It was quickly evident that Draco's legs were much longer than Ginny's. It was also discovered that he was the sort of odious person who, if going somewhere, sees no point in not getting there as quickly as possible. Clearly, "strolling" was not in his vocabulary.
Ginny began to forsee the difficulties almost as soon as they left the steps of the castle entrance, whereupon his long legs ate up the ground, his robes billowing around his legs and flipiong past her own ankles as she struggled to keep up with him. She was forced to do a sort of half jog just to match his stride, and even then, the whole ordeal was so awkward, she had to grab his sleeve and haul him back to a normal speed after three minutes. He looked aggreived, but relented.
The walk to Hogsmeade was not so very far - only a half hour with evenly paced steps, and twenty minutes if one was in a hurry. The trail was wide and led around the Black Lake, through a small corner of the Black Forest, and over a hill drenched with scottish grass, scraggly bushes and clusters of grey rock. It appeared to Ginny, as one of the first of the school year to make use of it, that the path had recently undergone a transformation. Someone had weeded the little road and had spread a fine layer of wood chips over it, scenting the air with newly cut cedar and creating a pleasant little area for students to walk safely beneath the boughs of trees, away from dangerous plants, or the small twigs that liked to claw at children's feet as they walked through the territory of the forest.
She found herself eminently glad that she had chosen to wear jeans, however, no matter how tight they were, as the chill in the air was biting and not nearly so friendly as it had appeared from her dormitory window. The sun did not quite strain all the way through the thickly entertwined branches over their heads, and the shadows brought an instinctive chill which could not be spelled away or chased off with more layers of clothing. Ginny found herself inching closer and closer to Draco's arm, trying to steal some heat away from his body even though she was a foot away, ignoring the fact that she knew very well the cold was all in her head, and that the actual atmosphere was only a degree or so colder than it was in the sunshine. Oppressive, long endured shadow, though, was hard to shake off, and Draco's arm looked more and more inviting as the path wore on.
Finally, after many ill fated attempts at subtlety, Draco grumbled and reached over, hauling her to his side and
wrapping his arm tightly around her shoulders, slowing his furious pace to her own speed. "Are you warm now?"
he demanded, ignoring the gross misplacement of his manners and glaring. At her surprised eyes he softened his tone.
"You could have just said that you were cold, you know. You didn't have to try and be all sneaky and get
closer and closer without actually -"
He grumbled again and looked ahead, leaving Ginny to figure out what on earth he was talking about. She shook her head and decided to leave his confusing statements behind, instead reaching around and grabbing the length of his thick black cloak, pulling it around own body, over his arm, so that it covered the both of them sufficiently. She stuck the end of the fabric in his empty hand for him to hold and looked at him archly. "I'm cold." she announced. He raised an eyebrow, but said nothing.
Walking in such a way soon became awkward, as she was leaning into him when her arm was in the way, so to remedy it, she saw no other option - short of getting cold again - but to wrap her arm around his waist, so that their hips brushed as they went along and she was close enough to feel his warmth radiate from his skin. He looked at her oddly again but, again, said nothing.
Eventually, they reached the village. They were among the first to arrive and the town was almost entirely devoid of students, instead deriving the bustle of activity from villagers and tourists from out of the area. Soon enough, a steady trickle of black cloaks would eclipse the hill and the regular shoppers would take shelter in their homes, well used to the usual devastation upon the collective psyche of the small town after the Hogwarts students traipsed through their usually calm, collected streets.
"Where would you like to go first?" Draco asked, as they passed underneath the wrought iron sign that proclaimed their official entry into the village.
"Well," she said, "I could use a visit to Quality Quidditch. I need some new gloves. Mine are ghastly." She laughed under her breath - as if Draco would even know what she was talking about, he hadn't owned an article of ratty clothing in his entire life. In fact, she was willing to bet that, since the Malfoys had re-won their fortune, Draco had not worn any of his clothing more than once. She would even go so far as to say that he burned it after wearing it, so as to prevent anyone from copying or stealing his style ideas.
Ginny looked at her own transfigured clothes, refusing to feel embarassed that, underneath a tightly woven layer of magic, she was in fact earing a ragged old pyjama top and a pair of ratty shorts grown out of two years prior. She was quite proud of her handiwork, but was not very endeared to Draco's state of monetary affluence and limitlessness, unless, of course, he was prepared to ignore it and join her in her quest for quidditch gloves without a single mention of money.
