A/N: Thanks to all readers and reviewers, especially Marinka. More mature themes here. Yay.

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Draco turned violently when he saw her standing there on the sunporch of Malfoy Manor for the second time. It was on a cool early evening in late spring, nearly a year after the first time and about a month before the last battle of Hogwarts, although neither of them knew about that then, of course.

"Oh, fuck, Ginny, what are you doing here?" he exclaimed.

"I don't know," she said.

"I thought—I was sure you'd never—" He broke off. "I never thought I'd see you again," he finally said.

I never did either, she thought but didn't say.

"You shouldn't be here," he said. "It's so dangerous. Too dangerous. Ginny, you've got to get out of here."

She shook her head. "It's not so dangerous. It's May Day. Nobody will miss me."

"Ginny, what's going to happen soon- Go back to Hogwarts. It's not like it was last year; the Carrows are keeping track of every student. You've got to go back. I wish I could. I wish I was there," he said, and an expression of terrible sadness passed over his face. "I wish I were anywhere but here. Except for right now. Because you're here, and I'm selfish."

They stood and looked at each other for a little while longer, until he finally sighed, and told her to come into the house, because it was just too dangerous otherwise. Anybody could see her, after all. Then he had to take her by the hand and they had to run quickly up to his rooms by the back staircase, of course, because it was insanely dangerous to stay anywhere else. Ginny sat perched on the edge of the same chair where she'd sat one year before. He sat across from her.

The room was so quiet that she could hear him breathing. She wondered if he was trying to hold his breath. She knew that she was. She could hear laughter and music coming from outside, somewhere on the grounds.

"Some of the servants are celebrating," Draco said shortly. "They've got a Maypole up; I think you can just barely see it from here—I suppose they have something at Hogwarts."

Ginny shuddered. "I don't want to even know about it if they do."

"Fuck," he said. "I didn't even think about that. Thank all the gods you're not there. You can't go back. Don't you dare go back. It's too dangerous, but then, it's dangerous to stay here as well."

"Not now that we're here, in your rooms," she said. "We're safe."

He laughed. "No, we're not. You're not."

"What do you mean?" she asked. "You'll keep me safe, I know you will."

Draco got up abruptly and stalked to the window, his hands gripping the casement. "I suppose you wish you were with Potter, wherever he is," he said. "Celebrating May Day."

"No," she said. She came up to stand behind him. They were raising the Maypole out on a green lawn; she could just barely see it, and the dancing thrummed in her blood like the beating drums. She looked at the back of his strong hand, at his white knuckles, at the tendons in his arms.

"You two could have a bloody celebration, all right," he said. "Wouldn't you like that?"

"No," she repeated.

"Isn't he what you want?" Draco asked. "Potter? Don't you wish he'd taken you with him?"

"No," she said for a third time.

"You still shouldn't have come here," said Draco. "Potter has something to offer you, when he returns, and you know he'll return. He's the fucking hero, he's got to return. I'm not the hero. I have nothing for you, Ginny. Why did you come here?"

She couldn't answer him. Now that she was here, she wanted to convince herself that she really didn't quite know why she'd come. She looked at the curve and play of his tense shoulders under his thin white lawn shirt, and a wave of weakness ran all through her. She grabbed onto the back of the chair behind her. Oh, gods! I know…I know…

She wanted to slip that shirt off of him and bite at his skin. She wanted to run her fingers along his corded arms and feel his fingers encircle her wrists, none too gently. She wanted to recreate that last moment on his bed from one year before, when he was starting to undo the buttons on her blouse and her black lace bra was just beginning to peep out from underneath and the swell of her breast was barely visible and his eyes went to it like magnets to metal, and he was pushing her down onto the mattress, and she stopped him. She wanted to start time up again. She wanted him to finish what he'd started then.

"Because I had to," she said. She pulled at his arm and forced him to turn round, facing her. She looked up at him pleadingly, unable to speak.

"Shite! I should have known." Draco shook his head, as if she'd just confirmed his worst fear rather than offering him his greatest desire. "Ginny, you're only doing this because it's May Day. You feel the power of primal magic here, in this place, on this day, and it's because of what you've done with me before, in this room. It's only that it's all hitting you at once, but that's all it is."

