A/N: Thanks to all readers and reviewers, especially:

Queen of Night, ijustsailedaway, and Ju-PiAzZaLuNgA. There are some answers in this chapter… but that's all I'll say. ;)

Ginny lay in Draco's arms, the side of her cheek pressed against his chest. She could hear him breathing deeply and evenly. He couldn't have fallen asleep… could he? No. It's only been a couple of minutes. But then, he said that he hasn't been sleeping well at all lately. So, maybe. Her own arms tightened around him, and she felt again how thin he'd really become. It was hard to tell from simply looking at him, because he was so wiry and muscular, but he'd lost weight, all right. And he didn't have all that much to lose before. Oh, Draco, where have you been? What's been happening to you? But she already knew that she wouldn't ask him.

Her hand stole out as if moving on its own, and her fingers ran themselves through his silvery hair, smoothing the thick strands. I really just want to lie here forever, she thought. I want to stay with him. I never want to leave. Fuck, what's wrong with me? It must be the room. It's got to be the room. Her head felt hot and feverish, and her throat was dry as a bone; maybe she was actually getting sick. That would explain a lot.

Ginny sat up, gently disengaging herself from Draco. She picked up the cup of the cold peppermint tea from the bedside table and drank the rest of it. When she put the cup back down, she heard a small click, and then an annoyed sniff.

"Isn't it enough that you've got a body and Draco Malfoy wants to do all sorts of naughty things with it?" said a dreary voice. "Do you have to throw cups on top of me, as well?"

Ginny looked down and saw the female face on Draco's watch, which he'd put on the bedside table. "Oh," she said awkwardly, wondering just how much that watch had actually seen. "Er, sorry."

"It doesn't make any difference, I suppose," the watch said gloomily. "He'll never pay any attention to me now that you've shown up again." Ginny couldn't help thinking that she sounded exactly like Moaning Myrtle. I suppose there's no point in putting on an appealing voice when Draco isn't listening to it.

"I don't mean to be rude," said Ginny, "but, uh, I find it a bit hard to believe that he ever paid you much attention in that way before. It's only that watches can't exactly take part in those sorts of activities, can they?"

"You're about as obtuse as most mortals, I see," the watch sniffed.

That's it. I've had it with mouthy inanimate objects, once and for all. Ginny opened the bedside table drawer and picked up the watch. "We're rather busy just now," she said. "So, if you don't mind—"

"Wait!" the watch shrieked, holding out both its hands. "I'm only trying to help, you know."

"Now that's something I really don't believe. But if you've got something to say, then you might as well say it, I suppose."

"It's just this," said the watch. "I mark time. And before too much longer, Ginny Weasley, time will be very important to you. And then, you'll want to remember me."

Ginny looked at it narrowly. "What are you talking about? Who are you; what are you? Aren't you just an ordinary wizarding watch?"

The watch face smiled secretively. "I am a Malfoy watch, and that means that I'm never ordinary. You'll see, in time. But for now, it just might interest you to take a look at exactly what time it is." The second hand tapped the hour.

Ginny's eyes widened in shock. Three hours had passed since they'd first entered the room. She dropped the watch back on the table and pulled herself away from Draco, ignoring the whimpering protest her entire body seemed to be making. He opened his eyes lazily.

"Get back here," he said, reaching for her wrist.

"I can't," said Ginny through clenched teeth.

He opened his arms. "Back. Now. I miss you already."

"No," said Ginny, fighting everything in her that was currently staging a full-scale attempt to scream the opposite at the top of its lungs.

"Don't be silly. Earthshattering sex is lovely, of course, but I rather like simply lying next to you. Didn't you like it as well?" he asked, looking sad.

