Disclaimer: The song "Your House" by Steel Pulse does not belong to me. It is beautiful, and after reading this fic you should listen to it. (Try youtube)
This story is a one-shot about Draco and Ginny after the war. It's a stand alone story as well as an alternate ending for Ginny the Dragon Slayer. The sequel for that story is now up and is called The World Inverted.
Your House
Ginny Weasley sat at the kiddie table of The Burrow's garden, folding the napkins that they would use that afternoon for their small gathering.
The sun was still high in the afternoon sky, its rays streaking through the foliage of the immense oak that shaded the side of the Burrow. From its leaves hung pink streamers matching with the pink tablecloth of the picnic tables, and the pink plates, and even the pink napkins the redheaded witch was folding.
"It looks really pretty," said Victoire Weasley, Bill's daughter, casting everything a glance of approval. "I think we did a good job Aunt Ginny. Domino will like it."
Victoire had helped her favorite aunt decorate the garden in a very pink birthday-girl motif, in honor of her cousin Domino's first birthday, and appeared very pleased with herself. Ginny smiled down at the precocious six year old.
"We're a good team. And you're right, I think Domino will like it," she said, turning to glance at the one year old lovingly.
The baby, as they all still referred to Domino, combined perfectly her mother and father's physical attributes. She was simply adorable with her freckles, and 'Weasley face' as Fred had succinctly put it, and her short fly-away blond hair.
Domino was at present in her father's arms, as he tried to feed her some apple mash. More of it was going into her hair, heck, in his hair, than into her mouth, but it was still cute to watch them.
"What are you laughing at, witch?" Domino's father shot at Ginny, as he picked apple bits out of his recently cropped hair.
"Nothing," Ginny replied, smirking. "Just taking in your novel baby-feeding technique."
"That smirk of yours…" he began, but was cut off by Victoire.
"Here, Aunt Ginny," she said solicitously, with the tone of someone who wants to be indispensable, handing her aunt a napkin that had fallen to the ground.
"Thanks, love," Ginny answered, taking it from her niece's small hands.
She pointed her wand at that last bright pink napkin, and it folded itself into the same swan shape as the others.
"Aunt Ginny, when I'm big I want to have hair like you and daddy. Can I, can I puh-leeee-zzze?" Victoire asked, her lovely little face twisting dramatically into a pleading expression.
Ginny cast the little girl's flaxen Veela hair, a trait of Fleur's, an amused glance, but her smile quickly dissolved. She could never really look at that hair without thinking of him. It was almost exactly the same shade of silvery blond as his.
Draco.
Draco, holding her wrist in his long fingers, drawing her to him, as his elven hair shone white under the moonlight.
"I swear," he had said, meeting her eyes with his silver ones, and she had believed him.
Who has hair and eyes like that? Who but him? Sometimes he was too beautiful to look at.
Ginny deliberately brushed the memory away, and smiled at her niece.
"Sure you can, you can do anything you want to, when you grow up. You can be anything you want to be." She kissed the top of Victoire's head. "Now go help uncle Charlie feed Domino, before he gets the rest of the mash into his hair." Sticking out her tongue at her brother, Ginny went into the kitchen, where Molly Weasley and Luna Potter were busy preparing the small banquet.
"Mum, is Hermione here yet? I need her help with something," Ginny said, pausing to take in the delicious smell wafting from the boiling pots.
"No, and I bet it's Ron's made her late," her mother commented wryly.
Ron and Hermione had moved in together some months before, and were by all accounts behaving like newly-weds.
"Indubitably. It's so nice, those first months," said Luna, smiling dreamily as her blue eyes glossed over.
For a moment it was impossible to tell if it was Luna being Luna, or if she was fondly remembering something, and if Ginny had any doubts, they were soon cleared when Luna spoke again a second later.
"Mrs. Weasley, can I put a pinch of bluebelled wizzenfrig sprig into the salad dressing?" she asked absently.
Molly fixed her with a look that said I would preferred you didn't. Really, but said, "Of course, dear. Just a pinch, you know. I'm not really used to all these exotic ingredients."
Ginny smiled and looked at the spacey blond warmly.
After years of dating, Harry and Luna had taken the big step, and were now living together in the London suburbs, with Luna's cats, but they still made it a point to visit The Burrow regularly.
Even though Harry hadn't married into the Weasley family, a fact that Molly constantly bemoaned in Ginny's presence when the Potters weren't around, Harry and now by extension Luna, were as much a part of the Weasley clan as Ginny herself was.
It's amazing how things change, and yet remain the same, she thought, as she observed her mother working in the kitchen.
Already she could see she was going to be in one of her melancholic sort of moods today. She had gotten to thinking, and that never did end well. But things really had changed.
At twenty-two, Harry and Ron were nearly through their auror training, and Hermione was looking into a teaching position at Hogwarts as Professor of Transfigurations, now that McGonagall had taken over as Head Mistress. Luna had taken over her family's newspaper business, since her father had died during the war.
