A/N: Thanks to all readers and reviewers!

There was a weight lying across Ginny's back. Hard? Soft? In her half-awake state, she wasn't sure which. Definitely warm. It rose and fell with each of her breaths. Thump. Thump. Thump. It had its own beat. She turned towards it, and it moved all along her body, pressing deliciously here and there in all the right spots.

Ohhh…

Her heartbeat sped up. A ripple of tasty sensation, a twinge. Hungry. That was how she suddenly felt. The perfect food was near; she could smell dark chocolate very clearly. Ginny turned towards the source. The heavy thing brushed across her breasts, once, twice. Mmm. A string tugged lightly between her legs. Floating in a half-dream, she moved her hips forward—and froze.

She was pressed firmly against Draco Malfoy's sleeping body, her legs slightly spread to accommodate the side of his hips. His arm was slung across her chest, and his fingers were curved around her nipples. Those had gone embarrassingly hard, poking through the thin T-shirt she wore as if about to bore holes in it any second. If he opened his eyes, they'd be inches from his face. Oh, gods!

There had to be some way out of this, Ginny decided. It was just a matter of finding it. Inspiration would strike any moment now.

Really. It would.

She stared across at Draco's sleeping face, studying the slight upward curve of his lips and the faint tilt at the very corners of his closed eyes. His lashes were very thick, and surprisingly dark, she thought. The skin under his eyes looked impossibly white and delicate beneath them. He seemed terribly young and vulnerable to her. So unlike the Draco Malfoy she'd known over the past year and a half…

And so likely to wake up any fucking second! Ginny's mind screeched at her. It desperately raced through possibilities. She couldn't Disapparate and reappear on the other end of the gallery—she'd probably splinch herself into a zillion little pieces, and they'd definitely never finish the sketches that way. She couldn't make a sudden, violent pounce on Draco and then pretend he'd been the one to attack her as part of a horrible nightmare, and she'd naturally been forced to defend herself against his advances. Mmm. A sudden pounce. Now, that idea has real possibilities, purred an apparently insane portion of her brain. The desperate part immediately overruled it. Could I change into some sort of dust bunny and just roil under the bed? I think that Bill mentioned a reliable Transfiguration spell once… Ginny peeked over the side of the squashy mattress. It lay directly on the floor, so that idea was out.

Ginny looked into Draco's sleeping face. That one frantic bit of her brain darted between possibilities, leaving the rest of her mind curiously blank. How beautiful he is, she thought. Her eyes traveled along the special perfection of his cheekbone where it curved down to meet his jawline. She wanted to touch it. Giuny waited for her brain to block the thought, but it was very busy at the moment. So she reached out her hand, and her palm cupped the curve, very very lightly.

Ginny watched her own movements as if viewing some sort of fascinating but impossible optical illusion. She couldn't be touching Draco Malfoy, after all. She had sworn to never do that again. Every time she'd tried it in the past, it had led nowhere but trouble.

He stirred in his sleep. His eyelids fluttered. Without thinking about it at all, Ginny snatched her hand back and rolled away from him.

Draco saw up, yawning and rubbing his eyes. He caught sight of Ginny and gave her a sleepy almost-smile. Or was it the same sort of look he'd always given her? She wondered about that for a moment. Perhaps she was only seeing now that there had always been a smile tucked away in it somewhere.

Unless I'm going mad and imagining the entire thing, of course, she thought.Which is perfectly possible.

"So what have you conjured up for breakfast this morning, Weasley?" asked Draco. "Although it's rather difficult to tell if it is morning, I suppose."

Ginny rolled her eyes. "Can't you think of anything but food at a time like this, Malfoy?"

He propped his chin up on his chin. "But it's breakfast-time. That seems like an excellent occasion to think about food, wouldn't you agree?"

If I really am going round the bend, thought Ginny, he's definitely driving me there. "Malfoy! Do you remember us making art last night, or not?"

An expression of tremendous relief crossed his face. "Oh, thank all the gods."

