Well, here's chapter 3!! Yes, this update has arrived much, much quicker than the first one. And why? Because people reviewed!! See the power of a review? Thank you Sunflower, Aurienna, and Angel-eyez. This chappie is dedicated to you!
What? Draco was having a hard time understanding what was going on. Ginny Weasley had just walked off, scorning him and his pretty generous offer. Did that mean she was going to tell someone? Or—even worse—that she already had? He raced after her.
"Stop!" he grabbed her arm again. "What do you mean? Ha-have you already told someone?" Great. Now he was stuttering. She gave him a look worthy of his father.
"No. I have no interest in telling anyone about your pathetic troubles, Malfoy. I don't care about whatever it is that upset you, nor does anyone else I know."
"Is that supposed to hurt, Weasley? I'm afraid you'll have to do a little better than that."
"Ugh!" she cried, looking ready to strangle him. "Don't you get it? I don't care how you feel! I'm not trying to upset you! Can't you stop thinking like a Slytherin for one blasted second?" He watched her take a breath to control herself. "Maybe that's it. I'll speak in terms you can easily understand: I am not going to tell anyone what happened. I do not want your money because I don't want anything that comes from you, Malfoy, and anyway, I don't need the inducement to keep quiet. The whole thing is rather embarrassing for me. Get it? So keep your money, and don't bother me again, and don't go through the effort to learn an Obliviate spell since I'm guessing you don't know how to do one. Alright?" Draco felt himself nod, and she walked off. He was left feeling rather stupid, and, he had to admit, hurt. She certainly had taken him up on his challenge.
But now was not the time to sort out his vulnerability to a Gryffindor. Reasonably confident that the girl would keep her mouth shut, he headed back to the dormitory to put his money away.
"Oi, Draco!" Blaise caught his attention in the common room. "So, what do you say, are we on for tomorrow?" With all that had happened, Draco could not, for the life of him, recall what Blaise was talking about. He gave him a blank look. "The forest, remember?" Blaise muttered.
"Oh! Oh, right. Sure. Maybe."
"What? I thought you were positive about it!"
"Yeah, right," Draco agreed without really hearing. In truth he didn't have an extra brain cell to spare on Blaise. He had much more important things to worry about; like what he was going to say to his father the next time he saw him or wrote. Blaise seemed to get the hint, and backed off.
Draco managed to win his Quidditch game the next day, thankfully; he wouldn't have been able to handle the anger and disappointment of his house if he had missed the Snitch in their first match. But when it was all done with he wouldn't have been able to report the final score if anyone had asked him. On the way back to his dorm he sent the little Weasley a threatening glare, for good measure, she didn't seem to notice.
"Great catch, Draco! So are we going tonight?" Blaise pounced on him the instant he entered the common room. Draco suppressed a groan.
"Why is this so important to you, Zabini? I have to say it's making me a bit suspicious."
"Because I need to share it with someone! And besides, I told you, you know what it told me to do." Draco nodded. It was a reasonable enough answer, but he couldn't bring himself to agree.
"Look, not tonight, alright, Blaise? Can we make it another night?" I'm in enough trouble as it is, he thought to himself. Of course he wanted to see his future, but sneaking out of the castle seemed too dangerous to him, now that he might also get in trouble for having a family killed. His father could say that, as easy as pie—my son had me do it because he hated the family—and who would defend him? People like Pansy could testify that he hated them almost as much as he hated Potty and the Weasels, and that he was totally capable of having them killed. Whether that was true or not, he wasn't sure, but everyone who knew him probably thought it was.
He had too much to think about. He pushed off the excursion with Blaise, until tomorrow, but the following day he wasn't ready, either. He had seen little Weasley in the hallway and she hadn't looked frightened of him at all; should he do something about that? What if she had gotten protection from Dumbledore, or even Potter? He pushed it off another night, and then another, until Blaise stopped asking.
"Excellent!" Millicent Bulstrode called from down the table. A grey owl had just dropped a large packet of sweets in front of her, which she proceeded to tear open and stuff down for breakfast. Draco sneered but said nothing. He saw out of the corner of his eye a brown and white eagle owl making its way towards him. Sweets, perhaps from his mother? But when it landed, it had only a letter attached to its claw. Draco's heart began beating rather quickly, and he took several deep breaths to calm his shaky hand before reaching out to untie the letter. The owl took off immediately.
He couldn't read it there, so he shrunk it surreptitiously beneath the table and stuffed it into another pocket of his robe. After waiting a decent interval he rose calmly from his seat and made his way out of the hall. But Crabbe and Goyle caught up to him there, and insisted on regaling him with new (and bad) jokes they had come up with, and then the entire school poured out of the Great Hall to go to class, and he was swept up in the crowd. He couldn't get a moment alone over break or at lunch, either, with the Slytherins constantly looking to him for entertainment.
It wasn't until after dinner, back in his dormitory, alone, sitting on his bed with the curtains drawn, that he snatched up the letter and restored its size. He fearfully read the contents:
Draco, I trust you have heard the news of the visit we made during our business excursion. It was quite enjoyable and I made sure to pass along our sentiments in your name. Your uncle was most pleased to hear that you had suggested the entertainment, and now looks forward to meeting you even more. He considers this idea of yours to be the first step in the right direction to a happy future for you. I am most proud of your ingenuity, and I hope this only strengthens your resolve to continue working for us.
So make sure you keep up your studies, Draco, as they will be most helpful in securing a good career, and for coming up with more ideas. Your uncle and I plan on looking to you again in the near future for more suggestions. Be ready.
