A Sudden Movement, Chapter 1
Title: A Sudden Movement (1/?)
Chapter: chapter one: every second dripping off my finger tips
Pairings Draco/Ginny, references to all canon pairings
Rating PG-13, for this chapter.
Warnings Language
Word Count 2500
chapter one: every second dripping off my finger tips
The light was grey as the shrill metal scream of the alarm clock dragged Ginny unwillingly into the conscious world. She shut her eyes tightly, clutched her pillow and curled into her covers as she felt Harry shift clumsily out of the bed. Her husband was quite used to making his own breakfast; there was no reason for her to get up just yet. She absently listened to him shuffling about, yawning as he pulled on his robes and fumbled for necessary items in various drawers and pockets, before picking up his wand and muttering several Summoning Spells. Then he left the bedroom, leaving the door open just slightly so that light from the hallway fell into the room. Ginny groaned irritably - Every bloody morning. What's so hard about closing a door properly?
She rolled onto her back and stared up at the ceiling; she felt a pang for her Quidditch days, when she would be out in the crisp morning air, soaring and diving, driven by pure, unadulterated energy. Now, instead, she lay in bed, dreading having to leave its warmth. The transition to the Daily Prophet had been a necessary change, and at the beginning she'd felt a surge of accomplishment and professionalism at the appointment. But that feeling had dwindled, and now working for the paper had contributed a mundane, lacklustre quality to her life. The further her Quidditch days faded behind her, the more she realised how important they'd been to the balance of her life. Now she understood why so many of her friends seemed to spend Mondays and Wednesdays in a sleepy stupor. Now she understood the meaning of the term "daily grind".
Light flooded the room suddenly and Ginny squinted at her husband's silhouette. "Lily's up. I have to go."
"Okay. See you later."
"Love you."
"You, too."
She waited for the distant click of the front door and the crack of Disapparation. Then, with a groan of reluctance, she pulled herself out of bed. She made her way across to the wardrobe, her hand pressed against her temple as a headache began to blossom. She opened her wardrobe and felt a pang at the sight of the dark green robes, with their gold embellishments, to the very right. Another reminder of her Quidditch days.
"Lily?" she called, pulling a set of inky blue robes out and snapping the wooden door closed. "Lily, have you eaten breakfast yet?" There was no response, of course. Ginny threw the robes on the bed and left the room, calling again from the hall, "Lily? You better not be practicing magic again, young lady."
There was a loud clatter in the bathroom and Ginny, flicking her eyes upwards in exasperation, went to the door, knocking upon it as she attempted to twist the locked handle. "Lily, what are you doing?"
"I'm going to the toilet, Mum!" the nine-year-old called, with the typical horror of having been plagued with such an embarrassing mother.
"What was that sound?"
Silence.
"Lily Luna Potter, you open this door right now! Don't make me use my wand!"
There was the sound of a flushing toilet and the door jerked open suddenly. Lily was standing in front of her, glaring at the floor, hands curled up into tiny fists. The floor was a mess of empty containers, and there were purple bubbles floating out of the toilet. Ginny was nearly certain she could hear chirping.
"What were you do-you know what? I don't even want to know. Go eat your breakfast."
Lily stalked off towards the end of the hall and then down the stairs. Ginny waited for the sound of cereal being poured into a bowl before she took out her wand and tried to do something with the state of the bathroom. She cleaned up the various containers from the floor, and was fairly sure the purple bubbles weren't a sign of long lasting damage. The chirping would have to be investigated, certainly, but there simply wasn't time at the moment. Instead, Ginny scribbled a note to Harry about looking into it and stuck it on the door, before rushing back to her room to get ready for the day ahead.
Robes on, hair tied up, face and teeth washed, Ginny slipped her shoes on and rushed downstairs. She picked up a portfolio of work from the night before and gave Lily a kiss on the forehead.
"All ready to go?"
Lily gave her a confused look. "What about Gran? She's not coming to get me?"
"Not today, sweetheart. Gran's got some things to take care of, so I'm taking you to -"
"Noo," Lily whined, slapping her arms down on the wooden table. "I hate going to Fleur."
