Disclaimer: Harry Potter is not mine, not by any means, and neither is the film Kontroll, which inspired certain aspects of this fic. I'd also like to cover my back by saying that I know very little about anything to do with Wales, trains, or anything much, so I've been purposely vague in places. I could have done more research than I did do, but I just wanted to write.

Summary: Draco and Ginny meet by chance at a crowded Muggle train station, a meeting that sets several things in motion for both of them. Twoshot.

Thanks to: tat1312, for her encouragement.

Notes: Lying in my bed one night, I was wondering how I could go about writing a Draco/Ginny fic, and I suddenly got a very vivid image in my mind of Draco dressed as a Muggle, carrying some kind of black bag in his hand and entering a train. I then proceeded to forget everything else and just pursue how I could make that into a story, and this is what I came up with.

When I look back on journeys I've taken throughout my life, I know that the only two things that make a journey memorable to me are how it goes wrong and the people I meet on them. If a journey is quiet and uneventful, I'm not likely to remember it years and years later, and being able to come in and out of someone else's life for a while is, for me, one of the few pleasures of travelling.

I hope that you enjoy this fic. Please let me know your thoughts - even if you only give me a few words, I value my readers' feedback.


Ginny steadily works her way through the swarming crowd, head held high and elbows at the ready as she shimmies her way expertly through the ranks of the people inconveniently in front of her. If there's one thing Ginny can't stand, it's people who push in; but if someone dares to push in in front of her, she will, inevitably, get past them again, because Ginny is a born queue jumper. Due to her distaste for queue jumpers, she doesn't usually use her skills without provocation, but if the situation is dire enough...

And believe me, she almost says to one woman who loudly complains about her as she passes, the situation's dire. It's been a total of four months since she last saw Harry, and a delay when she's this close to seeing him again isn't something she'll easily accept.

Four months. If there's one thing she hates most about spending much of the year in Wales, and having a boyfriend who is one of the most overworked and hyped-up Aurors of their time living in England, it's that she and Harry rarely get to see each other. The major Quidditch leagues deserve their title of major, and though Ginny is still only on the reserve squad, she's sure to be promoted soon. Every moment for her is about practice; and every moment for Harry is about perfect. He can't mess up, not with lives on the line, and that involves a crapload of work and not very much play at all.

The first year was the hardest, Ginny reflects as she gets stuck behind a stationary wall of enormous Welshmen. She's always loved playing Quidditch, and yet she couldn't have missed Harry more. They'd had a year long break from each other after the war, when they were focusing on rebuilding things and just learning how to live again, but afterwards, when they'd allowed themselves to reopen their hearts... suddenly, they'd had absolutely no impediments to their relationship. It had been bliss.

Then, work had taken over, and time had done its business. They've been together for five years now, and she finally became a reserve for the Holyhead Harpies two years ago. Now that she has this job that's so far away from home, it's like she has her own life, a life that Harry can't share; at the start, she'd felt guilty for enjoying it, but at that time she'd also been finding herself feeling jealous of Harry's work, the way it had absorbed him so completely, the way he'd spent more time on it than he'd done on her - and that, above all else, had convinced her that she'd needed some drastic changes in her life. She'd needed her independence back.

Although a long distance relationship hasn't ever been what they've wanted, somewhere in her two years as a Quidditch star in Wales she'd stopped trying not to settle down here and started relaxing; far from longing for the constraints of her life back in England, she's found herself revelling in her freedom.

The problem with disconnecting yourself from something is that, when the time comes, it can be hard to connect again.

She needs to get back.

There are things she has to figure out.


After much frantic worming around, Ginny manages to slither her way past the Welshmen, and she finds herself close enough to the front of the annoyed crowd to see what's going on:

On the front of the window for the office of the Welsh International Portkey Distribution Bureau, there's a sign that says: Closed for three weeks due to an emergency. If your journey is urgent and it is possible for you, please apparate responsibly or use Muggle means of transportation. If not, shut up and wait.

