A/N: Thanks to all the reviewers!
As I wrote in a reply to a review by the fabulous SometimeSelkie… there are a few things about the ffnet version of DDD that might even be very subtly improved over the FIA one. Nothing major at ALL, but there were just a few times when I wished later that I'd foreshadowed this or that a little bit better and so forth. So y'all are getting the improved version.
"Bloody overjoyed," said Blaise. "How the hell do I get myself into these things again?"
"Malfoy's been your best mate since you were both three years old, remember?" said Ginny.
"But that's only gone on so long because I spent so many years trying to find out for myself just how big his tackle really is. If it wasn't for that—"
"You'd still be his best friend," said Luna. "Even if the bait on his hook was the size of Harry's."
"How on earth do you know about Harry?" asked Ginny, startled.
"Stories get around, even the ones that I'd so much rather not hear. The point is that I think it would be a very good idea to get out of here."
"Turned out of my own flat, I like that—" Blaise began indignantly.
"Trust me, you'd like being at the business end of Harry Potter's bigger wand even less," said Ginny.
"Either wand would be one to avoid," agreed Blaise. "But where do we go?"
Ginny chewed her lip, thinking. "I have to find Draco," she finally said. "I just can't live with myself unless I do. At least I've figured out that much from what the photograph-me said."
"Are you starting to feel any signs of beginning delirium?" Luna asked her.
"I wouldn't be surprised," Ginny admitted. "But I have to find out what's going on with Astoria, and I have to find out what really happened last night, and I have to know what he meant when he said he wanted me to wait for him, and... oh, I just have to."
"I don't know about all the rest, but if you spend your time waiting around for boys to decide if they're going to do something or other," said Luna, "then you just might be waiting all your life. I think you spent rather enough time doing that for Harry, don't you?" She laid a hand on the back of Ginny's forehead. "I don't know. She feels like she has a bit of a fever to me."
Ginny wrenched away. "Don't do that," she said irritably. "Speaking of waiting, do you want to sit here twiddling our thumbs until the Aurors storm in here, wands out? Or do you want to do something?"
"You still haven't suggested anything," Luna pointed out.
"I'm suggesting it now. Luna, Blaise, you go and post lookout. Keep an eye on those Aurors, and text me if you see them. They can intercept Messaging spells, but not Muggle cell phones, is what I'm guessing. I'm going to find Malfoy."
"Do you know where he is?" asked Blaise.
"Yes," said Ginny. She sincerely hoped that her neck didn't flush as red as it usually did when she told really whopping lies.
"You're asking us to get in almost as much trouble as you will, you know," said Luna.
"You don't have to do it," said Ginny. "You don't have to do anything!"
"Look, we haven't said we won't," Blaise said uncomfortably. "It's just that I do have to wonder if , uh…"
"If I've gone completely mad?" Ginny snapped.
"No," Luna said quietly. "But, Ginny, have you really, truly thought this entire thing through?"
No. Ginny closed her eyes briefly.
They all slipped down the back stairs; there was an untraceable private exit that Blaise kept for "my more unusual nocturnal visitors", as he explained but did not elaborate upon. Ginny was silently thankful for that. Luna seemed to be asking questions in an undertone and taking notes in a tiny notebook, but at least she didn't have to hear about any of it.
"Coast is clear," whispered Luna once they were in the back garden. Ginny cast the Illusionment charm over herself and started off, trying to look confident when she felt anything but.
She paced restlessly down the almost empty side street, wondering where on earth to go now. Her flat was right out, of course; she already knew that. Draco's flat would be an even worse choice, not that she had any clear idea of how to get back there from here. Colin? No… there was no reason for Draco to go there, and Ginny was perfectly aware that she had no right to drag even more friends into the appalling mess she'd somehow managed to create for herself. Shite, I suppose that means that Blaise Zabini's a friend now, on top of everything else! It just gets worse and worse.
