"Who is it?"

Ginny peered through the small peep-hole of the door to her flat. As soon as she saw the platinum-blond hair glinting in the light of the hall, her skin grew warm and her blood ran cold.

"Your husband," he drawled. "And we need to have a little chat."

Even though he couldn't see her, she folded her arms. "Is that so, darling? What about that 'little chat' we had when I collected Nora last week? That got rather nasty and didn't solve a single thing," she cried, then attempted to collect herself, awkwardly crossing her arms as she glared at the solid oak. "I still need my space, Draco."

"Your space?" he scoffed. "Right. Because that's what this is all about. Space."

"Yes, Draco. My space. Mine."

She peeked through again. He was leaning against the doorframe, propping his head against his arm.

"I'm not having this conversation through a door, Ginevra. You will let me in."

She crowed with sarcastic laughter. "Oh, I will, will I? Because I do everything you say. Everything. I've followed your every whim and wish since I was seventeen, Draco! For eight years, I've—"

"If you don't open this door in the next ten seconds, I will give you all the space you've ever wanted."

Ginny rolled her eyes.

"However," he added coolly, "I will keep Eleanora as far away from that space as I possibly can."

Ginny kicked the door wildly, forgetting that she was barefoot. She hissed in pain as her toe connected with the solid wood.

"Ten. Nine..." He counted down slowly, keeping his voice steady.

Ginny swung the door open before he reached two, and the pair stared stonily at each other, arms folded.

Draco made the first move, stepping into the flat with a critical eye. "This is lovely," he observed casually.

"Don't try to make nice with me, Draco. You can't threaten me like that and then compliment me on the flat that you bought."

He shrugged. "Very well. I'll be direct." He rounded on her, and in two steps he had her back against the wall.

"Draco," she started, but he cut her off.

"Is there another man?" he demanded, keeping his voice steady, but Ginny didn't need to hear the unbridled fury in his pitch. She could see it in his eyes. She mustered her confidence and met his gaze.

"I'm not having this conversation while you're pinning me to the wall," she said quietly.

Every muscle in his body went tense, and Ginny inwardly cringed. Then, just as suddenly, he dropped his arms limply to his sides.

"Does that mean Blaise is right?" he asked dully. "You're divorcing me because there's someone else?"

Ginny sank down onto a nearby couch and put her head in her hands. "No, Draco. There isn't another man. I was going to divorce you because—because I feel like I missed something. I was just eighteen when we got the flat in London, fresh out of Hogwarts and barely of age, and only twenty when I had Nora. I…I feel like I missed my life. I'm going to be twenty-seven soon, and I can't remember the last time I had a night out on the town with the girls, or got really drunk, or flirted."

He looked at her sharply. "Flirted?"

"Yes, Draco," she said tiredly. "Flirted. I miss flirting."

He sat on a chair opposite her and brushed his hair back. "I'm an excellent flirt," he said crossly. "Far better than the rubbish you'd meet in a bar."

Her face crumpled. "But you don't flirt with me, Draco. You just fight with me," she said, prickling tears welling up in her eyes. "You fight with me, and I feel so very alone."

"But you don't tell me anything anymore. How can I flirt with a woman who gives me one-word answers to everything? You think you feel alone?"

Suddenly, he remembered a girl sitting on the edge of the Lake of Shining Waters, frantically pouring out her heart on paper as the sun caught her hair and set it aflame in shades of brilliant red.

"Gin," he said slowly, "I don't want you to feel unhappy. But…I also want you in my life." He reached over and took her hands in his. "Please, love. Don't take those papers to the Ministry. Blaise told me you had them drawn up, and I thought…well. I thought the worst."

She looked at him, the first tears inching down her cheeks. She recalled curling up with a boy in a Hogwarts tower, listening with all of her heart as he bared his soul, with all of its pain and fear, and laid it at her feet.

"And Eleanora, Gin. She doesn't understand this. She…" he floundered. "She deserves a happy ending to her little fairy tale," he finished lamely.

Ginny smiled through her tears. "She told me you were telling her 'Mummy-Princess' stories."

Draco groaned. "Hardly. They were more like 'Let's Remember Painful Moments' stories."

