Chapter Two: Toil and Trouble
"Colin," Ginny said as she slid onto the bench next to him at breakfast on Saturday. "I'm going to go mad."
He patted her on the back. "Well, I hope you've thought through all the ramifications of your decision, love. But if you really feel that that's what you want to do with your life, I'm behind you all the way."
She laughed half-heartedly. "That's not quite what I meant."
"Oh, good. I'd have hated to have to explain to Ron." He took a sip of pumpkin juice, studying his friend over the rim of the goblet. "You look tired, Gin."
"Yeah," she yawned. "I am. The powers that be seem to be smiling on me, though. At least its a Saturday." She reached for a piece of toast. "Another lovely weekend filled with lovely homework, and the loveliest prospect of all, detention with Malfoy for a week starting on Monday after this wonderful weekend."
"You're cheery today."
"Its just my sunny disposition showing through, right?"
Wisely, Colin decided not to ask her what she thought Zabini was on about the night before, though he was dying to. When it became apparent that Ginny had no desire to do anything to her toast but stare morosely at it and prod it with the butter knife, he said, "Why don't we go to the library and get a head start on that essay we've got for Professor Sprout? Its the only really hard bit of homework that we've been assigned, other then that awful bit on snaring jinxes for Professor Wervon."
Wordlessly, she stood and followed him out of the great hall. Professor Wervon, the latest Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, was a fat, bespectacled old man who had clearly never done much in the way of his subject. He was also very fond of assigning long and rather pointless essays.
Half an hour later they were seated in a tucked away corner of the library far from the gaze of Madam Pince with books scattered around them and ink staining their fingers.
"Pass me One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi, would you?" Colin asked.
"Harry wants me off the team," Ginny said without preamble.
He looked up from his essay, shocked. "What! Why? You're the best chaser they've had in years!"
"Apparently, I distract him from the game."
"Well that's his own bloody fault, isn't it?"
She let out a sharp sigh. Colin never quite looked at things the same way as she did. For all it provided interesting conversation, it was sometimes a pain in the neck. "Its not as simple at that."
"I don't see why not!"
"With a Quidditch team, or any team I suppose, fair isn't on the top of the agenda. What really matters in how everyone works together. Say you were the captain of Gryffindor's team. Your seeker, Harry, keeps getting distracted from the game by a chaser, me. Who's more important, a seeker or a chaser? You would get rid of me, not him. Not to mention that Harry is the captain, and really couldn't throw himself off the team without serious confusion."
"So you think it alright that he wants to throw you off the team when you've done nothing wrong? When its his own fault that he isn't over you yet? He has a nerve! 'Sorry Ginny, I'm kicking you out of the team because I still wish you hadn't finished it?' That has the ring of blackmail to it. It was your decision to make. He had no right to beat you over the head with it just because--"
"Did I hear right?" a drawling voice came from a nearby row of books, and Draco Malfoy emerged. "Potter's going to put you off your team, just because he can't keep eyes off you, she-Weasel? He's more of an idiot than I thought."
"No one asked you to join us, Malfoy," she said tartly.
"Was I looking for an invitation?"
"Just beat it, Ferret. "
"Too bad, Weasley. Do you think I came to find you just for the questionable pleasure of you odious company? No. I came to tell you that your detention will be making wart potion in the dungeons. It takes a week to prepare, so it'll last until the end of your punishment. When you have finished the required steps for the day, you will be relabeling potion supplies and, if necessary, putting them in new containers. It just to happens that there are seven rooms in the dungeons with large supply closets. You'll do one a day. Meet me six o'clock, starting Monday." He smirked at the glare she was giving him.
"You, Creevey. Zabini's looking for you. It would seem that you've managed to scrape up a detention for yourself too. Apparently, he caught you having a midnight stroll. Go on. "
Reluctantly, Colin stood. Casting Ginny a concerned glance -- he clearly wasn't happy about leaving her alone with Malfoy -- he said, "See you at lunch, Gin," and strode off into the bookshelves.
