Chapter 4:
Spending her entire weekend at work, Ginny fully appreciated how much rested on the shoulders of the campaign for the new line.
Two years of Seamus' work developing the line, Lavender's reputation as she had already announced the line to their customers, and the extra staff that they had hired for manufacturing and marketing. All of this would come to naught if she was unable to market it properly. They may as well just hand out the merchandise for free.
Word of mouth was always a good way to get noticed, but the wizarding population relied on their media for the latest information. They were also increasingly in competition with the Muggles, as Muggleborns were more and more likely to shop outside of Diagon Alley and Hogsmeade.
In other words, Ginny felt completely adrift. There was no way this campaign would get off the ground if Draco Malfoy stood in their way. That had now been proven beyond a doubt.
It was February now, but the World Championship was the following summer, and they had wanted to introduce the line in time for that huge Quidditch event, as she had told Malfoy herself. It was a good plan, but it needed to be well-executed as there would be so many other novelty products for sale at that time.
Ginny ran her fingers through her hair, picking out the tangles that she encountered, before pulling it back into a loose bun at the back of her head. The office was empty, as it was most weekends, and she revelled in the unusual silence that not even Silencio could achieve on a weekday.
It was also nice to be able to wear her jeans and a jumper to work, instead of her usual suit. It felt very liberating, and Ginny stretched in her chair trying to work the kinks out of her neck.
Deciding to ignore the pressing issue of the media coverage, Ginny looked over the finished prints of Oliver Wood in various settings and poses wearing BFW Quidditch Sweaters. They had turned out better than even she could have expected.
The famous Keeper was incredibly good looking, and it showed well in print. She frowned as she remembered just how much a contract with him ensuring his endorsement had caused, but then decided it had been well worth it. He was now looked into a non-compete agreement with BFW for the next three years, with an option to renew for another five after that.
She traced the BFW logo on each picture with one finger, loving the look of the elegant black logo that would soon become the must-have for wizards and witches. It was ambitious, but entirely doable. She, Seamus, and Lavender had made sure of that.
And it would not do to have Draco Malfoy stand in their way.
She ate her lunch at her desk, browsing through the pages of paperwork that lined her inbox, Ginny's eyebrows rose as a copy of The Prophet met her fingers.
"Why would Maeve put that there," she murmured to herself at the unusual addition to the polished wooden case.
Spotting a note from her assistant telling her to turn to page fourteen attached to the front of the paper, Ginny turned the pages with interest, and then promptly dropped the thing when her own face peered out at her.
Shock raced through her as she grabbed the paper back up, and spread it out on her desk to take a closer look.
The image of her was a promo picture that she recognized for BFW from a few years prior, standing next to Lavender and Seamus. This was beside a picture of Malfoy, obviously taken at some party, in dress robes with a beautiful blonde on his arm.
The entire article was about speculation around Ginny and Draco's supposed "passionate love affair." Ginny gritted her teeth as she read.
Expressions such as 'Romeo and Juliet', 'forbidden desire', and 'illicit love' were bandied around the article in a way that set Ginny's teeth to grinding.
The reporter also mentioned that Draco Malfoy had refused to comment, as was his custom, through his press agent. Ginny Weasley's response was that of an adult nature, though she had vehemently denied any reports that the two were together, according to the article.
Crumpling the paper up into a tight wad was satisfying. Throwing it in the trash even more so.
Ginny closed her eyes, and prayed to every god and goddess she could think of that her parents had not bought Saturday's Prophet. Or her brothers. Or Harry.
Why hadn't she taken the request for a statement on Friday more seriously? She could have already begun damage control. Instead, she had been at the mercy of her anger and hormones.
She could just imagine Draco reading the article. Hell, the cocky bastard had probably planted it. Her eyes narrowed on that thought.
Ginny grabbed a fresh piece of parchment, and her quill, and put together a scathing and to-the-point missive to be sent to Malfoy.
