Playlist Ch. 19: ‘23’ by Jimmy Eat World

Chapter Nineteen: What Can’t Stay in the Past

Staring down into the depths of her by-now cold coffee mug, Ginny finally admitted to herself that it was time to go home. She had been sitting in the same slightly uncomfortable chair at the Muggle café for nearly four hours, trying to gather some warmth from the cozy atmosphere, wanting to inject that warm feeling into her very soul. Coffee shops, it seemed, were not as blissful and relaxing as she’d thought they’d be.

She had been staring at the empty seat across from her for ages, it seemed, thinking back on the time she’d shared tea with her niece and the truth, or at least part of it, had come spilling out with her tears. She had wondered then, as she still sometimes did, if it had just been a bad day for her when she was feeling particularly rotten and wanted a good cry or whether it was something darker and buried much deeper inside of her.

She had been honest when she’d told Rose that she still thought of her time with Draco almost every day, but why? She was married, she was happy… she was still haunted by that day and that choice…

Once more staring across from her, Ginny pictured Harry’s soft smile as he’d taken her out to Amortia’s the night of the Malfoy dinner party, hoping to distract her. He hadn’t been trying to prevent her from going, he’d as much as said so, but since then his generosity towards her had changed at some point. She’d kept her bitterness at the past buried so deep for so long that he had been all too willing to believe she was happy in the life she now lived. She had even thought the same thing up until…

When had it changed?

Scowling down at her coffee without any real conviction, Ginny thought back to the fight she’d had with Harry just last night, when she’d accused him of lying to her, deceiving her with his false sincerity and kindness. Had he really meant to deceive her all these years? Surely that was impossible. Surely they had been happy? But now doubt was creeping in and she could no longer separate the feelings of hurt that had felt so real in the past from those that she wasn’t sure were sincere in the present. All that filled her head were thoughts of Draco, of Harry, of that last day…

Had she buried the truth for so long from Harry that she’d eventually lost it to herself? Lost it and no longer recognized it? Remembering the day she’d finally chosen Harry, the day she’d left Draco, Ginny felt her head start to spin, sickness gripping at her and clutching possessively to her heart. She’d heard Healers and many news sources after the war going on about trauma and the long-terms effects of emotional damage but never had she considered that she could have been blind to it for so long, thinking her tears spilled in her moments of weakness over the years were nothing more than her being too emotional, just in need of a good and thorough head-shaking and maybe a cup of tea.

How wrong she had been.

Leaving her small tip on the table beside the unfinished cup of hazelnut coffee, Ginny stood up from her seat and made her way towards the bathroom at the back of the shop, glancing out past the strip of windows as she passed. The sky had only grown darker, rain falling in sheets and buckets down upon the congested streets outside, Muggles running from their vehicles with their glowing headlights to their various buildings and such, all of them hoping not to get wet.

Ginny, who would have normally smirked at the luck she had in being able to Apparate home, didn’t feel her lips even so much as twitch upwards, more than likely because home was the last place she wanted to be.

Once she ensured that she was the only occupant of the small ladies’ restroom, Ginny slipped her wand out from the sleeve of her blouse, still wearing the same clothes she’d had on when she’d gone to see Draco earlier that morning. Dimly, she realized that Harry was more than likely to make a very big deal out of how long she’d be gone but she couldn’t bring herself to care. All she had wanted was to tell Draco the truth, to explain that she hadn’t abandoned him, hadn’t ever stopped loving him… and even in the safety of his office she had been unable to tell him that, much less the circumstances around her sudden and tearful departure.

Flicking her wand and Disapparating with a sharp crack, Ginny soon found herself standing on the front stoop of her cottage, the rain here no longer falling, though the ground was still soaked. Staring at the front door before her, Ginny wondered if she had the courage to go inside and face the decisions she’d made. Finally breathing a weary sigh, Ginny let her eyes fall shut and turned the handle before stepping over the cheery welcome mat and walking inside.

