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Chapter Four
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Living with Draco Malfoy was strange, certainly, but Ginny thought she could get used to it.
Living with Andromeda Tonks had taught him some manners, and some other things as well. Not only did Draco know how to cook and clean, he also knew how to knit. “Aunt Andy’s favorite pastime,” he had explained. “It snowed a lot in the Alps, and the other boys refused to play Quidditch in blizzards. I had nothing better to do, so I picked up some needles, and voila.”
Ginny was beginning to learn just how important a good family was. She thought that if Draco had been brought up by Andromeda from the very beginning, he would be an entirely different person. Even with the memory of being a Malfoy for thirteen years, the seven years he lived with Andromeda had managed to change him into an almost-tolerable person. He reminded Ginny of a meaner, snarkier version of Tonks.
Draco was also very childish. He acted not much older than the average teenager. While it was true that Andromeda had not been the greatest disciplinarian, Ginny suspected that it had more to do with his loss of memory. He didn’t have to wake up in the middle of the night, plagued by memories of people screaming for help, others dying, curses flying, and always being scared for your life and the lives of those you cared about. He didn’t have to deal with the ruins of the war. He didn’t have to rebuild the damaged buildings, didn’t have to search for missing family members, didn’t have to realize that so many of those you loved were no longer with you.
It almost made Ginny mad. While the rest of the world was trying to put back together their broken lives, Draco had lived a carefree life in the Alps, with the most stressful thing being that Andromeda made him clean up after himself. It certainly showed on his face. He still looked young and full of life. Everyone else looked much older than they really were, with a sort of world-weariness about them, which Draco did not have. Draco looked more youthful now than he did in his sixth year, when his hollow, gaunt face made him look like a corpse. It was as if his involvement in the war had been erased with his memories. It really was infuriating.
However, Ginny was not trying to fight her anger; she was instead trying to fight her laughter.
Presently, Draco was magically directing a duster to sweep the top of her bookshelf in the sitting room. “If my Aunt saw this…” he grumbled, and Ginny snickered to herself as she was reminded of how he had used to say ‘My Father this… My Father that…’. Now it was his Aunt.
“How,” Draco demanded exasperatedly, “do you live like this? Aunt Andy and I lived in a cottage in the mountains, with goats in the backyard. And we still managed to keep our living environment cleaner than this!” He growled in dismay as he peered at a stain on the carpet. “What is this? Did you raise a menagerie in here? Scourgify!”
It was all Ginny could do to keep herself from laughing. Her Healer had told her that among many other things, laughing was something that she should avoid if she wanted a speedy recovery. So, Ginny sat on her couch, drinking her morning coffee, doing her shoulder exercises, and desperately trying not to laugh at Draco’s antics.
“Ugh, Weasley!” he exclaimed, looking behind the bookshelf. “There’s a colony of dustbunnies back here!”
Ginny had to bite her tongue painfully to keep from laughing. Draco was just like Hermione when it came to cleanliness. The last time Hermione had come to her flat – to visit, and not to arrest her – she had been disgusted, and had spent her time cleaning, and complaining about Ginny’s collection of beggar’s velvet.
“Weasley, there is a spoon behind your bookshelf,” announced Draco, sounding highly put out. “Why is there a spoon behind your bookshelf?” Draco turned to face her, one hand on his hip, the other directing a duster, and resembling a tall, skinny, and blond version of Molly Weasley.
Ginny could take it no longer. She burst into peals of laughter that ached her shoulder, but she didn’t care.
“Laugh if you want, Weasley, but I think this is just stupid. There’s a spoon behind your bookshelf, like there was an axe under your couch. I think you just made a big deal out of nothing with that axe.”
Ginny immediately sobered. “Malfoy, that axe wasn’t mine! Why would I have an axe? So maybe it isn’t to the point where someone is trying to kill me, but it’s still not mine, and that’s creepy!”
“Well, then, I suppose that spoon isn’t yours either?”
“Sometimes I throw silverware at unwanted guests,” Ginny retorted, glaring pointedly at Draco.
“Yes,” he sighed, “dustbunnies are definitely unwanted guests. Scourgify!” A puff of dust exploded in Draco’s face, earning a wave of giggles from Ginny, and Draco swore colorfully. “When was the last time you cleaned this place, Weasley?” he thundered.
“Well, Malfoy, my Healer said no unnecessary wand-waving. But even before that, I was never a fan of even the lightest amount of duster-waving,” Ginny grinned cheekily, then strode over to her fireplace. “Practice starts in ten minutes. Care to join us? Or should I tell the coach that you were too occupied with cleaning my house?”
“Our house, Weasley,” Draco said sullenly, and Ginny couldn’t help but feel strange at those words. It almost sounded as if they were… family.
Ginny shook herself slightly. A week of living with Draco Malfoy, and it felt like he had been there forever. “You wish. As soon as you get your paycheck, I’m kicking you out of here,” she snapped, and disappeared into a rush of green flames.
She popped out of Coach Deverill’s fireplace, said her greetings, and went out to the pitch for another miserable training session spent sitting on the stands.
“Where’s your new roommate?” Oliver asked teasingly, flying over to sit next to her.
“Don’t call him that. I like to think of him as my ‘irritating piece of furniture’.”
“Ah. How convenient. I’d like a piece of furniture that does all my housework for me. But don’t you think Hermione would be against it? She might start F.L.U.: Furniture Liberation Union.”
Ginny snorted. “He doesn’t do all my housework. He complains and complains, telling me to clean, and when I don’t, he does it himself and makes things worse. Just this morning, he was cleaning the dustbunnies behind some bookshelf, and exploded dust all over my sitting room. I’ll probably wind up cleaning it when I get back home.”
“Or you could just leave him there and move in with me.”
“I don’t know, Oliver. I don’t want to inconvenience you. And besides, as soon as he gets his paycheck, I’m kicking him out.”
“Easier said than done. But you won’t inconvenience me. If it ever gets to be too much to have him around, you’re welcome at my place anytime.”
“Thanks, Oliver,” Ginny said gratefully.
Oliver soared away on his broomstick, and Ginny looked after him. Oliver was her constant. The war had changed almost everyone she knew, but Oliver had always been the Oliver she had known since she was a little girl. She had first met him when she was seven. The first year Charlie became the Gryffindor Captain, Oliver had been admitted as the Keeper, and had treated Charlie as an idol. Charlie had invited Oliver to come by during the summer and play Quidditch with the Weasleys, and after befriending the twins, became a good family friend.
