Disclaimer: I own nothing, so don't sue me. You wouldn't get anything
anyway. I'm broke.
A/N: The previous chapter was a flashback – I already told you that. But that was more to tell you what happened than anything – Ginny didn't remember all that. Anyway...
I scrunched my eyes closed, trying to remember whom I had been with, where I had gone, and what I had done the previous night.
It was like looking at a movie, frame by frame, but with some parts missing. I saw his hair, his face, his eyes, his smirk – oh, that smirk! I remembered the vodka, and his lips on mine, and the feel of him inside me, and the rest was a bit of a blur.
I opened my eyes again, to see my mum and dad and Fred and George watching me intently.
Woah, Gin! Since when do Fred and George attend your routine interrogations? Isn't that a little unfair?
Ignoring the voice in my head that was prodding me to tell the twins to leave, and looked around at each face.
"Draco," I said after a moment, shrugging my shoulders.
Ow, Giiiiinnnnnnn! Don't DO that! It hurts!
"Draco? So it's DRACO now is it? Since when do you call him by his first name?" Fred asked, looking really quite furious.
"Since last night," I retorted.
"And what happened last night? Oh, wait, never mind. You were too pissed to remember!" This was George, his fury matching his brother's.
"I could tell you some of it, but I don't think you'd want to know the details once we got to his house," I snapped, and stood from my chair, having had quite enough.
All four of them looked quite taken aback, and I wobbled over to the foot of the stairs.
"Now, if you don't mind, I'm going back to bed. I have a killer headache, not to mention some serious pain in other areas, and would much rather sleep it all off than have to listen to you lecture me. Good night."
All in all, I was pretty pleased with myself for telling them off; they didn't even follow me up the stairs. When I finally reached my room, I removed my robe, and collapsed on the bed, face buried in my pillow. Soon enough, I was sound asleep, sprawled across my single bed with very little dignity.
It was about three hours later when I awoke again, and at first I wondered why I was awake – I'd been sleeping quite peacefully. Raising my head off the pillow, I was quite suddenly aware of a prickling feeling on the back of my neck – you know the one when you feel like you're being watched? I glanced side to side around the room, before dropping my head back to the pillow, sure it had been a hallucination, and I was just paranoid.
But then, to my utter dismay, I heard footsteps coming closer to my bed. I sat up quickly, and turned around so I was facing the hallway – which I would, under normal circumstances, have been able to see through my open door. But at the moment, there was someone standing in front of my bed.
Vivid green eyes looked down at me, with an expression akin to disappointment, and I glared back up at him.
"Have a good time last night?" He asked.
Damn it, Gin, why do they all ask that? 'Cause they're idiots and want to know about my life, since they don't have lives of their own?
Ignoring the debate going on between my intelligent side and my flippant side, I continued to glare up at the Boy Who Lived.
"Yes, I had a wonderful time, not that it's any business of yours. Now go away, I'm trying to sleep."
"You know your family – not to mention Hermione and I – were pretty freaked out when you didn't come home last night," Harry said conversationally, ignoring my order for solitude.
"So?"
"What d'you mean, 'so'?" He was aghast.
"I mean... So what if they were freaked out? So what if you were freaked out? I don't care, Potter. I've been babied all my life. They never let me do anything, unless Ron or someone comes with me. This summer, I try to have a little fun, and they wig out. Now bugger off, I want to sleep."
I imagine, from the point of view of a fly on the wall, the situation would be pretty humorous. Ginny Weasley, in nothing more than her underwear, telling off the famous Harry Potter – whom she'd had a crush on since, well, she first heard of him. But for me, the situation was anything but funny: I just wanted to sleep. And as to my crush on Harry, well, it was pretty much nonexistent.
"So you're trying to tell me that you don't care that you had your entire family in a blind panic when you didn't come home?"
"Did you not understand what I just said?"
"I understood the words, I just don't understand the reasoning behind them."
"And you never will. Now sod off." I turned away and flopped back down on the bed, burying my face once more in the pillow.
"Ginny..."
