A/N: Thanks to Gabriele, for formatting this, and all my chapters. Look for my story "Curse of the Firstborn: Outtakes" for a few supplemental goodies.
Chapter 15
Daily Prophet, Thursday, 5 January
The Muggle Underground in London was rocked last night when four men, armed with wands, burst into a car during the evening commute, and began hurling hexes at the occupants. In the melee, more than two dozen people were injured and two more, a man and a child whose names have not been released, remain in critical condition at a Muggle hospital.
While Muggle authorities are not speculating publicly as to the cause of the attack, Auror Special Forces believe it can be traced to the Wizarding underworld organisation known as the Dark of the Moon Society.
"We think they were targeting Dirk Cheevers," says one source, who asked not to be named. "Cheevers is the Auror Special Forces agent who heads up the anti-DMS task force. He's been a thorn in the side of the Dark of the Moon Society for years now."
Cheevers was travelling by Tube on Monday, as he was taking a Muggle guest to his home for dinner. He was sitting in the car in which the attack took place, but was not seriously injured. He could not be reached for comment.
"It's amazing really, when you see the state of the car, that no one was killed," says Bridget O'Donnell, a chambermaid at The Leaky Cauldron, who was riding the Tube with her Muggle cousin that night. O'Donnell sustained a broken arm in the incident.
The MLES is urging anyone with any information about the attack to come forward.
Ginny frowned, and dropped the paper. She leaned her elbows onto her desk and rubbed at her temples. It wasn't the first time she had read something like this in the news. And every time, it brought back the question of just who this man she had married really was. On the one hand he was thoughtful, and considerate of her: he helped her plant flowers, and read her poetry. On the other hand he was associated with the kinds of people who attacked Muggle Underground cars and put little children in the hospital. Life would be so much simpler if he were simpler: if he were the kind of man she could just let herself love. Because in so many ways, it would be easy to fall in love with Draco; sometimes she feared that she was halfway there already.
But the truth of the matter was he was not the kind of man she could afford to love. She had learnt early on in life – after her first year at Hogwarts, when she had been possessed by that horrible diary – to make decisions with her head, and not her heart.
She reached into the front of her robes, and pulled out a fine, silver chain. She had made a hole in the little medallion with the Mercury's wings on it, and had taken to wearing it around her neck all the time. Now she examined it closely, for the hundredth time, hoping it would yield some clue to the identity of the man who had given it to her. As always, there was nothing new there.
Since the night he had rescued her from the fire in the convenience shop, Quicksilver had occupied Ginny's thoughts more than she cared to admit. Sarah teased her that she had a crush on him, though that was ridiculous. But reading about Dark of the Moon's attack on the Underground car had shaken her: sometimes, in the face of reports like this one in the Daily Prophet, she needed to be reminded that there were really good people in the world. Heroes like Quicksilver. Maybe if she dwelt enough on the mystery of Quicksilver it would get her mind off Draco, who was a puzzle she had begun to despair of ever solving. Suddenly, she badly wanted to know who he was. She was a trained Auror; surely she could track this man down?
She dropped the medallion back down the neck of her robes, and pulled a piece of scratch parchment toward herself. At the top, she wrote the word: QUICKSILVER. Underneath that, she wrote:
1. Is a wizard (wand residue always found at rescue sites.)
2. Is a man (picked me up: had definite man arms.)
3. Does things most normal wizards could not do alone.
4.
Here, she stopped, wracking her brain for any detail she might have forgotten. She didn't know anything else about him. She threw down her quill, and went to the door of her office.
"Lorelei!"
The pretty assistant looked up. "Yes?"
"Can you get me any files the MLES has on Quicksilver? I want newspaper clippings, reports, rumours, photographs of the signs he's left… anything. And make copies for me, please. I'm going to be using them for a long time."
"I can do that."
"I have an appointment this morning in Lisbon, to build security wards around a children's home. I should be back after lunch. Can you have them ready for me then?"
"I think so."
"Good. Because I'm going to run this man to ground if it takes me a year to do it."
Lorelei looked surprised, and a little impressed. "All right Ms Weasley, I'll get right on it," and hurried away.
