Keeping the Faith
The girls lay in their parents’ large bed steadily breathing as they slept. The elder of the two, Elizabeth, was flat on her back asleep with her mouth wide open. Her eyelids fluttered as various dreams raced through her subconscious. With both arms lying comfortably at her sides, she was completely oblivious to the small foot laying a few inches from her left shoulder.
Next to Elizabeth was her sister Michaela who was three years younger. Much like her sibling, Michaela was far off in dream land. She flinched in her sleep, unknowingly kicking her sister’s shoulder. Her head was lying on the edge of their parent’s bed. Her legs were sprawled in different directions “ one on her sister’s shoulder, the other stretched across Elizabeth’s waist. Also, as she had done since the day she was born, Michaela slept sucking her left index finger and middle finger while her right arm stretched across to massage her left earlobe. She slept soundly, feeling the security of her sister close by.
The sisters enjoyed their peaceful slumber as they did every night; their mother made sure of that. Her girls were her life these days. Ginevra Weasley sat in her comfortable rocking chair in the adjoining study. This was her favorite room and she spent most of her down time looking through old photos and reading letters from what seemed so long ago. One particular letter was singled out from the stacks of the others, sitting face down on the table top. Anyone looking at it would see that it had been read numerous times before. The edges were worn and some sections of what had been written had been smeared with tears of the not so distant past.
Ginny, as she was called by most, found herself reading a line from that particular letter.
I promise I will be with you again soon, I just don’t know when.
A lump formed in her throat even though a year had passed since she had received the letter.
Please believe me and try not to lose hope.
She grasped the parchment tightly. She hadn’t lost hope “ everyone else had started to but not Ginny. She had to have faith in his return. His girls needed their daddy and his wife needed her husband.
Thinking about happier times made her feel light, but sad as well. One of her favorite memories had occurred a few months before her husband had begun his “business meetings.” They had been at the park, all four of them. The girls were being pushed on the swings by their mum and dad. The girls laughed wildly as their parents pushed them higher and higher.
”Daddy, daddy, look how high I am!”
He laughed at his eldest daughter. “Yes, you are. We may need to start thinking about getting you your very own broom soon.”
Elizabeth’s eyes lit up in excitement and she cheered. “Yay! Mum, did you hear that? I’m getting a broom of my own! ‘Soon,’ he said.”
Ginny growled. She chanced a glare towards her husband and he wiggled his eyebrows at her. ‘He’s lucky he’s so delicious looking today,’ she thought to herself. She mentally vowed to direct all broom inquiries to him from that point on.
In the midst of her thoughts, Ginny heard a scream from somewhere on the playground. She looked around to see what had happened and found her youngest daughter lying amongst the scattered tire chips, holding her arm and trying not to cry.
By the time Ginny reached her, she noticed the scrape on her daughter’s hand. Kneeling down to Michaela’s level, Ginny asked, “What happened, sweetheart?” The little girl’s lip quivered as she answered, still trying to control herself and keep her emotions at bay.
“I w-w-was trying t-t-to jump off the-the swing and land on m-m-my feet like Snowflake, Mummy.” Ginny heard Elizabeth start to say something at the mention of their family cat but stopped her with a look that said “not now.”
She heard her husband approach from behind. He spoke gently to his injured child as he knelt down in front of her.
“That’s a nasty bit of a scratch there, isn’t it?” Michaela nodded quickly, almost as if she was afraid. Her father noticed this.
“Baby, it’s okay to cry. I don’t know how you’re staying so strong because if it were me I would be crying everywhere!”
That was all it took for the tears to fall. After a minute or so of sobbing into her father’s silk shirt, gripping the sleeves trying to hold on, she began to calm herself. He held her on his knee while continuing to kneel. Ginny and Elizabeth were looking at imaginary figures in the clouds.
Taking his daughter’s injured hand in his, he examined it. Chunks of dirt littered the wound. It had redness around the edges and it looked like it stung. Once he had examined the scrape, he gently cupped her chin.
“Good thing it’s not your wand hand, Peanut.”
Michaela looked confused. “But Daddy, I’m too little for a wand. You said so yourself.”
Nodding, he took her uninjured hand and placed it over his which was holding his wand.
“Here, you can help me clean this up.” He guided her hand in a simple motion saying “Scourgify” to clean the wound and “Ferula” to place the appropriate bandages over the cuts.
