Draco Malfoy dreamed that night. It was something that didn’t happen to him often. Most nights, he slept a peaceful, dreamless sleep. In his opinion, those who dreamed were burdened with a weakness of spirit that some called a conscience. He was conveniently devoid of such a useless item in his mentality.
But that night he dreamed. He dreamed of long red hair and tawny eyes that gleamed like gold and laughter that sounded like music. He dreamed of Ginny Weasley.
He jerked awake suddenly, as if he were having a nightmare. In a way, for Draco, dreaming of Ginny was a nightmare. She was the one of the few people that had ever elicited anything other than mild feelings from him, and he had left her behind years ago. Yet simply speaking to her for a few minutes had him waking in a cold sweat and longing to touch pale freckled skin with an ache so strong it left him shivering. And that, for Draco Malfoy, was very scary indeed.
When he’d first entered into a relationship with Ginny, it was strictly for entertainment. And it had provided that quite nicely, on several different levels. It had driven the Weasel and Potter mad that she’d been with him. Draco barely contained his glee each time he had seen Potter’s mouth tighten when Ginny had reached for Draco’s hand in his presence. The stupid git had still been in love with her then, leaving her behind only because his martyr-like ideals told him he had to in order for her to be safe. How disillusioned Potter must have been when Draco convinced Ginny that if she waited on Harry, she’d be waiting forever.
Draco, on the other hand, had no such hero complex, and it didn’t bother him in the least that being involved with him put her directly in the line of fire of both Voldemort’s and his father’s displeasure. He felt that if he were asked about it, he’d explain his purpose and that would keep any sort of repercussion towards him that might come about from occurring. As for what might happen to her, well, it hadn’t been something he’d been bothered about back then.
And then there was the fact that Ginny had several entertaining physical features. On a list that had circulated through the boys dormitories at Hogwart’s during her sixth year, Ginny Weasley had been number two on the list of ‘The ten hottest Witches at Hogwart’s’, second only to Daphne Greengrass, and the only reason Daphne had beat her was because Daphne indulged in certain…sports, and one of them wasn’t Quidditch. Certainly Draco Malfoy’s reputation was such that people expected him to have one of the top three girls on that list on his arm. Daphne had been around a bit too much for her to make the grade, but Ginny would do nicely in her place. And it didn’t hurt that it was the girl that everyone knew Harry Potter still wanted.
And last of all, there was the quite unexpected bonus of the girl weasel’s wit. Of course, Draco had known from their few interactions over the years that she was somewhat strong willed and stubborn. He had found though, after a few interactions with her, that she possessed an intelligence that rivaled that of himself and that mudblood Granger. He could appreciate brains. Hanging about with dimwitted buffoons like Crabbe and Goyle , Draco found himself thrilled to have someone who could actually keep up with his thought process and understand him when he talked about anything more complicated than professional Quidditch scores, what was being served for dinner that night, or who needed some ‘roughing up’ to show proper respect for Slytherins.
So, Draco had set out with Ginny Weasley to cause some discomfort to the Golden Trio, impress the school with the prettiest girl, and to have someone to occasionally amuse himself with some semi-intelligent conversation. But he had been young then, and he hadn’t yet discovered that the fates had a way of turning on you when your plans didn’t follow their weaves.
Draco threw back the sumptuous covers of the bed and padded barefoot across the room to the wardrobe. “It’s a sodding faulty pensieve,” he muttered under his breath as he took a small stone bowl from the shelf on the top.
Draco rarely experienced what others would call ‘pangs of conscience’ but the few times he did, he found the myriad of emotions it brought on burdened him with extreme reactions, something he could not afford, in his line of work. So rather than be weighed down with self-doubt and remorse or regret, all emotions Draco found to be completely worthless, he had acquired the pensieve. He poured every incident in his life that had caused him any sort of emotional reaction into it, and while he still retained a memory of the incidents, the crippling effects of the emotions did not hamper him as they did others. One of the memories the pensieve held was of his relationship with Ginny Weasley.
