Draco let his head fall back against the cool wall watching Ginny walk away from him for the second time in his life. And it hurt just as bad as the last time.
Her parting words echoed around the cold corridor even as she disappeared from view behind the corner. "It's not over, is it?"
His lack of reply had been answer enough for her, shoving him back against the wall and running away, though this time her cheeks were dry. Draco shivered and hugged himself, his silvery blonde head shining against the dark black of his robes.
He wasn't entirely sure what he'd expected. Draco had known that there was never really any chance that she would ever even speak to him again, let alone let him do far more interesting, illegal in several countries, things to her.
But he'd caught a glimpse of that red hair and suddenly he couldn't help remembering how her lips felt under his, how her body moulded against him, how she moaned as he'd nipped her pulse point. Draco balled his hands into fists and ineffectually bashed the floor. Because when he remembered that he always forgot the most important thing about their 'relationship'.
They were on opposite sides of a war.
A war he wasn't even sure he wanted to fight in.
*
Life had become routine without the promise of Death Eater-dom on the horizon. There were no daydreams involving standing over a heap of Muggle bodies, Potter's bloody glasses clasped in his hand, the Dark Lord grinning next to him, the Quidditch World Cup supported between them.
Draco couldn't even have the daydream that involved the whipped cream and Ginny anymore as all that succeeding in doing was make his heart ache and left him with a problem he was fairly sure that Pansy and Millicent would punch him for if he asked for help. And he and Blaise just weren't that close.
Though, of course, Draco mused, his die-Potter-die daydream was certainly due a good overhaul. There just wasn't something satisfying enough anymore about the scenario where he pushed him off his broomstick, grabbed the snitch and then proceeding to stab him repeatedly with the pieces of broken broomstick making him never be able to see, speak, have children or, really, ever breath again.
Draco decided that adding Potter being lowered into a pit full of giant man-eating Runespoor might help. Draco grinned to himself as he lay on the couch in the common room, That would do.
Ever since their argument, or as Draco had come to call it 'the time that could have been better spent getting off with each other', Ginny had firmly entrenched herself in the protective circle of her Gryfinndor housemates. The sight of her giggling with Potter in the hall had made Draco want to wrench her head off and bash it against Potter's face until his glasses were firmly embedded in his skull.
Luckily Draco had managed to restrain this urge and spent the better part of a week just thinking up ways he could hurt Potter. It also gave him time to ignore the fact that the constant gnawing ache in his stomach wasn't entirely because of Ginny, a good healthy portion of fear was attributed to Voldermort's uses for him.
Draco wasn't a fool. He'd chosen not to become a Death Eater. Voldermort should have killed him. And yet he was just sat at school, occasionally doing homework and occasionally eating and sleeping. Draco couldn't work out what it meant.
Though he was fairly sure it was bad.
He squinted into the fire trying to rouse himself from his comfortable slouch and go do his Potions homework when Blaise dropped into the armchair, fingering a long, slim envelope.
Draco dropped his head over the back of the arm and looked at Blaise who was staring into the fire, a slight frown marring his forehead. Draco considered asking him if he was all right and instantly decided against it. Things weren't the same between them and Draco wasn't the one who had a right to fix it.
"I got a letter from my Father," Blaise's voice filled the empty room and Draco stilled. The first move had been made.
"Full of good cheer, I hope?" Draco asked coolly, tilting his head so he was looking Blaise directly in the eye, right way up.
Blaise snorted, inelegantly. "Hardly," he shifted forward so his elbows rested on his knees. "It contains orders."
Turning his face away from Blaise and staring into the fire, again, Draco replied; "Well, you know what they say about orders."
"That you have to follow them."
The two boys stared into the flames, one dark head, one fair. Blaise casually threw the letter onto the fire, his eyes not moving from it's blackening form. The white paper darkened and curled, slowly dissolving to nothing, Draco's voice shattered the silence even though he was practically whispering.
"Or you die."
*
"I never have understood how you are so terribly bad at this game."
Crabbe shrugged, his massive shoulders shifting the heavy material of his dressing gown. He threw a card on the table and waited to see what Teddy would do. "I guess I just never really learnt it properly."
Pansy glanced up from her book, peering at him from her lying position on the couch. "Vincent, we've tried to explain it to you a hundred times."
Draco raised an eyebrow, shifting Pansy's feet that were lying in his lap. "Well, I'm not volunteering for a hundred and one."
Millicent laid her own cards on the table and fixed a determined expression on her face causing Teddy to groan. "Oh come on! I was winning!"
Shooting him a disgusted look, Millicent answered. "Of course you were winning. Vincent doesn't know how to play." She turned to Crabbe with a sweet smile. "Okay, the game is called 'Go Plimpy".
