Chapter Text
That Delicate Look
Prologue
Harry Potter wouldn’t have been able to tell you – how or when exactly, after the war – he and Draco Malfoy became friends.
You wouldn’t have thought it was possible. Malfoy had always been a blight on Harry’s years in Hogwarts. Impossibly arrogant, cruel, on the wrong side of the war.
But he’d seen his fragility, the glimpses of his internal conflict and his fear in those last two years of the war. Giving testimony at Malfoy’s trial – and Harry had been through hours on hours of trial preparation prior to that, and had attended endless days of trial of other Death Eaters before the Malfoys’ trials, had seen the various shades of non-remorse, of sneering wounded pride, of grovelling desperation on a range of accused persons – Harry saw the other boy’s quiet resilience facing his charges, his reckoning with his guilt clear on his expression throughout his hearing.
Malfoy had looked like he’d been equally willing to hear a sentence of hanging, as he would have been to hear of an exoneration.
And then – after, when Harry had started training to be an Auror, Malfoy had written, thanking him for his testimony that had contributed to his exoneration. It was a surprisingly graceful letter – both Hermione and Ginny had said so. Ginny had even teared up, insisting that Harry had to write him back.
So Harry had written back.
And then – they had kept up a steady, biweekly correspondence, and by the time it was Christmas that year, Malfoy had tentatively invited Harry and Ginny to the Malfoy Yule Ball.
Harry had hesitated – was it appropriate to accept? But then Ginny had said – wouldn’t it be an honest thing to do, to accept – given that Draco had become a friend?
And then – when Harry had qualified as an Auror in January of 1999, Draco had attended the investiture, had offered his sincere congratulations, had brought a smart, appropriate gift. Harry realised, watching Draco circulating among the Weasleys and Harry’s other friends: Draco Malfoy could be capable of civility, of social fluency – because of course he could, he was the Malfoy heir. He’d just kept his currency away from the Gryffindors, previously.
Two months into qualification, Draco granted the Auror Department access to Malfoy Manor’s vast library collection, to assist them in an investigation. While the Aux Squad – the Auxiliary Squad, which worked across the various operational Auror units, collected evidence and provided supporting expertise in their cases – did their research, Draco graciously provided a steady supply of warm drinks and food into the long hours, chatted with Harry and his supervising officer, Sergeant Higgs, when he wasn’t himself hard at work at Malfoy Industries.
By the time they’d completed the research at the Manor, just under a year after the Battle of Hogwarts, Harry had to admit – Draco had become one of his good friends. He was even friends with Ginny.
***
When Draco Malfoy began slowly becoming friends with Harry Potter, he’d not expected to take to Harry’s girlfriend Ginny Weasley that quickly.
Harry he’d learned to respect the hard way – not just having had his life saved by the other boy, but also having seen him go through the Death Eater trials: he’d seen him return, again and again, stoic and dutiful, to the stand, despite everything he’d had to suffer, had to bear.
And Harry had spoken kindly, for Draco. Draco knew, to a good extent, the other boy had given him his freedom.
But Ginny – Ginny he’d not met and spoken to, properly, civilly, until months after his own hearing, when she’d first tagged along for a lunch appointment he’d had with Harry.
On hindsight, perhaps his liking Ginny – platonically – wasn’t that surprising. Ginny was easy enough on the eyes – she’d always been, since Hogwarts. It admittedly was always easier to like a pretty girl. But what made Draco grow fond of her was really her spirit, her drive, her mind.
He could understand why Harry loved her.
Ginny Weasley was obviously a Gryffindor, but she didn’t carry it soberly, like Harry did, or righteously, like Ron Weasley or Hermione Granger could. She was the kind of girl who, in a ballroom full of socially fluent, sly Slytherins adept at making tiny, just socially acceptable stabs in your back with their words, could absorb these, and then cheerfully stab them back in their faces with her retorts, with the sweetest smile, until they learned not to trifle with her.
And she flew so fiercely, it was like she was possessed. Draco did enjoy going to her matches – her team, the Montrose Magpies, was also consistently great to watch, sadly unlike his childhood home team, the more temperamental Tutshill Tornadoes. The Magpies’ strong record of winning was why, after all, Malfoy Industries had bought into a minority holding in the Magpies.
