FIC: Draw Down the Lines (HP -- Draco/Ginny, Harry/Ginny & a bit of Harry/Draco)
Title: Draw Down the Lines
Author: katjad
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 3,875
Pairings: Draco/Ginny, Harry/Ginny and a bit of Harry/Draco -- but really it's all about the Draco/Ginny.
DISCLAIMER: All characters, situations, etc. belong to J.K. Rowling and her publishers.
Summary: She thought he was kidding at first.
Author's Notes: So I thought that after 48,000 words of Crepúsculo I'd said my piece on Draco/Ginny. But it seems that I then went and wrote 3,800 words of Draco/Ginny porn, so huh. I guess I lied. Thanks to actriz-k for looking this over.
Draw Down the Lines
When she arrived he was already naked, sitting in the armchair with his legs splayed. She didn't waste time. She pulled off her trousers and knickers and knelt over him; his cock pressed at her. She put her hands on his shoulders and his hands were on her hips and she sank down onto him -- no matter how many times they did this it always made her gasp -- and she rocked forward and back, rode him faster now, and he reached down and stroked her clit -- somehow he knew how to touch her just so -- and her orgasm built and took over and he was coming too and she rode it out until both of them were spent.
They didn't waste time leaving, either. She straightened up and rolled off of him; they spelled themselves clean and dressed and were gone.
-----
She thought he was kidding at first.
"Weasley," he said, "I think we should fuck."
She stared at him for a moment before saying, "You're a bloody pervert, Malfoy," and making to leave.
"No, really, I mean it," he said, cornering her.
She'd slapped him at that, which didn't seem to phase him much, and left.
But he wasn't kidding. For days afterwards she caught him looking at her over dinner, in the hallways. There was really no avoiding him: Grimmauld Place was only but so big, and since Hogwarts hadn't reopened in the fall, she was stuck here -- "It's safer than the Burrow, dear" -- doing coursework for the sixth year she wasn't in, which Professor Lupin corrected when he wasn't busy infiltrating the werewolf pack. Sometimes the Order gave her things to research in the Black library, but while the books there were great for telling you how to cast Dark curses, they didn't much concern themselves with giving the countercurses, so she wasn't having much luck. She suspected the Order was giving her assignments more to keep her busy than anything else.
As for Malfoy, he'd gone to Professor Lupin for help not long after Dumbledore's funeral in June. The Death Eaters wanted him dead, it seemed, and after the Order interrogated him under Veritaserum and found out that he hadn't actually killed Dumbledore, they'd taken him in. He hadn't been outside of 12 Grimmauld Place in five months.
Ginny had, of course, but only in the company of "at least two adults, and your brothers don't count," which generally made it more trouble than it was worth.
It wasn't just her and Malfoy in the house -- there were always a couple of Order members around at least -- but she and Malfoy were the only ones who were always there.
-----
He crept into her room well after midnight and slid under the covers. She wanted to tell him that she was too tired, that she hadn't slept well in days and that she'd almost fallen asleep before he came in, but he was curled around her back and his cock was hard against her arse and it was easier to just give in, to roll over and shove his pants down and her nightgown up and by the time he was inside her she'd forgotten why she didn't want to do this; it was bloody fantastic, the hard slim weight of him bearing down into her, their mouths touching but not kissing, panting together as he thrust and came and she spiraled down and down.
-----
She was still in love with Harry; that was the thing. She was still in love with Harry even though he was an idiot, even though he didn't understand that breaking up with her didn't make anything better and actually made a number of things worse, but she'd decided to wait for him, lame as it was; it was the only role he would give her and she'd always been too willing to take something over nothing where Harry was concerned.
But it had been five months. He'd been off on that stupid quest he wouldn't tell her about for five months, and he'd taken her stupid brother and Hermione with him, and no matter what he said about needing her to be safe it still boiled down to the fact that he wanted Ron and Hermione to be with him and not her.
It had been a month since Malfoy propositioned her, and although he hadn't said anything since then she was sure the offer still stood. She wasn't going to take it, but it was nice at least to know that she was wanted.
-----
He fucked her in the bathroom once while the Order met just down the hall. Ginny wasn't not old enough to join and even though Malfoy was, neither he nor the Order especially wanted him to.
