Disclaimer: Consider this dis - claimed. ::cheeky grin::
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Spoilers: J.K. Rowling's 'Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them'
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8. Ginny's Misfortune Revisited
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The D.A.D.A. classroom was filled with excitedly chattering teens - and favored topic of discussion, which wasn't at all surprising, was dear Professor Weasley.
"I am so not kidding you.I swear, I saw them kissing, out by the cliff last night!"
"How could you? You were with Dane Caldwell, dancing all night!"
"Didn't you see me come in soaking wet last night? We were together dancing. But, not all night - "
"Kayla!"
"Don't be such a prude, Jakoby Barr! For your information, we were out walking, before it started raining - "
"You mean you were outside kissing - "
"Girl, will you just shut up and let me tell you what I saw?"
"Saw what?"
"Oh, hey Zander."
"What are you guys talking about?"
"Kayla says she saw Professor Weasley and Professor Snape snogging last night."
"What? Ugh! You're demented! What would she want with that greasy old git? I saw her dancing with Ash last night!"
"Ash is a student, you Hippogriff's ass. You should know better. Professor Weasley would never get involved with a student!"
"Ash said differently - you shoulda' seen the Moon - calf eyed look on his face last night in the dorm, I thought he was going to lose it right there - "
"Ew, Zander! He didn't say anything! Ash isn't like that!"
"Don't get all aneurismal, Jakoby, I know Ash isn't a liar, and he wasn't lying - he said Professor Weasley was gazing at him all soft like - "
"She was probably staring at Snape over his bloody shoulder - "
"Shhh! Here she comes!"
********************
Ginny walked into an unusually silent classroom, a disturbing ache worrying at the base of her neck.
She slowed in her step, looking around at the staring students with a look that was not quite a frown.
She stepped up onto the dais where her desk was located, and smiled bemusedly.
"Okay - I know I haven't got underwear or anything else equally embarrassing stuck to my robes - I checked - so what's the joke? Someone put a dung bomb under my chair? Is there a snake in my desk? What gives?"
She watched her seventh year students give each other bewildered glances, each seeming to question the other.
"Well?"
"I - I don't think there is a joke, Professor," Ashley Primmer announced in his husky voice with a violent blush from the rear of the class, his hazel eyes sparkling.
Ginny did frown then. Something was going on. Half of her students had suddenly become fascinated with the ceiling, or the floor, in between casting quick glances at herself.
"Why is everyone looking at me so oddly then?"
Ashley turned a brighter shade of pink and shrugged, looking away.
A hesitant hand went up in the air at the far side of the room, and Ginny blinked at the girl, her nerves suddenly tingling in warning.
"Yes, what is it, Kayla?" Ginny watched the girl stand up warily. Kayla Parkinson wasn't in Slytherin as her older sister Pansy had been, but in Hufflepuff instead - and the pretty girl was a notorious gossip.
The girl's best friend, Jakoby Barr, tugged at Kayla's robes to no avail. She looked to Ginny like she desperately wanted her friend to shut up.
Zander Sedley, a Gryffindor Prefect, and also the Head Boy, coughed loudly into his hand, averting his sharp gray gaze as her eyes came to rest on him, and ran a hand through his longish brown hair.
Years of training told her something bad was about to come about. Her skin tightened as the girl opened her shiny pink lip glossed mouth, and the pain at the back of her head moved around to mercilessly tease her temples.
*********************
She was definitely going to be very unpopular with Severus.
Boy, was she going to hear it.
She was greatly tempted to give Kayla Parkinson a detention, for spreading lies, but she couldn't because the girl hadn't been lying - but she had been gossiping, and it was almost as bad, and could be twice as damaging.
Ginny hadn't given any one of her students detention at all so far, and she really didn't want to have to - so she'd settled for having a long talk with the girl after class.
The harm had been done, though, and there was no stopping it. One couldn't shut up two dozen seventh year students, half of which were teenage girls with quick, wagging tongues.
She should know - she'd been one once.
Ginny sighed, and reached for the door to her private quarters. A distressingly familiar fatigue was settling over her. She really didn't think she was up to going down to dinner that night.
"Virginia - a word, if you please?"
Ginny paused with her hand on her door latch, pulled her velvet hat off and let her forehead fall to the door with a loud, distinct thud, feeling suddenly rather ill.
It was Severus, and the cold inflection of his silky voice told her he definitely was not happy.
