"We've passed a school, town hall and a police station. Wouldn't it stand to reason that there'd be people living here to actually go to those places?" Ginny asked rhetorically to herself.
"Truly, your logic is stunning," Draco muttered grumpily, staring out the passenger side window at nothing.
"Shut up," Ginny said, as a matter of course. They came upon a battered sign in front of what looked like a house; there were lights on inside, which was heartening. "What's that say?" Ginny asked, peering at the sign on which her headlights shone.
"Rory Age B Ampersand," Draco said, reading the letters that hadn't yet been obscured by snow.
"Good enough for me," Ginny decided, parking the car as best she could. She frowned upon getting out of the car and finding it rather askew, and hoped she hadn't accidentally parked smack in the middle of the garden. She unlocked the boot, and as it yawned open, she grabbed both their luggage, taking care to drop his onto the wet ground. It was possible he swore at her, but the howling wind drowned his voice out, and Ginny trudged towards the front door of the house wearing a victorious grin.
"Yeeeh," Ginny said in mild disgust, inspecting the doorknocker, which appeared to be a brass carving of some sort of hideous, bearded old man. She lifted the ring delicately and struck it three times, as Draco ambled up behind her, muttering darkly.
"Coming, coming!" said a woman's voice from inside. Presently, the door swung open, revealing a short, plump woman with a kind face and white hair piled atop her head. "Welcome, welcome! Welcome to the Rosemary Cottage! Do come in out of that snow," she gushed, ushering them inside and closing the door quickly behind them. An intense warmth coming from the fireplace hit them like a wall. The old woman walked briskly to a stately wooden desk that looked strangely out of place among the rest of the furniture, mostly Victorian-inspired and rose-patterned pieces, which made up a large living room.
"Erm, sorry about the..." Ginny said, gesturing to the wet footprints she and Draco had left on the floorboards.
"No, no, no," said the old woman cheerily. "That'll clean right up. I'm Mrs. Burnham or, er, Emma, if you prefer," which she clearly didn't, "and sooner or later you'll meet my husband and our darling cat Bailey. Oh, where's he gone, now? He's usually curled up right in front of the fire.
"Ooh, it's a good thing you've gotten out of that storm while you could. You poor things, you're wet all over! I'll get you two in a room right away, and you can warm up and dry off! Oh, I haven't seen a storm like this in years. Lucky we just got a big delivery this morning; it can last us the week," Mrs. Burnham chattered, pulling out the register and a pen from drawer. "You'll want to go up these stairs, and it'll be the first room on your left. You'll notice each room's got its own little bathroom, which our guests always find very lovely."
"It's just that - well, we really wanted separate rooms, you see," Draco said, melted snow dripping steadily from the hood resting over his head.
"Oh!" Mrs. Burnham exclaimed, as though taken aback that they weren't actually a couple. "I'm sorry; we've just got the one room available. Usually we have three. It's a four-bedroom place; one's for me and my husband, another's currently occupied, and a third's under renovations, so I'm afraid there's just the one left."
"Erm, d'you know if there's anything else close by?" Ginny asked.
"Well... this is a very small village, and we really don't get too many visitors up here; this is pretty much the only lodging place we've got. There might be a few families who'd be willing to put you up, and oh, there's another B&B the next town over, a few miles off, but... well, it's a bit wild out there, isn't it? You were barely able to park without taking my sign off!" she said, gesturing at the way the wind was whipping the snow around outside. She laughed a little nervously, her head bobbing up and down.
"Do excuse us for a moment," Draco said to the proprietor, and pulled on Ginny's arm to a far corner of the living room, while Mrs. Burnham looked on in puzzlement. "This is stupid, Weasley. Can't we just Apparate home and come back again when there isn't a natural disaster on our heels?"
"What about the car? We'll have to come back for that, won't we? And then they'll ask questions. 'That's right, Mrs. Burnham, we climbed out the window and walked home. And we've just come back on foot for our car,'" Ginny said sarcastically.
"No one'll even notice!"