The hall bathroom was tiny and done in a hideous burgundy print; it was debatable whether the size or the decor was more objectionable. Personally Ginny thought it was the wallpaper, but the only way to fit two people in the bathroom and close the door was if one of them stood on the toilet, which she did, hiking up the skirt she'd worn knickerless today, and Malfoy closed the door and locked it and then dug his fingers into her hips and pressed his tongue up into her until she'd bitten her lip bloody trying not to cry out, and then he pulled her down and fucked her with her back against the wall and her legs locked around his hips and when she came she slammed her hand against the door. At dinner her mother asked if they'd heard the noise earlier and Malfoy replied, deadpan, that he thought there was a ghoul.
-----
It was the letter that did it. She'd written Harry faithfully every Sunday, and after the first eight letters went unanswered she'd stopped expecting an answer at all, but she'd kept on writing because she felt that she should and by then it was habit, anyway.
In the middle of November she got the letter. It was delivered by a nondescript barn owl, but she would have recognized Harry's handwriting anywhere.
The letter was one line long: Please don't write to me anymore. It wasn't even signed.
And that did it, that bloody well did it. She'd been wanting Harry too long and too hard and all of that want had to go somewhere. She found Malfoy in his room, spelled the door shut and was pulling her jeans off before she even gave herself the chance to think about it and it was nothing like that afternoon with Harry by the lake, nothing at all.
-----
Malfoy's cock was too big to fit in her mouth all at once, but he liked it when she gripped the base and twisted, and he liked it when she played with his balls, and when she stroked the skin behind them he made a high-pitched keening sound so she was pretty sure he liked that, too.
The rug was threadbare where she was kneeling on it, but it didn't much matter: a final twist of the base of his cock and he was coming in her mouth, salty and hot. And there was something almost beautiful about this, his cock in her mouth and her knees on the floor: for a moment she was there and thinking of nothing else.
-----
Ginny was pretty sure he could read her mind sometimes. There were days when she really hated Harry, hated him more than anything, and in the middle of their fucking Malfoy would grind out, "Fuck Potter," like he knew that was just what she was thinking. On those days she couldn't have agreed with him more.
-----
Harry, Ron and Hermione came to 12 Grimmauld Place for Christmas. They didn't tell anyone they were coming -- Molly's letters, too, had gone unanswered -- and Ginny hated the way her heart leapt up when she saw the three of them in the entryway brushing the snow off their shoes. She didn't want to be so happy, so unimaginably happy just at the fact that Harry was there, but she was in love with him, she couldn't help it, and she wanted him so badly in spite of it all.
She saw how her mother fawned over Ron and Hermione but even more over Harry -- "the poor dear, he's under such a burden" -- and Ginny knew her mother didn't know any more about the nature of that burden than she did, but it must have been a taxing thing: Harry was thinner than ever. They all were, Ginny thought, even her and Malfoy; it was like shaking a bag of bones when they fucked -- but Harry was here and that didn't matter.
The entire Order was in awe of him and Ginny didn't know why; she didn't think they could possibly know what Harry, Ron and Hermione were up to if her mother didn't. But Lupin clapped Harry on the shoulder as if to make sure he was really there and Fred and George punched him on the arm and didn't really make jokes and on Christmas morning her father drew Harry into an awkward hug and when he pulled away Ginny swore he was crying.
She herself -- well. She was much as to be expected. She couldn't eat and she was jittery and spastic, but none of that was new; she'd been putting her elbow in the butter around Harry since she was ten, and she'd learned to control herself a little by now. She'd gotten to be almost normal around him last year. But she hadn't seen him in nearly seven months and she'd gotten out of practice.
She wasn't the only one. She saw the way Malfoy looked at Harry and recongnized it, because it was the same way she could feel herself looking at Harry. And she remembered that Malfoy too used to count the days by Harry, that he used to make it his life's work to get under Harry's skin, and that he'd had little success. Last year he'd been too busy trying to get Dumbledore killed to go after Harry but that didn't mean he was done with him. The more Ginny watched him the more she was sure she wasn't the only one who wanted Harry Potter. She'd never given much thought to the whys of her and Malfoy -- she'd been trying her best not to think about her and Malfoy at all -- but if asked she would have said that he was with her to spite Harry, because that was what he did. But now she wasn't so sure.
