Hello everybody. I'm still nowhere near being finished this story - it's about 50 000 words right now and only feels half done - but I've had enough pressure put on me that I can give you the first few chapters, at least. Don't murder me if there are big breaks in between updating. It WILL be finished.

Ginny Potter looked out of her charmed window across from her desk. The day felt long. After sitting at her desk for a time, her back tended to seize up—right in the middle of the spine, big, gnarled knots of muscle.

Her office was cluttered with pictures of her family. Here, Lily grinned toothily at her, aged eight, and flame-haired, a little sprite. There, James and Albus scowled briefly at each other, and then turned to the camera and smiled, and then scowled again. And there—there was the picture of herself and Harry from their wedding day, young and vital and really hopeful.

Ginny shifted in her seat.

Her legs were falling asleep. Her fingers were ink-stained from scribbling with her pen all day. She couldn't properly feel her feet, which was slightly alarming, and now she was sinking back into that mild depression that she got whenever she looked over at her family pictures.

Midday doldrums. Mid-work-week doldrums. Everybody got them. It was the combination of unwashed hair and ill-fitting clothes, ink-stained fingertips and lack of sleep—it got to people. It was getting to her.

That was what she told herself.

Still, as she looked at a photo of her and Harry and their children together, there was a feeling in her stomach the size and taste of a grapefruit—something bitter and hard, something heavy and mournful.

Something was not right.

And now—now what?

Ginny sighed and stretched back in her chair, lengthening her legs. She had just turned thirty-eight, and she felt the weight of day-to-day life heavier than ever before.

It wasn't that she was older looking. Well, maybe she was—she hadn't aged as much as Ron or Harry or Hermione had, their faces clearly showing the stress of their "Golden Trio" adolescence. She had skirted that enough, but she still felt ancient, rounding up on forty years old. Her body just wasn't as elastic as it used to be, her breasts sagging just that little bit more, her hair just that little bit more brittle than it used to be, her freckles fading more than she had ever remembered. There were lines around her mouth and her eyes that she had never really noticed before—Luna called them "laugh lines", told her that they were beautiful, but she missed the creamy roundness of her younger face.

Ginny missed riding on a broom. She missed leaning over to spit blood and mucus into the grass after a hit from a Beater. She missed the burn on the inner thigh from the broomstick. She missed being in shape.

She had always been a lithe thing—tall enough to reach properly for a Quaffle, long enough to properly wear a skirt and send the men around her into paroxysms of lust. True, she had never been one of the conventional beauties—not like Fleur, or even Hermione, who had finally grown properly into her wild hair and deep eyes. But Ginny had always been evident, and unique, and startling, and the tautness of her thighs and her buttocks and her neck and her face had always contributed greatly to that.

And now she felt sallow.

More than sallow—pasty and soft, like some pastry gone wrong. The tautness of her thighs was gone, replaced by indented skin, cellulite that appeared when she flexed her buttocks, looking over her shoulder in the mirror. There was a fullness to those buttocks now, too, a doughy malleability that had never been there before—

Ginny tapped her pen on her paper.

She thought of her husband. She often thought of her husband. She had been thinking about her husband for months now—but not in the good way. Harry—nice enough Harry, those wide eyes, that mass of unruly hair, those glasses that she really hated but never told him that she hated. Their wedding day—simple, plain, happy, Ron and Hermione cheering in the background of every picture, her mum crying, praying for many grandchildren, crying, her dad quiet and proud. Their honeymoon—awkward, despite years of having sex beforehand, Harry being put off by the complex nature of her white garter belt and suspenders, Ginny for the first time in her life lying back and just letting a man take control.

It wasn't all bad. It hadn't been all bad. They had had some wonderful times—wild times—nights spent camping in Sardinia, days spent in Tunisia, sunsets looking out from San Francisco, midnights spent fucking up against a wall outside of a nightclub, in the back of Ron's stupid magic car, in their marriage bed.

