The Wife of the Emperor

Ginny said nothing as the pain of that night filled the silent study. She found that she could no longer bear to watch as Draco struggled with his own memories and emotions of their parting, so she stood and began to study the spines of the books filling the shelves around them. Titles, some faded, some gold and gleaming in the morning light, offered solace for her whirlwind thoughts. So much had happened in the past two days and she could not seem to gather her thoughts, so she continued to feign interest in the books,

Muggle and Wizard alike, while Draco stayed silent across the room. Sighing, she mentally relived the tremulous conversations they had had, hoping to find an answer to whatever mess they had found themselves in. Draco's voice, cold, yet inviting, broke the long silence.

"What are we supposed to do now, Ginny? I am willing to work out whatever it is we have, but I don't understand why you keep saying 'no.' We need to be able to like one another enough to live together, if not love each other. Why won't you love me?" Anger filled Ginny's mind at his audacious attempt to make her the antagonist of their broken love story. She turned sharply from the leather-bound books to burn Draco with a venomous stare.

"Why won't I love you? Let me ask you this, first: why didn't you come for me? I waited six months before letting Harry announce our engagement!" Ginny remembered agonizingly well the loneliness she felt those long months between that infamous spring night and her acceptance of Harry's ring, if not his love.

"You said that you waited to marry Harry because of the annulment." Confusion pierced through Draco's lingering pain.

"You said you loved me," she shot back, turning away to hide the tears threatening to spill over. Merlin, she didn't know she had so much water in her to sob out. Frustrated, she wiped away the tears, willing her body to stop reacting so.

"That's not fair, Ginny. I did love you, and I still do." Draco walked towards her, hoping to have her in his arms again, but she moved away quickly, tired of his attempts to steal her senses with a touch or a kiss. She needed all her wits about her to have conversations like this, especially with him.

"If you loved me, why didn't you come for me?" The question was foolish, they both knew, but at this point Ginny felt an unrelenting need to have Draco explain himself. They hadn't seen each other in ten years, and yet he expected her to love him as she once did? Not without answers. Draco sighed impatiently, for he knew they were wasting time with these silly conversations that went round and round again, but one look at her tear-stained face and shivering frame, and he knew he had to indulge her. He turned her towards him, the lack of tears in her eyes a relief and a worry. Had she built up her emotional wall again just as he had managed to break through? Or had she simply run out of tears to cry?

"Ginny, what did you think would happen if I did? Your parents ripped you from my arms on the grounds of the most protected wizarding spot in the world! How was I to steal you away from your parents' home? We would have been running from Harry, your parents, Colin's parents, Death Eaters, everyone! The only people who wanted us together were us. I loved you with every fraction of my being, but you were right. We couldn't have had a life together. Not then, but now we can. There's nothing holding us back! Why won't you accept it?" Ginny sighed, knowing he was right. What could they have done ten years ago, mere children running from the world? But now they were adults, given the perfect opportunity to submit to love, even though it was not the same as it had once been.

"All right," she said finally. "I'll stop fighting whatever it is that we have between us, but first I want to see it."

"What?" Draco's happiness of her acceptance was sharply interrupted by confusion of her request. She sighed impatiently and grabbed his left arm and pushed up his rumpled sleeve. There, a faint whisper upon his pristine flesh, stared the Dark Mark. She hadn't wanted to believe it, when she heard the rumors all those years ago, but when he was announced as Voldemort's successor, there was no doubting it. He had gone through the initiation, but how long after they separated? Gently, Ginny ran her fingers, cold from the morning air wafting through the open window, over the bumps and crevices on his skin. She looked up at him, to find his eyes closed, the sensation of her skin on his once again too much for him to bear. He felt her roaming fingers stop and he opened his eyes slowly to see her staring at him with sorrow and curiosity. He stroked her face with his fingertips.

"After you were taken away, I realized there was no reason to stay at Hogwarts. If I had, I probably would have killed Potter, or even you, if I were drunk enough. I wrote immediately to my father, telling him that I was tired of this school nonsense, even though I only had two more months left. He took me away the next day, and that night I joined Voldemort's followers." Emotion broke his voice as he recalled the darkness of the wood, the stench of burnt flesh, and the numbness he felt as he stood among the others, hooded and armed to kill. "I was so far gone, though we had only parted a few hours before. I thought you had lost all your love for me, I didn't know where else to turn. I had teetered on the edge of insanity and I knew that if I stayed in that blasted school one second longer I would have fallen and never been able to climb out." Tears fell freely for perhaps the first time in ten years from Draco's eyes, and Ginny cried with him, ashamed of what her actions had caused.

Draco wrapped his arms around her sobbing frame and the two cried for their lost love, for their found love, and for the destruction their childhoods had been through. As Ginny hiccupped through the last of her tears, she returned her attention to the raised and deformed flesh on Draco's forearm. Wordlessly, she leaned down and placed a soft kiss on the Dark Mark. Draco's eyes fluttered closed, the sensation of her lips and her tears on his deformity filling his broken soul and making him whole again. A hot wave of pleasure washed over them both as he gently tugged her head up to look into her brown eyes, blazing with a fire she hadn't felt in ten years. He smiled softly, stroking her crimson hair, an old habit he thought broken by years of waiting. Her hair...it was red again! This was an odd observation to make as she laid waiting in his arms, her plump cherry lips waiting to be smothered by his own, her eyes darkening with the anticipation of pleasure, but he made it all the same. A questioning look crossed his face as he opened his mouth to ask what had happened to her raven locks when she grew impatient and pulled his head down for a kiss. Draco moaned with the motion, this kiss unlike the other he had forced upon her to make her see. Now that she had given in to the love they shared, her kiss was as sweet as the summer rain that had passed by last night. His hands dug roughly into her hair, and she scraped her nails along the nape of his neck. Too soon she pulled away, and with her flushed face and disheveled hair, Draco thought she never looked lovelier. He wanted nothing more than to capture her lips again, taste the combination of tastes that was distinctively Ginny, but she said three words that would change their lives forever.

"Take me, Draco." An animalistic smile crept across his face as her words sunk in.

"You mean as we used to, when we were young?" he murmured, brushing a lock of hair out of her eyes. She shook her head, a new light shining from her eyes, something brighter than lust.

"No, as we will, as we should, when we're married." That light, he realized as he led her to his bedchambers, was love.