The first thing she noticed was that the lights were all off with the exception of a few lamps down the hall. Ginny set down her purse and lit the other lamps in the small cottage, slipping out of her shoes and moving down the hall towards the kitchen where she quickly swallowed a mouthful of headache potion, needing to quiet the dull pounding of her aching mind.

The gruff voice of her husband should have startled her, but it didn’t, she was well used to his practiced and quiet footsteps by now, his Auror training having seeped into every aspect of his daily life over the years, even when he was completely hammered as his bloodshot eyes proved he inevitably was.

He was still in the same clothes he’d fallen asleep in the night before, his hair more mussed than she’d ever thought possible and green eyes shadowed behind his unevenly balanced glasses.

“Finally come home, did you?” he asked, a slight slur to his words.

Ginny made a small sound of acknowledgement but turned back towards the kitchen counter, not wanting to face him and wondering if another headache potion would take the burden off her shoulders as well as her mind.

Harry glared at her turned back, his fingers clenching into angry fists at his sides as he took in her cream-colored blouse and the black and white floral-printed skirt she wore.

“Did Draco think you look as beautiful as I think you do?” he asked drunkenly.

“He never made any such comment, Harry. We were talking about the children,” she lied.

“Really? For the past six hours?” he asked.

Ginny turned around to see a sheen of tears in his eyes and immediately felt awful, knowing she was the reason for his distress, the reason he’d finished off an entire bottle of Firewhisky and not even left their bedroom until now.

“Come on, Harry,” she whispered, “Let’s get you a hangover potion and get you to lie down,” she sighed.

“No.”

“Harry…”

He waved her off, looking disgusted with her, disgusted and furious and heart-broken and… She shook her head, wanting all the guilt, all of it for just once to rest on someone else’s shoulders than hers. Not wanting to argue with him or even defend herself, Ginny attempted to move past him and out of the kitchen, not even raising her eyes to his, instead looking down and averting her gaze.

He followed after her, walking so close that she had to squeeze past the hall walls in order to make it to her destination, reaching out to turn the handle to the small bathroom.

“Where were you?” he growled, suddenly snatching the wrist of her hand in his fingertips.

Ginny stared up at him, too upset to even show any emotion at all, closed off and utterly without tears, as if she’d cried herself empty all morning.

“I didn’t do anything to hurt you, Harry,” she whispered numbingly. “I just went to see him at his work. I was only there an hour, maybe less. The rest of the time I’ve been in a Muggle café, Luna says it helps to drink their coffees but… I didn’t notice any difference,” she sighed.

“You expect me to believe you were just sitting at a café around a bunch of Muggles when you started out by going to see him?” Harry asked, shaking his head in astonishment and without humor.

Ginny shrugged, muttering a faint, “Believe what you wish,” before slipping into the bathroom and locking the door with a quick spell behind her. She could hear Harry slam his open palm against the wood of the door, demanding to know what she’d done with Draco but Ginny didn’t answer. Instead she sank against the edge of the bathtub, lazily flicking her wand to cause the showerhead above to spray down water, the sounds of the water slapping down against the drainage hole and being sucked downward drowning out the sounds of her husband’s voice.

Realizing she could still hear him, Ginny flicked her wand again to turn on the wireless at the edge of the bathroom sink, Celestina Warbeck’s smooth dulcet tones weaving out of the ending song as another, more soothing rhythm took its place. Closing her eyes, Ginny leaned her head back and listened to the shower’s spray and the song’s soft melody, losing herself in memories brought on by seeing Draco that morning, memories of the last day they’d had together and of the reason she’d finally felt she’d had no other choice but to leave him.

*

*

*

Draco stood in front of the mirror, his fingers trembling as he wound the thin necktie through his fingers. Ginny stood watching him for a moment, her arms crossed and a worry line forming between her eyebrows. Biting down for only a moment on her lip, she crossed the room towards him, inserting herself between him and the mirror, reaching up to take the thin fabric from his fingers in her much more steady hands.

