Shaelune

Part 12

Sex and Damned Amnesia

"Life is a mystery

Everyone must stand alone

I hear you call my name

And it feels like home

When you call my name

It's like a little prayer

Down on my knees

I wanna take you there

In the midnight hour

I can feel your power

Just like a prayer

You know I'll take you there"

~~~Madonna

"Like A Prayer"

Harry rubbed the back of his neck nervously as he rounded the corner of the stone wall that outlined the Fountain Garden. He could hear shouts and girlish giggles, accompanied by the pounding drums and high-pitched guitar riffs of the Weird Sisters. He'd sort of gotten the impression that it was a private date, but apparently Ginny'd invited him to some big party, and he was a bit scared they'd get caught- he was sure Dumbledore hadn't given his classmates permission to trash the gardens of the mansion.

Ginny emerged from the throng of dancing people, their sweaty faces illuminated by the moonlight, and dashed over to him, throwing her arms around his neck ecstatically. "Harry! We didn't think you we're coming, it's late!"

"Er- well, it's just-" Harry stuttered. He didn't really want Ginny to know he'd spent half an hour trying to do something with his hair to make it lay semi-flat, at least.

Ginny grinned and slid her hand down his arm to clasp his. Her skin was cold; it was explicable, however, as it wasn't exactly the south of France in August around here, and she was wearing an extremely skimpy gold confection of a dress fastened in the back with a complicated pattern of laces. "Never mind, you're here now," she assured him, and led him through the opened gates into the courtyard.

The ground was flagged with alternating black-and-white tiles; a giant fountain sparkled in the center of the garden, a tower of at least a dozen circular tiers overflowing with clear, azure water. Rivulets poured down at an angle on the guests, some of whom Harry recognized: Seamus and Dean were dancing with two fourth-year Ravenclaws, who looked impressed with the shameless Muggle breakdancing being performed nearby by Justin Finch-Fletchley. Lavender was slow-dancing to the currently playing fast song with Terry Boot, with whom she looked rather enamored; Parvati was laughing very loudly and drunkenly, as she tipped her head backwards from her position in the bottom tier of the fountain. Her white shirt was soaked through to the point of transparency. Colin Creevey was aiming his camera at her; when he brought the lens down, his expression clearly said Oh my god, what am I doing here with all these popular people, some of whom are wet and half-naked?

Which was exactly what Harry was thinking, except that his thought was quickly followed by Why didn't anyone tell me about this? Then, Wait. I'm popular, aren't I?

Ginny led him over to the side of the courtyard, which was overhung by the bottom of a balcony that extended from the actual building, and where a hastily set-up table had been festooned with several types of cake, a tower of frosty cans of various wizard drinks, and a murky-looking bowl of punch that smelled suspiciously and strongly of Valdestulte Elixir. Ginny proffered a cup of the punch, which seemed to be giving off some sort of steam, but Harry shook his head quickly and reached for an ice-encrusted can of Batwing Brew instead. She laughed and withdrew her wand from- where did she get it from, in fact? Harry wondered about this; one minute she didn't have it, and the next it was firmly enclosed in her hand. "Purge," she whispered to the cup, and the pink liquid frothed and bubbled before the steam turned opaque and rose upward in a curling mist. "It's fine now."

"Wow," Harry commented. That hadn't been in any of his spellbooks.

Ginny poured a cup for herself, murmuring "Repete Incantatem" to it, and handed one to him. "When you grow up in a house with two brothers who are constantly spiking your morning oatmeal with household cleaners, you learn a few tricks."

Hermione wrenched one eyelid open. Wherever she was, it was dark; she couldn't see further than a foot in front of her, and none of the mansion's ubiquitous torches hung from the walls.

Oh, my god, she realized with relief. She was lying in a bed.

Only it wasn't hers.

Panicking, she sat up quickly, taking in the demurely shining gray curtains and black bedspread. It was a room in the mansion, as the familiarly paneled glass doors were tightly closed beside her, but it was deep night and Hermione couldn't tell anything else about the room. And then she inhaled the faint smell of smoke and metallic, strange blood, and she knew where she was.

"Malfoy!" she yelled, reaching for her wand in her skirt pocket. It wasn't there; suddenly the events of the night flashed back to her. He'd Disarmed her and he had her wand.

"Malfoy!"

There was silence for a few, tension-infused seconds, and then, from somewhere in the darkness, a slow, mocking drawl: "I'm not deaf, you know."

Hermione ignored him. "I want my wand."

"Can't have everything you want."

She flung her legs over the side of the bed, so she could see beyond the curtains that hung at its foot, and the flickering light of the fire was suddenly visible. "Give me my wand."

Malfoy's bent head was silhouetted against the firelight, and he almost laughed, a sort of pitying snort. "Don't whine, it's not very attractive."

"What did you do to me, Malfoy?"

He turned to her, and suddenly his entire face was thrust into high relief, eyes serious and wild at the same time, hair extremely disheveled. "How should I know?"

Hermione sighed and held out a hand. "Wand?"

He glared at her, eyes narrowed, for a moment, then, in a blur of pale hand and fully-unbuttoned white shirt, handed her a long, glittering column of moonlight that lay heavy and comforting in Hermione's palm. His was out now too, a slender, pointed branch of impenetrable, highly polished oak.