Seeing her hand now covered in bandages, Michaela’s eyes grew quite large. “Did I do this Daddy? Did I do real magic?”
Smiling, he nodded, her questions melting his heart bit by bit. “Now, what do you say we leave the fancy stunts to your kitty, okay love?” She smiled and nodded shyly as he gently kissed her forehead. Looking over to them, Ginny smiled. Her husband winked and mouthed the words, “All better.”
Ginny placed the worn looking piece of parchment back into the small cedar box which was then placed carefully into her locked drawer. After dabbing her eyes with a handkerchief she took a final look around the room, satisfied with how it looked.
Turning to face the door, she muttered, “Nox,” and walked into the bedroom to check on the girls one last time before she tried to sleep. As she approached the bed, Elizabeth began coughing wildly, almost waking herself and her sister. Thankfully the coughing subsided.
While her daughter was coughing, Ginny thought briefly that she heard the sound of Apparating in the house but when the property alarms did not sound, she returned to tending to her daughter. Once she was convinced everything was fine with the girls, Ginny turned towards the door as she made mental plans for the next day. She covered her mouth and muffled a scream when she noticed a figure blocking the doorway.
In the blink of an eye, she reached into her nightclothes and found her wand. At the same time she was trying to adjust her eyes to the bright light flooding the room from the hallway ahead. As if in slow motion, Ginny turned towards Elizabeth and Michaela, reassuring herself of their safety. When she turned to face the intruder, she gasped, dropping her wand after seeing him close enough to place a single finger on her lips.
After a year of hoping and praying, Ginny was looking into the eyes of the man she loved. She reached out to touch his face, moving the long strands of hair out of his eyes.
“Draco, you came back.” She let out a shaky breath, feeling the tears coming and a lump forming in the back of her throat. He reached up with calloused hands and took hold of her trembling hand as it brushed his forehead.
“Of course I came back. Didn’t you get my letters?”
Blushing with a few tears making their way to the surface, she began to quote the letter she was looking at earlier to him.
“I promise I will be with you again soon, I just don’t know when. Please believe me…”
“And try not to lose hope,” he said with her, tears now in his eyes.
Ginny sobbed quietly as he brought her to him in a fierce embrace. He was trying desperately to memorize the moment such as the way her hair smelled of vanilla and the sparkle her eyes still held after all of this time.
While continuing to hold her, Draco looked over Ginny’s shoulder towards the two sleeping figures in the bed they used to share. His breath caught in his throat and he found himself being led towards them by his wife who, at some point, had apparently calmed down enough to guide him to his daughters.
Sleeping soundly, the girls were unaware that their father, gone for over a year, was kneeling next to them at that exact moment. He gently tucked a few strands of hair behind Elizabeth’s ear and stifled a laugh when he saw Michaela’s sleeping position.
Sighing he whispered, “This made everything I did worth while, Ginny. You “ my wife and my two beautiful girls - you are what got me through everything.
Ginny felt bold and asked, “Where did you go? Can you discuss it now?”
She stood up and accepted his silent invitation to leave the room in favor of letting the children sleep without interruption. They sat on an antique couch in the hall, facing each other, holding hands.
“They’re all gone, Ginny. Voldemort’s remaining followers have been eliminated. The ministry would have it no other way.”
His wife opened her mouth to respond but he began talking again before she could form any words. “I have never seen such a delicate yet seamless operation. People were being dispatched all over the world to retrieve the Death Eaters. The hunt took most of seven months.”
Looking up to be greeted with a look of shock on the face of his beloved, he quickly explained, realizing that a twelve month absence needed more details. “… but the next four months were spent getting a certain Death Eater to talk to us.”
Leaning forward in her seat, Ginny prodded, “Did it take that long before he snapped?” She had obviously understood who he was referring to. Her husband shook his head. She looked utterly confused and stuttered, “B-but you said…”
He held his hand up, effectively but gently silencing her. “He never snapped, Ginny. He was sent through the Veil as punishment for not being cooperative after all he had done.”
The ginger haired witch next to him covered her mouth in shock. “Draco, I am so sorry. I know you had not spoken in quite some time but are you alright? Would you like to be alone? I could let you be until you are ready to talk.” Ginny was fumbling with her long locks of hair between her fingers. She got nervous whenever Lucius Malfoy was mentioned. He was the one who had killed her best friend Hermione Granger when his son refused to do it himself. That was when they’d discovered the young Draco’s true allegiance.
