Authour's Notes: I'm sorry that it's taken so long to get this chapter out. I was hoping that I would have found a second beta reader to look this over, but since my best option doesn't have the time due to uni restraints and none of the other volunteers ever wrote back to me, I'm posting this today with only one beta putting it through the wringer - my beloved Alexis.
Currently I'm writing up a scene in chapter 33, but I skipped over 32 so I need to go back and do that because it's a very important chapter. I have no idea when chapter 30 will be posted since that relies solely on Alexis' free time and if I can find a second beta reader to help speed things along for her.
About chapter 30, I'm quite excited about it because some of the issues with Percy and Lucius come more into play and Narcissa gets her first real POV with all the lovely and twisted thoughts in her head.
As for chapter 29, this chapter, there are so many clues as to what exactly is wrong with Draco here, which I almost hope no one picks up on. If anyone does, though, send me an email or review explaining your theories. I probably won't confirm it, but it may make for lively discussion.
Again, I thank all the lovely reviewers that make my life and AIDE a bit richer with your words, constructive comments, and support. Cheers.
Draco escorted his mother through the corridors and downstairs to the main entrance of Hogwarts, a million thoughts whirling through his head. He belatedly noticed that she was speeding ahead of him and he leapt forward to grab her arm.
"What's the rush, Mother?" he asked, squeezing her upper arm painfully and delighting in her quiet intake of breath. "You seemed happy enough to plan out my life a few moments ago and now you want to leave? How very rude."
Narcissa sniffed contemptuously and continued to walk. "I want to go home. I've been in that dreary hotel for months and I'll enjoy being the sole mistress of Malfoy Manor just a while longer before you bring in that little Weasley tart."
"You were the one who pushed for marriage," Draco said icily. "I don't really care who I marry, but I'm sure that we could have worked out an arrangement with the Weasleys so that I would still be free to marry the Rosier girl. We needed her money and now we don't have it."
Narcissa was silent for a space. She kept turning down stone corridors, striding purposefully to the main entrance without her usual elusive, mincing steps. Then she started to speak at last: "The wind is blowing the other way now, and everyone associated with the Dark is being weeded out like before. But this time, I fear we must adapt or lose everything. I don't foresee You-Know-Who coming back, and there are none now who have his power, aside from Potter, perhaps." Her eyes were on the double doors at the far end of the corridor and she still wouldn't look at him. "Besides, I was fond of the Weasley boy and I need a companion. I'm afraid that your cousin is simply too foolish for me to deal with." She paused. "And we've plenty of money, Draco."
"We could always use more of it. Galleons don't grow on trees, you know. And if you wanted a companion, someone pure and wholesome to attach your name to, you could just as well have hired one or remarry. You didn't have to make me marry someone simply to keep you from being lonely or ostracised."
Draco studied his mother in the flickering torchlight. Her lips were thinned and her eyes haggard. She didn't look as if she'd slept well lately. He knew exactly how she must feel.
"You should fix your hair. You're starting to seem unkempt." Narcissa didn't look at him as she said this, and her pace didn't falter.
He raised his eyebrows. "Unkempt? Me? I'm as impeccably groomed as always, Mother."
"Your hair is sticking up in front. Surely you know a basic flattening charm at your age."
Draco ran his hand self-consciously over his head, and sure enough, there was a tuft of hair at his widow's peak that was misbehaving. Again.
"Blasted hair! I don't know what's wrong with it these days. It simply won't behave."
Narcissa pursed her lips and stopped long enough to pull out her wand and charm his hair flat again. Then she peered into his face.
"You're freckling." She reached up a finger and almost touched the thin skin under his eyes. "Just there. Have you been out in the sun?"
Draco blinked at her. "Been out in the sun? No more than usual." He scoffed. There was only the one on his nose and he'd charmed that away days ago. "I don't have freckles."
She started walking again. "Yes. You have freckles. Perhaps it's a disease and the Weasley girl's given it to you," Narcissa drawled, her voice lilting and entrapping the name 'Weasley' as if it were a fly in her beautiful new web.
"You can't catch freckles. And we don't freckle."
"You're right. We don't freckle." Her steps faltered for a moment and she clutched at his forearm to keep him close, but then released it as if he'd burned her. "You've changed, Draco. You're almost as thin as you were in your sixth year and I'd swear that you've shrunk."
"Have you been drinking absinthe again, Mother? Seeing little green faeries, too?" Draco contributed a brittle laugh to the perfectly enchanting conversation he was having with his mother. All the while, he was trying to pretend that he didn't notice how the loose cuffs of his sleeves came down over the backs of his hands. Perhaps his new spring wardrobe wasn't all a tailor's mistake . . .