She stared at the door and let her hand fall from the ornate silver handle as she reluctantly straightened up, trying desperately to draw back her slumping shoulders.
'Here it comes,' she thought as she turned to face him. 'He's going to accuse me of it being all my fault. Well, he's not at all infallible, either -'
"I've heard some disturbing news - "
"Have you? Well, don't you dare blame it on me, Severus Snape!" Ginny swallowed, and blinked against the odd blurriness of her vision. She cleared her throat, and gave her head a slight shake. What had she been talking about?
Severus was giving her an impatient, sharply accessing look.
"What the bloody hell are you talking about, woman? Are you feeling well? You look feverish - "
"Fever?" Ginny laid a hand over her cheeks and stared at him. She did feel awfully warm.
"No, I don't have a fever," she denied. "Er - wait. You don't know?"
He looked at her from where he stood a few steps away with annoyance, his dark brows drawn together in a frown. "Know what?"
"Er - nothing - "
He stepped forward, his robes slithering behind him, his shiny black eyes boring into her as he watched her suspiciously.
"You certainly look ill.of course, you were probably too stupid to get dry quickly enough last night after you finally came in out of the rain."
Ginny started to answer his cruel remark with a nasty one of her own, and then slumped back against the door. Her head was pounding, and the floor seemed very far away all of a sudden -
"Virginia?"
"I told you to stop calling me that, damn it!" Ginny snapped, closing her eyes against the dizziness she felt. Bloody hell - she recognized the symptoms now, she knew very well the rain the previous night had nothing to do with what she was feeling. She cursed out loud.
He actually looked taken aback for a moment before he crossed his arms and pursed his lips into a familiar thin line. "Stupid girl, go lay down before you fall down. If you think I'm going to sweep you up into my arms - "
"Oh, come off it, Severus - I'm not currently fantasizing about you, thank you very much! If you haven't anything sufficiently human to say, then I'll thank you to kindly shove off! I'm not in the mood!" Ginny sent him a venomous glare, to match the one he was currently directing at her.
"My, my, aren't we in a pissy state," he drawled dangerously, eyes narrowed threateningly.
"If you've got something to say, Snape, spit it the fuck out and leave me be!"
Ginny bit her lip, surprised by her own words, and dropped her gaze to stare at the floor, which was beginning to swim alarmingly before her eyes.
'Please, please, please, just go away,' she begged him silently.
"Language, Professor, such language.we are in a school, you know. Your lack of self control just proves that you are not at all suitable for this position."
She watched as he drew near, and bit her lip hard against the confusing wash of emotions assailing her.
Snape looked at her with undisguised malice.
"You've finally stumbled across the one thing you can't handle, haven't you?"
"And you love being that one thing, don't you? You love pointing it out, don't you?"
Ginny spun around, reaching blindly for the door latch again, only to see his strong, pale hand shoot out and grab her wrist.
He tugged her around to face him again, his expression openly caustic.
"What are you hiding?"
"What are you talking about?"
"Something is upsetting you - "
"You!"
Severus tightened his hand slightly.
"I'd have thought that you'd be positively ecstatic if there were something upsetting me," she heard herself say bitterly.
"Tell me," he bit out sharply.
"Fine - I really don't know how it didn't get 'round to you by now anyway. One of the students saw us last night."
He blinked and dropped her wrist as if it were burning him.
"Are you properly horrified, now?" Ginny gritted her teeth against a sudden wave of nausea, and fumbled for the door latch again.
"Don't worry about it, Snape - I'll talk to Dumbledore in the morning, I'll explain everything..."
"You are ill, aren't you?"
She ignored his silkily voiced question and threw her weight almost desperately against the door, which had a tendency to stick. It opened, finally, and she stumbled inside to her bed, not bothering to close the door behind her.
Ginny fell gratefully onto the soft four poster, and weakly tugged her wand from her robe pocket.
Her hands were already shaking.
How could she have forgotten? How could she have been so impossibly stupid?
"Of course I could be that stupid," she mumbled beneath her breath, fumbling her grip on her wand, and rolling her eyes. "Why not? I was stupid enough to fall for him."
"Accio potion!"
Severus darted forward suddenly and deftly snatched the small glass vial soaring toward her out of the air before it ever reached her.
He eyed the dark potion inside with an expert eye, and lifted it to the lamplight to study its color.
Ginny rolled her eyes, and lay her wand on her bedside table with deliberate care.
