As she had been doing steadily for the past three weeks, four days, thirteen hours and oh, say, twenty-one minutes, Ginny Weasley ignored him. With a hint of spite that would have no doubt made him proud, she wondered if it were at all possible for her to take out a restraining order.

The young witch paid no attention to her determined second shadow as she strode down the torch-lit corridor towards the Gryffindor common room, weaving through the crowd with a confidence reaped by almost six years of doing the very same thing.

She could feel the change in the air as if by the very second as dusk darkened towards night. Winter was coming on rather quickly this year, as Neville had commented. Maybe she’d take a warm bath before dinner, then seek out Hermione and ask if she could borrow that new romance novel she’d been talking about...

“You can’t ignore me forever, you know. It isn’t possible.”

Ginny sighed dramatically, sated an itch at the end of her nose with a quick rub, and turned, frowning, to face her relentless stalker.

“See, now, that wasn’t so hard was it?”

Draco Malfoy grinned; a quick, fleeting, surprisingly honest action for one such as him. Blink and you would have missed it, Ginny thought sourly.

Her bad mood only flourished with the gloating satisfaction that very bad moods do when she realised irritably that despite the fact Hogwarts’ halls were filled to the brim with jostling, wrestling students, she remained strangely unaffected. Apparently she and the pompous, piggy prat before her were being offered a significantly wide berth.

No one bumped a Malfoy, it seemed, or the people he chose to associate with.

Arrogant twit.

“Come on, admit you missed me, Gin, I know you did.”

Crossing his arms, the elder Slytherin smirked and cocked one oh-so-disgustingly-perfect eyebrow in her direction. (Much more like his usual self, Ginny felt. Stupid twat.) The sprinkling of fine, fair hairs scattered across his forearms begged woefully for her to recall what it felt like to be held in his tight (not tender - Malfoy’s were NEVER tender) embrace. Ginny, stubbornly, refused. Instead, she settled upon regaling him with what she hoped was a suitably scathing glare. It was a look she’d borrowed from Hermione and so far as she could tell, it seemed to work remarkably well with Harry and her brother.

Not so Mister Malfoy, it appeared.

He laughed. He actually bloody laughed.

So it was more of a chuckle really, but Ginny still could have killed him – or at least hit him with a suitably nasty curse. The Bat-Bogey Hex had worked remarkably well last time, if she recalled correctly.

“Don’t look at me like that, Ginevra,” his voice drawled slowly, low with warning, “I know exactly what you’re thinking and I’ll raise the counter-spell long before you can hex me.”

To her surprise, he actually seemed rather put-out.

“Can’t you even pretend to be civil?”

“Irritation? Gosh. So you’re human after all, Malfoy.”

A look of triumph flashed across his elegant features at her words and inwardly Ginny cursed, defeated. It was the first time she’d spoken to him since he’d-

“I refuse to trade insults with you, Weasel.”

That Bat-Bogey Hex was looking more and more appealing.

“Fine with me, Ferret-boy. And since I’ve really got nothing but insults to share with a prig like you, I suppose you won’t mind me leaving now, will you?”

“Hey-”

She turned to leave, but his lean, spidery fingers with their Quidditch-roughened pads wrapped firmly about her wrist.

“-I thought we agreed no more insults, Gin.”

She glowered at him darkly as she took an angry step closer despite her misgivings. Leaning up on her tiptoes to get right into his face for greater impact, she heard his sharp intake of breath and saw the suspicion in his narrowed eyes. She noted with a touch of surprised pleasure that he smelt vaguely of butterbeer.

“Don’t. Call. Me. Gin.”

A beat.

“Prig.”

And then he kissed her, and the whole world turned upside down.

Again.

His tongue, teasing hers mercifully until it finally relented and came out to play, was warm, but his lips against hers were shockingly cool.

Against her will, Ginny moaned softly. The knowledge of what she was doing – or more particularly, WHO she was doing it with – terrified and thrilled her all at once.

It was unfair, she thought dizzily as he drew back just far enough to catch her lower lip between his flawless, ivory-white teeth. It was unfair that the only boy – the only man – who had ever made her feel like this had to be him.

Bloody, stinking, sodding Malfoy.

Placing her hands on his chest, fighting reluctantly against the urges of her damnable, hormonal, teenage body, Ginny pushed herself away from firmly.

“Ass.”

He grinned.

“You’re just saying that.”

Ginny snorted, taking a deep breath to compose herself. She knew that her face was flushed; she could feel the heat in her skin and her palms were clammy.

“So, are you going to avoid me for another three weeks now?”

There was a curious look to his eyes and, this being the first real occasion she’d had to notice, Ginny saw that there were tiny flecks of blue and green in the paler silver ring immediately circling his pupil. With a sickening lurch, she realised she welcomed these tiny, seemingly inconsequential but so very important flaws with a sense of giddy relief.

They were a sign he wasn’t quite so perfect. A sign he wasn’t quite so beyond her reach.

She hated to admit it, but she wanted him. She wanted him with a longing that had driven her to hate him for daring to make her want him at all. Wanted him for his impossible beauty, his grace on the Quidditch pitch, his peppermint kisses that weren’t peppermint at all but more like chocolate that you knew was bad for you but you couldn’t help tasting anyway. She wanted him for his smirks, his sneers and his unfaltering, cursed arrogance. Wanted him for the irregular, unexpected smiles that gave her hope he wasn’t such a hopeless, helpless brat after all.

“What are you looking at me like that for, Weasel?”

Wariness caused one corner of his self-confident smirk to drop a little and with a private smile Ginny smothered silently an urge to kiss it back into its rightful place.

“Nothing, Malfoy. Cross my heart.”

Running a hand through his hair in a clearly much-practised parody of a motion that was far more fashionable than if it had been sincere (no doubt, he knew that very well), Draco gazed at her with a slow, mischievous grin spreading cross his face.

“So, Gin, if I get a three-week sentence of silence for just a kiss, what’s the punishment for a shag?”

Ginny could have kissed him. She did.

Fin.

Author notes: Comments are love!