A/N: Thanks, as ever, to Gabriele, the formatting monkey, who makes this story possible. And thanks to everyone who has reviewed, for your overwhelming enthusiasm. Hey – if you're reading, and you like it, why not leave a review and let me know?

Chapter 6

Draco opened his eyes and sighed. His own Apparition Port. He was home. He rubbed a hand across his burning eyes. How long had it been since he'd slept, really slept? He'd lost count. But then, he often lost count of his sleepless nights. It was an occupational hazard.

He needed something to eat, and a shower, and bed. And Merlin help anyone if he was called out again before he'd had at least twelve good hours of sleep. He headed for the dining room, but a voice, issuing from the sitting room, halted him in his tracks.

"Come on, I'm not going to hurt you! That's a good boy. Come to Mummy."

His eyes darted right, then left. It was Weasley, of course. He hadn't, for one moment, forgotten she was living here now. But whom the devil was she talking to? Come to Mummy. That's a good boy. A child? She had a – oh no! Panicked visions rose up, of a small child living under his roof. Noise. Messes. Strained food and nappies and things like that. But how could that be? She couldn't have a child, could she? Her ring was still white...

He hurried to the next doorway, and peering in, almost dropped the travelling bag he was carrying.

She stood on an overstuffed chair, with her back to him. One foot was on the arm of the chair, the other knee balanced on the chair back. It was a precarious position at best. She was reaching toward the tops of the draperies, toward a small bundle of fur crouched in the corner of them. A cat.

"Come to Mummy," she was saying, in a false, bright tone.

But it was not the cat that arrested his attention. She was wearing jeans. His wife, he thought, with a satisfied leer, was wearing jeans. And they were just the merest bit too tight for her. He had never seen her in jeans before; she filled them out very nicely. Oh no, she was not built at all like her mother. He grinned, his fatigue forgotten for a moment, and leaned against the doorjamb to watch.

She paused to flick her hair impatiently over one shoulder, and contemplate the cat. He watched her gingerly rebalance herself and reach up again, higher. Her shirt rode up in the back when she did that, giving him a glimpse of pale, freckled skin where her hips curved into her waist. Well. That was interesting. He'd always been one to appreciate a well-built woman, and though it was only Weasley, there was nothing stopping him enjoying the show. He folded his arms and settled in to watch.

She shifted her position, and the chair teetered. Then, as though in slow motion, it tipped backward, carrying her with it. She gave a strangled yelp, and instinctively, he jumped forward, grabbing her around the waist and yanking her back before she fell.

She uttered a terrified little scream and they fell backward, together, onto the floor.

"Oof." She landed on top of him, catching him in the stomach with her elbow. Her hair was in his face, caught against the two days' growth of beard, clinging to him like a coppery spider's web. He shook his head to free himself of it, brushing it away from his clothes, pulling it out of his mouth. There was so much of it; he had not thought, before, about how long her hair was, and knowing that he was covered with it, he felt a strange shock that was almost like the feeling of being discovered naked.

She twisted around and when she saw who it was that had hold of her, she swore. "You frightened me half to death! Let go of me!" He was still holding her, the skin of her waist warm and soft under his hands. He had not expected her to feel so... human. She wrenched free of his grasp and came up sitting beside him, gasping, and pulling down the hem of her shirt. It was a self-conscious gesture, and it made him feel oddly triumphant.

"Oh Merlin, Malfoy! You scared me! How long were you there?"

"Just a moment. What the devil were you doing?" He looked up at the cat atop the draperies. Two yellow eyes blinked down at him impassively. "What is that – that thing doing on top of my curtains?"

"It's not a 'thing', it's a kneazle," she told him haughtily. "I just got him today." She glanced up at it, and her haughtiness seemed to evaporate. "He made for the top the minute I put him down this afternoon, and he's been there ever since. I suppose I could just Summon him, but he'd be terrified, the poor thing, and he'd hate me forever after. He's frightened enough, being in a strange house. I don't know what else to do." She turned and clutched at his arm. He jerked at the contact, and stiffened. People didn't just go around... touching him without any warning, like that.

She didn't seem to notice. "Can you get him down for me?"

Draco looked at her, wondering why she should be so overwrought about such an inconsequential matter. She looked troubled. Compassionate. Irritated. He didn't understand the problem. It was only a cat – kneazle, he corrected himself. He would have Vanished the damn thing and had done with it altogether. He blew out a breath. He was exhausted. He'd had a hard week and he wanted dinner. A shower. Bed.

But then, he looked down at the hand on his arm. It was her right hand, with the silver ring on her thumb. There was an unfamiliar, softness stirring in him, at the thought that she needed him to do something for her, and was asking without sarcasm or malice: just a simple request. And touching his arm.

"Let me try," he found himself saying. "I'm quite a bit taller than you." He squinted up at the irksome creature. "I think I can reach him."

With an irritated – and slightly exaggerated – sigh, he righted the armchair and climbed onto it. Sure enough, he only had to stand on the seat cushion to reach the wretched animal. He plucked it from the curtain-top and handed it back to Ginny before he stepped down from the chair.

