A/N: Thanks to all readers and reviewers. And don't be scared! This really isn't dark D/G. But if Ginny and Draco really were together in any way during his sixth year… and that's a scenario that I've always secretly loved… then I think that this kind of dynamic would have to be there. He was under too much pressure, too much torment, to just skip around being a happy boyfriend. Just wait and see how it all plays out… ;)

And happy new year! J

Chapter Six

Ginny looked up at him with troubled eyes. "Draco…"

He fought to hold onto some shred of control. He'd spent months over the summer doing just that, during his Cruciatus lessons with his dear aunt Bellatrix. Draco had learned much about how to control pain and anger and a desperate desire to bolt out the room as fast as he could, to run and keep running until he left Malfoy Manor and everyone in it too far behind him to ever find again, because he knew he could never run that far. But he hadn't learned how to control pleasure that went wrong, or actions that ran into the immutable wall of what his partner wanted or didn't want.

"I don't know if I want to do this," she said, taking a deep breath.

I don't know. Well, at least Ginny hadn't given him a flat no. Perhaps there was still some way to salvage this.

"Did you like what I was doing to—for you?" he asked her.

"Yes," she said.

He reached down and caressed her neck, being careful to not go down any further. "Doesn't that feel good?"

"Of course it does," she said.

Draco slid his hand down the curve of her waist, stopping at the side of one hip. "Wouldn't you like me to show you just a bit more?"

She sighed, her face suddenly shifting into the distance somehow, and she looked far away from him. He wanted to drag her back.

"I'll only touch you, Ginny," he whispered. "I won't even take your knickers off. Just spread your legs a bit. You'll love this; you can't imagine how much you will love what I'm going to show you next."

She shook her head, but he had the strange feeling that she was responding to some thought process inside her head rather than what he was saying.

He was impatient. He couldn't help it. He was only sixteen years old, and his hormones were driving him blindly onward. And to make matters worse, he hadn't touched a girl in months and knew exactly what he was missing. And he'd done it for her. Couldn't Ginny appreciate this? Couldn't she understand how much he needed her?

"You've never done this part before either, have you? Is that why you're afraid?" asked Draco, trying to sound calm.

"I'm not afraid. I'm not! But…"She shifted her eyes away from him, and it seemed to Draco that she had a strange, faraway, glazed look.

"Someone tried once," she said. "It almost happened."

"You didn't want it?"

Slowly, she shook her head.

"Who was it? How did it happen, Ginny?"

Ginny only shook her head. Again. She seemed impossibly far away, as if her soul had suddenly fled, leaving her body behind with a tiny bit of consciousness in it, and she, whoever Ginny really was, had almost entirely gone. Draco could feel impatience bolting through him

"All right, don't tell me. But whatever happened then, it's in the past. We're talking about now, and you want this," said Draco. "You like the way I make you feel. You want to find out what comes next, and you know I can show you, more thoroughly than you can imagine."

"I believe you, I do, but…" Ginny seemed unable to stop shaking her head.

She wasn't going to explain. He would have listened if she did; he was sure of it, but she wasn't even going to try, and he could not help irritation from bolting through him. This is more than I can handle now, he thought.

"Don't you think you're being a bit ridiculous then?" he asked her.

"No, I'm not."

He wanted to be sensitive, he wanted to understand her, but too many parts of him could not. Draco was wise beyond his years in some ways, emotionally stunted in others, and he was then trapped in terrible expectations that nobody at Hogwarts could possibly have understood, even if he'd been able to tell them. Often, he felt as if he were going mad. Ginny had begun to seem like his lifeline to sanity, but she seemed so far away from him now. As if his grasp would go right through her. He desperately wanted to bring her back, by any means necessary.

"I can give you pleasure that you've never had," whispered Draco. "Do you doubt that?"

"No, I don't. I know you can do it. It's just… look, I didn't come here planning on shagging you!" She looked at him directly, her golden eyes seeming to pierce all his secrets. "That's what you thought I was going to do. Didn't you?"

In the glare of those eyes, he could not lie, even to himself.

He swung off her body, rolling to one side. "I've done nothing wrong," he said sullenly, not quite answering her. His body didn't seem to understand that a roadblock had sprung between him and the satisfaction he craved, and the desire he felt was maddening.

"I didn't say you had," said Ginny. "But you need to understand that I know what you're trying to do."

"You don't know anything about need, Ginny," he said in a voice very like a snarl. "What I need is—" He was able to stop himself from finishing the sentence the way that the worst part of his nature wanted to do.