-----
She wasn't going to go to him while Harry was there, but she did, and maybe it was a mistake because he looked at her like he was trying to see through her, trying to find someone else beneath him, and it was awkward and perfunctory and reminded her more of that afternoon with Harry at the lake than anything else, which made it even worse. She'd never dressed so quickly in her life.
-----
It was hard to get Harry alone -- she was certain that he was avoiding her, actually -- but finally she managed it. She placed her hands on his shoulders and he let her, but when she leaned forward to kiss him he said, "Ginny, I can't."
She didn't move. "What do you mean, you can't?"
It couldn't have gone any way but badly from there. Harry didn't really know how to let you down easy and she supposed that had always been part of the appeal, but she hated what she had been trying to be for him, a compromise, the girl who wasn't his girlfriend but was, the girl he had to come back to -- and she'd known what she was getting into at the start but still she hated him for making her want to do it and herself for following through and after Christmas dinner she found Malfoy and fucked him in her room, loudly, with the door unlocked.
She hadn't meant to say anything to him about Harry; she'd thought she would keep it as something only she would know; but she wanted someone else to hurt and as he fucked her she said, "You want him too, don't you?"
He didn't deny it, didn't say anything at all, but he began to fuck her harder and really that was everything she needed to know. They only had two kinds of fucking, she thought, hard and harder; this was the latter, and the only thing that could be done was ride it out.
-----
January sucked. Harry never apologized, never wrote, and while Ginny kept writing to him it was only because she was too stubborn to quit. Her letters were shorter each time; there was increasingly little she could say to him that wasn't, You're an asshole and I wish I could fall out of love with you and I kind of wish you would die. There was nothing bearable about it, and the fact that Harry didn't want Malfoy, either, didn't make things any better.
They were fucking two, three times a day now, nothing subtle about it. They fucked in all the bedrooms and on the kitchen counter and once on the hallway floor while her mother was downstairs cooking dinner, fucked naked, loudly and unhurriedly, because what did it matter if someone saw? No one was paying attention to them, anyway. The Death Eaters were massacring people by the dozen and part of Diagon Alley had burned last week and the Ministry was full of fools; the Order was too small and stretched too thin and really no once cared at all if Draco Malfoy fucked Ginny Weasley on the hallway floor in 12 Grimmauld Place.
The feeling was mutual. The Order needed people so badly that they wouldn't have been able to afford to say no if she'd offered to join, underaged or no, but she wasn't offering. Who gave a shit if Harry Potter defeated the Dark Lord? She'd been living in Grimmauld Place for eight months now; she was starting to get used to it. Even if the Dark Lord won, it wasn't like she had any reason to leave.
-----
He fucked her in the garden once, amidst the dead and dying plants. He charmed the air around them warm, but the magic that warmed the ground couldn't spell away the chill that got into her bones. The garden hadn't been tended to in years and roots and stones dug into her back; but it was over quickly, much more quickly than she would have thought.
-----
Somehow they'd all gotten it in their heads that Harry would defeat Voldemort in June, because that was when things between Harry and Voldemort always seemed to happen, at the end of the school year. But Harry had left school and she supposed he hadn't really seen any reason to wait because by the end of February the war was over. Harry had killed Voldemort and the right side had won and there was talk of making Harry Minister of Magic, even, which was ridiculous; he'd be crap at it.
There were parades and parties and ceremonies, of course, and Harry was awarded the Order of Merlin, First Class -- probably they only wanted to make him Minister because they wished they had an Order of Merlin that was better than First Class, the Order of Merlin that you gave out for saving Britain from certain doom and probably the rest of the world, too -- and after it had all died down a bit Harry came to her and asked her if she'd take him back, if she'd forgive him, and she said yes, because really, when had she ever told him no?
-----
The last time she and Malfoy fucked was the day they learned the war was over. There was something odd about their fucking, something she couldn't place until she realized he was gripping her hips, but not hard enough to bruise; they were fucking slowly, gently, like they were fragile and this was the end, which it was. Before she left he kissed her and there was really nothing to say; there never had been. And she was going to Harry. Harry didn't want Malfoy and he never had; but last year he'd wanted her, and now that the war was over she thought he might want her again, and if this were a contest between her and Malfoy then she had won.
-----
Harry loved her, he told her so nightly, and if she missed the way Malfoy fucked her through the mattress without asking if it was okay, she didn't say anything, because this was Harry and she'd always wanted him and now she had him and nothing was more important than that.
