Part 2

Blaise was sitting at his desk in the massive office he had fashioned for himself and he was completely distracted. After having been bored with life for months on fucking end, he seemed to have found a project. Well, not so much a project as a woman he just could not seem to get out of his head. Somehow, all of those different inventions at Malfoy Enterprises just couldn't hold his attention anymore.

The ball had been three weeks earlier and he hadn't really been able to concentrate since. He'd gone to the inventor of the glasses, a brilliant researcher who always thought out of the box and really questioned how they worked. If there were flaws, if they could show bruises falsely. And no, he wasn't mistaken. The glasses worked perfectly.

Which meant that Ginevra Weasley or Ginny to her friends, had actually been bruised as if she'd been attacked by an animal. Or a mental pureblood. He had heard about her dalliances with any number of purebloods and they were all bastards of different calibres.

The latest he'd heard about was Flint. A trollish excuse for a man. Why in the world she would ever take up with him was a complete mystery. And was he the reason for the battered body? It made his blood boil that he would ever lay a hand on anyone like that.

His mind just went round and round in the same bloody circles and he had no fucking answers. Of course, she hadn't shown up at the café the day after the ball. He sort of hadn't expected her to, she had after all told him that she wasn't going to show but still, he'd hoped.

He didn't really know why he'd hoped that she would show. He had no idea what he wanted from her or to give her. He could give her strength maybe? But he wasn't sure anyone could actually give her that. Maybe he just wanted to help her find her inner strength. That could work.

Maybe.

Again with those fucking circles.

He sat back in that ergonomically correct office chair that Draco had insisted on getting for him. It was no use of course, he still had a headache. The pounding at the back of his head was there and had been for three weeks.

Why the fuck he even cared was baffling to him.

That was probably the biggest reason for his headache. He didn't have a clue as to why he just could not get the petite redhead out of his head. Every single time he closed his eyes, he saw her. Dressed like a dream and wincing slightly with almost every step, every move, every touch.

He groaned, annoyed with himself and rubbed the heels of his hands into his eyes. He had other things to focus on. Work. Friends. Family. Women and some men too.

But that wasn't true, now was it?

His work was practically doing itself. He was excellent at delegating the right tasks to the right people and he kept a tight rein on his top leaders in the company. They were all brilliant at their jobs and he was free to pursue further avenues for the business to thrive. It gave him too much time to think.

And his friends were fucking useless.

Draco was whipped as fuck and loving it, Theo had finally found something worth staying monogamous for and Harry was playing the field as wildly as ever. He sent off an owl to Harry immediately asking if he wanted to join him at Omnium. They ought to go out as the only remaining bachelors of the group. Seamus and Dean would probably welcome them and their galleons with open arms at their place.

His family consisted of only him and his mother. That was all the family he had. He was an only child, despite his mother's numerous marriages. His mother wasn't exactly what could be described as warm and she needed no focus from him. She had relocated back to their luxurious Tuscany vineyard and only required him to answer to her beck and call when she was feeling maternally inclined, which was about four to five times a year.

And then there were the many women. Just a haze of beautiful women and men, because please, he had taste and he'd never pass up an exquisite man. But none of them stuck. None of them made him want to see them again. He didn't make the papers the same way Theo had, he as just enjoyed himself and the women and occasional men that came though his bed.

And that just left him with a fucking frustrating headache and a beautiful redhead playing tricks on his weary mind.

Just then, an owl arrived with Harry's scrawled "Okay love, pick you up at seven" on it. He rolled his eyes.

The Boy Who Was Fucking Annoying had way too big an ego these days.

Ginny was hiding out in the garden of the Burrow.

Her mum had made her do lots of chores since she'd moved back in and she loathed chores. She wasn't sure if it was because she'd been required to do much of the same by Marcus but either way, she didn't want to do it if she could help it.

Her first time back on a broom after the ball had been brutal. She was sore all over her body, inside and out and even her first, second and third trip to St. Mungos hadn't done much to alleviate the pain, despite the hard work of the healers there.

Her life was just such a mess, she wasn't even able to conjure a patronus anymore.

She just wasn't happy and those feelings and memories that once made her able to produce the spell was tainted now, they didn't seem happy anymore.

That evening she had a late night training session. Their coach wanted to make sure that the dark and the light projectors on the stadium wouldn't affect their game if a game dragged into the evening. They had to be thoroughly prepared.

She tried to focus on her training, but she was so confused about that Italian bastard.

Well, maybe he wasn't a bastard as such but she really loathed him. He had put the seed of doubt in her mind about her plan, because her plan was simple really. Marry well and live a great life.

