Chapter 22
Preparing for the Burrow
A/N: My muse, Maggie, is simple girl. All she likes are plot bunnies and reviews. So be kind to Maggie and feed her review cookies please.
Big thanks to my beta Lbandoly for her hard work. She has spent countless hours editing and providing plot help for my stories. She makes my writing possible.
No copyright infringement intended. All characters are the property of JKR, Scholastic, and any number of other companies with more money than I've ever dreamed of seeing. I didn't make any money off of this, so please don't sue.
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Draco lay next to his petite wife. "That could have gone worse."
Her laugh was hallowing. "It could have gone better."
"Gin you said it yourself. Ron is too stubborn for his own good. We knew before we came here that it wasn't going to go over well with him. Merlin knows I had hoped you were wrong but you weren't. What's done is done. It's time to move on. He has two options, grow up and be a man or remain the childish weasel I've always thought he was. Either way it isn't up to us. We made the steps we needed to. He is going to have to come to you now Gin."
"He won't do that."
"Oh I don't know about that. Padma looked like she could kill him with her bare hands when his mother's told him to leave after you ran out. Bill certainly laid into him."
"Why Bill?"
"Granger said Bill had to force Ron to leave."
"Oh. Well yeah in that case yeah Bill reamed him a new one."
"Your dad pulled me aside before he left. Ron's got it coming from your parents as well. And I wouldn't put it past Hermione to let him have it one last time when everyone else is done with him."
Ginny laughed. "Probably not and you do know you just called her by her first name right."
He smirked. "Of course I did, I just wanted to see if you would catch it."
Ginny giggled. "Sure you did."
Draco sat upright suddenly. "All that bloody talk about your dreams and we forgot your potion."
"I'll be alright one night without it. Lay back down please."
"No."
"Draco. Please. I'll be fine."
"We are not going to find out. Uric!"
The elf popped in moments after being called. "Yes Master Sir?"
"The potion vials that I gave you while Ginny was dressing this afternoon. Where did you store them?"
"Theys are in thes drawer to Mistresses vanitys in thes dressing room Master."
"Please bring one and a cup of strong tea please."
The elf was gone once again. "I would have been fine without it Draco."
"Maybe you would have, but I'm not picking tonight to find out. I think you've been on it far too long to dare try and come off of it now Ginny. You've been on it seventeen years without once forgetting it. It would be tempting fate to let it go tonight of all nights."
"Probably."
The discussion was interrupted when the elf winked back in. He handed the vial and tea cup to Draco. ""Wills you be requiring anythings else Master?"
"No Uric that will be all thank you."
"Yous are very welcome Master." The elf was gone again with a snap.
"I'll give him one thing."
"What?"
"He's by far the most efficient elf my mother has ever had."
Ginny laughed. "What you didn't like Dobby?"
"How do you know about Dobby?"
She laughed so hard she nearly spit out her tea. "Who in Gryffindor didn't know about Dobby? Harry is the reason your father freed him."
"Certainly not? I knew he ended up at Hogwarts because the bloody blighter flat refused to serve me in any way but I didn't know why father released him."
"Harry tricked your dad. He took a sock off and put it in Riddle's Diary. Somehow your dad gave the diary to Dobby. Of course the sock was in there. I think its part of the reason for Dobby's obsession with socks personally."
"Oh sweet Merlin and Circe that is bloody funny. I'll have to remember to give Potter credit for that one Sunday. No one ever got one over on Lucius. That must have pissed him off to no end. God I would have paid good money to see that go down."
Ginny was laughing so hard she couldn't breathe. "Who wouldn't? He was outsmarted by a thirteen year old wizard and a dirty sock."
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The following few days proved to be a much needed distraction. All of Friday and Saturday had been spent touring the sites of muggle London. Narcissa had joined them on Friday enjoying being allowed to take in the sites as much a tourist as the rest of her family was. Isaac had appointed himself unofficial tour guide for the entire day by spouting off more useless facts during the day than the paid guides had for many of the locations they had visited.
Saturday had been a quiet trip to the seaside Malfoy home that had been the vacation house for Narcissa over the years. Hours were spent lying on a sandy beach just enjoying family and the peace of the lapping waves against the shoreline. They returned to the manor very late in the evening after having spent a full day soaking up the sun on the northern coast.
Sunday morning arrived all too soon for Ginny's taste. "Must we go?"
Draco rolled over to look at his wife. "We said we would."
Ginny closed her eyes. "I know we did but I'm really not sure I want to."
"You don't want to see your mum and dad?"
"Of course I do. It's everyone else I don't think I'm ready to see again."
"Ron won't be there."
"He might be."
"If he is, it will be to apologize. No one would accept anything but from him after Friday's performance."
"Drake you don't know him. Not really anyway. He would gladly put up a show of being all repentant just to get mum to allow him to be there only to turn around and hex you or me the moment he saw us."
"He's braver than most men then knowing he would be casting hexes surrounded by dozens of able wands."
"Not brave, foolish. He was born that way and he'll die that way, hopefully when he is old and gray and not this afternoon."
