Disclaimer: I don't own the Harry Potter series, because if I did, Draco would be the main character and Harry would be squashed. But darn it, I know dreams don't come true. ^_^
Students crowded around the entrance to the hospital wing, each of them holding a worried face, a curious thought, and a calm mask. They tried to peer in the windows, some crawling on top of others to get a good view of what was inside. No matter how hard they tried, the door stayed jammed and the windows blurred. Your typical Alohamora wouldn't work on this lock—not while the professors were still engaged in conversation anyways. Crabbe and Goyle, who didn't know what to do without their leader, began pounding on the windows hoping to shatter them (though the glass was incredibly strong by the magic upholding it) and all the other students joined in.
The sound of fists against glass, which felt more and more like pavement the longer they kept hitting it, resounded through the halls. The echoes began calling other students' attention, and the crowd grew larger.
Soon, Dumbledore knew, he would have to address the students.
****
"Draco?" Ginny leaned over a pale face with a blush on her own cheeks. She repeated his name, again and again, but he didn't snap out of it. The children leaned over the edge of the couch, staring at him and giggling as Ginny moved her hand up towards his face, hesitant to touch it. All the tension from the morning's events caused her hand to shake, and her determination to quiver.
She'd just meant a light tap on his cheek to maybe revive him, but all the stress that built up in her hand made it jerk and before she knew it, she had slapped him.
He immediately sat up and, upon instinct, grabbed her wrist and twisted it tightly. Ginny made no effort to hide the pain in her expression. She wanted him to feel guilty, so she dragged it out dramatically and wailed at the top of her lungs how much it hurt. Draco let go, shocked at her actions and still confused about what had happened, but a few minutes, after Ginny had done enough screaming and turned it into laughter with the help of the children (who were mostly giggling at Draco's expression) she turned to face him and explain things.
"You fainted," She said clearly, still sort of snorting.
"I fainted?" Had a Malfoy before him ever done anything so… humiliating? Draco could barely hide his shame. But, alas, Ginny nodded, "When Jonathon and Ebony came home."
Draco frowned as she motioned into the kitchen, where a boy, about eight years of age was reading a rather thick book—typical Malfoy, Draco thought, always on top of things—and a girl sitting across from him at the table playing with spoons. He was about to scoff and claim the children looked nothing like either of them, he or Ginny, but then he saw the girl's long, pale blonde hair, a shade darker than his own. He scowled and swung his legs over so he wasn't laying on the couch anymore and went back to being annoyed at how he 'fainted.'
Hermione was talking to Pansy, a sort of disgusted look on her face, with Harry sitting in a chair close to them, listening in though he was pretending to read a magazine. Truthfully, the problems they were talking about such as the taking care of children—apparently Pansy had a kid as well—and putting up with husbands—although that was problem Pansy would rather not reveal—as such did not apply to him. Harry barely had to deal with anything troublesome in his way over to Ginny's house (he chose to ignore Draco and the fact he'd "married" his girlfriend) other than having to sign a few autographs for some very eager children he met on the street. In fact, he rather liked the future. He was famous, at least, for Quidditch and not the great defeat of Voldemort, and he was the most eligible bachelor in London.
They were in London… weren't they?
Harry's curiosity was piqued. What year were they in? Was Hermione's calendar correct or was it farther in time than they thought? Where were they living, exactly, and what was politics like now?
Grabbing the remote and once again thanking heaven that he didn't have anyone to fight with over it, he turned on the television. With a few minutes of channel surfing, he finally found a news station. What he heard did not especially please him. Really, it wasn't much—he caught the show as it was ending—but it was enough to send his blood running cold.
"And that's it of this edition of Good Morning America, we'll see you tomorrow." The local news was next, which was, apparently Florida's best source of information.
*****
"Slytherin scum!!"
"Shut up, you Mudblood!!"
Things were being thrown and fists were flying in the hospital wing, as more and more children were being led inside because of their wounds. However, right after Madame Pomfrey would heal them, the energetic, violent students would jump right back into the fight, only to return later with another injury. Seamus Finnigin came back six times and in the process of fighting, knocked out two Slytherins and one very unlucky Ravenclaw.