His breath caught for a moment and he stared down at her, his expression unreadable as she began knotting his tie, making him more presentable than he had dressed in the nearly eleven months they’d now lived together. Her lips quirked at the memory of his usual attire, often a simple jumper and muggle jeans. It seemed she had indeed had an effect on his normally meticulous taste in clothing, something he’d always jokingly said he was afraid of when they first became flatmates.

Still winding the tie through her fingers and then slipping it under the collar of his shirt, Ginny tried not to notice the sadness in Draco’s eyes or the fear, not wanting to acknowledge just how hard the day would be on him, how much it would take out of him.

“I can go with you, you know,” she whispered quietly.

He only smirked though it was rather forced. “Normally I would accept your offer, except for one small detail…” he trailed off.

“My family will be there,” she supplemented for both of them.

Draco nodded. “It would completely undo the entire secret of who you’ve been staying with all this time, don’t you think?”

Ginny begrudgingly agreed, nodding faintly. “I just don’t want… I don’t want you to face everything by yourself…” she murmured truthfully.

Draco shrugged his shoulders in a false show of indifference for her benefit, one of his many attempts over the past few days to put her at ease. “Potter already testified on my mum’s behalf, and mine,” he added with a small scowl in place. “We got off; his word may be enough to help my father,too…”

“But it may not,” Ginny said quietly, finally raising her eyes up to meet his, her fingers stilling and resting just over his chest.

Draco swallowed thickly, averting his gaze.

“Draco…”

“I’ll see you tonight, when everything’s… decided.”

“But…”

Draco pulled back from her, giving the mirror only a cursory glance, though still addressing her in a light attempt at humor. “I expect something delicious when I get back. Blueberry pancakes would be a definite upside in my day, should you be feeling generous, of course.”

Ginny placed her hands on her hips in mock annoyance. “Sometimes I think all you ever do is take advantage of my cooking,” she scowled with an exaggerated roll of her eyes which he mimicked as he walked away from her, pulling on his cloak.

“Well, you are a Weasley as I recall…” He shot her a pointed look and grinned faintly, straightening his robes and reaching for his wand on the dresser. “Just remember, I’m expecting blueberry, not that rot Potter thinks is so good.”

Ginny rolled her eyes, shaking her head slightly. “By the time you get back it’ll be nearly seven. Pancakes are hardly appropriate.”

“Pancakes,” he corrected her, “are always delicious and therefore appropriate, even for supper. Don’t you roll your eyes at me again, Gin. That’s twice now!” he sharply reprimanded her, his grey eyes bright and a smirk tugging at the corner of his lips.

“Oh yes, sir,” Ginny laughed, saluting him.

Draco smiled back and leisurely crossed the room over to her, lightly brushing his lips over her forehead and whispering quietly as if to make sure no one else could hear though they were the only two in the room. “Thank you,” he murmured. “You somehow can make any situation less horrific with a few well placed sneers and insulting jokes,” he teased.

Ginny rolled her eyes again and Draco seized her face in both of his hands, laughing loudly, his eyes bright. “That’s it right there, another roll of your eyes!” he laughed as Ginny clapped her hands over his, trying to pull back.

“Get off me!” she cried, giggling madly.

Draco held her just long enough to press his lips to hers before finally pulling away, shooting her a sly wink as he took a few steps back to Disapparate, shaking his head all the way. “What exactly am I going to tell my father when he asks why I’m so cheery to greet his tribunal?” he chuckled. “That I’m in love with a Weasley?”

Ginny burst into a fit of giggles, shaking her head in the negative. “I think that knowledge might just kill him,” she teased.

Draco nodded sharply, offering her one more brief smile before Disapparating with a crack, his earlier dark mood all but evaporated. Ginny smiled after him as she hugged herself, hoping Harry’s testimony would be enough to get the older Malfoy cleared of all charges. The last thing she wanted was for Draco to come home in any worse shape than he’d left her in. Over the past few months of living with him, the effect the war had had on Draco and his family had been inescapable, even to her when she tried to ignore it. He still had the Dark Mark, he still had the sneers of the wizarding public, he still had the threat of imprisonment hanging over his head.

