"What," Malfoy said, "what."
The hall outside his office was black with thick smoke. Many pairs of feet stampeded past, but Ginny couldn't see anyone beyond the curtain of darkness. Malfoy sent a lighting spell in the general direction of the torches, but the sparks from his wand fell through the air like shooting stars and disappeared.
"Lumos," Ginny said when the darkness crept over the threshold like a living, breathing beast. The tip of her wand lit up, but it was only a second before the smoke swirled up around her and wrapped her up completely, and she saw nothing. She sucked in a startled breath, a feeling of suffocation rising with the darkness all around her. "Malfoy?"
"God dammit," Malfoy snapped, and Ginny could imagine the sneer that went with the tone of irritation. "Over here."
Ginny felt her way forward to where she expected Malfoy to still be. She felt like the smoke should choke them up, but they could still shout. "Well, it was about time. We've been overdue for a really brilliant prank."
The string of profanities Malfoy let out served as a lifeline for her to find him by the door. "When I catch who did this... Ow!"
Ginny had stepped on his toe. "Sorry."
"You should be," he said. "This is all your fault."
"My fault?" she exclaimed. "How?"
"Well, who was it that ordered Darkness Powder for Defence practice?"
"I locked it away in my office!" Peruvian Instant Darkness Powder was forbidden after one too many disrupted lesson, but Ginny should've known a locked door had hardly ever stopped student mischief at Hogwarts.
More footfalls were coming down the hall, hurrying past Malfoy's door.
"Who's there?" Ginny called out, but whoever it was shoved past and disappeared round the next corner.
"Stupefy!" Malfoy yelled. As close to him as she was, Ginny could feel his breath brush her cheek as he dealt out the spell. Out in the hall, there was a thud of a body hitting the floor, and then the shuffle of several pairs of feet tripping over the fallen before catching themselves and running off.
"Accio Hand of Glory," Malfoy snapped, and Ginny felt something whizz past her. A moment later, Malfoy's face appeared in the light of a lone candle, which was held up by a shrivelled, shrunken hand.
"Ew."
"What? It's handy." His face twisted momentarily at the pun, then he held out the candle to illuminate the hall, and they saw a body lying crumpled on the floor. Malfoy's amusement faded as quickly as it had come. "Bloody hell."
Ginny recognised a skinny Slytherin third-year with her hair in messy pigtails. The girl could often be found among Teddy's admiring audience, pink-cheeked in anticipation of mischief, but now she lay on the floor like a broken doll, pale and glassy-eyed. Ginny knelt down beside her. "Olivia? Rennervate!"
The girl stirred, but there was no recognition in her eyes when she looked up at Ginny, as if she was staring right through her. "Easy now," Ginny said, pulling the girl up into a sitting position by her shoulders.
But Olivia clamped a small, surprisingly strong hand around Ginny's wrist and pushed her away. Startled, Ginny let her go. The girl climbed to her feet, movements edgy and stiff, and turned away from the teachers without a word to head back into the darkness of the corridor.
"Oh hell no," Malfoy burst out after a moment's stunned silence. "Where do you think you're going?"
The girl didn't acknowledge him any more than she had Ginny. She walked off, her legs jerking like a puppet's, and disappeared from the small circle of light cast by Malfoy's candle.
Malfoy grabbed Ginny's wrist and pulled her roughly to her feet. "Come on."
They hurried after the girl, who walked briskly down the corridor in spite of the darkness that lingered still, up several flights of stairs and through a doorway. Ahead, there was some commotion; a moment later, Ginny bumped into their charge, who had suddenly stopped in the middle of the hall. Malfoy held up the candle, and they saw a group of students clustering together by the statue of a witch, shoving at each other and at the walls as the crowd grew with more glassy-eyed, unconscious arrivals and the hall was effectively blocked.
"What the bloody hell is going on?" Malfoy demanded.
There was no answer. The crowd swayed as one like a wave crashing against the stone walls left and right, but none of the students spoke. They moved as if with urgent intent, but for all the action, the children were empty-faced and lifeless. Ginny looked into the blank faces around her and shuddered. It was like looking into a void.
"We have to do something!" she burst out, jabbing Malfoy hard with her elbow.
"Like what? The spells aren't working."
"We need to get them to the hospital wing."
"How? You saw it, they won't come quietly."
"So think of something, dammit, Malfoy!" She looked up at him, furious, but when she saw the expression on his face, she knew he wasn't indifferent; quite the contrary.
"I," he said, and broke off as the crowd around them grew more restless. There was a quiet hum in the air that sounded like thunder rolling in the distance, the wordless cry of many voices; the atmosphere around them seemed charged. Malfoy ran a hand through his hair, and Ginny could see that the fine blond strands at the back stood on end. "I don't see why I should have to-
"They're Slytherins." Ginny looked around at the students and only realised then how true it was. "They're all Slytherins. All yours."
"No!" Malfoy protested out of sheer habit; then he looked around too and his shoulders slumped. "...They can't be."
Ginny rounded on him. "What the bloody hell goes on in your common room?"
"I don't know, all right! Is that what you wanted to hear? I don't know." Brusquely, he turned away and seized the student closest to him by his Slytherin tie. "What is this, Flanagan? Answer me!"
Ginny pulled at Malfoy's sleeve. "Let him go, can't you see, they're unconscious! He can't answer you!"
