She always dreaded Fridays.
He knew that in the way that he knew what time of the month she'd be especially irritable and what her favorite gelato flavor was. He was also quite aware that she had every reason to dread Fridays, and that it was not entirely unjustified.
"Today's a bad day already," she told him from the bed, feet flat against the bedspread and red hair fanned away from her face.
He heard her and looked at her in the mirror, rolling up the sleeves of his shirt and taking in the way her formerly slim figure now swelled at the abdomen.
"Fridays are difficult for me, too," he reminded her, turning around. "Surprisingly, it gets tiring to hear them talk about you. Just hope they don't say anything about your brothers. I know for a fact that the Dark Lord is getting quite angered with the oldest one."
Ginny sighed. It'd been years since she'd last seen Bill. He was in France, heading the resurrected Order, while she was quarantined in England.
"I wish I could see him," she said mournfully, placing the bottoms of her feet flat against the mattress, knees curved and legs touching her thighs.
"Not when you're about to have the baby," he reminded her gently, coming to sit next on her side of the bed. "You can tell him that the Dark Lord is making plans to send a group of us to France to eliminate the threat, though. That should give him some kind of warning."
She nodded unhappily. After she'd married Draco and lost her family, Bill, Charlie, and Ron had become her only connection with her Weasley past. Ginny had tried to stay connected with them, but it was hard. Ever since Draco had arranged for Charlie and Bill to leave the country on false pretenses of work obligations, they'd been barred from coming back to England. The only Weasley who wasn't was Ginny, and she was fully aware that it was only because Draco had managed to convince Voldemort that she would provide for his next generation of Death Eaters.
Ginny placed a hand on her stomach, where she felt something kick from inside. All through the pregnancy, she'd been holding on to the hope that it would be a girl. Not because she didn't want a son, but she figured that Voldemort would be less interested in a daughter.
"She's doing it again," she told Draco, who was toying with a piece of her hair.
His grey eyes found hers, and he opened his mouth like he wanted to say something before snapping it shut. "Right. She," he said wryly, looking as if he were keeping something from her. "But you won't be disappointed if it's a boy, right?"
She thought about it. "No. A boy's fine. But it would be nice if he could come out looking like one of my brothers. I miss them so much."
His face was taking on that oddly strangled look again. "I have a feeling he'll look more like me," he informed her. "Just like every other one of my predecessors has looked like me."
"Well, a mini Draco running around wouldn't be too bad, either. Just hope that he doesn't come with the attitude and snark, though. I don't think I could handle two of you," she closed her eyes and smiled when she felt him tug on a strand of her hair in retribution for her comment.
She felt a soft, natural silence settle over them that was broken by a house-elf.
"Master Draco, there's someone at the door," Dilly said, popping his bat-shaped head in.
Draco sighed and stood up, adjusting his shirt. "That would be Theo. That git's always the earliest one here and the last to leave."
"I think I like Theo best out of all your friends," she decided. Out of all of them, Theo was the quietest, never participating in boasting about himself and his conquests. In fact, Ginny couldn't remember ever hearing him open his mouth. "He's better than either Blaise or Flint."
He threw her an amused look. Even before Ginny had met either of them, she'd seemed to have harbored a hatred for both. "You never did like them right from the very start," he commented off-handedly, fixing the cufflinks.
"Yes, well, I have a feeling that they would be the first to torture and kill you if given the chance," she remarked darkly. She'd never told him about her dream, but she could still picture the circle of Death Eaters, with Draco standing in the center as he watched Blaise Zabini and Marcus Flint step forward.
"Well, tonight's solely for pool and drinks, so you don't need to worry about that," he opened their bedroom door and stepped outside.
"Be careful," Ginny whispered behind him, harboring the deep fear that one day he would leave and never come back.
He looked back at her reclining figure and gave her a reassuring half-smile. "I will."
And then he was gone, and she could hear him descending the stairs, greeting Theo Nott in that detached and indifferently cool tone that she knew he was capable of.
She got up from the bed, stretching her aching back, and pulled on the heavy robes that she detested wearing. At the very least, it was better than running into Blaise Zabini in a darkened hallway and being molested by him. In the past, she would've fought him. But now, until her baby was born, she was in no condition for rigorous physical pain when she was so close to the due date.
Ginny grabbed her coin from her bureau drawer, casting a Protean charm on it so that a message to Bill would etch itself on the rims. They'd developed this system when letters had first became suspect to inspection. Anybody who tried to read it wouldn't be able to understand it, but Bill would have no problem.
