A/N: Thanks to all readers and reviewers!

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When Ginny woke, her cheeks were wet. She touched them wonderingly. Why was I crying? I dreamed… well, I don't really remember, but it was something about a door… anyway, Draco was in it…I think I held him in my arms. That's mad. I couldn't have done. I'm certainly not doing it now. She stole a glance at him as he lay rolled onto his side, several inches away from her. He was curled up into a ball, and the set of his back and shoulder muscles seemed very tense. He was muttering something under his breath. Carefully, she bent her head closer to hear.

"No. Get away. I won't let you. Don't touch me. Stop. No… no…."

Ginny scowled at herself. So much for that! Then she sighed, flopping back onto the bed. Whatever the dream had been, it was already slipping back into unreality. Had anything about that long, long night been real at all? How could she be sure? Oh, gods! The sketches!

Ginny struggled to rise to her knees, her fingers digging into the bed. Wait… that doesn't feel right at all. The surface was softer than a bed, then considerably harder; then a hand was grabbing at hers and before she could make so much as a sound, Draco had jerked bolt upright and flattened her against the opposite wall with breathtaking speed. His face was an inch or two from hers, white and frightened, his eyes wide and unseeing.

"No!!" he gasped.

"Malfoy, it's only me," Ginny somehow managed to say.

His grip on her shoulders loosened, and he blinked. "Weasley?" he asked in a small, uncertain voice.

"Who did you think it was?"

"I…" He rubbed his forehead with one hand. "Someone else," he muttered.

"I suppose it's nice to know you didn't actually plan to attack me." Ginny shoved him away from her.

Draco shook his head as if clearing it. "Well, as I recall it, Weasley, you're the one who started the attack," he said smoothly. "And your hand's still located in rather a strategic area, you know."

Ginny suddenly realized that her palm was digging directly into Draco's lean hipbone. If she'd happened to grab only a few inches over to the left- Oh, gods! Hurriedly, she removed her hand.

"Haven't you already tortured me sufficiently with all that snoring you were doing last night?" Draco shifted position, rubbing his head. "There's a sea dragon who used to paddle round the estuary near the Lyme bay estate who was quieter than you were at, oh, three in the morning. Or four. Or five. I finally had to wrap a pillow round my head and keep in there with a sticking charm—"

"Oh, can't you ever just shut your big mouth, Malfoy?" snapped Ginny. "Where the hell are those sketches?"

He moved forward so that he sat disturbingly close to her in the bed, and he lifted her chin up with a finger. "I really did think that artists were supposed to be more observant, you know," he said.

"Ooh—" Ginny's mouth dropped open. She was looking up at the tiny bedside table. Their sketches were neatly stacked on top of it.

"I forgot about it," she said with as much dignity as she could manage. "Temporarily."

"I see. So that would explain the unprovoked attack, I suppose. Should I start wearing armor?"

"Ooh—"

He caught her wrist as she tried to turn away. "I've never appreciated my quick reflexes quite so thoroughly before, I'll say that. Just think, Weasley—all those years as a Slytherin Seeker are paying off at last."

"Oh-"

He didn't let go. "Tell me, were you accustomed to waking up your older brothers in that way? I'm surprised that they didn't throw you out and rewrite family history to deny that they ever had a sister, if so. Of course, the oldest member of the brood—Bill, is it?—doesn't he already have one child? So I suppose that such must not have been the case, because I don't recall hearing that he ever played Seeker—"

"Shut it, Malfoy!" Ginny blushed furiously. I've really got to stop doing that all the time around him. She finally yanked her wrist out of his grasp. "I didn't really snore, did I? You made that part up. I'll bet you did."

"Maybe just the least little bit. You weren't really as loud as the sea monster."

She scowled at him and tried to reach for the portfolio. Draco shifted again so that he was sitting cross-legged, his hair tousled in an infinite number of delicious directions. Somehow, he ended up between her and the table.

"There was a very pretty little mermaid who used to sit about on a rock combing out her long hair, and she did have a way of snoring when she took her siesta in the afternoons. I suppose that you sounded a good deal more like her."

Ginny crossed her arms. "A mermaid, huh?"

Draco leaned back in a way that caused all the muscles to tense and play along his lower abdomen- not that she was keeping an eye on that portion of his anatomy or any other, Ginny sternly reminded herself. "Oh, yes. I remember her very well indeed. My mother didn't like my watching her, though. She discouraged it quite strongly in fact."