"Well, she saw us drive in, didn't she? We've parked right outside that front window; she can see the car from the front desk. And you know how Muggles are! They see a few fucking fairy lights here and there, and they think it's aliens come to get them, and then they start a whole investigation. We can't just disappear; it's too late now. And we barely have a clue where we are right now; we're both liable to splinch ourselves if we tried to Apparate back," Ginny whispered furiously. "Plus, I'm bloody tired; I've been stuck in that car with you for far too long, and frankly, putting my feet up and getting a bit of rest doesn't sound like a bad idea. You can go if you want, but I'm staying."
Draco frowned his disapproval and crossed his arms, but stayed put. At Ginny's "Well?" he said, "I never leave a partner behind. No matter how glad I'd be to be rid of them."
"Noble of you," Ginny huffed, and walked back to the desk, plastering a smile on her face.
"Have you decided?" Mrs. Burnham asked politely.
"Yes, of course. We'll be glad to take the room. Thanks so much," Ginny said, taking the register and the proffered pen. Then, her mouth curling into a wicked smile, Ginny signed both their names into the register.
Ginny and Draco came to the top of the stairs, and finding their door straight away, parked their luggage on the landing while Ginny fumbled for the key Mrs. Burnham had handed to her downstairs. Further down the corridor, the occupants of the next room - a middle-aged man and probably his wife - exited, in the midst of a conversation in which the woman blandly accused the man of never listening to anything she said, and she had told him about her friend Sally from the aerobics group a billion times.
"Shit," Draco breathed when he caught sight of the couple, and ducked behind Ginny, as if his lanky frame stooping behind her wasn't any more conspicuous. "Hurry up, open the door."
As soon as Ginny shoved the key into the door and unlocked it, Draco not so gently pushed her aside to slip into the room. Ginny clenched her jaw and picked up the bags that had been left on the corridor floor. "Chivalry is most definitely good and dead," she muttered to the carpet. The couple from the next room looked at her, a little perplexed.
"Er, is your friend all right?" the woman inquired politely.
"Yeah, yeah," Ginny said quickly. "Erm, he's knackered is all. Just getting over a touch of the flu," she added, shrugging her shoulders in that well, what can you do sort of way.
"Oh, that's too bad," said the woman sympathetically. "Nasty time of year."
"Yeah, really," Ginny agreed, nodding seriously and wondering if she'd be obliged to talk to these people about the weather soon.
"Well, we're going down for a bit of supper," said the man with a warm smile. "Feel free to join us - and your friend too, if he's up to it."
"Oh, thank you, yeah, maybe I'll - we'll see you downstairs," Ginny said, simultaneously still irritated but glad for a spot of human kindness, which Draco was clearly incapable of mustering. She smiled at them as they made their way down the hall towards the stairs.
"Get the fuck in here," Draco whispered curtly from the other side of the door after the couple had passed.
Ginny complied and hurled a piece of luggage at him, which he caught with an "oof." "Haven't you ever heard of ladies first? Or manners? At all?"
"Sorry," said Draco, at which Ginny's head jerked backwards in surprise. "What? Don't be stupid; I know when an apology is warranted."
"It has to be sincere to count. Anyway, what the hell was that out there? You owe those two money or something?"
"Money? Weasley, I could buy and sell you if I wanted," Draco said dismissively, pushing his hood off his head. To cut off any further argument, he added, "I recognise that man. I think he used to be an active Voldemort supporter."
"Him? Really?"
"Why?"
"I dunno, he seemed rather nice."
"On his best days Voldemort was a right charmer."
"Ugh, don't remind me."
"We'll have to keep an eye on him. Did he see me, d'you think?"
"Only the effects of your rudely shoving me out of the way."
"Good," Draco said distractedly. "Wonder if he'll recognise me." The answer was quite obvious; if a person from the wizarding community had been paying any attention at all before, during or after the war, that person would most certainly know who Draco Malfoy was, and possibly know him quite a bit better than one's own relatives.
"They asked after you," Ginny said rather accusatorily, "and I told them you had a bout of the flu, so I suppose you could lie low for a while, skulk about in the room. Maybe the snow'll stop soon and we won't even have to cross paths again."
Ginny took off her wet winter things, hanging them up on a nearby coat rack, and rubbed her hands vigorously together to fight off the winter chill. "I'm off for dinner. Ta," she said.