"No," Narcissa whispered, her eyes narrowing to cat-like slits that glowed in the gloomy corridor. "You have changed. It isn't in my imagination, this. What have you done?"
"I haven't done anything, Mother," he said testily. "But why don't we ask Father about what he's done? Oh, that's right, we can't. He's dead."
Narcissa scoffed and started walking again, setting a fast pace. "Your father has nothing to do with this."
"I rather think he does," Draco countered. "Have you ever heard of the Tir nan Og Curse?"
Narcissa stopped dead in her tracks, but she remained facing the main entrance. Her face was lost in shade, and Draco could tell that she was watching Dumbledore and Lupin come inside the building.
"I see that you have," Draco noted wryly.
"Lucius wouldn't have dared curse you with that," she whispered, moving closer to the protective shadows on the wall.
Draco slunk into the darkness to stand behind his mother, quietly watching as Dumbledore and Lupin walked by them. Lupin's more perceptive werewolf eyes caught Narcissa's as he passed, and he inclined his head in a nod of acknowledgement that held more respect than a formal bow from most would do.
"Father did dare," Draco said into his mother's ear after they were gone. "But I only know this from his journals. I want you to tell me the rest because I haven't been able to find anything on that curse." Draco scowled and hissed the next few words through clenched teeth. "I've been through Father's journals and almost every book in the library here. All for nothing. Not one mention of it anywhere aside from some stupid couplets about flowers and fair brows."
"You wouldn't find anything on it, Draco," Narcissa replied. "It's a family curse."
"Would you mind much explaining it to me, then?" Draco asked caustically, coming to stand in front of her as if his visual presence would help his case at all. "Seeing as how I'm thoughtful enough to escort you down to the front gates, the least you can do is tell me a bedtime story."
Narcissa bit her lip in a rare display of hesitation before she brushed past him and started walking again. "I'll tell you as we walk."
Draco raised an eyebrow and followed her. "How kind of you," he said dryly, pausing to open the main doors for her like a dutiful son.
"From what I understand," she started. "The Tir nan Og is a bartering curse. In exchange for certain boons, you must pay a price."
"Excellent," Draco said wearily, pinching the bridge of his nose with white-tipped fingers.
"Yes, well," she looked up at the bright half-moon above them. "I don't know much else about it. Just that it is supposed to protect the victim's physical form from harm and make them perfection."
Narcissa stopped to brush the wisp of hair from his forehead again. "You never did have this problem before. Lucius certainly never did, either. I wonder-" She stopped speaking and quickly turned around again. "No." Her shoulders shook but she kept moving hurriedly, almost stumbling over the stones and holes hidden by the silvery grass.
"What?" Draco raced to keep up with his mother. He saw her draw her wand, but she was too far ahead for him to hear the spell she cast. "You can't just stop there! I want to know."
She gazed at him calmly when he finally caught up; her eyes steady and cool once again. "I don't know any more than that, Draco. The curse seems to be broken now, though. Why are you so concerned?"
"So concerned?" He almost gaped at her, until he remembered that Malfoys don't gape. "This is my body we're talking about here! And it's slowly changing on me. I don't even recognise myself anymore. I can't remember what was here before and what's new."
Draco touched his chest, feeling the thick hair crisping under his shirt. Then he moved his fingers over his face, outlining his nose and mouth and eyes, pressing his cheeks with the cold pads of his thumbs. "My face hasn't changed, but the rest of me- my skin and-and hair." Narcissa wasn't even looking at him. "I'm bloody shrinking, Mother!" he shouted.
She finally turned back to him. "If Lucius really did curse you, then you are finally seeing your true appearance. This is how you really look, Draco. All the imperfections that make you wizard instead of deity are hidden no longer." Her eyes swept over him, noting every change, he was sure. "Truly, I don't see much difference."
"But you were just now telling me that I had changed! That I'm differ-"
Narcissa shrugged gracefully and opened the large, wrought-iron gates with a flick of her wand. She stepped through them and coolly studied him for a moment.
"Perhaps I overreacted."
Then she was gone, Dissapparated into the breezy, star-dappled night and leaving her son clinging to the frozen bars of the gate knowing little more than he did before.
*~*~*~*~*~*
Harry spent most of his evening attempting to, once again, learn a bit more from 'Albus Quaffle', as he'd started to call it. Or call him, rather. Harry was still confused on that point.
The only interesting detail he had discovered so far was that the last thing the stuffed Quaffle remembered was duelling with Grindlewald . . . in 1945.
