"I'll just leave you two, then," Draco said, lips curling. Ginny wanted to reach out and grab him, to wrap her arms around his legs like a child who doesn't want their parents to leave them at school. After all, she hadn't done it alone, had she? He had brought her the diary, egged her on, pushed when she was in a low place.
Draco apparently read all this in her face.
"You expect people to understand and forgive you every single time you do the wrong thing, don't you? All because of something that happened when you were a child, something we've all tried to mend many times over. Now it's time to own up to something, just one thing, all by yourself," he said, and left her and his father standing there in a room that suddenly felt unfamiliar to her. Ginny listened to his footsteps click away, and then heard the front door slam. Her hand was still on Lucius's wrist and Lucius was still standing there, perfectly still.
"Told me what?" he finally repeated, and she released her hold on him.
Ginny's breath was coming too shallow, and she sat down hard on the couch. She was vaguely aware of Lucius snapping his fingers and speaking to an elf, asking for a glass of water. Then he was pressing something cold into her hand, and she could focus on that, on not spilling the drink. And then, somehow, she was able to lift her head and take a sip and look at the man whom she had so badly betrayed.
"I don't want to say," she said through chapped lips, and even as she wondered how they could possibly have become chapped since she had so delicately put on lip gloss for his amusement only an hour before, he lifted the glass to her lips.
"It can't be this bad, Ginevra. Just tell me." He was crouching at her feet, one hand wrapped around hers on the glass and the other placed at the crease of her hip.
"You're under house arrest," she blurted out. He helped her lower the glass to the floor, and then moved to up to sit next to her.
"I'm brutally aware."
"Yes, and I know why."
"Everyone knows why."
"I really know why." For some reason she was hoping he would guess, or that he already had, and then he would laugh and hug her and say, "Oh that, that doesn't matter in the least."
He did not. He just went on sitting there, looking at her.
"You'll have to spit it out, or I'm simply going to leave until you tell me," he said.
"Draco came to me when you and I had –"
What had they done? Broken up? Stopped seeing one another? All those things sounded too official for how their relationship had come to pass.
"After I left the Manor. When I saw the diary," she decided. "And he asked if I was angry with you, and I said he was, and he said that I should help him get the Ministry involved. So I did."
Lucius's hand hadn't moved from her leg, but he was no longer looking at her. Instead he was staring at the fireplace, which was stacked with logs but unlit.
"Go on," he said, voice strangled.
"He brought me the diary and I took it to Harry and I pretended that I only knew about the whole affair because Draco had told me about it and I thought it would be the right thing to do to help him. So really I didn't do anything Draco couldn't have done by himself," she pleaded.
"But you helped."
"Yes."
"And then you agreed to marry Harry Potter."
"Well, we've already gone over that, Lucius. That's nothing."
"Suddenly, it feels like something. Is there anything else?"
"Nothing else, I promise. I promise, please, Lucius, don't be angry," she said, starting to panic.
His hand drew away.
"I'd like to lie down."
"No, stay, just stay here."
"I'm going to lie down, Ginevra. You may stay here, or go home. I'll let you know when I'd like to talk."
She was sobbing but didn't get up to follow him. Instead she just watched him go, and then curled up right where she sat, head on her knees. After a moment she felt compelled, for some reason she could not explain, to reach down and tip over the glass of water. She watched it seep into the oriental rug and spread across the wood floor, and then wished she hadn't done it.
Hours passed. An elf brought her a sandwich. She ate it. The clocks chimed all over the house, all at slightly different moments, creating a cacophony, many times over. Still, he didn't return.
Unable to take it any longer, Ginny went upstairs. With each step she got farther and farther from her fear, and closer to the certainty that she was beyond reproach. By the time she was tossing open his bedroom door, she had almost forgotten what they had fought over.
He looked up from his book, almost bored in expression.
"I didn't ask after you yet," he said. He shut the book on his lap and leaned back on his pillows, closing his eyes.
"I won't wait for you to make up your mind forever, you know."
"Has it been forever already?"
