**Author's Note: This is my first one-shot. Whoo! Anyway, it's been posted on a journal, but not posted here yet. Rest assured I'm still hard at work on House Unity… if you care… and the D/G installment will be upon me before I know it. Eep! Now… happy reading.**
*Suggested listening: Matchbox 20 "So Sad, So Lonely"*
It's dark, and though it takes a moment for her eyes to adjust, she knows where everything is. The door is three paces behind her, the dirty, lightless cloak closet is just to her right-no one ever hangs their cloak in there, no matter what the weather, but she knows there has been more than one use for that cloak closet over the years-and the dance floor is straight ahead, sunken three feet below the rest of the floor.
Her mum would have a kitten if she knew where her daughter went on Friday nights, but with the war recently over, with so many people gone, she had to do something with her time, something to prove she was still capable of fun, capable of living.
And the music was just too good to pass up. The guitars, both lead and bass, start out loud and stay loud as the wizard points his wand at them, twitching it to set the time and rhythm.
She drums her fingers on her thigh, the hem of her black dress so high her palms brush bare skin, the fringe at the bottom tickling her wrists as she swivels her hips minutely left to right, eyes drifting closed as the low thrum of the bass guitar reverberates off the walls, through her bones, straight to her loins.
Yes, the music is good.
She walks past one of the tiny tables, lit with oil lamps, and lets her cloak slide from her fingers onto the chair, snagging a glass from the outstretched hand of another witch in a fluid, easy, practice movement. She drains it in one motion and sets it down, hissing as fire burns her throat. Her cloak is gone, a great deal of her back and shoulders bare, but she's warm enough.
It should be boring, she thinks, but it isn't. It's been the same thing every Friday night for months now, and every week it's all she looks forward to.
A faint, somehow smug smile tugs at her lips as all music drops out but the thudding drums and as the wizard starts to wail into an old-fashioned Muggle microphone, its technology useless here where his voice is magically amplified, and she steps onto the floor, immediately swept up by an anonymous partner, his thighs pressed to hers, one hand pressed intimately to the small of her back as the horns come screaming into the song, the piano banging out a poorly tuned but somehow sexy tattoo of a melody.
It is here the survivors can be found, those proud few who fought long enough and hard enough, who lost enough to call themselves survivors. They are from both sides-the victorious white and the defeated dark-but there are few of each side. Many were lost both in victory and defeat, and they come here to forget.
She forgets the cold outside, forgets the fact that there was snow in her hair, now melting to gem-like droplets in her hair, because it is growing hot with this stranger's thighs pressed to hers, his hat drawn low over his eyes.
Which side had he been on? Had he hidden away, not been on one at all?
It doesn't matter, because she is just passing through with him, marking time. He swings her in a tight circle, his hips hitting hers sharply, and she dips down just a bit, shaking her shoulders and winking at him. His lips curve in a smile of genuine amusement, and she's about to smile back when she's taken by another partner, and another witch fills her place, a quick swap, a trade. Her new partner is dressed more simply than the first, his shirtsleeves rolled up and his vest hanging open; he isn't wearing a hat, and she smiles into Colin's eyes with the ease of long habit.
There are shadows under those eyes of his and in those eyes, but he is still here, just as he always is on these nights, and not for the first time, Ginny wonders if he's watching out for her.
They don't even make it one whirling, frenzied circle around the small, sticky floor before she sees Colin look up and toward the door, toward the tables where she'd dropped her cloak, and though his face grows tight, he heads there, spinning her away from him and back into him, then away one more time, knowing it will be the last for tonight.
She shuts her eyes, loving the blindness of it, as her next-and last-partner picks her up by the waist, sweeping her up toward the lights, down to the floor, and then right into him, her long legs anchored around his waist as he locks his arms around her back, his feet taking them right into the middle of the floor, right into the fray.
There is snow in his hair, as well, slower to melt than it had been in hers, somehow more appropriate for him than it had been for her. His suit is dark, the nearly invisible pinstripes in it a gaudy gold, and this, too, is fitting, she thinks.
But it is hard to think at all as he lets her slide down his body, both of them using tight, small moves as they're surrounded by so many other couples. Everyone else is switching, but not these two. No, this is also a pattern long-established, a survival rite, a ritual no one disturbs, no matter how disturbed they find it.
He drives her ruthlessly to the edge of the floor where there are more tables and myriad halls where the instruments are kept after hours, and though they are out of sight and off the floor now, they continue to dance, almost mechanically, filling a duty before fulfilling the destiny.
The music slows to half-time, becomes a sinuous, sleazy grind, and he slams her into the filthy, oft-painted wall, the wall covered in sluggishly moving posters of bands long since gone, laughing even as he does so, loving that he still has some power in this world as the son of a loser, as the shunned and outcast.
