Come to Me

**Author’s Note: The song lyrics that appear throughout the story is called “Unsigned Letter” and is property of Garth Brooks and its writers, Gordon Kennedy, Wayne Kirkpatrick, and Tommy Simms. Obviously, the characters aren’t so much mine as they are someone else’s.**

CHAPTER ONE

“For heaven’s sake, Ginny, you’re wasting your potential!” Her flatmate stood in the doorway, one sensibly-shod toe tapping out her impatience. “It’s a travesty!”

“Don’t be overdramatic, ‘Mione,” Ginny said, peering at one line of columns and transferring a few numbers. “It doesn’t suit you.” That wasn’t entirely the truth—the curly-haired brunette had an extra spark when she had something to be indignant about—and it seemed she had, most of the time.

With a huff, the nineteen-year-old Auror-in-Training sat across from Ginny and looked at the ledgers in front of her. “Why don’t you let a Squib do the twins’ finances, Gin? Or even one of those self-calculating ledgers?”

Her anger peaking to a slow simmer, Ginny sat down her quill with a click and raised a sleek eyebrow at Hermione. Her long, fiery hair was bound into a braid that had slipped down over her shoulder, and she slung it back before addressing the closest thing she had to a sister. “First of all, a self-calculating ledger stands no chance in Fred and George’s shop—there are so many tricky things going on in there that the ledger would be hexed in no time, and they’d have screwy finances to match everything else in their store. Secondly, I like doing their finances.”

There were so many other reasons for doing the twins’ books that she wasn’t ready to express in words, the simplest of them being the famous Weasley lack of money. It felt good to help, to see that her brothers were so successful, and making more money than the Weasleys had seen for generations. Ron wasn’t doing so bad himself, she reckoned, but it didn’t seem he needed much in the way of a bookkeeper when he was off officiating professional Quidditch games.

The most complicated of her reasons was the magic.

It had been two years since Harry had defeated Voldemort, two years since the Death Eaters had died or gone into hiding, taking their families with them. Two years since the rampant abuse of magic had stopped, and Ginny was quite fine with not making a living by hers.

And so as she totted the numbers in one column and sent a reassuring smile to Hermione, she tried not to think of the two years that had passed, and all the things—and people—that had passed with them.

She got an unsigned letter from her secret someone
And she fell into the mystery

“Owl call!” Fred threw open the door to the small office in the back of Weasley’s Wizarding Wheezes, letting a large black owl through the door. It dropped its message on Ginny’s desk, exiting after a small hoot of satisfaction.

Ginny glanced at the message, and seeing that it didn’t have the name of its sender on the outside, decided it could keep for a few minutes, at the very least. At the moment, she was busy trying to decipher her brother’s handwriting. “Oh, no you don’t,” she said as she saw him start to leave. “You get over here and tell me what this says.” She waved the order slip in the air, snatching it back as he tried to grab it. “Well, don’t touch, you great oaf. You’ve got some sort of something or other all over your hands, and then I really won’t be able to read it.”

Glancing down at the mixture of Stinksap and Dungbomb he had on his hands, Fred grinned sheepishly and peered at the order form. “Oh,” he said, laughing. “That’s nothing, Gin. It’s an order I made to take the mickey out of Perce. Look here, it says it’s from him for a box of fake—”

“That’s quite enough,” she said, sounding a great deal like their mother as she wadded it up and vanished it loftily.

“If you’re going to be like Mum, Gin, you really ought to do it elsewhere,” Fred said, pulling a face. “It gives me the willies.”

“I thought you liked willies!” George called from the store, sending a few scattered customers into laughter.

When Fred left the office in a hurry to defend himself, Ginny had to admit it was a bit of a relief. Left in silence with the order forms tallied, she picked up the letter.

Words were few and specifically vague
Intrinsic, intrigue

But it said everything
When it just read ‘Come to me.’

She opened the packet, her eyes unfocused from staring at numbers all day, and she stifled a wide yawn as she looked down at the page.

At first, in the middle of a yawn, eyes squinted, she thought there was nothing on the page.

Who would owl a blank page? she wondered. But that was common enough, with magical inks and concealing spells, not to mention practical jokers like the twins. But when she blinked her eyes a few times, she saw the small black print in the middle of the page.

Come to me.

The handwriting was neat, neither masculine nor feminine, but with a precision that said a great deal about the person wielding the pen.

“Ostendo,” she said, pointing her wand at the paper. But nothing more revealed itself on the page.

Ginny shuddered, laying the letter aside. Who would send such a strange message? A command, even? If either of her brothers had done it, for any reason, they would have already been at the door, unable to contain their mirth. But they were both minding their own business, neither of them concerned with what the owl had delivered.

A thought flashed through her mind, unbidden and unwelcome, a vision of Tom Riddle, stroking her face with a cold hand drawn out from the past.

It was just like something he would say, something he would do. But Tom Riddle was dead, and so was the evil thing that had replaced him.

Something else lurked just behind Tom Riddle in her brain… Same clothes, she thought nonsensically. Same clothes?

As George came through the door of the office, Ginny jumped and blushed guiltily. Against her instincts, Ginny folded up the parchment and tucked it into the pocket of her robes.

It was something to look at in private.

She's always been that responsible someone
Safe within her simplicity

She mentioned the letter to neither of the twins, but wrapped up her work quickly, citing housework as her reason for leaving early. Giving each of her prankster brothers a peck on the cheek, she all but ran out of Weasley’s Wizarding Wheezes.

When she was gone, the twins immediately sobered. “What d’y’think’s wrong with Gin, then?” Fred asked George, his face creased in a rare frown.

Fred shook his head. “I don’t know. She’s always been a bit more level than the rest of us—”

“But these days she seems—”

“Positively boring,” they said in unison.

Fred shook his head again. “It’s like she’s scared to do anything.”

