Hey! Well, in celebration of having gotten a review from Mynuet, and I guess of hitting the 12-mark in my reviews (whoohoo), and also because I realized that the ending of the last chapter was a bit confusion, here is a very fast update. Enjoy!
Chapter 7
Priceless. It had been the best prank of the year, so simple and more than worth the forty points and two nights' detention it had cost all of Slytherin house. McGonagall had been unable to pinpoint who had started throwing the coins and who had pinned the parchment on the Weasel's back, but she had glared pretty confidently at Draco. She was right on both accounts, of course.
He heaved a sigh of satisfaction as he recalled sticking the parchment on Weasley's back after her detention, the parchment that read in huge letters "The Weasley family needs your help! Please donate anything you can to help us put food on our table!" Then he had stalled her—also, all too easy—and raced to the Great Hall, where he had started the laughter upon her entrance, then banished a galleon that struck her perfectly on the head. None of it could be blamed on him, since all the Slytherins happily joined in. The prank could only have been improved in one way—if he had been able to see the look on her face when she read what was on the sign. But just imagining it was reward enough. Draco sighed again.
Dead. That's what he was. Draco Malfoy was in for it now. As if the prank hadn't been bad enough, now she had to deal with random Slytherins teasing her in the hallways (no one ever attempted it more than once), with Malfoy's smug looks, with the condescending pity of everyone in Hufflepuff and especially Ravenclaw, and Ron and Harry's constant demands, wanting to know who had pranked her.
"I'm taking care of it," Ginny had finally snapped at them. Harry immediately backed off, looking a bit intimidated, but Ron could not be satisfied. Nor could he shut up. That didn't slow Ginny down, however; neither did McGonagall's rather un-subtle suggestion that she not retaliate. Two days after the prank, the day before her birthday, Ginny made sure that not a single parchment of Malfoy's notes survived the dousing of ink she gave his book bag.
Thus began the great Weasley-Malfoy prank war. Only 'prank,' Ginny knew, wasn't quite the right word. A Terrorism war was really a much better term, as what they did to each other—and especially what she did to him, as she knew that her pranks were far superior—was far from harmless. She found carnivorous mice which attacked her in her knapsack, repeatedly avoided being tripped by Crabbe and Goyle, had her Charm textbook, which she had stupidly left in the library, shredded, was hexed so that she walked backwards for an hour before someone freed her, was doused in itch powder, and so on and so on. The most embarrassing prank of all, however, was one of the oldest in the book; Malfoy had permanently stuck a Galleon to the hallway floor and she spent a good few seconds trying to get it up—he caught her right as she realized it had to be a prank, and everyone standing nearby laughed.
But she retaliated. Malfoy had his cauldron melted, received a sparkle-bomb in the mail over breakfast, also received subscriptions to Witch Weekly and Playwizard (Ginny was fond of pranks-by-owl), slipped dungbombs into his Quidditch locker so that it and his uniform smelled for days, transfigured his books into slugs and greatly enjoyed it when she saw him vanish them—he had insulted her on the lame prank before realizing his books were gone, and she kindly informed him that he might disagree when classes began. The look on his face had been priceless. On top of it all they traded insults whenever they passed each other in the hallways, and more fights were only averted thanks to professors conveniently popping up. Ginny wasn't so sure their appearances were coincidental; she rather suspected that tabs were being kept on them so that their conflict didn't fall into violence again.
The Terrorism War went on for a little over a week before people began noticing; but once they did Ginny had to fend off warnings and questions from professors, prefects and fellow Gryffindors. McGonagall, for example, treated her quite a bit more coolly than normal during classes and Snape, who had usually ignored her presence in his class, began picking on her the way she knew he did to her brother and his friends. She suffered through quite a few detentions and her parents were written to about her deteriorating behavior—luckily she received only angry letters from Mum and Dad, not a Howler. Fred and George, however, wrote a few times to congratulate her on keeping up tradition.
Then Ron, Harry and Hermione all loyally butted in, asking her if she needed help, demanding to know why she and Malfoy were such fervent enemies all of a sudden, and on occasion threatening Malfoy so he would leave her alone, which of course never worked.
"Listen," she would sigh to them in the common room, "I don't know why Malfoy decided to bother me this year, but I'm taking care of it."
"Taking care of it?" Hermione would snort, "you've gotten three detentions in the past week, and have lost this house I don't know how many points; probably over a hundred—"
"Hardly that many, and anyway, Malfoy's lost just as many for Slytherin. Can you guys please just stay out of this?"
"Gin, you know we can take on Malfoy and his dumb friends," Ron would put in. "Why don't you let us scare them off?"
"Because I don't need you to. I'll do this on my own, thank you very much." Harry would just stand by looking grim, which was the worst of all, but nothing her friends could say would dissuade her from battling Malfoy.