But Malfoy's authority seemed to have entered deeply into his students' subconscious. The boy blinked rapidly, cloudy eyes slipping in and out of focus, and slurred, "H-Hogsmeade."
Malfoy shook him none too gently. "What about Hogsmeade?"
"C-c-candy," the boy slurred.
The word passed through the crowd from one child to the next. "Candy," many voices whispered, and the melee seemed to grow more chaotic with the excitement of the secret message. The students pushed at each other, and finally, the statue of the one-eyed witch gave way.
"The secret passageway," Ginny gasped. "It leads into the basement at Honeydukes."
"What is going on?" Malfoy exclaimed, addressing the crowd at large, but of course no one answered. He swore colourfully. "We have no choice. Petrificus Totalus!"
The boy he was holding by the collar went rigid. When Malfoy let go of him, the student keeled over, taking a pair of his restless housemates down with him. Malfoy immobilised them, too, then looked expectantly at Ginny. "Get to it before they disappear down the tunnel! I don't fancy rounding up students in Hogsmeade High Street, imagine the uproar!"
Ginny nodded unhappily. The last thing they needed was for a student prank to be blown out of proportion by some nosy gossip; the headmistress was proud that Hogwarts news hadn't made the front page of the Daily Prophet in almost a year, since that incident with the love potion spill and Professor Sprout's venomous, lovesick tentacula. At least they'd gotten a good laugh out of that one even if Malfoy complained about the bruises for weeks.
This here now was no laughing matter. Reluctantly, Ginny raised her wand and petrified the students around her, easing their fall with cushioning charms. She and Malfoy worked their way through the crowd with grim purpose. The children, where they even noticed what was going on, showed feeble resistance, but none of them were able to properly defend themselves. Ginny shuddered to think of the consequences this prank could have had in a setting where it was not as easily contained.
By the time they were finished, some two dozen students lay on the floor, and Ginny was breathless and exhausted, drenched in sweat. Knocking them out was for the kids' own good, sure, but she still felt supremely awful for it. "We need more people to get them all up to the hospital wing." She wasn't even sure Madam Pomfrey had enough beds set up to receive this many students at once.
Malfoy looked as tired of the job as she felt just then. "Let's take up a couple of them and get the headmistress on the way."
They set some wards so no one would stumble upon the unconscious Slytherins and feel inspired to more mischief, then they levitated two boys down the hall and around the corner as gently as possible. Unfortunately, it was still early enough that students lingered in the hallways, chatting to their friends from other houses before turning in for the night. Surprised muttering rose all around them as Ginny and Malfoy levitated two rigid bodies up the stairs in the direction of the hospital.
A group of Gryffindor boys was busy setting up a bunch of Decoy Detonators in a dark corner off the hallway. They interrupted their work to point and laugh at the two petrified Slytherins. "What did they get up to?" one of them crowed.
"Never you mind, Johnny," Ginny said firmly. The four of them glanced at each other and snickered.
"I fail to see what's so funny," Malfoy snapped.
"Oh, it's-" The boy broke off at a quelling look from Ginny. "Anyway, when Madam Pomfrey's set them right, could you tell them to join us down here, Professor Weasley?"
Ginny didn't know if Madam Pomfrey could heal them, and even if the matron did, not even the Slytherins deserved to be the butt of another joke tonight. "You four should be in the common room by now. Off you go!" she told the group in parting.
She sighed deeply with relief as she and Malfoy rounded a corner to walk down a corridor that was mercifully empty. Sweat trickled down her spine in a shiver, an old, almost-forgotten sense of dread descending upon her. The worst she'd seen in her years as a teacher had been a few broken bones from Quidditch practice and the inevitable spells-gone-wrong that caused the occasional nose to fall off. She would prefer if it stayed that way.
"Hey. Steady." Malfoy's hand closed around hers, righting her wand, and Ginny realized that she was trembling hard enough to make the boy she was levitating wobble dangerously in the air. She glanced at Malfoy. His face was grim, too, but he said, "Don't look so glum, Weasley. Do you really think this is something sinister?"
Strange didn´t automatically mean sinister, but Ginny had an odd feeling that she couldn´t yet explain. "I don't know. Could be. What do you think?"
He shrugged. "Could be mischief."
"You think they're pretending?"
"No, I think someone might've played a prank."
She snorted. "If they did, it's not a very funny prank, is it."
"Are they ever?" He gave her a look. "Your jokester brothers had a nasty sense of humour too, though everybody seemed to think they were so clever."
"Fred and George were geniuses," Ginny said loyally. "They never hurt anyone. Well, not permanently," she amended when Malfoy raised an eyebrow.
"We don't even know yet what's wrong with these kids," he said bracingly. "Might not be permanent."
She glanced at his profile, dark against the glow of the torches behind him, wondering if Malfoy was indifferent or if he just couldn't bear to be cynical this time. She'd never known him to look on the bright side. That he would now didn't make her feel better, though; not one bit.
The first time she remembered Malfoy ever showing any sort of human feeling had come under pressure, and at the time, Ginny had been too busy being worried sick about her students to be properly shocked.
