Disclaimer: Not mine. Get over yourself.
Note: A response to a challenge I found in the forums. It's short and sweet and to the point. Enjoy!
He raised the cup of coffee to his sculpted lips and took a scalding sip. His silver blond hair gleamed in the artificial sunlight, and his indecipherable eyes looked ahead without really seeing. On the other side of the hall, she stared at him without even noticing, just as she had every morning since school had commenced. She sighed, convinced she was thinking of her Herbology homework and not completely aware that she had just been caught red handed.
"It's rude to stare, Ginny," said a soft voice to her right. It barely carried over the din made by the rest of the breakfasters in the Great Hall, but it startled Ginny nonetheless. Fervently urging her face not to blush, she turned and found herself being scrutinized by the omniscient eyes of Hermione Granger.
Ginny blinked to clear her head, for she knew that to confront Hermione in a battle of wits, she would require complete coherency. "I wasn't staring," she said. "I was thinking about the Herbology report I have to start tonight." Which, when you get down to the thick of it, was partially true. "Besides," she added as and afterthought, "who in the name of Merlin would I waste the time to look at in here?"
Hermione's eyes flicked over to the Slytherin table and then back to Ginny. She scanned Ginny's face for any hint of falsehood and then, with a sigh, averted her attention to her plate. It was all Ginny could do to not show her relief. She glanced at Hermione again to make sure her inquiring mind was aptly subdued, and suddenly noticed how tired her friend looked. She hunched her shoulders as she read her issue of the Daily Prophet, her eyes looked like they could hardly stay open, and she barely touched her food. As curious as Ginny was, she wasn't very keen on having Hermione's focus directed toward her again and thus chalked her fatigue up to an overabundant workload, which Hermione was accustomed to committing herself to.
For the duration of the week, Ginny watched herself very carefully so as to avoid being caught again, but all thoughts of not thinking went out the window Monday morning.
She had noticed that he wasn't in his usual seat when she had tucked into her food, and she had tried to not pay it much mind. She had thought she was doing rather well, thankyouverymuch…until he walked in, of course. She had been conveniently looking up when his handsome form came through the doors. Immediately she noticed that he lacked his usual swagger as he made his way to his table. He looked utterly exhausted, and before she could stop herself, she was entertaining ingenious ideas of how she could manage to wake him up. She was absently twirling a lock of hair around her finger, her eyes trained on him with a hold that was seemingly unwavering…until a very exasperated Hermione appeared in front of her.
Ginny jumped as she plummeted back to reality. She opened her mouth to explain, but Hermione held up her hand and spoke first.
"I don't want to hear it," she whispered in a voice that betrayed more concern than anger. She took a seat next to Ginny and turned their chairs so that they were facing each other and so that Ginny had no option to look anywhere else. Hermione laid a copy of the Daily Prophet in Ginny's lap and said firmly, but gently, "Read."
Ginny looked down at the paper in her lap. On the front page was a picture of the Dark Mark hovering above a forest, a picture not unknown to accompany the Prophet's cover stories in the past three years. Ginny skimmed the article; it was written exactly like so many before it. Death Eaters had ravaged a Muggle town the night before and left six dead in their wake. These stories were published in such abundance that most had come to only look for the identities of the victims and then react accordingly. The rest was irrelevant.
Recognizing no names, Ginny looked up at Hermione again, confused.
"I was there last night," Hermione said wearily, "along with Ron and Harry. We saw the Death Eaters, Ginny. I think he was one of them." She looked across the Great Hall, but Ginny didn't budge.
"Not Draco," she whispered. Hermione looked back at her and raised a skeptical eyebrow, but Ginny was vehemently shaking her head. "Not Draco. He wouldn't, Hermione, he's different, he's--"
"How are you sure?" Hermione demanded.
Ginny opened her mouth to respond that she just knew, but she stopped herself. Hermione was right without even saying anything; the war was beginning to crescendo and would soon reach a climax that promised to be bloodier than any other was. The world had reached a point where running on instinct and "just knowing" simply wasn't good enough, and even though she very much wanted him to not be, Ginny knew it was highly probably that Draco wasn't on her side of the fence.
She closed her mouth and glared at Hermione, furious with her for being right and shattering her hopes. In one fluid motion, she scooped up her books and stood and stormed from the Great Hall, vowing to prove Hermione Granger wrong by any means necessary. After all, she couldn't always be right.
