“Mum’s not going to let me come back,” Ginny told Draco, her jaw clenched in an effort to keep any tear that might think of escaping from doing so.
“What?” he demanded, looking up from his potions book and staring at her sharply.
She pulled a crumpled piece of parchment from the pocket of her robes. “She doesn’t think it’s safe here anymore. Said I need to gather all my things when I come home for Easter weekend.”
“No one goes home for Easter weekend.” Draco snapped his potions book shut.
“I know that,” she said stiffly, dropping into the chair beside him. “But I am. And I guess a lot of other students are too.”
Draco closed his eyes for a moment. “You can’t leave me.”
“With Luna getting taken over the Holidays and Michael Corner and Neville… Mum doesn’t want me here anymore.” Ginny kept reminding herself that she hadn’t cried (publicly) over Harry, and she certainly wasn’t going to (publicly) cry over Draco.
“They’re going to know!” he said. “They’re going to know why you’re going home.”
“It’s not just me,” she said sadly. “A couple other people got their letters. Didn’t you hear the announcement? Snape said anyone who wanted to was free to make a home visit for Easter weekend.”
Draco shoved his blond hair out of his eyes. She’d been after him for weeks to get a haircut but he hadn’t. “Don’t go.”
She took a deep breath, ready to give him the speech she’d been practicing all afternoon. “Look, I know your mum won’t let you come home right now, with You-Know-Who and all, but you should come home with me. My parents won’t mind. They are always willing to help anyone out, and they’ll arrange to let your parents know you’re safe. Think about it. Just me and you and we won’t have to hide or worry about who’s going to hex us or anything like that. Say yes. Come with me.”
Instead of agreeing, or at least telling her why she was nutters, Draco sighed heavily and dropped back in his chair. “You-Know-Who isn’t there right now. He’s… away, I guess. Mum wants me home too.”
Ginny’s red eyebrows shot up. “You weren’t going to tell me?”
“Of course I was. But I was going to tell her I wasn’t coming home. I was going to stay with you.”
Ginny bit her lower lip. “You should see your parents then,” she said quietly.
“What about going with you?” he asked, angrily pushing aside his school books, sending his ink pot flying. “I thought that’s what you wanted.”
“It is what I want,” she snapped. “Of course it is! But would you say yes? Would you agree to it?”
Draco turned his head, his gaze burning holes in the table top.
“That’s what I thought,” Ginny said stiffly. “I’m going to go pack.”
**~~**
“Ginny, be a dear and come let this owl in before he scratches the glass. My hands are full.”
Ginny pushed herself up from her hands and knees position on the floor, pushing her long bangs back from her eyes. She wondered sometimes if her mother kept home from school because she was truly worried, or because she wanted another person in the house during the day. The biggest problem with being the other person in the house was that her mother cleaned to calm her nerves and therefore Ginny was constantly helping her clean. There was only so much schoolwork she could do, with no actual professors assigning it to her.
She nearly tripped over the bucket of sudsy water she had been scrubbing the entry hall with, and cursed the fact that she still couldn’t use magic outside of school.
As she entered the kitchen, she could see a black eagle owl scratching at the window pane. Her mother was waving her wand non-stop, rearranging the pots and pans. Ginny’s stomach lurched in anticipate and joy as she remembered where she’d seen that owl before. She dashed across the kitchen, knocking over two of the chairs at the table in the process and colliding with the wall as she skidded to a stop in order to open the window.
“Someone you know?” her mother asked lightly. “I haven’t seen that owl before, but if it can find us, it must be.”
Ginny untied the envelope as fast as she could without ripping it and shoved the entire can of owl treats at the bird. She unsealed the envelope and pulled two small pieces of parchment from it, beginning to read before she had even sat down at the table.
