A/N: Thank you for your kind reviews! Chapter 3 should be out done, as my college apps are almost done! Thank you to sillysun for the beta! I finished the chapter after she beta’ed most of it, so if there are any errors, it’s my fault. Thanks again, and Happy New Year!
“Pig, wait!” Harry barked, tilting his head to the side as he tried to prevent the tiny minute owl from nipping at his ear, his hands full of a box of Ginny’s things. “Get off!”
“Oh, Pig!” Ginny rushed forward to intercept the owl. “There’s a good owl, you’re right on time. Bring these to Mum, and, Harry, anything you want to send?”
“No, I sent Hedwig out earlier.” Harry dropped the box and rolled his shoulders back. “That’s the last of them, then. Good thing you don’t have much.”
Ginny made an unintelligible sound as she handed Pig her letters and fed him an owl treat.
“What happened to your old place?” Harry called from the bathroom, splashing water on his face.
“I couldn’t keep up with the rent,” Ginny sighed morosely. “And I didn’t tell Draco. I don’t think he knows. I was practically living at his place for the past two weeks. He never mentioned anything. I was dodging my landlady, but she finally caught me as I was packing up my stuff.”
Harry blinked owlishly as he came out of the bathroom, wiping his glasses on his shirt before putting them back on. “I’m surprised Ron didn’t say anything about that.”
“I suspect he was too thrilled at the thought of me leaving Draco to come stay with you that he wasn’t going to bring it up,” Ginny said dryly.
Harry slid into the seat across from her at the table. “So why did you leave Malfoy? Granted, I can’t see why you went out with him in the first place, but it was sort of unexpected.”
“Long story, Harry,” Ginny muttered, giving Pig a push off the table and glumly watching him fly out the window. “Well, all right, it’s not a long story, it’s just a story.”
Harry grinned at her.
“He’s Draco Malfoy,” Ginny exploded. “Do you know how hard it is? When we walk out on the street or into a restaurant and everyone stares?”
“Er,” said Harry.
“It’s not the staring that bothers me,” continued Ginny, “it’s the way everyone treats him. It’s just, ugh, Harry, it’s hard to explain. But put it this way. I was tired of having him pay for everything. I was tired of never knowing, when we go out or to one of his business associate’s places, whether I was wearing the right bloody thing or not! No man wants someone who doesn’t have a job and just – is there all day. I refuse to be a clingy person dependent on someone who isn’t even looking for a long-term relationship!”
There, it was out. Ginny deflated back into her chair.
“Ah,” Harry began, looking at her warily as though he suspected she would burst into tears. He hurriedly flicked his wand and transfigured a lemon into two tall glasses of iced lemonade. He wished he had learned how to make tea. Ron always said his mum made them tea when one of the Weasley brood was upset. But Harry had never bothered to learn because he liked lemonade better and – Harry cleared his throat and took a casual sip of his lemonade. “Well, erm, how do you know he didn’t want a long-term relationship?”
“We never even used the word relationship,” Ginny said bitterly, ignoring her lemonade. “I brought it up once, I said something to the effect of whether he thought our relationship would last this long, and he just kissed me and then we had sex.”
Harry spat some of his lemonade back into his glass, mildly horrified. “Um.”
_______________
Blaise waited patiently for two seconds, his silence a prompt for Draco to continue speaking. “And then?” he finally said touchily when it became clear that Draco was not going to say anything else.
“I heard about it, I think,” Draco said, completely not answering the question. He was rearranging some papers on his desk. “I think it was supposed to be at the end of this month. But it doesn’t matter; Malcolm has moved it up. It’s in two weeks.”
Draco continued to reshuffle the papers. Blaise looked at them. They were blank.
“Right, Malfoy,” Blaise sighed, stretching in his seat. “So I have this nice blank check, very flattered that you trust me with it, by the way, and exactly what am I supposed to buy with it?”
Draco stood up. “I’m going home.”
Blaise rose. “You haven’t answered my question, Draco.”
Draco gave him a dirty look and stormed out of his office. Blaise trailed after him, sighing and wishing he smoked. Or something.
They remained silent in the elevator, and they were on the street when Draco finally said, “I want you to buy Ginny Weasley’s services.”
“Sorry?” Blaise lengthened his strides to catch up. “Sorry, I missed that.”
