CONSOLATION PRIZE: PART TWO

She sat at her desk drumming her fingers on the cheap wood. She had Malfoy's file open in front of her but no matter how many times she read it, it gave her no clue as to what he was up too. All she had to go on were a recent spate of breaking-ins that the Aurors weren't even taking seriously. The last investigation had actually resulted in Malfoy being fined almost five thousand Galleons for possessing Dark Artefacts. No wonder he didn't want to make a report. They'd probably charge him with assault. But someone had stunned in him full view of an Auror, clearly they were missing something.

She dropped her head to the desk, whimpering. She then promptly sat up, rubbing the red mark that was beginning to rise on her forehead. Sure Malfoy was a wanker, Ginny thought, but he hadn't done anything recently that she knew of that would make someone want to hurt him. Well, the Aurors were probably a little sick of seeing his ugly mug.

Although, he was hardly ugly, her mind informed her. Just a little pointy. Ginny scowled. She did not find the lecherous, pompous, smirking git attractive. He wasn't horrible to look at, she would concede, but really five seconds with the pathetic excuse for a man, stripped him of any remotely attractive feature.

She sighed. She was getting nowhere. Maybe he'd turned over a new leaf and was just being nice? Ginny scoffed. That wasn't it. He could be nice without teaming up with George. And he had to have initiated it. George wouldn't have gone to him with the idea.

George!

Ginny slapped the receding red mark on her head, wincing as she felt it flare up again. George would have to know more about why Malfoy was running the competition. She shrunk Malfoy's files and shoved them in her pocket. Maybe after talking with George, they could tell her something. She glanced at her watch. Seven thirty. Oh, maybe she could even wrangle some tea out of him.

*~*

George opened the door and Ginny was hit by a sudden wave of floral perfume. He had a pair of goggles resting on his forehead and the remnants of a bright blue slime stained his clothes.

'Gin!'

Ginny cringed as he yelled at her.

'To what do I owe this pleasure?' he asked, stepping aside to allow her entry.

'Am I interrupting something?' she asked, more than a little wary of going into George's flat. She peered around the door and saw the same blue slime that coated George was currently flowing out of the kitchen and seeping into the living room carpet.

'What?'

'I said, "am I interrupting something?" 'she repeated, going up onto her tiptoes and yelling in his ear.

'No need to shout, Ginbug,' George grinned. 'Can hear you just fine.'

Ginny rolled her eyes and carefully stepped into the flat, ducking under George's arms as he went to give her a hug.

'Makes a brother feel loved, that does.'

'So what are you doing?' Ginny asked following the trail of bright blue footprints and oozing slime into the kitchen. Ginny gasped at the sight of it. Blue slime splattered the walls and dripped slowly from the ceiling. Pots and pans were strewn around the room and the sink was overflowing with cups and saucers. In the middle of the table was a large cauldron with red flames curling up the sides. Boxes and glass jars filled with brightly coloured powders and liquids were spread out around it.

'Yeah,' George said scratching his head, 'Ron is an alright ideas man but he's not too good at figuring out how to make it all work.'

Ginny laughed turning from the disaster of a kitchen to her brother. 'Not the ideal partner, huh?'

'He's no Fred, but he's not as bad as you all think.'

Ginny smiled tightly, feeling the sting of tears behind her eyes. She sniffed and turned back to the mess of the kitchen. It was stupid to dissolve into tears whenever George mentioned Fred's name! It had been almost eight years since he died. She should be used to it by now. But no matter how different to Fred he may look to her, George was still Fred's identical twin and when he said Fred's name it was just different.

'Sorry, Gin,' George said quietly, or at least Ginny assumed George thought it was a quiet voice. 'I know you don't like it when I talk about Fred.'

'No, no,' Ginny said, rubbing at her eyes. 'Argh, I'm just being silly. I actually came by for a reason.'

'And what would that be milady?' he asked, glad for the change in topic. He returned his attention to the cauldron that had begun to bubble over. Pale pink globs of gelatinous whatever-he'd-made, slopped down the sides onto the newspaper he'd laid out to protect the kitchen table.

'I was finalist in the competition you and Malfoy ran,' Ginny said casually, or as casually as you could when yelling across a room to your temporarily deaf brother over the bubbling of a cauldron.

