One Month (and a day) After Harry Defeated Voldemort
“Potter looks like his best friend just died,” Draco told Ginny. They sat side by side in a faded clearing near the lake, their knees touching.
“Nice analogy,” she told him dryly, plucking some of the dry grass between her fingers and sprinkling it on his trousers. “A lot of his friends did just die. Yours too. And mine.”
He glared for a moment before shrugging his shoulders. “Sorry then.”
“I told him.”
Draco’s eyes immediately swung to meet hers. “You did? What did you tell him?”
“That he and I had no future.” Ginny stared at the ground, still not exactly sure why she felt slightly guilty.
“Did you tell him about us?” Draco’s voice was more demanding then he she had heard in a while.
Ginny’s eyebrows shot up and her guilt was gone. “Us? Is there an official us?”
He let out a huff of disgusted air that caused his hair to ruffle. “We’ve been sneaking around this whole year trying to see each other. Seems to me there is. Unless of course you don’t want there to be.” He brushed the dead grass from his trousers and folded his arms over his chest.
“Don’t be so defensive,” Ginny said, scooting closer to him. “I just wanted to make sure that we were an official thing before I started telling people. Anyways he knew.”
“You should have just told him.” He swung his perfect hair out of his silver eyes. “After what I told you in the Great Hall that night? How could you think we weren’t an official thing? Haven’t we been seeing each other all year?”
“Yes, except for, you know, when you tried to kill Harry!” Ginny leaned back on her elbows, her hair dangling in Draco’s lap. They’d had the same conversation too many times in the past month and she was already tired of it. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”
“I was just trying to-”
“I know,” she cut him off, dropping her head back to stare up at him. “You were trying to help your parents.”
He shrugged, but reached down and began to gently twirl her hair between his fingers. “Yeah. That.”
“It’s over now. He didn’t die, your parents are okay, things are better.”
“When I graduate I want to get us out of here,” Draco said suddenly, his voice low and serious. “Me and you. We can go somewhere else, some place where we don’t have to deal with all this crap.”
“I won’t even be done with school!” she protested lightly, her head now resting on his knee.
“Do you really want to stay here next year?” he demanded. Even though his voice was rough, his fingers were gentle as they brushed over her cheek.
Ginny considered his question only for a moment. “Well… no.” There was no reason to stay, except maybe her N.E.W.T.s, but where she had once wanted to be a professional Quidditch player, she now just wanted to be with Draco.
“Okay then.”
“Where exactly will we go? And how can I expect to find a job if I don’t finish school?” She wasn’t going to let him know that she didn’t want a career.
“I’ll get you a tutor,” he replied as if it were the simplest thing in the world.
“And live? And support ourselves?” They didn’t fit together, the two of them, but somehow things just fell into place. For the past nine months, they had made things work, even though that meant a lot of sneaking around and denying things.
“My parents are in Azkaban right now,” he reminded her, brushing a loose strand of hair from her eyes. “I am the only Malfoy around. I control all the money!”
She couldn’t help but laugh. “But where will we live? You said… You-Know-Who was at your place.”
Draco nodded dismissively. “He was at the Manor. I don’t think he’d been there for a while before Potter offed him, but we won’t go there. We can go to our vacation estate in the south of France or to our villa in Tuscany. We also have this amazing tree house in the Serengeti-”
“Really?” Ginny cut him off, sitting up quickly. “The Serengeti? I always wanted to go there!”
“Then that’s where we’ll go.”
“Is it really a tree house?”
“Well, it’s build with the trees in mind. It’s on the rim of one of the plains. It’s on stilts so it sits up high near the trees. It has this amazing pool, it looks like it’s just right in the middle of the wilderness and that any beast could sneak up on you, but of course it’s heavily protected.”
“Of course.” She grinned up at him and tugged gently at his hair.
“Are you making fun of me? Because if you are, I won’t take you.”
“No, you just make it sound so easy! Like it’s no trouble at all to whisk me off to your castle in the sky.”
Draco pulled her closer and wrapped his arms around her waist. “It’s no trouble at all. The tree house practically is a castle in the sky.”
