Author's Note: This was written for Sarea Okelani's challenge, The Feast. Thanks to Where Is Truth, SillySun and LovelyEnchanted for giving it a quick read-through before it got submitted. ♥


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It had all gone to hell when they kidnapped Ginny Weasley. At the time it had seemed like a great idea; they'd show the Dark Lord that they were worthy of higher ranks in his army, they'd strike fear into all parents with children at Hogwarts, and they'd absolutely break the hearts of the entire Weasley clan, making Saint Potter miserable by extension on what might be his first Christmas with a real family, if you could call the Weasels that. It really was a good plan, even if Draco had been drunk off his arse when he'd agreed to it. And so Crabbe, Goyle, Zabini, Nott, and Malfoy fils had divided up the responsibilities. Vince had scouted locations, Greg had procured supplies, Theo had made the Portkeys, Blaise was the lookout, and Draco did the actual snatch.

Draco would later say, repeatedly, that his part went like clockwork. He'd entered the station in disguise, walked up to the girl just as she stepped off the train and wrapped his arms around her. She just had time to draw in a breath and drop the handle of her trunk before he'd touched the Portkey and disappeared. Blaise took the time to look around and confirm no one had noticed, banished her trunk so as not to leave evidence, then pulled out his own Portkey and joined in the hearty congratulations being exchanged at his destination. Everyone except the girl was holding a brandy and joining in. She would have had a bit of trouble, not just because she was likely not feeling very congratulatory, but also because she was tied to a hard-backed chair and gagged with what looked to be Vince's tie.

Draco saw the direction of Blaise's eyes and waved the bottle through the air before taking a swig that was obviously far from his first. "Silly cow was shrieking about rape,"
Draco said by way of explanation. "As if we'd touch filth like her."

"Too fat," sniggered Vince, who would have died instantly if the girl's glare had had the power to kill.

This led to a round of general laughter as Draco found another bottle and tossed it to Blaise and they all toasted each other and drank.

The next morning dawned, as many of their mornings had since they had left Hogwarts, with curses and hangovers. The curses from Draco would've been literal, except it seemed his wand wasn't working. The other boys got a great deal of amusement from this, until it became clear that Draco could deal out physical pain without aid of magic, and that none of them had working wands.

Everyone rounded on Vince, who began to sweat. "Where the fuck are we?" said Draco, and Vince cowered away from the smaller boy.

"We're in Suffolk! Near Wales. We can pop into London without Apparating, even!" Vince inched away, but not fast enough.

Draco's hand closed around his throat. "That's great, Vince."

"Really?" Vince's throat worked as he swallowed hard.

"Yeah," said Draco. "Except for the part about you not having any bloody clue where we are!"

Vince's eyes scanned the room frantically, but the closest he could see to anything comforting was that Greg was refusing to look at him. "It's one of your properties, Dra--"

Draco's hand clenched and cut him off. "Which one of the over one hundred properties I inherited would that be?"

"Ask Theo! He made the Portkeys!" Draco's attention shifted and Theo scuttled behind Blaise.

"I just set them to go where Vince told me! It's not my fault!" Blaise moved to one side and Theo mirrored his movements, trying to keep his human shield.

"So you set them to go to Suffolk, which is somehow near both Wales and London?" Draco sounded calm now, and somewhat amused. Vince fought the urge to cross himself and told his bladder firmly that loss of control was not an option.

"I'm not that big a thicko!" Theo said indignantly, and Vince managed a small glare before Draco turned his head back and Vince went back to cowering. "I set them to bring us all to Pinemarten House. Where the bloody fuck it is isn't my lookout."

Blaise decided to take a hand in matters before Draco either killed one of them or exploded. "How about some breakfast, ey? We'll find some hangover potions in the supplies and then eat up. I could murder a bacon sandwich, how about you?"

"I could murder something," said Draco, casting another fulminating look in Vince's direction. They'd just stepped out of the study, where they'd all passed out on the sofas and armchairs, when he said, "What's that smell?"

"Bloody hell, the girl!" Blaise took off down the hallway at a run, only to find Ginny Weasley still tied to the chair as she'd been since the day before, only now the chair was at the center of a large puddle. "Oh, shit."

"No," said the girl hoarsely. "Although if you don't untie me and let me find a toilet soon, there will be."

Blaise was across the room in an instant, babbling apologies as he worked frantically to undo the knots. "What did you bloody do, dip the rope in Tangling Solution?"

Holding a handkerchief over his face, Draco said, "It's just a rope. Can I help it if I'm good at tying knots and Weasels are bad at housebreaking their spawn?"

"You try sitting in one position for over twelve hours with a full bladder and see how good your self-control is," she said with a sneer. "I'd begun to hope you'd all poisoned yourselves and died."

"We were just--"

Blaise got cut off by a glare from the Girl Weasel that rivaled one of Draco's best. "Falling down drunk like little boys left unattended, I know. And passed out so you couldn't hear me screaming. Now show me a loo or get out of the bloody way so I can find it on my own."

Blaise stepped aside hastily and she swept past, her head held high as if she'd never heard of such indignities as a soggy skirt. Draco sneered, but Blaise thought he might be slightly impressed, particularly when the girl snarled and shoved the other three down to the ground and stepped over their prone bodies to get through the doorway. Poor Theo had ended up on the bottom and was cut off from groaning by her foot on his face.

"Come on, let's go find a house elf to come clean this up," said Draco, stepping over the fallen boys.

This plan was foiled as it quickly became obvious that there were no house elves there at all. Plenty of dust, many small cubbies that had obviously been intended as quarters for them, and a nest of pixies that caused poor Theo quite a few more bruises and several nasty bites before he managed to escape, but no house elves. They gathered in the kitchen and this time Vince didn't even resist as Draco shook him like a rag doll. "The Dark Lord can't be contacted by anyone for at least a week, you know that! And you!" Greg flinched as Draco let go of Vince's collar and turned his infuriated attentions his way. "What the hell is all this stuff? There's enough Cauldron Cakes for an army but the rest is all... Whatever the hell it is. Where's the actual food?"

"Told m' house elves I needed supplies to feed six people for two weeks," Greg mumbled. "Thought I was being cautious-like, asking for extra just in case."

Draco sat down heavily and buried his face in his hands, so it was up to Blaise to say, "So these are... Components? Like for potions, only for food?"

"May I just say, you are the most incompetent kidnappers I have ever heard of?" Girl Weasel was standing in the doorway, wrapped in an enormous green dressing gown and wearing a towel as a turban. "You don't know where we are, you can't use magic, and you have no idea how to feed yourselves. Please tell me you've at least got Floo powder so you can contact someone, or that one of you has tried hailing the Knight Bus."

The boys all exchanged looks that said more clearly than words could have that none of them had thought of either possibility, and they definitely didn't have any Floo powder. Theo limped outside and returned shortly with a small scrap of parchment. "I raised my wand hand, but all I got was this."

"The Knight Bus will be down for repairs for a period of one month in order to make repairs and for what Ern and me should get a holiday," the parchment said in Stan Shunpike's nasally voice as soon as it passed from Theo's hand to Draco's. "We apologize for the inconveniencing and 'ope you have a 'appy Christmas."

"Bugger." The statement was Weasley's, but the sentiment was universal.

"I need a drink," said Draco. "And what's the prisoner doing walking around, anyway? Tie her up and... Bring me something to the study to eat."

There being a distinct lack of anything better to do, the boys complied, whiling the day away with the rest of the brandy, Cauldron Cakes, and the billiard table they unearthed from under dustsheets.

