Poisoned

Chapter Fifteen

All those times Ginny had sat with Ron for hours - when he listened to her story without any interruption, going through all those happenings over and over - she had always wanted to tell him how Draco was wonderful and thoughtful; how time made him a humanitarian who split his time between his family and charity.

But she couldn't lie, so she always ended up having to wipe away the tears that'd still come when her brother would ask how she could do it.

How could she love Malfoy after all that had happened?

Hermione and Harry never understood it either, but they never asked her about it. Perhaps they're too polite to do so, while Ron never cared about manners and tact.

"All I care about is my little sister," he told her on numerous occasions, when Hermione would ask him to drop the subject.

He had said their father would have dropped dead if he had known half of it.

Ginny had always agreed with Ron. Her father, her mother, all her brothers - half the wizarding world would strongly object to her behaviour towards Malfoy.

And sometimes she'd think they were right. That maybe she deserved better. Maybe a wonderful guy had been out there, ready to care about her, ready to die for her if necessary.

But then she would go through all the memories again. She would analyse every word he had ever said to her, every look he had ever given her, in search for a reason to love him as much as she still did.

Ginny could say love came unrequited. She could also present blindness caused by love as an excuse for her feelings. But the truth was that so much had been lost in that war - and she'd not even be thinking about the lives spent so cheaply. She'd be thinking about the little things, things that no one ever accounted of any importance. Like Luna's naiveté, so pure and so unique through all that chaos. Like Colin's kindness and trust. Like Harry's belief in a higher purpose.

It all kept her going through quite some time. She had always thought about Colin when she thought nothing could ever be right again; she'd remember Luna's blank gaze and envy her ability to create her own beautiful world; she searched for Harry's ideals when everything seemed so out of hand.

But it was all gone. It was already gone when she had come back to England, after two years in Beauxbatons, and she couldn't believe how much things had changed in such a short time.

As Draco had imagined, vanquishing Voldemort had been the easy part. Well, it hadn't been easy for Harry, who seemed broken when she met him again, during that fateful night in Diagon Alley, when she saw the chaos that had ensued and made her choice.

Breaking away from her family happened too easily, after a meaningless argument about how she wanted to handle her life now that she was back home. She couldn't even remember what had been said - she could only recall her mother crying when she told everyone Draco had proposed, while her father would just look at her, sadder than he had ever been.

Hermione was the only one who didn't fall back in shock. But even she gave Ginny that accusatory look that made her make the decision to take her things and leave. Now that Ginny thought back, she could see it had been the Weasley temper speaking. And that same temper kept her from going back to try to explain what was really happening.

But the truth was that she didn't know what was really happening.

It was later that night, after Ginny had settled herself in a room at The Leaky Cauldron, that she met Harry and saw that he simply didn't believe in anything anymore: not a higher purpose; not even in his ability to survive another battle. He seemed like an empty shell, walking around, feeling glad that no one could remember he had been the one to get rid of the wizarding worlds greatest threat; and feeling sad with the worst threat that had arisen when the Death Eaters emerged as a strong, power-hungry group who didn't want to bring their Master back this time - instead, they wanted to fight for themselves.

Everyone was changed. War made them so bitter, and that's how she failed to understand why no one saw Malfoy's importance.

They all had become Draco in one way or another.

He had never had that trust, that naiveté, that belief they all shared. He had been a bitter, untrusting man since the beginning. And amazingly, that gave Ginny strength, and made her smile while he complained of how poor that room she was staying was; and how she would have to move in with him first thing in the morning.

So she did, and everyone took the marriage with a grain of salt. But when Narcissa proclaimed that she had always known that meeting Riddle would have that kind of impact on Ginny's life, the story of what had happened in Ginny's first year became popular, and got her accepted into that restricted group bed by Draco's father.

Draco had told her once he didn't believe in a higher good- it was something a lot of naïve man had created to give their lives some purpose. That he would never sacrifice his life for it because it just wasn't worthy.

And although she knew now that he had sacrificed his life for a purpose only she believed fully, what struck her was that when she'd think back, she couldn't help but wish all her friends had felt the same. That way she wouldn't wake up every morning searching for that sparkle in her eyes that had been there until she was sixteen. She wouldn't feel like crying every time she'd see Ron smile half-heartedly at his wife for something that once would make him leap in joy.

So much of them died in that war, but Draco was kept alive by that lack of faith everyone despised him for.

That was what kept her going through the terribly cold nights, when she'd wonder when she had began calling such a grey house as the Malfoy Mansion her home. Ron would later joke that Ginny wouldn't be able to walk around her own house when she'd reach old age. Draco would only smirk in response, for he knew she couldn't live anywhere else now.

Just once he had answered back, pointing out how their kids loved those large corridors and enormous rooms. How they made their huge library look tiny when they started their games. And Ron couldn't help but smile at the thought of his nephews shouting and hexing each other, something that would always amuse Ron, and drain Ginny.

It hadn't always been like that. In the beginning, it had been the pretending that drained her. But she had played her part well. She had served tea for many Death Eaters. She had organised portentous parties for pure bloods, and with time they attracted wizards from other countries as well. She was always smiling, always solicitous. She encouraged people to think she had seen how wrong her background had been, and they didn't take long to believe her.