“Sounds like a fairy tale.”
“Yeah,” he nodded, kissing her cheek. “You can be my Cinderella.”
She kissed him back. “I think Snow White was the once whose prince had a sky castle.”
“Whatever.” He kissed her hungrily and she felt herself melting into his arms, and a desire to rip his clothes off right there on the school grounds.
“But I could get used to that, the whole princess thing,” she whispered in his ear.
“Just kiss me. We’ll work out the details after graduation.”
She kissed him. “Do you think the skies are clearer?”
“What?” he mumbled, his words almost lost inside her mouth.
“Here the skies are still gray. Do you think they’ll be blue in Africa?”
“I hope so.”
“Me too.” She wrapped her arms tightly around him.
“I’m serious, Gin. I want to go and I’m taking you.”
She tilted her head and looked at him.
He sighed loudly and managed to look decisively bored at the same time. “What else do I have to do to make you believe me?"
**~~**
When Sixth Year Started
When her sixth year at Hogwarts began, and Ginny arrived on the train without Harry or Ron or Hermione, for the first time ever, it was equally terrifying and liberating.
She sat with Neville, Luna and Colin. Everyone asked about Harry, even Luna who had been at the wedding when he disappeared. They talked about the fall of the ministry and who would be running the school. They discussed whether or not they should even be going back to the school. Neville had jumped up, wand at the ready, when Draco Malfoy had slid open their compartment door and looked around. His eyes fell on Ginny for a moment too long, but she sneered at him and he slid the compartment door shut without a word.
Ginny didn’t notice Draco until two weeks later, when the school year was in full force and she was doubled over in an empty hallway, holding onto her sides and gasping for air.
“I take it you just came from Dark Arts?” a thin, stiff voice asked from behind her.
It took all her strength to whirl around and see who was talking to her. The red hot pain under her ribs hit her again, but she managed to gasp out, “What do you care?”
Draco Malfoy stepped closer and she tried to back away, but the cool stone wall behind her prevented that. “Who did it?”
“Excuse me?” The pain in Ginny’s ribcage was slowly subsiding but it was being replaced by suspicious and a slight twinge of fear – not that she would ever let on.
“I know you have that class with my house,” he continued, as if conversations between Weasley’s and Malfoy’s were perfectly acceptable. “I know they’re letting everyone practice those curses on each other.”
“Again, why do you care?” She rubbed her sides carefully and tried to straighten up. “Shouldn’t you be glad the Death Eaters are running the school?”
His eyes darkened. “You have no idea what makes me glad.”
“Then enlighten me.” She rolled her brown eyes. Only a few months ago Draco had tried to kill Harry, had gotten Dumbledore killed, had allowed Death Eaters into the school, one of whom had permanently scarred her brother’s face – of course that had managed to be a blessing in disguise, proving Fleur to the family and whatnot.
Draco didn’t respond. They stood in the dim hallway, staring at each other and Ginny was suddenly aware of every single sound the old castle made.
“Well?” she finally asked, trying to sound bored, but desperate to break the silence. He was still just standing there, staring at her. His normally coifed blond hair wasn’t so perfect today, she noticed. In fact, it looked rather normal, as if he had just woken up, ran his hands through it and decided that was good enough. Ginny didn’t like the way his gray eyes were fixed on her, as if she was some prize that he wanted to win or some delicious dessert he couldn’t wait to eat.
But he didn’t answer and the silence was more than Ginny could handle. She reached down to grab her bag from the ground, with every intention of slinging it over her shoulders and walking away. Instead the weight of her bag compounded the lingering pain from the Crucio she had received for not wanting to use the curse on any other students, Slytherin’s or not, and she crumpled to the hard ground.
The ground had rushed up to meet her so quickly that she almost didn’t notice Draco Malfoy, swooping in to save her from contact with the floor. Almost.
“You okay?” His words came out rough and gravelly, as if he wasn’t used to speaking.
Ginny stared at him, unsure if she should try to hex him or at the very least just find her way out of his arms. “I’m fine.”
“You can’t not use the curses against them,” he said crossly. “They’ll use them on you and you know it. Defend yourself.”
