A/N: I'm sorry it's been so long! But at last I've updated! This is a wicked short chapter, only because this is how much I think there should be here and I've got another chapter in the works.

Chapter Nine: In the Night

Ginny lay on the cold, dank floor, frightened and hurt. The place was awful, she kept her eyes closed to delay the inevitable. All the air around her seemed hostile, as if the room held the same contempt for her as she did for it. As she lay musing these thoughts she became aware of the echoing footsteps approaching. Her entire body seized up, slowly she lifted her eyelids. At first the darkness seemed eternal, but gradually, her eyes adjusted and she turned her head to find the dark looming figure with silver-blond hair.

With a frigtened yelp Ginny lept from sleep, panting and sweating. The great gulps of air she breathed in hesitated as she realized she was not in her own bed. At about the same time she recognized the presence of someone else on the bed, stroking her back, she realized where she was.

"You had a nightmare," Draco stated.

"Y-yes," Ginny said. Her muscles tensed as his fingers sweapt down her back.

"Are you okay?"

Ginny had had enough of this ambiguity,"Why are you being like this?"

Draco looked startled,"What?"

"Why are you being so nice to me all of a sudden? It doesn't make any sense, I don't understand."

He sat there for a moment, silent, just watching her. Finally he spoke,"I...I don't know. I hate your family. I should hate you. I do hate you. But...I want to take care of you. I-I never hated you the way I hate Big Brother Weasel. And...well I lost my mum over the holidays, I know how suffocating it must feel to lose your dad. He...when I saw him with you and your brothers and...Potter and Granger, that day at Diagon Alley back before my second year, I...I thought he looked like a very good father..."

That was more than he had ever planned to say.

Ginny sat back against the pillows beside him and looked down at herself. She was wearing an old pair of his pajamas. Tears pinched at the back of her eyes,"You lost you mum?"

"I don't want to talk about it, I don't even know why I said it...if you repeat...," his old Slytherin instincts kicked in.

"Of course I won't," Ginny said immidiately in a very quiet voice."I never hated you either, Draco."

"Really?"

"Really."

"Where does that leave us now?"

"I don't know," Ginny hadn't realized that she'd placed her head on his shoulder, or that he'd snaked his arm around her waist.

Ginny woke up the next day in his arms and decided that she would never let go of the safeness she felt in them.