Chapter Six

Draco was surrounded by Slytherins in his common room. They were lamenting over his horrid luck at getting stuck tutoring a Weasley. He was finding it all very humorous but was trying his best to appear a wounded victim.

“You poor thing, having to see that Ginny Weasley every evening! Is she as dumb as she looks?” Pansy Parkinson asked, patting his knee…over and over and over.

“Oh yes, She’s about as smart as a slug.” A very, very smart slug that was excellent at potions, he thought to himself.

“God, I bet her old ancient hand-me-down robes smell putrid!” Blaise put in his two knuts.

“You can’t begin to imagine the odor the girl emanates, it fills the entire room!” And just about does him in every single day. She smelled like honey and roses at dusk…or so he would imagine.

Millicent added with a smirk, “At least you get to put her in her place every day, reminding her who runs this school.”

Oh yeah, he had a place he wanted to put her but he wasn’t sharing that little tidbit with his lackeys, “Yeah, I make her nearly cry everyday. It makes the whole thing tolerable.”

“I think she’s pretty.” Goyle broke in with a dumb look and a shrug.

All of Draco’s audience turned to Goyle and “Ewwww’d” at the same time, many smacked him on his obviously defunct noggin.

Draco laughed aloud at Goyle. That was the most intelligent thing the boy had said in the 17 years Draco had known him. Everyone else followed his lead, only they were laughing at Goyle’s expense. Goyle looked embarrassed but didn’t take back his statement.

“I’m going to bed, trying to help that girl is wearing me down. The things we must do for our Head of House.” Draco tried to look forlorn as he traipsed off to his room. As soon as he got out of sight though, he had a spring in his step. Tomorrow was going to be a great day. He was finally going to let Ginny get her potion right and she was going to be all over him. He thought about rubbing his hands together in evil bliss but thought that was too cliché.

The next day, Ginny kept repeating Hermione’s advice every time Draco entered her thoughts. Hermione said that Draco was probably tricking her somehow. He might have put a spell on her or something. Hermione was going to look in all her spell books and see what she could find. She found it very curious that Ginny just now started liking him when she had known him for years and hadn’t found him the least bit appealing. Ginny didn’t tell her that she had thought he was good-looking for quite some time….at least on the outside. How can you go wrong with blond hair and gray eyes the color of rain clouds on a spring day? He also was hard and lean from playing quidditch all these years. He was in excellent shape, no doubt in her addled mind. And it didn’t matter that Hermione thought she was losing her mind when she said he smelled yummy, the boy smelled YUMMY! If anyone could sit by him for hours at a time and not want to snuggle into his neck and breath him in, they were crazy, not her.

Ginny’s day was rather uneventful. She was extremely busy with school at the moment. The end of the semester always brought on extra studying and stress. Her potion wasn’t her only concern. She had parchments due in her other classes as well. As a matter of fact, all the late evenings being spent on her potion had detracted from her performance in her other studies.

She was walking with the crowds through the halls, shuffling through some papers when she ran smack-dab into someone Her papers went off in eighty different directions.

“Oh! Gosh darn it!” She said as she started to pick up her things.

“Pretty harsh language there coming from a little female Weasel.”

Ginny looked up startled at the familiar tone of Draco’s voice calling her a weasel. He was smiling at her though and was already bending down to help pick up her papers. They both reached for the same paper and as their hands met she blushed and pulled back. He held on to her hand though and she turned bright red then.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to about knock you over. I just…”

“Oh my God! What are you doing?” It was Pansy and she looked like a bullfrog that had just eaten something very, very nasty.

Draco looked up at Pansy without letting loose of Ginny’s hand, “Don’t you have class or something that you should be getting to?”
Pansy looked like she wanted to say more but she didn’t. She gave a menacing scowl in Ginny’s direction and then took off like a bat out of Hades.

“I was looking for you.” Draco continued like nothing had just happened that was going to cause the whole school to go up in flames.

Ginny was truly dumbfounded. She couldn’t get her wits about her with him holding her hand in a hallway full of students, many of them walking very, very slowly by them now… “Wh-what? You..” she made a squeaky kind of noise and then continued, “you were looking for me?”

Draco tried his best not to grin at her, his plan was working…oh how he would like to do that rubbing-your-hands-together-in-evil-bliss thing, “Yep, I think I know what we are doing wrong with your potion and tonight we should get it right!”