Somewhere around sunset, Draco abandoned his shot and stood up straight, smelling the air like a champion hunting dog. Greg and Vince were instantly on their feet, deserting the books they had been looking at without a second thought as they rushed to the door and threw it open. "It's..."

"Food," breathed Theo with tears in his eyes, although they may've owed their origins to the pixie bite on his bum as easily as gladness over the heavenly smells that were wafting down the hallway.

There was a mad scramble as they all hurtled through the hall, following their noses straight back to the kitchen. There stood the girl, still in the oversized dressing gown but now with her hair loose. More importantly, though, the table had been cleared of the pile of food components and was now instead boasting serving platters of recognizably edible things. Roast chicken surrounded by vegetables, mashed potatoes with a gravy that looked completely smooth and free of lumps (which the Crabbe house elves had never mastered - Vince was almost tearing up at the sight), rolls that were piled high in a basket and gently steaming, stuffing that seemed to be as much bacon as bread crumbs...

Further inspection of the table was shelved in favor of a mad scramble towards the food, with much shoving and kicking as the boys reached for the chicken all at once. There was nothing even vaguely resembling table manners as they gulped the food down, fists flying at random to achieve or prevent thievery. When there was nothing left but crumbs, they looked up to see their redheaded chef standing at the head of the table, holding a large apple crumble.

"The way I see it, boys," she said calmly, shifting the pie slightly to let their eyes follow it, "we have some room for negotiation."

Draco leaned back in his chair and looked at her assessingly. "And the reason we shouldn't simply tie you up again and just let you out to cook?"

"Because I'm not above pissing in your grub," she said calmly.

Amidst the sounds of retching, Draco managed to dredge up a sneer. "You're quite fixated on urine, aren't you? And why aren't you tied up now?"

Ginny glared at him and moved to sit next to Greg, who looked a bit queasy. "Goyle here is a gentleman and doesn't have your experience with needing to tie girls up to get them to stand him." She slid the dessert in front of him and slid a finger over it, scooping up some of the warm filling and a bit of the crumb topping. "This hasn't been tampered with, see?"

All five sets of male eyes were riveted on her finger as it slid into her mouth and she looked smug for a moment, before they all dove for the dessert and knocked her to the ground.

"Right," she muttered angrily. "Right. What else do you expect from idiots?"

"Didya say something, Weasel?" asked Blaise around a mouthful of apple.

"My name," she said in the quiet tones of a bomb fuse, "is Ginny."

"'S better'n the elves at home make," said Vince around a mouthful. "Can I keep her?"

Greg hit him over the head with a spoon. "Don't be daft. She'd never fit in the house elf quarters."

"Not with that arse," sniggered Theo, and it was his bad luck that that was what made her temper snap.

"My name," she roared as she turned the table over, "is GINNY. Not Weasley, not Weasel, not 'her'. Ginny! And if you incompetent excuses for sorry bastards don't listen up, you'll starve to death before I lift a finger to help you."

Draco shot to his feet and glowered at her, but she didn't back down an inch. "Gag her before I kill her, boys, and this time tie her-- After her!"

They tried, but by the time they had sorted themselves out and made it out of the kitchen, she had disappeared. "Oh, excellent job, Draco," Blaise said as sourly as he dared. "Now you've gone and lost us our hostage and worse, our cook."

"We can eat the bloody Cauldron Cakes," said Draco. "Now we find her and we tie her up and if she pisses herself then she'll just have to stay pissed on."

They split up to search the house, which was fairly standard for their sort of family, except that it lacked many of the Dark Arts objects that they would've expected to find. There was a tapestry in one room with the family tree, and Crabbe had been scared out of his wits by a mad old portrait whose curtains he'd disturbed. She'd only shut up when Draco had picked up the remaining mashed potatoes and thrown them at her, leaving a thin white coating over the entire portrait surface.

It was almost reassuring, though, to encounter the madwoman's portrait. The house had been so thoroughly cleansed of dark magic that very little of any magic remained. It was spooky to see pictures standing still and enchanted daggers lying on moldy pillows without the slightest sign of flying murderously into the air. "It's dead depressing," Blaise opined on hearing a music box tinkling away and not feeling the slightest urge to sleep. "What the hell happened?"

"How should I know?" asked Draco moodily, pushing around a golden ring that had been in its own box. "I never even knew I had property in Sussex on the border of both London and Wales."

Vince flinched and ducked into another room, since Theo had taken a moment earlier to explain a few basic facts about geography. He ducked back out quickly, his face bright red. "'S a girl's room."

"And does it have a girl in it?" said Draco with mock patience.

"Course not," said Vince. "But there's... Frills and things."

Draco sighed. "Stand guard in case the girl shows up. I'm going to find a place to sleep."

"Bossy twit," muttered Theo, but he waited for Draco to be out of earshot first.

They didn't find her that night, but the others didn't bother to look once Draco stopped. They didn't see her in the morning, either, despite the delicious smell of bacon and eggs and fresh bread that led them all to the kitchen. It turned out that the Weasley girl had a streak of cruelty in her, because they didn't find a single crumb. All that greeted them was a stack of Cauldron Cakes and a note, which Draco shredded to bits. Theo had managed to read it over his shoulder first, and he whispered to the others that she had written, "Dear Idiots: I had a lovely breakfast. There's nothing as tasty as fresh-baked bread on a cold morning, is there? Bacon and eggs and hot chocolate are almost an afterthought. Leave a note under the troll leg umbrella stand if you'd like to reopen negotiations."

Draco tore open a Cauldron Cake and took a large bite. "It's perfectly fine," he snarled. "Yum. Could eat these for days."

"And we will," said Blaise. "At least six of them, if the supply holds out and we manage to find a way to contact the Dark Lord without being able to Floo or Apparate out of the house."

"Oh, there's loads. We could all eat cakes for a month and still have plenty left." Goyle had opened one and started munching happily, then choked as Draco glared.

Theo moaned piteously. "Coffee! I want coffee! Why isn't there any coffee?"

Draco found a bag marked 'coffee' and threw it at his head. "There's your bloody coffee." He stormed off in the direction of the study, and the other boys shortly heard a smash that they correctly identified as the last of the emptied brandy bottles being thrown against a wall.

"Maybe we should avoid giving him any stimulants," said Blaise.

"We could give him some chamomile tea," Vince said. "It's very soothing."

The others all looked at him, or rather, Blaise and Greg did. Theo was busy tearing the bag open and seeing if chewing the coffee beans would do him any good. Vince squirmed as Blaise said distantly, "Yes, Vince, we certainly could do that, if we had any chamomile tea and if we could persuade Draco to drink something that wouldn't catch his breath on fire if he went near an open flame. But, on the whole, since it's you, well done. That was almost a good idea."

"Shut up," Vince said in a rumble before stamping off. Blaise looked at his remaining companions - Greg still happily gorging on cakes, Theo now trying to fit his head under the pump at the sink so that he could fill his mouth, which was already overflowing with half-chewed coffee beans - and decided maybe he would go help Draco find the wine cellars.

There was another sound of shattering glass, and Blaise revised his plans, deciding to go explore on his own... And the first thing that needed to be found was some parchment and ink so he could leave a note for the Weasley girl. No, Ginny. Best to start thinking of her as that now, or she'd likely throw something at him when he begged her on bended knee to fry up some bacon for him.

The clock moved inexorably towards noon and Blaise casually made his way towards the kitchen, carrying a bottle of sherry. Girls liked that stuff, right? And Weasley was a girl. Ergo, bringing her some sherry as a gift might turn her up sweet and gain him a proper sandwich.

