A/N: Thanks to all readers and reviewers, especially James Birdsong.

"Do you remember your great-aunt, Sophia Prewett?" asked Molly Weasley.

"Yes," said Ginny, thinking back, remembering a prissy, straight-backed woman with her hair in a pure white chignon, always dressed in fluttering lace, fond of rapping the back of Ginny's knuckles with her wand in a futile attempt to keep her in line. "She died when I was about ten, I think. But what could she possibly have to do with this?"

"Oh, a great deal." Molly gave a short, humorless laugh. "You see, in her youth, she had a brief affair."

She stifled a snort. Apparently her great-aunt had a less strict side. They did seem to be straying from the point, though, and she wondered where on earth this line of conversation could be going.

"This was before she married your great-uncle Ignatius Ibbleston, of course, and years before your second cousins Darien, Devilbiss, and Lassemista were born. It was also well before they moved to the Outer Hebrides and started that sheep croft. I do wonder, sometimes, if Aunt Sophia's past had anything to do with that decision." Molly paused to take a breath, and Ginny decided that if she was going to try to force her back to the point, there was no time like the present. Once her mother got started on family history, there was no stopping her.

"Look, Mum, I'm sure this is very interesting, but shouldn't we be talking about something related to the Malfoys?"

Molly looked back at her steadily.

A shiver went through Ginny, and she did not know why. "We don't have much longer. Can't we just get to whatever it is you want to say?"

"Do you want to know the man's name?" asked Molly. "The one with whom she had the affair?"

"I… I guess so. Sure."

"Abraxas Malfoy."

A wave of dizziness passed over Ginny. She swayed, desperately wishing she had something to cling to, something to sit on besides the flat wooden surface of the piece of flooring beneath their feet. "No," she whispered. "That's impossible."

Molly shook her head. "That's what I thought as well, but it's what happened."

"But… but how?"

Her mother sighed. "I don't pretend to know all the details, Ginny, but I can tell you they met at Hogwarts during her sixth year. It was his seventh, I believe, and he'd transferred from Durmstrang. They were Quidditch rivals for months, and they became well-known for their public spats. Their animosity towards each other helped to fool everyone else. But at some point, the hatred turned to—well, not love, but… something else."

Ginny swallowed hard. "How long did it go on?"

"They were together after he graduated from school, during her entire seventh year."

It couldn't have possibly been only a casual fling, then, Ginny realized, feeling stunned. "Wait, does this mean…" An awful thought struck her. "Does this mean that Draco and I have the same great-grandfather? That's we're close cousins?" Oh, please say it doesn't, she prayed. Among the oldest purebloods, like the Malfoys, that kind of relationship would make no difference at all if the two people in question were romantically involved. She suspected that there were more than a few past occasions where the Malfoy family tree hadn't forked. But in families like the Weasleys, in her mother's social circles… for a couple to be second cousins… She shuddered to think.

"No." Molly grimaced. 'You wouldn't believe a lie, Ginny. I did think about telling you this was the case, you know. But no. The entire point is that Abraxas broke off the relationship and married a suitable girl."

"That's very sad," said Ginny. "But it still isn't the same as—"

"It goes back further than that," Molly interrupted. "Has Draco ever told you about his great-grandfather? Abraxas Malfoy's father, Alrakis, the one who was known as Mu Draconis?"

"No, but I'm sure that if I asked him, he would tell me."

Molly took a deep breath, as if steeling herself. "Alrakis Malfoy was… involved with… Rose Brooks, who was your great-grandfather's sister."

"Mum, you can't be serious," Ginny said weakly. Even as she spoke, she knew how foolish her own words were, because she could tell exactly how serious her mother was. The connection between the two families clearly went back so much further than she had thought, and the knowledge filled her with a deep sense of dread, as if standing before a locked door that she did not want to open. She shook off the feeling. Whatever this information meant, she would deal with it later; she would discuss it with Draco later; but now, she had to concentrate on hearing the rest of her mother's story. She knew instinctively that the narrative had not come to an end.

"And goodness knows how often the same thing has happened before Alrakis and Rose," Molly went on. "There's something about the women in our family that is irresistible to the Malfoy men. Oh, if any of them ever had children, it was so long ago that it wouldn't make you and Draco closer cousins than you already are. But that's not the point."

Ginny nodded numbly. All of the pureblood families were related in some vague fifth-cousin sort of way; after seeing the tapestry during the summer before her fourth year, she knew that. But she had a terrible feeling that her mother was right; there was much more to the question, and to the story.