Ginny,
I really miss you. You weren’t the only one who didn’t come back to Hogwarts. There are pretty much no Hufflepuffs and just a few Ravenclaws left. I really miss you. Sitting in our room isn’t exactly the same without you. I sit there in silence and all I can remember is that when the two of us were silent, there was still your breathing but now there’s just mine. Did I mention that it really sucks here without you? I miss the sound of your voice, and right now it’s the absolute loudest thing in my head. I can’t concentrate on a damn thing with you gone. Do you understand what you’re doing to me? This isn’t me, this isn’t how I’m supposed to feel or act! I think about you, worry about you all day long. Did you know that people build religions around people that they miss? I understand that now. It’s like I have this weird emptiness inside of me that I can’t explain. It aches so bad I went to Madam Pomfrey. Thank Merlin she thought it was because of the war. I feel like I have to do something or I’ll go completely mad. Perhaps building a shrine to you is the next step. I’ll place your picture at the top of it and I can kneel at it every day.
Ginny placed the first page on the table and continued with the second page, her heart hammering in jubilation. She honestly hadn’t expected him to write, and she had never expected him to be so honest. Part of her had been convinced she might never see him again.
This is getting embarrassing even though it’s just parchment, so let me change the subject. Crabbe and Goyle seem to have gone through some sort of ‘initiation’ over Easter if you know what I mean. They’re both on power trips right now, and completely annoying and unbearable.
I’m only telling you this because I don’t want you to worry, not because of any other reason. You have to keep it a secret for obvious reasons. I saw Scarhead over the Easter holidays. He was with your brother and the Mudblood and everything with them seems to be okay. That’s all I can tell you right now. I’ll tell you the rest when I see you again, and I swear it will be soon, even if I have to crawl in your bedroom window – which, by the way, I can’t do unless you tell me where you live. Just saying. Next time I see you I’m going to count every single freckle on your beautiful skin. Again, I miss you. A lot.
Draco
Ginny pressed the second piece of parchment to her face, and for a moment, she could image that she smelled his cologne and the smell that made him so irresistible. She wanted to laugh and dance and sing and send him directions to the Burrow, and at the same time she wanted to throttle him for being so mysterious about Harry.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t think it was this private.”
Ginny glanced over the top of the parchment just in time to see her mother placing the first page of the letter back on the table.
“I thought it was just a letter from one of your school friends,” Molly continued, her eyebrows slightly raised. “I wouldn’t have read it otherwise.”
“I know,” Ginny felt her face begin to flush, thankful her mum hadn’t seen the second page as well. “It’s okay.”
“Can I ask who it is?”
“Just a friend, like you said.” Ginny stood to her feet and tucked both pages of the letter in her back pocket. “No one important.” She moved to close the kitchen window.
When she turned around, her mum was still watching her, a small smile playing on her lips. “Really? Because I haven’t seen you this red since, well, since you were 12 and saw Harry.”
“Mum!” Ginny exclaimed.
“It’s a beautiful letter. It’s just a little frightening when you know it’s directed at your 16-year-old daughter.” Molly’s eyebrows were raised as she lowered herself into the seat across from where Ginny had been sitting.
“I’ll be seventeen in a few months,” she said seriously.
Her mum continued to watch her closely.
“There’s nothing to be frightened about,” Ginny mumbled, looking at the tile floor. “Not like that. We haven’t and I never have, so…”
She heard her mother’s rushing sigh of relief.
Ginny slid back into her seat, not eager to have the inevitable conversation.
“I can’t say I’ve ever had a boy want to build a religion around me.”
“Mum!” Her face was burning so fiercely, she wondered if it would start to shoot flames.
“It’s a hard time to be in love, isn’t it? Look at Remus and Tonks.” She rested her hand on her chin and looked out the window thoughtfully.
“I wouldn’t say I’m in love,” she said softly, unsure if she was or not.
“Maybe not, but he is.”
“You don’t even know him!”
“I don’t have to,” her mum smiled. “It was in the letter.”
“No it wasn’t!” Ginny pulled the letter out and scanned it again. “It’s not.”
“I can tell.”
“Really, he’s not exactly my type,” Ginny admitted. “I don’t know how we would ever make it work.”
“But we’re all making it work,” Molly said firmly. “That’s what you have to do, I suppose. If we don’t keep on living, then You-Know-Who wins, doesn’t he?”
