Special thanks to my beta reader, Sizarie! And an extra thanks today to Azalai for helping get this chappy up!
Alright, I know it's been forever… but… well… I've been busying. Anyways, here it is, it's longer than the usual chappies, so be happy about that! I hope you like, and I'll try to get the next chapter out sooner.
Have fun!
Narcissa ran up the front steps of Dormien manor as quickly as her feet would carry her. Throwing open the doors she swept grandly into the front hall to see Aquilus and Jewel curled up together looking frightened and nervous a few feet away from Draco.
Draco… he was collapsed on the ground staring straight ahead with such a dead look in her eyes she almost believed for a moment he really was dead. Her poor baby! With a strangled cry she was by his side and wrapped her arms around him.
"Draco! Sweetface, it's okay." She shot a small reassuring smile to the twins. "It's okay, Draco. Everything will be alright."
Draco shuddered but didn't make any other reaction. Narcissa made soft soothing sounds and stroked his hair rocking him back and forth. "I won't let anything bad happen to you Draco, everything will work out with her. Just give her a bit of time to adjust."
Slowly he turned to her and buried his face in her chest, quivering like a leaf.
"Aquilus, Jewel, go get some of the house elves! Don't worry, your daddy will be fine." She added seeing how upset they looked. In fact, Jewel was crying and Aquilus was barely holding his tears back.
"Go on, it'll be okay, your daddy just needs to rest." She reassured them, waving her hand at them to move.
Aquilus took off first dragging Jewel behind him.
Sighing Narcissa turned back to her son. "Draco, you have to get up, darling. We'll put you in bed okay?" She stood slowly and rather forcefully dragged him to his feet. "Come on now, lucky your room isn't far from here. Only three flights up." Grimacing, she slowly led him up to his room.
Jewel shifted from foot to foot nervously and glanced over at her twin; Aquilus paced back and forth muttering words under his breath. Both of them stood outside their father's room waiting for their Grandmere to come and tell them if they could go in yet. Frowning she put her arm out to stop him as Aquilus paced in front of her again. "Could you stop that? You're making me even more nervous!"
He just glanced at her and scowling sat down by her feet. Ten seconds later he was fidgeting and drumming his fingers on the floor.
Jewel sighed and placed her hand over his. "You're going to drive me insane, you know that?"
He didn't say anything; Jewel looked over and found him staring at the wall. Slowly she wrapped her arms around him and laid her head on his chest, "you know something?"
He still didn't say anything.
"I think we have to find out what happened between Daddy and that lady and fix it."
Nothing.
"Because it is obviously very important."
Why did he always have to clam up like this when he was scared?
"I think Daddy might have loved her."
"I want her to suffer!"
Jewel jerked up and stared at her twin. "WHAT did you say?"
"I. Want. Her. To. Suffer."
"Why?!"
Aquilus slowly turned his head to look at her; she shivered, was that really her brother in there? "Our Dad is in that room right now in some sort of state of shock, or depression, or grief, or something and it was obviously caused by that lady. I want her to feel what he is feeling!"
Jewel swallowed, hard. Quietly she said, "I get the feeling she's suffering too, right now."
Aquilus shook his head, "I don't care! I want her to suffer! She- she…"
He was shaking. "She what, 'Quill?"
Finally he let the dam go and broke down sobbing. "She hurt our Daddy!" He turned and threw his arms around her, burrowing into her chest, "She hurt Daddy, nothing hurts Daddy!" The tears came even faster, "What if she hurts you next, what if Daddy doesn't get better, what…"
Jewel didn't let him finish. She wrapped her arms around him and rocked him back and forth. "It'll be okay 'Quill. After all, this is Daddy we're talking about! Nothing will ever stop Daddy!"
Ginny woke up in her bed in her flat with no idea how she got there. Stiffly she raised herself up on her elbows and looked around. Yep, it was definitely her flat, but no one appeared to be in the room. With a cold hand she lifted the blankets that had been piled on top of her and got out of her bed. She was in warm pajamas, and had big warm socks on her feet. Sleepily she shuffled out of the room-
Only to stop dead at the site of her mother bustling around cleaning her flat.
