Author's Notes: This chapter has taken me a while, but I really think it's worth your wait. I want to give a huge thank you to fallenwitch and Marcia. I never would have gotten this far without them. And please leave a review on your way out. ;) Thanks!
Chapter 10: Burning Green
Draco twirled his quill in between his fingers idly as he stared at the first sentence on the page for the fourth time. The words blurred together, and Draco sighed exasperatedly.
It had been three days since he had been alone with Ginny. Between his NEWT homework and her impossible gaggle of friends he never found time to catch a minute with her. His fingers itched to touch that soft, flaming hair.
The library was freezing and smelled of dust and old books. Draco drew his cloak tighter around him and let his eyes sweep over the table that he had to himself, covered with books and scrolls of parchment. To his left lay a pile quills, all a shade of dark green except for a bright crimson one. Ginny had changed its color the last time she’d seen him, laughing about all of his green possessions.
There was something about her that sent him spinning. Three days ago he had planned to see her next during rounds, which was tomorrow. But Draco had found himself searching for that flaming red hair just the morning after. He was supposed to have more self control than this, damn it. His mind whirred with schemes to get her alone, but he couldn’t seem to execute one of them. She was driving him mad. Her laugh echoed in his dreams.
That melodic laugh suddenly broke through the stifling silence of the library. Draco’s eyes snapped up to see Ginny sitting at a table across the room with a few of her friends. He barely registered the two girls sitting across from Ginny, but his eyes narrowed as they settled on the companion beside her.
Zacharias Smith was leaning over Ginny’s shoulder, his hand on her arm and his gaze lingering dangerously close to her neckline. Ginny smiled as he pointed to something in the book opened up before them, tucking a strand of fiery hair behind her ear.
Draco felt something burst within him, and he rose from his chair almost without realizing it. It was only a few seconds before he was standing close to Ginny’s table, his fingers tightly wrapped around his pocketed wand.
“Weasley,” he said sharply. Smith and Ginny’s two friends looked up before she did. She met his glare with startled eyes.
“Yes, Malfoy?” she answered coolly, folding her arms across her chest and shrugging Smith’s hand away.
“I need to talk with you about changing rounds times. Seven won’t work for me.”
“It won’t?” Ginny asked in the same cold tone, one eyebrow cocked. “Well what time would work for you, Malfoy?”
“Nine,” Draco said gruffly, deliberately picking an unreasonable time.
Smith was glaring at Draco and slid his hand protectively onto Ginny’s shoulder.
“Nine doesn’t work for me,” Ginny replied.
“Mr. Malfoy! Miss Weasley! Please take your argument away from the books!” Madam Pince scolded from her desk.
“Fine,” Draco snapped. He turned to leave. “Coming, Weasley?”
Ginny rose from her chair. Draco clenched his fist tighter around his wand as Smith’s eyes flickered toward her nicely rounded arse. Draco turned on his heel and stalked out of the library.
Ginny caught up with him as he turned down an empty hallway. She said nothing, but matched his brisk pace. He threw open the door to the third empty classroom they came upon and motioned for her to enter. Draco turned to look up both ways of the corridor before slipping in after her.
She was perched upon the professor’s desk, her legs dangling beneath her. Ginny’s eyes were smoldering and her mouth was set in a straight line. As Draco made to walk toward her, she folded her arms across her chest.
No way in hell, she’s pissed at me, Draco fumed. She’s the one bloody flirting with Smith.
“What the hell is the matter with you?” Ginny blurted angrily. “What gives you the right to yell at me like that? In front of my friends!”
“Your friends?” Draco sneered. “Oh, if that’s what you call them.”
“What are you on about?” Ginny snapped, swinging her legs faster and faster beneath her. “My friends. Elizabeth, Lynne-”
“Zacharias?” Draco spat out the word hatefully.
Ginny let out a sharp laugh. “Smith? The bloody tosser I have to work with for Potions? I wouldn’t call him my-” Ginny stopped suddenly, and a nervous feeling settled in the pit of Draco's stomach.
“You’re jealous, aren’t you?” Ginny asked, all traces of anger gone and a look of pure mirth dancing across her face.