"After I told her about that time on the brooms, I stayed up almost all night reading my journal and crying," she admitted. "I had so much hope then. I don't know when I lost it."

He studied her face seriously. "Gin," he said, moving over to sit next to her, "I will do everything in my power to help you find it. Just—please—come home."

She pulled her hands from his and rubbed her palms into her eyes. "I don't know, Draco. What if we start fighting again? I still don't want to have another baby, and—"

"Shh," he said, wrapping his arms around her and pulling her close. "We don't need to have any more children. Though, you have to admit that we do make awfully nice ones."

Ginny laughed through her tears. "And making them is awfully nice, too."

"Ah, yes," he said smugly. "In that department, I can assure you that you are in much better hands than all those girls running about getting drunk and flirting wildly."

She nodded, and he cupped her cheeks in his hands.

"We could take a year and just travel. We're absurdly wealthy, Nora isn't in school, and you've always enjoyed Italy. We can go wherever you want—I happen to know a really great place to get drunk in Rio."

Ginny sniffled. "I suppose so," she said. "Do you think I could get a job, too?"

Draco rolled his eyes. "I shall never understand that need, but yes. Fine. You can get a job."

"And you'll flirt with me?" she asked timidly.

Draco smirked. "Darling, the things I'm going to do with you are going to make make-up sex look like a first kiss."

"That's not what I mean and you know it," she said crossly. "Will you flirt with me?"

He slid his hands back around her head and drew her close, almost closing the distance between them. "Ginevra Malfoy, I vow to flirt with you most shamelessly. But first," he whispered, locking his gaze on hers, "first, I am going to kiss you."

With that, he slipped his hand behind her head and pulled her toward him, gently brushing his lips against hers for a long moment before he slowly and deliberately parted her lips, making her heart thrum with electricity. His fingernails brushed along the nape of her neck as he pushed her back into the soft couch, shooting shivers down her spine.

She responded carefully, as though the kiss was a fragile thing, and wound her arms up over his shoulders, smoothing one through his silky hair and tightly gripping the collar of his shirt with the other. He responded in kind, pressing her back into the cushions as he deepened the kiss. She kissed him back, slipping her tongue into his mouth. His kisses were wonderfully, unbelievably sweet.

She couldn't help but sigh when he broke the kiss, and she wrapped her arms around him, trapping him against her.

"We're going to be okay, Draco?" she breathed worriedly.

He smoothed her hair back confidently. "Yes, Princess. We're going to be okay."

One Month Later

"Da, tell me again about how the fairy godmother tricked the dragon and the princess into falling in love!"

Draco groaned. "Eleanora, it's really time for you to be asleep, and if you're crabby tomorrow the beach won't be nearly as fun."

"I promise I won't be crabby," she insisted. "Please? Just that one part?"

He sighed and lay down on the bed next to her. He ran a finger down her nose and inspected it playfully. "Ah, that's not dust. Those are freckles. I think that Fiji isn't the best place for your mum to forget a sun-block charm."

She giggled. "I like the freckles. I look more like Mum."

"And I do like her freckles," he said seriously.

She gazed at him expectantly, and he sighed.

"Fine, I'll tell the story. Let's see…the fairy godmother was a very strange sort of fairy. Rather than appearing in a flash of light with a gossamer gown, she wandered about with bare feet and radish earrings."

"Last time you said they were eggplant earrings," Nora interrupted.

"She has both, I'm sure." Draco waved dismissively. "The fairy godmother saw that both Princess Guinevere and the dragon were very lonely, you see, and so she did a little magic.

"She managed to convince both of them to make a long trek, halfway around the Lake of Shining Waters. At the time, neither the princess nor the dragon realized that they would be going to meet the other—the fairy godmother was a tricky fairy."

"Da, was she from the Land of Lions or the Kingdom of Snakes?" Nora interrupted.

Draco frowned. "She was from the Heights of the Wise Eagles," he invented. "And she was very smart, unless she was off in fairy land. She had a long conversation with the rogue knave one day, after he tried to "get her," as you so nicely put it, and he let it slip that the dragon liked to watch the princess. And the princess told the fairy godmother directly about how the dragon had been so kind after Hairy Potface was so cruel to her.

