I Still Miss My Valentine (But My Aim is Getting Better)

Some call it love, but that's just hypnotizing chickens.

--Iggy Pop, That One Song I Can't Remember the Name Of From Trainspottting. Does ANYONE know what that line means???

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"Goodness knows," said the full-length mirror hanging on the door of Ginny's half of her room in the fifth-year girls' dormitory in Gryffindor Tower, "that I would never offer undue comments on one's personal appearance."

"Then don't,"muttered Ginny, turning to her dresser to pick up her garnet earrings and fixing them into her ears.

"Oh, I'm not... I'm not... wouldn't dream of it, dear..." The mirror gave a deep sigh, which was rather a trick without a pair of lungs.

Ginny smoothed the lace frills on her dress, tried to adjust the bodice, and sighed as well. The pale pink color was all wrong for her, and she knew it. The frou-frou style with all those little silk bows scattered down one side didn't suit her, and it didn't exactly help matters that the original owner of the dress had been a head shorter than she, and Molly Weasley had been obliged to lengthen the skirt so her knees didn't show. The empire waist...well, how on earth could anyone manage to not look six months pregnant while wearing an empire waist? But it had belonged to her cousin, and had been handed down to her for nothing, so naturally she'd ended up with it. Her roommates had insisted on piling her hair on top of her head and pinning it, when she'd wanted to let it hang free, and she devoutly wished that she hadn't allowed them to do her makeup. Blue eyeshadow really should be illegal, Ginny decided as she examined herself in the mirror. She tossed her head this way and that, admiring the earrings, which were the only real piece of jewelry she owned. They didn't go with the dress, but then, neither did she. Pressing her face closer to the glass, Ginny widened her eyes and blinked, hoping that a more attractive image might magically appear. It didn't work. The same gawky, too-tall girl stared back at her, looking decidedly unpretty in pink.

"Oh, who cares anyway!" she finally said.

"Now, now," said the mirror. "It's better to look good than to feel good, as they say... but don't you think you'd better try to manage one of the two, dear?"

"Shut it," muttered Ginny, turning towards the opening door to her room. She really ought to see about getting that mirror replaced.

"Has everyone else left?" whispered Hermione, tiptoeing in with a bag tucked under one arm.

Ginny nodded. "They're all gone. Emily and Sarah wanted me to go down with them, but I pretended I needed to spend more time on my hair." She grimaced. "They didn't have to agree so quickly."

"You look all right," Hermione said impatiently, sitting on the bed and motioning for the other girl to do the same. "Are redheads really supposed to wear pink, though?"

Ginny rolled her eyes. "Not you, too!" Wonderful. Now Hermione's giving me fashion advice. Talk about the blind leading the blind. "Maybe I shouldn't go to this stupid dance at all," she mumbled. "Maybe I should go off to the Highlands and hide in a cave and make friends with the Loch Ness monster; he wouldn't care whether I wore pink."

"The Loch Ness monster is female, as you know perfectly well," said Hermione. "Don't you remember when she visited the giant squid last year? Not that I'm saying that might not a better idea than doing this, Ginny."

"You promised you'd help." Ginny stuck her jaw out at an uncompromising angle.

"And I keep my promises. I'm only saying that--"

Ginny joined in the chorus.

"This is a perfectly mad idea, I can't believe you've stooped to such depths, either Harry will eventually notice you or he won't; don't you have any self-respect. Yes, Hermione, I know; this marks the six hundred and ninety-ninth time you've said it in the past three weeks!"

"Why did I ever agree to do this?" Hermione wondered aloud.

"Because I was the only one who would help you with S.P.E.W this year. Everyone else had taken to covering their ears and humming 'To Anacreon in Heaven' whenever you came within a twenty-metre radius of them. And also you said that if I absolutely insisted on behaving like a lunatic on Valentine's Day, there needed to be a voice of reason to provide some method to the madness, and who better than Head Girl? You did spend sixteen hours running in an attempt to talk me out of it first, remember."

"I'd nearly managed to forget," the other girl sighed. ""Now, before I give you this bag--" and she yanked it out of Ginny's grasp as she made a wild lunge for it "--let's go over the plans one more time. You'll go downstairs with the special plate. Where's that plate?"