Ginny bit her lip to try and stop from laughing. "You're not going to Fleur. Hermione has the day off, so you're going to spend the day with her and Hugo."
Lily cheered immediately and practically bounced out of her chair and, after pulling on her deep blue robe, grasped her mother's hand. They left the house and Ginny did her best to give her daughter a stern look. "And you're to be nice to Fleur. She is your aunt and she loves you very much."
"Yeah, but she's sooo annoying, Mum."
Ginny raised her eyebrow as she locked the door behind them. "Look who's talking, little miss purple bubbles."
Soon after dropping Lily off at Hermione's and arriving at work, Ginny found her mood steadily declining - whilst her headache gained in intensity. She was waiting on three articles to come back with corrections, and one which she hadn't even seen the first draft on, yet. The only story that was finished was still waiting on a headline, and on top of everything the design editor had decided the layout of the main spread needed to be overhauled due to a change in the article line-up.
As it was, with no stories and no layout, Ginny had nothing to do except bark at her underlings about getting things done. As a last resort she turned to her in-tray which contained independent submissions. She realised that her pessimism caused her to carry a negative bias towards all the pieces she found here, and perhaps that was unfair, but experience had taught her never to anticipate much. On the rare occasion something was worthwhile, it usually shone through her grim expectations.
This day was not one for pleasant surprises: the first piece she read was an inexplicably biased piece covering the first Quidditch match of the year at Hogwarts (it didn't help that the pupil who'd written it had referred to Ginny's own son using a string of expletives), the second was a rather anti-feminist editorial about the place of women in professional Quidditch. Both of these were set aside so that Ginny could personally write letters to thank the authors for their submissions; she'd enjoy that immensely. The third piece she attempted to read was written in what appeared to be Gobbledegook, though she couldn't really be sure. This one she made copies of and forwarded to the editors for the Foreign Affairs and Magical Beings sections. Perhaps one of them could figure out what it was and maybe put it to use.
Ginny's head gave a specifically sharp throb and she glanced at the clock - five minutes to noon. The day wasn't even halfway over. She could, at least, head out to lunch for a little while. A hot meal at The Leaky Cauldron was suddenly an immensely tempting prospect. She wouldn't say no to a Firewhiskey either - though it would be best if she did say no. It was, after all, still very early in the day.
After shuffling the papers on her desk into a passable imitation of organisation, Ginny pulled her cloak on and closed the fastenings as she headed down the hall. "I'm stepping out for lunch," she called to the assistant editor, who was sitting at his desk, chewing on the end of a purple quill - either pensively or in an attempt to appear pensive. He gave a distracted glance in her direction and nodded. Ginny rolled her eyes as she pressed the button for the lift.
When the doors opened before her, Ginny suppressed a small groan and momentarily considered not getting in. That, she decided, would be childish, and so she clenched her teeth and stepped inside next to lift's single occupant.
"Morning Weasley-Potter."
"Ugh. My day just gets better and better, doesn't it?"
"It's a pleasure to see you, too."
"What are you doing here, Malfoy?"
"Was dropping in to persuade the editor to publish a piece concerning the Ministry's suspicious habit of refusing grant funding to my company despite our eligibility, and despite the number of employment opportunities we've created." The lift shuddered to a stop at the lobby and Draco stepped aside and gestured towards the open doors.
"I suppose by 'persuade' you mean 'bribe'," Ginny said blithely, stepping out in front of him.
"Doesn't matter either way; she refused."
"Oh?" She turned on her heel to face him as they stopped off to the side of the hall.
"Yeah, don't know why I bothered. This rubbish paper is in the Ministry's pocket, isn't it?"
"Excuse me; I work for this rubbish paper."
"Yeah, and do you like it?"
"Yes," she lied. "As a matter of fact, I do."
"Of course. I suppose it's really fulfilling. I see the stories that make it into your section. Even you, Mrs Harry Potter, can't change who pays the Prophet to make their team look good."
"Fuck off, Malfoy."
He didn't have anything to say to that. He just shoved his hands in his pockets and gave a wistful look to the world at large. Ginny didn't move, and she wasn't quite sure why. Perhaps it was because, at some point in the last two decades, she'd become an adult, and adults don't typically walk off in the middle of a conversation. Or they weren't supposed to, anyway.
