Chapter One
Ginny realizes a few cruel moments too late that this is an argument she will lose.
She panics for a moment, perhaps two, brown eyes fluttering shut, her heart faster than a bird's beneath her ribcage. She can feel his ice water gaze on her, calculating as always, can feel the tension stretched between them like sticky spider webs, binding her inexorably to the conclusion that this is her fault and that now, she will pay for it.
"Weasley. Weaslette." A pause. "Is there anyone in that head of yours or have you gone to tea?"
"Shut up, Malfoy." Ginny clenches her teeth and opens her eyes at him, resolve steeling in her jaw, fists clenched into fists, half-numb from the cold.
"Oh, back, are you? I was afraid th—"
Ginny doesn't hesitate to throw his ratty face against the wall. She twists him nimbly around and forces her Quidditch-strengthened arm against his back. He connects with a tapestry with a soft shushing thud, a startled hiss escaping his aristocratic mouth. A Scottish hunter stitched onto the rich fabric dashes out of the way, swearing profusely. Draco's muscles tense underneath Ginny's hand.
"Shut. Up." She has to stand on her tip-toes in order to give him a really good vise-grip at the place where his neck connects with his shoulder, but, just as George assured her when he taught it to her, it silences him.
"I will have your head for this." Draco's voice, syrupy, is remarkably even. Ginny tightens her grip, and is mollified by a gurgle. "This sort of blunt violence is so typical." He tries to sound nonchalant, despite his lack of air. "Although, I s'pose you can't be blamed, what with being raised as a Neanderthal and all of that."
"Shut up!" There is hysteria in her voice now, like the edge of a violin creeping into her vocal chords. Weasleys are famous for these two things that they cannot control: their temper and their blush. She is positive that she has fallen victim to both of these travesties at this point. Ginny should be used to arguing with this little prat of a boy, and she supposes that she is. She just isn't used to knowing that she's gone too far. It's always him. She isn't supposed to have that insensitive impudence. She is supposed to be better than that. And now, she will lose this argument more thoroughly than she has ever lost an argument in her life, because she is wrong, she is stupid, and as if it weren't bad enough that she knows it, he knows it.
Yes. He obviously knows it. He relaxes against her hand, leans against the wall in a cool, calm kind of way, despite having his face crammed up against a cross-stitched mountain range and his air supply being half crushed by Ginny's fingers. He drawls, as if it is he who chose to be against the wall and as if he is in complete control, "I'm the picture of silence, my dear. A monk."
Ginny spins him around with two hands, pinning him against the tapestry.
"I apologize."
Draco looks shocked.
Ginny releases him.
He gapes.
"What I said about your father was uncalled for." She takes a step back, as if realizing how small she is compared to him, how he could pummel her into a pulp if he had the inclination to do so. She refuses to look ashamed, Draco notes, chin held high with a pride that he recognized in Percy Weasley from a few years ago; this girl has a vendetta, has something to prove. Her bottom lip quivers slightly. "So I apologize." Her eyes aren't like chocolate. They are like coffee, Draco thinks—they're clear and glassy, you can see into them, not like chocolate, which is muddy and thick and blunt. "But you'd do well to learn to stay the fuck out of my business and my life, you precocious, spoiled, pathetic excuse for a human being."
"I do not accept. You can take your apology to the grave, Weasley," Draco snaps at her, brushing himself off with long, milky fingers. "It's wasted on me. Points for effort, though. Ta." He walks away now, ballet graceful strides down the Arithmancy corridor.
---
Ginny refuses to care.
She slides nimbly into her desk in Potions, nodding at Colin Creevy, her partner. He manages a weak smile before his eyes dart down at the scarred wood. He is so shaky and careful, all quick words and eagerness and nervousness, and Ginny has a surge of motherly protectiveness over him. He hasn't been the same since his father was killed.
A milkman, wasn't he? A milkman; perfectly innocuous, and perfectly dead, now, with no evidence that the Muggle world could hope to trace. Just wide, glassy eyes. No sign of a struggle. No sign of a break-in at the humble Creevey abode. Of course, there wouldn't me, not with Avada Kedavra and Apparition.
And Colin—Colin has always been kind of fidgety. This unsettles him, undoes him, the death of his father, and Ginny knows he is guilty. He sees his involvement in the magical world as the reason, but the reason is, after all, that Mr. Creevey was a Muggle. Just that. Only that. And above all, that.
Ginny cares about that. Colin and his family, that is.
She reasons to herself, aligning her inkwell with her parchment, that this is a much more relevant topic than—well, than the one which she can't seem to shake herself from.
She will have to copy the Charms notes from someone else tonight in the Common Room; goodness knows she wasn't paying Flitwick any attention.
She will have to copy Colin's notes from this Potions lecture because still, still Ginny cannot shake the crawl that exists all over her skin, inside of her bones.
Didn't accept my apology!?
This is unheard of.
One always accepts.
It is a fact. Kind of. In a way. In theory.
Ginny frowns.
"Is something I say so displeasing to you, Miss Weasley?" Snape inquires. He drawls her name in a startlingly familiar way.
"No more than usual, Sir," she mumbles, too distracted to register whether she has indeed said that sentence out loud.
When he raises one aristocratic eyebrow at her, mouth thinning, Ginny understands. Her eyes widen. "I—I mean, not at all, of course. No more than usual—that is to say, not at all."
He sweeps over (and it is a sweep, God forbid he actually walk somewhere) to the space between Ginny's desk and between Candace Knarl's desk, turns 90 degrees sharply right towards her, and folds his arms.
He sneers. "Ten points from Gryffindor." He pauses. "For being an exceptionally bad liar." Snape picks up her paper and brings it to his face with a flourish. "And if you aren't going to pay attention to the lecture that may indeed decide your grade in this class, you might at least use the time to jot down better excuses."
"Can you really--?" Colin begins, and Snape replies curtly, "—Yes. I really can. Waste not, want not, Miss Weasley." He places the paper down in front of her and sweeps (yes, again) to the front of the cold classroom.
"Now, if anyone cares to tell me the three uses of yarrow root in a healing drought, you could help me believe that the lot of you aren't utterly useless…"
Ginny frowns at the paper, letting the rich thrum of Snape's voice lull her back into her reverie.
He would accept the apology.
He would.