Draco walked into his room after a midnight session of Astronomy to find an eagle owl preening itself on his desk. With a snarl of impatience Draco swept the dirty feathers off of his homework and grabbed the note from the letter sheath on the owls leg. The owl flew away through the window as Draco cracked open the Malfoy seal.
Draco, I am pleased with your work so far. You seem to be well ahead of any other competitors. Fortunately, at today's meeting our Lord announced that he had consented to give us a clue due in part to the urging of his heir. It seems that our lord is willing to dote on his heir. Imagine how wonderful it will be when you become co-heir and have such privileges. The clue was, 'My heir is a female of great power and cunning'. Draco I give you a month to find out which girl it could be. If you do not become heir you shall become re-acquainted with your favorite spot in the Malfoy dungeons.
Sincerely,
Lucius Malfoy
On another sheet of paper was the information on the girls Draco had asked for. It was in-depth information about where they lived and was so detailed it even mentioned their favorite foods. One report even mentioned the girl's monthly cycle.
Draco read through it quickly, looking for anything that would stand out. People like Susan Bones and Hannah Abbott had family killed by Death Eaters and would be perfectly happy to permanently destroy Voldemort. Luna Lovegood and her family were considered as crazy, and were hardly a threat. Parvati Patil, Padma Patil, and Lavender Brown were all known as Gryffindor goody-two shoes that wouldn't dare step a toe out of the line that Dumbledore set. Draco sighed and pulled on his pajamas. There wasn't anything of interest in any of these girls' profiles. Draco was about to set the piece of parchment down went he looked at the back to double check if there were any more names. Underlined three times was the name Ginevera Weasley.
"He could have been a little more subtle," Draco scoffed. With a sigh Draco lay down on his bed to read up on Ginevera Weasley.
Ginevera Weasley is the youngest child and only girl in the Weasley family. Her overprotective brothers have overshadowed her for her whole life. During her first year in Hogwarts she began writing in a journal supplied to her by Lucius Malfoy. The journal contained the memory of Tom Riddle, Lord Voldemort, and forced the girl to open the Chamber of Secrets and to attack muggle borns.
Draco sat up in his bed. "The little red headed Gryffindor girl opened the Chamber of Secrets!"
The letter continued on about her recent exploits but Draco ignored it for this little nugget of information. He was still contemplating how to use it to his benefit when he fell asleep.
At exactly midnight that same night, an Order of the Phoenix meeting was called in Dumbledore's office. Ginny, Harry, Ron and Hermione arrived a few minutes late and were slightly out of breath. Ginny was alternating between glaring at Ron and Harry. Dumbledore cleared his throat from behind his desk to get their attention.
"Sorry professor," Ginny said shyly. "We needed to wait for Mr. Filch to leave the corridor outside of the tower, and wait a few minutes for Harry to leave his ego behind." She glared at Harry as she said that.
"Very well Miss Weasley. Now I have called you all here today to discuss a matter of utmost importance. We know that Voldemort uncovered Severus as our spy and we all morn for him, but it seems that we have been betrayed. Someone must have told Voldemort about Severus. This means that Voldemort has a spy among our ranks. I trust everyone in this room with my life, but there are others in the Order who I do not know much about. I am doing research on them at the moment and am even contemplating using a strong veritaserum on anyone who seems untrustworthy. Please be careful where you speak about Order information, and be careful about whom you speak it to. I know I can trust all of you explicitly, but please be alert.
"Now for the next order of business. How do you propose that we insert another spy into the Death Eater ranks, and who should it be?" Arguments broke out between everyone in the room. Tonks was yelling about whether or not it would even be safe for another person to risk their lives by spying as a Death Eater. Other people were arguing about who would be suitable to go in as a spy. They knew that Voldemort was very particular about who he let into his fold.
They left the meeting an hour later with nothing accomplished except a large headache.
Harry yawned widely. "Well that was interesting," he grumbled. Everyone nodded in agreement.
"Hey guys, I'll catch up with you later." Ginny said quietly. "I have to use the bathroom and there is one in the next corridor. I'll be along in a few minutes." Ginny turned and started walking down a side hall.
"Ginny wait, I should go with you." Hermione called after her.
"Don't worry about it," Ginny waved her hand around in dismissal. "I'll be perfectly safe, and I'm sure you would like to go to bed." Hermione nodded and walked off with Harry and Ron. Ginny smirked and walked into the bathroom.
Voldemort was sitting in his chair, contemplating his glorious plans for the takeover of the wizarding world when a barn owl swept into the room, dropped a letter into his lap and flew off. Voldemort snarled in annoyance. He was just getting the part where he got to torture Dumbledore into submission.
With another snarl he ripped the letter open. The deep frown on his face disappeared into blankness as he read the letter from his heir.
"Wormtail!" He called. Instantly Pettigrew ran into the room and bowed at Voldemorts' feet. "I want you to write this down as I tell you, and send it to Lucius Malfoy. He is our spymaster and will understand what needs to be accomplished.
"Inform all spies that Dumbledore is about to do some searching through his ranks. Veriteserum may be used. Plan accordingly. Anyone who is lost will not be recovered." Peter bowed and ran out of the room.
Voldemort almost smiled in excitement. His wonderful heir had just told him everything about a short meeting at midnight in the fool's office. He knew about their plans for inserting a spy into his ranks and he knew about Dumbledore searching through the Order for the spy. There were a large number of spies hidden in the Order and Voldemort wanted to keep most of them there. The thing that amused him most was the last line that his little heir had written on her letter.
'Draco Malfoy definitely suspects that it's me!' She had even put an exclamation part at the end.
