Chapter 4 - Of Truth and Lies
If I ever thought that this year might not be too bad, boy was I wrong. That night, after our first day was over, all I wanted to do was crawl under the covers and stay there forever.
That day I had one dosage of Double Potions, followed by Care of Magical Creatures, lunch, and then Herbology. To end the day, I had Study of Ancient Runes. Why I picked that class, I have no clue, but the fact of the matter is that I picked it and now I'm stuck with it. The worst part is that Malfoy is in that class too. And he sits right across from me.
I sat down on a pouf and began thinking about my last class. How Malfoy's eyes had been pointed in my direction for a moment. How we had stared at each other while Professor Daphaneus had spoken, and how as I had begun to melt under his gaze, he had sneered at me and looked away. I could feel myself growing hot at that moment and I told myself to stop thinking nonsense. He had meant nothing with his deep piercing gaze; I meant nothing to him, and he meant nothing to me.
As I was about to begin a full fledged war with myself, the events of the day seemed to rewind inside my head. I was looking at Malfoy, then I was attempting to chop off a Pickle Plant's thorns, then I was attempting to coax a pin-prickled turkey out of its box, I was in Potions and Snape was yelling at me, I was smiling at the thought that Tonks was going to be our new DADA teacher, I was in Colin's arms, I was outside on the lawn crying into Malfoy's chest, I was throwing myself at Harry bitterly, I was sitting with my back pressed up against the oak tree, I was sleeping again.
I gasped as the morning's events dealt me a blow that left me practically winded and I rembered what had really happened outside. I had been crying, crying on Malfoy and-
"Ginny? Ginny, are you all right?"
Ron was staring at me oddly. Hermione was at his side with a book open in her arms. I could see the title: The Secret to Discovering Psychological Riddles and What They Mean. I wondered what she was doing reading the book. She had never been interested in psychology, and there was absolutely no reason why she should be now. Harry was standing further back behind both of them looking at me. I glared fiercely at him.
"Ginny, are you all right?" Ron asked once again when I didn't answer.
"Yes Ron I'm fine," I said bitterly, remembering what Harry had told me in the morning.
"You don't look all right," he told me stubbornly. "Ginny, we know something is bothering you. Why don't you tell us?"
"Why don't you just Harry, you prat?"
I got up and stomped up the stairs. I threw myself on my bed and replayed the incidents of that morning. I had lunged Harry and Malfoy had restrained me. At the moment I had thought him a cruel, heartless monster for doing that to me; but now I saw his reasoning, and I saw another side to Malfoy. One that I had never thought he had. He could have easily allowed me to get into a fight with Harry, enjoying the fact that Harry was getting beat up, and he didn't have to lift a finger. Instead, he had put his childhood rivalry aside and had done as his duty told him to do. My eyes opened wide as I thought about this.
I was going to get up and take a shower when I realized something else. Malfoy had proved to me that morning that he did have a heart. A small one I'll gladly admit, but he had one just the same. He had comforted me in my time of sorrow, he had actually let me cry on him, let me spill my bitter tears all over his perfect robes. This knowledge of mine, although very little and seeming unimportant, completely overwhelmed me. I stood up and took a shower and then hopped into bed, still trying to get Malfoy out of my thoughts. Thankfully, I managed to do so in my dreams. The next day however, his memory was in my head all day.
In the days that followed my embarrassing encounter with Malfoy, I stayed as far away from him as I possibly could. I even avoided eye contact with him. I was always with Colin and Celine at my side, and when they weren't around, I was ever on the lookout, lest I should run into the prat, Malfoy.
At breakfast, lunsh, and dinner, I would sit with my back to the Slytherin table if I could find a seat. Whenever I had to sit facing it, I found that my eyes would wander and seek out the devious little git. He was managing to get into my head.
Once, I came across him in a deserted hallway, I mean completely deserted. I had had to go to the bathroom and Colin and Celine had promised to meet me in the library. As I neared Malfoy, it looked like he was going to grab me or say something to me, but just then, Harry came out of the Prefects' bath, where he had obviously just finished taking a shower (password courtesy on of Ron Weasley), and Malfoy rethought it. I had never been so happy to see H arry in my life, and I can assure my audience that I never will.
