Blackness engulfed Ginny, the deepest blackness she'd ever known. She stirred slightly, blinking her eyes quickly, trying to force them to focus. What had happened?

I fell…Ginny recalled. Something happened and I fell right off my broom…so far…She felt a lump rise up in her throat. She had fallen quite a ways…Her mind felt sluggish and fuzzy, and Ginny heard herself make a small, pitiful whimpering sound.

"Am…am I dead?" She whispered aloud to no one. Her question was answered by a 'we could only hope' to her left, and a 'now really!' to her right.

"Oh come on!" The voice on the left spoke up. "What an idiotic question! Obviously she's not dead; she's in the Hospital Wing for crying out loud. But then, you can't expect much better deducing skills from a Weasley, can you?"

"Sit down, boy, for heaven's sake! I won't have you complaining to me that your ankle hurts if you insist on standing on it!" a shrill voice ordered fiercely. "She's been lying out in the rain. Who knows how far she fell?" Pomphrey, as Ginny had deduced the second voice to be, switched her tone to a much lighter and concerned one. "Do you feel alright, darling? How's your head?"

She pushed herself up a bit so she was propped up on her pillow. She was about to answer that it was throbbing and fuzzy, when she realized two horrid things:

One, Malfoy was here to witness her pain; two, the most terrifying, she couldn't see him. Panic flooded through her entire body, reaching out to the tips of her fingers and toes and wrenching her heart and stomach, finally settling in her throat where she choked out: "I-I can't see!"

"As I said, her deducing skills—" Malfoy was cut off by Pomphrey's soothing voice.

"Calm down now, just calm…how far did you fall?"

"I…don't know…very far."

"Do you recall how you landed?"

"No I…I just remember feeling like I was dreaming…headfirst I guess, because I was diving to the ground…"

"You must have landed just right and…oh my…" Ginny felt the skin around her eyes pull open and heard a muttered spell from Pomphrey.

She must have been checking her pupils because she muttered, "Completely dilated…that's not normal…"

"Neither is my not being able to see!" Ginny threw at her furiously. Ginny was blind and all Pomphrey could say was that her eyes weren't normal?

"Now really, just lay back down there and rest, I must speak with Severus," she bustled off without explanation, leaving Ginny to throw herself back down hotly.

Out of habit, Ginny rubbed her eyes and, realizing that it did nothing to help her vision, gave a frustrated growl.

"What were you doing flying in the rain at night, anyways?"

She had almost forgotten that Malfoy was there. Almost. "None of your business!" Ginny spat in his direction.

She heard a bed squeaking and Malfoy shuffling towards her. She didn't realize how close he was to her until he spoke again.

"Whoa…your eyes are completely black. That's so freaky."

"Not the only freak around here," Ginny muttered.

"What's that, Weasley?"

Ginny closed her eyes and turned on her side away from him. "Aren't you supposed to be sitting?"

"It doesn't matter that much," by the tone in his voice she figured that the statement had a shrug attached to it, something Ginny wouldn't have witnessed anyways, since she wasn't facing him.

"Pomphrey seems to think so."

"Shut up, Weasley."

"Hey, you're the one that struck up this lovely, little conversation so don't you tell me to shut up!" Ginny launched herself into a sitting position, only to fall right back down as she collided with something rather hard. He must have been leaning over her. She hated that she couldn't see where her enemy was. It terrified her.

"Ouch! Watch it! Oh…wait…ha, I guess you can't, can you?" he sneered to her, and Ginny could just picture the smug, sinister smirk that was forming over his lips.

"You're a jerk," she informed him, a small whimper escaping her lips. "Ugh…" she moaned. "I think I might puke."

"That's repulsive."

"Ha! Like you've never."

"I haven't," he said blankly.

"What?" Ginny knew that if her eyes weren't blank and distant they would be filled with incredulity. "Whatever! That's not possible. Everyone pukes."

"Not us Malfoys. We're naturally immune to everything," he informed her of this as if it were something to be proud of.

"How ironic," Ginny heard herself sneering uncharacteristically. "Considering that so few are immune to you."

"SIT DOWN!" Pomphrey made it obvious that it did matter that Malfoy was standing.

Ginny heard him muttering indistinctly and limping back to his bed, and thought she heard the phrase 'bloody nazi' leave his lips at one point.

"Now, you, what did you do?"

Ginny opened her mouth to speak when Malfoy beat her to the punch.

"I was walking, in a hurry—"

"So running," Pomphrey interjected.

"Er, yes, that. I was running and I remembered I had to do something else so I tried to change direction too quickly, I guess, and ended up twisting the bloody hell out of this foot."

"How graceful," Ginny interjected

"Watch your mouth. Quiet you. A simple twist—" Pomphrey, who seemed almost at her wits end due to their endless bantering, must have done something to Malfoy's foot, for he cried out in pain.

"OUCH!"

"Not sprained I see, well that's lucky. Okay," Pomphrey muttered a spell that Ginny couldn't understand. "Try that then. There we are. Better?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Off you get then. Oh, one moment, if you could."

"What?" Now that he was healed he seemed to have lost all manners. He practically spat the question at her.

"If you could just wait and escort Miss Weasley to her Common Room? I'm quite busy here and—"

"Fine," Ginny could hear in his voice that it wasn't fine at all.

