Nefarious


Harry looked between Malfoy and Ginny nervously. They were tense, on high alert. Malfoy was primed for mayhem, and Ginny was dangerous when she got into a mood like this. Things could get ugly. Everyone else in the room seemed to hold their breath in anticipation of what would happen next.

Malfoy made a move. The spectators gasped as he reached into his pocket. Ginny tensed. He smirked.

“I see your ten sickles. I raise you five more,” he declared, every syllable a challenge. One at a time he dropped five shining silver coins into the considerable pot in the middle of the table. He reclined lazily, arrogantly back into his chair, every action a taunt.

Ginny frowned, only one coin remaining in her palm, the reserve she always kept. Rarely was she confident enough to use her last bit of silver. Harry sighed nervously, scratching at his head, sitting back, sitting forward again. It had been the most gruelling round of Texas Hold ‘em he had ever suffered through. The other three players as well as himself had folded at the flop, somehow alerted to danger, frightened. Ginny and Malfoy were the experts here, had established their reign long before. They were playing on a plane beyond the table and what had already been laid down. Tonight was momentous, as they could duel for the title of Supreme Poker Overlord.

There were a handful of people hanging on the backs of the chairs of the folded players, a mixture of Slytherins, Ravenclaws, and Gryffindors - someone had decided that Hufflepuffs were too square to be told about the gatherings. Besides, nothing of consequence was ever really discussed; the impending war was taboo. Only when Malfoy brought a bottle of absinthe were the conflicting theories of life, the universe, and everything talked of and wholeheartedly agreed on by all. Harry and Ron had received much glaring when they had brought Hermione and her palpable disapproval of using the Astronomy Tower for such a purpose. For their part, Harry and Ron ignored her. Harry liked playing poker, and Ron liked feeling like a grown up.

Ginny put her silver bit on the table.

Malfoy looked at it scornfully, and then at her.

“I can’t match that,” she said finally, eyeing his coins. She didn’t have to by the rules of the game, but this wasn’t about poker anymore. “But I’ll trade you favours, deeds, whatever.”

“What sort of favours?” Malfoy’s dark grey eyes narrowed suggestively.

“Not the naked sort,” she replied tartly.

“Fine. Ruin everyone’s fun.”

“Your fun,” she corrected.

“Mine, everyone’s, whatever,” he said carelessly, taking a peek at his cards. Harry sighed once more. Looking at his cards had been significant two meetings ago, but Malfoy changed his tells every time he played. His control was staggering. “Fine. I will accept that pitiful coin as all in if you’ll add a kiss to the bargain.”

“What, kiss you?” Ginny said it like it was a ludicrous idea.

“I will kill you and make it look like an accident,” Ron snarled.

“I’m sure you’ll try, at least,” Malfoy said condescendingly, speaking as one would to a toddler. Ron was always infuriated by the way Malfoy couldn’t seem to pay attention to him for more than a few moments.

“It isn’t worth it, Ginny,” said Hermione. She’d been reviewing her Astronomy before, but had been pulled into the drama like the rest of them.

“Are you mad, that’s almost fifty galleons,” Padma Patil butted in, eyeing the glittering pot covetously.

“You Gryffindors are far too melodramatic,” Terry Boot added.

“Anyway, I only have to kiss him if I lose, Hermione.”

“And when you do, you have to mean it, Screech.” Malfoy grinned devilishly. “I’ll raise you another-“

“Hold on, Rummy, you’re dealing in favours too.”

Malfoy crinkled his nose. “You want favours? Sweetie, I don’t do favours that aren’t naked.”

“You do now. You’ll be nice to everyone. No put downs, no names, no sneering. You have to be kind to everyone you meet, and you have to come out of the common room too.”

“Hn. I’ll raise. Two days. I get to kiss you whenever I want. And you still have to kiss back and mean it.”

“A week of being kind,” Ginny said, leaning forward to show that she wasn’t scared.

“I’ll call. A week.”

“Agreed. Show.”

“You show.” They stared each other down. It was disappointing that sparks didn’t crackle between their locked eyes.

Finally, Ginny smirked as if to a private joke and laid her cards on the table. Two queens with one to match it on the table. “Three of a kind. Can you beat that, baby?”

He stared at them for a moment, expressionless, before he looked up at her, grinning that devilish grin, laying out an ace and then a five. With the cards on the table, he had a full house.

“You bastard!” she shrieked.

He was laughing, as he often did in the face of victory, all smirks and ungraciousness. “You can’t be angry at me, love, I won fair and square. Now come here.”

“Fuck off,” she snarled, murder and rage shuddering down every line of her body. Some would call it revulsion. “Your week starts tomorrow.”

“I’ll kill you!”

Blaise Zabini caught Ron by the shoulders. “Perhaps you should go, mate. Cool off? Your sister knows what’s good for her.”

Ron shook him off, taking Ginny by the arm as they turned to leave. “Come on, Gin. I think I might be able to cast that slug-spewing spell again. It’s not pleasant but you’ll just have to be brave and take one for the team.”

“You’re an idiot,” Ginny said, but he managed to elicit a smile from her. Ginny was an unhappy loser at poker, especially to Malfoy, and for the most part, seemed disappointed that she could no longer lay claim to the position of Supreme Poker Overlord.

