Searching for Someone
Chapter One
Ginny Weasley has opted out of the Wizarding world and has chosen instead to inhabit with Muggles. When a late night encounter with a dark man brings more trouble than Ginny expects, will Ginny make the right choices, or will the man wake something in her she had never known existed?
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The musty smell of the Muggle bar pervaded Ginny's nostrils as she opened the door. The tinny tinkling of the bell caused the young man serving drinks at the counter to look up and smile as he took in the new customer. True, Ginevra Weasley was no Muggle model beauty, but she had a pleasing athletic body and fiery hair that matched the soul hidden behind her eyes.
"White Russian, please." Ginny took no notice of the eyes that had turned toward her as she walked up to the bar and ordered her drink in a firm voice. Ginny was not interested in the men that accompanied those eyes. The Dark Mark had recently been found over the house of her Hogwarts roommate, Marie Chauvel. While Ginny and Marie were not exactly close, Ginny had enjoyed the girl's company many times, and Marie was in fact the first person Ginny had told about her massive crush on the boy hero, Harry Potter.
The barman handed Ginny the White Russian with a smirk and a wink to which Ginny responded with a scowl. Taking a place at the far end of the counter, Ginny slowly sipped her drink, trying to drown her worries in the mixture of vodka and milk. Only when the glass was half empty did the barman come up to Ginny again and place in front of her another drink that was definitely not a White Russian.
"I didn't order this." Ginny said and looked up to see the barman grinning at her. Oddly enough, he had the same almond shaped green eyes as…
"I know you didn't. That man over there took the liberty of ordering it for you." Ginny turned to see a very good looking man with sandy blond hair grinning at her and appreciatively moving his eyes up and down her slim frame. Ginny snorted and turned to push the Bacardi away from her and once again picked up her White Russian. Before she could take a sip, the man who had ordered the Bacardi for her walked up behind her and muttered seductively in her ear.
"Don't you know something fine when you see it? I suppose you want more by way of demonstration, do you?" He ran her tongue along the rim of Ginny's ear, who flinched then turned around and soundly slapped him.
"If you touch me again, you wont be able to walk straight for a month!" Ginny growled at the offender who hissed back at her, then walked out of the bar, his reputation wounded. The barman stared agape at Ginny who had turned back to finish her drink in peace, then he hurried to the other side of the bar to avoid the bad side of the fiery redhead.
Ginny had broken up with Harry two days before after her fifth year at Hogwarts had ended. Being with Harry put her in too much danger, and she couldn't bear it if she were to be used as bait to draw Harry to Voldemort. So Ginny had cut off ties with most of her family, told them she would be around if they needed research done, and Ginny had retreated into the Muggle world with her wand to drown her sorrows in the superficiality of their world.
A rather dark man slipped onto the stool next to her and ordered Mandarin Absolut in a quiet voice. He was okay looking, but Ginny didn't pay much attention to him, she instead took to doodling on her napkin. She had slipped into the sort of quiet stupor that alcohol brings until the voice of the man next to her broke into her consciousness.
"You play the drums?" Ginny looked down to see that she had drawn a rather sloppy drum set onto her napkin; she hurriedly crossed it out so that the dark man wouldn't see her abysmal drawing skills.
"No, I'm just drawing randomly. Not really thinking much about anything. Sorry." She looked up rather apologetically at the man who shrugged and stared back down into his drink. Ginny felt that he was being exceptionally nice to her, so she stuck out the first hand of friendship.
"I'm Ginny We- uh, Wesley." He looked up at her, and Ginny noticed that his grey eyes were rimmed with red. She shook her head as she realized that he had been imbibing Absolut this entire time.
"Darien. Darien Andrade." He slumped back over his drink, and Ginny felt the first stirrings of pity rise up inside her. He was obviously nice and good looking and hadn't tried to make a move on her. They way he was taking in the drink, Ginny could tell that he too was going through rough times. The other patrons of the bar were shooting him glares seeing as only he had managed to make conversation with the fiery redhead at the end of the counter. Ginny called the bartender toward her and ordered another White Russian.
The hours passed by in silence as Ginny ordered drink after drink, earning heavy glares by the occupants of the bar with every drink she ordered and every word she spoke to the dark man. Darien, meanwhile had been nursing his one drink the entire time, though Ginny could have sworn that it magically refilled itself when it was almost empty. At 1 o'clock Ginny finally reached for her coat that hung on the back of her chair and toppled off unladylike as the alcohol took its toll on her motor skills. Darien looked up from his drink to see Ginny clutching onto the edge of the counter. The rest of the bar was mostly empty at this point in time so Ginny felt near to no embarrassment as she got to her feet unsteadily. She had walked to the bar, but was clearly in no position to walk herself back to her flat as it was at least five miles away. Apparating was also out of the question as there were too many Muggles around, and in her current state, Ginny would have splinched herself.