“Then,” Ginny asked slowly, “can I go back to school?”
Her mother met her eye and watched her carefully. “Do you want to go back because that’s what you do, or because you miss someone?”
“Both,” she admitted, rubbing her fingers over an invisible spot on the table.
“Not that I don’t think you should be able to move on, but I thought you and Harry…” her mum trailed off.
Ginny nodded. “I thought so for a while,” she said finally, her voice tight, “but then this happened; I met this other person. I like him. A lot.”
“Are you going to tell me who he is?” A small smile played on the edges of her mum’s lips.
“Not yet,” Ginny shook her head. “But I will, I promise.”
“I know you will.” Molly reached across the table to squeeze Ginny’s hand. “I just want you to be careful, especially during these times. That’s why we brought you home from school.”
“I know.”
“If anything, you’ve always been the most sensible teenager I’ve raised.”
A small smile turned up Ginny’s mouth. “Thanks mum.”
*~*
Every night since Ginny had owled the location of the Burrow to Draco, it took an extra long time to fall asleep. Part of her worried about exactly what she would do if he did decide to knock on her window, while the rest of her brain told her what an idiot she was for actually sending him the location of her home. His family was made up of Death Eaters! Her family belonged to the Order! Anyone could intercept and owl, and there was no guarantee that Death Eaters weren’t closing in on her family at that very second. Nevertheless, she slept with her window cracked, just in case he was home for the weekend and somehow able to come visit her.
She sighed loudly as she pulled an old Beaters do it Harder t-shirt out of her bureau. There had been no word from Draco, not since his first and only letter. Rumors about the trio got wilder every day. Xenophilius Lovegood had been taken to Azkaban and everyone was saying it was because he let Harry get away. She found it hard to believe that Harry had only been a few miles away, and hadn’t let them know. But he might have. She still had no idea what he was up to. The Order’s constant worrying has definitely worn off on me, she thought grumpily.
Ginny unbuttoned the blouse she had worn to dinner and tossed it to the floor. Long dinners in which the Order discussed things while glancing at her until she was either asked to leave or left on her own had grown tiresome.
She wiggled out of her skirt and picked up the t-shirt.
“Ginny!”
She let out a small gasp and glanced around her room. Pressing the t-shirt over her chest, she realized the voice had come from outside her window. “Draco?” Nervously, she peeled back her curtain slightly so she could see out.
“Of course it’s me! Do you get other blokes at your window?”
“Let me, just a minute, I have to get dressed.” Ginny glanced around in a panic, trying to find her discarded clothing.
“I can’t sit out here forever,” he snapped and she heard her window creaking open.
Ginny froze, mortified and unsure of what to do, still pressing her t-shirt to her chest. She stared wide eyed as Draco climbed through her window.
“Someone will see me.” Draco stopped and blinked at her. “Why are you naked?”
“I’m not naked,” she said, flushed, attempting to turn the t-shirt so that it covered more of her. “I was getting ready for bed.”
“Right. I’ll turn around.”
She waited until Draco’s back was towards her before yanking the t-shirt quickly over her head. The shirt was long, ending several inches above her knees.
“I could see your reflection in the window,” Draco told her, turning around with a wide grin on his face.
“That’s not very noble,” she whispered, her face burning.
“Who said I was noble?” He stepped closer, his smile wicked and his eyes narrowed.
“You’re just supposed to be.” She wanted to inch backwards, but held her ground.
He took another step, eyeing her t-shirt hungrily. “Sorry princess. You picked the wrong person if you wanted noble.”
“What are you doing here?” she asked, pulling on the hem of her shirt and looking down.
“You told me where you lived. I thought you wanted to see me.” She was surprised at how hurt he sounded.
“I did.” She dove forward and threw her arms around him. “I missed you so much!” She breathed deeply, her face pressed into his chest. “Don’t leave me again.”
"You left me." He tilted her chin up sharply and before she could move, his lips were smashed into hers.
