I sit alone in the little room in the Burrow which has been mine since childhood. I look around, at the pink wallpaper that I never got around to changing, the open window which I never got around to painting, the old toys in the corner which I never got around to throwing away.
I am glad, now, that I never got around to getting rid of these unfinished remnants of my childhood. The old things - the Hogwarts school books, my first wand, the framed poster of the Weird Sisters - seem to recall on this still afternoon the Ginny-that-once-was, the old Ginny; the Ginny that I tucked away and left behind as I grew up and became a new Ginny.
I am alone in the Burrow - Mum has gone out with Dad, everyone else has grown up - yes, even Fred and George - and moved away. As I soon shall.
I sit on my bed and close my eyes for a minute, just taking in the clean smell of sun-dried cotton, of the crisp English air - especially appreciated after having spent a summer with Charlie in New York.
My thoughts drift, and for once, I allow them to do so. It is oddly restful being in my old room, peaceful and still. I allow myself to forget about duties I may have and simply sit quietly.
But my thoughts, when they drift, drift to the thing they always drift to. A boy - a young man, a person I think about too much - much more than I should . . .
Suddenly I sink into the silence of the day. I remember an old tune - written by a wizard and sung by a Muggle - a tune that startled me the first time I heard it - made me close my eyes and remember . . .
As I am remembering now...
You ask me if I love you,
And I choke on my reply,
I'd rather hurt you honestly,
Than mislead you with a lie.
I remember - the summer I graduated from Hogwarts. I remember the tumult of that last year, the year in which Harry defeated Voldemort. The year Sirius Black almost died.
The year Remus Lupin died.
Harry couldn't take it, I think. He had already lost so much - he'd almost lost Sirius, and when Professor Lupin died while fighting Voldemort, Harry stayed only long enough to finish Voldemort off and give me a goodbye kiss before leaving.
At the time I thought it was for forever.
It maybe wouldn't have been so bad.
If we hadn't been dating.
We'd started dating that year. If he had stayed that summer, maybe things would have turned out differently.
But he didn't.
And that summer I met Draco Malfoy.
Obviously I'd already met him in Hogwarts. But the Draco I met that summer was different.
He was still a nasty, sharp-tongued git. But he was different - everyone knew by then that he'd been helping to get rid of the Dementors, and he didn't have the shadow of everyone thinking he was a Death Eater looming behind him. He was nasty, but he wasn't evil.
I don't know how it happened exactly. One day it just became natural for him to join me in Trafalgar Square and start eating the corn I had bought for the pigeons and telling me it was poisoned. It became natural for him to join me some evenings to watch Old Man Henzy run down Coventry Street starkers. It became natural to hold hands and inch closer to each other, and one day it even became natural to kiss.
It was all very natural.
It was a mellow summer, slow and tempered. I think everyone was taking a rest, easy, long, relieved breaths, after the danger of Voldemort had finally passed forever. Only his acerbic comments and daredevil streak created ripples in the calm aftermath of Voldemort's fortunate removal.
It was a quiet summer, a contented, warm summer.
I didn't hear from Harry once.
One evening, Draco turned to me, and looked at me for a while. He looked strange in the darkening light. He looked vulnerable and uncertain, and not Draco when he asked me if I loved him.
Until then I'd always believed I loved Harry.
I had never thought about loving Draco, not even while we were sharing long, hot, soul-deep kisses.
I had never thought about loving anyone other than Harry.
But Draco was there and Harry wasn't, and all summer long I'd been happier than I'd ever been with Harry.
The look on his face filled me with longing. I wanted to reach out and touch his cold, wind-reddened cheek, and say softly that I loved him.
So I did.
And who am I to judge you,
And what you say or do,
I'm only just beginning,
To see the real you.
He hated my family, I always knew that. He hated Bill, and Charlie, and Percy, and Fred, and George, and my parents.
He hated Ron.
He hated all of them.
He especially hated Ron, who'd assisted in capturing his parents. He could have forgiven Ron for his father, but not his mother. I think that he loved his mother, although he never told me so.
Draco kept a lot hidden from me.
Things I had always thought would come out naturally as we spent the rest of our lives together.
He mentioned casually, slyly, a kiss he'd seen Harry and Hermione share. Ron turned white and when he looked at Hermione, I knew that an old suspicion had been confirmed.
