Learn to Hate

Chapter Four

Draco waited until the rest of the family had dispersed after the Christmas celebrations before breaking the news to Ginny of his impending trip to Jamaica.

'You're doing what? But my father has tried to find Lucien.'

She paused in the act of picking up the children's discarded toys to push her hair out of her eyes and stare slightly myopically at Draco. She had put her glasses down somewhere and now she couldn't find them, and without them it was hard for her to read Draco's expression properly.

'Correction,' Draco informed her laconically. ' What your father has done is to put in motion some half hearted inquires via a couple of low-key investigation companies. What Gramps wants me to do is to fly out to Jamaica to do some rather more muscular investigating.'

'But Jamaica,' Ginny protested. 'I thought Lucien was supposed to be in Spain. What makes Gramps think that he's in Jamaica?'

'Lucien sent him a card. He showed it to me and it's in Lucien's handwriting all right.'

'But I don't understand,' Ginny protested. 'You're always saying how busy you are, how impossible it is for you to take time off...'

'It's January. January can sometimes be relatively quiet, and it just so happens that I don't have any on going cases in hand. What are you trying to say Gin?' He taunted her softly.

'Surely you don't think that I'm deliberately avoiding spending time with you... not when you're such a wonderful, stimulating and exciting... partner...'

Ginny's face became suffused with uncomfortable color. She didn't need Draco underlining for her just how dull and boring he found her.

'Does my... does my father know?' she asked him huskily.

'Not so far as I know. Why should he? It isn't really any of his business is it?' he asked her coolly. 'Although no doubt it soon will be. You wont be losing any time running to your parents to tell them, will you, Ginny?'

'Lucien is my father's brother,' Ginny reminded him quietly, swallowing hard on the pain lodging in her throat. 'My father is also concerned about the effect Lucien's absence is having on Gramps... and on Nathan too.'

'So, no doubt he'll be delighted to hear that I'm going to try and find our missing black sheep, wont he,' Draco mocked her.

'Grow up, Ginny,' he advised her grimly. 'If you're looking to your parents to put a veto on my going, your wasting your time. They don't have any more power to control my life then you do.'

'If that's true, then why have you waited until now to mention the fact that you're going?' Ginny responded with unaccustomed sharpness.

Draco gave a slow, cruel smile.

'Oh, very good, very quick... I didn't say anything, my dear wife, because Gramps is bankrolling the trip and I didn't want your father getting any ideas about trying to persuade him to change his mind. Now its too late, my flight is booked and so is the hotel.'

'Oh, Draco,' Ginny whispered, closing her eyes against the tears she could feel burning the back of her lids. She didn't know what hurt her most, Draco's obvious contempt for her or the fact that he could so callously and so openly admit to using their grandfather's desperate wish to see his son again to fund what both she and Draco knew was going to be an abortive trip. She doubted that Draco would even make the smallest attempt to find Lucien.

'Oh Draco,' she whispered again under her breath as she heard him leaving the room.

Angrily Nathan skimmed flat stones across the dull surface of Queensmead's small lake, gritting his teeth against the hot, bitter tears. He was a boy... a man almost... and men didn't cry, not even when...

He had come over to Queensmead to see Ginny, but she had been out when he had arrived, and as he walked past his grandfather's library he had noticed that the door was open and that the old man was lying asleep in his chair.

With no particular purpose in mind he had walked into the room. While he wasn't afraid of his grandfather, Nathan couldn't honestly say that he particularly liked him.

'He's still hurting because of Uncle Lucien,' Charlie had once told him wisely when Nathan had complained that their grandfather never seemed to have much time for them. 'He's afraid of letting himself love us...'

'He loves Draco,' Nathan had pointed out.

'He loves Draco because Draco is the nearest thing he's got to Lucien, and loves Lucien because Lucien is the first-born o his twin sons, like the brother he himself lost...'

'What do you think of my father?' Nathan had asked his cousin quietly.

Charlie hadn't answered him for a while, and when he had, he hadn't been quite able to look Nathan in the eyes as he told him, 'I cant remember all that much about him. He was always working and...'

'I'll bet you're glad that he wasn't your father, aren't you?' Nathan had demanded bitterly, abandoning the pretence of wanting or needing to know Charlie's opinion.

'He's my uncle,' Charlie had reminded Nathan quietly, trying to pretend not to understand. 'I share his blood, his genes, almost as much as you do, Nathan. It's the same for me as it is for you.'

'No, its not,' Nathan had retorted savagely. 'It's not the same for you. For a start, Grandfather doesn't... he doesn't like me, Charlie. I can see it in his eyes when he looks at me. He blames me because of Dad.'

