Knowing that a month of fancy dining, fun, and a freakin' gorgeous male lay ahead of her, Ginny Weasley walked into the office with a bounce in her step. It was with this bounce that she took a lovely little misstep and ended up with the heel of her left pump cracked off and sitting on the floor beside the shoe. She stared at it for a few seconds before bending over to pick it up and stare at it some more. People passed beside her on either side of the hallway, ignoring her plight. Sure, no big deal, but come on, what kind of way was that to start a day? It was not a good omen. Professor Trelawney would be spazzing out. Ginny could practically hear that woman's soporific voice warning her that broken shoe heels were an omen of death.
Ginny moved into her cubicle awkwardly, leant down three inches on her right side. As she sat there, trying to decide if she was going to super glue it or not, three female coworkers burst in. They were wearing identical power suits except for the three different colors: yellow, pink, and baby blue, or if one wanted to use names, Trish, Wendy, and Hannah. These three women were evidence of just how unhealthy it was for the human psyche to spend years working in cubicles. Their scuttle across the room, combined with their smiles, gave the impression of colorful crabs on children's beachwear. Lord, help me, Ginny thought as the loony women sidled toward her desk.
Oh yeah, she amended mentally with a sheepish grin. God doesn't talk to Satanists.
"Ginny, we heard the news!" Trish announced, flinging herself onto Ginny's desk and knocking off a framed picture of the Weasley family. She didn't seem to notice.
"I can't believe it!" Wendy squealed. Hannah just nodded like a bobble-headed doll. Ginny grinned at them and shrugged her shoulders.
"I don't know what you're talking about," she replied, even though she did. Waving her hand in the air as if dismissing them, she couldn't help but sneak a bit of a smile. They gaped at her. Obviously they had expected her to spill her heart out to them about this, and now they weren't sure what to say.
"Draco Malfoy is the sexiest man alive!" Hannah's voice ricocheted off the walls. Ginny was sure the Minister of Magic must have heard it two floors up in his office. She didn't even have to ask how the three of them knew about her one date with Draco Malfoy; if she had been constipated when she woke up this morning, she would have gotten here and found laxative on her desk. They were just that competent in their nosiness.
"Hannah, contain yourself," Trish chided before she whirled back to Ginny. "How did you get him? Can I have a friend of his? Can I have him on weekends?"
"With that man, I'd take sloppy seconds," Wendy remarked sagely.
"Hell, I'd take sloppy sevenths," Hannah added.
"Sloppy hundredths."
"Sloppy thousandths."
"Sloppy millionths."
"Sloppy to infinity so ha!" Hannah concluded loudly. Ginny shook her head.
"You guys are such five year olds. Besides," she added the last part quietly, a grin tilting upwards on her lips. "Who says anything with him would be sloppy?"
The squeals that followed broke the sound barrier, and it took Ginny nearly twenty minutes to get them all shooed out and into their cubicles. She sagged into her desk as they did and thought about it. She was going to deal with this for a month. Every woman she encountered who knew was going to be dealing with her insane jealousy. The thought had its merit. She could definitely deal with that. Oh hell yeah she could. First it had been The Boy Who Lived, and now it was THE SEXIEST MAN ALIVE, at least according to Hannah. Ginny was not above the petty triumph of being envied.
Ginny thought of Draco standing in her apartment the day before, looking at her with those cool eyes, dressed perfectly, and she nibbled on her lower lip. She had to admit; she agreed with Hannah. Not only was he beautiful, but he was coming to rescue her from her cubicle later in the day for lunch out. Fairy tales had it all wrong; women did not want to be rescued from towers or dragons but from monotony and bureaucracy.
Just as her heart rate was settling and everything was returning to normal - filing paperwork and all sorts of other oh-so-exciting tasks - she heard someone enter her cubicle. The sound of dress shoes left a distinctive murmur on the carpeted floor. She could practically feel a smirk searing a brand on her. She thought of Draco leaning in the doorway to her little office, and the air suddenly seemed to sizzle.
As her thoughts ran away from her, she spoke without looking up from the paper she was stamping. "Seduction is not permitted at work."
"What?" The voice of utter shock made her look up, and she squeaked. Not Draco. Oh hell. Definitely not Draco.
"Daddy?" She murmured weakly.
Arthur Weasley was glaring at her; she recognized the expression quite well. It was the same glare she used all the time. He dropped a fat folder full of papers onto the desk, eyes on hers. She gulped. I have got to learn to just keep my mouth shut.
"What are these for, Daddy?" She tried to sound innocent so that he would just leave and pretend that he had never heard her use the word 'seduction'.
