a/n: Chapter two! Enjoy.
Draco strode confidently into the Great Hall, looking forward to a good breakfast to set his mind straight and his conscience clear.
He took his seat at the Slytherin table and was doing a very good job of staring at his food. But he couldn't keep it up, he knew that. Before he realized that he was giving in, his head lifted and he gazed across the Hall, straight at Ginny.
She looked exactly like she did in his dreams. That was a bit of a surprise, he'd never really looked at her, nor paid attention to her, but there she was - the spitting image. Her hair curled and waved and looked like wine. Much prettier than her ginger brothers' hair - not an orange mop of straw. He thought of it mingling with his on a Slytherin pillow - looking deep and gorgeous against the green, complimenting his own silvery hair in a stark contrast of cold and warm. Draco wrinkled his nose. He was thinking too much again.
He turned back to his breakfast, as Pansy Parkinson flounced into the seat next to his.
"Hello, lover," she said, drawing out the R. Draco nearly choked on his bacon. He didn't think people actually said that seriously. But Pansy was no normal person, he reasoned.
"Parkinson," he greeted her coolly.
"I was thinking we could skip Care of Magical Creatures and spend some … quality time."
Draco lifted his head and looked at her out of the corner of his eye, comparing her to the youngest Weasley. He had had sex with Pansy before - obviously - but that was really a matter of keeping up appearances. They were, in all conventional meanings of the term, a couple. But it was casual, flippant, and cold. Pansy seemed to be more attached than was perhaps necessary, but Draco's father had taught him that the fierce loyalty of a lover could come in handy.
Draco had yet to test this theory, and he was beginning to doubt that Lucius had known anything since he had been thrown into Azkaban. He was simply losing faith in his father.
The Great Hall was suddenly abuzz, with a fresh piece of gossip. Judging by the way it spread - it seemed to have originated at the Gryffindor table. Draco watched as the wave of whispering students traveled from table to table, until finally, it reached Blaise, who leaned over and told Pansy, who turned to Draco excitedly.
"Dirt on Weasley!" She squealed, and he looked up from his dinner abruptly.
"Which one?" He asked, and she stared at him in confusion for a moment.
"Oh, that's right - there's two of them, isn't there? Well, anyways, the boy asked the Mudblood to fuck, and she turned him down!"
Draco rolled his eyes. "Everybody knows she's in love with Potter, anyways."
Pansy looked at him strangely. "What?"
"Nevermind," he said, standing up. "I'd better go taunt him now."
"Already?" She asked, putting a hand to his thigh, "But you haven't even had breakfast yet."
"I had some food before you came," he said icily, and straightened his robes. He fixed his gaze on the Gryffindor table, and headed over.
As Draco approached, Weasley seemed to be in a rather serious discussion with Potter. Granger had disappeared. Weasley spoke: "That question I asked Hermione, I mean. See, she was supposed to say something else-"
Draco took his chance to interrupt. "Potty, Weasel." He greeted them, positioning himself behind Ginny so he wouldn't have to meet her eye.
"It's gotten all over school that you asked the Mudblood to do the nasty and she rejected you, Weasley." He said, waspishly.
Weasley's ears turned red and he looked down at his plate. They were so bloody predictable. Draco decided to press it further.
"How's it feel to be turned down by a filthy little-"
Ginny flounced out of her seat, and, eyes burning, delivered a stinging slap to Draco's face. He recoiled, touching his face briefly, and staring down at her angrily.
They really had ruined her - she really did deserve better. She deserved silk sheets to make love to in, and diamonds in her hair. She needed to be treated like a princess, not some tomboy. He was filled with contempt for her older brothers and their raising of Ginny.
"Don't talk about Hermione like that!" Ginny hissed at him, curling her hands into tight fists at her sides. Those same hands that in his dreams had stroked his chest and ran down the length of his…
"What are you going to do about it, Weaselette?" He taunted her, wanting feverishly to elicit a reaction from her, to see her flaming hair shaking in anger.
