Chapter 14
Ginny spent six glorious days at The Burrow recuperating from her gunshot wound. Her mother cooked all her favourite foods, and her brothers trooped through, some of them more than once, to scold her for being out alone in a rough part of London at that time of night, and then they all hugged her and told her to get well so they could quit worrying about her. One rainy afternoon she braved the ghoul and went to the attic to rummage around. There, she found a stack of cartons labelled "Ginny" in one corner, and spent a nostalgic two hours going through them.
She sorted through dried-up beginner potion kits, hair ribbons faded and frayed beyond salvaging, and old crayon drawings. She smiled at the five-year-old scrawl: her name was invariably written backwards across the page. Most of the sketches were stick figures of her family, drawn in descending order of height, all with brilliant orange hair and large smiles. Always all nine of them holding hands. One of the drawings she pulled from the stack brought tears to her eyes. It was of a similarly orange-haired figure with the same wide smile, battling a blue, fire-breathing creature with fearfully jagged ridges along its back. In shaky, green letters she had labelled it 'CHARLY'.
She sat back on the dusty attic floor and gazed into space while somewhere behind her the ghoul clanked away. Charlie. He'd been at school for most of her younger years, but she'd written him letters, and he'd written back about his friends and the magic he was learning. He'd gone to Romania, but he brought her the best presents when he came home to visit: a real training whip; a dragon-hide coin purse; books of Romanian legends with brilliantly-illustrated castles and princesses and battle scenes where you could really hear the shouting going on. Then, he had come back to fight for the Order, and had been killed in one of the very first battles of the war. Her mother and father had never really been the same after that. None of them had. She missed him. Gently, she set the drawing aside; she would have it framed, and give it to her mother when the anniversary of Charlie's death came around again.
One carton contained old paperback romances from her teenage years. At random, she pulled one out: To Wed a Scandalous Spy. She opened the book at random, and read.
Rosamunde's bosom heaved, straining at the flimsy fabric of the petticoat that was all she had left of the rich robes she had once worn. "Robert," she gasped. "Take me now! Ravish me!" Robert reached forward, his work-roughened hand trembling, and began – slowly – to unlace her bodice...
Ginny made a face and tossed the book aside; why had her mother kept all this trash? Her first dress robes were there, from the Yule Ball that Neville had taken her to. Dear Neville, braver than any of them could ever have imagined, was gone too. She thought about the reports of his very last hours: how he had spit Veritaserum into the faces of his captors, before they tortured him to death. And he had never let one word of the Order's plans slip out before he died.
One shoebox was full of old letters from her Hogwarts days: letters from friends, written over the summers; letters from Michael Corner and Dean Thomas that made her blush at their – and her own – stupidity. She had a sudden, horrifying image of what might have happened if she'd been killed in the convenience shop robbery, instead of merely wounded. Her mother would have, eventually, gone through these boxes and found the letters. Knowing Molly, she would have kept them for their sentimental value – probably handed them round at the funeral, so everyone she'd ever known could have one last 'piece of Ginny' to remember her by. She shuddered, and with her wand, set fire to the lot of them, then and there.
At the bottom of the box she came to a small stack of letters from Harry, tied with a broad, grosgrain ribbon and these, as she read them, made her smile. They were full of the same passionate adolescent declarations, but they were different because she had really loved Harry. Harry, however, had come back from the war too used up to be able to love back anymore. Oddly, she had understood. She had let him go then, for good: really let go of him in her heart, knowing that, as Hermione had told her when she was thirteen, she really did need to get on with making a life for herself. Now, she tucked the bundle of letters gently into the bottom of the carton. Someday she might come back for them, but not until her year at Four Winds was over. There would be time enough after that.
The last thing she found was her old guitar, leaning in a corner of the attic, dusty but still in good shape. She didn't know if she even remembered how to play anymore, but after she'd sealed up all the boxes of her childhood, she took the guitar downstairs with her, polished and tuned it, and gave it a try. The strings needed replacing, but she managed to give a fairly good account of herself with "Flow Gently, Sweet Afton" and "Danny Boy". She'd forgotten how much she loved to play. She would take it back to Four Winds with her, and see if she couldn't get back into the swing of it.
