Chapter One: The Commission

“Ginny, I want you to draw something for a friend,” Theodore said from his position on her bed.

Ginny nodded distractedly, adding an almost careless streak of violent red to the painting she was currently working on. That done, she dipped her brush into water, cleaning it of color before leaning back and brushing some loose hair from her ponytail behind her ear.

Theodore noted with amusement the fact that the fingers on her left hand, used for mixing paint when she was impatient, had left streaks of vivid color across her pale cheekbone.

“Which friend?” she asked, scrutinizing her painting. This was one of her more abstract paintings, one that she had stumbled out of bed sometime past midnight to draw, half-crazed with focus, using the light of the moon instead of wasting time reaching for her wand and igniting the logs in the fireplace. Spurred on by a fleeting dream, she hadn’t taken time to get a good look at what she had been creating, relying instead on her fingers to do the work without concentrating too hard on what she was actually painting. Until now, that is.

“Oh, bloody hell,” she growled, standing up abruptly and knocking her three-legged stool to the ground angrily.

Theodore, who had been in the middle of starting to say something, stopped and watched her with blatant curiosity. He observed the scene calmly as the redhead practically threw her tools back into place, sending a hateful glare at her most recent work.

“Ginny…?” he questioned cautiously when it seemed like she was calming down. She spared her friend a glance and sighed.

“Sorry, Theo. But look. Do those look familiar to you?” she questioned, gesturing wildly at the painting.

Theo examined it closer. He hadn’t given it more than a cursory glance when he had let himself in. Although much of the Wizarding world raved about the new anonymous painter who went through her agent to sell her work, donating a large sum of her income to charity yet still managing to maintain a lifestyle that was distinctly upper crust, he was sadly one of the few that cared not a whit about the numerous paintings and drawings that she seemed to produce like her mother produced children. He was about as artistically aware and appreciative as a wombat was.

Which is to say, he wasn’t.

“No…?” he asked uncertainly, taking a subconscious step closer. “It’s pretty,” he offered helpfully, and Ginny threw her arms up in frustration.

“No, you ignorant fubsy, it’s not,” she corrected him. “It’s dark and haunted and scary. Look at the eyes.” Theo complied, and stared deeply into the pair of eyes that dominated the painting.

Ginny watched him with a mixed expression of amusement and exasperation. She knew he wouldn’t be able to decipher any deeper meaning from the painting. They had been friends for years, starting in the aftermath of the Final Battle and continuing until now. She had been futilely attempting to get him together with their mutual friend, Pansy Parkinson, for the better part of that time now, and had lately become frustrated with her efforts. Apparently they were both comfortable with ignoring the pheromones the other put out upon a meeting, and Ginny was slowly becoming fed up.

Turning back to the painting, Ginny tried to see what everyone else (besides Theo) would see. The eyes were the only things clearly standing out. Around it, smears of dark colors gave it an oppressive feeling, as if the cool grey eyes, usually a color considered to be unfriendly, were the only bit of hope and humanity that remained. The stripe of red, tearing open the shadows in a streak between the eyes, was a slash of vermilion, an open wound.

“You’re in need of psychological help,” he provided as explanation for the painting, and she rolled her eyes.

“Let me rephrase: where have you seen those eyes?” She couldn’t believe that he was being so thick about this. He must have seen them every day from the moment he had popped out of his mother’s womb, and here he was, claiming ignorance.

Suddenly, he snapped his fingers, looking triumphant.

“Draco’s!” he cried. “I knew they looked familiar.” Ginny resisted the urge to roll her eyes. Theodore was blond, after all, even if he was the most prominent attorney in all of Europe. He was on a break of sorts after his latest case, which involved a Russian witch. Ginny had only barely kept up with the Prophet’s highly detailed tracking of the trial, but apparently it had seemed like a nearly impossible case and he had blasted it out of the water.

“Good job, Theo. Here’s a cookie,” she cooed, tossing him a biscuit she had found by her easel. He scowled at her as it bounced off his chest and onto the ground, before it was replaced with a crafty look.

“So…Draco. Now, Gin-bug, why are you painting our favorite albino friend?” Ginny huffed.

“Only his eyes,” she clarified sharply. “But…” she trailed off, gazing into their grey depths. When had this started?

Immediately after the Final Battle, it had been chaos and tears. Bodies being found, families being reunited, and a sense of bittersweet triumph permeated the air. But out of it all, clutched at her mother’s sobbing bosom, Ginny could distinctly remember her gaze being caught by Draco Malfoy’s. His entire family was a fair distance away from the rest of the people, a tiny triumvirate of dirty designer robes and distinctly uncomfortable expressions.

What had stopped Ginny was the haunted look in his eyes. Everyone else had been, in some way or form, some kind of happy or relieved that Tom Riddle was dead. Deaths or not, at least now they didn’t have much to fear from the megalomaniac. But the distinctive grey eyes had appeared lost. Lost amidst the quietly murmuring crowds, lost and without a purpose. He was out of place in this gathering of grieving Light mages, and it was obvious.

Compared to everyone else, who had lost family members and friends while Draco Malfoy hadn’t lost any family members or any close friends, he had appeared to be even more devastated. Ginny had thought about it, lying in the moonlight at night, and had eventually come to the conclusion that the reason why he had felt so lost, his misery seeming to be all the more present, was because he hadn’t had anyone close to him to lose. All the dead were people he didn’t care about, and that made him realize just how pointless his existence must have been as well.

After all, if you don’t care for anyone enough for their deaths to matter, then no one must care enough for your death to matter, either.

“Ginny,” Theo interrupted, a twinkle in his eye that didn’t bode well for the redhead.

“What?” she asked, instantly suspicious.

“Do you remember what I asked for when I came in?” he questioned innocently. Ginny thought back to the haze that had enveloped her, a result of painting and sinking into the work, and tried to remember what he had been saying.

“Er…no?” she replied sheepishly. Theodore sighed dramatically. He was a snake that was a breed of his own; even Pansy, with all the correct hormones and reproductive organs, wasn’t nearly as overly dramatic as Theo managed to be.

“I’d like for you to draw something for a friend,” he repeated. Ginny dimly recalled those words from earlier.

“Oh, right. A drawing or a painting?”

“Painting, I think. You know that one type that is generally of a person—“ He waved his hands in the air, as if he could pluck the elusive word from the very atmosphere.

“Portrait, you mean?” she asked, stifling her giggle. He nodded seriously.

“Yes, that. Pansy wants to give it as a gift to Draco.” Ginny frowned slightly. What were the odds that she’d have a dream about Malfoy’s haunting eyes when she was about to be commissioned for a portrait for him?

“Who will it be of?” she questioned, already going through mental lists of things needed for a commission of this size. She rarely took commissions, since she preferred to pick the brain of the person who was requesting it, and that required face to face communication of some kind. Ginny preferred that her identity remained secret; she wouldn’t go through Pansy, her agent, if she wanted her name to be public.

“Draco, naturally,” Theo said breezily. “You know how he’s got that narcissistic problem of his. He wouldn’t want it of anyone else. He can request one of those himself, you know.” Ginny’s brain shut down. A portrait of Draco Malfoy? No. Never.

“You do realize that he could easily contact another artist and just get a portrait done that way, correct?” she questioned, attempting to get him to see reason. When he turned to her, a devilish grin on his face, she felt her heart drop to somewhere near her kidneys. A Theodore Nott with that expression on his face meant no good at all.

“I keep on forgetting you do not know Draco like I do,” he said smoothly, stepping closer to Ginny. “You see, he’s actually terribly shy about his body in front of people. Ironic, yes? He keeps the candles extremely dim when he wants to have his wicked—“

“Enough,” Ginny interrupted hastily. “What does this have to do with me painting him? Someone else could still do it—“

“Nude, Ginny dear. Pansy wants a nude portrait of Draco Malfoy.”

Ginny felt the breath leave her body in a whoosh of air.

“Nude?” she demanded, and was embarrassed to hear it come out as a squeak. “Absolutely not! How he agreed to this at all is beyond me—“

“He didn’t agree, Ginny,” Theo interrupted sharply. She felt the violent urge to hit that curling smirk off his face. “Pansy wants it to be a birthday present. A surprise birthday present.” Ginny shook her head.

“Even if I wanted to do this, or if I agreed to it—which I don’t and won’t—that’s impossible. If Malfoy’s so uptight about people seeing him, he won’t agree to sitting for a nude portrait, much less one for a Weasley.” She may have been good friends with both Theodore and Pansy, but Malfoy had always been aloof, sneering, and insulting whenever they ran into each other. “Besides, I can’t paint someone without being able to see them. Pictures won’t do.”

The smirk on his face became a full-blown Slytherin grin, and even though they were long past their school days, Ginny felt an uncomfortable feeling in her stomach. Any snake with that expression meant trouble.

“Draco will be completely unaware of this portrait until it is revealed for his birthday,” he explained patiently.

“I will not Obliviate him, no matter how much of a prat he is,” she stated firmly.

“Not Obliviate, Ginevra, Polyjuice,” he said reverently, and Ginny knew that he was serious about this idea since he used her full name.

“Polyjuice?” she repeated faintly. “Oh, you mean like someone takes a swig of eau de Malfoy and presto, instant model?” He nodded happily in response.

“Precisely,” he confirmed. “Now, Pansy and I are still working out the details, but the proper materials have already been acquired—“

“Wait a minute,” Ginny interrupted sharply, narrowing her eyes at him suspiciously. “What do you mean, ‘the proper materials have already been acquired?’ Is that some kind of code for ‘We’ve been brewing the potion for the past bloody month now and you’re just being told of our plan now?’” He shrugged indifferently.

“We didn’t really see it as a priority to tell you before the potion was done,” he stated imperiously. She scowled at him.

“Well, you two spent the past month wasting your time brewing an illegal potion that won’t even be used,” she informed him, turning around her room in search of some clean clothing. She may be living the life of expensive luxury, but that didn’t mean she managed to do her laundry on a regular basis. Or ever, she corrected herself mentally as she picked up a shirt and took a whiff, deeming it particularly rancid smelling and throwing it back to the ground.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Theo shudder delicately in disgust as he moved his right foot out of the path of the putrid shirt.

“Ginevra—“

“You don’t have any dirt on me, Nott, so don’t even bother attempting to blackmail me. It won’t work,” she said, cutting him off before he even managed to ask a question. The left side of his mouth quirked up in a smile.

“I was actually going to recommend getting a house elf,” he replied, equal parts laughter and revulsion in his voice. She shrugged.

“If I had a house elf, I wouldn’t be able to find anything,” she told him, and he pointedly looked at a pile to the left of her bed. She rolled her eyes.

“That is my carefully stacked special-circumstances resources,” she snapped at him, striding over and pulling an item off of the pile. “See this?” she asked, waving the purple bra at him. She paused, experimentally taking a sniff and grimacing. “…this is in the wrong pile,” she continued sheepishly, tossing it in the near vicinity of the shirt.

