First Kiss by Mynuet
Ginny Weasley's first kiss had been taken from her under a sprig of mistletoe during her first year by a boy who was much too arrogant for his own good. She had been both angry, because the first kiss she was saving for someone special had been stolen, but also thrilled - she'd been kissed! On the lips, even! It was the only moment during all the time she had been bound to the diary and to Tom, that she had felt fully alive.
After a long conversation with Tom, though, the thrill was beaten down to nothingness, and instead she focused on her outrage. Tom was very sympathetic, pouring soothing words over her like gas on a fire, until she was ready to storm out of Gryffindor Tower and strangle Draco Malfoy with her bare hands. Tom laughed at her then and said she needed to think more like a Slytherin. The problem wasn't one rat-faced boy, the problem was the mistletoe; useless remnant of heathen cultures, it still carried the force of enchantment for wizards and witches.
It took a week of laboriously copying books into Tom's diary for him to develop the spell, even after he impatiently taught her spells to cull the useful information out of each book and copy it over magically. She didn't mind, though, because it meant Tom wasn't questioning her about boys and sneering at her for having whorish impulses. She'd snapped at him once that she wasn't that bad, and he had been so "hurt" that he stopped talking to her, not giving in until her tears had soaked the page and made a mess of her pleas for forgiveness.
Bastard. It was ten years later, and her older self still burned with anger at how gullible she was, and how terribly manipulative Tom's "love" had been.
Still, there were benefits, knowledge that she took spiteful pleasure in using for her own benefit. Research was never a problem for her, and, much to the disgust of the twins, the spell he had developed held strong, year after year. Any mistletoe that entered a five foot radius around her was instantly burned to ashes. The field extended upwards as far as the twins had been able to determine. They'd had to give up when the bubblehead charm failed and poor Fred had fallen quite a distance before anyone realized he wasn't joking and had actually blacked out from lack of oxygen. He'd come out of it with only minor injuries, but Molly had firmly declared any further attempts would mean a sound spanking, and neither twin wanted to take the risk that she meant it.
This smug assurance of safety was why she wasn't paying any attention when, while at the Grangers' house for a Christmas party, George looked at her (or rather, above her) and shouted out, "Plastic!"
"Genius!" answered Fred, snatching something from behind Ginny that she couldn't see. They'd made their excuses and departed hastily, leaving Ginny to shake her head and wonder if they'd had a sudden onset of complete lunacy.
She came to regret that obliviousness when she woke up the morning of December 23 to find a bit of fake greenery floating a few inches above her head. There was a note dangling from it, and as soon as her fingers touched the paper, it turned into a creepy double mouth that spoke with her brothers' voices. "Happy Christmas, Ginny! We thought you could use some festive Christmas spirit, not to mention a decent snog or two to get the stick out of your bum. Don't want to turn out like Percy, do you? Not our ickle baby girl!"
Ginny catapulted out of bed with a scream of pure rage, grabbing her wand to shoot off a spell at the offensive mistletoe. The twins had anticipated this, though, and the spell bounced off and set her bed on fire instead.
"They're going to die for this," growled Ginny, looking quite demonic by the light of the flames, although this effect was a bit wasted as no one was there to see. She put out the flames and stomped to the door of her flat, then stomped back inside when she realized she was only wearing her nightie. The teal satin chemise might be extremely pretty, but it wasn't very suitable to a winter day, let alone for intimidating two witless buffoons.
"Most of us get dressed in the morning, Weasel," came the voice of her next door neighbor through her front door. "You should learn that before I mention to the tenancy committee your appalling nudity habits."
"Fuck off, Malfoy," she growled, rooting around on her bedroom floor for something to wear that wasn't charred, smoky, or soaked. There were days it really didn't pay to be a slob.
"No, really, I'm shocked and disturbed by your lax moral character." Even with the front door between them, his arrogance made her want to smash his face in.
"Listen you unspeakable git," she shouted as she stalked to the door. "Compared to the outfits some of your endless parade of tarts wander about in, I'm dressed like a nun! And furthermore--" Her diatribe was cut off as she threw the door open, the better to yell at him and quite possibly hit him, because as soon as they were close to each other she was overwhelmingly pulled towards him. "Oh, shit," she managed, just before her lips came down on his.
She pulled back as soon as she could, only to see him staring at her with eyes wider than the human eye really should be able to stretch. "And let that be a lesson to you!" She slammed the door and just pulled her cloak on hastily before disapparating to the Wheezes.
She ended up kissing every employee her brothers had, and several customers, before finding out that the wretched cowards had "gone on holiday". "Gone into hiding more like," she muttered as she apparated back to her flat. It sounded like as good a plan as any for the moment. Thanks to the kissing, she now had the unswerving devotion of all of her brother's assistants and stock clerks, so she would be notified the instant the hooligans showed themselves. In the meantime, she was just going to stay at home with the door firmly locked and the viewer set firmly on something violent and gory with absolutely no kissing in it whatsoever.
Except that she had to report in that she wasn't going to work, and her boss was an absolute shithead. "But Percy, you don't understand!"
"I understand you want to lay about all day, but think of the example it would set to the other members of the department if I allowed my sister to skive off whenever it struck her fancy." Percy shook his head, his curly hair blending in with the flames around him. "No, Ginny. Report to work immediately or I'll have to place a reprimand in your file. You'll get one for tardiness if you're not here in the next... five minutes."
