It was the following morning and Ginny was currently cursing the fact that she hadn't taken Colin and Luna up on their offer to study together. She had purposely chosen a quiet corner of the library for her studies, hoping in vain that she wouldn't be disturbed as she struggled with forty inches on the warring factions of the little-known Romanian Goblin Uprising of 1802. No such luck, of course. She had been obliged to share a table with Ernest Humphrey, a pale third year Hufflepuff with an unfortunately unpredictable and loud case of the sniffles, who caused her to jump every twenty seconds as another explosion of mucus exited his nostrils.
Quieter, but just a tad more disturbing, was the third occupant of the table, a Slytherin fifth year. Ginny had never heard him addressed by name, but if she had to guess it would probably have been Damien... maybe Lucius. Something sinister. His appearance was perhaps stereotypical for a Slytherin male; immaculately cut black robes, anonymously attractive, pale to the point of anaemia, slightly scary looking. He was, theoretically, researching the Wolfsbane potion for an upcoming test. In reality, he was concentrating on the object he held in his hands - dressed in a pink cocktail dress, with a bright string of pearls and super-perky smile; a Malibu Barbie whose blonde hair he was fondly combing with an equally pink and miniature brush.
Ginny suppressed the urge to shudder. At her elbow Ernest erupted again and she reminded herself that her legendary Bat Bogey hex was not the answer to everything. She sighed resignedly and leaned back in her chair, stretching her arms above her head and glancing around the library in search of anyone who could take her attention away from the awful essay before her. Unfortunately, the only other people present in the library were a group of seventh year Slytherins lounging around suspiciously close to the restricted section, and her brother Ron, Harry and Hermione, who were in the corner, ostensibly researching their cooking projects. More likely planning something sneaky, judging from their flittering glances and Hermione's staunchly disapproving look. She concealed a snicker as a comment from Ron caused Hermione to throw one of her books at him. His retaliation consisted of a loud yell of outrage as he fairly launched himself across the table to tickle her.
Neither seemed to have considered the consequences of this; namely the fuming figure of Madam Pince who stalked over and began shrieking at the two. Rolling her shoulders back, Ginny darted a look around the library in search of the eyes watching her back. She nearly fell out of her chair as her eyes met those of Draco Malfoy, sitting at the far end of the library with Blaise Zabini and regarding her pointedly. The corner of his mouth curled into a faint smirk as he realised that he had caught her attention.
Ginny scowled inwardly. Typical. Always appearing when she least wanted him to. Just like the year before when she'd been roped into helping Luna fix up the Halloween banners for the upcoming ball. An insufferably bossy group of prefects had been directing them, and of all people for her and Luna to get paired with, it had to be those two. Not that she'd been bothered or anything, Ginny reminded herself resolutely. Yes, Malfoy definitely wasn't worth the attention of an independent young woman like herself. Not a bit of it. He was the boy who taunted her brother like a cat taunted a mouse and she'd never really paid him any heed.
But then of course, he'd come back in his sixth year, fully developed Wonder Prick. It seemed the long-awaited shove from his father had finally come now that his N.E.W.T.s were nearing, and had thus begun to focus on his work. That and Quidditch, not to mention strengthening the bonds within Slytherin house. That was another thing the rest of the students noticed. The Slytherins had changed in some indefinable way. Perhaps it was that they seemed to have become more interested in each other. They stopped taunting other students so much, though nothing would ever prevent them from the mirth that Neville Longbottom's cauldron acrobatics afforded them. The only real exception seemed to be Blaise Zabini, who, Ginny thought to herself, had always been like that.
And on that day, one year ago, as both of them had sauntered over towards Ginny and an oblivious Luna, she couldn't help wondering, as everyone did, what was going through his mind. They'd kept mockingly quiet until Ginny got fed up with Blaise's scrutiny of her and demanded, "Do you have a problem, or do you like staring at girls you can't have?"
Blaise had merely lifted an eyebrow, turning his amused blue eyes to his friend. "I understand," he had drawled, earning him an unreadable look from Draco. Ginny had opened her mouth to demand an explanation but then Professor McGonagall had appeared and she'd forgotten about it in all the excitement of Halloween and all the activity of exams and summer plans.
