Widdershins

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APRIL 29, 1999.

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The day began with these: black coffee made excellently by an elderly house-elf who had known of his habits since his youth; a fresh copy of today's newspaper, spreading out across the table with a chipotle bagel on a saucer used as paperweight; and, his legs resting on another chair in the way his mother would never approve.

In other words, perfect.

He snorted to himself as the thought passed his mind. Not quite.

The entire house was quiet save for the pitter-patter of raindrops on the foggy, floor-length windows of the dining room, soaking the premises of his territory vilely. He could already imagine the mud clinging to the edges of his robes before he was even able to cross the pavement. The hazy skyline of dark blue and dull gray was splashed together in a messy array of hues that did nothing but set a gloomy overcast to what could have been a promising morning. Still, it was no surprise that after weeks and weeks of scorching heat and clear summer skies, the weather was bound to change for the absolute worst, and stay bad for good long while before it could pick up from where it left off again. The world was round, what goes around comes around or something like that.

In other words, it was going to be a spectacularly shitty day the moment he stepped out of his house, and he wouldn't be able to do anything about it.

That was just great.

"Master Malfoy?"

Draco's eyes flicked toward the elf by his feet, bowing so low its forehead might have already touched the ground. It could have been because he was still scared of him, or it was just that his bones were getting weaker due to old age. Draco wished that he could fire the little creature so he could get a new one, but the new laws implemented by the Ministry made it far more difficult to do these things underhandedly, or even quickly, the way most people would have done before. Damn Granger.

"Yes?" he asked, flipping the pages of the Daily Prophet. "What is it?"

"A Master Zabini has come to see you. Lippy is to see to him?"

Well, shit. He might need to rethink that line about having a spectacularly shitty day once he got out of the house — it was probably starting already.

"Yes, of course. Bring him here."

The arrival of Blaise Zabini had properly sunk in his mind when the wards of his home shifted to accommodate the guest at his command. There was no glaringly loud alarm noise, no whiplashing from the violent plants his mother had urged him to grow (for his protection, no doubt, and her utter satisfaction at knowing that they could strangle anyone who would dare come close to him without permission), and no screams from the other end of the property. Yes, a friend had come to visit him in his home.

A pity, he thought. The ivies were particularly violent at this time of the year.

The dining room door opened with a loud bang that shook the chandelier over their heads, and Draco blinked at the sight of Blaise Zabini, dark eyes fixed on him. His clothes were as dry and pristine as the marble floor he was stepping on despite the downpour outside. Age had not changed Blaise Zabini's vanity or his penchant for dramatic entrances.

"What a pleasant surprise," he said loftily at first, eyes on the dark-skinned man before turning his head away, his gaze back on his paper. It could have been seen as a dismissal, but Blaise had taken it as a permission to speak.

"I never pegged you to be stupid," said Blaise instantly, completely overriding the etiquette of pleasantries. They had long passed the stage where they could be trying to kill each other with their eyes and still remain cordial for the sake of appearances — now it was just plain, cruel bluntness. "You do know that she's leaving today, don't you?"

Draco's eyes shot up to meet his. Blaise's face was unreadable; much like they were back in their Hogwarts days, when there was both hate and respect that divided their lines in their house. Still, there was an undeniable lack of happiness in the way that he spoke, and as Draco feared, it's not something that he could easily brush off with a smirk or a sneer.

It scared him, how hard it was now to form a response as Blaise's eyes bore holes through his head, waiting for an answer he knew he wouldn't like. Draco probably had a million to give, and none of them entirely pleasant.

Draco sighed, leaning back on his chair to completely face him. "I didn't peg you to be the type to care, Zabini."

Blaise raised a brow at the use of his surname. "I'm only here to state the facts. I've been told that you need it."

"The kind of gesture is appreciated, but I assure you that I haven't forgotten," he replied sarcastically, resisting the urge to sneer. Instead, he opted for the generally accepted, royally annoyed look. "No, I know that she's leaving today. I wasn't the last to know, either, if you worry about that. What do you want me to do?"

"Something," said Blaise, a bite of impatience in his voice. "This isn't it."

In an instant, Draco's eyes flashed. "Don't start, Blaise. I don't need it from you."

"Apparently, you do."

No, no. He really didn't.

