**Author's Note: What I really wanted to do was a little fic in time for Christmas, so here's the first part of it. I did the same last year and had wonderful fun with it. So, here's hoping you enjoy, and happy holidays!**
CHAPTER ONE - Punishment With Company
She was close.
She was sure he thought he could get away from her by wending his way to the lower levels of the castle, but if that was the case, he had some serious re-evaluation to do. She may have feigned disdain for her twin brothers' endless brands of mischief, but that didn't mean she hadn't paid attention.
"Bugger off, Weasley!" His voice was right on the verge of panicked, and Ginny smirked. Poncey little git. He was afraid of a girl. Some Death Eater he was going to make.
"I didn't even do anything to you this time!!" Draco tried to recall if that was the actual truth or not and drew a blank. Sweet Salazar's spells, if he took the time to keep track of every Gryff he terrorized, he'd have no time for anything else. He feinted left and ran right, knowing full well she'd track him like a hellhound. She was a Seeker after all, and while he was far and away the better Seeker, they were on foot and unfortunately not on brooms.
She was much fleeter than he was on foot. And unlike most Gryffindors, she'd hex him from back if given proper opportunity, and bloody laugh as she did it. He'd have turned around and docked points, but she didn't care. And the whole truth of it was, he wasn't about to match wands with the mite. She was faster at that, as well. And besides, short of an Unforgivable, there wasn't a whole lot he knew to hit her with that would stop her. She, on the other hand, knew every twisted hex in the book.
If he'd had time to slow, he would have shuddered.
"May as well take it like a man, Malfoy, even if you're only a ferret!" Ginny laughed breathlessly and drew her wand back, fully prepared to turn his precious, perfectly coiffed hair into a nest of albino snakes. She'd see how much of a Slytherin he was then.
"Ser-" She got no farther than that before her wand was plucked from her fingers and a cold hand clamped on the scruff of her neck.
Draco started to dive, unaware she'd been diverted, vowing in his mind to think up the most heinous punishment available for her… as soon as he recovered from whatever she was about to do. She was going to kill him one of these days, or worse, scar him permanently.
He'd have hit the stone floor in a roll if it hadn't been for the spell that froze him in mid-air.
"Twenty points from Gryffindor, Miss Weasley." Snape's voice was nothing short of an auditory sneer, and Ginny felt her shoulders slump.
Damn. She'd been so close.
From his place in mid-leap, Draco sniggered. What he got in return from his head of house, however, was a release from the levitation spell, dumping him none too gently to the floor. Unable to help himself, he let out a decidedly classless squawk.
"Fifteen points from Slytherin," Snape said disdainfully. "I ought to take more from you for fleeing from a Gryffindor girl, Mr. Malfoy."
Draco rolled over to look at Snape, his cheeks mottled in his embarrassment and incredulousness. "You'd have me hex her, cross wands with her?" he asked.
Snape didn't answer, but merely thrust Ginny toward Draco so he could scrutinize them as they stood together, chill them both with one stare. It was odd, he thought, this antagonism. People who should have been completely apathetic to one another should not have enjoyed these asinine chasing games as much as they did. If it had been the Weasley boy, he could have understood.
As it was, Severus Snape found it very worrisome.
"Since, at the moment, you're both too foolish to see sense," he said, "I'm going to sentence you both to detention with chores."
"But-" they chorused together, only to be literally silenced by the Potions master and his wand. "Perhaps it will impress upon you the need for reform if you are forced to spend your Christmas Eve in manual labor." He wouldn't have had to silence them this time; they both looked positively stunned.
Snape raised a peaked eyebrow at the two of them, trying to look imposing while he wracked his brains for the nastiest possible punishment. He and the other professors were growing weary of disciplining these two. He intended to do it correctly once.
"You are both to clean the northeastern bank of the lake," he said finally, smirking. The eternally hopeless Longbottom had somehow managed to explode an entire batch of marine Flobberworms during the last week's Care for Magical Creatures class, and well everyone knew it; the smell had been plaguing the grounds for days, but no one-not even Snape himself-had wanted to make Neville clean it up himself. Most of the teachers had found pity on the boy. Snape was simply afraid the boy would somehow make it worse.
He saw Ginny struggling to speak, and with an impatient sigh, he recanted the silencing spell.
