Of Binding Spells and Chartreuse

Note: fix Je Reve for the D/G archive version.

Now, don't worry. The smut IS coming. But there's a lot of plot, too, and some MAJOR plot twists that weren't in the short Ficmas version, if you've read that. All in good time, all in good time...

Talking in Your Sleep is by Crystal Gayle. Okay, she's not the songwriter, but that's close enough, now isn't it? ;) Dreamlover is by Bobby Darin.

December 20^th, 1997

Diagon Alley

Weasley's Wizard Wheezes

.

Fred was coming up the aisle inside the shop, headed straight for the door. He made a beckoning motion to Ginny. Her heart sank. He'd seen her. All she could hope for was that he hadn't seen Malfoy, since he was standing on the other side of the drunkenly leaning Father Christmas and should have been invisible to anyone looking out from Weasley's Wizard Wheezes. Draco's eyes followed Fred, and Ginny knew that he'd seen her brother, as well.

"What are you up to now, Weasley?" he asked softly.

"Nothing that concerns you, Malfoy."

"Does the fair maiden need a spot of rescuing, perhaps?" Draco asked. His mouth mocked her, but his grey eyes were very steady. She could not bear the scrutiny of his bright eyes. They weren't dark and opaque like other peoples', but they never seemed to reveal any secrets behind themselves, either. She always felt that if she looked into them too long, they would swallow her up.

"I have to go back inside," Ginny said. "I'm needed there." And she made herself turn and walk through the door, her legs lagging behind her unwilling body.

She saw Harry standing near the back, well away from the dreaded side room with the Magical Mistletoe hanging over its lintel. Even from this distance she could see that he looked tired, almost ill, and he'd grown too thin since the start of his seventh year. He smiled when he saw her, and as always, the smile lit up his face. She had a wave of warm, soft feelings for him then. At that moment, she couldn't understand why she'd been trying to avoid him. It's only Fred constantly trying to push us together, to set things up--as if we needed that. I could just smack him. No... if he keeps annoying me like this, he'll find out that I'm as good with the Bat-Bogey Hex as I ever was!

"I'm glad to see you," she said, sincerely.

"So am I," Harry told her. "All I've done is Apparate from place to place since the holidays started. At least I don't have to Floo anymore. Suppose that's something. But I've hardly had a chance to sit down. Seeing you..." He curled a ringlet of her hair around one of his fingers. "It's restful, Ginny. It's like coming home."

"You did go to the Burrow though, didn't you? How's Ron?"

"All but locked in his bedroom with Hermione standing over him, holding a whip in one hand and a NEWT study guide in the other. You know he hasn't studied one bit all term long, right?"

Ginny rolled her eyes. "I didn't know, but it's easy to believe. I'll see him on Christmas Eve, I suppose. How's Mum?"

A shadow passed over Harry's face, just for an instant. He recovered himself quickly.

"Baking up a storm. Enough fruitcake to feed an army, and she's got the biggest turkey you ever saw for the Yule feast."

"Mum's in her element," said Ginny with a laugh. "Is Charlie back yet? How about Bill?"

"Charlie, yes. And Bill will be in a couple of days. He's finishing up a bit of work for Gringott's in Provence. Going through the caves, you know--there are treasures that haven't been uncovered since Neanderthals lived there. But if anybody can get them, it's Bill."

Talking to Harry was wonderful, and it made her feel that her earlier fears had been the silliest things in the world. For the past year, since he'd begun to really talk to her, it had always been wonderful. They chatted about the Gryffindor Quidditch team's chances of beating Hufflepuff just after Christmas break, and the glimpses Harry had caught of the sweaters Molly Weasley was knitting for her children this year ("Orange, Ginny! I swear, they're all Chudley Cannons orange. She's doing them to match that stupid hat Ron has.") She chided him for not staying by Ron's side to study for his NEWT's, although, of course, as she assured him, she was very glad that he had come to see her. ("I can't bear Hermione rabbiting on at me about NEWT's twenty-four hours a day. It's a lot easier to take once the school term starts.") She asked him about Christmas presents he'd already received, hesitating a little after she realized that it might not be one of his favorite subjects. He only snickered.