'Why'd you do that?' he asked, measuring out a teaspoon of a bright blue powder. 'You weren't even eligible.'

'Yeah, well, I didn't know that at the time, did I?' Ginny said snippily.

'It was in the terms and conditions.'

'Does everyone but me read the terms and conditions?'

George laughed, putting the spoon full of blue powder back in its jar.

'You just measured that out,' Ginny pointed out, pouting. Even George would have read the terms and conditions. Merlin, was everyone as reliable of Hermione these days?

'Has to simmer anyway,' George said wiping some slime off the kitchen seat so he could sit. He pulled out the one beside it and repeated the motion. 'Seat?'

Ginny scrunched her nose. 'I like my robes, thanks.'

'So pretentious.' He shook his head. 'I had thought better of you, Gin. Much better. I thought you were going to on to big things. Spectacular things.'

Ginny rolled her eyes. George's speech still sounded a little strange to Ginny's ears. It was almost like he heard Fred's voice in his head and spoke for both of them.

'What you would have preferred me iand/i Ron working with you?'

George winced. They would do nothing but bicker all day. 'Maybe not. Sometimes I do miss when Ron thought he had the chops to be an Auror.'

'Like when he blows something up in your kitchen?' Ginny suggested. 'Why aren't you in your lab anyway? I thought the point of buying a space to experiment was so this,' she gestured around his kitchen. A particularly large blob of slime fell from the ceiling landing squarely on George's head to help illustrate her point, 'didn't happen again.'

'We were having tea when he had the idea so we just-'

'You've already had tea?' Ginny asked with a frown. 'Bugger.'

'Oh, now I see. You only want me for my cooking,' he put his hand to his forehead, falling dramatically back into his chair. 'No, no. It's fine. Don't placate me. I can handle the truth.'

'Actually,' Ginny said, ignoring George's theatrics and becoming serious. 'I wanted to talk to you about Malfoy.'

'Malfoy?'

'Malfoy,' Ginny confirmed. 'Like I told you I entered the competition and the bastard deliberately sabotaged me!'

'Can you sabotage someone and not have it be deliberate,' George asked, before continuing without waiting for her answer, 'besides it's not like you could have won anyway.'

'That's not the point, George,' she said, her hands flew to her hips and her voice became stern.

'Bloody hell, you look like Mum when you do that.'

Ginny gasped. 'I do not!'

'Spitting image,' George assured her with a grin.

She smacked his arm and then scrunched up her face in disgust as blue strands connected her hand to his arm. She shook her hands to break the strands.

'My hand's all tingly,' she said staring at her now blue palm. 'Is that bad?'

'No idea,' George beamed. 'But imagine how I feel!'

Ginny laughed but quickly sobered. 'Stop distracting me,' she scolded. 'Why are you working with Malfoy?'

George sighed. 'He approached me and it didn't seem like a bad idea. Shop was busy as April Fool's today.'

'But why you, George? Why would he want to work with you?' she pressed.

'Gee, thanks,' he said affronted.

'You know what I mean,' Ginny said, dismissing his disgruntled expression. 'A Malfoy willingly working with a Weasley?'

'Yeah and making the Weasley pay.'

'What?'

'Yeah, right tight arse Malfoy is. Made me pay for everything.'

'Then why was he on the radio pretending you're such great mates?'

George shrugged his shoulders. 'No idea. Said I'd get my money back and then some, in a couple of months, he just had to get his prototype into mass production.'

'His prototype?' she asked, her curiosity piquing. Malfoy had been into see the Aurors about a prototype being stolen from his labs. She was still missing something though. None of it made sense.

'Did he say why you had to pay?'

'Not sure,' George said, standing up and fussing with the containers of powders laid out on the table.

'George,' Ginny prodded.

'I signed a contract, Gin,' he apologised, dropping the teaspoon of blue powder into the cauldron. 'I can't tell you. It was part of the deal.'

As the powder hit the liquid, a sudden burst of an overwhelming aroma of roses hit the air. George hummed in appreciation.

'See now,' he said, leaning over to stir his latest concoction, 'isn't that nice?'

As he spoke, light blue slime rocket out the cauldron, hitting him square in the face and then spraying over the kitchen. Ginny squealed as it splattered against her robes and dripped down into her hair. The surprisingly cool liquid, soaked quickly through her robes, making her skin tingle.