The drums outside drifted up the room and beat harder and harder, faster and faster, and Ginny's blood thrummed too, itching and burning, a torture in her veins.

"But I feel this, I need this, so much," she said desperately. "And you feel it too, you have to, I know it, you can't turn me down, you just can't—"

"Oh, yes I can!" he growled. "Ginny, you have no idea what's about to happen to me, and soon. No idea at all. You don't know what sort of ungodsly mess I've got myself into; no, I've been forced into it but I can't get out now, the best thing you can do is to get the hell out and never see me again. I can't drag you into this. I can't do this to you. I'm getting you out of here right now; there's got to be someplace safe—"

She barely heard him. The pull of the oldest magic had hit her too hard, and when he grabbed her hand, the drumming in her body exploded. She threw herself against him and started kissing him, inexpertly, frantically; he pleaded with her to stop but she wouldn't listen to him, and finally he gave a groan of surrender, picked her up, and threw her on the bed, half landing on top of her.

She had won, Ginny thought muzzily, and her desperate desire slowed and calmed a bit with the knowledge of that victory. "We're going to do this, right?" she whispered to Draco.

"Don't ask fucking thick questions like that. Nothing could stop me now," he said, with a little laugh that sounded more like a sob. "Probably not from the moment I first saw you on that sunporch."

"Then do something for me," she said. "Lower me down to the bed just a bit, and start undoing the buttons on my blouse—no, Draco, just one or two, so you see the edge of my bra. Now stop. Now wait a moment."

He shivered, looking down at her, his eyes darkening to steel. "Are you trying to torture me? It's working splendidly."

She felt the pulse of insistent desire in her body, and then she nodded her head. "Now go on. Do what you wanted to do last year."

"Oh, gods, yes," he said, almost reverently, and he leaned forward, and Ginny sighed at the utter bliss of going on, of doing more, of doing everything, of letting the steady pulse of lust in her blood overwhelm her and have its way.

Draco stripped off the clothes she could not bear to wear for one more instant, and she pulled at his clothing too because it was unbearable for them to be separated by anything, and then at last there was nothing at all between them and his hands and mouth and fingers were everywhere, all over her body. She had barely had one stitch of clothing off in front of a boy before in her life but it just didn't matter, and she explored his naked body greedily, although her courage failed her a bit when she moved below his waist. He bent his head down to suckle at her nipples, moving back and forth from left to right, and she gasped at the insistent pull between her legs; his fingers moved steadily between her thighs and she cried out.

"Let me," he murmured, and she nodded and he stroked her and stimulated her every nerve and oh, oh, her body tightened and tightened and then exploded perfectly in his hand. He kept moving his fingers and she moaned in astonished delight as the waves of pleasure ran through her again and again, and she whimpered in protest when he pulled away.

"Ginny, I just have to," he said. "I can't wait anymore."

She knew what he was talking about, and for a second, it was as if a bit of clarity broke through her hazy mind, through the pounding desire and the uncontrollable need. It's going to happen, she thought. It's really going to happen. Right now. I am about to have sex. Is this what I want, though? Do I actually want Draco Malfoy to be my first?

"I don't… uh…" He hesitated. "I don't really know what this experience will be like for you."

She blinked. "Don't you know? How can you not know? I thought you were the Slytherin sex god."

Draco looked at the floor. "Uh…"

"Don't tell me that you're a virgin as well!"

"No," he said. "No, I'm not. But I've only ever done this with one woman, and she was very experienced, so I don't really know how this will work out for a girl who's never done it before. But I don't have the best feeling about it, to be honest. And it's been almost two years. So I doubt I can be as gentle as I'd like. I'm rather bloody desperate by now. Oh, fuck, Ginny, I'll explain later if you really want to know. I just, uh…"

Draco looked at her, and for a moment, he didn't look like the cold, bitter Malfoy heir at all, the one who was too old and weary and wary for his years, but only an anxious seventeen-year-old boy. "I just have to know that you really want me," he blurted. "Not that you're half-mad because it's May Day and you're at Malfoy Manor and you feel the power of this place and this land and Stonehenge, but that you want me, me, and that you'll understand and forgive me if this part isn't very good and if I have to hurt you and if you don't like the first time very much, I tried to at least make the orgasms really, really good for you, I did, I tried as hard as I could—"

Ginny put a finger over his mouth. "Shush", she said. "I want you, Draco. You. Just you."

