Ginny grits her teeth when she, Hermione, and Luna reach the pond to find it already occupied.

“There’s plenty of room,” Luna says, sensing the tension from Ginny and Hermione. “We can share.”

A protest is on the tip of Ginny’s tongue until Hermione shoots her a quelling look. Ice skating was Luna’s idea, after all. Not just her idea—her special request. So Ginny swallows her pride and carefully navigates down the snowbank, ignoring the four people cutting lines into the surface of the frozen pond as well as their matching green and silver scarves.

“Hello!” Luna calls with a frantic wave.

Pansy Parkinson, Draco Malfoy, Blaise Zabini, and Gregory Goyle all stop and look up, like clockwork figures programmed to move in sync. They stare for a moment before Zabini skates to the edge of the pond, a smile on his face that doesn’t reach his eyes.

“Is it all right if we join you?” Luna asks, her own smile oblivious.

Zabini eyes Hermione and Ginny, both of whom are hanging back. “I don’t see why not. We don’t want any trouble.”

A skeptical sound comes out of Ginny’s throat, but she says nothing and Zabini doesn’t pursue an argument. Meanwhile, Luna nods vigorously and says, “Who does? We’ll behave.”

Zabini looks at Luna more carefully, one eyebrow raised in consideration as he takes her in, from her fuzzy purple earmuffs down to her rainbow-striped stockings. His face cracks open when his smile widens, and that’s exactly what it looks like to Ginny. One moment, his expression is wary and closed off. The next, he’s grinning, charmed by Luna’s honesty. He skates back to his friends, who are standing together in a huddle, waiting for his verdict.

“We’ll behave?” Ginny says. “They’re the ones who have to behave!”

Luna bends down to charm her boots into ice skates, not dignifying Ginny’s objection with her full attention. “We will all behave. If there’s trouble, we’ll leave and skate somewhere else.”

Then Luna takes to the ice, leaving Ginny fuming on the side of the pond. Hermione’s gaze is understanding, and her mouth grim, as she charms her own boots and waits for Ginny.

But it really is as simple as that. Zabini and his crew avoid Ginny and hers. They pass each other on the ice but do not exchange words and barely exchange glances.

Hermione and Ginny spend at least twenty minutes hobbling around the edge of the pond, their ankles trembling and threatening to collapse underneath them. They hold onto each other for support, but this seems to do more harm than good. Their mutual instability exacerbates their unsteadiness, and Ginny spends most of her time bracing herself for an impact that, thankfully, doesn’t occur.

Around them, Luna skates like a professional, though a confused one. Her preferred direction to skate is backwards and with her eyes closed, but she does it so gracefully and with no risk of barreling into anyone else. She skates like she has eyes in the back of her head, like she was born on the ice.

Ginny tries not to pay any attention to Zabini and friends, but it’s hard when they, too, move so nimbly. Even cumbersome, awkward Goyle seems proficient in the art. He doesn’t twirl like Parkinson, preferring instead to skate in straight lines back and forth down the middle of the pond, but there’s a surety in his movements that does not exist in Hermione’s or Ginny’s.

Zabini skates as fast as he can, grinning into the wind, clearly enjoying his own increasing speed. Malfoy, on the other hand, sets a reasonable pace. He pushes off against the ice to pick up speed and then lets himself glide until his momentum runs out. Like Luna, he skates with his eyes closed. Unlike Luna, he lifts his chin to allow the wind to ruffle his hair, his enjoyment of the activity understated but obvious.

Every time he passes Ginny and Hermione, Ginny expects a snide remark about their ineptness. The tension in Ginny’s body escalates until she is all too aware of her awkward skating. Her boots with their enchanted blades are heavy, making her calves ache and tremble with exertion. Her arms are sore from holding onto Hermione, and she’s afraid they will permanently freeze into ninety-degree angles. She hopes Malfoy doesn’t notice her red, dripping nose or her wind-burned cheeks or that her favorite pair of mittens, knitted for her by her mum several years ago, have started to unravel. She hopes he is less aware of her than she is of him.

After their second lap around the pond, Hermione abandons Ginny to sit in the snow and rest her legs. Ginny continues on, shaky as she inches along the ice and tries not to fall. She can’t get the hang of the smooth gliding motion, so her feet scissor precariously underneath her. An image of a cartoon character Hermione showed her on the telly once comes to mind, and she scowls.

