A/N:Thanks a hundred times over again, to Gabriele, who does the formatting for me, and to Lina, my beta-reader.

Chapter 2

Twenty-five years later

Ginny Weasley sat at the table in the kitchen of the Burrow with her parents. The little room, which always looked much too small when it was filled with her brothers, seemed almost too big now, with just the three of them there. Her parents had asked her to come for dinner.

"Where is everyone?" she asked, helping herself to a Yorkshire pudding.

"We thought just the three of us tonight," began Molly, a little too brightly. At her mother's tone, Ginny looked up.

"Why? What is it? Something's wrong –"

"Not wrong, Love," her father interjected. "Just, your birthday's coming soon... Twenty-five years old! It's a big milestone..."

"Dad," Ginny said blankly. "I just had a birthday three weeks ago. Why the hurry to get me to my next one?"

Arthur floundered. "We thought it was time... That is, hadn't you better...?" he looked helplessly at his wife.

Molly took a deep breath. There was no sense tiptoeing around the subject. It wasn't as if they hadn't talked about it plenty of times over the years, and Ginny was a big girl now. A responsible girl. An adult.

"The truth is, we're wondering what you intend to do about Draco Malfoy." She watched her daughter's face change, but steeled herself to remain impassive. In a family as large as hers, she had learned there was not the luxury of being able to cater to one child's whims when there was another child who had real needs. A family looked out for one another; one sacrificed, when necessary, for the good of the whole unit. And right now, there was more than one Weasley child's future at stake. She forged ahead. "You're twenty-five next August, Ginny, and the Curse Standard says you have to marry him by the time you turn twenty-five. Isn't it time to start thinking about it? Eleven months is more than enough time to plan a nice wedding."

Ginny could feel the blood rush to her head, filling her ears with a dizzying roar, blackening the edges of her vision. Carefully, she put down her fork and took a couple of deep breaths. She heard herself say, "it's not as though I don't think about it every single day of my life, Mum." She stared at a nick in the scrubbed table top, trying to focus while her vision cleared.

"Perhaps I should say it's time to do something about it then," her mother amended tartly.

Ginny reached over and began picking at the nick with her thumbnail, and said nothing.

"Ginny, you know we would never ask you to do something like this just for us –" began Arthur, "It's just that, well, Bill..." He spread his hands helplessly.

They had told Ginny about the Curse when she was fourteen, when she'd come home from Hogwarts after her third year, carrying a rather obvious torch for Harry Potter. They'd thought it best she should be fully aware of how things stood, before she'd started having boyfriends of her own.

She, as their firstborn daughter, was bound by a blood Curse to marry Draco, the firstborn son of Lucius Malfoy. And she would have to marry him by her twenty-fifth birthday, or their firstborn child, Bill, would pay with his life.

She had handled the news remarkably well too. But then, Bill was her favorite brother and, with the hero-worship of fourteen years old, she had almost welcomed the chance to do something so big for him. And at that age, Arthur remembered, youth was forever. Twenty-five was something that pertained to old people. No girl, at the age of fourteen, seriously believed she would one day be twenty-five. That she would one day be married. It was easy to agree to something you essentially didn't think would ever happen.

But all through her years at school and afterward, during the war, Ginny had been as good as her word. When her parents had broached the subject from time to time she had never wavered. At school, Draco Malfoy had been a miserable, mean-spirited creature; she had despised him thoroughly, and with good reason. His father was a known Death Eater who went down with Voldemort in the final battle. Weasleys and Malfoys had hated each other for centuries. In spite of all of it, she had been staunch. She understood as well as her mother did what it meant to be part of a family. Before she turned twenty-five she would marry him. She would marry him, as prescribed, in a Ceremony of Rings at the Sacred Stone Ring. She would do what it took to stay married to him for a year and a day and then, when the Curse was broken and Bill's life was secured she would end the marriage and get on with the rest of her life. She loathed the thought of it, dreaded the day it would happen but with all Ginny's failings, she had never lacked for courage. She would do it.

She looked up at her father. "I know Dad," she said. "I know I have to face it sooner or later." She gave a shaky laugh. "I've got in the habit of telling myself, Just one more month. I'll think about it next month. I keep hoping that, somehow, the day will never come, but I suppose that's too much to hope for, isn't it?"

"It's only for a year," her mother said, trying to sound bracing but failing miserably.

"A year and a day," Ginny corrected her with an ironic little smile. "But you're right. I should be able to do anything for a year. It's not the end of the world." Privately, she wondered if that were true. A year married to that Son-of-a-Death-Eater Draco Malfoy might well be the end of the world for her. She shuddered.

"You're still not to tell Bill," she added. "Or any of the boys for that matter. They'd only get all heroic and come swooping down on some sort of Rescue Mission, trying to pull me out of it. The Curse Standard says if we're not married a year and a day, it invalidates the whole marriage. Where would that leave Bill?"

They sat in silence for several minutes, pushing their food around on their plates. At last Molly spoke in a choked voice. "Ginny, you can't know how proud that makes us; you sacrificing to save your brother's life..."

Ginny grimaced. "Please don't, Mum."

Arthur blew his nose. "If there's anything we can do to make this easier for you..."

She looked up at him and with a sudden flash of anger, said, "Dad, why was he never convicted as a Death Eater after the war?"

