BOTH SIDES NOW

Disclaimer: Anything you recognise is not mine...


Ginny realized how long she had spent at Malfoy Manor when she got back home – it was close to eleven.

Still restless and confused, Ginny decided to go to the only place she knew she would be welcome at this hour – Ron and Hermione's home, off Hogsmead Village.

She changed into her usual cotton robes, slipped on her cloak and apparated to the edge of Hogsmead Village. Pulling her collar up to shield her face from the chilly night air, she took the winding lane that led out into the wild countryside around Hogsmead.

As she walked beneath the ceiling of stars, she took a deep breath of the refreshing country air, hoping that it would help clear her mind. After what had happened tonight, Ginny believed anything was possible. She might take a single step and find there are constellations swirling beneath her feet. She might walk up the path to the cottage right at the end of the lane with the large garden and fall headlong into ether.

She knocked on the door and waited patiently. It was Ron who opened the door, clad in pants and a sweatshirt, indicating that he had not retired to bed yet.

"Hullo! This is a surprise!" Ron grinned at her, reaching out to give her a hearty embrace before inviting her in. The cottage was just nice for a couple – with a well-furnished living room, dining room, kitchen and two bedrooms.

"'Mione, guess who's here?" Ron called out as he took Ginny's cloak and hung it up.

Hermione came out of the kitchen, her face breaking into a warm smile at the sight of Ginny, "Hey! To what do we owe this pleasure?" She asked as she came forward to hug her, since Ginny rarely had time to visit them at their home.

Ginny shrugged, "Well, tomorrow's Saturday so I figured I'd go into work late, take a break tonight."

"Finally you realized all work and no play makes Jane a dull girl." Ron joked.

"We were just making some waffles for a late night snack. You want some?" Hermione asked, leading the way into the kitchen.

Ginny nodded, feeling ravenous all of a sudden despite the four-course dinner she had earlier.

She made herself comfortable on the bar stool at the kitchen counter, beside Ron, as Hermione made the waffles at the stove the muggle way. She preferred cooking without magic and Ron had given up trying to convince her otherwise.

"You had an assignment tonight?" Ron asked her.

Ginny blinked, and then remembered the excuse she had given Harry and nodded.

"Well, just so you know, Mum's a bit peeved you didn't come for dinner tonight, especially after Harry told her you had work."

Ginny sighed wearily, "Mum's always peeved at me, Ron."

"That's because she wants you to spend less time working. She just wants you to be happy." Hermione said benignly.

"Happily married, more like it." Ginny muttered, darkly.

Ron and Hermione laughed.

"So how's work? How's the search for Malfoy?" Ron asked.

He had been intensely proud of her when she first revealed to him that she was planning to track down Malfoy and put him in Azaban, back when she was starting out as an Auror. He hated Malfoy to the bone, unlike Harry who actually felt a tad sorry for him.

As far as Ron was concerned, Malfoy may have been forced into being a Deatheater by circumstances but he was a Dark Wizard by blood and nothing could change that. His cold-blooded killings and elevated position in Voldermort's ring of Deatheaters had confirmed Ron's suspicions about him.

Thankfully Hermione was more preoccupied with dishing out the waffles into their plates when Ron asked her that question. Ginny averted his gaze, simply shrugging, "It's been some time since we made any great progress."

"Does that mean you're giving it up?" Ron asked, perturbed. Hermione placed their waffle-laden plates in front of them with a jug of maple syrup, sliding onto the stool opposite them.

"I'm not sure, really. Maybe." Ginny said, non-committal.

Hermione spoke up, "You said you'd never give up till you hunt Malfoy down. What changed your mind?"

Ginny wished Hermione were not so perceptive or so probing. "There are more important things in life, I guess."

Ron seemed disappointed with the notion of Ginny giving up the Malfoy case. "You're the only one who can do it, Gin."

No, Ginny thought, I'm the only one who bothered to look for him when everyone else thought it was impossible.


Do you think I made a mistake using the portkey to go and see Draco, then having dinner with him and letting him kiss me? Ginny wanted to ask Hermione, later when they had retreated to the window seat in the living room while Ron washed the dishes in the kitchen.

This was her best friend, practically her 'sister', the woman who knew her fears better than she did. Ginny wished she could tell her all that had happened with Draco but she knew she could not. It was her secret, one she had to hide beneath her skin where it burnt.

"A Galleon for your thoughts." Hermione said, breaking into her reverie.

Ginny sighed and then turned to look at her, her lips twisted in a wistful smile, "Just thinking about some of the choices I've made in life and wondering if they're the right ones."

Hermione did not press her for details. "It's too late for regrets, isn't it? Anyway, every thing happens for a reason." She murmured, sagely.

