Ginny doesn’t remember Malfoy being so tall.

She hasn’t spoken to him in years, not since the first term of her sixth year of Hogwarts, months before Voldemort’s defeat. During detentions with the Carrows, Alecto Carrow would sometimes command Malfoy to restrain Ginny while she was being punished, but she was understandably more focused on the pain of the Cruciatus than his height back then.

She does remember the feel of his fingers encircling her wrists and how tightly he’d held onto her. His grip had disgusted her, frightened her, because it meant she couldn’t dodge the blast of the Unforgivable aimed at her. She also remembers his breath against the top of her head, heavy and hot with his own fear. That fear made more sense if he was tall. He always held her from behind, holding her arms out to the sides to make her a larger target, but if Malfoy’s height exceeded her own, he became a target, too. The Carrows could have missed her and hit Malfoy instead.

These are dark thoughts to have while trapped underneath enchanted mistletoe, but it’s the first place Ginny’s mind wanders when she tries to pass Malfoy in the Atrium and jolts to a stop, as if someone had grabbed her from behind by the waist. She spins around, but Malfoy is two steps away and has a frustrated expression on his face. His hands are nowhere near her body.

He glances up, and Ginny mimics him, horror dawning at the sight of the mistletoe hanging in midair. A festive trap. Ginny seethes.

Ever since Gilderoy Lockhart’s release from the Janus Thickey Ward, he’s wreaked havoc as a custodian in the Magical Maintenance Department of the Ministry. His memories had never been recovered, but the Healers had argued he deserved a new chance at a life outside of the hospital even without them. Magical mistletoe was exactly Lockhart’s MO. He had also been responsible for snow flurries in the lifts, magical windows that depicted the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in the offices of people who “needed a little cheer,” singing valentines, and many more annoying stunts. For someone who had no memory of his former life, he channeled his former passion for obnoxious forms of entertainment with suspicious accuracy.

Malfoy takes a step and grunts when his knee hits a solid, invisible object.

Ginny lifts her arm and gasps when she, too, encounters some sort of barrier that prevents her from leaving him.

They look at each other for the first time since those detentions at Hogwarts. It’s not the first time Ginny has looked at him, however. Malfoy had not returned to Hogwarts after the war and instead had taken a gap year before taking some secret position at the Ministry. No one knew exactly what he did. Some thought he was an Unspeakable, but he didn’t wear the telltale robes of the Department of Mysteries. Some thought he was the Minister’s personal adviser, utilized for some illicit business the public didn’t know about. Others thought he wasn’t employed at all and only walked around the Ministry with an important air so people wouldn’t forget about him.

Whatever his business at the Ministry, Ginny had spotted him around the building on various occasions. Once she’d noticed him the first time, she began noticing him more, until some subconscious part of her seemed attuned to his presence. She always sensed when he was near, and when she looked up, her gaze always landed on him perfectly. This was the first time he’d ever looked back at her, though.

“What a bloody mess,” he says under his breath.

Ginny bristles. “This isn’t my fault.”

“Did I say it was?” he snaps back.

Ginny’s lips press together to keep herself from snarling at him in return. “What do we do now? I’m supposed to be meeting with Harry.” She glances at her watch with a frown. “I was running late, but now I’m definitely late.”

“We wouldn’t want to inconvenience Potter, would we?”

Ginny’s glare is cutting. “I’m the one who’s inconvenienced. I have four performance evaluations to complete, and he’s weasled out of his for over a week. If we don’t complete it today, we’ll have to reschedule for two weeks from now and I have too much to do already without having to pencil in another unnecessary meeting.”

Malfoy’s sneer dissolves into something a little more interested. “Performance evaluations? They put you in charge of people?”

Ginny takes a little step closer and pecks Malfoy’s chest with a blunt finger. “For someone who spends so much time at the Ministry, you don’t know anything about it. I’m the Head of the Auror Office, and I’m too busy to stay trapped here with you.”

His posture straightens at that, his expression turning shrewd. Ginny is now fully aware of how close the enchantment requires them to be to each other and how large Malfoy really is. The top of her head barely meets his shoulder blades. The scrawny, frightened 17-year-old who used to restrain her in detention has filled out to nearly twice his former size. He’s wide enough, muscles thick enough, for Ginny to wonder how it would feel if he wrapped his arms around her and squeezed. Rather nice, she thinks. It’s been awhile since anyone embraced her to her satisfaction.

