He sat at the piano, lost in the music. Strains of Mozart filled the air and he flying along the melody. His eyes didn't see the sheet music in front of him, pages behind where he was. His fingers didn't feel the keys as they played each note flawlessly. He didn't notice the eight year old boy sitting next to him until the last dying note faded away.
"Wow, Uncle Draco, I didn't know you played the piano like that," the boy said in wonder.
"He doesn't play often," the boy's father said from the doorway. "You should consider yourself fortunate that you've heard it. Now, it's late. Off to bed."
The boy made some indistinct grumbling noises, but he hopped off the bench and did as he was told.
"Your piano needs to be tuned," Draco said to his friend.
"I'm sure it does, but I wasn't expecting you to visit."
"Oh, come one Blaise. Where else would I go? What kind of friend goes on a family vacation without inviting the bachelor uncle?"
Blaise sighed and took a seat near the piano. "The kind who is under the impression that the bachelor uncle will bite his head off for the mere suggestion of leaving the office."
Draco ran his hands through his hair. "I'm sorry for just showing up here. I just couldn't stay there any longer, not alone, not so close to…"
"Yeah, I understand," Blaise interrupted to spare his friend the pain of naming the day in question.
"Anyway, I just…" Draco couldn't finish his sentence, he just started playing another piece by Mozart.
Blaise sighed and got up. He walked over to the cabinet and pulled out a clarinet and joined in the music.
Out in the hall, his wife stopped by the door to listen. The music really was magnificent, but it was so melancholy, it always made her want to cry.
Down the beach, a violin offered the same song to the night sky. Fingers danced along the strings and bow sang in perfect pitch. The door to the deck opened slowly and an eleven year old little girl slipped outside to listen to her mother play.
Ginny jumped when she heard her daughter's voice.
"What's wrong?"
"What makes you think anything's wrong?" she tried to sound amused and failed.
"You only play Mozart when you're thinking of dad or are really depressed," the girl said.
"Oh," Ginny sighed. "I guess I was just wondering where he is now."
"How come you never talk about him?" the girl asked.
Ginny sat down next to her daughter. "I'm sorry. I know you deserve to hear all about your father, and I've always meant to tell you. It's just that…whenever I think about him, whenever I decide that I'm finally going to sit down and answer all your questions…well, that's when you find me playing Mozart. I guess it just hurts too much to relive it all." She pulled her daughter into a hug. "I'm sorry sweetheart. Someday I'll be able to talk about it."
"It's okay. I can wait."
Ginny smiled. Her child had always been so mature. It pained her that there had been cause in the short life for such understanding to be cultivated. She stood and began to play again.
Halfway through the song, the soft voice the clarinet rose to meet the sweet melancholy of the violin.
She didn't miss a note, if anything, her playing became stronger, more emotional. Tears filled her eyes and she put everything she had into the music. When the song came to a close, she found it difficult to open her eyes.
There, standing on the beach in front of her, was Blaise Zabini.
"Hello Ginevra," he said softly.
"Mum, who's that?" her daughter asked.
"It's an old friend," she answered without taking her eyes off Blaise. Finally, turning to her daughter, she said, "I'm sorry sweetheart, this is Blaise. We knew each other a long time ago."
"Oh," the girl said. Turning to face Blaise, she said, "Hi, my name is Andy. It's nice to meet you."
He bowed to her. "The pleasure is mine."
She smiled. Looking up at her mom, she sighed. "Well, I guess I'll go in to bed now."
The door was shut behind her for a full minute before Ginny could move. Finally recovering herself, she invited Blaise up onto the deck.
"What brings you to Italy?" he asked.
"I had vacation time, and Andy picked the destination," she answered softly.
"Ah," he began adjusting the stops on his clarinet. Sighing, he began again. "How old is she?" he asked simply.
"Eleven." Her answer was clipped as though she was reluctant to answer.
"Eleven…then…" he was thinking, "What is Andy short for," he asked at length.
"Andromeda," she answered.
"Right, so she is…"
"Yes," she cut him off.
"Ah," he said again. "Why didn't you tell him?"
She stared at him in disbelief. " 'You ruined my life,'" she began quoting, "'you've chained me down when all I've wanted was to be free. I got to know you at a strange time in my life and now I can't get rid of you.'"
"He didn't mean…" Blaise tried to interrupt her.
