Chapter Seven: Repent
Ginny opened her eyes and sneezed.
"Bless you," Draco towered over her, his voice lulled with sleep.
Ginny scrunched her nose and stared up at him. He was naked and his hair was rumpled and he still looked beautiful. "Were you watching me sleep?"
"Maybe," he said and turned to pull his pants on.
Ginny shook her head and teased. "There you go again, putting on your pants!"
Draco turned and gave a sexy half grin stealing Ginny's breath. It was a rare treat that he graced upon her, but it usually took a lot more for her to get him to grin that way. "What can I say? I guess I'm just-" he paused.
"A stud muffin?"
Draco squinted his eyes at her, his lip curled showing his distaste for the phrase Ginny had used. "Well, ah, I wasn't going to say that!"
Ginny grinned and sat up letting the sheets fall down her chest, taking great pleasure shuddering by just looking at her bare chest. "But it works."
He took in a breath. "Yeah," he whispered as he turned his eyes away.
Ginny plopped back down into the bed. "Can we just not show up for class?"
"Gin, don't you think it would look strange if both of us were missing and none of our so called friends had seen us all day?"
"What do you mean so called?"
Draco sighed and dropped his hands to his side, still holding his black long sleeved shirt. "I wasn't speaking for you."
Ginny frowned at his back. Slowly she lifted herself up and walked over to him, wrapping her arms around his waist and resting her head on his shoulders.
She kissed the nape of his neck. Draco gave a soft groan as he felt her naked body plastered to his back. He leaned lightly into her, getting lost in her smell.
"Draco, you are a great person, you know that right?"
Draco sighed and pulled away. "No I'm not. You don't know me Ginny, you just know one side of me."
"But I-"
Draco dropped his shirt in his hands and turned to her, giving her a warning look. "Ginny, leave it alone. If I were a great person then I wouldn't have the dark mark would I? If I were so bloody damn great I would have never touched you, tainted you, like I had planned in the beginning!"
"You were pushed into it!" she argued.
"How do you know that?" he asked angrily walking away from her. "How do you know I didn't want it? Ginny, I've killed people."
Ginny looked at him in shock. "Why would you lie about something like that?"
Draco bent his head. "Why indeed?"
'Why did you tell her?' Draco scolded himself.
She needed to know.
Ginny walked up to him, pushing her face into his. She was so close he could feel her lips brushing against his, but their bodies weren't touching.
She closed one eye then opened it and then closed the other.
Amusement took him by surprised as he watched her do this. "What are you doing?" he asked, and with every word his lips brushed against hers.
"Trying to see if you're lying."
He pushed her back hard. "Damnit Ginny, I'm not lying! You want to see the research I did on the people I killed? They were my missions! I have pictures of everyone one of them. Ten of them all together and not once did I fail."
He stalked over to a dresser door and pulled out a box that had 'Missions' scribbled on the top.
"Want to take a peak?" he snarled angrily.
Ginny eyes' watered. He wasn't lying. "You didn't want to do them."
"So you believe me now!" His hard laughter sounded dead.
"Draco, you were forced into it. YOU didn't have a choice. You were tricked."
"That's right Ginny, just keep telling yourself that," Draco sneered.
He couldn't have!
Not her Draco.
Not her sweet, funny, thorough lover!
She sat down on the bed, her mouth opened in shock. "Draco, I-" she lifted her eyes up to see him handing her clothes too her.
"Here. You better go," he said coldly.
"Why? Why?" she asked frantically, saying the last more calmly.
"I didn't want him to kill my mother," he whispered, his shoulders slumping in defeat.
In the beginning, the first time he and Ginny had done anything Draco wanted to end it right after that, but it lead to more and more contact with her. Before he knew it he was taken and he couldn't lose her the way he'd lost his mother.
Of course, his mother wasn't dead, but the day he had killed that first time, so that he could save her life, was the day he had truly lost her.
Tears streamed down her face as she looked at Draco's saddened eyes. "Oh god, he used your love for your mother against you?"
"Don't you sympathize and make excuses for me, do you understand," he glared and Ginny knew the old Draco was slowly coming back. "Get out of here!" he yelled causing her to yelp.
Ginny stood up, ignoring the clothes, and reached for his face. "Draco-" she cried.
His eyes darkened in anger. "I said get out! Or do I have to throw you out and if I have to do that, I will throw you out without your clothes. Do you understand?"
Ginny leaned on her tiptoes and kissed him gently on his lips, the sweetness of it wrenched his heart. She gathered her clothes, threw them on sloppily, and walked out.
"Ginny," he whispered agonizingly then lifted the knife he had in his dresser drawer and threw it across the room with perfect precision.
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She didn't have time to go to her room and change, or take a shower like she wanted to. Luckily she had taken three, wonderful ones with Draco that previous night. She sighed, hugging herself.
What was she going to do?
It's not up to you to do anything.
But you love him don't you?
I have feelings for him, but it's not love.
Yet anyway.
Why does it have to be 'yet'?
Because he's the kind of person you could love.
Ginny gave a bitter laugh as she turned the corner. "What is love anyway?"