"So the princess and the dragon ran into each other on the far side of the Lake of Shining Waters. At first, they didn't know what to do. They both started talking at the same time, and then they both stopped. The princess got very flustered, turned quite red, and made a face."

Draco paused to pull a wide-eyed face, and he opened and shut his mouth several times, like a fish.

"Are you acting me out, now?" said Ginny from the doorway, shaking her head. "Draco Malfoy, I'm ashamed. Every time you tell this story, it gets further from the truth."

Draco scoffed and winked. "Who said anything about you? This story is about Princess Guinevere."

"Yeah, Mum, it's a bedtime story," Nora said. She patted the bed. "Come sit."

Ginny sat down by Draco, who kissed her on the forehead before continuing his tale.

"So the princess and the dragon looked awkwardly at each other for a long time, and then finally the dragon got up the nerve to ask the princess about her journal."

"And the princess wouldn't tell him," Ginny chimed in. "She informed him very proudly that he was a rude git who didn't deserve to know."

"But the dragon was very handsome, and very charming, and once he stopped mocking and teasing the princess, it wasn't very hard to get her to fall in love with him. She told him about the stories and poems in the journals soon enough," Draco paused, meeting his wife's eyes. "And then, out by the lake, the princess and the dragon kissed for the first time."

"And they got married and lived happily ever after," Nora said with a satisfied sigh.

"Yes, of course they did," Draco said. "You wouldn't expect anything less of a dragon and a princess, would you?"

Nora shook her head, but Ginny smirked mischievously.

"Ah, but you forgot about the evil hag," she said, her eyes glinting as she turned to Nora.

"The evil hag?" the small girl repeated.

"Oh, yes. The evil hag used to follow the dragon around, latched onto him at the hip, and calling him 'Drakey-darling' all the live-long day. It was practically sick-making. She had a great deal of trouble understanding that 'happily ever after' meant that she needed to find another snake to latch onto."

Nora frowned. "I think she should end up with the knave."

Draco and Ginny burst out laughing.

"I do not think that would be a happy ending for either of them," Ginny said through a giggle. "I still think the knave should end up with the fairy godmother, but…well. Not all the stories have ended yet, hm?"

Eleanora stretched her arms over her head and yawned. "I think we should have a story about Princess Eleanora sometime," she said. "I bet she'd know what to do about the knave and the fairy godmother."

Draco smiled and smoothed her hair back. "Sweet dreams, darling."

"Goodnight, love," Ginny whispered, pulling up the covers and kissing her daughter's cheek.

"Are you sure you don't want a second child?" Draco whispered dryly as they shut her door. "If we had a boy, you could be a mermaid and I could be a pirate."

Ginny rolled her eyes. "Or you can be cowboy and I can be the native."

Draco arched an eyebrow. "Or I can be the Grecian god and you can be the nymph."

"You arrogant little—" she said, swatting him.

"Oh, I know. I can be the sultan and you can be my latest trophy," he said smugly.

"Draco Malfoy!" she hissed indignantly. "This story-telling business has gone to your head."

"Maybe so," he said, pretending to consider this thoughtfully. "But it'll be much more fun if it goes to yours, too."

With a wicked smirk, he swept her up into his arms. "Shall we go make up a few more?"

The End

A/N: Yay for happy endings. :)

I owe a great deal to my beta reader, Kim (Boogum) for all her splendid help, especially with so much dialog and an OC child character, to boot. Thanks to Harriet for the lovely prompt; I hope you enjoyed it despite my addition of a rather angsty twist. Most of all, thank you to the writing community at The DG Forum. You people are wonderful.

And dear reader, thank YOU for reading! I hope that you enjoyed it; please drop me a review if you're so inclined. It'll be received with much grinning - and since we live in the era of the smart phone, you could be literally seconds away from making me smile. How's that for motivation/begging? :)

Oh, and stay tuned. I have not one, but two lovely stories from past exchanges ready to post. One involves Quidditch, the other a kitten, and both involve a very flummoxed Draco. ;)