I've started college, and I want to die. If you were taking twenty-three credit hours this quarter, I'm sure you would too. So, again, I'm sorry that this is long...in coming. It's also sort of lengthy, but...what can you do? I'm so glad that you guys are curious about Holden. He's odd, isn't he? Well, we'll all just have to wait and see if he has a part to play. *smirk* La la...
Thanks again to everyone who reviewed! My heart flutters every time I read one. I don't mind emailing people when I update, so just mention it in your review if you would like me to. Well, enough of me! Enjoy!
*****
Scratch a Lover, Find a Foe
Chapter 4
Three days later, Ginny received a written response from Ian Jones, along with a very badly wrapped parcel.
It was a lovely Sunday afternoon, and Ginny was stretched out on her stomach across a blanket beneath a tree near the lake. She was reading a copy of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice... for the third time. Her paperback was already showing signs of loving wear on the corners, and the spine was bent (unintentionally), to mark her favorite parts.
She was just about to turn the page and come upon her second spine crease when a soft thud and hoot startled her out of the book. She craned her neck to see behind her, and quickly sat up, turning around to accept the letter from the owl's outstretched leg. Ian's owl, she noted with glee.
She stroked the bird's feathers gently, awed at how they shifted from their ebony color to a midnight blue that only stood out in sunlight, and seemed unnatural for the imposing owl. Ginny smiled at him, apologized for not having a treat on her, and watched it fly away. It wasn't until he took flight that she saw the parcel, smoothly wrapped across the top, but bulging awkwardly underneath, where a triple knot was struggling to constrain the brown paper. She smiled at it, imagining Ian's face while he'd hurriedly wrapped it.
Her hands were itching to wrench the envelope and parcel open-- and a week ago, it would not have been dangerous to do so in front of the other Hogwarts students. However, (no thanks to a certain Slytherin, she grumbled inwardly) Ginny would have to be more careful about her post. So she rolled her eyes and slowly looked around her, peering for anything suspicious...particularly any silvery blonde hair or Head Boy pins gleaming in the sunlight.
Over the weekend Ginny had been on the receiving end of many glares from Draco, but he'd kept his distance, which made her both relieved and anxious. While he didn't come to her, she didn't have to worry about how to get him to bugger off, but at the same time, that Slytherin could just be biding his time and scheming against her.
She wondered if he were really planning something hideous for her, and she was sure that it would be far more overdone than just placing someone face first on the floor. Honestly, it wasn't that horrible a punishment for eavesdropping; Merlin knew she'd done worse to Ron. Besides, he'd gotten back up, hadn't he? He'd been well enough to threaten her some more, and for Malfoy that meant being a picture of health.
The sound of that SLAP suddenly jumped into her mind, and she couldn't help but smile, just a little, at the whole situation. How often did one have a Malfoy kissing the ground they walked on?
Exactly.
And for all of Malfoy's obstacles (namely the prat standing in her way), Ginny had been able to eat sufficiently both times that day. Thanks to her barreling abilities and Holden, she thought. Holden...now there was a nice kid. Well, he seemed nice. It was considerate of him to wait for her with a dinner, right?
But then, she didn't feel quite right about him. It was more than his yank accent, and more than his casual friendliness with everything short of a Slytherin. It was... It was... Ginny sighed. She couldn't put her finger on it. There was just something peculiar about him, and about the way he made it a point to wave at her every time she passed (or even glanced at) him in the halls and at meals.
He was always the picture of happiness, she thought. Odd...that was something more characteristic of a Hufflepuff.
His eyes, too, she thought. They were pretty, sure, but there was something so much more vibrant and mocking in them. The cerulean eyes seemed to beat with a pulse and a life all their own, seperate from thought and body. Beauty wasn't what drew you in, but curiosity at what he was thinking. It was like he knew something incredibly scandalous about you, like he could read your thoughts just by looking at you. It was horrifying.
Ginny shivered and shook herself from her thoughts. She looked around.
There weren't many students out on the grounds that Sunday. Ginny attributed it to homework procrastination. Not that she blamed them; she had only finished her load on Friday night because she couldn't sleep, and she had misplaced her book.
She snorted. That's right. Leave it to Ginny to do all of her homework in one sitting because she's bored. What a lame excuse.
Nobody was paying any attention to her, or the crisp envelope lying on her lap. Might as well open--
Wait a second.
A mass of green was coming closer from the direction of the Quidditch pitch.
The Slytherin team had finished practice. The prefect groaned.