His saunter was interrupted by the presence of Theo (still chewing coffee beans), Greg (listlessly prodding a Cauldron Cake), and Vince (sitting at the table in front of an empty plate and looking hopeful). All three faces fell as they caught sight of him, and even when he was knocked forward by the door hitting him in the back, they barely cracked a smile.

"Well?" said Draco imperiously, letting the door swing shut behind him as he pushed past Blaise. "Where's the Weasley bint? I want my lunch."

"Then you'd best learn to cook," she said from a shadow somewhere to the side. "I told you my name already, and that point's not negotiable."

"No!" shouted out all the other boys in a single horrified gasp. They crowded around Ginny but backed down when she glared. Blaise, seeing himself as the only person who might possibly rescue their prospective lunch, said charmingly, "Just ignore him, Ginny, he's an utter tit."

"No argument there," she muttered, dutifully ignoring both Draco's squawk of outrage and the way the other three boys all jumped on him and covered his mouth.

Blaise picked up her hand and brushed a kiss on the back of it before giving her the look he'd been assured could dampen knickers at thirty paces. "Please could you make us some lunch? We'd-- I'd really appreciate it."

She looked at him softly for a long moment and he fought the urge to smirk at the visible effect of the Zabini charm. He didn't have to fight it for long, however, as it was completely killed by her laugh. "Does that actually work on anyone? Please. If I'm going to be doing the cooking, then I have certain demands."

"That works on loads of girls!" said an outraged Blaise, his position as the voice of reason completely abandoned in the face of a charm failure.

Ginny remained unimpressed, and so Vince left his place holding Draco down and sidled over, shoving Blaise aside. "Please, Miss, we're really hungry. What can we do for you?"

She looked him over and sighed before patting his cheek. "Tell you what, I'll save the big stuff for later. For now, everyone who promises not to attempt to tie me up or otherwise hold me captive gets to eat lunch, all right?"

This earned her beaming smiles from three out of five males, because Blaise was still sulking about her unnatural resistance to his charm and Draco was, well, Draco. "And can we have coffee?" said Theo hopefully.

"Of course," she said, making a motion like she'd just stopped herself from patting him on the head. "Now clear out unless you're going to help."

They did, Greg and Vince both calling out dishes they particularly liked and Theo interspersing "and coffee!" at random pauses. Blaise didn't speak, just set the sherry on the table and skulked out, wondering if there might be a book in the library that explained why she'd been able to resist him. Draco, however, stayed.

Ginny looked at him with a raised eyebrow and he gave her the same treatment in return. The green bathrobe she'd found the day before was looking a bit bedraggled, and she had some kind of white dust in her hair. "Charming fashion statement, Weasley."

She rolled her eyes and tied on an apron. "I suppose, for a Malfoy, that passes as civil conversation."

"That was sarcasm, you know. It's this thing that those of us who have any level of sophistication often employ for the benefit of others with a sense of humor."

"Really? Because I've seen some Muggle comedians and do you know, they use it too? Guess the only true sophisticates are Malfoys and Muggles." His face turned red and she threw an apron at him. "Now either stop trying to wind me up or get out. I've got cooking to do."

Draco glared at her and walked to the table, uncorking the sherry and taking a drink. "I'm not here to be a menial, Weasel, I'm just here to make sure you don't taint the food."

She jerked the bottle out of his hand and slammed a glass down in front of him. "You drink too much," she said even as she poured some out for him. "And I'm warning you, you can call me Ginny or, if you must, Weasley, but one more pejorative from you and the others won't get lunch... and I'll make sure they know why."

"Shut up, Malfoy!" came Vince's voice from beyond the door, followed by a thump and a small, "Sorry! But do shut up!"

Draco pinched the bridge of his nose and shook his head. "And you wonder why I turn to drink."

That caused her to giggle slightly before she smothered it and turned to the pantry. "Come fetch down that big bowl for me," she called, and Draco grumbled but fetched as ordered.

"What's the matter, your family couldn't afford--" He cut himself off at the look on her face and sighed. "Has anyone ever told you that you're no fun at all?"

"Frequently," she said drily, taking the bowl from him and putting it on the counter, then beginning to throw in various substances.

Against his will, he felt a stirring of interest in what she was doing. "What's all that, then?"

"Bread." She washed her hands at the sink and then put them in the bowl, a drift of white powder floating up to smudge the edges of her hair.

He wandered over, carrying the glass of sherry, and took a sip before peering over her shoulder. "Doesn't look much like it."

"Of course it doesn't. It's not even risen, let alone baked." Draco had no idea what she'd just said, but he nodded agreeably anyway. "Thank heavens the oven here's still enchanted or we'd be stuck with scones for our sandwiches."

"Thank heavens," he said, then swiped a finger through the white dust on her forehead. "So what else needs to be done?"

Her elbow was quite sharp as it dug into his stomach. "Keep your hands to yourself for a start."

There was a scuffle outside the kitchen door, but they both ignored it and it died down quickly. "I'm going to fry some bacon, grill some sausages, get out some tomatoes and lettuce... Not much, really, but then there wasn't much concession on your part, now was there?"

Draco nodded, willing his stomach not to growl. He followed her as she gathered things and brought them to the counter next to the stove. At one point she was carrying an iron skillet and stopped in her tracks, making him have to do an odd dance in order to avoid knocking her down. She handed him the skillet and said, "We'll need some mayonnaise, too. Take this to the stove while I go check if we have any or if we'll need to make it fresh."

He put it on the stovetop and stood over it, wondering how it all worked. Presumably you put something in it, but she'd pulled out two different sorts of pans, three if you counted the one the mixture she claimed was bread was in, and he didn't have the foggiest idea what the difference was between them, other than general shape, not to mention that he wasn't all that sure about the components. There was a large white lump with pink bits, some things that were sausage shaped but weren't the golden-brown color he normally associated with sausage, instead being pink with the occasional fleck of green, and various vegetables sitting there mocking him with their raw shapes.

Ginny bustled back, her arms full of food components. "There was an old bottle but it looked a bit manky, so I'm just going to make some since all the ingredients are handy."

Ingredients, not components. Draco made a mental note of it before looking over what she'd brought out. He could definitely recognize the eggs, since they were the same shape when hard-boiled, and there was a flask that looked like the one his mother used for olive oil when she was serving Greek or Italian food and wanted them to dip their bread in it. He assumed the yellow things were lemons, since he'd seen sliced ones and they fit the general shape of them, but he had no earthly idea what the various powders in jars were.

"Have you ever seen a sillier way to store salt? I suppose they just did it for traveling, but still." She cleared a space on the counter and reached underneath it to bring up a large wooden board, like the ones they used for chopping compo-- ingredients for potions. No, that was still components. Draco nodded and took a sip of sherry, then dropped his glass as she brought out a truly enormous knife.

"Whatever I did, Wea- er, Ginny, I apologize profusely." He stepped back, measuring the distance between himself and the door, while she looked at him quizzically.

She showed no signs of chasing him, so Draco stopped inching away and she shrugged before turning towards the chopping block and pulling the white-and-pink slab onto it. She set the knife to it and Draco was able to breathe again. Of course she wasn't homicidal. If she was she could've put something in the food.

Thus reassured, he edged closer once more and watched as the large lump was turned into a series of thin slices. "Oh, it's bacon!"