Ginny picked up her Herbology essay and studiously ignored Malfoy. He would have to go away eventually.
Ten minutes later, when he still hadn't moved, she snapped. "Alright, Malfoy, I give in. Why are you still here?"
He raised an impeccably cynical eyebrow at her and she cringed inwardly, expecting the obligatory bully/possible Death Eater type reply. To her surprise, it didn't come. "Zabini tells me you wouldn't listen to him last night."
"Go away, Malfoy. I don't have the energy right now, and what I do have is a foot-long essay on the beneficial vs. inimical properties of Bayvermew-Galerium vines to finish, and so far I only have seven inches."
He looked at her thoughtfully for a long moment.
Ginny glared up at him from her position on the floor amid the books."Don't try thinking so hard, you might break something." When he still did move, she added pointedly, "If you don't leave, you might get something broken anyway."
He nodded absently. "Maybe its better if you don't know after all." Then, as if he were putting on a mask that had momentarily slipped, he sneered, "Why should I, any way? Why would I lift a finger to help a Weasel-rat like you?"
"The only helpful thing I ever asked of you was that you leave."
"Well, it must be your lucky day, since I was on my way anyway. Tell your lover-boy he's a prat, from me."
"Like I'd do anything just because you asked me to," she grumbled to her ink bottle when he was gone.
-
On Monday evening, a disgruntled Ginny parted ways with a grouchy Colin, she to meet Malfoy and brew a wart potion, he to find Zabini and decant the school's entire supply of flobberworm mucus into new bottles without the aid of his wand. From what Ron had told them, though, they had gotten off lightly.
"There's a big infestation of doxies in a room on the fifth floor, and I'm supposed to catch them all without magic!" Ron had raged in the common room the day before. "I mean, flobberworm mucus is disgusting, mate, but at least it doesn't try to bite you!"
When Ginny reached the specified dungeon room, Malfoy was already there, waiting.
"Decided to show up at last, Weasley?"
"Oh, yes. I ran down here as fast as I could. I just can't wait to be subjected to hours of your company, especially when I have to make a wart potion at the same time. I think you can understand why I didn't rush my dinner. I'm not late, so you can't dock points."
"Nice to see you too."
"If I swear to do the detention, will you go away?"
"No."
"Didn't think so."
From her book bag, she removed her book bag from her shoulder and thumped it satisfyingly onto a chair before rooting around inside to find her potions book.
Wart potion wasn't the easiest concoction to brew, and Malfoy's constant needling did nothing to facilitate the process. When he suddenly broke off in the middle of a jeering insult, however, she looked up, concerned in spite of herself. What could be serious enough to put Malfoy off his insults?
The Slytherin prefect's badge piined to his chest was emitting a strong silvery glow. His face was very pale as he seized Ginny's wrist, dragging her out of her seat and out of the room.
"What are you doing, Malfoy?" she demanded angrily. "Let me go or I'll hex you!" She fumbled in the pocket of her robes for her wand.
"Be quiet, Weasley."
"Dammit, let me go!"
"By all means!" he suddenly said, venom in his tone, and hurled her away from him so that momentum slammed her hard into the wall of the corridor. "I couldn't care less if you get out of here alive!"
"What in the name of Merlin are you talking about?"
Malfoy made a 'God lend me patience, for I've none of my own left' face. Crossing his arms, he spoke in a tone appropriate for conversing with either the hard of hearing or the weak of wit. "There are Death Eaters in Hogwarts. That is why my badge glowed, it was a prearranged signal that McGonagall set up with all the prefects. It is now my duty to search the third floor of the dungeons for students, then get you all to the Great Hall where the anti-dissaperation charms will no longer be in place, then get the hell out of here. Either you come, or you don't Weasel. I'm not going to waste my time forcing you. "
Ginny's lips formed a silent 'O' of surprise. Apparently noticing that she was a little dazed by the sudden news -- who wouldn't be shocked to here that Hogwarts, the safest place in the world, had been attacked by Death Eaters for the second time in less then a quarter year? -- Malfoy resumed his iron grip on her wrist and continued down the stony corridor in grim silence.
