A/N: Draco comes to Ginny's rescue, and has a lot of time to think about what loving her requires of him. An outtake from Chapter 13 of "Ginny Weasley and the Curse of the Firstborn." If you haven't read that first, you probably won't understand this.

Letting Go

Draco had been pacing the floor in his bedroom for an hour. He kicked viciously at the fireplace. Love. What the hell did he know about love? He'd never loved another person in his life. He might have come close to it with his mother, but he knew himself well: what he'd mostly felt toward his mother was greed. He'd been attached to her only as far as she had something to give him… Come to think of it, that effectively described any relationship he'd ever had with another woman.

Except Ginny.

Ginny had nothing to offer him: not money; not political connections; not any particular beauty; not status; not experience. And yet when she was in the room with him, he felt himself come alive in a way he never had before. When she was there, Four Winds felt like home: like there was a reason to stay. She challenged the comfortable status quo he had come to live at, not only by the things she said, but simply by being who she was.

And the way she had kissed him on the beach… Draco closed his eyes against a little shock wave of pleasure. But the kiss had been before she knew about Dark of the Moon. There would be no more kisses now.

Frustrated, he went to the wall-mounted potions kit in the bathroom and took out the makings of a Dreamless Sleeping Draught. He needed to stop thinking like this; he needed to sleep, and to forget.

He was mixing it when the green light from the bedroom caught his eye. A Floo call. He dropped the bottle of valerian root into the sink with a clatter, and went to kneel on the hearth rug. As always, the fireplace was empty except for the flames, flickering green, and cool, and clear as glass.

"Headquarters!" he said, and stuck his head into the fire.

When it stopped spinning, he was looking into a shabby kitchen. There was the familiar scarred and scrubbed wooden table, the strange clock with nine hands, and the old, enamelled sink, chipped and stained, but shining clean. There was also Arthur Weasley, crouched near the fireplace, waiting for him.

Without preamble, Arthur began to reel off his report.

"Good. Malfoy. Convenience shop robbery at the corner of Crandall and Lutz, London. Apparition coordinates QE-seven-nine and LL-thirty. Got that?"

Draco committed it to memory. "Got it."

"Good. My sources tell me the fuse box in the shop has been shot up and the place is on fire. Several customers still inside."

"Is everyone there already?"

"No, Kincaid has still to come."

"He'll be right behind me, I expect," said Draco. "See you there."

"Take care, son."

"I always do." Draco pulled his head back into his room at Four Winds, and began pulling off his robes. With nearly contiguous motions born of long practise, he reached for his tatty jeans and a sweatshirt from the clothes cupboard, even as his dress robes were coming over his head. In thirty seconds, he was standing in front of the convenience shop in London.

It was a tiny, dingy place, but a brightly-lit sign in the window advertised, "Open 24 Hours!" Smoke clouded the glass door, and seeped out around the edges. Two or three onlookers hung about the edges of the pavement, talking among themselves in frightened whispers, and from inside the shop, Draco could hear muffled shouts, and an odd, popping sound he recognized as gunfire. Reaching for his wand, he pulled open the shop door and slipped inside.

The smoke stung his throat and made his eyes water. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket, clapped it over his nose and mouth, and moved forward, following the sounds of the shouting. He felt his foot strike something soft on the floor, and he nearly stumbled. Crouching down, he found it was a person. He shovelled his arms under the still form and heaved it gracelessly up. Staggering a little under the load, he headed back for the door.

Outside, he sucked in great gulps of fresh air and looked around. David Gordon was off to the right, a middle-aged man sitting at his feet, holding his arm and rocking back and forth. Draco made his way over, and dumped his own burden unceremoniously onto the pavement, next to the man. For the first time, he looked at the person he had rescued. It was a young woman – or at least he thought it was a woman – dressed in baggy clothes and army boots, her hair cropped close to her head, with several piercings in her nose, ears, and eyebrows. She was unconscious.

At that moment, Lowen Kincaid appeared beside him, and Draco turned. There might be more people inside yet. "Ready?" he said to the big man, and Kincaid nodded tersely. Together, they charged back into the shop.

This time, he hadn't gonea dozen steps before he crashed into one of the gunmen. His shoulder caught the man in the back, and the gunman turned with a yelp of surprise. The two went down in a tangle of arms and legs. Dimly, Draco heard the gun fire over his shoulder. Twisting quickly, he rolled on top of the other man, and rammed a fist into his nose. He felt it collapse under his knuckles with a satisfying crunch. The body under him went limp, and Draco stabbed his wand at the man's chest.

