Disclaimer: A very small amount of the spoken lines in this chapter were taken directly from JK Rowling and HP and the COS in order to coincide events. So I thought I would cite!
Harry's Arrival and Flourish and Blotts
"Hogwarts, Hogwarts, Hoggy Hoggy Hogwarts…"
Giant pinwheels floated through castles in the sky as eleven-year-old Ginny gleefully sailed broomlessly through the air, the wind whipping through her hair. At a sudden should she glanced down just in time to see Ron, wearing a bright fuchsia skirt that clashed horribly with his hair.
"Gin! Come on!" he exclaimed joyfully, merrily dancing around the frog pond doing what appeared to be some sort of strange tribal dance. "It's the 'it's almost time for school to start' shuffle –!"
Nervousness, embarrassment, and desperate loneliness.
Jerking out of a dream, Ginny's brown eyes flew open, and she sat up in bed with a start. The soft glow of early morning light was streaming in through the windows of her small bedroom. She hardly noticed, instead focusing in on the small area in her mind that she had come to label as the "Aura Center." Even in sleep, she had felt the stronger-than-usual Aura as if the person exuding it was sitting right next to her.
It was nearly the same one that the blond boy had exuded so many months ago. What had his name been? Darko? - No. No, it was Draco. Draco Malfoy… As in the Draco Malfoy Ron loves to hate.
She was able to remember his sensation so well because she had constantly been surrounded by generally cheerful, if not downright mischievous, Auras for as long as she could remember: namely, her family. Well, except Percy's obsessive compulsive one, but that doesn't really count -
" –do with taking a leaf out of Percy's book! I have been OUT of my MIND with worry!"
At the sudden screech, Ginny winced slightly even though it sounded like it had emerged from the first floor rather than anywhere near her room. Her mother's temper both fast and furious, and she pitied anyone who was on the receiving end.Furrowing her brow, she climbed out of bed, prepared to risk her Mum's wrath in order to investigate. Tiptoeing to her door, she pulled it opened quietly and slipped out into the hallway –
"And YOU! Ronald Weasley, how dare you blindly follow your brothers –"
Ginny! You can't go walking around in your nightgown when there are strange boys in the house! her mind abruptly hissed as another of her Mum's screeches rang out. Oh… whoops. Laughing at herself, she quickly threw on a pair of pants and a light top, checking her hair before she emerged back in the hallway, thinking about the strange turn the morning had taken as she did.
Except to occasionally go shopping with her mother, Ginny didn't get out of the Burrow all that often, but really.. how many embarrassed and lonely Auras were out there with enough reason to come into her house? She frowned. Then again… why would my family invite a Malfoy into the house? If Dad isn't home, then Ron at least would've certainly murdered him by now…
A banging of pans against pans momentarily interrupted her thoughts. " –taking the car, in plain sight. Plain sight! I don't know what you were thinking – "
Ginny rolled her eyes. Now what have they done? she wondered.
Images of that late December day flashed through her mind as she descended the stairs. Draco had been one of the first boys her age that she had interacted with outside of her family. His rich, meticulous appearance, his snooty attitude, his contemptuous speech… almost everything about him had been extremely different from what she was used to, but it was more of an interesting change than an annoyance. She had found somewhat amusing his dogged effort to be cranky and rude, no matter what she said. And really, during the few times he hadn't acted arrogant and cold… he really hadn't been that bad.
In fact, she really wouldn't mind seeing him again, she thought with a small smile. Almost eagerly, she gathered a bit of extra momentum at the bottom of the steps and leapt through the doorframe into the kitchen, her eyes raking over the several people inside for a head of blond hair.
Red, red, red, red, black – Black?
Ginny's eyes widened in surprise. There was no aristocratic blond in her kitchen. Instead, the only unfamiliar face was the farthest thing from it: a rather thin boy with messy dark hair, wearing Muggle clothing and glasses. She gaped at him in confusion. But his Aura… she had been certain it was Draco Malfoy!