"Love you ask, my dear?" popped out Nearly Headless Nick.
"Oh god! Sir Nicholas? You scared me!" Ginny gasped holding her hand to her chest.
"Sorry dear," he glanced at her in a puzzled manner. "What's this about love? Is it troubling you?"
"You're old," Ginny stated, slumping her shoulders.
He lifted his eyebrow. "Obviously. I'm dead."
"Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't mean it like that. I just mean you're experienced with that sort of stuff? So could you tell me what love is?"
Nick smiled at her. "Love? I don't think there really is a definition of it, an accurate one anyway. I suppose you could classify love as everything. Love, hate, anger, lust, and all the emotions you can think of. When you're in love it always starts with something. For you it was hate, then anger, then lust, that's when you started questioning your feelings."
"H-how did you know that?"
"I'm a ghost. I saw your lessons with the young Malfoy. I saw him look at you and you to him. It was obvious that there was something there. In my experience with love, I've always had to sacrifice one thing or another."
"It's always about sacrifice."
Nick lifted his eyebrow. "You are too young to be making that assumption. I just simply stated in my experiences, but the sacrifices were worth it, every time. What is that little saying? 'It is better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all.' Something like that then," he brought his transparent hand up to stroke his chin.
He sighed and smiled down at her, continuing his definition. "Lust is a feeling of intense desire and attraction that can build into something so beautiful as love, but that's my opinion. Everyone sees it as something different. Eh-" he waved his hand in dismissal, "it's a touchy subject, and a lot of people would disagree the way I see it-as one big sacrifice. Sometimes it's worth it, sometimes it isn't, and sometimes you love someone so much that you'd give your life for them."
Ginny laughed a bit. "God that must be some kind of love. To love someone so deeply and so completely…thank you!"
He bowed his head and drifted off with his hands behind his back and his chin pointed in the air.
She gave a slight grin and sauntered over to the great hall.
"Ginny, where have you been?" Ron pounced on her instantly as she sat down next to her brother.
"Gee, Ron, I wasn't aware that I had to check up with you!"
"Yes, you do and you bloody better well do it next time!" he scolded.
Ginny turned her head sighed. "You don't own me."
"I'm your brother Ginny, it's my job to look after you!"
"And you remind me so many times of that detail."
Ron frowned.
Ginny turned and began eating.
Then suddenly as if on instinct as if she knew the moment he had entered, she lifted her head up and met Draco's probing gray eyes. Her stomach fliped and he gave her a grim look as he walked over to his table.
Forbidden.
The word clung to the sides of her mind as the events of what just happened replayed in her mind.
God! Everything about them was forbidden, everything they were together was so far beyond the line that…Ginny didn't even have a word for it.
Weasley, Malfoy-they didn't match and they never would.
It's just an attachment to him anyhow.
'Are you sure that's only what it is?' Ginny asked herself.
Of course, what else could it be?
After breakfast the day pretty much went by in a daze and before Ginny knew it, it was time for her another broom lesson with Draco. Her nerves were shot by the time she got there. Her palms were sweaty and her heart was beating rapidly. At one point during the day she had almost forgotten about the lesson, almost, but that was because she'd accidentally bumped into him.
She turned, feeling him near by, and her breath caught as she watched him saunter up to her. The urge to kiss him filled her entire being.
Oh how she'd wanted to taste those lips all day.
He looked at her and held out his broom. "You're doing it by yourself today."
Ginny bent her head down and knew he didn't want to touch her. She didn't understand why though, she had been craving his touch all day. It wasn't fair that he could act this way and she couldn't. Before she knew it she pushed the broom away and wrapped her arms around his neck.
Draco's whole body went rigid as he tensed up. He wrapped his arms around hers and yanked them down, glaring at her. "Ginny, not here."
She jerked her arms out of his and re-wrapped them around his neck, tightly. "I think I'm going through withdrawal," she laughed slightly. "Imagine that! I'm addicted to you and I don't care about what you did. I don't care."
Draco sighed, not bothering to detach her again. "But you should."
"No, nothing you can say will make me love you less. You love your mother so much and anyone with that kind of love is a great person," she whispered against his neck then smiled as she felt him shudder.
Draco felt his eyes widen.
'Did she just say she loved me?' his mind raced, 'No way.'
"If I could do it over though…I think I either would have let him kill her, or I would have taken her away."
"But that's not your fault! You were, are, young and impressionable. You didn't want to loose your mother. I probably would have done the same thing."
"Listen to this, I'm being consoled and coddled by a sixteen year old girl."
"Hey! You're only one year older than I am."
"I love my mother, but I would have, should have done it differently," he sighed, finally giving up and hugging her closer to him. "You know, that if we get caught hugging it'll be all over the school in matter of seconds."
"I don't care if you don't," she grinned pulling her head back and smiling at him.
He grinned down at her. "I give up. Why don't we give them something to talk about?"
"Why don't we?" she smiled.
He bent down and kissed her tenderly on the lips.
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"Hey, Ron, isn't that your sister?" someone yelled.
Ron turned, smiling towards the voice and as soon as he saw his baby sister embraced in his enemies' arms his smile turned to a frown, then to anger.