Author's Notes: I have quite a few thank yous to dole out this chapter. Firstly, thank you to my wonderful beta, fallenwitch, without whom this story would not be half of what it is. Second, I want to offer my thanks to Coldplay, who has nominated Frozen for two of the D/G awards. And finally, a giant thanks to all of my readers who continue to read and review faithfully. I hope you continue to do so. Also, I know this chapter took a really long time to write, but again, I'm pretty sure it won't dissappoint.
Chapter 11: Loved and Freckled
He looked transparent standing before her, his emerald gaze piercing her soul. A myriad of emotions gripped her, but panic was all she felt. Her mouth opened slowly, mechanically, her body demanding air. The air wouldn’t come. Her insides were twisting, screaming, gulping for air, but in reality Ginny sat on the floor staring at Harry Potter with her mouth open and her eyes wide.
“Harry.” The word slipped from her open mouth softer than a whisper.
He smiled at her. His smile lacked the uncertainty that threatened to erupt from her heart, from her mouth. Instead of reaching his hand down to help her up, Harry was suddenly beside her on the floor, his arms wrapped around her shaking body.
“I’m back,” he whispered in her ear. And with two words, wounds that Ginny thought had long been closed gushed open with amazing speed and intensity.
His hands were running up and down her back, and Ginny had never felt so confused in her life. She could have been inside out for all she knew. She wanted to hug him back and kiss him over and over, but she also wanted to shove him away and tell him off for leaving her behind. Undecided, she sat there shaking, letting him rub her back with strong, reassuring hands.
Bile rose in the back of Ginny’s mouth, and she instantly refocused, remembering who was standing before her.
“No,” she whispered. She pushed away from him and scooted backwards on the floor. “No, no. You’re back.”
He smiled shyly at her, in his awkward, but perfectly sweet, way. “I’m back.”
“No,” she said in a louder voice, shaking her head. “No. You’re back.”
His green eyes darkened for the briefest of seconds, and then he titled his head in a confused way. “Gin? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing, nothing,” she said softly, shaking her head again. She could tell from the look on his face that she was scaring him. “I just…” She searched his face for something, something she needed to see. But in Harry’s eyes, she saw no trace of regret or guilt for letting her go. His eyes held none of the uncertainty that churned painfully with panic in her stomach. And that was one thing she wasn’t going to let by.
“You left me behind, Harry. You left me here in this frigid castle, guarded by walls and teachers, until you were done slaying the dragon…” Draco…
“Ginny, we’ve been over this! I couldn’t bring you with me. If something happened to you…” His eyes fell to the ground, and then looked back up at her face.
“I’m tired of being left behind, Harry,” she said softly. Ginny rocked forward onto her knees and began to gather her books. “I don’t know what it is you want from me.”
“Gin,” Harry said again, his voice pleading. “I don’t want anything from you. I just want you to be here.”
Ginny felt the panic clawing away in her chest again. “I understand. But I can’t promise that I’ll always be here.” She straightened up as she said this, her books tucked under her arm, and continued walking down the hall.
***
There was a ripple of something traveling through the school. Draco was sure of it. He could sense the subtle change of the students in the castle as he would a rise in temperature. Normal changes that caused these sorts of ripples didn’t interest Draco; they were usually petty gossip, like the newest couples or an article from the latest Witch Weekly. But something about this ripple left an unsettled feeling in the pit of Draco’s stomach as if there was something he had forgotten to do.
“Have you seen him yet?” a girl in a group of younger students asked her friend.
“No, but Kate said she saw him near the library…”
It took every ounce of self-control that Draco possessed to keep from loitering to find out what these girls might be talking about. But the voices didn’t stop as he continued on. They swirled through the air and, somehow, his mind.
“Bollocks…he’s got to be dead by now.”
“…Death Eaters…”
“…saw him with her?”
“Did you see his scar?” Scar, scar, scar…Whose scar?
“I saw him!”
“…Harry…”No, no, no. “…Potter.”