“I said I want you to use that check to buy Ginny Weasley,” Draco repeated, in the same cool, impassive voice he had used before.
Blaise stared at the back of Draco’s head and promptly wished he’d misheard Draco again. He struggled for something to say. “That’s not in my job description,” he finally said.
Draco said dismissively, “You don’t have one. And if you did, I’d censor it.”
Blaise stumbled after him. Two girls, laden with bags from Christmas shopping, giggled and stared openly as Draco strode by. Draco, still seething, didn’t notice. A woman they passed in the street eyed Draco like he was a piece of meat and she was a bloodhound. Draco noticed this time and gave her a haughty look. Blaise frowned as he hurried after Draco. Clearly, the prat was too big of a fool to admit that he was languishing away after Weasley.
“It’s not a good plan, Malfoy.”
Draco’s response was crisp and flat. “But you’re going to do it, Zabini.”
Blaise sighed. “This is pathetic.”
_______________
This was pathetic.
Blaise was moping and feeling rather sorry for himself. He had come with Pansy Parkinson, who had told him to “go and sulk by the punch bowl.”
So now he stood in the corner, breathing in the outside air, and hoping the little cocktail he’d stolen from someone’s seat would be enough to get him smashed. Tipsy, at the very least. Blaise bit on an ice cube as he glared in the direction he had last seen Draco, who had arrived with a very beautiful blonde with limpid blue eyes, saw Blaise, hissed “Do it, Zabini,” and strolled off with his lovely companion. The last time Blaise had seen him was when the blonde had dropped an earring on the floor and had bent down to get it, offering Draco ample view of her generously sized chest.
Blaise looked idly at one of Malcolm’s paintings and made guesses as to what it depicted. An overweight black cat? A deformed Deatheater? A Deatheater with big breasts? He gave up after the thought that it might be Snape with his hands down his robes and wandered to another corner. He looked and felt rather stupid standing on his own in the same place glaring at nothing.
He relocated a few yards down and looked around his surroundings. Funny, the gazebo looked different from this angle. Millicent Bulstrode’s arse looked bigger. He felt like giggling. Perhaps he was drunk.
Blaise shook the little champagne flute despondently and looked around for more drinks with a high alcohol content. He didn’t feel drunk. Still, he ought to be sure. Draco would kill him if Blaise messed up Draco’s plan. He did a few multiplication tables in his head, and he got all the way up to 12 times 13. He was rather proud of this. He had learned the multiplication tables all the way up to 16 times 16 when he was eight years old.
256, he thought fuzzily. Yep. Still good. Not drunk. That meant he could afford another drink.
Blaise fished the cherry out of the glass with a finger as he searched for a new drink. He didn’t see one, but he did see Draco twenty yards away and wondered whether he could spit out an ice cube out at him from this distance. Draco’s blonde companion smiled lasciviously at Draco and laid her hand upon his thigh. Draco looked amused.
Blaise crushed the cherry between his teeth morosely and tried to tie the stem into a knot with his tongue.
It was bad enough that Blaise’s dates seemed to be pulled away from him to Draco by a mysterious gravitational force. Blaise, for the most part, didn’t mind – well, he minded, no one liked being second to someone else – but it hadn’t really mattered. Blaise hadn’t taken those girls seriously.
As a matter of fact, Blaise reflected, he felt sorry for those girls. Draco was like a magnetic black hole. Everything and everyone was inevitably sucked in towards him. They were helpless to stop it, and it wasn’t until they fell in that they realized there was nothing there, and they couldn’t pull themselves out.
Which is why, Blaise thought sourly, he was here following Draco’s clearer than crystal instructions. Ginny Weasley hadn’t been magnetized. She had left Draco. If Draco hadn’t dragged Blaise into his half-assed plan, Blaise might have been humored. But the fact of the matter was that Draco had coerced Blaise into coming. He wasn’t sure who was more pathetic; Draco for needing to resort to these means or Blaise, for being a pushover and helping him resort to these means.
This was truly pathetic. He, Blaise, was being handed Draco’s leftovers. Although, when a familiar redhead appeared and walked carefully up the steps to the gazebo, Blaise was suddenly very sober and furiously reevaluating his opinion as he choked in surprise on his cherry stem.
Ginny Weasley was no one’s leftover; she was a full course meal, dessert included. Draco, Blaise concluded happily and decisively, was stupid.