That, and it was convenient to have “Malfoy Industries” emblazoned across the chests of the most successful Quidditch team in the League, reminding audiences that, however their political persuasion post-war, one of the most ubiquitous conglomerates in wizarding Europe was here to stay.
Draco had been glad to facilitate Ginny’s transfer from Holyhead Harpies to the Magpies. It might have been the first time he’d met with dissent from Harry in their burgeoning friendship – Harry seemed to think Ginny was happy enough with the Harpies, and that she should have repaid their faith in her by staying longer than the eleven or so months she’d had (Draco also sensed that Harry felt more relaxed with Ginny being in an all-women’s team when they spent so much time apart as a couple, but he kept his speculations to himself).
But Draco had been able to see that Ginny herself had the ambition, wanted to be in the best team in the League. Certainly she had taken the transfer like a duck to water, and had never looked back. She quickly established herself as a first-string Chaser, pairing especially well with Alec Vaisey, the Magpies’ star Chaser and Draco’s former Slytherin teammate and classmate.
When she’d first transferred, roughly around the anniversary of the Battle of Hogwarts, Draco had agreed with Harry to attend her matches consistently with him, to keep Harry accountable – he’d missed too many of Ginny’s matches while she was a Harpy, which had been a source of consistent disagreement between the couple.
It hadn’t taken more than two matches, however, before Harry would get called away.
Draco felt for Ginny – had seen her looking to the box, only finding Draco – and the next time Harry couldn’t make it (which was really the next match), Draco brought flowers for her, adding a tag that they were from Harry.
And the next time.
And the next time.
On the fourth time – Ginny gently told Draco that she knew the flowers weren’t from Harry. She’d explained – Harry wasn’t that good of an actor (Draco had written to him about his bringing flowers on his behalf, but he had no idea if the other boy had even registered the notes).
Harry also wasn’t really aware of other flowers besides roses. If he remembered to get her flowers at all – they were always the same deep red roses, which he already knew Ginny liked.
Draco’s choices though – exotic white orchids (to match the Magpies’ kit), red tulips (Ginny’s hair), marigolds and sunflowers (Ginny’s golden eyes) and elegant irises (they just looked pretty, and he thought Ginny would like them) – were deliberate.
Not that Draco had ever explained any of that to her. The reasons stayed in his head, unspoken, sealed behind a tag that simply read “Love, Harry”.
But Ginny had told him – the fact that they weren’t her favourite flowers was telling enough. Harry wouldn’t have picked anything else.
In any case – Ginny told Draco – Harry had never apologised for missing her matches. Work took precedence for Harry – it always did.
She’d said it matter-of-factly, lightly. Draco had already had a suspicion, then.
So it hadn’t really surprised him, really, as much as he’d learned to like Harry as a person – that Ginny had finally broken up with him, quietly, one weekend, about three months into her transfer.
Ron had Floo-called him to come over – Ginny had just packed all her things one day from Grimmauld Place – and then she was gone. She’d just left a note – explaining to Harry that they were breaking up; she couldn’t do it in person only because Harry had been away for a month, with potentially no known date of his return – he’d been on a secretive mission, and was uncontactable.
Draco had gone over, bringing a bottle of Glenfiddich, which supplemented the beer Ron had brought. Hermione had remembered to actually bring food. Harry had been inconsolable, until he was due for his next shift, 12 hours later.
If it’d just been two years ago – Draco would’ve delighted in the other boy’s misery. As it was, he’d wished he hadn’t had to witness it, but witness it he did. As Harry remained heartbroken, crumpled in the middle of the living room, he’d found himself staying that night on the actual godforsaken couch, across from Ron who had somehow wedged his long, lanky frame across and into an armchair, and Hermione who curled up into a chaise lounge. They kept watch as the saviour of the wizarding world fell apart over his Hogwarts sweetheart leaving him, 15 months after the Battle of Hogwarts.
Until roughly 11 hours later, when he’d pulled himself together to get back to his shift.