Ginny watched her go, and felt the stirrings of real excitement. There was a hero out there. She would find him.
Sarah's wedding was only four months away, and Ginny began going round to her flat a couple of nights a week, to flip through bridal magazines, and make plans about caterers, and florists, and bridesmaids' dresses. It was almost like old times, until – inevitably, at six-thirty – Bobby would show up for supper. Ginny always left then, and flooed back to Four Winds. It wasn't that she didn't like Bobby; she liked him very much. But he and Sarah were in their own little world, and so obviously, fantastically in love with each other that it gave her a strange, hollow feeling to watch them. It made her feel cast off and adrift somehow: as though she was reaching for something that was just out of her grasp.
She and Draco went flying almost every night now, after supper. And one night, when the snow-covered Cairngorms were awash with the light of a brilliant, full moon, he said to her, "Let's go see the waterfall. You can get your question answered."
"What question?"
"About whether or not it freezes up in the winter."
Ginny liked the idea. By broomstick, it was only a matter of a minute's ride over the forest, to where the waterfall came out of the fell side. She rode beside Draco, following his lead when he dropped down into the clearing, and came to a hover.
The waterfall was frozen. It hugged the wall of the cliff in a thick, irregular, blue-white column that dropped all the way to the pool at the bottom, which was frozen too, its surface blanketed with snow. The whole thing was like a Muggle photograph: motion arrested and captured in a split second to be examined and enjoyed for a long time to come.
"I've never seen anything like it," she told him. The night was calm, and their voices carried easily through the still air.
"Let's touch it." Draco flew to the very top of the falls, and she followed him.
"Oh look," she said, "it comes out of a little cave."
"In the spring it's not a cave at all; it's just a natural culvert, full to the top with rushing water. It's only now, when the river's been slowed up by the gradual freezing, that there's any room at all. Want to go in?"
Ginny eyed it sceptically. It seemed very small. "Will we fit?"
"If we fly flat to our brooms we will. At least, for the first bit. If it gets any narrower, we'll have to back out."
"Let's have a go, then."
Draco went first, flying slow and close to his handle, and still his knees skimmed the ice along the cave's floor. She followed him, keeping her head low. It was a steep, uphill slope, and the air was much colder in here. In a moment, however, the space widened, and suddenly, they were in the open air again, flying along the flat surface of a little, frozen burn. They straightened, and hovered again. All around them the forest rose, the trees deep-shadowed and gilded with moonlight.
He looked at her. "You know what that was, that we just came through, don't you?"
"What?"
"It would make a perfect ice slide."
She stared at him. "Draco, don't be stupid. It drops off into nothing: we'll kill ourselves."
"No we won't. Not if we keep a tight hold on our brooms. Look, we'll sit on our brooms, and lay flat back in the tunnel. When we shoot out over the waterfall, we just sit up and start flying."
She started to laugh. "You're crazy! I don't think you'll do it."
"Are you calling me a coward?"
"Well, if the shoe fits…"
"It was my idea! You're the one going on about how dangerous it is. I don't think you'll do it."
"I'll do it if you will. But you have to go first."
"Now you're being missish."
"No! I just have a healthy instinct for survival, is all. I want to know you can make it through without killing yourself before I try."
"All right, Miss Caution. Watch and see how it's done." Draco manoeuvred himself around so he was facing the mouth of the tunnel again then let the broom drop to the surface of the burn, which had been swept bare of snow by the winter winds. "Careful, it's slippery." He lay flat back against the broom handle, holding onto it between his legs, looking up at her. "Give me a push."
"You'll break your neck."
"No, I won't. Just push me."
She got behind him, and put her hands on his shoulders, bracing herself with her own broom. He was off like a shot, swallowed up into the black mouth of the cave. Ginny watched the place where he had disappeared, a trifle anxiously. What if he misjudged, and fell off his broom, or something? But in another second, she heard a triumphant whoop from the other end, echoing faintly, and sounding very far away. She smiled.
"Come on!" she heard him call, closer this time, and knew he was shouting into the other end of the tunnel.
"All right, but move out of the way so I don't knock your head off!" she called back.
