It was the end of term and Ginny was on the Hogwart’s train, being pressed against on all sides by the other students. Her brother had loaded her trunk into one of the compartments and was up ahead with Hermione. Harry was nearly pressed against her back, his hand protectively gripping her shoulder. He so rarely ever touched her, clearly reluctant to give confirmation to the rumors that abounded about their relationship, but it seemed he did not wish to lose her in this crush of people.
There was a strange sense of guilt rising in her. Draco had clearly expressed his distaste at the concept of Harry’s touching her. It felt like a betrayal to him, allowing even this innocent touch from the boy that he detested so much. A wave of nausea rolled up in her stomach at the thought of Draco’s displeasure with her, if he saw them at this moment. She swallowed against the sick feeling and tried to wipe her face of its emotions. There was nothing for it, at the moment.
Once they made it to the compartment that Ron had claimed for them, Harry guided her in with that gentle, coaxing touch on her shoulder and released her. A sigh of relief rose out of her. “Thank you, Harry,” she told him, throwing a smile back at him over her shoulder.
Harry’s eyes shifted guiltily away from hers. “No problem,” he mumbled as he started hauling both of their trunks, which Ron had only deposited in the middle of the compartment, up into the luggage racks.
At that moment, Ron’s head peered around the doorway of the compartment. “All right, you two?” he asked.
Ginny was just settling herself on one of the cushioned bench seats by the window. She curled her legs up under her and pulled an old paperback novel from the pocket of her robes. “Fine, Ron,” she answered.
“Hermione and I have to go report to the Prefects compartment and then patrol for a little while. You guys will be okay?”
If Ron had seemed over-protective before, he had been even more so since the week before when Ginny had not returned to the common room until well after dark with no explanation as to where she had been and what she had been doing the whole time. She couldn’t very well tell him that she had been with Draco. When Ron interrogated her about it, Ginny had simply said that she’d gotten lost. He would normally have believed her, but she wasn’t much of a liar.
“We’ll be fine,” Harry answered for both of them, throwing himself down on the seat across from hers.
“And you’ll watch out for Ginny?” Ron asked Harry.
“I already told you I would,” Harry bit out, a little irritably.
At the tone of his voice, Ginny brought her gaze over to Harry. He wasn’t normally prone to losing his temper with Ron, but she could see that something was bothering him.
“All right then,” Ron answered, his own voice sounding a little steely. “Be back to relieve you in an hour or so.”
Ginny jerked her head around to stare at her brother in horror. Though it was always obvious and often alluded to, their constant guard duty of her had never been so clearly stated. Ron did not catch her look before taking his leave and shutting the compartment door. She stared blankly at the spot her brother’s head had just vacated, then suddenly and without much intent on her part, Ginny violently threw her book at the door.
There was a palpable silence in the compartment after her unexpected outburst, the only sound was the rising and falling of Ginny’s suddenly labored breathing. After a moment, Harry rose from his seat, retrieved her book and offered it back to her. Ginny stared at the tattered paperback for a moment, attempting to control her sudden irritation. With a muttered “thank you”, she finally took it from Harry’s outstretched hand.
Ginny leaned her head back against the wall and closed her eyes, regulating her breathing. The possibility of a spectacular temper had always lurked somewhere deep inside of her, but it rarely, if ever, came to the surface. All of the Weasleys were known for having tempers, but that particular family trait had seemed to have skipped the youngest and only girl child of the family. She wondered briefly if it was an emotion that would have been dominant in her if her mind hadn’t been so thoroughly picked apart.
When she felt sufficiently calmed, Ginny let her eyes drift open again and picked her head back up. Harry was staring across the compartment at her. There was no trace of surprise on his face, as she had expected. There was really no sign of emotion on his face at all, other than the slight stiffening of a clenched jaw.
The two of them stared across the space at each other for what could have been seconds or hours. Very rarely, did Ginny allow herself to linger over Harry’s features. He was not the only one who did not want their possible intentions towards each other questioned.
She was surprised to see how much older he looked. The softness of youth had hardened; his cheekbones and jawline were more clearly chiseled and defined. There was the barest shadow of stubble on his chin. Harry must have to shave now, she thought wonderingly. His green eyes shone out from behind his too-small glasses. The Dursleys must not have replaced them since he was very small. And that wild, black hair of his was swept across his forehead to hide the tell-tale scar of legend, but sticking up at the back. She still found it strangely attractive, in a rumpled sort of way.