It wasn't even about him. It was never about him, but they all had begun meeting with him, taking over his lunch hours and free days and squeezing themselves in the middle of his work schedule, all with hopes that he could somehow persuade the youngest Weasley to change her mind. It had been somewhat amusing, if not exhausting, the first few times, but after a day of heated arguments and frantic tears (mostly from Molly Weasley; an exceptionally kind woman, but perhaps she was far too emotional for someone as perpetually unfeeling as he), he was forced to ban them all from the premises of his workplace, hoping that it would give them all a clue. The news that Ginny Weasley was planning to leave England for an indefinite amount of time was a surprise to the world, yes, but it was hardly worth all the hysteria that he was forced to endure.

Apparently, the rest of the entire goddamn world didn't agree. Harry sodding Potter himself had been the first to approach him, his eyes petulant but hopeful and beseeching, and quite tenacious about making him see what he was apparently blind to — not that he would know; he was blind to it, remember — but Draco had shut the door on his face when he'd had enough.

"She'd listen to you," Ronald Weasley had ground out to him one time, his eyes full of hatred, desperation, and hope, and something he couldn't quite place. "What do you think we all came here for?" In as much as Draco would have wanted to completely crush his heart and spirit at that moment, all he did was say that it wasn't his place to do anything. As far as he was concerned, Ginny was of age and could do whatever she wanted. No one, especially not Draco Malfoy, had any say in any of her decisions.

He had last spoken to Bill Weasley, who, upon hearing his refusal, merely gave him a sad, knowing smile.

That was four months ago.

Now, Blaise was the one speaking to him, the man wildly known for his neutrality in every possible angle of his life except his mother, his eccentric girlfriend Luna Lovegood, and that hideous little beast he liked to call his cat.

"Draco," he said, approaching him slowly. "You have to do something."

It was easy to be reminded of how loved she was by the people around her. She was gravity in a small, petite form of a woman with a feisty temper and a sharp wit that could give him a run for his money. It was her smile, a million-galleon and possibly more; the soft upturn of her thin lips that could keep an entire city alight as though it was magic in itself. It was her charm, the quirk of her brows when she demanded to get what she wanted and the hands on her hips when she sternly disapproved of something. It was her pretty face covered with freckles, the simple way she would bat her eyelashes and tie her hair in a neat bun. It was her fiery personality that dragged everyone around her to her.

Most of all, she touched people with kindness, and saw far past the facades that made them hollow, and dug deep in their hearts using that smile she loved to show. He had seen how she simply never gave up after taking a tumble; how she took care of those people she was keen on. There was little that anyone did not like about her.

And all these years, he knew better than to deny that she had touched him as well. She attached herself to a part of him that he she found to be worth it, and never let go. Even when he pushed her away harshly, she never gave up, because she was stubborn and angry and a stupid little Gryffindor with too bold a heart and too narrow a mindset and she knew, somehow, that it would all pay off someday.

"Listen to me, Draco," said Blaise, who had made himself comfortable by sitting on the edge of the dining table, watching him intensely. There was nothing more unnerving than being surveyed by someone with too-sharp eyes. Draco found that he was far too vulnerable and open to someone who didn't need Occlumency to be able to read him. "Let's not get into the sentimental value of her presence here. We all know by now how important she is, and no one wants her to leave. That isn't the issue, though. The issue here is you."

"What—"

"If you tell her to stay, she will stay," said Blaise matter-of-factly, holding a hand up to prevent Draco from speaking. "You know this. I know you do." Draco shut his mouth, then, knowing that he could not press against it. Everyone seemed to believe it to be true, himself being the only exception. "She can't stay here because you're not stopping her from leaving. You're letting her go because you think that's what's good for her."

"It's what she wants."

"Bullshit, Draco, you know exactly what she wants," said Blaise gravely, with a shake of his head. "We both know what the real question is: why do you still think you don't deserve her?"

Not quite a bingo, but close.

"She doesn't deserve me," he said gruffly, his jaw clenched and his curling into a fist over his chair's arms. "I've done—"

"You've done so many mistakes in your life that hitting rock bottom is practically like being in vacation to you, but you've always pulled yourself back up," Blaise cut him off once more, this time completely irritated. It was an old argument. "You deserve her far more than you know, Draco, and she deserves you just the same.

"Why do you think that her friends and family would even bother talking to you?" Blaise continued on, questioning him, a hand running through his hair. "They respect her decision, and if you weren't in the picture, they would have let her go willingly. You were right; she can do whatever she wants, and they know this. But they want her to be happy, too, and she's the happiest girl when she's with you. Only an idiot can't see that."

For the second time that day, Draco shut his mouth, unable to retort.

"Why can't you see it? I know you're not an idiot."

