After what felt like ages, it was over, and she was alone.

But when Ginny tried to shift her weight from the cold stone floor, a dozen parts of her body protested at once, screaming out in pain, as if she'd been trampled by a herd of hippogriffs. Involuntarily, she cried out. Her collarbone especially felt as if it had been sliced open and packed with hot coals. The agony thrust her mind into blackness as it overwhelmed her.

"Weasley." The voice was dimly familiar as it drew her back to awareness, but she was too disoriented to place it. As she blinked at the strange room, things in her confused mind began to fall into place. A glimmering fire. Cold stone walls. She was laying down on a leather couch; it stuck to the backs of her bare thighs. She could smell dittany, such a common smell to someone who had been raised in a house full of boys with an impressive propensity to injure both themselves and one another. Never her, though, except for the odd accident. She had always been safe.

"Weasley, wake up." And then Ginny remembered. Alarm flashed through her brain. And then full-fledged panic. She needed to leave. She couldn't be here. Not here. Oh Merlin, how had she let this happen? She scrambled to her feet before a combination of pain and a tall figure standing to block her way pushed her down again.

"Are you bloody mad?" the voice hissed, and this time she knew exactly who it belonged to. She glanced at Malfoy's profile but could not make herself meet his eyes.

"I'm sorry, I have to go." But she made no move to stand. Her head was still spinning after the last attempt.

Malfoy sighed. "Yeah, right. Go ahead and walk out the door, Weasley. If you can even make it to the door, that is." The redhead said nothing to this. Everything was still very hazy; only bits and pieces of her night were coming together to make any sense, and the resulting picture was not one she wanted, or was able, to face. Eventually the thought worked its way through that she didn't hurt so badly anymore. The pain was duller now, more like being sore after a hard game of Quidditch.

"You fixed me," she whispered. Her hand rose automatically to feel her collarbone. Prodding the tender skin, she was relieved to feel no pain.

"Why not?" Malfoy said. Ginny immediately processed the danger in his tone and stiffened. "He always does. Doesn't he?"

"Let me leave, Malfoy." And despite how terribly exhausted she felt, she managed to inflect her tone with the infamous Weasley fire, enough of it to make Malfoy blink in surprise, though not back down.

Malfoy sat beside her on the couch. His weight made her slide a little towards him, but she scooted away to the opposite end of the couch immediately. The movement caused a stabbing pain in her ankle; she hadn't noticed it hurting before, but now it was on fire. It must have shown in her expression, because in a moment Malfoy had drawn his wand and asked simply, "Where?" She indicated her ankle. The tip of his wand was cool against her hot skin.

"Episkey!" There was a loud pop and a moment of pain and then the bones had righted themselves.

"Thanks," she said shortly. He ignored it.

"Look at me, Weasley." She did. The sharp, angular planes of his pale face. His skin wasn't pale in the same way hers was – showing red every time she blushed or was angry and splotched with freckles. His was truly white, almost silvery in the fire's cast. She doubted it even burned in the sun the way hers did. It was too perfect; annoyingly perfect. But his eyes were what made her unable to turn away. Steel gray, hard, and oddly world-weary.

"Two of your bones were broken, Weasley. Your lip was split open. You had more bruises than I could count, and probably more that I missed in places I didn't feel at liberty to check. It doesn't take much to fix all that. A spell and some dittany. But chances are you have a concussion. You need to stay awake and you need to be watched. Do you understand me?"

Ginny nodded mutely. The repercussions of the situation were beginning to dawn on her, so much that she couldn't even argue. Malfoy knew. He had to know – he'd be top of his year if it weren't for Hermione and some Ravenclaw bloke, and the signs were all there. There was no way he could mistake it. She'd been humiliated before, sometimes publicly, but this kind of humiliation, with Malfoy as its only witness, felt a thousand times worse. A million times worse. The blood rushed to her face and spread across her cheeks like wildfire. But then an even worse notion struck her. What if he told somebody? What if he told everybody? The Slytherin Prince, laughing it up with his Slytherin mates in their Slytherin dungeon. All of Hogwarts would find out. Harry, Hermione, her brothers, Dumbledore, her family. Just as quickly as the blood had rushed to her face, it drained again, leaving her white as a sheet.