He groaned, and he moved forward to kiss her, and somewhere in the middle he took her hand and moved it down and put it somewhere that almost frightened her, and she swallowed hard. She let him push her back on the bed and spread her legs apart, and he knelt between her thighs for a moment and then slid up, and muttered an apology, and started entering her. And it did hurt, very much, even though she knew that Draco was as gentle and careful as any seventeen-year-old boy who hadn't had sex in almost two years could possibly be. But somehow the pain didn't matter.

"I'm hurting you. I'm hurting you, I know I am, I should stop," he kept whispering, and she kept gritting her teeth and saying "no, no, don't you dare," keeping her aching thighs spread wide. She wondered if Draco actually could stop even if he tried, because he alternated all the agonizing over her pain with groans of , Ginny, and all the time he kept pushing himself into her relentlessly and that part of him just seemed so big, and she'd never expected this first bit to take so long or to be so painful and she didn't know how much longer she could keep from crying or doing something awful so that he'd know how much it really did hurt, until finally he gave a strangled sort of yelp and he was completely inside her and there was no more of him to take.

She could feel tears gathering in the corners of her eyes anyway, although it wasn't from the pain. She had done it. She had chosen him, she had given him this, and now she could never go back.

"Ginny, Ginny," Draco whispered, and he lifted her hips and began to pump into her body, over and over again. Each thrust was painfully delicious and she pushed back at him because even though that made it hurt more, she had to move with him, she just had to, and his breathing got faster and faster and then he shuddered and grew rigid and she felt him filling her with the hot rush of his pleasure and finally holding her as if he would never let her go. But he did let her go, all too soon.

Draco moved back so that his face was shielded by darkness, afterwards, and she could not quite see his expression. "Are you all right?" he asked.

"Yes," she said.

"It didn't hurt too much?"

Ginny thought about how to answer that. "It did hurt," she said. "But it didn't matter, Draco. It really didn't matter."

They both fell silent. Draco had moved a bit away from her, Ginny suddenly realized, towards the other side of the bed. The sun had gone almost all the way down now over the horizon; she could see it outside the bay window. The room was growing a bit cold. She couldn't hear the music any longer, or the dancers, and it was too dark to see the Maypole. There ought to be more; shouldn't there be more? But maybe not. It really would be dangerous to stay much longer, she knew. She picked up her blouse and started putting it on, then felt around on the floor for her shoes. Draco clamped his hand down on her arm.

"Just where do you think you're going, Ginny?"

"Well—" she stumbled. "Back to Hogwarts. They'll start missing me if I don't get back soon."

"Don't be an arse," he said. "You're not going anywhere. "

"Of course I am. If I don't get back there, the Carrows—" She shuddered. "You don't want to know. I don't want to think about it. Draco, let me go, I have to go."

He moved out of the shadows, and she saw that his eyes had gone icy cold. "No," he said. "You're staying here with me."

Her mouth dropped open. "I—I can't," she said.

"You can and you will. After this—" He spread a hand to take in the rumpled bed. "Ginny, you can't think I'll let you go away from me. You're mad if you think that."

Ginny sat down on the bed, all her breath going out in a rush. "Draco, I was actually hoping you would come back with me," she said carefully, her heart pounding.

His eyes narrowed. "Was that your plan all along?"

"I just… "She looked around helplessly. "Draco, I can't go back, knowing you're here, in this terrible place. Come back with me."

He shook his head. "I can't go. But you could stay—yes, you could, and you've got to. Ginny, don't go back to school. Stay in my rooms. Nobody will ever know you're here, Voldemort will never know—you'll be safe and protected."

She stared at him. "Draco, I can't! Don't you understand? Nobody else would be protected- my friends wouldn't be safe!"

His eyes darkened. "You'd be safe, Ginny. You're all that matters. Just which friends were you thinking of?"