One afternoon, she and her mother went to Diagon Alley to do some early Christmas shopping. She knocked off most of her list by lunchtime. Her dad and mum; Ron and Hermione; Bill and Fleur; Fred and Angelina; George and Ainsley. She bought a set of wineglasses for Sarah and Bobby, and something for the office gift swap.
She wanted to get something for Lolly. She didn't suppose Draco would mind if she bought his house-elf a gift, and she really was fond of the little creature. In The Housewitch's Helper, she found the very thing: a pretty little beaded votive holder with an Everlasting Candle in it.
That left only Draco.
She didn't know whether or not the two of them would be exchanging Christmas gifts, but she supposed she should get him something. The trouble was that men were so hard to shop for. He didn't need anything, and he could afford to buy himself anything he wanted. She wandered the shops, pondering and discarding the usual array of jumpers and watches, cologne and Quidditch paraphernalia. She was getting desperate for inspiration, when she found herself looking into the window of Flourish and Blotts.
Of course. He'd been so taken with The Scarlet Pimpernel, and he knew next to nothing about Muggle literature. She'd get him something with sword-fighting and adventure... The Three Musketeers would be just about right. Naturally, Flourish and Blotts wouldn't have anything like that in stock, but later she'd nip into that little bookshop on the Muggle side of The Leaky Cauldron and find him a nice, leather-bound edition with gold embossing. To round it out, she spent half her paycheck on a bottle of 24-year-old Scotch at Potable Potions and More, and felt quite satisfied with herself.
She was in the middle of her toast and coffee the next morning, when the post came. There was a thin package for her, addressed in a spiky, slanting hand she didn't recognize. Instinctively, she knew it was from Draco: the handwriting was all him, angular and precise, and cultivated. Her heart sped up. She slit the parcel's wrapping with her butter knife, and a small book dropped out. There was a letter too, written on thin, vellum notepaper. She unfolded it.
Dear Ginny,
I thought you might want something to read while you recover. Hope this letter finds you well.
Draco
She turned the little blue book over in her hands. Autumn Journal, by Louis MacNiece. She knew MacNiece; he was an Irish poet. An Irish Muggle poet. Suddenly, absurdly, her heart soared. She clutched the little book reflexively to her chest, and smiled. Draco had been thinking about her.
Her mother, who was scrubbing out a pot at the sink turned around just then. "Someone got some good news," she observed.
"I'm going home today, Mumma," said Ginny.
Molly raised her eyebrows. "Home?"
"I mean Four Winds."
Molly regarded her thoughtfully, but she only said, "Feeling better, are you?"
"Yes, I think so."
"Will you be here for lunch?"
"Yes. I've loads of packing to do; I'm taking a lot back with me. It'll take me all morning."
"All right then. And if you're feeling so good, why don't you peg out that basket of washing for me before you start to pack?"
Ginny got up from the table and kissed her mother on the cheek. "I would love to peg out the washing for you." She gathered up her book and the note and turned to go.
"Ginny," her mother said.
"Hmm?"
Molly dried her hands on her apron and took Ginny's face between her hands. "Be careful."
"Be careful of what?"
"Of your heart."
Ginny was startled. "Don't be silly, Mum. My heart's not in any danger."
"All right," her mother said. "I'm sure it's not. But just remember something, Ginny: A curse is a curse, no matter how pretty the package."
Ginny pulled away from her. "I don't know what you're talking about." And when Molly started to speak again, she interrupted. "I'll go peg out that wash and start packing then, shall I?" And before her mother could say anything else, Ginny hurried from the kitchen.
A curse is a curse, no matter how pretty the package. It was one of those trite little sayings that every magical child learned before he got his first wand. What did it have to do with her and the Curse of the Firstborn? Nothing. It had nothing to do with her. She put it firmly from her mind, and went to deal with the basket of wet towels. She spent the rest of the morning packing her things, had a quick lunch with her mother, and Floo'd, with her trunk, back to Four Winds.
Draco wasn't home, but Lolly said he'd only gone to one of his Australian vineyards, and she expected him for dinner. And sure enough, at thirteen minutes past six o'clock, Ginny heard him in the Apparition Port. She stood up from the chair in the foyer, where she'd been waiting, and carefully smoothed her jumper. The door opened.
He stepped out, and stopped in his tracks when he saw her. "Oh, hello."
