A/N: Thanks to all readers and reviewers!
When Ginny opened her eyes in the morning, the other side of the bed was empty. She felt the pillow. It was cold. There was a slight indentation in it where a head might have lain, but she couldn't be sure. She got up and checked the bed carefully. There was no sign at all that anyone had been there. She sighed. I don't even know if Draco was really here, then. But perhaps… perhaps she would see him today, or at least learn more about how he was when she saw Dumbledore.
Madam Pomfrey was clanging together bedpans on the other side of the infirmary with unnecessary vigor and many sniffs. Ginny ignored her and ate the steaming breakfast of oat stirabout, rashers, and eggs that appeared on a tray on the bedside table. Then she dressed. She was still a bit shaky, but her appetite had returned. She felt steel-strong and even hopeful. She washed herself and dressed in green robes, and then sat on the bed and combed out her long hair with brisk, efficient strokes. Her head snapped up sharply at the sound of footsteps coming towards her end of the long room.
"George!" she said joyfully.
"'Lo, Gin. You look great." Her older brother chucked her under the chin. "I thought you were supposed to be sick."
"I was exhausted, that was all. I sort of collapsed, I think. But I'm better now." Ginny bit her lip, wondering how to ask what she most wanted to know.
"Ready to see Dumbledore?" George asked.
Ginny leaped to her feet. "Oh yes, yes!
"I thought you would be." George grinned and helped her put on outer robes, hat, scarf, and gloves.
"Where's everyone else?" asked Ginny, tucking the ends of the scarf into the collar of her long cloak.
"Bill and Charlie are in an Order meeting along with Mum and Dad, and so's Fred—he managed to talk his way in somehow. So there's only yours truly." George held out his arm for his sister with a flourish.
"But what about Ron?"
George didn't reply, but made an odd tugging motion with his left arm. Ginny wondered at that, but said nothing. Together, they walked out of the infirmary.
"Why'd you come, George? Did they send you?" she asked as they walked down the sloping hill that led down to Hagrid's hut and the fields just beyond.
"Good to see you, too, Gin." George pulled on one of her braids where it peeped out beneath the hat.
"I didn't mean that!" She cuffed her brother's arm lightly. "I'm so glad to see you, George."
"Likewise, sis. But you did need someone to bring you. Nobody's allowed to walk around alone now; it's too dangerous. And anyway you were in the infirmary for two days." His voice grew serious. "Are you all right, Gin?"
"I'm fine."
"Are you sure? Er…after everything that happened, I mean…"
They negotiated the steepest part of the hill then, and Ginny was glad. It gave her a chance to turn her reddening face away from him. "I'm perfectly fine, George," she said, once they were on more level ground.
"Gin, you have to tell me one thing. Just one. And then I promise I'll never ask about it again," George persisted.
Ginny groaned inwardly.
"When I let Malfoy in and then sent you off with him, did I make the worst mistake of my life?"
She stopped. They were on the flat fields just outside Hagrid's hut. "No, George," she said firmly. "I know what all of you thought Draco did to me, but it's just not true."
Her brother's face had turned an odd shade of bright red. "So, er, um, he didn't…?"
She sighed. "Well, not the way you think. Nothing happened that I didn't want to—"
An odd scuffling sound came from thin air at George's left side. He glared at it. "That's enough," he said. "What did I tell you?"
"What?" Ginny asked, confused. "You didn't tell me anything."
"Never mind," said George, turning back to her hurriedly. "I don't need to hear any more. I really don't."
"Well, you can tell me something, then. I heard you told Mum that I wasn't going to be home on Christmas Eve."
George nodded.
"Then how did the Order know to come and find us when they did?"
George grinned. "Gin, think about it for a moment. Who are you talking to?"
"You—I think."
"And who am I?"
As if it had happened long, long ago instead of three days before, Ginny remembered when her brother had asked Draco the same question. She smiled slightly, but did not reply.
"Half of Weasley's Wizard Wheezes, that's who. Come round this way." George led his sister behind Hagrid's hut and across a field of tall dried grass, gone dead and brown in winter. The snow crunched under their feet as they continued walking.
"Fred and I set up wards around your rooms at the Leaky Cauldron before you went there to stay," he explained. "Mum insisted on it, you know."
"Mum? Oh…" Ginny did not know how to feel after hearing that, or rather, she thought, her feelings were very complicated.
"She'll come round, you know," said George.