She could see their Seeker, recently made team captain (though Ginny suspected that his appointment had to do with something other than skill) striding ahead of them, his mouth twisted into a frown and his eyes alive with irritation. As he emerged from the shadow of a tree the sun struck his hair and made him so radiant that Ginny had to squint just to follow his frustrated tromp.
His team looked worn and weary. Their eyes were downcast, and their sneers diminished by what Ginny assumed must have been a sound verbal lashing and strenuous training. Some of them were dragging their brooms halfheartedly behind them. Dirt covered them from head to foot, and Ginny could see sweat stains around the collars of their robes.
It made her glad that she only played Quidditch at home, where she could at least have an opportunity to pretend that hitting Fred or George was an accident. (She ignored that they did likewise with her.) If she tried fooling around like that on any of the Hogwarts teams (much less Malfoy's) she would be reprimanded and looked down upon by her whole house for not being serious enough.
Well, it wasn't her fault that they couldn't have any fun.
In any case, the person she least wanted to see was in her sights, and her common sense told her that if he swivelled his reflective head in her direction, he would also be able to see her. Sitting there. Alone. With new post and a badly wrapped parcel laying in her lap. She stuffed the parcel and letter into her bag in a flurry of red hair, black fabric, and pale arms.
Well, this was it. She'd been expecting him to come find her a lot sooner than Sunday afternoon, and here it was. Not that she'd been waiting for it or anything. Especially not looking forward to it. That was preposterous. However, she had told herself what to do when it happened, and it involved acting bored and indifferent, again. Just because it seemed to bother him better than anything else she'd thought of.
She guessed Malfoy wasn't used to not getting 'enough respect' and attention from whomever he was annoying. Ginny shrugged inwardly. Oh well, he shouldn't have threatened Virginia Weasley. Period.
The key to really unnerving him was looking uninterested, and that meant acting as though he didn't bother her in the least. That involved not running away. So she had to stay there, on her blanket, out in the open, where he had plenty of room to hex her into oblivion. They'd have to dredge pieces of her from the bottom of the lake, and the Merpeople would most likely surface to shriek their protests at having witch bits raining down on them from above.
Ginny gulped. No, she told herself. She couldn't afford to get panicky right before Malfoy reached her. Speaking of which, she squinted in his direction. The kid was still standing with his team. What could he possibly be doing with them to take this long? She snorted. They probably hadn't been 'Slytherin enough' on the field or something stupid like that.
Well, all the other houses thought Slytherin did a fine job of earning the most fouls. Go ahead, Malfoy, encourage them to hand more easy shots to their opponents. Just make it easier for your team to lose the cup after all.
It didn't look like he'd seen her...yet. He was still chewing his team out, and for some reason, they all seemed infintely smaller in stature to Malfoy. It looked like he was towering over even Crabbe and Goyle with his rage. Even Zabini,--well, no. He was just haunched over. Anyway, if Malfoy was going to yell at someone, best if it wasn't her.
She stopped. If Malfoy was going to yell... Ginny remembered the times he'd raised his voice with her. He'd been mean and direct of course, but he'd also been flustered and it had seemed as though he couldn't really rally his thoughts long enough to do anything to her. In the owlery he'd been composed...until she'd exploded at him and pushed past him to leave. In the library he'd just stood there and watched her walk away.
The moral of the story? Get the prat angry, and he wouldn't do anything to her. Not at that exact moment, at least. Ah, she smiled. She could stall his wrath, and however unspoken it may be, both she and the Head Boy would know she'd added another victory to her tally. So why on earth was she sitting there quietly? Why was she waiting for him to act? Just because the ball was in his court didn't mean she had to sit still and patiently wait for him to hit it back.
No. She had to show him that Gryffindors could bend the rules of battle as much as Slytherins; or at least, that this Gryffindor could. She needed to act. But how? Much as she wanted to hex him into oblivion, Ginny thought that Draco would rather turn it around to get her in trouble for arranging it. She certainly couldn't instigate a fist fight with the kid. He was at least a handspan taller than she, and probably had better reflexes from being a seeker...no matter how badly he played on the pitch.
Ginny sighed. What to do? Then it hit her. Her eyes widened in surprise. It was so perfect! Of course she hadn't thought of it earlier, she reasoned. She'd been too worried about the blatant way to quell him. She needed to be subtle...like Ian had tried to tell her. Well, she thought, before long the team will slump into the castle, and she still had to look up everything to make sure it was right.
The prefect rolled up her blanket, tucked it under her arm, and shouldered her bag, striding confidently toward the castle with a satisfied smirk on her face.
