Moving to the States with Harry had felt like the kind of wild adventure they'd had back in school and Ginny kept expecting to come crashing back to reality. She floated through months feeling like she was having an out of body experience: standing in the middle of their new flat, walking around their new city and staring at all the funny muggle things, frantically trying to learn how to blend in, all of it felt a little bit out of reach and she couldn't shake the sensation of being fuzzy headed. The thing that had always felt the most surreal to her in the early days was the silence in their apartment; having grown up in a full home and a rowdy Gryffindor dorm, the relative quiet of living with just the two of them had been jarring. And although Ginny had developed a taste for good coffee, fashionable handbags, and killer heels, it was that quiet that remained her favorite luxury of their new lives.

But after a week of Harry ignoring and avoiding her, she was starting to feel differently about the silence.

"Harry, you're being ridiculous."

"James, tell your aunt she needs to learn to respect peoples' boundaries."

"Aunt Ginny, Daddy says to respect his boundaries."

"James, tell your father he is an idiot."

"Daddy, Aunt Ginny says-"

"We don't use that word, James, it's not nice."

"Then why did Aunt Ginny say it?"

"Because she's not being very nice right now."

"James, tell your father that it's not very nice to use his son as an owl and that it's very passive aggressive and unbecoming in a grown man."

"Um, that was a lot and I don't really remember-"

"James, tell your aunt that when she huffs and nags like that she is the spitting image of her mother."

Harry: 1, Ginny: 0

After that disastrous pitch, she hadn't seen Harry around the office and he'd taken the car so she had to find her own way home. She had prepared herself for a row, but Harry and James were nowhere to be seen when she walked through the door. With a sinking feeling in her stomach, Ginny tried to tell herself she was glad she didn't have to fight with her best friend after such a stressful day and that space would do them some good.

However, when she woke up the next day and had to call a taxi to get to work, she was less grateful for that space. She stalked into the office, coaching herself to maintain a frigid professionalism toward her idiot roommate who couldn't even be arsed to send a text that he was alright, but the office manager stopped her by asking if Harry was alright.

"I wouldn't know," Ginny said archly. "Harry is busy being an ass right now and we haven't spoken. Why do you ask?"

"Oh, it's just that he called out sick today and I hope it isn't anything serious…"

'No, you just hope it's something worth gossiping about,' Ginny thought grumpily. She shrugged and headed toward her desk, troubled despite herself. It was unlike Harry to call out and she knew he was just avoiding her. It was ridiculous and they'd be stuck in this awkward position until they could talk it out. She tried to put it out of her mind, but she only grew more agitated as the day dragged on. That agitation only grew when she got an email from Draco sodding Malfoy right before lunch.

Ms. Weasley,

Steve and I signed the packet your office sent over and I've just gotten off the phone with Jack. I told him that you and I were still negotiating whether you'd join our team, but I'm not sure where you've landed on that. Are you free for lunch today so we can talk about a few things I didn't have the chance to bring up yesterday? I apologize for subjecting you to my presence so many times in one week, but time is of the essence with these deals, as you well know.

Best Regards,

Draco Malfoy

Ginny gnawed on her lip, trying to decide how to answer. She did have the time for a meeting and if she was being truthful, she was curious about what Malfoy had to say. She also hadn't forgotten how much potential the startup had for her own advancement.

'And if Harry really had a problem with this, he would have talked it out with me instead of disappearing in a strop,' she thought moodily. At any rate, she couldn't just delete the message because that would be too much like fleeing from battle.

Malfoy,

Congratulations on capitalizing on your partner's labor! Now that you've secured funding, I hope you'll be able to find some other way to add value, lest Steve realize he's hosting a parasitic life form. As YOU well know, playing host to something that drains the life out of you while making shiny promises is a bit of a pet peeve of mine.

I'm free for lunch today, but I don't know of any restaurants that serve ferrets or terrorists. Do you?

