The Hogwarts Polar Bear Club

where_is_truth

Rating: PG13
Genres: Drama, Romance
Relationships: Draco & Ginny
Book: Draco & Ginny, Books 1 - 5
Published: 14/12/2004
Last Updated: 18/12/2004
Status: completed

When Professor Snape has had enough of Ginny and Draco warring with one another, he confiscates their wands and gives them joint detention-- and an opportunity to best one another without magic-- on Christmas Eve.

Chapters

1. Punishment With Company

2. Memorable Holidays

1. Punishment With Company

**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?”

2. Memorable Holidays

**Author’s Note: Following is the conclusion of this year’s seasonal fic from me. I wish you all the happiest of holidays. Be warm, be safe, be happy. Share time with your family, your friends, or getting to know yourself a little better. Thanks to everyone who has read. You make writing rewarding.**

CHAPTER TWO – Memorable Holidays

She was fairly certain she could behead him with her shovel, if she tried hard enough. Instead, she satisfied herself with driving it into the ground hard enough to make the handle quiver. “Afraid,” she said in a low, measured voice, “Is what you’re going to be when I come out of that lake freezing cold and ready to tear you into pieces smaller than that,” she said, gesturing at the Flobber bits in the hod.

It wouldn’t be so bad, she told herself. No worse than the time Fred and George had put a Freezing Charm when she’d been trying to shower at home. She glared at Draco for an extra second or two, just for good measure, and stomped toward the lake.

She was already thinking about how best to throw him in bodily.

“Ah-ah-ah,” Draco said, his tone smug. He didn’t feel smug—he was surprised she was even entertaining the notion. What he really wanted was to prove a point, to prove she was a cowardly breed of Gryffindor, and her traipsing into the freezing lake wasn’t going to help him prove that.

So, like any man aware of the payoff, he raised the stakes.

“You won’t want to go like that,” he said, mock concern written all over him, in the wide-eyed expression and the solicitous tone.

She didn’t even want to ask. “Like what?” she asked, thinking of a long, hot bath and a nap under down comforters, a well-tended fire and a cup of chocolate.

Then she imagined pushing his head under the water of the bath, suffocating him with her comforters, booting him into the fire, and throwing the chocolate in her face.

It was amazing how good one’s imagination could make one feel.

“You’ll want to take your clothes off,” Draco said, and it didn’t matter if she was Ginny Weasley, if she was a Gryffindor, it wouldn’t have mattered if she’d just tried to use the Killing Curse on him—the thought of her stripping down on the banks of the lake, right out in the open, got his blood stirring.

She knew he was being an arse, the only trouble was, she couldn’t hear it in his voice now. No, his voice had dipped low there for a moment, in a sliding tone that insinuated a purr, and she suppressed a shiver.

“Now you’re just being a wanker,” she said angrily. “Take my clothes off, my arse.”

“Yes, you would have to take your clothes off your arse,” he said reasonably, the chore of cleaning the bank now forgotten. He leaned on the rake he held and watched her intently. “Give me one good reason why you wouldn’t take your clothes off. After all, you’ve no wand to dry them if they get soaked, and by the time you got back to the castle… well, you’d never make it back to the castle.”

Damn him, damn him, damn him if he didn’t have a point.

And a pointy face.

“You think that’s going to make me back down?” she asked, seeing that smirk on his face. “Think again, Ferret. If I do this, you have to promise to—”

“Stop calling you a coward? Certainly. Anything else? Absolutely not.” He wasn’t about to promise he was going to stop mocking Harriet Potter or the insufferable Mudblood, and he certainly wasn’t going to promise to turn his back and not watch.

Just for proof’s sake, of course. Besides, it wasn’t as though she’d actually do it.

Gryffindors’ sensibilities were far too easily offended.

He nearly fell face-first into the hod when she shrugged off her cape, sending her hair snapping with little crackles of charge as she hung the hood on the top of the shovel handle. “I’d ask you to hold my clothes,” she said snidely, leaning down and prying off her boots, “But you’d likely run away with them to try them on.”

