Work Text:
Ginny sneaks through the patch of trees at the edge of the property, slipping through the wards of the Manor grounds as if they were a garden gate. The magic tingles against her flushed skin, welcoming her with a familiar feeling of warmth. It doesn’t take her long to spot the figure waiting in the shadow at the edge of the meadow. Malfoy stands proud and tall, but when he sees her a grin spreads over his face. Beside him, two brooms rest against a tree and Ginny hurries over, excited to start her favourite part of the day.
“You’re late,” he states.
“I’m perfectly on time,” she shoots back. “You’re just dreadfully early, you prick.”
Ginny pounds her fists against the barrier, but it holds firm under her assault. She is locked out. Why did Malfoy lock her out? Everything was fine yesterday. What changed? Did she do something wrong? She can’t remember doing anything, let alone something bad enough to warrant being locked out of the wards.
You knew this might happen, a treacherous voice inside her whispers. This isn’t the first time someone decides to leave you behind. Ginny bats the voice away. This is not the same. It’s just a misunderstanding and everything will clear up in no time.
Any minute now, Malfoy will appear in the distance, see her and come over, demanding to know why she kept him waiting. She slides down the side of the barrier and waits, but Malfoy never comes, their usual meeting spot remains empty and the Quidditch pitch stays deserted. When Ginny finally leaves, the emptiness crawls inside of her and stays.
“Come on, little Ginger. Come and catch me!”
“Hey, that’s unfair!” she calls as she tilts forward and gives chase. He’s a good flier, but she’s better and he knows it, which is why he secured himself a head start. They speed over the maddow, so low their passing causes ripples in the grass below. Ginny stretches forward, her fingers brushing and closing over prickly bristles. She tugs and they tumble to the ground in a mess of shrieks and laughter.
Afterwards, she remains in the grass, enjoying the feel of the long stalks tickling her bare skin. Ginny doesn’t know whether it’s from flying too fast, from laughing too hard or from the thrill of the victory, but she still can’t quite catch her breath and butterflies dance in her stomach as a shadow falls over her. She blinks slowly, trying to focus on the form above her against the glaring backdrop of sunlight.
“That was a foul,” Draco drawls. “I’ll require an apology or I will exact revenge so gruesome that you…”
She laughs in his face, despite the fact that her heart is beating double time. “Ha! The big bad Death Eater doesn’t even know how to finish that sentence.”
“Ex-Death Eater,” he grumbles, his nose scrunching up in affront.
“Oh, come on. You know I’m just taking the piss.”
“Not very ladylike of you, is it?” He leans closer, resting his hands beside her head.
“Oh, but I’m not a lady.” She smirks back at him, suddenly lost in his eyes. This close, they are interspersed with golden flecks, like sunlight caught in ice. A strand of white blonde hair falls in his face and on an instinct, she lifts her hand to brush it away.
Draco pulls away before her fingers can connect. His sudden absence leaves her momentarily blinded by the sunlight.
“We’d better get going now.”
She sits in the shadow of a tree. The coarse fabric of the folding chair is itchy against her skin, but Ginny does not care. She just sits and stares off into space as her brothers fly past. They never have enough brooms for her to join them on the field. She stays there when the wind picks up and the thunderclouds roll in. She doesn’t move when the sky breaks open and tries to drown her. The rain tastes salty on her skin.
At some point the summer heat grows so oppressive that even flying becomes too exhausting. Ginny lies in the shadow of a tree, eyes closed and content to simply exist. Even when she feels the familiar tickle on her nose, she keeps her eyes shut tight. She knows the second she opens them he will pull away, like an elusive deer and wonders what it might take for that to change. Instead, she concentrates on the way his breath ghosts across her cheek, feels the faint heat of his body radiate across the narrow space between them. It’s different from the humid summer heat around them. More alluring certainly.
When she opens the door, the air inside the ice cream parlour hits her like a shockwave or maybe it’s the sight within that makes her freeze. Oblivious, her brothers clamour behind her, trying to shove her out of the doorway.
“Oh, look what vermin weasled its way in here.” Gregory Goyle’s voice is overly loud as he addresses his friends.
Unfortunately, the provocation falls on fertile ground. Her brothers forget about the ice cream. They have been itching for a fight all summer. All they needed was a target to pin their anger to, now it has been served to them on a silver platter.
“Come on, let’s get out of here before we catch something contagious.” The boy who speaks looks unlike the boy who played Quidditch with her all summer. His face is back to the sneering mask she despises and his voice is monotonous. The words crawl down her spine like an ice cube. Slipping and sliding until she shivers and her stomach twists. He doesn’t even glance her way once as he takes his ice cream and moves toward the exit.
