The Black Alder Tree for Elle_Blessing

December 11th, 2008

• Title: The Black Alder Tree
• Rating: Sorta naughty
• Possible Spoilers/Warnings: Canon to the entire series except for the epilogue. Very mild warnings for language and sexual content.
• Author's Notes: Is there really anything I can say other than thank you, thank you, thank you to my fabulous beta, ? She put up with all of my last minute freak-outs, insomniac emails and overall frenzied panic attacks. And she kicks total ass at grammar, a trait we all wish we had. So, once again, thank you!
• Summary: The black alder tree had always enjoyed the visits from that slight, freckled girl with the strawberry hair that shone in the sunlight. But when she shows up one day, her heart clearly broken, the tree knew that everything was about to change.

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The Black Alder Tree



Just past the southern edge of a small, inconsequential village named Ottery St. Catchpole, there stood a giant black alder tree - towering over the rolling countryside, its topmost branches stretching like contorted fingers grasping at the heavens. It was an old thing. The bark was gnarled, the branches twisted, and the leaves were drooping and shuffled about weakly in the wind. Quite frankly, there were times when the tree reminded one of a stooped old man, bent over his walking stick and hobbling his way slowly down the street. Yet despite the many years it carried on its knotted, grey trunk, the tree stood straight and proud - dominant over any other ordinary alder tree, wise from the passing ages to which it stood witness - and every few years, it would muster up that old sap and produce forth a magnificent explosion of catkins and flowers, dusting over the entire countryside with shimmering gold pollen.

This remarkable black alder tree stood alone in the middle of a field of wild barley, where an especially high stalk would sometimes reach up and brush the lowermost branches of the tree as the breeze gently swayed the barley back and forth. The field was found just southeast of a particularly dense ring of trees which circled a little orchard, sweet-smelling from its hidden trove of fruits and flowers. There - once upon a time - a gaggle of red-haired children used to zoom about on brooms, calling to one another, laughing, and screaming from delight in that manner that children tend to do when they are extraordinarily happy.

If one were to climb to the topmost branches of this particular black alder tree and sit, leaning back against its warm, sunlit trunk, one would hear nothing but the rustle of green leaves in the wind and the joyous calls of birds as they flit across the summer sky, see nothing but undulating meadows, endless trees and general splendor of Mother Nature. There was no sign of human life or the loud, smoky pandemonium that generally accompanied those abrasive beings, save for a cluttered jumble of a house that made a small crooked blot on the eastern horizon. But the tree didn't mind the family living in that crooked house - no, indeed at times it was quite amused as it watched them go about their daily lives - working in the garden, reading outside in the sunlight, the children hollering at each other as they ran around on their short, stubby legs. And as time plodded on, the tree came to realize that it actually enjoyed the company of the red-haired family as they lived and changed and grew.

The father and mother would go on walks together at dusk through the fields and they always paused to admire the black alder tree's convoluted branches, twisting up and over one another until eternity. The tree generally found the boys to be unbearably loud - the whooping as they chased one another around the field, the noisy yells that ensued if one got his broom stuck in its branches, and the general crash and clatter that always seemed to accompany these rambunctious, redheaded boys. The one with glasses would sometimes sit against its trunk and read, something the black alder tree didn't mind, though an hour or so after his arrival, the other boys would always come running and hollering for him to join their never-ending stream of games. But it was the girl that the tree liked best - the freckled, brown-eyed girl with a slight bump on her nose and strawberry hair that shone in the sunlight - that would always stroll down to the field on windy afternoons, hands buried in her pockets, singing to herself. She had her favorite perch on the tree's uppermost branches - sixth from the top -and she had her own little niche where she would lean back against the tree's weathered trunk, glimpse the dappled sunlight pouring through the sparse canopy, and watch the days pass her by.

As the years passed, the brown-eyed girl's visits to this extra-ordinary black alder tree became limited only to the summer, and the tree found itself looking forward to the time when the world grew warmer, the sun hanging lower in the sky, and the tree could whittle away time in the girl's soft-spoken company. Then one summer came when the girl didn't visit at all. That spring the black alder tree had brought forth its most impressive batch of flowers yet - golden catkins dripped from its blossom-laden branches, blue-white buds bloomed until the tree blended into the perpetually azure sky, and delicate pollen covered the entire field, brushing over the barley and wildflowers with a soft, iridescent gold - and the tree was disappointed that the girl did not visit and see it in all its flowered glory. The days lengthened, then shortened again, and still she did not come. Then the time arrived when the tree's leaves turned red as the curls that spilled down her back, the barley white-gold as sunshine, and the skies black as night from the flocks of birds heading south for their winter nests. The tree resigned itself to the fact that she would not come this year and began to withdraw into itself, preparing for the cold and barren winter ahead.

Then, one day, she appeared.

Ginny sat on one of the uppermost branches of the black alder tree that stood in the field behind her house, just past the orchard where she and her brothers used to pass the summer days away playing endless games of Quidditch. She swung her legs back and forth, loving the feeling of the cool autumn air as it rushed in between her bare toes, just as she had loved it when she was younger - one of the few things that did not change with time.

She sighed and slumped back against the trunk, feeling the tree's knotted bark dig into her back. She had hoped that visiting her old childhood haunt would calm her down, wash the memories away. Instead, it just gave her a quiet place to think, each sunlit moment reminding her of all that had come to pass in the last year.

Everything should have been fine - the evil psycho-maniac was dead, the Wizarding world was being put back together again by the good guys, life was slowly returning back to equilibrium- and yet, nothing was fine. Ginny had spent all summer watching her father work tirelessly to fix everything that had been broken by Voldemort, watched her brothers help track down the remaining Death Eaters, watched her mother try to draw their lives back to a state of normalcy. They had all tried to ignore the hole left behind by Fred.

A squirrel scampered across a branch overhead, dislodging a couple of amber leaves and a fiery orange one. Ginny watched them flutter downwards, drifting lazily towards the earth. She wondered what she would have been doing at this very moment, had she not decided to take a year off before completing her seventh year at Hogwarts. Classes would've been over for the day by now - she probably would have been making her way down to the Quidditch field for practice, chatting with Demelza and Jimmy, her broom balanced jauntily over her right shoulder. It would have been amazing to captain the team this year - they had worked together really well last year and probably would have won the Cup if it weren't for the blatant Slytherin favoritism yielded by the Carrows - and McGonagall had offered the post. The stern professor had even paid a personal visit to the Burrow one drizzling afternoon in early August to appeal for Ginny to return to Hogwarts, but even an appearance of the professor whom Ginny respected the most wasn't enough to tempt her back to the school that had sheltered her and given her a home for the past six years. She loved Hogwarts - it was her second home, after the one in her rickety old Burrow - but Ginny couldn't bear to return to the place, knowing that he wasn't also somewhere inside those enclosing stone walls.

Her brothers didn't understand - she hadn't expected them to. They all thought she had quite literally lost it and made a point of telling her so every time she saw one of the big stupid lugs. Her mother was disappointed, frustrated and understanding all at once, agreeing to the plan only if Ginny stayed at home with her, and only after she promised that she would return the next year. Her father had just smiled that worn, crooked smile of his and wrapped his long arms around her shoulders like he always did when she was upset - never asking questions, never critical.

It was madness. Ginny knew that and she still couldn't bear to return. All because of him. She should have just - no, she couldn't. Ginny hated it, in a way, hated how a boy - especially that boy - had disturbed her entire life, made her unsure of everything, and he had done it all with that cocky smirk plastered across his face.

Ginny screamed in frustration, digging the palms of her hands into her eyes, covering her face. She had stayed home to get away from it all. She had come to her old spot on the black alder tree to be in a place where she had been happy before she knew him, before she had ever looked at him and wondered if there was someone else below that hard, icy exterior. But she couldn't escape, couldn't escape the images swimming before her eyes - cold grey eyes framed by a set of surprisingly-long lashes, a narrow and aristocratic nose whose nostrils flared when he was uncomfortable, smooth and barely curved collarbones jutting out of skin so pale that it fairly glowed in the moonlight. Every time she closed her eyes, he was there, whether it was the sound of his soft chuckle or the picture of that damned smirk splattered over his features.

Ginny inhaled sharply, shaking her head violently back and forth, trying to dislodge the memories like they were cobwebs clinging to the insides of her skull. She hated this, hated how she couldn't get away from his cool, calculating gaze - judging her, condemning her.

The memories she had suppressed deep inside her mind came boiling up again, swelling to the brim. Unbidden, a brief sensation overtook Ginny - cold fingers gently caressing her scarred palm, a long arm twisting lazily around her waist, soft lips pressing against her shoulders, her back, her mouth, tender and damp and scorching every surface of her skin. Ginny buried her head in her arms as the memories spilled over the brim, bubbling as they ran across her mind, taking over her thoughts, overwhelming her.



Dark storm clouds wheeled about in large coiled corkscrews above the Great Hall, lightning cutting through the gloom every so often, illuminating the room with its pale, electric fingers. The candles flickered, throwing long shadows against the back wall as the students stamped inside, rainwater trickling down their faces, forming puddles that ran in the crevices of the cool stone like winding, miniature streams.

Ginny stopped at Neville's side, taking the time to pull her damp red curls up into a sloppy, dripping bun. A chilly draft wafted up as she passed the stairs that led down to the dungeons, and she couldn't help but shiver, slightly, from something other than the cold.

She slid into her usual spot between Neville and Seamus and waited for the rest of the students to file in. So much had changed over the summer. Seamus was not his usual cheerful, charming self - Dean had not been on the train this year although, hopefully, it was because he had made a run for it and not because the Ministry had gotten to him - and Seamus was worried about what had happened to his best friend. Ginny looked around the room expectantly, only to see a multitude of faces missing from the crowd - Harry, Ron and Hermione, of course, but also many others like Eliza, the girl who always sat next to her in Herbology, and Thomas, who sometimes would take her study spot in the library, and even the fair-haired Ravenclaw whose name she always forgot but who could perform the best Wronski Feint she had ever seen, possibly even better than Krum. The faces that were present were mostly tightly-drawn and worried, fretting over the terror that controlled the world outside the castle walls or keeping close track of friends inside. The professors, too, were troubled, and Ginny couldn't help but notice how McGonagall's eyes darted across the room anxiously as she took stock of which of her students had returned and, more notably, which of her students hadn't. Hagrid was also missing, but he was most likely still battling his way across the windblown and stormy lake.

Ginny kept her eyes averted from the plain yet regal, tall-backed chair sitting at the very center of the High Table where the rest of the professors had congregated, overlooking the Hall.

There was a brief commotion at the front doors before the first-years finally straggled in, their eyes huge as dinner plates as they took in the floating wax candles, assembled students clad in black robes, and the dark mass of rolling storm clouds swelling overhead. A sharp crack of thunder rang through the Hall, rattling the gold goblets, and one of them shrieked. The others merely huddled closer together, shivering as they slowly made their way towards the front of the room. Hagrid tramped in after them, shaking his head and throwing great beads of water over an unfortunate huddle of Hufflepuffs off to his left.

Ginny was surprised at the decently large class size of the first-years, especially with everything else going on, and she leaned over to tell Neville so. But as she opened her mouth she saw his drop open, his brown eyes wide as they fixated on something behind her, his face white as a sheet. Ginny whirled around.

Snape swept into the room, his black cloak billowing out from behind him as usual, flanked on both sides by two hulking, vulture-like individuals - a man and a woman. Ginny's stomach gave a sickening lurch. She recognized both of them from pictures published in the Quibbler, which she had taken to reading due to a suggestion on Luna's part. They were Death Eaters, both of them - brother and sister, the Callows or the Carries or something like that.

But her attention was merely momentarily diverted. Ginny's spine stiffened as she watched the hulking form of Severus Snape stalk its way towards the High Table. She repressed a wave of anger and hatred that surged upwards at the sight of the man who had so recently injured her brother, who had killed one of the greatest wizards she had ever known, who had betrayed them all and caused so many people pain and grief and suffering.

The Hall quieted quickly. It became silent as everyone's eyes followed Snape stride across the room - some eyes widening in fear as they saw the hook-nosed man, many narrowing in hatred. Snape seemed oblivious to all of this as he approached the High Table, his face devoid of any expression. Then without a word - without even sparing a glance at the gathered mass of students watching his every move - he sat down in the Headmaster's chair, the Carrows settling themselves on either side of him.

The Hall erupted in whispers, cries of outrage and, from the Slytherin Table, some unrestrained cheers of victory. Ginny sputtered, her mind unable to put together a complete, coherent thought as she tried to grasp the concept that Snape - Snape - had been chosen to succeed Dumbledore. Snape, the man who had murdered the greatest headmaster - and the greatest wizard - that Hogwarts had ever seen, now honored to follow him? Was this really what life would be like now that Voldemort was in control - the good people dying, the bad usurping and leeching and taking over?

McGonagall approached the stool sitting at the center of the hall, Sorting Hat in hand, tight-lipped and determinedly ignoring the loudening clamor. Ginny stared at her professor, at the spectacles perched on the end of her nose, so much like another pair - a pair shaped like two half-moons - perched on the end of a different, much longer nose that she had seen not so long ago. Ginny couldn't take it anymore. She couldn't take being here at this school that was no longer the one she had loved and had called home for the past five years. It was something else entirely - certainly, this wasn't her beloved Hogwarts. Dumbledore wasn't here and her brothers weren't here and Harry wasn't here. Her entire family was out there, fighting for their lives and instead of being there to help them, she was in here, trapped by the immense stone walls of this wretched school that she no longer recognized, that was run by a murderer and -

She bolted. Without even thinking about it, she was up off of the bench and shoving her way though the crowd of tiny first years, sprinting across the Entrance Hall and out onto the front lawn. Overhead, the wind screamed and icy raindrops splattered onto the wet ground from the unforgiving heavens.

