Malfoy Manor had always given Draco the chills. It was his boyhood home,
the place where he could run and hide from the problems that existed
outside the gray gates that enclosed the mansion. It held all the
protection he could have ever needed, but it was also very isolated, very
dark, very cold.
And right now, the problem that existed did not live outside the mansion, HE lived inside the mansion.
Draco walked the long corridor to this father's study, occasionally passing house elves, who would bow silently as he passed, a gesture of welcome. The long carpeted floor was intimidating, with reds and greens everywhere. Candles lit the hallway, a sign of serenity to normal wizards. His father kept them there just so he would have easy access to fire in case someone attacked him in a wandless moment. Like his son, he was confident, but paranoid.
As he approached the large oak door, he for the first time noticed the intricate designs on it: a forest with some people, but by the bottom of the door, two of those people had been noosed, hung from the tree. How appropriate, he thought wryly. He knocked softly, hoping his father was either too busy or in no mood to talk to him. They had pre-arranged this meeting, but maybe there was an emergency at the Ministry, maybe pigs had started flying without magical assistance. After all, miracles do happen.
"Enter, Son," came a baleful voice from within.
"Father," he greeted, as he nervously sat himself in the chair across from his father. Large, maroon and leather, it stuck to his perspiration-soaked neck as he rested backwards.
"That swine Dumbledore owled me and said you would be coming home for a weekend. And while I not unhappy that you are home, one cannot help but ask why?"
Draco cleared his throat. "Mother? Is she here? I'd like her to sit in on this conversation also."
He shuffled some papers that sat on his desk. "No, your mother has gone to London, to purchase some new draperies. Your travels here were a little last minute, your mother had already made plans."
"I see," he acknowledged, internally petrified that his mother, the one person he knew would defend him to the death, soften the blow, was not present at the Manor - but it was either now or never. He needed to tell his father.
"The Dark Lord has been wanting to speak to you," Lucius told his son quietly. "You are a few months from eighteen. Your initiation is right around the corner."
"A few months yet, Father," he reminded gently. "As the time approaches, we will discuss it more."
"He is impatient. There are few of us left. The more fresh flesh in the group, the better off we will be."
"Yes, Father," he acknowledged, sick to his stomach that his father still wanted him to align with the Dark Lord. And while he had little, if any, problem with his father being apart of what was little more than a group of playground bullies, he knew aligning with the Dark Side could potentially cause a strain between him and new fiancée. He really didn't want to risk it. He had no problem cursing Potter, hoping that the twit was turning in his grave when HE was with Ginny that night in the Great Hall, but he just did not have the evil in him to be EVIL. Murder was just not his style. Perhaps he was underestimating the power of the Dark Lord, but he had grown up with He-Who-Must-Not-be-Named as a constant fixture in his life. This made him almost immune to the daily taunts his father spewed day in and day out, messages straight from You-Know-Who himself.
"Son?" Lucius prompted. "What is this news you have for me?"
Just do it, Draco urged himself. Just break the news. Fast and quick. Like taking off one of those despicable Muggle contraptions - Band-Aids: the slower you are, the more pain you cause. And if you break the news quickly, you might shock the poor bastard into a heart attack or something. Miracles do happen. . .
"I. . ." he started. "I have some news for you - and Mother. All rather good. . .shocking, but good."
Lucius gawped at his son. "Yes, get on with it then. What is this good, shocking news?"
He fiddled with his hands, looking at them intently, before bringing his head up. Just do it. Just do it. "Congratulations, Grandpa!"
Lucius fell backwards in his chair. Speechless for a moment, all he could manage to get out was, "Huh?"
"You are going to be a grandfather," he reiterated, a smile plastered on his face, as if he were breaking the best news in the world to his father.
His father took a moment before booming, "Damn naïve Dumbledore! He thinks all his students are all bloody saints, doesn't he? Doesn't believe in teaching the Contraceptus Potion. I swear I'll take this up with the Board of Governor's. I'll get that ancient beast fired, if it's the last thing I do. . ."