Ginny felt nothing when she thought of him now.

Nothing. That was what she had been mulling over for months. The nothing. The taste of the nothing, the feel of the nothing. The doldrums.

It was the truth.

It had been the truth for years, now, really. Not just months.

It had never gone sour—it had just faded. That glow from within—faded. But she was always flighty. She had always been flighty. Harry hadn't realised it, had married her stalwartly, wanting to make "things right", wanting to legitimise everything. And she had let him because she had been so tired after the war, after everything. She liked the ease that being his consort afforded her. She had liked it, at first. But now the glow from within—it was gone. And Ginny was surprised that she had lasted as long as she had with him.

When she had been younger, she had dated the boys at Hogwarts relentlessly, sampling, trying out different things, fulfilling different tastes. She had once snogged Draco Malfoy in a broom closet because he had dared her to, he only fifteen, she only fourteen, and when she had felt his erection pressing into her she had laughed and then left him there, standing beside the buckets and the mops. She had given Dean Thomas a lap dance just because she wanted to. She had bitten Cormac McLaggen's neck as he had put his hands down her pants, touching her everywhere.

And now she was nearly celibate. Didn't want to touch Harry. Didn't want to be near him.

And the children?

James, fifteen, moody and lanky and every bit the teenager, but smart as a whip, fiercely dedicated to his family despite his feigned indifference. Albus, thirteen and round-faced, sweet and kind and quiet and somehow managing a friendship with Scorpius Malfoy—that always amazed Ginny, but didn't irk her as it did Harry sometimes. And the Lily, her twelve-year old girl, who just a year ago had been one of her closest friends, the apple of her eye, and who had, in the span of a year, turned sullen and sobbing and too skinny, spurting up and up until she was nearly at Harry's shoulder.

They were a patchwork family, sometimes, but they were hers, and she loved them. She loved her children.

But her husband—her husband—

How many years married, now? Seventeen years? Yes, that sounded right—she couldn't even remember sometimes.

She regretted it. God, that was the awful truth to her. She regretted getting married to the Boy That Lived, the saviour of the wizarding world. She regretted it, all the time now. She regretted marrying her Hogwart's sweetheart. She regretted not fucking around more. She regretted having children so young.

Ginny rubbed a hand across her face. Tonight she wanted to talk with Harry properly, now that all of the children were off at school, packed off about a week ago and trundled onto the train.

The monotony.

It was always so monotonous in her world. Seeing the same people on the platform—nodding vaguely at Draco Malfoy, at Parvati, at Lavender, at everyone else's stupid, sluggish children while trying to get her own brood onto the Express.

It was also monotonous at work—the writing of stupid fluff articles, her transition between Quidditch correspondence and writing full, actual articles.

Ginny had come back to work after taking time off to raise her children because she simply needed the stimulation. Harry had been working extra long hours, being promoted to the head of the Auror Office, and she figured that her children were hardy enough to look after themselves for long periods of time. Hermione liked to baby-sit, anyway, so Ginny had gone back to the Prophet and had easily gotten her old job back. But writing about Quidditch had bored her after a while, and now—

Now she was trying to break into mainstream reporting, and was having a hell of a time with it.

Factor in her age—it wasn't that Ginny was showing her age. It was the contrary, really. But having just turned thirty-eight, which meant she was a year closer to forty—only two years off—Christ. She missed flying and the exercise that came with that. She missed the tautness that her stomach used to have before she had produced three children. She missed the pertness of her breasts. She felt too soft now, too lazy, too worn around the edges.

She glanced out the charmed window, catching her reflection in the pane. Still a hungry look in her eyes. Still that red hair, like burnished perfect gold and blood, spilling down over her shoulders. Still that full, snapping mouth, those expressive eyes, the high-set eyebrows. She felt like she wasn't properly thirty-eight. She didn't want to be getting older. She missed being seventeen. She missed being free. Her mouth still looked young. Her eyes still looked young. Her hair was still thick and luscious.

