Chapter 3

Months later they were just as she assumed they would never be; in each other company primarily and happily plodding along. Except for, of course, the fact that war waged on around them, things seemed too perfect. Yet surely as the sun rising each day, each day darkness crept into their daily lives. People were missing, then found dead. People were claimed dead, and deaths were ignored. Corruption was beginning to infiltrate the government. The streets were not bare or closed down, but passersby were growing sparse. Little shops were closing and only staples like the Leaky Cauldron, Madame Malkins and Flourish and Blotts were safe to really go to. So each day, they met at the Leaky Cauldron for lunch. And with him she could somehow forget that horrors surrounded them.

Eating with him one day she considered how thankful she was that they were both not in real danger, and how sickening it was that she was almost thankful it was other people. Lost in this thought she didn't even notice him leaning in, but he had.

She looked up when he was looming too close for her to react and right above her tomato soup, he pressed his lips against hers and kissed her; and she kissed him back.

When he pulled back a little her face was frozen. His arms were crossed and resting on the table and he was still leaning so forward his forehead was nearly touching hers. And he was smirking. Her brain wasn't even functioning to be able to make a face or move her body.

"What, Malfoy?" was all she could get out, as if he asked 'you know what Weasley?'

He just stared at her with an all too understanding look, "How about now?"

She knew what he meant by that. Things were racing through her mind. The fact that he'd done it, and she didn't know how or when he'd done it but he'd made it perfect again. She'd started liking him again. She was questioning how she'd fallen in love without noticing, that perhaps he'd manipulated it all. Above all else though, she was thinking, that he kissed her. Right here, just seconds ago, no warning, no nothing. He kissed her. And she liked him.

"Run away with me." he said to her blank unresponsive face. She knew she must've looked like an idiot. She felt the slackness in her face and that her eyes were widening still. She must have looked dumb, in every sense of the word; as her eyes widened more his narrowed with glee.

"Work." Was the first semi-comprehensive thing that came out of her mouth.

"Quit." He made it sound so easy.

"Friends…" and things started coming back fast. As she felt her senses returning her mental blocks and barricades went up, her sharp criticisms came back, but also a sense of remorse, that even she knew, her hard headed nature would probably deprive both of them what they desperately wanted in one way or another.

He raised his eyebrows at her, asking for challenge.

"Ron? Hermione?" her tongue hadn't quite caught up with her mind yet. Just past monosyllabic was where she was.

"Weasley…they've got each other. Who've YOU got?" he looked exasperated, but quickly changed his expression to amused.

Only to look more amused when she didn't answer.

"That's right," he smirked "Me."

"You're stuck with me." he pointed to each respective person as he said it slowly.

She banged her head on the table in front of her overdramatically, "Oh no!" This would all be easier to do with her face hidden. Her mind knew what she was going to do, but her heart hurt already from having to do it. She needed to escape his gaze to maintain the strength to do what she desperately did not want to do.

She lay motionless, searching for the strength to say something. Arms crossed and her head nestled in its nook.

He poked her head with his finger a few times.

"Weasley?" He whispered in her ear.

"Weasley." He whined out while shaking her shoulder lightly.

Finally, he yanked her arms away and stuck his face down on the table next to hers.

"FINE," he said to her unresponsive body, "we don't have to run away, you can just move in with me and get married." He compromised cheerily.

Her eyes opened wide and she lifted her head high enough to rest her chin on the table, just to tell him off.

"Yes, yes I'll even meet your family" he continued conversing with her before she could get actual words out. He rolled his eyes and she opened her mouth.

"We can move into your apartment if that's what you really want" he kept beating her to the punch though. She opened her mouth and got words out this time, before him too. "MALFOY!"

"What?" he started "Why are you yelling??" she glared at him; it was his goal to make her look like a complete imbecile. She knew it. While she glared she thought about the words she would say carefully. She couldn't say no this time, he'd offered to make everything okay by everyone's standards.

"No." she said.

He looked at her and looked in her eyes, and no matter how she would have loved to say yes, he could tell and she knew her answer would be no. Her heart was pounding and aching for her to say yes. Her mind was reeling at the possibilities of a yes. But her mouth resolutely would not even begin to form the shapes to mouth a yes.

He nodded at her, suddenly tired and left after that.