Molly Weasley looked up from her cleaning at the appearance of her daughter out of bed. Quickly she went into full-fledged-(dragon)-mum-mode! "What are you doing out of bed? You should be resting and staying warm!" Molly bustled over to her only daughter and pushed her back inside the bedroom. "Honestly, you pass out in the middle of no where, in a thunderstorm! Nearly give your father and I a heart attack," she paused to glare reprimandly at Ginny. "Why, I thought I was going to be sick when the clock pointed to lost, then, sick, then, unconscious! It was a good thing that we were able to use the family tracking spell in this weather!"
Ginny found herself tucked back into bed with a dozen covers pulled up to her chin as her mother continued on her rampage. "Your father was in a near panic when we found you, thought HE might have a heart attack! All cold and shivering when we got there. What was going on in your head I don't even want to guess! Sometimes-"
"Mum!" Interrupted Ginny who was getting a headache. "Do you think you could tone it down and maybe take away some of these blankets? I'm burning up!"
Molly gave her a withering glance, "of course you're burning up, wouldn't be surprised if you caught pneumonia being out there! You stay right there in bed while I go make you some soup and a potion." Molly headed to the kitchen calling over her shoulder, "and if you move even one of those blankets you'll regret it! I'll have you in bed for a month!"
Ginny gulped, her mum really would make sweet on that threat too! Sweating she settled back down for a long, hot, night.
Draco opened his eyes slowly, and immediately slammed them back shut as soon as he saw light. Who had left the bloody thing shining in his face anyways? Groaning he rolled over and pulled the pillow over his head. He felt like he'd been hit by a bloody train and decided at that moment that he was never getting out of bed again!
"Draco? Are you awake?"
Who the hell was making noise!
"Sweetface?"
Would they just shut up already?
"Dra-"
Apparently not, thus the next most logical course of action after ignoring them was to throw the pillow in their general vicinity. Unfortunately that caused the light to get at him and the voice still kept talking!
"Don't throw pillows at me young man! You turn over and sit up this instance!"
WHY WOULDN'T IT GO AWAY!?
"DRACO! You have two very frightened children outside your bedroom door waiting to hear if their Daddy is okay, and you're acting like a three year old! Get up this second and tell you kids that you're fine!"
Now that was important, so slowly… very, very slowly, Draco pulled the covers down from over his head and sat up. His mother stood at the foot of his bed with her hands on her hips glaring at him. He winced.
"Now," she began in a commanding tone. "You will smile pleasantly and look healthy as I let Jewel and Aquilus in to see you. You will reassure them that you are all right and hug them both and remind them of how much you love them. After that you and I are going to have a little chat and THEN you will go find Miss Weasley, and win her back. Do I make myself clear?"
Mothers, no matter how old you got they could still cut you down in a matter of moments. "Yes mother."
Narcissa nodded and went to the door. "He's awake, you may come in now."
Ginny sighed with relief when her mother finally left. As much as she loved the woman, her mother never seemed to get it through her head that she wasn't five anymore.
Inching out from under the many layers of blankets, she went to have a shower, her hair felt sticky and heavy, and she was covered in sweat from being under so many covers! Sometimes she wondered how she ended up growing up without going completely insane. Six brothers, an over protective mother, and a muggle obsessed father! Who would've blamed her if she had gone crazy? Certainly not herself!
Jewel and Aquilus ran straight across the floor and jumped onto the bed, tackling Draco. "Don't you EVER do that again!" Jewel whispered fiercely against his neck. Aquilus just clung to him.
Draco wrapped his arms around the two and pulled them even closer. "I won't." He assured. "And I'm okay, as soon as your Grandmere lets me, I'll be up and about."
Silence settled for several before finally Aquilus spoke, "start from the beginning. I want the whole story."
Molly muttered to herself as she made her way home. Honestly, that girl! What was she going to do with her? Ginny always had caused trouble, most people wouldn't realize it, but sometimes she was worse than Fred and George! Now, if she could just figure out what had happened to her baby…. In all her years she had only seen a handful of people make Ginny loose control. One was dead, two were living with Hermione in Scotland, the other five were nowhere near, and the last was missing. Well, at least, they thought he was missing. Perhaps he was the problem… but after ten years? Could they have really met again?