I hated him for that.
For not only sullying Hermione for Ron, but for sullying Harry for me.
Yes, I hated him for that.
But who was I to judge him, to judge his actions or his words? I loved him, even when I hated him, and I couldn't judge him.
I was learning who he was. I was learning him.
Sometimes when we touch,
The honesty's too much,
And I have to close my eyes and hide,
I want to hold you till I die,
Till we both break down and cry,
I want to hold you, till the fear in me subsides.
Whenever we touched, it was explosive.
It wasn't like the sweet, tender kisses I had shared with Harry, the kisses you should always share with your first love.
That was what Harry was, you know.
He was my first love.
He wasn't my true love.
When I touched Draco - it was like being burned and reincarnated, like heating up so that all the heat came to the surface and the only thing that could save us was each other.
Only - only - we made each other hotter.
The day I got the owl from Harry, telling me that he was coming back -
It wasn't a good day.
I received the owl at breakfast. I read it, not knowing.
I was even happy that he was coming back, at first.
Dear Ginny,
I'm coming back on the 8th. I'll Apparate over to the Burrow. We have to talk, don't we? I missed you.
Harry.
That was it. Not a long letter, not a love letter. Nothing loverlike about it, about Harry.
Harry had never been loverlike.
His idea of courting a girl had been to mumble and depend on that boyish charm he never really outgrew.
Once that had been enough for me.
Now I had Draco.
Yet - Harry had always been my hero.
I went to see Draco that evening.
It was a quiet evening, like all the others we had had that summer. Only, in my uneasiness, the summer air seemed fraught with tension.
Draco didn't seem to feel it. He seemed to be contented, sitting on the cold, hard, bench, playing with my fingers. I took my fingers away and stared at them.
"Harry's coming back next week." I said suddenly. I didn't mean to say it that way, to blurt it out and have it hang in the silence. p>Draco looked at me. He didn't seem to grasp the full concept of the Prodigal Boyfriend. I realized, for once, his grey eyes weren't cool or hot, as they always were. Draco was a creature of extremes.
His eyes were warm.
It was like he knew I was his, had always been his, would always be his, and he didn't feel the need to grasp at me constantly, to savour every moment as if it were our last. It was as if he'd settled into the warm, peaceful summer, the affectionate relationship of a long-married couple.
"So?" he asked.
I realized then that it wasn't him who hadn't grasped the full concept.
It was me.
Who was Harry to him? I knew I belonged to Draco, Draco knew he belonged to me.
Harry didn't fit into the equation at all.
Harry was just Harry.
I smiled then, and hugged him. He seemed surprised. Maybe because he didn't know what I had built Harry's coming home up to, in my mind, when really it was nothing at all.
But he seemed to understand, to understand that I needed to be held.
So he did.
I wanted him to hold me forever.
Romance and all its strategy,
Leaves me battling with my pride,
But through the insecurity,
My tenderness survives,
I'm just another writer, still trapped within my truth,
A hesitant prizefighter, still trapped within my youth.
Harry came home on the eighth.
He Apparated up into my room.
"Ginny!" he said happily, his cheeks flushed red with wind, his eyes sparkling from good health.
It was good to see him again.
It was always good to see Harry.
He was a part of me, and if that part wasn't my heart, then I was sorry.
I hugged him. He felt nice, solid underneath my arms. He leaned down to kiss me, as if the whole summer had been only two hours, and we could forget about it and slip easily into each other's arms.
As easily as we had before he left.
I twisted away.
"Harry -"
Harry laughed. "I missed you too." He said brightly.
"No -" I said sharply. There was no way to say it. "Harry - I'm with Draco."
Harry understood at once, and he didn't pretend not to. His mouth went white. "Draco Malfoy." He said flatly.
There was no point in replying.
Harry was silent. "Is there any chance -"
"No."
"All right." Harry looked at me, then, and I almost cried out at the pain in his eyes. I'd never really believed he loved me, until then.
But he did.
"I'll go say hello to Ron." He said finally.
"I'm sorry."
Harry stopped at the door, his back to me.
"So am I, Ginny."
He began to woo me then, as he hadn't bothered to do before. He wooed me with sad eyes, with sweet gestures and soft touches, and I realized that when he had said all right, he hadn't really meant it. Did anyone, really?