Ginny kissed him as if her life depended on it, not caring that she was in her nightshirt or that half the Order was still downstairs in the kitchen. All she wanted or needed right then was Draco. She moved her tongue over his lips, and then sucked at them, gently scraping them between her teeth. She bit harder, wanting to leave them bruised and swollen, to remind him that he was hers and she was his, even if they were apart. She finally let her tongue move inside his mouth, tracing the spaces behind his lips as her hands tightened around the material of his shirt.
“I can’t stay for very long,” he whispered as they broke apart. “My mum has been especially smothering this weekend.”
Ginny nodded, knowing she couldn’t allow him to stay anyways, but that didn’t lessen the heavy, suffocating disappointment. “You said you saw Harry,” she reminded him. “What happened?”
Draco looked at her for a moment, and Ginny didn’t like the expression she saw forming on his face. “I’ll tell you before I go,” he promised. “Just let me have you all to myself right now.”
“Okay,” she nodded, desperate to know about her brother but relieved that the knowledge was close.
“What was that?” Draco suddenly froze, his hands moving away from her.
In the sudden silence of her room, Ginny could hear the faint sound of laughter from beneath her room. “Oh, it’s just…” she paused, unsure of what to tell him. “We had people over for dinner.”
“It’s almost midnight.”
“Yeah.”
She could see the recognition in Draco’s face. “It’s the Order, isn’t it?”
Ginny tucked her hair behind her ear and nodded.
Draco closed his eyes and shook his head, letting out a harsh laugh. “How did we ever even think this would work out? Do you know who’s at my manor right now? We have prisoners, fucking prisoners, in the basement! My mental aunt is there, her husband, that damn werewolf, Wormtail, and sometimes the Dark Lord is there.”
“Then why did you go home?” She tried to keep her voice firm and steady.
“Because it was the only way I could see you.”
Ginny reached up and placed the palm of her hand on his cheek. “Then that’s how it works out.”
He stared at her a moment, his hands balled into fists at his side, but then he kissed her fiercely and Ginny forgot their tense conversation. His lips crushed her own and he grabbed her, pulling her closer to him so that there was no space at all between their bodies. More than anything, Ginny wanted to touch every piece of him.
He must have thought the same thing, because he gently pushed her down on her bed, his fingers running across her thighs, skimming the hem of her night shirt. “I’ve missed your skin,” he whispered, trailing kisses up to her ear. “And I’ve missed hearing your voice.”
Suddenly Ginny didn’t care that she had been raised not to fall into bed with the first wizard who came along – she wanted Draco with every fiber of her being. With him she felt the way she had never felt with anyone else – safe. If the world disappeared, it wouldn’t matter. She would still be there with Draco.
All she could hear was the heavy in out patterns of their breathing and her whole focus narrowed until Draco was the only thing that she knew or that mattered.
An hour later, they lay on their sides, chest to chest in Ginny’s narrow bed. Her night shirt and Draco’s button up shirt and trousers had been lost in the frenzy of their kissing. She wore her green cotton knickers and he still had his black boxers on, and as he promised, he had tried to count all her freckles but had lost count at 127.
“I have to go soon,” he said softly, unable to tear his eyes away from her bare chest. “I can’t let anyone notice that I’m missing.”
She nodded. “You said you’d tell me…”
Draco managed to divert his eyes from her breasts and his expression said clearly that it pained him to talk about the trio after such an amazing session of snogging and petting. “Don’t freak out,” he warned her. “I’ll tell you everything I know.”
He related how the trio had been brought to the Manor by Fenrir Grayback and several others, but Harry’s face was so distorted it was hard to tell who he was. “My aunt kept asking me to identify them, but in the past, I spent most my time trying not to look at them, so I explained that I couldn’t be sure it was them.”
Ginny wanted to throw her arms around him and kiss him some more. Maybe this time she wouldn’t stop him when his fingers tried to tug off her knickers. “I’m sorry about your parents getting in trouble, but I’m glad they escaped. I’m glad they’re okay. And that you didn’t give them up.”
“It wasn’t that I didn’t,” he said gruffly. “Just that I couldn’t. I wasn’t sure it was them.”
