A/N: I'm telling you, people,
if you don't review then these chapters don't come out as quickly! PLEASE
REVIEW!!! Oh, well, maybe I should put this at the end of the chapter, huh?
I'll just go to the story now.
Locator
Rings
Draco stabbed at the chicken with his fork
the night after his mother had read Ginny's letter. His mother had attempted to
cook dinner, and she'd managed to turn the chicken breast the color of two-week-old
hard-boiled eggs. If he hadn't been hungry before, then he definitely wasn't
anymore.
Narcissa Malfoy cleared her throat, trying
to get Draco's attention.
"What?"
he asked wearily, not bothering to look up.
They
were sitting at their dining room table, each at different ends, and it seemed
ridiculous to try and talk. The table ends were ten seats apart on each side,
so it was like Draco felt he had to shout to be heard by someone on the
opposite end.
"I have
something for you," Narcissa said softly.
Intrigued, Draco couldn't help but glance at her. She never had anything
for him, not since she stopped sending him food with an average fifty grams of
fat per bite during sixth year.
She was
smiling gently at him, Draco could see even from the distance.
"If
you're finished why don't you come down here," she suggested.
Noisily, Draco slammed down his fork and it rattled the china plate. He
shoved the chair back from the table and was at her end in three strides. Arms
crossed, staring down at her icily, he waited.
She
looked up at him sadly. "You look so much like your father when you do that,"
she said wistfully.
Draco
only hardened his look. He wasn't sure if she was sad because she missed Lucius
or because she didn't want Draco turning out like his father.
"There
was one time when Lucius really did love me," she said, looking back down at
her plate. "It was a long time ago, but it happened."
"Fascinating story, really, it is. But I have much better things to do
–"
He
turned to go, but to his surprise, Narcissa grabbed his arm to prevent him from
leaving.
"Draco,
please," she said. She was sharp, but she was also pleading him. "I want to
give you something and I'm trying to let you know the story behind it."
Draco
stared down at her for a moment, into her eyes so much like his, and debated
it. While he didn't want to spend any quality time with his mother, he was a
little curious on what she was trying to give him.
Without
a word, he sat in the chair beside her.
Narcissa's face relaxed into a small smile. "Over the years," she said,
obviously continuing her tale, "we grew apart. Even when you were born we
weren't getting along."
"Is
there a point to this?" Draco interrupted.
"Yes,"
Narcissa said, and reached out her closed fist onto the table. She opened her
hand to reveal two silver rings, each with a rather large circular green stone.
Draco stared at them for a moment, uninterested. His mother noticed and
explained. "They're made of white gold. They both have a real emerald, see?
Your father gave me one when I was seventeen, just after we graduated from
Hogwarts."
Draco
sneered. The rings were very feminine. "What did he do with the other one? Wear
it?"
"No, he
wore it on a chain around his neck," she replied. "These aren't just normal
rings, Draco."
"Let me
guess. When they're joined they can defeat the most powerful man in the world?"
Narcissa frowned. "That's not funny."
"Was it
supposed to be?"
She gave him a look for a moment, then
continued. "They're locator rings, Draco. When I wore mine, your father could
find me anytime he wanted. We both had to be wearing it or else it didn't
work."
"How
did they work?" Draco demanded sharply. The truth was, he could've cared less
about the rings. But he felt he'd humor his mother by not standing up and
walking away.
"The
emerald is divided into sections."
Draco
picked one of the rings up and inspected the gem. "I don't see any sections,"
he snapped.
Narcissa ignored him and went on with her explanation. "If I wanted to
find your father, all I had to do was think about him. Then I'd look at the
ring and the sections would light up. It's sort of divided into four parts. If
your father were north of me, the top half of the emerald would start to blink.
Sort of like a flame of a candle. If he were south, the bottom half would
blink. East, the right half. West, the left half. Do you understand?"
"Why do
I need to?" he asked irritably.
"You
could give them to this Ginny of yours," Narcissa said with a rare genuine
smile.
Draco
stood up quickly and stared down heatedly at his mother. "You don't know anything
about her. How do you know I even like her? She wrote me letter, but that doesn't
mean I'm in love with her. Lots of girls write me letters like that. Why the hell
would I want to give her those ugly chunky rings?"
Surprisingly, Narcissa did not appear to be hurt. Instead, she just
smiled lazily, her eyes laughing at him. "I'm your mother, Draco. I've heard
you talk about girls. But you never talk as angrily and as defensively about
other girls like you do Ginny Weasley."
"And
enlighten me . . . how would this make you think I like her? Most normal
people would realize that I don't."
Narcissa laughed. She had the weirdest laugh, and it literally sounded
like she was saying, "Ha, ha, ha, ha". It was annoying to Draco, and he
struggled to control his anger.
"Take
the rings, Draco," she said firmly. "I don't want them anymore. Maybe you can
pawn them."
"I
don't need any more money," Draco said coldly. He spun and left the dining
room, angry that his mother could read him so well.
At first, Ginny wasn't sure if she'd come out of
consciousness or not. Her head pounded but at least her whole body didn't ache.
She
heard a moan, and it took her a while to realize it was her who had made the
noise. Her eyelids felt like they weighed a thousand pounds, but she forced
them open.
She
felt before she saw anything. Her back was supported by a soft mattress, covers
pulled up to her chin and tucked around her. She was in bed – in her
bed.
Slowly,
her vision came back. A blurry figure swam before her eyes, and after she
blinked a few times, she realized it was Harry.
She
squinted. Then everything came rushing back to her. Falling into the water,
hitting her head on a rock of some sort. To the tell truth, she actually
thought she was dead for a minute. Her head had slammed onto the sharp edge of
the rock pretty hard.
Then a
different possibility occurred to her. What if she was alive, but crippled?
