Sideways

Draco felt like he’d spent an entire lifetime in the prison by the time his release date arrived. Narcissa and Ginny were both outside in the garden when the gate opened. Draco walked slowly, his body worn down and weak. He resembled a skeleton with his white hair and body so thin and gaunt. Both women looked up when they heard the metal clang of the gate closing behind him. Narcissa let out an audible gasp and Ginny was running down the cobblestone drive before the woman ever got to her feet. Ginny had relieved tears in her eyes matching the smile on her lips. She’d missed him more than she’d let herself admit. She was like a breath of clean air after living in smoke, just the sight of her coming to him, her vibrant hair flying behind her, brought tears to his already reddened eyes.

Draco fell to his knees with her as soon as his arms were wrapped around her waist. He was completely overwhelmed with joy after spending months thinking he’d never feel like that again. He felt no shame as he clung to her on the ground and sobbed against her neck. His long thin fingers gripped her, holding her as close as he could. Narcissa was only moments behind Ginny, falling to her knees as well and wrapping her arms around both of her children – all three of them crying joyful tears.

After his third bath, he walked back into his bedroom, the black silk pajama pants slipping down off his bony hips. Narcissa was sitting in his room waiting for him with a soft smile on her face. She stood when he walked in and stepped over to him, holding his face in her hands and looking into his gray eyes. “I am so glad you’re home, my son.” It was something she’d said to him at least ten times already, but she couldn’t stop expressing it.

“Have you been all right, mother?” he asked her softly, having worried about her while he was away; she had been the one taking care of him his entire life and he felt like his bad choices had left her alone. He knew Ginny had obviously come around and checked on her as he’d asked. He never considered that she wouldn’t keep her promise to him.

“Oh yes, love, I have been very well taken care of…thanks to you I’m sure.” She told him with a knowing smile.

“She told you about that, did she?” He asked, his eyes glancing around a little. Where was she?

“She didn’t need to tell me.” The mother said softly, sitting on the seat near the window with her son. She couldn’t help but notice the way he looked around, as if waiting for her to come back. “She’s probably in her own room by now. It’s gotten rather late.” She replied simply but his brow furrowed as he listened.

“Her room? She’s gone?” Had she gone back home already? On his first night back.

“No, Draco. Her room here. She’s been living here since you…were sentenced.” Draco blinked at his mother’s words, lips parted in shock. She’d moved in? Here? He could hardly believe it, she had never been comfortable in the Manor, or alone with his mother for that matter, but she’d moved in to keep the woman from being alone. “She showed up that night with a trunk and I set her up with the room across the hall.” It was the room that would have been hers anyway, though Draco never knew that.

When Narcissa left him for the night he walked quietly across the hall, he pushed open the door and found her sitting at the desk, writing with her back to the door. He smiled a little to himself before he spoke. “Are you sure this is your room? Doesn’t look much like you.” He said softly, catching her off guard. She’d wanted to give him and his mother some time together alone, and it had been the longest time she’d spent in the room since she moved in.

Ginny turned quickly at his words, a bright smile on her lips as she saw him standing before her. “I’ve never spent a night in it.” She told him as she stood and moved towards him and he knew what she was telling him, she’d been sleeping in his room where she’d always slept. More than anything, Ginny wanted her arms around him, but after all the time apart, all he must have been through she moved slowly across the room rather than rush him. He took long strides in and they met in the middle, arms going around each other with ease. Draco leaned down, his forehead against hers, unable to take his eyes off her. “I missed you.” He whispered as his long thin fingers reached up, touching her cheeks softly before pushing into her hair. He had thought so many times about running his fingers through her beautiful hair. He eased her head back and moved in, his lips brushing against hers just slightly. It was Ginny who pushed herself to her toes, pressing her lips firmly to him in the start of a deep kiss. Within minutes they were holding one another in her bed sharing soft slow kisses. He couldn’t seem to stop touching her, his fingers moving down her arm or through her hair – just needing to feel her again so close to him.

She held him in the dark, his head resting against her chest as he listened to the beat of her heart. She smiled softly when he whispered his request ‘talk to me’. Her hand moved through his hair as she began to speak. “I decided to come stay rather than just check in when we were in the courtroom. She looked on the outside how I was feeling on the inside and I just had this feeling that only she would understand how I was feeling, that maybe we needed each other.” She thought back over the last six months as she told him everything, always honest with him. “They didn’t understand it, why I had to go, why I would keep any promise to you, never the less that one. I think Mum and Dad tried to understand, at the very least they didn’t try to stop me, but Ronald…” She hesitated for only a second and his head raised some, meeting her eyes and seeing unmistakable pain in them. “He hates me.” She told him before she explained the depths of their fights, of how he would throw everything in her face from Draco’s Death Eater status to the new clothing she wore. How it came to hexes thrown back and forth in the middle of the kitchen.

“Ginny.” He said softly, shifting sit up so he could look into her eyes as he spoke. “I am a Death Eater.”

“No, you’re not.” She replied stubbornly.

