Forgotten Not Forgiven

Author’s Note: This chapter is dedicated to Emma, who hates Ginny nearly as much as I do. Thanks to Laurel for her beta work on it!

Chapter 7 Consequences

Harry didn’t take his normal place in the pub, deciding to forgo the dark corner booth for simply sitting at the bar instead, so that he could get his drinks faster. Firewhiskey slipped down his throat as freely as water while he contemplated what he’d just witnessed only hours before. How could Ginny do that to him? He knew they had problems, but was being married to him so bad that she felt the need to fuck Draco Malfoy in their own home? The implications of this new discovery brought so many things into light for him.

He’d been faithful to a woman who had been sleeping around on him for Merlin only knew how long. He’d falsely accused his best friend of cheating on his other best friend just because he couldn’t face facts and see what was apparently right in front of his nose and quite obvious to everyone else the entire time. How could he have been such a dolt not to see it? Malfoy had even flirted with her right in front of him and he’d been arrogant enough to think the man was flirting with him! It was like Allen all over again.

Harry shuddered at the thought of his last desperate rendezvous with the man he had called his partner for over two years. He could still remember Allen’s drawling Australian accent telling him he’d gotten the wrong idea. They had kissed once in the back alley of that very pub where Harry sat now. They had been celebrating a victorious day of catching a Death Eater the department had been after for over a year and perhaps celebrated too much. Harry had managed to get far too sloshed that night and Allen was even further gone if that was possible, and they’d been trying to sober up enough to Apparate home -talking about travel, what they planned to do with their life and all sorts of inane bullshit- when Allen suddenly kissed him.

That had been long before his marriage to Ginny, even before their engagement, but Harry still remembered the way Allen’s lips tasted of ale and how insistent his tongue had been when probing his mouth. Harry had kissed him back and lost all sense of self as he fell into the motion. He didn’t think the alcohol had addled his mind so greatly that he’d imagined how passionately Allen claimed him, but apparently he had.

Months passed and all Harry could think about when he was with his partner was that kiss. Even at the most inopportune moments, like in the middle of chasing down a suspected Death Eater, Harry’s mind would drift without permission to that one moment outside his favorite pub. He went back and forth between wanting to confront the man about it to passing it off as a weird drunken fluke, but eventually he couldn’t stand it any longer. He had fallen in love with Allen and he needed the man to know that, needed to see if his feelings were returned.

They weren’t.

When Harry finally got the Gryffindor courage up to ask Allen about it, the man hadn’t even remembered the kiss, worse still, he said he’d never felt even an inkling of romantic attraction towards him. “We’re just mates, Harry. I think you got the wrong idea,” he’d said with a careful smile.

Harry was so humiliated that he put a transfer in the very next day, asking Kingsley if he could be partnered with Ron instead and cited personal differences on the paperwork. It felt like a divorce, something he was now apparently going to be intimately familiar with. Allen left the Auror force a couple of weeks later. He’d tried to see Harry, tried to talk to him, reason with him, but Harry made himself extremely unavailable. He heard that his old partner had gone back to Australia, but tried not to think too much about it, tried not to wonder what he was up to even now, years later –not that he was successful in that mission.

Draco had reminded him of Allen so much, the way his presence seemed to dominate a room, the way his lithe body was always graceful even when simply walking across a crowded hall and, most of all, the way his voice lilted and hung in Harry’s memory long after he’d stopped speaking. He could almost hear that perfect drawl even now, a sound that used to make him cringe as a student but now made him swoon as an adult.

All of his feelings for the blond were based in lies though. Harry wondered how long the affair had been going on behind his back –days, weeks, months, years? He wondered how he could have been so blind to the farce, how his keen Auror skills had failed him so completely in the wake of one of the most important discoveries he could have made. He’d caught dozens of rogue Death Eaters over the past few years and solved hundreds of cases. Why did his common sense part with him so completely when it came to his own life? He supposed his mind was only trying to protect him from the truth of what a sham his life really was. The lie was so much easier to believe.

It had been simple to assume his wife was entirely faithful to him since he’d so easily refrained from adultery himself. The knowledge of what his wife had been up to left a void inside him that Harry wondered if he could ever fill again. How could he trust someone else after this? Ginny was supposed to have been his perfect match, he’d nearly grown up with her, so if she could do this to him, then what would stop any other witch from breaking his heart in the same manner?