"Father," he whispered, "it's not Dumbledore's fault. It's mine."
"You're a strapping young boy, Draco. Rich, quite a catch. I can't believe you'd be so stupid to forget something so important. The girl, it must be the girl. You'll be inheriting more wealth than most wizards will ever see! She trapped you, didn't she?" He stood up, his hands hitting the table. "I bet she expects a portion of it, in exchange for termination, doesn't she?"
"There will be no termination of the pregnancy, Father. She will carry it to term. And it is not her fault that WE ended up in this situation, it's both of our faults, I suppose, mine more than hers, but. . ."
"Who is it? Is it that Pansy girl who sniffs around like a dog in heat whenever your mother and I are at Quidditch matches?"
"Pansy? No, never," he said, thanking the gods that, in all the times that they had slept together, Pansy had remembered her Contraceptus Potion. He shivered at the thought - they would have made some rather pasty children.
"Well, then? Who is it then?"
"Weasley," he muttered, almost silently.
"Who? Repeat that?"
"Weasley, Ginny Weasley. Arthur Weasley's youngest. He works at the Ministry too," Draco answered, a little louder.
"Arthur Weasley's daughter? Draco, to what levels have you sunk? A Weasley. That poor, worthless excuse of a wizarding family? Good gods!" he yelled. The tirade continued for a few minutes about the repugnance of the Weasley clan - not unlike the one that Arthur Weasley had offered him at his modest home, against the Malfoy family, of course. "I can't believe that. You copulated with a Weasley? What, were no house elves or hippogriffs available? A Weasley?" A flabbergasted look sat on his face. "How far along is the wench?"
"A month or so," he said.
Lucius calmed down, the flush that had inhabited his neck slowly creeping downward. His face returned to its normal pale. "And she refuses to terminate?"
He nodded.
"Well, then, these seem to be our only options here, Draco," he started calmly, pulling out a sheet of parchment. "One, we can - tragically - cause an unexpected loss of pregnancy with a potion you can slip into her food. Two, we can kill the girl ourselves. Take your pick."
Draco rose from the chair, his jaw flailing. "Neither. I refuse to let you do that to the mother of my child."
"My, my, rather defensive of the harlot, aren't you?" Lucius asked spitefully. "Are you sure the child is yours?"
"Yes," he answered confidently.
"Fine then," he responded nonplussed, "If the strumpet is to bear your child, then you will not allow it to be a bastard." He pressed his robes down, the small wrinkles disappearing. "I will not allow it to be a bastard - I do have a reputation to maintain."
"So, what are you saying?" Draco questioned.
"Really quite simple, boy. I am saying, either you marry the girl before she starts to show, and keep her and your offshoot away from me, or I will kill her. There are certain things that are expected from us Malfoys, families of our status in this community. Bastards are not one of them." Utilizing his wand, he opened the door for Draco. "That will be all."
"But, Father," he started pleadingly, "she refuses to marry me. . ."
He brought his hand up to his chin, stroking it. "Well, that's quite a conundrum, isn't it, Draco? This is the way I see the situation: either you convince her to marry you, or she dies. Put it to her like that. Its really not a difficult decision." He looked at his papers again. "If you'll excuse me. . ."
Draco knew there was more to be said, but his father was too wrapped in whatever task he was completing for the Dark Lord today. There would be no use pleading with him now.
He got up and walked toward the fireplace.
*****
There was nothing that could be done about the situation at hand, Ginny thought frightfully as she sat in the Slytherin Common Room with Draco. The Slytherins all looked questioningly at their ringleader when he walked in sporting a redheaded Gryffindor.
Pansy was so annoyed that she departed huffily to her dormitory, despite being involved with a chess game.