"FUCK OFF, POTTER!" I screeched into the feather pillow.
"So it's Potter now, is it? Been spending a lot of time with Malfoy, have you?" He asked scathingly.
I rolled over, exasperated and quite pissed off. Did he not LISTEN?
"Yes, it's Potter. You know why? Because I'm pissed off. When I'm pissed off, I either call people by their surnames, or their full names. And no, I haven't been spending a lot of time with Draco. I saw him last night at the club, we had a few drinks, made out a bit, and he took me back to his place. We had some great sex, and then he brought me home. Happy?"
He gulped and left the room without another word. Apparently the idea of his best friend's sister having a sex life at the age of 16 was a disturbing thought. If he was frightened at that thought of me shagging at 16, I wonder what he'd think if I told him I'd been deflowered at 15?
Grumbling, I got off the bed and pulled my robe on once again. He had disrupted my sleep, and then made me angry; there was no way I'd be able to fall back into oblivion. I slipped my feet into a pair of slippers, and left my room.
I had just reached the stairs, when I heard voices drifting up the stairwell towards me. Curious, seeing as how I heard my name, I stopped and listened.
"D'you know what she just told me?" That was Harry's voice, sounding quite furious.
"Harry, calm down! She'll hear you!" Hermione, always trying to keep things calm.
"What'd she tell you? Did it have something to do with Malfoy? I'll skin him alive, if he hurt her! I'll skin him alive anyway!" Ronald. Always irrational.
"She told me she had sex. With Malfoy."
"The git! I'll kill him! He probably raped her! Or else he got her so drunk that she didn't know what she was doing, which qualifies as rape, doesn't it? If she wasn't in her right mind when it happened?" Ron sounded like he was hyperventilating.
Having had quite enough, I padded down the stairs and into the living room, where the three of them were standing. Hermione was busy trying to calm Ron, and Harry was staring out the window, clenching his fists.
They all looked up when they saw me, and at least Hermione had the decency to blush in embarrassment.
"First of all, Ronald, he did not rape me, and I was quite in my right mind when I started to strip off his clothes. Secondly, if you wish to talk about me, I suggest you do it somewhere where I won't be likely to hear you. And, thirdly, I don't recall ever telling you that it was any of your business. The only reason I told Potter anything was because he was being an ass and wouldn't leave me alone. Now, any questions about last night, or are you quite satisfied?"
At my words, I was pleased to see, Hermione blushed a deeper shade of red, and both Harry's and Ron's faces drained of all color. I smirked, and turned on my heel, mounting the stairs quickly. Figuring that, if I wanted to be able to make it to the Hogwarts Express tomorrow – because I was pretty sure my parents were seriously considering not letting me go back to Hogwarts – I'd better cool off.
And, what better way to cool off than to go for a swim? Headache having dissipated to a tolerable level, I set about trying to find the swimsuit I had purchased last month. Rummaging around in my closet, I finally found the two piece suit, and promptly scurried across the hall to get changed.
I washed my face, quite tired of looking as though I had two black eyes, and, once changed into my swimsuit, I padded back to my bedroom. Intent on not letting anyone see me – since I was pretty certain they would insist on accompanying me, for fear I might be off to shag Draco again – I grabbed a towel, chucked it outside, climbed out my window and dropped barefoot to the grass below.
Thankfully, the sunlight didn't burn my eyes or make my skull feel like it was splitting in two any more, and I was able to walk without feeling as though I was going to retch. Big step up from earlier.
Picking up the fluffy pink towel, I walked quickly away from the side of the house, and had about made it out of the yard, and was thinking my prospects were pretty good, when I felt that prickle on the back of my neck again.
"GINNY! WHERE DO YOU THINK YOU'RE GOING?"
Damn it, Ronald, can you not tell? I'm in a bathing suit, carrying a towel, and sneaking away from the house. IS IT NOT OBVIOUS???
Rather than answering, I pretended not to hear, and continued on my way. I didn't want to talk to him. Or his wretched little friends who seemed to think that my life was their business.
"GINNY!"
