A/N: It's all Gabriele: if it weren't for him, this story wouldn't be here. Thank you to those of you who've taken the time to review, and said such nice things.
Chapter 10
The screams of the Muggle boy were beginning to waver, and then to crack. He held his wand arm steady and tried to quell the bile that was rising in his throat. The effort of keeping himself from vomiting made his eyes water and sting. He stared at his father's back so he would not have to look at the boy.
And then, a sudden, brilliant surge of red lit up the room, and the side of the kitchen blew inwards, in an explosion of plaster and glass and thatch. There were cries and flashes of light, and the hole where the wall had been was filled with the silhouettes of a dozen robed men training their wands into the room.
He dropped his own wand. Dimly, he heard someone shout, "Reducto!" The blast picked him up like a rag doll, and something as hot and heavy as a cannonball caught him on the side of the head and flung him across the room. He heard, rather than felt the shattering of glass before he hit the trunk of a tree outside. He crumpled to the ground, and everything went black.
The face swam in and out of his consciousness, and he dreamed in snatches of poetry.
"If thine enemy is hungry, give him meat. If he is thirsty, give him something to drink for in so doing, thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head."
There was an awful, pasty dryness to his mouth and an odd ringing in his ears. 'Water,' he thought, but could not make his mouth form the words.
"Bless them that persecute you; bless and curse not."
The pain in the side of his head; oh, Circe, the pain...
"Father forgive them, for they know not what they do."
And then, once again, only merciful blackness.
Monday, Ginny looked in on Draco before she went to work, but he was sleeping. At the office, she found a vase of pink roses waiting for her on her desk, and had to fight down a surge of irritation when she saw Ted's name on the card. It was amazing, the difference a change of perspective made; if the flowers had come last Friday, she would have been ecstatic. Now, she only wished Ted would go away and leave her alone. She moved the roses to the top of the file cabinet, where they weren't quite so conspicuous and with a sigh of resignation, she went to thank him.
She found him in the Ministry of Education office. His concern for her was evident. Clearly, he thought that something had gone terribly amiss for her Saturday night after their date, and she did not disabuse him of this notion. She refused to elaborate, however, only maintaining that she could not see him anymore. At last he was forced to take 'No' for an answer. He wasn't pleased, however, and Ginny went back to work feeling like a heel for having encouraged him, and then thrown him over with so little explanation. When she left the office that evening, she took the roses with her. Two streets over was an Apparation Port that no one from the Ministry offices ever used. She pitched the flowers into the rubbish bin beside it, then Apparated home to Four Winds.
On Tuesday morning, when she came down to breakfast, Draco was at the table reading the Daily Prophet and finishing a cup of coffee. It was the first time he had been out of bed since his illness. He was still pale, and a bit hollow about the eyes, but otherwise he looked well. She was vaguely disappointed that he had shaved, and then she was annoyed at herself for caring. She was annoyed at herself for even noticing.
He stood, as he always did, when she entered the room. "Oh good, I was hoping to catch you before you went off to work."
"You were?"
"Yes, but no hurry. Go ahead and get your breakfast; we can talk while you eat."
She wondered what he could have to say to her. Self-consciously, she took a plate from the sideboard and helped herself to eggs and sausages, then brought her plate to the table and poured herself a cup of coffee. When she had started eating, he put down the paper.
"I'd like to have some friends in to dinner," he said, without preamble.
"Oh." She was not sure what he expected her to say. She supposed he could have friends in to dinner whether she liked it or not.
"What do you think?" he prompted.
"What do I think? I think it's your house and you can do whatever you please. Just tell me when you're planning it, and I'll stay out of the way."
He grimaced. "That's not exactly what I had in mind."
"No? What did you have in mind?" She did not like the way he was frowning at her.
"I was hoping you would agree to... act as hostess."
She put down her knife and fork and stared at him. "Hostess?"
"Well, yes... They're rather good friends of mine and, well... I'd like you to meet them."
"Draco," she said, bewildered and a little annoyed. "Why on earth would you want me mixing with your friends? I think I can safely tell you we wouldn't have anything in common." She knew she sounded rude, but Merlin, she couldn't think of anything in the world she'd rather do less than spend an evening in the company of Crabbe and Goyle.
