"Divorce"
"What?" Ginny nearly screeched.
"You heard me." Draco said, his voice flat and devoid of emotion. He sat down woodenly on the bottom stair of their home, his posture ram-rod straight as it always was.
"No." She said, shaking her head rapidly. "No, this can't be." She could see the pain hidden just behind his eyes, deep enough that you had to know where to look for it before seeing it. Ginny knew that he, too, was struggling to accept the disbelief of his parent's impending divorce.
"I don't know what else to say about it." He clenched his teeth. "They fight so much they're better off apart." The words were spoken with a nasty edge.
Ginny just watched him, her heart torn up by his refusal to show the pain he was feeling. She sat down on the stair above him, wrapping her arms around his shoulders and letting him lean back in her arms. "It'll be ok." She told him softly.
And she held him for the rest of the night as he sat there, staring straight forward in stony, pain-filled silence and thought about things. He came out of his self-induced mediation as the sun began to slowly rise and cast the grey stone in a orange tinge.
He gently wrapped his arms around Ginny and picked her up. At some point during the night, she'd slipped down to his stair and laid her head in his lap, but she hadn't left him to go sleep more comfortably in their bedroom. He carried her up the stairs, keeping his motions gentle as to not awake his wife.
Draco tucked her in before dressing for work and preparing for a day of pretending nothing at all was wrong. He took a deep breath before walking down the stairs, not pausing when he reached the bottom before he Apparated away, hoping desperately the black maelstrom of Apparating would take away his pain even as he reappeared in his office lobby.
Day 21, Divorce
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