Author's Note: This is a companion piece to "A Malfoy Does Not Love" and will probably clear up a few questions that were lingering. I did that purposely since this is Ginny's P.O.V. Also, neither piece is happy. I should warn you about that and it's spoilers for Book 5 and then AU, since the war hasn't happened (at least not in this timeline yet). Character deaths abound. You've been warned. Also? Don't own the characters, I just borrow them from JKR and all the rightful owners for a bit of fun.
On with the show.....
A Weasley does not forget.
A five-year-old Ginny Weasley sat on her grandfather's lap. She had been crying; evidence being the dried tears and dirt mixed together on her face.
"Now, Ginny, I'm confident Ron –"
"He did too! He told me to bugger off!" Her tiny face contorted in a position to start crying again.
"Well, you should forgive him, moppet."
"Why?" She was never going to forgive him. Ever.
"Because it's the right thing to do, but here's the secret: never forget. Learn to play their rules, then make them play by yours."
Ginny often thought that her grandfather's cunning had skipped all the males in the family – with the exception of the twins, of course – and gone straight her. Or perhaps she had just taken the lessons he shared to heart, because by the age of ten, she had the entire male gender in her family completely wrapped around her fingers.
A Weasley does not forget.
When the War finally reached its peak, Ginny was in the middle of the battlefield. Physically she had not changed much in the past several years: gangly body, hair just a little too bright, freckles everywhere and plain brown eyes. Mentally, though, she was a completely different person.
D.A. meetings had prepared her physically and mentally. She was quick with her wand and had no problem killing, not now. Something had snapped when she had lost her brother Percy the previous autumn. Now, it was payback.
Ginny felt rather than saw someone staring at her. The hair on the back of her neck stood and the prickle along her spine forced her to turn, seeking out the person. It was in that minute that a Death Eater went after her. Unable to move, she waited for the inevitable.
It never happened. A flash of bright green grazed past her and hit the man square in the chest. Out of the corner of her left eye, she saw a flash of silver before it vanished and she was forced to go back to a battle filled with the stench of death.
A Weasley does not forget.
It was that silver glimmer that became an obsession. It took two long years, but she found the owner in a small village located in the mountains of France. She knew Draco had killed for her, even if he never realized it. War could warp one's view and create gaping holes of memory. Personal experience taught her that lesson well; she still could not recall most of the battle.
So, as a wizard's debt goes, she went to save him from whatever was haunting him.
She strolled down the road and up his drive. She had to pretend it was an accident; it was the only way he would accept her arrival. When he opened the door with a glare, she pretended to be lost and "oh my, Malfoy is that you?" rushed out of her lips just as she had planned. She turned innocent eyes up at him, looking shocked. She wasn't sure if she had fooled him, but she could only hope it took it at face value.
He let her in out of the cold and gave her some cocoa. He didn't think she would take it after their colorful past, but she shocked him and did. She allowed it "slip" she was staying in the village for the next several months to get away from her meddling mother and remaining three brothers. She choked up a bit on the only having three brothers, but it was becoming easier to say everyday.
Draco asked, "Only three? You Weasleys were the size of a small school."
With a pained smile, she replied, "The war took Ron and Fred within a week of each other while Percy died the autumn before the war." Tears started to fill her eyes. "George, Bill and Charlie are all I have left. Dad died as well." A glare in direction startled him, and her quiet voice spooked him."Died at the hands of your snake of a father."
"I'm sorry, I had –"
"Save it. Well, I best be off." She left her mug on the table and grabbed the coat she had shed upon walking into the warm house.
Leaving the house, she suddenly felt alone; she hadn't felt this way in quite a while, before the war in fact.
Over the next several weeks, she would cheerfully drop by unexpectedly. She knew he never had visitors (having asked around the village the night of her arrival) and was intent making sure he received one, at least three times a week.
He would grudgingly allow her into the house and over time came to expect her visits. While talking, she would cook him stew or whatever could be found in the old-fashioned Muggle refrigerator. She put up curtains and with wave of her wand decorated the walls to resemble a home and not some Spartan tomb.
If he noticed the fact she was creating him a home, he never said anything to her. That made her job fairly easy, so the lack of acknowledgment was acceptable in the circumstance.
Throughout all this, she used her grandfather's lesson well. She had played on his terms in the beginning. He had fled and she gave him peace, then she arrived and saved him the best way she knew how. She gave him back his life, even something simple like a cozy home. She knew what it was like to want to be in an inviting house; the Burrow had been that for her as a child, and even now when she went back to visit her mum, she recalled the bittersweet moments of life was her family. She wanted to give that to Draco.
A Weasley does not forget.
It was an early April day when she walked up his drive. She was shivering lightly from the breeze that had appeared rather suddenly. Almost to his door, she felt the prickling of her neck like had in the war. Someone was watching, staring, waiting. Someone wanted her.
A Weasley does not forget.
As Draco came racing out the door, the man hit her with the Killing Curse, drawing her last breath in Draco's arms as he caught her before she hit the ground.
A gangly girl of barely twenty with red hair, freckles, and brown eyes joined her father and brothers in waiting for the rest of the family and a blonde man to finally come home.
A Weasley does not forget.
Author's Note 2: I know, I know. It wasn't happy. I just wasn't in the mood for a happy piece. I wanted something deeper, something not fluffy. I love D/G, so please don't think I hate Ginny. She's actually my favorite. I just needed something different. And like the Draco companion, this had the repeated lines because she believed in the statement, a family motto if you will. And? I'm lineraly challenged with these pieces. I know.