"Now, Miss Weasley. It seems there is a potion that will help you regain your eyesight."

"Oh thank Merlin," Ginny muttered.

"Unfortunately it takes a month to brew."

Ginny felt as if her world were falling once more. A whole month blinded. How would she survive that? What about Quidditch? Ginny felt the familiar lump residing in her throat once more and could feel warm tears burning her useless eyes. She willed herself not to cry. "I see," she choked out with the little composure she had left.

"You do?" Malfoy wasn't helping, either.

"Not to worry dear," Pomphrey patted her head in a patronizing way. She could obviously tell that Ginny was more than a little upset about the news. "He's started on it straight away. Now, Mr. Malfoy will escort you to your Common Room then. Up you get," she prattled on as she pulled Ginny to her feet. Ginny felt herself swaying back and forth.

She felt a cool hand wrap around her wrist far tighter than necessary, tugging her forcefully into motion.

"You're hurting my wrist," Ginny hissed once she heard the large doors to the Hospital Wing shut behind them. "Let go."

"Fine," and he did, and Ginny stood still for a moment, before walking forward. She hadn't taken three steps when she ran into something and began to fall forward.

"Geeze, Weasley, be careful! You'd hate to end up blind and with a concussion," he scolded her as he caught her in his arms and hauled her to a standing position once again. She knew it had been his foot conveniently residing in her path. "Still want to try it alone?"

When Ginny didn't answer him he took her wrist again, less firmly this time, and began to lead her once more.

It felt surreal, walking without counting the stones in the floor, or examining the students passing by—blindly trusting her enemy to lead her safely to her destination, knowing that at any moment she could be "led" right off a moving staircase.

"So what were you doing outside anyhow?" he asked again after a few minutes of tense silence.

"I thought I made it clear that it was none of your business, Malfoy."

"Was," he pointed out. "Five minutes ago. How about now?"

"Is, then," Ginny corrected herself, "it is none of your business."

"You're not very nice to the person you're depending on to get to your quarters. I could leave you stranded anywhere in the castle and you wouldn't know where you were, or how to get back. I could even leave you in the dungeons. That would be fun…I wonder who would find you first…" he trailed off in a contemplating tone that sent shivers down her spine because she knew, were that the case, that no matter who found her the exact same thing would happen.

So she took a deep breath, exhaling slowly as if she were pushing out every negative emotion she held and said: "I'm sorry, Malfoy," it sounded sincere enough to Ginny, but Malfoy was tsking her.

"I don't accept apologies wherein those apologizing address me by my surname," he said it all quite fast, and in such a manner that Ginny knew he was only trying to confuse her. She grasped the phrases 'don't accept' and 'my surname', and figured he must be telling her to use his name.

Not bloody likely! Ginny thought fiercely. She remained silent. Malfoy stopped walking.

"Apologize—correctly this time."

Ginny gritted her teeth and took a deep breath. She knew they were standing on a staircase. "I'm sorry, Draco," she apologized through clenched teeth.

"And once more, for using my surname all these years."

"You've got to be kidding."

"Not at all," Ginny could almost hear him smirking.

"I'm sorry, Draco."

"For what?"

"Calling you Malfoy," she could barely stand to be speaking to him anymore, and were he not the one standing between her and several flights of stairs she would have told him to royally piss off.

"Much better, I think," he chuckled softly as he took her wrist once again and continued on up the steps.

They walked a few more minutes in silence before Ginny's curiosity and utter boredom overtook her. Not being able to witness her surroundings left her with a strange gap that was only able to be filled by conversation.

"You want me to call you Draco, then?" she asked him.

"It would be nice."

Ginny couldn't stop a small smile that captured her lips when she continued. "Is that because you know it completely irks me, or because you think so much of yourself that your ego just needs to hear your name over and over again?"

He gave a short, quiet bark of laughter before answering, "A little bit of both, but mostly I just want to be different."

"Different?" Ginny inquired.

"From my father," he went on.

"From your father?" Ginny repeated, perplexed. Draco Malfoy, big bad bully of the school wanted to be different than his father, big bad bully of the entire Wizarding World? It was as if someone had told her that two plus two now equals fish: it just didn't compute.

He stopped walking, turning her to face him, his hands clutching her arms and holding her in place. "I'm not my father, alright? You may think that because I look like him I am him, but know right now that I'm not, alright?"

"I…don't understand," Does not compute, DOES NOT COMPUTE.

"My father," he began to explain, "was captured by a bunch of teenagers. He's now in Azkaban because of Potter. It's disgraceful. It's something that would have never happened to me."

"So you're saying…"

"I'm better than my father," he stated as if it were something that should be completely obvious to her. "Or at least…I will be."

"So by better you mean…worse, don't you?"

He chuckled again. "Something like that, yeah. We're here."

Ginny shifted her weight uncomfortably. Worse than Lucius means hell for us all…she thought miserably. "Erm…thanks then…for guiding me…" she trailed off stupidly and felt herself beginning to blush.

"Ha, it never would have happened if Pomphrey hadn't looped me back in before I was able to make it out the doors," he scoffed at her, as if berating her for thinking that he could do anything so decent as lead a blind person to their home.

"Er…right…"

She waited for his steps to fade before muttering the password and stepping into the portrait hole, groping the walls and nearly falling on her face as she went.