Harry was the first to break eye contact, turning his head to stare at the window as the train jumped to life.
For the first time, in a long time, the silence between them was strained and charged with unexplainable emotions. Ginny tried to reflect on how she felt about Harry, but had a hard time focusing on any one thought that flitted through her mind. All of her memories of him seemed to be fractured and glittering with refracted lines of light. Harry on his broom with a glimmering snitch clasped in his hand, Harry lying bloody and gasping on the edge of a maze, a dead boy cradled in his arms, Harry swishing his wand with determined confidence, Harry bruised and filthy, his child’s face staring down at her prone form, fear and guilt furrowing his forehead. That particular memory made her heart jump with fear.
“How much do you remember from the Chamber, Ginny?” Harry finally spoke.
She jumped a little and turned her face away from his as it flushed with warmth. They never talked about anything serious. Why was he asking this now?
“Not much,” Ginny whispered truthfully.
“I remember everything,” he finally said after a long pause.
Ginny didn’t respond for a long time, just pressed her forehead against the cool pane of the window and watched as the land rolled past them.
“You don’t know everything, Harry,” she finally muttered and closed her eyes as some of her memories rose up, with opaque and green fissures stitched across them. Black ink and stone walls leaking with moisture; a dark-haired boy who looked like a more put-together version of the one sitting across from her.
Both lost in their own thoughts, they let the silence drag out around them. An overwhelming urge to cry gripped Ginny and she shut her eyes against it. She wished that the boy sitting with her was blond and sneery, dressed in finely pressed wool and cashmere. He wouldn’t sit across from her, but beside her, his hand in hers. If she was sad, that boy would urge her head onto his shoulder and bury his face in her hair. She wanted him desperately at that moment.
Over the chasm, Harry finally spoke again, saying words that Ginny had never wanted to hear.
“I have these dreams about you sometimes. And in them, you’re always vibrant and smiling, flushed and sassy. You fly around with me on the Quiddich pitch and make stupid jokes and give me something to hope for, in the future. She’s not you, but the girl you could have been.”
Tears were running down Ginny’s cheeks now. He described his dreams so vividly that she could almost imagine that they were hers. But Ginny had never had dreams like those. The girl he was describing didn’t exist anywhere except for inside of Harry’s head. She sounded nice though, someone that Ginny wished she could aspire to be. How would she look in Quiddich robes, laughing and dashing around on a broom, playing with the boys? She could be beautiful that way.
“Being around you is like torture,” Harry finally mumbled.
When she glanced at him through the corner of her teary eye, she saw his face pressed against the window, mirroring her.
The girl from his dreams would have gone to him then, pulled his head against her breasts and rested her cheek against him. She knew this in a distant, but sure way. Perhaps, shadows of that girl did live in her. But she didn’t do any of those things. She cared for Harry, but she did not love him. The parts of her that could have were removed a long time ago. And he didn’t love the broken girl that she was anyway, he wouldn’t welcome her caresses. But there was one boy who would and that boy owned her completely.
Her thoughts were interrupted and dashed when the compartment doors were pulled together. The boisterous Irish-rich accent of Seamus Finnegan hit her in the face like a splash of ice cold water and had her sitting back from the window, blinking furiously. Quickly, she dashed the tears away from her eyes and turned to watch him and Dean Thomas enter the compartment.
“Oi, Harry!” Seamus stated as he flounced into the seat beside Ginny. He reached over and ruffled her curls like she was an adorable and affectionate puppy. “Ginny-girl.”
She glanced over at Harry. He looked bleary, like he had just been awoken from a long nap. He also looked suspiciously like he was about to punch Seamus in the face.
Inexplicably embarrassed, Ginny wrenched her gaze away from Harry. Her eyes fell on Dean, who was now sitting beside Harry, glancing from her to him. Unlike Seamus, he seemed to have recognized that they had just interrupted something intense. He shifted to the edge of his seat, like he might excuse them and flee the scene, but Ginny threw him a grateful smile. She tried to convey in that one look that she found their interruption extremely, extremely welcome.
“I got my letter from the Department of Magical Law Enforcement,” Seamus told Harry, clearly oblivious to the tension in the room. “I’m to report to the Auror’s department with my NEWTS results on the 16th June. What about you?”