'No, he doesn't,' Charlie had objected. 'How can he? We all know the reason why Uncle Lucien...'

He had stopped there, and Nathan hadn't continued to argue with him. What was the point?

He had lost count of the number of times he had gone over that final row between his parents, that furious, pressured, trapped sentence his father had flung at his mother before they had left for the party to celebrate Lucien and Arthur's fiftieth birthday.

'For God's sake, Vicky, will you listen,' his father had shouted furiously. 'Bloody kids, I never realized they were so expensive!'

'Lucien, don't be ridiculous,' Vicky had snapped back. 'Nathan has to have a new school uniform. He's completely outgrown his old one. You're just going to have to find the money from somewhere... he cant go to school otherwise.'

They had still been arguing when Nathan had crept past them to go to his own room.

His parents. Why did they have to be the way they were?

Why couldn't they be like other people's parents, or even better, like his uncle Arthur and aunt Molly?

Just thinking about his aunt and uncle made him feel both better and worse. Just knowing they were in his life made him feel safe, and yet, at the same time, he experienced guilt for needing to have them there to make him feel safe... guilt and disloyalty.

A duck squawked protesting and took flight from the lake, momentarily bringing Nathan's thoughts back to the present.

As he had walked into the library he must have disturbed his grandfather, who had suddenly woken up, glaring belligerently as he saw Nathan.

'Oh, its you, is it?' he had muttered. 'My God, with that mother of yours, its no wonder Lucien doesn't want to come home.' He had reached up and picked up a postcard that was lying on his desk, his fingers trembling as he touched it. 'This is what your father is reduced to because of her,' Bastian had told him bitterly. 'Living like some native in a place...'

His mother's fault- and his? Was that what Bastian was trying to say?

Instinctively Nathan had picked up the postcard his grandfather had flung down, his eyes luring as he tried to focus on his father's handwriting- handwriting he couldn't really recognize or relate to, and even though he brushed his thumb over the brief message, as though hoping to somehow or other absorb something of the man who had written it, something of the man who was his father, he could feel absolutely nothing, just an intensifying of the deep-rooted sense of pain and anger he always felt when he thought of him.

What kind of man was his father, what kind of man would he himself become, what kind of a father? Not one like Arthur.

Savagely Nathan flung another flat stone skimming over the dull, still water. His uncle Arthur would never walk out on his family, his children. His uncle, Arthur. Grimly he remembered how at Christmas when they had all exchanged gifts to one another, his uncle had reached for him, hugging him warmly, hugging him before he turned to Charlie, but Nathan had seen the look in his eyes when he did hug Charlie, had seen it and known that it was the look of a father for a dearly loved child. His uncle Arthur loved him, housed him, cared for him out of a sense of duty and responsibility, out of his general and characteristic love for all of mankind, but he loved Charlie very differently. He loved Charlie as a man loves his son. What was it he, Nathan, had done that had caused that lack of love from his father? There were so many questions he needed to ask him, so much he needed to know.

In walking away from him, disappearing, his father had cheated him of the right to ask those questions, and Nathan felt that he couldn't get on with his life, couldn't move forward until they were answered.

He knew how concerned his aunt and uncle were about his schoolwork, but how could he explain to them, how could he tell them how alienated he suddenly felt from them, how afraid and alone?

His grandfather was fond of repeating stories about Nathan's own father's teenage years, the sportsman he had been, the scholar, and hinted at, but never openly declared, his sexual skills and exploits. His father, according to his grandfather, had been a man to admire and emulate, but to Nathan he was little more then a flat cardboard figure without flesh and meaning, a vague shadow, a dim memory, someone with whom he had no sense of shared history or shared blood, someone who ha fathered him but who had then walked away.

Nathan reached for another pebble. It had started to rain, a thin, fine, penetrating drizzle, and he didn't have a coat, but Nathan didn't care, just as he didn't care that by rights he ought to be at home studying. Why should he care? Who cared for him? Not his father... No, never him.

'Ginny have you got five minutes to spare?'

Ginny smiled briefly at her mother as Molly popped her head around the kitchen door. It was eleven o'clock in the morning and she had just settled Gramps down with a cup of coffee and some of her homemade biscuits. Liam had gone for a walk with Charlie, his chest swelling with pride when Charlie had gravely invited him, and she had driven over to Liv's earlier in the morning to drop Jade off there to play with Amelia and Alex.