A month and a half later, I still couldn't stop thinking about Malfoy. The worst part was that I wasn't just thinking about that morning three weeks ago, I was just thinking about him in general. His perfect body, his gorgeous lips, his- stop it! I just couldn't. Hard as I tried, I couldn't stop thinking about him.
That day, the first Wednesday of October, the first Hogsmeade weekend was announced. It was a little late in the year I'll admit, but what with the Dark Lord up and about, we did need a certain degree of protection, even at and around Hogwarts. That night, I was sitting with Colin and Celine discussing where we should go at Hogsmeade excitedly, and Harry came up to us.
"Um, Ginny, can I talk to you really quickly?" he asked me.
I glared at him, and so did Colin and Celine. The way they were looking at him made me want to laugh despite my anger. I was going to turn my head away and tell Harry that I had other things to do at the moment, like laugh at Colin's and Celine's faces, but he insisted.
"Please Gin?"
I had no other choice. Besides I wanted to tell him that he didn't have the privilege to call me Gin anymore. So I followed him.
"What is it Harry?"
"Well, I was wondering if perhaps you'd like to go to Hogsmeade with me this weekend?"
I wasn't very surprised that he had asked me. I looked over at Colin and he was doing an imitation of Harry on his knees begging me to come back to him. I looked back at Harry and I laughed. I flat out laughed in his face. I mean seriously burst out laughing. I sounded like I had been placed under laughing gas too long. I couldn't help it though; I mean Harry asking me to go with him to Hogsmeade amused me, but Colin's impression was what did it. When I finally stopped laughing, Harry was practically bursting from anger.
"What's so funny Ginny?" he shouted at me sounding a lot like Ron when he was mad.
"You," I replied simply.
"What about me?" he yelled at me again.
"You trying to ask me out again after telling me that the only reason you went out with me in the first place was to get Cho jealous. How do I know this isn't another ploy to get someone else jealous, like I dunno, Lavender? I mean I really can't take this seriously. That's funny. It's good, it's real good. But I'm sorry, it didn't work. Besides, I believe I'm already taken for this weekend. Again I must congratulate you on your performance. It gave me a good laugh."
"Ginny, you know I wouldn't do that to you again, especially not for Lavender," he said disgusted.
"Well, you did it once for Cho."
And I turned around and walked back to my friends.
"Way to go Gin," Colin said loud enough for Harry to hear. I smiled. And we began making plans for the weekend again.
The night after all this happened, on Thursday, I went up to my room to put my things down before dinner, and I found a note on my night table. It said:
Meet me in the Prefects dormitories after dinner. I'll explain everything there.
Hermione
Okay. Yes it was odd, I mean Hermione had always been straightforward, especially with me. So I grabbed the note and took it with me down to dinner. There I showed Celine. I wanted to see what she thought. Just as she finished reading it and passed it back to me, Colin came up to us, dropping his things in front of him and sitting down next to me.
"Watcha got there?" he asked me.
"Oh it's nothing. Just a- "
He snatched it out of my hands before I could finish my sentence or put it away. He examined it and then gave it back to me seemingly uninterested. Then he began to eat.
"So did you find that in your room or what?" he asked me after a few bites.
"Yup, she sure did," Celine jumped in as usual.
"So why didn't she just ask you personally? I mean it's not like Hermione to go around being all sneaky and everything is it?"
"Wow, is she really that predictable?" I asked him.
"Of course she is. Haven't you noticed that yet, Ginny?" Celine answered for him.
"Well, I thought it was just me," I told her veering off the subject of the note. Then remembering it, I asked, "So now that both of you know about it, what do you guys think I should do?"
"Well, I guess if she just wants to talk to you then I think it's fine that you go," Colin told me slowly, as if he were thinking about it as he said it.
"Yeah, but see Hermione wrote that she'd explain everything in the dorm," Celine argued smartly.
"Yeah that is true." Then turning to me. "You know Ginny it's really your decision. I mean if you go then you might hear things you don't want to, or something like that. If you don't go though, then you're left with the doubt."
