Hurt Loves

Hurt Loves

Chapter 8

Aravaeya

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Right, yes, I know! It’s been a month! I know! But I had a wonderful time in the States if any of you care, and I finally have a chapter ready for you. Damn, this story is way longer than I ever expected it to be!

But first, as always is the case when I get a batch of amazing reviews, I must thank each reviewer personally. (Review for ff.net reviewers taken out)

AND NOW ONTO THE STORY!

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“Ginny,” she says, her voice comforting. I make no move, and I feel her hand touching my cheek, guiding it upwards so that I am looking directly into her eyes. “Ginny, I’m not angry. I already know.”

I look up sharply, hiccupping once, loudly, at the sudden movement. “W-what? You know? How?” (Author’s insert inspired by a reviewer: “Are the walls in this castle really that thin?”)

“Well, I didn’t actually think that you’d gone quite that far,” Hermione says, shrugging slightly and putting her arm around me, “But I heard parts of the whole story from a certain boyfriend we all know and sometimes love.”

I clench my fists together in an attempt to curb the anger washing through me. “Harry told you? He told you! That bag of chicken shit! I-I-”

“Ginny,” Hermione interrupts, looking into my eyes, “He was angry, and he was hurting. It’s not really an excuse to betray something that personal, but take that into account. He told me about the fight that you had, and he was mad at you. He wanted retaliation, revenge, and so he told me. I’m sure he didn’t tell me the whole story, but enough that I got the gist of what’s been going on and where you’ve been going off to. I’m sure he regrets it now and wishes he hadn’t told me. He seemed to last night.”

“So you know and you’re not angry with me?” I ask, hardly daring to believe it.

“Well, not anymore,” she replies, grinning wryly at me. “I was a bit more upset last night, and you’re incredibly lucky I didn’t get my hands on you, but I’ve had the entire night to think things through, and I’m not as angry anymore.”

“How can you not be as angry, Herm?” I ask, glancing away from her to let my eyes be dazzled by the red flames of the fire. ‘I lied to you, I didn’t tell you where I was going, what I was doing, who that owl was from!”

“Gin, I would have done the same if I was in your place, believe me,” Hermione replies, and her words soothe my weakened spirit. “Do you want to tell me everything that’s happened between you, and how your ankle fits into the story?”

I grin through my trickles of tears and start my story once more.

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“Maybe you should go next door and see how Draco’s doing, you’ve been here for quite awhile,” Hermione says, flicking a strand of her long brown hair away from her face as she settles back a little more snugly into the couch.

“But what am I supposed to do about Harry, Herm?” I ask, folding my blanket into a neat square and placing it onto the arm of the setee. “And what should Draco and I do about keeping him safe?”

Hermione gets up and helps pull me off of the couching, looking thoughtful. “Harry will cool down in time and the two of you will be able to sort things out, but about Draco…Why don’t you over there, clean him up and get him presentable and I’ll come over in half an hour and we can talk about the possibilities?”

“Okay,” I say after a moments hesitation. Hopefully I can prepare Draco for the intrusion of yet another unwanted person into his room. I lean in and give Hermione a light kiss on the cheek as she shows me to her door. “See ya in a half hour. Oh, and the password is buttercup.”

I hear her let out a burst of laughter and I know that she’s going to ask why that’s his password, but I’m already gone.

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“Draco?” I ask quietly as I slip back into his bedroom. I get no reply, so I slowly walk up closer towards his bed. Sprawled out across the middle of the large bed is the boy that I am looking for. The covers have been completely thrown aside save for a sheet which just manages to cover the necessary bits from my wandering eyes. Do I wake him or not? I deliberate for a moment and then move towards the bed. I reach out to gently shake him when I am startled by a sudden movement, He flings his arm out across the remaining unoccupied space on the bed and utters a loud snorting sort of noise. I can’t hold back a torrent of laughter at the ungodly noise and cover my mouth with both of my hands to try and stifle the noise, but to no avail. Draco stirs and one of his eyes drifts open, taking me in. He smiles at me and reaches out a hand towards me.

“What’s so funny?” He asks, attempting to pull me onto the bed. “Care to share?”

