Chapter Three

When Ginny woke up the next morning it was with a silly grin on her face. She had been having a heavenly dream. It involved rose petals, ice cream and....the smile was replaced by a grimace, Draco. She sat up and rubbed the sleep out of her eyes. When she swung her legs over the bed she noticed a note propped up on her bedside table. It was a plain piece of parchment folded over with her name written neatly in red ink. She grabbed it up thinking that nightmare-boy had left it. She unfolded it quickly and dropped it into her lap within a second. What was this? The letter simply said, “Stay away from D.M.! He is MINE!” It was all written in red ink. Ginny looked over the short note again. Well, guess they had an audience last night. ‘Wonder who it was?’ she wondered. Then she was startled by a thought. For it to be in her room, it was someone who knew the password. She looked anxiously around but all her fifth year roommates were still sleeping, supposedly. Well, that was a nasty thing for a fellow Gryffindor to do. And, she thought with some amusement, which one of them wanted the leader of the evil Slytherins?

Draco didn’t want to wake up. He was snuggled up under his niffler blanket dreaming about smashing Potter’s face in with a bludger. Something tickled his nose. He swiped at it but it continued. He opened one eye and groaned.

“Blaise, this is the boy’s dorm. Go back to your own kind.” Draco said as he rolled over.

“Ah, don’t be like that, Draco. Save your nasty attitude for the Quidditch match this afternoon.” Blaise sat down on the bed and ran a red-tipped finger down his back.

Then she added, “ I have something for you.”

This got his attention. “What is it? Money? Fame in a bottle? Potter’s head in a bottle?” Draco turned around and leaned back on his elbows. His hair was tousled and he looked good enough to eat. Blaise thought fleetingly that she knew where Veelas were coming from.

“Nothing that good, I’m afraid. It’s breakfast in bed. Oh, and this letter that I found on your floor as I came in.” Blaise said pointing to the red inked parchment.

She grinned evilly and asked “Who’s G.W. and what have you been doing with her that you have someone leaving you threatening letters?”

Draco raised one eyebrow as he read the note. It simply read “Stay away from G.W! She is MINE!” His first thoughts were almost identical to Ginny’s. They’d had an audience and it must be a Slytherin for the note to be in his dorm. Blaise was staring at him fixedly. Well, he better check a school roster and see how many G.W.s there were in school. He hoped at least there was more than just one. That wouldn’t be much of a stretch for Blaise to figure out, now would it?

Draco yawned, took the tray from her, told her thanks and asked her to leave him in peace. She looked affronted and started to protest. Then her glittery violet eyes rested on the note and she slowly got up from the bed. “Enjoy your breakfast, dear.” She sashayed out of the room in a way that left no doubt in her ability to hold a captive audience.

Draco ate his breakfast while pondering the note. He sure wasn’t one to back down from a threat though. On the contrary, he usually egged them on and then wiped the egg on their face. He grinned and could hardly wait to start ruffling some feathers. He’d find out who wrote it. Then there’d be hell to pay for threatening a Malfoy.

As Draco finished his breakfast he plotted what to do next. He decided to up the stakes. He wasn’t going to blatantly court Ginny, because he was a Malfoy and she was...well, for lack of a better word- poor. He was also a Slytherin, after all, and had a reputation to uphold. But, he could talk to her discreetly, and touch her any chance he got. He especially liked that part of the plan. Whoever her admirer was, would surely be watching anytime they were in close proximity to each other. He also had to find out who the traitorous Gryffindor-loving Slytherin was who wrote the note. Then, he had to punish them. All in all, it sounded like a great time to him. Snogging, spying, and squashing someone. ‘What a wonderful life,’ he thought as he got out of bed.

Draco started his plan into action on his way to his first class. It was his favorite, Potions. He saw Ginny in the hall as he descended into the dungeon floor. He casually walked by her and pinched her on the ass. She jumped and grabbed her bum. When she saw who it was, she turned bright red and looked a bit like a pickled beet. He had kept on walking but turned to wink at her. She mouthed something that looked a little naughty for a Gryffindor and he laughed. She wished he hadn’t though. She wasn’t sure that she had heard him laugh for real before and wow, it about brought her to her knees. She had an insane urge to juggle while standing on her nose to see if he would do it again. Then she smirked; she would more likely get a laugh from Malfoy for poking first years in the eye with a hot poker.

‘Was Adrian Pucey giving him a dirty look? And was Crabbe giving Ginny the once over when he walked by her?’ Draco thought as he glanced back in her direction when he entered his classroom. He might have to drop a rat’s spleen into their polyjuice potion today.

Ginny, on the other hand, was just wondering what the heck was going on. Draco pinching her arse blew her mind. That note that she found this morning was driving her nuts too. Who was spying on them in the garden? And, which one of her classmates wanted Draco for themselves? Which one was that stupid? Draco was pig-headed, mean, dead sexy...oh strike that last one, snotty, evil, really cute....well, anyway, nobody in their right mind would want him. She ignored the little voice in her head that said she would. She spent the rest of her Ancient Runes class doodling little hearts with Draco written in them. Then she scribbled them all out with a mad rush when she realized what she was doing.

Ginny moved through her whole day in a dazed state. It seemed she ran into Malfoy everywhere. If she was on the third floor, he was. If she was getting a drink from the Never-ending water fountain, he was. Once, she was excused from Herbology to use the bathroom and he was doing the same thing! By the end of the mind-boggling day, she was starting to expect him to be behind every corner. As she crawled into bed, she wouldn’t have been a bit surprised if he would have jumped out of her covers and yelled “Boo!”.

‘Well, that was a fun day,’ Draco thought to himself as he settled into the Slytherin’s common room that night. It was a little drafty and he was glad for the fire that burned in the fireplace before his feet. He ran down his day in his mind- he had shadowed Ginny all day, he was afraid that he would have gotten bored but it was quite amusing really; he spied on all his fellow Slythies throughout the day but really didn’t have a clue about who had left the note in his room; he caught the snitch this afternoon against his archrivals, which was quite a feather in his cap; and to top his day off, at dinner he raised his glass in a toast to Ginny across the room and she spit her mashed rutabagas all over Ron and Harry. Ah, life was good when you were bad. Later, he went up to bed and wondered what Ginny was doing. He wondered if she was in bed, and if she was, if she was wearing a see-through shimmery thing. He thought about sneaking up to the tower to find out but decided he wasn’t up to battling the Fat Lady tonight. So instead, he drifted off to sleep with pleasant dreams imminent.

A shadowy figure crept along the halls of Hogwarts. It’s stealth was an indication of how well it knew them. The school was a maze of secret corridors and moving staircases. Fred and George would have appreciated this figures ease with the school’s layout. First the cloaked one eased its way past the Fat Lady portrait. She was too sleepy to notice who was giving the password. It was the correct one, so she did her job and swung forward. The lone figure left a single rose on the young girl’s pillow. She was very pretty. Her black lashes swept down almost onto her freckled cheek. The intruder had to pull back its hand from an impulse to touch the girl. Soon after this, a solitary dark figure went into the pit of Hogwarts. The dungeon was its destination. With the right password the rough stone walls gave way to an entry. A bit further and it was in its target’s room. Draco was curled up with a piece of fabric that looked remarkably like a red and gold scarf, mumbling quietly in his sleep. The poor boy was quite smitten with Ms. Weasley. It was almost tragic, as this boy would never admit it, even to himself. The quiet figure did much the same thing as upstairs. It laid a flower on the boy’s pillow then crept silently off with no one the wiser.

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