She shook her head, her red hair swinging against him. “No I can’t,” she told him, gritting her teeth as the words caused her sides to flare up again. “I’m not like them.”
“So you’re going to be all noble and just get hexed all sodding year?”
“By your housemates? Yeah, I guess so. I don’t use unforgivable curses.”
He pulled her back to a standing position, but didn’t move his arms from around her. “I think there are times when they’re forgivable.”
“What do you care? I don’t even know why you’re talking to me! We have too much of a bad past.” Ginny was getting close to wiggling free of his grasp. On one hand, it was nice to have the male attention and know that there were other blokes besides Harry; on another, she didn’t want it from Malfoy.
“Technically,” he drawled, something that resembled his trademark smirk was creeping onto his face, “you and I have no bad past. I have never done a thing to you.”
Ginny opened her mouth, about to prove him wrong, when she realized he was right. The diary, that had been his father. The trouble that he caused was usually with Ron, Harry and Hermione. His actions at the end of the last school year, technically none of them had been directed at her, although they had affected her. “You made fun of me once,” she said finally. “For sending Harry that singing Valentine.”
He drew his eyebrows together in confusion and then began to laugh. “Seriously?” He shook his head, his arms still around her waist. “That’s the best you could come up with?”
She shrugged, his laughter causing a smile to creep over her face. “You did.”
“Come on! You don’t think it’s funny?”
“Okay,” she conceded, forcing herself not to smile by scowling. “It is.”
Draco’s left hand lifted from her side and brushed a strand of hair back from her eyes. “You have to be careful now. Take better care of yourself.”
Her stomach began to sink. What was he doing? Although she was pretty sure she still wasn’t in love with Harry, Draco Malfoy was not supposed to be able to make her stomach flitter like she had swallowed a colony of fairyflies.
“What am I supposed to do?” She meant for her voice to sound harsh and demanding, but instead it came out soft and tired. Two weeks into school and she was already exhausted. It was ridiculous. “I can’t curse them! They might all be gits, but they’re not trying to kill me.”
“Not yet,” he spat, his silver eyes dangerously narrow and pink spots appearing on his cheeks. “But give them time! And how much worse do you think it will be when they actually know what they’re doing? Damn it, Ginny, quit being so sodding virtuous! When has that ever gotten you anywhere?”
Draco had stepped closer, as if that were even possible.
“You called me Ginny.”
“Yes, I,” Draco looked confused. “That’s your name.”
She shrugged. “I didn’t think you knew it.”
“That’s all you have to say?” The hand that had brushed her hair back was now resting on her jaw line. “This is serious.”
“I still don’t know why you care.” The pain in her side had almost faded, but she wasn’t ready to tell him that.
“Are you blind?”
Ginny wondered how it was possible that part of her was finding him attractive, especially since he was glaring at her as if she was an idiot. “Apparently,” she muttered.
“Come on.” He let go of her with no warning and grabbed her bag from the floor. “You have Herbology next, right?”
“Um, yeah.” She was more disappointed that he was no longer touching her than surprised that he knew her next class.
Draco hauled the bag over his shoulder and grabbed her hand. “Let’s go. We’ll tell Sprout you were detained and she won’t give you detention. She likes me for some reason.”
“I wasn’t planning on going there,” Ginny told him as he pulled her along. “I’m really hurting.”
“How are you feeling now?” He stopped halfway down a staircase to look at her. “Honestly.”
“I ache,” she admitted, “but I’m alright. I think.”
“Then you should be in class,” he told her firmly. “It’s safer there.”
Ginny followed him down the flights of stairs until they were at the large front doors. “I can make it by myself from here.”
He turned quickly, one eyebrow raised. “And your excuse to Sprout?”
She shrugged, thinking she was a moron for being happy that he was still holding her hand. “The truth?”
“Hello! Have you even been paying attention to what’s been happening at this school? She can’t give you any special treatment because you hurt over a curse! Don’t you remember who’s running this school?”
“How could I forget?” Ginny glared at him. “The head of your house.”
“The head of my house is now Slughorn.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Exactly. Let’s go.”
