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Thunder and Lullabies
It wasn’t insomnia that kept her awake that night. Ginny could feel the storm coming. It tingled through her bones and made the hairs rise across her body. An icy fear had tightened around her heart far before it had even begun to rain. She usually couldn’t tell—at least at the Burrow, she couldn’t—but here at Hogwarts, in the giant stone castle, everything seemed to be amplified by a hundred fold. The charged air that weighed heavily in the girls’ dormitory seemed to nearly choke her, sticking in her throat like syrup.
She estimated she had at least a half hour until the storm started. That gave her a half hour to find somewhere safe. Normally, she’d just crawl into her closest brother’s bed. When she was younger, it was Fred and George’s, but when they moved out it had been Ron’s. Unfortunately, Ginny was well aware of the fact that Ron and Hermione had been spending an unhealthy amount of time in the Room of Requirement, so she knew that he probably wasn’t in his dormitory.
Ginny peeked out of her bed and looked towards the window. Luckily, it was dark out, but she knew that the dark, ominous clouds were slowly creeping closer and that any minute now she’d hear—or see—the source of her fears. And she couldn’t let that happen without being somewhere safe.
She quickly eliminated all the girls in her dorm. At times like these Ginny was completely unashamed to admit that she only felt safe when the person who was protecting her was a much larger, stronger, male person.
Call her old fashioned, but she knew from experience that hiding out with a girl wouldn’t work; she remembered with a small shudder an incident in her fourth year where a storm had gathered while Ginny had been studying with Luna Lovegood. Luna had been forced to hand Ginny off to Sebastian Bradley, a sixth year Ravenclaw who had been on the Quidditch team. Luna had picked Bastian, as he asked to be called, for his protective instincts and Quidditch playing abilities, knowing that he would be able to distract Ginny successfully.
He also had strawberry blonde hair, which was close enough to the red hair of the Weasley family that Ginny was instantly comfortable. The only good thing that had come out of that particular night of Bastian-clinging was the fact that she had gained another older brother. He kept a constant correspondence with her, updating her on his love life, his job as the manager of the Paris branch of Weasley’s Wizard’s Wheezes, and French fashion. She had received a good number of said French fashions from him, as well, even if some of it was highly inappropriate.
There were quite a few advantages to having a heterosexual male with good taste adopting you as a sister and Ginny took unabashed pleasure in being doted on by a non-Weasley brother that wasn’t the Boy Who Lived.
Back to the matter at hand, Ginny was also aware that she couldn’t go to Harry since she was currently going through a bit of a feud with him. He had gotten miffed over her accidentally-on-purpose testing out some of her brothers’ impotency products right before his big date with Cho Chang. Somehow she knew he was probably going to be a bit more prone to hexing her on sight for waking him up instead of being a nice, caring, and understanding surrogate older brother.
Ginny methodically went through the rest of the Gryffindor boys and decided that for all their supposed courage and chivalry, the rest of the boys wouldn’t be appropriate shields for huddling with and waiting out the storm. Neville was a bit of a nancy, Seamus would probably just try to take advantage of her with his Irish charm, and Dean had the unfortunate luck of being her ex-boyfriend. Colin Creevey was still a bit on the mousy side, despite being the same age as she was, and Ginny partially resented him for being a Harry Potter worshipper, especially with her current tiff with Harry.
The rest of the boys she didn’t even bother going through and listing their shortcomings, which meant the Tower was out of possibilities. Thinking that maybe she could sneak down to the kitchens and get far enough away to not hear the thunder, Ginny stealthily snuck out of her bed, passing all her peacefully dozing year mates and going down the stairs.
Halfway through the common room, she realized that she wasn’t particularly dressed for the rest of the castle, which was no doubt much colder than the warm Gryffindor common room. Her attire consisted of bare feet, a pair of boxers, and a ratty tank top, but she decided that getting somewhere safe before the storm hit ranked higher on her priorities list, so Ginny continued out the portrait.
It was late enough for most people to be asleep, but not late enough for Filch or the prefects to stop patrolling. Ginny figured that she’d have to be extra crafty to make it down to the kitchens this late and not be caught, so she swiftly took off down the halls at a brisk walk, focusing on not letting her feet touch the cold stone too often.
Every time she passed a window she dreaded looking out it for fear of seeing a bright fork of lightning. But she was compelled to look and make sure nothing was there anyway. By the time she got to the second floor the knot of fear in her stomach had twisted into a large ball that tightened with every moment when she didn’t hear any thunder. Ginny knew it was coming; she could feel the blasted storm and it was so obvious with the way everything seemed to hold its breath.
The calm before the storm, she thought bitterly, a touch of irony tainting the words. It was a shame that she wasn’t actually calm, and instead was already halfway to the fearful state she knew she would be in whenever she actually heard the rumbling quake of thunder or saw the flash of brilliant eckeltricity, (as her father called it), that signaled lightning.
Ginny’s eyes were locked onto the enormous windows as she walked down the main staircase to the first floor, hoping that the storm would wait at least until she was below ground and away from the sight of the sky. She didn’t have any luck, though, because just then she saw a vivid streak of white that had her frozen to the spot, paralyzed with fear.
Ginny only realized she was holding her breath when she heard the distant rumble of thunder and couldn’t stop the squeak that escaped her lips. She squeezed her eyes shut as her breath returned to her in shallow pants and she slowly reasoned to herself that it was best to keep on going to the kitchens. She had given up hope of finding someone to huddle against to brave out the storm. Now she just prayed that the kitchens would be far enough underground that the storm wouldn’t touch her.
Coaxing her hand to release its claw-like hold against the banister, Ginny barely saw the next streak of lightning before she was tearing down the stairs, her only focus being on getting away from the storm and somewhere safe. Somewhere where the lightning and thunder wouldn’t touch her and she’d be perfectly fine and not so afraid that she feared her very bones were going to separate from her body at the next reverberation of thunder.
She tore through the corridors without a thought towards whether or not she might get caught and be sentenced to a detention. Ginny stumbled at the next quake of thunder and fell to her knees, curling into a ball. She was vaguely aware of the fact that she hadn’t gone down the corridor to the kitchens—she was pretty sure that she had actually headed down to the dungeons if the cold permeating through her skin was anything to go by—but she could hardly give a damn.
Eyes squeezed shut, she tightened her hold on her knees as she waited for the rumbles to stop. She felt each quake like it was threatening to shake her into pieces. When it stopped she weakly tried to pull herself to her feet, failing miserably and ending up hanging on to a portrait for dear life. Its inhabitant sneered at her.
“Art thou fearful of a small storm?” he asked in a scornful tone. Ginny attempted to scowl at him, but was hardly able to stand up, much less scowl, so the effect was rather ruined. It was hard to see, anyway. Where are all the blasted torches? Ginny thought to herself angrily.
“Stuff it, you great codger,” she creaked out between stiff lips, whimpering—but not falling—when the next wave of thunder echoed through the castle. How could she have thought that the thunder might not reach underground? It seemed even worse down here, magnified by the walls with no hope of the sound escaping through the windows. Inwardly, she cursed herself for being so thickheaded. Ginny was pretty sure that a retarded flobberworm would have had more sense than she did.
“Vulgarity art not seemly of any maiden of class,” he sniffed out imperiously. She glanced at him, squinting, and her fear-choked mind took in rich green robes, black hair pulled back in a loose ponytail, piercing grey eyes, and pale skin. He was younger than most of the portraits—he looked barely over twenty five—but disgust was clearly etched over his aristocratic face as Ginny fought to stand up underneath the colossal tide of fear that was sweeping through her body.
She felt that she should recognize him, but it was instantly forgotten as the thunder crashed through the halls once again. She fancied that the portrait was vibrating from the thunder and whimpered again, letting it go and forgetting her crusade against huddling on the ground. She wrapped her arms tightly around her knees as she moaned quietly in agony. The thunder was coming more frequently and Ginny felt like crying. If not for the icy fear that had gripped her senses and convulsed her heart, she probably would have.
The thunder ripped through the halls again, making Ginny keen lowly and fold into herself more tightly. And that was where Draco Malfoy found her.
