Malfoy sat there with Ginny snuggled up next to him for hours. He didn't know if he should say something...do something...anything. He couldn't even figure out how he had gotten himself in this mess. He just wanted her back to normal. He just wanted the fight, the spark, the life, where it should be. He just wanted his universe to work the way it should and somehow he had ended up here, holding a Gryffindor! A Weasley at that! The female Weasley to add insult to injury!

He felt her stir. This was not good! He did NOT care about her! All he cared about was himself and his rutines and his own entertainment. Great! Her breathing was slowing down. Even that last bit of tension she had held onto was slowly fading away. She was falling asleep on him!

He stiffened up again and removed his arm from her shoulders. "Hey!" he almost yelled in her ear, "You don't get to sleep here!" There was clear annoyance and disgust in his voice. Yes, that was the way a Malfoy's voice was supposed to sound, all he had to do was maintain it...

Wait...maybe he should have make sure she was back to normal before he put her on the defensive? He was losing his mind.

She had almost been asleep when her pillow moved and yelled in her ear. She had known the comfort was too good to be true. She sat up and blinked at him wearily before she registered what was really going on.

She had been falling asleep on Malfoy. He had, for some unknown reason, gone completely mad and been nice to her, but there it was, all of the disgust and conceit, right back where it should be. She just rolled her eyes, grabbed her cloak, even though she couldn't remember taking it off, and headed for the door.

"Wait!" Malfoy called after her.

She turned to see him standing before the fire with an unreadable expression on his face. She adopted one of annoyed impatience.

"Look...I just..." he really couldn't figure out what to say, forget how to say it. His features kept cycling through disgust, impatience, confusion, pleading, and a even a little concern was thrown in there somewhere.

She sighed heavily and shifted her cloak in her arms. "I'm fine Malfoy. I'd thank you for saving my life but I'm not sure how much civility you can stand in one day." Sarcasm was heavy in her voice.

"Then...then you're back to normal now?" he asked searchingly.

She took a really deep breath, trying to steady herself. Here we go, she though to herseld."Normal? And just what is normal?" she demanded.

He got a confused look on his face again. She really had him off his guard. Why couldn't the universe take care of ITSELF! "Normal! You know...alive? Not whatever this...moping...thing you've become?" he offered, retreating to familiar ground, sneering.

That was it. That was all she could take. She had known this would happen if she let herself speak to him, and it had. "THING? Thing? You are calling me a thing?" She dropped her coat and took a step forward. "And what would know about it anyway?" she demanded, anger rising in her voice. "Have you ever cared about anyone? Much less lost them?" Tears were stinging the backs of her eyes, but that she would not give him.

Finally, she was going to explain what was going on. Once she did that, balance would be restored and...

She interrupted his thoughts. "You know what? Forget it! You don't understand; you don't care; so why bother?" She had managed to rein herself in, realizing that it was the only way she could get to him. She turned to leave again.

"Wait!" he called after her again. She had adopted that distanced tone and look again and he hadn't sat there holding her all evening for nothing!

"WHAT!" She spun around and faced him again.

That was better. The anger was back on her face. "You're talking about that Black fellow, aren't you?" He crossed his arms triumphantly. "What, were you in love with him or something? He was old enough to be your father!"

She closed her eyes and clenched her jaw, trying to calm down. When she opened her eyes she found his, stared into them, and said, "He was the only real friend I had. He was the only one who knew everything. He was the only one I could talk to. He was family. Now he's gone and I'm alone! Now that's something even you can understand. I've been cold since he died. I haven't felt anything! Not until you held me... Then I felt safe. I knew it couldn't last because it's you and you can't let anything be nice, but I just thought I'd be able to find some comfort in this evening, something to hold on to. Why can't you let me have that much? Why couldn't you just keep your slimy little mouth shut! You could have slipped out from under me and left you know!" She shook her head bitterly. "I don't care why you helped me. I might have wondered before but now I don't care. If you'll excuse me..." She bent down to pick up her cloak.

He ran around to the door. She couldn't be alone! She couldn't feel that horrible emptiness! That was obviously the source of the imbalance! In all of his contemplations of balance, the effects the war would have on the world never entered his mind. All he knew was that something had gone horribly wrong in his life when the spark left Weasley's eyes and he was grasping at straws to figure out what it was.

When she looked up she strangled a scream. She tried to leave anyway, but he was firmly in her way and there was no way around him.

"What about your brother? Weasel King, surely he's there for you," he offered.

She looked at him like he had lost him mind. "Yeah, the bloke who can't see me unless I'm bleeding, dieing, or dating."

"Potter, then, you always liked Potter," he tried to sound nonchallant.

She eyed him suspiciously. Nodding slightly like she didn't want to disturb the madman, she said, "Tell him that I was closer to his godfather, the only real family he ever had, than he was and never felt the need to tell him I had a reliable method of communication open with Sirius almost since he escaped Azkaban? I would have to comfort him, not really what I'm looking for."

"Then Granger! The mu...girl's always around; she's a girl; why can't you go to her?" he was getting desperate.

She took a step back, afraid he really had snapped. Taking a breath in through he teeth, she answered. "I don't want quotes and advice and platitudes. I don't even want blind sympathy. I need someone who understands and there was only one and he's dead. That's it. Can I leave?"

"No." He answered automatically. He was running out of ideas and had to figure something out. He couldn't let her leave until his world was set to rights.

"Why!" she demanded.

He couldn't stop himself, he just answered. "Because things aren't fixed yet! Everything is messed up! Everything is wrong! You are supposed to have fire, life, even love," he said the last word like it had a bad taste. "You're a Gryffindor! You have family! You have friends!"

"What on earth are you babbling about?" she was now staring in disbelief.

"We're supposed to be opposites! I'm nasty, you're nice! I'm cruel, you're kind! I'm alone, you're not! I lie, you're honest! People hate me and love you! I hate people, you love them!" He knew he was sounding like an idiot, but he couldn't stop. "We FIGHT! That's the way things work! I insult you and you insult me! You need to have passion because I have none! You've thrown off the entire universe! YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO HATE ME!" He stopped. Why did it matter so much to him in the first place? Had he seriously lost his mind?

So that's what this was all about? He wanted her to fight with him again? He had a serious screw loose. "The universe? That's being a bit meladramatic, isn't it?" She really had no idea how to react to this. She was supposed to balance him? What in the name of Merlin's beard did that mean?

He stared at her like she was the one who had gone crazy, not him. "We are here, aren't we? I touched you, VOLUNTARILY! I HELD you!"

Okay, he had a point there. Something was majorily off for him to care at all, for any reason.

"You think I'd really care about your loss if it didn't effect me?" He had finally recovered his icy cruel demeanor.

When a man is right, he's right. "You want me to hate you? FINE!" she glared daggers at him. "I hate you!" She threw a cookie at his head to prove her point. "You say I've imbalanced the universe? TOO BLOODY BAD! I'm sorry my grief has inconvenienced you, but GUESs WHAT! IT'S MY BLOODY GRIEF! SO DEAL WITH IT!" She shoved him away from the door and stormed out.

He turned back to the couch and sunk down into it, resting his head in his hands. So much for getting things back to normal, they were more jacked up than ever.