'Willow and dragon heart - string, nine and a half inches,' she thought idly, staring briefly at the highly polished wand, with it's intricately carved, delicately silver filigreed handle.
Ginny swallowed, wetting her lips, and watched as Severus thumbed off the cork stopper of her vial of potion, and sniffed apprehensively.
He was probably about to accuse her of having some scandalous kind of illegal drug addiction. Anything to see her dismissed.
"It's - "
"I know what it is," Snape snapped with a growl, popping the stopper back in place. "I can tell what it is just by the smell of it - an infusion of Cinchona bark. The question is, why do you have it?"
"P.Vivax - a form of Malaria. It decides to revisit now and then, a little past misfortune I need reminding of, apparently," Ginny forced out lightly, and held up her hand. "May I have it now?"
He looked at her, his sharply featured face grudgingly concerned. "Where the bloody hell did you manage to pick up Malaria?"
"While I was in Sub - Saharan Africa, studying Fwoopers two years ago - "
"Fwoopers." Severus snorted.
"Yes, Fwoopers. Anyway, our camp was attacked by a particularly vicious Nundu, which we later learned had been stalking nearby villages - "
"Dear God, you're lucky to be alive," Severus murmured abruptly, approaching her bed.
"I am," said Ginny solemnly, absently reaching up a hand to finger the scar bisecting her eyebrow.
"It breathed on you," he commented coldly, eyeing the beads of sweat gathering on her pale brow, and the shakiness of her hands.
"Yes." Ginny met his eyes steadily, though the room was wavering behind him.
"That's where you got the scar, from the Nundu's claws."
"I actually lost the eye," she stated nonchalantly, shrugging her shoulders. "My team was lucky enough to have a rather talented MediWizard on hand, who saw to it immediately. Its claws are poisonous, though, as I'm sure you know, hence the little reminder, here... As for the Malaria, well, it could have been far worse, if the MediWizard hadn't acted so quickly." Ginny rubbed the white scar again and sighed tiredly. "Many of our group didn't make it."
"We were glad to have been traveling in such a large number though, let me tell you - that leopard was the size of the Whomping Willow, easy, and ten times as violent. That's the only way we were able to subdue it -"
"Sweet Jesus, woman - how can you lay there and act as if you didn't nearly lose your life," he muttered edgily, his hair falling into his eyes as he stared down at her.
Ginny looked up at him with an unfocused gaze and flaming cheeks that could have put Ashley Primmer's to shame.
"Why shouldn't I? You do it all the time - act as if you never went through any of what you did at the hands of Voldemort.for all our sakes. I always wanted to be like you, you know.I never have quite been able to achieve your coldness, though."
She watched his face pale, and his expression close up tight.
He tossed the vial carelessly into her hands and turned away. "Drink it," he ordered harshly.
"Yes, Master," she said mockingly, and tilted the vial to her lips.
"You've obviously, and very foolishly, I might add, forgotten your dosage of late," Severus remarked, moving away to the opposite side of the room. "Why are you still using this particular infusion? Didn't anyone tell you the dangers of ingesting too much Quinine?"
"It's the active ingredient, isn't it? It's worked so far."
"I can tell, even with you forgetting your dosages, you're building up an immunity to this particular potion.it's slowly becoming ineffective. The malarial parasites evolve mechanisms to resist them - "
"You sound as if you're teaching class, Professor," Ginny said softly.
"Why, Miss Weasley? Are you actually paying attention?" He asked sourly from across the room.
"Tell me, what am I to do, then?"
"I'll brew you a similar, more effective infusion containing the Chinese antipyretic Qinghao - otherwise known as Artemisia anuua. it contains Artemisinin."
"I had no idea. That's kind of you, Snape," Ginny managed half - coherently. She mindlessly shrugged out of her robes, and struggled beneath her covers as she found herself shivering uncontrollably.
"Kind," he snorted under his breath.
He finally returned, a wet cloth in his elegant hands. "Thoughtless girl. It just proves you should have been paying attention in class instead of scribbling away at that nonsense in that blasted book of yours."
Ginny smiled ruefully as he unceremoniously dropped the cool cloth over her eyes and forehead. "Ah, the infamous 'diary'. Sometimes I regret I ever threw it away, you know."
She heard him clear his throat above her, and shift uncomfortably.
A sudden thought came, unbidden, to her fuzzy mind.
"You kept it, didn't you?" She fought to keep the smile out of her voice, and the sudden surge of hope she felt out of her heart.
