Chapter Four: The Viewing
Draco Malfoy was angry. Draco Malfoy was really really angry. He had generally been pissed off since that bint Weasley had argued and fled. Hell, typically he just got furious at her and stomped around and threw things, but he got over himself after a day or so. He had been on and off with this smoldering fury for the past two weeks; a new record for him, since after about a week he usually had either forgotten to be mad or gotten even.
Now, though, he was still pissed, and that compelled him to give his front door an extra hard slam as he stormed through Malfoy Manor. Various paintings of long dead relatives preached that it ill behooved a Malfoy to bang around like a petulant child, but he ignored them easily. He had been dealing with the disappointment of his ancestors for years, so it wasn’t like he was going to start listening to them now.
He didn’t like to admit that she had gotten to him so thoroughly. It irked him to realize that she had dared to cross that invisible line that they both had previously honored. He wouldn’t bring up her little escapades from her first year, and she wouldn’t bring up the Final Battle and everything that it entailed. Of course, that had all gone to Tartarus when she had just opened her big mouth and let it fly out like the dirty laundry it was.
Draco hadn’t constantly been thinking about the Weasley girl, however; he’d tried to forget, and that sometimes would work. For a while, at least. And then something would trigger it. A painting that he knew to be of her doing, a flash of vibrant red out of the corner of his eye, the freckles across the bridge of his secretary’s nose. And then he’d be thinking about her blasted hair, her blasted insults, or her blasted bowl of fruit.
Honestly, who drew fruit anymore these days? An artist of her caliber—as loathe as he was to admit it, she was actually good at what she did, and he could easily recognize that—didn’t need to be bothering with some apples or grapes. It had annoyed him to find her there, so soon after his revealing conversation with Theo, and he hadn’t been prepared. Hadn’t been prepared for her hurled insults and scathing glares and furious eyes.
He had left Theo’s almost immediately after her, for fear that he would take his anger out on his friends. Contrary to what Weasley might have said, they were his friends. His closest friends. He felt a brief moment of guilt. Pansy and Theodore must be constantly pulled both ways, by Weasley and himself, but he brushed off the guilt easily. Malfoys didn’t feel emotions such as “guilt.”
“Master Malfoy, you are having guests in your living room, sir,” came a frightened squeak somewhere near the vicinity off his left foot. Draco glanced down disdainfully.
“Guests?” he repeated nastily. “I wasn’t expecting guests. Who let them in?” he asked casually, directing his gaze at the unfortunate elf who quavered as if he’d actually struck the thing. His lip curled in disgust as it stammered an excuse out.
“Master Malfoy, Master Nott and Mistress Parkinson and—“
Draco cut it off with a huff of angry breath.
“Did they barge their way in here again?” he demanded, irritated. It was all the elf could do to nod fearfully as Draco changed courses, stumbling after his long strides as it wrung the discolored cloth it was wearing and stuttered out apologies. Draco dismissed it with a glare, and it gave an anguished sound before popping away to do whatever house elves did when they weren’t needed by their owners.
Great, so Pansy and Theodore decided to drop by, he grumbled to himself. He wasn’t exactly in the mood to say anything without hurting them, so he’d just have to get rid of them as quickly as possible and then go release his anger by torturing kittens or something.
He smiled mirthlessly to himself. It always amused him to mentally endorse the stereotype of the Dark ex-Slytherin pureblood.
Draco stalked down a few more halls, taking a few hidden passageways to get there sooner. Most of them had been added at the whim of whoever had been the Manor’s current junior resident. He himself had added a few of his own. He knew the reasoning behind it; most passageways were already known to whoever the patriarch of the Malfoy line was, so the heir needed a few secrets of his own and added some passageways himself.
Of course, this was completely negated by the time the new heir would come around, and it became an endless cycle of passageways being created. Hell, he was positive that there were probably more secret passageways than there were normal hallways.
Spinning around another corner, the end of this hallway opened up into the main living room, facing the far wall that was made of entirely glass, looking out over his imposing hedge garden. From here, he could see Pansy and Theodore talking and pointing at something over the entrance to the living room, devious smirks in place, and Draco had the uncomfortable feeling that whatever it was, he wasn’t going to like it.
As he got closer, they noticed him and made a few frantic gestures towards that place above the doorway, and Draco felt his eyes narrow further. He really wasn’t going to like this. He hoped for a wistful moment that they were only commenting on his family’s coat of arms, proudly displayed in a hulking monstrosity that took up half of the wall space above the doorway, but he knew that they wouldn’t be too interested in reading “Aurum est potestas” for the thousandth time. (1)
“Pansy, Theodore,” he started amicably as he strolled through the doorway, fighting the urge to instantly spin around and look at what had captured their attention so thoroughly. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“To whom, Malfoy, not what,” an all-too-familiar voice came from behind him—and slightly above him, he noted with a sinking feeling—and he spun around gradually, sneer in place before he had even begun to move. Instead of seeing Weasley (well, he did see her, he just wasn’t concentrating on her), his eyes were drawn to the enormously large painting of himself.
For one, Draco couldn’t remember having one commissioned of himself. That and he’d never posed for a nude portrait before. Nude. His mind couldn’t seem to get past that word, and it kept on blanking out when he attempted to go beyond that adjective. It was a huge monstrosity of a painting, taking up nearly as much room as his family crest, and was jauntily located right above his family crest. He could literally feel his ancestors rolling in their graves.
Distantly, he had to admit that it was magnificently done. The contrast between the darks and lights had been captured beautifully, drawing attention to the focal point of the painting: the nude Draco Malfoy. He felt his thought process short circuit again, and felt it go around in circles. Nude. Nude. Nudenudenude.