She kissed his chest. “Of course.”
“What?” he demanded, looking up from his potions book and staring at her sharply.
She pulled a crumpled piece of parchment from the pocket of her robes. “She doesn’t think it’s safe here anymore. Said I need to gather all my things when I come home for Easter weekend.”
“No one goes home for Easter weekend.” Draco snapped his potions book shut.
“I know that,” she said stiffly, dropping into the chair beside him. “But I am. And I guess a lot of other students are too.”
Draco closed his eyes for a moment. “You can’t leave me.”
“With Luna getting taken over the Holidays and Michael Corner and Neville… Mum doesn’t want me here anymore.” Ginny kept reminding herself that she hadn’t cried (publicly) over Harry, and she certainly wasn’t going to (publicly) cry over Draco.
“They’re going to know!” he said. “They’re going to know why you’re going home.”
“It’s not just me,” she said sadly. “A couple other people got their letters. Didn’t you hear the announcement? Snape said anyone who wanted to was free to make a home visit for Easter weekend.”
Draco shoved his blond hair out of his eyes. She’d been after him for weeks to get a haircut but he hadn’t. “Don’t go.”
She took a deep breath, ready to give him the speech she’d been practicing all afternoon. “Look, I know your mum won’t let you come home right now, with You-Know-Who and all, but you should come home with me. My parents won’t mind. They are always willing to help anyone out, and they’ll arrange to let your parents know you’re safe. Think about it. Just me and you and we won’t have to hide or worry about who’s going to hex us or anything like that. Say yes. Come with me.”
Instead of agreeing, or at least telling her why she was nutters, Draco sighed heavily and dropped back in his chair. “You-Know-Who isn’t there right now. He’s… away, I guess. Mum wants me home too.”
Ginny’s red eyebrows shot up. “You weren’t going to tell me?”
“Of course I was. But I was going to tell her I wasn’t coming home. I was going to stay with you.”
Ginny bit her lower lip. “You should see your parents then,” she said quietly.
“What about going with you?” he asked, angrily pushing aside his school books, sending his ink pot flying. “I thought that’s what you wanted.”
“It is what I want,” she snapped. “Of course it is! But would you say yes? Would you agree to it?”
Draco turned his head, his gaze burning holes in the table top.
“That’s what I thought,” Ginny said stiffly. “I’m going to go pack.”
**~~**
“Ginny, be a dear and come let this owl in before he scratches the glass. My hands are full.”
Ginny pushed herself up from her hands and knees position on the floor, pushing her long bangs back from her eyes. She wondered sometimes if her mother kept home from school because she was truly worried, or because she wanted another person in the house during the day. The biggest problem with being the other person in the house was that her mother cleaned to calm her nerves and therefore Ginny was constantly helping her clean. There was only so much schoolwork she could do, with no actual professors assigning it to her.
She nearly tripped over the bucket of sudsy water she had been scrubbing the entry hall with, and cursed the fact that she still couldn’t use magic outside of school.
As she entered the kitchen, she could see a black eagle owl scratching at the window pane. Her mother was waving her wand non-stop, rearranging the pots and pans. Ginny’s stomach lurched in anticipate and joy as she remembered where she’d seen that owl before. She dashed across the kitchen, knocking over two of the chairs at the table in the process and colliding with the wall as she skidded to a stop in order to open the window.
“Someone you know?” her mother asked lightly. “I haven’t seen that owl before, but if it can find us, it must be.”
Ginny untied the envelope as fast as she could without ripping it and shoved the entire can of owl treats at the bird. She unsealed the envelope and pulled two small pieces of parchment from it, beginning to read before she had even sat down at the table.