Draco kissed her temple. "You're amazing."
"I am not. I'm just the baby Weasel."
"Ginny don't do this."
"Do what? Tell the truth. They all moved on. We could have stayed gone. It wouldn't have mattered."
"Yes it would. Everyone but Ron is all for having you back again. Just because he's a prat doesn't give you the license to do that depressed haze thing you first did when he caught us."
"I'm not slipping off into some haze. I'm angry."
"Why?"
"Because he can just fuck up everything we've built. It took him all of ten minuets to tear my heart out. He's my brother. I love him. But damn him he manages to make me feel like the same naive eleven year old that fell for a memory enchanted into a diary."
"You've done nothing to validate feeling like that. You're a grown woman who is strong, witty, intelligent, smart beautiful, faithful, loving, and kind. You have three beautiful children that worship the ground you walk on. You have me; I will always worship the ground you walk on. You have parents that have loved you and missed you for every moment of your life even when they didn't know if you were dead or alive. Hell they had more reason to believe you were dead than anything, but it never stopped them from hoping you were out there somewhere. It's time to stop letting your prat for a brother tear you apart Ginny."
Silent tears streamed down her face. "I miss home."
"I do too but it will only be a week and a half till we go back. You can make it love. I know you can."
"I don't think I can." Ginny rolled into her husbands waiting embrace. He wrapped his arms around her, pulling her flush to him. Her skin was hot and clammy like it always was when she got overly upset.
"Yes you can. I know you can." The sun was just beginning to peak in the curtains as he kissed his wife. "We've got hours till we have to be there. What do you say to a lie in?"
"What type of lie in?"
"The kind where I remind you what it feels like to feel at home."
She smiled and kissed her husband soundly in response. He slowly teased his hands across the silky smooth skin of her taunt tummy before slipping up to cup one breast in his hand, gently kneading it between his fingers. He flicked his index finger over her nipple drawing it to a hard peak.
Ginny gasped when he buried his face between her supple breasts licking and nipping at the valley between then. "I like this plan."
He took a pert nipple into his mouth laving it with his tongue. Her breast absorbed the chuckle that followed her comment sending waves of delicious pleasure rolling through her straight to her core.
Involuntarily her hands immediately moved from where they had been "drawing" patterns against his back and
moved to cup his bum, to pull him closer to her. His hardness dug into her hip and his knee ground against her slick
clit as she pulled him closer. Draco let go of the nipple he had been sucking at almost hungrily with a pop.
"Someone is awful needy this morning."
"Mmm Draco please. I need you now."
Draco smiled and readjusted so he lay between her spread legs. The beautiful red curls at the apex of her thighs glistened with the evidence of her wanting. "Guide me Gin."
Without hesitation she reached between them taking his silken hardness in her delicate hand. His eyes involuntarily rolled back in his head from the magnificent feeling of her soft caresses. She gave a tiny squeeze and moved up and down its length before positioning him at her weeping snatch. They groaned together as he entered her.
He set a slow pace thrusting into her deeply before pulling almost entirely out and then thrusting back in again. Every thrust brought waves of heady gasps and desperate cries for more. He kept his pace, never once allowing her pleas to speed up his movements inside her.
"God Draco you're teasing me. Please. Faster."
He gave her a smirk that bordered on both cunning and intolerably sexy. "No, I don't think I will," he whispered into her ear.
"Beg all you want luv I'm not going any faster than this."
She grunted her disapproval and she tried to pull him in harder by wrapping her legs around his waist. He didn't allow her to force his movements to speed up no matter how hard she tried. He did give in in the slightest way by pushing in just a tad deeper than he had been.
Ginny dangled precariously at the precipice of bliss. His every movement seemed to stretch out the inevitable fall without allowing her relief. Her nails dug into the flesh on the back of his arms as she held tightly to him. "Draco, please." Her voiced was thick with desire.
Feeling his impending climax he relented to her cries, angling his hips to force the head of his cock to brush over the most sensitive part of her channel as he drove into her over and over.
She screamed her release into the morning light. The sound of his name from her lips was all it took to bring him soaring over the edge behind her. When the pulsing in his lions stopped he slowly pulled himself from her and lay down beside her. "Now that is how everyone should start their day."
Ginny giggled. "I imagine a few people would be a lot less surly during the day if they did."
Draco laughed. It had become an inside joke since being reunited with Draco's godfather to jest that his generally sour disposition was due the fact that he wasn't getting enough attention between the sheets. "Oh did you have to bring him up just now?"
Ginny's giggle turned to an all out laugh. "Better than me mentioning it before we started," she said as she winked at him.
"Bloody hell you're one evil witch woman."
"What? Little ol' me? Never."
Draco rolled from the tangled bed covers and headed for the bathroom shaking his head at his wife. He couldn't help but notice he had successfully managed to break her from the disheartened mood she had woken in. He showered and dressed for the day ahead returning to the room they shared nearly an hour later only to find she had drifted back to sleep in post orgasmic peace. He checked his watch before leaving her to get the rest he knew she hadn't gotten the night before.
