♥ "The War of the Malfoys" for iluvfanfics ♥

[fienabler]

Title: The War of the Malfoys
Author: 60sfreak
Rating: T
Possible Spoilers/Warnings: EWE
Author’s Note: Thank you to Rainpuddle, who is a dream beta. *hugs*
Summary: Everyone else can sense the tension between them. It’s only a matter of time before they both snap.

The War of the Malfoys

Ginny knew that there was no way to hide it. Hide the boiling anger that raged just beneath the surface of her barely-controlled, placid demeanour. They were her family, after all, and what else was family for except not letting you have your secrets?

It was too late now anyway; the owls had been sent out and replied to, and everyone was coming over to the manor in a matter of moments for the public holiday. Ginny herself was in the kitchen, looking over some last-minute decorating choices and making sure that all the dishes she’d chosen for supper were progressing nicely. She had a house elf stationed in the foyer, eager and ready to take everyone’s cloaks when they arrived. Another waited in the parlour to serve drinks and hors d’oeuvres. Draco -

Ginny shook her head, tossing her titian waves over her shoulder. She didn’t care if he even showed up or not. He could go to hell for all that it mattered.

At the side of the room, along the wall, one of the little bells rang to indicate that someone had walked through the manor’s front gates. “Right,” she said, half to herself and half to the small corps of house elves arrayed before her. “The evening begins.”

“We is not failing you, Mistress!” the closest elf squeaked. The others voiced similarly high-pitched promises.

Ginny, smiling thinly at them all, removed the apron she had put on over her dress robes and set it aside. One deep breath, she counted as she walked through the house. Two deep breaths. She would control herself for the sake of her family if it killed her.

Molly and Arthur were already in the foyer when she arrived there, a house elf happily removing them from their cloaks. “There you are, dear,” her mother said, moving in to kiss her cheeks. “We wondered where you’d gone off to.”

“Just in the back, seeing to dinner,” Ginny said. She was mildly dismayed to hear the unmistakable hard tone in her voice. “Are the others just behind you?”

Her father, head cocked to one side, studied her a moment. “Yes, they’re just taking a bit longer because of the children,” he said warily. “Look, Ginbug, if you’re not feeling well then you shouldn’t feel pressure to-”

“She’s perfectly fine,” someone drawled behind her. Ginny didn’t turn around to look, but she could picture him clearly in her mind’s eye: his blond hair artfully tousled across his forehead, his dress robes immaculate. He would ooze self-assurance and masculine beauty like a prince. In that respect, he was stunningly predictable. “I’m afraid the fault for that lies with-”

“There are drinks in the parlour,” Ginny declared, over the end of his sentence. She straightened compulsively. “Shall I go in with you, or should I wait for the others?”

Molly and Arthur were now giving Draco the darkest looks Ginny had ever seen. “We’ll stay here until they come in,” Molly decided, moving closer to her only daughter. “They’re really not far away.”

“Not when there’s food on the line!” Ron called from the door. He was followed in by Hermione, who cradled a sleeping Rose in her arms. “Let’s eat, I’m famished.”

Ginny went to them as they removed their cloaks, giving them both dutiful hugs and kisses. Ron, already thinking about the coming meal, was oblivious, but Hermione hugged her baby closer when she saw the seething anger in Ginny’s eyes. Something terrible had happened in the Malfoy house, she realised. They would all be in for a long night.

The rest of the Weasley family trooped into the house soon after, and the foyer bustled with activity as parents helped children off with their cloaks and shoes. Young voices filled the room as they all scrambled to hug Aunt Ginny and Uncle Draco and tell them all about the mudpies they had made, and the rat they were now keeping as a pet, and what their brother or sister had done to them last week. For the children did not sense anything amiss - bless their hearts, they believed that they were in for an evening of rare delights, the kinds of foods that their parents wouldn’t let them eat at home, and the chance to stay awake later than usual. Nothing more complicated than that.

It was their parents - Ginny’s four attending brothers, and their wives - who rushed in to hush them. Angelina gave George a fearful look as they reined in young Freddie, who was already halfway to destroying the foyer; Bill murmured low in Dominique’s ear about being quiet and polite. Ginny saw all of this and cursed inwardly. Maybe she actually did care about controlling herself. It was time to make more of an effort now, and at least make the evening bearable for everyone present. Making it worth her while, she reasoned, meant she had a few merciful hours where there would be a buffer between her and that slimy, self-centred bastard she called her husband.

“Let’s all have drinks in the parlour,” she said with a forced smile, clasping her hands together as cheerfully as she could. “The house elves will let you have anything you want.”

