Wow! I had forgotten how long it has been since I have updated. Sorry. Well here is the next chapter, I hope you enjoy!

Unexpected Alliances

Ginny stared at the neighboring blond ex-Slytherin in confusion as multiple possibilities swirled inside her head. Was Draco was denying his family? Could HIS family be denying HIM? What if he was put here simply to gather information from her? For that matter, WHAT was she doing here in the first place? Why did they even WANT her? She felt her stomach start to clench with fear and frustration.

"Kind of denies all reasoning doesn't it? Poor little Gryffindor. Don't let yourself strain your brain. If you want to live down here, you are really going to need it." Draco's rusty, mocking, voice filled the air and echoed off the stone walls.

Ginny stared blankly at him, her mind still struggling to adjust to this new development. He would be the last person she would have expected to find inside a Deatheater dungeon. The heir to the whole Malfoy legacy simply did not belong here. Deatheaters, Dark Arts, blond hair, and oily personalities, simply were their family trademark. It was part of their genetic structure.

She blinked rapidly, desperately trying to decide what exactly he was doing here. Draco's chains rattled slightly as he shifted to lean back on the gray prison wall. Ginny jumped slightly at the sound of moving chains and watched him watch her.

"So, ho.." she cleared her throat, "How long have you been in here?" she asked trying to hold his piercing gaze. Chills crawled up her spine as she watched him stare un-blinkingly at her with his silver gray eyes. She had a cat once that would look at her like that. Piercing, half-feral, and guarded.

"They don't exactly leave a calendar in here. You tell me. I have been here since Christmas. How ever long that is." Draco growled into the semi-darkness watching her intently.

Ginny nodded as she processed this new information and noted the state of his person. His pants were slashed along the legs in several places exposing several healing scars underneath. Angry red gashes ran along his bare chest and arms as well. It looked as if he had just lost a battle with a large angry cat. She grimaced in sympathy as she noticed the unnatural redness in the cuts. Several of those lacerations needed immediate medical attention.

"Well?" grated Draco. Ginny felt heat rush up the sides of her face. She had just been caught staring at the partially clothed form of Draco Malfoy. The same git who had tormented Harry, Ron and Hermione for years. Ginny fought her blush as she resolved not to be embarrassed.

"Well what?" she asked defiantly. It was not her fault he was walking around without his shirt. Even malnourished, he was good looking. In an arrogant, stuck up, insulting, short tempered, you don't deserve to lick my boots, way. Stupid git.

Draco pushed off the wall he had been resting on this entire time to rapidly advance towards her. Ginny backed up a step as he hit the end of his chain length just over three-quarters way into the room.

"Tell. Me. How. Long. I. Have. Been. Down. Here." He bit out savagely. His whole body pulled taunt against the chains, his eyes snapping with fury and impatience. She suddenly realized that he truly did not know how long he had been down here. She could not help feeling sorry for him.

"Oh," she said softly. "About six and a half months. It was July 18 when they grabbed me." She watched several emotions flash by on his face. Disbelief. Anger. Resolve. Then, astonishingly, laughter rang out between them. He tilted his head back and laughed until the might of it sent him to his knees. She watched him uneasily until he finally stopped laughing. He stayed unmoving on the ground for a minute before he looked up, met her gaze again, and grinned.

"They promised me that I would break within a month when they first put me in here. They had my inner clock so messed up that I could not know if I had out-lasted them. That is good news." He got to his feet still wearing a half-mad grin. She reflexively stepped back closer to the wall, further from him.

"Calm down. If you die down here, it will not be by my hand. I have more important things to worry about." Draco drawled as he watched her skittish movements.

"Why should I trust your word?" asked Ginny defiantly. "For all I know you have been placed down here to gather information from me." He watched her with blatant amusement.

"What could you possibly know, that I would have agreed to go to this extreme, to find out?" came his amused query.

What did she know. What did she know? She started to pace up and down her wall, out of distance of Draco. Just in case. None of this made sense to her. It had become obvious that they were after her specifically in Diagon Ally. They had not chased Hermione because they had her. But WHY her?

"I don't know." She finally admitted.

"You don't know?" he asked incredulously.

"No," she gritted out between her teeth. "I don't know. I don't know where I am. I don't know why I am here. I don't know why they picked me. I don't know why I am in here with you. I don't know how long I can stand to be in here with you! I DO NOT KNOW!" she finished yelling at him, her eyes snapping with fury, as he watched this emotional outburst dispassionately.

"Well. OK then." He answered as he stooped to pick up his chain. Ginny watched as he walked back towards the chain's anchor point gathering up the slack as he went. Ginny saw red.

"OK then?" she mimicked.

Draco gathered a bit more of the slack into his hand and then looked over his shoulder at her. She saw his hated smirk appear for the first time.

