CHAPTER ONE
The news broke at breakfast the morning after the Halloween feast. The same words on everyone’s lips, the only thing anyone could talk about.
“Malfoy’s back.”
“Draco Malfoy.”
“He’s here. He’s come back to Hogwarts.”
Ginny sat staring at her kippers and eggs and tried not to listen. She had already known that Malfoy was coming back. She’d received an owl about it three days ago. She hadn’t told anyone, not Luna, not Hermione. Although, given the source of the owl, it was likely that Hermione already knew, too.
Ginny wasn’t sure why she hadn’t said anything. Because it didn’t matter, she told herself. Malfoy didn’t matter. Of course, all the gossip it had caused made it clear that it did matter, to many people, and if Ginny was honest with herself, it mattered to her too.
She just didn’t want to admit it.
She wasn’t sure how Harry had known. He was the one who’d sent the owl, the only communication Ginny had had with him since last they spoke. But then, she wasn’t really surprised, given how chummy he and Malfoy were these days. All right, “chummy” was probably taking it a bit too far, but. Ginny had accused Harry of far worse the last time she’d seen him.
Apparently, Malfoy had returned yesterday evening, ensconcing himself in the Slytherin dungeons while everyone was at the Halloween feast. Probably so he could get settled in without a lot of stares and whispers behind his back. And yet, though he hadn’t come to the Great Hall for breakfast this morning, everyone knew he was back. Word traveled fast at Hogwarts.
“Why do you s’pose he came back?”
“Why have any of the old seventh years come back? To have a proper year, of course. Get his N.E.W.T. qualifications—”
Ginny lifted her gaze just enough to see a boy in her year, across the table and a little ways down, roll his eyes. “Please. If anyone managed to have a proper year last year, it was Malfoy. Death Eater scum. No reason he couldn’t take his N.E.W.T.s this summer, like some of the others did.”
Ginny wrapped her hands tightly around her goblet of pumpkin juice, unable to shut out the rest of the conversation.
“Well, he was a bit tied up this summer, wasn’t he?”
“Well, whenever then. And what does he need N.E.W.T.s for anyway? Not like he needs a job, his Death Eater dad never had one.”
“Well, I expect his mum wanted him to take them.” This came from Parvati Patil, down on Ginny’s left. “I heard that’s why Blaise Zabini came back.”
“Still, doesn’t explain why any of the Slytherins came back, does it?” Seamus Finnegan grumbled. “They didn’t spend the year getting tortured and hiding out in the Room of Requirement, did they? None of them need a proper year of Muggle Studies, do they? They all could’ve just taken their N.E.W.T.s and have done with this place.”
A number of “the old seventh years”—meaning last year’s seventh years—had come back to Hogwarts for “a proper last year.” Many of them were Muggleborns who had missed last year entirely, like Justin Finch-Fletchley, Dean Thomas, and of course, Hermione, who probably could have tested out but had returned anyway. (No surprise there.) Others were like Seamus, who had missed enough of the year hiding out that he wasn’t prepared to take his N.E.W.T.s yet. And then, of course, there were others like Hermione—mostly Ravenclaws—who simply wanted a proper year of classes to finish out their schooling.
But there was also a small number of Slytherins—Blaise Zabini, Gregory Goyle, Millicent Bulstrode, and a couple of other girls Ginny didn’t know—who had come back as well. And why they should need to, or want to, no one really understood.
“Malfoy shouldn’t even be walking around free,” someone complained, a fifth year Ginny didn’t know. “After everything he did? He should be rotting in Azkaban, him and his parents.”
“I heard,” said Vicky Frobisher, a Muggleborn girl who had been in Ginny’s year, “that Potter spoke for him to the Ministry. Told them Malfoy shouldn’t serve any prison time.”
Ginny didn’t have to look up to know there were eyes on her now. It wasn’t like her, to stay quiet and keep her thoughts to herself, and there was a part of her that wanted to snap at them all to stop staring, and to say—
To say—what? She didn’t know. She didn’t know what she could say. She’d already said it all to Harry, and that conversation wasn’t anyone’s business.
Luckily, Dean spoke up instead. “If Harry thought Malfoy shouldn’t do prison time, then I agree with him. I trust Harry.”
This seemed to put an end to most of the gossip about Malfoy. Parvati Patil began discussing what might come up on her Defense Against the Dark Arts exam tomorrow morning, and when Ginny looked up, no one was looking at her at all.
But then, as he went back to his porridge, Seamus muttered, “Yeah, well, Harry wasn’t around last year while we were stuck with Malfoy, was he?”
Ginny knew she should’ve said something then. Something to defend Harry. Or at least, she should’ve pointed out that wasn’t fair. And a part of her believed that.
But she didn’t say anything.
Ginny didn’t catch a glimpse of Draco Malfoy until the next day, and even then, it really was just a glimpse. That first day he was back, the day after Halloween, she was told she had just missed him when she came into the Great Hall for lunch, and he didn’t turn up at dinner at all. So it was the next morning, at breakfast, that Ginny finally saw him, getting up from his House table just as she was sitting down to hers.
She might’ve missed him entirely if it weren’t for the flash of white blond hair as he stood, because, surprisingly, he wasn’t sitting with any of the other returned seventh years. Goyle, pretty boy Zabini, and a couple of girls that used to hang out with Pansy Parkinson were all sitting near the center of the table, close to a handful of seventh years from Ginny’s year. But Malfoy was totally alone, near the end of the table, and as he stood, no one said anything to him and he didn’t say anything to anyone. He left the Great Hall quickly, disappearing through the open double doors.
She didn’t see him up close until Thursday morning. She’d overslept and skipped breakfast to get to Transfiguration on time, only halfway there, she realized she’d forgotten her textbook and had to run back to the dorm to get it. She was breathing heavily, her hair flying wild around her, when she finally reached the classroom just in time.
And then she stopped dead in the doorway.
Malfoy was there. In her Transfiguration class. Sitting in the back row, in the corner.
