The Dangers of Boredom

Draco Malfoy was walking about the grounds aimlessly, scuffing the toes of his shoes against the ground occasionally. It really was all rather boring anymore, life that was. Every day was the same thing, the same schedule, the same mind-numbing work, and the same idiotic people. Torturing any house but his own had always given him a bit of a thrill, but he was finding even that rather pointless anymore.

Face it Mate, he thought wryly, you’re in a rut.

And then something very small moving incredibly fast slammed into his chest, knocking him clear off his feet. He squeezed his eyes shut and braced himself for the impact, letting out a loud ‘oof!’ when his back hit the ground, the air knocked from his lungs.

When he opened his eyes, all he could see was a bright red something, the vibrant stuff all over his face. He realized a moment later that the great mass of red covering him was hair, and that the thing that had hit him was, in fact, a body…a body that was shaking quite hard on top of him. At first he thought the person was crying or something equally distasteful, but when breathy giggles reached his ears, he realized the shaking was laughter.

The girl, for it was indeed a female, rolled off of him, laughing even harder now. He propped himself up a bit to gaze down at her, incredulous that anyone had dared do something like this to him. She was on her knees now, holding her stomach with her head bowed as she kept on laughing uncontrollably. He felt his anger rise at her obvious amusement, and was about to demand just who she thought she was when her head rose and she brushed the hair back from her face.

That’s when it all snapped into place. The red hair, how small she had been, the slightly familiar giggle – this was the Weasley girl.

“Weaselette,” he sneered.

Her chortles came to an abrupt halt and her eyes widened in surprise before narrowing in recognition. “Oh…Malfoy.” She smiled sweetly. “Wow, I was about to apologize too. Good thing I waited, huh?”

She climbed to her feet and he followed suit angrily. He was about to hurl one of his more scathing insults, reserved only for special occasions like this one, when another, much bigger something came hurtling from out of nowhere and into the small girl’s side.

The both of them went down with an audible ‘thump’ in a tangled mass of limbs and hair. After a few moments in which he assumed they were attempting to find air, her laughter rang out again, this time followed by a deeper chuckle.

“Harry! That’s not fair!” she cried, still giggling. “I was hindered.”

Draco’s eyes narrowed harshly. Potter and Weasley. Just fantastic. This is precisely what I wanted to deal with today.

Harry was currently in the process of untangling himself from her and he laughed again. “Don’t try any of that,” he grinned, “I told you I was faster and I was right.”

“No!” she insisted, residue giggles escaping her as Harry pulled her back to her feet. “It was Malfoy….” Her eyes suddenly widened as she apparently remembered his presence.

She turned to him slowly and offered him a small, uncertain smile. “Erm…yeah, Harry and I were racing and…well,” she tried to explain lamely.

“And you’re both clumsy oafs that apparently feel you must run into someone in order to stop yourselves,” he snarled angrily, flicking invisible specks of dirt from his robes.

“Are you alright, Gin?” Harry suddenly asked as he stepped up beside her, glaring at Draco from behind his round glasses. “What did he do to you?”

Draco rolled his eyes. “I didn’t do anything to your little girlfriend, Potter. She knocked me over.” He turned accusing eyes on Ginny. “Isn’t that right, Weaselette?”

She huffed at him, but nodded reluctantly to Harry. “Yeah, I didn’t see him.”

Harry looked like he was about to argue when twin calls of “Harry!” sounded behind him. He turned and grinned at Ron and Hermione, racing off to catch up with the pair.

Draco snorted as he regarded the small redhead in front of him who was currently staring after the trio. “Thoughtful one, he is.”

She looked at him surprised. “What?”

He shrugged. “Just seems a bit unwise, leaving his girlfriend alone with the enemy, don’t you think?”

“I’m not his girlfriend,” she snapped, scowling.

Draco raised an eyebrow. “Ah, haven’t managed to seduce him just yet, then?”