The anger left Harry’s face, but there was still a good deal of tension in the set of his shoulders. He leaned back in his seat and rubbed absentmindedly at the scar under his bangs. “Mine’s in three days,” he replied to Seamus’ question.
Seamus let out a slow whistle. “They’re not wasting any time, are they? I expect they’re eager to get The Boy Who Lived all trained up.”
“Don’t call me that ridiculous name,” Harry snapped irritably.
Seamus put his hands up. “All right, all right. No need to get tetchy,” he mumbled and sprawled carelessly back in his seat. “Sounds like they aren’t even waiting for you to get your NEWTS results back.”
Ginny shifted in her seat and watched Harry squeeze his eyes shut, a pained look on his face. He continued to rub at his scar.
“No, I expect they don’t care one way or the other if I’m prepared or not,” Harry muttered, just a hint of bitterness lingering in his words.
He shot out of his seat so suddenly that Ginny jumped.
“I’m going to the loo,” he explained as he headed to the door. He stopped briefly and turned to Seamus. “Stay with Ginny,” he commanded in a tone that brooked no room for argument and then he swiftly fled the room.
Seamus crossed his arms across his chest and let out a bit of a huff. “Listen to him, would you? Already prepared to lead his army, he is.”
Despite the aggrieved tone in Seamus’ voice, Ginny had the sneaking suspicion that he was fully prepared to follow Harry unquestioningly.
After Harry’s departure, Dean and Seamus settled in for a game of Exploding Snap and Ginny curled up to stare down at her book. She didn’t read any of it, but used it as an excuse to be excluded from the conversation.
Ginny decided not to reflect on her conversation with Harry. It did not do to dwell on what-ifs and what-could-have-beens. Instead, she let her thoughts wander to a certain blond Slytherin. When he’d last left her, he had said he would see her on the train. She couldn’t imagine how that would be possible, with her brother and his friends hovering with such determination.
Still, she held onto the hope that she would get to see him one last time before the summer. He would not be coming back to school next year, if indeed, there was as school to go back to. The Dark Lord had declared all out war on all Muggleborns and any pureblood that stood in his way. People were already dying and going missing. Her own brothers were gone for weeks and weeks at a time, sent out on mysterious missions for The Order.
A knot formed in her stomach. Draco was a Death Eater, fighting on the opposite side of her family. She prayed that he would not be struck down by one of her own brothers, or gods forbid, her father. She prayed with even more vehemence that he would not be forced to do the same to any of her family. She was not prepared to deal with the self-disgust she was sure to feel when she forgave him unquestioningly.
Her fellow Gryffindors stayed with her, but Harry remained conspicuously absent. The sky outside of the window darkened to night as she waited for him to return. Ron and Hermione showed up before he did, still over an hour longer than Ron had promised to be. They must be very nearly to Kings Cross Station, she thought.
“What are you lot doing here?” Ron asked as he lingered in the doorway. The compartment was not exactly big enough for three teenage boys and two full grown girls. “Where’s Harry?”
“He went to the loo about an hour ago,” Dean explained. In his distraction, the card pile in front of him exploded, pelting him in the face.
“What’d he do that for?” Ron demanded with a scowl.
“Didn’t exactly explain, did he?” Seamus said. “Just told us to stay with Ginny and took off.”
That only seemed to deepen the scowl on Ron’s face. “Well, you can go now.”
“Finally,” Seamus said with clear relief and pushed himself out of his seat.
“Ginny-sitting not the glamorous job you hoped it would be?” Ginny asked, her own irritation rising as the group around her continued to talk like she wasn’t even sitting there.
For his part, the sandy-haired boy blushed and looked slightly abashed.
“All right, all right,” Ron interrupted and pushed his way into the compartment, ushering the other boys out so that Hermione could enter. “Get lost.”
“You’re welcome!” Seamus snapped from the corridor outside, before stalking away.
With the others gone, Ron fell onto the bench beside Ginny and stretched out his legs. He closed his eyes and wiped his hand down his face. If she hadn’t still been irritated with him, Ginny might have felt sad about how tired he looked.
“What is Harry on about, leaving Ginny with those two?” Ron asked Hermione, who had also seated herself on the other bench with a slightly exhausted air about her. She glanced at Ginny nervously, taking note of the blush of ire that was rising in the redhead’s cheeks.
