A/N
Full Summary: Ginny Weasley's son and Draco Malfoy's daughter hate each other as much as their parents hate each other, which makes things difficult when both Ginny and Draco are hired to restore a dilapidated mansion. It gets even worse when the family who lived there a century ago just won't leave them alone until they find out what happened to them.
Pairings: Draco/Ginny, minor Ron/Hermione and Harry/OC
Rating: M for language and eventual sex scenes
Lyrics from 'Nobody Knows' by the Pink
This is definitely not the best thing I've ever written but I'm quite proud of it because I've had writer's block for about two years and this cleared it. Not much happening yet but there shall be soon. Enjoy.
Dreaming Out Loud
Chapter Two – Nobody Knows
Nobody knows but me
That I sometimes cry
If I could pretend that I'm asleep
When my tears start to fall
I peek out from behind these walls
I think nobody knows
Nobody knows no
Nobody likes to lose that inner voice
The one I used to hear before my life
Made a choice
But I think nobody knows
Baby, oh the secret's safe with me
There's nowhere else in the world that I could ever be
And baby don't it feel like I'm all alone
Who's gonna be there after the last angel has flown
And I've lost my way back home
I think nobody knows no
I said nobody knows
Nobody cares
It's win or lose not how you play the game
And the road to darkness has a way
Of always knowing my name
But I think nobody knows
"Mum! Mum!"
Ginny jerked awake at the sound of Rayne's voice, bolting upright in her bed and staring around wildly.
"Rayne?!"
She threw back the covers and raced to the door, yanking it open and almost falling over the two children standing there.
"Rayne what are you doing…" She trailed off when she realised she was talking to an empty doorway.
She scrunched her nose in confusion and rubbed her sleep-filled eyes.
"Rayne?"
He appeared around the corner of the hallway, already filthy with his t-shirt on inside out and his trousers buttoned up wrong.
"Mum… Mum… guess what… guess…" He stopped and stared up at her, rubbing one cheek with a grubby hand.
"What have you been doing?" She asked, tugging on her dressing gown and ushering him back towards his room next door.
"Me and Lyra were in the attic… there's the coolest toys and stuff and Lyra nearly fell out of one of the windows but then she didn't and we found…" His voice was muffled as she pulled his t-shirt over his head. "…these books of pictures and these diaries… Lyra wanted to read them but I said they weren't ours…"
Ginny grinned at him as he perched on the edge of the bath while she set about cleaning the tub with her wand. When she was satisfied she turned the taps on. A loud creaking noise filled the room and a trickle of brown goo eased out of the taps.
"Eww." Ginny muttered to herself, keeping a careful eye on Rayne as he climbed onto the toilet seat to peer out of the dusty window at the grounds. "No running water yet, great."
She tapped her wand against the bathtub and the goo was replaced with hot steaming water with fragrant bubbles.
"Come here." She said, helping Rayne scramble down from the toilet seat still yapping about how cool the house was and that they should leave it the way it is.
She undressed him and dumped his smelly and thoroughly ruined clothes into a pile to one side before lifting him into the water.
"Can I trust you to get clean and not drown yourself for ten minutes while I get dressed?" She asked him as he set about creating a beard for himself with the bubbles.
"I'm not a child." He said, shaping the bubbles on his face careful and peering intently at his reflection in the water.
"Of course not." She said, kissing his wet head and getting to her feet.
She left the door to his room open so she could hear him in the tub as she took one of the thirty-second showers she had fast become used to thanks to her job. She pulled on a pair of ripped cut-off denim shorts and a plain black t-shirt, tied her hair back in a short ponytail and grabbed her boots from her still open suitcase.
"Weasley."
She groaned and pulled open her door. Draco Malfoy was standing on the other side of it with a scowl on his face and his arms folded over his chest.
"Now what have I done?"
He lifted his eyebrows at her and uncrossed his arms to glare at her angrily.
"Your little demon almost let MY daughter fall off the damn roof."
Ginny shook her head and moved past him into the hallway.
"They were in the attic not on the roof." She said, heading down the hallway towards Rayne's room.
"Not the point." He huffed, following her until she stopped outside of Rayne's room and turned back to him.
"And just so you know… my son sleeps like he's in a coma so the only way they could have been in the attic in the first place, is if your daughter talked him into it."