Hermione inhaled deeply and her rowan wand began to glow blue, illuminating the room with fluorescent ultramarine light. Malfoy's wand started to gleam pale gold, and Hermione let the force of the spell pull her toward him, the magnetism increasing until finally their wands locked at the tips. "PrioriIncantatem," she breathed.

Malfoy jumped back as his wand began to smoke. "What the fu-"

"Shh, shut up!" Hermione ordered, watching intently.

Her sleeping form rose upward from the wand, a ghost of roiling gray clouds, and gradually vanished into the ceiling. "That's Corporis Leviosam," Hermione observed, grabbing a loose piece of parchment, which began to write down what she was saying.

Next, a rushing, increasingly loud wind rose in the room, whipping the bed curtains haphazardly, then stopped just as abruptly. There was total quiet: Hermione tried to speak, but no words would come. Malfoy, too, was gulping like a fish out of water, attempting speech. When finally that enchantment vanished as well, they both shouted "Confutio!" in unison.

"The Suppression Spell," elaborated Hermione suspiciously. "What exactly did you need that for?"

He didn't answer, as long, rippling cords were spitting from the wand, coiling themselves at his feet in huge thick piles. "Funis Vinculie," Malfoy pronounced after a moment's concentration. Words silently blossomed onto the pad beside them. Hermione's face was ashen. "The Bondage Curse? Malfoy, what did you do?"

Lastly, the shadow of Hermione's wand flew from his, bouncing soundlessly off the arm of her chair before fading into the dark carpet. "And there's the Disarming Charm," Hermione said, gripping her actual wand more tightly as she, with some effort, ripped hers from Malfoy's. "I'll be right back, I have to check something."

Ginny felt fatigue wash over her, weighing down her eyelids. She fell gently forward, her head resting against Harry's chest, and wrapped her arms around his neck almost childishly, as a sleepy little girl would to the one carrying her. The music she'd relegated Neville to choosing was slowing down now; the straining chords of a ballad wafted through the breeze. Beside her, Lavender and Terry were pressed so close she couldn't even see the light of the waxing moon between them; Seamus seemed to have left his younger Ravenclaw dancing partner in favor of, er, comforting Parvati. And after half an hour of inane chatter with Harry over carefully non-spiked punch, she'd asked him casually to dance. Ginny noticed he hadn't needed any persuasion.

She wondered if Harry purposely separated himself from the social events at Hogwarts. You'd think with all the troubles he's got, he'd need some distraction, Ginny thought. But she never saw him at Parvati and Lavender's monthly parties in one of the underground halls Fred and George had found last year, nor had he been at the huge end-of-term celebration last year, preceding the Third Task by a week, which seemingly the entire school had attended. He was certainly enjoying this party, though, or so Ginny perceived. Harry's eyes were half-closed, and he was clasping himself tightly to her, using his arms around her waist as leverage. She could feel it every time he breathed if she tuned out the muted conversation of the people around them and the music, she could make out his heartbeat.

"Ginny?" he said quietly, startling her out of her reverie and making her look up way up at him. "Er thanks for inviting me."

Ginny tilted her head down again so he couldn't see her scowl petulantly. They were slow-dancing, she could almost hear the electricity crackling between them, and all he could say was thanks for inviting me'?

Harry must have realized she wasn't pleased with what he'd said, and so in his habitual fashion began to babble on about how nice Terry and Lavender looked together and asking rhetorical questions about Parvati's incident in the fountain and who'd spiked the punch. Ginny bit her lip, her forehead pressing into his chest, then grasped his hand one more time.

"Let's get out of here," she whispered.

She led him through the maze of thorny hedges, peeking into openings for a solitary garden. About twenty meters away, she spotted one that was empty, flagged with the same black-and-white tile, its leafy walls sparkling with faerie-lights. "This is good," Ginny observed, and resumed their dancing; the strains of the ballad still faintly reached her ears, and she swayed in time to the slow beat.

"What are you trying to do, Ginny?" Harry leaned down to her ear through a curtain of red hair, his breath on her neck.

Ginny shifted back so her face was parallel to his. "I'd have thought it'd be obvious by now." She giggled. "Maybe you're not the most perceptive person in the world, but come on."

Harry looked anxious. "Ron"

Ginny rolled her eyes and glanced at the entrance to the garden. Deserted. "Don't worry, Harry, do something for yourself for once." She trailed a finger down his oxford, curving slightly around the buttons. "You're so selfless do you realize that every time you do something, you're worrying about someone else's well-being? You deserve happiness too, you know."

"I know," he murmured. Ginny's metallic-painted nail worked the top button open. "But"

"It's okay," Ginny told him slowly without making eye contact. "No one's going to get hurt. No one's putting it in Witch Weekly." She looked around and stepped suddenly closer to him. "No one's watching."

"Oh, so we only er get together in secret, is that it?" His voice had a playful tone now, and Ginny almost sighed in relief.

"Whatever you want," she told him, finally gazing up, as she'd undone all the buttons. "Do I need to give you a minute to think about what you want?"

Harry gave her a lopsided, almost wolfish smile as he bent closer to her. "I already know."