This was how she'd always hoped things would turn out: she was with Harry and Ron was with Hermione and her mother was planning their weddings. The war was over and no one important had died and why was she so bloody miserable?
She didn't know how to appreciate what she had; that had to be it. She'd grown up wanting and wanting and when she finally got something she just didn't know what to do with it. She'd wanted Harry and now that she had him she wasn't going to be such a bloody fool as to fuck things up.
But she couldn't help herself. She picked arguments with him for no reason, over the stupidest of things -- she didn't bloody care if he left the toilet seat up -- and she snapped at him and rebuked him and she didn't know why she was doing this. And the worst of it was, he laid down and took it. He was still feeling guilty over having broken up with her before, over not having answered her letters, over having been an arse at Christmas, and okay, he had been an arse, but she would have forgiven him in an instant if he'd asked her to, but no, he wasn't looking for her to forgive him, not really, he was trying to repent or some bloody nonsense, and so he was letting her get away with everything and it was driving her mad.
She didn't want him to be a martyr. She wanted him to be the boy she'd fallen in love with, the scruffy black-haired boy who hadn't quite figured out what to do with his hands, but somehow the fact that he'd grown up without ever having figured out what to do with his hands wasn't endearing in the least.
Somehow she should have known that this wouldn't have been anything like she'd expected. But then she hadn't ever had any expectations for her and Harry, not really, because deep down she'd always been convinced that nothing would ever happen between them, that Harry would fall in love with someone else or die fighting Voldemort. It would have been easier if he'd died; she had all sorts of contingency plans for that. The only thing she hadn't planned on was their happily-ever-after.
-----
Sometimes she wondered what had become of Malfoy. She'd heard he'd been aquitted of Dumbledore's murder and other crimes after the end of the war. His trial had been closed to the public and there was a rumor that Harry had testified on his behalf, but the war was one of those things Harry didn't discuss with her and it wasn't like she was going to go asking him about Malfoy. It wasn't like it mattered, anyway. Things between her and Harry were going to get better.
-----
Except that they didn't.
-----
Ron and Hermione got married on a Saturday in June. Hermione was radiant and Ron looked like he'd swallowed a toad and the whole thing was really quite sickening. Ginny deliberately avoided the bouquet when Hermione threw it, and the look on Tonks's face as she caught it and glanced over at Lupin was really quite sickening, too. She spent most of the reception in the bathroom and when Harry asked her to dance she said no. She didn't know why she was acting this way.
Except that she did. She'd hero-worshipped Harry, she'd had a crush on him, and yes, she was in love with him and he with her, but it wasn't the same kind of love and it wasn't the right kind of love. Hers was the kind of love that gave and gave and never took, that accepted pain without question, as its due, and it was the worst kind of love, terrible love, love that fed on itself and would not die, as stubborn as she was and worse, and she could not be rid of it.
But she needn't live with it.
-----
She wasn't sure how the conversation with Harry went; it must have been awful, because five minutes later she couldn't for the life of her remember what they'd said. He had wanted her to be perfect for him, perfect as they'd both thought she was before he left her last June. And she had been perfect for him then, or at least she'd badly wanted to be. Part of her would always want to be that girl for him, but that wasn't the only thing she wanted.
She wanted to know what Malfoy was doing. She wanted to touch him, to taste him, to feel him writhe and hear him moan. She wanted him to fuck her in bathrooms and bedrooms and hallways and she wanted to scream his name when she came. She wanted to be with Malfoy more than she wanted to be the perfect girl for Harry Potter, and it was so nice to want something other than that.
-----
Malfoy wasn't hard to find, but then she'd never looked before. He lived in a building where the flats were clean and small and utterly ordinary. There were wards on the door and he wasn't home.
She didn't know why she'd been so sure he would be there. She hadn't seen him in more than four months; she didn't know what he did with his days. She had no idea when he would be back, but she was here and she wasn't leaving. She didn't want to wait in the hallway but she didn't know how to break his wards and it didn't matter; she wasn't leaving.
She didn't have to wait long. He walked up the stairs like any Muggle, looked at her like her presence was nothing out of the ordinary, like he'd been expecting to see her there all along -- and maybe he had. He opened the door and let her in and she tried to apologize but he was kissing her and she understood: it was his way of forgiving her; there was nothing more that needed to be said, and it wasn't perfect but it was better than before.
the end
Author: katjad
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 3,875
Pairings: Draco/Ginny, Harry/Ginny and a bit of Harry/Draco -- but really it's all about the Draco/Ginny.
