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Chapter 24: Emotional Outbursts

Hermione and Ginny sat down at the Gryffindor table, far away from people, for breakfast the following Monday morning. The two girls had spent the whole weekend together, steering clear of all male specimen-including even Harry. Ginny hadn't even spoken to Stephanie as of late, obviously not wanting to take the chance of being in the presence of a certain Malfoy.

"So," Ginny began, trying to ignore the fact that Draco was watching her from across the hall, "don't you think it's weird that Harry hasn't said that much about Voldemort this year?"

Hermione shrugged, but looked thoughtful. "I think that he's hoping for a normal seventh year."

"Right," she snorted, "because this year has been sooo normal."

"It definitely hasn't been normal," she agreed. "But if Harry had some kind of vision or something, then he would tell us."

She nodded. "I guess so."

"Maybe within the next day or so, Voldemort will jump off a bridge and kill himself, then Harry and the wizarding world wouldn't have to worry about him anymore," Hermione joked bitterly.

"Are you feeling alright?" Ginny asked the older girl in concern. Hermione never joked about something as serious as Voldemort.

"I haven't been feeling well for the past month," she admitted, thinking about the incident between her and Ron.

"I understand." Ginny gave her a sympathetic smile. "I haven't been feeling to spiffy these last couple of days myself." She patted her lightly on the shoulder. "Don't worry about Ron, I'm sure everything will work out like its supposed to." She felt Hermione tense beside her and she immediately felt like shit for mentioning her brother. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to bring him up-"

"No, it's not that." Hermione broke in uncomfortably.

"Well what is-" Ginny stopped and almost fell over in shock when she spotted Harry and Ron approaching them. Ron was actually going to sit with Hermione! Oh no, this wouldn't go well at all.

"Good morning," Harry greeted uneasily as he and Ron sat down. He knew that this probably wasn't a good idea, but he wanted his two best friends to talk again, and if Hermione and Ron weren't going to take the next step, then he would push them in the right direction.

"Good morning," Ginny responded, sending Harry a look that screamed, 'what the bloody hell do you think you're doing? Have you gone insane?'

He ignored it. "I can't believe that Ravenclaw lost the match yesterday. Now we might have to play Slytherin again," he said, trying to pick up an innocent conversation.

Ginny sent him a death glare. "Why thank you for that lovely bit of information."

"Sorry, Ginny," he apologized with a wince. "I forgot about the whole Malfoy thing."

"What happened with Malfoy?" Ron looked at Ginny in alarm.

"Nothing that you should worry about," she informed him quietly.

"Did that git do something to you?" he demanded.

"You don't need to worry about it," she repeated strongly.

"Did he hit you?" His face turned red with anger. "I'll kill him!"

"What? Of course he didn't hit me, Ron," she hissed angrily. "Would you stop yelling? People are starting to stare."

"I don't care if they are!" he retorted. "I knew that I shouldn't have listened to Hermione when it came to you and Malfoy."

'Shit,' Harry cursed to himself silently, 'that was definitely not the right thing to say, Ron.'

Hermione stood up swiftly. "It's a good thing you won't ever have to listen to me again, isn't it?" she snapped at him, before making her way out of the Great Hall. Most of the student's eyes now focused on the remaining three, waiting for another explosion.

"Why are all guys complete pricks?" Ginny complained loudly.

"Hey!" Guys from every house protested. She rolled her eyes.

Ron turned to Harry. "What did Malfoy do to Ginny?" he asked lowly, not wanting anyone else to hear.

"I really shouldn't be the one to tell you that," Harry explained.

"Why won't you tell me?" Ron asked Ginny.

"Because it isn't any of your business!"

"You told everyone else!"

"I knew they wouldn't overreact!" Both of the siblings were screaming now. Not even the professors made a move to stop their arguing. They were to curious as to what had the red-heads in such an uproar.

"I don't see why you are so upset about it," Ron retorted. "Everyone knew that you and Malfoy wouldn't last!"

"You're just mad because Hermione can't stand the sight of you! Maybe you should spend less time pondering on other people's problems, and concentrate on your own! It's obvious that you feel ashamed of what you did, and you want to believe that someone out there is worse than you!" Ginny ranted hysterically, not being able to stop. "Well congratulations, big brother! I'll have you know that I am in love with the BIGGEST PRICK of Hogwarts!"

"Oh gods," Ginny mumbled, suddenly feeling sick. for one specific reason. Everyone was staring at her in disbelief, including Draco Malfoy.