She and Harry hadn't had sex in so long.

Ginny pressed two fingers to the spot between her eyebrows, trying to alleviate her headache.

Fifteen minutes till she had to go home.

Fuck.

Fuck.

Fuck.

Ginny sighed as she opened the door to the Potter family house.

Even after so many years, she still thought of herself as a Weasley—would often forget her new surname when introducing herself, a fact that made Harry cringe and often made him angry afterwards. It wasn't her fault, really. The red hair, the smattering of freckles across the middle of her nose and along the bowls of her shoulders—she was a Weasley, through and through, physically—people could spot her from miles off.

She missed the Burrow.

Ginny set her bag down on the floor, in the same place that she had always set it—by the front hall table, on the right hand side— and threw her cloak over the railing as she always did.

She inhaled deeply.

Her home always smelled like salt, like something floral—rose, maybe—and then something else underneath, something that she couldn't name. It was familiar, and unsettling all at once.

She had just been too tired to cook tonight. Harry was still at the Auror Offices, so she knew that she couldn't rely on him to make dinner. Sometimes, when the children were still at home, during the summer, James or Albus would experiment in the kitchen, making ridiculous meals for the family, and Ginny would laugh, tie on an apron alongside them, eat with them as they worked. They would rip off pieces of meat and pop them into their mouths, take spoonfuls of sauce from the pan.

She set the takeaway down on the kitchen counter, lay down on the kitchen floor, waited for her husband to come home. Ginny let the cool of the tile soak into her feverish, tired limbs, soaking right in to the bone, lulling her into a patchwork sleep.

Harry woke her up about an hour later.

"What the hell are you doing down there?" His voice was slightly panicky and very angry.

"My back hurt. I was tired. I have a headache." She mumbled her conditions at him.

"I thought you were dead."

"Don't be so melodramatic, Harry." Ginny struggled to stand up, noticing that he didn't reach down to help her. She cracked her back as she stretched to the ceiling, and then she nudged one of the takeaway boxes towards him. "Dinner. You might want to heat it first."

Harry stared at her for a long moment, and then opened the box. "Chicken."

"From the pub. I didn't really want to cook tonight. And I knew you weren't going to."

Ginny grabbed her box and tipped the contents right out onto a plate. She didn't even bother to heat it, only sat down at the table, watching as Harry cast a warming spell and sat down, slowly, at the exact opposite end of the table.

She watched him eat, slowly, methodically, pulling apart the pieces of chicken with his knife and fork, his head down, his eyes fixed on his plate. He didn't used to be so. He didn't used to be like that—they used to fuck up against doorways, race each other on their broomsticks, use those bright and shining and glittering happy moments to outweigh the rest of the sometimes mundane, the sometimes dull and mediocre. They used to laugh as their children played in front of them, drink themselves silly with Ron and Hermione, stagger home, cut their own Christmas trees.

With the children all out of the house, it had been different. Lily was in her second year, now, and it had just been odd. And the children were so old—turning into little adults, really, and Ginny loved them fiercely, of course she did, but she felt so much less needed by them now. Maybe it was that both she and Harry had been war-survivors, had raised their children as war-survivors—raised their children to be intelligent and self-sufficient, and prepared always, and to be maybe aloof, tall and proud and figuring things out on their own.

She liked them like that, mainly, but with the children out of the house, she felt old and tired.

Ginny made a sound in the back of her throat, and Harry raised his head.

The two of them looked at each other, and Ginny wondered if Harry felt what she felt—if he remembered earlier times with more fondness, wondered if he wondered if the duskier years of his life were sliding by without any excitement.

Was it excitement she wanted? She didn't know.

"Harry. I want us to separate."

But this was the first step that she could take to finding out.