“Shut it, Malfoy,” she snarled, her eyes flaring up. “I don’t feel that way about Harry anymore. That ship has long since sailed.”

He just smirked as he regarded her coolly. “I noticed you didn’t argue that he was rather thoughtless to leave you here alone.”

She rolled her eyes. “I don’t exactly need to be babysat, Malfoy. And so what? He’s got friends of his own. Big deal.”

“Do you?” he asked. “Have friends of your own, I mean.”

For just a moment, he saw something flicker behind her eyes, but it was short lived. “Do you?” she returned with a grin.

“Of course I do,” he scoffed.

“Name one.”

He opened his mouth, ready to tick off names, but came up short. Crabbe, Goyle, Pansy, Millistrode, Zabini…did he really want to admit that any of those morons were his friends?

“Knew it,” she nodded with a satisfied look on her small features. “You just have minions, not friends.”

“At least I have that much,” he snapped back, not missing a beat.

She grinned easily and tossed her hair behind her shoulders. “Why, Mr. Malfoy, I am everybody’s friend. I am the social butterfly of Hogwarts. Didn’t you know?”

“And yet you’re still completely alone,” he jabbed. He really had no idea how the girl felt, but he’d found that comments like that tended to get anyone riled up, true or not.

Her grin never faltered, but he could see the pain and fury rising in her eyes and realized with a rush of satisfaction that he had hit the nail on the head. Actually, he was a bit surprised; she didn’t exactly seem the lonely sort. But then he supposed he didn’t seem to be the ‘dissatisfied with life’ sort either, did he?

Ginny glared for a moment before taking a breath and shrugging nonchalantly. “We’re all alone Malfoy. We all feel a little bit empty. It’s what you do with what you’re left with that matters, yeah?”

“What does that even mean?” he asked, making a derisive noise in his throat.

“It means,” she said, taking a step closer. “That right now I’m feeling just a tad bit disappointed that Harry left, that you sort of hurt my feelings with that comment, and that I’m doubting myself just a bit as a result. What I’m left with is a bit of annoyance for Harry, lots of anger for you, and a little amusement that you’re telling me that I’m lonely when the only people who talk to you are people who want to use you for your power. So now what do I do with all that?

“Well, I could go find Luna or Dean or someone, I could go and mope, or I could just stay right here with you for a bit. That last option opens a lot of new doors though. If I did stay, what would I do? I suppose we could go on trading insults. You seem to like that. Unfortunately, I’m not evil, and that gets old for me. Maybe I could just shock you a bit.” She took another step closer, until they were almost touching. Smiling up at him, she whispered, “Or maybe I could shock you a lot.”

She rose on her tip toes and inched closer until their lips were just a breath apart. He felt his breath hitch and his brain was screaming at him to get the hell away from her, especially when they were both out in the open like this, but his body didn’t seem to want to comply as he stayed frozen in place. His eyes were only closed for a second before a small fist collided painfully hard with his stomach and he doubled over in pain.

He looked up at Ginny’s delighted laughter and saw her grin mischievously at him. She held up her hand, still in a fist, and said, “See? That shocked you a lot, didn’t it?”

He snarled and moved to grab at her, but she danced easily out of reach, laughing and wagging a disapproving finger. “Ah ah, Malfoy. Play nice now. I was just illustrating my point, was all. I told you what bothered me, I told you what I was left with, and then I showed you what I decided to do about that. However, right now all you care about is what I did, which in this case was punching your poor tummy. See? I was right: all that matters is what you do with what you’re left with.”

He blinked and just stared in open disbelief before he came back to himself and roared, “YOU’RE OFF YOUR BLOODY ROCKER, WEASLEY!”

She tossed her head back lightly and laughed. “They say all great minds are just a little bit insane, you know,” she informed him with an amused smile. “Well! This has been fun, but I think I’m gonna go do a bit of reading.” She walked up to him, gave his cheek a light pat with her palm, and shouldered past him rather roughly, calling back a cheery “Ta!”