Ginny,
I really miss you. You weren’t the only one who didn’t come back to Hogwarts. There are pretty much no Hufflepuffs and just a few Ravenclaws left. I really miss you. Sitting in our room isn’t exactly the same without you. I sit there in silence and all I can remember is that when the two of us were silent, there was still your breathing but now there’s just mine. Did I mention that it really sucks here without you? I miss the sound of your voice, and right now it’s the absolute loudest thing in my head. I can’t concentrate on a damn thing with you gone. Do you understand what you’re doing to me? This isn’t me, this isn’t how I’m supposed to feel or act! I think about you, worry about you all day long. Did you know that people build religions around people that they miss? I understand that now. It’s like I have this weird emptiness inside of me that I can’t explain. It aches so bad I went to Madam Pomfrey. Thank Merlin she thought it was because of the war. I feel like I have to do something or I’ll go completely mad. Perhaps building a shrine to you is the next step. I’ll place your picture at the top of it and I can kneel at it every day.
Ginny placed the first page on the table and continued with the second page, her heart hammering in jubilation. She honestly hadn’t expected him to write, and she had never expected him to be so honest. Part of her had been convinced she might never see him again.
This is getting embarrassing even though it’s just parchment, so let me change the subject. Crabbe and Goyle seem to have gone through some sort of ‘initiation’ over Easter if you know what I mean. They’re both on power trips right now, and completely annoying and unbearable.
I’m only telling you this because I don’t want you to worry, not because of any other reason. You have to keep it a secret for obvious reasons. I saw Scarhead over the Easter holidays. He was with your brother and the Mudblood and everything with them seems to be okay. That’s all I can tell you right now. I’ll tell you the rest when I see you again, and I swear it will be soon, even if I have to crawl in your bedroom window – which, by the way, I can’t do unless you tell me where you live. Just saying. Next time I see you I’m going to count every single freckle on your beautiful skin. Again, I miss you. A lot.
Draco
Ginny pressed the second piece of parchment to her face, and for a moment, she could image that she smelled his cologne and the smell that made him so irresistible. She wanted to laugh and dance and sing and send him directions to the Burrow, and at the same time she wanted to throttle him for being so mysterious about Harry.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t think it was this private.”
Ginny glanced over the top of the parchment just in time to see her mother placing the first page of the letter back on the table.
“I thought it was just a letter from one of your school friends,” Molly continued, her eyebrows slightly raised. “I wouldn’t have read it otherwise.”
“I know,” Ginny felt her face begin to flush, thankful her mum hadn’t seen the second page as well. “It’s okay.”
“Can I ask who it is?”
“Just a friend, like you said.” Ginny stood to her feet and tucked both pages of the letter in her back pocket. “No one important.” She moved to close the kitchen window.
When she turned around, her mum was still watching her, a small smile playing on her lips. “Really? Because I haven’t seen you this red since, well, since you were 12 and saw Harry.”
“Mum!” Ginny exclaimed.
“It’s a beautiful letter. It’s just a little frightening when you know it’s directed at your 16-year-old daughter.” Molly’s eyebrows were raised as she lowered herself into the seat across from where Ginny had been sitting.
“I’ll be seventeen in a few months,” she said seriously.
Her mum continued to watch her closely.
“There’s nothing to be frightened about,” Ginny mumbled, looking at the tile floor. “Not like that. We haven’t and I never have, so…”
She heard her mother’s rushing sigh of relief.
Ginny slid back into her seat, not eager to have the inevitable conversation.
“I can’t say I’ve ever had a boy want to build a religion around me.”
“Mum!” Her face was burning so fiercely, she wondered if it would start to shoot flames.
“It’s a hard time to be in love, isn’t it? Look at Remus and Tonks.” She rested her hand on her chin and looked out the window thoughtfully.
“I wouldn’t say I’m in love,” she said softly, unsure if she was or not.
“Maybe not, but he is.”
“You don’t even know him!”
“I don’t have to,” her mum smiled. “It was in the letter.”
“No it wasn’t!” Ginny pulled the letter out and scanned it again. “It’s not.”
“I can tell.”
“Really, he’s not exactly my type,” Ginny admitted. “I don’t know how we would ever make it work.”
“But we’re all making it work,” Molly said firmly. “That’s what you have to do, I suppose. If we don’t keep on living, then You-Know-Who wins, doesn’t he?”
“Then,” Ginny asked slowly, “can I go back to school?”