—-

It was a thought that carried over to Draco's subconscious even after Blaise had left him in his own. Even now, while he was waiting outside the Weasleys' home with an umbrella over his head and an Impervious charm on his clothes and his hair just in case, the question repeated itself in his head, the answer eluding him as time continued to move around him, never stopping for him.

Through the window, he watched as family and close friends gathered inside the house and said their final farewells, and even without being in there, he knew that there would be sadness and tears, words of encouragement, sincere farewells, and proclamations of love and loyalty and everlasting friendship — things that were too cheesy, but too true. They were things would never be able to personally say those things to her, because he just wasn't made that way.

Through the glass, he saw Pansy glance at him pityingly, nodding her head to Ginny's direction, and he jerked his head to the other side, half-annoyed and half-exasperated. Her shoulders slumped and she looked away, her arms linked with Ron's in a way that, once upon a time, Draco wouldn't have thought was a sight he'd vomit at if he ever saw it (not that he even thought of it at all).

The war changed people.

Some were torn apart by the death and destruction while others rose the occasion as heroes in an epic story of love, bravery, and fealty. There were those who were stricken with reality far too late in time and could no longer recover, while there were some who would take a very long time to heal, though they tried their best to live normal lives. There were those like Pansy, who needed someone strong and understanding to show them that there was more to life than what had been drilled into her mind by prejudicial parents, and those like Draco, who simply wanted a way out of the dark.

"Draco?"

He looked up and saw her by the door, all of her luggage bags stacked together behind her, being shrunken magically by some of her brothers into a small handbag. There were droplets of water on her clothes and her freckled skin as she stood close to the rain, and her hair was already a bundle of red mess draped over her shoulders before she had even begun traveling.

Of course, he thought wryly as he walked over to her, there were those people who simply were the light that everyone followed. Even when all other lights went out, they still shone in the darkness, little twinkling stars best seen on a velvet blue night sky.

It took far less effort than he thought to say that she lit up his life with her obnoxious laugh and vibrant expressions, but was even easier to admit that she saved his life, in more ways than he could even count. He was doing all of this for her.

"They feared the worst when you didn't show up this morning, Draco!" She immediately went to him, much to his surprise, wrapping her half-wet arms around him and laughing as he stumbled less than gracefully, almost tripping over a muddy area. He grabbed her by the waist and pushed his feet back, saving them both from complete embarrassment. "Ron reckoned that the rain might have scared you away, running and screaming!"

He gave her a small smirk, shaking the umbrella that shielded them from the rain. "I came prepared."

"I noticed," she said wryly, flicking invisible lint from his shoulders. He snorted, and she laughed. Her hands smoothed out the creases of his very dry robes, brown eyes traveling from his chest up to his face. He let her. "Did you come to say goodbye?"

He noticed how shiny her eyes were, and he thought that she might cry soon. She was a strong woman, someone who had walked in the shadows and came out alive and bearing teeth and wit, but she felt. She had feelings. She was human. No matter how much she wanted to go and explore the world and write stories about her journey, she would always miss her home.

Draco refused to think about the way it seemed much harder to breathe just thinking about the loss he'd feel when she's gone; how difficult it was to comprehend that this would be the last time he would be able to twirl her stupid red hair around his fingers; how he couldn't bear to remind himself that she might have a far happier time without him, than he would have without her; or how he couldn't just admit to her that he really, really did not want to let her go.

How perfect would it be, if she could just change her mind then and there and tell him that she was going to stay?

"Why is that even a question, you miserable witch?" he asked dryly, a small smirk on his lips, his free hand going up to smoothen her hair. "What else would I come here for?"

She laughed and shivered as his fingers grazed her skin, and he saw that a fire in her eyes was kindled. He wondered why it was even dulled to begin with, but she took a deep breath and said, "I thought that perhaps you'd come to tell me that you love me."

His hands stilled.

She continued. "Have you?"

He sighed. "We've talked about this, Ginny."

"No, you've talked about it," she retorted. "I never got my say on this."

"I don't think that matters any longer, seeing as you're about to go halfway across the world," he replied in a steely voice. "As I recall, you were so excited to leave you didn't want to hear what I had to say."

"Shut up," she said fiercely. "You were the one who started evading me when we've agreed to talk about it again after a botched conversation due to your lack of spine."

"Always an allusion to my cowardice, it's like you make it necessary to always wound my pride," he said, with dark amusement, and in her eyes were diminishing, righteous anger and the rise of guilt from her conscience. She could never stay too angry for too long, and he could never hurt her the way she hurt him. Not anymore, anyway. "You were going to leave, and I did want to say goodbye properly."