“What do you want, ferret?” Ron growls, or is it George? The ringing in her ears makes it impossible to distinguish their voices. All she sees are eyes cold as a glacier and without a hint of sunlight.
The fight is short but brutal, never mind that they are wizards. Who needs wands when you can use your fists? Needless to say that they leave without ice cream, but Ginny feels cold anyway.
That night, when everyone is asleep, she hides in her room and cries. Cries and cries until she can’t breathe and the skin on her face feels tender to the touch.
Ginny startles awake, her heart pounding against her ribs. She has almost convinced herself that it must have been a dream, when she hears a clacking sound from her left. She whips her head around to the window, but there is nothing. The sound echoes again, more insistent this time. So she gets up and taps over to the window, the floor cold against her bare feet.
Tentatively, she steps closer and unlocks the mechanism, lifting the pane of glass carefully because she knows it is prone to getting stuck halfway, or maybe it’s because she isn’t sure she really wants to know what is going on outside. She’s had enough surprises for one day. Thank you very much.
But Ginny is nothing if not curious and so she leans out into the cool night air.
“Gin!” The whisper-shout makes her heart soar and her stomach clench into knots . As if magnetized, her gaze dips to find white hair reflecting the moonlight. He stands half hidden between the scraggly scrubs of their garden, glancing up at her like a lost puppy.
It’s all an act. It must be, because this boy can’t be the arrogant arse who locked her out of the wards and got into a fistfight with her brothers.
She desperately wants to hate him, would like to think Malfoy is just a cold bastard , but she was there with him at Hogwarts during the Carrows’ reign. He obeyed every order with his mask in place, only for her to find him dry heaving in an empty classroom later. She knows there are two Malfoys, but a tiny part of her hopes the one she spent her summer with is the real one. The Draco, who played Quidditch with her, laughed with her and teased her relentlessly. But even that Draco wouldn’t cross the line he had drawn between them, a line drawn in the sand but cemented with rejection.
Ginny goes to him. He never comes to her. Never. And when she gets too close he pulls back. It has never been the other way around, but here he is, in her garden, in front of her window and even as her heart rejoices her stomach twists in anger .
They remain there, staring at each other and neither saying anything. They stand there for way, way too long, until her telling him to go away becomes a moot point, because if she really wanted him gone she would have told him by now.
“I know I screwed up, but can I explain, please, Gin? Will you let me in?”
And she wants to say yes and she doesn’t want to say yes. In the end, she settles for something in between. She meets him in the garden, her feet sliding across the dew moist grass as she drags them towards her goal.
“So?” Ginny doesn’t know where to put her hands, doesn’t know where to look, because looking at him hurts and if she does she might cave any second. In the end she settles for leaning against a gnarled tree and looking at the moon. The crescent hangs low in the sky, almost full but not quite. He settles beside her. Meeting at night is not the same as meeting in the day and the cool night air does little to dampen the heat rolling off him.
“You know my father was released from Askaban a few weeks ago to live out his last days at the manor, right?”
She hums noncommittally, having read the papers but not really knowing anything. They never talk about their families.
“Things have been… strained ever since.” His voice is raw, stumbling over the words and almost choking on them, but still, he carries on. “Somehow, he and mother got wind of our meetings. They told me, in no uncertain terms, that I would be disowned if I continued to associate with the likes of you and then proceeded to lock down the Manor.”
“So what are you doing here then?” she asks. The dread is still coiled in her stomach, roiling and twisting tighter with each word he does or does not say.
“I just… after the fight… I just…”
Ginny closes her eyes, tries to pretend this is just a dream. A perfect, cruel dream. One where lines of concrete are drawn in the sand, but a flood makes the ground so murky they end up toppled over and askew. She doesn’t even know which side of the line she stood on anyway, probably crossed it ages ago. The line you’re not supposed to cross if you ever want to turn back and this – watching him sway back and forth along the edge – this is torture.
“You know what, Malfoy?” Ginny asks, opening her eyes because she can’t take one more second of this. “I’m not sure I care anymore. I’m tired of waiting for you to decide whether or not I am worthy of your company.”
His eyes sparkle in the moonlight as he sways closer, crowding her in and effectively blocking her way back to the house. She should go back, she should, but as he leans down with that devilish grin on his face – the one she adores – her breath falters and she forgets.
“Oh Ginny, the question was never whether you are worthy, it was whether I am,” Draco murmurs. “And I desperately want to be worthy of you, which is why I finally told them to go fuck themselves.”
He dips his head down - across the line - and finally claims her mouth with his.