She sighed. "All right, Malfoy. I'll bite. Why didn't your mother want you looking at the mermaid?"

"I imagine it was because mermaids don't wear anything from the waist up, and this particular one had very short hair which didn't cover any strategic bits. I'd has just turned fourteen the summer she liked to spend so much time in the lagoon, and I was very… intrigued by her, let's just say."

Something tiny and very sharp jabbed into Ginny chest, just beneath a rib on the upper left side. "I'll just bet you were," she said.

"Don't be silly. She wasn't half as pretty as you."

She stood very still. He had called her pretty. Draco Malfoy had just said that she… was pretty. Oh, no. Oh, this is not good. Oh, but it was the top step off a slippery slope that could only crash them both at a bottom they had barely avoided before. He would stroll off smiling, brushing off his hands. Whereas she… Ginny stared at the wall, picturing herself crawling after him, holding out a pitiful hand. He briskly ignored it.

Do refrain from lounging about on the floor, Weasley. You're only embarrassing yourself, you know. Why try to prolong an amusing episode into a tiresome affair?

She wiped the tears away from her cheek. Is that all it was to you, Malfoy? An affair?

He looked back at her, considering. Perhaps a bit more. Perhaps everything more. Yes… perhaps everything there is. Do give me some sun, Weasley. You're carrying it all in your hair.

She felt Draco smooth a strand of hair away from her face, gently. "You can't even properly see me, can you?"

But she could, Ginny thought painfully. Quite well, in fact. His oddly grave face didn't look at all like the careless one in her quick, awful fantasy. The problem was that she didn't know which face to trust.

"Wake up," murmured Draco, tucking the hair behind her ear, and she knew that this would be the only face she would remember.

"I think we both need to eat breakfast, Malfoy," said Ginny, trying to force a laugh. "This place is starting to get to us."

"Yes," he said, looking suddenly very tired. "It'll do that."

Ginny chewed moodily. "Where on earth are we supposed to start, Malfoy? I hardly know anything about the Pureblood Ball in the first place."

He swallowed the last piece of bacon with an appetite that would have done Ron proud, Ginny thought. Ron… She swallowed hard herself, even though she had eaten the last of her French toast. It was good to see Draco eating, anyway. Was it just her imagination, or had he already gained just the slightest bit of weight in the past two and half weeks (or however long it's really been? He's put it on in all the right places, if so. Stop it! Stupid brain.)

Draco buttered another slice of toast. "You must have at least heard something about the Ball at some point. I'm sure it wasn't a social event attended by anyone in your household, but still—"

Fire flashed in Ginny's eyes. "If you're trying to imply that we weren't good enough to go—"

"Not at all," said Draco. His voice sounded strangely toneless. "Any one of you could have eventually arranged an invitation at some point if you'd been determined enough. But I highly doubt that either of your parents ever had anything positive to say on the subject."

"That's right," said Ginny. "Mum said that she did go once, actually. It was back before she married Dad, when she was still a Prewett. The Blacks were trying to bring her back into the fold."

Draco nodded. "I guessed as much. So what did she tell you, Weasley?"

"She never exactly told me anything. She just sort of… let these little hints fall. She made it sound just awful; she said that everyone snubbed her and looked down their noses and wouldn't dance with her."

"The worst of the upper crust of the wizarding world, I suppose, all of the cold snobbery and prejudice and exclusion. Yes. There's some truth to that. Anything else?"

"Well…" Ginny bit her lip. "I'll admit that she did make it sound a sort of fairy tale, between the prancing horses and the gold coaches and the ball dresses. But not one that would ever be available to people like us. I just can't believe that I'm actually going to be there with you, Malfoy."

Did a shadow pass across his face, Ginny wondered, or had she only imagined it? "Have you heard anything else at all?" he asked.

"Well, I read a bit about the last one," she said without thinking.

"Really." Draco took a large bite of toast .

"I read the Rita Skeeter story about you at the Ball, all right? It had a picture of you, and… well… Astoria. Malfoy, what is it?" Something had happened to his face. She knew it now.

"Nothing," said Draco said in a light voice. "Weasley, if that's the sum total of your knowledge about the Pureblood Ball, then we've got our work cut out for us."

"Something's wrong," said Ginny. "I can tell. Malfoy, you really can't fool me anymore about that sort of thing."

"Weasley…" He sighed. "I've got to teach you all about the rules, regulations, and code of conduct of the five-thousand-year history of the Pureblood Ball. Isn't that enough?"

