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Halfway up Gryffindor Tower, Ginny Weasley woke in a cold sweat. It was the third time that week that she had found herself sitting straight up in bed, eyes wild and heart pounding in her ears, struggling with the slow, deep breaths she knew would bring her back to earth. By the time she managed to steady her pulse, this dream had slipped away like all the others, leaving only fragments that slipped from her grasp when she thought too hard about them- the feeling of wandering unfamiliar Hogwarts corridors without knowing how she’d gotten there; a flash of the looming, dripping walls of the Chamber of Secrets, closing in on her; Tom Riddle, sixteen years old, standing over her, his hand in her hair and his cold eyes locked onto hers, preventing her from looking away.In the four years since a teenaged Voldemort had taken up residence in her mind, these kinds of nightmares had become a rare occurrence, but after the Department of Mysteries, they had returned in full force, now interspersed with flashes of dark rooms with floating planets or tentacled brains strangling her friends and classmates. Either the nightmares or lack of sleep that they caused had kept her on edge all summer. On the train back, she had hexed Zacharias Smith for only mentioning the attack at the Ministry, and it had taken her until almost an hour into Slughorn’s ridiculous gathering to stop shaking.Ginny had hoped that the dreams would stop once she got back to Hogwarts, but nearly two weeks into her fifth year, she was resorting to the same habits of sleep-deprivation she’d used throughout her second year to keep the nightmares at bay, so far without much success. She had only meant to take a short nap before dinner, but the weight of having gone entirely without sleep for the previous two days had dragged her under almost as soon as she’d curled up fully-clothed on top of the covers, and judging by the pale moonlight cutting through the room, and the sleeping forms of her dormmates in their four-posters, she had overslept by several hours.Ginny changed quietly from her wrinkled uniform into her red flannel pajamas before slipping her wand into the pocket of her bathrobe and creeping downstairs to the common room. She didn’t intend to go back to sleep, of course, but she didn’t feel that there was any need to advertise that fact to anyone she might encounter. Ron was often in the common room with Harry and Hermione at all hours of the night, and his form of showing concern often involved lots of yelling and letters home to Mum. She thought that her Mum probably had enough on her mind without her daughter’s sleep schedule to worry about, and she didn’t fancy a public shouting match with her brother until at least four weeks into the term.The common room was blissfully calm, bathed in warm shadows from the dying fire. The clock on the mantle read almost one in the morning, and it was still too early in the term for many students to have fallen behind on homework, so the common room was nearly deserted, except for a group of third-years playing gobstones at the biggest table, and Vicky Frobisher snogging Fay Dunbar in one of the chairs near the fire. Ginny’s bag was under her favorite chair in one corner of the common room, where she had left it after class. Sometimes, a resurgence of her nightmares brought back the overwhelming fear of theft she’d carried along with Tom Riddle’s diary, but she’d been fighting her paranoia the last several days by pointedly leaving her belongings out of her sight.Resolved to get a head start on next week’s readings, Ginny pulled out her Charms book and settled herself into her favorite chair, which is where she found herself several hours later, being shaken awake by Dean Thomas.“Weasley, come on, wake up,” he said, his voice low and worried. His face was startlingly close to hers; Ginny opened her eyes and closed them again almost immediately, struck with the memory of a death eater’s mask looming over her before being knocked back by the explosion of a small planet. She sat up and looked around. Her Charms book had fallen to the floor, and the soft light filtering through the windows revealed that aside from Seamus Finnigan hovering a few feet behind Dean, the common room was empty.“What time is it?” she asked Dean.“Just after eight,” he replied, “Ginny, is everything okay? You were- I dunno, you sounded like you were having a bad dream or something-”“I don’t know what you mean,” she lied, standing up and forcing Dean to take a step back. She liked Dean just fine, but she wasn’t about to go confiding in him. Especially not before breakfast. “I must’ve fallen asleep doing homework. I’d better go get dressed- thanks for waking me,” she threw over her shoulder, heading up the stairs to her dorm. Dean looked like he wanted to say something else, but as Ginny rounded the corner of the spiral staircase, she saw Seamus put one hand on his arm, pulling him back, and she breathed a sigh of relief. She hadn’t figured out yet what she would say to people when they worried about her, so the only available course of action was to avoid those people altogether.What little sleep she had gotten between bad dreams the night before had done Ginny more good than she was willing to admit. Even after running all the way down to the Great Hall only to grab a few pieces of toast and some bacon before dashing back up two flights of stairs and to barely make it to Transfiguration on time, she still managed to muddle through the double period with what she thought was a reasonably successful attempt at the Vanishing spells they’d been working on that week. Ginny had almost forgotten about her morning encounter with Dean Thomas by lunchtime, until she reached the Great Hall and saw him sitting across the table from Ron and Harry and Hermione. She stopped short in the doorway, ignoring the first year that crashed into her from behind. She’d planned to sit with them- the sixth year Gryffindors had Defense on Friday mornings, and she wanted to hear what they’d done in Snape’s class that day- but she couldn’t risk Dean saying something in front of them.“Ginny!” came a bright voice from behind her.“Hey, Luna,” she said, turning to face her friend, grateful for the distraction. “Mind if I sit with you today?”“Of course not,” said Luna, peering around the other girl to see what she had been looking at. “Oh. I wouldn’t want to sit with them this afternoon, either.”“Why? Wrackspurts?” Ginny asked, following Luna to the Ravenclaw table with one last glance over at her brother and his friends.“No,” said Luna seriously. “Ron was in a terrible mood this morning.”Ginny laughed. “Isn’t he always in a terrible mood?”“More terrible than usual, then,” said Luna with a smile.“I’ll just have to take your word for it,” said Ginny, reaching for something clever to say and falling short.“I don’t know if you can take my word,” said Luna, pensively. “But I would certainly let you borrow it for a little while.”“You’re a good friend, Luna, you know that?” said Ginny. She knew Luna was perceptive. Ginny was pretty good at hiding things that were bothering her, but Luna was almost as good at noticing when something was wrong. She just didn’t go about addressing it the way other people would.“It’s what anyone would do,” said Luna, reaching for a chicken sandwich. “Would you like to walk to Herbology together?”“More than anything,” said Ginny. “If we get there early enough, maybe we won’t have to share a table with Jack Sloper again, like last week.”Luna shook her head solemnly. “I’m sure he’s trying his best,” she said. While Sloper had been a passable beater for Gryffindor the year before, he was absolutely hopeless when it came to Herbology.“I know we should probably try to help him, and I do feel a little bad, but…”“You don’t want him to get puss in your hair again,” Luna finished practically.“And in my mouth, too!” Ginny grimaced, remembering the taste. “My hair I can wash, but I swear I was spitting out slime for three days.”“Maybe we’d better go now,” suggested Luna, standing. Ginny nodded.“Hey, Colin!” she called over to the Gryffindor table. “Creevey!” Both brothers looked up. “Herbology?” She tipped her head towards the door. Ron and Harry found the other Gryffindor irritating, and Ginny was willing to admit that he had been a little overwhelming their first year, but he always meant well, and once the muggle-born had gotten over some of the shock and fascination of being introduced to the wizarding world, the two had become good friends. And he was a much better lab partner than Sloper.“Hey, Ginny. Luna,” said Colin, catching up with the girls in the entrance hall. “Didn’t want to risk puss up your nose again?”Ginny thumped him in the arm with her book bag. “Oh, Merlin, don’t remind me.” Colin grinned.“I thought it was a good look for you, honestly. Michael Corner doesn’t know what he’s missing out on-”“Oh, Colin,” chastised Luna, but the rest of her sentence was drowned out by Ginny, chasing Colin out onto the grounds.“You little prat,” she shouted, brandishing her book bag threateningly before pushing through the front doors after her friend. “You absolute git, come back here, you don’t want to know what you’ll be missing when I'm done with you!”

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

It was nearly curfew by the time Ginny limped her way back to Gryffindor Tower, leaving a trail of dripping footprints behind her. It had been such a nice day, and even though Harry wasn’t holding Quidditch practices until next week, she’d thought that a little flying after Herbology might be just what she needed to clear her head. It was almost meditative- when she didn’t have a match to focus on, it was easy for Ginny to lose herself in the feeling of the broom between her legs, the grain of the wood under her palms, the wind rushing through her hair.She’d flown through dinner in single-minded laps around the pitch until the dark clouds that had been gathering above her broke open all at once with a crash of thunder and lightning that almost knocked her off her broom. She’d landed funny in the mud, and while the cramp in her foot was not nearly as bad as the blinding pain of the ankle she’d broken at the Ministry the year before, it was just similar enough to set Ginny’s nerves on end, and she half expected she would encounter death eaters around every corner. Twice, she jumped violently when a ghost drifted down the corridor in her peripheral vision, and by the time she made it to the portrait of the Fat Lady, it took a full two minutes for Ginny to calm down enough to remember the password. The common room was full. Friday night at the beginning of term meant that the only Gryffindor doing any homework was Hermione Granger, and with the first Hogsmeade weekend only a week away, students were less inclined to ration any sweets- or, in the case of a couple of seventh years, firewhiskey- that they’d brought from home. Ginny was grateful that the commotion allowed her to make her way up to her dorm without having to talk to anyone, but the noise was horrific. Someone had started a betting pool on the third-years’ Gobstones tournament, and the cheers and protestations could be heard clearly all the way up the stairs, even with the door closed.Ginny squeezed her damp hair out into her towel and changed into her pajamas before climbing into bed and closing the curtains of her four-poster around her. She leaned her head back against the wall, trying not to focus on the noise from below. Every muffled shout was almost Neville screaming under the Cruciatus, close enough for the sound to pull Ginny out of the grogginess of the last stunner she’d taken, but too far away for her to do anything but listen and wait. The closed curtains around her bed, that used to provide some sense of safety and comfort, made her feel like she was hiding, waiting for something that could rip them open at any moment. When Ginny closed her eyes, she could feel him again, just like that day in the Department of Mysteries. Mum had said that it was impossible, that she must have imagined it, but Ginny knew she had felt him arrive at the Ministry. Voldemort. Not quite the same as her Tom- uglier, stronger, more corrupted- but still there. Her Tom.Ginny reckoned she was probably the most qualified to know if she’d felt him or not, since she’d lived with him in her head for almost nine months, but she didn’t blame her Mum for not believing her. It would have been so much easier to forget, to believe that she’d imagined it. Ginny didn’t know what her Mum would think if she knew that sometimes, Ginny still missed having Tom in her diary to talk to, even though she knew who he was now. That sometimes Ginny wondered what sixteen-year-old Tom would have thought of her now, if the diary hadn’t been destroyed. What they would have talked about.
The walls were closing in again. She was back in the Chamber of Secrets, and the walls were closing in, slowly but surely, and there was Tom, standing in front of her, and she couldn’t remember how she had gotten here.
“Tom?” She asked. Tom was a diary, but somehow she wasn’t surprised that Tom was also a boy. Tom sneered at her, and everything she thought she knew crumbled.
“Tom?” The older boy mimicked her, his voice high and mocking. The walls were closing in, and Ginny couldn’t have moved if she’d wanted to. “The twins are teasing me again, Tom, what if Harry Potter doesn’t like me, Tom, you’re the only one who understands me, Tom, I think I’m losing my memory, Tom, Percy thinks I’m not myself, Tom, I think I’m going mad, Tom, what am I going to do, oh, Tom-”
There was a high, cold, laugh, though Tom Riddle hadn’t stopped reciting her diary entries back to her, his tone getting crueler and his face sharper and more distorted with every word. “I was so worried I wasn’t going to have any friends, Tom, I don’t know what I would do without you-”
The walls were closing in. Tom Riddle was making fun of her, the silly concerns of a silly little girl, and the walls were closing in, and he was getting closer until he was touching her, running one cold finger down the side of her face, and then his voice was all around her but he was only a figure in the distance, and the walls were closing in, and there was a death eater right in front of her raising their wand and she couldn’t move and the walls were closing in and there was a sting of a curse across her face that knocked her backwards with the force of it and the back of her head connected with something solid and everything went dark.
It took Ginny several moments to realize that the darkness was not because she had been stunned or killed, but because she had drawn the curtains shut around her bed; that the shouting she could hear was not the Order arriving in the Department of Mysteries, but an argument drifting up the stairs from the common room; that the laughter echoing around her was not Voldemort himself but Romilda Vane, a fourth year, cackling with one of her friends from Ginny’s year over whatever story she’d been telling. They must have come in after she had drifted off. It took another moment for Ginny to realize that she had not dreamed the dull pain at the back of her skull, but had in fact slammed her own head into the wall in her panic as she was waking up.She cursed softly, rubbing the back of her head with one hand before pulling open her curtains and putting on her bathrobe and slippers. Judging from the amount of noise still coming from the common room and the fact that her hair was still slightly damp from the rain, not too much time had passed, but Ginny didn’t want to try to sleep again until she was tired enough that she wouldn’t have to deal with the nightmares.She padded down the stairs and through the common room, avoiding the corner where a mildly intoxicated Dean Thomas was loudly recounting one of the times he had been punished by Umbridge last year to a captive audience of a dozen or so first- and second-years and Seamus Finnigan, who was swaying slightly every time he nodded his agreement. The clock on the mantle read just past midnight, long past curfew, but prefects only did rounds until one-thirty or so most nights, so as long as she could stay out of sight for an hour, she would be fine.The Fat Lady was dozing in her frame, so Ginny was spared from having to come up with any sort of explanation or excuse for leaving after curfew, and set off in a direction at random. It was rare to be the only person around in even a single corridor during the day, and the knowledge that she was one of maybe three or four people up and about in the entire castle sat strangely. Ginny wasn’t sure if it was a freeing feeling, or a frightening one, so she ignored it as best she could.Ginny had been wandering for almost half an hour, paying more attention to listening for footsteps on other floors than to where her own feet were taking her, when she found herself standing in front of Moaning Myrtle’s bathroom, not quite sure how she had gotten there. It certainly wasn’t a place she would have chosen to go on her own- the fact that she couldn’t actually remember painting messages on the walls of the corridor or escorting herself through a sink to her own death didn’t change the fact that this was where it had happened. She had avoided this corridor so religiously for so long that she didn’t have to think about it anymore. And now here she was.The door of the bathroom swung open before Ginny had time to react, and Draco Malfoy stepped out into the hallway, flinching immediately. He looked just as surprised to see Ginny as she was to see him, if not more; Ginny was still rooted to the floor, staring at the ghosts of painted letters on the wall, and only registered in passing that Malfoy had appeared, and that his face was red as if he’d been crying.“Weasley,” Malfoy snapped, his voice hoarse. Ginny started, just a little, his voice pulling her out of her trance.“Malfoy,” she replied, fighting to keep her voice even.“It’s past curfew. I’m going to have to report you-”“Oh, sod off, Malfoy,” said Ginny, automatically. “I-” She stopped, realizing too late that she didn’t have an excuse, or an argument, or the energy to come up with either. “I can’t deal with that right now, I just can’t,” she told him. “Please just leave me alone.”Malfoy, who had opened his mouth to respond, closed it again. Any other day, he would have laughed in her face, but for some reason, today her clear defeat only added to the weight on his shoulders rather than giving him an opportunity to relieve it.“Okay,” Malfoy said hoarsely, surprising both of them. He blinked and straightened his shoulders, glaring at the youngest Weasley. “Just this once. And only because it’s the end of my shift, and you’re not worth the time. Don’t let it happen again.”Ginny nodded, almost apologetically, almost believably, if they had been any other pair of students. There was something in her eyes that was almost like understanding, but Draco ignored it, turning on his heel and walking towards the dungeons. If he kept looking at her and that empty look on her face, he might change his mind and take House points anyway, and there was no reason to make extra work for himself. It really was the end of his shift. Still. There was something about the way that she’d looked at him that was different. Wrong, even. This was Weasley. Ginny Weasley. Draco didn’t think he could remember a time that he’d seen her where she didn’t look like she was burning up, inside and out, and if anything set her off there’d be more where that came from. All of the Weasleys were like that. Easy to get under their skin. But she had just looked… Empty. Even back in the Slytherin common room, watching Crabbe and Goyle push around a couple of the new first years, he couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something wrong about it.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

The Gryffindor common room had emptied out considerably by the time Ginny climbed back through the portrait hole at three. She hadn’t been able to bring herself to actually go into the bathroom, but she had sat for nearly an hour with her back against the opposite wall, waiting for something that she couldn’t quite place. Maybe answers. Maybe relief. Maybe for the Chamber to open again and swallow her up.Was Harry right? Was Malfoy up to something? He hadn’t seemed like someone who was plotting anything in particular, and as much animosity as she held towards Moaning Myrtle’s bathroom, it didn’t seem like the place one would go to formulate evil Death Eater plans. But why had he let her off with a warning? The Malfoy she knew would have delighted in catching her out in the halls, crowed at the excuse to take points from Gryffindor or assign detentions with Filch. Ginny hadn’t expected to talk her way out of it even if she had been able to come up with a witty retort, and what she had said amounted to begging- please, I can’t deal with this right now, just leave me alone - something that normally would have only given Malfoy the opportunity to kick her while she was down. It just didn’t make sense.Ginny nearly tripped over Colin Creevey, who was stretched out on his stomach engaged in a concentrated game of Exploding Snap with a girl in fourth year. Her vision was almost blurry from exhaustion, and her head felt thick and slow, as if it was filled with custard.“Sorry,” she mumbled, stepping over him.“My fault,” said Colin cheerfully, twisting around to look at her. “I guess the middle of the carpet isn’t the best place for a game, but when we started there was Gobstones over-” Colin was interrupted by an explosion quite close to his face- in gesturing, he had knocked over most of the Snap deck. “Goodnight!” he called after Ginny, mood unaltered.Ginny trudged sluggishly up the stairs. Her legs were heavy, and her back ached. She felt awful, physically worn out in almost every conceivable way, but there was a tiny, guilty sense of accomplishment all the same. The later she stayed up, the less likely she was to dream about either Tom Riddle or the Department of Mysteries, and this was later than she’d managed to be up in a long time. This worked. It wasn’t ideal, but it worked. She could make it work.Ginny pushed the door of the dormitory open quietly. The other girls were fast asleep, and she managed to make it to her bed without kicking anyone’s trunk or tripping over the robes strewn across the floor. She was asleep before her head hit the pillow. Ginny woke up late Saturday morning to an empty dormitory. For the first time in several days she was woken gradually by the mid-morning light flooding the room, not jolted roughly from restless sleep by her nightmares. She yawned.She was still tired physically, but emotionally better-rested than she had been in some time. Breakfast had been over for a few hours, but lunch would be starting any minute, so she traded her pajamas for jeans and a sweater. Luna had been wanting to work together on their Transfiguration assignments in the afternoon.Ginny had always believed that Ravenclaws were fully dedicated to their studies, and that academic achievement came easily to them, but her friendship with Luna had all but proven that this wasn’t the case. While obviously intelligent, she often found it difficult to focus on school work when she didn’t have Ginny to keep her on track, and sometimes Ginny would discover after several hours in the library that rather than working on an essay for Potions, her friend had been researching nifflers or nargles, or fact-checking the morning Prophet against the latest edition of the Quibbler .Ginny pulled her hair up into a messy bun on top of her head, which she secured with a molting quill from under her bed, and slung her bag over one shoulder before heading down to the Great Hall. Draco followed the rest of the Slytherin Quidditch team off of the pitch, forcing a laugh at a joke that he hadn’t heard. The Dark Mark on his arm itched distractingly, but for all his boasting on the train, he didn’t think that pulling up the sleeve of his uniform to scratch at it in public would be the best move. He’d gotten another tersely-worded letter from his father that morning at breakfast, asking carefully veiled questions about his “studies” and his “social engagements”, letting him know that their “guests” were also very interested in his progress. Draco had burned the letter in the locker room before practice, poking it into the wood stove with his wand and watching it disintegrate entirely.It was all well and good to tell your friends how the Dark Lord was staying in your house, relying on your family, but it was another thing entirely to have to actually deal with it. Draco didn’t think he was dealing with it as well as he could have, and he didn’t think he was the only one. His father wrote him at least twice a week, the letters shorter and less believable each time. Draco could tell that he was getting worried. His mother hadn’t written him at all since the start of the school year, and in the weeks leading up to September 1st, had been barely able to look at Draco without practically bursting into tears.Draco scoffed, then hurriedly looked around to make sure nobody had noticed his external reaction to his own thoughts.Anyway, she hadn’t really burst into tears. Her version of an emotional response was a slightly concerned expression and then looking away almost immediately. But it meant the same thing. She didn’t think he could handle it. Neither did Father, clearly, or the Dark Lord, or he wouldn’t be getting all these letters.Privately, Draco wasn’t sure he could handle his assignment either. Complaining about the incompetence of your headmaster was one thing; killing him- Draco could hardly bring himself to think the word- that was something entirely different. Not impossible. Not unthinkable. He could do it, that wasn’t the problem at all. He just needed time, that was all. He needed time. He needed to write his father back before the Dark Lord punished him for his son’s failure to comply.Draco was so lost in his own thoughts that he walked directly into someone in the entrance to the Great Hall.“Watch where you’re going,” he sneered automatically. It was Weasley, he realized. Only one student had hair like that.“You walked into me , Malfoy,” the redhead spit back. He should have taken points last night. He would, next time, as she was so clearly ungrateful for his mercy in this instance.“Well, then maybe you should stay out of my way, Weasley , instead of standing like a flobberworm in the middle of the entry hall waiting for someone to step on you.”Weasley rolled her eyes and pushed past him. “Seems like you’re the one who’s in the way, ferret,” she threw over her shoulder.Draco opened his mouth, but she was too far away for a reply to be worth it, so he turned on his heel and followed his teammates to the Slytherin table, sitting across from Pansy Parkinson and reaching across Goyle to serve himself stew.“What’s with the Weaselette today?” asked Zabini with a smirk.“Maybe she’s finally realized that she’s unbearably ugly,” simpered Pansy, watching the Gryffindor join Loony Lovegood at the Ravenclaw table.“Or maybe she’s worried that someone might point out that a blood-traitor like her really can’t afford to be going around being such a little bitch to everyone all the time,” was Zabini’s contribution.“Draco?” prompted Pansy.“She’s a Weasley. She doesn’t need an excuse to be the way she is,” he sneered. “She probably can’t help it.” Whatever misguided sympathy- or pity, more likely- that Draco might have felt for the younger girl the night before was gone. This was Weasley, he reminded himself. This is the girl who put a Bat-Bogey Hex on you last year in Umbridge’s office.He wrinkled his nose at the memory. And then they had gone off to the Ministry, he remembered. That’s what Father had said. “That Weasley brat,” he had called her. Or her brother, one of the two. They’d both been there. It was almost amusing- almost- to imagine some of the more irritating Death Eaters taken down by the same hex that the ginger witch had used on him only hours earlier. Draco had never liked Macnair, in any case.“What’s she done now?” asked Pansy, twisting to look back at the Ravenclaw table. Draco realized that he’d been staring.“Who?”“Weasley. Or is that not who you were ogling?” Pansy’s voice drifted somewhere between biting and whiny. Draco shrugged.“Just lost in thought, I guess.” He glanced back at the Ravenclaw table, to see if anyone else had noticed, but Weasley and Lovegood were gone.“Are you going into Hogsmeade next weekend?” Pansy asked the group.“Probably,” replied Blaise. “I’m going to need to restock on firewhiskey if I’m going to make it through the term. This Slug Club business- I can’t believe the old fool is even allowed to teach classes, much less- ‘take students under his wing’? Is that what he’s calling it?”“You don’t have to go, you know. If you hate it so much.” Draco thought he had kept most of the bitterness out of his voice, but from the look Pansy shot him across the table, he hadn’t been as successful as he would have liked.“Ah, but I do.” Blaise’s voice was icy, carefully polite. “I know you’ve never had to work for your rank, but not all of us have fathers who have been playing both sides since before we were born. Some of us need our own backup plan.”Draco smarted. “I have business to attend to,” he said by way of retort. “Crabbe? Goyle?” The other boys stood and followed him out of the Great Hall. He didn’t have a plan, but by the time he was halfway to the dungeons decided that he should start Slughorn’s essay if he wanted time to get it done at all. He’d missed the prefects meeting on the train, and as a result had been assigned shifts every night this weekend.“I’m heading to the library,” Draco announced. Crabbe and Goyle hesitated. “You don’t have to come,” he said, smirking at the relief evident on their faces. “I’ll see you at dinner.” As much as he would have hated to admit it, Draco enjoyed Potions, even when Severus Snape was not the professor teaching it, and the essay on Felix Felicis was interesting, so it wasn’t until just after nine that Draco tore himself away from his books. He glanced at the library clock and began packing his books; his shift began at ten-thirty, so he had a little time, but he wanted to drop his bag off at his dorm and head to the kitchens for a snack beforehand.The walk to the dungeons from the library was a familiar one, but even making use of every trick-door and shortcut he knew of, the trip took more than ten minutes on a good day, when the moving staircases were timed just right so that he didn’t have to wait on any of the landings for more than a few seconds for one of them to line up right. Today was not one of those days, and it was twenty minutes before Draco finally found himself in the cool stone corridors of the dungeons, announcing the password (Wormwood) to a long stretch of empty wall, and stepping down into the spacious Slytherin common room. Most of the older students had already figured out which unused classrooms they were the least likely to be discovered in, and spent more of their free time in those, particularly on the weekends, but younger students were clustered around chess boards or study groups in various corners of the room, hard to distinguish in the pale green light.Draco made his way down one of the curving hallways to his dormitory, stepping past Crabbe and Zabini’s beds to get to his own. Zabini’s section of the room was immaculate, as always, but it looked as though Crabbe had emptied the entire contents of his trunk onto his bed. Draco dropped his bag next to his trunk, and had almost turned to leave when he recognized his mother’s handwriting on an envelope on his bed. He sat down, turning it over in his hand, and was about to open it when the door banged open, against the wall, revealing Theo Nott leaning heavily on the doorframe.“Oi. Draco. Draaaacooooo,” the other boy slurred.“Nott.” Draco regarded him cooly.“You had mail, at dinner- there was an owl-” Draco did his best to raise one eyebrow, the way his father did when he needed to communicate to someone that they were being particularly obtuse, but found he didn’t have the talent for it. He settled for a neutral yet disapproving expression instead.“Oh, you found it. Good,” said Theo, sliding along the wall until he’d reached his bed. Draco made a face.“Don’t throw up on my shoes,” he told the other boy. Snape would’ve put a stop to this sort of behavior, but Draco had been avoiding his godfather since the beginning of the school year, and didn’t feel as though this was the time to close the distance between them.Theo laughed. “My father would kill me,” he said. “He might actually kill me.” He trailed off, examining the wall behind his bed with great interest.“Just make sure you’re at breakfast tomorrow,” said Draco, standing. “United front, and all that.” One of the prefects first year had made a big deal about this sort of thing from the very beginning- Farley, her name had been, or something like that. House unity had been big their first year, and maybe more so their second. Draco had laughed at the time, but over the years, the idea of sticking together as a House when nobody else in the school would give them the time of day began to make more and more sense.“Yeah, of course. Of course,” said Theo, unconvincingly.“Great,” said Draco. “I’m off, then.” He slid the letter into the pocket of his robes and left Theo to his own devices, making his way back through the common room and heading for the kitchens. Just because he was a prefect didn’t mean he had to deal with the idiocy of the people who passed for his friends.He didn’t open the letter until he had coerced several house elves into preparing him a sandwich and a warm bowl of stew, and then he sat himself down at the long table that mirrored Slytherin’s position in the Great Hall above, fidgeting with the edge of the envelope.

Dearest Draco,

The letter began.

Professor Snape informs me that your studies have been going well. I was pleased to hear from him, as your father and I have been quite worried about you. It is not like you to leave letters from your parents unanswered, and I would worry about the kind of family that had raised a man with such poor manners. Do not forget that you have been entrusted with our high expectations. We hope to hear from you soon.

Best,

Mother

Draco resisted the urge to throw the letter into the large fireplace, or to use it to throttle a house-elf. He had hoped that a letter from his mother would be at least a little more genuine than those he had received from his father, but evidently the Dark Lord had not neglected Narcissa in the pressure he was applying to the Malfoys. High expectations, indeed.Draco kicked the table leg as hard as he could, sending his spoon clattering across the table. His foot throbbed, but only for a moment. He bit his lip, telling himself that the lump rising in his throat was from the pain.Suddenly aware of how long he had sat over the letter, Draco checked his watch. Ten-thirty three. He cursed under his breath and stuffed the letter into the pocket of his trousers, finishing the last of his sandwich in a couple of bites and one hard swallow that did nothing to ease the tightness in his chest. He left his dishes as they were on the table and headed up into the entry hall to begin his rounds, climbing the staircase that would bring him up just off the grand staircase in the entry hall.The castle was silent, for the most part. Draco encountered Mrs. Norris only once in the first hour of his rounds, on the second floor, lingering near one of the moving staircases. He resisted the very strong urge to kick her off of the landing, and then, as she was the only living thing he had seen in some time- and even the ghosts had been scarce so far- he continued on towards Moaning Myrtle’s bathroom. He had been steadily crumpling his mother’s letter in his pocket for close to forty-five minutes, and felt that very shortly he would need some other kind of release, and shouting his frustrations- he would never admit to actually crying- in Myrtle’s bathroom was the closest thing available.Draco had just decided on this course of action when he saw a flash of red hair down the corridor ahead of him, which disappeared just as soon as he had seen it. He hesitated for a moment, more to gather himself than anything, then ventured after the youngest Weasley. He had explicitly told her not to be out past curfew again. He was a prefect, and she was nothing more than a blood-traitor who felt that, because she was acquainted with the famous Harry Potter, the rules didn’t apply to her.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

“Merlin, can you believe the nerve of him?” Ginny demanded of Luna, dropping her book bag onto the bench between them with a thump. Luna looked up curiously. “Malfoy,” Ginny explained. “Almost ran me down just now, and then yelled at me about being in the way. Unbelievable.” She angrily spooned herself some porridge.“Maybe he hasn’t been sleeping well,” suggested Luna generously.“Or maybe he’s always been an arse,” said Ginny. Luna shrugged. “I haven’t been sleeping great, either, and you don’t see me going around snapping at people. Hey!” She glared at a tiny first year who had been about to pull a tray of muffins out of her reach. “Thank you,” she added pointedly, selecting one of the blueberry ones. “Don’t laugh. I can feel you laughing at me,” she said without turning to look at her friend. Luna adopted a more serious expression.“Hey,” said Colin from behind them, dropping onto the bench on Ginny’s other side. “I- no, Dennis, go sit with your own friends, come on,” he called. His brother, who had been trailing several feet behind him, stuck his tongue out before turning back towards the Gryffindor table. Colin rolled his eyes and plucked a pumpkin pasty from a platter with his fingers. “ ‘ave ‘ou starred M’gongall’s ‘omework ‘et?” He inquired with his mouth full.“The essay or the reading?” asked Ginny. Colin shrugged. “I read one of the chapters last night- most of it, anyway. It wasn’t too bad. What’s the essay, again? I haven’t started- Gryffindors don’t have class again until Tuesday.”“Two feet on the practical uses of switching spells,” said Luna.“Oh, good. I think most of what I read was the theory behind it, but maybe they go more into it in chapter eight.”Colin swallowed hard and nodded. “I started with that one, because it seemed more like it had to do with the essay than chapter seven, and it’s got pretty much everything we need. I wrote a bunch of stuff in the margins, so if you guys want we can use my book for notes and stuff.” He picked up another pasty. “On the condition that we work outside. I can’t spend all day in the library.”“That’s a lovely idea, Colin,” said Luna.“Thanks,” Colin tried to say, and abruptly choked on his pasty.The trio made their way out onto the grounds. Ginny had been concerned that the ground would be muddy from the storm the night before, but the sun had dried up almost any evidence of the rain in most places. They settled under a tree near the lake. Luna, who was prematurely good at conjuring spells, though only when she was in the right mind for them, produced a sort of picnic blanket, checkered pink and blue with yellow flowers scattered haphazardly throughout the pattern, which they laid on the ground against the base of the tree, placing their bags on the corners to keep it from blowing away.Ginny lay on her stomach in the center of the blanket to outline her essay in small writing at the top of her parchment, while Colin made further annotations in his textbook, mumbling aloud some of the more important notes as he did so. Luna, who never outlined anything, had gone down to the shore to watch for interesting fish, but when Ginny looked up after a few moments, she seemed to be attempting to hold a conversation with the Giant Squid.“What do you think of Snape teaching defense?” asked Colin after about twenty minutes. He had gotten bored with his textbook and was laying on his back next to Ginny, staring up at the dappled light coming through the branches of the tree.“I think it’s too bad Harry and Hermione aren’t keeping up with the DA,” said Ginny. “I mean, I’m glad we’re learning practical magic again, but it’s not nearly as much fun as training last year. Can I see your book for a second?”Colin passed her the Transfiguration book, and Ginny flipped through it to the section on switching spells before adding a few final notes to the margins of her planning.“I just think it’s weird seeing him out of the dungeons, mostly,” said Colin. “Even if he was a good teacher, I think it would feel just a little bit wrong, don’t you?”Ginny nodded, screwing the lid carefully onto her ink before setting it aside, along with her quill and parchment. “He’s too gloomy for anything else.” She rolled over so that she and Colin were both on their backs, side by side. “He always covers all the windows, though, so my personal theory that he would be burned by direct sunlight has not been disproven.” Colin laughed.“What’s so funny?” asked Luna, rejoining her friends on the blanket.“Just Snape,” said Colin. Luna tipped her head to one side.“I don’t find Professor Snape very funny at all.”“I find he inspires humor more than he embodies it,” replied Ginny.“Christ, it’s been ages since we’ve had a Professor who was funny on purpose,” mused Colin. “It had to have been Lupin, right?”“Sprout makes jokes sometimes,” said Ginny.“Right, but that doesn’t mean she’s funny.”“True. There are only so many plant-based puns you can make before it gets old.”“Do you ever think about getting old?” asked Luna.“I don’t know,” said Ginny. “I used to imagine what it would be like to be my mum, although I don’t think that’s the same thing. I wanted to grow up to play Quidditch when I was a kid, but you think seventh-years are old when you’re six, so I don’t think that counts, either.”“I don’t,” said Colin, as if he was surprised to realize this. “I mean, I barely think about what’s going to happen next week, so thirty years from now is ridiculously out of reach.”“Luna?” prompted Ginny, after a moment.“Oh, I don’t know. I used to wonder how I would feel someday when I was older than my mum was. I think that would be strange. But lately I’m not so sure. I love to imagine it, just the little moments, like living in a little cottage by the sea, and old friends stopping by for tea on Sundays… But then, we went to the Ministry last year, and anything could have happened. It sort of changes your perspective, doesn’t it?”The trio sat considering this for a few minutes, before Colin finally broke the silence.“Boy does it ever,” he said. “Do we have to think about it just now? We all still have essays to write, you know.” He retrieved his quill and parchment and moved to sit up against the tree.“Colin’s right. We should try to get these done tonight, Luna, you haven’t even started.” Ginny stood up. “I’m going to take a walk for a minute, see if I can get back into the mindset for homework.” She strode off towards the lake, fighting to release the tension in her shoulders. She was not quite shaking, but she was very close to it, and her breath kept catching in her chest. Anything could have happened . It’s not as if this was new information, she reminded herself. And they were all fine. Everyone except Sirius, of course, but then, he was an adult, and that was somehow different. Ginny knew that this logic was entirely unsound, but it still helped, a little. She closed her eyes and let the cool breeze off the water tug at her hair and her robes, lifting her chin into it. She turned back to look up at her friends. Colin had balanced his ink in a knot in one of the roots of the tree, and was attempting to use his knees as a surface on which to write his essay, scratching carefully so as not to pierce the parchment. His homework was frequently dotted with little holes, and his pants and bedspread were more often than not marked with inky constellations that showed where he most often attempted to complete his assignments. Luna was stretched out on the blanket, examining the grass in front of her. Ginny shook her head, a smile coming to her lips, and headed back up the hill.“Luna, come on, you have to write something,” she said when she’d reached the blanket. “What kind of a Ravenclaw are you, anyway?”The blonde witch stuck her tongue out at her friend, but began to gather her supplies all the same. Ginny sat down next to Colin, leaning her head on his shoulder in time to watch him put the dot of an i through the parchment and into his thigh. He winced a little, and Ginny laughed.“Hey, at least I’ve started,” he teased.“I’ve started! I outlined,” protested Ginny. “I’m practically finished.”“”Practically” being the operative word,” Colin pointed out.“I’ll get going soon. I’m waiting for inspiration.”“That’s what I was doing,” said Luna.“No, it wasn’t,” said Ginny.“No, it wasn’t,” she admitted with a shrug. “Worth a shot, though.” She lay back with her head in Ginny’s lap, balancing her quill and parchment on her stomach and bracing Colin’s book against her knees.“I can’t write if you sit like that,” said Ginny.“Oh, I thought you were practically finished?” said Luna, blinking up at her innocently.Ginny laughed. “Alright, have it your way. I’ll figure something out.” She ran her hand through Luna’s long, loose, hair, weaving the white-blonde strands through her fingers, watching Colin scratching at his parchment. He leaned his head against hers affectionately. “What if I just didn’t do it?” Ginny mused.“The essay?” asked Colin. “The essay for McGonagall’s class? Assigned to us by Minerva McGonagall? The essay that we’re turning in to our Head of House, that Professor McGonagall?”“Yeah.”Colin mock-shuddered. “I’d rather be petrified again.”Ginny froze, her fingers still in Luna’s hair. “Don’t say that.”“No, really, I think it would be better. I can’t even imagine what she would say if you didn’t turn anything in, but I think my only options would be to leave school immediately afterwards, or to die of embarrassment on the spot. I think I would rather face the basilisk. The consequences are much easier to live with, I should know.” Colin laughed.“Ginny? Are you okay?” asked Luna, looking at her upside down from Ginny’s lap. Ginny forced a smile and began carefully combing through her friend’s hair again.“Yeah, of course,” she said. “I was just surprised.”“It wasn’t your fault, you know,” said Colin, leaning out a little to look at Ginny. Ginny looked away for a second, blinking heavily. Sometimes, she thought it might be easier if her friends blamed her for what had happened, even just a little. But Colin wasn’t capable of lying about that sort of thing.“No, I just meant, surprised that you would be able to stand the idea of not being able to talk for that long,” she teased, elbowing him a little. Colin laughed, although Ginny could tell he was only doing it to go along with her deflection.“Are you kidding? I didn’t have to do any homework for months . It was very worth it.”“Well, it’s just too bad then that there aren’t anymore basilisks around to get you out of things,” said Ginny, returning her head to Colin’s shoulder. “You’ll just have to suck it up and write the damn thing.”“I thought it was you that was trying to get out of the essay,” Luna pointed out. Ginny moved her hand from Luna’s hair to her mouth.“Shhh…. Just let me have this one.”The sun was setting across the grounds. Ginny was half dozing against Colin’s shoulder with Luna’s head in her lap, loosely braiding small sections of the other witch’s blonde hair. Colin was chewing his lower lip, trying to add the last few sentences to his essay, while Luna had written about half of hers and was paging through Colin’s copy of their Transfiguration textbook, looking at the pictures.“Hey, maybe we should think about going in to dinner soon,” said Colin suddenly, looking up from his essay. “It’s getting late.”“Mm, but it’s so pretty out here at sunset,” said Luna, lowering her book and gazing up at the dusky sky through the branches of the tree above them.“Yes, but it’s so yummy in there,” countered Colin. “I’ve been craving shepherd’s pie since nine in the morning.”“Shepherd’s pie for breakfast? Gross,” said Ginny.“Yeah, that’s why I didn’t eat shepherd’s pie for breakfast,” said Colin. “I only wanted to.”“I don’t know that that’s better.”“Okay, if you guys are going to ruin it, then we’ll go inside,” said Luna, closing the book and tossing it aside.“No, don’t get up yet, I’m almost done,” said Ginny, tugging gently on the braid she’d been working on. “No, you can’t get up either,” she said to Colin, who had started to lean forward from the tree. “I’m comfortable here.”“What if I’m not comfortable?” Colin protested.“Your comfort means nothing to me.”“Oh, okay. That’s fine. I’m glad we all know where we stand.”“She just said you weren’t allowed to stand, weren’t you listening?” said Luna.“I’m done,” said Ginny, lifting Luna by her shoulders and scooting out from under her in order to stand up. “Hey, here's a thought I just had- how would you guys feel about going to dinner?”Colin threw his textbook at her.Ginny, Colin, and Luna spent another couple of hours after dinner in an empty classroom on the ground floor, where Colin proofread Luna’s essay while Luna doodled in the margins of his. Ginny would never let either of them read over her essays, but she made changes herself, as she went- every other paragraph had her returning to the previous one to scratch out a word or a sentence and write in a different one. She didn’t think she had ever turned in an assignment that wasn’t more crossed out and rewritten than it was original words, but the alternative was to write out an entire second draft, which she refused to do.It was eight-forty-five when Ginny finally tore the outline off of the top of her parchment and put the final essay back into her bag, but it was another hour before she, Luna, and Colin crept giggling into the corridor. The discovery of a chalkboard on the back wall of the classroom had led to an eraser fight, leaving all three of them covered in chalk dust, the rectangular marks standing out stark against their black robes.They split up at the Great Hall, Luna heading for a back staircase that she claimed was a faster route to the Ravenclaw tower, but which Ginny and Colin suspected was just the more interesting one. Ginny and Colin climbed the main staircase, Colin recounting for the third time the story of an art museum he’d visited over the summer, when Ginny stopped. She hadn’t been able to shake the memories of first year that had been running through her head since Colin’s comment about petrification.“You know what, I think I left my quill back in the classroom, actually,” she said, interrupting Colin just as he reached the part of his story about the security guard that he had thought for sure was part giant. He stopped.“D’you want me to come back with you? Or I can wait-”“No, it’s past curfew,” said Ginny. “You go on, I’ll catch up, or meet you back in the common room.” She turned around before he could argue, walking back towards the corridor they’d come from until she was sure he had continued up the stairs, and then she doubled back to another staircase that would take her up to the second floor. She had to know. She had to know if she could still feel him, if she remembered anything about the bathroom other than being rescued from it.Ginny took a somewhat convoluted path to Myrtle’s bathroom, avoiding larger corridors or places Colin was likely to end up if he went back to check on her, but finally she stood in front of the same wall where Mrs. Norris had first been discovered all those years ago. The corridor wasn’t as flooded as it had been, that day, although the floor was slightly damp, as though it recently had been. Ginny hesitated for a long time, remembering coming across the crowd of students, and hearing about what had happened, and finding paint down the front of her robes and not knowing how it had gotten there, but unable to remember anything more. After several long minutes, she pushed open the door and walked into the bathroom.It could have been yesterday. There was the stall where she had tried to dispose of the diary, the door still hanging lopsided from one hinge. There was the seam, if you knew what to look for, that would open into a fifty-foot drop if you knew what you were doing. Ginny knew she had opened the passageway herself, on at least one occasion, but possibly dozens more, but she had to check each tap until she found the one scratched with the rough image of a serpent that marked the entrance. She stared at it, wondering if there was any part of her that still knew how to open it, any muscle memory associated with the parseltongue, the way there seemed to be for having Tom in her head. She could almost feel it, standing in that bathroom. It wasn’t a good feeling; it was thick, and heavy, and sometimes hard to breathe; but it was comfortable in its own familiar way.The door swung open behind her, and Ginny spun around, almost slipping on the slick floor but catching herself on the sink just in time. Malfoy stood in the doorway, prefects’ badge pinned to his Slytherin jumper, smirk plastered across his pointed face.“Two nights in a row, Weasley?” He clicked his tongue. “I would’ve expected better from you.”Ginny thought that his sudden appearance should have pulled her from the feeling of slowly sinking back into Tom’s grasp, but it hadn’t, so she looked at him almost blankly for a long minute before responding.“You should lower your expectations,” she said, imbuing the words with a bite that she didn’t quite feel. Malfoy’s face suddenly soured.“And you should learn to do as you’re told,” he countered. It was a weak retort, but Ginny didn’t have a better one. She snorted.“I’m sure you would’ve loved that.” She couldn’t even remember what things Tom might have told her to do, what worse things he might have been planning. She had let the snake out, she knew that much. She had let the snake petrify Colin and Hermione and Penelope Clearwater and Justin Finch-Fletchley.Malfoy blinked, confused. “...What?”“Nothing.” Ginny sighed. “Are you going to take points, or something, or can I go?”“What are you doing in here?” Malfoy asked, stepping fully into the bathroom and letting the door close behind him.“What were you doing in here last night?” Ginny countered.“I asked first.”Ginny fingered the wand in her pocket, considering. She could hex him, take the detention, and be done with it. But it was late, and she hadn’t slept properly in over a week, and nobody could blame her if the exhaustion made her more willing to let people in, even if they were the wrong people. Maybe especially if they were the wrong people. At least this time, she knew she still had control of her own mind. And who was he going to tell? Nobody whose opinion she cared about would believe a word he said against her.“I was trying to see if I remembered what it felt like,” she said simply.“What what felt like?” asked Malfoy. He looked at her with slowly dawning understanding. Ginny shrugged. The blond boy gave a short, disbelieving laugh. “You’re not telling me that Gryffindor’s princess misses being the heir of Slytherin.”“No,” said Ginny. “Not exactly, not that. I don’t know, but not that.” Malfoy was still staring at her as if he couldn’t decide whether to be shocked or amused. “I don’t miss what he made me do, or waking up in the Great Hall and realizing that I couldn’t remember how I got there, or how panicked everyone was all the time, or all the fear and confusion about what was going on or who might be next. I just- I mean, I was very young,” Ginny explained, suddenly feeling as if she had to backtrack, explain herself. “I was very young. And I didn’t- I mean, I didn’t have friends, exactly, and my brothers never talked to me, and I’d been looking forward to Hogwarts for so long and it wasn’t exactly how I’d imagined, and then, I had that diary. And I know who he was, and I know how it ends, but sometimes- I don’t know, I wonder, I guess. What might have happened.”“You miss him ,” said Malfoy, his face carefully neutral. Ginny hesitated, then nodded.“Not Voldemort, never Voldemort. But I never knew him as Voldemort, he was always just Tom, and even though I know it was all a lie, he was almost the only important person in my life for most of a year, and it still feels wrong, sometimes, to not have that.”“That’s dark, Weasley,” Malfoy said, leaning against the wall. “I’m assuming your brothers didn’t take this well.”Ginny shook her head. “Nobody else knows.”Malfoy nodded, less as commentary on their conversation and more to buy himself some time.“If it’s any comfort,” he said, “I don’t think you would get along with him now.”“No?” said Ginny wryly. “I can’t imagine what would make you think that.”“Well, he’s not as friendly as they say.”Ginny raised one eyebrow. “You know this from experience.”Malfoy shrugged.“Well, I’m sorry,” Ginny said. Malfoy laughed, hard and cold. It wasn't a reassuring sound, but neither did it leave room for further sympathy or questions.“Don’t bother,” he said. “You should get back to your tower, Weasley. It’s past curfew.”Ginny hesitated, but relented after only a moment. “You’re not going to report me?”“Just this once,” said Malfoy, holding open the door and waiting for her to walk into the corridor. “It wouldn’t be worth the time.”