Ginny wondered if that curse had done more than just hurt her physically, because his bossiness was somehow turning her on.
**~~**
“Where are we going?” Ginny asked, looking around nervously. While she decided that yes, she did in fact like Draco Malfoy, she couldn’t quite shake the feeling that maybe she shouldn’t trust him. He came around often, finding any excuse for them to be together, but this was the first time he’d come out and told her that he wanted to spend time with just her.
“I got tired of sneaking around,” he had said, “so I found a great spot for us.”
She wondered if her body would ever be found in this great spot if things went awry.
“Just come on.” Draco jumped off the staircase as it began to turn, pulling her along with him to the third floor landing. He walked quickly along the empty hallway before pausing in front of a locked door. He extracted his wand from his pocket and whispered Alohomora.
“What is this?” Ginny asked, glancing behind them. The long corridor was empty and dusty. She couldn’t help but wonder why she hadn’t noticed it before, and why it was unused. For that matter, she wondered why so much of the castle was unused. Nearly every week she stumbled upon a classroom she had never seen before or a passage she had never used.
“An empty room,” Draco shrugged. “This one just happens to have a trap door that leads to all kinds of interesting corridors.”
“A trap door?”
He laughed as he shut the door behind them. “It’ll be fun.”
“I’m not going through a trap door.”
“You don’t have to,” he grinned at her as he lit his wand. “I was joking.”
Draco lit several lanterns that hung around the room and Ginny noticed several comfy looking arm chairs that were gathered around a fire place. “Looks like other people had the same idea.”
He nodded and brushed away a large cobweb. “Yeah, but I don’t think it’s been used since last year. I haven’t seen anyone around.”
Dropping their bags to the floor, Draco motioned at the armchairs. “Sit.”
She raised an eyebrow, but dropped down into one of the chairs, her feet dangling over one arm and her back propped against the other. “I should be doing homework.”
“We can do it later.” He shrugged off his robes, and she was surprised to see that underneath them, he wore khaki trousers and a faded orange t-shirt. It looked as though it once had lettering on it, but she couldn’t tell. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a large paper bag. “Here. Happy Halloween.”
“Potter looks like his best friend just died,” Draco told Ginny. They sat side by side in a faded clearing near the lake, their knees touching.
“Nice analogy,” she told him dryly, plucking some of the dry grass between her fingers and sprinkling it on his trousers. “A lot of his friends did just die. Yours too. And mine.”
He glared for a moment before shrugging his shoulders. “Sorry then.”
“I told him.”
Draco’s eyes immediately swung to meet hers. “You did? What did you tell him?”
“That he and I had no future.” Ginny stared at the ground, still not exactly sure why she felt slightly guilty.
“Did you tell him about us?” Draco’s voice was more demanding then he she had heard in a while.
Ginny’s eyebrows shot up and her guilt was gone. “Us? Is there an official us?”
He let out a huff of disgusted air that caused his hair to ruffle. “We’ve been sneaking around this whole year trying to see each other. Seems to me there is. Unless of course you don’t want there to be.” He brushed the dead grass from his trousers and folded his arms over his chest.
“Don’t be so defensive,” Ginny said, scooting closer to him. “I just wanted to make sure that we were an official thing before I started telling people. Anyways he knew.”
“You should have just told him.” He swung his perfect hair out of his silver eyes. “After what I told you in the Great Hall that night? How could you think we weren’t an official thing? Haven’t we been seeing each other all year?”
“Yes, except for, you know, when you tried to kill Harry!” Ginny leaned back on her elbows, her hair dangling in Draco’s lap. They’d had the same conversation too many times in the past month and she was already tired of it. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”
“I was just trying to-”
“I know,” she cut him off, dropping her head back to stare up at him. “You were trying to help your parents.”
He shrugged, but reached down and began to gently twirl her hair between his fingers. “Yeah. That.”
“It’s over now. He didn’t die, your parents are okay, things are better.”
“When I graduate I want to get us out of here,” Draco said suddenly, his voice low and serious. “Me and you. We can go somewhere else, some place where we don’t have to deal with all this crap.”
“I won’t even be done with school!” she protested lightly, her head now resting on his knee.