Her mother met her eye and watched her carefully. “Do you want to go back because that’s what you do, or because you miss someone?”
“Both,” she admitted, rubbing her fingers over an invisible spot on the table.
“Not that I don’t think you should be able to move on, but I thought you and Harry…” her mum trailed off.
Ginny nodded. “I thought so for a while,” she said finally, her voice tight, “but then this happened; I met this other person. I like him. A lot.”
“Are you going to tell me who he is?” A small smile played on the edges of her mum’s lips.
“Not yet,” Ginny shook her head. “But I will, I promise.”
“I know you will.” Molly reached across the table to squeeze Ginny’s hand. “I just want you to be careful, especially during these times. That’s why we brought you home from school.”
“I know.”
“If anything, you’ve always been the most sensible teenager I’ve raised.”
A small smile turned up Ginny’s mouth. “Thanks mum.”
*~*
Every night since Ginny had owled the location of the Burrow to Draco, it took an extra long time to fall asleep. Part of her worried about exactly what she would do if he did decide to knock on her window, while the rest of her brain told her what an idiot she was for actually sending him the location of her home. His family was made up of Death Eaters! Her family belonged to the Order! Anyone could intercept and owl, and there was no guarantee that Death Eaters weren’t closing in on her family at that very second. Nevertheless, she slept with her window cracked, just in case he was home for the weekend and somehow able to come visit her.
She sighed loudly as she pulled an old Beaters do it Harder t-shirt out of her bureau. There had been no word from Draco, not since his first and only letter. Rumors about the trio got wilder every day. Xenophilius Lovegood had been taken to Azkaban and everyone was saying it was because he let Harry get away. She found it hard to believe that Harry had only been a few miles away, and hadn’t let them know. But he might have. She still had no idea what he was up to. The Order’s constant worrying has definitely worn off on me, she thought grumpily.
Ginny unbuttoned the blouse she had worn to dinner and tossed it to the floor. Long dinners in which the Order discussed things while glancing at her until she was either asked to leave or left on her own had grown tiresome.
She wiggled out of her skirt and picked up the t-shirt.
“Ginny!”
She let out a small gasp and glanced around her room. Pressing the t-shirt over her chest, she realized the voice had come from outside her window. “Draco?” Nervously, she peeled back her curtain slightly so she could see out.
“Of course it’s me! Do you get other blokes at your window?”
“Let me, just a minute, I have to get dressed.” Ginny glanced around in a panic, trying to find her discarded clothing.
“I can’t sit out here forever,” he snapped and she heard her window creaking open.
Ginny froze, mortified and unsure of what to do, still pressing her t-shirt to her chest. She stared wide eyed as Draco climbed through her window.
“Someone will see me.” Draco stopped and blinked at her. “Why are you naked?”
“I’m not naked,” she said, flushed, attempting to turn the t-shirt so that it covered more of her. “I was getting ready for bed.”
“Right. I’ll turn around.”
She waited until Draco’s back was towards her before yanking the t-shirt quickly over her head. The shirt was long, ending several inches above her knees.
“I could see your reflection in the window,” Draco told her, turning around with a wide grin on his face.
“That’s not very noble,” she whispered, her face burning.
“Who said I was noble?” He stepped closer, his smile wicked and his eyes narrowed.
“You’re just supposed to be.” She wanted to inch backwards, but held her ground.
He took another step, eyeing her t-shirt hungrily. “Sorry princess. You picked the wrong person if you wanted noble.”
“What are you doing here?” she asked, pulling on the hem of her shirt and looking down.
“You told me where you lived. I thought you wanted to see me.” She was surprised at how hurt he sounded.
“I did.” She dove forward and threw her arms around him. “I missed you so much!” She breathed deeply, her face pressed into his chest. “Don’t leave me again.”
"You left me." He tilted her chin up sharply and before she could move, his lips were smashed into hers.
