The Radiant

-

Ginny stood in front of the mirror, watching in the background as Draco flitted around the room, grabbing his button-down shirt, his trousers, his shined shoes. He was always tardy while she was always fifteen minutes early, and sometimes it grated on her nerves. She watched amusedly as he tied his tie, yanked his feet into his shoes, cursed at the laces, cursed at his cufflinks, cursed at his hair that was quite stubbornly refusing to lie flat.

“Just wet it, Draco. It’s only a cowlick.”

He glared at her in the mirror and huffed off to the bathroom, and she could hear the faucet running and some muffled expletives.

Ginny exhaled slowly, allowing herself to feel her nerves now that her frenzied partner had left her.

The dress she had picked was a dark green. She figured that if she were going to be walking directly into the lair of Lucius Malfoy, she was going to be dressed in something that could be constituted as armour. She didn’t need to give any more reason to denigrate her or her family. Ginny felt curiously defiant about the dinner that was fast approaching. She didn’t want to embarrass herself – she wanted to prove to the old bugger that she was different now – not a little freckled sprite anymore, not necessarily still so connected to the raucous Weasley gang. Setting her jaw, she slipped on her high heels and began to brush out her hair.

Draco emerged from the bathroom, looking pale but with his rebellious hair tamed.

“What time is it? You look nice, Gin.”

She blinked.

“It’s eight fifteen.”

“Ah, fuck. We should probably head over then.”

Ginny nodded at him, still talking to him through the mirror’s reflection, and set her hairbrush down on the bureau. Turning, she grabbed at his collar and pulled him to her, kissing him hard. She felt him smile against her mouth and his hands traveled from where they had been set at his sides down to her hips. He pulled her into him. Mumbling against her lips, he spoke.

“If you start that, we’ll be late, and my father will flay me. I’ve already irritated him enough by pushing our arrival time back to eight thirty.”

“Yes, that was very brave of you, actually. Why did you do that?” Ginny’s hands moved down to fumble with his tie.

“I don’t know. I just didn’t want him to think he was going to be the alpha male tonight.”

She sighed.

“Well, we are going to be eating in his ancestral home. And he’s the host. I’m pretty sure that will automatically make him the alpha male.” Draco mimicked her sigh and tilted his head back.

“Yes, I know. Let’s just go.”

She held onto his arm as he Apparated.


---



The manor rose, blackly gleaming in the sunset, as Draco and Ginny stood on the front step. Ginny ran her hands over the front door, fingertips tracing the knocker, the handles, the stained glass windows. Her brain stuttered.

a stately pleasure dome
decreed

“This truly is a beautiful house, Draco.”

She could hear the words in her head. She was repeating it, phrases, fragments of words from a book from her past. Her past.

He looked at her quizzically.

“I suppose, yes. Kind of forbidding though. And you didn’t grow up here as a child. It’s a hell of a lot different when you are five years old.”

caverns measureless to man
a savage place as holy and enchanted
as ever a
waning moon was

haunted

Ginny stared at him and wondered, suddenly, if he would knock or if he was simply going to walk right in. She didn’t have to wait. The door opened and a house elf stood in the doorway.

haunted by woman
wailing

“Hullo Balius.” Draco looked down at the elf. “I can only assume that my father is waiting for us.”

for her demon lover.

The door of the manor clicked shut behind them as they followed the elf back into the labyrinthine bowels of the house.


---


Ginny stared, nearly gape-jawed, at the hallways that they were moving through. The entire place was done in dark wood – ebony, maybe, or mahogany – and had the most ancient and wonderful accoutrements – here, an antique umbrella stand, here, a hat rack with an old silk top hat hung on it, here, a stained glass window done with a motif of green spiders and lilies, here, a framed collection of French coins. She tried to keep walking without stumbling, her eyes trained on the ceilings and on the portraits and on the runner rugs.

a stately pleasure
pleasure
dome

She noticed an open doorway.

“Library!”

Draco stopped walking beside her and laughed.

“We have two libraries, Gin. Keep your knickers on. They’re just books. You sound like Granger.”

Ginny glared at him. That was one thing that she couldn’t stand about Draco sometimes – she read books vociferously and he deigned not to, instead preferring the newspapers or the radio. It had led to a few arguments between them, he calling her stuffy and stuck up and she calling him boorish and uncultured.

She huffed and kept walking, but made mental note of the location so as to find it later.


---


She stared at the dining room doors.

Draco looked at her.

“Are you alright?”

“Are you?”