"Oh," said Draco, suddenly realising he was hungry.
"I'll bring something back up for you," Ginny said on her way out the door. "And, er, just so you know, I've signed our names into the register. Fake ones, of course."
"Fine," Draco said, not quite catching on yet.
Just before closing the door behind her, Ginny added cheekily, "Your name's now Drew Peacock." She shut the door quickly before he could throw something at her head.
Suddenly struck by the ludicrousness of the situation they'd found themselves in, Draco found he had no energy to spare for being outraged. So he laughed instead, and then took off a boot and threw it at the door for good measure.
Draco paced around the room for a time, trying to remember where he had seen the man next door before. He had a vague recollection of the man's presence at a Death Eater meeting that had been held once at the Malfoy residence when he'd been quite small, but for the life of him, Draco couldn't remember who the man was. He hoped Ginny would use dinner conversation to try to extract some details out of the man; he should have given her direct instructions to do so. But she was a bright girl; perhaps she would have figured it out herself. He didn't begrudge her intelligence; in fact, he was glad that at least he hadn't been stuck with some half-wit for a partner. If only she wasn't so damn disagreeable all the time, shooting her idiot mouth off at every available opportunity, just like her brother. She was much prettier, though, at least, so that was one step up from Ron Weasley.
The room was smallish, much smaller than his own bedroom back in Wiltshire. There was a wooden desk and chair on the north end of the room, the desk containing nothing but a lamp on top and a bible with yellowing pages in its bottom drawer. Next to that, a rose-coloured armchair, and a two-shelf bookcase with a sparse collection of books that Draco looked upon with disinterest - a farmer's almanac from 1987, a few thrillers that looked dead boring, a biography of some person he'd never heard of, and six or seven trashy romance novels, a number of which looked as though they'd been perused with some frequency.
Draco's mouth curled into something of a sneer as he indelicately pushed one of the romances by its spine back into line with the rest of the books. He hoped that whoever had read those things hadn't gotten disgusting ideas and done those ideas on the four-poster bed in the room. The bed. One bed. He looked at his luggage, and then at Ginny's, and then out the window. Snow was still falling, hard and fast, and Draco looked at the bed again. It was conceivable that the weather would force them to stay for the night, and there was no way in hell they would agree to share a bed.
He contemplated turning the armchair into another bed, but there was no space for it, unless he made the real bed smaller and moved some of the furniture around. But that seemed more work than necessary. He thought about splitting the bed into two beds, but for as skilled as he was in Transfiguration, he wasn't quite as experienced at Untransfiguration. What if he couldn't put the bed back in one piece? That wouldn't be fun to explain. He'd done his fair share of, say, Transfiguring his captive criminals into some form that'd be easier to transport back to the Ministry, and, not that he'd shirked his duties, but when it came time to turn them back to normal, there was always someone else there who took care of it. Frowning, Draco noted to himself that he ought to work on Untransfiguration when he returned to London. Until then, he hoped the Weasel would know how to do it. Except that would mean that he'd have to admit that she was more skilled in some form of magic than he, and that would just be embarrassing.
Ginny returned to the room about an hour later, with a large bowl of soup, bread and well wishes from the rest of the house in tow. She stood outside the room for a moment, wondering whether it would be considered impolite to just walk in. Technically, it was her room, too, but what if he was... indecent? Well, she decided resolutely, if he was, then it was his own fault he hadn't thought to use the bathroom to be indecent in.
She walked in without knocking, but kept her eyes trained on the ground while loudly announcing her return.
"Took your time," Draco said, reclining on the bed, as clothed as she had left him.
"Well, I was grilling our suspect," Ginny said, handing him the food. "His name's Joe Lewis."
It didn't ring a bell. "Not his real name," Draco interjected.
"The woman's his wife - Nancy. They're on their way to Walsingham to visit some sort of shrine there. Religious thing. They've got family in the area and are staying here for a few days before going on. Two kids, Daisy and Sarah, sixteen and eleven, both currently off at boarding school. Joe works at a chemist's, Nancy's in a bookshop part-time; they've been married twenty years."
"That's all very well and good," Draco said impatiently, "but did you find out anything important?"
