Chapter Twenty-Six:
The first few weeks after the final battle were barely controlled chaos. The Weasley matriarch was constantly moving in at least four different directions at once, trying to simultaneously fuss over Harry at Hogwarts, Fleur at St. Mungos, Tonks and little Teddy at Remus’, and all the other assorted Weasleys, plus Hermione, at the Burrow. For just over a month, the former Horcrux hunter was able to take advantage of her mother’s absences to Apparate to the Tonks’ home in Hampstead for hours at a time without anyone the wiser.
Those brief respites became the only thing that kept her sane. When the house-witch was in Ottery St. Catchpool, she spent as much time scolding and lecturing her youngest as she did cooking and baking, which any Weasley could tell you was a lot of time.
When Harry and Fleur had both fully recovered and Tonks had settled in with Remus and Teddy, attention had turned more fully and more vigorously, towards ‘fixing’ Ginny. On the eve of her seventeenth birthday it was with immeasurable relief that the young witch was dropped off at Hogwarts with a final round of finger wagging and maternal condemnation. The brightness of the twinkle that was aimed at her above half-moon glasses once the older witch was gone forced a smile past gritted teeth.
“Well, my dear, I would hate for such spirited words to go to waste,” the newly re-instated Headmaster said, gesturing with his good hand for her to take a seat in front of his desk. “Shall we begin?”
Her smile grew momentarily at his apparent enjoyment of the dressing-down Molly Weasley had once again tried to give the flamboyantly unrepentant wizard. “Your contribution to the war effort and its successful resolution has been invaluable to myself and our world, Miss Weasley, and so I think it would serve us well if we took some time over the remaining weeks before the start of term to go over what you have accomplished and the unique abilities that allowed you to do so.”
Ginny nodded as this was basically what his owl had said a few days before. When the exact circumstances behind her involvement with the Order had been explained to her parents, they had found several more things to scold her for, especially as it concerned the additional facts that had been kept from them.
She suspected that the implications made that these sessions were in some way geared towards removing the knowledge and memories their daughter carried from the Dark Lord played a large part in their agreeing to let her attend. That and the belief that something she told Dumbledore about her time with the Malfoy heir might reveal his duplicity, prompting the Headmaster to confine the blond and thus save them the effort of keeping her away from him. Whatever the reason they had allowed it, she was just thankful that she was getting out of the house, something that she hadn’t been able to do in weeks.
He seemed to take her small nod as a sign of her enthusiasm and responded with a large smile. “Excellent!”
The elderly wizard brought his hands together above the desktop and she wasn’t quite sure if he was going to clap or rub them together with a maniacal laugh. He did neither, instead standing promptly and picking up a small spinning figurine from the corner of his desk. “You’ll need this, then, my dear.”
One red brow rose quizzically as she took the object he was holding out to her, not noticing until she was holding it that it was carved in the shape of a tiny dragon. Her other brow rose at that realization and she looked up to find him looking back with a knowing and bemused expression that turned outright mischievous when he met her eyes. “I’d hate for you not to have all the details before we discuss your time there, so I thought a trip or two back might benefit our conversations.”
Ginny blinked in surprise but the smile hadn’t finished forming on her face before the port-key activated and she found herself standing in an alley a few houses down from the Tonks’ home. Her smile widened to an open grin when she recognized the opportunities that her scheduled meetings with Dumbledore would be providing. A short laugh spilled out as she walked hurriedly to her destination.
Three minutes later, she was walking into the Tonks’ home to find her boyfriend ensconced at the dinning room table with his friends, surrounded by pop cans, papers, and the apparent idea to start their own business.
“What will you call it, ‘Where Rich Snobs Get a Rush’?”
The four at the table paused, looking up from their energetic discussion with identical shocked expressions, causing Coral to laugh as she closed the door behind the redhead. After a beat of silence, in which the only sound was of a chair scraping against the floor as Draco belatedly stood, Ginny herself started to laugh. The noise broke the others out of their shock and caused snickers to ripple through the group as they processed her suggestion. Soon, before the young wizard could even make it across the room to greet his girlfriend, Carren rubbed a hand absently over what little there was of his hair and looked down at the table with a suddenly contemplative expression.
