A/N: This is a collection of unrelated one-shots written for the "Your Favorite Couple: Scenarios Speed Writing Challenge" on the HPFC forum. Happy reading!

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- CONTENTS and SUMMARIES -

Chapter 1. Late: On a day for moving forward, Ginny is abducted by her past.

Chapter 2. Impasse: Sometimes, no matter how hard you want it to be true, love just isn't enough.

Chapter 3. Memory: It was a night (not) to be remembered.

Chapter 4. Caught: In that reality, a blood traitor and a Malfoy had no future together. His musings were only a passing fancy of your average, hormonal teenage boy, but that world was gone.

Chapter 5. Secret: The only thing they could do was to postpone the inevitable future, postpone it long enough for one more kiss, one more caress, one more high before the fall.

Chapter 6. Disaster: "Can't believe I'm doing this. I'm not a bloody house-elf."

Chapter 7. Fallen: She's fallen under the strongest magic there is; she's fallen in love.

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The full version of the first story is now posted as a separate one-shot: What Time Knows Not. That version contains my original ending for this piece while this version here was truncated and altered to fit within the 2000 word limit of the challenge.

1. Late

One minute she was standing next to her dad, nervous in her high heels and white satin gown but ready to head down the aisle into the next chapter of her life—the next minute, everything went black.

A sudden pressure squeezed at her from all sides. Ginny failed to place the sensation until her feet hit solid ground. She fought back the nausea of Apparition as panic swept through her. Seconds ago she had been bathed in sunlight streaming through the tall floor-to-ceiling windows of the Ministry's ballroom, but now blue-black shadows engulfed her in a musty space that smelled of damp and mildew. She became aware then of the hand tightly gripping her elbow and wrenched herself free as she fought frantically through too many blasted layers of tulle and lace to get at her wand.

"Accio Ginny's wand," a voice spoke calmly close by. She stiffened in shock, too stunned to even think of grasping her wand as it flew through the air. She knew that drawling voice, knew it as well as her own.

The recognition took a sledge hammer to her thoughts and emotions, to memories she'd buried with a vengeance to the depths of her heart. As if a floodgate had been opened, they tumbled over one another in a rush to the forefront of her mind, leaving her gasping with the force of their return.

"What the—I don't even—" Her thoughts were as incoherent as her attempts to speak them. She clenched her eyes shut, breathing deeply as she willed herself to calm down, but it didn't work. The confusing flurry of emotions continued to rock her, so she seized upon the familiar and reliable anger to pull her through.

"Draco. Bleeding. Malfoy," she bit out through gritted teeth. "What the hell do you think you're doing?"

A wall sconce flared to life near her head, the red-gold flames casting a flickering light over the moss-covered stone walls and rusted metal bars. A dungeon cell. He'd brought her to a frigging dungeon. Bloody unbelievable. The nerve of him to walk out on her without a word, without a single owl in these last five years, and to now have...

She watched as he stalked around the perimeter of the sizable cell, steadfastly avoiding her eyes as he flung spells of concealment, one after another. Most other witches would have been trembling in fear to find themselves abducted on their wedding day, but not Ginny. Not with this man. Not after everything that had happened between them years ago.

Already she could feel them, the painful cracks branching through her heart. She seethed, anger burning her white-hot. How dare he?

He had her wand, but she didn't need it to dish out the punishment he deserved. She flipped her veil back and waited until he had his back fully turned to her before she rushed up and whipped him around with a forceful pull on his shoulder. He only had time to widen those deceptive eyes of his before she decked him across his cheek with the knuckles of her hand. Having grown up with six older brothers, she knew how to throw a punch, and Merlin knows the skinny bastard before her didn't know how to take one.

He stumbled back and swore as he clutched at his face, dropping her wand in the process. She yanked his wand from his other hand before pouncing to snatch her own from the floor. His she threw forcefully over her shoulder while hers she jabbed hard at his chest. Her other hand gripped his shoulder, pinning him against the cell's metal bars.

"Explanation now or there won't be anything of you left to explain," she hissed.

He blinked at her, still dazed from her blow. She took the time to examine him, taking in his wrinkled, half-buttoned shirt; the mussed platinum blond hair; the bruise beginning to bloom on his cheek. In short, he was a mess, unnervingly so after the years she'd known him to be nothing but impeccable at all hours of the day. Up close, she noticed something else as well. Her nose crinkled from the smell of it. He reeked of alcohol.

"Are you drunk?" she asked incredulously.

