The Radiant

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It made sense, really, that Draco Malfoy and Ginny Weasley would start seeing each other. The antagonism between the two would have eventually culminated in murder or sex, and, in eventuality, it turned out to be the latter.

The magic world shuddered when the first rumours of their relationship started to circulate. Things culminated when the first pictures of them were published in the daily papers. Ron Weasley fainted. Hermione Granger scolded. Molly Weasley knitted enough sweaters to be donated to an entire orphanage, all in the colours black and red. Harry Potter disappeared for two days and returned with a tan and a tattoo from a tattoo parlour located in Sardinia.

Lucius Malfoy had snapped his breakfast paper shut and walked from his solarium to his den to pour himself a morning scotch.

---


Draco stretched, lazily, beautifully, like a feline. Lying on her side next to him, Ginny smiled and ran a hand down the piano-key ribcage that the taut skin revealed. He turned to her.

“Good morning.”

They were in one of the Malfoy family summer houses in Mauritius, and even though the day was still hovering in the dim grey and blue bruises of morning, the heat was already starting to seep in from under the door and around the cracks of the open window. Ginny used the back of her hand to wipe the first signs of sweat from her brow, sighing as she pulled the sheet down so that it was slung around her hips, leaving exposed her breasts and the muted lines of her stomach.

Draco smiled and reached out to her, wrapping his fingers around her wrists and pulling her across the bed, upsetting the under sheet as she moved towards him. Ginny laughed, bell-like, as he began to bite at her earlobe.

The past week had been just what she had needed. The scrutiny that the two of them had been subjected to since starting their relationship had been absolutely horrible.

Ginny hadn’t expected their one night stand to really turn into much. While on tour for the Holyhead Harpies, she had been out in bar in the Czech Republic, and had noticed a familiar dome of hot blonde hair in her peripheral. Only wisps of words and actions remained with her from that night – how he had laughed and admired the bruise across her cheekbone from a hit that had happened in the game that day, how she had pulled on his hair when he was derogatory about her family and her friends, how she had taken him back to her hotel and how she had wrapped her legs around the slim cage of his hips as he had fucked her up against the door to the bathroom and then the window, and then sideways across the bed, and then the floor. When she had woken up on the carpet in the morning, Ginny had expected him to be gone. Rather, he was sprawled naked on his stomach next to her, and she had been wearing only one of his socks on her feet, and had donned his white button down shirt as a nightgown.

It progressed from there. At the moment, it was mostly sex, some arguments, and a few hot and silvered discussions about literature and sports and equality and violence. He was smart, yes. He could hold his own with her. They fought well, mostly verbally, sometimes physically. Draco had not balked at her right hook when she had gotten so angry during a night out in Singapore and had punched him in the eye. The bruising had remained for a week.

He fought her, too. He would wrestle her to the ground if she progressed to screaming in anger. He learned how to disarm her with a well-placed bite to the collarbone or to the buttock. He learned how to pin her quickly when he figured out that she could still knee him in the testicles when he was straddling her on the floor of his flat.

Mauritius had been his idea. Ginny had understood as soon as she had seen the moon reflected off of the coastal sea, the dip of the waves undulating the grey silver of the reflection. She had cried, and Draco had laughed at her, sacking her over his shoulder as one would a bag of potatoes, and had carried her into the cabin. She hadn’t been out to see the sights of island since.

They had managed to keep their relationship fairly clandestine. Until recently.

“Have you looked at the papers yet?” Draco’s voice was close to ear – she still had her eyes closed in an attempt to escape the blossoming heat. Ginny’s heart sunk a little.

“Damn. No.” She had forgotten that the pictures would be published today. Both Draco and Ginny had guessed that they were about to become fairly famous – or least infamous – in the span of a day when the fleet-footed photographer had caught a picture of them kissing in the doorway of a back-alley bar.

“You shouldn’t have kissed me like that in public.” She still had her eyes closed, was sniping, starting the day off on a bad, soured note, but she couldn’t help it, was scared, was annoyed, was hot. Bloody hot. It was so hot here that everything seemed to hang in midair, mid-water, preserved in a gelatin-like stasis. Sex was terrifying at times because of the lack of oxygen. Showers were tepid at best. Food spoiled in a matter of minutes. Moods did, too.

Draco pinched her nipple.

“Don’t be a bitch.” His tone was genial, and opening her eyes, Ginny found him to be leaning over her on one elbow, smiling down at her. “We’ve been in the papers enough times.”

“Singly!”

“Well, now it’s doubly.” He grinned even wider (why did she have such an urge to smack that smile off of his face so hard that it stuck to wall?) and leaned over to kiss her.

The bird interrupted.

The grey owl that flew through the window and perched on the pillows above their heads was disgruntled, to say the least. Ginny looked up at its yellow eyes from her upside down position.