"Oh, no," Ginny managed, her stomach turning over. None of those present had been able to eat the evening after Neville's little accident.
Draco was too surprised to speak. One semester left at Hogwarts and his own Head of House gives him punishment like that? It was unthinkable, to have to clean up after a hopeless near-Squib Gryffindor. A thought occurred to him, and he finally found his words, speaking slowly. "Surely you don't mean both of us. Together."
"Goodness, dimwit, he couldn't possibly have meant both of us when he said both," Ginny said, affecting a wide-eyed amazement at his logic. He started to lunge at her with his wand, only to be easily disarmed by a very exasperated-looking Snape.
"You both should have been Hufflepuffs," he said disgustedly, turning on his heel and walking away. When he reached the end of the corridor, he held up the two wands he'd confiscated and addressed the two pupils who had stayed right where he'd left them. "You'll get these back when I know you've done what I asked," he said, a thin, horrid imitation of a smile crossing his lips as he saw them pale at the idea of wandless cleaning. He pondered if he'd be lucky enough never to return their wands to them.
Simultaneously, the Gryffindor prefect and the Head Boy glared at one another and spoke.
"This is your fault."
~~~
"For the hundredth time, Ron, I cannot go with you to Hogsmeade, and I cannot go home until I've finished my
stupid detention." Ginny put her fingers to her brother's forehead and pushed, laughing a bit. "Asking me
another ten times is not going to change that, either."
Ron looked miserable, and Ginny's heart went out to him. He hadn't signed to stay, but going to Hogsmeade with the disgustingly syrupy pair of Harry and Hermione was less than desirable, but it could hardly be helped.
She certainly wouldn't admit to being relieved that she didn't have to tolerate the two of then. Besides, Ron would fall in with Seamus and Dean and they'd have a brilliant time for their last Christmas outing together.
She waited until they were gone before walking to the empty Great Hall-or nearly empty. The great ferret was skulking around at one end, looking, she thought, positively sapped of the holiday spirit.
If he thought things were bad now… she narrowed her eyes with an evil smirk on her face, reached for her wand-
And remembered it had been confiscated.
"Missing something?" Draco asked languidly, turning so he could stretch his legs out on the bench. "Pity."
"It really is," Ginny shot back. "But no more a pity than you being born with the features of a rodent."
"And that no more than you being born with spots all over," he added. He'd been reserved to the punishment, but he wasn't willing to make it any easier on her. After all, he figured after a few hours at the Manor, he would be able to wipe the whole detention from his mind. Not so easy to do, he imagined, if your house was tiny, falling down, and filled with carrot-haired, Muggle-loving plebes.
"Well, princess," he said. "What say we get to cleaning the slime from the banks? You ought to feel right at home."
She thought her head might explode with all the hexes that needed room to breathe. "As long as I can get you to clean at all," she said through clenched teeth. "I'd hate for you to feel as though you were removing your natural habitat." Weak, she knew, but she was far more used to striking out with her wand.
"You'll have to show me what to do," he said, pushing past her. "I've never had to stoop low enough to clean anything."
That much she could tell, Ginny thought, ruefully following him. He was wearing a pair of tailored slacks, for Godric's sake, and a grey jumper that looked as though it would feel like an embrace when you put it on.
It would be a shame to see it ruined.
She couldn't wait.
Draco walked ahead of her, not willing to walk behind her for a number of reasons, not the least of which was the indecent nature of the denims she was wearing. They were too bloody tight, he thought. They'd been hugging her thighs, and he could only imagine the treatment they were giving her rear. Her jumper was stretched at the neck, practically falling off her shoulders.
She'd bloody well freeze, he thought, feeling smug about it. She'd be chilled to the bone within a matter of minutes, and all that skin right up around the neck of her jumper would be covered in gooseflesh-
He scowled and doubled his pace, annoyed with thinking about her skin. Weasley skin. Covered in spots.
"You're going to freeze your arse off," he said, shrugging on a heavy cloak and wondering if she had any sort of cover to wear.
"I believe I'll be fine," she shot back to him, and he turned to see her pulling on a hooded black wool cape, tugging it down over her head and sending her pulled-back hair into disarray, making it fuzz out at the top and ends. He snickered outright at how silly it looked.
He stopped snickering when she let it down and started running her fingers through it. Really, it had been easy enough to make fun of the famous Weasley red when it was on that stupid git who always followed Potter and the Mudblood about, and it had been easy enough to call her out on when he'd been too young to see the appeal of any woman, much less an orange-haired Muggle-lover.