Now, he was a better friend to her than anyone else could ever hope to be. Oliver was simple in a complex world, and just being with him made Ginny feel better during times when her head was about to explode. He saw everything in terms of Quidditch, and had even treated the war like a giant game of Quidditch. “Curses are like Bludgers – you avoid them. Your own hexes are the Quaffles, and the Death Eaters are the goals. You throw the Quaffle at the goal. Quite simple, really,” he had said about his battle experience.
Oliver’s skill on a broomstick had put him among the Order members to participate in the air raids against the Death Eaters, and each time, Oliver had come back unscathed and undisturbed. Ginny knew the only reason Oliver hadn’t been disturbed by the war was because he had been too far up in the sky to see all the blood and the grotesque, pained expressions of the fallen, and too far up to smell the rotten corpses. He honestly seemed to believe the war was a violent game of Quidditch, and had been as excited about the battles as he was about Quidditch games. While Ginny was mildly frustrated by his naivety regarding the war, she was extremely thankful that he wasn’t affected like the rest of the depressed, war-era generation, and even more thankful that he hadn’t gone the way of his Quidditch hero, Charlie, who had died fighting for the Order.
Charlie. Charlie had always been her favorite brother. By the time Ginny was old enough to know who Bill was, he was rarely at home, and Charlie had taken over the role of eldest brother. When the twins played a mean prank on her, it was Charlie who came to the rescue. When Percy was being a prat, it was Charlie who told him off. When she got into fights with Ron, Charlie played mediator. Charlie had always been there for her, but what she liked best about him was that he didn’t just protect her, but taught her how to fend for herself. Charlie was the one who had taught her the Bat-Bogey Hex, and for that, she was eternally grateful. Charlie had also taught her Quidditch, and she felt that without him, she would never have become a star Chaser.
But Oliver was equally responsible for her success in her Quidditch career. After Charlie left for Romania, Oliver was the one who had helped her practice and improve her skills. He used his influence to get her on the Puddlemere team without spending years as a Reserve, like most other players had to. Even after she joined the team, Oliver continued giving her private training sessions, and pushed her to be the best that she could be.
Also, Oliver had idolized Charlie for so long that he had inadvertently picked up many of Charlie’s habits and personality quirks, and made them his own. It was unnerving, and sometimes Oliver reminded her so much of Charlie that it made her sad. Ginny sometimes wondered if she was replacing Charlie with Oliver in her mind. But the differences – the Scottish accent, Oliver’s warm brown eyes in comparison to Charlie’s blue ones, his soft brown hair, and the smile that was uniquely his own – was enough to make Ginny feel distinctly un-sisterly thoughts about him. Which she crushed. Immediately. Because Oliver would not be on the very long list of the men whose hearts she had ended up stomping on.
Ginny didn’t know why, but she had never lasted very long in any of her relationships. Michael Corner and Dean Thomas had been childish flings who she had dumped without much emotion. Harry had been – well, Harry was a completely different case, but what mattered was that she had been the one who finalized that their relationship would never be rekindled. Then came the post-war boyfriends, some of whose names she couldn’t even remember. According to Ron, the most overprotective of her brothers, she had had sixteen boyfriends in the seven years following the war. Her list began with Neville Longbottom, who she had dumped for Seamus Finnigan, to Winston Tilman, who she had recently dumped because of a spat over a blueberry scone. Now that she thought about it, there were quite a few axe-murderer suspects. There were eighteen men, not including Harry, who she had carelessly dumped. Now it was possible that one – or more – of them were out to get her. Oops.
A whistle blew, and Ginny snapped out of her thoughts to realize that practice had started. The official team was playing the Reserve team as usual, and Ginny was amused to see that Rosalyn Lancaster was focused more on Draco than the game.
Draco, Ginny decided, was good. He flew with the grace and the speed of a Seeker, with the clever maneuvers of a Chaser. Ginny could see that Draco was trying to play well with the other two Chasers (never mind that Rosalyn kept looking at Draco’s bum instead of the Quaffle), but he was still a Quaffle-hog. His scoring techniques were excellent, he was very skilled and creative at stealing the Quaffle, and he received well, but passing was not his forte.
“Malfoy! You’re passing, not trying to knock the other Chasers off their broom! That’s what we have Beaters and Bludgers for!” Ginny yelled.
“And I can see that you’re an excellent passer too, Weasley, with that shoulder of yours!”
Ginny furiously began doing her shoulder exercises, and screamed, “I have more experience than you as a team player! Listen to my advice!”
“She’s right, Malfoy!” Coach Deverill agreed. “Your passing is a bit dangerous!”
Malfoy passed with great speed. No one would want to intercept a Quaffle thrown like that, but not many of his fellow Chasers would want to receive it either. When he passed with less speed, he couldn’t seem to target the Chaser he wanted to pass to, and the opposing team intercepted. Ginny suspected that he was doing that on purpose, so the others would just let him keep the Quaffle at all times.
An hour later, Ginny had yelled herself hoarse, and Draco appeared to be doing slightly better with his passes. Just as Ginny was about to criticize his lack of grace in passing (“You look like an angry toddler lobbing eggs at the wall!”), the Seeker and the Reserve Seeker, David Yeller and Lance Connor, both started to dive at an amazing speed. After an intense moment, David shot forward with an extra burst of speed, and snatched the Golden Snitch out of the air.
The whistle blew. “And the official team wins!” Coach Deverill clapped merrily and said, “Lunch break! Then we’ll meet here again for one more game!”
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Ginny was sitting outside Cape Café, a friendly seafood restaurant in Diagon Alley. The sun was shining, the bright yellow umbrella was providing just enough shade, and the linguine with clams she was eating was nothing short of exquisite. She was sitting at a table with Oliver, Katie, and Ian, and would have enjoyed herself if it wasn’t for someone behind her throwing clamshells over his shoulder and onto her plate.
“Stop it, Malfoy!” she hissed, though the effect was rather lost because of her mouthful of pasta. Another clamshell whizzed through the air and landed in her wine glass, spraying her with the burgundy liquid. “Malfoy!” she snapped, louder this time.
“Yes?” came his smooth reply.
“Stop throwing clamshells at me!”
“I am not throwing clamshells at you.”