Though Ginny didn’t feel her part truly mattered, she had been the one to help convince Harry of testifying on Draco and his mother’s behalf, knowing already that he didn’t truly want the Malfoys to end up in prison, not after understanding Draco’s motives and receiving Narcissa’s help in the final battle. No, Harry likely would have testified regardless of her desire for him to, but helping Lucius clear his name, that had taken some convincing and Ginny fully took the credit for talking him into that. After all, if she wanted the man pardoned after everything that had happened in her first year with Tom’s diary, then Harry really didn’t have a leg to stand on. He’d agreed and hopefully, his testimony would be enough to get Draco’s father off, just as it had worked for him and for his mother. More worried than she cared to dwell on, Ginny shook her head, hoping to clear her thoughts of the matter.

Sighing deeply, she turned and headed out of Draco’s bedroom and towards the main living room and attached kitchen, wanting to make sure she had enough batter left after only just making Draco the exact same pancakes only a few hours earlier.

Seeing a flash of unruly black hair, she jumped in surprise, her hand flying to her heart. “Harry, my God, how long have you been sitting there?” she cried.

Harry stood to his feet from the small couch, his green eyes pained though he tried to hide it. “A few minutes, long enough, though.”

“All your Auror training is really starting to make me fidgety, you know that?” she chuckled, moving past him to clean up the mess left in the kitchen. She began Vanishing the mess of scattered flour with her wand, her movements stilling for a moment. “Harry?” she called over her shoulder.

“Yes?”

She jumped again as his hands wound around her waist, the voice she’d expected from the other room coming instead from a low whispering in her ear. Her body tightened unconsciously, struggling to bring her breathing back down to normal and swallowing thickly.

“Sorry, could you not do that? You scared me again,” she breathed.

“Do what? Touch you?” he asked, his hands gently rubbing her sides, not taking even a step back from her.

“Harry…” Ginny broke off, holding her breath as he lightly pressed his lips against the curve of her neck, her scarlet hair in its pulled back braid allowing him easy access. “Harry, stop…”

He finally pulled back from her though his hands never left her waist and Ginny had to turn in his arms to face him, quickly averting her gaze from the dark shadow in his green eyes.

“Shouldn’t you be at the trial?” she asked breathlessly, glancing past him and at the still messy kitchen counter-tops.

“In a few minutes, yeah,” he shrugged. “I wanted to see you first, have a chance to stop by when Malfoy wasn’t here, watching you like a hawk.”

Ginny lightly snorted, privately thinking Harry was more of the hawk than Draco had ever been.

“What’s so funny?” he asked with a light grin down at her and Ginny worriedly bit down on her lower lip, feeling a pang seeing the same boy she’d been in love with for the past several years smiling down at her. Her heart still melted around him at times when she saw the Harry she once knew, but she just as often became tense and guarded around him, knowing he was still expecting an answer from her, an answer she wasn’t prepared to give.

“What did you come to say to me, then?” she asked almost tiredly, always afraid of the same question that tied her emotions in knots, making it easier to just hide them from him.

Without preamble, his green eyes darkened, his expression hardening with weariness. “How much longer?” he asked.

He’d asked the same question months earlier, then having been all too understanding when he’d agreed to give her the time and space she needed after his unexpected proposal. Now, though, he was fast losing his patience and seemed to ask every few days and it was making Ginny look less and less forward to seeing him.

She breathed a deep sigh and closed her eyes, leaning back against the counter. “Harry, I love you, but I have told you again and again now that I can’t do this right now. I can’t marry you. Not today, not in a week. You said you’d give me time…” she pleaded.

“I did, nearly a year now.”

“And I’m still not ready to get married…” she exclaimed.