But he was man enough now to realize that a woman unbinding her long hair and shaking it out, no matter who that woman was, had definite erotic connotations. It didn't really help that it looked as though she was going to leave it down, spilled out over her the black wool of the cape.
At least it was covering her idiotic neck. That was a plus.
Ginny stopped running her fingers through her hair and narrowed her eyes at him. "Go, Malfoy. I don't need to follow you to know where to go."
"I know that," he snapped, turning quickly in the unlikely event that his face would show the embarrassment he felt. He'd been staring at her carroty orange hair, for Salazar's sake. He shuddered, thinking about it.
He hated being out of control, and being a teenaged boy with a libido that was nearly legendary throughout Slytherin house wasn't exactly his idea of having good, solid control.
Though once he got to exercise that libido, he was in control every step of the way. It had earned him more than a few compliments.
Ginny glared at the back of his head, wondering if she could burn a hole in the back of it with nothing but sheer willpower. If she'd been a bit more clever instead of the type to fly off the handle, she'd have been able to think of something snide to say about his hair, but instead all she could think was that it was a vast improvement over what he'd had the first time she'd seen him.
Vast improvement? She wrinkled her nose, uncertain of what had ever possessed her to juxtapose vast improvement with Draco Malfoy.
They trudged outside, her hair blowing back and snapping behind her with the stiff wind that immediately assailed her. Though she could see the tips of his ears growing red with the cold, he didn't pull out a hat until they'd nearly reached the spot of Neville's mishap.
Draco swallowed hard as the wind blew a good, stiff shot of eau de Flobberworm into his nostrils. His stomach turned over and he tugged his hat down, trying to think of any possible way things could be worse. He was, after all, only seconds away from cleaning Flobberworm goo side-by-side with a Weasley.
It could be Ron, he supposed, stopping and thrusting his hands into his pockets and waiting for her to catch up with him. Lined up against the sparse trees were two rakes, two brooms, two shovels, and a hod with which to cart off any of the… parts.
"It didn't really get any better with a few days' time," Ginny said, coming to a stop beside him. They stood together for a moment, taking in the green-and-black mess on which the snow wouldn't gather, leaving a giant mar on the landscape.
In unison, they sighed. If Ginny hadn't known better, she would have said it felt almost companionable.
She pushed the thought away uncharitably, thinking it would only be fitting for a Slytherin to bond over worm innards.
Draco picked up a broom with his thumb and forefinger, regarding it like he would have regarded a dirty sock. "How does this work?"
Ginny grabbed a rake and considering beating him about the head with it, then decided that would only yield more detention. She wouldn't put it past Snape to try and take away Christmas altogether, and she wasn't about to test him. "Well, it's clear why you're not a Ravenclaw." She bent down and started to rake the frosty sludge off the ground beneath, trying to ignore the positively nightmarish noise it was making. Annoyed with her cape, she paused and folded it up over her shoulders, not wanting it to drag in… anything.
Draco scowled as he got the view of her bum he'd been studiously trying to avoid, and he decided he knew how to use his broom, after all.
"Ouch, damn it!" Ginny stood up, one hand clapped to her rear. "You just hit me with the broom, you backhanded, Flobber-sucking git!"
"How very observant of you," Draco smirked, though he was impressed with 'Flobber-sucking.' That was inventive. "It's clear why you're not in Ravenclaw."
He traded his broom for a rake, figuring emulating her was a safe course of action, and as he looked at her sidelong, he shook his head. "Can't really figure out why you're a Gryffindor, either," he said, sounding deceptively conversational. It was a pure insult to any real Gryffindor, and well he knew it.
The back-and-forth motion of her arms stopped only for a moment, giving a little jerk that sent the waves of her hair stirring and settling again, in turn unsettling him. "You can't possibly fathom why anyone is sorted into Gryffindor, Malfoy, because you don't understand the things it stands for."
His pale eyebrows shot up, hidden by the hair that was now hanging in his face. "Oh, really? Last I'd heard, Gryffindors weren't supposed to be the type to hex from behind." It had been eating away at him since the first time she'd done it, damn it, that she'd gotten the better of him and he'd never once thought she might be so duplicitous. "A bit cowardly, don't you think?"
