What Happened to Ginny

Chapter 8
The Short Walk Home

A/N: My muse is simple girl. All she likes are plot bunnies and reviews. So be kind to Maggie and feed her review cookies please. Big thanks to my beta Lbandoly for her hard work.


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The remainder of the evening passed into morning as Ginny danced and drank. Sometime in the very early morning she lost track of just how many Firewhiskys she had actually drank and focused only on the bliss of feeling nothing but the sound of the club flowing over her and the continued lust inspired by Draco’s hands and mouth on her skin.

She was relaxed and free, definitely just what the healer ordered to speed along the healing of her broken heart. ‘Okay not heal, but definitely patch it up for a while,’ she thought to herself.

Sitting in Draco’s lap with her head on his shoulder she lifted from her drunken musings. “Does this place ever close?”

“Not on weekends. From opening on Friday to close on Monday mornings, it’s nothing but pure hedonism.”

“Oh.” She looked at her wrist only to realize her watch wasn’t there. It hadn’t matched what she was wearing and it always lost time when she tried to transfigure it, so she left it off. “What time is it?”

After a few moments Nott responded. “4:28 AM”

“God I need to go home. I need sleep. Luna you coming with me?”

She snuggled further into Blaise’s chest. “No, I think I would rather stay if that’s okay with you.”

“Yeah, whatever. Pop around later if you are up to it eh. Blaise do keep her out of too much trouble.”

“Why would I do that? I rather fancy her in ‘trouble’.”

“Cause I’m a vindictive witch when it comes to my friends.

Draco mumbled something that sounded like bogies under his breath. She couldn’t resist a giggle at that particular memory.

She removed her necklace. “Finite Incantatem.” Instantly the transfiguration charm dropped and her everyday travel cloak hung loosely from her hand. She turned away from the group to leave, shouting a bye to Luna as she did.

Draco popped up from his seat. “I’ll walk you out of Knockturn.”

She didn’t acknowledge him, just stood and waiting as he grabbed his own cloak from the back of the chair they had recently vacated. They left the club without another word to one another, walking in silence for some distance through the nearly deserted alley. Suddenly Draco spoke. “Where do you live?”

“Why do you want to know?” she challenged.

He rolled his eyes. “Must you always answer every question with another question?”

She giggled. “Depends.”

“Oh what?”

“Who is doing the asking and what it is they are asking in the first place.”

“Sounds awfully Slytherin of you Gryffindor. Are you sure you were sorted into the correct house?”

Her inebriated state loosened her tongue a bit more than she normally would allow for. “I know I wasn’t.”

He stopped and stared at her in shocked aw. The sorting hat was always right. Or at least so they were told. “What?”

“I asked to be placed in Gryffindor. The hat suggested something a bit greener. Don’t get me wrong, green is a good color on me, works nicely with the hair you know. I just knew that it couldn’t happen.”

The resumed the leisurely pace, walking threw Knockturn Alley as if it were any normal street. “Slytherin?” It was more a rhetorical statement than a question after all being green at Hogwarts could mean only one thing. Just the way red, blue, and yellow had their own means. He thought on it for a moment. Save for a bad singing valentine she had always been quiet or at least as far he could remember, but she was known for having a nasty vindictive streak and an even nastier hexing wand. Yeah, he could see it. “So why did it put you in the tower?”

“Because I asked it to.”

“That simple?”

“Yeah. It spouted on about qualities for both houses. I didn’t really care if I fit in Gryffindor or not. Going to Slytherin would have gotten me ostracized from my own family. Plus, I wanted to be with the twins.”

“I always thought they should have been Slytherins as much as they worked in secret attacking everyone with their little pranks.”

“Charlie should have been too.”

“Which one of the millions is that?”

She gave him a rye look. “There are only seven of us. Charlie is the second oldest. You probably saw him during the Tri Wizard Tournament. He was one of the dragon trainers.”

“So his courage out weighed whatever skills would have landed him in Slytherin.”

“Yeah probably. Doesn’t mean he doesn’t have a nasty vengeful streak. He’s probably the worst in the family after me.”

