I'm having a bit of a mental block on my multi-chapter fic "Finding Home" and this kept haunting me until I got it out of my system. Hope you enjoy!
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Laughing, Will continued, "So that's when she screamed, 'You're a freak of nature!' and stormed out. That's our Malcolm, he's got the best slight of hand of the three of us, but he just doesn't have the patter down like David and me."
The table of two men and three women laughed at Will's story, as he detailed to their female companions how he and his two friends, David and Malcolm, had been using little magic tricks as ice breakers to meet women in pubs for years. Several weeks earlier, Will had approached Emma, one of the three women at the table, and "magically" turned a straw into a rose. In fact, all three of the women now held tissue paper roses, results of Will and David telling tales of their hapless third friend, Malcolm, who was now late for their triple date.
Emma and Kate were Ginny's flatmates. They had been for years, only they knew her as Jenny, and they knew her just well enough to know not to pry too deeply into her past. The trio had met in secretarial school, and enjoyed sharing their flat even after graduation, after finding work at three different firms, after acknowledging that they could all afford to live alone at this point. None of them had ever dated very seriously, but as Ginny watched Emma and Will, she suspected that might be changing in the very near future. Both men were funny, and handsome in a quirky way, and appeared to be both generous and well off. Kate and Jenny had been invited along to meet Will and his friends, under the hope that the other two couples would hit it off as well. Kate had clearly claimed David, swooning over his thick brogue. That left her with the late and apparently less than suave Malcolm. I bet he's not as handsome either, she thought to herself glumly, while the rest of the table shared a laugh at another of Will's tales at Malcolm's expense.
Will rose at the sight of a pale blond head entering the pub, and waved over his friend, "Mal, we're over here. Come meet these lovely ladies." Malcolm raised his head at the sound of Will's voice and suddenly Ginny found herself staring into a pair of deep silver eyes from the past.
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Draco made his way into the pub that held his two closest friends, friends that he had met through an investment seminar years ago. Will and David had been mates going back to primary school, nerds in their youth who had to rely on their wits to be popular, though in recent years had come into their own physically. Of course, the confidence that came with the wealth from our shared investments probably doesn't hurt matters, he thought. They'd welcomed him into their fold easily and openly, for the first time in his life he had friends who had no previous expectations, no knowledge of his past.
After he heard Will call his name, he took in the table where his friends and their companions were seated. Will had been raving for weeks about the warm and bubbly brunette Emma. Draco noticed that she was exactly Will's type, big round dark eyes, curly hair and an adorable grin. Next to Emma sat a statuesque blonde, who was obviously smitten with David and his accent. Draco knew that David laid it on thick when it came to women, damn him. That left the tiny redhead who had been gazing out the window, appearing a bit detached from the group, deep in her own thoughts. When she heard Will call out to him, she turned and he found himself face to face with one of the most beautiful witches he had ever known.
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Draco arrived at the table and both David and Will greeted him with a handshake and a clap on the back. "My apologies for my lateness, I was caught up at the foundation." He couldn't help grinning at his two good-natured friends.
"Malcolm, it's about time! Let me introduce you to Emma," Will gestured to his companion, who Draco shook hands with as well, "and her flatmates Kate and Jenny."
Draco shook Kate's hand as well, but then turned to gaze at Ginny. "Jenny, did you say?" he smirked, "It is a pleasure to make the acquaintance of such a lovely group of women."
Ginny stood to take his offered hand, "Mal-" she started, but he interrupted her.
"-colm, Malcolm Drake," he nodded for emphasis, and gave her a quick wink before turning their handshake so that he could kiss the top of her hand. "I didn't catch your last name, Jennifer," he drawled out her pseudonym with relish.
"Weistley," she murmured, overcome by the force of his presence. "Please, if you don't mind excusing me for a moment," she excused herself from the table and headed in the direction of the ladies' room.
The other two couples caught Draco up on their earlier conversation, and he laughed good-naturedly at their teasing concerning his failures at using "magic" to woo women. If they only knew, he chuckled to himself. He smiled and played along, allowing his friends to show an upper hand with their ribbing. He grew increasingly concerned about Ginny's absence, had the mere sight of him caused her to flee? he worried.
He pretended that his cell phone had vibrated, stood and apologized, "I'm sorry, I have to take this," and stalked his way back towards the quiet of the hallway in the back of the pub, a ruse as he looked for her. Knocking on the door of the ladies' room only brought back an empty echo, but as he turned to face the now defunct phone booths, he caught a glimpse of red. Pushing open a set of the heavy wooden doors, Draco found her with her head between her knees, trying to catch her breath.