Too much, she thought. Much, much too much! "I… It's nothing to do with that," she said. "But we've been in this room three hours; I just saw it on your watch. I had no idea it was that long. So I've got to get back; I have to know what happened to Colin and Daphne and Dean—"

"I'm no better at Divination than you are, but I don't think that any precognitive ability is required to figure out what's happened to them. They're long gone, because they've certainly all got enough sense to have got out of those tunnels by now- or Creevey and Daphne do, at least, and I'm sure they've managed to drag the nobly protesting Dean Thomas with them. We've given them enough time to do it." Draco picked up her hand and started kissing it. "Or do you think they need a bit more?"

"I can't just leave them! You know I can't. I've got to go and find out exactly where they are now, so… well…" Ginny began to get up from the bed. Draco took her wrist in a firm grip.

"Sweetheart, the best favor you could possibly do them would be to steer clear of them for a bit," he said. "You said it yourself; Potter already thinks you've got something to do with what's going on at St. Mungo's. Don't give him a chance to connect you with them."

"No. I have to get back there," Ginny said stubbornly. "Anything could've happened by now; how do I know they really managed to get out?"

He put his hand on her thigh, and she felt the heat of his skin through her trousers. "Sweetheart, you can't seriously think that I'm going to let you get away from me now."

Something in his words chilled her, just for a second. Then she saw his smiling face, and she shook it off. "But you can't come with me yet. You know you can't. Harry's searching for you already, and if he found us together…" Ginny shivered. "That would be exactly the excuse he'd want most to get you into trouble you'd never get out of again. He's relentless. He'll never give up. I'm afraid for you, D-" She stopped herself before Draco came out of her mouth, as it had almost done. I'll never do it again. Not until he does it first when we aren't both half mad… no. I won't even think about that. I won't even remember him saying . Ginnyginnyginny, or please, or I'm yours, or anything else. "I'm just afraid," she finished lamely.

"Ah." Draco sat back against the headboard. "Would you hide me, if it came to that? Maybe I could sleep in the cupboard under the sink in your studio."

"I—" I'd do anything. But I can't say that! I can't. "I would try to help you, as much as I could," Ginny finally settled for saying. "But I don't know what I could do. I certainly don't have any influence over Harry. Maybe I would as his girlfriend, but otherwise—"

Draco's face darkened instantly. "If that's meant to be a joke, it's not the least bit funny."

Ginny turned back to him, sitting on the bed. "Of course I'm not going to have anything to do with Harry in that way. I don't want to ever see him again at all, if I can help it! But I don't know what I can do about him, either. I don't see how there's anything I can do, if he starts in on you." Her voice caught. "I don't know if you should stay here," she said, all in a rush.

"Don't you?" Draco smiled at her oddly. "Perhaps you're right."

Stupid. Stupid! When am I going to learn to keep my big mouth shut? Ginny thought drearily. But then, Draco already had to know how dangerous it was for him to stay in London, anyway. Why had he really come back in the first place?

He reached forward and took her hand, stroking it. "Would you run away with me then? I suppose we might try that. We could live on the road, sweetheart."

"A Malfoy, living on the road?" she asked as lightly as she could. ""I don't think you'd last a week. We couldn't very well take house-elves with us, you know."

"You may be right. I suppose I'd end up enduring absolute horrors along the lines of washing out my own boxers in a public loo, or something." Draco grimaced. "Look, I've been giving a great deal of thought to all of these things. I haven't seen any hideous visions of myself in Azkaban, but you have, and I do know that it's at least possible, so I don't dismiss it. But I truly don't think that there's anything to worry about just now. Do you remember when you found me trying to crack the lock on that door into St. Mungo's?"

How could I ever forget, thought Ginny. "Of course I do. What's that got to do with anything?"

He reached out and played with a curl of her hair. "Well, you didn't know at that moment that I wasn't a desperate criminal, bent on blowing up St. Mungo's with carefully laid Explosive charms tied to dozens of pitifully mewing kittens whilst I cackled fiendishly. And yet—"

"It's not funny! Can't you be serious for once?"