There was a pause, long and hard. "Just like that, Draco?"

You'll let me walk away, just like that?

Draco caught the question far easier that he would have liked. He heard the underlying meaning and urgency that set the atmosphere of this moment on a higher scale. He told himself that he had been ready for these kinds of questions. He had prepared himself from the onslaught — or so he assumed. Clearly, he underestimated the one person who had been with him from the very start and had seen every ounce of changes in him and knew exactly when and what to push.

"What do you want me to do?" he asked, his voice tight.

"Tell me you love me, Draco," she urged him, her eyes were unfailingly warm and gentle, like the rise of the sun over the red lines that hide rays of twilight beneath a cloudy sky. The lines on her face were old scars, barely there but always there, and he watched nonchalantly as her hair fell to the side of her face, entwined with his fingers resting just below her ear. "I love you."

The truth was always in the simplest details that everyone else failed to see, and there was no lie in the way she looked at him, or the way she spoke.

I'll stay here with you.

A cloud of black-winged birds had erupted noisily as they passed over their heads, casting fleeting shadows across the late morning sun and disrupting the silence that had grown while Ginny stared at him with mercilessly earnest eyes. Behind them, the crowd of red-haired relatives and assorted-haired friends had started to come out of the house, preparing to see the youngest Weasley off one last time. "Ginny?" Molly called, but her voice sounded like a distant roar in an open sea. Ginny continued to stare and Draco continued to think, the clock ticking between them like mark of the limits of what they could do, what they would do, and what they should do.

He knew exactly what she wanted from him. Did she know what she was asking of, for the both of them? Did she realize what she would be getting herself into, if she did? The look in her eyes said that it wouldn't have mattered, but she was the sentimental fool who wore her heart on her sleeve, and he was not.

Her free hand rested on his chest, feeling the heartbeat underneath the palm of her hands, as soft and quiet as they were. Her eyes were wild and wide and willing to wait forever, and he was reminded of the war, when he promised to come back to her alive, and once he did he was never going to leave her side, and her smile was so brittle then that he didn't look back when he left to fight. Yet he did come back then, there was that. And he did stay with her, didn't he? He was always within reach of her. Perhaps she was expecting him to still honor that promise despite the shifts in the gears of their relationship, seal it with a kiss that would bind them to each other, more her to him than anything.

"You'll stay, and let go of the offer now?" he began, slowly. "It's once in a lifetime, Ginny. You'll never get another chance. You know this."

"I—"

There it was: the millisecond hesitation that stretched out into years of torture, the one he was waiting for. It was too easy, he always knew that it would be this easy. An out of the blue decision would never get her far, and he needed her to know that her happiness lied elsewhere, and not with the man with troubles in his eyes and an ugly mark on his arm. He was nothing more than a mere shadow of himself, his dream dark and his thoughts even darker when the lights were out. He didn't even know where to find his own peace and happiness, let alone give her hers.

Without waiting for a chance for her to continue on, he smirked lopsidedly and said, "You have your whole life ahead of you, Ginny, and I'm not about to get in your way."

"I won't leave you," she said firmly, after three seconds of open-close mouth motions after being stunned into silence. She was determined, but he had already planted the seed of doubt. If she chose him now, she would regret it. "I'd give it all up for you, if it meant that you'd tell me the truth for once—"

"Don't," he said quietly, ignoring the jibe, and there was something sinister and biting in the way that he said the word, a tone that wasn't meant for her, exactly. "I'm not worth it."

He raised her hand and kissed her knuckles softly, because for all the kindness she had shown her, none of it had rubbed off on him. He was forged in steel, his edges sharp and his heart lacking a space to fit too many things at once. He loved her. His heart could only house all of her and none of him. She looked at him, shaking her head. She looked as though he knew why he was doing this. She didn't want him to do this.

He had to do this.

"Be safe, Ginny."

"I might not come back," she said as he began to pull away, and it almost sounded like a threat. Everyone was watching them, hearing nothing but seeing everything, and they were looking at him expectantly. This was his last chance, his defining moment.

He sighed. "I know."

He kissed her temple, eyes closed. When he pulled back, she had tears in her eyes that never fell, he was gone in a flash.

—-

Disclaimer: Not mine.

Author's Note: Despite the fact that I have multiple projects to finish, here's another one. It's either I write it and post it somewhere or I lose my muse for it. This will be one out of three. Maybe four or five. We'll see how everything spreads out when I finish editing the rest of it. A bribe fic for intangibilities to finish her fics so that I can squee to her mercilessly.