The next morning, Ginny woke up to an empty bed. She knew that Draco would already be at work, and so it then became her responsibility to see Scorpius off at King's Cross. After she and Scorpius said their goodbyes, Ginny didn't feel like going back to the Manor. With Scorpius gone and Draco at work, she would not have anyone to talk to and would more than likely ruminate over her guilty conscience. Instead, she wandered through Diagon Alley. However, when she finally reached the point of boredom during her walk through the Alley, it was still far too early to go home, as Draco would still be at work for at least three more hours.
A thought occurred to her. Even if staying away from Malfoy Manor kept her mind off her current situation, it didn't make the problem go away. She needed help; she needed to know what to do. It hadn't dawned on her until that moment that she should talk to someone she trusted. There was one person who had been there for her throughout her entire life, who respected her and never treated her like a child, and that was who she needed now.
Ginny continued down the street until she got to Weasley's Wizard Wheezes. It was past lunchtime but before the work day ended, so she was reasonably certain that the shop would not be too terribly crowded. She entered the building, and she couldn't help but smile as soon as she passed over the threshold. It had been too long since she'd visited her brother at work. It was just a shame that she wasn't going to be visiting while wearing her own face.
George was just inside the door, ready and waiting to greet his customers. He smiled at Ginny. "Good morning, Miss," he said happily.
She stepped forward, gripping his arm. "George, can I speak with you in your office, please?" Ginny asked quickly.
He gave her a curious look. "Of course." After leading her into his office, which was a disaster in desperate need of being cleaned and organized, he turned to her. George continued to eye her skeptically. "Do I know you?"
"It's Ginny."
George looked her over, nodding his head as though he were in thought. After a few moments, he said, "No, my sister is a little bit shorter, heavier, and has hair that's a bit more… red."
"You think I'm fat?"
"Who are you?"
"Ginny!"
"Okay, if you're Ginny then you can tell me something only Ginny knows, right?"
She nodded impatiently. "What do you want to know?"
"Like I said, anything that only Ginny would know. You prove to me that you're Ginny Potter, and I won't turn you in to St. Mungo's."
Ginny rolled her eyes as she began to think. She knew lots of intimate details about her brothers, but she needed an appropriate one that would clearly distinguish that she was absolutely a Weasley. Suddenly, she got an idea. Her panicked expression turned into a smirk. "George Weasley, you had a crush on Hermione Granger when you were in your sixth year. You didn't realize it until after you saw her with Viktor Krum, and you stood in front of the mirror in your dorm room practicing how you would threaten him if –"
"Hey, it's Ginny!" George exclaimed, cutting her off and pulling her in for a hug. "So, why do you look like…"
"I switched places with Astoria Malfoy."
"Okay. Why?"
She rolled her eyes. "Because I'm tired of being paraded around on Harry's arm. I didn't want to go to the damn Ministry Ball and become so bored that I have to wreak havoc on the place like I do every year, and then go home and fight with Harry about how immature I was." She threw herself into the chair at George's desk. "I just wanted to do something that was different, I guess."
"Ginny, this has got to be one of the stupidest things that you've ever done." George stood in front of her, his arms crossed over his chest as he lectured his sister. "So you've got problems with your marriage and you don't get along all of the time. Who doesn't have that problem, Gin?"
"But see, that's the thing. I've loved Harry for as long as I can remember, but I just don't know if I am anymore. I'm tired of always being The-Boy-Who-Lived's wife, and that never used to bother me. I was always happy to be associated with him, to be in his shadow, but I hate it now. I resent him for pushing me back into his shadow. I feel like he stole my identity." She paused, looking down at her hands. "It sounds selfish and melodramatic, I know, but when I'm with Draco –"
"When you're what?" George's voice went up an octave at the last word.
"Not like that! I wouldn't sleep with him; I'm still married."
"But you like him? Malfoy?"
"Yeah, I do," she said quietly.
"Why, Gin?" George asked, a hint of disbelief in his voice. "What is it about him that is making you doubt the life you've had with Harry?"
Ginny considered this for a long time. She really hadn't given much thought about what was different about Draco that made her question how she felt about Harry. He was different, for sure, but why? It wasn't that he treated her better, and he certainly wasn't any nicer, but he made her feel good about herself in a way that Harry never did. Harry was all about being righteous and true, and when she was a child this was something that she admired. Years later, though, it was something that made her resent him. He made her look flawed and feel like less of a person because she wasn't the savior of the Wizarding world. Ginny knew that it wasn't intentional, but it was still something that existed in their relationship, and she couldn't look past it. She never could.
