CHAPTER SEVEN
She Apparated to Diagon Alley, taking the last few steps to Flourish and Blotts at a run. Dusk was just beginning to fall, though the hour was still considerably early, and the streetlamps were just starting to ignite themselves in tiny bursts of incandescent flame, throwing shimmering circles onto the cobblestones below.
Ginny flung the hood of her cloak back as she entered the store, trying to look casual as her eyes darted around, looking for just a glimpse of the one she'd come for. Turning in a circle, ignoring the few wizards and witches still in the shop at this hour, Ginny closed her eyes and let a half-smile ghost over her lips.
She could see him, nose-to-nose with Harry, defensive posture intact, the giant, bombastic ego too large for his small frame, sneering at the Boy Who Lived.
And she'd jumped forward to defend Harry, but also-
Also to see if she could garner a bit of that single-minded attention. And why not? With six brothers, a little attitude wasn't likely to faze her, and he was good-looking.
"Potter, you've got yourself a girlfriend." The voice wasn't a recollection, but a reality, and Ginny's brown eyes snapped open.
How was it she could always forget the anger, always forget what had come before, the second she saw him? It was wizardry without words and wands, only the chemistry between them making her forget past transgressions. Perhaps it was that he, once the object of her more covert fascinations, had simply disappeared one day, leaving her aimless.
"But he didn't," she said plaintively, closing the distance between them. "Potter didn't have himself a girlfriend." And doesn't now, she wanted to add, but there was still anger in this bright and beautiful boy, wrath she wasn't about to incur.
"Come on," he said, jerking his head and tangling his fingers with hers. He'd seen no one, found no one in Diagon Alley and no one in Knockturn Alley, but he wanted her out of sight as soon as possible. No need to stand around in the open and ogle at each other when they could do it in private.
This she recognized, Ginny thought as she took a skipping step to keep up with him. The haste, the heat. Yes, she recognized this. This was comfortable, no matter how much she yearned for more.
He weaved through the stacks with surprising ease-though Draco hadn't stricken her as the type to spend long hours frequenting bookstores, she knew him to be well-read; it stood to reason much of his reading had been done within these ceiling-scraping towers of books. With a clandestine glance to each side and a wicked grin tossed at her, he tugged her into a drapery-closed room in the back of the shop.
"I didn't know this was here," she said, looking around curiously. Her gaze landed on a few titles and her jaw dropped open, her face burning a bright, bright red.
Madame Moonlight's Many Magical Mischiefs was displayed prominently, a scantily-clad witch gracing the front of the book, her impossibly large lips pouted as she rubbed her hands over the sides of her body. As Ginny hurriedly averted her eyes, Madame Moonlight (presumably) tipped a salacious wink at Ginny.
"Draco, we're in the-"
"Adult book section. You've six brothers, Gin, let's not pretend you've not seen at least a few of these titles." Her shock was genuine, and to Draco, genuinely funny. After all, he was willing to bet he and Ginny had done things that would have made Madame Moonlight blush.
As she had no ready response for his point, he set his hands at her waist, feeling the heat of her skin through the thin robes she had reverted to upon coming back home to her poor family and the dilapidated Burrow. Though there was nothing Draco could do about it at the moment, he closed his hands possessively over her hips, wishing things were different.
By way of a distraction, for the both of them, he dipped his head and rubbed his lips over hers, refusing to part his lips and refusing to close his eyes. The light friction between them had Ginny putting her arms around him, her fingers playing in the silky hair that rode above the nape of his neck.
"Someone's going to see us," she said, but she planted a tiny, nibbling kiss at the corner of his lips.
"It's a rotating room," he said, lifting his chin to brush kisses over her eyelids, over her forehead. "No one's ever in the same place at the same time. Who wants to have a look at these things in the company of others?"
"Not me," Ginny said, sliding her hands down to grasp his ears, making him wince and take in a hiss of air. Once he was in that decidedly vulnerable position, he kissed her fully, savoring the taste of her, that taste that spoke of Ginny only and no one else.
Draco had no way of knowing that he had added to that taste, and that if anyone else were to kiss her, it would be as much him they were experiencing as her. They'd tailored one another without ever realizing it.
He stooped then, bending to his knees in front of her, looking up at her with an expression of supplication. Uncertain of what he was doing, Ginny kept one hand on top of his head, fingers stroking restlessly through the spun silk of his moonlight-bright hair, at once relaxed and tense in his presence. Staying stooped before her, Draco ran his hands up her thighs, barely restraining a curse as he felt the coolness of her thighs beneath the thin cloak and robe she'd worn.
She shouldn't have been so cold. He should have been able to at least give her that.
Is this the way the future Dark Lord treats his queen? It was like a slap in the face with a cold, clammy hand, his father's voice intruding in such a space as this, such an intimate situation, and Draco's head dropped forward as he took a single, gasping indrawn breath.
"What is it?" she asked, his queen, his Ginny, his sanity, and he turned eyes gleaming with tears and desperation to hers.
He could not tell her. He could not tell her the one thing that could save her and could not tell her the one thing that would send her away from him for good.
He was a Malfoy after all, a model Slytherin. He was too damned selfish to send her away.
Draco did not answer but leaned his head back, sending her light hand sliding from his head to dangle in front of him; he took each of her fingertips between his teeth, nipping lightly and trying to concentrate on her only, to push away his madness.