She suspected that he had never found out that it had been his father who had put in motion the ordeal that she had suffered at the hands of Tom Riddle in the Chamber of Secrets. Ginny closed her eyes and inhaled sharply through her nose, aware of Draco watching her silently, aware of the house elf observing her quizzically, and she realized that on the other side of the door stood the man who had probably changed the course of her life, who had nearly destroyed her, who had hated her family, whose only child she was involved with.

beware
beware
flashing –

She opened her eyes.

eyes

“Let’s go.”


---


The dining room was even more exquisite than the rest of the house had been. The table could have sat sixty people easily, but at the moment was set with three places at the end closest to them. It did not escape Ginny, however, that the guest settings were put on either side of the place setting at the head of the table – that Lucius had sat himself between the two of them. She tilted her head and turned to inspect the rest of the room.

She started to turn.

“Miss Weasley.”

beware

The voice came from the area of her left shoulder. Ginny closed her eyes for a moment and then, opening them, turned the rest of the way.

And there he was.

beware

Lucius Malfoy was standing near to her, hands held behind him at the small of his back, legs only slightly spread, black trousers, black waistcoat, black dinner jacket, and that hair – that hair – pulled back at the nape of his neck with a black ribbon. Ginny noticed, of all things, the watch fob that ran along the side of waistcoat.

She looked at his face.

and all should cry beware
beware
his

Time had been unfairly kind to him. She noticed the hard slant of his cheekbones, the bow of his mouth, the slight raise of his eyebrows.

flashing eyes his

“Hello Mr. Malfoy.”

floating hair

She saw, slowly, his lips lift, cupid’s bow mouth, eyes – light and hard – narrow at the corners with a smallest smile, his mouth opening again, his hand reaching out –

weave a circle round him thrice and

“Welcome to the manor –”

and

“It has been … a while since we have last spoken –” Years, goddamned years, not since she was small, innocent, fragile… she drew in a breath, kept her eyes locked on her face, the fact that his hand was wrapped around hers, he was leaning over it to brush his lips against the back of it and still she remained impassive and proud.

and

“Let us dine, then.”

close your
eyes
with holy dread.


---


Ginny had eschewed the offer of wine and had, instead, asked Lucius for an aged whisky without managing to betray how worried her nerves were. It had been harder than she had expected, seeing him again, seeing him after her ordeal as an eleven-year-old child. She had wanted, at first, to snatch her hand back from him and then to slap him, or, better yet, hit him with a folded fist.

She had resisted, and had felt Draco come up behind her, placing his large, warm hands on her shoulders. Reassuring. Or perhaps staking his claim on her. She hadn’t been sure, but when she had noticed that Lucius was still lightly holding her hand, Ginny had pulled away delicately.

And now she was seated to his left, Draco across the table from her to his right, and Lucius was between them, at the head of the table.

Ginny took another swallow from her glass.

“I admit, Miss Weasley, that I am surprised that you enjoy whisky. Most women I know do not.” Lucius’ voice cut her thoughts, hot and questioning.

“I’m not typical.”

Draco smiled at her and chewed his roll.

“Clearly. I’m curious – what do you think of the manor?”

Ginny wasn’t sure what his tactic was, but Lucius didn’t seem interested in Draco at the moment, and the line of questioning was being directed straight and steady at her. She inwardly shrugged, and then steeled herself. She could have a conversation with Lucius Malfoy. She was smart enough to do so and refused – refused – to be scared of him anymore. She turned in her chair.

“It reminds me of Kubla Khan’s palace. The stately pleasure dome.”

Draco sighed.

“What on earth are you talking about, Gin?”

Lucius flicked a glance at him, and Ginny wondered if that was slight annoyance she could see in his eyes.

“Coleridge, Draco.”

“Muggle?”

“Some say. Maybe. It has never been recorded if he was truly human or not.”

Ginny had leaned back in her chair, pursing her lips thoughtfully. She spoke.

“He saw things in his dreams.”

“Perhaps prophetic.”

Lucius’ words were not quiet but not loud, and Ginny found herself nodding to them, drumming her fingers on the tabletop as the bisque was brought out and placed before her.

“Perhaps. Perhaps just a result of addiction and outside influence.” Lucius turned to look at her from where he had been concentrating on his soup spoon, and her head reeled because she just wasn’t sure what they were talking about now and when they met eyes her head hurt, pounded. She fought the urge to wince.

beware.

“Clever girl.”

He looked at her for a second more, tilting his head in that strange aquiline way he had, and then turned his attention to his food once more.

Ginny finished her drink.

beware!

Draco finished his soup.

beware!

Lucius, sideways, looked at her.

stately
pleasure -
demon
lover -

beware

-