Chapter 4: The Next Morning

Draco

The boys' dormitory is too quiet. The usual early-morning sounds of snoring and shuffling bodies are conspicuously lacking. Draco forces his eyes open and stares up at the green canopy of his bed. It must be late. Everyone is already down at breakfast. For a moment he stretches out on the bed and yawns, and he doesn't let the anxiety seep into his mind.

Not yet.

Eventually though, he has to acknowledge that he's worn his school robes to bed, and the events of the previous night flood his consciousness in stark detail.

"Oh, no," he says out loud to nobody. "Ugh…fuck me." His whole body wants to cringe with the awfulness of it.

He's wide awake now, so Draco gets out of bed. Ginny Weasley is going to tell everyone about the Dark Mark. Probably, she has already told Potter, and Potter has told Dumbledore, and it is only a matter of hours, or perhaps even minutes, before he is carted away to Azkaban. Father, Draco thinks, will not be pleased to see him. Not at all.

He takes a shower and puts on a fresh set of school robes, carefully slicking back his hair. When he makes his way to the common room, he feels more like himself.

Pansy is waiting for him on one of the leather sofas. She stands up when he approaches, taking his hand, looking at him with her eyebrows knitted in worry. "You didn't come down to breakfast," she says. "Are you okay, Draco? You've been looking ill lately."

"I'm fine, Pansy."

"Are you sure?" she steps close to him and squeezes his hand. "I've brought you some breakfast. You've missed it, I'm afraid, but we've still got a few minutes to get to Charms if we hurry."

Draco takes the two proffered scones wrapped in a cloth napkin, and brushes past her out of the common room. She follows him. "You got in so late last night," she says. "I wanted to wait for you, Draco, but it was quite late, wasn't it? What were you doing for Filch, anyway? He can't keep you up all night like that, can he?"

Draco wishes heartily for Pansy to vanish, but she remains at his side as they walk through the dungeons, up the staircase, all the way to the Charms classroom. Normally he likes having her fuss over him; today, she is just in the way of his frantic thoughts. His eyes dart in all directions, expecting someone to apprehend him at any moment. Pansy continues to buzz around him like an unswattable mosquito, but nobody else pays him any notice.

He slips into Charms and sits down at his empty desk while Professor Flitwick passes out large clay bowls.

Draco has already run through all the ways in which he could escape the castle: he could sneak out to Hogsmeade and take the train home, or he could feign illness and call his mother to take him back to Malfoy Manor.

Only the manor is currently occupied by Death Eaters, and as soon as he sets foot inside, he will be as good as dead anyway. Better take his chances with Azkaban.

Maybe he could hide out in the Forbidden Forest … and be mauled by beasts or angry centaurs.

Maybe he could leave everything behind and sneak away to Muggle London and hide among the faceless masses. But he'd be found in the end. Wizards more skilled than he have paid the price for deserting the Dark Lord. Even if, by some miracle, he managed to stay hidden, there is Mother's safety to think about.

Pansy is still ranting about Filch. Goyle is in the seat next to him; Crabbe failed his Charms OWL and is probably sleeping off his breakfast coma.

Draco looks tiredly at Professor Filtwick, who is holding up the clay bowls with an instructional air. The small-statured professor begins to drone on about the magical properties of these particular bowls, made from the dark red clay from the Andean tarns, and behind him Pansy continues to whisper at the back of his head.

Draco ignores them both and allows his thoughts to flit briefly to Ginny Weasley, whom he had actually kissed last night. His hand goes unconsciously to his left wrist, clutching the Dark Mark beneath his sleeve. Why didn't he pull his arm away? How could he have let her just roll up his shirtsleeve and see the Mark? In the light of day, it seems like some unlikely nightmare.

He takes a bite of Pansy's scone, but it tastes like sand. Draco looks at Filtwick and watches his lips move as he gestures broadly, but his mind won't hold the professor's words.

After Charms, Pansy finally leaves him alone to go to Divination. He dodges past his classmates to find an empty corridor.

He needs some time before History of Magic to think. To figure out his next move. If he hasn't been apprehended, it means that Weasley has kept quiet. But for how long? Surely she's told Potter by now.

He'll need to get Grabbe and Goyle patrolling the entrance to the Secret Room again, and he'll need to work on fixing those cabinets. If he isn't going to run, then he's got to fulfill his mission, flee from Hogwarts, and return home to bask in the Dark Lord's praises. He still has plenty of Polyjuice potion left, hidden in his trunk up in the boys' dormitories. If he could just figure out the mechanism in those cabinets…

Draco's thoughts spiral to an abrupt end.

Ginny Weasley is waiting for him at the end of hallway. She is alone.