It occurred to her after a couple of weeks of pranking that she could get at his food source easily; once she did that he would never feel safe at his usual seat at the head of the Slytherin table again. She owled her twin brothers for some Skivving Snackboxes, preferably the puking kind, and late one night made her way down to the kitchens. It was a dangerous excursion for her, of course, because unlike her brother or Harry she had no invisibility cloak or Marauders' Map (how mad she had been when she found out the twins had given it to Harry! But of course, she hadn't deserved it at the time, having been rather quiet at school and not showing her true joker self). It took a good half hour of running and ducking behind corners and suits of armor just to get to the damn painting of fruit. Checking that she still had her Snackboxes on her, she tickled the pear and stepped in.
The kitchens were mostly quiet, as the house-elves were off sleeping wherever they slept, but Ginny didn't mind. She knew where the replicas of the house tables were, and she made her way there. It was easy to distinguish the Slytherin table, and she walked over to the head of it and grinned at Draco's plate. As she took out her Snackbox, however, she heard a loud clink! and looked up to see what had made the noise. Standing at the Gryffindor table, holding a potion vial in his hand and glaring at her, was Draco Malfoy. Ginny jumped about a foot into the air and took a step back from his plate, before recollecting herself and returning the icy stare. He stormed over.
"Just what do you think you're doing, Weasel?" he demanded angrily.
"What were you doing at the Gryffindor table?" They glared at each other for a good few moments, but it quickly became clear that neither was going to answer. Ginny, for her part, thought that it was rather amusing they had caught each other attempting the same prank, but was sure that he would not feel the same way; his objective sense of humor was lacking.
There was, therefore, only one viable alternative. She whirled around, marched decidedly over to the countertop where food for the morning's breakfast was laid out, picked up an egg, and hurled it directly at Malfoy's chest. He didn't have time to move; he hadn't been expecting her to attack; the egg smashed right into him and splattered down his robes. A moment of awful silence followed and for a moment Ginny was sure she had gone too far, as he didn't move a muscle, but when she noticed some of the yolk on his cheek she couldn't help herself. She burst out laughing.
If it was at all possible for him to grow any stiller, he did as Ginny stood there laughing at him. Her laughter died out, however, when he stalked towards her with a blank look on his face. She slowly stepped out of his way, but he ignored her, reached to the counter, and picked up his own egg. This time Ginny hadn't the time to react, and Malfoy slammed the egg down onto her head. She could feel the liquid oozing through her hair and into her ears and she wiped some off of her forehead. Malfoy just sneered, and that was something she couldn't allow. She reached for the flour. He grabbed the milk.
It was an out and out food fight.
"You're going to pay!" Ginny cried as they chased each other around the kitchens, hurling food back and forth and laughing every time they scored a hit. Well, Ginny laughed, while Malfoy managed to look pleased without changing his sneer.
"What's is going on?"
"Our breakfast!"
"The kitchens! The floors!"
"No! No! No! No!" Out of nowhere horrified-looking house-elves appeared, and Ginny and Malfoy stopped dead in their tracks.
"Please, please masters, no more! We works very hard to keep the kitchens clean! Please, if you is wanting something, let us get it." It was quite clear that the students were not lacking for food, as they were both covered from head to toe in chocolate, flour, pumpkin juice, egg, and milk, but Ginny did not bother to point this out. The elves looked too miserable for rational conversation, and besides, she felt quite guilty for waking them up.
"No, that's quite alright, I don't need anything. We were just going." She could feel Malfoy's disbelieving stare on her, but did not turn to look.
"Oh, well if masters is leaving," and suddenly half a dozen house elves had surrounded the two of them and were pushing them gently but firmly towards the entrance.
"I'm sorry," Ginny said as the portrait closed in her face.
"You're apologizing to house-elves?"
"And why not? We woke them up."
"Who cares? They're house-elves." Before she could respond, however, she noticed a small figure turn the corner of the hallway.
"Eep!" she let out as Mrs. Norris turned and ran away. "C'mon!" she said, and fled in the opposite direction.
"What?" Malfoy demanded, running after her.
"Filch!" He picked up his pace, and she struggled to keep up with him. But he didn't know where he was going. Ginny knew that the closest place to hide was the Selective Student Shelter Cabinet, thusly dubbed by her twin brothers, a room that only opened for Weasleys, as far as they could tell. Or perhaps redheaded students. Fact of the matter was that neither Malfoy nor Filch would know about it, and it was an ideal hiding place.
"Stop!" they heard Filch shout, and they only ran harder. So far he hadn't caught up enough to see them. Then Ginny spotted it—the very small door that shimmered vaguely on the wall.
"This way," she hissed, grabbing Malfoy's arm and heading towards it.
"What are you doing?" he demanded, but then the door opened and they jumped through it and eased it shut. A few moments later they heard Filch and Mrs. Norris run by, and Ginny took a deep breath of relief. "How did you spot this door?" Malfoy whispered, re-alerting her to his presence. All of a sudden Ginny was aware that they were sitting very close without tearing each other's throat out, and it was quite an odd feeling.
"I think you have to know it's here. And I think it only opens for redheads." She opted for that explanation, not wanting to open up her family to insult. He snorted anyway, so she stopped talking. They sat in silence for quite a few minutes, neither feeling secure enough to try heading back to their dorms. It was weird.