“Are you coming in or not, Miss Weasley?” Professor Chambers, the new Transfiguration teacher, asked impatiently.
Trying not to flush more than she already was, Ginny stepped inside, taking the seat beside Hermione, who wore a disapproving look.
“Well, why didn’t you wake me this morning!” Ginny demanded in a whisper.
“I left early for the library,” Hermione replied.
There was nothing Ginny could say to that, except to wonder, disgruntled, why neither Parvati nor Demelza had tried to wake her either. As Chambers instructed them to take out their book, Ginny ran a hand through her disheveled hair and tried, very hard, not to turn and stare at Malfoy.
She wanted to ask Hermione what she knew about his being in the class, but she couldn’t very well do that while class was going on, and anyway, Ginny couldn’t think of any reason why he shouldn’t be in the class. It was the seventh year Transfiguration N.E.W.T. class, and contained some students from Ginny’s year, as well as returning seventh years like Hermione. Malfoy wasn’t even the only Slytherin; both Harper and Vaisey, from Ginny’s year, were in the class. Harper was sitting next to Malfoy, though he’d looked stone-faced when Ginny came in, his body angled slightly away from Malfoy.
As soon as class was over, Ginny jumped up from her seat, then had to wait for Hermione, who was not in such a hurry as she packed everything into her bag. This gave Ginny a few seconds to throw a surreptitious glance Draco’s way, as he was also taking his time packing up his things. Harper and Vaisey left without a word to him.
“What happened this morning?” Hermione asked, as they left the classroom. “You overslept?”
“Yes, and I’m starving,” Ginny moaned. “I don’t know how I’m going to get through Muggle Studies before lunch—damn.” She glanced down at the haphazard pile of book and parchment in her arm and realized she’d left her Transfiguration book back in the classroom. Merlin, she was a mess this morning. “Hang on, I left my book—”
She whirled around, but before she’d taken half a step, she smacked right into someone, banging her elbow and dropping half of her things in the process.
“Ow,” Ginny mumbled, staring down in dismay at her scattered parchment. “Sorry, I—”
She broke off as she looked up. And up and up, as the person she’d run into was quite tall.
It was Malfoy.
Ginny’s apology died on her lips. She didn’t move, and neither did Malfoy. In her mind, all she could see was last year, Malfoy, last year, in the Great Hall and in the corridor and on the Quidditch pitch and everywhere—
The words were out of her mouth before she’d thought about them. “Watch where you’re going, Malfoy,” she snapped. The flash of anger that zipped through her felt good, a welcome heat of righteousness and contempt.
Malfoy’s pale face turned scornful in the space of a second, his gray eyes narrowing, his mouth beginning to curve into his all-too familiar sneer. But then—just as quickly—the look faded from his face. What was left in its place was something quite…uncertain…as he looked from Ginny to Hermione.
Then he stuck his hands in his pockets and hurried away without a word.
Ginny stared after him, astonished, watching him vanish down the crowded corridor. Then she realized people were beginning to trod on her notes, and she quickly bent to scoop them up. “That was weird.” She stuffed everything into her bag and looked at Hermione. “That was weird, right?”
“I suppose.” Hermione’s narrowed eyes were less hostile and more pensive as she stared after Malfoy. “Maybe.”
“Maybe? Maybe what? Malfoy just ran into me and then he didn’t say anything—”
“You ran into him, Ginny,” Hermione cut in.
This was true—obviously true, as Ginny headed back to the Transfiguration classroom for her book, the source of the run-in in the first place—but Ginny could not help the rush of annoyed consternation that swept through her. “Oh, not you too,” she grumbled.
“Not me too…?” Hermione prompted. “What are you talking about?”
“Nothing. Never mind.”
Hermione stood in the doorway and waited in silence as Ginny retrieved her book and stuffed it into her bag. In fact, neither of them said anything until they had left the classroom behind and were back in the corridor. That was when Hermione said, “If you’re talking about Harry…”
“I am not talking about Harry,” Ginny interrupted, perhaps with more vitriol than was necessary. “Why would I be talking about Harry?”
Hermione didn’t respond, but she did raise an annoyingly knowing eyebrow.
Ginny huffed a breath. “I may have been talking about Harry’s new, fuzzy feelings towards Malfoy—”
“Harry does not have fuzzy feelings about Malfoy.” Hermione looked amused. “If he’s shown some compassion for him—”
“If? If?”
“—well, he has better insight than most into where Malfoy was coming from, Ginny, these past two years. He was there on the Astronomy Tower sixth year—”
“When Malfoy tried to murder Dumbledore, you mean.”
“—when he didn’t murder Dumbledore. And he saw Draco through Voldemort’s own mind, he saw what Voldemort was forcing him to do—”
“Torturing people, you mean?”
“—and he was there at Malfoy Manor last spring, and so was I, Ginny—”
“When they tortured you!”
“When Bellatrix Lestrange tortured me.” Hermione shook her head. “Ginny, even I could see that Malfoy didn’t want any part of it. He wouldn’t identify us for his parents, for Bellatrix—”
“Like that makes it all okay!” Ginny burst out. This was exactly the argument she’d had with Harry, and he’d been the same way, so blind— “Letting Death Eaters into the school, and everything he did last year—”
Hermione stopped in the middle of the corridor and turned to face Ginny head-on. “What did he do?”
“I—well, plenty—he was treated like a bloody king, and just like all the other Slytherins, he tortured other students whenever the Carrows told him to—”
“Did he torture you?”
“No, but so what?” It was true; she had come under fire from other Slytherins—Crabbe, for one, and also Harper, who’d been ordered to practice the Cruciatus Curse on her in Amycus Carrow’s Dark Arts class. “It’s okay if he tortured other people, but not me?”
“No, Ginny, of course not.” Hermione sighed. “I only wondered if that’s why you feel so…hostile towards him.”
“I feel hostile towards him because it’s Malfoy! And despite everything he did, he got off scot-free, him and his parents!”
“Let me ask you this.” Hermione adjusted her bag over her shoulder. “Did you ever see Draco torture someone without one of the Carrows forcing him to do it?”
