Learn to Hate

Learn to hate

Draco Malfoy, thirty years old, married, successful, sexy and the father of two healthy energetic play school age children, and right nor thoroughly disenchanted and bored with his lot, surveyed the other occupants of the ballroom of Faro's Daughters- presently the scene of his brother in law's wedding reception- with cynical contempt.

Marion, the bride and the most dominant of the females of the Weasley clan, was laughing into the handsome face of her new husband, Percy Weasley, while various members of the Weasley clan looked on in what to Draco was grotesquely irritating sentimentality. Beside them stood Fred and George Weasley,

Twins!

Twins ran through the genealogical history of the Weasley family. His own step-father was the younger one of one pair and his grandfather, Bastian Weasley, the lone survivor of another.

Twins!

Draco was eternally grateful to his parents for the fact that his life had not been overshadowed; that he had not been overshadowed by another half, another self, threatening his position of sole supremacy, and it was about the only thing he was grateful to them for.

As he glanced around the large room, Draco was coolly amused to observe the way so many of his relatives failed to meet his gaze. They didn't like him very much, but he didn't care. Why should he? Having people like him had never been one of Draco's ambitions.

The brand new Bentley Turbo aero-dynamic convertible car he was currently driving, his position as a partner in one of London's most prestigious sets of Auror chambers; they hadn't been acquired because people liked him. To be one of London's foremost Auror's had been Draco's driving goal in life, ever since he had been old enough to learn from his father a.k.a. Lucius the mole, just what the word Auror meant.

Draco's uncle Jasper in law, his father in law's twin brother, had once been destined for that same golden future, but Uncle Jasper had failed to make it. There had been a time, too, when Draco had feared he too may fail, when despite all the promises he had made with himself, all the tension over the Great War, all the promises he had made to his father, he might, through no fault of his own, have the prize he so desperately wanted snatched from him at the last minute. But he had found a way to turn the situation to his own advantage, to show those who had tried to bring him down just how foolish they had been.

He glanced across the room to where his wife, Virginia, was sitting with her mother and her grandfathers sister, Germana.

While not one of his female cousins of his own generation, nor the wives of his male ones, could ever be said to be the kind of high profile trophy wives that their partners could take satisfaction in flaunting beneath the envious eyes of other men, they were certainly attractive enough- very attractive indeed, in fact in the case of Bill's wife Fleur- to underline Virginia's dreary, boring plainness.

Draco's mouth curled cynically as his wife glanced up and saw that he was watching her, in her eyes the look of a rabbit momentarily trapped in the dazzle of a car's headlights, before she quickly looked away from him.

Virginia did, of course, have one redeeming feature as his wife. Her family was extremely wealthy new money and extremely well connected.

'What do you mean, you don't want our baby,' she had faltered in shocked disbelief when she had so humbly and so adoringly brought him the news that she was pregnant with their first child.

'I mean, my oh-so-stupid wife, that I don't want it,' Draco had told her callously. 'The reason I married you was not to procreate another generation of little Weasleys, your brothers can do that...'

'No... then why... why did you marry me?' Virginia had asked him tearfully.

It had amused him to see the dread in her eyes, to feel the fear she was trying so hard to conceal.

'I married you because it was the only way I could get into a decent set of Auror chambers, which thanks to my fathers dabbling into the Dark Arts I didn't have,' Draco had told her cruelly. 'Why so shocked?' he had taunted her. 'Surely you must have guessed...'

'You said you loved me,' Virginia had reminded him painfully.

Draco had thrown back his head and laughed. 'And you believed me... Did you really, Virginia, or were you just so desperate to get a man, to get laid, to get married, that you chose to believe me?

'Get rid of it,' he had instructed her, his glance flicking dispassionately towards her small, round stomach.

Bud Virginia hadn't done as he had demanded. Instead she had defied him, and now there were two noisy, squalling brats to disrupt his life- not that he allowed them to do so.

It had been a positive stroke of genius on his part to encourage his step grand father to become so dependent on Virginia that the old man had insisted that she was the only person he wanted around him.

Persuading Virginia to virtually live full-time in Haslewich, the Cheshire town where her parents had grown up and where her great-grandfather had first begun the Auror practice that her father now ran, had been even easier, a move had left him free to pursue his own life virtually unhindered by the interference and responsibility of two turbulent children and a clinging wife.

Draco felt not the least degree of compunction about the affairs he had enjoyed during his marriage, relationships that in the main, had been conducted with female clients for whom he was acting for when undercover.