She lowered her broom to the ice, and lay back, gripping the handle tightly between her legs. She was going to kill herself, she just knew it. She took a deep breath and squeezed her eyes shut. With the heels of her boots, she inched herself forward on the ice until she hit the right slope, and shot forward. She heard herself scream as the black tunnel walls flew past her, and then she was in the air, plummeting in a free fall to the ground below. Automatically, she jerked upright, pulling up on her handle. At once, she levelled out, and came to a hover. She clung onto the broom for dear life while her head cleared, and she got her bearings. Her heart was racing, and she gasped for breath. Above her, she heard Draco yell again. She looked up at him, and he punched a fist into the air. Victory! She laughed and flew up to join him.
"How was it?" he asked.
"Terrifying! Incredible. Let's do it again!"
And they did, over and over, trying to see how close they could come to the ground below before pulling out of their drops. They flew until their faces and hands were numb and then, reluctantly, they turned for home.
In the foyer, they stripped off their outdoor clothes.
"I need some hot cocoa," Ginny said.
"Give Lolly a shout."
She raised her eyebrows at him. "Don't be ridiculous: I'll make it myself."
"Ginny," he said, half-exasperated, "that's what we have a house-elf for."
"Nonsense. Lolly's asleep by now: I'm not waking her up to do something I'm perfectly capable of doing myself." She turned for the kitchen. "Are you coming?"
"Will you make me some as well?"
She smiled. "Done."
In the kitchen, she took down mugs, and a saucepan, and milk. She measured out the cocoa and sugar, and set it on the hob to stir itself. She looked over her shoulder at Draco, who was sitting at the oak table watching her. "You might make us some cinnamon toast," she said.
"I wouldn't begin to know how."
She rolled her eyes. "It's just about the easiest thing in the world. Suppose you learn now, and then you'll have a useful skill under your belt for cold nights next winter, when I'm not around."
"I have a lot of useful skills!"
"Maybe, but none of them seem to be very domestic, do they? Here, get out some bread." She nodded her head toward the breadbox on the sideboard, and with a great show of reluctance, Draco went and retrieved it.
"All right, now what?"
"Well, you'll need to slice it, of course."
"With a knife?"
She rolled her eyes again. Step by step, she walked him through the intricacies of making cinnamon toast, while she kept an eye on the cocoa. When it was finished, they loaded it all onto a tray, and Draco carried it through to the library.
They settled into their chairs, and Draco stirred up the fire, while she picked up The Three Musketeers and found the place where they had left off. They had only two chapters left to read, and by the time she had read the last sentence and closed the book, the mantle clock was chiming eleven.
She yawned, and stretched like a cat. "If I don't go to bed soon, I'll sleep right through work tomorrow." And yet she was reluctant to go. It had been such a… nice evening. She waited, half-hoping he would ask her to stay, and play a game of cards or something, but he didn't, and after another moment, she told him goodnight and went to bed.
It was a long, bitterly cold winter. More than once, blizzards shut down the Apparition system across northern Scotland. On those nights, they used the Floo and visited the Kincaids or the Gordons. Sometimes, their friends came to visit them at Four Winds. Fiona was an accomplished pianist, and Betsy played the harp, so the six of them would gather in the sitting room, where Draco had a gorgeous, black Steinway grand that neither he nor Ginny knew how to play. At Fiona's insistence, Ginny always brought out her guitar and played with the sisters, while their husbands played chess, or talked by the fire at the other end of the room.
Other nights, she and Draco stayed home alone, and played Dragons and Dwarves. No money actually ever changed hands between them, but they kept a running tally of their winnings and losses. By the end of February, Ginny was far in arrears, the tally sheet showing that she owed Draco the horrific sum of two hundred and seventeen Galleons, seven Sickles, and three Knuts. When she protested that she would never be able to pay this, Draco gallantly offered to forgive her the three Knuts, just to prove to her how generous he was.
And so the winter passed.