“Maybe she is,” George replied, and the two ruminated in silence until the next customer came in, busying their hands and their minds.

~~~

She trotted quickly up the steps to the front door of the flat, her key already out. When she grasped the knob in her hand, however, it turned easily, and a cold shot of fear raced through her.

Come to me.

It was like a whisper in her ear, low and hissing, threateningly sexual. But it was only in her mind, and though her hand trembled violently on the doorknob, she stepped inside. When she saw the low-heeled black boots sitting by the door, she frowned.

What was Hermione doing home already?

Ginny stepped through the flat, her fingers sliding over the parchment in her pocket, the corners of it pressing insistently into her fingers.

Voices slid through her wonderings, Hermione’s and another so familiar it made Ginny gasp.

Ron was home for the weekend!

Excited, momentarily forgetting about her note, she quickened her pace, then drew short. Would it really do to interrupt the pair when they obviously thought they were alone? Time alone was a precious commodity for Ron and Hermione. It had been the trio all through school, and now that they were out, working hours seemed to butcher what little time they had left. Feeling guilty for the near-intrusion, Ginny started to slink away.

The sound of her name stopped her, and she wondered if they’d heard her entrance.

“Ginny?” Ron snorted and continued to talk, making it clear he wasn’t addressing her, but referring to her. “What’s there to be worried about, ‘Mione? It’s just Gin.”

There was a rustling sound followed with Hermione’s patented huff, and in her mind’s eye, Ginny could see her brother’s girlfriend pushing away from him, a pout on her face. “How can you say that? If she keeps wasting herself, she’ll end up more or less a Muggle, doing arithmetic all day and keeping to herself.”

“She has been acting like a bit of a lump. Maybe it’s because Harry’s not around,” Ron said hopefully. Having Harry for a brother-in-law would be wicked convenient.

“I don’t think she fancies Harry anymore,” Hermione said, trying to break it gently. In truth, Ginny hadn’t fancied Harry for years, but Ron was just too thick to see it. Poor chap, Hermione thought, playing her fingers over a lock of Ron’s hair.

“Well, you know, she’s just being sensible, helpin’ the twins out and all. Gin’s good at that, y’know. Right smart. I don’t think there’s cause for concern, ‘Mione, it’s not bloody likely she’ll do anything.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Hermione said sadly.

Ginny backed away from Hermione’s door, cheeks burning. She’d heard more than she should have, and more than she wanted to. A bit of a lump? Not likely she’d do anything?

Angrily, she stalked to her room, eased the door shut, and threw herself onto her bed, withdrawing her letter as she did so.

CHAPTER TWO

But all this cloak and dagger is stoking her heart
Stroking her curiosity
Is plain little Jane
Gonna risk everything

She read the three words over and over again, trying her best to shut out those words she’d just heard from her brother and her friend.

Was she really so boring as they seemed to think?

But I’m not, she thought. I have a secret. That was something Ginny was fairly sure neither Ron nor Hermione would expect. Ginny hadn’t been much of a secret keeper, not since—

Tom Riddle. He’d been an enormous secret, one she hadn’t really realized she held. Tom Riddle had been her secret, and in the beginning he’d been exciting. In the end he’d been frightening. Thinking so, she cast another glance at the letter.

It had also been exciting, though, to be the center of someone’s attention, anyone’s attention. To be secretive and have an entire other side that no one knew about.

Now that she was older, now that she was an adult, it had a different feel to it. A seductive sensation intermingled with fear, and she wondered who could want her so much to send such a letter.

Who would be so sly? And in the back of her mind, possibilities began to lurk, began to stir her blood.

“No,” she whispered to the room, running her hands up her cheeks as though to stem the tears that hadn’t even come yet. Everyone who would send such a letter, whose slyness was matched only by their snobbery, every one of them was gone, dead or as good as dead.

But the blood continued to pump faster through her veins and she gave a stifled, helpless cry. “Don’t do this, Gin,” she told herself firmly. “Don’t think of such things…” Of such people. Of such cruelty.

Of such seduction.

With a half-sob, she shoved the parchment under her pillow and resolved to forget all about it. But when she laid her head on the down-filled pillow, she could all but feel the message burning under it, whispering over and over again in her head in a sick, sadistic rhythm.

Come to me come to me come to me come to me…
~~~

She slept long into the evening, and by the time she awoke, Hermione and Ron were gone and a note had been left on the chalkboard by the door.

“Gone to see Harry,” the narrow, feminine script read. “Will be back late.”

Of course they would—once they got to Hogwarts to see Harry, there would be more people to catch up with. McGonagall, Hagrid, Dumbledore, and Remus, with whom Harry had been team-teaching DADA for over a year. And Ginny knew just as sure as the sun rose and set that Hermione would insist on stopping by to say hello to Snape, even though she claimed to hate him. That was just the way she was.

“And they think I’m predictable,” she snorted, erasing their message and the one beneath it, “Hello, Gin,” sprawling in Ron’s awkward scrawl across the bottom of the board.

Ginny felt her anger heat once more as she thought of the conversation she’d overheard. Snagging her cloak off the hook by the door, she stormed out. She’d been told more than once that a little fresh air would cool her redhead’s temper.

Is she gonna strike the match
That'll surely light the flame
Is she carrying a torch for love in vain

Though it was full night before Ginny returned to the small flat she and Hermione shared, Hermione wasn’t back yet. Whatever else it had done, the walk had serviced to do one thing—cool Ginny’s anger. In its place was a deep shame, an embarrassment so multi-layered she couldn’t put her finger on it.

It was ridiculous to be so upset, she thought. After all, neither her brother nor Hermione had said anything insulting. They’d only been speaking the truth. The letter was doing to her just what the sender had intended, she bet—making her on edge, making her doubt, making her cast her eyes too often all around her.

Making her paranoid and mistrustful.

She was lonely, and whoever had written the letter was banking on that, using that against her. Loneliness was the best way to fire up someone’s imagination good and proper.

Coming to that conclusion and not caring for it at all, not caring to be controlled by anyone’s idiotic game-playing whims, she went into her room, threw her pillows on the floor, and snatched up the childish, anonymous letter she’d gotten. Without a pause, she went into the bathroom and threw the parchment into the tub. “Incendio!” she shouted, pointing her wand at it.

Flame rose up in the porcelain tub and Ginny crossed her arms over her chest, a self-satisfied smirk crossing her delicate features. The smirk turned to a gape, however, when she saw what was happening. The fire concentrated in one area, revealing the parchment as unharmed. The flames began to thin out, forming again the words “Come to me,” before burning down into a low, green flame.

With a wavering moan, Ginny sank to her knees on the tiled floor, never taking her eyes from the parchment.

“Who are you?” she whispered, snaking her hand into the tub and pulling out the letter, smoothing it out on the cool floor. “Why are you doing this to me?”

But the parchment, of course, gave her no answer; weary of fighting, weary of wondering, she folded it up and carried it with her to bed.

She slept almost instantly, the thought of the parchment under her carrying her off into dreams, fitful dreams of strong arms, unyielding arms that confined rather than caressed, surrounded but not supported. Worshipful hands and an irreverent mind, eyes that were coolly amused even in as sparks arced white-hot between them.

In her dreams she wasn’t alone, and in her dreams, she wasn’t in control.

~~~

“Ginny? Ginny!” The voice was too far away to heed, and Ginny turned on her side, snuggling her face deeper into her pillow. She thrust a hand under the cushion and let her fingers trail over the message beneath it, her body lax with leftover sleep and lingering dreams.

The hand shaking her shoulder, however, was not part of a dream. “Virginia Weasley, you get up this second. Why, just yesterday you were telling me how much you loved your work, and lookit! It’s half-past and you’re not even awake yet to get ready.”

Hermione was a raving lunatic sometimes.

It was that thought that had Ginny sitting up and swatting at Hermione’s hands. “Would you shove off, ‘Mione? Because just yesterday you were telling me how I should find something else to do. As a result, I’m bloody well sleeping in!”

The look of shock that crossed Hermione’s features was well worth the outburst.

“Well, then,” Hermione sniffed, her nose rising in the air just a little. “I beg your pardon.”

Groaning, Ginny sat up in bed before her flatmate could huff out. “I’m sorry. I’m just not… feeling myself, okay? I thought a bit of rest could help.”

Slightly mollified, Hermione sat down on the edge of the bed. “I know a dozen spells that could help perk you up a bit, if you’re interested.” At Ginny’s brief shake of the head, she shrugged. “Your choice, then. I’m off… I’ll drop in on Fred and George and let them know you’re not feeling well.”

Ginny’s lips spread in a genuine smile. “Thank you,” she said warmly. She was still smiling when she dropped off to sleep again.
~~~

Flames rose around them, licking at both of their bodies but never quite touching, the bright yellow and gold flames tinged with green, and though she could feel his hair under her fingers, silky and thick, could feel his lips trailing down her stomach, she could not see him.