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Ginny soon found that she no longer had to come up with excuses for the bags under her eyes. Her professors had decided that in preparation for the O.W.L.s, still eight months away, the fifth years should be drowning in homework every night, and even with extra Quidditch practice on top of it all, Ginny was far from the only student in her year who could be found half-conscious in the common room at all hours of the night. Although her nightmares still left her waking almost every morning with strangely mixed feelings of nostalgia and paranoia in her chest, Ginny rarely woke during the night, and in any case found herself too exhausted from her schoolwork and Harry’s newly intensified practice regimine to even consider tiring herself out further with late-night strolls around the castle.Katie Bell had been sent to St. Mungo’s following the most recent Hogsmeade weekend, when she had apparently had an unfortunate encounter with a cursed piece of jewelry, and although Dean Thomas had proved in the past week to be a decent Chaser in her stead, Harry had become almost as obsessive in Quidditch practices as he was at coming up with theories about what Draco Malfoy was up to.Ginny hadn’t encountered Malfoy in weeks. In the first week after their discussion in Moaning Myrtle’s bathroom, she had occasionally at meals she had felt a prickling on the back of her neck and turned to see him sitting across the Great Hall, but he had always been engaged in a conversation with his Slytherin cronies or intently serving himself some kind of pudding. The looks, or Ginny’s imagination, had subsided since the incident with Katie Bell, but Ginny had caught herself in recent weeks sneaking her own curious glances towards the Slytherin table.Malfoy had begun to look even paler than usual, and though Hermione was always quick to shut down Harry’s speculation about what the blond boy was plotting, Ginny privately agreed that he seemed to have more on his mind than the next Quidditch match. Whether or not that meant that Malfoy was ‘up to something’, in the sense that Harry meant it, she didn’t know.
She was back in the Department of Mysteries. She couldn’t remember how she had gotten there, only that she had to run, had to keep running, until she didn’t know when.
She ran through the room with the brains, with Ron and Luna ensnared in their tentacles, but she didn’t have time to stop.
She burst through the door at the end of the room, and ran down the middle of the Chamber. She was running down the center of the Chamber. She was back in the Chamber.
She could feel the stone floor pressing into her cheek, could tell even with her eyes closed that Tom was standing over her.
“Ginny.” Tom spoke in Dean Thomas’ voice. “Ginny, wake up.”
A Death Eater appeared behind her and seized her shoulder. Ginny’s eyes snapped open.
She was in the Gryffindor common room, her cheek resting on the table next to her Charms textbook. Twilight filtered through the tower’s windows. Dean Thomas was shaking her shoulder.“Harry’s going to have a fit if we’re late for practice,” he said, once he realized she was awake.“Practice?” asked Ginny, muddling her way back to the real world. She blinked several times, then looked around the common room to confirm that she hadn’t slept through to the next morning. “Isn’t it Friday?”“Yeah, but he said yesterday afternoon that he wanted to get in an extra one before the match against Slytherin on Sunday,” Dean reminded her.“Shit.”“He only left a couple of minutes ago, don’t worry,” said Dean, as Ginny rushed to stuff her books back into her bag.“I’ll be down in a second, you should go!” Ginny called over her shoulder as she took the stairs to her dorm two at a time.“I’ll wait, it’s fine!” Dean shouted after her. She didn’t waste time arguing, banging open the door of her dormitory and dropping her bag on her bed, letting the contents spill across her comforter. She had a moment of panic- what if someone found her diary? - before she remembered that Tom’s diary was long gone. She pulled her practice gear and her broom out from under her bed and dashed back down the stairs.“Hey, hey, hey,” Dean said, spinning around just in time to catch her by the shoulders when she tripped down the last two stairs and fell into the common room. “Slow down. Take a breath. I’m sure Harry will understand if we’re late just this once.”Harry was pacing the locker room when they arrived, already changed. He looked up when they came in.“Great,” he said, his voice tense. “Now that we’re all finally here, we can get started,” he said, avoiding eye contact.Ginny and Dean exchanged a look. “I told you so,” murmured Ginny, before hurrying to the other side of the room to get changed.“We’re going to start with drills,” said Harry, ignoring them as turned to the blackboard and started scratching out a list. “Peakes, Coote, I want you working with one bludger- switch off between attacking and defending the Chasers. If there’s time, we’ll get them both out and you can both play defensive. Chasers, we’re going to run the same passing drills as Tuesday, but with scoring. Ron, you’ll obviously be trying to… prevent that,” Harry finished lamely. He looked around. “Alright, let’s get out there.”The practice ran late enough that Jimmy Peakes and Ritchie Coote, the Beaters, had time for both drills and had moved to the far end of the pitch to hit one of the bludgers back and forth between the two of them. Ginny felt that the Chasers, too, were in good form- she liked Demelza, and they had established a good rapport in the two months they’d been playing together, and while Dean didn’t quite have the instincts of Katie Bell, he took cues well, and with only a week of practices was managing to fill in the gaps in their maneuvers pretty well.The problem was Ron. His performance at the beginning of practice had been passable, at best, and had gradually grown more erratic, culminating in seven scores in a row, after which he dropped any pretense of technique and punched an oncoming Demelza Robins in the mouth. Ginny followed the other girl to the ground.“It was an accident, I’m sorry, Demelza, really sorry!” Ron shouted, diving after them. “I just-”“Panicked,” said Ginny, shooting him a glare before pointedly turning her back in order to get a better look at Demelza’s lip. “You prat, Ron, look at the state of her!”“I can fix that,” said Harry, who had landed just behind Ron. “And Ginny, don’t call Ron a prat, you’re not the captain of this team-”“Well, you seemed to busy to call him a prat, and I thought someone should,” Ginny shot back. Harry had closed his eyes and was rubbing his temples. He sighed.“Alright, everyone, that’s enough for today.” Harry called down the Beaters, who stayed back to wrangle the bludger back into the case while Ginny and Dean traipsed back towards the locker room with the rest of the team.“You played well,” she said to Dean as she made her way down the bench to where she had left her shoes. “I can see why Harry picked you.”“Thanks,” said Dean. “I think I’m finally getting the hang of it.”“How’s Seamus?” Ginny asked. Everyone except Dean knew that his best friend had had a crush on him since their third year, but the two had barely spoken to each other since Dean had been picked to replace Katie Bell. Seamus Finnigan had also tried out for the team at the beginning of the year. Dean shrugged.“He’ll come around,” he said. “He’s my best mate.” Still, he looked a little uncomfortable. “Want to walk back to the common room together?” There were only four of them left in the locker room, and Harry was pretty obviously waiting to be alone with Ron.“Sure,” said Ginny.“How have you been?” Dean asked, as they climbed the grand staircase. “The DA broke down so quickly last year, and you’ve been so busy lately, I never got the chance to ask you about the Ministry. That must’ve been rough.”Ginny glanced over at Dean. His sympathy seemed genuine, not prying, like most people. She laughed it off anyway. “I would do it all over again if it meant I could get out of all the homework Flitwick’s been assigning,” she joked. Dean laughed.“I remember my fifth year. McGonagall was the worst of it, we had essays almost every weekend by the time Christmas holidays came around.”“Oh, Merlin, don’t get me started,” said Ginny.“I can imagine,” said Dean. “I feel like I only ever see you when you’ve nodded off somewhere.”“That can’t be true,” said Ginny. “If it were, I think I would feel better rested.”Dean laughed. “Shortcut?” he offered, holding back the tapestry for her. Ginny climbed through. “I’m glad we’ve gotten the chance to talk, even if it’s just once in a while,” he continued. He had stopped just inside the corridor, and Ginny turned back to face him. “I always wanted to get to know you better, last year.”“Really,” said Ginny, skeptically.“Sure. But that Ravenclaw bloke was always hanging around, I never had a chance.”Ginny raised an eyebrow, like a challenge. “You mean Michael? You couldn’t be friends with me because I was dating Michael Corner?”Dean had taken a step closer to her. “Well, not exactly,” he admitted.“Well, then what, exac-” Ginny started to ask, before she was cut off by Dean’s mouth on hers. It wouldn’t have been a bad kiss, all things considered, if she hadn’t been wholly unprepared for it to happen, and Ginny hadn’t decided yet if she had grabbed hold of Dean’s arms to push him away or pull him in when they were interrupted by the sound of the tapestry being pulled back and someone clearing their throat.Ginny opted for pushing Dean back. “I’m sorry, Ginny, I thought-”“It’s fine,” she said, looking over his shoulder. “Don’t worry about it.” Draco Malfoy was lounging against the wall, hollow eyes locked on Ginny’s, but his gaze flicked easily to Dean when the other boy turned to see what Ginny was looking at.“Fifteen points each,” Malfoy said with a smirk.“We’re allowed to be out after curfew if we’re coming back from Quidditch practice, you know that,” said Dean hotly. Malfoy shrugged.“That didn’t look like ‘coming back from Quidditch practice’ to me,” he said. He was tossing an apple lazily in one hand, but his other hand was running the seam of his robes between his fingers. Ginny thought he looked more like he’d been roaming the halls himself than like he was on patrol, but it could have just been that he always looked on edge lately.“I’ll take another ten points for arguing,” Malfoy continued, “And you can be on your way now if you don’t want to lose any more.”“Come off it, Malfoy,” said Ginny. “What is it, nine fifteen? Get over yourself.” The tapestry was pushed open again, and Harry and Ron climbed into the corridor, stopping short when they saw who was already gathered there.“Oh, good,” said Malfoy, smirking, looking the pair up and down. “I’ll have ten points from you, Potter, for tracking mud through the castle. Make it an even fifty.” Ron bristled and might have punched him if Harry hadn’t stepped on his foot.“Fifty points?” cried Ron. “Where the hell did you get fifty bloody points from?”“From Gryffindor, Weasley. Do keep up,” said Malfoy. “But please, don’t let me stop your frolicking. I wouldn’t mind taking more points next time I come through here.” He turned, stopping in front of Harry. “You’re in my way, Potter,” he sneered, pushing past him and climbing back through the tapestry. The Gryffindors stared at each other until his footsteps faded down the corridor, then Ron exploded.“FIFTY POINTS?” He rounded on Ginny and Dean. “What did you do to make him take fifty bloody points?”“Forty points,” Ginny corrected sharply. “Ten were Harry’s.” She turned and continued on towards the common room.“I don’t bloody care whose points were whose!” shouted Ron.“It’s Malfoy, Ron, he doesn’t need a bloody excuse to take points,” Ginny snapped back. “Bugger off.”Ron jogged to catch up. “I’m not saying it was your fault, ” he griped, though he had been doing just that, “I just want to know what happened. Tell me it was worth it. Tell me you hexed him, at least.”“No, I didn’t hex a bloody prefect, Ron, I’m not an imbecile.”“You must have done something, Malfoy’s a twat, but even he-” Ginny flung the tapestry at the end of the passageway aside so violently that she thought for a moment she might have ripped it from the wall.“We were snogging, Ron, is that what you wanted to hear?” she yelled. Several portraits looked offended.“You were what ?” Ron sputtered, his ears reddening.“You heard me. Now lay off.” The siblings faced off in the corridor for several seconds. Ginny could see Ron’s brain working furious behind his contorted expression.“I’m, er- I’m just going to head back to the common room,” said Dean, breaking the silence.“You do that,” said Ginny coldly, not letting Ron squirm free from her glare. Dean retreated down the hallway and around the corner.“You think I want my own sister snogging people in public?” Ron blustered finally.“Public? Deserted corridors are public spaces now?” Ginny snorted incredulously. “Besides, not that it’s any of your business, but I-”“Yeah, it is my business, actually!” said Ron angrily. “D’you think I want people saying my sister’s a-”“A what?” demanded Ginny, drawing her wand and tossing her hair over her shoulder. “A what, exactly?”“Ginny, I’m sure he didn’t-” Harry started.“Oh, yes he did,” said Ginny, flaring at Harry. “He thinks, just because the best kiss he’s ever had was from our Auntie Muriel-”“Shut your mouth!” bellowed Ron, his face nearly purple.“No, I will not!” yelled Ginny, something snapping as she turned on him. “You think just because you’ve never snogged anyone in your life, you’re so much better than the rest of us, you can try and tell the rest of us what to do!”Ron was pulling his wand from the pocket of his robes. “You don’t know what you’re talking about!” he roared, trying to step around Harry, who had edged in front of him. Ginny cackled, ignoring the tears of frustration pricking the back of her eyes.“Just because Hermione’s actually snogged Victor Krum and you only dreamed about it doesn’t mean you get to take it out on the rest of us!” she shouted.“Don’t be stupid,” said Harry, but he was talking to Ron, who had tried to hex her and missed. Ginny felt something dark boiling inside of her, and pushed it down.“Just live your own goddamn life and stop trying to tell everybody else how to live theirs,” she spat. “And for the record, he kissed me.”Ginny turned and stormed blindly down the hallway, stuffing her wand angrily back into her robes.Ron’s mood had not improved at all by the next day. Ginny sat with Luna and Colin at the Ravenclaw table to avoid him, but she could still feel him glaring at her from across the room. He also seemed not to be speaking to Hermione anymore, for which Ginny felt a brief pang of guilt, but any feelings of responsibility for the situation vanished when she passed Ron in the entrance hall swearing angrily at a group of first years who apparently had dared to look at him.Harry had moved their usual Saturday morning practice to the afternoon, ostensibly to give the team time to rest from their Friday night practice, but more likely, Ginny thought, in an attempt to give Ron some time to cool down, which had backfired dismally. If anything, Ron had only become more aggressive, which did nothing to improve his Keeping. In two hours, he had not only failed to save even a single goal- despite what Ginny felt was a poor performance by the Chasers, hindered by her stiff attempt to act like nothing between her and Dean was out of the ordinary- but had bellowed so much at everyone that Demelza had been reduced to tears for the second day in a row.By the end of practice, the team had devolved into a loosely coordinated shouting match. Ron had said something nasty to Demelza that Ginny hadn’t heard, but had sent the other girl streaking towards the ground at an almost dangerous pace. Jimmy Peakes, who was about a foot and a half shorter than than Ron, but admittedly brandishing a heavy bat, had left Cootes to wrestle both of the bludgers on his own in order to come to Demelza’s defense, and looked about thirty seconds away from actively threatening Ron. Ginny had just turned her broom towards the pair to join in when Harry flew past her from the other side of the pitch to intervene.“That’s enough!” he shouted, wheeling around to hover between Ron and Jimmy’s bat. “Peakes, go help Cootes with the bludgers, he’s going to get his neck broken. Ron…”Ginny didn’t wait around to hear what Harry had to say to her brother, opting instead to dive down to the tunnel leading off the pitch, catching up with Demelza, who had already begun shedding her protective gear on the way back to the locker room.“Are you okay?” Ginny asked. Demelza nodded sharply; her eyes were rimmed red, but she seemed more angry than upset. “Ron’s a prat, don’t listen to him. You played really well today.” She could hear Dean following several paces behind them, but decided ignoring him was easier than figuring out how to address him.“If he blows the game tomorrow, I’ll take a bat to him myself,” said Demelza, slamming the door to the locker room open so hard that it bounced off the wall and nearly hit Ginny in the side of the head.“You might have to get in line,” she said wryly, catching the door before it put her in the hospital wing. She threw her pads into one of the lockers, spelling it with her name so that she wouldn’t have to carry them with her to breakfast before the match the next morning. “Going back to the common room?”“No, I think I’m going to shower here,” said Demelza. “Our bathroom’s got about an inch of water in it again. It’s Romilda Vane, every drain is clogged with her hair that she never bothers to clean up.”“Thanks for the warning,” said Ginny. “I’ll see you tomorrow, then.”“If I’m not in Azkaban,” Demelza agreed darkly, glowering through the wall in the direction of the Quidditch pitch.None of the Gryffindor Quidditch team had succumbed to murderous urges by brunch time on Sunday morning, though they were heartily booed by the entire Slytherin house upon entering the dining hall. The sky was clear, but Ron’s face was decidedly not, so in spite of the cheering mass of red and gold at the Gryffindor table, Ginny sought out Luna’s lion-topped hat and leaned over her to steal breakfast from the Ravenclaws.“We’re going to lose,” she confided to her friend. “Embarrassingly, too.” She spooned scrambled eggs onto a piece of toast and crushed a second piece of toast on top of the first, pinching the edges until she was reasonably sure she wouldn’t end up with a handful of eggs on her way down to the pitch. “I’ll see you afterwards,” she said, waving at Colin as she passed him on her way to the entrance hall. Harry and Hermione were arguing at the Gryffindor table, something about spiking Ron’s pumpkin juice, and Ginny wondered idly if anyone else on the team had considered poison. It would be less cathartic, but maybe more effective.“Ginny, wait up!” Dean was jogging down the lawn after her. Ginny cringed internally, without breaking stride. She took a bit of her makeshift sandwich just as Dean reached her. “Can we talk?”“Yeah, go for it,” she said, raising one hand to wave at a group of Hufflepuff second years on their way to the pitch who whooped when she passed.“No- I mean- yeah, okay.” They had reached the locker room, and though part of Ginny had hoped Demelza or even one of the Beaters would have gotten there first so that she wouldn’t have to be alone with Dean again, another part of her was glad to find it empty.“I wanted to apologize,” Dean said, following her to her locker. “For the other night, I mean. I was out of line anyway, and then the whole thing with Malfoy, and Ron-” Ginny rolled her eyes.“Don’t even talk to me about Ron.”“Sorry,” said Dean. “It’s just, I shouldn’t have- I just hope you know I didn’t mean anything by it. Not that I don’t think you’re great,” he added quickly, “It’s just- I mean, me and Seamus are in a weird place right now, and I’ve been trying to figure out how to… I thought it might be easier, you know, and I did like you last year, it’s just- and not that that’s an excuse for cornering you like that-”Ginny pulled her sweater over her head and stuffed it into her locker, turning to face Dean with her arms folded over her sports bra.“Are you done?” she asked. He hesitated, and nodded.“Good,” she said, though she was relieved to feel some of the tension she’d been carrying around the last two days dissipate. “Because I already said it was fine. Really. I’ve made worse mistakes than that,” she reminded him, “and we have a game to win. Possibly without a Keeper.” Dean laughed at that, the crease in his forehead fading away.“I’ll go get changed, then,” he said.“You’d better,” said Ginny, pulling her tunic on just as Demelza came in, already in uniform full uniform except for one gauntlet.“Guess what?” she asked breathlessly, letting the door slam behind her. Ginny began buckling her boots and kneepads on over her padded trousers.“Ron fell into the lake and was strangled by the Giant Squid and one of the house elves has volunteered to take his place,” she said, without missing a beat.“Ha. No. Slytherin’s down two players.” Ginny sat up straighter.“What? Who?”“Vaisey’s been in the hospital wing with a bludger-induced concussion since last night, and Malfoy’s sick, they’ve got Harper playing instead.”“You’re kidding.” Ginny was fairly certain that not only did Malfoy never get sick, the last time he’d claimed to be, he’d rescheduled the match to suit his needs, but she wasn’t about to complain about that now.“We’ve got a shot!” crowed Demelza, tossing her glove into the air and catching it.“You hear that, Dean?” Ginny called down the length of the room. “We’re going to win this thing after all!” Dean whooped from behind his locker. She pulled her Quidditch robe on over her head and adjusted the sleeves of her tunic before she began strapping her gauntlets on over her forearms.Harry entered the locker room, followed by Ron, who Ginny pointedly ignored. “Conditions look ideal,” she said, giving one last tug to the strap on her right arm before tucking it in and pulling on her gloves. “And guess what? That Slytherin Chaser Vaisey took a Bludger in the head yesterday during their practice, and he’s too sore to play! And even better than that-” she paused, letting it sink in, “Malfoy’s gone off sick too!”“What?” Harry turned to stare at her. “He’s ill? What’s wrong with him?”Ginny was wondering the same thing, but she brushed him off. “No idea, but it’s great for us. They’re playing Harper instead; he’s in my year and he’s an idiot. I had Slytherins in Transfiguration last year, and on three separate occasions I watched him transfigure his own textbook instead of whatever we were supposed to be working on. McGonagall started taking points every time she had to change it back.”Harry still looked uneasy, and muttered something to Ron, who didn’t seem to be paying any attention to Harry, but looked marginally more optimistic than he had before.The match got off to a shaky start; Lee Jordan, the usual commentator, had graduated the year before, and had been replaced with Zacharias Smith, a sour-faced Hufflepuff who spent almost more time taking shots at the Gryffindor’s lineup than he did relaying the actual events of the game. Ron seemed to be doing better, though- Ginny had almost given up the entire game two minutes in when Dean’s hand slipped and he dropped the quaffle straight into the lap of the Slytherin Chaser, but Ron blocked the shot almost easily.“Oh, well, I suppose he’s bound to get lucky sometime,” said Smith into the microphone, and while Ginny wholeheartedly agreed, she added her voice to the responding boos from the Gryffindor stands.Somehow, Ron’s luck held, or he managed to get back on track, and an hour and a half later, Slytherin hadn’t gotten a single goal, while Ginny, Dean, and Demelza had racked up sixty points between the three of them, forcing Smith to stop making snide comments about Ginny’s family and the history of nepotism on the Gryffindor team and start going after the Beaters instead.Ginny rolled her eyes, and after a particularly long-winded commentary on how Peakes was holding his bat all wrong, resolved to tune the Hufflepuff out and to focus instead on interrupting him as many times as possible by scoring goals, which she did, until she heard-“-seen the Snitch! Yes, he’s certainly seen something Potter hasn’t!”Demelza had the quaffle, and Ginny trusted her to keep it, so she wheeled around and watched Harry following Harper in a steep ascent. Smith had not quite finished gloating about how distracted Harry must have been by trying to hold together his shoddy team in time to see Harper slip back and Harry raise his fist victoriously above his head, and as the crackling megaphone was drowned out by the roar of the crowd, Ginny turned her broom towards the podium, shooting past the aerial dogpile in which the rest of the team had enveloped their captain, and crash-landed nearly on top of Zacharias Smith.McGonagall was furious, of course, but so obviously pleased at how well her team had done that she didn’t manage to actually discipline Ginny before she was swept up by the rest of the team.“Party up in the common room, Seamus said!” Dean was grinning ear to ear, shouting to be heard over the crowd. Ginny flashed him a thumbs up, and he shifted his attention to some point behind her. “Demelza!” he called, fighting his way back through the crowd. “Party in the common room, did you hear?”Ginny was greeted by a wave of sound as soon as the Fat Lady’s portrait cracked open. Seamus had rigged several radios to play the same thing from opposite corners of the room, all of them magically amplified far louder than they had been designed to play, and half of the house was already in the common room, recapping the most exciting parts of the game to each other. Colin tackled her almost immediately, shoving a drink into her hand.“You were brilliant, absolutely brilliant!” he screamed into her ear, making himself heard over the chaos. “That fourth goal, when you flew up behind Urquhart and grabbed the Quaffle right out of his hands, Dennis almost fell out of the stands-”Geoffrey Hooper, a seventh year, appeared out of nowhere and clapped her on the shoulder.“That move you pulled on Smith- outstanding,” he yelled, already slurring a little. “We were all hoping someone would do it, it was the best part of the whole damn game in my opinion-” he was pulled back into the crowd mid-sentence.“-And Malfoy missing the game, on top of it all!” Continued Colin, who hadn’t seemed to notice the interruption. “I couldn’t believe it when he wasn’t out there, he never misses a chance to try and prove-” Colin broke off. “Harry’s here, hang on, I’ll be right back-” and he was gone.Ginny downed the drink he’d given her before there was a chance to spill it on herself amid the jostling of the crowd, wincing at the aftertaste as she felt the fuzzy warmth of alcohol settling across her chest. She began making her way towards the opposite side of the room, where there was a table laden with food nicked from the kitchen, but before she had made it halfway there, she came across Ron entangled face-first with Lavender Brown, and her appetite was gone. She snorted and turned away just in time to almost walk into Harry.“Looking for Ron?' she asked, smirking bitterly. She inclined her head back towards the faceless mass of limbs that contained her brother. “It looks like he’s eating her face, doesn’t it?” she said, wrinkling her nose. “Filthy hypocrite.” She watched Harry struggling to decide how to react for a moment, then hit him on the arm affectionately. “Good game, anyway,” she said, changing course and grabbing herself a Butterbeer from the drinks table.Ginny found after only a few more minutes that she couldn’t possibly stay in the common room. For one, there was no place in the room from which she didn’t have a clear view of her brother snogging Lavender Brown without ever coming up for air. It was also incredibly overwhelming.While she generally appreciated the noise and distraction as at least being preferable to being alone with her thoughts, her mind was too occupied with the question of why Draco Malfoy would possibly miss a Quidditch match to be coaxed into the festivities. Besides, she thought she knew where she was most likely to find him, so she waited until Harry and Colin were both otherwise occupied- Harry with trying to extricate himself from the clutches of Romilda Vane, a fourth year who never missed an opportunity to express her hopeless infatuation with him- and slipped through the portrait hole and out of the common room.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Outside of the door to Moaning Myrtle’s bathroom, Ginny paused. She could clearly hear Myrtle’s wailing from within- ear-splitting shrieks and loud, high-pitched sobbing interspersed with rattling of pipes. The bathroom was flooded again, as evident from the water that was slowly advancing towards Ginny’s toes from under the door. A flurry of doubt spawned in Ginny’s stomach- is this really something that Malfoy would put up with? Where he would choose to spend his time? Perhaps their last two encounters had been coincidence- but she pushed open the door anyway and stepped into the puddle on the floor, lifting her robes above her ankles.Myrtle choked on the middle of her screech when she saw Ginny.“What are you doing here again?” She demanded. “Haven’t you done enough?”Ginny blinked in surprise, not sure whether or not she should be on the defensive.“What do you mean? What have I done?” Myrtle huffed.“As if you don’t know.”“I- do you mean the Chamber of Secrets?” Ginny asked, realization dawning. “Myrtle, that was four years ago.”Myrtle looked offended. “ I know how long ago it was,” she said. “When I died-”“Myrtle, I’d love to hear about the night you died, but maybe some other time,” Ginny interrupted. “Has Malfoy been in here?”“Malfoy?”“Er… Slytherin prefect? Stuck up prick? Blond, skinny, sort of scowls a lot?”“Oh, you mean Draco ,” said Myrtle. “No, he hasn’t been in here in ages , I haven’t seen him for weeks - why are you looking for him?”“No reason,” said Ginny quickly, wincing at her poor cover. “I, er, had a question about Quidditch. Thought I might find him here.” She turned to leave. “Thank you very much anyway.”“I’ll tell him you were looking for him,” cooed Myrtle.“No, you really don’t have to do that,” said Ginny with a grimace. “I can handle it on my own.”“It would be my pleasure,” said Myrtle.“I’m sure it would be,” replied Ginny, opening the door, “But like I said, I’ll manage on my own. Thanks.” She stepped into the hallway, dropping her robes once she’d stepped clear of the water. She didn’t know where else to look, so after a few minutes of debating the merits of wandering the dungeons, she gave into the weight that was steadily growing in her limbs and began to make her way back towards her dorm in Gryffindor Tower.Five floors above, in the Room of Requirement, Draco Malfoy was growing steadily more frustrated. His first test of the broken Vanishing Cabinet with an apple a few days ago had been successful, but he had been unable to replicate it. In the past three days, he’d had apples Vanish and not come back, Vanish and come back withered or dead or in some way just not quite right, and, most often, simply refuse to Vanish at all.Draco kicked the side of the Vanishing Cabinet as hard as he could, yelling as pain shot through his toe. He limped back around to the front and opened it, just in case his foot had been what the Cabinet needed to spur it into action- but the only change to the apple inside was that it had tipped onto its side and rolled a few inches to the left. He slammed both doors, letting out a grunt of frustration. There was a sucking sound from within the Cabinet- Draco paused, listening in anticipation, then pulled the doors open again.The apple was still sitting exactly where he had left it, but part of one side seemed to have melted away. Draco quivered with anger, staring at the slowly blurring apple with red-rimmed eyes. He had spent three days in this room, and nothing had changed. If he didn’t-Draco inhaled sharply, pushing that thought to the back of his mind. He would find a way. He was Draco Malfoy. This is what Malfoys did. He blinked what he was quite sure was dust out of his eyes, turned on his heel, and marched away, pausing only to scoop up his school bag from the floor. He could try the library. He couldn’t check out any books, of course, not under his own name, but he could sneak into the Restricted Section after hours. If he were still a child , he could’ve asked Snape to sign off on anything he might have needed, but the stakes were higher now. And he could manage on his own, thank you very much.Draco listened to make sure there weren’t footsteps coming from the other side of the door, then stepped out and into the seventh floor corridor, watching the entrance to the Room of Requirement fade away before he turned. He fully intended to proceed directly to the library, but he was hit with a wave of fatigue before he had managed more than two steps. He almost stumbled. The several hands of his watch took longer than usual to come into focus, and after a few seconds, Draco gave up on figuring it out. Maybe he had better get some sleep, after all.By the end of the week, several days of heavy snowfall had made Hogwarts and the grounds resemble something out of a Christmas card, and it was all anybody could talk about- that, and, of course, Slughorn’s Christmas party. Ginny had missed both of the last two ‘Slug Club’ dinners, claiming illness or homework, but she had still been invited to the Christmas party, though hadn’t decided yet if she wanted to go.Almost every other Gryffindor girl, it seemed, had decided that they did very much want to go; Romilda Vane in particular had been growing ever more obvious in the hints she was dropping in Harry’s direction.“Why don’t you just give him a love potion and be done with it?” Ginny had snapped in the bathroom one morning, after having to push through a half-dozen fourth year girls in order to get to the sinks. They’d paused to consider the idea more seriously than Ginny would have liked, but it hadn’t dissuaded them from crowding around the mirrors every morning and giggling incessantly while everyone else was trying to get ready.“In muggle schools, when it snows this much, they cancel classes,” Colin was explaining when Ginny joined her friends for dinner on Friday night. She had given up on the Gryffindor table entirely when Ron and Hermione’s feud had gotten suddenly worse after Gryffindor’s Quidditch victory the previous weekend. Lavender Brown was bad enough at a distance.“But I guess since everything’s all in one building- except Herbology, I guess- it doesn’t make sense to do that here.”“It would be nice, though,” agreed Luna sympathetically. “A whole day free to enjoy the weather.”“I think you might be the only one enjoying it, Luna,” said Ginny. This, of course, wasn’t true- their class schedule might have been unaffected by the weather, but classes themselves were constantly interrupted by hoards of students rushing excitedly to the windows whenever the snow started up again- with the obvious exception of Defense, where Snape kept the windows covered.“Oh, I think it’s lovely, though,” said Luna. It was, really, at least to look at- Ginny was willing to admit that much- but Harry had cancelled two practices in a row, and as much as she hated the feeling of snow down her collar and in her boots, she felt cooped up in the giant castle. She had also grown accustomed to having Quidditch practice to tire her out four nights a week, something the delicate balancing act of Ginny’s sleep schedule had relied on, and without it, the worst of her nightmares had been creeping back.“I just think I would be able to enjoy the snow more if we didn’t have class,” said Colin. “It’s usually dark out after dinner, so there’s never a good opportunity to go out in it.”“We’ve got two hours between class and dinner,” Luna pointed out. “What are you doing then?”“Gobstones,” said Colin, self-righteously.“We had this conversation last year, too,” Ginny informed Luna. “I don’t remember if you were there or not.” She turned back to Colin. “We can go outside this weekend, you know. We do it all the time when it isn’t snowing.”“Isn’t she supposed to be the logical one?” Colin asked suspiciously. “I feel like you’re ganging up on me.”“And what are you going to do about it?” Ginny asked, picking up the nearest salt shaker and pouring it indiscriminately over the remains of her friend’s dinner. Luna was tossing her uneaten peas into Colin’s pumpkin juice from across the table.“Apparently nothing,” said Colin, feigning a disgruntled expression that didn’t stop him from reaching under Ginny’s arm to steal one of her tarts.It was eleven-thirty when Ginny allowed herself to crawl into bed, convinced by the most optimistic- or maybe just the most tired- portion of her brain that next week’s Charms homework would be enough of a burden to disrupt her dreams.It was twelve-forty-five when Ginny floundered violently awake, drowning in sweat and the chilling certainty that she wasn’t alone. By the time she had caught her breath and identified the other presence in the room as one of the other girls that slept there, reading from a textbook by wandlight, she couldn’t remember much beyond the green-gray tint of Tom- of Riddle’s memories, and a few hazy details that were more feelings than words.Ginny’s slippered feet had carried her down the stairs, through the common room, and out of the portrait hole before she quite knew where they were taking her, but once in the corridor, she realized that there was only one place she could go. In a twisted sort of way, the Chamber- or the closest she could get to it, without Riddle- was the only place that had ever been just hers. And she couldn’t even remember most of it.Ginny pushed open the door to Moaning Myrtle’s bathroom, the hinges groaning quietly. There was an almost unsettling lack of water in the hallway, and no sign of Myrtle in the bathroom, either, just dim torchlight reflecting off of the tiles and porcelain sinks. Ginny’s shuffling steps echoed just barely in the empty space, and she settled with her back against one of the stall dividers, facing the sink that opened the Chamber, the cool tile leeching her body heat through her red flannel pajama pants in a strangely comforting way.She wasn’t sure how long she’d been there- long enough for her mind to wander, for her to just begin to drift into something that was part dream, part memory- when the door opened again, marked by the protests of hinges being made to unfold much more forcefully than Ginny had done, and the thunk- thunk of something hitting the floor and bouncing. She snapped awake. She couldn’t see the door from where she was sitting, but it didn’t matter; Draco Malfoy had already stalked into her sightline and was leaning heavily on one of the sinks, staring into the mirror as if doing so was a punishment. A misshapen apple rolled to a stop at Ginny’s feet, and she watched Malfoy’s eyes in the mirror follow its path and land on her.He spun around to face her, recoiling from some kind of emotion she didn’t have time to identify. Maybe only surprise.“Weasley,” he said, not quite as if he couldn’t think of something better, but almost. “What are you doing here?”His eyes were not quite red, but there was a strange puffiness to them, and his posture was… different. His back was straight, but there was something like desperation in his shoulders. Even his voice lacked some of the arrogance it usually held in armfuls. He looked tired.Ginny tossed his apple back to him.“You look like hell,” she said, without malice. She paused. He didn’t argue. “Want to talk about it?” The words left her mouth before she had time to think them through, and hung in the air for longer than she would have liked.“No,” he said finally, with a grimace that might have been a sneer if he had tried harder, “I don’t want to talk about it .”Ginny shrugged. “Fine by me.” She wasn’t sure if he expected her to surrender the bathroom to his brooding, but she wasn’t going to leave until she was good and ready. She’d been brooding first, after all. It was only fair.Malfoy retreated to the other side of the sinks; Ginny watched until he was around the corner, then returned her gaze to her sink, though she wasn’t able to bring back whatever memory or imagined memory she had been about to delve into when he had entered.“You missed Quidditch,” she said, after several minutes of silence.“So what if I did?”Ginny shrugged, even though he couldn’t see her. “You don’t, usually.” She traced a crack in one tile with the tip of her finger, then added, “Harry was sure you were up to something.”“And I suppose, as one of Potter’s most loyal worshippers, you agree.”Ginny smarted. “I’m perfectly capable of forming my own opinions, Malfoy. Do you think you’d still be here if I really thought you were a Death Eater?”There was a long pause.“You were the heir of Slytherin,” Malfoy said, finally. “I suppose you’re more unpredictable than most.”“I wasn’t the heir of Slytherin,” said Ginny flatly. “The heir of Slytherin was living in my head. There’s a difference.”“Right,” he said, though not entirely, Ginny thought, unsympathetically. “Then what are you doing here?”“I don’t know.” Ginny stared at the sink across from her, letting her eyes close in order to remember or to imagine the basin shifting to accommodate the pipe that would carry her down into the Chamber where Tom’s basilisk still rotted.“Weasley.”
Weasley. That was her. She could feel the cold stones of the chamber floor against her back and her legs. Her neck was twisted at an awkward angle, and she wondered for a minute if maybe she was-
“ Weasley. ”
It was Malfoy’s voice, coming from right above her, Malfoy who had brought her here, Malfoy whose diary she’d been writing in all year-
“Weasley, if you don’t wake up, I will leave you here.”

Her body will lie in the Chamber Forever-

Something prodded her leg, and for an instant, Ginny was back at the Ministry, running through the brain room, and a death eater had grabbed her ankle from behind, and she forced her eyes open to yell for Luna, and she was awake on the floor of Moaning Myrtle’s bathroom. Malfoy had kicked her.“Thank Merlin. It’s three in the morning,” he said. The bathroom was the same torch-lit darkness as before, but it did feel different. “I thought you had left, I almost didn’t see you.”“You woke me up,” said Ginny blearily. At some point she had slid most of the way down the wall and onto the floor. Her neck was painfully stiff, and her back cracked in three places when she pushed herself back up to a seated position.Malfoy rolled his eyes. “I was doing you a favor,” he said. “Don’t worry, it won’t-”“No, I know,” Ginny interrupted, having mostly gotten her bearings. “That’s what threw me off.”“It won’t happen again,” Malfoy finished.““Not worth the time”?” Ginny quipped, standing up and wincing as her stiff joints popped like a worn out deck of Exploding Snap.“Exactly,” said Malfoy, already turning away. “See you around, Weasley.” He left the bathroom, and Ginny took a moment to take stock of where she was sore- everywhere, as it turned out. She was too tired to think anymore about what any of this meant. And she had promised Colin they would go outside on Saturday, so she should try to get a little sleep.Ginny cracked her neck one more time before heading out into the corridor to make the trek back to the common room. She hoped the Fat Lady wouldn’t be asleep when she got back- she didn’t fancy having to defend both her late-night exit from Gryffindor Tower and her decision to wake the portrait in order to get back in.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

“I wasn’t the heir of Slytherin,” said Weasley, her voice echoing from across the bathroom. “The heir of Slytherin was living in my head. There’s a difference.”“Right,” said Draco. He’d forgotten about the possession aspect of the whole ordeal, and caught himself almost feeling sorry for the Gryffindor. It was bad enough to have the Dark Lord living in your house. “Then what are you doing here?”“I don’t know.”Draco waited for Weasley to elaborate, but she didn’t, and eventually the silence had gone on long enough that he didn’t feel comfortable breaking it. He leaned back against one of the sinks, staring up at the stars that could just be seen behind the reflections of flickering torches in the dark window. He had hoped that maybe the Cabinet had just needed time, that waiting a few days between tests would fix the problem, but that hadn’t been the case. He would have to sneak into the library after all.Draco didn’t realize how long he had been staring at the same spot at the wall until he heard, very distantly, the pulse of the giant clock in the entry hall, resounding through the corridors. He checked his watch and hissed under his breath. He should have been back at least an hour ago. Draco was sure Professor Snape had been keeping an eye on him lately, and couldn’t be sure whether or not if his watch extended to what his bedtime was.Draco left his apple on the edge of the sink and headed for the door, but stopped when a flash of red caught the corner of his eye.“Weasley,” he said, trying to get her attention. She had slid partway down the wall and was reclining at what looked like an awfully uncomfortable angle. The top of her pajamas had ridden up, revealing a stripe of bare skin around her middle. Draco had a fleeting thought that her lower back must be resting directly on the icy tiles of the bathroom floor, which couldn’t be comfortable- but he pushed this thought away, uncomfortable with having had it to begin with.“Weasley, ” he said, stepping closer when she didn’t seem to stir. She twitched, and he could see her eyes moving under her eyelids, but her breathing hadn’t changed.“Weasley, if you don’t wake up, I will leave you here.” He prodded her leg with his toe. As much as she probably needed the sleep, it didn’t feel right to leave her lying on the floor. Draco didn’t know what he would do if she didn’t wake up- he was a light sleeper himself, and was running out of ideas- but luckily, he didn’t have to worry about it; Ginny- Weasley, rather- recoiled almost violently from his foot, and blinked awake.“Thank Merlin. It’s three in the morning,” he said, hiding his relief behind an approximation of his usual aloof tone. “I thought you had left, I almost didn’t see you.”“You woke me up,” said Weasley blearily. Draco rolled his eyes.“I was doing you a favor,” he said. “Don’t worry, it won’t-”“No, I know,” she interrupted. “That’s what threw me off.”“It won’t happen again,” Draco finished.“Not worth the time?” guessed the Gryffindor, repeating his own words from two of their previous encounters.“Exactly,” said Draco, turning back towards the door. “See you around, Weasley.” He pushed the door open and stepped out into the corridor, turning towards the dungeons. If he hadn’t known better, he might have thought she’d been mocking him in a friendly way, rather than an antagonistic one- but she was a Gryffindor, and a Weasley, Draco reminded himself. And he had more important things to worry about.He had written back to his mother earlier in the week, stating vaguely that he had been making slow but steady progress, which was almost entirely a lie. Slow, maybe. He’d wanted to say more- to ask after her health, maybe, or something else that might leave room to open a conversation that was really with her, and not the Dark Lord, but he didn’t have any idea what her social calendar would have looked like even under normal circumstances, and asking how she was holding up with a house full of more and darker wizards than usual would have been a bit obvious, so in the end he had kept his response short.Draco pushed thoughts of his mother and the Dark Lord’s receding patience to the back of his head with some effort, casting about for anything else to think about.Weasley had looked almost as bad as Draco himself felt. He wasn’t in the habit of noticing things like that, but even setting aside the fact that he kept running into her in Moaning Myrtle’s bathroom- he of all people would know what kind of a state one had to be in to seek refuge there - it was hard to ignore the dark crescents under her eyes, or the change in her demeanor. He supposed it wasn’t a shift in personality so much as a delay. When she was caught off-guard, there was a moment of... vulnerability, maybe. Or honesty. Draco thought maybe that was the same thing.She had almost let Dean Thomas defend her, Draco remembered, when he had caught them together on his way to the Room of Requirement a few weeks earlier. It had taken her a moment to jump in. That wasn’t how Weasleys reacted. Her brother sometimes took a minute, but that was just because he was too thick to form words when he was angry. Ginny was quick and sharp-tongued and didn’t back down. Until recently.Draco almost started to wonder why, but by then he had reached the entrance to the Slytherin common room, and abruptly remembered that he didn’t care. Weasley didn’t matter. She was a distraction- less than a distraction- and he had a job to do.Ginny woke up with a dull throbbing behind her temples. She hadn’t fully closed the curtains of her four-poster the night before, and she had to squint against the light for almost a full minute before her eyes adjusted. It was almost twelve-thirty in the afternoon. Ginny's stomach pinched with hunger, just for a second, but she didn’t sit up until she remembered that she was supposed to have met Colin and Luna in the Great Hall over two hours ago.They were both waiting for her in the Common Room when she stumbled down the stairs a few minutes later, still pulling her jumper on with the hand that wasn’t holding her cloak. Colin was pacing in front of the fireplace, debating with himself whether sending Luna up the stairs to the girls dormitory was a good or even a possible strategy, while Luna watched idly.“He’s been like this for an hour,” said Luna, noticing Ginny before Colin did. “Before which, he spent thirty minutes trying to decide if he should let me into the Common Room or not. I was going to go upstairs on my own in a few minutes.”“I’m so sorry,” said Ginny. “I overslept, I didn’t mean to worry you.”Colin had mostly stopped pacing. “I’m not worried because you overslept, Gin,” he said, his expression hard to read. “You do that all the time. It’s the oversleeping for two hours when we had plans, on top of-”“I know, Colin, I meant to be on time, I swear-”“It’s not about the plans,” said Luna, interrupting Ginny to continue the conversation rather than change the subject, which was rare. Ginny rather wished she’d changed the subject.“It’s not, at all,” Colin agreed. “It’s not like we think you don’t want to hang out with us. Unless we should think that,” he added, his eyebrows creasing together, and Ginny almost got to laugh it off, to remind Colin that of course they were still friends, and to tease him for thinking otherwise, but Luna laid a hand on his arm. “Right,” said Colin. “It’s not about us, and it’s not about the plans, and it’s not about the oversleeping.”“If this is an intervention, we should do it outside,” joked Ginny weakly, trying not to sound defensive. “You’re going to miss out on all that snow you’ve been going on about.” She strode over to the portrait hole and stepped into the corridor, trailed by her friends.Colin caught up to her. “It’s not an intervention,” he said.“Should it be?” asked Luna, almost as if to herself, skipping over a trick step in the stairs.“We’re just worried about you,” said Colin, pausing as they passed Romilda Vane and several friends going in the other direction. “I don’t know how to put it, but you just… you haven’t been…” As much as she teased him for talking too much, it was unsettling for Ginny to see her friend at a loss for words. “Are you okay?” he said finally.“How long have you been worried?” asked Ginny, adding an incredulous note to her tone and dodging the question for a moment.“Just before the match against Slytherin last month,” said Colin, at the same time Luna replied, “June.” Colin shot Luna a sideways glance; Ginny ignored her, and felt badly about it.“You mean when Ron was being a prat?” she said, forced to stop at a landing to wait for the moving staircase to come around.“Ron’s always a prat,” said Colin. “Everyone knew Ron was being a prat, the whole team was furious. You were different.”“I don’t even know what that means,” said Ginny. “It was a month ago. I was exhausted then, and I’m exhausted now. It’s all this stupid O.W.L. prep they’re giving us. That’s all. The Charms essay is killing me,” she added, hoping to change the subject. She pushed open the door onto the grounds, ignoring the look Colin and Luna exchanged behind her back.“Ginny, wait,” said Luna, reaching out and taking her hand. She looked back at Colin.“I’m not trying to- to pry, or anything,” said Colin. “You don’t have to talk to us, you don’t have to tell us what happened with Dean Thomas-” Ginny stiffened, keeping her face blank, but something in Colin’s face told her she hadn’t done it well enough. “Really, Gin, you don’t have to talk about anything you don’t want to, it’s just- we’re your friends, and we love you, and- I don’t know.” He seemed almost to deflate a little as he ran out of places to go with the rest of his sentence.“It’s okay,” said Luna, finally. “I’m sure Ginny would tell us if anything was really wrong, wouldn’t you?” she asked.“Of course I would,” said Ginny, with a sincerity that surprised her. “You guys are my friends. I’m not going to keep important things from you.” Even Luna looked a little skeptical at this, so Ginny clarified a little hastily, “I just have a lot on my mind right now. I just… I just want to have a normal day,” she said, more honestly than she’d planned to. Luna and Colin shared a glance, and something that Ginny didn't have time to interpret passed between them.“Snow is good for that,” Luna pointed out. Ginny looked at Colin, who was still looking at her in a way that hurt, a little bit, but as she watched he brought a lazy smile to his face with an ease that scared her almost more than his concern had.“You know, I think I’ve heard that, too,” he said, bending down slowly to scrape snow off the ground, acting as though he was being far less obvious than he was.Ginny wasn’t sure if she ought to be relieved that her friends thought the biggest thing on her mind was her encounter with Dean, or unsettled by the idea of eventually having to think and talk and decide how she felt about it if she wanted to assuage their concern, so she settled for a not-quite-comforting mixture of the two, and resolved to ignore the whole thing just in time to be hit squarely in the face by Colin’s snowball.Draco paused at a window in a corridor on the third floor, looking out over the snow-covered grounds just in time to see a miniscule Ginny Weasley take a snowball to the face and consequently fall over backwards into a snowbank. He almost laughed out loud, in an almost not-unfriendly way, but he caught himself. That really wouldn’t do.Still, he watched the scene for another moment or so- Weasley scrambled to her feet, preparing a counterattack, and was immediately tackled back into the snow by someone who was probably Lovegood, judging from the hair and the amount of time the two spent together- before turning from the window and continuing on his way to the library. He probably wouldn’t have an opportunity to sneak into the Restricted Section until after the holidays, but it was still worth seeing what he could dig up in the general stacks.It would have been easier if he could have asked Madam Pince- she was strict, but her opinions of students rested entirely on how well they looked after her books, and not at all on what House they were in, which had annoyed Draco in early years at Hogwarts, but he now grudgingly appreciated- but he couldn’t have anyone guessing at what he was up to.Unfortunately for Draco, what he walked into in the library turned out to be exactly that. Potter and Granger were sat with their heads together at one of the tables by the windows, and as Draco wound his way through the shelves towards the Transfiguration section- the best place he could think of to start for things related to Vanishing- he could pick up snatches of their badly-whispered conversation. He ignored it, at first- it seemed to be about the vast quantities of Gryffindor girls who were so smitten with The Boy Who Lived that they were plotting to drug him with love potions- until he heard his name, hissed with an urgency that struck a chill in his chest.“...point is, Filch is... isn’t he? These girls…. Disguised… couldn’t Malfoy have... necklace into the school –?”“Oh, Harry, not that again,” came Granger’s voice, exasperated.Draco realized that he was holding his breath, and it took him longer than it should have to figure out how to breathe again. His hands were shaking. He stared at the label on the shelf in front of him, without really seeing it. They weren’t even close, he reminded himself. They thought he was sneaking things in with the post.
If they figure it out…
He couldn’t think of that. He couldn’t. He didn’t want to know what the Dark Lord would do if he failed, if he was found out, by Potter , of all people-Draco's hands were still shaking. He forced himself to take another breath, blinking until he could make the title of the book in front of him come into focus. 2,078 Practical Uses for Every Day Switching Spells. “-and he’s not a very good wizard, I doubt he can tell one potion from -” Granger’s voice broke off, suddenly, and a second later, Madam Pince spoke from the next aisle down.“The library is now closed,” she said. Draco mentally cursed himself. He’d forgotten, of course, it was Saturday, and the library closed by supper. He had just begun making his way back towards the exit, taking care not to be seen by the Gryffindors, when he heard Pince’s already sharp tone turn much harsher.“What have you been doing to that book, you depraved boy?” she practically screeched, as if someone had maimed her most priceless family heirloom.“It isn’t the library’s, it’s mine!” Potter yelped. Draco snuck a glance between the shelves. Pince had all but lunged at the Gryffindors, and Potter had nearly tripped over Granger, who was crouched on the floor and seemed to be packing her bag as quickly as she possibly could.“Despoiled!” Draco could hear Madam Pince hissing at the Gryffindors as he slipped out of the library and into the corridor. “Desecrated! Befouled!”The memory of the panicked look on Potter’s face had lightened Draco’s mood somewhat, and though he hadn’t forgotten his strange reaction to the not unexpected discovery that Potter was trying to keep tabs on him, he pushed it aside and descended to the Great Hall. It had been a few days since he had made it to dinner with the rest of his House, and however impressed Pansy Parkinson may have been by his speech on the train about the importance of his role with the Dark Lord, Draco had a sense that his friends were beginning to feel that it wasn’t worth it. Obviously, they couldn’t see the bigger picture- this was much more important than whether or not he was around to get drunk with them on Friday nights- but he couldn’t let those relationships wither, whether he actually valued the company of the likes of Crabbe and Goyle or not. “Never lose an ally if you can help it,” his father had said once.Crabbe and Goyle weren’t at the Slytherin table yet- they had remedial classes, Draco remembered, on Saturday afternoons. Blaise, Pansy, and Nott were all at the sixth years’ usual spot at the table, though, and Pansy looked up as he approached.“Draco!” she called, waving as if he might not see them otherwise. He slid onto the bench next to Zabini.“Pansy,” he said with a nod, serving himself soup.“Have you heard Nott’s finally staying with us for the holidays?”“Really?” asked Draco, regarding the other boy from across the table. “I thought you- what was it you said last year- ‘wouldn’t stay in this drafty decrepit hovel for another two weeks if your life depended on it’.”Theo shrugged. “Don’t have much of a choice, do I? It’s that or my second cousin Concetta in Dorsett, and I haven’t actually spoken to her in years, Father just wrote last week that he was ‘sure I’d be welcome’.” He snorted. “Her kids are something like eight years old, and from what I remember, her wife works in the Department of International Magical Cooperation and never shuts up about it. I’d rather spend two weeks home alone with the house-elf.”“Couldn’t get the old man to agree to that one, huh?” asked Blaise.“What’s he going to do, break out of Azkaban to stop me from stealing the liquor?” Theo shrugged. “It wasn’t worth the argument. I just told him I’d already decided to stay here.”“So you can steal our liquor,” said Blaise.“Yeah, pretty much.”“Speaking of,” said Pansy, who had been pouting over having chosen a topic of conversation in which she had been mostly unable to take part, “I heard Bletchley suggesting to Flora and Hestia that they spike the punch at Slughorn’s Christmas party next week. They seemed like they were considering it, too.”“Why bother?” sneered Blaise. “It’s Slughorn. He’s perfectly capable of making a fool of himself on his own. He’ll probably serve whiskey to the students.”“Yes, but only to the ones who want it,” said Pansy, rolling her eyes. “I’d pay to see Granger drunk off a glass of pumpkin juice, wouldn’t you?”“I thought you weren’t invited to the party,” asked Theo innocently. “So you wouldn’t get to see it anyway.” Pansy’s face twisted as she tried to respond, and Draco laughed.“He’s got you there, Parkinson.”“It was obviously hypothetical,” she said, with a glare for Draco.“It’s always Granger, isn’t it?” Zabini said to Draco, with exaggerated casualty. “She always brings Granger into it. What do you think that’s about?”“Couldn’t tell you,” said Draco. “Do you think she could be jealous of the mudblood?”“ Jealous? ” shrieked Pansy, as if this wasn’t a conversation that they’d had before.“Every time,” said Theo, laughing. “She falls for it every time.”“No, it couldn’t be,” said Zabini. “Not our Pansy. It must be something else.”Pansy was fuming. “I am not jealous of that- that- uppity buck-toothed know-it-all muggle ,” she hissed.“No, you’re right, Blaise, she says she’s not jealous.”Theo snapped his fingers. “She fancies her,” he said, like it was a revelation.“Merlin’s pants, not this again,” cried Pansy. “You know I can’t be held accountable for anything I say at the Montague’s New Year’s party. That was the year I ended up in the broom cupboard with Lucian Bole, for Merlin’s sake.”Zabini ignored Pansy, feigning shock. “Our Pansy? A lesbian? A muggle-fucker?”“I am not a lesbian ,” protested Pansy.“An equal opportunity muggle-fucker, then,” said Draco helpfully.“A muggle and a Gryffindor,” said Theo sadly, shaking his head.“I wouldn’t sleep with Hermione Granger if you paid me and put a sack over her head,” said Pansy haughtily. “Lavender Brown, on the other hand- well, let’s just say I wouldn’t mind spiking her pumpkin juice, if you know what I mean.”Theo made a face. “Gross, Pansy.”Pansy shrugged, smirking. “You started it. Besides, she may be nauseating as a person, but you can’t deny she’s attractive. And she clearly knows what she’s doing,” she added, with a nod towards the Gryffindor table. Draco turned to look. Brown and Weasley, who hadn’t, from what Draco could tell, spent a moment apart in a week, were snogging again. He rolled his eyes, and was about to turn back to his friends, when his gaze shifted to the Ravenclaw table, where the younger Weasley was just sitting down with her friends.She was laughing, which he realized he hadn’t seen her do in some time, though he wasn’t sure why that was something he would remember. Her cloak was wet- she had to peel it off of her jumper- and there was snow in her hair. She looked up, brushing long strands of damp hair out of her face, and met his eyes before he could look away. Something in her face changed, just for a second, before she looked back down at Lovegood, saying something that made the other girl flick peas at her from across the table.The redhead glanced back up, and Draco turned away before they made eye contact again, returning to a conversation that had shifted from which Gryffindors Pansy found less repulsive than the others to a heated discussion of whether Slughorn or Trelawney was more incompetent than the other."Trelawney," said Draco, interrupting Pansy's whining about the Slug Club. "At least Slughorn teaches something useful, even if he does a poor job of it.""Thank you, that's what I've been saying," said Zabini. It was a shallow conversation, one that they had had iterations of before, and would have again in the future, but Draco was more than happy to let it take up his attention until the four of them had finished dinner and returned to the common room, where he could go through the Slytherin bookshelves to see if they held anything remotely useful, or at least slip away to his own bed.
“Really, though, are you okay?” Colin asked in a low voice, stopping Ginny at the bottom of the stairs leading to the girls’ dormitories.

“I’m really okay,” Ginny lied, smiling at him around a yawn. “I meant it when I said I was tired. I don’t know about this whole O.W.L. business- Fred and George might’ve had the right idea, skipping out early.”

“They took their O.W.L.s though, didn’t they? They were seventh years last year.”

Ginny waved him off. “Details.”

Colin laughed. “Stick around for our sake, then,” he said. “I think we’d both flunk out if I was the only one responsible for getting Luna to study.”

“It’s a two-wizard job,” Ginny agreed. She yawned again. “I’ll consider it, for you.”

“Much appreciated,” said Colin. “Goodnight.”

“Goodnight,” said Ginny.

She lay in bed for almost two hours, staring at the ceiling, replaying the kiss with Dean in her head over and over again, looking for answers, until the hallway was no longer in Hogwarts, but the Department of Mysteries, and Dean was replaced with Tom Riddle, looming over her.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Draco had spent all of Sunday in the Room of Hidden Things, pausing only for Quidditch practice after what would have been dinner, if he had gone. He had been up until two in the morning on Saturday night, combing through the indexes of every textbook in the Slytherin common room, and had at last found one battered Charms book in the back corner shelf that had a chapter on what seemed to be diagnostics spells for enchanted objects, which looked promising.

He spent Monday night in the Room, poring over the Charms book, taking more extensive notes than he had ever taken for class. At four am, he set an alarm spell, and slept on a pile of rugs on the floor.

Classes on Tuesday crawled by at the pace of a flobberworm. He missed breakfast and scarfed down lunch. He skipped dinner to catch up on his homework- Snape had written fewer cutting comments than usual on his latest Defense essay, despite the assignment in question having been wrinkled, ink-stained, and almost incoherent in places, which wasn’t a good sign.

Quidditch practice on Tuesday evening was vile. Their beaters this year were lousy, and most of the team had spent more of practice dodging rogue bludgers than they had practicing- what’s more, it had been snowing, thick and heavy. By the time Draco trudged back into the castle, forgoing the locker room entirely, he was tired, sore, and soaked to the bone.

He needed to crack that Charms book. The diagnostic spell was impossibly complicated- he’d needed to filch a second book from the common room to interpret some of the runes involved- but he was getting closer. Still, he knew he wouldn’t be able make any progress if he fell asleep on his feet. Draco rolled his head in a slow half-circle, wincing as his neck crackled. What he needed, he thought, was a nice long shower, and maybe some coffee, and for nobody to disturb him. He sighed, and started for the seventh floor, then stopped and changed direction. He could take an hour.

In the prefects’ bathroom on the fifth floor, Draco sank up to his neck into the huge bathtub, the water nearly scalding and filled with thick turquoise foam. He could almost feel the muscles in his neck and shoulders uncoiling, as the sweat and grit from Quidditch practice melted away. He closed his eyes. The door was locked, and bolted, and password-protected, besides. His alarm spell wouldn’t go off for another forty-five minutes, and there would be enough time to go down to the kitchens and beg coffee off of the house-elves before heading back to the seventh floor. He had just managed to put all thoughts of the Cabinet and his task out of his head when a high, warbling voice called his name.

“Draco,” cooed Myrtle, from across the bathroom. Draco’s eyes snapped open.

“What do you want?” he demanded. “Get out.” The ghost was reclining a few inches from the floor on the other side of the tub, watching him with her head tipped back.

“Oh, not very friendly, are we,” tsked Myrtle. “I’ve been looking for you

everywhere

. It’s been

ages

since we talked-”

“Yeah, well, I have a life outside of you, you know.” Myrtle’s chin immediately began to quiver, and she flipped over onto her stomach so that he could see her distress right-side up. Maybe ‘life’ had been the wrong choice of words.

“I only had a message for you, but fine. If you don’t want to hear it-” she drifted towards the nearest stall door.

“A message?” Draco said, confused. “Wait, Myrtle- what do you mean, a message?”

Who would want to talk to

you

,

he added in his head.

“I don’t quite remember,” said Myrtle, turning around. “And besides,

you

said-”

“Fine, don’t tell me,” he said, folding his arms over his chest and closing his eyes.

“There was a girl,” Myrtle said, in an almost sing-song tone. Draco opened his eyes again.

“A girl? What girl?”

“The girl from the Chamber of Secrets,” said Myrtle, rasping conspiratorially. “She was

looking

for you.”

Weasley.

Draco’s stomach dropped. Something must’ve happened, for her to seek him out. Maybe Potter had figured it out. Maybe he was getting closer. Maybe she was hurt, maybe she’d tried to open the Chamber-

“When? Myrtle? When was this? Today, just now?”

Myrtle shrugged. “

I

don’t remember,” she said. “Not today. Last week, maybe. I do have a life outside of

you

, you know,” she said, with a malicious little giggle, and dived through the nearest stall door and down into the pipes.

Draco cursed, and after a long moment, climbed out of the tub, drying off and pulling his robes back on. At least Moaning Myrtle’s bathroom was on the way to the kitchens, he reasoned. He could just stop by and see. Just to make sure.

If Potter discovered anything-

Draco threw open the door to the corridor, letting the chill of the air in the corridor colliding with his damp skin cut off his train of thought before it got started.

The bathroom was empty. He checked the usual corners for the redheaded witch, and the rest of the corners, just to be thorough. The bathroom was empty, and there was no sign of any entrance to the Chamber of Secrets; the only thing out of place was the apple he had left on the sink, now half-rotted. Draco wrinkled his nose and Vanished it, before leaving the bathroom and heading down to the kitchens. Maybe Myrtle had been lying. Or maybe something was wrong, and they’d just missed each other.

He made it back up to the seventh floor in half an hour, a clay mug of coffee in one hand and a croissant left over from dinner in the other. He hadn’t realized how hungry he was until one of the wrinkled creatures had practically shoved it into his hands.

The Room of Hidden Things opened, Draco threaded his way through the maze of lost garbage to the Vanishing Cabinet. He ought to start being more careful, he reflected. Even if Weasley hadn’t been seeking him out in order to confront him, Potter was still suspicious. Maybe he could convince Crabbe or Goyle to guard to door, or watch to make sure he wasn’t followed…

He pulled the Charms book and his notes from where he had stashed them on a nearby shelf, and opened the Vanishing Cabinet, intending to pick up where he left off, but something stopped him. In the center of the Cabinet sat the half-rotted apple that he had Vanished from the bathroom maybe forty minutes earlier. Draco blinked stupidly. He had no idea what this meant, but it probably wasn’t good. He picked up the apple, cringing at the malleable texture, and flung it as far as he could into the seemingly endless room, hearing a soft clatter in the distance as it hit one of the piles of junk and rolled off.

It didn’t change anything, he decided finally. He still didn’t know what was going on or how to fix it. Draco took another sip of his coffee and settled himself on the floor with the Charms book, prepared for a long night.
The week leading up to Slughorn’s Christmas party was a blur. Harry was running Quidditch practices a full hour longer than usual, to make up for the time they had lost the week before, which meant that Ginny no longer had to worry about being woken by nightmares, as she no longer had time to sleep for more than five or six hours a night if she wanted to get a reasonable amount of her homework done.
“We don’t even have a match until after the holidays,” Demelza griped on Wednesday night, as she and Ginny and Dean walked back to the castle together after a particularly grueling three hours of drills.

“He’s a madman,” Ginny agreed.

Harry had asked Luna to accompany him to Slughorn’s party, as friends, in hopes that it would quell the Gryffindor girls’ efforts to dose him with love potions snuck into the school from the twins’ shop. Surprisingly, it had been marginally effective, though Ginny was mildly concerned that Romilda Vane would begin dedicating her energy towards vengeance on the Ravenclaw girl. Ginny had considered asking Colin, just so that she would have some company of her own, but he had warned her preemptively that the last Gobstones tournament before holidays was on the same night, and that he couldn’t be persuaded to skip it. Hermione, Ginny had been told in the strictest confidence, was taking Cormac McLaggen, the arrogant seventh-year who had tried out to replace Oliver Wood as Keeper at the beginning of the year. Though she had been strictly avoiding Ron and Harry outside of Quidditch practice, Ginny took this, along with Lavender’s constant presence, to mean that the hostility between her brother and Hermione would not be dying down any time soon.

“Shortcut?” Dean offered, jolting Ginny from her thoughts with a sudden flash of deja vu. He was holding back the tapestry for her.

“Oh, no, actually,” Ginny said, casting about for an excuse. “I actually promised Luna I’d fetch her from the library when we were done, she wanted to, er, talk about our Herbology homework,” she lied.

“See you tomorrow, then,” said Demelza, climbing into the passage.

“Goodnight,” said Ginny, heading for the stairs. She regretted her decision almost immediately- she really did have homework to be working on for Charms the next day, and her bag was up in the Gryffindor tower- but she hadn’t been paying quite enough attention to where they’d been going to prepare herself to go through that particular corridor with Dean again, even with Demelza there.

“You’re being ridiculous,” Ginny chastised herself aloud. Still. Nothing to do now but wait. She could always just loop around past the library on the way to the common room, to take the expected amount of time getting back, and still have a reasonable amount of time left to do her Charms homework.

“That would be the intelligent thing to do,” Ginny told herself, already turning towards Moaning Myrtle’s bathroom. She was too shaken up, she told herself. The Dean thing had surprised her, that was all. She needed a little while before she started her homework.

It had nothing to do with the part of her mind that remembered Riddle’s, that felt most at home in the Chamber (or when lying paranoid in bed, lost so deep in something almost like nostalgia that she forgot what time of year it was). Or the part that had moved her to glance at Hermione’s prefects’ rounds schedule two nights earlier and to notice that it was Malfoy’s shift that night.
Wednesday morning found Draco sitting alone at the Slytherin table, poking at his sausage. He hadn’t gotten any sleep at all the night before, only returning to his dorm early in the morning to change and splash some water on his face. His shoulders were tight, from hunching over the blasted Charms text- he was going to burn that book when this was all over with- and his chest felt oddly empty and unsteady from fatigue.
His dorm mates had all been asleep when he’d crept in and out of the dormitory, and the Great Hall had been almost empty when he’d gotten there, but as it approached eight thirty, the rest of the school began trickling in.

“You’re up early,” said Blaise, sliding into the bench next to him and reaching for the eggs.

“Hmm? Oh, yeah,” said Draco, tearing his gaze away from the entrance. “Couldn’t sleep, I guess.”

“You went to bed late, too,” Blaise observed, but Draco didn’t hear the rest of his sentence. Ginny Weasley had just walked into the Great Hall, her hair piled messily on top of her head and her bag slung over one shoulder. She looked okay- well, she looked normal, which meant that he could still pick out the dark smudges under her eyes even from across the room, and when she dropped her bag heavily onto a bench at the Ravenclaw table, he could almost feel its weight just by the relief evident in her posture.

She glanced up, scanning the room for her friends, probably, and met his eyes; Draco raised his eyebrows in what he hoped was an approximation of concern, but the Gryffindor just furrowed her eyebrows and looked away, spotting Creevey coming down the aisle towards her. No indication at all of what might have been-

“Draco.” Blaise was snapping his fingers; Draco jumped.

“What?” he snapped.

“Maybe you should consider getting some sleep one of these days,” said Blaise. “Then we might be able to have a proper conversation, one where you don’t lose consciousness every third sentence.”

“Lay off, why don’t you,” said Draco.

“Let’s make a deal,” said Blaise. “I’ll lay off, when you lay down.”

“Clever, Blaise,” Pansy said deadpan, sitting down across from the two boys. “Really, very impressive.”

“Thank you.”

“Mum and Dad are fighting again,” Draco informed Theo as he approached the table. The other boy just blinked at him, bleary eyed.

“What?”

Draco rolled his eyes. “Nevermind. Sit down.” He pushed a nearby platter of french toast towards his friend.

Several more glances towards the Ravenclaw table throughout breakfast didn’t give Draco any further hints as to what might be going on. Aside from a frankly disgusting combination of breakfast foods (she appeared, from a distance, to be taking bites of a piece of french toast piled high with eggs, bacon, and potatoes), Weasley looked… fine. Unconcerned, even.

An increasing number of furtive glances towards the redhead throughout lunch, which Draco attended that day for the first time in a week and a half, also did nothing to alleviate the strange tightness that had been clinging to Draco’s chest all day. She caught his eye on two different occasions, but Draco didn’t try to communicate across the Great Hall again; he just looked away, letting his friends draw him back into the conversation.

He would probably have continued watching her at dinner, but he had a free period in the afternoon, which he spent doing homework with Blaise in the Slytherin common room until just before his curfew shift at nine-thirty.

“Shouldn’t you be going?” asked Blaise.