"'We want completely different things. You want a home, security, stability. I want freedom; I want to go where I want to go and be what I want to be without thinking of the consequences. You want children; you want a family; you want to bring more miserable lives into this overpopulated hell hole of an excuse for a planet. You want to damn innocent souls to a meaningless existence in a god-forsaken world. I just want to make what I can of what we have left.' Tell me, Blaise, when was I suppose to tell him that another miserable life was on the way? That we had damned another innocent soul?" Her eyes were filled with pain and anger. "No, he meant what he said. He may have exaggerated it, he may have used more colorful language than necessary, but he meant it. He resented me for loving him. He hated me because I made him love me in return. He wanted freedom, Blaise, how many times did he say it? He wanted to be able to stay out all night without worrying someone. He wanted to be spontaneous without any consideration for someone else, much less having to find a babysitter. He was still a child himself when I left, how could I tell him he had one of his own?"
Blaise ran his hands through his hair in frustration. "Yeah, all right. I see your point. But I've got to tell him now." He looked at her nervously, unsure of how she'd respond to that.
"I know. I just…we leave Saturday, can you wait until Sunday to tell him? Please?" Her eyes were pleading now.
He sighed heavily. "Yeah, I guess I can wait that long."
They sat in silence for a while.
Eventually, she said, "He's here, isn't he? That's why you're wandering the beach with your clarinet."
He laughed but it sounded more like a huff. "Yeah. He showed up this morning and has been complaining about the tune of my piano ever since." He looked over at her, "You know," he said, "he only plays Mozart when he thinks of you."
She smiled ruefully, "Andy always knows when I've been thinking of her father because she hears me playing Mozart to myself."
Blaise shook his head sadly. "Well, I better be getting home. My wife worries when I walk the beach alone too late
at night."
Ginny went back inside and into her daughter's room. "Hey, how're you doing?"
"I'm okay…a little worried about you," she answered.
"I'm all right. I'm just afraid I've not been fair to you, keeping you to myself like this."
"I understand not talking about Dad, but how come you never talk about the rest of our family?" Andy sat up in bed and hugged her knees.
"I guess because I figured, when I found out I pregnant with you, that if your father wasn't going to know about you it wasn't right for anyone else to know. Also," she continued honestly, "I didn't really want all the attention and pity and all that. The problem is, I wasn't really thinking about you at all."
"I understand," Andy said.
"I know you do, but I'm not sure you should. I've been thinking. I think it's about eleven years past time for you to meet your family."
Andy's face lit up. "Really? You're going to take me home?"
Ginny laughed a little. "Hey, what do you call where we've been living?"
"Well," Andy answered slowly, "home, but it's our home. You're actually taking me to your home."
Ginny hugged her daughter. "Yes. I'm taking you home."
Sunday morning Ginny stood outside the Borrow, trying to get up the nerve to knock on the door. When she finally succeeded, a little boy answered it. "Can I help you?"
Ginny just looked down at him. He had red hair like all the Weasleys, but it was curly. She tried to speak, but she couldn't.
"Who is it, James?" she heard a man ask from inside.
"I don't know, Dad," the boy called back.
"Well, ask!"
The boy looked up at her again, "Who are you?" he demanded.
"Not like that, son," the man said, clearly approaching the door.
"Well, I asked her all polite like if I could help her and she just stared at me," James replied indignantly.
The man laughed as a hand appeared on the edge of the door. As it was pulled wider, he was apparently addressing her as he said, "I'm sor…" but he stopped mid-apology.
He just stared at her.
She just stared at him.
"Well? Who is it?" a woman called from inside.
"Still don't know!" James answered, "Dad's just staring at her like she stared at me!"
"Gin…" the man began. Then, as if breaking through a layer of ice, he shouted, "GINNY!" and threw his arms around her. "MUM! EVERYONE! IT'S GINNY! IT'S REALLY GINNY!"
Long before he had finished yelling, she had been mobbed.
Finally extricating herself from all the arms, she pulled back and looked at everyone. The man who had come to the door first was Ron. Hermione was there as well, apparently James' mother and Ron's wife. Molly was sobbing into her apron and making dinner plans. The twins were laughing and throwing kids up into the air and, well, anyone they could get their hands on. In the back of the crowd, Arthur stood next to Harry, both with huge grins on their faces. There were too many kids moving around too excitedly to get a good count. Some of them apparently belonged to the twins. Ginny would learn later that two of them were Charlie's and were visiting the grandparents for a week and the twins' wives were doing some last minute grocery shopping.