“You don’t really think he’ll hold you to it, do you?” Hermione asked as they gained the sixth floor corridor, desperate to break Ginny’s dejected silence.

“It’s Malfoy,” Ginny replied. “Of course he will. He’s only doing it in the first place to piss me and Ron off.”

“It’s a feud, Hermione, you wouldn’t understand. Your parents are dentists,” Ron said in a moody, world-weary tone.

“But Ginny, substituting money for... that sort of favour... well it’s almost prostitution,” Hermione said, hissing the last part as if it were an enormous secret. “And you said it, it’s Malfoy and there is such potential for humiliation-”

“I know,” Ginny ground out and then interrupted herself, squeaking with surprise as an apparition seemed to step out of a portrait.

“Do you have a moment, Miss Weasley?”

The Bloody Baron rarely spoke but the threat of his presence seemed to turn even the highest compliments into something ominous. Ginny shooed her fretting brother and friend, giving a nod of thanks to Harry who took them both by the backs of their collar. She looked expectantly at the Slytherin ghost who watched her with steady unblinking eyes.

“You’re looking exceptionally bloody today, Baron,” she said. “And very corporeal. New exercise regime or something?”

He blinked at her slowly, unimpressed. Hermione and Ron’s bickering disappeared around a corner and the ghost gave an irritated, wrathful sigh, sinking through the floor.

Hot breath whispered past the nape of her neck and she shivered. After a beat, she regained her senses and drove her elbow backwards, but they’d played this game too many times before and he evaded her, sliding his arms around her and holding her tight so that she couldn’t retaliate even if she wanted to. And she didn’t really want to.

“You’re not going to be angry with me because you’ve been forced to acknowledge my superiority, are you?”

“Be quiet, Malfoy.”

“No. You will cheer up. Now. Anyway, think of how much fun we can have this week. Think of how purple your brother will turn.”

“He will turn very purple,” she said, considering the possibilities.

“I like the idea of it. Being able to kiss you whenever I want.” As he said this he pulled gently on the end of her plait, his lips brushing feather-light over hers. They moved from there to her jaw, then her neck and she sighed softly in delight.

“Don’t be disappointed if it isn’t as good as you imagined,” Ginny murmured.

“Why wouldn’t it be? Why shouldn’t you feel just as good in the light of day as you do in the dark?”

“Isn’t the secrecy part of the thrill of this thing we’ve got going?” she asked, suddenly melancholy. “Although the rebellion should tide us over for the week I suppose.”

“Wicked girl.” He sighed softly. “Cruel girl.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” she asked, pulling away so she could see his smoky eyes.

He hesitated, looking faintly embarrassed. “I know we don’t say…things about…stuff… but I like to think I mean more to you than a tabooed thrill.”

Ginny was determined not to melt at the sadness in his voice. He’d beaten her at poker and been a terrible winner. She had to be strong and keep sulking. Their relationship was built on such exchanges and challenges. And really good sex.

No good.

“Tell me…things…about the stuff…” she whispered, looking up at him through her lashes.

He heaved a groaning sigh and lifted her suddenly, throwing her over his shoulder.

“I don’t want to frighten you.”

“I’m not easily frightened,” she replied. It suddenly seemed very important to her to know exactly what was going on behind those smoky eyes. Hope was an ache in her stomach and she hated herself for it. There was no future for them.

“Do you want to know the scariest thought I can muster?”

“Hit me.”

“Sometimes I think about sabotaging our contraception because if we have a child you won’t ever be able to get rid of me. I want to tie you down but then again I don’t because if you weren’t as free and wild as you are now, you wouldn’t be you. I think you’d be unhappy if we had children now. I want you to be happy. Frightened yet?”

“A little,” she said cheerfully. She clutched at his shoulder as he turned around abruptly, once, twice, thrice. He opened it and swung her down so that he held her bridal style. The symbolism was not lost on her.

“Only a little?”

She pulled at the fabric of his shirt while she picked her words, very aware of the bed that lay beyond the threshold and the promise that was implied in getting there. “Sometimes I think I’d like you to be less… nefarious. But then you wouldn’t be you. You’re flawed beyond belief but I think I’d find anyone else lacking. All I want is you.”

He buried his lopsided grin in her neck, bashful. Unceremoniously they stepped inside. “We’ll sort of forget the deadline on this ‘bet’ then?” he suggested casually, throwing her onto the bed.

“I suppose we could,” she agreed, watching him intently as he dropped his robes and pulled off his shirt. The candlelight shone dully off something at his waist and she squinted, trying to see. A playing card was tucked underneath his belt. Like a viper, she struck forward and grabbed it only to discover that it was a selection of high ranking cards.

“Bastard!” she shrieked.

“Who was it who said they liked me and my nefariousness just the way we are?” he asked pinning her down.

“I take it back.” Her voice was breathless as she leaned upwards, trying to reach his mouth.

“Get some perspective, love. We’ve just had a moment. Can’t you appreciate the moment?”

“You’ll get yours,” she promised, wrapping her legs around him.

“I certainly hope so.”