Chapter Seven
Ginny hoped that Draco and Blaise felt as thoroughly lost as she had when McGonagall had shown her to her allotted room, last year, but she doubted it, given their prefect status. If they knew the password for the Fat Lady, they definitely had been told where the Student-Access Activities rooms were - the kind of resource Fred and George would have killed for, had their business been one they actually could have written down on the Activities Rooms Application forms.
Still, when they reached the painting of an alabaster angel, wings spread in flight, she leaned in to whisper the password, on the off-chance that they didn't already know that. "Land of Spare-Oom," she breathed, and the portrait swung open for her, and the lights came on to reveal the messy landscape of the Weasley's Gifts workshop.
Half the room was occupied by a lump of material that on further inspection looked to be a derelict Ravenclaw common room sofa. Another part of the cramped area appeared to be taken by a squatting porcupine, until Ginny swept aside the 'spines,' which proved to be unraveled spools of the copper wire, strewn across a collapsing old desk. Blaise used restoration charms on the legs, ensured it wouldn't disintegrate under his weight, and hopped up to sit facing Ginny. "Nice place, one of the better of the rat holes doled out to students."
Ginny nodded. "I know – I've seen the one Colin got for his photography, it's miniscule. Course, he's hardly improved it, filling it with nasty smelling potions…"
Draco, with a sullen look on his face, asked, "Been in Colin's darkroom a lot, then?"
Ginny just rolled her eyes – so did Blaise, she noted – and complained, "What, now because you're stalking me, I own it to you to curtail my oh-so-whorish ways? Does this mean I have to give up my plan of doing every sixth year boy in the school? Drat. How disappointing."
Draco scowled at her flippancy. Blaise, amused, chuckled, "Just ignore him, I think he's just sulky at not getting you to himself all morning like I did."
Draco's scowl deepened and he flopped on the couch with a look of icy disdain and disinterest as Ginny started emptying her Poppins Bag. His 'disinterest' meant he went nearly cross-eyed trying to watch while seeming not to watch, as Ginny piled artifact after artifact on the table. Having emptied her bag of leaves, acorns, and other debris, she began rummaging through desk drawers, pulling out pliers, and a rather intimidating pointy object. "What on earth-" Blaise started to ask, but she snapped her fingers at him, directing him to the couch.
Obediently he slipped down from his perch and slunk over to join Draco, draping himself across his boyfriend's lap as Ginny, humming, started snipping at lengths of wires. She fed the strands through the weave of an edge of lace, making a series of tight, ruffly circles, and used the sharp pointy thing to bore holes in the acorns, which, along with beads, joined the lace on the wire. "What the hell?" Blaise tried a confused question again, but this time directed it at Draco, who only shrugged.
Thereafter a rapt silence reigned as they watched Ginny delicately manipulate the leaves and acorns into abstract forms strung along the wire. Suddenly – a few things slid together, a few fold in the copper, and Blaise and Draco were looking at – "A mobile?" Draco asked.
Blaise simultaneous marveled, "Little dancers!" which was exactly what the mobile was – acorn-headed ballerinas with gracefully outstretched willow leaf limbs, resting on a splash of 'dance floor' just happening to occupy the shape of a fat oak leaf.
"This was your business with Margaret? To promise her this?" Blaise asked sagely.
"How obscure," mused Draco. "And yet, girls will buy queer stuff like that… clever. Do you make much with this endeavor of yours?"
"Quite a bit," she said with a grin. A quick frown flitted across her face as she amended, "Well, once I've laid in some supplies I can't just pick up off the ground. And it's not just girls, wise-arse – just because this one's for Margaret's baby sister back at home, it's quite girly. I could just as easily make a Blast-Ended Skewt or a Quidditch diorama. Well, the Skewt, maybe not easily…" she said when Draco raised a surprised eyebrow.
Blaise sat up on the edge of his seat, leaning forward, hands roving delicately over the mobile. "Where're my acorn caps?" he demanded.
"Set aside for a different project," she told him, at which he pouted.
Draco, on the other hand, was lounging back on the sofa, but Ginny thought she could read the look in his eyes… "Interesting," he commented.
She broke into a wide grin. "Oh, you think so?"
"What?" he asked, made wary by her knowing tone.
"My prices double for Malfoys, I'll have you know," she said. Impressed, he raised an eyebrow. "You had that 'customer' look on your face," she explained with a grin.
