Alone Beside the Scarlet Engine

Alone Beside the Scarlet Engine

30/07/07

He watches her through the mist which shrouds the platform. He has felt her presence there form the moment she crossed the barrier and entered his life again, family in tow, the excitement of her children making her laugh. Seeing her there, hand in hand with her husband, he feels her joy as if it were his own, almost as though he too is a part of the scene. He is dimly aware of his own wife's hand upon his arm, of his beloved child's voice, but he pays them no attention. He sees only her in this moment. The years have been kind to her, he reflects. Her figure is still slim, graceful, and while her hair is shorter than it ever was in school, just brushing her shoulders, it is still the same burnished copper that has always marked her as a Weasley. But she is a Weasley no longer, he reminds himself bitterly. She is Ginny Potter now.

As though she has heard him, she turns and meets his gaze, her hand still entwined in Potter's. There is a trace of a laugh still on her face as across the platform, they look into each other's eyes, the first look they have shared for nearly nineteen years. Time seems to stop as everything else, the bustle of the families, the eager voices of their children, fades into the steam and they are left alone beside the scarlet engine. The laughter in her eyes has changed to sadness, sadness and something else he can't quite name. Suddenly, he is overcome with a desire to run to her, hold her, have her, to watch those brown eyes smolder and hear her passionate voice moan his name as she has just once before-

"Draco?" And he is back on the crowded platform, surrounded by luggage and happy voices. Ginny has turned to face her family and in doing so has turned her back on him. Again. He shakes his head as if to clear it and then looks down into the concerned eyes of his wife, Marie.

"Is everything alright?" He nods stiffly.

"It's nothing. Just-" He stops abruptly, remembering the sorrow in Ginny's eyes. Sorrow? He thinks scathingly. What can she know of sorrow? Yes, she lost a brother in the war so long ago, but what else? Her life is complete, full, happy. Whereas what did he have left? A father who had chosen to take his own life rather than face shame in the aftermath of the war, a mother who had gone mad with grief and was now in St. Mungo's, unable to recognize her own son, and a fortune depleted from his years of wild spending on the Continent, where he had gone to escape the past. Where he had met Marie.

Marie. He had met her in a bar in Paris and they were engaged two months later after a whirlwind romance. The passion had long since faded, but they still shared a safe and comfortable sort of love-- he supposed that happened to everyone with age. Ad Scorpius: his son, his pride and joy, his hope. This is my family, he reminds himself, my connection to love and emotion and everything human that still remains in my life... But even as he thinks this, his mind is drawn back to Ginny. The fit of her body against his, her scent- spicy and yet somehow sweet- his hands sliding underneath her shirt along her warm skin, the taste of her salt tears and the feel of her hands around his neck and her tongue along his teeth....

Dully, he realizes that he is still in love with her and that he can never have her. The one forbidden moment they shared when he was sixteen was his only chance.

.........

She feels his gaze lock onto her the second she steps on the platform. She studiously ignores him, laughing brightly with James and clinging onto Harry's hand, as if trying to prove to him that her life is good, that she is happy. And she is. Her job is satisfactory, her children bring her more joy than she would ever have thought possible, and she is as in love with Harry as she was on that first day they kissed, when she was fifteen. Still, she can't help but wonder...

Finally, she can help it no longer. Leaving her hand in Harry's- her anchor to the present, to her life- she turns to look at him.

He has changed. He looks, older, worn, not at all the arrogant, sneering boy he used to be. At his side stand a beautiful dark haired and a pale boy with a pointed face and dark eyes- his wife and child, she guesses- but he appears not to notice them. He has eyes for her alone. Only a trace of his once common smirk remains. His grey eyes, once so cold and inhuman, now speak of a pain she can only begin to imagine: the mark of scarring events both during the war and after it. She feels her own expression change, reflecting his, but just as quickly something in his eyes flickers and she sees rising from their depths an emotion she has seen in them only once before. His wife tugs on his arm and says something, and she takes advantage of the moment's distraction to turn around and fuss with Albus' new school robes, but it is too late; the memories she has been blocking for the last twenty years, memories of the last time she saw that look in his eyes, have all come flooding back.

...She is fifteen again, in the second floor girls' bathroom where she first found Riddle's diary, where she still comes to be alone when the darkness of the past overwhelms her. She is sitting in the second cubicle, crying softly- despite the fact that there is no one around, her pride will not allow her to sob at a volume that anyone could hear. Gradually, the darkness lofts, the tears slow, and she opens the door of her cubicle, only to become aware of the ragged breathing on someone else crying in the last stall. Her curious piqued, she hesitantly steps down to their door.