“Shouldn’t I- oh. Yes,” said Draco, closing his Arithmancy book. “Thanks.” He needed to check the bathroom, he remembered. Something tightened in his chest. He’d gone most of the afternoon and evening without thinking about Weasley, successfully forcing himself to focus on homework instead of on the dread that had been building in the pit of his stomach; but if she really was looking for him, that was where she would be.
Ginny had just turned the corner to Moaning Myrtle’s bathroom- the corridor was flooded again- when she heard footsteps coming up behind her. There was a moment of unfounded terror- she might be back at the Ministry, it might be a Death Eater- but she pushed it aside to make room for a more reasonable degree of panic. It wasn’t Filch’s shuffling footsteps, but it could be a teacher, or a prefect. There wasn’t time to make it the rest of the way down the corridor to the bathroom.

It could still be a Death Eater

, suggested the same thought again, and she pushed it back down. Her blood was pounding in her ears. She desperately wanted to press herself to the wall, or to run, but she had a mostly legitimate excuse for being out after curfew- she was still in her practice gear, after all- and any attempt to hide would invalidate it, so she kept walking as the footsteps turned the corner and came up behind her.

“Myrtle said you were looking for me,” said Draco Malfoy, appearing beside her. The tension in her shoulders dissipated, though her pulse was still hammering in her chest.

“I wasn’t,” she said, stopping at the edge of the puddle seeping out from under the door. She looked up at him, confused- there was something hesitant in the line of his mouth, he seemed uneasy, for some reason- and then she remembered. “Wait, shit. I mean- sorry. That was weeks ago,” she said. “After the Quidditch match.”

“Oh,” said Malfoy, looking visibly relieved.

“What did you think was going on?” Ginny asked. Malfoy opened his mouth to answer, or to argue, but then fixated on something over her shoulder and closed it again.

“We should go in,” he said, grimacing as he stepped into the puddle to open the bathroom door. Ginny turned to look. Mrs. Norris had appeared at the end of the hallway, and was staring straight at her with bulbous yellow eyes. Ginny swallowed. She’d always felt bad about having played a role in the petrification of the cat, no matter how justified the rest of the student body was in disliking her. “You’re not allowed to be out here,” Draco reminded her, holding open the door. “Filch is probably on his way.”

“Right,” said Ginny, shaking her head. “Of course.” She stepped through the pool of water and into the bathroom. There was no sign of Myrtle- the flooding must have been from an earlier tantrum- so Ginny waded through the inch or so of water to the other corner of the room, sliding down the wall to sit where the slight slope of the floor left a few meters of dry ground under the windows. Malfoy followed her, hesitating for a moment before sitting down against the other wall to her right, facing her.

“So if you weren’t looking for me, what are you doing here?”

“I wasn’t looking for you, I was avoiding-” Ginny broke off. “Someone else.”

Malfoy nodded sagely. “So of course you took refuge in a flooded loo.”

Ginny snorted. “Right, exactly.”

“Who are you hiding from?”

“Why were you staring at me all day?” Ginny countered, and was rewarded by a slight pink tinge spreading across Malfoy’s face.

“Like I said, Myrtle told me you were looking for me. I wanted to know why.”

“So you just believed that I was seeking you out for no reason? ‘Oh, Draco, my only hope’-” Ginny said, pitching her voice higher. “I’m just that desperate?” Draco looked away, as if he was embarrassed, but his tone was sharp and defensive.

“No, actually, I figured that if something had happened that you were asking after me about, it must be pretty bad. For you to be that desperate,” he added. “Something you couldn’t go to your friends about.” Ginny stared, not breaking eye contact when he turned back to look at her. He wasn’t entirely wrong, she realized. She had told him things that nobody else knew, but that had been mostly an accident. This was

Draco Malfoy

. But still.

“Were you

worried

-”

“You never answered my question,” said Draco. “It’s only fair.”

Draco Malfoy,

the little voice in Ginny’s head reminded her. She looked away.

“Dean,” she said. “Dean Thomas.”

Malfoy exhaled in a way that fell somewhere between a scoff and a laugh. “Lover’s quarrel?” he asked.

Ginny turned to Malfoy, curling her lip and creasing her forehead incredulously. “No,” she said, as if it should have been obvious. Malfoy raised his eyebrows at her.

Draco Malfoy,

the voice warned again.

“Last time I saw you together, it looked like things were going pretty well,” he said with a smirk.

The back of Ginny’s neck burned, and she turned back to address the lake covering the bathroom floor. “He kissed me,” she said, dropping more emphasis on the pronouns.

“Merlin, Weasley,” said Malfoy, his voice low. “I mean, from what I saw, you-”

“I know,” said Ginny. “I just didn’t know what to do. I mean, he’s my friend,” she clarified. “I just… I mean, it was a one-time thing. We talked about it. Everyone knows Seamus has got a thing for him, anyway, it wouldn’t be fair of me even if I wanted to.”

“And you didn’t.”

Ginny shook her head. “Well- I mean, I sort of defended myself, to Ron, about it, later. That night. We had this whole row- but no. I just feel weird about it,” she admitted.

“So you took refuge in a flooded loo,” Draco quipped.

“Heh. Yeah, I guess so,” Ginny said, with a weak laugh.

“I never much liked Thomas anyway,” said Draco. “And now I know he is an arse, after all. I could get someone to punch him for you,” he added. “He’s a Gryffindor, it wouldn’t be hard.”

Ginny laughed. “

I’m

a Gryffindor,” she pointed out, as if it was likely that he’d forgotten. Although Ginny realized that she hadn’t thought much about him being in Slytherin in the last several minutes. “Besides, I’m perfectly capable of punching people myself.”

“I don’t doubt it,” said Draco. Malfoy, rather. “I’ve seen you play. Vaisey still complains that you almost knocked him off his broom with that Quaffle last year.”

Ginny grinned. “That was a bloody good trick. I’d forgotten about that.”

“It should’ve been a foul,” argued Malfoy good-naturedly, a word which Ginny wouldn’t have expected to ever use to describe anything done by Draco Malfoy. “And he hasn’t shut up about it since, so we really should’ve gotten extra points to make up for us having to put up with him for the rest of our lives.”

“You only get points if your team isn’t lousy,” Ginny shot back. “If you had Chasers capable of catching a Quaffle thrown directly into their laps, you wouldn’t have this problem.”

“I suppose that’s a reasonable expectation,” Draco conceded after a moment. “It’s not Vaisey’s fault, though. He can’t help having dragon dung for brains.”

Ginny laughed, throwing her head back and nearly braining herself against the window ledge. Malfoy moved as if to lean forward, so suddenly that Ginny’s breath hitched in her chest, but he didn’t quite follow through with it.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“I’m fine,” Ginny said, a little bemused. “Just grazed it. Trying to even the field a little,” she joked, feeling the sore spot at the back of her skull to make sure the throbbing warmth spreading there was just pain and not blood. Her fingers came back clean. “See?” she said, presenting them to Malfoy. “All good.” He didn’t look convinced, but he relaxed back against the wall.

Ginny wasn’t quite sure what to make of his reaction. A month ago, he had gleefully taken fifty points from her for no real reason. Last year he had done everything in his power to get her expelled by Umbridge. His father was the one who had slipped her Tom’s diary in her first year. And now he seemed… She didn’t know.

“What time is it?” She asked suddenly. Malfoy checked his watch.

“Nearly half-ten,” he said.

Ginny swore colorfully. Draco raised his eyebrows, looking almost more impressed than quizzical. “I had Charms homework due tomorrow,” she explained anyway, standing up. “I meant to get started sooner.”

Malfoy stood up too. “I think you could probably take him. Flitwick,” he said, considering. Ginny gave him an incredulous look.

“He’s a world class dueler.”

“Yeah, but can he catch a Quaffle?”

Ginny shook her head with an exaggerated sigh. “Careful not to trip on how clever you think you are,” she threw over her shoulder, stepping through the shallow pool of water between her and the corridor. She paused for a fraction of a second in the doorway. “See you around, Malfoy,” she added, stepping into the corridor and walking away before he could respond.
Draco watched her leave, the smirk spread across his face slowly giving way to a more neutral bewilderment.
“What the bloody hell was that,” he demanded under his breath. Chatting about Quidditch with a Weasley, as if they were friends. He shook his head in disbelief, and set off for the dungeons.

It hadn’t been all bad, he thought. She wasn’t hard to talk to. And she didn’t seem to mind talking, either, judging by the kinds of things she’d told him. Dean Thomas…

Draco found himself shaking his head again, and sharply schooled his face to a neutral expression. All the Occlumency training in the world was useless if his thoughts could be read on his face by any passerby. Not, he conceded, that there were many onlookers wandering the castle past curfew on a Wednesday night. But even so.

Whatever Draco had said to Ginny, he had been surprised. Thomas had always seemed to fit right in with what Potter’s fan club considered to be the decent sort of wizard. It was possible there had been some kind of misunderstanding, but that didn’t seem like a very Gryffindor excuse.

Still, he was somewhat relieved to discover that she and Thomas weren’t, in fact, going out together. He’d had more than a few reservations about talking even as closely as they had before tonight with someone so closely associated with Potter’s crowd.

She was still, herself,

in

Potter’s crowd, he reminded himself. She was Ron Weasley’s bloody sister. Potter spent holidays with them in their hovel. Ginny had still taken him out in Umbridge’s office last year with a Bat-Bogey hex that smarted to remember. She was just as Gryffindor as the rest of them, and it was a tad unnerving that such a relatively small detail as who she was dating at the moment should alter how he felt about their run-ins.

So it didn’t make sense. But he felt a little better about the whole thing, all the same.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Ginny dropped her bag under the bench and sat down next to Luna at the Ravenclaw table. She cast a furtive glance towards Slytherin, across the room, though she suspected that Malfoy wouldn’t be there, and he wasn’t. He hadn’t been at lunch on Thursday, either, though he had been at breakfast both mornings. Not that she was keeping track.

“You didn’t warn me that Transfiguration was going to be awful today,” said Ginny. “It’s making me almost look forward to Herbology this afternoon. And we have to go outside for Herbology,” she stressed.

“I didn’t know that Transfiguration was awful,” said Luna. “What was awful about it?”

Ginny waved a hand. “It wasn’t all that bad. It was just theory instead of practical. I took so many notes I think my hand might be cramped up for the rest of the day,” she said. “Lucky thing Harry cancelled practice tonight.”

“Harry cancelled practice?” asked Colin, sitting down across from them. “Congratulations. Is there another blizzard or something?”

“It’s Slughorn’s party tonight, Colin.”

“Oh, right, of course,” said Colin. “Looking forward to it?”

Ginny shrugged. “Not especially. But it should be interesting, at the very least. And Luna’s excited.”

“Oh, yes,” said Luna. “I’m glad after all that I packed my dress robes, even though I didn’t especially think I would get the chance to wear them.”

Ginny glimpsed a flash of blond hair behind Colin’s head, and automatically glanced up towards the Slytherin table, but it was only Bletchley..

“What are you looking at?” asked Colin, craning his neck.

“Nothing,” said Ginny quickly. “I thought I saw Hermione.”

“She’s further down, I think,” said Colin. “Not for long, though, Ron’s on his way.” He winced sympathetically.

“She was crying in the bathroom last week,” said Luna. “He’s really not being very nice to her at all. He can be quite unkind when he wants to be.”

“Tell me about it,” said Ginny, glaring at her brother. Bolstered by the attentions of Lavender Brown and the apparent success of his derisive attitude towards Hermione, he had begun to be rather ugly towards other people, as well- most recently, Ginny had stopped him from calling Luna ‘Looney’ while expressing his feelings about who Harry had chosen to take to Slughorn’s party.

Across the room, Hermione, who had stopped on her way out to talk with Parvati Patil and Lavender Brown, giggled in a way that was entirely unlike her. Parvati looked awestruck; Lavender utterly flabbergasted. Ron, Ginny could see, was openly staring, and growing steadily redder.

“What do you think

that’s

about?” asked Colin.

“Best guess? She just told them who she’s taking to Slughorn’s party,” said Ginny.

“Weren’t she and Ron supposed to go together, as friends?” asked Luna.

“Supposed to,” said Ginny. “That was before he started acting like a complete arse for no reason.”

“Who is she taking now?” asked Colin.

“We-ell, I’m not

really

supposed to say…”

“Okay, but if

Ron

knows-”

“Cormac McLaggen.”

Colin’s jaw hit the table. “You’re kidding,” he said, a grin spreading across his face. “I would pay to see how that goes.”

“You still can, for the very low price of free,” said Ginny. “I told you coming with me to Slughorn’s party would be worth it.”

“Tempting,” said Colin, making a face at her, “But I’m not missing the Gobstones tournament.”

“Worth a shot.” Ginny stood up from the table, swinging her bag over one shoulder. “We should head to Herbology. I want to get a table a little further back if we’re doing another biting plant.”

“Good call,” said Luna. “I think losing an eye might have adverse effects on Colin’s Gobstones performance.”
Ginny applied her coral-colored lipstick in the mirror of the closest girls’ bathroom to Ravenclaw tower, pressing her lips together and giving herself one last once-over in the mirror. She’d never been one for more than a bit of mascara on a day-to-day basis, but she’d dug up some eyeliner for the occasion- originally purchased two years previously, for the Yule ball- and it had only taken four tries to get what she thought was a reasonably even line.
“Are you ready yet?” she called over the the stalls, where Luna was still changing. The other girl was typically much more adventurous with her make up than Ginny was, and she had applied a swirling design of glittery eyeliner and pink eyeshadow across her eyelids before donning her dress robes, telling Ginny she wanted her to get ‘the full effect’.

“Almost,” said Luna. “You’ll have to fix my hairpins for me.”

“I can’t do that until you come out,” said Ginny. “It’s 7:30, didn’t you say you were meeting Harry in the entrance hall at eight?”

“It’ll be fine,” said Luna, opening the door. Her robes, which were calf-length and open down the front except for one hook at the waist, were spangled silver, with a trim of metallic grey lace. Her skirts and top underneath were a dusky pink color which should have clashed with the silver on anyone else but somehow worked on Luna. Her hair was half-falling down.

“Gorgeous,” said Ginny, steering Luna to the mirror and taking several pins from the other girl’s hand. She reached up and tucked a handful of blonde curls into her updo, doing her best not to stab her friend in the head. Luna’s heels gave the taller girl another few inches over Ginny, and she found she could only mostly see what she was doing. Luna was looking at herself almost curiously in the mirror.

“These are the kinds of things people are supposed to want their mums around for, aren’t they,” she said, fingertips drawn automatically to the turquoise ring she sometimes wore.

“I suppose so,” said Ginny cautiously. “I don’t think about it much- it’s not the kind of thing my mum focused on, with six boys.” She paused, hands held apprehensively near Luna’s hair, waiting to make sure it would hold. It did. She took a half-step to the left so that she could look over Luna’s shoulder and meet her friend’s eyes in the mirror. “Do you miss her?”

“Sometimes,” said Luna. “When we’re down by the lake, in the spring, that reminds me of her, what she felt like. Not here, though. Not exactly. That’s just not how I remember her.”

Ginny shrugged. “Well, then, it doesn’t matter what you think people are supposed to think. However you feel about it is the way you’re supposed to be feeling. Nobody else gets to decide that for you.”

“Thank you,” said Luna. “I think that was very wise.”

Ginny shrugged again. “What would have been wise was if we had left here ten minutes ago. You’re going to be late to meet Harry.”

“A witch is never late,” said Luna. “She arrives precisely when she means to.”

“What?”

Luna shrugged. “Just something I heard once.”

“Well, he’s going to have to wait for you, either way, so let’s get going,” said Ginny, holding open the bathroom door. “I’ll meet you there.” She thought she had better arrive on time, as Hermione most certainly would, and the older girl would likely need every buffer she could get between her and her date.
Draco crept through the halls, ducking into alcoves or passageways on more than one occasion in order to avoid groups of students on their way down to Slughorn’s office. Blaise had left dinner early, to get ready, and Ginny Weasley hadn’t shown up at all.

Must be a big deal, this party, for a Weasley to miss a meal over it

, he thought sourly, though he felt strangely guilty for having thought it.

He paced back and forth across the seventh floor corridor, waiting for the room to reveal itself to him. He stepped through the door as soon as it materialized, with one last glance down the hallway to make sure he hadn’t been seen. Maybe enlisting Crabbe and Goyle as lookouts would be prudent in the future.

Draco made his way through the familiar maze to the Vanishing Cabinet. He’d abandoned the diagnostic spell for the time being, purely out of frustration, and instead had made a few repairs to the physical body of the Vanishing Cabinet, since it felt better than sitting around doing nothing. He hadn’t expected anything to actually happen, and then, on Thursday night, he had opened the cabinet to find several items that seemed to belong to Borgin and Burke’s shop. Closing the cabinet had sent the items back- with the exception of an impressive peacock-feather quill, which Draco had pocketed- and he had immediately penned an owl to the shop owner, who, if he was true to his word, was currently waiting in front of the other cabinet.

Draco pulled an apple from the pocket of his robes, examining it for a moment while he steadied his breath. If this worked, it would be more progress than he had made in months. If it didn’t, he had made a fool of himself by involving another party. He placed the apple in the cabinet and closed the door, holding his breath until he heard the sucking sound that meant that something, at least, had happened.

He waited.

After what seemed like hours, there was an answering noise, and he fumbled at the latch with trembling fingers until he finally opened the cabinet’s door. The apple sat once again on the floor of the cabinet, unharmed except for a bite taken out of one side. Draco picked up the apple. It still felt like an apple, firm and not melted or rotted or any of the other myriad of problems that had befallen so many of his previous tests. He let out a cry of surprise and delight that was muffled almost immediately in the stifling towers of junk.

It should have been obvious, he thought. The Vanishing Cabinet had been dropped several stories into a corridor by Peeves only a few years ago; as far as Draco knew, it had worked before then. But he’d figured it out now. He felt some of the fear that had characterized his sixth year slide from his shoulders, and stepped back into the corridor with a little more confidence in his step.

He had made it only as far as the next corridor over before he was apprehended by Filch.

“Out of bed, are we?” he asked, revealing a haphazard collection of yellowed teeth contained in a malicious grimace.

“I’m a prefect, I’m allowed-” said Draco, before being interrupted.

“Not today, you’re not. I know the patrol schedules, brat, don’t lie to me.”

“I was just on my way to Slughorn’s party,” he lied. “What is it, a crime to be late, now?”

“We’ll see about that,” said the caretaker sourly, grabbing Draco’s arm and draggin him towards the dungeons.

“Get

off

me, you filthy squib, I’m perfectly capable of walking myself,” he snapped, pulling his arm away sharply, but Filch’s grip only tightened; Draco could feel the man’s unkempt nails digging in through his robes.

Slughorn’s quarters were on the sixth floor. Draco had never been to any of the so-called ‘Slug Club’ gatherings, nor visited the Potion Master’s office for any other reason, but the muffled music and chatter could be heard from around the corner. Draco gave one last tug at his arm before Filch pushed open the door, flooding the corridor with a warm glow.

As Filch dragged him through the crowd towards the center of the room, Draco caught a glimpse of Ginny Weasley. She hadn’t seen him yet, although she was heading in the same direction- Draco heard Lovegood’s voice from some point ahead of him, saying something about gum disease, and guessed at the Gryffindor’s destination. Her hair was down; he didn’t know if he had ever seen it down, or if he had been paying attention. It fell in waves just past her shoulders.

“Professor Slughorn,” wheezed Filch, having located the man in question, standing next to Lovegood herself. “I discovered this boy lurking in an upstairs corridor. He claims to have been invited to your party and to have been delayed in setting out. Did you issue him with an invitation?”

Draco finally yanked his arm free of Filch’s claw-like grip. “All right, I wasn’t invited!” he said, having been too distracted to think of a better excuse. “I was trying to gatecrash, happy?” Filch opened his mouth, probably to say that he wasn’t happy, although the glee spread across his pockmarked face told a different story. In any case, Draco didn’t hear what he might have said. Ginny had reached Lovegood at the edge of the group gathered around Slughorn, and he was able to get a better look at her with fewer people between them.

Her dress robes were clearly second hand; the reddish-gold embroidered borders at the wrists of her fitted sleeves and running down the front of her robes where they hooked together was visibly frayed. The deep blue robes were cut simply, much more simply than the gathered skirts and draping sleeves preferred by more fashionable purebloods; loosely fitted through the waist and hanging more or less straight down from her hips, and fastened together from the point of a shallow v a hand’s width below her collarbones all the way down to her ankles. He thought on reflection that anything more complex would likely have just looked wrong.

He thought she might also be wearing a bit more makeup than she usually did, but just as he focused his gaze back on her face, she looked up and met his eyes. He looked away, returning to earth just in time to hear Slughorn interrupt Filch’s tirade.

“That’s all right, Argus, that’s all right,” he said, waving a hand. “It’s Christmas, and it’s not a crime to want to come to a party. Just this once, we’ll forget any punishment; you may stay, Draco.”

Draco brought a grateful smile to his face, thanking Slughorn for his generosity as Filch shuffled angrily back towards the corridor. Ginny had turned away again, but near where she had been stood Snape, who had either just arrived or had previously gone unnoticed. His face was dangerously inscrutable. Draco swallowed involuntarily.

“-nothing, nothing,” Slughorn was saying. “I did know your grandfather, after all…”

“He always spoke very highly of you, sir,” said Draco quickly, dragging his attention back to the conversation with some effort. “Said you were the best potion-maker he’d ever known.” Slughorn waved a hand at the flattery, beaming with satisfaction.

“Very kind of you, my dear boy. Now-”

“I’d like a word with you, Draco,” said Snape, suddenly closer than he had been.

“Oh, now, Severus,” said Slughorn, hiccoughing and pressing a hand to his chest, “It’s Christmas, don’t be too hard-”

“I’m his Head of House, and I shall decide how hard, or otherwise, to be,” said Snape curtly. “Follow me.”

Draco cast one last nearly desperate glance around the room- Blaise was nowhere to be seen, and though Ginny caught his eye again as he turned back towards his godfather, there was really nothing to be done. He followed Snape out of the party and down the corridor into an empty classroom.

“You’ve been incredibly foolish, Draco,” Snape said once he had closed the door behind them. “I’d expected that if you had any sense at all you would have sought my help months ago. You’ve been far luckier than you deserve. If Katie Bell had been harmed even slightly more than she was- and she was in serious condition as it is-”

“I didn’t have anything to do with it, all right?”

“I hope you are telling the truth, because it was both clumsy and irresponsible. Already you are suspected of having a hand in it, and you know as well as I that you cannot afford mistakes, Draco, because if you are expelled-”

“Who suspects me?” Draco demanded defensively. “For the last time, I didn’t do it, okay? That Bell girl must’ve had an enemy no one knows about.” Snape pursed his lips, giving him a penetrating look, his eyes shifting slightly out of focus. Draco hastily threw up mental walls. “Don’t look at me like that! I know what you’re doing, I’m not stupid.”

There was a pause as Snape continued to probe his mind. “Taking lessons from your Aunt Bellatrix, I see,” he said after a moment, his eyes coming back into focus and latching onto Draco’s own. “What thoughts are you trying to conceal from your master, Draco?”

Draco bristled, half-anger and half-fear. “I’m not trying to conceal anything from him, I just don’t want you butting in,” he replied sharply.

‘So that is why you have been avoiding me this term? You have feared my interference? Listen to me,” he said, lowering his voice. ‘I am trying to help you. I swore to your mother I would protect you. I made the Unbreakable Vow, Draco-”

Draco’s heart was pounding in his throat. “Looks like you’ll have to break it, then,” he shot back with a sneer, “because I don’t need your protection! It’s my job, he gave it to me and I’m doing it. I’ve got a plan, and it’s going to work. It’s just taking a bit longer than I thought it would.”

“What is your plan?” asked Snape. “If you tell me what you are trying to do, I can assist you-”

“I’ve got all the assistance I need, thanks-”

“You are a child,” spat Snape, “You are working alone and making elementary mistakes-”

“I’m not

alone

,” retorted Draco, which was technically true, now that he had at long last written to Mr. Borgin about the matching Cabinet.

“Then why not confide in me, and I can-”

“I know what you’re up to,” said Draco heatedly, his temper rising beyond his control.  “You want to steal my glory!”

There was a long pause. “You are speaking like a child," Snape repeated coldly. "I quite understand that your father’s situation has upset you, but-”

Draco had had enough. He pushed past Snape, knocking his arm out of the way, and slammed the door open, stalking off in any direction as long as it was away from the probing eyes and meddlesome questions of Severus Snape. He found himself almost heading for Myrtle’s bathroom, out of habit, but remembered when he was still on the staircase that Weasley would still be at Slughorn’s party. He reminded himself that it shouldn’t matter- she wasn’t why he went there, after all- but he headed back down towards his dormitory in the dungeons all the same.
Ginny left the party at midnight, unable to get Draco out of her head. Luna was still engaged with one of Slughorn’s guests in a conversation that they both seemed to find absolutely riveting, but which Ginny couldn’t seem to follow for more than a few exchanges; when she finally said goodbye, Luna barely paused between sentences to wish her goodnight. Ginny navigated through the still crowded room to the door, passing McLaggen hovering somewhat drunkenly near one of the pillars. Hermione must have made her escape after all, Ginny thought.
Back in her room in Gryffindor tower, Ginny tossed and turned in bed for nearly an hour, her mind filled with thoughts of Charms essays, Colin’s Gobstones tournament, Hermione’s ongoing feud with Ron, and Draco Malfoy catching her eyes from across the room. When she finally drifted off, it was only to enter a world where Tom still waited for her in the darkest corners of her mind and caught her eye from the darkest corners of every room. He cornered her in empty corridors, chased her through the maze of the Department of Mysteries, stood over her in the Chamber of Secrets as she lay dying, letting him sap away her life force to feed his own. His voice echoed in her ears, inescapable, and when Ginny woke again at four-thirty in the morning, cold and breathless and dripping with sweat, swallowing the scream on the tip of her tongue, she didn’t bother trying to go back to sleep.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

The last two days before the end of term were chaotic as ever. Predictably, nobody who was going home for the holidays had thought to pack in the weeks leading up to their departure, and from what Ginny could tell, most of the House spent Sunday afternoon shouting at their dormmates in a frenzied search for belongings that had scattered themselves all over Gryffindor Tower throughout the semester. Going off of past experience, Ginny had given up on any semblance of organization early on, in favor of the much simpler task of ensuring that the tangled mess crammed into her trunk contained at least enough clothes for two weeks at home, and the school books she would need for the mountains of homework the fifth-years had been assigned.
“You’d better write me,” Ginny instructed her friends over dinner Sunday night. Colin and Luna were both going home for the holidays as well. “Errol’s bloody useless, he would take the entire holiday to deliver one letter, and Pig isn’t capable of carrying a fraction of the amount of help I’m going to need with Flitwick’s paper.”
“We won’t let you down,” said Colin. “That is, so long as Dennis hasn’t misplaced Badger along with everything else he owns.” He cast a put-upon glance down the length of the Gryffindor table towards his younger brother. Ginny snorted into her pumpkin juice.“It’s not funny when you’re the one who has to deal with it!” said Colin. “It’s everything, really, I think he hasn’t packed anything but the clothes on his back. I’m only surprised he’s managed to hold onto his wand all this time, I thought for sure Mum and Dad would have to get him a new one by the end of his first year. Did I tell you, he lost it-”“-eight times in the week between going to Diagon Alley and getting on the train,” Ginny filled in.“And he wasn’t even supposed to have it out,” Colin added, undeterred.“I’m sure it will turn out alright,” said Luna, reaching across Ginny for mashed potatoes. “I can hardly ever find any of my things to bring home over the holidays, but they always turn up by the end of the year.” Ginny and Colin exchanged a somewhat helpless look across the table. People were always taking Luna’s belongings, but it didn’t seem to bother her enough to do anything about it herself, and she refused to tell Ginny and Colin who it might have been.“Lean in, you two,” said Colin finally, pulling his ever-present camera from his bag. “We haven’t taken nearly enough pictures this term, Mum and Dad are going to think I’ve been lying this whole time about having friends.”Ginny threw her arm around Luna’s shoulder, grinning at the camera. As obnoxious as it had seemed back in first year, she understood Colin’s urge to document everything. At first, she knew, it had been largely out of a need to prove to himself that magic was real, that everything in his life was really happening, but in the past couple of years there had been a darker, unspoken undertone of knowing that they might be glad to have so many pictures of their friends and classmates in the not-too-distant future.Besides, Ginny thought, returning to her food, he was good at it. She had a couple of his muggle pictures pinned to her bedroom walls at home, of the three of them, or the D.A., which she quite liked having, and for her last birthday Colin had given her a framed series of normal wizarding photos that he’d taken of her during Quidditch matches. It was one of her most prized possessions.“Earth to Ginny,” came Colin’s voice, tapping his fork against her goblet. “Still with us?”“Just tired,” she said, yawning right on cue. “Were you saying something?”“Only that we won’t have much time in the morning, and we should make sure we’re all packed tonight so that we can get down to Hogsmeade early enough to get our own compartment.”“It shouldn’t be too much of a problem,” said Ginny. “There’s not nearly as many students on the train for the holidays as there are at the end of the year. Not everyone goes home.”“That’s what you said last year,” observed Luna. “You said not to worry about it.”“And we ended up sitting with Ernie Macmillan, who talked the entire time,” finished Colin.“I don’t mind sitting with DA people,” said Ginny. “I thought we wanted to.”“Macmillan is a pompous arse, and you know it,” said Colin.“He was quite droning,” said Luna. Ginny raised her hands to her shoulders in surrender.“Alright, you win, I was wrong,” she said.“So you’ll come down to breakfast on time?” said Colin, pointing his spoon at her threateningly.“Yes, I’ll come down to breakfast on time.”“And you won’t run all the way back up eighteen thousand flights of stairs for something you forgot in the common room?”“No promises,” said Ginny, ducking to avoid the piece of bread he flung at her with his other hand. “I’ll do my best!”Colin sighed, looking at Luna in mock-disappointment. “I guess that’s the best we can hope for.” Ginny reached to spread some of Luna’s mashed potatoes on Colin’s treacle tart, but he pulled his plate out of the way before she could reach.“Ah ha!” He took a victorious bite of his dessert. Ginny stuck her tongue out at him.“Why don’t you go hunt down that owl of yours, if you’re so worried about it?” she asked.“I’m busy spending time with my two good friends,” said Colin. “How could I miss out on such charming memories?”“You’ve convinced me,” said Ginny, making another go for Colin’s plate with her knifeful of potatoes, and missing for a second time.
“You know,” Colin said to Luna thoughtfully, ignoring Ginny but holding his dessert out of her reach, “I don’t think she realizes that she needs to stay on my good side if she wants me to help her with her Charms essay,”
“I’ll do anything,” said Ginny, dropping her knife back onto her own plate.“Be on time tomorrow,” said Colin immediately.“He tricked me,” she said, turning to Luna. “I don’t believe it.”“You did say anything,” said Luna fairly.“Fine,” said Ginny, turning back to Colin, “But I’m sending your Christmas present with Errol.”Ginny had, in fact, woken up on time on Monday morning, despite a night of very little sleep. There had been so many people milling about in the common room, either hanging out with friends that they wouldn’t see until after the holidays, or still searching between couch cushions for lost gloves and missing quills, that it had been impossible for her to leave the dorm, but she’d kept herself awake for several hours packing and repacking her trunk, and by the time she’d finally fallen into bed at two in the morning, most of her belongings had been untangled and repacked with some kind of order.She hadn’t dreamed, that she could remember, for which she was grimly grateful despite the unconscionable effort it took to get out of bed and pull a striped jumper on over her pajama pants. Colin, waiting with his brother in the common room (“And the Gryffindor Chaser makes it, with five minutes to spare!” he called out, applauding her as she descended the staircase) was dressed similarly- it was almost a tradition that nobody much felt like getting properly dressed for the train home for Christmas.“I told you I would, didn’t I?” said Ginny, a little grumpier than she’d intended. She pulled her hair into a haphazard bun on top of her head, securing it with one of the four elastics on her wrist and several bobby pins, before seizing her trunk by one end and dragging it out of the common room.Luna, sitting alone at the Gryffindor table when Ginny and Colin arrived in the Great Hall, was also in pajamas- a plain nightdress over patchwork pants- and eating a bowl of oatmeal. Colin hoisted Badger’s cage onto the bench next to her- the tawny owl let out a squawk of protest- and climbed over his trunk to sit on her other side, stacking several pieces of french toast on top of each other (“For efficiency,” he told them). A glance towards the Slytherin table told her that Draco Malfoy was nowhere to be seen, though she didn’t know what this meant about how he was spending his holiday, or why it mattered.A slow stream of  horseless carriages began to arrive on the front lawn promptly at nine to take students the twenty minutes down to the Hogsmeade station, and though the train wouldn’t actually leave until ten, Colin ushered Ginny, Luna, and Dennis into one of the earliest carriages, helping Ginny load their trunks under the benches while Luna stroked one of the invisible thestrals.Dennis left them at the station, dragging his trunk off to one side of the platform to wait for his friends, and Ginny, Luna, and Colin claimed a compartment in the middle of the train, stowing their trunks in the luggage racks with some difficulty. Colin set Badger’s cage on the seat by the door, waiting until the train had been moving for about an hour before he opened the window and let her out, with an empty envelope addressed to his parents clutched in her talons.“I didn’t want her to just fly back to the owlery,” Colin explained, “but I don’t want to keep her shut up in here all day.”“I bet that’s the trolley,” said Luna, as several compartment doors could be heard sliding open in the corridor. “I’m going to get some Licorice Wands, I think. Do you want anything, Ginny?”Ginny shook her head. “I brought muffins from breakfast, remember?” she said, pulling one out of the pocket of her cloak, which had been cast aside on the bench. Her friends were by now quite aware of Ginny’s rather limited financial means, and while she appreciated their occasional offers to purchase things for her, it happened slightly more often than she felt comfortable with accepting.Colin followed Luna out into the corridor, and they returned after a few minutes with Colin balancing Luna’s Licorice Wands atop two boxes of Pumpkin Pasties and one of Cauldron Cakes. Luna was sipping a mug of iced pumpkin juice.“Have one,” said Colin, waiting for Luna to lift her packet of Licorice Wands off of the top of the stack so he could knock the box of Cauldron Cakes into Ginny’s lap with his chin. “They’re your favorites, and it’s Christmas.” He dropped the Pasties onto the bench next to Luna and sprawled out on the opposite bench, pulling a handful of chocolate frogs from one of one of his pockets.Ginny reluctantly opened the box, releasing the homey smell of freshly baked pastry. They weren’t, of course, but the warming spell on the trolley was quite effective. She selected one of the Cauldron Cakes, brushing powdered sugar off of the top and back into the box. “Thanks,” she said.Colin waved a chocolate-smeared hand. “Don’t mention it,” he said, his mouth full, examining a Chocolate Frog card.The lamps in the compartments turned themselves on half an hour before the Hogwarts Express pulled into King’s Cross Station, as dusk was settling over the world outside the darkened window. Ginny nudged Colin with her foot, and he woke with a small start. Luna was still absorbed in her latest edition of The Quibbler , which she was reading upside down.“It’s almost time,” said Ginny. “I think we’re slowing down.”Ginny pulled the three trunks down from the luggage rack, while Colin packed the remainder of the sweets into the Cauldron Cakes box, which he tossed into Badger’s empty cage after handing Ginny and Luna each one last Pumpkin Pasty. The train came to a full stop, and the corridor was immediately filled with chatter and the scraping and banging of trunks. Colin pulled Ginny and Luna into a tight embrace.“Have a good Christmas,” he said. “Be sure to write loads- I’ll send Badger along as soon as I get home.” He released them, picking up one end of his trunk and nodding to Ginny, who was closest to the door. “Lead the way.” Ginny led them through to the door, jumping down onto the platform and spotting her family, and Harry, a little ways off.“See you next term!” she called back to her friends, making her way towards her parents.“Ah, Ginny, there you are,” her Mum said. “Has your hair been like that all day? Nevermind. I’m glad to see you, dear,” she said, pulling her into a hug. “Let’s be quick, now, your father parked the car outside, but he couldn’t quite get the hang of- what was it you called it again, dear?”“The meter ,” said her Dad, starting towards the barrier that would bring them back out into the muggle station. Ginny hoisted her trunk onto the nearest luggage trolley and followed them. “Harry, I wondered if you could explain exactly-”Ginny fell back with Ron. “No Hermione?” she asked. It was rare for the older girl not to accompany Harry and Ron to the Burrow over holidays. Ron made a sour face.“No,” he said bluntly.“So you haven’t apologized yet for being an arse,” she said, watching her brother’s ears redden.“She should be the one apologizing,” he blustered.“If you say so.”Ron and Ginny loaded the three trunks into the boot of the loaned Ministry car while Harry explained whatever muggle device guarded the parking space to their father, who was nodding solemnly. The ride back to the Burrow was comforting in it’s predictability; Mum asked a barrage of questions about how school was going, and what they had been up to, which were mostly fielded by Harry and Ron, and Dad alternated between contributing short anecdotes about their own Hogwarts days, asking Harry questions about the muggle objects he had encountered lately, and reminiscing about their old flying Ford Anglia.The Burrow, when they finally reached it, was exactly as it always was. Mum began preparing dinner almost immediately, and by the time Ginny and wrestled her trunk up the stairs, the smell of thick stew was drifting up to her bedroom, overpowering the faint odor of burnt rubber coming from upstairs, which meant that the twins were home already. Her Mum had already enlisted Harry and Ron to cut up sprouts, so Ginny decided that a venture upstairs to the twins’ room would have the double benefit of seeing Fred and George and taking her further away from the kitchen.There was a frantic whispering and shuffling of papers when she knocked on their door.“One minute!” one of them called, as Ginny pushed the door open anyway.“Oh,” said Fred, setting down a stack of notes that he had been about to stuff under his pillow. “It’s only you.”“Not to mean that we don’t love and cherish our dearest sister,” clarified George.“But we thought you might be Mum.”“She doesn’t like us experimenting in the house, you see.”“Can’t imagine why not,” said Ginny. “What were you burning?”“Nothing,” said Fred, innocently.“Nothing intentionally ,” said George, batting his eyes.“Fine, don’t tell me,” said Ginny, flopping down onto George’s bed, which was closest to the door. “I won’t tell you anything, either. We can all keep secrets.”“Our darling sister, keeping secrets?” said Fred, looking scandalized.George shook his head in mock-disappointment. “Blackmail, too. I don’t know where she gets it.” The twins looked at each other, and back at Ginny, who blinked expectantly.“It may have been a new twist on an old classic,” said Fred.“Extendable ears. Brilliant little buggers.”“One of our finest inventions.”“The only trouble is, they are not nearly as retractable as they are extendable.”“It’s on account of not being in the name, you see.”“It’s hell on the wrist. You chafe your fingers. You end up with a great pile of cording on the floor next to you.”“So we thought, well, what if they retracted themselves?”“No longer will our nosiest clientele have to struggle in their eavesdropping.”“The new Automaticable Retractable Extendable Ears will coil themselves back up at the first danger of being discovered, giving you plenty of time to pack them back up and get out of sight!” said Fred, grandly. “The only trouble being that, as of yet, they do not.”“They do have a tendency to self destruct rather fantastically,” admitted George.“And at the first sign of danger.” The twins looked at each other.“Mum,” they said together.“We’ve lost seven of them so far.”“But never mind that,” said Fred, “Tell us your news.”“Well,” said Ginny, drawing it out, “If you hadn’t noticed, Hermione didn’t come back with us.”“Has something happened?” asked George, the mood of the room changing suddenly. “We heard about what happened to Hannah Abbott’s mum, have the death eaters-”“No, no,” said Ginny hastily, feeling foolish. “Nothing like that. She and Ron had a row, is all.”“He finally told her, then?” asked Fred. “Poor bugger-”“Quite the opposite,” said Ginny. “He’s started snogging Lavender Brown.”The twins looked at each other. “ Really ,” said George. Ginny nodded.“How do you know?” asked Fred. Ginny made a face.“I don’t think it would be possible not to, unless you were blind and deaf,” she said. “They’re at it constantly, it’s disgusting.” The twins looked at each other again.“Thank you so much for confiding in us,” said Fred, both of them standing.“We’re so glad you felt we were trustworthy enough for this incredibly sensitive information,” said George, opening the door.“It’s really been great catching up,” said Fred, starting up the stairs towards Ron’s room.“They’re both in the kitchen,” called Ginny.
“Oh, what a coincidence, that’s just where we were going,” said George, abruptly turning around. Ginny stared at a suspicious looking splotch on the ceiling for a moment, listening to the stairs creak as the twins descended them, before getting up and heading back down to her room. She thought she should perhaps take another look at her Charms assignment before Colin’s owl came, so that she’d be able to write him about it straight away.
“Aaah, George, look at this. They’re using knives and everything. Bless them,” Ginny heard Fred’s voice coming from the kitchen before she closed her door.On the afternoon of Christmas Eve, Ginny barricaded herself into her room alone for a few minutes of peace. The twins were out in the garden pulling up the last of the carrots for dinner, and Harry and Ron were off somewhere, too- Ginny suspected the orchard- so things were a little quieter than they had been that morning, but on the whole, the house was overcrowded with the wrong people, and it was beginning to wear on her. Percy hadn’t come home (“And good riddance,” Fred had said, when her mother was out of earshot, “The ugly git”), but Professor Lupin was staying in Bill and Percy’s old room, which left Bill staying with the twins, and Fleur in Ginny’s room. Phlegm, as Ginny privately referred to her, spent most of her time draped over Bill’s shoulder, but what time she did spend in Ginny’s room was entirely occupied with turning up her nose at the faded Quidditch posters on the chipped blue walls, sniffing at the patchy rug, and making passive aggressive comments comparing the ‘quaint’ Burrow to her own home in France. It put Ginny more on edge than she cared to admit. It was a very familiar kind of disdain, the kind that girls passed amongst themselves in the corner of the Gryffindor common room, haughty and served with just enough laughter that you could be told you were overreacting. The boys didn’t mind, of course. Boys didn’t care so much about stuff like that. She wished Hermione was there. Hermione would have understood; she knew what it was like when all the girls in your year thought you were odd or annoying or just plain not good enough. But Hermione wasn’t there, and Luna, usually only a firecall away, was off somewhere with her father until the twenty-eighth, and there was only so much that could be explained in letters.
Ginny sighed and returned her attention to the paper chain she’d been making instead of working on her essay. She hadn’t gotten a reply yet to the letter she had sent to Colin two evenings earlier- a foot and a half on their Charms assignment and another fourteen inches on everything that had been going on in the Burrow, along with his Christmas present; a selection of products from the twins’ joke shop, along with the promise of bat-bogey hexes every morning for the rest of his life if any of them were used on her- but she thought she might get an owl later that night, or the next morning, if Colin had written her back right away like he’d promised.
She’d sent Hermione an owl, too, that morning, just a quick note to see how she was doing, and a box of chocolates she was pretty sure was small enough that Pigwidgeon’s tiny heart wouldn’t give out halfway to London. She’d gone into the village with the twins for the chocolate- George had spent the last several evenings flirting with a very pretty muggle girl who worked in a paper shop, and it hadn’t been hard to convince him to let her tag along. For Luna, she had a beaded necklace that she had purchased in a shop in Diagon Alley over the summer, which she wouldn’t be able to give her until the other girl got back from her trip at the end of the week. And then a few days after that, they’d be back at Hogwarts. Even as slowly as the holiday was crawling by, it still felt like she was running out of time.
Ginny ran out of paper strips, and tossed the end of the chain into the pile that was growing to take up the lower half of her bed, reaching for her scissors and the seemingly endless stack of colored papers on her lopsided bedside table. George kept buying them in the village and foisting them onto Ginny, as if she had some inherent talent for making Christmas decor that he lacked. He could have done the whole thing by magic, too, Ginny recalled, with a wide yawn. She’d hoped she would be able to catch up on sleep over the holidays, in her own room- the nightmares were never quite so bad when she wasn’t at Hogwarts, and she didn’t have to worry about waking her dormmates if she had them- but with Fleur staying in her room, she didn’t think she could take the risk. She didn’t need to give the witch yet another reason to pity her. Instead, the last few nights, she’d stayed up late at the kitchen table, half-reading one of the novels she’d bought from a secondhand book shop on one of her rare outings into muggle London over the summer they’d stayed at Grimmauld Place, or working on her Charms essay, or idly cutting strips from George’s infinite supply of colored papers, until George himself got home from the village at two or three in the morning and made her go to bed.
So things with the muggle girl seemed to be going well.Ginny folded a purple strip of paper around a metallic orange one, and secured the loop with a piece of spello-tape. She didn’t mind doing it by hand, not really, even though it took more time than if she could have used magic. It gave her hands something to do, and she could let her mind wander. Lately, it had been wandering more and more in the direction of Draco Malfoy. She hadn’t told George, or anyone else, for that matter, about their encounters. She was almost positive that he wouldn’t understand, not when she didn’t understand herself. She could imagine how the twins would react if she told them she thought she was becoming friends with Malfoy , of all people. They wouldn’t believe her, at first. And then they would just be worried about her. She supposed they would probably be right to worry, but they would tell Ron and Harry to look out for her, and Ron would be furious, and nothing any of them did would help, no matter how well-meaning it was. And sitting with Draco Malfoy in Moaning Myrtle’s bathroom, sometimes talking and sometimes just sitting, it did help. She still wasn’t getting any sleep, but that had never been her priority. It was nice to have someone who almost understood. Even Harry, who knew what it was like to have Voldemort in his head, never thought to come to her. She was just Ron’s little sister. And what he had wasn’t the same, anyway, she thought. He had always known it was evil. There had never been anything comforting in it.Draco, she thought, knew what it was like to be drawn in. To feel things that didn’t match each other. Even if Ginny still didn’t know how she felt about him.“Ginny!” Mum was calling up the stairs. “If you’re going to put up more decorations, you’re going to have to do it before dinner!”“Coming, Mum!” Ginny called back.Alone time, then, was over, until after dinner, and Celestina Warbeck’s Christmas broadcast, which they listened to every year as a family. This year, the broadcast was punctuated by Fleur, speaking as loudly as she could in effort to drown out Cauldron Full of Hot Strong Love , to which Mum continued to turn up the volume on the wireless to the point that the twins deemed it safe to start a game of Exploding Snap with Ginny in the corner.“The angel is a stupified gnome,” said Fred, conversationally, dealing out the cards. “In case you hadn’t noticed.”Ginny craned her neck to look up at the tree. The gold-painted figure did seem rather uglier than usual. “I figured as much.”“He bit me,” said Fred. “He deserves it.”“Do you think your ego will recover?”“Eventually.”“Best to let him win, just in case,” suggested George. “That’s what I’ve been doing all these years. Preemptively, of course. I knew this day would come.” Fred smacked him on the wrist with a card, sending off a few sparks. “Oi, careful there, mate,” said George, shaking his wrist from the sting. “Wouldn’t want to leave a scar, it would ruin our whole reputation if just anyone could go around telling us apart.”“Years of work, wasted,” agreed Fred.“We’d have to go into hiding.”“I can’t imagine the shame.”Fred had won two games, easily, and Ginny and George were attempting to team up against him for a third, when their father came around the back of the sofa on his way to the kitchen.“Better put that away, now,” he warned. “It’s just finished. Eggnog?” and he continued on his way.“I think we’ll head straight up, actually,” said George hastily, with a glance towards their mother. Fleur had just launched into an imitation of Celestina Warbeck that was a little too accurate for Ginny’s liking, and the look on Mum’s face was as good a cue as any to go to bed.“I’m right behind you,” said Ginny with a wince, following the twins to the stairs.Fleur didn’t come back up to the room for a few hours, so Ginny had ample time to stare at the ceiling, watching the shadows of the trees outside shifting in the moonlight. She thought idly of Draco. Had he gone home, to a house that was certainly either nearly empty or filled with Death Eaters, or had he stayed at Hogwarts, wandering the empty corridors, waiting in Myrtle’s bathroom by himself? Ginny still wasn’t sure where they stood. She didn’t know if she should expect to see him when she got back to Hogwarts, or if she should seek him out, or try to happen to run across him in the girls’ toilets. But she wondered what he was thinking, nonetheless.Ginny woke on Christmas morning with frozen toes and eyelids glued shut with sleep and bad dreams. When she finally managed to pry her eyes open, to look for a second pair of socks, she saw that Fleur was gone- likely upstairs with Bill, she didn’t know how the twins put up with it- and that nearly an inch of snow had accumulated on her windowsill through the open window. There were several lumpily-wrapped packages and a disgruntled looking owl at the foot of her bed.“Oh, Badger, hullo,” she croaked, sitting up. “Happy Christmas.” She took the letter from her beak and untied the small package from her leg. “You can go out and hunt if you like, or take a rest, but please don’t leave until I’ve written Colin back, alright?”The owl hooted at her indifferently, and fluttered out the window. Fleur must have opened it to let the owl in. Ginny yawned and crawled out from under the covers, stepping carefully on her toes across the icy floorboards to close it again. Then she returned to the comfort of her bed, bundling her pillows around her.
She opened Colin’s letter first; it was written on sheets of lined muggle paper, two of which were spent rambling about something that he had seen called ‘Star Trek’- it was a movie, something that Colin had explained was similar to the talking portraits at Hogwarts, only the people in them were still alive, and they didn’t know you were there, and they told a story, like a play or a book on screen. Ginny thought it sounded fascinating, and he had promised to take her someday, after they graduated. Ginny scanned the rest of the letter. Colin had thanked her for his present, which he claimed not to have opened, though Ginny was sure he had, and had answered most of her questions about Charms.
The package, which was sealed with so much tape that Ginny nearly had to cut it open, contained copies of a few of the photos Colin had taken throughout that term. There was the muggle one that he had taken of her and Luna the day they left, both witches staring out of the picture with matching frozen grins, and several normal ones taken on the Hogwarts Express at the beginning of the year, one with all three of them, laughing and waving at the camera, nudging each other in and out of the frame. She thought she remembered Neville had been the one holding the camera for them, but she couldn’t be sure. She flipped through a few more of the photographs before setting them aside.She had just unwrapped her sweater from her mum, a lovely bluish-turquoise, this year, with swirly crimson patterns at the ends of the sleeves, when Fred and George came into her room.“It’s breakfast time,” said Fred.“Or at least, it ought to be,” said George.“Bill and Fleur have taken over our room.”“We’ve been waiting downstairs for forty-five minutes.”“Figure if someone else comes down, maybe mum’ll let us eat.”“What’s this?” George picked up the picture of Luna and Ginny. “Is this one of those muggle ones that doesn’t move?” he tilted the photograph, trying to set the witches off-balance.
“Yeah, Colin sent it,” said Ginny absently. She’d had a letter from Hermione, too, which she scanned over while the twins prodded her photographs, along with a couple of muggle sweets that the older girl knew Ginny would like. She hadn’t said anything about the row still going on between her and Ron, but she’d had a couple of tips of chapters to look at for Charms, which Ginny appreciated more than she would have the gossip.
“Weird,” said Fred. He tossed Ginny her sweater. “Put this on.” He and George were both wearing new ones, without letters, this time- Ginny thought at first that perhaps their mum had given up on the effort, before she realized both twins had their sweaters on inside out and backwards, in order to conceal them. She pulled her own sweater over her head obligingly.“Good, lovely. Happy Christmas, by the way,” said George, tossing a package onto her bed. “You can open it later. It’s time for breakfast just now.” He pushed her gently but firmly out of her room and towards the stairs.Everyone was wearing new sweaters at breakfast, except for Fleur, who either hadn’t gotten one or had refused to wear it, both of which Ginny thought were equally likely, and Mum, who was wearing her usual robes along with a midnight-blue, gem-studded hat, and a golden necklace, both given to her by the twins.“We find we appreciate you more and more, Mum, now that we’re washing our own socks,” said George, passing a bowl of parsnips to Professor Lupin. The twins, as well as Bill, all addressed him as Remus, now, but Ginny couldn’t get used to it. From what she could tell, Harry and Ron avoided this by not addressing their former professor by name at all, which was the approach she had taken. The pair of them entered the kitchen as if summoned by her thinking of them, which, she reflected, would be a useful power to actually have. Or simply inconvenient. She could only imagine what would happen if Draco Malfoy turned up in the middle of New Year’s dinner.“You’ve got a maggot in your hair, Harry,” said Ginny, because he did. She stood on her toes to pull it out, and handed it to him.“ ’Ow ’orrible,” said Fleur, sitting down at the table in a way that placed Bill between herself and the rest of the family. Ginny suppressed an eye-roll and did her best to tune out the rest of the conversation, instead beginning to draft her letter to Colin in her head whilst serving herself breakfast.Despite Fleur’s objection to anything and everything mentioned by any Weasley other than Bill, Ginny thought that brunch on the whole had been going quite well, until Percy showed up unexpectedly with the Minister. It was lucky, Ginny thought, that Scrimgeour had gone into Ministry work rather than acting in Colin’s “movies”, because he didn’t manage to fool anybody for even a moment that he wasn’t there solely to talk to Harry privately. Even Fleur had known what was going on. Percy hadn’t even bothered to keep up the pretense once the Minister had gone out into the garden, standing stiffly at the end of the table looking as pompous as he possibly could and trying to justify his actions to Mum, who was crying into his shoulder, while entirely ignoring their father, who, for his part, did the same.Ginny couldn’t remember what exactly it was that he had said that had set her off- the twins had been snipping at him, goading him in almost the way that they always did, but with more malice, until he’d snapped some outright defense of the Ministry, or a slight at his father’s job that was just a little more blatant than before, and she had remembered that she didn’t have a wand just as the twins had reached for theirs, and had instead stood and slammed her hands down onto the table so hard that the spoon had flipped out of the bowl of mashed parsnips and flung a several creamy globs of the stuff into Percy’s hair and glasses. The twins, both of whom had been aiming at the parsnips, looked mildly impressed, but Percy turned and stormed out, the back of his neck and ears flushing maroon.Mum had followed him out into the yard, pleading with him to no avail until he and the Minister had apparated away. Ginny had expected to be shouted at, but instead her mother had just spent the last several days of the holidays crying at any minor inconvenience, which was almost worse. Ginny thought she might rather have been shouted at.She and Percy had been close, once. He was the closest she’d had to what she thought people tended to think an older brother was supposed to be. Bill had left Hogwarts and moved out by the time she was eight, and Charlie had only been two years behind him. Ron was so close to her age that they tended to be equals unless he had something to prove, and the twins were the twins- they’d always had each other before anyone else. But Percy had gone to school when Ginny was old enough to be curious and young enough to be impressed, so she was the one who got to hear about everything that he was so proud to have accomplished at Hogwarts; and, maybe because she listened, he protected her from the pranks Fred and George were constantly playing on Ron. She was closer to the twins now, but it was Percy who had shown her the ropes when she was eleven, who had helped her onto the train while Fred and George ran off with Lee. He was the only one who had noticed anything was wrong when she was writing in Tom’s diary. He was the only one who had tried to help her, and she had pushed him away. Things had always been different after that.Sometimes Ginny wondered if that had been where everything with Percy had started, if maybe he’d needed for him to be her best big brother as much as she had, and it was her fault that he’d started to grow apart from everyone. It helped her stay awake at night.Ginny was only able to get away from the Burrow once, for an afternoon, when she flooed over to Luna’s house to give her her Christmas present. Luna had brought Ginny a large, misshapen nut from wherever she’d been with her father, which she had painted in bright, blocky watercolors that blurred together at the edges. Ginny wasn’t quite sure what to do with it, but it was very pretty, and she had set it on her windowsill when Fleur wasn’t in the room to comment.Ginny had expected her visit with Luna to make her feel better, but as much as she liked listening to Luna’s stories about the far-off places she and Xenophilius travelled to, it was ultimately unsatisfying. Ginny was exhausted, and hiding it was becoming a chore. She missed Hogwarts, where things happened that were interesting and that didn’t reduce her mother to tears, and where if she said she hadn’t slept in four days at least two other students would appear in order to agree with her and supply their own reasons for staying awake at all hours of the night, so that she wouldn’t have to. At home, she had to balance avoiding Ron and Harry with avoiding Fleur and her parents, and figure out how to talk to the twins just enough that she wouldn’t go mad with doing nothing all day, but not so much that she would give something away and they would ask about what was wrong. So it was more of a relief than usual, a few days after New Year’s, when the time came to Floo back to Hogwarts.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