Perhaps Draco’s plan wasn’t so bad after all, Blaise thought, brightening as Ginny walked a bit closer in his direction. It certainly had the potential to be very entertaining for Blaise.
Well, Blaise would have fun with Draco’s money. Best friends mean best friends with means. Sharing is caring. Mix business with pleasure. Blaise fully intended to put all three maxims to use.
Starting right now.
_______________
It was a cool night, a good night, the kind of night with hushed whispers and secrets. Pale pink and soft blue China lanterns bobbed magically along the paths of the garden. The gazebo was lavishly built, white wood and climbing vines, reflecting the opulence of the soirée.
It was a party for only the elite. The wealthiest, the most connected, the celebrities, the ones with old blood and ancient ties were all gathered there. Whatever tensions existed during the day were dispelled in the soft sound of clinking champagne flutes and the orchestra. A few business transactions were made with good faith and good intentions, but for the most part, the conversations were relaxed and carefree, ranging from world news and politics to the grapevine.
The setting was one of tranquility. As the hours trickled past, everything became more lighthearted and less lucid. The wine was flowing, heads were giddy, eyes more daring, conversations more bold.
Ginny wondered what she was doing there.
Harry sat beside her, emerald eyes very bright from the wine he had consumed. As a Quidditch player for a winning team in England, even the old guard willingly overlooked who he was. Winning Quidditch players had social rank.
She felt lulled by the peace. The night was beautiful. Her eyes drifted.
Draco was reclined in his chair, radiating cool aloofness, but gazing at his companion, the young and dewy blonde who seemed composed entirely out of seamless, flowing curves, with such heat in his eyes that it made Ginny blush. And burn.
Ginny had known he would be there.
She supposed it didn’t matter who the blonde was. She doubted anyone would get a chance to know the blonde, either. The blonde had come with him, and would leave with him. In the course of the week, however, the blonde would be left on the wayside. Draco Malfoy had, in the past two weeks, made it clear that he was single and ready to mingle. It all meant nothing, of course. Still, Ginny’s reasoning was severely impaired when it came to him, and all she could do was smolder helplessly in jealousy and hurt. Even if they had never explicitly stated that they had a relationship, they’d bloody lived together. They hadn’t been broken up for more than a month.
Harry’s hand on her arm made her jump, drawing her guilty eyes to his faintly amused face.
“You know,” he said in a low voice, “You look fabulous tonight. Don’t drool on your dress.”
Ginny flushed. “Shut up.”
Harry sat back, grinning.
Ginny tried paying attention to the dialogue rising and falling around her, cresting at some points with laughter, but before she could stop herself, she flicked a hasty glance at him again.
Draco looked elegantly put-together, even though he had come dressed very casually despite the formality of everyone else’s wear. His charcoal shirt matched the color of his devil-may-care eyes when they darkened, and oh, Ginny remembered how that used to happen when he looked at her. But he wasn’t looking at her. He hadn’t looked at her all night. At one point his gaze passed right over her.
Ginny had known that she had been asking for trouble from the very beginning, and wasn’t that the entire reason for seeing him? She had wanted trouble. She had thought she was indestructible, a woman of his league. How foolish. Draco was a man with many means and she was little more than the young schoolgirl she had been.
But even as a schoolgirl, she hadn’t been innocent. So what had she truly lost?
Her train of troubled thoughts was wrecked by the sound of silverware on glass. Cassius Warrington cleared his throat and beckoned for attention.
“Well, onto the anticipated event, the pièce de résistance of the evening! Would our participants please approach the stage?”
Ginny noted that nine other women in the audience also stood and glided over to Cassius who stood on the raised platform. She also noticed that the young and dewy blonde remained seated and that he was gazing at the stage with lazy, wandering attention.
“Now these ladies have assured me of their sportsmanship,” grinned Cassius. “I suspect that might be tested tonight. Each of these ten women standing before you have agreed to participate in an auction.”
Sinfully wicked laughter rolled across the rapt audience. A shiver ran up the ridges of Ginny’s spine. She stared hard at the floating pink lantern in the distance.
“…the money each lady receives will be donated to the Magical Animals Welfare Organization, who will use the money for…” Cassius fell into the spiel he had fed Ginny, providing a brief history and some facts and figures of the extinction of certain breeds of dragons, so she tuned him out.