It also didn't take long for her entire family to start ignoring her. She had cried on Draco's shoulders late at night until she forgot about crying and went on with her life, never considering abandoning it for she knew it would involve abandoning Draco and all their plans.

Their lives were too settled to be abandoned easily. And they would talk about it; about their lives and how it felt to lie; about all the information they had got. One thing they never talked about was how many people they were saving, even though they often thought of the deaths they had had to let happen.

Only after several years, when too many were dead and the organisation of Death Eaters had been successfully dismantled - although not completely destroyed -, Draco encouraged Ginny to write to her brothers.

Charlie had been the first to write back, a letter as warm as she never expected to receive again. Fred and George took longer, but when they answered was to tell how they had missed her and how they could curse Malfoy if she wanted. They had believed he had kept her with him by force, and she never managed to change their minds, no matter how hard she had tried.

Ron never answered, he simply showed up at her door one day bringing Harry and Hermione along, saying she should never forget her old friends; demanding her to explain what had got into her to make her do what she did.

She never told him the whole story. She only told him about their time in Beauxbatons, when they had been a safe harbour to each other in that new environment; and how he had held her every time she had received a letter telling how bad things were getting; and how he shared with her all the news he would get.

She also told him about Draco's graduation, and how he had endured a boring work behind a desk in the Ministry - a job he had got thanks to Dumbledore's personal recommendation - to cover up for his real work as an informant. And while Harry spent years on auror training, and Ron got more and more popular as a Quidditch player, Draco and she built their lives, backing away from his father as much as possible without compromising their duty.

But she never told Ron how Draco begun seeing what they were doing as a duty. She knew that if it wasn't for her, he would never have bothered, and somehow she never felt proud with that feeling.

Unexplainably, she liked that old Draco, the one that existed before he decided to make a huge difference out of his life. But that was another thing she never told Ron. He just wouldn't understand, as he wouldn't understand that silent comprehension they had of each other. Like when he would hold her when he'd sense she was almost breaking, or when he would provoke her exactly when she needed to be shaken a bit.

Another thing that Ron never understood was how Ginny could accept his apparent coldness. "Has he ever shown any kind of feeling for his own children?" he would ask in disbelief, seeing how he would stay quietly out of the way while they were playing around the house.

But it happened because Draco knew how tired she'd feel when things with the kids got too out of hand - and it usually happened when their uncles were around-, even though she never had the heart to stop them. She needed that feeling of movement all around her, and when Draco'd see she had had enough, all he needed to do was calmly raise an eyebrow and all would go silent.

And that's as much of a reaction the children would get out of their father.

Sometimes Ginny wondered if they missed a warm figure, someone like the father and the mother she had had while she was growing up. She knew how they adored Fred and George, and how they greeted Charlie as their favourite uncle, and she thought that's because they're the ones who play that part in their lives. They'd play along, they'd roll in the grass, they'd scream louder than the little ones could, while Draco and she would only watch it reverently by the library window.

And her favourite moments were when her brothers gathered the kids and told them all about the grandparents they never met. And they loved those stories, loving the people in those stories as much as she did. And when they'd ask about Draco's parents, he'd only smile and tell them there's nothing to tell. Because even though both of them lived in their own bitter world, they were selfless enough not to want their children in it.

"Lucius is becoming too much like Ronald was at his age." Draco had acknowledged the day they took their older son to the platform 9 ¾ to his third year, and he had - Ginny amusedly noticed - an unmistakable pride in his voice.

"Arthur looks too much like me," said Draco one night, after watching their middle son play Quidditch. "You must do something to stop it."

So she owled Hermione, and she and Ron began visiting them more often. Draco saw Arthur change his arrogant ways, and that calmed him down.

"Rebecca is shinning like you shone that day in Hogsmeade," he pointed out once, a hint of hope in his voice.

And Ginny shared that hope, because she wanted her daughter to shine. She wanted her to be the pest full of joy she had been when she was younger, and hadn't lost all her dreams yet. For their kids didn't have to loose their dreams; there was nothing in their way. No war; no difficult times; no terrible worry that the people they loved would suddenly be gone before they should.

Once Draco asked her almost shyly, "When did you start loving me?" and she joked that maybe never.

But then he looked at her and she remembered that day in the dungeons, when he had made her feel the princess of a fairytale, being held by the prince that would eventually rescue her.

The truth is that she didn't know when she had started loving him, and it didn't matter.

Colin had been somewhat wrong that day, and she had told him that several times while visiting him at St. Mungos. Draco was a very tortured boy, but later in life they all exceeded him. They became tortured themselves, all of them. Some of them had learned to cope; others had outgrown it.

She had chosen to be reminded of it every day.

Because every time Draco would hold her, she'd feel that familiar sting in her chest. But then he would look at her with those beautiful eyes - almost warm, slightly surrendering - and she'd be healed again.

Deep down, she knew it didn't really matter the reasons she loved Malfoy, or the reasons that made her build the life she had built, for every time Ron asked her to imagine how differently things could have been, she would answer she wouldn't want it any other way.

And she really wouldn't.