"I'll kick your ass!" Ginny shoved him with all her might, causing him to pull back slightly, before he caught her wrists tightly, and held them in front of him. He couldn't do anything with Potter watching with a death glare, but Weasley seemed to have… fallen asleep.
He grabbed her chin and twisted it so that he could whisper into her ear. "You try and kick my ass, Ginny," she shivered at the use of her first name, "and I'll fuck your brains out."
She twisted out of his grip and glared at him, her eyes blazing heat. Draco was overcome with desire.
Weasley suddenly woke up screaming, before Potter had a chance to reach for his wand. The three of them - and Loony Lovegood, who was for some reason at the Gryffindor table - all turned to look at him in surprise.
"You dozed off and had another strange dream?" Harry guessed, and Ron nodded, glaring at Draco with a horribly angry face.
"You," he growled, pointing a finger at him, "will never lay a hand on my sister ever!" He threatened, his eyes glowing dangerously.
Draco felt a sickly pink rise up in his neck, creeping around his ears and over his nose.
"No chance of that," he said unsteadily, trying to convince both Weasley and himself. "I'd never dream of laying a hand on any Weasley trash." With this, he turned on his heel and left the Great Hall, feeling awash with anger, desire, and humiliation.
How would Weasley even guess what had been running through Draco's mind - through his veins? It was inconceivable.
"Mr. Malfoy!" Snape's voice called out, sharply. "I've found something that may be of interest to you."
Draco turned on his heel and waited for the professor to catch up to him. "Apparently," Snape said coolly, "Dumbledore served a special sort of fish with last night's trout. Have you ever heard of the Piabble, Mr. Malfoy?"
Draco wrinkled his nose in thought. "No," he said "I can't say I have. What is it?"
"The Piabble was thought to be a purely mythological creature. However, they are just extremely rare. Evidently Dumbledore decided to serve one to the students as a sort of hidden treat among the normal trout. They're closely related, the two fish."
"So what does it do?" Draco asked, suspiciously, and began walking with Snape.
"The story is that it gives you strange dreams," Snape said, eying him, "however - these dreams are said to show you glimpses of your future."
"My future?" Draco said, and snorted. "I'm supposed to fuck her in the future?"
Snape allowed a corner of his lip to twitch upward slightly. "Apparently so," he said smoothly.
Draco waved it off. "It must be wrong, then, I couldn't have gotten the Piabble. There's no way she would even consider it." He started off down the hall again.
"Mr. Malfoy," Snape called after him, and Draco paused to look over his shoulder. "The Piabble is never wrong. The future cannot be altered." With this he turned and left, his robes billowing behind him.
"Rubbish," Draco murmured, and started off for the library, to research this Piabble and find something to contradict Snape's ominous warning.
Draco was sitting in the library, eagerly awaiting lunch. The search for contradictory evidence was going wretchedly. Every book he skimmed was staunchly upholding the silly notion that the Piabble was always right - always inevitable, always true. The idea was ghastly. There was no way he could avoid having sex with the youngest Weasley? Surely there was some way to get out of it. Not that the idea of making love to Ginny was unpleasant. He found that many of his thoughts strayed to it, in fact, and the dreams were not entirely unbearable.
If she was anything like in his dreams - it wouldn't be too bad of a future.
Draco turned a page idly, the words blurring.
"I love you." She said to him, as he reeled in a large fish. They sat on a lovely dock over a lovely lake, in some lovely, serene, mountain area. Everything had a brown haze over it - except for her blood-red hair.
Draco could not bring himself to argue with her over that comment. It in fact ran chills down his spine and he felt his fingers tremble so extremely that the fishing rod slipped out of his grasp and fell, with a splash, into the river.
He turned and looked at her, confused. "What do you mean?" He croaked out. Ginny blushed, a tinge of red in the sepia-colored world.
