Once & Always

Jk rowlings characters, Judith mcnaught story line. I just put it together. No credit whatsoever to me.

England 1815

"Oh, there you are, Draco," the raven-haired beauty said to her husband's reflection in the mirror above her dressing table. Her gaze slid warily over his tall, rugged frame as he came toward her; then she returned her attention to the open jewel cases spread out before her. A nervous tremor shook her hand and her smile was overly bright as she removed a spectacular diamond choker from a case and held it out to him.

"Help me fasten this, will you?"

Her husband's face tightened with distaste as he looked at the necklaces of glittering rubies and magnificent emeralds already spread across her swelling breasts above the daring bodice of her gown.

"Isn't your display of flesh and jewels a little vulgar for a woman who hopes to masquerade as a grand lady?"

"What would you know about vulgarity?" Pansy Malfoy retorted contemptuously. "This gown is the height of fashion." Haughtily she added, "Baron Lacroix likes it very well. He specifically asked me to wear it to the ball tonight."

"No doubt he doesn't want to be troubled with too many fasteners when he takes it off you," her husband returned sarcastically.

"Exactly. He's French - and terribly impetuous."

"Unfortunately, he's also penniless."

"He thinks I'm beautiful," Pansy taunted, her voice beginning to shake with pent-up loathing.

"He's right." Draco Malfoy's sardonic gaze swept over her lovely face with its alabaster skin, slightly tilted green eyes, and full red lips, then dropped to her voluptuous breasts trembling invitingly above the plunging neckline of her scarlet gown. "You are a beautiful, amoral, greedy…bitch."

Turning on his heel, he started from the room, then stopped. His icy voice was edged with implacable authority.

"Before you leave, go in and say good night to our son. Jamie is too little to understand what a bitch you are, and he misses you when you are gone. I'm leaving for Scotland within the hour."

"Jamie!" she hissed wrathfully. "He's all you care about!"

Without bothering to deny it, her husband walked toward the door, and Pansy's anger ignited. "When you come back from Scotland, I won't be here!" she threatened.

"Good," he said without stopping.

"You bastard!" she spat, her voice shaking with suppressed rage, "I'm going to tell the world who you really are, and then I'm going to leave you. I'll never come back. Never!"

With his hand on the door handle, Draco turned, his features a hard, contemptuous mask. "You'll come back, just as soon as you run out of money."

The door close behind him and Pansy's exquisite face filled with triumph. "I'll never come back, Draco," she said aloud to the empty room, "because I'll never run out of money. You'll send me whatever I want. . . ."

"Good evening, my lord," the house elf said in an odd, tense whisper.

"Happy Christmas, Northrup," Draco answered automatically as he stamped the snow off his boots and handed his wet cloak to the servant. That last scene with Pansy, two weeks earlier, sprang to his mind, but he pushed the memory away. "The weather cost me an extra day of travel. Has my son already gone to bed?"

The house elf froze.

"Draco. . ." A tall, man with dark, tangled hair and beard, and a tanned, weathered face of a sailor stood in the doorway of the salon off the marble entrance foyer, motioning to Draco to join him.

"What are you doing here, Hagrid?" Draco asked, watching with puzzlement as the man carefully closed the salon door.

"Draco," Rubeus Hagrid said tautly, "Pansy is gone. She and Lacroix sailed for Barbados right after you left for Scotland." He paused, waiting for some reaction, but there was none. He drew a long, ragged breath. "They took Jamie with them."

Savage fury ignited in Draco's eyes, turning them into furnaces of rage. "I'll kill her for this!" he said, already starting toward the door. "I'll find her, and I'll kill her. . ."

"It's too late for that." Hagrid's ragged voice stopped Draco in mid-stride. "Pansy is already dead. Their ship went down in a storm three days after it left England." He tore his gaze away from the awful agony already twisting Draco's features and added tonelessly, "There were no survivors."