Meanwhile, Ginny was amassing quite a file on Quicksilver. Suddenly, as so often happens in life, now that she was looking for him, she saw his name everywhere. The Daily Prophet had a new report once or twice a week, and Witch Weekly had named him their Year's Most Eligible Bachelor. Every news article she found, every snippet of speculation, every photograph of the Mercury's wings found at rescue scenes, Ginny clipped and studied avidly. She interviewed eyewitnesses, who never turned out to have seen very much at all. She had added to her list:
4. Rescues only Muggles
But she knew little more. It was all very frustrating, yet the very elusiveness of the man made her all the more determined to find him.
In mid-March, it happened again.
Daily Prophet, Friday, 17 March
The international Wizarding underworld society known as Dark of the Moon is claiming responsibility for last week's bombing of a village in Afghanistan that left twenty-two people dead, including six children, and another three hundred wounded. Sources say the village was home to Poppy Smack, an opium dealer with ties to the DMS.
"He wouldn't pay up," says one source, who asked not to be named, "so everyone else had to." Auror Special Forces are continuing to investigate.
Ginny sat at her desk, staring at the newspaper, and thought she might be sick. This could not go on. If Draco was involved in this sort of thing, he was a monster. And she… well, she finally admitted the truth of it to herself, because to deny it would have been ridiculous. She loved him.
She had not meant to love him, it had simply crept up on her, like a virus that had settled into her bones, and changed the way she felt about everything. And sometimes, the way he looked at her, she thought that maybe… But she would not let herself go there. That way led to too many complications. She hated this thing he was a part of; even if Draco felt the same way about her, she could not let her heart run away with her. It was all so tangled-up and confusing.
She thought ahead to September, when their year and a day would be over with, and she would leave Draco behind her for good. It would be the hardest thing she had ever done. The hardest, and the most right. And she would leave, there was no question about that. Hang the heartache that was bound to come with it: peace of mind was worth something too.
It was easier to feel angry than to feel so… wounded about this, so Ginny nursed her anger toward Draco all day long. When she stepped out of the Apparition Port after work that night, the first thing she saw was his travelling cloak flung over the back of a chair in the foyer. He was home then: good. Because she had a thing or two to say to him.
She flew up over the stairs and changed into jeans and a jumper, and brushed out her hair with a vengeance. She regarded herself in the mirror. It had been a cold walk from the office to the Apparition Port on the corner, and her cheeks were still glowing pink, her eyes bright with the fury she had been feeding all day. She did not look like someone to be tangled with, she thought with satisfaction. Draco had just better hope he wasn't involved in this Afghanistan bombing business.
She swept into the library in high dudgeon. Draco looked up from the bar, where he was pouring a whiskey.
"Oh, hello," he said mildly. "Want a drink?"
"No," she said. "I want to ask you a question."
"Oh dear," he said, with mock wariness, and held up his glass. "Should I make this a double, then?"
"Don't be pert," she told him crossly. "I read in the Daily Prophet about Dark of the Moon bombing that village in Afghanistan."
"Oh?"
"Don't 'Oh?' me, like you didn't know anything about it," she snapped.
"I did not attack that village, Ginny."
"No," she said, "I know you didn't attack the village!" His mildness infuriated her. She wanted him to be as distraught about it as she herself was, and instead there he stood, calmly putting the cover on the ice bucket as though nothing in the world were the matter.
"Good," he told her, "then there's nothing for us to discuss."
"Oh yes there is!"
"Why? Whatever's the matter?"
"The matter is," she said, beginning, even to her own ears, to sound a trifle hysterical, "that you are part of the group of people who did attack the village!"
And then, to her mortification, there were hot tears in her eyes and before she could stop them they welled up and began to spill down her cheeks. She tried to blink them back, but there were too many of them, and then, horribly, a sob rose up in her chest and escaped, and she was crying. Crying in front of Draco. It was too humiliating; she covered her face with her hands and turned her back to him.
It was the last thing she had expected to do. She was angry: furious with him. So why had her temper so traitorously deserted her, left her shoulders shaking uncontrollably, while tears flowed over her face, and through her fingers, and made her nose clog all up? It was beginning to run, and she didn't even have a handkerchief with her.