“Yes. I am.” He told her, not wavering. “The reasons why don’t matter anymore, what’s done is done and I am marked. The moment I held out my arm I was a Death Eater. I don’t like it, but I made my choices. I don’t want you fighting with your family over that. I don’t want you turning on them to defend me from my bad choices.”

She sat up as well, shaking her head. “No. I’m not going to fight with him about it and I’m not going to fight with you either. You got a mark, you did bad things, but you were not one of them. You didn’t try to kill me from behind a cowardly mask, you didn’t torture people for amusement. It was survival, Draco, I haven’t forgotten that and I’m not going to let you forget it either. This is real.” She told him lacing her fingers through his. “This is real and the rest was survival.” With a sigh he tried to argue with her, he didn’t want to be the reason she was in the outs with her family. “It’s more than that Draco, so much more than you or the mark on your arm.” She sighed, shaking her head some. “He can’t get past my blood, he said I wasn’t his family, that’s not you…that’s me and something I can’t change no matter how much I might want to. Nothing can ever go back to the way it was, not for any of us and it’s not fair, but it’s not your fault and it’s not mine either.” She told him, holding his hand tightly.

They relaxed back down in time, he urged her to keep talking, to tell him more that had happened while he was away. She talked to him about his mother’s good times and bad, about going to her in the night to console her, about how she found ways to occupy the woman and herself from thinking of what Draco was dealing with far away from them. She told him about how she’d looked around the house, how she’d gone looking for anything to help her know who his family was. How sad it made her that she never saw him smile in a photo. “He didn’t want smiles, he wanted perfection; if it wasn’t perfect it was destroyed.” Draco muttered, explaining the portraits around the home. And she told him about the only two items from her birth that Narcissa had somehow managed to save from the rage of her husband. “Seraphina?” He asked with the same inflection Ginny had thought about it. “No, I can’t see it.” He told her with a small smile as he tilted his head up to her.

She eventually talked him to sleep, her voice more soothing to him than anything he could imagine. He slept with his head on her chest, the rise and fall of her breathing rocking him gently as she too dozed off. When the nightmare hit him he jerked away, sitting upright and taking in sharp breaths. He knew the Dementor wasn’t really there, he knew from the warmth and the feeling of her legs against his but the image in his mind had felt so real in his sleep. She sat up almost instantly when he pulled away from her, concern in her eyes as she focused on him in the darkness. “I’m okay.” He muttered a few times, taking a deep breath and reaching for her, holding onto her.

Ginny lit the fire, hoping the light and warmth of the flames would help ease his mind. But despite knowing he was no longer in the cell, no longer feeding monsters with his pain, he still had trouble going back to sleep. “I used to mock Potter for how he felt when they were near him, but now…” He shook his head. “They make you relive everything bad you’ve ever done or seen in your life. Things I didn’t remember doing, things I never realized were so bad.” He whispered as she eased him back down on the bed and stroked his hair while holding him close to her. “I did…so many awful things I can never take back.” He told her, his voice nearly breaking. “And I’m still doing it. I’m still doing this to you.” He sighed, closing his eyes.

“You’re not doing anything to me.” She told him softly, tilting her chin to kiss his head.

“I am.” He muttered. “Every time I thought of you in there, every time I imagined your eyes or your smile, how your hand feels in mine.” He continued as he held her hand a little tighter. “I felt like you were being ripped out of my soul. Like they were going to tear you away from me. And I’m so selfish, I keep you here and I hold onto you when I should have let you go the moment we found out.” But even as he said the words, he didn’t loosen his hold on her or try to pull away from her. “The only time I got to keep you in my mind was when I thought about how wrong it was to love you like I do.” Ginny’s face fell as he talked, there was no denying that they were doing something wrong, that they shouldn’t be together when they shared the same mother, but Ginny didn’t let him go either. “I don’t deserve you, this is going to ruin you and I’m letting it happen.” He was so weak, so broken still clinging to his half-sister in the night.

Ginny bit her lip as she rubbed his back. “It’s going to ruin you too.” She whispered softly. “But I’m still letting it happen. Does that make me a bad person too?”

Draco pulled back, looking at her with furrowed brows. “No.” he told her, unsure how she could ever think that. “You’re…you’re the best person I know. You’re so good and kind, you’re everything good I’ve ever known.” His voice wavered some as the firelight flickered over her, making her hair look even brighter than it was. “Everything good, I’ll never be.”

“Don’t be stupid.” She muttered softly, a hand on his cheek. “Why would I be here if you were never good?” His eyes drifted away from hers, it hurt to feel her look at him with those warm brown eyes. “Draco.” She whispered, moving in, her forehead against his as her fingers laced between his. “You want the truth?” She asked him, feeling like nothing less was going to get through to him. He nodded slightly against her head and she took in a deep breath. “We’re both wrong, we’re both bad, and we’re both fucked.” He pulled back at her words, looking at her surprised, ready to disagree, but just as he parted his lips she continued. “You know I’m right, Draco. We’re both here, we’re both to blame.”

“No.” He told her sternly, the firelight flashing in his eyes. “You’re not to blame for anything.”