It was not unusual for these women- rich, beautiful, spoiled and often either bored or vulnerable- to feel that a relationship with the handsome young Auror who was going to make who ever wronged them part with as much of their fortune or possessions as he could was a justifiable perk of their divorce, as well as an additional small triumph against their enemies.

It was not to be hoped, of course, that they would keep the details of such a delicious piece of vengeance a secret.

Confidences were shared and exchanged with 'girlfriends,' and Draco had very quickly become known as the Auror to have if one was in trouble- and not just because of the wonderful amounts of possessions he managed to wrest from their previously determinedly ungenerous foes.

Even his marriage to Virginia, which initially he had intended should last no longer than the time it took to get himself established, had begun to be a bonus. After all, marriage to Virginia and the existence of two small dependent children meant that all his lovers had to appreciate right from the start of their affair that it could only ever be a temporary thing, that no matter how desirable, how enticing they might be, he as a man of honour could not put his own needs, his own desires, above the security of his children. For their sakes he had to stay married.

'If only there were more men like you...' more than one of his lovers had whispered. 'Your wife is so lucky...'

Draco totally agreed, Virginia was lucky. If he hadn't married her she could have been condemned to a life of being the unmarried daughter.

There was currently a whisper that her father was being considered for the soon-to-be vacant post of Minister of Magic, and it would certainly do his own career no harm at all is that whisper should become a reality.

Draco knew that Virginia's parents didn't particularly care for him, but it didn't worry him. Why should it? His own parents, his own family didn't like him very much, either. And he didn't particularly like them. The only member of any of his family's he had ever felt any real degree of warmth for had been his uncle Jasper, and even that had been tinged with envy because his grandfather doted on Jasper. Draco also felt contempt for Jasper, because for all his grandfather's talk and praise, Jasper had, after all, still only been the senior partner in the family's small-town Auror practice.

Love, the emotion that united and bonded other people, was an alien concept to Draco. He loved himself, of course, but his feelings for others veered from mild contempt through disinterest to outright resentment and deep hostility.

In Draco's eyes, it was not his fault that others didn't like him, it was theirs. Their fault and their loss.

Draco glanced at his watch. He'd give it another half and hour and then he'd leave. Marion had originally wanted to get married on Christmas Eve, but the wedding had actually taken place a bit earlier, primarily because it was the return of Great-aunt Germana and her American husband, Howard, to fly to the States to spend Christmas with German's daughter and her husband.

Great aunt Germana's granddaughter Fleur, and her husband, Bill, were going with them, along with their young daughter.

Several yards away, Fleur Weasley, who had observed the war Draco had looked at poor Ginny, reflected grimly to herself that Draco really was detestable. She had once heard his cousin Olivia remark very succinctly, 'Max is the king of man who, no matter how attractive the woman he's speaking with is, will always be looking over her shoulder to see if he can spot someone even better...'

Poor Ginny, indeed. Fleur didn't know how she could bear to stay in her marriage, but then, of course, there were the children.

She patted her own still-flat stomach with a small, secret smile; her second pregnancy had been confirmed only the previous week.

'I think this time it could be twins,' she had confided to Bill, who had raised his dark eyebrows and asked her dryly, 'Women's intuition?'

'Well, one of us has got to produce a set,' Fleur had pointed out to him, 'and I'm the right age for it now. Mothers in their thirties are more likely to have twins...'

'In their thirties? You are only just thirty,' Bill had reminded her.

'Mmm... I know, and I rather think that these two were conceived on the night of my thirtieth birthday,' she had told him softly.

Bill was one of several children, six boys and one girl. His father Arthur Weasley, and his fathers brother, Hasbreath Weasley, were the senior partners, now retired, in the original Aurors' practice in Chester. Over eighty years ago there had been a quarrel between the then youngest son Fenwick Weasley, and his family, and he had broken away from them and gone on to found the Haslewich branch of the Weasley family and firm.

While Bill's brothers and sister and the other Weasley cousins and their Haslewich peers were extremely good friends, Bastian Weasley, the most senior member of the Weasley family in Haslewich, was still obsessed by the family tradition of competitiveness with the members, even if it was now in spirit only.

It had been a burning ambition of Bastian's all his life that initially his eldest son and then, when that had not been possible, his most ambitious grandson, Draco, should achieve the goal that had been withheld from him and be called to the guild.