His first emotion was annoyance. He had just spent the past two hours going through his rounds and barely found anybody out of bed. Who would be out on a night like this? You could literally feel the tension in the air, sending the lesser students scurrying to bed almost immediately after dinner. His usual fun being squashed—that being breaking up couples with a nearly Snape-like vindictiveness—he had considered the night, as well as the two fruitless hours he had spent raiding all the empty snogging hotspots across the school, to be wasted.
Yet here, huddled underneath the portrait of Salazar Slytherin that was directly across the hall to his own house, was a tiny ivory figure, shaking like a leaf. Draco paused in his footsteps, contemplating the girl. There was hardly any light down here—Slytherins didn’t need to see to get around in their own dungeons—so he couldn’t really tell much about her.
He quickly deduced that she wasn’t a Slytherin, since no good Slytherin would ever succumb to such fear in such a public place. A Ravenclaw was out of the picture too, since they were generally too logical to ever even consider being afraid of something as natural as thunder. A Gryffindor was similarly knocked off his list; they were full of all that useless courage, weren’t they? And it was little far away from their little tower for any Gryffindor to be wandering around. So that left Hufflepuff.
Draco Malfoy hated the simpering Hufflepuffs that he normally had to deal with so on a night like this he wasn’t really in any condition to be nice to her and invite her in for a spot of tea.
“Fifteen points from Hufflepuff for being in the halls out of hours,” he snapped coldly, already intending on turning away from her in favor of the Slytherin common room. A muffled squeak escaped the bundle of small limbs and Draco decided with a roll of his eyes that she also had to be at most a third year, since she was so small and obviously frightened to death of being found out in the middle of the night.
He quickly remedied this opinion, however, when the thunder tore through the dark hall like a maleficent and highly demented marching band composed solely of drummers and the ball of limbs—he hadn’t yet gotten close enough to determine what color the dark hair was that coated her back, but he was guessing a dark brown—whimpered and then moved. She uncurled herself lightning quick—he couldn’t resist a mental chuckle at the ironic wording his thoughts had used—and crawled over to him with the speed of a kneazle and latched onto his leg tightly.
Draco was momentarily stunned by the action before he realized that the person was most certainly not a third year; not with tits like those, which he could currently feel pressed tightly to his left shin. Her legs were locked similarly around his leg with her head tucked in tightly somewhere near the region of his knee. He was torn between taking more points from Hufflepuff and wondering if she even was from Hufflepuff, because he couldn’t ever recall seeing a girl so nicely endowed amongst the patient and true lot.
When the thunder died down he heard a low murmuring that slightly confused him, until he realized it was coming from the girl currently attached to his leg. He leaned down slightly and managed to hear what she was saying.
“Fuck me, fuck me, oh, gods, I want my mum, this was the stupidest bloody idea ever, fuck, fuck, fuck, I should have stayed in the tower…” and on and on she babbled into his leg, cutting off circulation with her tight grasp. Draco sighed, annoyed.
“I’m not your mum,” he pointed out, for lack of something to say. He wasn’t usually faced with these kinds of situations while on patrol so this was something new to him. When his statement gained no notice he went to say something again but had to wait for the thunder to rumble down the halls again and wait for her subsequent keening to stop again. Even if she has a great rack, he thought irritably, she’s obviously a little touched in the head.
“Hey. You with the astraphobia,” he said, shaking his leg in the hopes of dislodging her. If anything, she seemed to tighten her grip more, making him wonder if she worked out regularly. She could probably arm wrestle Crabbe and win. “I am quite partial to my left leg, so could you kindly get the fuck off before I give you a month’s detention with Snape and curse you off myself?” he said sharply, giving his leg another shake to indicate that he was talking to her.
She gave a tiny sound that sounded like an “eep!” that didn’t quite qualify as a proper response in Draco’s book, and just when he was about to respond, he was cut off by the thunder again. He was beginning to get partially annoyed by that, especially since she turned completely illogical whenever she heard the thunder, so he couldn’t quite berate her properly when she wasn’t even paying attention. When the thunder’s echo ceased to be heard she took a deep breath that sounded like she was calming her nerves, and untucked her head.
She looked up and Draco squinted back down at her. He gave a minor curse when he realized he couldn’t really tell much about her in the dark and grabbed his wand and cast Lumos. In the sudden light she ducked her head back down to shield her eyes, but that gave Draco a chance to examine her.
He recognized her instantly. It was hard not to when met with masses of curly red hair and freckled ivory skin barely clothed by some scraggly bits of fabric. And all he could think of was the fact that he had thought she had nice tits and that it was a good thing that the only remaining male Weasley left was the thickest of the lot. If any of them found out he was thinking that about their sister he would be a dead man.
Her face left its place at his knee and looked up. Horror swept across her face, temporarily eclipsing the fear, when she realized that she was wound tightly around Draco Malfoy’s leg. Oh, gods…she thought to herself, before she heard the thunder again and was rendered incapable of coherent thought as she focused on not passing out from sheer panic.
“Malfoy,” she said, still partially horrified as she glanced up at him guiltily. “Sorry about this,” she apologized quickly. “See, normally I would have gone to Fred and George—you know, my brothers—but there’s the problem of them not being at Hogwarts, so Ron was my backup option, yet he’s been boffing Hermione in the Room of Requirement for the past few months now, so I knew I wouldn’t find him in the dorm and none of the Gryffindor boys would have been suitable refuges since Harry’s mad that I made him impotent before his date with Cho and the rest of them just wouldn’t work, so I was trying to go find someone else, and then I saw the lightning, so I figured that if I got far enough underground—“
Her rushed words turned into a muffled squeak as she buried her face in his leg again underneath the onslaught of thunder. Amazed, Draco stared down at her with a bit of wonder on his face. Had she just said all that without taking a single breath?
He idly thought that she would last practically forever in a snog before having to come up for breath and then dismissed the idea with the thought of the danger that six older brothers would offer if he even considered snogging their precious sister.
“Look, Weaselette. I don’t really care how or why you’re down here,” he informed her extra slowly, trying to emphasize the fact that most people breathed when they spoke. “All I really care about is you getting off my bloody leg so I can get back to my common room. I’ll even make you a deal. If you get off now, I won’t even take off points. You’ll just get the detentions.” She snorted, rolling her eyes and showing him just how wonderful she thought that deal was.
“Sorry, Malfoy, but as much as I hate you, you’re a much better alternative than being in the storm by myself,” she shuddered delicately. Draco wanted to just shake her off and leave her to suffer in the hall at the mercy of Salazar Slytherin, but something made him stop.
He had a sudden flash of a smaller version of himself crawling into bed with his mum during his first thunderstorm and could suddenly realize just how Weasley found them so terrifying. After all, he thought, glancing down at her small stature as she huddled up against his leg, she’s barely larger than I was when I was five. This might have been a bit of a stretch, but in his mind her smallness reminded him of himself and he just couldn’t let her rot out in the hallway. That would be too cruel towards himself, and if Draco Malfoy was anything, it was a narcissist.
“Well, I can’t very well walk with you hanging on my leg like that,” he declared crossly. “Get up.” He had to wait a moment for her to stop clutching his leg with a harpy-like intensity before offering a hand to her questioning expression.
“What?” she asked dumbly and Draco huffed, rolling his eyes impatiently. Stupid Weasleys and their stupid shortness and their stupid (yet fabulous) tits…
“Up,” he reiterated, reaching down and pulling her up by her armpits. She squeaked, but this time it wasn’t from the storm and instead was from his sudden grab. “I’m taking you up to your tower where I’m going to drop you off with your lovely Boy Who Wouldn’t Die.” She looked a little mystified at this act of kindness, but it was abruptly forgotten in favor of clutching his arm for all she was worth. He waited for her to regain her senses before tugging her forward.
“But…” she stuttered, breaking her grip on his arm in favor of remaining where she was. “I’m not going up,” she whispered as if going to the rest of the castle was akin to visiting Azkaban. Draco took a deep breath to reign in the urge to strangle her. He quickly turned around to grab her hand and yank her forward.
“Look, we’re just going up to your nice red tower, and then I can go to sleep. Got it?” She stopped again, only going forward when he pulled on her arm again.