Draco made his way down to the girls' rooms to find them empty and their beds made. He had expected them to both still be asleep, but obviously he had been wrong. Inspection of his son's room found it in just the same fashion. When a search of the lower level proved just a fruitless he gave up and called the house elf. "Uric."
"Yes Master?"
"Where is everyone?"
"The Mistress and little Misses are ins thes paddock riding. Little Master is ins thes garden I believes."
Draco nodded and dismissed the elf. Draco made his way to the dining room to find a plate covered with a silver lid and warmth radiating from it. Clearly Uric had anticipated his arrival or his mother had requested a plate be set out to wait for him. Silently he sat and enjoyed his meal as he scanned the Prophet that had been lying beside his plate. He had been privately worried that word would leak out via Ron or some unknown witch or wizard that happened to be in muggle London while they were touring the sites. He had been pleased both with today's newspaper and the paper from the day before to find that hadn't happened so far.
After he had finished his meal and read what little of the paper had interested him, he headed out the back hall in search of his son. Going by Uric's information he headed for his mother's prized rose garden behind the manor. What he found when he got there was rather shocking. Instead of his typically blonde haired son he found a rather large thick-haired white wolf sitting among the roses peering rather intently at its paw. He knew his son had been working tirelessly for weeks to discover his animagus form but he hadn't realized he had discovered it much less reached the point where he could change fully into it. "Isaac?"
The wolf lifted its cool grey eyes up and cocked his head to the side.
"So it is you. I see you figured it out."
Isaac attempted to respond but apparently forgot that he was in animal form. What Draco assumed was meant to be a yes came out as a sad cross between a bark and howl. He couldn't help but laugh when the wolf scratched a paw over his muzzle in seeming irritation.
The wolf moved from its shaded resting place beneath the roses and moved into the open grass. For a few long minuets he stood stock still staring straight ahead. It wasn't long before Draco realized Isaac was changing back. The moment Isaac was back to his normal self Draco wrapped his arms around him. "Congratulations. You learned that far quicker than anyone I've ever known. It takes most people years to learn. A good number of wizards never are able to."
Isaac smiled and hugged his father in return. "Thanks dad. It wasn't that hard honestly."
"You forget I know better. I know how long it took Ginny and I to learn."
"Well all have our thing. I guess this is my quirk."
"Quirk? No, it's no quirk, it's a gift. It's a true talent to be able to tackle something this drastic so extremely quickly. You should be very proud of yourself. As soon as we get home you'll need to register of course. As exciting as it might sound to be an unregistered animagus, all magical governments have become more restrictive on the practice after discovering so many Deatheaters had trained in that art as a way to avoid the law. You do not want to get yourself in some sort of trouble just because you didn't bother to inform the proper authorities."
"I know dad."
"You'll have to show you mum when she wakes up. She's going to be over the moon for you. You can do it again can't you?"
Isaac laughed at his father's antics. "Yes dad."
Draco turned as to leave then turned back around. "Have you seen your sisters and grandmother?"
"Just before I tried to change I thought I saw them riding away from the stables. I haven't seen them come back this way though."
Draco nodded. "Have you had breakfast?"
"Yep, I came down just as grandmum was finishing."
"Your sisters have then as well?"
"I guess. They were standing there rather impatiently waiting for her to finish when I came in. It's getting near lunch isn't it?"
"An hour or so till. Can't blame me for checking up on you now can you?"
"No sir."
Draco and Isaac walked quietly through the garden heading back in the direction of the rear of the manor. "Is mum okay?"
"Not completely, but she will be. She just needs some time to adjust and hopefully no more run-ins with your Uncle Ron."
"Everyone I met last night seemed nice enough. It's a shame Ron had to be a hippogriff's ass to her."
Draco laughed. "Uncle Ron and don't let your mother hear you say that."
"I won't." Isaac couldn't repress a grin then a grimace at the thought of his mother's ire if she caught him speaking ill of family. "So are we still going there later?"
"Yes. I'm not sure if we'll leave before or after lunch however. I'll let your mother decide."
"Is mum okay with going?"
"Not completely. However she can't overcome her worries staying holed up here."
"I guess not."
The conversation drifted to other topics. Isaac mentioned his worries about studying for NEWTS on top of his already rather full schedule for his muggle schooling and the pressure the swim team would undoubtedly be under for the coming fall swim season.
Draco tried to assure his son that there would be no harm in pulling back on his magical studies if they were too much to handle on top of his muggle classes. After all, the headmaster at his former school had insisted he could set up Isaac's NEWTS whenever the boy felt capable of completing the testing.
Finally nearly an hour and a half later Draco turned and headed back for the manor. "Isaac, don't stay out here too much longer. We'll be leaving in a couple hours at the very latest."
"Yes sir."
Draco went straight up to wake Ginny. He hadn't intended to let her sleep past noon, but what was done was done.
She needed the rest so he couldn't very well be too upset about it.
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