A/N: So . . . Haven't really updated this in sixth months. Mainly because what was a cliffhanger to you was a roadblock to me. But! I've decided to write a chapter after rereading all of your encouraging reviews and besides I miss poor, troubled Draco. In the 6 months since Chapter 8, I've realized how terribly cliché and unrealistic Draco is and will make an effort to have him be an actual teenage boy instead of a stuffed teddy bear "with a shielded heart" . . . How lame could I possibly be . . . Anyway, here goes nuffin!

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Ginny stopped abruptly, shocked by the scream. She recovered quickly and ran up over the hill to see what the heck was going on.

The first thing she noticed was Harry, lying spread-eagle on the ground. The second thing she noticed was Cho, standing by his left shoulder with her hands over her mouth. It was Cho, presumably, who had been shrieking. Lastly, Ginny noticed Draco, who was panting and had a disgusted sort of look on his face. His fine hair was tousled. Hmm, thought Ginny, it looks like he's just been in a fight. Oh, goodness, what is that on Harry's face? Looks sort of purple. Like a bruise. Wait – bruise? Fight?

She descended from the rise of the hill and jogged the short distance toward them. "What the frick is going on here?" she demanded, using Bill's favorite substitute swear word (he had to censor his language when he was around Mum).

"Um . . ." Draco looked up, a bit guilty. His hands unconsciously went up to his hair and smoothed it down. "Bit of a skirmish. . ."

Cho shrieked again in a high-pitched scream that probably was acquired only after years of practice. "A bit of a skirmish? You psycho freak! You just decked Harry! He's unconscious!" She knelt down, concerned. "Harry?"

Ginny was horrified. She knelt beside Harry, too, and saw that his right cheekbone was red and swollen, and that a dark bruise was blooming. His mouth was set in an open sort of grimace, and his eyes were only shut halfway but Ginny could see that they were bloodshot.

"Draco, what did you do?" she cried. Harry looked positively horrible. She looked up at Draco. Draco's ivory face was lit by the light from the castle and the reflected moonlight on the lake. He looked disgusted.

"I did what any decent man would do," he said defiantly.

"No decent man would do this," Ginny said, softly and sadly. She checked Harry's pulse because, in the dark, she couldn't tell if he was breathing or not. "What happened?"

Draco cleared his throat and shifted his weight uncomfortably. In past experience, fighting men were considered manly and desirable. Now, all of a sudden, Ginny despised him for it? He rolled his eyes, then remembered he was supposed to be answering a question. "Cho brought him here drunk."

"WHAT?" Ginny gasped. "But – how?"

Cho sucked in her breath. "You tell, you die. Get it?" Ginny nodded. "All right. Your brother George found another secret passage to Hogsmeade in his seventh year. He showed it to me, because we, er. . . Well, he showed it to me. And one of the waiters at Madame Rosmerta's has an obvious crush on me, so a couple of us can go there every now and then to unwind without getting told on. So we went tonight, and of course Harry followed me." Cho cleared her throat and looked down. "Then, my friend – Parker Wallace, do you know him? – got Harry to drinking a little Muggle beer and when we came back he didn't know what his name was. Kept calling himself Super Bacon Boy."

Ginny sat silently, stunned. "Figures," she sighed. She looked up at Draco again, who had zoned out and was looking at the air in front of him. "So, Draco, is this why you beat him up? Because he was drunk?"

"I did not 'beat him up', Ginny," he corrected, snapping back to reality. "I merely knocked him out. And it's not that he was drunk, it was the things he was saying and doing."

After a bit of a silence, Ginny piped up, "Elaboration, please?"

Draco sucked his teeth for a second, making a little squeaking "tssk" noise. It was his unconscious habit to do this when he was nervous and speaking publicly. "You know, the usual Potter crap. Stuff about my family, morals, insults in general."

He stopped speaking, not willing to go any further. Cho looked at Ginny bluntly. "Harry was insulting you, too, and being . . . kind of gross. He kept throwing himself at me, and um . . ." She giggled. "And at Draco, too."

Ginny's lips twitched in brief merriment, but Draco was obviously not amused. Ginny contemplated asking what sort of insults Harry had said about her, but Draco was already uncomfortable in this situation. And anyway, Harry was lying unconscious in front of her. "So," she said, "shall I revive Harry?" She began to pull her wand out of her pocket.

Draco moved his head slightly. "Let him sleep it off," he said carelessly with his hands resting in his robe pockets. "Combination of alcohol and my fist requires hours of recuperation." He looked sideways at Harry's body.

Ginny thought his remarks sounded suspiciously experienced. "Okay," she said, unsure. "Well, where should we put the body? Can't leave it - er, him - here. Maybe Hagrid's?"