-------------------------------------------------

The library was practically filled when he entered it, and the only thing that stopped him from turning around and leaving on the spot was the weight of his parchments and books in his bag, a rude reminder that if he skipped one more homework assignment, he’d be sorry.

He managed to actually find an empty table and spread his things over it. It was all he could do to hold in his groan of displeasure. Enter the boredom, he thought wryly.

His thoughts of about a week ago had not lessened with time; if anything, they’d grown more intense. He was absolutely and wholly sick of the dullness surrounding him at every turn. Although…the Weaselette had proved interesting, if only for a time. No one had had the nerve to be so blatant with him in a long time; he found it, in some weird way, slightly refreshing. And bloody annoying.

Catching himself thinking about the small redhead – again – he scowled and started writing his essay in a way that rather resembled attacking his parchment.

“Now what did that poor assignment ever do to you?” he heard a familiar voice coo above him, amusement rich in the undercurrents of the tone. Even if he didn’t recognize the sound, he could have placed the identity of the person by the mocking words alone.

He fixed his gaze onto the Weasley and growled, “It existed.”

To his absolute shock, she laughed. “Yeah, I suppose that’s a pretty terrible offense for homework…or class work…or any work, really.” Then, giving him a measuring look, she said, “I didn’t know Malfoy’s had a sense of humor.”

“I wasn’t aware I was making a joke,” he drawled, glaring hatefully at his homework.

And then it happened again. She burst into an appreciative fit of laughter, though she tempered it slightly due to their surroundings and a warning look from Madam Pince.

It was enough to make him stare openly, a slightly confused look on his face. She caught the expression and raised an amused eyebrow. “Not used to hearing laughter, Malfoy? Wow, you Slytherins really do have a broomstick shoved up your – ”

“What do you want, Weasley?” he snarled, angry now. Probably because it was true. She shocked him constantly, just being so…alive.

“I want,” she declared, “to be up in my dorm, reading a good book and sipping on a nice butterbeer. I need, however, to get lots and lots of work done. To my displeasure as much as yours, I’m sure, this is the only empty table. So make room.”

“Yeah, I’ll get right on that,” he drawled sarcastically, a smirk just barely tugging at his lips. When she just cocked a hip to the side, placing one slender hand on it, and stood waiting, he rolled his eyes and went back to ‘writing’ his essay.

He heard her mutter a Silencio charm, and immediately afterwards heard a loud crash as she swept his things from the table top with a casual flick of her wand. He stared at her incredulously for a moment before looking to Madam Pince, expecting her to come screeching over any second. When he saw the aforementioned woman was quite oblivious, he remembered the Silencio charm and realized its purpose.

“What was that?” he demanded hotly with narrowed eyes.

She grinned pleasantly and plopped down right beside him. “I asked nicely. It’s not my fault you didn’t listen, now is it?” When he continued glaring at her like he was trying to make her head burst into flame by force of will alone, she rolled her eyes and with another flick of her wand, his things were neatly piled on his side of the table. “See? That’s all you had to do in the first place.”

“I didn’t do that in the first place because I wanted you to go away,” he informed her.

She grinned. “Ask my brothers – that is an impossible task.”

He eyed her smiling face suspiciously. “Why are you like that?”

She raised her eyebrows. “What? Annoying?”

He smirked. “Well, that too, but I was referring to how…chipper you always are. Even around me. You used to be so quiet; I don’t even know your first name.”

Surprising him a bit (but nothing new there), she actually seemed to consider the question. “I don’t know,” she finally said slowly. “I guess it started about the same time I gave up on Harry. I realized that life sucks.”

His eyebrows shot up. “And this made you happy how?”

She smiled a little. “Life sucks, it always has sucked, and it’s always going to suck. So why mope over it? Just accept it. If you do, then you sort of find out that if you try really hard, you can see bad stuff often turns out to be…not so bad.”