"So you do remember it!" She scowled at him. "Why didn't you just say so in the first place?"

Draco gestured round the bed. "Weasley, what don't you see?"

"I don't underst—oh. Oh." Ginny's heart sank. The floor was bare. "What happened to all the drawings we did?"

"I have no idea. But you can see why I wasn't about to bring up the subject until you raised it first."

"Great, Malfoy. So you would've perfectly happy to let me think I was going mad—"

"Shh." He raised a finger to her lips. Ginny squirmed slightly, wishing that he wouldn't. She could feel the slight rough rasp of his skin, and it was bothering her severely. "It could still be a sort of folie a deux, you know," he went on.

"Oh, shut up. I'm thinking very, very hard of orange marmalade, I hope you know." She tried to speak without moving her lips.

Draco laughed. "You'll be eating the entire jar on your own, Weasley."

Ginny pulled another slice of bread from the satchel, laying it on the plate between them on the floor. She spread it thickly with marmalade, mostly for the purpose of irritating Draco. I don't really care for it either, she thought. He gave her an enigmatic smile and reached for the butter.

"How can you be so cheerful, Malfoy?" she asked irritably. "All of our art's disappeared!"

He took a large, thoughtful bite of bread, chewing and swallowing before answering her. "Weasley, I've been turning several ideas over in my mind. I believe we both know that we've finally managed to create art. That's what we accomplished last night. You'd agree with that, wouldn't you?"

Ginny swirled marmalade round and round with her knife, creating a circle on her slice of bread. She stared down at it. "I… yes. I think we did, Malfoy. But what happened to it? Unless we've got something to show the Ministry-"

"Ah, but here's where my exceptionally brilliant idea comes in, you see." Draco held up the satchel. "I think I know where it is, Weasley."

"I've already reached all the way in there about ten times and felt around," she said tightly. "Do you think I hadn't thought of that? There isn't a thing in that bag except breakfast, Malfoy, and we've eaten it."

A corner of his mouth quirked up. "I think that you simply haven't gone about your search in the right way."

"What do you think you talking about now?"

"You've tried on your own, Weasley. Of course you've failed."

"If you think you can do better, be my guest," snapped Ginny.

Draco shook his head. "I've already tried as well. No, that's not the way either. But I'm fairly sure that I've figured out what is." Without any warning at all, he reached across the plate and took Ginny's hand. She jumped.

"Malfoy—"

"Shh." He leaned closer to her, pushing their hands together, guiding her so that they moved as one. Now they were moving towards the satchel. In a flash, Ginny understood.

Together, they reached into the very bottom. She felt her fingers fumble against paper. Then something solid, something that felt like a book, a pack of pencils, the dusty feel of charcoal- oh! Her hands were full but Draco helped her; they worked in tandem, as a team, and together, they pulled out everything that was in the bag.

Ginny looked at all of her art supplies incredulously. "Malfoy, it's everything we need! Do you realize what this means? We can do all the sketches now—" Her words died away as Draco drew out the last piece of paper and held it up.

She reached out her finger and traced the one figure in their last drawing, from the night before seamless, beginning to end.

"A perfect circle," she said softly.

Then she looked up with a little gasp of surprise. Draco had been tracing it from the other end, and their fingers had met in the middle.

"So, Weasley. Aren't you the one who's required to teach me the entire history of Western art in the next twenty-four hours? You'd best get started, don't you think?"

His words were brisk and almost businesslike, but he did not move his finger away from hers where they were so barely joined by their very tips. Ginny didn't move hers, either.

"And how exactly are we going to do that, Malfoy?" she asked.

"I can't say that I'm completely sure," he answered her, "but something rather interesting seems to have happened to that wall whilst we were busy with breakfast, don't you think?" He jerked his head to the left.

Ginny looked up. The space where the canvas had been was now covered with a herd of red bulls chasing each other. She gave a gasp of excitement. "Malfoy! Look!"