“Jealous?” Draco reiterated, feigning a look of incredulousness. “Of Smith?”
Ginny grinned evilly. “You saw him slide his arm around my shoulder, his eyes wander farther than you would’ve liked,” she purred, sliding off the desk.
She slid part of her tatty sweater off of one shoulder, exposing creamy, freckled skin. Draco felt his vision blur and his head swim.
“Imagine, the unmoving, indifferent, frozen Draco Malfoy, jealous of another bloke,” she taunted, her eyes dancing and her body leaned against the desk seductively.
“I’m not jealous,” he choked out, his voice barely above a whisper.
“Oh no?” Her mouth curved into a delicious smile. “Because to be jealous you’d have to, I don’t know, actually have feelings for me, wouldn’t you?”
Draco felt cornered. Did he have feelings for her? Hell if he knew. Was that this painful tightness in his chest and the horrible feeling of watching Smith regard her as if she was something up for grabs?
She’s not up for grabs. She’s mine.
“Say it,” she demanded, her voice hard. “Tell me you don’t have feelings for me. Look me in the eye and tell me you’re not jealous.”
Draco didn’t have time to think about it. Before his brain could protest, his mouth erupted in a loud, “Of course I’m bloody jealous!”
He clapped his hands over his mouth in a very un-Malfoy gesture. She was grinning like a cat. Ginny took three steps to meet him, her hips swaying with every movement, and pressed her body flush against his.
“Do you have feelings for me?” she whispered, her mouth inches from his.
“Yes,” he responded in a gravelly voice. The word came out easier than expected.
“Good,” she whispered back, and she pressed her lips against his.
***
Ginny grumbled to herself as she slung her crammed book bag over her shoulder, making her way down into the frigid dungeons. She blamed her late night detention on Draco, even though it really wasn’t his fault.
They had been brewing The Draught of the Living Death, and the dungeon air had been thick with fragrant fumes. Ginny’s mind had become fuzzy and her thoughts wandered to Draco. During her recollections, she hadn’t been paying attention to her potion, which had suddenly burst into green flames, sending the class into a panic. Slughorn had not been pleased and had given her an evening detention.
Her breath curled in front of her as Ginny pushed open the door to Slughorn’s dungeon. A tall, curly-headed boy was kneeling on the floor scrubbing the inside of a grimy jar with a Muggle toothbrush. Nearly a hundred similar looking jars were scattered around the floor about him.
“You’re late,” said a familiar voice from the corner.
Ginny’s eyes snapped up to see Draco staring at her from the corner. His shiny, gold Head Boy badge gleamed obnoxiously on his chest and a smug smile played across his lips.
“Just by two minutes,” Ginny responded curtly, flashing him a small smile once the other boy turned back to his work.
Draco shrugged. “Slughorn left instructions for you to brew the potion you couldn’t manage to complete in class. Think you can handle that, Weasley?”
She nodded. The directions that the Potions Master had left her were complicated and required Ginny to focus on them completely.
She looked over to see Draco scolding the other boy. His blond hair was a little mussed and looked softer than usual. Ginny gritted her teeth and clenched her eyes shut, forcing herself to not think about Draco. It was going to be a long night.
***
Draco was proud of how well he had manipulated Ginny’s detention situation to his advantage. McGonagall had cornered him on his way down to dinner, reminding him that he “needed to keep up with his Head duties in addition to his studies.” She had handed him a list of evening detentions.
“I expect to hear from one of these professors that you reported to them this evening, Mr. Malfoy. I’m well aware that your seventh year can be very demanding, but we did have an agreement,” she had told him crossly.
He had nodded, giving her a curt, “Of course,” and headed off to dinner.
Professor Slughorn had greeted him jovially. Draco wasn’t sure when the old Potions Master had stopped hating him and started treating him like everyone else, but he wasn’t about to complain.
“Ah, yes. Miss Weasley and Mr. Harden should be here around nine. Their instructions are in that book over there.” Slughorn had peered at Draco oddly. “How is your mother, boy?”
Draco had started, taken by surprise. He pulled himself together to answer Slughorn stiffly. “Fine, sir.”