He thought seeing her now, in daylight, would be different, but his stomach clenches at the sight of her. "Weasley…" he drawls, and tries not to look at her too closely: not at her bright red hair, or the dusting of freckles along her bare arms, or her fierce dark eyes. She's just so fucking unavoidably intense. "What do you want, then?"

"I need to talk to you." She comes right up to him, and his heart is pounding in his chest and in his ears and inside his head. She is so close that he is sure she can hear it beating.

"So," he says, trying desperately to sound annoyed. "You've told Potter, I presume? You've told him about what you saw yesterday?"

She looks nervous herself. She takes his hand. He doesn't have the strength to pull it back. "I haven't told anyone, Malfoy." She's frowning. "Not yet, anyway."

Draco wishes she wasn't standing so close to him. Her face is inches away.

"Why did you kiss me, Draco?"

How can he answer that? "It doesn't matter. We both know it was nothing." Draco sees her hard gaze, and he thinks that probably if he kissed her again right now, it would discredit his earlier statement. Her lips are chapped. Draco licks his own lips. He takes a deep breath.

"Fine. Whatever, Malfoy." She seems impatient. "Never mind, that's not what I came here to ask you, anyway. I came to find out what the Death Eaters are planning."

"I can't tell you that."

"You're going to have to. Tell me everything you know, or I'll go to Dumbledore. I can't put everyone at risk just because I feel sorry for you, Malfoy."

Draco sneers again. "I don't need you to protect me, Weasley." As soon as he says it, he feels anxiety prickling at the back of his mind. He does need her protection.

Ginny's whole face flushes with anger, and she drops his hand and crosses her arms. "Fine. I've tried to help you. I'm not responsible for your mistakes." She makes a move to shove past him, but he catches her by the shoulders.

"I want to tell you," he says, "but I can't." He takes a breath. "Ginny." He tries her name on his lips, to see how it sounds, to disassociate her from her mess of a family. "Ginny," he says again, "it's just not possible. I wish I could tell you everything."

Draco almost believes his own words. If he could somehow reverse time and erase the events of the past year, he would do it. If he could make it so the Dark Lord had never returned, and his father had never gone to Azkaban, and his only concerns were passing his NEWTs and taking the piss out of Harry Potter, then he would gladly go back to that life. But he can't. "I'm just trying to figure things out right now. Just give me a bit of time, okay Weasley?"

"Weasley?" she asks softly.

"Ginny," he amends.

"Just promise me. Promise me that you'll leave it. Whatever you're doing, promise me that you'll stop."

Draco looks at her in surprise. "You mean, you won't tell anyone? If I promise?"

"No. I won't."

He knows then that she doesn't want to get him thrown out. Maybe she cares about him. She did kiss him back, after all. But surely she can't expect him to defy the Dark Lord, to risk his own life and the life of his family because she's asked him too.

Maybe she doesn't need to believe him; maybe she just needs to hear him say that he's not up to anything too bad so that her conscience can rest easy.

His hand moves from her shoulder to her back, drawing her into him. She smells like shampoo and wind. He lowers his head and kisses her slowly. It feels good, and his whole body is stirring, and suddenly he can't get enough of her. When he's kissing her like this, his mind is a blank slate, his anxiety momentarily muffled, and there is only this rush of adrenaline coursing through his body.

His hands are in her hair now, and his lips are on her neck. And he wants her. He wants this so much. Any minute now, someone might walk past this stretch of hallways and see them, but he can't make himself stop.

She's gripping him too, crushing him against her. "Promise me," she whispers against his lips.

"I promise," he says. She pulls away and looks into his eyes. "I promise," he says again, weakly. She must know that he is lying.

"Maybe we should tell Dumbledore," she says. "Maybe he can help you. He can protect you."

Draco takes a shaky breath and finally lets go of her. She doesn't understand. Of course she doesn't understand. She is on the wrong side of the war.

Dumbledore is his enemy. His death is the only thing that can truly protect him. Not only protect him – his death would elevate him in the Dark Lord's eyes, would exceed all of their expectations. "Don't tell Dumbledore," he says. "Not yet. Give me time."

He feels a rush of guilt, but she is already agreeing. "Fine. I won't tell." She frowns at him, her eyes hardening again. "For now."


Ginny

Something is definitely wrong with her.

She had a nice boyfriend. Dean is a nice bloke. He's handsome and easygoing and a gentleman. He's been grating on her nerves lately, but nothing like Draco Malfoy. Malfoy gets on everybody's nerves.

Maybe something's broken inside of her. Maybe when she spilled herself into Tom Riddle's diary, something dark and hateful took up residence in her heart, and now she can't like nice boys like Dean (like Harry). Instead she's attracted to awful, bigoted jerks like Draco Malfoy.