Suddenly, he stopped in front of a bare expanse of wall. A slight sheen of moisture glistened off of it in the light of a tourch bracketed to the opposite wall.
"Disembowelment," Malfoy said clearly.
"What do you--" Ginny began in surprise, but before she could finish, the wall slid back to reveal a long, narrow room filled with Slytherins. It must be the Slytherin common room! Everything inside it was tinges a faint and sickly green, and Ginny guessed that it must be under the Lake.
" Sonorus," Malfoy muttered beside her, pointing his wand at his own throat, then in his magically amplified voice, said, "Everyone needs to get to the Great Hall as quickly as they can. The school is being attacked, so be prepared to encounter Death Eaters. Don't stop to get anything, just go. Now!"
No one moved.
"Why should we, Draco?" snickered Pansy Parkinson. "Its not like they'll do anything to us."
Malfoy shrugged. "It's your call. But do any of you really want to be cursed by accident? Quietus." His voice resumed its normal volume at the spell.
About half of the Slytherins followed as he towed Ginny up the stone stairways to ground level.
"You can let me go now," she said, unsure what to think or feel. Malfoy's vice-like grip had left marks on her pale skin. In the morning, she would have a rather impressive bruise.
As the small group made its way toward the Great Hall, they ran into Blaise Zabini's charges, just ahead and slightly slower. Ginny's gaze searched the group for Colin. After all, he had been with Zabini for his own detention. And there he was, giving the impression of being rather small as he always did, for all her was only a little shorter the Ginny. She wove her way through the small cluster of students to stand beside him. He gave her a slightly wobbly smile; she gripped his wrist in much the same way Malfoy had her own, though with considerably less force, trying to communicate some sense of comfort to her friend by the touch.
"There're five Death Eaters guarding this entrance," Zabini said. "We could probably make it through."
"Right," said Malfoy, taking a deep breath -- to help him think? To steady his hands? Ginny wasn't sure. "First years to the center of the group. Everyone, wands out. be ready to stun. If you can't do that yet, the body-bind curse will be next best. Ready?" Of course they weren't. "Let's go!"
They rounded the corner to face not five masked and hooded Death Eaters but nine.
"Stupefy!" a chorus of voices spoke the word at once, and about a dozen stunning spells arched their way toward Death Eaters. Five went down, the others turned on the students, curses on their lips.
"Protego!" Ginny shouted instinctively, and thought inconsequentially as the spells rebounded off her shield charm, The professors would be disappointed that I didn't cast it nonverbally.
Another volley of stunning spells, and the Death Eaters fell to the ground.
Noises behind them -- more Death Eaters, charging down the Grand Staircase.
"In! Now!" Zabini shouted, chivying the students into the Great Hall.
"Avada Kedavra!"
A jet of green flame arched burst from the tip of a familiar Death Eater's wand -- Avery Nott. Ginny had seen him at the Ministry once when she went there with her father. The spell missed the fleeing students by inches, smashing into the wall and leaving a crumbling hole.
Then they were in the Great Hall, and someone gripped her bruising wrist once more -- was it Malfoy or Zabini? She wasn't sure until she saw Zabini nearby, pivoting on the spot with several students, including Colin hanging onto him.
Then Malfoy too was turning, spinning them and a trio of Slytherin second years into darkness as well. The sound of shouted incantations and screams and small explosions drifted away, into the darkness, and then Ginny's feet slammed into the ground again.
They were in the forest where the Quidditch Cup had been located. Many, many students milled around the clearing, frightened and in some cases injured.
Ginny was seized into a huge hug from behind. "Thank God you got out of there!"
"Ron?"
"Yeah. Harry and Hermione are okay too. I don't think anyone has --" died. The word seemed to hang in the air.
Amid the confusion and panic, the shouts of teachers and students alike, Ginny looked out toward the rising crescent moon and wondered, Will I ever see Hogwarts again?
What do you think? Review and let me know! -- Lizzy