"The point is that it never ends happily," said Molly. "I wouldn't like to say that the women have never been more than playthings for them, because that's something I don't know one way or the other. But the relationships never turn out well. They're certainly never permanent."

"So- we don't know what would have happened if any of them had ever been given a chance," said Ginny, feeling like she was arguing a case in front of the Wizengamot. "What if all these men and women hadn't been trapped by family expectations? Couldn't they have made it work if everyone else hadn't interfered with them? Couldn't they have loved each other?"

Her mother blinked, looking as if the idea had never really occurred to her. "Ginny, none of these couples were suitable for each other. Love over the long term isn't really possible I that case. First people marry, and then they love, and if they were truly matched each other to begin with—"

"Mum!" Ginny interrupted as a really awful thought came to her. "Did you and Dad have an arranged marriage?"

Molly laughed. "Goodness, what a thing to say. We knew that we were suitable for each other in so many ways. Our backgrounds were similar; we were both from the respectable class of purebloods, and our families had been connected for many years already."

Had her mother really denied the charge? Ginny was not quite sure.

"Look, this is all very interesting history, but it all happened a long time ago," she said, plowing on with determination. "Everything's completely different now. The world has changed, even the world of purebloods. And Draco and I- our relationship is different." She hesitated, wondering what details she could or should add to that statement.

"Oh, I'm sure that you believe that the two of you are close, you and the Malfoy boy, and that you could walk a different path from all the rest," said Molly. "But there's just one more thing you need to know." She looked into the mists in the distance, almost as if she'd forgotten that Ginny was there. "I'll need to tell you. I think I knew all along that it would come to this…"

Ginny's grades in Precognition had always been dreadful. She'd never had any gift in foretelling the future. But in that moment, even before she really knew what her mother meant, she could sense the terrifying shape of the secret that was about to be revealed.

Molly continued to face the mists, half-turned away from her daughter. "As Sophia was to Abraxis, as Rose was to Alrakis," she said quietly, "I was… in a way… to Lucius Malfoy."

Ginny's stomach gave a violent lurch. "No…" she whispered. "It's impossible. It can't be true. Mum, tell me it's not true!"

"Ginny—" Molly laid a hand on her arm. Ginny shook it off and whirled on her mother.

"No, this is all some sort of lie!" she spat. "You're inventing this to try to break us up, Draco and me, aren't you? You couldn't have possibly had anything to do with… Lucius Malfoy." She shuddered at the name. "Mum, please… tell me you're making it up…"

Molly looked very sad. "Believe it or not, Ginny, in a way, I wish I could tell you that I am. But it's quite true. Do you want to know more?"

No. Not another word. The reaction was instant and frightening in its intensity. Ginny beat it back. "I don't," she forced herself to say. "But I know I have to. Please. Just tell me everything, Mum."

Her legs would no longer hold her, so she sank to the wooden floor, hugging her knees. Her mother sat beside her and continued to speak.

"I didn't really know Lucius Malfoy at Hogwarts. He was just a little over four years younger, you see, and he didn't even start his first year until I was beginning my fifth. I graduated, and then I married your father the first of September, when I'd just turned nineteen. If I remembered Lucius at all, it was only as an arrogant boy who seemed to think the whole world belonged to him."

"So… how did you ever get to know him?" Ginny managed to ask.

Molly gave a long sigh. In the first few years after I married your father, we had, well, a few disagreements, let's just say. Our worst times were about three years after the wedding. We had a dreadful fight, and I accepted an invitation to a party for a Prewett cousin, one who'd married rich. I never ought to have done it, of course. Your father was most decidedly not included in the invitation. But it wasn't the first time that such a thing had happened during the past year, which is my own fault. I think that the Blacks would have liked to see me brought back into the family fold; they're our closer cousins, you know, and so they were happy to invite me to events as long as your father wasn't included. I went, and I… I saw him. Lucius was nearly nineteen; it was a few years before he married Narcissa Black. He was a very handsome man, young, of course, but in no way a boy. So charming. I had no trouble understanding the charm, the allure, of the Malfoy men."

Ginny desperately hoped that her mother wasn't going to ask her about anything remotely related to the allure of Malfoy sex appeal as it applied to her and Draco. As soon as Molly started up again, though, she realized that it might have been better if she had.

"I'm saying this because I think it's something you need to know, dear," said her mother. "I know, of course, that you'd never repeat it to anyone else."