"In any case Gin, you can always attempt to forget what you heard," Celine told me.
"Yeah, well, I think I just have to think about it a little," I told them.
I thought about it all through dinner and then all the way back to the dormitories. Finally my curiosity got the better of me and I went. When I entered the room, I saw Ron and Hermione sitting at a desk in a corner of the room. The door shut behind me and there was Harry.
"Don't you guys do anything alone?" I asked irritatedly. It was only supposed to be me and Hermione, wasn't it? "I mean, you guys do go to the bathroom separately right?" I added, just to bother them.
"Well, that is besides the point," Hermione told me. "We have summoned you here because- "
"We is too many people," I interrupted. "You summoned me here and I thought it was just gonna be a conversation between me and you."
She ignored me and kept talking. "We have summoned you here because we have your final diagnosis."
"What?" I asked, obviously confused. Hermione had changed a lot in a short span of time.
"We have been studying you closely, and your actions suggest emotional problems."
"I am not suffering from emotional problems! Have you gone mad?" I practically screamed.
"The first step is denial," Hermione said trying to sound smart.
So that was why she had been reading that book. "Look, this is stupid, I'm leaving."
"Ginny, I would like to analyze you. Ask you a few questions," she added in answer to my puzzled face.
"Fine. But then can I leave?"
"Yes."
"Can they leave?" I asked pointing to Harry and Ron.
"No, they have to be my witnesses."
"You sound like you're making my will."
"All right, now let's start with the first question. Why are you mad at Harry?"
"He must've already told you that. Or hasn't he? Why don't you ask him yourself?"
"Can you please answer the question?" she asked impatiently.
"I have the right to a lawyer don't I?"
"Ginny!" That was Ron.
"I've already told you, he used me to get Cho jealous."
"He what?" Ron exclaimed.
Hermione grabbed his arm and pulled him down next to her.
"Okay, why haven't you tried to make up with him?"
"See the above."
"He's been trying to apologize. Isn't that good enough for you?"
"No."
"Why?"
I shrugged. She wouldn't understand if I told her it just wasn't. She would just want to 'analyze' me more. She asked me a bunch of other lame questions and then told me I was free to go. I sarcastically thanked her so much for allowing me to be her specimen, and opened the door.
"Oh Ginny, one more question, but this is just for my personal knowledge. Who are you going to Hogsmeade with?"
"Why do you want to know?" I asked hesitantly.
"I was just curious, that's all. " She tried to sound casual, but I saw through her. I grinned inwardly as I said the first name that came into my head and had been coming into my head for the past three weeks and a half.
"Draco Malfoy." And I shut the door before Ron's anger level could reach maximum.
Shortly after I had escaped their clutches, I heard Ron trying to get up the stairs to the girls dormitories. Too bad I wasn't there; I was, and had been in Colin's room with Celine, waiting for Colin to get back from wherever he was. When he finally showed up, it was almost eleven thirty.
"Where have you been Colin?" we both asked together. "We've been waiting for you for ages!" We did it again and burst out laughing. This rarely happened to us.
"Trelawny made me stay before dinner to clean up some tea I had spilled when I laughed into the cup as she made some stupid prediction or other about Trun dying and then she told me to go up after dinner as well. She made me polish every single glass ball she had twice, and throw out and wash all the tea cups she's used today."
"That old bat. We told you to take something else but noooooo, you just had to take Divination."
"It's actually quite an easy A."
"Okay, well we haven't been waiting for you just to talk about the old bat. Ginny here went to Hermione's place and refused to tell me anything until you came back because she didn't want to tell it twice."
"All right then, do tell jolly ol' girl."
"Okay, well I went and I thought it was just going to be me and Hermione, right? Well, all three of them were there. So I sit down and she tells me that I have emotional problems and when I said I didn't, she claimed that denial was the first step." I rolled my eyes. "So then she made me answer a whole bunch of stupid questions and let me go."
"That's it eh?" Colin asked. "Wow, she's gone nutters."
"Yeah," agreed Celine.
"Oh but wait, there was one more thing. As I was leaving she asked me who I was going to Hogsmeade with."
"And you said- "
"Malfoy." I practically breathed his name.
