Family
The enchanted trunk lay on Ginny Weasley’s bed as she filled it with everything in her room that truly mattered to her. Ronald stood in her doorway with his arms crossed and the angriest stare he’d ever given to his baby sister. “Will you stop?” Ginny snapped at him, he’d been glaring at her since he’d gotten home. He’d met his distraught mother and father in the kitchen and heard the news. Not only was his little sister moving out, she was moving into the worst possible place in the entire world. Malfoy Manor.
“No.” He told her, his lips tight. “You know, this family has been working really hard to make you happy. To try to show you that you were taken in and loved, not lied to. You’re so damn selfish.” He nearly growled his words. “You’re breaking mum’s heart, you know that? And this is worse than Percy’s idiocy, you’re not stupid, just cruel.”
“Shut up!” She snapped back at him, turning on her heels to glare right back. “I made a promise, Ronald! I told you already, I promised I would help take care of her. You know without her I wouldn’t even have been here to be your sister? Without her I wouldn’t have been born?! How am I selfish?!”
“You made a promise to a death eater. He’s where he should be, Ginny!”
“Shut up!” She shouted as she threw a set of robes into the trunk angrily.
“He deserves to rot in Azkaban!” He shouted back at her. “I don’t care who she was to you for the first ten seconds of your life, mum and dad have been there for you the past sixteen years! And you would go to that house? Do you remember what happened in that house?!” He had stepped in her room now, both in a full out shouting match.
“I was born in it!” She screamed back at him.
“Hermione was tortured in it! Nearly killed in it! Voldemort lived in it, people who tried to kill you and everyone you loved, lived in that house from hell! We were locked in there, Luna, Olivander. What in Merlin’s name is wrong with you?!” A floor below, Molly cried at the kitchen table as she listened to her two youngest children scream at one another.
“But he didn’t do any of that! It wasn’t his fault!”
“He’s a Death Eater, Ginny! What about that don’t you get!?”
“I made a promise.” Ginny said, her tone going cold. She was tired of shouting, tired of being shouted at and tired of hearing Draco insulted. “I’m not going to break it.” She looked at him with a coldness in her dark eyes. “I don’t turn my back on people when they’re counting on me.”
Her words cut into him, bringing back terrible memories and making him wish he’d never told his family what really happened that year on the run. He stared her down for a second before he shook his head at her. “I don’t even know you anymore.” He told her, looking at her with disgust and disappointment before he walked out. Ronald said goodbye to his mother, apologizing for the fighting and for leaving. He just couldn’t stay and watch what was happening.
Ginny sighed, even at his worst she’d never seen him look at her like that. “I don’t know me anymore, either.” She muttered to herself as she turned back to packing. Ginny was still having problems coming to terms with who she truly was, what she should be. But she knew she wasn’t going to break a promise to the one person who had always been honest with her. Draco had done bad things, she wouldn’t deny that, but he hadn’t lied to her. He didn’t tell her what he’d done when he let the Death Eaters into the school, but she justified that he’d tried to when he told her that it was all for survival outside the walls of their world.
“Mum?” Ginny began from the foot of the stairs. Molly quickly wiping her face with the dish towel on the counter before turning to face her youngest child. “Mum, you…you know why I’m doing this, right?”
Molly forced a smile on her face as she nodded. “Yes, dear, you’re keeping your word, I understand.”
Ginny swallowed and stepped in closer. “You know it’s not because I don’t want to be here, because I want to live there or anything like that…she’s not my mother.” Molly nodded a little and Ginny moved in to hug her close. “I love you mum, I just need to do this for a little while.” Molly couldn’t watch as her daughter stepped into the fireplace and called out ‘Malfoy Manor’ before the green fire took her and all her things away from the Burrow.
Narcissa was sitting in the parlor with a glass of wine when Ginny arrived with luggage in the fireplace. “Ginevra?” She asked as she stood up. She truthfully had not expected Ginny to return now that Draco was gone, she’d been spending most of her time drinking elf-made wine and wallowing in her loneliness. She tried to straighten her robes and make herself look more presentable to the daughter she’d given up, but it wasn’t doing much for her appearance.
“Hi…” Ginny said softly, looking around nervously, she had never been in the house without Draco before and wasn’t really sure what was supposed to happen now. “Um…I was thinking that, if it was okay with you maybe I could.” She nodded to her trunk. “You know…stay a while.” A light hit Narcissa’s eyes at the words and she nodded several times.
Ginny was given a room in the manor, a luxury room grander than anything she’d thought she’d have, it was nearly as beautiful as Narcissa’s own room. However, no matter how beautiful the room she unpacked her trunk into was…Ginny couldn’t sleep in it. She still found herself walking across the hall to Draco’s room. It wasn’t the same without him there, holding her in the large bed, but it was as close as she could get to him. She slept in his clothes and wrapped herself up in his sheets while holding onto his pillow. She slept until she would hear Narcissa crying in the night. It was then she would slide out of the bed and make her way down the long hall towards the room she was born in.
She tapped on the door the first few nights, but after a week, she began to just let herself in. She would hug Narcissa and let her cry, she would tell her everything was okay and remind her how strong Draco was. “He made it this far, he can handle six months…he’s going to come home.” And she would eventually ease the dreamless sleep potion into Narcissa’s hand and ease her back into the bed to sleep. During the day, Ginny found ways to keep Narcissa busy and keep her mind off of Azkaban. Narcissa had help most of her life, help cooking, help cleaning, and Ginny found the best place to begin was to share the kitchen with her and find ways to teach the once-pampered wife how to cook.