“Do you really want to stay here next year?” he demanded. Even though his voice was rough, his fingers were gentle as they brushed over her cheek.
Ginny considered his question only for a moment. “Well… no.” There was no reason to stay, except maybe her N.E.W.T.s, but where she had once wanted to be a professional Quidditch player, she now just wanted to be with Draco.
“Okay then.”
“Where exactly will we go? And how can I expect to find a job if I don’t finish school?” She wasn’t going to let him know that she didn’t want a career.
“I’ll get you a tutor,” he replied as if it were the simplest thing in the world.
“And live? And support ourselves?” They didn’t fit together, the two of them, but somehow things just fell into place. For the past nine months, they had made things work, even though that meant a lot of sneaking around and denying things.
“My parents are in Azkaban right now,” he reminded her, brushing a loose strand of hair from her eyes. “I am the only Malfoy around. I control all the money!”
She couldn’t help but laugh. “But where will we live? You said… You-Know-Who was at your place.”
Draco nodded dismissively. “He was at the Manor. I don’t think he’d been there for a while before Potter offed him, but we won’t go there. We can go to our vacation estate in the south of France or to our villa in Tuscany. We also have this amazing tree house in the Serengeti-”
“Really?” Ginny cut him off, sitting up quickly. “The Serengeti? I always wanted to go there!”
“Then that’s where we’ll go.”
“Is it really a tree house?”
“Well, it’s build with the trees in mind. It’s on the rim of one of the plains. It’s on stilts so it sits up high near the trees. It has this amazing pool, it looks like it’s just right in the middle of the wilderness and that any beast could sneak up on you, but of course it’s heavily protected.”
“Of course.” She grinned up at him and tugged gently at his hair.
“Are you making fun of me? Because if you are, I won’t take you.”
“No, you just make it sound so easy! Like it’s no trouble at all to whisk me off to your castle in the sky.”
Draco pulled her closer and wrapped his arms around her waist. “It’s no trouble at all. The tree house practically is a castle in the sky.”
“Sounds like a fairy tale.”
“Yeah,” he nodded, kissing her cheek. “You can be my Cinderella.”
She kissed him back. “I think Snow White was the once whose prince had a sky castle.”
“Whatever.” He kissed her hungrily and she felt herself melting into his arms, and a desire to rip his clothes off right there on the school grounds.
“But I could get used to that, the whole princess thing,” she whispered in his ear.
“Just kiss me. We’ll work out the details after graduation.”
She kissed him. “Do you think the skies are clearer?”
“What?” he mumbled, his words almost lost inside her mouth.
“Here the skies are still gray. Do you think they’ll be blue in Africa?”
“I hope so.”
“Me too.” She wrapped her arms tightly around him.
“I’m serious, Gin. I want to go and I’m taking you.”
She tilted her head and looked at him.
He sighed loudly and managed to look decisively bored at the same time. “What else do I have to do to make you believe me?"
**~~**
When Sixth Year Started
When her sixth year at Hogwarts began, and Ginny arrived on the train without Harry or Ron or Hermione, for the first time ever, it was equally terrifying and liberating.
She sat with Neville, Luna and Colin. Everyone asked about Harry, even Luna who had been at the wedding when he disappeared. They talked about the fall of the ministry and who would be running the school. They discussed whether or not they should even be going back to the school. Neville had jumped up, wand at the ready, when Draco Malfoy had slid open their compartment door and looked around. His eyes fell on Ginny for a moment too long, but she sneered at him and he slid the compartment door shut without a word.
Ginny didn’t notice Draco until two weeks later, when the school year was in full force and she was doubled over in an empty hallway, holding onto her sides and gasping for air.
“I take it you just came from Dark Arts?” a thin, stiff voice asked from behind her.
It took all her strength to whirl around and see who was talking to her. The red hot pain under her ribs hit her again, but she managed to gasp out, “What do you care?”
Draco Malfoy stepped closer and she tried to back away, but the cool stone wall behind her prevented that. “Who did it?”
“Excuse me?” The pain in Ginny’s ribcage was slowly subsiding but it was being replaced by suspicious and a slight twinge of fear – not that she would ever let on.