You see, Seamus was angry. Seamus was angry because his friend Neville Longbottom was in a coma, unsure of when he was going to wake up again, if he was ever going to wake up again, and it was a Slytherin's entire fault. Every other Gryffindor was angry because they had lost friends too—Hermione Granger, Ginny Weasley and her brother Ron, and of course, the prize of the house, Harry Potter.
To the Slytherins, all those losses combined couldn't exceed what they felt losing Draco Malfoy. He was the very model of what a Slytherin should be, and there wasn't a child in the house who hadn't looked up to him in one way or another. Fans of Pansy rang out too, blaming the Gryffindors for her loss of consciousness.
It was all a very unjust way to let out all the pent up anger and frustration one feels when he loses a friend.
The Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff houses began to take sides. Ravenclaw proved partial to green, and Hufflepuffs donned red faces for the while, and both houses fought against each other when they really didn't even lose anything, or have an object to gain, either.
Meanwhile, the professors were failing at every attempt to revive the students they could come up with. Snape sat, curled up in a chair, looking through potions books for any way to reverse the effect, and McGonagal sent her own owl to the Ministry to see what they might do. Dumbledore looked to Hagrid for suggestions on what to do about the quarreling students, but sadly, the Gamekeeper only wept at the sight of his friends, and cried harder when they wouldn't respond to his calls of "wake up! Wake up!!"
The students outside, hearing Hagrid screaming at them, rushed in, most bleeding or bruised, and dashed to their friends. Each one knelt beside the beds or grabbed their hands, wishing for the world they would squeeze back. Many kissed their foreheads and cried their own tears onto the sleeping students' skin, hoping they would wake the next morning and be able to cry for themselves. With a mad rush, the teachers tried to get all the students to leave, but it was useless. They were all grieving.
*****
Jonathon looked up from his book to see his father cross the kitchen and open the fridge, rubbing his head as it was still sore where he landed on it. With suspicious eyes narrowed, he gave Draco an odd look that any Malfoy had seen before when mirrors were handy. "What are you doing?" He asked. "You know Mom hasn't gone shopping in forever."
True to his word, Draco found no food (save leftovers in containers dating back to times before Jonathon was born) and no drinks, either, except the sodas Ron had brought with him. Speaking of whom, Ron, father of seven, had fallen asleep after so much caffeine had worn down his system, and long after he had come down off his sugar high. Hermione sat in a chair across from Pansy, and the two were using address books, planners, calendars, diaries, and a number of other things to try to map out each of their lives, or at least the parts they missed out on. Pansy had apparently admitted to the same fate immediately after Draco passed out. He knew they weren't really working together; they were just trying to prove to each other which was smarter and could make the most of their logic. As the battle of wits was going on in that corner, in the other, Harry sat bouncing one of the twins on his knee, making the most of all this "Uncle Harry" stuff.
Draco rolled his eyes and shut the door, mirroring the look Jonathon gave him. "And where is she now?" He knew Ginny had rushed off once the baby started crying again, he just didn't know where to.
The boy shrugged and went back to reading his book. The little girl across the table from him stared hard at the spoons in front of her, twisting her face into a most serious position. After a moment, she stopped that and her slightly chubby cheeks returned, no longer pinched in, but now part of a frown.
"If I stare at spoons long enough, will they bend?" She asked, looking straight at Draco.
He stared back.
"This morning I woke up in a different bed, one with flowers on it, like I always wanted, so I think I might be psychic," She spoke softly, in a quiet voice that could probably be raised no louder.
"If you were psychic," Draco began to reply, "you'd have to have inherited that trait from either one of your parents. I'm not psychic, because I'm incredibly rich and intelligent and good-looking and I don't need to be."
The girl's eyes widened just a little, "What about Mom?"
"Ginny," Draco refrained from calling her Ebony's mother, "isn't smart enough to be psychic. Sorry."
Ebony frowned as Draco picked up another lollipop from the candy jar, unwrapped it, and stuck it in his mouth. After a moment of thinking, though, he pulled it out and asked, "What do you mean you woke up in a different bed?"
"Well, I—ow!" She stopped in mid-sentence, staring Jonathon down as he had been the one to kick her underneath the table, and from then on she said no more. Her dark eyes fell down to the spoons again.
Ginny came in at that moment, preventing Draco from prying further, and hurriedly checked the fridge for food.