“A very bright student, she was,” Slughorn had continued reminiscently. “She wasn’t the best at brewing potions, let her emotions get in the way of her work, but she was very bright, indeed.”
Draco had nodded, wondering why the old fool thought he would need or even want to hear this.
“Well, give her my best,” he had said in a much brisker manner. “And be sure to leave a report of the detention on my desk before you go. Don’t hold the students past midnight.”
Draco had no plans to keep that Hufflepuff idiot Clayton Harden past midnight, but he couldn’t say the same for Ginny. Her red hair was plaited down her back, and his fingers itched to pull out the tie and watch the silky strands unravel in his hands.
Patience, he told himself. Just be patient.
It was hard to be patient when she was standing there, her brow furrowing in concentration. She was wearing that worn maroon jumper that was far too big for her small frame. The cuffs were frayed and faded, and the thing was obviously homemade, but Draco knew that despite its worn and forgotten appearance, it would be soft to touch, just like Ginny was.
After over an hour of suffocating silence, a loud shriek from Ginny cut through the quiet. Draco looked up in alarm to see her pulling off her jumper. One sleeve had a nasty-looking, green fluid on it.
“Do try to be more careful, Weasley,” Draco drawled.
Ginny glared at him and stuck out her tongue, throwing the sweater on Slughorn’s desk. Draco snatched it up and removed the liquid with a carefully chosen spell, tucking the soft garment under his arm.
He looked up again and noticed that Ginny was only wearing a thin, white shirt. It was slightly damp from her spill, and Draco could make out something lacy beneath it. He stared for a moment before remembering that Harden was in the room as well. Whirling around, his saw the Hufflepuff ogling Ginny appreciatively.
Thoroughly annoyed, Draco flicked his wand and forced the jar in Harden’s hands to shatter into a thousand pieces. The boy yelled first in surprise and then in pain and the slivers of glass nestled into his skin.
“Harden, you idiot, what did you do?” Draco told off the howling boy. He sighed as if dealing with him was the bane of Draco’s existence. “Well, most of them are done. I’ll just tell Slughorn you finished. Go to Madam Pomfrey.”
Harden gave him a grateful look as he left the room, cradling his hands against his chest.
Draco waved his wand again and the jars cleaned themselves and flew to the shelves that lined the dungeon walls. He flicked his eyes back to Ginny. She was shivering in her light cotton shirt, but bent over her cauldron in serious concentration.
Draco pulled off his own dark green sweater. “Wear this,” he said, holding out the sweater to her. His eyes looked to the ground determinedly as she smiled and took it from him.
“Thank you,” she said in a muffled voice as she pulled on the sweater. She turned back to the potion, and Draco couldn’t help but admire how his sweater exposed the graceful arch of her neck.
“Do you need any help?” he asked, peering into the bubbling cauldron.
She laughed lightly. “Why, because you’re a potions god?”
“Only because you don’t look like you know what you’re doing,” he answered cheekily, blowing lightly on her bare neck, making her shiver.
“Draco, I really have to do this right,” she told him as he matched his hips to hers from behind. Her reprimand was half-hearted. Draco grinned into her neck.
“Yeah, me too,” he answered in a rough voice as he trailed kisses down her neck.
She rolled her neck back in response and gave a faint moan. “Draco.”
“Yes?” he asked her.
She said nothing but turned to face him. Without hesitation, she pressed her body full against his and kissed him hungrily.
Draco almost jumped in surprise but recovered quickly, matching her fervent kisses with his own. “What about your potion?” he laughed against her lips.
“What about it?”
***
Ginny rummaged through her trunk frantically, throwing old clothes across the room, her eyes scanning for a flash of maroon.
Ginny scowled as she reached the bottom of her trunk. Where was her jumper? It had been Ron’s, actually, but she had nicked it over the summer. She was sure he didn’t mind.
I last wore it…to detention. Ginny’s eyes widened. Had she left it in the dungeon?
No, I didn’t. I tossed it over to the desk and…Draco took it. What would Draco want with that sweater? He’ll probably burn it, I’m sure he finds it disgusting. Ginny’s fingers touched on something soft as she dug through her pile of clothes on the floor. She removed it from the pile and laid it out on her bed.
