She sits on the chaise longue, her eyes drooping closed, her book leaning precariously, almost dropping. She listens to him play piano and she feels the sun on her skin.

He’s pretending that he’s playing for himself, that he’s lost in the music that he’s making, but she knows it’s for her; all for her. The knowledge and the music send her drifting to the edge of sleep. But now is not the time for sleeping, now is the time to pretend to read and look like a dignified lady. Snoring should not be the memory.

She forces her eyes open and shifts where she sits, catching his eye in the mirror. He pretends to be concentrating and plays on. She recognises the music, vaguely; it almost brings back a sense of smell, caught in a moment and barely noticed, then glued to the memory. The music is a winter’s night in this very room. It’s him playing the piano and his face combined with the grace of his fingers as they moved along the keys. It’s her dress, the fire of her wit and the strength of her laugh. It’s the music and the smell of Ginny Weasley making love to Draco Malfoy for the first time, on the floor by the fire – and it’s breaking her heart.

Because now it’s a warm summer’s day and tomorrow they will each marry someone else.

‘You played this before. Only once before,’ Ginny muses. Draco nods – she thinks, it might just be the way his head moves as he plays. She decides to join him, so leaves her book and sits next to him at the piano. They’re almost touching, but not quite. He’s playing by memory, something she’s only seen him do a few times.


Once or twice, they’ve decided to run away together, to not marry the people they’re supposed to marry. Ginny will be a waitress and Draco will play the piano. They’ll live on a farm and learn to be self-sufficient. If only the world were that simple. God, those words that they whisper over again in bed, intertwined, all white sheets and pale skin: if only. The beds have been made, the lines have been drawn and still they love their betrotheds enough not to leave them. Their selfish natures guide them to this final day and then no more.

‘I wish…’ Ginny begins but stops when she sees the look in Draco’s eyes. He really is lost in the music now, playing from memory, this melody that seems to mean so much. Ginny knows, by this look in his eyes, that what she feels for him is not true love (it’s not, it can’t be) because if it were she would know what he meant in that look and in this song. She’d have questioned before this moment why he played it for her that night and never since.

She remembers so vividly the bright lights of the ballroom, dancing with all manner of people and Harry being sweet and uncertain towards her; so keen to please that he’d even go to Malfoy Manor. She remembers giggling with Hermione in the bathroom that night, she remembers doing a tequila shot at the bar with Ron. She remembers the way her heart beat so heavily in her chest as she followed Draco up to the drawing room, knowing that if she was not careful their fledgling friendship, their ‘meaningless’ flirtations would become much more. She remembers the way his hair fell forward just slightly as he bent to light the fire, then chatting away as though her life depended on it, the two of them smoking and discussing the art. She remembers the fatal blow, the pivot on which their relationship moved.

‘Do you play?’ she had asked, gesturing at the piano with her cigarette.

‘Occasionally,’ Draco replied.

‘Then play something for me.’

She remembers the last beautiful notes of the music and then her hand on his. His hand on her hair. His lips so soft on her neck.

‘Memories will be enough,’ she says now, despite herself. ‘Won’t they? I mean, we’re not just telling ourselves this has to end here, then making it worse – making ourselves worse – by carrying on regardless afterwards. I just keep thinking, hoping, really, if I’m honest, that we’ve both got cold feet. That this is all just cold feet.’

He doesn’t answer for a moment, just keeps playing. Then: ‘Cold feet is a one night stand on your hen night, Ginny, it’s not … this.’

She sighs. In the harsh light of the July sun, they both seem paler than ever. Like ghosts. In the future he will be a ghost, she supposes; they’ll see one another at some Ministry function or other and a glance full of memories will pass between them, a shy smile, then small talk. Ginny knows in this moment, that if that were to happen to the person sitting on Malfoy’s piano stool, these future moments would end in them fucking in the bathroom or something equally depraved. But the married Ginny is going to be different, she’s going to be better. She’s going to keep all those qualities so many praise her for and lose the ones they don’t know about. Is she marrying a man who really knows her? Does Harry know she’s been sleeping with his schoolboy enemy for the last seven months? If he does, he’s never hinted. He never would; she is everything he’s ever wanted if only in that she secures him a family forever and for real. He’s everything she ever wanted in that he’ll protect her, he’s good for her and her brothers like him.