"Well, it was dark that night. Rainy and blustering outside and we were both caught in it," Albus Quaffle had said, bouncing his plushy body up and down at the end of Harry's bed, testing his new 'flesh'. "I think that the last blitz had knocked out the eclectra city over half of London and we were in a seedy Muggle section of town." The ball swayed from side to side. "I chased him into an abandoned house. The floorboards were creaky, so it wasn't difficult to tell which room he was in, even without the trail of water from his wet robes. I cast a silencing spell on my shoes and crept up to the door he was hiding behind. I could hear him breathing." The Quaffle fluttered in an imitation of life. "I waited for him to get comfortable, to think that I had gone, before I threw the door open and confronted him. We duelled. Yes, some of my finest spells, those were." Albus Quaffle rocked back and forth as if nodding. "But then I looked up into his eyes and-" The ball wrinkled as if frowning. "I don't remember anything after that. There was a blinding flash of light; it lit the entire building, I think. Then it was dark until you found me."
The rest of the conversation degenerated into babbling about school and his students after that. Harry quickly grew tired of hearing about war-time Hogwarts and the adventures of a notoriously dim Cornish boy named Dickon Crackenthorpe.
Harry leant his head on his hand and stretched out on his side, nodding sleepily as Albus Quaffle continued to chatter.
"And I told him that you simply can't make a potion to turn iron into gold!" The Quaffle wobbled on his seat. "That's more Transfiguration work, and even then it's impossible since iron repels magic. Even young Miss McGonagall told him that and she wasn't very good with Potions; Transfiguration was more her cup of tea. But the structure of iron, you see-"
Harry yawned. "I'm sorry, Albus, but I'm exhausted. Could you tell me about, er, structures later?"
"Oh, of course! I'm terribly sorry, my boy. I tend to rattle on about things that young people don't generally care to know."
"Uh-huh. You may want to go back to Seamus' bed before he comes back from- wherever it is he goes at night."
Albus quivered and leapt from Harry's bed to land with a squishy thump on the floor. Then plop-scuff-plop as he hopped along to the other side of the room. Harry didn't care how Albus managed to get up on Seamus' bed so long as he left Harry alone.
"I don't think I'll be able to look at a plush toy the same way ever again," Harry muttered, dispelling the Silence Sphere around his bed. He turned over to beat his pillow into submission and curled up with his knees against his chest. Sleep found him quickly and it was blissfully dreamless except for a short one where Hermione - wearing a bikini made of aluminium - was playing cricket using Albus Quaffle for a ball and Dobby was the bowler . . .
Harry woke sometime later with a start. His body tensed and he listened for a moment. He was about to let his eyes drift closed again when he heard muffled shouting downstairs.
He leapt from his bed and opened the door. Behind him, his dorm mates had woken up, too, and were peering thickly at him.
"Whas's all the racket about, mate?" Dean asked sleepily.
"Yeah, I've got an exam in Herbology tomorrow," Seamus mumbled, stuffing a pillow over his head. Albus Quaffle discreetly moved closer to the edge of Seamus' bed as if he wanted to say something, but didn't.
"Shh. It's not me," Harry said. He strained his ears. "I'm trying to listen. There's something happening in the common room."
He saw movement from the corner of his eye and turned his head. Ron had woken up, too, and was looking at him with the same expression he'd had countless times before when they were younger and a mystery was afoot.
Ron's ginger eyebrows rose and he came over to stand beside Harry. "Do you know what's happening?" he whispered.
Harry shook his head. "I can't hear anything."
"Think we should go down?" Ron asked, looking steadily at him, measuring.
Harry didn't have to think about it twice. Ron had made the first move; he wasn't going to bollocks it up again. Even still, he held a breath in anticipation before letting it out in a loud gush. "Yeah. Let's go."
Ron opened the door, allowing Harry to take the lead. They crept down the stairs with their backs to the wall. Once they reached the bottom, they could see Hermione, Ginny, and Colin in the common room. Harry put a finger to his lips and they listened.
" . . . and you had no right!" Colin was saying harshly to Hermione. "Just because you've been having an identity crisis is no reason to make Ginny suffer like this."
"I thought she was in danger and I did what I thought was best!" Hermione shrilled. "It's about time someone did. I didn't know that would happen. And you can't put all the blame on me." She moved her head slightly toward Ginny, who was sitting on Colin's lap. "This is your mess. I warned you that no good would come of it and you didn't listen! You just kept on and on, running about with him all over the castle. You're only upset because I told Professor McGonagall and now you have to take responsibility for your actions!"