Ginny opened her mouth to respond, then shut it. She couldn’t, actually, think of any time she’d seen Malfoy use the Cruciatus Curse of his own accord, though Crabbe and Goyle both had, sometimes when he was around. Which, so far as she was concerned, was just as bad.
He hadn’t stopped them. And he had never refused the Carrows either, unlike Ginny, unlike Neville, unlike countless of other students who had refused to torture each other. Why couldn’t Hermione understand that?
“Look, you have every right to hate Malfoy, Ginny,” Hermione said, as they both took up again down the corridor. “All I’m saying is, don’t—don’t go looking for a fight with him.”
“I don’t go looking for fights with anyone!” Ginny scoffed. And that was true. Even if, somehow, fights did seem to find her.
The fact was, Ginny had been involved in no less than four fights since the term started back in September, but she hadn’t started any of them, much less gone looking for them. What was she supposed to have done, when she saw Vaisey belittling two Hufflepuff fourth years in the corridor? Professor Sinistra, who was the new Head of Gryffindor House, seemed to think that hexing Vaisey was not an appropriate response, but Ginny didn’t agree.
And she had punched a hulking Slytherin sixth year after the Gryffindor Quidditch trials, but he had been heckling her all the way back to the changing rooms, and was she just supposed to put up with that sort of harassment? And as for Goyle, that time in the entrance hall before dinner—well, she maintained that he’d been about to take his wand out when he and Zabini were arguing with that group of Ravenclaws, even though Zabini claimed Goyle was only reaching for a handkerchief. A handkerchief! As though she was supposed to believe that. So of course she’d hit Goyle with a Stunning Spell before he could curse anyone, and she’d earned a week of detention for that. Just for defending others.
She didn’t go looking for fights. But, though Voldemort might be dead and the Death Eaters ousted from the school, that didn’t mean everything was all roses at Hogwarts. How could it be, when so many of the same people—the same students, the same Slytherins—who hadn’t hesitated to side with the Carrows were still here, walking the halls as though nothing had changed?
The first Quidditch match of the year was that first weekend in November, and the Gryffindor team lost miserably. The only small piece of good about this, Ginny reflected sourly, as she changed out of her team robes after the match, was that they hadn’t lost to Slytherin. Though Gryffindor usually played Slytherin in the first match, this year, they had played Hufflepuff. The change had been made by Professor McGonagall, and though no official explanation had been given, rumor had gotten around that the staff was worried about the tension between the two Houses, and had therefore decided to put that match off for a while.
Which, Ginny thought, was ridiculous. It wasn’t like there wouldn’t be tension between the two Houses in three months’ time, or six months’ time, or in ten years, for that matter. There had always been tension between Gryffindor and Slytherin. So long as Slytherin didn’t pull any dirty tricks, she didn’t see why they couldn’t have their match. In fact, she was looking forward to trouncing them, especially since Harper was the new team captain.
Ginny was just stuffing her dirty Quidditch robes into her bag when the door banged open behind her. She jumped, spinning around with her wand in hand, but it was only Demelza, one of the Chasers on the Gryffindor team. Ginny relaxed a little, but then she registered the look on Demelza’s face. “What is it?”
“You better come quick, Gin.” Demelza’s dark eyebrows were drawn down over her face. “It’s Vaisey. And Harper.”
That was all the explanation Ginny needed. Still clutching her wand, she left her Quidditch bag behind and stormed outside, Demelza on her heels.
Just past the end of the Quidditch pitch, a small crowd had gathered around four people—Dean and Seamus, who stood facing off against Harper and Vaisey. Dean, who was also playing Chaser this year, was still in his Quidditch robes, and Seamus was red-faced as he exchanged scowls with Vaisey. No one had their wands out, but it was clear the Slytherins were spoiling for a fight.
“What’s going on here?” Ginny demanded, pushing past a couple of Hufflepuff girls to get to the Slytherins.
Harper turned at the sound of her voice, saw her wand in hand, and eyed it warily.
“Nothing’s going on here, Weasley,” Vaisey sneered. He was a tall boy with sleek, dark hair and chilling blue eyes. “Except you Gryffindors being sore losers, as usual. Especially the losers part.”
“Say that again,” Seamus growled.
Vaisey turned back to him. “I’m sorry, was I not clear? I said you’re a pack of losers, Finnegan—”
“Leave off, Dustin,” Harper muttered.
Ginny turned her glare on Harper. “What’s the matter, Harper? Too much of a coward to face me on even footing?”
Harper returned Ginny’s glare with a vicious one of his own. “I’ll face you on even footing, Weasley. On the Quidditch pitch, next term. And my team will trounce yours just as easily as the Hufflepuffs did.”
“Why wait?” Ginny shot back, raising her wand slightly. “Why not now?” In the back of her mind, she heard Hermione’s voice—Don’t go looking for a fight—but she hadn’t started this, had she, clearly Vaisey and Harper had—
Harper’s dark face went a little ashen, but he didn’t move. Vaisey did, though, and so did Seamus, the both of them thrusting their hands into their pockets for their wands—
“Now, now, what’s going on here?”
Seamus and Vaisey both dropped their arms, and Ginny hastily stuffed her wand into her back pocket, just as Professor Slughorn ambled over from the stands, his vast paunch proceeding him. He’d lost a bit of weight during last year, Ginny had noticed, but not enough to make much difference.
“Nothing’s going on, Professor.” It was the same answer he’d given Ginny, only this time, Vaisey smiled his best suck-up smile and left off the snarky remark about Gryffindors being losers. “Just chatting about the match, is all.”
“Yes, well, best we all move along.” Slughorn spoke affably enough, but his broad face was a bit too knowing as he ran his gaze over Harper, Seamus, Dean, and lastly, Ginny. That knowing gaze lingered on Ginny for a moment, but then he turned away, practically ushering Vaisey and Harper off with him. “I hope your essays for my next class are coming along, boys, don’t want to leave it too late, do we?”