“I know you have that class with my house,” he continued, as if conversations between Weasley’s and Malfoy’s were perfectly acceptable. “I know they’re letting everyone practice those curses on each other.”
“Again, why do you care?” She rubbed her sides carefully and tried to straighten up. “Shouldn’t you be glad the Death Eaters are running the school?”
His eyes darkened. “You have no idea what makes me glad.”
“Then enlighten me.” She rolled her brown eyes. Only a few months ago Draco had tried to kill Harry, had gotten Dumbledore killed, had allowed Death Eaters into the school, one of whom had permanently scarred her brother’s face – of course that had managed to be a blessing in disguise, proving Fleur to the family and whatnot.
Draco didn’t respond. They stood in the dim hallway, staring at each other and Ginny was suddenly aware of every single sound the old castle made.
“Well?” she finally asked, trying to sound bored, but desperate to break the silence. He was still just standing there, staring at her. His normally coifed blond hair wasn’t so perfect today, she noticed. In fact, it looked rather normal, as if he had just woken up, ran his hands through it and decided that was good enough. Ginny didn’t like the way his gray eyes were fixed on her, as if she was some prize that he wanted to win or some delicious dessert he couldn’t wait to eat.
But he didn’t answer and the silence was more than Ginny could handle. She reached down to grab her bag from the ground, with every intention of slinging it over her shoulders and walking away. Instead the weight of her bag compounded the lingering pain from the Crucio she had received for not wanting to use the curse on any other students, Slytherin’s or not, and she crumpled to the hard ground.
The ground had rushed up to meet her so quickly that she almost didn’t notice Draco Malfoy, swooping in to save her from contact with the floor. Almost.
“You okay?” His words came out rough and gravelly, as if he wasn’t used to speaking.
Ginny stared at him, unsure if she should try to hex him or at the very least just find her way out of his arms. “I’m fine.”
“You can’t not use the curses against them,” he said crossly. “They’ll use them on you and you know it. Defend yourself.”
She shook her head, her red hair swinging against him. “No I can’t,” she told him, gritting her teeth as the words caused her sides to flare up again. “I’m not like them.”
“So you’re going to be all noble and just get hexed all sodding year?”
“By your housemates? Yeah, I guess so. I don’t use unforgivable curses.”
He pulled her back to a standing position, but didn’t move his arms from around her. “I think there are times when they’re forgivable.”
“What do you care? I don’t even know why you’re talking to me! We have too much of a bad past.” Ginny was getting close to wiggling free of his grasp. On one hand, it was nice to have the male attention and know that there were other blokes besides Harry; on another, she didn’t want it from Malfoy.
“Technically,” he drawled, something that resembled his trademark smirk was creeping onto his face, “you and I have no bad past. I have never done a thing to you.”
Ginny opened her mouth, about to prove him wrong, when she realized he was right. The diary, that had been his father. The trouble that he caused was usually with Ron, Harry and Hermione. His actions at the end of the last school year, technically none of them had been directed at her, although they had affected her. “You made fun of me once,” she said finally. “For sending Harry that singing Valentine.”
He drew his eyebrows together in confusion and then began to laugh. “Seriously?” He shook his head, his arms still around her waist. “That’s the best you could come up with?”
She shrugged, his laughter causing a smile to creep over her face. “You did.”
“Come on! You don’t think it’s funny?”
“Okay,” she conceded, forcing herself not to smile by scowling. “It is.”
Draco’s left hand lifted from her side and brushed a strand of hair back from her eyes. “You have to be careful now. Take better care of yourself.”
Her stomach began to sink. What was he doing? Although she was pretty sure she still wasn’t in love with Harry, Draco Malfoy was not supposed to be able to make her stomach flitter like she had swallowed a colony of fairyflies.
“What am I supposed to do?” She meant for her voice to sound harsh and demanding, but instead it came out soft and tired. Two weeks into school and she was already exhausted. It was ridiculous. “I can’t curse them! They might all be gits, but they’re not trying to kill me.”