He regarded her thoughtfully. "I think you might be pleasantly surprised." When she didn't answer, he added, "You would be doing me a favour if you said yes." He folded the paper and pushed back his chair.
There was no way she was even going to consider such a proposition... Was there? She studied his pallor and the smudges under his eyes with a twinge of guilt. He looked wretched, and it was all her fault... It seemed she was going to be slave to a guilty conscience for a long time, yet. Besides, he was asking, for once. Well, nearly asking, anyhow. She blew out a breath. "When?"
"I though perhaps Saturday night."
"Can I think about it?" Get up the courage to say 'No' flat out, was more like it.
"Of course. Only, Lolly would need a day or two notice."
"All right." She picked a piece of toast from the toast rack and began to crumble it absently into her eggs. "Will you be home tonight? I could think about it and let you know then."
"Yes, I'll be here." Did she imagine the look of relief on his tightly-controlled face? He paused in the doorway, and looked as though he were about to say something else. But he only nodded at her, and then he was gone.
She thought about it all day. When she was in Suffolk, building a safe perimeter around a wizarding graveyard, she wondered what kind of friends Draco Malfoy had, that he wanted to have them in to dinner and introduce them to her.
When she was installing a Muggle-proof security shield around a pub in Brighton, she was certain he had ulterior motives, and worked herself into a cold fury, determined that she would never allow herself to be used in whatever nasty scheme he had come up with now.
By the time she was doing a routine, weekly test of a castle's wards on the Isle of Man, her curiosity had overcome her trepidation. She decided, with spirit, that she would let him have his dinner party. She would sit beside him, and she would meet the evening head-on and she would sneer at the lot of them. She had never been one to shrink from something just because it was not to her taste. She had married her worst enemy, for Hester Starkey's sake: she could sit through an evening of boorish company and tolerate Draco's moronic friends, and perhaps come out of it with a laugh or two, but she certainly wasn't going to avoid it, simply because it might be difficult.
That night, when Ginny came down to the dining room, he was waiting for her. Other than the Sunday night in his room, it was the first time in two months of marriage that they had eaten an evening meal together. He was dressed in heavy, navy robes, and Ginny was uncomfortably conscious of her own well-worn jeans and jumper. It put her on the defensive though, and gave her courage to attack the matter at hand. She waited until Lolly had served them and subsided to the kitchen, before she spoke.
"I'll be glad to have your friends in for dinner on Saturday."
He didn't exactly smile, but she saw his face relax in a way she had seldom seen it do before.
"But," she continued, "I'd like to have a few things clear before you invite them."
"Oh?" He looked wary.
"Yes. First of all, how many friends are you talking about?"
"Two men and their wives."
"Do I know them?"
"No."
Good, not Crabbe and Goyle then. "Will it be a formal thing?"
"Do you want it to be?"
"Lord, no," she said, vehemently. "If it's up to me, I'd like to be able to breathe during the evening."
He looked cautious, and she realised, with an unexpected stab of understanding, that he was not a man used to being casual. She had never seen him wear anything but robes. Well, robes and pyjamas.
She relented a little. "How about just informal dinner robes, then?"
"That would be fine." He looked relieved.
"Saturday, then. What time?"
"Seven?" It was later than Lolly usually served dinner.
"Drinks at seven, or dinner at seven?" she asked.
"Drinks at 6.30, and dinner at seven." He hesitated. "There's one other thing..."
She raised her eyebrows.
"I haven't told them this is all... arranged." He gestured between them.
"Why ever not?"
He looked self-conscious. "I think they might... feel sorry for me, if they knew."
"And they're not going to feel sorry for you when they think it's real and then find that I'm gone in a year?"
"I'll worry about that when the time comes. For now..."
"You want me to pretend to be in love with you?" She found this amusing, and watched him flush.
"You don't have to go to that extreme."
She laughed mirthlessly. "I'm not sure I could fake it, in any case. But I can pretend this is all... normal, if it will help."
An expression of something like relief came over his face. "That would be fine."
"Good." She smiled, feeling somehow that she had the upper hand here. "One more thing."
He looked wary. "What?"