Although, honestly, Harry wished that he could claim his heart was broken. As it stood, the pain of a shattered heart would be a relief from the numbness that seemed to work its was into his very core. Perhaps he was still in shock over the whole ordeal, but seeing Malfoy balls deep within his wife of three years made his heart completely shut off. It felt as though there was some robot inside of him allowing his motor functions to continue while his mind whirred unhinged and his heart went on an extended leave of absence.

The sight before him as he had entered his house that afternoon only served to reaffirm something that had been niggling in the back of his mind for ages. Ginny was all wrong for him, and she probably had been from the very start. Even though she felt familiar and right in his head, if Harry thought about it, his heart had always rejected her. She was greedy, always wanting more from him, more from life, more material things. He gave into her demands most of the time, it’s not as though she had many things to call her own growing up, even if she was the most spoiled of the Weasley children, what with being the only girl. She wasn’t forced into hand-me-downs like Ron and the other boys were. Still, her family had been poor and Harry had done everything he could to remedy that situation with the rest of her family, why not her?

If he looked back at her history, Harry should have expected her cheating as well. Harry couldn’t even count how many boyfriends she went through in school, never willing to settle on anyone. He was now convinced it was just his fame that kept her around this long –a fact proven by the man she had selected to cheat with. Only the remaining members of the ‘Golden Trio’ and Malfoy’s fame rivaled that of his own, in fact, Malfoy might have surpassed Harry’s fame as of late and Harry was more than willing to relinquish the spotlight.

Draco Malfoy.

The name made Harry growl into his nearly empty glass. Malfoy’s betrayal, for some unknown reason, had actually hit Harry’s heart harder than that of his wife. Deep down he supposed he’d known things were over with her for some time, but the Slytherin should have known better. Draco was supposed to be his friend. Harry had told the man things that he rarely mentioned to people who weren’t close. He hated the fact that he’d grown to trust the man only to be led astray. Why was it that everyone seemed to let him down, no matter how low his expectations were?

He shook his head, trying to cast aside the feelings of betrayal he felt, but to no avail. “Another,” Harry asked of the bartender, smacking his empty shot glass on the slick bar surface. He paid no mind to the nasty look he got from the barman, he’d been growing wary of Harry’s intoxication through the last four shots but he never said a word as he poured another glass and slid it over to Harry, who downed it in one go.

“You may want to slow down there, Mate,” called a familiar voice from behind him. Harry turned to see Ron’s blue gaze watching him closely before taking the seat next to him.

“I’m not drunk,” Harry announced, though Ron simply rolled his eyes.

“Of course you’re not,” he replied sarcastically. “How about we switch to water for a bit?” he suggested.

“Water is for wimps!” Harry declared, slamming his empty glass onto the table repeatedly until Ron snatched it out of his hand.

“Listen, Harry. When you didn’t show back up at the office today, I went to your flat looking for you. I heard about what Ginny did,” Ron told his inebriated friend. “We’re all furious with her. You didn’t deserve that, Harry.”

“No. I didn’t!” Harry agreed a little too loudly. “I’m a nice bloke. I’m handsome, you think I’m handsome right, Ron?”

“Er, sure,” Ron conceded awkwardly.

“I have a good job, I bought her nice things,” Harry continued, counting his qualities out on his fingertips. “I helped with the chores and the meals and I thought everything was good.” The more Harry spoke about their relationship out loud the more it sounded to him as if he was angry with his roommate, not his wife. Sure he had taken care of her, but there was obviously plenty she wanted from him that he was simply unwilling to give. He sighed and let his head fall to the sticky bar. “I messed up.”

“What?” Ron asked, not understanding. “No, not you. Gin messed up. You never did anything.”

“Exactly!” Harry exclaimed, pressing his finger roughly into Ron’s chest to accentuate his point. “That’s exactly right. I never did anything. I never fulfilled her, Ron. I never made her scream my name, I never-”

“Okay, that’s quite enough of that!” Ron shouted, interrupting Harry’s tirade. “She is still my little sister.”

“I know, Ron. That’s why I married her,” Harry explained. The alcohol and the fact that Ginny was now his past, made him feel open and free, like he could tell Ron anything. “I always knew she liked me and, even if it was for the wrong reasons, she was still a Weasley and marrying her made me a Weasley, too… but now I’m nobody, Ron.”