"Well, if he's a Death Eater or something, he's not going to just say so, is he?" Ginny said reasonably. "He had long sleeves on, and anyway, having the Dark Mark's not something you just wave around, I suppose, even if you're in Muggle company."
Draco pursed his lips in thought. "We might have to stay a bit longer and see if we can dig up anything more on him. I'm almost certain I remember him from one of those meetings."
"That's fine by me," Ginny said, wondering if this could perhaps be her big break - cornering and capturing a former Death Eater on the loose; it'd be a lovely accomplishment to put on her record. "It doesn't look like this snow's going to let us go anywhere, anyway."
They talked for a little while longer about the Felixstowe case and this possible new one while Draco finished his soup, and when all shop talk was exhausted, it appeared that they'd have to continue conversing about other things, which alarmed them both. There was nothing else to do in the room; Ginny regarded the books that Draco had seen earlier with similar indifference, there was no television, and there was a clock radio on the nightstand but neither of them could quite figure out how to work it besides making it beep a lot. There was nothing to do but talk to each other. Or sleep. Ginny chose the latter, despite it being much earlier than her usual bedtime.
"Well," she said resolutely. "I'm going to bed." She stripped the bed of its quilted comforter and one of its pillows and held them both out in front of Draco. "Here you are."
"And just what am I supposed to do with these?" he asked, putting his hands into his pockets.
"Sleep on the floor."
"Don't be stupid. There's a perfectly good bed for me to sleep on."
"A gentleman would sleep on the floor."
"No, an idiot would sleep on the floor. A gentleman would merely keep his hands to himself. While enjoying the comforts of a bed. Which happen to be available to him in this instance," Draco said. It'd be a cold day in hell before anyone, particularly a Weasley, relegated him to the floor like a common animal.
"I'm not sharing a bed with you, Malfoy."
"Then you sleep on the floor," Draco suggested.
"I'll do no such thing!"
"The bed's fucking big enough, Weasley; we can both sleep in it and leave our virtues intact," said Draco, in a tone that made it clear he wanted no part of her virtue.
"Fine," Ginny ground out. "But if you even so much as breathe on me, I'll hex you into next week." She threw his pillow back onto the bed and spread the comforter out, and got in, making sure to slide to the farthest edge possible, turning her back on his side of the bed.
Draco rolled his eyes and got in as well, turning off the lamp on the nightstand.
After about an hour (Draco dutifully checked the red numbers on the clock every few minutes), it was clear that neither of them had fallen asleep yet. Ginny kept tossing, trying to find a comfortable position that didn't include turning on her other side, which meant that she was jostling the bed, and every time she did so, Draco would let out an irritable sigh.
"Well. This is unpleasant," Ginny said quietly after a while, still facing away from him.
"Would you belt up, Weasel? You're making this worse with your stupid harpy voice."
"Don't call me a harpy!" Ginny said, finally whipping her head around to face Draco.
"I didn't say you were a harpy; I just suggested that your voice is overly shrill right now. There's a difference."
"Oh, well then, that makes it so much better."
"Doesn't it? I'm saying you're not harpish all over."
"Shut it, ferret," Ginny said, turning back around.
"Oh, you really had to go there? That happened over ten years ago. Get a new insult."
"Like you weren't just telling me last week that my freckles made me look like I have a raging case of scabies."
"To be fair, I'm not a ferret anymore, but you still do have a billion freckles." A beat. Then, reluctantly, "But if you must know, you don't look like you have scabies."
"Oh good, I was getting so worried."
"Didn't I tell you to be quiet?"
"Since when have I ever listened to the likes of you?"
"You don't, and that's why we're in this bind. This is all your fault."
Draco wasn't sure if Ginny was too wound up to respond, or whether it was because she couldn't think of a proper comeback, but his words were left hanging in the air as an angry silence settled over them both. Finally, Ginny fell asleep, as evidenced by the sound of her gentle, steady breathing, and the fact that she wasn't wobbling the bed about anymore. Before Draco fell asleep himself, he suddenly realised that she hadn't mentioned Transfiguring any furniture at all to solve the bed problem. That meant that either she was as unskilled at Untransfiguration as he was and didn't want to say so, or that she was dumber than he thought, and the possibility of Transfiguration never even crossed her mind. Either way, it was kind of disappointing.