Harper and Vaisey’s response was lost to the distance as they disappeared up towards the castle, trailing Slughorn.
“What happened?” Ginny asked, turning to Dean and Seamus.
Dean shrugged, looking a bit uncomfortable. “Just the usual,” Seamus griped. “Slytherins getting too big for their boots, of course.”
Ginny shook her head. Around them, what was left of the crowd was beginning to disperse. “Well, after that and that horrid match, I’m starving. Are you two coming?”
“Go on ahead, Gin,” Dean told her. “I need to change.”
Seamus elected to stay behind and wait for him, so Ginny and Demelza headed up to the castle with the last of the stragglers. Losing the match had left a hollow feeling in Ginny’s chest—it was not a horrible loss; it had been a close game, and anyway, Hufflepuff was really good this year—but it was her first loss as Quidditch Captain, and that stung more than she’d thought it would.
She was so absorbed by these glum feelings, and by her dinner, that it wasn’t until after she finished eating that she realized she’d left her Quidditch bag in the changing rooms. She looked around for Dean, wondering if he’d seen it, and hoping, maybe, that he’d brought it. But Parvati told her she’d seen him when she came down for dinner, that he’d gone straight to the common room, and that, no, she didn’t remember him carrying any Quidditch bag except his own.
“I’ll just have to get it myself, then,” Ginny said, resigned. Zipping her jumper up over her shirt, she headed outside, down the castle’s steps, and into the dark, chilly night.
The castle grounds were eerily silent, even though it was not that late. Ginny passed the lake on her right; it looked like black glass in the haze of twilight, reflecting the pale light of the moon that peeked out overhead. Further down the grounds, on her left, smoke was curling out from Hagrid’s chimney, and she thought maybe, after she picked up her bag, she might stop by and see him.
As the Quidditch pitch loomed into view and she reached the changing rooms, she couldn’t help but think of the confrontation with Harper and Vaisey earlier, and she flexed her hands into fists. Seeing Harper was like a punch in the gut—it always was. All she had to do was close her eyes and she was back in Carrow’s class, under the Cruciatus Curse, and if Hermione only knew what that had been like, then she would have known why it didn’t matter that Carrow told Harper to do it.
But Vaisey…Ginny would have liked nothing more than to punch Vaisey in his smug little face. He seemed to think he was king in Slytherin now, now that Malfoy was gone…only Malfoy was back now, and that didn’t seem to have deterred him one bit.
Ginny frowned as she went into the changing rooms and shouldered her bag. She hadn’t seen Malfoy at the match, although, she’d been a bit busy trying to get a hold of the Quaffle to pay attention to who was there and who wasn’t. Still, it was odd, how under the radar Malfoy had been since he’d come back. Everyone was talking about him, but outside of Transfiguration and the occasional meal in the Great Hall, she hadn’t seen him at all. He’d always been such a presence before, lording himself over everyone, always finding someone to jeer at or humiliate in the corridors between classes, but now that he was back, well…it was like he wasn’t back at all.
Ginny couldn’t say she minded. But it was odd.
She paused outside the changing rooms to pull her spare scarf out of her bag—Merlin, it was getting cold—and had only just finished wrapping it around her neck when she heard a strangled cry.
She whirled around, staring into the black. “Who’s there?” she said sharply. Her voice echoed into the night, but there was no response, no movement. Only silence.
Snatching her wand out of her pocket, she ventured forward, inching towards the pitch. “Lumos,” she whispered, and her wand came alight.
The pitch was empty; there was no one there. Ginny let out a long, low exhale. She tried to tell herself that perhaps she’d imagined the cry, but she knew she hadn’t. She’d heard it, and it sounded like a person. A person afraid, or a person in pain.
She swept her wand to the left, and that was when she saw it. A shadow, a moving shadow, beneath the raised stands. Without even thinking about the possible danger, Ginny darted forward, and as she got closer, she saw that it was two shadows, two people, one in black school robes and the other in a dark hoodie. She slowed as she neared them, confused, trying to get a clear look at what they were doing. It wasn’t until she reached the woodwork that she realized there was a third person—on the ground between the other two, moaning in pain. As Ginny looked on in shock, the robed student aimed a kick at the person on the ground, who writhed, curling in on himself. The attacker snarled something, but Ginny wasn’t close enough to hear what was said or recognize the voice.
“Oy!” she shouted, ducking beneath the woodwork. As she ran towards them, wand drawn, both attackers looked up, startled.
Then they scarpered.
“Hey! Stop!” she shouted after them. The attacker in the hoodie was closer, slower, than the one in the robes, and Ginny aimed a Stunning Spell at his back. But whoever it was caught a glimpse of her over his shoulder, just before she threw the spell, and he slowed long enough to half-turn and cast a Shield Charm to deflect it, shouting, “Protego!”
Ginny stumbled to a halt in her pursuit, lowering her wand. A wave of uncertainty swept over her. That voice…it almost sounded like…
A moan from behind her reminded her that there was someone here, in need of help. She tossed another glance after the assailants, but they had vanished into the darkness of the grounds. Turning away, she hurried back to the student on the ground. She could see that it was a boy, though he lay on his side, hunched in on himself.
“Are you all right?” Ginny asked, though judging by the hacking cough the boy was emitting, she thought it a pretty stupid question. Coming around in front of him, she said, “Can you—”
Then she froze. The boy’s face was half-plastered with mud, and he wore a snug beanie over his head, concealing most of his hair. But now, standing before him, Ginny could see who he was.
It was Malfoy.
The news broke at breakfast the morning after the Halloween feast. The same words on everyone’s lips, the only thing anyone could talk about.
“Malfoy’s back.”
“Draco Malfoy.”
“He’s here. He’s come back to Hogwarts.”
Ginny sat staring at her kippers and eggs and tried not to listen. She had already known that Malfoy was coming back. She’d received an owl about it three days ago. She hadn’t told anyone, not Luna, not Hermione. Although, given the source of the owl, it was likely that Hermione already knew, too.