"It wasn't your business, Hermione!" Ginny shouted, standing up to meet her eye. "It was my problem. Mine!" She beat her fist against her chest once before her fingers flew out to point at the common room entrance. "But now it's Draco's problem, and my parent's problem, and everyone else's problem. They're blackmailing me, Hermione, and there isn't anything I can do to stop them."
Hermione scoffed. "They can't make you marry him. The Daily Prophet won't be able to find-"
"What!?" Ron shouted from behind Harry, pushing him aside to rush across the room. "Who's marrying Ginny?"
All three seemed shocked out of their skins. Harry glanced up the stairs and shooed away a few other students who had come down to see what was going on before stepping into the room himself and casting a silencing charm on the doorways.
Ginny was flushed with anger and Hermione's eyes crackled. Colin wasn't looking terribly pleased with all this, either.
"You're marrying Malfoy, aren't you?" Ron grabbed Ginny by the shoulders and Harry thought for one fearful second that he and Hermione would wind up taking Ginny to the Infirmary again until Colin stood up and pulled her back. He wrapped his arms around her waist and placed his slender hands protectively over her stomach before glaring up at Ron.
"Don't do that. You'll hurt her again."
"Oh sod off, Creevey!" Ron exploded. "Why are you always here, anyway?"
"Because he's my friend, Ron," Ginny said heatedly. "And unlike some people, he actually gives a toss about me."
Ron closed his eyes and breathed deeply. He seemed to be collecting himself. "All right, Gin," he said after a moment. Ron still had his eyes closed, but he continued in a calm voice. "Just tell me what's going on. I promise I won't go bananas."
Ginny lifted an eyebrow and glanced at Harry. He shrugged. "Um. You may want to tell us what this is about, Ginny."
Hermione sidled closer to Harry. He wrapped his arm around her shoulders and pulled her onto an armchair with him. Ron finally opened his eyes and sat down on the sofa, flexing his fingers over his knees.
"Go ahead, Gin-love," Colin said gently. He kissed Ginny on the cheek before sitting on the couch, far away from Ron.
She twisted her fingers in her hair and glanced up from under her long, copper lashes. "Well, I'll give you all the short version. Mum and Dad-" Ginny took a deep breath. "AremakingmemarryDracobecause-" She gasped before continuing a bit slower. "B-because I'm preg-" Ginny frowned. "You know, that word."
"Pregnant," Colin supplied wearily, scrubbing his face with his hands. "She's pregnant."
"What!?" Ron shouted. He jumped to his feet. "Where is the little ferret-faced bastard? I'll make him wish he were never born! He thinks he can do that to my sister and get away with it then-"
Ginny stepped back and tripped over Colin's foot, landing half on his lap and half on the cushion beside him. "You said you wouldn't go bananas!"
"But you-I-I need-" Ron glanced around for a moment, his eyes flickering confusedly toward Harry and Hermione. He sighed and slumped a bit. "I need a piss. I'll be right back."
Ron trudged off up the stairs. Everyone blinked and Ginny chuckled after a moment. "That went better than expected."
Colin eyed Harry. "Did you give him drugs?"
"Er, no. Did you give him something, Hermione?"
Hermione's mouth was slack and her eyes slightly unfocused. "Uh. I didn't give him anything."
"Maybe it's his new girlfriend," Colin said lazily. He twirled a few strands of Ginny's hair around his finger. "You know, that Slytherin girl."
Harry's eyes widened and he drew a sharp breath. Surely he hadn't heard correctly. "A Slytherin? But Ron hates them more than I do!"
Hermione stirred in his arms. It looked like she had fallen partially asleep. "What about a Slytherin?"
"Colin said-"
"I'm not dating Pansy Parkinson!" Ron said loudly. He had come back from the loo seeming slightly shaken and his hair was messy and wet. It looked like he had dunked his head in the toilet, but Harry hoped that it was only under the tap.
"Did I say Pansy Parkinson?" Colin asked serenely.
Ginny was obviously failing to stifle a grin. "Did he say dating, for that matter?"
"Oh shut your gobs," Ron muttered. His face twisted into a parody of righteous indignation, but Harry could tell that there wasn't much heart in his protests. "You're mad, the both of you, and you're only on about it because I kept that troll from squishing her into marmite."
Colin smirked and Ginny seemed to be in better spirits than she was before. Harry hated to break the more pleasant mood, but he was really keen to get to the bottom of this marriage mystery. He cleared his throat.
"Ginny, what's all this about blackmail, anyway?"
Her face fell and she looked up at Colin. He squeezed her hand gently and she sighed. "Well, because Ron killed You-Know-Who, our family's quite famous now."