"Truly, your logic is stunning," Draco muttered grumpily, staring out the passenger side window at nothing.
"Shut up," Ginny said, as a matter of course. They came upon a battered sign in front of what looked like a house; there were lights on inside, which was heartening. "What's that say?" Ginny asked, peering at the sign on which her headlights shone.
"Rory Age B Ampersand," Draco said, reading the letters that hadn't yet been obscured by snow.
"Good enough for me," Ginny decided, parking the car as best she could. She frowned upon getting out of the car and finding it rather askew, and hoped she hadn't accidentally parked smack in the middle of the garden. She unlocked the boot, and as it yawned open, she grabbed both their luggage, taking care to drop his onto the wet ground. It was possible he swore at her, but the howling wind drowned his voice out, and Ginny trudged towards the front door of the house wearing a victorious grin.
"Yeeeh," Ginny said in mild disgust, inspecting the doorknocker, which appeared to be a brass carving of some sort of hideous, bearded old man. She lifted the ring delicately and struck it three times, as Draco ambled up behind her, muttering darkly.
"Coming, coming!" said a woman's voice from inside. Presently, the door swung open, revealing a short, plump woman with a kind face and white hair piled atop her head. "Welcome, welcome! Welcome to the Rosemary Cottage! Do come in out of that snow," she gushed, ushering them inside and closing the door quickly behind them. An intense warmth coming from the fireplace hit them like a wall. The old woman walked briskly to a stately wooden desk that looked strangely out of place among the rest of the furniture, mostly Victorian-inspired and rose-patterned pieces, which made up a large living room.
"Erm, sorry about the..." Ginny said, gesturing to the wet footprints she and Draco had left on the floorboards.
"No, no, no," said the old woman cheerily. "That'll clean right up. I'm Mrs. Burnham or, er, Emma, if you prefer," which she clearly didn't, "and sooner or later you'll meet my husband and our darling cat Bailey. Oh, where's he gone, now? He's usually curled up right in front of the fire.
"Ooh, it's a good thing you've gotten out of that storm while you could. You poor things, you're wet all over! I'll get you two in a room right away, and you can warm up and dry off! Oh, I haven't seen a storm like this in years. Lucky we just got a big delivery this morning; it can last us the week," Mrs. Burnham chattered, pulling out the register and a pen from drawer. "You'll want to go up these stairs, and it'll be the first room on your left. You'll notice each room's got its own little bathroom, which our guests always find very lovely."
"It's just that - well, we really wanted separate rooms, you see," Draco said, melted snow dripping steadily from the hood resting over his head.
"Oh!" Mrs. Burnham exclaimed, as though taken aback that they weren't actually a couple. "I'm sorry; we've just got the one room available. Usually we have three. It's a four-bedroom place; one's for me and my husband, another's currently occupied, and a third's under renovations, so I'm afraid there's just the one left."
"Erm, d'you know if there's anything else close by?" Ginny asked.
"Well... this is a very small village, and we really don't get too many visitors up here; this is pretty much the only lodging place we've got. There might be a few families who'd be willing to put you up, and oh, there's another B&B the next town over, a few miles off, but... well, it's a bit wild out there, isn't it? You were barely able to park without taking my sign off!" she said, gesturing at the way the wind was whipping the snow around outside. She laughed a little nervously, her head bobbing up and down.
"Do excuse us for a moment," Draco said to the proprietor, and pulled on Ginny's arm to a far corner of the living room, while Mrs. Burnham looked on in puzzlement. "This is stupid, Weasley. Can't we just Apparate home and come back again when there isn't a natural disaster on our heels?"
"What about the car? We'll have to come back for that, won't we? And then they'll ask questions. 'That's right, Mrs. Burnham, we climbed out the window and walked home. And we've just come back on foot for our car,'" Ginny said sarcastically.
"No one'll even notice!"