Unfortunately for Theodore, she overestimated its location and it landed on his shoe. He squealed in a decidedly unmanly fashion and kicked his foot out instinctively, sending the lingerie soaring into the air and ending up latched onto the edge of a portrait of her mum that she had placed high up on the wall. Her mother took one look at the offending violet silk and fainted dead away. Ginny glanced at Theodore, who was looking embarrassedly at the passed-out figure of Molly Weasley, and began giggling.

When the giggles turned into full-bellied laughter, even Theo had to admit that it was quite hilarious and contributed a few chuckles himself. Ginny had to find some respite by holding the edge of her easel for balance, with one especially violent shuddering laugh nearly knocking her newest painting off and spurring a whole new round of gut gripping mirth.

After a while Ginny finally gave a sigh of contentedness at completing her daily dosage of healthy cachinnation (she had read once in the Prophet that it was a good work out and lowered your blood pressure), Theo turned back to her with that calculating look in his eyes.

“No,” Ginny told him firmly, instantly interpreting it for what it was. “I’m not painting Draco Malfoy in the buff.”

“But it won’t be Draco Malfoy himself in the buff,” he countered, as if that made it any better.

“I’m not doing it,” she repeated again. There was absolutely no way that he could convince her to do this. When the slightly dejected look crossed his face in a last-ditch effort to convince her to do what he wanted, she grinned triumphantly. He really didn’t have any dirt on her, so short of torture, which she knew he wouldn’t do, he couldn’t make her take the commission.

“Money’s not going to persuade you, is it?” he asked hopefully, already knowing the answer. She shot him a dirty look.

“If I cared about money, I wouldn’t be donating three-fourths of my income to various charities,” she informed him coldly. She reached for a green shirt, took a breath of it, and was happy to note that it only smelled like it had been worn once or twice. Heedless of Theodore’s presence in the room, she tossed off her tank top and started to struggle on the other shirt over her bra.

“The painting,” he breathed, inspiration striking while Ginny had her head stuck in the shirt.

“What?” she questioned, voice muffled by the fabric while she pushed her arms through the wrong holes. Theodore watched her efforts, not concerned or charitable enough to help her get her shirt on. If Ginny could have seen his face, she would have been afraid; it was the purely malevolent, triumphant expression he—as well as every other ex-Slytherin—gained when they realized they had their victim right where they wanted them.

“The painting,” he repeated loudly, quickly erasing his expression to be replaced by a mildly interested blank look that he usually reserved for his mother’s tea parties as Ginny’s tousled head sprouted out of the shirt.

“What are you on about?” she asked angrily, irritated by the shirt and his lack of explanation.

“How do you think Draco will feel when he finds out that a certain lovely redhead has dreams about him—and frequently draws various parts of his anatomy?” he questioned curiously, examining his fingernails.

Ginny felt her heart sink even lower. Stated like that, it sounded much worse than it actually was. But it wasn’t a matter of embarrassment; it was a matter of pride. She couldn’t let Draco bloody Malfoy know that she couldn’t get his eyes out of her head!

Raking a hand through her hair to get the loose pieces out of her face, she let out a weary sigh. Theodore grinned triumphantly at this sound of defeat.

“I’ll go tell Pansy,” he told her smugly, walking out of the room.

Oh dear Merlin, Ginny thought, a tiny touch of panic entering her inner voice. Just what have I agreed to?
________________________________________

Theodore Apparated into Pansy’s flat, not bothering with the typically niceties of at least showing up outside of the door. Instead, he appeared in the middle of the living room, glancing around at the elegantly furnished room with disinterest. As typical of an art dealer, she had several paintings on the cream colored walls. He recognized a few signatures that he determined to be Ginny’s, but otherwise honestly couldn’t tell the difference between hers and another artist’s.

He wandered out of the room and into the kitchen, but she wasn’t in there, either. Going further into the apartment, stopping every once in a while to check into one of the rooms along the way—her office, her storage, her guest bedroom, her extra bathroom—before finally finding himself in front of her bedroom. He was able to control the mischievous grin from spreading across his face, but he could do nothing for the way his heart started to beat in overtime in anticipation of walking into Pansy’s room with the chance of possibly finding her in a state of undress.

He pushed the door open silently, eyes searching the room for a scantily-clad Pansy. Unfortunately, the softly glowing candles revealed the fact that she was nowhere in her room. Curiosity perked, he went for her closet, deciding on eliminating the least dangerous area first. When that search turned up no Pansy either, he took a look at the remaining door: the one leading to her bathroom.

Weighing the pros and cons of barging into the bathroom and staying in her bedroom, he decided that a glimpse of a naked, sudsy Pansy would definitely be worth the Crucio he received in return. Ultimately, however, he decided to collapse languorously on her bed. After all, he thought to himself, being courteous now could prove to gain me some extra points later.

He didn’t have to wait long for Pansy to emerge from the bathroom, stringy wet black hair sticking to her cheeks and a rich purple towel clutched around her pale body. Theo was extremely grateful that he had decided to wait for her.

“Theo, what are you doing here?” she questioned calmly when she noticed him, and he couldn’t help but pout a little at her decidedly anticlimactic greeting.

“Just popped over to tell you how things went with our little Gin-bug,” he said breezily, attempting to keep the sullen tone out of his voice and not quite succeeding.

Pansy walked to the closet, smirking to herself when she was positive he couldn’t see her. No need for him to know that she was secretly pleased at his disappointed attitude.

“How’d that go?” she questioned, ambling into the closet and making sure that he saw the towel slipping to the floor before she entered. She heard a mild choking noise and couldn’t help but grin evilly while she dug around for some clothing to wear.

“Oh, perfectly fine,” he responded breezily, not giving away the fact that he had nearly lost his composure upon seeing the towel falling.

“Really?” she asked, a hint of incredulity entering her voice. “I find it hard to believe that Ginny just up and agreed to paint a portrait of Draco in the nude.”

“Well…it did take some persuasion,” Theodore hinted, and she poked her head out the door.

“You blackmailed her? With what?” They had both found it particularly frustrating when they had originally made friends with Ginny quite soon after the Final Battle that she was almost utterly impossible to blackmail: the things she chose to reveal were known by everyone. However, they were both aware of the fact that she had some very dark secrets that she didn’t tell anyone—and they both knew that it was impossible to blackmail someone with knowledge that you didn’t have.

“I happened to walk in on her painting Draco’s eyes before she had a chance to destroy it,” he replied casually, ruffling his curly golden blonde hair disinterestedly as Pansy just stared, shaking herself out of a stupor when she realized what she was doing.

“I knew she had been doing that for ages now, but I never could find any hard evidence, and whenever I did it was already in flames and I wouldn’t have been able to confirm anything,” Pansy said, scowling angrily at the memory of coming across the bonfire and a soot-smudged gleefully manic Ginny.

“I think she had a dream last night that really threw her for a loop since she even took care to lead me through the hoops to determine that it actually was our favorite snakey bastard’s eyes,” he said, rolling his eyes. “You know just how artistically challenged I am. I don’t know how I managed to get such talented friends,” he bemoaned, pushing his head into the pillows in faux-despair.

“And you damn well better be grateful,” Pansy snapped, not completely unable to remove the affection from her voice. She shook her head again, frowning and trying to eradicate the thoughts. Give it up, girl, she advised herself for what seemed like the billionth time. He doesn’t like you like that. However much she wished it otherwise.

“Don’t worry, I am,” Theo told her, winking. She rolled her eyes.

“Sometimes you are,” she admitted, before continuing on hastily and cutting off his protests. “Anyway, since Ginny agreed everything’s moving along smoothly, yes?” Theo shot her a look that plainly said he didn’t appreciate the topic being changed, before he answered her question anyway.

“Yes. We have two weeks; Ginny can come over sometime during the first week, but after that it’ll be far harder to keep Draco away, since we’re supposed to be helping him plan that blasted birthday party of his.” Theo scowled. He didn’t like the public bashes that Draco insisted on having to keep his public image in “good shape.” But then again, he thought with a smirk, I don’t really care if the majority of the Wizarding world things I’m raving, do I? Draco cared about little things like that.

“So, two weeks before the big birthday bash and then our little soiree, correct?” Pansy clarified, jotting it down in her mental events organizer.

“Yes,” Theodore said, playing with the sheets while keeping an eye on Pansy. She had wandered over to her dresser and was idly twirling her wand, which was alternately shooting green and purple sparks out of its end.

“It won’t be hard to infiltrate the Manor…” she trailed off thoughtfully, already imaging all sorts of wild locations they could place the portrait.

“…and have Ginny there to show just how wonderfully snarky and perfect for our dear Draco she is,” Theodore finished, smirking triumphantly. Pansy nodded decisively, sharing his smirk.

“And then we wouldn’t have to deal with our two best friends moaning about their lack of love life and abundance of lust life,” Pansy added with a small sneer of annoyance. The last part was unequivocally true about Draco, but not Ginny; she did moan about her lack of proper boyfriends, but not nearly as frequently as Draco since a) she wasn’t quite as whiny as he was and b) she simply wasn’t as much of a womanizer (Or would it be manizer? Pansy thought idly) as he was, either.

“Excellent,” Theo said, rubbing his hands together with a decidedly sinister grin on his face. Pansy returned the look with joy.

Who knew that playing the role of nefarious matchmaker could be so much fun?

Chapter Two: The Sitting

Ginny had hardly knocked on the towering door of Theodore’s family mansion—quaintly nicknamed The Fortress of Nott by Theo but in actuality it had a long and complicated name in Latin that he had deemed unimportant enough to tell her—and nearly jumped when it creaked open immediately.

“Mimsy welcomes Miss Wheezey,” a house elf squeaked from the vicinity of her shoes. She looked down curiously. The tiny thing looked like it was almost a house elf-in-training or a baby house elf. It was so ugly it was endearing. Ginny felt her heart swell at the hideous cuteness of it.

“If Miss Wheezey would follow Mimsy…” it trailed off, gesturing further into the mansion.

Even knowing that Theodore was currently the only Nott alive and therefore the only one that actively lived in the brute of a home, she was still a bit nervous about entering the building. Outside, it was bright and sunny, if a bit brisk, but inside the darkness looked almost oppressive.

Clutching her brushes closer to her—Theodore had already picked up her canvases and paints a few days ago—she tentatively took a step inside, and had to nearly throw herself aside as the door attempted to slam her back out.

Shooting a glare at the heavy wood (or where she assumed the door was, since she couldn’t see a blasted thing), Ginny stood where she was.

“This way, Miss Wheezey,” she heard the elf call from a significant distance away and scowled as she dug for her wand. After a quick Lumos, she nearly jumped out of her skin when the thin beam of light was cast onto a grotesque looking animal head directly to the left of her, looking as if it had just died a few moments ago and had been slapped onto a slab of dark wood. She was pretty positive that the dark stains on said piece of wood were blood, but didn’t want to stick around to find out.

She made sure to give the statue to the right of the hallway a wide berth as she hurried down the hallway where she could see the tiny little house elf walking steadily along. The statue looked disturbingly real with two people locked into a vicious battle. However, instead of anger and rage, as typical fighting people would have, their expressions were twisted into fear and agony.