“Stop!” she said angrily, but it was the fear lacing her voice that ultimately made him halt. He looked over his shoulder at her enquiringly, wand held down by his side and casting his face in shadow.
“I can’t go up there,” Ginny whispered again, her voice cracking partially. She looked at him pleadingly; he couldn’t make her go up to the rest of the castle where there were windows and the possibility that she might see the lightning. She gave a shiver in response, but that was followed by a full-scale panic attack when the thunder tore through the corridor again. Only when Malfoy took a step closer and grabbed her around the waist did she keep from falling, clinging to him tightly.
“The lightning,” she said in a desperate attempt to make him understand. “I can see it from up there. I’m not going up!” She felt him sigh from where she had her head buried in his chest before his arms shifted. She let out a tiny “oof” when he swept out her legs, pulling her up to his chest and turning around and walking back down the corridor to where that painting was.
She wanted to protest—she knew she should—but she just couldn’t think of any arguments. In her head there were only two options: wait out the storm in a fear-filled state outside of the Slytherin common room, which is where she guessed she had finally collapsed, or stick with Malfoy and go wherever he took her. With the ominous vibrations of the thunder still vibrating the portrait, she hardly even had to take time to make her decision.
“Hurry up!” she urged into his shirt. She heard him make a tiny sound that sounded like a snort, but then decided that Malfoy would never snort, so it must have been her imagination.
“Wait a moment, Weasley. You’re not exactly a lightweight,” he said, his voice over exaggerating the strain. Ginny rolled her eyes, but said nothing while he fumbled with holding her and trying to get his wand out. She finally got tired of waiting around for him to free his hand—he had to stop two times to make sure she didn’t fall when the thunder vibrated the castle—she wriggled out of his arms, crossing hers and putting on an imperious expression.
“Now hurry up,” she commanded. He gave her a look that could have been described as sheepish, if Malfoys were inclined to look wooly.
“I guess I was a bit early for the sweeping you off your feet bit,” he said with a quirk of his lips. The tone made her racing heart relax momentarily and made her forget about the storm.
That was changed when she practically jumped into his arms again at the next bout of thunder and he patiently waited it out before she could stand well enough on her own.
“Don’t listen,” he warned, before completely negating the effectiveness of the words when he waved his wand and muttered a spell. She couldn’t really tell what the spell had done to her, but when he spoke next the words were garbled and she figured that he had done that so she wouldn’t know the password to get into the common room. The wall he was talking to creaked and rumbled before it opened to reveal a large passageway that was the complete opposite of the tiny hole that the Gryffindors were forced to crawl through.
She couldn’t help but feel a little gypped. I mean, if being a Slytherin meant having an entrance to the common room that didn’t require one to crawl around on their hands and knees, maybe there was some merit to being a snake, Ginny thought to herself as Malfoy waved his wand and cast another spell. Now, she could hear him clearly. She could also hear the threatening grumble of the thunder, and squeaked, diving for the closest safest thing.
Also known as Malfoy.
He staggered under her weight, swearing to himself, while Ginny clung to him tightly and wished for it to go away. It was marginally better clinging to someone like this, but she could still hear it. At least she couldn’t see the lightning, because usually that combination was infinitely worse.
“Come on Weasley, I need to breathe,” he gasped out in a strangled tone. She only really loosened her grasp when she couldn’t hear the thunder again and now it was her turn to look slightly sheepish while he glared at her.
“Sorry?” she asked hesitantly, giving him a small smile designed to win him over. She couldn’t tell if it worked or not, especially since she was positive that the smile was more of a grimace.
“Just be happy I’m not dropping you right now,” he threatened, making his way into the common room. Ginny wasn’t too surprised by the décor; after all, all it really was a fancier, bigger, chicer, more expensive green-black-and-silver version of the Gryffindor common room.
He took the hallway to the right that she knew led to the Head Boy’s room and briefly considered just what the fuck she was doing. Sure, he was someone to wait out the storm with, but…Draco Malfoy? Son of a Death Eater, rumored to be one himself, and her family’s complete nemesis? It went against everything she believed.
Especially since, despite his words, he hadn’t left her to huddle against that portrait and had instead brought her inside his room. She was only slightly nervous; before she had only been in this kind of situation with trusted friends or her brothers.
But with the next crash of the thunder, rumbling through the castle like a possessed Hogwarts Express, she found all her doubts disappearing as she huddle closer to the warmth and solidness of Malfoy.
Draco himself was having a hard time remaining as noble as Weasley was picturing him to be. He had been way off target when he compared her to a five year old; she was far from that age, which was all-too-obvious when her warm curves were generously pressed against his torso. All thoughts of the wrongness of the situation—the fact that she was a Weasley was hardly a blip on his radar now—was replaced with pure hedonistic need to keep on holding her this tightly. He didn’t trust himself to talk, so he didn’t.
Draco dropped her unceremoniously on his bed once the thunder’s sound had vanished in an attempt to break free of the trance she had him in. He shuffled over to his wardrobe to pull out some pajamas. Weasley or not, he wasn’t going to miss out on his sleep.
Ginny had been momentarily stunned when he had practically thrown her on the bed, but she quickly recovered. Malfoy’s room was quite large, but she couldn’t really tell that now, not when it was so dark and the only light was the glowing tip of his wand. He currently had it clasped between his teeth while he was digging through his drawers and Ginny had time to feel quite ignored by this change of events. Did he only bring her here to laugh at her in private, rather than out in the hall?
She briefly considered getting up and leaving, but the sound of thunder dissuaded her. It wasn’t as loud in his room, but now, with Malfoy being about twenty feet away and on the opposite side of the room, it was just as scary. All her fears that had been partially soothed by being held by Malfoy instantly returned and she clutched her knees closer to her, whimpering.
She could feel that her eyes were impossibly wide; the thunder wasn’t stopping. Rather, it was continuously going, one after the other, so close that she could hardly tell the difference from when one ended and the other began. She squeaked, dove for the head of his bed and grabbed a pillow. She held it tightly to her chest while she tried not to let the terror grip her too completely.
Draco concluded that the storm had reached its peak, judging by the thunder that kept rumbling, one bout after the other. While she had been distracted he had already discarded his school uniform and was busy tying the string on his silk pajama pants. He halted, though, when he heard a sound from the bed and looked up slowly, wand lightly clutched in his mouth.
She was a tiny ivory shape in the middle of all the shadows that comprised his room, huddling against a pillow near the head of his bed. She looked so…fragile and it tugged at Draco’s heart in a painful way that made him want to pull his heart out of his chest just to make the strange feelings stop. He wasn’t used to feeling that for a girl, much less a Weasley.
Well, he’d probably thought at one time or another that one of his smaller and cuter female relatives looked quite fragile, but not a girl of his age. He was used to feeling far different feelings for girls. Which he was also feeling, true, but he had pushed that aside in favor of marveling at her breakability.
Draco, once again, doubted his sanity. First, he had brought a Weasley into the Slytherin common room and into his private room. Second, he had carried said Weasley into the room. Third, he was thinking naughty thoughts about a Weasley. He was pretty positive that millennia of Malfoy ancestors would be turning in their graves at this point.
The ivory lump on his bed gave another whimper. He hardly even realized he was moving until he was crawling across his expansive bed towards her. Fuck being mean. Fuck being a Slytherin. Fuck being a Malfoy. No person, even if it was a Weasley, deserved to be so afraid of something without someone there to help them.
He had a brief moment to remember what it had felt like crawling over his mother’s legs when he was five, sobbing his eyes out, before he was upon her. Along the way he had dropped his wand and the tip still glowed and still would glow until he put it out.
“Shh,” he found himself saying, using the faint light of the wand to gently pry the pillow from her grasp. She put up a much better fight than he thought she would for the pillow; he was pretty sure he heard the distinctive ripping of the fabric underneath all the lightning. Once the pillow was out of her hands, though, she dove for him, arms outstretched, with a noise that sounded suspiciously like a sob.
She froze for a moment when her face collided with his bare chest, which gave him a moment to notice that she was crying, or drooling quite a lot, before a particularly loud boom from the thunder had her tightening her grip as if she was going to burrow inside of him.