Ginny nodded, already dreading whatever it was that she was about to hear.

"It wasn't the first time I'd seen him during that past year—he'd been at several of those family functions since he'd turned eighteen—and we'd exchanged a few words before. A few looks. If the truth be known, as I suppose it has to be now, there was a bit of flirting. I didn't take it seriously in the least, of course. I could tell that he was a young man who'd flirt with any woman. But that night, things were different, somehow. I was angrier with your father than ever before, more despondent, more convinced that perhaps I'd made a mistake and shouldn't have married so early after all. Lucius made me feel young and free and perhaps a bit wicked. And by the end of the night…" Molly hung her head. "He kissed me."

"Lucius Malfoy kissed you?" Ginny could hear her own voice rising into a squeak. "How did it happen? How many times?"

"On that night? Well… just the once." Her eyes took on a faraway look. "We danced, only one dance to begin with. We began walking around the grounds. I knew it was a terrible idea. But once we begin to slide down a slippery slope, it's so much easier to take the next step, and the next. We went into a secluded garden gazebo. I'd drunk some champagne, but not too much; I can't blame what happened on that. He kissed me, and I let him."

"And?" Ginny couldn't help but ask.

"And that was all," sighed Molly. "For that night, at least. After several minutes, I heard the sound of footsteps. Someone was coming towards us, I hid, and he left first. Narcissa found him, and as little as she liked him then, she knew that they were supposed to present themselves as a lovely young couple, a perfect match, ready to be married in only a few years. He left me without looking back." Molly lapsed into silence.

"Was the end of it?" Ginny dared to ask.

Molly shook her head. She spoke in a voice so quiet that Ginny almost couldn't hear her words. "The next night, I had the most dreadful fight of all with your father. At the end of it, he said that he wasn't sure he ought to have married right out of school." She flinched at Ginny's gasp, but she did not stop speaking. "Lucius sent me an owl inviting me to dinner. We met again, at a London flat belonging to one of his cousins. He had a wonderful meal ready for me, and the setting was so elegant, so rich. We drank champagne, he was witty and sophisticated, he had me laughing in the candlelight… and then…"

Oh, please, no. Ginny longed to cover her face, to stuff her fingers in her ears, maybe to jump into the mists, anything so that she wouldn't need to hear whatever her mother said next. But she was a Gryffindor and a Weasley; her courage was stronger than her need for comfort, and she knew that she must listen.

"I'd already done something wrong, you see, by kissing him the night before, by meeting him again at all. And one step leads to another. Once you've done one wrong thing, it's easier to fall into the next," said Molly. She shot Ginny an unexpected, shrewd glance. "Perhaps you found that to be true with Draco Malfoy as well?"

Knowing just how right her mother was, Ginny could not make any reply.

"It was such an enchanting night, and no-one could be more charming than Lucius Malfoy, when he wanted to be," she went on. "We were laughing in the candlelight, I remember, and I was enjoying the mad moment, not wanting it to end. And when he made an offer, when he told me how the night could end… I said yes."

"You mean…" Ginny whispered.

"Yes," was all that her mother said. She needed to hear no more.

Ginny's thoughts kept running round and round in her mind on one awful track, like a rat frantically scampering on a wheel. "Mother… you don't mean… that you and Lucius… that Draco could be…" My half brother. Oh, no, oh Gods, please no…

"Good heavens, no, of course not!" Molly gave her a tight-lipped smile. "Our meetings never continued beyond that one night, although Lucius surely wanted them to. He sent me a note by owl the next day. Such a lovely bird. Related to the ones the Malfoy have now, I'm sure. He said a lot of rubbish. How bewitching I was, how much I'd enchanted him, how constricted I must feel being married to a man who couldn't possibly appreciate me. He mentioned a generous arrangement, offering the luxuries I deserved, as he put it, weekends away, a villa in the South of France, summer holidays on a yacht. A pearl bracelet was included, the most beautiful piece of jewelry I've ever touched in my life. I sent back the bracelet without a note. Then I ripped up the letter and set fire to the scraps of parchment. And that was the end of it. Oh, he sent me several owls after that, too, but I didn't even open the letters, and they soon stopped. My life went on. Bill was born a year later, and then the rest of you, and those two nights seemed like a dream that had never really happened."

"And after that…" Ginny's throat closed. After that, in spite of that, years later, he went after me. Your daughter.