And goddamnit if they weren't both staring at her now, Blaise with quiet amusement, Draco with a characteristic smirk. She narrowed her eyes and fixed Draco with as cool and disinterested a stare as she could muster before looking away dismissively. Who in the name of Merlin did he think he was, checking her out?
"You know if you continue to watch him like that, your brother will catch you and have a heart attack," the misty voice of Luna Lovegood said in Ginny's ear. "Which would be such a shame. I've always liked Ronald."
Ginny turned to see Luna's blank blue eyes fixed on Blaise and Draco's table as she continued to speak. "But did you notice that one of Blaise's eyebrows is slightly higher than the other?"
Ginny, used to Luna's ramblings, took no heed of this. Ten minutes later, after another breathless plunge into the fascinations of goblin history, she found herself totally bored beyond reason and trying to peer across to see if Luna had been right. After five minutes of rather fruitless squinting and neck craning, Ginny gave a frustrated groan.
"Ack. It's no use. I can't see from here."
"It's perfectly true," Luna replied in the same vague manner. "And I don't lie."
"I didn't mean that you- " Ginny began, immediately realising that this was not an accusation but a simple statement of fact. She tried a different tack. "But why are you back so early anyway? I thought you were helping Colin sort out the cooking classroom."
Luna nodded, appreciating this. "Well yes, I was, but you know Professor Snape. He told me that as I wasn't the one to nearly burn down his classroom, I could go away and stop hovering like an over-grown dragonfly."
Ginny raised an eyebrow. "Professor Snape said that?"
"I was paraphrasing, silly."
"Well whatever he said, he'd better watch his back. I may not have the cunning of his precious inbred Slytherins, but a girl can't grow up around Fred and George without being thoroughly schooled in the fine art of revenge."
"I suppose that's true," nodded Luna again.
"You bet it's true. And I'll tell you another thing; if Draco Malfoy tries to ogle me again I'll remove his reason for wearing trousers with a very large - " Ginny stopped mid-sentence.
"Shovel?" suggested Luna brightly. "I'd like to see that."
But Ginny was looking in horror at the clock.
"Why didn't you tell me!" she exclaimed, stuffing the work into her grubby satchel. "I've got five minutes to get all the way down to the dungeons. I'll see you later!"
And with that, she grabbed her bag and sprinted out of the library with astonishing speed.
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Ten minutes later and the cookery class née potions classroom was full of chattering groups of people taking out different selections of food and pulling cooking utensils out of cupboards and drawers. In the midst of all this sat Colin Creevey, who was busy glaring at the cookery book in front of him and muttering something about the cruelty of existence. Hurriedly, Ginny scurried in from the back of the classroom and sat down by him.
"I'm late, aren't I?" she groaned resignedly.
"Not exactly. Professor Sedley hasn't arrived yet."
"Well at least that's one less thing to worry about," replied Ginny, who began to get her things out for the lesson, pulling out a chopping board and arranging a selection of strawberries on a plate. Having spent hours trying to find a recipe for pavlova that would not require a sauce pan, cooker, sieve or anything else with which she could inadvertently maim someone, she'd finally found one that was pretty basic to follow and not too challenging.
At that point, a rather breathless Professor Sedley flew through the door.
"All right class! I need to leave you alone for a few seconds whilst I go and find Professor Snape. I'm afraid he's decided to take a little walk, but I'll be back as soon as possible. Whilst I'm gone please get out your ingredients and start to prepare your meal. I shall expect the same standards of behaviour to be maintained."
Ginny arched an eyebrow and turned to Colin who asked rather wistfully. "Don't suppose Snape's taken a large step of a cliff, do you?"
She grinned in sympathy. "Why would God make our lives so easy?"
Sighing, Colin went back to mumbling under his breath and began cutting up apples with a little more vigour than was entirely necessary. Grabbing a hair tie, she focused on cracking an egg and whisking it until it was fluffy. Narrowing her eyes she glared as a piece of shell floating in the mixture caught her attention. She gave a cry of satisfaction when she finally managed to extract it, along with half the contents of the bowl five minutes later. Unaware of the slightly odd looks she was receiving from the other students, she sauntered over to the bin and threw the pesky piece of eggshell in with an air of triumph.