Draco had propped his arm up on the table, his thumb brushing his lip as he gazed musingly at Cassius.
“You gentlemen – or women, I suppose, must be fair – are bidding for a week of this person’s time. Compliance on each lady up here goes along with the price, of course. So without further ado, let me introduce you to Daphne Greengrass,” Cassius declared brightly. “Miss Greengrass works as an assistant to…”
Roger Davies, who was publicly smitten with Daphne, snatched the bid for Daphne up very quickly, and that was that. Cassius’ commentary as he conducted the auction was very provocative and full of flair, and soon everyone was entertained by the bidding.
“Next, every male’s pinup fantasy of a beautiful witch with temper and taste, Miss Ginevra Weasley,” announced Cassius, looking as though he were thoroughly enjoying himself. “And gentlemen, I need not say more – you’ve all heard the stories about redheads,” said Cassius with a wicked grin. “Let the bidding begin at a five hundred Galleons.”
The bidding was up at five thousand Galleons before Ginny could blink, a more than blatant reminder of the company she had dined in tonight. When someone tipped his hand at six thousand, she began to worry. It seemed like good fun and all, but exactly who would she get stuck with?
Then someone had said, very firmly, “Ten thousand Galleons.”
Heads turned, and she smiled in relief at Harry, who grinned reassuringly back at her.
Blaise Zabini raised the bid to twenty-five thousand. Harry matched him. Her other male bidders fell silent, preferring to watch the rising bid.
The bidding went on between Blaise and Harry, and she wondered what Blaise was playing at. They had never spoken before. He certainly wasn’t looking at her; instead he was gazing at Cassius with a coolness that bordered on frigidity.
As the seconds dragged by and Galleons went up, Ginny had second and then third and fourth thoughts. She needed money, of course. Cassius had offered her a very good deal at making money. It made sense – it was logical – to agree. After all, she couldn’t be pressured to doing anything she truly didn’t want to do.
Ginny studied Blaise. She really hadn’t heard much about him since they graduated school. To be honest, she hadn’t heard much about him while they attended Hogwarts. Ginny remembered hearing about an incident involving the mysterious Slytherin and Pansy Parkinson on one of the revolving stairs, but that was all.
He was a complete stranger.
Ginny suddenly felt too hot under the bright lights, and she felt like squirming. She could feel so many pairs of eyes on her, and she had another doubtful thought. She had been too rash, too hasty in agreeing. Running blindly away from Draco had not been especially wise.
Draco.
She swore she felt his eyes on her, and when she dared to, Ginny looked up, expecting to see him watching the blonde.
Draco was staring at her. He was speaking to the blonde, who looked very bored –but very beautifully so – with the proceedings, but his eyes were on her.
Ginny colored. She stood still, flushing on the spot.
Another wizard attempted to cut in between Blaise and Harry with thirty-eight thousand, but Blaise was quick to cover the gap.
You could outbid them, Ginny thought, silently trying to communicate a message to him. I could go home with you tonight. I could tell you that I’m sorry. I could tell you everything.
Draco was still staring at her. Isn’t this what you wanted? was the question in his slate grey eyes, and his lip curled in a familiar smirk.
Ginny snapped her eyes back to the pink lantern. So. He wasn’t going to lift a finger. This was his petty revenge. Fine.
Cassius ended the bid at fifty thousand Galleons to Blaise, and Harry lifted a shoulder at her, but Ginny wasn’t looking at him, or Blaise.
She saw only two deserted chairs that sat across the table from each other.
Blaise Zabini came to collect her at the end of the evening.
“Ginny Weasley,” he said crisply. “Good to meet you.”
“Yes,” Ginny said woodenly. “Good to see you again, Blaise.”
His lips curled sardonically. “I’m sure. You certainly sound very enthusiastic. Shall we set a week aside?”
“Now?” she echoed. His briskness confused her as she studied him. He was good looking, broad shoulders, dark and mysterious and all that, but since Harry, her tastes had turned to fairer, lighter boys. “I need to check my schedule…” She stalled.
“Could you check right now? I think it’s best to conclude this as soon as possible.”
Ginny’s face burned. “Well, why did you pay so much for me then, if you just wanted to get it over with?” she snapped.