"Fine," she snarled, dousing the fire before he could end the floo call from his end. She hoped spitefully that he'd get a miserable cold from getting soaked like that and vowed to put a cooling spell on his office to help that along. Deciding professional appearance could go bugger itself, she picked up a random pair of slacks and a blouse, resolving that the chemise would serve adequately in place of the only bra she could see, which had been tangled in the sheets and thus consisted now of two scorched wires and a scrap of burned elastic.
She'd no sooner appeared at the Ministry's apparition point than her lips were once again pulled towards those of Draco Malfoy, who worked down the hall from her and made a habit of raiding her department's office supplies whenever his ran low, or he needed entertainment. In her more bitter moments, she would glare at the sky and ask the heavens what she could possibly have done to deserve his constant presence in her life. They never answered, although sometimes she got the distinct impression that someone somewhere was sniggering.
In any case, here she was kissing him again, and now someone else had come up behind her so she was kissing them. A moment later, Cho Chang stepped back and looked at Ginny with considerable amusement. "Well, happy Christmas to you, too."
"I--" Ginny couldn't think of a single thing to say, and in any case probably lacked the physical capacity, as she was fairly sure blood flow was necessary to make muscles work, even in the jaw, and all the blood in her body was currently being mobilized to form the great-grandmother of all blushes.
Cho grinned. "I've got to get back to my department, but feel free to ring sometime if you're interested and not just toying with my girlish heart." She winked and walked away, leaving Ginny to moan and cover her face with her hands.
"You will let me watch, right, Weasley?" Her response was to growl and kiss Malfoy again before punching him in the stomach and storming out. "Was it something I said?"
She left a trail of dazed victims in her wake as she made her way to her cubicle, wishing she had a door she could close. And some lip balm.
"Ah, Ginny, there you are." Oh no. Oh definitely no. The universe couldn't be that cruel to her. "The Minister had some questions about the Langolier case and I explained to him that you were the department's biggest expert on them." Oh no. It was crueler.
She managed to only get Percy on the cheek, but the Minister got a full smack on the lips. It was hard to tell who was more embarrassed, Ginny or Percy, particularly when the Minister laughed jovially and pinched Ginny's bum. "Happy Christmas, Miss Weasley! I do so love the holidays."
"Yes, of course, sir," Ginny mumbled. "I'm sorry sir, the mistletoe..."
"Think nothing of it," he said magnanimously, patting her in a way that would be fatherly if it wasn't on her arse.
Ginny was beginning to consider the relative merits of losing her job in a blaze of glory as she broke the lech's fingers when his assistant appeared at the door in all his smarmy glory. "Ah, there you are, sir. I just wanted to remind you of the Midgen case, and that you've got a meeting in ten minutes."
The Minister's hand fell at the reminder of the quickly hushed-up scandal surrounding allegations of impropriety made by a former Ministry employee and he harrumphed and gathered his dignity. "Quite right, Malfoy, quite right. Weasleys, I'll expect a written report on my desk before close of business today."
As he walked away, Percy turned to Ginny and hissed, "What the flaming hell was that?"
"It's the bloody mistletoe!" Ginny whispered back. "I told you I needed to stay home, but you--"
"But you're supposed to be immune to mistletoe!" Percy ran a hand through his hair in agitation. "It sounded like a really stupid excuse."
Ginny smacked his shoulder. "Not when Fred and George are involved, you brainless berk! You of all people--"
"Ah, sibling love. It brings a tear to the eye, it really does." Draco Malfoy stayed a few feet away, but Ginny refused to take chances and scurried behind Percy, holding him up as a shield and just kissing his back when the mistletoe grew too strong to resist. "So the identical prats are the reason for Weasley's sudden rash of sluttishness?"
"This doesn't concern you, Malfoy," Ginny spat, peeking out from behind Percy. "Just trot off and worry about your own whorish tendencies and let me sort out mine."
"So you admit you have--"
Percy glared. "Malfoy, I'd suggest you think twice about what you're saying about my sister."
The insufferable bastard smirked, but only said, "See you around, Weaselette. Weasley." With that he left, sauntering down the hallway in a way that Ginny was sure he had practiced in order to maximize the way his arse showed to advantage.
"So now can I go home?" Ginny whined, turning the full force of her patented puppy dog eyes on her brother.
"Don't be stupid, we need to get that report done. You can work in my office, though, as I hardly think office decorum would be served by your cleaning the tonsils of any male who crosses your path."
"It works on women, too," muttered Ginny. "Don't ask."
Looking green, Percy said, "I wouldn't dream of it."
She managed to make it through the rest of the workday without kissing anyone else. Well, except the boy who delivered lunch, but he didn't count, even if she may have vaulted him into puberty prematurely. Percy, the utter bastard, had taken the report and left her to find her own way to the apparation point. Muttering curses about brothers in general, Ginny skulked down the hallway, trying to avoid the rest of humanity. She mostly succeeded, if you could count kissing three people as "mostly". First she'd gotten Malfoy again, because he had stepped out of his office just as she was crossing his door (and her brain could just shut up and stop thinking of it as lucky and pointing out that he was a really good kisser). Then she'd been rounding a corner and come face to face with Pansy Parkinson.