"You don't understand. You had just sent me away. I was distraught. Of course I wanted to help hurt you."
"Now hold on just one minute, Ms. Weasley. I never sent you anywhere."
She had gotten him riled up, eyes open and book pushed aside so he could swing his legs off the bed.
"Showing me the cursed artifact that ruined my childhood was intended to what exactly, then? Make me laugh?"
"I was trying to be honest with you."
"Like fun you were. You wanted to be back with Narcissa, perfect Narcissa who was starting to get better and who you didn't need to throw your life away for. You did it so you could stop lying to her, and feel good about yourself, and now you want to punish me for reacting in a way you don't like."
Her voice was rising, and she inched closer to where he sat.
"Don't drag Narcissa into this."
"Why not? Isn't she involved? You dragged Harry into it, and I'm not even married to him. You and Narcissa are married, something I'm sure you haven't forgotten."
"What would you have me do about it? Divorce her now, when she barely knows who I am?"
"I just don't think you have any right to act as if you are morally superior to me."
"Nothing I have ever done to you has left this house. I didn't try to meddle in your real life, did I? I offered you a place to hide if anything. So you repay me by having me thought a criminal yet again, for the third time in my life."
There was a beat of silence there, a misstep in their otherwise perfectly measured verbal sparring match.
"The things that happen inside this house aren't real to you?" she asked, suddenly deflated. "This isn't our real life?"
"Fuck," he whispered. He slumped down where he sat, and they both just stayed there, silent and dejected.
"I didn't mean it like that," he ventured.
"Sounded like it."
"Forgive me."
She sat down on the floor.
"Our relationship, real or not, is a constant wheel of forgiveness," she said. "That can't be right."
"At least we aren't holding grudges."
"I suppose."
"Do you know what I was thinking while you were yelling at me?"
"That I was right?"
"No. I was thinking about how badly I wanted to grab you and bring you over here and tear off all your clothes."
"Lucius…"
"It's true."
"At some point we'll have to talk about things, you know. You can't always distract me like this."
"Sometimes it's you doing the distracting."
"Sometimes, but not today."
He sighed.
"So what shall we do instead, if fucking it away isn't healthy?"
Ginny stood up.
"I want us to both forgive each other, one last time. That will be it. If you're serious about this, we'll have a clean slate and it can be as if nothing ever happened. We can be partners in everything, and move forward. So are you serious?"
"Do you really think it can be like that? Like everything has always been normal between us – like you aren't my son's age and I'm not married and I didn't ever have you possessed and you never had me imprisoned?"
"I think that it's our only hope. If we fail, we fail. But I want to try, don't you? Don't we owe ourselves that after all this fuss?
"Yes," he sighed. "I want to try."
"I thought so."
"May I apologize for one more thing, before we begin this new chapter?"
"May I come to bed with you?"
"Yes, of course."
He made room for her, and for a second, when their hands touched on the bedspread, she wished he had grabbed her the way he claimed to have wanted during the argument.
"Comfortable?"
"Very."
"Shall I say it then?"
"Yes."
"I apologize for making you sit with me and Draco. It was cruel to make you watch me worry over Narcissa. But I only did it because I couldn't have faced him alone."
"I thought so. When you shouted at me and held me back from leaving, I guessed you were afraid."
"Terrified. You forgive me?"
"Yes, I do. And I will always stand by you just as I did this morning."
"Perfect."
Her head came to rest on his chest as it had many times before, and she let her breathing match his until they were both calm and soft, melting together.
"Lucius?"
"Hmm?"
"Will you tell me what you would have liked to do after you tore my clothes of?"
He tutted.
"Naughty girl."
"No more secrets," she chided.
"That wasn't part of the deal."
"It should have been. I'm adding it now."
"You'd really like to know?"
"Why not? Can't I handle it?"
He looked at her a moment.
"You can handle anything," he whispered.
Sooo...I did write what he wanted to do to her, but posting smutty stuff still makes me squeamish so I took it out! Forgive me, xoxo
