Thanks for your time! Please review. Thanks agian~ Laura

~*~
She sat there, on those old creaky steps, as the cool night air passed over her body and she wondered how she became so lost. The cold blanketed her until she couldn’t feel it anymore, like it was part of her. Her eyes gave off that dazed look that most students got during History of Magic. That look that meant she was not really all the way there but she was not all the way gone either. She was in the middle, like she always was.

She was in the middle in her schoolwork; she was neither excellent nor horrible. She was in the middle in Quidditch; since Harry returned as seeker she was neither an amazing chaser nor a horrible one. Ah, Harry. He brought on a whole new set of places where she was in the middle. She was in the middle, between him and his friends, or at least that is what he told her when he broke it off. One thing she was not in the middle of was Harry’s heart and she knew she would never be.

Slowly, a bead of water made its way down her face and seemed to freeze on her lips. She shook her crimson hair and refused to let herself cry for him anymore. Her brother was more important to her ex boyfriend then she was, she had to accept that now.

The redhead heard the laughter from inside and wanted nothing more then an escape, a way out. It wasn’t fair, she thought. She just realized what qualities she possessed due to childhood and now she lost them by simply realizing that they existed. The fact that she realized that all people were NOT good people and that she COULD go unloved made her lose the childhood fantasies that people had a good nature deep down and that she would always feel loved.

Finally, she found her way out. It was the smallest corner of her brain that she would lock except for the rare occasions, like this, that she needed to remember. On these rare occasions she would allow herself to think back, to remember a time when she was young. Back to the time when she could run around with her brothers and get dirty without caring. Back to the time that boys were just playmates and could not break your whole being. Back to the time when all she wanted was to be grown up, to be right where she was right now.

Where was she, she wondered? Physically she was outside a warm house in the cold December night. But where was she mentally? Mentally, she was lost in the thoughts of a better time. Secretly, she longed to stay there and never return though she knew she must. She knew she needed to put back on the happy face she had worn since her person was broken and make believe it was ok once again.

Awoken from her daydream by a particularly loud laugh by one of her sister-in-laws, she realized it had begun to snow. She watched as the tiny, white snowflakes fell from the heavens and landed, then melted, on her exposed, frostbitten hands. For the first time in months, a tiny, yet true smile crept to grace her features.

It was a impulsive action. She stood up and walked into the middle of the frozen grass. Her white face was bathed in the lamp light yet her eyes danced with starlight. It was as if she had stardust sprinkled upon her; her whole body seemed to shine.
What started out as a slow movement of an adult yearning to be a child, escalated into the frantic movements of an adolescent. She began slowly at first. Tentatively spinning in the middle of the yard, looking up to the stars. Her hair became fanned out in the wind and her arms were moved from her sides and into the air like propellers, urging her to go faster and faster. Laughter began to bubble from her lips and she scared herself, she had not laughed in at least six months.

She fell to the ground, staring up at the sky and smiling. Her hair lay around her and her arms were above her head. It was at times like this, laying as the snow fell, with her eyes twinkling more brilliantly then the stars, that she was herself again. She wasn’t the twenty year old with the broken heart. She was just Ginny Weasley, the girl in the middle.

~*~

It had been five years since she found her laugh again and she was in the same place she was last time. It was still Christmas Eve and she was still sitting on the steps to her childhood home.

Five years made quite a difference in her life. She finally found a place where she was no longer in the middle but first. She had a steady job now and moved up to the head Healer of her department. People came to the curvy, red-haired woman to ask for advice in the new field of muggle medicine, practiced at St. Mungos. She was a psychologist and she loved her job, she was good at it.

She no longer thought of Harry Potter or what could have been if he had not broken it off due to his love of his friends over her. She wouldn’t allow herself to travel to those thoughts even when times were horrible. The most prominent reason she never though of the boy who lived, though, was she was finally first in some one else’s heart.

Snow already lay, fallen from the cloudy sky, on to the frozen ground. Laughter seemed to leak out of the house into her ears and she did not want it to stop. She just wanted it to keep going. The laughter was the music in her life, her reason to dance and never stop.

She let out a breath and it visible in the chilly night. Her eyes were almost watering from the sheer iciness that surrounded her and she was getting ready to go in, for fear of being frozen to the steps.

A creak came from behind her and she was immersed in the light from the warm house. The door opened and then shut again without a single word being uttered from the second person outside.

“I brought you something,” the low, masculine voice spoke from behind her. She turned and smiled as she saw the hat he was holding. “Your ears looked frozen.”

“Thanks. Come with me,” she whispered and took his hand. Confused, he complied with her wishes and followed her to the center of the lawn. As she stepped into the light all else was forgotten. It was as if he was alone with her on this Earth. Her beauty captivated him and he looked up and whispered a word of thanks to the heavens.

She took both his hands in hers and began to slowly walk in a circle. Their footprints were the only blemishes to the long white blanket that covered the world.

Then, they moved faster.

Just like five years ago, laughter spilled from inside of her. He stared into those glimmering brown eyes and then down at their hands. Her eyes and the stars were not the only things that sparkled with the moonlight tonight. An impressive heart shaped diamond, set on a platinum band, reflected the light in her eyes and shown like the stars. Lost in his thought, he tripped and with that, they fell.

They lie, hang in hand, on the wintry ice-covered ground and felt nothing but warmth. He did not feel anything but devotion for her and she felt nothing but craze for him. She found him when he was lost in the shadow of his father and the horrible things his father had done. He found her in the corner of her brain that would not let her escape the past.