"Ah. Watching me that closely, are you?" he purred, and she rolled her eyes. "Well, yes – my mother's birthday will be soon and I need something suitably unique and beautiful."
Ginny quirked an eyebrow. "I'm guessing you'll not be telling her where you got your unique beautiful present from."
Draco pondered that for a moment. "Well, I suppose I could – if I told her I stole it from you…"
She rolled her eyes again. "Alright, well, get back to me with the details, ok?" Draco nodded and resumed idly examining his fingernails. Blaise was still fascinated by Ginny's craftsmanship. Ginny surveyed them both. "Right – well, I'm done," she announced in a pointed tone, tugging the mobile out of Blaise's grasp.
Blaise settled back onto the couch, slinging his arm around Draco. "Don't let us keep you," he said politely, flashing a roguish smile.
"Oh, after you," she chirped through gritted teeth.
Blaise pouted. "Can't we, er, follow you out in a minute or thirty? We'll close everything up behind us…"
"No fucking chance I'm leaving you two in alone in here."
Draco, wild grin on his lips, elbowed Blaise. "Didja hear that? She refuses to be left out while we're molesting each other!"
"OUT. Now. Scat," Ginny instructed, pretending she hadn't heard Draco's exclamation. Which was a pity, because it meant she had to pretend not to hear all that followed as she hustled the boys out of her workshop… that bit about how they each wanted to suck one of the rosebuds that were her nipples, how they wanted to let their hands roam all over her body, to brace her between them and work together to bring her unimaginable heights of pleasure – ignore their flirting and promises, Ginny might, but she sure as hell had a hard time forgetting them, later.
In the last week of October, twelve old DA students received owl post. Each letter was a short, chatty note from someone they'd never heard of, and each had a nonsensical return address composed of letters and numbers.
It took over an hour of anxious work in the Room of Requirements before Luna, Seamus, and Ernie, who were taking Arithmancy and had the right kind of minds for codes, figured it out – a wireless signal, and a password, and a date and time – 9 pm, Halloween.
Draco and Blaise were disappointed to hear her reply when they asked her, 'would they see her at the Halloween feast that night,' and she told them, quite serenely, 'not a chance.'
But when the DA had passed three hours sitting and listening to static, they had to concede that perhaps they'd misinterpreted the code, or their wireless was broken, or it was all a prank…
It was Ginny who was sitting (trying to get some reading done for History of Magic without Draco popping up behind her and telling her which old warlock in her book invented which sex potions, or sex positions,) in the Room of Requirements when the radio, left on the lowest volume, crackled to life. She leapt across the room, turning it up –
"…rry about that last night, folks," came the voice of none other than her older brother. "We discovered there are many, ah, technical issues to deal with when you're running a clandestine radio broadcast. Ah well, you live and learn. And that's the purpose of our program –"
"You haven't told them the name," Lee Jordan's warm, amused voice interrupted George.
"Oh – damn. Right – what you're listening to here, folks, is the pirate signal of the Harry Potter Alliance, coming to you live from… like we'll bloody well tell you." Three male voices laughed heartily. Jerking out of her shocked stupor, Ginny lunged for her bag, scrabbling to find her DA Galleon.
The DA's exuberance was all-too-easily spotted the next day by the Slytherin prefects, and it clearly drove them mad that there was no discernable reason for it – nothing was vandalized or blown up, transfigured or charmed, or dosed with Skiving Snackboxes.
Of course, for one pair of Slytherins, that posed a puzzle they were intent on figuring out. And for one DA student, it was the last thing she wanted.
The purported "Harry Potter Alliance" was nothing of the sort. Granted, everyone in it knew Harry, supported… whatever it was he was doing. But not one of the cleverly code-named cast knew jack shit about what in the world Harry Potter was actually doing. While Ginny was beyond thrilled to hear the twins' voices, she'd known Fred and George were safe. What she hadn't known – and still didn't know – was what her closest brother, who was in mortal danger, was up to, and if he was alright, and for one glorious moment when she heard the name of the radio program, she had thought she was about to find out.
Instead, she was left with crushing disappointment, and had her heartache over her brother, ex, and best friend renewed all over again.
Finally, after a wearying day of alternating between trying to seduce her and trying to charm the DA's secret out of her, their constant refrain of "I'll worship your body all night long if you tell me what's going on" petered out.