I need you to tear those damn knickers off and spread your legs for me, Ginny, and let me lose myself in you before I go mad and burst apart and crawl away crying like a child, crying that I can't do what I've been ordered to do, that I can't kill, that I can't become a murderer or be murdered myself! I need to forget, I've got to forget. You can give me that forgetfulness. You. Nobody else.

She stared at him, and in that awful moment, he was sure that he had said the words aloud, that he had spoken the unspeakable. The gods knew that it was all true. His hormones were driving him forward, crying out for release, for a mindless afternoon of forgetfulness in Ginny Weasley's body, for the consuming rush of physical satisfaction that would make the terrible strain go away; no, nothing could manage that trick, but mindless pleasure that would lift him on a sensual cloud above the horror of it all, even if only for a few hours. He needed Ginny to simply offer herself to him, without hesitation, without scruples, without questions and complexities, to allow him to do exactly what he needed to do, to sate himself on her body and the consequences and the future for either of them be damned.

Draco would one day understand just how desperately unfair he had been to her, expecting her to give up her virginity to him without getting anything in return, without promises, without bonds, without plans, with nothing but pleasure. It was not something that he should have expected any girl to do, but especially not Ginny.

But at that time, he could not sort out any of those ideas. He only knew that he was desperate, throbbing for her, burning for her, at the mercy of his need, and she did not, would not, could not understand why this was so.

So Draco said the worst thing that he could have said, although with no understanding of what he was doing.

"You're being a silly little girl," he said coldly.

Ginny stiffened as if she had suddenly frozen, as if she had been cast out into the storm outside. But her voice was hot with fury. "What did you say?"

She was responding to him. She was returning. He was goaded on.

"I said you were being silly, and you are. I promised to stop whenever you asked me to, and I have, haven't I? And now I want to go just a bit further, to show you how much pleasure I can give you, and you won't even let me do that!"

"Like I said, I didn't exactly agree to have sex with you today. I was just going to meet you in the forest," she said. She sounded angrier, but still a bit distant, and he was driven to make her angrier still, if that was what it took to get her to respond to him. He had to have her respond to him. He had to prove that he himself was real. Let her scream at him, yell, punch him, anything. As long as she didn't keep staring at him so fiercely, yet as if he were a million miles away from a prison where she was locked inside her own mind.

"Look, we won't actually shag; this isn't the same," said Draco. "You must know that. You can't be as innocent as all that. I'd only be touching you."

"That's not all you want from me, though, is it?" said Ginny.

"I haven't done anything you don't want," said Draco, knowing that he was not answering her question. "I told you that I would stop if you asked me to do so, and I have, haven't I? Even though you're being ridiculous, even though you're not giving me anything I need, I'm hardly forcing myself on you, am I?"

She turned her head back to him, her face flushed. "Look, I'm not here to serve you, Draco! I'm not some sort of bed-elf. Oh, I've heard about those too; all Zabini does is brag about his."

She was right about that. Well, at least she was talking to him now.

"I'm not Zabini," said Draco. "He'd give a lot to be in my place right now, though. And do you really think he'd be so considerate?" He was being unfair to Blaise Zabini, and he knew it; the boy was a poser with a kind heart that he loved to hide beneath a flippant exterior, but at that moment, Draco did not care.

"No, probably not. But that doesn't change the fact that you want more from me, and you want it right now," she said, accusingly, sadly, as if her words really meant something else, although he was in no shape to work out what that was.

"All right—I do!" He threw up his hands. "Of course I do. Did you really expect anything else?" he blustered. Once again, he'd said the wrong thing, but he could not stop himself now. "You're beautiful, Ginny, you're in bed with me, you've been happy to let me take off all your clothes until you're wearing nothing more than knickers. You're moaning with pleasure when I touch your breasts! And are you planning to stay a virgin for the rest of your life? I can show you what sex can be. Can you honestly say you don't want that, not at all, not even a bit?"

"But then what?" Ginny demanded, sitting up halfway and propping herself on her elbows. "Let's say I go all the way with you. What happens once we get back to Hogwarts? Are we going to start eating breakfast together at the same table? Talking to each other while we walk around the lake holding hands? Are we going to wave to all my friends, to my brother, to Harry?"

The mention of Harry's name goaded him as nothing else. "Oh, Potter," he sneered. "Of course. I should have guessed you'd be worried about what he'd think above all else."