Once again she looked at him as if his hat was just a bit too tight, which was patently ridiculous as he didn't even own a hat, besides the one they were required to have for Hogwarts, and that one would be much too small by now anyway. He stopped for a further moment and thought that through again and decided she might be right; not about him being insane, obviously, but rather about the amount of drinking he was doing. "It was drinking that made me agree to this whole mad idea in the first place," he muttered.

"Talking to yourself is the first sign of insanity," she said absently, still slicing. "Although with you I'd say it's probably happening far too late in the process to do any good."

"You'd know," he said, but he felt that, as a retort, it lacked a certain something. Casting about for a change of subject, he poked at the pink sausage shapes. "So these are sausages, then?"

She rolled her eyes. "Obviously." The bacon slices had a towel tossed over them and were thus abandoned, and she picked up the thin rectangular pan and a dab of butter. She smeared the butter over the bottom of the pan for no reason he could see and then put the sausages inside all in a row. Apparently his confusion was obvious because as she slid the pan into a door under the one where the bread mix had gone in, she said, "I changed my mind and it's going to be toad in the hole, so the pan had to be greased. That'll keep the batter from sticking, or even the sausages. Makes it easier to wash up afterwards."

He nodded as if he had the slightest idea what she was talking about and she laughed. "Don't worry, there's no actual toads."

"The thought never crossed my mind," he said quite truthfully. He'd eaten stranger things than toads, but quite frankly the words 'washing up' sounded ominous.

The look she gave him could only be called assessing. Finally she said, "Let's get some coffee made, then we can get the vegetables ready."

Ignoring the noise from outside the door that was probably Theo bursting into tears of joy, Draco followed her to the sink, where she picked up a glass carafe and filled it with water. "My dad says Muggles have something very like this that they use for coffee, but you have to grind the beans separately first and it runs on elecrity." He watched as she poured the water into the top of a metal cylinder and then set the carafe underneath. "I suppose they've got to make do, the poor things, although I don't see how they manage not to kill themselves or burn the coffee."

Draco might've answered, but she didn't seem to need a second party to the conversation. "Of course, Mum says you get better coffee if you grind the beans separately anyway, but that takes a lot of time with the mortar and pestle and I can't really taste a difference anyway. I prefer tea, but since Harry likes coffee I had to learn to make it."

"Anything for the golden boy, right?" Draco infused the words with every ounce of scorn he was capable of - and that was quite a lot, given that he was a Malfoy and it was bred into the bone - but the wretched girl just laughed.

"Exactly. Well, that and I'm the girl, so I had to learn to be useful, not sit around and wallow in ignorance like you five obviously did." She produced a scoop from somewhere, quite possibly thin air, measured out a number of coffee beans into a smaller cylinder next to the one where she'd poured the water, then made the scoop disappear again. "Anyway, that'll be ready in a minute. For now you can learn to chop vegetables."

He followed her back to the chopping board but said, "Why would I want to do that? Aren't you here to perform the manual labor?"

"Of course," she said. "But, if you want to be able to sit down and have a sandwich in ten minutes instead of twenty, you could help."

"I'll help!" Greg and Vince barreled into the kitchen, both looking like eager puppies. Greg added, "What can I do?" while Vince said, "I'm really strong, I could tear things up or stomp on Malfoy for you." Greg nodded enthusiastically at that idea and even moved to loom over Draco before being stared down.

Ginny just giggled. "All right, then, you can help."

It was now Draco's turn to give her the 'what are you, mad?' look. "You're letting them have knives?"

She picked up a head of lettuce and gave it to Crabbe before steering the two over to the sink. "Here, you need to rinse this so there's no dirt on it, but it requires two of you - one to pump and one to rinse. When they're clean, just tear the leaves off and put them on this plate."

They smiled at her fatuously and Draco growled. She shot him a questioning look as she returned and he whispered fiercely, "You're ruining two perfectly good henchmen!"

"No," she whispered back, "I'm just shifting their loyalties."

His chance to respond was lost as she shifted her attention to the other vegetables. "Now, I already washed these, so all that needs to be done is slicing them. What you do is--"

Ginny broke off as he picked up the knife and started cutting a tomato into thin, even slices. "Apply the knife in exactly the same way I have to potions ing-- components since I was old enough to hold a knife?"

"Basically," she said grudgingly, turning away from him to put the bacon in the heavy skillet. He knew that was what it was called because she had said it when telling him to get it off a high shelf for her earlier, but he was fascinated to see that flames reached from the stovetop to tickle the bottom of it as she dropped the bacon in. It sizzled and she pulled a long fork from somewhere - he was beginning to think there were innumerable pocket dimensions within the kitchen that she used for storage somehow - and stirred the bacon as it sizzled.

The air was starting to fill with fragrance now, the heady scents of bread and bacon and coffee swirling through the room and making all the male salivary glands in the vicinity start dancing with anticipation. Even Blaise made an appearance, although he sat at the table and oversaw the proceedings while looking dark and tortured in Ginny's general direction.

Ginny blithely ignored him as she flipped the bacon over, then after a minute turned it out onto a plate with little ridges on it. Draco frowned. "Won't the grease overflow the plate?"

"Special plate," she said, concentrating on holding the pan with one hand while using the fork to move the bacon around. "It filters and drains the grease directly to cold storage so you can use it again later."

She finished and put the pan down, then rushed over to the sink and stuck her hand under the water. "I always manage to burn myself," she muttered, and Draco took heart at this sign of imperfection. A world with a perfect Weasley would just not be worth living in.

Vince was nattering about the lettuce and she said something complimentary which made him and his partner in oafishness beam. They carried the plate of lettuce to the table with great ceremony, earning daggered looks from Blaise and Draco. Theo was busy standing over the glass carafe, which was now filled with coffee.

This time she did pat Theo's head as she poured a large mugful and handed it to the boy, who looked ready to drop to his knees in worship. Whether it would be Weasley or the coffee he praised, Draco wasn't sure. "Anyone ever told you you're unhealthily fixated?"

Theo took a long drink and then sneered at Draco. "This from someone who begins his alcohol consumption within five minutes of waking up?"

"Oh, you know what they say," said Ginny, sharing a conspiratorial smile with Theo as she refilled his cup. "Breakfast is the most important meal of the day."

Draco thought it was fascinating to note the exact moment in which Theo's stunted little black heart was completely and utterly given over to Girl Weasel, red hair and lumpy bathrobe notwithstanding. Fascinating, but also sickening, and he wasn't the only one who thought so. From his post at the table Blaise said, "Which is why you should finish cooking it instead of flirting with Nott."

This earned him a variety of looks, from Draco's approving one to glares from Theo, Vince, and Greg, and an amused look from Ginny. "As my lord wishes," she said, her voice brimming with laughter as she swished her way to the oven where the bread smell was coming from. There she snatched up another towel and pulled out what was unmistakably bread, a large golden brown loaf that Draco's stomach would've been prepared to swear had an aura of beneficent magic around it. She put it on a rack and produced another loaf, which had one end cut off but was still mostly whole. "Slice the one that's cool, would you? I need to make the mayonnaise and then you can start eating."

Draco snatched the loaf before Vince or Greg could reach it. "Not you two, I'd prefer to eat bread, not the crumbs that would be left after you idiots sawed it to bits." Instead of slicing it himself, though, he tossed it to Theo, who caught it handily and then almost dropped it as he scrambled to catch the knife that had followed.

Ginny was standing over a bowl and muttering something about brainless boys when Draco joined her. "So how do you do this, then?"