“I want a butterbeer!” Victoire shrieked excitedly.

“She ees too young,” Fleur said, shaking her head. “A few more years, mon chère, and you can ‘ave un Bièraubeurre.”

“Oh, come now,” Ginny said, laughing gently. She took Victoire by the hand and led her to the parlour. “It’s very mild, and besides, it’s a holiday. Gully,” she said to the house elf standing in the corner, “would you please bring Victoire a small bottle of butterbeer?”

“Hooray!” Victoire cheered, jumping up and down in excitement. “Uncle Draco, I’m having butterbeer!”

“I know you are,” he said, grinning fondly at her. He reached to take her other hand, and Ginny dropped the one she held as though it suddenly burned her, and moved across the room to where George and his family sat on a sofa together.

“How are your lessons going so far, Freddie?” she asked her young nephew. She didn’t care how stilted or awkward she sounded; Fred would neither notice nor care.

“Don’t like ‘em,” he grumped, sticking out his bottom lip. He kicked his feet out in front of him. “I’d ruther play in the garden.”

“He means he’d rather find out what happens when you cross a firework with a Dungbomb,” Angelina said, rolling her eyes. “That was fun to clean up.”

Ginny laughed and nudged George with her elbow. “Sounds like someone I know,” she teased.

George blushed, but laughed with her. “I reckon my wicked, untamed youth has come back to bite me in the-”

“Earmuffs, Freddie,” Angelina chirped. Freddie obligingly covered his ears with his hands.

“What’s wrong, Gin?” George said urgently, leaning closer to her so that he could whisper. Everyone else was busy catching up with each other - Ginny watched through narrowed eyes as Molly, Percy’s older daughter, taught Draco how to do cat’s cradle with a spare bit of string. “There’s got to be something up,” George said, “I can tell just by looking at-”

“I’m fine, thanks,” Ginny said stiffly.

“Bollocks,” Angelina replied with a snort. “Like we’ll believe that.”

Ginny removed Freddie’s hands from his ears. “What’ll you have to drink, Freddie? Want a butterbeer like Victoire?”

“I asked Gully for extras, since I assumed all the children would want one.” Again from behind her, his smooth voice washed over them, and Ginny turned to see Draco bearing the tray the house elf had brought from the kitchen. Two butterbeers sat upon the shiny silver surface, uncorked.

The air noticeably crackled when their eyes met, like the electricity in the air before a thunderstorm. Had her robes been made of any thinner material, Ginny would have ripped a hole in them from the way she gripped the fabric in her fingers.

“Excellent!” Freddie cried, grabbing a bottle off the tray. “Cheers, Uncle Draco!”

Ginny stood up at once, hands smoothing the wrinkles in her robes. “I’m going to look in on our dinner,” she said quickly, and before George could even open his mouth to ask, she had darted out of the room.

“Ginevra.”

She clenched and unclenched her fists at her sides, longing to break something. Her heels clicked on the slate floor tiles in the foyer and corridor, but so did his, and he always had been able to move faster than her.

“Ginny, I’m talking to you.”

When still she ignored him, Draco grabbed her upper arm and spun her against the wall, pinning her between it and his body. The dull thud she made did not go unnoticed. “You’re acting like a spoilt brat,” he hissed, staring down at her with eyes like chips of ice. “Stop this, or I’ll send everyone home.”

“Me, a brat?” she ground out. “The only brat I see here is you.”

He tightened his grip. “If you would just take a moment to actually listen to me-”

“I don’t need to,” she spat, trying to twist away. “You said everything you needed to last week, remember?”

“Is there something wrong here?”

Ginny turned her head to see Bill, looking impossibly tall and imposing against the light filtering from the parlour. For effect, he cracked his knuckles. He looked capable of absolutely anything, including tearing Draco’s limbs from his body without breaking a sweat.

“Let me go,” she bit off under her breath. Draco did, but slowly.

“I’m just checking on dinner,” she said to Bill. “There’s nothing amiss.”

“I had something I wanted to ask Draco anyway,” Bill said, grinning a little. With his scarred face, the grin didn’t make him look friendly so much as sinister.

Draco returned his smile, looking a bit strained. “We will talk later,” he muttered to her, before he turned and followed Bill back into the parlour.

Once they had gone, Ginny ran the rest of the way to the kitchen, her sanctuary, where at last she could catch her breath. She braced herself on the edge of one of the workspaces, head sunk between her shoulders, and stared at the Spanish tile floor under her feet. This was hard. Too hard. It took so much energy to contain herself for their friends and family, but even more to just function and resist the temptation to…to what? Ginny wasn’t exactly sure.