"Ginny," he whispered, pulling her to a standing position, "are you ok?"
"Yes," she breathed, and moved to wipe away the tear that had finally escaped her eye; "I just can't believe that it's you, after all this time."
They stared at one another, pressed close together by the size of the booth, and finally when neither could stand it any longer, their lips met in a satisfyingly passionate and all consuming kiss.
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Finally their lips parted, and Ginny gasped, "Where have you been? What happened?" as he moved to her throat, licking her, tasting her from collarbone to ear.
Switching positions, her turn to nibble on the lobe of his ear, he moaned in pleasure as he replied, "You got engaged. I stood outside your engagement party," he moaned again as she began to suck gently on the lobe, "and saw how happy you looked. I went home that night and found Astoria in bed with Blaise. I'd lost everything and everyone that night. So I left."
Their lips met again and battled for dominance. She arched into him as he broke the kiss and asked, "And you? When did you leave?"
"Maybe a year after you, eighteen months at the most," she shivered in pleasure as his hand made its way under her blouse and he cupped her breast, moving a finger across the peak. "Harry had been shagging Cho all along. Probably as far back as the TriWizard. She turned up at our door one morning with his son."
He leaned back far enough to look in her eyes, and saw no pain left there for Potter. He asked, "Your family?" before diving back down to her jaw line, placing butterfly kisses along the trail.
"Mum wanted me to forgive him and adopt the baby. So I left too. She wanted him as a son more than she wanted me as a daughter. Hermione and Ron," she paused as he used his knee to spread her legs and move closer to her core, "they helped me get settled. I see them every six months or so. But otherwise, no one from our world."
For a few minutes they necked like teenagers, almost as if they were back at the castle, sneaking kisses under a tapestry between classes. Ginny stopped and grinned up at him, "Why do you let them think you're bad at magic, and that you're not able to talk to women? You're not like that at all, you never have been."
He sighed in contentment, relishing the feeling of having her in his arms. "They use their slight of hand to meet women. If me being a buffoon helped them with that, so be it. I had given up finding anyone to be with, after losing you, so it didn't really matter."
Minutes passed as they kissed again, deeper and deeper, hands exploring each other's bodies. Both his shirt and her blouse had come untucked, Ginny's hair was in complete disarray, and Draco's pants were becoming distinctly uncomfortable. He broke the kiss and looked down at her, a truly happy and genuine smile on his face for the first time in a decade. "Ginny, when is the last time you apparated?" he asked, refusing to let her go.
"It's been years, far too long really, why?" she smiled up at him, a twinkle in her eye.
He leaned into her harder, so that she could feel how aroused he was, and smiled into a kiss. "I need to take you back to my flat now, and have my way with you." He pecked her once, twice, and then three times while she giggled.
"Silly man, how long have we been pretending to be muggles? Let's just take a cab," she grinned at him, eyes alight with joy, as she pulled him out of the booth behind her.
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Draco wrapped his arm around Ginny as they made their way to the front of the pub. As they reached the door, he signaled to Will, pointed down to Ginny and gestured outside. The rest of their party looked up and saw the pair leaving together, slightly in shock.
"That's not like Jenny," Kate said, surprised at her friend's behavior. "In all the years we've known her she's never left a pub with anyone."
"Malcolm isn't like that either. In fact, in the entire time we've known him, he's always been single," David said, startled at his friend's actions that night.
Emma sipped her drink and looked at Kate, "What was it she said to us once, that she'd had her heart broken before? Once by a bad boy who turned out to be a hero, and once by a hero who turned out to be a bad boy, and that's why she'd rather be alone." She turned to Will, "Which is your friend Malcolm, a hero or a bad boy?"
Will snorted, "Mal? He's neither. Just a plain old nice guy, I promise you. What did he tell us David? That his last serious relationship was with a girl back in school? They had to keep it secret because their parents wouldn't approve. He never told us anything more than that, but I have to admit I'm surprised. Your Jenny must be special."
If Draco had been there, he'd have been tempted to tell them just how special Ginny was. He might even have told them that while it was muggle magic that had brought them back together, there was nothing in the world, either wizarding or muggle, that would ever separate them again. Too bad he was too busy kissing the love of his life in the back of a cab to be bothered.
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Happy holidays everyone! - Amy