Ginny huddled into a ball on the front steps, wrapping her trembling arms around her knees. Her robes were already soaked, her hair already dripping, but she paid no mind. She just sat and stared at the tumultuous clouds above, feeling the rain wash her tears away and wondering how the world got to be like this.

Ginny didn't know how long she sat there, gazing up at the blackness until - there, over the howl of the wind and the rushing of the unceasing rain - footsteps. She turned her face to the side, not caring to speak with whoever decided to take a walk on such a terrible night.

"Oh, are you sure this is safe?" The voice was soft but pinched with nervousness, maybe even fear. Either way it was not the voice of someone Ginny had expected to hear sneaking out across the grounds on a night like this, until she heard the second voice reply.

"Stop whining. I couldn't stand another moment in that room with those imbeciles. It's just a little rain." The second voice was cold, flat - Ginny would have thought emotionless, had there not been a hard and bitter edge outlining every word. She knew that voice.

Another flash of lightning illuminated the dark scene, where Draco Malfoy was standing on the front steps, his blond hair plastered to his face by the pouring rain, a slight girl with straight brown hair fluttering tentatively behind him. Ginny recognized her as a fifth-year from Slytherin the same moment that the girl saw Ginny. She raised a perfectly manicured finger, tapping Draco on the back and directing his attention towards the sodden redhead shivering on the steps not a meter away. The customary sneer crossed Draco's face. Of course, what else would a Malfoy do but sneer in the presence of a Weasley?

"What are you doing out here, you stupid little girl? Go back inside," he all but spat at her.

Ginny didn't know what it was. Maybe it was the fact that she was drenched and freezing, or that her best friends had run away to try and save the world, or that the school that she loved was now being headed by a black-hearted murderer, or that her entire family was living under the daily threat of an excruciating and drawn-out death, or that some deranged, spiteful supremacist was basically destroying everything that she had ever known, but something inside Ginny Weasley snapped. All of the anxiety and fury and terror that had been building up inside over the past two years suddenly broke out and manifested themselves in a deep, bone-aching hatred for Draco Malfoy. She hated him for everything that he had done and everything for which he stood, and now was the time where she would make him pay for it.

Without thinking, she was on her feet and in front of him, breathing heavily, her nose inches away from his. She clenched her hands into fists, imagining what it would be like to punch him in his slick, pointed face and surprising herself with the amount of satisfaction that came with the thought.

"I despise you," she growled, her voice quivering with rage. "Don't ever tell me what to do again, or believe me, I will hurt you."

Draco didn't even flinch. Instead, he merely raised an eyebrow. "Little Ginny Weasley, are you threatening me?" he asked softly, his voice barely audible above the lashing rain. "As if you could ever touch me." Another bolt of lightning played across the shadows in the sky, throwing its strange light across his pale skin. His lips pulled back into a disdainful snigger.

It was the contempt in his voice that did it. Ginny thrust her fist upwards, yearning for the gratifying crack that would come when her fist connected with his slimy face. It never came. He caught her fist - albeit with both hands - and when he spoke, his eyes had turned hard.

"I don't think you want to do that," he said calmly, though his grey eyes flashed. Ginny saw, just for a moment, the despair and rage that burned within those silver orbs and suddenly, irrationally, she thought of a sun-filled morning over the summer when Remus Lupin had sat down next to her during breakfast and they had discussed the death of Albus Dumbledore over buttered toast and coffee.

"He had to do it, Ginny," she remembered Lupin saying, his soft voice coated with sadness and something that could be described as pity. "You-Know-Who was threatening to kill his family - he had had no other choice. Dumbledore knew that, and he never condemned him for trying to murder him."

A sharp crack of thunder brought Ginny back to the present and the bitter, steel eyes of Draco Malfoy. She remembered how weak and exhausted he had looked at the end of last year - he had looked defeated - and her sudden hatred for Draco Malfoy ebbed away as quickly as it had come.

He felt her relax, felt her rage fade, and when he dropped her arm she saw his scorn twisted in every muscle on his face. "I knew you didn't have the courage," he jeered. Ginny didn't say anything back at all, wondering what lengths she would have gone to if someone threatened to murder her mother, her father, any one of her exasperating, idiotic brothers, and knowing that she would have voluntarily Avada Kedavra-ed Harry freaking Potter if it meant sparing the life of someone she loved. What a terrible decision he must have made, to know that he had to end another man's life to save his parents.

Draco took a step back, and she knew that he was unnerved by the lack of response from her, someone who was usually so angry and belligerent. She saw him take in the look of almost sympathy on her face and she knew that it confused him.

"Come on," he muttered, stalking off into the rainy darkness, not looking back. The fifth-year threw a fearful glance at Ginny and then bobbled after him, her sopping hair swinging back and forth in front of her face. Ginny sat back down on the front steps, feeling the torrential rain hammer against her skin and watching the pair until they disappeared from sight.

Ginny leaned forward, loving the feeling of the coarse bark underneath her fingertips. The black alder tree leaned against the wind, its limbs bending slightly. That had been the first time anyone on their side had seen him since the disastrous events that ended her fifth year at Hogwarts.

The subject of Draco Malfoy had undoubtedly been brought up that summer within the Order - it was impossible ignore what he had done and what had happened as a result of his actions - but no one, not even Harry, seemed to blame him. No, that particular resentment lay with Snape, who had betrayed them all in the worst way possible.

A lonesome nightingale cooed in the distance, its melancholy song harmonizing Ginny's dark mood. She idly snapped a dead twig off of the branch, relishing in the sharp cracking sound it made as the twig broke in half.

"Ow - Merlin's balls!"

Ginny gritted her teeth and slowly pushed herself back up from where she had fallen on the stone floor. Her ankle, which had turned inwards as she was hobbling down a particularly steep flight of stairs, had turned a nasty shade of purple and was swelling rapidly, not unlike a Bobotuber filling with pus. Crabbe had been feeling particularly vindictive tonight at detention, and Ginny's head ached so much that she had not been paying attention to where she was going before she lost her step and tumbled down the stairs.

Wearily, she pushed herself back up, gripping the rough stones jutting out of the wall with bleeding fingers. She had gotten more cuts, bruises and broken bones in the past month than she had ever gotten in the rest of her life, which is saying something when a girl has six brothers. But she couldn't stop - someone had to stand up against those vicious creeps, and if Harry wasn't here to do it, well, then Dumbledore's Army was going to have to carry on without him. And Neville was right - it did give all of the other students hope when someone stood up against the repulsive Carrows - so what were a few chunks of missing flesh here and there?

Besides, the pain was, well, not satisfying, but dulling, in a way. It meant that she was doing something right, if her actions caused the Carrows such rage. The others agreed that it was worth the blood and the risk. It made them feel less helpless, like they were accomplishing something other than sitting there and getting brainwashed while wizards and Muggles alike suffered outside the castle walls. The pain was worth the defiance, however small of a contribution they made.

Moving slowly, Ginny half-dragged, half-crawled her way down the rest of the stairs. This was going to take a while. It was silent here in the darkened hallway, the only source of light coming from the guttering torches flickering against the castle walls. The windows were black and the glass surface reflected nothing but her own battered face back at her, her own defeated expression. She trudged onwards, the slow footsteps echoing across still and silent stone.

Keeping her head down to check how her ankle was holding her weight, Ginny turned the corner and didn't notice the boy with the pale, blond hair sitting there until she tripped over him and tumbled - again - onto the cold, stone floor.

Draco scowled at the redhead sprawled out in front of him and swore under his breath, rubbing his arm where one of her flailing limbs had kicked him on her way down.

"Is it really so hard to watch where you're going, Weasley?" he snapped, getting to his feet and sneering down at her.

Ginny groaned, not moving from where she had fallen. The worn stone felt cool against her burning skin and aching ankle. "Go away, Malfoy," she mumbled, her voice muffled by the fact that her nose was buried into the floor. "I feel like crap and I do not feel like exchanging barbs or whatever so, yes, I am just that stupid and incompetent to not know where I'm walking and trip over you. My family's poor, Gryffindor sucks, etcetera, etcetera. Leave now, please."

Draco raised a perfectly shaped eyebrow, but did not move away. A condescending snort escaped his lips. "So, have the Carrows broken little Weasley so soon? What's it been - four, five weeks? I knew you wouldn't last."

At that, Ginny forgot about her throbbing ankle and wrenched herself to her feet, jabbing an accusing finger into his chest. "No, they did not break me, you arrogant, insufferable twat," she snapped, biting back the urge to punch him in the jaw - it hadn't turned out so well last time. "How about we subject you to three straight hours of the Cruciatus Curse? We'll see how lively you are then."

She spun on her heel and marched away, making it about six feet before her ankle gave out again. She caught herself on the wall, breathing heavily and trying to gather herself together. This was humiliating. She was going to have to crawl back to the Tower.

A hushed, shuffling noise came from behind her - the sound of retreating footsteps. She did not turn around. Good riddance, Malfoy, she thought. At least he did nothing more - had it been Zabini or Parkinson she had tripped over in the hallway, well, she wouldn't still be standing, that was for sure.

Ginny pushed herself off the wall, unable to keep a quiet whimper from escaping her lips as the jagged stone dug into a particularly deep gouge on the heel of her left palm. Her ankle gave a sharp throb. Ginny sighed, and slowly began to limp her way back to the dormitories.

The next time she left detention, picking her way slowly across the empty corridors back to the portrait hole, she found him waiting for her at the foot of the stairs that led upwards, winding and ascending out of the gloom of the dungeons.

"What do you want?" she scoffed, trying her best to sound menacing. It was a futile attempt - her skin was nearly transparent and her lips were peeled back in pain from a bleeding gash that ran from her cheekbone to her collarbone. She did not look threatening.

Draco pushed himself up from where he was leaning against the wall and approached her. Ginny couldn't help but flinch when he took out his wand, but she did not step back. Instead she kept her gaze steady on his face, unwavering. There was really nothing more that they could do to her.

"Hold still," he said in that flat voice, raising the tip of his wand to her collarbone and muttering some words under his breath as he traced the wound up towards her face.

Ginny lifted her hand and felt nothing but unbroken skin - a tiny ridge forming a faint scar across her face, but nothing more. "Why did you - ?"

"Sorry about the scar," he interrupted, tucking his wand back underneath his robes, "I never really was any good with healing spells."

"But-"

"Don't," he said sharply, startling her into silence. "Don't make a big deal about this, all right?" He turned and stalked away into the shadows, leaving her behind, smoothing her fingertips over that faintly raised scar running across her skin.

A gust of wind swept across the barley field, stirring the golden stalks, making them bend back and forth, little by little, until Ginny looked out upon a writhing, rippling sea of gold.

She lifted her hand and again traced the faded scar that wound across her skin, cheekbone to collarbone. She had never understood what made him come back and help her that first night - she doubted that he had either - but it was a decision that forever intertwined their two fates together.

After that first night, Ginny came to expect Draco Malfoy every time she hobbled out of the dungeons from her "detention," battered and bruised and bleeding from a myriad of gouges in her skin. He was always there, waiting for her. Always. His face was blank, his expression carefully guarded, and he never had a pleasant thing to say, but he was always there.

The first time she broke her ankle - actually broke, as opposed to the usual sprain that resulted when one was thrown against a stone wall too many times - he growled under his breath, irritated, but he levitated her so she wouldn't have to walk all the way back to the Gryffindor Tower.

"If you were smart - and I know that's a very big if - but let's pretend and say that if you were smart, you would be on your way to Pomfrey's right now," he said darkly, eyes darting from shadow to shadow as he trudged slowly through the empty corridors, Ginny floating a few inches off the ground at his side.

"Yes, Malfoy, because that is exactly what I want," Ginny retorted, gritting her teeth as they rounded a corner a little too quickly, her injured ankle swinging violently through the air. "I'm dying for those nauseating Carrows to know that they've tortured me so much that I broke my ankle and actually needed help."

Draco stopped walking, instead turning to the redheaded witch floating next to him. "Weasley," he said wryly, "you do need help."

Ginny stared at him blankly until he gestured to his wand hand and the fact that he was levitating her all the way back to her room. She sniffed and chose not to answer. Draco shrugged indifferently.

"Besides," he continued, ignoring her silence, "are you really that dense? Weasley, you had to crawl out of that room. I am almost positive that the dear Carrows figured out that you're pretty badly injured. And Pomfrey could fix you up a lot better than I can."

"Careful, Malfoy, or you might even fool me into thinking that you care," Ginny snapped weakly, but her heart wasn't in it - her ankle hurt too much.

"Zabini must've cracked your head too hard against the wall," Draco muttered, but dropped the subject. She knew that he knew that she had her pride.

Ginny always tried to thank him for his kindness - if you could call it that - but he always cut her off and threw an insult back at her as he walked away. In time, she learned that if she didn't try to show him her gratitude, he would stick around longer. This was something that Ginny found endlessly puzzling - one, that she actually wanted to show her gratitude to Draco Malfoy, and two, that when she discovered how to keep him around longer, she took advantage of it.

"Why don't you ever let me thank you?" she asked him brazenly one night, after they had reached the portrait hole of the Fat Lady.