And frankly, she was scared. She had married Draco two years earlier, and of course they had had their spats like any couple, over things both trivial and important - but this was ten times what those fights had been. They hadn’t spoken a civil word to each other since that fateful day a week ago, and the hostility was only getting worse. She hadn’t known that being angry with someone could take up so much of her time.

The fact that her marriage might be falling apart only made her hate Draco more, because it would prove everyone right. Everyone who thought that a Weasley and a Malfoy together was like trying to mix oil and water would be proven completely right.

With an immense effort, she took several deep breaths and refocused. She could do this. She would get through this. One day she would look back on this time in her life as only a fond memory.

But when she stepped back out into the hall, she found that everyone had already gone into the dining room - to get the evening over with, most likely. And just outside the door stood Draco, his back stiff as a fire poker, with her father. Her breath stuck in her throat, Ginny ducked out of sight to hear them.

“I don’t know what’s going on between you and my daughter,” Arthur was saying, “but it’s going to stop. Soon.”

“I assure you, sir,” Draco said - she thought rather glibly - “I am making every effort possible to end this feud. It is she who won’t cooperate.”

“Be that as it may, if I find out you’ve hurt her in any fashion, there will - there will be hell to pay.” Arthur was shaking with indignation he was so upset, and his blue eyes flashed so intensely that Ginny scarcely recognised him for a brief moment.

“I would sooner harm a defenceless child than cause Ginny pain,” Draco replied.

He was a good actor, she mused from her hiding spot. He had the penitent son-in-law role down pat, from the bowed shape of his shoulders to the faux-sincere glint in his eyes. Her father was eating right out of his palm, for now he was shaking hands with Draco and patting him on the back as though they were old mates. Ginny would never deny loving her father, but really, he was often blinded by what he wanted to see.

She gave them a few moments to enter the dining room with everyone else before she made her grand re-entrance. “I’ve just been to the kitchens, and everything looks delicious,” she said, smiling for them all except Draco. “I do hope you like it.”

“Did you make chicken and ham pie?” Dominique piped up from her seat between Bill and Fleur.

“I did,” Ginny said, “just for you, Dom.”

“It’s not as good as Grandmum’s,” Freddie cried. “Grandmum’s is the best.”

“Oh hush now,” Mrs Weasley said, but she was beaming with pride. “I’m sure everything will be just fine, love.”

Ginny pulled the bellcord on the wall and the house elves all came in from the kitchen, bearing immense platters of food. The children all shrieked in delight, for Ginny had had all of their favourite dishes made for the occasion: chicken and ham pie for Dominique, fish and chips for little Molly, and more. The adults chuckled at the enthusiasm of their children, and tried to contain them long enough to put food on their plates.

“Aunt Ginny,” little Lucy, Percy’s other daughter, said, “can you help me?”

“Certainly, darling,” Ginny said. “What will you have?”

Lucy struggled under the weight of her heavy plate until Ginny gently took it from her. “One of everything!” she said excitedly. Then, she added a belated, “Please?”

Ginny smiled as she went about fulfilling her request, portioning out a bit of each dish onto Lucy’s plate. Percy, on her other side, watched the proceedings with a slight frown. “Are you sure your eyes aren’t bigger than your stomach, love?” Percy said, raising an eyebrow at his daughter’s dinner.

Lucy turned thoughtful at his question, before - with utter seriousness - she took her fingers and measured the size of her eyes and the size of her childish little belly. “Nope,” she declared triumphantly to the table. “My tummy’s definitely bigger.”

Percy and all the adults laughed uproariously, and Percy, wiping tears from his eyes, bent and planted an affectionate kiss on his daughter’s strawberry blonde curls.

Ginny found she couldn’t breathe suddenly. Her heart jumped straight to her throat, making her lightheaded. She gave Lucy’s plate back to her and then gripped the table, seized with such a forceful, unnameable emotion that she couldn’t think, couldn’t do anything for a few mindless moments. Feeling eyes upon her, Ginny glanced up to see Draco staring back at her, with some equally unnameable look in his eyes. For the first time in a week, she was too caught up to be angry.

He stood up abruptly, wineglass in hand. “If I could have your attention, for just a moment. For a toast.”

Everyone silenced immediately and took up their wineglasses - even Ginny, who moved as though in a dream. Mr and Mrs Weasley looked from Draco to Ginny and back again, and they weren’t the only ones. Hermione was biting her bottom lip, worrying her napkin between tense fingers. Ginny could only stare up at the other end of the table.