Ginny let her fingers wrap around the rake handle and clench. She breathed in through her nose and out through her mouth, letting her knuckles turn white as she fantasized about squeezing her hands around his neck.
"I'm… not… cowardly," she forced out, slamming her rake into the ground harder than she'd meant to, the tines sending splatters of the late Magical Creatures experiment flinging onto the cuffs of each of their pants. It was perversely satisfying to see his fine clothes marred by such nasty stuff. The satisfaction, however, was ruined by the sting of what he'd said.
"Well, you could have fooled me," he said airily, wondering what to do with this newly found sore spot of Weasley's. He was his father's son, after all, and thinking of ways to use others' weaknesses… well, it was simply standard.
It didn't hurt him when he was trying to talk his way into getting some arse, either.
He frowned and straightened, wondering where the hell that thought had come from. Two different things, that, manipulating Weasley and talking himself into some bird's bed.
"That's because you're a fool," she said pointedly, picking up a shovel and throwing Flobber-debris into the hod. She'd briefly considered throwing it on his back, but then that would start more speculation that she was a coward.
She frowned, thinking it over. She'd only hexed him in the back because he'd turned and ran like a whinging first-year girl. That could hardly be considered her fault.
"What I wouldn't give to have my wand to prove you wrong," she said, scooping up a too-heavy load of waste and nearly toppling with it. She stumbled, ran into him, smacking hip to hip and stepping on his foot as he reached out one arm to steady her.
Didn't want her to spill that mess on him, after all.
Embarrassed, she shrugged away from him, spilling half of the shovel's contents but carrying her blessedly away from his touch.
"You'd be much more impressive if you could prove me wrong without the wand," he noted, just to see where it would take him. He saw a few snowflakes gathering in the spots they'd managed to scour and he looked up, realizing the flurries were just the beginning.
If he was going to clean up this mess and bait her, he'd have to act fast.
Ginny moved away from him, down toward the water, raking aggressively and knowing her arms were going to ache too much to properly open her presents the next morning but not caring. She didn't appreciate being called a coward, but she appreciated even less being made to doubt herself. She glanced around, trying to find anything to prove herself-a tree to climb would have been her first course of action, silly and boyish as that was; it had always been her signal to her brothers that she was no less than them. But the trees were covered in ice and snow, and straggly-looking things to boot.
She was looking to prove bravery, not stupidity.
Unfortunately, all that surrounded them were water, trees, snow, and Flobber-slick dirt.
Something moved in the water behind her and she let out a little scream, her feet trying to carry her away from the water's edge and farther up the bank but slipping in the slimy mixture. She slid, planted her rake for purchase, and slid more.
His quick reflexes saved her again and he caught her with one arm around her waist, the amusement on his face all too clear. "Some Seeker you'd have made," he crowed. "Can't even stay on your own two feet." She swung her rake at him and, predictably, nearly lost her balance again.
He threw his head back and laughed at her, his loud show of mirth-if he even had anything that resembled a sense of humor-echoing a bit. "Too priceless," he said, gasping for breath. "It's positively ironic, Weasley, that in nearly the same breath as telling me you're oh-so-courageous, you're screaming about a frog in the lake."
"There are things in that lake," she hissed. "Things that would make even you look desirable, warm, and cuddly."
"You're… afraid… of the lake," he managed. Merlin's dungeon, he was afraid of the bloody lake, too.
But he'd found a vulnerability, a chink in the armor. He wasn't fool enough to let that pass.
"I'm not afraid, I've just some sense," Ginny said, but she was starting to feel more and more miserable. He was making her sound like such a bloody girl, a whinging, cringing, need-a-man-to-protect-me girl.
Bloody hell.
"If it were summer," she said bravely, "I'd get into that lake and prove to you I'm not afraid." There. That sounded fantastic. After all, it wasn't summer, and even he wasn't sadistic enough to suggest-
"Why waste your days on speculation?" Draco said heartily, choking back the laughter that wanted to come at the thought of her so much as sticking a toe into the lake. "No time like the present, Weasley. Buck up. It's so cold, you'll only feel it for a moment."
Ginny's eyes widened and she opened her mouth to protest. Nothing more than a wheeze came out, and even that was lost in the wind howling around them. "I… no."
"Why?" Draco asked, his eyes glinting. "Are you afraid?"