Ginny was never afraid of conflict, never afraid of speaking her mind—sometimes just too blunt, just too cutting in her aims and needs and words. Harry had never been the best match for that, tended to get wounded by her verbal darts and shrapnel, couldn't take one of her briny, cynical jokes properly, but she had tried to soften herself for him, had really tried—

Harry sat very still across the table from her, looking at her almost curiously from behind his glasses. He didn't speak for a good few minutes, and Ginny refused to feel uncomfortable under his gaze. Instead, she cut a piece of meat and put it in her mouth, chewing thoughtfully, meeting his eyes brashly.

She would not be cowed by the Boy-Who-Fucking-Lived.

"Do you want a divorce?" His voice was calm. Maybe too calm. No, calm enough. It was enough.

"I want us to separate and see what that is like." Harry blinked, twice, and his eyes were so green. Ginny continued. "And if we are happier apart, then yes. I want a divorce."

"Fuck," Harry yelled, and slammed his cutlery down onto his plate so violently that the china cracked.

Ginny rolled her eyes. "You didn't need to do that. You must have known that this was coming."

Harry had stood, and Ginny watched him carefully, making sure that he stayed in her line of vision at all times. He was a good husband, a gentle sort—they had never, ever come to blows—but he was so aggravated that she wasn't sure if he was going to do anything stupid.

"I guess so—I don't know." He wasn't pacing, but was moving back and forth slowly, sort of rocking on his feet.

"It's just—Harry—we don't work right anymore." She tilted her head at him. "We haven't had sex in almost a year."

"I know," he snapped. "I'm well aware." Harry turned, suddenly, and sat down at her feet, up on his knees, meeting her eyes evenly. "I still think you're so beautiful, though."

Ginny had a gag reflex in her throat, which she tried as hard as she could to hide. The truth of the matter was that she had been the one to stop the sex—she just wasn't attracted to him anymore. He didn't need to know that, though. He didn't need to hear her revulsion.

His hands were stroking up and down her thighs. Ginny halted their movement by placing her own palms on top of them.

Harry scowled at her, pulling away from her body and standing up.

"Fine."

"What?" She hadn't heard him properly; he was mumbling away from her, his hands shoved into his pockets.

"I said fine," he yelled at her, whirling around to face her. She didn't even blink, only tilted her head at him. "You can find your own damn place, though. I'm keeping the house."

"That's fine, actually," Ginny said, strongly at first. She then pushed her chair back and stood, her voice lowering. "Fine for me." He was facing away from her again, and she walked up to him, putting her arms around his waist and pressing her forehead into his back. Harry sighed under her touch, and his hands came down to stroke absentmindedly along her forearms.

Ginny kissed his shirt-covered skin. "It's better like this."

He looked back at her over a shoulder. "Maybe."

"Maybe we did it all too fast, you know?" She loosened her arms so that he could turn in them, wrapping his own arms around her body, and pulling her close. She forgot, often, how tall he was compared to her shorter stature.

Ginny exhaled a little shakily. "Don't tell the kids over letter. We'll let them know around Christmastime. I think it might be better to do it face-to-face."

Harry's face crumpled softly.

Ginny could feel a welling of sadness inside of her. They were both aware of how useless their marriage had become, and were both so, so aware of how the papers would jump upon their separation, how hard it would be on their children, and how, yes, they would miss each other, they would.

"I will miss you, you know." She smiled, watery-mouthed, up at him.

Harry nodded. "I know."

"We were friends first." She exhaled softly. "Maybe friends again one day?"

"Maybe," he murmured, his hands rubbing up and down her back. "Maybe—maybe we were never just right for each other. I don't fucking know. I don't fucking know. You were too mean for me, sometimes."

Ginny laughed softly, her head on his chest. "You were too maudlin for me, sometimes."

She could feel the rumble of his laugh. "But we made it work. For a long time."

"For a long time," she murmured, echoing him, seeing the stretch of her life without Harry down the road ahead of her, not knowing what was going to be there, not knowing what the future was going to hold for her.

The future, it turned out, had a sense of twisted humour.