The first thing Draco noticed when Granger finally switched the light off and came out of the bathroom was that she was pale. Really pale: a ghostly shroud of gray-white had settled over her face, and her dark eyes stared sunken and haunted from their white sockets. "Malfoy," she started, her voice a hoarse whisper.

"What?" He tried to sound unconcerned, but she looked so sick that he couldn't help but be pityingly curious.

She moved, as though in a trance, over to the chair she'd sat in earlier, and sank slowly into its dove-gray cushions. "Malfoy"

Draco looked at her from beneath raised eyebrows. "Yes, that is my name."

Granger inhaled audibly and fixed him with her spookily soulless gaze. "Malfoy, we had sex."

It took a moment for Draco to register what she'd said. "What? How do you know?"

She glared at him in a much more normal, Granger-ish way. "Well, not only am I suddenly not a virgin anymore-" Draco snorted very unsympathetically. "- but look at this." She fumbled in her robe pocket and pulled out a small glass globe, hinged on one side and filled with a milky sort of liquid. Flicking open the lid, Granger said shakily, "Comperinomen."

Draco almost laughed as the liquid floated from the container and Granger held up the note-filled parchment; the stuff was forming itself into a beige-colored quill and scratching something on the paper.

Draco O. Malfoy, it said in a curvy, glowing script. The quill collapsed into liquid once again and the lid snapped shut.

"Okay, it knows my name," Draco said. "What does that prove?"

Granger looked at him matter-of-factly. "This, right here?" She held up the sphere. "It's your sperm. And it" she winced with an expression of distaste. "was inside me."

He couldn't resist laughing full-out this time, and her hands flew to her hips in indignation, rising from the chair. "It's not a laughing matter, Malfoy! YOU HAD SEX WITH ME!"

"Oh, hang on just a moment, Granger. You were under the spell as well, so it was you, too, I bet." Draco pulled himself back into the chair and looked at her expectantly.

Granger was pacing back and forth now, pushing her unruly curls out of her face with the anxiously curled fingers of one hand. Her eyes were wild with stress, and she was muttering to herself. "Contraception yes, that's the first step then, then Dumbledore? No, I couldn't memory charms, an anti-Obliviate, I know there's a book but shit, I don't have it with me maybe Lavender's crystal ball? A Pensieve would be the best thing, but Dumbledore's got the only one yes, we'll have to see him oh, no, but that would be so horrible but we've got to do it and check for any infections but I don't know the spells, I'd have to see the hotel nurse but she'd ask too many questions" Her head snapped up. "Malfoy. Are any of your house-elves trained medically?"

Draco was becoming a little frightened. Granger was, quite honestly, freaking him out. "Er, yeah, Sisii's a nurse-elf," he said quickly.

She picked up her wand again and aimed it at her stomach, clothed in the very rumpled silk shirt she'd been wearing when they had drinks. "Prohibeo Gravida," she said, and closed her eyes in discomfort as a shimmering, dark blue wave of light washed over her body.

"Smart," Draco remarked casually. He'd been reading up on Contraception Charms earlier, and this one would not only prevent pregnancy in the future but also abort any current ones.

"Thanks," she said sarcastically, scanning the bed area for something. "Have you seen my bag?"

Draco shook his head and stood up. "Must have, er, left it in the library," he said. "Where are you going?"
"Well, first, we're going to go see Dumbledore," Granger told him, settling for grabbing a cloak from his closet and draping it around herself.

"No," Draco stated simply, sitting down again.

"Yes," she told him emphatically as she crossed to the door. "If you don't go, I'll go anyway, and he'll come find you." Draco regarded her doubtfully. "Don't make me levitate you to his quarters."

"Fine," he conceded, and stood again, also taking a cloak.

"Was it the levitation that convinced you?" she asked bravely as they started down the hall.

He glared at her, and she smiled for the first time since waking up.

Ginny looked up at Harry from where she lay on the stone ground, her hair brushing the hedge-leaves behind them. With her shoes off, dress fully unlaced and the skirt hiked up to her hips, one would have thought she'd be cold, but Harry's earnest hands, like white-hot firebrands on her skin, warmed her at their touch. Right now those hands were doing something she really, really didn't want Ron to see, and therefore was glad he'd decided to take the night to research his project in the library.

Suddenly Harry's hand ventured into a part of her so heated that even his fingers were cold, and she gasped in shock and surprised pleasure. "Are you okay?" Harry said, quickly withdrawing his hand and backing up. "I'm sorry-"

Ginny glowered at him. "I'm fine," she said. "Or I was fine until you stopped."

Harry grinned shyly and leaned back over her, inserting his hand beneath her skirt again. Ginny closed her eyes and let out a shaky, quiet breath.

An hour later, he was lying next to her, arms wrapped possessively about her waist. His cloak served as a blanket for them. They hadn't done it, but they'd gotten pretty close, which was fine for Ginny, and a relief for Harry, as he knew that, had he done it, either Hermione or Ron would have figured it out and he'd have been walking around with a black eye courtesy of the Weasley fist for several weeks.

"So" she said between long kisses, "are you convinced?"

"Of what?" he muttered back.

" me," she said throatily, pulling him closer again. "us"

Harry's eyes opened wide, blinding emerald that made Ginny squint. "God, yes," he said in disbelief.

"Good," Ginny purred, and closed his eyes with her lips.

