A/N: Published 4 June 2022 for Draco's Birthday Collection on AO3, hosted by Hermione's Nook

June 1954

'Shhhh, my darling, it will be alright.'

A young man of barely twenty with pale blond hair that peeked out from below his tweed Newsboy cap was speaking in a low and soothing voice, attempting to calm the distraught girl in his arms. The air about them was warm and the sun had finally broken through the clouds. It had been a miserably wet spring, but presently there was little rejoicing over this recent change in the weather as it was a herald of their parting.

He'd recently graduated and tomorrow he would be leaving for two months, traveling with his uncle who was seeking more information on rare medicinal plants that grew on the European continent. He was to document their journey, taking photographs and notes of anything and everything. Having never left Britain before, he was curious and excited about his journey, though it would pain him to be away from the sweet woman currently in his arms.

'It won't! You'll forget me and…and…' Her sentence was interrupted by more sniffling, but he held her still more tightly to him, trying his best to reassure her. Her auburn hair spilled over them both and he breathed in its scent of fresh strawberries. He wished he could bottle the smell, take it with him on his long journey.

'I could never forget you. Never.' He desperately wanted her to believe him, to understand that his heart had room for no other woman nor did it wish to. 'I'll write as often as I can. And I'll be back before the end of summer.'

'Promise me, Draco?' she whispered. 'You're not going to fall in love with some other girl while you're gone?'

He leaned back from her to observe her sad gaze, his thumb wiping away the tears that were running down her pale cheek.

'Ginevra Weasley, I love you and I'll always be true. You're the only girl in the whole world for me, even if you do have the loudest and most uncouth family I've ever had the misfortune to dine with.' He leaned down then and kissed her gently on the lips even as she swatted at him playfully. He could feel her smiling against him and knew that his little jibe had worked its magic.

'I love you, too, you pompous arse.' She raised up on her toes and kissed him again, more warmly this time now that her breathing had begun to even out.

He loved everything about her: her laughter, her intelligence, her sense of humour, her insane competitive streak. Eagerly he opened his mouth to hers as their kiss grew more heated and tongues flicked against one another like flames. She was his sun, all heat and danger and life-giving. How could she think he wouldn't miss her?

Sadly, it ended before he was even ready.

'Do you need help packing your suitcase?'

'No, my mum already insisted on doing it for me last night.'

Ginny laughed then. 'Such a mummy's boy you are.'

'Right, that's why she had me sent to boarding school all those years.'

'Well, it's a good thing she did or we would have never met, hmm?'

She was right about that.

She had attended a girl's school in the same town and though they had met at a party several years ago, it was only during his last two years that they had been drawn together by a mutual love of literature. She was fearless and outspoken, something he had never been taught to value in the opposite sex, but he found that it suited her.

The day he had discovered that she played football in spite of the danger of getting expelled, she had dared him to snitch on her. The two of them were standing toe-to-toe behind a tall hedge, he towering over her. Instead, he had leaned down and kissed her. It was rather impetuous of him, but it seemed that he had been reading her signals correctly, for she kissed him back arduously and then asked him to be her boyfriend. That was over a year ago now.

'I'll miss you terribly,' he murmured, fingers now tangled in her tresses. He was going to propose at Christmas — he had already decided. To hell with how his family felt about her. They would come to love her in time, just like he did.

'I'll miss you, too, love,' she said in return.

He kissed her once more, heart aflame with a multitude of emotions.

'And I'll be counting down the days until I can do that again.' His grey eyes bore into her hazel ones. They reminded him of autumn leaves that had just began to turn, something he had always looked forward to each year. Now it was captured in the gaze of the one he loved.

She smiled back up at him. 'Is that a promise?'

'Cross my heart,' he swore.

That night after he drove home, he slipped her photograph into his suitcase along with paper and a few pens. The rest of his belongings had been packed the night before. This upcoming trip might be an adventure, but he had the feeling that the one afterwards would be of far greater import.

'Two months,' he sighed. Well, sixty-one days, if he were being exact. He clicked the suitcase shut and sat it next to his door. In the morning, there would be a car that would take them all the way to the ferry. At journey's end, a ferry would bring him back. His mind went through the checklist of everything that would happen in between, the itinerary that was bound to change, the places he would see, and people he would meet that summer. And then he would be back. Back to hold her once more. To laugh with her. To love her. And maybe in just another year, to marry her.