"Oh, Ginny dear!" Her mother exclaimed with a smile, waving her toward the table while shooting another dirty glare at Fred and George. "Look who's joined us for breakfast!" Ginny followed Mrs. Weasley's gaze as the older woman swept her hand toward the messy-haired boy and lowered her voice. "It's Harry Potter! Remember what I told you, dear, he's only a year older than you are! And such a polite young man!"
For as inconspicuous as she tried to make the remark, the dark-haired boy must have heard it because he glanced at them and shifted uncomfortably on the bench. The 'hint-hint' in her mother's voice had not passed over Ginny's head, either. Ew, Mum… I'm only in first year!
"Ginny," she heard Ron say to Harry in a low voice as she gave Mrs. Weasley a 'Yeah, maybe' smile and approached the table. "My sister. She's been talking about you all summer."
"Only to humor you, Ronald dear, because you haven't shut up about him either," Ginny countered with a roll of her eyes. Ron flushed and glared at her as she sat down across from the new boy who was not Draco Malfoy. Trying to hide an inexplicable twinge of disappointment that flittered through her mentality, she smiled at him. "Hi. I hope my brothers haven't driven you madyet; they seem to be quite apt at doing it - Thanks Mum," she added as Mrs. Weasley sat a plate of food down in front of her and patted her head with a fond smile.
"The only little angel left in this family," she mournfully bemoaned none-too-discreetly, with another glower at the twins.
When she turned back to the dishes, Fred and George instantly caught Ginny's eye pointedly and used their pointer fingers to make Devil horns over their heads. Ginny stuck her tongue out at them and held back a laugh.
"Er – no, they, er… haven't yet," Harry said a few seconds after the action died down, sounding utterly uncomfortable with even the simple task of opening his mouth.
"Well, just wait, then. Give them time," Ginny said sagely, tucking into her breakfast. As she ate, she continued to study him curiously. It was so interesting. This new boy's Aura and Draco's Aura were so similar, they could have been brothers, but they acted completely different from each other… like night and day.
"Better watch out. She's got the eye for you, mate," Ron whispered to Harry with a small smirk, but it wasn't quiet enough for the already quiet kitchen. Ginny's ears perked up the second he began to speak. "Reckon she's been dreaming about you, too."
What? She let out a squeak of indignance at the unexpected and, to her, very random remark, but before she could defend herself properly, Mrs. Weasley all but threw a ladle at her youngest son. "Ronald Weasley! You will keep comments like that to yourself!"
Instantly, another uncomfortable silence spread across the table, broken only by a clattering of dishes as Mrs. Weasley vehemently continued scrubbing her cooking dishes.
"Ginny's going to be in first year," Ron finally offered tentatively, cringing slightly and quickly glancing at Mrs. Weasley. When she didn't snap or throw anything at him, however, he relaxed, and Ginny guess that the topic had cleared her mother's relevancy test.
"An ickle firstie," Fred piped in with a devious smirk.
"Shut up, Fred," Ginny said good-naturedly as Harry looked at her interestedly. "I am going to Hogwarts," she confirmed with a smile when he didn't say anything, trying to remember what Ron had said about Harry – aside from the fact that he was the Harry Potter, of course. "There's hardly any suspense over which House I'm going to be in, either. Do you like being in Gryffindor?"
"Gin-bug, are you out you out of your mind? Of course he likes being in Gryffindor!" George crowed with a wink and a smirk. "How could he not like being in the Headmaster's favorite House? When he breaks the rules, he gets 100 extra House points!" He and Fred hi-fived each other as Harry flushed in embarrassment.
""Hush, Fre–Geor–you!" Mrs. Weasley finally exclaimed, flinging a hand at him, and, as a result, a wave of soapsuds. "Let Harry speak!"
After a moment, the dark-haired boy glanced at Ginny and nodded, again shifting in discomfort at being the center of attention. "Yeah. Yeah, I like it a lot."
