AUTHOR'S NOTE: This is one of at least four pieces, so I hope you enjoy chapter one. `The Draco and Ginny Show' is a story by Asparagus on PORTKEY.ORG
DISCLAIMER: `The Draco and Ginny Show' is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books, Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No copyright or trademark infringement is intended.
Chapter One - Warning Signals
Ginny stood in the alleyway, her hands in the pockets of her coat. Her cheeks were flushed red from the cold, not from the little screaming match she had just participated in a few moments ago. She bit her lip, looking up from the snow to the figure that was beside her. Draco Malfoy. After all this time, it seemed they could never spend more than a few moments in a room together without breaking out into a screaming match and then speak civilly to each other a few minutes later. It was bizarre.
"So..." She said, unsure of what to say.
He didn't dare say anything at this moment. His lungs scratched from screaming at the intensity that he hadn't experienced since he last talked to Ginny. He looked away, perhaps observing the people passing by. His fingernails dug into the pale flesh of his palms silently, mulling over how a casual meeting at a coffee shop could turn into this.
"So." He heard himself say.
"I said that already," Ginny said with a slight laugh, unsure of what else to say. Her voice hurt a little. She hadn't yelled like that in a long time. But then again, Draco always had a knack for infuriating her.
He bit his lip. "Well, then. There isn't that much more to say then, is there?" He turned on his heel slightly, not wanting to strike up another fight.
"I guess not," she said, crossing her arms. Then, she let out a slight laugh. "At least we didn't end up in a broom closet this time."
He turned back, a trouble-making smile on his lips. "We still could," he knew he should have kept the comment to himself, but couldn't resist.
Ginny snorted, rolling her eyes. What a stereotypical male answer. "Yeah, do you see any broom closets around here?" She was joking. Honestly, like she was just going to start snogging him.
He grinned, shaking his head. "Broom closets were definitely only for Hogwarts students. The popular thing now is to come to Draco's apartment. We had quite a bit of fun before, if I can recall correctly that you got a bit too excited, no?"
Ginny stared at him. "What do you mean I got too excited?" She asked a bit defensively. She most certainly did not get too excited.
A smile was still plastered on his lips. "You mean that you don't remember our last time in the closet together? I would happily reenact it with you, if you'd like..."
"Of course you would," she said, rolling her eyes. Is that all a guy had on his mind? "And even /if/ I got 'too excited', I was young, stupid, and hormonal."
"And you're not anymore? That's such a shame." Knowing that he wouldn't get any further with the girl, and quite disappointed at that, he got ready to leave. "If you ever change your mind..."
Ginny made a noncommittal noise, looking at him from the corner of her eye. "You know, you give up a lot sooner than you used to," she commented airily.
"Would you let up if I persisted?" He asked cheekily, stepping towards her and eyeing hopefully.
"I don't know," she said, shrugging her shoulders. It was cold out. Freezing actually. 'I need my couch and a warm blanket,' she thought. "I don't go for quitters," she said, looking up at him, a smirk on her face.
"Come to my place for uh... some more coffee, then?" He watched the cloud of air come through her lips as
she breathed.
Ginny looked up at him, watching him carefully. "I guess so. I don't like standing out in the snow much."
"We could Apparate, but it's a few blocks away from here." He was relieved that she actually okayed him on one thing. He would have to work on her more in a bit.
"Well, if it's not far, we could walk," she said, putting her hands in the pockets of her coat. "At the risk that we'd get into another verbal abuse session..."
He laughed quietly. "I promise I'll try not to do any thing to get on your nerves if you aren't to harsh on me?" He took a few steps in the general direction of where they were going, then stopped to wait for her.
"Eh," she said, wrinkling her nose and following him. "I'll try, I suppose. But no promises." Ginny laughed slightly, looking down at her feet as she walked.
He kept walking. "Do you have a boyfriend?" He inquired in a way that he hoped seemed casual.
"If I had a boyfriend, I wouldn't be going to your apartment, now would I?" she said with a slight laugh. "The past experience with you would have been one of those warning signals going off in my head."
"You mean no warning signals are going off right now?" That was a relief.
