Well, I'm back with a ficlet! This is involves Draco/Ginny, Dean is mentioned. Ginny is in her fifth year, Draco in his sixth. All of this is coming from Ginny's POV. Characters aren't mine, because if they were I would most probably be sailing in my own cruise.

Read, and read closely.

+3Libras

*

Blindfold

Standing on top of the fences of this veranda with my wings outspread, I struggled for my poise and flattened my feet on the rumbling marble beneath me. One unkind blow of the night

wind cost my plunge from this tower to the cold grounds; that would surely be news. The snake wouldn't have bothered assisting me up hadn't he come to think that a Malfoy behind a Weasley's death would utterly enlighten his father in prison. He knew better, he said.

It was he, anyway, who burdened me for days just to accept his invitation to step up the terrace with him on Halloween.. cloakless and blindfold. Why I trusted my life to the name my father loathed the most next to You-Know-Who, why I let that night pass without a question, I never knew.

"If you keep on bending back and forth I'm betting you'd rest in peace."

"God this is great, what did you say?"

"I said stand still. Don't take the cloth off unless I tell you."

"Alright." I sounded a little unsure.

"Breathe the moment, appreciate it while it lasts."

I was there with him on Halloween, apart from my friends who swayed and laughed in The Great Hall unaware or careless of my whereabouts. At least there was Dean. I knew he worried, and I also knew he wouldn't show. But he worried that's the point. He's.. different, that I am sure. He didn't follow me around or talk me out of anything, but he knew me too damn well to know when to sink in or not. But lately he's been indifferent, and I let him be. He didn't watch me practice like he used to and swapped our pick-up-sticks nights for a solitary game of chess with my brother. I silently watched him as he once walked into the Common Room with a box of Muggle pencils (the yellow thin ones). The box was taped at all sides that when he forcefully opened it, dozens of yellow sticks fired to all directions. With Seamus' help, he stuffed them back to the box and together they laughed. The laughter only faded when one of the pencils rolled to my direction, and stopped dead at my feet. I lifted my feet rashly as if a slug had just worked its way to my feet, when the smart thing to do was pick it up, hand it back to him and if given the chance, say sorry for whatever it was that I did and didn't do.

Appreciate it while it lasts..breathe the moment.. I was never going to forget those words.

But I didn't have to waste my time thinking how Dean managed to ignore me. All I had to do was..

"Crying again?"

He knew what was happening behind my clothed eyes, and suddenly I hated being the one behind that blindfold. I pulled it away, and I swear I saw him set a smirk as I stepped down.

"Leaving?"

"Have to go."

"Thomas, isn't it? It has to be Thomas," he concluded mockingly, looking not at me but at the horizon. "God, how pathetically easy that one was. All he needed was a little persuasion.. and a few empty threats. Seriously, Ginny, tell me; when was the last time he ever set a hand on you?"

Why Draco did it, whatever it was for hell's sake, I never knew.

*

by Three Libras

August 2, 2003