She can picture him perfectly when he closes her eyes. His fine hair, his wet, pale lips, that expensive, leathery smell that clings to his robes. The thought of kissing him turns her on, makes her imagine all sorts of things that are plain wrong. When he pulls her into him, and his arms are firm around her, she just can't feel enough of his body against hers.

She could lie to herself, but the fact that he's a Malfoy, that he's an incorrigible jerk obsessed with blood status that can't seem to keep her hands off her - it's part of the attraction. The fact that he's got one foot in evil, yet he's incapable of truly harming others, incapable of even fully seeing the good in himself.

Ginny groans and opens her eyes.

It's been three days since they last spoke in the hallway, since he promised to stop whatever he's been doing. Should she believe him? Probably not. She knows she needs to tell Dumbledore. But then she thinks of Draco's wide, grey eyes. His long eyelashes. He has the eyelashes of a girl. Ginny smiles to herself.

"What's so funny?" Concepta asks. Ginny remembers she's in the library, allegedly studying for her OWLs. Her friend Concepta is standing over her table with a fresh set of books. "It can't be that copy of Magical Theory you're reading, because that's the driest book I've ever read. Except for maybe Hogwarts: A History."

Ginny closes the big tome in a cloud of dust. "I need a break, Concepta. I think it's dinnertime anyway."

In the Great Hall, she slides into a seat across from Hermione and fills her plate with mashed potatoes and sausage. She pulls the loaded plate back, but looking at all that food, can't seem to find her appetite.

"Are you okay, Ginny?" asks Hermione.

"I'm just tired. I'm worried about OWLs. You know how it is."

Hermione nods enthusiastically. "In my fifth year, I felt like I was going to forget something no matter how much I studied. Oh, it was so stressful. It'll be okay, Ginny. It feels like the most important thing in the world right now, but believe me, it's really just a set of exams." Hermione laughs. "I mean, not just exams, but you understand what I'm saying. Don't stress yourself out like I did. Oh, hello Harry."

Harry sits down next to Hermione and starts piling up his plate. He looks tired and distracted, but that's the typical Harry look, especially towards the end of term. It seems like things are always coming to a point around this time of year.

Harry's eyes flit nervously up and over Ginny. She's noticed these looks before – he can't seem to settle his gaze anywhere in her vicinity, as if looking at her too long will give something away.

Across the room, from the Slytherin table, she senses the same flitting gaze from Draco Malfoy. His eyes fall on her, then dart away. Both are trying not to look directly at her. Dean is the only one who has no problem looking at Ginny. He stares at her with a deep frown. Ginny never did break it off with him officially, and now it's probably too late to have a civil conversation about it.

Ginny decides to focus on her food, and after the first few bites, she realizes she is ravenous. She pours on more gravy and grabs a biscuit from a heap. She cannot let all of this Malfoy stuff get to her. There's Quidditch practice tomorrow, and she does have OWLs to study for. And if something does happen in the next few months, she won't be much use to Harry if she's weak from hunger and constant worry.

"You've just got to stop obsessing about Malfoy!"

Ginny's eyes shoot up, but Hermione is talking to Harry.

"Come on, Harry. You've already told Dumbledore everything you know, and he doesn't seem worried."

"I know, Hermione."

"And you're meant to be focusing on Slughorn, where we've made zero progress by the way."

"I know, Hermione. I'm trying. I can't just force him to talk to me, can I? We've already been through this."

"What exactly did you tell Dumbledore about Malfoy?" Ginny asks.

"That he's a bloody Death Eater," says Ron. Her brother has squeezed in between Harry and Hermione and has already shoved an entire sausage in his mouth. "Harry told him about the conversation he overheard between Malfoy and Snape, but he still trusts Snape. He won't budge on that."

"And if Dumbledore trusts Snape, then so should we," says Hermione.

"Hermione's right," says Ron. Ginny smiles. It's nice seeing the two of them back on good terms after the whole Lavender debacle. It's also nice not seeing Lavender and Ron sucking face all over the Gryffindor common room.

Ron impales another sausage on his fork and points it at Harry. "I mean, come on Harry. I can't see Malfoy being a Death Eater. He's just…Malfoy. He's all talk."

Harry looks annoyed. "He's been going into the Room of Requirement more than ever. He's definitely up to something."

Ginny stands up abruptly. She doesn't want to talk about Malfoy, and she doesn't want to not talk about the Dark Mark burned into his forearm. "I have to meet some friends," she says. "See you guys."

"Oh okay. Bye, Ginny." Hermione waves. Ron ignores her, and Harry mumbles something with his eyes cast downward.

Ginny walks out of the Great Hall. Grey eyes catch hers momentarily, and then dart away.