Ginny blew out a puff of air. “Then what are you doing?”
“Trying to see how many clamshells I can get into your wineglass while not looking at it. It’s like this – the clamshells are Quaffles, and your wineglass is the goal.”
Oliver looked like he was trying to suppress a grin, and that irked Ginny even more. Though her Healer said no unnecessary wand-waving, Ginny didn’t care. She whipped out her wand with a flourish, and vanished all the clamshells in the area.
“Temper, Weasley,” came Draco’s amused drawl. “Your shoulder will never heal at this rate. If a Quidditch player can’t play Quidditch, how will you afford to live?”
Ginny realized with a sinking feeling that he was right, but refused to think of her financial problems. She managed to go without a single thought of money for the rest of lunch, and the rest of practice, until she went home and found a pile of bills that needed to be paid.
“Oh, bugger,” she said with feeling.
Quidditch players didn’t get paid anywhere near as much as they should be. After all, Quidditch brought families together, established friendships, kept Sundays quiet because everyone was at home watching matches on the Tele-wiz (*), and was a universal stress-reliever for the common folk – and none of this would be possible if it weren’t for the Quidditch players. But after the war, the Ministry had never quite recovered from its financial crisis (which Percy was busily trying to fix), and because Quidditch players got paid by the Ministry, they were in a spot of trouble as well. If Puddlemere won the European Championships, their wages would go up, but with the recent Chaser-crisis, winning was a bit too much to hope for.
Ginny flipped through her bills and scowled at the one from the landlord. If her irritating piece of furniture would pay just half of her rooming bill, she could save fifty Galleons a month.
If her irritating piece of furniture would take showers just half as long, she could save some patience. “Malfoy!” she yelled, banging on the bathroom door. “Come out!”
He did, with dripping wet hair, and wearing nothing more than a towel around his waist. Any other woman would have been rendered speechless at the sight of his glistening, thin-yet-muscled body. But Ginny, having the distorted eye of someone who had grown up believing that everything Malfoy was vile, only saw awfully pale skin covering a lanky frame – which was nothing unusual when you went swimming every summer with tan-resistant beanpoles like Ron. “Go make dinner, Malfoy. Nothing with clamshells.”
Draco watched with some annoyance as Ginny brushed past him without so much as a glance. Not that it mattered.
He threw on some clothes, went to the kitchen, and pulled out some vegetables to chop. A small part of him protested at doing House Elf work, but the larger part of him, which had come to accept the fact that the Malfoys were no longer what they used to be, caused him to grit his teeth and silently chop.
When Ginny finished with her shower, she wordlessly helped Draco cook dinner, and as they cooked together, Draco couldn’t help but wonder if this was what being married – really married – felt like. His family hadn’t lived the way most normal people did. His mother probably never knew how to make mashed potatoes, and his father probably never knew what the kitchen even looked like. The only time he saw them together was during dinner, or at formal events. The rest of the time, his father did his business, his mother met with the other rich Pureblood wives, and he was left to his studies and friends. Draco had thought that everyone – including the Weasleys and the Muggles – lived that way. The other mothers may have done their own cooking and cleaning, but he hadn’t known that families actually spent time together until he started living with the Swiss villagers and realized what a family really was.
Before he knew it, dinner was ready, and he was eating his shepherd’s pie while seated across the table from Ginny.
Draco had seen three types of women in his life: the sophisticated, elegant, and proud ones like his mother; the flirty, ditzy, and cheerful ones that he knew from Hogwarts; and the sweet, friendly, and humble ones of the Swiss village.
Ginny, who was currently chomping her food as if it had done her a great wrong, fell into a new category: mean, crazy, and slightly scary. Draco wondered what her problem was. He had cleaned up the dust explosion from earlier that morning, so it couldn’t be that. Was she still upset about the clamshell incident? But he had made her dinner, for Merlin’s sake! He hadn’t even asked her to help – she just did, all by herself, and now she was having a silent temper tantrum.
Draco glanced at Ginny with a critical eye. When out in public, Ginny was a popular, outgoing, energetic sort of person. Her bright brown eyes suggested mischief, her vivid red hair showed off her equally vivid personality, and her loud voice demanded that she be the center of attention. She was also quite fashionable, and naturally attracted the gazes of men. At home, however, Ginny was a completely different story. Her short, towel-dried hair was frizzing to the point of resembling Hermione Potter’s patented bird-nest style, and under the Muggle light globe – ball? bulb? or was it oblate spheroid? – that she used in her kitchen, her hair was a lurid shade of neon carrot. Her freckles stood out garishly on her freshly-scrubbed face, and her oversized Puddlemere United T-shirt and sweatpants did nothing for her figure, which she seemed determined to hide from him.
Overall, Draco liked the at-home Ginny much more than the center-of-attention Ginny – which made absolutely no sense. He snorted.
“I don’t know what you’re finding funny, Malfoy,” Ginny said, her voice dripping icicles, “but I’m definitely not amused.”
Of course you wouldn’t be, thought Draco, and said, “A bird would mistake your hair for its nest, Weasley, provided, of course, than it didn’t fly away in horror from the blindingly neon color.”
Draco could hear her teeth grind.
“I must ask, does it glow in the dark?”
“Fifty Galleons, plus groceries!” Ginny barked.
“Excuse me?” Draco asked, genuinely confused.
“From the moment you get your first paycheck, you will start paying me fifty Galleons a month for rooming, and pay for all the groceries, unless you cook, in which case I’ll pay for them, but your food better be good.”
“Are you saying that my food isn’t good?” Draco asked incredulously, gesturing at his shepherd’s pie, which was quite fabulous, thank you very much.
“It’s edible. That’s why it hasn’t been thrown in your face… yet.”
“And you’re also saying that I can live with you?”
“As long as you pay.”
“Why?”
“Why?” Ginny almost choked in disbelief. “You mean you thought I’d let you invade my personal space for free?”
“No, Weasley. Why, as in why are you letting me live with you?”
“Because Harry –”
“And don’t say because Potter said so, because I know you can hex him to Hell and back.”
“Because I know what it’s like to be poor,” Ginny replied quietly, after a moment. “And I know how especially awful it is to be homeless, because during the war, the Burrow burned down. It’s rebuilt now, of course, but it was still just terrible to be without a home. It’s not that I pity you, Malfoy,” she added hastily, “I just understand, that’s all.”