There was Astoria's place, of course, wherever it was. That thought was so awful that it stopped her in her tracks briefly. But that really didn't make any sense. Draco Malfoy had to know that expecting her to meet him at Astoria Greengrass's flat was bound to end up in murder, mayhem, and several dozen handfuls of different shades of blonde hair all over the floor. It was bound to be even more heavily staked out by the Department of Mysteries, anyway. Madame Lonelyheart's Coffeehouse? No… much too public. Sans and Serif? Same problem. Maybe back at the Ministry itself, because it was the last place the Aurors would think to look? No, that might work if they only had Harry to deal with, but the idea certainly wouldn't have slipped Hermione's mind. And if she used the nearest Apparition point, that would probably alert anyone who might be trying to track her.
A gust of wind blew a stray copy of the Daily Prophet past her feet; she saw that the photograph frame was blank now, every bit as bare as the street she was walking along. It was oppressively, strangely empty in a way that gave Ginny an odd feeling of urgency, almost more so than if she'd actually been running from Aurors. And why wasn't there any trace of any of them? She'd been out for at least several minutes; she could feel each precious second ticking by, and Luna hadn't yet texted to warn her. Ginny ran her wand over her arms and muttered a few words; the Illusion charm crackled a strong blue. Her suspicions were raised instantly. If any Aurors had made even the slightest attempt to find her, it should have glowed green. Something's wrong. I just know it. She punched at her Muggle phone.
ne signs yet?
no, Luna answered. Odd isnt it?
yes, Ginny texted back. where r they? y havent I seen-
She broke off. Zane Smith's sandy brown head had just disappeared around the corner.
Ginny raced after the tall, thin man. He was at the tail end of a large group of Aurors with Harry at their head, and they were all ignoring her completely, not even glancing back or looking in any direction; when she ran her wand down her body, the Illusion spell still shone blue. They're not even trying to find me, she thought incredulously. They were headed towards the Apparition point at the end of the block, she realized. One by one, they all vanished into it. She skidded to a stop. There was maybe thirty seconds to decide what she was going to do. If she left right now, she could simply follow them, tracking where they'd gone. The problem was that if they had even the least bit of interest in nabbing her, they almost certainly could and would. But if she waited, she'd never find them.
She took a deep breath, and she jumped into the Apparition point.
The entire world spun round her, round and round and took her breath away and she expected this from Apparition, she'd always felt it, but this time, it just kept spinning and she just couldn't get it to stop. A shadowy figure spun next to her, so indistinct that she couldn't even tell if it was male or female but it had fair hair; horrified, she realized that it had to be one of the Aurors, and that if they really wanted to catch her, the game was up. Then she landed on a hard surface and all the breath got knocked out of her and she tried to grab onto something but there wasn't anything and she found that she was scrabbling frantically on a gravel slope. A pair of scuffed brown leather boots tromped in front of her, and she dug her hands into the gravel as hard as she could and finally managed to stop herself. When she looked up, she saw the back of Zane Smith's head. He was walking at the rear of the group of Aurors, and a goblin scampered alongside of them.
"-most irregular this is, allow it I cannot!" he said in a high, piping, rather desperate voice.
It was Crumblygrotts, realized Ginny, the same goblin who'd originally approved her loan for the kiln and the studio rental. She must be at Gringott's.
"Oh, you'll allow it, all right," said Harry's voice from the head of the group. Ginny had to crane her neck to be absolutely sure it was him; he didn't even bother to turn his head back to speak as he stalked grimly down the slope.
"Work this matter out we can, sure I am… perhaps some financial arrangement come to we could," the goblin said coaxingly.
Harry's face darkened. Oh, that was the wrong thing to say, thought Ginny. "I don't need any of your money, do you think money matters to me compared with catching him?" he snarled, coming to a dead stop. "Do you know how long I've been waiting for this chance—do you have any idea—"
"Harry, come on. We've just got to leave now," Hermione said urgently. "He's ahead of us; honestly, I'm not even sure how far. If we don't get there before he does, we'll never catch him!" She gestured to the rest of the Aurors. "All of you, start getting in, now. Split up so there are no more than two or three to a cart. And hurry up about it. We don't have a moment to waste." Torches set high in the walls sputtered fitfully, casting long shadows on a line of small carts disappearing into darkness on a track at the bottom of the slope.
