Fic: Intrusions (Draco/Ginny, PG)
Title: Intrusions
Summary: Draco puts up with a lot because of his family.
Pairing: Draco/Ginny
Rating: PG
Word count: 3488
AN: Written for the 2007 DracoandGinnyFanFic list Ficmas! Canon through DH, but does not take epilogue into account. Huge thanks to Rainpuddle13, who whipped this story into shape. :D
*
When Draco Malfoy was seven years old, his mother insisted that he be brought to Diagon Alley for the lighting of the Christmas tree, which occurred every year. His father grumbled, as he thought a bunch of old codgers releasing a bunch of faeries into the sky and watching them bully each other for prime positions on the tree that occupied the corner across from Gringotts’ was, at best, a waste of time.
Draco could remember his father’s disdainful expression well, but what he remembered even more was the way his father had actually laughed when his mother was so delighted with the way the faeries swooped down, sprinkling them with fine silver dust that glittered in the candlelight.
Draco could not remember his parents being so unguarded in public at any other point in his childhood. He himself had giggled, he remembered, joy sending tremors of laughter through his shoulders and settling in his belly, and after they’d Apparated home, him clinging to his father’s side like he was still a baby, his father had twirled his mother around the foyer of the Manor and called for the house-elves to serve them all warm cider.
He fell asleep curled up in the corner of the couch, empty mug still clutched in his hands, watching his parents dance in front of their own faerie-lit tree.
It was the best Christmas Draco Malfoy ever had.
*
The problem with actually going through with a complete reformation of the government was that it took money. Galleons had lost an alarming percentage of their value on the international wizarding market, as their net worth had always been more than the actual gold they were made of. It was a simple thing to create gold, after all, alchemists had been doing it for the treasury for eons, but it was hard to recapture the wizarding community’s faith in their government when it had so recently been taken over by a megalomaniacal Dark Wizard bent on the extermination of a good part of the populace.
The Malfoys had never been so pedestrian as to keep the majority of their capital in currency (Grandfather Abraxas had been fond of reminding them that currency was only good currently, and that a proper wizarding family kept in mind the future more than anything) and thus were in a prime position to offer... penance for their misplaced loyalty.
And apparently a goodly portion of that penance involved Draco standing alongside his parents, shaking the hands of government officials in ill-fitting dress robes, at event after mind-numbingly dull event.
The sudden increase in such events marked the beginning of the holiday season, which Draco was dreading for several reasons. In theory, this holiday should be better than the last, which was mostly remarkable for You-Know-Who inhabiting his home and his mother’s fretful, guarded letters arriving with dirty smudges all over them from the censors.
Sometimes, though, and Draco would never admit this out lout, but the way they were playing the repentant sinner to the Ministry felt an awful lot like being a Death Eater again. There was the same sort of mindless sycophantism involved, though Draco had to admit that the Ministry was far less likely to perform a killing spree on their major contributors.
Another problem with attending Minstry events was the company.
Of course Harry Potter was invited to everything. He was a war hero, even Draco wasn’t so bitter as to be unable to admit that basic historical fact. However, it seemed a bit much for him to actually attend all the events he was invited to, smiling tightly and making awkward conversation with fawning old witches.
And it was triply unnecessary for him to drag along everyone he’d ever met in his life. Granger and a handful of Weasleys were always trailing along behind him.
But the worst part by far was that Harry Potter couldn’t seem to keep his bloody hands off Draco’s mother.
Draco had lost count of the times he had stood stiffly by his father, glancing over to see Lucius’ Adam’s apple bobbing angrily as he wore a pasted-on smile as Narcissa beamed and posed with the boy whose life she had saved.
It wasn’t that he wished that the prat had actually died; it was just that he thought that the first fifteen times Harry had thanked his mother with a hug and an awkward kiss on the cheek had been quite sufficient.
At a party thrown by the Diggorys, Draco was close enough to Harry’s Weasley girlfriend to hear her make the strangled, annoyed noise that he so desperately wanted to make himself when Harry clasped hands with Narcissa, beaming and offering up his cheek.
It wasn’t the first time he’d given the girl a sideway glance - it turned out that before they produced a litter, Weasley women were shaped like Greek goddesses, and Draco admired perfection in any form - but it was the first time that she’d caught his eye, rolled her own, and murmured, “Please tell me that horrifies you as much as it does me.”
