Ginny couldn't believe her eyes. She had to be more exhausted then she thought she was. Cause she swore Draco was standing right there in front of her.
Which was impossible, unless…
"I flooed here last night." He said stepping forward.
The light from the hallway shown brightly on his face and she gasped. He was really here. Feeling confused and surprised she frowned to hide it.
"To serve me with divorce papers in person?" Her voice came out hard and strident, because she couldn't let him see how much it hurt to suddenly find him here when she thought she might never see him again.
And as she fully expected, he was angry with her. She could see it in his face.
"A divorce. Is that what you want, Gin?" he asked.
She chewed on her bottom lip for a minute before she answered him.
"No, of course it isn't. But I don't have a choice. Or rather, a choice is exactly what I have. It's the only thing I have. You've been forcing it on me all along, and when I heard how ill Dad was, I knew there was only one choice I could make." She said.
Folding his arms he scoffed. "Yeah? And what was that?" he shot back.
"To come back, even though I knew you'd think that was, oh, everything you've been so critical about. The lemon lipped spinster sacrificing herself for her family. The woman who doesn't have the courage to choose you over everything and anything else that might be important to her. You said yesterday morning that if I'd gone back we would have lost our last chance." She sighed to tired to go on.
"No Gin. You've got it wrong. So wrong." She ignored him.
"I wanted to choose you since I came to you in Diagon Alley. So much. When we made love. When we laughed together."
The words began catching in her throat.
"When I remembered everything we had, and saw how much you've built, everything you always wanted, so successfully. And what I could contribute to it, too. But how can I love a man who asks me to sacrifice my family? Didn't you understand that from the note I left you? Why are you here?
She hissed when he didn't answer only shrugged.
"Because I'm not asking you to sacrifice your family, Ginny." He told her.
She just laughed at this.
"I'm not. I've never wanted that. Yes, I didn't want you to come running back here to stitch together Ron's broken relationship with Luna, the way you've tried to stitch everything else together for them all, over the years."
Draco sighed heavily before continuing, he didn't even know if he was getting through to her.
"I thought you could give him enough love and support just by listening, and that he should be resilient enough to get through it with the support of everyone else he has around him. Your father, your brothers, hell even Harry and Hermione." He drawled.
"Okay, yes and you convinced me on that, but…" she tried to say.
"But do you really think I don't understand that your dad's illness is different? His gray eyes blazed.
"That I wouldn't want you to drop everything to get to his side? Shit, Ginny, of course I do! Of course that's the right way to feel! You didn't even give me the chance to say so." He huffed.
Gasping Ginny paced in front of him, Taking in a few deep breaths to keep herself as calm as possible. "I had to leave immediately. I tried calling you, but I couldn't get through, and I wasn't going to wait. I didn't think it would make a difference to how you felt."
"And I got here way before you did, arrived at the hospital, and saw your father for a few minutes last night." He countered.
"They let you see him?" she asked surprised.
"I told them the situation, and then yes, they did." He nodded.
"The situation?" she asked throwing her hands up in question.
"That I'm his son in law. I've been his son in law for twelve years, and I care about him. Ginny, there is an upside to having money. I get some luxuries that others still have a hard time coming by. Like my own private floo network. Gin, we could have flooed here together. It took seconds, door to door."
Ginny choose that time to look up at him and once she did her heart dropped. He looked so hurt, so deceived. So alone. The same way she did.
"How could you have thought for one second that I wouldn't have wanted you to do that?" he sighed.
He came around the end of the bed toward her, and she stood up, overwhelmed by the intensity she saw in his face. "Oh, Draco…I'm…I'm sorry." She cried.
"And I'm sorry, too, if I've seemed that hard core. You have to understand that I'm not asking you to choose," he repeated.
"Please understand that. A big advantage to my success is that you wouldn't be that far from your family. Just a short floo away. Saying no to Ron wasn't about asking you to choose me over him." He finished.
Ginny looked down at the floor. "I guess it wasn't," she said.
"And do you know what it was about?" he asked her, wanting her to understand, begging for her to understand.
"Sucking on a lemon." She touched her fingertips to her mouth knowing he was watching her. "And never doing things for myself."
"So you do understand then." He felt relived. "All of that. How could I want the woman I love to get so locked away in her sense of duty to others? Not just away from me, but away from her own needs."
"The Woman I love Ginny, for always, and the woman I need. Please don't doubt that any more."
"Draco I …"
He kissed her, sweet and slow, with the promise of so much more to come. The both sensed movement in the doorway, and turned to find Ron himself standing there. Ron and someone else.
Someone small and female and looking extremely content. Luna.
Ron looked a little shame-faced about her presence, and about the fact that her hand was closed tightly around his.
"It was a healer," he told Ginny. "I flipped out for nothing."
"The man at the house?" Ginny asked with a raised brow.
"Luna was right. It was my entire problem. You were right, Luna. I've told you that, what a thousand times now, since yesterday?"
Ron pulled Luna closer to him, smiled large, looked down into her eyes and stroked her face, before turning back to Ginny.
"When Luna began to avoid me it was making me paranoid Gin, and the more I pushed and the more she fled, the more paranoid I got. She was angry when I came to her house that night, and she was right to be angry, and she has forgiven me and came down last night and we talked." Ron told her.
"Ginny there is something we have to tell you. The reason Luna was avoiding me was because we are having a baby" he paused long enough for Ginny to throw her hand over her mouth and smile.
"She was worried how I would take it, and was scared to tell me. But she did and everything is perfect now!" he grinned.