If I ever thought that this year might not be too bad, boy was I wrong. That night, after our first day was over, all I wanted to do was crawl under the covers and stay there forever.
That day I had one dosage of Double Potions, followed by Care of Magical Creatures, lunch, and then Herbology. To end the day, I had Study of Ancient Runes. Why I picked that class, I have no clue, but the fact of the matter is that I picked it and now I'm stuck with it. The worst part is that Malfoy is in that class too. And he sits right across from me.
I sat down on a pouf and began thinking about my last class. How Malfoy's eyes had been pointed in my direction for a moment. How we had stared at each other while Professor Daphaneus had spoken, and how as I had begun to melt under his gaze, he had sneered at me and looked away. I could feel myself growing hot at that moment and I told myself to stop thinking nonsense. He had meant nothing with his deep piercing gaze; I meant nothing to him, and he meant nothing to me.
As I was about to begin a full fledged war with myself, the events of the day seemed to rewind inside my head. I was looking at Malfoy, then I was attempting to chop off a Pickle Plant's thorns, then I was attempting to coax a pin-prickled turkey out of its box, I was in Potions and Snape was yelling at me, I was smiling at the thought that Tonks was going to be our new DADA teacher, I was in Colin's arms, I was outside on the lawn crying into Malfoy's chest, I was throwing myself at Harry bitterly, I was sitting with my back pressed up against the oak tree, I was sleeping again.
I gasped as the morning's events dealt me a blow that left me practically winded and I rembered what had really happened outside. I had been crying, crying on Malfoy and-
"Ginny? Ginny, are you all right?"
Ron was staring at me oddly. Hermione was at his side with a book open in her arms. I could see the title: The Secret to Discovering Psychological Riddles and What They Mean. I wondered what she was doing reading the book. She had never been interested in psychology, and there was absolutely no reason why she should be now. Harry was standing further back behind both of them looking at me. I glared fiercely at him.
"Ginny, are you all right?" Ron asked once again when I didn't answer.
"Yes Ron I'm fine," I said bitterly, remembering what Harry had told me in the morning.
"You don't look all right," he told me stubbornly. "Ginny, we know something is bothering you. Why don't you tell us?"
"Why don't you just Harry, you prat?"
I got up and stomped up the stairs. I threw myself on my bed and replayed the incidents of that morning. I had lunged Harry and Malfoy had restrained me. At the moment I had thought him a cruel, heartless monster for doing that to me; but now I saw his reasoning, and I saw another side to Malfoy. One that I had never thought he had. He could have easily allowed me to get into a fight with Harry, enjoying the fact that Harry was getting beat up, and he didn't have to lift a finger. Instead, he had put his childhood rivalry aside and had done as his duty told him to do. My eyes opened wide as I thought about this.
I was going to get up and take a shower when I realized something else. Malfoy had proved to me that morning that he did have a heart. A small one I'll gladly admit, but he had one just the same. He had comforted me in my time of sorrow, he had actually let me cry on him, let me spill my bitter tears all over his perfect robes. This knowledge of mine, although very little and seeming unimportant, completely overwhelmed me. I stood up and took a shower and then hopped into bed, still trying to get Malfoy out of my thoughts. Thankfully, I managed to do so in my dreams. The next day however, his memory was in my head all day.
In the days that followed my embarrassing encounter with Malfoy, I stayed as far away from him as I possibly could. I even avoided eye contact with him. I was always with Colin and Celine at my side, and when they weren't around, I was ever on the lookout, lest I should run into the prat, Malfoy.
At breakfast, lunsh, and dinner, I would sit with my back to the Slytherin table if I could find a seat. Whenever I had to sit facing it, I found that my eyes would wander and seek out the devious little git. He was managing to get into my head.
Once, I came across him in a deserted hallway, I mean completely deserted. I had had to go to the bathroom and Colin and Celine had promised to meet me in the library. As I neared Malfoy, it looked like he was going to grab me or say something to me, but just then, Harry came out of the Prefects' bath, where he had obviously just finished taking a shower (password courtesy on of Ron Weasley), and Malfoy rethought it. I had never been so happy to see H arry in my life, and I can assure my audience that I never will.
