A/N: Thanks to all readers and reviewers, especially: tryntee13 and amethyst-rose.
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A few minutes later, they stood in the ballroom in a line of chattering couples, waiting for the double doors to open. Ginny touched Blaise's arm. "Blaise," she asked quietly, "what exactly was that note Luna read? I didn't really understand it."
He looked at her as if trying to decide whether or not to tell her anything. "It's called a butterfly wish note."
"That's not the most helpful explanation I've ever heard, Blaise. What's that?"
"They only exist in the soft spaces, or someplace very near to them." Blaise sounded quite evasive, in her opinion. "I doubt you'd ever have seen anything like the wish notes before, Gin."
"You're probably right. That's why I'm asking what they are."
"You really don't give up, do you?"
"That's been said to me before." Again, Ginny thought of Draco. She couldn't help it.
Blaise was silent for a moment. Ginny saw for the first time that Luna stood just a few couples ahead of them in line. She was silent too, and when she turned to the side, Ginny also saw that her skin looked slightly pink around the eyes.
"Fine; fine. I'll tell you everything you've always wanted to learn about butterfly wish notes, but didn't know to ask," said Blaise in a strange tone of voice. It was louder than the one he had been using so far. "They're written on a very small parchment and carried to the recipient by a butterfly that clearly comes from the sender. You recognized mine when you saw it, didn't you, Gin?"
"Uh… yes," said Ginny. "It even had bottle-green wings, like your tailcoat."
"Right. It did. Now, as far as what they carry…" Blaise stared intently as Luna's profile. "Unexpressed wishes. Secret hopes which may be unknown even to the sender. Quite often, they're not sent willingly. It's been said that they express wishes which may be impossible to fulfill. But it all depends on the one they're sent to."
"I see," said Ginny. "Um…" Blaise was looking at her expectantly. What does he want me to do now? "Have you ever sent one before?" she asked.
He gave a sad smile. "Never," he said. "Not even once."
Luna pulled a lace handkerchief from her reticule. "Excuse me," she said in a muffled voice as she half-hid her face with it.
The line was moving at last, Ginny saw. "How do they decide who's at the start of this thing anyway?" she whispered to Blaise.
"It's ranked by order of importance, of course," he said. "That's quite exceptionally complex, so don't ask me to explain it, but the hostesses are at the head."
"I already guessed that much." Ginny stood on tiptoe and craned her neck.
"Yes, Gin; you're right," Blaise sighed. "The Malfoys are always nearly at the front."
"I wish you could put me on your shoulders or something," said Ginny. "I can't see a thing. Can you?"
Blaise didn't reply.
"You did see. I can tell. Come on, Blaise; you know I'll get it out of you."
"Astoria's there," murmured Blaise in her ear. "Draco isn't. She's with Theo Nott, and Kingsley and his wife are directly behind them. Now smile, Ginny, and look as if you're perfectly delighted to be walking into dinner with the great Zabini as your partner."
She took his arm without another word.
They filed into another huge, narrow room, filled by a mahogany table that seemed endlessly long to Ginny. "Where are we supposed to sit?" she asked.
"Right here." Blaise pulled out an elegant gold and white chair for her.
"How do you know?"
"I know." He sat down and stared broodingly to his right, where Luna sat with Dean, although she seemed intent on studying her linen napkin. Ginny stared down at her place setting, appalled by the number of forks and spoons. What on earth were they all for? She looked up into an enormous arrangement of pink, white, and red hothouse roses in huge silver vases. Through the petals, she could see Kingsley Shacklebolt's impassive face. She quickly looked away, to her left. The seat was empty. Directly next to it was Astoria.
Malfoy. Oh, dear gods… Draco's Malfoy's supposed to sit there. Except that he's not here! And he's the one who has the sketches!
"Ratafia, Mistress Weasley?" asked a piping voice behind her. She turned to see a protocol-elf with a pitcher of something.
