When Everything Breaks

"Are you alright?" Hermione asked, coming up the path to where Ginny was standing.

"I'm fine," she replied.

"What are you doing?" Ginny levitated the final box into her Ministry borrowed car.

"I'm trying to put my life back together."

"You think this is helping?"

"Yes I do." The box slotted easily into the enlarged boot and she turned to look at Hermione, who was standing with her hands on her hips and a determined look on her face.

"Just wait. Harry will come back," she said, grabbing Ginny's arm as she then attempted to walk past.

"I don't want him to come back. I don't want him," Ginny replied. She blinked back tears that had been threatening to fall since she awoke that morning, and started back into the house for the last of her things.

She couldn't remember when she had stopped caring what others wanted of her; maybe it had been when she was finally made a prefect in her sixth year at Hogwarts. But it was so hard to please everyone, she had instead chosen to please herself. She had finally been able to become her own person, and with that came Harry. She realised now that she had never really known him at all; she had a picture of what she wanted him to be. It had broken her heart when he could not fit the picture; he had broken her heart. And it had been her mistake.

"Come on Gin, are you ready to go yet?" George called from the front seat of her car. She stopped and looked back at the Burrow, crooked and looming.

"Almost," she replied quietly. She dropped her bags onto the cobbled path and ran back inside to pick up the half-finished book she had left forgotten on the living room floor. It was a book Shelly had lent her, a self-help book that Ginny found mildly amusing.

She returned to collect her bags, just as Fred was throwing them into the back seat of her car and getting in himself. It had surprised Ginny that Fred and George had volunteered to help her move when nobody else had been available. She smiled to herself as she dug the keys from her pocket and stepped up to the drivers' door.

It didn't take long to drive from the Burrow to Diagon Alley, within two hours Ginny had all her moving boxes piled erratically on her new living room floor.

"Thanks you two," she said, smiling tiredly.

"That's alright Gin. You just make sure you come and visit us," George replied.

"And back us up with Katie and Ange," Fred added.

"I wouldn't dare," she replied. It's true what they say, boys really do marry their mothers, or had Katie and Angelina merely turned into Molly Weasley when they had taken on the role of controlling the twins? Ginny shrugged and laughed as the twins' faces fell.

Later that night, as she sat in front of her small fireplace with her book forgotten in her lap, having promised to visit her brothers the next day and unpacked roughly a third of her boxes, she tried to comprehend how her life had turned out so wrong.

***

Not too far away there was another Hogwarts graduate trying to comprehend this same premise. He had done what his father wanted, what he thought he wanted. And yet here he was, waiting for something spectacular to happen, something that would take the decision to leave out of his hands. Because he knew he couldn't make it.

His father shifted in his chair, and Draco raised his book higher.

"Why are you here Father?" he asked through the paperback. Lucious Malfoy stood up and looked out the window, into Knockturn Alley.

"I am simply here to keep an eye on you, my boy," he drawled.

"Why would I need you to keep an eye on me?" Draco asked calmly. He stared at his father's back, wondering if he knew what he had been thinking lately.

"You've been doing some stupid things lately."

"Like what?"

"Like reading this book when I am talking to you, for one." He strode over and snatched the book from Draco. "You shouldn't be reading this, this Muggle crap anyway. What do you think you're doing?" Draco looked fixedly at the cover of the book in his father's hands. It was a book he had picked up in London, he couldn't even remember where. It hadn't even occurred to him that he shouldn't read it.

"I will read whatever I like. Besides, it's not like I'm reading fairy stories." He reached out to take it back but his father jerked it out of his reach.

"It's imbecilic is what it is. It's a waste of time." And with that, he threw it into the fire. Draco stood and looked at his father with resentment.

"Alright, point made. Now leave." His father snorted.

"With pleasure. I don't know why you live here Draco, when you could live at the Manor." He disappeared with a pop and Draco began to laugh.

"To avoid touching moments like these," he said to the air. He sat back in his chair and watched the book burn. It was a shame really; he had wanted to see how Hannibal Lector escaped.

When the last page was curled and blackened Draco stood and paced his cluttered living room once. He rubbed his empty stomach, and quickly dismissed the idea of cooking himself dinner. That was the one thing he just couldn't get used to, cooking and cleaning for himself. At the manor there had always been someone around to do those things for him, maids, servants, cooks, and when all else failed, his mother. The few times he had cooked for himself it had been mediocre and required a great deal of effort. He had soon given up on that practice, for a usual table and menu at the Leaky Cauldron.

***

Ginny stood up, dropping her book in the process, and looked around the small mess she had created earlier. She had been unpacking sporadically, a clock here and a blanket there. Enough to get her through the night, but she had yet to organise some dinner for herself. She stared vaguely out the window and thought briefly of returning home, instead she decided to walk to the end of the Alley.

The door to the Leaky Cauldron opened with a creak and Ginny looked into the semi-crowded room. Her eyes flitted across a few familiar but unfriendly faces and she sighed. As she retreated to a corner table, away from the bulk of the early evening crowd, she met an unusual pair of grey eyes staring back at her through the gloom.

Draco scoffed at himself, he should have known. The red hair and slight frame should have reminded him. But there were some things he did not remember, her pretty face and the swell of her breasts. Those were things he did not attribute to the freckle-faced girl who used to follow Harry Potter around, and yet here she was, exciting his curiosity. He saw that she was alone, where was the famous Potter? How easy it would be to please those he followed, to bring them that pretty girl. And he felt nothing, no guilt, no loyalty, and no affection. He wondered at the haunted look mirrored in her eyes as they briefly met his own.

Ginny blinked away her feeling of déjà vu and sat down to her dinner, her back to Draco. He scoffed again as he stood, threw some galleons onto the table, and sauntered out into the night.

Ginny quickly ate her dinner and she too left the bar to return home. She did not notice the other occupant of the Alley, solitary and shadowed. Malevolent brown eyes watched her walk briskly back to her apartment, fumble with her wand at the lock, and enter with a fleeting glance towards her brother's derelict shop at her back.

She awoke the next morning to brilliant sunlight shinning through her bedroom window, creating a wall against the unsettled dust. Her dry mouth forced her to get up and pad barefoot into her small kitchen. She watched people in Muggle London rush back and forth through her window as she sipped her glass of cool water.

After her thirst had been sated and she was once again dressed in ripped jeans and Weasley jersey, she returned to the cluttered living room and resumed the unpacking of her boxes.

***

Draco leaned back in his bed, thinking of the elusive redhead. Why had he dreamed of her, shrouded in darkness and leading him into the mist, when he hadn't thought of her since he was 17? He laughed dryly and reached to the book he had retrieved and restored from the fire the previous day off his bedside table. Pain ripped through his left forearm, a burning pain he was learning to hate.

He put on plain robes and apparated to Riddle House, where a circle was being formed to welcome their leader.

"It is time to come out of the shadows," a voice called. Draco turned to see a hooded figure, and its red eyes met his as he placed the mask over his face.

***

Ginny looked up from her boxes to knocking at the door. She looked at her watch and noticed it had been four hours since she had been aware of the passing of time, it was now 2pm and she had little left to unpack and put away.

She put her hand on the doorknob and paused with misplaced uncertainty.

"Who is it?" she asked.

"It's me, open the door," Harry replied through the door.