She shakes her head, trying to dislodge those dangerous thoughts, those wild feelings. This is a man who held her still while Death Eaters cast Unforgivables at her. This is an attempted murderer. This is a man who chose the side of bigotry and blood supremacy over basic human decency. Maybe that had been ten years ago, but did people change that much, even in a whole decade?

“What do you do, anyway?” Ginny asks, her thoughts circling around to general suspicion.

Malfoy takes a step closer to her, and their chests nearly meet. If either of them take a deep breath, they’ll be touching. He lowers his head and Ginny instinctively tilts her chin up to better reach him.

“We missed our opportunity to escape, and now we have an audience,” he says instead of answering her question.

His breath is soft against her cheek and her ear. Warm. His voice sends a shiver down her spine. It takes several moments for Ginny to look around them, and then she scowls even as her face heats up. A crowd has indeed gathered. Several people are tittering and pointing in amusement. Some look scandalized. All of them are curious to see what she and the infamously mythical Malfoy will do.

Her head snaps back to him. “You know what we have to do.”

“Yes.”

“And you’re willing?” she says skeptically.

“Oh yes.”

The skepticism blooms into disbelief, and the heat that rose up to Ginny’s face when she noticed their audience spreads further. Her entire body is warm now, bordering on hot. Her skin erupts in goosebumps and feels so sensitive, she’s aware of all the fabric draping her body, as if weights had been sewn into the hem of her robes.

“Do it, then.” The words come out breathlessly. They sound like a whisper between them, a secret meant only for his ears, though she didn’t intend for them to sound that way.

Malfoy takes one more step so that the toes of their shoes touch. It’s strangely intimate though Ginny can’t feel it. But not as intimate as when he grasps the sides of her waist and pulls her closer. Chest to chest. Breath to breath.

It seems like he has to bend down so far to reach her, so Ginny rises onto her tip-toes to help him. The sudden movement makes their mouths collide painfully, lips a little bruised, teeth stinging. But Ginny only takes a moment to recover before she’s got her fingers buried in the nape of his neck to tug him back down to her. He’s so tall, her body bows toward him, and his hands at her waist slide around to her back, pressing her fully against him as his mouth devours hers in an unnecessarily intimate kiss.

Ginny doesn’t think it’s unnecessary, though. She’s thinking that his arms feel just as good as she hoped they would—better, even—especially when she grunts into his mouth and he squeezes her even tighter, exactly the way she loves. She’s thinking that his mouth is purposeful, almost as if he’d noticed her around the Ministry, too, and wondered how she’d feel in his arms….

She doesn’t think any more after that until a loud burst of hoots and cheering interrupts the kiss, sending them spinning away from each other at the same time, the enchantment broken.

Ginny’s face is beet red as she meets the eyes of their audience and then turns back to Malfoy, whose own cheeks are rather pink and whose eyes are unmistakably glassy. They’re both panting, trying to reclaim their breath, and something inside Ginny breaks apart and melds back together.

Malfoy. Hmm. Maybe?

Yes.

He departs without a word, and Ginny is too stunned to follow.

“Ginny?”

She turns and Harry is at her side, his brows drawn together in concern or consternation, she’s not sure which. “I came looking for you when you didn’t show up for our meeting. Are you alright?” He tacks the question on at the end most likely because of the dazed expression on Ginny’s face.

She waves him off and straightens her robes. “No need to meet anymore. You passed your evaluation with flying colors. Don’t bother me for the rest of the day.”

She nearly runs back to Auror Headquarters, partially afraid she’ll run into Malfoy again but mostly hoping for it. Once she’s fully ensconced inside her office, she takes a seat behind her desk, one hand coming up to mindlessly stroke her lips.

She realizes she’s lost track of time reliving her memories of the kiss when a knock at her door signals her next appointment.

Even as she goes through the motions of meeting after meeting, keeping her mind engaged with Auror matters, there’s a tiny part of her brain that is fixated on Malfoy.

Wondering how she can become trapped under the mistletoe with him again.

Author notes:

This chapter was originally written/posted on Tumblr on 12/08/19 in response to an anonymous request. The prompt was "One person has to bend down in order to kiss their partner, who is standing on their tip-toes to reach their partner’s." There will be one more chapter, which I will post later today or tomorrow.