“I can almost guarantee that my revulsion is far more severe than yours,” Draco replied, mentally chanting at his mother to remove her hands from Potter’s sweaty grip.
She giggled, and it lit up her face. Draco hesitated, wondering if he was meant to say something else, but then another Weasley came and said something in a low, confidential voice to her, and they hurried off.
Eventually Potter pried himself away from Draco’s mother, and Draco found he could breath a lot easier.
*
It was three days before Christmas Eve when Narcissa announced at the breakfast table that she’d invited Potter over for a holiday dinner.
Draco had never actually *seen* his father do anything as undignified as spit out a mouthful of hot tea and garble out something that might have been, “Over my dead body,” in Mermish, so on one hand it was almost worth it for that memory alone. On the other hand, Draco rather felt the same way about the whole idea.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” he said, priding himself on how squeaky his voice wasn’t. The last time Potter had been in the house had been an unmitigated catastrophe. He didn’t feel it was appropriate to be inviting the git back over for tea and crumpets.
“Harry thought it was a smashing idea,” Narcissa said. Draco scowled; since when had his mother thought anything was a ‘smashing’ idea? The entire situation had a fishy, Potter-ish smell about it.
“I don’t give a hippogriff’s gizzard about what Harry Potter thinks,” Lucius announced, patting the last droplet of tea off his chin. “We aren’t inviting that rabblerouser into our home.”
“I’ve already invited him,” Narcissa said cooly. “He’s bringing my grand-nephew.”
And that was that.
*
As if actually inviting the wanker to their home wasn’t bad enough, Narcissa decided to make the dinner an elaborate, impressive affair.
“Since I’m sure the boy has never had a proper dinner,” she explained while directing more faerie lights to the ornamental engraving along the top of the walls.
“He went to Hogwarts, they feed people there,” Draco said, hearing the whine in his voice and not really caring that he was behaving like a six-year-old banshee. “Mother, this is ridiculous. We shouldn’t be inviting Harry Potter into our house. Mortal enemies. Bad blood. Annoying squeaky voices.”
His mother made a pshaw noise. “Don’t be childish. All that is in the past.”
Draco made an annoyed sound, and stormed off to his room to sulk. Things had finally started to look up a bit for him - their generosity was beginning to yield results within the Ministry, and last week they’d spent nearly an hour in Diagon Alley before an old hag spat at them - and here was his mother, ruining everything with a misguided sense of friendship for the dumb little national hero whose life she’d saved.
And he couldn’t even complain about it to his father, who had decided it was his fault that Narcissa had taken such a shine to Harry, as it was out of concern for his safety that she’d spared the Harry’s life.
*
“I was under the impression that this was a party,” Lucius hissed under his breath.
Draco nodded his agreement.
“It is ” Narcissa murmured back. “A very intimate party.”
Ginny Weasley continued to stand there, looking as though she wished she were anywhere else on earth. Standing in a pool of hot lava, perhaps, or in the middle of a patch of Devil’s Snare.
Harry Potter beamed and thanked Narcissa for inviting them. The baby made alarming noises in its pram.
“Where’s the rest of your hangers-on?” Draco couldn’t help but ask. He didn’t want a bunch of triumphant Gryffindors wandering around his house, poking their nick knacks and getting smudgy fingerprints on the mirrors, but there was no way he would be able to disappear in the crowds when there were only six people present, and one of those only really a person in the most technical sense. Draco hadn’t spent a lot of time around babies, but it seemed as though they only made strange noises and produced inappropriate smells, so he really didn’t want to include the child in the number.
“Andromeda didn’t feel as though she would be welcome,” Ginny said, voice echoing loudly. “And my brother and, well, everyone else had prior engagements.” It was clear that she hadn’t wanted to come either. Draco wondered how Harry had managed to convince her to.
His mother rushed over and began cooing over the thing in the pram, and Harry offered tidbits of insight about how the child now had a precocious number of teeth and sometimes had the same color eyes for hours on end.
Lucius sighed. Draco looked around, hoping for sudden inspiration for escape. Ginny bit her lip, tapped her handbag against her leg, and stared at a sculpture of Eberhart the Evergreen.
*
Dinner was an affair best forgotten.
Narcissa was a wonderful hostess, as always, and she and Potter kept up a steady stream of chatter, mostly about the baby and trivial things that somehow avoided mentioning the war whatsoever.