Draco shrugged. "Sounds good, but I'm not showing up on that freak's doorstep." He felt Ginny's resentful glare. "What? You know that if I'm there, he'll automatically assume it's my fault."

"Which it is," spat Cho. "You boys are fun to watch with your little tug-of- war with Ginny, but this has gone too far. Harry was drunk, Draco, and he obviously didn't have the mental capacity to form coherent sentences. As if he meant what he said. Help me carry him, Gin."

Ginny, feeling a bit numb, grabbed an ankle in each hand while Cho got a good grip beneath his armpits. "Ready, and . . ." They lifted him, but his head rolled back and they heard his neck crack. Ginny winced. "That sounded painful. Can you maybe prop his head up against your stomach or something?"

Cho tried this, but it compromised her strength, and Ginny knew they wouldn't make it to Hagrid's carrying him like this. She shot a look at a snickering Draco. "Little help? Be a gentleman?"

He sighed. "Haven't you sissies ever carried an unconscious body before? Put him down." They obeyed and watched in awe as he bent down and swung Harry up and over his shoulder. He leaned his body sideways to get a better balance, and gripped Harry on one ankle. He reached up and placed a hand against Harry's ribcage area to steady Harry's body. He looked at Ginny, whose mouth was slightly open. "What?"

"You're all . . . pro at this," she stammered. Well, it was partly that, and she was also impressed with the easy way Draco lifted Harry's fairly heavy body, as if it were a sack of dust. She tried to concentrate on the situation at hand rather than on imagining Draco's strong, taut muscles and sinews. Ooh.

"Yeah, well . . ." Draco's voice trailed off and he marched wordlessly to Hagrid's hut. He set Harry against the wall, being unnecessarily rough and knocking Harry's head against the house.

"Careful!" Ginny hissed. "Okay, Draco, maybe wait by the lake?"

Draco blinked. "Oh. Are we still having some sort of discussion?"

Ginny raised her eyebrows and nodded. "I think we sort of need to."

"All right," he said easily, and strode away, tall and straight-backed, toward the lake.

"You can leave, if you want," she said to Cho. "I can just make up a bunch of bull about Harry flying into a tree - "

Cho glanced at Hagrid's front door. "Okay . . . It would probably look suspicious if I were here, anyway. All right, well, laters." She turned around and walked toward the castle, her gait unconsciously flirtatious, as if it were natural for her to walk exaggeratedly. But Ginny still felt it was nice of her to help carry Harry to the hut.

Ginny knocked on Hagrid's door, forming the story in her head. He was flying, she decided, and tried to do a Wronski feint but it went all wrong and he lost control and slammed straight into a -

"Hagrid!" she exclaimed as he opened the door. "How are you?"

"Fine," he said through his beard. "Smashin', actually. Yehself?"

"Pretty good."

"Glad ter hear that. Hey - What're yeh doin' here at this hour o' night?" he demanded, suddenly realizing that it was against school rules for Ginny to be there at this hour.

"I've got Harry's unconscious body here, actually," she admitted, forcing a concerned look onto her face and pointing to Harry.

"What!" Hagrid gasped, shoving roughly past her (she crashed into a nearby bush) and crying out as he saw Harry. "Wha' happened, Ginevra?!" He took Harry up in his arms, went inside, and set the body on the table. His hut felt oddly empty without Fang, who had died some months ago from eating a poisonous plant.

Ginny fed him the crashing-into-a-tree story, which he seemed to buy. She acted overly anxious, asking questions about Harry's fever, his bruises, what she should do with his broom.

That last one almost ruined it. "Yeh can bring it here, I s'pose," he said, prodding Harry's bruised cheek. "'E can take it when he wakes up."

Think fast! Ginny screamed at herself. "Oh - um - actually I think I'll just take it to the common room. You know, in case he forgets it when he wakes up."

Hagrid looked at her sternly. "I think know what's goin' on here," he said in a gruff voice after a tense moment had passed.

"Er – you do?" Ginny squeaked, her heart racing. Crap! she yelled in her head. This was it. Everyone would suffer because of her careless mouth. Cho would be punished for consuming alcohol and hexing Harry; Harry would be punished for drinking, too; and Draco of course would probably be expelled for, as Cho eloquently put it, "decking Harry".

"Yeah, I'm onto yeh," growled Hagrid. He paused, letting suspense fill a few seconds. ". . . Yeh don' trust me with 'is broom!"

"Oh, well - " Ginny tried to act like she was denying the truth. "Not really, I just - "

Hagrid chuckled. "Now yeh don' really think I could fit on that bitty lil' broomstick? Naw, me flyin' days were over thirty years ago."