"We went to school together in Hogwarts, she was a year behind me and in Gryffindor, but we knew each other because I hated her brother, his girlfriend, and most of all, his best friend, Harry Potter."
"She knows Harry Potter?"
"She's practically related to him. Hell, she used to fancy him even!"
"Damn! Poor thing!"
Draco laughed, he had taught them well.
"Still, we never really conversed, even in way of insult until my sixth year. The headmaster, Dumbledore started a pen pal program and you can guess who I got as my pen pal!"
"Oh, I know, the lady!"
"Idiot, he was asking a rhetorical question!"
"I know, I was being sarcastic!"
"You need to work on your sarcasm then. Hey, what was her name anyways?"
"Ginny, Virginia Weasley. Gin or Ginny for short."
"Again may I say, the poor thing!"
"Well, we got to know each other because of the program, though we didn't know who we were talking to, it was anonymous. But at the end of the year we met, and after we got over the shock, started a real relationship."
"So what happened?"
"Yeah, where did it go wrong?"
"Well, you know the story of how I left Hogwarts a few weeks early to go into hiding with you?"
"Sure, it's dictated our life story!"
"You see, I couldn't tell anyone why I was leaving. Not even the girl I was in love with, and before you say anything, we were really in love! So I left her with basically a parting of: I love you, I don't know if I'll ever see you again, I can't tell you why I'm leaving, have a nice life."
"Why didn't you find her after you came back with us?"
"Did we cause that much trouble?"
"Yes you did, but you're worth every minute of it! I didn't look for her because I had decided before I left that given the circumstances I couldn't ask her to be with me. You have to remember, when I left she was just barely seventeen, and when I came back it was a week after she turned nineteen. She had finished her sixth year of school when you were born. It was too much to ask of her. The stress of balancing a romantic life, plus raising two toddlers, and making a living would've torn us apart. We loved each other, but I'm not sure anyone could survive that so young."
"Do you blame us?"
"Don't you think that! You are a blessing! I wouldn't change anything that had happened in my life the slightest bit!"
"Then, you don't regret letting her go?"
Draco sighed, how could he explain his feelings so they made sense? He didn't even understand them himself. "I do regret letting her go, but I don't regret gaining you two. I miss her, and I still love her, but I've gone on with my life. I'm fairly certain she feels the same way. We don't work with the other now; like two puzzle pieces that have been through so much ware and tear that they just don't fit together anymore."
Stepping out from the steaming shower she grabbed a towel and padded into the kitchen, wrapping it around her dripping body. She fixed herself a salad and sat down to eat it. The lettuce was a bit droopy, she'd have to get some more tomorrow, actually she should probably restock her whole kitchen. Even if she wasn't much of a cook, there was almost nothing left to eat in it.
After she was done eating she turned on her radio and listened to the witching hour for a while, but nothing good was on. She turned it off, and moved to her living room. Maybe she'd finally finish the book she was reading. She got through two pages and couldn't remember a word of what she'd read.
Finally she gave in. Virginia Weasley sat on her couch in her living room, with her head buried in her hands and cried. Cried because her heart didn't know if it was broken or healed, cried because she wasn't feeling well, cried because she didn't think the magazine would be ready by the end of the week, cried because she was confused. She cried because the love of her life had just walked back into her life, with two kids, a few billion galleons, everything she'd ever wanted, and she couldn't stand it!
Was it worth the wait (again)? I hope so. Next chapter is going to be mainly focused on Draco, and the twins getting ready for (and maybe even going to) Hogwarts.
Ummmm, just incase anyone's interested, part of the reason it took me so long to get this chapter out was because I got a puppy! He's a Mini Schnauzer, and is too smart for his own good! Just a few minutes ago he finally figured out how to climb to the top of the stairs, and boy is he proud of himself!
I know the story is going rather slow right now, but hopefully it'll pick up in a bit. However this isn't going to be a short story, the main plot (crisis) isn't going to hit until Christmas for them… so that would be about chappy ten or more for us. Hope you can hang on that long.
'Till next chapter,
-Dazma
Oh, wait, I almost forgot…
I've been getting requests and stuff for things like emails when I update. So if you want me to inform you when I update, send me an email from the address you want me to write to with the subject of mailing list, and I'll add you right away.
Now don't forget to review!