"Possibly," she said vaguely, continuing to walk beside him.
He turned, going around a corner. "...So... no unexpected hexing if I try something?" He was being to the point, now. If he kissed her, assuming that she would allow him because she was going to his apartment willingly, and she put some kind of fatal hex on him, he wasn't sure if he wanted to go through with it.
"Are you saying that you are going to try something?" She retorted, a light smirk on her face. Ginny laughed slightly, shaking her head. She turned the corner as well, looking around the area to which they just entered. Ginny had not planned on hexing him, but if he got fresh with her, she just might.
"Right up here..." He walked up the few steps that led up to his door, and took a key from his pocket. Draco turned back to her, a grin on the lower half of his face. "I won't promise anything, but if I was about to do something like that, would an advice columnist such as yourself be able to give me advice to get to your heart?"
Ginny followed him up the steps, looking up at the building. She laughed slightly at his question and then pretended to be deep in thought. "Nothing comes to mind at the moment. Usually, I have to be able to know my toes are still attached to my feet to give out advice."
He opened the door, then moved slightly so that she could enter first. "Well, then. I'll get a fire going if you'd like, and maybe then you'll be able to think more clearly. Excuse the bit of.... mess." His apartment wasn't exactly messy, but as he would put it, 'cluttered' with papers from his store and other out-of-place items.
"Ah, once my feet are out of the snow I'm fine," she said, stepping into the apartment and looking around. "It's fine," Ginny said, rolling her eyes a bit. "You should see my place." Her apartment was littered with rolled up pieces of parchment, broken quills, and the like.
He pulled his own coat off, and it was practically soaked from the snow. Draco hung it on an old-fashioned coat rack a few feet from the door that they had entered. "May I take your coat?" He moved towards her, hands ready.
"Will I get it back?" She asked jokingly, but took it off anyway and gave it to him. "Such manners you've acquired!"
"Thank you, fine lady," he said mockingly, bowing slightly. He hung her coat, then strode over to his kitchen table. "And just to ensure that you don't think I'm TOO polite, I'll invite you right now to take off any other articles of clothing that you would like. Preferably most of them."
Ginny smirked at him. Deciding to be a pain in the ass, she took out the hair elastic that she had kept her hair up with. "My, don't I feel free now," she said, watching him walk over to the kitchen table.
"Would you like something to drink? We didn't even have the coffee before.... I have coffee, juice, strong alcoholic beverages..." He paused at the last one and winked at her briefly, deciding to ignore her act of putting down her hair.
"Do you have firewhiskey?" She asked seriously. Why the hell shouldn't she have alcohol? It was past noon and she didn't have to go to work or anything.
"Sure. Most important drink to have." He plucked a fairly large bottle of a clear liquid from his counter, about three fourths of the way full, and took two glass cups out. He poured a generous amount into both- what the hell, his store wasn't open tomorrow until later on.
"Of course," she said with a laugh. "But usually a gentleman would lie to lady about such a thing!" Ginny snorted, remembering the time that her grandmother had told her something like that. She had been nearly eighteen at the time.
He shrugged. "Would you like me to lie and say this is water? Very funny tasting water, that is?" He slid over to hand her a glass, and he took a gulp of his. Beck, what a horrible day he had had at work.
"Go ahead," she said with a slight shrug, picking up her glass then taking a generous sip. "I'm going to drink it anyway." She felt the liquor go down her throat. It had been a while since she had anything stronger than butterbeer. Almost three weeks now. She's not an alcoholic, if that is what you're thinking. She just...likes to go out and have fun once in a while.
"Sit down, sit down," he urged, pulling a chair out at the table for her and then plopping himself down.
"Don't get too drunk," he said with a troublesome smirk. "If you do, I'm not liable for anything that goes on."
Ginny sat down, taking a second to roll her eyes at his comment. "Mm. Yeah, might be a bad idea. 'Cause you might take advantage of me. Do naughty things. Then bum me out into the street without my coat where I'd catch pneumonia and no one would fine me. Then I'd die." Then I'd die." She always did have a vivid imagination.