Ginny laughed awkwardly. "Of course I trust you," she said, "it's just, like I said, I'm afraid Harry will forget - "

Hagrid shrugged. "Yeh can take it. Don' worry about it. Why don' you run off ter yer common room now, since it's after hours and technic'ly speakin', I oughter put yeh in detention for bein' out righ' now." He slapped Ginny on the back, and she narrowly dodged being impaled by some antlers mounted on the wall. "But don' worry 'bout 'Arry, I'll take care o' him. You jus' go to bed now."

Ginny hugged him goodbye and walked in the direction of the castle until she was fairly sure Hagrid wouldn't see her. Then she doubled back toward the lake, up and over the hill over which she'd traversed an hour earlier in the evening.

She walked up the crest of the hill and saw Draco lying on his back, still and unmoving. His arms were folded loosely behind his head, and his robe collar was turned up. As Ginny drew closer she saw that his eyes were closed and his face relaxed and peaceful. She sat quietly next to him, cross-legged.

"Draco," she whispered, hovering over him. In the unusually bright moonlight she could make out a spattering of very small, light freckles across his nose and his high cheekbones. His eyelids twitched, but he didn't move. She noticed he had deep, purple bags under his eyes. No wonder he was asleep . . . Poor guy needed it. "Draco," she whispered louder, placing a hand on his arm and jiggling it. "Draco!"

His eyes fluttered open, glassy and gray in the night. They brought Ginny into focus slowly, and he sighed and sat up. He cleared his throat and rolled his shoulders slightly, then turned and looked at her. Ginny swallowed, wondering how to approach her talk.

"Well, that took you long enough," Draco said quietly, a bit of a smirk across his lips. He felt a little awkward from being found sleeping.

Ginny smiled. "You know how Hagrid is . . ."

Draco shook his head. "Not really."

"Oh. Well, he just wouldn't stop talking. I personally think he needs a wife, or maybe a new dog. He's been so lonely ever since Fang died last year. So, yeah, sorry it took me a bit." She looked down at her hands and began to pull up blades of grass.

He shrugged. "It's all right. I got in a bit of a siesta." Ginny giggled at his word choice. "What? Can't a guy say 'siesta' and not be laughed at?" He grinned crookedly, looking criminally cute.

"Nah, it's just – it doesn't seem like a word you'd say," she explained, smiling widely.

He shrugged again. "I can say 'siesta'. Watch - siesta, siesta!" He laughed too in spite of himself.

Their laughter trailed off into the night breeze and Ginny gritted her teeth. His good-natured disposition would make The Talk so much harder . . . How to bring it up?

"Well, I still can't believe you punched Harry," she said. "I mean, was it really necessary?"

Draco heaved a sigh. "Knew you'd want to analyze this. Look, nobody insults me and gets away with it, all right?" His face seemed to harden.

"He insults you all the time and you've never hurt him this badly before," Ginny pointed out.

Draco looked into the distance, across the lake. "He's never insulted me drunk before," he offered.

"Well, I don't think any 'decent man' would knock another guy out just because of some insults he made when he was inebriated - "

"Look, it was about you too, okay?" Draco interrupted. "He was . . . insinuating things."

"What did he say?" Ginny asked quietly.

He looked disgusted. "Let's just say you have no idea how lewd Harry can be. Honestly, he's . . . Well, he's just nasty. Not to mention the fact that he was trying to - to come onto me and - and. . . " He shuddered and grimaced. "Look, I just lost it, okay?"

He was acting all annoyed with her, Ginny noted. Not so soft-spoken and soul baring as he was when they were making out. Or even a few minutes ago with the whole siesta thing. Quick mood change. "Well, the least you could do is apologize."

"To whom?"

"Harry when he wakes up, for starters."

Draco exhaled slowly, crafting his next words in his head. "I guess I should apologize to you, too. I mean this is probably the last thing you need, after all the drama in the past couple days. I just . . . I couldn't stand to hear one more disgusting word out of his foul mouth. And I was surprised, too. Harry drunk is really annoying, more than usual, to tell you the truth. But I'm – I'm sorry, Ginny, for losing it like that." He swallowed, then reached out and tucked one of her stray locks behind her ear. He blinked at her beauty. "Forgive me?" He leaned in to kiss her. She met his lips with hers, but then broke away, not sure if he really meant his apology.

"Draco, I just – I just don't know about this."

"About what? Why are you so upset?"

"Because! You decked Harry. I can understand that you were angry at him, but knocking him unconscious? And – and this whole week has just been insane - "

"Is it so hard to forgive me? I said I was sorry, Ginny. I – I mean, jeez - what else do I have to do? Why do we have to talk so much about this? I wanted to come down here to be with you, not to obsess over Harry."