She tucked the coin back into its proper place and settled down again, listening as Draco's friends arrived one by one.
She sighed, turning onto her left side.
It was going to be a long night.
*
"He's late again," Adrian sighed, resting a hand negligently on the top of his stick.
Draco sat in the darkened corner, arms on the chair seat, and watched as Marcus approached the table, expertly shooting the ball into the corner pocket. Chances were that Blaise had brought a pretty girl and wanted to make an entrance. Ever since the time he'd tried to corner Ginny in the South Wing, he'd brought someone different every time. Draco couldn't really recall what they'd looked like. There were too many of them.
"About time you showed up, Blaise! We've already started without you," Theo greeted, standing up to welcome his friend.
"Looks like he's brought a lady friend with him," Marcus pointed out, revealing his crooked teeth.
Draco lazily tore his gaze away from the burning fire to see what all the commotion was about and did a double take. He blinked a few times, glad that his shock was hidden within the depths of the darkness, as he took in the girl's beautiful face and ice-blue eyes.
"What about you, Draco? Surely, your wife could take a break from your libido?" Adrian laughed, and he snapped out of his musings when he heard his name.
It took a minute for Draco to recall the question, but he smirked to himself when he thought of his red head wife, who was currently tucked away in their bedroom. If anything, her libido was even higher than his. With all her hormones going into overdrive with her pregnancy, she'd been shagging him in all sorts of positions and places around the manor. In fact, if memory served him, that pool table sitting right in front of him had been used quite inappropriately just last week. Something told him that Ginny had taken a sort of perverse pleasure in doing something like that in the room that all his friends often congregated in.
"My wife is of no concern to you, Adrian. She does as I say," he only said, using his customary bored tone
"Are you sure you wouldn't like to change it up a bit, Malfoy? We could switch for a night. Who knows? You could end up having a lot more fun with this one," Blaise said excitedly as he brought forth the girl.
Draco looked at him with mirth and pity, knowing that Blaise couldn't read his face. Blaise obviously had no clue that his supposed ace was nothing more than the common mudblood that he put down every day. And to think he wanted Draco's pure-blood wife in exchange.
Nonetheless, he stepped away from the shadows stonily, advancing on the woman. She bit her red lips, lips that Draco had once seen wide open in desperation. He grasped her face and turned it from one side to the other, fingers brushing slightly over the raised skin of the scar that ran diagonally down the upper half of that throat.
He stepped back, releasing the face, knowing that it was truly her. Draco discreetly wiped his hand on the back of his pants; there was only so much that Ginny could do to change his purist ways, after all.
"She's not my type," he told Blaise flatly. And she wouldn't be yours, either, if you knew who she really was, he added on in his mind.
Draco watched as Blaise drew the woman back, mouth drawn tight.
"Well, we can't all have Ginevra warming our beds at night," Marcus said, and the conversation turned.
Draco listened, responding with all the appropriate answers, only putting his foot down when Adrian crossed a line.
"That's quite enough," he said coldly in response to Adrian's crude comment, and the others backed off.
Only the girl stared resolutely at the door, silent. She had yet to say a word since she'd stepped into the room.
"Let's finish the game," he said abruptly, twirling his stick in hand nonchalantly, but always keeping a wary eye out for trouble.
He had enough to worry about these days.
*
Ginny was standing in the decorated nursery room across from the master bedroom when she thought she heard something coming from her room that sounded like somebody was sifting through something.
She quietly withdrew her wand from inside her robes, holding it in front of her protectively. Her heart thumped furiously as she imagined what one of Draco's friends would be doing in there; she didn't know what she'd do if she found Blaise Zabini in her bedroom.
Slipping through the wide gap in the door, she saw a dark shape rifling through her drawers. When the figure moved, Ginny half thought that she would see Blaise's distinctive square jaw and glittering eyes. Instead, she was relieved to find that the figure was much slimmer than Blaise's would've been. She relaxed visibly, and then stiffened she saw what was in its hands.
"I would put that down if I were you. My husband doesn't tend to take well towards thievery," she said coldly in imitation of Draco, looking at the diamond necklace that Narcissa had given her. "Besides, that necklace was a gift from my mother-in-law and has been in the Malfoy family for generations. He'd have you carted to Azkaban if he saw you with that in your hands."
A bit of a mean exaggeration, but Ginny did not take well towards stealing. Her entire family had grown up poor, and yet, Ginny had never lowered herself to taking something that wasn't rightfully hers.