"For the next nine months and twenty-seven days, you and I are going to be living in the same house. You're going to have to stop calling me 'Weasley'."
He looked taken aback. "All right," he said slowly.
"The name," she said, "is 'Ginny'." She flashed him a bright smile, feeling unaccountably like she'd won a battle she hadn't known she was fighting.
He didn't want to call her 'Ginny'. For one thing, it was a nickname, and he did not call people by nicknames. Ever. It suited her, but that was not the point. Her real name, he knew, was Ginevra, and he did not want to call her that, either. What was the point, then? Draco debated it with himself throughout the morning, as he caught up his correspondence and pored over the accounts for one of his vineyards in Australia.
The point, he was forced to admit at last, was that it was one more barrier torn down between the two of them. He could not afford any more barriers down: there had been too many of those already, this week. She had seen him sick and unconscious: what if he had been delirious? What if he had, not knowing what he was saying, given something away?
She had... somehow, taken care of him. He tried not to dwell on what that might mean, what she might have seen. According to the house-elf, she had nursed him tirelessly, sacrificing her own health, et cetera et cetera... He grimaced. She didn't appear to be any the worse for wear from it; he wasn't worried about that. But when he had awoken from the fever, he had been sweaty and dishevelled, and she had seen him like that. It put him at a disadvantage; it made him look... weak.
And then, she had read to him. What had possessed him to insist on it? She had a low, sort of musical voice. A bit husky. He'd liked listening to her. She did the voices, when she read; everything from low cockney to aristocratic French. He had quite forgotten himself for awhile, caught up in the story, and the sound of her voice... and next thing he'd known, her feet were on his bed, almost touching his leg, and he had looked up to see the firelight shining on her hair.
Her hair. It was obscene, really, how brilliant it was. A woman who cared more about her appearance might have toned it down with a Colouring Charm, made it more of a sophisticated auburn or a playful strawberry blonde. She didn't seem to care about that at all. It was a strange colour, not one colour at all, but a hundred different ones, gold and copper and bronze, all woven together into something entirely its own. An alive colour. He had never liked red hair. It was too distracting.
And now, when the barriers between them had already begun to crumble, he was supposed to call her by her first name. He threw down his quill in frustration, and went for his broom. He hadn't flown in days, and physically he was feeling quite his old self again. Fit enough to fly anyhow, and he needed to clear his head.
He wondered, as he flew above a stand of spruce forest, what stupidity had prompted him to suggest having friends in to dinner. He was probably risking too much. She might hate them. She might choose the evening to lash out at him, and exact revenge for all those years he had treated her so abysmally, at school.
But they were a vital part of his life, these people, and he couldn't say why, exactly, it was so important for him to introduce her – Ginny – to them. He only knew she thought badly of him, and that he wanted her to see he did have friends who were good people. He told himself he was only trying to prove her unfounded prejudices wrong.
"Ginny." He said it aloud, experimenting, tasting it. "Ginny." It was a pretty word, a warm word. It rolled off his tongue easily. He touched down at the edge of the lawn, and went to lock up his broom in the shed. Her Galaxy waited in the rack near his Stratosphere's empty holder. "Ginny," he said to it.
Yes, it suited her.
Ginny was in a state of nerves Saturday that she hadn't experienced since the night she'd met Malfoy at The Blue Onion. Something of the way she felt must have shown at breakfast, because Draco ate quickly and disappeared before she had finished picking at her toast and eggs.
First thing after breakfast, she ransacked her wardrobe and decided she owned nothing that made her look any better than a potato in a burlap sack. She went searching for Draco and found him in the library.
"I think I'm going to have to go into town and buy something to wear tonight."
He looked up from the ledger he was writing in, surprised. "Of course. Do you need me to come with you?"
Good lord, that would have been more than she could have taken, in her frame of mind. "No, just..." Here, she fumbled. On her own salary, she wasn't going to be able to afford anything that was going to measure up to Draco's expectations of what his wife should wear to entertain guests. "I thought I'd go to your tailor again, and wanted to be sure that was all right with you?"