"They need to be filed." He was sitting down. Oh shit. That didn't suggest that he was going to leave. His eyes were on hers now, boring into them, and she felt like he could read her thoughts. The image of she and Draco rolling around, tangled in Egyptian cotton sheets, came unbidden into her mind, and she turned beet red. Please don't let him be reading that thought. She tried agin to tamp down on any wayward thought, which, of course, led her brain into the worst places imaginable. Whipped cream, handcuffs, countertops, and dildos danced through her mind. She turned the trademark Weasley color of distress.
"Ginevra Weasley, has someone been harassing you here in the workplace?" His voice was low, concerned, and very quiet. Her eyes widened, and try as she might, she couldn't fight the snort of laughter that accompanied her surprise. He frowned. "Then what…"
"Daddy, I'm twenty-five years old. I'm old enough to use the word 'seduction',"
"But who in bloody hell did you think you were talking to?" Ginny realized that her father had not been home when she was yesterday; somehow he must have managed to get in and out of The Burrow without hearing about any of it. Perhaps he had spent the evening in his shed tinkering with the flying car and had only come in to have some leftovers and go straight to bed. Even so, it was hard to believe so many Weasleys had managed to let the opportunity to tell Dad about baby girl's love life go untaken.
"So, I'm fully supportive of us having sex right – Oh, hello, Arthur – here on your desk." Draco Malfoy smiled as he entered the office about 5 minutes too late.
Ginny didn't know what individual part of this whole situation was worse. Her boyfriend - who was only her boyfriend because he was trying to win a bet for shagging her and who also happened to be a sworn enemy of her family - had just walked in while she was having a discussion about harassment in the workplace with her father, and he had announced that he wanted not only to have sex with her - without any mention of protection or the sanctity of marriage - but that he wanted to do it in a public, professional setting. Oh, and to top things off, he had said hello to her father in the middle of this proposal.
She should have just gone home sick when she snapped the heel off of her shoe earlier.
Her father's face was turning a very violent shade of purple that was very unbecoming with his red hair, and the smug 'I'm the shit and I know it' look on Draco's face was getting smarmier by the moment. She realized they were both looking at her.
"Oh dear," she murmured weakly.
"Is that a yes?" Draco asked.
She dropped her head to the desk with a thud. The melodramatic gesture hurt more than books suggested. She grunted.
"So it's a no?" He tried again.
She flipped her middle finger in the air and heard a sharp intake of breath from across the desk.
"Sorry, Daddy," she muttered, burying her face in the paperwork about dragon dung and its applications to modern Herbology. How appropriate, she thought. Because I'm definitely in the shit.
"I don't want to talk to you." Ginny's voice was stubborn and harsh as she licked some mint chocolate chip ice cream off the cone. She and Draco were sitting outside an ice cream parlor, tucked together at one of the quaint little tables under a bright red and white umbrella. He looked calm and unruffled, completely put together from head to toe. From her shoe with its broken heel to her disgruntled expression, she looked distinctly otherwise.
"I bought you ice cream." He feigned a wounded, innocent tone, and she kicked him squarely in the shin under the table. That would teach him to bullshit someone who grew up in a den of testosterone. "Ow. You're a vindictive little bugger."
"You did that on purpose!"
"What? Called you a vindictive little bugger? Yes, that was on purpose." He smirked at her. She looked at him murderously. "Okay, okay. I get it. No more public announcements about my intentions towards you."
She let out a weak groan. "In front of my father. I can't believe you did it in front of my father. I hate you."
She bit into her ice cream again. The cold stung her teeth. He continued to eat from his own cone, unfazed; she had been surprised when he ordered chocolate decadence in a cone. That sounded so…unlike him, for some reason. She would have guessed he was strictly a vanilla in a cup kind of guy, but instead, he was walking on the wild side with a fudgy chocolate-swirled concoction dangling precariously in a waffle cone. She tilted her head in mild amazement at the way he managed to eat an ice cream cone without getting ice cream on that perfect mouth. Her gaze followed the curve of his lips, the way a hint of his tongue or teeth would appear, touched with chocolate. Suddenly he leaned down to meet her gaze, putting his eyes down to where his mouth had been in her ocular space.
"Obviously you're not that mad." He raised an eyebrow.
"I'm furious," she shot back, mentally slapping herself for admiring that mouth. Oh wow. That mouth. The things that she could do with that mouth. The things he could do with that mouth. The things they could do with that mouth. Oh wow.
"You are not. I think you like me." He sounded smug.
"I'm dating you. I'm supposed to pretend to like you." She opted for a lofty, superior tone.