The castle emptied out quickly; by the time Draco made it up to the Great Hall for breakfast on Monday morning, most of the students had either already departed, or were waiting on the lawn for the horseless carriages to bring them to Hogsmeade. He checked both Gryffindor and Ravenclaw tables for the youngest Weasley and her cohorts, but they were nowhere to be found. Running late, perhaps, but more likely already on their way to Hogsmeade.He hadn’t seen Weasley since Slughorn’s party two nights previously. He had almost gone to Myrtle’s bathroom on Sunday night, just in case, but had decided against it at the last minute. There had been no reason for him to be there, after all. And no reason to check up on the Weasley girl. She had seemed to be enjoying herself at the party, there was no reason for him to think otherwise. And besides, checking up on her wasn’t his responsibility.Draco stabbed moodily at some toast. Still, he would have liked to have seen her before she left, just from across the room. Why? He demanded of himself. It had been a silly thought. Just words, he reasoned, unbidden. Just because he had thought a thing by mistake didn’t mean that he meant it. These things happened. He instinctively tightened the walls around his mind, the reflex bringing his confrontation with his godfather to the forefront of his mind yet again. It didn’t surprise him that the Potions Master had tried to invade his mind; he had expected it. But he was shaken by it, still. It was one thing to get letters from far-off parents, and quite another to finally have concrete proof that someone in the castle was keeping an eye on him. Tracking his progress.An emptier castle meant that he wouldn’t have to worry about being seen coming and going from the room of Hidden Things. He knew now that repairing the external damage to the Vanishing Cabinet was going to be key to getting it properly link up with its twin in Borgin and Burke’s shop, and with two weeks with no class, no distractions (he pushed any lingering thoughts about that Weasley girl out of his head) he was almost certain to make good progress. Progress that he could write home about.Draco took another bite of his toast, still unsettled.“We’re going into Hogsmeade today,” said Pansy, sliding onto the bench across from him without so much as a hello. “Zabini doesn’t want us all drinking his fancy booze over the holiday, so we have to get our own. And I’m out of snacks as well.”Draco nodded. “Who’s going?”“Everyone,” said Pansy. “At least, Nott and Blaise and me. Greg and Vincey were still asleep.”“Greengrass?”“Both home for the holidays,” said Pansy. “I’m sure I told you.”Draco shrugged. “Daphne’s more your friend than mine, anyway.”“Which explains why you weren’t listening when I told you.”“I’ve had a lot on my mind, Pansy, let it alone,” snapped Draco, more harshly than he’d intended.“I wan’t pursuing it,” said Pansy, eyebrows raised. “What’s your problem?”“Nothing,” said Draco, “Never mind.” He almost apologized, but caught himself. He hardly ever apologized for anything, and wasn’t sure why he felt the need to now. Pansy would have definitely thought there was something going on if he had.Pansy rolled her eyes. “So, are you coming or not?”Draco hesitated. “I’ve got a lot of work to do-”“That’s what I told them you’d say,” said Pansy, standing up.“-but it can wait,” Draco added hastily. She was probably right. Whatever she was thinking, she was probably right. Pansy looked surprised, for almost a full second.“Well, good,” she said matter of factly. “We’ve missed you.”“When are we leaving?” asked Draco. He’d been neglecting his allies- his friends - again. He had so much work left to do on the Cabinet, but he had made some progress- a lot of progress, actually- and it was, after all, the holidays. He could spare a few hours to spend with them. Merlin, he spent enough of it moping around with Weasley. The thought brought a smirk to his lips.“What, do you have a better idea?” asked Pansy.“What? No, that’s fine,” said Draco. “That works.” He had no idea what time she had said, but he supposed he could just follow her around until that time came.“Good, because I don’t think anyone else will be functional for at least another hour,” she said. “I promised I would go back and make sure they were still awake by noon, though. I’ll see you back in the common room?”“I’m done here, actually, I’ll walk with you,” said Draco, standing up and following Pansy towards the dungeons.The agreed upon departure time seemed to be around two in the afternoon, which Draco gathered based on the fact that Theo stumbled bleary-eyed into the common room at one-forty-five, with the front of his robes undone and his hair still tousled from sleep.“Good morning,” said Draco with a touch of irony, closing his Charms textbook.“Mm,” said Theo, running a hand through his hair in a way that somehow immediately made his untidied appearance seem intentional. “Is it, still?”“Not at all,” said Draco.“But we’ve never let that stop us, now, have we?” said Blaise, coming into the common room looking much more awake than Draco had expected of him based on Theo’s state. He clapped his hands together. “Where’s Pansy?”“Here,” said Pansy, coming up behind Draco. “Glad to see you out of bed, Nott, I was worried you’d gone comatose on us.”“Don’t mention it,” said Theo, fastening his robes and pulling his cloak off of the back of a nearby chair. Draco rolled his eyes.The road to Hogsmeade only took twenty minutes, even with the wind against them nearly the whole way. The group split into two parties when they reached the village; Draco and Pansy set off to Honeydukes, for the sweets she had wanted, while Blaise and Theo took everyone’s gold and a short list torn from the corner of Nott’s latest essay to a shop just down the road from the Three Broomsticks, where Theo had a second or third cousin from a rather less well-off branch of the Nott family tree who worked as a clerk, and who was usually willing to believe that Blaise was of age, for an extra galleon or two.Draco and Pansy left their shop a half-hour after they arrived, Draco with a small paper bag of crystalized pineapple, and Pansy with a box of pasties and two bags of spiced chestnuts, one sweet and one spicy. She had made him try one of each on their way to meet Blaise and Theo at the Three Broomsticks, and they’d turned out to be better than he’d expected, though he still preferred his candied fruit.“Fine by me,” said Pansy. “I don’t want you eating them all, anyway.”They met up with Blaise and Theo outside of the pub (“Irma was happy to see us,” said Theo, indicating the large paper bag under his arm), and the four of them sipped butterbeers at a booth in the back corner for a mind-numbingly long time, while Blaise, Pansy, and Theo chatted about the homework they had to do over the holidays, and Draco picked at his cuticles, replaying bits of his conversation with Professor Snape over and over again, trying to decide how much the older man actually knew, and how much he had only guessed.Once the Slytherins had finally trudged back to the castle, Draco made his excuses and broke off from the group, heading for the seventh floor. There were two hours left before most students would go to the Great Hall for dinner, which he thought might be just enough time to repair one of the larger cracks on the left side of the Cabinet.By habit, he took a route to the Room of Hidden Things that took him past Moaning Myrtle’s bathroom. The corridor was dry, meaning that the ghost must somehow have had a better week than usual. Draco wondered what a good week was, for a ghost. He knew that some of the castle ghosts were friends- Nearly Headless Nick and the Fat Friar sometimes hung around in one of the dungeon classrooms, and Professor Binns had been known to engage the Bloody Baron in conversation on occasion- but Myrtle didn’t seem the type.On a whim, Draco pushed open the door. He hadn’t seen Myrtle in weeks, not since running into Ginny Weasley had become an almost regular occurrence, and as shrill as the ghost tended to be, he felt like he owed her something ; after all, she had put up with his venting for over a month.“Myrtle?” Draco said, his voice echoing on the tile. He let the door shut behind him, and stepped further into the bathroom, which seemed to be empty. His eyes flicked to the corner where he and Ginny- the Weasley girl, he corrected- had last spoken, but he looked away. “Myrtle, are you in here?”“What is it to you if I am?” came Myrtle’s voice. She was hovering above one of the toilets on the far end, pouting in his direction.“I just wanted to- check in,” said Draco, automatically adopting an air of authority. “It’s been a while.”Myrtle sniffed. “‘It’s been a while,’ he says.” She sank down out of sight and then floated through the closed stall door, folding her arms and staring him down as she bobbed slightly in the aisle. “It’s been weeks ,” she whined accusingly. “You used to come to see me all the time, and it’s been ages .”“Well I- I’ve been busy,” said Draco, who hadn’t expected this to be a confrontation. He felt she should perhaps have been a little more grateful that he was talking to her at all, when the vast majority of the student body avoided her altogether.“Yes, too busy for me, but not to busy for your little girlfriend ,” Myrtle rasped venomously. Draco blinked, startled, and opened his mouth to dispute this, but Myrtle had shifted to a more pitiful tone and was still talking. “But no, I understand, of course, who would want to waste their time with poor old Moaning Myrtle, she’s dead , she won’t notice, she has all the time in the-”“Weasley isn’t my girlfriend,” Draco snapped finally.“Ohhh,” cooed Myrtle, changing her demeanor for a third time. “ Isn’t she? Well, I won’t tell-”“No, she isn’t. She’s just a friend- not even a friend! We’re not even friends,” said Draco. “She’s a Weasley ,” he added, with a sneer and an air of finality that Myrtle ignored entirely.“Well, you looked awfully cozy to me,” she said. “And she was the one who came looking for you, remember-”“You’re wrong,” said Draco shortly. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. You wouldn’t understand.”“What is that supposed to mean?” Myrtle demanded shrilly.“I don’t care what you think it means,” said Draco.“I thought we were friends ,” cried Myrtle.“Well, you thought wrong,” Draco snapped, and he turned on his heel and left the bathroom. As the door swung shut behind him, he heard Myrtle’s shriek, and a splash as she dived into the nearest toilet. He strode down the corridor towards the stairs, turning his head as he reached the corner to see that water had begun seeping out from under the doorway. So much for the dry floor , he thought, and resumed his path upstairs.His work on the Cabinet took much longer than he had thought that it would. Partly because the crack itself was larger than he had remembered, and partly because his efforts to mend it were repeatedly frustrated by his own distraction.Myrtle didn’t know what the hell she was talking about, he reminded himself. Weasley was only a friend, if she even was that, which he doubted. She was a Weasley . And just because they’d spent some time together didn’t mean anything about their relationship had changed. Still. He kept finding himself playing back the times he had almost caught her watching him from across the Great Hall, or that first time she had teased him in a way that was amicable rather than unkind, or how he had nearly gone to touch her the last time they had spoken before Slughorn’s party, when she had hit her head on the window ledge. It made him uneasy. He was used to being in control. Knowing what to do.It was nearly nine before Draco was satisfied enough with his progress on the Vanishing Cabinet, and fed up enough with own distraction, that he slid his book on mending charms into his usual hiding place alongside the Transfiguration tome, ate his last three chunks of crystalized pineapple, and stepped back out into the seventh floor corridor.Draco had successfully pushed nearly all thoughts of Ginny Weasley from his mind by the time he had reached the entrance to the Slytherin common room. Whether he was beginning to be friends with the red-headed witch or not was of no consequence. He didn’t care, and Weasley didn’t matter. She was a distraction- less than a distraction- and he had a job to do. A job which, he realized upon stepping up into the common room, would have to currently entail getting several of his friends into bed before they embarrassed themselves, if they hadn’t already.“Draco!” called Pansy from across the room, her voice lilting and off-key. “Join us!” She giggled, twisting in her seat to watch him, almost spilling what was left of her drink onto the dark brocade upholstery of the couch. Theo Nott was sitting next to her, staring at a point just to the left of the fireplace, eyes a little unfocused, and Blaise was leaning forward in his chair, speaking to him very rapidly in french. Draco caught a few words- whatever Zabini was saying, it was very repetitive- but he’d never paid enough attention to his language tutors as a child to pick up much more than basic reading comprehension.“I’ll take this,” said Draco, gently removing a conjured wine glass from Pansy’s fingers. “Go drink some water.” The dark haired witch pouted, but obliged. The glass smelled chiefly of gin, although the only bottle in sight was Blaise’s half-full Knotgrass mead resting next to the fireplace. Draco downed the last swallow of Pansy’s drink, discovering in the process that it was not entirely gin, but gin mixed with something that was either Berry Ocky Rot or turnip wine, and either way was utterly revolting. He Vanished the glass and took Pansy’s seat on the couch.“Rough night?” he asked Theo, who had sworn off drinking until New Year’s after vomiting on his sheets in the night two weeks earlier.“Mm?” asked Theo, turning to look at Draco. “Oh! I’m fine, actually, just tired,” he said, with a wide yawn to illustrate the fact. “Pansy’s been horrid, though.”“I can see that.”“Est-ce qu’en voudrais tu ?” asked Blaise, who had broken off whatever tirade he’d been on and was holding his bottle of Knotgrass mead towards Draco.“Non merci , thanks,” said Draco. Blaise rolled his eyes and set the bottle back down on the hearth, turning back to Theo and resuming his steady stream of french. Draco watched for a moment.
“Et maintenant tu vois... —s’encore il ne veut pas passer de temps... —n’passe jamais... —s’avec nous. Il croit qu’il est tellement... —mon meilleur ami depuis... —maintenant il croit qu’il est... —que nous...”
“Are you getting any of this?” Draco asked, turning to Theo. The other boy shook his head.“I never took French; my father called it “a language for effeminate pansies”. I was hoping you would be able to translate.”“There’s too much of it, too fast. I can pick out a word here and there, but not enough to tell you what he’s actually talking about.” Draco shrugged. “Not pansy enough for your father, I suppose.”Theo laughed. “Guess not.” They watched Pansy emerge from the doorway that led to the bathrooms and make her way back towards their fireplace. “Oh, I nearly forgot- yours is under your bed, if you want it,” Theo said.“I might,” said Draco. “Can you handle both of them for five minutes?”“I’ve done it for the past hour and a half,” Theo pointed out.Pansy had stopped to talk to Crabbe, who was sitting in a chair near the dormitory entrances.“I’ll be back in a few,” said Draco, heading for their dormitory. “Good luck.”The door to the sixth years’ room was slightly ajar, and the room was in its usual state of general disorder, but Draco found the bottle of Beetle Berry Whiskey that Theo had left him without too much trouble, and left his cloak and outer robes on the bed in its place before heading back out to the Slytherin common room, where Pansy had reclaimed her spot on the couch.“Minx,” said Draco, dragging over a nearby armchair before conjuring himself a glass. The whiskey was tart, sweet and sour, and left a burning feeling on the back of his tongue that slipped down his throat and settled as a soft warmth in his chest.“That’s what- that’s what you think,” said Pansy, laughing and leaning over on Theo’s shoulder. Crabbe and Goyle had joined on the fringe of the circle, drinking directly from a bottle of Simison Steaming Stout that they were passing back and forth between them. Draco wrinkled his nose, unsure if he took more issue with what they were drinking or with how they were drinking it. He drained his glass and poured himself another.“My mother is getting married again,” said Blaise, in english. He never lost any of his eloquence when he was drunk; Theo tended to slur his speech to the point of unintelligibility, but Blaise’s inebriation never showed through his pronunciation. If you knew him well, you could tell by what he was talking about, and if you didn’t, you had to wait for him to stand up.“What is this, number seven?” asked Pansy.“Eight,” said Blaise.“I’m telling you, this woman has got it figured out,” said Pansy. “Say wha’ you want about her, she’s got it figured out. She’s living the life!” She nodded earnestly. “Zabini, have I ever told you, your mother is my idol.” She made as if to reach for something on the armrest, likely the drink that Draco had confiscated, and looked mildly perturbed by its absence. “My mother just lets my father push her ‘round all day long. Don’t think she’s ever had her own thought-” Pansy laughed for a minute, then stopped abruptly. “What was I-? Oh, yeah.” She giggled again. “But Blaise’s mother- this woman- she doesn’t take shit from anyone.” Pansy smacked her hand down on the armrest of the sofa. “She marries who she wants, and takes what she wants from ’em. She’s her own woman. Her own person.” Pansy trailed off, then smacked the armrest again. “Doesn’t care what anyone thinks. That’s how it should be done.”“Sorry excuse for a mother, though,” said Blaise. He braced himself on the arms of his chair momentarily, as if about to stand, but appeared to decide against it.“Sure, but that’s all of us, isn’t it?” said Pansy. “My mother didn’t have any hand at all with raising my older brothers, and they’re both idiots. You’re lucky I’m a girl or I’d be dumber than that lot.” She gestured towards Crabbe and Goyle with her chin. “On’y reason Draco’s got it so good is because Malfoy spawn are worth their weight in galleons. You think if Lucius’d had four of him, he still would’ve played family?” Pansy hiccoughed, then reconsidered. “Narcissa’s a Black, though, so maybe she would’ve pulled through. Quick as curses, all of them.”Draco had had this thought himself, before. He knew any of his friends’ fathers would do much the same as his own in public- the Slytherin sort of loyalty was a vein that ran thick in pureblood families, after all, and presenting a united front was everything- but few families remained as unfractured as his was behind closed doors. If house-elves could talk, went the saying.“I think I’ll take a rain check on an analysis of my childhood, if that’s okay with you,” said Theo.“Only if you can suggest something more interesting,” said Pansy. “And not chess again, I don’t care how good Zabini thinks he is when he’s saoulé .”“I’ll have you know I am excellent at chess,” said Blaise, looking affronted. “And your accent c’est terrible. ” Pansy made a show of selecting two of her fingers to show him.“I’ve got a deck of Exploding Snap somewhere,” said Theo.“That sounds like a terrible idea,” said Pansy, giggling. “Go get it.”“Whatever you say, Parkinson,” said Theo, messing up her hair with one hand as he got up and headed for the dormitory. Pansy threw a decorative pillow at him, missing by about four feet, and stretched herself out across the couch.“You can’t pass out until Nott gets back,” said Draco.“Says you,” replied Pansy. “You’re not in charge of me.”“Yeah, but I’m the one who’s not going to go through all the trouble of getting you into a bed,” said Draco.“Who needs you?” said Pansy. “I’ll get Vince and Greg to do it, right, boys?” she called over the back of the sofa to where Crabbe and Goyle sat a few feet away. Goyle guffawed.“’M not goin’ in the girls’ room,” he slurred. Crabbe wrinkled his nose.“Can’ get in the girls’ rooms,” he added. “Already tried, las’ year.”“Yeah, I don’t think they’re going to fall for that one again, Pans.”“Worth a shot.”Theo Nott returned from the boys’ dormitory, skimming his thumb along the edge of a crisp deck of cards, expelling a scattering of short-lived sparks from the deck.“Out of my spot,” said Theo, swinging himself over the back of the couch. Pansy squealed and covered her face with her arms, rolling off the sofa and onto the floor with a thud. Theo began dealing out cards.“We should go somewhere next summer. After graduation,” said Blaise. “My mother has a penthouse in Paris, the third arrondissement. It would be more than comfortable for the four of us, for a couple of months.”“That’s the worst part of everything,” said Pansy. “There were hardly any events at all last summer, nothing worth going home for now, and the way things are going, there won’t be anything this summer, either.”“My father’s in prison,” said Theo lightly. “But actually, on the whole, I agree with Pansy. It’s disrupted everything, and for what?”“A few dozen mudbloods that everyone knows won’t amount to anything anyway,” said Blaise.“My father’s all for protecting the lineage, don’t get me wrong,” said Pansy. “But he was never really involved with the Death Eaters, just supportive, and he spent all summer drinking and ranting about how he thinks Lu- everyone’s just trying to relive the glory days.”“That’s what it was for my father,” agreed Nott. “I’m sure of it. Otherwise he would’ve brought me along. He’s just in it for the Dark Lord.”“They’re just stirring up trouble at this point,” said Blaise, sliding a card across the low table to Draco. “Terrorizing muggles and such. They’re not actually going to accomplish anything. It’s all blown out of proportion. Diggory was a fluke.”Pansy made a noise of agreement. She hadn’t spent all summer in that house with them, though, thought Draco, picking up Blaise’s card. He took another drink from his glass. She hadn’t heard the way their head of house had spoken to him in that classroom outside of Slughorn’s ridiculous holiday party. If he hadn’t known better, Draco would have thought that Snape had seemed almost desperate, too. Wheedling for information in a way that didn’t match his usual quiet command of a room. No, he thought, things were more serious than they knew. He was really going to have to start being more careful, and working more quickly, and doing a better job of avoiding his head of house. He took another drink.Blaise had begun speaking french again, to Pansy, who was pretending to listen while flicking cards at Crabbe and Goyle over the back of the sofa. Draco blinked at his cards, in an effort to focus his vision enough to read them, but gave up and selected one of the swimming faces at random to pass to Pansy, who flicked it into the fire. The card exploded, sending sparks and scraps of burning paper in a four-foot radius. Draco flinched, rubbing the back of his right hand, where one of the white-hot specks had landed. Theo and Blaise had both ducked almost level with their seats, Blaise with one hand in front of his face.“Nice going, Parkinson,” said Theo.“Daphne taught me that,” said Pansy.“Greengrass?” asked Blaise, pulling himself back up to a more dignified position. Pansy nodded. “Wouldn’t put it past her.”“Scary,” said Theo. “Her sister’s cute, though.”“Tell that to Daphne, I dare you,” said Pansy. Theo shuddered.“Astoria?” asked Blaise. “She’s fourteen.”Theo shrugged. “Two years is nothing. My father was eight years older than my mother, they weren’t even in school together.”“She’s too good for you, Theo, you haven’t got a shot,” said Pansy.“I wasn’t saying I wanted one. I was-”“Just saying, I know.”Theo threw his hands up in defeat. “There’s no winning with you, Parkinson.”He was right, thought Draco. There really wasn’t any winning. Winning just meant that he and his family would continue to be under the thumb of the Dark Lord. He’d watched his father lose all of the power he’d had for the first fourteen years of his life, giving everything down to the Manor over to the Dark Lord.“You’re quiet,” said Theo, knocking Draco’s foot with his own.  “Are you always quiet when you drink?” asked Theo. “I’ve never noticed.”“You’re usually drunker than I am, by now,” Draco pointed out, leaning slightly forward to address him. His head spun in response- not unpleasantly, but more than he had expected.“That’s true,” said Theo, laughing. “Get out of your head, though. What’s so interesting in there?”“Maybe I would if you were doing anything interesting out here,” said Draco, speaking carefully around his tongue, which was thicker than usual.“That’s why he’s never around,” said Pansy, nodding meaningfully at Blaise. “We bore him.”“I’m around ,” said Draco.“Physically, maybe,” said Blaise. “Mentally…”“Daydreaming about Daphne Greengrass,” offered Theo.Pansy snorted. “None of you could handle Daphne Greengrass. And I bet Astoria isn’t as sweet as she looks, either.”“Maybe Draco likes a challenge. You don’t know,” said Theo.“I think I would know,” said Pansy drily.“You’re just happy to be the only woman in his life,” said Blaise.Pansy laughed. “Ten points to Zabini.”“I think I’ll quit while I’m ahead, then,” said Blaise, getting to his feet and immediately stumbling over the table. “Goodnight, all.”“I’m turning in, too,” said Draco, tossing his hand of cards onto the table and steading himself on his chair as he stood. “S’late.” The clock above the mantle showed almost three in the morning, and the lake outside of the tall windows on either side of the fireplace had changed from a dark silvery green to inky blackness.“Night,” chorused Theo and Pansy. Draco nodded, and trailed after Blaise to the dormitory, where he climbed under his covers without changing out of his clothes.Daydreaming about Greengrass, Theo had said. As if. Draco burrowed deeper into his blankets. Pansy wasn’t the only woman in his life, either. Not that it would mean anything if she was; they had been friends for so long that anything else was unthinkable. But she wasn’t. There was Weasley.The glimpse he had gotten of her at Slughorn’s party drifted up through the thick molasses in his head. Her hair had been down, he remembered. She didn’t usually wear it down. Except that first night he had seen her outside of Myrtle’s bathroom, in her pajamas, with that look in her eyes that had made him let her go. The emptiness had been raw where she was usually so in control, even in moments of fiery rage that were so characteristic of her family. It was almost awe-inspiring even when you were on the wrong end of one of her hexes, as Draco knew from experience. Ginny Weasley was a force of nature. But her vulnerability was moving in an entirely different way.Draco fell asleep imagining how it would feel to run his fingers through a thick mane of ginger hair, and woke up with a pounding headache and a deep-seated guilt that he couldn’t remember the reason for.Draco didn’t see his friends again, except in passing, until Christmas Day. The hangover he had suffered after their first night of the holidays had not left him inclined towards conversation, leading him to shut himself away in the Room of Hidden Things, where he had stayed for the better part of several days, even when he was working on homework instead of on the Cabinet. But on Christmas morning, Draco woke up in his own bed, blinking eyelids that felt like they were made of wet clay until he could clearly see the emerald canopy of his four-poster bed draped above him. He sat up. There were no packages at the foot of his bed, but he didn’t expect them; he wasn’t thirteen anymore, after all. He quashed the tiny part of him that still almost expected that his mother would send him sweets.The other beds in the dormitory were empty, so he made his way to the Great Hall, where his friends were enjoying Christmas brunch. His mother’s eagle owl, Mirage, was waiting for him at the Slytherin table, perched on a bowl next to Pansy and steadily ignoring the bacon she was attempting to feed to the bird. Draco untied his letter from her talon, and the owl flew off, knocking over Pansy’s pumpkin juice on her way up.“Rude,” said Pansy, setting the glass  upright. “Nice of you to finally join us, by the way.”“Any time,” said Draco, sitting down across from her. He took a sausage from a nearby platter and opened the letter, addressed to him in Narcissa’s flawless script.

Dearest Draco,

Your father’s trial last Thursday was not as fruitful as we had hoped.

Draco’s chest caught in a funny sort of way. He had almost forgotten. While the other Death Eaters who had been apprehended at the Ministry last spring had been shipped off to Azkaban almost immediately, his family’s position and power within the Ministry had allowed them to delay action so long as his father remained in the Manor during that time. Draco had thought that the situation was to be more or less a permanent house arrest, a waiting period in name only, but if there had been a trial-

Lucius was taken to Azkaban on Friday afternoon. We have delayed the release of this news to the public, so that I could be sure you would hear it from me, and not from the Prophet; we trust that the impact to yourself and your studies will be minimal. Our friends remain interested in the work you are doing at school; If you are having trouble, do not hesitate to reach out to Professor Snape. He is more than qualified to assist you, and I would not want to be disappointed in your progress. I await your reply.

Best,

Mother

Draco stood up from the table. He thought Pansy might have asked him something, but he hadn’t actually heard what she'd said.“I have some work to do,” he said in reply, hoping it was enough. He felt suddenly short of breath. Work. He needed to work.Draco turned and left the Great Hall, clearing his mind with as many of Bellatrix’s Occlumency tricks as he could remember, until he finally made it to the seventh floor, to the Room of Hidden things, and the door had sealed behind him.He screamed until his voice cracked painfully, then took as deep a breath as he could manage and did it again. He kicked an old quaffle as hard as he could into the nearest pile of junk, causing a minor landslide. He wasn’t making any progress, he wasn’t advancing in his ‘studies’, he didn’t have anything to write home about. He couldn’t go groveling to Professor Snape for help, he couldn’t go to his father for help- he had always been able to go to his father for help, his father had always been able to step in, pull some strings, fix everything. He had always seemed so unmovable. He had always been in control.Draco remembered the hopeless chill of the dementors that had searched the Hogwarts Express his third year, and imagined it multiplied by hundreds in Azkaban. He dropped to his knees. It was hopeless. The Dark Lord was going to torture his mother and kill him. Or torture him in front of his mother. Or let his father rot in Azkaban. He didn’t know what he was doing. He hadn’t known all year.Draco took several deep breaths, exhales rattling in his chest. He rubbed his palms on his robes, feeling the seams of the fabric beneath the soft pads of his fingers. He stood up and made his way through the winding maze of the Room of Hidden Things, and he got to work.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Ginny stepped gingerly out of the fireplace in Professor McGonagall’s office, taking care not to leave ashy footprints on the carpet. Her head was still spinning from the Floo travel as she followed Harry and Ron, who had arrived just ahead of her, out into the corridor and towards Gryffindor Tower.

The three of them ran into Hermione just outside the common room. She greeted Harry and Ginny brightly, while completely ignoring Ron, who was arguing with the Fat Lady about the password. Once Hermione had given the password, and all four of them had clambered through the portrait hole, Ginny climbed the stairs to her dormitory, dumping her trunk at a haphazard angle and collapsing onto her four poster. The dorm was so quiet, and her mattress at Hogwarts was so much more comfortable than her one at home, that Ginny almost allowed herself to close her eyes.

A muffled squeal of what Ginny thought might have been “Won-Won!” came from all the way down in the common room, and Ginny sat up. She wasn’t going to sleep, even if she might have wanted to. She had more important things to do.

Ginny told herself that she was only going to Myrtle’s bathroom because of the bits she had overheard from Harry and Ron throughout Christmas that meant the two of them were suspicious of something Malfoy was doing, but she couldn’t justify this with the way her pulse quickened as she approached the bathroom. The corridor was flooded again, so Ginny lifted her robes with one hand and pushed open the bathroom door with the other.

The bathroom was empty.

Ginny pushed back her disappointment with reason. Of course he wouldn’t be waiting for her. It was only four in the afternoon, after all. Ginny let the door swing closed, and turned back down the corridor. She didn’t know what she would have said to him if he had been there, anyway. Ask him what he was plotting? Tell him that she had been thinking about him over the holidays? Ginny didn’t know herself what that meant, and she certainly didn’t know how she would explain it to someone else. It was better this way.

Draco ran one hand over the side of the Cabinet, checking for splinters. As urgent as the need to complete his task was, he was frankly terrified of claiming to be finished, in case he had missed something. He had stowed himself away in the Room of Hidden Things all week, making slow but steady progress. He had enlisted Crabbe and Goyle to keep watch in the corridor outside, and the polyjuice potion he hoped he wouldn’t need was almost ready, just in time for the rest of the school to return from holiday. If more repairs were necessary, a random second-year girl lingering in the seventh floor corridor would draw much less attention than his two hulking lackeys.

Draco returned to the battered writing desk that he’d found near the entrance to the Room and relocated to sit a few feet from the Vanishing Cabinet. A half- finished letter to Mr. Borgin sat on its surface, and Draco sat on the edge of a once-regal chair to scratch out the last few sentences. Even under his scrutiny, the Cabinet looked like new; delaying a more definitive test would only hurt him at this point.

Draco let his ink dry and then folded the parchment crisply, charming it against would-be tamperers. His watch told him it was nearly five, giving him just enough time to bring his missive to the owlery before joining his friends for dinner for the first time in several days.

On his way down from the owlery, Draco hesitated at an intersection of corridors on the third floor. The last time he had spoken to Myrtle had been two days previously, on one of his few forays to the kitchens for food. She had been less hostile than the last time he’d seen her, and had been almost understanding when he had told her about his father. She’d seen him in despair often enough; he thought it might be equally nice to have someone with whom to share the tiny scrap of hope he now possessed. And Ginny might be back from holiday.

He wrenched his thoughts away from the Weasley girl and forced his feet to carry him down the corridor that would lead to the Great Hall.

He couldn’t see her.

One of Ginny’s yearmates had gotten a small round clock for Hanukkah, the sort with four little feet and a small bell on top, and Ginny could see it through the gap in her hangings, ticking quietly from the other girl’s nightstand.

tick

tick

tick

It was eleven, and she could still hear activity drifting up the stairs from the common room.

tick

It sounded like half the House was still awake, even though there was class tomorrow.

tick

She would have to go to class tomorrow.

tick

Ginny buried her face in her pillow. Quidditch practice would start again on Tuesday, too.

tick

At least between classwork, and Quidditch, and studying for O.W.L.s, she would have plenty to keep busy with.

tick

Maybe busy enough not to think about Draco Malfoy.

Ginny thrashed herself awake with one thought held clearly in her mind;

They were dead, and it was all her fault.

She forced herself to steady her breathing. She was drenched in sweat, and her left leg was so thoroughly tangled in a curtain that one more kick would have brought her whole bed hangings crashing to the floor. Ginny squinted at the clock across the room. Four-thirty. Five hours of sleep wasn’t too bad, she reminded herself, unwinding the curtain from around her ankle. Five hours of sleep was fine.

They were dead, and it was all her fault.

She pushed the thought away. She didn’t know who

they

were, in this particular instance, although she could imagine. Fellow students, most likely, with a few friends and family members thrown in for good measure. It was always the same.
  A half-dreamed and half-remembered image of waking up in the Chamber with oppressive feelings of guilt and dread presented itself to her, and Ginny pulled back her bed hangings.
“That’s quite enough of

that

,” she chided under her breath. She grabbed the muggle book she had brought back to school with her from the top of her trunk, and her wand from her nightstand, and crept down the stairs to the common room. She would probably be able to finish the book in the three hours she had to fill before it would make sense to get dressed for breakfast.

The common room was dusky, lit only by the flickering glow of the fireplace, and the furniture cast strange shadows across the floor. Ginny stopped at the foot of the stairs. She wasn’t afraid of her own shadow, she reminded herself sternly. And there was a lamp on the end table next to her favorite armchair, anyway, she only had to reach that, and she would have her back to the wall and everything.

One of the shadows suddenly stretched all the way to the far wall, and Ginny had spun around and was aiming her wand at its source before she fully registered why she was doing it.

“Ginny?” whispered the figure standing near the mantle.

She squinted until she recognized Colin, and lowered her wand guiltily.

“What are you doing down here?”

“It’s four in the morning,” he countered. “What are

you

doing down here?”

“I asked you first,” she said, taking a few steps closer to where he stood. Her blood was still beating in her ears and throat, but it began to slow to a dull throb once she’d stepped into the reach of the firelight.

“Couldn’t sleep,” said Colin. He dropped back onto the couch, resting his forearms on his thighs.

“It’s only the first night back,” said Ginny lightly, testing the waters. “You can’t still be worried about the Charms essay?”

Colin chuckled, a little hoarsely. “I think you’re projecting, Gin. I feel fine about the Charms essay.”

“Well, we don’t have Defense until Thursday, so unless you’re suddenly failing Transfiguration, you’ve stumped me.”

Colin shrugged, looking back down at his feet. “I’m worried about Dennis,” he said. “And my parents. I know it’s been a while since- you know, with Hannah Abbott- but I wasn’t even thinking about it when we heard about that. I didn’t even consider the possibility until I got home. But they’re- I mean, Dennis and me, we’re at Hogwarts, we’re fine, but anything could happen at home. We wouldn’t even know until summer holiday, there’s no one to tell us.” Colin’s voice cracked, and he wiped one sleeve roughly across his eyes.

Ginny sank down next to him, watching him carefully. “I can tell you it’ll all be okay, if you want,” she said. “But I don’t know what’s going to happen anymore than you do.”

“Heh,” Colin laughed humorlessly. “No, of course not.” He shook his head. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Ginny.

“I’m worried about you, too,” said Colin, sitting up to look at her. Ginny flicked her eyes downward, avoiding eye contact. “What are you really doing here?”

“Can’t I just have been checking in on my friend?”

Colin shook his head, unsmiling. “Even your intuition isn’t that good, Gin. You haven’t been yourself for ages.”

“You’re telling me,” said Ginny, tiredly. Merlin, she wasn’t sure she even knew who she was supposed to be anymore. She couldn’t go back to the way she was before Tom, because she wasn’t eleven years old anymore, but she didn’t know what kind of fifteen year old she was supposed to have been without him.

“What do you mean?” Colin asked gently, creasing his forehead between his furrowed eyebrows. He wouldn’t understand. He would just worry more, or try to reassure her. Ginny didn’t know which would be worse.

“I’m just worried, too,” she said. “I know it’s different for you, for my family- but everything’s changing. I’m scared,” Ginny admitted, because she was. “I worry that I’m not… enough, I guess. Strong enough, brave enough…”

Good enough,

the voice in her head added. “The DA was one thing, but that was just… it’s real, now. Like you said. And anything could happen.”

Ginny looked up to meet Colin’s eyes, only to find her face buried in his chest. She let go of her book and leaned into his embrace, wrapping her arms around his waist.

“I can’t tell you it’ll be okay, either,” said Colin from above her, his voice buzzing where his jaw was pressed against the side of her head. “But we’re going to get through this, right? You and me, and Luna. Together. I really believe that,” he said. “We can deal with everything else when it comes.”

Colin squeezed her tight, and for a moment, Ginny believed him too.

Katie Bell was back at school. If Draco hadn’t seen her being mobbed at breakfast on Monday morning by the entire Gryffindor House, or trooping out to the Quidditch pitch with Weasley and the rest of the team as he was walking into the Great Hall for dinner, he would still have known that something had happened by the way Professor Snape’s stare from the high table was boring into the side of his skull.

Draco ate quickly, doing his best to ignore the uncomfortable sensation of being watched. Snape didn’t know anything. And his plan was almost ready. He only needed Borgin to owl him back about the next test, and once they knew that the Cabinet was working, everything else would fall into place. In the meantime, Draco thought, maybe it would be prudent to actually complete his latest Defense assignment. Getting a decent mark might be enough to get the Professor off his back for a couple of days. And his marks had been slipping, last term, and his father always said-

Draco swallowed too quickly and had to drain his goblet of pumpkin juice to avoid choking.

In any case, he thought, steeling his mind to avoid that particular subject, it was important to have something to fall back on. And it would keep him from thinking too much while he waited for his owl.

His mind made up, Draco slung his book bag over his shoulder and headed towards the grand staircase, tossing a pastry nicked from one of the platters from one hand to the other. He paused on a landing, contemplating for the second time in as many days the merits of paying a visit to Myrtle’s bathroom. Despite the progress he had made on the Cabinet, and the fact that it had been over a week since he’d received the letter from his mother, he still felt like there was something inside of him that might be knocked loose at any moment, and he wasn’t sure what would happen when it was. Draco was unwilling to describe himself, his behavior, or his overall mental state using words such as ‘unstable’, ‘breakdown’, or ‘fragile’, but he was sure that whatever had caused him to react in the way that he had on Christmas Day was still there, just waiting for

something

. He could feel it. And it would be worse, next time.

Draco continued up the stairs towards the library without taking a detour. Talking to Myrtle would help. It had in the past. Unloading on the ghost helped him feel less weighted down by his thoughts, and on more than one occasion had led him to process his situation in a way that made it easier to deal with without feeling trapped. It didn’t hurt that Myrtle didn’t, as far as he knew, talk to anyone much except for him, and that she didn’t tend to remember specific details about their conversations after the fact. Whether this was part of being a ghost, or just because of how self-centered she was, Draco didn’t know. But it certainly made things easier, not to have to worry about someone else finding out. Which was exactly why he couldn’t go talk to her now.

It wasn’t just about the possibility that Weasley would overhear him talking to Myrtle, Draco reflected, as he made his way to a table in the back corner of the library. It was more that she might be there at all. He didn’t know how long the Gryffindor’s Quidditch practice would last, and he couldn’t risk encountering her in that corridor again. It was one thing to talk to a ghost about all kinds of things that were supposed to be secret, but a real person was altogether different. A Weasley was unthinkable.

Lately, he had caught himself almost

wanting

to talk to her. He wanted her to care. She cared so much about so many people, he knew, from the conversations they had already had- was it so unreasonable to think that she might also care, a little bit, about him?

But that couldn’t happen, either. That had never been what he wanted from anyone, least of all her. He didn’t want her pity, and he didn’t deserve her sympathy. She thought he was someone he wasn’t. She thought he was on her side. He didn’t want her to look concerned for him like she thought she understood, when she couldn’t possibly. He just wanted to argue about Quidditch fouls without actually being angry, and tease her like she’d teased him. He wanted to get under her skin and watch her eyes go bright the way they did when she was worked up about something. He wanted her to want to talk to him, the way they’d done the last time, the week of Slughorn’s party. It was a dangerous kind of feeling.

Monday night Quidditch practice ran late; everyone was so pleased to have Katie back, even with her not being able to play, that they let Harry put them through half again as many drills as they would usually stand for. Ginny also thought they played better, whether from good spirits or a desire to impress their returning teammate. Even Dean had fallen into a rhythm by the end of practice that was closer to their usual pace than the Chasers had reached since Katie had left the school. When Ginny finally trudged through the entrance hall to the grand staircase (far ahead of the rest of her team, who were lingering in the locker room with Katie), she found herself properly exhausted for the first time in weeks.

It didn’t take much for Ginny to follow a staircase to a second-floor corridor rather than continuing up towards Gryffindor tower- it was enough that the timing on the moving staircases happened to be convenient, and that none of her fellow teammates were close enough to notice. She didn’t have an excuse; seeing Draco had been half of her justification when she had really wanted to go to the Chamber to think about Tom, but she wasn’t going for Tom now, even if the anticipation of sinking back into that particular mindset was still attractive enough to her that she would take the trip without knowing if Malfoy would be there. She wanted to see Draco, even if she couldn’t explain why, but now that he had become most of the real reason for her visit, she found herself looking for a new lie to tell herself.

It was silly, Ginny reminded herself. She knew why she was going. It certainly wasn’t because she was fond of Myrtle, or bathrooms. It was because of the conversation they’d had back in November, when he had acted like a person, instead of like a prat, and they had been almost like friends for a few short minutes. And maybe because she hadn’t been able to stop thinking about him since.

Ginny pushed open the door to Moaning Myrtle’s bathroom. She had told herself not to expect anything from Malfoy, but she was still disappointed when the room was empty.

Ginny sat down under the window, as close as she could remember to where she had been sitting the last time they’d talked. After all, it wasn’t all that unreasonable to assume they might run into each other. It had happened too many times before to be completely a coincidence, so really there was no harm in waiting for a couple of minutes, just to be sure they hadn’t missed each other.

It was almost four in the morning when Ginny forced herself out of her stupor and crept out of the bathroom, setting a course for the seventh floor. She’d resolved herself hours previously to the fact that Draco wasn’t going to appear- and that really, there was no reason at all for her to expect anyone, least of all Malfoy, to come seek her out on a whim in one of the least appealing corners of the castle- but she hadn’t been able to commit to returning to her bed in Gryffindor Tower.  Part of this reluctance was because every time she had thought about standing up, she had also thought about how foolish she would feel if she left and Malfoy showed up five minutes later, or they ran into each other in the corridor outside. The other part, she thought, was that she wanted to put off having to start another day for as long as she could.

Ginny didn’t realize how far she’d made it from the bathroom without really paying attention to where she was going until she found herself automatically stepping over the vanishing stair two floors away. She guessed it didn’t really matter if she wasn’t cautious, since nobody was likely to be out and about at this hour to find her, anyway.

Ginny vaguely registered, as she slid aside a tapestry on the fifth floor, that she should probably be beating herself up about something; either staying up so late, or spending so long waiting at all, or for imagining whatever connection she’d thought they’d had; but by the time she’d made it back to the common room, and was climbing the stairs to her room, she still hadn’t picked a place to start. It took all of her focus to strip off her grimiest outer layer of practice gear before she fell into bed, and she was asleep before she had pulled her hangings shut.

Ginny woke up with limbs that felt like they were made of stone, squinting around the empty dorm. Apart from the light that had woken her in the first place, and then proceeded to throb in her temples, her skull felt like it was made of lead and filled with porridge. Her fingers were stiff and so lacking in grip strength that changing into her school robes took nearly twice as long as usual, but by the time she had gotten to the great hall, she felt much lighter, in an empty, unsteady sort of way. Whatever soreness she had from practice was cloaked under a dull ache that was evenly distributed from the top of her scalp to the soles of her feet. Her chest felt hollow- not metaphorically, or emotionally, but physically hollow, like her ribcage was thinner than it had been the day before. It wasn’t a pleasant feeling, but it was almost a freeing one. It felt welcoming, in a way. Safe and familiar.

“Ginny.”

“Hmm?”

“I said, can you pass me the- thingy?” Colin made a scissors motion with his fingers.

“Oh- yeah. Of course,” said Ginny, picking up a pair of green-handled pruning shears from the table next to her and passing them to her friend.

“You still with us?” asked Colin. “I don’t think Greenhouse 4 is the safest place to zone out.”

“You did have a wrackspurt sort of look in your eyes,” said Luna, holding back one of the plant’s tentacles so that Colin could trim an errant root.

“No wrackspurts,” said Ginny. “Just tired. I didn’t get much sleep last night.”

“Tell me about it,” said Colin. “That Transfiguration essay is killing me.”

“I haven’t even started that yet,” Ginny moaned. “I totally forgot. It’s not due until next week, right?”

“Monday,” said Colin, “But it’s pretty brutal.”

“Thanks for the warning,” said Ginny, brushing a thorny tendril away from her hair. “I’ll take a look at it tonight.”

Ginny did not start her Transfiguration essay that night. She did finish a Charms assignment that was due the following day, and then, since Gryffindor didn’t have Quidditch practice on Tuesdays, she spent several hours wandering the second floor of the castle, getting almost completely lost on more than one occasion, before she allowed herself into the corridor that held Moaning Myrtle’s bathroom.

Ginny stood staring at the door for several minutes. She wasn’t sure if she ought to be trying harder to not think about the things she had already done in this bathroom, or the things she wanted to do. There was no way to distract herself from one without the other- if there was, she wouldn’t have been there at all.

The bathroom was empty, again, and Ginny could feel the back of her neck flushing red even though there was nobody around to see. She let the door swing shut and turned back down the corridor. She wouldn’t make even more of a fool of herself by waiting. Not again.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

On Wednesday morning, Draco got an owl from Mr. Borgin just as he was finishing breakfast. Draco was already running late (he had overslept, as a direct result of having stayed up late with Blaise the night before, trying and failing the entire time not to think about who else he would have liked to be talking with until the smallest hours of the morning), so he stuffed the cheap parchment envelope into an inside pocket of his school robes and dashed off towards the dungeons, leaving the great bird to peck at the remains of his toast.

Ignoring the jabs of the letter’s folded corners through the fabric of his robes turned out to be impossible, and Draco spent the entirety of the sixth year Potions lesson so distracted that on top of the usual suspicious glares from Potter and his tag-alongs, he caught Theo on more than one occasion casting curious glances at him across their cauldrons.

Draco was only paying half of his attention to stirring his cauldron clockwise and at the proper speed (it wasn’t hard, if you had any natural talent at all; the sight of Weasley’s cauldron bubbling over across the room brought a ghost of Draco’s usual smirk to his face), while the other half was paid to scheduling out when and how he could slip away to read his letter. Skipping class was out of the question this early in the term, not when he had already been pushing his luck in that department before the holidays, and he knew there wouldn’t be time to go off on his own between lessons.

The next two hours of classes crawled by at an agonizing pace, but finally, finally, it was lunchtime, and Draco had two glorious hours of freedom.

“Have to grab something from the dorm,” Draco said to Blaise, parting ways with his friends and a junction near the third-quickest way back to the common room.

“See you in Arithmancy, then,” replied Blaise, continuing on towards the Great Hall.

Draco strode through the corridors as quickly as he could without looking hurried, careful not to run even when passing through corners of the dungeons where he was sure he was alone. There was no reason to be so anxious to read the letter, in any case, he reminded himself. It was only to schedule a test of the Cabinet. It was the test he should be anticipating. The letter was just a letter.
Ginny’s eyes went automatically to the Slytherin table as she followed Colin into the Great Hall, but she pulled her gaze back to Colin’s shoulders without allowing herself to process anything she saw there. There wasn’t any point. Colin was already heading for the Gryffindor table, meaning Luna must not have been in the Great Hall yet, but Ginny scanned the Ravenclaw table for the blonde witch anyway, to give her something else to look for. She was through looking for Malfoy, or waiting for him, or paying him any attention at all. It wasn’t worth it. It wasn’t going to be worth it; letting herself get invested in people like that never was. 
Besides, a treacherous voice in the back of her head reminded her, he never comes to lunch on weekdays.

That’s not the point

, Ginny reminded herself angrily. She abruptly stopped following Colin and turned back, walking around to sit across from him, putting her back to the Slytherin table. Putting it out of her head altogether was the best course of action, and barring that, physical barriers would have to do.

“Do you think Flitwick will get our papers back to us tomorrow?” asked Colin after they had both settled into their seats.

“We only handed them in on Monday,” said Ginny, absently pulling lettuce out of her chicken sandwich.

“He said it would be soon, though,” Colin reminded her.

“When has that made a difference?”

“Good point.”

“Hello,” said Luna from just over Ginny’s shoulder. Ginny jumped slightly, and the other girl gave her a strange look as she took the seat next to her. Ginny shrugged sheepishly in response.

“Oh, hi Luna,” said Colin. “I’d been meaning to ask- do you know anything more than we do about the Eddie Carmichael situation?”

“What’s the Eddie Carmichael situation?” asked Luna. “Did Mandy break up with him again?”

“Yesterday in the courtyard,” said Colin. “Terry Boot told me about it at Gobstones. Apparently…”

Ginny let the conversation fade into the background. Her head ached dully in the background, not only her forehead or her temples or behind her eyes, but behind her ears, and in her scalp and the muscles of her face. She was tired through to her bones. Wandering the empty corridors of Hogwarts might have kept the nightmares at bay, but it didn’t stop her from thinking about horrible things when she was awake. Death Eaters behind every tapestry; blood and chicken feathers stuck to her robes; Colin’s assertion that they would make it through the war together, his faith in her even when he didn’t know if his own family was safe. Ginny felt like she was holding her breath, waiting for someone to notice that she wasn’t who they thought she was. She wasn’t Good enough. She was going to get someone killed in this war, somehow, and- Ginny realized for the first time, with a pang of guilt- she was more worried about it being her fault and everyone knowing just how badly she had fallen than she was about who was going to suffer or die because of her.

Sometimes, Ginny wished that the Chamber would swallow her back up.
Weasley and her friends weren’t at the Gryffindor table when Draco walked into the Great Hall for dinner, but by the time he took his seat with the Slytherins, he’d spotted her ginger hair at the Ravenclaw table. She was sitting with her back to him- if he hadn’t known that only one witch at Hogwarts had that particular knot of hair, and that particular set of her shoulders, he would have had to take a second look. She normally faced him.
“What are you

looking

at?” demanded Pansy, twisting around in her seat.

“Nothing,” said Draco, reverting his gaze to his potatoes.

“Right,” said Pansy, who didn’t seem convinced, but who also didn’t seem to care. “Anyway, I was talking to Daphne in Herbology- Don’t make that face, Nott, it’s a useful subject whatever your old man thinks- and she said she and Bulstrode finally cornered Warrington over the holidays and got him to tell them how his lot used to get into the empty staff quarters in the southwest dungeon block back in his seventh year, so they’re throwing a party Friday night. Invite only,” finished Pansy.  “You’re coming.”

“The old Alchemy Professor’s quarters?” asked Theo. “I thought that was sort of a myth.”

“You’ve been in them,” said Blaise, with a touch of incredulity. “At

least

once.”

“To be fair, that was the night he got so pissed that he spent a quarter of an hour blubbering to an unsympathetic wall hanging about how his father used to hit him for talking to the house elf. I’m not surprised-”

Draco snuck a furtive glance across the Great Hall, more out of habit than anything. He was used to looking at her, and almost getting caught, and almost catching her looking back. He could only study the back of her neck for so long, although he was sure it would be more interesting at a closer-

“-having me on,” Theo was saying. “I would’ve remembered that. Besides, there hasn’t been a permanent Alchemy post at Hogwarts, since, like, the Dark Ages.”

“Eighteen-forties,” corrected Pansy automatically, “And Slytherin’s been breaking into those rooms for at least- it doesn’t matter.” she waved a hand. “You don’t have to believe me, you just have to come to the party. Which you will. Draco?”

“I can’t,” said Draco, pushing all thoughts of freckles to the back of his mind. “I have prefect duties.”

“Blow it off,” said Pansy. Draco shook his head.

“Snape’s been breathing down my neck for months,” he said. “I have to at least put in the appearance of effort. But maybe afterwards,” he said, reconsidering. He was already planning to blow off his rounds on Friday night, which was when Borgin had been available to test the Vanishing Cabinet for what, hopefully, would be the final time. If it went well, maybe a celebration would be in order. And then a good night’s sleep, thought Draco, finally. He would be able to sleep properly again once everything was over.

“I’ll take it,” said Pansy. Draco waited until her attention was firmly on one of the others before shooting another glance across the Great Hall.

He had prefect duty on Wednesday night. Ginny hadn’t been able to resist checking Hermione’s copy of the schedule, not when it had been sitting on a table in the common room in plain view under four of the older girl’s school books.

I promised myself I wouldn’t do this,

Ginny reminded herself, as she peered around a corner. The stone corridor stretched empty into the darkness. No Filch.

Ginny lit her wand and continued down the corridor towards Myrtle’s bathroom. If he was waiting for her, this is where he would be. She looked over her shoulder, unable to shake the tingling feeling in her spine. She was being watched, she knew it, although she hadn’t been able to catch anyone following her.

The door to the bathroom was propped open, inviting, and the small lake on the floor outside the threshold, still enough to reflect with perfect clarity the painted words on the wall above it, only stalled her for a moment. He was there, she was sure of it. She could feel it.

The door shut behind her.

The bathroom ceiling was cavernous, disappearing into darkness that Ginny felt sure went on forever. The torches had gone out; the only light came from one narrow window, but it was enough to illuminate every empty corner.

“Silly girl,” came Tom’s voice, echoing in her head, reverberating off of the endless ceiling. “Who would have time for

you

?”

His cold, unforgiving laughter resonated with the scraping of stone against stone as the Chamber opened in front of her, and Ginny was falling, falling, down a pipe wider than she was tall, down a damp corridor longer than the whole stretch of the Weasley’s orchard, down a pitch-dark aisle lined with rows of teetering shelves reaching up as far as she could see. The prophecies fell around her, shattering against the floor and the walls, until only the eye of the basilisk remained and Ginny was paralyzed as a thousand broken prophecies taunted her in Tom’s cruel voice.

There was a dense pain as something seized onto Ginny’s leg and she stopped falling almost as abruptly as she had started, tripping, crashing down onto the damp floor and she knew what she would find before she turned her head but couldn’t stop herself from turning to see Lucius Malfoy leering at her from behind a Death Eater mask and he raised his wand and she scrambled backwards without moving and he opened his mouth and Draco’s voice said

Avada K-

Ginny hit the floor with a thud, cracking her head against the corner of her nightstand. Hot iron filled her mouth, and Ginny lay with her face pressed into the carpet, the coarse fibers against her cheek slowly tethering her to reality, for nearly a minute before she found that her bitten lip was the source of this. It wasn’t until she tried to sit up that she discovered that her leg was caught between her mattress and her bedpost.

Weak morning light filtered through the windows. The dampness on the side of her head was the cold sweat that had drenched her pajamas, not more blood, and her throbbing temples hurt nearly as much as the tender spot above her right ear. Ginny slowly untangled her bedsheets, wincing as her stiff joints reminded her that she had only woken up from what a typical witch would be more likely to think of as a long nap than as even a bad night’s sleep.

She hadn’t really gone to Myrtle’s bathroom the night before, Ginny remembered, as she pulled on her robes. At least there was that.

The girl in the bed next to her stirred, and Ginny automatically froze before remembering that it was close enough to morning that she didn’t have to worry about someone seeing her up and about. She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror hung by the door on her way down to the common room;  deep circles underlined eyes she almost didn’t recognize as her own.

At least she hadn’t waited for him.
Professor Flitwick was giving a squeakier than usual lesson on levitation charms, unless it was actually one about locomotion. Either way, Ginny was sure she hadn’t retained any of the information, and a glance at her notes confirmed that her handwriting had long ago morphed into a sprawling, looping script that was either gibberish, illegible, or both, and that she had furthermore run out of ink halfway through the previous line. She could look at Colin’s notes, later, Ginny reasoned, propping one elbow on her desk and pressing her forehead into her palm. If he was taking notes. Ginny was too drowsy to turn her head to the left to check.
Charms was usually one of Ginny’s strongest subjects, when she had more than four hours of sleep to work with, but the stuffy air permeating the castle and the uncomfortable warmth of the Charms classroom seemed to be conspiring against her. While her chest felt just as thin and hollow as it had for the past several days, Ginny’s head was so thick that she didn’t think she would have stayed upright without resting her chin on her hand.

Levitation charms were never going to be useful, anyway, thought Ginny. Their main purpose was as a component in domestic charms for completing the kinds of mundane tasks that none of the students around her were likely to live long enough to need to accomplish.

Ginny flinched in her seat; somewhere to her right, someone’s quill had scratched against their parchment in a slightly different way than it had been scratching. Colin gave her a strange look; Ginny didn’t have to be able to see him out of more than her peripheral vision to interpret it. She’d been jumpier than usual, lately. Not only in the corridors at night, where it at least made since to be anxious about the presence of prefects and Filch, if not about that of Death Eaters and the like, but in everyday moments. At breakfast, she had been unreasonably startled by Luna’s sudden appearance at her elbow. Luna was often startling to others, but Ginny had been used to it for years. If she wasn’t careful, her friends were going to start asking questions again, and Ginny didn’t know if she was willing to admit the answers.
Ginny peered around a corner, checking the corridor ahead of her for signs of Filch. Quidditch practice had been rescheduled on account of a snowstorm that Oliver Wood wouldn’t have had any reservations about making them fly in, and Ginny had spent the time wandering the emptiest areas of the castle, avoiding the second floor and freely checking over her shoulder whenever the sensation of being watched grew too strong. 
If Colin and Luna had known how relieved Ginny had been to not have to play Quidditch, she thought, it would have been impossible for them to ignore that something might really be wrong. Ginny huffed derisively through her nose. She had been wrong for a long time.

Ginny told herself, as she cautiously checked the next corridor signs of life, that she was most worried about coming across Filch, but she knew this wasn’t true. Her conversation with Colin all but haunted her; he had said that he and his brother were safe at Hogwarts, but Ginny didn’t share her friend’s confidence. Tom Riddle had made his way into the castle before, and he would be able to again. Ginny didn’t think that the adult Voldemort would need to rely on the help of a lonely first-year to do it.

Ginny stopped walking to take stock of her surroundings; she was only two corridors from Myrtle’s bathroom. She wondered if there was anyone who would appreciate the irony that she had successfully avoided this corridor for years without having to think about it, only to be drawn to it now as if by a summoning charm. She thought probably not.

Halfway down the corridor, Ginny turned back towards the common room. She had promised herself she wasn’t going to do this again.

Draco knew that he couldn’t afford to see the Weasley girl, not now. Not when he was so close to success. He was so close to restoring his family’s place, to proving himself to the Dark Lord. When everything was back to normal, he wouldn’t need her anymore. Not that he

needed

her. That was the wrong word, though he didn’t know what the right one was.

One more day, thought Draco, choosing a staircase that would bypass the second floor entirely, just so that he wouldn’t be tempted to confide in Myrtle or anyone else. One more day before it’s all over. He allowed himself a small moment of hope, that his actions would be enough, that the Dark Lord would see the value in freeing his father from Azkaban, that it had been unnecessary to punish him for the failure of the ambush at the Department of Mysteries.

Draco stepped off on the fourth floor landing and continued down the corridor. He disliked his curfew shifts. Despite what the House Heads seemed to think, most students weren’t sneaking out on most nights, and the few that were usually did so because they knew how not to get caught. It was boring, really; the most interesting thing that was likely to happen, if you were actually doing the job and not sneaking off yourself, was that you might come across some inter-House couple snogging in a broom closet somewhere.

Draco turned a corner, and there, at the far end of the corridor, was Ginny Weasley. She had her back to him; he watched her look over at the adjacent corridor before pulling back a tapestry and disappearing into the wall.

Draco walked towards the tapestry. He could talk to her. It would be easy enough to follow her through the passageway, or to take another; she could almost only be going to Gryffindor Tower, and it would be easy enough to intercept her. It would look like a coincidence. He could demand to know why she was out so late, and she would have some sharp-tongued insult ready before she’d turned around, and a smirk to show that she only mostly meant it. He would tell her, again, that she was lucky; that it wouldn’t be worth the time to punish her. Maybe he would ask if she’d been ignoring him, in a way that meant he didn’t care one way or the other, and she would tease him for it, but then answer him anyway.