The curtains of the living room window moved in the night breeze, brushing against her face, reminding Ginny of the way Draco's lips felt against her own. As she leaned her elbows on the windowsill and breathed in the sweet scent of the honeysuckle growing beneath, she thought about how Draco spent all that time living underground, without any windows.

Ginny had been so sure of her life – you wake up, you make coffee, you go to work, you go on missions, stake-outs and raids, you investigate, you gather information, fill in reports, go for briefings, but no matter what, the Deatheaters you hunt are evil and hated, the people you love are good and kind, no questions asked.

Now she felt as if the rational world had spun so completely out of orbit that there was no way to chart or expect what might happen next.

As she watched Ron walk into the room, come over and kiss his wife before settling into the couch a few feet away, she wished she had Hermione's assured manner. She wished she knew what was meant to be and what was not. She wished she was not so torn apart by doubt.


She wound up spending the night at their place and after a rather good breakfast courtesy of Ron, she left, apparating back to her apartment to shower and change before using the floo-system to get to work.

The Auror headquarters were relatively slow and empty over the weekend but Kingsley could be found in his office as usual.

She walked in and stood in front of his desk, fidgeting nervously till he focused his attention on her.

"What is it, Ginny?" He asked, patiently.

"I want to be taken off the Malfoy case." She blurted out.

Kingsley stared at her, almost as if he did not recognize her.

"What!"

"I said-"

"I know what you said! But why?" Kingsley asked, genuinely perplexed.

"I'm too emotionally vested in it." She explained, hoping he would accept that as reason enough.

Kingsley frowned at her, "I hope it's not because you're not making much headway in the investigations. I've never known you to be a quitter."

She shook her head vigorously, "Really, it's not that. It's just that years of finding out about Dr-Malfoy, studying him, looking for him have made me too emotionally involved. It might affect the case."

Kingsley considered her for a minute before speaking, " I think that's a risk I can afford to take. You will remain in charge of the Malfoy Investigations. You're one of our most highly trained Aurors, Ginny, and you know Malfoy inside out." He said, decisively.

Ginny's shoulders sagged in defeat, "But-"

He cut her off firmly, "That's an order."

Ginny knew better than to disobey him. She made her way out of the office, seeing no way out of this situation other than staying away from Draco and focusing on the investigations.

The first thing Ginny did was burn the rose and the incriminating note that had come with it.

The second thing she did, when everyone got back to work on Monday, was to call for a meeting on the Malfoy investigations in Tonk's office – hers was the only office large enough to contain all of them.

The moment all members of the team were present, Artie announced that he had been thinking over the weekend and had come up with a plan of sorts.

Logically speaking, Malfoy could not have survived all these years without money. He could have kept a handsome amount in the Malfoy Manor with him but he would still need to access the family fortune at Gringotts now and then. (The team was working on the assumption that Malfoy was had been hiding all this while in the Malfoy Manor. Also, there was no way Ginny could confirm it without divulging how she knew for a fact that Draco had been hiding all this while in the Malfoy Manor.) Since he could not possibly do it himself or use house elves, he would have to turn to someone working in Gringotts itself, someone who could retrieve money for him…

"And pass it to him at the Malfoy Manor." Ginny completed, as she exchanged a triumphant look with Artie, who nodded excitedly.

"Ingenious, Artie, but how are we going to find out who Malfoys's connection at Gringotts is?" Tony asked.

"Security tapes." Tonks answered, smugly.

Dave nodded, "Yes, each vault at Gringotts has a camera watching it at all times. They installed this during The War."

"We'll need a warrant for the security tapes though." Ginny pointed out.

"No," Artie shook his head, "You can go to the goblins directly. For them, a letter from the Minister himself wouldn't make a difference. In their bank, they make the decisions." He said knowledgeably, having had first hand experience of obtaining security tapes from the goblins for the Parkinson case.

"I'm on it then." Dave volunteered.

"I'll go with you." Tony offered.

They were back in Tonk's office two hours later, after Dave and Tony had managed to sweet talk the goblins into passing them the tapes of the security camera located at the Malfoy vault. Danielle was with them this time, her equipment laid out all over Tonk's table as she looked through the tapes.

"Ah! I've got something!" She cried out, suddenly, after some time. The rest of them who had been sitting around waiting, jumped up to crowd around her. She showed them images of a middle aged bald bespectacled man opening the Malfoy vault and stepping inside, then stepping out of it with a heavy pouch, obviously filled with galleons, that he slipped into his cloak pocket before locking the vault and leaving.

"But look at this." Danielle showed them another set of images from a tape of a different. This time a scrawny, bearded man was opening the Malfoy vault and retrieving money from it.

"They're a different person every time." She said, having scanned through all the tapes.