*****
Quidditch practice could have been.... better. Draco turned to scowl at the disgraceful bunch of Slytherins trailing in his wake. Absolutely filthy, the way they'd played 'fair' with each other that day. There'd been no mishandling, no premeditated distractions, no hitting, no kicking, no... strategy. The other houses, (especially those foresight-lacking Gryffindors, Draco thought) only thought the fouls that Slytherin caused were to be "mean".
Well, there was that. But mostly they were to slow the other team down. Delay, stall, upset their strategy, while guarding our hoops especially well. The best defense is a good offense, he told himself. There was a method to their madness. He paused to sneer. At least, when there was madness, there was a method.
This practice had lacked both. Everything had been willy-nilly, and Draco hadn't appreciated it at all.
They'd played like a bunch of stinking Hufflepuffs. And he planned to let them know about it too.
"Hey, badgers!" he called to them as they caught him up. The team was stopping around him, forming a crescent of heavy green robes and equally laden expressions. "Do you want to tell me what you saw up there? What'd you see when you were gliding" --They'd been bloody gliding!-- "around your team? Green robes? Silver Slytherin crests?" The team stood still, wondering where their captain was going with this.
Draco continued. "Well. Let me tell you what I saw. From my vantage point, Crabbe," Draco stepped right into the ogre-like boy's face. Vincent's eyes dropped to the ground as though an anvil had been tied to them. His captain shifted his gaze to look at each and every player, all of who followed Crabbe's example.
All except for Zabini. He folded his hands over the top of his broomstick and rested his chin on them. His eyes met Draco's in an unwavering stare. Draco didn't care. Blaise always stared at him. Much as he didn't like it, he was used to it.
"I could have sworn your robes were yellow, with big, black, disgusting badgers on their fronts."
There was a stirring, anger rising in their faces and limbs at being compared to Hufflepuffs. Gryffindor was certainly the most hated of houses as far as Slytherins were concerned, but to play or act like Hufflepuffs... That was to be cowardly and timid in the worst sense. At least Gryffindors were action oriented, even when the stupid lions had no foresight, they didn't just sit there. Like a badger would.
Zabini's eyes drifted away from his livid captain...and settled on a spot across the lake. He saw the Weasley girl sitting under a tree over there...probably reading. That was all you could see her doing anymore. Not that he cared. It just meant that you had to get out of her way in the halls, or she'd walk right into you. Then she'd apologize profusely (really, too profusely) and help you carry all your things to your class (if you weren't lucky enough to run into her before her potions class, which nobody outside of Slytherin, much less a Gryffindor prefect, could afford to be late to). He'd seen her do it.
Too bad she couldn't knock Malfoy over.
A small smirk tugged at the corners of his mouth. But she had, hadn't she? The Ravenclaw boy had told a story that had spread like a plague, forming and festering an image in everyone's minds of a big, powerful, Slytherin Head Boy being hurled by a little, weak, Gryffindor Prefect to the ground she walked on. It could only have been better if she'd been a Plebe and a first year. As it was, Hogwarts had seemed more than amused to hear the tale.
Especially the yank, he thought. He'd been as happy as any of the Gryffindors. What was his name? Harold? Herman? Holton? He shrugged to himself. The name didn't matter. Zabini had seen him retelling the story to the younger students in the school.
He'd also seen him glaring daggers at Malfoy, and he was certain that if Malfoy hadn't been so busy with homework, Head Boy duties, and well…this revenge thing he was surely piecing together (Zabini would be genuinely surprised if Malfoy wasn't planning a little vengeance), he would have noticed the blond boy who kept giving him nasty stares in classes and at meals.
Meals... Zabini was hungry. Malfoy had kept them on the pitch through lunch. He thought about going inside and getting something from the kitchen, but to his annoyance, his captain was still talking. Blaise rolled his eyes and tried to look like he was focused on what Malfoy was saying.
"We are Slytherins. We play as Slytherins," Draco ranted. "When we start playing like badgers," he spat the word out, "then we start to be badgers." Draco surveyed his team, and gave them a moment to really mull it over. "Now," his voice turned over, taking on an insulting and patronizing tone. "When was the last time Hufflepuff won the House Cup?" Nobody answered. Nobody could. "Exactly."
He waved them off toward the castle, and they looked relieved to go. The sun was resting high above him, beating down and incubating him in his dark, dirty robes. What he needed was a shower, and some cooler clothes.
Draco sighed and slouched his shoulders, trying to relieve the tension in them. He failed miserably. After one last glance across the lake, he, too, entered the cooler darkness of the castle's entrance hall.
*****
Thirty minutes later, clean, refreshed, and considerably less disagreeable, Draco entered his single to see a common school owl perched on the back of his chair. He raised a curious brow and accepted the note tied carefully to its leg. As soon as it was free of its charge, it took off through the window that Draco had opened that morning.