She craned her neck, peering straight down the planes of her body to try and catch a glimpse of him. A flush suffused her cheeks as her eyes grazed past her breasts, milky-pale, her nipples hard and peaked despite the roaring fires around them.

Her stomach, too, was pale, sheened with a fine dew of perspiration, and she ran a hand down it to cool herself, to try and find him. His lips were on her thighs, his tongue slid hot into her, but flames blocked her vision and she couldn’t see who touched her.

Through the flames, two eyes speared hers and his voice rose over the crackling just as long fingers stroked first gently, experimentally, then delved into her with the words.

Come to me.

She awoke with both hands clutched into the pillow behind her head, the thin nightgown she wore clinging to her body with perspiration. Her hips were arched high off the bed, her heels digging into the mattress; the sheets and quilt had long since been discarded. Her head was flung back as her whole body bucked with the remnants of her dream, and her eyes were wide open, fixed on the ceiling above her.

A small, frightened whimper left her lips as the aftershocks of the orgasm trembled through her, and even as her body relaxed flat on the bed, she could feel the muscles deep inside the center of her tightening and relaxing around the now-absent length that had filled her.

Her breath coming in great, unladylike gulps, Ginny unclenched her fists, the fingers stiff, and pressed her hands to her eyes. Her dreams had always been vivid and often erotic, to be certain, but they’d also always had a face attached to them. For a great long while, her naïve fantasies had outlined Harry. When she’d started dating Michael, however, she’d gotten quite an education in what she should be fantasizing about. His Ravenclaw intelligence had made him thorough, if a bit methodical. And Dean—well, bless Dean and his Muggle-born imagination.

But never had her dreams been faceless, nameless.

She was going insane.

~~~

She had no particular destination as she set out for the day. Shopping, she’d told herself, was the best way to clear her mind. She’d not indulged in a great long while, and if ever there were a day for indulgence, she figured this was it.

She wandered around Diagon Alley, unable to really keep her mind on shopping at all. She would look into a window at an array of things, then immediately forget what she’d seen. The first thing to really grab her attention was a display of women’s robes in the front window of Madam Malkin’s.

They were tailored close about the chest, the bust of the robes fitted all the way down to the waist, where they flared out widely. The bottoms of the robes from the waist down were two-toned, as were the belled sleeves. Ginny’s gaze stopped and stayed on one of a deep purple, so dark and rich it was nearly black. Folds of a dark pine green peeked out of the skirt and sleeves, and she sighed a little as she put her fingers to the window.

Every girl had to preen a little, she reckoned.

She’d almost made up her mind to go in and buy the robes with she felt an alarming weight on her shoulder, and the rustle of feathers greeted her ear. Staying perfectly still, she looked back into Madam Malkin’s window, seeking this time for her reflection rather than what was inside.

The ebony owl perched on her shoulder, a message clutched in its beak.

CHAPTER THREE

Is the gonna break the locks
Take a look inside the box
Knowing that she could release Pandora's shame

Ginny took the message with trembling hands, shuddering as a shaft of wind blew through the alley, lifting a few strands of her long, coppery hair and setting it dancing. It seemed to blow straight through her as she turned the message over in her hands, searching for a name she knew wasn’t there.

It was magically secured, a tiny fingertip-sized lock placed at the place where the folds met. She’d seen its like only a few times before, and only when valuable things were being sent by owl. Biting her lip, she placed her fingertip to the lock, gasping as it popped open immediately.

She parted the sheets of paper quickly, her curiosity swamping what little caution she may have had. What she wanted was a solution to the riddle, a name to affix to the words, a face to look on in her dream—

That’s something entirely different, she insisted, shoving the thought away as she withdrew a small packet from within the parchment. Clumsily, she tried to open the unfamiliar packet and sent things scattering all over the cobblestones.

She bent down, her head whipping around to make certain no one was watching her, and began scooping the papers up off the ground. As she picked up one of the strange documents, however, her breath left her in a huff and she sat hard in the middle of the alley, her hand shaking violently.

One part of the packet, a small folder, had fallen open on the sidewalk. On it was a slightly outdated picture of her, a strange, still photograph that she knew to be the type that Muggles took.

A photograph of her, but it stayed perfectly still, unblinking, unmoving, unbreathing. It was like, she thought, seeing a picture of yourself when you were dead. Tearing her eyes away from the oddly gruesome photo, she looked at the careful printing under it. Her full name was printed across the page along with other information that made her mind reel—her date of birth, her birthplace, her mother’s maiden name.

Strangest of all was the signature, her own handwriting right down to the flourish on the ending “y”.

Slamming the folder shut fearfully, she looked at the other things she’d gathered. One was a pamphlet detailing something called an “airline,” and the other was some sort of pass. The parchment itself, however, was perfectly blank. No name, no message. Only the Muggle papers she held in her hands with her name blazoned all over them, her name and private information.

Who knew so many things about her, she wondered? And who would bother to use them? She opened up the crested folder once more and brushed a tentative finger over her face in the picture.

What did that face, heart-shaped and freckled, surrounded by a sleek mass of tumbling red hair, hold for the person who had sent it all to her? What possible fascination could come of such an ordinary face—a face like all the other Weasleys?

Not caring for the small, flattered thrill that sent through her, she shoved the materials into the parchment, muttered an incantation to re-lock it, and hurried into Flourish and Blotts.

~~~

“The Wonderful World of Muggles, Muggles and Their Habits, Mysteries of Muggles?” The shopkeeper eyed her over his spectacles as he totaled up her purchases. “I was under the impression, Ms. Weasley, that you were done with schoolwork and that your father was the only one in the family who had this particular… affectation.”

She smiled as sweetly as she knew how, shrugging innocuously. “Well, you know, you’re never too old to learn something new. I thought I’d check out some of the things Father had been going on about.” And Merlin save her for lying, she thought. But it just wouldn’t do to go on telling everyone—or for that matter, anyone—what was happening.

They’d think she was mad. And when it came right down to it—wasn’t she?

Welcome to the game
What's in a name

She spent the evening locked in her room, books spread across her bed with the things she’d received by owl that day. The passport, as she’d learned it was called, was deadly accurate, right down to the date of birth. Magical births weren’t quite as closely documented as Muggle births, which was something else she’d found out, so it puzzled her as to how someone could have so easily obtained her date and place of birth. Her mother’s maiden name was hardly much of a problem—everyone in the wizarding world knew one another, especially…

Especially purebloods, she thought, her face blanching. Purebloods always knew other pureblood families, nearly by heart. Family trees were as common in the home as fireplaces, sometimes even more so.

“Nearly all the purebloods are gone,” she told herself angrily, slamming shut the book and tossing the portpass… make that passport… aside.

The smaller piece was an altogether different matter, however, and gave her the beginnings of a clue.

It was a plane ticket, a voucher to ride on one of those great winged trains she’d heard tell of. As she stroked a finger over the glossy black print of the ticket, she read the destination out loud. “Boston, Massachusetts.” It had an awkward sound to it, an altogether American sound. It was a place of patriotism, she learned, a place of revolutionaries and memories of the past.

But she knew no one in America, and no one in America knew her. So why the invitation? Why the ticket? She’d be a fool if she thought the letter and the airline ticket weren’t linked—they most certainly were—but how?