Lucius made increasingly annoyed noises.
Draco pushed his food around his plate in circles.
Ginny looked intensely uncomfortable, except for when she was practically rolling her eyes at her boyfriend, who as it turns out was just as dull as Draco had always imagined. Several times he accidentally caught her eye, and she gave him silly smiles. It was alarmingly endearing.
“I have to make a business call,” Lucius said suddenly. “Very urgent.”
“You didn’t mention that earlier,” Narcissa replied, narrowing her eyes in a way that Draco had learned early in life meant, ‘apologize and flee.’
“Must have slipped my mind,” Lucius responded as he smoothly stood. “It’s been a lovely meal,” he directed at no one in particular, and strode out of the room.
Draco gave up the feeble hope that his father would somehow give him an out to leave with him, and slumped down in his seat. His mother gave him a disapproving stare, and he didn’t have to be a Legilimens to know that her thoughts were on how he was ruining the lines of his dress robes and looked like a slob. He straightened back up in order to avoid a lecture in front of the guests.
Narcissa still looked unruffled. “Harry, dear, would you like to see our gallery?”
Harry nodded his assent, and stood up quickly, scraping his chair loudly on the floor. Narcissa escorted him out, and the door swung shut behind them.
It took Draco approximately forty-three seconds before he realized that he was alone in a room with Ginny Weasley and a baby, who was making snuffly sounds.
He wondered how long his mother would lecture him if he fled, then thought that it would have to be worth it, and had just stood abruptly up when Ginny snapped, “Not on your life ”
“Say what?” he managed.
“You are not taking off and leaving me here with Teddy,” she said, “waiting on my stupid boyfriend to remember that he’s abandoned me here while he’s off cavorting with your mum.”
“There is no cavorting happening,” Draco said, horrified. “This is a cavort-free zone. Mother just feels sorry for the orphan, that’s all ”
Ginny’s grin was sly. “You sound awful defensive. Have the thoughts of Harry and your mum been keeping you up at night?”
“You are an evil little girl,” Draco said, surprised. “I didn’t think they let that sort into Gryffindor.”
She winked at him. “You’d be surprised what Gryffindors are capable of.”
Just then, the baby let out a harpy-like wail.
“Merlin ” Draco said, staring at the direction of the pram. “What the bloody hell does it want?”
“I don’t know ” Ginny replied, an equally horrified expression on her face. “I try to avoid it when I can. Him. It’s a him.” She paused. “Don’t tell Harry I called his godson an ‘it’. More than once. To your face, of all faces.”
Draco had spent the past year of his life coming to terms with the fact that what he had always believed to be fact about people was in fact normally patently false.
The revelation that Ginny Weasley had a personality that was remarkably similar to those of the girls he liked spending time with in Slytherin was still a bit of a shocker.
“I thought you Weasleys would be used to being around children.” He waved his hand in the general direction of the baby.
Ginny gave him a look. “I’m the youngest. When the hell would I have been around babies?”
He couldn’t spot a flaw in her logic.
“It’s clearly healthy enough,” Draco said, yelling a bit to be heard over the wails. “Do you want to go for a nice walk in the garden? There are silencing spells around the house.”
Ginny glared. “I don’t think we should leave a crying baby. That seems a bit evil.”
She bit her lip, and picked up the baby, rocking it for a minute. The cries did not subside.
Draco edged towards them, and peered at the child. The child’s face was scrunched up and its hair was violently orange. “Are you sure this isn’t your secret lovechild? It rather looks like you.”
Ginny promptly smacked him on the back of the head. “Where’s the gallery at? I’m going to take him to Harry. Let him deal with it.”
“Very altruistic.”
“I’m way too young to be playing mummy,” she said, still rocking the baby to no avail. “And Harry’s all too interested in making his own family, since, you know, he hasn’t got one of his own.”
Draco crinkled his nose.
“Exactly ”
Draco looked at the baby again - it seemed fine enough, just supremely displeased with the universe, and called for their house-elf Tessy.
“Yes, Master Draco?” Tessy said primly as she popped into the room.
“Please inform Harry Potter that his godson is requesting his presence,” Draco said.
Tessy nodded and popped back out of sight.
Draco gave Ginny a sideways glance. “Was that so difficult?”
She didn’t respond, just tossed her hair at him.
“Would you like to see the gardens? We have a peacock.”
She laughed. “Are you serious? That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.”