All through his growing years, Draco had been alternately bribed and coerced by his father to fulfil this goal, his naturally competitive spirit sharpened and fed by his fathers' tales of the injustices suffered by the Malfoy's and the need to restore the family pride by proving to the world that they weren't the only ones who could boast of reaching the higher echelons of the Auror profession.

When Draco had announced to Ginny's grandfather that he was to join one of London's most prestigious sets of chambers, he had made Bastian Weasley's dearest wish come true.

As Fleur surveyed the Faro's Daughters' ballroom now, she couldn't help remembering the first time she had attended another family occasion- Fred and his twin George's 10^th annual year of Weasley's Wizard Wheezes, an event to which she, as a stranger then to the family, had been invited by Ron, Bill's younger brother.

Draco had behaved very gallantly towards her then. Too gallantly for a married man, as Bill hadn't hesitated to point out. Conversely, she and Bill had clashed immediately, equally antagonistic towards each other.

She was glad that Percy had brought his wedding forwards from Christmas Eve so that they could all attend. She would have hated to have missed the celebration, but she was looking forward to spending Christmas with her parents and sister as well. Her mother, Severine, would be thrilled when she told her about her pregnancy, and so, too she hoped would Gabriel... A small frown touched her forehead as she thought about her younger sister.

Something was wrong with Gabriel's life at the moment. She knew it, could sense it with that extraordinarily magical bond that made them close...

In a small anteroom just off the ballroom, the youngest members of the Weasley family were having a small party of their own, not so much by design as by accident. From her seat within watching distance of the door, Molly Weasley was keeping a motherly eye on the events, though she knew they could come to no harm.

Who would have thought in such a short space of time that the family would produce so many little ones, a complete new generation.

Liv, her husband's niece and the eldest of his twin brother Lucien's two children, had started it all, and now she and Sherlock, her American husband, had Alec and Austin. Saya, Bastian's half brother Jai's elder son, had Quinn, Merry and Robin from his first marriage and now a baby from his marriage to Brianna, and of course her own daughter, Virginia, had Liam and Jade.

Ginny... Molly could feel her body tensing as she took a quick look at her daughter, who was seated between here and Germana her head bent down. Ginny might seem to the unaware onlooker calm and serene, but Molly had seen the tears sparkling in her eyes several minutes ago and she had known who had been the cause of them.

Even now, after all these years, she still hadn't come to terms with the reality that was her daughters husband, and it hurt her unbearably to know that it was Draco, who was the cause of so much hurt and pain.

She ached to ask her son in law why he behaved the way he did. Why. What it was that motivated him to be the person he was, but she knew that if she even tried to talk to him he would simply giver her that half mocking, half sneering contemptuous little smile of his and shrug his shoulders and walk away.

She had never been able to understand why her daughter had married him, and she knew she never would. She knew, too, that every time she looked at her daughter and witnessed the pain her marriage was causing her, she was overwhelmed by guilt and despair.

Ginny was everything that she, Molly, could have wanted in a daughter, and as such she was dearly loved by her, but Molly would had to have had far less intelligence than she did have to be able to convince herself that Ginny was the kind of wife that Draco should have gone for.

Draco thrived on opposition, challenge, aggression. Draco wanted most what he could have least and poor Virginia just wasn't... just couldn't... Poor Virginia!

At her mother's side, Virginia Weasley had a pretty fair idea just what Molly was thinking and she couldn't blame her in the least.

Draco had only arrived home at Queensmead this morning, the lovely old house that belonged to her grandfather and where Virginia and the children had now virtually made their permanent home, with only an hour to spare before the wedding began, having assured Virginia that he would be there early the previous evening. Not an auspicious start, and to make matters even worse, Liam was going through a belligerent and rather touchingly possessive phase where his mother was concerned. Unlike his father, Liam didn't seem to realize that her looks made it a visible implausibility that any man could ever feel possessively jealous about her- and he had glowered at Draco when he had arrived, refusing to leave her side to go to his father.

In private Virginia knew that Draco couldn't care less whether the children ignored him or not. In fact if the truth were known, the less he had to do with them, the happier he was. After all, he had never wanted either of them.

But in public, it was different. In public, in front of his grandfather and others, his children had to be seen to love their father, which Liam, quite plainly at the moment, did not. And then Jade had been sick. Not, fortunately, badly enough to harm her dress, but certainly enough to cause the kind of delay that had Draco swearing under his breath and telling Virginia with chilling cruelty that she was as useless as a mother as she was a wife.