Ginny held up a pink china platter.

"And why do we need a special plate?" asked Hermione in her most pedantic manner.

"So I can tell it apart from all the Hogwarts plates, and it won't get mixed up with them," she replied in a sing-song voice.

"Correct. I'll be standing at the far wall of the Great Hall with Harry and Ron, near the cherub band. And I'll make sure they don't eat or drink anything, especially since you told me that Professor Snape put a love potion antidote in the punch--very clever on his part, really," Hermione said musingly.

"Then I'll come up to the three of you with the plate of cookies and offer them to Harry," Ginny said dreamily.

"Right. The only other person who'll even have a chance to eat them is Ron, and I made it my business to find out that he hates frosted cookies with a passion. So he won't touch them, and of course I won't either. Harry should eat them all."

Ginny allowed her mind to stray into thoughts of what would happen after said gustatory event, pausing only when Hermione cleared her throat rather impatiently.

"We don't have much time, Ginny. We're already coming down very late, and everybody will be wondering where on earth we could have gotten to--"

"Right, right." Ginny caught herself. After all, why waste precious energy imagining what might occur? Soon enough, she'd be experiencing it. "Do you have the potion?"

In answer, Hermione held up a small sealed beaker. Ginny pulled out the stopper and dropped the sprig of bryony into the red liquid. A cloud of red smoke billowed up the ceiling, filled with sparkling silver lights and redolent of the perfume of every rose that had ever bloomed. Ginny and Hermione, watching, felt their hearts rise like two Mylar helium balloons, and suddenly knew why fools fall in love, recognized once and for all that la-la-la-la-la means I love you, and experienced the sensation of the moon hitting their eye like a big pizza pie. It was, in short, amore.

"It turned out wonderfully well," Hermione said, almost wistfully. "Anybody who eats or drinks anything containing this potion will suddenly be consumed by an irresistible attraction to you, and only you."

Ginny opened the bag and started taking out the heart-shaped cookies. "And it will last for three full hours, won't it?"

"Yes..." sighed Hermione, mixing the ruby-colored potion into the bowl of frosting she'd brought.

"Do you want some, Hermione?" Ginny asked curiously. "There's enough, I think."

"No..."

Ginny peered closely at her friend. "Is there something you're not telling me?"

"Positively not." The other girl arranged the cookies neatly on the plate. "Now let's go downstairs."

Ginny let out a long sigh as they made their way towards the Great Hall. She could already hear the faint strains of music, and closed her eyes, waltzing dreamily and with very little accuracy. One, two, three, one, two, three--Fortunately, several sets of staircases took pity on her and refrained from yanking themselves out from under her feet, as they normally might have done. Tonight would be perfect. Perfect! These niggling doubts she'd been having about the wisdom of her actions were clearly absurd. After all, she thought, what could possibly go wrong now?

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Romance is mush, stifling those who strive

I'll lead a lush life in some small dive...

--Nelson Riddle, Lush Life

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Hermione and Ginny hurried downstairs to the entrance hall. Strains of music could be heard wafting towards them, along with the far-from-subdued murmur of virtually all the students fourth year and above who were already at the Valentine's Day Ball; they were decidedly late.

"It's so dreadfully loud," grumbled Hermione. "Isn't there anyone even trying to keep order in there?"

Indeed, the babble of voices became obviously surlier and more snappish the closer the two girls got to the Great Hall. Ginny's stomach already felt as if butterflies were doing the Mexican Hat Dance in it while yelling "Ole!" at intervals, and the unusual amount of noise wasn't helping matters. They were nearly at the wide double doors when she clutched at Hermione's arm, a sudden wave of panic flooding her. She had caught a glimpse of the interior through the crack of one opened door, and by some freakish chance, it showed the precise section of wall and floor right near the cherub band. Her brother moved across the narrow field of vision revealed; his fiery auburn hair was unmistakable. And then she saw Harry. "I don't know if I can do this," she whispered.

"Ginny," hissed her friend, "you've pulled me into a completely demented plot that will probably result in my being expelled, if anyone ever finds out about my part in it. You're not weaseling out of it now."

