A/N: I apologize that it has been forever since I've been able to update, but alas, I have been computer-less since August. I will be updating this story as much as I can! Thank you to those who are still reading despite my long lapse!

There was a knock on the bathroom door. Gwen sat scrunched in a corner, holding a small, seemingly worthless and insignificant box against her chest and trying very hard not to cry.

"Mom?"

Wiping away her tears with the corner of her sleeve and doing her best to maintain a calm and steady voice, she called back, "Just - just a moment, Jeremy."

"Okay, I just…"

"Please," she interrupted, her voice cracking just a little. "Please, darling. I need one more minute."

There was silence from his end, and Gwen felt a pang of guilt for it. But she needed a moment to recuperate. To settle down the ache in the pit of her stomach, to fight away the urge to scream and cry and run away.

Everything was different now.

She sat at the foot of the bed, and he knelt on the floor at her knees, his hand grasping hers and his eyes never glancing away as she took in what he had just told her.

"I'm… a witch…"

The words rolled over her tongue, through her mind, and out of her mouth.

"A… witch."

Obviously, she knew what the word was, what it meant. And she had remembered what he had said to her before. Merlin, Ginny. Merlin - he was a wizard. And her husband was a wizard. And she was a witch.

He remained patient with her as her thoughts continued to reel. He didn't have a choice. She had made it perfectly clear that either he was honest with her about what was going on around them, or she would take the kids, leave him, and never come back. She couldn't know that he would be able to find her if she left - that an old friend of hers had the magical ability to always know where Gwen was and to feel whether or not any danger was lurking - and he couldn't tell her the whole truth - not just yet anyway. But her frustration was understandable. Things were happening all around her that she couldn't understand, and she was so desperate to remember all of the things that she had forgotten. She needed to know something, about who she was and why she no longer could remember.

But then her next action was one that took him by great surprise.

She laughed. From the pit of her belly, up through her diaphragm and out of her mouth. The sound bubbled up so carelessly and unrestrained, and for a moment he couldn't even be frightened by her inappropriate response because it was so nice to hear her laugh. It had been so very long since Gwen was truly able to laugh.

Her arm grasped her stomach as it began to cramp from her uncontrollable giggles, and she fell backwards onto her bed, her face planted against her pillow to subdue her uncharacteristically emotional reaction. None of it made sense. Not at all. Except it did, when she really thought about the memories she had seen in her dreams, the fact that her son had burst a window just by wanting to, the simple idea that there was an entity that existed in the world that could cause her to completely forget everything about herself. What else could do that if not magic?

These thoughts began to sober her, and the smile that had been gracing her lips began to fade away to nothing more than a ghost.

"We always knew there was something weird about us, didn't we?" she asked.

Drew smiled sadly, laughing lightly under his breath. "Yeah," he answered, "we did." A pause stretched between them, awkwardly and pregnant with so many questions and emotions that neither of them could begin to express just then. Her questions were obvious, but he had so many to ask as well. Finally, he settled on the most important. "Are you okay?"

She shrugged indecisively. "I'm not quite sure."

"You can ask me anything. And if I can answer it, I will."

Slowly she sat back up and then tucked her feet beneath her. Her warm brown eyes were suddenly very distant, her face very neutral. How could she begin to even ask a single question when none of it made sense? There was no one thing to ask. There was everything to ask, and all of the thoughts that were rushing through her mind began to be dizzying and overwhelming.

Sensing this, he came to a stand and brushed a kiss against the top of her head, allowing his lips to linger there for a few long moments. And she leaned into him, her arms wrapping around his shoulder, her body pressing against his, her racing heart beginning to slow to a less dangerous pace, and her breath began to calm.

"But… this still doesn't explain why you left me."

Her voice was quiet, yet unnervingly sure. A shiver went up his spine. He had been counting on her emotional reaction to get him out of his mess, because he couldn't tell her everything. Luna had told her not to. It was important that she remain unaware because she wouldn't be able to handle it. He barely could, and the harsh truth of the matter was that the center of the problem truly had very little to do with him and had everything to do with her.

"Ginny, I…"

"Please, Drew," she whispered. "I can't stand not knowing."

"Pretty soon it will all make sense," he assured her. "But for now…"

She closed her eyes, a few solid tears finding a path down her cheek. Ginny was not one to cry, as he could recall, and though Gwen was a woman who was quite openly emotional at times, the idea of her crying right now was overwhelming. Draco was still stuck between knowing the difference between the two, knowing who was who and which woman was more likely to do what. They were both in the same body, both had the same sharp mind and alarming wittiness about them, but they were clearly different people.

"Gwen."

"Please don't call me that anymore. Please. I don't want to be Gwen anymore."