The soft material of Draco’s sweater was probably something expensive like cashmere. It was such a dark shade of green that it almost looked black, and the tiny letters DM were sewn on the inside of the left sleeve. Ginny smiled and pulled the sweater over her head. It was buttery soft against her skin, just as it had been in detention. She smiled as she thought of the shock Draco would receive seeing her wear it.
***
The castle had become warmer overnight. None of the other students would have noticed it, Draco was sure, but the rise of just a few degrees made him loosen his collar and snap at Crabbe irritably.
He knew he shouldn’t be in a foul mood after his snogging session with Ginny in the dungeons the previous night, but today and tomorrow she had to work on several essays, and he had promised to let her get them done.
He hadn’t mucked up her detention, because he knew that after she came to her senses she would have been royally pissed. Anticipating as always, Draco had brewed a flask of the potion before Ginny or Harden had arrived. They had pitched Ginny’s mess of a potion and left the flask on Slughorn’s desk.
Draco made his way through the crowd of students in the corridor outside McGonagall’s office. Something soft and familiar rubbed against his skin as he pushed past a group of sixth-years. He looked back to see a girl with flaming red hair wearing a dark green sweater. His dark green sweater.
Ginny looked over her shoulder and threw him a sexy grin, making his toes curl and his whole body tingle. He smirked back, waved his wand at her, and turned to walk the other way.
***
Ginny wore a confused smile as Draco made his way farther from her. Why had he waved his wand?
She continued down the corridor, a grin still playing at her lips. Suddenly she looked down in surprise to see the sweater turning a shade of rich scarlet. Her eyes widened as she pulled back the left sleeve to see the tiny letters GW embroidering themselves just below the DM.
Ginny grinned giddily, still staring down out her sleeve. She couldn’t drag her eyes away from the sight of their initials sewn right beside each other.
Ginny abruptly collided with something hard and fell back onto the floor of the empty corridor, her books and parchment flying everywhere.
“Oh God, I’m sorry,” she said to the person who was on the floor behind her. She started to gather her things, her cheeks flushed with embarrassment. Ginny looked up at the person to see two emerald green eyes staring down at her.
“Hullo, Ginny.”
Draco twirled his quill in between his fingers idly as he stared at the first sentence on the page for the fourth time. The words blurred together, and Draco sighed exasperatedly.
It had been three days since he had been alone with Ginny. Between his NEWT homework and her impossible gaggle of friends he never found time to catch a minute with her. His fingers itched to touch that soft, flaming hair.
The library was freezing and smelled of dust and old books. Draco drew his cloak tighter around him and let his eyes sweep over the table that he had to himself, covered with books and scrolls of parchment. To his left lay a pile quills, all a shade of dark green except for a bright crimson one. Ginny had changed its color the last time she’d seen him, laughing about all of his green possessions.
There was something about her that sent him spinning. Three days ago he had planned to see her next during rounds, which was tomorrow. But Draco had found himself searching for that flaming red hair just the morning after. He was supposed to have more self control than this, damn it. His mind whirred with schemes to get her alone, but he couldn’t seem to execute one of them. She was driving him mad. Her laugh echoed in his dreams.
That melodic laugh suddenly broke through the stifling silence of the library. Draco’s eyes snapped up to see Ginny sitting at a table across the room with a few of her friends. He barely registered the two girls sitting across from Ginny, but his eyes narrowed as they settled on the companion beside her.
Zacharias Smith was leaning over Ginny’s shoulder, his hand on her arm and his gaze lingering dangerously close to her neckline. Ginny smiled as he pointed to something in the book opened up before them, tucking a strand of fiery hair behind her ear.
Draco felt something burst within him, and he rose from his chair almost without realizing it. It was only a few seconds before he was standing close to Ginny’s table, his fingers tightly wrapped around his pocketed wand.
“Weasley,” he said sharply. Smith and Ginny’s two friends looked up before she did. She met his glare with startled eyes.
“Yes, Malfoy?” she answered coolly, folding her arms across her chest and shrugging Smith’s hand away.
“I need to talk with you about changing rounds times. Seven won’t work for me.”
