Jewel of the Harem: The Grindelwald Continuum Book One

Chapter 16

A Friend of the Devil Is A Friend of Mine

Loki is the creature who transgresses all boundaries; even more significant, Loki represents the boundary itself. In Loki, the boundary, difference itself, has collapsed.

--Karen Swenson

Allow me to introduce myself; I'm a man of wealth and taste. Pleased to meet you... don't you know my name?

--Rolling Stones, Sympathy for the Devil

Let's make a deal.

--Monty Hall

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Thanks to all the reviewers, especially:

Laura Alexia, DracoEater, waterlily12, who was happy that Hornybastard!Draco was back (oh, he's still back, believe me,) twirler, Rachel Satowsky, Potty and the Weasel, Eloisia, who likes Dark!Draco and is only going to get happier, moonlite, Mara Jade (sorry about the no sex! that's the whole problem with having to update this chapter by chapter,) kdalemama, raindrop, Verbal Abuse, Elsila (who IS the review queen!), Sare, Kagome Higurashi, Athena, Bound, Starrysummer (great review!), and Sydney Lynne. (looks around guiltily) I know there were people who reviewed on PoF and they're all wonderful human beings too.

Loki quotes extensively from Friend Like Me, which is by Howard Ashman and Alan Mencken. From Aladdin, of course!

Draco's quotes are from Langston Hughes' When Sue Wears Red.

Blame Not My Lute is indeed by Sir Thomas Wyatt.

A/N: Wonderful fanart by the fabulous StarEyes for this chapter. Links are within, and they've all been checked and rechecked, so they should work. There's one of Draco that we like to call "Shag Me, He Says," and the minute StarEyes sent it to me I HAD to set it as my wallpaper. Yes, the next chapter will be the long-promised chapter where the evil plot device is revealed that'll keep JotH congruent with OotP (and beyond, should that become necessary, depending on how fast Books 6 and 7 come out.) This chapter, though, already has some very minor OotP spoilers in it. But if you haven't read the book, good Lord, what have you been DOING?????

Anyway, the OotP spoiler warning was in the header, so if you've read this far you know what you're getting into. Let me just say this. Like a lot of other people, I wished Draco had gotten a lot more character development therein. (Although from what JKR's said in interviews, he'll play a much bigger role in Book 6. We'll see.) Well, anyway, here's where he gets it, and JotH will, over time, take into account everything that happened in OotP. If you want to see how I'm going to pull that one off, stick around. ;)

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It felt wonderful to come back to the cozy kitchen at the Burrow after making a snow fort and throwing snowballs at her brothers on a winter's day, and draw a chair up close to the fire, and feel its crackling warmth on one's frozen face and hands. It felt wonderful to stretch and yawn after getting up late on a leisurely Sunday morning at Hogwarts, and then poke down to the Great Hall in one's own good time to be met by a sumptuous spread of eggs and bangers and pancakes and waffles and pumpkin juice. It was very pleasant to jump into bed on a cold, cold night and wrap the blankets around oneself, and draw the bedcurtains until they were a maroon haze shutting out in the world, and shutting one into a warm little nest of comfort. But Ginny decided then and there that nothing-- no pleasure afforded by earth or heaven-- beat taking a bath.

The little maidservant, who she supposed must be Bet, deftly helped her take off her filthy blouse and trousers, and that did feel a bit odd.. But it was customary here, she supposed. And she forgot all about that when she dangled a toe in the round wooden tub. With a little mewl of pleasure, she slipped into the hot, hot water, every nerve in her body coming to life at the feel of it. Steam rose up about her in perfumed clouds and she edged down and down until her shoulders were covered; it was almost too hot but she loved the feel of that as well, and all her sore muscles wept with delight. She sniffed. Tea roses. That was the scent.

"My favorite," she sighed.

Bet giggled. That seemed to be her response to life in general. "T'young master ordered it for ye," she said.

"Malfoy?" Ginny said dubiously.

More giggles, and a nod.

"Where on earth did you find it?"

The giggles continued, but apparently the supply of conversation had been used up. Bet briskly scrubbed Ginny with a wash rag until it went a bit too far down for her comfort. She finally blushed in embarrassment, and snatched it out of the maidservant's hand. How odd it was to have someone else standing over you-- and touching you-- while you were naked in a tub. Wonder what Malfoy thinks of it. She could hear splashing sounds coming from the connecting room; she'd seen the tiny manservant with the snapping black eyes, Rob she thought he was called, leading him towards another round wooden tub set up before the door closed. But then, he had to be used to that sort of thing, what with legions of house-elves at Malfoy Manor waiting on him hand and foot.

Bet poured something from a cup into Ginny's hair and began sudsing at her scalp. She closed her eyes and smelled more roses. Her tight muscles unwound and she slipped even further into the water, relaxing into the floating sensation. But the thought wouldn't stop nagging at her mind. How did he know? Well, she'd managed to scrape together a galleon or so, knut by knut, to buy her favorite tea rose perfume on the last Hogsmeade weekend. She'd been wearing it on the night of the Yule Ball. And Malfoy had certainly been close enough to her then to know it. Bet was only rinsing Ginny's hair now, but red flamed in her cheeks again. This time, it was at the thought that Draco Malfoy remembered the scent of roses on her body... and perhaps wanted to smell it again. She decided it was quite necessary to stay in that tub and soak until she was absolutely sure all the grime had lifted off her.

In fact, maybe she'd never get out of it again.

Civilization, Draco decided, is soap. Yes, the yardstick by which one measured man's descent from the trees could be summed up neatly in the invention of the bathtub. Perhaps the sixteenth century wasn't quite the savage backwater he'd thought. He looked in the standing mirror appraisingly as Rob wrapped a velvety dark blue dressing gown around him. His hair was beautifully sleek and clean; his pale skin glowed from the steam; the dreadful little rings of dirt were gone from beneath his fingernails, and that color really did suit him, bringing out an icy blue sheen to the irises of his eyes. Draco thought that Slytherin green, frankly, always made him look a bit anemic. It's more flattering to Ginny Weasley, though... He smiled slightly, feeling the belt slipped around the sash of the robe. He was rarely without that, day or night. Draco still couldn't help the panicky little leap that overcame him every time he felt for his wand and touched only a powerless shaft of wood-- he'd packed it away in the leather bag because he couldn't bear the feeling anymore; it was exactly like an amputation-- but at least he had the knife. Its omission would have left Draco feeling more naked than the undeniable fact that, beneath the voluminous folds of the dressing-gown, he wore nothing at all. Apparently, that was customary now. And, luckily, it suited his plans perfectly well.

Giving a final pat to his hair, he turned from the mirror. "The dress I wanted, did it arrive?"

"Yes, sir, in the other room, sir."

"Does that serving wench have it? Babs or whatever her name was."

"Bet, sir. Just as you ordered. The Lion and the Unicorn prides itself on providing all necessary services to the discriminatin' traveler. 'Twill be charged to your bill, sir."

"Very good,"said Draco. "Uh..." Was he supposed to thank him? One didn't thank house-elves, of course; the idea was ludicrous. But what about human servants? It was distinctly awkward. Still he could see the benefits, Draco thought as Rob knelt to pare his toenails. In this gods-forsaken backwater century, lacking both magic and Muggle conveniences such as running water and indoor plumbing, life without servants would be intolerable. He'd have to look into getting at least one. After his plans for the evening came off, of course.

"Where on earth did you find it?" he asked curiously, leaning forward to have his hair towel-dried.

"Leith be an international port, sir. Most anything can be found here. Green linen. Just as y'asked. And very low-cut bodice, just as you ordered. Should suit the lady." That was distinctly a leer.

"That will be all, Rob," Draco said stiffly.

"Say no more, say no more." Rob drew one side of his gnarled little face together in a wink. "Nod's as good as a wink to a blind bat, eh, sir?"

Draco decided that it was enough to make one nostalgic for house-elves. Silent house-elves. But the door opened then, and someone came in pushing a cart with covered dishes on its shelves, from which many savory smells were wafting up. Working together, the two servants wheeled out the tub, closing the door behind them; Draco waved them off, closed his eyes, sniffed, and hoped fervently that Ginny would get dressed damn fast.

Ginny chewed on her lower lip, thinking, thinking. Even though the glorious hot water threatened to steam every thought out of her head. First things first. Draco Malfoy had wanted to get them both to Leith. But he didn't want to meet with his father here, or at least that's what he'd said, and Ginny had the oddest feeling that it was the truth, although she could tell no more. It was as if there were a mist of some sort surrounding Draco's actions and motivations, and most of her efforts to penetrate it were rebuffed, or led into confusing channels. But she was sure of that one fact. He was not planning to drag her before Lucius Malfoy. And what choice did she have, really, but to trust his truthfulness? He'd said that he would get her to Leith, and he had done. She'd said she would bring her brother to him,and that she would do, if she could. But could she believe that Draco was being entirely sincere? He'd certainly been pleasant enough to her today, and very attentive. There were times (his head on her breast, her hand in his hair, and why, why didn't he try to kiss me?) when she'd even thought that maybe, just maybe, she was really getting through to him.

Well, except for the morning, when he'd had her pinned to the bed and she was kicking him. And the look in his eyes had frightened her half to death.

Ginny sighed inaudibly. She wasn't trying to figure out if he'd stopped being Draco Malfoy, because she knew he hadn't. She knew that he was arrogant and prejudiced, that he flaunted his superiority at every turn, rubbing the Malfoy name and wealth into everyone's face; that he could be nasty and spiteful and vicious and cruel. At close quarters, though, the sum total of his personality seemed greater than its parts. Or at least, he was, on the whole, far more pleasant to be around than she'd ever suspected. She'd known he was clever, but she'd only seen him apply his mind to manipulation and bullying; she hadn't known that his intellect was fierce, was brilliant. She'd known that she was thrown into a turmoil every time she spoke to him, rare as those occasions had been at Hogwarts. She hadn't known that sparring with him would sharpen her own mind to its highest pitch, or that the effort would make her feel gloriously alive, as if Sparkling charms were fizzing through every vein and nerve. She'd known that he was good-looking, in a pretty sort of way. She hadn't known that being so close to him every hour of the day would give her the opportunity to study the shape of his face and the crystalline patterns in his pale grey eyes, and to see that his thick hair was like spun silver strands at its roots. But softer, she thought, so much softer. She'd felt it running through her hands, today. She knew. He wasn't handsome, not like Harry and her brothers were. He was... beautiful. Boys weren't supposed to be beautiful, but Draco Malfoy was.

Ginny's thoughts had become dangerous, and she knew it.

He was still everything that he had been when everyone she loved, hated him. That wasn't the issue. No, the thing she had to decide was whether he could be trusted in this one particular matter. So maybe he really doesn't want to have anything to do with his father, not after kidnapping me. He knows that Lucius Malfoy won't be a bit pleased, I suppose... It's purely out of self-interest on his part, I'm sure. I doubt he's ever done anything that wasn't! But then, and the thought nagged at her, what difference does it really make? If he does the right thing, will it matter why he does it?

But then, and the thought was rather chilling, even through the delicious steamy heat of the tub, what's to keep him from simply... changing his mind?

She sighed and relaxed more deeply into the lukewarm water, the scent of roses rising to her nose. It would all feel so much less panicky if only... if only she had some sort of hold over him. If she held the key to some sort of compelling reason for him to do what he had said he'd do.

Ginny picked up the washrag and skittered it down her chest. She glanced down at the tops of her breasts. The oaken barrel tub was so deep that they rose out of the water, snowy white, tipped with pink nipples. She remembered Draco's hands on her, less than a week before. Unbidden, unwanted, and unwelcome, a thought came to her. If I could be sure that he wanted me that way... if I really thought he did... that could be the key. How many times did I hear Lavender and Parvati say that girls could get boys to do anything that way, if they led them around by the-- And he is a teenage boy, after all.

But he could have kissed me, when we were sitting under the oak tree. And he didn't.

The water was beginning to grow cold; Ginny wasn't sure how much time had passed. She stood up and it sluiced down her body in streams. She shivered. The room was chilly. She could smell something very faint from the other room... awfully good... supper!

Bet wrapped her in a large linen sheet and rubbed a smaller one through her hair, drying it. Ginny had to lean down the entire time so that the smaller girl could reach her. She was absolutely sure she smelled pork pies. Her mouth watering, she stood up straight, wincing at the slight pain in her lower back, and the aching in her inner thighs. She'd never realized that riding was so much work.

"That's good enough, Bet," she said absently, turning towards the door. The maid giggled. Ginny blushed. Hunger could do strange things to a person. Such as causing her to forget that she wasn't wearing a stitch of clothing. She doubted that it was a good idea to appear in front of Draco Malfoy in that state.

The green dress was laid across the top of a clothes-press at one side of the room. Ginny ran her hands down the fine linen of the skirt, and fingered the square-cut bodice. She'd had horrible visions of farthingales and neck whisks and bum rolls; the section on historical clothing in her Muggles: Medieval to Modern class had made rather an impression on her. But this was lovely, flowing in sumptuous folds, so rich and fine that she was almost afraid to touch it. Of course, there were a number of odd... things hung next to the bodice, and Ginny stretched out her hand to them, dubiously. Bet brought them down and began moving Ginny's arms and legs as if she were a recalcitrant child being dressed; directing her to step into yards of voluminous material, or stand still as strange garments were fastened around her waist and pinned at her hips. There was a chemise sort of thing, which was pinned to the skirt, and a great number of petticoats, at which point Ginny gave up trying to identify anything. At last, she stopped trying to protest and sighed, a stoic expression on her face.

Bet was struggling with an underskirt, her mouth full of pins, when a tremendous knocking came at the door. Ginny nearly jumped out of her skin. Her first, utterly irrational thought had been, Ron! He's found me! And I'm standing here in my knickers -- well, I suppose that's what these pettipants things are-- with Draco Malfoy in the next room. I wonder who he'll kill first. But that didn't make any sense, and Ginny realized it instantly. The knock had come from the connecting room, not from the hallway. It had to be Draco.

"Just a minute! Don't open that door! I'm not dressed!" yelled Ginny.

Dead silence.

"Did you hear me, Malfoy? I'm not dressed."

"I heard you, Weasley."

"Are you all right? You sound... odd."

"Oh yes. I'm all right. You say you're not dressed?" Pause. "Hurry up, would you? Dinner's here, and I'm starving to death."

"I'm trying to hurry. You try to get into these insanely complicated clothes sometime and see how you like it."

"I'll start without you. There's pork pie and steamed prawns and bread and butter and apple tart and--"

"Don't you dare!"