"Stupefy!"

The man didn't move again: not then, and not when Draco dragged his unresisting body out onto the pavement and dumped it there. He paused for a moment. In the distance, he heard the wail of sirens; they didn't have much time. He plunged back in.

The smoke was thicker now, and the back of the shop was lit by an ominous, orange light. He heard the crackle of flames from somewhere far away; felt the air in the place already heating up. Draco sensed, rather than saw, Arthur Weasley brush by him with another body in his arms.

"There's someone over there!" Arthur called out, giving him a sharp nudge on the shoulder. Draco turned left and groped his way through the smoke. The shop was small, and within moments, his foot kicked the body lying on the floor. Automatically, he bent and pulled it up into his arms. For a second the smoke cleared, and Draco caught a flash of brilliant, ginger hair. His blood froze in his veins.

It was Ginny.

His mind refused, at first, to accept it. How had she gotten here? But here she was, and she was in his arms, frighteningly limp. She coughed just then, and clutched at his shirtfront, and it jolted him into action. Draco stumbled back toward the door, wild, unreasoning panic sweeping through him. Outside, under a street lamp, he saw that the front of her blue jumper was soaked with a dark, wet stain. Blood. Oh Morgana, she'd been shot.

'Ginny!' He didn't know if he had spoken it aloud or not. He lowered her to the pavement, and groped for her hand, tugging at it, willing her to turn and open her eyes, to speak to him. She lay still, and he couldn't tell if she was even breathing.

He took her by the shoulders and shook her roughly. "Ginny!"

She made a little whimpering sound, but that was all.

'Don't die on me,' he thought.

He glanced around himself uneasily. Three Muggle police cars were pulling up to the kerb, their blue lights flashing so blindingly Draco had to shield his eyes against them.

"Time to get out of here," he heard Lowen Kincaid mutter, behind him.

He couldn't just leave Ginny here.

"Here comes Gordon now," Kincaid said.

"Ginny, talk to me!" She lay still, and he shook her again, impotently. Funny that he could rush into a burning building and pull out strangers with a perfectly clear head, but he could not think what to do when it was Ginny who needed help.

David Gordon came toward them. "Let's go. Where's the Commander?"

"Just leaving the sign, I expect," Lowen told him.

Draco felt David crouch beside him, and he seemed to sum up the situation in a glance. "Get this one to St Mungo's," he said tersely.

Draco felt that his feet were fused to the pavement: he could not make them move.

"Take her, Malfoy," Gordon said, his voice urgent. "Get out of here."

Wildly, Draco looked around. There was a red phone box nearby. Like most phone boxes, it probably doubled as an Apparition Port. He hauled Ginny by the neck of her jumper back into his arms, and stood up. He staggered towards the phone box, and pushed open the door with his shoulder. For a brief moment, caution asserted itself, and he fumbled a pair of sunglasses out of his pocket and put them on. It was the middle of the night, but he couldn't risk being recognised, or remembered. He pulled the hood of his sweatshirt over his head and close around his face.

"St Mungo's Hospital, Emergency Department!" he cried.

And mercifully, he was there.

The pretty, young mediwitch behind the desk turned toward him expectantly. "Can I help you?"

Draco ignored her. Just beyond her desk was a set of double doors blocking the corridor, and he headed for them, with Ginny in his arms. He burst through them, the mediwitch's cries of protest ringing in his ears, and stopped, looking around himself frantically. He had to get someone to help her.

A Healer in a lime-green robe sailed over. "Can I help you?" he asked in a cool, unperturbed voice.

Draco nodded toward Ginny. "She's hurt. Shot by a Muggle bullet, I think."

The Healer took over at once. With a simple motion of his hand, he was surrounded by mediwitches and a confusing jumble of other staff people. Draco felt Ginny's body lifted from his arms and he watched them carry her to a cot. Someone pulled a curtain around her, and she was hidden from view. He let himself go limp for a moment. She was in good hands.

The Healer turned toward him again. "Now, what happened?"

Draco shook his head. "I don't know anything. I found her on the pavement." He began to back away. It was time to get out before he was caught. He fumbled in his pocket. "Here. When she wakes up, be sure she gets this." He tossed the silver medallion to the Healer, who caught it automatically in the air. As he edged away, Draco saw the Healer examine it, and then look back at him in astonishment. He could almost hear the man's thoughts: 'Quicksilver! I just talked to Quicksilver!' Before the Healer could say another word, Draco fled.