"Weasley, did you sneak out of bed to draw these on the wall in the middle in the night? I rather like them. They've got amazing vitality."

"No, Malfoy! Those are the bulls from the caves of Lascaux. And look, there—" She pointed to a figure with her other hand. "There's the great black bull. Get up. Hurry, before it gets away or something."

"I'm not done with my toast."

She glared at him. "Get up, you lazy sod. I'll use a Stimulation charm and set them all stampeding straight at you."

Draco gave her the flashing, quicksilver grin that she was sure she'd never seen before the past two days. "You've never been able to take a joke, have you, Weasley?" He examined the red ochre animals critically. "What sort of point do these represent in the process of Western art?"

"They were created around 17,000 years ago, Malfoy. So you're right. We really do need to get moving."

His silvery eyes scanned a herd of horses, their manes rippling in an invisible wind. "Well, I think we've already found our centaur."

He's right. She stood next to him, so close that she could hear his heartbeat, the entire side of their bodies touching, their hands brushing each other, his skin against hers so hot that she wondered dimly if he had a fever. Or perhaps she did. Looking at the horses, Ginny caught her breath in longing, in joy, in recognition of journey begun. As one, their hands reached for the sketchbook.

It was a day that seemed to last forever. It was a day that fled by all too soon. But in the meantime, the gallery seemed inexhaustible, and the two of them simply kept moving on.

"What's this one?" asked Draco.

"The Vision of the Ball of Fire," said Ginny. "By Hildegard of Bingen. She was a twelfth century nun who used to go into trances and then paint her visions."

They both stared at the flaming concentric rings of gold and red until Ginny saw them imprinted behind her own eyes. Then she felt herself drawing them, hardly looking down at the paper. But when she did, she saw that Draco was drawing them too.

"What about this one?" asked Draco a bit later.

"The Isenheim Altarpiece," said Ginny. "Matthias Grunewald. It's an example of medieval religious art."

"Ah," said Draco. "It's the Muggle version of the sacred mystery of the Goddess and the Year-King. I see…" Together, they drew the eternal mystery of sacrifice, passion, and pain, and at some indefinable moment, their drawings began to meld into the sketches for the sculptures at the Ministry fountain.

"What about this one?" asked Draco, later still.

Ginny blushed slightly. "Um… we've got into the Renaissance now. The Birth of Venus, by Botticelli."

Draco examined the painting in a leisurely and very thorough sort of way. "Quite anatomically correct, isn't she? And the strands of ginger hair don't seem to cover very much." The woman standing on the half-shell looked back at him with a raised eyebrow. "You know, I rather think that she reminds me of someone," he went on.

Ginny stared down at the floor, blushing furiously. "I don't know who you mean, Malfoy."

He smiled down at her. "The witch, of course. Just a bit." Then his hand closed over hers and they began to draw, and she found that she agreed with him, after all.

"Oh! This is one of my favorites," said Ginny, pointing to the panel of fresco on the wall.

Draco's mouth quirked up. "One certainly can't complain about anatomical correctness here."

That's Michelangelo for you." She simply wouldn't blush, Ginny decided. "The Creation of Adam. It's from the Sistine Chapel ceiling. And I think a bit of Adam ought to go into the wizard."

Draco studied the panel, and then indicated a part of it with his finger. "Well, perhaps not that bit. We'd never get it past Humperdinck."

She laughed, and the pencil flew across the paper beneath their hands, strong and sure and lyrical.

"I don't know if we need to take anything from the Baroque era," said Ginny.

"We're going to skip over an entire era?" Draco asked dubiously. "Exactly how long was it, Weasley?"

"Oh, about a hundred and fifty years. There was an an annoying Ingres Odalisque,, a silly Bernini sculpture, a lot of overly dramatic lighting, some decent Rembrandts, and that's about it. Hardly anything worthwhile in it."

"Hardly anything worthwhile in a hundred and fifty years," repeated Draco. "That sounds a bit dodgy to me."