Blaise lifted an eyebrow at her outburst. “I didn’t,” he said coolly. “While I’m not by any means impoverished, few people can and will spend fifty thousand Galleons on seven days of doubtful entertainment. Draco Malfoy did. Now, can we set a date or not?”
“Pig, wait!” Harry barked, tilting his head to the side as he tried to prevent the tiny minute owl from nipping at his ear, his hands full of a box of Ginny’s things. “Get off!”
“Oh, Pig!” Ginny rushed forward to intercept the owl. “There’s a good owl, you’re right on time. Bring these to Mum, and, Harry, anything you want to send?”
“No, I sent Hedwig out earlier.” Harry dropped the box and rolled his shoulders back. “That’s the last of them, then. Good thing you don’t have much.”
Ginny made an unintelligible sound as she handed Pig her letters and fed him an owl treat.
“What happened to your old place?” Harry called from the bathroom, splashing water on his face.
“I couldn’t keep up with the rent,” Ginny sighed morosely. “And I didn’t tell Draco. I don’t think he knows. I was practically living at his place for the past two weeks. He never mentioned anything. I was dodging my landlady, but she finally caught me as I was packing up my stuff.”
Harry blinked owlishly as he came out of the bathroom, wiping his glasses on his shirt before putting them back on. “I’m surprised Ron didn’t say anything about that.”
“I suspect he was too thrilled at the thought of me leaving Draco to come stay with you that he wasn’t going to bring it up,” Ginny said dryly.
Harry slid into the seat across from her at the table. “So why did you leave Malfoy? Granted, I can’t see why you went out with him in the first place, but it was sort of unexpected.”
“Long story, Harry,” Ginny muttered, giving Pig a push off the table and glumly watching him fly out the window. “Well, all right, it’s not a long story, it’s just a story.”
Harry grinned at her.
“He’s Draco Malfoy,” Ginny exploded. “Do you know how hard it is? When we walk out on the street or into a restaurant and everyone stares?”
“Er,” said Harry.
“It’s not the staring that bothers me,” continued Ginny, “it’s the way everyone treats him. It’s just, ugh, Harry, it’s hard to explain. But put it this way. I was tired of having him pay for everything. I was tired of never knowing, when we go out or to one of his business associate’s places, whether I was wearing the right bloody thing or not! No man wants someone who doesn’t have a job and just – is there all day. I refuse to be a clingy person dependent on someone who isn’t even looking for a long-term relationship!”
There, it was out. Ginny deflated back into her chair.
“Ah,” Harry began, looking at her warily as though he suspected she would burst into tears. He hurriedly flicked his wand and transfigured a lemon into two tall glasses of iced lemonade. He wished he had learned how to make tea. Ron always said his mum made them tea when one of the Weasley brood was upset. But Harry had never bothered to learn because he liked lemonade better and – Harry cleared his throat and took a casual sip of his lemonade. “Well, erm, how do you know he didn’t want a long-term relationship?”
“We never even used the word relationship,” Ginny said bitterly, ignoring her lemonade. “I brought it up once, I said something to the effect of whether he thought our relationship would last this long, and he just kissed me and then we had sex.”
Harry spat some of his lemonade back into his glass, mildly horrified. “Um.”
Blaise waited patiently for two seconds, his silence a prompt for Draco to continue speaking. “And then?” he finally said touchily when it became clear that Draco was not going to say anything else.
“I heard about it, I think,” Draco said, completely not answering the question. He was rearranging some papers on his desk. “I think it was supposed to be at the end of this month. But it doesn’t matter; Malcolm has moved it up. It’s in two weeks.”
Draco continued to reshuffle the papers. Blaise looked at them. They were blank.
“Right, Malfoy,” Blaise sighed, stretching in his seat. “So I have this nice blank check, very flattered that you trust me with it, by the way, and exactly what am I supposed to buy with it?”
Draco stood up. “I’m going home.”
Blaise rose. “You haven’t answered my question, Draco.”
Draco gave him a dirty look and stormed out of his office. Blaise trailed after him, sighing and wishing he smoked. Or something.
They remained silent in the elevator, and they were on the street when Draco finally said, “I want you to buy Ginny Weasley’s services.”
“Sorry?” Blaise lengthened his strides to catch up. “Sorry, I missed that.”
“I said I want you to use that check to buy Ginny Weasley,” Draco repeated, in the same cool, impassive voice he had used before.