"Right, right." Harry leaned down, towards the goblin. "Listen, Crumblygrotts, you may not realize how serious this is, but you'll find out if you don't cooperate."
"But five thousand years of Gringott's reputation, at stake is," whimpered the goblin, wringing his hands. "None of our customers trust us anymore will, if word of this out gets—"
"I don't care," said Harry. "If you don't want the entire Ministry down on your head, you'll bloody well let us through! Do you want the Department of Mysteries to start investigating just how many former Death Eaters are hiding Dark artifacts here, in those secret family vaults?"
The little goblin blanched a pale green.
"Yeah, well, I didn't think so," said Harry with satisfaction. "We've got a criminal to catch, and I really don't care how long the Malfoys have been loyal customers of yours." He turned back to the line of Aurors. "Come on, let's get out of here!"
They're tracking Draco, Ginny realized in a flash. They had to be trying to catch him before he could reach the family vault; nothing else made sense. But how had they known where he was in the first place?
The Aurors were starting to pile into the carts; she followed them, stumbling over the loose gravel, praying that the spell kept them from hearing her. The cell phone vibrated softly in her pocket, and she pulled it out and glanced at it.
Aurors at Gringotts. Draco 2.
Thanks for the valuable information, Luna, she thought.
I know she texted back. Following them.
! U idiot. Stay where you are! Dean.
I cant, she punched in.
They found him thru Imperius test link. TROUBLE 4 u. STAY.
Ginny let her hand fall. You need to decide just how deep you want to get in here, Blaise had said to her. And now Dean had somehow involved himself with this entire mess, too; she hadn't forced him to do it, she hadn't even asked him, but if it wasn't for her, it never would have happened. Oh, gods, what am I doing? But she had to decide one way or the other, and quickly.
Ginny looked up and met Crumblygrotts' eyes. He saw her; she realized it at once, with a pang of terror. Why was I ever thick enough to think that an Illusion charm would fool a goblin at Gringotts? Maybe she could get a nice cell at Azkaban right to Draco's. Were conjugal visits allowed? But how could they be, really, when they weren't married, she wasn't his girlfriend, they hadn't shagged, and they'd never even shared a single kiss? Her mind ranged for a single mad instant over the idea of a romantic first time at Azkaban, perhaps aided by asking all the Dementors to keep their backs turned, before she realized that the goblin was keeping his mouth firmly shut. Crumblygrotts gave her a minute nod and beckoned his hand.
Ginny widened her eyes. Me? she mouthed.
Her cell phone buzzed again. DM your help need he does. Come to his vault U may.
"Who knew that goblins could text," muttered Ginny.
Crumblygrotts smiled. A goblin's smile was far from an attractive sight, but that, Ginny thought, definitely qualified as the least of her problems now.
"What are you smirking about?" Harry was asking the goblin now. "And are you sure that's the quickest way?"
"Only so fast can we go towards the lowest vaults, believe me you must, sir," Crumblygrotts said pleadingly as Hermione and Zane Smith crammed him into a cart.
"I think it is the fastest way, Harry," said Hermione.
"It had better be," Harry replied grimly. "'Mione, just think- if we catch Malfoy in time, he goes straight to a holding cell in Azkaban. He'd stay there until trial and you know we'd have the evidence by then, God, to finally get him on something, after he's bought his way out of every charge for years, slithered out of everything like the snake he is, what else has he ever done his entire life—"
Hermione put her hand over Harry's. "I know. I know. It's all right, Harry. We'll get him now."