She smiled prettily up at him and shut the door in his face. When she reached the bathroom she sighed and shook her head. Rayne had managed to splash three-quarters of the water from his bath all over the floor and soaked every towel she had brought into the bathroom.
"Mum! Mum! The back garden is huge… we have to go play some Quidditch out there… we just gotta."
She grinned as she wrapped a freshly dried towel around him and lifted him out of the bath.
"Not yet we can't." She said as she rubbed his head with the towel. "We have to go to the village to get some food and then we have to get to work."
He muttered something under his breath and stared mutinously at the floor as she led him into the bedroom to get him dressed.
"Besides you didn't bring your broom." She said patiently, digging through his suitcase for some suitable clothes.
"I did." He said triumphantly as she sat him on the bed to dress him properly in an old pair of jeans and a red t-shirt.
"I didn't see it in the suitcase that Grandma shrank for you." She replied, only half listening as she combed his thick wavy hair gently.
"Uncle George taught me how to shrink stuff when he was showing me his wand." He said offhandedly, scratching his ear as she tugged on his socks.
"I'll wring his neck when I get my hands on him." She muttered to herself as she laced up his trainers.
"I'm going to shrink Lyra's shoes later… when I get her Dad's wand." He said decisively, cackling at the thought of it.
"And how exactly were you planning on getting his wand?" She asked him as she led him out of the room and down the still rather dangerously cluttered stairs.
"He keeps it in his back pocket, I've seen it." He said, scowling when Draco and Lyra appeared out of the parlour.
"We're going down to the village for food. Do you want anything?" Ginny asked politely, checking her pockets for her keys and purse.
"Let's go to the village, Daddy!" Lyra said instantly, her hands folded delicately in front of her on top of her sky-blue dungarees.
Draco gave Ginny a look and she shrugged standing back as Lyra and Rayne darted out of the front door, almost forgetting to be nasty to each other in their excitement. As Ginny passed Draco on her way out of the door she tugged his wand from his back pocket and handed it to him.
"I wouldn't keep that there anymore if I were you." She said, catching the almost amused look on his face as he shut the door behind them.
"It's a long walk, you know." Ginny said after the best part of an hour in silence, wandering along the overgrown country path towards the village.
Draco nodded, watching as Lyra ran ahead picking various flowers from the hedges by the road.
"She's very beautiful." Ginny commented, following his gaze after she had determined that Rayne was safe and still in sight in the field next to the path.
"I know." Draco replied, a smug smirk on his face as they stopped to watch Rayne prod a lazy sheep with a long stick he had recovered from the ground.
It bleated unhappily and shuffled off up the field leaving Rayne cackling with laughter and deciding the stick was now set to be a sword.
"OK, I'm trying to be polite here." Ginny finally snapped, scratching at her arm where a fly had landed.
"You want me to tell you I think your son is attractive?" Draco snorted, shoving his hands into the pockets of his tan-coloured trousers.
"No." Ginny said irritably. "I just thought you could participate in a conversation like a polite person would."
They glared at each other under the hot sun for a moment before continuing down the winding path, Ginny swinging the bag she had brought with bottles of water idly at her side.
"She has a lot of her mother in her." Draco finally said, squinting into the horizon and frowning as Lyra wiped a dirty hand on her brand new dungarees.
"How do you mean?" Ginny asked, handing him a bottle of water which he took with a silent nod of thanks.
"She's beautiful, cunning, smart, stubborn, ambitious…" Draco trailed off as he took a large gulp from his bottle, which was magically charmed to stay cool and refill itself.
"Your wife is smart?" Ginny repeated disbelievingly, rolling her eyes when Draco gave her a reproachful look.
"That's the mother of my child you're talking about." He said reprovingly, handing his bottle to Lyra as she bounded up to him covered in dust.
Ginny waved her wand over Lyra's dress and the dust disappeared as she gulped on her water before handing the almost empty bottle back to her father.
"Perdita is very smart." He said. "That's what's so bad about her… she works out exactly how to get to you."
Ginny looked up at him for a long moment, trying to figure out what he was thinking behind the blank face.
"You mean she tricked you into marriage?" She asked, pushing her sweaty side-fringe out of her eyes and wiping her palms on her shorts.