Ginny felt her face suffuse with colour, and cursed the Weasley tendency to blush at the least provocation. "Hello," she said. Why did she suddenly feel so... she couldn't be feeling... shy? No. No, that was ridiculous. She was never shy.
"I didn't expect you back so soon," he said. "How's the shoulder?"
"Oh! Fine. It hardly ever hurts anymore."
"Good."
They fell into silence, and Ginny squelched an impulse to twist her fingers and giggle nervously. Instead, she said, "Thank you for the book."
"You're welcome. You... er... didn't already have a copy of it, did you?"
"No. And I like MacNiece. He writes lovely poetry. So... thanks."
Silence again. Ginny began to feel very foolish, standing there with nothing to say to him. At last, though, Draco spoke again.
"Did you have a good time at home?"
"Yes, very. I spent a nice, sentimental morning going through some of my old childhood things. Got some Christmas shopping done, did some baking, that kind of thing."
"Ah." Then, "Have you eaten yet?"
"No. Lolly said to expect you, so I thought I'd wait."
"Well, I'm hungry. Shall we?"
Ginny was in an agony of conflicting thoughts, all through dinner. How was it possible that she was so glad to see him, when she knew what he was? He was a criminal. The things he was involved in were, in all likelihood, so loathsome that she ought to utterly despise him. She should refuse to even be in the same room with him. And yet, when he asked her, after pudding, if she felt like going flying she said yes, and couldn't make herself feel anything other than happy at the prospect.
It was a gorgeous night for flying, with the temperature hovering around freezing and no wind at all. The stars were flung with abandon from one end of the horizon to the other, like a million diamonds scattered from a broken necklace, the sliver of white moon lying among them, its pendant.
They flew for an hour, and then came home, breathless with the cold, their faces and fingers numb, exhilarated by the speed of their brooms and the rare, perfect flying conditions. She handed Draco her Galaxy and he locked it into the holder next to his own broom in the shed before they started for the house together.
"Draco," she said, summoning her nerve. "I want to ask you something about Dark of the Moon."
Beside her, she felt him stiffen, though he never broke his stride or altered his expression. "I'm not going to tell you anything more than I already have."
She stopped walking, forcing him to stop and look back at her. She took a deep breath. "I feel like... I have to know."
He made an irritated sound. "Your need to know is not my problem." He started walking again.
She hurried after him, putting her hand on his arm to stop him. "Please, Draco."
He stopped again, and looked down at her gloved hand lying against his cloak. For a long while he was silent. Then he said, "Let's get inside, at least, before we freeze to death."
In the foyer, they stripped off their outside things, and by mutual, unspoken consent – by habit, Ginny realized with some surprise – they both turned towards the library. Lolly had anticipated their arrival, and a tea tray waited on the bar for them. Ginny went to it and poured them each a cup, adding a measure of Firewhiskey to Draco's before she handed it to him.
"Well," he said when they were sitting in front of the fire, "what do you want to ask, then? I'm not –" he added with a warning note in his voice, "– promising to tell you anything."
"I want to know what kind of work you do for The Baron."
"No."
"Why not? I told you I'm not going to turn you over to Special Forces. Don't you believe me?"
"Yes, I believe you."
"Then why won't you tell me?"
"Because I know why you're asking."
Ginny was a little taken aback: she was not entirely sure, herself, why she was so keen on knowing. "Why am I asking, then?"
He put his cup down on the end table with a clatter, and leaned forward, looking at her long and searchingly. "You want to know exactly what kind of evil I'm capable of because you have a need to classify me: to box me neatly up and weigh me in the balance. Once you have my relative merits weighed against my relative sins, you'll be able to label me 'accept' or 'reject', file me neatly away, and get on with your life accordingly."
She started to protest, but he held up his hand. "Don't bother Ginny; it's as true as you're sitting there. Not," he added, "that I blame you for it. It's the way we all function." He crossed to the bar and poured himself another cup of tea, then stood there so that she had to turn around in her chair to see him.
"I can't tell you the whole story," he went on, "I can only tell you the part that will weigh against me. You'd be judging me based on incomplete information. That's hardly fair to me, is it?"
"Draco, I'm not trying to judge you at all."
"Liar," he said easily, and sipped at his tea.