Ron squirmed in his seat but didn't say anything.
"And," she continued. "Mum and Mrs Malfoy are under the impression that if word of my . . . condition leaks out, the dailies will have a fit and dig up all sorts of things to drag our names through the mud just because they can." Ginny frowned and bit her bottom lip. "Like Percy and Mr Malfoy. Our dad could even lose his job."
Harry suddenly felt cold and pulled Hermione closer to him. Her head was tilted back and she was snoring softly into his shoulder now. She must have been terribly exhausted to fall asleep during such an important conversation, too much revision, probably. And it looked like he had a few Obliviates to cast on his nosy housemates before morning, so he'd probably be just as exhausted come daybreak.
"So why do you have to marry Malfoy, then?" Harry asked, partly because he couldn't think of anything better to say and partly because he was curious as to why Ginny would allow herself to be blackmailed into marrying a Malfoy - no matter the consequences. "That won't prevent the Prophet from finding out that you're, erm, expecting." He felt uncomfortable even saying the word and squirmed under Hermione's weight.
"Don't you get it, Harry?" Colin said, his eyes blazing. "I mean, I thought you would have noticed that we're living in a world that hasn't had a social revolution in centuries." He chuckled mirthlessly. Harry had never heard Colin so bitterly angry before except perhaps when Ron had pushed Ginny over that footstool. "Apparently it's a terrible stigma in the wizarding world to be an unwed mother. Especially if you're from a pureblooded family." Colin's fingers lingered over Ginny's face as if she were a rare gem he was gazing at through a window but couldn't touch. "Think of how wrong it was fifty or sixty years ago in the Muggle world and you'll have the idea."
"But-"
"It's just not on, Harry!" Ron said angrily. He stabbed a finger in Ginny's direction. "Girls aren't supposed to go around getting themselves into fixes like this."
"Yeah, but you have girls all over you from what I've heard. No one ever says anything bad about them do they?" Harry said heatedly. He felt somehow that this was all terribly unfair, aside from the obvious marriage issue. God, to be married to a Malfoy . . . a fate worse than death in his eyes.
"That's different," Ron murmured. "It's not in public. The only ones who know about it are me and them. Even if everyone knows that I'm-" He cleared his throat. "Well, I don't go telling people who they are."
"Yeah, it's just fine for you!" Ginny cried, pounding her tiny fist on Colin's knee. He winced, but didn't say anything. "It's not bloody fair that you can get away with it but I can't."
"It's that way in the Muggle world, too, Gin." Colin said. "Just that people aren't so shocked anymore if a girl turns up . . ." He trailed off with a sigh and pulled her closer to him.
"Creevey, I'm keeping my temper in check, but if you don't get your paws off my sister-"
"Grow up, Ronald," Ginny said quietly. "He's just my friend. You know he doesn't fancy girls." She glanced up at Colin from the corner of her eye. Harry was close enough to hear her whisper: "At least not normally."
"So how did Hermione find out about this?" Harry asked, eager to keep Ron from imploding.
"Oh," Colin said softly. "That."
"Yes, that." Ginny almost spit out the word. "Well, it seems, Harry, that your girlfriend has spent the past few weeks researching preventative potions and developing tests through Muggle clemency."
"Chemistry," Colin corrected absently.
Ginny waved her hand dismissively and leaned forward a bit so that Colin was blocked from her view. "Hermione woke me up this morning with this test thing. She didn't tell me what it was for until after she'd pricked my finger and put a drop of my blood in a vial with this blue potion she created." Ginny rubbed her hand. "Then she told me that the potion we'd been using from the Witches' Weekly back pages was flawed."
Harry's mouth was very dry and he suddenly had difficulty swallowing or forming words. "Flawed?" he squeaked.
"Oh yes. She spouted off a bunch of Muggle things I didn't understand before she started making sense again. Apparently, the preventative potion only works most of the time. There's always a good chance that it won't work even if you make it right."
"Is Her-is Hermione- um- too?" Harry stumbled his words and his forehead broke out in a cold sweat as possibilities ran through his mind, none of them good and all of them including bushy-haired, green-eyed children clambering up his trouser legs as if he was Mount Harry.
"No. Her test was fine," Ginny spat. "But mine . . . well, you know how mine turned out obviously."
"So all this time that potion wasn't even working?" Harry gasped out.
"It does work," Ginny insisted. "Uh, sometimes, anyway."
"Oh God," Harry whispered. "Are you sure-"
"For Merlin's sake, Harry!" Ginny shrieked. "She's fine! We were talking about an actual problem here. You know, what I'm going to do now?"