"Hmmph." Ginny tried to smile, but she kept staring at the crack in the door, watching students walk by. She wasn't looking for anyone in particular, of course. After all, she'd already seen Harry. "A Weasley attempting to weasel out of something. Funny, I suppose."

"I don't care how amused you are by your own feeble puns!" Hermione's dark brows knitted together ominously. "You've gotten us this far, and by Merlin you're going through with the rest of it now."

Ginny mentally measured the distance to the oak front doors. Maybe she could make a mad dash for it, hike to the main road, and make her way to a Muggle train station. There, she'd take a train for Inverness. Once at Loch Ness, surely there'd be a convenient cave somewhere, and finding the monster ought to be fairly easy. Perhaps she could lure it with the Valentine cookies, which she was still holding. Of course, that meant that the Loch Ness monster would then be irresistibly attracted to her. But the alternative was walking into the Hogwarts Valentine's Day Dance in front of everybody and getting Harry to eat the cookies. Suddenly, the lesser of the two evils was not easy to determine.

"Why in the world are you losing your nerve now, Ginny? After all those weeks of planning we've been doing?" Hermione asked despairingly.

Ginny shrugged helplessly. She didn't know the answer herself. If she stood rooted to the spot much longer, though, she was sure that Hermione was going to drag her into the hall by main force. "I suppose it's just that we're actually at the point of doing it now," she said feebly. "I mean--" There was seemingly no way to finish the sentence.

"Ah, Granger!" an all-too-familiar voice interrupted. "Just who I was looking for."Ginny glanced up to see Draco Malfoy, who was wearing black velvet robes, as he always seemed to do at school dances. They were beautifully cut, though, and had probably cost some unimaginable sum of gold Galleons. It was so like him to do that, she thought, when everyone else was wearing red and pink or, in the case of some recalcitrant Slytherins, green, which lent an unintentional leftover-Christmas look to the proceedings.

"You were looking for me, Malfoy?" Hermione asked. "Why?"

"So suspicious, Granger," Draco said sadly, shaking his head as if all his doubts about human nature had been confirmed. "Nobody trusts anybody anymore, that's the problem..."

"If you have something to say to me, Malfoy, please say it," she snapped, gathering her dark maroon robes about her. Ginny couldn't help admiring Hermione then. That was exactly the way to handle Draco Malfoy. The other girl didn't react to his barbed words, didn't rise to his bait; as a result, he didn't tease and torment her continually as he did Ginny. She wondered why she herself couldn't seem to ever manage that trick.

Draco didn't answer Hermione directly, but looked Ginny up and down as if examining a very unsatisfactory horse. She half expected him to say that he highly recommended sending her to the glue factory, and, despite her best intentions of remaining calm, cool, and collected in his presence, she began glaring at him.

"Weasley," he drawled, "what a pleasant surprise. I was starting to think you weren't coming." His words made her start; had he noticed that she wasn't there? Had he been looking for her? She wondered nervously what his next words would be. Hermione was certainly looking at him strangely enough, as if she wondered, too. "I must say," Draco continued, addressing Ginny, "that you look--"

"Yes?" Ginny lifted her chin, her heart pounding until she thought it was going to bounce out of her chest and start rolling down the hall.

"Absolutely dreadful. What in Merlin's name were you thinking?"

"What?" Hermione and Ginny chorused.

"You look all right, Granger, I suppose. I'm talking to Weasley. That dress! That hair! That makeup! How on earth did you get your mirror to let you out of the room?"

With an inarticulate sob, Ginny turned and fled down the hall.

Hermione gave Draco a reluctant half-grin. "You really are rotten to the core, Malfoy."

"Thank you, thank you." He bowed to her, mockingly. "It's good to be appreciated."

"But you've done her a good turn. Without meaning to, I'm sure. Nothing I could've said would have gotten to her into the Great Hall. But I think you just may have managed to goad her into it, after she's cooled down a bit." Hermione paused, looking at him curiously. "You're really going to let her take those cookies in there and give them to Harry?"

Draco spread out his hands in a helpless gesture. "What can I do to stop her?"

"Lots, if you wanted to."

"I never thought you'd turn out to be my champion, Granger."

