ILL MET BY MOONLIGHT

Chapter One- Façades

Ginny peered over the top of her book and scowled darkly at the trio sitting and chatting in front of the fire. They failed to take any notice of her glare. She sunk deeper into the squashy red armchair and tried to concentrate on Flying With the Holyhead Harpies, which was replaying the famous 1953 match with the Heidelburg Harriers. A particularly loud burst of laughter from Ron caused her to look up in distracted annoyance just as the Harpies’ Seeker made a stunning capture of the Snitch. Ginny slammed the book shut and stared menacingly at her brother, who was now positively rolling on the rug with mirth.

“...... and the look on your face when you came out, Hermione! Pure horror! Even through all that fur....”

His words were overcome with more laughter as the hilarity of the memory came back to him in full. Hermione was trying very hard to look angry with him, but not quite succeeding; the corners of her mouth twitched with a suppressed grin.

“If I remember correctly, Ron, you were quite as horrified as I was. In fact, you almost tripped over a sink and broke your neck trying to get farther away from me!”

"Well, at least we used the right kind of hair in our potion, didn’t we!”

“Load of good it did you! You almost got yourself caught by Malfoy, which I would never have been thick enough to do!”

“Oh really, Hermione? Well, YOU’RE the one who flew off the handle third year and slapped him, aren’t you! Not that I’m saying it was a bad thing, mind you....”

Harry was grinning slightly as he watched his two best friends bickering good-naturedly. A few months ago he would have been joking along with them, or perhaps trying to shut them up. Now the sadness of Sirius’s death hung over him like a dark cloud. He was slow to emerge from the fog of anger and depression the loss of his godfather had plunged him into. However, being around his friends seemed to be helping him.

Ginny stared at him for a moment out of old habit, looking at the firelight gleaming on his glasses and dark hair. Then she shook herself, jerking her mind back to the irritation the trio was causing her tonight.

Not just tonight, she reminded herself. Every night. It’s not even something they’re doing. Quite the opposite, in fact.

During the previous year Ginny had finally taken part in one of their famous adventures and battled horrors that few girls her age could even imagine. When they returned to the school, Harry, Hermione, and Ron had gone right back to treating her as their baby sister. It wasn’t even that they were trying to exclude her: they just didn’t seem to notice she was there.

I guess I’m just not worth noticing to them, she fumed to herself. I’m not worth anything to those three. Not even to my own brother! When his other friends weren’t around, Ron was quick enough to seek her out. However, once Harry or Hermione showed up Ginny was relegated back to her former solitude.

And Ron thought it was bad having to live up to Bill and Charlie and the twins! she thought bitterly. At least they weren’t best friends with a celebrity and a know-it-all!

Usually Ginny was quite fond of her brother and his friends, but tonight her feelings of abandonment and resentment had come to a head. She slammed her book down on the table next to her chair and stormed through the common room and up the stairs to her dormitory. Just before she turned the final corner, she threw a last sidelong look at the laughing trio in front of the fire. None of them had even looked up as she left.

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Ginny’s mind was racing as she stared at the red curtains that surrounded her bed. The anger which had flooded so violently through her veins was quickly being replaced with something stronger and deeper: determination.

What I need, she thought desperately, is a way to prove myself to them. I mean, I did well enough at Ministry, but so did Neville and Luna. It was nothing different. It was nothing special.

For a moment, she was horrified by the selfish, cruel thoughts that were running through her mind. What they had done at the Ministry wasn’t some foolish quest for glory. They had been trying to save an innocent man from the Dark Lord! As for the trio, they had never asked for their fame. In fact, they suffered for their bravery, especially Harry. They were just trying to help. How could she forget that they had once saved her? She was acting as bad as a Slytherin.

Ginny shoved these thoughts away roughly. She didn’t want fame. She just wanted them to notice her for once, instead of thinking she was part of the decor. Them? asked a cold voice in her head, Or Harry?

All three of them, she thought firmly. I don’t feel that way about Harry anymore.

Her thoughts went back to the discussion the three had been having in the common room. She didn’t doubt that it was about one of their famous escapades. But which one? “Fur,” Ron had laughed. “You almost got caught by Malfoy,” Hermione had said. Ginny sneered. Oh yes, the Polyjuice Potion fiasco. Harry and Ron had managed to sneak into the Slytherin common room disguised as Crabbe and Goyle. Hermione had sat the adventure out because her faulty potion had practically turned her into a cat. As far as Ginny knew, her brother and The Boy Who Lived were the only two Gryffindors who had ever managed to infiltrate the heart of Slytherin House. Not even Fred and George....

A thrill of excitement shot through her veins and Ginny sat up so fast her head spun. That was it! True, Harry and Ron had done it, but they had been forced to keep it a secret. If one of the Slytherins caught her, she’d probably lose points. But breaking the rules had never stopped Fred and George, or even Bill and Charlie! In fact, rule breaking was in the Weasley blood, with the notable except of Percy. Ginny shuddered. She didn’t want to be a Percy.