"There's nothing in there," Draco sneered. "And guess whose fault it is?"
****
Draco was dangerously close to pouting as he sat slumped in the passenger side of the car, arms crossed and a scowl on his face that was born to beat all other scowls. When he wanted to look miserable, that man could look miserable. He muttered incoherent things here and there, staring out the window as he did, but turning his head from time to time to make sure Ginny could hear a few statements.
"Men don't go shopping….. What am I being punished for? …. It's not my fault the fridge is empty…. YOU probably ate it all anyways—"
"OH SHUT UP!! I'm trying to drive here."
Draco's scowl suddenly disappeared and he looked over to see Ginny gripping the wheel calmly and performing all actions with ease. "When did you learn to drive?" He asked.
Ginny's mouth opened as though she was going to say something, and for a moment she stuttered. "I… I-I-I-I don't… know." Fear suddenly gripped her, and she slowed the car down. "It's like I've always known…"
Draco scowled again, sighed, and turned away. "Where are we?" He asked, as though suddenly very tired.
"I suppose we're going a route I've known in my subconscious, but really, I don't know any more than you—"
"No! I mean where are we, exactly and how in—"
"NO CURSING!! I'm sick of trying to stop your cursing—it's immoral!!!!!"
"There aren't any children around!! You said—"
"DON'T CURSE EVER, DARN IT!!"
"You said 'darn.'"
"Darn is not a curse."
"It very well could be in the right context and with the correct tone," Draco smirked at her flustered form, noticing how funny she looked right now. Her face almost matched her hair color and her knuckles stood out white on the wheel that would have been strangled had it been anything other than inanimate.
"Darn is acceptable, just not around children. You may use the word 'darn,' Draco."
Still, hearing her calling him 'Draco' was something odd. She had always said Malfoy, and had a disgusted sort of expression, like she'd wanted nothing to do with him. True, he returned the sentiments by giving her the same look, and calling her Weasley, but he really had no idea how that came about. She'd never really done anything to him, nor he to her. Why had they held that grudge then, so many years? He had reason to sneer at her—social status, but what had she to throw at him?
Ah, the answer came to him. Saint Potter. She was always on the Gryffindor side with famous Harry Potter. Even when he'd first met her, she stood fast beside him, never wavering while Harry was around. Oh, they could always win the house cup and they could always win at Quidditch as long as Harry Potter was around, so Draco supposed she had a rather easy school life. Draco hated that, and might have gone back to avidly hating her, but at the moment, their names were both Malfoy, and, as he thought with a smirk, she couldn't do anything about it.
**
Apparently, there were people in the town that knew them, as they were waved to or smiled at every aisle they went down in the store. Ginny pushed the buggy here and there, as she had found a wallet with her identification in it that was just full of money and she planned to spend at least half on food. She was trying to rush things, feeling bad at leaving Hermione and all the others stuck with all those children, but Draco walked behind her lazily, hands in his pockets.
"What am I doing?" Ginny muttered to herself. "Look at all the calories in this—the amount of carbohydrates!! I'd never eat this—"
"I don't think children worry about how many calories they eat every day, Ginny. Might as well buy it," Draco stated, wondering why he didn't rub that piece of information in, since she had not thought of it, instead of just letting her take it. Ginny was a bit surprised herself, but went on to buy the product anyway.
Still wandering the aisles, Draco mentally slapped himself as he realized he could've slipped an insult into that comment about how worried Ginny must be about her weight or just her weight in general, but there was no hope now, five minutes later.
However, what Draco passed off as stupidity, Ginny revered as kindness. Ah, he could have said so many mean things to her right there, but he stopped himself. She could tell he was holding back, trying to be more like the husband he should—Ooooh, bad thoughts, Ginny! IMPURE thoughts, Ginny! STOP. THINKING.
She seriously considered taking the can of cream-of-mushroom stuff against her head and banging it there again and again to stop thinking of Draco as her husband. So she woke up beside him in a strange house where they obviously have the same last name and three children. So what if she was wearing his wedding band that had the word 'love' engraved in it? And who cared about the fact that she had picked him to come along shopping, when her companion could've have been Harry, Hermione, her brother, even Pansy Parkinson, the little snot. Any of them could've been better than Draco, but she picked him… She assumed she felt obligated, since she was reverting back to the fact that she had woken up beside him in a strange house where—oh dear. Here we go again.