Virginia Weasley

Ten minutes later, her work line rang.

"Hello?"

"Weasley." Malfoy's icy voice made her focus all of her attention on the call. There was a blizzard of rage in that one word.

"To what do I owe the pleasure, and how did you get this number?" she asked, trying to sound blase.

"I have just read your insufferable email and your contact information is in your signature." She winced at the foolishness of her question - of course all her contact info was appended to every email. "I have done what I can to keep this awkward situation professional, but if you insist on provoking me in this childish way, then I don't see any way of us being able to work together in the future."

God, she wanted to tell him to fuck right off. She longed to tell him that she took more delight in provoking him than she would in a hundred promotions and a thousand closed deals. It was on the tip of her tongue to bring up every shitty thing he'd ever done to her, her family, her friends and use that as carte blanche to say whatever she wanted about him, thank you very much.

But he kept on talking. "I have apologized to you and I'll do so again. But the reality is that your boss has just given me money and basically told me to hire you. Unless I'm much mistaken, he's also told you to join a team. If you can get over yourself and just not be a bitch - we certainly don't have to be friends - then we can do something that benefits us both."

"Il Fornaio."

There was a long pause. "I beg your pardon?"

"Il Fornaio," she repeated. "The one close to the Embarcadero. Can you get there by noon?"

"I- yes, we'll be there." Great, he must mean his partner. She wasn't sure if that would make this meeting better, but maybe it was a good thing to have a bit of a buffer between them. She gritted her teeth, knowing that she owed him one more thing.

"Fine. And…I'm sorry. You're right, I was being a bitch and my email was childish and I shouldn't have sunk to that level." Her ears burned hotly in shame, but it was the truth. If she weren't so stressed about her fight with Harry, she might not have been so petty. Not that it was Harry's fault, either. Things were just messy at the moment.

"Well. Thank you." It almost sounded like a question, as if Malfoy hadn't expected her to give over so easily. He was clearly still wary, she noted with a slight smile. Well, if she couldn't be outright awful to him because of her stupid conscience, she could at least take some pleasure in keeping him off kilter. Maybe this lunch meeting wouldn't be awful.

"You can't keep avoiding me forever! Where are you and James even staying?"

"With Jae, obviously, I'm just here to pick up James's dino jacket and then I'll be out of your way."

"I don't want you 'out of the way,' I want us to sit down like two bloody adults and talk things through!"

"Funny, I thought you wanted to help a Grade-A tosser make a game out of my parents' deaths and the other hilariously shit moments of my life? Going to tell them about the Dursleys too?"

"Harry, I would never- "

"Oh, and I'm supposed to trust that? Because I would have said that you would never entertain the idea of collaboration with Draco fucking Malfoy, but here we are."

"If you would just listen to me- "

"Why should I? No, really, why the fuck should I stander and listen to someone I thought would always- You of all people should know how much I've had to give up and I reckon I don't owe anything else to anyone else for the rest of my bloody life. I don't owe all those muggles access to my private life, and I don't owe Malfoy my cooperation so he can make even more money than he already has, and I don't owe you another minute of my time."

Harry: 2, Ginny: 0

The lunch meeting was, in fact, awful, although not in the ways she had been expecting.

Ginny was the first to arrive, which gave her the opportunity to pick a nice booth, get settled with a glass of chardonnay, and watch Malfoy and his partner have a meltdown in front of the restaurant.

Malfoy was listening intently as the other one gesticulated wildly. A curt head shake and a clearly mouthed 'no' from the blond was enough to send the other into even more flailing and what looked like shouting. Malfoy grabbed him by the upper arm and yanked him to a stop and while he clearly wasn't shouting on the street, Ginny didn't think he was whispering sweet nothings into his partner's ear.

'Amusing, but it's not like this meeting needs any extra tension,' Ginny thought glumly. She was already aware that she'd been acting badly and the shame made her squirm. She wanted to resent Malfoy for causing her to feel shame, but that was the sort of childishness that had forced her into this awkward meeting in the first place. She could play nice, and she would play nice for the duration of this lunch.