“Dear Salazar,” he managed to squeeze out, sounding more strangled than he’d ever sounded. His eyes traced over the familiar body, recognizing every inch of it. She had truly captured him down to the very last hair on his calf, and knew that she probably got well paid for it. He couldn’t help but note that down in the right hand corner, tiny enough to not take away from the painting but large enough to be read, a tiny GM in vivid scarlet, the only trace of bright color in the whole painting.
He just knew she had chosen that color, so like her own bloody hair, just to irk him. Not that she needed to do anything else…
When his double gave a cocky little wave with his hand, Draco nearly fainted. He had hoped beyond hope that she might have done this painting in the Muggle style and kept the enchantments out of it, but he could see now that it was a fruitless gesture. He could just imagine entertaining important business guests in the parlor and having his nude self strut into another frame and greet the room merrily…
“Salazar’s balls,” he whispered faintly, ignoring Theodore and Pansy’s tittering to Weasley.
“That’s the second time he’s invoked old Snakey,” Theodore informed Ginny pleasantly, and she rolled her eyes. She had levitated herself up and had been in the process of putting the painting into place when Theodore and Pansy had gestured urgently, signaling that Malfoy was actually home earlier than they had originally thought.
Ginny glanced down at Malfoy, who looked more like a fish out of water than she’d ever seen him. Hell, after bearing the brunt of his insults for years, she knew he was shocked when all he could manage to say was “Salazar this” and “Salazar that.” Glancing back at the painting, she supposed that he kind of had reason to be so stunned. If she had come home and found a promiscuous looking painting of herself lounging around in her most-used room, she would have probably lost it.
Looking back at the painting, Ginny couldn’t help but blush in remembrance. The eyes had come easily—even now, when the painting-Malfoy was feeling particularly devious and rubbing his nudity in his original’s face (Ginny thanked the gods that he hadn’t progressed to strutting around yet)—after about two hours of spreading the paint and making it perfect in his face, nearly the same color as where the shadows faded into the soft sunlight from the curtains.
It was the other part of his anatomy that had given her more trouble. It wasn’t that she had any difficulty remembering just what it had looked like, as had been in the case of his eyes, but it was a different matter all together. The image was practically seared to her retinas, so she didn’t have a problem at all with recalling just what it looked like, nestled so perfectly between the crux of his thighs and the soft, downy blond hair…
Blushing, Ginny looked to the left and away from both Malfoys, knowing if she looked at either one, they’d cause a whole new wave of red to flood over her. Even though her eyes were closed, her treacherous thoughts immediately went back to those torturous hours after painting his eyes, each tiny brush stroke adding to the length of Malfoy’s most prominent organ.
After that, she had thought briefly over whether or not to keep it a Muggle-style painting, or charm it into a Wizard-style painting. Ultimately, it was her desire to cause him as much discomfort as possible that made her decide to charm it to move like every other normal Wizarding painting. Of course, the nude Malfoy had promptly stood up, stretched like a cat (which had drawn her eye to that recently-finished part of him that she just couldn’t look away from) and disappeared out of his frame.
Frantic, she had hoped that he hadn’t disappeared out of her apartment, so she had nearly thrown apart all her piles of precariously-stacked paintings in search of him. Eventually, however, she had found him in one of the most unlikely paintings: her own self portrait. What Malfoy’s dual self had been doing to her dual self, however, had caused a far more vivid blush than simply seeing a naked Malfoy had induced.
It wasn’t every day that she saw herself snogging a naked Malfoy, though, so she figured it had well earned the title of Ginny Weasley’s Most Violently Red Blush.
She had hastily removed him from her painting and locked him into his painting, promising herself that she’d undo the charm when she got to Malfoy Manor. Of course, she had woken in the middle of the night to find Malfoy’s dual self whispering dirty promises to her dual self, which she hadn’t properly hidden from his view, and had promptly cast a Silencio on the bloody thing and thrown him in the closet.
Getting back to sleep had been hard, however, when she realized that she had been feeling jealous of her portrait self. I mean, what does she have that I don’t? she had questioned to herself mournfully in the dark before realizing what she had just thought and sat up, eyes wide.
“I’m going crazy,” she had said aloud. How bizarre was it that she was jealous of her own self portrait? After promising to check herself into St. Mungo’s, she had flopped back onto her bed and gone to sleep after removing a paint brush that had been lodged uncomfortably underneath her bum.
When she was positive that she had gained sufficient control over her unfortunate tendency to blush like a tomato, Ginny opened her eyes and looked down at Malfoy. Who was staring up at her, utterly composed and looking only the tiniest bit pink and angry. This alone proved to her just how much this painting had gotten to Malfoy, and she smirked smugly, all regrets at having painted him disappearing if only for the knowledge that she had shaken Draco Malfoy’s unshakeable façade.
“What are you doing here, Weasley?” he sneered, and she couldn’t help but realize that he was acting as if the painting didn’t exist. She wasn’t going to let him get away that easily, though.
“What does it look like, Malfoy? I’m hanging my work,” she said, emphasizing the word with a pointed look to the lazily yawning naked Malfoy. She worked hard not to blush, and managed to pull off a color that was only a mild shade of salmon versus her normal puce. Malfoy, however, had his faint little pink darken slightly, and she grinned, knowing that even that slight acknowledgment had disturbed him.
“Happy Birthday!” came a cry from behind Malfoy, and both of them turned to look at Pansy and Theodore, who had produced their wands and were showering Draco with confetti. Scratching her head, Ginny wasn’t sure that their timing was all that perfect, considering she had been in the middle of making Malfoy uncomfortable, and obviously Malfoy thought the same, considering the death glare that he was directing towards them.