Draco turned away from the tapestry. He didn’t think it was a question he wanted to know the answer to.
Draco woke on Friday morning almost shaking in anticipation. It had taken him hours to fall asleep the night before, staring up at the ceiling of his dormitory and running over his plans for the following night over and over again in his head. 
Getting dressed did nothing to take his mind off of the task at hand, and neither did packing his school bag for the day, or walking to the Great Hall with Nott and Zabini. He was serving himself sausages from the nearest dish, still lost in the mental version of himself who was expertly navigating the Room of Hidden Things to the cabinet, when he looked up at Pansy, sitting down across from him, in time to catch a glimpse of Ginny Weasley walking in with the older of the Creevey brothers.

Creevey had been one of the students who had been petrified in Draco’s second year, he remembered. He wondered how that worked, then, with how Weasley still thought about that period of her life.

The pair sat down at the Ravenclaw table, which was closer to Slytherin than Gryffindor was, Weasley with her back to him. Draco returned his attention to his plate before one of her friends could notice him watching. It wouldn’t do to draw attention to himself. Not today.
“Can  you believe that last year we thought Switching spells were bad?” Colin said as he and Ginny walked into the Great Hall. The afternoon sun floated high in the enchanted ceiling, obscured occasionally by a thin cloud cover. 
“Switching spells are still bad,” put in Ginny. “I don’t see Luna.” They found an empty stretch of bench on one end of the Gryffindor table.

“Not compared to Vanishment,” said Colin, with a mock-shudder. Ginny sat down across from him.

“Two things can be bad.”

“How was Transfiguration?” asked Luna, sitting down next to Colin. The past couple of meals, she had seemed to make a point of sitting across from Ginny, rather than coming up from behind to sit next to her. Ginny appreciated the concern, but worried that this new accommodation of her recently overactive startle response might be in preparation for a conversation to address it.

“It wasn’t so bad,” said Colin. “You were right about Vanishment, it’s easier to get into the mindset for it, even if it is more complicated than Switching spells.”

“It was awful,” Ginny corrected. “We talked about the paper, too, which I completely forgot about. Everyone had all kinds of really specific questions about Inanimatus Conjurus. I think I might have to single-handedly win a hundred Quidditch games in a row to make up for McGonagall’s opinion of me after this assignment. I haven’t even started.”

“I’m almost done,” said Luna. “It’s not too hard to understand once you get into it.”

“Maybe not if you’re good at Transfiguration,” said Ginny.

“I’m almost done, too,” said Colin. “I was planning to go to the library after dinner, you’re welcome to join me. I can show you the books I’ve been using.”

“That would be brilliant,” said Ginny.

“Not that I don’t have faith in your ability to win a hundred Quidditch games-” Colin added.

“I don’t think there’s that many Quidditch games left before we’d graduate,” said Luna.

“-It’s just that it might be easier to do well on the essay.”

“When I fail the essay, I’ll have to take enough remedial Transfiguration to play a thousand matches for Gryffindor,” said Ginny.

The rest of the afternoon crawled by. In Herbology, Ginny spent what felt like hours watching condensation creep down the wall of the greenhouse, letting Professor Sprout’s hoarse, homey voice wash over her without hearing a word. There was just enough pressure in her head to distract from anything she might be doing without ever being seriously painful.

By dinnertime, the pressure had migrated to behind her eyes and the bridge of her nose, and was intense enough that she forgot that she was supposed to be sitting with her back to the Slytherins, now, but as she spent most of the meal with her forehead propped up on on palm, letting the motion of her chewing massage the space between her eyes into the heel of her hand, it turned out alright in the end. The one time she looked across the Great Hall, as she and her friends were leaving, Draco wasn’t at the Slytherin table at all.

Colin, as it turned out, had referenced nearly a dozen books in his essay, and it took Ginny the better part of an hour to narrow down the pile he’d set in front of her to three books that she felt would actually be substantial enough to use. Luna had finished her first draft by the time Ginny had begun to note the most useful chapters in the first of the books.

It was six-thirty when Colin leaned his chair back from the table to give his hand a break from holding his quill. Ginny looked up at the noise, barely covering her surprise with an expression of mild interest.

“What did you do last night?” asked Colin, stretching his arms over his head and flexing the fingers of his left hand. “I heard practice was cancelled from the storm, but I didn’t see you in the common room.”

“

Shit

, practice, I forgot,” said Ginny, slamming the book shut and crumpling her parchment into her bag. “We don’t usually have it on Fridays, but the storm yesterday-”

“At seven, right? You have time,” said Colin, letting the front legs of his chair return to the floor. “I’ll bring your bag back to the common room for you, don’t worry about it.” Ginny stopped her search for the lid to her inkwell.

“You’re a lifesaver,” she said. “I’ll see you tonight!”

“Have a good practice!” Colin called after her, earning the trio a piercing glare from Madame Pince.

Draco had found and stunned a small bird on the grounds, and now it was coming to in his hand as he crouched next to the Vanishing Cabinet. He checked his watch, and laid the still mostly immobilized bird on the floor of the Cabinet, careful not to let the door latch just yet. Only a few minutes before he would know if the restless anxiety of the past several months would come to an end. Only a few moments before his family would be redeemed.

Draco checked his watch again. Eight-thirty.

He waited two more minutes, just to be safe. If Borgin had had a late customer, or a problem with the shop, he didn’t want a delay to get in the way of the test.

There was a fluttering noise from inside the cabinet; the bird was beginning to get agitated.

Three more minutes.

Draco shut the door of the Vanishing Cabinet the rest of the way with a soft click, and after a few seconds, he was rewarded with a quiet sucking sound from within the cabinet.

He waited.

After several eternities, one of which was spent thinking about how he had seen what he was almost sure was Ginny Weasley hurrying across the grounds towards the Quidditch pitch on his way back into the castle with the bird, and many more of which were spent imagining that the bird had simply Vanished, and all the unspeakable things that might befall him if he Vanished one of the Death Eaters, the cabinet produced a faint rushing noise and a soft pop.

Draco held his breath. The cabinet was silent; he held his hand on the handle for as long as he could stand before cracking open the door.

The bird was dead.

Draco pulled open both doors of the cabinet with shaking hands.

The bird was dead.

Draco resisted the urge to slam the doors of the Vanishing Cabinet shut again; sending the dead bird back to Borgin & Burkes wouldn’t change anything.

The bird was dead.

Draco’s second and third instincts were both to flee to the out-of-order girls’ bathroom on the second floor, but this was no longer an option that was available to him.

Draco sank to his knees. The bird was dead, and Draco would be, too, if he couldn’t fix this. He could fix this. He could fix this. The bird was dead. He allowed himself two minutes to wish, raw and desperate, that he could return to the flooded bathroom, that he could sit on the cold stone floor in the corner under the window and tear himself open and let Ginny Weasley put the pieces back together in a way that was less messy and less broken and better than before. He allowed himself three minutes to grieve; for his father, for his mother, and for himself.

Draco stood up. His hands were still shaking, but he Vanished the dead bird with a wave of his wand, choosing to ignore the few feathers left behind on the bottom of the Cabinet.

He could fix this.

Warm air from the common room billowed into the corridor as Ginny followed Demelza through the portrait hole. The castle corridors, pleasantly cool in the warmer months, were positively frigid in the winter, and none of the Gryffindor team were good enough at warming spells to save their teammates from the freezing water that dripped from everyone’s damp hair down the backs of their necks on the long walk from the locker room showers to Gryffindor Tower.

Ginny found Colin in a chair near the windows, her teeth still chattering even as her fingers defrosted. He was reading a letter from his parents (Ginny could tell by the muggle paper), but he looked up when she sat down in the window seat.

“How was practice?” Colin asked, folding his letter into a pocket of his bag. Her bag was on the floor next to him, and he slid it towards her with his foot.

“Cold,” said Ginny, rubbing her hands together. “Thanks.” She made a mental note to ask Hermione if

Hogwarts: A History

mentioned who had thought to charm windows in dormitories and common rooms against the drafts that plagued every other window in the school, and if they were alive enough to appreciate a thank you note. “Not as cold as the walk back, though. Do you think the windows in professors’ offices are drafty?”

“Probably spelled against it,” said Colin. “I can’t imagine McGonagall putting up with drafts, can you?”

“Oh, bollocks, the essay,” said Ginny, remembering. “Did you bring that book back with you, the one I was looking at?”

“Which one?” asked Colin.

“Oh, I don’t remember. It had that tear in the cover-” Colin stopped her with a shake of his head.

“I didn’t bring any books back,” he said. “I finished the essay. I don’t know why I asked.”

“Shit.”

“Sorry,” said Colin.

“No, it’s alright. I’ll grab it tomorrow,” Ginny lied. It was nice to have a real reason to leave the common room for once. “I was just thinking I’d get some work done tonight.” She tipped her head toward Colin’s bag. “How’re your parents?”

“They’re fine,” said Colin. “They just wanted to make sure me and Dennis had got back and settled in alright. They wanted to know how I did on the Charms paper, so I’m not going to write back until we get that. Save Badger a trip.” The clock on the mantle chimed ten under the chatter of the common room. “Was that the clock?” asked Colin, craning his neck.

“Probably.”

“I’m going to turn in, then. Haven’t gotten much sleep the past few nights; I just wanted to wait up for you.”

“You didn’t have to do that,” said Ginny, feeling a little warmer.

“Don’t be thick,” said Colin, standing up. He picked up his bag over one arm and hugged Ginny with the other. “See you at lunch.”

“Night,” said Ginny, heading for her own dorm.

By the time Ginny came back down the stairs, having changed into her pajamas and Christmas jumper, the common room had quieted down significantly, due mostly to the N.E.W.T. study group that had lately taken up semi-permanent residence in one corner of the common room and invested a large portion of their energy each night into glaring pointedly at anyone who spoke above a whisper after whatever time they deemed too late for idle chatter. Ginny edged around the cluster of chairs to the portrait hole, and stepped out into the corridor. Her hair, which was almost dry, felt frozen to her scalp within seconds.

“And where do you think you’re going at this hour?” the Fat Lady asked, as her portrait swung shut.

“Forgot something in the library,” Ginny said, mostly truthfully.

“Hmm,” said the Fat Lady, suspiciously. “Well, don’t stay out too late now. Some of us want to get some sleep, you know. Just because it’s Friday night-”

“I won’t,” Ginny interrupted, heading for the stairs.

The stone floors of the castle corridors were icy even through the thin soles of Ginny’s shoes, and she wrapped both arms around herself when she didn’t need one or the other to open a door or hold back a tapestry. The headache just behind her eyes had faded a manageable amount, but she was still sorer than she should have been in her shoulders and thighs, and her knees and fingers were stiff- although that could have been from the cold. Either way, Ginny was cautious on the staircases. It wouldn’t do to fall into a trick step or something at this time of night.

After forty-five minutes, two wrong turns, and one three-floor detour to avoid Filch, Ginny finally turned into the library corridor. The arched entrance looked especially looming in the darkness, and Ginny found herself checking over her shoulder more often than was probably necessary for the length of the corridor.

Ginny couldn’t recall having ever been in the library at night. The tall, narrow windows that lined the outside wall at intervals could only barely be seen from where she stood, and didn’t provide nearly as much light as she’d imagined they would- which is to say, none.

“

Lumos

”, whispered Ginny, after waiting a moment to make sure she couldn’t hear any other movement in the library. The pale blue light at the end of her wand was barely bright enough to help her navigate the table clusters at the front end of the library without tripping on the chairs, and Ginny briefly considered recasting, but by the time she’d reached the first row of the shelves, she’d decided against it. She didn’t want to risk a brighter light being seen from the corridor.

The library was different in the dark, and despite having spent over an hour in the Transfiguration section just that afternoon, Ginny found herself holding her wand carefully in front of her and peering closely at the labels on the ends of the shelves. It gave her an uneasy sense of deja vu, one that she wasn’t able to place until her wandlight glinted off of a rounded crystal bookend on the shelf in front of her, and a chill raced up her spine faster than she had ever flown on her Cleansweep. Harry’s Firebolt might have been able to compete with the rate at which her pulse accelerated, if the two could be measured on the same scale, but it would have been a close call.

Ginny fought back the urge to squeeze her eyes shut as her mind filled in the blanks and every part of the library that lay beyond the dead end of the row to her left and the edge of her small circle of light stretched longer and darker and taller until it was indistinguishable from the Hall of Prophecies.

She was alone this time.

It was all very well to be brave when standing back to back with some of the most capable people you knew, Ginny reflected. Even when faced with Death Eaters, with objectively better, faster, more experienced adults who wanted you dead, there was some hope. There was Luna to squeeze your hand at the right moment. There was Ron to go charging in headfirst without a second thought- no matter how high the odds were against him- as long as there was someone to save, no matter how much you didn’t deserve saving. There was hope. This was different. (

Everything’s different now

, Luna’s voice echoed in Ginny’s head.) They’d only made it through the last time because the Order came in at the last minute; she couldn’t possibly take on a single Death Eater on her own. All she could hope to do was die trying, so that she wouldn’t have to live with the failure to save her friends.

There was a sound from behind her, barely audible over her own blood pounding in her ears, and Ginny’s breath caught in her chest. The back of her neck prickled in the uncomfortable way of someone who is being watched. No backup. No way out. Only Filch, somewhere in the castle, who would give her detention for being out of bed if he heard the commotion. Ginny tightened her white-knuckled grip on her wand and prepared to face her attacker.

You would deserve the detention, too,

Ginny reminded herself.

You petrified his cat.

The figure at the far end of the row had been standing frozen for so long that Draco, one aisle away, had almost stopped wondering who it was (and if he could safely tell them off for being there without being questioned himself) in favor of wondering what a statue was doing with a badly lit wand. His next cautious step into the row answered his original question, prompting dozens more. He continued slowly further, carefully cognizant both that nobody other than himself could see the light cast by his hand of glory, and that he himself could still be seen if he stepped into the glow of Ginny Weasley’s wand. Draco stopped in the aisle between the section of the row he had walked down and the section where she currently stood, still motionless, keeping his eyes on her as he stepped slightly to one side, out of her direct path.

He didn’t know how someone already standing seven degrees stiller than any Hogwarts fixture had ever stood could still manage to stiffen their shoulders, but she did, almost imperceptibly, and just as Draco was reconsidering what had apparently been a plan to watch her without revealing himself, she spun to face him with an accuracy that was especially alarming considering she couldn’t have seen his exact position until her wand was already in his face. Draco blinked; Ginny’s eyes widened, but not, he thought, in recognition. Draco dived instinctively to his left, missing her stunner by inches. Three books off of the shelf he’d been standing in front of hit the floor, and Draco spared a passing thought that they were both lucky she hadn’t used something that typically had any effect at all on bookshelves. While he was confident in his ability to evade Filch in the wake of a crash, he was equally confident that Madame Pince would have hunted them both down and have them skinned alive for the crime of causing any amount of destruction to her precious library.

“Ginny- Weasley- It’s me,” said Draco, scrambling to his feet. He grabbed her just above her elbows, forestalling what he was certain was an attempt to cast something much more creative than a stunner.

“Hey,” he said. “Hey. Look at me.”

Her wand had gone out when she’d tried to Stun him, and he’d dropped his hand of glory to dodge it, so he had only her faint silhouette against a ghost of light from the window above them and her breath on his face to tell him that she’d done it.

“It’s okay,” he said, casting around for what he could say that would persuade her to lower her wand. “It’s okay. It’s just me. I’m not-”

Draco didn’t have to decide what it was he wasn’t going to do, because he was interrupted by an exhale from Ginny that he assumed would accompany an unclenching of her shoulders, but which, it became immediately apparent, actually signified the buckling of her knees out from under her.

Draco dropped to catch her, adjusting his footing to support her weight. The earthy smell of her hair filled his mouth and nose.

“Heavier than I thought you’d be,” he said, almost conversationally. Ginny was shaking against his chest, but she shook less when he spoke. “Explains why the Gryffindor team is so rubbish, it probably takes all you’ve got to convince your brooms to lift your thick heads off the ground.”

“Doesn’t even make sense,” came Ginny’s voice, muffled by his robes.

“Well, you didn’t give me a chance to prepare anything better,” said Draco, relieved that she seemed conscious enough to critique his insults. “Let’s sit you down, okay?”

She was softer than he’d expected, too, he noted, as he adjusted his arms around her waist. You didn’t expect Ginny Weasley to be soft, in sort of the same way you wouldn’t expect it of a thunderstorm. Draco was overly conscious of his fingers pressed into her sides, warm even through her thick, home-knit jumper.

Ginny’s heart was still pounding in her throat as Draco lowered her to the floor, where she leaned back against the wall. The cool stones against her shoulders were grounding, and she took several deep breaths, each slightly less ragged than the last, before realizing she was still clutching his forearms.

“Sorry,” said Ginny, releasing him. She thought she might have blushed if she hadn’t had so many other things already going on.

“It’s okay,” Draco repeated for about the thirtieth time. He sat next to her against the wall, shoulder to shoulder between the shelves on either side of them. Ginny took another long, shuddering breath. She couldn’t see the end of her nose without the light of her wand, but somehow it was better that way.

“I thought you were your father,” she said, as if it explained anything. If she closed her eyes, she could still almost see him, leering at her from the darkness. She opened her eyes. Draco didn’t say anything, but she felt his leg stiffen where it rested against hers. “At the Ministry, last year, we walked into an ambush. We knew that’s what we were doing. We thought we were prepared for it, I guess. In the Department of Mysteries there’s a room with all these rows of shelves, hundreds of them, it goes on forever, and they surrounded us, and I wasn’t- I wasn’t scared, exactly, not then, but I just knew that I wasn’t going to come out of it. I never had that before. I mean, with T- with the Chamber, afterwards, I knew that I

could’ve

died. But it’s different in the moment, to be so sure that you’re either going to die or you’re going to watch your friends die first, and you know which one you’d rather.” Ginny could feel Draco looking at her- not through any kind of intuition, just because they were so close together that she could feel his breath in her hair. “It’s selfish,” she admitted. “I’d rather die than live with my mistakes.”

“Is dying last a mistake?” asked Draco.

“Letting my friends die is,” said Ginny. “If I could have saved them.”

“And if you couldn’t have? If there was nothing you could do?”

Ginny shook her head. “There’s always something you could do.”

“Damn Gryffindors,” said Draco, after a long silence. “Is this what it’s like? You all think you’re fully responsible for anything and everything that comes your way?”

“Taking responsibility for your actions isn’t a bad thing,” challenged Ginny. “You should try it sometime.”

Draco shook his head. “Not everything is your fault,” he told her.

“Some things

are

,” said Ginny. “If I hadn’t-”

“No,” said Draco, more forcefully. His hand gripped her thigh, as if leaning into her would help make his point. “

It wasn’t your fault.

”

Privately, Ginny disagreed- she had always done when Colin said it, and wasn’t about to stop now- but she nodded anyway. “Okay,” she said.

Draco sighed. His fingers relaxed their grip as the pressure of his shoulder against hers lessened, and she heard him run his other hand through his hair. “You don’t have to lie to me,” he said. “I just…” the hand on her leg twitched, not quite a flinch, as if it had just noticed where it was.

“Is this okay?” He asked, his voice softer than it had been. There was a beat of silence; Ginny felt him tense as she leaned tentatively into his shoulder. He relaxed, slowly, as her head found the curve of his neck and rested there.

“Yeah,” said Ginny, “It’s okay.”

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

“Is this okay?” asked Draco, his voice softer than it had been. His hand still rested on her thigh, but lighter, now, as if he was waiting to move it away. There was a beat of silence; Ginny felt him tense as she leaned tentatively into his shoulder. He relaxed, letting the full weight of his hand return as her head found the curve of his neck and rested there. She wanted to say,

It’s more than okay.

She wanted to say,

This is the most okay that anything has been in months.

She wanted to say,

I’ve wanted this since that night before the Christmas party,

and,

I’m the most tired I think I’ve ever been, but I’m going to stay awake, not because I don’t deserve to sleep, but because I don’t want to miss a moment in case I wake up and you’re gone,

and,

I missed you.

“Yeah,” said Ginny, “It’s okay.”

“Okay,” said Draco. There was a long silence. The library was dark and still; the only sound, and it wasn’t quite a sound, was Ginny’s blood still pounding in her ears.

“Are

you

okay?” asked Draco, fingers twitching. His thumb rubbed her thigh once, experimentally. Ginny exhaled shakily.

“Not really,” she admitted, after a minute. “Not for a while.” It felt good to say it out loud. Draco didn’t respond, but Ginny didn’t blame him; she didn’t know how one would respond, to something like that. His thumb traced its path again against her flannel pajama pants. “Are you-?”

Draco’s laughed, short and humorless, his breath shifting Ginny’s hair into her face. “No,” he said simply.

“At least we’re on the same page,” said Ginny, lifting her head to brush her hair back out of her eyes.

“Sorry,” said Draco quickly. His hand disappeared from her leg, and Ginny heard him shift away the few inches he could manage in the close space.

“What- oh,” said Ginny. She could feel her face heating up, and was glad for how dark it was. “No, I just had hair in my face,” she said, tying it back with a band from around her wrist. “It’s fine. You’re fine. Unless-”

“No,” Draco interrupted, “I just thought you-”

They both stopped.

“It’s

okay

,” Ginny said again. She felt rather than saw Draco shift back over, and after a moment, his left arm settled hesitantly around her shoulders. She bent her knees up towards her chest, leaning back into him with her head against his shoulder.

“Okay?” Draco asked again, almost inaudibly. His left hand grazed her knee, settling halfway down her thigh. Ginny nodded.

“I didn’t mean to frighten you,” he said after a moment. His thumb had resumed its slow, rhythmic stroke. Ginny could feel his heartbeat, thumping through his robes to meet the side of her head where it rested almost on his chest.

“It wasn’t your fault,” said Ginny.

“What happened to taking responsibility for my actions?”

Ginny smiled, despite herself. “Really,” she said. “I was already in too deep. It was the library that did it.”

“Madam Pince,” said Draco, nodding sagely, his jaw brushing the top of Ginny’s head.

“Close,” Ginny admitted. “I did think she was going to kill me once last year, I brought a box of chocolates in without thinking-”

“You monster,” said Draco.

“It just looked so much like that room, with all the prophecies,” Ginny continued. The voice in her head reminded her weakly that she

shouldn’t be talking to a Malfoy, she shouldn’t want to be talking to a Malfoy in the first place, and that

Draco’s thumb moved again against her leg, soft through the worn fabric of her pajamas.

“But it’s not,” said Draco simply.

“But it

felt

like it,” said Ginny.

“Mm.”

Ginny sighed. “I don’t know. It doesn’t usually happen like this, actually thinking I’m back there. I dreamed about it the other night, though. So maybe that’s what did it.”

“Do you always dream about it?” asked Draco.

“No,” said Ginny. “Sometimes it’s other things.”

“So that’s why you’re always up.”

Ginny nodded, then shook her head. “Well, mostly.” Draco said nothing. “I mean, tonight, I needed a book for McGonagall’s essay,” she explained.

“Which you could have gotten tomorrow. When the library was open,” said Draco.

“And risked running into Madam Pince?” Ginny shrugged the shoulder that wasn’t pinned to Draco’s side, feeling the position of his arm around her shift in response to the movement. “I know. I just- I don’t mind staying up, I guess,” she explained. “Sometimes I like it. Even knowing I’m going to be tired. I don’t mind that, either. It feels- I don’t know how to explain it.” Ginny felt as though she was treading very close to admitting something that she herself wasn’t ready to acknowledge, but she kept on. “Not rewarding, that’s the wrong word, but it’s close. Safe, almost.” She shrugged again. “I know it doesn’t make sense. But it helps.”

“You’re right, it doesn’t make sense,” said Draco. “But I understand.”

“I’m sorry,” said Ginny. “You shouldn’t.”

“Not your fault,” said Draco.

“I didn’t say that it was.” Ginny shifted her head to rest more comfortably against his collarbone. “I reckon I wouldn’t get much sleep in a house full of Death Eaters, either.” She didn’t expect Draco to deny it, and he didn’t.

“Be a funny old world if Death Eaters went around trusting each other,” Draco agreed. “Of course, there are wards on our rooms, but-” he shrugged, his shoulder rising and falling under Ginny’s head. “Sorry,” he said, and Ginny felt him cautiously find her face with the hand that wasn’t on her thigh. His fingers brushed her cheekbone, back into her hairline. “Oh, you put it up,” he said. Ginny nodded, then yawned, tipping her head so he wouldn’t feel the movement of her jaw. She didn’t want to give him a reason to leave. And she wasn’t going to sleep, not here. Not now. She blinked against the darkness, making sure that her eyes were still open. “They might work, I don’t know,” continued Draco. “I’d like to not find out.”

“That seems preferable,” Ginny agreed.

“Depends on the day,” said Draco. “Getting cursed might take some of the pressure off. Hard to be tasked with upholding the family name if you’ve been turned into an auto-cannibalistic slug.”

“Or a ferret,” agreed Ginny, stifling another yawn. Draco’s fingers stopped tracing the seam of her pajamas as his posture shifted.

“That seems uncalled for,” he said, his voice tight and haughty.

“Seemed relevant to me,” said Ginny lightly. “Death Eaters Transfiguring you into stuff.”

“At least I-” Draco began, hotly, but broke off. “Weasel,” he retorted instead. Ginny relaxed muscles she hadn’t meant to tense as his arm softened and his hand returned to its place on her leg.

“I still can’t believe that madman was actually allowed to teach classes,” he groused.

“Mm,” said Ginny.

“Thanks for the support,” said Draco.

“Any time.” Ginny suppressed a yawn, trying to find something to focus on to keep herself awake. The blinding darkness was isolating, in a way. The only real things were what she could hear or feel. The knit of her jumper against her arms, and the cold of the floorboards through her pajamas, and the slowly growing soreness from the way her neck and back were curved. Draco’s chest moving against her shoulder when he breathed. His breath in her hair. His arm around her shoulder, his hand on her leg, his thumb, still running up and down the seam of her pajama pants. Ginny didn’t want to move, or even to breathe too deeply, in case he stopped.

“What sorts of things do you dream about?” Ginny had let herself drift into a drowsy trance, following the steady rhythm of Draco’s breathing, but his voice roused her. She allowed herself to risk shifting into a slightly more comfortable position, pushing back a twinge of disappointment when the hand on her leg stilled in response. Draco’s left arm tightened around her, pulling her closer into his chest, and his right hand found her own in her lap.

“Unpleasant ones,” said Ginny, drily. Draco’s thumb had abandoned its seam in favor of a slow arc, back and forth. “Almost exclusively.” She entwined their fingers experimentally, feeling the carefully controlled rise and fall of Draco’s chest slow in contrast to the heartbeat drumming against her back.

“Oh, is that so?” said Draco. “I assumed it was all kittens and, I don’t know, frolicking.”

“I can see how that would seem nightmarish to you,” said Ginny, “but no.”

Draco was quiet, and Ginny took a moment to gather her thoughts. His fingers tightened briefly around her hand.

“It’s Him, mostly,” said Ginny, closing her eyes. It was the same darkness, in some ways, but in other ways it was entirely different. “The dreams are usually different, and I don’t always remember the details. Sometimes it’s just a feeling. But it’s almost always Tom, or the diary, no matter what else is going on.” Draco squeezed her hand again, and Ginny opened her eyes. “It happened all the time after first year, but they eventually stopped, except for special occasions. There were a couple of years where I really thought that it would just be something I thought about on bad days- not that I’d ever forget, obviously,” said Ginny. “I just wouldn’t dwell on it so much, when I wasn’t already at a low point.” Ginny refrained from mentioning that even then, there had been days when getting to lose herself in her memories of Tom, and everything else she had lost-

Percy

, thought Ginny, with a newly sharpened pang of guilt- was the reward for reaching that lowest point. “Over the summer it just all came back.”

“What happened in the Ministry?” asked Draco.

“I told you. It was a trap. They had us surrounded from the beginning.”

“No, I know that,” he said. “My father-” His voice made an odd sound, and he shook his head and started over. “I meant after that.”

Ginny shook her head. “I don’t want to talk about it.” Ginny felt Draco take another breath, and felt her own shoulders tense in anticipation, but he exhaled whatever argument he’d been about to make into her hair.

“Okay,” he said.

“Okay.”

Ginny wasn’t sure if it was minutes or hours before the silence was broken by distant footsteps in the direction of the library entrance; she flinched in surprise, her pulse staggering out of control as she imagined the light that the intruder held growing brighter as they approached- already she could almost make out the shape of the next row of shelves-

“Filch,” Draco hissed in her ear. His arm tightened around her- Ginny had grown so used to it that she had almost forgotten it was there. Her heart began to slow its attempt to escape through her ribs, but she still held her breath until the footsteps receded into the stone corridor.

Draco’s chest shook; it took Ginny several seconds to realize that he was laughing.

“He would’ve strung us up,” whispered Draco hoarsely. Ginny snickered.

“You were

worried

?”

“No, of course not,” he said, sounding mildly offended.

“I was,” said Ginny, “I thought we were dead for sure.”

“Merlin, if he’d found us,” said Draco. “I can’t even imagine what-”

“Yeah,” said Ginny. It was a sobering thought. Filch wasn’t exactly one to keep it his victories to himself; the whole school would’ve known within two days. She didn’t think even Luna would understand this. “We should probably go,” she said, reluctantly.

“Right,” said Draco. “It’s late.”

“And if he comes back...”

“I know.”

Neither of them moved for a long moment, a long moment during which Ginny allowed herself to drink in the feeling- of Draco’s arm around her shoulder, his hand on her thigh, her back against his chest- with an urgency that didn’t leave room for guilt. Then his arm relaxed, slightly, and Ginny shifted to stand, and the moment shrunk away into the cobwebbed corners.

They paused at the entrance to the corridor, standing rather closer than they might have a few hours before.

“Are you going to be okay?” asked Draco, looking down at her. Ginny could finally make out his face in the flickering light of the one lit torch halfway down the corridor. He looked as though he were trying very hard to sound more self assured than he was. “I mean, do you want me to- walk you back to the Tower?”

Ginny couldn’t help laughing, though Draco’s features turned stony as soon as she did.

“No,” she said, grinning bemusedly, “I think I can manage it on my own.” She risked following through on an impulse without giving herself time to think it over, stretching on her tiptoes to kiss him on the cheek. “Sweet of you to offer, though.” She took a step back, her heart flipping against her ribs. “Goodnight,” said Ginny. She couldn’t read his expression, but it wasn’t the one he’d had before. She was glad he wouldn’t see the blush crawling up the back of her neck and ears.

“Goodnight,” said Draco.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Draco stared down the corridor until Ginny had faded into the darkness. He didn’t quite know what to think. He felt a little bit as though he’d just rolled on his broom and only narrowly avoided a bludger.

Weasley,

he corrected himself, half-heartedly and several seconds late. He watched the darkened corridor for a moment longer.

Maybe, he thought, it was time to admit that what he called her in his own head wasn’t important anymore. Not if-

He stopped himself before he could finish the thought. That night had been an anomaly. Expecting something like it to happen again would only lead to- well, unrealistic expectations. He couldn’t bring himself to say

disappointment

, which was still too small a word to describe whatever had constricted around his chest in the split second in which he had fervently hoped for a repeat occurrence and simultaneously anticipated the pain that allowing such a wish to continue would cause.

Draco turned sharply and began his walk back to the dungeons. There wouldn’t be a repeat. He knew that- there couldn’t be. He’d known it the whole time. That’s why he had held her so closely, stayed so still, allowed himself to give in to feeling what he felt- Draco stopped walking and pressed his hands first to his face and then up through his already tousled hair.

Why can’t you just allow yourself to enjoy it for what it was?

Asked a very small voice as Draco resumed his course for the dungeons.

Can’t you just be-

Draco refused to think the word ‘happy’. He pushed this thought aside, too. It had been… nice, he admitted. But that was all. It didn’t matter, in the end. He had work to do.

This thought was the one that managed to squash down the last of Draco’s lingering good feeling about the night, and everything else that had happened that evening came rushing back. The image of the dead bird at the bottom of the cabinet presented itself to him and refused to retreat.

Draco swore aloud, immediately pausing and looking back over his shoulder to be sure he couldn’t hear Filch approaching. He had forgotten to get the book he needed. He hesitated, but continued into the dungeons. It would have to wait until morning.

He checked his watch as he trudged through the familiar maze of subterranean corridors. It was just past two in the morning, though he felt as though it should be much later. There was movement further down at an intersection of corridors, and Draco stopped walking. Filch didn’t usually descend into the dungeons, or most prefects other than the occasional self-righteous Gryffindor, but there was always a chance, and if he fell under further scrutiny…

The figure at the end of the hall solidified into two fifth year Slytherins, leaning on each other and badly suppressing giggles. Draco rolled his eyes and continued in the direction of the common room. He had forgotten about the Alchemy party, which would still be going on, if not for much longer. He’d expected to be able to come back to a quiet common room, and dormmates already asleep, or at least in a more passive kind of drunken stupor.

The common room was close to empty when Draco reached it, but the few clusters of students were managing to make almost enough noise on their own to make up for it. He intended to walk straight through to the dormitories, but glanced out of habit towards the corner usually occupied by himself and his friends, where Pansy was in the process of getting up from where she had apparently been lying on the floor.

“Malfoy!” she shouted across the room. “It’s about damn time!”

Having attracted her attention, Draco had no choice but to make his way towards the fireplace.

“Have a good night, Pansy?” he asked, rhetorically. Pansy had lain slowly back down on the rug as soon as she had ascertained that Draco was responding to her call, and her limbs were arranged about her in an almost graceful state of dissarray.

“Lovely,” she responded, stretching one arm languidly towards the coffee table. “Zabini. Blaise.” The coffee table grunted in response. “Hold my hand, numpty.” Blaise’s arm emerged from under the low table, his hand patting the rug aimlessly until it happened upon Pansy’s, who clumsily intertwined her pale fingers with his dark ones.

“Should I be checking under the chairs for Nott?” asked Draco drily.

“What?” asked Pansy.

“Nothing,” said Draco. “Is Theo with you?”

Pansy turned her head to both sides to check. “He was,” she said. “Came to the party- you didn’t come to the party,” she said accusingly, as if she had just remembered.

“Did he come

back

from the party?” asked Draco. Nott could be unpredictable when he drank, if he was alone. Usually the most dangerous behavior this was likely to manifest in was cursing things that didn’t respond to curses, but Pansy had confided in Draco once that she was concerned that sometime he might seriously hurt himself; she hadn’t told him what actually led her to believe this, but usually found ways to keep Theo in reach of the relative stability of the group when they drank.

“Probably,” said Pansy. “He was here a minute ago.”

“How long is a minute?”

Pansy shrugged. Blaise mumbled something from under the coffee table, but if he was drunk enough to be mumbling, he was probably too drunk to be contributing anything important, so Draco ignored him.

“Pansy-”

“Found him,” she said triumphantly, staring under the couch to her right. Draco almost checked under the couch, just in case, but as he turned to follow the direction of her gaze, he saw Nott emerging from the bathrooms, one arm flung cheerily around the shoulders of Crabbe, who looked as though he had either just been sick or was about to be. When he saw Draco watching him, Theo waved.

“Good night, eh Malfoy?” he called across the room.

“He didn’t come!” Pansy shouted from the floor. Theo rolled his eyes and left Crabbe to his own devices, weaving his way over to where Draco stood and throwing himself down on the couch.

“Have a good night?” he asked Draco again, ignoring Pansy.

“Nothing to write home about,” said Draco. In more ways than one, he reflected. He briefly considered whether the response would be worse to a letter containing the news that he had once again been unsuccessful in his service to the Dark Lord, or that he had dealt with it by seeking comfort from the Weasley girl.

“Shoulda come to the party,” said Pansy, attempting to shrug her shoulders.

“How was the party, Pansy,” asked Draco, giving in.

Comfort. Is that what it was? On purpose?

“Bitchin,” said Pansy. Draco raised his eyebrows. “Snogged Lizzy Burke’s brains out in that storeroom on level three.” (Draco knew at the very least that he had provided such a thing for Ginny. He didn’t know if he’d intended for just seeing her to have a similar effect on himself.)

Theo made a face. “We don’t need the details, Parkinson.”

Pansy smirked. “Oh, I didn’t give you the

details

,” she said. (

Although, you didn’t

just

see her, did you,

thought Draco). “I can tell you what

else

we did, if you want. Or Blaise can, can’t he?” she said sweetly, squeezing his hand. The boy under the coffee table made another grumbling sound that sounded something like ‘obliviate myself’. “That’s why we learn to knock,” Pansy told Draco knowingly. Draco pushed Ginny to the back of his mind, arranging his features into a more attentive expression.

“Hell,” said Theo, rubbing his palms over his face. Pansy grinned triumphantly. “No, isn’t Burke seeing- I forgot his name, I had it a minute ago, the beater from a few years back.”

“Bole, yeah, their wedding’s after graduation. July, I think. My mother wrote me about it,” clarified Pansy, winking at Draco. “Me’n Burke didn’t have time to discuss the details.”

Draco rolled his eyes. “We get the picture, Pans.” She stuck her tongue out at him. Theo looked like he was trying to come up with another argument.

“Climb off the hippogriff, Nott, stop sputtering. You told us all about that french girl last summer, and she was more taken then than Lizzy and Lucian’ll be fifty years into the thing. You’ve met him. He’s probably already signed his lease on an apartment in a Toad’s Bend brothel.”

“It’s

different

,” said Theo. Pansy’s eyes narrowed, and she started to sit up from the carpet.

“It isn’t, Theo, and you know it. Give it a rest,” Draco added, looking pointedly at Pansy, who rolled her eyes, but laid back down. Theo made a face, but closed his mouth. “Could be worse, anyway. Be glad you’re not Zabini.”

“What?”

“She’s not making you watch.”

Pansy cackled, and kicked Blaise under the table. There was a loud bang as the table shifted an inch to the right, and Blaise let out a stream of what Draco could only assume was French profanity. Theo was howling with laughter.

Draco smirked as Blaise crawled out from under the table, pressing the side of his head with one hand. “Rough night?” he asked. Blaise sprawled into the chair behind him, and then, as an afterthought, showed Draco one and then two of the fingers on his left hand in one fluid motion.

“Have you been practicing that?” asked Pansy, innocently. Blaise kicked the table, apparently intending to push it into her, but didn’t quite manage it, and winced in pain. Pansy laughed again. “Draco, help me up,” she demanded, reaching both arms up to him. Draco rolled his eyes, but took her hands and allowed her to use him to pull herself to her feet. “Thanks, babe,” she said, spinning around and collapsing into the couch next to him. “Sit

down

, you’re making me uncomfortable, hovering like that.”

“I do have things to do in the morning, you know,” said Draco. “We can’t all be awake all hours of the night with no consequences.” He sat down anyway.

“Sure we can,” said Pansy. “There’ll just be consequences.”

Draco looked at her. “Do you- never mind,” he said, shaking his head. “I don’t know why I bother.”

“You know you love me,” said Pansy, bumping his shoulder with her own.

“Loves that you put up with ‘im, at any rate,” said Theo, guffawing. Draco clenched his jaw, gripping the instinct to jump to his feet tightly between his molars.

“Who’s putting up with you?” he shot back. “The house elf?”

“I’m putting up with both of you,” snapped Pansy, heading off Nott’s response. “And I’ll keep doing it, too, if you lay off each other.”

“Yeah, alright, keep your hat on,” grumbled Nott.

“S’what I thought,” said Pansy, nudging Draco again with her shoulder until he put his arm around her. It was different with Ginny, he reflected. He and Pansy had known each other since they were children, had sat like this hundreds of times, and it was pleasant, of course, but it wasn’t…

Shut it,

he reminded himself.

Leave it alone

.

The relative silence was interrupted by an argument in the other corner of the room, and Draco turned just in time to see one of the fifth year boys scrambling up from the floor. It took Draco a moment to realize that he knew him; it was Harper, their replacement Seeker. If it wasn’t for the other boy standing over him, Draco would have easily believed that he had tipped his own chair over. He smirked and turned back to the group, tuning out the shouting that continued in the background.

“Did you hear about the Bulgarian Ministry?” asked Blaise. “This isn’t the beginning of a joke,” he added, flicking his gaze over to Theo, who had half-sat up in interest.

“What about it?” asked Pansy.

“Elected a new- whatever they call their Prime Minister,” said Blaise. “It’s not in the

Prophet

, my mother wrote me about it the other day in passing. Openly anti-mudblood.”

“Wasn’t the last one?” asked Theo, pulling disinterestedly at a loose thread on his sleeve.

“Not as a political statement,” said Blaise. “Just for a laugh at parties.”

“That’s good, though, innit,” said Theo. “Come out with it.”

“It’ll be interesting to watch, at any rate,” said Pansy. “Bet the

Prophet

keeps it quiet.”

“Probably better if they do. We’ve got a smaller margin on them here, with Dumbledore letting in just about anyone who can turn a teacup. Bulgaria’s stricter about that kind of thing. And they haven’t got so many blood traitors to deal with.”

“Makes you see where Dad’s lot are coming from,” said Nott. “There’d be a shot at doing things the right way if people like the Weasleys weren’t popping them out like nifflers.”

Draco removed his arm from around Pansy’s shoulders under the pretense of a yawn. All the occlumency in the world would be useless to him if he couldn’t even keep his own physical reactions under control, and he had just barely kept from tensing at the mention of the Weasleys. He couldn’t have her or anyone else suspect that anything was going on.

Nothing

is

going on,

he reminded himself.

“Merlin, it’s going to be the Weaslette’s turn soon, isn’t it,” snickered Pansy. “How much do you want to bet it’s Potter?”

“I think she’d like it to be,” said Blaise, with a faint smirk.

“Won’t be so pretty all settled down as his pet housewife, I bet,” said Pansy. “Once she realizes-”

“But you’re not jealous,” said Theo.

Pansy threw a pillow at him, and he was too slow to prevent it from hitting him in the face. Nott threw it back, and Pansy didn’t wait for him to miss by four feet before lunging across the table at him with a second cushion. Blaise watched in mild interest as their bickering devolved into a wrestling match, while Draco stared into the fire. He couldn’t really imagine Ginny

settling down

as anything, with or without Potter. (He told himself that whether or not it was Potter had nothing to do with it). She didn’t stand still long enough. Draco got the feeling that she didn’t quite have routines in her life so much as she had constants, things that she committed to continuously finding a place for, as long as they were willing to continue to adapt to new places.

Draco didn’t know how he felt like he knew her well enough to assess her life as a perpetually shifting turmoil, but he did know he would be willing to adapt to it, given the chance.

The thought frightened him.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

The wind nipped at Ginny’s wrists where her gloves didn’t quite meet the sleeves of her practice gear. It was bitterly cold, and Harry had promised to end practice early, but had yet to follow through. Ginny tried not to think about how warm Draco had been the night before, in contrast with the stone wall of the library.

Demelza, a few yards to Ginny’s right, had wrapped a thick scarf around her neck which covered almost her entire face, and was shooting glares almost as icy as the weather at their captain’s back across the pitch. He had left the Chasers to their own devices in order to supervise the Beaters, and the three of them had readily concluded that the exertion of running drills did not produce enough warmth to cancel out the added windchill of flying. Ginny drifted closer to Demelza, bumping her shoulder amicably.

“‘Huddling for warmth’ is among the most important forms for Northern Quidditch teams to master,” commented the other girl, her voice muffled by the scarf over her mouth.

“I’ll tell Harry we’re taking our inspiration from the Norwegian National team now,” said Ginny. “If I tell him there was a write up on them in

Quarterly Quidditch

maybe he’ll let it go.”

Dean Thomas flew up on Demelza’s other side. “Harry said we can head back to the locker rooms,” he said. “He’s just going to talk to Jimmy and Richie, the rest of us are done.”

“Thank god,” said Demelza, through her scarf, already turning towards the edge of the pitch. Ginny aimed her broom downwards, wincing as the chilling air rushed past her face and ears. The path to the locker rooms was icy, and Ginny slipped a little on the dismount, but her broom was still floating enough that her grip on it helped her recover her balance.

“Alright, Ginny?” asked Dean, slowing down as he walked past her.

“Just fine, thanks,” said Ginny, with a smile that came quickly but still managed to feel slightly forced. Something in her chest sank just a little every time she realized she still hadn’t quite figured out how to behave normally around Dean again.

The locker room was warm, and it was only reluctantly that Ginny finally stepped back outside into the snow and made her way up to the castle for a late breakfast. Colin and Luna were still in the Great Hall when she got there, sitting at the Ravenclaw table, and Ginny nicked a piece of toast from a platter on her way to join them.

“Morning,” said Colin, as she sat down across from him.

“It’s bloody freezing out,” replied Ginny.

“That’s why I don’t do Quidditch,” said Colin, with an exaggerated air of superiority.

“Yeah,

that’s

why,” said Ginny.

“Hey,” said Colin, without making any attempt to seem offended.

“Hay is for hircocervuses,” said Luna.

“Exactly,” said Ginny, putting jam on her toast.

Colin rolled his eyes. “Did you get any more work done on the Transfiguration essay like you wanted to?” he asked Luna.

“No.” Luna sighed. “I meant to, it just got away from me.”

“Good, you can help me with mine,” said Ginny. “I’ve barely started, and this git informed  me last night that he’d finished.” She gestured to Colin with the jelly knife.

“You still have time,” said Colin. “It’ll be fine.”

“It had better be.” Ginny brandished her toast threateningly in his direction, then took a bite.

Colin rolled his eyes. “If you need help with the essay, I’ll help you,” he said. “But I think you’re going to be fine. It’s not that hard once you actually get into it.”

“Coming from you,” said Ginny.

“You did better than me on the last one,” said Colin.

“That was Charms,” said Ginny. “That’s different. Charms makes sense. And you can’t know that, anyway, he hasn’t handed them back yet.”

“I read them both,” Luna reminded them, helpfully. “Ginny’s was better.”

“Thanks, Luna,” said Ginny. Luna shrugged.

“I really only have a few sentences left to add to mine, anyway,” she said. “But you can read it when I’m finished, if you like.”

“I might take you up on that,” said Ginny. “I’ll have to get my bag, I left it in my room.”

“Me too,” said Luna. “I didn’t think you’d be at breakfast.”

“Harry let most of us off early, on account of did I mention that it’s fucking cold out,” said Ginny, putting the last bite of toast in her mouth and licking jam off of her thumb. “Pass me the eggs, would you?” she asked Colin, reaching over Luna to spear two sausages with her fork. Colin obliged.

“You might’ve mentioned it,” he said.

“Good,” said Ginny, helping herself to the eggs. “Because I was pleasantly surprised to realize I still had toes by the end of practice.” She looked up at something over his shoulder before she had time to register what it was that had gotten her attention. It was Draco, just sitting down with some of the other Slytherins in his year at their table. He was looking at her, too; their eyes met from across the Hall, and Ginny looked quickly back down at her breakfast, hoping the heat crawling up the back of her neck wasn’t visible to her friends. She put a large forkful of eggs in her mouth just in case.

Luna and Colin were both looking at her expectantly.

“What?” asked Ginny, her heart jumping into her throat.

“I said, I’m going to go get my things, but I’ll meet you in the library,” said Luna.

“And I said, are you sure the cold didn’t get to your brain,” said Colin.

“He didn’t,” said Luna.

“Well, I’m saying it now.”

Ginny flicked a piece of onion at him.

“Well, I was going to sit with you, but if it’s going to be like that...” said Colin.

“I’ll be good, promise,” said Ginny. Colin shook his head.

“I can’t, actually, there’s gobstones. I’ll stop by the library afterwards, though.” He stole a piece of her sausage off of Ginny’s plate.

“Good riddance,” said Ginny as he walked away, just loudly enough for him to hear. He turned to look back, pressing one hand to his chest in feigned offense, and Ginny just grinned and shook her head.

“See you in a bit,” she said to Luna, who kissed the top of Ginny’s head on her way out.

It was harder not to glance over at the Slytherins without her friends to distract her, but she never caught Draco looking at her a second time. She ate quickly- just because Colin and Luna had gone didn’t mean there wasn’t anybody else who might question her, or worse, tell Ron, if they noticed- and stood to leave after only a few minutes, stepping over the bench and then turning back to take a muffin to eat on the way back up to the common room, with one last glance towards Draco, who was looking right at her. Ginny’s breath caught in her chest, and for a moment that probably lasted only a second or two, they held eye contact across the hall, until at last Draco blinked and turned to say something to Pansy Parkinson.

Draco dragged his attention once again back to the conversation happening around him. He had spent all morning wrapped up in his head, thinking about the night before to the point of distraction. Not the important parts of the night before, not the parts where he had failed yet again to make any meaningful progress towards fulfilling his promise to the Dark Lord; the part where he had held Weasley in the library, and-

Draco tore himself away from the thought. He’d managed to keep it at bay up until he’d actually had to return to the library, before breakfast, to find his Transfiguration book. He had to get back to work. He just had to keep working, and not think about Ginny, and not think about everything that had already gone wrong and everything that still could go wrong. He just had to finish this, once and for all, and then it would all be over, and everything could go back to normal.

A small voice in his head that told Draco that this was only the beginning, that it wasn’t going to end, that nothing would ever go back to the way things were. A second, smaller voice wondered if he really wanted to return to a ‘normal’ that didn’t include Ginny Weasley, anyway. Draco ignored them both.

He was staring at Ginny Weasley again, and this time she was looking back.

Draco blinked, shifting his gaze to Pansy, sitting across from him with her head propped up in one hand as she poked at a stack of pancakes with her spoon.

“-can’t believe Blaise isn’t even awake yet, he should have to suffer with me,” she was saying. “It’s not

my

fault Bulstrode gets up at an unholy hour every single morning.”

“Have you tried explaining that to the hangover?” asked Draco, drily. Pansy made a face at her pancakes. Draco glanced back up- Ginny was gone. He told himself this was a good thing. “Not to abandon you in your misery, but I have work to do,” he told Pansy.

“Oh,

work

to do,” said Pansy, her usual simper coming out more as a whine. “Well, by all means, leave me to my fate.”

“Do try to manage to live without me,” said Draco, collecting his bag from under the table and checking for the third time to see that it still contained the book he needed, and the vial of polyjuice potion he’d stolen from the dungeons earlier in the week, when Slughorn had taught it to the year seven advanced class. “I don’t have time to write a eulogy at the moment.”

“Who asked you to?” said Pansy.

“You did, third year.”

“I’ve grown older and wiser since then.”

“Have you now?” Draco knocked his knife into his goblet, smirking when Pansy winced at the sound. “Good to know.”

“I’m going to curse you into next Tuesday,” she grumbled.

“I’ll see you later,” Draco told her. “Drink your pumpkin juice.”

The halls were still relatively empty, and Draco managed to avoid directly seeing anyone until he reached Crabbe on the seventh floor.

“Take this,” he told him, proffering the vial. “Or, hold on, I probably can’t trust you to do this for yourself.” He opened the cover of the transfiguration book, removed the hair he’d placed there for safekeeping, and dropped it into the vial, watching the potion sizzle into a murky teal. “You have the robes?” Crabbe nodded. “Good.” He handed him the vial. “Just distract anyone that comes by, and let me know if Snape or any of Potter’s gang are snooping around.” Crabbe nodded, and raised to vial to his lips. “Not here, Vince, for Merlin’s sake. There’s a bathroom around the corner.”

Draco waited until Crabbe had disappeared, then began to pace the length of the wall, picturing the Room of Hidden Things until the doorway presented itself to him. He checked down both ends of the corridor before stepping inside. He hoped Crabbe hadn’t gotten lost. Draco curled his lip. That would be just like him, wouldn’t it, to not be able to do even one simple task.

It took Draco longer than usual to reach the wardrobe, because he made two wrong turns and then walked entirely past it without realizing. He was still preoccupied when he had finally tracked down his concealed notes and settled into his chair. Every third sentence had to be read a second time, and it was hours before he had at long last determined which chapter of the book was most likely to be useful to him, and settled in to scouring it for any information at all, vowing, as he automatically turned a page that he hadn’t read, not to be distracted until he was finished.

He wanted to see Ginny again.

This was not a new discovery, as he had been trying not to want to see her for over a month now, but it was still an unwelcome one. Whatever it was he was looking for would have been at very least inadvisable under normal circumstances, and these, he reminded himself yet again, were not normal circumstances. He had much higher priorities.

He paged irritably backwards in his book until he found a paragraph he recognized.

It wasn’t only him, he knew that now. Unless she had come to her senses in the hours between their last encounter- which, he reminded himself, was likely- she wanted to see him too. Draco almost didn’t want to let himself think it, but his fingers went involuntarily to his cheek.

This was

Ginny Weasley

, he chided himself. She didn’t want things like that, things like

him

. She was one of

them

.

She did want those things, though, he remembered. She had told him herself, about the diary, about her bond with the young Tom Riddle. He had been surprised, at the time, but only because he hadn’t known her beyond what she’d let him see. It made sense, now. She had so much darkness in her. Not

Dark

, not Dark Magic, not the way Draco’s usual colleagues did. Just ordinary darkness, in a mundane sense of the word, if anything about Ginny Weasley could be considered mundane. The kind of darkness that hurt only her instead of others.

Draco cursed and flipped three pages back again.

It turned out to have been a mistake to think she would be able to get any work done in the library. It was nearly dinnertime when Ginny finally gave up, shutting her book on the two measly paragraphs she’d managed to scratch out over the course of five hours.

“I’ll finish it tonight,” she told Luna, when the other girl looked up from the scraps of parchment she’d been doodling on. Ginny pushed Luna’s completed essay back across the table to her. “Or tomorrow morning.”

“Thanks,” said Luna, rolling the parchment and slipping it into her bag. “You don’t have to tell me that, I trust you,” she said.

“I’m telling you for me,” Ginny clarified. “If you know that I’m planning to get it done some time before Sunday night, then I actually have to do it.”

“Mm,” said Luna. Ginny screwed the lid tight on her inkwell and put it in an inside pocket of her bag along with her quill, casting one last glance over Luna’s shoulder in the direction of the aisle where Draco had found her the night before, as if she expected him to still be there, before standing up to put the book and her essay into her bag.

“Dinner?”

Luna nodded.

“D’you think Colin ever finished with gobstones, or did he just forget about us?” asked Ginny.

“I think gobstones might really be a state of mind,” said Luna, which somehow answered the question, even though it didn’t.

“I think you might be right.”

Colin, it turned out, had not finished with gobstones, as evidenced by the slime freshly spattered across the front of his robes when he finally joined Ginny and Luna in the Great Hall, apologizing profusely.

“It’s fine, Colin, I don’t think it really would’ve made a difference,” said Ginny.

“Hey,” said Colin. Ginny rolled her eyes.

“You’re very helpful. But you don’t sit quietly when you don’t have work to do, and I barely got anything done as it was. Your help and your distraction would’ve just cancelled each other out.”

“You may have a point,” he conceded. “But I reserve the right to be offended again at a later date if you’re proven wrong.”

“Fine by me,” said Ginny, standing up. “I’m going to go try to get a little more done before I pass out.”

“Good luck,” said Colin. “I’ll see you back in the common room?”

“Eventually,” said Ginny. “I hope.”

“Well, don’t stay up too late,” Colin advised. “We’d like to see you awake at some point this weekend.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” said Ginny, one corner of her mouth quirking.

If he only knew

.

“Goodnight, Ginny,” said Luna.

“See you tomorrow!” Ginny called back, already heading for the entrance hall. She hesitated on the stairs, even though she knew she’d already made her mind up about where she was going. The common room, she told herself, continuing on, would be too loud on a Saturday night, and she had already proven herself incapable of focusing in the library.

When Draco finally emerged from the Room of Hidden Things, well past seven in the evening, he was so wrapped up in his own warring thoughts that he almost didn’t notice the small second-year Slytherin leaning against the opposite wall of the darkened corridor, and when he did, he was startled for a second too long before he remembered the polyjuice potion.

“Crabbe,” he greeted, nodding. Crabbe, as a twelve year old girl, grunted in response, and stood up from the floor. “Anything happen I should know about?”

Crabbe shook his head. “Filch came past ‘bout an hour ago, but nobody else,” he said. “Didn’ even notice me.”

“Good,” said Draco. “Same time tomorrow, I’ll tell you if anything changes.” Crabbe started to follow him towards the staircase. “Better wait for that to wear off, hadn’t you?” Draco pointed out, not bothering to turn around to confirm that the other boy had taken his advice.

He’d made frustratingly little progress. There were a few spells that looked promising, but all of them required him to re-cast the diagnostic charm that he’d struggled with for so long before the holiday, and he wasn’t looking forward to having to perform such complicated magic in as distracted a state as he still was. He couldn’t seem to go even an hour without thinking about her, and he had

work

to do- not only for the Dark Lord, he remembered suddenly, but homework, too. Draco curled his lip in distaste. Maybe there was a spell in one of his stolen restricted section books that would help him keep his priorities in order.

He would only stop by the bathroom for a moment. Just to confirm that she wasn’t there, so that he could go on with his night without thinking about the possibility, however small, that she might have been.

Ginny looked up from her book as the bathroom door scraped opened, prompting a rapid-fire succession of guesses as to who might be on the other side- Draco, not Draco, another student, Filch, Death Eaters, Moaning Myrtle- (Myrtle couldn’t open doors, Ginny reminded herself, and had in any case left to go lurk in the fifth floor prefects’ bath an hour previously).

“Homework?” asked Draco, raising his eyebrows in mild skepticism. Ginny shrugged.

“Transfiguration,” she said. “I wasn’t getting any work done in the library anyway.” She realized the implications of her statement too late to say something different, but Draco didn’t comment on it.

“But you’re getting work done here.”