Draco nudged one of Pansy's feet and she glanced up at him with a smile as he inclined his head to the pair at the card table. She smothered a giggle as she saw Millicent begin to grow exasperated and batted Draco lightly on the arm with her book, whispering hurriedly; "Be nice!"
Instead of Draco having to bite back the giggle that was threatening to erupt it disappeared entirely when the flames in the hearth changed colour and Blaise stepped into the room.
His clothes were filthy, his features tight and pale. He glanced round at them all and strode from the room. But not
before Draco noticed the red stains covering his hands, only clear where his knuckles were gripping his wand painfully
tight.
*
Hogwarts was used to a sort of placidity from the Slytherin table, the housemates that resided there generally less rambunctious than those that caused all the chaos at the other tables. But it was still slightly unnerving for the rest of the students when the population of the Slytherin table in the Great Hall was deathly silent.
Draco mechanically spooned his cereal into his mouth, carefully watching Blaise's haunted eyes do a very thorough job of inspecting the top of the table. The younger years were shooting them nervous glances whilst the seventh years did their best to ignore them.
Swirling the cereal around the bowl, Draco contemplated whether to talk to Blaise. Glancing at his furious stabbing of his bacon made Draco hurriedly change his mind. He was certainly not a coward but that didn't mean he had a Gryfinndoric death wish. Draco glanced across the hall at Ginny. She was safely ensconced in her little group of friends but Draco noticed, gleefully, that she was looking a little limp and kept shooting covert glances at him.
He caught her eye for a moment and she endearingly coloured even as Draco offered a small smile. She glared back at him and turned, intentionally, he was sure, to Potter and began to giggle and flip her hair all over him.
Draco dug his fingers into the table and scowled. The beating of owl's wings disturbed his anger and the Daily Prophet was dropped into his cereal. Scowling again, this time at the owl, Draco irritably paid it and proceeded to do the normal drying charm. He flattened the paper out and began to read, absently noticing that Blaise had stopped eating.
The news of the attack was all over the front page, the picture of the hovering Dark Mark making him look up at Blaise. He was frozen, his eyes wide and fearful, his normally pale skin chalk-white.
"Blaise?" murmured Pansy. Blaise didn't reply, just took a swig of his pumpkin juice, placed his knife and fork down and walked out of the room. A number of heads swivelled to follow him and Draco noticed the angry glare of Potter and Weasley that followed his friend out of the hall. He glanced across from Pansy and in unspoken agreement they returned to their meals for a minute, made a pretence of finishing and walked from the room.
*
When polite knocking failed to incite Blaise to open the door Draco pointed his wand at the lock and whispered; "Alohomora." The door swung open revealing the boy's bathroom.
Blaise was stood over the sink, his hands prone underneath the running water, his eyes fixed on the mirror in front of him. Pansy made a sort of choked sound and ran forward, her hand curling around Blaise's upper arm. "Blaise?" she said, trying to make him look at her. He moved a fraction so that he was looking at her and then his gaze slid down to his hands.
The noise that issued from his throat reminded Draco of the strangled cries of the murdered animals and then Blaise was frantically washing his hands, knocking Pansy's arm away. "Blaise?" Pansy tried again. She grabbed his wrist and he threw her away violently, her body hitting the first stall.
Her shocked and injured expression galvanised Draco into action and he moved forward, grabbing Blaise and tossing him to the floor. "What are you doing?" he yelled. Blaise didn't move from his position on the tiles, though his hands were still manically moving and scratching over each other.
"I need to wash my hands," Blaise muttered, pulling himself up and putting his hands under the water again. The steam from the running water fogged the mirror and Draco watched in morbid fascination as the pale skin of Blaise's hands began to turn red.
"Out, out damn spot," murmured Pansy. Draco turned to look at her, she was leaning heavily against the stall, her hands splayed against the wood, her hair loose from it's usual ponytail and her blue eyes large and haunted in her small face.
Draco looked back at Blaise. He didn't seem to have registered her, his attention still fixated on the rhythmic cleaning of his hands, his face screwed up against the pain from the hot water. "What?" Draco asked Pansy tiredly, gently grabbing Blaise's shoulder and moving him from the sink until he was leaning against the far wall, his burnt hands cradled in Draco's cool palms.
"A Muggle playwright said it," Pansy muttered, she was still staring straight ahead, much like Blaise, and Draco was beginning to think he'd wondered into St Mungo's without realising it. "Mother used to say he was talking about guilt. Trying to get the blood out."
