Quick A/N's: I apologize to my loyal readers for not getting this out sooner, but I promise it's worth the wait. grin Oh, and this chappie is dedicated to Holly, the bestest little sister (insomuch as that is possible seeing that we are technically unrelated but share the same love of HP, weren't those BB beans good, I still like the dirt, b/c it really feels like dirt!) And never mind your sisters or mum, it's good to have an overactive imagination!
Disclaimer: the characters nor any of the recognizable HP universe are mine, just the plot.
Chapter Nine (and boy is it a doozy) Young Icharus
Ginny sat quietly crunching on toast the morning of the last day of school before Christmas hols. She was listening to Ron, her captain, dissect their last Quidditch match and what drills she should practice at before the next game in the New Year.
Ginny was just about to comment on a new tactic when a school owl landed in front of her with a note for her. She untied the message, gave the owl some crusts and watched him fly away. She was about to put it in her robe pocket when Ron chirped up.
"Aren't you going to read it?"
Ginny had a sneaking suspicion who had sent it and didn't think it was wise to open it at a table full of Gryffindors.
"Well?" Ron continued. Now more than interested due to Ginny's pause.
"Come to think of it Gin, you have been getting lots of owls lately. It's..it's..." he stuttered "not from a ..boy...is it?"
Ginny rolled her eyes at her brother, trying to hide a smirk, if he only knew who the sender was he'd go nutters, She decided the best plan of action would be to be direct and lie, lie, lie. So, she carefully unrolled the message, making sure only she could see what was written.
Weasley,
Good wind tonight. Everyone distracted with Ball, give us a chance to stretch our wings. Meet me an hour after the Ball has begun, in the side corridor by the front doors.
D.M.
"Blast!" Cursed Ginny under her breath. 'Of all the nights to practice!' She had looked forward to this dance for weeks. Her dress alone had taken her two weeks to create with complicated stitching spells.
"Something s'matter?" Ron asked, his mouth full of bacon and egg.
"No, no; just a friend in..er.. Hufflepuff," she stuttered, "who can't stay for the Ball tonight." She answered.
"Who is it?" Ron asked, after swallowing his huge mouthful of breakfast.
"Oh, no one you'd know, just some Hufflepuff."
"Your.. boyfriend?" Ron had trouble getting that out but his curiosity and big brother instincts were just dying to know. Narrowing his eyes at Ginny and really looking at her for the first time in ages, he realized that she was a cute, impressionable, young girl and that other boys might notice that too and lure her away.
"No!" Ginny replied vehemently. "Just a friend."
"I don't know Gin, still sounds awful suspicious to me.." he replied, leaving the sentence dangling there, waiting for the truth.
"Oh, Ron, you're too much of a big brother for your own good," she patronized, "I'm allowed to have my secrets." She ended, then backtracked, deciding to unseat him a little to really get her message across. She casually glanced in Hermione's direction, then back at Ron.
"Just like you have yours!" She concluded with a grin. Ron suddenly turned a shade of vibrant red and Ginny stood up and with a "Good-bye dear brother- o-mine" she left the Great Hall to get her books and head to class.
The Yule Ball was well under way when Draco casually eased himself away from his fellow Slytherins and left the Hall. Weasley was still inside he knew, having just glimpsed her dancing, surely out of pity, with Longbottom. As he walked to the predetermined corridor, he couldn't help think that Weasley hadn't looked too damn bad tonight. Where she had got the money for that gorgeous gown only Merlin knows, all he knew was that the silver gown certainly fit in all the right places. Malfoy's thoughts were interrupted as Ginny, herself, came walking into the corridor dressed in the exact gown that he had just been pondering.
"Hope you haven't turned to thievery, Little One, that gown looks like it cost more then the rest of your wardrobe put together." Malfoy remarked almost playfully, giving her a wicked grin and eyeing her up and down.
Ginny knew by now not to take offense. She knew that disguised in all those insults were compliments and a greeting.
"Hello to you too, Malfoy." She smirked. "If you must know, I made this gown myself, took me forever to get the stitching spells just right. Oh, and you're not looking to shabby either."
"Shabby?" Malfoy scoffed, "that word does not enter my vocabulary, let alone my wardrobe, witch."