"I could use some seeker gloves, actually." he said. "Let's go." He held out his arm for her and she took it, careful not to dwell on the fact that his bicep was bulging beneath her fingertips, or that he now had a sort of strutting stride, holding his head up straight and his spine stiff like he was a peacock. And, if he was the peacock, she was the feathers. She laughed again under her breath.
They crossed the street, his grip unyielding but gentle. She could very well see why so many of the other girls in her year found him so devastating - his firmnes was enough to make her feel lightly presured but not in the usual, brusque way of so many boys her age. He was soft enough that her stomach could flutter without her brain telling her to stop being an idiot.
They stepped over the cobblestones, to where the gleaming Quality Quidditch stood as a dark, polished mahogony front amongst cheery, bright colored stores. The window was gleaming and the store name was printed onto the window with gold leaf and again, smaller, over the door. A bell rung when the entered, and instantly, a slimy looking shopkeeper made his presence known. They tried to avoid him and just go straight to the glove shelf, but he followed them and cleared his throat until they were forced to acknowledge him. They were the only customers in the store, and Ginny began to regret not waiting for more people to go in with them, so that the shopkeepers undivided attention would not be focussed entirely on the two of them.
"Madam," he said, inclining his head. Draco had ducked somewhere behind the shelf and was busy laughing silently at her from the ground. "Are you finding everything to your liking?"
"Quite," Ginny drawled, in a pretty good impression of Draco.
"Do you require any assistance?" he enquired. Ginny didn't miss the slightly patronizing tone.
"No," she said, growing annoyed. She had always hated salespeople. And, usually, the feeling was mutual, since she so very rarely had any money.
He bowed and clicked his heels together.
He was about to return to his desk when Draco straightened from where he had crouched behind the shelf, looking at a pair of dragonhide seeker gloves with much more attention than they merited, as they were outrageously overpriced - especially considering that they were fingerless.
"Oh! Mr. Malfoy! I had not noticed you!" Ginny snorted as the shopkeepers oily face brightened with false effusiveness. "My dear sir, is there anything at all I might assist you with?"
Draco shook his head. "No, thank you," he said, drawling his words.
"Yes sir, but, please - I beg of you to ask for help should you need it." He smiled, somewhat remeniscent of Percy, Ginny thought, and looked again to Ginny, noticing how close they stood together and finally realizing they were together. "And you as well, madam."
Ginny almost rolled her eyes. She inclined her head. Draco said nothing. Finally, the shopkeeper turned and left them alone.
"I don't really think I need gloves that badly," she told Draco when the man was well out of hearing range.
"Why?"
"I don't like any of these." She waved her hand at the assortment. The shop keeper harrumphed softly across the store and Ginny wondered if he was evesdropping.
"Don't be stupid," Draco said. "These are the best chaser gloves on the market."
"Well - yes, but - " Ginny suddenly got uncomfortable. "They're also rather overpriced." she said. "I could get these for four galleons in Diagon Alley, but here they're seven!"
"So?" he asked. Ginny sighed.
"So, I would rather just order from Diagon Alley. Or I could send my mum some of my pin money and she could send me a pair."
Draco snorted dismissively. "That'll take weeks. Your next game is saturday. Which pair do you want?"
"None," she said stubbornly.
"Seriously, Ginny. I can afford it. Which ones do you want?" At her stony face, he reminded her, "This is supposed to be a date, you know. I have to buy you something."
She stared at him. He grumbled something about "stubborn" and "bloody" and "just money".
"Fine," he said. "I'll even let you pay me back."
She looked back at the rack of gloves. She still looked indecisive, so he added, touching her arm lightly, "With interest." In spite of herself, she giggled.
"Oh, alright," she said finally. She picked the cheapest pair - even if she was paying him back, she felt guilty about going for the most expensive pair. Draco grinned at her and brought his own purchases up to the front with her gloves.
After the transaction, he asked her to wait for him outside for a moment, he had one more thing. She shrugged but did so, and he joined her a moment later. He had no new packages, so she wondered what he had been doing, but the prospect of warm butterbeer made her forget all about it.
They went to Honeydukes next.
.
They didn't run into Harry, Ron and Hermione until the afternoon. Ginny and Draco were trying to get out of the cheese shop after a snack as the trio were trying to get in. Hermione didn't say anything, only looking at them curiously - Ron looked immediately furious, and Harry looked green.
