Who?

“Ginny





A/N If anyone can tell me how to
fix the weird italics and formatting thing, please do!

 

“Ginny! Ginnou’lou’ll be late for
dinner if you don’t come down. I am not
asking those house-elves to bring you any more food,” Hermione said, stamping
her foot. Ginny groaned and buried her face even more in her pillow. She’d
refused to go and eat dinner in the Great Hall for the past three nights after
being attacked (Really, Ginny, he didn’t
hurt you) and there was no way Hermione could be swayed any further on the
house-elf front.

“Okay, okay,” she grumbled. She got
up and felt like a shower. She’d been trying to take her showers at off hours,
not wanting to hear the other girls in adjacent stalls swooning about being
found by Malfoy in the shower.

While in the soothing spray, she
thought about the object of her intimate fantasies. She changed her train of
thought. What to tell Malfoy? She’d lose either way. He would either believe
her and make fun of her or disbelieve her and continue tormenting her. When she
thought about his teeth on the back of her neck she shuddered and her skin
pebbled with goose bumps. Her hands strayed and she sighed heavily.

 

Where was the stupid prat? Since
she was quickly becoming the center of his afternoon delights he found that her
face was fading from his memory. He needed to see her, to burn that visage into
his brain again. He noticed he hadn’t seen her at dinner for the past few days
which was where he planned to visually stalk her for a bit of fun.

When he entered the Great Hall he
was relieved to see her sitting at the Gryffindor table. He sauntered in as
always, purposely wearing the robe she had worn. It titillated him to wear
something that would be so permanently etched in her memory.

 

When she accidentally caught his
gaze over the tables, her mouth dropped. He let his features turn into
something close to a smile and rolled his neck to bring his nose closer to the
collar of the robe. His eyes dragged themselves closed and when he turned back
to her he opened his eyes and licked his lips.

 

There it was! He saw it. He’d heard
she’d been sulking and upset, and the glint of indignation in her eye cheered
him immensely. There was no fun to his chasing her when she was despondent and
depressed. There was no fun in breaking that sort of creature. He really did
wonder who she had been thinking about, and lately it was beginning to rub him
the wrong way.

He had no idea, and he supposed he
didn’t care. But he had this urge to know, to torment her for it. The look on
her face when he caught her, the looks on her face when he’d cornered her were
ones he wanted to keep producing.

Suddenly he brightened. Double
Potions day was coming up.

 

Merlin, but he was sexy. Stop! Just stop. He hates you. He wants to
make your life a living hell. That pale arse! It
bothered her to know that she had, since their last encounter, wondered what
Malfoy might look like if he weren’t so glacially perfect. If
that hair wasn’t gelled to within an inch of its life, if his face relaxed, if
he had his shirt off. It was patently obvious that he’d been with a few
Slytherin girls…ask any one of them and they claimed to have been the ones, or
knew the ones who had seen his tall, lithe body.

Ginny let these thoughts wander
through her head during Transfiguration. McGonagall tapped her sharply on the
shoulder with her wand, once, and it was more than enough to push him from her
mind.

She worried most about the upcoming
Potions class, and not just because Malfoy would be there.

This week’s Potions would be held
outside, in the near dark and freezing October night. She was desperately
grateful that it would at least be close to dark and no one would reale
ae
able to pay atten to to her robe. Her winter robe was painfuthinthin, she
being the fourth to wear it. It hit her at about her knees, not nearly long
enough to keep her legs warm. She was going to get some fabric in Hogsmeade to elongate it, but she’d forgotten last time and
the next visit wasn’t for two weeks.

 

Snape relished this particular
Potions class because it was outside in the cold and dark, something he liked.
He was teaching another flammable potion, and didn’t feel it was prudent to
have someone like Longbottom in his precious
classroom with that kind of power. His students began to trickle outside,
bundled in warm robes that brushed the ground.

There were tables set out for the
students, each with a lamp that flickered brightly and all the necessary
ingredients. Everyone was in place except for Malfoy and young Miss Weasley.

Ginny came running out of the
castle, afraid she was late. She rushed into her spot next to Colin about the
time that Malfoy came by. As loatloated past his hand brushed
Ginny’s backside. She smothered a crude response and tried to compose
herself.

“Malfoy,” Snape said carefully.
“You’re late.” Draco stood above his classmates.

“So sorry,
Professor. Only making sure Weasley came out of the shower long enough
to come to class.” Draco directed his insolent gaze to Ginny’s purple face. The
class broke out into nervous giggles that stopped immediately when Snape gla at at them.