"It's dead easy," she said, cracking an egg into a small bowl. She separated the orange bit, the yolk, and tossed it into a bigger bowl, then repeated this until she had four of the things. The runny clear bits were set aside with a towel on top and she started using a complex looking wire contraption to beat the everliving hell out of the yolks. "See, you just need to whisk the yolks until they've gone a bit thick... Like this." She paused and held up the wire thing to show him what looked like orange goo. He couldn't have said how it was any different than any other orange goo, but he was prepared to take her word for it that it was as it should be.

"Oh, bosh, I forgot to get the lemons ready." She put the big bowl down and rolled the lemons around on the counter in a way that made him blink very hard and decide that he definitely needed to drink less if he was getting turned on by a Weasel's hands. She was squeezing them and moving her hand over them in a way that led his thoughts directly to one thing, and that wasn't food. "Here, cut these in half while I get the yolks back to where they need to be."

He was grateful for the control he gained while handling the small knife, but he didn't think he'd ever be able to look at lemons the same way again. She picked up the flask of oil and poured a drip into the big bowl before resuming her frenzied whisking. "For this much you use two cups, and I really do advise measuring until you get the hang of it. You need to add it in just a little bit at a time, though, not all at once or you'll end up with a mess."

He nodded, trying not to look at the rapid and repetitive up and down motion of her hand. As of now, he thought, I am never going to drink again.

Ginny grinned as she kept adding small drips of oil and moving her hand. "The first time I tried it on my own, I forgot about taking it slowly. It all ended in tears and screaming and a certain Girl Weasel liberally coated in oil. My mum was not best pleased."

"No," said Draco. I need a drink, he thought.

"Anyway, once you've added about a third of the oil, you start adding the lemon juice," she said, happily oblivious to Draco's increasing discomfort. Was she wearing something under the bathrobe? He couldn't tell - couldn't even make out her shape and decide just how fat she was. She was whisking, then pouring in more oil, then whisking some more, then squeezing juice out of the lemons over the bowl, then it all started over again. If this kept up much longer, he thought desperately, the stuff in the bowl wouldn't be the only glossy white gelatinous fluid in the area. Any minute now he was going to stop looking at her hands and thinking terrible things. Really. Any moment.

She stopped and he was torn between relief and disappointment. "And then you just add some seasonings. Mum just uses salt and pepper, but I like to use a bit of paprika - adds some spice, you know?" Ginny opened the little jars and used her fingertips to pull out some of the contents - a little bit of salt, a dash of pepper, and then a generous sprinkling of red stuff which looked exactly like her freckles when it was scattered over the white surface. She stirred it all in and then stuck her finger in the bowl and brought some to her mouth.

"I need a drink," Draco said out loud, stomping away from her to sit down at the table in front of the bottle of sherry. The other boys looked at him oddly, but only Blaise sniggered.

Ginny looked a bit disconcerted, but shrugged. "Anyway, once it tastes all right, which this does, it's ready." She put it in two smaller bowls, each with a butter knife stuck in it, and placed them on the table, then shuffled back to place the bacon, lettuce, tomato and onion platters also at the table. She finished by setting out plates and napkins in front of each boy, giving each a warm smile as she did. "Some assembly required, loves."

She actually ruffled Greg's hair as she walked by, and he didn't object. Draco was starting to get a very bad feeling about all this.

"Aren't you going to eat with us?" asked Theo, giving her a revolting dewy-eyed look.

"In a minute, I've got to finish up the toad in the hole and make some tea." She gave him a bright smile, which was returned by Theo and Vince and Greg. "Thanks for thinking of me, but you lot go on."

Blaise edged closer to Draco. "Are you sure the food's not tainted?"

"Positive," said Draco, pulling some bread towards him. He reached for the mayonnaise and then decided against it, piling ragged lettuce and tomatoes and bacon on his bare bread. He had just taken his first bite when Ginny gave a little shriek.

Stupid sods, he thought about the others, who all dropped their food and ran across the room. Sandwiches are portable. He smugly took a bite of his as he stood over Ginny, who had fallen to the ground at some point and was being comforted, and quite possibly smothered, by the attentions of the goon squad. Blaise had apparently decided to try charm again, as he was holding her hand and using The Zabini Bedroom Voice to speak to her.

"No, I'm all right, really," she said. "I just need to put my hand under cold water for a minute and then find something to wear that doesn't have such big sleeves." Ginny pulled herself up with Blaise's help and was ushered over to the sink, where Greg ripped the singed sleeve off of the bathrobe and Vince enthusiastically manned the water pump. Draco decided the excitement was over for the moment and returned to the table to get a second sandwich.

Eventually, with some assistance from Zabini, the waterlogged Ginny was freed from their attentions. Draco heard her telling the disappointed Theo that he could help her by putting the kettle on, and then she showed him how to do it. Theo's face when she said she preferred tea to coffee was a sight to behold, but he struggled manfully for a smile and said that tea was quite good, really. Considering he'd been heard to say many times before that tea was a waste of water that could be used for coffee, the other boys all found this statement hilarious, much to Ginny's confusion.

When she finally got the others to sit down and resume eating, she breathed a small sigh of relief and starting pulling out ingredients again. Draco found he recognized all of them - there was the white powder she had used for the bread, eggs, and milk. His hunger being temporarily sated, he wandered over. "So what's this, then?"

"Flour," she said, using a scoop to measure some out. "Half a cup's worth." She patted it into a pile inside the bowl and then made a small hole in the middle, like she was building a model of a volcano. "Then you put in an egg in and you start whisking it gently, so that you mix just a tiny bit of the flour into the egg at one time." She suited action to words and Draco tried very hard not to get hypnotized again by the way her hand was moving.

"It's got a bit thick," she said and he nodded in agreement. It certainly had. She added some milk to the flour and egg, though, and said, "You just add a little bit if you need to at this point, just to help keep everything smooth."

He nodded again. Smooth was good. She smiled at him and kept whisking until all the flour was gone, mixed in with the egg and the tiny bit of milk she'd put in. "You have to make sure there's no lumps, but once you've got some practice that's no problem," she said. "Then you pour in the rest of the milk once it's all mixed up and that makes it all wet like this, see?"

"Urgle," was his conversational sally, since he felt like his own skin was attempting to strangle him.

"Now we need to set it aside for a bit under a towel, which will make it only need about five minutes instead of half an hour because the towels kept their enchantment, thank goodness. I was going to eat, but I think I'll go change instead." Her mouth twisted and he nodded again, lost in his own private fantasy world. "Keep an eye out that nothing burns and I'll be right back."

She scurried out, pouring Theo more coffee en route and exchanging cheery smiles with Greg and Vince. Blaise bowed and held the door open for her and she gave him a sort of curtsey in return before finally leaving, at which point all four others turned to Draco with evil smiles.

"Shut up," he snarled and turned around to start poking through drawers and cabinets.

The random sniggers and croons of "weeeeeeeeeeasel lover" hadn't completely died down when Ginny returned, looking cross. "I hope you're happy! This was my best outfit and the soap in the laundry shrunk it! I nicked a shirt from whichever one of you had the plaid suitcase, but look at this skirt! Just look at it!"

They were looking. It was very hard not to, as it was now so short that the tails of the oversized shirt she was wearing peeked out from underneath. The waistband cinched the shirt in tightly, making her waist look tiny compared to the flare of her hips and the way her bosom jutted out to strain the buttons directly over it.

Draco felt quite smug at the way the others were all drooling over the Weasel Girl now. Well, the parts of Draco that weren't fully devoted to trying to work out if she had any underthings at all felt quite smug.