"By all means." She thought he looked pleased. "Get whatever you want." He didn't mention payment. She'd noticed though, on their wedding night, that no money had changed hands between Draco and the tailor. She assumed it was considered a subject too vulgar to talk about, and she didn't mention it now. No doubt Natty Toggs would send them the bill later.
She Apparated to the port at Princes and Edward, then found her way to the abandoned building where a tap of her wand revealed the sign Natty Toggs: Designs for Discriminating Wizards.
She entered to the same cries of delight and enthusiastic embraces she'd met eight weeks earlier, though this time, Natty contented himself with a respectful kiss on her hand before calling for Mrs. Selvedge. Mrs. Selvedge, in her turn, took Ginny into the back room and fussed over a tea tray for her, before bustling back into the shop to search for a suitable robe. Ginny leaned against the soft chair back and sipped her tea. It was nice, this treatment. She stretched out her legs and wiggled her toes. A girl could get used to being rich. Perhaps a year from now she would miss this new life the littlest bit after all.
Mrs. Selvedge bustled back in, with three robes over her arm. She hung them carefully in the air, waving her wand expertly over each of them so that they took on Ginny's exact proportions.
"Now then," she said briskly, when the robes were all turning slowly in the air before them. "Like all of Toggs ' pieces, no two are alike, however the cream one..." she gestured, and a spotlight fell from her wand, onto one of the robes. "The cream has classic Toggs features that distinguish it from other designers: the silver bodice clasps; the skirt that is slit up one side; the laces on the shoulders..." Ginny relaxed into the seat and gave herself up to the luxury of shopping, and buying, for once in her life, anything she wanted.
In the end, she chose a clingy, sage-coloured robe with plain, elegant lines that cost more than her month's paycheck. It went well with her hair, and anyhow, she could never have worn cream: she would have spent the whole of the evening worrying about spilling soup on herself. She left the shop, with Natty's promise of having the robe delivered that afternoon ringing in her ears, and walked to the Apparition Port, trying to decide what to do with herself for the rest of the day.
She checked her watch. It was one-o'clock. She couldn't just go back to Four Winds and sit around for six hours: if she did that, she'd be a raving lunatic by the time the guests arrived. Briefly, she considered dropping in at The Burrow, but decided against it. She had too much on her mind right now to cope with her mother's anxious ministrations and her brothers' – any of them who might have popped in for Saturday lunch – questions about what she'd been doing with herself for the last two months.
In the end, she went back to her old flat to visit Sarah again. It was lovely to kick her shoes off and lie on the sofa with her feet up, this time with a perfectly clean conscience, and drink pumpkin ale straight from the bottle while the Wizarding Wireless played Faeries on Fire and Sarah caught her up on all the gossip. It turned out there was rather more than gossip to catch up on in the week since they'd seen each other: Sarah was getting married.
"...I would have told you before anybody, but I didn't know where to find you! Bobby just – just came out and asked me, and here I was, thinking he thought I was just a passing fancy, but I didn't realise, until he asked, just how much I love him and how much I would hate the thought of ever living without him..." She paused for breath, looking positively lit up from within.
Watching her, Ginny felt a restlessness stir in her, that she couldn't define. She recognised it as more than just wanting to be free of Draco and Four Winds and the Curse of the Firstborn. It was not a longing for Ted: good heavens, she shuddered now, at the very thought. No, it was just that she was somehow envious of the luminous joy that Sarah wore like a mantle: it was something she herself hadn't felt in a very long time. A long time, she admitted to herself, before she had married Malfoy and moved to Four Winds.
"Has Bobby moved in here with you?" she asked.
"Please!" Sarah scoffed. "I'm no Muggle! No, we'll wait for a proper wedding."
"And that's all right with him?"
"It'll have to be, won't it? It's the way I want it, and he thinks I hung the moon, so..."
Ginny smiled half-heartedly. 'It must be... nice,' she thought, 'to have someone think you hung the moon. Someone you want to think it, of course.'
"And I want you to be my bridesmaid, Ginny," Sarah was saying. "If we set the wedding for the first week in May, could you do it?"
Ginny sat up and put her ale bottle on the coffee table. She reached for Sarah's hands and tried to speak through the tears that were suddenly clogging her voice and making her nose prickle. "Of course I can do it! I'm honoured that you asked me."