“It won’t?” Ginny asked in the same cold tone, one eyebrow cocked. “Well what time would work for you, Malfoy?”
“Nine,” Draco said gruffly, deliberately picking an unreasonable time.
Smith was glaring at Draco and slid his hand protectively onto Ginny’s shoulder.
“Nine doesn’t work for me,” Ginny replied.
“Mr. Malfoy! Miss Weasley! Please take your argument away from the books!” Madam Pince scolded from her desk.
“Fine,” Draco snapped. He turned to leave. “Coming, Weasley?”
Ginny rose from her chair. Draco clenched his fist tighter around his wand as Smith’s eyes flickered toward her nicely rounded arse. Draco turned on his heel and stalked out of the library.
Ginny caught up with him as he turned down an empty hallway. She said nothing, but matched his brisk pace. He threw open the door to the third empty classroom they came upon and motioned for her to enter. Draco turned to look up both ways of the corridor before slipping in after her.
She was perched upon the professor’s desk, her legs dangling beneath her. Ginny’s eyes were smoldering and her mouth was set in a straight line. As Draco made to walk toward her, she folded her arms across her chest.
No way in hell, she’s pissed at me, Draco fumed. She’s the one bloody flirting with Smith.
“What the hell is the matter with you?” Ginny blurted angrily. “What gives you the right to yell at me like that? In front of my friends!”
“Your friends?” Draco sneered. “Oh, if that’s what you call them.”
“What are you on about?” Ginny snapped, swinging her legs faster and faster beneath her. “My friends. Elizabeth, Lynne-”
“Zacharias?” Draco spat out the word hatefully.
Ginny let out a sharp laugh. “Smith? The bloody tosser I have to work with for Potions? I wouldn’t call him my-” Ginny stopped suddenly, and a nervous feeling settled in the pit of Draco's stomach.
“You’re jealous, aren’t you?” Ginny asked, all traces of anger gone and a look of pure mirth dancing across her face.
“Jealous?” Draco reiterated, feigning a look of incredulousness. “Of Smith?”
Ginny grinned evilly. “You saw him slide his arm around my shoulder, his eyes wander farther than you would’ve liked,” she purred, sliding off the desk.
She slid part of her tatty sweater off of one shoulder, exposing creamy, freckled skin. Draco felt his vision blur and his head swim.
“Imagine, the unmoving, indifferent, frozen Draco Malfoy, jealous of another bloke,” she taunted, her eyes dancing and her body leaned against the desk seductively.
“I’m not jealous,” he choked out, his voice barely above a whisper.
“Oh no?” Her mouth curved into a delicious smile. “Because to be jealous you’d have to, I don’t know, actually have feelings for me, wouldn’t you?”
Draco felt cornered. Did he have feelings for her? Hell if he knew. Was that this painful tightness in his chest and the horrible feeling of watching Smith regard her as if she was something up for grabs?
She’s not up for grabs. She’s mine.
“Say it,” she demanded, her voice hard. “Tell me you don’t have feelings for me. Look me in the eye and tell me you’re not jealous.”
Draco didn’t have time to think about it. Before his brain could protest, his mouth erupted in a loud, “Of course I’m bloody jealous!”
He clapped his hands over his mouth in a very un-Malfoy gesture. She was grinning like a cat. Ginny took three steps to meet him, her hips swaying with every movement, and pressed her body flush against his.
“Do you have feelings for me?” she whispered, her mouth inches from his.
“Yes,” he responded in a gravelly voice. The word came out easier than expected.
“Good,” she whispered back, and she pressed her lips against his.
Ginny grumbled to herself as she slung her crammed book bag over her shoulder, making her way down into the frigid dungeons. She blamed her late night detention on Draco, even though it really wasn’t his fault.
They had been brewing The Draught of the Living Death, and the dungeon air had been thick with fragrant fumes. Ginny’s mind had become fuzzy and her thoughts wandered to Draco. During her recollections, she hadn’t been paying attention to her potion, which had suddenly burst into green flames, sending the class into a panic. Slughorn had not been pleased and had given her an evening detention.
