Hermione stopped her after breakfast the morning after she’d run out of the Common Room.
“I need to talk to you,” she sad quietly, making sure she wasn’t overheard by Harry.
Ginny didn’t argue with the look of urgency framed by bushy hair.
“After your last class. Library.”
Ginny had a bad moment as she remembered the last time someone had passed her instructions for a covert meeting and blushed furiously (it’d been with Draco, before they’d broken it off) but recovered quickly enough.
“Alright.”
So she made her way there after class, Harry following her, carrying both his own textbooks and hers.
She stopped at the entrance to the Library.
“Thank you, Harry, it was very sweet of you to offer to carry my books for me.”
He got the hint and turned to go to the Gryffindor dormitories.
“Harry, wait.”
Ginny, suddenly engulfed by a wave of affection, reached out to give him a brief hug.
“Really, thank you.”
He beamed and wandered off.
She walked into the library, fighting the skittish feeling she often got when she got too close Harry, and got a nasty shock when she saw Draco glowering at her. He turned back to his books the moment she came in through the door, obviously hoping she hadn’t seen him watching them.
Hermione waved her over from a discreet table hiding in a corner.
She sat down, shoving her book bag under her chair and trying to ignore the distinct feeling she had whenever Draco watched her out of the corner of his eye, and stared expectantly at Hermione.
Hermione cleared her throat nervously.
“It’s about Harry.”
Ginny raised her eyebrows and wondered how she could already tell this wasn’t going to be good.
“Um. This is all a bit odd. Look, I’m going to ask you some questions which might seem a bit off, but bear with me, okay?”
She shrugged.
“Have you noticed that sometimes when he’s around you, he looks a bit, well, dazed?”
Ginny stared.
“Just answer me, alright?” Hermione snapped, then looked down, briefly penitent.
“Sorry,” she breathed out, “This is very important, and I’m feeling a bit… edgy.”
“It’s okay. And, yes, I suppose he does, sometimes. Actually, most of the time.”
From where she was, she could see Draco subtly leaning out over his chair, trying to catch what they were saying.
“So did you notice when this started?”
Ginny thought, unwillingly going through memories she usually kept locked away.
“Well, he wasn’t always like that,” she said slowly, “It was… sometime after… sometime after the war.”
Hermione looked rather, Ginny thought, like a bloodhound intent on a fox’s trail. And she felt alarmingly like the fox.
‘Shame her nose doesn’t twitch,’ she thought vaguely, before concentrating on what Hermione was asking. Draco had moved his chair around to the other side of the table, so as to hear them better.
“When you’re around him, do you sometimes feel,” Hermione paused and checked something she’d written on the scroll in front of her, “um, agitated? Like you’ve been charged?”
“How did you?...” Ginny started, trailing off, then nodded. Draco was leaning out dangerously far.
“Ha! I knew it!”
Madam Pince looked over at Hermione’s loud exclamation just as Draco overbalanced and fell out of his chair.
“Perhaps we’d better go to my room. I don’t need these books anymore.”
They packed up their books and got up.
They passed by Draco, who was brushing out his robes, trying to look nonchalant.
“Tsk, tsk, Malfoy, looks like you don’t even have good balance on land. No wonder you can’t fly well,” Ginny opened her mouth to say, but then remembered that she wasn’t speaking to him, and pushed past him.
She jumped as his hand brushed hers, turned to shoot him a filthy look, and hurried after Hermione.
They reached her room without bumping into either Ron or Harry.
“I always feel so glad that I get my own room as Head Girl,” Hermione sighed as she dumped her books onto the table and flopped onto the bed.
“Hmm. Now I don’t suppose you’d mind telling me what all that was about?”
Hermione got her notes and passed them to Ginny.
“Well, you see, sharing magic with someone is always a very dangerous process. If you’re lucky, then your magics are different enough not to mix, like yours and Vol.. Voldemort’s, but if you’re unlucky, then they do, and what you get is a soup of two people’s magic in one person.”
Ginny nodded, looking through the notes.
“The person who cast the spell would, of course, be unaffected; they’d gradually regenerate the magic they passed on. But the problem lies with the person on whom the spell was cast. If the two magics are immiscible, then after a while, the foreign magic would fade and dissipate. But if they do mix, then their body is unable to dispel the residue magic.”