Malfoy knew.

She was too horrified by the thought to notice the pity in his eyes.

The mirror over the washbasin was not doing much to help Draco's mood. The face it revealed was drawn; he had never seen his cheeks so hollowed, or such deep circles pressed like bruises beneath his eyes. He didn't even have the energy to don his customary sneer. Water dripped from his skin to land noiselessly on the marble counter-top. As he stood there, glaring at himself, it took quite some time to notice that a fist was hammering obnoxiously on the door to the dormitory bathroom.

"Oi! You want to hurry up, Malfoy, I've got to take a leak!"

"Piss off," Draco muttered, but not loud enough for the ignorant git on the other side to hear.

The doorknob began to shake violently and Draco's annoyance increased. They were going to snap the bloody thing. Almost lazily, he grabbed his wand from the shelf and pointed it at the handle. A loud shriek followed by a stream of curses on the other side of the door told him that the heating spell had been effective. The doorknob remained still and there was no more knocking. Whoever it was had probably already pissed himself, adding insult to the injury of the fool's already-burned hand. It occurred to him that a situation like this would have once struck him as extremely humorous; but then again, once upon a time his dorm mates would not have even dared to rush him like that. As much as he didn't care to admit it, the Slytherin Prince no longer had much standing, even in his own house and with his own "friends." Things had changed. Everything had changed, but he couldn't quite make himself care.

Draco finished buttoning up his shirt and glanced in the mirror one last time. Pristine except for the unmistakable signs of sleep deprivation and severe anxiety, he thought, and seriously considered smashing the mirror that reminded him of everything he had not yet accomplished and still had yet to do. With his fists, not magic, just for the satisfaction of feeling something shatter, feeling it deep in his flesh. So long as it wasn't actually him that was being shattered.

Crabbe and Goyle met him at the Slytherin table in the Great Hall, flanking him as per the seating arrangement they'd had since first year. Funny that these two buffoons were the only friends he still had, and not even because some unbreakable friendship bond existed between them, but because their fathers had ordered them to help him succeed. Still, he was somewhat grateful that he didn't have to look like a complete pariah. He didn't actually miss the others. Zabini, Parkinson, Nott. They could go to hell as far as he was concerned. They were ignorant and arrogant when it came to this war, and they didn't care that the stakes involved were unbearably high, so long as in the end, they turned out to be on the winning side. They didn't care that Draco's life danced on a knife's edge, along with the lives of his parents. One slip was all it might take. One slip was precisely what he could not afford. But he wasn't spending enough time in the Room to ensure that he ultimately succeeded, and he knew it. What he had found there three nights ago had set him back. It had distracted him.

So why'd you do it, Draco? He asked himself accusingly. He didn't have an answer.

Automatically his cold eyes found the Gryffindor table. She was there, sure enough. Long red hair, sleek and shining. Skin flawless apart from those awful Weasley freckles. Looking happy and carefree as she laughed with her friends. Draco blinked. Carefree?

He was instantly struck with a powerful confusion. How was it possible that this was the same creature he'd carried to his common room from the seventh-floor corridor only a couple of nights ago? Merlin, she was fucking laughing, as though she hadn't just had the shit beat out of her. As though it wasn't happening regularly. And he knew that it had to have been a regular thing – that kind of abuse didn't just happen spontaneously, he was well aware. There was always a build up, pushing the limits, seeing how far they could go. It occurred to him that maybe none of it had even happened. Maybe the stress and lack of sleep had finally caused him to snap, to go bloody barking mad and dream up some shite about finding a ravaged Gryffindor in the doorway of the Room of Requirement. Was there something psychological about dreaming up something like that?

But even as Draco's mind tried to formulate alternate theories, he knew that it was real. Though he had been dead exhausted and unsure of what he was doing or why he was doing it, he remembered everything about that night very clearly. The feather-light weight of her as he took her down the secret passageways to the dungeons, thinking only that he needed to get the dittany for her lip. The way she smelled like blood and sex mixed with jasmine. For the first time in months he was not dreading his next excursion to the Room or thinking of what might happen to him and his parents should he fail; all he could think as he watched Weasley interact normally with her friends was this: How is she doing that?