Before they could drag her inside, though, she managed to stop them.
"What is it?" Ron asked with concern written across his face.
"Well…I'm…I'm not alone," she managed to say.
Everyone looked at her quizzically.
"Well, whoever you've brought with you bring them in!" Molly said as though the whole thing was ridiculous.
Ginny stretched out her hand and Andy, who had been around the corner of the house, came and grabbed it. "This is my daughter, Andy. Andy, this is your family."
Molly started crying again and Arthur stepped forward. Bending down in front of Andy, he said, "Hello. I'm your granddad. I know we all seem a bit crazy, but you'll get used to it." With that, he started the introductions.
It didn't take Andy long before she was running and playing with her cousins. No one asked Ginny who the father was or why she had run off so long ago or even why she had suddenly returned. They were all just too happy to have her home.
Late that evening, when everyone else had gone to bed, Ginny slipped out onto the back steps and started to cry.
Having just come back down stairs for a cup of water, Harry saw her slip out and followed her. He just put an arm around her shoulder and let her cry it out. When she had stopped crying, he passed her the water. "So…" he said, "Andy."
Ginny nodded.
"Short for Andromeda?" he asked.
She nodded again.
He smiled a bit sadly. "I figured. It is a beautiful constellation," he looked up at the stars.
Ginny sighed. "He doesn't know. Or…well…I reckon he does by now. I ran into Blaise a couple days ago and he said he was going to tell him today."
"Blaise didn't know either?" Harry asked in disbelief.
"No one knew."
"Why not?"
She shrugged. "I didn't want anyone to. I couldn't tell him, not the way he was then. He got so mad when everything was over. It was like the world had disappointed him. Things were supposed to get better when the war ended, you know? But instead they got worse. People weren't so scared that they trusted anyone with a wand pointed at their enemy. They started challenging him. He actually had to start living instead of just fighting and it wasn't what he expected. It wasn't the fun and games and freedom he thought it would be without that shadow over his head. He started blaming me, saying I had tied him down, gotten in his way. He meant it. He believed it. I know he did. I knew he wouldn't always, but he did then, and a baby would have just made it worse, so I left. I didn't think I could stand the reaction. I know none of you would have said you told me so but I would have seen it in every look and heard it in every sympathetic offer to help. I would have just felt more alone than ever for being so surrounded by everyone, so I ran. What with her starting school now, though, I started to feel more guilty than ever for keeping her from you. I mean, she deserves to have her family, and you all deserve to know her. She's so wonderful and strong…"
"Just like her mother," he interrupted.
She shook her head, but otherwise ignored the comment. "Anyway, seeing Blaise again…well it just provided the extra encouragement I needed because it reminded of how much my friends and family had meant to me."
He hugged her again. "Well, I'm glad you've come back. We've all missed you so much, worried about you so much."
"I'm sorry."
"It's all right now," he said.
After a few moments of silence, he ventured, "You still love him, don't you?"
She just nodded mutely.
In Italy, Draco was also silent, but he was furious. It had taken Blaise all day to work up the courage to tell him about Andy. Now, Draco was pacing the sitting room and mouthing silently, to upset to even mutter darkly.
Finally, he stopped and turned to glare at Blaise. "She damn well should have told me!" he yelled.
Blaise sighed. "Actually, I agree with her."
"You WHAT!?" Draco screamed.
"You were falling apart, Mate. There's no telling how you would have reacted."
Draco collapsed into a chair and buried his face in his hands.
After about fifteen minutes silence, Draco groaned. "Do you know where they are now?" he asked quietly.
Blaise had convinced Ginny to leave him her address and debated within his head for what seemed like an eternity before answering, "Yes."
Monday night, Ginny took Andy home to their flat in London with the promise of visiting the Borrow again the later in the week. As they approached the steps that led up to their door, Ginny froze. There, standing on the landing, was Draco. She put a hand on her daughter's shoulder to stop her from going up. "He…hello," she choked out.
"Hello," he said quietly.
"Andy…this…this is your father," Ginny managed to say, though she would never understand how.