"Well, she saw us drive in, didn't she? We've parked right outside that front window; she can see the car from the front desk. And you know how Muggles are! They see a few fucking fairy lights here and there, and they think it's aliens come to get them, and then they start a whole investigation. We can't just disappear; it's too late now. And we barely have a clue where we are right now; we're both liable to splinch ourselves if we tried to Apparate back," Ginny whispered furiously. "Plus, I'm bloody tired; I've been stuck in that car with you for far too long, and frankly, putting my feet up and getting a bit of rest doesn't sound like a bad idea. You can go if you want, but I'm staying."
Draco frowned his disapproval and crossed his arms, but stayed put. At Ginny's "Well?" he said, "I never leave a partner behind. No matter how glad I'd be to be rid of them."
"Noble of you," Ginny huffed, and walked back to the desk, plastering a smile on her face.
"Have you decided?" Mrs. Burnham asked politely.
"Yes, of course. We'll be glad to take the room. Thanks so much," Ginny said, taking the register and the proffered pen. Then, her mouth curling into a wicked smile, Ginny signed both their names into the register.
Ginny and Draco came to the top of the stairs, and finding their door straight away, parked their luggage on the landing while Ginny fumbled for the key Mrs. Burnham had handed to her downstairs. Further down the corridor, the occupants of the next room - a middle-aged man and probably his wife - exited, in the midst of a conversation in which the woman blandly accused the man of never listening to anything she said, and she had told him about her friend Sally from the aerobics group a billion times.
"Shit," Draco breathed when he caught sight of the couple, and ducked behind Ginny, as if his lanky frame stooping behind her wasn't any more conspicuous. "Hurry up, open the door."
As soon as Ginny shoved the key into the door and unlocked it, Draco not so gently pushed her aside to slip into the room. Ginny clenched her jaw and picked up the bags that had been left on the corridor floor. "Chivalry is most definitely good and dead," she muttered to the carpet. The couple from the next room looked at her, a little perplexed.
"Er, is your friend all right?" the woman inquired politely.
"Yeah, yeah," Ginny said quickly. "Erm, he's knackered is all. Just getting over a touch of the flu," she added, shrugging her shoulders in that well, what can you do sort of way.
"Oh, that's too bad," said the woman sympathetically. "Nasty time of year."
"Yeah, really," Ginny agreed, nodding seriously and wondering if she'd be obliged to talk to these people about the weather soon.
"Well, we're going down for a bit of supper," said the man with a warm smile. "Feel free to join us - and your friend too, if he's up to it."
"Oh, thank you, yeah, maybe I'll - we'll see you downstairs," Ginny said, simultaneously still irritated but glad for a spot of human kindness, which Draco was clearly incapable of mustering. She smiled at them as they made their way down the hall towards the stairs.
"Get the fuck in here," Draco whispered curtly from the other side of the door after the couple had passed.
Ginny complied and hurled a piece of luggage at him, which he caught with an "oof." "Haven't you ever heard of ladies first? Or manners? At all?"
"Sorry," said Draco, at which Ginny's head jerked backwards in surprise. "What? Don't be stupid; I know when an apology is warranted."
"It has to be sincere to count. Anyway, what the hell was that out there? You owe those two money or something?"
"Money? Weasley, I could buy and sell you if I wanted," Draco said dismissively, pushing his hood off his head. To cut off any further argument, he added, "I recognise that man. I think he used to be an active Voldemort supporter."
"Him? Really?"
"Why?"
"I dunno, he seemed rather nice."
"On his best days Voldemort was a right charmer."
"Ugh, don't remind me."
"We'll have to keep an eye on him. Did he see me, d'you think?"
"Only the effects of your rudely shoving me out of the way."
"Good," Draco said distractedly. "Wonder if he'll recognise me." The answer was quite obvious; if a person from the wizarding community had been paying any attention at all before, during or after the war, that person would most certainly know who Draco Malfoy was, and possibly know him quite a bit better than one's own relatives.
"They asked after you," Ginny said rather accusatorily, "and I told them you had a bout of the flu, so I suppose you could lie low for a while, skulk about in the room. Maybe the snow'll stop soon and we won't even have to cross paths again."
Ginny took off her wet winter things, hanging them up on a nearby coat rack, and rubbed her hands vigorously together to fight off the winter chill. "I'm off for dinner. Ta," she said.
"Oh," said Draco, suddenly realising he was hungry.