Wordlessly, Draco strode to the side table and picked up a crystal bottle of firewhiskey. He poured some into a glass and drank it down, then refilled it, staring blindly straight ahead.

"She left you these." Rubeus Hagrid held out two letters with broken seals. When Jason made no move to take them, Hagrid explained gently, "I've already read them. One is a ransom letter, addressed to you, which Pansy left in your bedchamber. She intended to random Jamie back to you. The second letter was meant to expose you, and she gave it to a house elf with instructions to deliver it to the Daily Prophet after she left. However, when Flossie Wilson discovered that Jamie was missing, she immediately questioned the servants about Pansy's actions the night before, and the house elf gave the letter to her instead of taking it to the Daily Prophet as he was about to do. Flossie couldn't reach you to tell you Pansy had taken Jamie, so she sent for me and gave me the letters. Draco," Hagrid said hoarsely, "I know how much you loved the boy. I'm so sorry. I'm so damned sorry. . . ."

Draco's tortured gaze slowly lifted to the gold-framed portrait hanging above the mantel. In agonized silence he stared at the painting of his son, a sturdy little boy with a cherubic smile on his face and a wooden soldier clutched lovingly in his fist.

The glass Draco was holding shattered in his clenched hand. But he did not cry. Draco Malfoy's childhood had long ago robbed him of his tears.

Portage, New York 1815

Snow crunched beneath her small, booted feet as Ginny Weasley turned off the lane and pushed open the white wooden gate that opened into the front yard of the modest little house where she had been born. Her cheeks were rosy and her eyes bright as she stopped to glance at the starlit sky, studying it with the unspoiled delight of a fifteen-year-old at Christmas. Smiling, she hummed the last bars of one of the Christmas carols she'd been singing all evening with the rest of the carolers, then turned and went up the walk toward the darkened house.

Hoping not to awaken her parents or her brothers, she opened the front door softly and slipped inside. She took off her cloak, hanging it on a peg beside the door, then turned around and stopped in surprise. Moonlight poured through the window at the top of the stairway, illuminating her parents, who were standing just outside her mother's bedroom.

"No, Arthur!" Her mother was struggling in her father's tight embrace. "I can't! I just can't!"

"Don't deny me, Molly," Arthur Weasley said, his voice raw with pleading. "For Merlin's sake, don't. . ."

"You promised!" Molly burst out, trying frantically to pull free of his arms. He bent his head and kissed her, but she twister her face away, her words jerking out like a sob. "You promised me on the day Ginny was born that you wouldn't ask me to again. You gave me your word!

Ginny, standing in stunned, bewildered horror, dimly realized that she had never seen her parents touch one another before – not in teasing, nor in kindness – but she had no idea what it was her father was pleading with her mother not to deny him.

Arthur let go of his wife, his hands falling to his sides. "I'm sorry," he said stonily.

She fled into her room and closed the door, but instead of going into his own room, Arthur Weasley turned around and headed down the narrow stairs, passing within inches of Ginny when he reached the bottom.

Ginny flattened herself against the wall, feeling as if the security and peace of her world had been somehow threatened by what she had seen. Afraid that he would notice her if she tried to move toward the stairs, would know she had witnessed the humiliatingly intimate scene, she watched as he sat down on the sofa and stared into the dying embers of the fire. A bottle of firewhiskey that had been on the kitchen shelf for years stood now on the table in front of him, beside a half-filled glass. When he leaned forward and reached for the glass, Ginny turned and cautiously placed her foot on the first step.

"I know you're there, Ginny," he said tonelessly, without looking behind him. "There's little point in our pretending that you didn't witness what just took place between your mother and me. Why don't you come over here and sit by the fire? I'm not the brute you must think me."

Sympathy tightened Ginny's throat and she quickly went to sit beside him. "I don't think you're a brute, Papa. I could never think that."

He took a long swallow of the firewhiskey in his glass. "Don't blame your mother either," he warned, his words slightly slurred as if he had been drinking since long before she arrived.