She wondered, dizzily, whether Parkinson and Malfoy had learned to kiss from each other, because they had remarkably similar styles. Pansy was a bit more aggressive, though, slipping her hand up Ginny's blouse with the same ease and casualness with which she stroked her tongue over Ginny's teeth. Draco had pretty thoroughly ravished her mouth, but he hadn't progressed to groping. Then again, he hadn't done anything to respond during the first kiss, so maybe he was just as aggressive as Pansy, just slower to warm up.
What on earth was she doing thinking about that? And was that a hand on her arse?
Ginny stepped back and then a bit to the side so that the hand that was indeed on her arse would fall away, "Er, I'm not actually..." Ginny couldn't finish the sentence somehow, but, sadly, she could still talk. "You should try Cho, I think--"
"Already have, sweetcheeks." Pansy winked and flicked one scarlet fingernail over the nipple of the breast she'd been kneading a minute before. "She was good, but I think you might be better."
"Move along, Parkinson, stop playing with the children." Ginny actually felt relieved to hear Malfoy's voice, which definitely meant that it was time to check into St. Mungo's. She didn't particularly want to spend her Christmas kissing Lockhart, though, so going home was probably a better idea. Ignoring the no doubt witty interchange between the two Slytherins, Ginny scurried to door of the apparation room, so totally focused that she didn't hear her name being called.
She stopped when a hand on her elbow pulled her back. "Hi, Harry!" She gave him a peck on the lips, then squeaked, "Bye, Harry!" and ducked through the door. She sprinted to the apparition point and popped out too fast for the spell to pull her towards the figure she vaguely glimpsed appearing as she left.
Perhaps a bit too fast, because she didn't reappear inside her flat. She wasn't sure where she was, actually, but wherever she was, she was falling. Her hands went out automatically to keep her from landing on her face and she felt sick as she heard something snap.
She couldn't even be glad it wasn't her wrists, because her mind couldn't stop repeating the word 'bugger' as she stared at her wand, broken neatly into two pieces. So, Ginny thought with just the slightest touch of hysteria, let's review. I'm alone and wandless in what appears to be an alleyway that could be anywhere on earth, and I can't ask anyone for help or directions because they won't be able to speak due to my snogging them. Upside? Well, she hadn't splinched herself, and maybe there were some murderous thugs lurking about who'd be willing to just put her out of her misery.
The murderous thugs were late. Deciding she might have better things to do after all than wait for them, Ginny pushed herself to her feet and looked both ways down the alley. Neither looked appetizing, so she just picked a direction and started walking.
Random kissing was truly a powerful thing, Ginny thought a few minutes later. She'd walked for a few moments before one of the thugs finally appeared, without bothering to apologize for his tardiness. His murderous impulses seemed to be dimmed by shock after she turned and planted one on him as soon as his hand closed on her elbow. Capitalizing on the element of surprise, Ginny called up every ounce of feminine wiles she had developed after a lifetime spent in the company of a horde of males. Her eyelashes fluttered and a few shining teardrops appeared in her eyes. "Oh, I'm so sorry! I was just so happy not to be alone! I'm lost and it's so dark and frightening out here!"
Her breathless enthusiasm left him sputtering, so she threaded her arm through his and looked up at him with eyes that a homeless puppy would've felt were too cute to deny. "Now that you're here, though, I just know everything will be all right."
"Right," he croaked, patting her hand awkwardly.
"Please, could you show me the way..." Ginny trailed off as she realized she had no idea where they were close to, or whether she was in a muggle area, and so she had no idea where to ask him to go.
He didn't seem to notice, though, so that was all right. Her uncertainty even seemed to restore a bit of his equilibrium. "Don't worry, miss. We'll get you back to Diagon Alley right and tight."
"Oh, thank you," she breathed, looking up at him as if he were a hero of legend. The mistletoe was dragging her back towards him and so she leaned up to kiss his cheek. "I was just trying to apparate home and something happened and my wand..." It had been a long day, and Ginny didn't even have to fake the tears that were now pouring down her face, nor the loud sobs that accompanied them.
Her new companion was looking a bit panicked. "Now, don't take on so, it's all right, Bert's 'ere, luv, don't cry, come on, be a good girl, oh look, there's the pub!" He dragged her into a brightly lit building, barely clearing the door before shouting for someone to bring her a warmed butterbeer. "There, see, you'll be all... Oh, bloody hell, not more crying!"
Ginny had now buried her face in his shirtfront and was gripping it firmly, disguising her kisses as sobs. She didn't know who else was in this bar, but the likelihood of finding two Galahads in Knockturn Alley seemed slim, and so she didn't want to kiss anyone else. "Does anyone have any bloody floo powder?" her rescuer yelled out, sounding desperate.
"Hey, Bert, maybe you just don't know how to treat a fancy piece like this." The voice was much too smarmy for Ginny's comfort, and her fingers tightened on Bert's rather grimy shirt before she was pulled away. "And look, she even comes with mistletoe. Maybe she just needs a real man--"
He was cut off by Ginny's knee traveling upwards, landing firmly in his stomach. He bent over and she kissed his forehead before pulling down on his shoulders so her knee dug harder into his kidneys. She sidestepped and let him fall, giving him a cuff on the back of the head as he went. "I don't like you," she said, fully aware of sounding extremely childish.
"Right then," croaked Bert. The pub's lights revealed him to be a man so massive as to possibly have troll ancestry, but he was looking at Ginny with a touch of fear. "Let's just floo you home."