Ginny wasn’t sure why she hadn’t said anything. Because it didn’t matter, she told herself. Malfoy didn’t matter. Of course, all the gossip it had caused made it clear that it did matter, to many people, and if Ginny was honest with herself, it mattered to her too.
She just didn’t want to admit it.
She wasn’t sure how Harry had known. He was the one who’d sent the owl, the only communication Ginny had had with him since last they spoke. But then, she wasn’t really surprised, given how chummy he and Malfoy were these days. All right, “chummy” was probably taking it a bit too far, but. Ginny had accused Harry of far worse the last time she’d seen him.
Apparently, Malfoy had returned yesterday evening, ensconcing himself in the Slytherin dungeons while everyone was at the Halloween feast. Probably so he could get settled in without a lot of stares and whispers behind his back. And yet, though he hadn’t come to the Great Hall for breakfast this morning, everyone knew he was back. Word traveled fast at Hogwarts.
“Why do you s’pose he came back?”
“Why have any of the old seventh years come back? To have a proper year, of course. Get his N.E.W.T. qualifications—”
Ginny lifted her gaze just enough to see a boy in her year, across the table and a little ways down, roll his eyes. “Please. If anyone managed to have a proper year last year, it was Malfoy. Death Eater scum. No reason he couldn’t take his N.E.W.T.s this summer, like some of the others did.”
Ginny wrapped her hands tightly around her goblet of pumpkin juice, unable to shut out the rest of the conversation.
“Well, he was a bit tied up this summer, wasn’t he?”
“Well, whenever then. And what does he need N.E.W.T.s for anyway? Not like he needs a job, his Death Eater dad never had one.”
“Well, I expect his mum wanted him to take them.” This came from Parvati Patil, down on Ginny’s left. “I heard that’s why Blaise Zabini came back.”
“Still, doesn’t explain why any of the Slytherins came back, does it?” Seamus Finnegan grumbled. “They didn’t spend the year getting tortured and hiding out in the Room of Requirement, did they? None of them need a proper year of Muggle Studies, do they? They all could’ve just taken their N.E.W.T.s and have done with this place.”
A number of “the old seventh years”—meaning last year’s seventh years—had come back to Hogwarts for “a proper last year.” Many of them were Muggleborns who had missed last year entirely, like Justin Finch-Fletchley, Dean Thomas, and of course, Hermione, who probably could have tested out but had returned anyway. (No surprise there.) Others were like Seamus, who had missed enough of the year hiding out that he wasn’t prepared to take his N.E.W.T.s yet. And then, of course, there were others like Hermione—mostly Ravenclaws—who simply wanted a proper year of classes to finish out their schooling.
But there was also a small number of Slytherins—Blaise Zabini, Gregory Goyle, Millicent Bulstrode, and a couple of other girls Ginny didn’t know—who had come back as well. And why they should need to, or want to, no one really understood.
“Malfoy shouldn’t even be walking around free,” someone complained, a fifth year Ginny didn’t know. “After everything he did? He should be rotting in Azkaban, him and his parents.”
“I heard,” said Vicky Frobisher, a Muggleborn girl who had been in Ginny’s year, “that Potter spoke for him to the Ministry. Told them Malfoy shouldn’t serve any prison time.”
Ginny didn’t have to look up to know there were eyes on her now. It wasn’t like her, to stay quiet and keep her thoughts to herself, and there was a part of her that wanted to snap at them all to stop staring, and to say—
To say—what? She didn’t know. She didn’t know what she could say. She’d already said it all to Harry, and that conversation wasn’t anyone’s business.
Luckily, Dean spoke up instead. “If Harry thought Malfoy shouldn’t do prison time, then I agree with him. I trust Harry.”
This seemed to put an end to most of the gossip about Malfoy. Parvati Patil began discussing what might come up on her Defense Against the Dark Arts exam tomorrow morning, and when Ginny looked up, no one was looking at her at all.
But then, as he went back to his porridge, Seamus muttered, “Yeah, well, Harry wasn’t around last year while we were stuck with Malfoy, was he?”
Ginny knew she should’ve said something then. Something to defend Harry. Or at least, she should’ve pointed out that wasn’t fair. And a part of her believed that.
But she didn’t say anything.
Ginny didn’t catch a glimpse of Draco Malfoy until the next day, and even then, it really was just a glimpse. That first day he was back, the day after Halloween, she was told she had just missed him when she came into the Great Hall for lunch, and he didn’t turn up at dinner at all. So it was the next morning, at breakfast, that Ginny finally saw him, getting up from his House table just as she was sitting down to hers.
She might’ve missed him entirely if it weren’t for the flash of white blond hair as he stood, because, surprisingly, he wasn’t sitting with any of the other returned seventh years. Goyle, pretty boy Zabini, and a couple of girls that used to hang out with Pansy Parkinson were all sitting near the center of the table, close to a handful of seventh years from Ginny’s year. But Malfoy was totally alone, near the end of the table, and as he stood, no one said anything to him and he didn’t say anything to anyone. He left the Great Hall quickly, disappearing through the open double doors.
She didn’t see him up close until Thursday morning. She’d overslept and skipped breakfast to get to Transfiguration on time, only halfway there, she realized she’d forgotten her textbook and had to run back to the dorm to get it. She was breathing heavily, her hair flying wild around her, when she finally reached the classroom just in time.
And then she stopped dead in the doorway.
Malfoy was there. In her Transfiguration class. Sitting in the back row, in the corner.
“Are you coming in or not, Miss Weasley?” Professor Chambers, the new Transfiguration teacher, asked impatiently.
Trying not to flush more than she already was, Ginny stepped inside, taking the seat beside Hermione, who wore a disapproving look.
“Well, why didn’t you wake me this morning!” Ginny demanded in a whisper.
“I left early for the library,” Hermione replied.
There was nothing Ginny could say to that, except to wonder, disgruntled, why neither Parvati nor Demelza had tried to wake her either. As Chambers instructed them to take out their book, Ginny ran a hand through her disheveled hair and tried, very hard, not to turn and stare at Malfoy.