“So,” Ginny cut in, still scanning the scroll, “Every time they came into close contact, the magic of the caster would exert an attraction on her own magic in the him, and he would be dazed by some of his magic leaving him. And she would be on edge because she would be receiving magic from him.”
She didn’t notice the pronouns she was using. They both, after all, knew which situation they were referring to.
“Correct,” Hermione beamed, “and his body would produce some of her magic, as well, because it can’t distinguish between the two types.”
Ginny sighed and ran her hand through her hair in frustration.
“That’s just peachy.”
“Not to worry, all we have to do is isolate the foreign magic in Harry. I suggest we go tell Dumbledore; he’ll be able to help.”
“Wait, why didn’t he warn us of this in the first place?”
“I think he tried to, actually. He kept going on about how dangerous the spell was, and about how spells have their after effects, but I thought he was just being typical Dumbledore.”
Ginny threw herself onto the bed.
“Well, that certainly explains a lot,” she murmured, staring up at the ceiling.
They went to Dumbledore the next day, dragging Harry along with them.
Dumbledore had nodded sagely, liberally dispensing lemon sherbets, as they explained the situation.
“Yes, I did wonder whether that might happen.”
He pursed his lips and stared off into the distance.
Ginny, Hermione, and Harry looked at one another.
“Professor Dumbledore?” Hermione ventured timidly.
“Hmm? Oh, right. We’ll need...”
Dumbledore summoned McGonagall and Snape in the fireplace and they stepped out, brushing the soot off their robes.
He’d explained the gist of the situation quickly.
“Well, I suggest that we bring their magic into corporeal form, and work from there to separate them.”
Dumbledore agreed, and they decided to commence the spells in a week; they needed to brew the necessary potions.
As they were leaving, however, McGonagall stopped Ginny and Harry.
“Potter,” she said, brisk as always, “Melanie Graves is leaving Hogwarts. Her parents are migrating, and they have decided to bring her with them.”
Harry groaned and buried his head in his hands. Melanie was the Gryffindor Keeper.
Ginny patted him sympathetically on the back.
“I think, in light of recent events, it might be better not to hold an open audition. Miss Weasley, I believe, would do very well as Keeper. I don’t think any Gryffindor would contest her taking over Melanie’s position.”
Harry brightened up and turned expectantly to her.
She looked at his eager face.
“All right,” she nodded, sighing.
“And I might mention that I think you’re both handling this excellently well,” McGonagall said, resting a hand awkwardly on their shoulders and looking rather like she’d just swallowed a fly at the admission.
They smiled, murmured polite and meaningless things, and extricated themselves as quickly as possible.
Ginny sighed and threw herself onto her bed. She’d just come back from an intense session of Quidditch, and her body was feeling battered and bruised; the Quaffle was thrown with no small amount of force, and she’d been intercepting throws for the better part of the last three hours.
In top of that, the previous day had been spent with McGonagall and Snape, who’d removed her magic, turning it instead into corporeal form.
It had materialised in the form of a metallic copper liquid that moved and shifted constantly, glinting in the light.
Snape had bottled it, nose casting an alarmingly large shadow on the opposite wall, while McGonagall briefed Ginny.
“You’ll be feeling tired the next couple of days without your magic. We’ve also put a damper on you, so that you‘ll not be generating any more magic until we get this done, so that means no magic at all. Oh, and we’ve spoken to your other professors, and arranged it so that you’ll not be doing any practical wandwork during the next week or so.”
And there was Quidditch practice again tomorrow! Ginny moaned and burrowed her face into her pillow.
The next day was Harry’s turn to have his magic removed. (Ron had already made several unkind jokes about how it sounded slightly like he was about to become a eunuch.)
He left Quidditch practice early, leaving instructions for the team to follow and plays to practice, and went to meet McGonagall and Snape.
Ginny and Harry’s shared the same tight smile across the Quidditch locker room as he left, even if his was slightly confounded.
They mounted their brooms and flew up.
Ginny never allowed herself to feel regret that she was no longer the key player, no longer the Seeker, instead being confined to defending the hoop; she threw herself into Keeping with the same enthusiasm and focus she had Seeking.
That was why, two hours into practice, she only noticed the ruckus back down on the Pitch when Rachel Adams, one of the Chasers she’d been practicing with, motioned her to look down.