"Why don't you run a polyjuice potion wipeout on their images to see if it's the same man underneath?" Tonks suggested, incisively.

"That'll take a day or two." Danielle told them. Disgruntled groans met her statement.

After Tony, the poster boy of the Auror department with his tall, dark, handsome looks, promised to take her to the Ministry Ball the upcoming weekend if she got the results by tomorrow, Danielle agreed to work through the night and get the tests done pronto.

Ginny, Dave and Tonks were still laughing and talking about it when they parted ways and she stepped inside her office.

Ginny's jovial mood completely vanished, however, when she got back to her office. There lying on her desk was a note with Draco's customary handwriting on it. It was the first time she had heard from him since their dinner together, last Friday. With great heaviness in the pit of her stomach, she picked up the piece of parchment and read it.

Ginerva,

It would be my great pleasure if you could join me for supper tonight at the Malfoy Manor.

Draco

Ginny did not hesitate. Before she could lose the will to do so and give into the ruinous, desirous thoughts running in the back of her mind, with a flick of her wand, she burnt the note. As she watched it fall onto the desk in ashes, she wondered why it felt as if it was her heart that was being burnt to its last vestiges rather than a bit of parchment.


The rest of the week did not get any better. The next day Danielle came by with the test results and seemed terribly mystified by it. She had found no trace of anyone beneath those different men – meaning all those men who had accessed the Malfoy vault over the past few months were who they were. To add to the mystery, when she ran a check of those men against the Gringotts Employers database and Ministry of Magic database, she could not find a match for anyone of them.

Ginny had suggested maybe those various men were Muggles under the Imperius Curse. She had put forward the possibility that Malfoy had a contact working in Gringotts who would put a Muggle under the Imperius curse, direct him to the Malfoy Vault, which the contact would have access to, where the Muggle would retrieve the money and pass it to the contact who would bring it to Malfoy at the Malfoy Manor. In this way, Malfoy ensured that his contact at Gringotts could not be incriminated.

A plan to put the Malfoy vault at Gringotts on twenty-four hour surveillance with two trusted Aurors stationed there was put on hold due to some reluctance on the Goblins' part to cooperate. This caused further speculation in the team whether Malfoy had one of the Goblins working for him.

In the middle of the week, Kingsley had come to them with news that their application for a search warrant had been rejected by the Minister of Magic due to a shortage of credible evidence – Ginny's eyewitness account of her encounter with Malfoy when he had broken into her flat was the only evidence. This had outraged the entire team and they had filed an appeal with the Wizengamot, which would be heard by them next week.

All in all it had been another unproductive week on the Malfoy case and Ginny was more than willing to completely forget about it and have fun during the Ministry Ball, which was mandatory for all Aurors to attend.

She had quite a good time, even though she had gone stag, - drinking, eating, sharing a laugh with Dave when they caught Tony snogging Danielle behind the stage, cold shouldering her brother Percy whom she still did not trust even though he had reconciled with the family, dancing a few times with Tony and Dave, chatting with Remus and Tonks, teasing Dave about his date Tiffany, a dumb brunette, who still did not understand what an Auror was.

By the time she apparated to outside her flat, she was in higher spirits than she had been all week. She was slightly tipsy though; she swayed a bit as she was walking up the stairs to her flat.

"Watch your step." Someone murmured behind her when she was midway up the flight of stairs.

Ginny turned, noticing a dark silhouette at the bottom of the stairs, then a cloud moved in the sky and the crescent moon shone down on the path, illuminating the figure that was Draco Malfoy.

Ginny stumbled backwards in shock and reached out for the railing to steady herself, before pulling her wand out, pointing it at him.

He chuckled softly, walking up slowly towards her, "I thought we'd gotten past that." He gestured at the wand she was pointing at him.

Ginny stubbornly kept the wand aimed at him, as she moved up the stairs, away from him. She did not speak because she was thinking. She had to take down her apparition wards, apparate inside her flat and put the wards back in place in less than a minute, so Draco would not try to stop her or apparate into the flat with her.

He stopped a mere step away from her, as she reached the landing in front of her flat.

"What changed, Ginerva?" He asked, the tone of his voice so quiet and placid, it reminded her of the way he kissed her.

Then suddenly, like a flood breaking through a dam, the emotional exhaustion she had been feeling the past week - from resisting him and her tremulous feelings for him, concealing all that she knew from her colleagues, trying to do the right thing by making all those futile efforts to find evidence to put him in Azkaban - finally got to her and brought down her defenses.

So when he came and put his arms around her, she could not think of any reason why not.

He kissed right there and then, a fiercely passionate wanton kiss, as if he had wanted to kiss her for the longest time and could not possibly rein in the urge any longer. The thought that he wanted her so strongly made Ginny feel weak in the knees.