There'd been an outing to the Forbidden Forest during Care of Magical Creatures, which, in retrospect, had been a bad idea even for Hagrid. When he came stomping out of the forest at dusk, wailing and missing half his class, no one remembered having given permission for the trip in the first place: neither the headmistress nor the Heads of House and certainly not the parents. More likely than not, Hagrid had come up with the harebrained idea over a tankard of ale down at the Three Broomsticks, and no one had paid enough attention to stop him. After all, nothing had happened at Hogwarts in years, and the stroke of good luck had lulled them all into a false sense of security.
It had been wrong to become complacent. But what was done was done, and so Ginny had found herself wandering through the dark forest at midnight, her fingers clammy as she held up her wand for light, periodically shouting the kids' names. Somewhere to her right, she could hear Professor Flitwick do the same. Malfoy was supposed to comb the woods to her left, but she hadn't heard him in almost an hour; he'd probably gotten tired of doing extra hours and gone back to the smelly hideout that he called his office.
The wind had picked up, singing in the branches of the ancient trees, an eerie whistle to match the creeping darkness closing in around her as the night wore on. She shivered, and not just from the cold, knowing the real dangers that lurked in the forest along with the imagined ones of the children's bedtime stories. What had Hagrid been thinking, leaving the kids to wander around by themselves? What had she been thinking, believing herself to be fit for a teacher, responsible for her students' wellbeing when she couldn't even take care of herself, when her sore wand arm was a constant reminder of her failure to see through the things she supposedly wanted-
"Weasley!"
Ginny remembered the tone of his voice because it was the first time she'd heard anything other from him than his disdainful drawl. Malfoy's shout had been loud and clear, full of panic or excitement, she couldn't say, and it had made Ginny's heart leap. She'd torn through the underbrush that scratched her legs bloody, running towards him with the air burning in her lungs and her own voice just a squeak of relief as she shouted back at him, "I'm here, I'm coming!"
"Weasley, hurry up!"
Somewhere in the twilight of the last few, anxious hours, he'd come out of his shell of hatred; he'd come alive. Her heart beating furiously with elation, Ginny had thought that he sounded like an actual person; an actual person who was going to face whatever they found along with her. She hadn't realised how alone she'd felt in the darkness until she'd heard Malfoy's voice; now that she had, she didn't want him to go quiet again. In years to come, when he'd go on and on about some imagined slight and she'd wish him far away, she'd think of this moment, forever etched into her memory.
"Where are you?"
"Over here."
A light had flickered on at the edge of her vision. Ginny bolted towards it, the golden glow a blur before her eyes, and found Malfoy in a clearing between some massive oak trees. He'd looked smaller, she'd thought, kneeling on the mossy ground, huddled over a weeping little girl.
"It's all right," Malfoy had said over and over as the girl had cried hysterically into the front of his robes. His pinched face was slack with relief. "Professor Weasley's here now, you can let go of me."
"N-n-no," the girl wailed. "I don't want h-her, she's friends with P-p-professor H-Hagrid."
"But I…" Malfoy had trailed off and looked at Ginny with an air of helpless befuddlement. "Do something!"
Panting, Ginny hugged her arms around her aching sides. "You look okay." She noticed a bunch of wide-eyed kids hiding behind a fallen tree trunk, peeking out at the sound of her voice. "You all look okay." Relief flooded through her until she felt choked up with it. "Malfoy, you found them!"
"Yes, yes, I found them," he said impatiently, then mouthed at her, "Get her off me!"
Ginny had laughed then for sheer happiness. Malfoy had looked like he would've hexed her if not for the kid clinging to him, but he stayed put, the damp soaking through the knees of his expensive trousers and snot gathering on his lapel.
"This is not what I signed up for." It was the first, but definitely not the last time he'd tell her that. "I don't even need this job."
Neither of them had planned for anything like this; neither of them had been prepared to care. That night, they had understood each other. Ginny had crouched down to pat the little girl on the back and shared a look with Malfoy over the child's head. "You don't need it, but they need you."
The girl had nodded vigorously against Malfoy's chest. "We were s-so s-scared," she hiccoughed. "Professor Hagrid didn't care. No one cares about us, Professor Malfoy!"
With a great sigh that hinted at all the wrongs he suffered, and about which he would complain later over the first of many cups of tea, Malfoy had resigned himself to his fate. "I know, Mary," he said, "I know," and Ginny had believed that he did.
Even now, the memory made her smile. She elbowed Malfoy, which made the student he was levitating bob up and down in the air. "Do you remember when the first-years got lost in the Forbidden Forest?"
"Yes; that was a hoot, wasn't it." He looked at the unconscious boys, a shadow passing over his face. "It's always Slytherins. Don't tell me that's a coincidence."
"Hagrid didn't lose them on purpose. Besides, you rescued some Hufflepuffs that night, too."
"Don't remind me; I may have messed with natural selection there," he snorted. "My kids would've been all right. They always are. Big fuss for nothing."
They could only hope so.
Madam Pomfrey wrung her hands when they brought the pair of students up to her infirmary. "Is there something in the water?"
"Could be; there's twenty more of them downstairs, all sleepwalking. Well, they're not going anywhere now, we immobilised them," Ginny said, laying her student down on the first available bed, next to an unconscious Teddy. Her wand arm ached when she finally dropped it.
"Let's see what we have here. Finite!" But the moment Madam Pomfrey ended the petrifying spell, the Slytherin boy began to thrash in his bed, struggling to get to his feet. "Dear me! Hold him down, please."
