Title: The Lion and the Serpent
Summary: Ginny is failing Potions, and even her brother Ron can't help her this time. As usual, Snape is eager to cause a Gryffindor like herself discomfort, and assigns her a tutor that could change her life. A story about a Malfoy seducing a Weasley... or perhaps, is it the other way around?
Rating: PG-14 for language and possible sexual reference in later chapters
Characters: Ginny Weasley, Draco Malfoy
Disclaimer: Nothing belongs to me except for this plot... everything else is Rowling's...


Chapter 1: Snape's Task

The new tutoring program at Hogwarts was anything but helpful to Ginny Weasley. Sure, she knew she was failing Potions, and of course, it would help if she got any grade other than a "D", but for Merlin's sake, she wasn't completely inept: she could take care of herself. The only problem seemed to be that she was completely reluctant to spend hours on end in the musty old library looking up Potion's ingredients while the last sunshine of the year shone brightly on the brilliant, grassy grounds outside. Needless to say, the library did nothing to remind her of anything she found even remotely pleasant, and Ginny was not at all cheered by the fact that if she failed her next assignment, Snape was going to assign her a private tutor; and Ginny was sure that whoever the tutor was, they would not help improve her abysmal grades.

This is why the redheaded fifth year sat cooped up in the Gryffindor common room while her fellow students were outside on an overcast but very warm day, soaking up the dwindling warmth from the sun whilst doing their homework outside on the last few days that they could before winter came. Ginny would have given almost anything to be outside with them, not a care in the world, talking and laughing with her friends… except for the fact that human interaction did nothing to improve her performance in essay-writing. So, alas, there she sat beside the empty fireplace, sun streaming in through the window and illuminating her nearly blank piece of parchment, while Ginny herself was seated, watching dust swirl in the sunbeams that spilled onto the dark red carpet, her mind almost as blank as the paper upon which she was supposed to be writing.

"Hey," said a familiar voice behind her. "Shouldn't you be outside?"

Harry walked in through the portrait hole, hair distinctly ruffled from the wind outside; Ginny suspected that it must be the perfect weather conditions for practicing Quidditch. She swallowed an irritated comeback and replied.

"No," Ginny said tonelessly, barely blinking as Harry sat down in the chair beside her. "Everyone outside would be way too distracting, which is not what I need right now." Her sentence ended with unintentional bitterness, which Harry chose to ignore.

"It doesn't look like you're doing much better up here," he pointed out, and Ginny shot him a withering look.

"Thanks so much, Sir-points-out-the-obvious," she said sardonically. "I hadn't noticed."

"Just trying to lighten up the atmosphere a bit," Harry said simply, putting his hands up in self-defense. "Thought you might need a little comedy relief after being up here for so long. It really is a beautiful day, you know."

"Thanks," Ginny said grumpily, resting her chin on the table. "I needed that."

"Don't mention it," Harry said with a chuckle. "Look, when you change your mind, Ron, Hermione and I are all going to be down by the lake, if you want to join us."

"Well, I would," Ginny said, raising her voice to a shout as Harry began to leave and lifting her head up off of the desk. "If a greasy-haired slimeball I could mention hadn't given me such a damn pointless assignment!"

The portrait slammed shut behind Harry as he left, and Ginny's chin smacked down onto the surface of the table again as she let out a frustrated groan and looked down at her so far nonexistent Potions essay. Slowly, tediously, she lifted her head once more from the table and picked up her quill, and began to write.

>>

It was past midnight when Ginny finally threw down her quill and nearly burst into tears of mingled exhaustion and triumph. The essay was finished – finally – after a full day's work, after she had skipped lunch and taken only a sandwich for dinner, brought up to her by Ron, who took pity on his little sister. "Snape had better give you a good grade," he said, watching as Ginny took a savage bite of sandwich before returning to the heavy reference book she was using. "If only for effort."

"You know that's not going to happen, Ron," she had replied shortly, her tired eyes itching from reading the millimeter-tall print that was dreadfully boring in itself. "Since when has Snape ever given a Gryffindor good grades because of their effort output?" She sighed huffily before taking another enormous bite of sandwich and scanning down the page for any useful information. Knowing that provoking an already over-stressed Ginny was about as safe as running through a field of active land mines, Ron bit back a retort and let his sister continue with her work.