"OK then." He repeated. Draco turned his back to her and kept gathering slack, effectively ignoring her.

"DRACO MALFOY," she yelled starting to march towards him. " You have to be THE biggest, most annoying, and simply the wor…" she trailed off mid-sentence as she was suddenly nose to nos.. er chest of her exceptionally annoyed male cellmate. Oh, he was taller than she remembered.

"I will say this only ONCE more." he snarled, as he wrapped his hand around her jaw and jerked her head up to look into his fiercely scowling face. "My name is Draco BLACK. Not, and I repeat NOT Malfoy. Can you get that fact into your simple mind?" he hissed venomously as he shook her for emphasis.

She nodded and he released her. She retreated to her side of the cell, out of his reach, before she felt safe enough to ask her next question.

"Why would you Fath…" she trailed off at his sinister scowl. Well, that was not a question that was going to be answered, or asked, today, she thought.

"Why did you pick the last name of Black?" she asked instead.

"My mothers maiden name is Black." He responded after a moment's silence.

"Oh. I had forgotten."

"Yeah. Well, so had I." he restarted the gathering of the slack in his chain.

Ginny watched him as he halted three feet away from the wall and folded the slack in half once to form a long loop. Then, to her amazement, he started to swing the loop around in varying circular patterns. Over the head, around the left, to the front, wrap around the back, and across the side. The loop of silver started to spin so fast it blurred. She watched as he began to bend and twist as the silver line blurred the air all around him.

"What are you doing?" she finally asked. He straightened and the chain slowly whirled to a stop.

"Training. Something you should be doing too. They have taken a liking to losing werewolves down here every so often." He pointed to the scrapes. "I got these from them. But, no bites." He shrugged. Ginny simply gaped.

"The chains may be magically unbreakable, but everyone knows the best metal for enchantments is silver. Thus I, or we, have a potential weapon. Found out by accident. A few solid hits with that chain and most of the bastards will back down. After a parting swipe of course." He finished up with a demonstration of his whirling silver chain. Ginny tried not to be impressed.

He gestured towards her own chain and she found herself watching him as he demonstrated an easy side to side rotating swing. She picked up her chain and tried to mimic him. she soon fell into a rhythm and they practiced in silence save for the rhythmic swishing of the swinging chains.

They practiced until her arm hurt. They kept on and on, until she dropped her chain loop from her numb fingers. Then they worked with her other arm. She missed school.

When they finally stopped, it was because of a scraping sound at the far end of the cell. The only corner that neither she nor Draco could get to. Ginny watched as a stone slid out of place and a tray with two bowls came floating to the center of the room. The aroma of food was almost too much for her. Something smelt good. Her stomach growled.

She approached the tray at the same time as Draco did. Two bowls sat on the tray. One was full of an unidentifiable collection of stuff and gave off an unappetizing odor. The other was full of the best-looking beef soup she had ever laid her eyes upon.

She had reached a hand to take the spoon from the bowl of the soup when a hand grabbed on to her wrist. Glaring she tried to shake her and free. He held her wrist securely until she stopped struggling.

"That one is not for you." He stated firmly as he pointed at the bowl with the wonderful smell.

"That one is." He pointed to the bowl of lukewarm blob. Ginny glared at him.

"If you think that you're going to make me eat that... that stuff." She gestured to the unappetizing bowl. "Then you are crazy. Don't expect me to quietly sit here with THIS as you eat better than me." She finished angrily as she pointed to the bowl with the appetizing smells.

Draco raised one eyebrow mockingly as he picked up the horrible looking mash and saluted her with his spoon. She watched with horrified fascination as he took a bite, swallowed and looked at her.

"You really don't want that other bowl as much as you think you do. It's poisoned." He handed her a second spoon and held his bowl out to her. She looked at it dubiously.

"My advice, don't chew, just swallow. You taste less that way." He said. Ginny felt her stomach twist in revolt as he demonstrated his own advice. She looked longingly at the other bowl.

"Are you sure that the other one is poisoned?" she asked as she tried to avoid the bowl he held towards her. The stuff smelled even worse that it looked.

"Yeah, it is defiantly poisoned. The entire meal is laced with Rackonic powder." Draco shook his head. "Not a pretty way to go. If you get that desperate, just ask me to snap you neck." He offered magnanimously.

Ginny shuddered. Rackonic powder was a random mixture of all of the Wizarding World's most lethal plants. Due to the indiscriminate ratio of the mix, it was impossible to produce up a cure, as many of the antidotes were deadly. To successfully create the anti-toxin you had to have the exact proportions of the original mix. The survival rate of Rackonic was one. Only one person had ever lived after being poisoned with Rackonic.

She sighed and decided she was not hungry.

Well, thanks for reading! I should have the next chapter up within a week. Give or take…

Ja-ne!