"I know it sounds crazy," she said, leaning back on the dock, her red hair spilling out over the wood. "But it could work out, if we really tried."
"Don't be silly," he scolded her, reaching out for a lock of her crimson hair. "We can't try that hard, it would be too conspicuous."
Ginny sat up, her hair spilling over her shoulders and her brown eyes gleaming in the warm light. "If it ended up being conspicuous - we wouldn't be trying hard enough."
Draco's eyes flitted open and he glared. At first, it had been the concept of sex with Ginny that was ridiculous. He allowed himself to weaken his defenses against it, and now the Piabble-induced dreams were throwing 'love' into the mix. He had a great resentment towards all seafood at the moment.
It wasn't that he disliked love, he just thought it was a rather silly, unattainable notion. Love was something for the Golden Trio to look for in life - to look for an unreachable goal that glitters in sunlight and yet always flits out of reach. Like the Snitch. A tiny emblem, which, if you really thought about, was unnecessary, but so many yearned to catch. Draco usually subscribed to the ideal that if you get the chance to marry out of love, go ahead and do it. It would, of course, be harmless. And well, more power to you if you can find it. But if it takes you too long to attain it - if your entire life revolves around the concept of love and finding your true love, give it up. Marry for money, marry for power, marry for convenience.
No, he thought, he didn't have anything against love. But love, it appeared, seemed to have something against a lot of people. He didn't want to bother it, and so he didn't search for it.
Now the blasted Piabble dreams were insinuating not only that he would become sexually involved with Ginny, which, admittedly, was nothing too horrible, but they now decided that they would love each other as well. How horrid, he thought to himself. It would have been better to have been hexed, after all.
He caught a flash of red hair across the library. It was Ginny, with some girls, huddled about giggling and studying. They must have come in while he was dozing. At first a thought struck him. He ought to get this whole thing over with.
Draco recoiled from the table, feeling a bit disgusted with himself. He here was, acting like it was torture to bed the Weaselette. Far from it. The dreams he'd had gave a sort of promise to the situation. But what to do about the fourth dream he'd had just now? Love? Rubbish, he thought to himself, absolute trash. He'd ignore that part of the dreams, for now. But if he was going to eventually seduce her in one way or another - what better time than now, when he was young and healthy…. His thoughts trailed to an end. That would be another horrible reason. He would do this, he decided, because she was rather pretty and had a fiery temper that would unleash splendidly in bed. You know what they say about redheads, he said to himself in his mind, over and over, until he reached her table.
"Weasley," he greeted her, and her friends all looked away from him immediately. They were intimidated by his mere presence, and that made him feel incredible.
"What do you want, Malfoy?" She snapped, her eyes flitting up to meet his. They were just like the ones in his dream - bright and gleaming, with a look of promise in them. Draco did all he could to contain his admiration.
"Could I have a word?" He asked, stuffily.
Ginny glared at him suspiciously, but pushed her chair back from the table, stood, and followed him to a more secluded area. "Now what do you want?" She urged.
"Weasley, have you ever heard of a certain thing called the Piabble?" He asked, deciding to be rather straightforward.
Ginny looked mildly surprised. "Well, Luna's talked about it before - quite recently, really. Why?"
"Dumbledore served one for dinner last night and I got a bit of it." He looked at her pointedly.
Ginny was beginning to look slightly suspicious. "It's lovely to hear," she said, "and I suppose you must be having some wonderful dreams about being a Death Eater and wasting away in Azkaban-"
Draco slammed a hand over her mouth, pressing her up against a bookcase. "Is that what you think is in my future?" He hissed, keeping his voice very low. "You think I'm going to become a duplicate of my father, who threw his life away so that he could kiss the boots of an evil wizard who's going to lose this ridiculous war anyways, and end up in prison, rotting away until I'm nothing more than a blubbering pile of mush?"