“What do you mean?” His eyebrows creased a bit in worry. “And please, no examples like last time.”

She laughed, her eyes glittering with merriment. “Shame. Okay…you. You’re a good example.”

He titled his head a bit, leaning back in his chair, homework completely forgotten. “How so?”

“Well, you’re bad. Annoying, spoiled, arrogant, cruel. I could go on, but from the look on your face, I think you get it,” she grinned at his scowl. “Anyway, you’re all this terrible stuff that normal people would classify as ‘bad’ and move on. Really, though, when I try really, really hard, I can see you’re not quite so awful.”

“Why do you say that?” he probed, curious out of his mind by this point.

She shrugged. “I have fun with you…usually at your expense, but I don’t mind that. Sure, sometimes you manage to say something that actually cuts, but that’s the ‘life sucks’ part of the deal. I just learned to concentrate on the other part.” She laughed again at his glare.

“So…you actually like spending time with me?” he asked, incredulous.

She frowned just a bit. “Well…I wouldn’t go so far as to say that. Just on the odd occasion, such as now, that I’m forced to spend time with you…I survive.”

For what seemed like a long time to him, he just stared at her. What she’d said…it sort of made sense in a twisted kind of way. She was happy because life sucked. It was almost poetic.

“Well,” he remarked quietly. “You really are insane.”

She smiled lightly. “It gets me by.”

Then she started working, and he followed her example. He was putting the finishing touches on his essay when she stood, shouldering her bag, and flashed him a mischievous smile. “Bye. Oh, and by the way, the name’s Ginevra. Ginny, if you like.” And with that she left.

Draco stared after her for a moment and sat back in an effort to collect his scattered thoughts. He had no idea what he thought about the littlest Weasel…Ginevra, did she say? He did know one thing for sure, though: she certainly wasn’t boring.

-------------------------------------------------------

When the sobbing reached his ears, he cringed. He was reclined comfortably against his favorite tree down by the lake, soaking up the sun and all in all just having a very peaceful moment, which was rare for him these days.

All kinds of doubts had started assailing the blonde Slytherin of late. More and more things that he once deemed important seemed utterly ridiculous. His thoughts seemed to always be absorbed with one of three things: how meaningless his life had been so far, what in the world he wanted to do with his future, and, much to his dismay, with a certain Ginevra Weasley.

She was so completely the opposite of him. Always smiling, always positive even through her pain. Normally, all of this would annoy him. Really, it did annoy him. But it also interested him, and with everything else seeming so incredibly dull to him, anything even a little bit fascinating intrigued him greatly. And she was more than just a little bit fascinating.

But right now, none of that was on his mind. He was blissfully unaware, and so when the sound of a crying girl penetrated that lovely state of nothingness, he was more than a little annoyed.

Twisting around to locate the source, he found himself incapable of moving for a moment as he saw it was Ginny sobbing, her back against a tree behind and to the left of him, her knees drawn up to her chest supporting her forehead.

Well…that was…unexpected. The warm, sunny girl was bawling her eyes out. He should have been happy about that. He wasn’t, though. Thankfully, he didn’t exactly feel sorry for her, either. He was merely curious. Another interesting thing had just entered his life as a result of this girl.

So, annoyance forgotten, he got to his feet, brushing himself off lightly as he walked towards her. She didn’t notice him standing before her, so he dropped gracefully next to her and said, “I hope you know I was having a nice, quiet moment before you interrupted it with your blubbering.”

Her head lifted quickly off of her knees and she turned a hateful glare on him. “Go away, Malfoy.”

He shook his head. “I don’t think so. You’ve disturbed my peace and quiet. The least you can do after that is explain to me why it was disturbed.”

She actually smiled a little, and he felt and inexplicable twinge of relief at the expression. “You know, Malfoy, normal people just ask what’s wrong.”