Blaise stared at the back of Draco’s head and promptly wished he’d misheard Draco again. He struggled for something to say. “That’s not in my job description,” he finally said.
Draco said dismissively, “You don’t have one. And if you did, I’d censor it.”
Blaise stumbled after him. Two girls, laden with bags from Christmas shopping, giggled and stared openly as Draco strode by. Draco, still seething, didn’t notice. A woman they passed in the street eyed Draco like he was a piece of meat and she was a bloodhound. Draco noticed this time and gave her a haughty look. Blaise frowned as he hurried after Draco. Clearly, the prat was too big of a fool to admit that he was languishing away after Weasley.
“It’s not a good plan, Malfoy.”
Draco’s response was crisp and flat. “But you’re going to do it, Zabini.”
Blaise sighed. “This is pathetic.”
This was pathetic.
Blaise was moping and feeling rather sorry for himself. He had come with Pansy Parkinson, who had told him to “go and sulk by the punch bowl.”
So now he stood in the corner, breathing in the outside air, and hoping the little cocktail he’d stolen from someone’s seat would be enough to get him smashed. Tipsy, at the very least. Blaise bit on an ice cube as he glared in the direction he had last seen Draco, who had arrived with a very beautiful blonde with limpid blue eyes, saw Blaise, hissed “Do it, Zabini,” and strolled off with his lovely companion. The last time Blaise had seen him was when the blonde had dropped an earring on the floor and had bent down to get it, offering Draco ample view of her generously sized chest.
Blaise looked idly at one of Malcolm’s paintings and made guesses as to what it depicted. An overweight black cat? A deformed Deatheater? A Deatheater with big breasts? He gave up after the thought that it might be Snape with his hands down his robes and wandered to another corner. He looked and felt rather stupid standing on his own in the same place glaring at nothing.
He relocated a few yards down and looked around his surroundings. Funny, the gazebo looked different from this angle. Millicent Bulstrode’s arse looked bigger. He felt like giggling. Perhaps he was drunk.
Blaise shook the little champagne flute despondently and looked around for more drinks with a high alcohol content. He didn’t feel drunk. Still, he ought to be sure. Draco would kill him if Blaise messed up Draco’s plan. He did a few multiplication tables in his head, and he got all the way up to 12 times 13. He was rather proud of this. He had learned the multiplication tables all the way up to 16 times 16 when he was eight years old.
256, he thought fuzzily. Yep. Still good. Not drunk. That meant he could afford another drink.
Blaise fished the cherry out of the glass with a finger as he searched for a new drink. He didn’t see one, but he did see Draco twenty yards away and wondered whether he could spit out an ice cube out at him from this distance. Draco’s blonde companion smiled lasciviously at Draco and laid her hand upon his thigh. Draco looked amused.
Blaise crushed the cherry between his teeth morosely and tried to tie the stem into a knot with his tongue.
It was bad enough that Blaise’s dates seemed to be pulled away from him to Draco by a mysterious gravitational force. Blaise, for the most part, didn’t mind – well, he minded, no one liked being second to someone else – but it hadn’t really mattered. Blaise hadn’t taken those girls seriously.
As a matter of fact, Blaise reflected, he felt sorry for those girls. Draco was like a magnetic black hole. Everything and everyone was inevitably sucked in towards him. They were helpless to stop it, and it wasn’t until they fell in that they realized there was nothing there, and they couldn’t pull themselves out.
Which is why, Blaise thought sourly, he was here following Draco’s clearer than crystal instructions. Ginny Weasley hadn’t been magnetized. She had left Draco. If Draco hadn’t dragged Blaise into his half-assed plan, Blaise might have been humored. But the fact of the matter was that Draco had coerced Blaise into coming. He wasn’t sure who was more pathetic; Draco for needing to resort to these means or Blaise, for being a pushover and helping him resort to these means.
This was truly pathetic. He, Blaise, was being handed Draco’s leftovers. Although, when a familiar redhead appeared and walked carefully up the steps to the gazebo, Blaise was suddenly very sober and furiously reevaluating his opinion as he choked in surprise on his cherry stem.
Ginny Weasley was no one’s leftover; she was a full course meal, dessert included. Draco, Blaise concluded happily and decisively, was stupid.
Perhaps Draco’s plan wasn’t so bad after all, Blaise thought, brightening as Ginny walked a bit closer in his direction. It certainly had the potential to be very entertaining for Blaise.
