Chapter Five
Earlier that same day…
When Draco woke up, he found his bedroom looking just as it had when he'd gone to bed the night before.
'That's one of the drawbacks about being a Slytherin,' he thought, rubbing his eyes and tossing his pillow to the ground. 'Even the prefects don't get windows in a dungeon.' He yawned and picked out his robes for the day.'Nothing special for today, just a Sunday.'
He plucked out an outfit typical of the weekend. A grey, V-necked shirt, black slacks held with a silver belt, and his usual cloak.He brushed a wrinkle out of his pants. 'Now that's class,' he thought as he surveyed his attire.
He brushed his hair back with his hand but it fell back into his eyes. The cut was a bit longer in the front than he'd kept it in the past.His teeth brushed and shoes on, he grabbed his watch off his bed stand and started to head for the door, but turned on his heel before he reached it, remembering something.
Grabbing for his wand, his fingers accidentally caught on a necklace on the little table, its delicate chain breaking. 'Bloody hell! At least the pendant isn't broken.' He snorted at that. 'Not that I could break it if I tried.' Draco tucked the pendant and chain safely in his pocket.
A thudding knock on the door turned Draco's attention from the charm. 'There it is,' Draco thought sarcastically as he walked to the door.'The second drawback of being a Slytherin.'
Goyle was preoccupied with a pumpkin muffin, which he ate messily. "Yes?"Draco inquired, irritated at Goyle's ever-present air of stupidity. Goyle looked down at him, confused.Goyle was able to look down at Draco in only the literal way. Draco was by no means short or small;he was a sturdy 6'1" that had filled out over the years, along with his broad shoulders.Goyle however, was just plain burly - 4" and stocky.
He was standing in the doorway, licking his fingers from his muffin and grinning stupidly. Draco pushed past him and walked toward the Great Hall for breakfast. "Move on with it, you bloody oaf!I will not be late to breakfast just because you can't get your brain to process how to walk. Now, come on!"
Goyle paused for a moment, then followed in Draco's footsteps, lugging through the hallway. 'Seriously,' Draco thought.'I don't know how he's made it this far in school being as slow as he is...' As Draco entered the Great Hall, he scanned the room, seeing the quiet, sleepy Ravenclaws moping about their tables, the Hufflepuffs as bubbly as ever, and the Gryffindors, well... Draco noticed less red hair than last year in their section, since those damned twins, Ford and Gerald or whatever their names were, had left.The unbreakable trio was together, and Ginny, or was it Jenny?No, definitely Ginny. He'd taken care to remember her name after she'd dropped her potions book on his foot early last year he thought as a grimace came on his face. She was sitting with that stuck-up prat, Seamus, and his friends. A shift from the norm, Draco noticed.
Draco, before this year, had had nothing but apathy toward Seamus.However, at the first Quidditch match of the year, Seamus' broom knocked into Draco's, just as Draco had caught sight of the snitch.Off-guard, he was hit in the arm by a bludger, nearly falling off his broomstick.Madame Pomfrey had healed most of the damage, but his left arm had been in a cast for a week.
Later, Seamus and his Gryffindor friends had teased Draco about the lost game and his injury, blaming it on carelessness. "Can't stay on your feet, Malfoy? Do you need me to carry your books for you?" they badgered. Draco held nothing but contempt for the boy now. Unfortunately he had not yet had a good opportunity to retaliate.
Mentally shrugging the thought far back into his mind, Draco sat at the Slytherin table.Around him sat Pansy, Malcolm Baddock, Crabbe, Goyle, and Millicent. Pansy had been chattering with Millicent over their pancakes and sausage until she saw him and leapt to her feet.
"Oh, Draco!Where have you been? I was so worried you might be sick! There are still pancakes on the table -" She grabbed a pancake stack and placed three on his plate."- and did you want syrup too?" She leaned over again, this time straight across Draco, her chest brushing his arms on the table. She poured him some syrup, smiling at him with what she thought must have been flirtatiousness.
Draco winced and thought, 'I swear, that rat never gives up!' But he gave her a weak smile anyway. He folded one pancake as much as he could with his fork and shoved the entire thing into his mouth.He glared at Pansy grumpily as she giggled with Millicent.'Probably about me again,' he sighed. He had no plans until his studying later that evening, and if this morning was any indication, it was going to be a boring day.
He turned to look at the Gryffindor tables.Ginny was twirling a piece of hair between her fingers, her mind obviously off in space. 'Well that's classic...Did that girl ever stay on Earth long?'He chuckled at his little stab at the Weasley, ignoring the attention it drew from Pansy.Draco turned to his pancakes as not to have Pansy catch him looking at a Gryffindor table. After all, she'd probably throw a fit or throw herself on him again.When he turned back, he saw Ginny standing beside Seamus, looking rather angry.
"You don't mean much of what you say, do you?" Ginny was looking angrily at Seamus, who looked genuinely perplexed. She probably thought she'd said it softly, but Draco would bet Seamus had heard her loud and clear.In fact, Draco probably wouldn't have heard what she said if he hadn't been looking at her just a moment before.'Not that I was looking at her,' Draco thought. He shook his head at the thought.