Her heart gave a funny little leap when she recognised the green flying robes of the Slytherin team, but she clicked her tongue in exasperation and gestured to Adams to continue playing.
“We booked the pitch!” Ron yelled angrily, Official Spokesperson Of The Gryffindor Team When Harry Potter Wasn’t There.
Draco’s lip curled.
“Signed note from Snape, Weasley,” he waved the piece of parchment in front of Ron’s nose.
Ron snarled and made a grab for it just as Harry jogged back onto the Pitch.
Then three things happened, in quick succession.
First: the two Beaters flew down to see what it was all about and whether they could lend a hand, or better yet, their bats.
Second: the Bludgers zoomed towards the other team members still practicing.
Third: Ginny Weasley turned to watch Harry and Draco argue.
When Adams screamed, prompting Ron, Harry, and Draco to turn around, the looks on their faces were identical ones of horror as they registered what it was falling out of the sky.
Red robes and red hair. Ginny Weasley. Bludger disentangling itself from her and continuing to pelt her.
Draco mounted his broom and zoomed up. Harry whipped out his wand, tried in vain to cast a spell, any spell to save her.
But just before she hit the ground, she slowed, though still hitting it with a sickening thud and several distinct cracks.
Ron ran to her, tucking his wand back into his robes.
Everyone gathered around, minus Adams who’d had the presence of mind to run up to the Infirmary to get Madam Pomfrey.
Ginny opened her eyes to see everyone crowded around, blinking away the blood from the gash above her eyebrow.
Through the miasma of pain, she could make out the concerned faces of Ron and Harry, with Draco hovering just behind.
She lifted her arm, stretched out pleading fingers.
“Harry.” She whispered.
The last thing she remembered before the cool relief of darkness overtook her was the feeling of warm arms wrapping around her.
Blaise watched in amusement as Draco systematically shredded the carpet in the Head Boy room.
“Draco, mate, calm down,” he couldn’t help smirking, despite it not being quite appropriate to the Lead Man’s Best Friend And Confidante.
He was the only person who knew about Draco’s relationship (or ex-relationship) with Ginny Weasley; apart from them of course, as it would have been quite quite weird if the both of them hadn’t been informed.
He’d happened upon the both of them in Draco’s room, once, and Ginny’d stopped Draco from Obliviating him.
Draco snarled.
“I honestly can’t believe you’re upset that she called Potter’s name and not yours. Besides, I’m sure she’s called out your name more than your fair share of times,” He wiggled his eyebrows in a distinctly salacious manner, then ducked to avoid the book chucked at his head.
“But why? I mean, why him? Just because he’s Saint Potter and goodness and light personified!”
Blaise shrugged.
“Not that I want to be rude or anything, Draco old buddy old pal, but have you considered that she might simply trust him more? It’s not as though you’ve never hurt her or anything.”
Draco looked briefly anguished before glowering at the carpet once more.
“Besides, wasn’t there a rumour circulating a while back that she helped him to defeat Voldemort the second time? That must have required a lot of trust.”
They both jumped as the portrait banged open.
“Malfoy, you arse!” Parkinson yelled as she stepped into the room and slapped him about the head, “Where were you? I was looking for you all afternoon! You could at least pretend to participate in this farce of a relationship, you know.”
Blaise winced as she hit him again.
Ginny was still awake when Harry slipped into the Infirmary that night.
She turned around as the door squeaked a little, half hoping and half fearing it might be Draco, then recognised the mussed black hair.
“Hi, Harry,” she whispered, trying not to move her head too much for fear that the little men trying to drill their way out of her skull might get angry and start doing some other damage.
“Ginny.”
He sat down on the chair beside her bed.
They watched each other in the pale moonlight. She was reminded of another time, not so long ago, when another boy had sat in that chair, and felt her heart knot.
“I’m sorry, Ginny, I really am.” Harry’s face was twisted up in wretchedness.
“What for?”
“I… I couldn’t save you.”
She smiled gingerly. It felt like the little men had stopped to have a cup of tea.
“Don’t be silly, Harry, it wasn’t your fault.”
He continued looking tormented, until she squeezed his hand where he’d been holding it.
“Truly. Besides, Ron saved me, didn’t he?”