And Draco understood as well, and shot her a lopsided grin before he returned to his meal, thinking that maybe ‘mean’ shouldn’t be used to describe Ginny, though ‘crazy’ and ‘slightly scary’ were still fair game.
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After hours of tossing and turning, and several times of waking up with a crick in his back, Draco considered transfiguring the couch into something more comfortable, but transfiguring had never been his forte. He had been good at potions, but didn’t know how that could help him make the couch any more comfortable.
Draco Malfoy, he thought to himself. How have you gone from being Slytherin Prince to being Ginny Weasley’s House Elf? Life was unfair. At least the House Elves got their own quarters. He got a couch, which was very hard, very lumpy, and very Gryffindor red. Draco sat up and smirked. With a wave of his wand, the couch was Slytherin green. Ah, much better, he thought as he settled down, ready to sleep.
But sleep didn’t come.
Lowering himself to a Weasley was hard. He tried to pretend it wasn’t, tried to convince himself that he was having an enjoyable time by getting on the youngest Weasley’s nerves, and while it was fun to rile up Ginny, it was ridiculously difficult to admit that he was at her level.
He had spent eighteen years as a proper Malfoy, and he remembered the first thirteen of it. He didn’t know what he was like during the five years that were lost to his memory, and honestly didn’t want to know. Even from the little details his Aunt had sometimes accidentally slipped (she never spoke of the war) he had managed to deduce that a Death Eater was not what he wanted to be. While he thought it was incredibly cool that he had once inspired fear in everyone he met, he wondered if he could do it all again, if given another chance. He most likely couldn’t, and wouldn’t. After all, according to Potter, he did switch sides during the war.
The only thing his Aunt had told him about his missing past was that he had become a Death Eater to save his parents, and Draco had been surprised to learn that he could be self-sacrificing. At the time, his mind, reduced to thirteen years of age, could not understand why he would give up his freedom to save his parents, when, quite honestly, he had enough money to live three long lifetimes without them. He understood his own reasons much later, after falling in love with a girl from the Swiss village (which caused the girl to freak out and promptly marry her next-door neighbor, though Draco chose to believe that the boy had forced her into marriage by threatening that he would kill Draco, who was her true love).
So he wasn’t evil. He blamed it on his mother’s family – Andromeda Tonks and her favorite cousin, Sirius Black, had both been disowned for their lack of evilness. Draco knew he was a man of talk and not action, and couldn’t kill a Muggle even if he was being laughed at. But not being evil was an entirely different story from not having the Malfoy pride, which he did have, in an amount large enough to flood the Hogwarts dungeons. And like it had been excruciatingly painful when his Aunt first made him clean up after himself, it was excruciatingly painful to beg a Weasley for food and lodging – even if he would be paying for it.
He had disliked the Weasleys even more than he had disliked Harry Potter, though probably not as much as he had despised the Mudblood Granger, who was now another Potter. He had hated the Weasleys for everything they didn’t have, and now, he had less than they did. Life was bloody ironic. The worst part of it was that after everything he had done to her family, Ginny Weasley had accepted him, and now he couldn’t even hate her because he was supposed to be thankful. And Malfoys were never thankful for anything, but apparently, this Malfoy was – a lot.
As Draco was trying to sort out his thoughts, a strange, barely audible noise reached his ears. It was like the soft rustling of wings, but it could also be something else – something much more dangerous, like the taking down of wards. Draco felt the fine hairs on the back of his neck stand up. Draco cast the Disillusionment Charm on himself, blending into the couch, and sat up.
Suddenly, there was movement by the window, and Draco pointed his wand at it. The curtains were slowly being opened, and Draco felt a jolt of fear – or was it excitement? – run down his spine. It was a cloudy night, and the moon wasn’t out to begin with. It was the perfect night to commit a crime.
There was nothing at the window at all, but Draco wasn’t put into Slytherin for nothing. Disillusionment Charms did not save its wearer from creating shadows, and the outside of Ginny’s flat was just a bit lighter than it was inside – enough to cast a very faint human-shaped shadow across the floor.
Had Draco been asleep, he would never have known that anything was happening. Draco had to listen very, very carefully to hear the slight rustle of the intruder’s movements, and the shadow on the floor was only barely visible.
The intruder was breaking in through the window, which was clever, thought Draco, since the Aurors would be focused on trying to track Apparition trails, which was difficult and time-consuming, and most wouldn’t expect anyone to break into a witch’s flat – five stories up – using Muggle means.
The window opened fully, and Draco saw a slight depression in the carpet where the intruder stepped. The window closed again, silent as ever, and Draco promised himself that if he remained alive after all this, he would curse those windows until their squeak could wake the dead.
The intruder slowly made his – or her; the best goat-thieves in Switzerland were usually women – way towards Ginny’s bedroom, and Draco gripped his wand, ready to strike. Except that his wand went soaring out of his hand, towards the intruder, and Draco realized that he couldn’t move. The intruder had paralyzed him! But how did he – or she – know he was here? Ah, Draco thought. The Daily Prophet. Curse that paper to Hell.
The intruder’s feet continued to travel in the direction of Ginny’s bedroom, from what Draco could see of the depressions in the carpet. He only had mere moments to react. Draco focused all of his magical power into his right hand, and silently summoned his wand. Based on the intruder’s definitely feminine gasp, she wasn’t expecting wandless magic out of him.
Wandless magic, another mysterious part of his missing memory, and though he didn’t know what evil things he might have used it for in the past, he was certainly thankful to have that particular skill now.
The wand was back in Draco’s hand, and he immediately took off the Body-Bind Curse, leaping away from the couch just in time to avoid a jet of red light. If the intruder was using visible spells instead of stealthy ones, she must have been effectively distracted by the flaw in her plan. It was just too bad for her that Draco was very experienced at being the flaw in other people’s plans.
Draco shot his own Body-Bind Curse at the intruder, and was pleased to hear the loud thump of a falling body. He shot to his feet, removed the Disillusionment Charm from the woman, and gasped audibly. One gloved hand was clutching tightly onto a blunt axe. This intruder was no thief; she was a murderer. And she had come to murder Ginny Weasley.
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To be continued…
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Chapter Four
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Living with Draco Malfoy was strange, certainly, but Ginny thought she could get used to it.