Still, Ginny thought miserably, she knew that Snape would undoubtedly sneer as he graded her essay, marking her errors with exaggerated flourishes of his quill. She knew, of course, that however long she had slaved to write her essay, she was fully aware of the fact that it was probably somewhere in the range of grades that would have appalled Hermione Granger. All the same, the redhead rolled up her parchment, eyelids drooping, and instead of going straight up to bed, let her head fall with a loud thump onto one of her open textbooks, and was asleep almost instantly.

>>

It would have been nice to say that Ginny awoke to the soft babble of student's voices in the common room, and that she stored her finished essay in her bag and joined Harry, Ron and Hermione for breakfast before traipsing off to the dungeons to hand Snape her two foot essay on the properties, uses, and proper handling of Ashwinder eggs. Instead, Ginny awoke the next morning to a near nightmare.

Once she had lifted her head from the book she had been using as a pillow, she received a shock as she glanced at her watch: breakfast was nearly over, and all of her books and parchment were strewn around her workspace. Cursing her luck, she ran up to the girl's dormitories, and was back moments later with her bag swinging wildly from her shoulder, and crammed her books and parchment inside haphazardly. Snatching up her essay from the table, she was halfway through the portrait hole when she realized that she had forgotten her Potions' textbook on the table in the common room. Her last nerve stretching nearly to the breaking point, Ginny tore back through the common room and, after several moments of frantic searching, seized it from underneath the chair she had fallen asleep in, and raced through the portrait hole again just as the bell signaling the end of breakfast sounded across the castle, meaning that she only had a few short minutes before classes started. Now holding in a scream of frustration, Ginny sped off down the corridor, occasionally taking a hidden shortcut or two and silently thanking her elder twin brothers, Fred and George, for telling her about most of them before they left Hogwarts the previous year.

Even with Fred and George's shortcuts, however, by the time Ginny had reached the Entrance Hall it was nearly empty. Hoping desperately that Snape wouldn't start class early, she turned to run down into the corridor that led to the dungeons, but –

There was a sudden, tremendous ripping noise that issued from the redhead's bag, and before she could whip out her wand and mend it, the bag, which had been full to bursting moments before, finally ripped along one of the side seams, and all of her books and parchment tumbled out onto the floor. Now willing herself not to cry, she hastily grabbed her books and shoved them back inside the bag in an admirable attempt of organization, and muttered "Reparo!" but had no time to watch as the bag fixed itself seamlessly. Now completely positive that she was going to be late, Ginny barreled down the corridor, knocking into people as the walls flashed past her, still running full-out when she rounded a corner…

"Weasley!"

Automatically, Ginny looked around wildly for the speaker, and attempted to stop, but instead collided hard with the cold stone wall. Rubbing her sore nose furiously, Ginny turned around to see Snape just outside his classroom, glaring at her with nothing short of loathing and, she was surprised to see, a shadow of a smirk on his face.

"You are late, Weasley," he said softly, eyes glinting unpleasantly in the dim light from a torch burning nearby. "And furthermore, running in the hallways? I think ten points from Gryffindor is in order… in."

He pointed her inside the classroom, and she hurried inside, trying not to look into his face. The door closed with a bang and an echoing silence fell as Ginny took her seat next to her two best friends, Myra Tamerlane and Freda Scott. Both of them dared a glance at her, each with a questioning look in their eyes, but turned abruptly back to look at Snape as he strode to the front of the room, glowering at them all. Even by Snape's standards, however, Ginny could tell that he seemed almost as distracted as he was furious. Curiosity bubbled inside her and Ginny shifted slightly in her seat as Snape's cold, black eyes flickered over her before returning to survey the room in its entirety.

"Today, you will be concocting a Strengthening Solution, a Potion used for invigorating the weak and offering a temporary boost to energy to the drinker. Copy down the instructions –" – he flicked his wand – "– from the board" (words appeared there) "and once you have finished please wait patiently by your cauldron until the end of class, at which point I will give the order for you to fill a sample flask with your potion. Begin."

There was an instant scuffling of tables and chairs being moved followed by the rush of people eager to get the ingredients and begin working; over three year's experience told them that Snape was in a particularly foul mood, and no one wanted to be found somehow victimized by the bad-tempered Potions' professor.

Least of all Ginny.

"Ginny Weasley!" Snape called over the noise, which died down to half its volume instantly, and Ginny instantly felt all eyes turn fleetingly to her before returning to the task at hand. Ignoring Myra and Freda, who were both staring at her as though unable to believe she had gotten on Snape's bad side so quickly, Ginny reluctantly got to her feet and trudged to the front of the room, dully wondering what Snape could possibly want her for. Was it possible that her last in-class assignment been so lousy that he was moving her to a desk at the very front of the room, where he could keep a close watch on her at all times? Ginny's stomach flipped over as she thought this, but despite her feelings that she would immensely despise whatever Snape had to throw at her, walked slowly up to his desk, examining the stack of parchment next to him rather than Snape himself. For a while, neither of them spoke. Finally, Snape broke the silence between them.