Draco had been staring for way too long, but he didn't realize it until it was already too late. Weasley turned her head, and just for a second, their eyes met across the Hall. He swallowed, suddenly feeling sick to his stomach. There it was.

She looked away very quickly, but not before he saw what a goddamn pretender she was.

Draco swept out of the Potions room as quickly as possible, before Snape could even form the words to tell him to stay back. He did not fear having points docked from Slytherin or being consigned to detention for deliberately ignoring a professor. Snape would do neither. Though he had refused to tell Snape anything about the exact parameters of his mission, the Potions master would not dare to interfere with the Dark Lord by causing Draco to waste time in useless punishments. He was just bitter, Draco thought. Bitter that he hadn't been trusted enough to cause Dumbledore's downfall.

Mindless of the faces he passed, Draco angled his steps toward the library. The library was his best shot of actually getting work done, and his grades had taken such a dive in the past few weeks that he desperately needed to do well on his next assignments. He still had that elemental Transfiguration essay to do, reading and practice work for Charms, the exposition on the Draught of the Living Death in Potions... His footsteps slowed. The fog was beginning to pass across his mind again, eating at the corners of his vision like something infectious. On second thought, maybe the homework could wait a couple of hours. He pictured his bed, soft and warm and inviting. He hadn't slept much last night, or the night before that, or... well, not much at all this term, actually. He turned a corner and found himself right across from the Trophy Room. He'd already made it to the third floor? He didn't even remember going up the stairs. His breathing was shallow, so he paused to lean against the wall for a moment, digging his shoulder into the cold stone. Eyes clenched shut, he tried to orient himself, decide what he was actually doing. He was so tired...

Too tired to fight it when a hand gripped his arm and dragged him into a nearby room. He stumbled but managed to keep himself upright, wand instinctively drawn, eyes blinking rapidly to adjust to the sudden darkness.

"Lumos."

Light flooded the room, but not from Draco's wand, which he still held defensively before him. His mind managed to process that he was in the armor gallery. In his peripherals he could see dozens of suits of armor lining the walls like sentries, creaking gently of their own accord. One scratched its side with a screech of metal on metal. But that was not what he was focused on. He'd expected Snape. He'd expected that the Potions master had actually tried to corner him again to force information from him. But he wasn't looking into the black eyes and hooked nose of Severus Snape.

"Weasley," he said, but what he'd meant to sound scathing only came out sounding weary.

"Did you tell anyone?" Ginny Weasley asked, her brown eyes holding his threateningly.

What the hell was she talking about? Suddenly standing was too much for Draco. Ignoring the wand pointed at him, he slipped his own back inside his robes and sat down against the door.

"I don't have time for this," he muttered.

"I'm serious, Malfoy! I'll bloody hex you if you don't answer me."

"I'm sure you will." There was no condescension in his tone: he really believed that she would. But at that point, he couldn't have cared less. He almost welcomed it. She could hex him all the way into next term if she liked. At this point, he wasn't even sure he'd be alive by next term. He watched as Weasley slowly lowered her wand arm. The light went out, thrusting them into pitch blackness.

Draco heard her step closer. He closed his eyes when he felt the tip of her wand press into his forehead. Come on, he thought. Just two words. Make my day, Weasley.

"I could cover you in boils," Weasley said. "Or bat bogeys. Or I could make you dance through the corridors naked in front of everybody."

"Mmhmm."

"You don't care?" The wand pressed even harder into his forehead.

"Do whatever the fuck you want, Weasley."

"Why don't you fight me?"

He said it before he could stop himself. "You'd like that, wouldn't you?"

Her hand struck his right cheek with surprising force. It actually hurt. He lifted a hand to his cheek, stunned. Before he could fully process that he'd just been slapped by a ninety pound Gryffindor girl, he heard the door open and slam shut again, and he was alone.