"What makes you think that I want your thanks?" he replied coolly, again throwing up that smirk on his face.

"Why do you always answer my questions with a question?" Ginny retorted angrily, poking him in the arm with an irritated finger. Draco, the smirk still on his face, chose not to reply.

"And," Ginny said, thinking of something else, "maybe you don't want my thanks, but what if I want to give it to you?" She watched how his grey eyes gleamed in the weak light.

"Perhaps," he answered slowly, his voice so soft Ginny wondered if he was talking to her or to himself, "perhaps I don't deserve your thanks." This was such a definitive statement that Ginny couldn't think of anything to say at all, instead only blinking back at him stupidly as he began to back away.

"I'll see you tomorrow, Weasley," he called back to her from the lengthening shadows. "Unless you gain enough brains to keep yourself out of trouble for one day. But no, I suppose that would be too intelligent of you, especially since you're a Gryffindor and all." Merlin, how was it possible that she could hear his smirk from the darkness?

And just like that, things snapped back to the way they always were. Ginny vaguely wondered if there was some other reason they never let the conversations get too serious between them as she shouted some form of "you're an irritating, dim-witted git" towards his retreating back.

But though it was rarely serious, the snarky banter that the two of them exchanged each night as he led her, bloodied and injured, back to her room was refreshing. There was almost no weight to their words and in his company, Ginny could forget who she was for a moment. She didn't have to be Ginny Weasley: fearless leader of the mouvement de résistance against the Carrows, Secret-Keeper of the Order of the Phoenix and someone whom those scared of Voldemort could respect. She was just Ginny: the girl who trembled uncontrollably when she imagined what Voldemort could do to her - what Tom Riddle had done to her. She was just the girl who loathed Draco Malfoy, exactly as she had when they were little, when the world was not so dark and everything made a little more sense. And when the two of them argued back and forth, Ginny was able to fool herself into thinking that they were back in times when the worst thing in her world was that the Boy Who Lived didn't return her affections.

But in the back of her mind, no matter how much she enjoyed quarrelling with him, Ginny never could forget that they were on opposite sides. Draco Malfoy was the enemy. His mansion was home to Voldemort's headquarters. His friends tortured her friends - and herself - night after night, howling with laughter every time one of them cried or asked for mercy. His parents had tortured, even killed countless Muggles and wizards alike - indeed, his father had tried to kill her when he gave her that diary back in her first year. Draco Malfoy was everything that Ginny despised, everything she and her family fought against, and yet - he wasn't. She couldn't explain why, but for some reason, when they were together and just bantering about pointless, meaningless things, she felt herself relax, felt the strain and the fear simply melt away.

"What?" he demanded one night as she watched him wind a long, flesh-colored bandage around her left wrist, which had gotten bent in a direction that a wrist should never bend, due to a particularly exuberant Pansy Parkinson.

Ginny realized that, as she had been thinking about how relaxed she felt around him, she had also been blatantly staring at him with an almost dreamy expression on her face. She felt her face turn pink.

"N-nothing," she stuttered, feeling for the life of her as if she was eleven years old again and had just dipped her elbow in the butter dish.

He studied her for a moment - taking in the flushed skin and nervous eyes, darting back and forth - before replying. "I should suggest to Crabbe and Goyle that they stop banging your head against the wall so much," he said, his voice dry. "You Weasleys don't have many brain cells to begin with, and it looks like the loss of so many in those detentions is affecting your ability to perform simple motor functions."

Ginny wrinkled her nose at him and then soundly kicked out with her right foot, nailing him in the shin. He laughed - yes, he did that around her occasionally - and caught her foot playfully before turning his attention back to her sprained wrist.

It certainly was a strange feeling, looking at Draco Malfoy and realizing that he gave her some sort of peace. She was supposed to hate him - she was born to hate him. That was what she was meant to do. But he was the only one that ever helped her, the only one who was there, waiting for her, always, when she limped away from the Carrows' torture chamber. He healed her wounds so she wouldn't have to suffer the humiliation of going to the infirmary and proving that she was weak. He practically carried her home every night, certainly a shameful task for him as well as her, but he did it nonetheless. And the thing was - he did all of this in such a manner that she never doubted that he didn't want anything in return. One might call her naïve, tell her that he was a Malfoy and a Slytherin and the son of a Death Eater - that he was doing this to gain her trust and that one day he would demand everything and more in payment- but Ginny didn't believe it. He helped her simply because, well, he did.

But needless to say, these encounters occurred only when they were alone, in the darkness, far past midnight. In the light of the day, he treated her with as much contempt and disdain as he always had. Not that he didn't treat her with contempt and disdain when they were alone at night either, but those nocturnal interactions lacked that edge of suppressed hatred and violence that he showed her when his friends were around. Ginny found none of this surprising - if there was one thing to be said about Draco Malfoy, it was that he was immaculate about how he appeared to the rest of the world. But she found herself increasingly puzzled by this other side he grudgingly revealed to her every night as he healed her bruises, dipped her cuts into a small wooden bowl filled with essence of Murtlap, staggered down the corridors as he half-carried her home.

"Why do you help me?" she asked him one night as she sat in one of the corridors, her back pressed up against the jagged stone wall. The rough edges of the blocks dug into her flesh, distracting her from the pain in her right thigh.

At first he said nothing in return, his only response a bowed head as he leaned over the ragged gash in her leg, his pale blond hair hanging in front of his eyes as he dabbed essence of Murtlap on the wound. It stung. Ginny hissed, but said nothing. The pain was there, but it was almost refreshing - a different kind of pain than the ones she was subjected to every night.

A single torch guttered on the wall above where the two of them sat, crackling softly. The flame flickered to the left and then the right in an odd pattern, and in its dance it wildly threw the shadows about, giving the dark corridor an aspect of unceasing movement, as if it were underwater.

"Draco?" she prodded, not realizing that it was the first time she had called him by his given name. Somewhere over the past couple of months, when she thought about the boy that was Draco Malfoy, he had gone from "that sodding prat" to just "Malfoy" and then, in the last couple weeks, to "Draco." Ginny froze when she realized that she had said it out loud, not sure what to expect of his reaction.

He paused, only briefly, raising his head to look her at her, his eyebrow cocked. But when he bent over again - this time to apply some salve to her bleeding left hand - he spoke, and for the first time, when he spoke to her, his voice was devoid of both contempt and playful derision.

"I'm not really sure why I help you," he said. "Most of the time I wish I don't - and I wish that I hadn't run into you that first night." His voice was low, steady, but Ginny saw how his hand shook as it smoothed the icy salve over her scorching, scarred skin.

"It's so easy to let everyone else suffer," he continued, and by the tone of his voice Ginny wondered if he was talking more to himself than to her, "but you? I don't know. I could just let it alone, but when I tell myself to stay away - and believe me, I tell myself to stay away every moment I think of you and your stupid plethora of bleeding cuts and purple bruises - I don't. I- I can't."

Ginny stared at him, wide-eyed. She couldn't think of a single thing to say. Draco didn't look at her, instead focusing on the cut in her palm, his deft fingers cool against her burning skin. It was quiet, the only sound being a muted sputtering of the flickering torch burning above their heads. Draco did his work quickly, skillfully - he had had quite some time to practice by now.

He finished wrapping the bandage around her wrist and agilely got back on his feet. Ginny looked up at him. He hesitated a moment, then stuck out a hand to help her up, the silver in his eyes blazing. Ginny took his hand and he pulled her to her feet.

They said nothing for a brief moment. They just stood there, eyes locked, their hands clasped in-between him. Then Ginny blinked. Draco shook his head once, as if to clear it, and dropped her hand, stepping back so his face was in the shadows.

He turned to leave but again he hesitated, pausing and looking back at her, standing there with all her bandages and bruises - her eye swollen, her face scarred.

"Look," he said plainly, "I don't know why I am helping someone on the other side at all, and I especially don't know why it happened to be you. But it's like - well, I've told you already. All I know is that I don't have a choice in this."

Ginny nodded once. She moved forward slightly, her intention to say something, but then she realized that there was nothing she really could say to a declaration like that. She lifted her hand and placed it on his shoulder, just for a moment, before spinning on her heel and making her way slowly down the corridor, alone.

It was through some unspoken understanding between the two of them that they did not speak in daylight. Or at least he didn't - Ginny, at times, caught herself slipping, opening her mouth to say something when she saw him in the Great Hall or out on the windblown grounds. Once, when he had brushed past her in the crowded corridor between classes, looking down his long nose at her, she had officered him a small smile. He had stiffened, his eyes turning dark, and that night he had not said a word as he, again, levitated her back to her dorm, leaving her at the portrait hole after silently healing her broken leg.

No, it was only when the sun sank below the horizon, when the smoldering ceruleans and luminescent ambers in the sky faded to grey- when the shadows overtook the world and washed its blurred edges in darkness - only then would he acknowledge her existence. So that was why she was so surprised when he sauntered up to her one windy afternoon and sat down next to her in the empty Quidditch stadium where she was staring at her sketchpad, chewing her thumb and agonizing over which plays to use against the Ravenclaws in their matchup next weekend.

"What do you want?" Ginny hadn't meant for her voice to sound so sharp - she was just surprised. Draco, as usual, stared back her, unperturbed.

"Goodness, Weasley, such manners. What would your dear mother say? Can't I say hello to an old acquaintance?" Ginny wondered whether he had been born with that obnoxious smirk stretched across his face.

"Sorry, Draco, it's just that, well, we usually never associate ourselves with each other unless it's at night and - wait, what do you mean ‘old acquaintance'?"

His eyebrows shot up into his hair. "Have we not known each other since the dawn of time, Weasley? I mean, yes, it' a given that you made my boogies shoot out of my nose and try to eat my face at every chance you got during most of that period in time, but now-"

"No, you giant, oblivious prat. I mean, what are you doing calling me an acquaintance? Don't you think by now you should be calling me a f-friend?" Ginny stumbled over the last word, realizing that she had just yelled at Draco Malfoy because he had not considered her a good enough friend. Draco Malfoy. Oh, bloody hell.

At first he only looked at her, his face passive as he studied hers. She felt her skin flush under his intense gaze - she hated how it did that so easily. A light wind swept across where they were sitting, ruffling the pages of her sketchpad.

"Well," Draco said slowly, as if he were choosing his words quite carefully, "I didn't think that true friends would only talk to each other under the cover of darkness. And only when the two of them are alone. And aren't friends not supposed to want to kill each other?"

Ginny shrugged, keeping her eyes trained on her feet. "I think friends help each other out, when one of them is hurt," she said softly, "and friends make you laugh, sometimes, when you don't feel like it. And some of your friends might be immensely obnoxious arseholes," she paused here, looking at him meaningfully, "but they're always there for you, which is more than I can say for some other so-called friends."

"Ah," he said, his grey eyes glinting in the afternoon sun, "and I suppose you're referring to the elusive Mr. Potter?"

Ginny shrugged. "I wasn't referring to anyone in particular," she said indifferently. She was lying through her teeth of course, and she knew that Draco knew it.

"You know, I never really liked Harry Potter," he said, bringing a smile to Ginny's face. She turned to him.

"Really? You never liked Harry? That's a shocking surprise - I can't believe you would reveal such a secret to me, your mere acquaintance." Her voice was dry.

He shrugged. "I am a superior being of wonderment, Weasley, filled with mysteries and revelations," he said without missing a beat. Ginny rolled her eyes.

"No, but listen," he said, his eyes turning dark grey - meaning it was something serious, Ginny had come to learn. "I never really liked Potter, but I think somewhere deep down I had some sort of - oh, I don't know - grudging respect, I suppose, for the twat. He always stood up for his friends and fought for what he believed, even if what he believed was a load of dung."

Ginny thought that it was probably not a good idea to point out in the middle of Draco Malfoy's admission that he actually respected Harry that she happened to agree with many of those "load of dung" ideas.

"But now," he continued, a hard edge creeping into his words, "now when everyone - the school, our world, and- and you -" He paused, not looking at her. "Now is the time when you need him most, to do his stupid hero thing and, I don't know, save the world, I suppose - now is when he chooses to run out on everyone. Not really something a hero - or someone you call your friend - should do now, is it?" His chest heaved, the air rushing out of his lungs.

Ginny opened her mouth to say something - to explain that Harry hadn't run out on them, that he and Hermione and Ron were out there right now, doing some secret task that Dumbledore had sent them to do, something that would save their world. But then, with a jolt, she realized, not for the first time, that Draco was on the other side and that he didn't know this. Furthermore. if she told him, well, it would put the three of them in even graver danger. So she said nothing at all, instead running a hand through her mess of copper curls and staring off into the distance.

A loud clattering noise sounded from the distance and someone laughed, a sharp bark ringing across the empty stadium. The two of them looked up, broken out of their silent reverie by the sound of approaching chatter. Draco stood up, readying himself to leave, and Ginny's heart sank, just a little, when she realized that things would always be this way between them. And he might not see this as a friendship - and maybe he was right, because how can you be friends with someone when you can't even admit to the world that you talk with them - but she most certainly did. Ginny was startled to discover that this thing she deemed a friendship between the two of them had quickly turned out to be one of the things she treasured the most, even in the short time she had gotten to know Draco Malfoy.

He buttoned his cloak slowly, not saying anything, eyes trained on the edge of the field where the students usually entered. But before he left, he turned towards her, placing a hand on the bench next to her and leaning over her right ear.

"We may only be acquaintances," he whispered quickly, the air from his lips making her skin tingle pleasantly, "but nevertheless, can you keep one of my secrets?"