Only now, it seemed the pensieve was not working properly. It couldn’t be. Draco simply didn’t believe that if it was, he would have woken up short of breath, dripping sweat, and with a hard-on in reaction of seeing his red-head after five years had passed to fade the memory. Draco made a disgusted sound as he caught that last though and rewound it in his head. She wasn’t his red-head any longer. He imagined she belonged to some other bloke now. In fact, it was quite likely that Potter had finally put his stupid morals aside and realized what he had turned away years ago.
Draco felt his hands clench tightly around the pensieve at the thought of Ginny with Harry and he nearly tossed the bowl across the room in frustration before he caught himself. He set the pensieve down carefully on the desk in the corner of the room and ran a hand through his rumpled hair. He examined the outside of the bowl carefully but could detect no cracks or anything out of the ordinary in it. Likewise, the magical substance the bowl contained did not look damaged or tampered with in any way.
Draco sighed. Obviously, if there was a problem with the pensieve, it had to be within it. Realizing that he wasn’t going to be getting anymore sleep that night anyway, he allowed himself to enter the pensieve, into a memory he’d placed there five years ago.
The blond boy watched the small red-haired girl from the safety of the shadows. He had come upon her on his normal nightly stroll, ensconced on the bench he often stopped at. He’d never known why the bench was there. It was dangerously close to the edge of the forbidden forest, a place the teachers at Hogwart’s definitely didn’t want the students. He often came there, just to get away from the noise and constant posturing of the Slytherin common room. But tonight he had found his quiet retreat already occupied. She had been there for the last ten minutes, not doing anything, just staring out into the forest and up at the night sky alternately, and his patience was wearing thin.
“Don’t do it,” Draco said, from his place just behind the blond boy, knowing already that the boy would indeed do it anyway.
The boy stepped out of the darkness. “Well, well, if it isn’t the girl weasel. What are you doing out her all alone, weasel girl, so close to the bad ole forest in the dark?”
The red-haired girl jumped at the sudden voice in the silence and turned around to glare at him. “Malfoy. It had to be you, didn’t it? Go away, my night’s already been ruined and you couldn’t possibly make it any worse, so there is no work for you here.”
“Oh, don’t be so quick, Red. I can always make it worse.”
“Don’t call me that, Ferret. I’m not interested in fighting with you, so just go away or I’ll hex you again.”
He shuddered as he remembered the horrible bat-bogey hex she had put on him. Still, it only firmed his resolve to send her off in tears. “What is ‘it’ anyway? Have a fight with your boyfriend? Potter found himself another chit that snogs a bit better than you?”
It was a stupid thing to say. Not even a very good insult, as his standard of insults went, but it had more than the desired effect on Ginny. Her lip trembled and even in the dim light of the moon, Draco could see the tears glistening in her eyes.
“Harry is not my boyfriend, not anymore. Don’t you know that? Everyone else does.”
Draco snorted. “Everyone knows he’s still besotted with you, and only gave you up because he thinks he’s protecting you. Stupid git. Does he really think that breaking up with you is going to keep the Dark Lord from getting you if he decides to? It’s not as if everyone can’t see it was all a ploy.”
Ginny sighed and replied, “That’s exactly what I said. Glad to see someone agrees with me, even if it is you, Malfoy.”
“No! Don’t say it. You can still get away. Turn around and walk away. It’s not too late. Just…don’t…say it.” Draco said watching the face of his younger self change from arrogant confidence to displeasure as he realized he had comforted the red-haired girl instead of insulting her, and then to demonic smirking as he opened his mouth for the comment that would seal his fate to hers for the next two years.
“Maybe I was wrong. Maybe Potter really did find someone who snogs better than you Weasley.”
“You said it,” Draco sighed, running a hand over his face.
Ginny was so quick that Draco didn’t realize she had moved until she was inches away from him, a strange gleam in her eyes. “Nobody snogs better than me Malfoy. Here, let me prove it to you.”
As she rose on her toes, she slid a hand around the back of his neck and tugged his shocked face down to hers…
Draco dragged his mind up out of the past in the pensieve back into the present of his dark bedchamber. No need to look any further into that particular memory. He remembered what had happened next without any help.