How she managed to take down her apparition wards and apparate with him into her flat, she did not know. She was incapable of any rational thought. All she could do was feel – his lips against hers, his tongue entwined with hers, his angular body pressed up against her own as he led her towards her room, towards her bed.

She should have stopped him then, pushed him away and told him 'No', looked him in the eye and said he was going too far. She had done so with all the other guys she had been with except Dean, whom she had wanted to get it over with and find out what it was all about since she had been a rather audacious teenager, and Harry, whom she had loved.

However, since pure, untainted desire was controlling all of her senses, at that moment, all she really wanted was to be completely drenched in his rain of kisses, to wrap him around her in the fashion of a second skin.

As they slipped into bed, completely naked, he murmured in her ear, "Did you know: women prefer being made love to in their own bed?"

"Is that why you came here?" She gasped, as his hand clasped the flesh of her right breast firmly.

"A man does not wait two hours for a woman to come home unless he wants something from her." Malfoy mumbled into the skin at the base of her throat.

"And what is it you want?" Ginny breathed heavily as his lips followed the path of his hands.

He paused, drew level with her, his gray eyes glinting in the moonlight filtering through the window while he stared down at her.

"I want you." He said it quietly but the intensity of his want in his voice and in his gaze knocked Ginny a loop.

Here is a man who does not mince his words or play games, Ginny thought, He is exactly the man I have always sought.

He took his time with her, tasting and touching every part of her in a languid and languorous manner that brought her closer and closer to the edge, before finally entering her.

As he moved within her, Ginny thought about forever and ever, about white picket fences, about children with wheat blonde hair and chocolate brown eyes and about waking up every morning with Draco's arms draped around her.


When they were done, she expected him to get dressed and leave but instead he lay beside her, breathing in deeply and slowly as he stared up the ceiling, deep in thought.

"What are you thinking about?" Ginny asked, turning so that she was facing him.

"Why didn't you come for supper on Monday?" Draco asked, sidestepping her question.

Ginny blocked her mind before answering. "I had work." She lied.

Wanting to change the topic of conversation, "So how do you do it?" She asked, referring to how he had gotten access to the Malfoy vault all these years without any chance of being incriminated.

"Do what?" Draco asked, raising himself on his elbow so that he could look at her.

"You must know by now."

"Oh. Gringotts." Draco stated, finally realizing what Ginny was talking about.

"How do you think I did it?" He turned the question back on her.

Ginny told him her postulation. A slight smirk was playing on his lips as he nodded his head, confirming it. His eyes, however, were completely serious.

"You can't tell me who your contact is at Gringotts, can you?" Ginny asked, hoping otherwise.

"No, not even if he's a goblin or a wizard." Draco stated firmly.

"I wouldn't have expected anything less." Ginny sighed, wearily.

Draco looped a strand of her red hair around his finger, "I always hated the color of your hair."

"And now?" Ginny asked, yawning, her eyelids heavy.

"I suppose I'm impartial to it." He murmured before yawning as well. He rested his head on the pillow, beside hers and promptly fell asleep.


When Ginny woke the next morning, she was glad it was a Sunday and she did not have to rush off for work. She watched Draco sleeping, his pale face, his fine features, his sinuous muscles, his chest rising and falling with each breath and she decided she had never seen anything more beautiful or perfect.

She did not feel any remorse about what had happened the previous night. All she felt was superfluous desire, rising like a wave in her abdomen as she traced her finger along his jaw.

He barely stirred, his eyelids fluttering as he dreamt in his sleep. He looked so much younger, almost like the boy she used to loathe back in Hogwarts. She would not have thought at that time, that one day she would wake up in her own bed, next to Draco.

Then, out of the blue, like an abstract thought that popped out of nowhere, it occurred to her that she could kill him now, if she wanted to. She reached for her dress robes, which were lying on the floor beside the bed and found her wand in its pocket.

She moved back towards him, placed the tip of her wand against his chest, where she presumed his heart to be. She wondered if she could actually do it, if she could kill him.

"You can't do it." His eyes fluttered open, as he spoke, startling her.

"What makes you so sure?" Ginny asked, knowing that he had used Legilimency to find out what she was thinking, as she had not blocked her mind yet.

In one fluid movement, he pinned her down against the bed. He removed her wand from the slack grip of her hand, tossing it across the room. His eyes were dilated pools of silver, the way they looked when he kissed her or made love to her.

"I am you." He murmured as his hand traveled the soft curve of her belly. "You are me." His fingers gently dipped in between the hollows of her thighs inciting a gasp of pleasure from her. "If you kill me, you'll kill a part of yourself." He whispered, before making love to her all over again.

TBC


A/N: PLEASE TELL ME WHAT YOU THINK..