Her trained ear caught the sound of his breath catching before he snarled coldly, "Certainly not. That bloody thing was the instigator of this whole senseless mess - what would I want with the cursed thing?"
"What indeed?" Ginny asked diffidently.
"I strongly suggest you go to the Infirmary, Virginia -"
"Will you stop calling me that? I hate it!"
"Promise me you won't call me that anymore," she said fuzzily.
"I don't make promises. I'm not very good at keeping them."
"Promise me," she pulled off the cloth, looked up at him through her lashes, and reached out to grab his robes.
He rolled his eyes toward the ceiling, and expelled a harsh breath. "Very well, I 'promise' - now let go of my bloody robes, I have business elsewhere."
Ginny closed her eyes and fell back onto her pillows. "It figures - you leaving me here, all by myself, sick and feverish - "
"- and still infuriatingly, maddeningly annoying," he muttered
"Still infuriatingly, maddeningly, annoyingly in love with you," she corrected in a barely there murmur.
Severus made a disgusted sound beside her and impatiently retrieved the cloth from her fingers, letting it plop carelessly over her eyes again.
"Oh - I forgot to inform you. It seems Potter is returning to Hogwarts."
"Harry? Why?" Ginny frowned and again yanked the cloth from her face.
"Maybe he's coming to propose to you," she heard him grumbled beneath his breath.
" 'If ' we're so fortunate."
Ginny shifted on her bed to look over at him.
"You are jealous, aren't you?"
He cut his eyes at her, and didn't bother to answer. He probably thought silence was the best way to answer her contemptible claim.
"So? Harry?"
"Mr. Potter is coming to discuss Ministry business with Professor Dumbledore. He is to be our guest through the holidays."
"Ah. You must be having kittens about that. Thought you'd finally gotten rid of him, hadn't you?" Ginny smiled sleepily. "Ahh, Harry. Who'd have thought he'd give up a chance to play professional Quidditch to go run around for the Ministry?"
"The Great Harry Potter, give up the opportunity to play hero to witches and wizards all around the world? You have a singular sense of humor."
Ginny began shivering in earnest, and tugged her blankets closer as her teeth began to chatter. "How's it feel to know he could have your job, if he wanted?" She couldn't help teasing.
"Potter knows very well what kind of teacher I am - he's not about to relieve me of my duties any time soon. Don't you know by now, that I'm Hogwarts resident watchdog?"
"And don't you sound cheerful about it!"
She watched him prowl beside her bed, and held out an unsteady hand.
"Severus."
He turned back to face her and froze in mid - step.
She crooked a finger. "Come. Sit." She patted the edge of the bed.
He scowled.
"Please?"
Ginny gave him a pleading look, and did her best to look as pitiful as possible. She didn't have to try very hard.
He crossed his arms, and took the few steps to stand above her - he did not make any move to sit.
Ginny sighed, and swallowed nervously, letting her hand drop to the mattress. She closed her eyes and began to speak, not even completely sure of what she was going to say.
"Harry was my childhood love, you know? Every girl has one - the guy she gets up and goes to school for every morning.but that changed, like everything does, like everything is supposed to. I grew up, and I started to see you. I knew there was something different about the way I felt about you. Harry is.my friend."
"I don't recall inquiring about your relationship to 'the boy who wouldn't die'," he muttered impatiently from somewhere above her, sounding aggravated.
"I could cheerfully strangle you at times."
"I believe I much prefer you vaguely homicidal to incurably romantic."
"I'm going to sleep," Ginny groaned, and rolled onto her side away from him, her temples pounding.
Only silence met her ears, and she finally allowed sleep to claim her, as it offered a slight respite from the effects of her fever.
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To Be Continued.
A/N: Ah, many groveling thanks to you lovely reviewers - you have no idea how VERY much I appreciate you!!! Plus, so sorry about the disturbing lack of smoochies.
: D
J.K.'s Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them - luv that book! All of the creatures mentioned in this chapter originate from there, along with the facts and locations, and thanks to Malaria Foundation International, on whose site I found the much needed info on herbal malarial treatments.
Fwooper - Colorful African bird whose song is purportedly able to eventually drive any Wizard listening to it, insane.
Nundu - A Gigantic leopard found in Africa whose breath spreads awful, lethal disease, and is capable of destroying entire villages.
- These are 'loosely' based summaries of the creatures from J.K.'s book.
(Again, I don't own it, so don't sue - I have about three cents to my name.oh, and a slightly squashed Moon Pie. Hope you like the Vanilla kind.)
