You Are The Only One
Summary – DG, Post Hogwarts, a tad AU-ish. What happens when your marriage does not turn out the way you envisioned? Would you stay, knowing that life would be a bit worse? Or would you cut and leave? Most importantly does true love last a lifetime? Ginny and Draco struggle to find out the answers before it is too late.
DISCLAIMER – Anything you recognise is not mine.
Part Five
True love lasts a lifetime – Emma Thompson in Love Actually
A storm had been predicted, and a wind had begun to rise; strands of Ginny's red hair whipped across her face as she sat in the yard of The Burrow, her swollen feet in a tub of reassuringly warm water. On this murky November day, she was finally back at home, having been given official maternity leave from work for the next few months.
Things were so much easier now that she had relented to her mother's requests to move back into The Burrow. At least she got to spend more time resting, and with her son, as she no longer had to take care of all the cooking and cleaning. Ginny rested her hands on her belly, and the baby turned, swimming in her sleep, executing what felt like a back flip.
It was then that Molly came stumbling out of the house, walking briskly towards her daughter, not knowing how to say what she had to say.
"Ginny," her mother began, stopping abruptly.
"What is it, Mum?" Ginny asked, taking her feet out of the tub. She knew something was wrong. It was in the way her mother said her name, it was in her eyes, a wary flicker, and in the quick breath she took.
"What is it? Is it Rafael?" The thought itself made Ginny put her hand to her chest. Her son was sitting in their room, absorbed in a book, the last she saw him.
Molly shook her head, reached her hand out, and touched Ginny's shoulder. Ginny flinched. Her stomach had dropped into a bottomless pit and she had a tingly feeling in her toes, the feeling she always got before disaster struck.
"It's Draco, darling." Molly's voice was thin and high. "He's been attacked."
This could not be, thought Ginny, even though she understood that it could. She felt something wrong in her fingers and toes, it was a whole lot like the edge of panic. It was panic she was feeling, that much she was certain. It was creeping along her spine, spreading into her veins, moving toward her vital organs. The blood was fast draining from her face. She was seeing spots before her eyes and every spot was red, hot as cider.
She realised her mother was still talking, "You were listed as the next of kin, so they contacted us. According to the healer, Draco had been mugged and stabbed. He's in the intensive healing unit at St. Mungo's, and his condition is still critical."
Twilight was casting purple shadows in the yard. The evening had turned even more overcast, and the birds had stopped calling. It was the hour when the crickets first began to call out a warning; their song quickened by the humidity of the coming storm. A storm with near hurricane-force winds had been predicted for late tomorrow. Right now though, Ginny's life was the thing in danger of being blown off its foundation.
"I have to see him." Ginny voiced the only coherent thought running through her head.
At that moment, she seemed to be someone who would jump from the branches of the tallest tree, convinced all she needed for a safe landing were her outstretched arms and a silk shawl to billow out and catch the air as she fell.
"Maybe you should wait. Just until Daddy comes back, he can take you," Molly tried her sweetest voice, the one that could cajole sense into her children.
She was worried about Ginny, and most of all, the baby. Apparating was not safe for Ginny in her condition. "Besides, I've contacted Harry and he's probably at St. Mungo's already."
But Ginny had made her decision. She refused to listen; once she pulled out her wand from her pocket, short of restraining her physically, Molly could do nothing but stand and watch as Ginny disapparated. She stood there motionless for a long while, staring at the empty space where her daughter had stood, musing how little control she had over her babies – no matter how old her children got, they would always be her babies.
As she stood there, a fine drizzle began and that was what made Rafael come after her. His grandmother was standing out there all alone, getting wet and not noticing.
"Oh no, Grandma? Is something wrong?" he asked, getting soaked as well.
In his opinion, it was truly creepy out tonight; it made no sense to be standing here in the dark. Rafael shivered and considered the overcast sky.
"No, let's go back in." All Molly could do was pretend that nothing was wrong.
Holding onto her grandson's hand as if he were leading her back to safety and not the other way around, they made their way back to the house. The rain was coming down hard; and there was a curtain of it, grey as a blanket of tears. The earth felt spongy and squished under their feet as they walked briskly across the yard.
Both grandmother and grandson were drenched through and through by the time they stepped into the kitchen. Their hair was plastered to their heads and their clothes were sopping wet.