I raised the hand not carrying my towel, and flipped him off as I continued across the yard. It really was no business of his where I went.
Reaching the brick wall that surrounded the yard, I clambered over it, and cut across the vacant field behind our house. Some five minutes later, I had reached the small lake that lay in the center of the field, and was quite surprised at my luck: they hadn't followed.
Dropping the towel to the grass, I waded into the chill water, and was immediately covered in goose bumps. When I had waded out up to the middle of my torso, I took the customary deep breath, and was about to dive beneath the surface when, once again:
"GINNY!"
Letting out my breath in a whoosh, I turned to face my brother and his friends who were standing on the lakeshore.
Damn it, Gin-gin, how did they sneak up on you? You're supposed to be good at being able to tell when people are following you!
"GINNY, GET YOUR ARSE OVER HERE RIGHT NOW!" Ron commanded, pointing furiously at the ground.
"No." Honestly, he didn't have to shout – I wasn't that far away. And I was hardly going to go near him and his friends. They'd make me go back to the Burrow.
And with that, I turned away from my brother and his entourage once more, and dove beneath the icy surface of the water. My eyes closed instinctively as I was engulfed in the cool liquid, but I opened them when I felt something graze my knee.
Just a rock, I realized, looking behind me at the inconspicuous boulder that had scratched my left knee. I continued my underwater explorations for a while, but was soon in desperate need of air and forced to surface.
What I saw, once I pushed the hair from my eyes and turned back towards the shore where I had last seen my brother, was an astounding sight, and one that proved Hermione's theory that Harry had a "saving-people thing."
He had kicked off his shoes and socks, stuffed his glasses in his shoe, and was pulling off his shirt. Before I could say anything, he dove into the water, swimming out a ways before diving beneath the calm blue surface. Hermione, ever the peacekeeper, was busy calming Ron, who was hyperventilating again.
I treaded water, waiting for my supposed 'hero' to resurface, and was quite startled when he popped out of the water right beside me.
"DAMN IT, POTTER!" I screeched, as I was splashed with the water that had been pushed aside when he surfaced.
"Ginny?" He asked stupidly, rubbing his eyes free of water.
"Yes, I'm Ginny, genius."
"You're all right! But we thought-"
"Yes, well, shows how much you know, Potter," I retorted, and started to swim away.
"Oh no you don't! You're going back to the Burrow. Your mum wants to talk to you," he said, grabbing me around the waist and preventing me from leaving.
I whirled at the feeling of his hand around my bare waist.
Gin, there are other ways to get away, you know. You don't have to stay above the surface.
Listening, for the umpteenth time, to the more logical part of my mind, I took a deep breath and dove beneath the water. Before he had time to respond, I had slipped out of his grasp, and was gliding away, diving deeper as I went.
Sadly, I was once again forced to surface for air, and kicked my way to the surface. And, wouldn't you know it, there he was, waiting for me.
"Fuck off, Potter," I growled, as he wrapped his arm around my waist once more, tighter this time so I knew I wouldn't be able to dive away again. He didn't respond, and proceeded to swim towards the shore, dragging me along with him.
"HARRY JAMES POTTER YOU LET ME GO THIS INSTANT!" I shrieked, struggling to get away. I debated biting his arm, but didn't think that would do much good.
We reached the shore a few seconds later, and there were Ron and Hermione, pulling both Harry and I out of the icy lake. Once both of us had been dried off, thanks to a spell from Hermione's wand, and they had fussed over me, making sure I was all right – apparently they thought I had been trying to drown myself – I prepared myself for the lecture.
Ron looked like he was trying to find the words, and I rolled my eyes.
"Ronald, I was not trying to drown myself, in case you got the wrong impression. Nor did I need to be rescued – I am quite good at swimming, thank you. And, for your information, I was swimming in order to cool off before I have to face mum and dad again, since I have every intention of returning to Hogwarts this term and they don't seem to want me to go back. Now, thanks to you three, I'll have to find another way to cool off."
"Ginny..."
"Bugger off, Hermione. I don't want to hear it."