Ginny knew what the true cause of his anger was, of course. It was a woman. It had to be. She knew the signs far too well now not to recognize them. Draco had left a woman behind in London whom he would far rather be with. And no doubt she was the reason he had not come down to Haslewich last night as they had agreed.

Ginny told herself that his infidelity didn't have the power to hurt her anymore, but deep down inside she knew that it wasn't true.

Ginny knew that her mother and the rest of her family felt very sorry for her. She could see it in their eyes, hear it in their voices, and sometimes, when she looked at her cousins and their wives with their families and saw they love they shared, she felt positively rent with pain for all that she was missing out on, although she tried to tell herself stoically that what you never had you never missed. And he did have an excuse for his behaviour. He had certainly never been loved as a child as a child longed to be. His mother was a peer's daughter who had always given her the impression that she considered her marriage, and with it her husband and her daughter in law, as somehow slightly beneath her. She held herself slightly separate from them and spent most of her time on a round of visits to a variety of relatives while his father, the ever known Lucius Malfoy, the leader of the Death Eaters, spent his time working for Voldemort's cause.

Draco, their only child, had not featured very significantly in his parents' lives. Except of course as a symbol of his fathers virility. Now that he was married she hardly saw them at all, and to come to Haslewich and discover that there was not just a home waiting for her with Virginia's grandfather, but also a role to play where she was really genuinely needed had for a time at least, been a comforting salve on the open wound of her destructive marriage.

Virginia was, by nature and instinct, one of life's carers, and when other people grimaced over her grandfather's tetchiness, she simply smiled and explained gently that it was the pain he suffered in his damaged joints that caused him to be so irascible.

'Ginny, you are a saint,' she had been told more than once by her grateful relatives, but she wasn't, of course, she was simply a woman- a woman who right now longed with the most ridiculous intensity to be the kind of woman who a man might look at the way Percy Weasley was looking at his wife, Marion Weasley, with love, with pride, with desire... with all the things Virginia had once mistakenly and tragically convinced herself she had seen in Draco's eyes when he looked at her, but which had simply been mocking and contemptuous deceits designed to conceal his real feelings from her.

Draco had married her for one reason and one reason only, as he had told her many, many times in the years since their wedding, and that reason had been his relentless ambition to be called to the Ministry's top Aurors; an ambition that she had discovered he might never have fulfilled without her family's help.

'Ginny, why do you put up with him? Why on earth don't you divorce him?' Hermione had asked her impatiently one Christmas when both of them had sat and watched Draco flirting openly and very obviously with a pretty young woman.

Virginia had simply shaken her head, unable to explain to Hermione why she remained married to Draco. How could she when she couldn't really explain it herself? All she could have said was that here at Haslewich she felt safe and secure... wanted and needed...

Hence, while, she had a task to complete, she felt able to side-line the issue of her marriage, to pretend to herself, while Draco was away in London and she was here, that it was not, after all, as bad as it might seem to others.

The truth was, Virginia suspected that she didn't divorce Draco because she was afraid of what her life might be, not so much without him as without sole possession of her children. It was pathetic of her, she knew, but it wasn't just for herself that she was being what others would see as weak. There were the children to be considered as well.

In Haslewich they were part of a large and loving interlinked family network where they had a luxury not afforded to many modern children, the luxury of growing up surrounded by their extended family- aunts, uncles, cousins. The Weasley family was part of this area of Cheshire, and Virginia desperately wanted to give her children a gift that she considered more priceless than anything else; the gift of security, of knowing they had a special place in their own special world.

'But surely if you lived in London, the children would be able to see much more of their father,' one recent acquaintance had commented to her not long ago.

Virginia had bent her neat head over the buttons she was fastening on Liam's coat so that her hair felt forward, concealing her expression as she had responded in a muffled voice, 'Draco's work keeps him very busy. He works late most evenings...'

Luckily the other woman hadn't pressed the subject, but as she ushered Liam towards the path that cut across behind the building where he attended play school classes three mornings a week- Virginia refused to use the car unless she absolutely had to, one of the pleasures of living in a small country town was surely that one could walk almost everywhere- Virginia had felt acutely self conscious. Within the family it was accepted that Draco remained in London supposedly mostly during the working week, but in reality for much longer stretched of time than that, so that she and the children could often go weeks if not months on end without really seeing him.

Although her marriage was subject that she never discussed- with anyone- Virginia knew that her family had to be aware that it wasn't merely necessity that kept Draco away.