And Ginny could think of nothing to say in reply because he was, of course, absolutely right.
Still, she thought later on when she was alone, was that so bad? She couldn't very well know how she felt about him if she didn't know the whole story, could she?
Mid-December, Ginny had another visit from Harry.
"Have you made any progress finding Draco Malfoy?" he asked her, over tea in her office.
She ignored the question. Instead, she said, "What would you say if I told you Draco Malfoy is not The Baron?"
Harry looked surprised. "Do you know that?"
She nodded.
"How?"
"Harry," she said reprovingly. "Do I ask you to tell me your professional secrets?"
"No," he admitted, "but we'd have to have something like that on pretty good authority before we act. Otherwise we could blow the whole thing."
"I have it from a reliable source," she said firmly. "Draco Malfoy is not The Baron."
"A reliable source?" Harry was sceptical.
"Very reliable. And I can tell you that the man who is The Baron is somewhere in the Isle of Wight, but that's all I do know for right now."
Harry was silent, thinking. Finally, he said, "Well, are you still interested in helping us track him down?"
She hesitated, but only for a moment. "Yes," she said firmly. "Yes, I am."
"All right, then. Why don't you get in touch with me as soon as you know something more."
"I'll do that," she said, smiling.
She thought for a moment that Harry gave her a very strange look. But then he stood up and said, "Well, I guess I should be going."
She walked him to the door of her office, and his hand was on the knob when he hesitated. Again, that odd look on his face.
"Ginny."
"Hm?"
"You wouldn't... er... want to go see a film with me sometime, would you?"
Ginny blinked at him. "Wha... Oh!" She felt herself turn about forty shades of red, and saw that Harry was blushing as well. "I... I'm not sure what to say." She was telling the truth. She couldn't have told him her own last name, if he'd asked it at that moment.
"I mean," he said hastily, "I understand if you don't want to. Things didn't exactly turn out the best for us last time."
"Oh, no Harry, that's not –"
"It was entirely my fault, I know that. I just... I think I'm doing better now. I mean... maybe I'm ready."
She couldn't think of a single thing to say.
"Well, anyhow," he said, turning, if possible, an even brighter shade of red, "it was just a thought: a bad one, probably. Never mind. Bye, Ginny." And he was gone.
She stood there, her hand on the door, and stared at the place where he'd been standing, and wondered why nothing in her life could ever just be simple, for once.
She tried, on two more occasions when Draco was out of the house, to get into his study, but the door was sealed as tightly as though it had been a solid wall. It was frustrating. They taught you, in Auror training, how to blast down walls to get through locking spells like this, but she couldn't very well do that. It would take a trained Spell Weaver, cutting patiently through each tangled thread of magic, to do it without leaving any trace. She simply didn't have the skills.
Meanwhile, Christmas was approaching, and one day after work, she went to the Muggle bookshop and bought a beautiful, red-leather bound edition of The Three Musketeers for Draco. On a Saturday, when he was away from home, she wrapped all her gifts, and spent the rest of the day in the kitchen with Lolly, baking mince pies and shortbread.
"Lolly," she said, when they were mixing fruitcake, "I feel like decorating! Where do you keep the Christmas decorations?"
"Christmas decorations, Mistress?"
"Yes, you know: fairy lights, tinsel for the tree... that sort of thing."
"We is never having a tree at Four Winds, Mistress."
Ginny gaped at her. "No Christmas tree? Ever?"
Lolly shook her head, her outsize ears flopping like wings. "No, Mistress. Master Draco is mostly too busy for decorating."
"But... don't you celebrate at all?
"Well, Master goes to lots of parties at Christmas time, and on Christmas Day, he is generally working at the vineyards. And as he is not at home then, he permits Lolly to go back to Peru to visit her old mother."
Ginny thought this sounded like a horrible way to spend Christmas. "Well, we're having a tree this year," she declared.
The house-elf looked sceptical. "Lolly is not sure Master is liking that idea, Mistress."
"Master will just have to get used to the idea, Lolly. There's more than one of us in the house now."
When Draco came home, she put the idea to him. To her surprise, he didn't balk at all, but only raised an eyebrow. "I suppose you want me to go out and thrash about the woods cutting it down, and hauling it home and all that?"