They just kept walking, not even realizing that they had left Knockturn Alley and were well down Diagon on the way to Ginny’s flat.

“Did you ever regret asking the sorting hat to put you in Gryffindor?”

“Only once, my first year. I think if I were in Slytherin I might have told Professor Snape that something was going on. Instead I didn’t and people nearly died.”

“Your first year was my second. The Chamber of Secrets?”

“Yes.”

“You opened it?” He stood aghast. No way had little quiet Ginny Weasely opened the Chamber.

“You didn’t know?”

He gave her a confused look. “Why would I?”

“Your father is the one that slipped it into my school books.”

“Slipped what into your books when?”

“At Flourish and Blotts right before term began, the day that your father and my father got in a verbal disagreement.”

He remembered that now. The day that pansy Lockhart have given Potter all those books. Interesting. He wondered if his father planned on slipping it to Ginny or if he had picked the first person he got near. “I didn’t know.”

“It’s not like it matters. It’s all over and done with now.”

“Wait if you opened the Chamber that makes you...”

She cut him off. “No I’m not Slytherin’s heir, Voldemort was. The book was one of his horcurxes. It was a dairy that belonged to him as a Hogwarts student. He enchanted his memory into it using a piece of his soul. Over time he, it, sort of took over my mind. I was there, but not in control of my actions.”

He was a bit more than mildly curious. So much so that he didn’t realize she had stopped at the door in a small almost hidden alleyway. “Seems you let me walk you home Weaselette.”

She looked around. “So I did.”

“Are you going to invite me in?”

“Do you want to come in?”

“Depends?”

“On what.”

“What you’re inviting me in for.”

“Coffee. Tea if you prefer.”

He thought on it for a moment. He had after all been in the girl’s knickers just a few hours before. It wasn’t like she made bad company when he wasn’t shagging her rotten. She had been rather fun to be around. Though, Merlin himself would not be getting that confession out of him, even under penalty of Crucio.

“Are you coming in or do you like the view of the alley?”

He followed her into a small foyer that led to a flight of winding stairs. They led into her rather spacious flat. The living room was bright and cheerful; mostly tidy except for shopping bags lying haphazardly around the room.

She sat down on the arm of an overstuff tartan plaid chair and removed her boots. “So tea or coffee Malfoy?”

“Coffee, black. Fairly nice place you have Weasely, though your shopping habit seems to have left it’s mark.”

Ginny walked into the kitchen in her stocking covered feet to prepare their coffee. “It’s Luna’s fault. One trip out for cloths for AK and she how somehow talked me into buying a whole new wardrobe.”

“I bet.”

“Oh bugger you. How I waste Harry’s money is none of your concern thank you.”

“Oh but there is some satisfaction in seeing the results of said wasted money. Have I mentioned you look positively wicked in that outfit?”

She yelled back a no.

“Well you do. Good enough to eat.”

She returned to the room, two steaming mugs in her hands. She handed him one before fishing in her pocked and retrieving a vial. “Sobering potion?”

“Please.” He took the vial from her and emptied it in his coffee. “Thank you.”

They sat in silence drinking their respective cups of the strong brew. When he finished he sat his cup on the coffee table. “I should go. It’s well past five. If I have any intentions of repeating last night, I’m going to have to go home and sleep.”

Nonplused she responded with a blasé okay.

“Will you be putting in a repeat showing any time soon?”

She smiled. “You never know Draco. You just never know.” She rose from her seat and saw him down the stares to the foyer. He gave her one finial saucy look before apparating away with a crack.

She headed upstairs to put away the evidence before the Spanish inquisition arrived in the form of her brothers or worse parents. After all, Nott gave the impression that the blood feud’s state would be known to everyone without her having to go play show and tell with her red-headed family. If she was lucky Charlie might show up with them and see that she was alright and keep the horde from killing her.

It was gonna be a long day. She might well need a return trip to AK that evening purely to blow off steam after they had gone. She smiled falling into hell wasn’t as bad as one might think.