"Leave him alone, Ginny. Harry's just shocked, 'right?" Ron glared at her and she backed down, pulling her feet up to sit on them.
"It's always bloody Hermione," Ginny grumbled.
Harry stood up as quickly as he could manage with Hermione's limp form dripping over his arms. He was upset with her, too, because she hadn't said anything to him about this, but he didn't want to hear Ginny badmouth her while she was asleep and couldn't defend herself, either. "I'll just take her to bed then, shall I?" he asked coldly.
"Yeah, you might want to get her out of here, Harry." Ron was looking at his sister. "It's about to get loud again and she probably needs her rest."
"You remember Lockhart's charm?" Harry asked him. "Because I can guarantee you that if ninety percent of our housemates aren't Obliviated . . ."
Ron turned back to look at Harry, letting his eyes rove over Hermione for a moment, before nodding. "Good idea. I'll get to it after I deal with the future Mrs Malfoy over here." Ron rolled his eyes and jerked his head in Ginny's direction.
Harry let one side of his mouth twist up in a wry smile of acknowledgement and went up the stairs with Hermione. He grunted along to his dormitory and fumbled with the doorknob before he was finally able to get the door open.
He set Hermione on his bed and collapsed partially on top of her, drinking in her moon-lit profile as he caught his breath. Harry could tell that she was worn out and her face was still pinched with worry, even in sleep. He was angry that she hadn't trusted him enough to say anything about this, but he regretfully supposed that it was just her way: she never said anything until she was completely certain that her theories were correct.
Harry climbed into the bed beside her and pulled off her shoes before covering them both with a thick quilt and settling down into the pillows. He stayed awake for a long time, staring at the tester over his bed until the first rays of sunlight crept over his body.
*~*~*~*~*~*
Ginny slinked down the secret passage that led to Draco's dormitory, quiet as a mouse with her lantern dimmed. She simply had to speak with him. He must know that this would destroy them both, so why was he being so agreeable to the marriage issue?
Her heart was in her throat as she turned the knob and tiptoed over to his bed. Ginny hadn't really expected him to be asleep, but he was.
Draco's profile was clear in the faint light filtering through the drapes around his bed, bleached into a sharp contrast of black shadows and warm flesh. His mouth was blank and uncreased by the habitual sneer, and his eyelashes were only dark, feathery lines overlaying the hollows underneath.
Ginny allowed her hand to hover over Draco's face, tracing it in the air with her fingers, before drifting down to shake him gently by the shoulder.
"Draco, wake up."
His eyes snapped open and gleamed strangely in the golden-dim lantern light as he looked at her. "What do you want, woman?"
She had the sneaking suspicion that he hadn't been sleeping after all. But Ginny steeled herself and sat down beside him. "We need to talk."
Draco snorted and rolled away from her, hunching his head down between his shoulders. "There's nothing to talk about."
Ginny pulled him back to her so she could see his face. "I rather think there is."
"Go away."
"No," she stated firmly. "We will talk about this, Draco. So either you can get off your lazy arse and we'll go to the common room, or I'll start right here in front of your dorm mates and air all our dirty laundry."
"Stupid cow," he hissed. "You wouldn't dare.
Ginny lifted an eyebrow, feeling more in control of her emotions than she had for quite some time. Anger was a remarkable restorative, it seemed. "Try me."
Draco's gaze locked with hers for a moment before he sighed in exasperation and sat up. "Hand me my slippers."
Her eyes flicked down to where his wool-lined slippers were peeking out from under the bed. The urge to just grab them and slide them over his feet was overwhelming, but Hermione's shrill voice, which had recently become her conscience, kept playing over in her head: 'Servant-servant-you're nothing but a servant to Draco Malfoy. He doesn't appreciate any of the small gestures you make out of love! He can't love, remember?'
"Get them yourself, Draco," Ginny said flippantly. "I'll be in the common room." She stood and left his dormitory, walking up the dark stairs to the deserted Slytherin common room. Or at least it should have been deserted.
Pansy Parkinson's eyes widened and swept over Ginny before narrowing in hatred. "Weasley," she spat. "Why are you in my common room?"
"Actually, Pansy, this room is for all of Slytherin; not just you," Draco said mildly from behind Ginny. She turned to look at him. He stood tall and regal in his green silk dressing gown, the embroidered snake curled over his left breast pocket adding a touch of menace to his wardrobe. But it also made Ginny keenly aware of the faded pyjama bottoms and old T-shirt she'd inherited from George under her tattered dressing gown.
