While reading this, please keep in mind that the Dead Lands don't want you (or anyone) to remain in them.  Free will can never be taken out in any situation, though, hence the troubles that Draco and Ginny have.  But as you read, you will notice certain people admitting certain things that they'd never admit if they weren't in the Dead Lands.  I couldn't think of a better explanation, so sue me. 

Wait a minute.  Please don't.

*********

"Where are we?" Draco repeated.  He looked around, and did not like the look of this desert. 

"I think I said the spell wrong…" Ginny started, and Draco's eyebrows shot up.

"Gee, you think?" he asked sarcastically.  Ginny just shrugged.  Draco saw something lying a few feet away from him.  It looked like a scrap of metal.  Just then, an old, odd-looking man appeared.  He looked at them.

"Who are you and what business do you have in the Dead Lands?"

"Dead Lands?" Ginny repeated, giggling.  Draco stared at her. 

"This isn't funny, Virginia.  Do you know where we are?"  He asked, his voice all condescension.  Ginny cocked an eyebrow and replied,

"Of course.  The Dead Lands.  The ancient Wizarding retreat*, only able to be accessed by Wizards in great peril.  The only question is:  how did we get here?"

"Well, one of us must have been in great peril.  And I'm betting it was you.   So you'd better get us out of here.  Who knows what we might encounter here, and I don't have my wand." Draco said quickly, trying to sound too much like a spoiled child who has been denied a treat.  Ginny rolled her eyes.

"It's a good Wizarding retreat!  We're not going to be attacked!" She practically yelled.  Then she commented, "And why don't you have your wand?  You keep it with you at all times…"

"That's not the point.  And it's a retreat, Virginia, not a safe retreat.  There are dangers to anywhere you might go.  This place has them too." He said, his tone that of a kindergarten teacher explaining to the student that one plus one really does equal two.

"Ahem!  As interesting as your talking to each other is, you still haven't told me who you are." The man interrupted, looking vaguely annoyed.  His eyes were fixed on both of them, but his mind was clearly elsewhere.

"I'm Draco Malfoy, and this is-" Draco began.

"Ginny Weasley." Ginny interjected.

"Virginia Malfoy." Draco finished, shooting a glare at Ginny, who just shrugged.  The man looked at them.

"Miss Weasley!  I'm so glad to see you here, you see, we were trying to figure out how to get you away from that dreadful husband of yours, and… Oh…" The man said, realizing just who Draco was.  He made an obviously insincere apology, and shook Draco's hand.

"So you did this?" Draco asked angrily.  The man shook his head.

"No, sir, we could not have brought you here.  It must have been either yourself or Ginny who did it."  He said, still obviously not caring.

"So, how do we get out?" Draco asked. He was getting annoyed with this man's disrespect towards him.  Disrespect to a Malfoy!  The only person who could do that, and get mildly away with it, was Virginia.  Thinking about it, though, she didn't really count, as she technically was a Malfoy.

"I've no clue.  It's different for each person." The man answered, bored.  He looked at them, with a slight curl of his lip.  If Ginny hadn't thought she knew better, she would have sworn he was getting some kind of strange amusement out of the situation.

"Well, tell us how others got out, and we'll find a way." Draco demanded, losing all patience.  He had obviously sensed what Ginny had.

"I can't.  It is against the rules."  The man said, and there was no mistaking the amusement in his eyes.

"I am still here, you know…" Ginny started.  She hated being ignored, something that happened quite frequently when she was living with Draco. 

"Be quiet." They both ordered at the same time.  Ginny glared at them.

"Hmph." Ginny retorted, and they both shot amused glances her way.  She walked a little further away, toward the piece of metal Draco had seen earlier.  When she got to it, she reached down and touched it.

"Ouch!" She hissed.  Draco, hearing her with his impeccably good hearing, rushed over to her. 

"Are you all right, Virginia?"  he asked, sounding concerned.  Ginny looked at him.  Why this show of affection?  He obviously doesn't care what the other man thinks. Ginny wondered, but pushed this to the back of her mind. 