"Sort of makes you miss the war, doesn't it?" Draco muttered finally.
She stared at him. The fact that she hadn't punched him in the jaw truly reinforced the theory that she was an adult. "The war is really not something I try to think about. It's certainly not anything I will ever miss."
His grey eyes turned away from the distance and met with hers; suddenly she saw a depth in his expression and, though she couldn't give it a name or definition, something inside of her instinctively reacted to it, as if by some means of recognition, though she couldn't know what she recognised or how. She took an unsteady breath, her momentary flare of anger giving way to uncertainty.
"I'm sorry," Draco said. His sincerity echoed in the emptiness of his tone more profoundly than it could have amidst any other emotion. "I just meant, well, at least then, we believed there was something to live for. We had some kind of purpose in the grand scheme of things. Now life is just a load of superficial, meaningless fuck-all."
It was Ginny who didn't have anything to say, this time. They stood in silence a few moments before Draco nodded and muttered a grim, "See you around," before striding off. Ginny only faintly acknowledged his departure, still processing the numbing honesty of his words as she made her way out to the bustling street, into the vast white winter noontide.
Though the suddenness of his sentiment had struck something within her, she knew she couldn't agree. Not fully, at least. After all, there was nothing superficial about her love for her children. Yes, her job was tedious, and often frustrating. But, this "meaningless fuck-all", as Draco had put it, was what the war had been fought for - the right to live life and raise families without the constant fear of death. The right to a boring career, even. Wars, after all, were not state-sponsored adrenaline rushes. Maybe being at the mercy of a sociopath was the kind of thrill Draco needed to feel life was worth it. Or maybe he was just having a mid-life crisis.
Whatever Draco Malfoy's issue, it had nothing to do with her. She slipped from the brisk air into the warm, crackling atmosphere of The Leaky Cauldron. The pub was fairly busy, owing to the time of day, but not crowded as it normally would be in the summer or early fall. Ginny was able to find a comfortable seat with a small table stuffed into a fairly private corner. Her thoughts wandered over her day, and despite her best efforts to get away from the office, she found herself thinking about all the work that would have to be done when her stories were finally turned in. She rested her head on her hand and pressed her temples again, her headache throbbing back to life.
A young waitress stopped in front of Ginny; she had blonde curls and eager green eyes. There was something slightly elfish about her appearance. She was probably new, as Ginny had never seen her before.
"What can I get you Mrs Potter?" the young witch said brightly, seeming to bounce once onto her toes as she spoke. Ginny tried to repress her exasperation - constant recognition by complete strangers had worn itself out, but it was part of the deal for marrying a war hero and playing professional Quidditch.
"A plate of fish and chips, please," Ginny said.
"Something to drink?" The waitress said, scribbling on her pad, and once more springing forward to the tips of her toes, then rocking back to her heels as she looked at Ginny.
"Just water," Ginny said. Noon really was too soon to be drinking; especially in a public place as Mrs Potter. The waitress smiled and nodded and turned to bounce away, and Ginny tried to remember the last time she had that kind of spring in her step. On the Quidditch pitch, most likely. She sighed and her head throbbed, and Draco Malfoy's bitter words echoed in her mind.
"Sorry?" Ginny called to the waitress, who seemed to perform a half-pirouette rather than merely stop and turned and strode back to the table. "On second thoughts...," she hesitated uneasily. "I'll have a Firewhiskey."
She wasn't sure what she had expected. Surprise, shock, disapproval? Perhaps a, "It's a bit early too be drinking the strong stuff, Mrs Potter." The elfish waitress merely smiled as genuinely as before and said, "Coming right up."
As she hopped away, Ginny felt herself oddly disappointed. She wouldn't have minded a little scandal; it would have made things more interesting, at least. She took a quick look around, she saw friends chatting, families laughing, lovers furtively conversing. They all seemed content. Ginny's thoughts wandered back to herself. She was a woman in her mid-thirties, alone in a pub, having whiskey with her lunch; if anything, she felt empty. Whatever she told herself, this was not the life they'd fought for in the war.