He offered her his arm. “It was my grandfather’s idea.”
She gently laid down Teddy in the pram. Outside the door, footsteps could be heard coming down the hall.
“Let’s go,” she said. “They’ll be in here in a second.”
She looked as though she needed a break from Potter and the baby, so Draco escorted her through the back entrance of the dining room, through the kitchens and outside.
In the garden, Ginny did not let off her steady stream of insults on his family’s taste and utter lack of sense, as she deemed it, staring up at their carefully sculpted Norwegian Ridgeback shrub, which swished its tail menacingly whenever the wind blew from the north and reared its head back angrily when it was foggy.
Most of her words were light-hearted enough, as though they’d declared an unspoken truce, though sometimes there was enough bite in her voice that Draco knew that the events of her first year had not been forgotten, even after everything else that had happened to them.
And the funny part was that Draco didn’t blame her, and he didn’t feel the need to make his insults on her own family any more acidic than the way he would make fun of his actual friends.
And then Ginny tripped over a bit of root sticking up from one of the older, more gnarled trees at the edge of the garden, and he caught her without thinking.
She was warm in his arms, a comfortable weight that felt as though it belonged, and her eyes were just wide enough from the shock of tripping that he could see his reflection as he leaned in and impulsively kissed her.
He drew back almost immediately, and she didn’t say a word, just kind of touched her lips and gave him a strange look.
“We should go back,” he said.
“Probably,” she replied.
“Do you...” he paused. “Do you want to go back?”
“No,” she said. “But we should anyway.”
She started walking back towards the house, then paused and turned back to Draco. “You’re useless around children,” she said.
“As if that were a surprise,” he replied, then realized that he should have said that she was, too, for that matter. He opened his mouth, but she was already speaking again.
“But it turns out you aren’t the useless waste of space I’d always assumed,” she continued, then resumed her way on the path towards the house.
The pronouncement gave Draco an unsettling, buoyant feeling.
*
When they arrived back in the house, Narcissa was dancing around the foyer, holding her great-nephew in her arms and singing a song Draco hadn’t heard since he was a small child.
“Where’s Harry?” Ginny asked.
“Making a Floo call to Andromeda,” Narcissa replied, and didn’t even stutter on the name. “Letting her know that he’s bringing Teddy home soon.”
Ginny nodded. “You have a lovely home,” she said, more to be polite than anything else, Draco thought, given her running commentary in the garden. He caught her eye, and she turned her head away from Narcissa enough to give him a wink without being seen. He couldn’t stop the undoubtedly half-witted grin that spread across his face.
“Thank you,” Narcissa said, distracted as she smiled at the baby.
Draco thought maybe she’d had an ulterior motive in taking Harry under her wing after all. He hadn’t even though that maybe she would want to see her sister’s grandchild. Or that she wanted to think about her family at all, given all that had happened in the past year.
When Harry and Ginny went to leave, Ginny griping about the way Harry was holding onto her arm too tightly, he saw Narcissa press a small wrapped present into the pram, though he didn’t say a word about it.
*
A short time later, on Christmas Eve, an owl appeared at Draco’s window.
Clutched in its beak was a card, which Draco opened to reveal a spray of glitter. A lion roared quietly from the atrocious red background, and on the inside he was wished a very happy Christmas by a line of dancing, bell-clad house-elves.
It was simply signed, “Thinking of you.”
That was the fastest Draco ever responded to a bit of mail.
*
The next Christmas, Draco went to Diagon Alley to see the faerie lights being released.
Ginny had insisted, and she clutched at his hand, pretty with snowflakes in her hair and just as warm against his side as she’d been for that first kiss in the snow.
The crowd expressed their awe as the faeries lit up the sky. Across the way, Draco could see Harry Potter standing beside Weasley and Granger, laughing. He gave Ginny a half-glance to see if she had spotted her former boyfriend, only to see her giving them a cheery wave. He wasn’t surprised to see the slight snarl of nose in his direction as his school foes waved at his girlfriend, though the venom they’d once felt for each other seemed to have faded.
Part of time passing, he supposed.
Around the wizarding community, people barely even talked anymore, at least not where he could hear, about what had been and what he might have done. Instead, there was something new emerging, and the wizarding world was changing, and Draco with it.
One of the faeries lighted down on his shoulder, and Ginny laughed as she batted it away before he got bit.