“Y-you snorted!” I exclaim, falling into a fit of giggles once more. The look on his face is utterly priceless, a mixture of incredulity and horror, but he does not reply, choosing instead to turn an amusing shade of ‘embarrassed crimson’. I lean over and press a soft kiss to his lips. I’m still a little shy about all of this, despite last night. It was…interesting. It wasn’t like the Witches Weekly Top Ten Romance Novels where the man and woman come together for a perfect night of…perfectness? No, Draco and I are, to my utmost relief, much more human. We had our share of awkward moments, but thankfully, we laughed. Laughter is always the best medicine.

“How was your talk with Granger?” Draco asks me after pressing a kiss of his own to my mouth.

“Hermione,” I correct him in a gentle voice. “She’s my best friend, and her name’s Hermione, not Granger.”

Draco purses his lips and nods slightly. “Hermione.”

I smile and kiss his cheek as a reward and then settle back down onto the bed next to him so that we’re each facing each other with our heads resting on our elbows. “When I got there, Harry was there, and apparently, he’s still furious with me, because he kept throwing me dirty looks and wouldn’t come near me--”

“You don’t need bloody Harry Potter anyways,” Draco interrupts me, contempt spilling out in his voice. I silence him with a gentle finger to the mouth.

“He’s my brother.”

“He’s not your brother, Ginny, he’s your brother’s best friend,” Draco says in an effort to correct me.

“No, he’s my brother,” I reply, sticking to my earlier statement,  “He’s more my brother than any of the other brother’s I have.”

Draco watches me with his silver gray eyes, waiting for me to continue.

“I told Hermione about us--”

“Was she angry?” Draco interjected.

“—No, she wasn’t, thank goodness. She had already known, so I filled in the details for her. And we talked about what you should do to stay safe.” I really hope that he won’t be angry that I’ve agreed to her coming over here.

“Did she have any ideas?” Draco asks, pulling himself up into a sitting position, causing the sheet that was covering to fall just a little lower than would be considered safe. I avert my eyes, trying to coax myself into thinking of something other than…that…at this time.

“She’s coming over here in about twenty five minutes to discuss it with us,” I say, inwardly holding my breath. He just looks at me in silence for minute and then slowly nods his head, as if accepting the fact that along with me comes my friends, no matter how much he dislikes them.

“I better take a shower,” he says, and he leans over, pressing a series of feather-light kisses across my face, letting me know that all is forgiven and that he is not angry with me for allowing Hermione to come – and why should he be, after all, she is coming to help him. But I suppose there are some fights which are never quite put to rest. I hope that this is not one of them.

He squeezes my hand and slips out of bed, grabbing his robe to cover himself as he walks to the bathroom. I smile to myself, amused by his shyness around me, but acknowledging to myself that if it was me who were in that position I most likely would have done the same thing. Both of us are quite shy in our own ways and will probably creep around each other for awhile, neither of us really ready to be completely open and carefree just quite yet.

I hear the shower turn on in the bathroom where the door is still open – I smile at this, feeling a very naughty urge to go and peek – and I glance around the room, attempting to find some useful endeavor to pass my time until Hermione comes. As I survey the room around me, it suddenly strikes me as looking like a place where two people recently had slept together. There are clothes in all sorts of strange places – why is my pajama top hanging from an arm of the chandelier? – a chair is tipped over, the bed is an absolute wreck.. I blush furiously at the memories of how these things came to be that way flow unbidden into my mind, and I quickly set about making the room appear presentable. I find all the clothes we discarded  as well as all sorts of items of clothing that Draco has just left lying around from the past couple of days and place them in the basket for soiled laundry that is just inside the bathroom. I pick up the chair – which was on the wrong side of the room as well, only God knows why or how it got there, I certainly don’t remember anything about a chair – and maneuver it back over to the correct place, arranging all the chairs properly around the table. Surveying the piles of papers on both the dining table and the coffee table, I glance around the room, looking for a place to put them where they won’t get lost. My eyes fall on the writing desk in the opposite corner of the room. I gather up all of the papers and books into my arms and carry them over to the desk, lifting up the cover and depositing them inside. Next is the bed. I wander over to it, and over the course of the next few minutes – the bed is extremely large, do not forget, therefore taking a long time to make, especially by one’s self – I straighten it out, rearranging the sheets and the beautiful duvet on top. I tie back the curtains, finishing the last one just as I feel a hand slip around my waist.