It was hard to see Harry and realize that I had misjudged him, to realize that maybe he had felt about me the way I felt about Draco. Before, maybe I would have been happy to know that the power to give Harry happiness lay in my hands.
But it wasn't before.
And Harry wasn't Draco.
I didn't hate Harry for pushing the issue, though.
Some tenderness for him, for being the hero I'd always thought he was, survived through all my feelings for Draco.
Yet I didn't question my love for Draco.
Loving Draco was truth.
Loving Harry had been an infatuation of youth.
At times I'd like to break you
And drive you to your knees,
At times I'd like to break through,
And hold you endlessly.
Draco was working for Dumbledore, of course, and so was Harry. They were working together. I often thought that was more than mere coincidence. If I didn't know it then, I know now that Dumbledore does everything for a reason.
Dumbledore sent Draco and Harry to France together to hunt down the last of the Death Eaters.
Draco kissed me just before he left, laughed at the tears seventeen shed so easily, and waved gaily as he prepared to Disapparate. I didn't look at Harry, wanting my last glimpse to be of my lover.
They were supposed to come back together.
I once said it was always good to see Harry.
I was wrong.
It wasn't good to see Harry when my lover wasn't with him.
I never thought I would hate the sight of Harry.
I did then.
He only had to look at me, a wealth of sorrow and regret in the green eyes I had once thought so beautiful.
Before grey eyes came and made them look pale.
And I knew.
Draco was nothing more than a shell, a broken, dead shell I didn't want to look at.
He was gone.
I wanted to kill Harry, to break him and fling him as far away from me as possible, to drive him to his knees and make him feel the agony I felt.
Black hate.
And yet, through the thick, poisonous hatred, I wanted to break, myself, let myself shatter and fall apart, and ask Harry to hold me for the comfort he couldn't give.
The comfort only my dead lover, still lying "somewhere in France" could give me.
At times I understand you,
And I know how hard you've tried,
I've watched while love commands you,
And I've watched love pass you by.
At times I think we're drifters,
Still searching for a friend.
A brother, or a sister,
But then the passion flares again.
It was five years after Draco's death that I finally became engaged to Harry.
I was tired of mourning my lost lover, and I wanted to be happy.
Maybe Draco would think I was betraying him.
Then again, Draco had always understood me.
And Harry had been by my side, all through the five years. He'd held my hand and let me cry, and sat with me through the long nights when I should have been in Draco's arms. He'd been content to be able to be with me and know that I wasn't pushing him away, wasn't leaving him for another.
Harry didn't understand that I'd already left him, a long time ago.
A time as long ago as that lost summer.
But sometimes when I watched Harry, I understood, fleetingly, how hard he tried to be what I wanted. He tried to become the white haired young man that I loved, and if he could never be that, simply because his hair was black and his eyes green, and his name Harry, it wasn't his fault.
But it wasn't mine, either.
It was your fault, Draco.
It wasn't meant to be you and me, the Malfoy and the Weasley. It was meant to be me and Harry, together forever.
But it is never how it's meant to be.
I let Harry woo me, gently, with his patience and easiness. And one day he kissed me, and even if it wasn't as hot as you had made it for me, there was still heat, and passion, and I could have gone on kissing him forever.
But I wasn't in love with Harry.
He was my brother, my friend, but never my lover.
He'd had my love once, and then I'd given it to you.
And that's the end of it, isn't it, Draco?
You'll never let me stop loving you.
I sigh, and come back to myself. The air outside carries with it a slight breeze. I am to marry Harry tomorrow, and leave the house I spent my youth in. It seems like I am going in circles, all the time. I leave my childhood home, and go to my childhood sweetheart, and over and over. And everywhere I go, I look for a head of white fluff and eyes so grey they mist over everything and blur your judgement.
I never find it.
And yet, maybe, I find it in everything, because sometimes when I look at Harry, I think his hair is growing lighter, and his eyes growing dimmer, and for a while...
Yes, for a while...
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Draco and Ginny belong to JK Rowling, Bloomsbury, Scholastic, Warner Bros and various other corporations. They are being used here without permission and/or affiliation with the above. None of the authors listed here make any profit from these stories.