Draco sat across from her, as they occupied a quiet corner. Surprisingly, the Slytherin Common Room was much more quiet than Gryffindor. Evil is silent, she reminded herself thoughtfully.
"So we marry?" he questioned her almost desperately, taking grasp of her hand.
Ginny reflexively pulled her hand backwards. "I don't want to. I swear. I won't make a very good wife."
"Your parents, you heard what they said. And my father. . ." He shivered as he thought about how the confrontation with his father had commenced. "You don't understand, Ginny, we need to get married," he whispered earnestly. He hadn't told her of his father's proposal. The less stress on her mind, the better it was for Leah - the baby - whatever.
"Why, Malfoy? Why do we need to get married so badly?" she asked suspiciously. "You don't love me. I don't love you. There is nothing between us except one night and two children brought back from the future. A child is no reason to chain yourself to someone."
He stared at her pensively. "I say a kid is as good a reason as any," he said, rather unconvincingly.
"I don't love you!" she hissed at him. "I will not marry you."
"Damn it all, Ginny," he said through clenched teeth, getting off his chair and kneeling at the base of her chair. "You do not understand. . . We need to get married. For the child. I don't love you, it's true, and you don't love me, but trust me when I say that I would make a good husband. You'll have access to my inheritance and offer the best possible life for Leah and Rachel in the long run. Trust me when I say you won't get far with your father supporting you. He has enough of a time budgeting for you and your brothers, and while I suppose he's doing a good job, it's not good enough for YOU to add another mouth to an already strapped family."
She rested back in the chair and closed her eyes, placing her hands on her growing abdomen, thinking. He could tell what was playing in her mind before she'd even opened her eyes and spoken. Potter. Always Potter. She was trying to fathom a life married to a Malfoy instead of a Potter. Trying to rectify a life planned as a spinster after Potter's death with one as a rich man's wife. Truth be told, those two lives contrasted drastically.
For Leah, for Rachel, for her family, for his family, reputations needed to be salvaged. Mistakes needed to be erased. Marriages needed to occur. Her shoulders slumped as she came to the realization that the only way to have any kind of contact with her family was to marry Malfoy.
She rolled that around in her head. Marry Malfoy. She'd be Ginny Malfoy. Eugenie Molly Weasley-Malfoy. Ginny Weasley-Malfoy.
Oh Blast-Ended Skrewts, she would be a Malfoy.
She opened her eyes, looking at the boy who sat at her feet: blonde, pale, not totally unattractive, but pathetic. So pathetic. Allowing himself to be bullied into marriage. No backbone to say no. There was no other word for her husband-to-be but pathetic.
Then of course, she was as pathetic as he, because she was about to give this marriage proposal her consent. "Fine," she sighed, defeated. "I'll marry you."
Her fiancé looked relieved, but less than thrilled at the prospect of his impending wedding. "So, what, ummm, do we do now? How does one go about planning a wedding?"
She looked at him, aghast. "You think pregnancy immediately endows me with Martha Stewart-like qualities or something?" (At his confused expression, she remembered to whom she was talking: the king of the Muggle-frees.) "She's a Muggle queen of the homemakers, Malfoy." She got out of the chair, the stares of his fellow Slytherins finally getting to her. "I know as much about wedding planning as you do about celibacy. And trust me, that's not saying much."
Marriage to Ginny Weasley was going to one tumultuous ride, flinching internally at the thought as he escorted her out of the Common Room.
A/N A few people commented after the previous chapter that Ginny was short for Virginia. NOWHERE in canon, according to a message board @ Fiction Alley specifically discussing Ginny's given name, does it state that Virginia is her actual first name:
http://www.fictionalley.org/fictionalleypark/forums/showthread.php?s=&thread id=24772
Also, the completely thorough Harry Potter Lexicon would have mentioned whether Ginny's full name was Virginia in canon. It states no such thing. Go see for yourself:
http://www.i2k.com/~svderark/lexicon/ginny.html
I don't particularly care for that name either, so I gave her something different.
