Author's Note: I wrote this last night instead of doing my history homework. I hope you all like it; I did.
Disclaimer: No.
Falling.
She dreams she's falling and there's no one there to catch her.
She dreams this almost every night since she got back together with Harry. She walks to the edge of the cliff and jumps off quite happily.
To her, it illustrates her frustration. Her smile seems fake and the cliff is just a better choice than all of this.
But others… They think she's truly happy to accept her fate; a future with Harry.
Trapped.
Ever since her first year at Hogwarts, she's thought that she and Harry were meant to be. He is her handsome prince; her knight in shining armor. And she is the princess, sitting pretty in the tower.
She never questioned why the princess waited for a savior. She does now. She's perfectly capable, so now she's a hypocrite, too.
A voice whispers in her mind:
Do something.
Her heart skips a beat. She will.
Ginny Weasley grabs her purse, leaves her sanity, and walks out of her flat. She Apparates to Paris and knocks on a familiar door.
"Fleur, where's a good club?" Her sister-in-law looks at her appraisingly before giving directions.
Ginny walks there, to 'the Pulse.' "It's a Muggle club," she'd said. Well, all right. Fuck magic anyway.
Magic can't help this.
She steps through a threshold and her hearts begins to race, to match the music.
She wonders if she's the only one whose heart has ever beat to techno.
Immediately, she glides to the middle of the dance floor. Her body whirls and writhes and matches her mess of a mind. The others dance around her, but they are many and anonymous.
She finds she rather likes the sound of it.
A man sidles up to her. He looks vaguely familiar, but in her current state, she can't place him. He's not just another dancer, she can tell that much.
He apparently knows her, however, because as he grips her hips and leans his head to her neck, he breathes, "Ginny Weasley. Fancy meeting you here. How 'bout a drink?"
"Water would be lovely," she tells him. He raises an eyebrow at this but she just laughs and says, "Tonight is about the dancing, doll." He leaves her for a moment, but for the first time that night the other club-goers don't fill the empty space. This new man radiates power; his stance says "she's mine."
Ginny has always been an independent sort of woman. She reasons that females are their own persons and aren't just the man's possession. Never has a man controlled her. Not since Tom.
But now, this man comes to her, a stranger, and places a hand on her hip and now she's his.
It worries her that she's excited by this.
But it's what she needs. She knows this.
So that's why Ginny Weasley finds herself being pulled out of the club, laughing. She notices tonight is filled with a lot more laughter than usual.
Freedom.
He tugs on her hand as if to say Hurry up! But she doesn't.
No, instead, she lingers on a bridge. She doesn't know why.
Until he sighs and asserts his force. Exactly what she needs. And as he throws her over his shoulder, she wonders if he realizes it. Figured out her secret.
He carries her into the hotel lobby and the woman at the front desk looks highly offended. Ginny wonders if the woman is some sort of feminist. The thought only makes her laugh again.
They take an elevator to the third floor, and Ginny finds that his room is only two doors down on the right.
She's glad. She can feel the desire pooling between her legs.
Her minddoesn't even register the luxury suite as he carries her to the bed. He drops her onto the bed carefully and it vaguely occurs to her that that's the only bit of gentleness that she's going to get from him. He lowers himself down and just looks at her.
They're still for about half a second before giving in.
Giving in to the moment. To desire. To temptation; to hunger and needs and passion. To everything wrong in all the right ways.
But not to fate, Ginny vows silently. Never again to fate.
Clothes disappear as hands frantically move about. In no time, she's naked.
She decides that this is unfair and rips his shirt in her eagerness. It doesn't faze either of them. She fumbles with his now too-tight pants before pushing them down.
He kicks the pants off the bed and they're even.
It vaguely registers in her mind that she doesn't even know his name. She finds herself struggling to remember before giving up and pushing away all thoughts.
She arches to meet him and as he drives into her, she doesn't cry out. She is beyond words and she revels in the feeling. She reaches climax far too quickly.
She awakens in the morning to find herself still in his bed. She'd insisted she needed to get home. But he told her to stay, so she had.
He woke her no less than four times that night. She heads to the bathroom and sees a monster in the mirror. She'sa frizzy mass of red hair with ruined makeup and no clothes. She smirks at herself and grabs her purse, intent on fixing some damage.
Her wand isn't in there like she expected, but she doesn't read into this like she normally would. She writes it off as forgotten at home. She'd left in a frenzy, after all.
She really needs a cup of coffee but knows better than to wake a slumbering man. He's got to be just as exhausted as she.
Disregarding the voice in her head – which sounded remarkably like him – that was telling her to stay, Ginny puts her clothes back on and turns towards the door.
Before she can reach it, though, it opens.
A Death Eater.
She's going to die.
She's going to die and all she can think is 'I hope they don't put pictures of this in the newspaper.'
He raises his wand and utters a fatal curse. Not Avada Kedavra, no, he seems to want to see her suffer.
She loses feeling in her legs and falls to the ground, bleeding.
She's elsewhere and, because of this, anesthetized.
Numbness.
In her mind, she replays the night before. No regrets.
She's sated, satisfied. For once, her passion is quelled and she has a series of hickeys to prove it.
People wonder if they get all the answers as they die. Ginny doesn't know. But in a moment of clarity, she knows his name.
She wonders if he's watching.
She'd always had a secret crush on the enemy. Two birds with one stone. Two desires in one night.
This, this is freedom. This is better than anything and everything. Better than cake and soda, better than chocolate. Better than heroin and speed and ecstasy. Better than fucking; better than laughing, crying, dancing. She knows she's delusional; this is hysteria.
This time, when she jumps, she spreads her wings and soars.
Draco Malfoy. She forgives him.
--
Months later, Draco Malfoy sits in his large, lonely, cold manor.
He's drinking coffee. It's a brand Ginny would have gone home to that morning, but he doesn't know it.
A house-elf Apparates in, leaves a newspaper near his master's hand, and pops back out.
Not even house-elves will stay in a room with him. For good reason, no one trusts him.
But she had.
He glances at the cover and sees 'Weasley Girl Still Missing.'
Voldemort's gone but he's still a suspect. His cause, his followers. He'll never be completely dead.
The picture of her isn't that of her in her last moments, but as a Hogwarts graduate – perfect, posed, dolled-up.
He remembers watching her fade away.
She was smiling.
He likes to think that at the last moment he heard a whispered "I forgive you, Draco."
He's probably delusional. But he likes the way it sounds.
Forgiveness.
"Save me," he whispers into the dark. It echoes back through the emptiness.
That night, he dreams of falling. But he's lucky; she catches him at the bottom.
He never wakes up.