Charlie had also married, some three years before. His wife was a Muggle-born herbologist from Finland, with silky blonde hair and a quick, wry smile. Their beautiful baby girl Domino, their firstborn, was the cause of today's gathering: the Weasley family was to meet at The Burrow today, to celebrate Charlie's daughter's first year of life.
Domino, who with her strawberry blond hair, and her beautiful amber eyes, was to Ginny a painful reminder of what her children with Draco would look like, if they existed…
"Mum, I'll be in my room. Let me know when you get started." Excusing herself abruptly, Ginny left the kitchen, with Luna looking after her thoughtfully.
"Mrs. Weasley, do you think Ginny will like the spicy strawberry chicken tart I baked?"
X
There was also something more to celebrate; the war had ended a year before.
There was so much hurt to heal over, there had been so many blows, so many terrible losses. But they had survived, and after a few emotional false starts, had managed to cope wit the losses of war, and had all more or less moved on.
Everyone except me, Ginny thought with a pang. She was pretty much sure she remained the same. Her scars still bled, sometimes.
Upon graduating Hogwarts, she had joined the working force as an intern in the Ministry's Department of International Affairs. It was a good job, one she enjoyed doing, and quickly she escalated positions within the office.
Privately, she was also a member of the Order of the Phoenix, and although she was not allowed to participate in instances of armed combat or missions, she was acknowledged to be instrumental in the Order's victory, through her gift of Divination.
Now that the war was over, and not having much to rely on, Ginny, along with many people her age, had decided to focus solely on her career.
She was now executive assistant to the head of her Department, and had spent the past six months doing an internship on Diplomacy at the Forbidden University in China. Having just returned, she had decided to stay at The Burrow during the next few weeks, instead of at her small flat in London. She liked it, really, it was her own space. But she found travelling made her feel vulnerable, although she loved it, and she didn't really feel like being alone just now.
Upon entering her room a few weeks ago, which was as it had always been, although she hadn't lived in it during the past two years, Ginny couldn't help a swift memory lighting up in her mind, like a spark in the dark.
It was here she had kissed him last, she had thought, here, on this very spot of worn carpet she was standing in now. Closing her eyes she saw his image before her, young and strong and beautiful, with silvery blond hair and pale eyes that regarded her full of sadness, and love.
And how he had fallen to his knees at her feet, and had wept bitterly over what he had done, and what he must become. The memory was still a painful one for her, four years later.
She knew her friends, Ron even, were shocked to know that after all this time she was still very much in love with Draco Malfoy.
Through the years she had discovered that love really wasn't in the pit of the stomach, or in one particular place of her anatomy, but rather humming in the blood, thrumming through her veins, as much a part of her as her own soul.
This love sometimes hid from her, or ran cold, so that she sometimes didn't remember how much it hurt to be separated from him, until one day it would rush over her again, and wash away any possibility of a relationship she may have encountered during that time.
In moments like those she would realize part of her was still weeping for him, and that without even knowing it, she had never stopped waiting.
The problem was she had heard nothing of him, not even so much as a whisper or a mention of his name in the past year. He had all but disappeared, and was feared dead.
Draco was now widely regarded as a hero, once the truth came out that he had been a double agent all along, with the mentoring of Severus Snape, and one Albus Dumbledore. Both had been lost in the war.
He had risen to power among the ranks of Death Eaters, his beauty, intelligence and ruthlessness quickly making him the favorite of all the 'faithful servants', surpassing even Lucius. Soon he had gained himself a reputation as the top Death Eater, the most cruel, the most black-hearted. Voldemort's angel of death. In this time he hadn't contacted her, not once, but she knew. She heard the rumors. Everyone did.
He had done many horrifying things to prove his loyalty to his master, and because of this, his loyalty had always been unquestioned. Few people knew about his gift of Sight, that gave him the advantage of glimpsing into the future, or more deeply into the present or the past, allowing him to piece together certain things, to divine others, and in general, to know just what to do or say at a critical moment.
In this way he had avoided doing some, not all, of the atrocious things that were attributed to him with horror, and, perhaps, awe.
But then, after orchestrating the meeting between Harry and Voldemort, the one that would ultimately bring about the downfall of the Dark Lord, he had simply disappeared.
Everyone assumed he had been killed in the war, or in the uneasy period of transition immediately following it, by one of hundreds of nameless Death Eaters.
Even Ginny, who had been avidly following his 'career' during the past four years, devouring every piece of news about him she could find, sometimes was sure he must be dead…
Whenever she tried to use her powers to reach him, to find him, or get a sense of how he was, she would come up against a cold grey wall of cement. Unmoving, unassailable, this wall she suspected he had built against her own Divination gift wouldn't let her get even so much as a glimpse of him.
And so she went around carrying a Draco-shaped hole in her soul, that wouldn't be filled by anything else.