DISCLAIMER: All characters, situations, etc. belong to J.K. Rowling and her publishers.
Summary: She thought he was kidding at first.
Author's Notes: So I thought that after 48,000 words of Crepúsculo I'd said my piece on Draco/Ginny. But it seems that I then went and wrote 3,800 words of Draco/Ginny porn, so huh. I guess I lied. Thanks to actriz-k for looking this over.
Draw Down the Lines
When she arrived he was already naked, sitting in the armchair with his legs splayed. She didn't waste time. She pulled off her trousers and knickers and knelt over him; his cock pressed at her. She put her hands on his shoulders and his hands were on her hips and she sank down onto him -- no matter how many times they did this it always made her gasp -- and she rocked forward and back, rode him faster now, and he reached down and stroked her clit -- somehow he knew how to touch her just so -- and her orgasm built and took over and he was coming too and she rode it out until both of them were spent.
They didn't waste time leaving, either. She straightened up and rolled off of him; they spelled themselves clean and dressed and were gone.
-----
She thought he was kidding at first.
"Weasley," he said, "I think we should fuck."
She stared at him for a moment before saying, "You're a bloody pervert, Malfoy," and making to leave.
"No, really, I mean it," he said, cornering her.
She'd slapped him at that, which didn't seem to phase him much, and left.
But he wasn't kidding. For days afterwards she caught him looking at her over dinner, in the hallways. There was really no avoiding him: Grimmauld Place was only but so big, and since Hogwarts hadn't reopened in the fall, she was stuck here -- "It's safer than the Burrow, dear" -- doing coursework for the sixth year she wasn't in, which Professor Lupin corrected when he wasn't busy infiltrating the werewolf pack. Sometimes the Order gave her things to research in the Black library, but while the books there were great for telling you how to cast Dark curses, they didn't much concern themselves with giving the countercurses, so she wasn't having much luck. She suspected the Order was giving her assignments more to keep her busy than anything else.
As for Malfoy, he'd gone to Professor Lupin for help not long after Dumbledore's funeral in June. The Death Eaters wanted him dead, it seemed, and after the Order interrogated him under Veritaserum and found out that he hadn't actually killed Dumbledore, they'd taken him in. He hadn't been outside of 12 Grimmauld Place in five months.
Ginny had, of course, but only in the company of "at least two adults, and your brothers don't count," which generally made it more trouble than it was worth.
It wasn't just her and Malfoy in the house -- there were always a couple of Order members around at least -- but she and Malfoy were the only ones who were always there.
-----
He crept into her room well after midnight and slid under the covers. She wanted to tell him that she was too tired, that she hadn't slept well in days and that she'd almost fallen asleep before he came in, but he was curled around her back and his cock was hard against her arse and it was easier to just give in, to roll over and shove his pants down and her nightgown up and by the time he was inside her she'd forgotten why she didn't want to do this; it was bloody fantastic, the hard slim weight of him bearing down into her, their mouths touching but not kissing, panting together as he thrust and came and she spiraled down and down.
-----
She was still in love with Harry; that was the thing. She was still in love with Harry even though he was an idiot, even though he didn't understand that breaking up with her didn't make anything better and actually made a number of things worse, but she'd decided to wait for him, lame as it was; it was the only role he would give her and she'd always been too willing to take something over nothing where Harry was concerned.
But it had been five months. He'd been off on that stupid quest he wouldn't tell her about for five months, and he'd taken her stupid brother and Hermione with him, and no matter what he said about needing her to be safe it still boiled down to the fact that he wanted Ron and Hermione to be with him and not her.
It had been a month since Malfoy propositioned her, and although he hadn't said anything since then she was sure the offer still stood. She wasn't going to take it, but it was nice at least to know that she was wanted.
-----
He fucked her in the bathroom once while the Order met just down the hall. Ginny wasn't not old enough to join and even though Malfoy was, neither he nor the Order especially wanted him to.