Ginny sniffled and nodded, allowing him to guide her to the hearth. She didn't have a floo in her flat, but she knew for a fact her next-door neighbor did. If he had any objections, she'd just distract him with a kiss and run for it. "Draco Malfoy's flat," she called out firmly, then stepped into the flames.
She tumbled out of his hearth to land, humiliatingly enough, at his feet. She managed not to kiss his highly polished shoes, but it took a great deal of physical effort to resist and she could hear him laughing about it, the bastard. She finally managed to stand up and kiss him on the lips instead, although she took her revenge by biting his lip before soothing it with her tongue.
"Has anyone ever mentioned to you that you're a hellcat?" Malfoy disengaged from the kiss, which was when she noticed that, like his female counterpart had earlier, he'd had his hand on her arse. She couldn't get too upset, though, because it seemed that she'd had her hand on his.
Blushing like mad, Ginny edged towards the door. "So, yeah, sorry to bother you, I'll just be going..."
"Wait a tick," he said, taking her hand and towing her towards the back of his flat.
Ginny dug her heels into the plush carpeting. "Malfoy, you might be a good kisser, but that doesn't mean I'm going to your bedroom."
"Duly noted," he said, tugging her harder. "But we're going to my kitchen."
"Oh." She wasn't disappointed. She was not. No. "Why?" she asked, as much to distract herself from her denials as out of curiosity.
"Because the Minister can't afford any more scandals, and if you keep kissing him, there'll be one." He looked her over and sneered. "Even odds whether it'd be over him pawing you or you breaking his fingers."
"I haven't the foggiest idea why you would think that," she said loftily.
His sneer shifted a bit, as if it was having to fight against a takeover attempt by a smile. "In any case, it does no good for professionalism at the office to have you running around offering free snogs."
"And what do you propose to do about it? I've got to sleep on my sofa tonight thanks to my attempt to cast a spell on the damn thing." They'd reached his kitchen and Ginny looked around curiously. It was sparkling clean, with takeout boxes piled high in the trash bin. "You should try that new place a block over. The Guptas make a heavenly vindaloo."
"I'll keep that in mind. Bend over the sink here." She looked at him suspiciously and he rolled his eyes. "I'm not going to pull your trousers down and ravish you, if that's what you're hoping for. I just don't want any mess on my floor after getting rid of that plastic monstrosity."
"You can?" she said, eyes bright with enthusiasm.
"Ravish you? Well, maybe another time..." Her scowl was apparently not very impressive, as he laughed in response. "Bend over, put this over your head." He handed her a thick sheaf of newspaper and she obeyed, despite feeling immensely stupid for doing so.
She heard something liquid being poured and saw it dribbling off the sides of the newspaper. After a moment, he said, "All set," and took the newspaper away, crumpling it into a ball and stuffing it into the trash as best he could. "If you could let me at my sink, I need to wash my hands."
"How..." She moved slightly to the side, casually remaining in range so she could test if the effect was really gone.
"Your brothers only shop at one supplier for muggle items," he said, brushing by her to stand at the sink. "It was simple enough to give them a call this morning and find out what the thing was made of and how to destroy it. There's some kind of fluid they use, I don't know the details, but it melts this stuff into nothing."
She nodded, waiting still for the irresistible pull towards him. He turned slightly and smirked. "It's gone, Weasley. Any urges to kiss me now are strictly your own."
"As if... Oh!" Growling in frustration she stalked away, slamming the front door of his apartment behind her, and then her own door for good measure. "Stupid, conceited, awful, kissable..."
All right, so maybe she was a tiny bit attracted to the arrogant jerk. Or even a lot. That didn't mean she had to do anything about what was obviously a temporary insanity caused by his kissing skills. That being decided, Ginny gave up entirely on the concept of dinner and pulled some blankets out of the linen closet before curling up on her sofa to go to sleep.
She woke up somewhere around dawn with a single thought. "Did he say morning?" she asked herself, the sound of her own voice making it seem more real. If he'd known about how to fix things in the morning, why had he waited? Was it to see her squirm? "Must be," she muttered to her reflection, which nodded amiably and told her to comb her hair.
Breakfast at her flat seemed limited to a single dill pickle, and so she bundled up against the cold, tossing her red and yellow muffler around her neck jauntily before venturing out into the still morning. The coffee shop on the corner opened early, and they served excellent croissants. Surely pastry would get her mind off of a certain blond.
The baked goods would have a lot to overcome, seeing as the blond in question had stepped out of their block of flats and was striding towards her. She paused next to a windowsill laden with snow and waited for him, absently making a snowball behind her back. "Morning, Malfoy."
"Weasley," he said, moving to stand much too close to her.
The clouds of their breaths merged into one and she could feel heat radiating from his body, which she told herself quite firmly to ignore. "What?" she asked, looking off to the side so she wouldn't be distracted by looking at him.
He raised his arm and smiled a bit, looking much too smug for words. "Oh, look, mistletoe. Guess you owe me a kiss."
She slanted her eyes to look at the sprig of plastic and gave a sly smile of her own. "Guess I do," she said, then smacked the snowball into his face. "Luckily that one's not enchanted."
"No luck about it," he said, wiping the snow from his face with the tail of his Slytherin colored muffler. "So kiss me now because you want to."
"All right," she said, and in the grayish-blue light of the early morning, she did.
Thanks go out to Where Is Truth for a quick beta - any mistakes are my fault for not giving her enough time to do the job properly.