Call me a blaspheme of all that is sacred in HP fanfic, call me creative, just don't call me late to dinner.
And right now, the problem that existed did not live outside the mansion, HE lived inside the mansion.
Draco walked the long corridor to this father's study, occasionally passing house elves, who would bow silently as he passed, a gesture of welcome. The long carpeted floor was intimidating, with reds and greens everywhere. Candles lit the hallway, a sign of serenity to normal wizards. His father kept them there just so he would have easy access to fire in case someone attacked him in a wandless moment. Like his son, he was confident, but paranoid.
As he approached the large oak door, he for the first time noticed the intricate designs on it: a forest with some people, but by the bottom of the door, two of those people had been noosed, hung from the tree. How appropriate, he thought wryly. He knocked softly, hoping his father was either too busy or in no mood to talk to him. They had pre-arranged this meeting, but maybe there was an emergency at the Ministry, maybe pigs had started flying without magical assistance. After all, miracles do happen.
"Enter, Son," came a baleful voice from within.
"Father," he greeted, as he nervously sat himself in the chair across from his father. Large, maroon and leather, it stuck to his perspiration-soaked neck as he rested backwards.
"That swine Dumbledore owled me and said you would be coming home for a weekend. And while I not unhappy that you are home, one cannot help but ask why?"
Draco cleared his throat. "Mother? Is she here? I'd like her to sit in on this conversation also."
He shuffled some papers that sat on his desk. "No, your mother has gone to London, to purchase some new draperies. Your travels here were a little last minute, your mother had already made plans."
"I see," he acknowledged, internally petrified that his mother, the one person he knew would defend him to the death, soften the blow, was not present at the Manor - but it was either now or never. He needed to tell his father.
"The Dark Lord has been wanting to speak to you," Lucius told his son quietly. "You are a few months from eighteen. Your initiation is right around the corner."
"A few months yet, Father," he reminded gently. "As the time approaches, we will discuss it more."
"He is impatient. There are few of us left. The more fresh flesh in the group, the better off we will be."
"Yes, Father," he acknowledged, sick to his stomach that his father still wanted him to align with the Dark Lord. And while he had little, if any, problem with his father being apart of what was little more than a group of playground bullies, he knew aligning with the Dark Side could potentially cause a strain between him and new fiancée. He really didn't want to risk it. He had no problem cursing Potter, hoping that the twit was turning in his grave when HE was with Ginny that night in the Great Hall, but he just did not have the evil in him to be EVIL. Murder was just not his style. Perhaps he was underestimating the power of the Dark Lord, but he had grown up with He-Who-Must-Not-be-Named as a constant fixture in his life. This made him almost immune to the daily taunts his father spewed day in and day out, messages straight from You-Know-Who himself.
"Son?" Lucius prompted. "What is this news you have for me?"
Just do it, Draco urged himself. Just break the news. Fast and quick. Like taking off one of those despicable Muggle contraptions - Band-Aids: the slower you are, the more pain you cause. And if you break the news quickly, you might shock the poor bastard into a heart attack or something. Miracles do happen. . .
"I. . ." he started. "I have some news for you - and Mother. All rather good. . .shocking, but good."
Lucius gawped at his son. "Yes, get on with it then. What is this good, shocking news?"
He fiddled with his hands, looking at them intently, before bringing his head up. Just do it. Just do it. "Congratulations, Grandpa!"
Lucius fell backwards in his chair. Speechless for a moment, all he could manage to get out was, "Huh?"
"You are going to be a grandfather," he reiterated, a smile plastered on his face, as if he were breaking the best news in the world to his father.
His father took a moment before booming, "Damn naïve Dumbledore! He thinks all his students are all bloody saints, doesn't he? Doesn't believe in teaching the Contraceptus Potion. I swear I'll take this up with the Board of Governor's. I'll get that ancient beast fired, if it's the last thing I do. . ."
