Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters.
A/N Thanks you so much for the reviews, it's really encouraging and it definitely makes me write the next chapter faster. See, I got round to this one really quick.
The practice
Ginny opened her eyes to the searing sunlight shining through a gap in the curtains, and quickly shut them again and allowed her fuzzy brain to wake up.
She looked down at her watch. 5 55. She rolled over to go back to sleep before remembering. The match. The practice. Groaning, she crawled out of bed, feeling as though her head had been filled with thorns. She dressed quickly and quietly so as not to wake up her roommates, even though it was tempting. They didn't have to get up for a stupid Quidditch practice at 6 am.
She left the room, wondering drearily why her head ached. Clearly should have gone to bed earlier last night and given up on the studying, she realized grumpily.
In the common room Ron was waiting for her.
"Hurry up Gin, Harry's always in a bad mood before matches so we really don't want to be late." He looked very disheveled, but definitely awake, his hands wringing together with nerves.
"Whereishe?" She mumbled.
"What? Oh, Harry's already gone down. You know what he's like about Quidditch. Let's go." He dragged her through the common room to the portrait hole.
Early morning sunlight left long shadows across the pitch, and a group of very tired looking teenagers stood huddled in the centre, leaning on their brooms. Harry was talking animatedly in the centre.
Twenty minutes later, they were all in the air, feeling considerably more awake. Ginny breathed in the cool air and relished the wind whipping her hair into a stream of long curls behind her. They were all practicing a difficult team tactic designed to get the Quaffle from one end of the pitch to the other in such a complicated manner to confuse the opponent.
From below a shrill whistle rang through the air, stopping them all in mid air as they looked down to see what it was. Malfoy and his pack of Slytherins stood collected at the edge of the pitch with customary smirks on their faces.
"What idiot gave that boy a whistle?" Katie grumbled from next to Ginny. They all flew down and collected behind Harry.
"You're early Malfoy." Harry stated, glaring at him.
Draco pretended to look down and notice the time.
"Oh yes, so I am. Well, we'll just have to wait over here then, won't we." He said, indicating to the Quidditch stands.
"No, you won't." Harry said through gritted teeth. "You can go and wait inside for another ten minutes."
"I don't see why, it's such a lovely morning, we all want to admire the view. You can go and get McGonnagol if you like, but.." he broke off looking at his watch, "is it really worth it?"
At this Fred and George leapt forward, but were cut off by Harry.
"He's not worth it." Harry said. "Lets go." It was, after all, now 25 minutes past six. As they walked past, Ginny gave Malfoy a death stare, as did the rest of the team. He simply smiled wider as he watched them all leave.
"Can't you let me go and bash his pretty face in Harry? He deserves it." Ron pleaded as the left the pitch.
Harry simply gave him a look, which left Ron grumbling about how Harry was 'too soft' of something.
"Just make sure we win the game, that'll do the trick." Harry said.
Later
Breakfast was a subdued occasion as the tension built in preparation for the most important match of the season. Ginny glanced up at the staff table to see Dumbledore's chair empty and wondered if he'd be back in time for the match. She could still not shake the ache in her head left from the morning and was even more unsettled by noticing Snape staring straight at her. She quickly glanced away only to find her eyes rest at the table opposite and on Draco Malfoy.
Feelings of hatred immediately bubbled to the surface, but she was surprised to find that she almost pitied him. Where did that come from? He was staring down at his plate like it was some sort of alien and she could see how nervous he was. He looked up and his features rearranged themselves into his usual twisted smirk. She glanced away, pity evaporating and continued on her conversation with Neville.
The match
The weather was still just as sunny at ten in the morning as the teams lined up at the side of the pitch. The stands were rapidly filling with people, and the team were all shifting nervously as they watched. Harry's pre-match talk was over, thankfully, and they were all waiting for the whistle to be blown by Madam Hooch.
"You know what just happened," Harry announced to her and Ron.
"What," She said wearily, expecting him to recall how he had just remembered some sort of Quidditch move from the World Cup or something. Ginny didn't think she could take any more.
"Professor Snape just came up to me, handed me my Invisibility cloak, and walked off." This caught her attention.
"There was definitely something going on. How did he have my cloak in the first place?"
"Dunno." Said Ron, not really in the mood for another of Snape's mysteries, and he looked up at the growing numbers of people in the stands and swallowed.
Ginny was rapidly thinking. She felt like she knew something of what had happened with Harry's invisibility cloak, but she couldn't quite put her finger on it.