Sarah peered at her with concern. "Are you all right, Ginny? I mean really all right? He's not... not mistreating you, is he?"
She shook her head and sniffed loudly. "No, he's perfectly correct in his behaviour toward me. Mostly, we just ignore each other, which is all I ask." She squeezed her friend's hands, and lied. "I'm just happy for you, is all."
After that, they talked about plans for the wedding, and who, among their friends, was going out with whom. Sarah gently pried for information about Ginny's life at Four Winds, but Ginny didn't want to talk about it. "I'll feel like it soon enough," she promised her friend. "And no doubt you'll get an earful, then."
At half past four, Sarah walked her to the Apparation Port at the end of the street. "Well, Love," she said, pulling Ginny into a hug, "if you need me, you know where to find me." She pushed Ginny back to arm's length and looked at her shrewdly. "Which is more than you can say to me."
Ginny smiled wryly. For a reason she couldn't have articulated, she wasn't ready to talk about her new life with anyone, just yet. She and Draco were the only ones who could satisfy the blood curse, and therefore, no one could fully understand their life this year the way they could. It was an intensely private battle she had to fight. "If you need me, my mum and dad know where to find me," she told her friend, and Sarah had to be satisfied with that.
When she stepped out of the Apparition Port at Four Winds, she found Draco pacing in the foyer. He practically leapt at her. "Where the devil have you been?" He had a nearly savage look on his face. She had never seen such an expression on him, and a chill swept over her at the thought that she, somehow, had provoked it. She took a step backward.
"I told you, I went shopping."
"The robe you bought arrived hours ago." He was glaring at her with a ferocity that alarmed and confused her. She hadn't spent too much money, had she? He had told her to get whatever she needed.
"I had some time to kill after that, so I went to visit my old flatmate." He turned away from her abruptly, so she could not see his face, but she watched his back intently and saw the tension gradually ebb out of his shoulders. "Why? Whatever's the matter?"
He whirled around and gestured fruitlessly. "I thought... oh hell, never mind. You're here, so that's all that counts." He started to leave, but she caught him by the sleeve.
"Wait. You thought – what?"
"It was nothing," he muttered, and he looked so self-conscious that Ginny suddenly thought she understood.
"You thought I wasn't going to come back?" she said gently.
"Well, it would have been sticky for me to have had to explain away an absentee wife, wouldn't it? It was a needless worry, I can see that now," he spoke brusquely, and shrugged off her hand. "Do you think you could manage to be down here a little early, to greet them when they come?"
The acid in his tone stung her. "I think I could just manage that."
"Good." He nodded curtly at her, and stalked away. She glared after him. That was nice: not a word of thanks for what she was about to put up with, tonight. And just when she thought he was beginning to be a little human, he all but turned and slapped her in the face. It would teach her to waste her sympathy on the likes of him.
In spite of the bravado she had been building up all day, for just this moment, Ginny's heart began to hammer in her ears, and her throat went dry when she heard the familiar 'crack' in the Apparation Port. She wanted to turn and bolt out of there. She could not do this, could not spend the evening sitting at the table, making conversation with a group of haughty, bigoted, cruel people who would surely despise her once they heard her family name, and would spend the evening looking down their noses at her. She had agreed to live in the same house with this man for a year, but that didn't mean she had to open herself up to the scorn of his friends. What had she been thinking when she had agreed to this? She had been mad.
She began to turn away, but Draco seemed to sense what she was thinking, and reached for her hand, and pulled her back. He laced his warm fingers through her clammy ones, and held them firmly, forcing her back to his side, forbidding her to run.
The Port opened and Draco stepped forward, pulling her with him. "Kincaid!" he cried, with a warmth so wholly unlike himself that Ginny turned to gape at him. He let go her hand to clasp the forearm of the person who stepped out first: a great, shaggy, blond bear of a man, who clapped him heartily on the back. Draco returned the clap, and Ginny watched them, astonished. Draco was... well, not smiling, exactly, but his face had lost the stiff, formal mask he kept on around her, and there was genuine, warm pleasure in his eyes. She had never seen him unbend so much. In a moment's time, he appeared to be an entirely different man from the one she had lived with for two months.