She gave a great, noisy sniffle, and then she felt Draco right behind her. A handkerchief appeared over her right shoulder, waving like a little, white flag of truce. She snatched it angrily from his fingers. She blew her nose, and took several deep breaths until her sobs subsided, then mopped up her eyes, grateful that she hadn't worn mascara today. When she was certain she had herself under control, she turned to face him.
He put his hands, strong and gentle, on her shoulders, and she had to close her eyes against a fresh onslaught of tears that tried to rise up in her throat.
"What's the matter?" he said.
She gestured fruitlessly with the handkerchief, too uncertain of her voice to speak.
He pulled her against his chest, and held her there, stroking her hair while the tears she thought she had finished with came back, quieter this time, but just as copious, and soaked into the fine wool of his robes. He was warm and safe-feeling, smelling of some heavenly cologne, imported no doubt, and costing the moon. She gave a little hiccup, and sighed into him.
"Why can't you just be good?" she said, when she managed to find her voice.
"That's what my mother always wanted to know." She could feel the rumble of his voice, where her face rested against his chest.
"Don't be flippant, Draco." Her voice was still muffled against the front of his robe, and he was still stroking her hair, making it difficult for her to remember why she was so angry with him. She pulled back, and wiped her eyes and nose again with the handkerchief, which was beginning to be a little soggy.
He kept his arms around her, and she let him.
"All right, then, I won't be flippant," he promised. "You were saying…?"
"I was saying, why do you have to be involved in the Dark of the Moon Society?"
"I've already told you why."
"Yes, I know that! I just wish…" She gazed steadfastly at his chest, and tried to formulate it into words in her own mind. "I wish you wanted to be good."
"I am good. I pay my taxes on time, and give to Christmas charities, and always remember to dance with the hostess at dinner parties. You don't think I'm good?"
Oh, she wanted to kick him! "Stop making a joke out of this! People died in that village, Draco. Six of them were children, and Dark of the Moon was responsible: doesn't that make you feel terrible?"
"Honestly?" He shrugged. "No, it doesn't."
She felt a chill wrap itself around her, and stepped back, shrugging off his arms, and folding her own in front of her. Barricading herself against him. "How can you be so cold and unfeeling?"
He sighed, and turned and went back to the bar, where he picked up his whiskey tumbler, and drank from it. "I'm not cold and unfeeling. I just… In theory, yes, it's unfortunate that those people were in the wrong place at the wrong time. But I didn't know them, and I'd be lying to you if I said I was moved by what happened to them."
She glared at him.
"Oh, get off your high horse, Ginny! Can you honestly tell me you're moved to tears by every tragedy you read about in the newspapers? I know you're not! But I don't go around accusing you of being 'cold and unfeeling,' do I?"
"No, Draco, but I don't plan for tragedies to happen. I don't create them. That's the difference between us. You're part of the organisation that bombed that village and killed those children. You're culpable."
"That incident was nothing to do with me."
"Well I wouldn't know that, would I? Because you won't tell me anything about your involvement in Dark of the Moon."
He studied her narrowly. At last, he said, "I'm not going through a repeat of this conversation every time you read the words 'Dark of the Moon' in the newspapers. You want to know what I do in the wizard mafia, Ginny? I've told you once that it will put you in danger to know. I'll say it once again, and then it's on your own head. You can't be enlightened and be safe too: it's one or the other. So which do you want?"
She didn't hesitate: she had to know. "Tell me."
"Then sit down." She obeyed, and without asking, he went to the bar and poured her a glass of wine, and brought it to her. He did not sit, himself, but leaned against the mantelpiece and looked down at her. Then, very simply, he said, "I'm a hired killer."
In spite of herself, she started. There had been a tiny part of her that had held out the hope that something like this wasn't true. But there it was. She forced herself to speak coolly, although she felt the words would choke her. "Who do you kill?"
He shrugged. "Whoever the Baron tells me to kill. Most of the time, I don't even know them. Almost always, they're men who are high up in other mafia families, who've crossed my boss the wrong way."
"Crossed him how?"
He took a sip of his drink, and said, "Bad debts; people who steal from him. One or two of them have been people who threatened his life and had to be got rid of."