“We should?” Ginny said trying to shake the cobwebs out of her brain.

“Need to go, see you after dinner!” Draco let go of her hand and shoved her papers into her arms and took off as it was time for class.

As it turned out, Ginny was late to her next class but she looked so distraught that her teacher let it pass without incident. She moved through the rest of the day in a daze. She was so nervous about possibly running into Draco after Potions class that she forgot her project parchment. Snape caught her as she was leaving.

“Ms. Weasley.” he said in his nasally voice, waving her parchment in the air.

“Sorry, Professor.” She said reaching for it. He drew it back though and read it with great interest.

“Have you made a proper batch of this yet?” He asked raising one eyebrow practically to his greasy hairline.

“No, Sir. Draco says we should get it tonight though.” She answered, shuffling her weight from foot to foot.

“Oh, he does eh? Well, Let’s hope so. You only have two days left before it is due.” Snape drawled out.

“Yes, sir, can I go to my next class now, sir?” Ginny asked nervously.

He handed her the parchment and released her with a flip of his pale hand. She hurried off then just catching sight of Draco’s fair head coming down the hall. She ran off in the other direction, even though her class was in his.

“Would you stop that?” Ron asked for the fifth time. Ginny was tapping her fingers on the dining room table, staring at the hour glass by the door.

“What?” she asked for the fifth time as well.

“Stop tapping your fingers like that! It’s driving me mad and it’s going to affect my digestion.” Ron said forking some more food into his mouth.

“Oh, okay, sorry.” Ginny replied absentmindedly, tapping her fingers on the table again five seconds later.

“What are you so fidgety for?” Ron asked, grabbing the hand closest to him. Hermione looked at Ginny with concern, but didn’t say anything. Harry just sat there, as usual of late, sticking his head further and further into his plate and ignoring everyone if anything controversial was going on.

“I am waiting til time to go to my Potions tutoring.” She finally said eyeing that hourglass again.

“Oh, I see. Can’t wait to see that bloody Malfoy, can we? Speaking of which, I heard a rumor that you were holding hands with him in the hallway today.” Ron said sending daggers over in Draco’s general direction.

“Yes, that’s right, Ron. You will be the best man at our wedding, won’t you?” Ginny asked sweetly.

Ron’s big gulp of pumpkin juice, he had just taken a swig of, came snorting out of his nose.

“Not funny, Ginny! Now I will have digestive problems, along with nightmares.” He said wiping off his dripping face.

“Well, maybe the spiders will leave you alone in your dreams if you have Malfoy and I on your mind.” She jumped up then as she noticed the sand running out and gave a hurried g’bye as she fled the room. She wanted to beat Draco there so she could get her stuff going and get out of there early. She was losing her marbles and it was time to recollect them.

Draco wasn’t going to let her off that easy though. He had watched her the whole meal and got up as soon as she did. He followed her right out the door, much to his housemates dismay. He wouldn’t answer to any of their inquiries except to say things weren’t as they seemed and they would find out soon what was going on. Pansy was beside herself but she knew when to shut up. Her mother had taught her well how to snag the right wizard. And Draco was the right wizard, the only wizard for her.

“Ginny! Ginny, hold on, I’ll walk with you.” Draco said trying to catch up to her. She knew he had followed her out but was trying to pretend she hadn’t. When he called to her though, she stopped without turning around and waited for him to catch up. She was not going to go all ga-ga over him, she was not going to go all ga-ga over him, she told herself while she waited for him to reach her.

“Hey Malfoy,” she said in way of greeting when he was by her side.

“Hi, think we can get this potion out of the way tonight?” He asked, walking stride by stride with her, trying to brush a part of him onto a part of her with each passing step.

She scooted over a bit and answered, “If it’s such a burden to you, I can finish up on my own. You can go on back to your friends.”

Draco eyed her warily… this was new. Was his plan not working as well as he thought? Naw, of course it was, he was on schedule with the whole charade. “No, I don’t mind tutoring you. I’m just glad that you will be able to get it done in time is all I meant.”

“Oh,” she said half-heartedly, “Okay.”

They finally reached the dungeon classroom and Ginny thought it was none too soon. If he touched her hand again with his, while they were walking, she was going to turn into a pile of flobberworms.

“I’ll get the cauldron going,” Draco said, “I think the babble pulp should be the original three grams you suggested. We just must have gotten something else wrong when we tried it that way before.”

