6. Disaster

She would need time to get over it—he knew that—but after his third owl returned with its delivery unopened, Draco had had enough. Braving her ire, he stormed her flat. When furious poundings and bell-ringing yielded no response, and unlocking spells also proved ineffective, he settled for simply blasting the door open.

The state of her flat confirmed his worst suspicions. Empty ice-cream cartons and candy wrappers littered the coffee table. Dishes were piled nearly ceiling-high in the sink, and a putrid stench of God-knows-what assaulted his nose. Even more troubling were the photo frames turned to face the wall or planted face down.

Where the hell was that meddling, overprotective family of hers? And the troll of a boyfriend the idiot persisted in seeing? They should have been here all along putting a stop to this. Bloody useless the whole lot of them.

He certainly wasn't going to stand for it. She would be stubborn, he knew, but it was nothing he couldn't match.

With several disdainful swishes of his wand, Draco cleared out the trash and set the dishes to wash themselves, muttering resentfully all the while, "Can't believe I'm doing this. I'm not a bloody house-elf."

He then stalked to her bedroom door, which was predictably close and locked. This time, his knocking was met with a colorful string of words, followed by her angry screaming. "For the love of—get it through your head, Harry. We're done. Over. Just leave me alone!"

He froze. His heart thudded in his chest. He could have sworn this wasn't a dream. With an Alohomora, the door cracked open, and he pushed it the rest of the way. A round lump under the covers and a sliver of red hair was all he could see of her.

He leaned against the doorframe and schooled his features to appear the definition of nonchalance before drawling in his most exaggerated manner, "It's three o'clock in the afternoon. Pray tell, Weasley, what the hell are you still doing in bed?"

"Malfoy?" Bolting upright, she stared at him with unrestrained shock. Dark circles shadowed her red-rimmed eyes. Within him, something clenched almost painfully at the sight, but he knew he would have to play it cool to get her out of this slump.

He arched an eyebrow, knowing the gesture could usually be depended on to irritate her. "Who else would I be? I can see that thinking is not your strong point in the mornings—or afternoon as it were."

Her mouth did the perfect imitation of a fish out of water, gasping for air. "What the—How? Why?" She let out a half-strangled cry and chucked a pillow at him, which he dodged with practiced ease. "Forget it. I don't even want to know. Just go away. I don't have the energy to deal with you right now." She burrowed herself back under the covers.

He marched closer and tore the beddings away from her body, yanking them off the bed altogether. In an instant, he regretted the act when it revealed her to be wearing only a T-shirt that fell just short of mid-thigh.

Sweet Salazar. His eyes weren't able to linger on the milky expanse of her legs for long because, in the next second, she clobbered him with another pillow.

"You. Are. An. Absolute. Wanker," she spat out, timing each word with her blows. "I already know it's hideous. You don't need to rub it in my face, prick."

"That—Oomph." Another mouthful of stuffed cotton filled his mouth. He had to grip her pillow and tug it away from her hands to get a word in.

"First off, I never said, nor implied, that I thought it was hideous. Secondly, stop being so dramatic. I thought you were fond of scars." He sounded a bit more bitter than he would have liked.

She glared at him. "Don't project your scar-envy onto me, Malfoy. What the hell are you doing here, anyway? If it's just to bother me, then you need to get off that lazy, entitled arse of yours, and get a life."

Good. At least she was reacting to him. "And you need to get off your self-pitying one. How long has it been since you left the house?"

She shifted her eyes to avoid his gaze. It was as he'd expected.

He sighed. "You act as if it's the end of the world."

Her eyes snapped angrily back to his. "It might as well have been! What did you think, Malfoy? Not only did my tumble cost England the world championship, but I'm also never going to play Quidditch again. That wasmy life, you idiot. Then the man I'd loved since forever proved once and for all that he cared diddly squat about me. 'It'll be all right, Gin,' he said. 'It was about the time you were going to settle down anyway so that we can start a family.' Him. It had always been about him, but I had been too stupid to see it."

Her voice had taken on an unmistakable hitch. Shite. Please don't cry. He was mortified to find that this revelation of hers hardly lifted his own mood, not when its reality made her so obviously miserable. It was enough, well almost enough, for him to wish Potter had been a better man for her.

"Now on top of being hideously scarred and having a permanent limp, my family is driving me crazy treating me like fragile glass. I can't stand it anymore." She covered her face with both hands and muttered, seemingly more to herself than towards him, "Why am I even telling you this? Just goes to show how rock bottom I've hit."

That she thought so little of him hurt in a way he would never let her know. Instead, he leaned over the edge of the bed and pulled her hands back from her face, but she stubbornly kept her eyes averted. So with a firm hand, he gripped her chin and tilted her face upwards, forcing her to look at him. "If you don't want the pity of others, then stop acting so pitiful. You're a fighter, Weasley. So what if you had one nasty tumble? You're still that woman who took a Bludger to the chest but turned around and scored the winning goal in the semifinals, the one who easily outmaneuvers and outflies just about everyone else in the League, and in her spare time takes down grown wizards twice her size. This incident will change you only as much as you let it. Now get out of this bed and into the shower. You reek, and I can't have my reputation ruined when I take you out to dinner."