“This is my birthday present?” he questioned incredulously, and Ginny couldn’t help but agree with the question. Why had they decided on this, of all things? Why not a perfectly normal birthday present, like jewelry or Quidditch supplies or even a Muggle to torture?
“Well, we figured you didn’t have one, so we wanted to rectify that,” Pansy replied primly, getting tired of waving her wand around and shoving it in her sleeve.
Theodore, however, had no such qualms, and jumped around even more energetically, seemingly attempting to make up for Pansy’s lack of confetti.
Malfoy turned back to Ginny, and she felt an uncomfortable feeling nearly smothering her. Realizing what it was with sickening clarity, she used her wand to drift to the ground. This was something that was better said face to face, not when she was fifteen feet above him.
“Malfoy,” she began, feeling her instincts rebel at the very thought of saying this to a Malfoy, “I’m sorry.”
From the expression on his face, she could tell that he was just as shocked as she was that she was apologizing. A fleeting thought crossed her mind: maybe if she shocked him enough tonight, he’d be well on his way to a heart attack or something equally dramatic.
“What?” he asked, and it was nearly a squawk.
Rolling her eyes, Ginny decided to humor him.
“I’m sorry,” she ground out from between clenched teeth, feeling the words reluctantly slip out despite her body’s attempts to contain them. He blinked owlishly, before glancing back to Pansy and Theodore.
“Did you two put her up to this?” he questioned them, and it was Ginny’s turn to blink in surprise.
“You mean have her apologize or paint you?” Theodore asked cheerfully, still dancing around Pansy. The confetti had turned into bits of ribbons, and every once in a while Ginny could see him lean closer and wave his wand in a complicated fashion that wove the ribbons in her short hair. By the way that Pansy pretended not to notice, Ginny knew that she was secretly pleased and would rather he continue than stop.
“Both,” Malfoy answered shortly.
“We asked her to paint you, but Salazar knows what she’s apologizing for,” Pansy said with a shrug.
There it goes again, Ginny thought with amusement to the fact that Salazar Slytherin had once again entered the conversation. She had noticed long ago that among Dark families and particularly ex-Slytherins, they tended to replace the more common “gods” or “Merlin” with “Salazar.” She attributed it to a long-ingrained loyalty to their house that had simply never vanished.
“What are you apologizing for, Weasley?” he questioned, turning back to Ginny.
She looked down at her feet, shuffling them uncomfortably under his scrutiny.
“For saying what I said last time I saw you,” she said in a rush, deliberately avoiding any particular words that would describe exactly what she was talking about.
“Which last time?” he questioned infuriatingly, and Ginny resisted the urge to look up and glare. She chose instead to continue looking at her worn sneakers, trying to decide how to best word this.
“The time when I brought up the topic of the Last Battle,” she said quickly, this time looking up from underneath her lashes to see his expression. It wasn't tortured or even the least bit sad; rather, he was looking kind of pissed. Ginny was part relieved and part annoyed at this. Here she was, attempting to make amends, and he was just going to throw it in her face.
“Don’t make me laugh, Weasley. You and I both know that you meant every word,” he sneered dismissively, looking away from her as if the sight of her was too much for him.
“I might have meant it, yeah, and I sure as hell don’t regret what I said,” she snapped back angrily, taking a step closer. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t feel bad about saying the bloody truth.” This brought his gaze back to hers, and he took a menacing step closer.
“Oh, and you of all people, Weasley, care oh-so-much about accidentally tromping all over someone’s feelings with your dirty trainers and your insensitive and ignorant words,” Malfoy drawled sarcastically, rolling his eyes.
“Ignorant?” she cried indignantly, stepping closer and giving a little shake of her head to fling the red curls out of her face so she could glare up at him more easily. “Even my great-great-grandmother knew about how the Malfoys had been shunned and alone after the Last Battle, and she’s been dead for the better part of century!” Ginny figured she was stretching the truth a bit there, but didn’t really care. It was the thought that counted, anyway.
“As if I would care what a dead Weasley broad thinks!” he said huffily, and Ginny glowered angrily. The distance between them was nearly nonexistent now; they had both gone so close to better deliver their insults, and Ginny found that she hardly had to crane her neck up to insult him, since their difference in height wasn’t nearly as pronounced as it could have been.
“For your information, Malfoy, she wasn’t a Weasley. She was a fucking Flint,” she growled angrily, referring to Ursula Flint.
She had actually married into Malfoy’s mother own illustrious “Noble and Most Ancient House of Black,” so Ginny knew that Malfoy couldn’t dispute this reference to her own pureblood status. However much a Weasley she might be, she was still connected to all those pureblood families that Malfoy held near and dear, and she knew that it would only rile him up further.
“And it was her granddaughter that decided to open her legs to any walking filth that decided to traipse near enough. Mainly, a Weasley,” he replied venomously, and Ginny didn’t even think about it before her fist was flying towards his jaw with the intention of knocking his lights out for going so far with the family insults. Sure, he had said that kind of stuff before, and sometimes it had been worse.
But something was different right now. She didn’t think about the why of it, she just wanted to make him regret it.
Lightning fast, his left hand streaked up to grip her wrist in a vice-like grip before it got close enough. She sorely regretted his Seeker reflexes, but figured he wouldn’t think about her having another hand and decided to give that one a go, too. It, too, was stopped inches away, and she gave him her deadliest glare.
Then, she decided to pull a last resort trick and tried to knee him. Sure, she had always felt as that was the lowest of the low, but she figured that like deserved like and Malfoy was probably used to it, anyway.
Her swiftly delivered knee was knocked aside by his own, and she wanted to hit him and snarl and curse. She opened her mouth to do so, looking up into his own furious grey eyes, and two things happened.
