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All Magic Has Its' Season by Nyghtinggail
Story Notes:
Written in 2007 FicExchange for Elle_Blessing
All Magic has its' Season. by Nyghtinggail
Painted in time, he still meets his her. Letting his spirit blow through frames until he finds her like a dying flame, embracing her in hollow arms and rushing winds.

***


There are only six people in his divination class this year. Theodore Nott who is adjacent to him and Daphne Greengrass who sits on the tier below them. Two girls and a boy from Ravenclaw all sit on separate tiers. He's mildly impressed, that despite the deplorable instruction they all manage to look fascinated.

Draco settles further into the blue and gold cushion he is sitting on, desperately wishing for the pain behind his eyes to settle with him. There is a soft glow from the crystal ball in front of him, he's not sure why he continues in this class, it has always made his head ache. Vaguely, he can remember his father telling him, 'Behind each minister there is a score of seers.' Never beneath he thinks, an image of his father in Azkaban appears and fades angrily on the pale orb in front of him, never beneath.

The pain eases as the image disappears and returns when it's completely gone. He squints his eyes and presses his hands against the short table in front of him. A large red pillow beside him falls along his arm onto the table, the corner tassel lands on the crystal ball in front of him. Nimble fingertips move to brush the glaring red strands off the white surface, as he touches the ball the pain behind his eyes ceases and he is enveloped in a vision.

Long red hair is wrapped around his fingers, his hands holding a petite naked waist to him. He watches as their centers join and shift again and again. A soft blush creeping up young woman's torso, and darkening across her breasts. She rolls her head causing her hair to cascade between them, what isn't in woven in his fingers and doesn't stick to the sheen of their bodies dances vivaciously to their coupling. He is feverish, his body is on fire, her hair dancing all around him as flame.

Her slender hands searing into his collar bones as she fills herself with him and quakes around him. He looks at her from the curve of her chin, up over her dark swollen lips, a small nose and bright eyes with short gingery lashes. She shivers on him, her warm breath puffs onto his face and he loses himself.



The soft rustling of long skirts moves up near him. The desire he feels from the vision vanishes as he opens his eyes and sees Professor Trelawney perched with her knee on Daphne's table, crawling towards him with a hungry look. “My tutelage has finally reached you, Mr. Malfoy?”

Irritation clearly spreading itself across his face. “No, I'm sorry to say today's lunch was just horrid.” His face contorting into a grimace. “Hospital wing,” he says by way of explanation. Picking up his satchel, he leaves the room not waiting for her approval.

There was only a short look of disbelief on Professor Trelawney's face before she nods. Moving back across the room muttering about inner eyes and the depths of deception.

***


Her favorite portion of any day is the time after lunch and Care of Magical Creatures just before Herbology. There is a period of just about an hour where there is no one she must be accountable for. Most of this time she spends exploring the castle. She can see a wing that can not be reached and has been trying to get to since the beginning of the year. It calls her with a lost voice, weak as the whispering wind.

Ginny moves quietly along the corridors, asking certain paintings various questions. She has created a map it follows the lines on her hand: subtle, accessible. She knows all these portraits by name. Addressing each in the manner which garners the most information. 'Younger sister, terribly sad -died visiting her lover. Never leaves her frame, won't let go of the wind. Silly child.' At times, she concedes, they make little sense. She has found eight new passages in the last two weeks, and has yet to see a girl clinging to the wind.

Rarely, she will spend the whole of the hour talking to a particular painting. There is only one who will not even acknowledge her, occasionally she fancies him her favorite. A pale man, hand pressed to pane, staring out a window with the diligence of a saint. His fingertips melting out of a crack in the window, sometimes he's not there at all.

Today, she lingers near a sleeping painting of a child. The young boy is beside a pool of water where a young undine watches him without rest. The undine's beautiful blue hands touch the surface of the pool and break as she reaches for the soil of the bank. Ginny watches, thinking the child will wake up any moment when an even more untouchable boy takes her attention. Emerging from the stairs that lead up into the divination tower, Draco Malfoy stands for a moment the bottom of the case at the other end of the corridor.

He stares at her and it's as if cold gust is wrapping itself around her. Pushing the warm air out from her skirt to create an algid want. A cool slick desire created by invisible hands, the force of which comes light as a zephyr and beating as a tempest. The boy tucks a pale lock of hair behind his ear and walks away.

She has lost her breath somewhere during the brief exchange, “Bastard,” she says with no trace of venom she might have once felt. Leaning against the stone wall the portrait of a crone opposite her form looks her up and down and offers without warmth. 'All magic has its season, Deary.' She breathes. All magic has its season.