It was one of the best Christmases he could remember.
Summary: Draco puts up with a lot because of his family.
Pairing: Draco/Ginny
Rating: PG
Word count: 3488
AN: Written for the 2007 DracoandGinnyFanFic list Ficmas! Canon through DH, but does not take epilogue into account. Huge thanks to Rainpuddle13, who whipped this story into shape. :D
*
When Draco Malfoy was seven years old, his mother insisted that he be brought to Diagon Alley for the lighting of the Christmas tree, which occurred every year. His father grumbled, as he thought a bunch of old codgers releasing a bunch of faeries into the sky and watching them bully each other for prime positions on the tree that occupied the corner across from Gringotts’ was, at best, a waste of time.
Draco could remember his father’s disdainful expression well, but what he remembered even more was the way his father had actually laughed when his mother was so delighted with the way the faeries swooped down, sprinkling them with fine silver dust that glittered in the candlelight.
Draco could not remember his parents being so unguarded in public at any other point in his childhood. He himself had giggled, he remembered, joy sending tremors of laughter through his shoulders and settling in his belly, and after they’d Apparated home, him clinging to his father’s side like he was still a baby, his father had twirled his mother around the foyer of the Manor and called for the house-elves to serve them all warm cider.
He fell asleep curled up in the corner of the couch, empty mug still clutched in his hands, watching his parents dance in front of their own faerie-lit tree.
It was the best Christmas Draco Malfoy ever had.
*
The problem with actually going through with a complete reformation of the government was that it took money. Galleons had lost an alarming percentage of their value on the international wizarding market, as their net worth had always been more than the actual gold they were made of. It was a simple thing to create gold, after all, alchemists had been doing it for the treasury for eons, but it was hard to recapture the wizarding community’s faith in their government when it had so recently been taken over by a megalomaniacal Dark Wizard bent on the extermination of a good part of the populace.
The Malfoys had never been so pedestrian as to keep the majority of their capital in currency (Grandfather Abraxas had been fond of reminding them that currency was only good currently, and that a proper wizarding family kept in mind the future more than anything) and thus were in a prime position to offer... penance for their misplaced loyalty.
And apparently a goodly portion of that penance involved Draco standing alongside his parents, shaking the hands of government officials in ill-fitting dress robes, at event after mind-numbingly dull event.
The sudden increase in such events marked the beginning of the holiday season, which Draco was dreading for several reasons. In theory, this holiday should be better than the last, which was mostly remarkable for You-Know-Who inhabiting his home and his mother’s fretful, guarded letters arriving with dirty smudges all over them from the censors.
Sometimes, though, and Draco would never admit this out lout, but the way they were playing the repentant sinner to the Ministry felt an awful lot like being a Death Eater again. There was the same sort of mindless sycophantism involved, though Draco had to admit that the Ministry was far less likely to perform a killing spree on their major contributors.
Another problem with attending Minstry events was the company.
Of course Harry Potter was invited to everything. He was a war hero, even Draco wasn’t so bitter as to be unable to admit that basic historical fact. However, it seemed a bit much for him to actually attend all the events he was invited to, smiling tightly and making awkward conversation with fawning old witches.
And it was triply unnecessary for him to drag along everyone he’d ever met in his life. Granger and a handful of Weasleys were always trailing along behind him.
But the worst part by far was that Harry Potter couldn’t seem to keep his bloody hands off Draco’s mother.
Draco had lost count of the times he had stood stiffly by his father, glancing over to see Lucius’ Adam’s apple bobbing angrily as he wore a pasted-on smile as Narcissa beamed and posed with the boy whose life she had saved.
It wasn’t that he wished that the prat had actually died; it was just that he thought that the first fifteen times Harry had thanked his mother with a hug and an awkward kiss on the cheek had been quite sufficient.
At a party thrown by the Diggorys, Draco was close enough to Harry’s Weasley girlfriend to hear her make the strangled, annoyed noise that he so desperately wanted to make himself when Harry clasped hands with Narcissa, beaming and offering up his cheek.
It wasn’t the first time he’d given the girl a sideway glance - it turned out that before they produced a litter, Weasley women were shaped like Greek goddesses, and Draco admired perfection in any form - but it was the first time that she’d caught his eye, rolled her own, and murmured, “Please tell me that horrifies you as much as it does me.”