Draco tried to recall what his own mother had done to ease his fears and tried not to concentrate on the fact that the female Weasley was practically wrapped around him. Luckily, she was high enough on his chest that a certain part of her anatomy wasn’t coming into contact with a certain part of his anatomy that was quite happy that she was there.
His mum had sung him a lullaby, he recalled, frowning while he adjusted his grip on her. Without even thinking, he pressed his lips to her head thoughtfully, concentrating on the exact words of the lullaby.
When he realized what he had been doing, he jerked his head back as if he was having a seizure, sincerely wishing he had a free hand with which he could slap himself. Sweet Circe, what was she doing to him? It was probably because she looked so small and fragile, but it was bringing out these strange protective instincts that he was positive weren’t there before.
The lullaby, he commanded himself firmly. Think about the lullaby. He remembered that it was short, even if he didn’t remember quite what it was about. He had a brief moment of disgust—at himself, at the Weasley in his arms—and his face twisted into a sneer at the thought of singing.
But then she whimpered again, and his resolve disappeared in the face of her fear.
With the thunder still rumbling in the background and with the small Weasley’s tears leaking down his chest, Draco started to murmur the song, singing it in the barest of whispers.
“Nonnë nonnë nonna uè nunnarella,” a soft voice somewhere above Ginny’s head filtered down into her ears. She stopped crying with the suddenness of it. Was that…Malfoy singing?
“E o lupe s’ha magnate la pucurella,” he continued. Ginny couldn’t help but think just where he had learned a small little lullaby like this. She wasn’t as culturally educated as he was so she couldn’t make any guesses as to the specific origin of the language. It was beautiful, the words seeming to curl themselves around his tongue as they slipped out and sank into her ears like thick chocolate.
A rumble of thunder reminded her that she was in Malfoy’s room for a reason other than to listen to him sing and she whimpered. In response, one of his hands crept up her back to cradle her head, positioning it so she was more facing his neck than anything.
“E pucurella mi comme faciva,” he whispered out. From where she was clutching to him she could literally feel the progress of the words from the bottom of his chest up through his throat and out his lips.
He was distracting her. She wanted to be annoyed by this since she shouldn’t be so easily distracted by something as bizarre as Malfoy singing, but she wasn’t. Maybe distracted wasn’t the proper word; as if sensing her uneasiness, her mind came up with plenty of decadent words, all coming straight from the tingling heat residing in the general area of her core, fueled by her proximity to the pale Slytherin.
This is wrong, she told herself dutifully. If you’re any kind of Gryffindor, you’d get off, steal his wand, and hex him to oblivion and then go kill yourself with the shame of it.
But somehow, even amidst the thunder, she just couldn’t help but feel completely and utterly comfortable in the arms of Malfoy.
“I quanno mmocc’a a lupe nonna nonna to le veriva,” he finished quietly, leaving the silence to be filled by…nothing. Ginny sighed with relief at the let up in the thunder, easing back slightly away from Malfoy.
“Since when do you sing?” she asked, pushing aside her terror in favor of curiosity. She hadn’t pictured the Slytherin Prince as the foreign-lullaby type of guy. Malfoy coughed as if trying to conceal embarrassment.
“My mother used to sing it to me whenever I was scared,” he admitted. She nodded, as if this was a perfectly acceptable thing for a Dark Pureblooded family to do. “But don’t tell anyone or I’ll make sure you get to see your pancreas ripped out of your body by a spoon,” he added quickly and gruffly as if he had just realized that his Big Bad Slytherin image had just been ruined. She wrinkled her nose in disgust, (Ew, her pancreas? Those things were nasty looking!), feeling a small smile curving her lips despite the rotten imagery.
“Don’t worry. Your secret’s safe with me,” she promised with a smirk. A sudden rumble of thunder had her freezing up, but this one didn’t last as long as the other ones had and she relaxed much more quickly. She wasn’t sure if that had anything to do with the fact that Malfoy’s hands were massaging her, one on her scalp, buried in her hair, and one on her hip, slightly underneath her shirt, but she didn’t want to think about that.
Ignoring her blush, she decided to continue on.
“What does it mean?” She could feel him shrug.
“I don’t know. I think when I asked my mum she said it was about lambs,” he replied, obviously distracted. Ginny nodded. Lambs were an appropriate topic for lullabies. She had half expected Malfoy to be singing to her about decapitated kittens or animals eating other animals. (1)
“What’s your name?” Malfoy asked, startling her.
“Ginevra,” she replied immediately before blushing again. “But no one but my great aunt Muriel ever calls me by it. Everyone calls me Ginny.” He snorted.
“Ginny? What a common name,” he scoffed and she bristled.
“Well, not all of us can be named for giant lizards with a hundred heads,” she snapped back angrily. Her retort was met with shocked silence. Ginny rewound what she had just said in her head and blushed. “I like Astrology,” she mumbled by way of an explanation. Malfoy chuckled. (2)
Ginny was slightly in awe at hearing him laugh, instantly thinking that he should do it more often. Of course, she stomped that back down as being delusional and decided to move on to more important things, like contemplating their current situation.
She had to wait for a bit of thunder to grumble through the room. Fear tightened her muscles and turned her brain to goop for the amount of time that it was in hearing distance.
She never would have pictured him as the comforting type.
She especially didn’t see him as the comforting type that would be willing to sing foreign lullabies to her. It was strange and practically unnatural, but Ginny had the strange feeling that if someone else had tried to pull it off, like Bastian, it just wouldn’t have been the same. With his pale features and partially luminescent hair she could easily imagine him as some kind of guardian angel sent to protect her.
“I hope you know I don’t usually pick up stray Weasleys,” he warned her harshly. And then, she mused sardonically, he’d do something like that and completely shatter my lovely fantasy, proving to me that he’s definitely not an angel of any kind. Glancing up at his hair again she quickly amended that thought. Well, not a good angel…
“Well, I hope you know that I don’t usually allow strange Malfoys to pick me up,” she said back primly, feeling him shudder at her words.
“Good. I couldn’t imagine my father scooping you up and spinning you around…” he succumbed into silence with the horror of it, making Ginny giggle at the absurd image of the stern Lucius Malfoy picking up a small little redhead and spinning her around. In her mind, Ginny exaggerated the clothing; she was wearing two scraps of rags and was covered in mud, while the icy Malfoy was wearing all white and a crown.
It was a little off base, but Ginny was willing to give herself some allowances in a situation like this.
“I think it’s over,” she ventured slowly, hoping she wasn’t going to be proven wrong. She let out a sound halfway to a shriek when the thunder rumbled menacingly as if saying, I’m still here, you stupid twit. She huddled in the protective strength of Malfoy’s arms, trying not to concentrate on the thunder or the strange direction her thoughts were taking her while in the presence of Malfoy.
“Apparently not,” Malfoy murmured with only a trace of amusement.
“Look, Malfoy. I know from experience the aftershocks can go on for hours,” Ginny said, making sure she was focusing more on speaking and not thinking about the words or anything about them. She could feel Malfoy shifting to hear her better and she resisted the girlish shudder she wanted to give in to at the feeling of sleek skin rubbing against hers.
“You can stay,” he said gruffly, his face looking the other way. “But only this time.” Ginny nodded seriously.
“Of course. I mean, I wouldn’t want to make sleeping with a Malfoy a habit or anything,” she said casually, trying to ignore the fluttery feeling in her stomach. She flushed a shade of red she knew would have been equivalent to the color of alizarin crimson when the implications of her words sank in.
Draco smirked.
“Well, if we’re sleeping together now, Ginevra, you can call me Draco.”
It wasn’t insomnia that kept her awake that night. Ginny could feel the storm coming. It tingled through her bones and made the hairs rise across her body. An icy fear had tightened around her heart far before it had even begun to rain. She usually couldn’t tell—at least at the Burrow, she couldn’t—but here at Hogwarts, in the giant stone castle, everything seemed to be amplified by a hundred fold. The charged air that weighed heavily in the girls’ dormitory seemed to nearly choke her, sticking in her throat like syrup.