Ginny bit down on his hand, and he pulled it back, but kept his other hand tightly clamped onto her arm, effectively keeping her against the bookcase.
"Why not?" She asked, flippantly, her eyes glimmering dangerously. "What else would you become?"
Draco was overcome with a want to leave her and never touch her again. For an odd, fleeting reason, he felt disgusted that she thought of him so horribly. He knew she disliked him, but assuming he was a carbon copy of Lucius was pushing it too far in his book.
"It's never occurred to you, of course," he found himself saying, "that I'm not my father?"
Ginny looked only slightly ashamed. "I never said you were him, but it's perfectly natural to assume that you'll grow up to be just like him."
"Why?" He hissed, leaning in close, so that his nose almost touched hers. "Why does it come so naturally to you to assume the worst of me?"
"You're a Slytherin," she said emphatically, "we're not supposed to expect the best of you lot."
Draco drew away slightly. So it was mere house pride and programmed belligerence to the Malfoys that caused these caustic lashings.
"I may be a Slytherin, and I may be a Malfoy. But I'm no Death Eater and I'm definitely no Lucius."
Ginny was silent, only looking at him. She didn't seem to be glaring at him, but she wasn't looking very fond of him either.
"Well?" She finally spoke, looking at him expectantly. "What about your dreams, then?"
"They're a bit hard to explain," he said, releasing her arm, "and before I attempt it, I should remind you that what the Piabble says is completely true. And must happen. The future is unalterable, etcetera, etcetera."
Ginny rolled her eyes. "Fine, whatever. What's so important that you had to tell me?"
Draco looked her straight in the eye, and put on his most serious face. "I have to have sex with you," he said, bluntly.
She didn't bat a lash. "Funny joke, Malfoy, you almost had me going with your speech about your individuality-"
"It's not a goddamn joke!" He bellowed, and they both looked round to make sure no one had taken notice.
"Malfoy," she said calmly, "I just don't believe you. I'm a Weasley - a ruddy Gryffindor, for God's sake, and you want to have sex with me? It's too transparent. Work on your story a bit, and it may make a rather humorous practical joke."
He gritted his teeth. "The only place, other than your face and arms, that you've got freckles, is the small of your back."
Ginny's face went pale. "How did you-"
They looked at each other for a very long moment.
"So, what, you've just got to sleep with me, one time or another?" She finally croaked out.
"Eventually," he said lamely, "it's kind of inevitable, you see."
She seemed to shrink back. "I've never… done that," she whispered.
Draco wasn't very surprised. Ginny had dated several boys before, but he'd never even seen her snog one, and if you aren't snogging in the halls, you're not shagging.
Ginny continued. "It would just be strange because I kind of want my first time to be… special," she paused here, as though she wasn't sure why she was telling him this.
"Are you saying I'm not special?" He asked, quirking an eyebrow, and eliciting a small smile from her.
"Malfoy, I just wanted it to be with someone I loved."
Draco leaned in, so that his lips brushed her ear. It sent a satisfying shiver throughout Ginny's body. "I would make it special," he insisted, ignoring her latter comment.
"How special?" She asked, so quietly he wouldn't have heard her if his face was not brushing with hers.
"What?" He asked, drawing back and looking at her in surprise. He hadn't expected her to give in, even in the slightest.
"How special could you make it?" She clarified, brushing her hair behind her ear. "Could you make me forget it was you I was with?"
A muscle in Draco's jaw twitched, and he felt a bit insulted at her wishing to forget who he was. "I suppose I could try. With proper lighting…." He trailed off, looking at her intently.
"Special," Ginny said pointedly, "you swear it'll be special."
"I swear," he said hoarsely. "But it'll have to be right away. As soon as I'm ready, I'll send an owl. You'll know what to do from the letter. Agreed?"
She nodded silently, and he felt a bit of sympathy. The way he said it made him sound like it was a business appointment.
A/N: And the plot thickens…. Flames and love letters can be left in a review. : )