Her father looked up from his handkerchief in surprise, and gave her a long, appraising stare. When he answered her, he spoke slowly, choosing his words. "I think, rather than ask why, the most important thing to remember is that he wasn't convicted. In fact –"

"That doesn't mean he wasn't one!" Ginny interrupted him savagely. "He was a Slytherin! He used to brag, at school, that he would take the Dark Mark before he came of age. Lucius Malfoy was convicted and rotted away in Azkaban! Of course Draco was a Death Eater! With a father like that, how could he not be?"

"Ginny," Arthur said quietly, "I think it's a mistake to judge a man by what his father was."

She ignored him. "He just wants to watch his step around me. Let me find one hint – one – of the Dark Arts being practiced in his house and I swear I'll have him thrown in Azkaban so fast it'll make his head spin." She stabbed fiercely at a potato.

Arthur put his hand on hers. "I'm confident you won't have to do that," he said.

Ginny stood up. "Well I'm not confident of it. Not one bit. But I'll be able to give you the full report, won't I? Just as soon as the marriage is over. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a headache. I'm going home."

Her parents exchanged anxious looks.

"Oh, quit worrying," she snapped. "I'll owl him before I go to bed."

Sarah Park-Winston, Ginny's roommate, was lolling on the sofa when Ginny stepped out of the fireplace at the flat they shared.

"You're home!" She exclaimed with a wide grin. "I wasn't expecting you for ages yet. I was just about to stir myself and go for take-away. How do you feel about Chinese? Or aren't you hungry? I suppose your mum's fed you up already..."

Ginny only scowled at her and made for the kitchen, where she waved her wand over the kettle and rummaged in the cupboard for the bottle of Wanamacher's Aged Elderberry Spirits.

"Have you read Witch Weekly yet?" called Sarah, from the front room. It didn't seem to matter to her that Ginny was clearly seething.

"There's the best article about Quicksilver, you should read it."

Ginny made a derisive noise which her roommate either didn't hear or didn't acknowledge.

She nattered on, unperturbed. "It says here,

"Fantastic rescues of Muggles continue to be reported from Kensington to Kent. On 21 August, a Muggle boy, his leg caught in a railroad tie, was lifted from the path of an oncoming train by what the MLES later defined, from residue left at the scene, as a clear case of magical intervention. Later that same day, an entire Muggle family, trapped on the 10th floor of the burning Park Hotel in London, found themselves 'gently lifted, as though on a cool breeze,' out the window and onto the sidewalk below. Again, MLES officials, acting after Muggle firefighters cleared the building, identified resonances in the air that they say can only be attributed to the use of a wand at the scene.

"And both times," Sarah continued, "they found his signature –" she paused, probably consulting the magazine article – "it says,

"In the first instance, the Mercury's wings that have become Quicksilver's signature were found burned into a railroad tie. In the second, they were drawn in the ash on the side of the ruined building."

"Isn't that romantic?" She heaved a sighed. "I wish someone could get a photo of him."

Ginny stuck her head out the kitchen doorway as the teakettle began to shriek, "Teatime! Teatime! Teatime!" She twitched her wand at it and the noise stopped.

"Sarah, you are possibly the only girl in Britain, over the age of fourteen, who actually believes in Quicksilver."

Her roommate sat up. She waved the magazine at Ginny.

"It's all right here! They wouldn't make something like this up."

Ginny glared at her. "Oh no? Why are those stories never in The Daily Prophet then? If those things really happened, I think they would have found their way into the mainstream newspaper by now. Besides, Sarah, I'm a Ministry Auror. Don't you think I'd know if this bloke were real?" Her red head disappeared into the kitchen briefly, before she reappeared and made her way back into the front room, a cup of tea-and-elderberry in her hand.

"I told you," she continued, "that Witch Weekly was going to the hobgoblins when that Lovegood chap took it over."

"Why," Sarah reasoned with her, "would you know, just because you're an Auror? Aurors don't bother themselves with Muggles who need rescuing, do they? Unless the Muggles are being tortured by Death Eaters that is, and we all know those days are over." She made a face at Ginny and clutched the magazine protectively to her chest, watching as Ginny sipped her tea. Suddenly, she frowned. Leaning forward, she sniffed suspiciously at the steam from the mug.

"Why are you drinking? Did something happen at your mum and dad's?"

Ginny didn't answer. Sarah knew about the curse – a little. After sharing her flat for six years, there was little about Ginny she didn't know – but would she understand what Ginny was about to do – had to do?

"What?" Sarah prodded. She leaned forward, her voice urgent. "Are you pregnant?"

Ginny was startled. "No! How could I be pregnant?"

Her friend crossed her arms and gave her an appraising stare. "You tell me."

Ginny rolled her eyes. "Great Morgana, Sarah! I'd have to be married for that, wouldn't I?"

"Not necessarily. Muggles do it all the time."

"Tuh! Do I look like a Muggle to you? No, Sarah, I am not pregnant."

Sarah raised her eyebrows. "Well, then?" She knew Ginny too well.

Ginny took a big swallow of her tea, nearly choking on the elderberry spirits she had laced it with. She gave Sarah her most level look.

"I'm going to marry him."

Sarah then demonstrated one of the qualities that made her such an invaluable friend. That was, she did not jump up and start waving her arms about. She merely narrowed her eyes at her best friend and said coolly, "Malfoy?"

Ginny gave her an arch look. "Who else?"

Sarah sat back and regarded Ginny. Then, without a word, she got up, went to the kitchen, and came back with two goblets and the entire bottle of elderberry spirits. She set it all on the coffee table between them.

"All right, start talking," she said, uncorking the bottle.

It was suddenly more than Ginny could do to hold back the tears.