Ginny and Malfoy restrained the boy while the matron hurried off to rummage through a large cupboard. Even with magic, it was a struggle to keep him in bed. Ginny watched with anxious eyes as Madam Pomfrey tried potions and tonics, then a few basic healing spells, but there was no change.
"Now that did a lot of good," Malfoy said sarcastically when a jar of smelling salts had been tried and discarded without effect.
Madam Pomfrey glared at him. "Why don't you take yourself outside, Mr Malfoy, and let me look after my patients in peace?" She administered a healthy dose of the sleeping draught she had given Teddy earlier, and the boy finally quieted down.
"We will be back with the others, Madam Pomfrey." Ginny seized Malfoy's arm and dragged him out into the hall, where the air didn't smell of potions and illness. A fresh breeze drifted in through the open windows, the night air still cool even with summer approaching. Ginny breathed deeply, feeling sick inside. She'd seen this too often, people lying in these hospital beds, pale like ghosts and just as lifeless. But it wasn't like that now, surely. It couldn't be.
They set off in the direction of the headmistress's office, but they didn't have to go far: McGonagall met them halfway to the infirmary. "There's students wandering the corridors," she said without preamble, looking harried and impatient. "They appear to be-"
"Sleepwalking?" Malfoy moaned. "Don't tell me there's more of them?"
"I found three outside my office and locked them in the cupboard there; they wouldn't stop wandering off," McGonagall said. "You've found some, too?"
They quickly related what they'd observed about the gathering of students by the statue of the one-eyed witch, their suspicions about pranksters in the Slytherin common room, and the five students already up in the hospital wing. The headmistress appeared shocked, but gathered her wits immediately. "I will summon the rest of the staff to help me get the students to Madam Pomfrey. You, Mr Malfoy, will please round up the rest of your House so we can get a head count. Miss Weasley, check if the other Houses really aren't affected. We must have order!"
Ginny couldn't agree more.
While Malfoy went to take attendance in his common room, she looked in to Gryffindor Tower and found her students all present and not a little curious about what was going on. Word spread like wildfire at Hogwarts when something noteworthy happened, and half of Slytherin House being knocked out by a 'brilliant prank' was the cause of some schadenfreude. With firm orders to stay inside the tower, Ginny left to talk to Professor Sprout, Head of Hufflepuff, and Professor Flitwick, who was in charge of the Ravenclaws.
The only ones who'd fallen ill were the Slytherins. There was a joke somewhere in that, but Ginny didn't feel too amused.
"How many?" she asked when she met Malfoy back upstairs outside the hospital doors.
He looked paler than usual. "Thirty-two. Out of eighty-seven. Fuck."
Were there only eighty-seven Slytherins? They were a boisterous bunch, so the Houses had always seemed balanced to Ginny, but there were almost twice as many students in Gryffindor. Suddenly, she felt kind of sorry for Malfoy and his kids. "It's not your fault," she told him, patting his arm a little.
He flinched back like she'd tried to curse him. "I didn't ask for your opinion!" he snapped, the air of defeat falling off him with a rush of sudden, hot anger that seemed to give him new life, but Ginny knew him well enough now, knew what he was thinking and what it was doing to him.
Once upon a time, she'd lived to inflict misery on Malfoy; now she couldn't stand to see him so wretchedly unhappy. What was happening to her, to them? Carefully, she reached out again and caught one of his balled fists between her palms. "It's not your fault," she said and, on impulse, rose up on tiptoes to kiss the tight, downturned corner of his mouth.
Malfoy didn't fire up again, but his eyes narrowed suspiciously. "What are you doing?"
"I'm sorry about your students," she said sincerely.
He drew back from her, but didn't shake off her touch again. "Yeah, well, I don't want a pity snog."
Ginny didn't know that it was; she couldn't have explained it to him any more than to herself, but what she did know was that he needed her on his side right now. "Are you sure about that?"
"Gods, Weasley, of all the bloody times to be flirtatious-"
"Malfoy, shut up, we can argue later." She squeezed his hand. "What can we do now? About the kids?"
"I don't know." Brusquely, he turned away, his fingers slipping from her grasp, and went to sit down on the top step of the nearest staircase, his back to her.
Ginny watched him for a few moments, slumped over with his elbows braced on his knees like he was going to be sick. She went and crouched down next to him, folding up her legs under her skirt. "I meant it. It's not your fault."
He sighed deeply. "No one's going to care, are they? They're going to blame me anyway."
It was true. They sat in silence for a while, catching their breath, listening to Madam Pomfrey rush about behind the infirmary doors. Up here, all was quiet now; only a slight buzz of many voices drifted up from the halls below.
"They'll be all right," Malfoy said at length, to himself more than to her. "No one has been killed here in ages."
When she glanced over, Ginny could see him swallow hard with the bitter aftertaste of the joke, but not going along with it would've been unbearable. For all her end-of-term fatigue, the only truly dreadful thing about being a teacher was seeing something happen to the kids in her care. "Right," she said, straightening up and nudging Malfoy's shoulder with hers. "So what now?"
"Nothing we can do for them." He jerked his head towards the infirmary door. "Let's go somewhere we can do something."
Unsurprisingly, Malfoy's idea of boosting morale involved a fair bit of bribery. With sufficient amounts of candy – "from my own stock, Weasley, do you think I'm an idiot? Oh, never mind!" – they managed to persuade even the most jittery Hufflepuffs to calm down and retreat to their beds in a halfway orderly fashion.
