You never did get it, did you, Ginny?
You always believed in the goodness and light of everything. You always thought that everything would turn out just peachy. You were so sure that I was a good guy, so positive that deep down inside me there was a tenderness that was longing to get out.
Just because you were right once doesn’t mean that it was true for everyone.
I remember when I told you about Crabbe and Goyle and their marks. You were so shocked that a sixth year, not even finished school, would be a member of the Death Eaters. You never really understood that Voldemort wasn’t Dumbledore, that the Death Eaters didn’t mind if they used children, as long as it furthered their goals.
In a way, I’m like them. I didn’t care about anything, except having you and keeping you safe.
Do you remember how we started? I ran into you in the corridor, and you spoke to me with language that would turn my mother’s hair blue. I remember walking away from you without saying anything, simply impressed that you would be able to stand up to me like that. You were all anger and passion, your chest heaving, eyes flashing, lips rosy and pink and ever so kissable. That was the first time I ever noticed you as a person. I was in sixth year, then.
You probably thought that we started at the lake, but I had been planning on winning you over for a long time by then. The day you swore at me was the day I fell in love with you. I planned for months afterwards. At first I just dreamt and fantasised about the different ways I would tell you I loved you, about the ways I would make you love me. Then I started plotting. I thought about ways of abducting you and forcing you to admit you wanted me.
You drove me absolutely insane, did you know that? Those months were the most confused I’d ever been.
I was a Malfoy, and, not only did I not hate Mudbloods, I was in love with a Weasley, of all people! I was disgracing the name Malfoy. It only made it worse that you never seemed to return the attraction.
But then came the lake. Dumbledore had organised a batch of your brothers’ fireworks for the Christmas Eve. You stood outside, staring up at them with all the wonder of an innocent getting her first taste of sin. You were irresistible. I walked up next to you, then sat down underneath the beech tree. You seemed to understand what I wanted, because you followed me. I think it was then that all my fantasies started coming true.
We were so different but at the same time, so alike.
And we were so in love.
You probably hate me for what I did. If you had died on me, I doubt I’d have been able to forgive you. But you didn’t. I left you. It was the hardest thing that I’d ever done. It was the most honourable thing that I’d ever done.
You always believed I had honour, though, so you wouldn’t have understood. Never once did I have honour before you. Even when I loved you, my honour was not your kind. I was loyal to only one person, and my honour equated with whatever kept them safe.
I honoured you.
I think perhaps that should mean something more to you than my love.
I loved you enough to die to keep you and our baby safe. The only honourable thing I did was to leave your life that night. I shouldn’t even have entered it, being strictly truthful. What honour was there in seducing an innocent (or not so innocent, were you, Ginny?) teenage girl? I couldn’t care about honour, though. I just wanted you, at any cost.
I wasn’t prepared to pay it, though. Not when I fully understood what that cost was.
It was you.
You. My love, my life, my honour. My precious baby girl who loved me more than anyone else in my life had. The price of loving you was losing you. And I couldn’t let that vitality, that energy and hope you sent out die.
Yes, I read your diary. I longed for you, and you always left it underneath your pillow. I asked you about it once. Do you remember?
What’s in it?
Words, mainly. Sometimes drawings, sometimes sketches or diagrams.
But what’s in it?
Words, mainly. My hopes, my dreams. My fantasies and my theories.
I remember grinning at that. Your theories were always so bizarre. You always believed in everything. And you were a great believer in ‘intuition’, when common logic was sufficient. It was a point of ours, to argue over which was better. Neither of us ever won, though, did we?
Your brothers always tried to poison you against me, didn’t they? They told you stories about Pansy and Millicent and every other Slytherin. But you never believed them.
I always wondered at that. You were so loyal. Such loyalty had never been so freely given before in my life.
In return, I gave you as much love as a human could give, hoping all the time that love alone would be enough to suspend us in our cocoon of ‘Happily Ever After’ moments.
Three months before I left you, some information came to me. Before my eyes, I could see our entire future narrowing to a pinpoint in time. My imagination supplied the gruesome details to your end. I fought it for three months, unconsciously trying to fulfil all your dreams and hopes before I sacrificed the one thing I loved. My life with you.
And then I saw your diary.
Pregnant, the words screamed. You were pregnant with my child. I was going to be a father.