"Sure," she said. The elf poured a golden liquid smelling of almonds into her glass, and she gulped at it, coughing.
"I suppose I should have warned you about that," said Blaise. "It's quite strong."
"Maybe I'm better off losing consciousness at this rate," said Ginny. "Where is Malfoy?"
"I don't know," said Blaise, turning back to her. "But you've got to keep yourself together, Ginny, and so do I." He brushed the side of her left cheek, and she glanced in that direction.
Astoria and Theo Knott were whispering to each other, their heads pressed together. As Ginny watched, Astoria glanced up to look at her. A sly smile spread over the narrow, horselike face.
The dishes were endless. Turtle soups, pink salmon with elaborately carved lemons, legs of lamb stuck with springs of rosemary; two whole suckling pigs with apples in their mouths, roast geese stuffed with fruit, potato soufflés, braces of spitted partridges and quail… Ginny quickly lost count of the porcelain platters that the elves kept waving under her nose, but she refused nearly all of them. She took a slice of beef and some salad so that she had something on her plate to toy with, and she drank glass after glass of sherry and claret. That only made the buzz of voices louder and the glare of the chandeliers brighter.
"Gin, you really ought to eat something," said Blaise.
She chewed at a bite of rare beef. It had the texture of leather. "Ugh. It looked a lot better than it tastes."
"I did warn you about the food." Blaise glanced at Luna. She had pleated and unpleated her napkin until it was a crumpled mass of folds. "I'm sorry, Ginny. I know that I'm doing nothing but making the situation worse."
Ginny shook her head and started on some wilted lettuce. "I have a feeling that it doesn't matter now, Blaise. I don't know why. I wish you'd just talk to her."
"I'm sure that she wouldn't listen to a word I tried to say, and I don't blame her a bit. I've been a cold, miserable bastard." Blaise began to take on a noble, tragic sort of look, and Ginny had to suppress the urge to kick him under the table.
"Fine; don't talk to Luna, then! I've got other things to worry about." Ginny glanced towards the head of the table and saw Dariya de Lieven and Lady Jersey rising from their seats. "Blaise, they're getting up."
"Shite," muttered Blaise. "So they are."
"What do we do now?"
"Ah… we retire into the dessert room. Remember that smaller one where we held the amateur dramatics?"
"But everyone can't fit in there."
He couldn't quite look at her. "Everyone doesn't need to. Ginny… well, you've got to know, after all… that's where you and Draco are slated to present the sketches in a bit."
'
Ginny's hand tightened around a used fish fork. "And when was I going to be informed of this fact?"
"Look, Draco was supposed to be here by now! I don't know why I always seem to end up being stuck with these awkward sorts of tasks."
She took a deep breath. "It's not your fault, Blaise."
The desserts looked lovely, thought Ginny. Footed silver plates of almond cheesecakes, tortes, fruit tarts, big bowls of custard, baked apples, tiered silver cakes holding petits fours covered with pink, green, and white sugar icing. She thought she'd like to try several of them. If I ever feel like eating again, that is.
She had ended up at the middle of the circle of the art crowd, somehow. Actually, she knew very well how it had happened. She was avoiding Kingsley Shacklebolt and Gaylord Humperdinck, who were talking quietly to each other. She was certainly staying away from Astoria and Theo Nott, who still seemed joined at the hip. It wasn't a very large room. There wasn't much of anywhere else to go.
Baroness van de Vere was holding forth at the moment. "What an awful ordeal you've endured, Ginny dearest," she shrieked at the top of her lungs, all the green feathers on her mauve turban waving at once. "Terrible. Unbearable. Dreadful." She stopped to draw breath. "Of course, I'd love to go through an ordeal just like it sometime soon. If I were twenty years younger— possibly thirty—you wouldn't have had a chance, my dear! I'd take that delicious Malfoy boy right away from you."
