“’To hell with that,” he said, “shake the tree and knock the great sloth down on his ass.’” – Ray Bradbury

---

Ginny is… well, she’s entirely sorry that she was ever angry at Astoria. She’s also a little bit horrified by the other girl’s cunning, but since it was aimed at He-Who-Was-A-Prat, it has become less of an issue.

Astoria, it seems, has latent Slytherin qualities not even Ginny knew of. In other words, her jealous rivalry with her older sister Daphne (who has been one of Pansy’s troupe since a young age and apparently thinks this makes her popular and well-loved) has had a bit of a crush on a certain classmate, which has not been pursued due to the very public knowledge that Pansy already has her eyes on him. She also has a tendency to rail on her younger sister for being friends with a Gryffindor.

“The conclusion,” Astoria says altogether too calmly, “was simple. It was a way to get back at her, and ever since that one time we went out to Hogsmeade, I hoped I could go out with him again.” She smirks slightly and it is almost frightening. “Daphne saw us together and she was furious.”

“But didn’t you like him at all?” Ginny asks, not comprehending the idea of dating someone purely to infuriate another person – well, not when it is her friend doing it, at least.

“Sure,” Astoria says with a small shrug, “he wasn’t bad company. And you know he’s handsome.”

“E-er, yeah.” Ginny blushes and looks away, but Astoria doesn’t notice as she continues the story. Despite already knowing it from this point onward, Ginny still wants to hear it again, if only to bask in the victory.

“Well, everything was going wonderfully at first – we were officially dating, and you should have seen Daphne. And best of all, she couldn’t even say anything, because Pansy would get angry at her – and she was already in enough trouble for letting her little sister date Pansy’s property, you know.” If Astoria wasn’t quite so delicate, she’d look demonic, Ginny muses.

“Go on.”

“But then I started to notice how he was acting – you know, smirking at you all the time, and you blushing. So then I had to go talk to you, and once you told me you liked him and he was just trying to embarrass you –”

“I told you no such thing!” Ginny snaps. “I had no idea you had any ulterior motives in dating Draco – I would never have told you I liked your boyfriend!”

Astoria sighs. “Yes, well, I figured it out on my own then, didn’t I? In any case, then I told you my real reasons and you know the rest.”

Ginny smirks. “Yes, I really do. Doing it outside the Great Hall, Astoria – that was pure genius.”

“Nothing less for my best friend,” Astoria says with a smile that is really very touching.

Ginny supposes that while it is generally frowned-upon for a girl to date someone in order to make someone else jealous, exceptions can be made when that person is himself a prat who is dating the girl to make someone else jealous. Especially if the girl then dumps him very publicly for the sake of her friend who he was attempting to make jealous, severely wounding his pride in front of half the school.

“I don’t think he’s ever been dumped before,” Ginny muses, glancing at the sheet in her hands. On the paper is a slowly replaying shot of the moment Draco was dumped. First, he is looking confused, but as Astoria’s mouth moves silently you can clearly see the moment she says ‘bored’. Draco’s face freezes in mortification, and while you can’t see it paling in the black-and-white photo, everyone knows that it did.

Ginny supposes she’s got a bit of a Slytherin in herself. She had tracked Colin down later that day and commissioned a hundred of these darlings, which she’d then stealthily distributed about the school. Almost everyone has seen them by now.

“No,” Astoria says in an interested tone that has Ginny looking up in surprise. “I don’t suppose he has. Just look at him” – she nods across the Great Hall to the table she should technically be sitting at right now – “he’s not taking it very well, is he?”

Draco… really is not. He is sitting, rather more slumped than usual (which, granted, only means that his posture is leaning forward at an 80-degree angle rather than a 90-degree rigid one) and he is poking disconsolately at his pudding. It looks as though Crabbe and Goyle are attempting to comfort him the only way they know how, if the small wall of food slowly forming around him is any indication.

That’s rather sweet actually, if obviously misguided. But Draco doesn’t seem to care. He sighs heavily – Ginny can practically hear it from here – and rises to leave the room. In order to do so he has to pass the Gryffindor table and consequently Ginny and Astoria. She grins widely, and he stiffens momentarily, his step jolting slightly. But he carries on his way without a word, until Ginny ‘accidentally’ drops her photo. It slides down through the air to land (face-up, thank Merlin) just in front of his feet, and he stops completely.