As for Draco's where abouts! Ginny's smile faltered. He had gone out immediately after breakfast, saying that he needed to go into Chester to finalize the details of his trip to Jamaica.

'I've come to ask you a favor,' Molly began, sitting down opposite Ginny at the kitchen table as she accepted her offer of a coffee.

'I know how busy you are with Gramps and the children, but with Ruth deciding to spend the next six months in America with her family and all the extra work we're going to have with the Mums and Babes home now that we've finally got the go-ahead on out new property, I was wondering, well hoping, that I could persuade you to take on a more formal role with the charity. You've been wonderful at helping out with the fund raising and taking a lot of the paperwork of Ruth's and my shoulders, but what I'd like to ask you is if you would consider taking over Ruth's role as the charity's treasurer.'

Ginny stared at her.

'You want me to do that, but...'

'Please don't say no,' Molly begged her. 'Ruth and I talked the whole thing over before she went away, and we had hoped to get an opportunity to talk to you together, but what with the wedding and Christmas... Ruth and I are in perfect agreement about this, Ginny. You'd be perfect for the job. You're a whiz with figures, and when it comes to organizational flair...'

Molly shook her head and laughed.

'You're talents are wasted on us, Ginny, you should be heading some multimillion-galleon organization.'

Ginny stared at her and blushed, her glance not quite meeting her mother in law's as she told her quietly, 'it's very flattering of you to think of me, and to go to so much trouble to boost my ego,' she added wryly, 'but flattering though...'

'I'm not flattering you, Ginny,' Molly interrupted her firmly. 'What I've said is no less than the truth. Arthur was commenting only the other day that he'd give anything to have an office manager with your skills. You have a very special gift; my dear,' she told her daughter gently, 'and I don't just mean your gift with people. Bill complained the other week that maths is supposed to be one of his strengths, and yet you are far quicker mathematically than he is himself.'

Ginny gave a small, self-conscious shrug. 'Its just one of those odd quirks,' she protested uncomfortably. 'I...'

'Ginny, I could shake you,' Molly told her mock angrily.

'You're always putting yourself down, but let me tell you, if you think that I'm asking you to take Ruth's place as the charity treasurer and secretary out of some kind of misguided altruism, you couldn't be more wrong. I... the charity desperately needs you and your skills. Our accountants have already warned me that I must find someone to take over Ruth's role, and Ruth herself has hinted that she would like you to take over permanently if you can be persuaded to do so.'

'But the charity is Ruth,' Ginny pointed out.

'Of course,' Molly agreed. 'It was Ruth's experience of being an unmarried mother and having to part with her baby that led to her establishing our first mother and baby home, and as you know I had my reasons for becoming involved...'

Gravely Ginny nodded her head. Harry, Molly's first baby, had died shortly after his birth. To lose a child would, Ginny knew, but the ultimate tragedy. She loved her two with a fierce maternal love that made even the direst and most miserable times of her marriage worthwhile, as it was her marriage that had given them life. But these were emotions too close to her heart for her ever to be able to discuss them with anyone, even someone as sympathetic as Molly.

In truth she could think of no causer she would rather be involved in than Ruth and Molly's mother and baby homes, and it was true that she did have a quiet, calm way of establishing order out of chaos. But if she made such a commitment, she would want...

Molly watched the expressions chasing on another over her daughter's face and saw the quiet, despairing sadness shadowing her eyes, and she immediately knew its cause.

'Has Draco gone back to London?' she asked Ginny.

'No... no, he hasn't...'

Refusing to look at her, Ginny got up and collected their empty coffee cups.

'Ginny, what is it? What's wrong?' Molly asked her insistently.

'Nothing...nothing's wrong,' Ginny fibbed.

'It's Draco, isn't it?' Molly guessed. 'What...'

'No, not really,' Ginny denied, and then admitted, 'well yes it is... but its not... he's going to Jamaica to look for Lucien.'

Molly stared at her. Of all the things she had expected to hear, this had quite definitely not been one of them. An affair- not the first for Draco and very likely not the last- an admission that her marriage had not turned out the way she had hoped, those she had fully expected and been prepared for, but this...

'He's doing what? But... How? Why? He can't... What about his work...?' Molly asked, thoroughly bewildered.

'Apparently it's all arranged,' Ginny told her quietly.

'Gramps has asked him to go and since... since Draco is having a quiet period at work at the moment, he decided, he felt... He knows how much Gramps is missing Lucien, and Draco seems to think that it shouldn't be too difficult to track him down if he is in Jamaica...'

