Unseeing

Some things just aren't meant to be. That's the way life goes, and it was a fact that she'd learnt at a very young age. Sometimes, it just isn't going to happen.

She was never going to be pretty. She'd known it ever since her mother had taken her face in two hands, when she was 9 and just beginning to look at boys, and told her that there are two kinds of people in this world - the lookers and the thinkers. And added on in a reassuring voice that there was nothing wrong with being a thinker. It had been reinforced when she'd looked at Harry for the first time, beaming with that glow that comes with a first crush, and seen pity looking back at her.

And there was nothing wrong with being a thinker, with being plain. After all, she was the one who got the highest grades and figured out the problems - never mind that she wasn't brave like Ron, witty and loved like the twins, or good with animals like Charlie. She was just Ginny. Gin-girl, Ginevra - and, eventually, weasel. She faded into the shadows, because no one ever bothered to bring her forward into the light.

And she liked it in the shadows, she really did - you saw so much more of people there, realised what they were truly like. People are the most unguarded when they believe no one is watching - and watching was what she did. And even with all that, no one noticed her, because she didn't want them to. At least, that's what she told herself. She liked the solitude, she liked being left to her own devices. She'd been doing it for so long, after all - anything else would be foreign to her, strange in its newness. It was best things stayed the same - nothing got shaken up that way.

And yet, there was a time when she would have given anything for someone to notice her - a time when she was slipping farther and farther into a deep abyss that she had no control over. She was only 11 at the time, after all. But nothing changed - no one saw, no one took the time to hold out a hand - and so she slid into the darkness, embracing it because it, at least, knew her.

Tom - it still hurt to say his name, even now. Hurt in a place so deep, so buried that she couldn't even begin to dredge it up, even if she'd wanted to. He had told her she was beautiful, that she could do anything, be anyone she wanted - and she'd believed him, because no one had ever told her that before, and it was a wonderful thing to hear. Wonderful in an alien way that can only be understood by a little girl who had been the last to be picked for ball games, and so had eventually given up on waiting. Wonderful, in a way that cannot be imagined by anyone who hasn't had to endure 'fat' taunts, only to have their mother tell them that there was nothing wrong with being well rounded.

Far too wonderful for anyone who has never been first, or even second, not to embrace.

So she had turned and had believed him, had done what he had told her - and had very nearly paid for those few moments of wonder with her life.

It had been Harry who had saved her, of course - Harry, always the hero. His had been the first face she had seen when she had brushed away the last sticky web of unconsciousness down in the bowels of everything evil. He had been covered in blood, his clothes torn, and that glint of triumph in his eyes - and she had searched desperately for anything else, any hint that some form of affection existed. And had been met with only pity, and more than a little patronisation.

So she'd turned inwards, unwilling to be rejected again, becoming even more introverted than before. She'd smiled her way through her family's concern and overbearing love. Such a tight smile, surely they'd notice that it wasn't real - but no, after the initial rush she had once again been pushed aside, buried beneath the exuberance that was so thick in the Weasley clan. Everyone had forgotten, and she'd gone back to watching from the shadows.

You'd think that in a place so full of energy, at a school pulsing with magic and chatter, someone would notice her. Or that she'd 'realise what she was missing', as some nosy housemate had phrased it when they'd realised that she'd never had a boyfriend, and emerge from her self-imposed cocoon to join the rest of the populous. But she'd gotten very good at hiding from people's notice over the years, and truly had no urges to become like everyone else. Well, if she did have such urges, she buried them deep so they couldn't rise and taunt her - and continued with her life.

So she made it through her entire education being known as the youngest Weasley, that red-haired girl that people knew of but never knew - the thinker, not the beauty. And she was content, as those who have never been offered anything better are content. She'd gone on to join the Ministry, for she'd never had a powerful inclination towards any particular profession and the Ministry seemed a nice blur of everything. She'd become a lowly desk worker, and had graduated from being 'that red-haired girl you sometimes run into at school' to 'that red-haired woman you sometimes run into in the office'. Nothing in her world had changed overmuch, and she quelled any doubts that this was what she wanted. Of course it was - it's what she'd spent her whole life doing, after all. Working, thinking - watching.

It was a mystery to her, then, why they picked her. She could weave daydreams about how someone had noticed her and realised she was the best one for the job, about how someone had seen her and suddenly realised how much they needed her - but in reality, it was mostly because she was a Weasley and the people who planned it didn't really want to give Draco a wife he actually liked. Slytherin-Gryffindor rivalry and all that.