She senses the Slytherins staring at her, but she doesn’t dare lift her head to confirm because she knows as soon as she takes her eyes off her feet, her arse will hit the ice. In her peripheral vision, Parkinson, Goyle, and Malfoy are standing close together, tittering like gossips while Zabini continues speeding around the pond, ignoring everyone else except Luna. He smiles at her every time they pass one another.

As she nears them, Parkinson says in a carrying voice, “Draco, please help the poor girl. She’s going to break her neck.”

Ginny grits her teeth and keeps her head down as Goyle responds with, “Who cares?”

“What do you think will happen if Ginny Weasley seriously injures herself while in our company?” There’s a pause as if Parkinson expects an answer, but then she makes an impatient sound and continues. “It won’t look good for us. Do you think anyone would believe we didn’t have something to do with her hurting herself?”

“You know I can hear you, right?” Ginny says, her voice raising at the end as her legs slide out from under her and she begins to fall.

She doesn’t, though, because Malfoy has caught her. It isn’t a graceful fall or a graceful catch. Malfoy manages to hook his arms under hers from behind, and it’s a miracle that her weight doesn’t make both of them crash down onto the ice. He hefts her up back onto her feet, but she can’t get them under her again. One of Malfoy’s arms shifts down around Ginny’s waist and pulls her against him, her back to his front.

“Steady now,” he says, his breath hot against her skin where her knitted cap has skewed, uncovering her ear. A shiver shoots down her spine in response to the tingling in her skin.

“Let go of me!”

He tries his best to hold her up as she struggles against him, but she slips through his arms and falls anyway, right onto her bum.

Parkinson laughs with Goyle. Zabini and Luna skate over, each taking one of Ginny’s arms and helping her to her feet.

“All right there, Weasley?”

“Did the Wrackspurts get you? I knew I should have brought my Spectrespecs.”

“I’m fine!” Ginny dusts ice off herself and loses her balance again, but Malfoy’s arm is there to support her, and she takes it to save her tailbone.

Now that he has verified Ginny is unhurt, Zabini turns to Luna and says, “You’re a lovely skater.”

It’s just starting to snow and she’s staring at one snowflake in particular as it drifts through the air, but she grins. “Thank you. So are you.”

He follows her as she skates away, his gaze intent on her back.

Parkinson eyes Malfoy and Ginny before she, too, beckons Goyle and leads him away.

Alone, her dignity still mostly intact even though her cheeks are burning, Ginny says, “You can let go now.”

“You’re the one who is holding on.” Malfoy’s lips lift up into a smirk, and he shakes his arm as evidence.

He’s right, of course. Ginny is the one grasping his forearm as if her life depends on it. Her face heats further.

Before she can pull away, he swings in front of her and takes both of her palms, clutching them lightly between his gloved fingers. Now they’re moving, Malfoy skating backwards as he pulls Ginny along.

“What are you doing?” she asks, her voice rising in panic. Instinctively, she bends at the waist, trying to lower her center of gravity so her fall will be less severe when it inevitably happens.

“You have every reason not to trust me, but I’m asking you to right now. After this, we never have to speak to each other again.”

The snow falls a little faster, entangling in her eyelashes and melting when she blinks. Malfoy continues to pull her, but he tugs on her hands, too, urging her to straighten her posture, asking her to put her faith in him, to entrust him with not only her safety, but her enjoyment, as well.

They are close enough to each other that she can’t help but notice the flush in his high cheeks and the tip of his pointed nose. Snowflakes drift into his eyelashes, too, as if they are meant to be there, and Ginny, for the first time in her life, takes note of the color of Draco Malfoy’s eyes.

Like his skin and his hair, his eyes are pale, and they are the exact same color as the frozen pond on which they’ve chosen to skate. It’s a fleeting thought, but she imagines him as a frosty spirit, a mischievous presence that might disappear with a gust of wind. There’s an air of the eternal about him, something both older and younger than she remembers him being during the height of the war, something wizened, saddened, and grown.

