This is an alternate ending to Anise's Unforgivable, written for her birthday last year. An AU of an AU of an AU - any more layers and we'd need a map! Anyway, the highlighted text is from chapter nine of Unforgivable, and once the italics end, that's where the stories branch off. Much love for Anise. *mwah*

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"I'm with him because I want to be. I'm near him because I want to be. What--what you saw, Ron, when you came into the room--" Ginny took a deep breath. "I wish you hadn't seen it, but I asked Draco to do what he did, this time. And it--I don't expect you to understand this, but it healed me from what happened last time. Maybe that's right, and maybe it's wrong, but it happened tonight because I wanted it to happen."

Time slowed down then.

The last traces of sanity left Ron Weasley's eyes and face and body. Draco saw it happen almost dispassionately. The pale, freckled hand raised his wand. The mouth began to form words. It was shaped a bit like Ginny's mouth, Draco noticed.

"Avada…"

Ginny clung to his arm with renewed force. Ron's wand did not waver. His mouth opened again.

In one of the very few unselfish acts that Draco Malfoy had ever committed, he thrust Ginny away from him with all his strength.

It wasn't enough, however, wasn't anywhere near enough, as neither of them were terribly strong, but Ginny was not still recovering from muscle damage inflicted by the Cruciatus. He felt himself falling backwards as Ginny knocked against him, the floor feeling strangely gritty beneath him, as if he'd fallen on sand. The fall had taken no time, or forever, and he might have aged a thousand years as he fell, or he might be newly born, at the beginning of the world, with nothing but the roar of his blood in his ears, and the weight of Ginny Weasley on his chest as she fell with him. I did that to her, he thought. She was never an angel that was meant to fall.

He couldn't breathe, and his vision was blurred, as if a mist had somehow formed inside the room, or maybe the room had ceased to exist, or had never existed, and all there was was this void and his mind, and Ginny was nothing but a dream. Still, he heard his voice, weak and broken and wheezing with cracked breath, choking out, "I'm not worth it!"

Ginny's weight shifted and he could suddenly take in more air, and it hurt, it burned, the entire pain of the curse he had welcomed her casting seeming to have returned, only to center in his chest, but still he forced himself to scream, "Don't do it, Weasley!"

There was noise then, and shouting, but Draco couldn't see anything. He tried to lift himself up, to reach out, to scream again, but his voice was gone, faded away. Everything was going, going, streaming away and leaving him to fall again endlessly, and it seemed as he fell that every memory he had was rushing past, and he clutched desperately at one, holding on fiercely to the memory of Ginny's eyes because they held the entire universe, if he could only see.

He dreamed then, flashes of his life that were not his. There was Ginny, patting a unicorn, and he wanted her. There was Ginny, watching the sun set behind him on the quidditch pitch, and she wanted him. There was Ginny, lying in a pool of her own blood in the hospital room where they had just consummated their desire. There was Ginny, and there again, and again, and through it all, one thing was constant, and that was that they were connected. There was something between them, something that repelled and attracted and bound them together irrevocably, and it was so strong, so large, that it was almost undetectable because it was beyond the scope of understanding.

Something ran through him, a jolt that made every living tissue within him jump, and there was Ginny again, her eyes the only gold that mattered as she looked at him. He felt another shock, but this one was inside of him as his world shifted, because he understood.

"I love you," he said, his voice raspy and weak, but firm in purpose.

The frown that had been creasing her features disappeared as her face softened and blurred, and she said, "God help us, but I think I love you, too," and he couldn't tell if the tears on his face were hers or his or both. He felt her weight on his chest, like before, only nothing like before, and his arms went around her and held her close.

Things did not miraculously become easy for them after he woke up in the hospital, having been healed from the complication of a punctured lung surrounded by broken ribs. Ginny had scolded Draco for not remembering that magic did not work on the grounds, asking what kind of Slytherin he was to attempt foolish heroics, and Draco had pouted, although when told so he insisted Malfoys never pout. When the hospital had attempted to discharge Ginny, she had flatly refused, and informed the staff that she would injure herself if that was what they deemed necessary to leave her alone at Draco's side. More importantly, Sirius Black had had a quiet word with the administration, and it was agreed that no awkward questions would be raised, either about the impropriety of two such young people sharing a room, or about the lax security which allowed a madman to roam the grounds at will. None of it made it into the newspapers.

Her family did not know what to think. The silencing charm Ron cast had not succeeded, thanks to the hospital's magic dampeners, and so Ginny's scream had alerted the staff to come running. Ron had been sent to St. Jude's Asylum for the Criminally Insane, pending further enquiry. His rantings, however, left little doubt in the minds of the Weasleys as to what the actual events had been. Once again, Sirius's diplomatic skills came into play, as he pointed out to the enraged Molly and the ominously quiet Arthur that Ginny's consent would have to be secured before prosecuting Draco for the rape, and that, regardless of her reasons, Ginny also stood in danger of prosecution for an act deemed Unforgivable. They could accept that, grudgingly, and even understand it to some degree.