It’s not bloody likely she’ll do anything. Her brother’s voice, casual and unintentionally mocking, made her wince.

Not bloody likely, eh?

Well, it seemed someone in America thought otherwise.

~~~

“America?” Molly leaned over the table, her eyes concerned. When Ginny had called the impromptu Weasley family meeting, she’d been pleased; after all, it was so hard to get the family in one place these days. But the last thing she’d expected was to hear her little girl, her baby, say she wanted to go to America.

It was, Ginny found, much easier to lie than she’d anticipated. “Well, yes,” she said, looking imploringly first at her mother and then her father. He was the soft spot. He was the one she’d counted on for this whole argument. For now, however, her big brothers had things to say.

“You can’t very well go alone,” Charlie said in a near-growl. “A little slip of a thing like you?”

“I’m an adult, Charlie,” she put in, noting how surprised they all seemed at her action. If Ron had decided to go to America, everyone would bloody well congratulate him.

“She is, to be exact,” Percy put in precisely. When everyone looked at him, his eyes widened. “What? It’s the fact of the matter, isn’t it?”

The twins seemed supportive, though they couldn’t seem to pin it down to a single thought.

“You’ll have to bring us back plenty of ideas, Gin—”

“We hear they’re brilliant with the tricks and all over there—”

“And while you’re at it, pick us up a few American girls and bring them back, eh?”

“Enough!” Molly said, slapping a hand to the table. “Virginia, dear, are you sure you’re feeling quite well?”

That was another cup of tea altogether. No, she wasn’t feeling quite well, but she wasn’t about to say that to her mother. No, Mum, you’re quite right. I’m not feeling well, in fact I’m feeling distinctly unwell. I think it’s possible I’ve gone mad with sexual frustration or perhaps just mad from boredom. Say toodles, won’t you?

“I’m feeling fine, Mum. It’s only that—” And here started the act she’d quite carefully calculated the night before, on the spur of the moment.

Spontaneity was what everyone thought she was lacking, then she’d bloody well make a decision at a blink.

“It’s only that I’ve watched Father study the Muggles for so long, and I know America’s simply full of marvels. Think of the things I could learn, Father!” She placed a thin-fingered hand over his large, clumsy one and smiled. “I’d bring you back all sorts of souvenirs.”

“Blackmail,” Bill observed pleasantly, his lips quirking. He wasn’t as daft—or at least as gullible—as the rest of his family, and he knew there had to be something else going on with little Virginia. She was the baby of the family, she was the sole princess of the Weasley kingdom, able to twist them all around her finger with a single glance. It was an ability she hadn’t used since she was very, very small.

In short, Bill would gladly eat one of his mother’s famed sweaters if there wasn’t more to the story than she was telling them. But he wasn’t about to call her bluff. She’d never had the independence that the boys had, and he couldn’t blame her for trying to get it.

And in the end, only Ron had one last thing to say. “Well, then,” he said, seeing acceptance drift over his parents. “Pick up some American Quidditch souvenirs for me, eh?”

She must be dreamin as she boards a plane
And flies into her fantasy

Muggle studies. What a load of Dungbombs.

She let herself be amused by her family’s gullibility as she sat in Heathrow. If she let herself think too long or too hard about where she was, she’d bloody well scream. After all, she was surrounded by giant panels of glass, hundreds of Muggles talking too bloody fast and too bloody loud, and she was on her way to a city she’d never heard of in a country she’d never seen.

And why?

Because the dreams had kept coming, night after night, nap after nap, and she’d found herself addicted to them in a matter of a few days. And if there was anything Ginny Weasley didn’t like, it was being addicted. It was being led by the nose by someone miles away who thought they were cute or clever or…

In control.

Ignoring her mind’s rejoinder, she fiddled with the latch on her suitcase and looked down at herself for what seemed to be the millionth time. Though she was just checking to make sure her clothes looked all right—plain, white cotton blouse and a Muggle skirt made of some sort of thick, awkward material called denim—the direction of her gaze made her thighs grow lax and heat arced into her stomach.

How many times in her dreams had she looked down, just so, to try and see him?

To try and catch a glimpse of the man to whom she was coming.

Don’t you mean for whom you’re coming?

Her mind really was yammering a bit too much. Thinking that, it was nothing short of a relief to her when they called the flight to Boston Logan. The words sounded magical to her, though they were tinny and overly loud through the airport’s sound system.

And this time, when the voice whispered Come to me into the sensitive cup of her ear, her mouth formed the response “I am.”

CHAPTER FOUR

A first class ticket to the city of Boston
Is all she knows of her destiny

The boarding process wasn’t so bad, she thought as she settled comfortably into her seat. After all, it wasn’t that much different from a train. But the skirt was another matter altogether. Every few moments she’d tug self-consciously at the material, feeling as though her legs were overexposed.

“You’ll want to dress the part,” Molly had insisted briskly, picking out the clothes with the efficiency—and insistence—of a drill sergeant. If she couldn’t stop her only daughter from going, she could at least have a hand in helping her go.

“Well, then, hello love!” A portly woman bustled down the aisle and sat into the seat next to Ginny, rocking back and forth a little as though to make the seat conform to her plump bottom. “Looks as though we’ll be getting chummy on the flight, eh?”

Ginny nodded mutely, smiling. It would be a comfort, she supposed. If there was someone to talk to, it would stave off the nerves. Don’t you mean it would stave off the wild daydreams? she asked herself frankly.

“Name’s Iris Hannigan,” she said, stretching out a many-ringed hand to shake.

“Ginny Weasley.” Ginny found her small hand engulfed by the jeweled hand of the older woman and stifled a giggle. Doubtless the woman would be horrified if she knew the girl she was sitting next to was flying halfway around the world to meet a faceless man with illicit intentions.

“You look nervous, m’dear. First time flying?”

“No,” Ginny said automatically, thinking of brooms. Her face flushed and she amended her statement. “Well, first time in a plane.”

“Ohhhh!” the woman stretched out the syllable knowingly, making Ginny’s blood run cold. Had she given up too much? It would be just like her to be apprehended on the plane for revealing herself to a Muggle. “Helicopters, bloody marvels, aren’t they?”

Gratefully, Ginny nodded. It was mortifying to feel so stupid, she thought. She hadn’t the slightest idea of what she was doing, how she was supposed to be acting, and all for what? A mystery.

“If you don’t mind me asking, dearie, how is it a young girl as yourself is traveling first class?” Iris leaned into the aisle and snagged a drink from a passing cart, smiling matronly at the stewardess.

First class? Ginny’s brow furrowed as she tried to puzzle out the woman’s meaning. Luckily for her, however, Iris Hannigan wasn’t one to allow conversational holes.

“I don’t mean any ill, of course. I’m only flying first class because my husband dotes on me.” So saying, she wiggled her fingers, sending light bouncing off the many rings.

“Wh-what are you going to Boston for?” Ginny found the nerve to ask. There now… that was more normal. Making conversation instead of staring like a dolt.

“I’m visiting a cousin,” Iris said confidentially. “Isn’t it exciting? Is it family for you? What’s the name, love? Perhaps I know them.” But before Ginny could answer, the loquacious woman was barreling on. “Then again, perhaps I don’t. You know Boston, it’s all about old money and family lineage. They’re more blue-blooded than the royal family.” With that proclamation she laughed, a long, genuine laugh that had people in other seats turning and looking.

Ginny’s brain circled warily around the words, around all those things that pointed to the identity of her host; she didn’t want to uncover what they pointed to.

Expensive ticket to a ritzy town.

Blue-blooded people, proud of their families.

She’d closed her eyes with a small whimper when Iris elbowed her cheerily. “Buck up, darling. Someone must want very much to see you.”

That’s what I’m afraid of, Ginny thought with her head, even as she spoke from her heart.

“That’s what I’m hoping.”

When she touches down
Will her feet hit the ground

It was smoother than the Knight Bus, that much was for certain, and it lacked the free feel of a broom ride. But all in all, Ginny decided, flying in an airplane wasn’t so bad. It certainly wasn’t the plane making her nauseous—it was her nerves. An hour into the two and a half hour flight, Ginny was valiantly fighting sleep. The last thing she needed was to have one of those dreams and wake up moaning—or worse. The whole plane would think she’d gone completely jakers.

As Iris snoozed beside her, emitting soft, ladylike snores, Ginny read the magazine provided but felt sick after looking too long at several of the strange, stationary pictures.

Finally, resigning herself to the fact that there wasn’t any sort of Muggle entertainment she’d be able to convincingly peruse, she laid her head against the seat and looked out the window.

The clouds streaking by were a welcome sight, one she hadn’t even realized she’d missed. She hadn’t flown since her brief stint as Seeker in her fourth year; after that, there had been little time for Quidditch. The war had blown full after that, and Slytherin had barely had a team. Slytherins seemed to go missing by the day, their parents dead or imprisoned or worse. And it was anyone’s guess what had happened to the students themselves.

Rolling her eyes at the melodramatic turn she’d let her thoughts take, Ginny cast her eyes away from the window, never even realizing her eyes were drifting slowly shut.

There were flames again, but this time she was clothed, standing amidst the flames and seeking someone, expecting someone. But it was impossible to see if he was coming for her or not, coming through all those strange, yellow-green flames.

Her body felt sorely used, and somewhere deep in Ginny’s subconscious, she realized it could have taken place after the previous dream—that would explain the slight ache between her thighs, the fact that her mouth felt chafed and bruised.

She turned in a circle, losing her bearings in the room full of flames, and she could feel the wild mix of emotions boiling inside her.

Desperation, anger, lust, and fear.

And through it all, she looked for him, not knowing who he was, but sure she’d know as soon as she saw him.
~~~
She awoke with a jerk, her eyes skittering wildly from side to side. Had she spoken in her sleep? Moaned? Screamed? Any of those were possible, she knew. But none of the Muggles were looking at her, and she breathed a heavy sigh of relief.