One, she realized just how damn close Malfoy had gotten to her in her attempts to disable him.
Two, he closed those scanty few inches between them and pressed his lips to hers.
The sheer unexpectedness of it all lasted for maybe a quarter of a second before Ginny started to fight back, squirming angrily at this violation of personal space. This was something entirely new to her, and she was just too furious and enraged to let him get away with it unscathed. She attempted to free her wrists from his grasp, but that was to no avail. Her lower body had no more success, and the only thing she managed to do was wriggle even closer to him.
So she decided to turn her violence towards the only other point of contact: his mouth.
Ginny attempted to snap down on his lips with her teeth, but he drew them stealthily away just long enough for her to miss before they were back on hers, fighting to keep them connected. His tongue savagely fought its way between her lips and she went to bite down on it before he rapidly yanked it back, caressing the folds of her lips in a way that had her melting in his grip subconsciously. When his velvet tongue returned next, she didn’t try to chomp down on it. Instead, she tried to expel it with her own tongue.
This did practically nothing, however, and she couldn’t help but think of the elaborate parries and thrusts of sword fighting as they orally grappled with each other. She hardly noticed when their battle ground, so to speak, transferred from her mouth to his in a slow progression, and then ended up somewhere in between before going either way, depending on who was “winning.”
His hands had released her wrists and had trailed down her arms, raising hairs and leaving goose bumps in their wake before one tangled viciously in her hair and the other ended up half on her bum, half on her lower back as he cemented them together. She didn’t have any protests; her own hands were in similar positions, one wrapped in his own silky hair—she exulted at the feeling, ecstatic that it was as soft as it looked—and the other gripping his bum tightly.
She squeezed said bum particularly hard, and he drew away with a strangled groan. She was panting, mostly held up by his grip on her while her forehead was resting against his shoulder. Dammit. Dammit, dammit, dammit, she thought to herself, unsure whether she was cursing herself for continuing the kiss, or enjoying it, or something else entirely.
When she realized that she was pissed that they hadn’t snogged sooner, she glared up at him accusingly.
“I still hate you,” she snapped petulantly. He was looked down at her, no longer quite as angry but still looking quite passionate, even if it was for an entirely different reason. Ginny rapidly decided that the current state of his eyes was going to inspire a whole slew of paintings now. The freshly-snogged horny look did wonders for those darker swirls of grey, and she was partially torn between wanting to reach for a brush and wanting to try snogging him again and see if they would get the same results.
“Same here, Weasley, but we don’t have to love each other to do this,” he informed her, before illustrating that point quite nicely and yanking her head back up to his violently. This kiss wasn’t quite as much of a battleground as it was the final negotiations after the battle, settling the terms.
It did take a bit longer than the “battle,” however, and Ginny didn’t really find herself complaining as his tongue did that swirly thing that she was rapidly beginning to love.
When they drew apart again, she looked up at him from beneath hazy eyes, drawing his attention back to her with another impatient squeeze on that well toned cheek.
“It’s Ginny,” she informed him. He bent his head in a nod, a devilish smirk crossing his lips.
“Then you can call me Draco.” He looked down at her with that heated expression, and Ginny quickly realized that that pressure in her lower stomach had nothing to do with the fact that she had indigestion or had to pee. Rather, she figured that there was only one thing that could alleviate that “pressure,” and it happened to have grey eyes, silky hair, and smirking lips.
“As long as we’re fucking, I figure it’d be a bit hard to cry out ‘WEASLEY!’ in the heat of it,” he continued on casually, and Ginny felt that stirring in her belly again.
“Don’t get any ideas yet,” she warned him, faux-scowling. “I’m not agreeing to anything until I see some action.”
“Don’t worry,” he purred dangerously. “That’s only the next part.”
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From their position outside of the room, Pansy and Theodore snickered quietly to themselves as they watched their two best friends snog each other. They had sneaked out sometime in the middle of the argument to give them some semblance of privacy. Hell, it was more like they were wrestling with each other; Pansy was surprised that one of them hadn’t pulled back with a busted lip or a black eye. Either way, however, the venture had been a success.
“Too perfect!” Theodore crowed happily, peeking back in and not bothered in the slightest that some would call it voyeurism.
“I agree,” Pansy replied happily. All their plotting had finally come to a conclusion, even if it had been a bit violent. She was partially concerned that they might injure themselves in the process, but then shrugged it off. Whatever injuries they sustained were well deserved. She and Theodore had put up with them for years; they deserved every bit of pain they would cause each other.
Theo turned to her, but she was too distracted by watching Ginny and Draco snog/attempt to kill each other to notice. She did notice, however, when he swooped in closer and dropped a small peck on her check. Whipping her head to face him, she raised her hand to her check, touching the spot with wonder while she stared at the blond man, who was looking quite pink.
“Theo?” she questioned cautiously, unsure if she should be hoping for what she was.
“You’re amazing, Pansy,” he murmured, looking down at his hands that were clenched around each other. She blinked, feeling the blush spread, and looked down at her own hand that was wrinkling her expensive shirt. She couldn’t bring herself to care.
“You too, Theo,” she whispered back, and the both looked up and met each others eyes instinctively. The small, shy smiles that curved their lips spoke for them. Sooner or later, they’d be in a similar position to Ginny and Draco—with a large fraction of the violence missing.
Pansy couldn’t wait.
Draco Malfoy was angry. Draco Malfoy was really really angry. He had generally been pissed off since that bint Weasley had argued and fled. Hell, typically he just got furious at her and stomped around and threw things, but he got over himself after a day or so. He had been on and off with this smoldering fury for the past two weeks; a new record for him, since after about a week he usually had either forgotten to be mad or gotten even.