And some people think I'm quiet? "You'll probably like it even more, now that you've spent another summer with those horrible Muggles. S'pose the reason they're mean to you is because they're jealous you can do something as amazing as magic, and they can't," she commented, digging into a few sausage links.
He looked at her for several seconds. After a moment, she glanced up at him curiously, and he blinked. "Yeah… Probably," he hastily agreed, offering her a small smile. "Everyone's really nice to me there, at Hogwarts – Well, except the Slytherins, but they don't quite matter. I'm sure you'll like it, too."
"I hope so," she said sincerely, polishing off the last of her toast.
"But speaking of that, you'll have to watch out for those Slytherin gits, Gin," Ron muttered quietly enough that his mother wouldn't hear. "No doubt you'll meet them soon enough. You can't let them get the better of you!"
Ginny jumped on the perfect opportunity to investigate the first non-family member who had intrigued her in her eleven short years. "Hm, by 'Slytherin gits' I suppose you actually mean 'Draco Malfoy," she noted with a small smirk.
"Malfoy is a git," Harry suddenly offered without any prompting whatsoever.
"Yes, you all say that, but why?" she pushed innocently, truly curious. Aside from the fact that he's pompous and can be slightly irritating… "I've been trying to get an understandable answer out of Ron all summer, but all he's capable of doing is shrieking 'He's a right git! A right git, Ginny! If he even looks at you this year, I'll wring his sodding neck!' "
At her sudden, high-pitched screech, Mrs. Weasley looked both surprised and affronted, George and Fred let out twin guffaws, Ron choked and glared at her murderously, and Harry laughed.
Flourish and Blotts, a few weeks later
"When young Harry here stepped into Flourish and Blotts today, he only wanted to buy my autobiography – which I shall be happy to present to him now, free of charge – " As the crowd gathered around Gilderoy Lockhart applauded, Draco nearly vomited at the sugary-ness to it all. "He had no idea," Lockhart continued, flashing a magically-modified smile and patting Potter on the back like he was his newest best friend, whilst Potter stood there looking nauseatingly modest and unassuming, "that he would shortly be getting much, much more than my book, Magical Me…"
As the speech glorifying Perfect Potter and the White-Teethed Wonder that went on and on, Draco forced himself to tune out the grating voice and the disgusting image of Potter being hailed for simply breathing by a crowd of at least a hundred. From the day that Potter had rejected his offer of friendship without even considering it, Draco had resented him.
At the time, he couldn't understand what he had done wrong, but as the year went on, the answer became clear: Potter was a Gryffindor through and through, and Draco prided himself in that he most certainly was not. They would have mixed like oil and water. On top of that, he had failed in his father's explicit instructions: Befriend the Potter boy at all costs. Even in something as simple as that… he had failed.
He always failed.
Another wave of thunderous applause interrupted his bitter line of thought, and he looked up to see Potter, red-faced, walk over to a lesser-crowded area of the shop and begin talking to someone Draco couldn't see. Jumping on the chance to corner Potter at the height of his discomfort, he bee-lined through the crowd and approached from behind.
"Bet you loved that, didn't you, Potter?" he challenged derisively as Wonder Boy spun around. "Famous Harry Potter, can't even go into a bookshop without making the front page."
As Potter's vomit green eyes narrowed angrily, Draco's scornful gaze moved on to the red-haired person beside him – One of the Weasley brood, almost certainly the Weasel he knew. The two had practically been connected at the hip since Day One at Hogwarts–
He froze.
Instantly, a mixture of surprise and horrified shock slammed into him like a tidal wave, and only years of dealing with his Father had taught him to automatically mask his features with an indifferent if not somewhat haughty stare.
It wasn't the Weasel.
It was her. The girl who had helped him in Knockturn Alley that Christmas. What had she said her name was? Jen – No, Ginny. Standing there next to Potter, casual as could be, Potter's newly-acquired stack of books poking out of her cauldron as if the two of them were the best of friends.