“Not yet,” he spat, his silver eyes dangerously narrow and pink spots appearing on his cheeks. “But give them time! And how much worse do you think it will be when they actually know what they’re doing? Damn it, Ginny, quit being so sodding virtuous! When has that ever gotten you anywhere?”
Draco had stepped closer, as if that were even possible.
“You called me Ginny.”
“Yes, I,” Draco looked confused. “That’s your name.”
She shrugged. “I didn’t think you knew it.”
“That’s all you have to say?” The hand that had brushed her hair back was now resting on her jaw line. “This is serious.”
“I still don’t know why you care.” The pain in her side had almost faded, but she wasn’t ready to tell him that.
“Are you blind?”
Ginny wondered how it was possible that part of her was finding him attractive, especially since he was glaring at her as if she was an idiot. “Apparently,” she muttered.
“Come on.” He let go of her with no warning and grabbed her bag from the floor. “You have Herbology next, right?”
“Um, yeah.” She was more disappointed that he was no longer touching her than surprised that he knew her next class.
Draco hauled the bag over his shoulder and grabbed her hand. “Let’s go. We’ll tell Sprout you were detained and she won’t give you detention. She likes me for some reason.”
“I wasn’t planning on going there,” Ginny told him as he pulled her along. “I’m really hurting.”
“How are you feeling now?” He stopped halfway down a staircase to look at her. “Honestly.”
“I ache,” she admitted, “but I’m alright. I think.”
“Then you should be in class,” he told her firmly. “It’s safer there.”
Ginny followed him down the flights of stairs until they were at the large front doors. “I can make it by myself from here.”
He turned quickly, one eyebrow raised. “And your excuse to Sprout?”
She shrugged, thinking she was a moron for being happy that he was still holding her hand. “The truth?”
“Hello! Have you even been paying attention to what’s been happening at this school? She can’t give you any special treatment because you hurt over a curse! Don’t you remember who’s running this school?”
“How could I forget?” Ginny glared at him. “The head of your house.”
“The head of my house is now Slughorn.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Exactly. Let’s go.”
Ginny wondered if that curse had done more than just hurt her physically, because his bossiness was somehow turning her on.
**~~**
“Where are we going?” Ginny asked, looking around nervously. While she decided that yes, she did in fact like Draco Malfoy, she couldn’t quite shake the feeling that maybe she shouldn’t trust him. He came around often, finding any excuse for them to be together, but this was the first time he’d come out and told her that he wanted to spend time with just her.
“I got tired of sneaking around,” he had said, “so I found a great spot for us.”
She wondered if her body would ever be found in this great spot if things went awry.
“Just come on.” Draco jumped off the staircase as it began to turn, pulling her along with him to the third floor landing. He walked quickly along the empty hallway before pausing in front of a locked door. He extracted his wand from his pocket and whispered Alohomora.
“What is this?” Ginny asked, glancing behind them. The long corridor was empty and dusty. She couldn’t help but wonder why she hadn’t noticed it before, and why it was unused. For that matter, she wondered why so much of the castle was unused. Nearly every week she stumbled upon a classroom she had never seen before or a passage she had never used.
“An empty room,” Draco shrugged. “This one just happens to have a trap door that leads to all kinds of interesting corridors.”
“A trap door?”
He laughed as he shut the door behind them. “It’ll be fun.”
“I’m not going through a trap door.”
“You don’t have to,” he grinned at her as he lit his wand. “I was joking.”
Draco lit several lanterns that hung around the room and Ginny noticed several comfy looking arm chairs that were gathered around a fire place. “Looks like other people had the same idea.”
He nodded and brushed away a large cobweb. “Yeah, but I don’t think it’s been used since last year. I haven’t seen anyone around.”
Dropping their bags to the floor, Draco motioned at the armchairs. “Sit.”
She raised an eyebrow, but dropped down into one of the chairs, her feet dangling over one arm and her back propped against the other. “I should be doing homework.”
“We can do it later.” He shrugged off his robes, and she was surprised to see that underneath them, he wore khaki trousers and a faded orange t-shirt. It looked as though it once had lettering on it, but she couldn’t tell. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a large paper bag. “Here. Happy Halloween.”
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