"Father," he whispered, "it's not Dumbledore's fault. It's mine."
"You're a strapping young boy, Draco. Rich, quite a catch. I can't believe you'd be so stupid to forget something so important. The girl, it must be the girl. You'll be inheriting more wealth than most wizards will ever see! She trapped you, didn't she?" He stood up, his hands hitting the table. "I bet she expects a portion of it, in exchange for termination, doesn't she?"
"There will be no termination of the pregnancy, Father. She will carry it to term. And it is not her fault that WE ended up in this situation, it's both of our faults, I suppose, mine more than hers, but. . ."
"Who is it? Is it that Pansy girl who sniffs around like a dog in heat whenever your mother and I are at Quidditch matches?"
"Pansy? No, never," he said, thanking the gods that, in all the times that they had slept together, Pansy had remembered her Contraceptus Potion. He shivered at the thought - they would have made some rather pasty children.
"Well, then? Who is it then?"
"Weasley," he muttered, almost silently.
"Who? Repeat that?"
"Weasley, Ginny Weasley. Arthur Weasley's youngest. He works at the Ministry too," Draco answered, a little louder.
"Arthur Weasley's daughter? Draco, to what levels have you sunk? A Weasley. That poor, worthless excuse of a wizarding family? Good gods!" he yelled. The tirade continued for a few minutes about the repugnance of the Weasley clan - not unlike the one that Arthur Weasley had offered him at his modest home, against the Malfoy family, of course. "I can't believe that. You copulated with a Weasley? What, were no house elves or hippogriffs available? A Weasley?" A flabbergasted look sat on his face. "How far along is the wench?"
"A month or so," he said.
Lucius calmed down, the flush that had inhabited his neck slowly creeping downward. His face returned to its normal pale. "And she refuses to terminate?"
He nodded.
"Well, then, these seem to be our only options here, Draco," he started calmly, pulling out a sheet of parchment. "One, we can - tragically - cause an unexpected loss of pregnancy with a potion you can slip into her food. Two, we can kill the girl ourselves. Take your pick."
Draco rose from the chair, his jaw flailing. "Neither. I refuse to let you do that to the mother of my child."
"My, my, rather defensive of the harlot, aren't you?" Lucius asked spitefully. "Are you sure the child is yours?"
"Yes," he answered confidently.
"Fine then," he responded nonplussed, "If the strumpet is to bear your child, then you will not allow it to be a bastard." He pressed his robes down, the small wrinkles disappearing. "I will not allow it to be a bastard - I do have a reputation to maintain."
"So, what are you saying?" Draco questioned.
"Really quite simple, boy. I am saying, either you marry the girl before she starts to show, and keep her and your offshoot away from me, or I will kill her. There are certain things that are expected from us Malfoys, families of our status in this community. Bastards are not one of them." Utilizing his wand, he opened the door for Draco. "That will be all."
"But, Father," he started pleadingly, "she refuses to marry me. . ."
He brought his hand up to his chin, stroking it. "Well, that's quite a conundrum, isn't it, Draco? This is the way I see the situation: either you convince her to marry you, or she dies. Put it to her like that. Its really not a difficult decision." He looked at his papers again. "If you'll excuse me. . ."
Draco knew there was more to be said, but his father was too wrapped in whatever task he was completing for the Dark Lord today. There would be no use pleading with him now.
He got up and walked toward the fireplace.
*****
There was nothing that could be done about the situation at hand, Ginny thought frightfully as she sat in the Slytherin Common Room with Draco. The Slytherins all looked questioningly at their ringleader when he walked in sporting a redheaded Gryffindor.
Pansy was so annoyed that she departed huffily to her dormitory, despite being involved with a chess game.
Draco sat across from her, as they occupied a quiet corner. Surprisingly, the Slytherin Common Room was much more quiet than Gryffindor. Evil is silent, she reminded herself thoughtfully.