She wanted to ask Hermione what she knew about his being in the class, but she couldn’t very well do that while class was going on, and anyway, Ginny couldn’t think of any reason why he shouldn’t be in the class. It was the seventh year Transfiguration N.E.W.T. class, and contained some students from Ginny’s year, as well as returning seventh years like Hermione. Malfoy wasn’t even the only Slytherin; both Harper and Vaisey, from Ginny’s year, were in the class. Harper was sitting next to Malfoy, though he’d looked stone-faced when Ginny came in, his body angled slightly away from Malfoy.
As soon as class was over, Ginny jumped up from her seat, then had to wait for Hermione, who was not in such a hurry as she packed everything into her bag. This gave Ginny a few seconds to throw a surreptitious glance Draco’s way, as he was also taking his time packing up his things. Harper and Vaisey left without a word to him.
“What happened this morning?” Hermione asked, as they left the classroom. “You overslept?”
“Yes, and I’m starving,” Ginny moaned. “I don’t know how I’m going to get through Muggle Studies before lunch—damn.” She glanced down at the haphazard pile of book and parchment in her arm and realized she’d left her Transfiguration book back in the classroom. Merlin, she was a mess this morning. “Hang on, I left my book—”
She whirled around, but before she’d taken half a step, she smacked right into someone, banging her elbow and dropping half of her things in the process.
“Ow,” Ginny mumbled, staring down in dismay at her scattered parchment. “Sorry, I—”
She broke off as she looked up. And up and up, as the person she’d run into was quite tall.
It was Malfoy.
Ginny’s apology died on her lips. She didn’t move, and neither did Malfoy. In her mind, all she could see was last year, Malfoy, last year, in the Great Hall and in the corridor and on the Quidditch pitch and everywhere—
The words were out of her mouth before she’d thought about them. “Watch where you’re going, Malfoy,” she snapped. The flash of anger that zipped through her felt good, a welcome heat of righteousness and contempt.
Malfoy’s pale face turned scornful in the space of a second, his gray eyes narrowing, his mouth beginning to curve into his all-too familiar sneer. But then—just as quickly—the look faded from his face. What was left in its place was something quite…uncertain…as he looked from Ginny to Hermione.
Then he stuck his hands in his pockets and hurried away without a word.
Ginny stared after him, astonished, watching him vanish down the crowded corridor. Then she realized people were beginning to trod on her notes, and she quickly bent to scoop them up. “That was weird.” She stuffed everything into her bag and looked at Hermione. “That was weird, right?”
“I suppose.” Hermione’s narrowed eyes were less hostile and more pensive as she stared after Malfoy. “Maybe.”
“Maybe? Maybe what? Malfoy just ran into me and then he didn’t say anything—”
“You ran into him, Ginny,” Hermione cut in.
This was true—obviously true, as Ginny headed back to the Transfiguration classroom for her book, the source of the run-in in the first place—but Ginny could not help the rush of annoyed consternation that swept through her. “Oh, not you too,” she grumbled.
“Not me too…?” Hermione prompted. “What are you talking about?”
“Nothing. Never mind.”
Hermione stood in the doorway and waited in silence as Ginny retrieved her book and stuffed it into her bag. In fact, neither of them said anything until they had left the classroom behind and were back in the corridor. That was when Hermione said, “If you’re talking about Harry…”
“I am not talking about Harry,” Ginny interrupted, perhaps with more vitriol than was necessary. “Why would I be talking about Harry?”
Hermione didn’t respond, but she did raise an annoyingly knowing eyebrow.
Ginny huffed a breath. “I may have been talking about Harry’s new, fuzzy feelings towards Malfoy—”
“Harry does not have fuzzy feelings about Malfoy.” Hermione looked amused. “If he’s shown some compassion for him—”
“If? If?”
“—well, he has better insight than most into where Malfoy was coming from, Ginny, these past two years. He was there on the Astronomy Tower sixth year—”
“When Malfoy tried to murder Dumbledore, you mean.”
“—when he didn’t murder Dumbledore. And he saw Draco through Voldemort’s own mind, he saw what Voldemort was forcing him to do—”
“Torturing people, you mean?”
“—and he was there at Malfoy Manor last spring, and so was I, Ginny—”
“When they tortured you!”
“When Bellatrix Lestrange tortured me.” Hermione shook her head. “Ginny, even I could see that Malfoy didn’t want any part of it. He wouldn’t identify us for his parents, for Bellatrix—”
“Like that makes it all okay!” Ginny burst out. This was exactly the argument she’d had with Harry, and he’d been the same way, so blind— “Letting Death Eaters into the school, and everything he did last year—”
Hermione stopped in the middle of the corridor and turned to face Ginny head-on. “What did he do?”
“I—well, plenty—he was treated like a bloody king, and just like all the other Slytherins, he tortured other students whenever the Carrows told him to—”
“Did he torture you?”
“No, but so what?” It was true; she had come under fire from other Slytherins—Crabbe, for one, and also Harper, who’d been ordered to practice the Cruciatus Curse on her in Amycus Carrow’s Dark Arts class. “It’s okay if he tortured other people, but not me?”
“No, Ginny, of course not.” Hermione sighed. “I only wondered if that’s why you feel so…hostile towards him.”
“I feel hostile towards him because it’s Malfoy! And despite everything he did, he got off scot-free, him and his parents!”
“Let me ask you this.” Hermione adjusted her bag over her shoulder. “Did you ever see Draco torture someone without one of the Carrows forcing him to do it?”
Ginny opened her mouth to respond, then shut it. She couldn’t, actually, think of any time she’d seen Malfoy use the Cruciatus Curse of his own accord, though Crabbe and Goyle both had, sometimes when he was around. Which, so far as she was concerned, was just as bad.
He hadn’t stopped them. And he had never refused the Carrows either, unlike Ginny, unlike Neville, unlike countless of other students who had refused to torture each other. Why couldn’t Hermione understand that?