The woman who followed the big man out of the Port appeared to be a few years older than Ginny, and she was as small and compact as her husband was big. Without ceremony, she put her hands on Draco's shoulders, stood on her tiptoes, and kissed him on the cheek. To Ginny's bewilderment, Draco bent down to allow it, curling the corner of his mouth tolerantly. The woman stepped back to appraise him, looking him up and down shamelessly.
"Married life agrees with you then," she observed, in a rich, Scottish brogue. Draco was saved from answering this when she turned to Ginny, and smiled at her. "Can I meet her then, Draco, or are you going to leave the introductions up to us?"
"Of course you can meet her." His arm went around her shoulders, and Ginny felt herself pulled against the lean, solid length of him. She fought to wrap her mind around the sheer number of rules that were being turned upside down on her tonight. Her arm was crushed between them and there was nothing for it but to put it gingerly around his waist. She held it there awkwardly. It was uncomfortable because he was so tall, and his arm was too heavy on her shoulders. More uncomfortable though, was the clean, aggressive scent of him that sent something stabbing through her: something sharp and sweet and disturbing that made her want to push him away.
"My wife, Ginny Weasley." He said it smoothly, without a hint of derision or apology, and she was grateful. "Ginny, may I present Betsy and Lowen Kincaid..." Betsy beamed at her, while Lowen ducked his head and turned a shade of pink incongruous in such a large man. "...and David and Fiona Gordon," he added just as a second couple stepped out the port. They nodded at her and smiled. No one balked when they heard her name, she had to give them all that.
"Well," said Betsy brightly, "go on and kiss your bride for us, then, Draco."
The bottom dropped out of her stomach. Surely he wouldn't – he would make some excuse – but Draco was saying, "my pleasure," and bending his head toward her. Her ears filled with a panicked roaring and she had time to do little more than react. She lifted her face, and automatically, her eyes closed. She felt his lips brush lightly across hers, and then it was over. Her eyes fluttered open and she released a breath she hadn't known she had been holding. They had got through it. It hadn't been so hard.
But to her horror, Betsy was laughing, and saying, "That's not a kiss! Kiss her properly, Draco!"
"Betsy!" Fiona protested, but Betsy brushed her off.
"We've all waited a good, long time to see you married, and now we want to enjoy it."
She felt his hesitation. But he pulled her around to face him and then one hand was on her waist, the other firm on the back of her neck, and he was kissing her, really kissing her. His lips were warm, and surprisingly soft, and they lingered on hers until she could hardly breathe. She swayed, clutching at the front of his robes to keep her knees from buckling. And then his lips were gone, and he was saying in a tolerant drawl, "Will that do?"
"Yes," said Betsy smugly. "That'll do just fine."
But Ginny thought a little wildly that no, no it wouldn't do at all. And she wasn't quite certain what she meant by that.
They went into the library, and while Draco poured drinks and handed them around, Betsy Kincaid cornered her by the bar.
"You," she pronounced guilelessly, "are perfectly lovely." She reached for Ginny's hand and held it fast in hers while she turned a mock glare on Draco. "Why didn't you tell me she was so gorgeous, Draco? I might have worn something different if I'd known I was going to look like an old fishwife beside her!" She smoothed the expensively cut, rose-coloured robes she wore and Draco quirked his mouth dryly.
Without waiting for an answer from him, she turned back to Ginny and said in confidential tones, "I want to know everything about you, Ginny, especially how you came to snare our Draco, when we were sure he was such a confirmed old bachelor! But everyone's always warning me not to come on too strong. I promised Lowen and Fiona I'd hold back and not make you tell it all at once. You've no idea how hard I'm trying to contain myself just now, so's not to scare you off." She cast an imploring glance at her husband and said in a stage-whisper, "I'm not botching it too badly, am I, luv?"
Ginny did not know whether to laugh or cry. There was something very open and artless about Betsy, and her instinct was to like her. Betsy was a friend of Draco's, however, and Ginny was hedging her bets for the time being. She was saved from either laughing or crying when Fiona Gordon joined them. "Pay her no mind, Ginny. She'll talk the hind leg off a mule if she's allowed: You have to know when to walk away."