And with that, I turned and marched myself back towards the Burrow, wrapped snuggly in my fluffy pink towel.
A/N: The previous chapter was a flashback – I already told you that. But that was more to tell you what happened than anything – Ginny didn't remember all that. Anyway...
I scrunched my eyes closed, trying to remember whom I had been with, where I had gone, and what I had done the previous night.
It was like looking at a movie, frame by frame, but with some parts missing. I saw his hair, his face, his eyes, his smirk – oh, that smirk! I remembered the vodka, and his lips on mine, and the feel of him inside me, and the rest was a bit of a blur.
I opened my eyes again, to see my mum and dad and Fred and George watching me intently.
Woah, Gin! Since when do Fred and George attend your routine interrogations? Isn't that a little unfair?
Ignoring the voice in my head that was prodding me to tell the twins to leave, and looked around at each face.
"Draco," I said after a moment, shrugging my shoulders.
Ow, Giiiiinnnnnnn! Don't DO that! It hurts!
"Draco? So it's DRACO now is it? Since when do you call him by his first name?" Fred asked, looking really quite furious.
"Since last night," I retorted.
"And what happened last night? Oh, wait, never mind. You were too pissed to remember!" This was George, his fury matching his brother's.
"I could tell you some of it, but I don't think you'd want to know the details once we got to his house," I snapped, and stood from my chair, having had quite enough.
All four of them looked quite taken aback, and I wobbled over to the foot of the stairs.
"Now, if you don't mind, I'm going back to bed. I have a killer headache, not to mention some serious pain in other areas, and would much rather sleep it all off than have to listen to you lecture me. Good night."
All in all, I was pretty pleased with myself for telling them off; they didn't even follow me up the stairs. When I finally reached my room, I removed my robe, and collapsed on the bed, face buried in my pillow. Soon enough, I was sound asleep, sprawled across my single bed with very little dignity.
It was about three hours later when I awoke again, and at first I wondered why I was awake – I'd been sleeping quite peacefully. Raising my head off the pillow, I was quite suddenly aware of a prickling feeling on the back of my neck – you know the one when you feel like you're being watched? I glanced side to side around the room, before dropping my head back to the pillow, sure it had been a hallucination, and I was just paranoid.
But then, to my utter dismay, I heard footsteps coming closer to my bed. I sat up quickly, and turned around so I was facing the hallway – which I would, under normal circumstances, have been able to see through my open door. But at the moment, there was someone standing in front of my bed.
Vivid green eyes looked down at me, with an expression akin to disappointment, and I glared back up at him.
"Have a good time last night?" He asked.
Damn it, Gin, why do they all ask that? 'Cause they're idiots and want to know about my life, since they don't have lives of their own?
Ignoring the debate going on between my intelligent side and my flippant side, I continued to glare up at the Boy Who Lived.
"Yes, I had a wonderful time, not that it's any business of yours. Now go away, I'm trying to sleep."
"You know your family – not to mention Hermione and I – were pretty freaked out when you didn't come home last night," Harry said conversationally, ignoring my order for solitude.
"So?"
"What d'you mean, 'so'?" He was aghast.
"I mean... So what if they were freaked out? So what if you were freaked out? I don't care, Potter. I've been babied all my life. They never let me do anything, unless Ron or someone comes with me. This summer, I try to have a little fun, and they wig out. Now bugger off, I want to sleep."
I imagine, from the point of view of a fly on the wall, the situation would be pretty humorous. Ginny Weasley, in nothing more than her underwear, telling off the famous Harry Potter – whom she'd had a crush on since, well, she first heard of him. But for me, the situation was anything but funny: I just wanted to sleep. And as to my crush on Harry, well, it was pretty much nonexistent.
"So you're trying to tell me that you don't care that you had your entire family in a blind panic when you didn't come home?"
"Did you not understand what I just said?"
"I understood the words, I just don't understand the reasoning behind them."
"And you never will. Now sod off." I turned away and flopped back down on the bed, burying my face once more in the pillow.
"Ginny..."
"FUCK OFF, POTTER!" I screeched into the feather pillow.