“Make sure it doesn’t happen again,
Malfoy.” Draco’s feral smile wasn’t reassuring at all.

 

Halfway through Potions, Ginny was
shivering so much that she could barely hold the glass vials. They clanked
together so much that even Colin tried to make them stop.

“Colin, it’s no use. I’ll break this
stuff or mess up the potion if I keep on. I’ll just have to pretend I’m
working.” Colin nodded, about to speak when Snape cut him off.

“Malfoy, be so kind as to help
check these pathetic potions,” Snape said. “Seeing as how
you’re done with yours.” Draco bowed slightly in deference. He exited
his seat and headed straight for Ginny and Colin.

He began to harangue them about
their weak potion. She glared at him defiantly. Colin was not much help; he was
so cowed by the great Malfoy that he answered only in sycophantic nods. The
second Colin looked away Malfoy locked eyes with her.

“Who?” he
mouthed. She resolutely turned her head.

“Colin!” Malfoy said.

“NO!” Ginny almost shouted. Both
Malfoy and Colin looked at her, one puzzled and the other merely pretending to
be.

“No, what, Miss
Weasley?” Ginny flushed again and closed her mouth tight.

“As I was beginning to say, Creevey, get back to work,” Malfoy said, moving on behind
them but not before he brushed up against her again. It took all she had not to
scream at him and rip his bloody head off. She shook her head in response to
Colin’s questioning look.

As they worked through the last
hour, Ginny began to feel almost uncomfortably warm. She looked down. Her robe
was brushing the ground.

Someone had charmed her.

 

After the horrific lesson was over,
Ginny made up her mind. She stomped over to Malfoy’s desk, came up behind him,
and tugged on the neck of his robe so hard he nearly fell down.

“Twenty-five points fr-“ Malfoy began, but this time
she came in front of him and grabbed his robe and brought him close to her
face.

“I don’t need your bleeding
charity. Don’t ever charm me again. Leave me alone,” she said. She pulled him
closer, noses nearly touching. Her hand fisted tightly at the clasp of his
robe.

“And if you ever surprise me again
in the hallway I’ll make sure everyone knows you tried to do something improper
to me.”

He licked the tip of her nose.

With a disgusted noise, she shoved
him back. She turned tail and he called after her.

“Not in the hallways.”

 

A few days later the subject of the
Halloween ball came up.

Hermione and Ron were going
together, after much bickering. Harry was taking a fifth year Ravenclaw. Colin, Seamus and Dean tried to ask Ginny. Ginny
knew it wasn’t really so much that they wanted to ask her, but most likely had
been threatened by Ron to escort her. She had declined every invitation, mostly
because she did not want to run into Malfoy at such a highly hormone-charged
event. It would be easy for him to corner her in the shadows of the Great Hall.

Besides, Ginny thought
sadly, any money I’d have spent on a costume is going to have to go to
getting new fabric for my robes. She did welcome the silence though. After
all the hustle and bustle of the girls getting ready, she’d have four or five
hours alone in her bedroom. She planned to catch up on some reading, maybe
write one of her upcoming Herbology essays, or maybe
just go to bed early. Yes, the latter certainly appealed to her. She was now
looking forward to the weekend.

She began making regular trips to
the Great Hall again and just as regularly ignoring the steely eyes that she
knew were following her every move. It was tough not to look up and meet the
gaze full on, but she couldn’t trust herself.

Malfoy even left her alone during
the Double Potions just before the ball. He came into class, answered questions
in his maddeningly lazy way and swept out without so much as a glance or a
touch.

Ginny heightened her watch that
night. She was sure that in place of not bothering her in class would make
Malfoy think he had to do double duty. But he was nowhere to be found. She made
her way quickly back to the tower.

 

Malfoy instantly regretted asking
Pansy Parkinson. The bint was shrill and really not
very comely. He’d shagged her three times when he just could not stand his hand
or his stash of Playwizard any more.
The other two were just two girls who wouldn’t quit asking him for a glimpse of
the Malfoy staff. He shagged them to get it over with. With Pansy it had taken
him what seemed like days to get her cloying scent off his body, her shrieking
voice out of his ears.

They stood on a magical staircase
that Dumbledore created from which each person could show off their costume and
descend to the party. Pansy clung to his arm and teetered in her high heels
that she had elevated to six inches. She was at eye level with Draco and
talking in her yowling voice.