"Can you not get home? My flat is just around the corner if you want to stay the night. You can have the bed, I'll kip on the couch." Ginny looked over at Darien who had of course extended the offer. He was in worse of a state than she was, and Ginny figured if she could sneak out before he woke up the next morning, she'd be at no risk of him taking advantage of her.
"That would be nice, yes thanks." Ginny hobbled out of the bar clutching onto Darien for support, who for all his drinking seemed rather steady on his feet. The two walked down the narrow alleyway that lay outside the bar before Ginny felt a pair of strong hands wrapping around her eyes and closing her ears shut. She struggled frantically, but could do little in her current state and Darien seemed strong enough to keep her at bay.
"Shh…Ginny, you've got to trust me, else we'll never get home." But Darien's words did little to dissuade Ginny who opened her mouth to scream, hoping that someone would find her and rescue her from the clutches of this mad maniac. But Ginny could not find her voice no matter how hard she tried, no sound seemed to be able to come out of her throat. Then there was an all too familiar squelching inside her, muted by the presence of Darien. Before Ginny could place what the feeling was, Darien had released her and stood back from her shamefacedly. Ginny managed to find her voice.
"What the hell do you think you were doing? I'm not some piece of shit girl that you pick up at bars then force home to have sex with you! Leave me the hell ALONE!" Ginny stopped, breathing heavily as Darien continued to stare at the ground, then announced in a quiet voice.
"Here's my flat. If you want, you can stay, or if you prefer to be away from the prying clutches of men like me, go ahead." He spoke all this in the same quiet voice he had spoke all evening, but at the end Ginny felt a hint of malice creep into his voice. Darien had offered her a place for the night, and it finally sunk in for Ginny how badly she had just shouted at him.
"Sorry, I do appreciate what you've done. It was rather ungrateful of me to row at you like that. Yes, please, I'd like to stay the night, if you don't mind." Something like a grin flitted across Darien's face, who pulled the keys of his apartment from his pocket and led Ginny upstairs.
When the lights came on Ginny could see that the flat was furnished badly with mismatched black furniture. A scrubbed dark wood table stood bare on the side, and there was a lump of black that was assumed to be a kitchen. A poorly lit hallway led obviously to the bedroom and other rooms. The entire flat reeked of hard liquor, similar to that which Darien had been drinking, it had the faint trace of oranges. The shocking and unfamiliar events of the evening had gotten to Ginny, and the mere appearance of this flat nearly robbed Ginny of her senses. The last thing she could remember was a set of strong arms picking her up and carrying her into another room before she fell asleep.
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Ginny woke up in the harsh light that filtered through the inadequate curtains. The bed she was lying on was made of strong dark wood, and the dark green tartan comforter seemed oddly comforting in this strange place. For a moment Ginny was unsettled as the events of the night before eluded her. Then it all came flooding back to her in an instant. The bar, the White Russians, Darien, him inviting her to his flat…
She started and groped about in her robes for her wand. It wasn't there. Throwing the comforters off the bed, Ginny made a scrambling search amongst the bedsheets, but her wand was still not to be found. A soft padding of footsteps could be heard coming form the hall so Ginny heightened her search, throwing everything off the bed. The footsteps stopped behind her and Ginny paused, feeling someone's presence.
"You know, the blacks in your sitting room don't really match. The sofa is more of a muted black while the table is a really harsh black." Her own voice sounded falsely cheery to her ears and there was a soft flump as Ginny's wand landed in front of her.
"I wonder why you would be tearing apart my bed at 6 o'clock in the morning and what this stick is, Miss Weasley."
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Don't you just luuuuuuuuuurve cliffies? I know you don't.
Yes, I am aware that this fic opens with the über-clichéd bar scene, but it fits where I want to go. This fic is based loosely on my own experiences minus the gay male strippers ;)
I'm not making any promises are far as this fic goes, but I just felt I needed to write it since I have been out of sorts lately.
Bacardi is my favorite bit of hard liquor. White Russians are basically vodka and milk with more milk than vodka. Absolut is possibly the hardest bit of vodka known to mankind, and I'm partial to anything orangey (clementines!). I would like to thank Kiwi, my incestuous lover (j/k), Franny for being the most invisible inspiration ever, and my muse who will furthermore be known as Isolde and is the reincarnation of…well, something very depressing. The song that made me happy while writing this was Mr. Brightside by the Killers. Aaah, good memories of random bus rides.