Living with Andromeda Tonks had taught him some manners, and some other things as well. Not only did Draco know how to cook and clean, he also knew how to knit. “Aunt Andy’s favorite pastime,” he had explained. “It snowed a lot in the Alps, and the other boys refused to play Quidditch in blizzards. I had nothing better to do, so I picked up some needles, and voila.”
Ginny was beginning to learn just how important a good family was. She thought that if Draco had been brought up by Andromeda from the very beginning, he would be an entirely different person. Even with the memory of being a Malfoy for thirteen years, the seven years he lived with Andromeda had managed to change him into an almost-tolerable person. He reminded Ginny of a meaner, snarkier version of Tonks.
Draco was also very childish. He acted not much older than the average teenager. While it was true that Andromeda had not been the greatest disciplinarian, Ginny suspected that it had more to do with his loss of memory. He didn’t have to wake up in the middle of the night, plagued by memories of people screaming for help, others dying, curses flying, and always being scared for your life and the lives of those you cared about. He didn’t have to deal with the ruins of the war. He didn’t have to rebuild the damaged buildings, didn’t have to search for missing family members, didn’t have to realize that so many of those you loved were no longer with you.
It almost made Ginny mad. While the rest of the world was trying to put back together their broken lives, Draco had lived a carefree life in the Alps, with the most stressful thing being that Andromeda made him clean up after himself. It certainly showed on his face. He still looked young and full of life. Everyone else looked much older than they really were, with a sort of world-weariness about them, which Draco did not have. Draco looked more youthful now than he did in his sixth year, when his hollow, gaunt face made him look like a corpse. It was as if his involvement in the war had been erased with his memories. It really was infuriating.
However, Ginny was not trying to fight her anger; she was instead trying to fight her laughter.
Presently, Draco was magically directing a duster to sweep the top of her bookshelf in the sitting room. “If my Aunt saw this…” he grumbled, and Ginny snickered to herself as she was reminded of how he had used to say ‘My Father this… My Father that…’. Now it was his Aunt.
“How,” Draco demanded exasperatedly, “do you live like this? Aunt Andy and I lived in a cottage in the mountains, with goats in the backyard. And we still managed to keep our living environment cleaner than this!” He growled in dismay as he peered at a stain on the carpet. “What is this? Did you raise a menagerie in here? Scourgify!”
It was all Ginny could do to keep herself from laughing. Her Healer had told her that among many other things, laughing was something that she should avoid if she wanted a speedy recovery. So, Ginny sat on her couch, drinking her morning coffee, doing her shoulder exercises, and desperately trying not to laugh at Draco’s antics.
“Ugh, Weasley!” he exclaimed, looking behind the bookshelf. “There’s a colony of dustbunnies back here!”
Ginny had to bite her tongue painfully to keep from laughing. Draco was just like Hermione when it came to cleanliness. The last time Hermione had come to her flat – to visit, and not to arrest her – she had been disgusted, and had spent her time cleaning, and complaining about Ginny’s collection of beggar’s velvet.
“Weasley, there is a spoon behind your bookshelf,” announced Draco, sounding highly put out. “Why is there a spoon behind your bookshelf?” Draco turned to face her, one hand on his hip, the other directing a duster, and resembling a tall, skinny, and blond version of Molly Weasley.
Ginny could take it no longer. She burst into peals of laughter that ached her shoulder, but she didn’t care.
“Laugh if you want, Weasley, but I think this is just stupid. There’s a spoon behind your bookshelf, like there was an axe under your couch. I think you just made a big deal out of nothing with that axe.”
Ginny immediately sobered. “Malfoy, that axe wasn’t mine! Why would I have an axe? So maybe it isn’t to the point where someone is trying to kill me, but it’s still not mine, and that’s creepy!”
“Well, then, I suppose that spoon isn’t yours either?”
“Sometimes I throw silverware at unwanted guests,” Ginny retorted, glaring pointedly at Draco.
“Yes,” he sighed, “dustbunnies are definitely unwanted guests. Scourgify!” A puff of dust exploded in Draco’s face, earning a wave of giggles from Ginny, and Draco swore colorfully. “When was the last time you cleaned this place, Weasley?” he thundered.
“Well, Malfoy, my Healer said no unnecessary wand-waving. But even before that, I was never a fan of even the lightest amount of duster-waving,” Ginny grinned cheekily, then strode over to her fireplace. “Practice starts in ten minutes. Care to join us? Or should I tell the coach that you were too occupied with cleaning my house?”
“Our house, Weasley,” Draco said sullenly, and Ginny couldn’t help but feel strange at those words. It almost sounded as if they were… family.
Ginny shook herself slightly. A week of living with Draco Malfoy, and it felt like he had been there forever. “You wish. As soon as you get your paycheck, I’m kicking you out of here,” she snapped, and disappeared into a rush of green flames.
She popped out of Coach Deverill’s fireplace, said her greetings, and went out to the pitch for another miserable training session spent sitting on the stands.
“Where’s your new roommate?” Oliver asked teasingly, flying over to sit next to her.
“Don’t call him that. I like to think of him as my ‘irritating piece of furniture’.”
“Ah. How convenient. I’d like a piece of furniture that does all my housework for me. But don’t you think Hermione would be against it? She might start F.L.U.: Furniture Liberation Union.”
Ginny snorted. “He doesn’t do all my housework. He complains and complains, telling me to clean, and when I don’t, he does it himself and makes things worse. Just this morning, he was cleaning the dustbunnies behind some bookshelf, and exploded dust all over my sitting room. I’ll probably wind up cleaning it when I get back home.”
“Or you could just leave him there and move in with me.”
“I don’t know, Oliver. I don’t want to inconvenience you. And besides, as soon as he gets his paycheck, I’m kicking him out.”
“Easier said than done. But you won’t inconvenience me. If it ever gets to be too much to have him around, you’re welcome at my place anytime.”
“Thanks, Oliver,” Ginny said gratefully.
Oliver soared away on his broomstick, and Ginny looked after him. Oliver was her constant. The war had changed almost everyone she knew, but Oliver had always been the Oliver she had known since she was a little girl. She had first met him when she was seven. The first year Charlie became the Gryffindor Captain, Oliver had been admitted as the Keeper, and had treated Charlie as an idol. Charlie had invited Oliver to come by during the summer and play Quidditch with the Weasleys, and after befriending the twins, became a good family friend.