Sometimes she was sorely tempted to confide in Molly, her mother, but the natural reticence and quiet pride that were so much a part of her gentle nature always stopped her, and what, after all, could Molly do? Command Draco to love her and the children; command him to...

Stop it, Virginia hastily warned herself, willing her eyes not to fill with tears.

Draco was already in a foul-enough mood without her making things worse. He might not be the kind of man who would ever physically abuse either his wife or his children, but his silent contempt and his hostility towards them were sometimes so tangible that Virginia felt she could almost smell the dark, bitter miasma of them in the air of a room even after he had left it.

The first thing she always did after his brief visits to Queeensmead was to go round and open all the windows and to breathe lungful of clean, healing fresh air.

'Where's that husband of yours?' she remembered Bastian asking her fretfully recently as he shifted his weight from his bad hip to his good one. The healer had warned him the last time he had gone for a check-up that there was a strong possibility that he might have to have a second hip operation to offset the wear and tear caused to his good hip by him favouring it to ease the pain in his 'bad' one.

Predictably he had erupted in a tirade of angry refusal to accept what the healer was telling him, and it had taken Virginia several days to get him properly calmed down again.

But despite his irascibility and his impatience, she genuinely liked him. There was a very kind, caring side to him, an old fashioned protective maleness that she knew some of the younger female members of his family considered to be irritating, but which she personally found rather endearing.

'I do not know how you put up with him,' Liv had told her vehemently only the previous week. She had called to see Virginia, bringing with her Christmas presents for Liam and Jade, and she brought her two small daughters, Austin and Alec, with her.

'Daughters! Sons, that's what this family needs,' her grandfather had sniffed disparagingly when she had taken the girls in to see him. 'It's just as well we've got young Liam here,' he had added proudly as he gazed fondly at his great grandson.

'I will not have him making my girls feel that they are in any way inferior to boys,' Liv had fumed later in the kitchen to Ginny as they drank their coffee.

'He doesn't mean anything by it,' Ginny had tried to comfort her, pushing the plate of Christmas biscuits she had baked that morning towards Liv as she spoke.

'Oh, yes he does,' Liv had told her darkly as she munched one of them, 'and I should know. After all, I heard enough of it when I was growing up. He never stopped making me feel... reminding me... that as a girl I could never match up to Bill, and my father was just as bad. Sometimes I used to wish that Bill had been my father's child, and that Uncle Arthur had been my father...'

'Molly's told me how dreadfully Gramps spoiled Bill when he was growing up,' Ginny remarked quietly.

'Spoiled him is exactly right,' Liv had agreed forthrightly, momentarily obviously forgetting that Ginny was Draco's wife. 'Anything Bill wanted he got, and Gramps was forever boasting about him to everyone. Whenever we had a get together with the lot, there was Gramps singing Bill's praises, and woe betide anyone who tried to argue with him.

'I laughed till tears crawled down my face when Bill announced he was to be a curse breaker. But then you married Draco, and then the world revolved around his son in law.'

'Yes,' Virginia had agreed. She knew Liv far too well to suspect her of any kind of malice or unkindness. She was simply stating what she saw as the facts, and her opinions were quite naturally tainted by her dislike of Draco. She had always been completely open with Virginia about her feelings for her Draco, explaining that they went back a long way, and that much as she liked Ginny herself, she doubted that she could ever pretend to feel anything other than wary acceptance of Draco.

Did Liv know that the only reason Draco had married her was to further his career? Virginia hoped not. Liv was basically very kind hearted and Virginia knew she would never have deliberately hurt her by raising the subject if she had known the whole truth.

'Gramps is going to be putting an awful lot of pressure on Liam to follow in Draco's footsteps,' she started to warn Ginny, but Ginny stopped her, shaking her head calmly.

'Liam isn't like Draco,' she told Liv quietly. 'I think if he takes after anyone it Arthur, and I suspect that if he does become an Auror, he will be quite happy to follow Arthur into the Haslewich practice.

'To be truthful, I think if any of the babes are destined to be real high flyers, its going to be your Austin...'

Liv had smiled lovingly at her eldest daughter.

'She is very quick and determined,' she had agreed, 'but life doesn't always turn out as we expect it to. Look at Charlie. We all thought he was going to be a famous Quidditch player, and look at him now. A dragon carer. Now its Ron, whom all of us have always though of as the quiet brother, the one who would become a teacher, who looks as though he's going to carve out a Quidditch career for himself.'