The headmistress and the rest of the teachers patrolled the corridors, searching for more errand Slytherins. It was nearing midnight by the time the staff congregated in the hospital for an assessment of the situation.
"Thirty-two students of Slytherin House have been taken ill. They have all been sedated and are now under Madam Pomfrey's care," the headmistress summed up. She looked at Malfoy with tired eyes. "I will have to notify their parents."
Malfoy stood over Teddy Lupin's sleeping form, his hands braced against the foot of the bed. His eyes never left the sleeping boy, but his fists clenched around the metal bedframe.
"Can't it wait until morning?" Ginny asked the headmistress. "If it's a prank product that caused this, the effects should wear off by then, it's nothing unusual-"
"But the scope of it is quite unheard of," McGonagall sighed. "And I'm afraid there is some more news. Professor Singh?"
All eyes turned to the rotund little Potions master. Unlike his predecessors, surly Professor Snape and self-important Slughorn, he was a jolly fellow, but now, his chubby cheeks seemed to droop as he frowned.
"As I was helping Madam Pomfrey administer the sleeping draught, I found something quite serious." He held up the wrapper of a chocolate frog, which looked innocuous enough. "One of the students had this in his pocket, and they were all muttering about candy, so I did a few quick revealing spells. There are traces of a substance that's... Well, I wouldn't expect to find it in chocolates. The best I can tell you, it's strong and quite intoxicating. That might account for their strange behaviour."
The words turned Ginny's stomach as if she, too, had swallowed some foul potion.
"They've been drugged?" The news didn't sound any better when Malfoy put it like that.
"That's what it looks like." Professor Singh mopped his brow, where sweat had gathered at the edge of his enormous turban. "I can't tell you more, not before I've broken down the ingredients. It would help if I had a sample, not just the wrapper."
Nodding, Malfoy straightened up. "I'll go round up whoever's left of my Prefects, make them search the common room for leftovers."
"Tell them to be careful," McGonagall warned. "We don't need more students to fall victim to this...this..." She looked around at the rest of them, but no one dared give a name to the situation. A prank? Certainly not. A crime? Ginny shuddered.
"I'll come," she told Malfoy, nodding towards the staircase that would lead them down to the dungeons. "Help you find the rest of that candy."
"Bring it to my laboratory when you find it." Professor Singh looked mournfully at the chocolate wrapper. "Who would poison children's candy? Is nothing sacred?"
The good professor hadn't been at Hogwarts long enough to witness the true horrors of what could befall children, but still, the crestfallen look on his cheerful face was hard to bear even for those who had.
"Toffee, Professor?" Ginny held out one of Malfoy's bags of candy, which contained the meagre leftovers that the Hufflepuffs hadn't devoured.
Professor Singh smiled slightly. "Don't mind if I do. Did you know that toffees are a powerful potion ingredient? One of my favourites, actually. At the right temperature, they melt to become a-"
Malfoy made a noise that was somewhere between a moan and a growl. He pushed off Teddy's bed and strode out without another word to his colleagues, leaving them to look after him in surprise.
"Excuse me," Ginny said, and hurried to follow him.
He was halfway down the stairs before she caught up. "Hey, Malfoy-"
"Offer me toffees and I'll curse you, Weasley," he snapped.
"I'm sorry, it's just, Professor Singh hasn't been here that long, he hasn't seen half of what we have-"
"He's not cut out for this job. Professor Snape would've..." He broke off, scowling. "Actually, no one would've dared touch the kids in Slytherin if Professor Snape was still here."
"No one would have dared…?" Ginny looked at him, surprised. "You don't think it was one of your own?"
Malfoy gave her a sharp look. "One of my own?"
"Well, it all started with your candy in your common room, didn't it."
A hot pink blush crept into his pale cheeks. "Just because it's my kids, just because they're Slytherins-"
"Well, we've got to start somewhere-"
"Not in my house." Malfoy's tone brooked no argument. "It's not any of mine. You're their teacher, aren't you supposed to be on their side?"
"Look-" Ginny snapped, but he shook his head angrily.
"How's it so hard to imagine that someone might be going after my kids if even you hold a grudge against Slytherin?"
"I don't...!" Chastened, Ginny gave up on protesting that one and said instead, "That's not what I meant."
"Well, that's how it sounded."
"Don't be so touchy, Malfoy, god." They enjoyed a few moments of baleful glaring at each other before she continued, more gently, "If it's someone not from your house, how d'you suppose they got into your candy bowls?"
"It's too easy now, isn't it," Malfoy said, his face set in sharp lines of displeasure. "What with the headmistress's open house policy and all? Hell, those Gryffindor boys of yours practically live in my common room these days."
"My third years? That is where they go off to?"
"No need to sound so scandalised, the worst they get up to is copying homework, as far as I can tell."
"I'm not-" Ginny said, and stopped. She was a little disappointed with her students, but only because they'd felt the need to be sneaky about where they went whenever her back was turned. Why they would bother to hide a friendship with the boys from other houses, she didn't know. What sort of example had she set for them, always openly fighting with Malfoy? "It's just that they made such a show of disappearing, I thought there'd be more of a mystery," she said ruefully. "In my time, when we sneaked out of our dorms it was literally life-and-death."