"So it's Potter now, is it? Been spending a lot of time with Malfoy, have you?" He asked scathingly.
I rolled over, exasperated and quite pissed off. Did he not LISTEN?
"Yes, it's Potter. You know why? Because I'm pissed off. When I'm pissed off, I either call people by their surnames, or their full names. And no, I haven't been spending a lot of time with Draco. I saw him last night at the club, we had a few drinks, made out a bit, and he took me back to his place. We had some great sex, and then he brought me home. Happy?"
He gulped and left the room without another word. Apparently the idea of his best friend's sister having a sex life at the age of 16 was a disturbing thought. If he was frightened at that thought of me shagging at 16, I wonder what he'd think if I told him I'd been deflowered at 15?
Grumbling, I got off the bed and pulled my robe on once again. He had disrupted my sleep, and then made me angry; there was no way I'd be able to fall back into oblivion. I slipped my feet into a pair of slippers, and left my room.
I had just reached the stairs, when I heard voices drifting up the stairwell towards me. Curious, seeing as how I heard my name, I stopped and listened.
"D'you know what she just told me?" That was Harry's voice, sounding quite furious.
"Harry, calm down! She'll hear you!" Hermione, always trying to keep things calm.
"What'd she tell you? Did it have something to do with Malfoy? I'll skin him alive, if he hurt her! I'll skin him alive anyway!" Ronald. Always irrational.
"She told me she had sex. With Malfoy."
"The git! I'll kill him! He probably raped her! Or else he got her so drunk that she didn't know what she was doing, which qualifies as rape, doesn't it? If she wasn't in her right mind when it happened?" Ron sounded like he was hyperventilating.
Having had quite enough, I padded down the stairs and into the living room, where the three of them were standing. Hermione was busy trying to calm Ron, and Harry was staring out the window, clenching his fists.
They all looked up when they saw me, and at least Hermione had the decency to blush in embarrassment.
"First of all, Ronald, he did not rape me, and I was quite in my right mind when I started to strip off his clothes. Secondly, if you wish to talk about me, I suggest you do it somewhere where I won't be likely to hear you. And, thirdly, I don't recall ever telling you that it was any of your business. The only reason I told Potter anything was because he was being an ass and wouldn't leave me alone. Now, any questions about last night, or are you quite satisfied?"
At my words, I was pleased to see, Hermione blushed a deeper shade of red, and both Harry's and Ron's faces drained of all color. I smirked, and turned on my heel, mounting the stairs quickly. Figuring that, if I wanted to be able to make it to the Hogwarts Express tomorrow – because I was pretty sure my parents were seriously considering not letting me go back to Hogwarts – I'd better cool off.
And, what better way to cool off than to go for a swim? Headache having dissipated to a tolerable level, I set about trying to find the swimsuit I had purchased last month. Rummaging around in my closet, I finally found the two piece suit, and promptly scurried across the hall to get changed.
I washed my face, quite tired of looking as though I had two black eyes, and, once changed into my swimsuit, I padded back to my bedroom. Intent on not letting anyone see me – since I was pretty certain they would insist on accompanying me, for fear I might be off to shag Draco again – I grabbed a towel, chucked it outside, climbed out my window and dropped barefoot to the grass below.
Thankfully, the sunlight didn't burn my eyes or make my skull feel like it was splitting in two any more, and I was able to walk without feeling as though I was going to retch. Big step up from earlier.
Picking up the fluffy pink towel, I walked quickly away from the side of the house, and had about made it out of the yard, and was thinking my prospects were pretty good, when I felt that prickle on the back of my neck again.
"GINNY! WHERE DO YOU THINK YOU'RE GOING?"
Damn it, Ronald, can you not tell? I'm in a bathing suit, carrying a towel, and sneaking away from the house. IS IT NOT OBVIOUS???
Rather than answering, I pretended not to hear, and continued on my way. I didn't want to talk to him. Or his wretched little friends who seemed to think that my life was their business.
"GINNY!"
I raised the hand not carrying my towel, and flipped him off as I continued across the yard. It really was no business of his where I went.