The two of them exchanged a shaky smile, and in it, Ginny saw Draco's bright head bowed, turned a dull silver as he sat slumped on a cot in a cell in Azkaban, waiting to hear a footstep that never came. He waited and waited, and finally he lost hope, and his gray eyes went blank, and he became a beautiful shell of everything that he had ever been. The first cart started up with a jerk. Ginny didn't think twice. She grabbed onto the back of it, said a quick Sticking charm, and hung on, trying not to remember everything she'd ever heard about dragons guarding the lower vaults of Gringotts.
The cart picked up frantic speed, and Ginny flattened herself to the side, struggling to keep her eyes open enough to see where they were going. It was hopeless. She'd been down here only once before with her father, and the Weasley vault was near the surface. They'd taken a short trip and opened it with a key. This time, they spun down and down and her stomach dropped further and further, and the cart rattled until she thought it was going to fly apart. Hermione's cloak was flying in front of her and she grabbed onto it at one point; the other girl turned round briefly and Ginny shrank back, sure the spell was wearing thin and she'd been seen, but they all went over a bump then and Hermione's head went down and Harry's arm went round her, and nobody seemed to be in any shape to notice anything. Zane Smith and Hestia Jones were right behind her, and Ginny did everything she could to avoid him too; she knew that she had to be smacking into people constantly, but with any luck at all, the ride was too chaotic for anyone to notice much of anything. There was someone else next to her too, a vague shadowy figure with fair hair, but she assumed it was another Auror who she just didn't know. The same one who went through the Apparition point with me? Funny. I thought that was Zane Smith. But he's behind me now, so it can't be—oh, so what- She certainly wasn't going to worry about his—or her—or maybe its identity when there were so very many other things to worry about, such as oh, the fact that the cart was about to—
"I told you that we're jumping the track!" Harry yelled.
"No, oh, no, far too dangerous that is!" Crumblygrotts yelled back.
"I don't care! Look, over there!" Harry stabbed a finger to the right, and Ginny raised her head to see through the maelstrom of swirling cloaks and darkness. Another cart was zooming off, further down, on another set of interconnected rails. Something flashed in it briefly, like a bright silver coin, but much larger.
"Malfoy! He's in it, I saw him. You jump the track,right now," snarled Harry.
Ginny held her breath. The cart took off in a tremendous leap, floating through space for one long, long frightening moment. Something next to her shook loose and fell, Ginny could have sworn, something or someone, and she wondered guiltily if it was the unknown Auror next to her. Well, it's not as I pushed them, whoever they were! Or are. Hopefully, 'are' is still the correct word. You'd think that the goblins would've thought of accidents just like that happening. Maybe there's a giant net down there, or something… Then the cart crashed onto the next track with a bone-shattering crunch. The other cart was just ahead of them now, and yes! Yes, Draco was driving it, wrapped in a long black cloak, his face tense and set.
Crunch! Their cart rammed his. Draco swerved, the track gave a little shake, and he nimbly avoided them.
"Oh, no you don't. You always were a rotten Seeker, Malfoy…" muttered Harry.
CRUNCH!
Ginny winced. She really, really hoped that the goblins didn't plan to use either one of these particular carts, ever again.
Crumblygrotts wrung his hands. "Oh… oh… so much dreadful property damage there will be! The worst since the dreadful goblin wars of 1064, when Gollum and the hobbits involved became, and Middle Earth Insurance Company pay would not—"
"Shut it," said Harry. "You get Malfoy, or the Ministry will make sure there's worse damage to Gringotts business than that!"
They were running on parallel tracks now. Draco was clearly using every trick he could think of with his cart, but their own was going just a little bit faster; probably, Ginny thought, because of some sort of goblin magic that Crumblygrotts was being forced to use. And when she looked ahead, she saw that the parallel tracks were running out. Oh gods. They're going to catch him. Unless-
There was only one thing she could think of to do, and unless she did it quickly, Ginny knew that even the insane, do-or-die Weasley nerve would fail her, because this particular trick fell a little too decisively on the "die" side of the equation.