And there you were, a sixteen year old girl; pregnant. I could hear the whispers in my brain. Just like her mother. Another Weasley. They start young, don’t they? Polite society would forgive you in time, I knew, as long as you were married. But you didn’t belong to polite society. You belonged to the world of the Weasleys, and the decent people. What would they say? Child of a Malfoy. Bad to the bone, of course. Death Eater’s child.
I knew that wherever you went in life, people would talk. And you’d always cared so much about what people thought of you, after that Tom Riddle incident.
How could I do that to you? To our child?
A week later I left your bed in the middle of the night. I visited Dumbledore, left him all I thought you would need. I spoke to him about you, told him of how you weren’t just my love, you were my honour.
In return, he told me the one thing I never expected to hear. In coming to him, I had been given not only a choice, but your honour.
There were two paths of my involvement, he said. It was my decision. I could choose the first, or the second. I asked about the first.
You stay here, safe. I can perform the Fidelius Charm, and you and Ginny will be safe for the duration of the war.
And the second path?
You confront Voldemort. You won’t be able to beat him, but you will make a severe dent in the Death Eater forces.
Logic told me that I should take the first option. Your beloved intuition told me that if I took the second, many lives would be saved. And alone the way, you would get your honour, and our baby would grow up the son of a hero, not the son of a coward.
So I left you with a heavy heart, knowing I wouldn’t return.
Knowing, too, that our child – a girl, I hoped, with my eyes and your smile – would be safe and would grow up with the love of all your family.
And your family would live. They were everything to you, and I couldn’t bear to be the cause of their death, knowing I could have stopped it. And you would be kept safe. And our baby.
Our baby. Even now, the thought sends a course of pleasure through me. Our baby.
You always believed in fairytales, didn’t you Ginny? Always believed in honour, and in love and tenderness and gentleness. You always believed in the happily-ever-after ending.
Well, Ginny, I believed in logic. And in you. I couldn’t bear to lose you; my honour.
So I left on a suicide mission, and thought of your life and the life of our baby every time I was wounded. Everything would be all right, I knew. Our child would grow up and you would watch. And every time you saw her, you would think of me and smile.
So I’m sorry, Ginny. You may not have gotten your fairytale ending, with your white wedding and your Happily Ever After, but at least they all lived.
At least you all lived.
You always believed in the goodness and light of everything. You always thought that everything would turn out just peachy. You were so sure that I was a good guy, so positive that deep down inside me there was a tenderness that was longing to get out.
Just because you were right once doesn’t mean that it was true for everyone.
I remember when I told you about Crabbe and Goyle and their marks. You were so shocked that a sixth year, not even finished school, would be a member of the Death Eaters. You never really understood that Voldemort wasn’t Dumbledore, that the Death Eaters didn’t mind if they used children, as long as it furthered their goals.
In a way, I’m like them. I didn’t care about anything, except having you and keeping you safe.
Do you remember how we started? I ran into you in the corridor, and you spoke to me with language that would turn my mother’s hair blue. I remember walking away from you without saying anything, simply impressed that you would be able to stand up to me like that. You were all anger and passion, your chest heaving, eyes flashing, lips rosy and pink and ever so kissable. That was the first time I ever noticed you as a person. I was in sixth year, then.
You probably thought that we started at the lake, but I had been planning on winning you over for a long time by then. The day you swore at me was the day I fell in love with you. I planned for months afterwards. At first I just dreamt and fantasised about the different ways I would tell you I loved you, about the ways I would make you love me. Then I started plotting. I thought about ways of abducting you and forcing you to admit you wanted me.
You drove me absolutely insane, did you know that? Those months were the most confused I’d ever been.
I was a Malfoy, and, not only did I not hate Mudbloods, I was in love with a Weasley, of all people! I was disgracing the name Malfoy. It only made it worse that you never seemed to return the attraction.
But then came the lake. Dumbledore had organised a batch of your brothers’ fireworks for the Christmas Eve. You stood outside, staring up at them with all the wonder of an innocent getting her first taste of sin. You were irresistible. I walked up next to you, then sat down underneath the beech tree. You seemed to understand what I wanted, because you followed me. I think it was then that all my fantasies started coming true.
We were so different but at the same time, so alike.
And we were so in love.
You probably hate me for what I did. If you had died on me, I doubt I’d have been able to forgive you. But you didn’t. I left you. It was the hardest thing that I’d ever done. It was the most honourable thing that I’d ever done.