Both of them grinned at their banter and started walking outside towards the fields behind the Quidditch pitch.
"So, Weasley," Malfoy began. "What in all of Hades realms were you telling that git brother of yours this morning that made him turn such a delightful shade of red? He looked like someone threw a tomato gargantua hex on him and it went terribly wrong."
Ginny glanced up at him.
"Staring at me in the Great Hall are we? Do I need place a 200 metre repelling charm on you, or should I just call the authorities?" She grinned wickedly at him.
Malfoy just stared at her evenly.
"Had to make sure you got the message. I didn't particularly want to stand around in the corridor like a prat forever, now did I?"
"Fair enough." She conceded, wiping the grin off her face and replacing it with a look of pure mischief as she commenced in telling him the whole conversation between her and Ron that had occurred at breakfast. Afterwards hearing the tale, Malfoy started to stagger, hands clutched to his heart.
"Me, a Hufflepuff! Oh, you wound me, you witch! You're killing me, Gin, so slowly you don't think I'll notice, but ugh, a Hufflepuff! He finished dramatically, majestically swooning onto the snow-covered ground. Ginny, unable to hold back any longer, burst into giggles at the sight of Draco Malfoy, court jester.
"See," she gasped between giggles.
"What?" He stood. suddenly alert, and peered cautiously into the night.
"No, you!" She exclaimed as she finally regained her power to speak. "Look how perfectly normal that was, what you just did. There was not one ounce of evil in that performance. In moments like those Draco, you are a completely likable wizard." He looked thoughtfully at her, not only because of what she had just said but because he noticed her use of his given name. Ginny too fell silent and they continued the rest of the way to their practice grounds in companionable quiet.
"I know it's been more than a week since the last outdoors practice, but the winds haven't been right, still too strong for our skill level. However, this is the last night before holidays and since I have to go home for business, we won't get a chance to practice now for a couple weeks, what with Dumbledore insisting we always practice together. Tonight the winds have improved but" he raised an eyebrow at her, "stay low to avoid the strong gusts, I can't have you die on me. How would I explain it to your prat brother without being forced to join you on the other side?" Malfoy finished lightly.
He turned away from her, ran a couple of steps and leaped into the air, as he did so, he morphed into Talon, caught an updraft and was soaring faster than you could say Quidditch. Ginny was quick to follow, concentrating carefully on all the elements of her animagus. With a simple leap, Red Feather had joined Talon in the dark December sky and began stretching her wings and negotiating the winds. Once they were warmed up, Malfoy took her through a series of rolls, swoops and dives with him leading and her following close behind. After that was done, they split up again to try their own tricks. Ginny was soon exhausted and flew down to the ground, landing a little off kilter and morphing back into human form.
'Still have to practice landings.' She thought with a grimace as she stood, slowly gaining back her balance. She automatically looked to the sky where Talon was still soaring though the air. A little too high perhaps.
'That's too high Draco, stop showing off.' Ginny mumbled to herself as she watched him climb further.
Everything changed in a split second for Draco. In one moment he was riding on a particularly strong updraft, and in the next an eastern wind came roaring along his left side. He tried to compensate for it but failed and now was stuck in a fast downward spiral. It took all of his concentration to keep in Animagus form during the dizzying fall. He managed to stretch his wings back a bit which slowed his descent in jolts, but the ground still seemed to be getting much too close for comfort. Draco's last thought before he lost concentration and transformed back into his human body was the ever eloquent:
'Shit!"
And then, nothing.
He hit the ground with a dull thump and rolled a couple metres, finally resting on his back in the middle of the snowy field.
Ginny had watched this whole incident with horror from the ground. At first, she thought that he had been joking with her, maybe showing off a little, but when he failed to pull himself out of the spiral it was already too late for her to do anything. Her wand was up in her dormitory (as there as no pocket for it in her gown), and there as no way she could have flown up to him fast enough to knock him out of the spiral. As he hit the ground, Ginny was already sprinting to the spot where he lay.
"You can't be dead, Draco, you can't!" She moaned hysterically.
"Wake up, you stupid prat, tease me, terrorize me, anything! Please!" She started shaking him a little and watched as his eyes began to flutter open.
"Mother, I wish to have the pumpkin juice with suppe.." he mumbled.