“When then?” he demanded, his voice becoming less friendly, his jaw tightening. “You say you love me, that this was only a temporary solution to give you time away from your family, from their pressuring you.”

“And now you’re the one pressuring me!” Ginny cried, trying to hold in her frustration but unable to, especially when he was still standing so close to her in the home that was hers and Draco’s, Draco whose face was flitting through her mind with an ache. “Harry, this really isn’t the time to rehash this all again,” she whispered wearily. “Draco’s father’s facing the tribunal and you have to go and testify. You can’t be late because of me, nothing’s going to be sorted out now between us that wasn’t yesterday.”

“I really think you owe it to me to put a little more effort into this,” Harry said coldly. Ginny flinched at his tone but he was standing so close that she couldn’t not meet his eyes, almost paralyzed by them, emerald green but darkened by some strange shadow.

“Harry, I am still only sixteen…”

“You’ll be seventeen in a few months. What will your excuse be then?

“Stop it, Harry!” she snapped, “I can’t make a rational decision when you keep hounding me like this. I asked for space and time and you promised to give that to me.”

“And you promised to come back to me,” he replied darkly. Ginny stilled, her response dying in her throat. Harry bent his head closer to hers, leaning his forehead against her own, his voice lowering to what he meant to be a soothing whisper but that only made her stomach churn with guilt and her heart press painfully against her ribs. “You promised to come back to me,” he repeated. “You loved me.”

“I still do,” she argued back weakly.

“And you love him.”

Ginny sucked in a sharp breath.

“You can’t have it both ways, Gin. You need to make a choice,” he whispered.

“Why are you doing this now?” she asked brokenly, wanting to pull back from him. “You should be at the Ministry,” she reminded him again.

“Is that all you care about? What happens to Malfoy?”

“No, Harry, I just… you have responsibilities… You promised Draco you’d testify for his father…”

“You’ve made promises of your own; perhaps you ought to honor them before asking anything of me.”

“What are you saying?” Ginny asked, suddenly fearful.

Harry swallowed thickly, pressing his forehead to hers once more, his hands still around her waist. “I’m saying I can’t take much more of your empty promises,” he whispered. “You’ve waited in indecision for long enough now. I can’t keep watching from the sidelines as you fall in love with him. God, you’re already living together…”

“It’s not like that!” Ginny pleaded.

“But it will be, if you don’t make a decision now.”

“Why today?” she asked with a whispered breath, suddenly feeling that she understood much more than she should about what was happening between them. This wasn’t just another of Harry’s pleadings with her; there was something different and it scared her.

“Maybe, after how selfless I’ve been, how much patience that I’ve given you, I’m just not feeling very generous towards Malfoy anymore.”

Ginny’s eyes widened in horror, feeling as though she couldn’t breathe. “You wouldn’t dare…”

Harry swallowed thickly, unnamed emotions swirling behind his green eyes. “I’ve had enough, Gin. I want an answer. I have given you everything you asked and I can’t keep waiting for you to drag me around by your little finger. I deserve an answer, not an extension so you can only fall further in love with him.”

“And what if I say no?” she asked quietly, seeing the pain reflected from her eyes in Harry’s.

He clenched his jaw, struggling to keep his voice steady. “Then that’s your answer. Just tell me, I have a testimony to give and I don’t have much time.”

For a moment, a horrible fear shot through Ginny’s very heart, panicking at the idea of what Harry might say if she distressed him enough with a refusal now, only minutes before he took the stand.

“What will you do?” she asked fearfully, her voice trembling at the thought of Draco bearing the pain of his father’s imprisonment, after everything he’d already been through since the war.

Harry shrugged listlessly in response. “I won’t throw the trial, if that’s what you’re asking,” he murmured in a dead voice.

