A/N: A short and, perhaps, cryptic chapter. Sorry for the delay between updates.
Rolling her eyes at Malfoy's ridiculous refusal to let her attend to his injuries, Ginny followed him into the hall.
"Petrificus Totalus!"
Ginny voice echoed off the stone walls as Malfoy went rigid and hit the ground with a painful-sounding thump. She hurried to his side and, crouching, rolled him onto his back in a perfunctory manner. Her eyes moved over him, checking for any injuries from his fall. Finding none, Ginny began pulling up the sleeve of his robe to assess the damage he'd done by punching the trophy case.
"Sorry about that," Ginny apologized, "but honestly, Malfoy, you're worse than a first year."
The cuts ran from his knuckles to beyond his wrist. Although they were no longer bleeding, Ginny could see that glass was embedded in the wounds. For the next several minutes, the hallway was quiet, but for the murmuring of spells to remove the shards of glass, clean the wounds, and finally heal the skin.
When she had finished, Ginny leaned back as far as she could in her squatting position, and tried to determine just how ticked off the Slytherin boy was. Malfoy lay perfectly still, yet his irritation was unmistakable. Not that she could blame him, she supposed. Full body binds were rarely looked upon with favor by the person on the receiving end. What in the world had possessed her to do it in the first place? This was Malfoy, after all. What might he do in retaliation? Ginny wondered if she should move away from him before lifting the body bind spell.
"I'm going to take the spell off of you now, Malfoy." She assessed the distance from their location in the corridor to the stairwell. It was too far for her to be able to outrun him, and despite her success with the Bat Bogey Hex the year before, Ginny was in no hurry to get into a duel. Focusing again on the paralysed boy in front of her, Ginny became very serious.
"Don't do anything stupid," she warned. She stood and took a step back from him before speaking the counter spell.
Malfoy rose to his feet slowly, rubbing the shoulder that had taken the brunt of his fall. His grey eyes seemed to have gone several shades darker, like clouds just before a thunderstorm. Ginny braced herself for the hail of insults and indignation, but it did not come. He glowered at her for a long moment, then turned on his heel and strode away without a word.
Ginny left out the breath she'd been holding and put a hand on the wall to steady herself. She didn't know what had made her so determined to play nursemaid to Draco Malfoy. The image of a young man in the trophy room, wearing a pained expression crept into her mind. Had she felt pity for him? Giving her head a shake, Ginny decided that the strange impulse that led her to force her attentions on Malfoy was best left unexamined.
Draco sprinted through the castle, ignoring the curious looks on the faces of the students he passed. Could this day get any worse? It was scarcely past breakfast, and he'd already had a run-in with Pansy, learned some very disturbing family history from Snape, and been saved from certain detention and discomfort by the Weasley girl. Draco didn't want to think about any of that. He didn't want to think about his obsessive ex-girlfriend. He didn't want to think about the many pains his father had caused his mother. He didn't want to think about how easily Ginny Weasley had gotten the better of him, and he certainly didn't want to think of the way her light touches had made his skin tingle and his heart beat double-time. Damn that girl.
He reached the Slytherin common room and hurried to his dorm. The room was deserted and Draco was relieved not to have to deal with his dorm-mates. Kneeling down, he pulled a long trunk out from under his bed and murmured the words to unlock it. With a soft clack the latch opened, allowing its owner access to the broomstick within. More than once Draco had thought that the Gryffindors were a very privileged lot to be housed in a tower rather than a dungeon. It crossed his mind again as he wished for a window through which he could escape with his broom. Having no similarly convenient route to the outdoors, Draco began the trek out of the castle.
As soon as he passed through the oak front doors, he straddled his Nimbus 2001 and took to the air, seeking the freedom and bliss he only ever found when flying. The morning air was cool and damp and a brisk wind buffeted him as soared over the grounds. Force of habit led him to the Quidditch pitch, but Draco soon found the familiar stadium confining. He began a circuit of the school property, flying from the Quidditch pitch along the wall that surrounded Hogwarts to the Black Lake.
From his vantage point he could see the Giant Squid propelling itself lazily across the water. He descended until he was almost touching the water and flew directly above it, keeping time with its progress across the lake. Draco could see one of the squid's enormous eyes regarding him without interest. The careless movements of the water animal were oddly comforting. No ghastly familial intrigues haunted the squid. No unwelcome reactions to a girl's touch set the squid on edge. Draco followed along, lulled by the languid strokes of the squid's tentacles, until the creature tired of its activity and sank down beneath the surface of the water.
He landed on the edge of the water and lay down on the grass. Now that he was back on the ground, the breeze swept over him softly. The sun was bright, and Draco closed his eyes against it. He was calmer now than when he'd rushed from the castle, and soon the combination of little rest and emotional upheaval began to pull him into unconsciousness.
He was struggling, trying to free his hand from his father's grasp. Across the room, his mother covered her face with her hands and sobbed.
Lucius held his arm immobile on the marble table. "Pansy, bring me the knife," Draco's father ordered coldly.
The dark-haired girl stepped forward, holding a large butchering knife. Her mouth curled with malicious glee when she looked at Draco.
"Who's going to want you now?" she sneered. He watched in horror as she handed the knife to Lucius.
"Father, please," he cried, pulling away desperately now. "Please Father, don't do this!"
Keeping a firm hold on Draco's arm, the disgust in his voice unmistakeable, Lucius' only response was to say, "Weak. I always knew you were weak." The words were not unfamiliar, and Draco's cheeks burned in shame.
The knife came down just below Draco's wrist, and he screamed as he felt it cutting through his flesh.
"Petrificus Totalus!"
As quickly as it had begun, the knife's progress halted, and Lucius fell to the floor. Draco looked up to find the room empty but for the Weasley girl, who seemed to have come from nowhere. Crossing the room quickly, she reached for his wounded arm, and he flinched. The pretty girl graced him with an affectionate smile, and went for his arm again.
"Honestly, Malfoy," Ginny teased, her voice low. "You're worse than a first year."
Instead of speaking an incantation to knit the cut together, she began to kiss the injured extremity, travelling along the gash left by Lucius' knife. As she moved, Draco could see that the flesh of his arm was completely healed everywhere that Ginny had pressed her lips.