~~~Author's Note~~~

Well, I like this chapter. It was kind of hard to do and keep in the PG-13 area, but if you think it should be R, just tell me and I'll consider it. It's a little shorter than the last few I've done, but I liked ending it here, because there are going to be some BIG plot twists next chapter. But yay, Ginny and Harry are finally together! And, er, Hermione and Draco too, sort of, against their will, I guess I thought that was an interesting little turn of events stay tuned, because there's a lot more where that came from (not the sex, the turn of events bit, though no! Can't tell! You must read!)

Thanks ever so much to those who took the time to review this chapter!

KeeperOfTheMoon- No hard feelings, okay? Thanks for obliging and taking it down. And yes, you were the first!

Lilie Blaze- Yay! I always thought I was bad at writing suspense eh thanks, I liked the conversation too You're welcome!

Wyrm- Thanks! Character is good!

Emmy- Yeah, OMGOMG! I thought I'd introduce a separate plotline to make it a little more interesting, but this is the only chapter where it'll be split up like that. Just for variety.

Felicity- Here you go!

Avi- Thanks, I thought it was really funny, but not a lot of other people seemed to Okay, two days before Christmas! Close, right?

Demonstar- Oookay sure

- Thanks! I know I always download like 50 chapters of stories before I disconnect and take my laptop to bed so I can stay up til 3 AM reading fanfic

S-Star- Hmmm a conundrum

JoKing- That would be interesting, but I recommend you stay around for a while and wait. It might happen in a, er, different way than you imagine.

Wyrm- Didn't you already review? Okay, two reviews, two responses

Lastjediprincess- I think so!

Black Mage Zelda- Oh! That's so sweet! Not the frikin creepy' part, but saying I'm a great writer. I want to be a professional one.

~*~goldenberry~*~