His face flushed red, but he was too busy watching her undress to level a comeback.

All right, he amended. So she might have the gall to undress in front of him. Not a surprise. After all, he was certain shame wasn’t a word found in the Weasley family dictionary.

Ginny stood still for a moment, the wind already slicing through her jumper, blowing down the wide neck of it and making her shiver. Was it really worth it, to humiliate herself just for the sake of a little pride?

She thought of the Gryffindor lion, head reared back, undeniably proud, and she thought it was. Besides, knowing Malfoy, he’d probably run screaming the moment she had her jumper off. Then she could call him a coward and a poof.

Ginny gripped the bottom hem of the jumper, taking a deep breath and looking him in the eye. He was smirking, but was there something else there? A little amazement, perhaps? Something else? The thought made her blush and she welcomed the warmth of it, using it to propel herself into the upward tug of arms, the sudden blast of chill. Her nipples hardened immediately under the thin cloth of her bra, and she sucked in a shocked breath, her ribs standing out as she did so.

It was bloody cold.

Draco watched, his expression carefully blank—he hoped—as he saw her skin cover in gooseflesh, the strain of her nipples in defined points against the thin white cotton. Her skin was pale, the chill giving it a translucent bluish tint, and he thought he could trace each of her ribs with a fingertip, counting them clearly—

He let out an explosive breath, not realizing he’d been holding it.

He didn’t know if he could actually take this. But she’d grab the jumper off the handle any moment now, any moment.

“You act as though you’ve never seen a woman undressing before,” Ginny snapped, but she was mortified. No one, aside from a handful of Gryffindor girls, had ever watched her undress. There was a different feeling about this, one that made her shivering double and made her skin sensitive in addition to cold. It hurt to rub her hands over her arms, but she did it to keep herself moving.

“I certainly have,” Draco drawled, proud for the evenness of his voice. Every time she rubbed her hands over her arms, she pressed her breasts together and then made them rise and fall with the motion.

He rearranged his cloak, making certain it fell to his knees. He could feel the heat starting to build, that unbearably lovely anticipatory climb.

If she kept on taking clothes off, things were going to get distinctly uncomfortable.

But he wasn’t about to stop her.

She didn’t care for the tone of his voice. This was a big deal, damn it, and he sounded bored. Defiant now, she toed off her shoes, unsnapped her dungarees and shucked them off, hating her Gryffindor-red knickers and her knobby knees and the way the cold air seemed to make the hair grow on her formerly smooth legs and the way the blue veins were clearly visible on her ankles. She wished for a moment she could have that dusky, golden skin Hermione had, that shade of honey that seemed to retain its color year-round.

But no, she was milk-pallid with a bunch of spots.

She threw her dungarees over the top of the shovel and decided to take one more glance at him before heading down to the water.

He’d meant to tell her to take it all off, but Draco didn’t think he could make his mouth move. He was simply a seventeen-year-old, he told himself. He wasn’t supposed to have any control of this sort of reaction.

He just hadn’t expected to find the sight of her quite so appealing.

She was holding back her shivering as best she could, and she kept her head held high. She had a smooth form, he thought, long lines from head to toe, like a good broom. They stared at each other for a long moment, and he simply could say nothing, could only stare and know with a horrible kind of certainty that he’d asked for her to take her clothes off, and now he was going to be stuck thinking about it over holiday.

She moved first, eager to get away from that flat, cool stare, turning quickly away—Good Merlin, he thought, looking at her backside—and walking with already numb feet toward the water.

Ginny felt the frozen grass—this part of it thankfully Flobber-free—crunch under her toes, and she gave a little moan of discomfort. She was going to come down sick and die, just from doing this. And it would be all his fault. That, at least, was a little satisfying. She could bemoan his name on her death bed and say all the horrid things she wanted without getting in trouble.