***


There is a letter from his mother, concise and wistful. He is unsure how she can write her mind to paper with such ease and regrets never truly responding. His mind is beating as he climbs from Professor Trelawney's room. Old magic, new magic, always magic, and forgotten magic. 'Memories,' his mother calls them, these sights he's having. 'Deep and shallow. Lifetimes can return to you in an instant.' Not a lifetime he thinks, not even ending. Scenarios of lovers winding through his subconscious like a forgotten story, forgotten magic. He makes his way to the library.

His fingers are nippy, wrapping around the edge of an old book. He curses to himself about the cold, and forgetting his gloves. Mostly he's just irritated that these sorts of things aren't discussed in class, than again he really doesn't want to know what his teachers would answer.

Past or present. To come- he prays with longing. He admits to himself the desire to stay in such an anamnesis, if that is the only choice. She comes to him though, many times in these memories, thoughts and visions. Her body burning itself into his memory, stealing his attention in Divination. He smiles wryly to himself, a coupling of ten thousand lifetimes and he hopes to live them all.

So lost in his thoughts, he doesn't see when she stands across the table from him. His eyes only leave the words scrawled and printed before him when she removes the book from his hands. Taking them in her own and blowing a powerfully warm breath onto them. She warms his hands like this for several minutes, leaving him sweaty palmed and feverish. The forgotten book cracked open to the last page and cover.

The wind has memories you will never know and its spirits sing without sense of time.


He closes his eyes, hungry for memories of lifetimes past. The wind knows. He laughs, speaking aloud, “Oh, to be jealous of the wind.”

***


She's lost, 'not lost' she assures herself five lefts and a right and she'll be a passage way from the back stairs to the green house. This is just the first time she's been to this part of the castle, that's all. She doesn't have any more classes tonight, but doesn't want to have anyone come looking for her. Not of course, that they pay enough attention to notice. She follows the narrow corridor to its end, and goes through the arched door toward a stone staircase.

There are 17 steps with no painting to speak with as she climbs them. Ginny stops a moment when she reaches the top and examines the stairs. Dust is creeping into the corners and she can see streams of soft colors leaking through the door and underneath it. She places her hand on the door knob testing it for a reaction and slow turns it. A soft clinking noise stirs in the keyhole and the soft light creeps out of it, growing brighter and brighter. Ginny places her palm over the keyhole as the light becomes too strong. There is a soft stirring noise sounding in her ears like a falling pin. The door opens.

From where she stands in the threshold at the top of the stairs she can see a small room with five more doors leading from it. The air around her is stale, but magic is moving all around her with a heady urgency. She inhales, sneezes and steps into the room. There is a cracking noise, somewhere behind or in front of her. She can't tell. The first door is crested with old symbols of air, the next fire, time, water and finally earth. She steps toward the doors and away from the stairs, the air cracks again. This center door wiggles anxiously distracting her as first door moans and lurches open.

Her breath is knocked from her chest. The door slams back, against the wall with a crippling noise. The air swirls around her, whipping her robe up from the stone floor. Ginny sees her hair blowing all around her as she crashes to her knees. Her chest heaves three times, and she can't seem to make the air enter her lungs. Her eyes are wide, 'All magic has its season,' and magic never goes stale. Wide eyes close as the wind blows across her face, slipping from her brow to cheek and finally between her parted lips quirking softly at corners.

She wakes some hours later, creeping down the stairs. And through empty corridors, turning into the quiet dark passage. Intent on making her way back to the commons without being caught, Ginny turns into little used rooms with each noise she hears, waiting patiently. Lighting the tip of her wand she wanders slowly toward her goal.

She doesn't mean to stop. It's a gypsy boy who calls her, she doesn't mean to answer or pretend she knows what they are talking about. His little voice is too much though, when he says in eerie familiarity that he's found her, as if she'd been lost in a long game of hide and seek. It's the woman who begs her though. 'Don't leave, not again. Not again.' The woman pleads. A cold draft blows Ginny's hair across her face, chilling her through her robes.

“I must go.” Ginny tells the woman while her hairs blows around her, hiding her face. She doesn't mean to ignore her, but she can't wait any longer.

'Not again,' The woman begs, but she is gone.

***


The dreams have come.

In the night he wakes, his blankets wound around his legs, hands clenched tightly into the sheets. Sweat running down his chest and belly. Slick and smooth. Taking time to press hair off his feverish forehead, he wonders, 'past or present.'

She is frightening in his dreams. Too real. Too vibrant. Her eyes too urging, her breathe to sweet, her body too hot. Her red hair more like fire, licking flames of heat all over him. Waking, like pulling himself from the pyre. His skin itches with the heat. He steals her away, devouring her in dreams like forbidden fruit.

It's like an illness, these thoughts and he escape his mind. How many lifetimes to fight for this desire, how many lifetimes will he live to hide this bondage? He won't lie to himself, they are bound. He just doesn't know why.