Blaise, bundle of lust that he was, was inclined to drag it out – "Come on, Ginny… as much as I love Draco grabbing my ass, smacking it – if he was reaching around an incredible, curvy armful like you to do it, as we pressed you between our naked bodies, it would be all the more mind-blowing. And let me tell you, the things Draco does to me are already pretty damn mind-blowing."
Ginny grew silent and sullen. Now, on top of everything else, her damn simmering interest in Blaise's perfect arse had just exploded into a raging fire, with that fuel thrown onto it. Having only seen the boys kiss, really, the notion of just what they did together had somehow never really imprinted itself on her mind – after all, they only plied her with stories of what they would do to her, not what they did to each other. But now, Ginny was surprisingly jealous of Draco Malfoy for having Blaise's tight arse to himself.
That last thought was really too much for her nerves – she bolted up from the windowsill she'd been perched on after an exhausting attempt to lose the two prats, announcing, "Alright, fuck you two, I'm going to bed. If you follow me I'll find a charm that makes you two repel each other like magnets – I'm warning you."
Blaise looked horror-struck by the thought that such a spell might exist. Draco tried to placate Ginny and soothe his boyfriend at the same time. "Oh, come on, Blaise. You've worn her ragged teasing her tonight. Let's go cadge some liquor off the house elves, eh? And then we can sneak off to Ginny's workshop and put it to our own nefarious purposes."
Ginny affected a shiver of revulsion as the boys waved to her before scampering out of sight. Really, though, she was still trying to shrug off the thoughts their words inspired. When they had their hands all over each other like that, it was hard not to think about how often they'd offered to put those same hands all over her – dammit, this lack of snogging was really becoming unmanageable. Ginny sighed, and trudged back up the stairs. If she was caught out by the Carrows she'd be in trouble, even if it was slightly before curfew.
Slumping bonelessly through the Fat Lady's entrance, Ginny yawned. It was late in the evening –
– far too late for McGonagall to be in the Common Room when Ginevra returned to the Tower, unless something was wrong. "Ah, Miss Weasley – good, you're here," her professor said absently, and the fact that she wasn't in trouble disturbed her far more than any ten detentions.
McGonagall gestured for Ginny to take a seat among the gathered Gryffindors who occupied entire area before their Head. Ginny swallowed against the hard lump of anxiety in her throat and gingerly sat.
"As I started to say: I have had word… of Harry Potter." She said this in a tone so hushed that for an instant Ginny was dead certain that Harry was, well, dead. Then she took in the rapt expressions of her Housemates and the smile slowly, slowly conquering the stern face of the professor. A thrill swept the room, warming everyone but Ginny, as McGonagall took out a parchment and read to them the inspiring, noble words of the Chosen One, as he spoke to them from his distant exile. They were poetic words, intended to uplift, to ease the pains of life under the reign of Death Eaters. For all but one person in the room, they did exactly what they were meant to.
McGonagall had enjoined them all to keep this "sacred secret" of Harry's correspondence. Joy-lit faces had all solemnly so sworn. Then she had taken her leave. As Ginny had rushed to McGonagall's side before she left the Tower, wondering if there was a personal word for her from the gang, she read the professor's answer in her face – she gave a small, regretful headshake, and refused to meet Ginny's eyes. Feeling cold, as though she'd been doused with a bucked of water, Ginny had scrounged in her pocket for one of Fred and George's Rings of Silence, and jammed the tight circle of metal over her pinky, cursing herself for buying the wrong size.
'Thanks a lot,' some line from some tune ran through Ginevra's head. Thanks a lot, Potter. So much for all my guilt about not liking you anymore. Thanks a lot, Ron, for worrying about me as much as I do about you. Thanks, Hermione, for valuing me the way I do you.
'I woke you up' – Woken her up, it definitely had, to know that while she and the rest of the DA were all here, bundled up in their fears and dreaming of Potter's glorious return, he was thinking of them – but not of her.
'And I slit the throat of your confidence' – Her ego really did take a beating, first when they left without her – what a slight to her skill and talent! – and then now, to realize that Ginny Weasley, Miss Popular with the boys, Miss Going through them a bit fast now, aren't you?, wasn't worth Harry Potter's time.
'And we laughed in the night' – after the Chamber, after her first year, she'd drifted through the years at Hogwarts, until the DA, until she was included. They'd laughed through the nights together, when they were friends. Now, it was back to before – the three older ones laughing together; Ginny, alone.
'And I felt all right' – she did, oddly. The knot of feelings inside her was just that – a knot, something solid and choking, but not part of her. She was feeling crystal-clear, knowing what she did, now.