At home, he took ten minutes to shower. He couldn't go back to St Mungo's smelling of smoke, or someone would get suspicious.

His mind was in turmoil. What had Ginny been doing in a seamy Muggle convenience shop in the middle of the bloody night? Had she been running away? Leaving him? The thought caught him like a solid blow to his gut, and he actually had to steady himself against the wall of the shower.

No. No, she wouldn't do that to him. Would she? Was he that miserable to live with, that she had to escape?

'Don't die on me, Ginny,' he thought desperately. He would do better. He would try harder. She couldn't leave. She couldn't die.

He pulled on freshly-pressed robes then took the Floo to St Mungo's, and found the Information Desk again. The pretty mediwitch was there, and she didn't seem to recognize him as the same man who had come in a quarter of an hour before, wearing a tatty Muggle sweatshirt and sunglasses.

"I believe my wife was just brought in with a gunshot wound," Draco told her. "The name's Ginny Weasley."

The girl consulted a parchment chart in front of her. "Oh yes, she was just brought in: they identified her by the name on her Apparition License. She's in room three-sixteen; the Healers are still working on her."

His mouth was dry, and he had to try twice before he could form the words: "Is… is she going to be all right?"

"I really don't know," the mediwitch told him. "But you can go and see for yourself." She pointed down a corridor. Draco followed it, willing himself not to run; ticking off room numbers as he went. Three-oh-eight; three-ten; three-twelve… her room was at the end of the corridor, and when he found it, he burst through the door without knocking.

A Healer was just towelling his hands dry at the sink, and he smiled at Draco.

"Mr Weasley, I presume?"

"No, it's Malfoy. Different last names, but she is my wife."

"Oh, all right then." The Healer stuck out his hand, and Draco shook it gratefully. The man was smiling; that had to be a good sign.

"How is she?"

"Sound as a top. Had a Muggle bullet lodged in her shoulder. It made for a lot of blood, but we got it out, and there's no serious damage. How did it happen?"

"I have no idea," Draco lied, trying to look puzzled. "This is the first I've heard about it."

"Well, she should stay here the night, and if all goes well, she can go home in the morning. She wants a few good days of rest: keep her quiet; wait on her hand and foot. That sort of thing."

"Right."

"Will you be staying here with her, tonight?"

"If it's all right."

"Of course it is. We'll be in and out through the night to check on her. Meanwhile, just call the mediwitch if you need anything."

"There's one more thing," Draco said. "I'd like her to have a private room."

The Healer shrugged. "As good as done. We have a low census on this floor tonight. I'll have a word with Registration, and ask them not to put anyone else in here."

"I appreciate it."

After the Healer had gone, Draco pulled up a chair to Ginny's bedside, and looked long and hard at her face. She was very white, which made her freckles stand out more than ever. She had a smudge of soot on one cheek. He pulled out his handkerchief, and very gently, wiped it away. "Ginny."

She did not move, but the Healer had said she was going to be all right. He sat back and settled in to wait.

Draco had a lot of time to think that night. Every two hours, the mediwitches came and checked on Ginny, brushing their wands over her body, or administering potions through the drip in her arm, but in between, the hours seemed interminable. One of them brought him tea, and although he intended to drink it, it grew cold in the cup before he remembered.

Had Ginny really been trying to leave? The idea made him feel ill. Oddly, it brought back to mind an old Care of Magical Creatures lesson he'd had at Hogwarts, once. They'd been studying Fire Fairies: elusive creatures of great beauty that were said to bestow special powers on their owners. Naturally, everyone in the class wanted to own a Fire Fairy, and once they had caught them, were reluctant to let them go.

That was the key with Fire Fairies, though: they were easy enough to catch, but then you had to set them free again. Otherwise, there was no magic to them. Keeping a Fire Fairy captive against its will was no good: he remembered that clearly, from the lesson. Professor – what was her name? Grubbly-Plank, or something vulgar like that. She'd made them release their Fairies, and said that if one came back to you, it was yours to keep. If not, you were out of luck. And at the end of the day, there was only one girl in the whole class whose Fire Fairy ever came back to her. Some Hufflepuff, whose name Draco had never bothered to learn.

His thoughts were interrupted by a soft knock on the door. It opened, and Arthur Weasley came in. Draco stood, and shook the other man's hand.

"How is she?" Arthur whispered, looking down at his daughter.

Draco told him what the Healer had said, and Arthur blew out a relieved breath.