Molly looked at her with very sad eyes. "Ginny, there are times, during the years between then and now, when I've blamed myself for what happened to you."

"That's ridiculous!" Ginny exclaimed, finding that she could speak after all. "Lucius Malfoy gave me that diary because he wanted to get power and to convince the Dark Lord that he could be the most useful servant he'd ever have. It had nothing to do with what… well, what happened between the two of you."

"I suppose that I can never really know," Molly sighed. "But one thing I do know very well is that at best, what had… happened between us… meant less than nothing to him. And at worst, he enjoyed the opportunity to take a bit of revenge on me through my daughter."

"But… but Draco's not like that," Ginny whispered. "That much, I do know. Mum, he could have done what his father failed to do; he could have been the Dark Lord's right hand man, and I can't even imagine how much power he'd have now. But he gave up the chance when he had it, and believe me, he did have it."

"Perhaps Draco is different in that one way, but..." Molly sighed. "That's far from the only problem. I do understand, Ginny. There's something about these Malfoy men that can make Weasley women forget everything, lose their minds and their morals both. If they give in." She looked at her daughter shrewdly. "Perhaps Draco isn't as bad as Lucius was. But are you sure that you mean anything more to Draco that I might have meant to his father?"

No, no, that's not true, Ginny wanted to cry. Draco offered me all of those things and more once he knew that he still had his money and properties, but that's because he didn't know any other way of showing he cared. But he's been learning. Emotions are so terribly difficult for him, that's all. And he does care about me. Respects me. He even…

The words stuck in her throat.

Her mother was silent, and Ginny understood that she'd said all there was to say. There seemed no way to respond.

In that moment, the floor under her feet knocked against something and settled into place. The mists began to clear. Around her, she saw the dim shapes of the back hall, with its portraits on the wall just visible through the semi-transparent white clouds. Directly in front of her was the door to the outside. She could hear winds battering against the frame, shaking the door. She wiped the fogged glass with her sleeve and saw nothing but whirling, scouring snow.

"Ginny, dear, come back here," said Molly behind her. "Now that we've returned to the house, the other piece will follow us in only a few minutes. Your father and brothers will be on it, and Cho, and oh, that dreadful Pansy Parkinson as well; I'm sure they'll be all right. It'll just take a bit of searching for them. This happens, sometimes, with the Runcible house; people will turn up all over the place rather than going back to where they were when the spell broke us all apart."

Ginny could not stop looking outside the window, and she didn't know why. She wanted to start searching for everyone who had been on the other piece of flooring and had drifted away from them, but she seemed glued to the spot.

"Do come away from that door," her mother said. "The storm must have hit. We can talk about—everything—later on. Right now, we need to find where that other piece ended up; they're bound to be around here somewhere."

She was right, of course, thought Ginny. Perhaps they could let the conversation pass by for the moment, pretend that it hadn't happened at all, and get caught up in the work of finding everyone else. She forced herself to start turning away.

Then she heard the desperate cry.

"Ginny! Ginny! Where are you… Ginny…"

The voice was Draco Malfoy's, and it was coming from outside the door, from the whirlwind of snow.

She had the presence of mind to grab her coat from a hook on the wall, and then she started to open the door. Her mother caught her arm.

"Ginny, you can't possibly go out in that storm!"

"I certainly am. Mum, Draco's calling for me, and he's stuck out in it!" retorted Ginny.

"Wait just a few minutes," Molly pleaded. "We'll find your father and brothers, and then, if you'd like, we can organize a search party."

Ginny glared at her mother. "If I'd like? I suppose you think it would be a better idea to just leave him out there to freeze to death?"

"Of course not, but dear, he does know some excellent warming charms; you said so yourself."

"Ginny…" called Draco's voice again, sounding fainter this time, and further away.

Ginny shook off her mother's hand. "Mum, I don't care what sort of an arse Lucius Malfoy was. Or Abraxas, or Alrakis. All I know is Draco l—" She faltered on that word, the dangerous word. "Cares for me," she amended. "And I won't leave him out there in the storm, no matter what you or anybody else thinks."

"Don't be ridiculous, Ginny," said Molly. "Of course we're not going to leave anyone out in the storm—what a dreadful thing to say." She gave Ginny a long, appraising look. "But are you sure that you know what Draco Malfoy feels for you? Are you really sure that you mean more to him than Sophia or Rose or I did, to our Malfoy men?"

Ginny blanched back under that stare. Then, without another word, she flung the door open and ran out into the howling snow.