Ron sighed and let his friend lay his sticky forehead on his shoulder. He’d never seen Harry so wasted in all his life. “You’re still a Weasley if you want to be, Harry. You never had to marry Gin to get that. We’ve always considered you one of our own.”

“Brothers,” Harry mumbled against his friends shoulder.

Ron chuckled and nodded. “Right, but we’ve been brothers since that first day on the train.”

“I love you, Ron,” Harry slurred, making the redhead chuckle again.

Ron shifted Harry over to the other shoulder so he could rummage in his robe pocket. A moment later he procured a thin glass vial filled with putrid looking liquid. “Yeah, me too, Harry. Here, drink this. It’ll make you feel better,” he suggested, handing the vial over to his intoxicated friend.

Harry looked at it blearily before upending the vial into his mouth, choking on the sour contents inside. “Uhg!” he exclaimed, running his tongue over the roof of his mouth repeatedly to try and remove the foul taste. “What was that?”

“How do you feel?” Ron asked curiously, scrutinizing Harry’s every movement.

“I feel fine, I feel… sleepy. Really… really… sleepy,” he answered, the words coming slower with each enunciation until he was falling into a deep cavern of darkness.

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The massive ivory doors of Malfoy Manor loomed in front of her and Ginny slammed her fist against it for what felt like the hundredth time. “Open up, dammit! I know you’re in there!” she shouted at the inanimate door.

Her eyes were still swollen and her cheeks were stained with tear tracks from the confrontation she’d had with Harry just hours before. She’d been crying on and off since Harry left, but at some point the tears would no longer flow, as if her eyes had just dried up and refused to let another drop fall. “Draco! Fucking open the door!”

The door finally opened but there was no elegant blond in the doorway, only a squat little House Elf. “Master Draco is not in, Miss.”

“Liar!” she shouted. “You’re lying to me for him.”

“No, no Miss. Master Draco’s not here,” the Elf replied shakily, his entire body trembling with fear from the look of determination and rage in the woman’s eyes.

With a flick of her wand she sent the House Elf sprawling across the hall while she stormed passed him into the foyer. There was a massive set of stairs directly in front of her and several doors on either side of the entrance hall, she wasn’t sure where Draco’s quarters would be but she imagined that upstairs would be the best place to start. She ran as fast as her thin legs would carry her, bursting into room after room until she found him sitting in what appeared to be an opulent study.

His fingers were trailing over a framed portrait on the desk, but she cared very little about what tender moment she might be interrupting; Ginny was furious. “Why did you just leave me to that?”

Draco looked up then, his eyes holding less shock than she would have imagined they should. “Well, aren’t you just a brazen little hussy?” he asked, shaking his finger at her in mock sternness. “How did you get in?”

“Why did you do that?” she repeated, ignoring his question. “Why did you just leave me?”

Draco rolled his eyes as if the answer were quite clear to him and should be equally clear to her as well. When she continued to look at him as if he’d sprouted and extra head or three, Draco enlightened her. “I left because I had achieved what I had set out to accomplish. Your marriage with Potter is over,” he replied simply.

That much was obvious. She didn’t even know how she would be able to look at Harry again after what he’d walked in on. Still, breaking up the marriage had been the plan and she knew that, but the plan had also been to spend the rest of her life with Draco and the blond had abandoned her naked and crying on the floor of her flat the moment Harry had slammed the door. That kind of behavior was unacceptable. He was supposed to take care of her and love her.

“I know, but then you left me there, you didn’t even defend me to him while he screamed at me. He left and you just followed him! It was as if the entire time you were really after… Harry…” she shouted, her words trailing into a soft whisper at the end as her knees felt like they were going to collapse beneath her. “That’s it isn’t it?”

The last year spun in a clear web before her, all their encounters, all their conversations, had never been about her at all. Some twisted part of Draco’s brain thought that using her would be the perfect way to get to her husband –ex-husband.

Draco began clapping sarcastically as he got up and approached his unfortunate ex-lover. “Very good, Ginevra. I’ve been wondering all this time how you could possibly be so dim that you didn’t understand. I told you outright on several occasions who it was I had fallen in love with and you were arrogant enough to assume I was speaking of you every time.”

“You’re crazy!” she shouted, narrowing her eyes. “You broke up my marriage!”

