For a few moments the two teenagers glared at each other.
“What are you going to do, Weasley?” Draco broke the silence to taunt her in a low, cool voice, making no move for his own wand. “Bat-Bogey me to death?” He suppressed the urge to smile as her nostrils flared and her eyes narrowed further. Merlin, she looked cute when she was angry. Seeing her up close, he could really appreciate how mature she’d become, clad in her form fitting pyjamas; he nearly forgot she was the Weasel’s little sister.
“You have a lot of nerve showing your ferret face around here, Malfoy,” she seethed. “Everyone knows it’s your fault Dumbledore’s dead, and that you’re a Death Eater. You almost killed two of my brothers!”
His expression hardened. “You should really get all of your facts straight before you start running your mouth. I didn’t kill Dumbledore, I’m not a Death Eater, and I didn’t touch your brothers.” He made to push past her, but with a flick of her wand he found himself dangling in the air as if hoisted up by his ankle, sputtering through his robes as they hung over his head.
“What the bloody hell, let me down! What is that spell?” Draco yelled.
“Just a little trick I learned from Harry,” Ginny replied calmly with a Malfoy-worthy smirk. “You better keep it down, or you’ll get us both in trouble, not that you would care about a little detention.”
Reaching around to his back pocket, Draco pulled out his own wand and pointed it at his hoisted ankle, muttering, “Finite Incantatem.” It seemed to do the trick, since he came crashing down to the floor in an ungraceful heap.
Attempting to get back to his feet, Ginny struck before he was ready.
“Incarcerous!” she shrieked in her surprise that he had wormed his way out of the spell so easily, though the curse sailed just past his head.
Turning sideways to be sure the hex missed him, he began his next attack without focusing first. “Impediementa!” he shouted as his head came back around, but the spell merely struck a wardrobe next to her, the sheet covering it flapping about with the disturbed air around it. The cloth’s movements immediately slowed upon contact with the charm until it was frozen in mid-flap, eerily hovering away from the wardrobe.
As soon as he missed, he ducked behind a desk. Not a moment too soon, either, for he felt the desk shake violently with the impact of whatever she had thrown at him next.
Annoyed with the charade, he peeked over the edge of his hiding place and he yelled “Stupefy!” as he pointed in her direction, but she managed to duck behind another desk. The red jet of light struck the wood and sent splinters flying from the black singe mark the curse had created.
The top of her head appeared from hiding, and the hostile glare of razor-sharp daggers she sent towards him at his gall to attempt to stun her gave him chills. He almost thought to apologise, since stunning usually advanced the duel quite a few pegs from the usually harmless hexes, but then she stood up and whipped her wand at him so fast that he almost missed her next spell.
As she shouted, “Petrificus Totalus!” Draco also stood and countered with, “Protego!” at the same time. Ginny’s arms and legs snapped together upon being hit with her rebounded spell, and she toppled flat on her face with a nose-breaking crunch. Wincing as she crashed, he imagined what a fall like that would do to that small, button nose. He stepped over her stiff body, making his way towards the door; it wasn’t his problem she had been nosing around the school in the middle of the night and ended up a little worse for the wear.
Halfway out, he stopped. This is so juvenile, he thought, turning back around. He was, after all, a different person than the ignorant, self-absorbed prat blindly following orders that had left Potter on the Hogwarts Express in a similar situation as a hilarious joke, seemingly ages ago. He was separate, distinct from that idiot, more mature, wiser to the world - at least that’s why he told himself he didn’t want to leave her in this humiliating state.
Sighing at his lack of malevolence towards the blood traitor, he lifted the jinx. She pulled herself off the floor and stood to face him, glowering. Blood gushed from her nose and stained the arm of her robe crimson as she attempted to stem the flow.
“Put your arm down,” he ordered. Ginny obliged more out of confusion than anything. “Don’t move.” His voice dropped to a softer tone as he moved closer and raised his wand to her nose; she recoiled a bit at the sight of Draco Malfoy’s wand so close to her face.
“Episkey,” he whispered with a small flourish of his hand. Her nose, straightening oddly by itself, glowed a very subtle red as if heating up. After he performed the healing charm, he muttered “Tergeo,” to siphon the blood off of her face and robes. Her puzzled eyes searched his face for an explanation, but he kept his own eyes on his work, avoiding the question that he didn’t want to answer. When he was satisfied that she looked presentable, he took a step back and sheathed his wand back into his robes.