"You're in love with Malfoy?" Ron finally squeaked.

Ginny took off running and didn't look back.

Draco sat down at the Slytherin table for breakfast the following Monday morning. His grey-blue eyes wandered to the Gryffindor table, landing on the one special girl that haunted most of his thoughts and dreams. He hadn't meant those things that he said to her on Saturday night. Yeah, it would've been alot easier for him if his mystery girl turned out to be some random girl, but it was Ginny. Ginny, the only girl that he had ever had real feelings for. That night in his fifth year was the only time that he had ever felt anything...period. Knowing that it was Ginny made all the difference. She made him feel things, things that he had never felt before, and it was confusing. He had been brought up to shield every kind of emotion, except for the few and far between moments he'd had with his mother. But every minute that he was with Ginny, that was all he could feel. Pure emotion.

"Dude," Stephanie whispered from his right, "you need to stop staring at her. I think you're freaking her out."

Draco scowled.

"You should just go talk to her or something," she suggested.

"And say what? Hello, Ginny, I'm sorry, lets kiss and make up now," he whispered sarcastically.

"Drakie, whats wrong?" Pansy cooed from across the table. "Shouldn't you be happy? You did win the Quidditch game after all. I bet that Ravenclaw will lose against Gryffindor and then you can get another chance to beat those cowards."

"Gryffindor stands for courage, you stupid twit," he insulted.

Stephanie snorted in her pumpkin juice. Pansy huffed and turned to talk to Millicent.

"I thought that Granger and Weasley weren't getting along," said Draco with a furrowed brow.

"They aren't," Stephanie confirmed.

"Then why is Weasley sitting across from Granger," he pointed out.

"Oh no," she groaned, "Harry, are you bloody insane?"

Draco smirked. "Potter's trying to get the Dream Team back together."

"Well, you would think that Hermione and Ron would be fighting, but it looks like Ginny and Ron are fighting," Stephanie remarked.

Suddenly, Hermione's voice echoed from across the hall, "It's a good thing you won't ever have to listen to me again, isn't it?"

"Gin's right," Stephanie agreed with her friend when she heard her reply about guys being pricks, except for Harry of course.

The two cousins looked back and forth between Ginny and Ron, as their voices grew louder.

"I think they're talking about you," Stephanie observed.

"Really?" Draco asked dryly.

Ginny was raving like mad now, all of her words coming out in a rush. But her last statement was loud and clear, catching everyone off guard. "Well congratulations, big brother! I'll have you know that I am in love with the BIGGEST PRICK of Hogwarts!"

Stephanie, who had been taking a drink of her pumpkin juice, spewed the liquid out of her mouth, landing it all over Pansy's face.

Draco's heart paused in mid-beat at her confession and he watched Ginny glance at him in shock, then take off running.

He needed to go after her.

"No," Stephanie stopped him with a hand, "let me go. She needs a friend right now, not someone who might upset her further," she advised wisely.

Draco watched in silence, feeling helpless as his cousin slipped out of the Great Hall. "What the bloody hell are you looking at?" he snapped at the people who had their eyes focused on him. Everyone quickly turned back to their conversations.

"Ugh, I have pumpkin juice all over my face!" Pansy whined to him a few moments later.

"Ginny! Ginny, wait up!" Stephanie called after her friend.

"You know, being short isn't fun when you're trying to run after someone," she huffed to Ginny as she sat beside her against the Willow tree.

"I..I-" Ginny started with an expression of pure horror on her face, "I just told the whole fucking school that I'm in love with Draco bloody Malfoy!"

"Gin, don't worry about it," Stephanie searched for the right words to comfort her distressed friend. "I'm sure that everybody will forget everything in a month or two."

"A month or two?" Ginny cried.

'So much for making her feel better,' Stephanie thought wryly.

"I'm not even really worried about what other people think, Steph." Ginny sighed tiredly. "He doesn't feel the same way about me." Tears blurred her vision. "He's probably in class right now with all his buddies, telling them how he nailed the littlest Weasley and how he made me disgrace the family name."

"Draco wouldn't do that," Stephanie assured her weakly. At least, she knew her cousin, and she didn't think that he would treat a girl the way his father treated Narcissa.

"You weren't there the night he told me that it should have been some random whore instead of me." Ginny spat bitterly.

"He what!" she screeched. "Oh, we are definitely going to have a talk. One that involves my foot and his nether regions," Stephanie promised.