Ginny had been pinned and buttoned and fastened into the dress at last, and she smoothed its material with her hands, trying not to feel jittery. It had obviously been created for a smaller and much shorter girl. It didn't make so much difference with the kirtle and underskirts of a lighter green patterned silk, but the bodice was very tight and so low that she hardly dared to breathe. I'll be lucky if I don't pop out any second!

"I'm ready," she called.

The connecting door swung open.

Draco's eyes travelled up and down the dress, marking her bare feet beneath the skirts, her waist, her breasts swelling dangerously over the neckline, and coming to rest, at last, on her face. Ginny shifted nervously, looking into the adjoining room to keep from having to look directly at him. An enormous four-poster bed took up most of the space; a fire crackled merrily on the hearth, casting red lights to match the golden ones of the beeswax candles on the table. The shifting lights cast their reflections back from a standing pier glass at the far end of the bed. This must be the best room, thought Ginny. Glass was a rare and almost prohibitively expensive thing in these days, she remembered learning that. But it meant that she saw what Draco saw, and for a moment almost did not recognize herself. She caught her breath. Her skin glowed against the green; her eyes were darker, more mysterious, and her hair was like spun copper and gold. The girl in the dark glass looked like a stranger. Not herself.

"Do they have dinner set up?" she asked quickly. Rather unnecessarily too, since she was looking straight at it.

"They do indeed," said Draco. He offered her his hand, and, with a very surprised look, she took it. "Shall we?" he murmured. He led her into the next room with the elegance of a courtier, opening the door all the way for her, letting her enter before him. Since her back was turned, she did not see his mask drop for only a moment. And he looked at her then as if he were starving, and she was food that had been kept on a high shelf and was now placed, at last, within his reach. But when she saw the table and exclaimed with delight, turning back towards him, his face had settled back into smooth immobility.

Nothing had ever tasted so good as that dinner, Ginny thought. She ate greedily of pork pie, and beef roasted in rock salt, bread and butter and cock-a-leekie soup, steamed prawns and oysters and a dish or two she couldn't begin to guess at. There was more wine, a light Alcante red, and she drank that too.

They spoke very little, and when they did it was of trivial things, as if they both followed an unspoken pact to keep the moment suspended, unbroken by any word of theirs that might call up the world outside this room.

"I never knew you sang so beautifully," Draco said once. "I don't understand why I never heard you; why didn't you sing at any of the school concerts?"

"They're for fifth years and above, remember?" shrugged Ginny.

"Still, you might have done this year."

"The reason's very stupid."

"I want to know."

"You'll laugh."

"I won't."

"Oh, all right," she sighed. "The reason I didn't was because... I was too shy."

"You?" said Draco. "Aren't we talking about the girl who just finished giving an impromptu concert for an inn full of drunken sailors? Same one who's kicked me in the shins repeatedly, tried to run away, asked me, and I quote, what the fuck I'd done to her, and grabbed me in the--"

"That was an accident!"

He leaned back in his chair, clasping his hands behind his head. "And you've been sleeping next to a strange boy every night, on top of everything else... whatever would your mother say?"

"Well, strange, perhaps, but not exactly a stranger," Ginny said primly.

"But we have been sleeping together, you must admit--"

"Not sleeping! Just... er... sleeping."

He smirked. "Nice to see you drawing such clear distinctions."

Ginny felt a sudden desire to change the subject. "Are we..." she began mazily. The patterns of the orange and red firelights dancing on the plastered wall distracted her a moment. Oh, yes. "We're going to find Ron and the others after this, aren't we? Now that we've eaten, and dressed, and everything?"

"No," said Draco, and his voice was as sweet and reasonable as the serpent asking Eve if it made any sense to not eat the fruit of one particular tree. "It's late. You're exhausted. So am I if it comes to that. And anyway I've no proper clothing; they couldn't find any for me." The lie slipped smoothly off his tongue. "D'you really think it's a good idea for your brother to see me like this? In the same room with you?"

Ginny giggled. "S'pose not. But first thing in the morning, then?"

"Of course. Enough, now," said Draco, putting his hand over her cup when she reached for the decanter again. "Tipsy is all well and good, but I don't want you to get drunk."

She didn't want that either, Ginny realized. Soon, this night would end. They'd find Ron and the rest, and she'd run to her brother and he'd embrace her. He'd forgive her for the cruel things she'd said to him. She'd forgive him for not protecting her, for letting her take the road that had led to this night. Then her brother would likely make an attempt on the life of her current travelling companion, once he heard that she'd been with him day and night for nearly a week. Especially night. Ginny was sure that Harry, Hermione, and Neville between them could hold Ron back, once she herself explained that Draco hadn't done anything to her. Because, of course, he hadn't. Ron wouldn't allow him within twenty metres of her after that, and if she wanted Draco to live, she'd probably better keep away from him as well. Then things would go back to normal. But she wanted to clearly remember this strange secret night, and keep it somewhere within her to pull out and study in the darkest hours. This last night with Draco Malfoy.

"There was one piece I almost performed, last year," she said, picking up the last thread of the conversation as if it had never been dropped. "But then I-- I was ill, at the last minute. I was always sorry, because I liked that one so much... it was from a sixteenth century poem, too..."

"Do you still remember it?"

"Yes." Ginny thought for a moment, and then began to sing in a clear, high, pure voice.

"Blame not my Lute ! for he must sound
Of this or that as liketh me ;
For lack of wit the Lute is bound
To give such tunes as pleaseth me..."

Her voice trailed off as she tried to remember the rest of the verse.

"Though my songs be somewhat strange," continued Draco, " And speak such words as touch thy change, blame not my Lute."

Ginny picked up the thread of melody again.

"Blame but thyself that hast misdone,
And well deservèd to have blame ;
Change thou thy way, so evil begone,
And then my Lute shall sound that same."

Draco leaned forward, across the table, and the firelight from behind threw his face into alternating patterns of light and shadow. "But if 'till then my fingers play,
By thy desert their wonted way, blame not my Lute."

"Sir Thomas Wyatt," she said quietly. Their eyes met for long seconds.

" Apple tart?" he offered, holding up a sliced piece on a plate. The juicy chunks of fruit glistened in the candlelight.

Ginny almost snapped her head round to look at it, glad of the excuse to break the gentle, inexorable gaze between them. "I couldn't eat another bite. Maybe later."

When she turned her head back from the tart, something caught the corner of Ginny's eye. A reflection of the four-poster bed, she quickly realized; she'd just barely seen the edge of it in the standing pier glass. Its mirror-self looked much larger and darker than the real bed.

The fire gave off plenty of heat in that tiny room; even in bare feet and a sinfully low bodice, she was toasty warm. There was no reason for them to have to share that bed tonight. Except that there wasn't anywhere else to sleep. The room she'd bathed in seemed to be only a dressing room. Maybe Draco would lie down by the fire. She could give him one of the blankets. Maybe she'd lie down by the fire.

Or maybe they'd climb into that bed together, as they had done for the past three nights.

They'd studied Muggle literature throughout the ages in Muggles: Medieval to Modern class. She remembered words from old wood-cut pages, reprinted in her lesson book. Ware the path of sin, and may a merciful God and all His saints preservest thou from setting thy feet thereunto. For it is a way that hath no turning...

"Oh, look!" said Ginny, too brightly. "A chess set. Let's play. Not wizarding chess, but then you can't have everything; where would you put it?" Her giggle at her own witticism was shrill. "You do know how to play, don't you, Malfoy?"

"Yes," he said. "We will in a bit." Draco looked at her very intently and Ginny wondered what he was about to say. Her heart beat unsteadily.

"Your hair's all tangly again," he said.

She scowled.

He rose and pulled something out of the leather bag, which was hung on a nail driven into the door. Smiling slightly, he held up the comb, holding out his other hand to her. "Let me."

There was another option, thought Ginny, that had not occurred to her before. They might lie down before the fire together. And now, they had. Her sore feet curled into the fluffy sheepskin rug; it was so thick that she could barely feel the stone floor beneath her elbow as she lay propped up on her side. Draco lay behind her, his body lightly touching hers at every point with no more force than a breath of wind, running the comb through her hair. There was wonderful crackly warmth coming from the fire in front of her and a subtler warmth from his body behind her, and Ginny closed her eyes, drifting in a sea of comfort.

"Ginny Weasley in green," Draco murmured.

"What?"

"Nothing." He laughed. "I was only thinking of a poem."

"What's so funny about that?"

"We've both been quoting sixteenth century poetry all evening, but this one came to me so strongly when I saw you in that dress... and it certainly isn't four hundred years old, or even British." He was silent for a moment, as if casting back in his memory, and then he spoke again.

"When Susanna Jones wears red
A queen from some time-dead Egyptian night
Walks once again.
And the beauty of Susanna Jones in red
Burns in my heart a love-fire sharp like pain.
Sweet silver trumpets,
Jesus!"

"I'm not wearing red, Malfoy," Ginny pointed out. "And my name isn't Susanna."

He laughed again, more softly this time. The poet never saw Ginny Weasley in green, or he would have surely written about her. For that sight has set a burning in me that must be quenched. Not love. But it is sharp, like pain...

"Wherever did you read that?"

"It was a book of wizarding poetry in the Malfoy library. Read it when I was twelve." Draco moved closer to her, combing the little strands of hair at her neck. "I'm not quite sure why my father didn't get rid of it, to tell you the truth. It was American poets, mostly, and he always said that the American wizards were little better than Mudbloods."

Ginny snorted.

"I didn't say I thought that. Anyway I wasn't picky about what I read, not when I was a child. That's about all there would be to do for weeks on end, most summer holidays."

"Why didn't you go outside?"

"Locking charm on the door," Draco replied dryly.

"Tell me about those days," said Ginny, thinking of how much she had told him, how little he had told her.

"Sure you want to know?" asked Draco, silently exulting at the warm look in her eyes, the way her pupils were enlarging and her lip trembling. "It isn't very pretty, most of it."

"Yes. I do want to know."

A brisk wind had picked up outside, and Ginny heard it shrieking and sobbing around the walls of the inn. But on the thick sheepskin rug they were cozy and warm, and the stories Draco whispered in her ear about his childhood held them both suspended in that endless moment before the fire. They were terrible stories, some of them; but she almost didn't realize it until after he'd told them to her, since his voice was so caressing, so low and musical. He was leading her a little way into his mind, and she went willingly, a little dazed, a bit confused. But the path was so smooth that she did not care. And all the while he kept running the comb through her hair, over and over and over again in a continuous hypnotic motion. She bent her head down to the coaxing motion of the comb. And, although she scarcely realized it since it happened so gradually, he pressed closer and closer to her.

The nape of her neck was so white, so vulnerable. So close. It had taken a long time, moving very very slowly, to get that close to her. Draco eyed that bit of naked flesh, feeling suddenly like a vampire too long starved for blood. Ah, but he'd begin gently, anyway. The very edges of his sharp teeth would barely graze her skin and he'd feel its slight shiver all through his mouth; he would deepen the kiss, would taste her, would run his tongue down the back of her neck... He bent down to touch his lips to that little spot just below the wisps of hair, softer and lighter than on the rest of her head. It would be the first truly overt move he'd make. A beginning. But she pulled away, nervously, as if by instinct.

"Oh, look!" Ginny said brightly, pointing out the little window deeply set in the wall. "Stars!" She scrambled up from the floor and walked over to the window. Draco followed her. A bit of stargazing as the fire crackled in the background... his arm around her waist as he pointed out the constellations to her, perhaps... this could work, as well.

The window-glass was wavy and distorted, but the stars shone brilliantly through it against the black velvet of the sky. "There's Andromeda," he said."And Pegasus. How bright they are, aren't they?"

She stood motionless, staring out at the night. "I suppose I never paid enough attention during Trelawney's classes," she admitted. "All I can really pick out is the Big Dipper and Orion."

Draco moved just a bit closer to her, the back of hand barely brushing hers. "Casseopia's very beautiful tonight," he said in a low voice. "Right over there... see?" He pointed just past her line of vision; she would have to move towards him a little, and then he would slip his hand into hers and slowly caress her fingers as he showed her the patterns of the night sky. Something about the situation felt familiar to him, and he realized what it was. The last time they had looked up at the stars together had been the night of the Yule Ball. The thought made him smirk. Ginny shied away nervously and, too late, he felt it.

"I wouldn't have thought you'd be interested in stars," she nearly snapped.

Draco pulled back, resting his elbows on the window ledge. "There were nights when I couldn't sleep, during those summers I told you about. I'd get up and sit in the window seat of my room for hours sometimes... once, on Midsummer, I remember I was there until dawn. And I'd pick out constellations..." It was a true story. Those were always the best, as they were both the most convincing and the easiest to remember in every detail. Deliberately, he remembered those cold nights-- somehow, they were always cold, even in summer-- and the cramped muscles in his legs as he crouched in the window seat, hour upon hour, and how he'd watch the stars move across the sky in a great wheel of cold light. His face was both moody and brooding, he knew, and he felt the flood of moonlight and starlight on it. One shoulder of his dressing gown had fallen off one shoulder a little, and he felt, rather than saw, that she was looking at his chest. Out of the corner of his eye, behind him, he saw Ginny's face soften. He turned back to her. "Come on. Let's play chess," he said.

"Are you any good?" Ginny asked, setting up the board.

"Very," Draco replied.

"Playing against other Slytherins, I suppose?"

"No. I never met a Slytherin yet who could play a really decent game of chess. It's odd. Never did understand why."

"Hmm." Ginny poked at the pieces. "They're not going to move, are they? I think I know why. You actually have to have a strategy. It's not enough to just be sneaky and deceptive and underhanded."

"You may have a point, Weasley," Draco agreed. "Never play wizards' poker with Millicent Bulstrode, though. She'll beat the pants off of you."

"I'm sure you'd know," Ginny said sweetly. "So how did you learn to supposedly play chess so well?"

Draco shrugged. "Well, I couldn't read all the time, over those summers. And it's a bit hard to watch the stars during the day."

One corner of her mouth went up. "We'll see just how good you really are, Malfoy."

In one way, Draco thought, he seemed every bit as far from his goal of seducing Ginny Weasley as he'd ever been. And yet... and yet... the atmosphere continued to change, to shift, even as she took almost too much care to treat him no differently from before. She didn't gaze into his eyes, and she didn't permit their fingers to touch as they both moved their pieces. She sat almost ramrod straight in her chair, not leaning forward in a seductive way, as Pansy Parkinson always had when she'd played chess with him. She certainly wasn't running her toes up his leg under the table or pouting prettily whenever he took one of her pieces, which Pansy also was in the habit of doing. And yet... and yet.