She felt ill. Disembodied. He could not stand here and talk so cavalierly of killing people. He was not the man she had spent the winter reading to, and playing cards with, and teaching to make cinnamon toast in the kitchen.
"I asked you once before," she said her voice a little shaky, "and you didn't answer me: Do you like being a part of this?"
"I like being alive," he said wryly.
"And… to stay alive, you have to do this."
"We've been through all of this before." His voice was impatient.
She thought for a moment. "What if you didn't have to be a part of it? What if there were a way out?"
"There isn't. Don't go trying to save me, Ginny; it won't work."
"I'm not saying there is. I just want to know, if there were, would you take it?"
He did not hesitate. "Of course I would."
"So… you only do this as a means of survival?"
"What?"
"You kill other people so the Baron won't kill you."
"Yes, I suppose you could say that's true."
"I think that's terrible."
His face took on a hard look. "Do you? Well it's lucky I never asked for your opinion, isn't it? You're the one who just had to know: don't blame me if you don't like what you heard."
She sat forward. "Don't get all pissy with me, Draco. Try the shoe on the other foot and see if you like the way it fits. How would you have liked it, for instance, if I'd had the same instincts for self-preservation that you have? Because if I did, I'll tell you what would have happened: I never would have married you. I would have said 'to hell with Bill's life; my own interests are more important.' And I wouldn't have bothered to marry you, and come next August 11th, you'd be dead." She sat back and folded her arms, glaring at him.
He frowned. "That's different –"
"No, it's not," she interrupted him. "Because last September, when you and I met to talk about getting married, it was just about the most horrible fate I could think of. I could easily have let the both of you die so I wouldn't have to go through with it."
"You wouldn't have done that."
"No, because I love my brother. But let me tell you something: if it had been a complete stranger whose life had been on the line, I would have made the same decision. You don't just let people die so you don't have to face something that's unpleasant."
"It is different," he insisted. "I won't just have to 'face something that's unpleasant.' I will die if I try to walk away from Dark of the Moon. I've seen it happen to other people who've tried it. You betray them, and they get rid of you –" he snapped his fingers. "– just like that."
She scoffed at this idea. "You're a wizard, Draco. There are such things as Secret Keepers; there's a Wizard Protection Program."
He shook his head. "You have no idea what you're talking about."
"I think I do. I think you could walk away if you really wanted to, but you're too afraid to do it."
Draco did not say another word. With frightening calm and control, he simply set his whiskey glass on the mantle and stalked past her, out of the room, his back stiff and angry.
Ginny was past caring. She knew it was true, what she had said to him. How unthinkable to let other people die just to keep yourself safe. Draco believed it too: she had seen it in his eyes – just a glimmer of guilt – when she had spoken about it. She had to tell him, because no one else was going to. And he might hate her from now on, but the most important thing was that he had heard the truth from her. And maybe someday he would change because of it.
They didn't speak about it again, and for an entire week they reverted to treating each other with icy restraint. And then one Saturday afternoon, when sleet was rattling the windows, Ginny found herself in the kitchen baking gingersnaps. He came in, midway through, and announced that he was there to help her. He was, in so many ways, such an overgrown spoilt child, but she was touched that he wanted to be with her. So she showed him what to do, and he made a complete disaster of the kitchen, but in the end the coldness between them had vanished. He was what he was, Ginny decided, and it was not up to her to change him. She would be out of the relationship soon enough. Meanwhile, she was just glad to be on good terms with him again.
Gradually, the snow on the mountainsides shrank until there were only little pockets and runnels of it left on the shaded slopes, and the icicles on the eves thawed and dripped away to nothing. The days grew longer, and one evening toward the end of April, Ginny was walking to the broom shed behind the house when a splash of colour near the chimney caught her eye. Her daffodils had bloomed. For some reason, it made her cry.
Sarah's wedding, slated for the first weekend in May, was fast approaching. Ginny was fitted for her dress, and the last-minute details were sorted out, and before she knew it, the rehearsal was over with and the wedding was to be the next day. That night, she returned to Four Winds late, after a long party with the other bridesmaids, feeling bereft and melancholy.