George smiled sheepishly. 'Maybe Ron wasn't the whole problem.'

*~*

She Appararated to work the next morning, and despite the long bath she had had night before and the half hour shower that morning, she swore her skin still had a blue tinge and she was sure it was still tingling. It was quite pleasant really. At first. Now it was just damn annoying.

Ginny sat at her desk and hurriedly filled out paperwork. If George couldn't tell her why Malfoy wasn't paying for anything it didn't mean she couldn't find out herself. She was an Auror. She had certain privileges that the general public didn't. Like subpoenaing Gringotts' records. She smiled smugly as she signed her name for the final time. Really, the form didn't need to be signed half a dozen times, what if she was in a hurry? She owled it off to the Wizengamot and leaned back into her chair with a satisfied grin. Malfoy couldn't hide much longer.

Two days later she was still waiting for a reply. She growled to herself when for the third time that day, her inbox only held insignificant office memos.

'Weasley,' the Auror Commissioner said tersely as he passed her. His face was a deep red which contrasted so very nicely with the blue of his robes, Ginny thought unkindly. .

Ginny cringed. 'Morning, Sir,' she all but groaned to his back. He didn't like her at the best of times, but why did he always have to walk past when she wasn't working?

'Ginny!' Harry called from his office. 'A word.'

Ginny raised her eyebrows. Someone was cranky this morning. She got up slowly from her desk, and shuffled into Harry's office. It wasn't her fault the Commissioner decided to rip him a new one.

'Shut the door,' he snapped as she entered the office.

She let the door close with a bang, which earned her a vicious scowl from Harry, and sat down. She waited for Harry to talk.

His lips were pursed as if a shout was fighting to escape. His hands were clasped tightly together in front of his chain, almost like he was praying. He took a deep breath. 'Did you try and have the Wizengamot get Malfoy's Gringotts' records?'

Okay, maybe it was her fault that the Commissioner had ripped him a new one this morning.

'Maybe,' she said quietly. She gave Harry a small smile, hoping it would dispel some of his anger.

'What the hell were you thinking?' he yelled.

Or it could just throw him into a rage.

'Well he's up to something,' Ginny defended. 'I know he is.'

Harry paused for a moment. 'Really?' he asked hopefully.

Ginny nodded vigorously. 'Malfoy went to George and started this competition on the radio.'

'Ginny,' Harry sighed, scrubbing his face with his hands. 'That's not illegal.'

'No, but, he was attacked and people keep breaking into his house and his office. He-'

'There's no evidence that half of those break-ins took place,' Harry interrupted, annoyed. 'And he was never 'attacked'.'

'Yes, he was!' Ginny insisted. 'At the radio station. A big guy stunned him and I—bugger.' She shot him a sheepish smile. 'I forgot to file the report.'

'Malfoy reported that he was assaulted and you forgot to file the report?' Harry asked incredulously. He was staring at like she'd just told him she'd made a thousand Galleon bet that The Chudley Cannons would win the next Quidditch World Cup.

Ginny cringed. The anger was back again. The redness in his face made the white of his scar more prominent. She made a mental note to tell him that later, he always hated it when his scar was noticeable.

'He didn't actually report the attack to me so much as I was there. So-'

'Did he want to report it?' Harry bit out.

'He may have told me to forget about it.' Harry hung his head and groaned. 'But, but,' Ginny continued quickly, squeezing as many words as she could into the one breath. 'He was all smarmy and evasive and George said that he made him pay for the competition and sign a contract so he couldn't say why and since when does a Malfoy do something as nice as giving away a holiday?'

'Ginny,' Harry said in shock. His eyes were wide and she Ginny swore that his eyebrows had decided to migrate to his hairline. 'You can't subpoena someone's records because they're smarmy!' He held up his hand to stop her next line of defence from spilling out. 'Even if he is Malfoy.'

Ginny huffed and slammed her back into the seat, shaking her head. She could not believe Harry was doing this. She was right. Malfoy was up to something and there was a chance he was using George as a front. What if George was paying because Malfoy still had to launder the money or had it all tied up in support of Death Eaters.

'Look, Gin,' Harry said kindly.

Ginny's head snapped up. Where had that tone come from?

'I know Malfoy has been a bit of a pain lately and you're still a bit sore about the suspension, but that doesn't mean you have the right to invade his privacy. He isn't up to anything.'