“I can almost guarantee that my revulsion is far more severe than yours,” Draco replied, mentally chanting at his mother to remove her hands from Potter’s sweaty grip.
She giggled, and it lit up her face. Draco hesitated, wondering if he was meant to say something else, but then another Weasley came and said something in a low, confidential voice to her, and they hurried off.
Eventually Potter pried himself away from Draco’s mother, and Draco found he could breath a lot easier.
*
It was three days before Christmas Eve when Narcissa announced at the breakfast table that she’d invited Potter over for a holiday dinner.
Draco had never actually *seen* his father do anything as undignified as spit out a mouthful of hot tea and garble out something that might have been, “Over my dead body,” in Mermish, so on one hand it was almost worth it for that memory alone. On the other hand, Draco rather felt the same way about the whole idea.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” he said, priding himself on how squeaky his voice wasn’t. The last time Potter had been in the house had been an unmitigated catastrophe. He didn’t feel it was appropriate to be inviting the git back over for tea and crumpets.
“Harry thought it was a smashing idea,” Narcissa said. Draco scowled; since when had his mother thought anything was a ‘smashing’ idea? The entire situation had a fishy, Potter-ish smell about it.
“I don’t give a hippogriff’s gizzard about what Harry Potter thinks,” Lucius announced, patting the last droplet of tea off his chin. “We aren’t inviting that rabblerouser into our home.”
“I’ve already invited him,” Narcissa said cooly. “He’s bringing my grand-nephew.”
And that was that.
*
As if actually inviting the wanker to their home wasn’t bad enough, Narcissa decided to make the dinner an elaborate, impressive affair.
“Since I’m sure the boy has never had a proper dinner,” she explained while directing more faerie lights to the ornamental engraving along the top of the walls.
“He went to Hogwarts, they feed people there,” Draco said, hearing the whine in his voice and not really caring that he was behaving like a six-year-old banshee. “Mother, this is ridiculous. We shouldn’t be inviting Harry Potter into our house. Mortal enemies. Bad blood. Annoying squeaky voices.”
His mother made a pshaw noise. “Don’t be childish. All that is in the past.”
Draco made an annoyed sound, and stormed off to his room to sulk. Things had finally started to look up a bit for him - their generosity was beginning to yield results within the Ministry, and last week they’d spent nearly an hour in Diagon Alley before an old hag spat at them - and here was his mother, ruining everything with a misguided sense of friendship for the dumb little national hero whose life she’d saved.
And he couldn’t even complain about it to his father, who had decided it was his fault that Narcissa had taken such a shine to Harry, as it was out of concern for his safety that she’d spared the Harry’s life.
*
“I was under the impression that this was a party,” Lucius hissed under his breath.
Draco nodded his agreement.
“It is ” Narcissa murmured back. “A very intimate party.”
Ginny Weasley continued to stand there, looking as though she wished she were anywhere else on earth. Standing in a pool of hot lava, perhaps, or in the middle of a patch of Devil’s Snare.
Harry Potter beamed and thanked Narcissa for inviting them. The baby made alarming noises in its pram.
“Where’s the rest of your hangers-on?” Draco couldn’t help but ask. He didn’t want a bunch of triumphant Gryffindors wandering around his house, poking their nick knacks and getting smudgy fingerprints on the mirrors, but there was no way he would be able to disappear in the crowds when there were only six people present, and one of those only really a person in the most technical sense. Draco hadn’t spent a lot of time around babies, but it seemed as though they only made strange noises and produced inappropriate smells, so he really didn’t want to include the child in the number.
“Andromeda didn’t feel as though she would be welcome,” Ginny said, voice echoing loudly. “And my brother and, well, everyone else had prior engagements.” It was clear that she hadn’t wanted to come either. Draco wondered how Harry had managed to convince her to.
His mother rushed over and began cooing over the thing in the pram, and Harry offered tidbits of insight about how the child now had a precocious number of teeth and sometimes had the same color eyes for hours on end.
Lucius sighed. Draco looked around, hoping for sudden inspiration for escape. Ginny bit her lip, tapped her handbag against her leg, and stared at a sculpture of Eberhart the Evergreen.
*
Dinner was an affair best forgotten.
Narcissa was a wonderful hostess, as always, and she and Potter kept up a steady stream of chatter, mostly about the baby and trivial things that somehow avoided mentioning the war whatsoever.
Lucius made increasingly annoyed noises.