Ginny nodded.

"Well," he continued, his voice growing even softer so that Ginny had to strain to hear his words, "don't tell Ginevra Weasley, because it would only go to her head, but I secretly consider her one of my best friends."

She looked at him quickly, her caramel eyes widening in surprise. He looked back at her, that smirk on his face again and, with a whirl of his black cloak, he walked away.

Ginny blinked.

It happened on one of those out-of-nowhere warm days in November, when the sun decides to peek out from behind the usual ensemble of rolling grey clouds and dye the sky a crystal light blue. The breeze was unusually warm, and Ginny only donned a light cloak as she sat with Neville and Seamus out by the lake after classes, enjoying what was sure to be the last of the good weather until spring.

"McGonagall's planning to give us an exam before Christmas break," Neville mentioned idly, running a thin blade of grass between his fingers. Ginny still marveled at the change in his appearance since the start of the war - undoubtedly, he was still a bit plump around the edges, but there was an aura of confidence and determination to his stance that made him hard to recognize at times.

Seamus snorted. "That old bat. How am I supposed to concentrate on the Five Principles of Transfiguration between the Three States of Matter when going home and seeing my family is all I can think about?" he complained.

"And by that you mean, two whole weeks with absolutely no work is all you can think about," Ginny teased, poking him lightly in the shoulder.

Seamus' eyes twinkled as he poked her back, that friendly crooked grin on his freckled face. "Dear me, Ginevra, you know me too far too well," he drawled.

The three old friends chatted and joked in the sunlight, unusually carefree on this bright day. Their typically anxiously-drawn faces were relaxed, and as each sunlit moment passed, the scars scattered across their skin seemed to fade, just a little. For once in a very long time, they weren't plotting their next move against the Carrows or worrying about their friends and family out there in the real world. They were just three teenagers, relaxing in the autumn sun, not a single care save a looming exam. Or at least they were, until a group of Slytherins strolled past.

"Oh, and did you see her face? Even being tortured, Looney Lovegood can't look normal." Zabini gave a curt, harsh laugh.

"Yeah, I know," Goyle joined in, guffawing wildly. "It was funny though, wasn't it, when she tried to fight back and nailed Crabbe in the shin?"

Crabbe glowered. "It was not funny. Crazy witch got what she deserved though." He leered appropriately.

Ginny spun around, her eyes tracking the group of chortling boys as they picked their way across the muddy grass, making their way slowly towards where she and the others sat hidden behind some exuberant shrubbery. She felt her heat pound, her mind scrambling to make sense of what she had overheard.

They couldn't have been talking about the nightly detentions. Ginny and Neville had conferred early on during the school year - when they had decided to take a stand against the Carrows - about what to do with Luna. The slight blonde was brave, there was no doubt, and she wasn't afraid to stand up for her friends, but she had also become frail over the summer - delicate, one might say - and Ginny and Neville had vowed to try and keep her away from the Carrows' torture chamber. Of course, Luna knew what they were doing. Every time after one of them took the blame for what she had done, received her punishment, Luna would always confront them, her blonde hair sparking, her eyes ablaze, but there was nothing she could do to stop them. Except now, it seemed like she had gotten herself into deeper trouble.

The Slytherins were still making their way closer to Ginny and the others. "You know what?" Zabini was saying gloatingly. "My Cruciatus curse must be getting a lot stronger - I've never heard anyone scream like that before."

Before she really processed what she was doing, Ginny leapt to her feet and ran straight up to the laughing bastards. "What did you did to Luna?" she demanded furiously, pulling out her wand.

The three of them looked taken aback by her sudden appearance. Zabini, naturally, was the first to gather his wits, which was peculiar as Crabbe and Goyle both had much fewer wits to gather. "Why would we tell you?" Zabini scoffed, a pompous scowl splayed across his face.

"Because if you don't," Ginny retorted, fighting to keep control of the frantic rage that was rising inside her, "you'll be missing a large chunk of flesh from your face. I've been wanting to get you back from all those - oh, what do call them? - detentions."

She would make them tell her where Luna was, torture them like they had tortured Luna, and Merlin help her, if Luna was hurt in any way- Ginny didn't know what she would do. Luna had better still be alive, she thought, an icy chill running down her spine. She raised her arm.

"Ah, ah, ah, little Weasley." Draco stepped out from where he had been lurking behind the bulky frames of Crabbe and Goyle, startling Ginny. She hadn't known he was there.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you," he continued with a disdainful smile. "The Carrows would be very upset if their special helpers were marred in any way, shape or form, especially by someone like you."

Ginny's eyes narrowed. He was looking at her like she was scum, like he didn't take care of her night after night under the cover of flickering shadows and shifting darkness. Like he wasn't her friend.

She hated this.

"The Carrows can go jump off a cliff, for all I care. All I want is to know where Luna is, and I want to know now." She moved her arm so that her wand was pointed directly at his slimy, smug face. Neville and Seamus had come up from the lake and they stood by her now, flanking her on either side.

Malfoy chuckled darkly - Ginny didn't even recognize him anymore. The Slytherins around them grinned maliciously, their eyes glinting. "It seems like all those nights of torture haven't broken you yet, Weasley," he said in a strange voice. "Funny, I'd have thought they would have by now." He paused, his eyes flashing, the expression on his face rigid. "Too bad little Lovegood didn't have your strength, if you could call it that."

A shock of electricity ran down Ginny's spine. "What do you mean?" she whispered.

Zabini cut into the conversation. "What he means," he said, sneering, "is that your pathetic little friend didn't even hold up five minutes under the Cruciatus Curse. Started sobbing, didn't she, Malfoy? We left her broken body behind somewhere. Should be an interesting little hunt for the three of you, wouldn't you say?"

The fury and panic that had been simmering in the pit of Ginny's stomach boiled over and, before she realized what she was doing, she threw a punch straight at Zabini's repulsive face, caching him just above the jaw. The wand in her hand was completely forgotten.

He staggered backwards, holding his face, falling back into the fold of Slytherins. Draco moved forward and grabbed her wrist, gripping it between his long, white fingers. Ginny blinked at him, seething with anger. They had been here before.

"I thought I told you to never try that again." His voice was low.

"Yeah, well, since when have I ever listened to anyone, let alone the orders of a worthless arsehole such as Draco Malfoy?" she hissed, wishing with all her heart that it was his jaw she had socked instead of Zabini's. He deserved it more. She had been wrong, he wasn't a friend - she would have never befriended someone who condoned what the others had done to Luna. What he, in fact, might have also done.

Draco laughed, the sound jarring and cruel. He shook her, dragging her closer to him by her wrists. "Look, little Weasley, let me tell you something. Lovegood's a goner, alright? She was barely breathing when we left her, so she hardly had any life left in her, let alone her wits. She's certainly not anyone worth getting hurt over. And let me warn you," he intoned, his eyes so dark they were nearly black, "we will hurt you - kill you even, should we feel it necessary."

Ginny looked at him. How could this possibly be the Draco Malfoy she had gotten to know these past couple of months? This was not him - this was not the same person who had bandaged her wounds with such a surprisingly gentle touch, who had carried her down the darkened corridors night after night, who leaned over to her in the Quidditch stands and whispered in her ear that he thought of her as his friend. No, this was a stranger - she didn't know who this boy was at all, this boy who laughed at her friends' pain, who tried to hurt her, who leered over her and threatened to kill her.

So Ginny spit at him, this strange, cruel boy that she did not recognize, catching him straight in the eye. "That's what I feel about your warnings, Draco Malfoy, and your threats," she growled, wrenching her arms from his grasp.

Draco recoiled, his face twisting in disgust. "You -"

"Ginny!" Neville cut Draco off, grabbing Ginny's shoulder to get her attention. He and Seamus had been poring over something behind her back while the whole drama played out, ignoring both the increasingly violent exchange between her and Draco and the other three Slytherins who stood behind them, watching with their mouths gaping open. "Ginny," he repeated, "Luna's behind the Herbology greenhouses. Greenhouse number three. She just sent us a message."

Ginny glanced at Seamus, noticing something gold catching the sun's rays before he tucked it back into his pocket. She nodded.

Without sparing another glance at Draco Malfoy, she turned and sprinted off to help Luna, Seamus and Neville fast on her heels. Surprisingly, the Slytherins let them leave. Ginny vaguely wondered why, but dismissed it from her mind. It didn't matter - she needed to get to Luna. She didn't waste another thought on the grey-eyed boy with the pale skin standing by the lake, or the shattered fragments of their broken friendship that she was left behind.



Ginny tugged a crumbling, brown catkin from where it clung to a branch of the black alder tree, feeling it fall apart between her fingertips. She thrust her fist out into the air and opened her fingers, dropping the pieces. She watched them flutter slowly towards the ground.

Ginny crept away from Hagrid's hut that night, annoyed that she had let herself lose track of the time. She had needed someone to talk to, someone to help her understand the chaos that had happened that afternoon, and Hagrid had always been there with a comforting ear and a warm pot of tea. He was much like her mother in that way, though Ginny would never dream of telling him so.



Seamus and Neville had carried Luna to the infirmary, where Madam Pomfrey had fixed her up as well as she could. Ginny had never seen the doddering grey witch lose control like that before - when she learned what had happened to Luna, Pomfrey had gone off on a good-sized rant, using words with which even Fred and George would be impressed. After she had calmed down, she had told them that Luna would most likely be fine after an intensive array of potions and a week's rest, but she couldn't be sure.

Ginny felt helpless, wanting to do something for Luna but knowing that there was nothing that could be done. Things might have been different, if only they had found Luna sooner, or if they hadn't wasted so much time at the lake. But Ginny knew that what had happened wasn't really their fault - it was someone else's entirely, and she could barely keep herself from seeking out each of those four slimy gits and making them pay, somehow, for what they had done to Luna.

Hagrid had listened to her rant, nodding understandingly and growling angrily under his breath. He had agreed that drowning Malfoy and the others in the lake and using them as food for the giant squid was probably not the wisest decision, though it was rather tempting. The two of them had sat by the fire, Fang's head butting into Ginny's side occasionally, and talked well into the night, sipping tea and laughing.

But she had stayed out too late and it was now well past the time it was safe for her to be up, prowling about outside. She circled slowly around the grounds, skirting the edge of the forest, keeping close to the shadows. The harvest moon shone out of black velvet- full and yellow and ripe, casting a strange glow over the castle. It hugged the horizon, hanging low in the pitch-black sky, as if it were too heavy to lift itself any higher.

"Ginny."

The voice came from her right, hissing out from the darkness and nearly making her shriek. She whipped out her wand, cautiously twisting around on the spot, her eyes darting for the source of the sound.

"Relax, Ginny, it's me." Draco stepped out from the shadows, his hands held up in a gesture of surrender.

Ginny's eyes narrowed. She kept her wand up. "What do you want with me, Malfoy?" she snapped. "What, are you going to make good on that threat to kill me now?"

He looked taken aback. "You must be daft if you thought I meant any of that drivel, Ginny. It was all for show, although," he winced, "I could do without the spitting next time." He grinned at her, hopefully.

Ginny wasn't amused. "You thought that was for show? And what about Luna? Was hurting her, torturing her, nearly killing her, was that for show too?" Her hair glinted an angry copper in the strange moonlight.

Draco's eyes darkened. "You need to calm down, Ginny," he said steadily, moving closer towards her.

"Don't take another step," she warned, keeping her wand trained between his two gleaming eyes. "And don't call me Ginny. You don't deserve that."

Draco stopped moving forward and dropped his hands, his arms hanging limply at his sides. The first two buttons of his white Oxford shirt were undone, and furious as she was, Ginny couldn't help but notice how smooth his skin looked at his throat.

"Fine then, Weasley, you need to calm down. You have no right to be angry with me."

Ginny couldn't believe what she was hearing. "Really. I have no right to be angry with you? Were you there this afternoon?" Her voice was growing increasingly shrill. "How can you stand there and say that, knowing what you did to me? Knowing what you did to Luna?"

"You don't know what it's like," he retorted, his voice rising. "You have no right to stand there and judge me."

"Yes, I do. All right, I understand why you stand back and do nothing as, night after night, your friends insult and torture all of the other students - usually my friends. No, usually me. I get that you care what they think of you and that's why you never do anything but-"

"No, Ginny, that is not why I never do anything." He cut her off, his dark eyes smoldering. "You wouldn't understand."

"Try me."

He looked at her, at her flushed cheeks and her blazing eyes and the wand that she kept trained on his face.

"We're in a war, Ginny," he began, his voice cold. "We're in a war, and people don't care anymore. They don't care about who gets hurt. You-Know-Who's living in my home - I can't do anything out of line, anything that he or the Carrows or Snape wouldn't agree with. Don't you understand? I'm forced to care about what other people think, Ginny, because if I don't, it's my mother that will end up being that damned snake's next meal."

Ginny couldn't think of anything to say. Slowly, she lowered her arm.

"And it bothers me, all right?" he continued, not looking at her, the shadows playing across his face. "It bothers my conscience to do nothing, to just stand there and watch - watch what he does to people, how he gets what he wants - you have no idea what it was like in my house this summer. But what, really, what can I do? He has all of us under his insatiable, pitiless thumb - one mistake and-" Draco's voice broke. "He's already punished my mother, for what I failed to do last year. Never mind that he got what he wanted in the end - I still failed and my mother had to pay. What do you think would happen to her if he knew what I had been doing for you, all this time? And this afternoon - it's like I had to help them, had to laugh when they did that to Luna, just like how I had to hurt you because, well, what other choice did I have? How can you judge me for trying to protect my parents?"