Quickly she thought through her options for sneaking into the Slytherins’ common room. The Polyjuice Potion was definitely out. She seriously doubted she would be able to obtain the necessary ingredients or get the book out of the Restricted Section. Besides, it took a month to brew and she didn’t want to wait that long. Transfiguring herself into something inconspicuous wasn’t completely off limits, but there were a lot of ways it could go wrong. It wasn’t worth the risk of remaining half Transfigured into a mouse or something for the rest of her life. If only they’d learned Disillusionment Charms! Unfortunately, Disillusioning was N.E.W.T. level magic, and Charms had never been her strongest subject. Ginny sighed. This was leading somewhere she didn’t really like. Luckily, no one would ever need to know about it.

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Ginny stuck her head carefully out of her dormitory. There was no one on the stairs and the common room was quiet. The stone was freezing against her bare feet, but her footsteps made no sound as she ascended the stairs to the 6th year boys’ dormitory. Her heart was pounding so hard in her chest that her whole body shook with it. She let out a quiet breath of relief when she saw that the door to their room was slightly open. She nudged it lightly, just hard enough that she could slip in sideways. Her nightgown barely brushed the edges of the door.

Moonlight illuminated a small room in which the quiet and steady breathing of five sleeping boys could dimly be heard. It glinted off Dean Thomas’s old West Ham soccer poster, illuminated Harry’s glasses on his bedside table and gleamed on the brass fittings of the trunks at the foot of each boy’s bed.

Ginny slid quietly over to Harry’s trunk. Her face was pale with nervousness and excitement. She looked more like a ghost than a fifteen year old girl, except for her flaming red hair. Unaware of her unearthly appearance she knelt and opened the trunk. The hinges creaked slightly and she held her breath for a long moment. None of the boys even stirred.

Right on top was Harry’s greatest treasure, his Firebolt. Ginny lifted it reverently out and put it on the floor next to the trunk. She carefully shifted spell books, spare robes and a stack of Which Broomstick magazines. Then her hand brushed against something silky. She gently tugged it out and was forced to smother a gasp as her hand momentarily disappeared under it. She knew what an Invisibility cloak did, of course. The sight of her wrist with nothing at the end was still unnerving.

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The next day, Ginny was a complete wreck. She had told herself over and over again as she tried to fall asleep that she had to act absolutely normal the next day. As a result, she nearly had a heart attack when the mail came, looked nervously over her shoulder whenever she felt someone standing near her, and jumped every time a teacher called on her.

By lunch, things were going downhill rapidly. When Ron tapped her on the shoulder to pass her a bowl of mashed potatoes, she jerked so violently that her knee flew up and hit the bottom of the table. Her goblet of iced pumpkin juice fell over with a resounding clang.

“Um, Gin?” said Ron quietly, attempting to mop up the spill with Hermione’s napkin.

“Yes?” she replied. She was painfully aware that her voice sounded unnaturally high pitched and nervous.

“Are you all right? I mean I haven’t seen you this jumpy since Harry came to stay at our house that first summer, you know, when you had a crush on him and you were always....”

“Yes, Ron, I know what I was always doing,” she replied acidly, pleased that her voice was at least back in its normal octave, even if she did sound cranky. “Thank you so very much for mentioning it.” Ron looked rather taken aback at her attitude.

“Well, honestly, Ginny, I was just wondering if you were....”

“I’m fine, thank you!” She slammed her goblet upright on the table and fairly stormed away from the table.

“There’s no need to bite my head off!” he yelled after her. She sprinted out of the Great Hall, ignoring the snickers behind her and wishing desperately that the day would just end. Then she could get this stupid adventure over with.

Despite her distraction, Ginny worked feverishly during class. She wanted to finish her homework early so she could take as much time as necessary on her mission. The work for O.W.L.S. was hard, but not nearly the nightmare that her brother had warned her of. Maybe it’s the fact that I didn’t waste my first four years here trying to save the world instead of doing homework, she thought wryly. She then tried to push the memory of her nightmarish first year firmly out of her mind. It was something that hovered almost constantly on the edge of her awareness, and the horror had been dulled only slightly by the intervening years.

Thinking about that is the very last thing in I need to be doing right now, she told herself and turned back to her Potions essay. She tried to ignore the images flickering madly through her mind and the way her body shuddering uncontrollably...

The black book, looking innocent with its plain black cover... black like night, black like empty pits. The words oozing out of the paper... kind, comforting, understanding words. Her new friend, Tom... Tom smiling, Tom speaking quietly to her, Tom standing by her, standing as she fell, fell through blackness, fell and fell and fell forever, never landing, always falling, screaming with terror, terror that was never going to end, her helpless screams mingling with his laughter, cold, high laughter, mocking her, snatching away her hope, her happiness, her life...