"But you are Gwen. Right now, you still are. And you have to be to keep yourself safe." He ran a hand through her hair, bracing her gently at the back of the neck. "Please believe me. I would give anything - my own memories, my life - so that you could understand what's going on. But it is beyond you and me. There's an entire world that is at stake here, and even if I gave you a completely straight answer about where I went, it wouldn't help you to be safe. It wouldn't save our children. And you would be so much more confused, so much more hurt, because this one little detail is small in the grand scheme of things. There would still be so much that you wouldn't know, and not all of it I can answer, and I don't even have the right to try. I wasn't there for it."

She closed her eyes and allowed her forehead to rest against his. "I loved Drew with my whole heart," she whispered, her throat dry as the words came out like sandpaper. "I loved our family, our home, our life. But this man that you are now… You can hide yourself behind your flowery words, your false sincerity. You may look like him, but you're not my husband."

"Gwen…"

"No." She shrugged his arm away from her, coming to stand abruptly. "Drew may not have been perfect. He may have cheated on me, lied to me - berated me at times even - but he never thought he was too good for me. He never acted like he could give me some impressive monologue and that I would immediately fall to my knees and be thrilled just to be placated."

"I assure you that…"

"You probably came from money, didn't you?" she spat. "I can see it. The inflection in your voice, the way your nose is always pointed just a little bit in the air."

"Look, I know you're angry with me, but you can't possibly…"

"I don't think you're in any position to tell me what I 'can't possibly.'"

He knew in his heart that she meant none of what she was saying. She was furious, frustrated, sad, and confused, and he knew that because he had been there not long before. "You may not trust me right now, but you're going to need to stop cutting me off everytime I try to speak to you."

She smiled just slightly, almost undetectably, but just barely enough that he noticed. He could see the fire within her raging, bubbling over, ready to explode. Even if she didn't realize it, she was much closer to being the Ginny Weasley that he remembered now more than she had ever been before.

"I know more than you think," she hissed. "I've been seeing things in my dreams. And not just gardens and flying sodding broomsticks, either. I've been seeing things that have scared me shitless. I've seen death and destruction. I've seen you and your mansion, Draco Malfoy. And you weren't here for me to talk to about it! If you can't wave a magic wand and make it all come back, I wouldn't have held that against you, but the fact is that you abandoned me. You left me alone and vulnerable and confused. With no money. With two kids. Drew Montrose may not have been perfect, but he'd have never left me."

A pang of guilt waved through him. She was completely right. She had a right to be angry, and he could say nothing in defense of himself without giving anything away. He wanted to be back with her - he never truly wanted to leave - and everything he did, he really did do for her. But a day had come and gone since he had returned, and she had not let him see the children yet. She had not opened herself up to him, had not yet told him that she would forgive him for what he had done because nothing within her could rationally understand what was going on. He was so completely torn about everything that he almost caved and admitted to her everything that Luna had asked him to keep to himself.

"But I'm not going to leave you," she said, her voice quiet and defeated. "Things have changed, and I have no choice but to stay with you."

He was taken aback. Just last night she had been threatening to run. Just last night, she had told him to tell the truth or she was gone. And now she couldn't? "Not that I want you to go or anything, but Ginny, I don't understand…"

"I'm pregnant."

He closed his eyes. "You're...what?"

"I'm pregnant," she repeated, this time less patiently. "I just… I just found out today."

"How… how far along are you?"

"I don't know yet. I just started getting sick the other day. Maybe a month or two?" She bit her lip. "It's yours, of course. When you were gone, I never even dreamed…"

"No," he whispered, even if the thought had crossed his mind. "No, of course you wouldn't do that." He took a few steps toward her again, his muscular arms - still toned and tan from years of working in their fields - embraced her, tips of his fingers pressing into her back possessively. "It's going to be all right."

She smiled briefly against his shirt, but her expression sobered almost immediately. She pulled away from him, eyes wide and concerned. "Please," she pleaded. "I need to know if I'm in danger. If my baby is in danger."

Draco swallowed hard. "This baby will be safe," he said. "Because it won't be long now before this is all over."

A look glossed over her in realization, in understanding. The dream she had had the night before, after Draco had come home to her, had confused her. Frightened her. But now that she could see a little more clearly, she had come to realize once more that it hadn't been a dream. This had been another memory. And for a brief moment, clarity happened, and Ginny understood who it was that Draco was really protecting.

"It's not this child that I need to be concerned with," she asked quietly. "Is it?"

Her question startled him in a way that he could not have expected. He looked deep into her eyes, saw that she could take no more deceit, no more protection from things that she had no way of being protected from. Maybe she didn't need to know everything just yet. But he wasn't going to lie to her.

"No, it isn't."

She closed her eyes, allowing a single tear to escape once more. "I won't… I won't be the same until I find him." Her eyes locked with his. "Will I?"

Draco bit his lip. "How long have you known?"

But she didn't answer his question. She shook her head, sobbing violently now that he had confirmed for her what she had already known, what she had seen in her dream only the night before.

"Please," she cried. "Please just tell me that you found my son."