Just a small update for y'all...second time this week!

jk rowling...disclaimer...yaddah yaddah

As Ginny let the door to Snape's new office close shut quietly behind her she steeled herself for the long walk back to the hospital wing. Raising her chin to meet Draco's gaze she rehearsed what she was going to say.

It all flew wildly out of her mind when she looked up to find the boy way closer to her than she would like. "Malfoy…" she breathed, air gushing out of her lungs in surprise as she stopped short to avoid crashing into him. Draco Malfoy was so close to her that she could feel his body heat and see the tiny blond hairs running the length of his jaw line.

A fuzzy feeling began to grow over Ginny's brain as she got lost in his scent for a moment, she was almost dizzy. Why was he standing so close? Ginny asked herself, trying to wade through the fog in her mind. Why aren't I moving away?

I NEED YOU TO CHARM ME. Purple letters filled her unfocused stare and she began to shake herself out of her stupor. Ginny threw out her arms and clamped her hands around his biceps. Don't think about the muscles…Ginny gritted her teeth and averted her eyes as she pushed him back, achieving an arms-length distance between the two.

She heard an intake of breath and deep sigh emitted from the boy she was still holding. She dropped her hands immediately. His breath wasn't unpleasant but the tone of his exhalation had been full of a complicated emotion that she had no idea how to read.

Tucking a strand of hair behind her ear, Ginny chanced a glance up at Draco's eyes. They didn't have the same effect on her as they normally did for she had prepared herself and his stone grey gaze had been checked a bit. Even so, Ginny felt her stomach squeeze gently.

That happens all the time, Ginny reasoned with herself. Every time you accidentally make eye contact with someone it's jolting.

Ginny didn't admit to herself that those times were usually limited to people across the room and it usually didn't happen multiple times.

Ginny huffed, getting control of herself. "Why do you need me to charm you? Do it yourself." She enjoyed watching his cheeks flush slightly. Red-heads weren't the only ones that blushed.

JUST DO IT, ALL RIGHT? YOU'RE MY TUTOR I WANT TO SEE IF YOU CAN DO IT.

Ginny's eyes narrowed, regarding her opponent. "Fine, but you have to explain to me what you were doing barging into Snape's office like that." Ginny took out her wand and cast the spell, pleased that it was done well. "What if he was really bad and attacked you, what then?"

Disembodied purple letters answered her. I HAD A PLAN.

Ginny snorted. Even in writing, she could sniff out his lie. "Oh sure, I bet that plan had something to do with you chickening out at the end?" Ginny blanched. She hadn't meant to be that mean and rehash and old event. She knew what it meant to him and was devastated with herself.

When no purple letters floated out with a witty comeback, Ginny began to feel worse. As they walked along the hallways, Ginny silently called herself and idiot with every step. "Draco, I'm sorry, I really didn't mean it, I was just, I mean, I can take care of myself you know…" she trailed off.

As they rounded the corner to another hallway, Ginny felt her stomach drop again. I called him Draco. Good Merlin, Ginny, what the hell is wrong with you? There goes our connection to the Slytherins…

Ginny decided to stay quiet for the rest of the walk.

Under the cover of his disallusionment charm, Draco was free to stare at the girl walking next to him. At first he had been annoyed at her questions, although pleasantly so. It was conversation, and like any time Draco found himself being talked to, he lapped it up, regardless of what was being said. But anger had fizzed in his veins when she mentioned last year. It wasn't really anger at her, more at himself and his situation, but it felt good to take the emotion out on someone other than him.

But then she had called him Draco…

Draco's name was a special thing. It had been ingrained in his psyche long ago by his elite parents that the name Malfoy meant everything. So it was his last name that he and his family lived by.

Wherever they went, all they had to do was mention their surname and receive special treatment. It wasn't Draco's fault that he had been subconsciously conditioned to associate certain things to his last name. His father was the man who embodied it, his mother worshiped it and Draco was the product of it.

From a young age this had been pressed upon him along with the facts that Draco was to behave, to act in certain ways, all in accordance with the Malfoy family name in mind. And so his first name was largely forgotten, not in the way things taken for granted are, but more like an old toy that a child doesn't really need, but can't cast away.

His mother called him by his full name when in trouble, as did his father, and only in times of great love and private affection did they call him Draco. The same went at school. Only his greatest friends who loved and adored him called him Draco.

When he was mostly alone in his sixth year, trying to cope with Voldemort's demands, his name, his first name, was hardly spoken at all. Over the summer, there was no time for special moments with his parents and he certainly wasn't making any new friends this year.

Save for one.

When she came into his life, Draco had clung to her desperately. Deep down his Malfoy ways and teaching hated what he was doing, but his need for companionship won out. And when she called him Draco…it brought back memories of family, friends, and love.

Draco Malfoy couldn't help but be infatuated with this girl. A pretty girl, he admitted now unashamed of stating what he thought was the obvious. She had rescued him, talked with him, spent time with him and, including at this very moment, called him by his first name twice.

Under the cover of invisibility, Draco was staring. She was blushing, obviously conscious of what she had said. Draco wanted to reach out to her, to tell her that he cared for her, that he though of her as a friend, an equal, that all the shit about their families was behind him and what she had said in the night sky while they were on brooms made sense to him.

He wasn't the bad guy and he didn't want to be enemies. But he had no idea how to express himself.

For all that his parents taught him, Draco had retained one thing that he was proud of; emotional blockage. Draco's father reinforced the importance of being stoic and in control of his feelings his whole life and Draco was proud when his father acknowledged his progress.

What Draco didn't know was that he wasn't in control of his emotions, just incapable of expressing them. That was what he learned from his father. Unfortunately, the two are easily confused and his father didn't know to change anything.

Theo and Blaise would say that their blonde friend wore his heart on his sleeve, although never to his face. This was evident in years of interacting with Harry Potter and other children he bullied at school. His emotions of envy and annoyance ran wild but if someone were to ask Draco why he had bullied those that he did, he would have been at a loss for words.

They reached the hospital wing in silence and without incident and Draco slipped into his room while Ginny informed Madame Pomfrey of what she was doing there.

Alone in his room, Draco took off the disallusionment charm. The truth was, he could cast the charm on himself but it was never as good as Blaise's and now he know it also wasn't as good as Ginny's. A bubble of pride welled up within him before he quashed it.

Draco was floundering. He had too many feelings that he didn't know what they meant. He couldn't have dealt with them internally if he wanted and calling Theo or Blaise to talk was out of the realm of possibilities for Draco.

He was stuck. In a tiny stone room in the hospital wing at Hogwarts.

Poo for Draco :(