A/N: You tell me if this chapter gets confusing. I'm not sure...I know a few parts will be, but a lot is going to be explained next chapter. And a ton is explained...or hinted at this chapter!! So read, review, and enjoy! Sorry for the delay and if I don't talk to you sooner, happy holidays everyone!!! :)

Thanks for all the reviews on both chapters 1 & 2...

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Disclaimer: Check chapter 1.

Draco Malfoy stared up at the ceiling.

The clock on the wall told him it was 4:00 in the morning and that he hadn't slept since he got into bed but he didn't feel it at all.  Something else was overcoming him, a different feeling...not tiredness.  Something he had never experienced... it was...

Weakness.  Fear, maybe. The thought struck him so oddly, he almost had to laugh.  Hell, he was in many situations that could have resulted in death, usually when he was with his father, but he couldn't ever remember fear.  Maybe because then he knew somewhere in the back on his mind that there was a way out. But as he lay comfortably in the bed of the quaint little cabin settled in the middle of nowhere, he couldn't feel more of a sense of death. 

It was eerie, really, this place.  What did he even know about it? Why was he even here? Because if he stayed out in the storm with Weasley they would have died? But aren't they just prolonging the inevitable? Someone, an ax-murderer, a psycho killer, a...death eater could break in right at this very moment and...

A shrieking, ear-splitting scream reverberated off the walls of the log cabin, and Draco jumped out of bed, scrambling around. 

"Shit, shit, shit..." he muttered, hopping around the room pulling on his shoes.

He stood in panic for a moment, listening to some more of Ginny's screams.  He had to get out. 

He saw the window.

Draco didn't know what was attacking Ginny, but it was probably nothing good. God, it was happening. They had gotten lured into this house, hadn't they?  They walked right in on a trap, and Draco wasn't about to be part of it.

With one leg out the window, he finally thought of Ginny. He couldn't just leave her. I mean she could die. But what did he care if she died? I mean she was nothing to him wasn't she? She was... She was...

"FOOD! FOOOOOOOOOOD! Glorious food!"

She was eating.

"GOD DAMMIT, WEASLEY!" Draco bellowed, falling over himself, back into the bed room and slamming the window shut.  He barged out the door only to find Ginny sitting on the floor by a trunk in the corner of the back of the living room, surrounded by snacks.

She looked up, startled, potato chip crumbs around her mouth. She began to say something, stopped, swallowed, and started over, "What is it?"

"What the hell do you think you're doing?"

Her eyes lit up like for a moment she had forgotten that they were stranded in an uncharted...cabin. "Eating! Can you believe this food?! I though we were going to starve, didn't you?" Ginny threw him a bag of candy. "Eat."

Draco threw it back. "Not if you've touched it," he snarled storming back into his room. "And for Merlin's sake wipe your goddamn mouth."

He slammed the bedroom door.  Except... "Screw her," he grumbled.

He slammed it back open.

Ginny blinked. "Yes?"

"Nothing," Draco barked, swiping a bag of cookies. "I was hungry."

She laughed. "Of course."

Draco sat down next to her a chocolate chip cookie halfway to his mouth. "How do you know this isn't poisoned?"

"What does it matter if it is?" she shrugged. "Do we have another option?"

Draco bit into the cookie. Well, it tasted fine at least. A little stale, maybe. And she had been eating before him, so if she kicked the bucket at least he could know not to touch the potato chips. "Right. So you...were looking around?"

"I guess, yeah." She glanced at him oddly. "Why?"

"Because I want to know what else you found that you could be keeping from me."

Ginny hit her hand to her forehead. "Oh right. Yes, Malfoy. I found a broom and a map, and was planning on sneaking out but damn I was too loud and woke you up.  Guess I can't abandon you like I wanted." Ginny rolled her eyes, unwrapping a piece of chocolate.

"I would've done the same to you."

"I know," Ginny snarled. "But I won't sink that low."

"I feel better now."

She made a sound in the back of her throat, and turned away.

"You started that?"

He was referring to the fire that was illuminating the room across from them. 

"Yes."

"And nothing burned down? I'm amazed."

"Thank you."

"Where did you find matches?"

Ginny nodded her head over to the sink area. "Top drawer."

They didn't talk for a while. "So...you couldn't sleep?" Ginny asked cautiously.  She didn't know Malfoy at all, but she did know that she never liked him, and never would. So why was she pretending to care she had no idea.

Draco laughed at her. "And I thought your parents birthed an idiot."

Now she had even less of an idea.  God, he was plain evil and she didn't have time for that.  He was right; she should have just kept this food a secret, because so far she wasn't hearing a thank you anywhere.

Ginny threw her bag of potato chips to the ground with disgust.  They hadn't been in each other's company for 24 hours, but she was so sick of his snide remarks that she wanted to kill him.

But she wasn't strong enough for that, so she said something that may have been ten times more stupid.