He smiled sadly, then, and she was struck, all of a sudden, by how much better he looked when he wasn’t dazed.
He leaned over to place a gentle kiss on her cheek before leaving.
“You’ll always be my hero regardless, Harry,” she whispered to the darkness.
She was back in the Great Hall eating breakfast by the next morning, jostling elbows with Ron and elbowing Harry playfully in the side.
Her good mood vanished at once, however, when she saw Parkinson place a square of Honeyduke’s chocolate in Draco’s mouth, then, laughing, lean over and kiss him.
It was definitely disgust squeezing her heart unpleasantly, she thought as she waited for them to surface.
She watched.
She took a sip of coffee and nibbled her croissant.
She stabbed the butter knife into the pat of butter as she saw Draco’s tongue swipe into Parkinson’s mouth and tried not to remember how it felt like.
She thought she saw Draco’s eyes open to watch her before he threw himself into the kiss with even more vim and vigour.
Pansy broke off, still laughing, sucking on a square of chocolate.
Ginny pushed her plate away. She wasn’t hungry anymore.
“All right, Ginny?” Harry peered at her in concern. She could feel Draco’s eyes on her.
She forced a sweet smile and nodded.
Snape swooped down on them after breakfast, leading them to the classroom they’d cast the spells in.
McGonagall was waiting there, two vials in hand. She passed one to each.
Ginny peered at the copper liquid.
Essence of Ginny Weasley, that was.
How odd.
She touched her finger to the surface of the liquid, as McGonagall had instructed, and saw Harry doing the same out of the corner of her eye.
She jumped as she felt a wave of energy hit her.
“Oh, I forget to tell you about the aftershock,” McGonagall said as she took the bowls from them and removed the dampers, “Right, you may go to class now. If you notice anything more, you may approach either me or Professor Snape.”
They left, nerves tingling.
[A/N: I know, I know, there was barely any D/G interaction there. And it's short. Relatively. Sorry. Just wait! Next chapter. Oh it’s either one or two more chapters and a sequel or three or four more chapters and nothing, I guess. What do you think? I’ll have to see whether I have anything to put in the sequel besides the basic stuff I’ve worked out. Oh, and thanks for reviewing, darlings.]
“I need to talk to you,” she sad quietly, making sure she wasn’t overheard by Harry.
Ginny didn’t argue with the look of urgency framed by bushy hair.
“After your last class. Library.”
Ginny had a bad moment as she remembered the last time someone had passed her instructions for a covert meeting and blushed furiously (it’d been with Draco, before they’d broken it off) but recovered quickly enough.
“Alright.”
So she made her way there after class, Harry following her, carrying both his own textbooks and hers.
She stopped at the entrance to the Library.
“Thank you, Harry, it was very sweet of you to offer to carry my books for me.”
He got the hint and turned to go to the Gryffindor dormitories.
“Harry, wait.”
Ginny, suddenly engulfed by a wave of affection, reached out to give him a brief hug.
“Really, thank you.”
He beamed and wandered off.
She walked into the library, fighting the skittish feeling she often got when she got too close Harry, and got a nasty shock when she saw Draco glowering at her. He turned back to his books the moment she came in through the door, obviously hoping she hadn’t seen him watching them.
Hermione waved her over from a discreet table hiding in a corner.
She sat down, shoving her book bag under her chair and trying to ignore the distinct feeling she had whenever Draco watched her out of the corner of his eye, and stared expectantly at Hermione.
Hermione cleared her throat nervously.
“It’s about Harry.”
Ginny raised her eyebrows and wondered how she could already tell this wasn’t going to be good.
“Um. This is all a bit odd. Look, I’m going to ask you some questions which might seem a bit off, but bear with me, okay?”
She shrugged.
“Have you noticed that sometimes when he’s around you, he looks a bit, well, dazed?”
Ginny stared.
“Just answer me, alright?” Hermione snapped, then looked down, briefly penitent.
“Sorry,” she breathed out, “This is very important, and I’m feeling a bit… edgy.”
“It’s okay. And, yes, I suppose he does, sometimes. Actually, most of the time.”
From where she was, she could see Draco subtly leaning out over his chair, trying to catch what they were saying.
“So did you notice when this started?”
Ginny thought, unwillingly going through memories she usually kept locked away.