'Do you remember Malfoy?' she asked scornfully. 'Pointy. Evil git. Worked with Voldemort. Any of this ringing a bell.'

Harry sighed and shook his head. He had this condescendingly little smile when he looked back up at her. 'That was school and it wasn't his fault. You know that. He deserves a second chance as much as anybody.' He got up from behind his desk and knelt beside her. Ginny looked down at him, eyebrows raised. What the hell was he doing?

'Ginny, please, you've got to pull your head in,' he pleaded. 'Now I took the fall for you this time. I told the Commissioner that I had you order the records but there's only so much I can do for you.' He stood up and looked down at her with a stern expression and crossed his arms across his chest. 'You've got to pull your finger out and your head in, otherwise you're going to find yourself out of a job. You're on thin ice with the commissioner as it is.'

Ginny's mouth dropped open at him in shock as he stood up. None of this was her fault. Malfoy started it when he pulled his radio competition stunt.

'Promise me you'll try,' Harry said, ducking his head slightly. He rocked back on his heels uncertainly. Ginny rolled his eyes. Why did he always have to pull out his kicked puppy look? It wasn't fair. It had been worse when they were together, but even with its muted effect everyone in her family fell for it. Her Mum, her Dad. Even Bill and he was immune to everyone's pout. Bill... Ginny suppressed a smile

'Fine,' she conceded, pouting as she stood. 'But it's still his fault,' she muttered as she exited the office.

She grabbed her cloak as she passed her cubicle and left the Ministry. She'd only promise to be better at work and stop using official channels to wage her highly justified war against Malfoy. He said nothing about her own time and unofficial channels. What was the point of having a brother working for Gringotts if she couldn't shamelessly exploit him?

*~*

'Ginny!' Bill greeted her with a hug. 'What are you doing here?' he pulled a stack of parchment off a chair for her to sit down and searched for a clear space to put them back down. Bill's office was a mess. Parchment was strewn across every available surface. Artefacts from tombs he had worked on now doubled as paperweights. His book shelf was overflowing, with a piles as high as Ginny's head, stacked around it. Every piece of wall was covered with paintings, drawings of ancient symbols and newspaper clippings of unearthed tombs.

'Can't a little sister just pop in to see her favourite big brother on her lunch break?'

Bill checked his watch. 'It's eleven o'clock. Isn't it a little early for lunch.'

'Okay, fine,' Ginny said, dropping the charade. 'I have a little favour to ask you.'

'No,' he said simply, leaning against his desk.

'You don't even know what I'm asking for yet?' Ginny protested.

'Go ahead, ask.'

Ginny scowled. He looked so smug. Bill raised his eyes brows, waiting for her.

'I want to have a look at Draco Malfoy's records.'

Bill exploded with laughter. Ginny's eyebrows knitted together in annoyance.

'You have got to be kidding,' he exclaimed. 'That could get me fired!'

Ginny smiled sweetly at him. She stood up and went to stand next to him. It annoyed her that even when sitting on his desk, he was still taller than her. He eyed her warily as she wrapped an arm around him.

'Hey, Bill, remember a couple months back when you forgot Mum's birthday and I covered for you?'

There was silence in Bill's office for a few moments. 'So it was Draco Malfoy's record you wanted?'

*~*

Bill stood guard over the door, pacing back and forth. The records were kept in a large underground cavern. Rows of filing cabinets stretched back as far as Ginny could see. Ginny sat cross legged on the floor, Malfoy's file open on the small table at the front of the room.

'Are you sure I can't just take this with me?' she asked Bill again. It was all just so complicated. There were whole ledgers in his file.

Bill rolled and eyes and stalked over to her. He flopped down on the floor beside her, cursing the fact the table was made for a fully grown goblin rather than a fully grown man. 'Just look at the summary page. It should give a basic run down on the most recent and relevant business.' He sorted through the mess of parchment, scanning for what he was looking for. He discarded all the ledgers and pulled yet more parchment from the file.

Ginny watched him closely as he read, waiting for him to give her some kind of sign.

'Merlin's shit stained pants,' he breathed. That would be it.

'What?' she pulled the parchment from his hands and quickly read it. With every paragraph she read, he mouth dropped closer to the floor. She looked at up at Bill in utter shock.

'Malfoy's broke?'

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