"Oh, hello you three," Ginny said brightly.
"Fancy seeing you here," Harry mumbled. Hermione groaned behind him and rubbed her temples through her pretty white gloves.
Ginny made a show of taking Draco's hand and twininghis fingers around her own, googly-eyeing him the whole while. His grey eyes were amused and Ginny could feel her own humor trying to escape her chest as loud raucous laughter.
However, with Harry refusing to speak and Ron too angry to remember how, the whole scene quickly fell flat. Hermione took control of the situation, and cleared her throat loudly. Ginny reminded herself to forgive the other girl for being friends with such dunderheads and be friends with her again.
"Alright then, I could really use a drink." She gave a little false laugh and gathered the boys in her arms when the two of them didn't respond to her anvil sized hint. "Have a lovely rest of the afternoon, Ginny, Draco! See you later!" She tugged on Harry's sleeve and shoved Ron into the stoor as soon as Ginny and Draco were out of the way. Before disappearing into the shop herself, she turned back to Ginny and winked. Ginny smiled back.
"Would you like to go for a butterbeer?" Draco asked her. He was behind her, his hands on her shoulders, and his breath tickling her ear. He brushed his nose against her cheek as he bent to graze her skin with a kiss, and her stomach dropped through her like the floor had just disappeared.
Goodness. She really was going to have to keep him.
"Yes," she managed to choke out. He came back beside her and rested his arm on her shoulders. It was heavy and seemed to push her into the ground, even though she knew his arm wasn't really that heavy at all. His mere presence seemed to weigh her down, while simultaneously causing her to float like a bubble.
"Good," he smirked. "Because I could really use something to drink right now."
Ginny agreed. Her mouth was dry and sticky and she wanted to wash down the remnants of the chocolate frog she'd eaten earlier from her tongue.
They went to the Hogs Head, and Aberforth was, as usual, cleaning his dirty mugs with an equally dirty rag. It never failed to make Ginny feel exasperated, because now that she and Aberforth were on good terms, she longed for him to put down the bloody rag and shoddy business practices and take advantage of the new opportunity to make Hogs Head successul.
When they were seated, they neither of them had much to say, and they ended up discussing the weather and their favorite Quidditch temas before running out of things to argue about. They both wanted to speak, but neither had anything to say - or rather, neither of them knew the other well enough to say what they wanted to say without being accidentally offensive.
"So, how much longer do you think it will take for Potter to pop completely off his head?" Draco asked finally.
He was leaning back in his chair with his hands cradling his butterbeer on his belly. His hair looekd silver in the dim light of the room and Ginny thought that if only he had some pointy ears he might look like an elf.
"I don't know, perhaps a week? He isn't very used to containing his emotions - probably not much longer."
Draco smirked. "No, that's one thing he definitely did not learn to do - contain himself."
"I suppose he might have been better had we actually told him off when he did a bunk," she mused. "But then, we rather needed a sane savior of the wizarding world, and so we may have let him off a little bit too lightly most of the time."
"You think?" Draco intoned with a sardonic tint.
"Yes, I think," Ginny sniped.
"Is that why you dated him in the first place? You must have known he'd go and-"
"Cheat on me? No, I did not know he would cheat on me," she growled. "I never would have willingly set myself up for failure..."
"No, I suppose not. Although dating him to begin with might have been a testament to the contrary..."
Ginny began to giggle. She couldn't help it.
"You should have just told him to sod off when he came sniffing at your shorts," he said. "It would have saved you the trouble, and you could have saved him from getting a massive head - the speccy git."
"How exactly are you sure that I wasn't the one doing the sniffing?"
Draco suddenly looked rather green himself.
***
The rest of the day, they amused themselves by following the Trio around and snogging madly everytime one of them turned around. Ginny was having a great deal of fun and she could tell that Draco was enjoying himself as well.
They followed the Trio up and down Main Street, sat accross from them in the Three Broomsticks, and giggled their way through various doorways and onto benches.
Hermione started to laugh every time she saw them, and she obviously had no problems with what they were doing. Ginny was beginning to regret judging Hermione so hastily as she had for protecting Harry from her wrath two days earlier. She was coming to realize that, just because Hermione didn't want blood to spill in the Great Hall, didn't mean that Hermione approved of Harry's actions any more than Ginny did. Ginny decided that she would make ammends with her friend when they got back to the castle that night.