The world, the floor and possibly Draco’s stomach fell out from underneath him. The edges of his vision blurred red and green, black and white. Potter was back.
Draco stumbled through mobs of people, through whispers and rumors and laughing, until he found himself standing at the door of the Head Boy’s quarters. He murmured the password in a barely audible voice and waited for the door to swing open, ready to throw himself onto his bed.
But that turned out to be a problem, considering that someone else had already thrown herself onto his bed.
Her red hair was fanned out behind her like a halo, her porcelain skin looked perfectly soft against his sheets, and her face looked unusually calm and at ease as she breathed lightly in her sleep. Draco felt the colors around his vision ebb away as he stared at her, and with a whoosh of breathlessness, he realized that he hadn’t marked her these past few months. Every kiss that he had trailed down her neck had been matched by one from Potter. In order to mark her, he should have done what Potter hadn’t. Had he? Had he done that?
I bloody well don’t know! he snapped at his screaming conscious. What hadn’t Potter done? Make love to her? But that wasn’t marking her. If Draco had learned anything in his surreal time with Ginny, it was that the physical acts didn’t mark people close to you.
He had started this with Ginny so that he could take her away from Potter, but now the bloody bastard was back. Why was he back? To reclaim Ginny? That seemed like the kind of slimy thing Potter would do. But the real question remained, did she still want Potter? He hated these questions. These many, many questions that whirred through his mind.
What would stop her from running back to Potter?
I will, he growled at his conscious. She knows that I…
What did Ginny know? He hadn’t made any commitments to her. He hadn’t asked her to “go steady.” They hadn’t visited Madam Puddifoot’s or made plans for Christmas. What had he honestly given her?
Does she know? his conscious begged of him. Does she know that you love her?
I never said that I loved her. I don’t…I don’t know.
But his conscious quieted as Draco came to this realization. He didn’t know. Did he want to?
He smiled slightly as he noticed for the first time that the scarlet sweater hugging her small frame was his own. It was hers too, though. It was theirs.
With a sudden rush of warmth, Draco laid down carefully beside her. He wrapped one arm around her waist with a fierce protectiveness, rested his forehead in the crook of her shoulder and breathed in her intoxicating scent. And before he drifted off to sleep, he had a fleeting thought that maybe, just maybe, everything would turn out alright if they never left his room.
***
Ginny awoke from dreams of dragons and towers and guarded princesses, her breathing calm and her heart in a safe place. Two arms encircled her waist, and Ginny looked over to see Draco breathing peacefully beside her. He looked innocent, lying there beside her. His face was free of the usual smirk or sneer that hardened his features, and his hair was mussed and soft, further lightening his appearance. She brushed a fallen strand away from his forehead and sighed with contentment.
Suddenly, as the fog of sleep wore off, Ginny felt a knot of panic burrow into the pit of her stomach. What was she doing in Draco’s room? And the truth hit her like a blow to the stomach. Harry was back.
She had somehow made it to Draco’s room without passing out, prepared to wait for him and tell him that Harry was back. But she had fallen asleep on his giant bed, and here she was now.
She ran her fingers through his hair and she wondered if he had heard already. It wasn’t going to stay quiet for long if Harry was back. Why was he back? Had she asked him? Why did he insist upon having the worst timing for everything?
Maybe he’s not back for me. Ginny wondered if she really hoped that that was the case. Did she want Harry to forget about her? To leave her behind in the most literal sense?
Damn right, you do. A rather loud voice in her head scolded. What are you so afraid of? It’s your choice. Tell Harry that you don’t want him. Tell him that you want someone who puts you first. Who wants you unconditionally.
Ginny smiled as Draco took a deep breath. “Ginny,” he murmured in his sleep. His eyelids fluttered open as she ran a hand over his cheek. She sucked in an involuntary breath as his eyes bore into hers. What a shade of blue. Like a stormy sky on a winter’s day.
His lips curled into one of the sexiest smiles she’d ever seen. Testing and taunting but just tender if she looked closely enough, just like Draco.