The hall bathroom was tiny and done in a hideous burgundy print; it was debatable whether the size or the decor was more objectionable. Personally Ginny thought it was the wallpaper, but the only way to fit two people in the bathroom and close the door was if one of them stood on the toilet, which she did, hiking up the skirt she'd worn knickerless today, and Malfoy closed the door and locked it and then dug his fingers into her hips and pressed his tongue up into her until she'd bitten her lip bloody trying not to cry out, and then he pulled her down and fucked her with her back against the wall and her legs locked around his hips and when she came she slammed her hand against the door. At dinner her mother asked if they'd heard the noise earlier and Malfoy replied, deadpan, that he thought there was a ghoul.
-----
It was the letter that did it. She'd written Harry faithfully every Sunday, and after the first eight letters went unanswered she'd stopped expecting an answer at all, but she'd kept on writing because she felt that she should and by then it was habit, anyway.
In the middle of November she got the letter. It was delivered by a nondescript barn owl, but she would have recognized Harry's handwriting anywhere.
The letter was one line long: Please don't write to me anymore. It wasn't even signed.
And that did it, that bloody well did it. She'd been wanting Harry too long and too hard and all of that want had to go somewhere. She found Malfoy in his room, spelled the door shut and was pulling her jeans off before she even gave herself the chance to think about it and it was nothing like that afternoon with Harry by the lake, nothing at all.
-----
Malfoy's cock was too big to fit in her mouth all at once, but he liked it when she gripped the base and twisted, and he liked it when she played with his balls, and when she stroked the skin behind them he made a high-pitched keening sound so she was pretty sure he liked that, too.
The rug was threadbare where she was kneeling on it, but it didn't much matter: a final twist of the base of his cock and he was coming in her mouth, salty and hot. And there was something almost beautiful about this, his cock in her mouth and her knees on the floor: for a moment she was there and thinking of nothing else.
-----
Ginny was pretty sure he could read her mind sometimes. There were days when she really hated Harry, hated him more than anything, and in the middle of their fucking Malfoy would grind out, "Fuck Potter," like he knew that was just what she was thinking. On those days she couldn't have agreed with him more.
-----
Harry, Ron and Hermione came to 12 Grimmauld Place for Christmas. They didn't tell anyone they were coming -- Molly's letters, too, had gone unanswered -- and Ginny hated the way her heart leapt up when she saw the three of them in the entryway brushing the snow off their shoes. She didn't want to be so happy, so unimaginably happy just at the fact that Harry was there, but she was in love with him, she couldn't help it, and she wanted him so badly in spite of it all.
She saw how her mother fawned over Ron and Hermione but even more over Harry -- "the poor dear, he's under such a burden" -- and Ginny knew her mother didn't know any more about the nature of that burden than she did, but it must have been a taxing thing: Harry was thinner than ever. They all were, Ginny thought, even her and Malfoy; it was like shaking a bag of bones when they fucked -- but Harry was here and that didn't matter.
The entire Order was in awe of him and Ginny didn't know why; she didn't think they could possibly know what Harry, Ron and Hermione were up to if her mother didn't. But Lupin clapped Harry on the shoulder as if to make sure he was really there and Fred and George punched him on the arm and didn't really make jokes and on Christmas morning her father drew Harry into an awkward hug and when he pulled away Ginny swore he was crying.
She herself -- well. She was much as to be expected. She couldn't eat and she was jittery and spastic, but none of that was new; she'd been putting her elbow in the butter around Harry since she was ten, and she'd learned to control herself a little by now. She'd gotten to be almost normal around him last year. But she hadn't seen him in nearly seven months and she'd gotten out of practice.
She wasn't the only one. She saw the way Malfoy looked at Harry and recongnized it, because it was the same way she could feel herself looking at Harry. And she remembered that Malfoy too used to count the days by Harry, that he used to make it his life's work to get under Harry's skin, and that he'd had little success. Last year he'd been too busy trying to get Dumbledore killed to go after Harry but that didn't mean he was done with him. The more Ginny watched him the more she was sure she wasn't the only one who wanted Harry Potter. She'd never given much thought to the whys of her and Malfoy -- she'd been trying her best not to think about her and Malfoy at all -- but if asked she would have said that he was with her to spite Harry, because that was what he did. But now she wasn't so sure.
-----
She wasn't going to go to him while Harry was there, but she did, and maybe it was a mistake because he looked at her like he was trying to see through her, trying to find someone else beneath him, and it was awkward and perfunctory and reminded her more of that afternoon with Harry at the lake than anything else, which made it even worse. She'd never dressed so quickly in her life.