Their cart was almost flush with his now. She stood up as much as she could, crouching low. Crumblygrotts gave her a completely horrified look. She ignored it. Then she jumped.
The other cart snatched itself past her and she grappled with the door; she would not fall, would not, and somehow in the middle she found herself grabbing at Draco's fingers. He swore and crashed her up against the wooden side with one hand.
"I won't allow you to do this to me," he said in a low, cold voice, his face a vicious mask of anger. "You have destroyed my life, and hers, or you've given it your best attempt anyway, and now you've followed me here, and I will not allow—"
Then he blinked, and both of his hands reached out and felt her arms and shoulders upper chest, much more gently. "What the hell is this?" he asked. "Weasley?"
"No time to explain!" said Ginny. "Steering! Give me!" Without waiting for permission, she grabbed the little wheel.
Harry was completely parallel with them now. She swerved Draco's cart away from him slightly. He shouted something at Crumblygrotts, and his cart followed. She swerved again. He followed them again. Swerve. Follow. Swerve. Follow. Harry leaned over from the other cart, his hand reaching for its side, no more than an inch from grabbing onto them.
"Ginny, come on," he yelled to them. "I don't know what he's done to you, but if you stop now, if you cooperate, if you turn him in, you won't get in any trouble at all—it's all Malfoy's fault, I know it is, none of it's yours, but I've got him now, there's nothing more you can do—"
"Oh, yes there is," she said. Ginny gave him a huge smile, and jammed the wheel all the way to the right. I can't really say that Harry was a rotten Seeker, she thought, with grudging honesty. But the problem is that he always expects to catch the Snitch, and he doesn't know how to think in any other way. He only ever knows how to think in one way, really.
"Fuck, Weasley, what have you done now?" she heard Draco groan beside her. Then the cart plunged down into darkness, and really, thought Ginny, it wasn't the best time in the world to ask any more questions at all.
Not that this fact kept him from asking another one, right after they'd finally crashed to the bottom, and before she'd even had half a chance to catch her breath.
"Shite, Weasley, why didn't you wait for me?"
"Wh—what?" asked Ginny groggily. He was sprawled half on top of her. She could feel the weight of his body pressing her into the ground. They weren't face to face, which was probably why she could manage to get out even one coherent word, she thought.
"It's a simple question. I told you to wait for me to come to you, and you couldn't even manage to do that," snapped Draco. "Instead, you've chased me through Gringotts like a gods-damned idiot, it's a miracle you didn't get yourself killed-"
"I wasn't chasing you! Harry and a rather large group of Aurors were chasing you, as I hope you bothered to notice, Malfoy. And you can just get off of me!" She struggled out from under him. "Where are we? I mean, where on earth did we end up?"
"You might have thought of that before you randomly steered the cart off a cliff in the dungeons of Gringotts," said Draco. "By the way, between now and the events of this morning, Weasley, I will never, ever get the hearing back in my left ear, I'll have you know."
She might, just might have done some screaming during that long, long freefall, thought Ginny. Not that she was about to admit it to him.
"Lumos Maxima," he said, and yellow light illuminated the space around them both.
He was sitting across from her on the bottom of what looked like a limestone cave, surrounded by the ruins of a cart. How could Draco Malfoy manage to make even rising from a sprawled position look elegant? But he did, somehow. He offered her his hand, scowling.
Ginny took it, uncomfortably aware of its warmth, its strength, its sheer size. She'd gotten mud all over his fingers, and when she looked down at herself, she groaned silently. She had mud everywhere, too. She tried to brush off her bum and winced. The fall had not been well cushioned.
"A little sore?" asked Draco.
"A bit," Ginny admitted.
"I'd like to be of help, but I'm afraid I don't have any murtlap tea at the moment. It's a little thin on the ground around here." Draco stuck his hands in his pockets, his eyebrows drawn together into an ominous line.
He's really, really giving me a dirty look. And even his dirty looks are sexy; there's no other way to put it, is there? Oh, he doesn't look happy with me… well, I don't care!
