Draco awoke the next morning, not from his usual fog of nightmares, but with something swelling inside him. He awoke with his mind clear and perfectly focused, not able to recall the dreams that had plagued him as he slept, only that his mind had somehow reached a conclusion in its deep slumber.

He caught a glimpse of the pale green tint running along the horizon as he rushed past the window and pushed open his bedroom door. His footfalls were soft but quick against the floor as he rushed along the corridor, the end in sight. His fingers itched at the very sight of her dulled brass doorknob, and he reached out a hand to turn it.

He was not at all surprised to see her awake, propped up against her pillows, staring out her window with a bizarre serenity. She turned her head slowly, as if coming to meet him from many miles away. A wan smile tugged at her lips at the sight of him standing in the doorway.

Draco felt his mind flicker but did not make a move to stop her as she briefly swept through his thoughts. She nodded, looking down toward her hands, folded gracefully atop the sheets.

“You know, then,” she said softly. There was the slightest bit of color in her cheeks now, and a faint fire in her eyes that Draco had thought long gone.

He nodded, striding across the room but hesitating at the edge of her bed. She smiled sincerely this time, patting the bed beside her as if he were still four years old, running into her bedroom after his nightmares.

He smiled sheepishly and climbed onto the bed beside her, reaching for her hand. “You didn’t tell them you knew what was wrong.”

Narcissa shook her head. “No. No, I didn’t. I couldn’t break your heart that way, darling. There was nothing to be done.”

“But there is!” Draco exclaimed. “We can perform that spell. You can live-”

“-For another couple years, yes I know. Is that what you want?” she asked, looking at him with pity in her eyes. “To see me die slowly before your eyes? I couldn’t watch you suffer like that.”

Draco sat silently at her side, hearing the clear truth in her words and squeezing her hand tighter. His mind spun, trying to find a way around it, a hole in her words. But there was nothing to find.

“I am so, so proud of you,” she whispered, tears squeezing out of her eyes. “You made the right choice. You became your own man. And I couldn’t have asked for anything more in a son.”

A strangled sob escaped his throat, and she pulled him closer. Her words echoed in his mind, her voice mingling with Ginny’s as he cried. I’m proud of you.

She tilted his chin upward and forced him to meet her gaze. The fire in her eyes that he had discovered only moments before was slowly flickering out. She sucked in an audible breath, smiling widely through tears.

“Your eyes…” she breathed. “Such a shade of blue…” And he squeezed them shut, not able to stop the scene from playing in his mind.

“I used to think that you were playing a game with me. But your eyes, they looked…I don’t know, depressed for a long time. And then they started turning blue. And I think it’s because of me.”

“You do?”

“Yes.”

His mother’s fingers slackened in his grasp. His eyes shot open again, searching hers, desperate to hold on. She smiled at him again.

“Be happy, Draco. For me. Can you promise me that?” she whispered, straining to keep her eyes open.

He nodded vigorously, swallowing tears. “Yes, Mother. I promise.” I promise to try, at least.

“Good,” she sighed, letting her head fall back against the pillows. Draco’s tears splattered against her hand as he held it tighter.

“Don’t,” he choked out, but he knew she was ready. She had said everything she needed to say.

She closed her eyes dreamily, her lips parting slightly. He leaned in instinctively to hear her. “Go to her,” she murmured. And her hand fell limp in his own.

Each step down the stairs was louder and more deliberate than the last, shaking ancient dust from the ceilings and chandeliers of Number 12 Grimmauld Place. His heartbeat was thudding along in time with his footsteps, preparing him for what he was about to attempt. He ran his fingers along the silky tie curled up in his pocket.

Because I have to, he reminded himself firmly. Because she wanted this.

Draco felt some of his determination shrink away as he stepped into the kitchen to see the Christmas wreath hanging above the window. In his resolve, he had forgotten that it was Christmas morning.

Potter looked up from the parchment in front of him on the table, his expression changing at the sight of Draco’s face. He stood up slowly, his eyes searching Draco’s as he took a step forward.

As if getting ready to plunge into water, Draco took a deep breath. “I want to go to the Burrow. I have to go see Ginny.”

Potter’s fierce green eyes burned into his own. There was a moment, as Draco forced himself to hold Potter’s steady gaze, that he thought Potter was going to hex him, or demand an explanation, or tell him that there was no way in hell was he going to let him go to the Burrow. But the moment passed, and his hard eyes softening, Potter turned around and grabbed a mug off the counter.

“Portus,” he whispered, and the mug glowed blue and trembled slightly in his hands. Potter swallowed and held out the Portkey for him to take.

Draco inhaled shakily and took the mug. He felt as though relief should be coursing through his body, but all he could feel was fear.

“What about your mother?” Potter blurted, shoving a hand through his untidy hair. “Are you coming back for her?”

Counting down the seconds silently, Draco shook his head. “She would have wanted this.”

As he was pulled out of Grimmauld Place and into the whirl of time, Draco caught the look on Potter’s face and could tell that he knew exactly what Draco had meant.

Ginny stayed curled up beside the frosted window as the rest of her family opened presents, staring at the delicately iced garden and the few stray birds flying aimlessly through the frigid air. She breathed in deeply, hugging her knees closer to her chest and pressing her forehead to the cold, damp glass.

Being at home had never felt so wrong to Ginny before. But then, everything’s wrong. All wrong. I messed everything up.

There were so many things she could have done differently, so many different ways she could have fixed things. And in the struggle to decide upon a solution, a fear of messing up again rose in Ginny, so great and terrible that it paralyzed her from deciding anything at all.