"Oi, Harry! My dad wants to get out of here – Bollocks. Don't tell me that's Malfoy."
"Ron! Watch your language!"
Draco's eyes briefly darted to the right, where a taller redhead was plunging through the crowd beside the Walking Bush. Also known as the much-resented Granger.
Buggering hell. She is a Weasley.
As Granger and the Weasley he had expected to see came up behind Potter and Ginny, glaring at him, Draco's throat closed, and this time he truly fought the urge to throw up. The sensation only grew worse when the smallest redhead smiled at him and said, "Hey."
Hey. Hey yourself. How was he supposed to respond to that, with all of them standing there? How was he supposed to tell her that what she had said to him that Christmas had changed his point of view on so many things? How could he explain that he had no one to tell, no one to talk to about it, because, for as long as he wanted to preserve his mother and get by with as minimal amount of punishment as possible, he had to be every inch Lucius Malfoy's son?
And, anyway… he hardly knew how to be anything else.
"How are you?" she continued when he didn't speak, that same ridiculously bright, understanding smile from six months yearly still on her little freckled face, dressed in hand-me-down robes that sealed her family's identity without a doubt.
Weasley swung his head toward his – his sister (another wave of nausea rushed over Draco at the idea), suspicion glowing in his heated gaze. "Ginny, do you know this git?"
Draco bristled, and she crossed her arms and gave her brother a dirty look. "I'm just being civil, Ron, which is apparently a bit over your head!"
"She has a point," Granger said vaguely while Draco continued to gape at Ginny, though the Muggle-born was still staring at him with an expression of extreme distaste on her face.
The blond boy quickly composed himself a second before the head Weasel arrived. "Just fine, brat," he choked out in answer to Ginny's initial question, making sure to twist the comment so it sounded like a proper insult. Any further conversation between them was halted by the arrival of his own father… and the brawl that ensued when the head Weasel shoved his father into a wall.
"Get him, Dad!"
BANG!
"Watch it!" Draco hissed, automatically yanking the littlest Weasley out of the way as Lucius slammed into a bookcase and a shower of heavy books cascaded down around them. After he'd moved, he gaped down at the culpable hand as if it was attached to some other mechanism rather than his own body, but Ginny didn't seem to notice. Instead, she straightened herself up and stood beside him.
"No, Arthur, no!"
"Yes! Punch him there!"
"You're father's barking mad," Ginny commented mildly as the two grown men tussled around on the floor, taking down several more bookshelves in the process. Draco tensed at the insult, but he relaxed slightly when he saw the slight smile playing at her lips. She looked up at him, the smile breaking into a full-out grin. "Don't be me wrong. Mine's barking mad, too."
Draco tried to sneer but found that the ability had suddenly left him. "Must be contagious," he spat, setting his face into the next best thing: a scowl. "In which case, mine almost certainly caught it from yours."
"Or maybe they caught it from glaring at each other at the exact same time," Ginny countered with a grin, her unmistakable red hair flashing in the bright lights of the shop, mocking him. She leapt out of the way as several shopkeepers rushed past her wielding brooms, shoving their way through masses of people and trying their best to simply get to the actual fight in order to try to stop it.
"Gods, you are a little brat," he said in disbelief, but Ginny could just make out the smallest of smirks tugging at his lips. The almost friendly expression soon faded to something unreadable, and he crossed his arms. "Why didn't you tell me that you were a Weasley?" he gruffly asked after a moment, but he nearly had to yell it to be heard over the crowd.
"I – What?" Ginny blinked and looked over at him in surprise, but he simply raised his eyebrows at her in an 'answer the question' sort of way. She had been ready for some scathing banter, maybe… but definitely not that. She considered retorting with something classically Fred and George, something like, 'I thought I'm just a little brat,' but wisely opted against it.
"Would it really have mattered that much?" she finally asked him.