You always believed I had honour, though, so you wouldn’t have understood. Never once did I have honour before you. Even when I loved you, my honour was not your kind. I was loyal to only one person, and my honour equated with whatever kept them safe.
I honoured you.
I think perhaps that should mean something more to you than my love.
I loved you enough to die to keep you and our baby safe. The only honourable thing I did was to leave your life that night. I shouldn’t even have entered it, being strictly truthful. What honour was there in seducing an innocent (or not so innocent, were you, Ginny?) teenage girl? I couldn’t care about honour, though. I just wanted you, at any cost.
I wasn’t prepared to pay it, though. Not when I fully understood what that cost was.
It was you.
You. My love, my life, my honour. My precious baby girl who loved me more than anyone else in my life had. The price of loving you was losing you. And I couldn’t let that vitality, that energy and hope you sent out die.
Yes, I read your diary. I longed for you, and you always left it underneath your pillow. I asked you about it once. Do you remember?
What’s in it?
Words, mainly. Sometimes drawings, sometimes sketches or diagrams.
But what’s in it?
Words, mainly. My hopes, my dreams. My fantasies and my theories.
I remember grinning at that. Your theories were always so bizarre. You always believed in everything. And you were a great believer in ‘intuition’, when common logic was sufficient. It was a point of ours, to argue over which was better. Neither of us ever won, though, did we?
Your brothers always tried to poison you against me, didn’t they? They told you stories about Pansy and Millicent and every other Slytherin. But you never believed them.
I always wondered at that. You were so loyal. Such loyalty had never been so freely given before in my life.
In return, I gave you as much love as a human could give, hoping all the time that love alone would be enough to suspend us in our cocoon of ‘Happily Ever After’ moments.
Three months before I left you, some information came to me. Before my eyes, I could see our entire future narrowing to a pinpoint in time. My imagination supplied the gruesome details to your end. I fought it for three months, unconsciously trying to fulfil all your dreams and hopes before I sacrificed the one thing I loved. My life with you.
And then I saw your diary.
Pregnant, the words screamed. You were pregnant with my child. I was going to be a father.
And there you were, a sixteen year old girl; pregnant. I could hear the whispers in my brain. Just like her mother. Another Weasley. They start young, don’t they? Polite society would forgive you in time, I knew, as long as you were married. But you didn’t belong to polite society. You belonged to the world of the Weasleys, and the decent people. What would they say? Child of a Malfoy. Bad to the bone, of course. Death Eater’s child.
I knew that wherever you went in life, people would talk. And you’d always cared so much about what people thought of you, after that Tom Riddle incident.
How could I do that to you? To our child?
A week later I left your bed in the middle of the night. I visited Dumbledore, left him all I thought you would need. I spoke to him about you, told him of how you weren’t just my love, you were my honour.
In return, he told me the one thing I never expected to hear. In coming to him, I had been given not only a choice, but your honour.
There were two paths of my involvement, he said. It was my decision. I could choose the first, or the second. I asked about the first.
You stay here, safe. I can perform the Fidelius Charm, and you and Ginny will be safe for the duration of the war.
And the second path?
You confront Voldemort. You won’t be able to beat him, but you will make a severe dent in the Death Eater forces.
Logic told me that I should take the first option. Your beloved intuition told me that if I took the second, many lives would be saved. And alone the way, you would get your honour, and our baby would grow up the son of a hero, not the son of a coward.
So I left you with a heavy heart, knowing I wouldn’t return.
Knowing, too, that our child – a girl, I hoped, with my eyes and your smile – would be safe and would grow up with the love of all your family.
And your family would live. They were everything to you, and I couldn’t bear to be the cause of their death, knowing I could have stopped it. And you would be kept safe. And our baby.
Our baby. Even now, the thought sends a course of pleasure through me. Our baby.
You always believed in fairytales, didn’t you Ginny? Always believed in honour, and in love and tenderness and gentleness. You always believed in the happily-ever-after ending.
Well, Ginny, I believed in logic. And in you. I couldn’t bear to lose you; my honour.
So I left on a suicide mission, and thought of your life and the life of our baby every time I was wounded. Everything would be all right, I knew. Our child would grow up and you would watch. And every time you saw her, you would think of me and smile.
So I’m sorry, Ginny. You may not have gotten your fairytale ending, with your white wedding and your Happily Ever After, but at least they all lived.
At least you all lived.
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