Ginny got that familiar gleam in her eye that she had had every night when she was on to something right. “You think so? I was sure it should be three grams!” She got right into the potion then without a care to her emotional distress a few seconds ago.

“Yes, I talked to Professor Snape this afternoon and he agrees.” Actually Professor Snape had talked to him this afternoon in something close to a lecture. When the professor had looked at Ginny’s parchment he knew she had the potion perfect. She had crossed out the three grams and he asked Draco why that hadn’t done the trick. Draco made up some flimsy excuse about a dirty cauldron. The teacher gave him a dressing down about checking his equipment and dismissed him with instructions to get it right tonight. The ‘or else’ was definitely implied there. He was glad he had intended on getting it correct tonight anyway, but now it was a bit more urgent that nothing else went wrong.

Ginny mixed, mashed, and mangled all of her ingredients into her cauldron. There was a glorious, gaseous, green POOF! and then the mixture settled into a lovely turquoise color…with no bubbles. Ginny stared at it in open-mouthed amazement. Then, much to Draco’s delight, she hurdled herself into his arms! She was laughing and crying and she wrapped her arms around his neck like it was the most natural thing in the world. He did what anyone would do in such a situation, he spun her around the room, laughing right along with her. Before they knew it, they had twirled right into a wall, knocking a picture of Salazar Slytherin askew.

Ginny’s back was against the wall and Draco was still holding her around her waist. The laughter faded away and they were left listening to each other’s quickened breaths. Ginny thought she heard his heart beating and she knew she felt it. It was a steady beat that matched her own. That yummy neck was just too close to her, there was no hope now. She looked into his gray eyes and knew what was going to happen next. He was going to bend his head down and meet hers in a dazzling kiss that would deepen into their lips parting…

“Ginevra Molly Weasley! What in the bloody hell are you doing?”

Draco cursed under his breath. Damn that Weasel, five more minutes, just five more minutes!. He could feel Ginny pulling away from him. He looked into her eyes and saw the confusion there, and felt like a heel. When did he get this annoying conscience? He wanted his money back, the damn thing was useless to him. Draco reached up and took her hands down from his neck without breaking eye contact with her. He brought them in front of him and kissed her knuckles before letting her go. Ginny’s knees about gave out then. She could barely stand, let alone stand up to Ron. Draco sighed and turned to face the annoying prat of a weasel, while blocking Ginny from her brother‘s stare.

“Ron, so glad you could join us.” Draco said with his trademark smirk, “We were just celebrating.”

“Celebrating my freckled arse! Looks like you were getting ready to snog my sister from over here!” Ron had his hands clenched by his sides and he had that pufferfish look going on again. His eyes were bulging and his face was red and mottled. Ginny would have been perfectly happy if a dementor showed up right now and sucked out her soul. Anything would be better than her brother catching her in Malfoy’s arms.

“Well, maybe you need to get your eyes checked. Ginny just got her potion right and we were so happy to be rid of each other that we…oh bloody hell! I don’t have to explain anything to you, Weasel. What are you doing here anyway?” Draco said, still standing in front of Ginny. She had her forehead resting on his back and he could feel her warm breath on his skin.

“Getting ready to kill you is what I’m doing here.” Ron pulled out his wand and pointed it directly at Draco’s chest.

“I think we need to test the potion, Draco,” Ginny whispered behind him. “I’ll disarm him, you grab him & we’ll get some down his throat.”

At Draco’s nod, everything happened in a blur. Ginny stuck her wand between Draco’s body and arm. She shouted “Accio!” Ron’s wand flew from his hand and landed behind Snape‘s desk. Draco jumped on him and they both fell to the floor. Ron opened up his mouth to curse Draco to another dimension and Ginny scooped out some of her potion and poured it down his throat. He spit, sputtered and cursed before turning a lovely shade of turquoise for a brief second. Ginny stared in horror. She wasn’t expecting that side effect. What had she done to her brother? What other ill effects would come of her concoction? She was about to find out, she guessed. No going back now.

Ron stopped fighting Draco. He was turning his head every which way and his eyes were moving from object to object. He looked at Ginny and said, “blah wheche nother”. Ginny could only look at him in amazement. He turned to Draco then and made more incoherent babblings, “judiky humphy quarked portho!”

