The End Of The World
Author - Lee Velviet
Chapter Four - Memories
Edited/Revised 11/5/06
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"Friends are those rare people who ask how you are, and then wait to hear the answer." - Anonymous
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Ginny knew she was going to scream if she heard one more person humming the wedding march as she passed by.
Of course, not many besides the Slytherins dared to tease her so openly about the joke Malfoy had pulled on her the night before - most people were still wary of her because of her recent misfortune.
She could only thank the powers that be for the fact that Fred and George were no longer at Hogwarts. She could only imagine what they would have been doing.
Ginny marked her place in her Transfigurations book and placed it into her pack, and then tucked away her writing materials as the class came to an end.
Who'd have thought that anyone would ever be scared of her? She'd been 'little Ginny Weasley' her entire life.
Getting up from her seat at the back of the class, she began to walk out, trying very hard not to notice how several of her classmates hastened away from her.
The walk down to Double Potions was so quiet that she began to feel as if she were the last person on earth.
Just as she began to feel impossibly lonely, someone fell into step beside her.
Of course it was Harry.
"Hullo, Harry," she tried to say brightly, as if she were surprised to see him there.
Oddly enough though, she hadn't seen him since breakfast. That potion Malfoy had given him must have been wearing off. She couldn't decide if she was disappointed or relieved.
"Hi, Gin." Harry smiled at her in a friendly manner, and they walked along for a few moments, neither saying a word.
"Er…how are you today?"
"Um, fine…thanks." Ginny looked at him from the corner of her eye. Didn't he have a class to get to?
Harry simply walked with her for s few minutes, but didn't say another word.
His presence made Ginny extremely nervous, and she finally stopped him with a hand on his arm just short of the entrance to the steps leading down into the dungeons.
"Harry, what is it?"
He dug his hands into his pockets and stared down at her hand where it rested on his arm.
She quickly dropped it.
"I was really just wondering…that is, I wanted to see how you were holding up. I know all this has to be incredibly difficult for you." His eyes were soft but intense as they finally met hers. "You looked really upset this morning."
"I-I'm getting along, I suppose…it's rather hard when everyone treats you as if you have an incurable contagious disease."
"I know how you feel..."
Ginny thought back on the stories Ron had told her about Harry's years at Hogwarts and didn't doubt what he said a bit.
"Harry…thank you. It's very thoughtful of you to look out for me." She wasn't quite sure what else to say. "I appreciate it."
He blinked at her as a pink tinge crept over his cheeks. "You're welcome."
"I guess I'd better get to class." She turned toward the stairs. She caught herself smiling back at him over her shoulder, and she ducked her head when he smiled slowly at her in return. Stop it, she told herself sternly. It's just the potion - he doesn't really love you.
She couldn't resist basking in the warm glow that had sprung up inside her, after the morning she'd had, though.
It was too bad it didn't last.
The good mood Harry's consideration had evoked died a slow and ugly death when she entered the Potions classroom a few minutes later and Malfoy met her with his usual infuriating smirk. She wondered briefly if his lips had been permanently fixed like that.
She sighed and settled down to wait out the hellish class.
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"Are you crazy or just plain stupid, Weasley? You don't add the Chalet root before the mixture comes to a rolling boil - it says so right there in the notes!"
Ginny wanted to slug him in the worst way. Mostly because he was right - she'd been thinking about other things, and had almost ruined their potion. She ignored him with major difficulty and concentrated on crushing dried Silverweed into a fine dust, hoping he'd shut up.
Unfortunately, he didn't take the hint.
"Did you even bother reading the assignment? Or did Potter keep you that busy last night?"
Ginny shot him a hateful look and kept crushing. "Don't talk to me. I think you're a pain in the ass, and I'd quite frankly rather be using a Lethifold as a blanket than to have to sit here with you for the rest of the year. You're evil and annoying and I think that if you cherish your tongue, you should keep your nasty little comments to yourself."