But Draco was different. He wasn't good and pure like Harry, and he never wanted to be. Like with Harry, this was something that she viewed differently as a child as opposed to how she felt as an adult. At Hogwarts, she hated Draco. He was everything that Harry wasn't, and at the time it made him the enemy. But as an adult she had become close to Astoria, resulting in inadvertently getting to know Draco better. He had made mistakes when he was young, though his pride prevented him from admitting it, but he forced himself to learn and grow from his experience rather than regretting it. This, in Ginny's opinion, made him a bigger person than Harry in some ways, and it wasn't until the moment that George had asked Ginny why that she understood something very important. She had been falling for Draco for a long time; she just never wanted to admit it.
She felt a tear trickle down her cheek as she looked up to meet her brother's eyes. Ginny was torn by the fact that she wasn't in love with Harry anymore, but she was also relieved that she would finally be able to admit it aloud. "George, I think I've loved him for years."
George pulled up another chair beside hers. He straddled it backwards, resting his chin on the back of the chair. "Ginny, I will never like the idea of you with Draco Malfoy. It disturbs me in ways that I just don't even want to think about, but if you think you'll be happier with him than with Harry then you've got to do what's best for you. I just want you to really think about this."
She chuckled humorlessly. "See, that's just it. He thinks I'm Astoria, not Ginny, and Astoria is my good friend. Even if Draco wanted me, I couldn't do something that would hurt my friend."
"Ginny, I saw Astoria with Harry the other day at the Burrow," George said tentatively. "I thought that she was you, of course, but I have to be honest with you. He was different. It was the happiest I'd seen him in years, Gin, and I don't know if it's got anything to do with her or not. I just want you to know."
Ginny felt a pang in her chest. Naturally, she'd considered the thought at some point she might be with Draco and imagined how horrible she'd feel about hurting Harry. She never considered that Harry might be happier without her, and the thought hurt her more than she liked. It was also obvious at this point that Astoria hadn't been completely honest with her, either.
"If I were you, Ginbug, I'd talk to the ferret and tell him the truth."
George's statement broke her from her thoughts. She bit her lip as she got up from her chair, giving her brother a tight hug as she prepared to leave.
"Promise me you'll keep this a secret, yeah?" Ginny asked.
George nodded and Ginny left.
Draco had finished with work early, only a little past noon. When he discovered that his wife had not yet returned from seeing Scorpius back to Hogwarts, he took a seat in his library. Propping his feet up on the ottoman and opening his book in front of his face, he found that he really couldn't concentrate on the writing. Rather, he was still stuck on the conversation that he had had with his son the afternoon prior while at the Leaky Cauldron.
Astoria had been different over the past few days. She'd almost turned into an entirely different person. His wife's actions, although strange, were not as curious as the fact that she had changed so little in the fifteen years that they'd been married. Since she was a young girl at Hogwarts, she'd always been very proper and classy with very specific ideas of what should be expected of a young lady. Being anything other than polite and agreeable to her husband was on the wrong side of what was appropriate, and when they had first got married this was something that Draco had really liked. Over the years, however, it got irritating and he longed to have a wife that would speak her mind every once in a while. He actually began to dread the time that they spent together because she had almost no personality. Sometimes he was tempted to start a fight with her, just to see what she would do in response. His sniping abilities had depleted significantly over the years.
His wife also had very specific interests: being a wife, being a mother, and keeping up appearances. Astoria cared deeply for her husband and her son, and Ginny Potter for some reason, but everything was skin-deep. Hobbies were frivolous and unnecessary. All a proper woman should do throughout the day is tend to her home, keep up on reading so that she can be as suitable a wife as possible, and make sure that her family is cared for. The brunette woman was a master at this, and never strayed from the path that she had laid out for herself.
But lately she'd been different. She was less concerned with what she wore, she got excited over a Quidditch match, and she even proposed that they have a picnic in the meadow. She was also less obsessive about the way she spoke. It wasn't as though Draco could not appreciate how hard Astoria would always try to be the perfect picture of an aristocratic wife, but sometimes being around her was very monotonous because, in her mind, he could do no wrong. Though he couldn't deny that he liked having his ego stroked, after a while he found that he hated the way she put him on a pedestal. Draco hated being with Astoria.