Check out the gorgeous artwork done by Lyra! (lyrakristine [at] gmail.com if you want to tell her how much you love it.)
After a long conversation with Tom, though, the thrill was beaten down to nothingness, and instead she focused on her outrage. Tom was very sympathetic, pouring soothing words over her like gas on a fire, until she was ready to storm out of Gryffindor Tower and strangle Draco Malfoy with her bare hands. Tom laughed at her then and said she needed to think more like a Slytherin. The problem wasn't one rat-faced boy, the problem was the mistletoe; useless remnant of heathen cultures, it still carried the force of enchantment for wizards and witches.
It took a week of laboriously copying books into Tom's diary for him to develop the spell, even after he impatiently taught her spells to cull the useful information out of each book and copy it over magically. She didn't mind, though, because it meant Tom wasn't questioning her about boys and sneering at her for having whorish impulses. She'd snapped at him once that she wasn't that bad, and he had been so "hurt" that he stopped talking to her, not giving in until her tears had soaked the page and made a mess of her pleas for forgiveness.
Bastard. It was ten years later, and her older self still burned with anger at how gullible she was, and how terribly manipulative Tom's "love" had been.
Still, there were benefits, knowledge that she took spiteful pleasure in using for her own benefit. Research was never a problem for her, and, much to the disgust of the twins, the spell he had developed held strong, year after year. Any mistletoe that entered a five foot radius around her was instantly burned to ashes. The field extended upwards as far as the twins had been able to determine. They'd had to give up when the bubblehead charm failed and poor Fred had fallen quite a distance before anyone realized he wasn't joking and had actually blacked out from lack of oxygen. He'd come out of it with only minor injuries, but Molly had firmly declared any further attempts would mean a sound spanking, and neither twin wanted to take the risk that she meant it.
This smug assurance of safety was why she wasn't paying any attention when, while at the Grangers' house for a Christmas party, George looked at her (or rather, above her) and shouted out, "Plastic!"
"Genius!" answered Fred, snatching something from behind Ginny that she couldn't see. They'd made their excuses and departed hastily, leaving Ginny to shake her head and wonder if they'd had a sudden onset of complete lunacy.
She came to regret that obliviousness when she woke up the morning of December 23 to find a bit of fake greenery floating a few inches above her head. There was a note dangling from it, and as soon as her fingers touched the paper, it turned into a creepy double mouth that spoke with her brothers' voices. "Happy Christmas, Ginny! We thought you could use some festive Christmas spirit, not to mention a decent snog or two to get the stick out of your bum. Don't want to turn out like Percy, do you? Not our ickle baby girl!"
Ginny catapulted out of bed with a scream of pure rage, grabbing her wand to shoot off a spell at the offensive mistletoe. The twins had anticipated this, though, and the spell bounced off and set her bed on fire instead.
"They're going to die for this," growled Ginny, looking quite demonic by the light of the flames, although this effect was a bit wasted as no one was there to see. She put out the flames and stomped to the door of her flat, then stomped back inside when she realized she was only wearing her nightie. The teal satin chemise might be extremely pretty, but it wasn't very suitable to a winter day, let alone for intimidating two witless buffoons.
"Most of us get dressed in the morning, Weasel," came the voice of her next door neighbor through her front door. "You should learn that before I mention to the tenancy committee your appalling nudity habits."
"Fuck off, Malfoy," she growled, rooting around on her bedroom floor for something to wear that wasn't charred, smoky, or soaked. There were days it really didn't pay to be a slob.
"No, really, I'm shocked and disturbed by your lax moral character." Even with the front door between them, his arrogance made her want to smash his face in.
"Listen you unspeakable git," she shouted as she stalked to the door. "Compared to the outfits some of your endless parade of tarts wander about in, I'm dressed like a nun! And furthermore--" Her diatribe was cut off as she threw the door open, the better to yell at him and quite possibly hit him, because as soon as they were close to each other she was overwhelmingly pulled towards him. "Oh, shit," she managed, just before her lips came down on his.
She pulled back as soon as she could, only to see him staring at her with eyes wider than the human eye really should be able to stretch. "And let that be a lesson to you!" She slammed the door and just pulled her cloak on hastily before disapparating to the Wheezes.
She ended up kissing every employee her brothers had, and several customers, before finding out that the wretched cowards had "gone on holiday". "Gone into hiding more like," she muttered as she apparated back to her flat. It sounded like as good a plan as any for the moment. Thanks to the kissing, she now had the unswerving devotion of all of her brother's assistants and stock clerks, so she would be notified the instant the hooligans showed themselves. In the meantime, she was just going to stay at home with the door firmly locked and the viewer set firmly on something violent and gory with absolutely no kissing in it whatsoever.
Except that she had to report in that she wasn't going to work, and her boss was an absolute shithead. "But Percy, you don't understand!"
"I understand you want to lay about all day, but think of the example it would set to the other members of the department if I allowed my sister to skive off whenever it struck her fancy." Percy shook his head, his curly hair blending in with the flames around him. "No, Ginny. Report to work immediately or I'll have to place a reprimand in your file. You'll get one for tardiness if you're not here in the next... five minutes."
"Fine," she snarled, dousing the fire before he could end the floo call from his end. She hoped spitefully that he'd get a miserable cold from getting soaked like that and vowed to put a cooling spell on his office to help that along. Deciding professional appearance could go bugger itself, she picked up a random pair of slacks and a blouse, resolving that the chemise would serve adequately in place of the only bra she could see, which had been tangled in the sheets and thus consisted now of two scorched wires and a scrap of burned elastic.