"Be careful what you wish for," Malfoy said, and then he walked right into a wall.
It took Ginny a moment to realise that Malfoy's sense of direction hadn't been set off by stress: they had arrived at the entrance to the Slytherin common room. Despite not needing passwords anymore, Slytherin House remained well-hidden to anyone who did not know where to look behind a bare stretch of wall. The stones slid aside at a touch of Malfoy's outstretched hand, and he and Ginny entered the common room to tumultuous chatter by what looked like the whole remaining House.
"Professor Malfoy, what's going on?"
"What happened to the others?"
"Can you just-"
"We need to-"
"Silence," Malfoy barked, and surprisingly, the students actually did quiet down. In their pyjamas, without the armour of their Slytherin insignia, they looked young and vulnerable to Ginny, most of them only first and second-years. They were just children, she thought, fighting the urge to go up to Malfoy and tell him to stop scowling; he'd only make them more scared.
"Your housemates are in the hospital wing, Madam Pomfrey is taking care of them. Go to bed now, all of you, I expect you to make up for the others' absence tomorrow in collecting House Points, and you need to be rested for that." Malfoy surveyed the too-small group before him, but his imperious mask slipped; he just looked tired. "Are any of the Prefects left?"
"Here, sir," two boys spoke up from the back of the room, where they'd been doing their best to blend into the ancient tapestry behind them. One of them was the pimply Wilkes whom Malfoy had sent off on errands earlier. Had that been only a few hours ago?
"I have a job for you. Off to bed with everyone else!"
Reluctantly, the kids shuffled off to their dormitories, casting furtive glances back at Malfoy and Ginny. The two prefects approached warily at an impatient gesture by Malfoy.
"Right. Boys, we have to find all the candy that's been sitting out in the common room – all of it – and get it to Professor Singh. Don't eat any of it, it's been poisoned," Malfoy told them unceremoniously.
Ginny elbowed him hard. "It might have been tampered with," she corrected when she saw the boys exchange worried looks. "We don't know yet. Can you get what's left of it?"
Muttering among themselves, the pair went off to turn over the couch cushions, picking through the empty candy wrappers they found there with long fingers as if they suspected their hands would instantly rot off on contact. Occasionally they looked back at Ginny and Malfoy, then quickly away again.
"You're not supposed to incite panic," Ginny told Malfoy in an undertone as she fished a string of candy floss from the mouth of a huge suit of armour.
"I'm just telling it like it is."
"Do the children really need to know?"
Malfoy didn't immediately reply. "They need to know," he said at length. "If we keep them in the dark, they'll only end up doing something stupid."
Ginny desperately wanted to say something that would make him stop looking so glum, something comforting, but that hadn't gone over so well earlier; it'd only upset him more. She felt around for a light remark, finally settling on, "This place is very grand."
No doubt, the Slytherin common room was fancy. Green brocade draperies covered the bare stone walls, and every ornate plaque, silk tapestry or ornamental mirror was adorned by the House crest. Dark leather furniture was clustered around the room, not as cosy and inviting as the plush sofas in Gryffindor Tower, but grouped together closely the better to sit together and plot mischief. The green glow of the interior was intensified by the dim light that filtered through the depths of the great lake which lay just behind the windows. A faint gurgle of water could be heard through the walls; it was soothing.
She had been down here before, but Ginny had never felt comfortable intruding on Malfoy's turf; first she'd been wary of getting her nose hexed off, and then… And then. In any case, there had never been an excuse to take a closer look at all the knickknacks that sat on the mantelpiece over the fire or on the enormous black cupboards. On her hunt for leftover candy, Ginny examined a jar of dried beetles. It gave off an ominous hum, and she put it down cautiously. "Are these just for decoration?"
"I suppose so, they've been here for at least twenty years," Malfoy said, barely glancing at her before he went back to shaking out the curtains.
"And all the skulls?" Not just a few of them were scattered all around the room.
She could hear him snorting softly. "They're from all the Gryffindors we've secretly murdered down here over the centuries, Weasley. Naturally."
Ginny wondered idly why she always had to be the one to suffer his anger; maybe it was just that that was easier than directing his rage at the nameless, faceless threat against his children. She could understand that, but his sarcasm still got under her skin like a splinter, itching and not leaving her alone. She crossed the room to where he was upending a cupboard of school supplies, glancing past him at the prefects, who were making a big show of carrying out Malfoy's orders while surreptitiously watching the teachers. "I'm just trying to help you, you tool."
He did look at her then, annoyance sparking in his pale eyes. "By accusing Slytherins of poisoning each other?" He picked candy bars from between inkpots and scrolls of parchment and began to toss them behind him over his shoulder.
"You have to admit the idea's not that far-fetched. And I'd say this here," she scraped a chewed wad of gum from the bottom of the cupboard, "is me making amends."
Malfoy made a face. "I was going to have a cup of tea and devise game strategies," he said mournfully, "While you sat and moaned about grading papers. That was the plan for tonight." He glanced at her, and suddenly, he smirked his annoying smirk, which might have been welcome for the reprieve it brought from doom and gloom, if only Ginny hadn't known exactly what that particular look of his preceded. Her stomach fluttered with dreadful anticipation as he said, "Well. It was one part of the plan for tonight."