Ginny smiled weakly. "Thanks, but no. I'll probably have to commit murder trying to keep Ron and Harry away from him."

"Well, I'm still going to talk to him," Stephanie replied stubbornly.

Ginny knew not to argue with her friend. Once she made up her mind about something, then that was that.

"Do you feel up to Herbology? It might take your mind off of some things," Stephanie suggested.

"Yeah, I would love have all our classmates look at me like I'm some kind of newly found creature," she bit sarcastically.

"Oh, don't worry. If someone keeps on looking at you, then I'll just kick them in the face. Plus, we only have forty-five minutes of that class left," The brunette said cheerfully.

Ginny eyed her friend warily. "How come you're being so violent lately?"

Stephanie grimaced inwardly as she thought of all the things that had been bothering her the last couple of months. She couldn't very well say, 'well Draco and I might be the reason your father gets murdered, or Harry... or any of your family for that matter. Oh and yeah, I think that I might be in love for the first time in my life.' No, that wouldn't work.

"All kinds of little things just get piled up into one big thing and I gotta pent my frustrations somewhere, don't I? It wouldn't be any fun hitting myself," Stephanie joked, making her friend smile for the first time that day.

"Yeah," Ginny agreed. "To many little things that can make you go crazy."

'You have no idea how right you are,' Stephanie thought to herself.

"What the hell have you done to my sister, Malfoy?" Ron had cornered Draco after their last class of the day, which had been Potions.

"Oh, great, it isn't enough that you have to stare holes through my skull all through class, but you want to accuse me of doing something to Ginny," Draco snapped.

"Don't call her Ginny," Ron growled at him. "The only people who call her that, are the ones who care for her."

"I do care for her," Draco replied honestly.

Ron just stared at him in shock.

"What are you playing at, Malfoy?" Harry piped up in confusion, standing behind Ron. Hermione was nowhere to be seen.

"What the fuck are you talking about, Potter?" Draco sneered.

"Well, how can you care for her, if you treat her the way you do? She didn't come into the common room at three o'clock in the morning, crying her eyes out, for no reason. How could you treat someone that you care about, that way?" Harry pointed out.

Draco shuddered with repressed anger, but it wasn't at Potter, it was at himself. 'How could he have been so stupid as to say those terrible things to her?'

"What!" Ron screamed at his best friend. "When did this happen, and why didn't anyone tell me?"

"Because it wasn't my business to tell, Ron," Harry explained carefully. "Ginny would have told you sooner or later, but I'm guessing she was opting for later."

"You made my sister cry," Ron seethed to Draco. He didn't know why his sister didn't tell him about Malfoy, but he wasn't about to let this ferret get away with hurting her.

"I wasn't the only one who made her cry, Weasel." Draco spat in defense.

Ron reached for his wand, but Harry stopped him just in time. "No, Ron."

"What, are you mad?" Ron questioned Harry's sanity. "He made my little sister cry, and you don't want to beat the shit out of him?"

"He wasn't the only one." Draco looked at the raven-haired boy in shock. 'Did Potter just agree with me?'

"You're taking up for him?" Ron shouted to Harry, pointing at the Slytherin.

"No, I'm not taking up for him!" Harry shouted desperately. "But think about it. If you get into a fight with Malfoy, what are the chances that you will get back together with Hermione?"

Ron bowed his head in defeat. Harry was right, he knew that he had already screwed up this morning at breakfast. Now it would probably take a few more weeks before she even spoke one single word to him.

"We don't have to solve this by fighting," Harry replied, taking Ron's wand away from him in case the boy had other ideas.

"I'm not solving anything with you, Potter," said Draco, boldly. "Besides, I'm not going to miss eating dinner just because you and Weasley want to have a little chit-chat."

"Oh, you will." Harry smirked. "You will, if you ever want to talk to Ginny again."

"He's not coming anywhere near Ginny, anyway!" Ron exclaimed. "I don't want her anywhere near a Death Eater." He glared at Malfoy, hatred showing in his crystal blue eyes.

Draco raised his wand in attempt to shout a curse at him, but Harry grabbed it out of his hand before he could speak.

"Give me my wand back," Draco demanded.

Harry shook his head. "I think we'll all be a little bit safer if you and Ron don't have your wands."

"I can always use my fists." Ron grinned.

"How about we go outside and have a long talk with Malfoy?" Harry asked Ron.

Ron, who looked happier than a kid at Christmas, accepted his idea.

"I am not going anywhere with you fuc-" Draco was cut off by Harry's silencio spell and the two Gryffindors took him by the arms and dragged the unwilling occupant outside.