I draw in a deep breath, slightly surprised at Draco’s actions – I hadn’t even noticed it when the noise of the shower had ceased to reach my ears, another sign of how distracted and deep in thought I was -  and I turn to face him. He looks good enough to eat, his blond hair combed loosely behind his ears, his black t shirt just tight enough to reveal his incredible seeker’s body, and his muggle Adidas track pants, not anything special in themselves, but completing his scrumptious image perfectly. He grins wickedly at me and pulls me to him, his mouth coming down directly upon my own before I even process what he’s doing. I groan into his mouth, overwhelmed with all of these new sensations that I don’t ever think that I will tire of. His other arm winds around my waist as well, pulling me closer to him so that I molded to his body. I move my arms from their resting place on his chest and place them at the base of his back, surreptitiously allowing them to creep gently underneath his t-shirt to caress the bare skin of the small of his back as he tilts his head against mine even more, his tongue penetrating my mouth.

“Ginny,” he whispers against my forehead as we separate to draw breath.

“Mmm?” is all I manage to say, my mind to preoccupied with what he’s doing to me with his hands.

“I’m so glad you found me in that hallway,” he replies, his lips drifting across my cheeks and nose lightly and softly before coming to rest once more on my seeking mouth.

“Me too,” I murmur in reply, backing away to plant a soft kiss on his jaw line as he entwines his fingers within the messiness of my massive bun. “Me too.”

He grins at my repetition and brings his hands around to cup my face, palms warm against my flushed cheeks. “Think we have time for a quick go before Hermione gets here?”

I turn crimson and my eyes widen involuntarily at his proposal, but I roll my eyes as I realize he is only joking. His eyes are sparkling with mischievousness and a streak of desire and he leans down, his lips perilously close to my ear, to whisper something to me. “Believe me, Ginny, if she wasn’t coming, there would be nothing stopping me.”

Instead of replying, I pull his face down to mine, fusing our lips together once more, and we allow ourselves to get lost in our enthusiasm. He walks me backwards until the backs of my thighs are pressed against the side of his bed, and he pushes me back onto it, following me so that he is lying on top of me. I feel warm, savored, content. I feel…loved?

“Ahem.” Hermione’s voice is unmistakable.

“Shit,” Draco exclaims quietly against my lips.

Draco and I look up, moving away from each other in a desperate attempt to put as much distance between us as we possibly can as if that by doing so we can erase our actions from our visitor’s mind. I know that I am red, I can feel it, and I feel remarkably like the child whose hand got stuck in the cookie jar and was caught trying to sneak a cookie. I grin slightly at Hermione, and suddenly my face morphs into one of horror, because there, standing next to Hermione in all of his superior glory is none other than…Harry.

“Harry?” I squeak out, chancing a glance at Draco, and I can see that Draco has seen both of my friends because he is desperately trying to avoid eye contact with either of them.

Harry just looks at me, his face expressionless, a mask that I cannot, for the life of me, read. I move my gaze over to Hermione, who is standing right next to him, an smile playing around her lips and an amused glint in her eyes. It is she who breaks the embarrassed silence that has descended upon our small group. “Shall we sit down?”

I, who am closest to the arrangement of chairs, am the first to sit down. I sink back into the loveseat, and Draco sits next to me, although he is careful to leave a respectable amount of distance between us. Hermione sits in the wingback chair next to me, to the right of the couch, and Harry, rather than sitting in the wingback chair next to Draco on the left side of the couch, opts for standing behind Hermione’s chair, in an oddly protective manner, as if he expects Draco to grow fangs, or wings, or make some ludicrous attack at any moment. Hermione does not argue with his decision, and turns to face us, her face relaxed, her eyes warm and caring, soothing out some of the tension in the room, at least for me anyways.

“Malfoy, I hope you don’t mind us coming here to discuss your – unfortunate predicament,”  Hermione starts, looking directly at him. “And I hope we didn’t interrupt anything too important.”

Draco turns his eyes to meet hers from where they were resting on the heirloom clock on the mantelpiece, eyes a little wider than usual in surprise at Hermione’s play of words. “No, nothing was interrupted, and,” he pauses for a moment, eyebrows furrowed in what looks to be intense frustration, as if he’s trying to figure out how to do or say something, “T-thank you for coming.