So she thought one more time… 'Thanks a lot…' and took off out of the Tower.
Even though the circulation to her pinky was cut off, leaving her hand throbbing, Ginny was immensely glad to have the ring: McGonagall never turned around. Ginny followed her, padding noiselessly to the end of the hall, then numbly drifting across the corridor to the long hallway that cut across to the Charms corridor. Maybe about halfway down the hall, she came to the realization that she was heading to her workshop despite knowing full well that it was occupied by Blaise and Draco. As she cautiously opened the door into the empty Charms hall, she came to the realization that, in fact, she was heading there because she knew the boys would be there.
It was only when she hissed the password and the painting swung open to let her through the workshop's door, and found the boys sitting there innocently, that she realized she'd hoped to stumble in on them. Ordinarily she would have taken herself to task for such voyeuristic tendencies. Instead, she just grinned. "You know, boys," – the purr in her voice took them, and her, by surprise – "if you don't close doors, just about anybody could come strolling by."
Blaise was so shocked he almost dropped his wineglass. Draco, though, seemed to read something in her face. He put his own wineglass aside, rose in a quick movement, and sidled behind her to shut the door. "Problem solved," he murmured in her ear from where he stood behind her. The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end, his presence was so vivid to her.
"One problem solved," she corrected, recklessly.
"Oh?" Blaise asked, poise clearly recovered, as he rose and smoothly tugged her over to sit next to his spot on the beat-up sofa. Draco dogged her footsteps the whole way back and immediately claimed the spot on her other side, his knee digging into her thigh, he was so close to her. When she didn't immediately clarify what the other problem was, Blaise, concerned, leaned in, brushing a strand of hair away from her face.
That gesture burned away a good deal of her icy anger – but left her with the heedless wildness that had brought her down here in the first place.
"Ginny?" Draco asked, catching a glimpse of her face. He leaned in closer, practically wrapping his lithe body around hers in an attempt to meet her eyes. She sucked in a breath, closing her eyes to try and regain her composure. This was simply too much of a freefall, emotionally. Anger and bitter resentment shouldn't be replaced so easily by outright lust.
But with her eyes still closed, she could sense the heat of Draco's face, not even an inch from hers, and she could smell his breath, sweetened by something like berries, but stronger. She heard a low sigh from Blaise, and opening her eyes, saw him lean forward too, all three of them bent in, heads together. The grey and blue eyes on hers, the two waiting, expectant gazes on those sculpted faces, and their bodies, pressed around hers, pushed her wild incaution to the breaking point. She shifted, bringing herself cheek to cheek with Draco, the corners of their mouths touching, and Blaise leaned in, his mouth seizing both of theirs.
For someone terminally under-snogged, it was intoxicating. Ginny sank into a fuzzy cloud of warm, delicious lips on hers, punctuated by occasional, electric moments where one of the boys' mouths opened, snagging her lip between his teeth to nibble briefly, or sliding his tongue deep into her mouth, taking turns in deepening the three-way kiss.
When, panting slightly, they broke apart minutes later, Blaise unsurprisingly recovered first. "Did that solve the problem?"
She swallowed a few times, nestling herself between the two boys on the sofa. As she looked around the room, blinking, she spotted a bottle – "No – but let me catch my breath and maybe have a drink? Then we could work on it some more."
The next hour was snatches of hastily gulped strawberry wine, and long, drugging kisses. It wasn't until her leg started getting pins and needles that she realized she'd slipped into something close to a recline across the boys, her hair fanned out across Blaise's lap so he could tug his long nails through it, and her rump on Draco's lap, his hand possessively on her stomach as he leaned in for another languorous snog. When she shifted away, trying to wake up her numb leg, his eyes bulged, and she realized she'd just shifted her weight to crush him in a very tender area. Of course, that brought to the forefront of her mind just how snugged-up she had been to said tender area, and in general how heedlessly she'd let herself be laid up with these two boys.
"I should go," she gasped out, stammering, clambering to her feet. Naturally, her foot exploded with pins and needles again, and she stumbled.
"Give us a minute longer," Blaise instructed, pulling her wrist. "You can't stand straight, and Merlin knows when we'll catch you in a mood like this again." Because she knew, too, that this was all going to seem very incredibly foreign in the morning, she sat back down, Blaise's arm shifting around her, accidently grazing her breast with electrifying fingertips. Accidently? Well, it was unlikely for him to do so accidently – but at the same time, she figured, if he was trying to grope her, he would have touched her for more than .02 seconds.