“Look, you have every right to hate Malfoy, Ginny,” Hermione said, as they both took up again down the corridor. “All I’m saying is, don’t—don’t go looking for a fight with him.”
“I don’t go looking for fights with anyone!” Ginny scoffed. And that was true. Even if, somehow, fights did seem to find her.
The fact was, Ginny had been involved in no less than four fights since the term started back in September, but she hadn’t started any of them, much less gone looking for them. What was she supposed to have done, when she saw Vaisey belittling two Hufflepuff fourth years in the corridor? Professor Sinistra, who was the new Head of Gryffindor House, seemed to think that hexing Vaisey was not an appropriate response, but Ginny didn’t agree.
And she had punched a hulking Slytherin sixth year after the Gryffindor Quidditch trials, but he had been heckling her all the way back to the changing rooms, and was she just supposed to put up with that sort of harassment? And as for Goyle, that time in the entrance hall before dinner—well, she maintained that he’d been about to take his wand out when he and Zabini were arguing with that group of Ravenclaws, even though Zabini claimed Goyle was only reaching for a handkerchief. A handkerchief! As though she was supposed to believe that. So of course she’d hit Goyle with a Stunning Spell before he could curse anyone, and she’d earned a week of detention for that. Just for defending others.
She didn’t go looking for fights. But, though Voldemort might be dead and the Death Eaters ousted from the school, that didn’t mean everything was all roses at Hogwarts. How could it be, when so many of the same people—the same students, the same Slytherins—who hadn’t hesitated to side with the Carrows were still here, walking the halls as though nothing had changed?
The first Quidditch match of the year was that first weekend in November, and the Gryffindor team lost miserably. The only small piece of good about this, Ginny reflected sourly, as she changed out of her team robes after the match, was that they hadn’t lost to Slytherin. Though Gryffindor usually played Slytherin in the first match, this year, they had played Hufflepuff. The change had been made by Professor McGonagall, and though no official explanation had been given, rumor had gotten around that the staff was worried about the tension between the two Houses, and had therefore decided to put that match off for a while.
Which, Ginny thought, was ridiculous. It wasn’t like there wouldn’t be tension between the two Houses in three months’ time, or six months’ time, or in ten years, for that matter. There had always been tension between Gryffindor and Slytherin. So long as Slytherin didn’t pull any dirty tricks, she didn’t see why they couldn’t have their match. In fact, she was looking forward to trouncing them, especially since Harper was the new team captain.
Ginny was just stuffing her dirty Quidditch robes into her bag when the door banged open behind her. She jumped, spinning around with her wand in hand, but it was only Demelza, one of the Chasers on the Gryffindor team. Ginny relaxed a little, but then she registered the look on Demelza’s face. “What is it?”
“You better come quick, Gin.” Demelza’s dark eyebrows were drawn down over her face. “It’s Vaisey. And Harper.”
That was all the explanation Ginny needed. Still clutching her wand, she left her Quidditch bag behind and stormed outside, Demelza on her heels.
Just past the end of the Quidditch pitch, a small crowd had gathered around four people—Dean and Seamus, who stood facing off against Harper and Vaisey. Dean, who was also playing Chaser this year, was still in his Quidditch robes, and Seamus was red-faced as he exchanged scowls with Vaisey. No one had their wands out, but it was clear the Slytherins were spoiling for a fight.
“What’s going on here?” Ginny demanded, pushing past a couple of Hufflepuff girls to get to the Slytherins.
Harper turned at the sound of her voice, saw her wand in hand, and eyed it warily.
“Nothing’s going on here, Weasley,” Vaisey sneered. He was a tall boy with sleek, dark hair and chilling blue eyes. “Except you Gryffindors being sore losers, as usual. Especially the losers part.”
“Say that again,” Seamus growled.
Vaisey turned back to him. “I’m sorry, was I not clear? I said you’re a pack of losers, Finnegan—”
“Leave off, Dustin,” Harper muttered.
Ginny turned her glare on Harper. “What’s the matter, Harper? Too much of a coward to face me on even footing?”
Harper returned Ginny’s glare with a vicious one of his own. “I’ll face you on even footing, Weasley. On the Quidditch pitch, next term. And my team will trounce yours just as easily as the Hufflepuffs did.”
“Why wait?” Ginny shot back, raising her wand slightly. “Why not now?” In the back of her mind, she heard Hermione’s voice—Don’t go looking for a fight—but she hadn’t started this, had she, clearly Vaisey and Harper had—
Harper’s dark face went a little ashen, but he didn’t move. Vaisey did, though, and so did Seamus, the both of them thrusting their hands into their pockets for their wands—
“Now, now, what’s going on here?”
Seamus and Vaisey both dropped their arms, and Ginny hastily stuffed her wand into her back pocket, just as Professor Slughorn ambled over from the stands, his vast paunch proceeding him. He’d lost a bit of weight during last year, Ginny had noticed, but not enough to make much difference.
“Nothing’s going on, Professor.” It was the same answer he’d given Ginny, only this time, Vaisey smiled his best suck-up smile and left off the snarky remark about Gryffindors being losers. “Just chatting about the match, is all.”
“Yes, well, best we all move along.” Slughorn spoke affably enough, but his broad face was a bit too knowing as he ran his gaze over Harper, Seamus, Dean, and lastly, Ginny. That knowing gaze lingered on Ginny for a moment, but then he turned away, practically ushering Vaisey and Harper off with him. “I hope your essays for my next class are coming along, boys, don’t want to leave it too late, do we?”
Harper and Vaisey’s response was lost to the distance as they disappeared up towards the castle, trailing Slughorn.
“What happened?” Ginny asked, turning to Dean and Seamus.
Dean shrugged, looking a bit uncomfortable. “Just the usual,” Seamus griped. “Slytherins getting too big for their boots, of course.”
Ginny shook her head. Around them, what was left of the crowd was beginning to disperse. “Well, after that and that horrid match, I’m starving. Are you two coming?”
“Go on ahead, Gin,” Dean told her. “I need to change.”
