*Author's Note: This is one of two new chapters posted today. If you haven't read the previous, go do that first. :-) *
CHAPTER TWELVE - Voldemort's Soufflé
She stood with her head high and her shoulders back as she gave three polite raps on the door of the mansion that had once represented everything she had once feared as a child, and everything that had once loathed her.
She wasn't certain those feelings had ceased, because as the seconds ticked by and she waited for someone to answer the door, she could feel the fear, the anxiety, creeping through her, sliding in jittery fingers up her straight spine, threatening to send a shudder wracking through her. Certainly meeting with her brother hadn't helped to mind at her ease, it had only made her less sorry for what she'd done. It couldn't be helped, damn it-she hated them for thinking uncharitably of her, the Golden Trio. Or two-thirds of the trio, at least. At least Ron had the stones to be honest with her, up-front with her.
Thinking of Hermione- in love with Harry, and for how long?-made Ginny a little sick at heart. It was simply so right, the two of them. And somehow, that rightness made things final. If she'd not been completely shut of Harry before, she was certainly shut of him now.
Now, his life would start to work out as it was undoubtedly meant to.
The door jerked open far too quickly, startling her and making her toes curl back in her sensible, closed-toed black shoes. When her breath recovered from her gasp, she leaned forward and spoke. "You answer your own door?" she asked incredulously, unable to think of anything suitable to say. She'd expected a house elf, and instead what she'd gotten was an irked-looking Draco, his white shirt rolled up to the elbows, his black slacks dusted with something white and powdery. It was his turn to have bare feet, the long, strong toes of one foot tapping impatiently on the cold tile entryway.
"Yes, I answer my own door," he said tersely. He was none too fucking happy about it, either. He wasn't really all that pleased with how the entire evening had turned out, and greeting her with pants in need of a good scourgify and bare feet wasn't his idea of playing a good host, or even making a good representation to a woman you'd shagged. Dammit, he'd not wanted her to accept, anyway, and now she was standing on his doorstep looking prim and proper in a black sweater, high of neck and long of sleeves, and some sort of denim skirt that went all the way to the disgustingly prudish shoes she was wearing. Taking no chances, he thought with a smirk. As though he'd repeat his mistakes. He'd not be beholden to her again. "Are you coming in?"
"Where are your house elves?" Ginny asked, craning her neck to look around him. A Malfoy answering his own door. It was just weird.
Draco heaved an exasperated sigh and stepped back from the door, leaving it hanging open in case she figured out how to step over the bloody threshold.
"My mother has taken them to France," he said, his inflection alone making the country name sound like an insult. "So they can carry her bags as she shops."
Ginny finally stepped into the foyer, reluctant but unable to hear him very well standing outside like a lunatic. His mother was in France, the house elves were gone…
"Were you hoping for a chaperone?" he snapped, stepping around her to swat the door with one hand. It slammed shut, its noise echoing up the multiple stories, making him wince and her jump.
"No," Ginny said, drawing herself to her full height. "I was wondering who cooked dinner, if your elves are gone."
Who cooked dinner? How the bloody fuck did she think he'd managed to get flour all over his slacks if he didn't cook? "Lord Voldemort," he said dryly. "He's a temperamental bastard about his kitchen, but his soufflés are unparalleled."
Ginny gaped at him for a moment and saw the unthinkable-the beginnings of a smile twitching at the corner of his mouth. More likely it was only a smirk, but in its beginning stages, it certainly looked like a smile.
"Me!" he finally shouted. "For Merlin's sake, I'm cooking!" If she wasn't going to come to the conclusion, he'd bloody well tell her. He wanted credit for roasting his arse off in that behemoth of a kitchen trying to figure out how to do the simplest things.
"That explains the flour," she retorted, her eyes skipping down to his slacks. It was an easy gesture, a natural one, if a bit awkward once she'd skated her eyes down. She knew a bit too much about what lay that way, so she looked back up at him and laughed, rolling her eyes.
It was too easy, she thought, to look at him like this, in his bare feet and his smudged pants, that half-smile, and feel all right. It was too easy to feel comfortable.
So she toppled that particular tower with the simplest nudge. "Before anything else happens, I want to apologize."
He'd started to turn, to head back to the kitchen to make certain the ham he'd attempted to glaze hadn't actually turned into a live pig or something equally probable. Her words stopped him in his tracks, and he felt his molars grind together independent of his will.
She was apologizing, was she?
He just imagined he knew what for. Instead of giving into the certainty that she was about to apologize for participating in a particularly memorable shag, he continued walking toward the kitchen, hoping she didn't notice the hitch in his step. "Did you finally see the light, then? Feeling guilty over all those hexes back in fifth year?"
Ginny scurried to keep up with him, her cheeks burning with the effort it took to muster the words she wanted to say. "For using you," she said. "For the other night. I should have-I could have-said no."
That did stop him, and he turned on her so quickly she recoiled. "Could you?" he said, his voice set in a tone of deceptive mildness. When she didn't answer, his jaw set firmly and his eyes narrowed. "Save your post-coital guilt for someone else, Weasley. If I feel I have been wronged, you will know with unequivocal certainty."