Draco looked at Ron and a huge grin broke out on his handsome face. He turned to Ginny, “It worked! I can’t understand a thing he’s carrying on about.”

Ginny knew she was going to hell for it but she had to smile right back. Her potion worked. It really worked. Her brother was now the village idiot. Her mother was going to kill her if she found out, but until then she couldn’t help but be ecstatic!

“What do you think he remembers?” she asked then, a worried frown replacing the grin as her brother continued babbling like a toddler.

Malfoy shrugged, “ No clue, Gin. I don’t know if any memory loss he experiences will be permanent either or if it will wear off when the potion does.”

Ginny bit her bottom lip while she thought this out. “Okay, I think the potion will last about an hour. If I am right, he will not have any recollection of what happened to him after he was given the potion until it wears off. He should only have vague images of whatever he saw and did for about 20 minutes before he drank it. The babbling should end the same time the immediate confusion does.”

“Sounds good to me,” Draco said with a shrug, “You’re the expert. Let’s get him out of here….. what are we going to do with him?”

“I don’t know.”

“Throw him in the lake and let the giant squid have its way with him?”

“No, too mean to the squid.”

Draco laughed.

“It’s still early. There are student’s wandering all around, let alone teachers.” She was biting her lip again. He brushed a hand over her mouth.

“Quit worrying over it, we’ll figure it out.”

“Moaning Myrtle!” They both said at the same time.

“That was freaky.” Ginny said eyeing Draco.

“Great minds think alike, dear. Let’s go.” Ginny was thinking too hard about the ‘dear’ in that sentence to appreciate the talent Draco showed next. He used a variety of spells with his wand to get Ron up and walking. They walked him all the way to the abandoned girls’ bathroom on the second floor. The whole while he was talking his mumbo jumbo.

They got him through the door and Ginny tried to make him comfortable in one of the stalls. He continued to look around in dazed confusion, babbling away like a crazy brook. They quickly stepped away from him and edged out the door. When they were safely on the other side of the door they stopped to listen for a sec. Myrtle had just found Ron and was beseeching him to tell her where his friend, Harry, was. She was moaning about how he wasn’t talking to her correctly because he thought she was ugly and fat.

Draco pulled on her arm and they moved away down the hall. Ginny felt bad about her brother’s state, but she sure hoped he couldn’t remember what had happened. This would certainly test her potion making skills. Oh well, nothing to be done now except wait. She pulled her arm away from Draco, then surprised him by taking his hand instead. He didn’t say anything, just held her hand in his firm grip and kept walking. She soon realized that they were in a portion of the castle she wasn’t familiar with. She was pretty sure it wasn’t used much. The portraits all had a layer of dust covering them. Draco seemed to know where he was going, however, because he was walking with a steady stride. When they reached the end of the hallway, Ginny looked at him confusion. There was a floor-to-ceiling bookcase at the end flanked by two burning candelabras on the wall.

“In the mood for a good book, are we?” Ginny asked looking at him bemusedly.

“Yep,” he answered with a smirk, “This one right here.” He pointed to a book entitled, The Way Out, by I.T. Wontbudge. He started to pull it out and the bookcase started spinning.

Draco pulled her into the opening and it closed up behind them. Ginny clutched Draco’s hand and moved closer to him. It was pitch black wherever they were now. It smelled musty and damp. It reminded her of the Chamber of Secrets and she was very nervous.

“Lumosita.” Draco said in a quiet but steady voice. His wand tip glowed with a soft light. It didn’t help set Ginny’s mind at ease though. It looked even worse than it smelled. There were cobwebs here that looked to be from a herd of acromantulas. She thought vaguely of the Ford Anglia and wondered if it could fit in this narrow hallway to save her as it had Ron and Harry.

“It’s okay, we aren’t going much farther.” Draco said, smiling at her reassuringly as he pulled her forward. They went down several flights of stone steps. They were crumbling in some places and Ginny lost her footing twice but Draco pulled her upright before she hurled to her death in the darkness below.

“If you wanted to kill me, I would have thought you would have had ample opportunity with all the time we have spent alone in the dungeons.” Ginny said with a nervous hitch in her voice that belied she wasn’t entirely joking.

Draco stopped then at a solid wooden door. With a flick of his wand and a quiet command the door opened easily and silently. He gave her a wicked grin that about floored her.

“I don’t want to kill you, I just want to snog you in peace.”