A month and a half later, I still couldn't stop thinking about Malfoy. The worst part was that I wasn't just thinking about that morning three weeks ago, I was just thinking about him in general. His perfect body, his gorgeous lips, his- stop it! I just couldn't. Hard as I tried, I couldn't stop thinking about him.
That day, the first Wednesday of October, the first Hogsmeade weekend was announced. It was a little late in the year I'll admit, but what with the Dark Lord up and about, we did need a certain degree of protection, even at and around Hogwarts. That night, I was sitting with Colin and Celine discussing where we should go at Hogsmeade excitedly, and Harry came up to us.
"Um, Ginny, can I talk to you really quickly?" he asked me.
I glared at him, and so did Colin and Celine. The way they were looking at him made me want to laugh despite my anger. I was going to turn my head away and tell Harry that I had other things to do at the moment, like laugh at Colin's and Celine's faces, but he insisted.
"Please Gin?"
I had no other choice. Besides I wanted to tell him that he didn't have the privilege to call me Gin anymore. So I followed him.
"What is it Harry?"
"Well, I was wondering if perhaps you'd like to go to Hogsmeade with me this weekend?"
I wasn't very surprised that he had asked me. I looked over at Colin and he was doing an imitation of Harry on his knees begging me to come back to him. I looked back at Harry and I laughed. I flat out laughed in his face. I mean seriously burst out laughing. I sounded like I had been placed under laughing gas too long. I couldn't help it though; I mean Harry asking me to go with him to Hogsmeade amused me, but Colin's impression was what did it. When I finally stopped laughing, Harry was practically bursting from anger.
"What's so funny Ginny?" he shouted at me sounding a lot like Ron when he was mad.
"You," I replied simply.
"What about me?" he yelled at me again.
"You trying to ask me out again after telling me that the only reason you went out with me in the first place was to get Cho jealous. How do I know this isn't another ploy to get someone else jealous, like I dunno, Lavender? I mean I really can't take this seriously. That's funny. It's good, it's real good. But I'm sorry, it didn't work. Besides, I believe I'm already taken for this weekend. Again I must congratulate you on your performance. It gave me a good laugh."
"Ginny, you know I wouldn't do that to you again, especially not for Lavender," he said disgusted.
"Well, you did it once for Cho."
And I turned around and walked back to my friends.
"Way to go Gin," Colin said loud enough for Harry to hear. I smiled. And we began making plans for the weekend again.
The night after all this happened, on Thursday, I went up to my room to put my things down before dinner, and I found a note on my night table. It said:
Meet me in the Prefects dormitories after dinner. I'll explain everything there.
Hermione
Okay. Yes it was odd, I mean Hermione had always been straightforward, especially with me. So I grabbed the note and took it with me down to dinner. There I showed Celine. I wanted to see what she thought. Just as she finished reading it and passed it back to me, Colin came up to us, dropping his things in front of him and sitting down next to me.
"Watcha got there?" he asked me.
"Oh it's nothing. Just a- "
He snatched it out of my hands before I could finish my sentence or put it away. He examined it and then gave it back to me seemingly uninterested. Then he began to eat.
"So did you find that in your room or what?" he asked me after a few bites.
"Yup, she sure did," Celine jumped in as usual.
"So why didn't she just ask you personally? I mean it's not like Hermione to go around being all sneaky and everything is it?"
"Wow, is she really that predictable?" I asked him.
"Of course she is. Haven't you noticed that yet, Ginny?" Celine answered for him.
"Well, I thought it was just me," I told her veering off the subject of the note. Then remembering it, I asked, "So now that both of you know about it, what do you guys think I should do?"
"Well, I guess if she just wants to talk to you then I think it's fine that you go," Colin told me slowly, as if he were thinking about it as he said it.
"Yeah, but see Hermione wrote that she'd explain everything in the dorm," Celine argued smartly.
"Yeah that is true." Then turning to me. "You know Ginny it's really your decision. I mean if you go then you might hear things you don't want to, or something like that. If you don't go though, then you're left with the doubt."