"Not exactly." He said and for the first time Ginny could tell that Draco Malfoy was uncomfortable.
They continued on in silence, Lyra and Rayne squirting each other with the water bottles noisily a few yards in front of them.
"How about you?" He asked as they turned onto the slightly better-kept path which led directly into the village.
"You want to know what I think of Perdita?" She said evasively, grinning sheepishly when Draco glared at her.
"You wanted to do this polite thing." He chided childishly, swinging Lyra into a piggy-back after she had pouted at him for a while.
"I know I know." She muttered, taking hold of Rayne's hand when he came back over to them shyly as the occupants of the village came into view.
"We should really get to work tomorrow." Ginny sighed as she piled their plates into the sink.
Rayne pulled a face at her from across the table and she rolled her eyes at him.
"We're here to do a job and you know it." She told him, sticking her tongue out at him as she waved her wand over the plates to clean them.
She lifted Rayne down from his high stool at the kitchen table and sent him off to his room with a new wizarding comic she had bought him earlier.
"Wine?" Draco asked, unearthing a bottle of wine from one of the many bags they had returned with from the village.
Ginny stared at him for a long moment before nodding. She grabbed two chipped mugs from the side and transfigured them into sparkling wine glasses and grabbed a brand new rather gaudy blue and orange chequered blanket.
"Might as well sit outside." She said, pointing at the lowering sun through the grimy kitchen window.
She had to struggle with the door for a while until it finally gave way and opened. She emerged onto a back porch that stretched the length of the house. There were three steps leading down into the back garden and Ginny spread out the blanket before them so they had a view over the downward sloping jungle of a garden which led to the fields beyond. She sat down cross-legged on the blanket and held out the glasses for Draco to fill with the wine.
It was still warm and musky and the distant bleating of sheep and twittering of birds was comforting. They sat in silence for a while, sipping their wine and staring out into the distance.
"This house is going to be beautiful." Ginny finally said, breaking the silence that was strangely comfortable.
Draco nodded, turning to look at the back of the house which was just as broken down as the front.
"But we'll have to get a landscaper in to sort this out." He pointed out, waving his glass in the direction of the garden.
"A place this big is going to take the best part of a year." She mused, already wondering what colour she could paint the porch.
"We should get everyone we'll need in as soon as we can." He muttered, finishing off his glass idly.
Ginny leant back against the heels of her hands, turning her face up to look at the damage under the porch roof.
"Do you know any good landscapers?" He continued, squinting at the setting sun.
She thought about it for a long moment, watching the sinking sun in the distance and idly scratching at her knee.
"Well I do have someone in mind…" She said slyly, peering up at him through her lowered lashes. "You won't like it though."
"Longbottom!" Draco almost fell down the last few steps of the staircase when he saw who Ginny was embracing on the doorstep.
Ginny glared at him for his rudeness before stepping back so Neville could get into the house. He eyed the complete mess the house was in, they still hadn't even cleared the rubbish and debris out yet, with raised eyebrows. His face was ruddy from days spent in the sun and he had filled into his frame rather nicely since Hogwarts.
"Do you want a drink or do you want to look at the garden straight away?" She asked him, looping her arm through his as she kicked the door shut behind him.
"Neville!" Rayne bellowed, exploding into the room covered in dust yet again and with a rip in his shirt.
He hurtled across the room and latched onto Neville's legs, gabbling excitedly. Being a good friend of the family Neville had visited the Weasleys for Sunday lunch often, always bringing samples of exciting and sometimes entirely new species of plants to show the children. As a result Rayne was besotted with him and was always clamouring for his mother to go out so he could be looked after by Neville.
"How about we take our drinks into the garden." Ginny decided, leading Neville, who now had Rayne clinging to his back, and trailing a thoroughly dubious looking Draco into the kitchen.
As they still hadn't got around to starting what they had been employed to do, Ginny had merely cleared a space on one corner of the kitchen table to be used. On the corner was a jug of freshly squeezed lemonade which she had made earlier, a bowl of chicken and salad and a large plate of tuna and cucumber sandwiches all of which Ginny picked up as they headed out onto the porch.