Duty, as it always did, called for Harry, destiny’s favourite son.
Three weeks later, Draco found himself wishing he could Obliviate Harry – just to spare him more misery – when the Prophet released an exclusive photograph: Alec Vaisey, Magpies Chaser and notorious rake, kissing Ginny Weasley outside a bar.
His sympathy for Harry was genuine – enough to distract him, briefly, from the flicker of disappointment he felt toward Ginny.
Of all people – Alec Vaisey?
***
When Ginny Weasley had decided not to return to Hogwarts for her seventh year, on account of her really only being interested in playing professional Quidditch, she’d not expected that her boyfriend, Harry Potter would’ve been her biggest obstacle.
It had been hard enough getting through that first summer, after the war. The Weasleys had had to bury a son, a brother – and Ginny found herself, many nights, outside the twins’ – George’s – door, crying silent tears as she heard George’s sobs from the other side of the door. George refused to let her into their – his – room, when he was like this, but Ginny could never leave him to return to her room.
She’d been afraid – though she didn’t tell anyone of her fear – that she might lose another brother, too, from grief. For as much as she could have – she’d wanted to make sure he was safe.
And Harry hadn’t been able to return to her – not immediately. He’d been swept almost instantly into a dragnet of trial preparation, testimony, and Auror training, starting in July 1998, while still entangled in the Death Eater prosecutions.
Ginny had waited – and Harry knew Ginny was waiting for him. They found each other in the rare moments he was free. Those moments were brief, but they were real: comfort, relief, even happiness at being reunited.
When she had his attention – his full, intense attention – she couldn’t help loving him. She’d loved him for so long, it was like he was built into the foundation of her heart.
So Ginny hadn’t expected opposition from Harry, of all people, when she went straight from that summer into professional Quidditch trials.
She’d successfully convinced her parents – she’d proven herself sufficiently during the Battle of Hogwarts that she was a capable enough witch, and she’d shown, since she was a child of six, how much she loved Quidditch, needed to play it like she needed to breathe. She belonged to the sky – her whole family knew. Molly and Arthur agreed – Ginny had a year to try, and if she wasn’t successful in breaking through, she would have to undergo a suitable apprenticeship at the Ministry, or eventually join George in reopening the shop.
Ginny intended to land a position – at least a second string one – within the first three months of trying.
But Harry had said – professional Quidditch wasn’t the safest option, and would take her away from him.
Ginny remembered thinking then: being an Auror wasn’t a safe option, and certainly took Harry away from her a good chunk of the time.
They’d had a tremendous fight on it – Ginny cried for a full weekend – before Harry had softened, and had agreed that she could try. His ultimatum was: she could try for the rest of the summer – otherwise she should enrol for her last year in Hogwarts.
It had been such a bad fight that Ginny had been glad for even this concession – but it had hurt. It’d been the first of many real, cumulative hurts.
Within her first month – Ginny had made second string with the Harpies.
Within her third month – Ginny had made first string with the Harpies.
And she knew – she played well. The trades wrote favourably about her promise – though Ginny was also realistic, knowing that her being Harry’s girlfriend made her a popular new player to cover. Ginny just had to make sure she played well enough that their noting that she was his girlfriend appeared only in the middle of an article about her, rather than in the first paragraph.
And then – during the Malfoy Yule Ball – she’d gotten into an intense conversation with Draco Malfoy about her career, during which they’d discovered their mutual interest in the Montrose Magpies: Ginny in joining them, because they were the best in the league, and Draco’s financial investment in them through Malfoy Industries, because they were the best in the league. That night, they’d barely spoken to anyone else for over an hour – despite Draco being the host, because they were too busy comparing notes and stats.
By the end of the Ball – Draco had promised her – he would see what he could do to have her seen by the Magpies’ scouts and management team.
When she’d first told Harry about what Draco had promised, after the Ball – Harry had been distracted. He was going to be late for a shift, and nodded vaguely, kissing her on the side of her head, saying that they could talk more about it, when he was back.
He didn’t return for another 72 hours, and Ginny had spent Christmas that year without him, at the Burrow.
