Ginny Weasley sat at the table in the kitchen of The Burrow with her parents. The little room, which always looked much too small when it was filled with her brothers seemed almost too big now, with just the three of them there. Her parents had asked her to come for dinner.

“Where is everyone?” she asked, helping herself to a Yorkshire pudding.

“We thought we’d be just the three of us tonight,” began Molly, a little too brightly. At her mother’s tone Ginny looked up.

“Why? What is it? What’s wrong--”

“Not wrong, Love,” her father interjected. “Just, your birthday’s coming soon…. Twenty-five years old! It’s a big milestone….”

“Dad,” Ginny said blankly. “I just had a birthday three weeks ago. Why the hurry to get me to my next one?”

Arthur floundered. “We thought it was time, that is, hadn‘t you better…?” He looked hopelessly at his wife.

Molly took a deep breath. There was no sense tiptoeing around the subject. It wasn’t as if they hadn’t talked about it plenty of times over the years, and Ginny was a big girl now. A responsible girl. An adult.

“The truth is, we’re wondering what you intend to do about Draco Malfoy.” She watched her daughter's face change, but steeled herself to remain impassive. In a family as large as hers she had learned she didn’t have the luxury of catering to one child's whims when there was another child who had real needs. A family looked out for one another; one sacrificed, when necessary, for the good of the whole unit. And right now there was more than one Weasley child's future at stake. She forged ahead. “You’re twenty-five next August, Ginny, and the Curse Standard says you have to marry him by the time you turn twenty-five. Isn’t it time to start thinking about it? Eleven months is more than enough time to plan a nice wedding.”

Ginny could feel the blood rush to her head, filling her ears with a dizzying roar, blackening the edges of her vision. Carefully, she put down her fork and took a couple of deep breaths. She heard herself say, “It’s not as though I don’t think about it every single day of my life, Mum.” She stared at a nick in the scrubbed table top, trying to focus while her vision cleared.

“Perhaps I should say it’s time to do something about it then,” her mother amended tartly.

Ginny reached over and began picking at the nick with her thumbnail, and said nothing.

“Ginny, you know we would never ask you to do something like this just for us--” began Arthur. “It’s just that, well, Bill…” He spread his hands helplessly.

They had told Ginny about the Curse when she was fourteen, when she’d come home from Hogwarts after her third year still carrying a rather obvious torch for Harry Potter. They’d thought it best she should be fully aware of how things stood before she’d started having boyfriends of her own.

She, as their firstborn daughter, was bound by a blood Curse to marry Draco, the firstborn son of Lucius Malfoy. And she would have to marry him by her twenty-fifth birthday or their firstborn child Bill would pay with his life.

She had handled the news remarkably well. But then, Bill was her favourite brother, and with the hero-worship of fourteen years old she had almost welcomed the chance to do something so big for him. And at that age, Arthur remembered, youth was forever. Twenty-five was something that pertained to old people. No girl, at the age of fourteen, seriously believed she would one day be twenty-five. That she would one day be married. It was easy to agree to something you essentially didn’t think would ever happen.

But all through her years at school and afterward, during the war, Ginny had been as good as her word. When her parents had broached the subject from time to time she had never wavered. At school, Draco Malfoy had been a miserable, mean-spirited creature; she had despised him thoroughly, and with good reason. His father was a known Death Eater who went down with Voldemort in the final battle. Weasleys and Malfoys had hated each other for centuries. In spite of it all, she had been staunch. She understood as well as her mother did what it meant to be part of a family. Before she turned twenty-five, she would marry him. She would marry him, as prescribed, in a Ceremony of Rings at the Sacred Stone Ring. She would do what it took to stay married to him for a year and a day and then, when the Curse was broken and Bill’s life was secured, she would end the marriage and get on with the rest of her life. She loathed the thought of it and dreaded the day it would happen, but with all Ginny's failings, she had never lacked for courage. She would do it.

She looked up at her father. “I know Dad. I know I have to face it. I keep thinking, just a little longer…I’ll do something about it next month…” She gave a shaky laugh. “Where’s a Time Turner when you need one?”

“It’s only for a year,” her mother said, trying to sound bracing but failing miserably.

“A year and a day,” Ginny corrected her with an ironic little smile. “But you’re right. I can do anything for a year, can’t I? It’s not the end of the world.” Privately, she wondered if that were true. A year married to that Son-of-a-Death-Eater Draco Malfoy might well be the end of the world for her. She shuddered.

“You’re still not to tell Bill,” she added. “Or any of the boys for that matter. They’d only get all heroic and come swooping down on some sort of Rescue Mission, trying to pull me out of it. The Curse Standard says if we’re not married a year and a day, it invalidates the whole marriage. Where would that leave Bill?”

They sat in silence for several minutes, pushing their food around on their plates. At last, Molly spoke in a choked voice. “Ginny, you can’t know how proud that makes us; you sacrificing to save your brother’s life….”

Ginny grimaced. "Please don't, Mum."

Arthur blew his nose. “If there’s anything we can do to make this easier for you…”

She looked up at him and with a sudden flash of anger said, “Dad, why was he never convicted as a Death Eater after the war?”

Her father looked up from his handkerchief in surprise, and gave her a long, appraising stare. When he answered her he spoke slowly, choosing his words. “I think, rather than ask why, the most important thing to remember is that he wasn’t convicted. In fact--”

“That doesn’t mean he wasn’t one!” Ginny interrupted him savagely. “He was a Slytherin! He used to brag at school that he would take the Dark Mark before he came of age. Lucius Malfoy was convicted and rotted away in Azkaban! Of course Draco was a Death Eater! With a father like that, how could he not be?”

“Ginny,” Arthur said quietly, “I think it's a mistake to judge a man by what his father was.”

She ignored him. “He just wants to watch his step around me. Let me find one hint—one!—of the Dark Arts being practiced in his house and I swear I’ll have him thrown in Azkaban so fast it’ll make his head spin.” She stabbed fiercely at a potato.

Arthur put his hand on hers. “I’m confident you won’t have to do that,” he said.

Ginny stood up. “Well I’m not confident of it. Not one bit. But I’ll be able to give you the full report, won’t I? Just as soon as the marriage is over. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a headache. I’m going home.”

Her parents exchanged anxious looks.

“Oh, quit worrying,” she snapped. “I’ll owl him before I go to bed.”