She also was afraid that if she bumped into it, she would be able to tell if the small pieces of fabric that were placed carefully over various parts of the statue would turn out to be real skin, as she suspected it to be. Determined not to look anywhere but the house elf, she shuffled down the hallway with surprising speed and caught up with the house elf just in time to see it turn the corner.

Around the corner the hallway was bare and the only important feature was the elaborately carved door at the end. The house elf waved its hand and the door opened, revealing a well-lit room that made Ginny squint and distractedly say, “Nox,” before tucking her wand away.

Stepping into the room, she gaped at the vast contrast between this one and the previous room. This one was bright, sunny, and painted in a light green, with elegant black leather sofas ranging in a circle with white marble details on the fireplace and around the tall windows to her right. On the far wall was a tall bookshelf, the dark wood filled with hundreds of books that she was betting hadn’t been read in the last century.

“Miss Wheezey will wait here,” Mimsy told Ginny before cracking out of the room and off to wherever house elves went whenever they weren’t needed. Ginny felt her scowl fade away into a thoughtful one as she caught sight of a painting on the wall. Naturally, she ambled her way over to it, distractedly placing her bag that contained her brushes on a table as she passed.

The painting was of a man, sadly leaning with his right arm resting on a table, with two sprigs of foxglove in a glass.

Ginny thought it was the man’s expression that was the most profound, most heart wrenching. He looked sorrowful, as if he had seen all that the world had to offer and realized that it wasn’t enough to continue living. His eyes were the most expressive part of him, showing that he knew about the world’s shortcomings, something that most people never realized. He was full of melancholy and intelligence, weary and sad yet gentle, as if he knew that to treat the world with anything but tenderness would be a mistake.

If the foxgloves had been poison, she was positive he would have taken it; he looked positively suicidal.

Still spellbound by the painting, she didn’t hear when someone entered the room. She did, however, hear the throat clearing imperiously, so she glanced over her shoulder, expecting to see Theo.

It was with horror that her gaze froze on the figure sinuously leaning against the doorway. Pale, silky skin covered every inch of his body, the color consistent and revealing sensuous muscles that rippled as he adjusted his position. Tousled blonde hair scraped across his forehead over a cocked eyebrow and smirking expression. She tried not to concentrate on his distinctive lack of clothing, her face turning fourteen different shades of red before settling on a color close to carmine.

“Merlin’s balls,” she muttered to herself, snapping her eyes shut in an attempt to block out the image of a naked Draco Malfoy. It was impossible, however, since his bare body seemed to be seared into her irises. She cracked an eye, in the hopes that he had somehow found some clothes, but realized that he was still very much in the buff, and closed them again.

She didn’t want to admit how much his body had affected her. After only previously seeing him in well-tailored clothes, she was forced to admit that he had a nice body; in the same way that one would comment on the weather. It was a fact of life: it was sunny today and Draco Malfoy was positively sinful looking. Before this, however, she had generally only admitted it under extreme duress, and even then it was grudgingly admitted and only to herself.

“Actually,” Malfoy drawled from the door, causing Ginny to crack open an eye, “they’re Draco’s balls.” The Malfoy impersonator gave Ginny a slow wink, and she rolled her eyes, huffing.

“Oh, lord, Theo, put some bloody clothes back on Malfoy—er, well, yourself?” Ginny asked uncertainly, utterly confused at how to treat the situation. Malfoy laughed, a low sound that caused trills in her stomach that she utterly refused to acknowledge, choosing instead to pretend that they were trills of her stomach telling her to eat since she hadn’t had breakfast yet.

“Actually, love, I’m right here,” Theo said, walking in the room from a door that she hadn’t seen since it was part of the bookshelf. Turning confusedly from between the naked Malfoy and Theodore, who was casually sipping some wine, Ginny opened her mouth and closed it, attempting to catch up. Theodore seemed to take pity on her poor sanity, and filled her in.

“Ginevra Molly Weasley,” he stated stuffily, “let me introduce you to Draco Endymion Malfoy,” he paused for a breath as Ginny raised an eyebrow, demanding that he continue, “also known as Pansy Juliana Parkinson.” She gaped for a moment, before bursting out laughing.

“Pansy?!” she gasped incredulously, leaning against the wall for support. Pansy-Malfoy huffed indignantly.

“What?” she demanded. “I look fine!”

This just caused more peals of laughter from Ginny, and when she finally had the ability to speak, she turned to Theo.

“Why not you?” she questioned honestly. A look of disgust crossed his face.

“I don’t think I could stand to be in my best mate’s body and keep my food down,” he stated, before looking past Ginny and turning a curious shade of green. Ginny turned to Pansy, wondering what had Theo so sickened, and was greeted with the sight of Pansy prodding Malfoy’s…well, her rather extended part of the male anatomy that she hadn’t had previously.

“This is seriously bizarre,” she commented to the room in general as she pulled on it experimentally, wincing at the pain of it when she jerked too hard. Ginny heard a sound like a gag behind her, and found Theodore fighting to hold down his breakfast. She held her laughter in, instead attempting to help Theo.

“Why don’t you just…go do whatever it is you usually do,” she advised helpfully. He didn’t have to be told twice before darting out of the room like a bludger was on his tail. Ginny turned back to Pansy and watched almost impassively as Pansy continued to tug on her recently-acquired manhood.

Ginny supposed that knowing that it was Pansy Parkinson beneath the Malfoy exterior helped tremendously when distancing herself from the situation; it wouldn’t do to be salivating over the person she was supposed to be drawing calmly. She cleared her throat to regain Pansy’s attention away from her newly acquired extra protrusion.

“What?” Pansy asked distractedly, stroking her hand up and down. “You know,” she continued thoughtfully, “this is an entirely different sensation on this end than it is on the other. You should definitely try it out sometime.” Ginny shuddered at an errant thought that whipped through her mind: was it possible that some twisted couples got their rocks off on Polyjuicing each other and experiencing it from the other end, so to speak? She didn’t want to think about it.

“As fascinating as this is to watch, I think we should hurry up and get this over with,” Ginny said dryly. Pansy looked up, disappointed and pouting.

“Alright, I guess we should,” she said, shooting a longing glance at Malfoy’s member. Ginny fought to not let her eyes join Pansy’s in observing her source of interest, but it was nearly impossible. She sated herself with a tiny glance—No more, her conscious commanded. Or, at least don’t openly stare. You can look once every…second. Yes, that should work.—before looking back up into Malfoy’s eyes.

Ginny saw her painting from the previous day flash before her eyes. She remembered the haunted expression. She knew it wouldn’t be appropriate for the kind of portrait that Pansy wanted her to paint, but still…she couldn’t get the look out of her head.

“You’re in the mood,” Pansy commented, recognizing the look in Ginny’s eyes. “Okay, let’s get down to business. We can discuss payment after.”

Ginny nodded mechanically, reaching for her wand to wave at her easel and a canvas that was to the left of the door she had originally entered. She gave a cursory glance around the room, searching for the perfect place to place Malfoy, and decided on the window.

After looking at the assortment of black couches and cushions, she settled on a black fainting couch and levitated it to underneath the window. She waved her wand at her easel and canvas to set them up in front of the couch and reached for her brushes before looking critically at Malfoy.

“Turn,” she said.

Malfoy shot her a smirk before spinning as slowly as possible, flexing each of his muscles as she went. Unfortunately for Pansy, however, she was completely unaware of exactly how detached Ginny had gotten the instant she had sunk into painter-mode; all it did for her was make her consider what muscles would be used best in the portrait.

“What look were you looking for?” Ginny asked.

“I just wanted to capture the essence of Draco,” Pansy explained, if a bit wistfully. That shocked Ginny enough to shake her out of her daze; Draco Malfoy didn’t “wistfully” do anything. She blushed when she realized what she had been looking at—trying to figure out how to pose him that displayed his prominent features best, and unfortunately his member was quite prominent—and busied herself with walking around the easel.

“Come here,” she told Pansy, analyzing the couch and the lighting. The black couch would be an excellent contrast to the fair Malfoy; it would look wonderful like that, with the black on the white. She could even fade out the rest of the painting around the couch, making it dark as well so the only sources of light would be the faint smudge of sun and Draco Malfoy himself—

“Here,” she said, taking Malfoy’s wrist and tugging him forward. She was surprised at how good his skin felt on hers, and forced herself back into painting mode. No thinking of that kind of stuff, she told herself sternly.

“Lay down in a way you think is good, and I’ll adjust you,” she told Pansy, and she did that, casually collapsing on top of the couch as if she did it every day. Considering whose house it was, Ginny didn’t think that was unlikely.

Thoughtfully, she took Malfoy’s arm and draped it across the curved piece of the couch, the front end of his arm hanging delicately into the empty space. She planted his left arm in front of his stomach, pressed to the velvet and seeming to be in the act of stroking it. His legs were a different matter, since it was difficult to lay a man out on a fainting couch and allow them to remain masculine. She figured that it didn’t help that he was already girly enough as it was, so she was already working against nature in attempting to make him manly.

“Bloody hell,” Ginny said, rocking back on her heels and scratching her head thoughtfully.

“What?” Pansy queried, and Ginny spared her a glance.

“I can’t figure out what to do with Malfoy’s—er, your—lower half,” she admitted, gesturing vaguely towards the direction of the three problem limbs. A slow smirk traced across Malfoy’s face and Ginny had to stop herself from staring. It was a good thing that Pansy was the one playing Malfoy; between her and Theo, she was the only one Slytherin enough to match his mannerisms.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, it’s nearly impossible to make Malfoy look not like a girl,” she said dryly, “even without you inhabiting his skin and doing those…girly things,” she said, looking pointedly at where Pansy had been examining her nails critically and digging the dirt out from under them. She rolled her eyes.

“Treat him a like a girl, then. Salazar knows he acts more like a sissy every day.” Ginny grinned, hastily deciding on the way things were going to work.

“Here,” she said, pushing Pansy back a little on the couch so her chest was angled a bit flatter. She pushed up his left knee so it was bent, while adjusting his arm so it framed his favorite feature a bit better.

Ginny couldn’t contain the blush as her fingernails scraped dangerously close to the top of his curls, and he shuddered delicately.

“Oh, dear,” Pansy said quaintly, looking down at where her member had suddenly acquired a bit more muscle and was floating half mast. Ginny glanced down and closed her eyes, wishing she hadn’t seen that.

I’m never ever going to be able to imagine a guy without imaging Malfoy’s penis, she thought dryly, giving it another appreciative glance before realizing what she was doing and mentally shaking herself.

Ginny backed away, taking in the scene as she had set it up. Something was wrong, however; the light was too bright. It was beautiful outside and Theo had an excellent view of a garden, but still…it was far too harsh to be on Malfoy.

Thoughtfully, she waved her wand and suddenly there were sheer white curtains on the windows, filtering the sunlight so it was a silky glow that caressed his skin rather than reflecting off violently. Another wave of her wand and the lights were off on the inside of the room and the other windows were covered in heavy drapes, so the only source of light was the single window.