But she’s never connected with anyone like she’s connected with Draco. Never felt the need to be close to someone, just to talk to them, like she does with him. She’s never felt it on so many levels to the extent that even if they disagree they take pure joy in their own interaction, the beats of the conversation and the raw passion it leads to. She’s never been with someone before who can make her come at the exact same moment that they do. She convinces herself that all of this seems so potent because it’s all just so forbidden; reverse Harry and Draco’s positions and the situation would remain the same.

‘How do you see things unfolding from here, then?’ Ginny asks, since Draco seems to think this isn’t just something they can brush away as insignificant.

‘Tonight? Or indefinitely?’

Ginny shrugs. Draco doesn’t venture a further response, but he comes to the end of the piece. The last note lingers on the air for a few moments, then slowly dies. The silence feels odd, all of a sudden (but then, growing up with six brothers she has never been all that accustomed to it). Looking away from Draco, Ginny can see the dust dancing in streaks of light from the ornate windows – so reminiscent of the embers from the fire and the ash from their cigarettes on that first night.

‘Tonight,’ says Draco at last, ‘I intend for us to try our best to forget this is the last night.’

‘I don’t think I can do that. I can’t just …’

‘I know.’ Draco pushes her hair off her face, so tenderly, so like that night. ‘That’s what I …’ She knows what he was going to say. He was going to say things she’s so often thought but that they’re never allowed to speak. Instead he leans in and kisses her ever so softly, though far too briefly. ‘Tomorrow we’ll get married. You do what you want in your marriage but I’m going to try and make mine work. My parents made it work, they loved each other and they lived tolerable lives; they did their duties. I know they cheated sometimes … I don’t want to do that.’

‘You’ve already done it,’ says Ginny, wondering whether to regret it even as the words fall from her lips. ‘We both have.’

‘But we’ve got time to make up for it. If we want to.’

‘And in a year, two years? What if we feel exactly the same then as we do now? Trapped in relationships made by young love and social obligation?’

He smiles. ‘Then I daresay you’ll have the balls to come to me before I do anything about it.’

‘I feel so strange, sitting here. Even making all the wedding preparations it never really seemed real. Things never do until they’re tomorrow, I suppose.’

Draco begins playing again, something Ginny doesn’t recognise at all, but still underscores this sad, empty feeling that’s building in her chest with each passing minute. She leans towards him and rests her head on his shoulder, closing her eyes momentarily to listen again. He’s playing by memory again, she notices.

‘I’ve not heard this one before, have I?’

‘No,’ Draco replies softly, ‘no one has.’ She feels like she should say something, ask something, but she’s just so happy, sitting here silently with the music seeming to speak the words that she can’t. ‘I’d say I wrote it for you,’ says Draco after a while. ‘Or that I wrote it about you. But I didn’t; I just wrote about the way you make me feel.’

She can feel him breathing as she sits there and listens not to the way that she makes Draco feel, but the way that he makes her feel, and she can’t quite believe that she’s letting this go.

She wants to make love to him by the fire, but it’s too warm, too light, for that. There’s no way to recapture moments of their past, just as there’s no way to do this again in the future. Instead, she waits for Draco to finish, then takes him by the hand and leads him down the stairs through his home. As she glances at him, she can tell he knows what she intends, but not where they’re going.

She stops in the garden, in a secluded area that always resembled a very pretty maze in her eyes, but isn’t one. It is perfectly manicured and perfectly lit and this is where she will see him, all of him for the last time. She stands on her tiptoes and kisses him slowly, her eyes fluttering closed and batting away reminders of what this kiss (and each kiss from here) signifies.

As she makes love to Draco on the previously perfect grass under the pure blue July sky, Ginny is certain this isn’t the last time. Deep down, she knows that this moment marks the beginning.