"Yeah, I got one, all right. My aunt and uncle already sent my Christmas present to Hogwarts. I think it might be the worst one yet-- it's an AOL 7.0 disc. Dudley got a Soloflex, a weight bench, and a Stairmaster."

Ginny's heart twisted a little, as it always did when Harry told her anything about his Muggle relatives and how badly they'd always treated him. His face was unconcerned and smiling. Still, she moved on to something she was sure would be a happier topic.

"Who's staying at school over the holidays this year?" she asked him.

"A couple of Gryffindor third years, some Hufflepuffs... Cho Chang's little sister, Kim, she's a second-year Ravenclaw... oh, and I almost forgot." Harry's face darkened. "Malfoy."

"Oh?" said Ginny, sincerely hoping that her voice sounded completely normal. Apparently, this hadn't been such a safe subject for conversation, after all.

"Yes. His little Slytherin gang's there as well. Pansy and Ivy Parkinson, ugh. They're the ones I saw first, then Crabbe and Goyle, of course... but really, none of them count except Malfoy. And nobody seems to know why he's there. Probably plotting something."

"I'm sure you're right," Ginny said hurriedly. "How about the teachers? Are they all doing well?"

Harry shrugged. "I suppose so. Snape looks as evil as ever. God, to think that I'm going to have Advanced Potions with him all spring term. McGonagall's a bit frail these days; she was never really the same after getting hit with those curses last year... but she seems okay..."

"How about Dumbledore?"

Harry's face shuttered itself against her as rapidly as a window slamming shut. "I saw him today," he said. Ginny waited. It seemed as if Harry would definitely say something more; as if that statement had only been the beginning of a long conversation. But he was silent. She realized that he wasn't going to tell her what he and the Headmaster had spoken about, after all, and if he didn't want to, she wasn't going to ask. She wished that she had never raised the topic of teachers.

"You've been speaking to him a lot lately, haven't you?" she said, carefully. "I mean, you were before the end of autumn term."

"Yes," he said. Then he moved toward her, and she smelled the complex spicy-clove scent that was Harry, and that would always mean him to her. "Hold me, Ginny," he said. She did it gladly. She liked the feel of Harry in her arms, the solid strength in his shoulders and the thick untidy softness of his hair, and his faint trembling brought out a protective instinct in her. I love him, she thought. I really do.

"What's wrong?" she whispered.

"Nothing," he said. He pulled back from her a little and searched her face as if he hoped she'd say what he most longed to hear, but could not tell her what it was. She was suddenly very aware that they were both standing right underneath the mistletoe. Harry's eyes went up to it. Ginny blushed.

"Frightfully interesting about mistletoe, isn't it?" she asked. "Do you know the story?" Without waiting to hear his reply, she plunged on. "I learned it in History of Magic class, so you must've as well, I imagine. Remember? The Norse god Loki killed Baldur with a sprig of mistletoe, so Lord Morpheus of the Endless sentenced him to be chained to the Rock of Torment in the underworld with the serpent Nidhogg dripping poison on him constantly until Ragnarok, the fall of gods and men. Loki's only refuge is in the dreams of mortals, I think. Funny how that kind of story should've led to mistletoe being associated with kissing, don't you think? I wonder how that ever happened--" Ginny knew that she was babbling, but she could not seem to stop. But Harry leaned towards her then, and she did fall silent.