Chapter: chapter one: every second dripping off my finger tips
Pairings Draco/Ginny, references to all canon pairings
Rating PG-13, for this chapter.
Warnings Language
Word Count 2500
chapter one: every second dripping off my finger tips
The light was grey as the shrill metal scream of the alarm clock dragged Ginny unwillingly into the conscious world. She shut her eyes tightly, clutched her pillow and curled into her covers as she felt Harry shift clumsily out of the bed. Her husband was quite used to making his own breakfast; there was no reason for her to get up just yet. She absently listened to him shuffling about, yawning as he pulled on his robes and fumbled for necessary items in various drawers and pockets, before picking up his wand and muttering several Summoning Spells. Then he left the bedroom, leaving the door open just slightly so that light from the hallway fell into the room. Ginny groaned irritably - Every bloody morning. What's so hard about closing a door properly?
She rolled onto her back and stared up at the ceiling; she felt a pang for her Quidditch days, when she would be out in the crisp morning air, soaring and diving, driven by pure, unadulterated energy. Now, instead, she lay in bed, dreading having to leave its warmth. The transition to the Daily Prophet had been a necessary change, and at the beginning she'd felt a surge of accomplishment and professionalism at the appointment. But that feeling had dwindled, and now working for the paper had contributed a mundane, lacklustre quality to her life. The further her Quidditch days faded behind her, the more she realised how important they'd been to the balance of her life. Now she understood why so many of her friends seemed to spend Mondays and Wednesdays in a sleepy stupor. Now she understood the meaning of the term "daily grind".
Light flooded the room suddenly and Ginny squinted at her husband's silhouette. "Lily's up. I have to go."
"Okay. See you later."
"Love you."
"You, too."
She waited for the distant click of the front door and the crack of Disapparation. Then, with a groan of reluctance, she pulled herself out of bed. She made her way across to the wardrobe, her hand pressed against her temple as a headache began to blossom. She opened her wardrobe and felt a pang at the sight of the dark green robes, with their gold embellishments, to the very right. Another reminder of her Quidditch days.
"Lily?" she called, pulling a set of inky blue robes out and snapping the wooden door closed. "Lily, have you eaten breakfast yet?" There was no response, of course. Ginny threw the robes on the bed and left the room, calling again from the hall, "Lily? You better not be practicing magic again, young lady."
There was a loud clatter in the bathroom and Ginny, flicking her eyes upwards in exasperation, went to the door, knocking upon it as she attempted to twist the locked handle. "Lily, what are you doing?"
"I'm going to the toilet, Mum!" the nine-year-old called, with the typical horror of having been plagued with such an embarrassing mother.
"What was that sound?"
Silence.
"Lily Luna Potter, you open this door right now! Don't make me use my wand!"
There was the sound of a flushing toilet and the door jerked open suddenly. Lily was standing in front of her, glaring at the floor, hands curled up into tiny fists. The floor was a mess of empty containers, and there were purple bubbles floating out of the toilet. Ginny was nearly certain she could hear chirping.
"What were you do-you know what? I don't even want to know. Go eat your breakfast."
Lily stalked off towards the end of the hall and then down the stairs. Ginny waited for the sound of cereal being poured into a bowl before she took out her wand and tried to do something with the state of the bathroom. She cleaned up the various containers from the floor, and was fairly sure the purple bubbles weren't a sign of long lasting damage. The chirping would have to be investigated, certainly, but there simply wasn't time at the moment. Instead, Ginny scribbled a note to Harry about looking into it and stuck it on the door, before rushing back to her room to get ready for the day ahead.
Robes on, hair tied up, face and teeth washed, Ginny slipped her shoes on and rushed downstairs. She picked up a portfolio of work from the night before and gave Lily a kiss on the forehead.
"All ready to go?"
Lily gave her a confused look. "What about Gran? She's not coming to get me?"
"Not today, sweetheart. Gran's got some things to take care of, so I'm taking you to -"
"Noo," Lily whined, slapping her arms down on the wooden table. "I hate going to Fleur."
