A/N: I'm reviving this story. It died a quick death, but I'm bringing it back to life. We couldn't let Draco keep on feeling guilty about Ginny, now, could we? No, of course not.
(Outside the Quidditch Field, 8:58 PM)
Ginny's breath curled up smokily in front of her face. It was –
"Freakin' cold," Ron mumbled as he vigorously rubbed his icy cheeks.
"It's just too bad your secondhand robes are about as thin as toilet paper," said Draco from where he stood off to the side. His voice wasn't as snappy and biting as it usually was, mostly because he still felt a little knot of guilt in his abdomen. Apologize! – No! I can't, I just -
"Yeah, we don't all have rich Death-Eater fathers who spoil us rotten," replied Ron rudely.
Draco said nothing, but his face darkened at the mention of his father. Lucius had been thrown into Azkaban after Rita Skeeter had interviewed Harry last year. All Draco knew was that Lucius had broken out of his prison, but beyond that – nothing. It had been a weird summer and first semester; usually his father was such a prominent figure in his life, but he hadn't seen him in around eight months.
"What?" spat Ron after a moment. He was angry with Hermione, and some of his viciousness begged to be taken out on Malfoy. "Ashamed of your yellow-bellied father?"
"If anyone should be ashamed of their father, it's you, Weasel," replied Draco, smoothly hitting two birds with one stone – he served up a sure insult while avoiding acknowledgment of how he felt about Lucius.
"Why? Because he knew the truth the whole time? Because he's been promoted to an important place in the Ministry?" Ron was proud of his dad.
"What, Chief Executive of Gutter-born, Muggle-obsessed - "
"Shut up, both of you," snapped Ginny wearily. She'd watched their argument for a few minutes, but it was getting old by now.
"Hello, Madame Hooch," said Hermione loudly as the professor approached them.
"Hello, students. Bit nippy, isn't it? Expelliarmus!" she cried suddenly. Nothing happened. "Good, I see you've all left your wands in your dormitories. Thank you for obeying the announcement. Come now, into the Quidditch pitch. You've got all your cleaning supplies, and things to clean, good, I see Mr. Filch has set it all up . . ."
She let them in, explained in detail what to do and how to clean the Quidditch supplies, then retired to the seats by the side of the field, where she watched them clean.
Ginny began to disinfect the broom handles with a sizzling sort of potion. It was a mindless task – pour potion onto rag. Wipe rag along broom handle. Wipe broom handle with clean rag. Set aside. It wasn't terrible.
Ron started to clip stray twigs off the end of the brooms. The thin branches scraped painfully against his cold, too-dry hands. This was terrible.
Hermione was polishing the Quaffles. Who knew that the school had over two dozen Quaffles? After only two, they began to feel heavy and bulky in her hands. Not to mention the fact that it had begun to snow slightly, and small droplets of ice-cold water collected at the back of her neck. Oh, well, it was terrible, but it was better than, say, looking for dead unicorns in the Forbidden Forest.
Draco was delegated to the task of cleaning the Bludgers. All bloody 28 of them. Why did Hogwarts have twenty-freaking-eight Bludgers? Stupid Gryffindors took all the better tasks and he was stuck getting the air knocked out of him as he tried to subdue them enough to polish them. He'd take being a bouncing ferret any day over this - this was bloody TERRIBLE.
Madame Hooch yawned. "It's time for a caffeine buzz," she decided. She looked at the four hunched-over students on the field. Hmm, she thought, they seem to be doing all right. They don't have any wands, either. I'm sure they'll be fine. "Students," she called out. They stopped and looked up at her, miserable in the light snowfall. "I'm going to nip off to the castle – there's something I need to take care of – I'll be right back. No funny business, now. I will be right back in just a few moments." She walked hurriedly out of the stadium and into the castle, eagerly anticipating her usual nightly black coffee.
"Well," said Ron as they watched her run into the warm halls of Hogwarts, "that's freakin' cold-hearted. Leaving us out here in the freezing cold."
"It's so cold," whined Ginny. "I'm getting snow in my shoes." They were her favorites, too – ankle-high, brown leather boots. George had sent them to her as a Happy Winter present. And now they were getting wet in the light snow.
"They shouldn't make us do detention in the snow," grumbled Draco who, even through five layers of the most insulating fabric Galleons could buy, couldn't feel his extremities. "I'm an effin' ice cube." He glanced over at Ginny, who snickered. Her cheeks were a rosy pink. The cold seemed to suit her, even though her teeth were chattering.
"Well, the sooner we get this all finished and cleaned, the sooner we can go inside," said Hermione in a reasonable voice. Truth was, she was freezing her butt off too, and the bright stadium lights gave her little blind spots whenever she blinked.
The other three opened their mouths to argue against this, realized she was right, and then set to rigorously scrubbing the Quidditch supplies.
Ten minutes later, however, the snow was coming down extremely hard. It was no longer a "light snowfall" – it was becoming a full-on blizzard. The snowflakes were whizzing down from the heavens, still frozen hard from their formation in the dark clouds above. They pelted the four students, who found the whole situation extremely unpleasant.
"Is she ever coming back?" groaned Ginny. The wind had picked up and was wreaking havoc with her hair, which she hadn't bothered to tie back.
"What?" called Ron from where he stood hunchbacked, clipping broom twigs. "Can't hear you!"
"D'you think Madame Hooch is ever coming back!"