Now, though, he was still pissed, and that compelled him to give his front door an extra hard slam as he stormed through Malfoy Manor. Various paintings of long dead relatives preached that it ill behooved a Malfoy to bang around like a petulant child, but he ignored them easily. He had been dealing with the disappointment of his ancestors for years, so it wasn’t like he was going to start listening to them now.
He didn’t like to admit that she had gotten to him so thoroughly. It irked him to realize that she had dared to cross that invisible line that they both had previously honored. He wouldn’t bring up her little escapades from her first year, and she wouldn’t bring up the Final Battle and everything that it entailed. Of course, that had all gone to Tartarus when she had just opened her big mouth and let it fly out like the dirty laundry it was.
Draco hadn’t constantly been thinking about the Weasley girl, however; he’d tried to forget, and that sometimes would work. For a while, at least. And then something would trigger it. A painting that he knew to be of her doing, a flash of vibrant red out of the corner of his eye, the freckles across the bridge of his secretary’s nose. And then he’d be thinking about her blasted hair, her blasted insults, or her blasted bowl of fruit.
Honestly, who drew fruit anymore these days? An artist of her caliber—as loathe as he was to admit it, she was actually good at what she did, and he could easily recognize that—didn’t need to be bothering with some apples or grapes. It had annoyed him to find her there, so soon after his revealing conversation with Theo, and he hadn’t been prepared. Hadn’t been prepared for her hurled insults and scathing glares and furious eyes.
He had left Theo’s almost immediately after her, for fear that he would take his anger out on his friends. Contrary to what Weasley might have said, they were his friends. His closest friends. He felt a brief moment of guilt. Pansy and Theodore must be constantly pulled both ways, by Weasley and himself, but he brushed off the guilt easily. Malfoys didn’t feel emotions such as “guilt.”
“Master Malfoy, you are having guests in your living room, sir,” came a frightened squeak somewhere near the vicinity off his left foot. Draco glanced down disdainfully.
“Guests?” he repeated nastily. “I wasn’t expecting guests. Who let them in?” he asked casually, directing his gaze at the unfortunate elf who quavered as if he’d actually struck the thing. His lip curled in disgust as it stammered an excuse out.
“Master Malfoy, Master Nott and Mistress Parkinson and—“
Draco cut it off with a huff of angry breath.
“Did they barge their way in here again?” he demanded, irritated. It was all the elf could do to nod fearfully as Draco changed courses, stumbling after his long strides as it wrung the discolored cloth it was wearing and stuttered out apologies. Draco dismissed it with a glare, and it gave an anguished sound before popping away to do whatever house elves did when they weren’t needed by their owners.
Great, so Pansy and Theodore decided to drop by, he grumbled to himself. He wasn’t exactly in the mood to say anything without hurting them, so he’d just have to get rid of them as quickly as possible and then go release his anger by torturing kittens or something.
He smiled mirthlessly to himself. It always amused him to mentally endorse the stereotype of the Dark ex-Slytherin pureblood.
Draco stalked down a few more halls, taking a few hidden passageways to get there sooner. Most of them had been added at the whim of whoever had been the Manor’s current junior resident. He himself had added a few of his own. He knew the reasoning behind it; most passageways were already known to whoever the patriarch of the Malfoy line was, so the heir needed a few secrets of his own and added some passageways himself.
Of course, this was completely negated by the time the new heir would come around, and it became an endless cycle of passageways being created. Hell, he was positive that there were probably more secret passageways than there were normal hallways.
Spinning around another corner, the end of this hallway opened up into the main living room, facing the far wall that was made of entirely glass, looking out over his imposing hedge garden. From here, he could see Pansy and Theodore talking and pointing at something over the entrance to the living room, devious smirks in place, and Draco had the uncomfortable feeling that whatever it was, he wasn’t going to like it.
As he got closer, they noticed him and made a few frantic gestures towards that place above the doorway, and Draco felt his eyes narrow further. He really wasn’t going to like this. He hoped for a wistful moment that they were only commenting on his family’s coat of arms, proudly displayed in a hulking monstrosity that took up half of the wall space above the doorway, but he knew that they wouldn’t be too interested in reading “Aurum est potestas” for the thousandth time. (1)
“Pansy, Theodore,” he started amicably as he strolled through the doorway, fighting the urge to instantly spin around and look at what had captured their attention so thoroughly. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“To whom, Malfoy, not what,” an all-too-familiar voice came from behind him—and slightly above him, he noted with a sinking feeling—and he spun around gradually, sneer in place before he had even begun to move. Instead of seeing Weasley (well, he did see her, he just wasn’t concentrating on her), his eyes were drawn to the enormously large painting of himself.
For one, Draco couldn’t remember having one commissioned of himself. That and he’d never posed for a nude portrait before. Nude. His mind couldn’t seem to get past that word, and it kept on blanking out when he attempted to go beyond that adjective. It was a huge monstrosity of a painting, taking up nearly as much room as his family crest, and was jauntily located right above his family crest. He could literally feel his ancestors rolling in their graves.
Distantly, he had to admit that it was magnificently done. The contrast between the darks and lights had been captured beautifully, drawing attention to the focal point of the painting: the nude Draco Malfoy. He felt his thought process short circuit again, and felt it go around in circles. Nude. Nude. Nudenudenude.
“Dear Salazar,” he managed to squeeze out, sounding more strangled than he’d ever sounded. His eyes traced over the familiar body, recognizing every inch of it. She had truly captured him down to the very last hair on his calf, and knew that she probably got well paid for it. He couldn’t help but note that down in the right hand corner, tiny enough to not take away from the painting but large enough to be read, a tiny GM in vivid scarlet, the only trace of bright color in the whole painting.