He shook his head. Whether it was to clear his head or answer her question, she didn't know. He started to move, so she dug her wand in harder, eliciting a wince from him.

"Start talking, Malfoy."

"So it's Malfoy now? What happened to Draco or 'Dray' when you couldn't—"

"You lost that privilege long ago, Malfoy," she spat.

"A privilege was it, Ginny?" The daze was gone from his eyes. They hardened into the all too familiar steely slabs from their fights in the past.

No. He had no right to turn this on her.

"I'm not here to play around with you. You better have a bloody good reason to give me in the next three seconds, or I'm out of here. Have fun dealing with the Aurors."

"You should be grateful I'm saving you from that marital trap you were about to fall into," he muttered.

He might as well have shot a Stunner at her. Ginny opened her mouth but found herself speechless. She snapped it shut before gathering her rage to try again."What were you thinking, Malfoy? That you could just show up out of the blue and whisk me away without any consequences? That I would still want to come with you?"

Do you? asked that terrible voice in her head, the one she thought she'd snuffed out for good years ago.

"That's just it. I wasn't thinking at all," he blurted out and visibly cringed from his admission, shutting his eyes as he swore.

She stared as he brought up a hand, the one whose shoulder she didn't have pinned, and ran it through his hair—a frustrated, distracted gesture. Malfoys didn't have frustrated, distracted gestures.

"Who are you and what have you done with Draco Malfoy?" she asked in disbelief. He had to be an imposter. Taking everything into account, there was no way the real Draco Malfoy would have shown up before her like this—disheveled and, dare she say it, seemingly almost desperate.

He gave her a little sad smile then—not a grin or a smirk but a hesitant tilt upwards at the corners of his lips. Her traitorous heart quivered dangerously. He opened his eyes then, the steel gone from them, replaced by a depth that spoke volumes.

"I've missed you, Gin," he whispered hoarsely, "badly."

The frank admission was her undoing. The heat of her anger dissipated leaving her cold and hurting. Her throat constricted and the back of her eyes began burning with other emotions altogether.

No. She closed her eyes to those blasted grey orbs that spoke too much but belonged to a man who left too many things unsaid. She closed her ears to the silver tongue that could extract the world from her but could not tell her what she needed to hear. Lastly, she closed her heart, hardened it to stone. She wouldn't let him do this to her, not again.

Releasing his shoulder, she stepped back.

"No." He gripped her hand, keeping the wand pressed into his chest. "No," he repeated.

She exhaled and opened her eyes, keeping them trained on the point where her wand ended and he began. "Let me go, Malfoy," she said quietly. "It's over. We were done the moment you decided to walk away that morning, after I was prepared to give you everything. I've made my peace with your decision. Now you need to do the same with mine." Finally, she found the strength to look up at him.

Draco had never appeared so open to her, allowing his every emotion to show in his features. He shook his head. "I can't. I can't do it." The voice that had been cold and cutting, charming and suave, smug and assured in all the years she'd known him seemed ready to fall apart.

She knew the depth of her feelings then. It was hard to lie to herself when even after he'd broken her heart, smashed it to smithereens, still here she was, digging her nails into her palms to fight the urge to comfort him. How maddeningly fitting, considering how they'd gotten together in the first place—two broken people, who collided with a push from fickle Fate, left to pick up the scattered pieces of themselves and accidentally found their missing parts in the other. Or so she had believed.

Damn it, Draco. It had always been this way. There was never any peace with him in her life. She shut her eyes again at the memories that flooded her.

Words began tumbling out of him as if he couldn't speak fast enough. "I can't let you go. I won't let you go. You can't marry him." He worded them as commands, but even in their most intimate moments, she'd never heard a more sincere plea in his voice, sincere and desperate.

Crack went her heart. Crack went the walls she'd built. Damn him.

She snapped her eyes open and pierced him with her gaze. "Then why did you leave me?" she demanded even as she struggled to keep her voice steady. "I chose you first, and look what happened. Why should I believe you now?"

"I was out of my mind," he choked out but said nothing more.

It was the same old story. She would excuse him, and they would fall back together only to fall apart again. Except not this time. Ginny shook her head sharply. "That's not good enough. Goodbye, Draco." Without another word, she twisted her hand free from his grip, turned, and walked away for what she hoped was the last time.

Author Notes:

Thanks for reading and please let me know what you think of it. :) In case you missed the note above, an expanded version of this story is now posted (What Time Knows Not), which continues the story past where it ends here.

This was written for the following scenario: Person A is engaged to someone else. Person B tries to win them over.