Ginny thought that she would have choked with laughter if she hadn't been so thoroughly consumed with attempts at coming up with every possible method of murdering Draco Malfoy as soon as he showed up with the sketches. Because he would show up, of course. Any moment now. He had to.
"But, uh, Lady van de Vere, it was an ordeal. I've hated every second of the past two and a half weeks-"
"Oh, yes, darling, every instant, I'm sure." A twinkle entered the older woman's heavily mascara'd eyes.
This line of conversation wasn't helping at all, Ginny decided. She turned to Sir Goiter von Goillingsworthy, who was blinking owlishly up at her. "You really can't imagine how bad it was. I mean, Lord Malfoy is, uh, so overbearing and snobbish and loathsome and, um, he practically kidnapped me, and, um—"
He shook his hand. "That wasn't kidnapping, Ginny. That was just—"
"I think I'll go have a petit fours," said Ginny in desperation. "Or maybe that would be a quarter of one petit fours. A petit one-eighth? I've never been quite sure about that point. Excuse me."
All six tiers of the silver cake tray were empty, she saw. The very solid ghost of Andy Warhol was standing behind the table and munching on the last pink cake.
"Hello, Ginny," he said vaguely, patting his top wig with one hand. "Don't mind them. They're not being very helpful, are they?"
"Oh, not you too!" groaned Ginny.
"I've saved one for you." He handed her a green petits fours with a skinny white hand.
She bit into it glumly. "It's really very good. Thanks."
"They're bringing more in a moment, you know." Andy blinked at her from behind thick glasses. "And we both know what really happened in those Crystal Palace rooms, don't we? But we don't need to say it. Especially not at the moment."
"I suppose it doesn't make any difference now, anyway." Ginny finished the cake.
"That's what I told dear Luna. I do hope I was right." He pointed discreetly at Luna, who was in a corner, partially hidden by a potted palm. Blaise was standing very close to her. Ginny watched him raise his hand to stroke her cheek, and she felt something in her chest twist painfully.
"You were, Andy," she said. "I can call you that, can't I?"
"I don't think that makes any difference anymore, either. But I can tell you what does."
"What?" Ginny asked tiredly.
Andy gave her his unexpectedly sweet smile and looked just past her shoulder.
Ginny thought later that she knew; even before she turned round, she knew. It didn't mean anything that she smelled chocolate, of course. She was standing next to the dessert table. Perhaps she had sensed another person a few yards away from her before she saw him, but that meant nothing either; the room was full of people. But still, she knew.
She turned to see Draco Malfoy at the far end of the table. He was facing almost entirely away from her, and she knew at once that he must have slipped in through the doors that led from the tiny conservatory. Ginny marched towards him immediately.
"Where the hell have you been, Malfoy?" she hissed.
He shrugged. His shoulders barely moved at all.
"How can you just come in here and—and shrug at me as if nothing's happened?" she said through gritted teeth. "I've been waiting and waiting for you, and I didn't think you were going to show up at all! And you're the one who's got the sketches, so I couldn't do anything without you. And I was so—" She stopped.
He finally turned to her. He looked incredibly weary, and for a moment, that was all that Ginny could see, or think. His face was whiter than normal, and he seemed to be holding himself upright with an effort. She scanned him quickly. Even the corners of his eyes drooped. But there was something in those grey eyes of his, a look she couldn't quite place… Could he be happy? Peaceful? What? It almost looks as if he's found something he's been searching for. Whatever it was, that was a look that she had never thought she would see on the face of Draco Malfoy. But, yes. Just for a moment, she'd seen it. The look didn't last long, but it had been there. What the hell?
"Ah, still singing the same old banshee song, I see," said Draco.
"Oooh—"
He was holding the blue linen folder that contained their sketches. She saw that now. He moved closer to her, and he slipped it into her palm so that their hands touched. His fingers were hot and dry. "Shush," he said softly. "Don't ever change, Weasley. Just give me one of your smiles, can't you?"
And Ginny was so shocked that she did smile at him.