Well, Blaise would have fun with Draco’s money. Best friends mean best friends with means. Sharing is caring. Mix business with pleasure. Blaise fully intended to put all three maxims to use.
Starting right now.
It was a cool night, a good night, the kind of night with hushed whispers and secrets. Pale pink and soft blue China lanterns bobbed magically along the paths of the garden. The gazebo was lavishly built, white wood and climbing vines, reflecting the opulence of the soirée.
It was a party for only the elite. The wealthiest, the most connected, the celebrities, the ones with old blood and ancient ties were all gathered there. Whatever tensions existed during the day were dispelled in the soft sound of clinking champagne flutes and the orchestra. A few business transactions were made with good faith and good intentions, but for the most part, the conversations were relaxed and carefree, ranging from world news and politics to the grapevine.
The setting was one of tranquility. As the hours trickled past, everything became more lighthearted and less lucid. The wine was flowing, heads were giddy, eyes more daring, conversations more bold.
Ginny wondered what she was doing there.
Harry sat beside her, emerald eyes very bright from the wine he had consumed. As a Quidditch player for a winning team in England, even the old guard willingly overlooked who he was. Winning Quidditch players had social rank.
She felt lulled by the peace. The night was beautiful. Her eyes drifted.
Draco was reclined in his chair, radiating cool aloofness, but gazing at his companion, the young and dewy blonde who seemed composed entirely out of seamless, flowing curves, with such heat in his eyes that it made Ginny blush. And burn.
Ginny had known he would be there.
She supposed it didn’t matter who the blonde was. She doubted anyone would get a chance to know the blonde, either. The blonde had come with him, and would leave with him. In the course of the week, however, the blonde would be left on the wayside. Draco Malfoy had, in the past two weeks, made it clear that he was single and ready to mingle. It all meant nothing, of course. Still, Ginny’s reasoning was severely impaired when it came to him, and all she could do was smolder helplessly in jealousy and hurt. Even if they had never explicitly stated that they had a relationship, they’d bloody lived together. They hadn’t been broken up for more than a month.
Harry’s hand on her arm made her jump, drawing her guilty eyes to his faintly amused face.
“You know,” he said in a low voice, “You look fabulous tonight. Don’t drool on your dress.”
Ginny flushed. “Shut up.”
Harry sat back, grinning.
Ginny tried paying attention to the dialogue rising and falling around her, cresting at some points with laughter, but before she could stop herself, she flicked a hasty glance at him again.
Draco looked elegantly put-together, even though he had come dressed very casually despite the formality of everyone else’s wear. His charcoal shirt matched the color of his devil-may-care eyes when they darkened, and oh, Ginny remembered how that used to happen when he looked at her. But he wasn’t looking at her. He hadn’t looked at her all night. At one point his gaze passed right over her.
Ginny had known that she had been asking for trouble from the very beginning, and wasn’t that the entire reason for seeing him? She had wanted trouble. She had thought she was indestructible, a woman of his league. How foolish. Draco was a man with many means and she was little more than the young schoolgirl she had been.
But even as a schoolgirl, she hadn’t been innocent. So what had she truly lost?
Her train of troubled thoughts was wrecked by the sound of silverware on glass. Cassius Warrington cleared his throat and beckoned for attention.
“Well, onto the anticipated event, the pièce de résistance of the evening! Would our participants please approach the stage?”
Ginny noted that nine other women in the audience also stood and glided over to Cassius who stood on the raised platform. She also noticed that the young and dewy blonde remained seated and that he was gazing at the stage with lazy, wandering attention.
“Now these ladies have assured me of their sportsmanship,” grinned Cassius. “I suspect that might be tested tonight. Each of these ten women standing before you have agreed to participate in an auction.”
Sinfully wicked laughter rolled across the rapt audience. A shiver ran up the ridges of Ginny’s spine. She stared hard at the floating pink lantern in the distance.
“…the money each lady receives will be donated to the Magical Animals Welfare Organization, who will use the money for…” Cassius fell into the spiel he had fed Ginny, providing a brief history and some facts and figures of the extinction of certain breeds of dragons, so she tuned him out.
Draco had propped his arm up on the table, his thumb brushing his lip as he gazed musingly at Cassius.