"Don't change the subject, Draco Malfoy!" Her eyebrows swooped together into one angry auburn line. " Why don't you admit it? You expect me to just give you my virginity without knowing what's going to happen next, if you're going to speak me again, if we'll be able to meet again, if anything will happen between us again? And without telling me anything about what's actually going on with you this year?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," said Draco weakly.

She laughed. "I think you do."

Oh gods. Oh no. He was instantly on alert. "You don't need to know, Ginny; you couldn't understand." How much did she know? Nothing, she can't know anything, and that's the way it's got to stay.

"Because I'm just a silly little girl, is that it?" she laughed harshly.

Something about the phrase was triggering her. He realized it. But he did not know what to do about it now.

"Look, I—" Draco ran his fingers through his hair, putting it all on end. "Yes. There are certain… pressures on me. Can't I have one single afternoon's relief from them?"

Ginny's set her jaw, the muscle jumping behind her skin. "Not if it means that you're expecting me to have sex with you while keeping all these secrets from me. You know, Draco, you know what that would mean to me!"

Draco kept silent. He did have a fair idea of what she was driving at. Purebloods who had turned their backs on the old ways, families like the Weasleys, had also adopted prim sexual standards to set themselves apart from the decadent old guard like the Malfoys and the Zabinis and the Parkinsons. That was why he would never have expected a Slytherin girl to be as inexperienced as Ginny was. And that was also why it was desperately unfair to expect her to give herself to him when he could give her nothing in return. In her heart, he knew that this fact cut to the core of the conflict between them.

"What do you expect me to do?" asked Draco, his voice quiet.

"You could start by telling me a few of those secrets," said Ginny. She sighed, and the rigid set on her shoulders lessened a little. "Help me to understand. If you'd just tell me what you're going through... Don't keep it all from me."

This wasn't the way he'd wanted it at all, not the scenario he'd earlier pictured. Yes, perhaps he could unburden himself to her in the end, but he had to have her first, to bind her to him in a way that nobody else could ever do again, and in return, he would confide in her. But she expected him to confess his secrets to her without giving up anything in return. For all Draco knew, she would turn on him in horror, jump out of the bed, and run screaming out into the storm wrapped in nothing but a blanket before she even knew a tenth of all the secrets he could tell her. That was what he could not do.

"I need this, Ginny," said Draco, hearing his own voice speaking coldly and distantly.

That had been exactly the wrong thing to say. It was as if he also hovered above the scene as his older self, one who was horrified to look back and see what a fool he'd been at the age of sixteen. But in the present, he pressed on.

"Can't you just let me have some relief, some release? Can't you give that to me, Ginny?"

"If that's all you want, then you're going to have to get it from someone else," she said. "I'm sure Pansy Parkinson would be happy to oblige."

"Yes, she would," he retorted. "She's made the offer many times." As indeed, Pansy had. Draco had turned her down, perhaps because she was a friend, and he would not risk their friendship in that way. The thought made him angrier than ever.

"Then go to her," said Ginny, moving a bit further away, her back rigid against the headboard. "I'm sure she won't expect you to tell her anything."

"No, she wouldn't. But she's not here, and I don't want her. And you're the one who expects me to simply tell you all my secrets, Ginny," said Draco. The words came out as more hurt than angry.

"Well, you expect me to just have sex with you so that you can get an afternoon's relief from keeping all those secrets. And it doesn't seem to be anything more than that," said Ginny, sounding sad. Her face was sad too, more sad than angry, and that made him pause, even in the middle of his anger and confusion and thwarted lust.

He could storm out. But he would shatter any fragile chance he'd ever had with Ginny Weasley if he did so. If he proclaimed that he was leaving in order to have sex with some other girl, and then actually did it, whatever he and Ginny had would be ruptured beyond hope of repair. And he understood that he desperately did not want that to happen.

Draco swallowed hard. "Ginny… you don't want to know." He reached out across the expanse of coverlet that separated them and almost touched her hands with his. "if I could tell anyone living, I would tell you. But I can't. You're better off not knowing."

She laughed bitterly. "That isn't the first time I've heard those words today."

What do you mean?" he asked cautiously.

"You think you're the only one keeping secrets from me? You're not." Her mouth twisted. "And I'm about tired of it."

Ice crisped down Draco's spine. He felt suddenly very cold, even though he was wrapped in blankets. Whatever Ginny meant, this was what she had been talking about earlier. And even though he'd always been rubbish at divination or precognition or telling the future in any way, he had a very, very bad feeling about what she was going to say next.