A/N: First off, WOW I got so many reviews for Chapter 10! That was amazing…keep it up! :) So sorry for not updating sooner! This chapter is NOT long at all (it's transitional- I'm sorry, I've been really busy all week!), and I apologize, but this means that the next one will be very long. Oh, and thank those who reviewed the story I plugged- I have another one for you! Ha, I'm never not writing…this time, it's a pairing even more unusual than D/G (at least I think)- Ron/Pansy. Check out 'Truly Whipped' if you want a fic that's pretty much the same style/genre as this one.
Be warned- this chapter is angsty.
Leaden Guilt
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Ginny sat with her arms across her chest uncomfortably, now having become aware of just how tight the top was. Pansy looked over at her and raised an eyebrow. "Having fun there Weasley?" Ginny glared.
"Couldn't I have done this in normal clothes?" she whined, plucking at the t-shirt in irritation. Hermione and Pansy shrugged in unison.
"We didn't want to risk it not working," Hermione explained carefully. Ginny turned this over in her mind- knowing Hermione, she was probably terrified of making a fatal mistake. In any instance.
"I still hate the leather," Ginny mumbled grumpily, making the others laugh. Except for Ron.
"Virginia Louise Weasley…" he began, but surprisingly it was Hermione who cut him off.
"She didn't sleep with him, for heaven's sake Ron!" she snapped. Ron merely glared, not put off by the abruptness of her interruption in the slightest.
"You used my little sister! I don't care who against, even if it's Malfoy…honestly Hermione, that's not like you at all. That was just plain…blimey Hermione, what were you thinking? Get Malfoy where it hurts, like he does to us?" Hermione sat, jaw hanging open slightly, absorbing the blunt statement her best friend had thrown at her.
And it was perfectly true. Ashamed, she looked across at Ginny, who had curled up into herself, hugging her knees and chewing on a chunk of hair worriedly while looking out the window. Hermione looked at Pansy, and was surprised to see a similar look of awkwardness as Hermione felt deep inside. Harry was looking somberly through his glasses at Ginny and Hermione, concern etched into every feature of his face. Hermione sighed.
"You're right," she said quietly. Ron jumped and then raised a red eyebrow.
"I'm what, sorry?"
Oh, it's just like him to milk this up for all it's worth! Hermione thought bitterly as she repeated herself. "You're right. We were stupid. We should've just hexed him or something." Ginny looked up slowly from her knees.
"I didn't want to hurt him like that," she said softly. Ron looked even more surprised at that than at Hermione admitting she was wrong. Ginny, seeing this expression, hastily explained. "I don't want to hurt anyone like that- granted, I love to act, but not if it will end up like this did."
There was silence; it was shattered by Pansy abruptly getting up and leaving, slamming the door behind her.
--
Draco sat on the grass, contemplating his position. It was bad. Possibly, it had never been worse. All of his school enemies had major blackmail on him now, and there really wasn't a blasted thing he could do about it. His musings were interrupted by someone sitting next to him.
"Oh sod off Parkinson, I'm betting you were in on it too." Pansy didn't deny or reply to this; she just twirled a grass blade between her hands and looked thoughtful. Draco rolled his eyes and looked back over the gray and green English landscape. Although it was incredibly drab, there was something beautiful about the cloudy colors that made Draco and Pansy think of Hogwarts- silver and green.
"You are a prick." Draco almost had to convince himself he wasn't dreaming when he heard Pansy say that.
"Excuse me? I'm not the one who bandied up with Granger and Weasley and wrapped them in leather, was I?" Pansy shrugged, but didn't look at him when she responded with a slightly shaky voice.
"No. But you're the one who sneered at Ron when he had tattered robes. You're the one who laughed when his father was persecuted for his curiosity. You're the one who smirked when you found out about Ginny and the diary. You're the one who called Hermione a Mudblood, when she's got twice the intelligence you'll ever have. You're the one that taunted Potter about something that should have never happened to him, and wasn't his fault. You're the one, Draco, who's made dozens of people miserable…and you're proud of it."