With the liquor impairing his judgment, he glance at Ginny's stricken face and assumed she had understood more of the scene than she actually had. Putting a comforting arm around her shoulders, he tried to ease her distress, but what he told her increased it a hundredfold:

"It isn't your mother's fault and it isn't mine. She can't love me, and I can't stop loving her. It's as simple as that."

Ginny plunged abruptly from her secure haven of childhood into cold, terrifying, adult reality. Her mouth dropped open and stared at him while the world seemed to fall apart around her. She shook her head, trying to deny the horrible thing he had said. Of course her mother loved her wonderful father!

"Love can't be forced into existence," Arthur Weasley said, confirming the awful truth as he stared bitterly into his glass. "It won't come simply because you will it to happen. If it did, your mother would love me. She believed she would learn to love me when we were wed. I believed it, too. We wanted to believe it. Later, I tried to convince myself that it didn't matter whether she loved me or not. I told myself that marriage could still be good without it."

The next words ripped from his chest with an anguish that seared Ginny's heart: "I was a fool! Loving someone who doesn't love you back is hell! Don't ever let any6one convince you that you can be happy with someone who doesn't love you."

"I – won't," Ginny whispered, blinking back her tears.

"And don't ever love anyone more than he loves you, Gin. Don't let yourself do it."

"I – I won't," Ginny whispered again. "I promise."

Unable to contain the pity and love exploding inside her, Ginny looked at him with tears spilling from her eyes and laid her small hand against his handsome cheek. "When I marry, Papa," she choked, "I shall choose someone exactly like you."

He smiled tenderly at that, but made no reply. Instead he said, "It hasn't been bad, you know. Your mother and I have your brothers and you to love, and that is a love we share."

Dawn had barely touched the sky when Ginny slipped out of the house, having spent a sleepless night staring at the ceiling above her bed. Clad in a red cloak and a dark blue woolen riding skirt, she clutched her broomstick and swung effortlessly onto it.

A mile away, she came to the creek that ran alongside the road leading to the village, and dismounted. She walked gingerly down the slippery, snow-covered bank and sat down on a flat boulder. With her elbows propped on her knees and her chin cupped in her palms, she stared at the gray water flowing slowly between the frozen chunks of ice near the bank.

The sky turned yellow and then pink while she sat there, trying to recover the joy she always felt in this place whenever she watched the dawning of a new day.

A rabbit scurried out from the trees beside her; behind her she heard a broomstick drop to the ground and footsteps moved stealthily down the steep bank. A slight smile touched Ginny's lips a split second before a snowball whizzed past her right shoulder, and she leaned neatly to the left.

"Your aim is off, Harry," she called without turning.

A pair of shiny brown top boots appeared at her side.

"You're up early this morning," Harry said, grinning at the petite, youthful beauty seated upon the rock. Red hair shot with sparkling gold was pulled back from Ginny's forehead and secured with a tortoiseshell comb at the crown, then left to spill over her shoulders like a rippling waterfall. Her eyes were the deep, vivid blue of pansies. Heavily lashed and slightly tilted at the corners. Her nose was small and perfect, her cheeks delicately boned and blooming with health.

The promise of beauty was already molded into every line and feature of Ginny's face, but it was obvious to any onlooker that her beauty was destined to be more exotic than fragile, more vivid than pristine, just as it was obvious that there was a stubbornness in her small chin and laughter in her sparkling eyes. This morning, however, her eyes lacked their customary luster.

Ginny leaned down and scooped a small pile of snow with her mittened hands. Automatically Harry ducked, but instead of launching the snowball at him, as she would normally have done, she threw it into the creek.

"What's wrong, bright-eyes?" he teased. "Afraid you'll miss?"

"Of course not," Ginny said with a morose little sigh.

"Move over and let me sit down."

Ginny did so, and he studied her sad expression with mild concern. "What has you looking so grim?"