-----
It was hard to get Harry alone -- she was certain that he was avoiding her, actually -- but finally she managed it. She placed her hands on his shoulders and he let her, but when she leaned forward to kiss him he said, "Ginny, I can't."
She didn't move. "What do you mean, you can't?"
It couldn't have gone any way but badly from there. Harry didn't really know how to let you down easy and she supposed that had always been part of the appeal, but she hated what she had been trying to be for him, a compromise, the girl who wasn't his girlfriend but was, the girl he had to come back to -- and she'd known what she was getting into at the start but still she hated him for making her want to do it and herself for following through and after Christmas dinner she found Malfoy and fucked him in her room, loudly, with the door unlocked.
She hadn't meant to say anything to him about Harry; she'd thought she would keep it as something only she would know; but she wanted someone else to hurt and as he fucked her she said, "You want him too, don't you?"
He didn't deny it, didn't say anything at all, but he began to fuck her harder and really that was everything she needed to know. They only had two kinds of fucking, she thought, hard and harder; this was the latter, and the only thing that could be done was ride it out.
-----
January sucked. Harry never apologized, never wrote, and while Ginny kept writing to him it was only because she was too stubborn to quit. Her letters were shorter each time; there was increasingly little she could say to him that wasn't, You're an asshole and I wish I could fall out of love with you and I kind of wish you would die. There was nothing bearable about it, and the fact that Harry didn't want Malfoy, either, didn't make things any better.
They were fucking two, three times a day now, nothing subtle about it. They fucked in all the bedrooms and on the kitchen counter and once on the hallway floor while her mother was downstairs cooking dinner, fucked naked, loudly and unhurriedly, because what did it matter if someone saw? No one was paying attention to them, anyway. The Death Eaters were massacring people by the dozen and part of Diagon Alley had burned last week and the Ministry was full of fools; the Order was too small and stretched too thin and really no once cared at all if Draco Malfoy fucked Ginny Weasley on the hallway floor in 12 Grimmauld Place.
The feeling was mutual. The Order needed people so badly that they wouldn't have been able to afford to say no if she'd offered to join, underaged or no, but she wasn't offering. Who gave a shit if Harry Potter defeated the Dark Lord? She'd been living in Grimmauld Place for eight months now; she was starting to get used to it. Even if the Dark Lord won, it wasn't like she had any reason to leave.
-----
He fucked her in the garden once, amidst the dead and dying plants. He charmed the air around them warm, but the magic that warmed the ground couldn't spell away the chill that got into her bones. The garden hadn't been tended to in years and roots and stones dug into her back; but it was over quickly, much more quickly than she would have thought.
-----
Somehow they'd all gotten it in their heads that Harry would defeat Voldemort in June, because that was when things between Harry and Voldemort always seemed to happen, at the end of the school year. But Harry had left school and she supposed he hadn't really seen any reason to wait because by the end of February the war was over. Harry had killed Voldemort and the right side had won and there was talk of making Harry Minister of Magic, even, which was ridiculous; he'd be crap at it.
There were parades and parties and ceremonies, of course, and Harry was awarded the Order of Merlin, First Class -- probably they only wanted to make him Minister because they wished they had an Order of Merlin that was better than First Class, the Order of Merlin that you gave out for saving Britain from certain doom and probably the rest of the world, too -- and after it had all died down a bit Harry came to her and asked her if she'd take him back, if she'd forgive him, and she said yes, because really, when had she ever told him no?
-----
The last time she and Malfoy fucked was the day they learned the war was over. There was something odd about their fucking, something she couldn't place until she realized he was gripping her hips, but not hard enough to bruise; they were fucking slowly, gently, like they were fragile and this was the end, which it was. Before she left he kissed her and there was really nothing to say; there never had been. And she was going to Harry. Harry didn't want Malfoy and he never had; but last year he'd wanted her, and now that the war was over she thought he might want her again, and if this were a contest between her and Malfoy then she had won.
-----
Harry loved her, he told her so nightly, and if she missed the way Malfoy fucked her through the mattress without asking if it was okay, she didn't say anything, because this was Harry and she'd always wanted him and now she had him and nothing was more important than that.