Draco sat in complete shock. Pansy Parkinson had just told him off, and it hurt. Where Ginny had stabbed him in the heart, Pansy stabbed him in the back, and in the ego. The one person on this blasted train carriage whom he thought wouldn't go all Holier Than Thou on him had just called him arrogant! Her words cut deep, because Draco knew every word was completely true, so there was no way he could deny it. He had found Ron's robes extremely amusing, and when his father had had an Inquiry Draco had wasted no time in showing the article to Crabbe and Goyle. When Lucius had relayed to him the semi-triumphant tale of how he had slipped Tom Riddle's diary into tiny Ginny Weasley's dilapidated book, he had laughed at her stupidity. That same year was the first time he called Granger a Mudblood, a term that he used as loosely as his smirk. And last year on the train…Potter's face when he had accused him of killing Cedric was one he gloated over all summer. Draco didn't feel remotely proud of himself now. In fact, he felt nauseated and disgusted with himself.
But he just looked over at Pansy and said coldly, "You forgot 'shamelessly used pathetic girl.'" Pansy's eyes welled up with tears, and she bit her lip and got up, walking away to the back of the train carriage. Draco didn't let himself watch as she leaned against the train carriage and started to cry; the scene was all too familiar.
--
The only time Ginny had been so ashamed of herself was the year Tom Riddle has possessed her; however, every adult she ever encountered that knew of it told her it wasn't her fault, she had no chance in preventing it. Being the trusting girl she was, she believed them with all her heart, and tried to move on with her life and fall into the normal pattern of being a teenager- school, Harry, friends. But this prank…she had control over that. She could have stopped it from the very start, stomped it out with her scuffed out, perfectly comfortable sneaker. But she hadn't, had she? The silence in the train carriage rang through her ears as if Peeves was yelling in her ear, but instead of the mischievous prankster in her ear she heard herself, screaming at her foolishness.
--
Hermione sat next to Ron, dumbfounded. How could she have been so stupid? Blimey…she had agreed with Pansy Parkinson, of all people!, to use Ginny to get at Draco. Through his heart. When sounded out in her mind, she couldn't see why she hadn't seen how badly it could end from the start. Of course, at the time it seemed like a stroke of genius; Draco's mocking 'Mudblood' pulsed in her head like a bad headache she couldn't shake. Slapping him in third year had temporarily paused the frustration she held penned up inside, but as was expected it came back again full force. Especially after he had said those horrid things to Harry about Cedric; poor Harry had been so confused that he didn't need a huge git like Malfoy to come along and perplex him further with visions of Death Eaters floating about in his head.
But any way Hermione looked at it, she couldn't get rid of the impending feeling of guilt; it sat in her stomach like a lead ball of poison.
--
Ron was livid. Hermione, one of his best friends, had used his little sister in the worst way possible to an older brother- her body. It was a protective older brother's worst nightmare…well, except of course for a mammoth giant snake being her lapdog while under the influence of the darkest wizard in the world's memory. Ron shook with anger when he thought of Ginny forcing herself to put her lips on that vile creature, whose family symbolized all that he hated with a passion. Death Eaters were bad enough in themselves, but their spawn were bound to be three times as ambitious, twice as power hungry.
Besides, the words 'Ginny' and 'leather' didn't belong in the same universe let alone the same sentence.
--
Harry stared blankly at the three in front of him, turning over everything in his mind slowly like a chicken roasting on a spit. He still didn't quite understand it, but there was one thing he understood and therefore grasped onto: Ginny had snogged Malfoy. The albino bane of his existence at the moment, had touched Ron's pure sister. Harry looked over at Ginny, now silently looking out the window, and his vision clouded over with gray as if he were looking through incredibly dirty lenses. She wasn't the same Ginny he thought of anymore. She wasn't the sweet, innocent girl who followed him around and blushed practically on command. He didn't know what to think of her now.
--
Pansy shook violently as she cried, feeling the thick mascara slide down her cheeks, making little black veins. She didn't even try to wipe them away as she let all her emotions out in the unstained water that poured from her eyes like a waterfall. It wasn't everyday that you get to be in the presence of Hogwarts' bravest, Hogwarts' smartest, Hogwarts' most loyal, or even its most mean-spirited or sweetest. Pansy miserably tried to think of where she stood- certainly not bravest. If she was brave, she'd be out there still talking to Draco. In her opinion, if she was Hogwarts' smartest then the school was in big trouble. Most loyal? She had just turned a young girl against a guy she had known for seven years, three prior to school. Draco was, without a doubt, the most mean spirited, and Ginny was perhaps the sweetest girl Pansy had ever known. It confused her.
Where did she stand? Hogwarts' Sluttiest? Hogwarts' Most Wicked? Or Hogwarts' Most Cowardly, unable to fight her own battles, and making others suffer for her?