“I’d like to thank you all for coming here tonight to celebrate the holiday with us,” Draco began, his perfect hair glinting in the light of the chandelier. He bared his teeth, in what Ginny assumed was meant to be a smile. “One thing I’ve learned since Ginny and I married is that the importance of family can never be underestimated. As I said, it’s a pleasure having you all here to celebrate and bring some life to this dusty old place.

“This toast is not for you, however, but for her. My wonderful - my brilliant wife.” He choked on the words. She saw it. They all did. Ginny felt sick at seeing the difficulty he had in saying something even obliquely nice about her, and she looked away. Had it come to this already? So soon? “I don’t know where I’d be without her, because I don’t think there’s a single thing she can’t do.”

“Here, here,” Angelina said weakly, raising her glass. George nudged for her to be silent.

Draco smiled his fake smile at her, before going on. “As - as I said - she’s amazing, Ginny. Worth much more than any mere toast I can give her. She’s good at everything she tackles - everything. Seeing how good she is with all her nieces and nephews - I know that she’ll even make an excellent mother someday.”

A terrific shattering sound broke the stillness, as the delicate wineglass crushed under the merciless pressure of Ginny’s hand. Percy and Ron were so startled they jumped in their seats. Baby Rose started to whimper in her father’s arms.

She ignored them. Ignored the blood trickling down her hands and onto the fine linen tablecloth. She only had eyes for Draco, whom she now saw for what he really was: a monster. A hideous, spiteful monster, who would taunt her in front of her parents with his talk of children - children they would never have. He was saying goodbye to her. In front of everyone.

She stood up so quickly she tripped on the leg of her chair, and would have gone sprawling had she not caught herself on the table. Vaguely, she heard her mother call out to her, and Bill, but Ginny stumbled out of the dining room, out into the foyer, up the stairs. To her bedroom, bleeding. Where she had slept alone for the past six nights.

He was, as she had suspected he would be, right behind her. He stood in the doorway as she trembled in the middle of the room, knowing she had to get her luggage, but too scared to take the first step. “What are you doing, love?” he murmured, in that same voice he had used to whisper endearments in her ear, and to tell her that he loved her. That seemed centuries ago now.

“I’m doing what you want,” she said, and she discovered that she was crying. Tears streamed down her pale cheeks unchecked, tightening her throat with noiseless, despairing sobs. “I’m packing my bags. I’m leaving.”

“What I want?” Oh, he was good, so good. Still putting on that act, to convince her that he wasn’t completely heartless. His voice had just the right amount of worry and astonishment to almost convince her, but she knew, she knew better. “Why would I want you to leave?”

“You won’t-” Her voice came out a hoarse scream, and she had to cough and try again. “You won’t have children with me, but you’ll tell everyone I’ll make a good mother?” She spun on her heel to face him. “Why can’t I leave you before you leave me? Spare myself the heartbreak?”

Draco took several steps into the room, one arm outstretched as though to stop her. “I’m not leaving you, Ginny. I’m never leaving you.”

She didn’t think. She couldn’t think anymore. With a wordless scream, she attacked him with her bare hands. She reached for his perfect eyes, wanting to scrape them out of their sockets, and to knock askew that perfect nose, and ruin that perfect complexion. He needed to hurt just as badly and deeply as she did. It was only right.

He grabbed her wrists just in time to save himself, but it was a struggle to keep her at bay. Her face was red now in rage, in pain, but he hung on, shocked and confused until she simply couldn’t maintain the façade anymore. For that was what it was, her rage: a front. She collapsed into a pile of silky dress robes on the floor and Draco followed, clinging to her with both hands.

“Why would I want you to leave?” he repeated desperately, trying to get her to meet his eyes. “Why, when my whole life hangs on you?”

“You said goodbye,” she hiccoughed, grabbing fistfuls of the front of his robes. “You lied to them all.”

“I told them the truth,” he said firmly. “I told them how much you mean to me - I can’t put a value on how you’ve changed my life for the better, Ginny.”

“And even still!” she gasped, dissolving further into her tears. “Even now you’re trying to talk me into - into believing you-”

“Just listen to me!” he bellowed, shaking her. He took her chin in hand and forced her to look at him. “You heard what you wanted to hear, but this is what I really said: not goodbye. Not that I wanted you to leave.”

Ginny sniffled loudly. “If you claim to love me so much,” she hissed, “then why did you ignore me when I went to you last week?”

“Because you expected me to give you an answer right there, on the spot,” he said, meeting her stare for stare and tone for tone. “You know how I function, love. I need to take the time to consider things before I decide anything, and yet you expected me to answer a life-altering question with only five seconds to think about it!”

“That didn’t call for you slamming your door in my face!”

“No, it didn’t, and for that and that only, I’m sorry.”