"I suppose we could work on Judith Decapitating Holofernes," Ginny said sweetly. "Artemisia Gentelleschi painted a very good version. Would you like to be the model, Malfoy?"

"Er… on second thought, perhaps we'd best hurry on to whatever came nest."

"I wanted to show you this one," said Ginny rather shyly. "I've always loved Manet's Olympia."

Draco examined the nude woman staring defiantly back at him from her couch, her eyes proud and fierce. "Ah, there's the witch," he said.

"Yes, I think so too."

So they drew, and drew, and drew, canvases and frescos and sculptures moving by in a blur, past starry nights and screams, boating parties and Sunday afternoons, quilts and dinner parties and picnics on the grass, until at last Ginny could not keep anything straight anymore. She had no idea what she was seeing; it was all she could do to simply keep one foot in front of the other, until—

"Weasley! Do try to be a bit more careful, can't you?"

Draco's arm came up in front of her, catching her just before she walked into the wall. Ginny shook her head and looked up, feeling as if she were coming out of a daze. They had circled the entire gallery.

"Is…. Is this the end?" she asked. Her words sounded thick and slow.

"I suppose it must be," said Draco.

Ginny glanced back. The walls were blank. Her hands were empty. She had a sudden, awful, sinking feeling. No; no, it was all right, it had to be; Draco held the sketchbook. She grabbed it out of his hands and flipped it open.

Every page was empty.

"Oh, no," she moaned. "They're gone… all gone…"

Draco shook his head. "I don't think so."

"What are you talking about? We just spent gods-know-how-many-hours sketching, and every single one disappeared! It's a disaster!"

"No, it's not," Draco said almost harshly. "Look!" He grabbed Ginny's shoulders, spun her round, and pointed at the wall. She saw that one painting was left, and she gave a half-hiccup of a laugh.

"Oh, that's brilliant. Leda and the Swan. I suppose that this is somebody's idea of a joke. All of our work's gone, and now we're left with this thing, mocking us—Malfoy, you don't even know—"

"But I do, Weasley, I do," Draco said intensely. "Listen to me. Our work hasn't even begun; can't you feel it? Everything we've done is only a prologue. Now is when we create art, and this is what it's got to be." He stabbed a forefinger at the embrace of Leda and her divine lover, and Ginny saw it all at last. He knew, now, what she'd known at the beginning. She stared at the painting with something like terror.

I can't, some treacherous part of her whimpered. Some cowardly part.

"You can," said Draco. "Draw with me, Weasley. You'll find that you can."

She struggled for a moment, with him, with herself. "Malfoy, we can't do this! When Harry sees the sort of art we'll come up with-"

"Don't worry about what Potter might think!" he said harshly. "Just draw, Weasley, draw!" He seized her hand and tried to move her fingers. She fought back, pushing her own hand away; he moved forward, and suddenly they were drawing together.

Afterwards, Draco and Ginny looked at the sketch of two intertwined marble , all their fierceness spent. Ginny thought of how she had sometimes known that she had created something outside of herself with her art, something other than herself and beyond herself. But all of those times had been only shallow fragile echoes of this time. And she had created it with someone. With Draco Malfoy. She stole a peek at him from under her lowered lashes. What did he think? How did he feel when he looked at the sketch of this stone witch and wizard meant for the Ministry fountain? He hadn't said a word.

"Uh… we really can't show this anyplace where Harry might see it," said Ginny, clearing her throat. "You know we can't."

"I'd never allow Potter to see this," said Draco.

He might have taken the thought from her own head, Ginny realized. They looked at the sketch a bit longer.

"Let's draw another one," she finally said.

So they did, their hands moving smoothly and rhythmically, as if all of the hard work had already been done. Ginny gave a long sigh of completion, putting down her pencil.

Draco examined the main drawing critically, and she saw it through his eyes, as if with doubled vision. The four figures stood in an overlapping circle: witch, wizard, centaur, and house-elf. Unlike the old sculpture, they all stood on equal ground. Ginny fanned out the other drawings, showing each statue individually, from different angles, from above, below, and in all perspectives.