The woman turned towards Ginny, making sounds like it was difficult for her to swallow.
"Well?" Ginny demanded when the woman didn't say anything, didn't at least try to explain. "Do you want to explain yourself, or should I just bring you to my husband and let him deal with you?"
At that, it was as if a dam had broke inside the girl, and she rushed forward into the light from the hallway, gesturing wildly.
When she saw her, Ginny did a double-take.
She only faintly registered that the girl was grabbing onto her hands tightly with her own, but Ginny felt no pain. Only shock and recognition. She'd only seen blue eyes like that once in her life.
It was the girl that she'd seen getting raped in Draco's last and final memory, the one that he'd shown her more than two years ago.
"How much more do you need?" Ginny managed to get out, interrupting the tirade.
Ginny saw the confusion register in those eyes, eyes that she still sometimes saw in the back of her mind.
"What?" the woman gulped, and Ginny repeated herself, feeling pity override her previous contempt and anger.
"Two hundred and twenty-six. I still need two hundred and twenty-six galleons," the woman told her in a quiet voice.
"Okay," Ginny only vaguely heard herself agreeing. After all, Draco's account was almost bottomless. She didn't think he'd begrudge the woman this chance to start over, to leave behind her bad memories in England where every shapeless Death Eater mask probably reminded her of that night. She must've wanted the money very badly if she had willingly stepped into the strongholds of one of the oldest pure-blood families.
"If I give you the money you need, will you deliver something for me in France?" Ginny asked, suddenly remembering what she'd needed to send Bill. It was easy enough for her to get it to her brother, but somehow, she wanted to share a part of herself with her with this woman. The first and only one that Ginny had ever seen violated like that. The one who was partially responsible for saving her and Draco's relationship.
In the back of her mind, Ginny saw herself handing the coin to the woman. And then she was closing the bedroom door again, where she would stay in there alone with her thoughts until the night was over and Draco's friends went home.
*
Normally, Ginny fell asleep soon after intercourse, but tonight, from the way her breathing was still uneven, he could tell that she was still awake.
"Is he bothering you again?" he asked, running a hand over her rounded belly soothingly, hoping that the news that Malfoy firstborns were always male hadn't disappointed her too much.
She sighed.
"No, it's not that," she said, and she grew silent again.
Ginny pressed her head into the top of Draco's arm, absentmindedly making circles in the heart of his palm as she thought about what she'd seen tonight.
"I saw her today," she said softly in the dark, after a brief pause. "That woman in your memory."
Draco wasn't surprised. The girl had disappeared for a long time and had come back looking a lot more hopeful and radiant.
"What did you guys talk about?" he asked, pressing his nose into her hair.
"She needs money to get out of England with her daughter and to start over, so I promised to give it to her," Ginny explained quietly, still brooding.
"Maybe that's for the best," he mused. "Nobody really sees Blaise's girls again after he's tired of them."
She turned towards him, her caramel eyes clouded with thought. "Can you speak with customs, then? Make sure that she doesn't have any trouble? I don't want to know what Blaise would do if he knew the truth," she told him, stroking the side of his face distractingly.
"Is that what you want?" he asked. He didn't have the same sentimentality as Ginny did, having seen countless of girls subjected to similar fates, but Ginny seemed to take this one very personally.
"Yes, it's what I want," Ginny said firmly, unhesitatingly.
He sighed in the dark. "Then I'll see what I can do. Now go to sleep. Too much stress isn't good for you or the baby."
"Thank you," she said, kissing him softly before turning around so that they were spooning again.
She fell asleep quickly after that, but Draco stayed awake all night, thinking. He was falling fast from favor with the Dark Lord, especially after his continued reluctance to invest more energy into hunting down members of the new Order. It was fine for him to kill off ones that weren't too prominent, but he couldn't bring himself to kill any of Ginny's brothers and friends, knowing that it could isolate her from him forever if she ever found out. Because of that, his parents were already suffering the Dark Lord's wrath and impatience.
Draco buried his face deeper into her neck.
He didn't know what he'd do if they took away Ginny too.
*
Ginny looked around her, stepping gingerly into the house. It still looked the same as she remembered it. The only thing was that the blood had long been scrubbed off from the doorsteps. It now looked as if it'd been repainted.
She waddled around the bare quarters, careful not to tread on anything on the floor, and took in her surroundings.