She'd no sooner appeared at the Ministry's apparition point than her lips were once again pulled towards those of Draco Malfoy, who worked down the hall from her and made a habit of raiding her department's office supplies whenever his ran low, or he needed entertainment. In her more bitter moments, she would glare at the sky and ask the heavens what she could possibly have done to deserve his constant presence in her life. They never answered, although sometimes she got the distinct impression that someone somewhere was sniggering.
In any case, here she was kissing him again, and now someone else had come up behind her so she was kissing them. A moment later, Cho Chang stepped back and looked at Ginny with considerable amusement. "Well, happy Christmas to you, too."
"I--" Ginny couldn't think of a single thing to say, and in any case probably lacked the physical capacity, as she was fairly sure blood flow was necessary to make muscles work, even in the jaw, and all the blood in her body was currently being mobilized to form the great-grandmother of all blushes.
Cho grinned. "I've got to get back to my department, but feel free to ring sometime if you're interested and not just toying with my girlish heart." She winked and walked away, leaving Ginny to moan and cover her face with her hands.
"You will let me watch, right, Weasley?" Her response was to growl and kiss Malfoy again before punching him in the stomach and storming out. "Was it something I said?"
She left a trail of dazed victims in her wake as she made her way to her cubicle, wishing she had a door she could close. And some lip balm.
"Ah, Ginny, there you are." Oh no. Oh definitely no. The universe couldn't be that cruel to her. "The Minister had some questions about the Langolier case and I explained to him that you were the department's biggest expert on them." Oh no. It was crueler.
She managed to only get Percy on the cheek, but the Minister got a full smack on the lips. It was hard to tell who was more embarrassed, Ginny or Percy, particularly when the Minister laughed jovially and pinched Ginny's bum. "Happy Christmas, Miss Weasley! I do so love the holidays."
"Yes, of course, sir," Ginny mumbled. "I'm sorry sir, the mistletoe..."
"Think nothing of it," he said magnanimously, patting her in a way that would be fatherly if it wasn't on her arse.
Ginny was beginning to consider the relative merits of losing her job in a blaze of glory as she broke the lech's fingers when his assistant appeared at the door in all his smarmy glory. "Ah, there you are, sir. I just wanted to remind you of the Midgen case, and that you've got a meeting in ten minutes."
The Minister's hand fell at the reminder of the quickly hushed-up scandal surrounding allegations of impropriety made by a former Ministry employee and he harrumphed and gathered his dignity. "Quite right, Malfoy, quite right. Weasleys, I'll expect a written report on my desk before close of business today."
As he walked away, Percy turned to Ginny and hissed, "What the flaming hell was that?"
"It's the bloody mistletoe!" Ginny whispered back. "I told you I needed to stay home, but you--"
"But you're supposed to be immune to mistletoe!" Percy ran a hand through his hair in agitation. "It sounded like a really stupid excuse."
Ginny smacked his shoulder. "Not when Fred and George are involved, you brainless berk! You of all people--"
"Ah, sibling love. It brings a tear to the eye, it really does." Draco Malfoy stayed a few feet away, but Ginny refused to take chances and scurried behind Percy, holding him up as a shield and just kissing his back when the mistletoe grew too strong to resist. "So the identical prats are the reason for Weasley's sudden rash of sluttishness?"
"This doesn't concern you, Malfoy," Ginny spat, peeking out from behind Percy. "Just trot off and worry about your own whorish tendencies and let me sort out mine."
"So you admit you have--"
Percy glared. "Malfoy, I'd suggest you think twice about what you're saying about my sister."
The insufferable bastard smirked, but only said, "See you around, Weaselette. Weasley." With that he left, sauntering down the hallway in a way that Ginny was sure he had practiced in order to maximize the way his arse showed to advantage.
"So now can I go home?" Ginny whined, turning the full force of her patented puppy dog eyes on her brother.
"Don't be stupid, we need to get that report done. You can work in my office, though, as I hardly think office decorum would be served by your cleaning the tonsils of any male who crosses your path."
"It works on women, too," muttered Ginny. "Don't ask."
Looking green, Percy said, "I wouldn't dream of it."
She managed to make it through the rest of the workday without kissing anyone else. Well, except the boy who delivered lunch, but he didn't count, even if she may have vaulted him into puberty prematurely. Percy, the utter bastard, had taken the report and left her to find her own way to the apparation point. Muttering curses about brothers in general, Ginny skulked down the hallway, trying to avoid the rest of humanity. She mostly succeeded, if you could count kissing three people as "mostly". First she'd gotten Malfoy again, because he had stepped out of his office just as she was crossing his door (and her brain could just shut up and stop thinking of it as lucky and pointing out that he was a really good kisser). Then she'd been rounding a corner and come face to face with Pansy Parkinson.
She wondered, dizzily, whether Parkinson and Malfoy had learned to kiss from each other, because they had remarkably similar styles. Pansy was a bit more aggressive, though, slipping her hand up Ginny's blouse with the same ease and casualness with which she stroked her tongue over Ginny's teeth. Draco had pretty thoroughly ravished her mouth, but he hadn't progressed to groping. Then again, he hadn't done anything to respond during the first kiss, so maybe he was just as aggressive as Pansy, just slower to warm up.