"I think you want me." His voice was husky, and she breathed in slowly, trying to stop the air from escaping her lungs. He just wants to win that bet, but damn…
"I think you're wrong."
"I know I'm right." The corner of his mouth lifted in a smirk, and he bit into his cone with a definitive crunch. After he swallowed, he went on. "Would you like to have dinner with me tonight?"
"Huh?"
"That's an unattractive sound."
"Yeah, yeah. Whatever. Repeat the question."
"Would you," he began as if she had a deficiency that required him to speak very slowly, "like to have dinner with me tonight?"
"Where?"
"At my house."
"Your house. Can you actually Apparate there?"
"I'll disable the anti-Apparation charm since you're coming."
"Wow. I didn't know it was that easy to get into hell."
"All you have to do is sin, Ginevra." His voice dropped low, but his smile acknowledged the over-the-top cheesiness of what he was saying. The mix of confidence and sheepishness kicked up her pulse.
You are a walking sexual fantasy, you know that? She thought, but all she said was "Har har. Yeah right! I'm coming for the food."
"You'll stay for the dessert."
Silence lapsed over them then because she wasn't sure she could disagree with him without cracking a smile to match his smirk. After all, what was she supposed to say? 'Sorry, Draco, but I'm just not attracted to you'. Finally, she opted for a teasing tone.
"The dessert? What? I was planning on staying for the sex."
She noted with satisfaction that she had left him at a pleasant loss for words.
"So, you're dating Draco Malfoy."
Ginny could not believe her bad luck. She had decided to drop into the Leaky Cauldron to have one non-alcoholic drink before she went home; she had felt like a perfect angel, being good before she went to play with the devil. She could hang her halo on his horns when she got there. Yet who should she run into at the Leaky Cauldron but Harry frickin' Potter.
Harry looked rough; his tie was undone, hanging around his shoulders, his hair its usual mess, and he had a hang-dog look that she recognized well. He and Hermione must be having a spat; Harry didn't handle spats well. For someone so brave and quick to jump in there and save the wizarding world as Auror, he ran from conflict quickly in his personal life. Ginny had no doubt that he was drinking to avoid going back to finish his fight with Hermione. After all, how fun could making up be with someone like Hermione? She had hair so bushy that it would have required a pair of hedge trimmers to manage.
When did I become such a bitter, bitter woman? She wondered in mock self-reflection. Judging another woman's hair while your own was in a messy topknot might be crossing a line of decency.. She grinned broadly at Harry, though, as if she were a queen patronizing a servant.
"Yes, I'm dating him."
"How could you do that to us, Gin?"
"Excuse me? Us?"
"Your family, your friends." Harry shrugged his shoulders. He seemed genuine in his concern, but the knot of bitterness on her heart stayed hard as she remembered how ugly and patronizing it had all been when he cheated on her. She remembered her own silliness, how she had been so in love that his cheating was not enough and she had still been begging him to give them another chance as he left her. Forgiving him for the actions might happen, but she could not forgive the embarrassment she still felt over how it had all gone down. She laughed at him now, seeing a little tiny droplet of her spit land on his cheek. She didn't even feel the need to apologize.
"I'm afraid, Harry, that you don't fall into either of those categories," she said, trying to hide her urge to smile inappropriately. The times when she had truly been angry at him were long gone. Now she looked at him and saw how pathetic and awful and irritating it all was. She saw everything she had once loved and could laugh at it because it was attached to all the things she could never love. He had cheated on her, for God's sake. If that wasn't enough to turn you off someone forever, she didn't know what was. If he had been with Hermione, he had practically been with Ron, which meant Ron had practically been with her! Harry had caused her brother to indirectly commit incest! And he dared to call himself a part of the family or a friend! What a nutcase!
"Ginny, I don't understand why you can't be more adult about all of this. You and I dated for a long time, and we had something very special, but I fell in love with Hermione and I had to follow my heart. I just wish you could be mature and accept that."
She looked at him for a moment and wondered how he had become so delusional. Maybe it hadn't been healthy for him to grow up in a cupboard. He was totally inept with this whole social structure thing. She snorted out a laugh again.
"If you had been able to keep it in your pants, or if you had told me about your after-hours exercise, or shown even an ounce of maturity, perhaps I could have returned the favor. You don't get to do whatever you want and then demand that other people handle it the way you want them to." Her voice was now cold, and she applauded herself silently. Harry hated when people were cold. However, when he replied, there was the strangest hint of a triumphant smirk on his lips,
"When did you become so bitter and angry, Gin? Just because, at twenty-five, your life seems to be stalled... well, it's no reason to begrudge me my happiness."