***
It was her touch that brought him back. He had been drowning, drowning in a sea of green. His mother’s voice wailed louder than the waves, an icy tip of a wand drilled between his eyes, and his body sunk farther and farther into the burning sea.
Just when his lungs were going to burst, when the screams were going to pierce his very soul, a hand laid itself softly on his face, drawing him to the surface in a whoosh of rushing air. He opened his eyes to see her face inches from his own, and he couldn’t help but smile.
“Ginny,” he breathed.
She nodded sadly, looking at him as if she knew what he had been dreaming of. She smoothed his hair back and left a feather light kiss on his forehead. Her eyelids fluttered closed, and she leaned lower to leave another on his lips. Ginny pulled away slowly, and as she did, he whispered something against her lips.
“I love you.”
Her eyes opened wide, swirling with emotions that he couldn’t read. “What did you-” her voice hitched. “What did you say?”
It had been easy to say it against her lips, as light as one of her kisses. But when she looked at him with that unreadable expression, he knew it would be harder to repeat.
“You heard me,” he said in a voice that was a little rougher than he intended.
Her eyes clouded. “No, I didn’t. What did you say?”
Say something. Say anything. Draco implored his own mouth. Ginny’s bottom lip had slipped between her teeth, and Draco could have sworn that he felt his heart sinking into the watery, green depths of his nightmares.
He saw that there was no way out of this one. He had said it and meant it, and he couldn’t take it back if he wanted to. Before his courage could fail him, Draco uttered softly, “Ginny, I…I love you.”
Her brown eyes lit up in a way he had never seen before, her checks flushed a delicate pink, and her full, red lips moistened from the mistreatment of her teeth. A brilliant smile spread across those lips, and she reached out a hand to touch his cheek. God, he was addicted to her touch. He would never be able to get enough of it.
Her smile now lit up her entire face, and Ginny held his gaze with her own. “Draco, I love you too.”
When Draco was very young, his mother rescued a baby bird that had fallen into the icy pond in their garden. It had been near Christmastime, and Narcissa warmed the tiny bird that had been seconds away from an icy death.
Draco had never been pulled from an ice-covered pond to avoid a frozen death, but as he kissed Ginny over and over, he suspected that it felt a lot like this.
And as her lips molded to his and her fingers tangled in his hair, he couldn't tell where one of them began and the other ended. He could almost forget that the baby bird had died on Christmas morning. Almost.
***
She knew that she loved Draco for some time. She suspected, or maybe hoped, that he loved her back. But she never expected, or even dared to dream, that he would tell her that, or be the first to say it.
Her heart fluttered at every kiss he placed along her neck. He loved her. She, Ginny Weasley, had thawed his heart so completely that he was capable of loving her. As vast and terrifying as their new uncharted territory of love was, Ginny’s heart swelled until she thought it would burst. The new idea of love made her heart swell so big that she wondered if the fluttering of fear existed there at all.
Maybe it wasn’t the idea of being in love that was making her heart swell, but the feeling of being so close to Draco as he kissed his way down her collarbone.
“Say it again,” he growled in her ear.
She giggled softly. “I love you.”
He smiled against her skin. “I am going to kiss every goddamn freckle on your body,” he promised, dragged his lips across her stomach from freckle to freckle.
“There aren’t enough hours in the day,” she laughed, enjoying the tickling sensation of his lips against her skin.
“But there are in a lifetime,” he grinned, planting kisses everywhere he could reach. “I love you. I love you. I love you.” He said it every time he reached a new freckle.
She laid back against his pillow, feeling unthinkably content. Enough hours in a lifetime. Just how long was a lifetime?
***
The castle was still warm when Draco forced himself to leave his room. Although a rise in temperature would usually make him irritable, Draco found that he didn’t mind the warmth. Ginny had charmed their sweater a dark green again and gave it to him to wear.
“But what are you going to wear?” he had asked her.
She had grinned, pulling off the sweater. He didn’t bother to avert his eyes from the sight of her lacy, black bra.