“Strap in, love, lest you want to fly out of your seat when we land.” For a short, frightening moment, Iris’s face hung suspended in front of Ginny’s, her surplus of eye makeup making her look a bit manic.

“Right, then,” Ginny said weakly, her hands fumbling a bit with the unfamiliar buckles and contraptions. She was sharp enough, though, and had herself secured within moments.

It all happened a bit too quickly, like time charmed to run fast, and before she could even gather her bearings and take the time to realize she was in America, she was off the plane and walking on American soil. It seemed too wide-open, too bright, too hard.

“Good luck!” Iris called, picking a bag off the large moving belt and disappearing into the crowd, leaving Ginny once again completely alone.

There were people hugging family members, people waving at long-absent friends. There were those holding simple signs and those holding banners, and it didn’t take Ginny long to come to a simple conclusion.

There was no one there with her name on a sign, plain, flashy, or otherwise.

Her shoulders dropped and her mind piped up immediately with a cynicism she’d held back in her personality, a cynicism few ever saw. You didn’t think anyone was really going to be here, did you? The only guy that ever paid you more than the required attention was the epitome of evil, drawn out from memories and all but dead.

And then a hand descended on her shoulder.

“This way, Miss Weasley.” Her heart leapt in her chest as she clutched her single suitcase tighter to her and eyed the thin, middle-aged man standing beside her.

“I’m not going anywhere with you! Who the hell are you?” Disappointment warred with fear as she looked the balding man over. She didn’t know this man, and he certainly wasn’t the one from her dreams.

He at least had hair.

“I’m the person picking you up,” he retorted in the bored tones of one long used to tantrums and long used to waiting them out. “I’ve specific instructions to take you back to my employer’s home. And before you ask, part of that specificity was anonymity, so don’t even ask.” And so saying, he held one hand out while he let his nose inch a bit farther into the air.

Some arrogant bastard, she thought, had sent a servant for her.

It was getting harder and harder to look away from where the clues pointed.

All signs point to rich and conceited, she thought, hiking her own chin in the air as she held onto her suitcase for herself and followed the man to the curb.

CHAPTER FIVE

Is she gonna strike the match
That'll surely light the flame
Is she carrying a torch for love in vain

He didn’t say a word as he drove through the city, and it was just as well that he didn’t. She couldn’t decide whether she was angry or scared or appalled or—

Just plain excited. Though she knew it showed her naïveté, the poor little Weasley from the Burrow, she kept her face nearly pressed to the window of the car, watching the houses and automobiles and scads of Muggles walking along the streets.

When the car came to a halt in front of a house—though calling it a house was a bit like calling a thestral a pony, she thought—she couldn’t help but feel a bit disappointed—and apprehensive.

Now she had no distractions, nothing to keep her mind off the matter at hand. She was really here, thousands of miles from home at the request—nay, the command—of a single letter.

Her steps grew slower as her heartbeat grew faster, and though the driver opened the door for her, he made no move to come in.

“You’re on your own,” he said, looking none too patient as she hesitated in the doorway.

It could have swallowed her up, this house, so full of shadows and tall ceilings it seemed to be. But she could feel the familiar tingle when she walked in—magic—and it set her heart just a little more at ease. A room expanded here, a chair conjured there—it made all the difference in the world.

So where was the wizard who’d done the magic?

Music pulsed, loud but at such a low register it seemed to be under her feet, around her skin rather than in her ears. It pulsed like something living, making her insides tremble.

“This is bloody well ridiculous!” she called, her words swallowed up in thick drapery and thicker tension, the trembles in her words swept away by the insistent beat of the elemental music that played on. She set her bag on the floor and turned in circles in the long foyer, noting the floor-to-ceiling pillars that held the heavy ceiling in place.

Just like a castle, she thought, her mind whirling, her hair fanning out around her as she whipped around again, thinking she’d heard something—something additional in the room.

All she got for her troubles was a flash of white, tiny as a scrap but solid. What was it?

To whom did it belong?

“Don’t be a coward,” she said accusatorily. Was this what she’d come for? To be hunted like some sort of fox?

“Virginia…” The curt whisper was all but engulfed by the swelling bass and she felt her knees turn to water beneath her. Desperate, she turned in circles, searching for her hunter.

“Stop it!” she commanded. “I came as you asked and now I’d like some answers!” The spine she’d inherited from her mother, the one that made her brothers step back a bit, showed itself and she tossed her head back, her mane of flame-colored hair shifting back away from her face.