"My…" Andy looked up at her mother in confusion, "my father?" she asked.
Ginny nodded without looking away from Draco.
Andy looked up at the man in the shadows and gulped. "Hi," she said weakly.
"Hi," he echoed her.
"Why don't you go inside, Andy. Let us talk a minute and then he can come inside and the two of you can get to know each other." Ginny sounded completely emotionless but she felt like she was about to faint.
"Okay," Andy said quietly before climbing the steps, unlocking the door, and going inside with one long, lingering look at the man she had never known.
Ginny slowly climbed the stairs to face Draco.
"You should have told me," he said coldly.
She shook her head. "No. I should have stayed with my family, but I was right in my decision regarding you," she said strongly, though she felt anything but.
He snarled. "What gave you the right to keep me from my daughter?" he demanded.
She sighed. "You hated me for being what I was, for being in love with you. She deserved better than being raised by a man who resented her existence. I knew you would change. I knew you get past all that anger, but not if you had something to fixate it all on that you couldn't escape."
"Do you mean to keep her from me now?" he asked venomously.
She shook her head sadly. "No. No…now I just have to pray you can forget who her mother is and see her for herself. Now I have to trust that she's strong enough to survive you. She's your daughter. I would have told you eventually, I just don't know when, and whether you believe me or not is your choice, but it was never my desire for her to grow up never knowing you."
He looked at her calculatingly, as though unsure of whether or not to believe her.
From inside, the sounds of jazz piano music came out into the night.
He stared at the door. "Is that…is that her?" he asked in a whisper.
Ginny nodded. "I told her once that you played. Ever since then it's been her love. She's got your gift."
He nodded absently and opened the door.
Ginny shut it behind him and sat down on the steps to cry again.
Inside, Draco walked up slowly behind the girl sitting at the piano. She was playing a piece by Thelonius Monk. After listening for a few moments, he sat down next to her and began playing it as a duet. He could see her smile out of the corner of his eyes and they continued playing like that without a word for fifteen minutes.
Shortly after they stopped playing, she sprung out the door at her mother, very excited. "Mum! He's asked if I want to stay with him for a couple of weeks. There's three before school, you know, and he said he'd bring me home for the last one so you'd be able to have some time with me before I went off. I know I'm supposed to spend time with Gramma and Grampa, but this is Dad. Please?" she begged.
Ginny smiled up at her. "Of course. They'll understand."
Andy threw herself around her mother's neck. "I'm going to go pack!" and she disappeared back through the door.
Draco came and stood in the doorway. The lights from inside made his face almost impossible to see from where she sat in the dark.
"She knows how to take care of herself, so I'm not going to patronize either of you by giving you any instructions." Ginny stood slowly and turned to look out into the night.
"I appreciate that, but I really have no idea what I'm doing," his voice was still guarded.
"Don't be so hard on yourself. You've already shown that you're better at this than you think. Taking her to stay with you is a smart move. It will let you get to know her a lot better than you would here for an evening. You would both be thinking about me in the other room or out here and it would make you both uncomfortable…no, you're doing the right thing, and she's a good kid. She won't take advantage of you. Besides, you've seen Blaise with his kids…"
"They're younger," he interrupted.
"Not by much," she turned to face him. "Anyway, if you really want advice, all I've got is this: if you make a rule stick to it. Never go back on it without having a serious discussion with her in which you explain why. You can't always be her friend and you aren't equals, but never forget that she's very intelligent and deserves to be treated as such and you'll get along fine."
"Yeah," he was studying her face. He was trying to be mad at her, he really was, but all the pain in her face was making that really difficult for him. He had expected her to try to keep him away from Andy, to make him feel like he had no right as a father and no ability even if he had.
Andy came out with a bag in hand and looked up expectantly at her father. He looked down at her smiled. "Ready to go?" he asked.
She nodded enthusiastically before running over to her mother and giving her a bone crushing hug and leading her father down the stairs.
Draco had driven his car because he had planned on asking for at least some time with the girl and thought a drive would be as good a way as any to start the getting to know each other process.
It wasn't going as well as he would have hoped. They rode in silence for twenty minutes. He was trying to come up with something to say when he was spared the trouble.
"Are you mad at her?" Andy asked.
He glanced over at the girl, "Your mother?"
"Yeah, for not telling you about me?"