Ginny sobbed again, and wrenched her chin away from his hand. “Not for - not for glaring at me like I was unhinged?” she asked in a small voice.

He winced. “Well, that too. I’m sorry.”

“Not for avoiding me for the rest of that day?”

Draco sighed and shifted positions so that he was seated on the floor before her. “Right, so - I did lots of things wrong that day,” he admitted reluctantly. “Had I known that this was the reaction I’d get, I would never have done any of them.”

“And - and downstairs,” she said unevenly. Another sob bubbled up. “When you had - so much trouble being kind to me-”

He rolled his eyes. “Since when have I ever enjoyed wearing my heart on my sleeve in public? Come on, Ginny. You know better than this.”

She considered. Was it possible she had misread him? Merlin knew it had happened before - like last week, for one. “Then - then are you sorry?” she whispered.

He picked up her hand, the one that bore his ring, and kissed it tenderly. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. Next, her other hand, still bleeding slightly. “I’m sorry.” Her shoulder. Behind her ear. “I’m sorry.” The corner of her mouth next. “I’m sorry.”

Ginny trembled again, but this time for a different reason. “Sometimes it’s - so easy to hate you,” she murmured, sniffling again. “It’s so easy to believe everyone else was right when they said we’d never last. But it costs - so much.”

Draco bent his head until it touched hers, and kept both her hands in his own. “This has been one of the hardest weeks of my life,” he admitted. “It takes a great deal of effort to despise you. And do you know why?”

Silently, Ginny shook her head.

“Because it goes against everything I believe in.” He tipped her chin up to look at her once more. “I am miserably, pathetically in love with you, you insane witch.” Ginny laughed helplessly, even as more tears spilled from her eyes. “And being angry with you is to go against my very nature. I simply cannot do it for any extended amount of time.”

Ginny was quiet awhile, comforted by the soft motion of his thumbs skimming across the backs of her hands. There was still one thing left undone. “Now what?” she whispered.

Draco heaved a great sigh, as though preparing himself. “Now you tell me once more,” he said. “Tell me what you did a week ago. I’ve thought about it. I’m ready now.”

Ginny met his eyes steadily, amazed at how they had changed. What had so recently been cold and cruel to her, were now warm and loving. It hadn’t been an act. This man, seated penitently before her - he really, truly loved her.

“I want-” Her voice caught, so she cleared her throat, tried again. “I want a child,” she breathed. “A baby of my own. With you. Your baby.”

Draco nodded slowly. “With your hair and my eyes,” he whispered.

Impossibly, Ginny felt her heart swell to five times its proper size. “With your wit and my patience,” she said. She could feel herself smiling so broadly she thought her face threatened to split in half.

“My charm and your beauty,” Draco continued, leaning in to brush his lips against hers.

Another sob escaped the back of her throat, but this one was different - it was happy. “Oh Merlin, Draco, please tell me that’s a yes.”

He kissed her again. “That’s a yes,” he murmured. “Let’s do it. Let’s have a child.”

Laughing ecstatically, Ginny flung herself at him; Draco, caught off-balance, tumbled backwards onto the floor with her atop his chest, smothered by breathless kisses. “Thank you,” she said over and over, “thank you, thank you.”

Carefully, he extricated himself from her grasp. “It makes sense to me now,” he said thoughtfully, brushing a stray curl of hair back from her face.

“What does?”

“The strength of your reaction.” He cupped her cheek in his hand. “You want this more than anything, don’t you?”

She remembered that tightness she had felt in the dining room, watching little Lucy. “More than anything,” she repeated.

He smirked up at her. “Then who am I to deny you what you want?”

Ginny laughed again, and scrubbed away the last of her tears. “It won’t be that disagreeable on your end, you know,” she said in a sultry tone, reaching for the top fasteners of his robes. “I’ve heard the process of making babies is rather enjoyable.”

In one swift movement, Draco had flipped her onto her back, and now he hovered over her. “We still have guests downstairs,” he reminded her.

“They know where the door is,” she said, waving a hand in dismissal.

“Saucy wench,” he growled, his hand already halfway up under her robes.

There were no more words for a long, long time.

ORIGINAL REQUEST:
Briefly describe what you'd like to receive in your fic (art)
The tone/mood of the fic: Angst, fluff, intense but not abstract
An element/line of dialogue/object you would like in your fic: I love a good Angry Draco whose sarcasm is only matched by Ginny's.
Preferred rating of the the fic you want: Any
Canon or AU? Either
Deal Breakers (anything you don't want?): D/G only -- I hate it when ships cheat on each other; no stupid Harrys; no extreme warnings.