Reaching the brick wall that surrounded the yard, I clambered over it, and cut across the vacant field behind our house. Some five minutes later, I had reached the small lake that lay in the center of the field, and was quite surprised at my luck: they hadn't followed.
Dropping the towel to the grass, I waded into the chill water, and was immediately covered in goose bumps. When I had waded out up to the middle of my torso, I took the customary deep breath, and was about to dive beneath the surface when, once again:
"GINNY!"
Letting out my breath in a whoosh, I turned to face my brother and his friends who were standing on the lakeshore.
Damn it, Gin-gin, how did they sneak up on you? You're supposed to be good at being able to tell when people are following you!
"GINNY, GET YOUR ARSE OVER HERE RIGHT NOW!" Ron commanded, pointing furiously at the ground.
"No." Honestly, he didn't have to shout – I wasn't that far away. And I was hardly going to go near him and his friends. They'd make me go back to the Burrow.
And with that, I turned away from my brother and his entourage once more, and dove beneath the icy surface of the water. My eyes closed instinctively as I was engulfed in the cool liquid, but I opened them when I felt something graze my knee.
Just a rock, I realized, looking behind me at the inconspicuous boulder that had scratched my left knee. I continued my underwater explorations for a while, but was soon in desperate need of air and forced to surface.
What I saw, once I pushed the hair from my eyes and turned back towards the shore where I had last seen my brother, was an astounding sight, and one that proved Hermione's theory that Harry had a "saving-people thing."
He had kicked off his shoes and socks, stuffed his glasses in his shoe, and was pulling off his shirt. Before I could say anything, he dove into the water, swimming out a ways before diving beneath the calm blue surface. Hermione, ever the peacekeeper, was busy calming Ron, who was hyperventilating again.
I treaded water, waiting for my supposed 'hero' to resurface, and was quite startled when he popped out of the water right beside me.
"DAMN IT, POTTER!" I screeched, as I was splashed with the water that had been pushed aside when he surfaced.
"Ginny?" He asked stupidly, rubbing his eyes free of water.
"Yes, I'm Ginny, genius."
"You're all right! But we thought-"
"Yes, well, shows how much you know, Potter," I retorted, and started to swim away.
"Oh no you don't! You're going back to the Burrow. Your mum wants to talk to you," he said, grabbing me around the waist and preventing me from leaving.
I whirled at the feeling of his hand around my bare waist.
Gin, there are other ways to get away, you know. You don't have to stay above the surface.
Listening, for the umpteenth time, to the more logical part of my mind, I took a deep breath and dove beneath the water. Before he had time to respond, I had slipped out of his grasp, and was gliding away, diving deeper as I went.
Sadly, I was once again forced to surface for air, and kicked my way to the surface. And, wouldn't you know it, there he was, waiting for me.
"Fuck off, Potter," I growled, as he wrapped his arm around my waist once more, tighter this time so I knew I wouldn't be able to dive away again. He didn't respond, and proceeded to swim towards the shore, dragging me along with him.
"HARRY JAMES POTTER YOU LET ME GO THIS INSTANT!" I shrieked, struggling to get away. I debated biting his arm, but didn't think that would do much good.
We reached the shore a few seconds later, and there were Ron and Hermione, pulling both Harry and I out of the icy lake. Once both of us had been dried off, thanks to a spell from Hermione's wand, and they had fussed over me, making sure I was all right – apparently they thought I had been trying to drown myself – I prepared myself for the lecture.
Ron looked like he was trying to find the words, and I rolled my eyes.
"Ronald, I was not trying to drown myself, in case you got the wrong impression. Nor did I need to be rescued – I am quite good at swimming, thank you. And, for your information, I was swimming in order to cool off before I have to face mum and dad again, since I have every intention of returning to Hogwarts this term and they don't seem to want me to go back. Now, thanks to you three, I'll have to find another way to cool off."
"Ginny..."
"Bugger off, Hermione. I don't want to hear it."
And with that, I turned and marched myself back towards the Burrow, wrapped snuggly in my fluffy pink towel.