Now, he was a better friend to her than anyone else could ever hope to be. Oliver was simple in a complex world, and just being with him made Ginny feel better during times when her head was about to explode. He saw everything in terms of Quidditch, and had even treated the war like a giant game of Quidditch. “Curses are like Bludgers – you avoid them. Your own hexes are the Quaffles, and the Death Eaters are the goals. You throw the Quaffle at the goal. Quite simple, really,” he had said about his battle experience.
Oliver’s skill on a broomstick had put him among the Order members to participate in the air raids against the Death Eaters, and each time, Oliver had come back unscathed and undisturbed. Ginny knew the only reason Oliver hadn’t been disturbed by the war was because he had been too far up in the sky to see all the blood and the grotesque, pained expressions of the fallen, and too far up to smell the rotten corpses. He honestly seemed to believe the war was a violent game of Quidditch, and had been as excited about the battles as he was about Quidditch games. While Ginny was mildly frustrated by his naivety regarding the war, she was extremely thankful that he wasn’t affected like the rest of the depressed, war-era generation, and even more thankful that he hadn’t gone the way of his Quidditch hero, Charlie, who had died fighting for the Order.
Charlie. Charlie had always been her favorite brother. By the time Ginny was old enough to know who Bill was, he was rarely at home, and Charlie had taken over the role of eldest brother. When the twins played a mean prank on her, it was Charlie who came to the rescue. When Percy was being a prat, it was Charlie who told him off. When she got into fights with Ron, Charlie played mediator. Charlie had always been there for her, but what she liked best about him was that he didn’t just protect her, but taught her how to fend for herself. Charlie was the one who had taught her the Bat-Bogey Hex, and for that, she was eternally grateful. Charlie had also taught her Quidditch, and she felt that without him, she would never have become a star Chaser.
But Oliver was equally responsible for her success in her Quidditch career. After Charlie left for Romania, Oliver was the one who had helped her practice and improve her skills. He used his influence to get her on the Puddlemere team without spending years as a Reserve, like most other players had to. Even after she joined the team, Oliver continued giving her private training sessions, and pushed her to be the best that she could be.
Also, Oliver had idolized Charlie for so long that he had inadvertently picked up many of Charlie’s habits and personality quirks, and made them his own. It was unnerving, and sometimes Oliver reminded her so much of Charlie that it made her sad. Ginny sometimes wondered if she was replacing Charlie with Oliver in her mind. But the differences – the Scottish accent, Oliver’s warm brown eyes in comparison to Charlie’s blue ones, his soft brown hair, and the smile that was uniquely his own – was enough to make Ginny feel distinctly un-sisterly thoughts about him. Which she crushed. Immediately. Because Oliver would not be on the very long list of the men whose hearts she had ended up stomping on.
Ginny didn’t know why, but she had never lasted very long in any of her relationships. Michael Corner and Dean Thomas had been childish flings who she had dumped without much emotion. Harry had been – well, Harry was a completely different case, but what mattered was that she had been the one who finalized that their relationship would never be rekindled. Then came the post-war boyfriends, some of whose names she couldn’t even remember. According to Ron, the most overprotective of her brothers, she had had sixteen boyfriends in the seven years following the war. Her list began with Neville Longbottom, who she had dumped for Seamus Finnigan, to Winston Tilman, who she had recently dumped because of a spat over a blueberry scone. Now that she thought about it, there were quite a few axe-murderer suspects. There were eighteen men, not including Harry, who she had carelessly dumped. Now it was possible that one – or more – of them were out to get her. Oops.
A whistle blew, and Ginny snapped out of her thoughts to realize that practice had started. The official team was playing the Reserve team as usual, and Ginny was amused to see that Rosalyn Lancaster was focused more on Draco than the game.
Draco, Ginny decided, was good. He flew with the grace and the speed of a Seeker, with the clever maneuvers of a Chaser. Ginny could see that Draco was trying to play well with the other two Chasers (never mind that Rosalyn kept looking at Draco’s bum instead of the Quaffle), but he was still a Quaffle-hog. His scoring techniques were excellent, he was very skilled and creative at stealing the Quaffle, and he received well, but passing was not his forte.
“Malfoy! You’re passing, not trying to knock the other Chasers off their broom! That’s what we have Beaters and Bludgers for!” Ginny yelled.
“And I can see that you’re an excellent passer too, Weasley, with that shoulder of yours!”
Ginny furiously began doing her shoulder exercises, and screamed, “I have more experience than you as a team player! Listen to my advice!”
“She’s right, Malfoy!” Coach Deverill agreed. “Your passing is a bit dangerous!”
Malfoy passed with great speed. No one would want to intercept a Quaffle thrown like that, but not many of his fellow Chasers would want to receive it either. When he passed with less speed, he couldn’t seem to target the Chaser he wanted to pass to, and the opposing team intercepted. Ginny suspected that he was doing that on purpose, so the others would just let him keep the Quaffle at all times.
An hour later, Ginny had yelled herself hoarse, and Draco appeared to be doing slightly better with his passes. Just as Ginny was about to criticize his lack of grace in passing (“You look like an angry toddler lobbing eggs at the wall!”), the Seeker and the Reserve Seeker, David Yeller and Lance Connor, both started to dive at an amazing speed. After an intense moment, David shot forward with an extra burst of speed, and snatched the Golden Snitch out of the air.
The whistle blew. “And the official team wins!” Coach Deverill clapped merrily and said, “Lunch break! Then we’ll meet here again for one more game!”
---
Ginny was sitting outside Cape Café, a friendly seafood restaurant in Diagon Alley. The sun was shining, the bright yellow umbrella was providing just enough shade, and the linguine with clams she was eating was nothing short of exquisite. She was sitting at a table with Oliver, Katie, and Ian, and would have enjoyed herself if it wasn’t for someone behind her throwing clamshells over his shoulder and onto her plate.
“Stop it, Malfoy!” she hissed, though the effect was rather lost because of her mouthful of pasta. Another clamshell whizzed through the air and landed in her wine glass, spraying her with the burgundy liquid. “Malfoy!” she snapped, louder this time.
“Yes?” came his smooth reply.
“Stop throwing clamshells at me!”
“I am not throwing clamshells at you.”
Ginny blew out a puff of air. “Then what are you doing?”
“Trying to see how many clamshells I can get into your wineglass while not looking at it. It’s like this – the clamshells are Quaffles, and your wineglass is the goal.”