Her eyes slid over to Blaise's and two sets of startling blue eyes locked together. Blaise moved his hands away from Draco and held them close to his body. His eyes dropped back to the floor and he furrowed his brow. "I'm a good Death Eater." His voice was like a small child's, the tone pleading for someone to tell him that he was.
Pansy smiled through the tears that were running down her cheeks. Draco ran a hand through his hair. "Blaise, I somehow think that that may be an oxymoron."
"I want to be a good Death Eater." Blaise looked up at Draco and he was suddenly reminded of how, when they were little, Blaise had accidentally broken Draco's toe when he'd dropped a statue of his Great-Aunt Millie on him during a game of catch. He'd looked at him with the same expression then, pleading for forgiveness. "They were Mudbloods."
Draco closed his eyes slowly. "Fewer of them in the world, then. There's your silver lining." Blaise suddenly gripped Draco hard by the arm.
"They were normal wizards till I was told," he spat out. "Wizards with wands and homes and hexes."
Draco watched his friend's anguished eyes and felt tears pricking the back of his eyes, the sensation uncommon for him. "Mudbloods?" murmured Pansy so quietly Draco wasn't sure he heard her. He turned to see if she had spoken and realised that she had moved next to them.
Pansy looked up at Blaise and laid a hand on his face, tears running down her cheeks. Draco had never realised before how striking a couple they would make. He and Pansy had always been pushed together and he'd long known that their fair features would complement each other, but she and Blaise? Well, they were like him and Ginny. Opposites. The fair hair and the dark. But the same clear, blue eyes.
He moved to grasp her hand and she stepped away, a strangled sob coming from her throat. She stared at Blaise for a moment and then, without even glancing at Draco, she ran from the room. Blaise seemed to crumple as she left and he slid down the floor, holding his arms around his body.
Draco turned and sat next to him. Resting his head on his knees as he leant back against the cool tile wall. "Well this is fucked up, isn't it?"
Blaise didn't reply, just let his head fall back against the wall with a resounding thunk.
*
The days wore on and each time that an owl came to deliver a letter to Blaise, and each time he answered their summons, his eyes became a little more haunted, his steps a little more sluggish. Professor Snape had begun to watch Blaise carefully, his expression as outwardly worried as the potions master's would ever be.
But Draco was still left alone and that meant that the gnawing in his stomach wasn't getting any better. It just got worse with every new discovery of a Dark Mark.
He was meandering through the aisles of the library looking for some books for an extra potions assignment he was sure Snape had given him just to taken his mind off things when a surprisingly strong arm shot out and yanked him into a alcove.
Sneezing at the dust that was hovering around them Draco observed Ginny irritably. "What?" he said, wafting his hand to clear the dust.
She stood with her hands on her hips and her expression stormy. "What do you know about these attacks?"
Draco froze and stared at her, making his usual cool mask fall into place. "You mean the attacks of the rampaging Hippogriffs in Outer Mongolia, I presume?"
"Draco," she said, exasperatedly, running her hands over her face.
"Because I hear they're because of a dead rat shortage."
"Draco!" she yelled angrily and then, her voice softening; "Please."
"Why would I tell you?" Draco asked, pragmatically.
She looked up at him with wide brown eyes, sidling closer she ran a finger down his cheek. "Because…" she whispered, her face inches from his.
Draco growled and pushed her away. She grinned sheepishly as she hit the far shelf and shrugged. "Worth a try."
Draco shook his head. "I can't believe you'd try that."
Ginny raised an eyebrow in a perfect imitation of Draco. "Oh, come on. You can't tell me you're not proud of me for that."
A grin tugged at the edge of Draco's mouth. "Maybe a little proud."
She sighed and folded her arms. "You can't tell me anything?"
Draco looked her in the eyes and said seriously; "I'm not involved."
She sighed and Draco thought that he could see the relief flood through her. It made him absurdly angry because he had been so close, so close, to being involved. He had been so close to being Blaise. But her smiling face and relaxed body made him not want to say anything. He was angry at her but that didn't mean that he didn't want her to look like that for him again.
"Good," she was saying, "because I was so worried…"
"What the Hell is going on here?" The angry voice interrupted Ginny and they both turned, eyes fearful on Ginny's part and vaguely disinterested on Draco's, to look at the three people stood in the doorway.
Harry Potter, Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger.
All of whom looked seriously pissed off.
*
Weasley advanced on Draco with the sort of fierce determination that Draco was used to seeing on Potter's face as they squared off for the snitch.
"I repeat," said Potter dangerously from behind him, "What the Hell is going on here?"