For just a moment Draco was sixteen years old again, angry at the whole world without really knowing why. And then she had kissed him and the world began to spin the wrong way. Draco told himself he would use Ginny, he told himself that it would entertain him to ‘keep’ her for a while. He told himself a lot of things over the next two years but the truth of it was, with one kiss, Draco Malfoy was betrayed by his own heart that night.
Shaking his head to throw the memory out of his head he sighed. Obviously there wasn’t anything wrong with the pensieve.
“Ah, Red, how the hell can it be that you can still do this to me?” he asked the empty room.
Draco was putting the bowl back on the shelf when he heard the pecking at his window. Closing the wardrobe doors, he turned and opened the window. A large brown owl hopped through and deposited a scroll on the desk.
“Does your mistress know what time it is?” Draco asked the creature as he picked up the scroll and began to unroll it. The owl only stared at Draco impassively.
Draco began reading the scrawling script on the scroll. His expression went from irritation to amazement. Snatching a quill from the desk he hurriedly dipped it into the ink jar and sketched a quick message on the bottom. He rolled the paper back up and held it up for the owl. The owl took the scroll and took flight through the window into the night sky. After watching it soar off for a moment, Draco closed the window and rubbed his hands together as he strode to the wardrobe for the second time that night.
His eyes rested on the stone bowl on the shelf for just a moment and he closed his eyes for a moment. It was good to see her again, he thought, but if that message is true, then things are about to change. There will be casualties and she’s likely to be one of the first. I don’t intend to be a casualty. Not even for her.
And with that, Draco firmly put all thoughts of Ginny Weasley from his mind. After dressing quickly he threw floo powder into the cold hearth and said “Spinner’s End” and stepped into the green fire.
Dusting soot off his shoulders, he looked around the dinghy little room. A pretty woman with a slightly pug-nose strode towards him.
“Draco, hello.”
Draco took the woman’s hand in his and kissed it. “Pansy. I was surprised to get a message from you. It wasn’t smart to be so careless with your location. Anyone could have intercepted your owl. You’re very high on the ministry’s wanted list right now, and I happen to know of at least one Auror who would love to know you’re right here under her nose. You left a very bitter taste in her mouth in Vienna.”
Pansy Parkinson rolled her eyes. “You mean your little weasel, I presume. Yes, I imagine she’d be chewing on the handle of her broomstick to get to me. That witch is a lot more dangerous than she appears. Too bad you couldn’t ever turn her to our side.”
“She isn’t my weasel anymore Pansy. And she isn’t little anymore either.”
Pansy gave him a sharp look. “You say that like you know from recent experience Draco.”
Draco gave her a twisted smile. “In fact, I do. I had the pleasure of running into Auror Weasley just today. Or rather, yesterday, considering the time.”
Pansy gasped. “You ran into her? And she saw you as well? No, don’t answer that, I can see from the look on your face that she did. I can’t believe that she didn’t stupefy you immediately and cart you off. By the Gods, Draco Malfoy, what is your secret? I scrambled to get away from her, and had to live hand to mouth for months because I didn’t dare use magic to contact anyone and you she lets just walk away?”
“Ahem. Forgive me for interrupting this intensely entertaining conversation, but we have bigger things to discuss at the moment.”
Draco and Pansy both turned and observed a slender, greasy haired man standing in the hidden doorway frowning at them both.
“Snape is right, Draco. You have to go in and speak to him. He has many new…ideas.” Pansy said, an indiscernible look on her face. “He’s asked for you already.”
“I’m still having difficulty believing he’s alive. Potter didn’t leave much of him the last time they….” Draco trailed off.
“Well, be that as it may, he is alive, and he wants to see you. Now.” Snape said, stepping out of the doorway and gesturing towards the dark room beyond.
Draco looked at Pansy for a moment, who gave away no expression on her face, and then he swept past Snape and into the room.
When he came out, two hours later, the sun was rising. Draco dropped on the grimy couch and rubbed his temples with his fingers. Pansy sat down next to him and put a hand on his shoulder. Severus Snape only stood at the window, looking out to the dirty little street.