"Malfoy, I've got some dreadfully important things to tell you," she said. "You've got to listen. I don't know how much time we have—"
"They can wait just a bit," said Draco. "You haven't answered my question."
"Uh… I know that you said I was supposed to wait for you," said Ginny. "But I just couldn't."
Draco gave a long sigh. "You just couldn't. Has any Weasley ever been able to do as they're told?"
"No," said Ginny. "But listen to me, can't you? It's bloody important."
"Whatever it is, you're wrong. It's not. Not compared to the danger you've put yourself in by illegally entering Gringotts—how did you get here, anyway?"
"I Apparated. I followed the traces of the Aurors."
A muscle in Draco's jaw jumped. "Lovely! Do you realize that you've earned yourself some bloody inconvenient question-and-answer sessions at the Ministry just for that, if they decided that they wanted to press charges?" His lips tightened. "Not that Potter would do any such thing to you, of course."
Ginny laughed harshly. "Oh, that's what you think."
Something happened in his face then, she thought, some sort of change too subtle to put her finger on, except that it reminded her of how he'd looked in the alley behind Le Bas Blue when Harry had put his hand on her arm. "What do you mean?"
"I'm not very popular with Harry just now," muttered Ginny. She wanted to tell the story in order, and she was determined to tell it her way. "Why do you care, anyway?"
Draco's voice lightened, but his face remained tense. "Malfoys live up to their obligations," he said. "Loki only knows how this situation came about, Weasley, but I'm now under some sort of obligation to you. I can' t permit Potter to railroad you on some ridiculous shite or other. Anyway, do you think you're ready to grace me now with your explanation for why you couldn't just safely wait for me? I'd have sent you an owl."
"Because if I'd waited around until you deigned to show up," said Ginny, "the Aurors would have caught you first. And then you'd be waiting for me in Azkaban, Malfoy."
He laughed. "Don't be ridiculous. You're a Weasley; you love lost causes and all-or-nothing battles, but don't waste it on me. I'd have been perfectly all right, with or without your Chaser stunts."
"No, you wouldn't have been, and you won't," she persisted. "Malfoy, listen to me. You would've been caught by Harry and the Aurors if it wasn't for me, and you don't know what they were planning to do to you; I heard them talking. They would have taken you to Azkaban. They would have kept you there."
Draco shook his head. "It wouldn't have mattered. They couldn't have made a charge stick. Really, Weasley, weren't you listening when I informed them of my rights earlier? Potter would have blustered about, and they would have taken me in to the Ministry, I suppose. He'd have his chance to get off, and Granger would have her chance to wet her knickers, so I suppose they would have got their two minutes out of it in the loo or wherever it is they go for their romantic interludes. Then they would have had to let me leave."
His tone was light and mocking, and Ginny knew that she was close to tears."No! Malfoy, will you just listen to me? They dragged me to St. Mungo's today and forced me to undergo an Imperius test! That's the part you don't know about yet—"
Draco sucked in his breath sharply. "Potter did what?"
There it was, there it was again, Ginny thought crazily, Draco's dark and almost-frightening face, and every time she saw it, she knew that she could never forget it again, as solid and true as if it were the real one and the light, cheerful, charming, flippant mask was never anything more than a front.
"They made me take the test," she stammered. "A rape test too—"
"You mean that Potter thought I would do that to you? Against your will?"
And there was that Draco's cold, clipped, frightening voice, dark and precise and dangerous, and the menacing body looming over her with panther-like grace, and the steel hands, gripping her arms with a strength that should have been painful and yet somehow not hurting her at all.
"I told him, them, that you wouldn't. I knew you wouldn't. I knew you didn't, but it's more than that, I knew you never would," said Ginny.
"Never," his voice said in her ear. "Never."
"They were both negative," whispered Ginny. "The tests."