He didn't. Oh dear God. He didn't. That was the cheapest of cheap shots. She felt a surge of white-hot anger sear across her skin, felt her cheeks turning the same color as her hair. For years, she had been the girlfriend of Harry Potter, the token pretty girl at his side, and she had never complained about it. She had bought into the stereotype she fulfilled, and he had let her, encouraged it even, and now he wanted to play the 'What are you without me?' card. Bitterness and anger rose up like bile now, bubbling over.
"You haven't seen anger yet, you bastard," she growled, rising to her feet. The anger was so thick and heavy and awful and tangible that she wanted to… oh, she couldn't do exactly what she wanted to do, but…
She lifted her half-full butterbeer bottle into the air and threw it at the hardwood floor. It shattered with a sickening and satisfying crash. Silence seemed to descend over all the bar's patrons as Harry gaped at her in horror. She felt a sadistic, dangerous smile capture her lips.
"Ginny, stop!" His voice actually had raised in pitch, and she felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand up as she reached for his glass, taking it from his surprised hands. She lifted it up and threw it with another tremendous crash. The glass glittered on the floor in its puddle of amber liquid. Satisfaction draped over her shoulders like a blanket, egging her on.
Like a woman possessed, which she probably was, Ginny took a step forward and picked up an abandoned bottle.
"This is for lying." SMASH! She grabbed another.
"This is for cheating." CRASH! And another.
"This is for betraying my brother." SMASH!
With long strides, she carried herself behind the bar, past the slack-jawed, gaping bartender, and grabbed a full bottle of firewhiskey. The red liquid fizzled and hissed and steamed against the inside of its bottle. She admired it and unscrewed the top before turning to look at Harry. Tilting the bottle to her lips, she gulped down as much as she could, fighting to keep her eyes from watering or her expression from showing the pain of the liquor. The moment was too poetic to spoil. She held the bottle up as one might do before a toast.
"And this, my dear Harry Potter, is for me." She hurled the bottle with every bit of force she could at the wall. It smashed in an explosion of glass, sparks, and smoke. On the floor, the liquid hissed and raced. Harry lifted his shoes off the floor to avoid it.
Brushing her trembling hands together, Ginny felt her anger dissolve as quickly as it had come on. She looked at the horrified but entranced faces all around her, the terror and shock on Harry's face, and the devastation she had caused. Without a word, she hurried for the door.
She marched out of the bar on shaky legs and walked fast up the street until she was just outside of town.
You've lost it now, Ginny-girl. You've gone utterly insane. You attempted to destroy a pub because Harry accused you of having a pathetic life, she thought miserably as she leaned against a lamppost. Letting him get to you, now that was pathetic.
She sighed. Then it hit her. What she had just done was illegal. I-L-L-E-G-A-L. She tried not to panic and lose her already mostly lost mind as she drew her wand from her pocket.
She didn't even debate where to Apparate to as she lifted her wand and vanished.
Impressive, she observed as she appeared on the lawn of the stately stone home. It rested at the crest of a grassy knoll, and it looked distinctly Draco Malfoy. She walked up the lawn gingerly, feeling a tremor through her legs. Perhaps destruction of property hadn't been the best idea she'd ever had. She felt that sadistic grin come back. But damn, did it feel good in the moment.
Reaching the huge door, she was surprised at the cliche of a knocker in the shape of a serpent. She grabbed it and smacked it resoundingly against the wood of the door. There was a long pause, and the door opened. Her breath seized tight in her lungs. Draco was wearing jeans and a button-down white shirt, sleeves cuffed to just below his elbows and bottom completely untucked. He was drying his hands with a dish towel. She had never seen him dressed so casually, so relaxed, and she was certain nothing in the history of the earth had ever been so sexy.
"Hello." He greeted her smoothly, calmly, blissfully unaware of the chaos she brought with her.
"The police are after me. I'm a fugitive," she blurted out. Nice going, she chided herself.
"You know, if you wanted excitement, I could have provided it," he informed her, stepping out of the doorway to invite her in. She appreciated a man who was unafraid of a little criminal behavior.
She accepted his unspoken invitation, and the door fell shut behind them.
"I'm in awe. I'm in love. Even I never threw a bottle of firewhiskey at Potter," Draco mused as he lounged his long body across his couch. She was seated on the loveseat opposite him, feet tucked beneath her. He looked like some kind of god lying there, except for the distinctly wicked look twinkling in those cool eyes. He never seemed to fidget, completely still except for the rise and fall of his chest.
Breathing is officially going on my list of turn-ons. She smiled to herself.
"I didn't exactly throw it at him. More because of him," she amended. He waved a hand as if this were an unimportant detail.