Ginny kissed him as if her life depended on it, not caring that she was in her nightshirt or that half the Order was still downstairs in the kitchen. All she wanted or needed right then was Draco. She moved her tongue over his lips, and then sucked at them, gently scraping them between her teeth. She bit harder, wanting to leave them bruised and swollen, to remind him that he was hers and she was his, even if they were apart. She finally let her tongue move inside his mouth, tracing the spaces behind his lips as her hands tightened around the material of his shirt.
“I can’t stay for very long,” he whispered as they broke apart. “My mum has been especially smothering this weekend.”
Ginny nodded, knowing she couldn’t allow him to stay anyways, but that didn’t lessen the heavy, suffocating disappointment. “You said you saw Harry,” she reminded him. “What happened?”
Draco looked at her for a moment, and Ginny didn’t like the expression she saw forming on his face. “I’ll tell you before I go,” he promised. “Just let me have you all to myself right now.”
“Okay,” she nodded, desperate to know about her brother but relieved that the knowledge was close.
“What was that?” Draco suddenly froze, his hands moving away from her.
In the sudden silence of her room, Ginny could hear the faint sound of laughter from beneath her room. “Oh, it’s just…” she paused, unsure of what to tell him. “We had people over for dinner.”
“It’s almost midnight.”
“Yeah.”
She could see the recognition in Draco’s face. “It’s the Order, isn’t it?”
Ginny tucked her hair behind her ear and nodded.
Draco closed his eyes and shook his head, letting out a harsh laugh. “How did we ever even think this would work out? Do you know who’s at my manor right now? We have prisoners, fucking prisoners, in the basement! My mental aunt is there, her husband, that damn werewolf, Wormtail, and sometimes the Dark Lord is there.”
“Then why did you go home?” She tried to keep her voice firm and steady.
“Because it was the only way I could see you.”
Ginny reached up and placed the palm of her hand on his cheek. “Then that’s how it works out.”
He stared at her a moment, his hands balled into fists at his side, but then he kissed her fiercely and Ginny forgot their tense conversation. His lips crushed her own and he grabbed her, pulling her closer to him so that there was no space at all between their bodies. More than anything, Ginny wanted to touch every piece of him.
He must have thought the same thing, because he gently pushed her down on her bed, his fingers running across her thighs, skimming the hem of her night shirt. “I’ve missed your skin,” he whispered, trailing kisses up to her ear. “And I’ve missed hearing your voice.”
Suddenly Ginny didn’t care that she had been raised not to fall into bed with the first wizard who came along – she wanted Draco with every fiber of her being. With him she felt the way she had never felt with anyone else – safe. If the world disappeared, it wouldn’t matter. She would still be there with Draco.
All she could hear was the heavy in out patterns of their breathing and her whole focus narrowed until Draco was the only thing that she knew or that mattered.
An hour later, they lay on their sides, chest to chest in Ginny’s narrow bed. Her night shirt and Draco’s button up shirt and trousers had been lost in the frenzy of their kissing. She wore her green cotton knickers and he still had his black boxers on, and as he promised, he had tried to count all her freckles but had lost count at 127.
“I have to go soon,” he said softly, unable to tear his eyes away from her bare chest. “I can’t let anyone notice that I’m missing.”
She nodded. “You said you’d tell me…”
Draco managed to divert his eyes from her breasts and his expression said clearly that it pained him to talk about the trio after such an amazing session of snogging and petting. “Don’t freak out,” he warned her. “I’ll tell you everything I know.”
He related how the trio had been brought to the Manor by Fenrir Grayback and several others, but Harry’s face was so distorted it was hard to tell who he was. “My aunt kept asking me to identify them, but in the past, I spent most my time trying not to look at them, so I explained that I couldn’t be sure it was them.”
Ginny wanted to throw her arms around him and kiss him some more. Maybe this time she wouldn’t stop him when his fingers tried to tug off her knickers. “I’m sorry about your parents getting in trouble, but I’m glad they escaped. I’m glad they’re okay. And that you didn’t give them up.”
“It wasn’t that I didn’t,” he said gruffly. “Just that I couldn’t. I wasn’t sure it was them.”
She kissed his chest. “Of course.”
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