This was how she'd always hoped things would turn out: she was with Harry and Ron was with Hermione and her mother was planning their weddings. The war was over and no one important had died and why was she so bloody miserable?
She didn't know how to appreciate what she had; that had to be it. She'd grown up wanting and wanting and when she finally got something she just didn't know what to do with it. She'd wanted Harry and now that she had him she wasn't going to be such a bloody fool as to fuck things up.
But she couldn't help herself. She picked arguments with him for no reason, over the stupidest of things -- she didn't bloody care if he left the toilet seat up -- and she snapped at him and rebuked him and she didn't know why she was doing this. And the worst of it was, he laid down and took it. He was still feeling guilty over having broken up with her before, over not having answered her letters, over having been an arse at Christmas, and okay, he had been an arse, but she would have forgiven him in an instant if he'd asked her to, but no, he wasn't looking for her to forgive him, not really, he was trying to repent or some bloody nonsense, and so he was letting her get away with everything and it was driving her mad.
She didn't want him to be a martyr. She wanted him to be the boy she'd fallen in love with, the scruffy black-haired boy who hadn't quite figured out what to do with his hands, but somehow the fact that he'd grown up without ever having figured out what to do with his hands wasn't endearing in the least.
Somehow she should have known that this wouldn't have been anything like she'd expected. But then she hadn't ever had any expectations for her and Harry, not really, because deep down she'd always been convinced that nothing would ever happen between them, that Harry would fall in love with someone else or die fighting Voldemort. It would have been easier if he'd died; she had all sorts of contingency plans for that. The only thing she hadn't planned on was their happily-ever-after.
-----
Sometimes she wondered what had become of Malfoy. She'd heard he'd been aquitted of Dumbledore's murder and other crimes after the end of the war. His trial had been closed to the public and there was a rumor that Harry had testified on his behalf, but the war was one of those things Harry didn't discuss with her and it wasn't like she was going to go asking him about Malfoy. It wasn't like it mattered, anyway. Things between her and Harry were going to get better.
-----
Except that they didn't.
-----
Ron and Hermione got married on a Saturday in June. Hermione was radiant and Ron looked like he'd swallowed a toad and the whole thing was really quite sickening. Ginny deliberately avoided the bouquet when Hermione threw it, and the look on Tonks's face as she caught it and glanced over at Lupin was really quite sickening, too. She spent most of the reception in the bathroom and when Harry asked her to dance she said no. She didn't know why she was acting this way.
Except that she did. She'd hero-worshipped Harry, she'd had a crush on him, and yes, she was in love with him and he with her, but it wasn't the same kind of love and it wasn't the right kind of love. Hers was the kind of love that gave and gave and never took, that accepted pain without question, as its due, and it was the worst kind of love, terrible love, love that fed on itself and would not die, as stubborn as she was and worse, and she could not be rid of it.
But she needn't live with it.
-----
She wasn't sure how the conversation with Harry went; it must have been awful, because five minutes later she couldn't for the life of her remember what they'd said. He had wanted her to be perfect for him, perfect as they'd both thought she was before he left her last June. And she had been perfect for him then, or at least she'd badly wanted to be. Part of her would always want to be that girl for him, but that wasn't the only thing she wanted.
She wanted to know what Malfoy was doing. She wanted to touch him, to taste him, to feel him writhe and hear him moan. She wanted him to fuck her in bathrooms and bedrooms and hallways and she wanted to scream his name when she came. She wanted to be with Malfoy more than she wanted to be the perfect girl for Harry Potter, and it was so nice to want something other than that.
-----
Malfoy wasn't hard to find, but then she'd never looked before. He lived in a building where the flats were clean and small and utterly ordinary. There were wards on the door and he wasn't home.
She didn't know why she'd been so sure he would be there. She hadn't seen him in more than four months; she didn't know what he did with his days. She had no idea when he would be back, but she was here and she wasn't leaving. She didn't want to wait in the hallway but she didn't know how to break his wards and it didn't matter; she wasn't leaving.
She didn't have to wait long. He walked up the stairs like any Muggle, looked at her like her presence was nothing out of the ordinary, like he'd been expecting to see her there all along -- and maybe he had. He opened the door and let her in and she tried to apologize but he was kissing her and she understood: it was his way of forgiving her; there was nothing more that needed to be said, and it wasn't perfect but it was better than before.
the end