Oliver looked like he was trying to suppress a grin, and that irked Ginny even more. Though her Healer said no unnecessary wand-waving, Ginny didn’t care. She whipped out her wand with a flourish, and vanished all the clamshells in the area.
“Temper, Weasley,” came Draco’s amused drawl. “Your shoulder will never heal at this rate. If a Quidditch player can’t play Quidditch, how will you afford to live?”
Ginny realized with a sinking feeling that he was right, but refused to think of her financial problems. She managed to go without a single thought of money for the rest of lunch, and the rest of practice, until she went home and found a pile of bills that needed to be paid.
“Oh, bugger,” she said with feeling.
Quidditch players didn’t get paid anywhere near as much as they should be. After all, Quidditch brought families together, established friendships, kept Sundays quiet because everyone was at home watching matches on the Tele-wiz (*), and was a universal stress-reliever for the common folk – and none of this would be possible if it weren’t for the Quidditch players. But after the war, the Ministry had never quite recovered from its financial crisis (which Percy was busily trying to fix), and because Quidditch players got paid by the Ministry, they were in a spot of trouble as well. If Puddlemere won the European Championships, their wages would go up, but with the recent Chaser-crisis, winning was a bit too much to hope for.
Ginny flipped through her bills and scowled at the one from the landlord. If her irritating piece of furniture would pay just half of her rooming bill, she could save fifty Galleons a month.
If her irritating piece of furniture would take showers just half as long, she could save some patience. “Malfoy!” she yelled, banging on the bathroom door. “Come out!”
He did, with dripping wet hair, and wearing nothing more than a towel around his waist. Any other woman would have been rendered speechless at the sight of his glistening, thin-yet-muscled body. But Ginny, having the distorted eye of someone who had grown up believing that everything Malfoy was vile, only saw awfully pale skin covering a lanky frame – which was nothing unusual when you went swimming every summer with tan-resistant beanpoles like Ron. “Go make dinner, Malfoy. Nothing with clamshells.”
Draco watched with some annoyance as Ginny brushed past him without so much as a glance. Not that it mattered.
He threw on some clothes, went to the kitchen, and pulled out some vegetables to chop. A small part of him protested at doing House Elf work, but the larger part of him, which had come to accept the fact that the Malfoys were no longer what they used to be, caused him to grit his teeth and silently chop.
When Ginny finished with her shower, she wordlessly helped Draco cook dinner, and as they cooked together, Draco couldn’t help but wonder if this was what being married – really married – felt like. His family hadn’t lived the way most normal people did. His mother probably never knew how to make mashed potatoes, and his father probably never knew what the kitchen even looked like. The only time he saw them together was during dinner, or at formal events. The rest of the time, his father did his business, his mother met with the other rich Pureblood wives, and he was left to his studies and friends. Draco had thought that everyone – including the Weasleys and the Muggles – lived that way. The other mothers may have done their own cooking and cleaning, but he hadn’t known that families actually spent time together until he started living with the Swiss villagers and realized what a family really was.
Before he knew it, dinner was ready, and he was eating his shepherd’s pie while seated across the table from Ginny.
Draco had seen three types of women in his life: the sophisticated, elegant, and proud ones like his mother; the flirty, ditzy, and cheerful ones that he knew from Hogwarts; and the sweet, friendly, and humble ones of the Swiss village.
Ginny, who was currently chomping her food as if it had done her a great wrong, fell into a new category: mean, crazy, and slightly scary. Draco wondered what her problem was. He had cleaned up the dust explosion from earlier that morning, so it couldn’t be that. Was she still upset about the clamshell incident? But he had made her dinner, for Merlin’s sake! He hadn’t even asked her to help – she just did, all by herself, and now she was having a silent temper tantrum.
Draco glanced at Ginny with a critical eye. When out in public, Ginny was a popular, outgoing, energetic sort of person. Her bright brown eyes suggested mischief, her vivid red hair showed off her equally vivid personality, and her loud voice demanded that she be the center of attention. She was also quite fashionable, and naturally attracted the gazes of men. At home, however, Ginny was a completely different story. Her short, towel-dried hair was frizzing to the point of resembling Hermione Potter’s patented bird-nest style, and under the Muggle light globe – ball? bulb? or was it oblate spheroid? – that she used in her kitchen, her hair was a lurid shade of neon carrot. Her freckles stood out garishly on her freshly-scrubbed face, and her oversized Puddlemere United T-shirt and sweatpants did nothing for her figure, which she seemed determined to hide from him.
Overall, Draco liked the at-home Ginny much more than the center-of-attention Ginny – which made absolutely no sense. He snorted.
“I don’t know what you’re finding funny, Malfoy,” Ginny said, her voice dripping icicles, “but I’m definitely not amused.”
Of course you wouldn’t be, thought Draco, and said, “A bird would mistake your hair for its nest, Weasley, provided, of course, than it didn’t fly away in horror from the blindingly neon color.”
Draco could hear her teeth grind.
“I must ask, does it glow in the dark?”
“Fifty Galleons, plus groceries!” Ginny barked.
“Excuse me?” Draco asked, genuinely confused.
“From the moment you get your first paycheck, you will start paying me fifty Galleons a month for rooming, and pay for all the groceries, unless you cook, in which case I’ll pay for them, but your food better be good.”
“Are you saying that my food isn’t good?” Draco asked incredulously, gesturing at his shepherd’s pie, which was quite fabulous, thank you very much.
“It’s edible. That’s why it hasn’t been thrown in your face… yet.”
“And you’re also saying that I can live with you?”
“As long as you pay.”
“Why?”
“Why?” Ginny almost choked in disbelief. “You mean you thought I’d let you invade my personal space for free?”
“No, Weasley. Why, as in why are you letting me live with you?”
“Because Harry –”
“And don’t say because Potter said so, because I know you can hex him to Hell and back.”
“Because I know what it’s like to be poor,” Ginny replied quietly, after a moment. “And I know how especially awful it is to be homeless, because during the war, the Burrow burned down. It’s rebuilt now, of course, but it was still just terrible to be without a home. It’s not that I pity you, Malfoy,” she added hastily, “I just understand, that’s all.”
And Draco understood as well, and shot her a lopsided grin before he returned to his meal, thinking that maybe ‘mean’ shouldn’t be used to describe Ginny, though ‘crazy’ and ‘slightly scary’ were still fair game.