None of the boys attempted to stand up, which was just as well because Ginny was tearing around the kitchen and throwing things. Draco wished he had managed to sit down again as she brushed past him to tear the towel off the batter and give it one more fierce whisking before she opened the oven and poured it over the sausages. She'd had to bend slightly to do so and the boys weren't quite quick enough to avoid being caught with craned necks.

She glared at all of them and crossed her arms over her chest, causing her breasts to be pushed upwards and thus for there to be some extreme happiness mixed in with the terror she was inducing. "All right, I have a great big fat bottom, an arse so big that it couldn't fit in any of your trousers. It's a fact and we all know it but if any of you say even one single word, I will chop you into small pieces and make you into stew."

"'S a nice--" started Greg, only to stop as she brandished a very large meat cleaver.

"Not. One. Word."

The cleaver quivered with the force that she had used to sink it into the chopping block, and there was silence for a long moment. Satisfied that she had suitably impressed upon them the importance of silence, she looked around and saw the bowl of egg whites from earlier. "Might as well make some meringue. Waste not, want not, right?"

The sudden cheerfulness made Draco suspicious, but given that he'd still not managed to get to the table and was thus the closest to knifing range, he nodded. Never mind that he'd never worried about wasting anything in his entire life, unless one counted opportunities.

"Now, unless you've got a spell to keep things fresh and temperature controlled, like is on these towels, you don't want to let eggs sit around for all this time before using them," she said to Draco. "But since we do, we can go ahead and use them. Meringue is a good way to use up spare egg whites, so we'd get it as a treat whenever Mum made up a new batch of mayonnaise."

She poured the egg whites into a much larger bowl and picked up the whisk again. Draco wanted to whimper, but instead chose to tie an apron around his waist with a lot of billowing cloth left in the front. "You need the big bowl so it doesn't all slop over the edges," Ginny said, then started whipping the whisk through the eggs at a truly astonishing speed. "You want to do this until it gets all stiff."

"No problem," he said.

"Let's see, we had four egg whites, so we'll need about a cup of icing sugar and just a touch of vanilla... But we'll make some coffee ones for Theo, so we'll separate some out after the sugar but before the vanilla." Still beating the egg white, she walked to the pantry and looked at him over her shoulder. "Well, are you coming?"

"Not yet," he said. "But give me time."

This earned him an arched eyebrow. "Just how much time to do you need to walk ten steps? Honestly, Merlin save me from useless boys."

"I'm a man," said Draco, but he was drowned out, as the other boys had had time to recover from their abject fear, and were crowding around and offering to help.

"You don't have to make me special ones," said Theo, giving her a hopeful puppy look. "But I sure would like it if you did."

"Of course I will," she said, patting his hand. She remained completely oblivious to the way this earned the boy daggered looks from the others. "Just one of you get down the icing sugar, all right? It's right there."

She turned and walked back to the kitchen proper, missing the small scuffle that ensued over the sugar. Blaise emerged triumphant, mostly because Draco had quit the field in order to read the labels on various bottles. "Here it is," said Blaise triumphantly.

"Thanks," she said with a smile, scooping some out and then handing the bag back to him. "Just put it back where it was so I can find it again later."

"Here, Ginny, I brought the vanilla," said Draco, proudly offering up a brown bottle with the words 'vanilla extract' written across the label.

"Good job, Malfoy," she said with a smile, and he looked at the others with unmistakable smugness.

"If I've got to call you Ginny, you may as well call me Draco," he said, giving her his best imitation of The Zabini Smile.

"Cheeky bugger," muttered Blaise, "accidentally" bumping into Draco and knocking him into a cabinet.

Ginny shook her head and paused in her whisking to check the consistency of the egg whites. Deciding it was ready for the sugar she started beating it in a little bit at a time, calmly ignoring the scuffle that eventually encompassed all the boys. "Right, then, Theo, get me some coffee."

He tore himself away from the brawl to obey and she rewarded him with a smile. A towel over it and a few taps to the flower pattern rendered the coffee into a concentrate, which went into a smaller bowl with a large dollop of the meringue mixture. She gave it a quick mix and then whipped some vanilla into the main mix. From somewhere she produced a flat metal sheet and covered the bottom of it with a sheet of parchment. Another parchment sheet got folded into a cone and she spooned some of the mix into it. "See, you do it like this," she said, pressing the tip of the cone to the baking sheet and giving the whole thing a small squeeze before running her hand up and down over it. Her face was set with concentration, her lips puckered. "And then you pull it up like this... And voila! It's a kiss!"

"Well, I thought it was impressive," she muttered as she took in their blank faces. "Just go sit down, then, and finish your lunches."

They shuffled off obediently and she finished making the meringue kisses before putting them in the oven that wasn't currently holding the toad in the hole. Satisfied that she was done for the moment, she washed her hands and went to sit down at the head of the table.

"Now I think it's time to talk," she said.

Draco felt the chill of those words travel down his spine like ice water. "We're listening."

"Now, the way I see it, you boys captured me against my will and took me prisoner, subjected me to cruel treatment and callously forced me to humiliate myself." She looked around as if daring them to argue, but an imperious wave from Draco and they all held silent. "Not to mention that you're making me miss time with my family at Christmas, when everybody's gathered in one place."

No one mentioned that this might be held to be a favor, although everyone at the table thought it. "In any case," she continued, "you also want me to continue cooking, right? You don't know how long it will be before you figure out a way to contact the outside world, and if I don't do any cooking in the meantime you're pretty well fucked."

"Get to the point," snapped Draco. She was leaning over and poking the table with one finger to emphasize her words, and he wasn't sure how much more he could take.

"The point," she said, leaning back in her chair and folding her arms over her chest. "Well, it's quite simple, really. You five need to forswear your loyalty to Voldemort and swear it to me instead."

There was a moment of utter silence.

"Are you mad?" asked Blaise. "There's no way!"

"You want us to sell you our souls for some bacon sandwiches?" Theo said, aghast.

Vince rumbled, "They were good sandwiches, mind."

"Yeah, and Theo'd sell his soul for coffee," said Greg.

"I can see you'll all need some time to think about it," Ginny said, standing up and smoothing down her miniscule skirt. "There's timers that will go off when the meringue and the toad in the hole are ready. Leave a note at the same place when you're ready to accept my terms, although this time you really only need to leave one note, not five."

She sauntered to the kitchen door, hips swaying from side to side in a way that totally distracted Draco from his furious thinking of ways around her terms. Pausing in the doorway, she looked over her shoulder and said, "Oh, and don't wait too long. The freshness spell on the beef looked a bit wonky, and you wouldn't want to miss out on my roast beef with Yorkshire pudding. It's positively sinful how tasty it is."

There was another moment of silence as the door closed behind her, and only quick movements from Blaise and Draco kept Vince and Greg from running after her.

"We can't let her win like this," said Blaise.

Draco nodded. "What kind of Death Eaters, hell, what kind of men would we be if we let some little girl lead us around by the nose?"

"Are you sure it's your nose she's got?" said Greg slyly. "Looked to me like--"

Dreamily, Vince said, "Do you think she knows how to make glazed carrots to go with the roast beef?"

"What's more important," said Draco, "your stomach or your pride? Didn't this all start because you lot wanted to prove yourselves?"

"Right," said Vince half-heartedly. "Not sure what we've proven."

"That we're idiots," said Blaise gloomily. "And that Draco drinks too much."

"We can do this," said Theo. "We can. We're Death Eaters! We're going to be the Dark Lord's best servants!" They all nodded, sitting up straighter, but sank again as Theo looked at his empty cup and said desperately, "But you remember how to make the coffee, right?"