It's all going to come right, in the end. I know it will. Not much longer. I have her here, after all... right where I want her, where I need her... and now it's only a matter of playing out the game. Her eyes gleamed with triumph as she took one of his pawns. Draco cursed himself silently. He was allowing her to distract him too much. "I'm still going to win," he warned her.

"I wouldn't count on it," she said. "Ron taught me, you know, and he's the best chess player I ever saw."

Draco studied the board, mapping it, trying to anticipate her moves. He was used to living his life on two levels at once, and he continued to remember the night of the Yule Ball, that night of a thousand stars, as he subtly pulled her pieces into a net.

These memories, he now understood, had been battering at him since they happened. But the difference was that Draco gave himself permission to experience them now; this weakness that could not be conquered, that he would turn into a strength. The floodgates fell and the remembered sensations swept over him. The feel of her in his arms, warming him against the cold wind at the top of the North Tower. The soft whimpering sounds she had made at the bottom of her throat when he pressed her back against the stone bench and devoured her with his kisses; how her mouth had been stiff with inexperience at first and then had opened to him like the petals of a flower. Had she been kissed before? He studied her grave face, studying the chess pieces, then moving her queen. Suppressing a smirk, he began encircling her on the chess board.

He rubbed the ball of his thumb over his bottom lip. Ginny played with one of the laces on her bodice, unconsciously, he'd swear... Surely she had at least been kissed, by that moron Longbottom, or that irritating little bastard Creevey.... But had things ever gone much further than that? The dreamlike journey through her memories of one year before in the clock tower and the Chamber of Secrets, the one he could never quite call to his mind in all its details, drifted through him. He doubted it; yes, on the whole, he thought it unlikely. There was a quality of such innocence about her. What a novelty that was going to be. If such were the case, and Draco wished that he knew for sure one way or the other; it might be an important point. The power of the sacrifice might turn on just such a little thing... But he'd find out for himself soon enough. How to do this; that was the only important question now.

"Check and mate," he said.

She gasped and looked down at the board. "How did that happen?" she muttered.

Draco shrugged. "You didn't believe me when I told you I was better at chess than any of your brothers. Now you do, I hope."

"You shouldn't gloat," said Ginny. "It's not good manners."

"A Weasley lecturing a Malfoy on the subject of manners. Will wonders never cease."

"Yes yes, I know. You were high and mighty lords of the manor when we were lowly serfs on your estate." Ginny rolled her eyes.

A shadow passed over Draco's face, and he didn't reply.

"Anyway," she continued. "you should have better manners, then, because you've had more time to practice. Ha!"

Draco pondered her words. The flickering firelight cast orange and yellow shadows on his face, infusing it with more color than it normally seemed to have. "I suppose you're right. You've caught me in a logical inconsistency."

"I suppose you think you're clever because you used a five-syllable word."

"Oh, I do, and I am, but I don't normally display the sheer depths of my cleverness for the rabble..." He leaned back in the chair, thinking, planning ahead. The game they played was continuing, and it tickled him to think that he could ensnare Ginny Weasely by appealing to her intellect. "If you like multisyllabic words, how about 'antidisestablishmentarianism'?"

Ginny scoffed. "I knew that word when I was eight years old. What about 'interdenominationalism'?" She leaned back against the wall, her eyes sparkling.

Her triumph, however, was short-lived. For Draco immediately countered with "'Pratertransubstantiationalistically."

"Uh--" Ginny cast frantically about for vocabulary. "'Quasihemidemisemiquaver.' Top that, Malfoy."

He appeared to be thinking for a long moment, and then sighed theatrically. "Llanfairpwllgwyngyddgogerychllyndrobwllllantisiliogogogoch,'" he said, in an almost regretful tone of voice. "It's a village in Wales."

Ginny gulped. "Er-- er-- 'the cat sat on the mat'?"

Draco's teeth gleamed white in the firelight when he grinned at her. "I win."

Something about that smile was making her dizzy. There was so rarely a real smile on his face; mostly, it was those awful smirks, and just as before, she was struck by how different it made him look. He was in an oddly teasing mood, or seemed to be, and in a way it made her just as uneasy as his anger that morning had done. Time to back off a bit. "You are clever, aren't you?" she said coolly. "Before this... journey, I never would have guessed."

"I told you. I don't feel the need to display my intelligence constantly. Not like that m--" Seeing her face darken, he amended his words. "--that friend of yours, that Granger."

"You're avoiding the entire issue anyway. This has nothing to do with manners."

"Well, in a way, it does." He bit into the last piece of apple tart.

"I might have wanted that!" protested Ginny.

"Afraid not, you had your chance. Anyway, my English tutor used to come on Wednesdays, right after the etiquette lessons. So you see, there is a link." Draco finished the last bite and licked his fingers.

"That's terribly elegant," said Ginny, trying not to look too closely at what he was doing. His tongue was very pink and -- well-- remarkably long. Its tip was very pointed. The memory of certain conversations overheard in the Gryffindor common room in the small hours of the night was threatening to make her blush, which she truly preferred to avoid.

He shrugged. "We're in the sixteenth century. They don't use forks. When in Rome..."

"You know about Rome?" blurted Ginny, surprised.

Draco raised one eyebrow. "Rome, Greece, the Byzantine Empire--"

"I wouldn't have thought you would have learned anything about Muggle history."

"And you accused me of sleeping through History of Magic class. Roman wizards were particularly fond of sky magic and cloud magic, as I recall... oh, the advantages of a classical education are legion. Knowledge enriches the mind." He leaned back against the chair, watching her lazily across the table from beneath hooded eyelids.

"My mind's rich enough, thank you."

"Perhaps you would know best about that, but some might say-- Well, never mind. We were discussing manners, weren't we? Do you know something, Weasley?" He leaned forward, towards her. A lock of his silvery hair fell into his eyes. She fought off the sudden, utterly insane urge to brush it away. She remembered how that hair had felt under her fingers only a few nights before; neither of them had ever directly mentioned that night yet, and an even more insane urge surfaced in her to ask him if he remembered it.

"What?" she asked, fighting to keep her voice steady.

"You never did thank me for saving your life on the night of the Yule Ball," he said.

Apparently, Draco Malfoy did remember.

"I said thank you!" she said. "When we were at the top of the tower, I mean. And then I--" Ginny did blush then, and she lowered her head in a probably futile attempt to hide her stinging cheeks.

"And then you what?"

How had the distance between them begun to close so rapidly? Had the table shrunk?

"What did you do?" he whispered.

I thanked you in a different way, that's what I did. But I doubt you even remember it. "Nothing," she mumbled.

"I wouldn't call it nothing, what you did that night." Draco's voice was low and hypnotic. His face was inches from hers. "Do you remember, Ginny Weasley?"

"Yes..."

"But you didn't thank me properly, either. No, ah, no, you didn't do that. And then there's the unresolved matter of your forfeit, since I beat you at chess. Hmm. Will you ever to able to dig yourself out of all the debts you owe me?"

"Trust you to think of it that way."

"Saving your life, just think. You'd better get started now on paying me back for that one alone--"

"Well, I don't think it was quite that simple--"

"I could ask anything of you," Draco continued. "Anything at all. And it couldn't make up for what I've already done."

"There are other ways of looking at it, Malfoy," she snapped. "In ancient China, if you saved someone's life, you were responsible for that person's welfare from that day on." Ginny's hand flew to her mouth. "Oh! That's worse. I didn't think of it that way. We'll never get away from each other now!"

Never get away from each other now... never get away... never... Draco tried to swallow past the icy lump that had suddenly formed in his throat. He had the distinctly unsettling feeling of losing his grasp. Forces beyond his understanding were moving him like a piece on a chess board. And her, as well. They were being pulled, together, into a current that was stronger than either of them. Well, there was no time to think about that now; he had to continue what he had begun. He could do no other.

"I don't see how I can repay you now anyway. You know I don't have any money," Ginny said. "Or anything else. Everything that's on my back--" and wasn't this bitter to admit "-- you bought for me."

"Yes. How true. Oh, there's such a debt between us, Weasley..." He reached out to finger the material of the green kirtle. "But I told you I'd think of something."

"I-- I can pay all my debts to you; I know I can. Just give me a little time. I'll get you the money; I'll find some way--"

"I don't need your money, and you've just finished telling me that you don't have it to offer anyway," Draco interrupted.

"Then what sort of repayment do you want from me?"

Draco looked at her steadily, not replying, and the look in his eyes gave a sudden meaning to the words she herself had spoken, even as they echoed in her ears.

Ginny's eyes went wider and wider and her lips trembled. He moved closer. The moment had come, he knew it, and a hot excitement rushed through him at the thought that his triumph was at hand. "Pay up, Weasley," he murmured.

Then his lips were moving towards hers, and his arm was drawing her closer to him, and, at long last, he was kissing her.

"Open your mouth," he said. "You kiss like a child." When her mouth stayed motionless against him, her palms pressed to his chest, Draco's voice lowered to a husky rasp. "Open it, I said. Open for me." She could barely hear his last words. "I want to taste you..."

Ginny gasped and began a furious retort. But her lips parted, prepared to speak, and he moved his head forward a little more and oh God, she knew why he'd wanted her to do it. For the first time, she knew what a kiss was, and knew that she had never understood anything of it before. Nothing that Colin or Neville had ever done to her could have prepared her for this. She understood for the first time that all of their pawings and gropings and fumblings, the timid, tentative, clumsy attempts, had failed to do more than scrape the surface of her. She had remained pristine, untouched, locked within herself. But Draco Malfoy had reached in and pulled her violently out of her sanctuary-- her prison-- with one touch of his lips.

The world dropped away beneath them like a trapdoor silently opening and this, this was what he had wanted; his skin prickled with it and his body shivered under it and it seemed an eternity of miserable waiting since he had last had this from her. Her eyes flew open, startled, then fell closed again. And he could swear that she felt it too, this falling, falling, falling through endless sweet darkness, plummeting to the very roots of the world with Ginny Weasley.

She had originally opened her mouth to scream, or protest, or ask him what the hell he thought he was doing. But she was never sure which, since whatever she had planned to do was washed away, swept from her mind in a wave of sensations unlike anything she had ever felt before. He nibbled at her lips with just the edges of his sharp teeth and slid his tongue along hers, coaxing her closer to him with one of his hands on the small of her back, but still he was incredibly gentle, as if she were a filly being broken to the saddle, who might shy and kick if he moved too fast and frightened her. That gentleness was the only coherent thing she could seem to remember from when he'd first kissed her, the night of the Yule Ball, and it had shocked her just as much. So Ginny sat frozen, caught between her body's reaction to what Draco was doing, and the cold fear she was sure her mind was about to cast up between them. It felt-- good? Really good, yes. But there was something insane about the idea of trying to apply any adjective in the English language to this unstoppable forward motion, this fierce dark sinking into Draco Malfoy as his arms clutched her suddenly boneless body and his mouth devoured her lips, her breath, her soul. She wanted this to go on and on and on without stopping, ever. She wanted him to do things to her she had only imagined, and she wanted him to do things to her she had never imagined. He knew what they were, she was sure of it, and she wanted him to show her.

And oh bloody hell, it shouldn't feel good, shouldn't feel consuming, shouldn't be a dark sweet maelstrom that made her forget everything else in this world but this blond boy who was kissing her, touching her, holding her, claiming her. The one who had been a bitter enemy all her life.

No. And it couldn't. This was wrong, all wrong.

--"unripe fruit," the gritty voice whispered in her ears again, and the skeletal hand traced a line down her leg from hip to ankle again. "Unripe fruit, little Gwenhyfar, still unready. But all things ripen, in time." And the shame she felt, the shock, the knowledge that it was all her fault, no matter how hard they all tried to reassure her, no matter what they all said--

But it was impossible to hold onto the memory of Tom Riddle in the Chamber of Secrets. She felt not a twinge of the old, familiar cold terror. Instead, she was suddenly, blazingly hot. A fine mist of sweat was breaking out on her skin; the room had become suffocatingly warm and his hands were tracing trails of even greater heat down her body.

"You said you didn't want this," she whispered.

"That was a long time ago."

"That was three days ago!"

"Well-- I lied," said Draco, almost tenderly.

"You said I looked like an overgrown wet house-elf."

"You cleaned up very nicely. Very nicely indeed." He caressed a spot under her ear with the tip of his tongue in a way he knew girls liked. She shuddered unwillingly. Her head was spinning like a top; she couldn't begin to trace back how all it had begun. How had they gone from playing chess and trading ten-syllable words to... this?

He was kissing along her jawline now, pausing where the fine-grained skin of her neck met her earlobe. She jumped. "Ah yes, right there," she heard him say.

Inexperienced as Ginny was, she recognized experience when she encountered it. He's done this many, many times, her mind informed her. Every story you ever heard whispered about him was no more than the simple truth. He'd do this to any girl, any girl at all. It doesn't make any difference to him. He'd take anyone. The thought made her loathe herself for her own response. But underlying that response was the same fear, and it argued frantically with her. Why is he doing this? He said he didn't want me this way. And he certainly seemed to mean it at the time!

There was something wrong with this sudden seduction, she knew there was. Think. She had to think. She felt like she was drowning in a molten sea of his kisses and part of her didn't want to come up to the surface ever, ever, but still she had to get control, somehow, just a little bit of control. Deliberately, she tried to dredge up the memory of Colin jamming her against the wall at Hogwarts, making her feel afraid, angry, dirtied, desperate. But she couldn't hold onto that either. It had nothing to do with what she felt now. At that moment, the fact that what Malfoy was doing didn't remind her of what Colin had done was more shocking than if it had.

Now Draco was nibbling the side of her throat, taking soft little bites where the pulse throbbed and then soothing the nips with his tongue. His fingers moved slowly through the long waves of her hair, brushing the soft strands against his face. His hands closed on her shoulders and pushed her back gently; somehow they'd moved so that she was falling backwards onto the great bed across from the table. Her bones were dissolving, melting, all of her was melting and in another instant she'd be flat on her back with him on top of her. This isn't real! she screamed at her traitorous self. It's just another reaction to the Disinhibio potion, it has to be! And her sheer self-disgust at that thought gave her a bit of strength. She wrenched herself away from him and wiped her mouth savagely with the back of her hand.

"Don't!" she said in a trembling voice.

"What?" Draco blinked at her stupidly. He had been completely caught up in the sensation of her velvety skin, of sinking into that willing responsive mouth and feeling her arms twining like sleek living ropes around him. Everything else was forgotten. Lost. Dissolving in her, washing away in her; and in a brief burst of sanity he realized that he had been out of his mind to think he could do this with her and not lose all control. But there was a plan, and he clutched at it like a drowning man at a straw. He cleared his throat and straightened his face into a mask of wide-eyed innocence. "Don't you want this? I thought you did."