“Yes, actually,” said Ginny, sliding her parchment back into the book. “I might manage to finish in time to get some sleep tomorrow night, at this rate.” She took stock of her own position for the first time in at least forty five minutes, and found it to be vastly uncomfortable- laying propped up on one’s forearms was fine in the thickly carpeted Gryffindor common room, but the tile floor was much less forgiving. Ginny sat up and rolled her shoulders, wincing when a muscle in her back twitched in response.

“Are you just going to stand there and stare at me?” she asked Draco as she leaned back against the wall, slightly uneased by too long a silence.

“I wasn’t- I mean, no, of course not,” he said, a touch defensively.

“Well, good,” said Ginny. “It’s unsettling.” Draco crossed the room and sat upright against the wall, under the windowsill, leaving a foot or so of tile between them.

“How are you?” he asked. “After last night, I mean.”

“It was good,” said Ginny, smirking up at him, teasing at his apparent worry in order to cover a more genuine smile. “Like I told you.”

“Flattering,” said Draco. “But not what I meant.” Ginny felt a blush spreading across her face, and looked away to conceal it. “You said the library was still bothering you,” Draco prompted. “Is it still…?” He trailed off, expectantly. Ginny could feel him watching her, and became very interested in the loose threads on the hem of her robes.

“That’s, uh, not what was distracting about the library,” she said, willing the heat to recede from her cheeks. “Besides,” she added quickly, risking a glance at Draco, whose expression was unreadable, “Like I said, it was really mostly how dark it was that did it. It’s not the same in the daytime. It’s fine.” She pressed her palms into the cold stone of the wall behind her until she trusted herself to look over at Draco, who had gone back to looking mildly concerned. It shouldn’t have been funny, but it almost was- the emotion didn’t look quite right on his face.

“It didn’t seem fine,” he said. His voice, at least, still carried a hint of sarcasm. “I mean, I’m more than willing to believe that Gryffindors have a different definition of fine than the rest of us, but I’d have to question your judgement if that definition included panic attacks, and, I don’t know, hallucinations.”

“You already question our judgement,” Ginny pointed out.

“Well, is that it, then?” Draco persisted. “You told Creevey, and he agreed that it was normal, nothing to worry about?”

“I- no,” said Ginny. “I think you know I didn’t.”

“But I thought it was

fine

,” said Draco.

“It

is

fine,” insisted Ginny, ignoring his mocking drawl. “I just don’t want them to worry.”

“Why would they be worried?”

“Malfoy-” said Ginny, warning.

“

Weasley,

” he countered. “What happened in the Ministry? What are you so afraid of?”

Ginny shook her head. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Why not?”

“Because I

don’t

.”

“That’s not a reason,” said Draco.

“Fine,” snapped Ginny. She sat up straighter. “Then because it was horrible and I’d prefer not to relive it, if it’s alright by you.”

“You’re already reliving it!” said Draco. “You said last night, you’ve been thinking about it for months. I don’t understand-”

“No,” interrupted Ginny, fighting to speak through the flood of memories that were always waiting to be unleashed by the slightest provocation, the accompanying rush of adrenaline fueled by a mix of unbridled terror and the certainty that she would just need to take as many of them as she could down with her, and the overwhelming urge not to have to carry all of those things on her own. She stood to pace, forcing the rhythm of her own footsteps ground her in reality. “That’s right. You

don’t

understand. You couldn’t

possibly

-”

“Try me,” said Draco, his voice clipped and sharp. “You can’t know if you won’t even talk to me. You’ve told me all kinds of things, I don’t know what the problem is all of a sudden.”

“Yeah, I- that was before,” said Ginny, without thinking. “It’s different now.”

“Before

what?

” demanded Draco. “That doesn’t

mean

anything, you have to- well, you don’t owe me any explanation, but I-”

“Before you cared!” Ginny burst out, finally. “Before it mattered.”

“You think I

care

about

you

?” Draco sneered, and Ginny involuntarily took a step back. It felt like she had taken a bludger to the chest. Something in Draco’s face shifted almost immediately, but it blurred before she could get a good look.

“Not at all,” she said, her voice thankfully even, all hard consonants and icy vowels. “I wouldn’t be surprised if you weren’t capable of it in the first place.”

“Ginny,” said Draco, who was scrambling to his feet. “I’m sorry, I didn’t-

think

, I do care, I-” Ginny turned away, forcefully blinking back the hot tears that threatened to spill down her cheeks.

“You want to know what happened?” she demanded. “Do you really want to know?” She didn’t give him a chance to respond. “We went to the Ministry. We knew it was a trap, but we went anyway, because they had Sirius, and there was nobody else we could get a message to.”

The dark wood of the stall door in front of her blurred until the darkness filled her vision, and Ginny could see the atrium of the Ministry in her mind’s eye. It wasn’t a hallucination. He was wrong. She still knew where she was. But she could see it, all the same, the eerie emptiness, the way their footsteps had echoed as they’d run to the elevators, still confident that they stood a chance against Voldemort himself.

“We thought we were walking straight to Voldemort. We thought he might expect Harry to be alone, and that maybe we would have that advantage, for a minute, but really we didn’t know, and it took forever to find the right door, and I was sure every time we went back out into that room that

He

would be waiting for us. I don’t know if he would still know me, I don’t know how any of that works, but I remember thinking maybe if he did, it would distract him long enough that the others could do something. Maybe it would count for something. But we never saw him. He wasn’t there.

The prophecy room was the worst, because that was what we were looking for, that’s where we

knew

they were, and it was freezing, and every row was dark halfway down and anyone could’ve been watching us from those shadows, it didn’t matter how silent we were, we didn’t see them at all. And then the row was empty, when we got there, where He was supposed to be. And Harry went all the way to the end, where it was darkest, and Luna was right next to me and she was glowing, almost, the light was blue and her lips and fingernails were blue and she looked almost dead already, and I only knew she wasn’t because she still didn’t look scared, and we saw them first while the others were looking at the prophecy, coming out of nowhere, and there wasn’t time to warn anyone. There were twice as many of them as us, and we were surrounded, and Bellatrix Lestrange was going to torture me to get Harry to talk, and suddenly all those months training didn’t matter because I still wasn’t a threat, I was a pawn, they were just going to use me to get to him and there was

nothing I could do about it

.”

Ginny’s voice cracked. She could still hear Bellatrix’s voice-

take the smallest one. torture her. the little girl.

She could feel Luna’s right hand in her left one, squeezing tight as the others closed around her to protect

her

, small and powerless and takeable.

“And then we smashed the shelves. There was glass everywhere, and the shelves were falling, and we got split up, we couldn’t make it back to the door with the others, there were too many of them in the way. Four of them followed us, me and Luna and Ron. He was hanging back, I knew he was, because all of their curses went over our heads until he knocked me down. I don’t know what they hit him with, but they were aiming for me. He yelled and knocked me out of the way, and they hit him instead, and one of them grabbed my ankle, I never saw his face, and he was dragging me back to Bellatrix, who was just watching and laughing, I think she was missing on purpose just to scare us, only I knew she would’ve tortured me until my brain was bubotuber pus and I couldn’t

do

anything, and then something crashed and everything was dark and floating and I could just hear Ron giggling, and Bellatrix wasn’t laughing anymore, and that was so much worse.

Luna got us out, but we led Bellatrix right to the others and I couldn’t even

walk

, and they chased us into another room and Harry and Luna couldn’t get all the doors closed in time, and I couldn’t help them, and they came through, and they got Luna, I thought she was

dead-

”

Luna had hit one of the tables so hard that it had collapsed even as she slid off of it and onto the floor, and Ginny never knew if she had been knocked out by the impact or by whatever spell had flung her away from the last door, she just remembered crawling desperately under the tables, dragging her ankle behind her, selfishly trying to reach Luna instead of helping the others, and not even reaching her in time to find out if she was still alive.

“-and there were

five

of them, and Hermione was already unconscious, and Neville was bleeding to much to cast anything, and the last thing I saw before they Stunned me was Ron with the tentacles of that brain wrapped around his chest-”

Ginny broke off. She couldn’t breathe. It would’ve killed him, he still had the scars, she’d seen them, and if it had been her, he would have saved her, like he had in the planetarium- Ginny pushed her face into her hands, pressing her palms against her eyes in effort to stem the flow of tears that persisted past the knot the size of a large walnut in her throat.

“I couldn’t even

stand,

” she managed, her voice ragged. She heard Draco shift behind her, and before she could take another breath to steady herself, she found her hands and face against his chest, and one of his hands stroked through her hair.

“It’s okay,” he said gently, gathering her into his arms. Her hands lowered to clutch each other between her chin and her chest; his jumper was soft against her cheek. “It’s okay,” he said again. His arms wrapped tightly around her shoulders, and Ginny broke.

She was sobbing, suddenly; uncontrollably and in frantic, shuddering gasps that wracked her chest; crying in a way she couldn’t remember ever having cried, in terror and guilt and relief; nearly collapsing in on herself except for Draco’s steady presence, holding her while she cried nine months of tears into the front of his robes, until she felt empty and hollow except for the knot in her throat.

“It’s not,” she said eventually, pathetically, in a small, trembling voice that could almost manage to get the words out. “It’s not okay.”

“I know,” said Draco, holding her tighter. “I know.”

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Draco held Ginny until she stopped shaking, until the rise and fall of her chest against his own had become steady again. “Alright?” he asked. After a long moment, Ginny nodded into his robes. “Good,” he said. He released her from his grasp, and she took a step back, wiping her face with her sleeve. She took a deep breath, avoiding his eyes, and then walked over to sit on the floor under the window.

“Sorry about that,” she said, with a wet and unconvincingly monosyllabic chuckle.

“Don’t be stupid,” said Draco, moving after a moment to sit carefully against the wall next to her, not quite touching, but all the same much nearer than any respectable distance. “Do you feel better?”

“No,” said Ginny. “A little.”

“Well, then, you have nothing to apologize for.”

“Slytherin logic,” Ginny muttered. Draco magnanimously ignored her, if only because she followed this comment by leaning back against his shoulder, and he forgot what he had been going to say.

“I miss Percy,” said Ginny, after a long moment. Draco’s mind raced to catch up- Percy was her brother, the one who had been Head Boy. He’d heard he was working at the Ministry now- surely he would have heard if something had happened to him? Had he been at the Department of Mysteries? Surely not. Draco hesitated.

“Is he-”

“No, no,” she said, quickly, shifting slightly. “Nothing like that. We just don’t hear from him much anymore.” Draco waited. “It doesn’t really matter,” said Ginny. “I don’t know why I’m thinking about it now.” Draco wanted to ask what ‘it’ was, but felt that perhaps he had pushed Ginny quite far enough for one night.

“Mad how it all comes up at once, isn’t it,” he said instead. “Shouldn’t be allowed; we should get to take them in turns. Someone should really do something about it.” Ginny snorted.

“Have you tried telling your father about it?” she asked, teasing. Draco stiffened.

“No,” he said shortly.

“I was only joking,” said Ginny, sitting up to look at him, eyebrows puckered in mild concern. “I didn’t mean-”

“I know,” said Draco. He forced himself to swallow, to unclench his shoulders, to stop thinking about his father locked away in Azkaban waiting for Draco to win back the Dark Lord’s favor- or worse, of his father before that; pitiable in a way Draco couldn’t have imagined for

his

father, bowing and scraping and snivelling to the Dark Lord when for all of Draco’s childhood Lucius had been the one who was cold and aloof and all-powerful and the recipient of such vile displays of subservience.

Ginny was still looking at him.

“He’s not a terribly sympathetic man, in any case,” Draco said lightly. “I doubt news of my inadequate mental fortitude would provoke a favorable response.”

She didn’t appear placated.

“Come back,” said Draco, detesting the hint of a whinge beneath his familiar casual drawl. But she obliged, turning and settling into his outstretched arm without hesitation, resting her head on his shoulder between his neck and his collarbone.

“Only if I can make fun of you for saying ‘inadequate mental fortitude’ in casual conversation,” she said belatedly.

“I suppose I can allow it, under the circumstances.”

“Good, because you sounded a right ponce.”

“You’ve wounded me.”

“I wasn’t done,” said Ginny. “I was also going to tell you that you don’t have anything of the sort, and that your father would be a tosser to say so.”

“He hasn’t.”

“Well, he still is.”

“I would ask what he’d ever done to you, but…” Draco gestured vaguely. Ginny laughed- short and bitter, but more genuine than the time before. “Besides, I’ve got the strangest feeling you think you’re standing up for me, so it mightn’t be in my best interest to argue.”

“Exactly,” said Ginny.

After a moment, the silence was faintly broken by the deep bells resonating from out in the corridor and from the window above them as the massive clock far off in the entrance hall struck eleven, the chimes echoing through the empty halls of the castle and across the grounds.

“That’s your bedtime, isn’t it?” said Draco, for something to say. It would have been easy to say nothing, to just stay exactly as they were, but that couldn’t happen.

“Something like that,” said Ginny.

Neither of them moved.

“Why are you still here?” he asked, finally, softly. “Not, like, here,” he said, meaning the bathroom floor, “but

here

.” Meaning him. He didn’t want to know the answer, but he had to ask.

“Do you not want me to be?” asked Ginny. She sat up, only their legs still touching, looking at him with an expression that Draco suspected was unreadable on purpose. He wondered if he was rubbing off on her, or if she’d always been able to control her emotions when she tried. It was a little unsettling- it had always seemed to him as if everything she felt was on display, all but spelled out in the freckles across her face, but he was learning more and more that this wasn’t the case. He wondered how much of her frank honesty was as much of an act as his own shrouded half-truths.

“No,” he said finally, forcing the word out. “I do.” It was harder to admit than he’d thought it would be, but it became easier when her shoulders relaxed, a little bit, and her face opened again.

He didn’t deserve her.

Or, he wouldn’t have, if he’d

had

her in any way. Which he didn’t, he reminded himself. It was harder to hold onto that when Ginny was laying her head back on his shoulder, and he found himself wrapping his arms around her again without bothering to first brush her long hair out of his mouth. Like stopping to do that would waste too much of the time he seemed always to be running out of.

He relaxed his arms. He was holding her too tightly.

“I don’t know,” said Ginny, and Draco, who had forgotten he had asked a question, had to divert his attention from the freckles dusting the inch of skin visible on her shoulder between her hair and the collar of her jumper in order to remember what it had been. “I wish I did.”

“You can’t just not know,” he said. “There must be something.”

“Oh, really?” said Ginny. “Why are you here?”

Draco opened his mouth and immediately drew a blank. He tried to think back to their first meeting- whatever reason he hadn’t reported her then wasn’t why he had come to the bathroom on this night. Things had changed.

“I- alright. You win.” Ginny grinned smugly up at him. “Don’t look at me like that,” he said, glaring down at her in mock annoyance. She had three freckles that sat in a straight line above the curve of her left eyebrow. He hadn’t noticed before.

“How should I look at you?” she demanded, raising that eyebrow.

“

Differently.

”

Ginny crossed her eyes and stuck out her tongue.

“Much better.”

Her nose scrunched when she laughed.

Ginny wasn’t laughing anymore, wasn’t distracted, but Draco hadn’t stopped looking at her. Her freckles were most visible across her cheeks and the bridge of her nose, but he could still make out the paler ones dusting her forehead and chin and the line of her jaw, even in the dim light of the bathroom, if he looked for long enough.

She was looking at him.

He would have looked away by now, usually, and he didn’t know why he hadn’t, but all at once her wide brown eyes were locked on his own, and Draco didn’t know if he could have brought himself to look away if the Dark Lord himself had ordered it. Which, in a way, he had. Or didn’t have to. It was sort of implied that whatever this was wasn’t part of a Death Eater’s job description.

Draco blinked. He didn’t want to be thinking about that.

Ginny was still looking at him. Draco realized suddenly that she had shifted in his arms, only slightly, that she was facing him just a little more than she had been. One of her hands was resting on his arm.

You shouldn’t be here,

thought Draco. He didn’t know if the thought was meant for himself or for Ginny, whose gaze he must have imagined had flickered only briefly down from his own. He wouldn’t return the glance. He couldn’t. I would get them both killed.

The soft line of her upper lip was broken in only one place, by a large freckle that fell just to the right of the bow. Her lower lip was cracked in two places; the space between was slightly pink, where a patch of dry skin had been removed.

Draco’s eyes met Ginny’s again. He noted absently that he was still breathing, and wasn’t quite sure why he had thought that wouldn’t be the case.

She was closer than she had been. She was warm against his chest, and occasionally a whisper of her breath brushed his face. He tightened his arm around her, almost involuntarily. She was close enough now that he felt her breath catch in her chest, and something locked deep within his own stirred in response.

Draco saw Ginny’s eyes widen almost before he heard the deep rattling groan coming from the pipes across the room, and she had already gone so tense that Draco thought she might break. Her gaze had jumped past him, to where her wand lay, out of reach on top of her Transfiguration book. Draco drew his own. He didn’t have time, in the split second that passed between when he first heard the noise in the pipes and when Moaning Myrtle shot with a wail from the sink on the opposite wall, to consider what he might have thought the source of the sound was; he only knew what Ginny thought it was.

“Out,” he said, sharply, flicking the point of his wand from Myrtle to the door and back.

Ghosts don’t use doors, prat,

said a voice in his head, though the voice was Ginny’s, and the tone was kinder than the one his own would’ve used.

Myrtle was momentarily shocked into silence, though it was too good a moment to last.

“

Out

?” she demanded, shrilly. Ginny had stirred against him, breathing deeply, if a little unsteadily. Her eyes were focused at some point on the floor, but the terror had left them.

“You heard me,” he drawled, directing his attention and his wand back to the ghost. He wasn’t sure he actually knew any spells that worked on ghosts, but to say that those he knew

of

were nasty at best would have been overly generous.

“This is

my

bathroom!” cried Myrtle, her voice rising in both pitch and volume.

“Yeah, well, we’re using it just now,” said Draco. “You’re going to be here forever, you can spare us ten minutes.”

“I knew I couldn’t trust you,” she warbled accusingly. “You’re just like him, I could

feel

it, you-”

“GET OUT!” shouted Draco. He was standing, though he couldn’t remember getting to his feet, every muscle in his body held in icy stillness. His wand was still trained on Myrtle.

“Ooh, didn’t like that very much, did we?” she cooed venomously. She was looking past him now. “Mustn’t upset this one, dearie,

someone

could get hurt.”

“Leave her alone,” said Draco coldly, taking a step to his right to stand in front of Ginny. Myrtle huffed.

“Well, I can see when I’m not wanted.”

“News to me.”

The ghost sniffed indignantly, but before she could speak, she was interrupted by a large book sailing through her face.

“How

dare

you!” she shrieked. “After everything that I- Oh!” she sobbed, before throwing herself back into the nearest toilet with a wail that reverberated in the bathroom for several seconds after Myrtle herself had vanished..

Draco returned his wand to his pocket and turned around. Ginny was standing, staring at the space Myrtle had just been occupying.

“Are you okay?”

She blinked. “Fine,” she said, tearing her eyes away from the wall to meet his inquiring gaze. “Just a moment of deja vu.”

“You throw a lot of books at Myrtle?”

“You’d be surprised.” One corner of her mouth quirked up, and Draco breathed an internal sigh of relief. He turned and picked up her book from the floor, thumbing through the pages to check for damage before handing it back to her.

“I think you’re safe from Pince’s wrath,” he said, “But I can’t make any promises. There’s always the possibility that she’s psychic.”

Ginny laughed. “Thanks for the vote of confidence,” she said.

“Anytime.” Draco checked his watch as she slid the book back into her bag. “It’s getting late,” he said reluctantly, “And you still have that essay.”

“I know,” said Ginny.

“So, I’m going to-”

“In a minute,” she said, standing and wrapping her arms around him. “Just-”

He pulled her close to his chest. “Okay,” he said.

They stood like that for a long moment, until Draco felt Ginny’s arms loosen, and released her in the same moment. “Better head out before Myrtle comes back,” he said.

“I was thinking the same thing.” She took a step back, and Draco watched her look at him in a way that he was afraid to interpret before she finally scooped her belongings up off the floor. He felt like he had missed something- a moment, an opportunity- but at the same time like it was one they were both better off without. This logic wasn’t quite enough to stop him from throwing himself back up against the edge of it.

“Same time tomorrow?” he asked, casually, as if this was normal, as if it was allowed, as if saying it didn’t start his pulse hammering in his throat. Ginny looked surprised, but not, he thought, unpleasantly so.

“No,” she said. “I have Quidditch practice.” Draco’s stomach stopped plummeting abruptly. “So, after that,” she added. “Closer to nine.”

“Alright,” he managed. He held open the bathroom door. “Sure you don’t need a chaperone back to the Tower?” he asked with a smirk.

“I think it’s possible you’ve forgotten how that Bat Bogey hex felt last year,” said Ginny, feigning concern. “I can refresh your memory if you’d like,”

Draco put his hands up to his shoulders in surrender. “Next time, maybe.”

“I’ll hold you to that, you know,” Ginny threw over her shoulder as she continued down the hallway.

“I’d expect nothing less,” said Draco. He watched her round the corner before turning on his own way towards the dungeons.

It was too much. He knew it was. He had already taken this- whatever it was- much farther than it should ever have been taken. He knew it was dangerous. It would have been nearly as dangerous even if there hadn’t been any war going on. But he couldn’t seem to stop, all the same, even as he could feel it getting worse, eventually. Building to some point of certain collapse, just like everything else.

Draco had thought, for a moment, that she had been going to kiss him. He was frighteningly certain that he would have kissed her back. It should have been a moment of reckoning, he reflected. Ideally, Myrtle’s untimely outburst had saved him from taking this,whatever it was, past the point of no return; Draco was beginning to suspect that he had already passed that point, weeks ago, without paying it any mind.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Chapter 18:
    Ginny was late to breakfast on Thursday, only barely leaving herself enough time to grab a piece of toast from the end of the Ravenclaw table before she and Colin were off to Charms. She’d overslept. She’d been waiting for it to happen, really, with how late she’d been up the previous few nights, but she still didn’t know what excuse she would give to her friends if they asked.     She’d been meeting up with Draco in Moaning Myrtle’s bathroom every night. Nothing had actually happened , she reminded herself, stilling the flutter of her pulse that had begun to accompany even the briefest of references to the bathroom. Not that clarifying this point would mean anything to anyone else, other than to lead them to question if she wanted something to happen.     Ginny was fairly sure by now that she did, in fact, want this. She was certain she wouldn’t spend so much time thinking about it otherwise- sometimes after returning to her bed in Gryffindor Tower, even as late as two or three in the morning, she would lay awake remembering how close they had been that night in the library, and wondering what it would take for them to be that close again. She wouldn’t have imagined, when he had found her in that bathroom last term, that it would lead to this, though she did now spend a fair amount of time imagining where else it could lead.    Colin was looking at her strangely, and Ginny made an effort to focus on her notes. Flitwick was lecturing; he always lectured on Thursdays, and Ginny never understood any of it until the practical lesson the following Monday.     They had settled into a routine, which Ginny enjoyed, despite herself. She disliked feeling as though her life were predictable- predictable, she felt, was tantamount to imitable, which felt dangerous- but the consistency was comforting, nevertheless. Besides, she reasoned, this was one pattern that couldn’t be replicated. Not if nobody knew about it. Which meant one person who would know if something was wrong.     It felt safer than it should have. Maybe, she thought, it was the mundanity of it all. She wasn’t sneaking around with the enemy; she was doing her Herbology assignments on the bathroom floor while he paced along the opposite wall muttering about Transfiguration. She was revising her Potions essay while he watched her from the sinks until she felt his eyes on her and looked up, only ever almost catching him looking. Sometimes they argued about Quidditch. It didn’t feel like a high-risk environment.     “Are you okay?” Colin asked on their way down to Potions. Fifth years had Potions in double periods, but even sharing their period with the Slytherins wasn’t so bad now that Slughorn taught the subject.    “Yeah, of course,” said Ginny.     “Okay, there’s no reason for anything to be ‘of course’,” said Colin. “You were staring off into space all lesson. I mean, I don’t usually manage to pay attention for a whole lecture period either, but it seemed excessive.”    Ginny shrugged. “I’m just not invested in the ins and outs of Banishing Charms, I guess.”    “Theory days suck,” agreed Colin. “Like, I don’t need to know why it works, or walk through all the process notes of the bloke who came up with it. Seems like he figured out how it worked so that we wouldn’t have to.”    “ Thank you,” said Ginny as they descended into the second level of the dungeons. “My feelings exactly.”Talking to Tom hadn’t felt risky, either, Ginny recalled, stirring her cauldron counter-clockwise. At a glance, her late night meetings with Draco felt uncomfortably familiar, if only because of the sneaking around, and the feeling that not only would none of her friends understand why she was talking to him, but that he understood her better than they did. And of course, there were the obvious parallels; he was a Slytherin. He was Dark. Lucius Malfoy had given her the diary to begin with.She measured out powdered porcupine quills in a slightly dented set of brass scales, squinting up at the chalkboard through the slight haze of brewing potions to double check her work before tipping the fine grains into her cauldron, which was beginning to bubble slightly. Ginny winced and turned down the flame.    It didn’t quite hold up under scrutiny, though. For one, it felt different, and had for a long time. Ginny didn’t know how to describe the difference, even to herself, but there were concrete considerations, too, the largest of which was that she knew she was capable of handling Malfoy, if it came to it. She was becoming less and less convinced that it would come to that- or at least she was avoiding the thought of it more and more often- but she knew squarely who he was, and what he was capable of, and that she could overpower him, if she had to. That on its own would almost have been enough to distinguish him from Tom, who she’d known nothing about at all.     Maybe that was part of the difference in feeling, she thought. It wasn’t so one-sided. Draco told Ginny about himself, too; she knew that he followed the Ballycastle Bats (Ginny, a Holyhead Harpies fan since birth, tolerated this only because of the thorough beating Ballycastle had taken from the Tornados in the previous season). She knew that he liked Pansy Parkinson the best of his friends, but that he felt like Parkinson and Zabini were closer to each other than either of them was to him. She knew that he didn’t like tomatoes, and that he had been afraid of thunder when he was little, and that his mum used to make him hot chocolate with peppermint when he couldn’t sleep. She knew that he preferred waking up early to staying up late.    She also knew that there were things that Draco wasn’t telling her. She hadn’t asked how deeply involved he was with the Death Eaters, or if he had really been responsible for Katie Bell’s injury, like Harry insisted he was. She was careful not to tell him about the Order, or anything more than he already knew about Dumbledore’s Army. It felt complicated, to think about it, but it was also worth it. It had been almost a week since the last time she’d dreamt about the Ministry, or about Tom, and with Draco, she could talk about her old nightmares without being drowned in pity, or made to feel like she was crazy, or worst of all, given understanding looks from people who couldn’t possibly understand.    Colin, at the other side of the table, was grimacing into his potion, which had gone slightly milky in both color and texture.     “Bad luck,” said Ginny, giving her own potion (which she thought was a few shades yellower than it ought to have been, judging from Slughorn’s sample, but otherwise seemed passable) a cautious stir before leaning over Colins notes. “What happened?”    “Lost count of the stirring pattern in step eight,” said Colin, frowning at the textbook. “I was hoping it wouldn’t make too much of a difference, but it’s been soupy the whole time.”    Colin was quite good at potions when he put his mind to it- he’d been brewing well enough to develop his own photographs since their first year, and Ginny didn’t think he’d ruined any film since their second- but he did tend to lose track when there was an exceedingly long step, or a multi-part instruction that wasn’t split up well enough.    “Oh dear, what have we here?” Slughorn was bending over the cauldron of one of the Slytherins at the next table over, wrinkling his nose in distaste. Ginny and Colin both craned to see what was inside, and Ginny caught a glimpse of a sort of dark, congealed jelly.    “I think maybe you’ll do alright,” she told Colin.By the time Ginny and Colin were leaving their double period of Defense and making their way towards dinner, the snow that had been gently swirling in the ceiling of the Great Hall at lunchtime was falling so thickly that from the window in the stairs, Ginny could see only the stone of the nearest protruding exterior wall of the castle; further wings, the lawn, the grounds, the forbidden forest in the distance, were all completely obscured in the mass of white.Quidditch practice that night was not cancelled until the entire team stood in the entrance hall, preparing themselves physically and mentally for the march across the lawn to the locker rooms. “We have a better chance at survival if we travel as a pack,” said Demelza, muffled by the thick wool scarf she had wound around her face. The other Gryffindors nodded in general agreement, and Jimmy Peakes had just moved reluctantly to open the door to the grounds when Harry and Ron came through it, cheeks ruddy from the cold and the blistering wind. Ron had his hands stuffed under his arms beneath his cloak. Behind them, hail the size of the small beetles Ginny had used in Potions earlier that week battered the stone path. Harry was wiping condensation off of his glasses with his robes. “Practice is cancelled,” he said, slightly short of breath. Jimmy and Ritchie cheered.“Thank God,” said Dean.“You sure?” asked Ginny. “Angelina would’ve made us at least try to go out in this.” Harry laughed.“Wood too,” he agreed. “At least Angelina would’ve called it early. Oliver might’ve actually extended practice, unless Fred and George could bully him out of it.”Ginny clapped Harry on the shoulder. “Congratulations on being the first Captain in living memory to give slightly more of a damn about the prospect of the team losing fingers than matches.”“It would be harder to win the matches without the fingers,” Harry pointed out.“That’s not necessarily true,” cut in Ron, who looked for some reason as though he were trying very hard not to glare at Ginny. “Bert Maggin lost two fingers off his left hand in a botched Quafflepock in a scrimmage against the Falcons in 1924, in the same game that Keeper Orfin Thatch broke three fingers on his right hand- they think he thought the bludger coming towards him was an attempt to score- and lost his left index finger at the knuckle when an opposing Chaser- flying an off-market model- locked brooms with him, and the Cannons went on to win seven games that season.”“No offense, Ron, but I don’t think they’re who we ought to be emulating,” said Ginny, “Given that they’ve been bottom of the League for the last sixteen years solid.”“Seventeen years,” said Ron-“Oh, well, in that case-”“-and that’s not the point.”“Well, so long as you’re volunteering your fingers, knock yourself out,” said Ginny. “Slytherin will have a field day.”Harry looked mildly amused by the exchange, but Ron’s ears were turning slowly purple.“Come on, mate, let’s see if Hermione will let us nick her Charms notes,” said Harry. Ginny gave them a moment’s head start before following the rest of the team up to the common room. Draco wouldn’t expect her until after practice, and she had homework waiting for her in the Tower.“Quidditch canceled?” asked Colin, who looked up from what appeared to be Luna’s History of Magic notes when Ginny came up behind him and leaned over the back of the sofa.“Yeah,” said Ginny. “Thought it might be. Harry’d be crazy to make you fly in this.” Outside the window, Ginny could faintly hear hail clattering against the roof of the castle.“Does Luna have any insight on Binns’ lecture yesterday?” Colin shook his head. “She got a few more of the dates down than I did, but there’s no commentary this time. Just this.” He showed Ginny a sketch of Professor Binns that took up most of one page.“Nice,” said Ginny.“Do we have reading for McGonagall tomorrow?”“I don’t think so. There is for Herbology, though.”Colin nodded. “I started that. It doesn’t seem too bad.”“Good. I still have my Ancient Runes assignment to finish,” said Ginny. “I might have to write Bill if this one goes as badly as the last one. I always feel like I understand in class, and then the second I walk out the door, I lose it all.”“S’why I didn’t take Ancient Runes,” said Colin.“We already knew you were smarter than me, you don’t have to rub it in.” Colin rolled his eyes. “I’ll be right back.” Ginny went up the stairs to her dorm, where she pulled her school robe off over her head and traded it for her Christmas jumper and a grey-green outer robe that hung open all the way down the front. It was slightly long for her, having previously belonged to her brother Charlie, but the fabric was soft from wear. She made sure she had her Herbology book and Ancient Runes notes in her bag before bouncing back down to the common room and spreading out next to Colin.It was two hours before Ginny looked up from her notes, rolling her neck until some of the stiffness had dissipated. Colin glanced up from his book. “I think I’ve mostly figured it out,” she said. “Proud of you,” said Colin. Ginny glanced over her shoulder to the clock on the mantle, which told her it was almost half-past nine. “Oh, bollocks,” said Ginny. “What’s wrong?”“Nothing,” said Ginny, yawning. “It’s just later than I thought.” She normally would’ve been in Myrtle’s bathroom by now. She didn’t know if Draco would wait for her or not, but found herself hoping that he had. “I think I’m going to take this upstairs. Maybe take advantage of the canceled practice to catch up on some sleep.”“Probably a good idea,” said Colin. “You’ve been pretty out of it lately.”“I’m working on it,” said Ginny, carefully not rushing as she replaced her things in her bag. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”“Goodnight.” Colin went back to his book.Ginny put her bag back in her dorm, taking the steps two at a time as soon as she was around the corner from the common room, and hurried back down, pausing at the bottom of the stairs to make sure Colin was still facing away from the portrait hole before she crossed the common room and stepped out into the corridor. The Fat Lady wasn’t in her frame, so Ginny didn’t have to make any excuses before turning and walking briskly towards the nearest staircase. She tried to step lightly, quieting her pattering footsteps as she descended to the sixth floor and continued down towards the fifth. It was colder in the castle without the heat generated by the rest of the student body moving through the corridors. Ginny moved to wrap her robes around her, to stop them flapping around her ankles, and felt her foot catch something- the stairs were rising towards her, and Ginny reached blindly for the railing with one hand, watching as her other foot managed to land on the step three stairs below her, finding solid ground, and as her momentum carried her one step further where her foot sunk straight through the stair before she’d regained her balance. She landed awkwardly, her right leg sunk up to her hip in the trick stair, her left still on the stair above. She’d managed at the last second to catch the railing behind her, and had narrowly avoided hitting her head, but she was too far from the edge of the stairs to be able to actually use the railing to pull herself up. Ginny swore out loud, forgetting momentarily that Filch might hear her. The back edge of the stair below her was digging painfully into the soft flesh of her hip.Ginny took several deep breaths, waiting for her heart to stop hammering against her ribcage. “Well, well, what have we here,” came a familiar drawl from above her.Draco had heard a muted yell from two corridors away, in course of scowling his way up to the seventh floor. He’d been telling himself that being stood up by the Weasley girl was a good thing, that he needed more time to work on the cabinet, anyway, but he hadn’t been very convincing. If he didn’t care, if some part of him hadn’t been worried when curfew came and went without her usual appearance, he wouldn’t have taken the path that would lead him near the Gryffindor common room on his way to the Room of Requirement. He liked seeing her, he reflected, on his way to investigate the sound. He’d mostly come to terms with that. Even if he wasn’t yet willing to admit that he was worried as well as hurt by her not showing up. She was sprawled out several stairs below him, just above the next landing, her legs positioned at odd angles. It took him a moment to realize one of them disappeared into the staircase. His smirk grew as she looked up to see him, relief evident on her face.“Weasley, you never told me this was your first year,” he said. “Someone would have warned you about these.”“Are you following me, now?” asked Ginny. She tried to pull herself out of the staircase, but didn’t have enough leverage for it. “Someone should,” said Draco. “Doesn’t Potter babysit?”“He has his hands full with my brother,” she said, a little shortly. Draco raised his eyebrows, a grin spreading slowly across his face.“That’s where I was going with it,” he said. “I can’t believe you stole my line. That’s never happened before, I don’t know what to do now.”“You could stop being an arse and help me up,” said Ginny. “Right, of course.” He made his way down the stairs, stepping carefully over both Ginny and the trick stair, and turned back to face her. “How do you want me to- okay.” She was holding out one hand to him, still using the other to brace herself on the stair below her. Draco grabbed her forearm, just below her wrist, so that she could hold onto his arm the same way without either of them breaking a wrist or dislocating fingers. It was one of the first things Madame Hooch made all of the first years practice, once they’d figured out how to get their brooms off the ground. “I don’t think this is going to work,” said Draco, about to move to the step above her and changing his mind. It wouldn’t do either of them any good if he lost his balance from there. “I can’t get far enough above you. I’m assuming you need that hand?” he asked, gesturing to the one she still had on the stair. Ginny nodded. “If I slip down further than this, it twists my knee funny.” She inclined her head towards her left leg, still braced on the step above her and already at an uncomfortable looking angle.“Okay,” said Draco. “Hold on.” He crouched down on the stair below her hand, letting her wrist go, and hesitated before reaching for her. “Can I?” he asked. She nodded, a little impatiently.“Yes, anything, just get me out of here.”“Get out of here? Is that what you want?” He asked, with just the edge of a smirk. He made as if to stand up. “Okay, if you’re sure…”“Draco Malfoy, you absolute prat, don’t you dare leave me here!”“Wouldn’t dream of it,” said Draco, feeling a strange but not unpleasant twist in his chest when she said his name. He crouched back down below her and put his hands under her arms. “Now- yes, right.” She put her hand on his shoulder, and he pushed her up just enough that he was supporting most of her weight. “And the other one.” Ginny hesitated. “What, you don’t trust me?”“I mean, eight seconds ago you were all set to walk away, which didn’t inspire a great deal of confidence, no.”“I’ve got you,” he said. “Come on.” He didn’t doubt that he could lift her, but it was going to be harder the longer he sat half-holding her and not moving. She met his eyes, looking much more like she was issuing a challenge than demonstrating her faith, and moved her other hand quickly from the floor to Draco’s shoulder, wrapping her arms around his neck.“See?” said Draco, beginning to stand, slowly, pulling her up with him. “That wasn’t so bad.” She was holding onto him tightly, and had just about gotten her free leg back under her properly when Draco took a step back to balance her weight, his stomach plummeting as his foot unexpectedly dropped six inches down to the next stair. Ginny’s eyes widened as she tipped forward into him with a startled gasp, crashing into his chest, and Draco only just managed to step rather than fall backwards down the last two stairs- each one only marginally less terrifying than the last- until he had reached the landing, where he managed to set her down without having killed either of them. “ Arsehole, ” said Ginny, still holding onto his arms. “You did that on purpose!”“I absolutely did not,” said Draco, struggling both to appear dignified and to catch his breath. “I forgot there were stairs.”Ginny laughed, her sides shaking under his hands, which were still holding her. He hadn’t let go at all, he realized; only loosened or adjusted his grip, which had slipped to just above her waist. His breath was coming with more difficulty now for an entirely new reason. She laughed unabashedly and open-mouthed, revealing bottom teeth that overlapped slightly; her eyes narrowed, crinkling at the corners, but never left his face except to roll her eyes good-naturedly. “Prat,” she said, and then, looking over his shoulder, “Oh, bugger.”Draco turned his head; behind them, down the next flight of stairs on the third-floor landing, sat Mrs. Norris, staring up at them, the end of her tail twitching. Draco swore. “Come on, this way,” he said, ushering Ginny back up the stairs. “Watch the step.” Her hand slipped from his shoulder as they ran up the stairs. Draco grabbed it under the guise of pulling her into the fifth floor corridor, and didn’t let go. “There’s a passage somewhere near here, shortcut towards the East wing,” said Ginny in a low voice once they’d turned the corner. They slowed to a brisk walk, trying to prevent their footsteps from echoing on the stone floor. Draco checked over his shoulder.“He knows that one, I ran into him there once on rounds last year.”“Alcove behind the portrait of that witch with the ferret?”Draco glanced sideways at her. “Everyone and their uncle’s been caught snogging there.”“Oh.” Draco thought he caught a tinge of pink in her cheeks as they passed under a torch, but before he could decide what it meant, he realized that the end of the corridor was getting slowly brighter as a bobbing light approached from around the corner. “Here, then,” said Ginny, just as Draco hissed, “Filch,” and she pulled him into an empty classroom and closed the door carefully behind them.The corridor had been dim, with torches lit only every several meters, but as Draco waited for his eyes to adjust, he found the classroom to be truly pitch-black, except for the crack under the door. Ginny’s hand was still in his.“Carefully,” she whispered. “Don’t bump anything.” She guided them along the wall to the end of the room, and pulled him down to sit on the floor. Her shoulder pressed into his. “This way at least the door’s between him and us if he does come in.” They watched the light coming under the door grow brighter, until they could hear Filch wheezing and muttering to himself out in the corridor. Draco held his breath. The light moved past them, but didn’t disappear; the caretaker had paused just down the corridor. Ginny squeezed his hand, and seconds later Filch gave a triumphant shout, and Draco heard what sounded like a heavy tapestry being thrown aside, followed by a long string of cursing. The light came back and stopped just in front of the classroom door.“Don’t worry, Mrs. Norris,” rasped Filch. “We’ll find them.” There was a loud, plaintive meow, and after a few seconds, the light dimmed again as Filch shuffled on towards the staircase that Draco and Ginny had come from. After a minute, the gap under the classroom door showed only the faint flickering light of the nearest torch, a little ways down the corridor.Ginny was shaking against him. Draco opened his mouth to comfort her, somehow, but she spoke before he could ask what was wrong. She was laughing.“He thought he’d found us!” she giggled, fighting to keep her voice below a whisper. “He pulled back the tapestry-” Draco laughed, quietly.“I don’t think there’s anything behind that one, either,” he said. “I think it’s just a wall.” Ginny laughed harder, leaning into him for support. “Come on, let’s get out of here, before he comes back.” Draco pulled Ginny to her feet, and they crept back out into the hallway, checking carefully for Filch’s lamp.“There’s another staircase over this way,” whispered Ginny, glancing at Draco while he was looking the other way down the corridor. His hand was warm in hers, and she wondered if he realized he hadn’t let go. She wasn’t going to be the one to remind him. “Which way do we want to go?”“Up, I think,” said Draco. “He tends to work his way down from where he’s started.”“How do you know?” asked Ginny, heading down the corridor. Draco shrugged. “Just something I noticed.”“And here I thought I was the only one lucky enough to be followed around the castle,” said Ginny, with an exaggerated sigh. “How many wizards have you been stalking?”“I wasn’t following you,” said Draco. “I just-”“Happened to be in the area?”“Maybe.”“That was very convincing,” said Ginny. “I’m almost not creeped out by the way you appeared out of nowhere to gloat the moment I was in trouble.”“So you admit you were in trouble,” said Draco, turning to smirk at her as they reached the narrow staircase. He let go of her hand, and she followed him up to the sixth floor. “You were lucky I was nearby.”“I would have been fine on my own,” said Ginny. “Yes, you looked like you had the situation well under control.”She took the last two stairs in one step, and caught up to walk next to him, though their hands remained at their sides. “That’s not the point!” said Ginny. “The point is that you were following me. Admit it.” She hadn’t put much thought into it when he’d first appeared- having been preoccupied with the trick stair- but now, under the teasing, she wondered if there was a little bit of truth in it; if he’d come to look for her when she’d been late to the bathroom. The thought of him worrying warmed in her chest.“Not everything’s about you, Weasley,” said Draco loftily, bumping into her with his shoulder with slightly too much force for it to have been unintentional. “Just because you’re obsessed with me-”“Oh, now I’m obsessed with you?” Ginny shouldered him back. “You wouldn’t be the first.” Ginny laughed. “Well, what else would you call it?” Draco put on a haughty air. “You show up almost every night-”“You asked me to!”“-in the bathroom where you know I’ll be,” he continued, ignoring her. “You’re always staring at me from across the Great Hall, asking me all kinds of questions-” Ginny bumped him again, and their course paused for a moment as each struggled to shoulder the other out of the middle of the corridor, ending when Draco stepped out of the way and Ginny tripped a few steps sideways.“This just sounds like you don’t know what it’s like to have friends,” Ginny teased, grinning easily up at him as she caught her breath. The nearest torch flickered, casting shadows across his face.“Friends?” Said Draco softly. Ginny’s stomach flipped, her eyes trapped in the intensity of his gaze. He was standing closer than she’d thought.“Oughtn’t you two be in bed?” demanded an aging wizard in a portrait behind Ginny’s left shoulder. She jumped. “Instead of waking up ’alf the castle with your bickering!” added a witch from across the hall, in a thick Irish accent.“Sorry,” said Draco, stepping back rather quickly. The painted wizard didn’t seem satisfied.“Sorry excuse for-” Ginny turned and pointed her wand at the portrait, whose occupant stopped grumbling under his breath in favor of insulting her, at full volume and in great detail. “Threats, really,” said the witch across the hall, clicking her tongue. “In my day-” But Ginny never heard what the witch had to say about her day, because further down the corridor, a large Welsh dinner party had joined in on the argument.“-and constantly disturbing our sleep!”“You think you’re the first to try something like-”“-after year, and it’s always just the same-”The whole corridor really was awake now, berating them, and Ginny turned her attention away from the wizard, who was meanwhile describing the sort of lineage he believed she must have; as every fourth word or so seemed to be an expletive, it was taking him some time to do so. Ginny had so far counted trolls, house-elves, and banshees among her supposed ancestors. “-and louder every year!” one of the Welsh dinner guests was saying. “Every time we might get a moment’s peace-”“You know, we would be long gone by now if you hadn’t started yelling at us,” argued Ginny. “Oh, right, you were just going to leave, right after that little-”“-be tearing each others clothes off by now, if-”“-obnoxious, loud-mouthed, inconsiderate, bloody brat-”“-may not have brains, per se, but we’re not brainless -”“-seen it a hundred times, love, you’re not fooling anyone-”“Oh, sod off, won’t you,” said Ginny, heat crawling up the back of her neck towards her ears. She hoped the torchlight was low enough that Draco couldn’t see. “Maybe if you paid more attention to your own peeling paint than to everyone else’s business, you’d be able to sleep at night.” The paintings looked shocked; Ginny couldn’t help but laugh at the horrified expressions on several of the dinner party guests.“- peeling paint -”“-the nerve of some people, honestly-”“-bleeding half-wit, I wouldn’t be surprised if-”“-ought to tell Violet, she’s friends with-”“-how dare you-”“Alright, SHUT IT!” shouted Ginny over the din, stunning most of the paintings into a disgruntled silence.“-careless, empty-headed, good-for-nothing, four-knut-whore who could have done everyone here tonight a favor if you’d never come out of the Chamber of Secrets!” finished the old wizard.    “That’s quite enough,” said Draco, coldly. The last whispered grumblings of the other paintings stopped abruptly; he was looking at the wizard as if he wanted to shred the painting with his eyes alone, and Ginny almost believed he could do it.    “Oh, I was finished,” said the wizard, innocently brushing something off of his painted yellow robes.    “The lad’s got a point, Ephraim, you did cross a line, just then,” said the Irish witch in the opposite painting.    “I did no such thing!” said Ephraim. “You know as well as I do what she’s done, apart from disturbing us. She can’t expect it won’t come up, not when-”    “If you say another word about her,” Draco said, each syllable deadlier than the last, “I will remove you from this wall. I will use your frame to light a bonfire, and I will slice your canvas into a thousand pieces, one at a time, and feed them to the fire.” The wizard sneered, but there was a flicker of doubt in his eyes. “Let’s go,” said Draco, turning down the corridor. Ginny hurried after him.    “You have some nerve, boy!” Ephraim was shouting after him. “I have hung here for a hundred and sixty years, and I will hang here long after you are dead in the ground, and never have I been treated with such-”Draco held back a tapestry for Ginny, and she clambered into the passage, where Ephraim’s protestations faded into the distance.“Are you okay?” asked Draco, looking sideways at her.“Course,” said Ginny, somewhat surprised to realize that this was true. “I don’t care what some old painted prick thinks of me.”“I wasn’t sure.”“It was funny, honestly,” said Ginny. “All of them arguing over each other. Just like family dinner back home.” Draco shuddered in mock horror, and Ginny laughed. “Really, imagine if that’s what Filch had come upon when he was looking for us.”Draco chuckled, some of the tension finally leaving his shoulders. “He would’ve found us, too,” he pointed out. “None of those paintings would have covered for us.”“We wouldn’t have lasted ten seconds,” agreed Ginny.“Probably be in detention until we were as old as Ephraim.”“Do they shout at Filch, too, do you think?” asked Ginny. “Or do they get on? I imagine they might bond over their hatred of students.”“You know, I wouldn’t be surprised if they went to get him,” said Draco, reluctantly. “Most of the time they stay out of it when students are sneaking about, but sometimes they’ll report to whoever’s on duty, if they were bothering the paintings.”“I feel like they were bothering us more than we were bothering them,” said Ginny, “But I’m sure Filch won’t see it that way.”“No,” agreed Draco. They emerged from the passage behind a statue on the seventh floor. “Still following me?” asked Ginny, as they neared the entrance to Gryffindor Tower.“Well, someone has to make sure you don’t fall into anything on your way back to bed,” said Draco.Ginny ignored him. “We might have Quidditch tomorrow, if the storm’s cleared up by then,” she said. “We usually don’t on Fridays, but Harry might want to make up for missing today. So I’d be a little later than usual.”“Trying to prolong the amount of time you can struggle on your own before I come looking for you, next time?”“Exactly,” said Ginny.They had nearly reached the Gryffindor common room now; Draco could see the portrait of the Fat Lady down the next corridor. Ginny stopped walking. 
“This is where you turn around,” she said.

“What?”

“Well, I told you I didn’t need an escort,” she said, with a flash of a mischievous smirk that reminded him horribly of her older brothers. “Unless you wanted to be hexed. Besides, we can’t have you figuring out how to get into the Tower.”

“Weasley, I’m a prefect. I know all of the passwords.”

“It’s the principle of the thing.”

Draco raised his hands to his shoulders. “Alright, I’ll wait here.”
Ginny grinned. “That’s what I thought.” She turned down the corridor. “See you tomorrow!” she threw over her shoulder, as if he were any of her friends, as though their friendship were the most natural thing in the world. It still caught him off guard, when she did that, but it felt right at the same time.Draco watched her until the portrait swung closed behind her, then he headed back towards the Room of Requirement, to get to work.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

By dinnertime, Draco found himself struggling to keep his eyes open. After leaving Ginny the night before, he hadn’t gotten back to his bed until nearly four in the morning. He had spent only an hour working on the cabinet, and the rest of that time pacing the room of hidden things, trying to work out what he tried very hard not to think of to himself as the Dumbledore problem. Nothing so far had worked; the necklace had been intercepted by Katie Bell, he’d never been able to figure out any way to instill curses into the headmaster’s office itself, and the poisoned wine he had tried to send through Slughorn seemed at best to have disappeared, or been forgotten about- at worst, Draco thought, perhaps Dumbledore had gotten it, realized what it was, and now knew that Draco was attempting to…

He still refused to allow himself to consider any kind of direct approach, even as his imagined plots became ever more convoluted. He had been telling himself all along that the reason for this was simply that he didn’t want to do anything that might be easily traced back to him, but he was starting to fear that deep down, it was something far less complicated: he was a coward. The irony, then, of his long-held contempt towards Gryffindor house, in light of this situation, was not lost on him.

Draco had gone through his classes that morning in a haze. He tried not to dwell too much during the day on things best left hidden amongst countless others in the Room, but sometimes, despite his best efforts, his mind returned to his task at the most inopportune of moments. At least, Draco reflected, watching Pansy prattle on across the table from him without hearing a word of it, he’d managed to keep his focus in Defense this time. Snape had caught him with more than one hideously astute

look

, but hadn’t been able to find any reason to keep Draco after class, for which Draco was endlessly relieved. He was doing his best to avoid any close quarters with the Death Eater- the

other

Death Eater, the voice in Draco’s head reminded him, and he grimaced. Before the frantic flood of his own thoughts could backtrack or explain away the involuntary response, Pansy was addressing him directly.

“What’s wrong with you?”

“Nothing,” said Draco, too quickly. Pansy scoffed.

“I suppose your face always looks like that, then, and we’ve just never noticed?”

“I’ve just been feeling a bit ill of late,” said Draco, after a beat, at long last allowing just a bit of his exhaustion to show through his mask. The muscles in his face and jaw loosened, and he felt his shoulders drop slightly forward as he released a sigh that came out much heavier than he had intended. He narrowed his eyes once more, reclaiming some of his practiced aristocratic air to compensate for the slip.

“Well, then maybe it’s a good thing, after all,” said Pansy.

“Pardon?”

“That there are no parties in Slytherin House this weekend. Have you been listening to a word I’ve said?”

“Oh, yes, of course. No, I just didn’t realize that’s what you meant,” lied Draco.

“Well,” sniffed Pansy, looking moderately unconvinced, “At least you’ll be able to get some rest straight away.”

“Afraid not,” said Draco. “Prefect duties.” His cover for nearly every one of his illicit meetings with Weasley would be blown if Pansy ever bothered to return to the prefect meetings, or ask a single other person who might know the schedule, which meant that his secret was completely safe for the foreseeable future.

“Not until nine, though, isn’t it? That’s enough time for a nap, at least.”

Draco blinked. “You know Pans, that’s not a half-bad suggestion.”

“They never are.”

“Let’s agree to disagree,” said Draco, abandoning his untouched plate and standing up from the table. “I’m going to take this one, though, if you don’t mind, and I’ll see you later tonight.”

“Sweet dreams, Drakey-darling,” said Pansy sweetly, with a little wave. Draco made a face at her, and waited until she had gone back to talking with Theo before surreptitiously scanning the Gryffindor and Ravenclaw tables for Ginny, who didn’t seem to have made it to the Great Hall yet. But he would see her later, in Myrtle’s bathroom. After a nap.

Draco woke up to Blaise standing over him.

“It’s nine-thirty,” he said. “Don’t you have rounds?”

Draco cursed. “Thanks,” he said, standing up from his bed and promptly tripping over his outer robe, which he’d apparently left in a pile on the floor. He shook it out and pulled it back on over his head, brushing off imaginary dust and giving himself a quick once-over in the mirror beside his bed. He ran one hand through his hair. It wasn’t quite so neat as usual, but didn’t look half-bad, considering he’d just been sleeping on it. And soundly, at that.

“Thanks for waking me,” he said to Blaise.

Even if it was some of the best sleep I’ve had in months.

Four whole hours in a row.

“You said that already,” said Blaise. “Sure you don’t want to blow it off and go back to sleep?”

“More than anything,” lied Draco, “But McGonagall’s supposed to be keeping closer tabs on all the prefects this term, and I don’t want to give her a reason to come after me if I can avoid it.” He strode through the common room and out into the corridor, heading for the second floor.

By the time Draco neared the proper corridor, it was past ten, and he was convinced that Hogwarts itself was conspiring against him. He’d come up against what seemed like every locked door in the castle, plus two shortcuts that hadn’t been where they usually were, and a staircase that had come out three floors and two wings away from where it was supposed to. He was unsurprised when he finally entered the bathroom to find that Ginny wasn’t still waiting for him, but he couldn’t stop himself from disappointed anyways. She had told him that there might be a late Quidditch practice. There was still a chance she would come.

Or maybe she’s stuck somewhere again

. The memory cheered him.

Draco sat down in his usual place under the windowsill, reaching to run his hand through his hair, but stopping himself. He would only make it worse. It would be for the best if she didn’t come, of course, he reminded himself. He needed another night to work on the Cabinet. He hadn’t made any progress in what felt like weeks, or maybe years.

The bathroom door swung open.

“Oh, Merlin, you’re still here,” said Ginny, though Draco thought hopefully that she seemed more relieved than surprised. She dropped heavily to the floor beside him and slid down the wall until she was laying almost completely horizontal, her chest heaving as she caught her breath. “Sorry I’m late. There’s this massive party in our common room tonight- has been since about seven- and it took ages to get back through once I’d changed from practice. I think the whole house plus half of Hufflepuff is crammed up in the Tower right now. Bloody nightmare. Remind me to nick ingredients from Potions next time we’re working with something slimy enough to put in Seamus Finnegan’s pillow.”

Draco laughed. “It’s all right. I’ve only been here a few minutes.” He glanced sideways at her, but she had closed her eyes, still breathing heavily. He wondered if she’d run from the seventh floor to reach him in time, or if she’d been avoiding Filch. He didn’t know how to ask without giving away which answer he preferred. “Finnegan’s responsible for the party, then?” he asked instead.

“I think Lee Jordan might’ve had a hand in it, given some of the refreshments, but Seamus is the one who invited the Hufflepuffs.” She pushed herself back into a sitting position. “You’d think having a dozen students sneaking in would make it easier for me to get out unnoticed, but no, somehow. It just means more people to have to make excuses to. I only managed it in the end because Neville turned into a canary again.”

“I’m not even going to ask,” said Draco. “I don’t think I want to know.”

“What, you lot don’t have trick sweets at Slytherin parties?” asked Ginny. “I’m shocked.”

“Not usually, no,” agreed Draco.

“What are yours like, then?” she asked curiously. “I mean, you said you were running late, too, I assume that’s why.”

“No, actually, I just- lost track of time,” admitted Draco. If he let slip how tired he’d been lately, she might suggest that he go back to bed, and he’d be forced to admit to at least one of them how much he’d rather be with her. “It’s pretty quiet tonight. I think everyone’s still recovering from last weekend.”

“Last weekend?” asked Ginny, raising one eyebrow cheekily. “What happened last weekend?”

“Nobody turned into a canary,” said Draco, “If that’s what you’re wondering. But I think Blaise might be hungover until March.”

“What, just all got piss-drunk the old fashioned way, then?”

“Something like that,” said Draco.

“Not that there’s anything wrong with that option, of course. Just not quite as entertaining.”

“Maybe if you’ve never experienced an Alchemy affair,” said Draco. “We Slytherins may not turn to recreational Transfiguration at the earliest opportunity, but that doesn’t mean we don’t know how to have a good time. In ways that aren’t quite so…

Uncouth

.”

“It’s only temporary,” said Ginny, who was turning slowly pink. “It wears off after a few minutes. Neville will be fine.”

“Oh, did I give off the impression that I care about Longbottom’s well being?” asked Draco. “My mistake.”

Ginny snorted. “No, not at all. I just wanted to make sure you wouldn’t think we were all reckless oafs or something.”

“Nothing you could say would prevent me from thinking that,” said Draco, with a broad smirk.

“What is an

Alchemy Affair

, anyway?” asked Ginny. “Some sort of fetish relationship for kinky purebloods?”