Draco Malfoy knows he was born to power, and if the only power he has is shared with a Weasley, he'll not reject it.
The couples shift on the floor, taking new partners, men occasionally dancing with men, women occasionally dancing with women, whispers exchanged at the tables, drinks passing from hand to hand with the abandon of the very stupid, very careless, or very brave, and the temperature raises a few degrees in the building, and everyone knows what's going on-
His face runs with sweat and the water of melted snow, and he's already hard, has been since before he walked in, knowing the routine, hating it, loving it, hating himself even more than he hates her, because he's fucking addicted, it's the only thing left in this forsaken place to be addicted to, everything else is lost-
The wizard onstage bounces slightly to the rhythm he's set, moaning in mock mournfulness about his loneliness, bobbing back and forth with the half-paced music, knowing it is set now for slow, bumping, torturous sex-
She raises the skirt of her dress, such as it is, it's barely there, and he's seen in her twirls and jumps that she wears black underneath, as well, black edged in red, and red underneath that, and he doesn't bother taking her knickers off, just pulls them aside and he wants to call her a whore, but he wouldn't mean it, he knows she'd know he doesn't mean it, wishing he could-
A glass breaks, laughter rings out, but the song doesn't pause, doesn't even falter, for now this music is essential-
She kisses him, biting his lips as he parts her with his fingers, then bites his neck and marks him purposefully, wanting him to be just as ashamed as he is, and she's laughing and panting and wondering why this is so much better than the first time it happened.
He wants to punish her, manipulating her roughly with thumb and fingers, bringing her to pain rather than pleasure, seeing that moment of fear come and go in her eyes, and though she's surely hurting, though it may only be a little, she growls in his ear like a wildcat and thrusts her hip forward, forcing one of his fingers into her, nearly breaking his digit with the force of her orgasm, her muscles clamping around him viciously as she comes.
She screams just as the music kicks back into full tempo, scratching her nails over his face-
And the whole place seems to be panting, the entire club to be inhaling and exhaling, whimpering and begging as the dancers start to lose their breath, as they round the bend toward the end of the song-
And he spins her around roughly, one more dance move, slapping her palms against the sticky surface of the wall, tearing down one poster while the band members scrambled over one another, falling to the floor.
He wants to speak, wants to tell her what he could do to her, how he could violate her, but he never speaks, they've never once spoken to one another, not even so much as names have ever crossed their lips, and he knows he cannot violate her in any case.
He knows he can do anything to her, for she has taken away that power of his to shame, and he's taken away the same power to her, for he wants someone to find them, wants someone to call them out on it, and then he can figure out what the fuck sort of hold this is, what sort of spell this is, what sort of evil, vile, poisonous potion she's pumped him full of.
He takes her from behind, putting his hands over hers and smelling her hair, snow, sweat, alcohol, insanity, and he wants to be full of her, pressing his lips to the back of her head and trying to even out his thrusts, but they're little more than shallow strokes, arrhythmic and desperate, barely making contact, but it's always enough for her and it's always enough for him, and he feels her hair under his lips and wonders if he can consume her this way-
And the song is over, so they keep their silence, no panting, no screaming, no grunting, moaning, slapping, sighing, because shhhhh, no one is going to find them here-
And they strain together in complete silence, lips pressed tight together, breath coming hard and fast through their noses, even when she picks up one foot and presses her heel down on top of his foot, making him see stars and rushing his climax, and he comes when he's not even in her, emptying himself on her wet, bruised outer lips and her thighs, and then the next song starts-
She casts a cleaning spell, knowing his are always halfhearted and ineffectual, as though he wants her reeking of him all night long (and doesn't he? Didn't he just mark his territory?), and he fastens up and spins her back out on the floor again as though they'd never paused, as though their knees aren't shaking, as though they're not covered with one another and confused and angry and grieving and joyous, not letting anyone switch, and no one dares to try, not after that first night when they'd tried and he'd bared his teeth in a feral challenge.
She wants to cling to him in these moments but resists, wants to lay her head to his chest to see if there's a heart beating in there, but she doesn't do it.
Yet.
She's closer every week, because she senses this, too, will run out, this assertion, this ritual, and she needs something to take its place.
And she's the baby, the only girl, so she always gets what she wants.
Ginevra Weasley gives no indication of her wants, of her needs, as he finishes out the song with her and then shoves her toward a table, ready to leave and ready for her to leave with him, even though they both know she won't.
Yet.
It's dark, and though it takes a moment for her eyes to adjust, she knows where everything is. Her cloak is on the chair beneath her, chafing her where she's already abused, her drink sits in front of her, and he?
He is gone out the door, back into the snow with his winter cloak hanging off of him, black and weighted like the history that has been built for him.
It should be boring.
But everything, including the music, is too good to pass up.