A/N: This is written for the Secrets Competition on HPFC and is based on the following post-secret:

Prompt: That night when I laid my head on your chest and listened to the sound of your heartbeat, I realized I had the potential to love you.

From the diary of Draco Malfoy:

As a girl, she had been told that she'd find love with her Prince Charming. One day, when she was old enough, she'd find a boy – or a man, I suppose – who would sweep her off her feet and show her that romance happens outside fairy tales, and together they would live happily ever after until they died peacefully in their sleep, in each other's arms, while their twenty-five fat grandchildren surrounded them until their dying breaths.

She told me that story, and I had to fight to keep my gag reflex under control.

I was told by my father, "Someday, you will need to produce an heir with a suitable, pureblooded wife. If you and your wife are on good terms, it would be preferred, though this is not a requirement."

Truthfully, I wish I could say that that was not a direct quote. But that's how I was raised. I was not supposed to find a wife and a fairy tale to satisfy me until my dying day. I wasn't supposed to have children to give my life meaning, but to produce an heir so that my father and his fathers before him would not roll in their graves as the Malfoy bloodline died with me.

Those plans were set before us by my father and hers, but in truth, neither of us ended up with what we had intended.

She fell into a loveless marriage with me - a man whose coldness ripped her heart out regularly, only to mend it with carefully chosen words and meaningless gestures of a love that I never felt – and cried herself to sleep every night with unhidden desires of the life she wanted. And I fell into bed with an unsuitable witch who refused to bring children into a home devoid of caring and who routinely gave threats of dismemberment if I were to attempt to reproduce with anyone else.

But as I write this, I reminisce on a moment we shared years ago, when our marriage was new and even more fragile than it is now. I remember lying together one night, falling asleep somewhat peacefully after spending hours trying to break down each other's barriers with brutal insults and angry sex. Her arms had engulfed me that night as my head rested against her chest, and I stayed awake for hours, enraptured by the steady beating of her heart.

I promised her then that, if it were possible, I would fall in love with her.

I never told her about the promise I made her in secret, but sometimes I think that she knew. She had always known me better than anyone, more than I'd have liked for her to. One day, I had decided, I would tell her I love her, and those words wouldn't be a compulsive and meagre attempt to rectify hurtful words and actions. They would be sincere and heartfelt, in the way she deserved. She'd have her happy marriage full of love, just like she had always dreamt.

But for now, as I practice speaking the words aloud, I remember what it was like. I watched the fire die in her eyes as she attempted to endure my verbal abuse and my cold, demanding ways. I listened to her voice croak with unbidden tears that she no longer had the strength to fight back. I smelled the alcohol that she'd drowned herself with, I felt her heart breaking, and I'll tasted the tears on her skin as she gave her body to me again and again, crying at what her life had become and because that was all she had left to give.

I'll practice writing the words, too, because they sound so foreign coming from me.

I love you, I'll say to her.

And I'll mean it.

I'll mean it completely when I tell her, as soon as I can gather the strength to say it.

I love you forever, I'll say.

And then we can start over.

I'll love you forever, Ginny.

Those words are on the tip of my tongue, and I promise that I'll say them when I visit her grave.

And we can live happily ever after, until death do us part.