“Okay, Pansy, I need you to adopt his expression,” she said quietly, as if afraid to break the spell. Pansy sucked in a breath, released it, and then focused those mesmerizing grey eyes directly on Ginny. Ginny felt her breath leave her in a quiet whoosh, scrambling for her brush.

“Perfect,” she breathed out softly. “Absolutely perfect.” Real Malfoy or not, this portrait was going to be simply breathtaking.
________________________________________

Theodore had escaped when he could, seeking refuge with the only other male who could understand Pansy’s insanity. At least I didn’t have to actually reveal the specifics of her insanity, he thought with a glance to the blond walking beside them. They had both decided that staying at Malfoy Manor and doing nothing would be no use and, since it was so early, getting drunk was out of the question too. Theo couldn’t let anything too valuable slip out and if he was inebriated he wouldn’t be able to stop himself if he wanted to.

Now, they were cruising the streets of Wizarding Paris, looking for something to do. Theodore was pretty sure they were going to stop at a café and eat there instead of doing something productive, so he was more on the lookout for a nice, secluded café instead of looking at the latest fashions as Draco was. He already had one in mind, but he knew it wasn’t for a few more stores more. They had been at this for hours now and his stomach had been going through various threats for the past two at least.

“Oooh, look there, Theo!” Draco nearly squealed, pointing at some particularly expensive looking dragonhide pants, posed in a raunchy position on the mannequin as it strutted around the window. Theo just rolled his eyes. Draco could be just as bad as Pansy was on her good days, and that was really saying something. They had been raised knowing that money was meant to be spent, not saved, since they had so bloody much of it.

“I’m hungry,” he nearly whined when Draco began pulling him into the store. Draco stopped, sending a glare at Theo that should have knocked him in his tracks. Instead, Theo just pouted, jutting out his lower lip and widening his eyes into a pleading expression.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a young witch stop and pause, faltering in her steps as she almost ran into someone. Theo smirked triumphantly, breaking the spell.

Draco raised an eyebrow imperiously as if to say, You think your puppy dog eyes can stop me? Well, think again. Draco turned around and stormed off into the store. Theo opted to wait for him outside. Thankfully, however, Draco only had interest in the pants. He came back out with a bag in hand and his wand in the other, shrinking it and dropping it into his pocket filled with many other boxes.

“Let’s go eat,” Theo proposed, and started striding confidently towards the location of a particularly notorious café. He didn’t bother looking back at Draco, but he knew that the other blond would be dragging his feet as much as he could while still managing to look like a runway model striding down the catwalk. Theo shook his head at the image of Draco posing in some garish looking French clothing, and dropped back a bit so he could talk to Draco and remove said image from the depths of his mind.

“Let’s talk,” he said, and Draco’s shoulders only gave a miniscule jerk upwards that was his way of saying, Talk all you want, but I probably won’t reply.

“I want to talk about your latest woman, Elizabeth,” he began, hoping that he’d be able to loop the conversation back over to Ginny somehow. The café was ahead of them now, a quaint little building that seemed to be squished between two other towering shops. He knew the entrance wasn’t that impressive; it was the back that was the impressive part. He nodded at the maitre de. The French man bowed elegantly and rushed to get them a table in a prime location.

He led the way through the hazy red atmosphere to the back terrace where a number of young couples were sighing happily at each other and looking at the magnificent view of the Seine and many other old buildings. It was a beautiful sight, yes, but Theo had seen a lot of beautiful things in his life, so this one wasn’t all too high on his list.

After they were seated their waiter arrived almost immediately and offered a translation for the menu, which both blonds declined. French hadn’t been his first language, but it had been Draco’s, so they certainly didn’t need to know what the food was in English. After ordering, Draco turned to Theo and shot him a dirty look.

“Elizabeth was last month’s,” he said coldly, and Theo shrugged indifferently. What did it matter which one was this month’s or last? They were all the same to him; pretty, somewhat smart, and typically a second daughter of a rich, pureblood family. It didn’t matter who they were, just as long as they assumed that Draco was going to marry them. That way, Theo knew, they really put out.

“So who’s this month? Giselle? Tamora? Vasiliki? Amelia?” Draco just sighed exasperatedly.

“No one’s this month,” he said, running a hand through light blond locks and mussing them distractedly.

Theo immediately noticed just how tired Draco looked. Maybe he was sick of dealing with breakups every month? He knew they always got pretty ugly, so this could be the perfect moment to suggest settling down with someone…

“Why not?” he questioned innocently. Draco shot him a glare.

“Why aren’t you and Pansy together yet?” he snapped back.

Theodore scowled angrily. Why did he have to bring that up? His love life with Pansy—or lack thereof—was none of Draco’s business.

He conveniently forgot that meddling in Draco’s love life was none of his, either.

“That’s beside the point. I mean, even Ginny—“ He was cut off midsentence by a scoff of derision.

“Don’t talk to me about Ginny’s love life,” he instructed, sneering her name. “I still don’t understand why you two put up with that poor bohemian waif, anyway,” he continued.

Theodore rolled his eyes. “Please, Draco, she’s not even close to being poor anymore. The only reason she’s not as rich as she could be is because she donates three-fourths of her profits to charities. And she’s an artist, for Salazar’s sake, of course she’s going to be a bit loopy.”

Draco nodded firmly, agreeing, but Theo wasn’t going to let him off that easily. He was interrupted from continuing his tirade by the appearance of their meals, which they tucked into with gusto. He began talking again when his stomach wasn’t going to immediately self implode from lack of sustenance.

“Artist or not, you haven’t really seen her, have you? Quit painting her as a Weasley and look at her as someone without a name or anything.”

Theodore gave Draco a chance to do that. He knew he didn’t fully succeed since the frown remained on Draco’s face. He sighed when Draco shot him a look that clearly meant he doubted Theodore’s sanity.

“Okay, now picture her not insulting every last hair on you,” he added.

Draco shot him a glare before attempting again. This time a look of incredulous wonder swept over his face, before his eyes fluttered open and it was replaced with repulsed interest.

“Salazar’s balls, she’s fucking beautiful!” he hissed.

Theo smirked triumphantly. Even though Draco looked supremely pissed at this revelation, it meant he was now willing to be open to options. He had figuratively opened the door; now it was time for him to walk through it.

Theodore shook his head in embarrassment at the clichéd turn his thoughts had taken. Who knew that he could be so Hufflepuff?

They finished up their meal quickly, sinking into silence. Unlike their female acquaintances, they didn’t feel the need to fill the silence with mindless chatter. They were men, and ex-Slytherin manly men did not chatter. They spoke gruffly about Quidditch and curses.

“I want to see Pansy,” Draco said abruptly, causing Theo to nearly spit out his wine in panic. Pansy? No, of course not, he couldn’t see Pansy. Pansy was him right now, being painted by Ginny.

“Why?” he asked instead, discreetly gauging Draco’s emotions. Draco’s face was currently set on his Brooding face, but that could also be his Thinking face. Theo was quite positive it was also a bit of his Fanatic Drive face, if the eye twitch had anything to say about it.

“Because I’m in the mood for some post-lunch shagging,” Draco snapped at Theo, scanning the tables for their waiter. He gave a tiny jerk of his head when he finally saw the man and made eye contact.

Theo tried to ignore the spasm his heart gave and the indescribable urge to leap across the tiny table and strangle his best mate when he heard those words. He was only joking, but…

“Malfoy, if you even think about it,” he said menacingly in an undertone.

Draco rolled his eyes. “I just want to talk to her, you paranoid wanker,” he said exasperatedly.

Theo blinked, the animosity leaving in an instant. “About what?” Theo questioned.

Draco shot Theo an annoyed glare. “About Ginny Weasley. Salazar, Theodore, you’re her friend, but Pansy’s the bloody woman’s agent. She’ll know more about her. I need to find out if she’s sane.”

Theodore resisted the urge to jump for joy. “Sane? Why?”

Draco shot him another look that was basically the equivalent of a growl. “Because all artists are lunatics and if I’m going to shag her I need to make sure she isn’t loony and isn’t speaking. I can solve one with a Silencio, but the other one I’m going need some inside knowledge on.”

Theo felt his mouth drop open and hastily closed it. That was fast, he thought to himself. He had assumed it would take Draco at least until the unveiling of the painting to decide that he wanted to get with Ginny—at this rate, all they’d have to do is convince him to want to actually have a relationship with her, and then beyond that…well, they hadn’t really planned that far yet.

At least, he hadn’t. He couldn’t speak for Pansy, who he knew secretly had a book full of wedding plans for whenever Ginny and Draco ever got together. She had been saying that they would marry since she had first seen how fiery and heated their arguments were; Theo had taken some persuasion, but eventually he too had seen that their arguments were just a disguise for their unrecognized lust.

“So, where is she?” Draco demanded, and Theo mentally shook himself.

“Pansy?”

“No, Weasley,” he sneered as he rolled his eyes.

“She’s at my place,” Theo responded automatically, before mentally cursing.

“Well, then raise the wards and let us Apparate in!” Draco demanded. Knowing that Draco wasn’t going to relent until he had spoken to Pansy, he prayed to all the gods that Ginny was finished with her painting and Pansy was back to being Pansy.

“In three,” he told Draco, bringing his finger down to his ring.

They’d better be done…

Chapter Three: The Painting

Ginny began as she normally did: getting familiar with the subject. Normally she’d spend some time talking to the person, getting to know how they worked and their thought process and things like that. It gave her a feel of how the painting would go. However, she couldn’t really talk with Malfoy about this, so she had to get his character from memory.

Thoughtfully, she did a quick outline of his figure reclining on the couch. It became a vague conglomeration of bendy lines that only formed a body if you squinted slightly and turned your head a little to the left, as she was doing now. Shrugging, she figured it didn’t really matter what it looked like now; she was just outlining it, anyway, and getting a feel for his character.

He was an arse, she determined quickly, going through all her memories of meeting him and interacting with him. An arse and an arsehole, and with this thought she solidified the hard line of his jaw, making his obstinate chin stronger and slightly thrust out, daring the viewer to contradict him.

Ginny remembered the way his lips would curve nastily whenever he saw her, so with quick flicks of her pencil she added a mouth that was partially twisted into his customary sneer.

This expression was also one that he used to look down on manure. Ginny could recall quite easily the day that Pansy had been out gardening, spreading fertilizer like it was turd shaped confetti, and he had entered the courtyard and noticed Pansy’s boots first, his lip curling in disgust. Then he had noticed Ginny standing near Pansy, and his expression hadn’t changed a bit.

It was hard to like him. She assumed that the only reason that Pansy and Theodore could stand to even be in the same room as him was because they all knew each other from childhood. Being raised together as holier-than-thou purebloods probably had something to do with that. At this thought, she idly drew in his strong nose, focusing particularly on the little uplift at the end of his nose—a retroussé nose, her inner Hermione reminded her.