Ginny bit her lip to try and stop from laughing. "You're not going to Fleur. Hermione has the day off, so you're going to spend the day with her and Hugo."
Lily cheered immediately and practically bounced out of her chair and, after pulling on her deep blue robe, grasped her mother's hand. They left the house and Ginny did her best to give her daughter a stern look. "And you're to be nice to Fleur. She is your aunt and she loves you very much."
"Yeah, but she's sooo annoying, Mum."
Ginny raised her eyebrow as she locked the door behind them. "Look who's talking, little miss purple bubbles."
Soon after dropping Lily off at Hermione's and arriving at work, Ginny found her mood steadily declining - whilst her headache gained in intensity. She was waiting on three articles to come back with corrections, and one which she hadn't even seen the first draft on, yet. The only story that was finished was still waiting on a headline, and on top of everything the design editor had decided the layout of the main spread needed to be overhauled due to a change in the article line-up.
As it was, with no stories and no layout, Ginny had nothing to do except bark at her underlings about getting things done. As a last resort she turned to her in-tray which contained independent submissions. She realised that her pessimism caused her to carry a negative bias towards all the pieces she found here, and perhaps that was unfair, but experience had taught her never to anticipate much. On the rare occasion something was worthwhile, it usually shone through her grim expectations.
This day was not one for pleasant surprises: the first piece she read was an inexplicably biased piece covering the first Quidditch match of the year at Hogwarts (it didn't help that the pupil who'd written it had referred to Ginny's own son using a string of expletives), the second was a rather anti-feminist editorial about the place of women in professional Quidditch. Both of these were set aside so that Ginny could personally write letters to thank the authors for their submissions; she'd enjoy that immensely. The third piece she attempted to read was written in what appeared to be Gobbledegook, though she couldn't really be sure. This one she made copies of and forwarded to the editors for the Foreign Affairs and Magical Beings sections. Perhaps one of them could figure out what it was and maybe put it to use.
Ginny's head gave a specifically sharp throb and she glanced at the clock - five minutes to noon. The day wasn't even halfway over. She could, at least, head out to lunch for a little while. A hot meal at The Leaky Cauldron was suddenly an immensely tempting prospect. She wouldn't say no to a Firewhiskey either - though it would be best if she did say no. It was, after all, still very early in the day.
After shuffling the papers on her desk into a passable imitation of organisation, Ginny pulled her cloak on and closed the fastenings as she headed down the hall. "I'm stepping out for lunch," she called to the assistant editor, who was sitting at his desk, chewing on the end of a purple quill - either pensively or in an attempt to appear pensive. He gave a distracted glance in her direction and nodded. Ginny rolled her eyes as she pressed the button for the lift.
When the doors opened before her, Ginny suppressed a small groan and momentarily considered not getting in. That, she decided, would be childish, and so she clenched her teeth and stepped inside next to lift's single occupant.
"Morning Weasley-Potter."
"Ugh. My day just gets better and better, doesn't it?"
"It's a pleasure to see you, too."
"What are you doing here, Malfoy?"
"Was dropping in to persuade the editor to publish a piece concerning the Ministry's suspicious habit of refusing grant funding to my company despite our eligibility, and despite the number of employment opportunities we've created." The lift shuddered to a stop at the lobby and Draco stepped aside and gestured towards the open doors.
"I suppose by 'persuade' you mean 'bribe'," Ginny said blithely, stepping out in front of him.
"Doesn't matter either way; she refused."
"Oh?" She turned on her heel to face him as they stopped off to the side of the hall.
"Yeah, don't know why I bothered. This rubbish paper is in the Ministry's pocket, isn't it?"
"Excuse me; I work for this rubbish paper."
"Yeah, and do you like it?"
"Yes," she lied. "As a matter of fact, I do."
"Of course. I suppose it's really fulfilling. I see the stories that make it into your section. Even you, Mrs Harry Potter, can't change who pays the Prophet to make their team look good."
"Fuck off, Malfoy."
He didn't have anything to say to that. He just shoved his hands in his pockets and gave a wistful look to the world at large. Ginny didn't move, and she wasn't quite sure why. Perhaps it was because, at some point in the last two decades, she'd become an adult, and adults don't typically walk off in the middle of a conversation. Or they weren't supposed to, anyway.