“One of your shirts,” she replied, opening the bottom drawer of his bureau and pulling out one of his collar shirts. It was crisply pressed with forest green stripes running horizontally. She brought it to her face and inhaled deeply.
“What are you doing?” He had laughed, moving to examine his shirt.
“Nothing,” she had giggled from inside his shirt.
His initials were, of course, monogrammed on the inside of his sleeve. The green stripes not only clashed with her flaming hair but also with the scarlet tie that hung loosely from her neck. Draco smirked to himself as he thought of her other tie hidden at the bottom of his trunk with her maroon jumper.
The sweater felt soft against his skin, and he could still smell Ginny’s intoxicating scent on the wool. Draco didn’t know what he was going to do with himself until dinner because Ginny absolutely had to study for Transfiguration, and he had promised to leave her alone. And he would keep that promise, if only because he loved her.
I love her. It rang through his head constantly, nearly wiping his trademark smirk from his face and replacing it with a mad grin.
Just as he was about to turn down another empty corridor on his way to the library, a voice rang out loudly behind him.
“Malfoy!”
Draco stopped mid-stride, frozen to the floor. He knew that voice, knew those scrambling footsteps coming up behind him. His younger self would have whirled on the spot, wand ready and eyes flashing, to look upon the face of Harry Potter. Now, with his fingers rubbing over Ginny’s initials on the inside of his sleeve, he rotated slowly to look into the fierce green eyes that threatened to take his world from him.
“Potter,” he responded coolly, his back straight and stiff and his face calm.
Potter ran his fingers through his shaggy, black hair, mussing it up further. Draco recognized the gesture as a sign of nervousness, but the Potter standing before him wasn’t nearly as juvenile as he had once been. He gaze didn’t settle on the floor, but instead bore into Draco’s eyes, authoritative and confident, as if they were both adults. Which, Draco realized, they were.
“Malfoy, I’m not here to pick a fight with you, I’m just back to ask your help,” Potter began.
Draco crossed his arms in front of his chest, not letting his guard down for a second. His help with what? Potter didn’t ask for help. Potter was the hero, the arrogant, self-centered bastard who didn’t need help. If he needed help, it was more like he wanted Draco to dump Ginny so he could take her back for his smarmy self.
Potter took his silence as a sign to keep talking, which was wise because Draco sure as hell wasn’t going to. “Look, I know I’ve been gone this year, and I’m sure you have some ideas why, but we’ve been working for the Order, and we need something from you.”
“You need something from me?” Draco repeated.
“The Order needs something from you,” Potter corrected in a snotty tone. “And from what I understand, you had some sort of agreement with McGonagall about-”
“Well since you obviously know everything I don’t see why we have to go into the details of my personal arrangements, Potter.”
Potter’s face twitched, as if he were refraining from rolling his eyes. “Well then you’ll have no problem giving up something that the Order needs, then?”
“Depends on what that is exactly,” Draco replied coldly. You bloody well can’t have Ginny, no matter how much anyone needs her. I need her more than anyone.
Potter sighed impatiently. “We need access to the Malfoy library.”
“The Ministry has already raided the Manor,” Draco replied with a wave of his hand. “I’m sure every one of our books is already at the Order’s disposal.”
“Not that library, Malfoy. Nothing of real value is in that library, as you very well know. We need access to the other Malfoy library. The one with Dark artifacts and texts.”
An icy, iron fist clenched itself around Draco’s stomach. His father’s library. The Order, the blood traitors and half-breeds and scum that were everything his family stood against, wanted a free pass into his father’s library. Draco wasn’t even supposed to go into that room.
“I’m afraid I can’t help you,” Draco answered curtly.
“Why the-” Potter began, his voice raising. He took a breath. “And why not?”
“To enter the library of which you speak, you need a person of Malfoy blood to open it for you. And the person in question must know the exact location of the library. I’m afraid that I don’t.”
“You don’t know the location of your own library?” Potter sputtered incredulously.
“My father’s library,” Draco corrected through clenched teeth. “And leaving the school at this time is not in my best interest.”
Leaving Potter seething in the middle of the corridor, Draco turned on his heel and stalked toward the staircase.