"Hermes," Ginny called softly, looking outside the window where one of BFW's owls lived, "Hermes!"
The sleek, medium sized brown owl floated to the owl stand in the corner of her office, giving her a look of disdain for disrupting his rest.
She tied the parchment to his leg, "I need you to take this to Draco Malfoy, wherever he is. Now. Do not wait for a reply."
Hermes seemed to look down his nose at her, before he flew sharply out the window.
"Bloody temperamental bird," Ginny groused to herself as she sat back down at her desk, determined to get a few more hours of work in before she was due at the Burrow for the weekly family dinner.
It was after six before she finally made her way from the Apparition point beside the garden gate to the back door of the large house.
Breathing in the familiar smells that wafted through the cold crisp air, Ginny smiled as she entered the kitchen to see Percy's two little boys sitting at the table there, as Molly stirred something on the stove. Something that smelled wonderful. It felt as though she were five years old again.
"Auntie Ginny!" Michael and Matthew both made a grab for her legs as she walked in; their heads level with her thighs. Ginny laughed, and leaned back on the door for balance as she leaned down to give them both big hugs.
Wiping ineffectually at sticky little boy handprints on her pants legs, she then reached over to give her mum a hug.
"Alright there, mum?" she asked brightly, already looking around to see who else had arrived.
"Ginevra Molly Weasley," the red haired matriarch had perfected her terrifying 'you're in trouble' tone to the point where even her eldest sons cowered, "you are going to sit down, and tell me what is going on with this nonsense in The Daily Prophet."
Ginny sighed as she was enveloped in a quick hug, before pushed to a wooden chair. Both of her nephews had left for the front of the house at their Grandmum's tone, determined not to be blamed for whatever had gone wrong.
"So… how has your week been?" Ginny asked brightly, trying in vain to distract her far-too-perceptive mother.
"Do not give me that," Molly Weasley sat down opposite, and gave her only daughter a good glare. "Imagine my surprise when Sheryl Bones pops over for a cuppa yesterday, and casually asks about my daughter's relationship with Draco Malfoy!"
"Yes, I can imagine that would be quite shocking," Ginny agreed in what she hoped was a commiserating tone.
"Oh, you do?" Molly snarled at her. "You are not going to leave that chair until you tell me everything. And no pudding until I am satisfied either!"
Ginny's shoulders drooped. She took a deep breath, and proceeded to lay her arse off to her mother. "Mum, you know how the papers can be. Malfoy Enterprises has been trying to acquire BFW for a few months now, and I took a dinner with Malfoy himself at The Truffle to try and sort it out. The press got wind of it, and suddenly we're shagging on every horizontal surface."
"I don't believe you," Molly informed her archly.
"Well, it is the truth. Did you notice how they didn't even have a picture of us together? For Merlin's sake, the picture of Malfoy was of him with a blonde. I am clearly not even his type." Ginny congratulated herself for picking that little titbit out of the recesses of her arse, before she started wondering why she had remembered that detail when she had thought she only glanced at the picture momentarily.
Molly was still looking at her sceptically.
"Mum, remember what Harry and Hermione went through with Rita Skeeter? These reporters will do anything for a story," Ginny continued, trying to keep calm, and keep her eyes focused on her mum. It was all in the eyes.
That seemed to do it, Molly cracked slightly. "Well, I just don't like having updates on your love life through the paper. Perhaps if you had a fellow, you wouldn't fuel these kinds of rumours."
Ginny rolled her eyes at the sound of the familiar reprimand. "Mum, I'm perfectly happy by myself. I'm only twenty five, and I work too much to have much in the way of a boyfriend right now."
"Almost twenty six, dear," her mother reminded her helpfully, "and you would be so much happier if you had some chap to go home to at the end of the day."
Pushing the side of herself that agreed with that comment to the back of her mind, Ginny stood. "I'm going to go and say hi to dad, right? When will dinner be ready?"
"About an hour, dear," as she answered Molly jumped up to check on her casserole, swirled her wand at the oven timer.