Ginny's golden eyes narrowed. "Why?" she asked.

"Why...?" Draco felt dumber than ever and it was not a feeling he recognized or relished. What the hell is she talking about now? And why has she moved, she's moved all the way over to the other side of the bed... I want her back here, now... He inched across the mattress towards Ginny so that she was trapped between him and the plaster wall.

"Remember, oh, a week ago?" she asked. "When we hated each other, and you didn't have a single civil word to say to me? Remember how your family's always despised mine? Remember how nasty you've always been to me, how miserably you've always treated me when you deigned to notice me at all?" Her hand swept out, encompassing the rumpled bed, his closeness to her, his hair tousled by her hands, his eyes half-lidded and his breath coming short. "So why are you doing this?"

The obvious answer did not seem to occur to her. It wasn't the only one, of course. But he was supposed to have gotten it under control. It was to play a minor part now; an advantage to be enjoyed, a fringe benefit to be gotten out of her; nothing to make him lose sight of the real prize. And instead it was... this thing was... he struggled to solidify it with some sort of a name, and once more he thought of a tidal wave. Again and again, he struggled to rise, and it brought him to his knees. Over and over. He had thought his pride an iron wall, and had learned that it was a house built on sand. This primal force that was Ginny Weasley smashed through it with careless ease. Did any of it affect her? He wondered. If she really was a virgin still, then she couldn't feel this as he could; there were things one simply didn't know enough to desire until certain locks had been opened, and certain doors swung wide. But how could she not see the effect she was having on him? The thought itself almost frightened him for a moment; he couldn't believe that such innocence existed. He put a hand on one of hers, tracing the long, slender fingers with all the studied tenderness he could muster. "Because you're beautiful."

"Me?" squeaked Ginny, hating the way her voice was cracking into a different register. "You mean you think... and so you want..." She felt her face getting hot. "With me?"

He grinned, his eyes on hers, liking the sight of the peach blush that crept up her cheekbones. Control. All that mattered was staying in control; he might enjoy her, he would enjoy her, but he would also be, as he must be, the master of everything that happened between them. He moved forward again and nuzzled her neck, thinking that it was every bit as delightful to feel her skin under his lips as he'd thought it would be. "Oh yes, Ginny Weasley, you're beautiful, and I want you," Draco murmured truthfully. Few tactics worked so well as deceptive honesty.

She jerked her head back. "Cut the crap, Malfoy."

"You're so suspicious. Hasn't anyone ever told you these things? Haven't you ever done any of this before? I can't believe that Longbottom never made a move, or Creevey-- I know they're not very bright, but honestly--"

"Maybe I'm suspicious because you kidnapped me, bound me to you with a Hexensymbol spell, and dragged me through sixteenth century Scotland towards-- well, God knows what!"

"Didn't I..." He groped for an untruthful way to end the sentence. Not knowing what the truth actually was made it a challenging task indeed. "...save you? When we were in the.. wherever we were?"

Ginny pressed her mouth into a thin line. "Did you? I thought you didn't want to talk about it!" Her huge velvety gold eyes were accusing. Weighing, measuring. They saw too much, he thought. Under the judgment of those eyes, lies failed him.

"I don't know," he whispered. I don't know what I did, and I don't know why I did it, but I know what I'm going to do now...

He moved towards her and started kissing her again, but there was something different in his kisses now, something determined, almost angry, and she could hear the harsh sound of his breathing in her left ear. His hands were moving on the bodice she wore. He could no longer separate his lust for her from his lust for power, a power she might be able to bring to him, a power he could get only through her; it was all one tangled and twisted mass of dark desire, and there was only one way to satisfy it, he knew, only one.

"What are you doing?" she asked, and immediately regretted her words. The village idiot would have known what Draco was doing, and what he planned to do.

"Something we both want," he said.

A helpless, muffled noise came from the back of her throat.

"Tell me you don't want me to do this, Ginny Weasley. Tell me to stop and I will."

Her hands began to tremble, clutching at the fur bedspread, but they made no move to stop him, and her lips did not form coherent words.

"Ah, see, you want it too, I can tell. Don't be afraid, Ginny, don't be afraid, of me, of this," he said against the red-gold strands of her hair, and his voice was very ragged despite all his attempts at keeping it steady, his words becoming a little incoherent.

"Please," she whispered, not knowing what she wanted, or what she begged for. Almost the only thing she could be sure of-- oh, shamefully sure-- was that she wasn't asking him to stop. "Please," she repeated. "I-- I've never--"

"You're still a virgin?" he said, the statement rising slightly at the end so that it seemed to turn into a question despite itself. The tone of his voice made it clear that he wanted to hear an affirmative answer, but wasn't yet sure, or at least quite sure, whether he would.

She couldn't speak. So she nodded, her eyes wide and dumb, tears shivering on the bottoms of her lashes.

"Good... good." Draco's eyes glowed silver, and a strange sort of triumphant smile curved up one corner of his mouth, crookedly. "I thought you most likely would be. I promise you, I'll be gentle. When I need to be. And later I won't, but you won't want me to be, by then..."

"I don't understand," she managed to say.

"No, because you don't know what I'm talking about yet, Ginny, my innocent little Ginny." At the sound of her first name, she jumped slightly. Or perhaps that was because his lips had started journeying down her neck again. "But you will understand it... soon. Oh, you're going to enjoy this, I swear you will..." and his hands moved behind her, to her shoulders.

At last, Ginny really understood why his name had been whispered again and again, mouth to ear, in those secret conversations she spied upon in the darkest hours of the night. It wasn't the coldly pretty perfection of his face or the sinewy grace of his body, and it certainly wasn't the Malfoy money. His hands told the secret, those lanky, elegant hands of his that always seemed too big for him; the hands that should have been clumsy, but were more graceful than anything else on earth. They touched her, and they made silent promises that the rest of him would keep. They had the gentleness of a feather falling to earth. They had the hard implacability of iron bands. They were hard and soft, punishing and soothing, sinful and crude, sacred and shameless as the dreams of a fallen angel. Before this night is over, his fingertips whispered, I will understand every inch of you, inside and out. I am learning you, Ginny Weasley, and I will know you better than you've ever known yourself. I will drive you beyond anything you have ever dreamed you could feel, yes, even in those dreams where you woke gasping and covered with sweat, shivering, grasping at a sweetness past all understanding, touching yourself in your lonely bed, crying out for the loss of what you never truly had...

All these things she understood without words. And all he was doing was caressing her shoulders, her upper back, the curve of her waist, and all through a layer of cloth. It was almost an embrace that he could have given her in front of her mother and her father and all six of her brothers. If he hadn't been Draco Malfoy, that is, since his laying one finger on her would have been taken as grounds for dismemberment as far as they were concerned.

His fingers moved up to her neck, brushed against bare skin, and branded her. She gasped from the heat of him; it spread sudden liquid shocks down through her chest and stomach and nipples and gathered between her legs. Heat... she was nothing but heat, she was melting into a hot pool of some resistless stuff under his hands. It felt like there was very little of herself left to resist him. Soon there would be nothing at all. And he hadn't even taken off her bodice yet; it was as if he were deliberately waiting, tantalizing Ginny by showing her what he could do to her body while scarcely touching her skin, so that by the time he had all her new clothes off she would be only a mindlessly writhing moaning thing, utterly compliant.

Now his hands were at her waist, turning her on the bed, and he said only one word in a husky, harsh voice. "Look."

Ginny looked.

She stared back at herself from the standing pier glass directly at the other end of the bed. And at last she understood why it was there, in that exact location, in the Lion and Unicorn's most expensive rooms, and felt a perfect fool for not understanding before. Its surface was dark, a little rippled, but the images of herself and Draco were clear. She was barely sitting upright; somehow it was easier to see that than to feel it. He was supporting her from behind, or she would have fallen. Her reflected face was a mask of fear, confusion, dawning knowledge, and-- yes-- desire. His reflected face was criminally, sinfully beautiful, his hair a halo of silver, misty in the uneven surface of the mirror.

She watched his hands move down her chest, like pale snakes. The image and the thought should have been unappealing, but they were not. She felt his hands stop at her breasts. He smiled, and she had never seen anything more sinister, or more perfect. Too perfect to be human, she thought. He was a fallen angel of lust, trapped between heaven and earth, and whatever powers remained in him, whether celestial or hellish, were turned on her.

His fingers moved forward. She watched them, hypnotized. Then she felt them, and she could not stop the little whimpers that escaped her. Draco was brushing her nipples. Gently. Gently. Then more firmly. The linen of the bodice rasped against them, and they rose almost painfully hard. He was using the very clothing she wore as a means to arouse her. He knows, she thought faintly. He knows everything about... this, this dark mysterious sex thing, and I know nothing at all. It isn't fair. How can I fight this? How can I fight him... when I don't want to? When he does things to me, and I can't want to?

Her eyes, in the mirror, were dark, huge, and haunted. They glittered like jewels. But something else was glittering, too-- no, glowing. Without surprise, Ginny saw that the silver locket shone brightly. It was hot around her neck, just as his kisses were hot on her skin; she could scarcely tell the difference anymore. His face was buried where her neck met her shoulder; he couldn't have seen it yet.

Then he was turning her back towards him, and gathering her to him, so closely that she had the strange feeling that she was losing all form and identity as a separate person. Draco had her pressed up against the head of the bed and was devouring her; there was no other word for it; his mouth was all over her; his big hands were lifting her and holding her so closely to him that their bodies touched at every point. Somehow or other he'd pushed her thighs apart and her legs were spread, or perhaps she'd done it herself, and he was half-kneeling so that he was sandwiched between them. She wasn't wearing proper knickers, of course, only the little pettipants, and if she'd suspected that he wore nothing beneath that dressing-gown except his wand-belt with the silver-handled knife, she knew it now. There was only a thin layer of cloth between them and oh God, she could feel how much he wanted her, the very solid evidence of his desire. Even though she had never permitted Neville or Colin to get close enough to her so that she could have clearly felt this part of a boy's body before, she certainly knew what it was. Ginny remembered her spiteful taunt of a few days before. It's a bit hard to aim at something that small, isn't it? She'd thought that Draco had had a strange smile on his face at the time. Now, she understood why. Maybe he knew even then that she'd soon find out for herself how wrong she was.

It all made her a little afraid, and she squirmed against him, realizing too late what a shamefully exciting feeling that was. She could only imagine by the dilating of his eyes, the sudden painfully sharp intake of his breath, what it had done to him.

"Ginny, Ginny. I want you. How I want you," he murmured. "Let me show you. Let me prove it to you."

Her entire body burned for him; not only the places where he touched her, or where she'd touched herself in the lonely past, but all of her. She wanted to say yes. Her mouth opened to form the word. Then she felt a sharper burning around her neck, piercing and painful. It was the locket.

There was only one moment left, she saw in a sudden flash of clarity. One moment she wrested from his control over her by a supreme effort of the mind, one instant in which she was still herself, Ginny Weasley, and still had the power to choose.

Not quite ready yet, he thought. She would be shy, of course; it was natural enough. There was definitely something titillating about the sheer fact of such innocence. The thought of corrupting it, perhaps. Draco pulled back just slightly and simply looked at her for a moment, a slight smile on his lips. "What lovely hair you have," he said, moving forward again, pressing little kisses around her hairline, lifting the red-gold mass, letting it sift through his fingers. "I wonder would it spread all the way around me, like a shining curtain... so beautiful. But first I want to see it spread out on the pillows... You're dizzy, aren't you? Lie down. Lie down and let me touch you the way I want, and the way you want, as well..."

(A/N: You really need to see that pic.)

Draco felt her fumbling at his belt. Ah... apparently, she wasn't so shy, after all. He smirked triumphantly; imagining those slender hands of hers holding other parts of him, those long strong legs wrapped around his waist where her fingers were now. Shifting his weight forward very slightly, he felt her moving back, her shoulders inches from making contact with the bed. Oh yes. He'd known that under her prim exterior she was more than ready for him. For this. She had been ripening towards him for years without even knowing it, and now... now... The word thudded in his head, over and over, and he could nearly taste the strong metallic savor of excitement and arousal in his mouth. He deliberately forced himself to keep running his hands through her hair, to avoid touching the body so close to his hands. Self-discipline. So impossibly hard, with her; so very, very necessary. Think, think, he repeated to himself. Decide what you're going to do... every move must be planned out, carefully calculated. I need to make sure she feels pleasure from this or I don't think the power will be fully awakened... Oh, but he knew all too well how to accomplish that. Once he overcame her childish fears, he'd make her want him every bit as much as he wanted her. He knew how to make her sigh and moan and writhe for him, to clutch onto him as if she were drowning and only he could save her; to call out his name as if there was nothing, nothing, nothing left in the world but him and her. And the best part of all was that she was still so unawakened; he would be the one to bring to life all that slumbered in her.

She was still touching him, but her hands had moved no further down, as he'd hoped they would. He gritted his teeth, wondering how much longer he could wait. Patience is a virtue... have I thought everything through, though?

Draco himself had never felt fully connected to his magical powers until one year before, when he'd finally lost his own virginity, an event which he privately felt was long overdue. That was a memory of sheer joy; it was only what had come after that was pain, even though it was this experience that had taught him how much deeper were the scars of joy and pleasure that had gone. But he'd wondered, too, if all the endless hellish time of ever-increasing frustration and Pansy's teasing and girls at Hogwarts bouncing mockingly away from him into the mysterious world of untouchable females-- until he found out just how touchable they all were, that is--all the imagining, all the dreaming, all the long long nights of loneliness in his solitary Slytherin bed, had somehow sharpened him, and heightened his abilities. Because there was a different kind of power, he knew, that came from stemming the source, damming up the stream. Ginny Weasley had remained a virgin even though she'd certainly had opportunites to change that state. And he sensed her great capacity for passion, one that she had never tapped or even truly suspected. All that power in her; all that pleasure; built up, waiting to be released, and a shiver went through him at the thought of both of those things from her and through her, separately, together, all at once.

Enough. His supply of forbearance had simply run out, like water through a sieve. Draco reached behind Ginny to undo the back of the bodice. The tiny carved buttons slipped and rolled away under his fingers. He'd tear them off if he had to. He'd tear every scrap of clothing off her in shreds, if he had to. There was only so much he could be expected to endure. He had no patience left, and if he had to wait much longer, he wouldn't have any control left, either. There was a driving desperation to it all that reminded him of that very first time with Marie-France, a year ago-- now, now, hurry! The clothing she wore was a barrier he could no longer tolerate, the thin linen like a brick wall between them. Once he got it all off of her, once her naked body was a solid reality under his hands, Draco knew he could be calmer. Time would slow to a delicious leisurely pace, marked only by their cries and sighs and whispers as he slaked this hunger for her to his heart's content. If only the strange buttons and fastenings would come off; he needed to see her, to match her naked body to the image he carried in his mind--

But then her hand went up, swiftly, and he saw the flash of steel in it. She had his little knife.