“How about your mother’s best interest?” Potter called after him, stopping Draco’s heart. “Those texts might be able to save her.”
As he stomped on each stair deliberately, his temper got the better of him. “Sod off, Potter!” he yelled back.
He looked transparent standing before her, his emerald gaze piercing her soul. A myriad of emotions gripped her, but panic was all she felt. Her mouth opened slowly, mechanically, her body demanding air. The air wouldn’t come. Her insides were twisting, screaming, gulping for air, but in reality Ginny sat on the floor staring at Harry Potter with her mouth open and her eyes wide.
“Harry.” The word slipped from her open mouth softer than a whisper.
He smiled at her. His smile lacked the uncertainty that threatened to erupt from her heart, from her mouth. Instead of reaching his hand down to help her up, Harry was suddenly beside her on the floor, his arms wrapped around her shaking body.
“I’m back,” he whispered in her ear. And with two words, wounds that Ginny thought had long been closed gushed open with amazing speed and intensity.
His hands were running up and down her back, and Ginny had never felt so confused in her life. She could have been inside out for all she knew. She wanted to hug him back and kiss him over and over, but she also wanted to shove him away and tell him off for leaving her behind. Undecided, she sat there shaking, letting him rub her back with strong, reassuring hands.
Bile rose in the back of Ginny’s mouth, and she instantly refocused, remembering who was standing before her.
“No,” she whispered. She pushed away from him and scooted backwards on the floor. “No, no. You’re back.”
He smiled shyly at her, in his awkward, but perfectly sweet, way. “I’m back.”
“No,” she said in a louder voice, shaking her head. “No. You’re back.”
His green eyes darkened for the briefest of seconds, and then he titled his head in a confused way. “Gin? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing, nothing,” she said softly, shaking her head again. She could tell from the look on his face that she was scaring him. “I just…” She searched his face for something, something she needed to see. But in Harry’s eyes, she saw no trace of regret or guilt for letting her go. His eyes held none of the uncertainty that churned painfully with panic in her stomach. And that was one thing she wasn’t going to let by.
“You left me behind, Harry. You left me here in this frigid castle, guarded by walls and teachers, until you were done slaying the dragon…” Draco…
“Ginny, we’ve been over this! I couldn’t bring you with me. If something happened to you…” His eyes fell to the ground, and then looked back up at her face.
“I’m tired of being left behind, Harry,” she said softly. Ginny rocked forward onto her knees and began to gather her books. “I don’t know what it is you want from me.”
“Gin,” Harry said again, his voice pleading. “I don’t want anything from you. I just want you to be here.”
Ginny felt the panic clawing away in her chest again. “I understand. But I can’t promise that I’ll always be here.” She straightened up as she said this, her books tucked under her arm, and continued walking down the hall.
There was a ripple of something traveling through the school. Draco was sure of it. He could sense the subtle change of the students in the castle as he would a rise in temperature. Normal changes that caused these sorts of ripples didn’t interest Draco; they were usually petty gossip, like the newest couples or an article from the latest Witch Weekly. But something about this ripple left an unsettled feeling in the pit of Draco’s stomach as if there was something he had forgotten to do.
“Have you seen him yet?” a girl in a group of younger students asked her friend.
“No, but Kate said she saw him near the library…”
It took every ounce of self-control that Draco possessed to keep from loitering to find out what these girls might be talking about. But the voices didn’t stop as he continued on. They swirled through the air and, somehow, his mind.
“Bollocks…he’s got to be dead by now.”
“…Death Eaters…”
“…saw him with her?”
“Did you see his scar?” Scar, scar, scar…Whose scar?
“I saw him!”
“…Harry…”No, no, no. “…Potter.”
The world, the floor and possibly Draco’s stomach fell out from underneath him. The edges of his vision blurred red and green, black and white. Potter was back.
Draco stumbled through mobs of people, through whispers and rumors and laughing, until he found himself standing at the door of the Head Boy’s quarters. He murmured the password in a barely audible voice and waited for the door to swing open, ready to throw himself onto his bed.