"Sort of makes you miss the war, doesn't it?" Draco muttered finally.
She stared at him. The fact that she hadn't punched him in the jaw truly reinforced the theory that she was an adult. "The war is really not something I try to think about. It's certainly not anything I will ever miss."
His grey eyes turned away from the distance and met with hers; suddenly she saw a depth in his expression and, though she couldn't give it a name or definition, something inside of her instinctively reacted to it, as if by some means of recognition, though she couldn't know what she recognised or how. She took an unsteady breath, her momentary flare of anger giving way to uncertainty.
"I'm sorry," Draco said. His sincerity echoed in the emptiness of his tone more profoundly than it could have amidst any other emotion. "I just meant, well, at least then, we believed there was something to live for. We had some kind of purpose in the grand scheme of things. Now life is just a load of superficial, meaningless fuck-all."
It was Ginny who didn't have anything to say, this time. They stood in silence a few moments before Draco nodded and muttered a grim, "See you around," before striding off. Ginny only faintly acknowledged his departure, still processing the numbing honesty of his words as she made her way out to the bustling street, into the vast white winter noontide.
Though the suddenness of his sentiment had struck something within her, she knew she couldn't agree. Not fully, at least. After all, there was nothing superficial about her love for her children. Yes, her job was tedious, and often frustrating. But, this "meaningless fuck-all", as Draco had put it, was what the war had been fought for - the right to live life and raise families without the constant fear of death. The right to a boring career, even. Wars, after all, were not state-sponsored adrenaline rushes. Maybe being at the mercy of a sociopath was the kind of thrill Draco needed to feel life was worth it. Or maybe he was just having a mid-life crisis.
Whatever Draco Malfoy's issue, it had nothing to do with her. She slipped from the brisk air into the warm, crackling atmosphere of The Leaky Cauldron. The pub was fairly busy, owing to the time of day, but not crowded as it normally would be in the summer or early fall. Ginny was able to find a comfortable seat with a small table stuffed into a fairly private corner. Her thoughts wandered over her day, and despite her best efforts to get away from the office, she found herself thinking about all the work that would have to be done when her stories were finally turned in. She rested her head on her hand and pressed her temples again, her headache throbbing back to life.
A young waitress stopped in front of Ginny; she had blonde curls and eager green eyes. There was something slightly elfish about her appearance. She was probably new, as Ginny had never seen her before.
"What can I get you Mrs Potter?" the young witch said brightly, seeming to bounce once onto her toes as she spoke. Ginny tried to repress her exasperation - constant recognition by complete strangers had worn itself out, but it was part of the deal for marrying a war hero and playing professional Quidditch.
"A plate of fish and chips, please," Ginny said.
"Something to drink?" The waitress said, scribbling on her pad, and once more springing forward to the tips of her toes, then rocking back to her heels as she looked at Ginny.
"Just water," Ginny said. Noon really was too soon to be drinking; especially in a public place as Mrs Potter. The waitress smiled and nodded and turned to bounce away, and Ginny tried to remember the last time she had that kind of spring in her step. On the Quidditch pitch, most likely. She sighed and her head throbbed, and Draco Malfoy's bitter words echoed in her mind.
"Sorry?" Ginny called to the waitress, who seemed to perform a half-pirouette rather than merely stop and turned and strode back to the table. "On second thoughts...," she hesitated uneasily. "I'll have a Firewhiskey."
She wasn't sure what she had expected. Surprise, shock, disapproval? Perhaps a, "It's a bit early too be drinking the strong stuff, Mrs Potter." The elfish waitress merely smiled as genuinely as before and said, "Coming right up."
As she hopped away, Ginny felt herself oddly disappointed. She wouldn't have minded a little scandal; it would have made things more interesting, at least. She took a quick look around, she saw friends chatting, families laughing, lovers furtively conversing. They all seemed content. Ginny's thoughts wandered back to herself. She was a woman in her mid-thirties, alone in a pub, having whiskey with her lunch; if anything, she felt empty. Whatever she told herself, this was not the life they'd fought for in the war.