“Well, he wasn’t always like that,” she said slowly, “It was… sometime after… sometime after the war.”
Hermione looked rather, Ginny thought, like a bloodhound intent on a fox’s trail. And she felt alarmingly like the fox.
‘Shame her nose doesn’t twitch,’ she thought vaguely, before concentrating on what Hermione was asking. Draco had moved his chair around to the other side of the table, so as to hear them better.
“When you’re around him, do you sometimes feel,” Hermione paused and checked something she’d written on the scroll in front of her, “um, agitated? Like you’ve been charged?”
“How did you?...” Ginny started, trailing off, then nodded. Draco was leaning out dangerously far.
“Ha! I knew it!”
Madam Pince looked over at Hermione’s loud exclamation just as Draco overbalanced and fell out of his chair.
“Perhaps we’d better go to my room. I don’t need these books anymore.”
They packed up their books and got up.
They passed by Draco, who was brushing out his robes, trying to look nonchalant.
“Tsk, tsk, Malfoy, looks like you don’t even have good balance on land. No wonder you can’t fly well,” Ginny opened her mouth to say, but then remembered that she wasn’t speaking to him, and pushed past him.
She jumped as his hand brushed hers, turned to shoot him a filthy look, and hurried after Hermione.
They reached her room without bumping into either Ron or Harry.
“I always feel so glad that I get my own room as Head Girl,” Hermione sighed as she dumped her books onto the table and flopped onto the bed.
“Hmm. Now I don’t suppose you’d mind telling me what all that was about?”
Hermione got her notes and passed them to Ginny.
“Well, you see, sharing magic with someone is always a very dangerous process. If you’re lucky, then your magics are different enough not to mix, like yours and Vol.. Voldemort’s, but if you’re unlucky, then they do, and what you get is a soup of two people’s magic in one person.”
Ginny nodded, looking through the notes.
“The person who cast the spell would, of course, be unaffected; they’d gradually regenerate the magic they passed on. But the problem lies with the person on whom the spell was cast. If the two magics are immiscible, then after a while, the foreign magic would fade and dissipate. But if they do mix, then their body is unable to dispel the residue magic.”
“So,” Ginny cut in, still scanning the scroll, “Every time they came into close contact, the magic of the caster would exert an attraction on her own magic in the him, and he would be dazed by some of his magic leaving him. And she would be on edge because she would be receiving magic from him.”
She didn’t notice the pronouns she was using. They both, after all, knew which situation they were referring to.
“Correct,” Hermione beamed, “and his body would produce some of her magic, as well, because it can’t distinguish between the two types.”
Ginny sighed and ran her hand through her hair in frustration.
“That’s just peachy.”
“Not to worry, all we have to do is isolate the foreign magic in Harry. I suggest we go tell Dumbledore; he’ll be able to help.”
“Wait, why didn’t he warn us of this in the first place?”
“I think he tried to, actually. He kept going on about how dangerous the spell was, and about how spells have their after effects, but I thought he was just being typical Dumbledore.”
Ginny threw herself onto the bed.
“Well, that certainly explains a lot,” she murmured, staring up at the ceiling.
They went to Dumbledore the next day, dragging Harry along with them.
Dumbledore had nodded sagely, liberally dispensing lemon sherbets, as they explained the situation.
“Yes, I did wonder whether that might happen.”
He pursed his lips and stared off into the distance.
Ginny, Hermione, and Harry looked at one another.
“Professor Dumbledore?” Hermione ventured timidly.
“Hmm? Oh, right. We’ll need...”
Dumbledore summoned McGonagall and Snape in the fireplace and they stepped out, brushing the soot off their robes.
He’d explained the gist of the situation quickly.
“Well, I suggest that we bring their magic into corporeal form, and work from there to separate them.”
Dumbledore agreed, and they decided to commence the spells in a week; they needed to brew the necessary potions.
As they were leaving, however, McGonagall stopped Ginny and Harry.
“Potter,” she said, brisk as always, “Melanie Graves is leaving Hogwarts. Her parents are migrating, and they have decided to bring her with them.”
Harry groaned and buried his head in his hands. Melanie was the Gryffindor Keeper.
Ginny patted him sympathetically on the back.
“I think, in light of recent events, it might be better not to hold an open audition. Miss Weasley, I believe, would do very well as Keeper. I don’t think any Gryffindor would contest her taking over Melanie’s position.”