"Oh, nothing, I just realized that metal conducts heat.  I'll have to publish my findings in a Muggle scientific journal entitled "Duh"." **

Draco laughed.  The man walked over.

"What did you find, Miss Weasley?" he asked, then corrected, "Or, I suppose, Mrs. Malfoy."

"Mrs. Malfoy is his mother.  My name is Ginny." She informed him angrily.

"Fine.  Ginny, Mrs. Malfoy, it doesn't matter.  I just want to know what you found." He said, exasperated.  Draco gave him an amused look, knowing that if he were in the other man's shoes, he would have said the same thing.  Ginny glared at both of the men.

"I don't know…" Ginny said, saying a spell to cool the metal so that she could pick it up without burning herself.  She reached down and picked up the metal.

"It has something written on it." She said, looking up.

"Well, read it!" Draco demanded, slightly annoyed.  She looked at it (after giving him a death glare, of course) and read,

"If home is what you seek,

You must leave within a week,

If you don't, you won't go back,

And the thing you find won't help your track." ***

"Wow, that's a really bad poem." Draco commented. "What does it mean?"

"It means, Draco dearest, that if we want to leave, we have to leave within a week.  And we're supposed to be looking for something."  Ginny informed him, trying as hard as she could not to roll her eyes.  She knew that Draco hated it, and if she had to stay with him here for a while she didn't want him to be too angry with her.  Although, when she thought about it, it didn't really matter how angry he was with her now, because he'd get angry with her eventually again.  But better to be nice now than regret it later. 

Hold it. she thought. Where the hell did that thought come from?  I've never worried about regretting anything with DracoShe thought that this didn't quite sum up her thoughts as effectively as she wished, so she added onto her thought, just for good measure, The bastard.

"Looking for what?" He asked.  Draco was confused by the poem, and asking her if she knew took a lot away from him.  He hated asking for help for anything, especially if it was from Ginny.

"I'm not sure, but we could ask…" She looked around for the man.

"Or not…" she muttered when she didn't find him.  Well, this keeps getting better and better. Ginny thought, not realizing that Draco's thoughts were paralleling her own.  If she had, she would have tried to think something different. 

"Perhaps we should look for whatever it is we need to?" Draco asked.

"Let's," Ginny agreed, "I don't want to stay here any longer than I have to."

"Neither do I.  Although the company is good…" He said, and then thought, What was that?

"What?" Ginny asked, sure her ears were full of earwax. 

"Nothing, Virginia.  Let's just go."  Draco said, covering up his potentially embarrassing phrase.

"Go where?" Ginny asked, confused.

"To find whatever we need to." Draco explained, his eyes rolling.  Why can't I roll my eyes when he can? Ginny wondered angrily.  With thoughts like this racing around her head, they began walking.

Wandering around the desert for days on end is never fun.  But, then again, when one is a witch or wizard it isn't that big a deal.  When they needed something, all they had to do was summon it up.   Well, it was mostly Ginny doing the summoning, as Draco still hadn't quite caught on to the whole "wandless magic" thing.  They talked a lot more than they ever had previously (which was a total of about thirty minutes, and those thirty minutes were spent shouting at the top of their lungs… not a very effective form of communication) and got to know each other better.  Ginny began to get the feeling that Draco wasn't such a bastard after all, but rather had been raised by his mother and not been allowed to act like an actual human being.

When one of them needed to stop for a rest, the other began to notice and actually care.  They would call a halt to the never-ending walking, and they would rest until they were both ready to go walk again.   Maybe it wasn't very fun, but they were able to sort a few things out.  Draco promised to not make her tell him everything that she wrote in her letters to her friends, as long as she promised not to continue pulling the childish pranks on him.  She promised to be fair to him, if he'd be fair to her.  They made these agreements, and both fully intended to keep them.

On the fourth day, Ginny made the comment,

"You know, Draco, you're really not so bad."  He was glad that she had made the comment.  He had been thinking something along those lines, but didn't want to say it if she didn't feel the same way.