Draco pushed his food around his plate in circles.
Ginny looked intensely uncomfortable, except for when she was practically rolling her eyes at her boyfriend, who as it turns out was just as dull as Draco had always imagined. Several times he accidentally caught her eye, and she gave him silly smiles. It was alarmingly endearing.
“I have to make a business call,” Lucius said suddenly. “Very urgent.”
“You didn’t mention that earlier,” Narcissa replied, narrowing her eyes in a way that Draco had learned early in life meant, ‘apologize and flee.’
“Must have slipped my mind,” Lucius responded as he smoothly stood. “It’s been a lovely meal,” he directed at no one in particular, and strode out of the room.
Draco gave up the feeble hope that his father would somehow give him an out to leave with him, and slumped down in his seat. His mother gave him a disapproving stare, and he didn’t have to be a Legilimens to know that her thoughts were on how he was ruining the lines of his dress robes and looked like a slob. He straightened back up in order to avoid a lecture in front of the guests.
Narcissa still looked unruffled. “Harry, dear, would you like to see our gallery?”
Harry nodded his assent, and stood up quickly, scraping his chair loudly on the floor. Narcissa escorted him out, and the door swung shut behind them.
It took Draco approximately forty-three seconds before he realized that he was alone in a room with Ginny Weasley and a baby, who was making snuffly sounds.
He wondered how long his mother would lecture him if he fled, then thought that it would have to be worth it, and had just stood abruptly up when Ginny snapped, “Not on your life ”
“Say what?” he managed.
“You are not taking off and leaving me here with Teddy,” she said, “waiting on my stupid boyfriend to remember that he’s abandoned me here while he’s off cavorting with your mum.”
“There is no cavorting happening,” Draco said, horrified. “This is a cavort-free zone. Mother just feels sorry for the orphan, that’s all ”
Ginny’s grin was sly. “You sound awful defensive. Have the thoughts of Harry and your mum been keeping you up at night?”
“You are an evil little girl,” Draco said, surprised. “I didn’t think they let that sort into Gryffindor.”
She winked at him. “You’d be surprised what Gryffindors are capable of.”
Just then, the baby let out a harpy-like wail.
“Merlin ” Draco said, staring at the direction of the pram. “What the bloody hell does it want?”
“I don’t know ” Ginny replied, an equally horrified expression on her face. “I try to avoid it when I can. Him. It’s a him.” She paused. “Don’t tell Harry I called his godson an ‘it’. More than once. To your face, of all faces.”
Draco had spent the past year of his life coming to terms with the fact that what he had always believed to be fact about people was in fact normally patently false.
The revelation that Ginny Weasley had a personality that was remarkably similar to those of the girls he liked spending time with in Slytherin was still a bit of a shocker.
“I thought you Weasleys would be used to being around children.” He waved his hand in the general direction of the baby.
Ginny gave him a look. “I’m the youngest. When the hell would I have been around babies?”
He couldn’t spot a flaw in her logic.
“It’s clearly healthy enough,” Draco said, yelling a bit to be heard over the wails. “Do you want to go for a nice walk in the garden? There are silencing spells around the house.”
Ginny glared. “I don’t think we should leave a crying baby. That seems a bit evil.”
She bit her lip, and picked up the baby, rocking it for a minute. The cries did not subside.
Draco edged towards them, and peered at the child. The child’s face was scrunched up and its hair was violently orange. “Are you sure this isn’t your secret lovechild? It rather looks like you.”
Ginny promptly smacked him on the back of the head. “Where’s the gallery at? I’m going to take him to Harry. Let him deal with it.”
“Very altruistic.”
“I’m way too young to be playing mummy,” she said, still rocking the baby to no avail. “And Harry’s all too interested in making his own family, since, you know, he hasn’t got one of his own.”
Draco crinkled his nose.
“Exactly ”
Draco looked at the baby again - it seemed fine enough, just supremely displeased with the universe, and called for their house-elf Tessy.
“Yes, Master Draco?” Tessy said primly as she popped into the room.
“Please inform Harry Potter that his godson is requesting his presence,” Draco said.
Tessy nodded and popped back out of sight.
Draco gave Ginny a sideways glance. “Was that so difficult?”
She didn’t respond, just tossed her hair at him.
“Would you like to see the gardens? We have a peacock.”
She laughed. “Are you serious? That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.”