He grabbed at her wrists, but she yanked herself away from him, slippery as a snake, and darted across the room. When Draco started to get up off the bed, she pressed the knife to the blue jugular vein standing out against her white skin. "Don't take another step," she said.

Well. That was less than flattering. She preferred cutting her own throat to sleeping with him. "Ginny--"

"Don't call me by my first name, Malfoy!" Her voice rose to a near-screech, and he winced, hoping nobody else at the Lion and Unicorn had heard it. Of course, nobody in the building might care if he was murdering her up here. At that particular moment, the thought had its tempting aspects.

"Listen, Weasley," he said in what he hoped were placating tones, "if you really don't want to do this, we won't. I'm not going to force you, I swear I won't-- I just thought that-- put down that knife--"

Ginny raised the blade to her hair, grabbed it up in a hank with her left hand, and, with a swift movement, hacked it off. The red-gold length fell to the floor.

There was a moment of appalled silence.

"Gods, Weasley, what have you done?"

She threw the hair at him, and it landed at his feet. "If you like my hair so much, Malfoy, then you should have it! It's all you're ever going to get of me."

"That's the worst haircut I've ever seen," Draco said as Ginny continued to chop at her hair, tears rolling down her face. "Would you like me to help you? You're making a terrible mess."

"If you think I'm going to let you get anywhere near me with a knife--"

"I seem to recall that you're the one who grabbed the knife. My knife. Give it back."

She turned in a jerky movement and kept wielding the blade. He darted across the room and had it from her hand in one fluid motion. She cried out, grasping for it, but he held it easily out of her reach.

Ginny bowed her head, determined not to scream, sure she'd feel his hands on her at any moment. The thought filled her with a mixture of terror and desire; she could no longer separate them and wondered if she ever would be able to do so again.

But he only handed her back the knife, turning it around so that the blade was towards him. "Here. If you want it so much, I suppose you can keep it for now."

She tucked it in a pocket of the skirt, quickly, before he could change his mind. "Aren't you afraid I'm going to stab you in your sleep?"

He reached out and touched her wrist, and the red web of spells flickered briefly into vision. "While we're bound by the Hexensymbols, you can't hurt me, remember? And before you ask, I'm not going to hurt you, whether I have a knife or not."

"Well, what about what you were just doing?" Ginny snatched her arm away.

"On the bed?" Draco gave a low laugh. "Honestly, Weasley, do you think I planned to hurt you?" He shifted position a bit, standing before her in the great armchair by the fire, and his hands clasped onto hers.

"Don't--"

"I was going to make you feel pleasure like you've never felt it before," he said, looking into her eyes, knowing she saw the honesty in his. Once again, he thought, nothing was so deceptive as telling part of the truth.

"We can't."

"Why not?" He did not move towards her. Somehow, that made it worse. "And if you tell me it's because you're saving yourself for Creevey or Longbottom, I will laugh. Or is it Potter?" He could feel his mouth twisting down into a sneer.

Ginny took a deep breath. "I'm not going to try to explain it again. Look, you say I can't hurt you while we're bound by--" She gestured with her wrist, and red flickered faintly "--these. All right. But I can hurt myself, and I will if you don't leave me alone. I will!"

Draco dropped her hands, genuinely shocked. "You'd do that?"

"I would." Her gaze was very level.

"I don't know if I should let you keep that knife."

"I didn't know you cared," she said mockingly.

He bit his lip and knew that his face must look white and strained at the sudden fear he felt. Should he be showing his emotions so clearly? Well, let her think it was out of concern for her personally; that might be very useful for his purposes. "I'm not used to girls threatening to kill themselves if I touch them," he said lightly, letting his voice roughen a little. "My ego may never recover."

"I'm amazed you know what an ego is. Don't tell me you've studied Freud."

"Well, I think the id was the primary operative here. But the entire situation, really, was more similar to the existentialist philosophy R.D. Laing discussed in The Divided Self. The maniacs are sane; it's the world that's gone mad." He grinned at her. "Close your mouth, Weasley. Something might fly in."

"You've studied psychiatry?"

"The von Drachen librarian is the ghost of Sigmund Freud. We've discussed the subject many times, Ziggy and I."

Ginny opened her mouth, and then closed it again.

"I'm full of surprises." Draco crooked a finger at her. "Now come to bed. It's very late."

"I'll sleep over here." Ginny retreated to the chair and pulled it closer to the fire.

"Look, we both need to get some sleep," he said impatiently, seized by a sudden fear. My voice sounds steady again, he thought. Something's... over. The worst of it isn't hitting me like it was, anyway. The moment of insanity, of screaming bodily need, had passed. It seemed that way for now, at least. He didn't pretend to understand it, but the Ginny Weasley-compulsion seemed to come in waves, and it had dipped into a trough for the moment. But she had to sleep next to him. For three nights in a row now, he'd slept nearly the entire night through for the first time in a year. With her. Normally, he never allowed girls to stay after the shagging was over, and no-one had since Marie-France Tessier; his broken sleep patterns disintegrated even further if someone else was with him all night. But Ginny had been different. With her in his arms, he gratefully entered the realm of sleep, and was welcomed into it instead of being left outside to drearily tramp its borders. The dream-memories that had begun to haunt his nights were always dispelled as soon as he woke with her next to him. He'd hold her as tightly as he could and hear her sleepy murmur in his ear; the touch of her hair, her rose-petal cheek against his lips, the feel of her body, soft, slender, strong, all at once... and then, incredibly, he would drift back into sleep, dreamless this time.

"I am not staying in the same bed with you tonight, Malfoy," said Ginny, a note of finality in her voice.

"It's a huge bed. You can take one side and I'll take the other. We'll never even know the other person's there."

"No."

Still, he tried one more time. "Mmm! This mattress is so soft. And the fur coverlets. Very warm." He yawned voluptuously.

"They're probably full of fleas."

Damn her. She was right. "Aren't you cold over there?"

"I'm perfectly fine."

"Are you sure? You can have your own pillow."

"I think I'll stay right where I am."

"Suit yourself." Draco blew out the candle. He heard the faint rustling sounds as Ginny made herself comfortable-- well, at least as comfortable as she could be on that chair, he thought maliciously.

He was utterly exhausted from riding all day. The endless arguing with Ginny Weasley had tired him out further. But it was just as he had feared. The instant his head touched the pillow, his eyes snapped open. It was going to be another sleepless night.

The chair was every bit as uncomfortable as Draco thought it was. Ginny flipped back and forth, wood digging into her arms and along her spine. Something nibbled at her leg. Was that a flea? Maybe it was a good thing that the room was so dim. She couldn't see how dirty it probably really was. She stared up at the ceiling, her mind racing. Ottery St. Catchpole. The Christmas tree; the enchanted dancing ornaments, the Yule log carried in from the woods as they all sang "The Boar's Head Carol" and joyously dragged it along the floor. Skating on the pond on Boxing Day... Searching for holly and ivy in the woods with Ron the day before they returned to Hogwarts... Her throat tightened and her eyes swam tears. Yule.

And now she was spending the holidays in a dirty room in a waterfront inn on the quay at Leith. Her deadly enemy lay sleeping in a bed next to her. She heard his restless tossing and turning. Well, clearly he wasn't sleeping either. God only knew what would happen in the morning. She felt instinctively that something would, though. It was as if they'd been building up to something in the past several days, as the year turned towards the winter solstice and Yule, and also, she remembered now, towards Draco's seventeenth birthday. And now it was nearly here, whatever it was. Nearly here...

The idea made her more restless than ever, and she turned again, rubbing her hip where the hard wood of the chair dug into it. An awful thought struck her.

"Malfoy?"

An exaggerated sigh. "What is it, Weasley?"

"We-- we are going to find Ron tomorrow morning, like we said. Aren't we?"

"Goodnight, Weasley."

"I need to know," said Ginny, her voice trembling with something very near to hysteria.

"Do you? Well, people in hell need ice water. You don't see them getting it."

"You don't mean--"

"I mean that I don't want to hear another word out of you. Now shut the bloody fuck up and go to sleep!"

Ginny decided not to say anything more.

She chewed on her thumbnail for a long time, staring at Draco. He was lying motionless now, his face against a pillow in a posture she knew well. She'd adopted it herself so many times. He was hunting sleep, grimly chasing it down, refusing to allow it to escape. It wasn't a tactic that worked very well, but while you were trying it, the entire outside world was blocked out.

She was blocked out.

What if he didn't plan to help her find Ron, after all? What if she'd made him angry enough so that he really would turn her over to his father? She didn't have any sort of hold over Draco Malfoy now. You could have had one, her mind whispered. And you threw it away.

Ginny groaned silently at the thought.

If you had done what he wanted, the little voice in her head persisted, you might be able to trust him now...

I wouldn't trust him as far as I could throw him with a dragon tied on no matter what I did!

She shifted position in the chair, examining Draco's head, his shoulders, his arms as he turned over and over, grabbed the other pillow and threw it across the bed again, tossed and turned and rolled the sheets into a ball. Some sort of madness had swept over her while they were on that bed, transmitted by his touch. It had ebbed now. She should have felt ill at the thought that she had allowed the son of Lucius Malfoy to put his hands on her. Instead, she was icy cold. The fire had died down; the room was bitterly chilled and the frost seemed to have crept into her thoughts, overlaying all of them with an frozen logic. As she stared across the room, at the bed with its restless occupant at its centre, everything seemed to shift slightly so that she saw things from a different perspective.

Her only bulwark against Lucius Malfoy and the Death Eaters and Lord Grindelwald and God knew what else was lying in that bed. Draco Malfoy. She really had no choice. He was it. Maybe-- her mind tried to flinch away from this thought, but she didn't allow it-- maybe she should have let him do what he wanted. Yes, maybe she should have done. While he was touching her, she'd imagined all sorts of strange things, but now it was time to be logical, practical, and sensible. The truth was very simple. Of course it was.

She was a girl. He was a teenage boy, and, if she could believe even half the stories she'd heard whispered about him, a rather more sex-obsessed one than most. They'd been thrown together for four days and nights. And he had wanted her before all of this had even begun; maybe only as a warm and willing body, but he had wanted her still. In resisting Draco Malfoy, Ginny realized, she had caught his interest even more. She somehow didn't think he was used to that. He's very accustomed to getting what he wants, I think. And I-- she squirmed-- I've become what he wants, for now. What a perfect fool she'd been not to see that this might happen; she felt as if her eyes had just been opened and her ears unstoppered after years of walking about deaf and blind.

Funny... I wonder what made me think of that...

Ginny shivered. Some strand of icy cold memory was slithering through her mind, as it had so often done in the most vulnerable hours of the night. Not the memory of Tom Riddle in the Chamber of Secrets, not this time, but one that was at least as bad. The memory of all the days and weeks and months afterwards, when she had crept around school and then home like a grey little ghost, her head down, her eyes cast down from meeting anyone or anything. There was something terribly wrong with her, something so badly damaged that it could never be recovered, and yet it didn't seem to show. She went to classes, ate meals in the Great Hall, sat in the stands at Quidditch matches, and studied in the library as she always had, and no-one ever seemed to notice, or to see. Not even after that horrible time at St. Mungo's.

Ginny had seriously wondered if some sort of glamour had been cast on her right after she was found in the Chamber, before she woke up, something that had been done as a kindness. Something that lent her smiles and normal-sounding giggles and convincing cheerfulness when those qualities were needed, so that nobody would ever suspect. She'd stand before mirrors for hours on end sometimes, peering closely at herself, afraid to turn away, sure that at any moment the facade of a normal teenaged girl would split and break and fall away, revealing the monster within. And then everyone would see. Behind their hands, they'd whisper that they'd always known.

It was why she never let friends come too close to her, being careful to keep relationships superficial. She'd spent more time with Luna Lovegood than anyone else in the past year precisely because Luna didn't talk when Ginny couldn't bear the effort of speaking. But the two girls rarely did more than sit in the library or walk around the Hogwarts grounds on sunny days, Luna peacefully working on one of her endless necklaces of butterbeer caps, occasionally giving Ginny a calm look from her huge eyes and pushing a strand of dirty blond hair behind one large ear. Then she would talk about the Crumple-Horned Snorkack that lived in the far northern parts of the Scandinavian countries, and how it could often be found lurking among the fjords of Norway or skiing down the slopes in remote areas of Sweden. Frequently, too, she spun elaborate theories involving the location of the lost city of Atlantis, the untapped secrets of the pyramids, and the layout of ancient civilizations on Mars, all of which were apparently contained in a cryptic peanut butter, bacon, and banana sandwich recipe buried at the foundation of an American estate that went by the odd name of Graceland. Whenever other students passed their table at the library or crossed their path as they walked around the lake, Ginny knew she would shortly hear the whispers, and then the muffled bursts of laughter. She never paid any attention. Ginny simply nodded at intervals and never really listened to Luna, letting the words wash over her in a soothing tide.

If looking at a particular boy made Ginny feel hot and cold and shivery all over, she made a special effort to never be in the same room with that boy again, and resolutely kept her eyes away from him. It was why she'd never spoken to Michael Corner again after he'd asked her to come to the last Hogsmeade weekend with him before end of term in the spring, his cheeks growing pink and his dark eyes smiling shyly at her. She'd felt betrayed. They had been friends since the first Yule Ball several months before, but Ginny had never imagined he wanted more. She'd thought he was safe, and he wasn't safe, and she never spoke to him again. That was why Neville and Colin were... safe, yes, for all his creepy qualities, there had been something very safe about Colin. She had never wanted him. She had felt only detached pity and friendship for Neville. She had never permitted herself to feel more than that for anyone else, and she had been sure, more deeply sure than she had ever been of anything, that nobody could ever truly desire her.

But now, Ginny knew that she had been proved wrong. And it was more than that. It felt as if-- and she struggled to give the feeling a name-- some other-Ginny was sharpening beneath the surface of her, a Ginny with roots that went deep. This self wasn't shy or afraid, and it was stepping forward boldly. It was the Ginny that should have been, that could have been, and, if not for the Chamber of Secrets and God only knew what else, that would have been. For the first time, she wondered if the Disinhibio potion had entirely done her a disservice, after all. Perhaps it had given her something that life had not.