She didn’t notice, and neither did he, that their banter had fallen silent, replaced by her shivering breaths and his shallow pants. Neither was aware of the other’s discomfort, both caught up in anticipating the actions or words or thoughts of the other. Wondering what he was thinking, the uncertain part of Ginny that longed like any other young woman to know how she was viewed by the world wondering how she looked to someone else’s eye, she found enough distraction to place one foot in front of the other, five toes hitting the edge of the water.

It propelled him into motion. He’d been tracing those fine veins around her ankles with his eyes, wondering if she had freckles there too pale to see, urging on the arousal that had started to creep on him, figuring if he couldn’t defeat it, he might as well encourage it, and then he saw the water lap over her toes.

Bloody hell, he thought, taking three long strides forward and letting his rake fall to the ground. She’s going to kill herself.

He hadn’t really thought she’d do it, and he’d been far too distracted by her body to pay attention to her expression.

He grabbed her by the arm, shocked at how cold it was, and pulled her away from the water, sending her feet sliding over the frost, her legs sprawling askew and spilling her into his arms. He turned her toward him quickly so she was no longer facing the stupid, bloody scary lake, his eyes fierce.

She’d have done it, he thought, looking down at her wide eyes, her blue lips. “You’re a fool,” he said harshly, giving her a shake. “What d’you mean to do, then, walk into the lake and drown and get my arse in trouble? Not a chance.”

The water had done something to her, made her toes shoot pain all the way up her limbs and her teeth chattered too hard to allow her speech. She shuddered uncontrollably, curling her toes under, hoping to retain a little warmth, and without even thinking about it, leaned into him, too cold to do otherwise. She needed her clothes, damn it, but right now he had his hands to her arms, and those long fingers of him were so hot they were nearly burning her, and it felt utterly fantastic.

“Fuck,” he said miserably as she stroked into him like a cat. He knew what she was doing and why, but his body was simply leaping at the contact, obeying a natural command ingrained thousands of years before.

He was only a teenaged boy, after all. How was he supposed to feel with a naked woman in his arms?

“This has nothing to do with you,” he said, wrapping his arms around her and feeling more than a little startled at how she felt there, how she fit, how small she seemed in the embrace. “It’s just… reaction.”

Ginny wished he’d stop talking so she could be warm and forget who the hell she was standing with, but it was nice, the feel of his arms around her. She’d get her clothes in just a moment, but for now she felt as though she could simply climb into his cloak with him. There was enough room for her. She entertained the notion and snaked one hand between the cloak and his jumper, feeling the soft material of both clinging to her hand.

Draco squeezed his eyes shut and hoped when he opened them she would be gone, and he wouldn’t have a naked Weasley in his arms with her hands roaming over his chest.

It didn’t work.

“I need to…” Ginny let out a sigh and plucked the material of his sweater between her fingertips and wished she wished he were someone else. “Get my clothes.”

“Hang on a tic,” Draco managed, trying to shift so she wasn’t pressed up against him, because things were going to get embarrassing any moment now if she continued to try and climb up his body and wrap herself around him.

This, he thought, is why wizards must always carry their wands. If he’d had his wand, well, he’d have hexed her long ago. Or at the very least, warmed her so she wasn’t sliding her naked thigh between his covered ones—

He yelped and thrust her away from him, feeling distinctly un-Slytherin. “All right,” he said in a near croak. “Look, Weasley, there’s something I have to do, and if you tell anyone, any of your stupid little friends, I’ll—” He interrupted himself by pressing his lips to hers and feeling her mouth tremble—from cold or something else—as he did so.

It simply couldn’t be helped. He was human, after all. Well, maybe a bit more than human, but…

She gave a kittenish moan as he tested the temperature of her lips with his tongue, and she thought maybe he could just keep her warm like this. He was practically duty-bound, wasn’t he? After all, it was his fault she’d stepped out there, and it was his fault they’d gotten detention in the first place—

“If you insist on buying those ghastly magical malfunctions from Hogsmeade, take them home,” Severus’s voice cut through the clear, cold air, quite apparently in the middle of chastising some of the students who’d come back from the village but who had not yet gone home.

