have been there for a week or so. Allow us time to show the children around muggle London before forcing them into the spotlight of questioning reporters. You and Mum and my brother's families will be more than welcome to visit us at the Manor or we can come to The Burrow (I assume you're still there) during that first week. So long as no one outside the family knows we are there.
Tell Mum I love her and I have missed her so very much. I can't wait to see you both. If you find that you either can't wait till we arrive or find yourself unable to believe the contents of this letter and the photographs before you, you are more than welcome to come to us. The letter has been set to act as a portkey in that case, just say the spell and off you go.
I guess that's all for now. I love you Daddy.
Your Ginny Girl.
DG DG DG DG DG DG DG DG DG DG DG
Author's hands were shaking and tears were streaming down his face. So very long without knowing if his dear baby girl was okay and now he knew. He finally knew she was safe and happy with a family all her own. Molly was going to be over the moon to have her Ginny-Boo back and three new grandchildren to boot. "Molly!"
He quickly rose from his desk and went to the door, opening it and sticking his head out. "Annett, I need you to reschedule everything I have planned for today. I'm leaving the office. I have some news I need to share with my wife and it's not the sort of thing I can do via floo. Do tell Harry that I need him to cover the fund raising banquet for the new ward at St. Mungo's in my stead this evening. I will not be able to attend after all. Do send a sizeable donation from both the Ministry and a personal one from myself in the Weasley name with him please."
"Yes sir. Will that be all sir?"
"Yes Annett. Thank you for your help."
Author closed the door and grabbed his traveling cloak from the hook on the back of it before grabbing the letter and the photographs from his desk. He walked to the floo, grabbing a pinch of powder before stepping into the grate and tossing the shimmering powder to his feet. "The Burrow!"
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