"Neither are you, Virginia." He replied, with truth.  He liked spending time with her, no matter that her family was a bunch of blood traitors, or her brother was a friend of Harry Potter.  But Ginny's next comment really caught him off guard, although if he'd been following the conversation it shouldn't have.

"I think I like you."

"Good.  But, I think I have to warn you." Draco said, dreading what he was going to say.  His mother had told him to say this when Ginny began to have feelings for him.  It wasn't because he wanted to, but because he always listened to his mother.  Things could be dangerous for him if he didn't.

"Of what?" Ginny asked thinking, Here it comes.  Of course, she was right.  But it was worse than she expected.

"Don't think of this as a true marriage, Virginia.  We're not going to go live happily ever after.  When we get home, this isn't going to change very much.  There won't be any love.  Ever.  Sure, we've made those promises, but to me, this is just an experiment.  If you'd like to call it "just another romance" for me, you can.  My experiment is working though, it seems." His heart stabbed with pain with each word he said.  He didn't really feel this way, it was just his mother talking through him.  When he saw the hurt in her eyes, he felt like the devil himself taking away candy from little kids.  When he heard her reply, his heart felt like it was shattering into tiny pieces.

"Of course, Draco.  I had expected no less.  Imagine thinking that a Malfoy could feel." She managed to gasp out, before walking away.

"Wait, Virginia!" Draco called to her retreating back.  She didn't turn around, and he knew that if it had been him in her shoes, he wouldn't stop walking.  He was worried about what was going to happen to her.  He started to run after her.

I love her. He realized with a start.  He did not know that she was thinking the exact same thing.

And then they were back in Draco's room that was still covered in purple goo.  Ginny tried to hide the tears that she had been shedding, and looked around.

"Alohomora!" came Narcissa's voice.

"Quick, the spell!" Draco muttered, and Ginny said the spell, this time without any mishaps.  When Narcissa burst in, all she saw was her son standing proud, and her daughter-in-law in tears.

*******

So, now you have a choice:  pasta bar, or "hamburger steak" with mashed "potatoes". Keep in mind that this is school food.  What do you choose?

La la la la la la…. Ha!

And now, the question I have for you… should I have another chapter here before the graduation chapter?  Because I'm not exactly a fountain of creativity right now… ("fountain of creativity"… what the heck?!) but I think that they should do something before then.  But I love having extremely long gaps of time where people do absolutely nothing for ever and ever.  And then bam! they do something.   Because it is so incredibly dumb!

So, now you have a choice:  pasta bar, or "hamburger steak" with mashed "potatoes". Keep in mind that this is school food.  What do you choose?

Yes, I've been absolutely horrible at updating… I was going to do it yesterday, but then I remembered I wanted to fix some things on here.  So I was running out of computer time, and I had either play games or update… and, unfortunately, games won out.  But not today!  Aren't you lucky?  Hehe…. (and yesterday was so nice, I felt the need to go play basketball.  But today is so damn humid being outside isn't fun.)

I've also discovered that being sarcastic is a very good mechanism for writing papers in English classes.  The teachers don't quite seem to understand that you really are being sarcastic…

~Lili

Trivia Question:  How much was John T. Scopes fined after he was found guilty of teaching evolution in the "Monkey Trial" in 1925?

*2 : a place of privacy or safety (privacy, yes, safety, not quite… though I didn't seem to go into the dangers… shoot, huh?)
  3 : a period of group withdrawal for prayer, meditation, study, and instruction under a director (the director, in this case, would be the greeter that didn't stick around)

**Quote from my bio teacher.  Actual quote, "What?  You mean metal conducts heat?  I'll have to publish my findings in the scientific journal 'Duh'."

***I hate poetry… and don't you dare say "Don't you like songs?" because I will find you and kill you myself.  (hehe… now, after scaring you all, I'll leave you thinking that I'm even more insane than you previously believed… I'll say "have a nice day!")