"Sod off, Weasley - I've already had enough of you this year." He pulled the mortar and pestle from her hands and looked at her work disgustedly. "You didn't even grind the Silverweed right."
"You've had enough of ME?" Ginny stood up outraged, aggravated beyond her means to control herself.
Professor Snape barked at her to sit down, and Malfoy gloated as he took five points from Gryffindor for her interrupting his class.
Ginny sat down, trembling from head to toe, telling herself everything would be all right if Malfoy could just keep his mouth shut for five minutes…
That was when he asked her how the Wedding night had gone, and then she did slug him-right in his irritatingly handsome jaw.
Ginny abruptly grabbed her fist and hissed at the pain in her knuckles. She'd hit him so hard she could still feel it in her shoulder.
The room was dangerously quiet. Snape was looking at them in shock.
Malfoy sat perfectly still, the place where she'd struck him rapidly reddening and swelling. His head was still turned to the side from the force with which she'd struck him.
Ginny felt her hand burning unmercifully, and she felt a tinge of fear as she stared at him, aghast. Had she really just done that?
After a long moment, Malfoy turned his head back to look at her.
Her heart skipped a beat as she realized this merited instant retaliation.
He glared at her with slitted eyes, and what he did next shocked everyone-including her.
He quite simply hit her back with the flat of his hand.
Ginny gasped, immediately feeling tears fill her eyes as she raised her hand to the stinging, flaming spot on her cheek, and stared back at him incredulously.
Malfoy actually looked a tiny bit regretful. But his eyes were still furious as he stared back at her. He touched the bruising swelling on his lean jaw with an unsteady hand and finally rasped through clenched teeth, "Strike me again, Weasley, and see what happens."
His tone was so provoking, so threatening, it made her remember her anger, and she was sorely tempted to do just that - but Snape decided to step in just then.
Of course she ended up landing herself in detention-not just for hitting Malfoy - but for calling Snape a hateful, sexually repressed 'little' man when he took twenty points more from Gryffindor.
The man had actually blushed. And the insult had cost another five points.
Malfoy had lost ten points from Slytherin, and been sent on to Dumbledore along with her for fighting in class.
Ginny glared at him when instead of holding the classroom door open for her, he went through first and let go of it, so that it swung back and nearly smacked her in the face.
"This is all your fault," Ginny snapped at him on the walk up to Dumbledore's office. She fingered her tender cheek, wincing involuntarily.
"I fail to see how this suddenly became MY fault. You took the first swing - I was merely showing you the consequences of your actions." He readjusted his pack over his shoulder and looked at her from the corner of his eye as they climbed a set of stairs.
"I always knew you were a complete bastard. Got a thing for hitting girls, have you?" She couldn't help needling him.
"Unlike your precious Potter, I have no qualms about retaliating in kind when someone is stupid enough to lay hands on me - even if that someone is a little girl dressed in rags."
Ginny stopped on the steps and turned to face him, the top of her head feeling as if it might blow off. "First you put that memory charm on me, so I wouldn't remember Harry, then you pull that stunt with the love potion, and now you're smacking me around! Do I look like your personal punching bag?"
Malfoy stopped too, and looked at her coldly. "I didn't put any memory charm on you, you silly brat. Why would I bother? Secondly, you really don't have much of a memory left do you, Weasley? You hit me first."
"So that makes it okay for you to bat me around like a practice bludger?"
"I'm a Malfoy - I can do whatever I like," he drawled in an irritatingly calm voice.
Ginny rubbed her bruised cheek lightly. "Couldn't you have just stuck to your unoriginal insults?"
This made him look extremely annoyed. "I think my insults are rather good, thank you very much - oh, ballocks. Now look what you've done."
Ginny looked around in alarm as the staircase began to move. "What I've done? Merlin, I can't stand you!"
"I think by this point I can safely say the same! Damn, this is going to take us completely out of our way." He eyed the new corridor stretching before them impatiently.