"I am. I'm being very, very serious." Draco kissed the tips of her fingers. "Sweetheart, you're lying on a bed at the Crystal Palace with me now because when you saw me, you didn't betray me, which you easily might have done. So Potter didn't catch me. Ergo, he has no reason at all to railroad me into Azkaban, and he does need at least a bloody good reason. The Ministry hasn't changed so much as that."

"But—" Ginny stopped herself again. But what are you going to do? Where are you going to go? Are you going to stay? What about Astoria? Am I going to see you again? How can I be apart from you now? But I have to be, I know I do, because it can't be any other way. You've made me yours, Draco, but only half yours, and then you stopped. It's worse than if we'd gone all the way.

"Well… anyway, I have to go back now," she said dully. "I don't see what else I can do. I have to find out what happened to my friends, at least, and then, I suppose I really don't know…" Ginny made a remarkably half-hearted attempt to begin shoving herself off the edge of the bed. She couldn't even pretend not to feel relief when Draco pulled her back.

"You can't seriously think that I'm simply going to let you naff off back to the tunnels under St. Mungo's," he said.

"Do you really have any better ideas?"

"I do. I'd like to make you an offer. I've been thinking about this for some time." Draco kissed the side of her neck.

"What kind of offer? Do you mean that you've got a plan for getting out of here without the Ministry being able to trace either one of us?"

"No, no. I'm offering you a position."

"Some sort of artistic commission?" A little spark of hope fluttered in Ginny's heart. Draco did want to keep up their association, then, and he wanted it in a way that meant he respected her. "I—I mean, I'm really honored, but I don't think that this is exactly the time to talk about it. We'd have to wait until we were both back safely. And we'd really have to figure out how it could work. I mean, wouldn't we—well, it wouldn't necessarily be easy to have a strictly business relationship on the one hand, now that we've, er…" Ginny shifted uncomfortably.

"No, I didn't quite mean that. It's rather a different offer." He kissed her neck again, massaging the back of her shoulder with one hand, and he smiled as if he had a wonderful secret. "I've waited so long to tell you this, sweetheart. But the time's finally come."

Much later, Ginny would wonder if she had actually felt something in the air shift into a vacuum at that moment, or if time itself had seemed to warp. She knew that she couldn't possibly have sensed anything that was coming before Draco actually said it. She'd always been rubbish at Divination. But at his very next words, the world itself dropped away from under her.

"Become a Malfoy mistress," said Draco. "My mistress."

His words were casual. At first, she thought she hadn't heard them. She hadn't understood what he'd actually said. Then, she was sure that he couldn't possibly have meant them.

"I don't understand," she said cautiously. "I thought we were through playing the game."

"It's not a game, sweetheart," he said. "It's an offer. I'll have the Gringotts letter sent round again tomorrow, if you like." His smile remained steady. His hand round her shoulder was warm and firm. As if she were a piece of property that he knew he would soon fully possess, she thought.

Ginny looked down at herself. She was still half-lying on the bed, but she had become weightless. She was floating in an empty space where everything was coming together and every idea was making sense at last.

The puzzle pieces clicked, one by one. First, Draco had played on her weaknesses- her desire to save him in Azkaban, her own guilt about assuming his motives were worse than they were, and then shoving him down into broken glass on the floor and having to save him from probably bleeding to death in front of her eyes. He'd taken advantage of the seductive magic in the room, and he'd used the bond between them, too. Once he had softened her, soothed and petted her, and made her comfortable in every possible way, he had invited her to explore her most forbidden desires, to bite timidly but deliciously on forbidden fruit. By the end of it all, her defenses were down, and she knew now that she herself had done almost all of the work of lowering them. And then he had led her further and further into her own corruption, bit by bit. But she had walked there on her own.

That was the cleverest part by far, thought Ginny as Draco's confident smile widened, showing the tips of his sharp white canine teeth. He had coaxed her to give in to her own fantasies, but he hadn't forced her into a thing. He had tempted her into giving up her fight against him, and she had fallen, but she had stepped off the edge of her own free will. Step by step, he had guided her deeper, deeper, and deeper still into her deepest wants and wishes, until she was begging him for everything that was most forbidden. But she had put the chain of desire around her own neck, and handed him the key.

