To this day, Draco Malfoy still cannot pinpoint the day when his best friend became a genius. Blaise Zabini, however, is most definitely a genius. After all, he gave Draco the best advice of his life.
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"When she walks away from you mad… follow her."
"Healer Weasley, come on, wait up a second!" Draco yelled, running after his student.
"What do you want, Healer Malfoy?" Ginny asked, seething, never turning around.
"You could turn around and face me, for one, Ginny," he stated plainly. He immediately regretted asking her to turn, as now he could not ignore her tear streaked face.
"Look, you can't expect to be called in -"
There is a faint line between getting angry and being in a blinding rage, and Ginny knew that she was flirting with it. She simply could not wrap her mind around that fact that now, instead of spending her birthday with people she actually liked, she was stuck here at the hospital charting.
"Called in on every case, you mean?" Ginny interrupted, "You called me on my first day off in weeks to work explicitly on this case! You told me you wanted me on this case! Now, you're telling me to chart while Harold takes over my spot!"
"You can't have it your way all the time. Other people need the practice!" he told her exasperatedly.
"You called me in, Healer Malfoy, on my first day off in weeks, on my twenty-fifth birthday, no less, to tell me that I'm hogging the practice time of the other students?"
Draco opened his mouth as if to say something, only to close it and furrow his eyebrows.
"Your twenty-fifth birthday?" he asked softly.
"Yes, my twenty-fifth birthday, not that anyone else cared to notice. Funny, when I was picturing my birthday celebration, it didn't involved doing your charts. Obviously, I was wrong. Just let me go get this over with so I can go home and shower, Healer Malfoy," Ginny finished, struggling to hold on, to not break down.
Ginny turned on the heel of her favorite electric blue sneakers and strode down the hall, never looking back. She didn't know if she was delirious from lack of sleep, but she could have sworn that her boss, Draco Malfoy, looked apologetic. Of course, she thought, he did have a lot to be apologetic about.
**
What seemed like only five minutes later, the door of the room Ginny was in flew open. She looked up to see a harried Draco.
"Do you have any bloody idea how many rooms are in this hospital? Did you have to choose the very last one I look in to chart?"
She chose not to respond to his question. She remembered all to well what she had said to him earlier, and while she believed every word of it, he had every reason to kick her of the program if he so desired.
"Let's go, Ginny," he said, holding his hand out.
She looked at his outstretched hand, and then into his eyes, eyebrows raise in skepticism, never attempting to move.
Draco knew she was tenacious when working on a case, but had no idea that she held such grudges in her private life too.
"You can walk on your own two feet like a big girl or I'll drag you kicking and screaming behind me," he threatened.
She closed the folder and hopped off the bed. She looked at him expectantly and he stared back at her.
"Well," she said, breaking her silence, "where are we going?"
**
He had had no idea that it was her birthday today or he never would have called her in. In the few weeks that they had been working together, she had rapidly ingratiated herself as his favorite student. She was quick, decisive, and intelligent, all of the makings of a perfect Healer. He just thought that she might like the exposure to this case.
Unfortunately, he hadn't counted on Harold, another student, starting his rotation today, and since Harold was there first, he got the case. He figured that since he'd already called her in, she might as well make herself useful.
When he found out it was her birthday, his stomach bottomed out. Just because he had spent his last three birthdays in this hospital without any birthday cake did not mean that anyone else had to.
**
"Just follow me," he said, turning back from the direction he had just come from.
She followed him around corners, down staircases, and through doors that she never knew the hospital had. She eventually found herself in the basement. As they rounded one last corner, she saw a small table with a plate in the middle. There were two buckets turned upside down and he pulled hers out for her to sit on. He took his seat after she took hers.
"Look, Ginny, I had no idea it was your birthday today. If I had, I would have never called you in," he started, raking his hands through his hair and looking distinctly uncomfortable.
"It doesn't matter," she replied apathetically.
"Apparently, it does," he snapped. Before she could retort, he continued, "I didn't bring you down here to bicker," he said. He lifted off the plastic coverlet over the plate.
"You brought me down here for a sandwich?" she asked.
"No, I brought you down here for a piece of birthday cake. It's special birthday cake. Bread, peanut butter, and banana flavoring," he corrected as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.
"You mean a peanut butter and banana sandwich?"
"Call it what you will," he muttered, pulling a candle out of his lab coat. He lit the candle and started to sing.
**
Ginny couldn't believe what she was watching. She knew that the Draco Malfoy who was the Healer-in-Charge on her floor of St. Mungo's was not the same snaky Draco Malfoy who haunted her Hogwarts days, but this was too much. Draco Malfoy was singing happy birthday to her. After one very hard pinch, she realized that he really was indeed singing to her. If only she could get proof, she thought, since no one would believe her.
"Aren't you going to make a wish?" he asked, snapping her out of her reverie.
She looked at him, then down at her cake. She flashed a smile at Draco before blowing out the candle.
"What did you wish for?" he asked almost immediately.
"I can't tell you. I'd have to kill you," she replied casually, as she doled out the cake and took a bite.
**
Draco just smiled at her as she took a bite of her cake. He watched as she licked the peanut butter that stuck itself on her lips. He listened as she hummed a little when she tasted the first bite.
Blaise Zabini was definitely a genius.
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