He just knew she had chosen that color, so like her own bloody hair, just to irk him. Not that she needed to do anything else…
When his double gave a cocky little wave with his hand, Draco nearly fainted. He had hoped beyond hope that she might have done this painting in the Muggle style and kept the enchantments out of it, but he could see now that it was a fruitless gesture. He could just imagine entertaining important business guests in the parlor and having his nude self strut into another frame and greet the room merrily…
“Salazar’s balls,” he whispered faintly, ignoring Theodore and Pansy’s tittering to Weasley.
“That’s the second time he’s invoked old Snakey,” Theodore informed Ginny pleasantly, and she rolled her eyes. She had levitated herself up and had been in the process of putting the painting into place when Theodore and Pansy had gestured urgently, signaling that Malfoy was actually home earlier than they had originally thought.
Ginny glanced down at Malfoy, who looked more like a fish out of water than she’d ever seen him. Hell, after bearing the brunt of his insults for years, she knew he was shocked when all he could manage to say was “Salazar this” and “Salazar that.” Glancing back at the painting, she supposed that he kind of had reason to be so stunned. If she had come home and found a promiscuous looking painting of herself lounging around in her most-used room, she would have probably lost it.
Looking back at the painting, Ginny couldn’t help but blush in remembrance. The eyes had come easily—even now, when the painting-Malfoy was feeling particularly devious and rubbing his nudity in his original’s face (Ginny thanked the gods that he hadn’t progressed to strutting around yet)—after about two hours of spreading the paint and making it perfect in his face, nearly the same color as where the shadows faded into the soft sunlight from the curtains.
It was the other part of his anatomy that had given her more trouble. It wasn’t that she had any difficulty remembering just what it had looked like, as had been in the case of his eyes, but it was a different matter all together. The image was practically seared to her retinas, so she didn’t have a problem at all with recalling just what it looked like, nestled so perfectly between the crux of his thighs and the soft, downy blond hair…
Blushing, Ginny looked to the left and away from both Malfoys, knowing if she looked at either one, they’d cause a whole new wave of red to flood over her. Even though her eyes were closed, her treacherous thoughts immediately went back to those torturous hours after painting his eyes, each tiny brush stroke adding to the length of Malfoy’s most prominent organ.
After that, she had thought briefly over whether or not to keep it a Muggle-style painting, or charm it into a Wizard-style painting. Ultimately, it was her desire to cause him as much discomfort as possible that made her decide to charm it to move like every other normal Wizarding painting. Of course, the nude Malfoy had promptly stood up, stretched like a cat (which had drawn her eye to that recently-finished part of him that she just couldn’t look away from) and disappeared out of his frame.
Frantic, she had hoped that he hadn’t disappeared out of her apartment, so she had nearly thrown apart all her piles of precariously-stacked paintings in search of him. Eventually, however, she had found him in one of the most unlikely paintings: her own self portrait. What Malfoy’s dual self had been doing to her dual self, however, had caused a far more vivid blush than simply seeing a naked Malfoy had induced.
It wasn’t every day that she saw herself snogging a naked Malfoy, though, so she figured it had well earned the title of Ginny Weasley’s Most Violently Red Blush.
She had hastily removed him from her painting and locked him into his painting, promising herself that she’d undo the charm when she got to Malfoy Manor. Of course, she had woken in the middle of the night to find Malfoy’s dual self whispering dirty promises to her dual self, which she hadn’t properly hidden from his view, and had promptly cast a Silencio on the bloody thing and thrown him in the closet.
Getting back to sleep had been hard, however, when she realized that she had been feeling jealous of her portrait self. I mean, what does she have that I don’t? she had questioned to herself mournfully in the dark before realizing what she had just thought and sat up, eyes wide.
“I’m going crazy,” she had said aloud. How bizarre was it that she was jealous of her own self portrait? After promising to check herself into St. Mungo’s, she had flopped back onto her bed and gone to sleep after removing a paint brush that had been lodged uncomfortably underneath her bum.
When she was positive that she had gained sufficient control over her unfortunate tendency to blush like a tomato, Ginny opened her eyes and looked down at Malfoy. Who was staring up at her, utterly composed and looking only the tiniest bit pink and angry. This alone proved to her just how much this painting had gotten to Malfoy, and she smirked smugly, all regrets at having painted him disappearing if only for the knowledge that she had shaken Draco Malfoy’s unshakeable façade.
“What are you doing here, Weasley?” he sneered, and she couldn’t help but realize that he was acting as if the painting didn’t exist. She wasn’t going to let him get away that easily, though.
“What does it look like, Malfoy? I’m hanging my work,” she said, emphasizing the word with a pointed look to the lazily yawning naked Malfoy. She worked hard not to blush, and managed to pull off a color that was only a mild shade of salmon versus her normal puce. Malfoy, however, had his faint little pink darken slightly, and she grinned, knowing that even that slight acknowledgment had disturbed him.
“Happy Birthday!” came a cry from behind Malfoy, and both of them turned to look at Pansy and Theodore, who had produced their wands and were showering Draco with confetti. Scratching her head, Ginny wasn’t sure that their timing was all that perfect, considering she had been in the middle of making Malfoy uncomfortable, and obviously Malfoy thought the same, considering the death glare that he was directing towards them.
“This is my birthday present?” he questioned incredulously, and Ginny couldn’t help but agree with the question. Why had they decided on this, of all things? Why not a perfectly normal birthday present, like jewelry or Quidditch supplies or even a Muggle to torture?
“Well, we figured you didn’t have one, so we wanted to rectify that,” Pansy replied primly, getting tired of waving her wand around and shoving it in her sleeve.
Theodore, however, had no such qualms, and jumped around even more energetically, seemingly attempting to make up for Pansy’s lack of confetti.