Ginny realized that in almost every encounter she had had with Malfoy, they had fought in some way, usually arguing and getting nowhere at all. It was no wonder that they didn’t get along; even if there wasn’t the whole Malfoy/Weasley thing going on, just the fact that some of the things they had called each other were simply so offensive that they would guarantee a continuation of their feud.

Back in Hogwarts, she had taken it upon herself to continue Fred and George’s legacy by pranking the school. Of course, this quickly turned to an all-out prank war and insult fest with Malfoy. The things they said to each other…

Ginny was grateful that she had progressed past the “your mum” jokes that she had oh-so-frequently indulged in during her school years. Just thinking about her lack of originality made her shudder. Those pathetic jokes had been the cause of many late night duels, as well as the resulting detentions. They hadn’t ever cursed each other in the halls—well, Ginny cut herself off, there was that one time with the Bat Bogeys…she thought to herself fondly.

Frowning to herself, she realized that she must have been subconsciously suppressing the amount of duels done secretly during the middle of passing period; she was almost positive that she had gotten hit with a Densaugeo somewhere in her fifth year, and she had responded to this with a Confundus Charm that made him forget completely who he was or where he was.

So, Malfoy had panicked when he noticed a menacing redhead with buckteeth that were growing at an alarming rate swooping down on him like a vengeful angel of death (or a vengeful angel of chipmunks, take your pick). He had screamed like a little girl—Ginny could still remember this sound and the fond memories it brought—and ran off. The next day they had found him blubbering to Myrtle in the bathroom, who hadn’t bothered to let him know that he was a wizard and all that usual rot, content to just let him wallow in his misery with her.

The Charm had been reversed and he had immediately pointed a tear-stained finger at her, which she had denied profusely. McGonagall had believed her, bless her old heart, but Snape hadn’t bothered with any formalities and had snatched her wand away, casting Priori Incantatem and proving without a doubt that she had cast it, along with the reversal for the Densaugeo and, embarrassingly, a Point Me because she had gotten lost somewhere on the fifth floor.

She had gotten three weeks' worth of detention. She would have had a whole month’s worth, but Snape claimed that her Point Me made him laugh, so he took one off as a reward. Ginny was pretty sure his exact words were “Oh, Salazar’s balls, that’s priceless,” but he had said it so quietly that she hadn’t been exactly positive.

Needless to say, their relationship hadn’t exactly been harmonious. In fact, she couldn’t remember a single time in which Malfoy had been even remotely polite to her, and she frowned at this revelation. He didn’t like her so he went out of his way to continue their somewhat trivial rivalry whenever they met? That made no sense, since even Pansy and Theodore had every reason to hate her, too, but they didn’t. What was different between them and Malfoy?

He didn’t waste an opportunity to sneer at her or remark snidely on her clothing and poor status (although now that insult had fallen into disuse due to the fact that she wasn’t poor anymore). And despite this obvious loathing towards all things Ginny Weasley, Pansy and Theodore continued to like him. Was there some hidden side to him that she just didn’t see?

Ginny thought about it some more, and came to the following conclusion: even though Pansy and Theo were perfectly nice to her, when they were out in public they seemed to adopt that upper crust pureblood persona that just screamed prick to everyone they directed it to. Malfoy did that to her. Maybe there was something to Malfoy that she just never saw.

An even more plausible option was that she was trying to find excuses for his behavior, and he just generally was an overall arsehole to everyone that wasn’t Pansy and Theodore. Shrugging, Ginny decided to give up on analyzing Malfoy’s relationships. Instead, she turned back to something she could be sure of: his animosity towards her.

Thinking back on the way he had gripped his wand when dueling, she bypassed drawing his arm and focused on the intricate details on his hand that was limply hanging in the air. Unlike many artists, she didn’t have a problem with hands; they were actually one of her strong points. This probably was because she spent about an entire year going through a fanatic stage in which she just drew hands in various positions and gestures.

Her pencil made its way to his forearm, and Ginny felt her lips quirk in a small smile. She secretly loved forearms and Malfoy happened have the most delicious pair that she had ever seen. She couldn’t wait until she picked up her paints so she could paint the fine tiny hairs scattered across the pale skin of his arm glowing golden in the sunlight.

She drew the lines of his defined chest sharply, finding it almost curiously free of hair. Not that she was complaining; she never had been fond of men that had more hair on their chests than on their heads. She drew the cradle that his hipbones made as well, noticing just how he jutted out spectacularly. Really, if he wasn’t such an utter berk…

She determinedly avoided the thing directly below his hips; she’d cover that later. It was left as just a blank space, similar to the space where she had left a place for his eyes to go. Instead, she focused more on his thighs.

With one thigh bent so beautifully, Ginny could see exactly where his huge muscles would bunch underneath his skin. She found herself wondering if they’d ripple underneath her nails, the delicate golden hairs dancing above his shuddering muscles…

Fuck! she caught herself, blushing violently and closing her eyes to dissipate the image. She didn’t need to be thinking like that about a Malfoy—even if he did have nice forearms, thighs, hip bones, eyes…hell, a nice everything—especially when she was supposed to be painting him!

Focus on something else Ginny. Focus on…Quidditch. And the Chudley Cannons' losses for the past century.

This unfortunately had her turning back to his thighs, imagining them wrapped tightly around a broom, racing for a snitch…

Her treacherous mind instantly went haywire with the following image, and she attempted to move on to a part of his anatomy that was less innuendo-laced: his feet. Despite the fact that most people’s feet were utterly disgusting and nasty, Malfoy made his pale, narrow feet manage to be elegant and lovely. Well, maybe “lovely” is a bad word choice…Ginny amended, remembering that she was talking about his feet.

She felt her smile quirking back into place as she drew the tiny little squares that were his toenails: they looked pedicured from this distance, and she wouldn’t put it past him to have done just that.

Her pencil traced the graceful line of his calf, connecting it with the bottom half of his thigh. There were small, golden hairs scattered across the backs of his calves, too, and Ginny grinned, idly humming a tune to herself. The rest of him wasn’t that hard to finish up, since it was essentially just mirroring the other parts of him. She didn’t have to mentally interact with him as actively as she had before.

Of course it didn’t hurt, so while continuing her off-tune humming, she subconsciously imagined doing all sorts of things with Malfoy, from perfectly innocent things such as cursing his innards into his outards to decidedly less innocent things such as finding out just what those sinful lips would feel like pressed to her skin.

Those particular thoughts were always stopped almost immediately, but they still managed to sneak in, despite her valiant efforts to avoid seeing Malfoy as a potential…man.

With a wave of her wand, she opened up her paints, and her brush was already diving for the right colors to begin painting Malfoy. She paused with her brush millimeters away from the canvas, looking back up and meeting Malfoy’s eyes.

Pansy was utterly missing from the scene, and in her wake was the purest form of Malfoy. The eyes are off, she thought with a frown, but that wasn’t much of a problem since she had decided to save those for last, anyway. The base layer of skin was simple and easy, since it was akin to just filling in the lines. However, it was the unearthly glow that seemed to emanate off his skin that she knew was going to be harder. That, and his silky hair.

Ginny was aware of the fact that with the actual size of this painting, it was going to take several hours longer than it typically took her. However, she found that by painting Malfoy she was sinking deeper into her “mood” as she went—farther than she had gone before, and she could practically feel herself painting him even more quickly than she had ever done.

Once the rough outline of his body was complete and painted in with its base layer, Ginny decided to turn to the scenery around him, to get an idea of how to do the delicately glinting light that would dance across his apple blossom skin. It was easy to do the couch; she had mastered still life years ago. The artfully smudged black shadows that seemed to surround the couch were just as easy; after all, the prominent theme in many of her paintings was the devastation of Malfoy’s eyes.

She then reached for a smaller brush to begin to work on his glowing skin, and that took a good amount of time. Pansy had closed her eyes when she realized that Ginny wasn’t focusing on her face, and she dozed for a bit, waking up every so often to reach for a sip of the potion and shuddering delicately at the taste. That was how Ginny knew the time passed; Pansy would take a sip roughly every hour to stay as Malfoy.

The paint itself came on in multiple layers from a daffodil yellow to a rosy pink, all combining together to form the warm, pale glow that was Malfoy’s silky skin. She took more time trying to capture the glow that seemed to emanate from his skin and the way the sunlight seemed to amplify that glow than she had spent drawing him in the first place. When she was finally done with his skin, it was perfect, pale, and glowing softly, but it still wasn’t complete yet.

Ginny had great fun reaching for her tiniest brush, barely the length of her hand and only a combination of three miniscule hairs. It was one of her more expensive brushes, as well: those three hairs were actually from the head of a baby Thestral, and were considered to be practically illegal. Since Ginny took things like the law to be just a minor inconvenience, anyway, she didn’t have any problem searching for dealers that would sell her the hairs.

Only the best brushes were made by the artists themselves, and all of Ginny’s favorite brushes were made by her. She only had four that actually were made of Thestral hair, though, and she had been using all four exclusively on Malfoy. Somehow, she knew it was appropriate.

With this tiny brush, she searched with a critical eye for the perfect shade of yellow and gold, a pale golden poppy color that worked just perfectly. It wasn’t too dark to show up vividly on his skin, and it would only be visible as the faint hairs on his legs, giving the appearance that the hairs were there without making him seem like a modern-day Sasquatch.

Delicately swiping the brush across the appropriate limbs, Ginny felt the most satisfaction come from the tiny rows of golden hairs on his forearms. She had to practically press her nose against the painting so she could see it perfectly, so when she shifted her weight on her stool she accidentally brushed against the dark paint of the couch and had to repaint that part, ignoring the fact that there was now a dark smear on the tip of her nose.

She paused and stretched when she had finished up with that, yawning wearily. This painting was huge, and she knew she would probably be here for a while. However, her insistently growling stomach was informing her that if it didn’t get food now, she wouldn’t finish anything today.

“Pansy,” she called out, and Malfoy opened befuddled eyes.

“Are you done?” she questioned, voice thick with sleep. Ginny grinned; she must have been painting a long time. Judging by the way the sunlight had shifted a little lower, creating a fuzzier appearance, she knew that it really had been a few hours. Additionally, she was positive that she had seen Pansy reaching for the potion a good five or so times, so she knew that it had been a really long time.

“No, but I’m hungry.” At this, Mimsy popped back into the room.

“What would the Missus and the Master like?” it questioned. Ginny shrugged.

“What do you want, Pansy?” she asked, hoping to stave off making decisions. She was too busy examining the painting. She had yet to draw the window with its ethereal light, but it was vaguely sketched out. She knew it wouldn’t take too long—maybe, if she got working on it right away, two or three hours, tops.

“Just bring us some waffles with whipped cream, strawberries, and a side of Theodore Nott,” Pansy commanded, waving her hand idly. Ginny quirked a grin at the way she phrased it, before Transfiguring a nearby vase into a silky robe and tossing it in the direction of Pansy as Mimsy popped back out. Pansy wandered over to the portrait and sucked in a breath.