And another thing—while Ginny was thinking about how many carbs she didn't want to consume, Draco thought about what the children would care about. Like a caring father, he—DARN IT, GINNY, STOP THINKING!!!
Ginny audibly squealed as she grasped the jar of jelly, getting ready to slam it against the floor. A steady hand stopped her, looking at her target, (which was Draco's foot once he'd stepped in) and then glancing back to her. "Don't you read? This store has a 'you break it, you buy it' policy and I'm not paying for anything we have to scrape off the floor."
"You're not paying anyway! This is all coming out of my pocket, and grape jelly wouldn't scrape off the floor, Draco," Ginny resolved to setting it down in the buggy. Maybe she had read too much into him, overanalyzed things. Once again, there was a mental block where she tried to imagine Draco as a dad. Nah, it could never happen.
**
A woman of about thirty approached them in the next aisle, a smile on her face until she laid eyes on the pair. She let go of her buggy, ignoring that it went careening into a display and ran to Ginny to grasp her arms tightly. "Oh, Ginny! Oh, you must be so brave!!" She wailed, not caring what the rest of the store heard or thought, for that matter. Ginny, not having heard the news from Harry was rather confused when she heard an American accent come from a woman she thought should be British. She didn't have much time to think of it, though, for just then, the strange woman gathered the alarmed redhead in a fierce hug, still quivering from all her excitement. Hesitantly, Ginny pat her back.
"OH!" The woman wailed again as she pulled away from the hug, still holding Ginny's arms, "You are so brave! I envy you! How could you? Don't you consider the consequences? Of course you don't—look how brave you are!"
"Um, why—"
"I bet you just dragged him in here, didn't you? He probably came kicking and screaming, but you didn't care because he was going to finally spend time with you! And in our last session, you said he wouldn't give a flying flipper when he next saw you!! Oh, but you took action, Ginny! You brought him shopping!!"
"Um, well, yes—"
"Oh, you'll have a lot to talk about in our session tonight! I just can't wait to hear how much better your marriage has gotten. I mean, mine has certainly improved from Dr. Edgeworthe's tips, but I haven't gotten up enough courage to take my husband shopping, or out in public for that matter. You'll certainly have a lot to talk about, Ms. Malfoy! It's okay if I call you that isn't it? I mean, since your relationship is improving and—"
Ginny, eyes wide and her head shaking, could only mutter, "We haven't improved that much."
**
After all the groceries were paid for and loaded up into the car (Draco tried to let Ginny do all the work, but didn't really get away with it) Ginny paused a moment before starting up the ignition. The woman walked past their car, waving and mouthing "I'll see you at seven!!" with a cart full of bags of groceries as well as the largest amount of beer Ginny had ever seen at one time.
"We have marital problems," She muttered.
"Surprise, surprise."
She reached over and grabbed his collar, jerking him towards her so their noses were almost touching. Needless to say, Draco was scared out of his wits. "This is serious, Draco! We actually have to go to a therapy session tonight! With other people who are having marital problems!!"
"I don't think it's called therapy, Ginny. More like—"
"IT'S THERAPY, DARN IT!!"
"There you go again. Darn, darn, darn."
Ginny made a motion to strangle him, but as she lost her guts in the last minute, settled for growling horrible curses and banging her head against the car horn, honking it at the store as she sat in the parking lot. Draco patiently waited for her to finish her little tantrum, but eventually got tired of waiting. He cautiously forced her into the passenger side and put a grocery bag on her lap so she wouldn't lash out at anything other than, perhaps, the loaf of bread she was holding. With a smirk, he started up the car, and figured out he could drive too. Instead of going home, however, he drove around aimlessly until Ginny got so sick of it, she really did make an attempt to kill him, and earned the right to drive once more.
So… Draco thought. You really can fit an entire person in the trunk of a car.
**
Yay, another chapter! I'd like to voice an especially loud thanks to all the reviewers ^_^ that were so nice in the first chapter. Next chapter ought to be about that giant fight you saw in the first couple of scenes, what Dumbledore's going to do about the whole situation, and the therapy session. Ah, this'll be fun. And, since I'm out all week for Thanksgiving, I should have enough time to do it all.
Thanks again,
Maura Belle