Ginny and Draco were too focused on each other as he approached to take notice of the other young man’s reaction. A wide smile replaced the shock on the icy-blond’s face as he drew the redhead to him for a short but enthusiastic kiss. “How’d you get away?”
The witch smiled even wider than her boyfriend as she offered a short synopsis of her meeting with the Headmaster. “So it looks like I’ll be able to come twice a week for the rest of the summer.”
Draco expressed his opinion of that idea with a much longer kiss, not pulling away until they were both becoming short of breath. “I assume we’ll be able to come up with some way to pass the time while I’m here,” she said with a subtly coy tone. He started to smirk in response but paused as though something had just occurred to him and began to turn sheepishly back towards the table. Instead of the teasing grins he expected to see aimed at him, his three friends were discussing something animatedly amongst themselves.
He glanced over at the redhead with a look of slight confusion and she in turn raised an inquisitive brow and nodded towards the Muggles as if to encourage him to lead her over towards the increasingly excited chatter. With an arm tightly around her waist, that was exactly what he did, the two of them arriving at the table just in time to hear Blake exclaim, “Perfect!” with a characteristically arrogant tilt of his head.
Before the couple had a chance to ask exactly what was so perfect, Carren shot a pointedly amused grin at the witch. “As the price point and exclusivity of our services will most likely imply both rich and snob it would be somewhat redundant to include it in the name, but otherwise your suggestion has remarkable merit.”
Both russet brows rose in surprise while the blond beside her continued to look at his friends questioningly. Aaron answered him with an excited chuckle. “What do you think of ‘The Rush’ eh Dray?”
The Malfoy heir let out a laugh as he recalled the first conversation he had ever had with these three in the locker room of the dojo. “I think it’s rather apt.”
“And catchy too, yeah?” Carren asked with a smile at the redhead who had unknowingly suggested it.
“The Rush, an adrenaline junkie’s answer to a good time,” the ice blond started with a pleased nod.
Aaron let out a sharp laugh and shook his head at the couple. “And there’s our sale’s pitch in a nutshell. You two work rather well together, maybe we should put you in charge of marketing.”
The proposition was made with a joking tone but the look in the brunette’s narrowed eyes added an air of solemnity to the words which only grew as he turned his full attention to the young woman. “What do you say, Ginny, going to come work for us then?”
The others laughed good-naturedly but all four regarded her with genuine interest in the silence that followed. A pair of grey eyes in particular pinned her with a gleam of anticipation. The youngest Weasley started to laugh and roll her eyes in automatic response, but only a heartbeat passed before she began to seriously think about what it was that she might be doing after she graduated Hogwarts in less than a year. No doubt her parents had her career at the Ministry all planned out but her time with Draco and the Tonks had given her a taste of a life she’d never known she’d wanted until Moody and Dumbledore had thrown her into it head first. Her lips slowly curved into a smile that more than slightly resembled the smirk her boyfriend had always favored.
The table erupted into cheers at the sight and room was immediately made for her amongst the papers and snack debris. Within moments Ginny was immersed in the many and varied ideas and plans the four had been concocting over the last several weeks. The time allotted for her meeting with the Headmaster flew by with animated chatter, lighthearted arguments, and a lot of laughter and junk food.
It was with extreme reluctance that she left the Tonks house that afternoon and barely containable excitement that she returned several days later. Many of the hours she spent there over the remainder of her summer vacation were spent alone with her new boyfriend of course, but many others were occupied with business proposals and marketing analyses and she loved every minute.
Her carefree time with Draco, Aaron, Blake and Carren was in direct contrast to the tense and awkward time she spent at home, especially when Harry and Hermione were visiting with her brother. The months that had passed since the end of the war had done nothing to lessen the unanimous disapproval being directed at the Weasley daughter, though at least some members of the family had stopped voicing their opinions every time she entered the room. Ron and her mother were certainly not among that number. Harry and Hermione were another category entirely as they had taken to ignoring her almost entirely. Harry in particular was mulishly silent whenever she was around.