“Grey owls always seemed so frightening to me.” The bird dipped its head down to her as if it had heard her admission, and tilted its face to the side, as if inspecting her. She blanched but stared back, impulsively sticking out her tongue at it, blushing as Draco snickered at her and then staring inquisitively at him when he sobered quickly.

“What’s wrong? And why is there an owl in Mauritius? I have a feeling the message it’s carrying is somehow connected to the headlines from the English papers today, but how on earth could this bird have gotten here so quickly?”

Draco held up a hand.

“Shut up for a second.”

She looked at him, mouth open, ready to flail him.

“Seriously, Ginny. This is my father’s owl.”

---

Draco and Ginny were lying side by side, the covers kicked down to their feet, as they re-read the letter that Lucius had sent. Draco read out loud as the both of them punctuated the letter with peppered comments.


Draco –

In terms of women, you could have done worse – “He’s rather blunt.” – but I am still fairly irritated that I had to learn of your affair with Ms. Weasley through the papers. – “Shit. I probably should have told him.” – Regardless, if this affiliation between the two of you is going to continue – Ginny stifled a laugh at the archaic wording as Draco frowned at her and kept reading aloud – then I firmly insist that the two of you come to dinner at the manor. Tonight. Tonight, Draco, or I will come and find you at the Mauritius villa, and I assure you, that will not be pleasant – “Pervert.” – in the least.

If you are going to be consorting with someone in public, I will be kept updated with your situation.

Formal attire, eight o’clock. Do not be late, or I shall whip you. “Whip you?”

Your father.



Ginny looked sideways at Draco as he folded the letter up. He was staring at the ceiling, exhaling loudly.

“Well, we have to go.” He looked at her. She nodded, her face blank but resolute. That was certainly one thing that he appreciated about Ginny – she wasn’t afraid of things. His father – maybe she was nervous, maybe she was remembering the past – but she wouldn’t be afraid of it. Not now, not ever, not her.

“Let’s go back to England, then, please. If it’s formal, I have to pick out a dress for tonight.”

Draco turned over and moaned, face-first, into his pillow. Turning his head towards her, he grimaced.

“Fucking old nosy bastard is ruining our vacation.”

Ginny laughed.

“You shouldn’t talk about your father that way.”

---

Lucius sighed.

Tightening his fingers around his second glass of scotch of the day, he picked through his closet, examining his waistcoats. Perhaps he had been rash in sending out that owl so quickly, but finding out about his only son’s dalliances through the bloody newspaper had made him so angry that the corners of his vision had started to blur red and black.

Life at the manor was soothing but desolate. He appreciated his isolated life. He enjoyed the ability to stroll aimlessly through the clattering, wide halls, undisturbed by companions or by guests or by family. When his familial house had had its heyday, it had been gleaming with people – filled to the rafters with champagne flutes and glittering faces and purposeless parties, nights spent by the fountains in the gardens, dances spent trying to get a glimpse down a dancing partner’s dress, days spent writing reports and invitations and cheques and angry letters. Now, with the separation and impending divorce, he was mainly alone. The elves came and went quietly enough, and the guests had dwindled to a sere stream. The divorce saw to that – not that he was a pariah, but more that he was someone to be left alone now. To be left to his peace.

Thank god.

“Green, maybe.”

He had started to talk to himself, just a little bit, if he felt like he had a decision to be made.

He sighed again.

“Or maybe bloody red to make her comfortable.”

---

“Write back, please.” Ginny pushed at Draco’s hand.

“Fine.”

---

To find out that his son had been dating someone through the brief and cool paper copy had stung him smartly – whipped a little heat into him – and he had written the letter and clipped it to Xerxes’ leg before he had had time to clear his head.

Well, now he had the two of them coming over for damned dinner tonight. Thank god she was at least a pureblood. If she had been anything else –

An aquiline click and hoot distracted him, and as he exited the closet, he saw that Xerxes had returned. The note rendered was brief – terse – but resigned. Resolute, even.

Father –

Thank you for the charming missive. Ginny and I will be there at eight thirty. Please put away the racks and pillories before we arrive. I don’t want to scare her just yet.

Do not be offensive tonight.

She will fight back.

- Draco

Lucius smiled faintly at his son’s clipped tone.

“Cheeky.”

Purposely pushing back his established time of eight. Very bold.

And Miss Weasley – he wondered if she had seen what Draco had written, or if she had been unaware. He certainly hoped that she would put up a fight. It was always so wonderful when they did.

Lucius stepped back into his closet and took another drink from the glass, enjoying the harsh swallow and the glow that began to rise again from his stomach. He wanted to be prejudiced in peace. He wanted to exist without annoyances. He wanted to get to know his son again. He wanted to meet Ginevra Weasley. He wanted to forget that he had slipped her the diary. He wanted her to remember that he had slipped her the diary. He wanted to be seen as a monster, as evil, as a human man, as regretful, as sober, as young again, as masterful once more.

“Black, then.”

He pulled the waistcoat from the closet and stepped out into his chamber.


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