Pansy pointed at her. "She's not a Slytherin."
"Thank Merlin," Ginny muttered under her breath.
Draco was almost grinning, cruel amusement lit his eyes from within. "No, she's not. But she is the future Mrs Malfoy, so show the proper respect."
Ginny and Pansy both gawped at him. But whilst Ginny's mind was spinning in confusion bourn from his open admission of their engagement, Pansy spluttered incoherently at the news itself.
"How-what-but you couldn't possibly-a Weasley, Draco!"
Here Ginny smirked and glanced at Draco from the corner of her eye. He likely didn't know what she knew about Miss Perfect Slytherin. "Oh don't get your knickers in a twist, Parkinson." Ginny tapped a finger on the side of her cheek in mock-thought. "But wait a moment! I do believe that's my brother's job, isn't it?"
Pansy's face drained of colour, and Draco lifted an inquiring eyebrow. "Really now? You've been shagging the new saviour of the wizarding world? Mighty defeater of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named?" he taunted. "What is the world coming to these days?" Draco whispered sibilantly.
Pansy's hands fisted at her side and the flesh of her jaw trembled. "I didn't sh-shag him."
"You did do," Ginny said viciously. Perhaps if she were cruel enough, the Slytherin bitch would go away. "Or at least you want to, don't you?"
"No!" Pansy gasped. Her fingers twisted deeply into her perfectly tamed curls, mussing the pale, blonde hair into a rat's nest. She squeezed her eyes shut. "I'll never¾ I'm not like Malfoy. I don't associate with Gryffindors or Weasleys!"
"Go tell someone who'll believe you, Parkinson." Ginny said dismissively. She flopped into a chair and put her feet up, letting them dangle over the arm. If that wouldn't make her go away-
Pansy sobbed and covered her face with her hands. Ginny felt a twinge of guilt, but it evaporated as soon as she remembered what Ron had reluctantly admitted earlier: that Pansy had tried to kill him.
Several times.
"Good-night, Pansy," Draco said. He shooed her toward the stairs. "Out like the obedient little slag you are."
She took off running down the stairs toward what Ginny assumed must be the girl's dormitories, tears streaming down her ugly face. Once Pansy was surely gone, Draco studied Ginny from across the room.
"That was uncharacteristically malicious of you," he commented finally.
Ginny shrugged. "She tried to kill Ron. You can't expect me to trade hair charming secrets after that, can you?"
"Suppose not." Draco settled into the chair beside her and pointed his wand at the embers in the hearth, making them roar to emerald life with a short incantation. "Now, why did you feel it necessary to drag me out of bed at this ungodly hour?"
"Just to talk."
He scoffed. "If that's all you wanted, I'm going back to sleep."
"You weren't asleep before."
"I was close to," he grumbled. The green light from the fireplace reflected on his skin, giving it an unhealthy, malarial sheen. "Let's get on, then."
Ginny turned her head away from him and absently picked at her fingernails. "Why did you agree to it, Draco?"
When she glanced at him again, his eyes were closed and the back of his head was flush with his chair. "Is that all you want to know?"
"Not all."
"Mmmn," he grunted. "I suppose you could say that I subscribe to the 'better the Kneazle you know' theory. That Rosier girl . . . well, she could be completely unsuitable to my needs. If Mother is any indication, she probably is that."
Ginny's heart shuttered. He admitted it so coldly . . . "So you only chose me because you know me?"
The pupil of his eye turned toward her from under a cracked lid. "Not only. My mother and yours were breathing down my neck as well, and of course there are those-" He waved his hand in the general direction of her stomach. "You know."
"They're babies, Draco." Ginny sighed and rested her cheek against the side of her wingback chair. "They're our babies."
"Well, you had best thank Professor Snape next time you see him. I would have doubted their paternity if I hadn't seen them for myself."
Ginny sat up quickly, stung. "You know that you were my only lover, Draco! How could you say that?"
"I don't know anything about your life outside of my bed," he said in a soft, ominous whisper. "For all I know, you could have been shagging Creevey, too. You certainly weren't a virgin when I first had you."
She bit her lip. "Colin and I were together a long time ago. We were each other's first. Then he discovered certain-" Ginny dashed a look at Draco, remembering his aversion to all things homosexual since his discovery about Lucius and Percy. "Things about himself and we parted as friends. That's all we are, and all we'll ever be."
Draco was perusing her from under his lashes, his eyes glinting spitefully. "Little Colin Creevey . . . His own brother won't talk to him now, from what I hear. At least not at school."
Ginny curled her hands into fists on her lap. "Dennis is a slimy little bastard and he only treats Colin that way because our society doesn't accept his romantic preferences."