“I’m sorry, Pansy, what did you
say?” Draco asked in a bored voice. The murderous look in her eyes gleamed as
she repeated whatever inane thing she had said before. He smiled emptily and
scanned the Great Hall for Ginny Weasley. He wanted to see what cute costume
she could cobble together with her precious little resources. He’d had an idea
of the costume he wanted to see her in. He signed inaudibly and put on his
party face as he gracefully escorted Pansy down the steps. He was forced to put
a levitating charm on the chit lest she fall head over fake heels.

There were the usual gasps over how
dashing Draco looked and how ridiculous Pansy looked. Pansy had insisted that
he go as Salazar Slytherin and she as his concubine. Pansy was covered in
emerald green velvet with gauzy wraps of silver that she claimed she bewitched
to exactly match Draco’s eyes. Said eyes rolled when he had seen her earlier
that evening. She looked more like a Muggle hussy, the kind he had seen when
accompanying his father through the dregs of London.

Draco, on the other hand, had
chosen to go simply. He wore Ginny’s robe (which was what he now privately
referred to it as) over an emerald green button-down shirt that gleamed as if
it were made of jewels. His pants were black leather. He had fastened the robe
down far enough that it revealed his pale throat above the green shirt. Around his neck hung a silver chain with a long serpent charm.


He’d found a simple eye mask and
transfigured his toothbrush into a paintbrush (not a good idea, as he found out
later). He conjured silver and glittery green paint and set to work. He’d
created intricate green swirls and lines around his eyes and the edges. He was
rather satisfied with himself…his father had never let him draw since he was a
small child. Charming it with a sticking charm, it rested lightly on the skin
around his eyes and nose.

 

Ginny was thrilled to hear the
chatter and the patter of feet die down. Several
people had tried to coax her into a last minute costume. She declined each
invitation with a smile, telling them that she was desperately behind in some
of her reading. She settled into her bed and pulled the curtains on three of
the four sides, leaving the side open that faced the window. She loved her
view; she could see the lake and lots of stars. She often curled up in the
window seat to read or watch thunderstorms beat relentlessly on the glass.

Tonight, though, she just wanted to
open the window and get some fresh air. That would be nearly impossible without
freezing, she thought, for the temperature was dipping low. Sighing, she
slipped into her nightclothes, a too-long tee shirt that read “See Romania” on
it in flashing letters. Or, it had flashed,
she reflected. It was so old it just finally gave up.

She slid into her bed, the sheets
clean and warm thanks to the house-elves. She pulled her red down comforter up
around her and closed her eyes.

 

Draco had had enough. He’d almost
asked Ron where his silly little sister was, but wisely decided that asking Ron
in the first place and in front of
Pansy wouldn’t be the smartest move he’d ever made in his life.

“Panwoulwould you like some punch?”
he asked. Her eyes brightened.

“Why, yes I would, Draco. How thoughtful!” He pulled back his lips in some semblance
of a smile and set off.

Once he got outside ten meters of
her he shook his head. It would never occur for her to look for him, because
she’d assume he was talking with friends. She couldn’t move that well on her
own anyhow. He let his face relax when he was outside the Great Hall and smiled
for the first time, a real smile, knowing that he’d just ditched the belle of
the ball. He set ofwardwards Gryffindor.

When he reached the Fat Lady, she
gave him a disapproving look. What was it with these Gryffindors?
Even the paintings hated him. He gave his Head Boy password (parselmouth) and
the painting swung open sullenly. He ignored it and went directly up the stairs
that led to the sixth and seventh year dorms. He stopped in front of her door,
which was covered in her and her absent roommate’s names and little pictures
from the Daily Prophet.

There was no light and he wondered
if she was even there. Bloody hell,
should have checked the library first, he thought. He didn’t want to do an Alohamora to
unlock the door either, as it would make a sound. Tentatively, he tried the
door. It swung open.

In the faint moonlight he could see
that the drapes of the bed closest to the window were closed. He shut the door
behind him, hearing only a faint click as the door eased into place. Silently
he picked his way to her bed. He stood at the foot of it listening to the sound
or qur quiet breathing and imagining he could also see the soft rise and fall
of her breasts.

Realizing one side of her drapes were open, he moved to the other side.

For someone who had never
proclaimed anything beautiful he was damn close to admitting it now.

“Sonitus nullus,” he whispered to the room at
large. Toundoundproofing charm would keep whatever happened in there silent to
the outside world.