This deeper self knew that Draco Malfoy wanted her, and coolly accepted the fact. It gave her something to bargain with, maybe, on this winter's night at a waterfront inn, when her back was up against the wall. It wasn't as if she was planning on dying a virgin. And she certainly knew what to expect; she might not have any practical experience, but one couldn't grow up with six brothers and not end up knowing the theory of everything there was to know. How bad could it be, really? It would hurt; she knew that, but she could always grit her teeth through that part. She surely wouldn't like it, of course, but there were more important things at stake right now than what might or might not please her.

Maybe she ought to get up and go over to the bed right now. She felt incredibly awkward and clumsy at the very thought, but it wasn't as if she'd really have to do anything. He certainly seemed to know what he was doing, and she could just let him do it. His hands had been so sure, so strong, there was none of the clumsy fumbling and groping she had heard whispered about, had endured a little of from Neville and Colin. But...

...You'll enjoy this. I swear you will, he'd said in that low purring voice, and his tone offered no boasting or bragging. He was stating plain fact; he knew what she'd feel. What he could make her feel. She waited for the shrinking fear at the core of her, the little voice crying out that she could never enjoy it, never, never; if she submitted, Malfoy might protect her, but if she had to let her family's worst enemy do these things to her, she was obligated to hate every moment of it. The feelings did not come. Deep within her mind, there was only a faint wonder if it would be too much of a betrayal if she did like it, after all. A shiver went through her at the thought of his hands on her, all over her this time, doing things to her she could only dimly imagine...

She stared into the darkness for a long time. The locket shifted and twisted under the bodice, next to her skin. It felt like a light scorch every time it moved, but if it wasn't covered she was afraid that it might be glowing. Each time Ginny felt the little movement, she pretended that she hadn't, holding her breath until it stopped. It knocked, knocked, knocked at her chest, and she stared resolutely into the darkness, not looking down. If I ignore it, it'll stop. If I ignore it, it'll stop. If I ignore--

And as she stared, she saw the faint outline of the leather bag on the table, where Draco had left it after taking out the comb. The edge of the Kitap-an Dus was sticking out.

It glowed red as the very heart of fire.

Ginny sprang from the chair in a wild, uncoordinated leap. Draco rubbed his eyes and pushed himself to a sitting position, his upper body a dark outline against the wall. "What is it now, Weasley?" he asked, his voice surly.

"Get up," she blurted, too panicky to pick and choose her words.

He stretched leisurely. Even in the dim light, she could see the smirk on his face. "My, but how the worm has turned. You want something from me now, is that it?"

"Please, just listen to me, listen--"

"And you're saying please. How considerate--"

Ginny whirled towards him, her eyes feverish. "We have to get out of here. Now, right now."

"Oh?" Draco made as if to lie back down. "Well, maybe I don't want to get out of here. I want some sleep, Weasley."

"We have to. Now. Right away. It isn't safe." She went over to the bed, kneeling on the floor so that she was at eye level with him, barely feeling the hard boards under her knees, scarcely conscious of the fact that she had taken his hands in hers and was gripping them hard. "I just-- I suddenly know that it isn't. They're after us. They'll find us. They-- oh!" His thumbs caressed her fingers, moving lightly over her skin, and she nearly fainted when she felt his lips on their sensitive tips, brushing them. "Don't do that-- I can't think-- I--let's just go, we have to go. Take me out of here--"

Then he raised his head. The look on Draco's face at that moment was one that Ginny wished she had never had to see.

"Why the hell should I?" he drawled. "I wanted something from you, and you wouldn't give it to me. And you wanted it as well-- you did, Weasley; I can tell when a girl wants it."

She imagined that he was right.

"But you were too afraid." He clucked his tongue in mock sorrow. "Such a pity. Well, I'm not going to force you into anything. But now you want to leave, and I don't. What a shame."

She saw the pulsing red glow out of the corner of one eye. It had grown stronger. Ginny groaned, and then clapped her hand over her mouth.

But it was too late. Draco raised his head at the sound, and the quick sharp intake of his breath filled the room. He was looking at the book, too. In an instant, he was out of the bed, springing up as noiselessly as a cat, the Kitap an-Dus in one hand, Ginny's wrist in the other.

"You saw this! When did you see it? When did it start glowing like this?"

"I--I don't know," said Ginny in a faltering voice. "A few minutes ago, I suppose."

"You suppose. Do you know what this means?"

"I'm sure I don't. But when I saw it I just felt that danger was about to close in on us, and we had to get out-- "

Draco bit his lip, thinking, turning away from her. The moon shifted from behind a cloud, and the flood of its light almost blinded her after the darkness of the chair; she could only see his profile, motionless as he ran over every possibility in his mind. "We're getting close," he said at last. "Close to the time." Before she could move a muscle, he had seized her right hand and placed it on one lit page of the Book of Dreams, his own intertwined with her fingers. The book pulsed, glowed, pulsed, glowed, and she saw his face, lit by the preternatural red light from below, grave and deliberate.

"I know that which would bond us truly, and so do you," Draco said, his voice wandering a little. "But it has no value unless you give it to me willingly."

"I--I can't," whispered Ginny.

"What?" He blinked, shaking his head.

"I can't do what you said."

"I didn't say anything." He continued to look into the open book for another moment, then closed it, sighing.

A chill of fear crept up Ginny's spine. Was Malfoy going mad at last? Or was something else at work here? "We have to get out of here, we absolutely have to," she repeated.

"No," he said, his voice distant. "We're staying right here."

Tears prickled the inside of her eyelashes. "Please."

"No."

The clouds scudding over the moon had hidden it, and she could see almost nothing. The thought came to her again. Between the Death Eaters and her, the sinister dark lord Grindelwald and her, and the book and her, she had but one protection. One possible protection. And only one bargaining chip left.

Before she lost her nerve, she opened her mouth to speak.

"Please. I'll do anything. Anything, Malfoy. Get me out of here and I'll do anything you want."

"Oh?" He looked up at her suddenly. "Such as what?"

Ginny ground her teeth. He wasn't going to make this easy for her. "Such as-- well-- I am sorry I couldn't do what you wanted, before."

"Are you?" Draco turned his head back to look at her, and there was something so strange in his gaze that her planned words faltered. This wasn't going how she'd thought it would go at all.

"I mean, I'm, I, it's just that I'm not ready. Not quite yet. I need a bit more time."

"More time," said Draco thoughtfully, as if pondering an Arithmancy question written on the floor between them.

"It's just that it was all so sudden," she said pleadingly. "I mean, I've never done anything like this before, and things were so different at Hogwarts, you know they were." Pretend! Pretend to be a silly simpering idiot with your mind between your legs, like Lavender or Parvati. Think of how they were forever whispering and giggling. "You frightened me a little, that's all. You're so--" She batted her eyelashes, regretting that the gesture was probably wasted in the near-pitch blackness. "Well, experienced. The things I've heard about you--"

"All true," he said, but his voice wasn't smug, which was what she would have expected. Again, she thought, he was simply stating fact.

"I'm sure they are."

"You'd like to find out?"

"Well, I mean, I'm curious, of course, and..." Ginny said. She couldn't think of a way to end the sentence, so it trailed off miserably. She took a deep breath and plunged on recklessly.

"I'll, uh--" I can just say it, I don't have to mean it, it was said under duress, surely that doesn't count, my fingers are crossed, maybe if I say it fast enough I can get it out of my mouth-- "I'llgotobedwithyouIpromiseIwill. Soon. And then I won't-- I won't do what I did tonight, I promise. I won't try to stop you, Malfoy, and you can do as you like with me--"

He raised his bent head and looked at her; she caught the glitter of his eyes. "Really? Do you swear?"

"Yes, yes, I swear."

"By what?"

"Anything you like, I suppose."

Draco reached his wrist up and tapped it; the red hearts and crescents and geometric shapes glowed in the darkness. "By this? By the Hexensymbol?"

Ginny nodded, then rather awkwardly said "Yes" once she realized that she was standing in a dark patch, and he couldn't see her head move.

"Once more," said Draco.

"What? But I just said--"

"Third time's the charm." He moved closer, but his next words came to her as from a great distance. "Swear that I'll be your first, Ginny Weasley. That you won't take anyone else before me." His hands were moving even closer and he halted them millimetres away from her body, laying claim on her thighs and hips and breasts and arms. "Promise me that you'll be mine."

She could feel the desire radiating from him, like little flames licking at her body from his fingertips where he was so nearly, so very nearly touching her. She was drowning in it, this overwhelming consuming shameful feeling. She could feel herself dipping beneath the surface...

No. No. She couldn't do this, or she shouldn't do this, she no longer knew which. Giving herself to Draco would be darkness, profanation; her flesh responded to his because of the darkness in her, and she must never stop fighting it. She was Harry's, even if he never took her. She would save herself for him, even if he never wanted her. She didn't know that a light had entered her eyes, and her lips had curved into a smile, as if seeing something of great beauty and perfection, infinitely far away.

Draco caught his breath, looking at her. He suddenly surged forward and backed her against the wall, throwing his hand up so that her head didn't hit the rough wood, drawing her face so close to his that she could see the silver lines radiating out from the dark pupils of his eyes. He said only one word.

"Swear."

"I swear," whispered Ginny, scarcely knowing what she said. The weight of her words coiled around them. The red web of spells crackled in the air between them. "But so must you."

He inclined his head to her, waiting for her to speak again.

"Promise that..." Her thoughts frayed into near-panic; this was her one chance to get a vow out of him that she didn't think he would dare to break. Oh God, this had to be good! "That you won't betray me." Even as the words left her mouth, she was dismally aware that she could have done better, but also that it was too late to change what she demanded of him.

"I do," said Draco. "I swear it. I swear." And the magical bond was completed.

The air lapsed into stillness once more, and Ginny could hear her own quick, frightened breathing. "A promise made is a debt unpaid, Weasley," Draco said softly. "Your word will be your bond."

"Yours as well," Ginny managed to say in a tart voice. "Now for the love of God, let's get out of here!" She had headed for the door and was halfway there before she realized that he hadn't moved. "Come on," she repeated. He turned back towards the bed and leisurely got in it, pulling the covers up. "What are you doing?" she asked dumbly.

"Gettting some more sleep."

"But-- but we have to leave."

"I'm not going anywhere, and neither are you."

"But you said-- you promised--" Her mouth didn't quite seem to be working.

"I promised not to betray you. I didn't say anything about leaving." He yawned. "Good night, Weasley."

She stood motionless in the centre of the room, hands clenched into fists.

"I don't think you'll be able to sleep very well standing in the middle of the floor," said Draco. "Sure you don't want to share the bed?"

Ginny flew at him, beating at his chest, his face, and his head with her fists. He held her at arms' length without the slightest effort, a smirk on his lips. Her breath began to come in gasps, and her cheeks grew bright red. "I hate you," she said at last, helplessly.

"It seems to me I've heard that song before," said Draco idly.

"I do, I do. I hate everything about you. Everything!"

"Oh, you'll change your mind about that, Weasley."

"Never. Never."

His face darkened. "You don't have a choice, now. You've sworn--"

"You tricked me into it!"

"You volunteered! I'd left you alone and was trying to get some sleep. You're the one who said--" and Draco mimicked her pleading voice with cruel accuracy "--oh please, Malfoy, get me out of here and I'll do anything you want, I'll go to bed with you, I won't stop you from doing as you like with me." His voice took on a mocking tone. "Did you really expect me to refuse such a charming offer, Weasley?"

"It doesn't count," said Ginny, struggling to keep from crying in front of him. "It can't count."

"Oh, I'm afraid that it can and does. You really don't know much about the nature of magical bonds, do you?"

She did cry then, hating herself for doing so nearly as much as she hated him.

"I'll have to let you at me, then," she said in an exhausted, hopeless whisper after she had run through all the tears that were in her. "There's nothing I can do to stop you. But I'll despise every moment of it."

"As I said..." Draco reached out to run one finger down her arm. "I think you'll change your mind about that."

She snatched her arm away. "I won't. I tell you I won't. I'd rather shag anything else that walks. I wish I had, so that at least you wouldn't be the first."

"Too late," said Draco, and he laughed.

She jerked back, but he was holding her fast. And it swept over her like a wave, the knowledge that she would soon have to share her body with this boy she despised more fiercely than she had ever hated anyone on the face of the earth. The old, old dream hovered somewhere in her mind, faint as the strands of a shattered spiderweb. A white bed draped in something drifty and floaty, and she herself sliding between snow-white sheets into Harry's arms as she offered him the only sort of purity that she had left. Her mind had been broken into and dirtied, but at least her body had not, and oh, how she had dreamed of giving Harry that gift. Ginny had a sudden burst of furious inspiration.

"You'll have my body, Malfoy," she said, "but you won't have my mind. I'll be thinking of someone else the entire time. Picturing someone else. Pretending you're someone else--"

He turned on her with the speed of a striking snake. "Who?"

Ginny gulped. Maybe that last part hadn't been such a good idea. "I-- nobody! Nobody in particular, I mean. Just anybody else."

"Just anybody else," Draco repeated. "Well, maybe you won't change your mind about hating me. But I find that I don't really care a great deal... in fact, it's a matter of supreme indifference to me."

"You really think that's a surprise? That you'd just take what you want from me? I would never expect you to care if I wanted it or not."

"Oh, I wouldn't say that at all." He tipped up her chin and trailed one finger down her neck. "Hate me as much as you like. But you will want me. And you will respond to me." That order, or threat, or promise, should have sounded silly coming from a boy who was only one year older than she, thought Ginny, but it certainly didn't. "Now picture that, if you like," he continued. "Naked for me... writhing under me... moaning my name... and hating me like poison. Pleasant thought, isn't it?"

"That's what you want, isn't it, Malfoy?" she asked. She could hardly form the words. Her lips felt as if they were made of ice. "That's what really gets you off. The thought of shagging someone who despises you. You'll know that I would stick a knife between your ribs when you're in the middle of fucking me, if I could--" a tremor went through her, dear God, she'd never used that word before the past few days-- "and you'll only get some twisted pleasure out of that, too. Because that's what you really want! To hurt me. The more you do, the happier you'll be. That's all you've ever really wanted from me!" Ginny's face was contorted into a snarl, and the moonlight shone full upon it, tracing each distorted feature. Draco stared down at her, something almost like fear on his own face.

"You don't know what the hell you're talking about, Weasley," he said. Then he rose abruptly from the bed, leaving her clutching the spread to her breast.

"Where are you going?" she asked falteringly. He was fully dressed and had put on his cloak.

"Out," Draco said.

"You can't simply leave."

"Watch me."

"What am I supposed to do?"