Forty-five minutes on and she was just about near completion of her so-called cake. It was about the size and shape of a deflated quaffle and scorched through to boot. She was currently trying to disguise this fact with more icing and cream than could ever be deemed healthy. She was also experimenting with the decoration of little animal shaped pieces of strawberry that she dotted liberally over the cake's snow-white surface. Unfortunately, there are only so many shapes one can make out of a strawberry and she'd already tried every animal in the animal kingdom, from an ant (which looked like a blobby sheep) to a snake (that had absolutely nothing to do with the suggestive way in which Draco Malfoy kept licking the sugar for his crème brulée off of his fingers) and now there was nothing more to do.
Rolling her shoulders backwards to try and get rid of the tension caused by bending over a chopping board for too long, her attention was drawn to the rest of the activities in the classroom. Ron, one desk ahead of her, was adding cinnamon to the final tier of a magnificent looking layer cake, much to the amusement of his friends and Ginny, who never would have pegged her brother as a brilliant cook. Next to him stood Hermione, who had flour sprinkled across her hair and was frantically trying to remove the fairy cake mixture that was currently sticking to the bottom of the bowl and stubbornly refusing to budge.
"Now, now, Miss Granger," reprimanded Miss Sedley, as Hermione prepared to perform an effortless lubrication charm, "The skills of this course must be practised without assistance. What would happen if you were caught in a life or death situation without magic to aid your survival? You wouldn't always have your wand in the wilderness, you know."
"Yes, and there wouldn't be domestic ovens either," Ginny heard Hermione mutter darkly as Professor Sedley moved onto the next row.
But despite the actions of Ron and Hermione, her attention was mostly caught by Harry, sitting between the two, who was now ... well ... determinedly poking holes in the chicken and mushroom pasty Parvati Patil had unfortunately placed on the bench whilst fetching a whisk. Ginny, sensing impending disaster as Parvati made her way back from the front, made an effort to distract him.
"Uh, Harry?" she asked uncertainly, wondering whether the stress of repeatedly saving the world from Voldemort was starting to get to him.
He turned a lopsided beam on her.
"Are you.... okay?"
"Okay?" he grinned genially. "Never been better..."
"Well then, perhaps you could explain the red pepper?"
He looked down at his hand. It did indeed hold a red bell pepper.
"Oh. This pepper," he remarked, as if it were the first he had seen of it. "Now looky here Ginny," he slurred reprovingly, waving the pepper as if to prove his point. "I know you think little Voldemort isn't all bad...."
Ginny wondered exactly when Harry had chosen to become a resident of Crazytown.
"But I really think he has to be tried and punished as the wickedest ..." he searched for the word, "...Veggytable he is."
No, she decided firmly. Harry was not a resident of Crazytown. He was the fully paid up Mayor of Crazytown, with an entourage of hundreds and a multicoloured tickertape parade on Sundays.
Harry began dipping the pepper into Colin's cheese and foccacia fondue. "Die, Voldie, die!" he giggled triumphantly.
"No, Harry!" said Ginny, as if admonishing a small child. "That's Colin's. He - won't - like - that." She accentuated every word as she pulled his hand away.
"But - but Ginny..." said Harry, sounding wounded.
"Oh, just go on," she groaned resignedly. "Muck about with my pavlova then. You can't do it much more damage anyway." Harry proceeded to do so, thwacking the pepper-shaped dark lord into the dessert in a fervour of dramatic justice.
Settling down to view the destruction, she wondered if she should have seen this coming. After all, he had been a pretty regular Harry only a few moments before. Being virtually muggle-born, he'd finished his tiramisu pretty quickly and had settled down to watch the world go by. Ron and Hermione had put paid to that idea. Forty minutes sandwiched between the culinary efforts of both could make anything look attractive after a while, particularly the bottle of forty percent alcohol Tia Maria left over from the production of the dessert.
And so it was in a fairly drunken state that he was now playing with pieces of misshapen strawberry animals and singing nursery rhymes to himself.
Not that this was particularly surprising. Harry was fairly well liked and respected throughout the two eldest years at Hogwarts for lots of things; an easy going personality, for his natural leadership minus the arrogance and the added plus of saving the world several times, but there was no one, absolutely no one who didn't know that it would only take an eleven year old to drink him under the table.