However, she was also a firm believer in "do no evil, but take no shit."

She considered asking the waiter for the rest of the bottle of wine, but then Malfoy and his partner were standing in front of her table and she rose to meet them, extending her hand.

"Virginia Weasley, it's a pleasure to see you again, and congratulations on being funded."

"You don't have to pretend, I know there's some drama between you and Draco," the programmer - she really needed to try to remember his name - said as he slid into the booth, ignoring her outstretched hand. "I'm starving, does this place do free bread?"

"Hello Ms, Weasley, thank you for meeting with us with such short notice," Malfoy said, briefly shaking her hand and waiting for her to sit before he took his own place next to the other man. "I apologize for Steve's lack of manners; he assured me he would manage to be civil, but apparently we have two very different definitions of 'civil.'"

"Whatever," Steve grumbled, rolling his eyes and slouching into his seat. Malfoy shot an annoyed glare at him and Ginny was struck by the feeling of being at lunch with a single father and his recalcitrant teenage son. Maybe this was what Harry had to look forward to in ten years - but that made her heart hurt, so she put them resolutely from her mind.

"So what has Malfoy told you about our drama?" Ginny asked innocently.

"Oh, just that you all went to some posh boarding school and that his family and yours were on different political sides. I can kind of get that, I have a bunch of conservative family members who live in some swamp in the south and we don't really talk."

It was a decent analogy, considering that Malfoy must have had to come up with something on the fly that would explain the confrontation they'd had at the office. She wondered how much he'd said about the side he'd been on.

"That's true enough," she acknowledged. "There was also the fact that he bullied my brother and my best friend and his dad once-" she cut herself off, camouflaging by grabbing her glass of wine for another drink. God, she'd almost talked about the diary, which wasn't something she could say in front of muggles. This was harder than she'd been expecting; she'd never had to play muggle in front of any wizard other than Harry. She'd thought Steve might be a good buffer between her and Malfoy, but now she was realizing that this might be a dangerous trap. And how the hell was she supposed to clear the air with Malfoy if she couldn't even talk about anything from the past?

"Well, suffice it to say that I'm sure I'm not the first woman Malfoy has driven to drink," she said wryly, raising her glass ironically to the man.

"Yes, I've already accepted your judgment of me," Malfoy sounded bored and a little tired, "but I hardly think it's fair to hold my father's actions against me. I'd also like to point out that your best friend almost killed me, which is significantly worse than a bit of name calling."

"He also saved your arse a handful of times, so I'd say you're about even, wouldn't you?"

"What the fuck kind of school was this? I thought rich kids just sat around and did cocaine and rode horses or something at boarding school. Was this like a reform school for delinquents?" Steve burst in, causing both Ginny and Draco to start a little. Ginny hadn't even realized she was leaning toward her old enemy; there was something about him that drew her attention like a lightning rod and she couldn't help going after him.

"Do I really look like some kind of former delinquent to you?" She raised an eyebrow at Steve.

"No, you look pretty good to me," he said with what he probably thought was a suave leer.

She blinked. Malfoy blinked. She thought they probably had similar expressions of frozen incredulity (it wasn't exactly comforting to know that she and Malfoy had something in common, but at least it was confirmation that he didn't share this disgusting opinion). Such a blatant come on was so unexpectedly gauche, so out of place at a business meeting, and so very fucking unwelcome that she was surprised into laughter.

"Is he for real?" She asked Malfoy, not even looking at the rapidly reddening Steve.

"Unfortunately," Malfoy looked truly, deeply unhappy as one hand came up to massage his temples. "And the delightful creature you see before you is the result of several years of my efforts to reform him. Again, I apologize for his behavior."

"Uh, excuse me, I'm right fucking here," Steve interrupted.