Being back at work was merciful. At least here she had something to do—there was always something to be reviewed, something to be copy-edited, something to be captioned.

It had all gone so quickly. Ginny had moved all of her things out of the house, having found a flat in Muggle London—not Diagon Alley, where she would be recognised living alone instantly—but instead Muggle London, somewhere where she could slip in and out of her apartment without worrying about photographers. The two of them—herself and Harry—had made sure that there were enough bedrooms for the three Potter children to stay in when they were back from school. Harry had insisted on paying half of the rent every month, which had touched Ginny, and simultaneously made her uncomfortable. Moving all of the things out subtly and under the radar had been difficult, but she had managed.

They had managed, slipping things through the Floor, one person by one hearth and the other by another hearth, not talking to each other, not even seeing each other.

Harry had helped her relentlessly, toting things in and out of the house, staying quiet, watching her hawkishly, mutedly.

She sighed and sat down to her newest piece, a tiny 100-word article on the newest Jarvey rebellion. Truly, she believed that the piece deserved a bigger word limit than it was being afforded, but seeing as though she was essentially a junior reporter on the staff now that she was transitioning, she didn't back talk.

There was a sound of a man clearing his throat.

Robert Amorin was standing in her doorway. Ginny looked up briefly, still scribbling down notes with her right hand. She bent back down and continued writing. She wasn't ignoring her editor, and Amorin knew that. She rather thought that he appreciated that about her—her serious work ethic.

He stood there, watching her for a minute. Ginny frowned slightly as she realised he was hovering, but still she continued to jot down notes, scribbling down key points about the new Jarvey rebellion.

Amorin finally spoke.

"We want you to interview someone."

Ginny's head perked up. That was interesting to her. She smiled briefly at Amorin before bending back down again, writing spiritedly, her ears completely open to her boss now. If they were asking her to interview, it meant that they were probably interested in moving her up from her shitty little writing position—moving her up to bigger and better things.

She really needed something like that in her life right now.

Amorin was silent for a moment, and then cleared his throat again and continued.

"We want you to interview Lucius Malfoy."

"No." The answer came out of her mouth before she could even think. She hadn't even looked up at her boss.

She could hear Amorin sit down in the chair opposite her desk.

"No?" His voice was incredulous. "You haven't heard why. I know that your two families didn't quite get along—"

Ginny looked up then, nearly sighing with exasperation. Even at thirty-eight, she still shuddered when she heard Lucius' name. He was a figure that she hadn't thought too, too much about since her adolescence, but he was a shadowy figure from her childhood regardless, a demon of sorts that she had painted as such in her mind. He had held the diary, had brandished it at her—Ginny exhaled, dropping her head into her hands as Amorin watched on. She had to cut Amorin slack, though. No one outside of close friends and family knew about the incident with the diary. And really, really, she hadn't thought about it too much since then, since back then—

"That's putting it fucking mildly." Her words were mumbled.

Amorin started, grinding his teeth.

"Potter, come on. You can't be such a gutter-mouth at work." His voice was lightly scolding.

Ginny sighed and shook her head back and forth in her palms, her eyes closed, the silver tint of a headache just playing around the corners of her temples. Fuck. Fuck. "Why the hell are we interviewing Lucius Malfoy?" She said his name as a gardener might mention a pest, a weed, as an Auror would mention a criminal. She lifted her head from her hands and stared blearily at Amorin.

He looked back, concerned for a moment.

"Shite, Potter. You look like rubbish. Are you alright?"

"Call me Weasley."

Those three words made all known to him, and he nodded slowly, his eyes not full of pity but rather understanding. Ginny raised her eyebrows at him, tapping her pen against her teeth.

"Sorry," he said, simply. It was all she needed; he knew that. The two of them had established a well-oiled working relationship many years ago. "And we are interviewing Malfoy as a retrospective."

"Why? It's not the anniversary of any shite thing. Not the War, not his damn birthday." Ginny's voice was vitriolic.