Grasping her hands between his, Draco gave her a reassuring squeeze. “Love, I am fine. I was the one to agree to my father’s punishment. Too many people lost their lives because of him and I thought, for my mother’s sake, it would be the most humane way to remove him from society.”
Moving closer to her husband, she couldn’t help but realize how lucky they were as a family. Both had stable jobs (Ginny was an editor for the Quibbler and Draco worked for the Ministry) and the four of them were surrounded by love. After coming out of hiding and proclaiming his loyalty not to Voldemort but the Order, Draco became an invaluable asset. He claimed to have seen too many people close to him die for Voldemort and their world was still in a war which did not seem to be ending any time soon. He explained his change of heart by simply saying that he wanted to see a change for the better. He even admitted out loud to the Order his regrets for the past. Before Harry had died, Draco had promised to round up the last Death Eaters and he had diligently followed through.
Sitting in a comfortable silence just holding each other, Draco and Ginny didn’t hear the footsteps advancing towards them. It was only when they heard Elizabeth squeal, “Daddy!” that they broke apart. Hearing his eldest daughter, Draco jumped up and held his arms out to receive her as she ran to him. He picked her up and spun her around while all three of them laughed until they cried.
A minute or so later, they turned to see her sister standing at the end of the hall yawning while rubbing her eyes. She was wearing purple pajamas with feet. Walking carefully to her, Draco knelt in front of his daughter with tears in his eyes. “Oh how I missed you, Peanut.”
Michaela’s hands stopped moving and her eyes grew huge. “Daddy?” she asked, “My Daddy?” She took two steps and wrapped her arms tightly around his neck. Draco closed his eyes and let her feather soft kisses drown out all of the stress and pressure he had endured in the past year. He glanced in Ginny’s direction and mouthed the words, “I love you.”
Ginny approached the two of them with Elizabeth in her arms. Both girls joined in the emotional reunion. Once he had a hold on his emotions, Draco looked at his wife. “See? This here made it all worth it.”
Suddenly, as if a light went off in his head, Draco put his four-year-old down. “I almost forgot.” He pulled out his wand and tapped a small box which magically expanded to a full sized trunk. He released the latches on the side and opened the trunk, using his wand once again to enlarge the object in his hand. Elizabeth screamed.
“A broom!”
Bowing his head, he held it out to the seven-year-old. “I’m sorry it took so long for me to get this to you, sweetheart. I had to special order it.” Elizabeth just stared at him in awe and gave him a bone crushing hug in appreciation for her new gift. Michaela was impressed and peered into her father’s trunk, looking for something of her own. Slipping a small item out of his pocket, Draco performed the charm once more. He tapped her shoulder and she looked up.
“I couldn’t forget you, baby.” He held his hand out to reveal a small wand. Michaela looked up to her father and he laughed as her eyes seemed to grow out of their sockets once she recognized the item in his hand.
Ginny gasped, “It’s just her size!”
By this point, the little girl was literally quivering with excitement. Almost to the point of bursting, Michaela started clapping her hands wildly, eagerly reaching up for her new wand.
Smiling, Draco said, “It’s got limited abilities until she makes the trip to Ollivander’s in seven years for her true wand. Now, keep in mind that this can only be used here at the house, Peanut. Otherwise Daddy will get in trouble.”
He looked to his wife. “This wand came courtesy of your brothers, Ginny.” Her eyebrows went up in amusement.
“For now she can only do simple things like clean with it and perform a simple healing charm.” He winked at Michaela, who showed him a faded scar on her left hand.
Ginny pretended to pout. “And where is MY gift, dear husband of mine?”
Waggling his eyebrows, he leaned in and whispered, “Ask me in nine months.”
He kissed her before she could respond and when they parted she gave him the first of many seductive glances that night. Hearing giggling below them, they gathered the two girls in their arms and headed downstairs for some long awaited bonding time.
Keeping the Faith by NikkiSue
Chapter Notes: This particular plot bunny came to me while I was babysitting two little girls one night. I was watching them sleep and just started to write. The result of that evening in here in this opening paragraph. I would like to thank Masked One for beta-ing this in record time and a special thanks to WhittyLeah who gave me one of the nicest rejection letters I have ever seen before I edited this again.