Saying hello to various brothers and their wives as she made her way through the sprawling house, she finally found her father in his workshop at the other end of the house.
He was bent over the table with various wires and parts laid out in a diagram in front of him. Ginny took a moment just to contemplate the top of his head, noting the few grey hairs that seemed to have snuck in without her notice. It was hard realizing her parents were getting older, that they might not always be there as they always had been.
Shaking herself out of the gloomy thoughts, she called to Arthur, "hi daddy."
"Hello princess," he responded with a grin creasing his face as he looked up. Standing, he held his arms out for a hug from his youngest child.
Ginny hugged him tightly, breathing in the familiar scent of leather, cigars, and motor oil.
"What are you working on?" she asked lightly, looking down at the table and trying to piece together in her mind what all of these parts were.
"Oh, it is the most incredible thing, Ginny," Arthur answered excitedly. He held up a muggle picture for her to look at. "Harry brought me a muggle CD player. I've been looking it over for days now… incredible. Muggles are remarkable, really, despite their obvious limitations."
Ginny frowned as she looked at the picture, and then down at the pieces strewn across the wooden surface. She didn't completely know what she was looking at, but he seemed happy enough.
"That's great, daddy. You're going to have to show me how it works, and what it does when you put it back together."
"Of course! Of course!" he replied, already moving back to a few wires that had caught his interest. "Let me know when supper is on the table, right princess?"
Ginny smiled and moved back out of the room, coming face to face with Harry in the narrow hallway.
"Harry!" He smiled as she hugged him tightly, and kissed her on the forehead.
"Hey Gin," his smile widened, "what was all this Ron was pissing about with you and Malfoy?""
"Oh," she wrinkled her nose, "absolutely nothing. You know how the media is sometimes, they would try to bring Voldemort back for a story.
Laughing, he caught her around the neck with the crook of his arm, and dragged her along to the living room where Hermione and Dean had just arrived with their daughter, Ella.
Amid the greetings, Hermione grabbed Ginny's arm in a vicelike grip. "What was all this I read about you and Malfoy?"
"Later," Ginny hissed at her, smiling at Dean and giving him a kiss on the cheek.
Dean and Hermione had been together for about five years, but despite the birth of Ella almost two years prior, had not seen it necessary to wed. They both insisted they were happy with what they had to Molly who took it upon herself to ask every few weeks when they managed to make it to the Weasley Sunday night dinner.
Ella toddled over to Ginny, her chubby arms outstretched, "up!"
Ginny grinned at her goddaughter's demand, and swiftly pulled her into the air in a move that had Hermione gasping, and then scolding her friend, even as her daughter screeched in delight.
Dean laughed, kissing Hermione to district her, and pulled her away to say hello to Ron with a grinning Harry following closely behind them.
Ginny settled the little girl on her hip, grinning at her, and speaking softly, "hi muffin. Have you had a good week?"
Sitting on the couch as Ella told her all about her new shiny purple shoes that her daddy had gotten her, and about her playgroup and swimming lessons, Ginny kept her attention focused on the miniature Hermione.
Only the hint of mocha in Ella's skin tone spoke of Dean, and Ginny again wondered how they had gotten to this point, where one of her best childhood friends had a toddler, and was madly in love.
Ella was now intent on pulling on her pink socks, and reciting the alphabet as Ginny nodded, her expression serious so as not to offend the two year old squirming on her lap.
Smoothing the little girl's unruly hair back from her brow, Ginny kissed the satiny smooth skin that she found there.
"Are you going to come watch me swim Auntie Ginny?" Ella spoke seriously, her dark eyes intent on Ginny's much lighter ones.
"I will definitely try. It sounds like you're having a lot of fun!"
"Mummy gets worried when I jump from the board, but daddy laughs and throws her in the water at home," Ella told her cheerfully. Ginny laughed at how Dean and Hermione's relationship worked.