I trust you will take good care of this letter, as a souvenir of my trip.
Father
He felt that nauseous feeling in his stomach and throat, again, and had to get out of the dormitory. First he burned the letter, of course, as his father directed. Because otherwise it might be used as evidence—or a "souvenir"—of what they had done. Draco knew he was as involved in this as his father, it was inevitable, now. And not only that, but the Dark Lord knew, and was pleased. There was no way out of this situation. He was going to become a Death Eater in December.
He slowly, painfully made his way out of the dormitory and into the common room. He tried his best to put on a normal face, but was sure he was failing. He didn't even know where he was going, until he bumped right into Blaise Zabini.
"Draco, what's the matter?" he asked in a low voice, trying not to let anyone overhear. Draco shook his head, not knowing what to say.
"Let's go," was what came out, "let's go tonight." Blaise nodded hurriedly.
"Alright, alright, but keep quiet. At midnight, then, yeah?" Draco nodded miserably and made his way back into the dormitory. It didn't matter how much trouble he got into, now. He was as far in as it was possible to get.
Ginny sat on the edge of her bed, singing "Mo Ghile Mear", brushing her hair and feeling guiltily complacent. She had felt wretched a couple of days back because of the death of the Chittocks and her encounters with Malfoy, but she couldn't feel bad for long about problems that were not her own. So far her past presentiment had proved to be nothing at all; no serious trouble changed her life or shattered her fairly peaceful world. Though she knew she was ready to be called to fight Voldemort whenever necessary, for now she enjoyed her time as a simple student. And just this instant she wouldn't even think about the question she had to ask her brother.
'Sé mo
laoch, mo Ghile Mear
'Sé mo Chaesar, Ghile Mear.
Suan na
sian nm bhfuaireas fiin
O chuaigh in gciin mo Ghile Mear.
She sang to herself, and hummed, and was altogether in a very pleasant mood. A little later on she made her way out of the dormitory and to the Astronomy Tower for her midnight class. She carried her telescope with her and was on the whole thrilled to be out of the Gryffindor tower at night. Only rarely were they allowed to do this as part of Astronomy class. She felt a terrific thrill run through her veins; Ginny loved the nighttime, and it was the one thing she hated most about Hogwarts—being forced to stay indoors every night. But this was her chance to see the beautiful nighttime sky, filled with stars and the moon, and to breathe the clean nighttime air. She shivered in pleasurable anticipation and hurried onward. She was twenty minutes early, which was about as early as she thought she could get away with being. She was the first on out on the tower. Not even Professor Sinistra was there.
So she permitted herself the pleasure of lying on the ground and staring up at the sky above. She stowed her telescope in its holder at the best spot on the tower, sat down on the floor, and lay back. The sky above was filled with millions of stars, like grains of sand, as she had heard somewhere. A gentle breeze tickled her nose and played with her hair. She stared for a good ten minutes, then got up and sat on the wall. As soon as Sinistra arrived she would be scolded, but for the moment, it didn't matter. She gazed out on the darkened grounds, out at the beautiful blackness of the dark forest, and breathed deeply. This, indeed, was heaven.
Down on the grounds she could see Hagrid's hut; the windows were glowing with firelight or lantern-light from inside, and smoke was rising from the chimney. But the smoke wasn't the only thing moving on the grounds. Ten meters past Hagrid's hut someone was moving, in the direction of the Forbidden Forest—no, it was two people, she was sure of it. And they were running! Ginny rushed to her telescope and aimed it down, but the grounds were so dark she couldn't much clearer. The person in front she could not see at all, but the person who came second seemed to have bright hair...blonde hair, she thought—
"Good evening, Miss Weasley." Ginny jumped in fright and whirled around to see Professor Sinistra, in deep purple robes, standing on the tower behind her.
"Oh, h-hello, Professor."
"Were you looking at something on the grounds?" Ginny was spared an answer by the arrival of the rest of the Gryffindors. Relieved, Ginny went over to talk to Colin as Sinistra moved away.
The class was pleasant, as usual, as they traced the course of the stars through the autumn sky. It ended far too quickly, and since Sinistra was the first one to leave, Ginny dawdled after class while everyone filed out without fear of being caught alone with her again. She slowly packed up her telescope, urging Colin and the others to go on without her, and backed up to the door after a couple of minutes of enjoying the air alone, again. She knew she could wait no longer, though, and turned around to hurry back to Gryffindor.
As she ran across the Entrance chamber, however, she bumped right into someone. Looking up, she saw Draco Malfoy. Had he been following her? Was he going to say anything?
"Watch where you're going, Malfoy," she said rudely, getting in the first word before he could. But he said nothing in response, and only looked at her with surprise and some other unidentifiable emotion on his face. The fact that his face portrayed any emotion at all was odd enough in itself, and Ginny took a small step back. He was looking at her as if he had never seen her before. He also seemed rather upset. Did he want her to comfort him again, was that it? Well, it wasn't happening, not after the way he had thanked her the first time. "Would you care to move out of my way?"
"Oh! Oh, yeah..." he said weakly, and stepped aside. As she walked past him she could feel his eyes following her until she turned the corner of the long hallway. Only then could she breathe properly—whathad that been about? She felt distinctly unnerved, and quickened her pace back to the common room.
A/N again—So what's going on with ol' Drakie? And will we finally get to see the clearing? Tune in next time! I should warn anyone who's still reading this that the next update may not come as quickly as this one; I need to slow my pace because though I have the next few chapters written, I haven't finished the fic. Please please review, it makes such a difference (even if it's only to say—'hi, I'm reading this fic.').