He looked down at his feet, not meeting her shocked gaze. The harvest moon shone its odd yellow light above them, silently watching over them.

Unbidden, another memory came to Ginny, this time of a conversation she and Harry had had before he left them at Bill's wedding. The two of them had been sitting on the rickety stairs in the Burrow, halfway between her landing and Ron's, and Harry had been telling her - slowly, haltingly - about what had happened that murky night out on the Astronomy Tower.

"His face was as white as Dumbledore's, Gin," Harry had said, his voice trembling. "And he was shaking so badly. I don't think he wanted to do it. He looked so scared. And - and in that last moment, before Snape burst in there - I think he lowered his wand."

Ginny didn't know what she was doing until she was there, standing in front of Draco, cupping his face between her two frozen hands. He raised his eyes to look at her, silver swimming with some emotion she could not fathom.

"I'm sorry," she whispered. "You're right, I can't even imagine what it must have been like, what you have to - I'm sorry."

He nodded silently, taking her hands and tracing his finger up her arm. She flinched when he glided over the raw skin, chafed from where he had grabbed her earlier. Draco pulled back, examining the angry red welts that encircled both her wrists. She heard a sharp intake of breath.

"I did that to you," he said, his voice quiet.

Ginny shook her head vehemently, not wishing to cause him any more guilt. "No, Draco, it's fine. It doesn't even hurt that much-"

"You were right. How can I even stand to look at myself?" His voice was bitter. Ginny felt something wet on her face, and was shocked to realize that she was crying, her eyes dripping because of something she did not understand.

"No, Ginny, don't - don't cry," Draco said frantically, brushing away her teardrops with his thumb. "Why are you even -"

Ginny shook her head. "I don't know," she choked out, half-laughing at the silliness of it all. Draco was the one whose life was literally falling apart, and here she was, crying.

Draco pulled her close, and she knew that he was trying to make this hurt go away, just as he had with all the others, all those nights in the past. And it broke her heart - how he tried so hard to save her, when he couldn't even save himself.

So she tilted her chin upwards, wrapping her arms around his neck and pulling him down towards her. And under the strange glow of a golden harvest moon, she kissed Draco Malfoy, because her heart was breaking, because he looked so hopeless and defeated, because she wanted to. And he kissed her back, smoothing his hands over her tangled hair, his lips burning under her own. Ginny did not know why he decided to kiss her back that night under the harvest moon - but it didn't matter why. All that mattered was that he did.

Ginny touched her face, feeling the salty tears dribble down her cheeks. It was hard, remembering. There was a reason she had kept these memories pent up inside her for so long. A warm breeze wove through the late afternoon air, drying her skin. The sun was beginning to set, and in the lengthening shadows, the black alder tree on which she sat seemed to tower ever higher over the countryside.

Ginny ran her hands agitatedly through her hair. She didn't want these next memories, didn't want to recall those heated arguments between the two of them as they tried to understand what was happening. Neither of them wanted it, she remembered, yet neither of them could resist it. They couldn't break that magnetic pull that inevitably drove them towards each other.

They defied logic and reason, the two of them together. They made no sense - she was all blistering words and righteous anger, while he was calculating, calm, almost to the point of coldness, some might say, though she never would. He was risking everything for her, she - only the disapproval of her friends and family. They should have stopped, should have just let it go after that first searing kiss under the luminous yellow moon, but neither of them could.

They still only met under the cover of darkness, relishing the stolen time that they spent in each other's company. He was still there every time she staggered out of detention with the Carrows, waiting for her with his gentle touch and burning kisses. They crept into empty classrooms or shadowed passageways, leaning against each other, fingers entwined as they whispered the night away. More than once they fell asleep, his head in her lap, she curled up in a ball against his side, and the two of them always awoke just prior to sunrise with barely enough time to dash off to their respective dormitories before someone discovered their absence.

"What do you think we're doing?" Ginny asked him sleepily one night as she leaned back against his chest, feeling it rise and fall beneath her cheek. Draco ran his fingers through her tangled copper curls, feeling them slip smoothly beneath his fingertips. It was dark in the empty classroom where the two of them were sprawled out on the stone floor, the only light coming from the moon and the stars that could be seen through the high glass windowpanes.

"We're being unbelievably dense, that's what we're doing," Draco replied sardonically, his voice dry. But still he stroked her hair, never missing a beat.

Ginny sat up, twisting her head around to look him in the eye. "You always say that," she said accusingly, "and yet you never change anything. If you think the idea of us being together is so stupid, then why don't you ever just leave?" She folded her arms and glared at him.

Draco raised an eyebrow. "Would you like me to leave? Because I will, if you want me to." He shifted his weight, pretending to stand up.

"No," Ginny pouted, "don't move. You're comfy." She plopped back down and snuggled closer into his chest.

Draco laughed softly. "Really? Is that why you keep me around?" he asked, kissing the top of her head.

"You're useful for other things too," Ginny mumbled, already half-asleep from where she was burrowed in his arms. "You're fun to look at. And you kiss very nicely."

She felt Draco start underneath her. "What? Woman, my kisses are phenomenal. My kisses are extraordinary. You had better be describing them with a word better than nicely," he sulked grumpily.

She rolled her eyes. "Please, no, don't be so humble. Honestly, Draco, your modesty amazes me to no end."

Draco leaned forward, his breath hot against her neck. "Now, see, that's what you should be saying about my kisses, love." His voice was low, teasing.

Ginny stuck her tongue out at him, mature witch that she was. "No. I shan't."

"Say it," he whispered mischievously, digging his fingers into her sides and tickling her until she shrieked with laughter. "Say it, Ginevra, or I'll tickle you to death."

"Fine, fine," she wheezed, wriggling to get away from his hands. "You win. You are a magnificent kisser. Astonishing. Awe-inspiring. I don't know why I don't swoon now, at the sight of you."

Draco released her, his face smug. Ginny rolled over and crawled upwards so that her lips could reach his ear. "But, Draco Malfoy," she breathed into his left ear, "I'm still better."

He laughed and pulled her down to face him, wrapping his arms around her waist before kissing her full on the lips.

Ginny's days passed in a blurred, sleep-deprived haze, in clear contrast to the defined, crystal-clear electricity that encompassed her nights.

There were still nights when they weren't together, when she lay awake in her bed and fretted over what was to become of them once the year was over, once they had to face the real world outside the castle walls. She wondered what would become of Draco's parents - and of Draco himself - should anyone else find out. Ginny questioned, sometimes, whether Draco resented her at times because of the risk she represented for him and his family. But then he would whisper some sweet nothing in her ear and kiss her on her neck, on that spot right below her jawbone, and every rational thought would fly out of her mind.

Ginny ran her hands over the bark of the black alder tree, feeling its whorls and ridges beneath the palms of her hands. There had been so many nights - so many stories told, so many kisses exchanged, so many promises made - that they all ran together, and yet each one stood out in such utter clarity. They had had such a short time together, the two of them - in reality only a couple of months, from late November until April.

She remembered that night in March, when she crept into his dormitory and whispered that she had to leave the next day, that she wasn't coming back to school.

"What do you mean you're not coming back?" he demanded, after he had taken her hand and led them to a deserted classroom somewhere in the dungeons. Ginny shivered, feeling a draft of icy air twist around her ankles, and she crossed her arms, huddling within herself for warmth. Draco offered no comfort, standing there before her, his hair tousled and his face creased from sleep. But his eyes were blazing as they regarded her, imploring her for an answer, and Ginny didn't know how to explain.

"My parents Owled me this afternoon, telling me that they're sending for me tomorrow morning. Things are happening outside - I don't know what, but they said it's no longer safe for me here." She rubbed her arms, trying to keep warm.

Draco paced back and forth, his bare feet tapping a rhythm on the stone floor. "How can they do this? Hogwarts hasn't been safe for a long time now - look what you go through every night with the Carrows - but it's still safer than anything they could dream up out there. Don't they understand that?"

Ginny shrugged helplessly. "I don't know, Draco, but they're my parents and they need me."

He turned towards her, the look in his eyes melting her heart. "And what about me, Ginny? I- I need you too."

She reached for him but he pulled away, stepping back into the shadows, an old trick of his when he didn't want anyone to get close. But Ginny knew better than to let him close himself off, and she stepped with him into the shadows, wrapping her thin arms around his rigid frame.

"I'm sorry. I can't just tell them no. Besides, I don't think I really have a choice in the matter - I'm only sixteen, remember? I tried to appeal to McGonagall - you know how she is - but she agrees with them. I think I'm leaving for good." She buried her nose into his chest, listening to his heartbeat pulse against her ear. "I don't want to leave you either," she whispered.

Draco finally relaxed, slowly winding his arms around her thin shoulders. "Do you know where you're going?" he asked softly.

Ginny nodded. "Home. It's safe enough out there that I can sneak out at night, past the Apparition boundaries if I need to," she said slowly, throwing him a meaningful glance.

Draco sighed, resting his chin on the top of her head. "If you want me to, I can get to you," he answered, his lips moving against her hair.

And so they had continued their relationship - if one could call it that. Somehow, a few times a week, he would send her his owl with a message, letting her know that he was coming. Then that night, as the moon rose overhead, she would slip out the back door, sprint across the garden, jump the fence and meet him in the aromatic orchard. She wondered, sometimes, how he managed to send owls out of Hogwarts without having them intercepted and the messages read, as it happened with every other owl. She also wondered how he managed to leave the school grounds any time he wished. But she never asked him, suspecting that it had something to do with the part of him that she didn't want to think about.

The time they spent together in the orchard was different now - it seemed rushed, more urgent, as if they both knew that they were running out of time. Ginny remembered taking in every moment with him - every word whispered in her ear, every kiss pressed against her skin - committing each grain of time to her memory.

They took walks together, the two of them trudging over the frozen ground that surrounded her home. Ginny wondered now - now as she perched on one of the highest branches in her beloved black alder tree - why she had never brought him here, never showed him the undulating sea of barley, never sat beside him in her black alder tree. She could have then, but not anymore. It was too late now.

Then came that one fateful day when Ginny rolled over in bed and woke to see his large eagle owl perched on her windowsill, ruffling its feathered wings and hooting at her exasperatedly. She stared at it, bewildered. It was still night, but barely so - light was beginning to creep into her room, its tendrils snaking through the open window and across her bedroom walls. The tawny owl hooted again, drawing her out of her sleepy reverie. It hopped closer, its great yellow eyes glowing in that weary, faded light that comes right before dawn, the same light that was trickling through Ginny's window and washing her room grey.

Ginny slipped out from beneath her covers and plodded over to the owl, shivering slightly in the morning air as she slid the rolled parchment off of its leg and opened it with her fumbling fingers. The message was short, direct: I need to see you. Now.

With barely a moment's hesitation, Ginny was out the window and sliding down the drain pipe, trying to make as little noise as possible, as she knew her parents were mostly likely awake by now, though still taking their time getting out of bed. She tiptoed across the garden, her bare feet leaving footprints in the fresh dew.

Spring had arrived - the weather was growing warmer, the trees beginning to bud - and it was in this world of rebirth that she found him waiting for her in the grove of trees that encircled her family's tiny orchard. The sun was just hovering just below the eastern horizon, unfolding a fan of dusty pink streaks across the sky.

"Draco, what is it?

He was sitting in the grass, his arms wrapped around his knees, trembling. Ginny ran towards him and knelt in front of him, enfolding his hands within hers. "Draco?"

He looked at her, his unsteady eyes taking a moment to focus on her worried face. "Sorry," he rasped, in a voice that sounded like it had been worn out from shouting, "I know it's almost dawn and I didn't give you much warning -"

"No, it's fine," said Ginny hurriedly, not wanting him to think that she didn't want to see him. "Don't ever apologize to me for wanting to meet me." She rubbed her hands over his, trying to instill some of her warmth into his frozen skin.

Draco nodded. "I just - I just needed to talk to someone."

Ginny shifted her weight, placing her chin on her hands and staring into his eyes. "Well, that's what I'm here for," she said quietly.

She didn't say anything for the next half hour as the sun edged gently nudged the horizon and Draco told her all that had come to pass over the Easter holidays at Malfoy Manor. Ginny couldn't keep her heart from giving a hopeful jump when she heard that her brother and her friends were alive and well - for the most part - but her joy turned to despair when he started describing everything that had happened. When she heard how Bellatrix had tortured Hermione - she couldn't help it, a tiny gasp escaped her lips. But Draco didn't pause - Ginny didn't think he could - and he kept on rolling through the rest of the story - how Harry, Ron and Dobby had burst in, rescuing Hermione; how Lucius Malfoy had staggered down to the cellar, only to discover it empty, save for the lifeless body of Wormtail; how Voldemort's fury seemed to blast through the entire mansion when he had returned to find the Manor in chaos, with not only Harry Potter gone but the other prisoners as well. Draco stopped talking at this point, but he was still shaking, his face hidden in his arms, and he didn't have to tell Ginny for her to understand what happened next.

"Is-" she started, but her voice gave out. She cleared her throat. "Is everyone all right?" she asked tentatively.

Draco nodded numbly. "They are now."

Ginny sat back in the grass, her white nightgown soaked with the morning dew. She didn't know what to say, didn't know what she could do to make everything better again. He had helped her, so many times in the past year, and now - the one time that he needed her - she didn't think she would be able to take the hurt away.