He sighed. "I don't know."
"I think I understand," Andy said, "and I agree with her. I mean, she said you had it pretty rough for a while. She said that you didn't really know what to do after the war and were kinda mad about everything."
He opened his mouth to say something defensive but she continued before he could.
"She explained it all, and I don't blame you. She said that she wanted me to be older before we got to know each other, or, rather, before you got to know me. It makes sense, you know? I mean, babies are scary! They can't tell you what they need but they need everything. Crying babies always make me so frustrated and I don't even have to figure out how to make them stop. I can just imagine how angry I would have made you if you were already as mad as you were with everything else. Now I can help. I can tell you what I need and I can let you know what a great dad you are and how much I love you. Not to mention the fact that babies just kinda lay there and do nothing but cry and fill diapers. They're boring and hard to take care of. Now we can do stuff! We can talk. We can play the piano! I mean, I'm a person now, you know? So don't be mad at her, please? She was just trying to take care of both of us, trying to make sure we liked each other when we met. You know how it is when you meet someone at the wrong time, right? I mean, you just don't get along and then you never do when if you had just met on a different day when you both felt better you would have been the best of friends. And think of how much harder it was for her, all by herself. I've thought a lot about it. There's nothing wrong with not being ready to be a dad. Mum wasn't ready but she didn't have a choice."
He took a few glances over at the girl as he drove while he thought about what she had said. When it was put like that, by an eleven year old, it made sense.
"So," he asked, "so she talked to you about me?"
She shook her head. "No, only the once. It was on my last birthday, when I turned eleven. She gave me this necklace," she pulled a chain out from under her shirt from which hung a beautiful rose charm. "She said you gave it to her when she graduated from Hogwart's and that she had wanted to give it to me when I graduated but just couldn't wait and figured that starting was about as big a deal. She said she figured I should have something of yours."
He winced.
"Anyway, that was the only time she really ever talked about you and it was only to explain why she had left without telling you about me. She didn't want me to be mad at you at all 'cause it wasn't your fault that you weren't in my life and all that. She wanted me to know that she was sure you'd be a good dad when you were ready and she apologized for any time after you became ready that I didn't know you 'cause she didn't tell you 'cause she wanted to be sure you were ready before she introduced us and she was sure she'd end up waiting too long."
"Oh," he didn't know what else to say. This really wasn't what he was expecting at all. He had been sure Ginny would have told her daughter how horrible he had made her life before she left, not this.
"Yeah. She said she always meant to tell me about you, but couldn't 'cause it hurt to bad to think about you. I could always tell, though, that she had tried, 'cause I'd find her playing her violin. She only ever played Mozart when she thought of you. She said you used to play together."
"Yeah," he said quietly. It was getting hard to breath.
"I heard her once. I guess I was four or five. She was playing in her bedroom and I went in to listen. When she set the violin down to hug me I noticed it was wet and asked her why. She said it was because she had been thinking about my dad and how she missed hearing him play the piano after she went to bed. That was when I decided to learn to play the piano so I could play her to sleep like you used to, but I guess I was too little to realize I'd never really be going to bed before her," she sighed like it was a deep disappointment.
His knuckles were beginning to hurt from clenching the steering wheel so hard. He had never really stopped to think about how hard it must have been on Ginny. He had assumed that she had left angry with him, over him. He had never imagined that it had hurt her as much as it had hurt him.
"Anyway, the only other time she really said much about you at all was after Blaise left the beach house. She had never told me about him and that he used to play the clarinet with you guys. Anyway, she told me that he was a good friend of yours and would be telling you about me. She told me you'd probably be mad at her but that I shouldn't think any of that was because of me or that you were mad at me at all. She also said that I shouldn't get defensive for her because you had a right to be mad and that I should try to see things from your point of view and understand how you feel, finding out after eleven years that you have a daughter you never knew about and all the special stuff you missed because she kept me from you. You aren't mad at her, are you?" she sounded worried.
"No," his voice was husky. "No, I don't think I am anymore. I don't think I really have been for a long long time."
"Why were you mad at her?"
"I blamed her for a lot of things that weren't her fault. Some of them weren't anyone's fault. A lot of them were mine. I blame her because I could, because she let me. Oh, she got mad. She yelled at me a lot and told me I was being an asshole…sorry,"
"It's okay."