"Of course they were. You could not have believed that I would do either of those things to you," whispered the voice that didn't sound like Draco's, and yet it did. It was the voice she had heard when he spoke to her in the corridor on the night of the last battle at Hogwarts, the night that she had almost given in to him and to herself. She closed her eyes. For a single mad moment, she wished that she had, that she would, right now.
He pulled back from her. She felt the loss of warmth. How strange, that he should be so warm, when his eyes and face and body were like ice. "That's how they traced me here," he said flatly. "You're in danger now, Weasley."
"But listen to me, Malfoy. You're the one in danger! They were planning to bring you in on that Imperius charge so they could hold you for everything else, and I'll bet they can still find some trumped-up way to do it."
"Yes. I'd figured that out. The point is you, Weasley. You. They can charge you with aiding and abetting a criminal. I had no right to do this to you, no right at all," muttered Draco.
Everything about this side of him was different, thought Ginny. Even his speech patterns. It was as if he set aside all of his elaborate affectations, and stripped down to a steely core. "You didn't," she insisted. "I did. I followed Harry and the Aurors here; nobody made me do that. I'm the one who's dragged my friends into this whole disaster. You didn't have anything to do with it. You're giving yourself a bit too much credit, Malfoy—hey, what do you think you're doing?"
"Getting you out of here," said Draco. "I'll find one of the goblins, and he'll take you somewhere safe."
"But how will you get out?"
"Any cart with a Malfoy in it is charmed to head directly towards the Malfoy vault. It's a short walk from here."
"But why were you going there in the first place?" Ginny tried unsuccessfully to dig her heels into the powdery dirt floor.
"That's my business."
"But, but Draco—" Ginny made a grab for a stalactite. Or is that a stalagmite? she wondered fleetingly. Never could keep them straight. "What if the Aurors do make it down here? There are so many of them. Harry, and Hermione, Zane Smith, Hestia Jones, I saw a couple of others, and there was one who I think was even under some kind of Illusion charm, sort of like I was—I couldn't tell much about him, at least I think it was a him. Tall, with blond hair, I think. I don't even know what happened to him. I sort of lost track after the cart fell off the cliff, or whatever it was that happened—"
Draco stopped dead in his tracks. "What?"
Maybe she was wrong, Ginny decided. Maybe this Draco really did frighten even her after all. At least, the look on his face managed to do the trick, for just a minute. "I—uh—" she began.
"I heard what you said,' he muttered. "All right. All right, Weasley. We're both getting out of here now."
"But you said you had to get to the Malfoy vault. Wasn't that the point of your going here in the first place?"
"The plans have changed," Draco said grimly.
"But where—"
"We're going where I planned to meet you in the first place. And if you'd waited, I would have come to you there." Draco stopped again, and Ginny stumbled, falling against him slightly. He scanned her face, and then he smiled. The sight of a smile on this grim, cold Draco's face was shocking. But beautiful, Ginny thought. He's more beautiful than ever this way. It's like seeing the devil's smile. Oh, gods, what's wrong with me?
"Thank you, Weasley, for coming to me," he said softly.
His hands were still around her wrists like Muggle handcuffs, trapping them. His thumbs came up and caressed the sensitive inner skin, where her pulse beat. Ginny bit her lip. She'd felt a shameful tug between her legs at that firm touch, at the sensation of Draco's hands encircling her slender wrists; gods, what was wrong with her? There they were, desperately trying to escape from the dungeons of Gringotts, chased by her power-mad ex-boyfriend and a bunch of Aurors who probably really were all licensed to kill, and an image had flashed through her traitorous mind of those strong male hands pinning her wrists down to a mattress!
"Now let's get the hell out of here while we can still do it in one piece," said Draco, and Ginny nodded. He gave her wrist a pull, which was a good thing, she thought gratefully, because her legs had turned to jelly, just for the moment, and a jump-start was very helpful.
As they ran past the stalagmites, Ginny couldn't help noticing how large and tall and erect they were, and that this might, just might remind her of something else. She rather thought that she'd finally found a reliable memory aid to remind her of the difference between them and stalactites from now on.