It turned out that Draco did remember how to make the coffee, except that when he made it, it tasted like shit. They had cold toad in the hole for dinner that night and Blaise poured out huge glasses of red wine for each of them. They spent dinnertime making toasts and talking about how they'd be big, bad Death Eaters in only six more days - five, really, since this day was already over. Theo was a bit quiet, but with the way his face screwed up every time he tasted Draco's horrible coffee, it wasn't too big a surprise.

It was Theo who brought out the meringues, carefully separating all the coffee ones and piling them on his own plate. Vince reached for the rest, dividing them up evenly between the remaining boys. They all sat and stared at them gloomily.

"She made these for us," said Vince.

"Slaving like a house elf to cook us up a spot of grub," added Greg dolefully.

Blaise sighed. "They're kisses, from her to us."

"Oh for fuck's sake," said Draco, standing up and spilling his mostly-full wine glass. "They're just egg bits and sugar, and besides, she treats you all like you're part of her repulsive red-headed tribe."

"If it means I get roast beef and Yorkshire pudding," Vince said, "then dye my hair and call me a Weasley."

Draco glared at the lot of them. "Pathetic," he sneered before stalking out, magnificently ignoring that Blaise had whispered something that made the rest of them giggle like schoolgirls.

He lasted an entire twenty-four hours. Not wanting to be around the others, who had developed a distressing tendency to look at him and snigger, he started to explore the place. It wasn't a bad house, and he thought he might be willing to live there if it was in a reasonable location. It would need a thorough cleaning and some repairs, particularly to fix the weird magic dampening effect, but he was sure he could get some things from Borgin and Burkes to make it feel more like a home. The mad portrait would have to go, though, because every time he got near it, the old cow started shrieking about the shame of having her own flesh and blood throwing food at her.

The one oddity was that, every time he got near what he thought might be a door to the outside, he'd see a flash of red hair or hear her soft laugh and he'd get distracted from his exploration to instead try to track her down. He never quite managed it, but there were a few times he heard her talking to one of the others, and he was quite annoyed that she'd talk to those prats but not to him.

Finally at lunchtime, after a disastrous attempt to cook bacon, Draco shut himself up in the library, chucking an empty glass at Blaise when he attempted to join him. Theo shook his head. "Maybe if he gets drunk enough, we can get him to agree to Ginny's demands."

Blaise nodded. "Come on, let's go see if she'll agree to make dinner for the rest of us while Draco drinks himself into a stupor. Go get Vince and Greg, they can give puppy eyes the best."

The puppy eyes prevailed, Ginny eventually agreeing that one more meal would only help them make up their minds. The five of them spent the afternoon in the kitchen, making roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, but also glazed carrots and a large chocolate cake with a vanilla custard between the layers and icing made from Dutch chocolate and cream cheese. Ginny even remembered how to make espresso, which prompted Theo to propose marriage on the spot.

It was at this point that Draco arrived, taking in the laughing faces and the full table with a sneer. "How cozy."

"Come on in, Draco," Ginny said calmly. "The boys already gave me their oaths of allegiance before dinner, but they said you were too drunk to join us."

The boys thus named squirmed as he looked at all of them accusatorily. Finally Vince said, "Sorry, Draco, but... Well, the Dark Lord's really not all that good at cooking."

"Ginny made a lot of good points," Blaise said hastily. "Did you know that Voldemort's not even a pureblood?"

"Plus your coffee tastes like shit." Theo seemed convinced this set the seal on the matter. Greg just kept eating.

"Just leave so I can have a word with Circe here before she turns you all into pigs," said Draco. He looked at Greg, still shoveling food into his mouth, and said, "Unless it's already too late."

They all looked to Ginny, who nodded. Someone apparently explained the reference to Greg on the way out, because he squawked and glared at Draco, but very shortly they were all out and Draco sat at the table to face Ginny. "I'm prepared to discuss terms," he said, putting a book on the table.

Ginny studied him and he thought about what she saw: a handsome blond in his shirtsleeves, missing his tie and in general looking quite rumpled. He hoped she could also see that she was facing someone completely sober and easily her equal in terms of scheming. What he saw was a red-haired girl who was quite possibly his equal at being an evil genius, which was appealing on its own. He really didn't see how it was possible that he'd never, not once, noticed before that she had quite the luscious figure; it must be because of the hideous clothes her poverty forced her to wear. Well, that and the fact that Hogwarts robes made everyone look like they had the figure of a potato sack.

In any case, it was time to get down to business, because Draco Malfoy was not about to swear allegiance to anything or anybody without getting something out of it. At least with Voldemort he could count on status within his social circle, something that allegiance to a Weasley would most definitely not confer.

Finally she said, "I'm listening."

He walked around the table and placed the book in front of her, open to the page he had carefully marked. As she read, he pulled together a plate for himself from the food on the table, thinking he'd have to get her to show him how she did it later. He thought the Yorkshire pudding was a lot like the non-sausage part of the toad in the hole, but he wasn't absolutely certain.

Before he could ask, she looked up. "You realize this sort of mutual oath taking usually accompanies marriage."

"Usually, but not always. I considered it, given that a wife can't testify against her husband, but we really don't know each other that well yet." The roast beef was a little bland, and he looked around the table. "What, no horseradish?"

A small bowl flew through the air towards his head. He caught it, barely, and waited to see whether that would be the extent of her temper. It had been quite baffling how it took the five of them to pick the table back up after she'd casually tossed it over, not to mention that she knew where all the knives were.

Just when he could feel the skin on the back of his neck crawling from her unwavering stare, she said, "Done."

"What, just like that?" He kept staring at her as she started gathering dirty dishes, tapping the sides of the platters that still contained food to send them into the stasis pantry.

She shrugged, making Draco fairly certain she wasn't wearing a bra under the shirt she'd pinched from Vince. With considerable effort, he dragged his eyes away from her breasts in order to focus on what she was actually saying. "Might as well. You can't abuse the oath without my being able to retaliate every bit as badly, so I lose nothing by it."

"Keep up that sort of talk, Weasley, and I might rethink the marriage thing." He smirked at her over his plate and she shook her head over the last of the plates in her stack.

"Read the oath, Malfoy, so I can get on with the washing up." They spoke the words, Draco reading them from the book and Ginny repeating them, swearing to be loyal to each other above all others, never to take action that might harm the other, and renouncing all former oaths of allegiance. The magic of it was still making Draco's body tingle when she straightened up and picked up the stack of dishes. "Right, then. We'll leave for the Burrow in the morning."

Draco wondered about her sanity. "You're aware that we don't know where we are, can't take the Knight Bus and have no Floo powder, right? Not to mention that you'd be taking five Death Eater Slytherins into your family's home?"

"Oh, I wouldn't let them hurt you. Proper care of minions leads to greater consolidation of power, not to mention loyalty." She frowned at the sink, then sighed. "Stupid enchantment's gone. Anyway, you don't know where we are. I, however, do. We're at number twelve Grimmauld Place in London, about a mile away from King's Cross."

"I'm not anybody's minion!" he said in scandalized tones, focusing on the truly important point. The outrage was hard to hold on to, though, as she'd bent over to fetch something from under the sink and he could clearly see that she'd been unable to find any underwear whatsoever.

She looked over her shoulder at him, her hair falling around her face. "Think of it as mutual minioning if you must," she said, then turned back to searching under the sink. Having found some dish soap and a new sponge, she set the water pump to work automatically and picked up the first of the dirty dishes.

From just outside the door, her other minions heard a loud crash, as if all the dishes in the kitchen had been smashed at once. "She probably just threw something at him," muttered Blaise.