"I know that she doesn't like Draco," Ginny mumbled.
"Could you reasonably expect her to? Could you expect that from any of us?" George's voice sharpened. "I don't say that I like him, if it comes to that."
"But then—" Ginny groped for a way to ask what she wanted to ask, but nothing graceful came to mind. She tried again. "Why—"
"I want you happy," George said simply. "We all do, Gin."
She kicked at a rock. "But could anyone else in the family have got past how much you've…we've… always hated all the Malfoys?"
"I doubt it. Fred was talking about invoking an ancient law that would've allowed us to shave off Malfoy's skin millimetre by millimetre with a dragon's tooth—We're not actually going to do it," George added hurriedly.
Ginny looked down at the snow for awhile, and they kept walking. "So why could you do what you did?" she asked.
George gave a long, deep sigh. "He makes you happy. And I could see it."
"You're right. I- I don't really know how to thank you," Ginny said awkwardly.
"You can thank me best by not telling me any of the details. Anyway… they were good wards, the ones we put up. Although they really couldn't stand up to the likes of Lucius Malfoy. But we had a backup system as well. If anyone who intended to harm you managed to get past them and into your rooms, an alarm system would go off. First at the shop, and then at the Burrow."
"And that's what happened. And then you knew," Ginny said slowly, remembering what Draco had said just before the bathroom door had opened to reveal Ron and Harry, two days earlier. There's something else, Ginny. Something you may not have thought of. But I have.
Draco knew, she realized.
They stopped at the base of the tower. She shivered as she looked up its sloping sides, made of weathered granite blocks. It squatted in a field abutting the Forbidden Forest like some sort of sinister animal, crouching, ready to spring.
"Are you cold, Gin?" George asked.
"No." She watched her brother fish a ring of keys out of his pocket and extract a curious twelve-sided one. He fit it into the lock, twisting it in several different directions until the door swung open. He gestured her inside.
"Go on, Ginny. Dumbledore's waiting."
Her brows knitted together into a frown. "You can't go back on your own, though."
"Oh, I'll be all right."
"You can't," she persisted. "You said yourself that it's too dangerous."
"Don't worry about it. Don't you want to see Dumbledore? And Malfoy's still up there as well—" George's words were cut short by a furious snort that seemed to come from nowhere. He gave his left hand a vicious shake. "What did I say you were going to have to do if you came with me?" he hissed.
"Who are you talking to?" Ginny finally asked, curiousity getting the better of her.
In answer, the air to George's left shifted and crumpled in upon itself. A shimmering length of material fell to the snowy ground from thin air. Ron looked back at her. He was very red in the face.
Ginny sighed. Somehow, she was not surprised. "Is that Harry's Invisibility cloak?"
"Nope," said George. "It's a new one we've been developing. It also works as an Inaudibility Cloak, or at least it's supposed to. Still some kinks in that part of it."
She shook her head and started through the door, only to feel a hand on her shoulder. She knew without even looking up that it belonged to Ron. It was both too urgent and too uncertain to be George's sure, steady hand.
"Gin," Ron said in a rush. "Don't go up quite yet. Please. Please don't."
"What are you going to do?" she asked without turning round. "Hit me over the head and tie me up in a sack to keep me from seeing Dumbledore, because Draco Malfoy will be there as well?"
Ron winced at Draco's name, but he didn't react anywhere near as violently as she had expected him to do. "Won't you wait just a moment?" he asked softly. "Please?"
She relented and turned round to look at him. "Make it fast."
Ron stuck his hands in his pockets and stared down at the ground. "I heard about what happened," he said in a rush. "I heard that it wasn't, well, exactly what we all thought at first. Is that true?"
"It's true," Ginny said guardedly.
"I suppose that means that Malfoy saved you from his father, doesn't it?"
"It does."
"Well. All right, then." Ron traced a pattern in the snow with his foot.
Ginny fingered one of her braids and wondered how far she might go with her brother now. "Do you understand what that means?" she finally asked. "I want to be—I'm going to be with him, Ron. You're going to have to accept that. Everyone will have to."
Ron turned a strange shade of purple at her words. "When I see Draco Malfoy again-" he choked out.
"You'll what?" asked Ginny, one hand on the ancient bronze doorknob of the stone door into the tower, ready to flee, or to attack.
Ron gritted his teeth together so loudly that she could hear the grinding sound in the clear, cold air. "I won't kill him," he said.
That's as good as it's going to get, Ginny realized.