"And tried to get me to see what was really going on, but I was an idiot and refused to listen to her. Why should I? It was safe. It didn't matter how badly I treated her, she would never leave. She loved me like no one else ever had. She believed in me and knew I'd eventually grow up. When she had someone else to think of, however," he looked over at his daughter, "well…it wasn't a fit environment for her, much less a child. But, as I didn't know about you, I thought she had just had enough and left. She would have been right, of course, but that wasn't how I saw it. I convinced myself that she had abandoned me and that I was truly alone."
"So…" Andy asked, "when'd you stop being mad at her?"
"I don't know. I was mad for a long time. Then with no one to yell at, no one to blame that wouldn't walk out on me the second I opened my mouth, I decided I would be a martyr and suffer in silence. I would live the life I had sworn I never would and hope I'd die young." He sighed and shrugged. "Unfortunately for me, it didn't turn out to be so bad. I found out that life left more room for living than I had ever imagined. I found myself actually enjoying it from time to time. I had fun with Blaise and his kids. I liked my role as their uncle. But I had lost the one person I really owed it all to, the one person who had been there for me when no one else was. She put up with shit, again, sorry…"
"It's okay."
"that even Blaise wouldn't take, and I had driven her away." He sighed again. "It took everything in life I loved and made it just a little bit painful. Mostly, though, it's been good for quite some time. It's just late at night, on certain days, or when I'm specifically reminded of her that I just…well…that I just kind of shut off and sit at a piano for hours, losing myself in the music of Mozart." He was silent for a moment and was painfully aware of his daughter watching him. After a moment or two, he continued. "When Blaise told me about you I got angry again. It made me think of all the parts of our relationship I tried to forget, all the reasons she left. I started to feel guilty and that made me angry at her again, angry with her for making me feel that way. I convinced myself she would have been filling your head with all these horrible stories about me from the day you were born." He growled lowly. "I should have known better. It's just another way I've failed her."
"So…" Andy ventured slowly, "Do you still love her?"
He scratched the back of his head as he pulled to a stop at a red light. He just sat there, his daughter waiting for an answer.
He jumped as though startled when he heard her voice.
"Dad? It's been green twice."
"Damn it," he swore to himself before pulling a sharp u-turn and heading back the way they had come.
Andy giggled.
"Listen," he said as he drove, "if you ever stay with a piece of shit like I used to be as long as your mother did…"
"You'll what?" she asked, laughing.
"Say you turned out just like her and bit the punk within an inch of his life, or at least until he started treating you better."
"Okay," she was still smiling.
Ginny was just gathering enough strength to drag herself away from the kitchen table and her hundredth cup of tea when someone started banging on her door. Startled, she got up and hurried to answer it.
When she saw Draco standing there, she panicked. "Andy! Where is she? Is she okay?"
"Whoa!" he held up a hand to calm her down. "She's fine. I just…we were talking and…"
She looked at him, worried. She had rarely seen him like this, and only when something terrible had happened.
"Shit, Gin, she told me…she asked…DAMN IT! I screwed everything up, I treated you like shit, and by all rights you should have raised that girl to hate me. I pushed you around because I knew I could, I knew you'd always be there, but then you weren't, and then I knew you had been right all along, and I knew I had pissed it all away. I love you, I never stopped, even when I hated you. I…"
He couldn't continue. Tears were streaming down Ginny's face and the sight was killing him. When he stopped, she started shaking her head. "It…I…Oh…" she brought one of her hands up to her mouth and used the other to brace herself in the doorway.
He ran a hand through his hair, looked around nervously, and then started backing away. "Yeah, yeah…anyway…" he started to head down the stairs.
"No…" she choked out. "No…"
He turned back to her. She was shaking her head. "Don't…"
He walked back to her, she took a fumbling step forward, and she was in his arms. She was crying into his shoulder and he was kissing her hair.
"Where's Andy?" she asked at last.
"I called Blaise. He met me half way back here and took her to his place. Is that okay?"
She nodded into him and then started laughing. "Is this really happening? Are you really here?"
"I'm here. And I'm staying if you'll me."
"Blaise will kick your ass if you start treating me like shit again," she said playfully.
"He better."
When they had recovered some, they made their way inside. He sat down at the piano, she got her violin, and together they played Mozart, rejoicing in the music they were once again making together.