"Don't correct me. I'm relishing the thought of you taking aim and throwing a bottle at his head. My real fantasy, though, involves you spilling that whiskey on you before the throw." He mused thoughtfully, tilting his chin up as if actually considering this mental image. "Then I would walk over and catch hold of you where your skin is sizzling from the whiskey, then we would kiss and not just your skin is sizzling…all this while Potter lies unconscious. It's a damn good thought."
It's a bloody wonderful thought. She didn't say that; though from the look on his face, she suspected he knew exactly what she thinking. Her cheeks burned red, but he either didn't notice or pretended not to notice.
"Anyway, I should feed you before we talk sex. That's part of Seduction 101. You'll have to forgive me if I don't get it quite right. You'd be surprised how rarely I have company here at the Manor," he said, standing up.
"You're doing just great," she mumbled under her breath, and he arched an eyebrow. She rolled her eyes. "What? I said 'I don't shag on the second date'."
He didn't call her a liar out loud, but his cool, oh-so-devilish eyes did as he headed for the kitchen, untucked shirt moving lightly against him. She was jealous of that lucky, lucky shirt, getting to touch against smooth skin. She sucked in a breath and laid the length of the loveseat, closing her eyes. Until this man walked into her office, she hadn't realized how much she had missed the distinct male-ness of having someone to go to at night. She had gone too long without actually thinking about how fun, messy, and real sex could be. You can't go to this guy at night! He's the devil. He's dangerous enough by day.
The sensible side of her mind was losing leverage by the second, though, as the hedonistic side of it tried to convince her that she deserved the kind of sex this man could offer.
"Are you coming in to eat dinner?" She looked up to see him looking at her expectantly. She nodded. He extended his hands to help her up, and when she folded her hands into his, she noticed the way they were smooth and slightly rough all at once. Maybe it was wishful thinking, or maybe his hands really did linger for a moment before they walked into the kitchen. It was hard to separate his calculation from her imagination.
"Now, I don't usually eat in the kitchen with company, but I didn't want to sit at the big dining room table with you. I wanted this table for its intimacy."
It sounded silly until they sat down to eat, and then Ginny understood exactly why he had wanted that. Their knees brushed under the table; their fingers touched as they reached for bowls. His hand caught hers for a moment as he refilled her glass of wine. If they had been romantically inclined, the dinner would have been desperately romantic. Instead, it was a lusty wonderland (how bad would it be to drag him to his bedroom?), and Ginny spent every other moment reminding herself that she was not going to sleep with this man (no matter how much she wanted to). By the time they had cleaned up the kitchen together (she bet there were abs under that white shirt that the right splashes of water could reveal), she was dizzy with suppressed desire.
"You have been quiet," he said. A smirk played at the corner of his mouth.
"I've been thinking-" she began the half-truth as she dried the last dish and put it in the cabinet. It is unhealthy to go a year and a half without a relationship, she decided silently as she gripped the edge of the countertop.
"Concentrating-" he supplemented.
"On some things-"
"On the same things I've been concentrating on-" He dried his hands on a towel.
"But I'm not going to act on them."
"May I?" The husky note of his voice made her back up once as he stepped forward, and she shook her head.
"You can't just seduce me and call that consent!" She practically shouted, voice squeaking dramatically, as he advanced on her. She knew if he touched her, she would just melt against him, melt into it, and she would never be able to resist.
"Shhh." He caught her, pressed a finger to her lips, and slid his strong arms around her waist. She felt him draw her against him, and heat surged through her as their eyes locked. Sparks flew, stars collided, and the kitchen was on fire. She lost the ability to stand on her own as he bent to press his mouth to hers. Tilting up to him, she tumbled into the kiss, all fiery heat and raw desire and desperation. The seconds stretched on and on, as she wrapped her arms up around his neck, as she stretched to accept his kiss more fully. He tasted like the food they had just eaten and something else, something all his own. It made her even dizzier than she had been before.
He slipped back, and her lips were parted, her eyes snapping with the sizzle, and the words "Take me" were resting on her lips, begging to be let out.
He smirked at her, though she saw his eyes dancing with the reflection of her desire and alive with his own. "I enjoyed dinner, Miss Weasley," he said quietly. "I'm sorry you weren't interested in anything more, but I respect your decision, and I will see you tomorrow."
He brushed the lightest of kisses across her cheek.
As he, as infuriatingly calm as usual, walked out of the room, she tried to think about Antarctica and knew that wasn't going to help. It was going to take something far better than that to cool her down when all she wanted was to truly heat up.
Curse chastity! Her mind roared as she Disapparated.