"Tell me, Weasley," he said in a soft and deadly voice, and Ginny heard the rustling of papers. "What is this?"

At last, feeling that she could distract her eyes no longer, Ginny looked from the pile of papers on Snape's desk to Snape, who was holding a piece of parchment out to her. A large, black "D" had been scribbled on to the front of it. Ginny swallowed hard before answering.

"My paper on the properties of moonstone," she answered quietly, doing her best to keep her voice steady.

"I am aware of that, Weasley," Snape said in the same deadly soft voice, this time with a bite of irritation in his tone. "Can you tell me what kind of grade seems to have been given for this… essay?" His lip curled into a twisted smirk.

"A 'D'," Ginny muttered, once more averting her eyes from the Potions' master.

"Excuse me?"

"A 'D'," Ginny said loudly, causing the people nearby to stare apprehensively at her, then at Snape before returning to their work.

"Precisely," Snape growled, bringing her paper back down to the desk with a snap. "And do you know why, Weasley?" He paused only for a moment before going on anyway. "It is because of your abysmal Potions work in this class. Or," he added, his cruel smirk widening, "perhaps it is because you are as incompetent working outside of this class as you are inside it…"

It took all of the willpower Ginny could muster not to scream at Snape, but she could feel her face growing warm and knew that her hands must be shaking with the effort of keeping quiet. With a great deal of difficultly, she swallowed her scream and managed to stare, expressionlessly, at Snape.

"I do believe," he went on unexpectedly. "That I assigned you a paper on Ashwinder eggs and their proper handling and usage in potions, did I not?"

This time Ginny knew that he was addressing her directly, and did not hesitate before answering, "Yes, Professor", her heartbeat speeding up. Perhaps Snape would allow her to fetch it quickly from her bag, and then she could turn it in, and then maybe, just maybe, she would receive at least an "Acceptable" for her hard work…

"I see now that it was a waste of time," Snape continued, smirk fading to be replaced with an ugly sneer. "You clearly are unable to continue with your current homework performance, seeing as these are the kinds of grades you receive."

Ginny's eyes traveled briefly to her "Dreadful" essay paper, and then back to Snape. Snape, however, had gone quiet, and instead was surveying the students as they added their ingredients to the Strengthening Solutions. In seconds, however, his eyes had returned to her.

"I have just been with the headmaster, Weasley," Snape said in a low voice. Wondering what this had to do with anything, Ginny resisted the urge to ask why.

"The headmaster seems to see fit that you be assigned a private tutor for your future Potion's assignments," Snape said, upper lip curling again as Ginny glared at him, pure hate drilling into his eyes… what wouldn't she give to be able to curse that horrible smirk right off his face, right then and there?

"Are you listening to me, Weasley?" Snape asked in his lowest voice yet. Ginny became aware that a small smile had become lodged on her face, likely as a result of her daydreams of cursing Snape. She wiped it off her face hastily and nodded mutely.

"You will answer to me," Snape said in an extremely icy voice. "As 'professor' or 'sir' while you are in my class. Do you understand, Weasley?"

"Yes… sir," Ginny said savagely, and Snape's smirk widened slightly.

"As I was saying," Snape went on in a smooth voice as though nothing had happened. "The headmaster has given me permission to assign you an appropriate tutor to assist you in your Potion's homework. And I believe that I have chosen one that will be suitable for your particular… needs."

"And who's that? Sir?" Ginny blurted out, and Snape's smirk widened to its fullest extent.

"Draco Malfoy," he answered silkily, and Ginny's stomach sank through the stone floor as she gaped at Snape in horror. As if having a tutor wasn't punishment enough… did it have to be Draco Malfoy?

"Do not give me that look, Weasley," Snape told her, his normal tone returning to him. "I will not switch tutors for your sake, nor for anyone else's. I expect you to meet with Draco at the library at least twice a week, on the days of your choosing." He smiled horribly. "Anyone who has seen your homework grades will not disagree with me. Now please take your seat."


AN: Hooray! I've finally gotten around to posting my reworked fic... I've decided to keep most of the original Author's Notes and Disclaimers at the beginning and end of each chapter, so expect to see some ancient history surfacing in later chapters.

Keep checking for the next chapter, coming soon!