"I want my mother," Rafael said in a very small voice as he stared out the window above the kitchen sink at the sky, which was black enough to convince him that it was midnight.
"She's out running some errands. We'll be fine, darling," Molly told him, fixing their clothes with a drying charm and conjuring up some camomile tea to settle her nerves.
"No need to worry," she told him as she tucked him in and kissed him goodnight awhile later, "We're safe and sound tonight."
Her hair stuck up like feathers from the rain and her breathing was ragged by the time Ginny reached St. Mungo's from the apparition point some distance away. She did not care about any of that, or about the fact that she squeaked when she walked, or about the dark water that she dripped all over the hospital lobby.
When Ginny burst in through the doors of the emergency unit, Harry did not recognise her. That was the way love walked in, barely dressed, confused, panic stricken, overcome, not caring what anyone thought or what he or she believed.
"Merlin, you look terrible," Harry said, before throwing his arms around her. They hugged each other, and then Ginny backed away. "You're soaking wet."
"How is he?" Ginny managed, her face was tight.
That was all she really cared about – Draco. There was a lot to lose when you had something, when you were foolish enough to let yourself care. Well, Ginny had gone ahead and done it by falling in love all over again with Draco, and her fate, she realised, was now out of her hands.
Just then, a tall, dark haired familiar looking man emerged from the swinging doors of the waiting room.
"Ginny." He smiled broadly at her.
She blinked at him in disbelief.
"Blaise!" She cried out, as they embraced.
Blaise was the kindest person that Ginny had been blessed to have been acquainted with during her years as Mrs. Malfoy. He was Draco's best friend, right hand man, and had always had a soft spot for Ginny and her quirky sense of humour.
"Well," Ginny said when she was done crying. She wiped at her eyes with her hands. "Who would have thought I'd get so emotional?"
"It's been a long time since we last met," he told her.
She nodded, "How is Draco?" Her voice sounded fragile, a shattered, dependable thing.
"I just spoke to the Healer," Blaise glanced at Harry, addressing both him and Ginny, "Draco's still in surgery. The stab wounds were pretty deep – in the chest area and abdomen, so there's been a lot of blood loss. His condition is still considered critical for now, and they'll let us know once the surgery's over."
"Wh- where was he attacked?"
It was Harry who answered, quietly, "in Knockturn Alley."
"What!" The hairs on Ginny's arms were standing on end at the very mention of Knockturn Alley. "But he knows better than to go in there, after all the Howlers he gets from former Deatheaters, even after the War." Blaise shrugged, seemingly baffled.
"Have they got the attacker?"
"No, it's difficult considering how many dodgy characters there are in that place," Blaise reasoned.
The group decided to camp out in the waiting room where Blaise fell asleep sometime near dawn around when Harry left to get food. Ginny stayed awake all night long. No one would ever guess she had not had any sleep. No one would ever guess how hard she wished for something.
The surgery lasted eleven hours, and the whole time Ginny pictured Draco's face, his shining eyes, and his perfect lips. She remembered how stubborn Draco always was when he wanted something. She remembered how he once told her that one reason he loved her was because she could never imagine some of things he was made to do during his youth by his father and the Dark Lord, and when he was with her, neither could he. She thought about his kisses, and the way he touched her, and she was turned inside out all over again.
She sat helpless, hearing Draco's goofy laughter when she had told him that she was pregnant with Rafael. She heard him singing the sleepy song to Rafael on the morning of his birth. She saw him drawing a heart with a marker on her swollen stomach. She watched him play Quidditch at Hogwarts, she sitting with the Gryffindors. Draco was older than she and so glamorous, even the way he wore his Quidditch robes made the hair on her arms stand up.
The weight of the possibility of never seeing or feeling Draco again descended on Ginny like a cloak made of ashes. Every voice sounded like fingernails against a chalkboard, and she had absolutely no tolerance for even the smallest bit of false hope.
All night she avoided Harry and Blaise and sat by herself, because, what was the point? Everything was about to be lost, and she could not stop it; she might as well give up and call it a day. The only problem was she could not do that. She had considerations now; she had for better or for worse, Rafael, and now, this baby.
When Ginny saw the Healer approach, she shook Blaise awake and he blinked in the fluorescent light of the waiting room while the Healer told them the good news.
"The first thing you need to know is that Mr. Malfoy is out of immediate danger. The prospects for recovery, cautiously at least, are quite good..."