“Harry Potter is not my keeper, Ron,” Ginny finally snapped. “It’s unfair of you to keep expecting him to watch over me.”
“Well!” Ron snapped back, turning his red face to Ginny’s. “Someone’s got to and I can’t always be around!”
“Why? Why does someone always have to watch after me?”
“Don’t be daft,” Ron said and turned away from her, dismissively.
Ginny shuddered against the sudden and foreign urge to smack her brother’s smug face. Instead of giving into her instincts, Ginny turned back to the window and addressed it, rather than him. “Just shut up, Ron. You’re a jerk.”
A tense moment of silence followed Ginny’s words, before Hermione finally spoke in a gently admonishing tone. “Ron.”
“Just leave it, Hermione,” he responded in a tired voice.
The sound of breathing and Hermione’s nervous toe-tapping filled the compartment for a long time. With her eyes closed and her head once again rocking against the window, Ginny let the slowing of the train lull her into calmness. They were nearly there and she still hadn’t seen Draco. She was now convinced that she never would. Never again. She vowed she would never take a lover, she would save herself for a boy who could never claim her. Not that there were any other men who could possibly want her with that same kind of shivering desperation.
A commotion outside in the corridor snapped the three occupants of the compartment to attention. They all leaned forward in their seat and looked at the door. Another loud bang sounded and Ron jumped up, pulled his wand and ran out of the compartment, Hermione close at his heels.
Ginny stared at the doorway they had just exited, feeling the shuddering of the train as it was coming to its halt. She placed her hand on her wand and considered following Ron and Hermione, but they would not thank her for possibly putting herself in harms way. Despite what they thought, Ginny was very capable with a wand.
As she hovered on the edge of indecision, Draco appeared in the empty doorway that she had been staring at. Her eyes widened with surprise and pleasure at the sight of him, all golden whites and grays. His eyes seemed to smile, though the expression did not travel down to the thin, bowed lips that had tasted her mouth with such reverence.
“Come on, Ginny,” he said and offered her his hand.
She only hesitated a moment before jumping up from her seat and going to him. He clasped her hand in his, cupped her cheek in the other and pressed a searing kiss against her lips. She gasped his breath into her lungs and let her eyes fall closed from the heady taste.
It was a very brief kiss before he began pulling her out of the compartment and down the strangely empty corridor. She could still hear the sounds of the commotion somewhere ahead of them, but she could not see what was going on.
“Where are we going, Draco?” she asked as she followed him. He came to an abrupt halt at one of the trains exits, pulled his wand and tapped the door so that it slid open.
“I’m taking you to meet my mother,” he explained as the smoking smell of train exhaust sailed into their waiting faces.
Draco jumped out of the train, turned and picked her up at the waist to help her out of the train. There were several people standing on the platform, craning their necks in search of their family members. Ginny didn’t have time to look around for long as Draco placed a hand at the small of her back and began guiding them through the crowd to where a tall woman with golden blonde hair stood.
Oh, she was beautiful, Ginny thought. That regal stature and those elegant silver robes, her chin held proudly aloft as her blue-gray eyes scanned the crowd for her son. Draco had her finely arched brows and high cheekbones. Other than that, she knew he took mostly after his father.
Narcissa Malfoy finally caught sight of Draco, leading Ginny through the crowd. A pleased smile lifted her lips and wiped the arrogance out of her face. However, when she caught sight of who he had with him, Narcissa’s brows drew together with confusion.
“Mother,” Draco said, as they came upon her. He leaned in and gave her a dutiful kiss on the cheek.
Ginny was momentarily distracted when she heard shouts at the other end of the platform, she pushed up on tiptoes to see over the heads of the crowd, but Draco’s hand in hers brought her attention back.
“This is Ginevra, Mother,” Draco introduced them.
That tall imposing woman looked down at Ginny, a shadow of suspicion wavering in her eyes. “Draco, what is-“
Narcissa’s question was cut off when Draco suddenly reached up and clasped the pendant hanging from his mother’s neck. His grip tightened on Ginny’s hand and she felt the tug at her navel. She was flying and whipping through space and then she was falling.