She estimated she had at least a half hour until the storm started. That gave her a half hour to find somewhere safe. Normally, she’d just crawl into her closest brother’s bed. When she was younger, it was Fred and George’s, but when they moved out it had been Ron’s. Unfortunately, Ginny was well aware of the fact that Ron and Hermione had been spending an unhealthy amount of time in the Room of Requirement, so she knew that he probably wasn’t in his dormitory.
Ginny peeked out of her bed and looked towards the window. Luckily, it was dark out, but she knew that the dark, ominous clouds were slowly creeping closer and that any minute now she’d hear—or see—the source of her fears. And she couldn’t let that happen without being somewhere safe.
She quickly eliminated all the girls in her dorm. At times like these Ginny was completely unashamed to admit that she only felt safe when the person who was protecting her was a much larger, stronger, male person.
Call her old fashioned, but she knew from experience that hiding out with a girl wouldn’t work; she remembered with a small shudder an incident in her fourth year where a storm had gathered while Ginny had been studying with Luna Lovegood. Luna had been forced to hand Ginny off to Sebastian Bradley, a sixth year Ravenclaw who had been on the Quidditch team. Luna had picked Bastian, as he asked to be called, for his protective instincts and Quidditch playing abilities, knowing that he would be able to distract Ginny successfully.
He also had strawberry blonde hair, which was close enough to the red hair of the Weasley family that Ginny was instantly comfortable. The only good thing that had come out of that particular night of Bastian-clinging was the fact that she had gained another older brother. He kept a constant correspondence with her, updating her on his love life, his job as the manager of the Paris branch of Weasley’s Wizard’s Wheezes, and French fashion. She had received a good number of said French fashions from him, as well, even if some of it was highly inappropriate.
There were quite a few advantages to having a heterosexual male with good taste adopting you as a sister and Ginny took unabashed pleasure in being doted on by a non-Weasley brother that wasn’t the Boy Who Lived.
Back to the matter at hand, Ginny was also aware that she couldn’t go to Harry since she was currently going through a bit of a feud with him. He had gotten miffed over her accidentally-on-purpose testing out some of her brothers’ impotency products right before his big date with Cho Chang. Somehow she knew he was probably going to be a bit more prone to hexing her on sight for waking him up instead of being a nice, caring, and understanding surrogate older brother.
Ginny methodically went through the rest of the Gryffindor boys and decided that for all their supposed courage and chivalry, the rest of the boys wouldn’t be appropriate shields for huddling with and waiting out the storm. Neville was a bit of a nancy, Seamus would probably just try to take advantage of her with his Irish charm, and Dean had the unfortunate luck of being her ex-boyfriend. Colin Creevey was still a bit on the mousy side, despite being the same age as she was, and Ginny partially resented him for being a Harry Potter worshipper, especially with her current tiff with Harry.
The rest of the boys she didn’t even bother going through and listing their shortcomings, which meant the Tower was out of possibilities. Thinking that maybe she could sneak down to the kitchens and get far enough away to not hear the thunder, Ginny stealthily snuck out of her bed, passing all her peacefully dozing year mates and going down the stairs.
Halfway through the common room, she realized that she wasn’t particularly dressed for the rest of the castle, which was no doubt much colder than the warm Gryffindor common room. Her attire consisted of bare feet, a pair of boxers, and a ratty tank top, but she decided that getting somewhere safe before the storm hit ranked higher on her priorities list, so Ginny continued out the portrait.
It was late enough for most people to be asleep, but not late enough for Filch or the prefects to stop patrolling. Ginny figured that she’d have to be extra crafty to make it down to the kitchens this late and not be caught, so she swiftly took off down the halls at a brisk walk, focusing on not letting her feet touch the cold stone too often.
Every time she passed a window she dreaded looking out it for fear of seeing a bright fork of lightning. But she was compelled to look and make sure nothing was there anyway. By the time she got to the second floor the knot of fear in her stomach had twisted into a large ball that tightened with every moment when she didn’t hear any thunder. Ginny knew it was coming; she could feel the blasted storm and it was so obvious with the way everything seemed to hold its breath.
The calm before the storm, she thought bitterly, a touch of irony tainting the words. It was a shame that she wasn’t actually calm, and instead was already halfway to the fearful state she knew she would be in whenever she actually heard the rumbling quake of thunder or saw the flash of brilliant eckeltricity, (as her father called it), that signaled lightning.
Ginny’s eyes were locked onto the enormous windows as she walked down the main staircase to the first floor, hoping that the storm would wait at least until she was below ground and away from the sight of the sky. She didn’t have any luck, though, because just then she saw a vivid streak of white that had her frozen to the spot, paralyzed with fear.
Ginny only realized she was holding her breath when she heard the distant rumble of thunder and couldn’t stop the squeak that escaped her lips. She squeezed her eyes shut as her breath returned to her in shallow pants and she slowly reasoned to herself that it was best to keep on going to the kitchens. She had given up hope of finding someone to huddle against to brave out the storm. Now she just prayed that the kitchens would be far enough underground that the storm wouldn’t touch her.
Coaxing her hand to release its claw-like hold against the banister, Ginny barely saw the next streak of lightning before she was tearing down the stairs, her only focus being on getting away from the storm and somewhere safe. Somewhere where the lightning and thunder wouldn’t touch her and she’d be perfectly fine and not so afraid that she feared her very bones were going to separate from her body at the next reverberation of thunder.
She tore through the corridors without a thought towards whether or not she might get caught and be sentenced to a detention. Ginny stumbled at the next quake of thunder and fell to her knees, curling into a ball. She was vaguely aware of the fact that she hadn’t gone down the corridor to the kitchens—she was pretty sure that she had actually headed down to the dungeons if the cold permeating through her skin was anything to go by—but she could hardly give a damn.
Eyes squeezed shut, she tightened her hold on her knees as she waited for the rumbles to stop. She felt each quake like it was threatening to shake her into pieces. When it stopped she weakly tried to pull herself to her feet, failing miserably and ending up hanging on to a portrait for dear life. Its inhabitant sneered at her.
“Art thou fearful of a small storm?” he asked in a scornful tone. Ginny attempted to scowl at him, but was hardly able to stand up, much less scowl, so the effect was rather ruined. It was hard to see, anyway. Where are all the blasted torches? Ginny thought to herself angrily.
“Stuff it, you great codger,” she creaked out between stiff lips, whimpering—but not falling—when the next wave of thunder echoed through the castle. How could she have thought that the thunder might not reach underground? It seemed even worse down here, magnified by the walls with no hope of the sound escaping through the windows. Inwardly, she cursed herself for being so thickheaded. Ginny was pretty sure that a retarded flobberworm would have had more sense than she did.
“Vulgarity art not seemly of any maiden of class,” he sniffed out imperiously. She glanced at him, squinting, and her fear-choked mind took in rich green robes, black hair pulled back in a loose ponytail, piercing grey eyes, and pale skin. He was younger than most of the portraits—he looked barely over twenty five—but disgust was clearly etched over his aristocratic face as Ginny fought to stand up underneath the colossal tide of fear that was sweeping through her body.
She felt that she should recognize him, but it was instantly forgotten as the thunder crashed through the halls once again. She fancied that the portrait was vibrating from the thunder and whimpered again, letting it go and forgetting her crusade against huddling on the ground. She wrapped her arms tightly around her knees as she moaned quietly in agony. The thunder was coming more frequently and Ginny felt like crying. If not for the icy fear that had gripped her senses and convulsed her heart, she probably would have.
The thunder ripped through the halls again, making Ginny keen lowly and fold into herself more tightly. And that was where Draco Malfoy found her.
His first emotion was annoyance. He had just spent the past two hours going through his rounds and barely found anybody out of bed. Who would be out on a night like this? You could literally feel the tension in the air, sending the lesser students scurrying to bed almost immediately after dinner. His usual fun being squashed—that being breaking up couples with a nearly Snape-like vindictiveness—he had considered the night, as well as the two fruitless hours he had spent raiding all the empty snogging hotspots across the school, to be wasted.