Ginny was truly tempted to confide in him. At eighteen, Harry was three years her senior and wise beyond his age. He was an orphan who was forced to live with the village's wealthiest resident, his widowed Aunt Petunia who was seemingly always ill, and clung to her nephew as to make him run the huge mansion and 1,000 acres of farmland surrounding it when he was not away at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

Putting his gloved finger beneath her chin, Harry tipped her face up to his.

"Tell me," he said gently.

This second request was more than her heartsick emotions could withstand. Harry was her friend, and her brother Ron's best friend. In the years they had known each other, he had taught her to fly a broomstick, play wizards chess, swim, shoot a muggle weapon called a pistol, and cheat at cards – this last he claimed to be necessary so she would know if she was being cheated. Ginny rewarded his efforts by learning to out swim, outshoot, out fly and out cheat him. They were friends, and she knew she could confide almost anything to him. She could not, however, bring herself to discuss her parents' marriage with him. Instead she brought up the other thing worrying her – her father's warning.

"Harry," she said hesitantly, "how can you tell if someone loves you? Truly loves you, I mean?"

"Who are you worried about loving you?"

"The man I marry."

Had she been a little older, a little more worldly, she would have been able to interpret the tenderness that flared in Harry's bright green eyes before he swiftly looked away. "You'll be loved by the man you marry," he promised. "You can take my word for it."

"But he must love me at least as much as I love him."

"He will."

"Perhaps, but how will I know if he does?"

Harry cast a sharp, searching look at her exquisite features. "Has some local boy been pestering your papa for your hand?" He demanded almost angrily.

"Of course not!" she snorted. "I'm only fifteen, and Papa is very firm that I must wait until I'm eighteen, so I'll know my own mind."

He looked at her stubborn chin and chuckled. "If 'knowing your own mind' is all Healer Weasley is concerned about, he could let you wed tomorrow. You've known your own mind since you were ten years old."

"Your right," she admitted with cheerful candor. After a minute of comfortable silence, she asked idly, "Harry, do you ever wonder who you'll marry?"

"No," he said with an odd little smile as he stared out across the creek.

"Why not?"

"I already know who she is."

Startled by this amazing piece of news, Ginny snapped her head around. "You do? Truly? Tell me! Is it someone I know?"

When he remained silent, Ginny shot him a thoughtful, sideways look and began deliberately packing snow into a hard ball.

"Are you planning to try and dump that thing down my back?" he said, watching her with wary amusement.

"Certainly not," she said, her eyes twinkling. "I was thinking more in the line of a wager. If I can come closer to that rock atop the farthest boulder over there, then you must tell me who she is."

"And if I come closer than you do?" Harry challenged.

"Then you don't have to tell me," she said magnanimously.

"I made a big mistake when I taught you to gamble," he chuckled, but he was not proof against her daring smile.

Harry missed the far-off target by barely an inch. Ginny stared at it in deep concentration; then she let the snowball fly, hitting it dead-on with enough force to send the rock tumbling off the boulder along with the snowball.

"I also made a big mistake when I taught you to throw snowballs."

"I always knew how to do that," she reminded him audaciously, plunking her hands on her slim hips. "Now, who do you wish to marry?"

Shoving his hands into his pockets, Harry grinned down at her enchanting face. "Who do you think I wish to marry, blue eyes?"

"I don't know," she said seriously, "but I hope she is very special, because you are."

"She's special," he assured her with gently gravity. "So special that I even though about her when I was away at school during the winters. In fact, I'm glad to be home so I can see her more often."

"She sounds quite nice," Ginny allowed primly, feeling suddenly and unaccountably angry at the unoffending female.

"I'd say she's closer to 'wonderful' than 'quite nice.' She's sweet and spirited, beautiful and unaffected, gentle and stubborn. Everyone who knows her comes to love her."

"Well then, for Merlin's sake, why don't you marry her and have done with it!" Ginny said grimly.