"That's why. We want to take readers by surprise. Paint a real shocking image for them. It would boost sales like you wouldn't believe. Can't believe he agreed to it, really. But he's been so quiet in recent times, a part of me wonders if he doesn't miss the spotlight, you know? Malfoy family name doesn't hold as much clout as it used to. But also, he just worked on that book."

"Oh, god yes." Ginny groaned slightly. "That compendium of Medieval torture spells."

"The torture spells are just one chapter. Don't exaggerate."

She growled slightly. "Either way, Lucius Malfoy helped publish a book of dark magic. Essentially."

"Along with other authors. And it's fucking well written. You'd love it, being the reader you are." Ginny hissed slightly, angry with herself because she knew that she would be interested in it. "It would be a full length article, Pot—Weasley." He grimaced as he corrected himself. "You would have the front page. Not some tripe—a real, man-of-the-year interview." Ginny gagged a little at that, but Amorin pretended not to notice, continued. "Good god, if you did it right, it would push you into serious heights here at the Prophet. Propel you out of sports for good. You want that, yeah?"

Ginny nodded slowly. She did want that. She was sick of just being the Quidditch correspondent. Amorin had responded to her complaints by giving her smaller general articles to work on, but something of this size could make all the damn difference.

Maybe it would help her gain closure of a sort. She was a grown-up now, after all. She could handle him. And he was—what? In his sixties—for the magical community, it was nowhere near decrepitude, rather being closer to middle-aged, but an advancing age of any kind still rendered him somewhat less dangerous in Ginny's eyes.

And it was something new—something different. It could help her—she could lose herself completely in work with a story like this—it would be so detailed and so complex.

She sighed.

Amorin knew that she was softening.

"Wait," she said suddenly. "Why did you ask me? I'm technically a junior reporter here."

He grimaced again.

Ginny sensed that something was a little bit awry.

"Amorin." Her voice was thick with warning.

He came clean. "Malfoy requested you specifically."

Ginny stared for a few moments. "What?"

"He—you heard me, Weasley."

"What the fuck?"

"Stop swearing. It's not ladylike." Ginny balled up a piece of paper and threw it at her editor's head. "He said that he wanted you. You, or no article at all."

Ginny gritted her teeth. "Smarmy shit. So basically, if I don't do this—the paper loses the biggest feature they've had in years?"

Amorin nodded, grinning. "Yes."

"Oh, fuck you. Fine. Fine." She made a violent gesture with her hands.

Amorin grinned wider. "Thanks, Weasley. Good choice. I'll get my assistant to get the details for the first meeting to you. Don't fuck this one up."

"Don't swear," she mumbled as he left her office.

She sat in the middle of the Prophet's archives, which were unfortunately located in the basement of the building. Ginny didn't mind it, though. She rather liked the dankness of the cavernous room, and she definitely appreciated the aesthetic pleasantness of the rows and rows of files and boxes and books.

Hours later, Ginny Weasley picked through photos of Lucius Malfoy, wondering why she had accepted such an article in the first place. Dossiers and boxes of files and papers surrounded her, circling her in, as though she were in some sort of little nest.

"A fucking interview. A whole biography of his damn life. Goddamn you, Malfoy." Her last words were spoken at the dusty shelves. She winced at the way she sounded, even alone—insane and shrill.

She wanted to start her piece by thoroughly researching him beforehand. Never before had she had the urge to look at anything regarding Lucius Malfoy, so she figured that there were quite a few things that she didn't know about him—maybe things she didn't want to know, she wasn't sure.

Ginny had started in 1965, looking through records of Hogwarts for his enrollment.

Yes, she had found him. No pictures of the eleven-year old boy, but mention of his intelligence, mainly. Immediate sorting into Slytherin. A member of the Slug Club—Ginny couldn't help but smile at that, remembering her own time as a member of that club. She missed Slughorn—she had liked him, had appreciated that he had invited her into the club for her nasty hexes. Lucius had been invited for—she flipped through a few pages—potions.