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Spoilers: J.K. Rowling's 'Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them'
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8. Ginny's Misfortune Revisited
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The D.A.D.A. classroom was filled with excitedly chattering teens - and favored topic of discussion, which wasn't at all surprising, was dear Professor Weasley.
"I am so not kidding you.I swear, I saw them kissing, out by the cliff last night!"
"How could you? You were with Dane Caldwell, dancing all night!"
"Didn't you see me come in soaking wet last night? We were together dancing. But, not all night - "
"Kayla!"
"Don't be such a prude, Jakoby Barr! For your information, we were out walking, before it started raining - "
"You mean you were outside kissing - "
"Girl, will you just shut up and let me tell you what I saw?"
"Saw what?"
"Oh, hey Zander."
"What are you guys talking about?"
"Kayla says she saw Professor Weasley and Professor Snape snogging last night."
"What? Ugh! You're demented! What would she want with that greasy old git? I saw her dancing with Ash last night!"
"Ash is a student, you Hippogriff's ass. You should know better. Professor Weasley would never get involved with a student!"
"Ash said differently - you shoulda' seen the Moon - calf eyed look on his face last night in the dorm, I thought he was going to lose it right there - "
"Ew, Zander! He didn't say anything! Ash isn't like that!"
"Don't get all aneurismal, Jakoby, I know Ash isn't a liar, and he wasn't lying - he said Professor Weasley was gazing at him all soft like - "
"She was probably staring at Snape over his bloody shoulder - "
"Shhh! Here she comes!"
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Ginny walked into an unusually silent classroom, a disturbing ache worrying at the base of her neck.
She slowed in her step, looking around at the staring students with a look that was not quite a frown.
She stepped up onto the dais where her desk was located, and smiled bemusedly.
"Okay - I know I haven't got underwear or anything else equally embarrassing stuck to my robes - I checked - so what's the joke? Someone put a dung bomb under my chair? Is there a snake in my desk? What gives?"
She watched her seventh year students give each other bewildered glances, each seeming to question the other.
"Well?"
"I - I don't think there is a joke, Professor," Ashley Primmer announced in his husky voice with a violent blush from the rear of the class, his hazel eyes sparkling.
Ginny did frown then. Something was going on. Half of her students had suddenly become fascinated with the ceiling, or the floor, in between casting quick glances at herself.
"Why is everyone looking at me so oddly then?"
Ashley turned a brighter shade of pink and shrugged, looking away.
A hesitant hand went up in the air at the far side of the room, and Ginny blinked at the girl, her nerves suddenly tingling in warning.
"Yes, what is it, Kayla?" Ginny watched the girl stand up warily. Kayla Parkinson wasn't in Slytherin as her older sister Pansy had been, but in Hufflepuff instead - and the pretty girl was a notorious gossip.
The girl's best friend, Jakoby Barr, tugged at Kayla's robes to no avail. She looked to Ginny like she desperately wanted her friend to shut up.
Zander Sedley, a Gryffindor Prefect, and also the Head Boy, coughed loudly into his hand, averting his sharp gray gaze as her eyes came to rest on him, and ran a hand through his longish brown hair.
Years of training told her something bad was about to come about. Her skin tightened as the girl opened her shiny pink lip glossed mouth, and the pain at the back of her head moved around to mercilessly tease her temples.
*********************
She was definitely going to be very unpopular with Severus.
Boy, was she going to hear it.
She was greatly tempted to give Kayla Parkinson a detention, for spreading lies, but she couldn't because the girl hadn't been lying - but she had been gossiping, and it was almost as bad, and could be twice as damaging.
Ginny hadn't given any one of her students detention at all so far, and she really didn't want to have to - so she'd settled for having a long talk with the girl after class.
The harm had been done, though, and there was no stopping it. One couldn't shut up two dozen seventh year students, half of which were teenage girls with quick, wagging tongues.
She should know - she'd been one once.
Ginny sighed, and reached for the door to her private quarters. A distressingly familiar fatigue was settling over her. She really didn't think she was up to going down to dinner that night.
"Virginia - a word, if you please?"
Ginny paused with her hand on her door latch, pulled her velvet hat off and let her forehead fall to the door with a loud, distinct thud, feeling suddenly rather ill.
It was Severus, and the cold inflection of his silky voice told her he definitely was not happy.
She stared at the door and let her hand fall from the ornate silver handle as she reluctantly straightened up, trying desperately to draw back her slumping shoulders.