Ginny noticed it was a hall she wasn't familiar with at all. "Can't we just wait for the stairs to shift again?"
"They don't have a bloody schedule, Weasley," Draco stepped into the corridor and walked away.
Ginny looked around apprehensively before walking up after him.
"What is this place?" She looked around at the walls, which were hung with rather ragged, severe looking portraits of elderly witches and wizards. She grimaced at the sight of a gory, ghostly looking painting featuring a beheading - the axe just kept dropping, over and over, and the poor victim's head just kept popping right off and rolling away...
"It's the ghost's wing," he snapped with annoyance. "It's where the house ghosts reside. Not all of the house ghosts are as friendly as your Sir Nicholas, you know - our house ghost, the Bloody Baron, he'll haunt you for days on end if you cross his path while he's in a temper."
"When isn't he in a temper - always floating about with those eerie eyes, looking ghastly, scaring the first years," Ginny grinned, and looked up at him. "He's really not much different from you, is he?"
Malfoy sighed sufferingly. "Do you never shut up?"
"Never," Ginny said unrepentantly.
"You're tongue is going to get you in some very real trouble one day."
"Too late," Ginny muttered.
Draco mumbled something rude and abruptly ducked into a room.
Uncomfortable with the thought of being stuck in the eerie hall all alone made her walk in after him.
The room was dark. "Where are you going, Malfoy?"
"To the devil, I suppose," he drawled from nearby.
"Oh? Do you believe in the devil?" She squinted and barely made out where he stood next to a tall, carved stone statue of an unhappy looking wizard.
"There are too many things that go on around here for me not to," he replied absently, and appeared to be looking around the base of the statue for something.
"What are you doing?" Ginny pulled out her wand and lit the room.
"Finding a shortcut - " he looked up at her from around the statue and she stared at the blooming purple mark on his jaw in dismay - until he finished his sentence. "I don't know how much longer I can stand to be alone with you."
Ginny just snorted.
"Ah, here it is." Malfoy clicked something, and then stood away from the statue, as it swung heavily outward, revealing a narrow, dusty passageway. "This should take us right up to Dumbledore's office."
"Wow, how did you know about this?" Asked Ginny as they stepped inside the drafty passage and the statue moved closed behind them.
He looked at her with one blond brow arched. "Right. I tell you, and then off you go blabbering about it to everyone. They aren't called 'secret' passages for nothing."
"I wouldn't 'blab'," Ginny said, offended. "Unlike a certain smarmy-mouthed git I could speak of, I know how to keep secrets."
"You know nothing about me, Weasley. I can keep secrets. I have secrets that would turn your hair white if you knew them."
"Oh, scary."
Ginny ducked a rather large spider web and immediately thought of Ron when a green and black spider scuttled out of her way.
"So?"
"What?" He stopped and looked at her with an angry sigh.
"Are you going to tell me how you knew about this passageway? Do you know about anymore?" She hated the eagerness in her voice, but having the knowledge of a few secret entrances and such might come in incredibly handy when she wanted to be alone.
"No, and yes. Now quit being a bloody pain and move!"
"Are you scared I'm going to slug you again?"
"What? You must be joking. Just because you caught me off guard and popped my cork once, doesn't mean I'll let you do it again."
"Because I'm just a little girl, right?" Ginny was tapping her foot angrily.
"Because you're just a little girl," he agreed sneeringly. He was drawing disturbingly near…
"You're a miserable sod, you know that?"
"Give over, Weasley." He lowered his face until it was level with hers.
Ginny found herself closer to him than she'd ever been before - she could see the star like burst of odd silver streaks radiating outward from his pale colored irises, and the slightly dark circles under his eyes that attested to the fact that he didn't sleep very well.
"Give over what?"
"Tell me you wouldn't say yes if I threw you down right here and snogged you until you fainted."
Surprised, Ginny took a stumbling step back from him. "B-but I hit you!"