"Of course not! Why would I do something as low as that? I'd drink just as much as you, and then we'd have a wonderful drunken time. Over there." He motioned towards the bedroom in his small apartment, and emitted a low laugh. "Then, of course, we don't HAVE to drunk to make a trip over there...." Draco eyed her a bit too slowly.
"Hmm. This from the boy who is making it blatantly obvious that he is giving me the once over," she said pointedly, shaking her head at him. She took another sip from the firewhiskey, feeling warmed up from the cold outside. Hence another reason why she asked for the drink: it rose your body temperature up significantly, so even a person covered in ice would get warm.
He drank deeply, then looked up. "Well, the boy is just wondering if the girl has the same figure that she did when they were in school together... its hard with so many clothes, though..."
Ginny stared at him a moment. "It's not like you saw much of my figure anyway." She smirked, laughing slightly. "Do you still have that shirt? It was quite comfortable." Taking another sip, she noticed her glass was less than half full now.
"I probably do, and you're welcome to try it on..." He put his glass down, now empty.
"Hmm - maybe later," she said, looking at the contents of her glass and then downing it. Ginny placed the glass down on the table then looked over at him.
"If I say... kissed you right now, would you be angry?" He asked boldly, leaning towards her.
"I don't know," she answered truthfully. Would she be angry if he kissed her? He'd done it before.
With that, he leaned closer to her, and kissed her. What was the worse that could happen by a girl whose senses were dulled a bit by the drink she had. Her lips were all too familiar.
Ginny kissed him back, feeling like she was almost sixteen again and in a broom closet at Hogwarts with him and not at the kitchen table of his apartment. The whole thing was kind of weird.
He moved even closer, a hand moving towards her as he tried to deepen the kiss. Almost all of the times that they had kissed had ended badly, and he hoped that this one would not.
Though her mind was a bit fuzzy, Ginny couldn't help but wonder if she was doing the right thing. Despite this, she allowed him to deepen the kiss.
He pulled away slightly, reluctantly, and managed to murmur, "Let's move to somewhere more comfortable..." It wasn't exactly fun in the position that he was leaning.
"Okay," Ginny said simply. She could always stop him later. If she wanted. And if she could still manage a comprehensible thought.
He took a few stumbling steps towards his bedroom, then turned back to her. "You're a big girl, now, eh? I don't have to stop for your own good?"
"Yes, stop. I still wear diapers and play with dollies," she said sarcastically, getting up to follow him. "But should I stop this, since you haven't reached manhood yet?" She was joking and it showed by the slight laugh she let out.
He shrugged, and headed into the other tiny room, waiting impatiently to follow. He had a small un-made twin bed. It would be crammed, but there was not other option.
Ginny let out a breath. That boy didn't have a sense of humor, did he? She followed him inside and looked around before standing there awkwardly for a moment. "Well, aren't you going to take advantage of me or something?" She asked jokingly.
"If you insist..." He stumbled closer, and slightly bent his head for another kiss, this one better than the last.
Ginny laughed slightly before she was cut off from him kissing her. Now that she thought about it (for a brief second), she had come to the same conclusion she had about...five years ago: He was a damn good kisser.
Draco shuffled his feet closer and closer to the bed slowly, waiting for the perfect timing to migrate to its surface. His hands began to roam. "May I see your Chamber of Secrets?" he asked in a rather naughty tone.
Ginny was a little disgusted by his remark, and was about to tell him so when his hands hit a patch of uncovered skin. She pulled away at the cold touch (probably from being outside so long). "You're hands are freezing," she breathed, slightly out of breath from all the kissing.
He rubbed his hands together. "Well, then. Help me warm them up." Draco wondered why this was taking so long.
Ginny saw the impatient look on his face. "A little anxious to get this over with?" She asked him, eyes slightly narrowed.
"Not at all," he protested, holding out his hands. "I warmed them, care to test to see if they're up to standard?"
"Hmm." Was her noncommittal reply. Being that she was totally starting to not make anymore sense, Ginny just closed the gap between them and kissed him, her hands wrapping around his neck and playing with his hair.
He couldn't wait any longer, and flopped back onto the bed, pulling her with him.
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