'Here it comes,' she thought as she turned to face him. 'He's going to accuse me of it being all my fault. Well, he's not at all infallible, either -'
"I've heard some disturbing news - "
"Have you? Well, don't you dare blame it on me, Severus Snape!" Ginny swallowed, and blinked against the odd blurriness of her vision. She cleared her throat, and gave her head a slight shake. What had she been talking about?
Severus was giving her an impatient, sharply accessing look.
"What the bloody hell are you talking about, woman? Are you feeling well? You look feverish - "
"Fever?" Ginny laid a hand over her cheeks and stared at him. She did feel awfully warm.
"No, I don't have a fever," she denied. "Er - wait. You don't know?"
He looked at her from where he stood a few steps away with annoyance, his dark brows drawn together in a frown. "Know what?"
"Er - nothing - "
He stepped forward, his robes slithering behind him, his shiny black eyes boring into her as he watched her suspiciously.
"You certainly look ill.of course, you were probably too stupid to get dry quickly enough last night after you finally came in out of the rain."
Ginny started to answer his cruel remark with a nasty one of her own, and then slumped back against the door. Her head was pounding, and the floor seemed very far away all of a sudden -
"Virginia?"
"I told you to stop calling me that, damn it!" Ginny snapped, closing her eyes against the dizziness she felt. Bloody hell - she recognized the symptoms now, she knew very well the rain the previous night had nothing to do with what she was feeling. She cursed out loud.
He actually looked taken aback for a moment before he crossed his arms and pursed his lips into a familiar thin line. "Stupid girl, go lay down before you fall down. If you think I'm going to sweep you up into my arms - "
"Oh, come off it, Severus - I'm not currently fantasizing about you, thank you very much! If you haven't anything sufficiently human to say, then I'll thank you to kindly shove off! I'm not in the mood!" Ginny sent him a venomous glare, to match the one he was currently directing at her.
"My, my, aren't we in a pissy state," he drawled dangerously, eyes narrowed threateningly.
"If you've got something to say, Snape, spit it the fuck out and leave me be!"
Ginny bit her lip, surprised by her own words, and dropped her gaze to stare at the floor, which was beginning to swim alarmingly before her eyes.
'Please, please, please, just go away,' she begged him silently.
"Language, Professor, such language.we are in a school, you know. Your lack of self control just proves that you are not at all suitable for this position."
She watched as he drew near, and bit her lip hard against the confusing wash of emotions assailing her.
Snape looked at her with undisguised malice.
"You've finally stumbled across the one thing you can't handle, haven't you?"
"And you love being that one thing, don't you? You love pointing it out, don't you?"
Ginny spun around, reaching blindly for the door latch again, only to see his strong, pale hand shoot out and grab her wrist.
He tugged her around to face him again, his expression openly caustic.
"What are you hiding?"
"What are you talking about?"
"Something is upsetting you - "
"You!"
Severus tightened his hand slightly.
"I'd have thought that you'd be positively ecstatic if there were something upsetting me," she heard herself say bitterly.
"Tell me," he bit out sharply.
"Fine - I really don't know how it didn't get 'round to you by now anyway. One of the students saw us last night."
He blinked and dropped her wrist as if it were burning him.
"Are you properly horrified, now?" Ginny gritted her teeth against a sudden wave of nausea, and fumbled for the door latch again.
"Don't worry about it, Snape - I'll talk to Dumbledore in the morning, I'll explain everything..."
"You are ill, aren't you?"
She ignored his silkily voiced question and threw her weight almost desperately against the door, which had a tendency to stick. It opened, finally, and she stumbled inside to her bed, not bothering to close the door behind her.
Ginny fell gratefully onto the soft four poster, and weakly tugged her wand from her robe pocket.
Her hands were already shaking.
How could she have forgotten? How could she have been so impossibly stupid?
"Of course I could be that stupid," she mumbled beneath her breath, fumbling her grip on her wand, and rolling her eyes. "Why not? I was stupid enough to fall for him."
"Accio potion!"
Severus darted forward suddenly and deftly snatched the small glass vial soaring toward her out of the air before it ever reached her.
He eyed the dark potion inside with an expert eye, and lifted it to the lamplight to study its color.
Ginny rolled her eyes, and lay her wand on her bedside table with deliberate care.
'Willow and dragon heart - string, nine and a half inches,' she thought idly, staring briefly at the highly polished wand, with it's intricately carved, delicately silver filigreed handle.