"Hello?" she says quietly, but she is either not heard or simply ignored. Louder then, this time: "Hello?" The crying stops abruptly. Feeling encouraged, she continues, "Are you alright?" Stupid question, she knows, but what else is there to say?

"Yeah, bloody brilliant, what the hell do you-'' the door to the cubicle is yanked open and she is confronted with the angry face of Draco Malfoy. "Weasley?" His handsome face is as shocked as hers, but the malice in it is clearer than ever. Suddenly, all of her charitable feelings have vanished.

"Maybe I should just... go..." she mutters, edging towards the door, still not fully comprehending that she has just caught Draco Malfoy bawling his eyes out in a girls' loo. He smirks and, despite the tear tracks on his face, his voice is biting.

"That's right, Weasley, no one asked you to come in and dirty the whole place up, why would I want the help of a filthy blood traitor like you anyways?" At this, her emotions, still close to the surface after remembering the diary and Tom, bubble over and it takes all of her self-control to keep from hitting him.

"Look, Draco," she hisses vehemently. "Don't flatter yourself and think that I'd ever try and help you. I thought that maybe some first year was feeling homesick or something. I didn't expect to find poor Draco sobbing his heart out because Mummy won't buy him a new racing broom." She feels an immense amount of satisfaction as his perfect self-control shatters and a flush of pink rises in his pale cheeks.

"How dare you- If only you knew- You have no right-" he splutters, but she cuts across him, her voice rising along with her temper.

"No right?!" she says, nearly shouting now. "You think I don't have the right to mock you? You sit here crying because you think your life is so difficult, because Daddy's stuck in Azkaban where he belongs, but at least you have yourself, Malfoy! At least you can control what you do, what you feel; you are free to do whatever you want, you have the freedom to think as you will, and you waste it crying here about things that don't even matter! You have no idea what it's like to have that control taken from you, Malfoy, no idea...." She is sobbing now, and turns away from him, embarrassed by this show of weakness. Dimly, she is aware of him swearing furiously, and then footsteps approach from behind and a pair of strong arms wrap around her. Not caring to whom they belong, she turns into his chest and cries, letting the darkness flow away. Suddenly realizing whose arms she is in, she looks up, and is shocked to see him with his eyes closed, a single tear rolling down his cheek. What is it that haunts him, she wonders, but there is no more time to think, because his grey eyes open and gaze into hers, a new emotion clouding them, and then his mouth is on hers and he is kissing her.

She does not fight it or protest at all, but moves her hands up to his neck as if to keep him there, one hand tangling in his fair hair. Their kiss deepens, her mouth opening willingly to his tongue, her own tongue feeling the edge of his teeth before moving in to explore his mouth as thoroughly as he has just explored hers. Her hands are fumbling with the front of his robes and she realizes that his are doing the same to hers. Both of their robes pool on the floor and now he is kissing his way down her neck as she throws her head back, clumsily undoing the buttons of his shirt.

"Draco..." she moans, one hand on his bare chest, and he slides his hands underneath the hem of her shirt to find the smooth skin there. She shivers and slides her right hand down his left arm, meaning to help him with her buttons, but before she reaches his fumbling hand, her thumb brushes across something on his left wrist. He pulls away as though burned.

"What..." she murmurs, dazed. Her eyes fall upon his wrist, which he is cradling with his right hand, and comprehension slowly dawns as she takes in the skull and snake etched into the skin there. She looks up at him, all of him: the tousled hair, the fast breathing, the open shirt and smooth chest, and then back down at the mark on his wrist. Then slowly, deliberately, she bends down to pick up her robes. When she straightens, she has composed herself somewhat and is able to say, coolly and without any inflection, "So I guess it's true then. You can't change blood." And with that she turns and walks away from him.

She does not hear him call her name. She does not see him sink to the ground and cry.

...Ginny shakes her head and returns to the present. Ron and Hermione and Hugo and Rose have joined them, and both Harry and Ron are eyeing Dra- Malfoy, she reminds herself, with something very like suspicion. He offers them a curt nod, the turns back to his son, but not before she has seen the realization in his eyes that he has so recently come to, the same emotion she sees every time she looks into Harry's eyes. In Draco's eyes, there is no hope of a future. She sighs tiredly. Perhaps if they had ever truly been together, there would not be such and unresolved feeling between them. If there had been a real beginning, middle and end, then the reasons why it could not be would be clear. With matters as they are, she know that he will carry her in his heart always, just as a small part of her heart will always belong to him. The rest, she knows, belongs to her family and the life she has chosen, her present and future. She sees them all standing there, her lifeblood, and she does not regret anything that she has done. Reaching out, she catches Harry's hand in hers. It is warm, solid, and it pulls her away for the chill of her memories. Together, she know, they will carve out a future.

She does not see him rub his left wrist as a single tear rolls down his face.