The three of them stumbled as their feet came in contact with granite. Ginny’s knees wobbled and she nearly fell, but Draco’s arm went around her waist to steady her. When she looked up, she was no longer in Kings Cross Station. Her eyes rounded in shock as she gazed up at the cold, imposing sight of Malfoy Manor.
There was a strange sense of guilt rising in her. Draco had clearly expressed his distaste at the concept of Harry’s touching her. It felt like a betrayal to him, allowing even this innocent touch from the boy that he detested so much. A wave of nausea rolled up in her stomach at the thought of Draco’s displeasure with her, if he saw them at this moment. She swallowed against the sick feeling and tried to wipe her face of its emotions. There was nothing for it, at the moment.
Once they made it to the compartment that Ron had claimed for them, Harry guided her in with that gentle, coaxing touch on her shoulder and released her. A sigh of relief rose out of her. “Thank you, Harry,” she told him, throwing a smile back at him over her shoulder.
Harry’s eyes shifted guiltily away from hers. “No problem,” he mumbled as he started hauling both of their trunks, which Ron had only deposited in the middle of the compartment, up into the luggage racks.
At that moment, Ron’s head peered around the doorway of the compartment. “All right, you two?” he asked.
Ginny was just settling herself on one of the cushioned bench seats by the window. She curled her legs up under her and pulled an old paperback novel from the pocket of her robes. “Fine, Ron,” she answered.
“Hermione and I have to go report to the Prefects compartment and then patrol for a little while. You guys will be okay?”
If Ron had seemed over-protective before, he had been even more so since the week before when Ginny had not returned to the common room until well after dark with no explanation as to where she had been and what she had been doing the whole time. She couldn’t very well tell him that she had been with Draco. When Ron interrogated her about it, Ginny had simply said that she’d gotten lost. He would normally have believed her, but she wasn’t much of a liar.
“We’ll be fine,” Harry answered for both of them, throwing himself down on the seat across from hers.
“And you’ll watch out for Ginny?” Ron asked Harry.
“I already told you I would,” Harry bit out, a little irritably.
At the tone of his voice, Ginny brought her gaze over to Harry. He wasn’t normally prone to losing his temper with Ron, but she could see that something was bothering him.
“All right then,” Ron answered, his own voice sounding a little steely. “Be back to relieve you in an hour or so.”
Ginny jerked her head around to stare at her brother in horror. Though it was always obvious and often alluded to, their constant guard duty of her had never been so clearly stated. Ron did not catch her look before taking his leave and shutting the compartment door. She stared blankly at the spot her brother’s head had just vacated, then suddenly and without much intent on her part, Ginny violently threw her book at the door.
There was a palpable silence in the compartment after her unexpected outburst, the only sound was the rising and falling of Ginny’s suddenly labored breathing. After a moment, Harry rose from his seat, retrieved her book and offered it back to her. Ginny stared at the tattered paperback for a moment, attempting to control her sudden irritation. With a muttered “thank you”, she finally took it from Harry’s outstretched hand.
Ginny leaned her head back against the wall and closed her eyes, regulating her breathing. The possibility of a spectacular temper had always lurked somewhere deep inside of her, but it rarely, if ever, came to the surface. All of the Weasleys were known for having tempers, but that particular family trait had seemed to have skipped the youngest and only girl child of the family. She wondered briefly if it was an emotion that would have been dominant in her if her mind hadn’t been so thoroughly picked apart.
When she felt sufficiently calmed, Ginny let her eyes drift open again and picked her head back up. Harry was staring across the compartment at her. There was no trace of surprise on his face, as she had expected. There was really no sign of emotion on his face at all, other than the slight stiffening of a clenched jaw.
The two of them stared across the space at each other for what could have been seconds or hours. Very rarely, did Ginny allow herself to linger over Harry’s features. He was not the only one who did not want their possible intentions towards each other questioned.
She was surprised to see how much older he looked. The softness of youth had hardened; his cheekbones and jawline were more clearly chiseled and defined. There was the barest shadow of stubble on his chin. Harry must have to shave now, she thought wonderingly. His green eyes shone out from behind his too-small glasses. The Dursleys must not have replaced them since he was very small. And that wild, black hair of his was swept across his forehead to hide the tell-tale scar of legend, but sticking up at the back. She still found it strangely attractive, in a rumpled sort of way.
Harry was the first to break eye contact, turning his head to stare at the window as the train jumped to life.