In answer, he slammed the door. A second later, she heard the sound of a key turning in the lock. She hurled herself at the door and rattled the knob. It didn't budge. She glanced around the room for something to use as a lockpick, but there was nothing. Ginny didn't think she'd be able to do it successfully anyway. It had looked very easy on those television programmes, but she had a sneaking suspicion that imported episodes of "The A-Team" did not parallel reality too well. "He can't keep me here," she whispered, slumping against the door. But it seemed that he could.

After a time, she stood, walked to the little window, and peered out. The moon sailed high across the massive night clouds, dappling the long, frozen stems of wild grasses in a sea marsh up against the quay. She could see the hulking forms of ships moored to the docks in the darkness, their gangplanks almost all up now. Lights bobbed merrily from the masts of some, and there were forms moving about on deck. Probably sailors celebrating the holidays, the ones who had to stay onboard and guard the cargo. The rooms were on the third floor, with a landing just below, and if she tried to get out that window, she'd probably break her neck. And there were no mediwizards here. She pressed her hands into the windowsill, trying to control her breathing and the dreadful sense of panic that threatened to overwhelm her. Draco couldn't have gone far. He couldn't get away from her any more than she could escape him. He'd be back soon.

"I'm a Gryffindor," she repeated to herself through gritted teeth, clutching at the locket about her neck. "I'm brave, I'm brave, I'm--oh God they're coming for us. How could that stupid git just leave? Without me? I'm brave, I'm brave--"

One hand went to the side of her head, automatically, to twirl a strand of hair as she'd always been in the habit of doing while trying to think, and her fingers closed on empty air. Gone. Her long hair was gone; it was a sort of weird ragged pageboy now. What on earth had driven her to do such a thing? A cold fear had darted through her, she did remember that. Not from what he was doing, exactly-- she tried not to remember how she'd responded to that-- but something else. She pressed her hands against the stone wall as if the cold could steady her. Malfoy's touch been sucking will and strength out of her. His hands, laying claim. The possession of his kiss. Like a vampire feeding from its prey. And the worst part of all was that she had wanted it. She was conniving at her own destruction. Well, she had certainly done it now. She'd promised that she'd sleep with him soon... how soon was that? Would it depend on what he wanted, or what she... what she...

The back of Ginny's hand was cool against her throbbing hot forehead, and she pressed it against her skin as if she could blot out some unbearable knowledge by doing so. Perhaps if she'd had even a little more experience, she thought, she wouldn't have felt this unnameable emotion at the thought of what was going to happen between him and her, what she had sworn to allow him. It would at least be a fixed journey to a known place rather than a leap into the heart of an impenetrable darkness.

But she didn't think so, not really. There was more at stake here than herself. Malfoy didn't just want to sleep with her, although God knew he did want that. He wanted all of her. And if she gave him what he wanted, it wasn't just that she would never belong to her own self again. Some minute thing would shift and some mysterious balance would be broken.

Escape. There had to be a way to escape. The possibility teased at her mind once more. But how? She was tied to him by the Hexensymbol. Worst than that, she was now also bound to him by what she had sworn on it. And even if she did somehow free herself of that, Ginny didn't have any illusions about exactly how far a nearly sixteen-year-old girl would get on the waterfront of sixteenth century Leith. Whatever awaited her at Draco's hands seemed positively pleasant compared to that thought. If only I could-- oh, I don't know-- disguise myself as a boy! The thought came back to her again, every bit as tempting as before, every bit as impractical. If her body had still been coltish and flat, the way it was three or four years ago... but it wasn't. She glared down at her breasts with something like fury.

They were still singing down in the taproom. She could hear the faint voices drifting up to her as she stood by the window.

The boar's head in hand bear I

Bedecked with bays and rosemary

And I pray you my masters merry be

Quot estes in convivio...

Raucous yells, glasses clinking, drunken roars of laughter. The Christmas holidays. Nearly Draco Malfoy's birthday. Well, she wasn't going to think about that one.

Where were her friends on this cold winter's night? Were they lying safe within walls? Had they escaped the Death Eaters? Had they perhaps already set sail for Istanbul? She thought not. Somehow, Ginny believed that she'd know if they were gone. It might be a lot better if they had done so. And her brother, oh, where was Ron? Her heart ached for him. She could almost see him before her, his red hair getting a little long, flopping over his chocolate-brown eyes, his crooked smile showing the front tooth that had been chipped when he rescued her from falling facefirst down the slide at the village playground when she was six years old. That chip always kept coming back no matter how many dentistry spells her mother kept performing. "'Lo, Gin," he'd say in his deep husky voice. "Of course I'm all right. D'you think I'd let myself be caught by Lucius Malfoy and that lot? Not likely. Who's the cleverest brother in the world?" "You are," she'd say, and he'd pick her up and spin her round as he had when they were both children. Tall as she was, he topped her by a head, and he could still do it. Ron, how I miss you. What you'd think if you knew--

Oh, God. She thought with dread of what he'd say and do if he did know. "Let me get this straight." Her brother's face would screw up in concentration. "Malfoy locked you in a room at a seedy waterfront inn and started groping at you. Then you pulled his own knife on him-- good one, Gin-- and got him to leave you alone. But he already trapped you with a Bavarian spell, so you couldn't get away from him. And-- have I got this right, sis?-- you had to agree to shag him later." She could just hear the mixture of incredulity and deadly calm that would be in Ron's voice. "Right then," he'd finally say. "There's only one question. Should I torture him first? Or just throttle the slimy git?" And if Ron did find her, as she'd thought he would--

Ginny moved to the chair, pulled it up towards the window, and sat looking up at the night sky, praying for a moment of peace, just a moment. Exhaustion settled on her. The clouds had thinned. Every star whirled above her in an endless spiral dance. She'd never seen anything like it before; no matter where you went in modern Britain, there was at least the smudge of some Muggle-created artificial light blotting out the stars. But not here. Not here.

It was very late, or early, depending on how one looked at it. Draco wasn't sure how long he'd been sitting at the long wooden trestle table and drinking ale. Vile stuff, really. A subdued murmur still surrounded him; several tables were still playing cards or throwing dice in a lackluster way, but they all ignored him. He knew he couldn't go far. He wasn't really sure why he didn't simply return to the rooms upstairs and try to get some sleep. Start fresh tomorrow.

Except that he knew he wouldn't sleep. Couldn't sleep. He'd had a taste of it in the arms of Ginny Weasley, and now she would give him no more.

Another reason to hate her.

Time dragged by as if the hands of all the clocks in the world were coated in treacle syrup. Somewhere in the distance, a bell tolled three. In a few hours, dawn would come. Draco stared up into the hollow darkness of the beamed ceiling, playing with his cup. It was all Weasley's fault. All of it.

Images of what had failed to happen began to flash through his mind, mockingly. It was amazing how much hell he was capable of putting himself through even without being caught in the worst of his craving for her. She'd given him a little of herself, just a little, and he wanted more as naturally as he wanted to take the next breath of air. A little learning is a dangerous thing... That was the essence of the problem in another way as well, he supposed. If he'd been totally without experience, he wouldn't have known enough to be tormented this way. If he'd had several years more of it behind him, on the other hand, perhaps he would have felt more jaded, more sated with the whole thing. With sex in general. Well, maybe not. But he knew just enough to torture himself with what could have been.

By about this time, he thought, their breathing might be starting to slow between bouts, and they would be lying next to each other, naked of course, one of his hands caressing the curve of her hip, perhaps, his head on her breasts. He had seen only little tantalizing glimpses of that body of hers, but his imagination was happy to torture him with conjured images of it. "Did you like that, Weasley?" he would ask, lazily, smugly, sure of his answer. She would try to evade giving it at first, would attempt to retreat into silence, but he wouldn't allow it. He could picture her lips growing tighter and tighter, the mutinous fury in her eyes... "Tell me or I'll stop," he'd say, beginning again. "Tell me you liked what I did. I'll stop if you don't. I mean it, Weasley." "Yes," she'd finally say. "Want me to do it again?" he'd murmur in her ear, and she would look at him evenly, proud but no longer defiant, conquered but nobody's victim, knowing that the victory was his. "Yes," she would repeat. "Damn you, Malfoy. Yes." He would lean down to kiss her, moving on her, in her, feeling her body's response to his, and although her face would be turned away from him her fingernails would dig into his lower back, all her efforts to hurt him only marking him as hers. It was all unwinding like a animated wizarding photograph inside his head, and it seemed a little beyond his control. He could see how he would grab her chin with one hand and pull it back toward him, wanting, needing to see her face.

Her eyes still shone with hatred, looking into his. The fantasy came to an abrupt halt.

I don't want to see that, he thought. Why can't I imagine something else, when I don't want to see that?

Draco's mind began wandering into strange paths. They all ran to the same end-- he made love to Ginny Weasley, over and over and over again, using every technique he could imagine, every skill he had ever learned, and each time he tried to see her looking up at him with gratitude. Pleasure. Desire. But he never could quite manage it, even in imagination. He kept seeing hatred. That, and the look on her face when she said she would hurt herself if he touched her again.

Draco took a deep breath. She had gotten under his skin, Ginny Weasley had. He was unable to trace back all the tangled threads of how she'd done it, but she had. He could not and would not allow her to get to him this way. No, not this way, of all ways... She tricked me. She did! I swore this sort of thing would never happen, and now it has.

He remembered those months, when he had cut off everything and everyone, embraced the celibacy of a monk, that autumn. After that Lughnasa night in Hogsmeade, the Three Broomsticks drunk and festive around him, around them, watching Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger dragging Longbottom onto the dance floor and giggling out of the corner of one eye, sitting at that table with... the person who'd been sitting across from him. And against his will Draco remembered that too. Thinking that he'd engineered that moment, that chance for glorious and subtle revenge, and now it had turned to dust and ashes in his mouth. Thinking, I could use you, I could break you, I could make you hate yourself. I could get revenge on you beyond my wildest dreams. But I don't want it now, now that I could stretch out my hand and take it. I don't want you. Not even enough for this. I don't think I could make myself do it... And if I did it anyway, something in me would break, as well.

Someone was coming up behind him, and, ensnared in his memories, Draco realized it too late. He turned swiftly, dismally aware that if whoever it was planned to stick a knife between his ribs, he couldn't avoid it. And that would be Ginny Weasley's fault, as well, flashed through his mind.

But it was only the man who'd been sitting at their table earlier in the evening, the one who had mysteriously disappeared. He sat on the bench, his short scarlet cloak swirling around him.

"You keep late hours, Master Malfoy," he said, his glance taking in the empty cups littering the table. "And apparently you have a great thirst as well. You reserve no ale for guests and other travellers, I see." He snapped his fingers, still looking at Draco. His eyes were the exact blue of the sea at the Kentish shore near Malfoy Manor, and lights glinted in them like the crests of the waves. Draco blinked. A flagon had appeared in the man's left hand. He was reasonably certain that it hadn't been there before.

"I wasn't expecting guests," Draco said steadily, keeping his eyes on the man as he'd heard it was wise to do when introduced to dragons.

"A very rustic setting, this," the man said, draining his cup. "One would think that the inn's finest rooms upstairs would prove a bit more... accommodating."

"I had a slight disagreement with my travelling companion." Draco tried not to blink again, but the room was smoky and dry. When he opened his eyes, the flagon the other man had held was gone.

"She kicked you out?" the man asked innocently.

"I left!" exclaimed Draco. "Wait, wait-- how did you know--"

"Your thoughts are easy to read." He shrugged. "Pity. Like most mortals, Mistress Weasley fails to appreciate the painfully brief span of mortality. Gather ye rosebuds while ye may. Had we but world enough, and time, this coyness, lady, were no crime. Et cetera, et cetera."

"But at my back I always hear, time's winged chariot hurrying near; and yonder all before us lie deserts of vast eternity," said Draco, rising from the bench.

The man nodded. " Thy beauty shall no more be found, nor in thy marble vault my echoing song shall sound--"

" And your quaint honor turn to dust, and into ashes all my lust--"

" The grave's a fine and private place, but none, I think, do there embrace." The man smiled. "You know Marvell, I see."

"Yes. But there's one problem," said Draco, leaning over the table and looking down intently into the man's face, as if seeking an answer to a riddle. "Andrew Marvell wasn't born until 1621."

"Oh dear. A slight snafu."

"And you were quoting Shakespeare earlier. Well, he's alive right now. But he didn't write the sonnets until 1603."

The man examined his fingernails, unconcernedly. "It's so difficult to keep all the timelines straight, isn't it? I'm sure you'd agree if you knew what I was talking about."

"Something very strange is going on. Isn't it?"

"Congratulations, Master Malfoy. Your mental elevator really does go all the way to the top floor, and you just may not be the weakest link after all. For now, at least, you get to stay on the show."

"What?" Draco blinked. This time, the man's eyes had changed to silver when he looked at them again.

"Oops. That's just a teensy bit after your time. All times are one to me, you see."

Draco took a deep, careful breath. "What's going on?" he asked, in the most neutral voice he could manage.

The man lifted one hand, and in the moment when he held it palm out, Draco saw that it was utterly without lines. The low rumble of noise in the tavern ceased. Moll had been turning towards a table with foaming mugs of ale in her hands; she paused in the movement, her skirts spun out. The table itself was frozen in tableau; the sailors who'd been drinking held their flagons halfway in the air, the very smiles stopped on their lips. The room was utterly silent, more silent than any space in the living world ever is. Time itself had stopped.

"Lord Grindelwald?" whispered Draco.

The man shook his head, a smile touching his lips. "No. But it does show you're thinking. I was rather wondering when that intellect of yours was going to kick in. Certainly hasn't so far."

Draco paced a little, chin in one hand. "I saw the Lady Desire early this morning, at Melrose Abbey. Are you... as she is?"

"Ah, so Desire appeared to you as a woman?"

"For the most part."

The man laughed softly. "With red hair, doubtless. Well, I am an immortal, but no, I'm not one of those dreary Endless."

"But you know her?"

"I know them all. I should. They're my cousins. At least, that's the best way of expressing the incredibly convoluted relationship in a form that mortals might understand. I've had some fun with Desire-- like me, she keeps chasing after mortals even though she knows she's only going to drive them mad, and we share similar fashion tastes-- but she can be so nasty. Dream takes the broody, moody, Goth-y thing too far over the top for words. I keep telling him he should try pastels every once in a while. Delirium is a fruitcake. Despair is just depressing. Destiny bores me to tears and can bring down any party. Destruction mostly does his own thing and won't answer my emails. And Lady Death won't have sex with me. With me!"

"I didn't know Immortals had sex."

"Oh, I assure you they do. That's some of the best material the gods ever came up with. Some of them never have approved, of course. If I have to listen to one more dreary lecture from Zoroaster, I'll go out of my mind."