She heard him only a split second before he was upon her, before a large, rough hand fastened over her eyes. He stepped to her front, pressing thigh-to-thigh against her,

a long, hard body pressed into hers, convexity fitting into concavity, softness yielding to solidity. He took two long-limbed steps, forcing her backward, stumbling into one of the ornate wooden pillars that stood every few feet. Taking advantage of the position, he pinned her there with the weight of his body, his hand anchored over her eyes.

It all happened in a matter of seconds, and before she could catch enough breath to scream, his mouth was over hers; where her lips ended, another’s began, sliding over hers and teasing tongue to tongue, plunging then retreating, flicking then taking just a moment to release her—to lick at her lips.

Even as she nipped back at the lips on hers, tilting her head back as best she could, she shoved at him, her small hands ineffectual against the wiry strength that held her. His free hand tangled in her wealth of hair, and for the first time, he spoke directly to her, placing his lips so close to her ear it made her shiver.

“There we are,” he said in a pleasant but unidentifiable whisper. “Who wants a dragon without fire, anyway?” He lapped at her earlobe, using his tongue to draw it between gently scraping teeth.

She struggled a bit, stopping when she realized with a thrill of panic that her attempts to free herself only brought her skirt riding high on her thighs, bunched between them.

“I’ve been waiting for this for years,” he added, streaking his hand from her hair to her throat, from throat to covered breast, from breast to thighs. He paused there, his breathing growing labored as he stroked long fingers over her shaking thighs.

Mortified, intuiting his next move, Ginny emitted a long, keening moan as she tried to shake her head in negation.

She’d traveled thousands of miles, she thought. Hadn’t she known—hadn’t some low, crawling part of her even hoped—that this was what would happen?

And so when he stroked the backs of his fingers up her skirt and over the silk she wore underneath, his fingers came away damp. At the slight contact, Ginny’s keening cry broke into a gasp and her hips rocked forward before she could stop them.

In the gloom, a small, hopeful smile sparked on the young man’s face, and this time when he spoke, his voice was clearer.

“Looks like Weasley’s a bad girl deep down. Wonder what else she’s hiding inside?”

With one swift motion, he moved aside the thin barrier of silk between his flesh and hers and slid one long, fine finger into her heat. His gasp echoed hers as he felt her tighten around his finger, and he flicked his thumb lightly just where he knew she would love—and hate—it most.

Just before she peaked, just moments before she’d have begged even if it damned her, he withdrew his fingers and gave into the obsession that had spanned years, driving himself into her, arousal into arousal. A raw cry tore from his throat as her muscles fit around him, and he forced himself to be still, his teeth clenched with exertion.

One finger at a time, he took his hand away from her face.

Is she gonna break the locks
Take a look inside the box
Knowing that she could release Pandora's shame

She shouldn’t have been surprised, that much she knew. After all, who better fit the term “arrogant bastard”? Draco Malfoy had practically invented it. But it was hard not to be shocked that the man who was buried inside her, the man who was making her want to weep with frustration, was the same one who had given her such grief back at Hogwarts. The same one whom she’d believed dead long ago, killed with his father.

And so the surprise was there, carrying his surname on her lips in a gasp that he cut off before completion by striking forward and catching her lower lip between his teeth.

“Ah-ah-ah,” he said, his voice muffled by her full lower lip. “You think I came all this way to be called by the name of my father?” He wrapped a hand around the back of the pillar and pulled, seating himself in her even tighter and making beads of sweat pop up along his brow. “Not quite.” He released her lip from his mouth with a slight sucking sound and licked his lips to seal in the taste of her.

Please, she wanted to say, the want rising in her like a fever. Please, I don’t care what you want to be called, just… Though her brain couldn’t coherently finish the sentence, her body knew how, and she raised herself on her toes and sunk back down, trying to gain some friction, trying to just finish the damned thing.

Had she forgotten cruel? Cruel, arrogant bastard?

His corded arms were trembling with the force of holding himself back, and it took everything he had to keep that high-society, golden voice steady. “We can get on with the proceedings, Weasley, it’s only that I had a question first.”

“Go… to hell…” she ground out, catching her swollen lip between her teeth and rolling her eyes back in her head. But she was already there, already in hell and being tortured by an expert.

How could hell feel so much like heaven?

“All in due time.” He lowered his head then, as though to let it drop to her shoulder, but instead he placed a string of open-mouthed kisses along her neck and collarbone as he raised one hand lazily. One by one, he twisted the buttons off her shirt, taking just as much time as it would have to unbutton them properly. But after each one came off in his fingers, he tossed it aside, listening to each one scatter along the hardwood floor, the noise swallowed up by the bass beats that surrounded them.

“All those years I watched and wanted, and then I left. But I didn’t forget.” He spoke leisurely, twisting buttons between strings of words and not moving an inch, still planted so deeply inside her that he could feel every fluttering of every muscle, every strain of every slick inch of skin.

“And what did my ears hear, Weasley? What did my spies eye?” He struck out then, his mouth hot and quick, bringing blood to the surface in several places along her neck, scraping white teeth over white skin in others. “The Weasley family’s crown jewel was pining. Pining away in England, and for what?”

One hand was buried in her hair now, jerking her head back to leave her throat exposed. The pulse in her throat flew at a jackrabbit pace and he laid his lips to it gently even as he roughly pulled her hair. “For whom, Ginny?”

When she merely glared at him with that same stare she’d always used just for him—the one that spoke volumes of hatred, disgust, and damn her, superiority—he smirked and executed one quick, tight roll of his hips, letting out something very near a purr as she screamed breathlessly.

“You,” she panted, willing to tell him anything he wanted to hear, even the truth. She raised her hands once, twice, but they fell away weakly and rested on the pillar behind her, one landing squarely on his hand, fingers tensed, tendons standing out, and she dug her nails into it roughly.

“Don’t lie to me, Weasley,” he said, his eyes suddenly furious, and he let go of her hair so abruptly it rapped her head into the pillar once more.

“I’m not lying,” she said desperately, wondering if anyone else had even noticed, anyone else had wondered what had gotten her down. “You… and others.”

The thought of others nearly made him blind with rage, and so to keep himself steady, he set the pace.

He’d primed the pump, so to speak. Now that she was talking, she wasn’t about to stop.

He slid out of her several inches, grimly pleased at the disappointment it wrought on her face, then eased back in slowly.

“What others, Ginny?” He braced one hand above her head, keeping the other low on the pillar, and timed his strokes to the music around them, his eyes nearly crossing with the sheer heat, the sheer fit of her.

“Tom,” she gasped out, unable to help herself. “You, and Tom, and all of you…”

His rhythm broke and he slammed himself into her, pleased when her words turned to whimpers and she levered one hand around his neck to steady herself.

“Don’t compare me to him,” he insisted through clenched teeth, his mercurial eyes boring into hers. “Not now, not ever.” He brought his lips close to her ear again, and when he spoke he was out of breath.

“Poor little Ginny. Sorry for all the lost boys of the great war, eh?” Her fingernails dug into the nape of his neck and he reared his head back, his teeth bared as she was pushed over the edge, the sudden rush of heat and wetness sending him over as well. They rode it out, completely silent; when he could feel the last of himself empty into her, he bit her neck just under her ear, feeling the last tiny shudder it sent through her as he spoke.

“I always knew you’d be my bleeding heart.”

**Author’s Note: This is the final chapter of “Come to Me.” Stay tuned for a sequel titled “Even I Have Pride,” coming soon! Also note the name change—where_is_truth, under new management, is now hip_to_ship.**

CHAPTER SIX

Welcome to the game
What's in a name

They called him Young Master.