“You gentlemen – or women, I suppose, must be fair – are bidding for a week of this person’s time. Compliance on each lady up here goes along with the price, of course. So without further ado, let me introduce you to Daphne Greengrass,” Cassius declared brightly. “Miss Greengrass works as an assistant to…”
Roger Davies, who was publicly smitten with Daphne, snatched the bid for Daphne up very quickly, and that was that. Cassius’ commentary as he conducted the auction was very provocative and full of flair, and soon everyone was entertained by the bidding.
“Next, every male’s pinup fantasy of a beautiful witch with temper and taste, Miss Ginevra Weasley,” announced Cassius, looking as though he were thoroughly enjoying himself. “And gentlemen, I need not say more – you’ve all heard the stories about redheads,” said Cassius with a wicked grin. “Let the bidding begin at a five hundred Galleons.”
The bidding was up at five thousand Galleons before Ginny could blink, a more than blatant reminder of the company she had dined in tonight. When someone tipped his hand at six thousand, she began to worry. It seemed like good fun and all, but exactly who would she get stuck with?
Then someone had said, very firmly, “Ten thousand Galleons.”
Heads turned, and she smiled in relief at Harry, who grinned reassuringly back at her.
Blaise Zabini raised the bid to twenty-five thousand. Harry matched him. Her other male bidders fell silent, preferring to watch the rising bid.
The bidding went on between Blaise and Harry, and she wondered what Blaise was playing at. They had never spoken before. He certainly wasn’t looking at her; instead he was gazing at Cassius with a coolness that bordered on frigidity.
As the seconds dragged by and Galleons went up, Ginny had second and then third and fourth thoughts. She needed money, of course. Cassius had offered her a very good deal at making money. It made sense – it was logical – to agree. After all, she couldn’t be pressured to doing anything she truly didn’t want to do.
Ginny studied Blaise. She really hadn’t heard much about him since they graduated school. To be honest, she hadn’t heard much about him while they attended Hogwarts. Ginny remembered hearing about an incident involving the mysterious Slytherin and Pansy Parkinson on one of the revolving stairs, but that was all.
He was a complete stranger.
Ginny suddenly felt too hot under the bright lights, and she felt like squirming. She could feel so many pairs of eyes on her, and she had another doubtful thought. She had been too rash, too hasty in agreeing. Running blindly away from Draco had not been especially wise.
Draco.
She swore she felt his eyes on her, and when she dared to, Ginny looked up, expecting to see him watching the blonde.
Draco was staring at her. He was speaking to the blonde, who looked very bored –but very beautifully so – with the proceedings, but his eyes were on her.
Ginny colored. She stood still, flushing on the spot.
Another wizard attempted to cut in between Blaise and Harry with thirty-eight thousand, but Blaise was quick to cover the gap.
You could outbid them, Ginny thought, silently trying to communicate a message to him. I could go home with you tonight. I could tell you that I’m sorry. I could tell you everything.
Draco was still staring at her. Isn’t this what you wanted? was the question in his slate grey eyes, and his lip curled in a familiar smirk.
Ginny snapped her eyes back to the pink lantern. So. He wasn’t going to lift a finger. This was his petty revenge. Fine.
Cassius ended the bid at fifty thousand Galleons to Blaise, and Harry lifted a shoulder at her, but Ginny wasn’t looking at him, or Blaise.
She saw only two deserted chairs that sat across the table from each other.
Blaise Zabini came to collect her at the end of the evening.
“Ginny Weasley,” he said crisply. “Good to meet you.”
“Yes,” Ginny said woodenly. “Good to see you again, Blaise.”
His lips curled sardonically. “I’m sure. You certainly sound very enthusiastic. Shall we set a week aside?”
“Now?” she echoed. His briskness confused her as she studied him. He was good looking, broad shoulders, dark and mysterious and all that, but since Harry, her tastes had turned to fairer, lighter boys. “I need to check my schedule…” She stalled.
“Could you check right now? I think it’s best to conclude this as soon as possible.”
Ginny’s face burned. “Well, why did you pay so much for me then, if you just wanted to get it over with?” she snapped.
Blaise lifted an eyebrow at her outburst. “I didn’t,” he said coolly. “While I’m not by any means impoverished, few people can and will spend fifty thousand Galleons on seven days of doubtful entertainment. Draco Malfoy did. Now, can we set a date or not?”
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