"Holy shit!" Hermione and Ginny looked up from their books in alarm to Stephanie, who currently had a look of disbelief on her tan face.

"What?" The other two girls asked her in unison.

"I-I-" she stuttered, staring off in the distance. Hermione and Ginny followed her line of sight and their jaws dropped.

"What the hell are they doing?" Ginny gasped, watching as Harry and Ron walked with Draco to the lake, completely oblivious to the girls.

"They just had to come out here! This would only happen when we're trying to avoid them," Hermione muttered in annoyance. The three girls had chosen to stay outside, well more like Ginny and Hermione, because they didn't want to see a certain couple of boys at lunch or dinner. They'd been lucky enough during lunch, but not so lucky during dinner.

"They look like they're having a civilized conversation," Stephanie said, watching the scene with interest.

"Nah," Ginny shook her head, "see the way Draco has his jaw clenched up. It means he's angry or he's aggravated."

"I can't tell, I don't have on my contacts." Stephanie squinted her eyes to get a better look.

"Maybe Draco can knock some sense into Ron."

Ginny looked at Hermione in amusement, despite the situation. "They both need some sense knocked into them."

"Amen to that," said Stephanie.

"I wonder what they're talking about," Hermione replied curiously.

"I don't really care," Ginny said, her mood turning sour once more. "Maybe they'll beat each other to a bloody pulp."

"Except for Harry." Of course this came from Stephanie.

"At least I have one male as a friend who isn't a jerk," Hermione sighed.

"So, what do you want from me?" Draco asked, eyeing the two boys in suspicion.

"I want YOU to tell ME what happened between you and Ginny," Ron said calmly, even though he felt like punching this guy's lights out.

"Uh. Ron, I think you should let Ginny tell you that, otherwise you might have a very mad Weasley on your hands," Harry proposed. "And I really don't want to see another argument between you two."

"Fine," Ron relented through gritted teeth. "What are your intentions towards my sister?" He turned back to Draco.

"There aren't any now," he drawled. "If you didn't notice, she doesn't seem to keen on talking to me anytime soon."

"Well what if she does talk to you again?" Harry asked.

Draco paused. He had never thought that she'd talk to him after what he'd said to her. "You think she might talk to me again, even after what happened?"

Harry shrugged. "I dunno. You did mess up things pretty badly, even worse than what Ron did to Hermione."

"You cheated on my sister?" Ron shouted at him.

"I didn't cheat on her, you idiot," Draco said angrily. "Wait a minute..." he smirked, "You cheated on Granger?"

"No," Ron spat out. "Not that it's any of your business anyway, ferret."

Draco ignored the insult and kept on smirking.

"Back to what we were talking about, before you two decided to argue again," Harry said wearily. "What will you do if Ginny decides to talk to you again?"

The Slytherin didn't respond. He didn't feel at all comfortable talking to Potter about this and he especially didn't feel right talking to Ginny's brother. "I will apologize to her. Besides, what I said to her that night, it was a mistake...I didn't mean for it to come out that way," he finally answered.

"Right." Harry nodded, apparently satisfied with his answer. Ron, on the other hand, didn't.

"I don't want you coming anywhere near her, Malfoy. If she decides that she wants to talk to you again, then she will. But I don't want you to go near her," he decided.

"Fine," Draco sneered, and then started his way back to the castle. On his way, he spotted Ginny under the Willow tree and their eyes met for a second, before she quickly looked back down. He sighed in disappointment. She wouldn't be talking to him anytime soon.

"So," Ron began, turning to his friend, "I think I handled that pretty well."

Harry snorted. "Yeah, sure. Ron. You handled it perfectly." He made his way back as well.

"What?" he asked in defense. "At least I didn't beat him up!" Ron called after him.

"That was really weird." Stephanie commented, watching Ron and Harry leave the lakeside.

"I've never seen the three of them leave each other without some broken bones," Hermione added thoughtfully.

"Its definitely an improvement," Stephanie observed.

"We should get back," Hermione said, after packing up her books. "It's starting to get dark."

Ginny followed them to the castle, remaining silent. She shivered, thinking about how Draco's grey-blue eyes bored into her own golden-brown. 'Wasn't he even a little freaked out at her outburst during breakfast this morning? Or could he feel the same way? Yeah right, Ginny, Draco won't ever feel that way about you', she reminded herself.

She didn't know how wrong she was.

I hope you liked it!

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LilyK