He offered her his arm. “It was my grandfather’s idea.”
She gently laid down Teddy in the pram. Outside the door, footsteps could be heard coming down the hall.
“Let’s go,” she said. “They’ll be in here in a second.”
She looked as though she needed a break from Potter and the baby, so Draco escorted her through the back entrance of the dining room, through the kitchens and outside.
In the garden, Ginny did not let off her steady stream of insults on his family’s taste and utter lack of sense, as she deemed it, staring up at their carefully sculpted Norwegian Ridgeback shrub, which swished its tail menacingly whenever the wind blew from the north and reared its head back angrily when it was foggy.
Most of her words were light-hearted enough, as though they’d declared an unspoken truce, though sometimes there was enough bite in her voice that Draco knew that the events of her first year had not been forgotten, even after everything else that had happened to them.
And the funny part was that Draco didn’t blame her, and he didn’t feel the need to make his insults on her own family any more acidic than the way he would make fun of his actual friends.
And then Ginny tripped over a bit of root sticking up from one of the older, more gnarled trees at the edge of the garden, and he caught her without thinking.
She was warm in his arms, a comfortable weight that felt as though it belonged, and her eyes were just wide enough from the shock of tripping that he could see his reflection as he leaned in and impulsively kissed her.
He drew back almost immediately, and she didn’t say a word, just kind of touched her lips and gave him a strange look.
“We should go back,” he said.
“Probably,” she replied.
“Do you...” he paused. “Do you want to go back?”
“No,” she said. “But we should anyway.”
She started walking back towards the house, then paused and turned back to Draco. “You’re useless around children,” she said.
“As if that were a surprise,” he replied, then realized that he should have said that she was, too, for that matter. He opened his mouth, but she was already speaking again.
“But it turns out you aren’t the useless waste of space I’d always assumed,” she continued, then resumed her way on the path towards the house.
The pronouncement gave Draco an unsettling, buoyant feeling.
*
When they arrived back in the house, Narcissa was dancing around the foyer, holding her great-nephew in her arms and singing a song Draco hadn’t heard since he was a small child.
“Where’s Harry?” Ginny asked.
“Making a Floo call to Andromeda,” Narcissa replied, and didn’t even stutter on the name. “Letting her know that he’s bringing Teddy home soon.”
Ginny nodded. “You have a lovely home,” she said, more to be polite than anything else, Draco thought, given her running commentary in the garden. He caught her eye, and she turned her head away from Narcissa enough to give him a wink without being seen. He couldn’t stop the undoubtedly half-witted grin that spread across his face.
“Thank you,” Narcissa said, distracted as she smiled at the baby.
Draco thought maybe she’d had an ulterior motive in taking Harry under her wing after all. He hadn’t even though that maybe she would want to see her sister’s grandchild. Or that she wanted to think about her family at all, given all that had happened in the past year.
When Harry and Ginny went to leave, Ginny griping about the way Harry was holding onto her arm too tightly, he saw Narcissa press a small wrapped present into the pram, though he didn’t say a word about it.
*
A short time later, on Christmas Eve, an owl appeared at Draco’s window.
Clutched in its beak was a card, which Draco opened to reveal a spray of glitter. A lion roared quietly from the atrocious red background, and on the inside he was wished a very happy Christmas by a line of dancing, bell-clad house-elves.
It was simply signed, “Thinking of you.”
That was the fastest Draco ever responded to a bit of mail.
*
The next Christmas, Draco went to Diagon Alley to see the faerie lights being released.
Ginny had insisted, and she clutched at his hand, pretty with snowflakes in her hair and just as warm against his side as she’d been for that first kiss in the snow.
The crowd expressed their awe as the faeries lit up the sky. Across the way, Draco could see Harry Potter standing beside Weasley and Granger, laughing. He gave Ginny a half-glance to see if she had spotted her former boyfriend, only to see her giving them a cheery wave. He wasn’t surprised to see the slight snarl of nose in his direction as his school foes waved at his girlfriend, though the venom they’d once felt for each other seemed to have faded.
Part of time passing, he supposed.
Around the wizarding community, people barely even talked anymore, at least not where he could hear, about what had been and what he might have done. Instead, there was something new emerging, and the wizarding world was changing, and Draco with it.
One of the faeries lighted down on his shoulder, and Ginny laughed as she batted it away before he got bit.
It was one of the best Christmases he could remember.