Ginny had tried to speak to her ex-boyfriend the first time she had seen him at the Burrow but the conversation had been awkward in the extreme and stilted to the point of non existent. She would have been thankful for the start of her seventh year and the opportunity to escape the heavy discomfort in the Burrow if not for the fact that it also meant a stop to her visits to Hampstead. The offer of a job was not forgotten however, nor was her possible input ignored in her absence. Half of the letters she received almost daily from the owl she had left with Draco at their last meeting included revised plans and specific questions for her in regards to the ongoing formation of The Rush.
It was in fact those letters, and the decidedly less business oriented missives she exchanged with her boyfriend, that made her lonely last year at Hogwarts bearable for the young witch. A few of the early owls brushed on Draco’s reaction to the official announcement that his parents were dead and had been since moments after he had been supposedly killed by ‘Snape’ for his failure on the tower. Others talked of the tedious process of Wizarding inheritance law and the blond’s subsequent liquidation of the vast Malfoy assets and investments.
Despite the somber subject matter, they had a rather good time coming up with ways to go about selling off his financial stake in the Wizarding World and re-establishing him in the Muggle one. The new head of the Malfoy family took great delight in pulling out of shady businesses and pureblood only investments only to sell them to any half-blood or Muggleborn who took an interest. Reinvesting his fortune in Muggle companies and stocks, including of course, his own fledgling venture, left the former Slytherin immensely satisfied.
That satisfaction was mirrored by his girlfriend, the redhead feeling quite relieved at how well he was settling in and how much a part of the process she had managed to be. Even knowing how very much he wanted to start over away from magic and the Malfoy name, she had nursed a tiny fear that he would regret his decision, or worse yet, that following through with it would create distance between them. The only distance that existed, however, was the physical one between Hogwarts and Hampstead and they both did their very best to bridge it with an untold number of letters that left their poor owl, who Draco had insisted on calling Adrenaline of all things, with a semi-permanent pout that only dissipated in the face of overt affection and numerous treats. Needless to say, Adrenaline- or Linny for short, was one spoiled owl. But then again, she was practically a Malfoy so it was hardly surprising.
End Chapter Twenty-Six
The first few weeks after the final battle were barely controlled chaos. The Weasley matriarch was constantly moving in at least four different directions at once, trying to simultaneously fuss over Harry at Hogwarts, Fleur at St. Mungos, Tonks and little Teddy at Remus’, and all the other assorted Weasleys, plus Hermione, at the Burrow. For just over a month, the former Horcrux hunter was able to take advantage of her mother’s absences to Apparate to the Tonks’ home in Hampstead for hours at a time without anyone the wiser.
Those brief respites became the only thing that kept her sane. When the house-witch was in Ottery St. Catchpool, she spent as much time scolding and lecturing her youngest as she did cooking and baking, which any Weasley could tell you was a lot of time.
When Harry and Fleur had both fully recovered and Tonks had settled in with Remus and Teddy, attention had turned more fully and more vigorously, towards ‘fixing’ Ginny. On the eve of her seventeenth birthday it was with immeasurable relief that the young witch was dropped off at Hogwarts with a final round of finger wagging and maternal condemnation. The brightness of the twinkle that was aimed at her above half-moon glasses once the older witch was gone forced a smile past gritted teeth.
“Well, my dear, I would hate for such spirited words to go to waste,” the newly re-instated Headmaster said, gesturing with his good hand for her to take a seat in front of his desk. “Shall we begin?”
Her smile grew momentarily at his apparent enjoyment of the dressing-down Molly Weasley had once again tried to give the flamboyantly unrepentant wizard. “Your contribution to the war effort and its successful resolution has been invaluable to myself and our world, Miss Weasley, and so I think it would serve us well if we took some time over the remaining weeks before the start of term to go over what you have accomplished and the unique abilities that allowed you to do so.”
Ginny nodded as this was basically what his owl had said a few days before. When the exact circumstances behind her involvement with the Order had been explained to her parents, they had found several more things to scold her for, especially as it concerned the additional facts that had been kept from them.