Maybe she ought to revise that plan? She had absolutely no clue. She looked down at two of the notes Marcus had sent her since that night before the ball.

That Sunday after the ball, she had actually gone to the coffee shop under a disillusionment charm but hadn't been able to bring herself to enter.

She just stood outside watching Blaise read the muggle newspapers and checking his watch occasionally before he inevitably looked up and down the street outside. It was like a tick that came dependably every three or four minutes.

It took her a while to realize that he had probably been looking for her. But why would he? He knew all of the worst things about her from Harry.

She left him sitting there, apparating back to the Burrow after deciding definitely not to go inside.

Sometimes she even believed that she deserved all that she got from her boyfriends. She deserved the berating, the slaps, the punches and even the bites. She should be better. She could be better and do what they asked of her.

But better for whom? For herself or someone else?

That night she trained hard, harder that she normally would have during those late sessions. She pushed herself to the brink and their team worked like clockwork. When she flew, the world came back into perspective.

When the coach blew the whistle to signal end of training, she was ready to do something more with her life. Anything really.

It felt invigorating.

So she didn't watch where she was flying.

A bludger seemed to come out of nowhere and hit her broomhandle hard. It shattered and the broom started spinning out of control and aimed directly towards the ground.

The last thing she heard before she hit the ground was the terrified screams of her teammates.

She awoke squinting with a pounding headache.

Hard florescent light was beaming down on her with no reprieve and she winced when she tried to move. Her body was sore, tired and battered. And probably dirty as well. A fall to the damp ground could do that to you.

She knew exactly where she was. At St. Mungo's. Again.

She hated it here. It illustrated things that were wrong in her mind. Issues, problems. This was where she went every time one of her boyfriends had beaten her 'because they loved her'. And she had gone back to them when they apologized and then ended up right back here again a few weeks or months later.

A healer in training entered. She had been her healer before, a few of those times after Marcus's attacks and she was sympathetic, having grown up among purebloods and having been expected to marry one of them. At least Marcus probably wouldn't have beaten her. She was a perfect pureblood when Ginny herself was so far from it.

Astoria Greengrass moved to Ginny's side with a smile. "Hello again Ginny. What in Merlin's name happened to you?"

Ginny just chuckled and then winced, it hurt her ribs to chuckle. "I fell off my broom at practice. Please fix me up."

Astoria cocked her head with a calculating smile. "I'm already working on it. But did you really come from practice? At least you're wearing your uniform this time."

Ginny nodded with a lump in her throat. Astoria was very perceptive, unfortunately. She knew that all of those bruises couldn't be from Quidditch accidents. No matter how hard Ginny had adamantly insisted on it, Astoria had seen right though her but thankfully kept her mouth shut.

Astoria then started waving her wand over her body, focusing especially on her midriff and they sat there in silence for about ten minutes.

Suddenly a rumble of running feet could be heard out in the hall, the door slammed open and two men tumbled into the room in a tangle of limbs, roars of laughter and a haze of booze.

A nurse was following them with a rather harassed expression and entirely red in the face. "Will you exit this room immediately?!"

The front man stopped abruptly when he spotted her and the other rammed right into him from behind, causing them both to fall over each other in a tumble on the floor. Astoria sat, completely calm, still waving her wand over her and watched the two inebriated men try to disentangle from each other and get up.

It took them a surprisingly long time.

Astoria turned to the nurse. "It's really no problem Mathilda, I can deal with these two delinquents." Her voice was rather stiff but her eyes were smiling at the two men, who were none other than Harry Potter and Blaise Zabini. Ginny was wondering what the hell brought them to St. Mungo's.

However, Astoria was only looking at Harry now. Ginny's intuition flickered.

By the time they were upright, they were giggling like little girls at each other and she rolled her eyes. "Are you two boys fucking finished? And how the hell did you get inhere?" Her voice was playful on the surface but she couldn't stop some of that Molly-esque exasperation from creeping into her voice. That was when she noticed the gash on Harry's arm. She wanted to roll her eyes again, he'd probably fallen on something with how unsteady he was.

That sobered them immediately. Harry narrowed his eyes at her but Blaise knocked him on the shoulder unsteadily. "Relax dude. You know,-" He said, clearly thinking hard. His expression was hilarious with knitted brows and narrowed eyes. "-you two ought to make up, let bygones be bygones you know?" He was slurring the words and Ginny, to her disbelief, found herself smiling at him from her cot.

Harry shrugged. "We probably will. Someday." Which clearly meant not yet. Ginny was surprised by how much that stung.

Blaise then realized that Astoria was in the room. "What the fuck?! Little Snake! Come here and give us a hug." She grinned and he enveloped the petite woman in his arms. Ginny just watched on in amazement.

