I've discovered that I can only write Harry Potter fics in flashes of inspiration. Hopefully, I'll have plenty of those over the next month, since it's exams and it's only three days in and already I'm bored out of my mind... Almost done! (fingers crossed)

He wasn't actually sure how he'd done it, but somehow, through some trickery so cunning that he'd even baffled himself, its originator, he'd managed to get into the Gryffindor common room. He'd been pestering the Mudblood about it for weeks, now, trusting to sheer annoyingness and whatever subtle hints he could think of to drop to get him in; and then, one day, she'd suddenly said yes. At the rate things were going, he had expected it to take another month, at least. He'd even made it one of his New Years resolutions, even though New Years was still almost a week away.

He might have thought it was Ginny's intervention - although why she would want him there was anyone's guess - except that she had made it quite clear, in the few days since their chess game, that she would prefer it if he wasn't around. Frustratingly, it wasn't a 'go away, I hate you' sort of attitude, but more of a 'I don't have time for you right now.' Nobody dismissed a Malfoy like that.

So it was that, through some twist of fate or his own contrivance, Draco found himself sitting in a deep armchair in front of the Gryffindor fire, fully conscious that the quiet in the room was caused by his presence alone. There were hardly any students left over the break, but if the Slytherin common room was anything to judge by, those remaining should have been making more noise than the entire House normally would, as festive cheer and boredom took hold. Instead, it was almost peaceful, in a menacing sort of way.

Not that he considered Potty and Weasel much of a threat, he amended to himself. If they wanted to sit around and glare at him, imagining that they were being subtle or some such, that was their outlook. For his part, he intended to sit in this - rather comfortable - armchair, ignoring them all and basking in the knowledge that he, Draco Malfoy, self-appointed and uncontested Prince of Slytherin (although he didn't use that title out loud, he just acted as though he were), was sitting in the Gryffindor common room.

"So…" Was the Mudblood actually trying to make conversation? He had thought she had learned her lesson back in September, during that disastrous picnic. There was no way in heaven or earth that he would have a civil conversation with the likes of the Dream Team. "How has your vacation been, Malfoy?"

She used to try calling me Draco, he mused. He'd forbidden it, of course, but she'd persisted for a time, taking some perverse pleasure in that small modicum of revenge. As though it actually bothered him all that much; he was used to having such an ill-thought-out name, and had long ago decided that at least his parents hadn't hated him enough to call him Ronald.

It was an effort not to glare at her. She's supposed to be smart, but she can't figure out that I never, ever want to hear her voice. Unoccupied by other things, his thoughts drifted to the other member of Gryffindor with whom he was, ah, acquainted, and curiosity as to where she might be. If he hadn't been stuck in this room because of his own bloody-minded determination to piss off as many Gryffindors as possible, he might have gone looking for her, as had become his habit. Sometimes, he would go up and bother her, just to see how she would react and, perhaps, start another small spat which would leave him grinning to himself for hours. Other times, he would stay out of her line of sight and just watch her.

Right now, though, he had no idea where she might be. For all he knew, she was off with Zabini somewhere, and the other boy was using the time to make a move on the little red-head. Whenever Zabini tried anything while Draco was present, Draco found some excuse to block his housemate's efforts. Might as well spread the suffering around, he reasoned. There's no reason I can't torture people from my own House as well.

As though in answer to his thoughts, he heard the portrait slam. Unable to stop himself, he glanced over to find that, as he had secretly hoped, Ginny had arrived. With her hair pulled up hastily in a clip so that strands of it escaped in every direction and a smudge of ink on her cheek, she looked undeniably studious. But while he hated that aspect of Granger's personality, it seemed almost - not cute, he would never use the word 'cute' - attractive when it applied to Ginny.

She stomped over to a table just behind where Weasel sat and slammed her pile of papers onto the table before throwing herself into a chair. Someone had recently caught the brunt end of her temper, Draco suspected, and he considered himself wise enough not to say anything to bring the aftereffects down on his own head.

No one ever accused Weasel of being that intelligent, however. "Are those your Transfiguration notes? Can I borrow them?" From a sixth year? Draco wondered. Only Crabbe and Goyle need to do that.

"If you need to borrow a first year's paper to do your homework, Ron, you really are pathetic." It was a thing of beauty to watch little Ginny take out her frustration on her looming brother. "And even if they were my notes, no, you couldn't borrow them, because they're mine, and you should have taken your own when you were in sixth year."

"I did, I just…"

"Borrowed 'Mione's, I know. What's he doing here?" As far as Draco knew, Ginny had never once even looked in his direction, but she was still aware of him. He took that as a promising sign that he was finally getting to her. On the other hand, she hadn't put any special inflection on the sentence - she might have been asking why someone had their owl with them. Plus, being noticed put him squarely in the line of fire. "No, never mind. I don't have time to listen to you ranting."

Weasel only managed to squeak out an indignant "I don't…" before his sister continued her tirade - which it was, if delivered in a very calm manner.

"Get your ass over here, Malfoy. I said now."

Bemused, and a little uncertain as to what she wanted, he stood slowly and stretched before sauntering over to her. It wouldn't do to make her think he would hurry for anyone, least of all her. A single glance at Weasel's red face made him change his mind about sitting across from her, and instead he pulled a chair up close to Ginny and sat beside her.