Liv didn't say anything to her about the fact that she, Ginny seemed to have no interest in anything outside her domestic life and her children, she noticed rawly.

'Mmm... these cookies are delicious,' Liv had suddenly confounded her by saying. She added, 'You could cook professionally Ginny. I'm not surprised that you manage to coax Gramps into eating so well.'

Ginny had said nothing, just as she said nothing about the kitchen cupboards that were brimming with the fruits of her labours over the long summer and autumn- literally. She enjoyed gardening as well as cooking, and with Germana's expert tuition and assistance when she was in Haslewich, Ginny had resurrected Queensmead's neglected kitchen garden with its espaliered fruit trees and its newly repaired glass house along its south facing wall. She was presently cosseting the peach tree that had been Germana's and Molly's birthday present to her and that she hoped might bear fruit next summer.

Since moving to Queensmead, she had quietly and gently set about bringing the old house back to life- dusty rooms had been cleaned and repainted, furniture mended and waxed. She had even made the Apparition north to Scotland to persuade her maternal grandparents to part with some of the sturdy country furniture not deemed grand enough for the lofty, elegant rooms of their Scottish castle and currently housed in its attics, but which she had known immediately would be perfectly at home at Queensmead.

Guy Cooke, the local antique dealer with whom Molly had once been in partnership, had whistled in soundless admiration when he had visited Queensmead and been shown the newly revamped and furnished rooms.

'Very nice,' he had told Ginny appreciatively. 'Too many people make the mistake of furnishing houses like Queensmead with antiques that are far too grand and out of place, or even worse, buying replicas, but these... you've definitely got an eye Ginny.'

'It helps having grandparents with attics full of furniture,' Ginny had laughed as Guy turned to examine the heavy linen curtains she had hung in one of the rooms.

'Wonderful,' he had told her, shaking his head. 'You can't buy this stuff now for love nor money. Where?'

'My great- great- grandmother had Irish connections,' Ginny had told him mock solemnly. 'I found it...'

'I know, in the attics,' Guy had supplied for her.

'Well, not exactly,' Ginny had laughed again. One of her third cousins had apparently been aggrieved to discover that Ginny had made off with the linen from one of the many spare bedrooms, having earn-marked it for some expensive decorating project herself.

'I'm so looking forward to Christmas this year,' Molly suddenly said to her. 'You've done wonders with Queensmead, Ginny, it's going to make the most wonderful venue for the family get together.'

'Mmm... Queensmead is a lovely home,' Ginny agreed.

'Arthur's had a word with Bran,' Molly told her, 'and he's arranged for the tree to be delivered the day after tomorrow. I'll come round if you like and give you a hand decorating it.'

'Yes, please,' Ginny accepted with alacrity. The Christmas tree that was to go in Queensmead's comfortably sized entrance hall was coming from the estate of Bran T. Thomas, the Minister of Wizard and Muggle connections and a close friend of the family. Elderly and living on his own, he had been invited to join the family for Christmas dinner. Ginny like him. He had a wonderful fund of stories about the area and talked so movingly about his late wife that Ginny often found her eye filling with tears as she listened to him.

'I think Marion is getting ready to leave,' Molly warned her daughter now, disturbing Ginny from her reverie.

As she glanced towards her newly married couple, Ginny's heart suddenly missed a beat. They looked so happy, so much in love, Percy looking tenderly down into Marion's upturned face and then bending to kiss her. As they reluctantly broke apart, Ginny could quite plainly see the look of shimmering joy illuminating Marion's face. It wasn't that she begrudged Marion her happiness- how could she? It was just... it was just... Swallowing hard, Ginny looked the other way.

Obligingly Ginny got up and went to separate her own two children from the happy mass playing in the adjacent anteroom.

Liam, who had been a page boy, had conducted herself with aplomb, and Jade had swiftly recovered from the morning's bout of nausea, but they were tiring now as Ginny's experienced maternal eye could tell.

As Fleur, Bill's wife, came to find her own daughter, she grimaced at Virginia and confided, 'I'm not looking forward to a transatlantic port key on top of this...'

'But it will be worth it once you're with your family,' Virginia reminded her.

'Oh heavens, yes,' Fleur agreed feverently.

As Bill came to join her and picked up their small daughter, cradling her tired body in his arms, Fleur couldn't help reflecting the differences between Bill and Draco.

Her Bill was a tender, loving father and an equally loving husband, while Draco might pretend in front of other- especially his grandfather- to be a caring human being, but Fleur could see through that pretence.

Poor Ginny.