As he drew her index finger between his lips, suckling it lightly, his fingers found the part of her that was warm against the chill. Crossing his first and middle finger, he moved aside her knickers, sliding the crossed digits into her and pressing his thumb to the tiny bundle of nerves at her center. She gasped as he curled his fingers in a come-hither gesture, and all her questions were forgotten as she drove her hips forward and back, her finger sliding from his mouth with a pop.
"Look at me," he commanded her in a harsh voice. If there was anything he needed to see, it was what he did for her, it was the one good thing he could do for her.
"This isn't-" She couldn't finish her thought, but the flush stayed on her cheeks. She was ashamed at her wantonness, ashamed at the fact that he knelt before her as though serving her, ashamed that she had been so immediately ready, so unbearably common. But she kept her eyes on his as he slid slowly in and out of her, the long fingers doing both more and less for her than had been done before.
The power arced between them like lightning, eyes locked to eyes and need warring with need, and she was sobbing as she came, grasping his hand with her own wildly shaking fingers.
He withdrew his fingers even as her muscles were still fluttering around him, and when he rose to her, she grasped his shoulders, ready to draw him to her, into her, but he shook his head, instead leaning his head to her shoulder and letting his breath come in hard and even gusts as he tried to control himself.
"Let me-" She slid her hands down, seeking him, but he shook his head, his lips rubbing over her neck.
"No," he said, sliding his own hands down to cover hers, to still them. He knew it would torture him for the rest of the night if he didn't allow himself release, but now was not the time. He drew back, placing his lips to her ears, and said "Only you tonight, okay?"
"I don't understand," Ginny said, jerking her hands away from him, stung by what she saw as his rejection.
But all she got in return was an enigmatic smile, and he pinned her in her place with nothing more than that, a look so incongruous to his usual character that she could do naught but gape at him. "Do all you bloody Gryffindors have to be so selfless? Be selfish for once, Ginny." He lowered his forehead to hers, letting their breaths mix, and said "Be a bit of a Slytherin for me. Have a little pride."
That's the thing… when it came to you, I never had any. Her voice filled them both in memories, and she let out a small sob, touching a hand to his face.
"I'm scared," she admitted, though the admission shocked her. Scared of what? Or of whom?
Scared of everything, because everything was forcing them apart, forcing them into roles they'd left and had no wish to resume.
"Go now," he said, kissing her quickly and wishing he could do more, take more, have more. But this was what they needed, and Draco knew what he could give her.
He knew he could make her need him just as surely as he needed her, and as she fled Flourish and Blotts confused, aroused, and mussed, he cried out in anguish he refused to admit to her.
Is this how you would treat your queen?
"Oh, Merlin," Draco ground out, letting his knees buckle and spill him to the thick carpeting in the small room of the bookshop. "Help me."
~~~
She came into the house with trudging steps, having walked nearly all the way home in the cold. It was the best alternative to a cold shower she could think of, and if she was shivering, she couldn't cry.
Oh, how she desperately wanted to cry.
Life had never been simple for her-though the Weasley family thrived on the simplest of joys, she had always been confused. The only girl in such a large family, she had issues to deal with and no one to truly confide in, and moving onto Hogwarts hadn't been much better-she'd stepped from a world filled with men into a world where she was surrounded by other females constantly.
And then Tom had come along.
Draco, however, was a new challenge altogether, because for the first time, Ginny's confusion stemmed not from circumstance, not from happenstance, but from her own choices.
She'd chosen to go to him, chosen to stay with him, chosen to stand by him as best she could.
She hadn't, however, chosen to love him.
"Well, he didn't choose to love you, either," she said through chattering teeth as she climbed her way up the steps to the Burrow.
And wasn't that the problem?
As she fell into the well-worn bed upstairs, she prayed for some sort of guidance.
There are thieves in the temple tonight
Kicking me in my heart
Tearing me all apart
"It can't be true." Her words were borne more of habit than true belief-it most certainly could be true, and most probably was, considering her source.
Hermione Granger simply did not want to believe the prospect of yet another war, especially at the hands of Ginny Weasley's lover.
"He's no longer a classmate, girl, you can't be thinking of him as such." Mad-Eye Moody thumped around the room, shaking his fist now and again to punctuate his words. "He's a bloody Death Eater, and they must be watched." He lowered his face to hers and shouted "Constant vigilance!"
He'd seen the boy, the boy who looked so much like his demon of a father, creeping around Knockturn Alley. And no sooner than the silver-haired young wizard had left, three more crept in his wake, eyes gleaming with peculiar madness, with fanaticism found in few. Mad-Eye Moody had seen it too many times before to misidentify it, and it was a perfect training opportunity for this young woman.
Hermione thought fleetingly that if being an Auror was likely to drive her as batty as Mad-Eye, then perhaps she'd made the wrong career decision. But she straightened her spine and looked the old Auror in the eye.
"He's no longer a classmate," she said stalwartly. "In fact, the odds that he's hurting a friend are fairly good." She took a deep breath and wished, for a moment, that things could be easier, that they could be back at Hogwarts, bickering over lessons and Ron's big mouth, and Harry's touchiness.
But they weren't; the trio was split up and they had no one to depend on but themselves.
"We're keeping an eye on him, Granger," Mad-Eye said bracingly. "But we don't move until we're certain."
Hermione was already certain-something would have to be done, and soon. So she found herself nodding and doing what she did best-more plotting, more planning. Hermione Granger could outsmart Draco Malfoy any day.