A satisfied grin blossoms across Hermione’s face as she processes Draco’s words of thanks, and even Harry looks stunned. I can just see the thought’s running through his head, “Malfoy, saying thank you? Has Ginny threatened him with the Death Penalty if he’s not nice? Has he lost his mind?” I must say that I am quite proud of him. I know that it is not easy for him to say thank you, especially to people whom he has had an on and off bitter feud with from practically the first day of their schooling here at Hogwarts. But then again, things do change. I don’t think that Draco’s the person that he was when their differences started, and to be honest with you, I don’t think that Harry and Hermione are the same people that they were when they started at Hogwart’s either. For one thing, Harry has softened a lot since he and Hermione became inseparable. He’s not as moody and doesn’t get as angry about things, which seems a funny thing for me to say taking into account the major spats that Harry and I have being having on regular occasions recently, but it is true.

“You’re welcome…Draco,” she says, trying out his first name. I smile encouragingly at her, and she flashes me a small smile as she glances my way. I look to Draco and study his face, the set of his eyebrows, the angles of the corners of his mouth. He is skeptical, I think. “To be honest with you, I don’t think that the four of us are going to be able to come up with any wonderfully bright ideas. Your father is a smart man and I am sure that he would find you if you were hidden outside of Hogwarts. If you were hidden inside of Hogwarts I think that you might have better chances of staying hidden, but then again, your father can obviously get inside of Hogwarts as well, so even if you were kept here, I’m sure he’d find you.”

“So you’re saying that there isn’t anything that we can do,” Draco says, a slight edge in his voice.

“There must be something, Hermione. We can’t just do nothing! Think!” I say, trying not to let my desperation become too apparent in my voice. I feel eyes on me and as I glance up, I see Harry studying me with a curious, but soft expression on his face.

“I’m not saying that there isn’t anything, I’m just saying that I don’t think that hiding will work particularly well,” Hermione says, picking up my hand and giving me a small squeeze of reassurance.

“You think that there’s another way to keep me safe without hiding me?” Draco asks, disbelief clearly apparent in his voice.

“Yes, I do,” Hermione says, straightening the hem of her shirt as she speaks, something that I know is one of her nervous habits. “The Fidelius Charm.”

My lips form a perfect ‘oh’ as I recognize the name of the charm, and I see it on Draco’s and Harry’s faces when they make the connection as well.

“The Fidelius,” Draco says thoughtfully, furrowing his eyebrows in an interestingly Harry-like manner. “It could actually work, Granger.”

Harry growls at Draco and steps forward in a threatening manner, but Hermione holds up a hand to stop him, saying nothing of Draco’s use of the name ‘Granger’. “I think that we should talk to Dumbledore though. He has more knowledge about hiding people than anyone else I’ve ever heard of.”

Draco and I nod in agreement, although I can see on Draco’s face that if it were up to him and if he weren’t in such danger he would rather not go and see Dumbledore.

“When shall we go and see him?” I ask, glancing in between Hermione and a thoughtful looking Draco.

“Do you want to go and get it over with now?” He asks, glancing between me and Hermione. I nod in consent, as do Hermione and an obviously reluctant Harry.

Draco grabs a pair of trainers and slips them on as the rest of us stand up and get ready to go.

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“Hunkleberry Pops,” Hermione states as we stand in the corridor outside of Dumbledore’s office. Draco and I stand next to each other, behind Harry and Hermione, and desperately wait for the staircase to fully appear so that we can escape the hallway. Eyes everywhere seem to be peeking out at the four of us, and whispers were barely concealed as we passed. I know what’s running through their heads, ‘what’s Malfoy doing with Potter, Granger, and Weasley?’, but I didn’t think that their odd looks would bug me so much.

We step onto the staircase and make our way up to the door that conceals Dumbledore’s office.

“Ever been here before?” Draco whispers in my ear, taking my hand in his own. I can feel him trembling slightly, and his skin is deathly cold.

“Yes,” I reply, smiling warmly at him as the door swings open before us. We slowly walk inside and I  watch Draco take in the room with wide eyes.

“Miss Granger and Mr. Potter, what a pleasure,” Dumbledore’s voice calls out from behind his desk. I hear him get up as we enter the room, and I see him give my friends a beaming smile. And then his gaze turns on Draco and me. He doesn’t seem at all surprised to see us here, or at all surprised by the fact that we’re holding hands, which I am positive his sweeping gaze took in because his mouth twitched up into a smile slightly as he passed them. “And Miss Weasley and Mr. Malfoy. Very nice to finally see you two here together. I’ve been wondering when you would come…”

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What did you think? Horrible? Okay? Yes, I know it’s not as good as I would have like, but it’s hard to write a good fanfiction, damnit! But I do try! :) And you know the drill. Reviewing makes me sooooo happy!