What they did not understand, did not want to think of, was that Ginny refused to leave Draco's side long enough for them to talk to her about it. "I need to be strong first," she said, holding on to Draco's hand and shaking her head when anyone asked if she would like to see her family. But why would she need to be strong before seeing the people who loved her? What hold did this boy have over her that she would act so strangely?

The day arrived when Draco was healed of his immediate wounds, finally judged healthy enough to leave the hospital and continue his recovery at home, and that was when Dumbledore arrived at St. Mungo's. He looked old for once, and tired, as he walked past Molly stood, flanked by her clan. Her hopeful smile dimmed a bit as he lifted a hand to her in a stilling gesture. "I will help her as best as I can," he said, and she was soothed until after he had shut the door behind him, sealing himself in with Ginny and with Draco, leaving Molly to wonder fretfully whether Dumbledore's idea of helping Ginny matched with hers.

It did not. No one knew precisely what was said between the three of them that day, for none of them ever spoke of it. Its effects, however, were made clear when they left the room, all together, all solemn. Ginny and Draco wore nearly identical plain brown robes and walked with their arms around each other, as if they would collapse without the other's support. Neither looked at the Weasleys.

Several hours later, somewhat dazed, the Weasley family reconvened in the kitchen at the Burrow, trying to understand when things had gone wrong, and why they should have turned out so badly. Ginny had spoken for Draco in front of the Wizengamot, as had Dumbledore, and he had been deemed innocent of being a Death Eater - one of the wizards on the panel had even moved to have him declared a hero, for changing sides at great risk to himself. The holdings of the Malfoy family were now his, and before the day had ended, they were Ginny's as well, for when Dumbledore had arranged for the special trial, he had also arranged for a special license. Mrs. Ginevra Malfoy had gone with her husband, having spoken to her family only once.

"I love him," she had said calmly, just before the exchange of vows. "I love him, and I need him, and this is what is right." Molly had puffed up, wanting to argue, to make her see sense, but her husband had laid a hand on her arm and she had stared at his eyes and Ginny's, and seen something that convinced her, if not of the rightness of things, then at least of the inevitability of them.

The new Mr. and Mrs. Malfoy never did fit in well in the gatherings of the extended Weasley clan. They tended towards a quiet life, and a gathering of Weasleys could never be anything like quiet. Ron remained at St. Jude's for some time, until Hermione had, in desperation, gone to beg Ginny for help and had ended up screaming, at her and Draco both, that it was all their fault. Draco had looked furious when he apparated away, and Ginny had ordered Hermione out of her home before sitting down to worry about what her husband might be doing. Eventually he returned, looking tired and sad, and she had held him for hours before he explained that he had been with Ron, and that he thought she should visit her brother soon.

There had been a thick layer of glass between them, heavily reinforced with spells, but as soon as Ginny saw him she burst into tears, because there, there was the brother she loved, the one who loved her. He was dangerously thin, his eyes sunken and shadowed in a face that looked completely wrong without freckles, as if the lack of sunlight had removed the life from his skin, but he was Ron, and a weight she hadn't realized had been around her heart dropped away. His hand went to the glass and she put hers up against it, comparing her long fingers with his longer ones, just as they had when they were two tiny children who romped through the countryside around their home. When she left that day, many hours later, she promised to return, and meant it, but she never did.

Instead he came home, settling into the Burrow quickly, almost as if he had never left. There were times when he was odd and quiet, staring reflectively at the middle distance, but most days he seemed as he ever had, heedless and funny and bright with an inner glow that attracted people to the force of his personality. He was the godfather to Draco and Ginny's first child, a boy that they named Daniel, with his middle name Lyra as a nod to the Black family tradition of celestial naming.

Daniel grew up, the eldest child of a large number, and spent the majority of his days with Dumbledore, who seemed ancient but never aging. What secrets the two of them shared, no one knew, but on occasion Daniel would speak of his Purpose, and his parents would then give in to his seemingly odd requests. The first time she knew of it happening, Molly had warned them direly that they were spoiling the child, who would then invoke the Purpose for anything he wanted, but she had been gently rebuffed; Daniel was too aware of his own importance to ever cheapen it so.

All of this passed in a moment, a fragment of mist, and Loki quirked his lips in a sneer that attempted to appear lighthearted. "That's not very funny at all, is it? Where's the interest in happily ever after? The boy even manages to bring back the magic, letting the wizard world continue and grow stronger."

Dream shrugged and turned away, the barest hint of a smile playing at the corner of his mouth. Sometimes... Sometimes it was good for things to work out.