Ginny paused at a picture tacked to the wall. It was the only decoration in the house. In it was a photo of three people. She easily recognized all of them. The man had an arm around the woman's waist while his free arm hoisted a tiny, three-year-old girl. All three of them were smiling, but there was a worried expression in their eyes. She wondered if even then, they'd known that something was going to go wrong. Upon closer inspection, the man looked vaguely familiar, and Ginny would later find out that he'd gone to Hogwarts with both Draco and Ginny.
Turning away from the picture, Ginny gently draped the woman's shrug on the back of a chair, dropped the bag of money on to the tabletop, and left.
Behind her, the three people talked and moved amongst themselves, forever frozen in time.
*
The war ended five months after Hyperion's first birthday.
When the time came, Ginny had insisted on going with Draco, who'd been adamant that she stay home and wait for him. She'd refused, finally divulging that she had harbored a secret desire for an equal chance to kill Blaise.
In the end, she'd stubbornly went anyway, and he'd had no choice but to follow. And even though Theo Nott was the one who killed his friend on the battlefield, she'd still taken guilty pleasure in seeing the demise of the man who'd haunted her for so long.
After the fall of Voldemort, she'd thought that things would finally be right again, but she was wrong.
A month after the final battle, Draco was pulled from their home and brought in front of all of Wizengamot to go on trial for his Death Eater activities.
When that happened, Ginny had to floo and threaten Ron, and remind both Bill and Charlie of how Draco had saved them before they all reluctantly agreed to testify in his defense. As for herself, she'd stood in front of Minister Shacklebolt and spun story after story about Draco's heroics, even bringing Hyperion into the courtroom as Draco sat superiorly in his chair, alternating between smirking proudly at his wife and feigning remorse when they questioned him.
In the end, he was released on only a warning, and even Ginny was slightly suspicious about how fast it'd all happened. She had been ready to debate this for days on end. Draco had, after all, not been quite as virtuous and gracious as she'd painted him to be.
The answer came a few days later when Draco casually announced during dinner that he was building a new hospital wing to St. Mungo's.
"Whatever for?" Ginny asked, confused.
"As it turns out, the Ministry is short on money at the moment, especially considering how many people were injured during the war. So, naturally, I agreed to donate a hefty amount to charity, to show how truly sorry I am," he smirked self-satisfactorily. "I don't think they would've taken 'no' for an answer, either."
"Hm," Ginny huffed. "No wonder you got off so easily. And to think that instead of preparing my speech for days, all I had to do was give them your account number at Gringotts."
"Yes," he sighed in content, raising a fork to his mouth, "but it was certainly nice hearing you praise me, even if it was all fictional. You never spoil me like that when we're at home. Besides, you should be happy about this. The new hospital wing is dedicated in your name."
"My name?" Ginny wrinkled her nose. "You should've just did it in yours."
He shrugged.
"That's not nearly as interesting. The public likes the idea of a Death Eater loving his wife so much that he would spend an exorbitant amount of money to commission a hospital wing in her honor," Draco said, taking his son out of high chair and bouncing Hyperion on his knee so that his wisps of dark blond hair fell across his forehead. "I'll have you know that I told the Daily Prophet the sappiest things that came to mind. They'll probably print something tomorrow about our everlasting love, just so you know."
Ginny rolled her eyes and took Hyperion back from Draco so that she could feed him properly.
Some things would just never change.
*
They were on vacation in France one summer when Ginny thought that she saw the woman again.
She caught a glimpse at the dark brown hair as she was walking down the Champs-Elysee, having just put both Hyperion and his sister down for a nap. Ginny knew that the woman was still in France, but had never run into her. On more than one occasion, Ginny had considered asking Bill about where she lived, but could never follow through. Some things just weren't meant to be revisited again, and this felt like one of them.
She left France that year without saying a word and tucked her memories of the woman away under her metamorphic bed.
Ginny never mentioned her again.
~FIN
A/N: ...And there you go. Thank you so much to everyone who read and reviewed, especially noona1, Callidora-Malfoy, Hollandtheamoeba, Starlight Ellie, andthenshesaid, lucygirl07, Hybrid Gin, veronica21, delete-the-girl, Black Lagoon, HeavilyBrokenSpirit, intrepidx. Your words really made my day, and I will personally respond to every single one of them tonight. It just might take me a while, but I'll get there.
And if you feel so inclined and wanted a longer story with actual Draco/Ginny relationship development, I'm starting two new fics. One is already up, called Lie to Me, and the other I will update this week. Regardless of whether or not you read those, though, thank you to everyone who's reading this right now. You guys are amazing.
Please leave me a review one last time?
-JT