It was little more than a scrap of gray fur. She held it close to her chest and stroked it, burying her cheek in its fur, crooning meaningless words, and the intimacy of it was somehow embarrassing to Draco. He turned away.

"If that's all, I'm going to find some dinner," he muttered.

"Right," she said, and her voice trembled just a little. "I'll just nip this one up to my room then, shall I?" And she was gone.

She did not reappear that evening, and Draco went to bed after he ate, and slept like the dead.

When Ginny entered the dining room the next morning she found Draco already eating breakfast, the day's issue of the Daily Prophet folded open beside his plate. When he saw her, he pushed his chair back and stood up. She stifled her impulse to giggle. It was such an... old-fashioned thing to do, a gesture that didn't belong to the world she was used to. She had grown up with six brothers and a father, and never once had a man stood up when she entered the dining room. She remembered that Draco had done it the other night as well, when she'd joined him at his table in The Blue Onion.

"Good morning," she said awkwardly.

"Morning." He nodded briefly, before sitting back down and returning his attention to the newspaper.

She filled a plate at the buffet and sat down at the table across from him. She wished she had thought to bring something with her to read, so she wouldn't feel all hands and fingers, her fork scraping the plate so loudly, sure he could hear her chewing in the silence.

She studied him while she tried to eat her mushrooms and tomatoes quietly, and he read the paper. He was rather taller and broader in the shoulders than she remembered him at Hogwarts, while she had hardly grown since her fifth year. His hair was still very light, and he wore it long, and pulled back with a leather thong. She supposed that, pressed for an objective opinion, she would have to call him good-looking, though she had never fancied blond hair, and his chin was entirely too aggressive for her liking. Then too, she knew him to be an arrogant bastard, so she couldn't possibly approve of the way he looked. The difference in their sizes might have made him seem threatening to someone else, but she straightened her shoulders. She was not going to be intimidated by anyone just because he was bigger than she. Six brothers gave a girl confidence that way.

He finished the article he was reading and pushed the paper aside, turning his full attention to her.

"Did you sleep well?" His voice was carefully modulated, his face bland and composed, the perfect blend of courtesy and polite distance. Good breeding in action.

It suddenly irked her. People were supposed to visit at the table. To chat and tease and bicker and gossip and catch up with one another. So what if they didn't know each other, or like each other or even respect each other? She was not going to be polite and formal with anyone she lived with. Not for a whole year.

"No," she said with spirit. "I had a wretched sleep. Ginger and Smoke kept me awake half the night with their yawling. I suppose they wanted their mum. Eventually I let them sleep with me, but then I was afraid I'd roll over and crush them, so I didn't dare move a muscle. I only really got to sleep about two hours ago, and then I had to get up for work. How about you? Did you sleep well?"

He blinked at her, clearly taken aback. Then, "Ginger and Smoke?"

"The kneazle kits."

"Two of them?"

"Well, yes. Brother and sister. You know." She gestured vaguely, but then she remembered that he was an only child, so she supposed he didn't know, really.

"Ah," he said, unenlightened.

"A witch at the Apparition Transfer Station had a box of them for sale," she elaborated, "and I was waiting to get through the line yesterday – you know it takes forever, at least an hour – and by the time it was my turn in the Port she had just these two left."

He was looking at her as though she were speaking some strange language he had never heard before.

"I couldn't just take one and leave the other, could I?"

He didn't answer, only scrutinized her more closely.

"They were brother and sister," she said, exasperated.

"So you brought them both home?"

"Well, yes. What else could I do?"

He did not answer, and silence reigned for several minutes, in which Ginny grew more and more uncomfortable and her fork seemed to scrape the plate more loudly with every bite.

When he did speak, it was to say something wholly unexpected. "I forgot you'll have to be passing through the Apparition Transfer Station every day, now that you live in Scotland."

She shrugged. Everyone performing International Apparition had to pass through a Ministry-regulated Apparition Transfer Station. It involved showing papers and waiting in long lines for Apparition Ports that had been meticulously timed to mesh with the schedules of Ports worldwide. These stations regulated intra-air traffic, in order to prevent people colliding mid-Apparition. Immigration and international trade were also regulated there. Traditionally, movement across the Scotland-England border had not required a stop at an ATS, but since the war, everyone had been more cautious about just who was allowed to enter the country and why and from where. Larger countries, like the United States and Russia even had ATSs between major cities.

Draco pushed back his chair. "Well," he said, a trifle awkwardly, "Have a – a nice day."

"You too," she said brightly, forking sausages into her mouth. She stuck her tongue out at his departing back.

She did not see him the rest of the week, but the next morning, propped against her breakfast plate, Ginny found a gold-embossed card bearing the seal of the Ministry of Magic. She picked it up and turned it over in her hands. It was an ATS Clearance Pass, signed by the Minister for Security himself. An ATS Pass: They were almost unheard-of; she knew of no one, personally, who had one. Where on earth had he got hold of it? She read the fine, copperplate writing on the back, then read it again, to be sure she understood correctly. The Pass gave her, at all times, security clearance to circumvent the entire ATS system.

Ginny ran her fingers over the thick, cream-coloured vellum, then clutched it convulsively to her chest, grinning broadly, one thought foremost in her mind. A security Pass meant she could lie in a whole hour later every morning.