Some nights it's too much. Tonight, he lets his hand slip through the curtains at the end of his bed. He grabs his school robe off his trunk, slinking it back through the curtains. His pale body disappears into the black of his robe, and is nearly invisible crawling from his bed. Walking past one, two, three, four beds and glides through the door to their dorm.

The stone floor is frigid beneath his feet, his long toes curl upward as he shifts from heel to ball. Walking through the common room in the blind darkness with the ease of cat. He exits into the corridor, walking through various ways and up unused stair cases. He follows a cool breeze till he's sure he's lost. Leaning against the stone wall, his breathing steady despite the different temperature from his lungs to the air around him.

Draco fingered the wand in his pocket only a moment before he casts a weak lumos. There is a painting of gypsies across from him. Several are dancing in front of what seems to be a wagon, but the cover tenting high and into the trees. There is one who seems to be alone, she sits into the roots of a large tree. He extends his wand toward the painting, throwing light onto the woman.

“The wind took her, just lifted her up and love stole her away from us. Like a spark to breeze.” Draco tilts his head listening to the woman speak. “Can't burn out -clings to the wind,” she says accusingly, looking up to and into Draco's face. Staring and watching him as if registering with an old shock. A familiar fear of pale hair falling into grey eyes. “It was you.”

***


He sits on the stairs just outside the divination tower. A little embarrassed, more the a little unnerved. He wonders if it was the right thing to do after all. He unlaces and relaces the ties of his boots, knotting them tightly and pulling the leg of his pant over the tops. He figures he sent the owl right after breakfast and asked her to meet him right after lunch, then really he doesn't have so long to wait. She could be here any moment.

He begins to fidget with his laces again, a quiet tapping forces his gaze away from his feet. A small owl, with large eyes and more tuft than feathers is on the stair below him, beak knocking into the stone incessantly. His hands are sweaty, and the small bird perches itself on the top of his finger, sticking its leg out with what looks like extreme effort. He takes the small folded parchment from between its toes.

Left, two rights, fourth door. Beside the portrait of Lady Ewelinen, absurd hat. Can't miss her.


She hasn't signed the note, but the miniature owl seems to know where she is. Hopping down from his hand, then popping from stair to stair, and finally flying to the base of the stairs and waiting for him. He shifts his weight, standing then following. He's about to follow the owl into the corridor when it flutters right.

“Not as bright, as I could've hoped.” He murmurs to the little creature.

When he reaches the room the painting across the frame catches his eye. He recognizes the scene, it's a window from his wing of the manor. He turns to look at it closer noticing the similar crack in the pane. The soft blue and gold wall paper. No one ever was able to fix that window. He wonders with interest who would've painted such an image, and enters the room across the hall.

She is sitting in the sill of the window, one leg tucked under her the other hanging limply. Her hair is vibrant and sets a fire around her face. Her eyes look at him slowly under ginger lashes, turning from her view outside. He flexes his fingers and itches to loosen his tie and shrug off his robe. He stands watching her in unrivaled fascination as she walks towards him, her hair flies around her softly like breeze is trying to escape it. He wishes for a breeze, feeling sweat trickle down his spine. His shirt clinging damply to his lower back. She shivers.

“I..” Draco starts, strange questions melting into the fray. He means to tell her about the dreams, but her lips brush a chaste and scorching kiss across his. His eyes flutter shut, his hands rise involuntarily as his mouth finds hers again. Pulling her closer he allows himself to kiss her throughly before backing away a hairs breath, “..You,” he finishes against her mouth.

***


She feels pensive and unsure of herself, like there is something she needs to remember but can't. She's attracted to him she knows, with the suddenness of entire lifetime. Ginny is sure she exists as two completely separate entities. There is Ginny, who has lived her life in a sea of freckles and smiles, and the woman inside of her dying in a prison made of skin. You can't have everything you want she thinks, but she does.

Some days she feels as if every day is preparing itself for one special moment. Dressing itself with so many emotions, ideas and words that when the toast comes her cup is already overflowing. She is overflowing, leaking at the edges. It's happening in small doses, as if she's running out of room for secrets. So they are pushing themselves out of her system in frenzied kisses, whispered lullabies, and multiple orgasms.

Not everyone is seeing them, these small slips and inconsistencies, but she doesn't worry. She's had to rewrite several papers for the lucid thoughts that spill from the quills she holds. Remember to wash her hands from grass and dirt when there is no quidditch practice. Brush her robes of dust from abandoned rooms. Slip on knickers before dinner, while previous pairs are lost, stolen and forgotten in coital haste.