She suspected that the implications made that these sessions were in some way geared towards removing the knowledge and memories their daughter carried from the Dark Lord played a large part in their agreeing to let her attend. That and the belief that something she told Dumbledore about her time with the Malfoy heir might reveal his duplicity, prompting the Headmaster to confine the blond and thus save them the effort of keeping her away from him. Whatever the reason they had allowed it, she was just thankful that she was getting out of the house, something that she hadn’t been able to do in weeks.
He seemed to take her small nod as a sign of her enthusiasm and responded with a large smile. “Excellent!”
The elderly wizard brought his hands together above the desktop and she wasn’t quite sure if he was going to clap or rub them together with a maniacal laugh. He did neither, instead standing promptly and picking up a small spinning figurine from the corner of his desk. “You’ll need this, then, my dear.”
One red brow rose quizzically as she took the object he was holding out to her, not noticing until she was holding it that it was carved in the shape of a tiny dragon. Her other brow rose at that realization and she looked up to find him looking back with a knowing and bemused expression that turned outright mischievous when he met her eyes. “I’d hate for you not to have all the details before we discuss your time there, so I thought a trip or two back might benefit our conversations.”
Ginny blinked in surprise but the smile hadn’t finished forming on her face before the port-key activated and she found herself standing in an alley a few houses down from the Tonks’ home. Her smile widened to an open grin when she recognized the opportunities that her scheduled meetings with Dumbledore would be providing. A short laugh spilled out as she walked hurriedly to her destination.
Three minutes later, she was walking into the Tonks’ home to find her boyfriend ensconced at the dinning room table with his friends, surrounded by pop cans, papers, and the apparent idea to start their own business.
“What will you call it, ‘Where Rich Snobs Get a Rush’?”
The four at the table paused, looking up from their energetic discussion with identical shocked expressions, causing Coral to laugh as she closed the door behind the redhead. After a beat of silence, in which the only sound was of a chair scraping against the floor as Draco belatedly stood, Ginny herself started to laugh. The noise broke the others out of their shock and caused snickers to ripple through the group as they processed her suggestion. Soon, before the young wizard could even make it across the room to greet his girlfriend, Carren rubbed a hand absently over what little there was of his hair and looked down at the table with a suddenly contemplative expression.
Ginny and Draco were too focused on each other as he approached to take notice of the other young man’s reaction. A wide smile replaced the shock on the icy-blond’s face as he drew the redhead to him for a short but enthusiastic kiss. “How’d you get away?”
The witch smiled even wider than her boyfriend as she offered a short synopsis of her meeting with the Headmaster. “So it looks like I’ll be able to come twice a week for the rest of the summer.”
Draco expressed his opinion of that idea with a much longer kiss, not pulling away until they were both becoming short of breath. “I assume we’ll be able to come up with some way to pass the time while I’m here,” she said with a subtly coy tone. He started to smirk in response but paused as though something had just occurred to him and began to turn sheepishly back towards the table. Instead of the teasing grins he expected to see aimed at him, his three friends were discussing something animatedly amongst themselves.
He glanced over at the redhead with a look of slight confusion and she in turn raised an inquisitive brow and nodded towards the Muggles as if to encourage him to lead her over towards the increasingly excited chatter. With an arm tightly around her waist, that was exactly what he did, the two of them arriving at the table just in time to hear Blake exclaim, “Perfect!” with a characteristically arrogant tilt of his head.
Before the couple had a chance to ask exactly what was so perfect, Carren shot a pointedly amused grin at the witch. “As the price point and exclusivity of our services will most likely imply both rich and snob it would be somewhat redundant to include it in the name, but otherwise your suggestion has remarkable merit.”
Both russet brows rose in surprise while the blond beside her continued to look at his friends questioningly. Aaron answered him with an excited chuckle. “What do you think of ‘The Rush’ eh Dray?”
The Malfoy heir let out a laugh as he recalled the first conversation he had ever had with these three in the locker room of the dojo. “I think it’s rather apt.”
“And catchy too, yeah?” Carren asked with a smile at the redhead who had unknowingly suggested it.
“The Rush, an adrenaline junkie’s answer to a good time,” the ice blond started with a pleased nod.
Aaron let out a sharp laugh and shook his head at the couple. “And there’s our sale’s pitch in a nutshell. You two work rather well together, maybe we should put you in charge of marketing.”