He’d fit in perfectly there from the moment he’d arrived by himself, his suitcase full of his father’s business papers, papers that represented all the money Lucius Malfoy had been siphoning from his businesses into Muggle banks and accounts for years.

It was the only thing Draco took with him from his father, from the life his father had crafted for him.

The privileged, the children of the Death Eaters—how they’d been scattered. Some of them killed, others simply missing, parents dead, parents institutionalized. Lucky Draco, as he thought bitterly to himself sometimes, had one of each. A dead bastard of a father and a mother too mad to recognize him.

He’d flown from his name and those who would have seen him dead and found a place in Boston, a place where the eclectic rich were as common as boats in the bay and stars in the sky. He didn’t have the requisite paperwork bloodlines or the pedigrees, but he had the money, and by Merlin, he had the charm.

Clever as ever, he’d hosted parties, giant fêtes with lightshows that defied imagination, decorations that dissipated as soon as the party was over, and helping at every step were the servants he’d hired, a network of American Squibs so extensive he knew he’d never be betrayed.

And through it all, none of the Boston society knew who he was. He was only the Young Master, and occasionally they dared to call him by what they believed was his first name—Drake.

Finally alone for the first time in his life, he’d taken his peace, his independence, and he’d committed it all to one cause. Now, as he slid from her gasping, he knew she’d been worth the time, worth all the trouble.

Virginia Weasley, young, spiteful Ginny, had been Draco’s first sure thing, the first thing he’d known he’d wanted only for him. While everything else in the Malfoy heir’s life had been dictated by his father, chosen by his father, demanded by his father or provided by his father, Ginny was the one thing his father would have hated.

Ginny was the one thing Draco couldn’t have, and so he became more and more determined to do just that—have her. He’d dreamt of her, of that long red hair spread out over his pillows, lashed out over black satin.

Instead, however, he’d taken her standing up like some kind of animal, impatient and impulsive, and he didn’t have a damned bit of regret about it. But there were tears standing in her eyes, and they made him strike out.

“Regrets already, Weasley?” he bit out, feeling his own words pierce as he stepped away and casually zipped up the black pants he wore. If she’d bothered to look any closer, she would have seen those long fingers of his shaking.

Is our little plain Jane
Gonna risk everything?

She barely heard him for the blood pounding in her ears, and she laid her bruised head against the pillar that had bruised it, her hands still pressed to the polished wood. Her shirt, now ruined and buttonless, hung open, revealing a white lace bra and skin nearly pale enough to match. Her lips were parted to accommodate the deep, racing breaths she was taking, and though her eyelids drooped, she kept her eyes on him.

“No regrets,” she said between breaths, opening her eyes a bit wider to pin him with a shade of her customary glare. “But that doesn’t keep me from being ashamed of myself.” She was defensive and well knew it; after all, how foolish, how shameful was it to have flown all those miles, just because someone wanted her to, and just to be taken in a passion so hot it felt like rage?

And how bloody idiotic was it to let someone like Draco ever, ever hold the reigns?

She knew she’d said the wrong thing—or the right thing—when he advanced toward her, eyes iced in anger. With a sudden move, he’d slammed the heel of his hand into the pillar just millimeters from her face, and she flinched even as she felt a tug deep down, a quickening of her already-cooling blood. Some men were just seductively angry, she thought as he visibly tried to hold back his anger. There was something fascinating about watching a cold-blooded man heat up.

“Ashamed, are we? That’s bloody fucking fantastic, coming from someone whose family lives like a burrow of rabbits.” He wanted to shake her, wanted to wipe that hateful look from her freckled face. But the hateful look melted of its own accord, and she regarded him openly, without guises, without anger.

“Why?” she whispered then, wondering how much longer her knees would hold her. “Why me?”

“You never looked at me with fear,” he said, leaning in and even now seeing challenge instead of fright in her eyes. “And always there were the Weasleys, doing everything just right and always knowing they were right.”

She thought of the only exception even before he spoke it, wondering how many times Tom Riddle would come back to haunt her.

“And then there was Ginny, consorting with the enemy.” He lowered his forehead to hers then, exhausted with the relief of having her there, wrung out by the anger, the violence, the lust taking turns through him. “And so I thought if you could have a little bad, what was so wrong with me getting a little good?”

Her eyes locked with his, and seconds ticked by, then minutes, and finally she broke away and found that her legs could walk, could hold her weight. She slid away from his nearness and walked unsteadily across the foyer, hugging her arms tight around her and keeping her back to him, though she knew it wasn’t wise.

“I thought you were dead,” she said, casting her eyes to the ceiling and blinking back the wetness that wanted to gather. There were too many things to process, to many feelings to mull over. So she chose to keep it simple, looking over her shoulder at him when she had herself under control. “I need something to wear.”

Is she gonna strike the match
That'll surely light the flame
Is she carrying the torch for love in vain

He’d sat alone at the huge, long dining table for so long it seemed odd to have someone sitting across from him. But she looked right there, in a black silk robe bewitched to fit her, her red hair spilling flames over her shoulders and down her back. Mistrust shone blatantly in her eyes, and she didn’t bother to hide it. It was one of the things he’d remembered about her, one of the things he’d held onto.

The Weasley crown jewel was nothing if not forthright.

“How did all this happen?” she finally asked, picking at the food in front of her. How could she eat, sitting across from him? Across from the man who was supposed to have been her enemy, who was supposed to have been dead, who’d just made her little more than a trembling puddle on the floor?

He’d been a bit of a fascination for her, that much was true. A substitution in her fevered, post-possessed mind for the absent Tom Riddle, the long-since nonexistent boy who’d cherished her words, no matter how facetiously. Draco had the style, had the sheer drive. Who hadn’t wondered what it would be like to be wanted with the single-mindedness that marked a Slytherin, courted with that common factor of sheer determination? He’d had the rawness, and she had watched it from afar and wondered what would happen if someone like that could be redeemed.

He regarded her with the air of a man in control, and that alone infuriated her. “All things come to those who wait,” he said mockingly. “It was all a matter of time… and money… and want.” When she cast her eyes down, he sneered, more to protect his own vulnerabilities than to mock her. “And I wanted you very much.”

The color rose over her cheeks before she could stop it, flattered and embarrassed at the same time.

“Oh, rot, Weasley, let’s not pretend to be shy now,” he snorted, watching as the color burned into anger, into temper. He’d very nearly decided it was what she looked best in. But there was something else needling him, something underneath the urge to push her buttons, as it were.

Jealousy was Slytherin-green and crept like a snake, clever and covert.

“It isn’t like you’re a blushing virgin, Weasley,” he said bitingly, wondering who had been there for that pleasure, wondering who had given to her and taken from her for the first time, wondering why it bloody well hadn’t been him.

She was his obsession, and she was more.

Her emotions were close to the surface, rubbed raw by travel and confusion and lust, and she slammed her two small hands on the table, ignoring the tears that streamed down her cheeks.

"’Tisn’t as though you’re a fucking innocent schoolboy yourself, Malfoy,” she said, stressing his last name. “If you were, I don’t think you’d have been able to pull that sick, twisted torture act with me, would you have?”

