Ginny Weasley is the youngest child. She always sits off to the side when she spends time with her friends. And, because her last name starts with W, she is always last in line to get ingredients in Potions.

Ginny is always on the end, except when it comes to things that matter.

Right now she’s trapped between the cold stone wall and Draco Malfoy, and she’s finding that she rather enjoys being in the middle.

Draco told her that she shouldn’t speak, because then Mrs. Norris will find them, and Filch will come running. Ginny doesn’t mind that he’s done this with some other girl, maybe even a bunch of other girls.

All Ginny really knows is that right now it’s just to two of them, the stone wall, and the steady pounding of her own heart.

She can feel his breath, hot and rough, right at the base of her neck. She can feel the occasional, erratic thrust of his hips against her own, which allows her to feel his erection straining, heavy and hot, against the cloth of his pants.

When Draco moves his hands from her breasts, Ginny shivers in the cool air. Her blouse hangs open, and her buttons are scattered across the floor, forgotten, where they landed as he ripped her shirt apart.

“In a hurry?” she had chided, and he had silenced her with a burning kiss, all rough edges and tongue and teeth.

Ginny shivers again, but not because of the cold, when his hands find her thighs and push them apart.

“Oh Merlin,” Draco groans against her neck when his hands roam higher, beneath her skirt, and he discovers that she isn’t wearing anything underneath. “So naughty. What else— what else are you hiding from them?”

Ginny can barely understand him. He’s panting so hard that his words come five seconds apart, and the hard puffs of warm air on her neck are driving her quickly to distraction. His words go in one ear and out the other. “Wha—what?" she stammers.

“How much— how much more of your life is a— is a secret from Potti and the Weasel?”

“Potti...?” she mumbles lamely, nearly delirious each time his finger dips insider her. His head moves lower, and his teeth nip at the skin stretched over her collarbone, and then lower, so that his tongue can trace the curve of a breast.

Potti. Potter.

Harry.

“Draco, get off me,” Ginny breaths, shoving him backward. Her hands are shaking as she tries to smooth her skirt and collect her buttons from the ground. “I have to go.”

“Leaving me again, Weaslette?” He smiles, leaning back against the opposite wall. Ginny, suddenly self-conscious, pulls her torn blouse so that it covered her chest. This is one of the things that she loves about Draco. He understands that this isn’t easy, and that sometimes, keeping up appearances is all that matters.

“I was supposed to meet Harry—” Ginny cuts herself off, blushing, at the same moment that the emotion in Draco’s eyes changes from amusement to annoyance.

“What are you meeting him for?” he spits, as if he doesn’t know the answer.

“He’s my boyfriend,” Ginny replies, struggling to keep her voice steady as she stands there, one hand holding her blouse together, the other clutching her wayward buttons.

“You're mine.” The words don’t hold the confidence that they do during sex, when he growls them in her ear, and the expression on his face is one of sadness and of doubt, not of ecstasy.

“I know. But he’s my boyfriend.” Because you can’t be. She bites back those words that she will never say. “In order to go steady, you kind of need to do stuff in public,” she mumbles.

“In order to go steady, you kind of need to be having sex,” he mumbles. His eyes widen when Ginny blushes scarlet. “Goddammit, Gin, you’re fucking him, too?”

“He’s my boyfriend,” she says, one last time, because she can’t think of anything else to say. Because she’s late, and the situation is beyond fixing.

He pulls out his wand, and she flinches away until she sees that his eyes are full of hurt. “Who do you think I am, Gin?”

The question stops her in her tracks. Who does she think he is? Who is he? She cocks her head to the side, and even though she can see him waiting expectantly, the faintest light of hope rising up in his eyes, she can’t force herself to say everything she means.

If she asked him to be hers, he would do it in a heartbeat. But she hasn’t asked. She knows as well has he does that going public would ruin everything. That holding hands in the hallways isn’t worth anything if everybody is going to stare.

Ginny has never been one to conform, but she knows Draco too well. He has never had a choice.

She shakes her head. I love you. But the words don’t come out.

“Reparo,” he murmurs, and by the time her shirt has pieced itself together, Draco is gone.

As she stumbles away, tears prickling in her eyes, she tries to act as if this doesn’t break her heart, as if they won’t meet again tomorrow and pretend that this isn't how it has to be.

She tries to pretend that being in the middle doesn't hurt.

Fred is the middle child (by two minutes). Hermione is always sitting in between Harry and Ron. And, because her name starts with M, Rachel Moskowitz is always right in the middle when they pick potions ingredients.

But Ginny is always caught in between when it comes to the things that matter.

Between being a girl and being the youngest Weasley. Between being a girlfriend and being a secret fuck. Between being with Harry and being with Draco.

When she climbs through the portrait hole and see that Harry isn't smiling, and all she can think to say is that Luna had held her up after dinner, Ginny realizes that the middle is not a place she wants to be.