Finally Draco raised his head and with a look that took in both the woman at his side and the man at the window he asked “Sweet Circe, what are we going to do?”
But that night he dreamed. He dreamed of long red hair and tawny eyes that gleamed like gold and laughter that sounded like music. He dreamed of Ginny Weasley.
He jerked awake suddenly, as if he were having a nightmare. In a way, for Draco, dreaming of Ginny was a nightmare. She was the one of the few people that had ever elicited anything other than mild feelings from him, and he had left her behind years ago. Yet simply speaking to her for a few minutes had him waking in a cold sweat and longing to touch pale freckled skin with an ache so strong it left him shivering. And that, for Draco Malfoy, was very scary indeed.
When he’d first entered into a relationship with Ginny, it was strictly for entertainment. And it had provided that quite nicely, on several different levels. It had driven the Weasel and Potter mad that she’d been with him. Draco barely contained his glee each time he had seen Potter’s mouth tighten when Ginny had reached for Draco’s hand in his presence. The stupid git had still been in love with her then, leaving her behind only because his martyr-like ideals told him he had to in order for her to be safe. How disillusioned Potter must have been when Draco convinced Ginny that if she waited on Harry, she’d be waiting forever.
Draco, on the other hand, had no such hero complex, and it didn’t bother him in the least that being involved with him put her directly in the line of fire of both Voldemort’s and his father’s displeasure. He felt that if he were asked about it, he’d explain his purpose and that would keep any sort of repercussion towards him that might come about from occurring. As for what might happen to her, well, it hadn’t been something he’d been bothered about back then.
And then there was the fact that Ginny had several entertaining physical features. On a list that had circulated through the boys dormitories at Hogwart’s during her sixth year, Ginny Weasley had been number two on the list of ‘The ten hottest Witches at Hogwart’s’, second only to Daphne Greengrass, and the only reason Daphne had beat her was because Daphne indulged in certain…sports, and one of them wasn’t Quidditch. Certainly Draco Malfoy’s reputation was such that people expected him to have one of the top three girls on that list on his arm. Daphne had been around a bit too much for her to make the grade, but Ginny would do nicely in her place. And it didn’t hurt that it was the girl that everyone knew Harry Potter still wanted.
And last of all, there was the quite unexpected bonus of the girl weasel’s wit. Of course, Draco had known from their few interactions over the years that she was somewhat strong willed and stubborn. He had found though, after a few interactions with her, that she possessed an intelligence that rivaled that of himself and that mudblood Granger. He could appreciate brains. Hanging about with dimwitted buffoons like Crabbe and Goyle , Draco found himself thrilled to have someone who could actually keep up with his thought process and understand him when he talked about anything more complicated than professional Quidditch scores, what was being served for dinner that night, or who needed some ‘roughing up’ to show proper respect for Slytherins.
So, Draco had set out with Ginny Weasley to cause some discomfort to the Golden Trio, impress the school with the prettiest girl, and to have someone to occasionally amuse himself with some semi-intelligent conversation. But he had been young then, and he hadn’t yet discovered that the fates had a way of turning on you when your plans didn’t follow their weaves.
Draco threw back the sumptuous covers of the bed and padded barefoot across the room to the wardrobe. “It’s a sodding faulty pensieve,” he muttered under his breath as he took a small stone bowl from the shelf on the top.
Draco rarely experienced what others would call ‘pangs of conscience’ but the few times he did, he found the myriad of emotions it brought on burdened him with extreme reactions, something he could not afford, in his line of work. So rather than be weighed down with self-doubt and remorse or regret, all emotions Draco found to be completely worthless, he had acquired the pensieve. He poured every incident in his life that had caused him any sort of emotional reaction into it, and while he still retained a memory of the incidents, the crippling effects of the emotions did not hamper him as they did others. One of the memories the pensieve held was of his relationship with Ginny Weasley.