Reality was something that she generally kept in close touch with, but these days it sometimes became a little blurry, before coming back to slap her in the face with a vengeance. It was hard, though - so hard. So hard to realise that she had ended up here because they needed someone who was firmly on their side to keep an eye on their newest spy, and that marriage would be the easiest way to make sure she could keep a close watch. Never mind that there was really no need for it - Draco had been passing on Death Eater secrets through Snape for years, and was almost certainly trustworthy - but Ron and Harry couldn't quite reconcile the image of this Draco with the insufferable git they had loved to hate, and so had wanted an extra precaution.

An extra precaution - that was what she was, when they got right down to it. Oh, they spun the pretty tales about how she would really be playing an extremely important role in the war, and how it was a highly prestigious job. They gave her the reasons of pureblood and ancestry that weighed so heavily in her being the best choice, and made vague noises about having the marriage dissolved later, when it was no longer necessary. But when all the glitter they so liberally applied had been stripped away, she was their rather unnecessary safeguard against evil - picked because their resident heroes couldn't get over a schoolyard grudge.

But because she had never had any practice in standing up for herself, never given more than a fleeting thought towards doing anything against the Order's wishes, she went along with it. And so, in a hurried ceremony held in the Hogwarts' entrance hall, she became Mrs Draco Malfoy - joined forever, or at least for the foreseeable future, to a man that couldn't glance her way without disgust filling his eyes.

She was a Malfoy in name only - a fact he made clear to her the minute they'd apparated back to Malfoy Manor (her new home, she'd realised dizzily) and were alone for the first time since she'd met him. A real marriage, this was not to be. No sex, no children, no claim of any sort on the other - no questions. She'd nodded, dazed, but somewhat relieved that nothing extra would be required of her.

The relief lasted for a little while, before reality slapped her in the face yet again. The truth, she found, was that a marriage like this was cold and lonely. So much more so than before, because she was now edged away from rather than being ignored. Strangers poked their nosy questions at her, people avoided her at work, and parents led their children away before she got too close. The Malfoy name was, after all, one to be feared.

She couldn't even watch her husband - it was strange still, that phrase, still unfamiliar to her tongue - because he was never there. The Manor got colder with the oncoming winter, and with it chilled her heart.

Then there was an attack, and they had to go into hiding. She watched him then, cramped in the small shack hidden somewhere that she didn't even know the location of. There were no shadows to sink into, but that was all right because he ignored her anyway. She watched his movements, absorbed his habits, registered his expressions - and realised that there was much more to Draco Malfoy than she had ever realised. He was still a cold, unforgiving bastard - but mixed in with that was a speck of kindness, a keen and cynical mind, and something resembling a soul that had more than a dash of goodness.

They were only in hiding for a month, but during that time the balance between them had been upset. He still ignored her - but now, she loved him.

Love was not something she had ever really encountered before. There had always been the vague, smothering love of her family, but no parallels could be drawn between that and what she was feeling now. That had been a warm, somewhat suffocating blanket while this - this was more like an icy knife that burned and twisted a little more every day. This was sharp and painful - and real. So she fogged out reality whenever possible, because then the feeling was dulled and didn't hurt quite so much

She didn't love him the way she'd loved Harry - that had been closer to hero worship, and had been given by a child blinded by looks and fame. It wasn't the same as the way she had loved Tom, which had been dark and dangerous and never quite real. She loved him in a completely new way - it was crazy, it could never have been predicted, but it felt so right, even as it hurt so much. It felt as if this was how it was meant to be, so she accepted it and turned, to continue with her life while coping with this new development.

But being in love had some unexpected side effects that made ignoring reality just that little bit harder. Whereas before she had watched him when she felt like it and ignored him otherwise, she was now aware of his every move. She felt it shiver along her skin, spark through her veins - when he moved, when he spoke, when he breathed. And being aware of him made her notice some things that she never had before.

Like the masses of beauties that continually filled the place in his bed that, technically, should have been hers. And oh, how it hurt to see those gorgeous women emerge from his bedroom the morning after, to look at her with pity and shame warring in their eyes. But it hurt still more to see him, hair mussed and lips swollen, walk over to see them off with a kiss that could almost be termed affectionate. To walk down to the kitchen in the middle of the night, in search of something to drink - and hear the muted noises of passion echoing through the hall. To look at him, sitting cold and untouchable at breakfast while she picked at her food down the other end of the massive table, and know that no matter how much she loved him, no matter how long she waited, she would never be one of those women.

Not because he really hated her, or didn't particularly want her.

He simply didn't see her.