Ginny Weasley sat in her usual seat in the Great Hall, slowly picking through her porridge. She took one last look at the mushy grains in front of her and sighed deeply. Pushing her bowl away in the process, she stood up and walked quietly through the finely carved double doors to the Entrance Hall. Ever since Harry had broken it off with her, she’d lost most of her appetite and even her school grades had suffered considerably. “Stupid git,” she mumbled to herself as she started up the Grand Staircase. How silly though, giving her some feeble, heroic excuse about He-who-must-not-be-named and danger and all that crap. ‘His loss,’ Ginny grumbled in her mind.

“Weasley!”

Ginny wheeled around to see Professor Snape, winner of ‘the world’s foulest teacher of all time’ for 6 years running, was standing in the entrance to the dungeons.

“Yes, Professor?” Ginny put on a false tone of sweetness as she descended back down the stairs to stand in front of Snape.

“Your essay on aconite was due yesterday,” he said, his voice echoing strings of deadly seriousness. Although Professor Snape was at least a head taller than her, and a former Death Eater, Ginny wasn’t particularly afraid of him. She swore in her head.

“I forgot,” she mumbled to her shoes.

Snape swooped down so he was barely an inch from Ginny. His voice was barely audible over the din of students chatting and going to breakfast, but it resonated icy syllables that threatened pain with each word.

“Well, maybe a week's worth of detentions will help you remember simple things like home.." but Snape didn’t have time to finish his threat because a sharp drawl cut across him.

“Professor, if you don’t mind, I’d like to experience my new found Head Boy privileges in practice. Let me deal with the amnesiac Weasel,” sneered none other than Draco Malfoy himself. Snape eyed Malfoy with a calculating eye before saying, “Make sure she gets what she deserves”. He leered at Ginny before sweeping away down to the dungeons, his black robes billowing behind him.

Ginny felt her face go hot with rage. Malfoy was going to pull out the big guns, she could feel it. What’s the betting he made her clean the Owlery for a month? Or worse still, help Madam Pomfrey with some less desirable tasks that the matron would rather not do.

Malfoy leaned in close to her ear and she was counting on his voice to come out in a malicious hiss, much the same way Snape had just spoken to her.

“Consider yourself lucky, baby Weasel. Go back to your Gryffindor cubbyhouse and don’t speak of this to anyone. If Snape asks, I’m getting you to clean the Slytherin Common Room for a week. Now get out of my sight,” and then he turned around and followed Snape’s path to the dungeons.

Ginny stood shocked for several minutes before she shook herself out of it and ran back to the Gryffindor Common Room, taking the stairs two at a time. There, she sank into her favourite cushy brown armchair in the corner of the room. Draco Malfoy being nice? It wasn’t possible. She briefly considered that maybe it was Harry or Ron using polyjuice potion? No, if it was them, they would have told her, and Malfoy still sounded his usual arrogant self, even if he did do something nice for her… But Malfoy being nice, in particular to a Gryffindor, and a Weasley no less? It was shocking as He-who-must-not-be-named dancing naked down the street singing about flowers and butterflies and throwing out lollies to all the wee kiddies!

Ginny giggled at the thought of He-who-must-not-be-named showing uncharacteristic celebrations of Nature. But she’d had enough of thinking about Malfoy and his out-of-the-ordinary behaviour, and she dove into her bag to retrieve her astronomy homework.

Ginny crept quietly down the corridor, following a sweet voice that was singing a song she didn’t know, yet it was so familiar to her. She opened a door with a lion etched into its surface and found herself in a room draped in black with stone walls and floors. In the middle of the room was a giant statue of a great snake, and the form of Tom Riddle muttering what sounded like half song, half spell. Ginny ran up to him but then he morphed into Snape, who warped around to look like Malfoy.

Ginny woke, drenched in her own hot sweat. “Stupid Chamber, stupid Riddle, stupid, stupid, stupid…” she continued to curse under her breath at the day that has haunted her dreams for five years as she fumbled through her trunk for a clean set of robes and some pants to wear for the day. She slouched down to the Great Hall for breakfast, when she saw Draco Malfoy making quite a noise come from the Slytherin table. Ginny subconsciously found herself admiring the way his perfectly chiselled hands swept through the air as he animated his speech, the way not a strand of hair fell out of place as he laughed, the way his steely eyes roamed the hall and pierced her gaze. Ginny gasped and looked away when his eyes met hers. She couldn’t believe she’d just thought about Malfoy as if he were even remotely human, let alone let her mind wander to thoughts about what a marvellously composed human he was.

She sat down opposite Ron and Harry and joined in their conversation about the prime Quidditch conditions for today’s practise. At one point, Ginny looked up over her plate of scrambled eggs to see Draco looking intently in her direction, and to her great surprise, winked at her.

“Ginny? What’s up?” Hermione had just sat down next to her and gently pushed her jaw up for it had fallen open when Malfoy had winked at her.

“Wha-? Oh, nothing. I was just, um… thinking about… erh… Quidditch Practise! Yeah, um… great playing conditions today...hmmm…” Ginny looked away towards the Staff Table and began shovelling toast into her mouth to avoid further questioning from Hermione. This tactic seemed to work because Hermione, who amazingly accepted Ginny’s feeble excuse, pulled out her Transfiguration book and propped it against an empty crystal vase so she could read while she ate.

Harry and Ron finished breakfast not long after this and made their way to the change rooms to get ready for practise. Ginny leapt from her chair to follow them. Once she’d changed into her scarlet team robes (which were once Fred’s), she slipped out of the change rooms and onto the pitch.

Practise was much the same as always. Harry took them through some passing, dodging, and flying drills and the Slytherin team showed up half way through to laugh and jeer at the Gryffindors who were now practising formation flying. When they started playing a mini practise match, the emerald-clad group started up a verse of the ever popular ‘Weasley is our King’.

Ginny was seeker for the practise match and agilely spiralled through her airborne team mates in search for the elusive Golden Snitch. She was just getting frustrated after a good 20 minutes of searching when she saw it, dancing on silver wings, just shy of where the Slytherin’s were sitting.

Ginny dove, egging her broom to go faster or that damn snitch was going to get away from her again. She gracefully ignored the cat-calls and snippets of ‘Weasley is our King’ coming from the Slytherins, to gather the tiny ball clean in her fist.

Then, as she was turning around to release the snitch for another round, she saw it. The platinum blond hair was what caught her eye first, and then it travelled to his arm, where he had raised his hand to scratch his nose. And on the stretch of skin where his sleeve had fallen back to his elbow, was The Dark Mark. Ginny felt sick as she took in the black, burnt talisman of a Death Eater’s loyalty to He-who-must-not-be-named, and the irritated red skin that it was embellished onto. It looked fresh, like it had just been inked mere days ago. Then Malfoy looked up to see Ginny staring, shell-shocked and he hastily shook his sleeve back down to cover his Mark. He didn’t need anyone close to the order dobbing him in to Dumbledore or the authorities.

As Ginny crawled into bed that night, all she could think about was Malfoy. She wasn’t going to report him, not yet anyway. “Tortured to Insanity,” she whispered to herself as she remembered what Neville had told her about what the Death Eaters had done to his family, and this was the last thought that crossed her mind as she surrendered to a dreamless slumber…