I was easy prey, thought Ginny. And I can't even blame Malfoy for that part of it, can I?

"Well, sweetheart?" he asked softly. "What do you think?"

She looked at the impossibly beautiful young man sitting next to her, smirking, and for a mad instant, she wished that the heavy wooden bed would fall in on his head.

He reached for her hand. "I know it's a bit of a shock. I do understand that. But this is the perfect solution; you have no idea how perfect it really is. You'll understand everything once I explain it fully."

She snatched her hand back. She couldn't endure his touch for another instant.

"Now, sweetheart—"

That word was what did it, she decided later. She stiffened, her eyes blazing."Don't you dare call me sweetheart! I never want to hear that word from you again, Malfoy, never, do you hear me?"

"Yes, yes, of course, all right." Draco spread his hands out in a placating manner. "We can return to last names for now if you'd like that better. I only want you to feel comfortable, you know."

"Comfortable? There's nothing in the world that could make me feel comfortable!" Ginny thumped her fist down on the coverlet, impotently. "I was right at the very start. Oh, I should've known all along; I never should've listened to your shite for one single second. This entire thing was a trick from beginning to end."

"Sw- er, I mean, Weasley, if you'd just let me explain—"

"I don't want to hear any explanations from you, Malfoy!" she snarled. "Oh, fuck, how stupid I was to ever—to even-" Ginny had to stop; her voice was breaking up. She blinked back idiotic tears.

"Listen to me, Weasley," said Draco, in his most persuasive voice. "Hear me out, can't you? I'm offering you more than you can imagine, and you'll understand it once you've listened to everything I have to say."

Ginny wiped the back of her hand across her face, savagely. "What I understand is that you planned out every bit of this little seduction. And that's all I need to know."

"Listen to me. That's just not true. At least, not—ah- all of it."

"How much is 'not all of it'? Ninety-nine point nine percent?"

"No such thing," protested Draco. "I mean, well, yes; some parts of it have been planned for months; I'll admit that. But there were loads of things I didn't know. I had no idea that the bond still existed; I was rather sure that it didn't. I wasn't planning on our coming to the Crystal Palace exactly when we did, not at all—"

"What do you mean, you weren't planning on getting here exactly when we did? You mean that you did plan on us ending up here at some point very soon, don't you?" demanded Ginny, pushing herself up within a few inches of him.

"Er… yes," admitted Draco. "That was one of the bits that was planned."

"I knew it! I absolutely knew it. You meant to come here all along. Well, I can't say I'm surprised. What else was part of your original evil plot? You might as well tell me now." She glared at him.

"I suppose you're right. See how honest I'm being? I'd planned to get you here, as you already know, but yes, there were a few more things. You were meant to end up in this room, for one."

"What about Professor Flitwick and Devyani?"

"Er… have you ever heard of a certain Muggle saying that runs, 'if so-and-so hadn't existed, it would have been necessary to invent it?'"

"Yes," Ginny said suspiciously. "What does that have to do with anything?"

Draco squirmed. "I'm afraid that you're going to be a bit upset with me over this one…"

"If you define 'a bit upset' as 'hexing your balls off', then yes."

Draco gulped. "Don't you think that those might be very, very useful in the near future? When you decide to take me up on that offer, I mean. No, no! I remember your Bat-Bogey hexes, Weasley, as well as your wicked backhand with a Bludger. All I was about to say was that I'm not entirely sure if the professor and his lady-love actually existed at that particular moment, or not. They may have been only some sort of illusion. You see… this is a bit difficult to explain, but the Malfoy rooms exist in one of the soft places of the Crystal Palace. That's why we were able to come here through the portal in the first place. As the Malfoy heir, I wished that a distraction which would drive us into this room and keep us here would appear, and so it did."

"The Malfoy rooms?" echoed Ginny.

