Love, and Other Things That Hurt

When Draco stepped outside the front doors of Hogwarts just after midnight, Ginny was already waiting against a tall weeping willow right next to the bank of the lake, still fully dressed, her eyes reflecting the moonlight from the water below. As she raised her gaze to him at the sound of approaching footsteps, she watched his face illuminate at the sight of her. Within moments, he was at her side and pulling her into his arms.
"'Lo, beautiful," he muttered against her hair, and she felt her heart twisting as though someone were trying to squeeze it from her chest. "You still mad at me?"
She didn't answer, but wrenched herself out of his grip, far more aggressively than she had intended, and she accidentally hit him in the side of the face. He drew back, cursing.
"What the fuck was that for?" he demanded irritably, rubbing his jaw, and Ginny bit down on her tongue so hard that she could taste blood.
"It's fine," he said, his mind clearly on other things as he began pacing. "Nevermind. We have to figure out a way to deal before the shit hits the fan. Parkinson knows something, that much is clear. And if she comes out with it before we do -"

"Draco."

"-it's going to be a fucking gongshow. She could write to my father - who knows what arseholery she has planned. So if we're going to tell him - or I am - and if we're going to -"
"Draco..."
" - get married..."
They both stopped speaking and stared at each other. Ginny's hands rose to her mouth and her shoulders began shaking with a rush of silent sobs she couldn't fight any longer. Her eyes were dry and red and completely empty of tears. Her ribs ached from crying. But these sobs were far from weeping and though they made no sound, she felt keening struggling to escape from her diaphragm. She lurched forward and Draco caught her, and this time, she collapsed into him before she could stop herself. It was the very first time being in his arms hadn't made her feel safe."
"What?" Draco asked, and though his voice was tinged with bewilderment, his eyes searched hers with genuine concern. "OK, so that wasn't the most romantic marriage proposal of all time. You'll get a real one when I can give you my - my grandmother's ring."
Ginny stared up at him and to her astonishment, a vague expression of sentimentality had settled over Draco's features, and he looked slightly abashed when he noticed her gaze.
"I inherited it," he muttered. "It's not a big deal."

Ginny shook her head. "Draco...."
He seemed eager to move on. "Anyway," he said, running a hand through her hair despite giving no notice of her speaking. "Where have you been all afternoon? I asked the Creevey kid and he said you weren't in the Tower, and -"
"Draco, shut up," Ginny burst out. Her voice was raw and hoarse and so fierce that he immediately fell silent, his face falling into shock. "I'm trying to talk to you. I'm trying to talk to you, and you always make it so fucking difficult!"
"Ginny, what -?"

Ginny stared at him in stony silence, her jaw set, until he abruptly stopped speaking. She wasn't going to fight with him. There was no more fight left in her.
"I've been in the hospital wing," she said, and her voice broke before she could hold it steady once more. "I was bleeding. I fell unconscious."
Draco stared at her, and for once, he didn't looked poised to interrupt.
Ginny faced him with eyes full of steady, unyielding pain. "It's over, Draco. Madam Pomfrey couldn't slow my body down. It happened too fast. I lost it."
There was a silence that felt like an eternity.
"You lost..."
"The baby. I lost the baby. It's gone."

Draco's arms fell limply to his side and Ginny stepped back, her eyes motionless on his. He stared unseeingly past her as her words washed over him, amplified a hundredfold. She lost the baby.

He was free.

As Draco stared at Ginny's slack, bloodless face, his eyes slid out of focus until all he saw was his father's angular, malevolent face, eyes disdainful, lip curled into a sneer as it always did when he set his gaze upon his only son, the one upon whom it fell to carry on the Malfoy name with blood as pristine as that of his ancestors. There was no room for mistakes, for following his own desire, and numbly, Draco marveled over how certain he had been only one day before to turn his back on everything he had been taught, to defy his parents, to trade his family, his fortune, everything he had ever known to take Ginny Weasley into his arms and never let her go. He had had one day, one mere day to wrap his head around this concept, and his overwrought mind had had barely moments to spare to cast a thought at the idea that in a matter of months he would be a father as well. It was this fact, this potent reality that had nearly driven him from Ginny out of cowardice, out of a paralyzing, all-encompassing fear that he would have never voiced aloud - the fear that his own child would live the life that he himself had for seventeen years. That his child, the one who would bear his family name, would face a lifetime of fear and hatred towards him, would grow up in constant trepidation of his own father, just as Draco himself had. That his child - a pale stormy eyed boy like him, or a freckled, bow-lipped girl like Ginny - would have to live a lifetime with the knowledge that their father had raised them in a cold, hostile life that he had inherited from his own.