Draco thought back to his years at Hogwarts, his sixth year in particular. He had been under terrible stress and had spent the entire year hanging on by a thread. There was so little in his life at the time that seemed normal and carefree, and he longed for it the entire time. He wanted to fight with his Gryffindor foes and play Quidditch and take all of the pretty girls out on Hogsmeade weekends, but he couldn't. That whole year, there was only one moment where he felt some semblance of normalcy. She had been there, practicing for an upcoming Quidditch match. He had watched her, wanting desperately to be as happy as her. There wasn't anything spectacular about the way she looked, although she wasn't ugly by any means, but something about her passion and determination made it hard for him to take his eyes off her. He took a picture of her while she was flying and he kept it hidden inside his school trunk. Whenever he was so stressed that he thought he couldn't make it, he would look at that picture of her to remind himself that there was still good in the world, even if he wasn't a part of that.
He didn't see Ginny much after that day, not for years. But there was one day that he had come home from work to find the Potters sitting in his garden, having tea with his wife. He hated having his old, school-yard nemesis in his home on a regular basis, and he was certain that Harry felt the same, but Draco felt quite differently in regard to Ginny being there. She was witty and a good conversationalist, and he found that he couldn't stop thinking about her after she and Harry would leave. There was something about the fiery woman that made him want her. Ginny wasn't afraid of him, despite his past, and she certainly wasn't timid and shy like Astoria. On more than one occasion during their regular get-togethers she had put him in his place, and rather than being defensive and rude in return, he was impressed. She had an air of confidence, an interesting personality, and it didn't hurt that she had turned into quite the beautiful woman over the years.
The funny thing was that Astoria had begun reminding him of her. It was a disturbing thought, especially since Ginny was such a good friend to his wife, but he chocked it up to perhaps Ginny having an addicting personality. Maybe Ginny was just rubbing off on Astoria. He felt guilty for hoping so. He felt guilty for wanting Ginny more than he wanted his wife.
Lost in thought, he barely heard the door to his study open and his wife enter.
She sat down on the ottoman, carelessly pushing his feet off the side. "Draco, I need to talk to you about something," Ginny said.
Draco set down his book on the side table, sitting up straighter. "Sure," he answered simply.
Ginny bit her lip. "So, I know that the last few days I've been a bit –"
"Different?" he offered.
"Well, yes," she said. Ginny stood, pacing the floor nervously in front of his chair. "I know that I've been a bit different and there's something I have to tell you, because it will explain a lot."
"No," he stated. "It doesn't matter."
"No, it really does," she insisted. "Really, Draco, you have to know that –"
"Astoria, I don't care why you're different."
"But see, that's the thing. I'm not –"
"You are not understanding me, Stor," he said, standing up to meet her. He put both of his hands on her shoulders, effectively halting her nervous motions. "I don't care what life epiphany you've had that's changed your outlook on not being a mindless shell of the person you could be; I'm just happy that you've grown a bloody backbone."
"That's the thing, though. I haven't –"
"Just stop, alright? I want you to stop."
"I can't. You –"
She wasn't able to say anything else. Draco's lips crashed into hers so hard, so abruptly, that it took her a moment to even realize what had happened. When Ginny finally was able to react to him, she laced her arms around his neck and kissed back, unable to stop herself. She knew it was wrong, knew it was a mistake to allow herself to indulge in this, but in that moment nothing could stop her from allowing him to do whatever he wanted with her. She had tried to be honest, tell him the truth about who she really was, but he wouldn't let her. Even if she was in his wife's body, he saw through her skin. He looked past the façade that she had put up to who she actually was, and that was who he wanted. Ginny couldn't find the strength to stop him as he sensually began to remove her clothing.
Everything that she knew was wrong about this situation vanished from her mind. His hands on her body, brushing ever-so-lightly against her newly bared flesh, made her dizzy. She let go of everything, pouring herself into him until all she could think about was Draco and the way his warm skin felt against hers. There was no awkwardness, no fumbling. Their bodies fit together so seamlessly that she almost felt as if she had always been with him. In that moment, the past fifteen years were nonexistent. There was no Harry, no children, no marriages. All that existed was herself and Draco. Everything else faded away until it ceased to be.
When it was over her whole body was numb, and not just because of the euphoria following her earth-shattering climax. It seemed as all of her muscles had relaxed. She could have spent the next fifteen years in his arms, and in that moment she made a choice. After sharing that intimate experience with him, she could never lie to Draco again. She had to do something to make him listen. He needed to know the truth about who she was, and Ginny was certain that after what they had shared, he'd understand.
After dressing quickly, she snuck to their bedchambers. There was a small jewelry box that sat on the wardrobe that held what she needed. There was only one way to prove that she was Ginny Potter and not Astoria Malfoy, and that simple solution was inside the porcelain case. She opened it, retrieving the vial, and walked toward the bathroom. Without giving it a second thought, she poured the entire contents into the toilet, flushing it away. Her remaining share of the Polyjuice Potion was gone.
It wasn't until much later that she realized what she had done.