***
Twilight dusted the sky in pinks and lavenders that night as Ginny lay on her bed, alone in her dormitory. She hugged her pillow tight to her chest for comfort and thought about Hermione's accusation and the feelings that had erupted within her as a result. She realized that, despite the numerous excuses she had made over the past months, she had become infatuated with someone she was sworn to hate. She never even spoke to Draco to feel like she did about him, and yet here she was, skulking in her room because he was possibly a Death Eater. She should be out with the intrepid trio trying to vanquish him and his kind! And yet…and yet…she just couldn't bring her heart to believe he was evil.
Even since the incident with the diary and Tom's possession of her body, Ginny had acquired an acute awareness of all things bad. Yes, she had always despised Draco, but he didn't necessarily set off red flags and alarms in her head. Ginny sighed and turned on her side, looking out at the window and sun slowly surrendered the sky to the clutches of night. Her eyebrows came together in a decisive glare. There was only one way to find out if she was right.
***
"Ginny, I have homework to do. Is this going to take long?" Hermione whispered anxiously as Ginny pulled her by the arm through the library.
"Hermione," Ginny said, exasperated, "all of your homework for the next two weeks is completely caught up. You can spare me five minutes for this."
Ginny stopped them at a round table nestled between two imposing bookshelves. Hermione took a seat at the table while Ginny peaked around the corner created by one of the bookshelves. They waited like that in the silence for two minutes. Hermione had begun impatiently drumming her fingers on the table when Ginny turned back to her to whisper excitedly, "He's here, come on!"
"Who's here?" Hermione demanded, but Ginny had pulled her to her feet and they were catapulting around the bookshelf and into the chairs of another table. Draco Malfoy looked up at them in surprise.
"Can I…help you?" He asked, looking at the girls in utter perplexity.
"Have you ever killed anyone, Draco?" Ginny asked abruptly. Hermione turned to look at her in shock, her eyes wide in disbelief that Ginny would be audacious enough to ask an obvious Death Eater if he had ever -
"No," Draco said almost instantaneously, although he looked like he wasn't sure why he was saying what he was saying. Ginny turned proudly to Hermione.
"See?"
"How can we believe him?" Hermione demanded.
"He can't lie to me…" Ginny started.
"Gin, I know you trust him, but…"
"No, he CAN'T lie! I slipped some Veritaserum in his coffee…"
"You WHAT?" Hermione and Draco demanded in unison. Hermione instantly clapped her hands over her mouth at her sudden outburst and looked around in horror for Madame Pince. Draco was looking at Ginny with the oddest combination of confusion and admiration, and it emboldened her to continue.
"Draco, are you a Death Eater?" She asked.
"Merlin, no. I would never subject myself to someone else like that," he said, clearly repulsed by the thought. Ginny turned to beam at Hermione. The older girl rolled her eyes.
"Yes, yes, you told me so, congratulations. You stay here and ruin your record with Madame Pince if you'd like, but I'm not going to be removed from here," she said in a rush, and left them as quickly as she had spoken.
"You slipped Veritaserum in my coffee?" Draco said softly. Ginny turned back to him, and her heart skipped a beat when she realized they were the only two in the vicinity, and she was the one he was looking at that way. For the first time, she wasn't so sure about herself.
"Well, you see…I'd heard you might be on the Dark Side, and I didn't want to believe it, because that would've been terrible, so I had to find out, but I knew you would've said something about me minding my own secondhand business if I asked you, so this was the only way," she said before she could stop herself. Realizing that she was all but wearing her heart on her sleeve, she bit her lip and looked at him hopelessly.
"Wait, how would that have been terrible? What are you saying?" He looked more confused than he had to begin with.
Ginny contemplated her options for a moment, and in a sudden burst of courage, said, "Draco, do you love me?"
"No," he said simply, and Ginny's entire body slumped. "But…I could, I think," he added. She looked up, hopeful. He smiled and reached out to touch her hand across the table. She smiled back and turned her hand into his. The bells and whistles that went off in her head in that moment, along with the fireworks down in her stomach, proved better than any Veritaserum could that it was still possible to "just know" and, most importantly, that Hermione had been wrong.