The instant Harry's lips touched hers, it all began to go wrong. The sense of rightness and peace drained away as if he were taking it from her without even realizing he did it. Ginny struggled fiercely with what was blooming in her own mind. She kissed him back, perhaps even more passionately than she would have done if she'd truly felt the emotions she so wanted to feel. Harry crushed her to him and ran his hands up and down her sides, his lips becoming more demanding. He let go her mouth and started to press a trail of burning kisses down the side of her neck. The sense of wrongness rose in her throat until Ginny thought it would surely burst out of her lips. Then Harry will see it, she thought crazily, and he'll know something's wrong. What will it look like, I wonder? Dark and ugly, like a little goblin? Or beating as frantically as the heart of a wild bird in a cage?

"Ginny!" a voice called from the front of the shop. "Where are you? I'm simply starving. Come on."

"It's Colin," said Ginny.

Harry stepped away from her. "I need to get back to Hogwarts, anyway," he said quietly.

"All--all right," said Ginny. She tried not to feel relieved at the fact that he wouldn't be joining them for dinner.

"I'll see you again tomorrow night, though," said Harry, opening the back door to the alley. "I have something for you, Ginny. I... I thought I'd come by your rooms at the Leaky Cauldron, to give it to you. You're staying there over the holidays, right?"

She nodded. "Fred and George didn't have any extra space at all in their flat, and they need me at such odd hours that I couldn't sleep at home."

"I'll see you then," Harry repeated. "I want to see you, Ginny. We haven't really had any time to see each other. Alone, I mean."

She watched his dark head retreat down the back alley, trying to tamp down the strange feeling that was still rising in her throat. The one that had begun when he kissed her.

***

"You look like you've had a lovely day so far," said Colin over the ruins of Yorkshire pudding and bubble and squeak at the table in the taproom of the Leaky Cauldron. The radio near the bar seemed to be playing constantly now, and was always tuned to some Muggle station or other. Thankfully, thought Ginny, it rarely played Christmas carols.

You're been talking in your sleep,

Sleeping in your dreams,

With some sweet lover...

I've heard it said that dreamers never lie.

"Don't ask," she said. "I want a cigarette."

He raised his eyebrows. "You shouldn't be smoking. What if your mother found out?"

"I'll risk it."

"Anything wrong, Gin?"

"Not a thing. Just give me a drag off yours, Colly." She took his cigarette and inhaled the smoke deeply into her lungs, coughing at the dirty cinnamon nicotine rush of it. Must be a Muggle one. They're so much stronger. Still she kept pulling at the cigarette, as if wanting something more from it than it could give her.

"Owl came with this when you were gone," said George, handing Ginny a folded parchment as she walked back into the shop an hour later.

"Surprised you didn't try to read it," she said, taking the sheaf of paper with its red wax seal.

"Oh, we did," Fred assured her. "Or, I did, anyway. But we haven't perfected the Super-Sneaky Re-Sticky Seal Opener yet. The way it works now, an opened letter looks like it's never been touched-- but it does have a bad habit of shrieking when the recipient finally gets it."

"That's good to know," sighed Ginny, walking back towards the storage shelves and opening the parchment with a fingernail. She read it. Then she went to the very back of the shop, going behind a stack of Whizzing Whirligigs where she knew Fred and George couldn't see her, and read it again. Then a third time, as if one final reading might twist the message into a different shape. Slowly, she refolded it and put in a pocket of her outer robe.

"Was that from Mum?" asked Fred when Ginny re-emerged.

"Yes," she said.

"What'd it say?"

Ginny decided that her brother was fully capable of whipping up an undetectable Truth Serum and secretly dosing her with it if he suspected she was hiding anything about the contents of that letter. She bent over to fasten a buckle on one of her boots, carefully arranging her face into an open, unconcerned expression. "She doesn't like me to stay at the Leaky Cauldron the week before Christmas, that's all. She's bothering me again about coming home and helping with all the holiday preparations."

"Well, you can't," said Fred flatly. "We need you here. Remember the time we had to open the shop at three in the morning so the goblins could come in and buy Financial Fidelius charms? You're stopping here until Christmas Eve, sis."

Ginny shrugged. "I know."

As she walked back towards the shelves with a heap of boxes in her arms, George tapped her arm. "You all right, Gin?" he asked quietly.