When he didn’t flinch, she sighed heavily and said, “I was bored and decided to go see what Ron and that lot were up to. Of course, as is inevitable when Ron and I are in the same room for too long, we got into an argument. I can’t even remember what about anymore. Then Hermione got really mad because she couldn’t bloody concentrate on her work or some rubbish and proceeded to tell me I was basically just a hindrance tolerated only for Ron’s sake. I know it’s something silly to be worrying over, so you don’t have to tell me, but there it is.”

The first thing he thought to say turned out not to be too smart. “Well…you are rather annoying. You certainly managed to effectively shatter my peace just now.”

Like a shot she was up, fresh tears springing to her eyes, and she spat, “You know, I’d yell at you, but really it’s my own fault for thinking maybe you had a soul underneath all that malice.”

He didn’t know right away what compelled him to make her stay, but he eventually figured it must be that he simply wasn’t ready to be bored again just yet. In any case, he did just that: made her stay. He grasped her hand tightly in his own and yanked her back down next to him in the grass.

With a sigh, he said, “Some people find annoying bad…but some complete lunatic, whom I absolutely cannot stand, once told me that if you try really hard, bad stuff turns out to be not so bad sometimes.”

She gazed at him a moment before finally admitting, “I can’t decide if that’s a compliment or not.”

He just shrugged. For a moment, they sat in blessed silence, but only seconds later silent tears started streaming down her cheek and eventually turned into full-blown crying once more.

“Lord Weasley,” he complained disdainfully. “How much salt water can be in one person’s body?”

She made a weird hiccupping/choking sound that he assumed was meant to be a wry laugh, and said, “You know, most people would offer me food or something, like ice cream, not insult me.”

“Food?” His brow wrinkled a little in confusion. “That’s rather stupid. How is food going to make any problem any less of a problem?”

She laughed, though it came out as a sort of strangled sob. “I think it’s supposed to distract you.”

“That’s stupid too,” he declared with a nod, as if agreeing with himself emphatically on this. “Distracting yourself doesn’t make a problem less of a problem, either.”

Now she didn’t smile. “Sometimes,” she whispered a little hoarsely, “a problem can’t be made less of a problem. Then all you have left is distraction.”

He studied her a moment. She really wasn’t that horrendous looking…at least not like her brothers. Her hair was just as obnoxiously orange-red, but he remembered from when she’d barreled him over that it was remarkably soft and it always seemed to shimmer. Right now, it was obvious she’d been crying by the tear tracks down her cheeks and the slight redness rimming her eyes…but he didn’t think it made her particularly unattractive. In fact, the moisture residue in her eyes seemed to make them shine with an inner light, and she looked almost vulnerable.

He reached his hand out to play with her hair, and when she turned towards him, his eyes were immediately drawn to her lips, slightly parted from the deep gasping breaths she’d been inhaling in between sobs.

Slowly, he slid his hand around to the back of her head and bent his face down, pausing for just a moment before he pressed his lips to hers. He felt her go stiff at first, but almost immediately she relaxed into him, and he pulled her a bit closer as she kissed him back. Her kisses seemed to be directly connected to her personality. She would attack him with a passionate fervor one minute, surprising him with her boldness, then pull back and just barely brush her lips across his, teasing him until he growled in frustration and fisted his hand in her hair, forcing her mouth tightly against his own once more.

He didn’t know long it went on, but after some time the need for oxygen became too great, and he eventually broke the contact between their lips completely, breathing heavily.

“What was that?” she asked softly.

He gazed at her for a minute before the corners of his mouth tipped up in a smirk. “Distracting you.”

She blinked, then broke into a wide grin, her laughter ringing out clear and honest as she tossed her head back. He found his attention drawn to the smooth curve of her throat when she did this, and soon he was sucking at the flesh there, unable to resist.

She let out a tiny gasp and threaded her fingers through his hair. “I’ve got to say, Malfoy,” she told him breathlessly, “this works much better than ice cream.”