He took a step forward. "And I hit you."
"I'm not getting you, Malfoy. Are you suggesting that I'm attracted to you?"
"Maybe."
"Are you telling me you love me or something - did someone slip you a potion?"
"Love you?" He laughed. "Certainly not. No, I don't even like you…but there's something there between us. Something almost… elemental."
"If I had known all it took to get a guy to pay attention to you was to smack them around a bit, I'd have done it years ago," she tried to say lightly.
"Aren't you in the least bit curious? Aren't you interested in finding out what it's like to kiss someone you loathe?" He had her backed against the wall now, and his arms braced on either side of her.
"Not terribly," she squeaked. Malfoy was absolutely mad-just plain barking mad!
"Oh well, if I were Potter I suppose I'd take that as a no and leave it at that. But I'm not, am I?"
"No!" She tried to turn her head, but he grabbed her chin and held it still as he unbelievably pressed his lips against hers.
The strangeness didn't stop there, she soon discovered - she actually found herself leaning into his kiss as if she enjoyed it!
He sighed roughly against her lips and the sound made her legs tremble.
Minutes later, she discovered his chest was pressed against hers, and her fingers were tangled in the baby soft, longish blond hair at the back of his neck. She felt weak as his hands lifted and encircled her wrists, and she couldn't prevent a small sound of protest as he slowly pulled her arms down, and released her, taking a step away.
"Well…that was interesting." He eyed her coldly.
Ginny blinked at him. "Huh?" She frowned, feeling strongly disoriented. What had just happened?
"We'd better move on, Dumbledore is still expecting us."
Ginny watched as he moved away down the passage, looking cool and unruffled, and then slid down the wall to sit hard on her rear.
All she could think about, at first, oddly enough, was that he'd stolen her first kiss-the one that she'd been saving for Harry…and then she squeezed her eyes shut as her mind was slowly bombarded with one hurtful memory after another…
"Weasley?"
What seemed like hours later, Ginny opened her eyes, and found them blurry from tears. Malfoy was standing above her, frowning.
"What's wrong with you?"
Ginny stared at the floor, her chest having ached itself numb. Again. "I'm fine."
"Well…come on, then. You don't want people getting ideas about us, do you?"
She started laughing then, and couldn't seem to stop.
"Snap out of it, Weasley! Or do you want me to slap you again?"
Ginny stopped her hysterical giggling with a major effort. "Could you just knock me out instead?"
"What's your problem?" He sounded irritated - and not a little anxious.
Probably thought he was going to get into some real trouble, she thought glumly.
It was weird - like she'd woken up from a dream. All of her memories had returned, and she remembered the memory charm-and why she'd done it to herself.
The tears started again at the thought of what everyone would say if they found out…found how weak she was…and then she thought of how weak the memory charm she'd used had been in the first place - it hadn't lasted very long at all! She hadn't even been able to do that right!
She remembered Harry trying to talk to her about what had happened between them - he'd been so sweet, so sincere - and she'd felt so scared…now she knew why.
She thought about the love potion and everything that had happened since, and all of her emotions came crashing together in a huge, earth-shaking, mind-bending crash-
Ginny was dimly aware of Malfoy talking to her.
"Just leave me alone - I'm busy losing my bloody mind," she heard herself mumble shakily, and she stared at the dusty wall of the passage, wondering if he would just go away and hopefully not mention her to anyone, and she could just hide there forever with the ghosts…
"You sure cause a lot of trouble for being as tiny as you are," she heard him grunt near her ear. She felt his arms under her, and she closed her eyes as he lifted her up against him.
"What are you doing?"
"Be quiet, Weasley. I'm attempting the first 'nice' thing I've ever done in my entire life, and I don't need you reminding me." He said it as if it were distasteful to him.
Ginny laid her head tiredly against his chest. "Just drop me out the first window you come to, will you?"
"Has anyone ever told you, you have major issues? And about the window...don't tempt me…"
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TBC