Her breath curled in front of her as Ginny pushed open the door to Slughorn’s dungeon. A tall, curly-headed boy was kneeling on the floor scrubbing the inside of a grimy jar with a Muggle toothbrush. Nearly a hundred similar looking jars were scattered around the floor about him.
“You’re late,” said a familiar voice from the corner.
Ginny’s eyes snapped up to see Draco staring at her from the corner. His shiny, gold Head Boy badge gleamed obnoxiously on his chest and a smug smile played across his lips.
“Just by two minutes,” Ginny responded curtly, flashing him a small smile once the other boy turned back to his work.
Draco shrugged. “Slughorn left instructions for you to brew the potion you couldn’t manage to complete in class. Think you can handle that, Weasley?”
She nodded. The directions that the Potions Master had left her were complicated and required Ginny to focus on them completely.
She looked over to see Draco scolding the other boy. His blond hair was a little mussed and looked softer than usual. Ginny gritted her teeth and clenched her eyes shut, forcing herself to not think about Draco. It was going to be a long night.
Draco was proud of how well he had manipulated Ginny’s detention situation to his advantage. McGonagall had cornered him on his way down to dinner, reminding him that he “needed to keep up with his Head duties in addition to his studies.” She had handed him a list of evening detentions.
“I expect to hear from one of these professors that you reported to them this evening, Mr. Malfoy. I’m well aware that your seventh year can be very demanding, but we did have an agreement,” she had told him crossly.
He had nodded, giving her a curt, “Of course,” and headed off to dinner.
Professor Slughorn had greeted him jovially. Draco wasn’t sure when the old Potions Master had stopped hating him and started treating him like everyone else, but he wasn’t about to complain.
“Ah, yes. Miss Weasley and Mr. Harden should be here around nine. Their instructions are in that book over there.” Slughorn had peered at Draco oddly. “How is your mother, boy?”
Draco had started, taken by surprise. He pulled himself together to answer Slughorn stiffly. “Fine, sir.”
“A very bright student, she was,” Slughorn had continued reminiscently. “She wasn’t the best at brewing potions, let her emotions get in the way of her work, but she was very bright, indeed.”
Draco had nodded, wondering why the old fool thought he would need or even want to hear this.
“Well, give her my best,” he had said in a much brisker manner. “And be sure to leave a report of the detention on my desk before you go. Don’t hold the students past midnight.”
Draco had no plans to keep that Hufflepuff idiot Clayton Harden past midnight, but he couldn’t say the same for Ginny. Her red hair was plaited down her back, and his fingers itched to pull out the tie and watch the silky strands unravel in his hands.
Patience, he told himself. Just be patient.
It was hard to be patient when she was standing there, her brow furrowing in concentration. She was wearing that worn maroon jumper that was far too big for her small frame. The cuffs were frayed and faded, and the thing was obviously homemade, but Draco knew that despite its worn and forgotten appearance, it would be soft to touch, just like Ginny was.
After over an hour of suffocating silence, a loud shriek from Ginny cut through the quiet. Draco looked up in alarm to see her pulling off her jumper. One sleeve had a nasty-looking, green fluid on it.
“Do try to be more careful, Weasley,” Draco drawled.
Ginny glared at him and stuck out her tongue, throwing the sweater on Slughorn’s desk. Draco snatched it up and removed the liquid with a carefully chosen spell, tucking the soft garment under his arm.
He looked up again and noticed that Ginny was only wearing a thin, white shirt. It was slightly damp from her spill, and Draco could make out something lacy beneath it. He stared for a moment before remembering that Harden was in the room as well. Whirling around, his saw the Hufflepuff ogling Ginny appreciatively.
Thoroughly annoyed, Draco flicked his wand and forced the jar in Harden’s hands to shatter into a thousand pieces. The boy yelled first in surprise and then in pain and the slivers of glass nestled into his skin.
“Harden, you idiot, what did you do?” Draco told off the howling boy. He sighed as if dealing with him was the bane of Draco’s existence. “Well, most of them are done. I’ll just tell Slughorn you finished. Go to Madam Pomfrey.”
Harden gave him a grateful look as he left the room, cradling his hands against his chest.