"Would you prefer to live as a Muggle?" Draco asked derisively.
"Yes, I believe I would." Ginny lifted her chin high and met his eye with a challenge in what she hoped was a steady gaze. "I would gladly give up my magic if it meant I actually had a choice in how to live my life."
Draco gave a short bark of unpleasant laughter. "You have no idea what you're talking about. We have a choice, Ginny. But are you prepared to accept the consequences for both us and our-" He paused and glanced at her belly. "Our children, if we don't give in to what they want from us?"
Ginny looked down and let her fingers slide over the barely noticeable bump under her dressing gown. Even though the thought that something was alive inside of there had yet to register, Ginny still felt a wave of protective fear wash over her. She shivered and clutched at her stomach. "I suppose not." Her eyes shifted back to him. "Why are you being so mild tonight, Draco? You've hardly been your usual arsing self."
He didn't reply immediately, but instead traced a pattern with his finger over the rich embroidery on his dressing gown. Draco's voice was soft with a hidden edge when he finally spoke. "I suppose that it would be best if I didn't antagonise you any more than necessary if we're going to be married soon."
His winter-hard eyes found her face in the stillness after he'd spoken. Ginny fancied that if she wiped the rime of frost from them that she'd find globes full of swirling snow and deep, dangerous eddies.
"I don't know about you, but I don't relish living the rest of my life in fear of flying crockery."
The break in silence and tension made Ginny's hand jerk, but she chuckled nervously to avoid that mad, contemplative quiet again. "I don't throw things. They're still in my hand when I hit you with them."
"Mmmn. True." Draco nodded thoughtfully, taking her mild amusement and sucking it back into the dark vortex of his strangely unemotional state with all the ease of swatting a fly. "But we should at least make an effort to be civil."
Ginny murmured her disagreement. "It won't be nearly as much fun that way, you know."
"Our marriage isn't about fun. It's about keeping up appearances and living - respectably - below the notice of the press."
"Sounds lovely," she muttered sarcastically.
They were both silent for a long time, Ginny absorbed in thoughts of the future. She still couldn't make herself believe that there were two incredibly tiny bodies growing within her own. Objectively, she knew it was true, but on the inside, it hadn't become truth. Ginny was aware of the fact that her belly would swell and everything else that came along with her condition. But she didn't know if she could ever bring herself to believe it until she saw their delicate limbs with her own eyes.
This only fuelled her resentment at being forced into marriage.
Carefully, Ginny reached out and touched the back of his hand. "Draco."
He raised an eyebrow in response.
"Do you want to feel them?" she asked in a quiet voice that was very unlike her own.
"Why? They're too small to feel."
Ginny studied his blank, hooded eyes for a moment before tugging his fingers toward her. "There's a knot, though. Madame Pomfrey showed me where to look. Maybe if you can feel it, too, then I know I'm not mad."
She let go of his hand and it glided in the air above her belly for a brief time, as if it had a brain of its own to decide with. Finally he snatched it back and stood up.
"Enough of this," Draco said harshly, the thin glass of his diffidence suddenly shattering and allowing Ginny to see the rage he'd kept hidden so far that night. "I'm not interested in those two things! I don't want to feel that soft belly of yours grow hard because of their greedy little bodies."
Ginny gaped up at him, her mouth slightly open due to sudden revelation. "You're jealous," she whispered.
He scowled. "Never. I'm angry because-because-" His face broke as he floundered and Ginny felt a smirk creeping over her lips.
Draco reached down and dug his fingers painfully hard into her upper arms. Ginny winced, but didn't say anything. "You're mine, Ginny Weasley. Perhaps not yet in deed, but you still belong to me. And I see those beasts as encroachers on my property. Nothing more."
Ginny laughed in his face and pulled away. "Aww, is ickle Dwaco going to miss his favouwite pillow?" she teased. "Dwaco's a bit jwealous, isn't he?"
He leant forward with a snarl. "Don't mock me, you daft bitch!"
She forced her body to relax, her eyes to remain calm and unperturbed. "What are you going to do?"
Draco stepped back and raked his hands through his hair. "Bitch," he said again.
Ginny pretended to look at a watch. "Twice within three seconds." She met his eye. "You're slipping. You could hardly call that original, or worthy of the great Draco Malfoy."
He turned his back to her and stiffly made his way down the stairs to his dormitory. Ginny sat up a while longer in the Slytherin common room, though, turning over in her mind all the possibilities that life with Draco Malfoy would bring. She eventually concluded that she could have done worse, but not by much.