Her thoughts were interrupted by a very flustered looking Hermione.
"Good, I'm so glad the match hasn't started yet." She said, "I've just been in the library, completely lost track of time." She explained.
She gave Harry and Ron a quick hug, both of whom turned slightly red. "Good Luck."
"Oh, Ginny, your robe's not quite done up properly," Hermione said, and reached to refasten the half undone clasp at Ginny's neck. She smiled, and gave her a quick hug also and disappeared off into the crown just as the whistle blew.
They walked to the centre of the enormous pitch, and Ginny felt her own nerves building, which she'd originally managed to keep at bay.
Harry and Draco forced themselves into such a brief handshake that if you blinked you'd have missed it. The wind had caught up a little, whipping Ginny's hair around so that she was grateful she'd remembered to tie it up.
As soon as the whistle blew any thoughts Ginny was still questioning about the invisibility cloak all but disappeared and she focused solely on getting the Quaffle. She dodged a few badly placed Bludgers to lunge for the Quaffle which Katie threw to her, and headed straight for the goal, blocked by the large form of Malcolm Baddock. She easily feigned a left turn, but nipped to the right at the last minute, not leaving Malcolm any time to change direction and shot the Quaffle through the right hand hoop.
The crowds erupted and a magnified voice shouted "Gryffindor takes the first score of the match…"
Ginny flew round seeing Fred and George do a quick loop the loop in celebration before focusing on aiming a bludger at Blaise Zabini.
About ten minutes later the score was 90 to 70, Gryffindor in the lead. Ginny was watching Ron in goal doing a brilliant job of stopping Pansy Parkinson from scoring when a flash of gold glinted in the corner of her eye. The snitch. Sure enough Harry and Draco neck and neck darted straight towards it and Ginny dodged out of their way just in time.
As Draco flew past, a looked of sheer determination on his face, huddled low over his firebolt, Ginny caught sight of his cloak clasp, which was a gold serpent twined around the silver catch.
Suddenly, memories flooded down into her brain. She'd seen the exact same design, of the serpent twined around the golden goblet she'd thrown at Snape. The timestop… Draco…the invisibility cloak…the bombs…Snape.
An incredibly loud cheer erupted suddenly from the stands, only just penetrating her furiously concentrating brain. Her eyes flicked to the stands where people were clapping and just beginning to filter out. The match had ended, Gryffindor had won. Her eyes scanned the stands and found Dumbledore immediately, but that was not who she was looking for. She whirled around to the Slytherin side of the pitch and to the taller box in the middle where the head of house normally sits. The seat was empty, Snape was gone.
In steely determination she raced towards Draco, with one thing on her mind. She had to make him remember. He was circling around in the air at the edge of the pitch, not far from where the other Sytherins had begun collecting, clearly in a sulk.
She caught up with him and stopped right in front of him.
"Come to gloat Weasley." He sneered, and she flinched at the tone he used in spitting out her name, remembering how nice he'd been to her only yesterday. She cut straight to it and spilled out anything she could think of.
"Draco, you must remember, please, there was a timestop yesterday, the Death Eaters, planting bombs in the school, it was only us there…" she looked at his face, staring in utter amazement, with an evil glint in his eye, but there was no recognition there, she carried on, "…Snape Obliviated us. We have to tell Dumbledore, you're father was there…" She was running out of ideas. He wasn't remembering. Her heart fell when she realized that something needed to trigger the memory, not words.
"Weasleys actually gone mad." He said momentarily stunned, "what a shocker, must be the poor bloodlines." Ginny felt tears prickle and the back of her eyes and blinked furiously, how could she ever have thought he was any better than an arrogant bastard. She had actually thought he might like her, possibly even love her.
The stands were emptying as the school returned to their respective common rooms, and Dumbledore was back and she realized that time was running out. An idea struck her, and not a nice one. Draco was still staring at her with an ugly sneer, please let this work, she thought furiously. She shut off the thoughts that this was utter suicide if it didn't work, and launched herself towards him, putting her lips to his in a desperate kiss.
A/N Wow, I've actually done this really quickly. Before anyone complains about the various Quidditch players I've mentioned in here, I couldn't be bothered to look up the actual team members so you'll just have to bear with it. I hope that wasn't an utter disaster chapter, as I don't have time to edit. I don't actually have very much idea of what is going to happen next, but I'm sure I'll come up with something! You know what to do if you want the next chapter faster, Review! It worked very well for this one. Lol.