"Ah." A distinctly guilty look spread over Draco's face. "That. Yes, I didn't quite explain that bit, did I? Yes, this room… all of these rooms… these corridors, all of it, has belonged to the Malfoys since time out of mind."

A thought struck Ginny. "I've seen these before," she said slowly. "And it wasn't in an etching in that book."

"Which book?"

"Never mind. I've been in this entire place before. I know it. Malfoy, isn't this where I found you with Astoria back in May?"

"Yes," Draco admitted. "Or something like this, at least. These corridors and rooms shift and change, you know. They're not always quite the same. But they always belong to the Malfoys. Always have, always will do. That's why they link through the Malfoy vault at Gringotts as well."

Ginny looked around the room as if seeing it for the first time. "This is the room that she was trying to get into when I first saw her. Isn't it?"

Had something flickered across Draco's face? She really didn't know. "I suppose it probably was, or a room just like it," said Draco. "And Astoria certainly couldn't get in it. This is a room of desire, Weasley. I didn't want her- don't want her, I should say, and I never will."

Something very dangerous fluttered in Ginny's stomach at those words.
She tried her best to ignore it. "Oh, who cares!" she said furiously. "That doesn't matter now! Nothing makes any difference now except that you tricked me to get me here, and this is even more proof of it. I should hex you, Malfoy, I really should."

He shifted his weight so that he was just a bit closer to her, still not touching her. Balls, Weasley. Remember the necessity of the balls."

Ginny was silent, because she did remember it, all too well.

"What are you thinking, Weasley?" Draco's voice whispered in her ear.

"Things I won't tell you," she said without turning round.

"But you told me that you trusted me."

"Don't make me laugh."

"I proved that I was worthy of that trust," said Draco. "Yes, I did—look at me. I did. You know now that I was only trying to break into St. Mungo's because of the money. You know that whatever it was that you thought happened between us the last time you saw me, whatever terrible things you believed that I said, it simply couldn't have happened as you thought it did. I couldn't have been at the art gallery on the eighth of June. I don't know anything at all about it."

Draco paused for a moment, and Ginny thought about what she remembered that he did not. He told me that he didn't care about Marie anymore. He said that she was a woman he'd loved long ago, and that she wasn't important now. Bill said that the spell was working, that it couldn't go wrong. Malfoy couldn't have lied about that, and he can't know now that he said it to me, either.

"And if you think that I'm not going to remind you of how I held back from having sex with you, exactly as I promised to do," he said, "then you're wrong, because I am."

"Oh! That's vile. That's stooping low, Malfoy. That was only after you tricked me into telling you exactly what I wanted you to do to me, in every agonizing detail—" Ginny shut her mouth too late.

"I see," purred Draco. "So you admit that you really did want everything that I apparently didn't quite force on you?"

"All right—yes!" Ginny exclaimed. "I did want it. I'm not going to pretend I didn't. You're an expert at sex, Malfoy; you already know that. Of course I liked it. That doesn't prove anything."

"I'll tell you what it proves, Weasley." He spoke very deliberately. "I could have fucked you at least a dozen times over in the past three hours; more, I imagine. You were pleading with me by the end, and I still held back. Do you have any idea what it's like for a man to listen to a beautiful woman begging him for sex while she's lying naked under him, spread open, willing, eager, ready-"

The sound of a ripping sheet echoed through the air again. When Ginny glanced down, she saw a piece of silk clenched in Draco's fist.

"No, of course you don't," he said. "You can't know what it was like for me. But I protected you from yourself. You owe me a listen because of that."

"It never would have happened if it wasn't for you. Malfoy, you tricked me into it," Ginny repeated.

Draco let out his breath in a sigh. "Weasley, I wasn't done listing all the things that weren't a part of the evil plan, you know. There's one more. It's the most important of all."

"You tricked me, I never would've done any of these things otherwise, and I don't want to hear—"

"'Conjugal visits in Azkaban,'" he said. "Does that ring a bell?"

"Um…" Oh dear. It did.