"Yes, we're quite unfortunately aware," Ginny snapped, still not looking at him. "Listen, Malfoy, I need to know honestly, is he going to be more of a liability than an asset if I join your team?"

"Unfortunately, he's actually quite good at what he does and I don't think we can meet our timelines without him. I'll personally ensure that he doesn't, er, foist his attentions on you."

"That won't be necessary," she gave a smile like a shark, "I'll ensure that myself." She swiveled her head sharply and caught Steve as his mouth was opening to make some asinine retort and she raised a hand to stop him. "No, no, you've done nothing but mouth off since you got here and unless you'd like me to leave immediately you are now going to be silent and listen to me speak. Do you understand?"

He nodded meekly.

"Why do men think this is a winning strategy? No, Steve, that was a rhetorical question, I'm monologuing and you're still listening. Has that shit ever worked for you? You just say the first dumb thing that comes to mind when you see a pretty girl and she follows you home like a lost puppy?" She looked him over, slowly, forcing him to feel every inch of her scathing gaze. "I doubt that very much."

Malfoy was staring at her with a faint smile; it certainly didn't look like he'd be springing to his partner's defense. It almost seemed like he was supportive of her, which was a weird feeling, so she returned her focus to her main target.

"You have literally nothing that I want. There is no way that you could transform yourself to be desirable to me. I don't care that you find me attractive and I don't appreciate that you chose to express yourself in such a crude way in what should be a professional setting. You are not a threat, so anything you do is completely irrelevant to me. You, however, should be threatened by me. If I leave this restaurant and go to my boss's office and tell him what you just said to me, he'll replace you."

"You can't do that!" Steve squawked. "We've already signed the contract-"

"I can do that, and it's your bad luck to have offended someone like me who would get rid of you just because I can. My firm invested in your idea and your technology, but every single person is replaceable and if you annoy me enough you'll learn that firsthand. I'll accept an apology now and then we can move on to discussing the role that I'm being offered."

Steve was wide-eyed as he looked at her with a gratifying degree of fear. Malfoy had to punch Steve in the side before he gritted out a very quiet "Sorry."

The conversation went better from there. They discussed everything from title to compensation to expected work hours. Ginny's job was more or less to come up with the storylines for future games. Steve would create the software and Draco would ensure that their product sold. All of that was fine.

There was just one small, tiny, virtually insignificant thing Ginny wanted them to change.

"Absolutely not."

"Malfoy, surely you can see that this will make our lives much easier."

"I can appreciate that it might make your life somewhat easier, but you have no idea how long it took us to actually make the game we have now. You're talking about thousands of hours of work we'd be scrapping."

"I mean, can't you just tweak a few things? Change some of the images and keep the game mechanisms the same?"

"Yes, because changing the protagonist of the game is a minor tweak. Not."

"Yeah, hi, programmer here," Steve interjected. He'd been quiet since Ginny had put him in his place, but he was stirred into reluctant participation by her suggestions. "As the person who would actually have to do most of the grunt work, I can confirm that what you're asking for is bat shit crazy. We're 90% done with this software, I don't know why we'd start over at this point."

"I realize it's a big ask, but I think this could really differentiate us!" Ginny had known that it was a big ask, but she couldn't think how else she could salvage her friendship with Harry and yet still join Malfoy's startup. Her proposal could easily be rejected - it almost certainly would be - but she wasn't going to let that stop her from trying.

"I've taken a look at how many games there are on the market with male protagonists and it's over 90%" she continued before they could interrupt the argument she'd prepared. "There's a huge cultural movement to get girls into STEM right now; there are all sorts of platforms that are focusing their marketing on girls, so I think that if we switch up the storyline a bit, we could ride that movement to position ourselves as being more unique and also more current than the competition."

Steve was still muttering, but she could see that she'd caught Malfoy's attention. She'd hoped that she could convince Steve to side with her and that they'd outvote Malfoy, but she hadn't counted on a) Steve being such a dick, or b) Malfoy being reasonable.