But that turned out to be a problem, considering that someone else had already thrown herself onto his bed.
Her red hair was fanned out behind her like a halo, her porcelain skin looked perfectly soft against his sheets, and her face looked unusually calm and at ease as she breathed lightly in her sleep. Draco felt the colors around his vision ebb away as he stared at her, and with a whoosh of breathlessness, he realized that he hadn’t marked her these past few months. Every kiss that he had trailed down her neck had been matched by one from Potter. In order to mark her, he should have done what Potter hadn’t. Had he? Had he done that?
I bloody well don’t know! he snapped at his screaming conscious. What hadn’t Potter done? Make love to her? But that wasn’t marking her. If Draco had learned anything in his surreal time with Ginny, it was that the physical acts didn’t mark people close to you.
He had started this with Ginny so that he could take her away from Potter, but now the bloody bastard was back. Why was he back? To reclaim Ginny? That seemed like the kind of slimy thing Potter would do. But the real question remained, did she still want Potter? He hated these questions. These many, many questions that whirred through his mind.
What would stop her from running back to Potter?
I will, he growled at his conscious. She knows that I…
What did Ginny know? He hadn’t made any commitments to her. He hadn’t asked her to “go steady.” They hadn’t visited Madam Puddifoot’s or made plans for Christmas. What had he honestly given her?
Does she know? his conscious begged of him. Does she know that you love her?
I never said that I loved her. I don’t…I don’t know.
But his conscious quieted as Draco came to this realization. He didn’t know. Did he want to?
He smiled slightly as he noticed for the first time that the scarlet sweater hugging her small frame was his own. It was hers too, though. It was theirs.
With a sudden rush of warmth, Draco laid down carefully beside her. He wrapped one arm around her waist with a fierce protectiveness, rested his forehead in the crook of her shoulder and breathed in her intoxicating scent. And before he drifted off to sleep, he had a fleeting thought that maybe, just maybe, everything would turn out alright if they never left his room.
Ginny awoke from dreams of dragons and towers and guarded princesses, her breathing calm and her heart in a safe place. Two arms encircled her waist, and Ginny looked over to see Draco breathing peacefully beside her. He looked innocent, lying there beside her. His face was free of the usual smirk or sneer that hardened his features, and his hair was mussed and soft, further lightening his appearance. She brushed a fallen strand away from his forehead and sighed with contentment.
Suddenly, as the fog of sleep wore off, Ginny felt a knot of panic burrow into the pit of her stomach. What was she doing in Draco’s room? And the truth hit her like a blow to the stomach. Harry was back.
She had somehow made it to Draco’s room without passing out, prepared to wait for him and tell him that Harry was back. But she had fallen asleep on his giant bed, and here she was now.
She ran her fingers through his hair and she wondered if he had heard already. It wasn’t going to stay quiet for long if Harry was back. Why was he back? Had she asked him? Why did he insist upon having the worst timing for everything?
Maybe he’s not back for me. Ginny wondered if she really hoped that that was the case. Did she want Harry to forget about her? To leave her behind in the most literal sense?
Damn right, you do. A rather loud voice in her head scolded. What are you so afraid of? It’s your choice. Tell Harry that you don’t want him. Tell him that you want someone who puts you first. Who wants you unconditionally.
Ginny smiled as Draco took a deep breath. “Ginny,” he murmured in his sleep. His eyelids fluttered open as she ran a hand over his cheek. She sucked in an involuntary breath as his eyes bore into hers. What a shade of blue. Like a stormy sky on a winter’s day.
His lips curled into one of the sexiest smiles she’d ever seen. Testing and taunting but just tender if she looked closely enough, just like Draco.
It was her touch that brought him back. He had been drowning, drowning in a sea of green. His mother’s voice wailed louder than the waves, an icy tip of a wand drilled between his eyes, and his body sunk farther and farther into the burning sea.