Stupidly, the image before Ginny's mental eye looked entirely too cosy. She found herself wishing them there, into his comfortable office, where they'd argue late into the night about his illegible notes over a cup of sweet, fragrant tea, and then, when they ran out of insults-
She quickly clamped down on that thought, feeling her face grow hot as she said, "Whenever I join you for tea and crumpets and impolite chitchat, I end up doing stupid things. And I'm tired of feeling stupid."
"I don't think stupid is the right word."
There were many words to describe how she felt; life with him was a mixed bag, quite like a helping of Every Flavour Beans – sweet and sour, bitter and spicy, and always surprising – but the candy metaphor was entirely inappropriate and not just while they were hunting for leftovers of poisoned sweets. Ginny didn't particularly want to go there.
Malfoy, of course, would be contrary if it killed him. "Just admit that you like it, Weasley."
Damned if she did; damned if she didn't. "Look, Malfoy, I don't think this is the right time for...any of that."
He gave her a sidelong glance. "When will it ever be the right time?"
Ginny didn't have an answer to that. What would they be doing, how far would things have gone, if someone else had been there tonight to deal with student trouble instead? Considering the answer to that question took her mind down a well-travelled path that ultimately led to one single, mortifying conclusion. Hastily, she said, "Well, definitely not when we have an epidemic to worry about."
"There's always going to be something." His voice was cool again, devoid of emotion in a manner that might have suggested indifference in anyone else, but Malfoy's anger burned cold, like ice.
Ginny knew that voice well, and she steeled herself against it when she said, "Probably."
"And you'd let that stop you?" he sneered.
"Can we just...not?" she pleaded, tired of fighting for once, with him and with herself. "Let sleeping dragons lie and all that."
He snorted harshly. "Funny you'd say that, because-"
"Don't." She didn't think she could handle his innuendo just then. "Let's just not talk about it. Ever."
"Fine. Let's not talk."
Before she could brace herself, he'd seized her hand and dragged her to her feet. The prefects started as Ginny and Malfoy popped up from behind the cupboard door, and quickly looked away as if they'd been searching pencil cases for sugar quills all along. "Boys, when you're done, lock away all the sweets so no one eats any. I'll take a sample to Professor Singh."
He dragged Ginny from the common room to surprised glances from the prefects, never letting go of her hand. Shamefully, Ginny found herself hoping that the gossips among the seventh-year Slytherin girls were among those up at the hospital wing, then immediately felt awful for thinking such a thing and directed her annoyance at Malfoy instead.
"What do you think you're-"
He spun around, his momentum turning them in a circle. Ginny found herself being backed into a dark corner off the main corridor and stumbled gracelessly over her own feet, clutching at Malfoy's robes in reflex and dragging him forward, against her. The wall at her back was cold and hard; she arched off it and found Malfoy warm and surprisingly pliant before her. He curled his long body around her so his face hovered just above hers, and whispered, "I changed my mind. I'll take that pity snog."
There had never been sense or reason to her attraction to Malfoy, so there was no point reasoning against it. Oh, Ginny had tried, but she only ever succeeded in convincing herself when she was alone with her traitorous desire, never when he was this close, fanning the flames of it. "Malfoy-" she started, but then his lips were on hers and no word of protest would come. Instead, she wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him back.
It was not the time and certainly not the place: the wall behind her was damp, and the corridor all too public. Still, when he cradled her head in his hand and kissed her just so, Ginny didn't notice anything around them. He kissed her with the urgency of long-denied need, like he was starved for touch and could never get enough. Even when he pulled back, it was only to bring her closer: his hands found their way under her robe and stroked down over the worn cotton of her dress, along the curve of her waist to her hips, drawing her into his body.
In the darkness of their alcove, she couldn't really see him, only his eyes glittering and the pale halo of his fair hair around the darker silhouette of his face. For a moment, they stared at each other, a look passing between them that shot through her like the most masterful spell could make her body hum with magic. Ginny ached with it, and knew exactly now where this would go if she didn't gather her wits.
There were footfalls in the distance, appearing around the corner and then fading down a hallway. A door banged somewhere far away. "Malfoy," she whispered, "I... We can't. We have our hands full as it is."
His hand came to rest lightly on one of her breasts, right over her wildly beating heart. "I certainly do."
She moaned at the lame joke; but then again, from the feel of it, he didn't have much blood left in his brain at that moment. "With all that's going on tonight, just think-"
"No," he said fiercely, "Just for five minutes, I'd like to not think about that at all."
There was desperation in his touch when he clutched at her, drawing her legs up and around his hips so he sank into the full embrace of her body. He bowed his head, and she felt him rest his forehead against her shoulder for a moment like he was very, very tired. Ginny teetered on the brink of indecision, the thought of tomorrow warring with the blissful feeling of now. His breath was cool, preceding the heat of his lips as he found a ticklish spot between her neck and shoulder. She tilted her head, trapping him against her shoulder with their cheeks pressed together, and for a moment sought her own place of rest in the breadth of space between them, this new kind of togetherness that was so unfamiliar, so untainted yet by the memories of harsh words and unkind actions.
He needed this, but maybe she did, too.
"You're-" he began hoarsely.
"Shh. Don't spoil it," she whispered, tipping his head up so she could kiss the words from his lips.
She felt that he was smiling. "Don't think I could."