For the first time, in a long time, the silence between them was strained and charged with unexplainable emotions. Ginny tried to reflect on how she felt about Harry, but had a hard time focusing on any one thought that flitted through her mind. All of her memories of him seemed to be fractured and glittering with refracted lines of light. Harry on his broom with a glimmering snitch clasped in his hand, Harry lying bloody and gasping on the edge of a maze, a dead boy cradled in his arms, Harry swishing his wand with determined confidence, Harry bruised and filthy, his child’s face staring down at her prone form, fear and guilt furrowing his forehead. That particular memory made her heart jump with fear.
“How much do you remember from the Chamber, Ginny?” Harry finally spoke.
She jumped a little and turned her face away from his as it flushed with warmth. They never talked about anything serious. Why was he asking this now?
“Not much,” Ginny whispered truthfully.
“I remember everything,” he finally said after a long pause.
Ginny didn’t respond for a long time, just pressed her forehead against the cool pane of the window and watched as the land rolled past them.
“You don’t know everything, Harry,” she finally muttered and closed her eyes as some of her memories rose up, with opaque and green fissures stitched across them. Black ink and stone walls leaking with moisture; a dark-haired boy who looked like a more put-together version of the one sitting across from her.
Both lost in their own thoughts, they let the silence drag out around them. An overwhelming urge to cry gripped Ginny and she shut her eyes against it. She wished that the boy sitting with her was blond and sneery, dressed in finely pressed wool and cashmere. He wouldn’t sit across from her, but beside her, his hand in hers. If she was sad, that boy would urge her head onto his shoulder and bury his face in her hair. She wanted him desperately at that moment.
Over the chasm, Harry finally spoke again, saying words that Ginny had never wanted to hear.
“I have these dreams about you sometimes. And in them, you’re always vibrant and smiling, flushed and sassy. You fly around with me on the Quiddich pitch and make stupid jokes and give me something to hope for, in the future. She’s not you, but the girl you could have been.”
Tears were running down Ginny’s cheeks now. He described his dreams so vividly that she could almost imagine that they were hers. But Ginny had never had dreams like those. The girl he was describing didn’t exist anywhere except for inside of Harry’s head. She sounded nice though, someone that Ginny wished she could aspire to be. How would she look in Quiddich robes, laughing and dashing around on a broom, playing with the boys? She could be beautiful that way.
“Being around you is like torture,” Harry finally mumbled.
When she glanced at him through the corner of her teary eye, she saw his face pressed against the window, mirroring her.
The girl from his dreams would have gone to him then, pulled his head against her breasts and rested her cheek against him. She knew this in a distant, but sure way. Perhaps, shadows of that girl did live in her. But she didn’t do any of those things. She cared for Harry, but she did not love him. The parts of her that could have were removed a long time ago. And he didn’t love the broken girl that she was anyway, he wouldn’t welcome her caresses. But there was one boy who would and that boy owned her completely.
Her thoughts were interrupted and dashed when the compartment doors were pulled together. The boisterous Irish-rich accent of Seamus Finnegan hit her in the face like a splash of ice cold water and had her sitting back from the window, blinking furiously. Quickly, she dashed the tears away from her eyes and turned to watch him and Dean Thomas enter the compartment.
“Oi, Harry!” Seamus stated as he flounced into the seat beside Ginny. He reached over and ruffled her curls like she was an adorable and affectionate puppy. “Ginny-girl.”
She glanced over at Harry. He looked bleary, like he had just been awoken from a long nap. He also looked suspiciously like he was about to punch Seamus in the face.
Inexplicably embarrassed, Ginny wrenched her gaze away from Harry. Her eyes fell on Dean, who was now sitting beside Harry, glancing from her to him. Unlike Seamus, he seemed to have recognized that they had just interrupted something intense. He shifted to the edge of his seat, like he might excuse them and flee the scene, but Ginny threw him a grateful smile. She tried to convey in that one look that she found their interruption extremely, extremely welcome.
“I got my letter from the Department of Magical Law Enforcement,” Seamus told Harry, clearly oblivious to the tension in the room. “I’m to report to the Auror’s department with my NEWTS results on the 16th June. What about you?”
The anger left Harry’s face, but there was still a good deal of tension in the set of his shoulders. He leaned back in his seat and rubbed absentmindedly at the scar under his bangs. “Mine’s in three days,” he replied to Seamus’ question.