At this point, there was a sudden, ear-splitting, but perfectly pitched A-flat crashing sound. Harry, unsatisfied with death by Pavlova, had chosen to bite Voldemort's head off, forgetting that he was currently filled with unimaginably fiery pepper seeds. The resulting agony had caused a series of unintelligible yelps and he had reached wildly for the remaining Tia Maria to douse the imagined flames, knocking the bottle over in a shower of dark liquor.
"Bloody hell!" exclaimed Ron, wiping down his apron that was now liberally sprinkled with brownish spots.
"Harry? What are you doing?" asked Hermione, who stared at him with a look of horror. Harry, who was still staggering about like an injured wildebeest, ignored her.
"What has he been doing?" demanded Ginny indignantly. "What have you been doing, letting Harry near spirits?"
"Spirits?" asked Hermione faintly.
"Yes - that brown stuff that Harry's been drinking like a fish while you've been playing My Little Bake Oven and Ron's turned into Gordon fucking Ramsey!"
"Ginny, I can't believe you'd say that..." replied Hermione crossly. "I've only been trying to get the grades I need for the class. Those fairy cakes need a lot of checking and - " She let out a sharp squeak of realisation and ducked beneath the bench. A few seconds later she re-emerged with the baking tray of fairy cakes which were now woefully sunken; where there should have been pleasing domes, mini-craters sagged. The look on her face was priceless; a mixture of fury, sorrow, resentment, and deep despair.
Ron struggled to suppress a grin.
"It's your own fault, Hermione," he said jokingly.
The annoyance in her face increased ten fold.
"What?" Her voice suggested that there was a good chance that the next person to cross her would be hung, drawn and quartered. Ron didn't seem to pick up on this.
"Well, I mean, you do realise that they wouldn't have sunk if you hadn't been opening the oven door all the time like a paranoid schizophrenic, don't you?"
Ginny closed her eyes as if about to witness a car accident she was powerless to prevent. For a few seconds, time appeared to slow down. Hermione's fists clenched at her sides, her knuckles rapidly turning white. In the row in front, Gregory Goyle was just about managing to carry a large pan of gravy from the stove to his workspace. Staggering at the corner of the bench and hiccoughing loudly, Harry's eyes were straying irresistibly to the cherry tart that had been placed on the tabletop to cool and to the figure of Draco Malfoy, two rows ahead, who was beginning to look seriously in need of retribution...
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The chain of events that took place in the following seconds couldn't have been better executed if the classroom had been a giant pinball machine. The angles were perfect, beautifully planned, and marvellously accurate - reaction following reaction. Reeling from Hermione's furious lunge, Ron steadied himself with his hand, catapulting an upturned spoon skywards. The spoon soared through the air like a shooting star towards Harry who at that moment was holding the cherry tart contemplatively, wondering whether Draco would look prettier with it slanted to the left or the right side of his head. The spoon, blessed with impeccable timing, beaned him neatly on the back of the head a fraction before he threw it. The tart sailed through the classroom and landed with a satisfying plop in Goyle's vat of gravy. Bellowing like a scalded troll, Goyle staggered blindly and promptly dropped the large pan onto its side on the bench. Slowly, inevitability, the pan rolled towards Ron's beautiful three-tiered cake...
The impact with which it smashed against the floor was pitiful. Ginny immediately knew that the remains of the cake would make a very sorry sight, and indeed it did. They all looked at it. There was not much to be said, really. There was perhaps a fraction of a second during which the players in this strange cosmic accident could have chosen to turn back, mop up the mess and move on.
The moment passed and the Goddess of Chaos, in her more worldly form of a food fight, descended on the classroom.
With presence of mind that surprised even herself, Ginny followed the cake's example and hit the deck.
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In the middle of all this sat Blaise Zabini and Draco Malfoy, who were watching the ensuing chaos unfold with impassive eyes.
"Pretty pathetic, really," said Draco, ignoring the blob of jelly that had just whizzed narrowly past his ear.
"I know," replied Blaise. "But I think you're not seeing the advantages in the situation. Do you know what I mean?"