Could it be this easy, she wondered, mapping out the shape of his smiling mouth with her lips. Could this be how they were together, even out of the shadows, even in broad daylight, for everyone to see? "Don't sell yourself short."
"No. You're just too bloody perfect."
Ginny tightened her legs around his hips, wondering wildly what it would take to shut him up, to make him stop teasing her. It would be the downfall of her, trying to find out; already she was struggling to retain her tenuous grip on her self-control, hurtling past any of her own boundaries at breakneck speed. She'd been fighting a feeling that was like a force of nature, and finally, she had grown tired of the effort. It was like riding a broomstick into an oncoming storm and expecting to turn the winds so they'd take her where she wanted to go. It would be so good to just give in, let go, see where it would take her—
"Ginny-"
Moaning, she threw herself forward into his arms and the kisses she secretly craved, the relief of it sheer overwhelming. She'd never been good at passively waiting her turn, for things to go her way; she wanted to act and she'd wanted to do this for a long time. Admitting to it now, there was none of the doubt she'd feared, none of the awkwardness of realising she'd make a mistake. It was good.
Malfoy staggered back with a surprised laugh, but he did not let her go. His hands tightened on her hips, and he returned her kiss with a breathless delight that matched her own.
The footfalls returned.
Swearing, Ginny drew back and let her legs drop to the floor. Their passion had carried them back into the main hall, and now they stood in broad view of anyone coming by. She glanced left and right down the corridor, but there were no curious eyes watching; only Malfoy's pale ones, intent on her face and warm like liquid silver.
She'd never seen him look like that. Over anything that had happened over the past few minutes, it was that level gaze that made her blush now, but she held his eyes even as she said, "Did you hear anything?"
"Yes. Someone's coming."
Surely enough, a lanky seventh-year boy appeared around a corner a moment later. He looked at them blankly, as if he'd expected nothing less than the Heads of Gryffindor and Slytherin Houses cavorting in a hallway together, looking thoroughly dishevelled. Ginny blushed more deeply. She and Malfoy really had to have a reputation by now.
Malfoy, too, looked startled. "Hathaway? What are you doing here? Off to the common room with you now," he snapped. "It's mayhem around here, I don't want you wandering the castle at night."
Nodding silently, the boy hurried off and disappeared through the entrance to the common room.
"Now, where were we?" Malfoy, it appeared, had recovered enough of his composure to affect his smug drawl.
Ginny shook her head at him with a sense of fondness. "We were supposed to get the candy to Singh."
"Right." Sighing, he straightened his collar, which sat askew. "I'd almost forgotten all about that mess."
They were always trading one mess for the next; it was a fact of life. "That was the whole point, wasn't it?" she shrugged.
"I suppose." He looked at her shrewdly. "We're not done."
Something about those words rubbed her the wrong way; or maybe it was the way he was looking at her, sizing her up as if he didn't quite know what to make of her now. The warmth in his eyes was gone, and now they were just his colourless grey. She stepped back a few steps. "I didn't know the goal was to get 'done'."
At that, he smiled. "Well, let's say the goal is not to stop once things get...interesting."
Ginny didn't know if they could stop next time. What was she getting herself into? She hugged her arms around herself, suddenly noticing how cold it was down here in the dungeons. "Come on," she said, "let's get to the lab."
Despite his sunny personality, Professor Singh had kept the old Potions classroom in the dungeons, his reasoning being that the damp, dark underground conditions lent themselves perfectly to brewing volatile potions. The laboratory was close, and the two of them managed to not speak a single word on the way, which had to be a record, Ginny thought.
Malfoy had made his intentions clear; or had he? Things had seemed easy while they were touching, but now, Ginny's clarity of mind was quickly becoming muddled again. This was what she'd feared in her more sensible moments, when she wasn't daydreaming about snogging Malfoy's brains out or busy doing just that. Things would become complicated and awkward, and she couldn't afford losing her only friend; especially not at a time like this.
They truly had other things to worry about, but she didn't know half of it until they came up to Professor Singh's laboratory door. Smoke was wafting into the hallway; the door, which was usually secured, stood open. Ginny peered inside the lab and promptly choked on the breath she'd inhaled.
"Malfoy!" she coughed.
Pressing a handkerchief to his nose, Malfoy looked, and saw. "Professor?"
The Potions master lay prone by his work station, lifeless and limp, and for a moment Ginny feared that he was dead. She pointed her wand at the vents in the ceiling so the smoke could escape. Professor Singh's cauldron had boiled over, spilling its contents onto the hearth. Vials and test tubes had burst over smaller flames on his work table. Upon closer inspection, the man appeared to be breathing shallowly, but no reviving spell or charm that Ginny tried could rouse him.
Her eyes watered. "What is this? Was it the...the toffee I gave him?"
"No, that was never in circulation in the common room. This must've been something different." Malfoy touched Professor Singh's leg with the tip of his boot. The Potions master didn't stir. "Maybe this was too much for him. Stress can-"
"Stress?" Ginny exclaimed. "He didn't keel over from stress. Do you want to see what stress looks like?"
"I can see it," Malfoy snorted, and then suddenly, there was a hint of that intensity in his eyes again as he looked at her with inappropriate amusement.
With difficulty, Ginny suppressed a shiver. "This is not the time to be having fun at my expense," she said, frowning. "This is not the time to be having fun, period."
And now they only had to remember that.