"I'm sorry," she whispered, her voice barely audible. She shifted over until she was next to him and pressed her own cheek against his wet one.

"I just -" he started, his voice breaking, "I just wish that it could be over, you know?"

Ginny nodded against him. "I know."

The sky continued to lighten as the two of them sat side by side, leaning against each other. The birds chirped their morning song, and in the distance, Ginny could hear the daily sounds of the village waking up. Her parents would be rising soon, but still she did not move.

"You should go," said Draco suddenly, just realizing the time of day and what the two of them were doing. "Your parents are going to discover that you're missing."

Ginny shook her head. "It's fine. I'll go only if you want me to go," she said stubbornly. Draco smiled wearily at her, his pale hair gleaming in the light of dawn.

"I'm fine, really," he said, giving her a light kiss on the cheek - his lips lingering on her sweet skin - before slowly getting to his feet. Ginny watched him from her seat on the ground, noticing the gouges in his face that had not been healed - one or two were still dripping blood - and a long, thin gash that ran across his throat and down under his shirt where she could no longer follow it.

She pulled herself up, planting her feet squarely in front of him and poking him gently in the nose. "I love you, you know that, right?" she said, hardly even comprehending her words before they had spilled from her lips. She froze, not sure what to do now, feeling for the life of her exactly as she had so many months ago, when she had first told Draco Malfoy that he should consider her to be his friend.

Draco - of all the things that he could have done - smirked. Typical. Ginny resisted the urge to slap him and wipe that smug look off his face - it was one of the few impulses from their early days that she could not get rid of. "Stop smirking, you gigantic prat," she muttered, scowling darkly at him.

He only smirked wider. Then, leaning forward, he kissed her tenderly, his lips soft, his hands barely skimming her skin. "I know you love me," he murmured against her lips, and she could feel him smile. He pulled back, his eyes serious now as they bored into hers. "And it's a good thing, since I love you too."

And with that he stepped back, his eyes never leaving hers, and Apparated away from her, a resounding crack reverberating through the still air.

Ginny grinned contentedly, a dreamy expression stretching across her face. Slowly, she rotated on the spot, remembering the feeling of his lips against hers, the shiver of pleasure that had shot down her spine when he told her that he loved her. Deliriously happy as she was, Ginny wasn't exactly watching where she was going, and it wasn't until she walked straight into him that she realized that Neville Longbottom was standing behind her, his arms crossed, glowering not at her, but at the spot behind her from where Draco Malfoy had just Apparated.

"Neville!" Ginny exclaimed, feeling not unlike she did when her mother caught her sneaking sweets from the cookie jar before dinner. "I - I wasn't expecting - When did you get here?" Her voice was shaking.

Neville looked at her, the expression on his face dark. "What are you doing, Ginny?" he said in that deep voice Ginny recognized from before, when he was working hard to control his anger.

"I-"

"I can't believe that you would even - what is wrong with you? How can you really be this stupid?"

Ginny was taken aback by the ferocity burning behind his words. "Neville, it's not that bad. If you could just please calm-"

"I will not calm down!" He fairly exploded, the anger that had been simmering inside bursting out in a stream of cutting words. "It's Malfoy, Gin, Malfoy. He's practically a Death Eater. Don't you remember what he did last year, how he pretty much murdered Dumbledore? Or perhaps how his father tried to kill you - along with every single Muggle-born student - back in your first year, do you remember that? How about every single time he's called Hermione a Mudblood, or how he's always humiliated me at every chance he got, or how about how he taunts and belittles and takes advantage of everyone who he thinks is weak - how he knows exactly how to make them feel hurt and ashamed and exploits it? Did you remember that?"

Neville stood before her, his fists clenched as his sides, breathing heavily. Ginny didn't know what to do. She didn't know how to explain to her best friend that yes, she did remember all of that about Draco, but that wasn't who he was when he was with her. He was someone else entirely - someone kind and gentle and just as scared as the rest of them, who loathed how he and his friends treated everyone else but couldn't do anything about it, and who felt remorse for everything that he had done. How could she explain that to him?

"But, Neville," she said, her voice quiet, "I love-"

"Oh, don't, Ginny," Neville cut her off again, exasperated. "Don't be such a girl and say that you love him. He's a monster, Ginny - you see this?" He rolled up his sleeves to show her the angry red welts and litter of purple bruises lining his forearms. "That's what he did to me, last week, when he levitated me into a stone wall. And this?" He prodded his nose, which was swelling and twice the size it normally was. "That's from him also, when he shot a curse straight at my face. And this here?" Ginny didn't want to look but she couldn't keep her eyes from following Neville's motions as he turned his wrists upwards, showing her the deep scratches embedded in the flesh. "That was what I did to myself, when he put the Cruciatus Curse on me two nights ago. The pain was so bad that I gouged my skin with my fingernails, trying to make it stop."

He stared at her, and Ginny saw the deep and haunted look in his eyes, a look she knew was mirrored in her own. They had been through so much this past year, and maybe it wasn't right, this thing that she and Draco were doing - in fact, she knew deep down that it wasn't right - but then, why couldn't they stop? Perhaps he was a monster, but even that wasn't enough to keep her from loving him.

"I don't know what to say, Neville," she said, cautiously moving closer to where he stood, still glaring at her. "This isn't something that I can control. And it's wrong - I know it's wrong - but I can't, well, it just doesn't work that way. I love him. I don't know what else to say."

Neville sucked in a deep breath, looking as if he wanted to shout some more. But then his eyes lit up - Ginny knew that he had thought of something else - and for some reason, the thought filled her with apprehension.

"You could say," Neville began slowly, "that you'll help us." He began to pace across the orchard grass, in circles around Ginny who stood motionless, watching him. "Yes. He leaves the protection of his Death Eater friends when he comes and meets you, right? So if we could set up a trap somehow, keep him from being able to get away - we could capture him."

"Capture him - what, kidnap him and hold him for ransom? No, Neville, what are you-"

"You-Know-Who lives at Malfoy Manor, Gin," Neville explained to her excitedly. "Malfoy must know so much about their plans - at the very least, we could use this to blackmail his parents, maybe get them to work for us too. Don't you see, Ginny, this could be the turnaround we've been waiting for!" He stopped pacing and turned towards her, his face shining.

Ginny shook her head vehemently, not believing what Neville was saying. "We can't, Neville. Using someone's child to blackmail their parents? Dumbledore would have never even considered - no, we can't."

Neville scowled. "Well, we'll never really know what Dumbledore would have done, will we? Because of that slimy ferret and everything he did last year."

"He wasn't-"

"Oh, what, are you going to defend him on that too? Believe me, Ginny, there are plenty of people in the Order who would like a personal explanation for everything that Malfoy did last year. I, myself, wouldn't mind a little revenge," he growled menacingly, his chin set at a determined angle. Ginny remembered a time, not too long ago, when that very same chin would quiver at the barely raised voice of McGonagall or the slightest remark from the Slytherins. Nowadays, Neville rarely backed down from anyone - not even, sometimes, Snape.

As Neville stood there in front of her, condemning Draco, Ginny noticed a hard edge to his words, a coldness in his eyes that she had never seen before. She wondered, briefly, if perhaps Draco had taunted Neville one too many times, mocked and humiliated him just a little too much. Or maybe it was just the war.

She looked at the boy in front of her, remembering how he used to be so timid and soft-spoken - and a bit rotund, to be sure, but that just made him all the more loveable. This year had changed him so much that she no longer knew with whom she was speaking. The Neville standing before her was braver now, that was certain, but he was also less merciful - less compassionate. He had turned callous and it broke Ginny's heart, seeing him like this. Was there nothing that this war would spare?

She opened her mouth to say something, anything, but then at that moment, a familiar tawny eagle owl drifted into the orchard and dropped a folded note into Ginny's outstretched hands. It hooted at her once, its yellow eyes watching her as it ascended and disappeared into the early morning light. Ginny looked at the note in her hands, and then at Neville, who was also staring at the piece of parchment.

"Well?" he prodded her.

Not sure what she was doing, she unfolded the note deftly and read it out loud. "May 1st - at dusk. Same place as always. Love." She stared at the note for a moment, and then back up at Neville's exuberant face.

"All right then," he said, nodding to himself. "It's set. I'll tell someone and we can create an ambush here and-"

"Neville!" Ginny interrupted, frustrated. "What makes you think that I'm going to help you with this? I should just write back now and tell him about this insane plot you're hatching. I can't - I mean, how can you even think that I would do this to him?"

Neville looked at her, his gaze darkening. "And so what are you telling me instead, Ginny?" he asked, his voice rumbling. "You're telling me that you're going to abandon everything we've worked for all this time - that you're going to give up this one chance that we might have to get the upper hand and take down You-Know-Who? Are you just going to betray me and Luna and Harry and Hermione and your family, all for Draco Malfoy?"

Ginny hesitated, the weight of his words sinking in, and Neville took the momentary waver as her consent. "Good," he said, nodding, "I always knew I could count on you. I'll be in touch."

And with those parting words he Apparated out of the orchard, leaving behind only his footprints in the wet grass and the heavy feeling of dread in the pit of Ginny's stomach.

The sky was burning, alight with crimsons and golds and oranges, the fading light painting a reddish sheen over the rolling countryside. Ginny closed her eyes, feeling the warmth from the last of the sun's rays. The black alder tree seemed to relax with her, immersing itself in the peace that comes with darkness at the end of a long day.

Even looking back, Ginny was unsure about what had happened in those last few days of April. She had tried to get in contact with Draco, she remembered, but that turned out to be pretty much impossible. The castle had become a fortress, silent and formidable, letting nothing in or out. The Floo network was being watched, the owl mail was being searched - if only she had given him a DA coin, but if she changed the message on hers then all of the other coins would have changed also, and then Neville would have found out about her betrayal.

She tugged on the sleeve of her sweater, twisting the worn material between her fingers. Ginny had known, even at the time, that it should have been easy. It should have been so simple to say that she loved Draco, and their love surpassed all else, and that of course she wasn't going to let the Order capture and use him for their own means. He had done so much for her, loved her so unconditionally, taken care of her - she had at least owed him this. But Ginny loved her parents too, just as she loved Neville who was fighting so hard, and Harry who was the only one that could save them, and everyone else on this side of the bloody line. And what if Neville was right, what if this was the only chance they had to defeat Voldemort? How selfish could she be, keeping this from everyone else?

Ginny's instincts had been screaming at each other and she hadn't known what to do, and so she had done nothing. She had just buried her head in her arms and tried to ignore the sick feeling of apprehension clawing its way up her throat. And she had hated herself - hated how she couldn't stand up to Neville or any of the others, hated how she couldn't protect the one that she loved. But she had also hated herself for loving him in the first place. How could she have been so stupid? There were songs written about this stuff, novels, epic poems, for Merlin's sake. But she had ignored them all - she had gone off and pulled a Juliet Montague, fallen in love with the enemy, and now she was about to pay for it.

The light was almost gone now. Ginny watched it fade, growing cold inside. Shakespeare pretty much had it spelled out from the start, didn't he? Falling for someone on the other side - it could only end in tragedy.

That night - the night of April 31st - she had awoken with a jolt, some nameless presence tugging her away from shifting dreams and restless slumber. It took her a moment to gather her wits, but suddenly she realized why she had woken up. After days of agonizing, days filled with self-loathing and uncertainty - she suddenly knew what to do.

Ginny fairly soared down the stairs and dashed across the front lawn, her bare feet flying through the air, She stopped when she reached the Apparition boundary, set just past the front gate. Technically, she wasn't supposed to know how to Apparate, but Molly Weasley- being the fretting mother hen that she was - had taught her secretly over the summer, under the warning that it was only if Ginny found herself in a dire situation that she should Apparate. Ginny could not think of a situation more dire than the one she was in right now.

With a sharp crack, Ginny disappeared from where she was standing in front of the Burrow and reappeared with an elegant twist right between two wooden tables in the Hog's Head. She shouted a quick hello to Aberforth Dumbledore, who stared at her groggily from where he was sleeping on the couch, and made for the portrait of the smiling little girl in a red dress with the Peter Pan collar. "May I pass through, please?" Ginny panted breathlessly, staring pleadingly into the portrait's twinkling blue eyes.

The girl smiled wider, revealing her pearly baby teeth, and stood aside, letting Ginny pass through.

"Thanks!" she called back to the girl as she ran into the passageway, her steps echoing oddly down the stone tunnel.

Those last few moments would always be a blur, the colors and sounds melting together into a swirling kaleidoscope. Ginny didn't recall running down the passageway, sneaking past the sleeping forms in the Room of Requirement or skidding across the empty corridors, the guttering torches overhead flickering against stone. Her memories of those minutes were hazy at best, so different from her memories of what happened later that night, when every second was defined with a crystal-like vividness. The only thing Ginny remembered clearly of those moments before she saw Draco was the hammering of her heart - a steady drumbeat pounding out those final, lingering seconds as she marched down the dungeons to his room.

She shook him gently awake, just as she had countless times before, and as he stared at her in dazed astonishment - his eyes bleary, his hair disheveled - she took his hand and slowly led him out of the room. Treading softly, as if they were in a dream, they traveled through the stone wall entrance into the cold corridor, up the stairs, out of the dungeons and into an empty, unused classroom in the twisting passage that led off into the Entrance Hall. A single window stood open on the wall furthest from the door, its glass panes frosted silver by the glittering star light.

Draco found his voice. "Ginny," he whispered, reaching up to caress her cheek with a calloused thumb, "what are you doing here?"