The rather curt and unhelpful message sends Ginny's head spinning. What kind of emergency could cause a three weeks' closure? Her journey is urgent. She only has a month of leave, and then she has to be back for tryouts for the real team. Her return to England can't be delayed.

And yet, this puts her in a very difficult situation. Muggle money isn't hard to attain, but Ginny's not so sure about the transport. She hasn't got a car, and a taxi's just too much; fares have become ridiculously high in recent years, if she recalls correctly - Harry recently had to go undercover as a Muggle taxi driver, and apparently, he'd made a mint. On the other hand, Ginny's heard that the trains are a lot cheaper than they used to be. There's a train station just nearby, too... but it's been some time since she's used a train, and it'll be a long journey, longer than she's ever had. Hours? Days? How long?

Apparition is always an option, but it's difficult over long distances even if you do cut down your journey by making it in leaps, and even the thought makes her stomach churn a little; she's apparated more than enough times to get here already. She remembers the apparition lessons with the Carrows that she'd had in her sixth year with startling detail, but they're details she will never repeat to anyone. These things are best left forgotten. Ginny, a strong girl, has managed to push away many of her memories of the war, but some things still linger; namely, a dread of apparition that she can only do her best to ignore. Most things that she learnt that year are painful in some way.

Frowning, she pushes her way closer to the front, but it doesn't tell her anything she couldn't already have guessed at. The sign is all the information given, and there's no one around to complain to (or, as Ginny had hoped, convince to make an exception for her) - something that the people around her seem to have noticed, too, if their conversations are anything to go by. Ah, Britain, Ginny thinks with a distracted sigh. Whether you're in Wales or England, the art of complaining is heartily and frequently practised. With great gusto. Endlessly.

Even so, people are already moving away. Ginny wonders what they'll all look like, all these people dressed in robes getting on the trains at once, staring at ticket barriers and machines as though they've never seen them before, and she feels the urge to laugh; but then she sees that the majority of people are taking other options, and, feeling more than a little worried, she starts out in the direction of the bank where she can change up some galleons, hoping that the enormous Welshmen, who are walking in front of her, are choosing the same option she is - and, if so, that they know a lot more than she does about trains.

Calm down, Ginny, she tells herself. You can do anything if you've got enough nerve, remember?


The enormous Welshmen, it turns out, do indeed know more than her about trains. They seem so at home among them that she'd almost have thought they were Muggles; that is, if they hadn't kindly offered to help her with magically concealing her robes from Muggle eyes when they found out they would all be going the same way, as "You won't find anybody better at that than Rhys here" (Rhys, at around 6 ft 6, being the biggest one of the three of them).

Much to her relief, they don't much like apparition either, and as they chat during the walk to the station, she finds herself quickly warming to them. Ginny always likes meeting new people, and they're friendly, teasing her about her lack of knowledge about Muggles and Wales but accepting it when she, in turn, teases them about their lack of knowledge about the Quidditch leagues, as they're curiously ignorant about them.

By the time they've bought their own tickets and told her which one to get herself (all the names of tickets just bemuse her - is this off peak or on peak time, and whatever that means, what difference does it make?), and Ginny has embarrassed herself by being confused when some of the announcements were in Welsh and others weren't, she knows that their names are Rhys, Daffyd and Owen, that they were all born in Cardiff, that Owen and Daffyd are cousins, and that they make frequent journeys to London via the trains.

"But why do you use the trains more than Portkeys?" she asks them quietly as they settle down in some seats in the corner of a random carriage, where it doesn't smell as bad; doubtfully, she adds, "Do you prefer them?"

Owen laughs - a loud, hearty sound that briefly attracts attention from the other passengers. "Well, it's not difficult to see what's more reliable," he explains. "It's International apparently, but the Welsh Portkey Distribution Bureau has a lot of these 'emergencies'. After a while, we realised it wasn't worth bothering!"

Ginny rather doubts that anything could be less reliable than the British rail system, but she figures that there's no point arguing about it, especially when her experiences with it are much fewer than theirs. Instead, she changes the subject:

"What brings you to London so often, then?"