Draco considered the statement for a moment.
"What, now?"
"Why not? When are you going to get a better opportunity?"
Draco's gaze fell upon Ron wrestling with Goyle in the remains of his cake on the floor, whilst Miss Sedley vainly tried to separate them.
"You don't think I'd get the shit kicked out of me?"
"I doubt it. They won't clear up this mess for a while."
"I meant by her."
"Possibly." A flicker of a smile passed Blaise's lips. "But isn't worth trying?"
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Ginny was crouching beneath the table, praying that the apocalypse would happen without her. Pulling her legs up in front of her, she sighed and leant her head against the table leg. It was at the point that she was ducking out her head to see if she could make it safely across the classroom and possibly to freedom, that an insistent hand grabbed her own and yanked her to her feet. Before she could even manage to speak, she found herself being pulled through the menagerie, over collapsed stools and towards the classroom door.
He didn't stop there, either. With a firmness that was hard to resist, she found herself being dragged along the corridor as far as they could go. It was only after going around about the sixth corner that they finally stopped. Breathing hard, Ginny leant against the wall as her abductor looked round the corner to check that no one had spotted them.
It was only a few seconds later that Ginny registered the fact he was, in fact, Draco Malfoy.
"What the hell do you think you're doing?" she asked indignantly. (After all, she was a Weasley, and there were several hundred years of dedicated feuding to uphold.)
"Rescuing you, of course," he replied, not paying very much attention to this.
"What in the name of Merlin makes you think ..." Ginny tried to reply, but he wasn't listening. Instead, he seemed to be observing himself in the mirror opposite them with inane preciseness and muttering as he did so.
She groaned. "God Draco, I knew you were vain but this is ridicu-"
Ginny felt the breath being knocked out of her with what could only be described as a whumph as Draco grabbed her by the shoulders and pulled her through the heavy oak frame and into the mirror.
The initial shock of passing through what should have been solid glass over, Ginny was then aware of the space behind the mirror. Strangely dislocated from the outside world, she found herself lying pretty much on her back in a space that was small, undefined, and all but pitch black
"Where the hell-" began Ginny, angrily staring up at Draco, forgetting for a few moments that he was standing between her legs.
"I wouldn't worry about that," replied Draco, pulling her to her feet. She couldn't see his face but she could tell he was grinning. She could feel it. "It's cut off from humanity, your brother, and that war zone down the hall."
"Oh really. And what do you think you're doing now?" she asked, trying to sound brutally mocking and outraged but rather feeling that this would be much easier if he wasn't standing virtually nose to nose with her.
"Kidnapping you."
"Oh," she said, blocking the thought that this statement was rather less than blisteringly sarcastic.
"Yeah, I am, actually."
"And for what purpose?"
"Disreputable purposes, of course. What else?"
It is at points like these that circumstances in history change. When the mood shifts and those involved are swept forward in the winds of change as establishment crumbles. Revolution. Rebellion. And of course, historians will always try to explain the groundwork and the ideals; Marx's manifesto, liberté, egalité, fraternité, or Martin Luther King's speeches, and so they should. But they will never experience the force of true change - at the moment when the Bolshevists surrounded the Winter Palace, when the French peasants stormed the Bastille, when Rosa Parks decided not to move to the back of the bus, and when Draco Malfoy threw caution to the winds and kissed Ginny Weasley with an intensity she thought she couldn't bear.
He broke off.
"Do I need to explain anything more to you to or are you catching on?"
Ginny breathed out slowly, her skin tingling unbearably from his touch. "Why are you doing this?"
"Because."
"That's not an answer and you know it. Why are you doing this?"
"...Weasley allure?"
"I appreciate the flattery but no, that won't do."
"How about `I like you, I'm prepared to deal with your idiosyncrasies, and I find the way you deal with eggshells inexplicably, intensely attractive'?"
She smiled, slowly.
"I'll accept that."
She curled an arm round his neck and placed a kiss on the right side of his mouth, on the left side, and finally, lingeringly, on his lips. She pulled away, hovering a centimetre from his face.
"For now."
And as she leaned forward to kiss him again, Ginny made a resolute promise to buy Mrs Barnes a very large cake. After all, cooking could teach you some things.
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