She raised an incredulous eyebrow at him. "Only you would manage to compliment and insult me in the same breath. But don't worry, your reputation is safe. Like I would even want to go."

"I'm not asking. I'm taking you either way. Shower. Now. Or I'll be forced to take matters into my own hands." Shite. That didn't sound quite right. Unexpectedly, her freckled cheeks blushed in response. Oh hell. Flushed cheeks had no business looking so exceedingly attractive.

She cast her eyes downwards, but after several beats of silence, she looked back up at him. "Malfoy?"

Oh gods. It was that gaze again—wide eyed and vulnerable, the one that might just convince him to hand her the world if she only asked for it. Outwardly, his expression remained impassive but for the raise of a single inquiring eyebrow.

She hesitated, but then pushed on. "I can't trust my family or friends, but I know you'd never sugarcoat it. Tell me the truth, how does it really look?" She gestured towards her leg.

His eyes followed the line of her arm down the tip of her finger to the zigzag of raw, newly healed flesh. It ran from mid-thigh down to just short of her ankles, shiny and pink among the rest of her pale, freckled flesh and stood out as a slight ridge from the rest of her skin.

Even now, a month and a half since the accident, his hands grew clammy and his stomach sunk at the memory of her fall. A freak fog had appeared just seconds prior to the incident, obscuring the players from sight. Her piercing scream and his utter helplessness in that moment continued to haunt his nightmares. There had been talks of sabotage, and while official investigations had yielded nothing substantial enough to go on, Draco had hired a personal team to continue looking into the matter. If the culprits were ever found, they would have hell to pay.

The weeks that followed, filled with botched operations and every imaginable complication, ranked among the most harrowing experiences of his life, even after everything that had gone on in the war. But in a twisted way, the whole ordeal shattered the lies he'd built to protect himself, forcing him to accept without any pretense that, for better or for worse, he couldn't bear to not have the feisty redhead in his life, whether merely as a friend or—or something more. Even with Potter temporarily out of the picture, he could scarcely dare to hope.

He looked back up at her, but she had her eyes downcast again, fingers picking distractedly at the pale blue bed sheet. For all her bravado, he'd come to learn in glimpses here and there that much of her brazen confidence masked insecurities that she had never really gotten over since those early years at Hogwarts. At the thought, something inside him clenched even tighter. How had a proud Malfoy been reduced to this? Worst of all, the fact hardly even bothered him anymore.

Without thinking too much about it, he sat down on the bed and reached out with his fingers to softly trace the path of her scar. Her skin shivered under his touch, setting his nerves on edge. When his hand came to rest around her ankle, he glanced back up. She was staring at him, bewilderment and uncertainty flitting through her eyes, the blush renewed on her cheeks.

He smirked at her, and told her the truth. "I think the scar's wicked. Just like you. Except you have everyone else completely fooled. It was about time some of that showed on you."

She smacked his arm, but a thrill shot through him at the sight of the smile she was trying and spectacularly failing to suppress. She scooted closer towards his side of the bed before swinging her legs over and standing up. Then suddenly, her arms were around his neck, her soft body pressed against his side.

His nose was thrust into her shoulder in the unexpected hug. Despite her pungent, sour smell of old sweat from who knows how many days of not bathing, he wrapped his hands around her waist and pulled her even closer. The nearness of her was overwhelming and not nearly enough.

Just as abruptly, she sprang back, a mortified expression on her face. Inwardly, he swore heatedly at himself, but Merlin, how had she expected him to react? He hadn't even done anything, honestly.

To his relief, her concern soon proved to be about something else altogether. "Oh God. I'm so embarrassed. I must stink something terrible. I j-just wanted to thank you. You're being awfully...I don't know. It's strange coming from you, but then again, I guess for this past year you've actually been—gah. Shut up brain."

She was unbelievably flustered, adorably so. Adorable? A Weasley? But really, he should just stop being surprised. He'd known he'd flown off the deep end weeks ago.

Without another word, she raced out of the bedroom. A few minutes later, the sound of running water could be heard. While she showered, he wiled away the time putting the rest of her flat back into order. When she finally reappeared, he was laying across her bed reading the latest Quidditch Quarterly. The magazine and all else were quickly forgotten at the sight of a wet, towel-clad Ginny Weasley blushing furiously in the doorway. It took several seconds for even a single coherent thought to form in his mind, and the first was this: He, Draco Malfoy, was irretrievably, irrefutably doomed, and he didn't even mind.

Author Notes:

If you liked this one, you might also like my Why I, Draco Malfoy, Have Clearly Gone Off the Deep End. I wrote it as a loose follow-up to this story (not a direct sequel but I had this Ginny and Draco in mind when I wrote it).

That wraps up this collection, at least for now. I would love to know which were your favorites over all and especially which ones you would be interested in seeing a continuation for. Your comments might just get a plot bunny going, so please do chime in if you care to share. Thanks for reading! I hoped you enjoyed the one-shots.

This last one was written for Scenario #6: Something bad happens to one half of your couple, the other half attempts to help.