"I only let Fiona talk to me that way because she's my sister," Betsy said fondly. "She's five years older than me but you'd think she was my mother, the way she goes on, sometimes."
Ginny looked at the two sisters. Where Betsy was small and energetic, Fiona Gordon was tall and serene, and beautiful in a classic sort of way. Her husband David was serious and bespectacled, making Ginny think of a scientist, or a professor. "How did you meet Draco?" Fiona was asking her.
"Oh yes, tell us!" Betsy chimed in, settling herself on the sofa and patting the cushion beside her. "I like a good love story."
Cautiously, Ginny sat. She didn't like the direction this conversation was taking. She was still reeling from the kiss, and wasn't sure she trusted her own judgment to say the right thing, at the moment. "We..." she sipped at her wine, to give herself time to collect her thoughts. It would be best, she thought, to stick as close to the truth as possible, without giving too much away. She glanced up at Draco, who did not appear to be paying any attention to the conversation. "We were at school together, years ago, actually."
"At Hogwarts? Lucky you. We were sent away to Beauxbatons, ourselves." The sisters grimaced at each other. Evidently, there was a history there.
"Yes," Ginny forged ahead. "We were at Hogwarts, but in different houses, so we didn't mix often. I'm afraid Draco didn't like me much, back in those days." He looked at her then, over the bar, and she held his gaze evenly, daring him to contradict her. He returned the gaze just as directly and his eyes almost seemed to be laughing at her.
"Yes," he said smoothly. "Well, I remember being on the wrong end of your bat-bogey hex a time or two, my dear." She should have known she wouldn't be able to wrong-foot him so easily.
Betsy's eyes lit up. "Old enemies, then. How romantic! So how did you come to fall in love?"
Ginny's eyes sparkled at Draco over the rim of her glass. "I think it's safe to say," she replied, "that Draco found he couldn't live without me. I think his exact words were, 'I'll die if you don't marry me'. So what was I to do? I couldn't have that on my conscience now, could I?"
They all, except for Draco, laughed.
"The way I remember it," he interrupted, "you were the one who proposed to me. By owl post, if I'm not mistaken."
Ginny could not find an answer to this. It was too easy, this bantering with him; it could become uncomfortably... comfortable. She found herself groping to regain her train of thought. "Anyhow, we're married now and..." She forced a smile even as she lied. "And I've never been happier." Fortunately for her, Draco turned the conversation to something else then, and the others seemed willing to let the subject lie.
At dinner, Draco sat at the head of the table, and Ginny sat at the foot. It was, she soon realised, the perfect position for her to accidentally catch his eye every time she looked up from her plate. She tried not to look up too often, but she couldn't help herself. More often than not, his eyes were already on her, and she would feel the colour flood into her face, without knowing quite why it should.
Betsy was seated on her left, and she had something to say on nearly every subject that came up throughout the course of the meal. Normally, Ginny despised garrulous women; they were inevitably stupid and full of themselves, but by the time they had finished their salmon and had moved on to the roast beef, she found herself actually enjoying Betsy Kincaid. She had an opinion about everything, but though she was shrewd, she was also kind, and Ginny could not fault anything she said as being catty or narrow or mean. It was not what she would have expected from a friend of Draco.
David Gordon was on her right, and though he was quiet, he seemed intelligent and well-spoken. He was particularly attentive to his wife, almost anticipating what she wanted before she asked. At one point, when he refilled her water goblet, Fiona gave him a quiet smile that was filled with something so tender it made Ginny ache to watch it. She shook herself. She'd had far more wine than was good for her. Purposefully, she turned her attention back to Betsy, who was holding forth about something her mother had said last week, which made everyone laugh except for Ginny, who hadn't heard a word of it.
She glanced through her lashes at Draco. He was watching her knowingly. She flushed again, wondering what he was thinking. She knew she wasn't exactly scintillating company tonight. Was he regretting asking her to do this? She chided herself for not adding more life to the party, and resolved to overcome her nerves and pull out all the stops for the rest of the evening. She drained her wine glass and flashed Draco her most brilliant smile.