Ginny tried to calm her erratic breathing, squeezing her eyes shut as she felt tears pressing upon her. She wanted to make him swear to it, swear that he’d do everything to keep Draco’s father from being imprisoned and locked out of his son’s life forever. Ginny wanted so desperately to make Harry promise that wouldn’t happen but she knew it was cruel, too cruel to ask from him only to reject the boy she’d been in love with for years now. Truly, she never had completely given Harry up, but she wondered if she’d be able to give Draco up instead. Perhaps it would cause them all less pain, and if it was enough to ensure Harry stayed in his right mind during the trial, that he didn’t lash out with anger against Draco for Ginny rejecting him…

Biting down so hard on her lip that she felt sure she’d draw blood, Ginny wondered if this pain was anything like what Harry claimed she’d put him through, drawn out over months of telling him she’d come back to him, promising she would marry him when she was ready only to let him watch as she started to fall in love with another instead. In a shocking moment of utter self-hatred, Ginny realized it was her fault that her time to decide between he two men she loved had come down to this, a few minutes in a messy kitchen, the trial just minutes away…

“Alright,” she choked. “Alright, I-I’ll pack my bags tonight…”

Harry’s shoulders sagged in relief and he almost kissed her, catching himself only a moment before his lips could brush over hers, staring into her eyes with fear. “I’m not… I’m not forcing you to pick me, Ginny…” he trailed off, almost asking it seemed.

Ginny fought the desire to sneer at him, to push him away from her in her anger, instead calmly taking a deep breath. “No,” she whispered. “No, Harry, you didn’t do anything.”

His breathing was shallow and just as pained as hers had been moments before, trying to reassure himself of the finality of her answer in some way, fearfully realizing that this was not the happy agreement he’d waited for from her. “I waited…” he whispered, “I waited for you for months… I could wait longer…”

“You and I both know that you can’t,” Ginny replied numbingly, feeling sick inside.

“You’re right,” he nodded shakily. “I was patient, and I… I was understanding… I just, I just couldn’t handle you putting off rejecting me any longer.”

“I know,” Ginny choked, a sob catching in her throat that she hadn’t anticipated, suddenly feeling a horrible weight of guilt descending on her thin shoulders, thinking Harry was right. He was selfless and kind and patient, he always had been but she’d been too cruel with his emotions, never returning them, pushing him until the point that he’d finally demanded an answer. How she wished it hadn’t been today…

“I’m sorry, Harry…” she cried, tears now falling down her cheeks, still standing pressed against the kitchen counter. Harry immediately moved to comfort her, never realizing just how convoluted her emotions had become as they twisted about themselves. She’d hidden her true feelings from Harry for so long that she no longer recognized them, supplanting guilt for the anger she should have felt at his pressuring her. Within minutes, she was crying so hard that she was shaking against him, feeling rotten to the core for what she’d put him through and what she would put Draco through. She was nothing, horrible, deserving of nothing.

She didn’t deserve either one of them.

Harry whispered comfortingly in her ear, trying to soothe her. Ginny caught a glimpse of the clock behind him, her breath hitching in her throat. “The trial, you have to go. You’re already late, Harry, please…”

He nodded then, quickly kissing her cheek and telling her he loved her, moving back to quickly Disapparate, making one final promise to her before he went, that they’d sort everything else out later…

With a crack, he vanished and Ginny took a shuddering breath, her knees suddenly buckling out from under her as she sank to the kitchen floor, scattered dishes and flour surrounding her, one of the bowls falling and shattering into ceramic shards against the floorboards, the crash causing her to flinch at the sound. Her tear-filled eyes flitted around the apartment endlessly, picturing when Draco had been laughing with her only a few minutes beforehand.

“Oh, God,” she cried out, burying her face in her hands, shaking with the force of her tears. “God, God, what have I done?” she sobbed.

Practically sinking into the floorboards, Ginny fell into a curled up ball on the floor, crying so hard that the kitchen cabinets around her became distorted through the haze of her tears, unable to see anything of the life she’d had with Draco.

Draco…

She had to get out of there. She had to escape the evidence of him all around her, everything there had ever been of the two of them living together. In the hours that Draco spent praying for his father’s release and that Harry spent testifying in court, Ginny hurried through the flat, packing her bags in a whirlwind, tears coursing down her cheeks.

