AUTHOR'S NOTES:

This was a piece I wanted to write for the 2016 DramioneLove Mini Fest (dramionelove . livejournal . com). However, I ended up writing other pieces for that fest & this remained unfinished until today. This fanfic is finished now, but I changed out the characters to try something new with the story. I hope you approve. It is a one-shot.

My prompt that I worked from was: 1,500 words or less, marriage of convenience; Squicks: non-con, humiliation, watersports, cross-gen, mpreg

Thanks for reading!

DISCLAIMER: "Harry Potter" is the property of J.K. Rowling and Warner Bros. This fanfiction was written entirely for fun, not for profit, and no copyright infringement is intended.

TIMELINE: Post-Hogwarts, EWE (+10 years)

MAIN CHARACTERS FEATURED (alphabetical order, last name): Ginny Weasley-Malfoy, Draco Malfoy

SECONDARY CHARACTERS FEATURED (alphabetical order, last name): Gabrielle Delacour, Harry Potter, Tracey Davis-Potter, Original Characters (OCs)

SUMMARY: Ginny has an epiphany that will change everything…

RATING: PG-13

WARNINGS: Sad ending. Implied infidelity (off-screen).

EPIPHANY

By: RZZMG

It wasn't as if we were a real couple. Ours had always been a marriage of convenient inconvenience. It's something I'd long ago acknowledged.

Since the day the Ministry passed that ridiculous post-war Marriage Law and my name had been magically paired to Draco's, my former enemy and I had agreed to a total cessation of hostilities. We'd conceded to a position of toleration, instead—not out of a place of mutual respect, mind you, but primarily for the sake of avoiding a contempt charge by the courts.

Yet, despite being compelled to marry each other, we were both practical and ambitious enough to see our contrived union as one that could bring us reciprocal advantage: his in the form of his family's money going into my Quidditch ambitions to buy him political capital with Magical Sports and Games, and mine in the form of being a respectable war heroine with political connections in the new government…and in possessing a very fertile womb.

For the last seven years, that détente has remained in place. It has given us three lovely children, a successful apothecary business that Draco runs, and allowed me to eventually retire from professional play and take over the position of coach for the Holyhead Harpies.

It's a marriage neither of us wanted, true, but it's one that's become comfortable over the years. Yes, it's passionless—Draco never touches me now that we've fulfilled the Ministry's requirements of having two-point-five children survive the birthing process, and even before then, what we did in bed was awkward and mechanical—but I've always felt I was more than adequate to take care of my own sexual needs. Buy me a few batteries or allow me the pleasure of taking a dip in a warm bath filled with scented oils, and I can take it from there. And as for romance...who's got time for such frivolity?

All that changed last week, however, when I caught sight of my husband at one of my parent's trendy restaurant-bar franchises, the one at King's Cross, nuzzling up to and kissing Gabrielle Delacour in a way that told me he'd had plenty of practise at swallowing the woman's tongue. They'd kissed like they were in happily in love, the rose-coloured kind, where every touch lingers and the eyes speak louder than words.

Something inside me shifted in that moment. Something buried deep under layers of denial and the desire for acceptance became displaced and was set free…and it was a hideously jealous, miserable demon that screamed in righteous fury about unfairness and burned with a glittering, green-eyed possessiveness. It made my hands tremble and my heart ache, and I hated it more than I've ever despised anything in my life.

It seemed I'd reached my breaking point.

How I made it back to The Leaky Cauldron that day without exploding like one of Fred and George's fireworks, I'll never know. That part is a blank space in my brain, secured away from me by extreme emotional distress and shock. What I do remember is that Tom the Barkeep was kind enough to sit me down in a private booth, and that he brought me hot tea and warm, buttered bread, and bade me eat and drink. I remember finishing every crumb on the plate and downing cup after cup of sweetened herbals that turned bitter in my stomach. I remember Flooing back to the manor, climbing the marble stairs, and standing over my children in their beds, wondering if they knew their father loved a woman who wasn't their mother.

That night, I'd gone to bed crying into my pillow for the years wasted. I was married to a man who didn't love me—never would. For Merlin's sake, he'd only ever kissed me on the lips the day of our wedding, a perfunctory and chaste act! We'd had sex, yes, but only when I was ovulating and we'd needed to make babies to get the Ministry-monkey off our backs. Our conversations, too, had been sparse, impersonal, primarily having to do with work, politics, money, or the children.

I mean, I didn't even know if green was his favourite colour or not.

I take some fault for that, since it was my responsibility, too, to make of this marriage what I'd wanted and expected of it, and I'd used it as carelessly and ruthlessly as Draco had. I hadn't tried to love him, so how could I have had the expectation that he would want to love me? I'd made the bed I was lying in, literally.

Regardless of who was to blame for the failure of this relationship, the bottom line was that there was nothing holding me to this path any longer. It was time to end this chapter and open a new one. And I didn't care if divorce was permitted or not under the Marriage Law, because I was going to change that, if I had to, no matter what it took. I deserved to find a relationship with someone who looked at me, who kissed me, who wanted me as Draco had looked at, kissed, and wanted Gabrielle Delacour.

The next morning, I'd gathered our twin sons, and bundled up my baby Iris, and we'd left Malfoy Manor and its cold memories behind us.

An hour later, when they'd asked me at the Ministry why I was standing in the G.R.O. offices so early with three sleepy children in tow, I'd told them that there was only so much unhappiness once person could absorb in their lifetime before its poison turned them gangrenous.

"I want to speak to someone about obtaining a Petition to Divorce, immediately."

.***.

We're staying with Harry and Tracey for now, until I can get things settled.

The beds are lumpier here at Grimmauld Place than our old ones at the manor, but they are warm and comfortable, and at least the plumbing works. Also, the children are enamoured with the house in a way I have never been, running up and down its worn, wooden stairs with far more energy than even the doxies around this place, but that could be due to the Potter's two boys, Ronnie and Mitchell, who are the same age as my Alex and Theo. Harry's sons have a penchant for trouble-making that matches their father's.

I've signed the divorce petition and filed it with the Ministry. I expect a battle from the courts over it, as it would be the first divorce from the enacted law and would establish precedent for other unhappy couples, unraveling everything the Ministry had hoped to accomplish in forcing unsuitable people together after the war.

I also expect to go head-to-head with Draco regarding the custody of the children, but not over the actual ending of the marriage. I'm sure he'll be quite pleased in fact as our union had given him all he'd needed to start over after the war, and our permanent separation will now give him the coup de grâce, too: the freedom to be with Gabrielle.

What he doesn't know, however, is we're equal in that regard. I'll be free, too: free of everyone else's expectations, free to pursue causes that are good for me, too, not just for society. Free to fall in love with someone at long last, to marry that man and build the kind of life with him I'd never have been able to build with Draco Malfoy.

…After all, ours was only ever a marriage of convenience.

~FIN~

Author's Final Notes:

Depressing, I know. Hence the reason I'd lost interest half-way through writing it the first time. I finished it only because I forced myself to write something today as I've hit a wall with my current W.I.P.s and other fest pieces & needed a break from those. Changing it from Dramione to Drinny actually worked better for my writing flow, for some odd reason.

No sequel planned here. I think it's good as-is.

I hope you find it was an acceptable take on the prompt. Leave me a review & let me know, yeah?

XOXO,

- RZZMG