It was so hot in this area that they had taken to eating at a table and chair set which Draco had summoned outside on the porch. Ginny placed their lunch down on this table and gestured for Neville to sit. She took Rayne back into the house on her way for glasses and told him to keep himself out of trouble.
"What do you think?" She asked Neville as she poured all three of them a glass of lemonade.
"It's a big job." He said, idly chewing on a sandwich as he surveyed the huge garden before him.
"It is." She agreed, waving her own sandwich around as she spoke. "You've seen the front, which also needs designing. Do you think you can do it?"
Neville umm-ed and ahh-ed as he made calculations on a battered piece of parchment from his robes.
"That's expensive." Draco observed as he eyed his final calculation, looking not unimpressed. "How do we know you can do the job for that price?"
"Malfoy!" Ginny snapped, kicking him hard under the table. "Neville is very good at his job. Gardening isn't as easy as it sounds you know you can't do it magically."
Neville patted Ginny on the shoulder and she huffed at Draco before taking a gulp of her drink.
"Can you do some sketches and make some notes and I'll send them to the owners for approval." Ginny said, turning away from Draco and speaking directly at Neville.
"Sure no problem, I'll have to do them this afternoon if you don't mind." Neville finished off his sandwich with relish. "These are good. I'm in a meeting first thing tomorrow."
Ginny nodded, disappearing into the house briefly and leaving Draco and Neville alone.
"So this is what you do for a living, Longbottom." Draco said idly, leaning back in his chair.
Neville stared at him coolly, he wasn't scared of Slytherins anymore and he had gained enough confidence over the years to feel secure in himself.
"Part-time." He answered, gulping some of the lemonade thirstily.
He didn't seem to be elaborating any further and Draco was damned if he was going to show an interest in Longbottom's little life. Ginny emerged from the house with Rayne and Lyra in tow. She handed Neville a magical camera and a notepad.
"Here you go. Rayne not now, Neville is working I told you."
Rayne pouted at her and Neville chuckled, getting to his feet and handing Rayne and Lyra a sandwich each.
"No problem." He said cheerily. "I can charge for baby-sitting while I'm here."
Ginny rolled her eyes as Neville, Rayne and Lyra headed off down into the jungle of a garden.
"Don't worry, he's very good with children." Ginny reassured Draco as she caught him eyeing Neville's back carefully.
"I didn't take you for a Longbottom-shagger." He said, turning back to see her mouthing with outrage.
"I am not… we are not…" She spluttered angrily, her face burning red with anger at his rudeness. "How dare you…"
Eventually she gave up and stormed off into the house to start her work.
Draco had just wandered into the kitchen on the lookout for something cool to drink when he found Ginny. She was standing by the sink gulping down a huge bottle of icy water. She was only in a tattered pair of white cotton dungarees over a rather too-small orange bikini-top which clashed with her hair. She had slicked her hair back from her face with water and it was drawn back and held into place with a pencil. She was drenched in sweat, streaks of dust striping her skin and turning her hair white.
"What have you been doing?" He asked in amazement at the sight of her.
She jumped and spilt the water down her chin. Glaring at him she wiped her chin with the back of her hand and spread more dust onto her face.
"I've been clearing out the house." She said as though it should have been obvious. "I've started with the attic."
He took a bottle from the sink which was full of water charmed to be cold and brimming with bottles. Ginny hadn't started designing the kitchen yet and was loathe to buy a fridge and then change her mind.
"You look like…" He trailed off as he surveyed her again, watching her embarrassed toes curl above her black flip-flops.
He didn't, however, fail to notice that her very long and fast-browning legs were very evident under her dungarees.
"I don't know what." He finally said after a lengthy pause when they both gulped their water.
"It would go a lot faster if you actually helped." She pointed out, pushing away from the sink and heading back to the door.
She expected a smart-ass remark but instead he only followed her back up to the attic, lazily running an expert eye over her backside as she moved up the stairs above him. She stopped abruptly and he nearly fell down the stairs in his distracted state.
"Stop watching me." She hissed, very aware that she was much angrier at the fact that she had an insistent pulse beating between her legs from his scrutiny than because he was actually checking her out.
Christ I go almost a year without sex and I get turned on by Malfoy?! I don't think so. Ginny growled to herself as she continued to stomp up the stairs towards the attic. Bloody huge house with its half a million stairs
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