It was Draco’s turn to blush. “You’re changing the subject,” he choked. “And, I might point out, also pureblood.”

“Only when it’s convenient for you, it seems,” said Ginny, cocking one eyebrow in a way that made Draco feel like his chest was being constricted.

“No, it’s nothing like that,” said Draco, regaining his composure and willing the warmth to fade from his cheeks. He hesitated, but not for nearly as long as he should have. “Alchemy didn’t used to be only a Newt-level elective. Back a few hundred years ago- Pansy knows exactly when- there used to be a full-time post at Hogwarts. The staff quarters were in the dungeons. They were closed up when the last Alchemy Master retired, of course, but some Slytherin figured out how to get in a few years back, and ever since then someone throws a party there about once every term, or so. They’re pretty exclusive. Not just anyone’s trustworthy enough to get an invite. It’s actually a surprisingly well-kept secret, for what it is. Even a lot of Slytherins think it’s just a legend.”

“Seems like a lot of work to go through for a bit of a do,” said Ginny. “Especially when you’ve got all those empty classrooms in the dungeons, even if you didn’t want to take over the whole common room like

some people

.” Draco laughed. “It’s not funny!” protested Ginny. “Really, what if I’d been trying to do revision for the OWLs?”

“But you weren’t,” Draco pointed out.

“But I could’ve been.”

“Maybe if you were Granger,” said Draco, winning a laugh from Ginny. “And we’re not going to use just any old classroom. There’s a proper way of doing these kinds of things.”

“‘These things’ being a school party,” clarified Ginny. “And the proper way, just to be clear, is to break into someplace where nobody’s lived for a century.”

“Exactly,” said Draco. “I knew you’d understand in the end.”

Ginny laughed. She was intrigued, Draco could tell, despite her teasing. She was beautiful when she laughed. Unlike Draco, she wasn’t still wearing her school robes, but a set of worn grey ones that opened down the front to reveal a pair of the loose linen trousers most wizards wore under their outer robes- that they were cut more or less straight down from her hips, rather than in the slightly more fitted style witches tended to prefer, suggested that they had been passed down from one of her many brothers- and in place of the usual tunic, she wore what appeared to be a muggle t-shirt, tucked into her waistband along with her wand.

The dim torchlight danced across her face.

Something surged in Draco’s chest. “You still don’t believe me, do you?” he asked, standing. “Have it your way. I’ll show you. Come on.” He extended a hand to Ginny, before he could change his mind, and she took it, allowing him to pull her to her feet. She ended up closer to him than he’d anticipated, and Draco found himself very briefly unable to tear his gaze away from her warm brown eyes. He could feel the warmth coming from her body, she was that close, her chapped lips only a few short inches below his own, and-

“I know a shortcut to the dungeons,” said Ginny, releasing his hand and moving for the door. Draco hoped she hadn’t noticed the way his fingers had flexed instinctively against her absence.

“Behind the tapestry in the East wing?” asked Draco, following her into the corridor. “It’s not there tonight, I had a hell of a time getting up here. Everything’s moved around.”

“No, not that one. You’ll see,” said Ginny, flashing him a grin over her shoulder that made Draco’s heart stop in his chest. “Can’t just give away all my secrets.”

“I mean, it does seem only fair,” said Draco, catching up to walk alongside her.

“All in good time,” said Ginny.

The castle all but unfolded itself for Ginny. Doors that had convinced Draco for six years that they were actually walls only

pretending

to be doors opened easily to her touch; staircases changed to come out in places that were more convenient, rather than less; even the suits of armor in the ground floor corridor seemed to creak more encouragingly than threateningly. Draco watched, almost in awe, as she tripped her calloused fingers gently down the hinges of a door half-hidden behind a tapestry, which Draco had always assumed was only painted onto the wall, and the door swung silently inwards.

A shiver went down Draco’s spine. He knew, practically, that this was luck; Weasley got lost just as often as anyone else at Hogwarts, and there was nothing she could have done to convince the castle to cooperate on this occasion- and yet, it felt, somehow, as if she were showing off. The way she pressed her thumb into a divet in the wall at the end of the dead-end corridor, the way she grinned at him when the wall slid a few inches to the left, revealing a familiar corner of the dungeons- pleased, but not surprised.

She squeezed through the narrow opening, and he followed suit, disgusted to find himself mildly envious of the sliding door that had gotten to feel what it would be like to push her up against the wall of that tunnel. He pushed the thought away.

“It sticks more than it used to,” whispered Ginny, quieter now that they were so near to inhabited areas of the castle. “It’s never opened the full width of the tunnel, which I’d wager it’s supposed to, but when Fred showed it to me in my second year, you could almost still walk through it without turning sideways like that. Bet in a few more years you wouldn’t be able to get a mouse through the opening.” Draco hummed in acknowledgement, and they turned down another corridor towards the next dungeon block, Draco taking the lead. “Makes you wonder how many secrets the castle is keeping just because the spells have worn off, or the mechanisms have worn down, and you just can’t get to them anymore.” Draco thought of the walls that pretended to be doors- at least to him- and wondered how many of them might once have been more than they now seemed. “I used to wonder if they might get lonely.”

“Cheerful tonight, aren’t we,” he said, casting a sideways look at Ginny. She shrugged.

Draco finally stopped in a corner of the dungeons that Ginny had never been to before, past a block of disused classrooms and storage rooms, and several corridors of what seemed to be actual cells, facing a solid stone wall. Squinting by the light of Draco’s wand- there were no torches in this section of the dungeons- Ginny thought she could see the faintest outline of a doorway.

“Turn around,” said Draco, running his wand along the seam in the stone.

“Still haven’t decided if you trust me?” asked Ginny, obliging. “We’ve come this far.”

“It’s the principle of the thing,” said Draco, and she could hear the smirk still in his voice as he murmured something into the wall. There was a muted of Draco’s knuckles against something that wasn’t still stone but wasn’t yet wood, followed by the faint hiss of magic releasing and a gravelly creak. It sent a twinge of anxiety up Ginny’s spine. She didn’t like that this was all happening behind her back. She trusted Draco- mostly- but it was just unsettling not to

know

.

Draco cleared his throat crisply, and Ginny turned back towards him. The Potions workrooms had always had heavy wooden doors that sat unevenly in their frames, but this door, even revealed, still blended almost perfectly into the wall. Draco pushed it open- it slid several inches straight back in its deep frame before swinging inwards on concealed hinges-  and ushered Ginny over the threshold ahead of him.

The main room was smaller than Slughorn’s, the only other professor’s quarters Ginny had seen, but framed in ornate stonework, with blue and green quartz threaded through the dark wood paneling on the walls. Fist sized crystal globes of light had been magically hung in the air, floating a few feet beneath the vaulted ceiling at uneven intervals, and casting the room in a soft golden glow. Ginny turned in place, taking in the richly covered sofas, the large fireplace emitting occasional orange or yellow sparkles from the still-shimmering embers, the embroidered tapestry hanging unevenly against one wall, disrupted by the open door meant to be concealed behind it. The space had clearly not been properly lived in for some time, and had just as clearly been well-loved in its occupant’s absence.

“It’s sort of beautiful,” said Ginny, turning back to face Draco and accidentally kicking an empty butterbeer bottle across the rug. It rolled to join a variety of others in the archway dividing the larger room from what must have once been a study of some sort, though what she could see of it’s shelves currently held many more liquor bottles than they did books. “Well, most of it.”

“They don’t really clean up after one party until they have to set up for another one,” said Draco. “The lights are leftover, too, the real ones are nicer.”

“I like these,” said Ginny, looking back up at the magical lanterns.

“They’re not bad,” conceded Draco. “If there’s anything Slytherin can do properly, it’s throw a party.” He chuckled. “You’re probably the first Gryffindor to see this. I’m sure there’s been the odd Ravenclaw or even Hufflepuff at a Slytherin party over the years, but never a Gryffindor. And never here.” Ginny watched him look around the room, as if he was seeing it for the first time. His hair shone under the lights. It was styled differently than usual; a little tousled. She wondered if it was on purpose, and if it was wrong of her to hope that it wasn’t. He looked good. He looked real. “This is almost sacred.”

“I can see why,” she said. Draco looked back at her, with a kind of calm intensity in his gaze that sent a shiver through her chest. She laughed, turning to look around the room again, almost instinctively slipping out of the moment. “Can you imagine if they knew I was here?” She asked. “If they knew you

brought

me here?” she added, teasing. She looked back at him over her shoulder. Draco smirked, shaking his head.

“I don’t know which of us they’d jinx first, but it would take Pomfrey weeks to get us back to normal,” he said. Ginny laughed. For a moment, the only thing that stood between them was the House rivalry, and she refused to allow her brain to remind her of any other obstacle.

“Normal, that’s really the word you’d use?” she asked innocently.

“Well, I was trying to be polite,” said Draco. Ginny raised her eyebrows, as if impressed.

“There really is a first time for everything.”

“Weasel.”

“Ferret.”

Draco laughed, thankfully, and Ginny turned back to the room, drinking in the soft lighting, the cool shadows, the details in the woodwork. “Gryffindor usually just decks out the common room and calls it a night,” she said. “Not even usually. Possibly without exception.”

“What did I tell you. We do things the right way here,” said Draco.

“Don’t be a twat,” said Ginny, still enthralled. “I love our common room. It’s… I don’t know, it’s home. It’s cozy. I wouldn’t trade it for anything. This is just…” she trailed off.

“Beautiful,” supplied Draco, softly. His voice was closer than it had been, and when Ginny turned around, he wasn’t looking at the room. Her heart pounded suddenly against her chest in a way that made her think he hadn’t been talking about the room, either.

“Yeah,” she said. The intensity in his gaze was back, and Ginny found herself unable to look away. His hands shifted at his sides, just on the edge of her peripheral vision, and Ginny tipped her head up, slightly, just enough to feel his breath on her face. Draco brushed hair out of her face, his fingertips lingering on her temples. He cupped her cheek in one hand and

looked

at her for a long moment, almost reverentially, his eyes tracing the contours of her face before returning to meet her own. The moment was whole and pure and unbroken, and went on for so long that Ginny almost thought he wasn’t going to go through with it.

Her lips brushed his, just the ghost of a kiss, really, and then there was too much space between them again, and Draco had dropped his hand, searching for something in her face. She shuddered with the force of the pounding in her chest.

“Can I kiss you?” asked Draco. “Properly?”

“You’d bloody well better,” said Ginny.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Draco took one step back towards Ginny, and she closed the distance between them before he could, placing both hands on his shoulders, and he kissed her. There was no force behind his lips, just a sort of firm determination, slow and intentional, that would have still made her take a step back from the intensity of it if he hadn’t taken hold of her waist, tightly, his thumbs pressed deep into her sides, just above her hips. She slid her hands along his shoulders, letting one thumb graze his jaw before interlocking her fingers at the back of his neck. She ran her tongue along the edge of his lower lip. Draco sucked in his breath, which was really her breath, and made a little noise in the back of his throat.There was an answering quiver in the pit of Ginny’s stomach, just between Draco’s thumbs, as his fingers pressed tighter into her hips. She wasn’t quite sure who had closed the last bit of distance between them- their torsos now pressed against each other from chest to hip, except for where Draco’s hands were trapped between their bodies, and where his thumbs were pressing two divets into her belly- until Draco was guiding her backwards, stopping only when he had her against the back of the sofa, the lip of it pushing into the middle of her back, just above his hands. Their mouths were level, now; Draco had bent his knees slightly, so that Ginny no longer had to tip her head back to reach him. Ginny untangled her hands from each other so that she could run one of them through his already gloriously tousled hair, soft between her splayed fingers. Draco hummed against her lips, sinking into her touch without loosening his own grip on her hips. His mouth left hers, and after a moment Ginny felt his lips, slightly damp, just below the hinge of her jaw. Ginny inhaled sharply, holding back the giggle that bubbled in her throat. Draco chuckled against her, kissing experimentally down the side of her neck. It tickled, and Draco dragged it out, Ginny fighting not to laugh.    Draco moved back, smirking at her before tilting his head to reach the other side of her neck, and Ginny took the opportunity to duck under his mouth, moving her hands to his waist as she kissed him, skimming her thumbs up his sides. Draco hissed, as a muscle in his stomach twitched under her hands. Ginny felt her mouth spreading into a satisfied grin against his own.He was thinner than she remembered, from the last time they had been this close- although last time hadn’t been anything like this- and she felt a flash of concern for the ribs she could feel through two layers of robes under her fingers, before Draco’s hands slid down her thighs, and she forgot to be worried about anything.     Ginny lifted her arms back to Draco’s shoulders as he hoisted her up, bracing her against the back of the couch. Ginny wrapped one leg around his waist. She could feel each of his slender fingers gripping the back of her thighs, supporting her weight, and as he adjusted his grip, she flicked her tongue out against the corner of his mouth, edging between his lips.     Draco stumbled, and the sofa, which had been stable up until now, shifted behind them with a deep-throated scrape against the floor, setting Draco further off-balance.     “You did that on purpose,” Draco choked indignantly, managing not to drop her. Ginny laughed.    “Did what on purpose?” she asked, as innocently as she could manage, tipping her head to the side and looking at him with wide eyes.    Draco, with a soft grunt, lifted Ginny a few inches higher, and dumped her unceremoniously over the back of the couch.     “Oh, it’s like that, is it,” she demanded, scrambling to her knees, facing him over the back of the sofa. He was much taller than her from this position, and smirking down at her. “I can’t believe I trusted you-” his lips crashed into hers, nearly knocking their teeth together as he held tightly to her shoulders, leaning over the couch to reach her, his hands rubbing up and down her arms. His hands came up past her shoulders to caress her collarbones, pushing her outer robe down to bunch up around her elbows on his way back down her arms.    “Is this okay?”    “Hardly,” she said, grinning and out of breath. “It’s-” he pulled away before Ginny could finish, his eyes wide as he backed away from the couch.    “Weasley-” Ginny could feel a flush working up the back of her ears, hot as the blood pounded towards her face. She grabbed his wrists before he got too far away. She hadn’t expected him to stop , not right away like that.    “More than okay, Draco,” she finished, searching his face for some sign that he wasn’t upset. “That’s what I was going to say. More than okay.” He freed one hand from her grasp and ran it through his hair, and a small part of Ginny thrilled at this small break in the seamless composure he usually offered, even to her. “Good, even,” she added, with a quirk of her lips, when he still hadn’t said anything.    “Shit, Weasley.” His chest still rose and fell erratically, matching the strength of the pounding in Ginny’s chest, but he had taken a half step back towards the couch. She let go of him and slid her outer robe the rest of the way down her arms, twisting to push it in a heap off of the couch and onto the floor behind her. When she turned back to face Draco, his eyes were fixed on her bare arms. He raised his eyebrows.    “ Shit , Weasley,” he said again. “Who knew that Quidditch uniform wasn’t all padding?” Ginny blushed. She knew her training with the team and over the summer paid off, but it wasn’t the part of her physique blokes had focused on in the past. Michael Corner, himself the Beater for Ravenclaw, had gone so far the year before as to tease that she didn’t want to bulk up too much . Ginny had laughed it off at the time, but had to admit that Draco’s teasing felt much better, in comparison. “You’re just going to stand there staring, then?”“Not if that’s an invitation.” Ginny turned to follow him as he made his way around to the front of the couch, where he threw one leg over her and settled over her hips, supporting most of his weight on his knees and wrapping his hands around her biceps to push her back into the cushions. Ginny caught his lip again and nibbled gently, experimentally. It was something the characters in her mum’s romance novels always seemed to do; she’d tried it out on Michael on one occasion, but he hadn’t seemed interested.Draco, on the other hand, made that sound again, a low whine in the back of his throat, and bit her, sinking his teeth into her swollen lower lip hard enough that Ginny gasped into his mouth. He ran his tongue over the stinging skin. Ginny kissed him, and Draco melted against her. He’d taken his hands from her arms now, and Ginny hooked one of her knees around one of his, stretching out until she’d pulled his leg straight and he had no choice but to let most of his weight rest on her, supporting the rest with elbows braced on either side of Ginny’s chest, propping himself just far enough above her that Ginny had to reach for his mouth. It felt good, Draco’s weight pressing her into the couch cushions, and Ginny wrapped one arm around his shoulders, leaning back on her other elbow as she lifted herself to reach him. He had one hand on her back, supporting her shoulders. She kissed him. She was kissing him, the way she’d wanted to for months now. Their mouths moved messily against each other, tongues scraping teeth, the sound of their breathing and the brush of fabrics occasionally punctuated by soft sucking sounds that Ginny couldn’t help but laugh at, her chin bumping Draco’s before she kissed him again.Draco lowered her back onto the couch cushions, laying his head in the crook of her shoulder as Ginny breathed heavily, catching her breath. She could still feel his hands beneath her back, shifting occasionally as he pulled himself closer to her, his body covering hers, enveloping her in a way Ginny couldn’t have known she wanted. Ginny pushed her fingers through his hair. His breath was cool across the thin sheen of sweat on her chest. Draco pressed a single kiss into her collarbone, without turning his head.The floating crystalline lights still glowed softly golden above them.“Pity I haven’t got any closely-guarded House secrets I can reveal to you next time,” said Ginny. “This one was really something.”Draco raised his eyebrows into her hair. “Next time?” Something caught in his chest, something that twisted at each confirmation, however small, that she too wanted whatever this was: when she winked at him from across the great hall; each time she met him in Myrtle’s bathroom, despite being visibly exhausted from Quidditch practice; when she had first kissed him, earlier that evening, so softly that he had been almost convinced he had imagined it; and now. Next time .“I mean, unless it wouldn’t be worth your while,” teased Ginny, bringing back memories of their first few encounters. Draco hummed into her neck. “Well, I’ll have to consider the offer.” His drawl was impeded somewhat by the proximity of his lips to her skin. “I’ve so many better things to do, but I suppose I could try to make room for you somewhere...”“Arse,” said Ginny, affectionately.“It is rather nice, thank you for noticing,” said Draco.Ginny snorted. “As well as narcissistic, arrogant-” Draco licked her shoulder, just above her collarbone, and she broke off with a soft yelp. “ Gross, Draco,” she giggled. “Git.”“I’ll take it,” said Draco. She adjusted her arms around his shoulders, and he nestled back into her neck.    She was soft underneath him, and the few strands of hair which clung to the damp skin of her chest, just barely within Draco’s line of sight, glowed the red-hot of branding irons in the refracted light coming from above. He wanted, wanted , in a way that felt overcrowded with guilt, to touch her, to run his hands along the exposed skin of her arms, to dig his fingers into the sinewy Quidditch muscles in her shoulders, to find all of the places where she would laugh when he kissed them, and kiss her there.    He didn’t.    They breathed together, the gallop of their pulses slowing in tandem.    Next time.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

The halls of Hogwarts stretched out before her into darkness. 
She had been here before, many times, though she didn’t remember all of them, and her feet carried her easily down the familiar path. She was looking for something, though she couldn’t remember what. 
The door opened before she reached it.
She was in Defense. She was twelve years old. Professor Lupin stood before her.
“Now, this is an advanced spell for your year,” he was saying, over the chatter of her classmates behind her, “but there’s no shame in trying.” He opened the trunk, and when nothing happened, Ginny peered inside. A plain black diary sat at the bottom. 
Ginny was not afraid.
Tom slammed the trunk closed. “Promise me you won’t tell anyone,” he said, in Percy’s voice. “Please, Gin, you know how the twins are, they’ll never leave her alone.”
Penelope Clearwater lay stiff as a board in the hospital wing, and she had done that. Not the twins. 
Your fault, said Tom’s voice in her head.
“Leave me alone,” she told Percy, who still stood in front of her.
“You haven’t been yourself lately,” he said. “It’s normal to have trouble adjusting-”
“You don’t understand!” she was shouting. “Just because you’re a prefect doesn’t suddenly make you an expert on everything.” Percy looked taken aback.

Your fault.

“Ginny…”
The waters of the Chamber of Secrets were rising around her, up to her neck now, and Percy just looked at her from far away, pained, as if he knew what she’d done, as if he knew that she was the one who had petrified Penelope Clearwater, that she was the one who had hurt him.

Your fault.

“I don’t need you interfering all the time!”
Percy was Tom Riddle, and his glasses were covered in mashed parsnips.
“Ginny, is everything alright?”
His voice echoed against the walls of the Chamber, coming from the far end of one of the many tunnels.
“Leave me alone! Leave me alone! Leave me alone!”
“Ginny, wake up.”
Ginny woke up.Her throat was knotted with something that tasted like grief, but it didn’t take her any time at all to realize where she was, even blinking sleep from her eyelids. The dorm was bright with mid-morning sun, and empty; her yearmates must have already gone to breakfast. Ginny’s shallow breathing began to level out. It had been nearly two in the morning when she’d gotten back to the Tower, her heart still skipping with each fluttering memory of Draco’s mouth on hers. She pressed her lips together, remembering the feeling of it, until her dream started coming back to her.It had been a long time since she’d woken up like this, heart pounding, palms clammy with sweat. Wearing herself out with Quidditch practices, staying up late with Draco, and never getting quite enough sleep had been doing the trick rather nicely, Ginny thought. It would have been unrealistic to expect the dreams to cease entirely just because she’d kissed him the night before.Something in her jumped again when she remembered Draco. The way he had looked at her. Ginny closed her eyes and let the feeling flood her chest.Luna was eight minutes into an explanation of the infestation she’d discovered in the library of the Ravenclaw common room when Draco walked into the Great Hall with Blaise Zabini. Ginny hadn’t been watching for him, exactly- she’d actually been listening with some interest to Luna’s description of the ptolskin, which had apparently been first observed by a Scandanavian sorcerer in the library of Alexandria, and which primarily caused people to mis-shelve books- but she caught his eye almost immediately. He must have been looking for her.    Ginny didn’t risk acknowledging him, but Draco gave a slight nod in her direction before returning to his conversation. Ginny smiled into her eggs.     “Were you guys thinking of going to Hogsmeade next weekend?” asked Colin, when Luna paused to organize her thoughts.    “Probably,” said Ginny. “If only for the chance to get out of the castle.”    “It has been rather gloomy lately,” agreed Luna. The three of them looked up at the enchanted ceiling. The sky was clear for the first time since the previous Sunday, belying the several feet of snow blanketing the grounds which had kept most Hogwarts students cooped up inside the school all week.“I don’t mind it, actually,” said Ginny, with a shrug. “Just fancy a change of scenery. And some decent butterbeer.” Colin was looking at her curiously, but Ginny couldn’t figure out what she might have said to concern him. “What?”“Nothing,” said Colin, turning away from her to pick through the muffins. “What are you doing today?”“Ancient Runes essay, don’t remind me,” groaned Ginny. “Two feet on how to tell in Greek whether an inscription affects the object it’s written on or the person who uses the object. It’s all grammar, and we need examples, and it’s due first thing on Monday.”“Should’ve stuck with Care of Magical Creatures like me and Luna,” said Colin smugly.“So you’ve said.”“We don’t usually have homework,” said Luna. “Or if we do, Hagrid forgets to check it.”“Best professor in school, in my opinion,” said Colin.“It’s a decent class, but he really doesn’t know very much about category eleven creatures, does he?” Luna shook her head sadly. “I suppose it’s not his fault the Ministry keeps their research under wraps. But I do wish he’d at least address the politicized nature of modern magizoology.”“Sure, but then we might have to do homework about it,” said Colin.“That’s true,” Luna conceded. “It is nice once in a while to only have to learn things instead of having to explain them back, too.”“I like Ancient Runes,” said Ginny. “It’s just that it’s rubbish and Babbling thinks we’re all only taking her class and have time to be doing NEWT-level work as practice for the O.WL.s.”“Sure, that sounds swell,” said Colin. Ginny rolled her eyes. “I was going to suggest that we find something actually enjoyable to do for part of the afternoon, but I think you’ve convinced me that I really would rather get working straight away.”“You should do your essay straight away,” Colin reminded her.“Yes, but I’d really rather not.”“I thought you said I’d convinced you.”“Yes, well, I also told you that the haircut you came back with in third year wasn’t completely dreadful,” said Ginny. “I say a lot of things.”“I thought we’d agreed not to talk about third year anymore,” said Colin, groaning.“I don’t remember agreeing to anything like that,” said Ginny. “I do remember you having bangs that ended just here-” she reached across the table to indicate on Colin’s forehead, but he batted her hand away. “This feels like blackmail,” said Colin, looking to Luna. “Is she blackmailing me?”“Is it blackmail if it’s true?” asked Luna.“ Yes .”“I don’t remember the bangs as much as I remember the back,” mused Luna. “We weren’t even friends yet at the start of third year!”“That doesn’t mean she can’t remember things about you,” said Ginny.“It was memorable,” Luna assured him.“Wasn’t the back of your neck shaved?”Colin dropped his face into his hands, his voice muffled by his palms. “It was even with the sides.”“I think, we all have to suffer at least one truly awful haircut in our lives,” said Ginny. “Mine was when I was seven. The twins set off a dungbomb in the kitchen sink in the middle of it, and I went to play outside with Ron when Mum went to tell them off, so she never finished. It took her almost a week to notice that the left side of my hair was still two inches longer than the right.” She held up her hands to illustrate, one just under her chin and the other halfway down her neck. “Dad has a picture somewhere. I think I was missing both front teeth, too. I looked like one of Lockheart’s pixies, you remember? After they escaped in Ron’s class, when they were all battered.”Colin laughed. “At least you had your awkward phase young,” he said. “I think I’m still in mine. Luna?”“I don’t think I’ve had any bad haircuts,” said Luna. “Not memorable ones. I think it’s easier with long hair.”“Well, I’m sure we can fix that,” said Ginny, taking one of Luna’s curls in her fingers and reaching for the butter knife.Ginny returned to Myrtle’s bathroom after dinner to meet Draco. She’d spent most of the afternoon in the library combing through her Ancient Runes notes, and dinner had been occupied with watching a lively argument that had broken out at the Hufflepuff table, so it wasn’t until she was standing outside in the corridor that Ginny realised that she was nervous to go inside. She hadn’t yet decided whether she was more worried that everything would be different now that she and Draco had kissed, or that nothing would change at all, when she heard footsteps coming around the corner and ducked quickly into the bathroom, heart pounding. A moment later, the door swung open, and Draco entered as well. Ginny released her breath. “Oh, it’s just you.”Draco smirked, and Ginny set her bag in a dry sink, turning her head to follow him as he crossed in front of her to lean against one of the stalls. “You were expecting someone else?”“I only heard footsteps. I wasn’t sure.”“Hoping for Filch, instead? Or, no, who was that Gryffindor bloke at Slughorn’s party, the really thick looking one- McLaggen?”Ginny graced this suggestion with an exaggerated retching sound over her shoulder.“Charming,” said Draco, wrinkling his nose, though Ginny saw the corners of his mouth twitch. “I can see what Corner and Thomas and Potter and McLaggen all see in you.”“And Filch,” Ginny reminded him.“And Filch.”Ginny snorted. “Jealous?”“Yeah, I’ve been after Filch for ages, myself.”“Well, you’re wrong on at least one count. I’d have known if Harry fancied me, I had a massive crush on him for about four years running.” Ginny rolled her eyes at her own foolishness. She’d felt for sure there was something between them when he’d rescued her from the Chamber, but had quickly realized he would have taken exactly the same risks for quite literally anything that breathed. “I think to most of Gryffindor I’ll always be Ron’s sister before I’m anything else.” Ginny considered herself to be well past her infatuation with the Boy Who Lived, though privately she’d wondered if she wouldn’t find herself plunged into it all over again if he were to pay her the slightest bit of attention outside of her capacity as a fellow member of the Quidditch team or the DA.    “Besides,” Ginny said, returning herself to the matter at hand, “I’m not snogging any of them, am I?”    “I don’t care who you’re snogging,” said Draco haughtily. Ginny raised her eyebrows. “Wait,” he said, after a moment. “Are you snogging me?”    “Well, I was going to,” said Ginny. “But if you’d rather leave it as a one-off, by all means, keep suggesting alternatives.”    “No,” said Draco, stepping forward. “I mean, there’s always Longbottom.”    “We went to the Yule Ball together,” Ginny recalled, as Draco stepped directly into a puddle and made a face. “He was a surprisingly good dancer.”    “Finnegan, then,” suggested Draco. “Complete the set.”    “Somehow, I don’t think he’s interested,” said Ginny. Draco took another step towards her, now within arms reach.    “Terry Boot.”    “I’ve sworn off Ravenclaws.”    “Ravenclaws? But not Slytherins?”    “Well,” said Ginny, “I’m making an exception.”    Draco closed the distance between them. “In that case…”Ginny met up with Draco almost every day in January, their meetings no longer reserved for weekends or those nights on which Draco had prefect duties to skip out on. They never returned to the dungeons, but Ginny found him waiting for her in Moaning Myrtle’s bathroom after Quidditch practices, and they worked on homework while leaning shoulder to shoulder against the back wall, or paced around and argued about the upcoming Quidditch season in between kissing up against the sinks, or just sat on the floor and chatted. On one memorable occasion, Myrtle herself interrupted them, and once she’d been sufficiently placated, offered some surprisingly helpful advice about a tricky bit of Transfiguration Draco was working out for class. On another night, after Ginny had rebuked Draco’s weekly suggestion that she required an escort back to her common room, he had trailed her halfway back to the Tower and ambushed her on the fifth floor in order to drag her into a secluded alcove from which neither of them emerged for another thirty minutes. It wasn’t all snogging, though, and Ginny’s concerns that her volatile friendship with the Slytherin would be strained by the new development in their relationship were squelched by a steady stream of insults and mockery that remained undisrupted by an equally steady stream of goodnight kisses that went on for upwards of a quarter of an hour. Ginny was sure that Colin suspected something. She tried to sometimes meet Draco straight after practice, rather than having to sneak back out of the common room, but it wasn’t always possible. And even if he hadn’t seen her leaving Gryffindor Tower after curfew, it was inevitable that spending so much time with Draco meant that she no longer spent as much time with Colin most evenings. She felt guilty about it whenever she caught the other boy watching her in class or at meals, which was happening more and more often, but it couldn’t be helped- she had all of those times to spend with Colin, and limited options when it came to seeing Draco. Still, it took her two weeks to work up the courage to confront him about it, and a period of Arithmancy in which she thought Colin spent more time glancing up at her than he did paying attention to Professor Vector’s lecture.“Alright,” she said, as they walked together towards their double period of Defense. “You have to tell me what’s going on.” Ginny had a feeling she was going to regret asking- after all, the last two times Colin had tried to have any kind of talk with her, it hadn’t been exactly pleasant- but she couldn’t stand the constant itching feeling of knowing he was staring at her anymore. “You’ve been looking at me funny all week,” she said, when Colin looked confused.“Oh,” said Colin. He laughed. “I didn’t mean to. It’s just nice to see you like this.”“Like what?”Colin shrugged. “Well-rested, I guess. Like you’ve been sleeping well, for a change.”“Oh,” said Ginny. “I suppose I have.”“I don’t know what it is,” said Colin. “That was Luna’s guess.” His cheeks tinged slightly pink. “We weren’t talking about you, or anything like that, she just mentioned it the other day, when we were waiting for you at lunch. We were- well, I was worried, last term. I think you knew that. But you seem better now than you have for a long time.” Ginny put her arms around him impulsively, stopping to hug him in the middle of the corridor, and Colin squeezed her back, warm and grounding and safe. “I like seeing my friends happy,” said Colin. “You deserve it more than you know.”

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

On Friday morning, Draco had another letter from his mother.

“What is it?” asked Pansy, peering over his shoulder at Narcissa’s curling script on the envelope. Draco forced himself to breathe again, and kept his eyes trained on the table in front of him, suppressing the instinct to look for Ginny across the Great Hall. She would know something was wrong. He didn’t know how, but she always seemed to know, and he was running out of excuses.

“It’s none of your business,” he snapped at Pansy, shoving the letter deep into his bag. He didn’t need to read it to know its contents.

“Well!” huffed Pansy, dropping her spoon into her bowl and splattering cereal across the table. Blaise made a point of separating some of his eggs from those that had been contaminated with imaginary droplets of milk. Pansy made a face at him.

Draco ignored them both, pushing his fork around his plate aimlessly. He needed to write back. He needed to fix that blasted cabinet. He needed to deal with-

“Did anyone get a look at that notice in the common room this morning?” asked Theo, changing the subject with a glance in Draco’s direction.

“Is that what everyone was so obsessed with?” asked Pansy airily, examining her nails and pointedly turning away from Draco. “Could hardly get past the fireplace with everyone standing around.”

“Apparition lessons start this weekend,” said Blaise. “I was there last night when Professor Snape put it up.”

“Late night?” asked Draco.

“Not as late as yours,” replied Blaise, gazing cooly at him over a platter of toast. “Your bed was still empty when I turned in.”

“Yes, well,” bristled Draco through a poorly-timed yawn, before being saved from having to justify himself by Theo’s interruption.

“So it doesn’t concern the first-years at all!” he crowed, glaring down the table. “Don’t know why they’re always in the way when something important happens.”

“It’s not

that

important,” drawled Blaise, releasing Draco from his stare. “You’ve side-alonged before, haven’t you?”

“Only about a hundred times,” said Theo with a shudder.

“It’s supposed to be easier to pick up on if you’ve done it before.”

Draco had only apparated on a handful of occasions, but on the whole found it preferable to portkeys, if still unpleasant.

“I’m looking forward to the splinchings, personally,” said Pansy. “Hestia said last year three Hufflepuffs lost fingers. Temporarily, of course,” she added. “Shame.”

A late owl fluttered down the Slytherin table, and Draco looked up sharply, but it landed in front of a third-year further down.

He wasn’t expecting anything else, anyway, not at the castle. He’d ordered a book, on Borgin’s advice-

Nineteen Most Marvelous Magical Artifacts of the Nineteenth Century

- but he’d had it sent to the Hogsmeade post office. He couldn’t risk Filch poking his nose in.

Draco hoped fervently that the book would be waiting for him on Saturday. He wasn’t getting anywhere without it. He’d lied to both Ginny and his friends the night before, and spent most of the night in the Room of Hidden Things, getting nowhere at all.

The letter in his bag burned at the edge of his consciousness.

“Have you seen this?” Colin asked tightly, his face hidden behind the morning

Prophet

.

“

Prophet’

s a Ministry hackjob,” said Ginny automatically, buttering her toast. “Whatever they’re writing is rubbish.”

“No- I mean, yes, you’re right, but-” Colin laid the paper out over the table, open to the obituaries on one side, and personal advertisements on the other, a page which in recent months had come to be taken up entirely by missing persons notices. He was running his finger down a list of names in one column. “Fawcett. You know Sloane, she’s in gobstones with me. This has to be her whole family.”

Ginny looked over her shoulder towards the Ravenclaw table, which was eerily quiet.

“She got my books back for me once,” said Luna. “Third year. Of course, it was her friends that took them, but she was in the middle of studying for OWLs. She didn’t have to stop them.”

“Missing?” asked Ginny. Colin nodded.

“Seven of them.”

“Merlin.”

“Sometimes I’m glad it’s just me and my dad,” mused Luna. “Less to worry about that way.”

“They’re going after squibs now, too, here-” Colin was tapping another column. “This man says his whole book club has disappeared, half of their families refuse to say if they know anything-” he broke off. He had gone very white.

“Colin?”

“She lives just down the street from me,” he said, his hand frozen over one of the names in the ad. “I had no idea. She used to babysit me and Dennis. She lives-”

“You got a letter from your mum yesterday, though, right?” asked Ginny, hating the sinking feeling in her chest.

“That was yesterday,” said Colin.

“The

Prophet

’s always behind,” said Ginny, a little more desperately than she would have liked. She had met Colin’s parents at King’s Cross before their third year. His mum had answered all of her own father’s questions about the muggle transit system with ones about the Floo Network and the Quidditch World Cup, and his father had hugged her on sight. Ginny had liked them immediately. They both still asked after her in their letters to Colin. “And people don’t make these kinds of reports right away. It must have been at least a week ago by now. You would know if anything had happened.”

Colin nodded, still staring at the paper.

“Colin,” said Luna.

“Yeah, I know.”

“Colin, look at me.”

He did.

“They’re okay,” said Luna. “We’ll write them over lunch. It’ll be okay.”

Colin nodded. “Okay,” he said. “Thank you.”

The rest of the day passed much too slowly for Ginny’s tastes. News of the Fawcetts spread quickly through Hogwarts, and by lunchtime Ginny knew that it was Sloane’s aunt who had written to the

Prophet

, that she’d found the house torn apart four days ago when she’d Flooed over for a drink after work, that they’d taken Sloane’s parents, her grandmother, her older sister, her sister’s husband, and their two young children, with no trace to follow- and that her father and her brother-in-law were both muggleborns. There were competing rumors as to whether or not Fawcett was dropping out of school. Ginny had overheard a wiry seventh-year Slytherin boasting in the corridor that he’d heard that one of the children had been found- “parts of him, anyway”- but he’d been given a month of detentions after Flitwick had pried half of the Ravenclaw Quidditch team off of him.

Nobody had anything to say about the missing squibs.

She accompanied Colin and Luna to the owlery at lunchtime, where Colin penned a quick note to his parents, just to ask if they were okay, and he seemed a little steadier by the time Bandit had disappeared over the forest. He hadn’t shown Dennis the article.

“I don’t want him to worry when there’s nothing he can do,” he told them.

There was no team practice on Friday nights, but Ginny went out to the pitch anyway. The ritual of strapping herself into her Quidditch pads was calming. And standing alone in the center of the pitch with one beater’s bat and both bludgers free cleared her head by necessity.

Draco stood at the fireplace in the Slytherin common room, rereading his mother’s words.

Write back soon. Narcissa.

There was a tiny blot of ink bled into the parchment between the last line of the letter and her signature. She had hesitated. She never hesitated. Something was wrong.

He almost had to laugh at that.

Everything

was wrong. And there was nothing he could do about it. It felt like his chest was collapsing in on itself.

“What happened to your face?” asked Pansy, throwing herself onto the sofa behind him.

Draco crumpled the letter and threw it into the fire.

“Is that Mummy’s super secret letter for her special little boy?”

Draco bristled. “My mother is ill,” he lied, through gritted teeth.

“That explains the face,” said Pansy, but with slightly less venom. “Let me guess. You need to talk about your feelings?”

“No,” said Draco, glancing at the clock above the mantle. “I need to go. I’m late for my rounds.”

Everything was wrong, he reflected on his way to the bathroom. The Dark Lord had returned, and it wasn’t at all like what had been promised. Draco felt cheated. Lied to. He was a

Malfoy

. This wasn’t the life he was meant to live, snivelling in fear, taking orders, hiding away. He would have been angry, but there was nobody left to be angry with. The whole world had been set wrong, and this, he thought, pushing open the door, was perhaps the most backward thing of all.

She was laying on the floor in padded trousers and a thick tank top that bared her freckled shoulders, one leg bent at the knee and the other stretched out in front of her, holding a Charms book open above her face with the hand that wasn’t under her head. Discarded pieces of her Quidditch practice uniform littered the floor around her. She smiled when she heard him, turning her head to watch him come in without bothering with the hair that fell into her face.

The world was upside down, and Ginny Weasley was his only escape from it.

“I hope you’re planning to shower tonight,” he said. Ginny watched him push her Quidditch robes to the side with his foot before sitting cross-legged in front of her. He looked a bit like he’d been crying, but he also looked as though this was the first time he’d relaxed his shoulders all day, so Ginny didn’t press him on it.

“Is it that bad?”

“Yes,” said Draco, “But if I were you, I’d be more concerned about the floor of this place than a little Quidditch grime.”

“What, you don’t use toilet water in your hair care regimen?” Draco looked as if he was afraid she might be serious. Ginny rolled her eyes. “Please tell me your day was better than mine,” she said, not bothering to correct him.

“Well, we did mock-duels in Defense, and I watched Goldstein lose fifteen points for Ravenclaw for using a hair-growth jinx on Corner that was so effective he had to be sent to the hospital wing.”

Ginny snorted, feeling like she could breathe properly for the first time in hours. “That’s just like Snape, to take points for doing something correctly.”

“I think it was more the inconvenience of it,” said Draco. “Patil got his hair back to normal in about a minute, but his eyebrows were past his knees by the time she gave up.”

“Who walked him to the hospital wing?”

“Nobody,” said Draco. “Snape wouldn’t let anyone else leave class. He just had to hold them back in order to see where he was going-” he raised one hand up past his forehead. Ginny laughed.

“Maybe you could ask Anthony to give it another shot in a couple of weeks. It might improve your chances against Ravenclaw next match.”

“It certainly improved his appearance, if nothing else.”

They fell into a companionable silence, as Ginny paged through the last section of her Charms reading without really processing any of it. Draco was shifting uneasily across from her, and though he would stop when he caught her watching, it was distracting. Ginny sat up and made room to put her book in her bag.

“I suppose you heard about the Fawcetts?” She didn’t look at him, focusing on rearranging her belongings and on willing her hands to stop shaking.

“I heard,” said Draco.

“Everyone keeps saying they can’t imagine how she feels,” said Ginny, still staring into her bag, “but I think I can.”

“Well, don’t,” said Draco, bluntly. Ginny looked up sharply, but he wasn’t looking at her. “It won’t do any good.”

“I know that,” said Ginny, “but I can’t always help it.” She shrugged. Draco looked at her, finally, and his face softened somewhat.

“It won’t happen to your family,” he said. “You’re purebloods.”

“Blood traitors,” she corrected. “And I was talking about Fawcett, not me.”

“If you say so,” said Draco.

“I do.”

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

“It’s alright to be worried for yourself, you know,” said Draco, softly, after a moment had passed.

No.

“I

know

that,” said Ginny, feeling selfish and guilty and horribly seen. “But I’m not. We’re purebloods. We chose this fight, not that it’s much of a choice. And I know that caring about other people might be a foreign concept to you, but some of us don’t build up

quite

as many walls-”

“Alright,” said Draco, cutting her off, “you’ve made your point. You never think of yourself. You’re just as noble and righteous as you’re supposed to be.”

“You know more than anyone that I’m not,” snapped Ginny. “But at least I’m trying.” Draco looked pained, and then angry, but didn’t bite back. Ginny exhaled heavily.

“Can we not talk about it anymore?” Ginny leaned into Draco’s shoulder, not quite an apology, but something like a truce. “It’s been a long day. I just- I need-”

“I know,” said Draco. His arm settled around her shoulders, and Ginny allowed herself to sink into him, to be held close to his chest. “Me too.”

Colin was still awake when Ginny crept back into the common room at midnight. Ginny watched him for a long moment before he pulled his eyes from the window and saw her. He smiled wryly.

“Alright?” asked Ginny softly, sinking into the armchair cushion next to him and pressing their shoulders together.

“No, of course not,” admitted Colin. Ginny nodded. “Where’ve you been?”

“Quidditch pitch,” lied Ginny. Not quite a lie. But not the whole truth.

“There’s no practice on Fridays,” said Colin. “And Harry went up to bed an hour ago.”

“I wasn’t really practicing,” said Ginny. “Just hitting bludgers.”

Colin nodded. “That’s about how I feel, too.”

“It’s nice. It’s- will I sound like a complete nutter if I call it meditative?”

“Maybe only part of one.”

“You can’t really think about anything else when you’re doing it,” said Ginny. “Or you’ll get hit. It’s like the whole world shrinks down to the weight of the bat in your hands, and the sound of the bludgers through the air, and you get to be in control, for a few minutes.”

“It sounds nice.”

“You should try it sometime.”

Colin smiled a half-smile. “I think I’d just get hit.”

He was looking out the window again, and Ginny watched his fingers pick at a stray thread in the cuff of his sleeve.

“Helen moved into our neighborhood a little while after Dennis turned three,” he said finally. “She was just starting university, I think. I remember Mum talking on the phone once, she must’ve been talking to one of the other mums in the neighborhood, about how young she was to be living on her own. I remember because I was just a kid, obviously, and she’d already babysat for us a few times, and I thought she was really grown up. So I thought it was weird that Mum would say she was young. I don’t remember if she also said then that Helen’s family kicked her out when she turned seventeen, or if she said it some other time, or if I put it together on my own later on. She has- well, had-” Colin stumbled, and Ginny nudged his knee with her own, wishing she had something better. Colin swallowed.

“Her partner’s a woman, anyway, so I think we all sort of assumed it was because of that. But then Luna said today that squibs don’t often get to stay in the magical world.” He looked at her for confirmation.

“Sometimes it’s their choice,” said Ginny cautiously. “It’s hard to get by without magic.” Colin nodded. “We have a second cousin or something who’s a squib. I met him once, when I was little. I think he stayed with his family during the last war and went back to living as a muggle when it was safe.”

“I don’t think it was her choice,” said Colin bitterly, turning his head back towards the window. “I don’t think someone casts their parents as horrible, intolerant people unless it’s true in some sense.”

“You’re probably right,” said Ginny.

“And that man from her book club who placed the advert said that he’d tried to talk to the families. He said that they all refused to tell him anything. Not that they didn’t know what had happened. That they wouldn’t tell him. I don’t understand that. I don’t know how someone can care so little for their own family, just because they’re different. Even if it’s like you said, and you just can’t fit into the wizarding world without doing magic, that’s no excuse for- for abandoning someone like that, just because you live different lives!”

“You’re right,” said Ginny. “And I know you know you’re right, and my saying it doesn’t change anything, but for whatever it’s worth.”

“What happened during the last war?” asked Colin, turning back towards her. “When people would go missing. What happened.”

Ginny hesitated. “Well, a lot of wizards were imperiused, until You-Know-Who fell.”

“And the others?” Colin pressed.

“Usually they stayed missing.”

Colin nodded. “I wish I’d known,” he said. “Maybe I could’ve talked to her about it, when I got my letters, and I wouldn’t have come into all of this completely blind. Or not. I don’t know. I just feel weird, I think, because I feel like- this connection to her, that wasn’t there before, knowing that she was part of this world too. But she doesn’t have that. She didn’t know.”

“I don’t know if it helps,” said Ginny, after a moment, when Colin didn’t seem to have anything more to say, “or changes anything, but she probably did know. If she babysat you often enough. Kids do a lot of accidental magic, even though you might not remember it now.”

She watched Colin think about this.

“It doesn’t help,” he said after a while. “Or change anything. But thank you.”

Ginny nodded.

“Are you still worried about your parents?” She asked. “I know it’s a stupid question.”

“Yeah, I am,” said Colin. “Not for right now, I think. I’ve had all day to think about it, and you were right- it took four days for Sloane’s family to make the

Prophet

, so if something had already happened to Mum and Dad at the same time as Helen disappeared, I wouldn’t have gotten that letter yesterday. But there’s still the reinforcement of the knowledge that something

could

happen.”

“I could write my dad,” said Ginny. “Find out what the Ministry policy is on putting protective enchantments on a muggle’s house.”

Colin shook his head. “You have to register through the Ministry,” he said. “Hermione was talking about it earlier. I think the idea of having our name and address down on a list somewhere scares me more than taking our chances on not being targeted, as awful as it sounds.” Ginny thought he was probably right- both that it sounded like an awful choice to make, and that it was better not to hand-deliver a list of muggleborns’ families to whichever Death Eater infiltrated the Ministry first.

“That’s horrible, Colin.”

“I know.”

“What can I do?”

“You’re already doing enough, Gin.”

“I haven’t done anything,” said Ginny, helplessly.

“You’re

here

,” said Colin. “That’s everything.”

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

The walk to Hogsmeade always felt longer in the winter, and Ginny huddled close between Colin and Luna, cloak pulled up around her neck against the bitter wind.

“We have to stop by Scrivenshaft’s after the Three Broomsticks,” said Ginny. “My nib broke last night, it leaks every fourth letter now.” The stone floor of Myrtle’s bathroom had not been kind to Ginny’s quills.

“Fine with me,” said Colin, kicking up snow as he walked. “As long as we don’t run out of time for Honeydukes. I think Dennis has been sneaking into my dorm and stealing my toffees.”

A clump of snow slid neatly down Ginny’s boot, and she gasped as the icy drips reached her bare ankle and began melting into her sock.

“If you don’t stop flinging snow at me, I’m going to tell Dennis where to find your stash of Drooble’s,” she said.

“I am not

flinging

snow at you,” said Colin, kicking another puff of snowflakes into the air.

“What do you call this, then?”

“It’s just so fluffy. You have to.”

“My socks are sopping wet! Luna,

please

back me up here.”

Luna shrugged. “I think it’s pretty.” She tugged on the bough of a pine tree off the side of the road, sending a flurry of snow up into the air. “See, it sparkles.”

Ginny laughed. “I don’t know why I bother.”

“I think you can’t help it,” said Luna, resting her snow-encrusted mitten on the back of Ginny’s neck. Ginny yelped.

“Sweet Merlin’s spotted knickers, why? Why would you do that?”

“You’re just so cute when you’re angry!”

Colin laughed. “Luna, I don’t know how you get away with saying things like that.”

“She doesn’t,” said Ginny, reaching for a handful of snow.

“She really does,” said Colin. “If I’d said it-”

“I don’t even want you to

think

it,” said Ginny.

“See?”

Ginny pushed a handful of snow down the front of his robes.

“I didn’t even

do

anything!”

“You did get snow down her boots earlier,” said Luna. Ginny grinned triumphantly.

“I thought you were on my side!”

“I was. But you still did it.”

By the time Luna pushed open the door to Madame Rosmerta’s, both Colin and Ginny were shivering, their cheeks flushed red and their hair clumped with snow.

“Truce?” asked Colin, stomping his boots off on the mat and extending one chapped hand towards Ginny. Ginny nodded, peeling off damp gloves with slightly numb fingers.

“Truce.”

Draco couldn’t shake the feeling that he was wasting time. Pansy kept up an incessant stream of commentary the whole way to Hogsmeade, pausing only for the occasional interjection from Nott, and Zabini kept shooting him strange looks, as if he knew he was hiding something.

“Oh, let’s not go to Broomsticks this time,” said Pansy, wrinkling her nose. “It’s always so crowded and full of Gryffindors and third-years.”

Draco was inclined to agree. He didn’t feel guilty, exactly, for having imperiused Madame Rosmerta back in October, but all the same he wasn’t particularly interested in seeing her in person.

“We need to go

somewhere

,” said Theo, stuffing his hands under his arms. “Bloody freezing out here.”

“Hog’s Head, then?” said Blaise.

“

No,

” said Pansy, curling her lip. “Have you

seen

the place? Merlin, even the outside is filthy. The man who runs it looks like he sleeps in his cellar.”

“Pans, there’s only so many pubs,” said Theo.

“We haven’t been to Puddifoot’s in a while.”

Theo looked aghast. “Because it’s horrid,” he said, with a shudder.

“I’m with Nott on this one,” said Draco.

“Yes, the atmosphere is less than desirable-”

“And the patrons are either vapid hags or half-deaf and disintegrating in their chairs,” continued Blaise.

“-but the teas are actually decent. Much better than anything you can get up at school,” continued Pansy, as if she hadn’t been interrupted.

They ended up at Puddifoot’s, somehow, despite Theo’s continued grumbling. Soft music played from a tinny wireless on a shelf behind the counter as Pansy ordered for all four of them, and looking around the over decorated shop, Draco found that Blaise’s assessment of the clientele had been accurate. One lace-draped table held a group of giggling Ravenclaw fourth years; at another, several old witches hunched permanently over bundles of yarn and knitting needles.

The tea was excellent.

“I have to stop at the post,” said Draco, as they stepped back into the icy street.

“Oh, well, that’s on the way,” said Pansy. “Watch your step, it’s slippery here.”

“On the way to what?”

“Were you listening to anything I’ve said all day?” demanded Pansy, but without much malice. “I have to find something for my father’s birthday next week. Mother recommended some book about twelfth century flying carpets he’s been after, and said I might be able to find it at the shop here. She won’t just order it from the publishers unless I look first. Apparently it’s

more personal

if I mail it myself.”

“What an ordeal for you,” said Blaise mildly.

“You told us not to let you get distracted,” said Colin, and Ginny tore her eyes from the turquoise feather on the quill in the shop window. The body of the quill was solid silver, and she didn’t have to look at the tag to know it was several galleons beyond her budget.

“I was just looking,” she said.

“At a distraction,” said Luna. “A very pretty one, though.”

Ginny left Luna to be distracted by the display of fancy quills, and headed for the back of the shop, where there were rows of small drawers of nibs in a variety of sizes and styles. She had little interest in the more expensive designs, which would in any case be wasted on her cheap quill, so it took only a moment to find the right drawer and to place three plain nibs into a small paper packet, which she presented to the middle aged witch at the front counter.

“Preparing for exams?” asked the witch, pressing several keys on the register.

“Yes,” said Ginny. “We have our O.WL.s in a few months, and I think the professors are intent on wearing down all my quills on homework before then.”

“I remember those days!” the witch laughed. “I actually snapped my quill halfway through my History of Magic O.W.L. and had to complete the essay with just the stub.” The fingers of her left hand curled into a claw as she scribbled demonstratively in the air. “I got an Outstanding, though, so I can’t complain,” she added. “Binns still teaches up there, doesn’t he?”

Ginny nodded. “He does, yeah.”

“He was always my favorite professor.” Ginny exchanged a look with Colin, who looked comically bewildered. “I admire his dedication, too. Merlin knows you wouldn’t find me coming into the shop if I died! Not to work, anyway.” The witch winked.

“I don’t think most ghosts are expected to stay employed,” Ginny agreed.

The witch laughed. “Depends on what shop you work in,” she said, pressing another key. “I hear Honeydukes has a hell of a retirement policy. That’ll be three sickles fifteen.”

“Right,” said Ginny, taking her coin purse from the pocket of her cloak. She plucked out three of her remaining four sickles and began counting out knuts, silently regretting the hot butterbeer she’d allowed Colin and Luna to talk her into at the Three Broomsticks, and made a mental note to put down a book as a writing surface next time she did her homework in Myrtle’s bathroom. The witch swept the small pile of bronze coins off of the counter and into a drawer.

“Have a nice weekend, you three, and good luck on those O.W.L.s!”

“Thank you,” said Ginny, following her friends back into the street and pocketing the nibs.

“She was nice,” said Luna.

“She was batty,” said Colin. “Can you imagine Binns being anyone’s favorite professor?”

“Maybe he was competent when he was still alive,” said Ginny, generously.

Colin shook his head. “It just feels wrong. Is that how ghosts work?”

“I’m not sure, you know,” said Ginny. “I don’t think I know anyone who knew a ghost when they were still alive. I could ask Mum about Binns, I suppose. She might remember.”

“Daddy says ghosts tend to emulate the energy of their deaths,” mused Luna. “He says that’s why the Bloody Baron is so gloomy all the time.”

“Shouldn’t all ghosts be gloomy, then?” asked Colin. “I can’t imagine dying in any circumstances would be cheerful.”

“The Fat Friar was laughing when he died,” said Luna. “He choked on a potato.”

“Do you know what he was laughing at?”

Luna shook her head sadly. “He never heard the end of the joke.”

“So, do we think Binns died of boredom, then?” asked Ginny.

Colin laughed. “Maybe while reading about Goblin wars?”

They turned a corner into a narrow alley leading back towards the main street, but only made it a few meters before their path was blocked by Draco Malfoy, leading a group of Slytherins headed in the opposite direction. He held a bulky package under one arm, and he was limping slightly, though he straightened up when he saw her. Ginny twisted the smile that came to her lips into a smirk.

“Malfoy.”

“Weasley,” he sneered.

Colin and Luna had stopped walking a few steps behind her, but Ginny risked one more forward.

“You’re in our way,” said Draco. “Move.”

“Or what?” said Ginny, gesturing to his wool cloak, which was damp on one side and coated in grit. “You’ll fall down at me?”

Blaise Zabini, who Ginny recognized from the Slug Club, coughed into his shoulder, earning a swat in the arm from Pansy Parkinson. Emboldened, Ginny continued.

“I’m amazed that you somehow manage to cling onto your broom, when you struggle so much to stay upright on your own two feet.”

“Well, I don’t know if I’d call what you’re doing

upright

,” drawled Draco, managing to use the few inches’ advantage he had in height to look down his nose at her. “Being so close to the ground already. But it probably feels right at home, doesn’t it? The smell of the dirt?”

“That’s rich, coming from the only one of us who seems to have been rolling around in it,” said Ginny. Draco had taken a step closer to her. Ginny’s pulse raced, thrilled with the risk of it all.

“I’m impressed, Weasley,” he said. “I don’t think I’ve heard anyone in your family string two sentences together before now.”

“I’m surprised you can hear anything at all over the sound of your own self-importance.”

“Pity she’ll never know what it feels like to

be

important,” simpered Pansy, from further down the alley.

“Pansy,” Draco snapped, without breaking eye contact. He sneered again, curling his upper lip against his teeth. “She’s not worth the effort.” His gray eyes stayed locked on Ginny’s for a second longer before he stepped forward, pushing bodily through her and continuing down the alley, brushing sharply past Colin and Luna. Ginny pressed herself back against the building, giving the other Slytherins room to pass.

“What an arse,” she said, when her friends had caught up. “Let’s go home.”

“Can you believe the

nerve

of her?” Pansy was seething.

“I don’t know, Parkinson,” said Blaise. “I think she made some good points. If she wasn’t everything else that she is, I would’ve been impressed.”

“And she didn’t even see how ridiculous he looked when he slipped,” chimed in Theo.

Draco thought he might be more annoyed with his friends for taking Weasley’s side than he was secretly pleased that they’d been impressed by her wit.

“Sure,

we

all know that he’s an arrogant, clumsy git, but that doesn’t give

her

the right-”

“Hey,” bristled Draco.

“I mean that with love, of course,” said Pansy.

“Like hell.”

“You slid halfway down the street!” Theo was laughing again.

“I absolutely did not.”

“No, there’s no need to exaggerate,” said Blaise. “The three tries it took him to stand up is more than enough to make up for the mundanity of the landing.”