"It's finished," she said.

Draco nodded. "These are exactly what we need for the public offering, all right. I wonder how they all ended up holding hands? The design looks positively egalitarian."

Ginny rolled her eyes. "Yes, Malfoy, I know it goes against all your deepest instincts. You don't need to tell me that."

"Why, Weasley. You cut me to the quick. " His eyes scanned the drawings again. "I think they'll do very well."

"So do I. Of course…" Ginny hesitated. "They're not like the first one."

"No," said Draco. "But nobody else needs to lay eyes on that one, don't you think?"

Ginny nodded. But she knew, too, that they couldn't have possibly drawn the sketches they intended everyone to see without having drawn the first one, the real one, the one that mattered.

"So now what happens?" asked Ginny, tucking the used plates under the satchel. They had eaten ham and egg pie in a curiously companionable sort of silence, and these were the first words that either of them had spoken in a long time.

Draco shrugged. "We'll go to sleep." He was taking off his shoes and placing them carefully at the side of a little white bed that had appeared when Ginny wasn't looking.

"I meant tomorrow, Malfoy. Do you think we need to work on the art anymore, or…?"

"No. It's complete, Weasley. Can't you feel it?"

Yes. She could. The little green portfolio on top of the bedside table gleamed like a jewel in the faint light. They wouldn't need to open it again until they got to the Ball. Oh! That's it.

"Malfoy, how are we going to get to that ball tomorrow? How are we even going to find it?"

He draped his cloak over a chair. "Weasley, that's the very definition of the least of our problems. We'll be drawn to the Pureblood Ball automatically at the correct time."

"So what's the most of our problems?"

Draco grimaced. "You really did have to ask that, didn't you?"

"Well, yes. I don't see how else we're going to—"

"Never mind; my question was meant rhetorically—well, it has been rather a long day, hasn't it? Anyway, finding the Pureblood Ball is the easy part. Let's just say that I'm planning to devote all of tomorrow morning to discussing how on earth we'll going to even begin to handle things once we get there."

"Oh," said Ginny lamely. She started grabbing at the sheets.

"You're yanking those off my feet. Do you want me to freeze? It's dreadfully cold in this corridor in the middle of the night, or hadn't you noticed? Oh, Weasley, do stop it." His big hand came down on hers, stilling her motions. Then he spread all the covers wide for her. Ginny looked up at his face, and saw the smile, as innocent as Lucifer before his fall from heaven. Impossible to resist. Pointless to try. Besides, it really was cold.

She slid between the sheets and not-quote-up-against the warmth of his arms were open only inches away. She could feel something in her chest crying out, tugging her towards the cradle they made. No, she thought resolutely. I won't fall that far. Then slowly, reluctantly, she fell asleep, painfully aware of Draco Malfoy lying next to her.

Tap. Tap. Taptaptap.
Ginny's eyelids fluttered open.
Tap tap tap…

She sat up in bed, straining her ears, trying to figure out where the sound was coming from. It sounded so close…

Tap. Tap. Tap…

She leaped up and made a sudden grab. Warm, solid flesh moved and bunched under her hands; a body jumped and turned, and then a witchlight flickered orange, radiating a tiny, tight circle of light. Draco's bewildered face looked back at her.

"I can't find it," he said in a very small voice. .

In a rush, she remembered. "What are you looking for?" she asked guardedly, seeing how troubled he looked. "You never did tell me."

Draco shook his head, his lips trembling.

"Can't you tell me?"

In answer, he unbuttoned his pyjama top and pointed at his chest. Ginny peered closely at his pale skin until she saw the outline of the little carved door. Oh! This isn't real. This is only a dream. The realization poured over her like cool, refreshing water.

"Do you want me to open it, Draco?" Surely it was safe to call him by his first name, in a dream.