She gave him an irritated look, but didn't comment. Instead, she grabbed a stack of papers and slammed them in front of him. "Mark."

"Why me?" It sounded a bit pathetic, even to himself.

The look she gave him spoke volumes, but all she said was, "Please." With an inward sigh, he grabbed a quill and started reading the paper. How was it, he wondered, that he could read so much into a single glance from her? Coming from Snape, that look might have meant, "you think you're being clever, but keep it up and it'll be points off." Coming from the Mudblood it could have meant "I hate you, slimeball." From Dumbledore, he wouldn't have been surprised if it had meant, "do you know, I believe I may have just got a frog stuck up my nose." But coming from Ginny, it meant "you're being annoying again" and "I don't have time for this" and "because I trust you" and maybe even "I could really use the help right now but I'm too proud to ask for it, especially from you, but I'm damn sure not asking any of them." He put a big red circle around a paragraph that appeared, for no good reason, to be made up of only half a sentence, despite being four inches long. Maybe he was just reading to much into that look. It might have only meant "you're annoying." Aren't Ravenclaw's supposed to be smart? he wondered as he scribbled a failing grade at the top of the page in a big, cheerful font.

Ginny wasn't about to speak first, he realized some time later, so it was up to him. "So," he said conversationally, "how did you get stuck doing Snape's marking?"

"It was meant to be a detention." Draco froze. He was helping her with her detention? "But Dumbledore put me to cleaning cauldrons instead, and told me to mark them anyways so that Gryffindors would stop failing Potions."

"Oh, I see. So little goody-goody Gryff…"

"Fails more students than Snape ever did," she agreed, not looking away from the paper that she was covering in red marks. "Show me a first year that can put together a coherent sentence and I'll give them a perfect score, even if they try to tell me a levitation potion ought to be orange because it's their favorite color."

"They've tried that?"

Finally she looked at him, glancing sideways through her curtain of hair to give him an amused look. "Have you ever reread your papers from first year, Draco?"

Draco was vaguely aware that, somewhere in the background, a red-haired oaf was about to have an apoplexy because, not only was he talking to Ginny with something approaching friendliness, she had just called him by name. Aware that it would probably lead to an attempt on his life, he grinned at her. "No, I haven't, Ginny."

Her slight return grin said she knew what he was doing. She stuck a hand in the pile in front of her, seemingly at random, and pulled out a much creased paper. "In that case, sweetums…" She slammed the paper in front of him. "Shut up and sit down, Ron."

The menacing presence ignored her, storming closer to where Draco sat, until… "I said, sit down." An irritated wave of Ginny's wand knocked her brother backwards across the room. Draco didn't really notice; his attention was focused on the page in front of him. It was his first perfect paper - his very first potions paper, in fact.

"Where did you get this?"

"It was in a pile that Snape told me to use as reference when I started marking, and stay sat! What do you think?"

As much as it hurt, he settled on the truth. She already knew about Snape's favoritism, and pretending that the evidence wasn't right there in front of him would only make him look stupid. "I can't believe I passed."

"I can't believe you were ever that dumb," she agreed.

Shocked, he looked up from the paper. There was a hint of a blush in her cheeks, but she was still composed. "Was that almost a compliment?" he demanded, unable to think of any other suitable reply.

"Ron, I told you to stay sat, or I will nail your ears to the floor! Just an observation that maybe Snape was right to give you the benefit of the doubt."

"How would you know…"

She gave him an irritated look. A 'please stop being an idiot' look. A 'I didn't want to mention this' look. "Snape's not the most organized man, besides being a greasy git. He gave me the first half of your senior thesis along with some second-year papers."

"Oh." What else was there to say? 'Thank you for accidentally reading it'? 'Yes, I thought it was damn good, myself'? 'You actually understood it' might have been acceptable, if he'd been able to keep the disbelief out of his voice. Instead, he said, "Did I get a passing grade?"

"Sadly, it was incomplete." She shrugged. "I had to fail you…" a very deliberate glance at her brother, who was ignoring her warnings to stay away… "shnookums."

Pulling the next paper to be marked towards him, Draco sighed in a very exaggerated way. "It's alright, babe. You can make it up to me later."

Just before he was knocked backwards, chair and all, by a mass of very angry red-head, Draco caught a good look at Ginny's face. Later, he was sure that hitting the floor must have addled his head, because there was no way a single look could so many meanings, even one of her looks.

"You sorry son of a - "

"Ronald Weasley!"

The fist stopped half an inch from Draco's face. Experimentally, he tried breathing again, but found that having a very angry Weasley kneeling on his chest while pulling his face up by his collar didn't really allow him that luxury. "Get off him right now, Ronald!"

The younger Weasley didn't even wait to see if her brother would do as she said, and instead sent him flailing across the room with a wave of her wand. It was a pity that he narrowly missed being speared on the halberd held by a suit of armor. "Go to your room! And did I tell you that you could stop marking?"

It's an awful shrew I've chosen for myself, Draco thought, and it wasn't until later that it occurred to him to be horrified by the direction of his thoughts.