Seamus let out a slow whistle. “They’re not wasting any time, are they? I expect they’re eager to get The Boy Who Lived all trained up.”
“Don’t call me that ridiculous name,” Harry snapped irritably.
Seamus put his hands up. “All right, all right. No need to get tetchy,” he mumbled and sprawled carelessly back in his seat. “Sounds like they aren’t even waiting for you to get your NEWTS results back.”
Ginny shifted in her seat and watched Harry squeeze his eyes shut, a pained look on his face. He continued to rub at his scar.
“No, I expect they don’t care one way or the other if I’m prepared or not,” Harry muttered, just a hint of bitterness lingering in his words.
He shot out of his seat so suddenly that Ginny jumped.
“I’m going to the loo,” he explained as he headed to the door. He stopped briefly and turned to Seamus. “Stay with Ginny,” he commanded in a tone that brooked no room for argument and then he swiftly fled the room.
Seamus crossed his arms across his chest and let out a bit of a huff. “Listen to him, would you? Already prepared to lead his army, he is.”
Despite the aggrieved tone in Seamus’ voice, Ginny had the sneaking suspicion that he was fully prepared to follow Harry unquestioningly.
After Harry’s departure, Dean and Seamus settled in for a game of Exploding Snap and Ginny curled up to stare down at her book. She didn’t read any of it, but used it as an excuse to be excluded from the conversation.
Ginny decided not to reflect on her conversation with Harry. It did not do to dwell on what-ifs and what-could-have-beens. Instead, she let her thoughts wander to a certain blond Slytherin. When he’d last left her, he had said he would see her on the train. She couldn’t imagine how that would be possible, with her brother and his friends hovering with such determination.
Still, she held onto the hope that she would get to see him one last time before the summer. He would not be coming back to school next year, if indeed, there was as school to go back to. The Dark Lord had declared all out war on all Muggleborns and any pureblood that stood in his way. People were already dying and going missing. Her own brothers were gone for weeks and weeks at a time, sent out on mysterious missions for The Order.
A knot formed in her stomach. Draco was a Death Eater, fighting on the opposite side of her family. She prayed that he would not be struck down by one of her own brothers, or gods forbid, her father. She prayed with even more vehemence that he would not be forced to do the same to any of her family. She was not prepared to deal with the self-disgust she was sure to feel when she forgave him unquestioningly.
Her fellow Gryffindors stayed with her, but Harry remained conspicuously absent. The sky outside of the window darkened to night as she waited for him to return. Ron and Hermione showed up before he did, still over an hour longer than Ron had promised to be. They must be very nearly to Kings Cross Station, she thought.
“What are you lot doing here?” Ron asked as he lingered in the doorway. The compartment was not exactly big enough for three teenage boys and two full grown girls. “Where’s Harry?”
“He went to the loo about an hour ago,” Dean explained. In his distraction, the card pile in front of him exploded, pelting him in the face.
“What’d he do that for?” Ron demanded with a scowl.
“Didn’t exactly explain, did he?” Seamus said. “Just told us to stay with Ginny and took off.”
That only seemed to deepen the scowl on Ron’s face. “Well, you can go now.”
“Finally,” Seamus said with clear relief and pushed himself out of his seat.
“Ginny-sitting not the glamorous job you hoped it would be?” Ginny asked, her own irritation rising as the group around her continued to talk like she wasn’t even sitting there.
For his part, the sandy-haired boy blushed and looked slightly abashed.
“All right, all right,” Ron interrupted and pushed his way into the compartment, ushering the other boys out so that Hermione could enter. “Get lost.”
“You’re welcome!” Seamus snapped from the corridor outside, before stalking away.
With the others gone, Ron fell onto the bench beside Ginny and stretched out his legs. He closed his eyes and wiped his hand down his face. If she hadn’t still been irritated with him, Ginny might have felt sad about how tired he looked.
“What is Harry on about, leaving Ginny with those two?” Ron asked Hermione, who had also seated herself on the other bench with a slightly exhausted air about her. She glanced at Ginny nervously, taking note of the blush of ire that was rising in the redhead’s cheeks.
“Harry Potter is not my keeper, Ron,” Ginny finally snapped. “It’s unfair of you to keep expecting him to watch over me.”