The proposition was made with a joking tone but the look in the brunette’s narrowed eyes added an air of solemnity to the words which only grew as he turned his full attention to the young woman. “What do you say, Ginny, going to come work for us then?”
The others laughed good-naturedly but all four regarded her with genuine interest in the silence that followed. A pair of grey eyes in particular pinned her with a gleam of anticipation. The youngest Weasley started to laugh and roll her eyes in automatic response, but only a heartbeat passed before she began to seriously think about what it was that she might be doing after she graduated Hogwarts in less than a year. No doubt her parents had her career at the Ministry all planned out but her time with Draco and the Tonks had given her a taste of a life she’d never known she’d wanted until Moody and Dumbledore had thrown her into it head first. Her lips slowly curved into a smile that more than slightly resembled the smirk her boyfriend had always favored.
The table erupted into cheers at the sight and room was immediately made for her amongst the papers and snack debris. Within moments Ginny was immersed in the many and varied ideas and plans the four had been concocting over the last several weeks. The time allotted for her meeting with the Headmaster flew by with animated chatter, lighthearted arguments, and a lot of laughter and junk food.
It was with extreme reluctance that she left the Tonks house that afternoon and barely containable excitement that she returned several days later. Many of the hours she spent there over the remainder of her summer vacation were spent alone with her new boyfriend of course, but many others were occupied with business proposals and marketing analyses and she loved every minute.
Her carefree time with Draco, Aaron, Blake and Carren was in direct contrast to the tense and awkward time she spent at home, especially when Harry and Hermione were visiting with her brother. The months that had passed since the end of the war had done nothing to lessen the unanimous disapproval being directed at the Weasley daughter, though at least some members of the family had stopped voicing their opinions every time she entered the room. Ron and her mother were certainly not among that number. Harry and Hermione were another category entirely as they had taken to ignoring her almost entirely. Harry in particular was mulishly silent whenever she was around.
Ginny had tried to speak to her ex-boyfriend the first time she had seen him at the Burrow but the conversation had been awkward in the extreme and stilted to the point of non existent. She would have been thankful for the start of her seventh year and the opportunity to escape the heavy discomfort in the Burrow if not for the fact that it also meant a stop to her visits to Hampstead. The offer of a job was not forgotten however, nor was her possible input ignored in her absence. Half of the letters she received almost daily from the owl she had left with Draco at their last meeting included revised plans and specific questions for her in regards to the ongoing formation of The Rush.
It was in fact those letters, and the decidedly less business oriented missives she exchanged with her boyfriend, that made her lonely last year at Hogwarts bearable for the young witch. A few of the early owls brushed on Draco’s reaction to the official announcement that his parents were dead and had been since moments after he had been supposedly killed by ‘Snape’ for his failure on the tower. Others talked of the tedious process of Wizarding inheritance law and the blond’s subsequent liquidation of the vast Malfoy assets and investments.
Despite the somber subject matter, they had a rather good time coming up with ways to go about selling off his financial stake in the Wizarding World and re-establishing him in the Muggle one. The new head of the Malfoy family took great delight in pulling out of shady businesses and pureblood only investments only to sell them to any half-blood or Muggleborn who took an interest. Reinvesting his fortune in Muggle companies and stocks, including of course, his own fledgling venture, left the former Slytherin immensely satisfied.
That satisfaction was mirrored by his girlfriend, the redhead feeling quite relieved at how well he was settling in and how much a part of the process she had managed to be. Even knowing how very much he wanted to start over away from magic and the Malfoy name, she had nursed a tiny fear that he would regret his decision, or worse yet, that following through with it would create distance between them. The only distance that existed, however, was the physical one between Hogwarts and Hampstead and they both did their very best to bridge it with an untold number of letters that left their poor owl, who Draco had insisted on calling Adrenaline of all things, with a semi-permanent pout that only dissipated in the face of overt affection and numerous treats. Needless to say, Adrenaline- or Linny for short, was one spoiled owl. But then again, she was practically a Malfoy so it was hardly surprising.
End Chapter Twenty-Six
Leave a Review