Once again he looked at their conjoined hands and smiled at the symbol of undying, unchanging, unblemished, love they shared. Her looked up at her face and saw her tongue was out, catching snowflakes, and he thought she looked like an angel.

With her eyes closed and her tongue out, she felt perfect. She was not cold. She was not sad. She was just her and that meant she was perfect. She was not in the middle. She was not unloved. She was not known as the woman who had her heart torn to pieces by Harry Potter, savior of the world. She was just Ginny Weasley, soon to be Malfoy, and that was what made her perfect.


~*~

They were married while it snowed outside. The reception was held under the star lit sky, in a little bubble of warmth, as it snowed all around them. People sighed as they watched the bride and groom play in the snow, in their muggle wedding attire.

That was six years ago. Those six years have been filled with fights that involved the breaking of plates on walls near Draco’s head and enough love to fill twenty lifetimes. But even after her life has been changed so dramatically, she still finds herself sitting here, on these same brick steps.

She smiles as she is showered in the light from inside and hears the miniature boots walking towards her. She turns around and opens her arms to the small figure that is covered from head to toe in clothing and love. The only visible features are the long strawberry blonde hair and the vivacious gray eyes. The little girl sat on her mother’s lap and put her head on her shoulder.

Ginny chuckled at the sight of her daughter and pulled the gold and emerald scarf away from her mouth and nose. The little girl’s eyes widened and she let out a breath of air.

“Mommy! Why did you do that? Daddy said that if I take the scarf off I will get a cold and I don’t like to be sick, mommy!”

“Daddy was just being silly, love. He just wanted you to be warm. If I hold you like this are you warm?” The small girl nodded her head and smiled. She loved how her mommy held her so close. It made her feel like she would never get hurt or get sick ever again.

“Aren’t your hands cold, mommy?” Cassie questioned, as she looked down and saw the snowflakes melting on her mother’s white hands.

“Want to go get me warm, baby doll?” The little girl jumped up and smiled proudly at her mother. It was not every day that Cassie got to offer her mother with such help. “Come with me.”

Ginny took her daughter’s mittened hand in her own and walked to the middle of the yard. Ginny took the scarf from her daughter’s neck and smiled as the grey eyes glittered in the starlight.

“Ready, sweetie?” The girl nodded and Ginny had to hid a giggle. Cassie stood there, looking as if some magical thing was going to occur. The gray eyes that looked into the cinnamon ones were full of mystery and wonder, while the cinnamon ones only held love and no regret.

Her daughter was still so innocent and Ginny longed to keep her that way. She knew that one-day Cassie’s Harry Potter would come along and steal her heart. All Ginny could so was pray that her daughter also had a Draco Malfoy in the future to pick up the pieces.

The mother and daughter stood there looking as if nothing in the world could touch them, like they were standing in a bubble. Ginny started to move in a ring and her daughter followed. Soon, the pace became to quick of the short-legged girl to keep up with and her mother scooped her into her arms and continued to spin. Not long after, Ginny grew dizzy and fell on her back.

“Mom?”

“Yea, baby?”

“Why is daddy standing on the steps smiling at us?”

“Because daddy is a silly man and we need to throw snowballs at him.” This idea made the little girl’s eyes widen in surprise and darken with mischief. Cassie was sly like Draco and could act coy like Ginny, which was a combination that could turn out to be bad news.

Draco knew it was coming and he did not even want to stop it. He could not dare to dash his daughter’s dreams by moving and not getting hit with the powdery snow she was about to throw at him. What he did not know is that his daughter had and arm and some aim in her and that she would hit him right in the face.

“Look, mommy, I got him!” She giggled and ran away, to behind the shed, to hide from her father who would surely retaliate and get her with some snow.

“Aw, poor baby looks like daddy has been outsmarted by his baby girl.”

“Kiss it make it better?”

“Of course,” she whispered against his lips. She kissed him softly and then put the pile of snow she hid behind her back on top his head. She pulled away smiled and ran.

It was a wild pursuit in which Ginny was not planning to lose. She spun and jumped and finally he caught her and both fell to the snow covered ground.

Cassie peaked from behind the shed and stuck her tongue out a little. Her mommy and daddy ALWAYS kissed when they thought she wasn’t looking. It was very icky, she thought. Quietly as she could, the little girl of age five, skipped back into the house, to sit on Uncle Ron’s lap and hear another funny story about daddy. Maybe if she was very good she could hear of how he was turned into a ferret.

And that was how it went. As time passed, life went on, life changed but the snow did not. Cassie got to old to go outside and spin in the freshly fallen flurries with her mother yet secretly she went out and did it by herself.

When the name Harry Potter was brought up in conversation, Draco would tense and Ginny would smile and say that, yes, she knew him once but not any longer. He was a footnote in the story that was Draco and Ginny and their tale of dancing in the snow and that was how he would remain.

One night, lying on the icy ground, she thought back on her life. This was a ritual she let herself go through less and less often. She realized that she needed to thank Harry Potter. She realized that without him she would have never needed to dance in the snow, to once again obtain part of her youth. She realized that Draco was her savior when she was twenty-one and that if it weren’t for him the snow would always hold memories of a better time passed.

She realized that the snow was calm. The snow meant stillness. The snow meant love. Most of all she realized that life went on, no matter what happened, but it was little things, like the snow or Draco’s I love you or Cassie’s baby hand prints forever incased in the cement, that helped you on your path to perfection, to serenity, to happiness. Ginny sat up as the snow started to fall and smiled because she realized she had all those things and the snow gave them all to her.