"Yes, but—"

"You've got to understand the strict order of precedence on arrival. You've got to know how you're going to be announced. You've got to know how to go into dinner; you've got to have impeccable table manners—"

"Malfoy, if you think that I don't know how to eat with a knife and fork, or what a napkin is for—"

"Do you know how to dance?" he interrupted her. "Well, you've got to know the cotillion, the minuet, and the quadrille, because you'll have to do them. You'll have to know how far to stand from your partner in a waltz, how delicately to flutter your fan, and how many lumps of sugar to take in your tea."

She stared at him. "Malfoy, are you out of your mind?"

"Do you know how to address the second daughter of a baronet? Are you sure which fish fork to use for sole Veronique? Have you ever learned how to play whist? Tell me, Weasley, tell me!" He began to breathe very hard.

"Malfoy! Shut it, or I'll hit you over the head with a frying pan! I don't think I know any of these things, and you have to know that you can't teach me in—what? Eight hours? And don't we have to take a little bit of time to do a couple of other slightly important things? Such as, oh, I don't know, figuring out how we're going to convince Harry to not send you to Azkaban the second he sees you there? Who cares whether I know how to dance the quadruped or not?"

"It's the quadrille, Weasley. And it might matters very much, because if we don't follow every rule and regulation at the Pureblood Ball, then we're lost," said Draco. He sighed. "Look, I—I really don't have time to explain this properly now, but you've got to take my word for it. Can't you just do that?"

"Oh." For an awful moment, Ginny simply stared at him. "Wait. Malfoy, there's a solution. You're going to be there, and you'll be with me the entire time. You know exactly how every single thing is supposed to be done. You can just guide me. If you see me doing something wrong, stop me; tell me how to do it exactly right."

"It wouldn't work," muttered Draco.

"Why not? It's the perfect solution. And it's the only one I can possibly see if we have to follow the rules perfectly, because you know them and I don't."

"Weasley, I'm telling you that we can't do it."

"Don't be an arse, Malfoy!" snapped Ginny. "You can't just tell me that there are crazy rules I have to follow perfectly, and then say that that the only way I could manage to do this couldn't possibly work. Why wouldn't it work, why can't you just tell me exactly how I should do things? You're going to be with me all the time—"

"Because I won't be!" yelled Draco.

Or maybe he hadn't actually yelled, thought Ginny. Maybe it only seemed that way because the silence after his words seemed so very loud.

"What are you talking about?" she asked, when she couldn't take the silence anymore. "Of course you're going to be there. Malfoy. You've got to be."

"Yes," he said, glancing down at his hands. "But not with you, Weasley."

"I don't understand."

"Neither do I," said Draco.

"You mean that you don't know—"

"Oh, I know, all right," said Draco. "I'm fully aware, you could say. The part I don't understand, Weasley, is why I'm about to show this to you. But I feel compelled. It's as if there's something beating against the inside of my chest quite uncomfortably, and it won't stop until I give this to you after all." He reached up and plucked the portfolio from the little table, handing it to her, not quite looking at her.

Ginny's heart sank. "Oh, Malfoy. Did something happen to the sketches?"

"Just open it, Weasley."

All of the sketches were still there. Relief rushed through her as she paged through them. Then she stopped. There was another piece of paper, a folded, thick cream-laid sheet of linen parchment with a broken wax seal.

"When did this get here?" asked Ginny.

"Very early in the morning. Your snoring had woken me up, and I couldn't get back to sleep… never mind, Weasley. Just get this over with, can't you?"

Slowly, Ginny opened the folded parchment. Even more slowly, she read it. In some corner of her mind, she couldn't quite understand why it was taking her so long to read so few words.

Lady Astoria Jacquelina Malfoy, nee Greengrass, requested to appear at six o' clock of the evening of the first of December. Escort Lord Draconis Lucas Malfoy.

The words were written in slanting, elegant, silvery calligraphy.

"I wonder why the woman's name is first," said Ginny. She really couldn't think of anything else to say, at the moment.

"It's an ancient wizarding tradition," said Draco's toneless voice behind her.

Since there was nothing else to say, Ginny naturally didn't say it.
"Etiquette dictates very strict rules regarding escorts," Draco went on in the same sort o voice. "Single men couldn't possibly escort married women, for example. And married men…"

"Have to escort their wives," said Ginny, finally understanding.

"Yes."