Obviously. The most insidious and subtle subject matter at Hogwarts, aside from the Dark Arts classes.

She snorted and wrote it down on her pad.

Friendship with Snape.

Talented at the Dark Arts.

Prefect.

Potions.

Ginny sighed. None of it was news to her. She drummed on the page with her fingertips, and then reached to the next pile of papers. Here, she froze.

There was the first picture of Lucius Malfoy she had found, attached to an article about potions making.

He appeared to be about seventeen, standing beside a cauldron, dressed all in black, wearing some sort of smock, presumably to prevent the ingredients from splashing on his. His hair was pulled back at the nape of his neck—not as long as it was now, but enough to twist it into a sort of sloppy bun. Lucius' young face was cut harshly—a pointed jaw, a stark and aquiline nose, shelved cheekbones, raised eyebrows. He was staring at the camera so silently and so intensely that she didn't realise that it was a wizarding photo at first until he tilted his head to the side, drumming his fingers along the rim of the cauldron.

Ginny bent to look at the photo, meeting eyes with the young man. She exhaled a puff of breath.

He looked so young. So young and so—not innocent, never innocent, but rather carefree compared to how he looked in his later life.

She slid the article into her purse.

Narcissa.

The word was scribbled down on her pad. What had come of Narcissa? As far as she knew, they had been in love—or had at least had a mutual respect and admiration for each other. She shuffled through newer articles, using a tailored searching spell, pulling out papers until she found—

Divorce.

She hadn't really been aware of that. That was rich. She thought that Purebloods tended to only separate—divorce being the last resort.

And then on to—

Draco.

Yes, their only child. The little git.

Ginny couldn't be angry with Draco. Unlike the other members of Gryffindor house and the Golden Trio, she had been quiet and observant during her dwindling time at school, and she had seen the anguish that Malfoy had gone through in his sixth year.

Now, they were civil. One time he had even winked at her when she had run into him at a Ministry function, and she had smiled back, putting her hand on his shoulder as she asked how his son was, how his wife was. Harry had glowered but hadn't spoken.

What was the use of holding onto shite from the past?

Draco—

—had been the apple of their eyes. Ginny remembered that, remembered how the two Malfoy parents had sprinted across the battlefield toward the end, hadn't cared about any allegiances, had ran, ran, their long pale hair streaming behind them, as they had searched for their son.

The sight of the three of them, huddled together, in the Great Hall after all had been said and done—it was an image that Ginny could—would—never forget—their hair streaked with dirt and blood, Lucius' nose bleeding, Draco clinging to his mother's robes like an infant, not ashamed at all, Narcissa bowed over her two men.

Durmstrang.

Oh, yes—the fact that Lucius had wanted to send his only child to a far away school because it was stricter, more stoic—Ginny rolled her eyes.

Tradition.

Rules.

Perfectionism.

Those didn't even need to be looked up in the archives. They were a given.

Voldemort.

Ah. This one would have to be broached with him directly. Same with—

Death Eater.

As chilling as his past was—or was purported to be—Ginny knew that in order to get any proper story, any truth, she was going to have to go directly to Lucius and ask the pertinent questions, despite any residual fear or distrust that she would have. She didn't trust Lucius, but she trusted the Prophet from 20-30 years ago even less. She simply just didn't trust the Prophet archives on either of these terms. So much had been swilled around the press back then—anyone with money controlled the news, and nothing had been reliable. She wasn't sure how reliable Lucius Malfoy would be, but she would hazard a guess that he was going to be more truthful than the paper.

Help.

She wrote the word down, knowing what it meant—that she was going to be in over her head, no matter how much research she did—that really only Lucius Malfoy could tell her his entire history.

Fuck.

Oh yes.

Fuck.

And with her life falling to shite around her, not doing much of that now.

Fuck.

God help her, she was going in over her head with this one.