Malfoy turned back to Ginny, and she felt an uncomfortable feeling nearly smothering her. Realizing what it was with sickening clarity, she used her wand to drift to the ground. This was something that was better said face to face, not when she was fifteen feet above him.
“Malfoy,” she began, feeling her instincts rebel at the very thought of saying this to a Malfoy, “I’m sorry.”
From the expression on his face, she could tell that he was just as shocked as she was that she was apologizing. A fleeting thought crossed her mind: maybe if she shocked him enough tonight, he’d be well on his way to a heart attack or something equally dramatic.
“What?” he asked, and it was nearly a squawk.
Rolling her eyes, Ginny decided to humor him.
“I’m sorry,” she ground out from between clenched teeth, feeling the words reluctantly slip out despite her body’s attempts to contain them. He blinked owlishly, before glancing back to Pansy and Theodore.
“Did you two put her up to this?” he questioned them, and it was Ginny’s turn to blink in surprise.
“You mean have her apologize or paint you?” Theodore asked cheerfully, still dancing around Pansy. The confetti had turned into bits of ribbons, and every once in a while Ginny could see him lean closer and wave his wand in a complicated fashion that wove the ribbons in her short hair. By the way that Pansy pretended not to notice, Ginny knew that she was secretly pleased and would rather he continue than stop.
“Both,” Malfoy answered shortly.
“We asked her to paint you, but Salazar knows what she’s apologizing for,” Pansy said with a shrug.
There it goes again, Ginny thought with amusement to the fact that Salazar Slytherin had once again entered the conversation. She had noticed long ago that among Dark families and particularly ex-Slytherins, they tended to replace the more common “gods” or “Merlin” with “Salazar.” She attributed it to a long-ingrained loyalty to their house that had simply never vanished.
“What are you apologizing for, Weasley?” he questioned, turning back to Ginny.
She looked down at her feet, shuffling them uncomfortably under his scrutiny.
“For saying what I said last time I saw you,” she said in a rush, deliberately avoiding any particular words that would describe exactly what she was talking about.
“Which last time?” he questioned infuriatingly, and Ginny resisted the urge to look up and glare. She chose instead to continue looking at her worn sneakers, trying to decide how to best word this.
“The time when I brought up the topic of the Last Battle,” she said quickly, this time looking up from underneath her lashes to see his expression. It wasn't tortured or even the least bit sad; rather, he was looking kind of pissed. Ginny was part relieved and part annoyed at this. Here she was, attempting to make amends, and he was just going to throw it in her face.
“Don’t make me laugh, Weasley. You and I both know that you meant every word,” he sneered dismissively, looking away from her as if the sight of her was too much for him.
“I might have meant it, yeah, and I sure as hell don’t regret what I said,” she snapped back angrily, taking a step closer. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t feel bad about saying the bloody truth.” This brought his gaze back to hers, and he took a menacing step closer.
“Oh, and you of all people, Weasley, care oh-so-much about accidentally tromping all over someone’s feelings with your dirty trainers and your insensitive and ignorant words,” Malfoy drawled sarcastically, rolling his eyes.
“Ignorant?” she cried indignantly, stepping closer and giving a little shake of her head to fling the red curls out of her face so she could glare up at him more easily. “Even my great-great-grandmother knew about how the Malfoys had been shunned and alone after the Last Battle, and she’s been dead for the better part of century!” Ginny figured she was stretching the truth a bit there, but didn’t really care. It was the thought that counted, anyway.
“As if I would care what a dead Weasley broad thinks!” he said huffily, and Ginny glowered angrily. The distance between them was nearly nonexistent now; they had both gone so close to better deliver their insults, and Ginny found that she hardly had to crane her neck up to insult him, since their difference in height wasn’t nearly as pronounced as it could have been.
“For your information, Malfoy, she wasn’t a Weasley. She was a fucking Flint,” she growled angrily, referring to Ursula Flint.
She had actually married into Malfoy’s mother own illustrious “Noble and Most Ancient House of Black,” so Ginny knew that Malfoy couldn’t dispute this reference to her own pureblood status. However much a Weasley she might be, she was still connected to all those pureblood families that Malfoy held near and dear, and she knew that it would only rile him up further.
“And it was her granddaughter that decided to open her legs to any walking filth that decided to traipse near enough. Mainly, a Weasley,” he replied venomously, and Ginny didn’t even think about it before her fist was flying towards his jaw with the intention of knocking his lights out for going so far with the family insults. Sure, he had said that kind of stuff before, and sometimes it had been worse.
But something was different right now. She didn’t think about the why of it, she just wanted to make him regret it.
Lightning fast, his left hand streaked up to grip her wrist in a vice-like grip before it got close enough. She sorely regretted his Seeker reflexes, but figured he wouldn’t think about her having another hand and decided to give that one a go, too. It, too, was stopped inches away, and she gave him her deadliest glare.
Then, she decided to pull a last resort trick and tried to knee him. Sure, she had always felt as that was the lowest of the low, but she figured that like deserved like and Malfoy was probably used to it, anyway.
Her swiftly delivered knee was knocked aside by his own, and she wanted to hit him and snarl and curse. She opened her mouth to do so, looking up into his own furious grey eyes, and two things happened.
One, she realized just how damn close Malfoy had gotten to her in her attempts to disable him.
Two, he closed those scanty few inches between them and pressed his lips to hers.
The sheer unexpectedness of it all lasted for maybe a quarter of a second before Ginny started to fight back, squirming angrily at this violation of personal space. This was something entirely new to her, and she was just too furious and enraged to let him get away with it unscathed. She attempted to free her wrists from his grasp, but that was to no avail. Her lower body had no more success, and the only thing she managed to do was wriggle even closer to him.