Ginny swallowed, wetting her lips, and watched as Severus thumbed off the cork stopper of her vial of potion, and sniffed apprehensively.
He was probably about to accuse her of having some scandalous kind of illegal drug addiction. Anything to see her dismissed.
"It's - "
"I know what it is," Snape snapped with a growl, popping the stopper back in place. "I can tell what it is just by the smell of it - an infusion of Cinchona bark. The question is, why do you have it?"
"P.Vivax - a form of Malaria. It decides to revisit now and then, a little past misfortune I need reminding of, apparently," Ginny forced out lightly, and held up her hand. "May I have it now?"
He looked at her, his sharply featured face grudgingly concerned. "Where the bloody hell did you manage to pick up Malaria?"
"While I was in Sub - Saharan Africa, studying Fwoopers two years ago - "
"Fwoopers." Severus snorted.
"Yes, Fwoopers. Anyway, our camp was attacked by a particularly vicious Nundu, which we later learned had been stalking nearby villages - "
"Dear God, you're lucky to be alive," Severus murmured abruptly, approaching her bed.
"I am," said Ginny solemnly, absently reaching up a hand to finger the scar bisecting her eyebrow.
"It breathed on you," he commented coldly, eyeing the beads of sweat gathering on her pale brow, and the shakiness of her hands.
"Yes." Ginny met his eyes steadily, though the room was wavering behind him.
"That's where you got the scar, from the Nundu's claws."
"I actually lost the eye," she stated nonchalantly, shrugging her shoulders. "My team was lucky enough to have a rather talented MediWizard on hand, who saw to it immediately. Its claws are poisonous, though, as I'm sure you know, hence the little reminder, here... As for the Malaria, well, it could have been far worse, if the MediWizard hadn't acted so quickly." Ginny rubbed the white scar again and sighed tiredly. "Many of our group didn't make it."
"We were glad to have been traveling in such a large number though, let me tell you - that leopard was the size of the Whomping Willow, easy, and ten times as violent. That's the only way we were able to subdue it -"
"Sweet Jesus, woman - how can you lay there and act as if you didn't nearly lose your life," he muttered edgily, his hair falling into his eyes as he stared down at her.
Ginny looked up at him with an unfocused gaze and flaming cheeks that could have put Ashley Primmer's to shame.
"Why shouldn't I? You do it all the time - act as if you never went through any of what you did at the hands of Voldemort.for all our sakes. I always wanted to be like you, you know.I never have quite been able to achieve your coldness, though."
She watched his face pale, and his expression close up tight.
He tossed the vial carelessly into her hands and turned away. "Drink it," he ordered harshly.
"Yes, Master," she said mockingly, and tilted the vial to her lips.
"You've obviously, and very foolishly, I might add, forgotten your dosage of late," Severus remarked, moving away to the opposite side of the room. "Why are you still using this particular infusion? Didn't anyone tell you the dangers of ingesting too much Quinine?"
"It's the active ingredient, isn't it? It's worked so far."
"I can tell, even with you forgetting your dosages, you're building up an immunity to this particular potion.it's slowly becoming ineffective. The malarial parasites evolve mechanisms to resist them - "
"You sound as if you're teaching class, Professor," Ginny said softly.
"Why, Miss Weasley? Are you actually paying attention?" He asked sourly from across the room.
"Tell me, what am I to do, then?"
"I'll brew you a similar, more effective infusion containing the Chinese antipyretic Qinghao - otherwise known as Artemisia anuua. it contains Artemisinin."
"I had no idea. That's kind of you, Snape," Ginny managed half - coherently. She mindlessly shrugged out of her robes, and struggled beneath her covers as she found herself shivering uncontrollably.
"Kind," he snorted under his breath.
He finally returned, a wet cloth in his elegant hands. "Thoughtless girl. It just proves you should have been paying attention in class instead of scribbling away at that nonsense in that blasted book of yours."
Ginny smiled ruefully as he unceremoniously dropped the cool cloth over her eyes and forehead. "Ah, the infamous 'diary'. Sometimes I regret I ever threw it away, you know."
She heard him clear his throat above her, and shift uncomfortably.
A sudden thought came, unbidden, to her fuzzy mind.
"You kept it, didn't you?" She fought to keep the smile out of her voice, and the sudden surge of hope she felt out of her heart.