Just when his lungs were going to burst, when the screams were going to pierce his very soul, a hand laid itself softly on his face, drawing him to the surface in a whoosh of rushing air. He opened his eyes to see her face inches from his own, and he couldn’t help but smile.
“Ginny,” he breathed.
She nodded sadly, looking at him as if she knew what he had been dreaming of. She smoothed his hair back and left a feather light kiss on his forehead. Her eyelids fluttered closed, and she leaned lower to leave another on his lips. Ginny pulled away slowly, and as she did, he whispered something against her lips.
“I love you.”
Her eyes opened wide, swirling with emotions that he couldn’t read. “What did you-” her voice hitched. “What did you say?”
It had been easy to say it against her lips, as light as one of her kisses. But when she looked at him with that unreadable expression, he knew it would be harder to repeat.
“You heard me,” he said in a voice that was a little rougher than he intended.
Her eyes clouded. “No, I didn’t. What did you say?”
Say something. Say anything. Draco implored his own mouth. Ginny’s bottom lip had slipped between her teeth, and Draco could have sworn that he felt his heart sinking into the watery, green depths of his nightmares.
He saw that there was no way out of this one. He had said it and meant it, and he couldn’t take it back if he wanted to. Before his courage could fail him, Draco uttered softly, “Ginny, I…I love you.”
Her brown eyes lit up in a way he had never seen before, her checks flushed a delicate pink, and her full, red lips moistened from the mistreatment of her teeth. A brilliant smile spread across those lips, and she reached out a hand to touch his cheek. God, he was addicted to her touch. He would never be able to get enough of it.
Her smile now lit up her entire face, and Ginny held his gaze with her own. “Draco, I love you too.”
When Draco was very young, his mother rescued a baby bird that had fallen into the icy pond in their garden. It had been near Christmastime, and Narcissa warmed the tiny bird that had been seconds away from an icy death.
Draco had never been pulled from an ice-covered pond to avoid a frozen death, but as he kissed Ginny over and over, he suspected that it felt a lot like this.
And as her lips molded to his and her fingers tangled in his hair, he couldn't tell where one of them began and the other ended. He could almost forget that the baby bird had died on Christmas morning. Almost.
She knew that she loved Draco for some time. She suspected, or maybe hoped, that he loved her back. But she never expected, or even dared to dream, that he would tell her that, or be the first to say it.
Her heart fluttered at every kiss he placed along her neck. He loved her. She, Ginny Weasley, had thawed his heart so completely that he was capable of loving her. As vast and terrifying as their new uncharted territory of love was, Ginny’s heart swelled until she thought it would burst. The new idea of love made her heart swell so big that she wondered if the fluttering of fear existed there at all.
Maybe it wasn’t the idea of being in love that was making her heart swell, but the feeling of being so close to Draco as he kissed his way down her collarbone.
“Say it again,” he growled in her ear.
She giggled softly. “I love you.”
He smiled against her skin. “I am going to kiss every goddamn freckle on your body,” he promised, dragged his lips across her stomach from freckle to freckle.
“There aren’t enough hours in the day,” she laughed, enjoying the tickling sensation of his lips against her skin.
“But there are in a lifetime,” he grinned, planting kisses everywhere he could reach. “I love you. I love you. I love you.” He said it every time he reached a new freckle.
She laid back against his pillow, feeling unthinkably content. Enough hours in a lifetime. Just how long was a lifetime?
The castle was still warm when Draco forced himself to leave his room. Although a rise in temperature would usually make him irritable, Draco found that he didn’t mind the warmth. Ginny had charmed their sweater a dark green again and gave it to him to wear.
“But what are you going to wear?” he had asked her.
She had grinned, pulling off the sweater. He didn’t bother to avert his eyes from the sight of her lacy, black bra.
“One of your shirts,” she replied, opening the bottom drawer of his bureau and pulling out one of his collar shirts. It was crisply pressed with forest green stripes running horizontally. She brought it to her face and inhaled deeply.
“What are you doing?” He had laughed, moving to examine his shirt.
“Nothing,” she had giggled from inside his shirt.
