Sweet Surrender

Draco helped her to her feet, trying so badly to swallow the lump in his throat at her tear stained cheeks. Her hair was mussed, her clothes ripped, her lip was bleeding and there was a nasty bruise on one side of her cheek. And yet her eyes were always as beautiful as they had been when he had first saw her, a clear blue color. But this time they were filled with tears. His heart ached. His mind rushed. He tightened his grip around her waist.

"W-why did you help me?" came her small, pathetic voice, full of pain as she looked down at her bare feet, refusing to let her eyes meet his. Draco didn't answer. All he did was slowly lead her away from the table where she had been strapped down so roughly. He propped her against the door frame, turning to face her tormentor, who was now lying unceremoniously on the floor, just as battered as Draco wanted him to be. Draco approached him wearily. Here, he had two choices. He could either kick the bastard one more time, or he could walk away. Kicking him would mean breaking the code of a fighter-never kick a man while he's down- but walking away would mean less punishment for some one who deserved it. Draco did what he knew was right. He gathered all the strenght in his right leg and thumped the already limp body in the ribs, causing it to roll over again.

Sighing, Draco turned back to where he had left her. She was gone...

Ginny ran. Her bare feet making silent thwapping sounds on the concrete floor. She needed to get away. She needed to find somewhere where no one would see her, where she could just sit and think and sort out her feelings for a while. She sniffled. She couldn't believe he of all people had helped her. She couldn't believe he cared. What she'd seen in his eyes had confirmed it though. Those stormy grey eyes, all the shades of a London morning, they had actually slipped for a moment, showing her what he actually felt. Pain. He had felt her pain.

Ginny fell to her knees in one dark corridor she had never been down before. She put her hands over her face and sobbed. Sobbed about her whole life. About her grades, about her family, about what had just nearly taken her innocence from her. About her saviour. How she had loved him, since the moment she had known Tom didn't care, and Harry didn't care. She had looked to that Silver Prince, because there was still a chance he might care. And now, all these years later, when she had just begun to think that he didn't care, she found out he did. More than she ever would have imagined.

Ginny curled herself up against the cold stone wall. It seemed everything was cold these days. Davis, back in the classroom, his touch on her arm had been cold. When he had strapped her down to that table, it had been cold. And when he had slipped his hand up her shirt, it had been very cold. But then, when he, her saviour,had come, and put his arms around her, it hadn't been cold. With his arms around her, it had been warm, it had been right. It had felt like everything in the world was right again. Like when she had been a little girl. And everything in her world had been seen through pink glasses.

But, even then, Ginny had known all was not right. She had been bruised, and battered. There were finger marks in parts of her body she dared never show, and her clothes were ripped and torn. She had been a mess, not looking like anything she had imagined her prince charming would have seen her in. And, then, she had been hurt. Not only physically, mentally too. How close she had been to loosing her childhood, her innocence. All Davis had needed was five more minutes, and it would have been gone, and she would have been ruined. A rosey apple that had already been bitten.

Ginny sighed, and let her eyes droop down and down...her last thought, being that of Draco Malfoy...

Draco went looking for her. He didn't know why, but he did. He needed to find her, to make sure she was OK. He knew she wasn't. What girl would be after some thing like that? As he walked, he skimmed over the first time he had saw her. It had been at the beginning of his second year, at Flourish and Blott's. With his father. Draco scowled at the thought, but continued. And she had been there with her whole family, her second-hand books tucked neatly in her second-hand cauldron. Draco hadn't seen his father put the diary in her cauldron, but after, when he had found out it had been the source of many sleepless night full of guilt. Guilt of what his family had put her through.

Draco had always avoided having to insult Ginny Weasley. He had attacked, verbally, her brothers, her family, but never her. What was there to critisize? She was an above average student, and she was beautiful. Long copper locks, not red red, but copper-red, and icey blue eyes that sparkled when she smiled. When she smiled...Her white smile, with riders on either side of her mouth, and a dimple on one cheek...Draco loved it, riders and all. Her cherry blossom lips and straight little nose...Draco loved that, too...freckled and and all...The point was: He loved her.

When Draco found her huddled in a corner, and had to smile slightly at the innocent look on her pretty face. How he had savoured that innocent look from afar all these years...How he had! Slowly, Draco slipped his arms around her limp body, and lifted her. She was asleep, but even so, her arms instinctively went around his neck, her nose snuggled in the crook of his neck. He smiled as her warm breathe invaded his neck, and began to walk, his destination undecided as of yet...

Ginny woke some hours later, in a bed, warm and comfortable. It was still night, because it was dark, and for a second she thought that all that had happened before had been some uncanny dream. But then, she turned over, and whether it was the soreness of her body, or the fact that there was another body there with her, she would never know. All she knew was that she panicked, twisting herself out of the bed and jerkily falling to the floor, waking the other person. Ginny watched with growing apprehension as the person rose groggily and switched on the bedside lamp.

Then her fears were distinguished. Sitting sleepily on the bed before her was none other than a bare-backed Draco Malfoy, just woken from slumber. Ginny took a second to observe all of his features. His pale silvery-blonde hair fell into his face, and his grey eyes were half closed due to the light. His pale skin shimmered, strangely, in the given illumination and Ginny marveled at the slender, well-built body that was exposed to her. "Weasley?" his voice came, smooth and strangely reassuring, his eyes squinting, "Yes, Weasley. Get back into bed, its still, like, one in the morning..."

"Get back into bed-with you?" she asked unsure. Maybe she liked him, but who knew what he could do to her, saviour or no.

Malfoy seemed become impatient. "Come on, Weasley," he said, his voice tired, but at the same time demanding, "You've been sleeping here with me for the past, what, four hours, and nothing has happened. Just get back on the goddamned bed." Ginny couldn't help but smile a bit, but she hid it. Slowly, she crawled back into place next to him, trying to keep her distance.

Not for long. Soon enough, Malfoy, unconsiously, had her wrapped in his warm embrace, his cool breathe on her shoulder.

And then Ginny really smiled.

The first thing Draco saw when he woke up that morning were her blue eyes. He lost himself in them for a minute or two, before he was finally aware of another sensation. Her breathe, on his lips, so close he could count every eyelash, every freckle. He rid them of the space, pushing his body closer to hers, his lips on hers. And it was the best kiss Draco had ever had, or given. Slowly it deepened, becoming more sweet and passionate with every swipe of either of the two tongues that were currently engaged it a fierce tango of saliva and desire.

Ginny moaned a bit as Draco's hand moved to the small of her back, pulling her body closer to his. She broke the kiss. "Why did you help me last night?" she asked as she looked into those sincere grey eyes, the ones that she loved so much.

"I helped you," he said, "because I love you..." The words sent a shock of adrenline and emotion to Ginny's heart. "I love you."

She looked at him for a second. How long she had waited to tell him these words, how long she had waited to be this close to him. 'And I'm not going to screw it up...' she thought, before saying, "I love you too."

That day Ginny and Draco made pure love. All their lives, both had always had walls built around their hearts. They had never let any one in, or any one out. But that day they both experienced something that, together, they would experience for the rest of their lives...

Sweet Surrender

Author's Note: Based on Sarah Mclachlan's song Sweet Surrender...Read and Review please!