"Well—everyone at Hogwarts," she stammered. Something had changed in that room, something in the atmosphere, something in Draco's face, and she didn't like it at all.

He rose from the bed. She started backing towards the door. He walked towards her, as graceful as a hunting cat.

"Who were you thinking of?" he repeated. "Potter? Is that who you meant? Well, I'm afraid I don't much care about keeping him safe."

"I wasn't talking about him, Draco! And I don't like your tone of voice. But if you must know, yes, I'd like him to be safe," she said defiantly. "He's trying to do something important, something meaningful."

Draco laughed. "I suppose you think he's on the side of all sweetness and goodness and light, don't you? Ginny, you don't know half as much as you think you do. I know what the Dark Lord is, I don't have any illusions about him, but if you just knew half of what I do about Dumbledore- If you knew what a psychopathic old fraud he was, how incapable he was of caring about anyone, if you knew how he didn't protect me or any of his students last year, how he let the Dark Lord use me to almost kill everyone in the school, you'd get off that high horse, and Potter worships the memory of Dumbledore's arse, of course—"

She closed her eyes, memories ripping through her. The smell of musty old books. The soft twittering of a phoenix on its perch. The soft, calm old voice saying horrible things.

How very useful it will be if you agree. Otherwise, it may be regrettably necessary. All you will be required to do in return…

"You don't know what you're talking about, Draco Malfoy!" raged Ginny. "You said yourself that something terrible is getting ready to happen here, and the so-called Dark Lord is going to be right in the middle of it, and I don't see you doing anything about it, so don't talk about Dumbledore or Harry or anyone else. And you think you'd be able to keep me safe in the middle of whatever horrible thing it is—don't make me laugh!"

Draco went red. "I could. I could! I'd find a way. I'd keep you in these rooms, I'd come to you every night, I'd do more for you than Potter ever could. He'd never offer you what I would. He'd never give you what I just gave you."

'How do you know? "demanded Ginny, knowing that she was saying terrible things, unforgivable things, standing appalled, apart from herself, hating herself for what she heard coming out of her mouth.

"What are you going to do now, Ginny?" Draco asked viciously. "Go off and find Potter and get into bed with him, so you can have a basis for comparison? Don't you dare. You stay here; don't you dare leave, I'll keep you safe, nobody else will ever have you, no other man can ever touch you—"

"You'll keep me safe as what, Draco Malfoy?" Ginny asked mockingly. "Your little sex toy? I think I'd rather take my chances with Harry." As soon as the words left her lips, she would have given anything, anything to take them back. She stared at the floor, her cheeks burning.

"So that's it, then," said Draco. "So that's why you shagged me—to get me to come over to the right side. What was this, Dumbledore's dying instructions? You're the Order's official little tart now? "

"That's not fair," mumbled Ginny, her eyes filling with tears.

"You do a damn good job, Weasley, I'll give you that," he said coldly. "You could work as a companion at the Crystal Palace. Do you want me to write you a reference?"

That was when she had slapped him, hard. He stared at her for a moment, a perfect red handprint on his deathly pale face. Then he gave her a little bow, and stepped back, elaborately allowing her space to leave the room. She could barely see her way out because of the tears, but she made it back to Hogwarts all right. She hadn't even been missed.

Ginny opens her eyes and looks at the walnut ceiling of the four-poster canopy bed. For a second, she is confused, torn between the past and the present. The sun is going down outside, almost completely sunk over the horizon, just as it was when she lay in this bed two years before, and this only confuses her more. Then she sees Draco lying by her side, and she notices the subtle changes that the past two years have caused in him. And she sees, too, that he isn't sleeping at all.

"Did you get any sleep?" she asks.

He nods. "A bit. I just woke up. You?"

"Same thing. I dreamed…" She shakes her head, trying to clear it. "I dreamed about that afternoon." He knows what she is talking about before she even finishes the sentence, she can tell, and she wishes that she hadn't said anything about it at all. But he only gives her a small, strange half-smile.

"I dream about it all the time," he says. There is no particular emotion in his voice.

She sits up, cross-legged. "I want you to know something," she said. "I understand, now, why you couldn't go. You couldn't leave your father, and your mother."

