Disclaimer: Ya ya ya, I know, I own nothing...so shoot me....

Bigreader: YAY! You like it!!! I am now goin to write more and more!! YAY!

CoupeLaFromage: lol, I like ur name, cut the cheese. Amused. Enjoy!

Dark Flame: Lol, thanks 4 the luck, I'm gonna need it...either my Ginny is WAY too out of chapracter and my Draco is just right, or my Draco is WAY too out of character and my Ginny is just right...I have re-writen the same chapter like...fifty times. The luck wishing is greatly appreciated. Enjoy.

[A/N] If I didn't answer ur review, it is because I am too excited to wait for your reviews! I will answer them in the next chapter...THER WILL BE A NEXT CHAPTER! YAAAY! Wow...spaz.

An Emerald Ring

Chapter 2: Stay in your place, remember?


Pansy's drawling feminine voice spoke up from the shadows of his Head Boy room where she and Blaise were playing a slow, uncompetitive game of wizard's chess. They were not playing it for any liking of the game, more for something to do with their hands. Her voice was not high pitched, or annoying in reality, it was just a cover she used so people would underestimate her, so was her clinginess and stupid front. If you were stupid and clingy, nobody seemed to watch what they said when you hung off their arm. Pansy could learn so much just by being annoying. Draco and Blaise were the only people she knew, that she would let her guard down around. Her pug nose was not a trait she was born with, it was from when her Father had landed a punch in her face when she was six, for breaking an antique vase, worth more than the Malfoy Manor. He had broken her nose and refused to let her mother set it so it would grow back to its straight self. She, Blaise, and Draco, were the only three Slytherins so far to escape the brainwashed worlds their death eater parents had created for them, none were evil. Just lost, trying to keep up the façade that they were under the thrall of the Dark Lord, with out getting themselves marked.

"Save any innocents, Draco?" She asked, while her knight beat Blaise's Rook to a dusty mess on the board.

"One." Draco said, collapsing on his bed and cradling his head in his hands. "I lost my Emerald's Eye." He confided in the only two people in the world he would consider friends. Trust was dangerous to a Slytherin...but these three were willing to take this chance.

"The one your Mother gave you? Before..." Blaise looked at Draco and allowed sympathy to slip through his emotionless mask.

Draco nodded and pushed back the sorrow he felt. He knew that is some one else had picked it up; he was never going to get it back. That ring could not be stolen, if one found it, they would keep it. It could only switch hands if that person died, or it was given in an act of love. Or of course if they simply lost it, then Draco could get it back, but the chances of him finding it were unlikely. It had no magic powers, and was hardly worth much more then forty sickles, but its sentimental value was enormous. It was the last thing he had that attached him to his mother.

Pansy, sensing that he did not want to talk about it, changed the subject.

"So, who did you have the fortune to save to night? Last night it was that Lynchester badger...huffelpuff...who was it tonight?" She asked, Draco had recently taken to wandering the Slytherin halls at night; he knew the dangers of them for other students that were not in Slytherin, Rape, torture, and mugging were common entertainments for the seventh and sixth years, and once in a blue moon, even murder. Draco, being the Slytherin prince he was, could not openly stop this, but he could thin out their prey as best he could.

"A little lion cub, Ginny Weasely, I think her name is...I remember her cursing me in my fifth year vaguely... but it could have been Granger." He said, running his hands through his hair.

"All the good it did, the vermin got someone anyways, I don't know who, but I heard her scream...so did the Kitten, I think that is why she trusted me enough to follow me out. You could tell she was drunk with adrenaline and sleep deprived. Other wise I would have expected she would not have come down here at this hour. She seemed to have some sense in her...what a concept."

"You saved a Weasely? I didn't think you had it in you." Blaise grinned at him, and moved a pawn without even looking, and Pansy's knight smothered it again.

"Well, if it was Weasel I might have made an exception, but she was young, and a virgin, and innocent...and she deserved her innocence, who was I to let them take it away?" He asked grimly. Pansy offered him a sad smile.

"You look tiered Draco, I'll take the next night OK? You have been out for two nights in a row now, why don't you get some sleep?" The sun was coming up and it was Saturday. He decided to take her advice and nodded. She smiled and with a wave of her wand the chessboard disappeared, and she and Blaise filled out of his room, leaving him to sleep.

Ginny stretched out on her bed, it was six o'clock p.m. She had slept the day away...again. On Saturday and Sunday night, Ginny would often stay up and enjoy the night and it's coolness. Usually she confined her nighttime prowls to the astronomy tower and its many secrets, or the grounds, occasionally even Hogsmead. She rarely strayed into the Slytherin tunnels, or even the main floor, but she really had forgotten her quill in professor Snape's classroom, and tired as she was, she had decided to get it, not thinking of the consequences. But now she realised the danger she had put herself in, and if it hadn't been for Malfoy...she didn't know if she would still be alive. Being that it was still early, and most of the Slytherin population would be at dinner, she figured she should go and thank Malfoy, she was not tired, and she had all of her awareness about her, the dangers were much less. Also, she and a few of her friends had noticed that Draco Malfoy, Blaise Zabini, and Pansy Parkinson rarely showed up for dinner. They had scared them selves sill making up stories about what the threesome were doing in their serpents den. She decided now would be the perfect, safest time to do it, also, it was not likely any one would see them, so she knew he could not be embarrassed about socialising with a filthy, poor Weasely. She jumped out of bed, brushed out her garnet locks, put on her best fitting robes and a thin layer of makeup. She pocketed her wand and a powder her brother had given her for Christmas, that when thrown in an enemy's eyes, would blind them temporarily...not to mention hurt like hell. She then crept out of her dorm, through the portrait, and into the dungeons. But suddenly, when she reached the bottom of the black stone steps, she realised that she was going against the one thing Malfoy had told her to do...

'Stay in your place, Kitten.'

[A/N] So? How was it? I would really apprecieated a review, the long ones are best, but just an acknoledgement that you read it is also greatly apreceated! Don't be an invisible reader!

Ash Night

May the stars be with you always.