"I'll bring something back up for you," Ginny said on her way out the door. "And, er, just so you know, I've signed our names into the register. Fake ones, of course."
"Fine," Draco said, not quite catching on yet.
Just before closing the door behind her, Ginny added cheekily, "Your name's now Drew Peacock." She shut the door quickly before he could throw something at her head.
Suddenly struck by the ludicrousness of the situation they'd found themselves in, Draco found he had no energy to spare for being outraged. So he laughed instead, and then took off a boot and threw it at the door for good measure.
Draco paced around the room for a time, trying to remember where he had seen the man next door before. He had a vague recollection of the man's presence at a Death Eater meeting that had been held once at the Malfoy residence when he'd been quite small, but for the life of him, Draco couldn't remember who the man was. He hoped Ginny would use dinner conversation to try to extract some details out of the man; he should have given her direct instructions to do so. But she was a bright girl; perhaps she would have figured it out herself. He didn't begrudge her intelligence; in fact, he was glad that at least he hadn't been stuck with some half-wit for a partner. If only she wasn't so damn disagreeable all the time, shooting her idiot mouth off at every available opportunity, just like her brother. She was much prettier, though, at least, so that was one step up from Ron Weasley.
The room was smallish, much smaller than his own bedroom back in Wiltshire. There was a wooden desk and chair on the north end of the room, the desk containing nothing but a lamp on top and a bible with yellowing pages in its bottom drawer. Next to that, a rose-coloured armchair, and a two-shelf bookcase with a sparse collection of books that Draco looked upon with disinterest - a farmer's almanac from 1987, a few thrillers that looked dead boring, a biography of some person he'd never heard of, and six or seven trashy romance novels, a number of which looked as though they'd been perused with some frequency.
Draco's mouth curled into something of a sneer as he indelicately pushed one of the romances by its spine back into line with the rest of the books. He hoped that whoever had read those things hadn't gotten disgusting ideas and done those ideas on the four-poster bed in the room. The bed. One bed. He looked at his luggage, and then at Ginny's, and then out the window. Snow was still falling, hard and fast, and Draco looked at the bed again. It was conceivable that the weather would force them to stay for the night, and there was no way in hell they would agree to share a bed.
He contemplated turning the armchair into another bed, but there was no space for it, unless he made the real bed smaller and moved some of the furniture around. But that seemed more work than necessary. He thought about splitting the bed into two beds, but for as skilled as he was in Transfiguration, he wasn't quite as experienced at Untransfiguration. What if he couldn't put the bed back in one piece? That wouldn't be fun to explain. He'd done his fair share of, say, Transfiguring his captive criminals into some form that'd be easier to transport back to the Ministry, and, not that he'd shirked his duties, but when it came time to turn them back to normal, there was always someone else there who took care of it. Frowning, Draco noted to himself that he ought to work on Untransfiguration when he returned to London. Until then, he hoped the Weasel would know how to do it. Except that would mean that he'd have to admit that she was more skilled in some form of magic than he, and that would just be embarrassing.
Ginny returned to the room about an hour later, with a large bowl of soup, bread and well wishes from the rest of the house in tow. She stood outside the room for a moment, wondering whether it would be considered impolite to just walk in. Technically, it was her room, too, but what if he was... indecent? Well, she decided resolutely, if he was, then it was his own fault he hadn't thought to use the bathroom to be indecent in.
She walked in without knocking, but kept her eyes trained on the ground while loudly announcing her return.
"Took your time," Draco said, reclining on the bed, as clothed as she had left him.
"Well, I was grilling our suspect," Ginny said, handing him the food. "His name's Joe Lewis."
It didn't ring a bell. "Not his real name," Draco interjected.
"The woman's his wife - Nancy. They're on their way to Walsingham to visit some sort of shrine there. Religious thing. They've got family in the area and are staying here for a few days before going on. Two kids, Daisy and Sarah, sixteen and eleven, both currently off at boarding school. Joe works at a chemist's, Nancy's in a bookshop part-time; they've been married twenty years."
"That's all very well and good," Draco said impatiently, "but did you find out anything important?"
"Well, if he's a Death Eater or something, he's not going to just say so, is he?" Ginny said reasonably. "He had long sleeves on, and anyway, having the Dark Mark's not something you just wave around, I suppose, even if you're in Muggle company."