What on earth was she doing thinking about that? And was that a hand on her arse?
Ginny stepped back and then a bit to the side so that the hand that was indeed on her arse would fall away, "Er, I'm not actually..." Ginny couldn't finish the sentence somehow, but, sadly, she could still talk. "You should try Cho, I think--"
"Already have, sweetcheeks." Pansy winked and flicked one scarlet fingernail over the nipple of the breast she'd been kneading a minute before. "She was good, but I think you might be better."
"Move along, Parkinson, stop playing with the children." Ginny actually felt relieved to hear Malfoy's voice, which definitely meant that it was time to check into St. Mungo's. She didn't particularly want to spend her Christmas kissing Lockhart, though, so going home was probably a better idea. Ignoring the no doubt witty interchange between the two Slytherins, Ginny scurried to door of the apparation room, so totally focused that she didn't hear her name being called.
She stopped when a hand on her elbow pulled her back. "Hi, Harry!" She gave him a peck on the lips, then squeaked, "Bye, Harry!" and ducked through the door. She sprinted to the apparition point and popped out too fast for the spell to pull her towards the figure she vaguely glimpsed appearing as she left.
Perhaps a bit too fast, because she didn't reappear inside her flat. She wasn't sure where she was, actually, but wherever she was, she was falling. Her hands went out automatically to keep her from landing on her face and she felt sick as she heard something snap.
She couldn't even be glad it wasn't her wrists, because her mind couldn't stop repeating the word 'bugger' as she stared at her wand, broken neatly into two pieces. So, Ginny thought with just the slightest touch of hysteria, let's review. I'm alone and wandless in what appears to be an alleyway that could be anywhere on earth, and I can't ask anyone for help or directions because they won't be able to speak due to my snogging them. Upside? Well, she hadn't splinched herself, and maybe there were some murderous thugs lurking about who'd be willing to just put her out of her misery.
The murderous thugs were late. Deciding she might have better things to do after all than wait for them, Ginny pushed herself to her feet and looked both ways down the alley. Neither looked appetizing, so she just picked a direction and started walking.
Random kissing was truly a powerful thing, Ginny thought a few minutes later. She'd walked for a few moments before one of the thugs finally appeared, without bothering to apologize for his tardiness. His murderous impulses seemed to be dimmed by shock after she turned and planted one on him as soon as his hand closed on her elbow. Capitalizing on the element of surprise, Ginny called up every ounce of feminine wiles she had developed after a lifetime spent in the company of a horde of males. Her eyelashes fluttered and a few shining teardrops appeared in her eyes. "Oh, I'm so sorry! I was just so happy not to be alone! I'm lost and it's so dark and frightening out here!"
Her breathless enthusiasm left him sputtering, so she threaded her arm through his and looked up at him with eyes that a homeless puppy would've felt were too cute to deny. "Now that you're here, though, I just know everything will be all right."
"Right," he croaked, patting her hand awkwardly.
"Please, could you show me the way..." Ginny trailed off as she realized she had no idea where they were close to, or whether she was in a muggle area, and so she had no idea where to ask him to go.
He didn't seem to notice, though, so that was all right. Her uncertainty even seemed to restore a bit of his equilibrium. "Don't worry, miss. We'll get you back to Diagon Alley right and tight."
"Oh, thank you," she breathed, looking up at him as if he were a hero of legend. The mistletoe was dragging her back towards him and so she leaned up to kiss his cheek. "I was just trying to apparate home and something happened and my wand..." It had been a long day, and Ginny didn't even have to fake the tears that were now pouring down her face, nor the loud sobs that accompanied them.
Her new companion was looking a bit panicked. "Now, don't take on so, it's all right, Bert's 'ere, luv, don't cry, come on, be a good girl, oh look, there's the pub!" He dragged her into a brightly lit building, barely clearing the door before shouting for someone to bring her a warmed butterbeer. "There, see, you'll be all... Oh, bloody hell, not more crying!"
Ginny had now buried her face in his shirtfront and was gripping it firmly, disguising her kisses as sobs. She didn't know who else was in this bar, but the likelihood of finding two Galahads in Knockturn Alley seemed slim, and so she didn't want to kiss anyone else. "Does anyone have any bloody floo powder?" her rescuer yelled out, sounding desperate.
"Hey, Bert, maybe you just don't know how to treat a fancy piece like this." The voice was much too smarmy for Ginny's comfort, and her fingers tightened on Bert's rather grimy shirt before she was pulled away. "And look, she even comes with mistletoe. Maybe she just needs a real man--"
He was cut off by Ginny's knee traveling upwards, landing firmly in his stomach. He bent over and she kissed his forehead before pulling down on his shoulders so her knee dug harder into his kidneys. She sidestepped and let him fall, giving him a cuff on the back of the head as he went. "I don't like you," she said, fully aware of sounding extremely childish.
"Right then," croaked Bert. The pub's lights revealed him to be a man so massive as to possibly have troll ancestry, but he was looking at Ginny with a touch of fear. "Let's just floo you home."
Ginny sniffled and nodded, allowing him to guide her to the hearth. She didn't have a floo in her flat, but she knew for a fact her next-door neighbor did. If he had any objections, she'd just distract him with a kiss and run for it. "Draco Malfoy's flat," she called out firmly, then stepped into the flames.