Voldemort knew that there was an attraction between his heir and the handsome Malfoy boy. He also knew that Draco would be a good ruler, if it came to that. Voldemort had known from the start of this little contest that Draco Malfoy would become his other heir. It just depended on whether or not Draco was able to figure out who his heir was before some one else was able to.
The Flint boy was pretty close to the answer. He had already figured out that it could be one of three girls, and his heir was one of them. Maybe an unfortunate accident would happen to Marcus Flint in the near future?
Draco woke up the nest morning with a plan in mind. He needed to figure out if the Weasley girl was the heir or if he had been searching in the wrong direction the whole time. He simply had to corner the girl when she was alone and ask a few innocent questions.
If only it was that easy.
That morning at breakfast the new potions teacher was introduced. It was a young man who Harry had seen at the meeting the night before.
"Well it only took Dumbledore two months to find another potions teacher to replace Snape." Hermione mused form her seat next to Harry.
"I'm gonna miss the free blocks we had instead of potions though," Ron groaned wistfully.
Hermione tisked at him and shook her head. "You know perfectly well that those free blocks were meant for studying and doing home work."
"But there are so many other things that you could be doing during free time," Ron hissed back.
"Oh yea! Such as…."
Harry sighed and ignored them. They would still be arguing about the same thing at the end of the day anyway. Instead Harry turned his mind to what had happened last night.
He had been sitting on the couch looking into the fire, thinking, when Ginny had come down the stairs and had sat on the couch next to him. Rather closely. They had started a pleasant conversation when Ron came running down the stairs looking for Harry.
"Harry we have a meeting tonight at Dumbledore's office. Midnight. I have to find Hermione." He ran off. Harry turned towards Ginny and sighed. She looked so beautiful. Her hair was a dark auburn red and it fell in waves down her back. Her green eyes seemed to look right into him and melt his soul. He knew at that moment that he loved her.
"Ginny, well I've been thinking about this for a while, and, umm…"
"Yes Harry?"
"I was wondering if you wanted to go on a date with me to the next Hogsmeade weekend." He finished softly.
"I don't know what to say!" She gasped. "Why do you want me to go with you?"
"Well, Ginny, you are a very pretty girl, and I think you would make a wonderful girlfriend," Harry almost groaned at how bad that sounded but refrained from fixing it when he saw the perplexed look on her face.
"You mean that you want to go to Hogsmeade alone with me because I'm a girl and I would make a good girl friend?" Her expression darkened. "Are you implying that you want me because I would be a good lay while I'm your girl toy. But as soon as you see someone else you think would make a good "girl friend" you'll drop me like a load of bricks?" She stood up and snarled at him. "I will not be used for that. Understand?"
At that moment the portrait hole opened and Ron and Hermione walked into the room holding hands. When they saw Ginny yelling at Harry they ran over to try and stop them from hurting each other.
"Ginny," Ron said, "What are you doing? Why are you yelling at Harry?"
"Because HARRY just offered to take me to Hogsmeade- "
"But that's wonderful Ginny. We all know that you have a crush on him." Hermione interrupted.
"- To have sex with me!" Ginny continued, ignoring Hermione's interruption.
"No I didn't!" Harry gasped out. "I asked her to got to Hogsmeade, yes, but." He stopped talking when Ron turned his formidable temper onto him.
"Did you try to hurt my sister again! This is the second time since school started Harry. I understand that you like her, but hurting her isn't the answer." Harry tried to say a few words in his defense but Ron kept screaming until Hermione whispered that it was midnight and they were already late for their meeting.
Harry sighed from his seat in the Great Hall. Every time he made an advance towards Ginny, even when she was practically telling him to, she took it and changed it so that it seemed like he was trying to hurt her. To top it off she always seemed to do that when Ron was around. His friendship was suffering, and he didn't know if he could trust Ron. Ron wouldn't even listen to his explanation about what really happened. It was almost as if Ron didn't care about him anymore. Hermione didn't express her opinions as loudly as Ron but Harry could tell that she agreed with Ron on everything. Harry groaned and got up to go to his first class.
Across the Great Hall Draco was fuming. His day had started off well but was rapidly deteriorating from there. First, when he had gone to the Great Hall early to find Ginny before breakfast she had brushed by him and went to get food. Nobody just brushed past a Malfoy when said Malfoy wanted to talk with them.
Then when he had gotten to his seat at the Slytherin table he found a bunch of first years sitting in and around his seat. That was when he realized that he had been so preoccupied with finding out who the heir was he had been lax at his duties of getting the younger years to fear him. When he had snarled at the first years to move, they had ignored him. He cursed them instead. They had run away screaming with large painful boils covering their faces.
That had been the upside of his day so far. Next he had looked at the new potions teacher and had noticed that the man was one of the well-known supporters of the Order and would be torturing the Slytherins in potions class. Draco sighed and walked to Transfiguration. Maybe he could talk to Ginny before lunch.
He had no luck. By the end of the day he had seen Ginny once, and that had been from the other side of the school grounds when he was in Herbology and she was in the oaf Hagrid's class. Draco had accomplished one thing today though. He had threatened a couple of first years and now most of them were avoiding him like the plague. Draco shook his head in impatience. "I'll just send her a note asking her to come to the kitchens at about three o'clock tonight. I'll give her enough incentive to come." He muttered to himself.
At exactly three that night Draco was sitting in the kitchens sipping a cup of hot cocoa. Ginny walked in and sat down next to him.
"All right Malfoy," she snarled. "You threatened me enough to make me come down here, now tell me what you want before I leave."
Draco smirked and started his questioning.