“Of course I am! I know what we are, I know what we were born…I’m still here.” Her chin defiantly jutted out. “And I’m not sorry.” He let out a sigh and fell back against his pillow, she was impossible to argue with, she just disagreed until you were exhausted and gave in. “Are you sorry?” She asked him.

“Yes. No. I don’t know.” The hurt showed in her eyes. “Gin, I’m not sorry to be with you. But I am sorry that this is going to ruin you. My family is already ruined. My father is never getting out of Azkaban, We’re a family of Death Eaters and supporters and you are the complete opposite of everything my family is. Except…in one way.” And while he didn’t say the words they were both thinking of the most obvious thing they had in common, their blood. “You could leave here, you could go back to the Weasley’s and live a respectable life.”

“You think I give a damn about a ‘respectable life’?!” She snapped at him. “Do you respect me?” She asked him her fire showing. The night had quickly turned from one of comfort and relaxation to fiery eyes and sharp voices.

“Of course I respect you! I fucking love you!” Narcissa stood outside the bedroom door as Draco sat up quickly and snapped at Ginny. She closed her eyes tight as she listened to them argue in the night, the noise had woken her up, but she wasn’t going to barge in unless necessary. They needed to figure this one out, she couldn’t do it for them – knowing no matter which outcome came from this, they would both feel more pain than she ever wanted for them.

“That is what I care about.” She told him, on her knees in the large bed, pointing a finger at his chest. “I don’t care what anyone out there thinks of me. I love you. I’m here for you.” She poked his chest with each emphasized ‘you’. They had never fought before, there was always too much happening in their lives to fight with each other. “You care what they think! You have always cared what people think of you…what they would think of us!”

“What?!” He snapped and the argument escalated back to the beginning. To lying at school, to it being a problem for him long before it was about their familial closeness. “I wasn’t the only one lying! I didn’t see you telling any of the Gryffindor’s about me!” He saw a fire in her eyes that took him back to the day she found him in the girl’s bathroom, as if she was ready to pull a wand on him and something about it made him move in, he’d fallen in love with that fire and seeing it again in the heated moment pushed him back in time. Before he’d ever been under the care of dementors, to when she was his saving grace in a time of chaos.

In the middle of her shouting him down about lying he took hold of her face and moved in. He silenced her with a kiss, passionate but slightly rough. She didn’t hesitate to return the affections, her arms moving around him as the kissed hard. All the reasons to stop fell out of their minds in their angry state as they kissed. They fell against the plush mattress as they tangled together, hands roaming over one another and tugging at their night clothes. Down to his boxer shorts, Draco kissed her fiercely, with his hand under the small tank she wore. It took little time for him to push the loose fitting pants off her hips but as his hand went towards the cotton knickers hers grabbed his wrist.

“Stop.” She leaned back from underneath him, eyes locked on his as she took in a few deep breaths before she explained herself. “No more lies and no more shame.” He looked to her, his heart racing, she was forcing him to choose right there, reputations or her. Respected by all, or respected by her. He looked down on her, red hair splayed across a white pillow and those eyes burning into him. He knew he was already dammed, he was already a villain and would forever be seen as such. But she wasn’t.

He pulled his hand away and shifted, his hands at either side of her head as he lay over her, hips between her legs. “Then you tell me.” He challenged her right back. “Tell me that you are willing to give up everything you have ever known outside this house, your family, your life, it will be gone if we tell the truth. Are you ready to embrace a life like this? Are you ready to hold you head high even with they all talk about you? Ready to be looked down upon by people who are below you?” He stared into her eyes, his hips pressed down on hers as his arms flexed at her sides.

Draco was ready for her to admit he was right, that they couldn’t tell people what they were, that it had to be a secret for them alone. He should have been more prepared for her defiance as it made him love her even more. She looked up at him, those eyes bearing down, trying to see into her soul. She hooked a leg over his, while smaller than he was, she wasn’t weak, she was athletic and healthier than he’d been in the last six months. She shoved him, rolling him to his back and straddling his bony hips – his hands instinctively going to her waist while her hands pressed flat to his bare chest. She leaned down, just as his eyes bore into her, hers did the same. “No. Shame.” She told him sternly. “I’m not the one with a choice to make, you are. I accepted this a long time ago, I accepted what we are and what I want. I am here, aren’t I? Do you not see I’ve already given it all up?!”

The aggression seemed to slip out of them as his eyes softened looking up at her. He had been so consumed with all the wrong he’d done, in destroying the one beautiful and good part of his life that he allowed himself to forget that she made the choice to come there. That in the night, she came to him. She stayed when he left, she slept in his sheets and surrounded herself with him even when he couldn’t be there to hold her. He brushed his fingers across her cheek, watching her eyes soften as well. She didn’t need to tell him that she did it all for him, that she loved him no matter what she was supposed to be with him. “I have never had shame.” He told her softly, his hand moving up her cheekbones and into her hair. “Not even in the beginning, fear but never shame.” With his fingers barely touching her he brought her down. He kissed her softly, deeply and with more love than he knew he was capable of. “There is no choice for me to make, love.” He told her softly as he held her close, he rolled them again, looking down at her. Still his saving grace in the storm that was his existence. He kissed her again and again, holding her close until the sun came up.