Then Draco, still frowning at her injury to his person, demanded reparations, and two pairs of questing lips met hers again.
Ginny woke in the morning and immediately felt like thumping her head against the table to try and shake loose the memories of the night before. She was pretty sure, though, that they were permanently burned into her mind, and that nearly made her want to cry, it was so frustrating.
Quite aside from the remarkable scale of the probable consequences of the night before, Ginevra Weasley was now helplessly horny. The sole reassurance she could take away from last night was the way it had ended – Blaise and Draco walking her back in the forms of brunette Ravenclaws, acting civil and solicitous and completely normal, and not at all like they'd just had her sprawled across their laps for an hour and their tongues in her mouth. (-Oh Merlin, their tongues in her mouth-) They'd talked idly about the Hieberus book series, Blaise promising to pass on to her the next in the series, and each boy had given her an almost chaste kiss goodnight before heading off.
It made it really, really difficult to blame them for any part of last night. Fortunately, she still had Harry Potter to blame. She ruminated on that for a few hours until it was time to meet Neville and Luna, striding up to the Room of Requirement in a funk, trying to regain a sense of normality.
And why not? She was going for a routine meeting with Luna and Neville, doing the things she normally did, had done since the first week of school. She was a perfectly unremarkable girl, who fought Death Eating teachers, and didn't curl up with two Slytherin boys late at night to be snogged senseless. Yes indeed.
Reaching the mural of Barnabas the Barmy, pacing impatiently the three times, concentrating on meeting her friends, Ginny got the door to appear, and she stepped through hastily, but only saw Luna's blonde hair. "Luna – what are you up to? Where's –"
That was when Luna turned around and Ginny nearly choked. She'd wondered vaguely, when she entered, why Luna was seated facing away from Ginny on the chair – now, as Neville spluttered and blushed and stammered, trying to say something that would erase the awkwardness in the room, she saw why – his robe was shrugged off his shoulders, shirt half buttoned. By the way Luna hopped off his lap holding her robe tightly at the collar, it was a reasonable guess she had the same problem. Then – oh – that white heap at Luna's feet – her shirt. Ah.
"Oh dear," Ginny whispered, then cleared her throat. "Erm." She backed away slowly. "I'll just come back – later?"
Neville started to protest that no, they weren't about to drive her away, she wasn't interrupting anything, she should stay, but Luna, serenely unaware or at least uncaring about being caught shirtless, said reasonably, "We're not going to get anything accomplished with you two in the state you're in – for heaven's sakes, you can't even meet each other's eyes, much less plan a revolution."
Relieved, Ginny seized that oh-so-logical excuse. "Right, right. I'll… come back later."
"Detention, later," Neville reminded her, mumbling to the floor.
"Oh, that's right – your nightly quality time with the Carrows…" her wry joke seemed to reassure Neville that everything was going to be ok – he finally brought himself to look at her feet, instead of his own, at any rate. "I'll see you two tomorrow, the same time, then?" She couldn't help making a small dig – "Five-fifteen, alright? I can remind you in class if you like…"
Luna smiled blandly. "That would be lovely, thank you." Ginny flashed a quick, tight smile and ducked out as abruptly as she entered – even as quick as she left, she was still fairly sure Luna was back on Neville's lap and twining herself in him before the door had even shut.
Ginny would have gone straight down to the Quidditch pitch and dealt with the scarring mental images that way –right, Gin, you were 'scarred' by the idea of someone you're close to getting some action. Not jealous, oh no…- but at the rate her day was going, Ginny was convinced she'd probably stumble into an orgy in the locker rooms.
There was, of course, another sensible way to deal with what she was feeling right now, though…"Where the fuck is Blaise with that book?" she hissed, irritated, to herself, as she pelted down the stairs, intent on finding either some consoling chocolate, or the rascal that had her latest Hieberus book.
Two alcoves down from the stairway, a blonde gave a smug grin, eyes sparkling as he took off in the opposite direction down the hall to intercept his lover first and pitch a little idea.
A.N. - So. Short and to the point - well, except for my unexpected foray into song-ficness. ("Thanks a Lot," Third Eye Blind). Also, there's a quick flash of C.S. Lewis tribute in the beginning. Anyway. The steaminess will continue until further notice - further notice consisting of the words, 'the end.' Hehehe. If you approve, DO let me know... :-D