His lips twitched, and in a rare gesture of intimacy, Harry reached out and laid his hand against her heavy, silken hair. "Because," he whispered tenderly, "she's still too young. You see, her father wants her to wait until she's eighteen, so she'll know her own mind."

Ginny's enormous blue eyes widened as she searched his handsome face. "Do you mean me?" she whispered.

"You," he confirmed with smiling solemnity. "Only you."

Ginny's world, threatened by what she had seen and heard last night, suddenly seemed safe again, secure and warm. "Thank you, Harry," she said, suddenly shy. Then, in one of her lightening-quick transformations from girl to charming, gently bred young woman, she added softly, "How lovely it will be to marry my dearest friend."

"I shouldn't have mentioned it to you without first speaking with your father, and I can't do that for three more years."

"He likes you immensely," Ginny assured him. "He won't object in the least when the time comes. How could he, when you are both so much alike?"

Victoria mounted her broomstick a little while later feeling quite happy and cheerful, but her spirits plummeted as soon as she opened the back door of the house and stepped into the cozy room that served the dual purpose of kitchen and family gathering place.

Her mother was bending over the fireplace, busy making dinner in the cauldron, her hair pulled back in a tidy chignon, her plain dress clean and pressed, with plain robes over top. Hanging from nails beside and above the fireplace was an orderly assortment of dippers, graters, chopping knives and magical herbs. Everything was neat and clean and pleasant, just like her mother. Her father was already seated at the table, drinking a cup of coffee.

Looking at them, Ginny felt self-conscious, sick at heart, and thoroughly angry with her mother for denying her wonderful father the love he wanted and needed.

Since Ginny's sunrise outings were fairly common, neither of her parents showed any surprise at her entrance. They both looked up at her, smiled, and said good morning. Ginny returned her father's greeting and she smiled at her cousin, Hermione, who had live with them as long as Ginny could remember, but she could scarcely look at her mother. Instead, she went to the shelves and began to set the table with a full complement of flatware and dishes – a formality that her English mother firmly insister was "necessary for civilized dining."

Ginny moved back and forth between shelves and the table, feeling ill at ease and sick to her stomach, but when she took her place at the table, the hostility she felt for her mother slowly began to give way to pity. She watched as Molly Weasley tried in half a dozen ways to make amends with her husband, chatting cheerfully with him as she hovered solicitously at his elbow, filling his cup with steaming coffee, handing him the pitcher of cream, offering him more of her freshly baked rolls in between trips to the fireplace, where she was preparing his favorite breakfast of waffles.

Ginny ate her meal in bewildered, helpless silence, her thoughts twisting and turning as she sought for some way to console her father for his loveless marriage.

The solution came to her the instant he stood up and announced his intention of riding over to the Bones' farm to see how little Susan's broken arm was mending. Ginny jumped to her feet.

"I'll go with you, Papa. I've been meaning to ask you if you could teach me how to help you – in your work, I mean." Both her parents looked at her in surprise, for Ginny had never before shown the slightest interest in the healing arts. In fact, until then, she had been a pretty, carefree child whose chief interests were in gay amusements and an occasional mischievous prank. Despite their surprise, neither parent voiced an objection.

Ginny and her father had always been close. From that day forward, they became inseparable. She accompanied him nearly everywhere he went and, although he flatly refused to permit her to assist him in the treatment of his male patients, he was more than happy to have her help at any other time.

Neither of them ever mentioned the sad things they had discussed on that fateful Christmas night. Instead they filled their time together with cozy conversations and lighthearted laughter, for despite the sorrow in his heart, Arthur Weasley was a man who appreciated the value of laughter.

Ginny had already inherited her mother's startling beauty and her father's humor and courage. Now she learned compassion and idealism from him as well. As a little girl, she had easily won over the villagers with her beauty and bright, irresistible smile. They had liked her as a charming, carefree girl; they adored her as she matured into a spirited young lady who worried about their ailments and teased away their sullens.