She had to get away from him.

She had to close down her emotions, her feelings, she had to stop the tears from falling though nothing helped, nothing but the steady packing of her suitcase, the vanishing of the tulips lying in the kitchen and on her nightstand.

She stripped the walls of her bedroom, emptied out her drawers.

She was going to marry Harry…

And all she could think of was that she was tearing herself to pieces.

The guilt fell so heavily upon her that she struggled to breathe, knowing only that she didn’t deserve Harry after everything she’d put him through and she owed it to him to finally be the loving wife he’d wanted from her. She owed him for all the pain she’d put him through.

She owed Draco an apology too, even an explanation… but she didn’t have the strength for either.

Her absence would have to be enough, because she didn’t trust herself enough to do the right thing anymore.

She had filled her trunk and then started filling her last suitcase, the small collection of belongings she’d first had moving in having expanded to so much more baggage over those eleven months, more baggage than she’d ever recover from.

When she Apparated back from her second trip of returning her things home, Ginny froze at the sight of Draco standing in the middle of the living room, looking around in confusion and hurt. His grey eyes found hers, any trace of his earlier relief that his father had been cleared of all charges, all but vanished from his face. Instead he was staring at her in hurt, unable to comprehend what was going on.

Ginny felt her throat close up and hurriedly pushed past him, her shoulders shaking as she dissolved once more into tears. He chased after her, demanding to know what was going on, why she was leaving him.

Ginny only shook her head, staring at the release form in his clenched fist, wondering numbingly if it had really been worth it. Staring up into Draco’s hurt grey eyes, she wondered if she would have hurt him anyway, if she’d stayed, if she’d gone. All she ever did was destroy her loved ones it seemed. She couldn’t make Harry happy, she couldn’t make Draco happy.

She destroyed everything she touched and after hours of crying and sinking into madness without a soul to help hold her up, Ginny truly believed that. She didn’t see the act of desperation that had come in her agreement to marry Harry, she didn’t see the cleared charges and the life of prison she’d saved Draco’s father from. No. All she saw was Draco’s face and his normally silver eyes, clouded in pain and filling with tears that she’d never once seen him shed before now but which were openly streaking down his face, begging her to stay.

He took a step towards her, his hands trembling as he gripped her shoulders in his, his silver eyes only centimeters from her brown ones, filled with even more tears. She was sobbing and as she refused to give him an explanation, struggled to stop crying in front of him, she really and truly lost a part of herself, leaving him behind when she walked out the front door, her last suitcase in hand and tears streaking endlessly down her face.

“I’m sorry,” she cried.

Draco stared after her as she stepped out of the door and out of his life, his father’s release form lying forgotten on the carpet behind him. He watched her leave, never realizing that the reason she’d left him, to try and protect him from losing his father, was all explained in a neat, ministry-issued form, lying at his feet, forgotten in the wake of her absence.

*

*

*

Ginny let out a broken and heart-wrenching sob as she leaned back against the tub’s frame, the steady downpour of water behind her sounding like the broken fragments of her heart, each of them shattering against the shower bottom in the slew of her memories, of what she’d given up.

The soft tones of the Wizarding Wireless faded into the background, finally ending with the last piano chords. It would have been sad and so powerfully emotional but it wasn’t the melancholy chords that tore at her heart. It was her memories. They’d been strong enough to continue ripping her heart to shreds for the past twenty-six years…

Gulping back tears that would never stop, Ginny wondered if they ever could.

*

A million miles away or so it seemed, Draco Malfoy lay awake in his bed, staring unseeingly up at the ornate ceiling overhead, his wife’s sleeping form lying beside him, the steady in and out of her breathing bringing him little comfort from the darkness of his tumultuous thoughts.

She’d finally come to see him again.

Ginny had finally forced herself back into his life and then ripped herself straight out again, leaving his chest aching with a searing pain he was sure would never fade.