Her trained ear caught the sound of his breath catching before he snarled coldly, "Certainly not. That bloody thing was the instigator of this whole senseless mess - what would I want with the cursed thing?"
"What indeed?" Ginny asked diffidently.
"I strongly suggest you go to the Infirmary, Virginia -"
"Will you stop calling me that? I hate it!"
"Promise me you won't call me that anymore," she said fuzzily.
"I don't make promises. I'm not very good at keeping them."
"Promise me," she pulled off the cloth, looked up at him through her lashes, and reached out to grab his robes.
He rolled his eyes toward the ceiling, and expelled a harsh breath. "Very well, I 'promise' - now let go of my bloody robes, I have business elsewhere."
Ginny closed her eyes and fell back onto her pillows. "It figures - you leaving me here, all by myself, sick and feverish - "
"- and still infuriatingly, maddeningly annoying," he muttered
"Still infuriatingly, maddeningly, annoyingly in love with you," she corrected in a barely there murmur.
Severus made a disgusted sound beside her and impatiently retrieved the cloth from her fingers, letting it plop carelessly over her eyes again.
"Oh - I forgot to inform you. It seems Potter is returning to Hogwarts."
"Harry? Why?" Ginny frowned and again yanked the cloth from her face.
"Maybe he's coming to propose to you," she heard him grumbled beneath his breath.
" 'If ' we're so fortunate."
Ginny shifted on her bed to look over at him.
"You are jealous, aren't you?"
He cut his eyes at her, and didn't bother to answer. He probably thought silence was the best way to answer her contemptible claim.
"So? Harry?"
"Mr. Potter is coming to discuss Ministry business with Professor Dumbledore. He is to be our guest through the holidays."
"Ah. You must be having kittens about that. Thought you'd finally gotten rid of him, hadn't you?" Ginny smiled sleepily. "Ahh, Harry. Who'd have thought he'd give up a chance to play professional Quidditch to go run around for the Ministry?"
"The Great Harry Potter, give up the opportunity to play hero to witches and wizards all around the world? You have a singular sense of humor."
Ginny began shivering in earnest, and tugged her blankets closer as her teeth began to chatter. "How's it feel to know he could have your job, if he wanted?" She couldn't help teasing.
"Potter knows very well what kind of teacher I am - he's not about to relieve me of my duties any time soon. Don't you know by now, that I'm Hogwarts resident watchdog?"
"And don't you sound cheerful about it!"
She watched him prowl beside her bed, and held out an unsteady hand.
"Severus."
He turned back to face her and froze in mid - step.
She crooked a finger. "Come. Sit." She patted the edge of the bed.
He scowled.
"Please?"
Ginny gave him a pleading look, and did her best to look as pitiful as possible. She didn't have to try very hard.
He crossed his arms, and took the few steps to stand above her - he did not make any move to sit.
Ginny sighed, and swallowed nervously, letting her hand drop to the mattress. She closed her eyes and began to speak, not even completely sure of what she was going to say.
"Harry was my childhood love, you know? Every girl has one - the guy she gets up and goes to school for every morning.but that changed, like everything does, like everything is supposed to. I grew up, and I started to see you. I knew there was something different about the way I felt about you. Harry is.my friend."
"I don't recall inquiring about your relationship to 'the boy who wouldn't die'," he muttered impatiently from somewhere above her, sounding aggravated.
"I could cheerfully strangle you at times."
"I believe I much prefer you vaguely homicidal to incurably romantic."
"I'm going to sleep," Ginny groaned, and rolled onto her side away from him, her temples pounding.
Only silence met her ears, and she finally allowed sleep to claim her, as it offered a slight respite from the effects of her fever.
********************
To Be Continued.
A/N: Ah, many groveling thanks to you lovely reviewers - you have no idea how VERY much I appreciate you!!! Plus, so sorry about the disturbing lack of smoochies.
: D
J.K.'s Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them - luv that book! All of the creatures mentioned in this chapter originate from there, along with the facts and locations, and thanks to Malaria Foundation International, on whose site I found the much needed info on herbal malarial treatments.
Fwooper - Colorful African bird whose song is purportedly able to eventually drive any Wizard listening to it, insane.
Nundu - A Gigantic leopard found in Africa whose breath spreads awful, lethal disease, and is capable of destroying entire villages.
- These are 'loosely' based summaries of the creatures from J.K.'s book.
(Again, I don't own it, so don't sue - I have about three cents to my name.oh, and a slightly squashed Moon Pie. Hope you like the Vanilla kind.)