"I haven't said a word to her mother yet: I wanted to wait until I knew something…" He fell silent, and Draco watched the older man carefully brush the hair back from his daughter's face before turning again to him.

"We miss her. How is she, Malfoy? I mean, at Four Winds. Is she happy?" There was the suggestion of a tremor to his voice.

Draco didn't have to think long about the answer. Of course Ginny wasn't happy. She was a Ministry Auror, living against her will with a mafia bloody hit man. How could she be happy? But he couldn't tell Arthur that, because… well, because Arthur looked as though hearing something like that would just about do him in right now. So Draco said, "I think she's doing fine." And he was gratified by the relief that flooded his Commander's face.

Arthur went home soon after, but his words seemed to linger in the air long after he left. "Is she happy?" Draco wanted her to be. He had begun to feel it when they were together on Crete, the idea that Ginny's happiness was important to him. It was more important, even than his own and that was a foreign idea: one that he did not quite know what to do with.

Draco heard the hospital around him begin to wake long before he saw the first, faint rays of dawn filtering through the window in the room. He was beginning to feel stiff and exhausted from his night-long vigil. But Ginny might wake up at any minute now, and he wanted to be there when she did. In an attempt to stay awake, he drank the tea, now stone-cold, that the mediwitch had brought him hours ago. It didn't help; he felt himself drifting away…

He sensed Ginny stirring, and it brought him sharply out of his half-dream. He sat up. Her eyelids fluttered, and then opened. She gazed about herself in confusion, and then her eyes came to rest on him. She smiled weakly, and held out her hand.

Automatically, he took it, and before he could stop himself, he kissed her on the forehead. Her hair smelt of smoke, but she was going to be all right.

"You gave us a right good scare," he told her.

"It scared me too. What happened, exactly?"

"You were in the wrong place at the wrong time. The shop was being robbed, apparently, and you got in the way."

She frowned. "What about the fire?"

"One of the idiots shot up the fuse box."

"Was everyone ok?"

"No, the clerk was killed."

"Oh, that's terrible." He watched her turn her head away from him, and he suspected that she might have started to cry.

"Are you all right?" he asked her.

She gave a great sniffle, and swiped at her eyes. "Yes, I'm fine, thanks. How did you know to find me here?"

"The Healers called me," Draco lied. "No idea how they knew. You must have said something to them."

"I don't remember."

"What do you remember?" He watched her carefully.

"Not a lot." She turned to face him again. "I was on my way to see Sarah, and I stopped to pick up some wine. And then there was all this shouting, and I got shot. There was smoke everywhere, and someone picked me up and carried me outside."

Visiting Sarah? Then she had not been leaving. For a moment, his relief was so profound he could not speak. "Who?" he managed, at last.

"I don't know. I suppose it was the fire department, or the MLES, or something. They knew to take me to St Mungo's, anyway, so I imagine it was the MLES."

So she didn't remember. "Probably. What then?"

"I don't know, really. A Healer gave me a potion, and… here I am. Did they tell you what was wrong with my arm?"

"You were shot in the shoulder, and you lost a lot of blood, but there doesn't seem to be much damage. In fact, they said you might go home later today."

"Oh, that's a relief."

And all at once, he knew what would make her happy. He studied her: the slight form under the blankets; the freckles and pallid complexion; the tousled red hair. He could not understand the spell she had woven over him these past weeks and months. So unexpected was it, that he might have blamed it on a Love Potion, except that he knew Ginny would never stoop to something like that. And now, having discovered how much she meant to him, he wanted to clutch at her: to keep her as close to him as he could. To make her feel the same way about him.

But he could, for once in his life, put aside his own feelings, and think about someone else's. He could give her this.

He said it: "I was thinking you might feel better recovering at your mother's house."

"Oh, Draco, could I?" Ginny looked as though she might start to cry again, and he felt a stab of pain through the place where he breathed.

He forced out the next words. "Yes, of course you can. When they're ready to release you, I'll floo your father."

They were interrupted just then by the Healer, a brisk young Asian woman who shooed Draco out of the room, and closed the door behind him.

In the hallway, Draco stared, unseeing, at the beige-coloured wall opposite him. He was numb from exhaustion. From elation, and disappointment, and uncertainty. He had told Ginny he would floo her father; there was no going back. It was all he had to give her: the freedom to leave, and to maybe never come back to him. All he could do was to wait and see what happened.

Resolutely, he straightened himself, and headed for the bank of floos in the lobby. Went to call Arthur Weasley to come and collect his daughter.