She didn’t know how he did it and likely wouldn’t ever know, but in an instant’s time he’d gone from chair to table, crouched in the center of the long, ebony surface with his hands grasping her forearms and his eyes boring into hers. Long fingers dug into tender flesh, but he didn’t shake her as he’d have liked to. Instead, his voice was cool and curt, a smile flickering over his lips to mask the offense she’d bred.

“Sick, am I? Twisted? Oh, yes, Ginny. I’ll have you remember I’m not the one who flew thousands of miles by Muggle transport at the beck of three words.” His voice dropped to a harsh whisper, and he could feel himself growing hard just looking at her, thinking of her reactions earlier. “It took even less than three words to have you wet-knickered and fucking ready for a man you couldn’t even see.” He shoved her away then, hopping onto the floor even as she fled.

She wended her way through the many rooms of the large house, knocking things over at will to keep him from being so close on her trail, wanting to get away, wanting to escape him and herself. When she came upon a bedroom filled with light from flickering candles set on ornate silver candelabra, she gasped.

It was the bedroom she’d seen herself in, the one she’d never been able to see him in. Hearing his footsteps behind her, she ran deeper into the massive black-adorned bedroom, striking down candelabras to block her path.

If she died here in flames, then at least she’d not endure his shaming anymore, the cruelty he seemed to have brought her there for.

His face was cold when he strode through the door, master of the house even in a room full of fire. The ice of his grey eyes seemed to grow cooler in contrast to the flames, and as he crossed the room to her, she knew she was cornered.

She stood her ground, trembling, as he advanced toward her. Deliberately, calculatingly, he grabbed her wrist and thrust her hand into one of the masses of fire wreathing the room. Though it was very, very warm, the green-tinged blaze did not burn her.

“I’d be a bigger fool than your father if I’d have something as dangerous as real fire in the same house as one so volatile as you,” he said, jerking on her wrist hard enough to make her stumble toward him. Clamping an unyielding hand around her other wrist, he shoved with all his might, throwing her onto the black bed, surrounded by the inferno she’d created.

Is the gonna break the locks
Take a look inside the box
Knowin’ that she could release Pandora's shame

Ginny backpedaled, bunching the black velvet throw and black silk sheets at her heels as she tried to make her way away from him, to the head of the bed. But his gaze never wavered, and though she didn’t realize she was doing it, she slid her tongue out to wet lips that seemed parched.

He felt every nerve in his body tense at the unconsciously seductive gesture, and he climbed onto the bed one knee at a time, prowling toward her.

“You didn’t like the way we did it the first time, Muggle-lover, then we’ll try it again.” He shackled her ankles with his hands, pulling swiftly and surely, sending her sliding spread-eagled over the satin sheets and closer to his anticipatory hands.

Don’t do this again, don’t do this again… but she couldn’t get away from his eyes, from his heat, from his want.

“Didn’t say… I didn’t like it,” she managed, her breath coming in gasps. “It’s so bloody hot in here,” she managed, tossing her head restlessly. Sweat was beading over her forehead, and she could see it sheened over his, as well.

He paid no mind to her, however, wrapping the tail of her robe’s sash around his hand once, then twice, untying it. In no more than a minute, the robe was open and he bit back an oath.

She’d apparently not bothered with any of the underwear once he’d given her the robe.

Her body laid before him, fully exposed, and for the first time he saw what he’d been thirsting for. Her red hair was spread out like a pillow itself, shining to rival the flames. She was slight, fine-boned, her collarbone, ribs, and hips making faint lines along the pale flesh. Her breasts rose and fell with the labored rushes of her breath, her nipples sweetly pink and hardened with arousal.

He laid his lips to follow his eyes, brushing his mouth lightly over her breasts but keeping his eyes high, on hers.

He didn’t know what was more arousing: her body reacting beneath him or the way she kept her eyes unwaveringly on his.

The flames crackled around them, heating the room but not endangering them, swirling in arcs over the bed and climbing to the ceiling. Keeping one hand lightly covering her ribs, he slid the other one down, playing his fingers in the ginger curls that lay at the apex of her thighs, springy and already wet.

She was panting now, her bottom lip drawn between her teeth, and she wondered how it was he’d gotten her exactly where he wanted her.

And I wanted you very much, she heard his voice ricochet through her head.

To be wanted much was to want much.

He laved one taut, straining nipple with a rough tongue, scraping his teeth over it and grinning predatorily as her hips jumped to meet his hand more firmly.

Leaning back, his own breath now labored, he slid the hand over her ribs up, gliding over her perspiration and the wet trails his own tongue had left to cover her breast with a large hand, pressing his thumb into her nipple.

Her heart fluttered wildly under his touch, like something caged trying to escape, and there, finally, was something about her he fully understood.

“It’s like snagging the Snitch,” he said, finally closing his eyes to try and catch his breath.

“Draco, please…” She hadn’t the words for what she wanted, hadn’t the pride to stop the begging. She lifted one hand to tangle in the silky thickness of his hair, the other clenched in the slick sheets below her.

“Please what? Go on, Virginia. Say the words.”

But all she could do was shake her head from side to side, pulling at his hair while simultaneously pushing at his head, sending him lower down her body. Slowly untangling her fingers from the sheets, she ran a trembling hand over her body, feeling the muscles jump in her stomach.

This is the dream, she thought, a wordless scream leaving her lips as his mouth fastened over her, teeth scraping gently over the sensitive bundle of nerves at her center, tongue piercing and retreating, bringing her close and drawing her away.

Finally, those long fingers, those seducer’s hands, stroked over her slickened lips, then two fingers slid into her, filling her. He curled them slightly, sending her hips rocketing off the bed as she came.

“I’ll damn well not be still this time,” he grated out, withdrawing his fingers and, with an evil smile, running his tongue over one, then the other. His robes were gone, cast to the floor thoughtlessly, and when he entered her he did so gently, rocking above her, their unbroken gazes locked on one another.

The muscles in his arms bunched and relaxed as he pistoned into her, but as she reached her second orgasm he reached his own peak, and his arms gave out, spilling him onto her, chest pressed to chest, racing heart pressed to racing heart.

“Come to me,” he whispered, stroking a hand with uncharacteristic reverence over her hair.

“I did,” she responded, and as she curled her arms around him, the tinted flames around them began to dissipate.

Oh, welcome to the game
What's in a name

Dear Mum, Dad, Bill, Charlie, Percy, Fred, George, and Ron,

America is really quite wonderful. Though the first day was a bit rough, things smoothed out soon enough and I believe I’m acclimating wonderfully. It’s surprising how many people you can connect with in a short time.

I’ll be sending along souvenirs soon; there will be something for each of you. That’s the good news. The bad news is that there’s so much here to learn and so many new things to experience, I feel it will take quite a long while before I’ll be looking to come back to England.

Think of it this way—I’ve been here less than forty-eight hours, and already I’ve learned enough to change my life. I would tell you what I’ve done so far, but honestly—it’s just beyond description, and I don’t think you’d all want the tedious details.

Write often, and I will as well.

Much love,

Ginny

And of them all, the rambunctious, big, red-haired clan, only Bill noticed the black owl with its silver trappings, the characteristic showy affluence, and he smirked slightly.

He was certain Ginny was right; he didn’t want the tedious details of the things his little sister was doing.

Back in Boston, it took less than a week for the elite to discover her.

They called her Young Mistress.