Yet here, huddled underneath the portrait of Salazar Slytherin that was directly across the hall to his own house, was a tiny ivory figure, shaking like a leaf. Draco paused in his footsteps, contemplating the girl. There was hardly any light down here—Slytherins didn’t need to see to get around in their own dungeons—so he couldn’t really tell much about her.
He quickly deduced that she wasn’t a Slytherin, since no good Slytherin would ever succumb to such fear in such a public place. A Ravenclaw was out of the picture too, since they were generally too logical to ever even consider being afraid of something as natural as thunder. A Gryffindor was similarly knocked off his list; they were full of all that useless courage, weren’t they? And it was little far away from their little tower for any Gryffindor to be wandering around. So that left Hufflepuff.
Draco Malfoy hated the simpering Hufflepuffs that he normally had to deal with so on a night like this he wasn’t really in any condition to be nice to her and invite her in for a spot of tea.
“Fifteen points from Hufflepuff for being in the halls out of hours,” he snapped coldly, already intending on turning away from her in favor of the Slytherin common room. A muffled squeak escaped the bundle of small limbs and Draco decided with a roll of his eyes that she also had to be at most a third year, since she was so small and obviously frightened to death of being found out in the middle of the night.
He quickly remedied this opinion, however, when the thunder tore through the dark hall like a maleficent and highly demented marching band composed solely of drummers and the ball of limbs—he hadn’t yet gotten close enough to determine what color the dark hair was that coated her back, but he was guessing a dark brown—whimpered and then moved. She uncurled herself lightning quick—he couldn’t resist a mental chuckle at the ironic wording his thoughts had used—and crawled over to him with the speed of a kneazle and latched onto his leg tightly.
Draco was momentarily stunned by the action before he realized that the person was most certainly not a third year; not with tits like those, which he could currently feel pressed tightly to his left shin. Her legs were locked similarly around his leg with her head tucked in tightly somewhere near the region of his knee. He was torn between taking more points from Hufflepuff and wondering if she even was from Hufflepuff, because he couldn’t ever recall seeing a girl so nicely endowed amongst the patient and true lot.
When the thunder died down he heard a low murmuring that slightly confused him, until he realized it was coming from the girl currently attached to his leg. He leaned down slightly and managed to hear what she was saying.
“Fuck me, fuck me, oh, gods, I want my mum, this was the stupidest bloody idea ever, fuck, fuck, fuck, I should have stayed in the tower…” and on and on she babbled into his leg, cutting off circulation with her tight grasp. Draco sighed, annoyed.
“I’m not your mum,” he pointed out, for lack of something to say. He wasn’t usually faced with these kinds of situations while on patrol so this was something new to him. When his statement gained no notice he went to say something again but had to wait for the thunder to rumble down the halls again and wait for her subsequent keening to stop again. Even if she has a great rack, he thought irritably, she’s obviously a little touched in the head.
“Hey. You with the astraphobia,” he said, shaking his leg in the hopes of dislodging her. If anything, she seemed to tighten her grip more, making him wonder if she worked out regularly. She could probably arm wrestle Crabbe and win. “I am quite partial to my left leg, so could you kindly get the fuck off before I give you a month’s detention with Snape and curse you off myself?” he said sharply, giving his leg another shake to indicate that he was talking to her.
She gave a tiny sound that sounded like an “eep!” that didn’t quite qualify as a proper response in Draco’s book, and just when he was about to respond, he was cut off by the thunder again. He was beginning to get partially annoyed by that, especially since she turned completely illogical whenever she heard the thunder, so he couldn’t quite berate her properly when she wasn’t even paying attention. When the thunder’s echo ceased to be heard she took a deep breath that sounded like she was calming her nerves, and untucked her head.
She looked up and Draco squinted back down at her. He gave a minor curse when he realized he couldn’t really tell much about her in the dark and grabbed his wand and cast Lumos. In the sudden light she ducked her head back down to shield her eyes, but that gave Draco a chance to examine her.
He recognized her instantly. It was hard not to when met with masses of curly red hair and freckled ivory skin barely clothed by some scraggly bits of fabric. And all he could think of was the fact that he had thought she had nice tits and that it was a good thing that the only remaining male Weasley left was the thickest of the lot. If any of them found out he was thinking that about their sister he would be a dead man.
Her face left its place at his knee and looked up. Horror swept across her face, temporarily eclipsing the fear, when she realized that she was wound tightly around Draco Malfoy’s leg. Oh, gods…she thought to herself, before she heard the thunder again and was rendered incapable of coherent thought as she focused on not passing out from sheer panic.
“Malfoy,” she said, still partially horrified as she glanced up at him guiltily. “Sorry about this,” she apologized quickly. “See, normally I would have gone to Fred and George—you know, my brothers—but there’s the problem of them not being at Hogwarts, so Ron was my backup option, yet he’s been boffing Hermione in the Room of Requirement for the past few months now, so I knew I wouldn’t find him in the dorm and none of the Gryffindor boys would have been suitable refuges since Harry’s mad that I made him impotent before his date with Cho and the rest of them just wouldn’t work, so I was trying to go find someone else, and then I saw the lightning, so I figured that if I got far enough underground—“
Her rushed words turned into a muffled squeak as she buried her face in his leg again underneath the onslaught of thunder. Amazed, Draco stared down at her with a bit of wonder on his face. Had she just said all that without taking a single breath?
He idly thought that she would last practically forever in a snog before having to come up for breath and then dismissed the idea with the thought of the danger that six older brothers would offer if he even considered snogging their precious sister.
“Look, Weaselette. I don’t really care how or why you’re down here,” he informed her extra slowly, trying to emphasize the fact that most people breathed when they spoke. “All I really care about is you getting off my bloody leg so I can get back to my common room. I’ll even make you a deal. If you get off now, I won’t even take off points. You’ll just get the detentions.” She snorted, rolling her eyes and showing him just how wonderful she thought that deal was.
“Sorry, Malfoy, but as much as I hate you, you’re a much better alternative than being in the storm by myself,” she shuddered delicately. Draco wanted to just shake her off and leave her to suffer in the hall at the mercy of Salazar Slytherin, but something made him stop.
He had a sudden flash of a smaller version of himself crawling into bed with his mum during his first thunderstorm and could suddenly realize just how Weasley found them so terrifying. After all, he thought, glancing down at her small stature as she huddled up against his leg, she’s barely larger than I was when I was five. This might have been a bit of a stretch, but in his mind her smallness reminded him of himself and he just couldn’t let her rot out in the hallway. That would be too cruel towards himself, and if Draco Malfoy was anything, it was a narcissist.
“Well, I can’t very well walk with you hanging on my leg like that,” he declared crossly. “Get up.” He had to wait a moment for her to stop clutching his leg with a harpy-like intensity before offering a hand to her questioning expression.
“What?” she asked dumbly and Draco huffed, rolling his eyes impatiently. Stupid Weasleys and their stupid shortness and their stupid (yet fabulous) tits…
“Up,” he reiterated, reaching down and pulling her up by her armpits. She squeaked, but this time it wasn’t from the storm and instead was from his sudden grab. “I’m taking you up to your tower where I’m going to drop you off with your lovely Boy Who Wouldn’t Die.” She looked a little mystified at this act of kindness, but it was abruptly forgotten in favor of clutching his arm for all she was worth. He waited for her to regain her senses before tugging her forward.
“But…” she stuttered, breaking her grip on his arm in favor of remaining where she was. “I’m not going up,” she whispered as if going to the rest of the castle was akin to visiting Azkaban. Draco took a deep breath to reign in the urge to strangle her. He quickly turned around to grab her hand and yank her forward.
“Look, we’re just going up to your nice red tower, and then I can go to sleep. Got it?” She stopped again, only going forward when he pulled on her arm again.
“Stop!” she said angrily, but it was the fear lacing her voice that ultimately made him halt. He looked over his shoulder at her enquiringly, wand held down by his side and casting his face in shadow.
“I can’t go up there,” Ginny whispered again, her voice cracking partially. She looked at him pleadingly; he couldn’t make her go up to the rest of the castle where there were windows and the possibility that she might see the lightning. She gave a shiver in response, but that was followed by a full-scale panic attack when the thunder tore through the corridor again. Only when Malfoy took a step closer and grabbed her around the waist did she keep from falling, clinging to him tightly.