Draco reluctantly looked the red-head in the eye. “I’m not the enemy anymore, Ginny,” he said, her first name sounding strange as it rolled off his tongue. “I’m sorry for what happened to your brothers, for Dumbledore… for everything, but you don’t know anything about what really happened, just what Boy Wonder thinks he saw. If you ever get in my face again, I won’t be so nice.” He pushed past her one more time, but instead of starting another duel, Ginny let him past.
“Don’t know what really happened?” she retorted incredulously to his back. “What are you playing at, Malfoy, why on earth would they let you back in?”
Draco paused, fighting memories he had suppressed all summer. Keeping his back to her, the outer edges of his mouth curved upward as he thought of just the remark to rile her up.
“Drop it, Weasley. Don’t worry your pretty little head about things you won’t understand.”
Smirking with triumph as he left the room, he could almost feel two holes burning into his back. He imagined the blazing rage in her eyes, willing him to feel pain by merely glaring at him.
He could tell she was a girl that hated being pushed out of the way, that she wanted to be in the thick of the action. Being the youngest and the only girl of so many brothers, he could only guess how many times she had been cast aside for being too weak; being the object of Voldemort’s possession as an 11-year-old child surely hadn’t helped her win any awards for charm either. She was tough, stubborn, and on a mission to prove herself. Not to mention stunning, he finally admitted to himself. It was for these reasons that Draco Malfoy found himself taking a turn at the end of the corridor, hoping to find himself in another duel with Ginny Weasley sometime soon.
Ginny’s balled fists shook with rage at her sides as Malfoy strutted out of the classroom; the nerve of that traitor, taunting her as if they were in their second year. Part of her wanted to stun him in the back and run to Professor McGonagall to let her know that Malfoy was running loose in Hogwarts. After all he did, taking orders from You-Know-Who himself, how could she possibly have let him live here? Ginny was baffled as to why he wasn’t in a cell in Azkaban at this very moment; he must have snitched some really good information.
She flopped into the chair that earlier had been abruptly vacated in front of the large mirror and examined her clean sleeve. As infuriated as she was, she had to admit that there was something different about him tonight. He had made no move for his wand until she attacked him. He could have left her there, but he not only unfroze her, he repaired her broken nose and cleaned up the mess.
What left her the most unsettled with her thoughts was the hint of care she had detected in his eyes when they had been less than an arm’s length away. It had quite possibly been a trick of the light, or he had temporarily let his guard down, but the typically frigid rings of stony grey looked slightly warmer up close. Regardless of what his eyes looked like, he had been… nice to her; this strange new development she had discovered in him gave him a new appeal she found extremely foreign. Having always thought of him as one of the better looking boys at Hogwarts, after Harry of course, she had never given him more thought than that due to his dark status and the fact that he was an utterly impossible jerk. After tonight, both of those negatives had been shaken, opening her thoughts to an array of new possibilities.
Shaking her head in confusion, she glanced up at what she was expecting to be her mirrored reflection, but what greeted her caused her to take a sharp intake of breath. There, standing right behind her, his arms wrapped around her reflected form, was Harry. The carefree, goofy grin she saw so rarely was plastered across his face, his emerald green eyes twinkling with a hint of mischief. His ruffled hair lay hap-hazardly across his brow, but the usual lightning bolt etched into his forehead was conspicuously missing. In the distant background, she saw her entire family of Weasleys, looking whole and happy together. Bill, who looked as if he had never even seen battle, was clapping Percy on the back as they laughed together. Everyone looked so untroubled, just happy to be with each other.
Seeing Harry so vividly, so close she could almost feel his warm nuzzle against her ear forced these strange thoughts from her head and brought a sting to her eyes; she no longer felt so alone. She wrapped her own arms around herself to strengthen the feeling.
She knew what this mirror was. Harry had told her about it once, had warned her of the dangers it could hold. Why it was here, she wasn’t sure; he had told her that Dumbledore had moved it to another location long ago, before she had started at Hogwarts.
She dragged her eyes unwillingly away from the jovial sight. The walk back to her dorm seemed desolate, but she knew she had to go; she would come back again to visit them soon. As she walked, she continued to hold herself, rubbing her arms with her hands to retain the illusion of being in his comforting embrace.
Finally drifting off to sleep later that night, a brief thought crossed her mind. She wondered what it was that Malfoy had seen. If the mirror showed the deepest and most desperate desires of your heart, what had he watched for so long that he had fallen asleep right in that chair? Knowing she’d never find out, she didn’t dwell on it too long, and succumbed to a sleep full of heartbreak and longing.
Author notes:
I await your thoughts! :-)
Next chapter: Secret Needs
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