Unlike Hermione, Luna was all for the idea. She and Ginny sat awake until the wee hours of the morning, sitting on the overstuffed armchairs in the common room, beside the blazing fire. They had meant to start their potions essays, but once Ginny had brought up her new project, all they had done was to come up with ways of getting the ball rolling.
Luna was slumped sideways on her chair, sat scribbling away in a leather bound notebook with her favourite bright purple quill.
"Ok" she began, "So far we have, a dreaming draft, an acousticas charm, the very obvious love potion and the twiterpater-trance from your brother's shop" She read out, tallying it all up.
Ginny, who was curled up beneath a thick red blanket with her legs tucked beneath her smiled as she kept flicking through the pages of Lavender's new copy of Witch Weekly.
"Sounds good to me" she said, the excitement of all the plotting bottling up inside of her.
"Oh, what about this stuff?" she said, tossing the magazine towards Luna.
"Lust Dust?" Luna asked, raising her eyebrows at Ginny who just motioned for her to read on.
"A girls best friend. A simple charm that affects the chosen witch or wizard for up to 4 and 20 hours, causing them to find the first person they set eyes upon completely bewitching. Caution: keep well away from knee caps, and only use in small doses" Luna finished, giggling madly.
"Are you mad? That crap never works."
"It might…Maybe we should order some as a last resort" Ginny said with a tired shrug.
"Still, I think this stuff would be more effective Gin" Luna smiled as she passed the magazine back to Ginny on a double page advert for Lady Lavinia's Lingerie Lair.
Ginny gasped in mock outrage and threw the magazine back at her friend.
The next few days passed by quickly for Ginny. Before, between and after classes she, Luna and Hermione would gather ingredients, spells, directions for potions, and every little bit of information on the Slytherin Prince as they could get their hands on. They went as far as to just outright ask some other, slightly friendlier Slytherin's about his character.
"He keeps to himself mostly. He doesn't usually join in with the rest of us. He thinks he's too good for it all"
"Everyone's afraid of him. His family's so influential…."
"He has a very select group of mates. They're all snobby twats to be honest"
"He can go all night, he can"
"He takes Viagra and is so totally a borderline alcoholic. But then, we all have our weaknesses"
"Best I ever had"
"Likes to drink a lot of tea"
Everything they found they kept in an old suitcase beneath Ginny's bed, and she would review them every night before she fell asleep.
Luna managed to sneak into Snape's private ingredient store when she was the last to leave the dungeon after the class had finished, Hermione spent hours trawling through library books, finding any charm or spell that could possibly prove to be useful, and Ginny had kept a close watch on Draco Malfoy himself, trying to get to grips with his routines, his likes and dislikes (including how he prefers his eggs in the morning), who he spent his time with and his general persona.
Ginny's task however, had proved to be the trickiest. Being as Malfoy, Draco seemed to have perfected giving as little of himself away as possible. So far, all she had found out was that he was completely punctual, very precise, liked eggs Benedict and disliked almost everyone in the castle, including most of the people in his own house.
Getting their research together was easy, but putting their idea's into practise was less so. The girls had decided that the first step should be the dreaming draft. Hermione had brewed it secretly, and it would soon be ready for use.
"So, what exactly is this going to do?" Ginny asked, as she pulled a strand of crimson hair from her head and dropped it into the small cauldron of simmering, deep pink potion.
"A few sips of this and Malfoy will dream of you for three nights" she replied, matter-of-factly while adding a little more heart of violet extract to the cauldron, making the contents fizz and turn slightly purple.
Ginny watched with curiosity, again, feeling slightly envious of Hermione's amazing ability to do just about anything.
"The only problem is, how do we get the ferret to drink it?" Hermione said slowly.
"I'll slip it into his pumpkin juice at dinner tonight" Ginny offered bravely, always ready to let loose some of that famous Gryffindoor spirit.
"Be careful Gin" Hermione warned with a soft motherly tone. "We can't let him suspect a thing".
That night, Ginny paid a quick visit to the girls dorms before going down to the Great Hall for dinner.
Lately, she'd been spending a lot more time on her appearance so that it wouldn't only be her use of charms and potions that would bewitch her target.
She had taken her grey school skirt up two inches, so that the tips of her fingers reached the hemline when her arms hung by her sides.
She'd also shrunk a few of her shirts and her school jumper so that they clung to her figure that little bit more. She had made sure it was all very tasteful; she may have acquired a new confidence, but she wasn't ready to do what the Slytherin girls do and walk around looking like she was wearing a uniform made for eleven year olds. In that house, the general consensus was that the shorter the skirt, the cooler the girl.
Ginny was only willing to go so far; she wanted to keep her dignity. She had style.
She stood in front of Lavenders full length, mahogany framed mirror and decided that she looked good enough to make her first approach to Malfoy.
Her long hair hung perfectly straight almost down to the small of her back (with the help of Parvarti's straight and shine charm, ordered from Witch Weekly), and her fringe was sweeping perfectly across her forehead, making her look very sultry. Her eyes were wide and bright, and her cheeks were perfectly rosy. The only adjustment she made was to grab a small tube of Lavender's lip gloss and applied a little to her full bee-stung lips.
She smoothed her skirt down and tucked her shirt into it, before adjusting her jumper and tie, making herself look neat for once. Then she practised strutting out of the room after sticking her tongue out at her reflection, which did the same back.
Walking into the great hall had become a big ego boost for Ginny. When she appeared at the door and walked gracefully over to her seat beside Hermione, she revelled in the fact that she always managed to turn heads, and tonight was no different.
When she sat down and greeted all her friends, she noticed that there were one set of eyes that hadn't stopped staring, and those eyes belonged to the Slytherin Prince himself.
She glanced up at him, expecting him to turn his head away quickly so that she wouldn't realise he had been staring, but he didn't. It was almost as if he wanted her to catch him; the arrogant idiot.
"So, are you coming to Quidditch practise tonight Ginny? You've missed out on the last two" Harry asked, interrupting her thoughts.
"Oh, yeah, absolutely" she said excitedly. There was nothing she enjoyed more than Quidditch practise, apart from a game.
"Hey Ron, I got a letter from Fred and George. They want to meet us all in Hogsmeade at some point, to see how we're all doing" she told him as she dug into a plate of fish pie and peas.
The group chatted for a while, before Hermoine nudged Ginny, letting her know that if she was going to pay her visit to Malfoy, it had better be soon.
"Uh…I need to go to the toilet" Ginny announced standing up, holding the little bottle of purple liquid in the sleeve of her jumper.
She strode more confidently than she felt over to the other side of the hall, to where one of the doors were, intentionally passing the Slytherin table as she went. Thankfully, Malfoy was deep in conversation with Blaise at the very head of the table, and didn't see her coming. When she was almost passing his chair, she pretended to stumble and let one hand rest on the table to stop herself from falling as the other hand quickly emptied the contents of the bottle into Malfoy's drink.
"Watch it Weasel" Blaise Zambini spat at her as a few of the people seated sniggered at her clumsiness. Ginny glared at Zambini before sneaking a look at Malfoy. He wasn't sniggering, and he wasn't glaring at her; Just looking straight back into her eyes with his slate grey ones.
Ginny met his gaze for a few seconds and smirked at him, before straightening up, smoothing her skirt around her thighs and slinking out of the large oak doorway with the smirk continuously playing on her lips, leaving him to watch her as she departed.
"Sweet dreams Mr Malfoy" she said quietly to herself as she left.