She enjoyed the evening more than she'd ever imagined she would, and when they saw their guests into the Apparation Port, long after midnight, she was truly sorry to see them go. She listened for the four telltale 'cracks' that indicated they had gone, and then collapsed into a chair and looked up at Draco.
He said nothing, only folded his arms and looked down at her with an inscrutable expression.
"Well?" she said, at last. "Do you think it was a success?"
For a long moment, he was silent: only looked at her until she began to be uncomfortable.
"What?" she said, defensively.
"Come into the library, and have a drink with me," was all he said.
"All... all right." She got up and followed him into the library, suddenly uncertain of herself. She thought the evening had gone well. Had she made some crude mistake? Embarrassed him in some way? Or was it the kiss that had him bothered? Well, she could hardly help it; he was the one who had started that.
He poured her a brandy, and one for himself, and brought them over to the fire that was burning low in the fireplace. He indicated that she should sit, and handed her the drink. Automatically, she took it from him. Smoke and Ginger jumped lightly into her lap, and she stroked them, feeling oddly relieved that their little bodies were between the two of them.
He did not look directly at her, but recapped the bottle, then went to lean on the mantelpiece, where he stared pensively into the fire. He was so hard to read. Was he displeased with the evening? She thought it had gone swimmingly, herself. His friends, completely contrary to her expectations, were nice people. Moreover, they were intelligent and appeared to be sincere. Once she'd gotten over her nerves, she had enjoyed herself very much.
As if nearly reading her thoughts, Draco spoke. "Did you enjoy yourself, then?"
"Yes, I did. I didn't expect to – I'll be honest with you about that – but your friends were... a pleasant surprise. Just like you said they'd be." She spoke carefully, choosing her words. "I liked Betsy and Fiona very much, and their husbands seem like... like decent men."
He continued to gaze into the fire, swirling the brandy around in his glass. Almost absently, he said, "Yes, they are. Very decent men."
The clock ticked in the silence, and Ginny sipped at her brandy, letting the warmth of it begin to lull her into sleepiness. Idly, she wondered what in the world Draco Malfoy would know about what made a decent man.
He swallowed the last of his drink and seemed to shake himself from his reverie. He turned to look at her. "Thank you for doing this." His grey eyes were remote, shielded from her. His posture was stiff and removed. It always seemed to cost him something to be grateful to her.
"Draco," she said, exasperated. "It was nothing. I was happy to do it, and I enjoyed your friends. Besides," she added, half-joking, "I got a new robe out of the evening, didn't I?"
For an instant, he looked startled, and then the shield went up over his eyes again. "No," he said. "Tonight went above and beyond the call of duty. You could have been rude to my friends, but you made them feel welcome, and I thank you." After an awkward pause, he added stiffly, "And your new robes suit you. You look... very nice."
Ginny didn't exactly roll her eyes, but she felt like doing it. What would it cost him to be generous with a compliment? But before she had time to formulate a reply, he had left the library, closing the door softly behind him.
Draco's mind was in upheaval as he undressed. On the one hand, he was relieved and pleased at how well the evening had gone. It had been far beyond his best expectations, actually. He had to give Ginny credit: she had given his friends a fair shake, and she had genuinely seemed to enjoy them. They, in their turn, had seemed to like her. She had been gracious and entertaining, and... and damn, she had looked good in those robes that clung to her breasts and hips and turned her hair a warm, deep russet colour in the candlelight... He moved restlessly.
He lay down on his bed and closed his eyes. She had looked at him that way, across the table... A way that made him flush with sudden, unexpected heat so that he had almost dropped his knife. There were secrets in her eyes, and he was seized by a need to know what they were. She should not have secrets from him, he thought, although he had them from her. She should not because... well, because she was just an old enemy who had been thrust upon him, and he wanted the boundary lines between them to remain firm and clearly drawn, as they always had been. He did not want to become pulled into her deep eyes, entangled in her brilliant hair, and forget who he was, and who she was. It did not help anything when she looked at him the way she had tonight.
He fell asleep replaying in his mind the image of her in her green robes, her hair woven into some complicated kind of plait, the firelight playing over the line of her jaw, where a few loose curls brushed her skin and made his fingers itch to reach out and touch them.