His eyes pierce her and her heart stutters in her chest, certain that he can see straight into her. Every heartbeat, every silly thought, every shameful emotion. She feels exposed to him, and she hates it because there’s only one person who knows her, the true her. There’s only one person she wants to open up to. Malfoy is not D. He’s not her pen pal. He’s not her confidante, a man so far removed from her life and the war that she feels safe with him in a way she didn’t feel safe with Harry.

Malfoy is the complete opposite of safe. In fact, his gaze and his touch and his words, they all burn her. With him, Ginny can’t help but remember how the war felt. She can’t help but be reminded of children suffering under Unforgivable Curses in classrooms, rebellions in the corridors, her brother dying, her friends dying, her mother crying, fire and smoke and multi-colored lights from spells.

The memories are too much for her, too immediate, so she breaks her connection with Malfoy, just closes her eyes and yanks her hands out of his grasp.

She falls. Of course she falls. But, sprawled out on the ice, she looks up at Malfoy, meets his eyes for the last time, and says, “I will never trust you. Don’t speak to me ever again.”

Her voice carries enough to alert Parkinson, whose eyes narrow at Ginny when she glides past them and stops at Malfoy’s side.

His face shutters, suddenly as frozen as the pond and as impenetrable as a Gringotts vault. He nods and leaves her on the ground, Disapparating with a faint pop that is incongruous with Ginny’s mood. She wants the loud crack that sometimes accompanies Apparation to alleviate her urge to break something.

Zabini once again helps Ginny to her feet while Parkinson watches in disapproval, but she shakes off his hand as soon as she’s standing and hobbles back to the snow to sit with Hermione and wait until Luna is ready to leave.

We should meet.

She doesn’t know that she already met him and rejected him just three days ago. She doesn’t know how much that rejection devastated him. He can’t be angry at her for not anticipating her own devastation when she finally puts his handwriting to a face.

But he is angry. Enraged, even. Partially at her, but mostly at himself. He wasn’t sure what he’d expected when he offered to help her on the pond. Benevolence, maybe? Understanding? Not outright hate. Not an order to never speak to her again.

She doesn’t know that the man she has banished and the man she now wants to meet are the same person. He would laugh if he wasn’t so damn angry.

“What's the matter with you now?” Blaise says in a bored tone. He's flipping through a book he found in the library, casually turning pages as if he's only interested in the illustrations. “Bad news from your pen pal?”

Draco stops pacing and turns to the hearth, where Blaise has laid claim to an armchair. “How do you know I have a pen pal?”

Blaise rolls his eyes without looking up. “I’ve been reading his letters for the past few months. If you didn’t want anyone to find them, maybe you should have locked the box you hide them in.”

A flash of anger at the trespass flares through him for a moment, and then dims under the light of the hotter fire burning in the vicinity of his heart.

“Is that why you visit so often?”

“How else will I uncover information about your secret boyfriend if you won’t tell me?”

The anger switches to a mild irritation and quickly shifts to annoyance. Draco drops onto his favorite uncomfortable sofa across from Blaise and hands him the letter.

“I don’t have a boyfriend. Ginny Weasley is my pen pal, but she doesn’t know that I’m the one writing her back.”

Blaise is hard to surprise, but Draco can tell he has surprised him now. His eyes widen and dart from the letter to Draco and back again.

“Pansy thought you might have fancied her at the pond the other day, but I thought the idea was absurd. You haven’t left the manor in months, and you weren’t besotted with her at Hogwarts.”

Draco doesn’t explain the situation further. He lapses into silence instead, his fury sucked out of him and consumed by the fire in the grate. An emptiness wells up inside him in its absence, threatening to swallow him whole.

Normally, he would write to Ginny when he began to spiral into feelings of loss and loneliness, but she’s the catalyst for those feelings this time, and he can’t very well discuss them with her. There isn’t a truth he could stretch wide enough for a convincing hypothetical story, and Draco is afraid that once he opens up to her, he’ll end up revealing everything.

Draco tries to ignore the serious look in Blaise’s eyes, but it’s difficult when there’s an air of expectation between them. Blaise wants to know more, more than Draco is willing to share, and Draco wants comfort that Blaise can’t give.

“Are you going to meet her?” Blaise asks.

There’s no question what Draco will do next. “No,” he says. “I’m not.”