Draco was still awake, reading in the library. Ginny went in and flopped into her chair.
"How was the rehearsal?" he asked.
Ginny shrugged. "Full of mistakes, but they say that makes for good luck at the wedding." She gazed pensively into the fire. After awhile, she said, "I'm so happy for Sarah, and at the same time I don't want her to get married. I want to move back into our old flat together, next fall, and to have things stay the same for us. I'll miss her dreadfully."
Draco did not reply to this, and Ginny was grateful to him for not throwing meaningless platitudes at her. At last, she roused herself and stood up. "Do you want to come to the wedding with me tomorrow? I can bring an escort."
"No, I don't think so. I'll just wait here, and you can tell me all about it when you get back."
"I thought you'd say that. Good night then."
"Good night."
She was up and out of the house early the next morning, before Draco was awake. She had promised to do Sarah's hair for her, and there was still the church to decorate.
The day flew by. Sarah, all in white, was lovely, and when Ginny had lowered her friend's veil for the last time, handed her the bouquet, and stepped into her own place in the procession, she could not stop the tears from flowing down her face at the knowledge that a chapter in her own life had ended, and things would never be the same again.
It was nine o'clock, earlier than he had expected, when Draco heard Ginny in the Apparition port. He felt something inside himself relax, and realized then that he had been on edge all day, waiting for her to come home. She appeared in the doorway of the library, dressed in something green and filmy, her hair, normally straight, a mass of curls tumbled around her shoulders. In one hand, she held a bottle, and she waved it at him.
"Hello."
"Hello yourself. What are you doing back so early?"
She shrugged. "I wasn't having a very good time. I waited a decent interval then told Sarah I had a headache, and she sent me home."
"Do you really have a headache?"
She shook her head, and collapsed onto the leather sofa, looking quite disconsolate. "No, but I'm really tired, and… well, I suppose I'm sad because my best friend just got married. In any case, I couldn't bring myself to stay any longer." She looked at the bottle in her hand. "Oh yes, they made me take home a bottle of Moet. Do you want some?"
"If you'll share it with me."
He was rewarded with a smile that warmed something deep inside him. "All right," she said, "that would be lovely."
He found champagne flutes, and pulled the cork on the bottle.
"How do you do that?" Ginny asked. "Whenever I open a bottle of champagne, the cork goes flying across the room and nearly puts someone's eye out."
He handed her a flute, and settled himself back into his chair. "Tell me about the wedding."
Ginny lay back on the sofa and propped her feet onto a loose cushion. "Sarah was the most stunning bride," she said. "But then, I never met a bride who wasn't lovely, have you?"
He smiled tolerantly.
"But the rest of it was just like any wedding, I suppose. Everyone made speeches, and there was dancing and lobster for dinner. I'm afraid I cried through most of it. And oh, look." She reached for her handbag, and rummaged around in it. "Someone got a photo of Sarah and me together." She handed it to him.
From the photo, a smiling Ginny and a dark-haired bride waved, smirking and giggling at him. He watched, as Ginny blew a kiss. She had a spray of lilies-of-the-valley in her hair, he noticed, but it must have got loose at some point, because she wasn't wearing it now. He handed the picture back, and Ginny regarded it fondly.
"I'm going to frame it," she said. "One last thing to remember my best friend by."
"Rubbish," he told her briskly. "She's still your best friend. She's only married, not dead."
Ginny smiled sleepily at him from the sofa. "You're right of course, and I'm only feeling gloomy because I've had too much champagne. Things will look better in the morning." She gave an enormous yawn, and set her champagne glass carefully on the table at the end of the sofa. "I think I'll just close my eyes for a few minutes."
Draco watched as her eyes closed, and her breathing gradually evened out, and deepened. She had come to mean the world to him. She would be gone in four months, and he felt slightly desperate at the thought. Not for the first time, he thought about what it might take to keep her here with him. And much later, he retrieved a blanket from a chest in the corner, and settled it over Ginny's green gown, tucking it in well at the edges. Then he kissed her softly on the mouth, and went up to bed.