Draco and Ginny jumped apart, mouths gaping, breaths rushing out to commingle in a large puff of condensation. “Your clothes,” Draco hissed, throwing her denims at her with all the gentility of a man who had not been kissing her only moments before.

“No, really?!” Ginny whispered sarcastically.

What had she been doing?! It was the cold, she thought, and the Flobber-fumes. She’d simply gone dotty for a few moments. It was all better now, save for the fact that her knees were at first too weak for her to alternate legs to slip into her pants, and save for the fact that she was still quite topless.

Her jumper hit her in the face, obscuring her view of Draco knocking the shovel over and tripping over it as he tried to catch her cape before it hit the ground. He barely succeeded, yanking on the cape and smacking himself in the arm with the handle of the shovel, still hooked in her hood.

“What are you doing?” she said, her voice muffled as she nearly stuck her head into the armhole of the jumper. One more stretching, she thought, couldn’t hurt. And how close had Snape been?

How much detention did one get for being nearly nude on the grounds, anyway?

She could almost imagine that Howler.

Almost.

“Give me my cape, arsehead,” she said crossly, gesturing for it as she wedged her feet quite uncomfortably into her trainers.

Draco shoved it at her, picked up his rake, and started working at the ground blindly, frankly not caring if she got the thing put on right. It wasn’t as though he had any concern for what was under her clothes.

“Well, well, what have we here?” Snape’s voice betrayed nothing, and the two teens were left wondering if he’d seen or heard anything.

“Nothing,” Draco said hurriedly. “Well, we’re cleaning, obviously, but other than that, nothing.”

Snape raised an eyebrow and wondered if perhaps the boy hadn’t gotten a rap or two in the head with the cane in his lifetime. He was acting positively daft lately. And in an unusual turn of events, the Weasley girl was silent.

The two of them, quite simply, made him very, very suspicious. He was willing to say they looked even guiltier without wands than they had with them.

It didn’t even bear thinking about.

“This is more than I’d expected you to get done,” Snape noted, and it was clear by his voice it wasn’t at all meant as a compliment. “Aside from that, I look forward to the castle being as blessedly empty as it’s ever going to get. Do not misinterpret and think I’m letting you go out of some misguided cheer for a celebration of an obese wizard with a flawed overabundance of generosity and an unfortunate taste for crimson vestments. It’s simply that I would like you out of my sight.” And away from each other, he thought.

They gave him the creeps. Not individually—no, when separate, Draco and Ginny were, respectively, a good student and a promising young witch. But together?

Well, there were some things that scared even Severus Snape, hardened Death-Eater.

When they both merely stared at him, he rolled his eyes and offered them their wands. “If you hex one another in my sight,” he said, “I will send you home in cages, chirping, barking, or croaking.”

“Thank you,” Ginny said meekly, accepting her wand from him and being careful not to brush hands with Draco—with Malfoy.

Draco took his and then they both stood still as though waiting for reprieve.

“Go!” Snape said, flapping his hands like an old woman scaring off crows. “Filch will cart away this mess.”

They started to walk away, both pairs of shoulders hunched, avoiding one another’s eyes, and Snape watched them with a narrow-eyed gaze.

He turned back to the bank to survey what they’d done, and his old, hardened heart performed an alarming jackknife in his chest.