At that, Ginny's tensions melted away and she burst into laughter. He was alive and he was asking for pumpkin juice. Draco slowly shook the muzzy feeling from his head, and painfully propped himself up on his elbows. The confusion from the fall drained from his mind as he took in his surroundings and examined himself. He couldn't help but notice the near hysterical girl beside him.
"You think this is funny, Weasley." He spat, not believing that she, Ginny Weasley, a bloody mushy Gryffindor, would take his near death so lightly as to laugh at him because of it.
He watched shrewdly as she, kneeling beside him, kept laughing like a maniac. He noticed, suddenly, as her demeanor changed, anger now filled her once gleeful face. She began yelling at him and hitting his upper body nonsensically.
"You stupid, bloody prat, Draco, what were you trying to do? How could you scare me like that?" she sobbed at him.
"Draco, you arrogant, selfish, ego centric, silly, stupid, bast.." She railed at him, tears now falling down her face.
"Shh, hush, Ginny, shhh." He crooned, trying to keep a firm hold on her hands so they'd stop batting him. He tried to console her, something he had never done to anyone before, because he realized in that moment, as she hit him and cursed him with tears streaming that she had been terribly scared that something would happen to him. She had cared about him, Draco Malfoy, a boy whom no one had ever bothered to care about.
"I'm going to be all right," he smiled a genuine smile at her, "see, just a few bumps and bruises. Knocked the wind out me, but I'll be just fine, Gin."
Ginny sniffed, now calming because of the soothing effect of his soft words, and wiped her face with her hand.
"Sorry," she gulped, figuring she must have looked pretty stupid just then. Her reaction to his fall had been so strange.
"I don't know.. sniff.. why I just did all that. Sniff.. guess I'm just not used to being all helpless like that anymore. I'm.. I'm sorry I couldn't do anything, if anything had happened to you..." She left the sentence dangling, and lay back in the field beside Draco, not wanting to look him in the eye; not wanting to see his reaction.
'I am such a slobbering mess,' she thought to herself, 'must be the ruddy Gryffindor in me acting up.'
Draco unpropped his elbows and eased back beside her to lie in the snow. It felt good on his aching muscles.
"Ginny?" He said quietly. "Thank you."
"For what?" She sighed. "I couldn't do anything, I wish I could of, but.."
He blindly grasped her hand in his.
"Thank you, Ginny, for wanting to help me."
They lay there like that, forgetting about the cold and the snow, staring up at the clear sky, both lost in thought. It slowly dawned on Ginny why this was so important to Draco. He had never been fortunate like her, to have grown up with people surrounding him with love. Love and support was a Weasley trait, it ran through the family, just like the red hair and freckles. 'I never realized how lucky I was until now.' She pondered to herself. 'How different his life must be from mine.' Ginny was right, there was no real caring in house run by a Death Eater, help was never offered, only given out if it was paid for in fear, or supplied some form of personal gain. But Ginny, she had just wanted to help Draco because she cared. She wanted him to live, and she admitted to herself, she would have missed him terribly if he had died. It would be hard to imagine her life now without the constant of Draco Malfoy, his jokes and smirks, his passion and determination. He couldn't be replaced in her life by anyone else.
The silence continued until Draco turned his head towards her, and said in a casual manner.
"Ginny, look at me."
She rolled onto her side and propped herself up. She peered into his grey eyes thoughtfully, silently questioning him. In a slow movement, his hand came up to rest against her cheek, and he drew in closer to her, silently asking permission to do what he wanted to do next. It was given as soon as her eyes drifted shut and he brought his mouth down upon hers. Though their lips were both cold, they felt waves of warmth engulfing them. Their kiss intensified and deepened until it began to overwhelm the two teenagers and they fell back into the snow, lying just as they were before the kiss, staring up at the stars.
Their hands were still firmly entangled, pulsating warmth from palm to palm.
As Draco's eyes picked out constellations, his thoughts were everywhere at once. As he picked out his own namesake on the dark cloak of Night, one thought slowed enough to be processed in his conscious mind.
'I never knew it could be like this.'
A/N's: So how was it? Good? Mushy? Romantic? Scary? Tense? Tell me what you think, you beautiful people you! I would love your feedback. And no worries, the next chappie is already in the works...