“I’m sorry, I think I might have to go back and go another round with Weasley, I think she was nicer,” said Draco, half-turning back towards the way they’d come.

“She didn’t see it,” said Theo.

“I’m sure she would’ve done worse if she had,” said Blaise, with the ghost of a smile. “Quick as curses, that tongue. What was it? ‘Only one of us has been rolling in dirt’?”

“No, the self-importance bit, that was the good one-”

Pansy snickered. “I don’t envy Thomas,” she said. Draco soured. “Or whichever poor sod has to put up with her next, Merlin knows she goes through them fast enough-”

Draco opened his mouth, feeling something dangerous rising in his chest, but Theo jumped in before he could say something he was sure to regret.

“I think Draco was holding back,” said Theo, “she had the upper hand the whole time, you could tell she was

enjoying

it-”

“I was

not

-”

“Oh, so that was the best you could do?” Pansy made a sympathetic face.

Draco threw his hands up. “I can’t win, can I?”

“Oh, please,” said Pansy. “You know none of us cares a jot for the blood-traitor. But you have to admit-”

“I certainly do

not

-”

“So

sensitive

, Draco.” Pansy nudged him, and Draco felt his heel slip out from under him, grabbing her shoulder for support.

Theo laughed so hard he slipped sideways into a snowbank.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

The Room of Requirement had long ago lost any sense of wonder Draco might once have held for it, but in the past few nights he had added to his resentment for his own failures a particular resentment towards the Room itself. Surely, he thought, a room apparently capable of manifesting anything its user desired at the drop of a hat could give him something useful for a change. He had certainly asked it to, both from within the Room of Hidden Things and from without; on Monday night, he had spent hours pacing the seventh floor corridor, demanding, asking, and nearly begging the Room to help him, trying every variation of ‘some way to fix the Cabinet’ or ‘something to help me fulfill my obligations’ and once, in a moment of frustration and weakness, ‘something to save my family’.The Room had offered up hundreds of options, each wildly different from the last; a vast Hall, filled with identical copies of the broken Vanishing Cabinet (connected, he found, only to each other, and each with the same flaws as the original); a completely empty broom cupboard; a nearly perfect imitation of Myrtle’s godforsaken bathroom, except for a stone wall covering the outside of the windows. One room had a second exit that had deposited him somewhere in the West Wing and promptly sealed itself back into the wall, leaving him to find his own way back. Another had been lined entirely with broken mirrors, making leaving the room again a nearly impossible task. There had been only two constants: the original Vanishing Cabinet had never made an appearance, and none of the rooms had been helpful in the slightest.The next night, he had returned, defeated, to the Room of Hidden Things, where the walls themselves seemed to mock him. Most Marvelous Magical Artifacts contained nearly two hundred pages of miniscule text and incomprehensible diagrams on the Vanishing Cabinet, and after slogging painstakingly through the first third of the section over seven agonizing hours, Draco was no closer to understanding the Cabinet than he was to marching into the Great Hall and standing atop the High Table to spout prophecy about grindylow culture.Actually, Draco thought he might be approaching the latter more quickly with every passing day.He could feel himself growing more paranoid, but not without cause- Potter had overheard him arguing with Crabbe on Sunday, at the first apparition lesson (the only interesting bit of which had been Susan Bones badly splinching herself, which Draco hadn’t even been able to enjoy as much as he normally would have), and Draco could practically feel the chosen one breathing down his neck at every turn. It was his own fault, really, for talking to Crabbe about anything publicly, but he hadn’t had another chance, and if anything his need for a consistent lookout had only been solidified by Potter’s obsessive interest in whatever Malfoy’s up to this time. It did complicate the issue of visiting Ginny, however, when he had to come up with excuses not to walk with Crabbe back to the dungeons. But it helped that it was Crabbe, who didn’t need believable excuses. And it helped that it was Ginny. Who was worth it.At breakfast on Thursday morning, it had taken Pansy seven tries to get Draco’s attention for long enough to pass her the pumpkin juice. He had managed to snatch a scant four hours of sleep the night before, after spending so long enlarging various pages of the blasted book- in what had felt at the time like a productive endeavor to get a better look at some of the simpler-looking diagrams, but which in the end hadn’t amounted to much greater understanding of how exactly they bore any relation to his Cabinet- that by the time he had thought to look at his watch, it was hours past when Gryffindor’s quidditch practice would have ended, and he had forfeited his chance to see Ginny. He felt strangely better rested than he had the rest of the week, but still driven to distraction by Weasley, whom he watched from across the Hall for any sign of a reaction to his absence the night before. He wasn’t sure what he was expecting, or hoping for- anger? Understanding? Indifference?- but she’d only glanced up at him once, and her expression hadn’t changed from the grin she’d been directing at Creevey.Draco only had one class on Thursdays, a double period of Defense in the morning, which meant he would have all afternoon and evening to spend in the Room of Hidden Things, if he could only make it through the last hour. Potter was watching him more closely than ever, now, but it was Professor Snape’s eyes that were boring through Draco’s skull throughout the entire lesson, his droning voice dripping with even more contempt than it usually did in a class with Gryffindor house. Draco wondered if something had happened. He hadn’t gotten any letters in the past few days. He hadn’t had any other botched assassination attempts, that he knew of. He wondered briefly if Crabbe had said anything during his remedial Potions lesson the night before, risking a probing glance to his left- but Crabbe was hard-pressed to speak in more than grunts in the best of circumstances, he thought with a faint mental sneer, and he had never been close with Snape, who was only continuing his private tutoring because Crabbe’s father had thrown a fit about it. Slughorn, apparently, was not to be trusted with his precious son’s education, never mind the fact that in six years the only thing Professor Snape had managed to teach Crabbe was to occasionally read the directions before blowing up his cauldron.Snape paused between slides, the room heavy with it, and Draco glowered steadfastly down at his parchment, the notes scratched on it few and far between. His eyes were dry and sore with lack of sleep, and diagrams of the thrice-damned Cabinet swam before them.Draco all but bolted from the classroom the very second class was ended, putting as many students and as many corridors between himself and his Head of House as possible before he could be cornered again. Crabbe could catch up later, if he bothered to remember that he was supposed to be keeping watch.The Cabinet now sat in the center of a small cleared space in the depths of the Room. At the start of term, Draco had been careful to maintain it’s overlooked appearance, and to conceal his books and notes amongst the rest of the junk, but as time went on, he found that he had gradually carved out a more permanent space for his work. An antique desk, one leg four centimeters shorter than the other three, but no longer engulfed in cobwebs and a thick coating of dust, had been appropriated to hold Draco’s spare parchment and books, along with several battered quills, and a self-refilling inkwell with a small crack which allowed a steady drip of self-refilling ink to produce a self-refilling puddle on the floor, which Draco periodically remembered to Vanish. The hundred and twelfth page of Most Marvelous ’s section on the Vanishing Cabinet, which Draco had enlarged and tacked to the back of a wardrobe that leaned on a nearby pile of discarded furniture, was filled almost entirely with a long string of Latin. Draco recognized a few sections of the spell- Charms, especially the theories, had never been his strong suit, but it seemed to be rooted with Revelio , and he recognized one clause from the diagnostic spell he had attempted earlier in the year.And nothing else had worked so far.There were wand movements outlined in the footnotes, and Draco studied the page for a moment before removing it from the wardrobe and stepping back to face the Cabinet.“ Incantamum revelio, ” he began, and was gratified with a slight shimmer around the Cabinet. “ Propalo stratum cantamen ex munus . Lucem haurire. Figura praetorvolo ut visi .”Slowly, he watched the shimmer begin to solidify, separating itself into distinct threads and shapes, encircling the Cabinet. His father had shown him the wards around the Manor once, two summers ago, when he had modified them to allow the Dark Lord and some of his inner circle to apparate directly onto the grounds. They had looked a little like this, lights drawn in the air, but in more uniform patterns, each spell knit into a veil draped overhead, layer upon layer of them, so that you couldn’t look at all of them at once and still make out the details of any one of them. This was a little clearer. There was only one pattern that wrapped around the entire Cabinet, that Draco could see- he thought this must be the binding spell he’d read about in his initial research, which forced all of the other enchantments to take effect on the whole cabinet, rather than only the area on which they were cast. Without an intact binding spell, anyone who used the Cabinet would be badly splinched. Other enchantments continued to reveal themselves to him as he chanted, looking back and forth between the words on the page and the wand movements in the footnotes, walking in a slow circle around the Cabinet. Some Draco recognized, in quick glances, from one or another of the diagrams from the book, while others he would need to take a longer look at once he had finished. Some, he realized, seemed distorted- he peered at the curve in one line that was fractured, leaking , really, in a way he didn’t know how to understand.The sigils began to dim, and Draco looked hurriedly back to the page for his next line, stepping forward as he did so, directly into the river of ink running from the desk, and slipping on the slick stone floor.He landed flat on his back. For a moment, he lay paralyzed and empty. His mouth opened, but his chest stilled; he couldn’t convince his body to gasp for the air that had escaped him. The ceiling swam above him, blurred in the hot tears that filled his eyes, and he watched the shimmering threads of magic made visible blink back into nothingness in the side of his vision.When he could breathe again, his lungs burning with it, he didn’t immediately stand. He remembered his father showing him the wards. It had been the summer after his fourth year. The summer that the Dark Lord had returned. In his mind’s eye, Lucius looked haggard, even then, but Draco thought this probably hadn’t been the case.“ It’s blood magic, ” he had said, pricking his finger with the fang of his walking stick and opening the wards with a few words. “ Built up over generations. My father and his father and his father before him. ” They were standing at the focal point of the wards- a marble obelisk in the courtyard that marked the center of the property- so Draco couldn’t see the walls that appeared to encircle the Manor, but he’d looked up to watch the crisscrossing dome grow visible over their heads. “ It’s your birthright, Draco, ” his father had told him. “ So pay attention. ”He had watched his father unravel five generations of protection spells and knit them back together again with exceptions. Old magic grew stronger with age, and these spells had spent a hundred years drawing power from the Malfoys, from every summoned sock, every extinguished candle, every scraped knee dripping blood into the earth and every spell that healed it, using it to tighten the knots and weld closed the gaps between them.He had watched his father hesitate, and act as though he hadn’t. He had watched his father grimace as he peeled back the layers of spells that had protected the Manor for so long that they had grown together into one thick mesh that splintered as it was ripped apart. He had felt the hair on his arms stand up with the crackle of magic that was released into the air, flowing out of the wards that couldn’t hold onto that much power once they’d been remade, tender and new and with deliberate chinks in the armor.Draco took a deep, shuddering breath. His family had made many sacrifices to attain their place of favor. He didn’t need to be reminded of that. But he couldn’t afford to be the one who let them down.He realized that he could see the ceiling clearly again, and at the same time that something wet was pooling around his ears and his hairline. Draco felt hollow, even though he could fill his lungs again. It was a feeling he was growing all too familiar with, one that he could never seem to part with for longer than a few hours at a time. He thought it might eventually grow to consume him.He needed, suddenly, to see her, needed more viscerally than he had ever needed anything before, needed in a way that bubbled up inside his chest and pulled . She had Quidditch practice. She wouldn’t be in Myrtle’s bathroom for another few hours, but he didn’t need to wait that long. Seeing her would be enough.The rush of wind in Ginny’s hair was almost enough to wipe out the rest of the day. She could feel it slipping away behind her as she ascended towards the goalposts, quaffle tucked under her arm; the new list of disappearances in that morning’s Prophet , the Potions essay she’d been assigned that morning, the unpleasant combination of concern and hurt that had settled in her chest since the night before, when she’d endured Myrtle’s bubbling mockery for nearly two hours before resigning herself to the fact that Draco wasn’t going to appear.None of it mattered in the air. Ginny rolled to avoid a bludger, dropping the quaffle neatly into Demelza’s arms below her, and shifted to the right to allow the other girl to rise to the lead position above her. There was only the smooth handle of her Cleansweep, warm under her palms. Dean’s practice robes fluttering up to her left. The quaffle, held securely between Demelza’s elbow and her ribs, two or three metres above and one ahead of Ginny. She kept her eyes trained on the ball, waiting for the moment when their formation would shift again- any second now-In the corner of her eye, something moved in the empty stands. Her head turned instinctively as her heart leapt to her throat. Gryffindors with nothing better to do sometimes turned out for weekend morning practices, or the occasional Sunday night, but weekdays were a closed pitch. There it was again- a flash of something dark- Death Eaters , thought Ginny, her knuckles tightening their grip on her broom as her knees went stiff, wishing desperately that she hadn’t left her wand in the locker room- and the lights of the pitch reflected off a shock of blond hair ducking under the staircase in the Slytherin section.Ginny blinked in surprise, and Dean swore from above her as the quaffle dropped past her left shoulder. She grabbed for it instinctively, her focus snapping back to the balance of each split second; her feet braced against her broom; her right hand on the grip ( three points of contact , came Charlie’s voice in the back of her head); her chest humming with the thrill of open air between her body and her broomstick as she threw herself sideways to follow her outstretched arm; the world tilted in exactly the ways it was meant to as her fingertips found the quaffle and she righted herself underneath it. When she looked back towards the stands, Draco was gone.“Sorry, sorry,” Dean was saying, drifting towards her as Ginny made a sweeping turn back towards her fellow chasers. “It was a good pass, Demelza, my hand just slipped.”“Good save, Ginny,” said Harry, flashing her a small smile from under what Ron and Ginny sometimes referred to as his ‘Professor Potter’ voice- the serious demeanor he adopted at Quidditch practices and DA meetings. Ginny grinned back at him. “Let’s run it again.”They ran the formation again. And again, until their transitions were smoother, and their spacing was consistent, and Ginny thought she could predict whether Demelza would drop the quaffle to her or toss it to Dean on the left based on the position of her boots on the brackets of her Comet 260.“Alright, team, I think that’s enough for tonight,” called Harry from the end of the pitch. “Jimmy, Ritchie, I want to work on that last exchange next time, I know the match isn’t for another month, but Hufflepuff’s beaters are no joke. Good work, everyone, really,” he said, looking at Ginny.She landed next to the crate of practice balls. “I can pack up,” she offered, when Harry had dismounted next to her. He raised his eyebrows.“It’s really not your job,” he said.“I’d like a few minutes to myself,” she admitted. His brow furrowed slightly.“Is everything okay?”“Well, you see, the longer I stay out here, the longer I can put off working on the essay McGonagall wants for tomorrow,” said Ginny wryly.“Oh, well, if it’s McGonagall you’re avoiding,” he said, “that’s completely understandable.”“I think by the time we actually take our O.W.L.s, we’ll all be so worn out from studying for them that it won’t make any difference.”“I remember,” said Harry, laughing. “Just don’t let Hermione hear you saying things like that. Last year, she made us schedules. Down to the minute, some days.”Ginny snorted. “Ron was mental over it,” she said. “All he could talk about when he got his results over the summer was how ‘see, I was right all along, I did just fine without any ridiculous schedule’, as if I didn’t watch him follow it obsessively for four months whenever he thought Hermione wouldn’t notice.”“Well, if you think it’ll help, you’re welcome to mine,” said Harry. “I’m sure I still have it somewhere.”“If I think I need it, I’ll ask Hermione myself,” said Ginny. “I’m not the one who can’t admit that she’s right about these kinds of things.”“I know,” said Harry. He picked up his broom. “Well, if you’re going to take care of this, I’ll catch up with the others,” he said. “I wouldn’t want to interfere with your getting some space. I know what it’s like to need that.”“I know,” said Ginny. “Thanks.” Harry smiled at her.“You really did play well today,” he said, his eyes lit up, almost all hint of his professorial tone gone. “That catch was fantastic, really. I was impressed.”“I know,” said Ginny again, with a broad grin. “Thanks.”“Don’t stay out here too late,” he said, starting back towards the locker rooms. “If you think McGonagall is bad now...”Ginny laughed, waving in acknowledgement before she turned to strap in the quaffle. There was a funny warmth in her chest. She didn’t still think about Harry the way she had when she was eleven- in fact, she hoped she wouldn’t feel that obsessively about anyone ever again- but it wasn’t hard to understand what first-year Ginny had seen in him. He had a way of making people feel drawn to him that was independent of his Chosen One title. He noticed people in the ways that made them want to be noticed again. It felt good. It felt safe, in a way that not much else did.Both bludgers and the snitch still had free reign over the pitch, but Ginny didn’t immediately start after them once Harry had disappeared up towards the castle.“Malfoy?” she called, cautiously, in case Harry hadn’t gone as far as she’d thought, or someone else in the team had turned back- and then, feeling silly, “Draco?”Maybe she’d been wrong. Maybe she’d imagined it. Or it hadn’t been him.A figure emerged from under the stands, a little ways away, walking towards her with none of his usual strut.“Hey,” said Draco, when he got close enough. His robes were wrinkled, and his eyes were puffy above the dark circles, but he smiled at her. “Are you alright?”Something in his face faltered. “I just needed to see you.”“Well,” said Ginny, carefully, “I’m here.”“I- I wanted to apologize,” he started, a bit stiffly, “for last night.”“It’s fine,” said Ginny briskly, waving a hand. It didn’t quite alleviate the lingering fears of the night before. But she felt a little lighter, all the same. “It happens.” Draco didn’t look placated, but some of the tension left his shoulders. “Are you here to help me catch these bludgers, or are you just going to watch?” Draco smirked. “Before you answer, it’s my personal opinion that you’ve done more than enough watching today. You’re lucky we don’t have another match against Slytherin this term, or I’d have to turn you in for spying.”“I wasn’t watching for them,” said Draco, feigning offense. “I was watching for you . We can beat Gryffindor any day without resorting to cheating.”“So, the constant cheating is just for fun?”“Exactly.”“And you could beat us without playing dirty, even though you’ve been losing to us for five years without having played a single clean game the whole time.”“Right.”Ginny laughed. “Glad we cleared that up. I’ll be sure to let everyone know, if Slytherin ever decides to stop trying to cheat, that’s when we should be worried.”“I think if Urquhart had seen this practice, he would have stopped trying to play ,” said Draco.Ginny raised an eyebrow. “He’s been chasing since he was nine years old, and I’ve never seen him even attempt a save like the one you pulled. I think he might fall off his broom just from considering it.”“I wouldn’t have had to make that save if you hadn’t distracted me,” said Ginny, but she was grinning again, just remembering how it had felt. To give everything she had without having to think about it. To be so in control. To try something crazy, and for it to work .“That’s not a good argument,” said Draco. “It was Thomas who dropped the quaffle. Besides, I’m going to distract you more often if it means getting to witness stunts like that.”“Good players don’t need stunts,” Ginny pointed out, just to be contrary. “I could have caught it if I’d noticed in time that he was going to miss the pass.”“It wouldn’t have been as impressive, though.”“It wouldn’t have been as flashy ,” Ginny corrected.“For fuck’s sake, Weasley, take the compliment,” said Draco. Ginny smirked. “I have to get those bludgers,” she said, instead of responding. She tossed him one of the beater’s bats that leaned against the crate. “Are you helping?”Draco spun the bat in his hand, eyeing her Cleansweep distastefully. “You’ll never catch anything on that mop,” he challenged.“It’s not all about the broom, Malfoy. You of all people should know that.”“Why me, of all people?”“I seem to remember you saying something disparaging about Urquhart, just a minute ago,” said Ginny, confidence rising in her chest. “That broom he’s going to fall off of, isn’t it the latest Nimbus?”“Well-”Ginny was kicking off from the ground before Draco could finish, swinging the bat experimentally from her right hand. She’d never beaten at Hogwarts- only over the summers, on the rare occasion that her Dad was willing to spend an afternoon putting up containment spells around the orchard so that they could play with the bludgers. But she’d handled these bludgers often enough. They were faster than the ones at home, but their aim was better, too, which would work in her favor, this time. She circled the pitch until she had one of them on her tail, and dove, levelling her trusty Cleansweep steadily towards the ground. That was Urquhart’s problem, she reflected. Expecting the broom to do all the work for him just because it had a few extra stabilizing spells. Ginny spun a few feet from the ground to face the bludger, bracing herself with her knees and swinging the bat with both hands, connecting solidly with the ball with a crack that rang through the empty pitch and sending the bludger skimming across the field towards Draco. She watched him calculate, adjusting his grip on the bat. It was moving too fast to be tackled without breaking any ribs, and when it was close enough, she watched him slam it towards the ground, his grip clumsy but his swing forceful and straight. The bludger hit the ground and shot straight up into the air, and Ginny sped across the pitch, digging her heels into the turf to stop directly under it. “You’d better get this, Malfoy, because last time we used this tactic-”The bludger plunged towards her. Ginny rolled out of the way, and Draco dove on top of the ball with a soft grunt, using its own momentum to pin it to the grass.“What happened last time?” he panted, clutching it to his chest as she dismounted and snapped open the latch in the crate.“Coote broke an ankle,” she said. “Jimmy didn’t pin it down in time, and it hit him on the upswing. We usually go for slowing them down and catching them, not using each other as bait.”Draco secured the bludger in the crate and shrugged. “It’s faster.”“Not if you include the trip to the Hospital Wing.”“Alright, it’s faster if you’re competent ,” Draco allowed.Ginny rolled her eyes, but they secured the second bludger the same way, Draco wincing a little as the ball strained against his clutches.“You’re not hurt?”He shook his head. “Just a little winded.”“Well, you can catch your breath while I get the snitch,” said Ginny, turning to scan the pitch for it.“Not a chance,” said Draco.“Draco, you’ve seen me catch a snitch before,” she pointed out. “I was the reserve Seeker for a year.”“I’ll race you for it,” he clarified, his eyes glinting with the challenge. “My broom’s in the locker room.”“I mean, if you really think your ego can handle it,” said Ginny. Draco scoffed.“Don’t worry about me. You’ve been begging all night to be taken down a peg. Do you want a head start?”“And catch it before you get back? It’s no fun if I don’t get to see the look on your face.”“Have it your way,” said Draco. He went and retrieved his Nimbus. “This is what a real broom looks like, by the way,” he said when he got back. “In case you needed a reminder.”“This is the broom I won the Quidditch Cup with last year,” said Ginny evenly. “In case you needed a reminder.”They kicked off from the ground. Draco went up, circling the upper limit of the pitch; when Ginny looked, he was racing in wide circles and figure eights, clearly showing off. She rolled her eyes, scanning the arena slowly, circling progressively higher. Draco, above her, had settled into a smooth lap, though he still sped up whenever the crossed paths. It was easier without thirteen other people on the field, without bludgers hounding her or a thousand students jumping up and down in the stands. It was only a few minutes before she saw it; a flutter of golden wings halfway down one of the goal posts. She risked a glance up at Draco. He hadn’t seen it yet, but he was closer, and would notice if she abruptly changed course. She drifted around the opposite goal posts. The snitch was moving again, out towards the center of the pitch, and she saw Draco see it at the same moment she changed her course. She was level with it now, and he was still diving. The snitch flitted off to the left, and Ginny lost a second in following- whatever she told Draco, the Cleansweep really wasn’t a broom for Seeking. The maneuverability wasn’t sensitive enough for the hairpin turns. Still, she was gaining; Draco’s broom was nimbler, but his reflexes weren’t, and the snitch was fleeing in a straight line now, back across the length of the pitch, and this was where a Cleansweep with a steady hand could outpace even Harry’s Firebolt on an off day. They were shoulder to shoulder now, Draco catching up on her right and knocking into her, focusing on throwing her balance off instead of on maintaining his own. Ginny grinned at him as his speed stagnated, the Nimbus keeping pace with her but not pulling ahead. She ducked her head and adjusted her grip, her knees, leaning forward and lower against the broom, feeling the Cleansweep respond to the lessened wind resistance. She pulled ahead by an inch.“Weasley,” Draco growled from her right, sounding more impressed than angry. He jerked into her again, his shoulder hitting hers, and the Cleansweep shuddered, but didn’t give up that inch.“I hate to say ‘I told you so’,” said Ginny, her eyes locked onto the snitch that was only a few feet in front of them now. “But…”They both reached out; Draco’s arm was longer, but not by much, and Ginny was pulling ahead by two inches now, the snitch just out of their grasp as they each struggled to knock the other’s hand out of the way. 
“You won’t have to,” said Draco, shouldering her again. The Cleansweep pulled another inch ahead. The wings of the snitch brushed Ginny’s fingertips, and then it spun abruptly to the left. The Nimbus followed; the Cleansweep didn't, and Ginny felt her broom slip out from under her as Draco slammed bodily against her, and they both tumbled into the grass.

“I would’ve had it in another second,” said Ginny, almost before she could breathe again.

“Maybe,” said Draco, from where he lay across her, “but you didn’t.”

“If something’s happened to my broom because you couldn’t stop yourself from crashing into me-” Ginny started.

“You mean because you couldn’t make a simple turn?” Draco shifted above her, smirking.

“For the love of Merlin’s sagging left-”

“

Language

, Weasley,” said Draco, and he kissed her.

“We still- have to get the snitch,” said Ginny, wrapping her arms around his neck. “Eventually.”

“I have never-

never

- cared less about a snitch,” said Draco.

“And my broom-”

“Weasley, if there’s a single scratch on your mop, I will personally buy you twelve new ones. I will rebuild it out of twigs from the forbidden forest. I will break into the Ministry, steal a time-turner, go back in time to before you scratched it, and bring it back good as new.

Later

.”

Ginny kissed him.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

On Friday morning, Colin opened the

Prophet

to a personal ads section that was entirely mundane.

“Eleanor Gillespie is looking for someone to look after her collection of Stinging Spider Lilies while she’s on holiday in Wales,” he said.

“You’re joking,” said Ginny. Colin shook his head. “What,

nothing’s

happened?”

“This is the first time in a month and a half,” said Colin.

“Nothing new. That’s a miracle,” said Ginny.

“Not nothing new,” said Colin. “Nothing at all. The regular ones are gone, too.”

“The one from that family in Bristol? That’s been run every day this week.”

“Gone.”

“...Maybe they found her,” said Ginny, with a growing measure of apprehension.

“Daddy said this would happen,” said Luna. “It’s a cover up, obviously.”

“You know, Luna, I think your dad might actually be right about this one,” said Colin grimly.

“The Ministry never wanted to believe You-Know-Who was back, anyway. I imagine it wasn’t hard to convince them not to report on it.”

“But they

know

now,” said Ginny. “We were there. Fudge was there. Merlin’s pants, Scrimagour’s an ex-auror, he

knows

.”

Luna shrugged. “Maybe the

Prophet’s

been infiltrated.”

“Or he doesn’t want people panicking,” said Colin. “Wants us to think he’s doing something about it all.”

“Which of course means that he’s not,” said Ginny.

“Exactly.”

Draco was waiting for her when Ginny made her way to Myrtle’s bathroom that night, leaning back against the stone wall behind the sinks. He opened his eyes when the door closed behind her, offering a wan smile.

“I wasn’t sure you would be here,” said Ginny, cautiously. Their meeting on the Quidditch pitch the night before had been fun, certainly- Ginny had held it in her mind all day, using it to shut out a plethora of more troubling thoughts- but it had also been a break from the routine they’d fallen into. As had Draco’s absence a few days earlier.

Draco exhaled heavily. “I’m here,” he said, meeting her eyes.

Ginny dropped her bag under the sinks and slid down to the floor next to him. “What happened?”

Draco huffed. “Why?” he asked, with a ghost of a sneer. “Were you

worried

?”

“Yeah, I was, Draco,” she said pointedly, with a twinge of guilt. Her first instinct had been more fear than concern. Fear that he had changed his mind, or grown tired of her, or that it had all been a trick; that he’d been using her, and she had been too naive to realize,

again

-

“I apologize,” he said, his tone loosening again. “I didn’t mean to worry you.”

“It’s alright,” said Ginny, positive she was trying to convince herself. After all, they’d never made any spoken arrangement, and it was foolish to worry that just because she was alone for a few hours that something bad would happen for which she was responsible. She had control over her actions now, she reminded herself, hating that she needed reminding. She would know if she didn’t. “I just wish-” she stopped. “You can tell me what’s going on, you know,” she said instead. “Merlin knows I’ve put enough of my problems on you.”

Draco shook his head. “You don’t want to know, Ginny.”

Ginny wasn’t sure if it was the tone of his voice, or the way he used her name, or if she’d known he was right before he’d said anything at all, but she believed him.

“Well, I’m here, too,” she said, finally. “If you need…” she trailed off, not sure what he might need that she could do anything about. He didn’t want to tell her what was going on, which could almost only mean it was something to do with Voldemort. Something she couldn’t know because of who she was and because of who he was. She could hope that she was wrong, but doing so would be to hope that, after months of doing whatever it was that they were doing, he still didn’t trust her.

Ginny hated herself for not knowing which felt worse. She knew which was worse.

“I know,” said Draco. “I-” he looked away. “That means more to me than you know,” he said. He opened his arm, and Ginny leaned into him, allowing him to pull her close to his chest, where the hard lines of his ribcage pressed into her side through his robes. She looked up at him, examining him more closely than she had for a few weeks. The only places she ever saw him in close quarters were after nightfall, and the poor lighting of the bathroom made it easy to overlook things. He looked gaunter than she thought of him as being, she realized. His face was pointier than usual, his cheekbones protruding in a way that almost would have been elegant if it wasn’t also so worrying. He had always been pale, but in the way of refined marble- his skin now was waxy, colorless, except for the deep indigo thumbprints pressed under each of his eyes.

Something a little like loneliness pulled at her chest, and Ginny burrowed closer to him, feeling his arm tighten securely around her.

you shoudn’t be here,

said a soft, traitorous voice in the back of her head.

you know what he is. you know why he can’t tell you.

I don’t

know

,

Ginny thought back, uselessly, lying.

I think he needs me,

she tried instead. She searched for something better, something defensible, something that justified the sneaking around and the lying to her friends and the way she shouldn’t feel about Draco Malfoy, and all she found was that familiar emptiness that Tom Riddle had left behind him. The emptiness that hadn’t been filled by anything or anyone since. The one her friends couldn’t possibly understand, that fueled all of her most self-sacrificing tendencies by reminding her, constantly, that she wasn’t

good

like the others, not enough, not without trying.

I need him.

“Your boyfriend’s been following me around again,” Draco said, finally, testing the waters and being rewarded for opening up with a tiny release of the tightness in his chest. Ginny was snuggled up against his side, soft and warm and

there

, in his arms, and he felt deceptively safe.

“Boyfriend? Oh. Harry?” she asked. Draco nodded.

“Snape too,” he added. “It’s exhausting.”

She didn’t say anything, waiting, he was sure, for him to elaborate, to give her any information at all, but he couldn’t do that. He turned her hand over, in his own, instead, rubbing his thumb under the edge of her sleeve, along the velvety skin of her inner wrist.

“It just feels like everyone has expectations for me that I can’t meet,” he said, choking on the words. He had promised himself he wasn’t going to do this. He hadn’t even admitted to himself the growing fear that maybe he just wasn’t good enough, no matter how hard he tried. “But I have to,” he said, collecting himself with a breath. “I don’t have a choice.”

“Everyone has choices,” said Ginny, her voice low. Draco looked away.

“Not the right ones.”

He walked her back to the Tower, despite her protestations.

“You know, I’m perfectly capable of finding my own way to bed,” said Ginny, though she’d slowed to walk beside Draco once she’d realized he had no intention of turning around.

“I know,” he said, uncharacteristically gentle. Ginny shot him a quizzical glance, but he wasn’t looking at her.

“I mean, I would understand if

you

needed help finding your way home,” she continued, mildly concerned by her inability to draw out a reaction from him. “Or maybe you’re used to friends who need a personal escort in order to navigate the castle without injuring themselves? I did see Nott walk directly into a door frame last week in the East Wing.”

Draco smirked. “I do trust that your sense of direction is better than Nott’s,” he said.

“Which isn’t saying much.”

“No,” he agreed.

“So here we are.”

“You’re right,” said Draco, a little tersely. “I couldn’t possibly just want to spend time with you.”

“No,” agreed Ginny, one corner of her mouth tugging involuntarily upwards. “That’s not the Draco Malfoy I know. There’s got to be an insult coming, or at least an ulterior motive-”

She stopped talking abruptly, listening for the footsteps she thought she’d heard coming from around the corner. For a moment, there was nothing, and then-

Draco pulled her out of the center of the corridor, squeezing past a gargoyle into the shadows of a narrow alcove. His hand still gripped her arm even once they were pressed together in the tight space.

“Not that there’s anything wrong with the occasional ulterior motive, of course,” Ginny murmured, listening to the footsteps with the part of her brain that wasn’t attuned to Draco’s breath on her face. The tread was too even to be Filch. More than likely it was a prefect, but whoever it was didn’t slow as they passed Draco and Ginny’s hiding spot. Ginny exhaled softly as the footsteps turned the corner and faded into the distance. Draco hadn’t released her arm.

He could barely see her, only a silhouette, really, but he would have felt her there even if he had been completely blind. Not because of his hand on her arm, or where her shoulder pinned his bicep to the wall, but because of something radiating off of her that made his spine feel something that spread outwards along his back and arms and made the hair stand up on the back of his neck, the way it felt when too much magic would build up in a classroom just before some Gryffindor’s spell went explosively wrong.

Draco found her hip with his other hand. “Stay,” he said, the word slipping from his lips almost before he had thought it, though Ginny hadn’t moved to do otherwise. He kissed her before she could question him, feeling her breath hitch against his mouth as he buried his hands in her sides, freeing her arms to wrap around his neck as he took the half-step he could manage in the cramped alcove to press her against the curved stone wall. Her fingers were in his hair. Their knees knocked together as they made space for each other’s feet without stopping to watch what they were doing. Ginny’s fingers ghosted their way along his face, her thumb grazing his jaw on its way to his shoulder, and Draco felt that itch floating down his spine again, accompanied by a sudden and somehow impossibly dense emptiness in his chest.

He could feel her slipping away from him even as she pulled him closer to her. Time was rushing past him, and he was floundering to keep up, lunging for her at every chance in the same way he gasped for air, knowing that the currents would pull him under before he could fill his lungs. He could see the end coming. Every day dragged him more quickly towards the moment when he wouldn’t resurface at all.

He was clutching fistfuls of her robes, now, and Draco forced himself to release his fingers, to step back, to breathe before he gave too much of himself away.

“Well,” said Ginny, a little breathlessly, a smirk skirting the edges of her voice. Draco was glad to not have to meet her eyes in the darkness. He could feel his face twisting in ways he could neither control nor bear for her to see.

“I trust you can find the rest of the way on your own?” His voice was hoarse, too much so to be attributed solely to the recent lack of air, and he could only hope she wouldn’t notice.

“Most likely,” said Ginny, wryly.

“I won’t see you this weekend,” he heard himself say. It needed to be said. “I have to catch up on some homework.”

She brought one hand up to his cheek, the pad of her thumb finding the tender skin under his eye, bruised with exhaustion. In the sanctuary of darkness, Draco allowed himself to close his eyes and lean into her touch.

“Also on sleep,” she said. Draco made a wordless noise of assent. “Thank you for the escort,” she added, almost sincerely, he thought.

“Anytime.”

He could feel her hesitate, her fingers lingering on his cheek, but only briefly. She exhaled, her breath warm on his throat, and then a brush of fabric against stone. His face was cold where her hand had rested, and when he opened his eyes, he was alone.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Draco did not spend the weekend catching up on sleep.

On Friday night, he returned to the Room of Hidden Things, and didn’t emerge until Saturday evening, when he returned to the dungeons with a dull, oozing sort of headache, and limbs buzzing with exhaustion. He avoided meeting Pansy’s eyes across their table while he slogged through a Potions essay that should have come easily to him.

He slept in his own bed that night, staggering down the corridor after Blaise at two in the morning and passing out with his completed essay still clutched in his hands.

He woke up to a dark dormitory and the striking certainty that he was late for something important. Draco rolled over and fumbled for his watch on the bedside table, wincing at the crunch of parchment under his hip as he squinted at the crystal face, waiting for the hands to resolve into something that made sense. It was seven minutes past eight in the morning.

He released a resigned sigh and rolled off of his essay, smoothing the parchment against his blankets before dropping it in the direction of his school bag. He was awake, now, no point in trying to be otherwise. It was too early to start work on the Cabinet. His friends would have questions if he was missing this early, and in any case, he didn’t want to. He pushed that thought aside as quickly as it had come, and pulled his Charms book from where it had wedged itself between his trunk and his bedframe. Flitwick had given them a reading for Monday, and Draco had been putting it off.

He felt the disaster that had been his diagnostic incantation on Thursday had been quite enough Charms for the time being, but didn’t think Flitwick was likely to feel the same way, so he closed the door to the dormitory softly behind him and padded down the corridor to the common room in mismatched socks and the robes he’d been wearing the night before.

“You’re up early,” said Pansy, jolting Draco out of a Charms-induced stupor. He blinked at the page he’d been staring at to confirm that he hadn’t managed to read any of it, and then turned around to squint at the large grandfather clock on the opposite wall. The lamps around him had brightened at some point in the previous hour and a half without him noticing.

“Not that early.”

“Early for Sunday morning.”

Draco shrugged in response. “Flitwick assigned forty pages for tomorrow.”

“And you missed apparition lessons yesterday,” she added, with a note of triumph that didn’t quite manage to offset the questioning look in her eyes.

Dragon dung

, cursed Draco, keeping his expression even. “I had work to do,” he said blandly, looking back down at his textbook and turning the next page. “I won’t be able to take the test until this summer, in any case.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Draco saw Pansy open her mouth, but she closed it again, and Nott appeared in front of him a moment later, rubbing sleep out of his eyes.

“Morning,” said Theo, yawning widely. He dropped inelegantly across the arms of one of the high-backed chairs across the table from Draco, idly tracing the patterned upholstery with one finger.

“Nott,” replied Draco, with a slight nod.

“It is, actually,” quipped Theo, smirking at him. He made a poor attempt of straightening himself in his chair, craning to get a better look at Draco’s book. “Is that the Charms?”

“What it is is a waste of time,” said Pansy, seating herself at the head of the table.

“Oh. Herbology?” guessed Theo. Pansy glared at him and tapped her wand twice on the edge of the table, triggering the enchantment that brought all of the chairs back into place. Draco straightened up as his chair slid a few inches forward; Theo scrambled to avoid having any limbs or fingers pinched between his chair’s wooden armrests and the edge of the table.

“No, it’s

Charms

, dung brains,” she snapped. “For the hundredth time, just because

you

can’t tell a Devil’s Snare from a dandelion-”

“Not that I’ve ever

needed

to,”

“Not

yet

,” said Pansy, nastily enough to sound like an explicit threat rather than an implied one. Theo swallowed.

“Breakfast?” Asked Blaise, emerging from the dormitories looking distinctly more put together than Draco thought someone who had gotten only an hour more sleep than he’d gotten had any right to look.

“Let me put this away,” said Draco, closing his Charms book with some relief. At least he’d looked at it, he reasoned, walking back down the tunnel towards his room, which was better than nothing, even if he hadn’t gotten anything out of it. He set the book on top of his trunk in a neat stack with its compatriots and took a moment to straighten his hair and robes in the mirror that hung next to the door. Short of a glamour charm, there was nothing he could do about the bags under his eyes, except to overpower them with a glare in the direction of anyone who looked his way. He narrowed his eyes in the glass and felt a little better.

“–even more than usual,” Pansy was saying in a low voice, all of the usual performative airs gone from her tone.

“No, I’ve noticed,” said Blaise. “I fear that he’s–”

Theo cleared his throat, and the pair fell silent, turning towards Draco in the doorway with a studied casualty. He felt a trace of bitterness bubble defensively inside of him, too slowly and too far below the surface to trigger a poorly thought out response. It wasn’t worth it to lash out, though he couldn’t imagine another time when he might have heard his friends talking about him behind his back and allowed it to be overlooked.

“Do I have something on my face?” He said sourly. He could hardly pretend not to have noticed that they’d all turned to look at him, but he could react to that action without necessarily having heard the conversation he’d rather they keep to themselves. “I thought we were leaving.”

“We were waiting for

you

, Malfoy,” said Pansy, picking up her snide tone again with apparent relief. The other Slytherins wouldn’t want a direct confrontation any more than he did, which suited Draco just fine.

“Next time we’ll be sure not to,” added Blaise.

The Great Hall was empty enough that Draco could tell without making any special effort that Ginny was not present; the Weasley’s hair was impossible to miss even in only his peripheral vision. Professor Snape, however, was in his seat at the high table, practically motionless, his eyes boring through Draco. He’d been avoiding the man for weeks now, and itched under his gaze. This can’t go on much longer, Draco thought, the desperation he would normally have felt dampened somewhat by the physical exhaustion that permeated every part of him now during his waking hours.

He was right; as he followed Pansy back towards the dungeons, mulling over the advantages of a nap before he continued his homework, a hand fell upon his shoulder with a firm grip that left no room for arguments or excuses.

“A moment of your time, Draco, if you please,” Snape said smoothly.

“I won’t be long,” he told the others loftily, a pit of dread settling in his stomach.

Snape led him down a side-stair and through the length of the clammy corridor that led to his office without releasing Draco’s shoulder. Draco shook him off as the professor turned to close the door behind them.

“What do you want?” He demanded, the sound of his own voice detestably brittle in his ears. “I’m doing everything I can. The Dark Lord will just have to wait,” he added hastily, mustering an arrogance he didn’t feel in hopes of making up for the previous statement. True as it was, he didn’t want to give the Potions Master an opening.

Snape raised an eyebrow coldly, and Draco forced himself to ignore the less frigid emotion in the man’s eyes.

“The Dark Lord is not particularly known for his patience,” he said simply.

“Well, that’s not my fault,” snapped Draco.

“I didn’t say that it was.”

“Then why–” Draco cut himself off, breathing sharply and directing his gaze to a jar on a shelf behind Snape’s left shoulder. “Is there something you wanted, Professor?” He asked flatly.

“I want only what I have wanted all year, Draco, which is to offer my assistance,” he said. A muscle twitched in his jaw, and Draco’s eyes flicked involuntarily to his godfather’s face and back again. “And perhaps for you to

look at me when I am speaking to you

.”

Draco flinched, his eyes returning to Professor Snape’s, which were full of something that felt sickeningly like pity. “Yes, sir,” he sneered, straightening his shoulders to meet Snape’s gaze defiantly. Snape sighed testily, pinching the bridge of his nose between his eyebrows before turning back to Draco.

“Sit,” he said, gesturing to the chair in front of his desk.

“I’d rather not.”

“As you wish.” He took his own seat, giving up his height advantage and putting Draco in a position to look down on his professor. “Draco, whatever you might think, I do not wish to see harm come to you,” he began.

“You already told me about the Unbreakable vow,” said Draco, “and I think I told you what you could do with it–”

Snape held up a hand, and Draco fell silent out of habit.

“Yes. I made a promise to your mother. I am not speaking of that now, though you should know that Narcissa and I had already reached an understanding, and both felt that the Vow was unnecessary, but your aunt–”

“Knows that you’re a slimy traitorous half-blood who can’t be trusted no matter what He thinks?” Put in Draco.

The Potions Master lunged to his feet, leaning across the desk to loom over Draco, who braced himself to be shouted at– but Snape’s next words were hushed, almost hurried, such a departure from the measured and icy tone Draco had grown to expect that he was momentarily stunned.

“Draco, this responsibility never should have fallen to you,” he said, speaking very quickly. “I fought to take it on myself, even the most loyal of the Dark Lord’s followers were shocked that He would put so much on your shoulders, the only person who saw this assignment as a badge of honor and not a torturous burden was your Aunt Bellatrix, because

you are a child

. It is not a personal failing to struggle with tasks that grown men and the Dark Lord himself have been unable to accomplish. It is not-” he paused for a breath, and Draco thought he would collect himself, but he continued on, increasing in urgency. “It is not

your fault

. You were given this responsibility with the expectation that you would fail, so that you could be punished for it, so that your father could be punished for it,” he said. “You are young, Draco, and you should have been given a choice. But if you would let me

help

you, you would see, I can protect you, I can–”

“You can what?” Draco interrupted, shaking from something that felt like anger but wasn’t. “I don’t believe you,” he lied, “and I’m not a child, I’m nearly of age–”

“Draco–”

“No,” he said, his voice rising in pitch as he struggled to keep from choking on it. “No, I won’t let you take this from me. Even if– if you were telling the truth, what would your help accomplish? Other than to make sure that I couldn’t do this on my own, to ensure that I

do

fail, that my family is punished because

you

couldn’t stand not being the center of attention!”

“Draco, you

cannot

do this on your own,” Snape said, “nobody expects you to succeed, not even the Dark Lord–”

“Good!” Shouted Draco, trembling, “Because I’m going to, you’ll see, and when I do, when I redeem myself without your

meddling

, the Dark Lord–”

There was a crack from one side of the desk, and a knobby house-elf wearing a neatly pressed tea-towel as a tunic appeared, carrying a silver tray almost too large for its overgrown fingers.

“Winky has Professor Snape’s tea,” the creature squeaked, and Draco took the opportunity to turn on his heel and slam his way out of the tiny office. Professor Snape’s words echoed in his head.

Nobody expects you to succeed.

And he had

known

, hadn’t he, that he was being set up to fail. Hearing it out loud– well, he was still shaking, his breath rattling in his chest, walking too quickly to give himself a chance to recover. He thought if he slowed down he might collapse entirely, which wouldn’t do anybody any good. But it didn’t change anything. The consequences of failure remained unchanged, whether or not the consequences were the point. He had known all along that he didn’t have a choice.

His Charms reading felt distinctly unimportant. He had nearly reached the common room, where his friends were surely waiting for him, maybe talking about him again, as if they thought he hadn’t noticed that he wasn’t sleeping. He turned his stride towards the Room of Hidden Things instead.

The weeks passed slowly. Draco managed, after several days spent emerging only for classes, meetings in Moaning Myrtle’s bathroom, and the occasional meal, to reliably hold the diagnostic charm, and began working away at deciphering the layered enchantments. He attended the apparition lessons, and despite the growing weight of his limbs and Pansy’s ever-present stare, managed not to splinch himself the first time he apparated from one hoop to the other, though he still hadn’t been able to give a repeat performance.

Draco had had a headache for five days in a row when he discovered that his stock of low-dose vials of bright orange pain potions had replenished itself; he didn’t question it, even to discover whether his mysterious benefactor– he suspected Pansy– had used a mail-order system or had sought the help of their Head of House. He lived on pain potions and tea for an entire weekend until the throbbing in his temples had subsided to a low buzz.

On Wednesday night, the headache returned in full force. He was on the floor of Myrtle’s bathroom, leaning shoulder to shoulder with Ginny in one corner, both of them doing homework on their intertwined legs. Almost the only schoolwork Draco did anymore was on the days when Ginny decided she needed to use their time together to catch up on her own studies, and while Draco had expected to feel slighted by the idea that she would spend their time together paying no attention to him, he had come to enjoy those evenings almost more than the others. He grudgingly appreciated the opportunity to catch up with his own workload, but more than that, he enjoyed that they could fall into this kind of companionable silence, broken only by the scratching of quills and the occasional short conversation about whatever he or Ginny happened to be working on. He didn’t know how to describe how it felt, even to himself.

A lock of hair escaped the knot on top of Ginny’s head, falling into her face, and Draco reached to tuck it behind her ear almost without thinking about it. He brushed the freckles splashed across her cheek, her skin warm under his fingertips. She grinned up at him, and Draco let his fingertips linger until she turned back to her parchment, something warm in his chest.

It was both easier and more comfortable than it should have been. It was the smallest and brightest of escapes from the waking nightmare that consumed him the rest of the time. His head throbbed.

“You seem distracted,” Ginny said, when enough time had passed for her to have worked through another four problem sets for Ancient Runes and Draco had yet to turn the page of his textbook.

“Mm,” said Draco.

“That page giving you a lot of trouble?”

“Mmhm.”

“I heard a lot of purebloods never learn to read, and they just coast by on reputation,” said Ginny.

“Mm, yeah,” said Draco.

“I got lonely over the weekend, so I found a nice hippogriff to talk to. We had a swell time. The wedding’s in May.”

“Uh huh.”

“It’s funny, I didn’t think we’d have anything in common, but he’s much better at Quidditch than you are. The wings help. The talons, not so much, but he makes a fine Keeper as long as he’s careful not to scratch anyone. We were hoping you’d agree to be a groomsman along with Ron and Harry.”

Draco blinked. “I’m sorry, did I miss something?”

“Not at all,” said Ginny cheerfully. “Where’d you go off to?”

“Nowhere,” said Draco. “I’ve just got this horrible headache, that’s all.”

“Oh, I feel a little bad for teasing you, now.”

“I can’t believe you would do such a thing.”

“Because I’m so sweet and unthreatening?” Ginny widened her eyes and blinked innocently.

“No, I mean I don’t believe you’d feel bad about it,” sad Draco, shoving her a little with his shoulder.

“Well, if I did, I certainly don’t anymore,” said Ginny, nudging him back.

“What if you’d really hurt my feelings?” He bumped her again.

“I wasn’t aware you had any,” said Ginny. “Is there one left that you didn’t repress? Where have you been hiding it?” She smirked up at him, pushing her shoulder against his until he was forced to press back or else let himself be toppled to the side.

“Wouldn’t you like to know,” said Draco.

“Very much, yes. I’m trying to be thorough, you see, I wouldn’t want to leave one untrodden upon.” Draco looked bemused.

“Is that… a word? A phrase, rather? Either?”

“Probably not,” said Ginny.

“Unfortunate. If only your incredibly dirty upbringing had included any instruction in how to speak properly, I might have told you.”

Ginny untangled her legs from his in order to turn herself around and kiss him, both of their books and parchment and quills scattering to the floor.

“Will you tell me now?”

“It was all a lie, I have no feelings left at all. You’ve thoroughly trodden upon everything there was to be trodden upon, leaving nothing untrodden upon, no need for anymore trodding. Kiss me again.”

Ginny laughed, and obliged.

When they’d returned to their work, settling in again with Draco’s arm around her shoulders and their books in their laps, Draco began to read again. Turning the pages and everything, Ginny thought. What a marvel.

The shadows in the bathroom began to stretch, shifting with the flickering torches, swimming in front of Ginny’s eyes.

“I wish you hadn’t mentioned your headache, because I’ve got one, now,” she told Draco.

“Not my fault,” he said, rubbing her shoulder with his thumb without looking up from his page. “You should be sleeping more. Not doing scandalous things on filthy bathroom floors.” Ginny snorted.

“Well, what’s life without a little scandal once in a while?”

“Less of a headache,” said Draco.

The chill of the stone tiles crept through her, filling her limbs and trickling upwards through her chest. She scratched out the beginnings of another translation, but her focus was gone. She leaned into Draco a little more. The bathroom no longer brought a constant onslaught of bad memories, but she occasionally still needed something to ground her in the present, something solid and warm and undeniably of this particular moment and no other.

Well, more or less solid, she thought.

By the time the clock in the entry hall struck midnight, echoing through the halls towards them, Ginny had made no further progress in her assignment, and was surprised to learn, stretching to collect her things, that she still had control over her frozen limbs.

Draco closed his book and yawned, turning away from Ginny to pack it into his bag.

“You’re going to sleep tonight, yeah?”

“Probably,” he told her.

“Draco.”

“I still have some work to look at.”

“You should find a pillow to look at.”

“Is that how you sleep? Facedown? It’s really a wonder your family line has made it this long,” said Draco, then snapped his fingers. “That explains all the children! Spares, in case one of them suffocates themselves in their sleep.”

Ginny laughed. “I’m serious.”

“So am I,” said Draco, with a smirk. He stood from the floor and offered Ginny his hand, which she pointedly ignored, using the nearest sink to haul herself to her feet instead. She held the door for him with an elaborate bow, and he checked around the corners so that she could follow him safely out into the corridor.

“Goodnight,” she said softly, turning towards Gryffindor Tower.

“Ginny, wait,” said Draco. He stepped carefully forward and took her hands in his. His face was half-obscured in shadow, but the dim light of the nearest torch illuminated just enough that Ginny saw only him, and none of exhaustion that normally plagued his features. Draco met her eyes solemnly.  “I want you to know that I really, truly, think that your half-hippogriff children will be the handsomest Weasleys ever born.”

Draco gave up on sleep around six on Thursday morning, and resigned himself to several hours of watching the dormitory ceiling slowly resolve itself into a clearer topography by the light of the hallway. He had returned to his own bed after seeing Ginny the night before, but had struggled to sleep, his mind crowded with thoughts about the Cabinet, his mother, and Professor Snape’s words from the previous weekend. He had not thought to try to find out how Ginny had been doing, he realized; she’d seemed less tired, lately, and not as on edge about Myrtle’s bathroom, but Draco wasn’t sure if perhaps he himself had just grown too tired to notice.

By the time his roommates began to stir, Draco had returned to another of his thoughts from the night before, one that was growing increasingly attractive with each passing wakeful minute; that he should consider diversifying the contents of the compartment of his trunk that held the pain potions he used for headaches. A variety of timed sleep potions, first of all, and if he could get into Madame Pomfrey’s stores of Pepper-Up, all the better for late nights...

Draco avoided Professor Snape’s eyes in Defense, staring resolutely at the blackboard and doing his best not to pay attention to Potter and his cronies whispering behind his back. It itched at him, though, and he was relieved when they were finally silenced by the threat of detention. He couldn’t relax. He took the most convoluted path he could to the Room of Hidden Things, taking fifteen minutes longer than usual, still positive he was being followed, and spent all afternoon there.

“Malfoy,” said Blaise, and then, “Draco. Git.” Draco’s fork collided with the table, and he twisted back around to face his friends. Theo had dragged his plate several inches to the left.

“I was eating that,” said Draco.

“No, you were playing with it,” said Theo, “and acting like a skittish Knarl.”

“A what?” asked Pansy.

“The spiky ones. You remember, Grubbly-Plank showed us last year, with the milk?” Blaise ignored them both.

“Is there a reason you look like Nott after he and the reserve beaters tried to smoke shrivelfig leaves in fifth year?”

“That was one time!” Theo protested. Pansy cackled.

“That’s why we pay attention in Herbology, trollface.”

“Malfoy?”

“It’s nothing,” he said. “Potter’s been breathing down my neck again, it’s getting on my bloody nerves.”

Blaise craned his neck to look around Draco towards the rest of the Great Hall. “Potter isn’t even here.”

“I know that,” snapped Draco. The itching had started again, and he twisted around to check the length of the Gryffindor table, just to be sure. “I’m just tired of him showing up everywhere.”

“Well, he can’t show up in the common room, so if you’ve finished drawing in your gravy, we can leave,” said Pansy. “And maybe you can sit still for five minutes, you’re making me nauseous.”

“I wasn’t hungry anyway,” said Draco, throwing his fork down and pushing away from the table.

“Evidently.”

The common room was relatively empty, with most of the students still at dinner, so the sixth-years were able to claim their preferred fireplace without the trouble of uprooting any younger students. Draco settled into a chair, propping his Arithmancy book on his knee and making a concentrated effort not to startle whenever anyone walked too closely behind him.

It felt a little bit like he was melting into the chair, he mused, watching Pansy gripe about whatever it was that she and Bulstrode had argued about that week. The tension and aching weight of his limbs seeped into the cushions, leaving Draco feeling much lighter, in an empty sort of way. He wondered who had selected these particular chairs for the common room. They surely hadn’t been there since the school’s founding, but Draco’s father had recognized them when he’d visited the grounds second year on business for the Board of Governors. Perhaps a previous Head of House was owed a congratulatory letter, so long as it hadn’t been Slughorn.

Given Draco’s luck, it had probably been Slughorn, he reflected.

The clock chimed nine from the mantle, and Draco stood automatically, stumbling a little. He had been less conscious than he’d realized.

“No,” said Pansy. Draco continued packing away his arithmancy book anyway.

“No, what?”

“You’re not going anywhere tonight, Draco, have you seen yourself?”

“I have rounds,” he lied. “Snape–”

“Can chew on a blast-ended screwt,” said Pansy. “I’ll do your rounds myself if he throws a hissy fit about it, but he won’t, because I checked the schedule this week and your shift isn’t until Saturday.”

Draco made for the dorms, making a show of ignoring her. He needed a thicker jumper under his robes, the corridors were colder and colder lately, and he needed to still be able to feel his fingers by the time he and Ginny parted ways and he returned to work on the Cabinet. Pansy followed him down the tunnel.

“Draco, whatever you’re working on, and I’m sure it’s important, it’s not worth–”

“You’re right, it is important,” snapped Draco, shoving open the door to his dormitory and not waiting to see if it hit Pansy on the way back. “More important than either of us, do you hear me? So if you get in my way–”

“Are you

threatening

me, Draco Malfoy?” Pansy’s voice was poisonous. He turned towards her, unable to back down.

“You wouldn’t understand,” he said. “Just because your family isn’t important enough to truly serve the Dark Lord– some of us have responsibilities, you know, and– you just don’t understand, He chose me! I have to do this,” Draco finished weakly, feeling dangerously close to saying something he would regret. His hands were shaking. Somewhere, he had taken a step closer to Pansy, and she met his gaze unflinchingly. They were the same height, now. Draco wasn’t sure how long they had been without him noticing. She’d always had an inch or two on him when they were kids.

Draco looked away. “I have to go,” he said.

“I’m not going to let that happen,” said Pansy. She pushed him towards his bed, and Draco stumbled, catching himself on the bedpost. Proving her point. Something inside of him hissed viciously at his own failure, and his ribcage tightened around him. “Take a goddamn nap, Malfoy, you’re no use to anyone dead.”

“That doesn’t sound better to you?” he croaked bitterly.

Something flashed across Pansy’s face, but it was gone too quickly for him to interpret it. She exhaled sharply.

“Draco, you’ve been a self-centered, histrionic, temperamental, pain in my arse since we were seven years old, and when I don’t want you around anymore, I will kill you myself,” she said. “Nobody else has earned that right. Least of all you.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “So I’m not letting you leave here until you

fucking

sleep.”

Draco slept.