It plays out its little scene in front of him twice before he stoops to pick it up. Everyone is watching with interest now, and mild snickers are making their way through the amassed students, but Draco acts as if no one is there. He just stares at the paper for several moments longer before slowly turning to Ginny and locking eyes with her.

At first, her gaze is triumphant and challenging. Then, as he continues to stare without saying or doing anything, she begins to grow uneasy. Still, he keeps her waiting, and it is only when she is about to say something herself just to break the heavy silence that he finally moves.

He hands her the photo. “Here,” he says, voice flat and expressionless, “You dropped this.”

Then he turns and leaves the hall. Ginny finds herself waiting desperately for the anger, for him to turn and glare at her, to say something vengeful, or even to pretend that he isn’t bothered by this at all – but nothing. He does nothing at all, but leave in silence, and soon the noise level is back to normal as the door shuts behind him.

Ginny stares after him. This – this feels unfinished, not right, it’s –

“Anticlimactic, wasn’t that?” Astoria quietly observes. “I wonder what he’s up to.”

Ginny does too. That wasn’t satisfying at all, and not even the sight of Crabbe and Goyle following Draco from the room with their arms full of muffins can restore her previous spirits.

---

The worst part is that it doesn’t get any better. Ginny waits. She watches. For three solid days she endures, but although Draco recovers enough to snap at Crabbe and Goyle every time they try to direct food his way, he still makes no move of revenge. He doesn’t even seem to care.

She corners him in the corridor once, bumps right into him, and what does he do?

Nothing. That’s what he does. Nothing at all. He doesn’t even sneer at her, or insult her, or make that little scoffing noise in the back of his throat that he does. He just keeps on walking.

And it’s not as though he’s just ignoring her to annoy her. He is always this sluggish and unresponsive lately, and it is only once – when Ginny and Astoria are standing together in an alcove, comparing Potions grades and he passes by and sees them with their heads bent together – that he shows any reaction to anything. He stiffens then, just like he did in the Hall, and for half a second Ginny can see the rage and humiliation warring on his face, right along with the desire to march right up to her and attack her.

But he still does nothing.

It’s frankly more than Ginny can handle. Astoria is no longer concerned with Draco (Daphne is now leaving her mostly alone, at least for the time being, so their short courtship has served her purposes well enough) but when Ginny brings his behavior up, she says not to worry about it.

“It’s not like it concerns you anymore, right?” she says. “You’re done with him now. If he’s not attacking you back, that’s a good thing.”

Even Ginny knows better than that, even she suspects Draco of having some trick up his sleeve, but Astoria is only fourteen, cunning or not.

However the naïve advice isn’t all that bad and Ginny knows she ought to take it. She really ought to just forget Draco and move on already. He is a jerk, she has put him in his place, and all ought to be well.

It would be. If she didn’t still like the twat.

Oh, Ginny has no illusions regarding his character. And she’s fully aware that he is probably just waiting to get his revenge and this whole dejected moping thing is nothing but an act, but –

It’s not right, seeing Draco without the snark, and she wants it back. Now that the desperate need for revenge has been served, Ginny is more forgiving than he probably deserves, and she just wants the whole thing to be over.

In other words, she wants to get together with Draco already, so that she will stop gazing at him and feeling perturbed when he doesn’t smirk mockingly back. It’s too horrifying to admit that she misses being called ‘little Weasley’ or ‘Weaselette’ in those sultry, mocking tones. It’s just wrong to miss him insulting her intelligence, wealth, or beauty whenever she sees him.

But she does, and the only way Ginny sees to fix that is to verbally harass him for a bit, then kiss some sense into him. …Well, okay, there’s probably several other ways to do it, but Ginny likes this one best.

Draco is the kind of person that should never be so quiet, and Ginny has graciously decided to fix that. It is with this in mind that she leaves the Gryffindor common room this lovely Saturday afternoon, and proceeds to wander in the general direction of the library to look for him.

Ginny was hoping to embrace him at some point today, yes. She is willing to admit that (if not aloud, at least not until Draco is back to normal and firmly her boyfriend). However, she completely denies purposely falling on him in an attempt to make said embracing occur. It might work, yes, but it’s really just not her style. Too eager, too contrived, too... the position she finds herself in now.

Draco looks down at her, blinks, and for half a moment Ginny almost sees something there. She thinks. Possibly. It could be a trick of the light.

“Oh,” she says, thrown off guard. “Hi.”