Draco pursed his lips in thought. "We might have to stay a bit longer and see if we can dig up anything more on him. I'm almost certain I remember him from one of those meetings."
"That's fine by me," Ginny said, wondering if this could perhaps be her big break - cornering and capturing a former Death Eater on the loose; it'd be a lovely accomplishment to put on her record. "It doesn't look like this snow's going to let us go anywhere, anyway."
They talked for a little while longer about the Felixstowe case and this possible new one while Draco finished his soup, and when all shop talk was exhausted, it appeared that they'd have to continue conversing about other things, which alarmed them both. There was nothing else to do in the room; Ginny regarded the books that Draco had seen earlier with similar indifference, there was no television, and there was a clock radio on the nightstand but neither of them could quite figure out how to work it besides making it beep a lot. There was nothing to do but talk to each other. Or sleep. Ginny chose the latter, despite it being much earlier than her usual bedtime.
"Well," she said resolutely. "I'm going to bed." She stripped the bed of its quilted comforter and one of its pillows and held them both out in front of Draco. "Here you are."
"And just what am I supposed to do with these?" he asked, putting his hands into his pockets.
"Sleep on the floor."
"Don't be stupid. There's a perfectly good bed for me to sleep on."
"A gentleman would sleep on the floor."
"No, an idiot would sleep on the floor. A gentleman would merely keep his hands to himself. While enjoying the comforts of a bed. Which happen to be available to him in this instance," Draco said. It'd be a cold day in hell before anyone, particularly a Weasley, relegated him to the floor like a common animal.
"I'm not sharing a bed with you, Malfoy."
"Then you sleep on the floor," Draco suggested.
"I'll do no such thing!"
"The bed's fucking big enough, Weasley; we can both sleep in it and leave our virtues intact," said Draco, in a tone that made it clear he wanted no part of her virtue.
"Fine," Ginny ground out. "But if you even so much as breathe on me, I'll hex you into next week." She threw his pillow back onto the bed and spread the comforter out, and got in, making sure to slide to the farthest edge possible, turning her back on his side of the bed.
Draco rolled his eyes and got in as well, turning off the lamp on the nightstand.
After about an hour (Draco dutifully checked the red numbers on the clock every few minutes), it was clear that neither of them had fallen asleep yet. Ginny kept tossing, trying to find a comfortable position that didn't include turning on her other side, which meant that she was jostling the bed, and every time she did so, Draco would let out an irritable sigh.
"Well. This is unpleasant," Ginny said quietly after a while, still facing away from him.
"Would you belt up, Weasel? You're making this worse with your stupid harpy voice."
"Don't call me a harpy!" Ginny said, finally whipping her head around to face Draco.
"I didn't say you were a harpy; I just suggested that your voice is overly shrill right now. There's a difference."
"Oh, well then, that makes it so much better."
"Doesn't it? I'm saying you're not harpish all over."
"Shut it, ferret," Ginny said, turning back around.
"Oh, you really had to go there? That happened over ten years ago. Get a new insult."
"Like you weren't just telling me last week that my freckles made me look like I have a raging case of scabies."
"To be fair, I'm not a ferret anymore, but you still do have a billion freckles." A beat. Then, reluctantly, "But if you must know, you don't look like you have scabies."
"Oh good, I was getting so worried."
"Didn't I tell you to be quiet?"
"Since when have I ever listened to the likes of you?"
"You don't, and that's why we're in this bind. This is all your fault."
Draco wasn't sure if Ginny was too wound up to respond, or whether it was because she couldn't think of a proper comeback, but his words were left hanging in the air as an angry silence settled over them both. Finally, Ginny fell asleep, as evidenced by the sound of her gentle, steady breathing, and the fact that she wasn't wobbling the bed about anymore. Before Draco fell asleep himself, he suddenly realised that she hadn't mentioned Transfiguring any furniture at all to solve the bed problem. That meant that either she was as unskilled at Untransfiguration as he was and didn't want to say so, or that she was dumber than he thought, and the possibility of Transfiguration never even crossed her mind. Either way, it was kind of disappointing.
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