“Salazar, Ginny, you’re brilliant,” she breathed out, tracing the lines of Malfoy’s body with her eye, focusing on the subtle glow and texture. Ginny adopted an “aw, shucks” expression and busied herself with straightening her brushes. Mimsy popped back into existence, a tray held aloft and looking slightly fearful.

“Mimsy couldn’t find Master Nott,” it said, eyes slit as if in preparation of a blow that was to come. Pansy shrugged while Ginny looked amused.

“Probably couldn’t stand to see his best mate mess with his other best mate’s bits,” Pansy said without mercy, and Ginny fought hard to not look at the particular bits that Pansy was talking about, so artfully framed by either side of the silky fabric that Pansy had been too lazy to belt closed.

It was harder than she expected, and she was disgruntled at this revelation.

Pansy had reached for her wand, transfiguring a small table and two chairs into existence for Mimsy to put the tray. After doing so, it bowed so low that its floppy ears brushed the carpet, before popping away again, probably in the hopes that if it was gone, Pansy and Ginny wouldn’t remember to punish it for not finding Theodore.

They both sat at the table, digging in to the waffles with gusto. Ginny idly glanced at the painting of Malfoy, finding some amusement in the fact that he was currently bald and there was an empty space where his eyes would be as well as where his bits would be. Ruefully, she promised herself that she’d finish his bits, at least, after lunch, and get that done with as soon as possible. His eyes, however, she knew were going to take a little bit longer…

“What are you thinking about?” Pansy asked, but at that instant she pushed her chair back almost violently, spasming forward and clutching her middle as if she was going to burst to pieces. Alarmed, Ginny jumped to her feet, attempting to find out what was wrong, how she could help, anything at all. Instead, almost as quickly as it had come it was gone, and in Malfoy’s place was a slightly disheveled Pansy.

She brushed her short hair back in quick, efficient swipes, and Ginny stared, trying to get over the fact that where Malfoy had just been, Pansy was now. The process hadn’t lasted long at all, and the shock of a man morphing into a woman was still something that was hard to take in.

The hair had actually shortened from Malfoy’s lengthy locks, and the texture now looked different. Crouching down, it had been hard to determine Pansy’s height, but when she straightened again Ginny realized that he must tower over the petite brunette when they were standing side by side.

She hadn’t really noticed before. Ginny herself stood at a mountainous five foot nine inches, so standing next to Malfoy, who she guessed was just a little over six feet, hadn’t been all that different.

Pansy tightened the belt on the robe subconsciously, and Ginny noticed, arching an eyebrow. Pansy shrugged.

“I don’t have a problem with flaunting Draco’s body, but I’m a little bit more concerned about flashing mine around,” she explained easily and they both resumed their places at the table.

“Wonder how you’d feel about that if Theo walked in here now,” Ginny mused deviously, looking at her over the mug of tea she had picked up. At the way Pansy’s face gathered a faint pink tinge that was probably equivalent to Ginny’s full-on mauve flush, Ginny grinned to herself, knowing that Pansy was cursing mentally for being so transparent.

“I’m not sure you’re exactly in a position to point fingers,” Pansy said, fiddling with the napkin in her lap and pushing the blush away. Ginny watched enviously and wished that she had the same level of control, and knew it was something that had been practically hammered in since Pansy was born. Ginny knew that she personally had no chance to teach herself that ability to push emotions away, especially since she had been born with her heart on her sleeve.

“What do you mean?” Ginny questioned indifferently, fiddling with her own napkin to avoid meeting Pansy’s accusatory violet eyes.

“I mean that I noticed how your eyes lingered on a certain someone’s anatomy,” she said pointedly, and Ginny looked up guiltily before freezing, words sticking in her mouth.

“Ogling your betters again, Weasley?” came a smooth, silky voice from a door in the bookshelf that Ginny was positive hadn’t been there before. Panic closed her throat with fear before she realized that Malfoy absolutely couldn’t see the painting. Raising a hand casually to her hair where she had stashed her wand, she brushed her fingers against the thin wood, thinking the spell as loudly as she mentally could towards the easel. Thankfully, Ginny was quite adept at this particular spell, and the painting suddenly morphed from one of a naked Malfoy to a much more innocent painting of a bowl of fruit.

This was the painting that was the cover for a good third of her other paintings stored away in her flat, to prevent prying eyes (Like Theodore’s, she thought with no small amount of loathing) from seeing what she had really painted. Pansy and Theodore had long ago decided that she was nutters for painting the same bowl of fruit hundreds of times, but now Pansy gave Ginny a pointed look that clearly stated that Ginny was in for a good interrogation.

Shit, Ginny thought to herself, knowing that now that Pansy had realized that all those bowls of fruit had just been illusions, she’d want to see the real paintings. Meaning that about a few hundred versions of Malfoy’s eyes, drawn when she was half asleep or in a particularly deep and moody frame of mind, would be revealed for her to see. Oh, shit, she repeated mentally, before pushing that out of her mind. She needed to be in her top form to deal with Malfoy.

“That makes two of us, Malfoy,” Ginny snapped back, giving him a darkly pointed glare in response to his evaluating gaze that he had cast on her paint covered figure. Even though she didn’t want to admit it, she felt a trill of excitement shoot through her at the prospect of a good argument.

Pansy and Theodore generally just ignored her when she was in this aggressive mood, lusting for a fight, but she knew that she could rely on Malfoy to sink to her level and return her insults with the same amount of smug relish.

Theo came into the room from behind Malfoy, giving Ginny and Pansy an apologetic look, mouthing, “I couldn’t stop him,” and shrugging, giving Ginny the impression that he must not have tried too hard.

“Hardly,” Malfoy said, lip curling in a haughty sneer. “As if a Malfoy would do anything but look down on a Weasley,” he sniffed imperiously. Ginny arched an eyebrow at this, smug smile twisting her lips.

“Oh really?” she questioned loftily. “And pray tell, what do you think happened between Silvain Malfoy and Francesca Weasley? They just ‘looked down’ their way to six children?”

He blanched at this, obviously not recalling until now that vital piece of their family tree and how it had once crossed, unfortunately.

For the most part, both families liked to pretend it didn’t happen, or it was just some “bad blood” in the family for that one generation. Ginny only brought it up since he had made such an easy opening for her to prove him wrong, but generally she liked to avoid the thought of a Weasley coupling with a Malfoy, of all people. Of course, this had happened about a millennia ago, but both the Malfoy and Weasley bloodlines were extensive enough and stubborn enough to keep track of their relations.

“I think we can both agree that we can write that example off on account of them both being mad as hatters,” he said almost painfully. Ginny nodded, reluctantly agreeing. That really had been a low blow, and that particular insult had the unfortunate ability to cut both ways and remind both of them that congeniality was possible.

Ha, isn’t that a laugh, Ginny thought with a grin.

“Agreed. What the hell are you doing here, Malfoy?” she demanded, ignoring his look that he gave her.

“Visiting my friends,” he stressed, giving her an icy glare. “And what are you doing? Swimming around in acrylics and spreading Weasley germs?” Ginny had to stomp down on the urge to giggle absurdly at the image of Malfoy cringing away from her, crying, “Ew, Weasley cooties!” Instead, she snorted disdainfully.

“I doubt you’d protest if I got ‘Weasley germs’ on you, anyway,” she said dismissively, turning back to her waffles. He looked flabbergasted, glancing to Theodore to confirm that she had just said what he thought she had said. Did she just insinuate…?

Ginny, on the other hand, was hitting herself for giving him encouragement. Why would he even care? It was just because she had just spent the better part of five hours staring at his gorgeous, naked body. That was the only reason she was now giving partially veiled and very much convoluted sexual invitations.

“So, Theo, I think Ginny’s finished the fruit up just fine!” Pansy decided to chirp in loudly, and all of them looked at her as if she had grown a second head. Pansy didn’t chirp; Theodore did, and Pansy was usually a bit more restrained. That was resorting to such drastic measures to keep Ginny quiet showed just how nervous she was about the situation.

“You were over here drawing fruit, Weasley?” Malfoy repeated incredulously, taking a few steps closer so he could look at the easel. In her defense, Ginny’s illusion painting was modeled off an original that she had once painted (granted, that had been years ago), so it wasn’t as if it was drawn in crayons or anything. He looked at it as if she had barely managed to draw a stick figure. “Couldn’t you have painted some fruit where I don’t have to breathe the same air as you?” Ginny huffed, rolling her eyes.

“You’re the one who chose to come here, Malfoy. It’s not like I forced you to be in the same room as me,” she reminded him venomously. He gave her a withering stare for reminding him of this fact.

“Yes, but I didn’t expect it to be inhabited by an airheaded, artsy type like you, Weasley,” Malfoy informed her sardonically in a debonair tone. Ginny stood, hardly noticing that she did when she took a menacing step forward, giving him a smoldering glower. He had gone beyond the line of joking insults and into dangerous territory: Ginny was extremely sensitive when it came to her chosen profession, since her mother had put her through so much grief when she had first decided to become an artist. She didn’t like taking shit from anyone in regards to what she did for a living.

“At least I have friends who appreciate me for who I am, Malfoy, and don’t just keep me around for decoration and old times’ sake,” Ginny said, spitting the words out with vicious contempt. She hardly cared what Pansy and Theodore thought at the moment; she could apologize to them later, anyway.

“Let me remind you that they were my friends first, Weasley,” he growled back, two slashes of amaranth pink on his cheekbones that brought attention to just how defined the bones of his face were, as well as making Ginny highly aware of the fact that she was really pushing his buttons now. But she couldn’t stop herself, not like this, not with him.

“Oh really?” she questioned in an arched tone. “And where were these ‘friends’ of yours in the aftermath of the almost-destruction of everything that I hold dear? Certainly not sitting with you with your parents, looking beaten and out of place.” The silence that came after this comment made Ginny realize that this time, it was she that had gone too far. But, in a way, it had the desired effect: his eyes, which had previously been shielded and indifferent, had transformed into what she had been missing with Pansy.

Haunted pools of grey, framed by golden lashes and a face frozen in an expression of indifference, were locked on Ginny’s with deadly accuracy, seeing, but not seeing her. She couldn’t help it: even though she had just insulted all three of them practically simultaneously, the craving to paint and capture clawed at her insides like a rabid animal.

Reaching up for her wand, she shrunk all her items and quickly shoved them into a small chest designed just for this purpose, knowing that they would be protected from jostling inside of that chest. She dropped it into her pocket, turning to Theo. He noticed her desperate look, and thankfully knew what she was requesting with her eyes, hand trailing down to his signet ring.

“I’m sorry,” she murmured, and Apparated away.

Whether Ginny was apologizing for the disintegration of their partially-cordial meeting, bringing up Malfoy’s past, or Apparating away and leaving them to deal with the mess she had created was unknown even to her. But at that moment, she didn’t care.

Miles away in her flat, she was frantically, desperately trying to capture the look in Malfoy’s eyes, pushing the feeling of guilt aside with more trouble that she liked to admit.