His initials were, of course, monogrammed on the inside of his sleeve. The green stripes not only clashed with her flaming hair but also with the scarlet tie that hung loosely from her neck. Draco smirked to himself as he thought of her other tie hidden at the bottom of his trunk with her maroon jumper.
The sweater felt soft against his skin, and he could still smell Ginny’s intoxicating scent on the wool. Draco didn’t know what he was going to do with himself until dinner because Ginny absolutely had to study for Transfiguration, and he had promised to leave her alone. And he would keep that promise, if only because he loved her.
I love her. It rang through his head constantly, nearly wiping his trademark smirk from his face and replacing it with a mad grin.
Just as he was about to turn down another empty corridor on his way to the library, a voice rang out loudly behind him.
“Malfoy!”
Draco stopped mid-stride, frozen to the floor. He knew that voice, knew those scrambling footsteps coming up behind him. His younger self would have whirled on the spot, wand ready and eyes flashing, to look upon the face of Harry Potter. Now, with his fingers rubbing over Ginny’s initials on the inside of his sleeve, he rotated slowly to look into the fierce green eyes that threatened to take his world from him.
“Potter,” he responded coolly, his back straight and stiff and his face calm.
Potter ran his fingers through his shaggy, black hair, mussing it up further. Draco recognized the gesture as a sign of nervousness, but the Potter standing before him wasn’t nearly as juvenile as he had once been. He gaze didn’t settle on the floor, but instead bore into Draco’s eyes, authoritative and confident, as if they were both adults. Which, Draco realized, they were.
“Malfoy, I’m not here to pick a fight with you, I’m just back to ask your help,” Potter began.
Draco crossed his arms in front of his chest, not letting his guard down for a second. His help with what? Potter didn’t ask for help. Potter was the hero, the arrogant, self-centered bastard who didn’t need help. If he needed help, it was more like he wanted Draco to dump Ginny so he could take her back for his smarmy self.
Potter took his silence as a sign to keep talking, which was wise because Draco sure as hell wasn’t going to. “Look, I know I’ve been gone this year, and I’m sure you have some ideas why, but we’ve been working for the Order, and we need something from you.”
“You need something from me?” Draco repeated.
“The Order needs something from you,” Potter corrected in a snotty tone. “And from what I understand, you had some sort of agreement with McGonagall about-”
“Well since you obviously know everything I don’t see why we have to go into the details of my personal arrangements, Potter.”
Potter’s face twitched, as if he were refraining from rolling his eyes. “Well then you’ll have no problem giving up something that the Order needs, then?”
“Depends on what that is exactly,” Draco replied coldly. You bloody well can’t have Ginny, no matter how much anyone needs her. I need her more than anyone.
Potter sighed impatiently. “We need access to the Malfoy library.”
“The Ministry has already raided the Manor,” Draco replied with a wave of his hand. “I’m sure every one of our books is already at the Order’s disposal.”
“Not that library, Malfoy. Nothing of real value is in that library, as you very well know. We need access to the other Malfoy library. The one with Dark artifacts and texts.”
An icy, iron fist clenched itself around Draco’s stomach. His father’s library. The Order, the blood traitors and half-breeds and scum that were everything his family stood against, wanted a free pass into his father’s library. Draco wasn’t even supposed to go into that room.
“I’m afraid I can’t help you,” Draco answered curtly.
“Why the-” Potter began, his voice raising. He took a breath. “And why not?”
“To enter the library of which you speak, you need a person of Malfoy blood to open it for you. And the person in question must know the exact location of the library. I’m afraid that I don’t.”
“You don’t know the location of your own library?” Potter sputtered incredulously.
“My father’s library,” Draco corrected through clenched teeth. “And leaving the school at this time is not in my best interest.”
Leaving Potter seething in the middle of the corridor, Draco turned on his heel and stalked toward the staircase.
“How about your mother’s best interest?” Potter called after him, stopping Draco’s heart. “Those texts might be able to save her.”
As he stomped on each stair deliberately, his temper got the better of him. “Sod off, Potter!” he yelled back.
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