With a close call like that, it made perfect sense that Ginny began to shake like a leaf in a thunderstorm. All night long, she had been preparing for the worst, and when the Healer left them after promising Ginny that she could see Draco in a few minutes, she sat down in one of the plastic waiting room chairs, and she cried.
As Ginny understood it, the greatest portion of grief was the one you dished out for yourself, and now, she knew what she had been missing. Better late than never, that was the way she saw it. People made mistakes all the time, and sometimes it was more than worthwhile to forgive someone, especially if that person was the man you loved all your life. Even if he had hurt you before.
Pride was a funny thing – it could make what was truly worthless seem like a treasure. As soon as you let go of it, pride shrank to the size of a fly, but one that had no head and no tail, and no wings with which to lift itself off the ground.
Who was she to be so certain and so righteous that her way was the best? From the very start, Ginny had been lying to herself, telling herself that she could handle everything. She did not want to lie anymore. One more lie and she would truly be lost. One more, and she would never find her way back through the woods.
Ginny gulped the coffee Harry had brought her; she was dying of thirst. Her throat actually hurt from all the lies she had told everyone, specifically Draco. Lies of omission were still lies after all. She wanted to come clean; she wanted to tell all.
In the post-op room, Draco was breathing slowly, deeply adrift inside the half-sleep of the anaesthetic potion, which was only just beginning to wear off. He thought he was walking on the black stone pavement of Knockturn Alley, searching for something. He thought there was darkness in the air itself and it was choking him.
He thought it had all dissipated when a beautiful woman leaned down close and whispered, I'll always be here. It was the voice from his dreams, the person who knew him inside out, Ginevra. He smiled just knowing she was there.
A day started out in one direction and ended in ways no one could imagine, with blood lost, with true love gained, with a swirling mass of stars below the fluorescent charmed lights, with good fortune where it was least expected to be found.
Draco Malfoy knew exactly who he was for one lucid moment, and that was more than could be said for most people. Before he sank back into sleep, he said Lucky aloud, as if that single word was his prayer and his protection, well worth repeating everyday of his life.
There was a vacuum hush in the room as Ginny sat with Draco's hand in hers for a long while, watching Draco sleeping in the dark with only the fluorescent charmed light at the back of the bed. She thought how wonderful it would be to climb up on the hospital sheets and lie beside him. And how impossible.
She pulled her chair as close to his head as she could and laid her face on the edge of his pillow to watch him breathing, to see the flutter of his eye beneath his eyelid when he dreamed. How could it be that you could love someone so much and keep it a secret from yourself as you awoke everyday away from your home?
It was so simple, as she watched him, as his regular breathing calmed her, that she did not even see it happening at first. She began to think of the rooms in their house, The Malfoy Manor, and the hours (that she had worked hard to forget) spent inside of them. Like fruit put up in jars and forgotten about, the sweetness seemed even more intense when she returned.
There on that shelf, were the dates, and the silliness of their early love, the braid that began to form of their dreams, the solid root of a burgeoning family; the first solid evidence of it all. Rafael. Ginny traced a new line on Draco's face. She liked the premature silvering of his temples.
Shortly after, she fell asleep after trying as hard as she could to keep her eyes open. To hold to everything all at once while she looked at that face, so that when he awoke she could say she loved him.
It was near Noon when Draco's eyes opened and he felt the warmth of Ginny's breath on his cheek even before he knew she was asleep. He wished that he could hold her, but he was too weak. Besides, he did not want to wake her.
The hospital was silent except for the sound of rain. He closed his eyes with the breath of Ginny reassuringly exhaling against his cheek, and listened to it, the silent patter on the slim metal windowsills. Then, he heard the sound of birds – small birds chirping, but he could not see them.
He felt Ginny's fingers, which had loosened their hold on his hand in sleep. That was the attachment; that was the way she held onto him. It was the only attachment Draco had to this world: the thread that had pulled him back. Then there was Rafael: the needle that pulled the thread.
Draco studied her with the leisure of someone who did not have to fear being caught. A few years on the rocks gave a person character. Although Ginny would never believe it, the lines on her face were the most beautiful parts of her. They revealed what she went through, what she survived, and who exactly she was, deep inside.
Her bulging stomach was very visible. He longed to place his hand flat on her belly and feel the baby. It did not matter anymore if it was his or not. He wanted her back anyway. She was here, and this time, despite it all, he was going to love her forever.