"I had to talk to you." She closed her eyes, memorizing the feel of his fingers against her skin.

He leaned forward, pressing his forehead against hers so that his eyes gazed directly into her liquid brown ones. "Why?"

And so it was in a raised whisper that Ginny told him all that had happened since they had last seen each other - how Neville had come to visit the her at the Burrow and saw her sneaking of the house, how he had followed her and discovered the two of them in the orchard, how she and Neville had argued afterward, how Neville had come up with the plan to kidnap Draco Malfoy, and how she had - so far - done nothing to stop him. Draco listened to all of this without uttering a sound, his thumb never ceasing as it stroked Ginny's tear-sodden cheeks.

"And now I don't know what to do," she cried, after she had told him everything. "I know what I'm supposed to do, but it's not that easy, and how can I go against everything that I've fought for, all this time? None of it makes any sense and - oh, I just don't know what to do."

"Well," Draco said seriously, holding her as she trembled in his arms, "you're here, aren't you? Don't you suppose that means something in itself?"

Ginny paused, taking in what he said. "But that would mean that I have betrayed them," she cried, feeling an ache inside her chest. "Neville and Harry and my family - everyone. I turned my back on them." She turned her face away. "What have I done?" she whispered.

Draco drew back from her. "Does that mean you regret telling me about this?" he asked her flatly.

Ginny looked at him, exhausted, her mind reeling. "What?"

"Do you regret telling me?" he repeated, his eyes turning to steel. "Do you wish that you hadn't betrayed your precious Potter, your Order - did you want me to meet you there in that orchard, knowing full well what was going to happen to me, but not caring as long as you had the approval of your family and your friends?" His voice was cold.

Ginny shook her head, not quite understanding what was happening. "Why are you - no, Draco, of course not. If I had wanted that, well, you said it yourself - I'm here, aren't I?"

"You don't seem very sure of what you did," he shot back. "And furthermore, you hesitated." He withdrew away from her. "You had almost an entire two weeks and you waited until the last moment to come and tell me - and even then you were shaking, like you were doing something terrible."

"Well, I am, aren't I? I'm breaking everyone's trust, helping you when instead I should be-"

"Instead you should be what, Ginny?" Draco was almost shouting now - Ginny had never seen him so much as raise his voice. He was always icy, controlled - never like this. "Instead you should be plotting some way to hurt me? Merlin, Ginny, I gave up everything for you. I put it all at risk - my status, my family's safety, my entire life and it was all for you. And now you have the choice to do something for me and it's killing you inside? Are you serious?"

Ginny's old anger flared up; she hated it when he lectured her. "Who are you to judge me, to be so condescending and to belittle my decisions?" she snapped back. "I mean, no, I'm not guaranteeing that my mother is to be made Nagini's next meal by coming here to you, but that was because I chose the right side, the side that doesn't support You-Know-Who and all of his insane, supremacist ideals. And don't demean my situation, Draco. I'm still betraying their trust. I'm still hurting them by being here, with you." She folded her arms, fighting the urge to scream.

"Oh, yes, well, that solves everything, doesn't it? You telling me that my presence in your life hurts every one of your friends and family - I feel a lot better now." His voice dripped sarcasm.

"No, no, don't you start that, Draco Malfoy," Ginny cried. "How about every time you tell me that by being with you, I'm putting your family in danger? Don't you think I feel enough guilt, that I'm so selfish for wanting to be with you that I would risk the lives of your parents - and you?"

"I'm just telling you the truth!" he burst out. "Would you rather I lie and made the world all rainbow sprinkles and unicorns? Would that solve everything?"

"No, you bloody prat," she retorted, "I'd just appreciate it if you weren't so hypocritical."

The two of them glared at each other from where they stood, Draco's arms crossed over his chest, Ginny's eyes narrowed. He looked away first, turning his gaze to the weak starlight that filtered through the open window.

"This was a mistake from the beginning," he intoned, eyes fixed out on the inky blackness beyond the open window. "We should have never have gotten this deep. You're right, it is selfish of us, risking everything - and everyone - we know, putting our entire worlds in danger, and for what? A few stolen moments in the darkness of night, whispered promises that we can never keep?" His voice was weak, defeated.

Ginny wanted to explode, so badly - she wanted to slap him, to scream at him, to cry that of course he would be the one to give up on them first. But she didn't explode. Instead, she walked slowly towards him, placing her hands on his chest, smoothing out the wrinkles. "I think it's worth it," she whispered, running her hands up and down his torso, slowly. "Maybe I'm wrong - maybe it's because I'm spoiled and naïve and I'm not facing stakes as high as yours, but - I love you, Draco Malfoy, and that makes every stupid moment of this worth it."

He said nothing for a moment - just looked at her, his grey eyes reflecting silver starlight, an unnamed emotion running across his face. Then he clasped her face between his hands, his expression smoldering, and when he kissed her, she felt like her entire body had burst aflame. His lips were everywhere - in the hollow of her neck, trailing down to her collarbone and then again on her mouth, fervent, scorching. She ran her hands up his back and into his hair, feeling the pale strands slip smoothly between her fingers, and then - as if by their own volition - she felt her hands glide underneath his shirt, raising it over his head and dropping it onto the floor.

He looked glorious in the dim starlight - his pale skin glowing like marble under her fingertips, his eyes shadowed as they pored over her face. She answered his unspoken question by crushing her mouth against his, her hot breath drifting over his body, and she reveled in the feeling of his bare skin beneath her lips as she showered kisses along his jaw bone, over his shoulders, across his chest. A low groan slipped from his lips, the sound resonating through the still air.

The stars outside flickered, their diamond light twinkling as the two of them, their limbs intertwined, sank silently onto the smooth, cool stone.

Afterwards, Ginny sat with his head lying in her lap, her back upright against the far wall, his buttoned shirt covering her body. He was asleep, and she watched him as he breathed, his chest rising slowly with every shallow breath he took. She took in the strands of his white-gold hair spilling across her lap, his long arms draped loosely around her legs, the sharp slope of his shoulder blades jutting out of his pale skin, and in that moment, Ginny felt an overwhelming stillness that she had never felt before. She felt, right then, that whatever else happened to them, it wouldn't matter, because everything - somehow - was going to turn out all right.

What Ginny didn't realize was that in that moment, the way they were - his head held in her lap as he slept, her eyes open and her skin flushed, vibrant - it looked like she was waiting for them.

The door burst open and in rushed a crowd of wizards - half the Order, it seemed like - their wands held high, their faces guarded. Neville was at point, his expression determined as he surveyed the scene - Ginny awake with Draco Malfoy stirring sleepily in her lap. Ginny saw the assembled mass open their mouths, raising their wands higher, and she grabbed Draco's hand, dragging him behind the teacher's desk at the exact moment that room filled with great jets of light and color, the spells just narrowly missing the spot where the two of them huddled together, hidden. They took cover there, hastily covering themselves until the pandemonium ceased.

"Ginny," Lupin's voice filtered out of the gloom - firm, quiet, "come out from behind there, with Malfoy."

Ginny peeked her nose around the desk leg, taking in the gathered group of wizards and the cold, determined look on their faces. "What do you want?" she asked, her heart pounding underneath her ribcage.

Neville spoke up. "What do you think we want?" he called to her. "It's just like we planned, Gin."

Ginny shook her head. "I don't know what you're-"

"It took a while, of course," Neville continued, not hearing her words. "After you ran through the Room of Requirement and woke me up, I had to contact the Order and tell them about the time switch and all, but it turned out fine."

Something cold uncurled in Ginny's gut, making her shake. "No, Neville, it's not like that. It was never like that."

"It's over, Ginny," Neville said, his voice hard. "You don't have to pretend anymore."

"I wasn't pretending!" Ginny burst out, feeling the panic rise in her throat.

She heard Draco swear underneath his breath and she turned her face towards him, pleading for him to understand that everything was not as it seemed, but he didn't even look at her. Gathering his things, he stood up from behind the desk, holding both hands up above his head. Ginny uttered a small cry, and grabbed his ankle, hissing at him to sit back down, but he ignored her, wrenching his leg from her grasp.

Two Order members Ginny didn't recognize marched forward, their faces grim, each one taking a firm grip around Draco's arms. She watched, horrified, as they conjured ropes and bound his hands behind his back. Somewhere in the momentary scuffle - probably when she had yanked him behind the professor's desk - he had procured a long gash across his cheekbone. It was bleeding, a single droplet of blood balanced on the edge of his lip, shimmering like a tiny, blood-red crystal.

"Well played, Ginny," he murmured, his voice barely audible. Ginny looked up at him, her face stricken.

"No, Draco, please, you don't really believe that-"

"That you told them where to find us? Yes, Weasley, I do." His eyes were bleak, accusing.

It broke her heart to hear him call her that, and she felt desperate tears sparkling in her eyes. "But-"

"Sorry, miss," interrupted one of the unknown wizards holding Draco, "but we have to get out of here, before our presence is detected. You can talk to him back at headquarters. Probably."

Ginny shook her head. "No!"

Draco didn't spare another glance at her, instead only looking out the window again, where a myriad of tiny stars glittered from a million miles away. Ginny wanted to run after him - she wanted to grab him, to hold him, to make him believe her - but by the time she had struggled to her feet, they were gone.

Lupin looked at her, at the rivulets of tears running down her cheeks, and he walked over to her. "It's for the best, Ginny," he said softly, placing an arm around her shoulders.

Ginny looked at him and wished that she could hate him - she wished she could hate him for playing a part in all of this and thinking that he could still comfort her. She wished she could hate Neville, for bringing this upon them, just as she wished she could hate the Order, for taking Draco away from her. She wished that she could hate someone other than herself, but she couldn't - she couldn't hate them. They were all just doing what they believed was right, what they believed would help make the world better. She envied them, their conviction and their faith. They all knew what they believed.

Ginny Weasley, on the other hand, had no idea what to believe anymore.

It was night now, the previously glorious sky bleeding into dark blues and muted purples. The black alder tree itself changed colors with the vanishing of the light, its light grey trunk now painted black by the night's shadows. Ginny wrapped her arms around herself, shivering slightly in the cold.

The moon had not yet begun to rise.

The last time she saw him, it was in the midst of the chaos and pain that defined that battle, the last Battle at Hogwarts. Her heart had nearly stopped when she learned that he had escaped the confines of the Order - how, she had no idea - but she knew he would have immediately returned to Hogwarts, especially for that last stand, and it was with that thought in mind that she convinced the twins to let her come with them to the castle, though they all knew that their mother would not like it.

Draco would be there, fighting - she was sure of it. All Ginny had to do was sneak away from the watchful eye of her mother and find him, explain to him what had happened, convince him that it wasn't what he thought. But then her family forced her to stay behind, trapped within the walls of the Room of Requirement, and it nearly broke her heart all over again. Not only would she be stuck inside, not knowing the fates of her family, but she wouldn't even be able to escape and find the one person with whom she was desperate to speak.

It was an agonizing hour, sitting there in the Room, first alone, then later with Tonks and Neville's grandmother. But then she was sent away from her sanctuary by, of all people, Harry Potter, and Ginny dashed up the stairs as fast as she could, not knowing where he was but knowing that she had to find him.

She was fast on Tonks' heels, heading for the north battlements, when she lost sight of the bright-haired witch in a deafening explosion of rubble and dust as some of the Death Eaters blasted through a nearby wall. She drew back into a narrow passageway - coughing, trying to gather her wits - but then she saw him run past the other end of the corridor, his face black with soot. Ginny sprinted after him, calling his name and knowing that it was futile - he could not hear her voice over the din of the battle.

She chased after him, weaving her way through dueling pairs and fallen bodies until, finally, she saw him at the foot of a flight of stairs. He had paused, for some reason, and was heading away from the stairs when she caught up with him, throwing herself forward and nearly tackling him. Draco stumbled from the impact, staggering backwards at the same time Ginny lurched forwards, trying to regain her balance. This was how it always was, when they met - one of them tripping over the other.

"I have to talk to you," she panted, the breaths escaping her lungs in short bursts.

He regarded at her coolly. His robes were singed, his chin was blackened from soot, and the skin on his arms was red and covered with blisters, as if he had been burned - and yet he still managed to look disdainful. Ginny growled under her breath. This was not going to be easy.

"What, Weasley? I have to find my parents." She saw his eyes flicker up the stairs, leading outside, away from her.

"No, Draco, I just have to explain-"

"Can this wait until later? I don't think this-" he gestured to the running people, flashing bursts of light from thrown curses and dusty rubble all around them "-is really the time for your excuses." He turned to leave.

"No!" Ginny grabbed his arm. He looked down at it, then at her, and she thought she saw the edges of his gaze soften, just a little. It gave her courage.

"You don't really think that I led them there, do you?" she pled with him, softly. "Please, I didn't even know that I had woken up Neville - it was all just a big misunderstanding, and you - I mean, I chose you over them, and there was a reason for that and I never wanted you to get hurt and - and I'm sorry." It all came out in a rush, her words stumbling and tripping over each other.

Again, he said nothing, only watching the firelight flicker in her warm caramel eyes. Ginny wondered if he was just going to walk again but then, slowly, he shook his head.

"I don't think I ever really believed that you wanted them to capture me," he said, his voice flat. "I just thought that you wanted, forever, to hide in the shadows with me, never telling anyone, and that's why I walked away."