Harry brightened up and turned expectantly to her.
She looked at his eager face.
“All right,” she nodded, sighing.
“And I might mention that I think you’re both handling this excellently well,” McGonagall said, resting a hand awkwardly on their shoulders and looking rather like she’d just swallowed a fly at the admission.
They smiled, murmured polite and meaningless things, and extricated themselves as quickly as possible.
Ginny sighed and threw herself onto her bed. She’d just come back from an intense session of Quidditch, and her body was feeling battered and bruised; the Quaffle was thrown with no small amount of force, and she’d been intercepting throws for the better part of the last three hours.
In top of that, the previous day had been spent with McGonagall and Snape, who’d removed her magic, turning it instead into corporeal form.
It had materialised in the form of a metallic copper liquid that moved and shifted constantly, glinting in the light.
Snape had bottled it, nose casting an alarmingly large shadow on the opposite wall, while McGonagall briefed Ginny.
“You’ll be feeling tired the next couple of days without your magic. We’ve also put a damper on you, so that you‘ll not be generating any more magic until we get this done, so that means no magic at all. Oh, and we’ve spoken to your other professors, and arranged it so that you’ll not be doing any practical wandwork during the next week or so.”
And there was Quidditch practice again tomorrow! Ginny moaned and burrowed her face into her pillow.
The next day was Harry’s turn to have his magic removed. (Ron had already made several unkind jokes about how it sounded slightly like he was about to become a eunuch.)
He left Quidditch practice early, leaving instructions for the team to follow and plays to practice, and went to meet McGonagall and Snape.
Ginny and Harry’s shared the same tight smile across the Quidditch locker room as he left, even if his was slightly confounded.
They mounted their brooms and flew up.
Ginny never allowed herself to feel regret that she was no longer the key player, no longer the Seeker, instead being confined to defending the hoop; she threw herself into Keeping with the same enthusiasm and focus she had Seeking.
That was why, two hours into practice, she only noticed the ruckus back down on the Pitch when Rachel Adams, one of the Chasers she’d been practicing with, motioned her to look down.
Her heart gave a funny little leap when she recognised the green flying robes of the Slytherin team, but she clicked her tongue in exasperation and gestured to Adams to continue playing.
“We booked the pitch!” Ron yelled angrily, Official Spokesperson Of The Gryffindor Team When Harry Potter Wasn’t There.
Draco’s lip curled.
“Signed note from Snape, Weasley,” he waved the piece of parchment in front of Ron’s nose.
Ron snarled and made a grab for it just as Harry jogged back onto the Pitch.
Then three things happened, in quick succession.
First: the two Beaters flew down to see what it was all about and whether they could lend a hand, or better yet, their bats.
Second: the Bludgers zoomed towards the other team members still practicing.
Third: Ginny Weasley turned to watch Harry and Draco argue.
When Adams screamed, prompting Ron, Harry, and Draco to turn around, the looks on their faces were identical ones of horror as they registered what it was falling out of the sky.
Red robes and red hair. Ginny Weasley. Bludger disentangling itself from her and continuing to pelt her.
Draco mounted his broom and zoomed up. Harry whipped out his wand, tried in vain to cast a spell, any spell to save her.
But just before she hit the ground, she slowed, though still hitting it with a sickening thud and several distinct cracks.
Ron ran to her, tucking his wand back into his robes.
Everyone gathered around, minus Adams who’d had the presence of mind to run up to the Infirmary to get Madam Pomfrey.
Ginny opened her eyes to see everyone crowded around, blinking away the blood from the gash above her eyebrow.
Through the miasma of pain, she could make out the concerned faces of Ron and Harry, with Draco hovering just behind.
She lifted her arm, stretched out pleading fingers.
“Harry.” She whispered.
The last thing she remembered before the cool relief of darkness overtook her was the feeling of warm arms wrapping around her.
Blaise watched in amusement as Draco systematically shredded the carpet in the Head Boy room.
“Draco, mate, calm down,” he couldn’t help smirking, despite it not being quite appropriate to the Lead Man’s Best Friend And Confidante.
He was the only person who knew about Draco’s relationship (or ex-relationship) with Ginny Weasley; apart from them of course, as it would have been quite quite weird if the both of them hadn’t been informed.