Molly started to frown, her shock giving in to a mixture of anger and unease. Draco would never agree to put himself out to such an extent simply out of concern for his grandfather. Molly felt her heart start to sink. What was Draco up to? She knew all about the card that Bastian had received from Lucien, post-marked Kingston, but anyone could have posted that for him, and even if he had actually been on the island, Lucien could be anywhere by now.

Draco knew as well as they all did that there was nothing to stop Lucien from making proper contact with his family if he wished to do so. It was cruel of him to encourage Bastian in his false hopes, his false beliefs that Lucien was a victim of unkind circumstances, isolated from his family by fate instead of by his own choice. There was no point in suggesting to Ginny that she might try to prevail upon Draco not to go. As Draco's mother in law and godmother, Molly knew perfectly well that Draco listened to no one, heeded no one, cared for no one, other than himself.

She could still vividly remember finding Draco in the graveyard one afternoon, the plants she had so carefully tended around Harry's grave all ruthlessly ripped out of the earth, their petals crushed and dying. When she had finally managed to fight back her tears to as Draco why he had destroyed them, he had simply shrugged his shoulders.

'They aren't doing any good,' he told her callously. 'He...' He had aimed a kick in the direction of Harry's gravestone. 'He's dead anyway.'

'I just feel that I can't relate to him at all,' Molly had told Arthur through her anguished tears later.

'Why... why do something like that... something so... so senseless and destructive? He knows how much Harry's grave means to me.'

'Perhaps that's why he did it,' Arthur had suggested. 'Perhaps he feels jealous.'

'Of Harry?' Molly protested. 'How could he? He never even knew...'

Grimly she closed her eyes. How could she say even to Arthur that she didn't love her own godson and now son in law, and anyway it wasn't true. She did love him, but the things he did, the way he was, no those she could not love.

'Liam is starting to become very...' Ginny paused and swallowed. 'He's very difficult when Draco's around and I... I feel that Liam needs Draco to be here at home for him... to spend more time with him, But Draco...'

'Oh, Ginny,' Molly sympathized sadly. 'I'm so sorry. I'm so very sorry.'

Ginny gave her a wan smile.

'Can I think about the Mums and Babes thing and let you know?'

'Just as long as you say yes,' Molly conceded. 'We really do need you Ginny.'

'You're looking very pensive,' Arthur commented to his wife as he walked into the sitting room and saw her standing, staring through the window obviously deep in thought. 'Did you see Ginny?'

'Mmm...' Molly agreed.

'So what's wrong? Has she refused to held you by taking Ruth's place?'

Molly shook her head, interrupting him. 'It's not Ginny, its Draco. Ginny was in a bit of a state when I got there, and it turns out that Draco is planning to fly to Jamaica to look for Lucien.'

'He's what?'

'Yes, I know,' Molly acknowledged wryly, correctly reading her husbands expression. 'I was as stunned as you. I mean, Draco has never shown the remotest interest in Lucien's whereabouts, and I doubt very much... According to Ginny he's doing it to please Gramps, who, by the way, is apparently underwriting the whole trip.' Molly looked across at her husband and recognized his concern.

'According to Ginny, Draco is flying out to Kingston the day after tomorrow and...' She stopped, frowning, asking Arthur, 'what was that? I thought I heard someone outside the door.'

Arthur crossed the room and fully opened the sitting room door, which he had left slightly ajar.

'There's no one there,' he told Molly. 'It was probably one of the gnomes.'

'Arthur, what are we going to do about this?'

'I suspect there isn't anything we can do other than register our disapproval,' Arthur told her quietly. 'You know Draco.'

'What about Nathan?'

'I don't know,' Molly sighed. 'He seemed so happy with us, but just lately... I hate to pry, but I've actually asked Charlie if he... They've always been close, but while they haven't fallen out, they're tending to spend more and more time apart these days. All Charlie can say is that Nathan talks a lot about his father and that he seems very angry with Lucien.'

Ginny turned her car in through the gates to Queensmead after paying a visit to Liv, fiercely blinking away the evidence of the tears that had been threatening her all day.

As she dropped the car down a gear to avoid the pot-holes the winter rain had left in the driveway- Draco had complained furiously about the state of the drive and the damage it could potentially do to his expensive new car- Ginny bit worriedly at the corner of her mouth, a habit she had developed as a small child and one she had never entirely grown out of. It often left her mouth with a soft bee-stung look about it that had made Draco tell her tauntingly one, when he had not visited Queensmead for almost six weeks, that if he hadn't known better he might have thought she had been enjoying the attentions of a lover.

There was one aspect of Draco's trip to Jamaica that, as yet, no one other than her seemed to have picked up on, and she devoutly hoped that they would not.