"Don't know," replied Ron in an even louder voice lest his words were drowned out by the wind. "Looks like a blizzard, eh?" His hair had become icy and stiff and his lips were a lovely shade of periwinkle.
"Screw this!" yelled Draco suddenly, clamping a particularly aggressive Bludger into the trunk of Quidditch balls. "I'm going inside, I can't take this anymore!"
"I'm coming with you," said Hermione, dropping the Quaffle and rag.
Draco looked surprised. "Oh . . . kay." He marched to the entrance of the field and threw his weight against the gate. It didn't budge.
"Must be blocked by snow," offered Ron, who had followed, too. "Look at the bottom, it's snowed about three inches already."
Draco tried again, and this time Ron threw himself at the gate, too. Ginny even joined in but it was definitely not going to move.
"Think it's frozen shut?" Ginny panted.
"I'll bet she locked us in," said Hermione. "Bet she thought we'd try to escape."
Draco could see the reasoning in this. "I reckon you're right, Bucktooth," he conceded. "No way in hell I'm staying in here, though," he added fiercely. He could no longer feel anything at all.
Ginny watched with interest as Draco clambered up onto the spectator seats, then prepared to jump over the back wall. She saw him look down, hesitate, twitch, and then come back down onto the field.
"Thirty foot jump," he explained grudgingly in response to the girls' questioning looks.
Ron emerged from under the bleachers. "No way out under there, either," he yelled over the screaming wind.
Ginny wrapped her arms around herself. It was now painfully cold. Bitter cold, she could stand; but painful cold was extremely difficult to bear. Especially with the blizzard beginning to bear down on them. "Let's get under the bleachers anyway," she said.
"What?" yelled Ron. The wind had increased in volume and speed, nearly knocking him over.
"Let's get under the bleachers!" she yelled. "Shelter from snow! And wind!"
Suddenly, the magical stadium lights shut off, apparently not strong enough to withstand such a snowstorm. They plunged the field into darkness. It was now difficult to see five inches in front of their faces.
Ron yelled out obscenities. "This just gets worse and worse, doesn't it!" he screamed.
"Follow me under the bleachers!" Ginny shouted. "Follow! Me!"
Someone grabbed her elbow. She began to walk slowly toward where she remembered the bleachers being.
"Where are they?" she yelled to whomever was holding onto her. "Ron? Hermione? Where are the bleachers?" It seemed as though they'd been walking forever. She felt blind.
"Right in front of you," replied Draco into her ear from right behind her.
Ginny felt a tiny electric shock as she realized Draco was grasping her so closely, but got over it. "Where are Ron and Hermione?" Her voice was growing hoarse. She began to panic when nobody replied, but then was almost knocked over.
"Oof – sorry – Ginny?" said Ron's voice. He could barely make out his sister in the blackness.
"Come on," Hermione's voice yelled ahead of them. "I'm under the bleachers! Follow my voice if you can't see me!" She began to shake uncontrollably as she held up the green and silver tarp that decorated the field-side front of the Slytherin bleachers.
At last they made it to their destination. The blizzard had moved in fully now, dumping about a foot of snow onto the field. Some snow filtered in through the stadium seats above them, and there was a bit of a wind tunnel effect in there, but it was definitely preferable to being out in the middle of the field. The decorative tarp on either side of the bleachers kept out most of the wind.
"Sweet Mother of Merlin!" burst out Draco. "That was bloody hard!"
Ginny giggled in spite of the situation. His voice had come from the ground. Sitting was a very good idea, decided Ginny, who couldn't feel her legs. She sat, or rather, collapsed. The snow crunched under her and began to melt; the wet snow chilled her rear end.
"It's freakin' freezing," moaned Ron, whose ears felt like they'd fallen off. He heard Ginny sitting and decided to join her on the ground.
"Time for a body-heat huddle," said Hermione bossily. "Get over yourself if you feel awkward. Come on, scootch close together."
Ginny certainly felt awkward as she inched toward everyone with her knees bent up to her chin. No one could see anything and kept bumping into other people and mumbling embarrassed apologies.
"Good enough," said Hermione in an exasperated sort of voice.
"No need to hang all over me, Weasley," drawled Draco amusedly, who felt he'd been lacking in his trademark Malfoy insults as of late.
"I am not!" protested both Ron and Ginny loudly.
"Well, whichever one of you it is, you can stay after all, you're warming up my arse quite nicely," Draco added.
Everyone suddenly flinched away from each other.
"For goodness' sake!" shrieked Hermione. "Look, I don't care who or what I'm touching but I'm so cold I could skin a hippogriff for its coat!"
"Do you think Hooch is coming back?" asked Ginny, who suddenly felt the terror of the situation. They were trapped in a blizzard. With Malfoy. Who happened to be less than a foot away from her, possibly touching her.
"Not in this blizzard," said Draco in a scratchy voice. "Unless she came with her own personal fifty-foot blowtorch."
"There's got to be a way to rescue us," groaned Ron over the sound of the shrieking wind.
"Sometimes," said Hermione in a quiet voice, "even magic can't conquer snowstorms."
Her statement seemed to declare the hopelessness of the situation. No one said anything, but instead huddled unconsciously closer together. It had suddenly become much colder.
A/N: Yay, progress! The newest chapter since November! I rock like none other.
I hope the last bits weren't terribly boring. It gets better later, there will definitely be snoggage, I promise you that. ;)