"So why don't you have that skull on your forearm yet?" She hadn't meant for it to slip out and Ginny felt panic wash over with the way that Malfoy looked at her.

"Weasley you think you just know everything don't you?"

"It's just your father--" her voice was softer now; desperate. Something about his reaction...she knew she touched upon something so sensitive, and so...none of her business.

"Don't talk about him like we're the same person!" he bellowed, jumping up, leaving the food forgotten on the floor. Ginny stood up too and Malfoy pointed a finger at her as she backed up slowly. She slammed against the wall. "You don't know shit about my father and even less about me." 

Ginny felt like crying and she had no idea why. "I just thought..." she began lightly.

"No one asked you to think," he hissed, his voice low and full of anger. "No one's that stupid."

Ginny let out a slow, angry breath of air, quickly pushing off the wall, banging into Malfoy's shoulder as she made her way across the room. "You're right -- I don't know. Don't get angry at me for it because you walk around acting like you have it made." God he could cross the line talking about her family ten times, but when she dared to place a toe over it, it was like the world was crashing down.

"Yeah well who would expect you to understand," he growled, turning around and facing her. "You and your perfect life--"

Her anger and worries that had been building up inside of her ever since the knight bus had crashed now collided with her hatred for Malfoy. "I do not have a perfect life!" she shouted, her face red, her pulled up hair slowly, wildly, falling out of it's elastic all over her face. "Don't you ever tell me that I do."

"You don't know what you have," he snarled.

"How rich, and let me stress the rich, it is for you to say that! Malfoy you get everything.  I had never once held the weight of a galleon in my hand until I reached 18 and was working on my own.  For my own money.  I do not have a perfect life," her voice was thick with emotion as visions of the family she hadn't seen in over a year, and Bill, her brother whom she would never see again flashed into her mind.

"Life isn't about money."

"You sure have no problem pretending like it is."

"I haven't got anything else." His eyes were blazing fires staring down at her.

Ginny let out a breath of angry air. "And right now," she said. "We both don't have anything. And I don't know--"

"You often don't."

Ginny breathed in and out very hard wishing that he didn't look so amazingly handsome standing there with his arms crossed, and his perfectly chiseled face set and hard.  Lost strands of hair loosely falling into his forehead. And god that sweatshirt.

What she would give to be wrapped up in something that looked so comfortable and good... Ginny shivered. What the hell was the matter with her?

"Look, we're not going to get anywhere fighting."

"Hey, good call," he growled.

She plopped down on the couch. "Why do I deserve this? What is so wrong with me!?" she cried to the ceiling.

"Allow me..." Draco began.

"Shut up," she snapped. "I have been having the worst month. No, year. And it's only been getting worse. I mean you," she paused to glare at him. "and that, what was that? That weird encounter in the alley, and almost getting fired and..."

"Hold on!" Malfoy sat down next to her. "A weird encounter in the alley? This month?" 

"A week ago... I guess. I don't know." She shook her head. "Some horrible man was torturing someone. It just shook me up, that's all." 

"What are you talking about 'some horrible man was torturing someone'?"

Ginny shrugged. "I don't want to talk about it."

"Too bad," he snapped. "You're going to."

She laughed. "Oh right! Yes, high and mighty Draco steps in to tell me what I can and can't say!"

"Oh god, Weasley, just shut up."

"Thank you, I plan on it."

Draco glared at her. "Listen, you don't want to talk, fine. But I'll tell you what you don't want to talk about.  You don't want to talk about what you saw a week ago in that dark alley because it scares you.  Because you think that if you talk about the hooded man in the black robes then that's going to make it real.  Because you've been living in some alternate universe where bad things don't happen.  Where people don't die or get tortured and you deny everything that happens or that's going to happen.  Face the facts, Weasley.  It's bullshit.  We didn't just end up here on coincidence."

"YES WE DID." Her eyes were red and her voice screeched.  She didn't believe herself for a second.

"No," he snarled. "You saw him, and you know, you know what happened in the alley that day.  A death eater tortured a man, maybe for no reason at all.  Maybe because he was bored.  Maybe because he could."

"How do you know all at?" Ginny gasped out.

"Because I was there."

Her mouth fell open slightly. "Why...?"

"Weasley," he rushed. "I'm going to try to let your stupidity grasp the concept that maybe we're here because of a common link. Maybe we both witnessed something."

"What did you do there? What did you do when you saw the death eater torturing that...person?" She tried calming her nerves.  She tried forgetting about the harsh things Draco had said to her, or about the horrid visions flashing through her mind.

"I watched."

"You mean..." her voice was low as though she were afraid someone was listening in. "You saw his face? The death eater?"

Malfoy's eyebrows went together. "You didn't?"

"No," she said lightly. "I ran the second I heard the words 'crucio'...But I'm betting Voldemort doesn't no that. So, who was it?"

Malfoy hated her for being so oblivious.  Of course she didn't know, he thought bitterly.  Let him be the bearer of bad news.

"It was your brother," he said lazily. "Ron."