“The lightning,” she said in a desperate attempt to make him understand. “I can see it from up there. I’m not going up!” She felt him sigh from where she had her head buried in his chest before his arms shifted. She let out a tiny “oof” when he swept out her legs, pulling her up to his chest and turning around and walking back down the corridor to where that painting was.
She wanted to protest—she knew she should—but she just couldn’t think of any arguments. In her head there were only two options: wait out the storm in a fear-filled state outside of the Slytherin common room, which is where she guessed she had finally collapsed, or stick with Malfoy and go wherever he took her. With the ominous vibrations of the thunder still vibrating the portrait, she hardly even had to take time to make her decision.
“Hurry up!” she urged into his shirt. She heard him make a tiny sound that sounded like a snort, but then decided that Malfoy would never snort, so it must have been her imagination.
“Wait a moment, Weasley. You’re not exactly a lightweight,” he said, his voice over exaggerating the strain. Ginny rolled her eyes, but said nothing while he fumbled with holding her and trying to get his wand out. She finally got tired of waiting around for him to free his hand—he had to stop two times to make sure she didn’t fall when the thunder vibrated the castle—she wriggled out of his arms, crossing hers and putting on an imperious expression.
“Now hurry up,” she commanded. He gave her a look that could have been described as sheepish, if Malfoys were inclined to look wooly.
“I guess I was a bit early for the sweeping you off your feet bit,” he said with a quirk of his lips. The tone made her racing heart relax momentarily and made her forget about the storm.
That was changed when she practically jumped into his arms again at the next bout of thunder and he patiently waited it out before she could stand well enough on her own.
“Don’t listen,” he warned, before completely negating the effectiveness of the words when he waved his wand and muttered a spell. She couldn’t really tell what the spell had done to her, but when he spoke next the words were garbled and she figured that he had done that so she wouldn’t know the password to get into the common room. The wall he was talking to creaked and rumbled before it opened to reveal a large passageway that was the complete opposite of the tiny hole that the Gryffindors were forced to crawl through.
She couldn’t help but feel a little gypped. I mean, if being a Slytherin meant having an entrance to the common room that didn’t require one to crawl around on their hands and knees, maybe there was some merit to being a snake, Ginny thought to herself as Malfoy waved his wand and cast another spell. Now, she could hear him clearly. She could also hear the threatening grumble of the thunder, and squeaked, diving for the closest safest thing.
Also known as Malfoy.
He staggered under her weight, swearing to himself, while Ginny clung to him tightly and wished for it to go away. It was marginally better clinging to someone like this, but she could still hear it. At least she couldn’t see the lightning, because usually that combination was infinitely worse.
“Come on Weasley, I need to breathe,” he gasped out in a strangled tone. She only really loosened her grasp when she couldn’t hear the thunder again and now it was her turn to look slightly sheepish while he glared at her.
“Sorry?” she asked hesitantly, giving him a small smile designed to win him over. She couldn’t tell if it worked or not, especially since she was positive that the smile was more of a grimace.
“Just be happy I’m not dropping you right now,” he threatened, making his way into the common room. Ginny wasn’t too surprised by the décor; after all, all it really was a fancier, bigger, chicer, more expensive green-black-and-silver version of the Gryffindor common room.
He took the hallway to the right that she knew led to the Head Boy’s room and briefly considered just what the fuck she was doing. Sure, he was someone to wait out the storm with, but…Draco Malfoy? Son of a Death Eater, rumored to be one himself, and her family’s complete nemesis? It went against everything she believed.
Especially since, despite his words, he hadn’t left her to huddle against that portrait and had instead brought her inside his room. She was only slightly nervous; before she had only been in this kind of situation with trusted friends or her brothers.
But with the next crash of the thunder, rumbling through the castle like a possessed Hogwarts Express, she found all her doubts disappearing as she huddle closer to the warmth and solidness of Malfoy.
Draco himself was having a hard time remaining as noble as Weasley was picturing him to be. He had been way off target when he compared her to a five year old; she was far from that age, which was all-too-obvious when her warm curves were generously pressed against his torso. All thoughts of the wrongness of the situation—the fact that she was a Weasley was hardly a blip on his radar now—was replaced with pure hedonistic need to keep on holding her this tightly. He didn’t trust himself to talk, so he didn’t.
Draco dropped her unceremoniously on his bed once the thunder’s sound had vanished in an attempt to break free of the trance she had him in. He shuffled over to his wardrobe to pull out some pajamas. Weasley or not, he wasn’t going to miss out on his sleep.
Ginny had been momentarily stunned when he had practically thrown her on the bed, but she quickly recovered. Malfoy’s room was quite large, but she couldn’t really tell that now, not when it was so dark and the only light was the glowing tip of his wand. He currently had it clasped between his teeth while he was digging through his drawers and Ginny had time to feel quite ignored by this change of events. Did he only bring her here to laugh at her in private, rather than out in the hall?
She briefly considered getting up and leaving, but the sound of thunder dissuaded her. It wasn’t as loud in his room, but now, with Malfoy being about twenty feet away and on the opposite side of the room, it was just as scary. All her fears that had been partially soothed by being held by Malfoy instantly returned and she clutched her knees closer to her, whimpering.
She could feel that her eyes were impossibly wide; the thunder wasn’t stopping. Rather, it was continuously going, one after the other, so close that she could hardly tell the difference from when one ended and the other began. She squeaked, dove for the head of his bed and grabbed a pillow. She held it tightly to her chest while she tried not to let the terror grip her too completely.
Draco concluded that the storm had reached its peak, judging by the thunder that kept rumbling, one bout after the other. While she had been distracted he had already discarded his school uniform and was busy tying the string on his silk pajama pants. He halted, though, when he heard a sound from the bed and looked up slowly, wand lightly clutched in his mouth.
She was a tiny ivory shape in the middle of all the shadows that comprised his room, huddling against a pillow near the head of his bed. She looked so…fragile and it tugged at Draco’s heart in a painful way that made him want to pull his heart out of his chest just to make the strange feelings stop. He wasn’t used to feeling that for a girl, much less a Weasley.
Well, he’d probably thought at one time or another that one of his smaller and cuter female relatives looked quite fragile, but not a girl of his age. He was used to feeling far different feelings for girls. Which he was also feeling, true, but he had pushed that aside in favor of marveling at her breakability.
Draco, once again, doubted his sanity. First, he had brought a Weasley into the Slytherin common room and into his private room. Second, he had carried said Weasley into the room. Third, he was thinking naughty thoughts about a Weasley. He was pretty positive that millennia of Malfoy ancestors would be turning in their graves at this point.
The ivory lump on his bed gave another whimper. He hardly even realized he was moving until he was crawling across his expansive bed towards her. Fuck being mean. Fuck being a Slytherin. Fuck being a Malfoy. No person, even if it was a Weasley, deserved to be so afraid of something without someone there to help them.
He had a brief moment to remember what it had felt like crawling over his mother’s legs when he was five, sobbing his eyes out, before he was upon her. Along the way he had dropped his wand and the tip still glowed and still would glow until he put it out.
“Shh,” he found himself saying, using the faint light of the wand to gently pry the pillow from her grasp. She put up a much better fight than he thought she would for the pillow; he was pretty sure he heard the distinctive ripping of the fabric underneath all the lightning. Once the pillow was out of her hands, though, she dove for him, arms outstretched, with a noise that sounded suspiciously like a sob.
She froze for a moment when her face collided with his bare chest, which gave him a moment to notice that she was crying, or drooling quite a lot, before a particularly loud boom from the thunder had her tightening her grip as if she was going to burrow inside of him.
Draco tried to recall what his own mother had done to ease his fears and tried not to concentrate on the fact that the female Weasley was practically wrapped around him. Luckily, she was high enough on his chest that a certain part of her anatomy wasn’t coming into contact with a certain part of his anatomy that was quite happy that she was there.
His mum had sung him a lullaby, he recalled, frowning while he adjusted his grip on her. Without even thinking, he pressed his lips to her head thoughtfully, concentrating on the exact words of the lullaby.