She sat, not in shock but in pain. At herself. At him. With him gone she could think of a hundred good reasons to say no, reasons she couldn't think of while he was there; their age, their positions in life, the war, his past record with women. But for the life of her, she could not feel like it had been worth it to say no.

Not too far after that, everyone started seeing less of him. It didn't stand out though, everyone saw less of everyone. The war was worsening. Everything was in the open now. Everyone knew, and most everyone had taken a side. Most everyone.

He stopped stopping by for dinner. He'd come to her office everyonce in a while and stand in the doorway and halfheartedly quip at her. But eventually he stopped doing that too and one day he was just gone.

As people started disappearing due to war and Susan Bones' body had been found not so subtly stowed in an alley way right by the Leaky Cauldron in muggle London ginny began to worry. She couldn't contact him. Owls came back days later with posts still attached to them. The floo wouldn't go to his house. His apartment seemed abandoned. She said nothing, but silently wondered if he'd just run away without her. Found something else, someone else. She latched on to any thoughts that meant he hadn't changed his colors. Things were coming to head very soon. She knew it, the Order knew it. no one knew how the pieces would fall though, no one could even guess. All they could do was hope.

The day that Hermione's parents died he stumbled into her apartment at 1 in the morning. That's how she'd begun to remember that year, segmented into deaths of people close to her. Her fear was the war wouldn't end before a time when she couldn't distinguish one death from another.

He looked like he hadn't slept in days and he stumbled to her and grabbed her hands. And she grasped them back, relieved. She was shaking and relieved to see him alive, to be touching him alive, in her hands. She closed her eyes and let spread to every part of her, and as soon as she'd done that her shaking turned to anger.

"Ginny, I've done something bad." He rasped out before she could yell at him for being an idiot. Her anger didn't subside, but she noticed then that he was thin, a little dirty and emaciated looking. She wondered when he had last seen daylight or eaten.

"Run away with me." he begged her, "Leave this shit life," he pleaded "this war," his voice was rising "this hate." He was yelling, almost crazed.

"What'd you do Draco." She whispered; almost accusingly but more scared looking.

"Leave with me Ginny." His eyes bore into hers showing no sign that he would answer her but begging her, forcing her. She wanted to say yes. She wanted to not have to push him. She knew he wouldn't tell her and probably for a good reason by some standards or another. But she still, still after the war, after his words and after his actions wasn't ready to give in. She briefly wondered if she would ever swallow whatever was stopping her, but quickly returned to the present.

"Whatever you've done Draco," her voice wasn't steady but it was harsh, "tell me, we can try to fix it." were the nicest words she had in her. No acknowledgement of any words he'd said or any past requests to be with her.

"It only goes down hill." He said, staring at her harshly, like she'd done something awful that she wouldn't man up to, rather than the other way around. "Run away." Was all he kept saying, "Run away with me."

It was like a trigger word for her though, "Stop trying to RUN Draco!" she yelled and then it all spilled out, in this obvious crucial moment all the things she'd never said came out. Things that she hadn't entered her head while she worried about him night and day for the weeks she hadn't seen him. All she'd prayed for in that time was for him to be okay, for him to come to her just like this some night. She prayed for him. And now that he was there, all she could think of was how hurt and angry he made her.

"I won't be you're escape, you're… you're other woman." She stuttered with hurt and anger. "Face up to things." She was screaming now "And when you're that strong maybe I'd consider." She was crying, from what appeared to be anger. But it was hurt. Hurt at her own words. She was, in her own insane way, pleading with him to say he loved her, to make everything real to her. She wasn't even thinking about the war. She was thinking about the prospect of never feeling validation.

She threw his hands out of hers.

He looked at her like he was about to be sick and shocked at the same time and fell backwards, never hitting the ground—he apperated first.

The next morning it was all over the news. And even though the news couldn't be trusted, it was news in the mouths of everyone, even those she trusted. He'd been caught as a death eater. That very morning, at four o'clock in the morning he'd been seen, in robes and no mask, with his father. Just hours, she calculated, after he'd begged her to run away. She turned her back on it; she didn't want to think of the implications either way. She just stayed angry and hurt. She turned that anger into a 'hate Malfoy' campaigned. That would last throughout the war. And it was no secret to anyone on either side that she held him with the utmost contempt. For what he'd done to her family's protection; completely and outright disrespected and disregarded was what he'd done in her eyes.