What if she couldn't walk?
She was
still exhausted, but she had to know. To her relief, she wiggled her toes and
felt them respond, brushing against the sheets covering her.
"Ginny
. . ."
Harry
was talking to her, trying to ask her how she felt. She still felt half asleep.
Satisfied that she could walk, and that she was neither dead nor brain-dead,
she fell back onto her pillow. Doing so she hit the back of her head on the
soft down pillow, and it sent a fresh wave of pain through her body.
"It
hurts," she moaned. Where was her mother? Why wasn't she there?
The
pain began to diminish, but Ginny realized it was because she was falling back
asleep. She was so out of it she barely felt the brush of Harry's lips on hers,
and then she fell out of consciousness.
When she woke up next, she woke up faster and
knowing everything that had happened instantly. She sat up, and saw that
instead of Harry beside her, it was Hermione.
"Hey,
you're up!" Hermione cried, and dashed to the door. "She's up!" she yelled out
into the hall, and then returned to the chair beside Ginny's bed.
Only
seconds had passed before Ginny's parents, brothers, and Harry all hurried in
and gathered around her.
"How
long have I been out?" she croaked, her throat dry. Her mother handed her a
glass of water.
"About
twenty-four hours," Mr. Weasley answered, smiling at her. "We've been worried
out of our minds."
Ginny
reached up and felt the back of her head. She felt a long scratch, but it felt
as if it had already been stitched up.
"We
called the doctor and he came by to look at you," Mrs. Weasley explained. "He
said you didn't need to be awake and just fixed you right up. Said we can take
the stitches out for you in a week or so."
Ginny
thought for a moment. "What did I cut my head on?"
Everyone was quiet. Then Fred spoke up. "That's the weird thing, Ginny.
Me and George –"
"George
and I," Mrs. Weasley corrected.
" –
went back to remove the rock you hurt yourself on, and there was nothing
there," Fred continued. "Nothing. There wasn't a rock on even the bottom close
to where you landed. Even if it had been on the bottom, there's no way you
could've hit it – you hit something only a bit below the surface."
Ginny
blinked. "I had to have hit something," she said.
"Let's
not worry about it," Mr. Weasley said, reaching over and taking her hand. "From
now on that pond is off limits, all right?"
No one
disagreed.
Ginny
really needed a shower, so the first thing she did was take one. After she got
out, she sat at her desk wrapped in a towel and wrote Draco a letter quickly
explaining what had happened.
She
sent it off with Pidwidgeon (A/N: is that how you spell it? I'm too lazy to
look it up) and got dressed. She found that Draco had not responded to her
first letter. It disappointed her, but she tried to think nothing of it and sat
at the kitchen table while her mother fixed her something to eat. She'd barely
been awake an hour, but she felt tired once again.
"You
should be back to normal in a day or so," Mrs. Weasley assured her.
When Draco woke up the next morning, he
went over to his desk to see if there were any more letters from Ginny. For
some reason, he just hadn't wrote to her yet. He just didn't want to. He didn't
want to communicate through letters, he wanted to see her in person.
There was a letter from her, much to his
surprise. She's been writing me everyday.
He picked up the parchment, but something
caught his eye before he could read it. Glancing down at his desk, he saw two
things on top of his pile of school papers.
The two white-gold locator rings sat
there, reflecting what dull light there was in the room. Angrily, he snatched
them up and looked for a place to put them.
It took him a while to find one, but he
ended up shoving them to the bottom of a drawer full of clothes he'd never
worn. By then, the butler came up and announced that it was time for breakfast.
Ginny's letter lay forgotten on his desk.
A day later, Ginny
was feeling better. Whenever she ran up the stairs too fast, she'd get dizzy,
and she still had a long cut along the back of her head that stung whenever she
washed her wavy hair. But other than she felt fine.
I'm really lucky, Ginny figured. I could be
dead or crippled, but I ended up all right.
At
sunset after dinner, Ginny excused herself to go to her room. Draco still
hadn't answered her letters and she was starting to get upset.
Maybe
he really doesn't want me the way that I want him, she worried, but tried
to think positive.
There
could be trouble with owl post or something. Or maybe he just hasn't had the
chance.
She was bored. Ron's room was below hers,
and she could – unfortunately – picture what he and Hermione were doing in
there. Harry was outside with the twins playing Quidditch (how they played
Quidditch with only three people, Ginny did not know) and her parents were
probably listening to one of their radio talk shows.
What
a wonderful vacation this is, she thought sarcastically, throwing herself
stomach down onto the bed. I'm just having so much fun. First, my family
goes ballistic at the mention of my boyfriend. Then a huge cut in the back of
my head nearly kills me. Not to mention Draco hasn't written to me even once,
not even letting me know if he's alive or not. What a joy this is.
Sighing, Ginny grabbed a pillow and wrapped her arms around it, dropping
her face into it. Doing so, she could've sworn she heard a tap. She lay still
for a moment and listened, but didn't hear anything else.
Breathing
into the pillow was not easy, so she sat up and sighed again. Then she heard
the tapping noise.
Startled, she looked around her room. Her eyes fell on the window. And
she nearly jumped ten feet in the air from both shock and happiness.
Draco
Malfoy was hovering on his broom outside her window, half-smirking,
half-grinning at her.
Ginny's
face broke out into a huge smile and crossed the room. She pulled open the
window. It took all of her self-control to not grab him by the collar and kiss
him hungrily.
"Can I
come in?" he asked pleasantly.
A/N: All right, this is going very slowly, I know.
It takes a little while to build the plot.To tell the truth, I'm even getting
bored writing it! But just have patience, it will turn more exciting soon. Most
likely in the next chapter. So review, or else you'll be stuck with these three
boring chapters for a while!