On this sunny afternoon, surrounded by her family and loved ones, the thought of Draco, his image emblazoned in her memory, as if burnt there, was for a moment more real to Ginny than what was actually happening around her. But she forced the thought away, knowing that this wasn't fair to her family, or to her.
She had been little more than a walking corpse these past years. Present in body, but never in spirit, never really there.
Not today, she decided, making her way down the stairs.
Nearly everyone was there, and amidst greeting people she hadn't seen in a while, and helping Fleur and Luna carry trays out to the garden, Ginny found her mood to be improved to near cheerfulness.
Soon the party began, and Kara, Charlie's wife, even managed to get Arthur Weasley's Muggle music playing contraption, a "radio", to work somehow, and they had actually gotten a signal.
The Muggle radio station was playing a laid-back song that instantly made Domino burst out laughing, and hold her little hands up joyfully.
"I take it she likes it," Ron observed amusedly.
He and Hermione had arrived some time before, their young faces glowing with contentment as was usual in them now.
As the song continued to play, Ginny found herself listening to the lyrics, enjoying the bittersweet beat of the bizarre music that Charlie's wife identified as reggae.
Your love is a life for I
Realized that so much
When I first met you.
That was some time ago, oh
From then until this
Resist no no no close to you
Oh yes right from the start
Oh no no no could never part
I want to live in your house, your house
I want to live in your house.
You say dry your…don't…
Wipe that teardrop from your
your eyes…
And it was then the thought of Draco invaded all her senses, the feel of his arms around her, his laughter, his pale gray eyes, the look on his face when he was looking at her, and thought she wasn't noticing. The way it felt to have his presence, to know that he was there. The thought of how things could have been, if they'd been allowed to be together, if things had been different.
She did, in spite of herself, sometimes dream of how things would have been. Of their life together, of their own children…
Of his silver hair and beautiful eyes that were the color of an overcast sky, the color of the heavy gray mist that hung around her heart.
He would be there, with her, like Hermione had Ron, like Luna had Harry. They had all made it.
And now everyone was here, together, laughing, forgetting their sorrows for a moment, to celebrate a new life, the symbol that, in spite of everything, life must and will go on.
But can I go on, when all I think about is him, when all do is breathe him, feel him, love him? she thought, and was surprised to find her eyes had filled with tears, and her throat had tightened almost unbearably as the sincere, wistful voice of the Muggle singer went on.
Was a revelation, a triumphant call
Triumphant, triumphant…
I want to live in your house
I want to live in your house
Oh I no hear
Too much of what some say
Cause at the close of the day
They'll be so far away
But then I know
one thing's for certain
Yes, I know one thing for certain
You'll be there, you'll be there
I want to live in your house,
To make I home
To make I home…
The feeling of lightness and delight that had invaded her upon listening to the song suddenly made her burst into tears.
Draco Draco Draco Draco Draco Draco Draco Draco Draco Draco her wounded heart repeated tirelessly.
Covering her eyes with her hands, Ginny quickly walked back into the house.
Harry and Hermione exchanged sympathetic looks as she ran out, wondering briefly what had been of Draco Malfoy, and whether Ginny would ever get over him.
"What's wrong with Ginny?" asked Molly, entering from the kitchen just in time to catch her daughter's tearful exit.
"You know Ginny, mum…" Ron commented sadly, wrapping his arms around Hermione, and in spite of himself, thanking all his lucky stars that they had both survived.
X
Everybody says you're dead…
Ginny ran up the stairs to her room, slammed the door shut and collapsed against it, burying her face in her hands and crying silent, bitter tears. Soon she fell on her knees, her hands clenching into fists against her eyes as she cried desperately, letting the tears fall, the tears she had been holding back for months.
And when I close my eyes, I can't see you…
You said you would come back to me. You swore.
She fell forward on her hands and knees, beating the floor angrily, desperately, howling with rage and pain, as the open wound in her chest bled freely. And the pain, the liquid sadness she had carried around for four years, since the last time she had laid eyes on him, threatened to break her chest open, it hurt so very much.
She wept bitterly, cried and cursed, and cried again, until she could cry no more.
Sitting back on the floor, she held her head in her hands, her amber eyes wide. She still ached with grief, but she had no more tears left to cry.
I want to live in your house…
Because he wasn't here, because she hurt, hurt so very much, and she had wished the same things as the mellow, trusting singer, and had been denied.
I want to live in your house, I want to live, I want to live in your house
And because in that moment, Ginny had allowed herself to realize what she had already known, knew all along.
That if Draco Malfoy were alive, nothing, nothing, would have prevented him from coming back to her, after the war…
THE END.
DISCLAIMER 2: Forbidden University: The concept is borrowed from Ladyofthemasque's beautiful and epic fic "For Someone Special", which you can find at restrictedsection.
A/N: As always, I'd like to thank my wonderful beta, Grace,(mmoxxie), for her work on this fic!