"One of the publicity stops you have scheduled is the PAX West conference. They just announced a whole section of booths that will be devoted to female-protagonist games. They're going to do a special award for those games; even if we're only short listed, that's still way more attention than we'd get as a tiny fish in the relatively bigger pond of male-dominated games. Don't you want to give ourselves better odds of developing our following for our first game?"

"Let's say, in theory, that these are good points and something that could feasibly be done if we give Steve enough coffee-"

"There's not enough caffeine in the world to get that work done in time for PAX, you might as well just give me meth-"

"Shut up, Steve. Anyway, what would the new storyline even be?"

"I can have a draft for you by Monday. If you don't like it, we can stick with what you've got," Ginny said, trying to project confidence. In truth, she hadn't really decided what she'd write about, and she'd hoped that Harry would work with her to come up with something that would spare him from having his own life used as game fodder. But the git was unbelievably stubborn, so she'd probably have to work on the draft alone.

"Alright. We'll look forward to seeing what you come up with on Monday, then. I'll be in touch." Malfoy's face was impossible to read, but she thought it was a good sign he was willing to entertain the idea. Now she just had to write something compelling.

"Hellooo?"

"Hello, Jae? Are Harry and James there?"

"Um, yes, I had a tall credenza and a little side table delivered last week, but they're cramping my apartment and I'd like to return them."

"…What the hell, have you lost the plot?"

"Sorry Harry, I just have to step out to clear something up with these stupid Pottery Barn delivery people…Ginny, that was obviously a code and my wit is wasted on you. It's criminal. Yes, they're here, they've been here, and I'd like to know when they're no longer going to be here."

"Ask Harry! He's the one who refuses to be in the same room as me! He won't even attend meetings we're both scheduled for and I don't even know what to tell our boss."

"Damn, what did you do?"

"Why do you assume this is my fault?"

"Are you seriously trying to tell me that Harry is petty enough to jeopardize his job, uproot his son, and sleep on the terribly uncomfortable couch I inherited from my grandmother for no good reason? I'd like to remind you that this is the same man who apologizes to baristas when they get his order wrong."

"Well…how is he?"

"In crippling pain, I assume! I know for a fact that that shitty couch has zero lumbar support, but it's vintage Mario Bellini and if you knew what it cost to reupholster-"

"For fucks sake Jae, I meant, y'know, emotionally how is he?"

"How very dare you call my phone and try to make me talk about feelings? It's honestly disgusting."

"Jaesung."

"Virginia."

"Please."

"It's…not great. He hasn't said much, actually. But James is asking a lot of questions and I have absolutely none of the answers. I can be relied upon for cocktails and clever banter, sweetheart, not family therapy."

"Great. Could you just pass him a message for me? Tell him that I waited for him to come back when he was, er, on his prolonged hunting trip and that I'll wait for him again for as long as it takes to come back."

"Sure, I'll give him your not mysterious at all message."

"Oh, and Jae? What's a credenza?"

"It's like a sideboard, you uncultured swine."

"A what?"

"Never mind. It's my misfortune to be surrounded by people who are beneath me, but I soldier on."

Ginny could admit that she was a loud person, but to be fair, she was the product of a loud environment: the constant explosions coming from the twins, her mother's voice raised shrilly over the sound of a large family, the chaos of war.

The silence of her life with Harry had been a shock, but eventually it became one of the biggest perks to this major transition. Even the addition of James, a preternaturally quiet and docile baby, hadn't done much to shake that tranquility. Sometimes when work was particularly stressful, she'd find an empty conference room, turn off the lights, and just breathe into the quiet for a few moments until she was ready to put her game face back on.

And yet, for all that Ginny had learned to crave and appreciate a moment of calm nothingness, when she got a call from the hospital looking for "Virginia Weasley, emergency contact for James Potter," the way her brain shut down into absolute silence wasn't comforting at all.