Draco nods. "That's right. But I don't know if I understood that then. I certainly didn't tell you."

"I wish…" Say it! Ginny took a deep breath. "Draco, I wish I had come to you when your mother died."

Half of Draco's mouth twisted up. "How could you have done, Ginny? You were still with Potter then, remember?"

"I ought to have done it," she said simply.

"Maybe so," he says.

"And I wish I'd understood that she was the real reason why you couldn't come with me, two years ago. But I was only sixteen years old, Draco. I couldn't understand. There were so many things I didn't understand."

"I couldn't understand either," he says. "Why you couldn't stay, I mean. But I think I do now… She isn't buried here. Did you know that?"

Ginny shakes her head. Of course she didn't; how could she have? But she can tell that Draco isn't really asking her.

"My father is laid away in the Malfoy catacombs," Draco goes on. "But my mother was buried with the Blacks. I've always been rather glad of that."

Ginny takes another deep breath. "Will you tell me something, Draco?"

"If I can."

"When are Mulciber and the rest coming back?"

He cannot look at her. She knows that she already has her answer. Everything that he has said today makes sense to her, every warning he has given her, but she knows that she could not have taken any of them. She could not have left him. She still can't.

"Any minute now," he says. "I tried to warn you, Ginny."

"I know," she says. "And I want you to know that I know something else, Draco." She looks at him calmly, looks right into his beautiful, unreadable, impenetrable gray eyes. "You can't let me go now. I don't mean that you're about to make the same offer you did when you were almost eighteen. I mean it's because of who you are, and who I am. You're the leader of the Death Eaters. I'm the brains behind the resistance.' She laughs ruefully. "You'd have thought that Hermione would be that, wouldn't you? But she isn't. They'll probably fall apart without me. That's why you can't let me go. When Mulciber and the rest do come back, you'll have to hand me over to them."

He is silent.

"You know it and so do I, Draco. You saved Ron, but you can't save me. If there's just one thing you could do… just save me from…" Her voice wavers. "You know. From torture. Because I'm brave, but I'm not that brave. I don't think I could stand up under it. You know I'll tell you anything you want to know anyway. And you know what I'm talking about- what torture means to Mulciber and his sort. Not physical pain, because I could probably bear that. No. You know what they do. They take girls, and they—" She can't go on.

He turns and grips her arms, hard. "Do you really think, can you honestly believe, that I would let Mulciber or any of the others get their hands on you, Ginny?"

She breathes a sigh of relief. "That's all right, then. That's all I was ever really afraid of, I think. Will they put me in Azkaban? No. The Dementors are gone, aren't they? I wonder where, then?"

"Will you just bloody well shut up and listen to me?" Draco glares at her.

"Um… okay," says Ginny. "I just wanted you to know that I'm ready now, for whatever happens next, because I know you have to do it."

"You're going to stay with me," says Draco. "That's what happens next. Here, or somewhere else. Wherever you want to go."

Ginny knows all the reasons why she must not listen to another word he says, and they are like dry leaves blowing before a wild spring wind. "Why would you want me to do that?" she asks.

His mouth curves into a bitter half-smile. "Oh, you know, don't you?" he finally says.

"What?" she asks.

"I've lost the battle. I give up. I've given up." His muscles go rigid, as if he is trying to push her away slightly, fighting with himself, still holding onto her. His gray eyes are filled with pain.

"What are you talking about?"

"Because—" His face twists. "I… I… if I say this, I'm lost, but I'll say it anyway. You know what I mean, don't you?"

She looks into his eyes, and in that moment, she knows that she, too, has lost. She will stay with him no matter what it may cost her, but she does not show this decision in her face yet. Draco looks back at her, and his eyes are as guarded as if he expects her to take his heart in her hands and destroy it.

Her own heart begins to rush out, to expand, ready to overwhelm him with all the warmth he lacks, ready to cradle and comfort and soothe him, ready to love and love and love him until all his fears slip away in the safety of her arms. Now she will tell him the truth. She begins to speak, a smile starting on her face, looking into his beautiful gray eyes. The smallest spark of hope is beginning to form in their depths.

And then the door bursts open.