“Ginny, darling, there’s another one for you here,” Molly called out over the twins’ shouting. When her daughter didn’t move from her spot by the window, Molly sighed and scooped up the small box from her and Arthur and made her way across the wrapping-strewn floor.

Ginny squeezed her eyes shut, bracing herself for another strained conversation with her mother. She just…couldn’t bring herself to make an effort to keep her mum from worrying. She couldn’t find the energy to care.

“Ginny?” She turned her head slowly from the window, her eyes a dull and lifeless brown as she reached out her hand and took the gift.

“Thanks, Mum,” Ginny replied quietly, looking down at the box in her hands as if wondering how it had got there.

Ginny avoided her mother’s penetrating look and gazed back out upon the frozen world. It had seemed so beautiful to her once. But now all she saw was ice, cold and white against the once alive landscape. The thought of it made her heart ache.

There was a soft rustling of paper and Ginny looked past her mother to see a sheet of folded parchment fall from the air and flutter gracefully to the floor. Before it settled among the wrapping paper, Ginny caught a glimpse of the untidy scrawling. She unfolded her legs and walked across the room, stooping to pick it up, her mind blank even to her. She could feel the eyes of her entire family on her as she unfolded the sheet of parchment.

Ginny felt her eyes widen and refocus as she took in the single line of the letter, her heart pounding in her chest. A familiar swell of emotions was rising inside her, one that had last been caused by a pair of emerald eyes. The searing panic ripped her inside, smothered only by fear and a dull sort of ache she couldn’t place. She gulped for air as she read it again, her mind once more refusing to function.

She shrieked loudly, dropping the paper as if it had burned her, before turning to run up the stairs. Her family stared after her with their mouths open.

Ron rose from his seat and snatched the paper off the floor, reading it with a furrowed brow.

“What’s it say?” demanded Molly.

Ron turned the sheet over, looking more baffled than ever. “He’s on his way,” he read, handing the letter to George. “Signed from Harry.”

It might have just been the anxiety and impatience churning in his stomach that made the journey through the whirl of space much longer than usual, but Draco began to wonder if Potter had deliberately sent him somewhere else.

The dizzying seconds lengthened, and then suddenly Draco fell through the air and landed with a thud upon a hard, wooden floor, staring up at a flashing poster of the Weird Sisters.

He sat up, rubbing his head, taking in the small, bright room that he had fallen into. It looked completely untouched, as if the person living in it wanted to leave as little as possible behind.

He was rising from the floor, still gazing about the room, when the door behind him flew open and banged against the wall. He whirled to see her standing there, dressed in red pajama bottoms and a bright orange, slightly-worn Chudley Cannons shirt. He let his eyes roam over her flaming hair, piled haphazardly atop her head, and her brown eyes, darker than he had ever seen them, but shining intensely as she stood in the doorway staring at him. His mind failed him, wiped blissfully blank and content simply to drink her in.

She stepped into the room and shut the door behind her, waving her wand at the knob so it glowed, and turned to face him again with her arms folded across her chest. She knew. Potter warned her somehow. And suddenly it seemed much more plausible that Draco’s journey really had taken longer than it should have.

She sucked in her bottom lip, rolling it between her teeth as she had at the top of the Astronomy Tower, driving him mad. It seemed so long ago.

“Ginny,” he whispered, afraid the girl before him was as fleeting as his memories. He slipped his fingers into his pocket and ran them over the scarlet and gold strip of fabric.

Tears filled her eyes, as if she too hadn’t fully comprehended the reality of his presence. She made no move to stop them as they trickled down her cheeks.

“I-” His words failed him. There was nothing to say, nothing he could do.

His failing mind flashed suddenly and he couldn’t stop the scene from coming back to him, washing over the real Ginny standing before him.

“What are we doing?”

“If you have to ask, then we must be doing it wrong.”

She laughed lightly, "No, I mean, what is this?”

“I don’t know.”

“What do you want from me?”

“I know what this is,” he whispered. “I know what I want from you.”

Recognition flared in her eyes.

“I can’t…I can’t go anywhere or do anything without thinking about you. You, this, whatever it is we had, whatever we’re doing, it’s perfect.”

Her tears were falling in earnest now, her arms folded tightly against her chest and her body shrinking back against the door.

“If I – if you hadn’t given me a chance, or put up with my shit, or–” he swallowed, “loved me–”

A sob broke free from her lips, but his voice had died in his throat at the word anyway. His fists were balled up against his thighs, clutching his trousers to keep from running towards her.

“I wouldn’t have – couldn’t have – gone with Potter, or helped the Order, or seen my mother. I would have only been loyal to myself, just caring about me, a selfish bastard, just like my father…” He broke off bitterly, staring down at the floor.

Her breathing was ragged, punctured with sobs, but she managed to choke out, “And now?”

His head snapped up, hope swelling in his chest faster than he could smother it. “And now?” he whispered. “Now I only haul my arse out of bed for one person. But I’m afraid I might have lost her.”

Her laugh was wracked with tears, but it sounded perfect ringing in his ears. “I love you, Ginny.”

The world outside the Burrow, dark and dangerous and frozen over, was ready and waiting for them. But as she flung herself from the door and leapt three feet for him to catch her, Draco pulled her close against his lips and found that he didn’t care. He held her as close to him as physically possible, tangling one hand in that fire and brushing her tears away with the other. It was cold out there, but he had her, his flaming beauty, to keep everything warm. And he was never letting go.

Author notes: For old times sake, please leave a review. :)