Dean was so incredibly easy going, he always had been, even during his and Ginny's ill-fated relationship at Hogwarts. He proved to be a good foil for the ever-worrying Hermione. It seemed that their daughter was starting to pick up on that particular point of her parent's relationship.
Ginny thought wistfully how she sometimes wished that she had that. That easy way of being with another person, of talking and laughter, and knowing that that they were always there for her.
Instead, she had Draco blooding Malfoy making threats to shag her silly. Life was not always fair.
The rest of the evening passed comfortably, with Ginny somehow being talked into babysitting Ella on the following Saturday by an innocently smiling Dean, while Hermione rolled her eyes.
The conversation only once more turned to the piece in The Prophet, and they all agreed that reporters should be taken out and AK'd for inaccuracy of pieces surrounding a witch or wizard's private life.
It was when coffee and tea was being drunk back in the living room, that Ginny sat down beside her eldest brother.
"How's the new campaign, Gin?" Bill asked with interest, knowing from his ties with Gringotts just how much was riding on this. Ginny frowned briefly, unwilling to even think about her current predicament, and instead focused on a smaller, yet equally terrifying concern.
"Not bad," she stalled, looking down at her clasped hands for a brief moment, "but I was actually wondering how much you knew about residential security wards."
Draco's appearance in her apartment the previous day had been cause for concern, and it made Ginny uneasy to think that he may have been there other times without her notice.
Bill watched her shrewdly, picking up on Ginny's mood. "Why do you ask?"
"Curiosity, mainly. I have nothing on my flat right now, and some people at work were telling me about a spat of break-ins over the past couple of weeks in Hogsmeade."
"Oh really?" Bill arched a red eyebrow. "I haven't heard anything about that, though, all places of residence should have something in terms of wards. I can't believe you've been living there that long, and are just now asking about it."
"Not the top of my list of priorities, right?" Ginny sighed. She was getting his protective brother senses to flare up, and that was really the last thing she wanted. She liked her privacy and independence, and her brothers simply overrode her wishes if they felt she was in any kind of danger.
"Listen, I'll come by tomorrow after work to set them up for you," he continued, still watching her carefully.
"Lovely."
"What are you setting up for Ginny, Bill?" Fleur settled herself on his other side, smiling at her sister-in-law.
"Security wards. She's been living in that flat without them for years," Bill grumbled, still unable to get over this fact.
Ginny rolled her eyes. "It's nothing, Fleur. How are you doing? Are you looking forward to the baby?"
"Oui. Very much so." Though the blonde's English had improved since she had first set foot in Hogwarts a decade prior, she still occasionally lapsed into her native tongue, and it softened the edges of her words.
Bill smiled at the thought of his first child, and wrapped a careful arm around his wife. "It's a girl, you know."
"Really?" Ginny grinned. This would be the first female grandchild. Molly would be over the moon.
"Yeah, you won't have the distinction of being the only female Weasley child anymore," George teased hearing the end of the conversation as he sat down with the small group.
Ginny laughed, and reached over to punch him gently in the arm. "I will have you know, that that is a very great distinction, and that acts of greatness are always done through the female line."
Harry turned his head to her, with a mocking tilt, amusement dancing across his features as she quickly amended her sentence, "except for you Harry, and that whole war thing. You're not a girl."
Fleur giggled, and leaned over to pat Ginny's hand amid the general laughter of the statement. "I hope she will be like her aunt."
"Well," Ginny grinned and looked around at her brothers scattered throughout the room, "she had better be. If she ends up like one of her uncles, there will be no stopping them."
Apparating home later that evening with a full week's worth of leftovers courtesy of her mother, Ginny shoved the whole lot into her icebox, and went to finish up her paperwork, keeping an eye out for an owl back from the head of Malfoy Enterprises.
The night rolled by with nothing from the blond, and Ginny frowned as she changed into her nightclothes, determined to get a full night's sleep and that the next day couldn't possibly be as stressful as this one.