"Well... I was sort of hoping you'd go with me. I don't think I can manage to get it home through the forest all by myself."
"All right. But I'm not decorating it. You're on your own with that."
"That's fine. You help me cut it down and get it home, and I'll take care of the rest."
So after dinner that night, they bundled up into cloaks and thick gloves, and trooped out to the forest behind the house. Ginny had already earmarked the tree she wanted: a tall, blue spruce with thick, full boughs, so it was only a matter of felling it. Having helped her father cut down the family Christmas tree for as many years as she could remember, Ginny was adept at Chopping Charms. Draco was useless at it, declaring that he had never heard of such a charm in his life: his family had always bought their Christmas trees ready-cut. It was up to her to do it, then, which she did without much difficulty.
Getting it home was another matter. Once it was lying on the ground, it looked a good deal bigger than it had while it was upright. It took their combined Levitation Charms to wrangle it out of the forest, across the snow-crusted garden, through the front door, and into the sitting room. By the time they had it standing, its tip brushing the high ceiling, they were both disheveled, sweaty, and more than a little irritable with each other.
"Barbaric custom, this," Draco muttered. "Whoever thought it would be nice to bring wildlife inside the house at Christmastime ought to be executed."
"Oh stop grousing," she told him. "It's the first and the last time you're ever going to have to do this. Besides, it'll look lovely when it's finished."
"You're surely not going to decorate it tonight?"
"No, I'm about done in. I'll do it tomorrow. I'll have to pick up some decorations first anyway."
Draco looked alarmed. "You're not going to muck up the whole place with plastic Father Christmases and singing reindeers and things like that, are you?"
She was offended. "I do have some taste, Draco."
"And no mistletoe either!"
"No, I wouldn't dream of it."
"Good. Just so we're agreed."
He was right, of course. Mistletoe was not for couples like them. She was confused enough about the way she felt: mistletoe would only complicate things further. It was unthinkable. And yet, as she drifted off to sleep that night, Ginny couldn't help but feel the tiniest bit hurt that Draco had been so adamant about not having it in the house. Not that she cared, of course, but it would be nice to think he didn't find her entirely repulsive.
Nearly every morning now, the post brought an invitation to some Christmas party or other. Ginny was surprised to learn that Draco had friends: lots of friends, apparently. When she – rather indelicately – told him this, he only quirked his mouth in that way of his: that way that was almost-a-smile-but-not-quite.
"I haven't always lived like a hermit."
And she suddenly understood that their relative seclusion from the rest of the world was because of her. Of course Draco didn't want all his friends knowing about their marriage; no more did she want her own friends knowing. Not that there was anything wrong with it, but being discreet about it did help to avoid sticky explanations and the tiresome, well-meant condolences that would surely come from every direction.
She picked up the invitation that had come that morning. "Mike and Rosemary Peach? I don't recognize their names."
"No, I don't imagine you would."
"I don't recognize any of the names on the invitations that've come. Somehow, I always pictured you still hobnobbing with your old Slytherin pals."
"Did you? Well, the war changed a lot of things, I suppose."
"Don't you ever see any of your school friends any more?"
"Oh yes. I keep in touch with a few of them."
"But... not this year?"
"Not this year."
Ginny wondered if Pansy Parkinson was one of the ones he kept in touch with. She stuffed down a wholly unreasonable surge of resentment. She was not going to ask him. Instead, she said, "It seems a shame not to go to any Christmas parties. Isn't there at least one we could go to, where no one would think it strange for us to be there together?"
He looked surprised. "You want to go to a Christmas party full of people you don't know?"
"Well... no, I suppose not."
"David and Fiona Gordon generally have one every year," he said. "I'm surprised the invitation hasn't come yet. If it's still on, do you want to go to that?"
"Oh, yes! And will Betsy and Lowen be there too?"
"Of course."
"Then I'll be perfectly comfortable. And it really will make it seem more like Christmas."
And serendipitously, the Gordons' invitation came the very next morning.
The party was set for Christmas Eve, which was a Thursday, and Ginny took the day off from work. She got her hair trimmed, and her nails done, and then went and spent a mind-blowing amount of Draco's money at Natty Toggs' shop. An hour under Mrs Selvedge's care, and she was the proud owner of the cream-coloured robe she'd been too cautious to buy before. It had silver bodice clasps, and laces at the shoulders, and a marvellous, long slit up one leg... and Ginny didn't care about spilling soup on herself this time. She knew she wouldn't. Somehow, this time, the robe seemed just perfect for her.