He watched her leave the Great Hall; Lavender was holding Seamus from going after her and she still clung to his' side after Ginny had gone. She talked to him, although Draco couldn't hear what she'd said. Finally she winked at Seamus, waved to Dean, and left for her dorm, the two braids she'd kept since she was a first year swinging behind her.Seamus started talking to Dean, and Draco lost all interest.
Crabbe and Goyle were still eating, Millicent and Pansy hadn't stopped their chattering, and that Malcolm kid was reading through a purple herbology book.Draco thought about Ginny; the way she'd helped him from under the suit of armor in the hallway days before, the comment he'd made to her about getting back at her for being in his way.
'Now's a bloody good time too,' he thought. 'She's off outside with no one rushing after her.Now's my chance.' Draco threw on his cloak and was successful in not being caught as he left the building. The morning air outside the castle was a bit colder than Draco expected, but not bitingly so. Draco performed a quick warming charm on his cloak for good measure. He looked out into the distance; Ginny wasn't in sight from where he was.She couldn't have flown anywhere, as she hadn't had a broom with her at breakfast, and she couldn't be that far from the castle, since she hadn't been that far ahead of him. He decided to circle the castle and look for her that way.
When he finally spotted her, he found her curled in a "hole" in the wall. She looked frustrated already.'This is going to be easier than I thought!Now if she'd give me an opening...' Draco was standing off to the side of the nook, where he could see her but she couldn't see him.Then he heard it.
"If Seamus didn't have the decency to..."
'Oh, this is too good... almost too easy,' he thought.
"... at least pay you for your services?" Draco had shown himself, suddenly appearing before her, his arms folded across his chest, his back leaning casually against the castle wall. She turned to look at him, made a face then stared blankly for a moment.He knew then that he would succeed in pissing her off.He smirked.
"And here I thought it was Seamus who had no decency,"she replied almost arrogantly, and he looked down at her, plotting his next move.
"What'd he do? Ignore you like everyone else does?" Draco patted himself on the back for that one. The truth always got to people the most. He'd seen Potter, her brother and Granger ignore her, and now that stupid Irish boy. 'She probably thinks he'll fall in love with her, or something stupid like that. It's obvious Seamus isn't going to stay with her... Anyway, why should I care?Can't say I didn't warn her.'
"How would you know, Malfoy? You don't know anything about me!" Ginny snapped at him. He looked at her disdainfully.It didn't take a genius to realize her situation. Draco had been taught how to control people, to convince people.To have power over a situation, you have to know about the person.
Of course he knew her. It was an automatic response for Draco to learn everything he could about people he had contact with.It wasn't his fault he'd been watching her since the incident in the hallway. He'd show her what he knew. Draco did his best to say something cutting and ruthless, something that would definitely get to her.
"I know you're a poor, good-for-nothing Weasley with that horrid hair all of you have, who obviously isn't special enough for even her brothers or her friends to notice her." His intended, and obviously more common thought after hurting someone - something along the lines of, "Take that, Weasley!" - didn't come.His mind was blank instead, and he rubbed a small part of his cloak with his thumb and forefinger, a nervous habit. He didn't think she'd seen it, but smirked arrogantly just in case she had.When she didn't say anything, he decided to prod her on.
"What? Nothing to say to that, Weasley?" He smirked a bit more. "I guess it just proves -"
She cut him off, but he didn't hear a word she said, just watching her as she yelled at him. It was then that he came upon a great idea. It was quite possibly the best idea he'd come up with in a long time.'This day may not be as boring as I thought.'He slid down next to her, wondering just how much longer she'd yell at him before she realized just how close they were.
She wasn't noticing. He sighed."Weasley, are you ever going to stop talking?"
He leaned closer to her, now hovering over her.She looked a little flustered now. 'She must have noticed,' he thought as he observed her blushing and shifting her hands awkwardly.He moved until his lips brushed her in a suggestive and tantalizing manner, speaking to her."I don't think you understand, Weasley." He slipped his mouth up to her ear and whispered,"I know you very well."
When she leaned back and closed her eyes, he knew he'd won. He moved quietly, gracefully to his feet, and was gone before she knew what hit her.
He walked quickly back into the castle and to the Slytherin common room.He sank into a black leather armchair, his arms on the sides and his feet on an ottoman.He smiled, recalling just how well the beginnings of his plan were turning out. 'Now, I'll just need more time.'He grinned at the prospect. 'I'm sure I'll be able to work something out.'
He rested in the common room, until he heard some rowdy 4th years coming his way. Entering his room, he threw his cloak onto his desk chair. He took out his potions essay, which he needed to finish for tomorrow, his quill and a bottle of expensive ink.Why keep common ink when you can have dark, deep, aristocratic ink?
He wrote for nearly an hour before he finished, signing "Draco Malfoy" at the top in a flowing scrawl. Putting his work away, he reached into his pocket for the necklace, hoping to assess the damage he'd done to the chain. He felt around for it frantically, but found only the chain. Had it been any regular necklace, or just the chain,he might have just forgotten about it. However, it was definitely not a normal pendant, and he needed to find it fast.
His mind raced. 'Where could it have gone to?' he thought as he paced through his room.'Where could it have fallen?' Suddenly his eyes filled with dread as a horrible thought occurred to him. 'When you leaned over Ginny,' a voice screamed in his mind. 'Ginny Weasley has an artifact that, if used, could create the worst situation a Malfoy has ever been in. Bloody fantastic!"