Only now, it seemed the pensieve was not working properly. It couldn’t be. Draco simply didn’t believe that if it was, he would have woken up short of breath, dripping sweat, and with a hard-on in reaction of seeing his red-head after five years had passed to fade the memory. Draco made a disgusted sound as he caught that last though and rewound it in his head. She wasn’t his red-head any longer. He imagined she belonged to some other bloke now. In fact, it was quite likely that Potter had finally put his stupid morals aside and realized what he had turned away years ago.
Draco felt his hands clench tightly around the pensieve at the thought of Ginny with Harry and he nearly tossed the bowl across the room in frustration before he caught himself. He set the pensieve down carefully on the desk in the corner of the room and ran a hand through his rumpled hair. He examined the outside of the bowl carefully but could detect no cracks or anything out of the ordinary in it. Likewise, the magical substance the bowl contained did not look damaged or tampered with in any way.
Draco sighed. Obviously, if there was a problem with the pensieve, it had to be within it. Realizing that he wasn’t going to be getting anymore sleep that night anyway, he allowed himself to enter the pensieve, into a memory he’d placed there five years ago.
The blond boy watched the small red-haired girl from the safety of the shadows. He had come upon her on his normal nightly stroll, ensconced on the bench he often stopped at. He’d never known why the bench was there. It was dangerously close to the edge of the forbidden forest, a place the teachers at Hogwart’s definitely didn’t want the students. He often came there, just to get away from the noise and constant posturing of the Slytherin common room. But tonight he had found his quiet retreat already occupied. She had been there for the last ten minutes, not doing anything, just staring out into the forest and up at the night sky alternately, and his patience was wearing thin.
“Don’t do it,” Draco said, from his place just behind the blond boy, knowing already that the boy would indeed do it anyway.
The boy stepped out of the darkness. “Well, well, if it isn’t the girl weasel. What are you doing out her all alone, weasel girl, so close to the bad ole forest in the dark?”
The red-haired girl jumped at the sudden voice in the silence and turned around to glare at him. “Malfoy. It had to be you, didn’t it? Go away, my night’s already been ruined and you couldn’t possibly make it any worse, so there is no work for you here.”
“Oh, don’t be so quick, Red. I can always make it worse.”
“Don’t call me that, Ferret. I’m not interested in fighting with you, so just go away or I’ll hex you again.”
He shuddered as he remembered the horrible bat-bogey hex she had put on him. Still, it only firmed his resolve to send her off in tears. “What is ‘it’ anyway? Have a fight with your boyfriend? Potter found himself another chit that snogs a bit better than you?”
It was a stupid thing to say. Not even a very good insult, as his standard of insults went, but it had more than the desired effect on Ginny. Her lip trembled and even in the dim light of the moon, Draco could see the tears glistening in her eyes.
“Harry is not my boyfriend, not anymore. Don’t you know that? Everyone else does.”
Draco snorted. “Everyone knows he’s still besotted with you, and only gave you up because he thinks he’s protecting you. Stupid git. Does he really think that breaking up with you is going to keep the Dark Lord from getting you if he decides to? It’s not as if everyone can’t see it was all a ploy.”
Ginny sighed and replied, “That’s exactly what I said. Glad to see someone agrees with me, even if it is you, Malfoy.”
“No! Don’t say it. You can still get away. Turn around and walk away. It’s not too late. Just…don’t…say it.” Draco said watching the face of his younger self change from arrogant confidence to displeasure as he realized he had comforted the red-haired girl instead of insulting her, and then to demonic smirking as he opened his mouth for the comment that would seal his fate to hers for the next two years.
“Maybe I was wrong. Maybe Potter really did find someone who snogs better than you Weasley.”
“You said it,” Draco sighed, running a hand over his face.
Ginny was so quick that Draco didn’t realize she had moved until she was inches away from him, a strange gleam in her eyes. “Nobody snogs better than me Malfoy. Here, let me prove it to you.”
As she rose on her toes, she slid a hand around the back of his neck and tugged his shocked face down to hers…
Draco dragged his mind up out of the past in the pensieve back into the present of his dark bedchamber. No need to look any further into that particular memory. He remembered what had happened next without any help.
