Chapter 10 – Listen to the Hat for a Change!
Ginny and Draco went on with their foolishness for more than a week, both moping around their common rooms instead of confronting the other and straightening things out. It was quite childish and both knew that very well. However, that did not stop them from doing it.
Her brother and friends all assumed her introverted tendencies of late had to do with her father's disappearance, and no one had even thought it could possibly be due to Malfoy. Even though they were quite alarmed at her newfound love of curling up in the common room when not in class, it was no problem to her housemates that she was forgoing her daily library sessions with Malfoy to do so.
It was beneficial to the Golden Trio that Ginny was out of sight and seemingly out of mind. Now that Ginny was busied with her feelings and avoidance of a certain blond haired wizard, Harry, Ron and Hermione would camp out in the library doing research. It seemed that their roles had switched with the sad couple. It had always been the couple spending time in the library while the trio were being secretive in their common room.
The trio went into research mode to uncover any spells or charms that could help Harry in his fight with Lord Voldemort. He had returned from finding and destroying Salazar Slytherin's locket; one of the Dark Lord's remaining Horcruxes.
He had remembered seeing the locket at Number Twelve Grimmauld Place, and had remembered Mundungus Fletcher filching some of his godfather's family valuables. He was quite certain, after a thorough inspection of the grim old place, that the locket was not there, and that Fletcher must have taken it as well. He tracked him down, threatened Mundungus with incarceration for theft, and proceeded to get information from the fool on the locket's whereabouts.
Mundungus had sold the locket to a pawnshop on the outskirts of Diagon Alley, situated near the entrance to Knockturn Alley. After Harry had gotten this information out of the man, he ran to the pawnshop and paid an insane amount of galleons to get what he was looking for. Harry decided to use a Blasting Curse, as well as a "Reducto" on his purchase and then the locket, along with the part of Voldemort's soul inside it, was ancient history.
It was after he had destroyed that Horcrux that he had returned to Hogwarts to find his best mate's father missing and a rather depressed ex-girlfriend. It did not bother him so much to see Ginny moping around, as he had gotten used to that at the Burrow over the summer. After spending a mere two weeks with the Dursleys, Harry was relieved of the nasty family for the last time in his life. While he had been staying at the Burrow he had witnessed Ginny holing herself up in her room for three days straight, and not letting anyone in aside from Fleur Delacour, Bill Weasley's then wife-to-be.
By the time Bill and Fleur's wedding had come around, Ginny had let herself out of her room, but would still brood around the house. However, by the end of the summer she had reduced herself to only glaring daggers at Harry when he was around, but he was told that when he was nowhere near the girl she was quite a pleasure to be around again.
He knew that this time around, since he had nothing to do with it, Ginny's problem could not possibly be such a big deal and that she would deal with whatever it was because she had more important things to worry about. Harry, however, was dead wrong. Ginny had gotten over her father's disappearance, not that she had forgotten him or anything. She just put it at the back of her mind, and knew that worrying would not help him to be set free. She trusted the Order to get him out of harm's way as soon as possible, and that was why she was focussing more on her problem with Draco than the problem of her father's kidnap and torture by apparent psychopaths.
Ginny knew what Harry was thinking; as she had overheard a conversation that had occurred between himself and her brother, when they had assumed she was asleep in her chair in front of the fireplace. They had not been aware that Ginny had been awake and had witnessed every little bit of Harry's extreme arrogance.
The Boy Who Lived was not on Ginevra Weasley's good side at the moment, despite his heroic efforts to bring down Voldemort. It was more personal than the battle between the Dark Lord and her ex-boyfriend.
The other boy not on Ginny's good side was also under a self-inflicted House arrest. This did not go unnoticed by his Housemates. Most were glad that he did not grace them with his presence, with the exception of his best mate. Blaise Zabini, of course, had confronted him right away, only to be thrown out of his friend's private dorm room. Zabini had not attempted anything again; he avoided his friend until he would decide to let him know exactly what was going on with him.
It was obvious that their House prejudices were getting in the way, and that was very unfortunate for them, indeed. As the Sorting Hat had said the previous year's starting feast, they were all in danger and the Houses needed to unite otherwise they would crumble from within. The founders had worked together to create a school for the students to learn magic, it was only right that they must now stand together to preserve their school, to ensure that the wizarding world of the future would have a place in which to learn magic.
This school year, the houses had managed to attempt putting their differences aside, because of the impending war. However, as always, the Slytherin House was a bit slow at the realization that unity was the way to go. If anything, they did tone down their outward disdain for anything Gryffindor, but to their own House members that showed solidarity and friendliness toward others were immediately ostracized from their social circle.
Now that there was a father kidnapped, tensions were running high and feelings of helplessness were roaming the halls. Everyone could tell that something was going on and that it could happen to anyone. It was now known that the Dark Lord would stop at nothing to fulfil his plans of ridding the world of his opposition, half-bloods and muggles.
Aside from Draco's feelings of betrayal by Ginny, he also felt guilty that he still had not told her about the owl his father had sent regarding her father's kidnap. He knew the longer he waited to tell her about it, the higher his chances were of being hexed by the angry girl, but he just could not bring himself to do the right thing. He did not want to feel as though he was letting his feelings rule him; he thought it would be extremely Gryffindor of him to do so. That was the beginning of the breakdown of the tolerance and trust he had been building for witches and wizards of different backgrounds from the one he had.
Draco was never seen outside his common room, except during class time, and even then, he would only glare at the other students if they were not from his House. Ginny, on the other hand, still kept to moping about the common room, but occasionally she would be seen flying around the Quidditch pitch when it was not in use by the House teams. It was a great way to rid her of the tensions and feelings that were bothering her. It was also a way for her to ignore everyone and everything around her and just concentrate on the liberating feeling she always felt when on a broom.
The liberating feeling of flying was not enough to liberate the feelings that Ginny felt in her heart. She still did not confront Draco about his apparent disappearance. Neither did Draco, until the end of November rolled around. Their month-long avoidance led to a confrontation that could not be avoided.