Ginny was sitting at her desk, going through the paperwork from the previous week from her administrative team, a large cup of coffee at her elbow, when a sleek black owl made its appearance in her office.
Dropping a letter with a precise flick of one strong leg, the owl turned, and settled itself onto the perch in the corner, obviously under instructions to wait for a response.
Ginny stared at the heavy cream envelope for a long moment, before she picked it up, and ran a nail under the seal that had been stamped with an ornate DM on the back.
She sucked in a breath as she read the letter that had been written in a heavy, elegantly scrawling script in black.
My office at two o'clock.
DM.
Well, that was certainly to the point, and gave her no reaction to the harshly worded letter she'd sent him the previous day. Ginny scowled, and scribbled something in the affirmative, before throwing the letter back at the owl, who left with an offended look on his almost inscrutable features.
Checking the time, she realized that it was verging on one thirty already, and she rushed to eat the sandwich and juice that Maeve had left for her on the edge of her desk with a cooling charm almost an hour earlier.
Taking a last look in the mirror in her office, Ginny smoothed the tailored black suit over her figure, straightening the collar of her white blouse beneath it. A harsh look for her, but it was needed in this case.
She apparated to the front lobby of Malfoy Enterprises, and was shown to Draco's office at precisely two o'clock.
This time, she was not left alone in the large space.
Draco Malfoy himself was seated behind the magnificent desk, sprawled languidly in his chair as if he had not a care in the world. Several piles of paperwork littered the desk in front of him, and a pair of spectacles rested on the top beside a mug of tea and a bottle of water.
"Ginny," he drawled, watching her from beneath golden eyelashes, "to what do I owe this honour?"
"I read The Daily Prophet article," she spoke as she clenched her fists to her sides.
"Ah," he said, in the tone of man who has been enlightened, "a superb piece of journalistic art."
"Hardly," Ginny snapped, glaring at him, "I want a retraction in tomorrow's paper, along with an apology to myself for libellous reporting."
"Libellous?" he mused softly, still staring at her intently. "I do not know if I would use that to describe that article."
"You planted it," she breathed out her earlier suspicions, somewhat mollified when he inclined his pale head slightly in confirmation. "I can't believe you!"
"I rarely start a battle that I expect to lose," he pointed out with devastating conviction. "I also get what I want."
His silver eyes gleamed at her in the elegantly understated lighting of his office.
"Cut the shit," she snarled in return, seeing no need for pleasantries. "This has gone far enough."
"I agree," he stated smoothly, cutting her tirade off before she was able to get started. "My patience is wearing thin. Have you come to a decision?"
Ginny stared at him for a long moment, her eyes tracing his lean form, seated in front of her as if he were the king, and she a mere peasant. She moved to stand directly in front of his desk, leaning her weight on the hands that she braced on the edge.
He looked up at her from across the wooden surface, supremely unconcerned that she had the physical advantage for once.
"I want you to stop all of this."
"Are you willing to accept my terms?"
Ginny felt the breath whoosh out of her at the softly spoken question, and she gasped while staring at him. Authority was written in every part of his being.
He laced his fingers together and laid them across his flat stomach, seemingly intent on just watching her, and letting the silence between them lengthen.
Watching him, Ginny again took in the patrician beauty of his features. All clean, angular lines, his cheekbones were accentuated by the length of his pale hair pulled clear of his face, and elegantly arched eyebrows that were a shade or two darker. He should have, by all rights, looking something like a ghost, or albino, with his colouring, but he managed to look almost… smouldering was the word that flitted across her mind.
A smouldering bastard.
As she opened her mouth to reply, she took a moment to wonder if she was throwing herself to the lions, and if she would come to regret this decision.
A/N: thank you to all who reviewed! I keep trying to reply to everyone, but it sometimes comes down to my spare time could be used replying, or writing the next chapter! I also suspect the next chapter will be the longest one yet, as I have a lot more time this week... going on vacation with the fiance, and we have a trainride of epic proportions ahead of us, so it should be a good time to write.
Thank you all again!