He’d happened upon the both of them in Draco’s room, once, and Ginny’d stopped Draco from Obliviating him.
Draco snarled.
“I honestly can’t believe you’re upset that she called Potter’s name and not yours. Besides, I’m sure she’s called out your name more than your fair share of times,” He wiggled his eyebrows in a distinctly salacious manner, then ducked to avoid the book chucked at his head.
“But why? I mean, why him? Just because he’s Saint Potter and goodness and light personified!”
Blaise shrugged.
“Not that I want to be rude or anything, Draco old buddy old pal, but have you considered that she might simply trust him more? It’s not as though you’ve never hurt her or anything.”
Draco looked briefly anguished before glowering at the carpet once more.
“Besides, wasn’t there a rumour circulating a while back that she helped him to defeat Voldemort the second time? That must have required a lot of trust.”
They both jumped as the portrait banged open.
“Malfoy, you arse!” Parkinson yelled as she stepped into the room and slapped him about the head, “Where were you? I was looking for you all afternoon! You could at least pretend to participate in this farce of a relationship, you know.”
Blaise winced as she hit him again.
Ginny was still awake when Harry slipped into the Infirmary that night.
She turned around as the door squeaked a little, half hoping and half fearing it might be Draco, then recognised the mussed black hair.
“Hi, Harry,” she whispered, trying not to move her head too much for fear that the little men trying to drill their way out of her skull might get angry and start doing some other damage.
“Ginny.”
He sat down on the chair beside her bed.
They watched each other in the pale moonlight. She was reminded of another time, not so long ago, when another boy had sat in that chair, and felt her heart knot.
“I’m sorry, Ginny, I really am.” Harry’s face was twisted up in wretchedness.
“What for?”
“I… I couldn’t save you.”
She smiled gingerly. It felt like the little men had stopped to have a cup of tea.
“Don’t be silly, Harry, it wasn’t your fault.”
He continued looking tormented, until she squeezed his hand where he’d been holding it.
“Truly. Besides, Ron saved me, didn’t he?”
He smiled sadly, then, and she was struck, all of a sudden, by how much better he looked when he wasn’t dazed.
He leaned over to place a gentle kiss on her cheek before leaving.
“You’ll always be my hero regardless, Harry,” she whispered to the darkness.
She was back in the Great Hall eating breakfast by the next morning, jostling elbows with Ron and elbowing Harry playfully in the side.
Her good mood vanished at once, however, when she saw Parkinson place a square of Honeyduke’s chocolate in Draco’s mouth, then, laughing, lean over and kiss him.
It was definitely disgust squeezing her heart unpleasantly, she thought as she waited for them to surface.
She watched.
She took a sip of coffee and nibbled her croissant.
She stabbed the butter knife into the pat of butter as she saw Draco’s tongue swipe into Parkinson’s mouth and tried not to remember how it felt like.
She thought she saw Draco’s eyes open to watch her before he threw himself into the kiss with even more vim and vigour.
Pansy broke off, still laughing, sucking on a square of chocolate.
Ginny pushed her plate away. She wasn’t hungry anymore.
“All right, Ginny?” Harry peered at her in concern. She could feel Draco’s eyes on her.
She forced a sweet smile and nodded.
Snape swooped down on them after breakfast, leading them to the classroom they’d cast the spells in.
McGonagall was waiting there, two vials in hand. She passed one to each.
Ginny peered at the copper liquid.
Essence of Ginny Weasley, that was.
How odd.
She touched her finger to the surface of the liquid, as McGonagall had instructed, and saw Harry doing the same out of the corner of her eye.
She jumped as she felt a wave of energy hit her.
“Oh, I forget to tell you about the aftershock,” McGonagall said as she took the bowls from them and removed the dampers, “Right, you may go to class now. If you notice anything more, you may approach either me or Professor Snape.”
They left, nerves tingling.
[A/N: I know, I know, there was barely any D/G interaction there. And it's short. Relatively. Sorry. Just wait! Next chapter. Oh it’s either one or two more chapters and a sequel or three or four more chapters and nothing, I guess. What do you think? I’ll have to see whether I have anything to put in the sequel besides the basic stuff I’ve worked out. Oh, and thanks for reviewing, darlings.]
Leave a Review