Noting that the envelope had no name on it, he opened it cautiously, holding it away from himself. More and more students were buying Weasel gags nowadays, and Draco had been able to not be the recipient of any this far into the school year. He sincerely hoped (for the sender's sake, of course) that the streak was not about to be ruined.
When he finished tearing it open, half a standard piece of parchment floated to the ground. Draco looked at it suspiciously before bending down to retrieve it. He turned it over and immediately noticed the half flowy, half scrawled handwriting. It was construed so that he couldn't make out whether a girl or a five-year-old boy had written it. Draco was able to make out the message, however.
My land is bare of chattering folk;
The clouds are low along the ridges,
And sweet's the air with curly smoke
From all my burning bridges.
--Parker; Sanctuary
Draco's features clouded over with uncertainty. A poem? Draco was no stranger to letters and poorly written lyrics of admiration from anonymous (and sometimes not so anonymous) girls, but this was different. This poetry wasn't about love at all. In fact (he read it again), it was about making enemies. And furthermore, (he read it once more) it was about not caring that one made enemies. Who on earth would send him a poem about indifference to burning one's bridges...deliberately?
Who was this...he glanced at the bottom of the parchment, Parker person? The poet? The sender? Both? Because he could guess that Sanctuary was the title, he assumed that Parker was the poet. Parker... Parker... Had he seen the name before? It would have to have been on a book if he had, since this Parker was an author of sorts. A book...
Well, it wasn't on any of his books, that was for certain. He thought of people who might read poetry for fun at Hogwarts (assuming the note was even from a student), lying back on his bed to contemplate. Draco abandoned that thread and went back to books he'd seen recently in the halls. The library? A class?
Nothing with a Parker ran through his thoughts.
Draco sighed, putting the poet out of his mind for a moment.
Running...something he always had to chide the first years on. The last time he'd done that had been the week before, when a Hufflepuff had come rushing down the crowded hall and spooked a girl into crashing into another student. He'd taken points from the little badger before brushing past the fallen students. Honestly, didn't they ever learn?
He remembered the girl who'd been run into, red hair, big apologetic eyes, and pale, freckled arms gathering the other student's books into her own arms... Weasley. The Weasley girl had been the unwitting victim of the badger's carelessness, and her own books had spilled out of her arms to the floor around her, some laying open in the hallway. Draco had smirked at her embarrassment and watched her pull her books into a pile under the other student's. Between her hurried apologetic babble, he remembered seeing one that stood out from the big dark textbooks she'd had with her. It had been bright, a clean, pristine white, with black letters running up the spine.
Draco's brow furrowed in concentration. What had the spine said? Collected poems of somebody... Park, he'd seen from under her hand. Under her hand. The freckled hand had been covering the name. Park could only lead to one of two things, and as Draco had the hardest time picturing Pansy as a published poet, it had to be Parker! His eyes widened with surprise, and then narrowed with anger. That conclusion also only meant one thing: Ginny Weasley had sent him the note.
Well, he thought, sitting up. He paused; he'd sat up too quickly, and waited for the ache in his head to go down before thinking to himself. What the hell did it mean? Draco only had to read it one more time before he was sure: she didn't give a damn about what he had on her, and furthermore, Ginny Weasley didn't care if she had to become his enemy. She was telling him to do his worst, and that she wouldn't hesitate to do the same. That was what enemies did, after all, was burn each other's bridges.
It was an insult in a horrible disguise. Unless... He thought about it a moment. Unless she didn't mean to hide her message. Draco growled. He didn't appreciate her lack of tact. Her frankness was an insult in itself. He crumpled the paper in his fist. Weasley.
A moment later he heard a gentle rush of wind that startled him back. He looked around the curtained bedpost to see another owl landing gracefully on the arm of his chair, with another blank envelope tied to its leg. Draco opened it and pulled out the parchment.
Malfoy,
Just in case it was too hard for you to figure, I'll spell it out.
S-O-D O-F-F
He seethed.
Knowing that she must have just been in the owlery to send him the note so quickly, Draco stood up, snatched his robes from his trunk, and stormed out the door... To catch a little Weasel.
*****
Well? Not a whole lot happened, but I wanted to put something up. Well, actually, one significant thing happened. I hope you all caught it. *wink* Anyway, if you've the time, I'd really appreciate a review. What'd you think? Was it awful? Too long? Too short? Too...Ginny/Draco-less? Too Holdenless? Too Underlying Plotless? Too..thless? (Ba Dum Bum) S'okay. You don't have to laugh at the joke. Just laugh at the joker.