They go on to tell her that they're ballet dancers and often do shows all over both wizarding and Muggle Europe. Ginny almost laughs in their faces - that's the last thing she'd have thought they would say, and at first, she doesn't believe them one bit. But they seem serious, and then she remembers the Hogwarts tapestry of Barnabus the Barmy, the man who'd attempted to teach trolls the ballet - and, smiling, she thinks, Well, stranger things have happened.

Strange things often happen.


Despite the pleasant company, Ginny sleeps through most of the journey. The journey from all the way in Holyhead - which is an island off the Welsh coast, not a part of the mainland - to London is the longest and one of the hardest of her lifetime, not least because a large part of it was done the Muggle way, and she feels heavily drained by it.

When awake, she'd done anything she could to distract herself from the thoughts of those things she had to figure out, but they'd played on her mind nonetheless, pick-pick-picking away. Being so far away from Harry's been skewering her mind, surely? But Ginny has nearly always known what she wants in life: she's strong in her convictions, and she knows when something's wrong with the way things are. And maybe, just maybe, she's right. Their relationship no longer feels like what she wants, so maybe, just maybe, it isn't.

Ginny wants to be held at night. She wants to wake up to someone's smile, to someone else making breakfast for her, to someone else laughing at her bedhair; she wants to wake up in the arms of someone who loves her. She wants face-to-face interaction, to etch his expressions into her mind but turn around and see them again anyway. She wants to know someone inside out, talking to them, knowing them every day, from more than just ink on parchment. She doesn't want to have to ration time anymore - she wants someone who makes her feel as though they've got all the time in the world.

Instead she sleeps on a bumpy train, face against the cold window, counting down the hours until she sees the man she's chosen to be with for the first time in four months. They'll talk, of course, once they get past the awkwardness of seeing each other again after all of this time. And then he will hold her. But in the back of her mind, she'll still be counting hours.

Is this really what she wants? Even with Harry, the man she loves?

Ginny sleeps for most of the journey, but her problems don't.


Armed with a new ticket and the parting instructions from Owen about where she has to go next, Ginny steels herself for the next challenge of her life: navigating the London Underground alone.

It's a miserable and lonely sort of place, she thinks as she strides off towards platform ten, already missing the Welshmen's jokes and laughter by her side. No one here smiles, just focusing on getting where they want to get to, it's rather grimy, and, hulked up in the corners, she's already noticed several homeless people. She wonders whether she should just apparate at this point, but she's too close to Muggles and, more than that and more, even, than her hatred of it, she's too tired. Exhaustion is weighing down her limbs and mind, and it's hard enough for her to keep walking, let alone apparate. At least on the tube, there might be the slightest possibility of a seat...

Inevitably, focusing so intently on that possible seat causes her to lose focus on where she's walking, and she bumps into someone. Hard.

The impact sends her and her heavy bag flying and she falls painfully onto the ground. The man she's bumped into drops the carrier bag he was carrying and stumbles back a few paces, but is otherwise fine; Ginny, scrabbling around to pick up her bags before people tread on them, waits for him to ask her if she's okay and offer his hand like a gentleman would, but no such things happen.

When she looks up, she sees that he has already started to walk away, and she stands up hurriedly, forgetting entirely that she's exhausted, that her train is set to arrive in five minutes and that he's walking away from platform ten. It had been her fault, true, but really!

Inexplicably incensed, she pushes her way past annoyed people now, following the flashes of his distinctive blond hair through the crowd, soon having to up her pace in order to not fall completely behind. He's a lot taller than she is and it would have been hard to keep up had he been walking at a faster pace than usual, but this is quite ridiculous - it's almost as though he's running away from her.

Well, two can play that game.


It's the second time she's collided with this man in as many minutes, but this time, the impact isn't nearly as dramatic. He doesn't even stumble, just stops where he is, and Ginny simply finds herself rearing back, cheeks flaming, suddenly wondering what on earth she can say to explain her strange behaviour. "I-I'm sorry," she says automatically, heart pounding.

For a moment he doesn't turn around to face her, but then he squares his shoulders and whirls around, and Ginny Weasley and Draco Malfoy come face to face for the first time in three years.