When he realized what he had been doing, he jerked his head back as if he was having a seizure, sincerely wishing he had a free hand with which he could slap himself. Sweet Circe, what was she doing to him? It was probably because she looked so small and fragile, but it was bringing out these strange protective instincts that he was positive weren’t there before.
The lullaby, he commanded himself firmly. Think about the lullaby. He remembered that it was short, even if he didn’t remember quite what it was about. He had a brief moment of disgust—at himself, at the Weasley in his arms—and his face twisted into a sneer at the thought of singing.
But then she whimpered again, and his resolve disappeared in the face of her fear.
With the thunder still rumbling in the background and with the small Weasley’s tears leaking down his chest, Draco started to murmur the song, singing it in the barest of whispers.
“Nonnë nonnë nonna uè nunnarella,” a soft voice somewhere above Ginny’s head filtered down into her ears. She stopped crying with the suddenness of it. Was that…Malfoy singing?
“E o lupe s’ha magnate la pucurella,” he continued. Ginny couldn’t help but think just where he had learned a small little lullaby like this. She wasn’t as culturally educated as he was so she couldn’t make any guesses as to the specific origin of the language. It was beautiful, the words seeming to curl themselves around his tongue as they slipped out and sank into her ears like thick chocolate.
A rumble of thunder reminded her that she was in Malfoy’s room for a reason other than to listen to him sing and she whimpered. In response, one of his hands crept up her back to cradle her head, positioning it so she was more facing his neck than anything.
“E pucurella mi comme faciva,” he whispered out. From where she was clutching to him she could literally feel the progress of the words from the bottom of his chest up through his throat and out his lips.
He was distracting her. She wanted to be annoyed by this since she shouldn’t be so easily distracted by something as bizarre as Malfoy singing, but she wasn’t. Maybe distracted wasn’t the proper word; as if sensing her uneasiness, her mind came up with plenty of decadent words, all coming straight from the tingling heat residing in the general area of her core, fueled by her proximity to the pale Slytherin.
This is wrong, she told herself dutifully. If you’re any kind of Gryffindor, you’d get off, steal his wand, and hex him to oblivion and then go kill yourself with the shame of it.
But somehow, even amidst the thunder, she just couldn’t help but feel completely and utterly comfortable in the arms of Malfoy.
“I quanno mmocc’a a lupe nonna nonna to le veriva,” he finished quietly, leaving the silence to be filled by…nothing. Ginny sighed with relief at the let up in the thunder, easing back slightly away from Malfoy.
“Since when do you sing?” she asked, pushing aside her terror in favor of curiosity. She hadn’t pictured the Slytherin Prince as the foreign-lullaby type of guy. Malfoy coughed as if trying to conceal embarrassment.
“My mother used to sing it to me whenever I was scared,” he admitted. She nodded, as if this was a perfectly acceptable thing for a Dark Pureblooded family to do. “But don’t tell anyone or I’ll make sure you get to see your pancreas ripped out of your body by a spoon,” he added quickly and gruffly as if he had just realized that his Big Bad Slytherin image had just been ruined. She wrinkled her nose in disgust, (Ew, her pancreas? Those things were nasty looking!), feeling a small smile curving her lips despite the rotten imagery.
“Don’t worry. Your secret’s safe with me,” she promised with a smirk. A sudden rumble of thunder had her freezing up, but this one didn’t last as long as the other ones had and she relaxed much more quickly. She wasn’t sure if that had anything to do with the fact that Malfoy’s hands were massaging her, one on her scalp, buried in her hair, and one on her hip, slightly underneath her shirt, but she didn’t want to think about that.
Ignoring her blush, she decided to continue on.
“What does it mean?” She could feel him shrug.
“I don’t know. I think when I asked my mum she said it was about lambs,” he replied, obviously distracted. Ginny nodded. Lambs were an appropriate topic for lullabies. She had half expected Malfoy to be singing to her about decapitated kittens or animals eating other animals. (1)
“What’s your name?” Malfoy asked, startling her.
“Ginevra,” she replied immediately before blushing again. “But no one but my great aunt Muriel ever calls me by it. Everyone calls me Ginny.” He snorted.
“Ginny? What a common name,” he scoffed and she bristled.
“Well, not all of us can be named for giant lizards with a hundred heads,” she snapped back angrily. Her retort was met with shocked silence. Ginny rewound what she had just said in her head and blushed. “I like Astrology,” she mumbled by way of an explanation. Malfoy chuckled. (2)
Ginny was slightly in awe at hearing him laugh, instantly thinking that he should do it more often. Of course, she stomped that back down as being delusional and decided to move on to more important things, like contemplating their current situation.
She had to wait for a bit of thunder to grumble through the room. Fear tightened her muscles and turned her brain to goop for the amount of time that it was in hearing distance.
She never would have pictured him as the comforting type.
She especially didn’t see him as the comforting type that would be willing to sing foreign lullabies to her. It was strange and practically unnatural, but Ginny had the strange feeling that if someone else had tried to pull it off, like Bastian, it just wouldn’t have been the same. With his pale features and partially luminescent hair she could easily imagine him as some kind of guardian angel sent to protect her.
“I hope you know I don’t usually pick up stray Weasleys,” he warned her harshly. And then, she mused sardonically, he’d do something like that and completely shatter my lovely fantasy, proving to me that he’s definitely not an angel of any kind. Glancing up at his hair again she quickly amended that thought. Well, not a good angel…
“Well, I hope you know that I don’t usually allow strange Malfoys to pick me up,” she said back primly, feeling him shudder at her words.
“Good. I couldn’t imagine my father scooping you up and spinning you around…” he succumbed into silence with the horror of it, making Ginny giggle at the absurd image of the stern Lucius Malfoy picking up a small little redhead and spinning her around. In her mind, Ginny exaggerated the clothing; she was wearing two scraps of rags and was covered in mud, while the icy Malfoy was wearing all white and a crown.
It was a little off base, but Ginny was willing to give herself some allowances in a situation like this.
“I think it’s over,” she ventured slowly, hoping she wasn’t going to be proven wrong. She let out a sound halfway to a shriek when the thunder rumbled menacingly as if saying, I’m still here, you stupid twit. She huddled in the protective strength of Malfoy’s arms, trying not to concentrate on the thunder or the strange direction her thoughts were taking her while in the presence of Malfoy.
“Apparently not,” Malfoy murmured with only a trace of amusement.
“Look, Malfoy. I know from experience the aftershocks can go on for hours,” Ginny said, making sure she was focusing more on speaking and not thinking about the words or anything about them. She could feel Malfoy shifting to hear her better and she resisted the girlish shudder she wanted to give in to at the feeling of sleek skin rubbing against hers.
“You can stay,” he said gruffly, his face looking the other way. “But only this time.” Ginny nodded seriously.
“Of course. I mean, I wouldn’t want to make sleeping with a Malfoy a habit or anything,” she said casually, trying to ignore the fluttery feeling in her stomach. She flushed a shade of red she knew would have been equivalent to the color of alizarin crimson when the implications of her words sank in.
Draco smirked.
“Well, if we’re sleeping together now, Ginevra, you can call me Draco.”
Author notes: (1)—Translation of the Italian lullaby:
Rock rock rock-a-bye, lightly rock-a-bye
the wolf has eaten the little lamb
and little lamb, how did you manage
when you found yourself in the wolf’s mouth?
(2)—The constellation of Draco is, according to Greek mythology, a 100-headed dragon named Ladon who Hercules put to sleep during his 11th labour and Hera placed in the sky.
A/N: This oneshot is just cute fluff that makes me want to giggle every time I read it. :P If you felt the same way, review and let me know!
Note: Um, so, I just now noticed that all my italics didn't carry over from the word document to here. I just went back and added them all. They add to the telling of the story, but aren't necessary for a reread unless you want to. :D --10:47 PM October 20, 2008.
Note Two: As of now, I've decided that this is just going to remain a oneshot and its former three-shot glory will never be achieved. I'm sorry for the disappointment, but I feel that it works better as a standalone. --5:57 PM February 18, 2010.
The End.
Cadaverous Apples is the author of 6 other stories.
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