Draco dug his fingernails into his palms. "Sir-- can't you please just tell me. Who are you?"

The man smiled. Of course, thought Draco, he really isn't a man. But I don't know what else to call him. Not yet.

"Do you remember one night, less than a week ago, when you stood at the top of the north tower at Hogwarts, after Ginny Weasley fled you?" he asked. "Do you remember what you thought, staring out into the night? Do you remember what you said?"

"I said--" Draco rubbed his face with one hand. "I asked-- well, it was a rhetorical question, but I asked what the hell I was supposed to be doing."

"Oh, it wasn't rhetorical. And you didn't just ask a question, either. You called me," the other said softly. "I have come."

"I--what?" He racked his brains to remember exactly what had happened on that night at the top of the North Tower, after Ginny Weasley had left him. Less than a week ago, but it did seem longer. All I want is an answer, he'd said. Just some sort of answer, or clue, or sign, to tell me what the hell I should be doing. Then he'd called on all the gods he could think of...and then... and then...

Draco's mouth went dry.

The man nodded. "You called me by the name given to me when I am damned and despised. When mankind blames me for what men themselves have wrought. You called for Satan, the spirit of darkness. Here I am."

There seemed to be a high, faint singing in his ears. Draco stared stupidly across the table at what he had called up. Speak of the devil, he thought numbly. Speak of the devil and he appears... I knew there was a reason why I wasn't Sorted into Gryffindor. Well, aside from the fact that they're mostly Mudbloods and riffraff. I am a coward. I really am. I'm not brave at all. Well, it's not as if I thought I was, so I can't say I'm disappointed, at least...

"Of course, that name's gotten a bad rap," the other said, chattily. "It really only means 'tester' or 'tryer of souls.' But if you were a Muggle, as your sort calls them, you'd probably be groveling at my feet right now. Funny how they always seem to do that... I do wonder why more people don't pray to me on a regular basis, though. If they really think I'm all that is evil, as they're so often told, it's always seemed to me that they ought to pray to me. If God is all-good and all-loving, well, you don't have to beg a good being to be good. You should be begging an evil being to be good. Anyway. I don't really care for that name. You also called on me by my favorite name, though, and it put me in a good mood." He gestured grandiloquently. "Call me Loki. Son of the morning. Spirit of light."

"I remember," whispered Draco. "I did call you. But I never thought you'd show up!"

Loki shrugged. "People never do. Then they don't have canapes ready when I get there."

It had to be a good sign that he was still alive at this point, Draco thought. He tried desperately to remember everything he'd ever read on the subject of placating devils, but could only seem to recall one book in the Malfoy library called Immortal Beings: How to Recognize and Hopefully Avoid Them. There had been a chapter entitled "What To Do When They've Cornered You Anyway," but the name alone did not sound helpful. "Uh... how may I serve you, my Lord?" The book had definitely recommended using that sentence.

"Oh..." Loki leaned back. "You've got it all wrong. I'm here to serve you!" His grin was high, wide, and handsome. Draco had never trusted anything less in his life, but it seemed unwise to say so.

"You're going to Istanbul," Loki continued. "Aren't you?"

Slowly, Draco nodded. He really hadn't planned ahead that far, but he wasn't about to admit it. What had he thought he was going to do with Ginny Weasley, exactly, after getting power through her... well, he hadn't thought at all. How very unlike him that was.

"Well, there you are. Lovely place. But I think I'm correct in saying that you don't know the first thing about it. You're looking for the Jewel of the Harem in Topkapi Palace, and you don't have the slightest idea where to find it. Or what to do with it once you get it. Why, you'd never get past the deaf-mute eunuchs who guard the Great Gate."

"How did you know--" Draco exclaimed.

"Immortal being?" said Loki in a sing-song voice, examining his fingernails. "Powers over heaven and earth? Master of darkness? Lord of the damned? Hello? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?"

Draco looked down at the table. "Sorry," he mumbled.

Loki waved a hand. "Don't apologize," he said. "It doesn't suit you. The point is, I can help you, Draco. I can call you Draco, can't I?"

"Er-- of course." Draco wondered if being on a first-name basis with the spirit of ultimate evil made it less likely that the conversation would end with his soul getting sucked out through one ear, or more so.

"See, it's like this." Loki tipped his cap over one eye, rakishly. "Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Sheherazadie had a thousand tales. But, you're in luck 'cause up your sleeves, you got a brand of magic never fails. You got some power in your corner now, some heavy ammunition in your camp. You got some punch, pizzazz, yahoo, and how! All you gotta do is rub that lamp!" He spread his arms wide. "Except that there isn't really a lamp."

"Er--" Draco said, feeling rather overwhelmed.

"Let's be friends. We'll do lunch. We'll take meetings, think outside of the box, and be proactive. My people will call your people," said Loki, in the tones that had tempted a million million souls.

"Well--"

Loki stood and circled behind Draco so that he was whispering in the boy's ear, his voice low, familiar, and seductive. "Life is your restaurant, and I'm your maitre d'. C'mon, whisper what it is you want. You ain't never had a friend like me. " Then he straightened up. "You never saw the Disney movie, did you?"

"I suppose... uh... not. But what I really want to know is..." Draco looked up at Loki, feeling rather as if he was drowning in a whirlpool of panic. The god, or devil, was silent for a moment, his unfathomable eyes studying Draco intently. An immortal, putting out all this effort for me... but why? Why? And suddenly his fears eased a little. The master of manipulation was trying to work on him, and although even a Malfoy could hardly stand against that, it was the sort of situation he understood. There was at least a glimmer of light in the darkness. "What do you want from me?" Draco asked, flatly.

"Funny you should ask. A teensy weensy favor. Hardly even worth mentioning."

Draco leaned back, studying the other through narrowed eyes. "Don't let that stop you."

"I can't believe I'm saying this to a mortal, but... I need your help."

"You need my help."

"Don't rub it in. Gloating isn't attractive." Loki raised his hands to sip from his flagon of ale, and Draco saw the red network of spells flickering around the devil's wrists. They're like mine... and Ginny's... they're like the Hexensymbol...

"What are those?" asked Draco suddenly.

"Ah. Well, glad you asked. We're getting to the heart of the matter here, actually." Loki let his arms drop, as if they had become too heavy to hold. "These are the bonds that shackle me." The god's voice grew serious for the first time, and when he spoke again, it was as if the smoky tavern had narrowed to encompass only the two of them. "Set me free, Draco Malfoy. Set me free."

"But how-- and where-- Oh, hold on a moment..." Draco said slowly. "I've studied Norse mythology. I know this... and it was in that song Ginny sang tonight, The Lay of Loki Bound. You killed Baldur with a sprig of mistletoe, and as punishment, the Nordic gods imprisoned you on a rock in the underworld beneath the world-tree, Yggdrasil, where venom from the serpent Nidhogg drips onto you throughout all eternity. Or no, wait, until Ragnarok, the fall of gods and men. Or is your liver torn out by an eagle? No, that's Prometheus..."

Loki shrugged. "It's all the same thing. The Israelites liked to cast me into a lake of fire. You've got the basic idea. The point is, you're the one who can loose what binds me."

"Me?"

"Yes, you." Loki leaned forward. "We don't have much time. I will pay a heavy price for escaping my imprisonment as long as I have. I have come further than you can imagine, little dragon. So listen to me, listen. The key to my imprisonment lies within the talisman of great power, the Jewel of the Harem. And it is that which you seek."

Draco leaned back in his chair, suddenly feeling as if a little, a very little, of the conversation was beginning to make sense. He remembered the night less than a week before when he had communicated with Al-ladin al-Rashid through the pages of the Kitap-an Dus, and what he had learned. Evil spirits had been kept imprisoned within the jewel... and apparently, unimaginable power lay within it. It was guarded somehow, somewhere within the sultan's palace in the city of Istanbul, and the last time it had been seen was... now. In the sixteenth century. And it held the key to Loki's imprisonment. Draco's mind raced faster than it had ever done before, as if simply being near an immortal had lent him superhuman powers of thought. The devil wants something from me... Satan, or Loki, or whatever I want to call him, could be indebted to me... oh, I've never even imagined power like this, the power I could have, never, never... But a distinctly unpleasant thought struck him then, as he remembered several very inconvenient facts about the nature of magical vows.

"Uh-- is this what Lord Grindelwald wants?" he asked.

"No," said Loki with a grimace. "It's exactly the opposite of what Lord Grindelwald wants."

"Oh."

"I can't imagine why I'm called the father of lies, you know. And that 'he was a liar from the beginning' quote-- well, that wasn't a very nice thing for Jesus of Nazareth to say. I have to tell the truth if I'm asked. All immortals do. We can't lie. Although we don't always know how truth looks to a mortal."

Draco bit his lip, his face turning white.

"Listen to me, listen, listen." Loki's face was utterly serious suddenly. "I'll offer you a trade. Let's make a deal."

"A deal with the devil?" Draco asked dubiously. "I'm almost sure I've heard that isn't a good idea."

"I'll give you what you most want."

"And how would you know what that is?"

"The devil always knows what you most want."

"Tell me what it is, then."

"Knowledge."

The single word struck into Draco more sharply and keenly than any curse could have done, and he could only stare at Loki in reply.

"There are so many things you would like to know, aren't there?" he said, coaxingly. "So many questions you need answers to. And you're not getting them. I'll give you a free sample. No obligation. No salesman will call. "

Draco remembered the quiet, dark library at Malfoy Manor that summer. The little room that was always cold, no matter how searingly hot it was outside. Lucius Malfoy's study. The little door set into its wall, the one that led to the heart of the library, and to the librarian. His search for knowledge. His goddamned need to know, the one that had sent him into a freefall at last. Why, why did he always have to know? Surely there was an alternate universe someplace where some other version of himself had wised up and learned to obey, to do as he was told, to suppress the insane desire to learn everything...

Loki leaned forward. "You teeter at the edge of an abyss, Draco Malfoy. You walk a tightrope that frays beneath your feet. But in this time, and in this place, you have not yet fallen."

"In this-- what do you mean?"

"Here and now, you still possess the priceless power of human choice. Here and now, you have not yet made that choice. Choose wisely when the time comes, and it will come. Choose well."

"Here? Now? You mean somewhere else-- or at some other time-- I chose differently, or would have done, or-- ?" Draco asked, hopelessly confused.

But Loki was silent.

"You haven't explained anything!" Draco turned away and pushed himself back from the table, suddenly tired of the word games. Perhaps he'd go back up to the rooms, to see Ginny Weasley. He pictured her shivering and crying by the locked door, throwing herself on him when he opened it, grateful that he hadn't abandoned her in a waterfront inn in sixteenth century Leith. He'd frightened her enough. Perhaps she'd be more properly appreciative towards him now...

Loki held up one finger, crooking it back in a commanding motion. "I have not given you leave to go, Draco Lukas Malfoy," he said. Then he laid the finger directly on Draco's wrist.

A force greater than anything he had ever known was crushing the air out of his lungs; his heart gave a frantic, sideways beat, and fell still. Wings of darkness swooped down over his field of vision. The tavern had disappeared, and a girl in a long black veil moved at the edge of the rapidly narrowing corridor that rolled itself out in front of Draco. She looked up, but not at him; she was looking past him, her great dark eyes lined with kohl, the ankh on a chain around her neck swinging back and forth. "Quit it, Loki," she said.

"Oh, all right!" An aggrieved sigh.

The last thing Draco saw was Loki lowering his hand. His expression was one of mild interest, as if watching a hedgehog changing to a pincushion in Transfiguration class. On the face of the devil, some mask had been dropped for a split second, and although he still looked human, at least in shape, he was infinite, a being older and more vast than the universe itself. For the first time, Draco truly understood what, and whom, he had been talking to, and how vast was the gulf between mortal and immortal. Then he fell across the table facefirst, gasping for air.

"Sorry about that," said Loki, smirking in a way that was anything but apologetic.

His blood was pounding in his ears as if it had been sucked out of his veins and now frantically needed to re-enter them. Draco looked down at the little cut on his wrist, the larger one of the two. That was from the night before they all went through the clock tower, when Lucius Malfoy had sliced his wrist, using his blood to call up Lord Grindelwald. How long ago that seemed, and yet it had been less than a week. It wasn't healing well. Since he couldn't use his wand to perform a Knitting charm on it, it probably would leave a scar. He thought of what he had sworn, and been sworn to, on that night. He weighed his options. It would do no good, he knew, to lie to the immortal sitting across from him. "I can't help you," he said dully. "I'm already sworn to Lord Grindelwald. I'm already bound in a way I can't break."

"You have no idea of all the oaths that bind you," sighed Loki. Strangely, he did not seem angry.

"I don't understand," Draco said again, wincing at the very sound of the words. This was surely the dumbest half hour of his entire life. Still, he hardly thought he could be blamed.

"Don't you? I suppose not. Mortals never understand this kind of thing," said Loki. "Look at it this way. No man may serve two masters. He will love one and despise the other. But, as Bob Dylan noted, you've got to serve somebody, and it may be the devil."

"Look," blurted Draco. "I'm hopelessly confused. Just tell me one thing. Are you going to kill me, or, uh, take me back to hell, or wherever it is you're going?"

"What if I said yes?" Loki asked softly.

"I know I said I couldn't help you before." Draco knew that he was speaking awfully fast, the words tumbling out over each other in such quick succession that he wasn't even sure they made sense, but he couldn't seem to stop himself. "But you know, I bet I was wrong. I'm sure I was wrong! I'm sure we can work something out. Maybe, uh, um, if you want really evil souls to capture, I could lead you to the Death Eaters. You'd like them! They're just your sort. I'm not really evil enough yet, you see, so it wouldn't make sense to drag me off to--"

A smile flickered on Loki's lips. "Courage really isn't your strong suit, is it, kid? Ah well. There are more important things. You'd like to get some sleep, wouldn't you?"

Then he got up, passing a hand over Draco's head without touching it, barely ruffling the fair hair. "Sleep. Sleep, little dragon. That is a gift I can give."

"There's-- one more thing," said Draco, fighting off the heavy dark cloud descending over him. "I have to know. You said you came to me because I called you. Even though I never thought you would actually show up. But people call on God and the Devil all the time, without really meaning it. Do you come to all of them?"

Loki looked down on him with something like a smile. "No," he said. And then he was gone.

But the devil didn't go far; all times and places on the mortal plane were near to him now, at the end of his long journey. He changed his course slightly, and headed for the Forbidden Forest, on a dark winter's night over four hundred years in the future, where Sirius Black was even now trudging along a snowy path towards Hogwarts. And the Endless followed in Loki's wake, grudgingly, knowing their destiny was now tied to his, and to the mortals with whom he meddled.