“No,” Draco corrected sharply. “No, you did that all on your own. Merlin knows I never held a wand to your head and forced you to fuck me.”

“You evil fucking bastard. How does this even help you? Harry’s going to hate you just as much as he hates me after what he’s seen!” she growled. The confusion over the entire situation made her stomach heave. She couldn’t believe she had ever considered, for even a second, leaving Harry for this malicious man. He was no different from the Draco Malfoy they had grown up despising.

“We’ll see about that,” Draco soothed. “As you’ve already proven, I can be quite charming and persuasive.”

“If you touch one hair on his head, I’ll-“ she began, but Draco promptly cut her off with a silent spell that had her clutching her throat and choking for air.

“I believe you forgot whom it was you were dealing with in the wake of your foolhardy crush,” he growled, leveling his wand at her chest. “I am not to be trifled with. I do not tolerate silly little witches breaking into my home and making demands or threats. I love Harry and I’m far better suited to him than you ever were.”

The air around Draco seemed to flutter and silvery light emanated from his body, casting the room in an eerie metallic glow that matched his eyes. Ginny gasped as he released the spell that stole her breath, and she fell to the floor, coughing painfully as she desperately took in big gulps of air to replenish her lungs while Draco scowled down at her fragile body.

“I’m a Malfoy, and Malfoys always get what they want,” he told her confidently. “Unfortunately for you, I have my eyes set on what was once yours. Leave Harry alone or I’ll make you regret it.”

Draco didn’t give her time to respond, he simply cast another silent spell and she closed her eyes against the jet of white light that crashed into her. Pain laced through her body, and when she opened her eyes again she was no longer in Draco’s study. Somehow he’d pushed her through the Manor’s wards and chucked her unceremoniously into the front yard by the entrance gate. She had no idea how powerful Draco actually was, but that little display made it fairly clear that Draco wasn’t playing the game on the same level she was, or even Harry for that matter. Her heart stung bitterly over what the blond was going to do with her husband. It was fairly obvious the man was delusional, Harry wasn’t gay, nor had he ever shown any romantic interest toward Draco. Not to mention, she knew her husband well enough to know that he would spurn any advances from the man who shagged his wife.

She couldn’t believe how badly she had messed things up, and that she had done it all for nothing. Harry would surely divorce her for this, and her lover had proved nothing but a dream; even her family would be furious with her over what she’d done and she couldn’t blame them. Her only hope at this point was that perhaps Ron hadn’t gotten to her mum yet and she could tell her what happened in her own words before she could form any harsh judgment against her.

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Draco paced the floor of his study after he’d sent Ginevra out of his sight. Forced Apparition was a Dark Art his father had taught him ages ago and he knew the effects of the spell would frighten and disorient the woman enough to hopefully convince her to keep her mouth shut, not that the woman had ever done anything as Draco expected. The rest of his performance was just simple lighting Charms and a spell that would make his tone sound more ominous. Parlor tricks, really, except for that nasty bit that removed all the air from her general vicinity -that was just fun.

He had expected her intrusion, welcomed it even. It was good that she now knew what game she’d been playing for over a year. A game that had little to do with her and all to do with her stunning and brilliant husband… soon to be ex-husband. The title thrilled him. Of course, ideally Harry should have been his from the start, never having his name sullied by being attached to someone like a Weasley, but now they shared that trait, he and Harry. It was just another thing they now had in common. Draco had been too blind to see how perfect and special Harry really was when they were at school, but now that he’d seen the man for who he was deep down, Draco desperately wanted him and would go to any lengths to possess him.

With Ginevra’s unwitting assistance he’d achieved the first step of his plan, though not without causing more damage than he had originally intended. He had hoped for a clean break, to get Ginevra to leave Harry –preferably without mentioning who she was leaving him for- and then be allotted the time to make his move. Unfortunately, Harry’s poor timing had ruined that option. Still, Draco was nothing if not persistent and he had an endless supply of schemes up his sleeve. Harry would still be his before long. He could already taste those sweet lips giving him his first victorious kiss.

One day soon, Harry would belong to Draco and he would be forever happy in his arms.

Author’s Note: For those of you who read Becoming, I think it’s fair to say that I lied about being nice to Ginny in my other stories… Also, I can only shake my head at Draco. Part of me doesn’t want him to succeed, but he’s a Malfoy, so it certainly won’t stop him from trying everything in his underhanded arsenal to get his man.