By the time he’d returned – he was exhausted, he was spent. He could only manage to shower, pulling Ginny into a tight embrace as he fell asleep next to her, at his – Sirius’ former – bedroom, at Grimmauld Place.
Ginny had always disliked Grimmauld Place, had tried, more than once, to hint that they could rent somewhere brighter, airier, somewhere that didn’t hold so much grief. But Harry had wanted to keep close to Sirius’ memory, and Ginny hadn’t found it in herself to argue much against that.
In any event, she only stayed at Grimmauld Place when she knew – or was hoping – that Harry would be there. Otherwise, she stayed at the Magpies’ grounds in Montrose.
It was only later – after the dust settled on her and Harry – that Ginny realised he’d never once asked, perhaps never even noticed, how she’d kept up two lives for his sake: one in London, and one in Montrose.
When she’d then told Harry about the audition – eventually scheduled for a month before the anniversary of the Battle of Hogwarts – he’d looked surprised, as if it were the first time he’d realised she was going to try.
He’d asked – but what about the Harpies? They’d taken a chance on her when she was first starting out. Ginny had been with them for less than a year.
Ginny had bitten down the immediate retort: she didn’t owe them loyalty. She’d played well, and the Magpies were her dream. The best team in the League – she couldn’t afford to pass up a chance like that.
She tried not to remember how Harry had joked, more than once, that it comforted him to know Ginny was tucked away in a far-flung coastal town in Wales, playing for an all-women’s team, safe while he was hard at work.
She tried not to let it hurt – even it bubbled over, and they fought about it – how Harry had rarely made it to her Harpies matches.
She had to remember: this was the price to pay, when you loved a man the world so needed.
Ginny kissed Harry, assured him of her love, the morning of the audition – and went for it, anyway.
When she made the team, he’d been sweet about it. Had been happy for her – had even remembered to get her favourite flowers, deep red roses. Had promised her that he would make more Magpies games – he’d even told Draco to keep him accountable, because Draco always went for their games.
But really – it would be Draco who would witness Ginny’s steady rise in the Magpies. Draco who, charmingly, sweetly, brought her flowers, thinking she would accept that they were from Harry.
It was the beginning of the end – those flowers. The orchids, the tulips, the marigolds and sunflowers, the irises – which Ginny knew: Harry would never think to get for her.
He’d barely noticed their presence in Grimmauld Place, when Ginny had brought them back, arranged them in vases.
He’d either not been there – because he was on yet another shift, yet another mission – or he simply had been too tired to notice, when he returned to Grimmauld Place, simply ready and expecting to collapse into Ginny’s arms.
Those flowers were the climax in all those real, cumulative hurts that Ginny had collected over the course of their relationship together. Harry’s absence was the wound, but his repeated distraction, even thoughtlessness – seemed to be encapsulated in those flowers that Draco had brought to try to run cover over Harry’s inability to attend Ginny’s matches.
And, finally – on that last mission, which seemed to have no definitive end – watching the last of the irises die – Ginny had packed her things, written a note, and left.
She’d cried, the Magpies’ Seeker Cho Chang looking after her, on and off for nearly a week after that.
She’d never thought she could leave Harry. She’d waited for him for so long – hung her heart, all her faith, on him.
Pushed down so much, over time, for him.
The surprise and twinge of hurt when he’d first decided to kiss her, in front of the entirety of Gryffindor, during his sixth year, when the celebration really should have been about Ginny’s leading Gryffindor to a win in her fifth year. She’d not gotten much of a choice, after – it wasn’t that she wasn’t willing, but Harry had essentially decided for them, that they would be together.
The hurt, again, when he’d decided they had to break up before he left to hunt for Horcruxes.
The constant gnawing worry and terror she’d carried with her for the whole of her sixth year, waiting for news of safety of him and Ron and Hermione.
And then – all the disappointments, the consistent hurts, the neglect of their 15 months together.
His lack of faith, of belief, in her ambition.
His lack of presence in their relationship.