Ginny kept looking at the wall, away from him. Lady Astoria Jacquelina Malfoy. Lord Draconis Lucas Malfoy. She remembered the photograph she had seen so long ago in the Daily Prophet where they stood together at another Pureblood Ball, exquisitely dressed, blond and beautiful, perfectly suited to other. In the next moment, they would have turned in the motion of a dance, pirouetting flawlessly in neat figures, following every utterly bewildering rule that they understood and that Ginny herself didn't.

She heard a movement behind her. She would turn round and Draco would be laughing at her. She was sure of it. No—he wouldn't even bother to laugh. He would be cool, calm, and collected, and she would snap, because she couldn't bear it, and she didn't know how it had come to this, couldn't retrace whatever horrendously stupid steps had led her to stumble into this pit. She would turn round and see Draco Malfoy's cool, uncaring face, and she would lose it, utterly and horribly, and then everything would be destroyed and she would have ruined it.

A hand grabbed her shoulder and spun her round, and she was suddenly confronting Draco's frantic face.

"Weasley. Listen to me, for gods' sake; listen. I don't have any choice at all, there's nothing I can do; if we deviate from the rules in any way then we're lost; we've got to follow five millennia of pureblood tradition to the letter because even the slightest mistake could be the one that—Weasley? Are you listening to me? You're not listening. You haven't said a word." He shook her. She looked back at him blankly.

"Shite!" he groaned. "Can't you see; don't you understand? You can't really think that I want to escort Astoria anywhere at all? I'd rather chop off my own foot with that spatula than lead her in a waltz! I've got to pretend that we're a happy couple, or at least that I wouldn't like to shove her into a cage of rabid nundus, and it makes me ill to even think of it. What will it take to make you believe me? What sort of proof do you need? Weasley, will you answer me?" He shook her shoulders until her head bobbled back and forth, and she struggled in his grip.

"Stop it, Malfoy! You're making me dizzy."

"Then don't let it get to the point where I'm forced to do that sort of thing," he said. "Why the bloody hell didn't you answer me, Weasley?"

He hadn't let go of her shoulders, and she could feel the heat of his hands seeping all the way into her skin. He was still breathing very hard, and she could hear each one of his breaths. She didn't answer for a while.

"Weasley, what's wrong with you?" groaned Draco.

"Nothing," said Ginny. "Nothing at all."

He examined her face closely. "Do you believe me now?"

"Yes," she said quietly.

He sat back, sighing. "I really have no choice at all, you know."

"I know," said Ginny.

They were both silent for several moments. Ginny wondered what Draco was thinking about. She certainly knew just what was going through her own head.

"It's our only chance," Draco finally said. "It's—"

Ginny reached up and laid a finger on his lips. "Sh. I understand, Malfoy."

The look of incredulity on his face was downright funny, he thought. "You… you do?"

She smiled. "Malfoy, you really don't understand women all that well, do you?"

Half of his mouth curved up in what she had privately dubbed Classic Malfoy Smirk #7. "For the sake of continued harmony throughout this entire preparatory process, Weasley, let's just say that I suppose I don't comprehend the fair sex quite so thoroughly as I imagined I did, after all."

"What a surprise." She sat back, leaning on her elbows. "Malfoy, are there really a million rules we have to follow, or were you just taking the mickey out of me a bit?"

"Oh, there are more than a million. This has been going on in one form or another for five thousand years, remember?"

"We still haven't exactly solved the problem of how I'm going to remember any of them, you know, even if we have time to go over more than about, oh, five or six out of the million plus-"

"Never mind that. I'll find a way. And it won't include—well, never mind." A muscle jumped in Draco's jaw. "Weasley, I think the primary problem is that I really don't know which are the important ones to follow in this case. I'm not at all sure what could trip us up."

"Then I don't know what way out of it you think you're going to find," said Ginny. "But what did you mean by 'it won't include'? Did you actually think of something?"

"No," muttered Draco. "I didn't. Look, why don't I start by finally starting to fill you in on the nature of the Ball? Do you actually know anything at all?"

"I already told you that I really don't," said Ginny.

"Well, haven't you always been curious?"

"I guess I have been," said Ginny. She did know just a bit more than she'd admitted to Draco, although she certainly wasn't about to tell him how she'd found out. She highly doubted it would be a good idea to tell him that when she took the author portrait versions of the patronesses of the ball out of the secret crate last May, they'd told her they thought that Draco should take her there.