---
After hours of tossing and turning, and several times of waking up with a crick in his back, Draco considered transfiguring the couch into something more comfortable, but transfiguring had never been his forte. He had been good at potions, but didn’t know how that could help him make the couch any more comfortable.
Draco Malfoy, he thought to himself. How have you gone from being Slytherin Prince to being Ginny Weasley’s House Elf? Life was unfair. At least the House Elves got their own quarters. He got a couch, which was very hard, very lumpy, and very Gryffindor red. Draco sat up and smirked. With a wave of his wand, the couch was Slytherin green. Ah, much better, he thought as he settled down, ready to sleep.
But sleep didn’t come.
Lowering himself to a Weasley was hard. He tried to pretend it wasn’t, tried to convince himself that he was having an enjoyable time by getting on the youngest Weasley’s nerves, and while it was fun to rile up Ginny, it was ridiculously difficult to admit that he was at her level.
He had spent eighteen years as a proper Malfoy, and he remembered the first thirteen of it. He didn’t know what he was like during the five years that were lost to his memory, and honestly didn’t want to know. Even from the little details his Aunt had sometimes accidentally slipped (she never spoke of the war) he had managed to deduce that a Death Eater was not what he wanted to be. While he thought it was incredibly cool that he had once inspired fear in everyone he met, he wondered if he could do it all again, if given another chance. He most likely couldn’t, and wouldn’t. After all, according to Potter, he did switch sides during the war.
The only thing his Aunt had told him about his missing past was that he had become a Death Eater to save his parents, and Draco had been surprised to learn that he could be self-sacrificing. At the time, his mind, reduced to thirteen years of age, could not understand why he would give up his freedom to save his parents, when, quite honestly, he had enough money to live three long lifetimes without them. He understood his own reasons much later, after falling in love with a girl from the Swiss village (which caused the girl to freak out and promptly marry her next-door neighbor, though Draco chose to believe that the boy had forced her into marriage by threatening that he would kill Draco, who was her true love).
So he wasn’t evil. He blamed it on his mother’s family – Andromeda Tonks and her favorite cousin, Sirius Black, had both been disowned for their lack of evilness. Draco knew he was a man of talk and not action, and couldn’t kill a Muggle even if he was being laughed at. But not being evil was an entirely different story from not having the Malfoy pride, which he did have, in an amount large enough to flood the Hogwarts dungeons. And like it had been excruciatingly painful when his Aunt first made him clean up after himself, it was excruciatingly painful to beg a Weasley for food and lodging – even if he would be paying for it.
He had disliked the Weasleys even more than he had disliked Harry Potter, though probably not as much as he had despised the Mudblood Granger, who was now another Potter. He had hated the Weasleys for everything they didn’t have, and now, he had less than they did. Life was bloody ironic. The worst part of it was that after everything he had done to her family, Ginny Weasley had accepted him, and now he couldn’t even hate her because he was supposed to be thankful. And Malfoys were never thankful for anything, but apparently, this Malfoy was – a lot.
As Draco was trying to sort out his thoughts, a strange, barely audible noise reached his ears. It was like the soft rustling of wings, but it could also be something else – something much more dangerous, like the taking down of wards. Draco felt the fine hairs on the back of his neck stand up. Draco cast the Disillusionment Charm on himself, blending into the couch, and sat up.
Suddenly, there was movement by the window, and Draco pointed his wand at it. The curtains were slowly being opened, and Draco felt a jolt of fear – or was it excitement? – run down his spine. It was a cloudy night, and the moon wasn’t out to begin with. It was the perfect night to commit a crime.
There was nothing at the window at all, but Draco wasn’t put into Slytherin for nothing. Disillusionment Charms did not save its wearer from creating shadows, and the outside of Ginny’s flat was just a bit lighter than it was inside – enough to cast a very faint human-shaped shadow across the floor.
Had Draco been asleep, he would never have known that anything was happening. Draco had to listen very, very carefully to hear the slight rustle of the intruder’s movements, and the shadow on the floor was only barely visible.
The intruder was breaking in through the window, which was clever, thought Draco, since the Aurors would be focused on trying to track Apparition trails, which was difficult and time-consuming, and most wouldn’t expect anyone to break into a witch’s flat – five stories up – using Muggle means.
The window opened fully, and Draco saw a slight depression in the carpet where the intruder stepped. The window closed again, silent as ever, and Draco promised himself that if he remained alive after all this, he would curse those windows until their squeak could wake the dead.
The intruder slowly made his – or her; the best goat-thieves in Switzerland were usually women – way towards Ginny’s bedroom, and Draco gripped his wand, ready to strike. Except that his wand went soaring out of his hand, towards the intruder, and Draco realized that he couldn’t move. The intruder had paralyzed him! But how did he – or she – know he was here? Ah, Draco thought. The Daily Prophet. Curse that paper to Hell.
The intruder’s feet continued to travel in the direction of Ginny’s bedroom, from what Draco could see of the depressions in the carpet. He only had mere moments to react. Draco focused all of his magical power into his right hand, and silently summoned his wand. Based on the intruder’s definitely feminine gasp, she wasn’t expecting wandless magic out of him.
Wandless magic, another mysterious part of his missing memory, and though he didn’t know what evil things he might have used it for in the past, he was certainly thankful to have that particular skill now.
The wand was back in Draco’s hand, and he immediately took off the Body-Bind Curse, leaping away from the couch just in time to avoid a jet of red light. If the intruder was using visible spells instead of stealthy ones, she must have been effectively distracted by the flaw in her plan. It was just too bad for her that Draco was very experienced at being the flaw in other people’s plans.
Draco shot his own Body-Bind Curse at the intruder, and was pleased to hear the loud thump of a falling body. He shot to his feet, removed the Disillusionment Charm from the woman, and gasped audibly. One gloved hand was clutching tightly onto a blunt axe. This intruder was no thief; she was a murderer. And she had come to murder Ginny Weasley.
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To be continued…
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Author notes: (*) I mentioned the Tele-wiz before, without explaining what it was. I was thinking that after the war, the magical people would be much more open-minded towards the Muggles, and would adopt some of their technology. The Tele-wiz, in my mind, is something like TV, but more like a holograph, so the people watching it can actually feel like they’re at a Quidditch game. Wouldn’t it be cool to have Quidditch players flying around your sitting room?
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