Chapter Four: The Viewing

Draco Malfoy was angry. Draco Malfoy was really really angry. He had generally been pissed off since that bint Weasley had argued and fled. Hell, typically he just got furious at her and stomped around and threw things, but he got over himself after a day or so. He had been on and off with this smoldering fury for the past two weeks; a new record for him, since after about a week he usually had either forgotten to be mad or gotten even.

Now, though, he was still pissed, and that compelled him to give his front door an extra hard slam as he stormed through Malfoy Manor. Various paintings of long dead relatives preached that it ill behooved a Malfoy to bang around like a petulant child, but he ignored them easily. He had been dealing with the disappointment of his ancestors for years, so it wasn’t like he was going to start listening to them now.

He didn’t like to admit that she had gotten to him so thoroughly. It irked him to realize that she had dared to cross that invisible line that they both had previously honored. He wouldn’t bring up her little escapades from her first year, and she wouldn’t bring up the Final Battle and everything that it entailed. Of course, that had all gone to Tartarus when she had just opened her big mouth and let it fly out like the dirty laundry it was.

Draco hadn’t constantly been thinking about the Weasley girl, however; he’d tried to forget, and that sometimes would work. For a while, at least. And then something would trigger it. A painting that he knew to be of her doing, a flash of vibrant red out of the corner of his eye, the freckles across the bridge of his secretary’s nose. And then he’d be thinking about her blasted hair, her blasted insults, or her blasted bowl of fruit.

Honestly, who drew fruit anymore these days? An artist of her caliber—as loathe as he was to admit it, she was actually good at what she did, and he could easily recognize that—didn’t need to be bothering with some apples or grapes. It had annoyed him to find her there, so soon after his revealing conversation with Theo, and he hadn’t been prepared. Hadn’t been prepared for her hurled insults and scathing glares and furious eyes.

He had left Theo’s almost immediately after her, for fear that he would take his anger out on his friends. Contrary to what Weasley might have said, they were his friends. His closest friends. He felt a brief moment of guilt. Pansy and Theodore must be constantly pulled both ways, by Weasley and himself, but he brushed off the guilt easily. Malfoys didn’t feel emotions such as “guilt.”

“Master Malfoy, you are having guests in your living room, sir,” came a frightened squeak somewhere near the vicinity off his left foot. Draco glanced down disdainfully.

“Guests?” he repeated nastily. “I wasn’t expecting guests. Who let them in?” he asked casually, directing his gaze at the unfortunate elf who quavered as if he’d actually struck the thing. His lip curled in disgust as it stammered an excuse out.

“Master Malfoy, Master Nott and Mistress Parkinson and—“

Draco cut it off with a huff of angry breath.

“Did they barge their way in here again?” he demanded, irritated. It was all the elf could do to nod fearfully as Draco changed courses, stumbling after his long strides as it wrung the discolored cloth it was wearing and stuttered out apologies. Draco dismissed it with a glare, and it gave an anguished sound before popping away to do whatever house elves did when they weren’t needed by their owners.

Great, so Pansy and Theodore decided to drop by, he grumbled to himself. He wasn’t exactly in the mood to say anything without hurting them, so he’d just have to get rid of them as quickly as possible and then go release his anger by torturing kittens or something.

He smiled mirthlessly to himself. It always amused him to mentally endorse the stereotype of the Dark ex-Slytherin pureblood.

Draco stalked down a few more halls, taking a few hidden passageways to get there sooner. Most of them had been added at the whim of whoever had been the Manor’s current junior resident. He himself had added a few of his own. He knew the reasoning behind it; most passageways were already known to whoever the patriarch of the Malfoy line was, so the heir needed a few secrets of his own and added some passageways himself.

Of course, this was completely negated by the time the new heir would come around, and it became an endless cycle of passageways being created. Hell, he was positive that there were probably more secret passageways than there were normal hallways.

Spinning around another corner, the end of this hallway opened up into the main living room, facing the far wall that was made of entirely glass, looking out over his imposing hedge garden. From here, he could see Pansy and Theodore talking and pointing at something over the entrance to the living room, devious smirks in place, and Draco had the uncomfortable feeling that whatever it was, he wasn’t going to like it.

As he got closer, they noticed him and made a few frantic gestures towards that place above the doorway, and Draco felt his eyes narrow further. He really wasn’t going to like this. He hoped for a wistful moment that they were only commenting on his family’s coat of arms, proudly displayed in a hulking monstrosity that took up half of the wall space above the doorway, but he knew that they wouldn’t be too interested in reading “Aurum est potestas” for the thousandth time. (1)

“Pansy, Theodore,” he started amicably as he strolled through the doorway, fighting the urge to instantly spin around and look at what had captured their attention so thoroughly. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“To whom, Malfoy, not what,” an all-too-familiar voice came from behind him—and slightly above him, he noted with a sinking feeling—and he spun around gradually, sneer in place before he had even begun to move. Instead of seeing Weasley (well, he did see her, he just wasn’t concentrating on her), his eyes were drawn to the enormously large painting of himself.

For one, Draco couldn’t remember having one commissioned of himself. That and he’d never posed for a nude portrait before. Nude. His mind couldn’t seem to get past that word, and it kept on blanking out when he attempted to go beyond that adjective. It was a huge monstrosity of a painting, taking up nearly as much room as his family crest, and was jauntily located right above his family crest. He could literally feel his ancestors rolling in their graves.

Distantly, he had to admit that it was magnificently done. The contrast between the darks and lights had been captured beautifully, drawing attention to the focal point of the painting: the nude Draco Malfoy. He felt his thought process short circuit again, and felt it go around in circles. Nude. Nude. Nudenudenude.

“Dear Salazar,” he managed to squeeze out, sounding more strangled than he’d ever sounded. His eyes traced over the familiar body, recognizing every inch of it. She had truly captured him down to the very last hair on his calf, and knew that she probably got well paid for it. He couldn’t help but note that down in the right hand corner, tiny enough to not take away from the painting but large enough to be read, a tiny GM in vivid scarlet, the only trace of bright color in the whole painting.

He just knew she had chosen that color, so like her own bloody hair, just to irk him. Not that she needed to do anything else…

When his double gave a cocky little wave with his hand, Draco nearly fainted. He had hoped beyond hope that she might have done this painting in the Muggle style and kept the enchantments out of it, but he could see now that it was a fruitless gesture. He could just imagine entertaining important business guests in the parlor and having his nude self strut into another frame and greet the room merrily…

“Salazar’s balls,” he whispered faintly, ignoring Theodore and Pansy’s tittering to Weasley.

“That’s the second time he’s invoked old Snakey,” Theodore informed Ginny pleasantly, and she rolled her eyes. She had levitated herself up and had been in the process of putting the painting into place when Theodore and Pansy had gestured urgently, signaling that Malfoy was actually home earlier than they had originally thought.

Ginny glanced down at Malfoy, who looked more like a fish out of water than she’d ever seen him. Hell, after bearing the brunt of his insults for years, she knew he was shocked when all he could manage to say was “Salazar this” and “Salazar that.” Glancing back at the painting, she supposed that he kind of had reason to be so stunned. If she had come home and found a promiscuous looking painting of herself lounging around in her most-used room, she would have probably lost it.

Looking back at the painting, Ginny couldn’t help but blush in remembrance. The eyes had come easily—even now, when the painting-Malfoy was feeling particularly devious and rubbing his nudity in his original’s face (Ginny thanked the gods that he hadn’t progressed to strutting around yet)—after about two hours of spreading the paint and making it perfect in his face, nearly the same color as where the shadows faded into the soft sunlight from the curtains.

It was the other part of his anatomy that had given her more trouble. It wasn’t that she had any difficulty remembering just what it had looked like, as had been in the case of his eyes, but it was a different matter all together. The image was practically seared to her retinas, so she didn’t have a problem at all with recalling just what it looked like, nestled so perfectly between the crux of his thighs and the soft, downy blond hair…

Blushing, Ginny looked to the left and away from both Malfoys, knowing if she looked at either one, they’d cause a whole new wave of red to flood over her. Even though her eyes were closed, her treacherous thoughts immediately went back to those torturous hours after painting his eyes, each tiny brush stroke adding to the length of Malfoy’s most prominent organ.

After that, she had thought briefly over whether or not to keep it a Muggle-style painting, or charm it into a Wizard-style painting. Ultimately, it was her desire to cause him as much discomfort as possible that made her decide to charm it to move like every other normal Wizarding painting. Of course, the nude Malfoy had promptly stood up, stretched like a cat (which had drawn her eye to that recently-finished part of him that she just couldn’t look away from) and disappeared out of his frame.

Frantic, she had hoped that he hadn’t disappeared out of her apartment, so she had nearly thrown apart all her piles of precariously-stacked paintings in search of him. Eventually, however, she had found him in one of the most unlikely paintings: her own self portrait. What Malfoy’s dual self had been doing to her dual self, however, had caused a far more vivid blush than simply seeing a naked Malfoy had induced.

It wasn’t every day that she saw herself snogging a naked Malfoy, though, so she figured it had well earned the title of Ginny Weasley’s Most Violently Red Blush.

She had hastily removed him from her painting and locked him into his painting, promising herself that she’d undo the charm when she got to Malfoy Manor. Of course, she had woken in the middle of the night to find Malfoy’s dual self whispering dirty promises to her dual self, which she hadn’t properly hidden from his view, and had promptly cast a Silencio on the bloody thing and thrown him in the closet.

Getting back to sleep had been hard, however, when she realized that she had been feeling jealous of her portrait self. I mean, what does she have that I don’t? she had questioned to herself mournfully in the dark before realizing what she had just thought and sat up, eyes wide.

“I’m going crazy,” she had said aloud. How bizarre was it that she was jealous of her own self portrait? After promising to check herself into St. Mungo’s, she had flopped back onto her bed and gone to sleep after removing a paint brush that had been lodged uncomfortably underneath her bum.

When she was positive that she had gained sufficient control over her unfortunate tendency to blush like a tomato, Ginny opened her eyes and looked down at Malfoy. Who was staring up at her, utterly composed and looking only the tiniest bit pink and angry. This alone proved to her just how much this painting had gotten to Malfoy, and she smirked smugly, all regrets at having painted him disappearing if only for the knowledge that she had shaken Draco Malfoy’s unshakeable façade.

“What are you doing here, Weasley?” he sneered, and she couldn’t help but realize that he was acting as if the painting didn’t exist. She wasn’t going to let him get away that easily, though.

“What does it look like, Malfoy? I’m hanging my work,” she said, emphasizing the word with a pointed look to the lazily yawning naked Malfoy. She worked hard not to blush, and managed to pull off a color that was only a mild shade of salmon versus her normal puce. Malfoy, however, had his faint little pink darken slightly, and she grinned, knowing that even that slight acknowledgment had disturbed him.

“Happy Birthday!” came a cry from behind Malfoy, and both of them turned to look at Pansy and Theodore, who had produced their wands and were showering Draco with confetti. Scratching her head, Ginny wasn’t sure that their timing was all that perfect, considering she had been in the middle of making Malfoy uncomfortable, and obviously Malfoy thought the same, considering the death glare that he was directing towards them.