"How about 'I've got to be able to get in to visit the poor hopeless Malfoy prisoner in Azkaban, even if that means making the sacrifice of letting him at my virginal body now'?"

Ginny covered her face with her hands. Draco pried them away, not harshly, but relentlessly.

"When I began this thing, I had no idea that you thought you'd seen me in Azkaban," he said. "I don't know what it is that you're really seeing, but you believe that it's a vision you can't bear. You told me that it's why you chose to lie down with me in this bed and give in to your desires, Weasley. Stop lying to yourself about that, at least."

The seconds ticked by on his watch, punctuated only by the second hand's sniffing, and his silvery-gray eyes were on her. She felt his fingers touch her arm.

"Listen to what I have to say," Draco said softly. "Just listen. Then if you want to leave me, you can."

"All right," she said, sitting stiffly across from him. "Where exactly are you going to start in on convincing me, Malfoy?"

Draco sat up, crossing his legs. "I told you. It's not like that. I've learned so many things in the last four months, Weasley; you really have no idea." He held up a hand. "I can't tell you much of anything now. There's no time, for one thing. But what happens in the next week is crucial. Let's start with tonight. You'd stay here—"

Ginny rolled her eyes. "Oh, I'll just bet I would."

"Hear me out. There are some very good reasons to stay here tonight, no matter what. If you try to leave, there's too much of a chance that the portal will pull you back to St. Mungo's, no matter how hard you try to steer it anywhere else. And you were right at the start. Your friends are a hell of a lot better off if they aren't caught with you or anywhere near you; the Ministry can't prove anything against them then."

"All right; I'll go along with this insanity, just for the sake of argument," sighed Ginny. "What would happen then?"

"I'd have a Malfoy house-elf go to your flat and your studio, and bring back anything you liked. All of your clothes and art supplies, I suppose. Then you'd have a very nice night's sleep. What would you like for dinner first?"

"That's not what I mean, Malfoy! I'm talking about what would happen after that. Tomorrow, I suppose."

"Well." Draco smiled lazily. "You do remember that week I talked about, yes? The week of preparation for your first time?"

Oh, yes. She certainly did. "Sounds familiar," she said guardedly.

"It would begin tomorrow. Here. In this room." He looked at her very directly, and something hot and traitorous throbbed through her body. Ginny was quite sure that this was the reason why she asked what she did next, because it clearly wasn't a good idea to even ask that question at all.

"Look, Malfoy—even if I had any intention of going along with this madness, why would anything that happened tomorrow be the beginning of anything? Don't you think that tonight was quite enough of a start?" exclaimed Ginny.

"You don't understand," said Draco."A beginning isn't only about what happens. A beginning has to do with intention. You enjoyed everything that we did tonight—yes?"

"Yes," muttered Ginny.

"You have no idea, none at all, how much deeper that sort of enjoyment is—how utterly different- when we both know that it's foreplay for the final consummation. When you can simply let yourself go, Weasley. Imagine that. When you don't have to hold back anymore, when there's nothing to fight… may I touch you?" His fingers hovered millimeters above her arm.

"All right," she said ungraciously.

Flesh skimmed flesh, and she shivered uncontrollably. "When you know that you've given in completely," he murmured. "When I've told you exactly how I'm going to make you mine, and by the end of the next few days, I deliver on just what I've promised. Nothing held back. Nothing forbidden, nothing at all. You cannot imagine, Weasley."

No. She couldn't, and she knew it. But she drew her hand back, because she still could.

"You haven't convinced me, Malfoy," she said flatly.

"I'm not trying to," he said. "I know that I can't. It doesn't work that way. You've got to decide on your own. Of course, I'm not above using a bit of persuasion." He grinned, leaning back against the headboard in a way that somehow made all of his chest and arm muscles flex at once, and Ginny's mouth went dry. Draco's mere existence was more than a bit of persuasion, and a very unfair one, in her opinion.

"Fine," she sighed. "Explain it to me, Malfoy. I'll listen."