So – still thinking that she was still recovering from her breakup with Harry, Ginny had not thought, when she’d tried an exotic absinthe-based cocktail drink with Alec Vaisey, the Magpies’ star Chaser during celebratory drinks after a win, that she’d end up following him outside, and end up making out with him.
She’d certainly not expected to have been photographed doing so.
***
When Ginny Weasley had joined the Magpies – of course Alec Vaisey already knew the girl.
He remembered her from Hogwarts, had played against her. She’d been a force of nature even then. After a particularly vicious Gryffindor-Slytherin match, he’d thought: she ought to play professionally.
He liked the way she played – fearless, relentless, holding nothing back. He liked the way her high ponytail whipped in the wind. He liked the way she grinned at him when she snatched the Quaffle.
Alec had left seventh year early – the Carrows were too much for his blood – and signed with the Magpies straight away. He’d made first string quickly, and just as quickly became a fan favourite. Alec knew he was handsome, and brilliant at his job, his calling. He made a ready star.
The revolving door of girls – and he was always gracious with each one, however brief their time together – was just a distraction. Alec knew that his real love was Quidditch.
But Ginny Weasley had joined the Magpies, and Ginny Weasley had always had something about her.
When she first donned the Magpies kit, there had been something in the way she moved in it, under the flash of camera bulbs. Something about her blaze of her red hair, the sharp delicacy of her face, the golden gleam in her eyes.
And – as a teammate, she was competitive but supportive, and smart, and funny. Kind, open. He learned to trust her, almost immediately.
Ginny Weasley was forged in a war that Alec had opted out of. He’d done it not out of cowardice, necessarily – though he hadn’t wanted to potentially fight his own Housemates – but perhaps out of convenience. His family affluence and ties, the historical political neutrality of House Vaisey, had given him the easy option. And Alec had taken it. No medals, no scars, no heroics, thankfully nobody he was close to who’d been hurt, who he’d lost. Just Quidditch, and fame, a life untouched by grief, violence, fire.
Alec could see why Ginny was a war heroine. She held herself like she’d survived something and knew the cost of things. It added to the weight of her, added to his trust in her, as a person and as a teammate.
His very pretty, deceptively delicate-looking teammate.
As soon as Alec had heard from Cho that Ginny had broken up with Harry Potter, he’d begun to think.
He’d never wanted to start something with a colleague, but Ginny was different.
And so – one night at celebratory drinks after a win (it could’ve happened at any point – the Magpies won often – but the fact that it was only three weeks after Ginny’s breakup hadn’t been planned), Alec had suggested Ginny try the bar’s new absinthe-based cocktail with him.
She’d been wary of the cocktail’s inclusion of pandan – Alec had assured her would be delicious. He’d explained it was a tropical plant with a uniquely fragrant aroma: sweet, grassy, slightly nutty, vanilla-ish. Paired with absinthe, he promised, it would be interesting.
So he ordered it – and they quickly finished the glass between them. Then another, of the same drink. And another.
By the third drink, there was no real reason to still be sharing. They already both knew that they liked it.
And by that third drink – looking into Ginny’s golden eyes, admiring her pretty smile – Alec already knew he was going to kiss her that night.
He just hadn’t expected that kissing her might mean more than he’d planned.
But then – Ginny Weasley had always been different, for Alec.
***
A/N 2:
Details relating to Harry’s training, qualification and work as an Auror are inventions. Specifically, the Auxiliary Squad and Sergeant Higgs were invented for my other fic, Ornamental.
Draco’s preference for the Tutshill Tornadoes is an invention.
Ginny leaving school early and details relating to her Quidditch career are inventions.
Cho Chang’s Quidditch career is an invention.
Alec Vaisey is part-invention, part-canon: in canon, we were given his last name and Quidditch position for the Slytherin team. All other details relating to his character are my invention, so I consider him technically an original character. In my other fic, The Trick is to Keep Breathing, there is some reference to him as a younger student (than Draco; here he’s from the same year) in Slytherin House; he shares the same family background in that fic as in this one (politically neutral, family of lawyers and lawmakers).
The pandan-absinthe cocktail is a real cocktail I had some time ago in a bar in Hong Kong, which sadly no longer exists.