They pressed their ears harder to the door, trying to make out what was happening. "Are they still talking?" asked Greg, only to have the rest of them shush him furiously.

"All I hear is water splashing," Theo said.

Vince nodded. "She must have him pumping water for her, then. Bet he doesn't like that."

There was a communal laugh at the thought of a Malfoy doing manual labor, but it broke off abruptly as they heard a scream. Theo looked at the door worriedly. "I thought he couldn't hurt her."

"I'm going to go check," said Vince determinedly, pushing the door open carefully, so as not to take the chance on startling an angry Malfoy or losing the element of surprise.

It took him less than a second to clap his hand over his eyes and slam the door with his other hand. "We need to go."

"What? Why?" asked Greg.

Blaise took one look at Vince's face and sighed. "What's that bastard got that I haven't? By rights I should be the one getting a shag."

"They're..." Theo looked ill. "But they've only really known each other for two days!"

Greg put a comforting arm around Theo's shoulder and pulled him away from the kitchen door, which was failing completely to block out the sound of Ginny Weasley thoroughly enjoying herself. "Cheer up. Tomorrow she'll look like she's been shagged just in time for him to meet all of her brothers and her parents. Draco'll be lucky not to come out a eunuch."

And with that cheery thought in mind, the boys went off to find the supply of alcohol that Draco was apparently no longer in need of and bemoan the day they'd underestimated Ginny Weasley enough to kidnap her.




Notes for Muggles:

For toad in the hole you'll need

about a pound of raw link sausages, roughly 8
a dash of something to grease the bottom of the pan
1/2 cup flour
1 egg
1 cup milk

First start the batter as Ginny did, then put it in the fridge so it can rest - DO NOT skip this step unless you have enchanted kitchen towels. You can either fry the sausages or set them to bake, but to make absolutely positively sure you're not going to encounter raw pork at the last of it, it's a good idea to cook it at least partway. You want it to spend some time in the 400 degree oven before the batter's ready, though, because you're going to get the batter out of the fridge, give it a quick stir, then pour it over the hot sausages and (a little bit of) fat (drain some if you've got a ton, but leave at least enough so there's a thin coating along the bottom of the pan). Close the oven and DO NOT OPEN IT until 40 minutes have gone by, unless you see flames or something, otherwise you'll be having toad in the concrete pancake.

For the mayonnaise, follow Ginny's directions, but I'd suggest halving her ingredients the first time out so that there's less waste if you get it wrong - the key is in adding the oil slowly. And, well, use with caution - the acid in the lemon (you can substitute 2tbsp vinegar for the 2tbsp lemon juice) supposedly "cooks" it, but you're still dealing with raw eggs. Don't let it sit out and don't use eggs past their sell-by date.

For the meringue kisses, use a 200 degree oven - you more want to dry them out than bake them.

When Ginny had returned home for Christmas, she had disappeared from the train station only to reappear with a small herd of dark wizards trailing her like overgrown ducklings. The fact that she was actually dating one of them, and that it was no less a personage than Draco Malfoy himself, had been enough to send Ron into fits. That's why, when the time came near for Ginny to come home when her last year ended, Ron persuaded Harry to convince the adults that it wasn't safe and that the students should remain at Hogwarts until the danger passed.

Of course, this might inconvenience a lot of others, but Ron was sure they'd understand if they knew the full horror of the situation, and the utter necessity of keeping Ginny away from the evil ferret, who probably had nefarious designs on her chastity. Harry hadn't seemed fully convinced by the logic of this argument, but he'd come around quickly when Ron had further pointed out that it was likely Theo Nott would also be following Ginny around, and highly probable that the boy would once again steal all the coffee and leave none for Harry. It was all working perfectly, until Harry had to go and screw it all up by killing Voldemort at the end of July, thus removing the clear and present danger as well as the reason for the students to remain sequestered at Hogwarts.

Ron stood now at the train station, trying to ignore the way the crowds of anxious and excited parents amplified the muggy August heat. He didn't quite have a plan, but he was hoping to find Ginny before anyone else did, and that he'd come up with a plan very quickly at that point. In this he was doomed to failure, as he spotted Ginny's distinctive hair moving off the train, followed closely by the equally noticeable Malfoy blond.

The two heads could be seen moving through the crowds, four more heads of varied brunette shades following. All too soon, the heads became the whole bodies of Ginny and the ferret... And she did not look happy.

"Hey, Gin," he said with a big fake grin. "It's so good to see you! I've got a surprise for you back at the house! And look, there's Harry! HARRY!"

Ginny plastered a pleasant smile on her face, and waited until Harry was near before she spoke. Ron had a brief moment of hope, but it crashed and burned as she said, "Good, both of the condemned are here to face judgment."

Harry froze as Ginny pointed her wand at him and murmured something inaudible. A quick mental inventory showed all body parts as seeming attached, and no insane bat bogeys flying around. Remorselessly, he left Ron to his fate as he muttered about having to find someone and scurried away.

"What did you do to him?" Ron asked fearfully.

She smiled. "Not a lot, since I recognized his main fault is listening to an idiot like you. I just made it so that from now on, all the coffee he drinks turns to decaf. Instant decaf."

There was a gasp from behind her, and Ron looked to see that Theo had turned pale and was swaying as if about to faint. Ginny ignored him, and soon Ron's eyes were dragged back to her still form. Just as his nerves were about to snap from the strain, Ginny said, "Do you know where Draco was while I was in school?"

Ron shook his head. It hadn't even occurred to him to wonder. Ginny went on, "He was in Hogsmeade. Mr. Honeyduke thought it was a bit weird for someone to want to lease his basement, but Draco offered so much money that he didn't really care how weird he was."

There was something about Mr. Honeyduke he should remember, as it might explain the way his stomach was twisting. For a minute all Ron could think of were Sugar Quills, and then he remembered third year, and where in Hogsmeade Harry had come out of the secret tunnel. "Oh, no!"

"Oh, yes," said Ginny grimly. "We've been shagging constantly, without anything interfering except classes. I passed Arithmancy due to Draco quizzing me and granting sexual favors when I mastered the formulas."

"Oh, God." Ron was going to throw up, and he looked around desperately for escape.

Ginny nodded slightly and Ron found all avenues of escape blocked by her cadre of former Death Eaters. "After the actual classes ended, the boys simply moved into the castle. Draco and I ended up living together, practically like we were married."

Clutching his stomach, Ron moaned piteously, but she wasn't done. "It was good practice." Holding up her hand, she showed off the engagement ring she was wearing, the diamond easily three times the size of any Ron had ever seen. "I'm pretty sure that the contraceptive spells held, but if not, the wedding may end up happening very quickly."

Ron broke completely, and another nod from Ginny opened a route for him to stumble away.

After he had dropped from sight, Draco kissed Ginny lingeringly. "I love it when you're evil."

"I know," she said with a grin. She turned to walk away, then paused to pat Theo on the shoulders. "Don't worry, I won't take away your coffee. Just don't let Harry touch any of yours and you'll be fine." Ignoring his whimper, Ginny straightened and sailed through the crowded station, her minions keeping a circle of space open around her. That had all been rather fun, but the crowning touch of her revenge for keeping her at Hogwarts was going to come when she announced at dinner that night that she was moving into a flat off Diagon Alley, and all five boys were going to live with her. Only she and Draco would share a room, but the faces of her family would be priceless.

It was kind of funny how constant exposure to her had made the boys a bit nicer, but had made her a lot more wicked.