"Harry, this here is Astoria Greengrass. Also known as-" He paused conspiratorially. "-Little Snake!" He laughed at his own bad joke.

Harry smiled at her but then frowned in that way that only drunk people do when they're trying to figure something out. "Why Little Snake?"

"Greengrass, Slytherin, snake in the grass, get it?" He winked with a grin and nudged Harry and Ginny was forcibly reminded of her beloved twin older brothers. A sharp pang of pain shot through her and she wished they still had Fred with them.

The loss of her beloved older brother had been so difficult to overcome after the war. She had felt so lonely, despite having both Harry and the rest of her family to share her sorrows with but they didn't really understand.

George had shrunk into himself and only really started to resemble himself after he and Angelina had re-connected. But she was there too, everyone just seemed to forget about little Ginny. Out of all of her brothers, Fred and George had been the ones she'd been truly close to and with the passing of Fred, she'd lost them both.

She took a deep breath and tried to dispel the sadness from her mind as she did so often. She just wanted love in her life. Someone who loved her and not just her family. She felt so lost and lonely but she had been sure she knew how to fix it. Although it hadn't worked. All of those men hadn't fixed her at all, they'd only made it worse.

She was startled out of her reverie by the two boys starting to play-fight. Ginny merely shook her head at their exuberant antics and Astoria rolled her eyes. Ginny was surprised Astoria hadn't kicked them out yet but the other woman was watching the two men, and Harry in particular, with something akin to adoration intermingled with scheming.

Finally, Astoria stopped the two semi-drunk men-children. "Blaise, mr. Potter. Please leave this room. It was kind of you to visit Ginny but you must leave now." She waved her wand once and Harry's gash knitted right back up as if it hadn't been there. Harry looked like he was fighting sleep as her magic worked on him for just a few seconds.

At soon as he was healed, Harry went over to her and threw Ginny a hard look. "I apologize for the inconvenience." Then he looked at Astoria properly for the first time, his eyes widening. A frown appeared and he glanced up at Ginny again which made his lips set into a hard line before he just turned on his heel and left. Strange.

Ginny bit her lip, she hated that things were this bad between them. She had never meant to hurt him like that, stupidly she just hadn't been thinking about the consequences when she cheated on him. She would probably never stop beating herself up over it.

Astoria shook her head a bit and smiled somewhat dazedly while Blaise walked over to sit on the edge of the cot.

He leaned in conspiratorially. "Do you need me to hold your hand while the ruthless nurse stitches you up?"

She snorted a short laugh and he grinned. That was probably his intention though, to bring her out of her sudden mental slump. She was somewhat surprised that it worked. She shook her head. "No, but thank you for offering, Blaise."

His entire form shivered visibly and he smiled widely, like that cat who caught the canary. "My given name on your tongue makes me think of bad things." Just then, Astoria moved from her to look over her chart at the table behind her and Blaise took that opportunity to lean so close to her and whispered in a dark and sinful tone. "I wanna do bad things to you."

He almost sang the line and it confused her. She didn't know if it was a joke or something and he grinned. "It's a song! My new favourite, muggle and all. They play it rather often at the café I'm at every Sunday. The first time I heard it was the day after Granger's birthday bash and it made me think of you." He winked with a smirk tugging at his lips and she mentally kicked herself.

He was too handsome, too nice, too fun and too pureblood. He would be just like the rest of them given time. She could even feel herself gravitating towards him because of his infectious personality. He was like a sun in her perpetual darkness but it didn't help much.

He would probably end up just as bad or maybe even worse than the others, because he seemed to promise so much more than just the wining and dining she'd had before.

He promised safety and fun, something she had long forgotten and she didn't want to get her hopes up again. She had been burned too many times.

He had been watching during her lengthy silence and he smirked. "I think I know what you're thinking Little Red and you can wonder about me all you want. But just so you know, I'm still at that café every Sunday. Feel free to swing by." He leaned in then, much too close, and kissed her cheek. It was probably supposed to be a quick peck but it wasn't.

It really wasn't.

Her heartrate spiked alarmingly and she sucked in a breath hard. His presence were affecting her in so many ways. The hairs on her arms stood up and a shiver criss-crossed her every nerve ending up and down her body over and over.

What felt like an hour was probably just a moment and he pulled back, chuckling darkly. "You know where to find me." And then he just left her sitting there, probably with a shocked expression on her earth-smudged face.

Just like that.

She was stumped. Those other men had chased her relentlessly and he didn't. He wanted her to do the chasing. She snorted softly.

Hell would freeze over before that ever happened.

Maybe.