Draco rolled his eyes. "Oh no, not at all," he hissed sarcastically, pointedly shoving his thumb toward the ring of people that had gathered around the fist-fight. "Aside from the fact that our families bloody hate each other—"
"Break it up, there, gents, break it up!"
"Ginny!" Ron's voice suddenly exclaimed. She looked toward the call to see him battling his way through the growing, raucous crowd as Hagrid pulled the two men apart. "You get away from her!" he snarled at Draco, yanking Ginny safely out of range of the blond's bubble.
"Ron!" Ginny exclaimed angrily.
"Oh, do relax, Weasley, I wasn't going to physically attack her," Draco drawled, leaning back against one of the still-standing bookcases and casually crossing his arms. He glanced pointedly at the center of the room, where Arthur Weasley and Lucius Malfoy were straightening their clothing and still battling each other with their eyes. "That, apparently, seems to be your family's cup of tea…"
"Why, you slimy little–"
"Ron, no!" Harry had appeared from out of nowhere, and, thankfully, he grabbed Ron's collar before he could jump a smirking Draco.
As he did, Ginny was finally able to wrench her arm from her brother's iron grip. She spun on him furiously. "Listen, Ron, it's very good and well that you care about me and all, but you have no right to just yank me about wherever you please! I can take care of myself perfectly well, thank you very much!"
She would have said more, but she was interrupted by Lucius as he approached and shoved the Transfiguration book that he had taken from her earlier back into her cauldron. "Here, girl – take your book – it's the best your father can give you –" Shooting one more scathing look at her father, he snapped his fingers. "Come along, Draco." He wheeled and marched from the store.
For as quickly as Draco had almost shown her a smile, he sneered at the Weasleys, Harry, and Hermione, and started to follow his father when something caught his eye. "What's this, little Weasel?" Stopping abruptly, he bent down and quickly pulled from her tin a small black book that Ginny hadn't recalled placing inside. He looked down at it almost thoughtfully. "Doesn't look like anything I needed in first year. So poor you have to resort to shoplifting, do you?"
"What are you on about!" Ron hissed, stepping in front of Ginny protectively.
"Oh, Ron, stop it. We aren't in the middle of a war." Ginny rolled her eyes and stepped back in front of him. In the background, she could hear Hagrid lecturing her father: "Yeh should've ignored him, Arthur. Rotten ter the core, the whole family, everyone knows that – no Malfoy's worth listenin' ter – bad blood, that's what it is…"
Draco must have heard it, too, because his eyes darkened, and he glared fiercely at Hagrid's back. Ginny sighed and expectantly held out her hand to Draco and the book he was grasping. "My mum must've picked it up, which means I'll probably need it," she explained as patiently as she could. "So if you wouldn't mind…"
To Ginny's – and Draco's – surprise, Harry stepped up beside her and piped in threateningly, "Give it to her now, Malfoy!"
Draco's gray gaze briefly traveled between Harry and Ginny before he sneered and pocketed the journal-like book. "No." His intent to keep it was obvious, and she would have been furious if not for the expression in his eyes. It was one she couldn't quite put her finger on, but it was certainly not one of malice or vengeance. "No, I don't think I will."
Ron's face was quickly turning purple."Now, look here, you piece of scum,you give that back or I swear to Merlin I'll– "
"Oh, shut up, Weasley," Draco snapped irritably. Shooting one more entirely unreadable glance at Ginny, he quickly left before a spluttering Ron – or maybe even the head Weasel himself – could launch himself at him, wondering what the hell he'd just done and how much his father would make him pay for it.
A/N: So I know I said at the beginning that I wouldn't repeat my plea for reviews… but hey, rules are made to be broken, right? Please review! I would love to know what you think!
Thanks SO much to my first reviewers, mell8, xshortayhustlerx, 1x1pEngUIn89, Tisiphone, and Lady Moonglow! Glad you all liked the start! Just to explain, this story is going to touch very briefly on D/G's first six years at Hogwarts in the slightly alternate way… leading up to Post HBP, where the main plot really takes off.