There is hostility still outside the time they spend alone and intertwined, somehow picking up right where they left off. It's reassuring how their bodies melt together, it helps when her knees feel as weak as a sand foundation. Goose flesh rises across her back as he kisses his way down her neck. Exhaling frosty breathes onto skin centered between his icy lips. There is something that makes her come back, over and over. Despite the other offers, and more freedom. There is this, above any hand she could hold in front of her house, her brother. It tugs at her spirit with the diligence time pulls a watch hand. Has it really been like this for months? She is so tired. The curtains blow around her bed while she tries to still her mind and sleep.

***


She finds her near the end of term, her heart is breaking. A lovely woman desperately grasping for the wind, pulling it into herself. Searching for a lost lover. The woman cries, her voice crackling like a fire. Screams riping across the canvas in anguish and longing. The change is sudden, so sudden Ginny stumbles backward. Watching the deep red hair of the woman dance around her face, arms and hands pushing it aways and she laughs completely and utterly satisfied. Her form falling backward and never touching the ground, twisting and turning. Ginny watching the wind pick her up tossing her back and forth and swirling around her so fast she can almost see the blustery hands that tatter the womans robes and shawl.

Ginny takes a deep breath and closes her eyes. Her breath hitches and she feels a spindly sensation building along her neck. When she opens her eyes the woman is staring straight at her, murky brown eyes meeting her own. Her surprise doesn't end there as the pale man's visage becomes apparent beside the woman. A gust of air cuffs her ankles, freezing her in place. Willfully, she breaks her gaze with the woman, footsteps in the hall bring take her attention.

***


They are laying on his robe, somewhere above the charms room. He doesn't know how she finds these places, though he figures less than ten percent of the room in the castle were in use. Sometimes she'll tell him about the paintings, and finding new hallways, rooms- new magic.

He is lying on his stomach, her fingertips stroking up and down the length of his spine. Pausing and swirling over vertebrae at random. His insides on fire, softly hissing when she pressed burning lips against his shoulder blades. He brushes his hand lightly down her bare side, feeling the inferno of her skin shiver beneath his touch.

Tonight, he asks what she knows about the painting of the cracked window. She looks at him strange and asks if it's the one with the pale man who's fingertips melt through into the wind? “There is no man.”
“Yes, there is.”
“Different painting then.”
“No, there is a man. He looks like you.” She brushes pale hair out of his face. “Sometimes, he's not there though.”
“Oh. Why isn't he there, then?”
“Not sure, he won't talk to me.” She puts one arm through her button up and frowns a little. A small smile crosses his face and looking very put upon she asks, “What?”
“You're sad he won't talk with you.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“Doesn't matter.”
“The painting is of a room at the manor.”
“What?”
“It's true.” He watches as she buttons the rest of her shirt up. She aimlessly tries to bush the hair from her face, it never stills. Even when they lay motionless with one another, her hair crawls and creeps around them with a spirit all its own. She stands bent at the waist, pulling her skirt up over soft hips. He sits up, pulling his own jumper beside him. He steadies her leg as she slips on her soft leather shoes and places a gentle kiss on the inside of her knee.

He's about to tell her, he's been waiting months to tell her about the dreams and visions. Though, now he can no longer remember which times have been real and which he remembers. It all gets lost between her hair and porcelain skin, between her soft mouth and searing hands. At times he thinks he's losing his mind, like it all might slip away like the wind through the trees. Through the flame. “He has a lover.”

She picks up her jumper and robe and slips from the room into the corridor.

***


He dreams of parapets and flying.

She is always beside him in these dreams, and he's teaching her to fly. He lies awake in his bed, reliving the sensation of falling from the castle. He can close his eyes and feel his body coming apart like ashes in the wind. Forcing himself to open his eyes is the hardest part.

He climbs from his bed, grabbing his closest jumper. Draco sneaks from his dorm to the top of the astronomy tower. Climbing countless flights of stairs, in just his pants and jumper. He has no fear of being caught, she has taught him that.

In his dream she stands with him on the the edge, over looking the highlands. He can feel her hand hot in his, his breathing is deep. He looks at her before letting go of her hand, he would kiss her but her breathing is so erratic that he doesn't want it to change more. 'Come with me.' He begs her, moving closer to the edge. And she does.

The stone is cool from the night air, he perches his foot on the stone work and lifts himself onto the castle parapet. He sits there watching the moon cross the sky. It's almost dawn when she finds him there. She's wearing a thin night gown, and looking more like a spirit than he's ready to agree with.

“Draco,” Ginny calls. He watches her cross the distance of the tower. Each foot step bringing her closer to him, closer to the dream he's just had.

“Sit with me. Like we used to,” she mimics his earlier steps till she's standing between his legs, then sitting with her knees tucked up with her, his arms wrapping around her bare ones. “In a separate lifetime.” She shivers, and looks at him over her shoulder. “I think I killed you.”

“Pity,” she says.

And this time he just holds her.


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