Ginny stared at him blankly. "What? No, no - don't you think that's a little hypocritical?" she asked, her mind reeling. "I mean, at least Neville knew about us. You never told anyone either - you wanted to hide in those shadows, forever, just as much as I did."

Draco shrugged indifferently. "Maybe you're right but, look, Gin, whatever we had - it wouldn't have worked. It can't. I mean, look around us." A loud explosion sounded from below them. "Like that," he said. "The people from my world are trying to kill the people from yours - they hate each other, Ginny. And whatever happens, whoever wins, we still won't be able to be together. So what's the point?"

"The point," Ginny cried, her voice breaking, "is that we love each other."

He shook his head. "It's not enough. And I have to go find my parents, so if you could just-"

"No," said Ginny, tears blurring her eyes, "I don't believe that. It is worth it - I just think you're scared." She didn't really know what she was saying anymore - she had just blurted out the first thing that popped into her mind - but it was something that would keep him here, with her for another moment.

Draco looked at her, incredulous. "How can you say that - how can you even think that I was scared? After everything we've gone through?" When she didn't answer, he sighed, stepping away from her. "I really need to go find my parents, Ginny. Can we do this later?"

"There's not going to be a ‘later,' Draco," Ginny said, her voice rising. "We're in the middle of a battle here, in case you haven't noticed, and if you - if something happens to you and I don't get to say - I mean I don't, I don't know what-"

"Ginny, I'm sorry, I really have to go," he cut her off again. "I have to find my parents. I don't know what's happening and," he paused, turning away from her, "and maybe it's just better this way, if we don't get to say goodbye."

"No," Ginny croaked, hating how close she was to begging him to stay, and not caring that she was. "Please, don't go."

He turned to look at her, his grey eyes overflowing with something she couldn't describe, and Ginny remembered that same look in his eyes from what felt like a thousand other nights - when he had staggered down the dimly lit corridors that first time he brought her home and she had ground her teeth because of the pain and he had glanced at her, concerned; when the two of them had stolen into the kitchen one night and sat by the roaring fire, eating chocolate pudding and laughing, and he had looked at her in that new way that made her spine tingle curiously; when she had kissed him that strange night under the glow of the ripe harvest moon and he had pulled back from her, that unnamed emotion dripping from his grey eyes, and she had thought her heart would burst; when he had whispered stories in her ear late at night as they laid side by side, limbs tangled together on the damp grass in the orchard; when he had gazed into her eyes last night, when he had been holding her face in his hands and before he had kissed her, and he had whispered those three words to her, so quietly that she couldn't even hear them but she had known that he meant them with all his heart.

"I have to go," he said quietly, and pulled his arm gently out of her grasp. He sprinted up the stairs, away from her, to find his parents. And Ginny knew that he had made his choice, knew that he hadn't chosen her, and she walked away from where they had stood - where she had all but begged him to choose her instead - disappearing into the dust.

The black alder tree felt sturdy behind Ginny's back - the branches holding her tenderly as a father might hold his young daughter, the leaves brushing over skin as a mother might run her fingers over her daughter's forehead and sweep the long strands of hair behind one ear. Ginny silently wiped the tears from her cheeks, her knuckles nudging her nose. The time for crying was past - she was supposed to be looking to the future, heeding the call of a world that was new and just and good. But it was hard to forget all that they had lost - Fred, Tonks, Lupin, Moody. And Draco too, though he was lost only to her.

The end of the war had not been kind to him, though both he and his family were spared from Azkaban, mostly due to Narcissa's actions over those last hours before the end of the battle. None of them could escape the judgment though, the scorn and jeers from those they had once spurned themselves. The last she had heard of Draco, he had withdrawn with his parents back into their Manor, rebuilding and remodeling everything Voldemort had tainted. Her father had informed their family gleefully one night that the albino peacocks were now gone - carried off as part of the war reparations - though Mr. Weasley had sobered up quickly at the stricken look on Ginny's face. She still couldn't hear Draco Malfoy's name without feeling that wrenching sensation inside her chest, like someone was ripping a jagged dagger over her heart.

Ginny burrowed herself deeper into the tree, her fingers growing numb in the frigid night air, but she lacked any desire to move inside where it was warmer. She only stared harder into the far horizon where the moon was beginning to rise, slowly unveiling its pale face as it crept higher across the ebony sky.

Distantly, she thought she heard a voice calling, indistinct though the night air was both silent and still. She wondered what time it was.

She knew her mother had been growing increasingly worried as Ginny moped around the Burrow, day after day, draping herself listlessly over whatever could hold her weight. It was one of the reasons Ginny had scampered off to the black alder tree after lunch that afternoon - she couldn't take another tentative question, another furrowed brow. Molly Weasley's life had been difficult enough of late, especially with the gaping hole left by Fred, and Ginny hated how much she worried her mother. Ginny wished she could act the way she had before everything had happened so her mother could sleep easier at night. But it was hard for her to act like herself, when she had no idea who herself was anymore.

The voice came again, closer now, and this time Ginny could distinguish her name in the call. So much for not worrying her mother - she had been gone for too long, and now her parents were out, looking for her, probably thinking that she had run off.

She swung her legs over the branch she had been lounging across for the past day and swiftly clambered down the black alder tree, each branch holding her weight solidly, the whorls in the bark rough and comforting beneath her palms. Ginny grasped the lowest branch with both hands, her feet dangling above the dusty ground, before letting go and landing softly in the midst of the rippling field of wild barley.

She heard hasty footsteps approaching through the stalks and she turned, not knowing how she was supposed to explain to her upset parents that she just couldn't bear to be around them today. Ginny looked up. The footsteps stopped abruptly. Her breath caught. The moon glowed overhead, its iridescent silver-white light mirrored in a pair of smoldering grey eyes.

The field of barley spanned all around them, endless, its gold stalks bleached white by the moonlight. Ginny's heart twisted. She couldn't help it - she stumbled backwards, the heel of her left foot tripping over the tree's roots until her back was pressed up against its warm trunk. "What - why are you here?" she choked out.

Draco Malfoy looked at a loss, his face in shadow as he stood before her, palms facing outward. "I'm not sure," he replied, his voice sounding strange in the quiet night air. "I just - couldn't stay away."

Ginny smiled, faintly. "I've heard that before," she murmured. She drank in the sight of him - limpid eyes, pale skin, the angle of his jawbone, the shape of his hands - all of it so familiar, though she had only known it for such a short time. "Is this the part where I run crying into your arms, begging for you to take me back?"

He raised an eyebrow. "Who said that I wanted you in my arms, or that I even wanted you back?"

And just like that, everything from the past year flew out of Ginny's mind - the way he had taken care of her when she was hurt, the conversations they had shared under the shadows, the chills that had shot up her spine when he had whispered that he loved her, the last few months without him when she had cried and sulked and yearned to see him just one more time - it was all wiped away. Suddenly she was just Ginny Weasley, and she was boiling mad at Draco Malfoy.

"You - you arrogant, infuriating, self-obsessed bastard," she burst out, her eyes flashing, and he laughed - actually threw back his head and laughed at her.

Ginny clenched her jaw and remembered that time she had spit at him, wondering exactly how he would react should she choose to do so again. She narrowed her eyes, glowering, and he quickly sobered up. "Well, if all you've come to do is insult me and then laugh at me," she said crossly, "then you can just leave. Send an owl, if you must, but I would prefer not to see your repulsive face if you're just going to abuse me." She folded her arms, glaring at him.

And she knew she was being completely unreasonable - the last thing she wanted him to do was leave. Ginny loved him and she wanted him and she ached for him, but she had begged for him to stay that last time they were face to face - begged for him to choose her - and instead he had run away from her, shaking her off and leaving her alone in the dust and chaos.

Draco looked at her. "Do you really want me to go?" he asked her softly.

Ginny wished she could say yes - she wished she could say yes and turn him away and come out of this thing with at least one shred of her dignity intact.

"No," she muttered, her eyes trained on her feet, "don't leave."

Draco sighed and ran an agitated hand through his pale hair. In the moonlight, it matched the color of the barley all around them - an almost pure white, with a slight golden sheen shadowing the edges.

"Look, Gin," he started, his voice trembling ever so slightly, "I have no idea why I came to find you. I never know why I come and find you - actually, I have no idea why I act the way I do around you at all. It's just - you hurt me, you know? Even if you didn't blatantly betray me -"

"I didn't-"

"I know you didn't," he said, cutting her off. "But you still chose your side, your cause, over me and-"

"I chose?" Ginny cried, her voice shrill. "What about you, Draco Malfoy? I ran away from my friends, ran away from my family and I went to find you that day at Hogwarts. I ran after you, to apologize, to ask you to stay - I begged you not to leave me - and you just walked away, left me alone without so much as a backward glance."

Draco's jaw twitched. "I couldn't stay, Ginny. I had to find my parents. I didn't know if Voldemort, or if one of the other Death Eaters-"

"Well, you know what Voldemort did to my brother?" Ginny growled. "He killed him. Or if not Voldemort, then one of his sorry lackeys. And I should have been there - in fact, I would have been there, had I not ran away from where he was to find you."

The two of them faced off in the moonlight, their jaws set, their backs tensed. Ginny wondered, distantly, if this was finally the end, the goodbye for which she had been waiting. Of course it would happen at night, she thought - the night was their time, the only time when anything and everything between the two of them ever existed. If there was ending, then it would be the darkness of the night that swallowed him up when he walked away from her, one last time.

"Well, what now?" he asked her wearily, his voice ringing with defeat. "What can we do now, if you can't forgive me and - and I can't forgive you?"

Ginny shrugged, saying nothing. The moon climbed higher in the sky.

"It wouldn't have worked anyway," he said, eyes downcast. "We're too different, our worlds too far apart - and I'm no longer accepted in yours, remember? It seemed possible, in the darkness, all those nights surrounded by the castle walls, but here in the real world it's just - it couldn't happen."

Ginny felt like something was shattering inside her when she heard him say those words. She wanted to run at him screaming, to pound her fists on his chest, to walk away from him without another word. And yet -

"Then why did you even come here?" she asked him, her voice breaking.

Draco moved suddenly, stepping forward until he was right in front of her, the branches of the black alder tree forming an ever-shifting canopy over them. "I don't have a choice, Ginevra Weasley," he whispered, his eyes glittering in the darkness. "I can't stay away from you."

He gathered her up into his arms and Ginny could feel his heartbeat pounding beneath her fingertips. She knew that this didn't solve anything. She knew that they would always have their complicated past between them, a winding labyrinth twisting around and entrapping them. She knew that the future, whatever they chose, would be hard - the world was a terribly difficult place, full of judgment and intolerance. They would never be able to keep what they had between them. It was insane, this idea that they could have something together. More importantly, it was impossible.

He lifted his hand and slowly trailed it along her cheek, delicately, as if he were afraid she would splinter apart. Ginny closed her eyes.

It was impossible, but even so - he was right. They really had no choice in this. She couldn't stay away from him any more than he could stay away from her, and the way that they felt about each other - well, in the end, wasn't that really all that mattered? She loved him and he loved her and everything else would fall into place. It had to.

So she lifted her chin and let Draco Malfoy kiss her under the black alder tree, bringing the year into a full circle. She felt his hands lightly skimming across her skin, took in the scent of his desperation, tasted the sweet sensation of his lips crushed against her own. And nothing else mattered to Ginny, not really - they had each other and they could take anything else as it came. They had to - after all, it wasn't as if they really had a choice.



The black alder tree sighed, watching the boy and the girl laughing as they sat side by side, their limbs entangled, their backs warm against its trunk. The girl covered her mouth with her hand as she laughed, her eyes dancing, and the boy tugged her closer to him, leaning his head on her shoulder. The tree dropped a leaf - burning scarlet, like her hair - and watched it spiral downwards, coming to a rest in his lap. The boy didn't notice even notice - he only had eyes for her.

The two of them had spent the rest of the night beneath the leaves of the black alder tree, talking and arguing and laughing amidst the spun-gold barley, sometimes serious, sometimes not. The tree knew that soon the brown-eyed girl would take the boy's hand, pulling him up and drawing him across the field, away from the tree's fond glance. Maybe she would take him back to her house, introduce him to the rest of the redheaded family, smile as they tentatively drew him into their fold. Maybe she would merely walk with him to the tiny, fragrant orchard, giving him a kiss on the cheek before he turned once and disappeared. Whatever happened, the tree knew that neither of them would ever forget this moment.

The sky was washed in a burning pink, the clouds in a soft peach. Dawn was here. The sun tipped over the horizon, spilling color across the countryside. The tree heard its leaves rustle in the breeze and it stretched out its branches, absorbing the morning warmth. At the base of its trunk, the boy and the girl didn't even notice, wrapped up in each other as they were. The boy leaned over and kissed the girl's forehead as the sun's rays reached them, bathing the couple in its light.

ORIGINAL REQUEST:
• Briefly describe what you'd like to receive in your fic
  Angst. I want it to be hard for them to be together - really big emotional hurdles and/or societal hurdles for them to overcome. Even if it's just a moment of their time I get to see, I want that moment to be filled with the urgency and heat that the truly forbidden imparts.
• The tone/mood of the fic: Dark, angsty, emotional, but a light at the end of the tunnel. Maybe. Epic feeling in scope, as if upon them rests something bigger than themselves.
• An element/line of dialogue/object you would like in your fic: A droplet of blood
• Preferred rating of the fic you want: Any
• Canon or AU? Either - though since I want them together, or trying to be together, that's probably AU.
• Deal Breakers (anything you don't want?): No rape or anything forced.

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