Seamus elected to stay behind and wait for him, so Ginny and Demelza headed up to the castle with the last of the stragglers. Losing the match had left a hollow feeling in Ginny’s chest—it was not a horrible loss; it had been a close game, and anyway, Hufflepuff was really good this year—but it was her first loss as Quidditch Captain, and that stung more than she’d thought it would.
She was so absorbed by these glum feelings, and by her dinner, that it wasn’t until after she finished eating that she realized she’d left her Quidditch bag in the changing rooms. She looked around for Dean, wondering if he’d seen it, and hoping, maybe, that he’d brought it. But Parvati told her she’d seen him when she came down for dinner, that he’d gone straight to the common room, and that, no, she didn’t remember him carrying any Quidditch bag except his own.
“I’ll just have to get it myself, then,” Ginny said, resigned. Zipping her jumper up over her shirt, she headed outside, down the castle’s steps, and into the dark, chilly night.
The castle grounds were eerily silent, even though it was not that late. Ginny passed the lake on her right; it looked like black glass in the haze of twilight, reflecting the pale light of the moon that peeked out overhead. Further down the grounds, on her left, smoke was curling out from Hagrid’s chimney, and she thought maybe, after she picked up her bag, she might stop by and see him.
As the Quidditch pitch loomed into view and she reached the changing rooms, she couldn’t help but think of the confrontation with Harper and Vaisey earlier, and she flexed her hands into fists. Seeing Harper was like a punch in the gut—it always was. All she had to do was close her eyes and she was back in Carrow’s class, under the Cruciatus Curse, and if Hermione only knew what that had been like, then she would have known why it didn’t matter that Carrow told Harper to do it.
But Vaisey…Ginny would have liked nothing more than to punch Vaisey in his smug little face. He seemed to think he was king in Slytherin now, now that Malfoy was gone…only Malfoy was back now, and that didn’t seem to have deterred him one bit.
Ginny frowned as she went into the changing rooms and shouldered her bag. She hadn’t seen Malfoy at the match, although, she’d been a bit busy trying to get a hold of the Quaffle to pay attention to who was there and who wasn’t. Still, it was odd, how under the radar Malfoy had been since he’d come back. Everyone was talking about him, but outside of Transfiguration and the occasional meal in the Great Hall, she hadn’t seen him at all. He’d always been such a presence before, lording himself over everyone, always finding someone to jeer at or humiliate in the corridors between classes, but now that he was back, well…it was like he wasn’t back at all.
Ginny couldn’t say she minded. But it was odd.
She paused outside the changing rooms to pull her spare scarf out of her bag—Merlin, it was getting cold—and had only just finished wrapping it around her neck when she heard a strangled cry.
She whirled around, staring into the black. “Who’s there?” she said sharply. Her voice echoed into the night, but there was no response, no movement. Only silence.
Snatching her wand out of her pocket, she ventured forward, inching towards the pitch. “Lumos,” she whispered, and her wand came alight.
The pitch was empty; there was no one there. Ginny let out a long, low exhale. She tried to tell herself that perhaps she’d imagined the cry, but she knew she hadn’t. She’d heard it, and it sounded like a person. A person afraid, or a person in pain.
She swept her wand to the left, and that was when she saw it. A shadow, a moving shadow, beneath the raised stands. Without even thinking about the possible danger, Ginny darted forward, and as she got closer, she saw that it was two shadows, two people, one in black school robes and the other in a dark hoodie. She slowed as she neared them, confused, trying to get a clear look at what they were doing. It wasn’t until she reached the woodwork that she realized there was a third person—on the ground between the other two, moaning in pain. As Ginny looked on in shock, the robed student aimed a kick at the person on the ground, who writhed, curling in on himself. The attacker snarled something, but Ginny wasn’t close enough to hear what was said or recognize the voice.
“Oy!” she shouted, ducking beneath the woodwork. As she ran towards them, wand drawn, both attackers looked up, startled.
Then they scarpered.
“Hey! Stop!” she shouted after them. The attacker in the hoodie was closer, slower, than the one in the robes, and Ginny aimed a Stunning Spell at his back. But whoever it was caught a glimpse of her over his shoulder, just before she threw the spell, and he slowed long enough to half-turn and cast a Shield Charm to deflect it, shouting, “Protego!”
Ginny stumbled to a halt in her pursuit, lowering her wand. A wave of uncertainty swept over her. That voice…it almost sounded like…
A moan from behind her reminded her that there was someone here, in need of help. She tossed another glance after the assailants, but they had vanished into the darkness of the grounds. Turning away, she hurried back to the student on the ground. She could see that it was a boy, though he lay on his side, hunched in on himself.
“Are you all right?” Ginny asked, though judging by the hacking cough the boy was emitting, she thought it a pretty stupid question. Coming around in front of him, she said, “Can you—”
Then she froze. The boy’s face was half-plastered with mud, and he wore a snug beanie over his head, concealing most of his hair. But now, standing before him, Ginny could see who he was.
It was Malfoy.
Author notes: Kyla's Prompt #1
Basic premise: The war is over; Harry Potter has won. The successful turn of battle doesn't mean that their fight is over, more that the rest of their lives are just beginning. Emboldened by their successes, the people Harry loves begin to pull the frayed edges of themselves together. Alone, vilified, and afraid, Draco Malfoy doesn't think he can move on and there's a part of him that doesn't believe he deserves to. Young Ginny Weasley, who wears her scars like a proud flag, doesn't intend on having anything to do with Malloy at all, but a chance encounter changes things. For better or worse, she's finding her path--and the place were they can both belong.
Must haves: Impulsive!Ginny. The kind of "grown up too fast" feel to be expected from teenagers who were involved in combat situations. The color green, the color red. References to another Slytherin/Gryffindor pairing, and a smattering of Luna Lovegood. Happy or hopeful ending.
No-no's: Partner betrayal, infant/child death, non-con.
Rating range: Any
Bonus points: Make me laugh and cry within the same story. If you take a good prompt and make it better.
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