She knew enough about her husband's business to acknowledge that the months of January and February could often be quite slow, but for him to claim that he had no work pending and that he could take what amounted to at least two months off, indicated to Ginny that there could be some other and rather more sinister reason for Draco's absence from his chambers.

She stopped the car and turned to smile at her children.

Draco was not popular with the mother members of the chambers, she already knew that, but there was also no question about the fact that he was a highly skilled and very successful divorce Auror, who acquired by reputation, the very cream of the country's divorce cases.

Ginny was by no means lacking in intelligence, she had also trained in law, although she had never practiced, because she had chosen to bring up her children. Despite what Draco and to some degree her own family chose to think, she was very much afraid that Draco's decision to take a couple of months' leave was not as voluntary as he wanted others to believe.

Ginny knew that both she and the children were secure enough; financially- she had her trust fund. But it was not her financial future that was causing her to feel such concern, it was...

'Ginny, where the hell have you been?'

She tensed as Draco suddenly materialized beside the car, wrenching open the drivers door as he glared angrily at her.

'I've got to go out this evening, and the old man's complaining again that you haven't changed his library books. There's all my packing to be done as well.'

'I've got Gramps' new library books with me,' Ginny told him pacifically as she reached into the back of the car for the children while Draco stood and watched, without making any attempt to give her assistance.

It would never have occurred to her to ask for his help, and, anyway, Liam, now that he had caught sight of his father, was already stiffening in her arms, his body tense with rejection and fear.

It worried her that Liam was so antagonistic towards his father, but he was too young yet for her to be able to explain to him that Draco's indifference towards him, which she suspected was the cause of Liam's feelings, had nothing to do with Liam himself and was simply the way that Draco felt towards anyone whom he considered unimportant or not worthy of his time or attention.

She had realized very early on in her marriage how little she meant to Draco, and had long ago stopped being hurt by his lack of love and respect for her, or so she told herself. Jade had been conceived without any of the emotions she herself had once considered essential between two people who were creating a new life.

Ginny smiled painfully to herself as she lifted her small daughter out of the car. Thankfully, Jade herself had no notion and never would have if she could help it, of the empty, banal, cynically selfish act that had led to her procreation.

'Why don't you go to a prostitute?' Ginny had hissed tearfully at Draco when he had walked into their bedroom late one night, deliberately waking her up by slamming the door and then proceeding to switch on the lights and yank back the bed clothes. She had been wearing a nightdress, a habit she had developed during the long nights she had spent alone. Draco had smiled cruelly at her as he dropped onto the bed beside her, naked and plainly ready for se.

'Don't bother taking it off,' he had advised her tauntingly. 'I don't want to look at you. Anyway,' he had said as he pushed her night dress aside, ignoring the tense hostility of her motionless body and the pain in her eyes, 'why should I pay someone else when I've got you here. After all, one-' he had then proceeded to use a phrase that had seared Ginny's emotions, sickening and humiliating her as he concluded '- is much the same as any other and gives the same degree of release.'

'If that's all you want, you should...' Ginny had shot back only to stop, her face flushing with mortification as she saw the white glint of his teeth as he laughed at her.

'I should what? Go and take care of myself in the bathroom like some adolescent..? Oh, no...' he had advised her calmly, his hands touching her, arousing her physically, even though emotionally she hated herself for being so responsive to him. As he entered her, Ginny wondered why he was with her. Was the reason he was with her now, the reason he needed her, because whomever he had been with whomever he had been expecting to spend the night with had, for some reason or another, turned him down? It had been out of that; out of his usage of her body to assuage the physical desire he had felt for another woman, that she had conceived their second child.

That time, when Draco had tightened his lips and looked calculating at her as he told her he did not want a second child any more than he had wanted a first, she had ignored the way she was shaking with nerves inside and had told him quietly, 'Perhaps you should have thought of the consequences before having sex with me, although I should imagine it would be rather more embarrassing for you if the woman whom you had expected to have sex with that night was standing her instead of me, telling you that she'd conceived your child...'

Draco, of course, hadn't been in the least bit fazed nor repentant. He had simply shrugged his shoulders and told her dismissively, 'with her, the situation wouldn't have arisen because she would have taken good care to make sure there was no... problem. You see, unlike you, my dear, she enjoys sex, and she knows how to make sure her partner enjoys it as well.'

In some ways her daughter was even more precious to her because she knew that she had been conceived only by chance, Ginny acknowledged as she kissed Jade's plump face before shepherding both children towards the house.