"You're awake," Ginny said, stirring. "I must have fallen asleep."
"It's wonderful to have you back," he said.
Ginny looked at him. Everything was stripped away in that moment.
"How do you do it?" She asked.
"I know that the things people in love do to each other, they remember. And if they stay together, it's not because they forget. It's because they forgive," he said.
"How about going away? Starting over again?" Ginny offered.
"Did it work?" He asked.
They were silent.
"Why don't you come lie down up here?" Draco asked. "I think there's more than enough space for you and that baby."
Ginny did not move.
"Harry and Blaise were wonderful. They were here all night," she said. "Harry got Luna to come and help me put all the flowers in water while you slept."
He looked around and made out their shapes. " Daffodils."
"Yes, our flower."
Ginny had to clamber onto the bed somewhat clumsily before they managed to stretch out beside each other so they could stare into each other's eyes.
"How's Rafael taking it all?"
"He doesn't know yet. He's still asleep. At The Burrow."
They were silent for a moment before Draco reached up and took a fiery strand of Ginny's hair, looping it around her ear. "I fell in love with you again while you were away," he said.
Ginny realised how fortunate she was to be where she was. Draco's love for her was not about looking back and loving something that would never change. It was about loving her for everything – for her brokenness and her feelings, for her being there right then in that moment. It was about his touching her hair with the side of his fingertip and knowing yet plumbing fearlessly the depths of her cinnamon eyes.
Ginny could not bring herself to say ' I love you' though – not yet, not now.
"I used to think there was a plan, a rough plan but a plan all the same," she admitted. "Now, I believe there are a thousand plans. Every breath, every decision, influences these plans, expands them, shortens them, twists them all around. It's always changing. Then, I wonder, in the end, where are we?"
It was silly to ask Draco, as though he knew, but he, in fact, did not hesitate. He took Ginny's and placed it on his chest, in the place he knew his heart to be. "There."
Ginny felt tears well up in her eyes at the feel of his heart beating steadily against his chest, and her hand.
"I always told Rafael that you had two hearts," she murmured. "Both so big and huge, and filled with love for me and him."
"I was at Knockturn Alley when I got attacked," he said then, his guilt wearing down on him like blocks of granite.
"I know."
"I was looking for a way to find out if that baby was mine." He placed one hand on the curve of her abdomen. "I was so desperate to know, and I decided Dark Arts were the only way. I almost would have been sucked in. If I hadn't been attacked, I might have gotten involved in dark magic just like my father. I was about to step into the shop, into the darkness." He wanted to curl into a ball and moan his self-hatred into the black.
Ginny shook her head once, holding him in her tear filled gaze. "I always told Rafael that Daddy is a king, not a prince. And kings know what must be done – even if it is hard – to make things right."
"Gin-"
"-He will do whatever he has to do for those he loves. Everyone makes mistakes. Everyone. Great men try to make things right. That's what great love is. That's why Daddy's a great man."
Draco felt drunk with Ginny. He felt the desire for her take hold of him as if it had been building since birth.
"Does that mean you will stay?" he asked.
"Don't you want to know if the baby is yours?" she asked, momentarily puzzled.
"That baby's mine." Draco sounded so certain that he surprised himself. It was almost as if the answer should have been obvious from the start.
"Ask me how I know." He looked a tad cheeky, almost like himself. Ginny wanted to laugh.
"How'd you know?"
"'Paternal instincts." A tiny smile curled up Ginny's lips.
"She's yours alright."
"Finally, a daughter to spoil."
Draco reached over and traced the line of Ginny's nose, ending with his finger over her lips. As he did, her lips parted ever so slightly.
"You'll have to lean down," Draco said, "I'm still a sick man."
As they kissed, they kept their eyes open; Ginny was the one to cry first, the tears dropping down onto Draco's cheeks until he wept too.
A/N NOTE
What will it take for Ginny to realize Draco's the one – she nearly losing him that's what
All my dg stories seem to make your'll cry..lol..
Now I just HAVE to check out "Nobody Does It Better" by Carly Simon
I ALWAYS push my luck..lol
That king bit is from the very tragic Mystic Rivers
This is my version of numbering..the caveman method where they draw lines for each chapter…lol
Anyway, give me MORE REVIEWS..am very greedy..was kidding about the hundred reviews babes and mates..lol
EILOGUE coming up!