"In any case Gin, you can always attempt to forget what you heard," Celine told me.
"Yeah, well, I think I just have to think about it a little," I told them.
I thought about it all through dinner and then all the way back to the dormitories. Finally my curiosity got the better of me and I went. When I entered the room, I saw Ron and Hermione sitting at a desk in a corner of the room. The door shut behind me and there was Harry.
"Don't you guys do anything alone?" I asked irritatedly. It was only supposed to be me and Hermione, wasn't it? "I mean, you guys do go to the bathroom separately right?" I added, just to bother them.
"Well, that is besides the point," Hermione told me. "We have summoned you here because- "
"We is too many people," I interrupted. "You summoned me here and I thought it was just gonna be a conversation between me and you."
She ignored me and kept talking. "We have summoned you here because we have your final diagnosis."
"What?" I asked, obviously confused. Hermione had changed a lot in a short span of time.
"We have been studying you closely, and your actions suggest emotional problems."
"I am not suffering from emotional problems! Have you gone mad?" I practically screamed.
"The first step is denial," Hermione said trying to sound smart.
So that was why she had been reading that book. "Look, this is stupid, I'm leaving."
"Ginny, I would like to analyze you. Ask you a few questions," she added in answer to my puzzled face.
"Fine. But then can I leave?"
"Yes."
"Can they leave?" I asked pointing to Harry and Ron.
"No, they have to be my witnesses."
"You sound like you're making my will."
"All right, now let's start with the first question. Why are you mad at Harry?"
"He must've already told you that. Or hasn't he? Why don't you ask him yourself?"
"Can you please answer the question?" she asked impatiently.
"I have the right to a lawyer don't I?"
"Ginny!" That was Ron.
"I've already told you, he used me to get Cho jealous."
"He what?" Ron exclaimed.
Hermione grabbed his arm and pulled him down next to her.
"Okay, why haven't you tried to make up with him?"
"See the above."
"He's been trying to apologize. Isn't that good enough for you?"
"No."
"Why?"
I shrugged. She wouldn't understand if I told her it just wasn't. She would just want to 'analyze' me more. She asked me a bunch of other lame questions and then told me I was free to go. I sarcastically thanked her so much for allowing me to be her specimen, and opened the door.
"Oh Ginny, one more question, but this is just for my personal knowledge. Who are you going to Hogsmeade with?"
"Why do you want to know?" I asked hesitantly.
"I was just curious, that's all. " She tried to sound casual, but I saw through her. I grinned inwardly as I said the first name that came into my head and had been coming into my head for the past three weeks and a half.
"Draco Malfoy." And I shut the door before Ron's anger level could reach maximum.
Shortly after I had escaped their clutches, I heard Ron trying to get up the stairs to the girls dormitories. Too bad I wasn't there; I was, and had been in Colin's room with Celine, waiting for Colin to get back from wherever he was. When he finally showed up, it was almost eleven thirty.
"Where have you been Colin?" we both asked together. "We've been waiting for you for ages!" We did it again and burst out laughing. This rarely happened to us.
"Trelawny made me stay before dinner to clean up some tea I had spilled when I laughed into the cup as she made some stupid prediction or other about Trun dying and then she told me to go up after dinner as well. She made me polish every single glass ball she had twice, and throw out and wash all the tea cups she's used today."
"That old bat. We told you to take something else but noooooo, you just had to take Divination."
"It's actually quite an easy A."
"Okay, well we haven't been waiting for you just to talk about the old bat. Ginny here went to Hermione's place and refused to tell me anything until you came back because she didn't want to tell it twice."
"All right then, do tell jolly ol' girl."
"Okay, well I went and I thought it was just going to be me and Hermione, right? Well, all three of them were there. So I sit down and she tells me that I have emotional problems and when I said I didn't, she claimed that denial was the first step." I rolled my eyes. "So then she made me answer a whole bunch of stupid questions and let me go."
"That's it eh?" Colin asked. "Wow, she's gone nutters."
"Yeah," agreed Celine.
"Oh but wait, there was one more thing. As I was leaving she asked me who I was going to Hogsmeade with."
"And you said- "
"Malfoy." I practically breathed his name.