Chapter 1: Monday’s Sight



Ginny Weasley absolutely hated Mondays. Mondays meant a life’s sentence in hell.

Otherwise known as Double Potions.

With Snape.

Alongside the Slytherins.

In the dungeons.

For a full sixty minutes.

Groaning, she stuck her face in her pillow, hoping to God that he would send a few Dementors to the Hogwarts dungeons today. If the dungeons were full of Dementors, she reasoned to herself, then there stood a very good chance that lessons would be cancelled for the day. Honestly, it was a shame that the Dementor population was so misunderstood. There were so many ways in which they could be made into productive members of society.

“Come on, Ginny!”

Any chance at stealing a few more precious moments of blessed sleep was cruelly ripped into shreds before her desperate eyes.

She growled as she felt a pillow collide with her back. Hard. Well, as hard as a pillow could, given the fact that pillows, as a general rule, weren’t exactly made to do much damage to the body. Rolling over, she was confronted with the distinctly unholy sight of a bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, and even more bushy-haired Head Girl.

“Hermione,” she said, more calmly than she’d thought she was capable of at the moment, “what the hell do you think you’re doing?” Grabbing Hermione’s soft and fluffy missile of choice, she lobbed it into the air in the general direction of her dorm-mates’ currently empty beds.

“We’ve got a lesson in twenty minutes, Gin,” Hermione announced, unable to prevent a rueful smile from crossing her face as she watched the pillow fall only a handful of inches from where Ginny had tossed it. What is it about the Weasleys that puts them at the mercy of the morning hours? Pathetic, is what it is, she mused to herself.

“Twenty minutes is a lifetime, Hermione!” Ginny protested. Maybe I could use my tie to asphyxiate her, she thought wildly, considering the scrap of gold and maroon with a hungry and slightly deranged gleam in her eye.

“Come on,” Hermione persisted. “You don’t want me to tell Professor Snape that the only reason you were late to his lesson is because you wanted to look extra special for him this morning, do you?”

Ginny let out a loud gasp, shooting up to a sitting position as she pushed her sleep-tumbled hair out of her now-wide eyes. There were no words for the horror that had rushed through her upon hearing this underhanded plan of attack.

Hermione just nodded in a rather solemn sort of manner. She wasn’t best friends with Ronald Weasley and Harry Potter for nothing, after all.



Twenty minutes later, a grumbling redhead sprinted into the dreaded dungeon just before Snape shut the door, bravely ignoring his disapproving glare.

“Today, you will be brewing Felix Felicis with a partner.” Snape’s cold voice lowered the freezing temperature in the dungeons a couple of degrees more. The class shivered as one.

“If you brew the potion correctly, perhaps some of your number might be able to properly utilise it, and find their punctuality much improved upon.” There was no question as to whom exactly Snape was directing his obsidian stare at. Ginny merely grinned in a cheeky way.

Looking slightly disconcerted (Ginny snorted), Snape swept around the room assigning partners as his robes billowed in his wake.

“Ah, Ms. Weasley.” Snape’s soft voice thinly veiled the promise of punishment.

Ginny stared.

“You will be working with Mr. Malfoy today.”

The commotion of twenty-four students’ preparations abruptly ceased, and all heads turned towards the back of the room, where Ginny was currently seated.

Ginny nodded.

The heads whipped back around. Whispers flew around the dungeon much like an outsize bat would have.

“Well, Weasley,” Draco drawled after Ginny had relocated her person and her possessions to his table, “do try to keep up with me, will you?”

“Please, Malfoy,” Ginny returned in a saccharine tone as she bared her teeth at the blond who was currently lounging back in his seat, looking for all the world as though he owned Hogwarts itself.

“I’m in this lesson,” she continued in a flippant voice, “because I’m so far ahead of my fellow sixth-years that I could leave Hogwarts with you at the end of this year. Where were you at my age?” Just catching the appalled look that flitted across Draco’s face, she turned to the task of slicing slugs, deep satisfaction welling up within her.

It was a difficult job, controlling her urge to fidget.

It was damned uncomfortable, the way Ginny could feel Draco’s eyes on her the entire time that they worked on the potion in silence, standing so close to each other that she could have reached out and jabbed him in the shoulder with her ladle.

Ginny reached a hand up with the intent of smoothing her hair back, and then caught herself. Why the hell do I care what Malfoy thinks about my hair? she thought angrily, shoving her wayward hand into her pocket. She ignored the sudden urge to straighten the knot in her tie. She refused to fret at the slightly frayed cuff of her oldest robe.

It wasn’t her fault that she had been in a hurry, and thus didn’t have the time to search for a nicer robe. Or to tie a proper knot. Or to brush her hair, for that matter.

What the hell do I want to care about my appearance in Double Potions for, anyway? she sneered, missing the way the corner of Draco’s mouth tilted up just a fraction of a centimetre as he watched her internal struggles.

It’s not as though I’m Princess D here, whose robes always look as though they’re made of angels’ wings or…something. She blinked, and then wondered briefly if she had got any slug slime on her cheek.

Ginny sighed. She just wasn’t used to a silent, brooding, staring Malfoy. That was all. It was enough to make anyone nervous. Where had all the insults gone off to, anyway? What had happened to the smirks? Oh God, the smirks. The smirks are an essential part of Hogwarts life, damn it! Ginny was indignant now. Malfoy couldn’t just switch the game up whenever he felt like it.

“You’re sadly mistaken if you think I want to engage in any sort of game with you, Weasley,” Malfoy stated.

The next table over, Pansy Parkinson giggled. Both partners ignored her.

Ginny sighed in relief. There was the good old familiar drawl that she was used to.

Wait a second.

“What are you doing? Stir once more, Weasley. Jesus, do I need to do everything here?” Draco’s exasperated voice sounded for some reason as though it were coming from a very far distance.

“Er?” Ginny stood, frozen, ladle dangling precariously from her suddenly limp hand.

Draco tilted his head as he regarded the youngest Weasley. “I thought you were some sort of prodigy, here,” he said as he stared coolly at Ginny.

“Did I say anything about a game?” she asked, feeling like the world’s most immense idiot.

“Yes. Yes, you did. I do apologize for switching it up on you, as you put it, although I must admit that I wasn’t quite aware that we were embroiled in any game to begin with.” Draco looked bored now as he deftly assumed stirring duties.

“I-” Ginny floundered. What was wrong with her?

“Look, I really don’t want to know all about the sick fantasies you shove me into inside that pretty little head of yours, Weasley,” Draco said, smirking as he bottled the now-finished potion, labelled it in his weirdly elegant scrawl (G. Weasley and D. Malfoy, Ginny read), and levitated it over to Snape’s desk with a lazy flick of his wrist.

Somewhere in the castle, a bell tolled the end of the hour.

With another wave of his wand, Draco cleared the remnants of their shared work away.

Shaking her head, Ginny began stuffing her books back into her schoolbag, suddenly very eager to get as far away from the dungeons as possible.

“Oh, and Weasley?” Draco paused mid-step, gazing at Ginny as she walked slowly towards where he stood in the doorway to the room.

With a jolt, she noticed with a vague sort of discomfort that everyone else, Snape included, had long since made their own exits.

Ginny shouldered her way past Draco, sticking her nose into the air and quickening her stride as she made her way towards the Great Hall.

“Bye, Malfoy!” she called over her shoulder.

“You’ve got a bit of slime on your cheek.”

Ginny swore she could hear the laughter in his voice long after he was out of sight.