Draco waved his wand again and the jars cleaned themselves and flew to the shelves that lined the dungeon walls. He flicked his eyes back to Ginny. She was shivering in her light cotton shirt, but bent over her cauldron in serious concentration.
Draco pulled off his own dark green sweater. “Wear this,” he said, holding out the sweater to her. His eyes looked to the ground determinedly as she smiled and took it from him.
“Thank you,” she said in a muffled voice as she pulled on the sweater. She turned back to the potion, and Draco couldn’t help but admire how his sweater exposed the graceful arch of her neck.
“Do you need any help?” he asked, peering into the bubbling cauldron.
She laughed lightly. “Why, because you’re a potions god?”
“Only because you don’t look like you know what you’re doing,” he answered cheekily, blowing lightly on her bare neck, making her shiver.
“Draco, I really have to do this right,” she told him as he matched his hips to hers from behind. Her reprimand was half-hearted. Draco grinned into her neck.
“Yeah, me too,” he answered in a rough voice as he trailed kisses down her neck.
She rolled her neck back in response and gave a faint moan. “Draco.”
“Yes?” he asked her.
She said nothing but turned to face him. Without hesitation, she pressed her body full against his and kissed him hungrily.
Draco almost jumped in surprise but recovered quickly, matching her fervent kisses with his own. “What about your potion?” he laughed against her lips.
“What about it?”
Ginny rummaged through her trunk frantically, throwing old clothes across the room, her eyes scanning for a flash of maroon.
Ginny scowled as she reached the bottom of her trunk. Where was her jumper? It had been Ron’s, actually, but she had nicked it over the summer. She was sure he didn’t mind.
I last wore it…to detention. Ginny’s eyes widened. Had she left it in the dungeon?
No, I didn’t. I tossed it over to the desk and…Draco took it. What would Draco want with that sweater? He’ll probably burn it, I’m sure he finds it disgusting. Ginny’s fingers touched on something soft as she dug through her pile of clothes on the floor. She removed it from the pile and laid it out on her bed.
The soft material of Draco’s sweater was probably something expensive like cashmere. It was such a dark shade of green that it almost looked black, and the tiny letters DM were sewn on the inside of the left sleeve. Ginny smiled and pulled the sweater over her head. It was buttery soft against her skin, just as it had been in detention. She smiled as she thought of the shock Draco would receive seeing her wear it.
The castle had become warmer overnight. None of the other students would have noticed it, Draco was sure, but the rise of just a few degrees made him loosen his collar and snap at Crabbe irritably.
He knew he shouldn’t be in a foul mood after his snogging session with Ginny in the dungeons the previous night, but today and tomorrow she had to work on several essays, and he had promised to let her get them done.
He hadn’t mucked up her detention, because he knew that after she came to her senses she would have been royally pissed. Anticipating as always, Draco had brewed a flask of the potion before Ginny or Harden had arrived. They had pitched Ginny’s mess of a potion and left the flask on Slughorn’s desk.
Draco made his way through the crowd of students in the corridor outside McGonagall’s office. Something soft and familiar rubbed against his skin as he pushed past a group of sixth-years. He looked back to see a girl with flaming red hair wearing a dark green sweater. His dark green sweater.
Ginny looked over her shoulder and threw him a sexy grin, making his toes curl and his whole body tingle. He smirked back, waved his wand at her, and turned to walk the other way.
Ginny wore a confused smile as Draco made his way farther from her. Why had he waved his wand?
She continued down the corridor, a grin still playing at her lips. Suddenly she looked down in surprise to see the sweater turning a shade of rich scarlet. Her eyes widened as she pulled back the left sleeve to see the tiny letters GW embroidering themselves just below the DM.
Ginny grinned giddily, still staring down out her sleeve. She couldn’t drag her eyes away from the sight of their initials sewn right beside each other.
Ginny abruptly collided with something hard and fell back onto the floor of the empty corridor, her books and parchment flying everywhere.
“Oh God, I’m sorry,” she said to the person who was on the floor behind her. She started to gather her things, her cheeks flushed with embarrassment. Ginny looked up at the person to see two emerald green eyes staring down at her.
“Hullo, Ginny.”
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