Draco shrugged and leaned nonchalantly back against one of the shelves. "Well, let's see," he paused and looked around, feigning surprise he exclaimed; "My God! I'm in a library! Could I possible be looking for one of those things, now what are they called," he clicked his fingers; "ah yes, a book."
Weasley scowled. "And what the Hell is Ginny doing here?"
Rolling her eyes, Ginny walked forward to intercept her advancing brother. "Really, Ron. Did it ever occur to you that I was looking for a book, too?"
Granger piped up at this point. "But why are you back here for books? These are all old editions."
Draco scowled at her but was cut off from answering by Ginny. "I'm doing an essay for History of Magic. These old editions are actually useful to me." The lie slid off her tongue and Draco found himself impressed.
Granger looked satisfied with the answer and gripped Ginny by the elbow. "Oh, there are better ones than these. I'll show you."
"Ron, Harry," Ginny said, turning back.
"We'll be there in a minute, Gin," said Ron, staring at Draco, "Just go on ahead."
Ginny let out an exasperated breath. "Ron, really…"
"Ginny, let's just go." Ginny threw one last desperate look back as Granger drew her away and so Draco saw her eyebrows knit together as Granger whispered to her, "Just stay away from Malfoy, Ginny. He's bad news."
Draco resisted the urge to roll his eyes and concentrated on the two scowling boys advancing on him. His hand instinctively flexed by his wand and so Draco was surprised when, instead of hexing him, Ron grabbed him by the front of the robes and hauled him into the shelf.
Draco affected a look of pure nonchalance and decided against showing Potter and Weasley that his training had left him more than able to deal with two underage wizards in hand to hand combat.
"Stay away from my family, Malfoy," Weasley whispered threateningly into his ear, "If you ever lay one Death Eater hand on my little sister I swear to Merlin I'll…"
The sentence trailed off and Draco couldn't help but chime in. "You'll what? Bring the popcorn?"
Weasley's face went the same red as Ginny's, though Draco thought it less endearing and only Potter's arm stopped him from shoving Draco's head through the musty old books.
Weasley let him go with a look of pure disgust etched on his face. Draco stood and brushed his robes off, glancing up at Potter. "What, nothing to add?"
Potter shrugged. "I think Ron said it all."
Draco grinned evilly and said; "Oh, so you're going to bring the drinks?" Before Weasley had regained enough sense to punch him, Draco had moved out of the aisle and was ambling through the library, a complacent look upon his face.
*
Draco dropped into the seat by the fire in the common room, mulling over the incident in the library. It just solidified everything that he'd ever thought about him and Ginny. There was no way that they could ever be together.
He sighed wistfully, remembering the feel of her close to him again. For perhaps the millionth time Draco found himself wishing that things would be different.
"What's this I hear about an incident in the library?"
Pansy's accusing voice announced her arrival as she sat opposite Draco and fixed him with a penetrating glare.
Draco blinked guilelessly. "Incident in the library? Well, there was this thing where one of the books gave me a paper cut. Atrocious."
Pansy rolled her eyes. "You should try and not argue with them, you know."
Staring steadily at her, Draco responded; "And you should talk to Blaise."
He watched her body freeze and her eyes become shuttered. "I don't see what that has to do with you getting into arguments with angry Gryfinndors."
Shrugging, Draco didn't move his eyes away from her. "Absolutely nothing."
She regarded him icily and crossed her arms, leaning back in her chair. "Then I don't see why we have to discuss it."
"Because you have barely spoken to Blaise since the incident in the bathroom and, basically, it's disturbing our well-ordered levels of friendship. I can't be held accountable if I suddenly feel the need to widen my circle of friends and decide to spend time with Padma Patil."
Pansy snorted. "Padma Patil? There's only one reason you'd hang around with her and it certainly would have nothing to do with friendship."
"Pansy. Why aren't you talking to him?"
"Draco!" Pansy yelled, throwing her hands in the air as she stood up and began to pace in front of the fire. "I'm not not talking to him. You may not have noticed but Blaise has been a little bit more than withdrawn the last few days. The boy's been practically catatonic. I can't see what deep conversations you can have expected us to partake in."
Draco watched her carefully. Keeping his tone casual, he innocently said; "Pansy? How did your mother die?"
She span to meet his eyes and dropped heavily back into the seat. "What?" she gasped out.
Draco continued to stare at her. "How did she die?"
Pansy didn't reply, just looked down at her hands and crinkled her eyes to stop the tears from flowing. Draco sighed and leant back, running his hand through his hair, making it go flyaway and rest in a halo around his head. "That's what I thought."
Her head shot up and glared at him. "And what did you think, Draco?"
Turning his head slightly, Draco looked at her, his grey eyes empty. "Wherefore art thou, Parkinson?"