David and Fiona Gordon lived in London, on a hill near Kensington Gardens, in a grand, sweeping old house they called Sunnyside. Ginny, stepping into the foyer on Christmas Eve, thought that she had never felt quite so welcomed by a house before. It was charming: all restored antiques and warm, polished wood, and holly and evergreen boughs.
Betsy Kincaid found them at once, and linked her arm through Ginny's. "Come here, love," she said. "There are some people you just have to meet." Somehow, Draco melted away into the crowd, and Ginny found herself at Betsy's mercy, being introduced to a dizzying array of people, none of whom she recognized five minutes after she met them. Someone pressed a champagne flute into her hand. There was Christmas music coming from a ballroom somewhere, and everything was marvellously noisy and festive.
Two hours into it, though, Ginny was beginning to tire of the crowd. She'd had three glasses of champagne, which always had the effect of making her feel morose, and she couldn't find Draco anywhere. It was beastly hot in the crush of people, and she thought if she had to smile at one more stranger, her face would crack. Betsy steered her toward the ballroom.
It was warm and bright in the room: half of London was there, by the look of it. Ginny craned her neck, searching the crowd for Draco's blond head. She didn't see him anywhere. Someone tapped her on the shoulder, and she whirled around hopefully, but it wasn't him. It was some man she'd never seen before in her life.
"Pardon me, miss," he said, "but I was wondering if you had plans for the next dance?"
"What?" she said stupidly.
"Dance," he said. "Would you like to dance with me?"
It was the last thing in the world she wanted, but she couldn't think of a decent way to tell him so, so instead she said, "Yes, that would be lovely," and followed him onto the dance floor. He was an entirely forgettable young man, handsome in an innocuous, vapid sort of way. While they danced, he made frequent allusions to his 'American business interests', hoping, no doubt, to pass himself off as someone wildly fascinating. Ginny left him gratefully, at the end of the song and couldn't, for the life of her, remember what he'd told her his name was.
There followed a succession of half a dozen or eight men just like him. It seemed every time she escaped one of them, another appeared before her, asking her to dance. Her feet were beginning to ache, and she couldn't see that Draco was anywhere in the room. Maybe he had left her here. Maybe he had abandoned her to this seemingly endless stream of insipid men who seemed determined to dance her to death. She wondered if men had always been this boring, and if so, why she was only now noticing it for the first time.
And then she saw him. She was midway through a waltz with some balding person who smelt of bourbon and sweat, when she saw a flash of white-gold hair near the doorway. It was Draco. No one else had hair that colour; it had to be him. She kept her eyes pinned on him as he moved through the crowd. The damn song was endless. Her partner was saying something that she didn't even pretend to listen to. He stepped on her foot, and apologized. He whirled her around. She felt dizzy and a little sick, overwhelmed by the crowd and the heat and the noise. But at last it was over. She fled the sweaty man, and made for her husband.
When she reached him, he was talking to David Gordon. Ginny plucked at his sleeve a little desperately. He looked down at her, and she hissed, "Get me out of here!"
Without missing a beat, Draco said smoothly, "Excuse us, Gordon. We're going to step outside and get some air." He took her by the arm, and Ginny gratefully allowed him to lead her from the room.
They found a door, and burst out together into the cold, London night. Ginny leaned against the stone wall of the house and closed her eyes, drinking in great gulps of fresh air.
"Not having the great time you expected, eh?" Draco observed dryly.
She opened her eyes. "I don't know what's the matter with me. Usually, I do all right in crowds. I think it was the heat that got to me."
"Want to walk?"
"Yes, all right."
They followed the drive out the front gate, and onto the quiet city street. Once out of the heat of the house, Ginny began to shiver.
"Cold?" he asked. "You want a Warming Charm." He pulled out his wand and swept it over her, and she immediately felt better.
"Thank you." A taxi went by, and then a bus, but after that there was no one else except themselves. "I don't know when I've seen London this quiet at night," Ginny said.
"Everyone's shut up in their homes, getting ready for Christmas tomorrow."