Ginny was surprised, and realized that Draco was probably accustomed to getting his way in arguments. She knew he was more than a little spoiled. The line about being with her was also a little disconcerting. "Look, I can't just forgive you like that" – she snapped her fingers – "and anyway, it's not just Harry, it's everything that's happened and I don't know if we should be - "

"Oh, so that's why you wanted me to come down here," said Draco in a sudden moment of enlightenment. His voice became weary and sarcastic at the same time. "Because things are moving too fast and you don't know if you want to keep snogging me in secret, and nobody would approve and it would ruin your reputation." He paused when he saw her wide eyes. He tried to remain calm, although inside he seethed with frustration, and maybe the tiniest shred of regret for hurting Harry. "Am I right?"

"Well – kind of, in a way," said Ginny helplessly.

Draco looked hard at the grass in front of him. "I'm not going to force you to do anything," he said finally. "But I think you should know that this past week has been something fairly special and new to me. I thought you understood me, you know? And I don't know why we have to go through all this. I thought maybe we were meant to be, or something. I felt - something." Draco observed that he had become much better at expressing his feelings. His manly side derided his expressive side, but his expressive side took a page out of his manly side and decked it; then it reached out and took Ginny's hand. He ran his own fingers over hers.

Ginny didn't know what to say. "Well . . . It's been new and special for me too, but – the truth is, I don't really know you. I mean we skipped straight from being enemies to being, like, well. You know. Like you said, I think that's a little quick and that's probably not a good thing." She paused. "If you wanna be my lover, first ya gotta be my friend."

Draco looked up. "Isn't that Spice Girls song?"

Ginny pondered. "Umm . . . Kind of." She smiled.

Draco paused. "Don't ask how I knew that."

Ginny fought off her grin, forcing herself to get back to business. "But do you see what I mean?"

"Yeah, I guess. If . . . If you really feel this way, then I guess that's it, then. If this is what you want." Please, please don't let this be what you want, Draco thought, but didn't say aloud.

"I don't know what I want anymore. I don't want this to end, necessarily, I guess. Just slow down or something. You know. Get to know you and stuff?" She frowned. What the heck was she babbling about?

Typical girl, Draco huffed in his head. "Just be friends, you mean."

Ginny suddenly felt like crying. She saw how Draco understood her words – he thought she was using the well known "let's just be friends" break-up technique. "I - "

"If you don't want to be with me, fine," Draco suddenly said. "But don't try to beat about the bush. Just tell me. I'm man enough to take it. I can see where you're coming from. I'm not stupid, okay? You obviously don't think this will ever work out." He exhaled through his nose, his mouth set in a grim line. Don't yell, he commanded himself. Yelling had never amounted to anything. "I know what you think. It was all a big mistake to begin with, and everything has to be perfect for you." He sounded so mean, but when he was angry or frustrated he said terrible things.

"Nothing is perfect for me," she said honestly. She had to make him see her way.

"It is," Draco insisted. "Your perfect family, your perfect friends, your perfect grades, your perfect boyfriend - "

"I'm not perfect! Draco, this is not what I want to - "

"What do you want?" Draco almost yelled.

"I . . . I told you, I don't know," she whispered hoarsely. Her throat clenched and her jaw ached and the lake began to bend in her eyes because she was crying.

"What do you want?!" He really did yell this time.

"I don't know!" she cried out.

He shot to his feet. "I don't know how to deal with this anymore. I don't know why you're confused because I know I'm not. I know what I want, and I know what I don't want, and I don't want to be some - blemish on your perfect life."

He walked away. Not stomping, or marching, or running. Just walking. He half-hoped Ginny would run after him but she didn't. Why couldn't she just forget about Harry and kiss him?

She was still sitting cross-legged next to the shiny lake, still sorting out what he meant by that last outburst. She felt like she had just witnessed an explosion, and all that remained were her despair and her crazy, mixed-up life. What happened to the magic that she felt when she was kissing him? The real magic. Not the kind of magic she learned from McGonagoll. She had experienced real magic, in that classroom and in the forest.

Maybe that magic was so real that it scared her.

Maybe she didn't know what was good for her anymore.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

A/N: Whoo, long. Looks like the end, eh? Your opinion is needed. Should I draw out their story or end it soon? I don't really want it to become a soap opera, although it pretty much is. Also, I apologize for Draco's fluctuating character. Like I said before, I wanted him to have the mean teenage-boy side he has in the books since he was extremely, sickeningly mushy before. So, your comments would be very, very helpful!

Edited 7/19: Okay, okay, Newbie3, I semi-fixed the Spice Girl lyrics. I kind of knew that I hadn't gotten them right, but the real line doesn't quite mesh with the situation, so I have Ginny saying that it's "kind of" a Spice Girls song. Sorry. :) But thanks for pointing it out.