"So we marry?" he questioned her almost desperately, taking grasp of her hand.
Ginny reflexively pulled her hand backwards. "I don't want to. I swear. I won't make a very good wife."
"Your parents, you heard what they said. And my father. . ." He shivered as he thought about how the confrontation with his father had commenced. "You don't understand, Ginny, we need to get married," he whispered earnestly. He hadn't told her of his father's proposal. The less stress on her mind, the better it was for Leah - the baby - whatever.
"Why, Malfoy? Why do we need to get married so badly?" she asked suspiciously. "You don't love me. I don't love you. There is nothing between us except one night and two children brought back from the future. A child is no reason to chain yourself to someone."
He stared at her pensively. "I say a kid is as good a reason as any," he said, rather unconvincingly.
"I don't love you!" she hissed at him. "I will not marry you."
"Damn it all, Ginny," he said through clenched teeth, getting off his chair and kneeling at the base of her chair. "You do not understand. . . We need to get married. For the child. I don't love you, it's true, and you don't love me, but trust me when I say that I would make a good husband. You'll have access to my inheritance and offer the best possible life for Leah and Rachel in the long run. Trust me when I say you won't get far with your father supporting you. He has enough of a time budgeting for you and your brothers, and while I suppose he's doing a good job, it's not good enough for YOU to add another mouth to an already strapped family."
She rested back in the chair and closed her eyes, placing her hands on her growing abdomen, thinking. He could tell what was playing in her mind before she'd even opened her eyes and spoken. Potter. Always Potter. She was trying to fathom a life married to a Malfoy instead of a Potter. Trying to rectify a life planned as a spinster after Potter's death with one as a rich man's wife. Truth be told, those two lives contrasted drastically.
For Leah, for Rachel, for her family, for his family, reputations needed to be salvaged. Mistakes needed to be erased. Marriages needed to occur. Her shoulders slumped as she came to the realization that the only way to have any kind of contact with her family was to marry Malfoy.
She rolled that around in her head. Marry Malfoy. She'd be Ginny Malfoy. Eugenie Molly Weasley-Malfoy. Ginny Weasley-Malfoy.
Oh Blast-Ended Skrewts, she would be a Malfoy.
She opened her eyes, looking at the boy who sat at her feet: blonde, pale, not totally unattractive, but pathetic. So pathetic. Allowing himself to be bullied into marriage. No backbone to say no. There was no other word for her husband-to-be but pathetic.
Then of course, she was as pathetic as he, because she was about to give this marriage proposal her consent. "Fine," she sighed, defeated. "I'll marry you."
Her fiancé looked relieved, but less than thrilled at the prospect of his impending wedding. "So, what, ummm, do we do now? How does one go about planning a wedding?"
She looked at him, aghast. "You think pregnancy immediately endows me with Martha Stewart-like qualities or something?" (At his confused expression, she remembered to whom she was talking: the king of the Muggle-frees.) "She's a Muggle queen of the homemakers, Malfoy." She got out of the chair, the stares of his fellow Slytherins finally getting to her. "I know as much about wedding planning as you do about celibacy. And trust me, that's not saying much."
Marriage to Ginny Weasley was going to one tumultuous ride, flinching internally at the thought as he escorted her out of the Common Room.
A/N A few people commented after the previous chapter that Ginny was short for Virginia. NOWHERE in canon, according to a message board @ Fiction Alley specifically discussing Ginny's given name, does it state that Virginia is her actual first name:
http://www.fictionalley.org/fictionalleypark/forums/showthread.php?s=&thread id=24772
Also, the completely thorough Harry Potter Lexicon would have mentioned whether Ginny's full name was Virginia in canon. It states no such thing. Go see for yourself:
http://www.i2k.com/~svderark/lexicon/ginny.html
I don't particularly care for that name either, so I gave her something different.
Call me a blaspheme of all that is sacred in HP fanfic, call me creative, just don't call me late to dinner.