"Oh! Well, as to that--" Hermione shrugged. "After I saw you pull that thirty-eight hour stretch in the library researching love potions last month, I knew you couldn't be as bad as all that. You're not the horrible, sadistic monster you like to let people think you are, Malfoy."

He raised an eyebrow at her. "Talk about damning with faint praise, Granger. Couldn't you at least call me a horrible, sadistic, dead sexy monster?"

She laughed. "I've only got eyes for a certain someone, Malfoy, and it certainly isn't you."

"Yes, I know who it is." He smirked. "Well, your stomach must be stronger than mine, that's all I can say... Does Ginny know?"

Hermione shook her head. "No, and don't talk so loudly. She might be on her way back."

Draco grimaced. "That's all I can take of the noble gingerbread goody-goodyness that is Gryffindor. I'll already have to be around hearts and flowers all night; if I hear another word I think I'll be ill."

"All right, all right." Hermione flapped a hand impatiently. "What did you want to tell me, anyway?"

"They're pressing all the prefects into service," he said.

Hermione stared. "Whatever for?"

"Well," said Draco, jerking one thumb back towards the Great Hall, "there's a bit of an unpleasant situation in there."

"Of what sort?" she asked, sounding for all the world as if she were going to whip out a parchment and begin taking notes.

"None of the refreshments ever showed up."

"Oh no..." breathed Hermione, her face growing white.

"Oh, yes. The natives are growing restless, you might say. Now, I think what we really need are Aurors in full riot gear, but they seem to think that prefects will be sufficient crowd control. Potter and Weasley have been trying their best to keep them all organized and calm everybody down, but if I were you, I'd--"

But Hermione had already gone dashing down the hall, robes flying frantically, and his last words never reached her. "Come as quick as you caaaaan!" she called.

Draco hesitated, looking from side to side. There were several minutes of silence--well, a very relative silence, seeing as how the increasingly agitated hubbub and turmoil in the Great Hall were getting ready to break the sound barrier. But he was listening for the fairy-like tread of a particular pair of size-10 feet, the British equivalent of which remains unknown, since the author was unwilling to look it up. Suffice it to say, we're talking some pretty big feet here. They belonged, of course, to Ginny Weasley.

"Hurry!" gasped Hermione, sticking her head briefly out the door. "We can't hold them back alone! Marcus Flint just started on the decorations!"

"Isn't he ever going to finish school?" wondered Draco aloud. "Well, I suppose if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself. Why do I always end up doing everything around here..." Sighing, he entered the Great Hall.

Ginny's face burned as she fled down the corridor, and she stopped to collect herself, hand to her hot chest. Oh, she'd never be able to face Malfoy again! Her spine stiffened. Wouldn't he just love that. She'd go to the dance with her head held high! That's what she'd do! Awkwardly, her hands went to her hair, patting it. Several strands had come down, and she could feel her makeup running. She vaguely remembered that there ought to be a washroom somewhere along this hall, but when she opened door after door, only mops and buckets met her eyes. Then she saw a bright pink door painted with little red hearts that she definitely didn't remember ever having been there before. Rooms were always mysteriously appearing and disappearing at Hogwarts, however. Sniffling, she pushed it open.

It was a luxurious little powder room with recessed pink lights, sweetly swank pink carpeting, and a white and gold dressing table covered with jars and bottles and tubes that had an upholstered pink chair pulled up to it. Ginny sank into it with a sigh of relief. She peered at herself in the triple mirror. All of her mascara had run, making her look like a raccoon that somebody had bundled into a pink parachute.

"I'm awful! I'm hideous! I'm absurd!" She sighed. "Why did my mirror ever let me out of the room?" Rather contrary to the custom of mirrors at Hogwarts, this one didn't answer her. However, another voice from behind her did.

"Don't ask me! I just work here. Well, for the night, anyway."

Ginny whirled to see a large pink divan on one side of the small room; she hadn't noticed it before. On it lounged an elf wearing the decidedly unlikely combination of leather pants, a frilly pink lace jacket, and shoes with curled-up toes. His long blond hair fell over his pointy ears, and he was busily filing his nails, pausing to examine his slender white hands at intervals. She goggled at him.

"Legolas?" she gasped.