“This is my birthday present?” he questioned incredulously, and Ginny couldn’t help but agree with the question. Why had they decided on this, of all things? Why not a perfectly normal birthday present, like jewelry or Quidditch supplies or even a Muggle to torture?

“Well, we figured you didn’t have one, so we wanted to rectify that,” Pansy replied primly, getting tired of waving her wand around and shoving it in her sleeve.

Theodore, however, had no such qualms, and jumped around even more energetically, seemingly attempting to make up for Pansy’s lack of confetti.

Malfoy turned back to Ginny, and she felt an uncomfortable feeling nearly smothering her. Realizing what it was with sickening clarity, she used her wand to drift to the ground. This was something that was better said face to face, not when she was fifteen feet above him.

“Malfoy,” she began, feeling her instincts rebel at the very thought of saying this to a Malfoy, “I’m sorry.”

From the expression on his face, she could tell that he was just as shocked as she was that she was apologizing. A fleeting thought crossed her mind: maybe if she shocked him enough tonight, he’d be well on his way to a heart attack or something equally dramatic.

“What?” he asked, and it was nearly a squawk.

Rolling her eyes, Ginny decided to humor him.

“I’m sorry,” she ground out from between clenched teeth, feeling the words reluctantly slip out despite her body’s attempts to contain them. He blinked owlishly, before glancing back to Pansy and Theodore.

“Did you two put her up to this?” he questioned them, and it was Ginny’s turn to blink in surprise.

“You mean have her apologize or paint you?” Theodore asked cheerfully, still dancing around Pansy. The confetti had turned into bits of ribbons, and every once in a while Ginny could see him lean closer and wave his wand in a complicated fashion that wove the ribbons in her short hair. By the way that Pansy pretended not to notice, Ginny knew that she was secretly pleased and would rather he continue than stop.

“Both,” Malfoy answered shortly.

“We asked her to paint you, but Salazar knows what she’s apologizing for,” Pansy said with a shrug.

There it goes again, Ginny thought with amusement to the fact that Salazar Slytherin had once again entered the conversation. She had noticed long ago that among Dark families and particularly ex-Slytherins, they tended to replace the more common “gods” or “Merlin” with “Salazar.” She attributed it to a long-ingrained loyalty to their house that had simply never vanished.

“What are you apologizing for, Weasley?” he questioned, turning back to Ginny.

She looked down at her feet, shuffling them uncomfortably under his scrutiny.

“For saying what I said last time I saw you,” she said in a rush, deliberately avoiding any particular words that would describe exactly what she was talking about.

“Which last time?” he questioned infuriatingly, and Ginny resisted the urge to look up and glare. She chose instead to continue looking at her worn sneakers, trying to decide how to best word this.

“The time when I brought up the topic of the Last Battle,” she said quickly, this time looking up from underneath her lashes to see his expression. It wasn't tortured or even the least bit sad; rather, he was looking kind of pissed. Ginny was part relieved and part annoyed at this. Here she was, attempting to make amends, and he was just going to throw it in her face.

“Don’t make me laugh, Weasley. You and I both know that you meant every word,” he sneered dismissively, looking away from her as if the sight of her was too much for him.

“I might have meant it, yeah, and I sure as hell don’t regret what I said,” she snapped back angrily, taking a step closer. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t feel bad about saying the bloody truth.” This brought his gaze back to hers, and he took a menacing step closer.

“Oh, and you of all people, Weasley, care oh-so-much about accidentally tromping all over someone’s feelings with your dirty trainers and your insensitive and ignorant words,” Malfoy drawled sarcastically, rolling his eyes.

“Ignorant?” she cried indignantly, stepping closer and giving a little shake of her head to fling the red curls out of her face so she could glare up at him more easily. “Even my great-great-grandmother knew about how the Malfoys had been shunned and alone after the Last Battle, and she’s been dead for the better part of century!” Ginny figured she was stretching the truth a bit there, but didn’t really care. It was the thought that counted, anyway.

“As if I would care what a dead Weasley broad thinks!” he said huffily, and Ginny glowered angrily. The distance between them was nearly nonexistent now; they had both gone so close to better deliver their insults, and Ginny found that she hardly had to crane her neck up to insult him, since their difference in height wasn’t nearly as pronounced as it could have been.

“For your information, Malfoy, she wasn’t a Weasley. She was a fucking Flint,” she growled angrily, referring to Ursula Flint.

She had actually married into Malfoy’s mother own illustrious “Noble and Most Ancient House of Black,” so Ginny knew that Malfoy couldn’t dispute this reference to her own pureblood status. However much a Weasley she might be, she was still connected to all those pureblood families that Malfoy held near and dear, and she knew that it would only rile him up further.

“And it was her granddaughter that decided to open her legs to any walking filth that decided to traipse near enough. Mainly, a Weasley,” he replied venomously, and Ginny didn’t even think about it before her fist was flying towards his jaw with the intention of knocking his lights out for going so far with the family insults. Sure, he had said that kind of stuff before, and sometimes it had been worse.

But something was different right now. She didn’t think about the why of it, she just wanted to make him regret it.

Lightning fast, his left hand streaked up to grip her wrist in a vice-like grip before it got close enough. She sorely regretted his Seeker reflexes, but figured he wouldn’t think about her having another hand and decided to give that one a go, too. It, too, was stopped inches away, and she gave him her deadliest glare.

Then, she decided to pull a last resort trick and tried to knee him. Sure, she had always felt as that was the lowest of the low, but she figured that like deserved like and Malfoy was probably used to it, anyway.

Her swiftly delivered knee was knocked aside by his own, and she wanted to hit him and snarl and curse. She opened her mouth to do so, looking up into his own furious grey eyes, and two things happened.

One, she realized just how damn close Malfoy had gotten to her in her attempts to disable him.

Two, he closed those scanty few inches between them and pressed his lips to hers.

The sheer unexpectedness of it all lasted for maybe a quarter of a second before Ginny started to fight back, squirming angrily at this violation of personal space. This was something entirely new to her, and she was just too furious and enraged to let him get away with it unscathed. She attempted to free her wrists from his grasp, but that was to no avail. Her lower body had no more success, and the only thing she managed to do was wriggle even closer to him.

So she decided to turn her violence towards the only other point of contact: his mouth.

Ginny attempted to snap down on his lips with her teeth, but he drew them stealthily away just long enough for her to miss before they were back on hers, fighting to keep them connected. His tongue savagely fought its way between her lips and she went to bite down on it before he rapidly yanked it back, caressing the folds of her lips in a way that had her melting in his grip subconsciously. When his velvet tongue returned next, she didn’t try to chomp down on it. Instead, she tried to expel it with her own tongue.

This did practically nothing, however, and she couldn’t help but think of the elaborate parries and thrusts of sword fighting as they orally grappled with each other. She hardly noticed when their battle ground, so to speak, transferred from her mouth to his in a slow progression, and then ended up somewhere in between before going either way, depending on who was “winning.”

His hands had released her wrists and had trailed down her arms, raising hairs and leaving goose bumps in their wake before one tangled viciously in her hair and the other ended up half on her bum, half on her lower back as he cemented them together. She didn’t have any protests; her own hands were in similar positions, one wrapped in his own silky hair—she exulted at the feeling, ecstatic that it was as soft as it looked—and the other gripping his bum tightly.

She squeezed said bum particularly hard, and he drew away with a strangled groan. She was panting, mostly held up by his grip on her while her forehead was resting against his shoulder. Dammit. Dammit, dammit, dammit, she thought to herself, unsure whether she was cursing herself for continuing the kiss, or enjoying it, or something else entirely.

When she realized that she was pissed that they hadn’t snogged sooner, she glared up at him accusingly.

“I still hate you,” she snapped petulantly. He was looked down at her, no longer quite as angry but still looking quite passionate, even if it was for an entirely different reason. Ginny rapidly decided that the current state of his eyes was going to inspire a whole slew of paintings now. The freshly-snogged horny look did wonders for those darker swirls of grey, and she was partially torn between wanting to reach for a brush and wanting to try snogging him again and see if they would get the same results.

“Same here, Weasley, but we don’t have to love each other to do this,” he informed her, before illustrating that point quite nicely and yanking her head back up to his violently. This kiss wasn’t quite as much of a battleground as it was the final negotiations after the battle, settling the terms.

It did take a bit longer than the “battle,” however, and Ginny didn’t really find herself complaining as his tongue did that swirly thing that she was rapidly beginning to love.

When they drew apart again, she looked up at him from beneath hazy eyes, drawing his attention back to her with another impatient squeeze on that well toned cheek.

“It’s Ginny,” she informed him. He bent his head in a nod, a devilish smirk crossing his lips.

“Then you can call me Draco.” He looked down at her with that heated expression, and Ginny quickly realized that that pressure in her lower stomach had nothing to do with the fact that she had indigestion or had to pee. Rather, she figured that there was only one thing that could alleviate that “pressure,” and it happened to have grey eyes, silky hair, and smirking lips.

“As long as we’re fucking, I figure it’d be a bit hard to cry out ‘WEASLEY!’ in the heat of it,” he continued on casually, and Ginny felt that stirring in her belly again.

“Don’t get any ideas yet,” she warned him, faux-scowling. “I’m not agreeing to anything until I see some action.”

“Don’t worry,” he purred dangerously. “That’s only the next part.”

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From their position outside of the room, Pansy and Theodore snickered quietly to themselves as they watched their two best friends snog each other. They had sneaked out sometime in the middle of the argument to give them some semblance of privacy. Hell, it was more like they were wrestling with each other; Pansy was surprised that one of them hadn’t pulled back with a busted lip or a black eye. Either way, however, the venture had been a success.

“Too perfect!” Theodore crowed happily, peeking back in and not bothered in the slightest that some would call it voyeurism.

“I agree,” Pansy replied happily. All their plotting had finally come to a conclusion, even if it had been a bit violent. She was partially concerned that they might injure themselves in the process, but then shrugged it off. Whatever injuries they sustained were well deserved. She and Theodore had put up with them for years; they deserved every bit of pain they would cause each other.

Theo turned to her, but she was too distracted by watching Ginny and Draco snog/attempt to kill each other to notice. She did notice, however, when he swooped in closer and dropped a small peck on her check. Whipping her head to face him, she raised her hand to her check, touching the spot with wonder while she stared at the blond man, who was looking quite pink.

“Theo?” she questioned cautiously, unsure if she should be hoping for what she was.

“You’re amazing, Pansy,” he murmured, looking down at his hands that were clenched around each other. She blinked, feeling the blush spread, and looked down at her own hand that was wrinkling her expensive shirt. She couldn’t bring herself to care.

“You too, Theo,” she whispered back, and the both looked up and met each others eyes instinctively. The small, shy smiles that curved their lips spoke for them. Sooner or later, they’d be in a similar position to Ginny and Draco—with a large fraction of the violence missing.

Pansy couldn’t wait.