“Well!” Ron snapped back, turning his red face to Ginny’s. “Someone’s got to and I can’t always be around!”
“Why? Why does someone always have to watch after me?”
“Don’t be daft,” Ron said and turned away from her, dismissively.
Ginny shuddered against the sudden and foreign urge to smack her brother’s smug face. Instead of giving into her instincts, Ginny turned back to the window and addressed it, rather than him. “Just shut up, Ron. You’re a jerk.”
A tense moment of silence followed Ginny’s words, before Hermione finally spoke in a gently admonishing tone. “Ron.”
“Just leave it, Hermione,” he responded in a tired voice.
The sound of breathing and Hermione’s nervous toe-tapping filled the compartment for a long time. With her eyes closed and her head once again rocking against the window, Ginny let the slowing of the train lull her into calmness. They were nearly there and she still hadn’t seen Draco. She was now convinced that she never would. Never again. She vowed she would never take a lover, she would save herself for a boy who could never claim her. Not that there were any other men who could possibly want her with that same kind of shivering desperation.
A commotion outside in the corridor snapped the three occupants of the compartment to attention. They all leaned forward in their seat and looked at the door. Another loud bang sounded and Ron jumped up, pulled his wand and ran out of the compartment, Hermione close at his heels.
Ginny stared at the doorway they had just exited, feeling the shuddering of the train as it was coming to its halt. She placed her hand on her wand and considered following Ron and Hermione, but they would not thank her for possibly putting herself in harms way. Despite what they thought, Ginny was very capable with a wand.
As she hovered on the edge of indecision, Draco appeared in the empty doorway that she had been staring at. Her eyes widened with surprise and pleasure at the sight of him, all golden whites and grays. His eyes seemed to smile, though the expression did not travel down to the thin, bowed lips that had tasted her mouth with such reverence.
“Come on, Ginny,” he said and offered her his hand.
She only hesitated a moment before jumping up from her seat and going to him. He clasped her hand in his, cupped her cheek in the other and pressed a searing kiss against her lips. She gasped his breath into her lungs and let her eyes fall closed from the heady taste.
It was a very brief kiss before he began pulling her out of the compartment and down the strangely empty corridor. She could still hear the sounds of the commotion somewhere ahead of them, but she could not see what was going on.
“Where are we going, Draco?” she asked as she followed him. He came to an abrupt halt at one of the trains exits, pulled his wand and tapped the door so that it slid open.
“I’m taking you to meet my mother,” he explained as the smoking smell of train exhaust sailed into their waiting faces.
Draco jumped out of the train, turned and picked her up at the waist to help her out of the train. There were several people standing on the platform, craning their necks in search of their family members. Ginny didn’t have time to look around for long as Draco placed a hand at the small of her back and began guiding them through the crowd to where a tall woman with golden blonde hair stood.
Oh, she was beautiful, Ginny thought. That regal stature and those elegant silver robes, her chin held proudly aloft as her blue-gray eyes scanned the crowd for her son. Draco had her finely arched brows and high cheekbones. Other than that, she knew he took mostly after his father.
Narcissa Malfoy finally caught sight of Draco, leading Ginny through the crowd. A pleased smile lifted her lips and wiped the arrogance out of her face. However, when she caught sight of who he had with him, Narcissa’s brows drew together with confusion.
“Mother,” Draco said, as they came upon her. He leaned in and gave her a dutiful kiss on the cheek.
Ginny was momentarily distracted when she heard shouts at the other end of the platform, she pushed up on tiptoes to see over the heads of the crowd, but Draco’s hand in hers brought her attention back.
“This is Ginevra, Mother,” Draco introduced them.
That tall imposing woman looked down at Ginny, a shadow of suspicion wavering in her eyes. “Draco, what is-“
Narcissa’s question was cut off when Draco suddenly reached up and clasped the pendant hanging from his mother’s neck. His grip tightened on Ginny’s hand and she felt the tug at her navel. She was flying and whipping through space and then she was falling.
The three of them stumbled as their feet came in contact with granite. Ginny’s knees wobbled and she nearly fell, but Draco’s arm went around her waist to steady her. When she looked up, she was no longer in Kings Cross Station. Her eyes rounded in shock as she gazed up at the cold, imposing sight of Malfoy Manor.
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