Harry, however, was looking more and more agitated as the day wore on, jerking his head over his shoulder every few feet as if he were just waiting for a Dragon to pop out of nowhere and pluck him from out of the sky.
***
Every time he turned around, there they she (they) was.
In the shops, in the windows, on the benches, in the doors, the reflections in the glass, and the booth accross from him in the Three Broomsticks, where morbid curiosity eventually took over and he watched them try to choke eachother with their tongues for about twenty minutes - without a breathing break.
Were they using some sort of bubblehead charm?
It was like she was haunting him, only she wasn't dead, and she didn't have her apparating license, so it wasn't as if she was just popping in front of him with Draco in tow and then starting to snog the living daylights out of eachother before Harry could know what was going on and avert his eyes.
No, it was much more likely that he was just losing his mind.
He hoped that going to Zonko's might have cheered him up a little bit, maybe make him feel less like he was a lamb awaiting a very painful and very imminent slaughter at the hands of his own conscience. However, it was not to be.
This experience would teach him never to not trust Hermione again. Hadn't she warned him something like this would happen? Hadn't she told him that flying off the handle and doing something rash like snogging Daphne Greeengrass in the sixth floor broom cupboard under the watchful eye of the Troll of Golgormeth was a bad idea?
Harry groaned as Daphne herself wandered in front of him in the dungbombs aisle. She was actually quite pretty, in an obvious, in-your-face sort of way, with butter blonde hair and cold blue, icy eyes. She did have the most adorable mouth, a full pout, pink lips, and a red tongue that darted out every so often to moisten her lips. Harry's gut tightened. Stop that, he told himself.
"Oh, hello Harry," she said. He noticed that she looked almost nervous, her eyes flicking behind him and down the other side of the aisle before settling back on his face. "How have you been?"
"Oh, Great," he said, trying to grin.
"Really?" Daphne asked. Harry didn't appreciate the utterly dubious tone. "I thought Ginny was doing her best to make your life miserable."
"Oh, that," he said, trying to sound dismissive. "Piffle." His bravado faltered when, over Daphne's pretty, angular shoulder he caught sight of Draco and Ginny falling over eachother and stumbling into the end of his aisle with a crash and a good deal of laughter.
Daphne looked over and Harry saw her eyes widen.
She hurriedly said goodbye and made excuses for leaving.
"See you later, Harry," she muttered. Before she quite made it around the corner, Harry grabbed her wrist.
"Wait, Daphne, I - um, I was wondering," he choked in his rush to speak and sound smooth at the same time. "Could I take you out sometime?"
She stared at him dumbly for a second before looking over his shoulder to Ginny. "So you can throw me over for another girl in two weeks? No thanks," she smiled maliciously before twisting out of his grasp and walking away, her heels clicking smartly on the tiled floor and her hips swaying in the enticing sort of way he had never quite been able to resist.
It took him a moment to realize that he'd just been turned down.
Harry Potter, Savior of the Wizarding World, turned down because of one little, teensy weensy, itty-bitty mishap in a closet? It was preposterous. He snorted.
He'd never liked Daphne anyways.
He turned back to the Dungbombs, and was quite immersed for all of ten seconds until he heard a feverish whispering and the unmistakable sound of smacking lips.
"Oi!" he yelled, annoyed, "Get a room!"
Ginny looked over.
"YOU get a room!" she yelled back.
"I've got one!" he yelled again. For some reason he could not decipher, Ginny was making him very angry.
"Though apparently you haven't got anyone to share it with!" she shot at him.
He snapped.
He sent a tickling jinx at her, but she already had her wand out and sent the jinx flying straight back at him. He doubled over, the feeling of a thousand fingers prodding his sides too much to take like a man. To add insult to injury, she sent a tricky little jinx that made his legs move in a high speed scottish dance all on their own. Before he could stop himself, he was dancing and jerking into the shelves, knocking thousands of dungbombs onto the floor, where he stomped on them, exploding them all over himself.
In the end, he lost a hundred galleons on the ruined merchandise, and he smelled embarassingly of dung.
Hermione and Ron wouldn't even go near him.
And so, he was left to walk back to the castle alone. He would never snog anyone in the Troll Cupboard again.
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