Swallowing thickly, Draco wondered at the feelings battling for the will of his heart, the guilt he felt towards his wife, the swell of his heart as he’d held Ginny in his arms and heard the sounds of her voice, choked with tears though it had been. He had felt complete when she’d stepped into his office, letting him wind his arms around her and hold her, but it was a painful kind of complete, like forcefully shoving a jagged piece into his equally torn apart soul. They had once fit but they’d become too damaged by life and choices and hurt to ever be whole again.

It made him want to die inside.

Blinking past the tears he felt building behind his eyes, Draco tried to focus past the blur on the decorated ceiling overhead, trying to escape the horrible thought that clung to him with a draining force. In his fist was the crumpled wedding invitation that Ginny had sent him twenty-five years before, the parchment now yellowed with age and stained by old tears, and fresh ones.

He’d found it shortly after retiring to their bedroom, Astoria still downstairs. He’d found it at once, hidden amongst his old Hogwarts trunk in the back of his closet. Ginny had never been in his life during their Hogwarts years, but it had seemed fitting to hide her letter there all those years ago. His time at Hogwarts was long over, as was his time with Ginny in his life.

He had found the old wedding invitation, lying untouched, read only once that night before he married Astoria, two years too late to have ever attended the lavish event that was the wedding of Harry Potter and Ginevra Weasley.

Now, twenty-five years too late, Draco had read the letter again, not the formal invitation on its cream-colored stationary, but the shaking script of Ginny’s handwriting, begging him to come, pleading with him for just one last time.

Squeezing his eyes tightly shut and refocusing on the ceiling once more, Draco pictured her anxious face, staring fearfully out past her wedding veil, searching a crowd for his blond hair and realizing, numbingly, that he wasn’t there.

He should have opened the wedding invitation.

He should have found her note.

He should have stopped them and somehow saved her from the choice she’d made to leave him, the choice that had its reasons he still couldn’t even begin to understand.

He should have never let her walk out of the door of their flat.

Swallowing past the hot tears in his throat, Draco again pictured her face, her brown eyes searching for him, her lips pressed tightly together, trying to hold back tears upon realizing he wasn’t coming, he wasn’t coming to save her as she’d saved him.

Draco’s eyes flew wide as he sucked in a sudden breath, his heart pounding against his ribs as he tried to retain that fleeting thought, a thought he’d never before had and couldn’t hold onto, couldn’t grasp from fading back into the recesses of his mind. Throwing himself up from the bed, Draco didn’t pay his rudely awoken wife the slightest attention, pacing restlessly and cursing to himself.

“No, no, NO! You just had it, you bloody fool!” he snarled, tearing at his own hair.

“Draco?” Astoria cried in astonishment, watching her husband burn a hole in the carpet with his pacing. “Draco, what are you talking about?”

He didn’t hear her, he was running back through his mind, picturing Ginny’s face as the tabloids had shown her, looking off in an almost distant kind of shock. The news rags had cited her lovely face as having ‘stared off into her future with her beloved husband, no doubt picturing the wonderful life they would have together and in awe of it’. Neither the reporters covering the event nor Draco had seen the truth; he hadn’t yet read her letter, hadn’t realized she had been waiting for him, only he’d never come, he’d never come to save her…

Groaning in frustration and cursing, Draco ripped at his hair once more. He was so close. He could feel it, see it in her shaking script, her pleading words burned forever against his eyelids. He could sense it in her quiet desperation that she had expected something of him, how desperately she had tried to tell him something of it only this morning when she’d come to see him.

He couldn’t name it.

It was there, openly staring at him in the face but Draco saw nothing, nothing but the family portraits hanging on the walls of their master bedroom, Astoria and his wedding portrait, one with Scorpius as a child, curled up in his mother’s arms, the portraits of each of their parents’ wedding days, his mother and father staring back at him.

Draco didn’t pay the portraits the slightest attention, staring past them and back into the recesses of his memory, seeing only Ginny.