Now there was no more need for fear.
I am free.

There were no tears in Ginny's eyes, no dampness on her cheeks. After weeks and weeks of crying, of fighting through the tidal wave of torrential emotion, she seemed to have finally burnt out, her cinnamon eyes almost lifeless. Her legs shook slightly as she struggled to hold her own weight upright, but her hands at her side were quite steady. Inside, however, her heart was throbbing and she could feel the threat of heartbreak rising straight from her stomach to her throat. Was it the loss of the child she hadn't asked for, hadn't wanted? Was it the strain that she, in her selfishness, had placed upon her relationship with her friends, who certainly deserved better than what she had put them through? Or was it the fact that the final tie binding hers and Draco's tumultuous, dysfunctional madness that had somehow shifted into a passionate insanity they had finally called love was now cut? The year was ending, and Draco's time at Hogwarts was over. Ginny had always believed in signs, and this one was up in lights - the universe was granting them this escape. Life was offering them liberation from their silly, childish mistakes. Life was giving them a second chance.

The moon reflected a shivering silver light off of the surface of the lake, and as Draco pulled himself with a jolt from his reverie, he saw with a start that Ginny was smiling at him.

"You're a good man, Draco," she said, and her voice was so soft that it was almost lost to the breathy rhythm of the midnight breeze that was stirring the beech trees surrounding them. "I know you don't believe it, but you are. You're nothing like him, and I mean that. You are a better man by far."

Draco felt his eyes burn and he swiftly turned his head to stare instead at the rippling water at their feet. "I'm not," he muttered finally, his teeth gritted. "I'm no different. We have the same blood."

Ginny's hand closed around his wrist and she forced him to look at her, waiting until the grey eyes met the brown until she spoke.

"That's bullshit and you know it," she responded quietly. "You're going to do incredible things with this world. You're going to break the cycle."

"And what about you?" he burst out, his voice low and harsh. "What are you going to do with this world, Gin?"

It was her turn to look away now as she raised her face to the sky. She inhaled, exhaled and a shadow of a smile flickered once more across her pale, exhausted face before she looked back at him.

"I don't know yet," she said finally. "But I have at least one more year to figure it out."

Draco closed his eyes, and Ginny took one last look down towards the water, through whose ripples she could see a blurred, distorted reflection, one lone figure staring back up at her - her own. Her, all long red hair and wide brown eyes, freckles that weren't quite visible, jaw set and lips no longer quivering. Ginny, not surrounded by a family of redheads, lost in a sea of older brothers . . . not wrapped in the arms of a boy, not Michael or Dean, not even Draco . . . not arm-in-arm, mid-laughter with her friends . . . just Ginny. Alone for the very first time, and it seemed a very long time before she finally broke eye contact with her own reflection. She wasn't used to standing alone, but seeing it so clearly made her resolute - being alone would not be the hardest thing, and if there was anything she knew for sure, it was that she could do it for real.
Draco did not open his eyes as he felt lips brush his cheek, and again, it could have been a day that passed before he opened his eyes to find that the sky to the east was lightening, and there was nothing surrounding him but silence as he dropped eyes to his own reflection which too was quite alone while Ginny slipped silently back into the castle, down a maze of long, deserted corridors, in and out of shadows until she returned once more to the place that had become her home in the past year. It was the one place she had never ceased to find joy, and the physical ecstasy that had been her draw to the Room of Requirement, the room the could be whatever you wanted it to be, had evolved into a completely different oasis of elation for her. She stared at the blank wall before her, and the request came to her automatically before she could even summon what she thought she wanted.
I want to be safe.
The door materialized with barely a sound, and the handle in the worn oak was tarnished and worn. She opened it and found herself in a warm pool of candlelight, in a room that was new and yet so familiar. There was no furniture, just an expanse of thick, soft carpet covering the unencumbered floor, and before Ginny could wish for anything else, she knew that she didn't need anything more. She sank onto the ground and let her eyes travelling unseeing along the candle brackets distributed along the empty walls, their light and warmth seeming to gather straight to her, so that even in her solitude, she felt a warm embrace of something telling her, it's alright. It will all be alright. You will be fine.
And Ginny knew it was true, as she lay her heavy head down, curling up in the candlelight and letting out one last shuddering, brokenhearted breath as she let her aching eyes close. What the future was to bring her was a mystery, but she knew somehow that whatever happened, whatever the universe brought her way, everything would be alright after all - perhaps for the very first time.
All she had to do was breathe. Sometime before dawn, the candles were extinguished, and with them, she fell from the ferocious world and into dreamless sleep.