Was that a sock on the ground?

~~~

There were roughly a million things she wanted to ask, but she didn’t really want to voice them. She couldn’t tell him not to tell anyone, because that just sounded unoriginal. He’d said that first, after all. And she couldn’t tell him it was his fault. He’d been wandless, and she’d been all too eager to prove her courage.

Ah-ha. There was something. “I told you I wasn’t afraid,” she said finally as they reached the doors of the castle.

They reached for the door at the same time, only to step back at the same time. “Oh, for Merlin’s sake,” he snapped, “Go.”

“Now you sound like Snape,” Ginny sniffed. “Though that’s no great surprise.”

“The sooner I get home, Weasley, the sooner I can forget today ever happened.” Not bloody likely, he thought. No, whether he was at home or at Hogwarts, he was fairly certain he had his bedtime story for the evening.

For some reason, that hurt her, just the tiniest little jab in her stomach. But she wasn’t above hitting back. “Forget what? There wasn’t anything noteworthy enough to remember.”

She started to glide past him to head up to Gryffindor Tower to gather her things and head home for her own family’s holiday. The place would be brightly-lit and stuffed from side to side with family, friends, and food.

Even he couldn’t dampen that.

But her phrase had stricken him as a challenge, and with an arm around her waist, he yanked her off the bottom-most stair, bending his fair head and turning her only slightly. She was forced to look up, and he was forced to look down, but the angle worked well enough for him, and he tried once more what he’d tasted only moments before.

Her lips were warm now, more pliant under his, but she still tasted like the snow. He touched the tip of his tongue to hers with the lightest of teases, thinking it appropriate—snowflake kisses—before he pulled away and gave her a gentle push to the stairs.

She was one step up before she could re-gather her wits, her fingertips pressed to her lips, chapped from the cold and swollen from his first kiss of earlier. She turned to face him, to ask him just what that had been, but he was already walking away, toward the dungeons, and his voice echoed off the stone walls.

“Have a tolerable Christmas, Weasley. Be sure to think of me.”

And damn him, now that he’d said that, she was quite certain she would.

~~~

“Pass this to Ron, Gin!” Fred tossed her a present, making her wince as she caught it. The last one he’d tossed had been an exploding fake Remembrall and she’d ended up with bits of ash in her hair.

“I never asked,” Ron said suddenly, smacking himself in the forehead. “How was cleaning up down by the lake?” He pitched his voice low so neither Arthur or Molly would hear him, and Ginny was grateful for that, at least.

She wasn’t really grateful for being put on the spot about her punishment with Malfoy. “Cold,” she said, shrugging.

“That lake,” George said, rolling his shoulders as though to relieve himself of something unpleasant. “I know they did challenges there and things, but it still gives me the willies.”

“Count me in on that,” Fred seconded.

Ginny gaped at the two of them. Had she really been putting herself in danger? Trying to sound casual, she laid the present aside for the moment. “You know, I figured if anyone’d been in there, it was the two of you.”

They changed horrified looks and then snickered simultaneously. George regained his composure long enough to speak. “The closest we ever came—”

“Was when we tried to convince the first years—”

“—That Hogwarts had a Polar Bear Club,” George finished, throwing an arm around his brother and collapsing into laughter. “We nearly had that Jorgenson git stark naked and in the drink,” he added between gasps.

“Polar Bear Club?” It sounded familiar, Ginny thought.

Percy pushed his glasses up on his nose, giving a disapproving sniff that clearly said You’d have been in trouble if I’d known that was happening. “Polar Bear Clubs are groups of Muggles who believe—perhaps rightly, perhaps not, no research has truly been done, to the best of my knowledge—”

“On with it, Perce,” Bill said from his corner of the room where he’d flung his long body sideways over a chair, one leg swinging back and forth lazily over the arm of the chair.

Percy gave his eldest brother a nervous glance and hurried on. “They believe nude bathing in icy waters is invigorating.”

Ginny masked her laugh with a cough. Invigorating might have been one word for it, if she’d gone ahead and done it.

Malfoy’s kiss had been rather invigorating, and the shock of hearing Snape’s voice had been downright energizing.

As she watched her brothers open their presents, Ginny kept the secretive smile to herself and wondered if she’d ever find the courage to tell her brothers Hogwarts really had almost had a Polar Bear Club.

She didn’t think swimming naked in the lake would have been half as memorable as what she’d gotten instead.

Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays!!!