Ginny woke the next morning with a horrible, sticky taste inside her mouth. Bright sunlight was streaming in through the windows, and she groaned. She was stiff from having been on the sofa all night, and her face felt unpleasantly caked with all the makeup she had slept in. She closed her eyes again, but at last, roused herself to go up to her room and take a shower. But first, she folded the blanket that had been over her. Draco must have put it there; that had been kind of him, she thought.
It wasn't until later that day that she missed the photograph of herself and Sarah. She searched her handbag, and the sofa cushions, and looked underneath the corner of the rug. It was nowhere to be found. Lolly denied having seen it, and so did Draco. It annoyed her, because she had been planning on framing it, and keeping it on her bureau, but in the end she shrugged it off. It had to be somewhere in the library. It would turn up sooner or later.
A week later, Lolly's old mother in Peru died, and she went off to spend three days at the funeral. Ginny assured Draco she could manage the household just fine in Lolly's absence, and that there was no need to go scaring up a spare house-elf for just a few, short days.
The last afternoon of Lolly's absence, Ginny spent doing the laundry. She hated washing, and she had left it for last, but she didn't want the old, grieving house-elf to come home to a huge pile of it, so the day she was due back home, Ginny rolled up her sleeves and gamely plunged into the chore. It wasn't as bad as she had feared, once she got the hang of pressing the fiddly pleats in Draco's robes, and at last it was finished.
She picked up the last armful of robes and started up the stairs. She was to meet Betsy and Fiona for tea at Heart's Content later this afternoon, and she was looking forward to it. Draco had been away for two days, and she was tired of sitting around the house feeling that she was just waiting for him to come home. Because of course, she wasn't.
Fiona had insisted she bring her guitar along with her today. She really should replace the G-string first, though, Ginny thought, and tune it before she got there. She would do that just as soon as she finished putting away the clean clothes for Lolly.
Preoccupied with her thoughts, Ginny pushed open the door to Draco's room, and stopped in her tracks. He stood there, in the middle of the room, just out of the shower, apparently. His hair hung in damp strands around his shoulders, where little droplets of water lay like diamonds against his pale skin. A towel was draped low around his hips. But it was not this that arrested her attention.
On the right side of his chest was a tattoo. Ginny stared at it in frozen fascination. Mercury's wings. The robes she was carrying slipped from her arms and fell soundlessly to the floor. She felt her vision begin to tunnel, and the room began to shift oddly around her. Mercury's wings.
She stepped towards him. Draco stood unmoving, his face stony and impassive. She took another step, and then another, until she was so close she felt the heat emanating from him, caught the scent of the soap he used. Still, he did not move.
"It's you," she whispered. How was it possible that Draco Malfoy was Quicksilver?
Dreamlike, she reached out, and with her fingers, began to trace the shape of the wings tattooed there like a badge.
He shuddered then, his muscles rippling under his skin. Wrenching himself away, he turned his back on her. He was still close, and she saw that gooseflesh had risen up all over him, and he was breathing heavily. When he spoke, his voice was low and harsh.
"If you say a word about this to anyone, I'll Obliviate you into next week."
Tell anyone? Who did he think she was? "Draco, I –"
"Get out."
"Draco –"
"I said get out."
She stared at his back. It was unyielding. Silently, she went out and pulled the door shut behind her.
Out in the corridor, Ginny leaned against the wall and closed her eyes against the hot tears that welled up and threatened to spill over. He had known all along what he was; knew that on some level, at least, they were allies.
And it changed nothing.
He still did not want her, could not stand for her to touch him. Angrily, she swiped at her tears. She was stupid to let herself hope, even for a moment, that it might be any different.
In his room, Draco leaned heavily against the wall and stared numbly at the carpet. She knew.
Oh Morgana, it changed everything.
He had not expected her to come in: had not taken the time to do his usual Concealing Charm on the mark. She had seen it, and if she ever told anyone, his life was as good as over. He tried to make himself feel that this was the most important thing, but his body refused to obey his mind. Instead, he remembered, with another little shudder of longing, how her fingertips had felt against him, how it had felt when she swayed a little, and her hair brushed his skin.
Would she tell anyone? And more importantly, would she ever, ever touch him like that again?