For just a moment Draco was sixteen years old again, angry at the whole world without really knowing why. And then she had kissed him and the world began to spin the wrong way. Draco told himself he would use Ginny, he told himself that it would entertain him to ‘keep’ her for a while. He told himself a lot of things over the next two years but the truth of it was, with one kiss, Draco Malfoy was betrayed by his own heart that night.
Shaking his head to throw the memory out of his head he sighed. Obviously there wasn’t anything wrong with the pensieve.
“Ah, Red, how the hell can it be that you can still do this to me?” he asked the empty room.
Draco was putting the bowl back on the shelf when he heard the pecking at his window. Closing the wardrobe doors, he turned and opened the window. A large brown owl hopped through and deposited a scroll on the desk.
“Does your mistress know what time it is?” Draco asked the creature as he picked up the scroll and began to unroll it. The owl only stared at Draco impassively.
Draco began reading the scrawling script on the scroll. His expression went from irritation to amazement. Snatching a quill from the desk he hurriedly dipped it into the ink jar and sketched a quick message on the bottom. He rolled the paper back up and held it up for the owl. The owl took the scroll and took flight through the window into the night sky. After watching it soar off for a moment, Draco closed the window and rubbed his hands together as he strode to the wardrobe for the second time that night.
His eyes rested on the stone bowl on the shelf for just a moment and he closed his eyes for a moment. It was good to see her again, he thought, but if that message is true, then things are about to change. There will be casualties and she’s likely to be one of the first. I don’t intend to be a casualty. Not even for her.
And with that, Draco firmly put all thoughts of Ginny Weasley from his mind. After dressing quickly he threw floo powder into the cold hearth and said “Spinner’s End” and stepped into the green fire.
Dusting soot off his shoulders, he looked around the dinghy little room. A pretty woman with a slightly pug-nose strode towards him.
“Draco, hello.”
Draco took the woman’s hand in his and kissed it. “Pansy. I was surprised to get a message from you. It wasn’t smart to be so careless with your location. Anyone could have intercepted your owl. You’re very high on the ministry’s wanted list right now, and I happen to know of at least one Auror who would love to know you’re right here under her nose. You left a very bitter taste in her mouth in Vienna.”
Pansy Parkinson rolled her eyes. “You mean your little weasel, I presume. Yes, I imagine she’d be chewing on the handle of her broomstick to get to me. That witch is a lot more dangerous than she appears. Too bad you couldn’t ever turn her to our side.”
“She isn’t my weasel anymore Pansy. And she isn’t little anymore either.”
Pansy gave him a sharp look. “You say that like you know from recent experience Draco.”
Draco gave her a twisted smile. “In fact, I do. I had the pleasure of running into Auror Weasley just today. Or rather, yesterday, considering the time.”
Pansy gasped. “You ran into her? And she saw you as well? No, don’t answer that, I can see from the look on your face that she did. I can’t believe that she didn’t stupefy you immediately and cart you off. By the Gods, Draco Malfoy, what is your secret? I scrambled to get away from her, and had to live hand to mouth for months because I didn’t dare use magic to contact anyone and you she lets just walk away?”
“Ahem. Forgive me for interrupting this intensely entertaining conversation, but we have bigger things to discuss at the moment.”
Draco and Pansy both turned and observed a slender, greasy haired man standing in the hidden doorway frowning at them both.
“Snape is right, Draco. You have to go in and speak to him. He has many new…ideas.” Pansy said, an indiscernible look on her face. “He’s asked for you already.”
“I’m still having difficulty believing he’s alive. Potter didn’t leave much of him the last time they….” Draco trailed off.
“Well, be that as it may, he is alive, and he wants to see you. Now.” Snape said, stepping out of the doorway and gesturing towards the dark room beyond.
Draco looked at Pansy for a moment, who gave away no expression on her face, and then he swept past Snape and into the room.
When he came out, two hours later, the sun was rising. Draco dropped on the grimy couch and rubbed his temples with his fingers. Pansy sat down next to him and put a hand on his shoulder. Severus Snape only stood at the window, looking out to the dirty little street.
Finally Draco raised his head and with a look that took in both the woman at his side and the man at the window he asked “Sweet Circe, what are we going to do?”
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