Strangest of Creatures
Chapter 2
Disclaimer: I claim nothing but the situations I put these characters in.
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After the incident in the dungeons, Draco payed quite a bit of attention to the littlest Weasely. Watching her in the Great Hall, following her with his eyes whenever she happened to be in sight. He couldn´t figure out why she had been so unlike herself. She hadn´t been scared or meak, he hated to admit to himself but they´d switched places for those horrid few minutes. He wanted to know why.
He´d noticed that while she acted as she always had, there was something different about her, a calmness that no teenage girl should have. As if she´d matured into a women over the span of a few years, instead of a decade. Though none of their peers seemed to understand or even notice this change in her, he saw in her the same thing that he saw in himself. He had long ago stopped being young, and innocent at least in aspects of pain and wisdom. Of all the people that he´d encountered she had surprised him, and he couldn´t phantom why, or what had forced her to grow up so suddenly. So he watched her, and listened, and quite unwittingly started treating her not as a Weasley or a Gryffindor, but as a girl worth his notice.
...
Malfoy was in the most unlikeliest of places. Not that it was strange to see him in the library, what was strange was that it was a saturday and instead of being outside with his Slytherin friends, he was in the library watching a certain Gryffindor. Though it appeared that she had forgotten the incident in the dungeons, he had not, and his own curiousity being peeked, he had decided that today while everyone else was outside enjoying themselves that he would track down Ginny Weasley and ask her what excatly had gotten into her that awful day in the dungeons.
He was peeking, though Malfoys were above such things, this Malfoy found himself peeking, of all things, at a Weasley, he had been peeking only for an hour, an hour where he had noticed that the library was silent except for the page turning and scribbling of Ginny Weasley. Not even Madam Pince was here, opting instead to enjoy a day without students somewhere else on the grounds, trusting that the students of Hogwarts would not be in need of her faculties.
Deciding that the Weasley girl had finally settled in, and that no one would be coming to disturb them, he walked out from behind the bookshelf and headed straight for the girl that had intrigued him for the past week. Malfoy did not sneer or smirk as he approached her, rather, a calm expression lay on his face and the smallest tendril of nervousness, which of course would be denied if ever mentioned.
Ginny looked up as she heard his footsteps approach her. She had of course noticed him watching her since that enlightening day in the dungeons. She thought it wise to ignore him when he was watching her, the rest of the time she thought him a puzzle, and watched him in return. For he had never answered her question, why had he been so unMalfoyish? She had run of course, it would have been foolish to stay, and Ginny Weasley was anything but foolish, anymore.
She noticed that his eyes were swirling again, a rainstorm of grey, intent upon her. It was rather cat and mouse of him to corner her all alone in the abandoned library, it would be weak of her to do anything but stay sitting in her chair looking at him, waiting.
When he had finally made it to her table, he stayed standing there for a moment, thinking, watching. ˝Why?˝ he asked, eyes locked on hers. His hands were at his sides, back straight, legs firmly planted, every muscle clenched in anticipation of her answer.
˝Why what?˝ Perhaps she should have answered him, but he was impossible, full of some tension, ready to explode. Her heart beat a little faster, she had wondered why he hadn´t said or done something after the incident, she had anticipated him at any moment, and now that he was finally here, she just wanted to watch him that much longer.
The calmness slipping, his hands started to shake just the littlest bit. ˝When did little Ginny Weasley get the courage to follow a DeathEater into the darkest dungeon to ask him ´why´?˝ He managed to say, collecting his thoughts, stilling his breathing.
˝You don´t look like a DeathEater, you don´t even act like one, I was just curious as to why not?˝ She looked him in the eyes, looked at how her words affected him, how his fingers twitched at her boldness. It was rather bold of her, and she didn´t think that it was Gryffindor courage, it was more like she didn´t have the time for such childish games.
He didn´t need to explain himself to her, and yet as she looked at him in earnest, he couldn´t help but want to tell her why, but she hadn´t yet earned that from him. ˝A moment of weakness.˝He told her, that is all that it had been, a moment in which he hadn´t had the will to keep pretending.
˝I thought that Malfoys were never weak.˝ She commented, readying herself for his outburst, but it never came.
"Our strength grows out of our weaknesses." He said, the strangest of smiles fluttering on his features for the briefest of glances, so that she thought that she had imagined it. Then he was walking away, she made to get up, to stop him, but stopped herself watching his back, the graceful way he moved.
He´d seen enough, heard enough, restrained himself in time. She´d made him almost express himself, almost made him confess one of his darkest secrets, and that made her more dangerous than he could have ever imagined.
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"Our strength grows out of our weaknesses" Ralph Waldo Emerson: American Poet, Lecturer and Essayist, 1803-1882