"Can you believe it Gin I'm going to have a child. And it's with the most wonderful woman in the world." He said kissing Luna on the cheek.
Ginny grinned at her brother. She was going to be an aunt. She couldn't have been happier for him. Ron and Luna worked through their problems.
If only her Dad hadn't gotten sick then maybe she could be back at Draco's feeling the same happiness as her brother was. But things happened for a reason and she had to accept that.
The thought saddened her and Ron must have sensed it because he let go of Luna and came toward her, his arms stretched out in a big hug.
"Ah, Ron," Ginny whispered, hugging him.
"Gin, I'm so sorry about how much I put on you! How much we all put on you. Fred and George and I had a huge talk last night after we left dad. Three in the morning while Luna was asleep upstairs!" he sighed.
"We blame ourselves for not looking after dad better. And Percy wants to apologize for that line he delivered to you on the phone yesterday, suggesting it was your fault for not being here."
"Ron…" she sighed.
"No!" he cried cutting her off. "Let me say it, don't' let us off the hook. It gave us a huge scare, and if his healer hadn't told us that he was close to dying…" His voice dried to a rasp and his eyes watered.
"I'm not sure how we could ever had forgiven ourselves. I'm still not sure how you can forgive us. Do you Gin?" he asked.
"Of course I do. I know your hearts are in the right place. We've all gotten into some bad habits with each other, over the years." Ginny smiled.
"Bill and Charlie want to say it too. And even Dad, a couple days ago, before he got cursed, said a few things about how much things fell apart when you weren't around, and how that wasn't good for any of us." He frowned.
"You must of all. Major wake up call to all of us. You should go live among the muggles or something, until we tell you it's safe to come back"
Ginny gave a little sideways glance at Draco. "Or maybe not with the muggles… Diagon Alley is looking pretty good, right now," Ginny answered slowly.
"Oh, Gin! Oh true?" Ron's face lit up. "Most defiantly, because you look and Malfoy looks… and what is that you're holding out to her?" he asked looking past Ginny at Draco.
"Ginny I think he's trying to give you something" Ron told her.
Ginny let go of him and whirled around, to meet a huge bunch of flowers and an exquisitely wrapped gift.
"The flowers survived the floo pretty well," Draco said. "And the gift isn't perishable."
"You brought them with you?" she asked thinking he must have put them down somewhere before she'd opened her eyes and seen him, and they'd been camouflaged by all the other flowers and gifts in Dad's room.
"I came home with them at around six yesterday evening, after I goofed off shopping for half the afternoon." Draco stepped closer.
"That was when I found you and your things gone, and your note in my study, and I felt like my heart had died all over again.
"Go, what are you waiting for?" Ron said pushing her the final distance toward Draco so that she almost collided into the huge bunch of flowers.
"I'm thinking you two still have stuff to talk about. I'll take care of Dad, if he wakes up, and I'll write down everything the healer says, if you miss him."
"Thanks Weasley" Draco told Ron.
Ginny didn't argue with either of them. She took the lavish bunch of flowers from Draco and walked out of the front entrance with them still in her arms a minute later.
She was definitely going against the regular flow of traffic that way. People didn't usually walk out of a hospital carrying flowers…unless maybe they had a baby in their arms as well.
Draco caught her smiling, and she explained as they walked outside.
"They are probably wondering why I'm getting a cut of the flowers." She said laughing.
"They'll think it's one of the perks of being Arthur's daughter," he said as he dropped his arm around her shoulder and pulled her close. "Getting a cut of the flowers"
She leaned her head against his chest, her heart almost ready to burst. "Except I'm far more interested in the perks of being Draco Malfoy's wife. May I see what's in the box? May I guess that it is for me?" she said.
He kissed her hair and the corner of her mouth. "You may see what's in the box, but I think it's really for me." He smiled.
He held it out to her, while he waited for her to take it.
Ginny laughed as she took it, and handed him the flowers to hold. "Oh it is?"
"I never did this for you when we were together the first time around," he said watching her fingers at work.
"No I guess not, but that never matter Draco" she assured him.
He leaned closer and brushed his forehead against hers. "I was intent on saving for our future, I think the most glamorous, luxurious gift I ever gave you was a necklace with the Malfoy family crest on it."
"I remember that!" she laughed. "I didn't mind Draco. I loved that necklace and I understood about all of that."
"Too easily I might add," he said before kissing her again. Her ear, her neck, her jaw, her mouth.
"From now on, I'm spoiling you with or without your understanding." He looked into her eyes and she saw how serious he was about it and she smiled.
"Then I'm helpless, I guess" she shrugged.
Smiling, she gave him the ribbons and the paper, and then lifted the lid of the box. Her eyes went wide and her mouth dropped open.
She started to laugh with happiness, and the cream and gold of the satin and jewels blurred as her eyes filled with tears.
"Helpless" she repeated, her voice soft. Reaching up to bring his mouth down to hers once more. She added, "And totally in love with my husband."
"Who is totally in love with his wife," Draco whispered his words mingled in their kiss.
"Yes this is definitely a gift for me, more than you, sweetie. To see your face. To know I can make you this happy. To know that this time we've understood what went wrong, and we've got it right this time and to have such faith that we'll never get it so horribly wrong again. I love you so much."
"So much," she echoed, and the roses were slowly crushed between them as their bodies clung together.
There it is chapter 10. The next chapter will be out soon. I hope you like the story and please review good or bad. Well until next time enjoy and you guys rock.
Bra4goten