So she decided to turn her violence towards the only other point of contact: his mouth.
Ginny attempted to snap down on his lips with her teeth, but he drew them stealthily away just long enough for her to miss before they were back on hers, fighting to keep them connected. His tongue savagely fought its way between her lips and she went to bite down on it before he rapidly yanked it back, caressing the folds of her lips in a way that had her melting in his grip subconsciously. When his velvet tongue returned next, she didn’t try to chomp down on it. Instead, she tried to expel it with her own tongue.
This did practically nothing, however, and she couldn’t help but think of the elaborate parries and thrusts of sword fighting as they orally grappled with each other. She hardly noticed when their battle ground, so to speak, transferred from her mouth to his in a slow progression, and then ended up somewhere in between before going either way, depending on who was “winning.”
His hands had released her wrists and had trailed down her arms, raising hairs and leaving goose bumps in their wake before one tangled viciously in her hair and the other ended up half on her bum, half on her lower back as he cemented them together. She didn’t have any protests; her own hands were in similar positions, one wrapped in his own silky hair—she exulted at the feeling, ecstatic that it was as soft as it looked—and the other gripping his bum tightly.
She squeezed said bum particularly hard, and he drew away with a strangled groan. She was panting, mostly held up by his grip on her while her forehead was resting against his shoulder. Dammit. Dammit, dammit, dammit, she thought to herself, unsure whether she was cursing herself for continuing the kiss, or enjoying it, or something else entirely.
When she realized that she was pissed that they hadn’t snogged sooner, she glared up at him accusingly.
“I still hate you,” she snapped petulantly. He was looked down at her, no longer quite as angry but still looking quite passionate, even if it was for an entirely different reason. Ginny rapidly decided that the current state of his eyes was going to inspire a whole slew of paintings now. The freshly-snogged horny look did wonders for those darker swirls of grey, and she was partially torn between wanting to reach for a brush and wanting to try snogging him again and see if they would get the same results.
“Same here, Weasley, but we don’t have to love each other to do this,” he informed her, before illustrating that point quite nicely and yanking her head back up to his violently. This kiss wasn’t quite as much of a battleground as it was the final negotiations after the battle, settling the terms.
It did take a bit longer than the “battle,” however, and Ginny didn’t really find herself complaining as his tongue did that swirly thing that she was rapidly beginning to love.
When they drew apart again, she looked up at him from beneath hazy eyes, drawing his attention back to her with another impatient squeeze on that well toned cheek.
“It’s Ginny,” she informed him. He bent his head in a nod, a devilish smirk crossing his lips.
“Then you can call me Draco.” He looked down at her with that heated expression, and Ginny quickly realized that that pressure in her lower stomach had nothing to do with the fact that she had indigestion or had to pee. Rather, she figured that there was only one thing that could alleviate that “pressure,” and it happened to have grey eyes, silky hair, and smirking lips.
“As long as we’re fucking, I figure it’d be a bit hard to cry out ‘WEASLEY!’ in the heat of it,” he continued on casually, and Ginny felt that stirring in her belly again.
“Don’t get any ideas yet,” she warned him, faux-scowling. “I’m not agreeing to anything until I see some action.”
“Don’t worry,” he purred dangerously. “That’s only the next part.”
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From their position outside of the room, Pansy and Theodore snickered quietly to themselves as they watched their two best friends snog each other. They had sneaked out sometime in the middle of the argument to give them some semblance of privacy. Hell, it was more like they were wrestling with each other; Pansy was surprised that one of them hadn’t pulled back with a busted lip or a black eye. Either way, however, the venture had been a success.
“Too perfect!” Theodore crowed happily, peeking back in and not bothered in the slightest that some would call it voyeurism.
“I agree,” Pansy replied happily. All their plotting had finally come to a conclusion, even if it had been a bit violent. She was partially concerned that they might injure themselves in the process, but then shrugged it off. Whatever injuries they sustained were well deserved. She and Theodore had put up with them for years; they deserved every bit of pain they would cause each other.
Theo turned to her, but she was too distracted by watching Ginny and Draco snog/attempt to kill each other to notice. She did notice, however, when he swooped in closer and dropped a small peck on her check. Whipping her head to face him, she raised her hand to her check, touching the spot with wonder while she stared at the blond man, who was looking quite pink.
“Theo?” she questioned cautiously, unsure if she should be hoping for what she was.
“You’re amazing, Pansy,” he murmured, looking down at his hands that were clenched around each other. She blinked, feeling the blush spread, and looked down at her own hand that was wrinkling her expensive shirt. She couldn’t bring herself to care.
“You too, Theo,” she whispered back, and the both looked up and met each others eyes instinctively. The small, shy smiles that curved their lips spoke for them. Sooner or later, they’d be in a similar position to Ginny and Draco—with a large fraction of the violence missing.
Pansy couldn’t wait.
Author notes: (1)—Latin for “Gold is power.” Not the official Malfoy motto or anything since JKR never says it explicitly, but I figure it's close enough. It’s also the Fowl family motto from the Artemis Fowl series by Eoin Colfer, and although I’ve read the series, I didn’t realize it until a reviewer pointed it out. :P
Also, Ginny's initials, "GM," stand for "Ginevra Molly," not "Ginevra Malfoy."
A/N: Whew! That was a really rushed few hours to pump this out ASAP. Thank you so much to Melissa, my beta (mell8) and rowan-greenleaf for starting this challenge.
I'm actually really really happy with this. Like, super happy. I think everyone should tell me if it was like you hoped.
Thank you everyone who supported me in this, and review replies will come as soon as I can get them out.
Roma
The End.
Cadaverous Apples is the author of 6 other stories.
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