"Oh, right. How does it go? The children were nestled, all snug in their beds..."
"Look," Draco said, pointing. In a shop window was a tiny, toy village set up around a four-foot high Christmas tree. Little lights winked on in the buildings, and around it all ran a train: round and round and round. They stepped under the shop's awning to get a closer look.
And then, with no warning whatsoever, he pulled her into his arms and kissed her.
It was a gentle kiss, a slow, exploring kiss, and Ginny was certain that her heart fully stopped beating for a moment. And then it began to pound, and then to soar. He backed her against the rough stone wall of the shop, and then his hands were on her face, and in her hair, and the kiss was no longer gentle, but febrile and electric –
He broke away first, and the only thing she could do was to stare, wide-eyed and shocked. Shocked that he had kissed her so feverishly, and shocked that she had kissed him right back, the same way.
He dropped his hands to his sides and stepped back. "Mistletoe," he said, and nodded at the shop awning above his head. Dumbly, she followed his gaze. A kissing ball of evergreen and mistletoe hung directly above them; she hadn't even seen it until now. He shrugged. "It gets me every year: I never could resist a pretty girl under the mistletoe. Don't take it personally."
She could hardly believe her ears. Don't take it personally? Hadn't the kiss affected him at all?
But apparently, inexplicably, it hadn't. Because he was leading her away from the shop, down the sidewalk, saying something banal about the weather, while her head was still spinning, and her body still tingling from that kiss.
That kiss.
She stopped abruptly, and interrupted him. "I think I'd like to go home, if you don't mind."
"Mind? No, of course not. Gordon can bring our cloaks along to us when they come over tomorrow. There's a Port around here somewhere; maybe that's it, on the corner." It was. Wordlessly, they stepped into it, and wordlessly they stepped out of their own port at Four Winds, just as the clock in the foyer struck midnight. Ginny looked up at it. It was something from a dream, another world.
"Happy Christmas, Draco," she said dully.
"Right. Happy Christmas to you too. And you ought to be getting to bed, don't you think? You're looking pale, just now."
"Really? I feel fine," she lied. "Just tired, I expect. I'll be all right in the morning."
And surprisingly, she was. She woke early, as she always had on Christmas day, and lay in bed, thinking. Draco was right not to get all worked up about a simple kiss under the mistletoe. No doubt he had forgotten the whole incident already. She had been overtired the night before, and had drunk too much champagne at the party. She would put it out of her mind right now. The Gordons and Kincaids were coming over later, for a midday dinner, and she still had their gifts to wrap, and she wanted to give Lolly a hand in the kitchen, besides.
She got up, showered, and dressed. Her mother had stopped knitting the Weasley family jumpers when the last of her children had left school, and pulling on a green cashmere top, Ginny felt a twinge of regret that the homely old tradition had gone by the wayside. They would all be at the Burrow today, everyone but her; her parents would make her excuses. Draco had assured her that he didn't mind if she spent Christmas day with her family, but whenever she thought of him spending Christmas at some vineyard or other, all alone, she just couldn't bring herself to leave.
She took Lolly's gift downstairs with her, but left Draco's in her room. It seemed silly to put them under the tree, when there were just the two of them, and anyhow, she didn't want to give them to him if he hadn't got her anything.
He wasn't downstairs yet, so she took Lolly's gift into the kitchen and gave it to her. The house-elf tore away the wrapping paper, and promptly burst into loud, squelching sobs.
"Oh, Mistress!" she wailed. "Nobody is ever giving Lolly anything so beautiful in all her life!" She flung herself at Ginny's knees, her face awash with tears of joy.
Ginny was embarrassed. It was only a candle holder, after all. She patted Lolly gingerly on the back. "It's nothing, Lolly. Happy Christmas."
"Ha-a-appy Christmas, Mistress!" Lolly howled. Gently, Ginny disentangled herself from the creature, and escaped back to the dining room, the house-elf's rapturous hiccupping following her all the way.
Draco was there and Ginny saw, beside her plate, a little, gold-wrapped gift. He stood, as he always did, when she came into the room.
"Happy Christmas, Draco," she said, as she had last night.
"The same to you."
She went to her chair and picked up the little box. "Is this for me?"
"Well, it's not for Lolly, is it?"