She tumbled out of his hearth to land, humiliatingly enough, at his feet. She managed not to kiss his highly polished shoes, but it took a great deal of physical effort to resist and she could hear him laughing about it, the bastard. She finally managed to stand up and kiss him on the lips instead, although she took her revenge by biting his lip before soothing it with her tongue.
"Has anyone ever mentioned to you that you're a hellcat?" Malfoy disengaged from the kiss, which was when she noticed that, like his female counterpart had earlier, he'd had his hand on her arse. She couldn't get too upset, though, because it seemed that she'd had her hand on his.
Blushing like mad, Ginny edged towards the door. "So, yeah, sorry to bother you, I'll just be going..."
"Wait a tick," he said, taking her hand and towing her towards the back of his flat.
Ginny dug her heels into the plush carpeting. "Malfoy, you might be a good kisser, but that doesn't mean I'm going to your bedroom."
"Duly noted," he said, tugging her harder. "But we're going to my kitchen."
"Oh." She wasn't disappointed. She was not. No. "Why?" she asked, as much to distract herself from her denials as out of curiosity.
"Because the Minister can't afford any more scandals, and if you keep kissing him, there'll be one." He looked her over and sneered. "Even odds whether it'd be over him pawing you or you breaking his fingers."
"I haven't the foggiest idea why you would think that," she said loftily.
His sneer shifted a bit, as if it was having to fight against a takeover attempt by a smile. "In any case, it does no good for professionalism at the office to have you running around offering free snogs."
"And what do you propose to do about it? I've got to sleep on my sofa tonight thanks to my attempt to cast a spell on the damn thing." They'd reached his kitchen and Ginny looked around curiously. It was sparkling clean, with takeout boxes piled high in the trash bin. "You should try that new place a block over. The Guptas make a heavenly vindaloo."
"I'll keep that in mind. Bend over the sink here." She looked at him suspiciously and he rolled his eyes. "I'm not going to pull your trousers down and ravish you, if that's what you're hoping for. I just don't want any mess on my floor after getting rid of that plastic monstrosity."
"You can?" she said, eyes bright with enthusiasm.
"Ravish you? Well, maybe another time..." Her scowl was apparently not very impressive, as he laughed in response. "Bend over, put this over your head." He handed her a thick sheaf of newspaper and she obeyed, despite feeling immensely stupid for doing so.
She heard something liquid being poured and saw it dribbling off the sides of the newspaper. After a moment, he said, "All set," and took the newspaper away, crumpling it into a ball and stuffing it into the trash as best he could. "If you could let me at my sink, I need to wash my hands."
"How..." She moved slightly to the side, casually remaining in range so she could test if the effect was really gone.
"Your brothers only shop at one supplier for muggle items," he said, brushing by her to stand at the sink. "It was simple enough to give them a call this morning and find out what the thing was made of and how to destroy it. There's some kind of fluid they use, I don't know the details, but it melts this stuff into nothing."
She nodded, waiting still for the irresistible pull towards him. He turned slightly and smirked. "It's gone, Weasley. Any urges to kiss me now are strictly your own."
"As if... Oh!" Growling in frustration she stalked away, slamming the front door of his apartment behind her, and then her own door for good measure. "Stupid, conceited, awful, kissable..."
All right, so maybe she was a tiny bit attracted to the arrogant jerk. Or even a lot. That didn't mean she had to do anything about what was obviously a temporary insanity caused by his kissing skills. That being decided, Ginny gave up entirely on the concept of dinner and pulled some blankets out of the linen closet before curling up on her sofa to go to sleep.
She woke up somewhere around dawn with a single thought. "Did he say morning?" she asked herself, the sound of her own voice making it seem more real. If he'd known about how to fix things in the morning, why had he waited? Was it to see her squirm? "Must be," she muttered to her reflection, which nodded amiably and told her to comb her hair.
Breakfast at her flat seemed limited to a single dill pickle, and so she bundled up against the cold, tossing her red and yellow muffler around her neck jauntily before venturing out into the still morning. The coffee shop on the corner opened early, and they served excellent croissants. Surely pastry would get her mind off of a certain blond.
The baked goods would have a lot to overcome, seeing as the blond in question had stepped out of their block of flats and was striding towards her. She paused next to a windowsill laden with snow and waited for him, absently making a snowball behind her back. "Morning, Malfoy."
"Weasley," he said, moving to stand much too close to her.
The clouds of their breaths merged into one and she could feel heat radiating from his body, which she told herself quite firmly to ignore. "What?" she asked, looking off to the side so she wouldn't be distracted by looking at him.
He raised his arm and smiled a bit, looking much too smug for words. "Oh, look, mistletoe. Guess you owe me a kiss."
She slanted her eyes to look at the sprig of plastic and gave a sly smile of her own. "Guess I do," she said, then smacked the snowball into his face. "Luckily that one's not enchanted."
"No luck about it," he said, wiping the snow from his face with the tail of his Slytherin colored muffler. "So kiss me now because you want to."
"All right," she said, and in the grayish-blue light of the early morning, she did.
Thanks go out to Where Is Truth for a quick beta - any mistakes are my fault for not giving her enough time to do the job properly.
Check out the gorgeous artwork done by Lyra! (lyrakristine [at] gmail.com if you want to tell her how much you love it.)
The End.
Mynuet is the author of 71 other stories.
This story is a favorite of 15 members. Members who liked First Kiss also liked 1263 other stories.
This story is a favorite of 15 members. Members who liked First Kiss also liked 1263 other stories.
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