She took the woman to the garden and seemed to find her niche there. Narcissa had never tended her own garden before, but the flowers and the need to keep something else alive seemed to occupy her more than anything else. Within the first month, Narcissa was on her own in the garden and doing well. They spent rainy days in the kitchen and sunny ones outside. Ginny had a lot of room to fly at the manor, but as soon as Narcissa got a look at her broom she had a new one ordered. Ginny was treated like the daughter she was born to be, the best of everything and wanting for nothing - except Draco.
Ginny had tried her best to do what Draco asked of her, to take care of his mother but her own confusions were still there, lingering on the more time she spent in the house. It wasn’t until she felt like Narcissa had felt good enough to spend time on her own that Ginny began to roam the house. She looked at portraits and art around the house, she searched for photos of the family together as Draco grew up, but all the photos were posed for, nothing spontaneous like in the album in her room. No first-steps, no laughing or silliness. Nothing that looked like a family.
Ginny would spend hours going through empty rooms that now stored items the family didn’t feel needed to be displayed. Old clothes out of style and furniture replaced. On the fourth floor Ginny sat on the dusty floor, her jeans just as dusty. She lifted the lid to the trunk that was so covered with years of grime that she was sure no one had ever opened it. She wasn’t sure what she had been looking for all this time, just that she still hadn’t found it. Inside the trunk was a small blanket with silver monogrammed letters ‘SM’. She pulled it out and the fabric was still silken soft. Beneath it was a silver baby rattle and Ginny wondered if these were once Draco’s things, though the monogram wouldn’t fit him.
“They were supposed to be yours.” Nasrcissa said from the open doorway. Ginny jumped, nearly dropping everything in her arms and looked up guiltily. Narcissa stepped inside the room, and aimed her wand at a chair, cleaning the layers of dust from it before sitting down. “It was the only things I could save from Lucius.” She said with a sadness in her voice. “We had an entire nursery for you, he destroyed almost all of it, but Draco had those things in his room and Lucius never found them. I hid them away…couldn’t bring myself to get rid of them.” Narcissa reached for the blanket, her fingers moved over the monogram. “Seraphina Malfoy.” She explained in a whisper.
Ginny looked down at the blanket. Seraphina? It definitely wasn’t a fitting name for herself, but then again, they had no idea whose child she was at the time either. She offered Narcissa an awkward smile “I’m sorry, I wasn’t meaning to snoop.” She muttered. “I was just…I don’t know, trying to…”
“I know.” Narcissa told her, reaching to wipe a bit of smudged dust from Ginny’s cheek. “You don’t need to apologize, you still want to know things. Everything here is yours, Ginevra, and you can ask me things. I know you’ve seen me….at less than my best, but, I can still answer your questions.” Over the following weeks, Ginny and Narcissa began to look through the house together, Narcissa explaining the history of things they found.
“So,” Arthur began, clearing his throat as they all sat at the table together for supper. His spoon moved around his stew a few times as he tried to find words to say to his daughter. “How is Narcissa doing?” It was after all the reason she’d left home. Ginny had been back at the Burrow a few times since she left three months before, but each visit had been more awkward than the one before.
Ginny took a sip of water and looked up to her father. “She has good days and bad.” It was the most she really wanted to say, knowing the matriarch of the Malfoy family would not want her weaknesses discussed at the dinner table.
“Pity.” The sarcastic tone came from the back door where Ronald stood and Ginny’s eyes flashed as she looked up.
“You said he wasn’t going to be here!” she snapped, eyes going to her parents.
Molly sighed and pushed her bowl away, the two hadn’t spoken since the fight before Ginny left. “We didn’t know he was going to come to supper tonight, Ginevra. And please don’t start shouting at the table.”
“Don’t blame her mom, she’s been living in the house where good manner’s died.” Ginny glared up at her brother as he walked in and made himself a plate before sitting across from her at the table. “What are you wearing anyway?” He asked her with a mouth full of homemade bread. Ginny looked down at her clothes – a new jumper from Narcissa. Ronald just scoffed and shook his head as he ate.
“Oh, shut up.” Ginny snapped back.
“Both of your shut up.” Molly scolded. “I am tired of this fighting. I cannot take this any longer, you’re family.”
“Some of us are.” Ronald mumbled bitterly and Ginny’s eyes went wide in shock, pain and anger.
“Oh, I’m not family now?! Is that how you want it?!” She shouted, standing so fast her chair flipped behind her. “Fine!” She screamed and shoved the table hard, stew sloshing out of the bowls.
Ron stood as well, glaring just as hard. “Why not?! You already made a choice when you left! You want to be with them, then go do it!” He’d never done well at expressing himself, pain always came off as anger with Ronald when his emotions hit him hard. “You don’t need some excuse about taking care of the Death Eater’s mother, you wanted to go long before that evil wanker got sent away.”
The fight came to blows before it came to one of them leaving, both with wants in hand and red sparks flying through the Weasley kitchen before Molly stood with a very loud booming voice “Stop it now!” and with her wand waved she shielded them from one another
“You don’t belong here!” Ron snapped at her, his face red with anger.
“I hate you!” Ginny shouted through the invisible shield at the man she’d known as her brother her entire life, angry tears in her eyes as she spun on her heel and disapparated from the house without another word to any of them.
Ginny would later send owls to Molly, apologizing for her behavior and for being so disrespectful to the home. She knew better than to behave like that and hoped Molly and Arthur could forgive her for behaving so badly. She apologized for leaving in such a way. She told them how it didn’t matter to her about her blood, they were her parents, but also made it clear that if Ronald was there, she would not be coming back to the Burrow again.