"Can I open it now?"
"When the devil else would you open it?"
She shook it, listening. Nothing. Carefully, she untied the ribbon. "This looks lovely. Did you wrap it yourself?"
He snorted. "I shouldn't think so."
She frowned. He was almost being rude, this morning. She glanced up at him, and for just a moment, caught a glimpse of something behind his eyes, and she understood. Whatever the gift was, he was afraid she wouldn't like it. He was... nervous?
She stopped, and shook the package again. "Hmm... jewellery? But it's not big enough to be a necklace..." She turned it over in her hands. "It could be a pendant. Or a pin. Or..." She placed it carefully back beside her plate, and pretended to regard it warily. "Then again, it is from Draco Malfoy, my old childhood enemy, so maybe it's not something flattering after all." She tapped her chin and spoke, as if to herself. "I'll have to be on my guard. Maybe a Revealing Charm –" She pulled her wand and pointed it at the package.
"Will you quit making a bloody production of it, and open it, please?" he snapped.
Ginny favoured him with a beatific smile. "Well, if I must." But any thought of teasing him went out of her mind when she pulled the top off the box. It was a pair of earrings. Beautiful, elf-carved, jade earrings. She held one up to the light. It was a little, pendant ball, so intricately wrought it might have been made from green gossamer. "Oh, Draco!" She felt tears spring to her eyes. "I've never seen anything so gorgeous!"
He looked pleased, and she thought, a little relieved.
She fumbled the gold hoops she'd been wearing out of her ears, and put in the new ones. "How do they look?" she asked, holding up her hair, and turning her head.
"Lovely," he told her. But when she glanced at him, he didn't seem to be looking at the earrings at all.
She felt herself flush, and dropped her hair. "I'm going to go look in the mirror. And wait here – I have something for you, as well." She ran up to her room and examined her reflection in the mirror. The little, delicate balls were so thinly carved they appeared nearly translucent against the red of her hair. She smiled at her reflection, and a girl with sparkling eyes smiled back at her. She retrieved Draco's gifts, and dashed back downstairs.
He seemed to really like the book and the Scotch. "You'll have to read it to me, you know," he told her.
She laughed. "All right. I'll read the first chapter right now, before everyone gets here." And she did, sitting at the table, among the remains of their breakfast, while she drank a second, and then a third cup of coffee, and Draco listened intently.
And later that evening, when the Kincaids and the Gordons had finally left for home, she read him a second chapter, this time in the library, in front of a fire that burned low in the hearth. When she had finished it, she yawned and stretched.
"And now, I think you should read to me."
He contemplated her. "All right."
Ginny held The Three Musketeers out to him, but he shook his head. Instead, he picked up the little, blue volume of MacNiece that was lying on the coffee table. She looked on, amused. Draco was going to read poetry? Now there was something she never thought she'd see in her lifetime. He opened the book, and she settled back to listen.
Whose vitality leaps in the autumn
Whose nature prefers
Trees without leaves and a fire in the fireplace.
So I give her this month and the next
Though the whole of my year should be hers who has rendered already
So many of its days intolerable or perplexed
But so many more so happy.
Who has left a scent on my life, and left my walls
Dancing over and over with her shadow
Whose hair is twined in all my waterfalls
And all of London littered with remembered kisses."
Ginny's heart was pounding strangely when he closed the book and set it aside. Draco stood up and looked down at her, his face shadowed and unfathomable in the firelight.
"Well, it's been a busy day, and I'm for bed. Good night, Ginny. Merry Christmas." He crossed to the door, and opened it.
"Draco –"
He turned, expectantly, and she couldn't think what she had called him back for.
"Merry Christmas."
After he left the room, Ginny sat, gazing into the red coals of the fireplace, and thinking.
All of London littered with remembered kisses.
It was a long time before she got up and went to bed, herself.
A/N: "To Wed a Scandalous Spy" is the actual title of an unfortunate novel I picked up in an airport once, but which I promise you I did not finish reading. If I could remember the author's name, I would certainly credit her. The excerpt from it, however, is a creation of my own hem fertile imagination.
Excerpt from "Autumn Journal" by Louis MacNiece.
Thank you to my sister Gracie, for her valuable insights and most gratifying swooning over this chapter.