He nodded. Then he reached up and laid his long white hand along her cheek. She closed her eyes and leaned her head into his palm. When he drew his fingers back, something glinted between them. He handed her a tiny golden key.

Ginny fitted it into the miniature lock and pried the door open with a fingernail. She reached in and gave a little cry of pain; something had pricked her, something sharp set into the side of the door. A drop of blood welled up from one of her fingers, but really, it didn't matter much. I always knew I'd have to pay in blood to get into this room… or out of it, more likely, she thought, and because it was a dream, she didn't wonder how she could have known any such thing.

She gave a little caught breath. Oh, there was Draco's heart! Gently, she stroked the soft tender thing, and it beat with life beneath her touch. But her fingers caught on the dark jagged bits, and she felt the pain go all through her when she felt all the hurts that his heart had endured.

"It's missing pieces, Draco," she said sadly.

"I know," he said. "Keep touching me like that, Ginny, will you? I think you're healing me a bit."

So she kept caressing him, desperately sending all the healing power she had, or hoped she had, through the surface of her fingertips, until she felt Draco's heart soften, like a frightened child rescued from cruelty.

"Can't I do anything else?" Ginny finally asked.

"I tried to find one of the missing bits," he said. "But I can't. I can't get to her, even though I know she's here."

"Who, Draco? Who is it you can't reach?"

His lips moved slowly, like the dreamer he was. "Her. She is… My… my… m…mmm." He would say no more.

Ginny didn't feel at all angry, or threatened, as she might have done in waking life, when she would have been afraid that he was talking about Marie. "I wish I could help you find her, Draco. Whoever she is. Why is it that you think you can't?"

He blinked, and then spoke with surprising clarity. "Because there's no way out of this room until we leave it for the Pureblood Ball, Ginny. We can't reach any of the other soft spaces from here. "

"And she's in one of the soft spaces?"

Draco was silent. Then he spoke abruptly. "It was about the money, you see. That's why I was there. I never meant to hurt anyone. You do believe me, don't you, Ginny?"

"Of course I do," she said soothingly. His words teased at her mind, because they held an important clue. If she could only remember when she'd last heard him say them, or something like them, then she would understand something more of what he was saying now. But she couldn't remember, and anyway it didn't seem very important when he was looking at her with such large silvery eyes that were so very sad and hopeless.

"I can't find her," he said, and he seemed on the edge of tears. "I won't be able to find her, Ginny, ever, ever."

Her fingers were still moving over his heart, delicately. She traced an aching gap. "This one will never be filled, unless you do find her," she said. "I can tell."

"No," he said. "It won't."

The way he said the words collided with the shocking tenderness of his heart and the searing pain of the lost pieces in it, until Ginny wanted to scream or tear something apart or even kill, if killing would keep him from feeling any more pain, ever again. . There was nothing she would not do to protect Draco Malfoy from the world that had hurt him so much, because nothing mattered more than to keep that delicate hurt heart beating, as it was now.

"You'll find her, Draco," she said. "Not here and not now, but soon. I promise."

He looked up at her with the eyes of a wounded boy. "Promise?"

"Yes," she said, and to make her promise good, she pressed her lips to his forehead, just once. He sighed, and then he suddenly held her to him so hard that she gasped. The door to his heart was not yet closed, and she felt its furnace heat against her own. Her heart was hurt as well, and it yearned towards his with a passion that she swiftly knew could tear her apart, if she allowed it. His own hand closed over hers, guiding her fingers to the largest gap of all in his heart, and she felt the tears of blood that it was weeping.

"Oh… Draco, no! How long has that been going on?"

"Many years," he murmured into her neck. "Oh, so very many. Can't you heal it?"

"I don't know," she said honestly. "But it isn't time yet. You know that, don't you?"

He sighed deeply. "I do, Ginny. And nothing can ever happen outside of its appointed time." Then she felt his shudder of disappointment run all through his body, spreading to her own, but he let her go.

She pressed a kiss to her lips and touched it to his damaged heart , and then she closed the door.