It quite ruined the dramatic effect, he thought, when he had to lean down and pull a ridiculous pig's carcass from a heated box with a pair of insulated gloves. He'd tried moving the food with his wand at first, discovering altogether too late that floating a pan of potatoes was not quite like floating a quill. For one, a quill did not care if you tipped it from side to side.
For another, a quill was not ruined if you dropped it on the floor.
Ginny chewed her lip restlessly in the doorway of the kitchen, wondering what in dungeons she was going to say now. He'd thrown off the whole carefully planned apology she'd formulated, and now she was stuck with the altogether not-unpleasant-enough task of watching him cook.
"Would you fancy a bit of help?" she asked, nearly desperate to say something.
And to be needed would be nice, she thought before she could stop that particularly dangerous idea. To be needed just a little bit.
It's only Harry that's bothering you, she told herself as she waited for his answer. At the moment, he seemed to be far too busy settling a ham big enough to feed forty-five people atop the stove. Finally, once he'd managed that seemingly Herculean task, he turned to her.
"I'm doing fine," he snapped, annoyed with her presence, annoyed with her bloody apology, and annoyed with the prospect that she'd have had a very clear view of his arse only moments ago, if she'd cared to look, and of course, she didn't because she was hung up on Potter and a bloody prude, to boot. "Besides, how am I to know you've any culinary skills?"
"I cooked dinner for you just nights ago," Ginny retorted, stepping forward to nudge the ham to the side so it didn't drip all over the pudding perched beside it. "And while it may not have been the most memorable cuisine you've ever had, I'd think certainly you could remember it."
"Perhaps I could," Draco said, putting his quilted-mittened hands to his hips and glowering down at her. "If there hadn't been other things going on."
How tempting would it be, he wondered, to just kiss her right here, where they were face-to-face and she wouldn't be taken by surprise, where it was already warm and heady from the smell of her added to the smell of what he'd cooked?
So easy, he thought, trying to hold onto that scowl.
"We are not having sex," Ginny said matter-of-factly.
"Well, no, not right at this given moment," Draco said back, cursing inwardly. She was a ball-breaker if ever he'd seen one. Pansy at least made a man feel like a king before asserting her queenliness.
And what the bloody blue blazes did it matter to him what sort of activities Ginny Weasley got up to with balls, anyhow? It wasn't as though he wanted her mucking about with his.
Though the thought nudged the temperature in the kitchen up incrementally.
"Tonight!" Ginny exclaimed exasperatedly. "We are not having sex tonight! Or any other night, for that matter!"
"Except the other night," Draco shot, wanting to wrap his gloved hands around her neck and throttle her.
Why in hell was he still wearing those gloves?
No wonder she didn't want to shag him.
"We are not having sex any night in the future," Ginny said through her teeth, wondering how the conversation had managed to get so single-tracked and completely off the level at which she'd intended to keep it. Respectful, she'd told herself. Apologetic.
Not snappish and juvenile.
"Well, you may have already gone through your entire repertoire," Draco said, shoving past her with potatoes and slamming them on the massive table in the dining room, "But I assure you, I have not."
He didn't really know what had gotten into him, only that he agreed with her, and it brassed him off to no foreseeable end. It was all well and good for him to decide things had been a glitch, and that things, such as they were, were over. But it was certainly not all right for her to decide it and be in total agreement with thoughts he hadn't even voiced yet.
Those were his thoughts, damn it. And he'd thought women were supposed to cling after sex, not proclaim their independence. He was afraid he'd chosen the wrong woman in whom to seek old-fashioned behavior traits.
So, just because it was his prerogative, as a Malfoy and as a man, he did what seemed most rational to him.
He decided to switch sides completely and disagree with her.
Just for the sake of argument.
Not because he really thought they should have sex. He made a ham, after all. They'd have ham.
He was losing his mind.
"Draco, honestly, I'm not trying to make this difficult." Ginny eyed him slamming dishes onto the table like a man possessed and wondered if perhaps he'd spent too much time in the heated kitchen. He looked positively feverish, if not downright mad. "I'm certainly not trying to offend you-"
"Careful, Ginevra, if you're worried about offending me, you might actually end up liking me, Merlin forbid," Draco said, throwing down a handful of silverware and trying to remember in what idiotic configuration the house elves had been setting it in. It seemed as though every week, the silver took on a new placement in order to "facilitate good fortune," one of them had proclaimed, much to Narcissa's delight and Draco's disgust.
He grasped a fork between the thumb and hand portion of the quilted mitten and dropped it on the floor.
Just watching him was painful, Ginny thought, and wondered why. It had to be the horrible clumsiness in the kitchen, ineptitude of a magnitude she'd never witnessed, not even in Ron. She stepped forward, shaking her head, and grasped the ends of the mitts he had on, drawing them off and laying them to the table.
Before she could pull her hands away, he had them trapped in his.
Now he was comfortable, he thought. With his hands on hers, and that wary look in her eyes, he felt much more in control. And just to be contrary, just for argument's sake, he wondered if he could make her warier.
He skimmed his lips over the backs of her hands and waited to see what happened.