“NO!” Her shout echoed through the silent dungeon. The entire class turned and stared at her. Snape looked up from his desk and his cold eyes echoed the black of the diary that haunted her dreams.

“Is there a problem, Miss Weasley?” The words were knives, cruel and uncaring.

“Um, I, uh... blotted my parchment, Professor.” A long and dubious silence followed this pathetic excuse. Ginny gulped and awaited her sentence. Snape arched an eyebrow at her.

“Very well, Weasley. Twenty points will be taking from Gryffindor for disrupting my class. Back to work, all of you.”

She let out a relieved breath. Twenty was a ridiculous amount of points for “disrupting class”, but at least he hadn’t pressed her for the truth.

Potions was her last class of the day. She sat in silence through dinner. She couldn’t eat, but could merely wait. She knew she was going to have to follow a Slytherin to find their common room. First, however, she had to retrieve the Invisibility cloak from where it was hidden in her own trunk. After fifteen agonizing minutes, she slipped quietly out of the hall and up to her dormitory.

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If seeing your hand disappear was unnerving then standing next to the Slytherin table, invisible and vulnerable, was downright surreal. Ginny half expected one of them to stand up and demand why she was there, despite the cloak.

Why am I doing this again? Ginny asked herself silently. Oh yeah, to prove that I’m as good as the Golden Trio. Good lord, where did I get such a stupid idea? At the same time however, the adrenaline pouring through her veins made it feel like the most exciting thing in the world.

Without warning, a whole group of the Slytherins stood up. Graham Prichard, Blaise Zabini, and Millicent Bulstrode all headed down the hall toward the dungeons. Trying to slow her pounding heart and keep her breathing quiet, Ginny hurried after them.

They walked for about five minutes, going past the Potions classroom and then stopping suddenly at an empty stretch of wall.

“Oye, Graham, did you get the new password from Draco?” asked Blaise.

“Nah, Pansy told me. Serpensortia!”

A hidden door slowly emerged from the rock wall and swung open. The three Slytherins passed through, followed closely by Ginny. The door swung shut again and disappeared. As it melted back into the wall, a terrible thought occurred to her. She didn’t know how to reactivate the door spell! It might even require another password. What if no one else went out tonight? She might not be able to escape until morning. Ginny shuddered as she turned to face the grim and starkly furnished common room. This was enemy territory. This was not somewhere she wanted to spend the night.

The only light in the room, besides the fire, came from eerie greenish lamps that hung from the low ceiling. The walls were mostly bare, making the room seem colder than it actually was. Instead of the squashy red armchairs of Gryffindor Tower, there were high backed chairs of black leather, which looked quite uncomfortable. The result was a stiff and formal, though rather elegant sort of old-fashioned sitting room. Ginny was horrified.

All right, she thought, trying to pull herself together, Now I need something to prove I was actually here. A sudden wicked thought made her grin. It meant waiting longer, of course, probably until most of the Slytherins were asleep. That would greatly reduced her chance of getting back out again that night. But if she managed to pull it off.... She grinned again and carefully settled herself into a corner to wait, remembering what she had told Harry just last year.

“The thing about growing up with Fred and George,” she had said thoughtfully, “is that you sort of start thinking anything’s possible if you’ve got enough nerve.”

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The ornate grandfather clock in the corner read the hour as 11:30. It had been nearly two and a half hours since a Slytherin had come into the common room and the last one had gone to bed an hour before. Ginny’s legs were prickling all over from remaining in the same uncomfortable crouch for so long. She slowly stood up, leaning against the wall to keep her knees from collapsing, then tiptoed to the nearest dormitory door.

Ginny eased the door open, mentally thanking the house-elves for keeping the castle doors so well oiled. Pansy Parkinson’s ugly face was on the nearest bed, filling the room with snuffling snores. This was definitely the wrong room. She pulled the door shut again and slid into the next dormitory. Sneaking quietly through the stone chamber, she saw several sleeping boys. There was Blaise Zabini, muttering to himself in his sleep, two snoring lumps (Crabbe and Goyle), a small rat faced boy named Theodore Nott, and one other. Ginny froze. Draco Malfoy was not asleep.

Damn, she thought, turning away with bitter disappointment. It was something of his she was after, his Nimbus 2001 to be exact. If she brought that back to the Gryffindor common room, no one would doubt her story. Only the Slytherin Quidditch team played on Nimbus 2001’s. But there was no way she was going to be able to open Malfoy’s trunk and waltz off with his broomstick while he was awake, invisible or not. No, she would just have to sit in here and wait till he fell asleep and then hope that....

Ginny stopped dead in her tracks with disbelief. What she was hearing was completely impossible. Not just impossible, but also totally incomprehensible. She stepped quietly back over to his bed and peered at his face. Her mouth dropped open.

Draco Malfoy was crying.

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