She looked away. It had always been much harder to fool George. "Yes," she said.

***

Cigarettes made in the wizarding world are very mild; they have no effect, really, and are mostly used simply to relax. But in that secret world, Muggle cigarettes are considered drugs, in all the shameful implications of that word. Ginny had started secretly using them during the summer, when she needed to calm herself down. The trick isn't working tonight, though, she thought. Very dimly, she could hear Fred's off-key voice singing a Muggle song as he stacked boxes inside the shop.

Dream lover, where are you with a love, oh, so true?
And I hand that can hold, to feel you near as I grow old?
'cause I want (yeah-yeah yeah) a girl (yeah-yeah yeah) to call (yeah-yeah yeah) my
own (yeah-yeah)
I want a dream lover so I don't have to dream alone...

She drew deeply on the cigarette and let her breath out slowly, trying to make smoke rings. She heard footsteps walking up to her, but did not turn her head to see, and she was not surprised when she heard Draco's deep, drawling voice.

"What do I see here? Tsk, tsk, tsk." He moves to stand next to her and leans against the wall of the alley, shaking his head. "Ginny Weasley, smoking a Muggle cigarette."

"How do you know that's what it is?" she asked. It was just too much trouble to show surprise at seeing him when she didn't feel surprised, and he didn't seem to expect that reaction anyway.

"Because I smoke them too. American Spirit, isn't it? Give me one."

She pulled a cigarette out of the pack in her pocket and gave it to him. She expected him to light it with the end of his wand, as she had, but he leaned towards her and touched the tip of his cigarette to hers. It caught and began to burn, a tiny winking circle of red in the near-blackness of the alley.

"I'm surprised you use such a Muggle thing," she said.

"I'm more surprised at you," he said easily, propping one foot up against the brick wall. "What would your mother think to see her sweet, innocent little daughter smoking?"

Ginny laughed. The sound was much harsher than she'd intended for it to be. "You know that's not true, don't you, Malfoy?"

"Which part have you failed at, Weasley? Sweetness, or innocence?"

"Both," she said.

The moon came out from behind a cloud, briefly illuminating Draco's face, casting deep shadows across his nose and mouth and chin. He looked amused. "Is that so," he said.

Ginny shrugged. She knew perfectly well what he thought she meant. He was wrong, but she didn't want to correct him. She wasn't at all sure why.

"Did you ever catch up with Pansy again?" she asked.

"Unfortunately, yes."

Ginny thought that today was the first time he had ever spoken to her when Pansy or anyone else he knew was within earshot. It was also the first time he had ever invited her anywhere. If he was even serious about that invitation.

"Why would anyone name a club Gris-Gris?" she asked. It didn't occur to her until the words were out of her mouth that they sounded dreadfully disconnected from anything else they'd been talking about. But then, the entire conversation was sounding that way.

"It's a Creole word," said Malfoy. "The place is run by expatriate wizards from Haiti and Jamaica and Cuba, you see. They all had some reason for leaving and they know they'll never be invited back, so they understand... how to be discreet."

Ginny nodded. "Do you spend a lot of time there?"

"I'm staying in rooms over the club during the holidays."

She tried not to show how surprised she was at that piece of news. Why would Draco Malfoy be staying anywhere at all this time of year other than Malfoy Manor? Maybe Harry was right. Maybe he really is plotting something or other. Funny how I can't seem to bring myself to care. I've got other things to worry about...

She had been looking at him much too long, and she realized it too late. The familiar shape of the mocking grin took up residence on his face.

"I'll be there tomorrow night, if you'd care to come and visit. It's an interesting place. Well worth checking out. And easy to find. Right next to Borgin and Burkes." He took something out of his pocket and pressed it into her hand. "Show this at the door, and they'll let you in." The thing felt small and hard, but she did not take her eyes off his to see what it was.

"Ginny!" Fred called from inside the shop. "You had your five-minute break. Get back in here! I need you to invoice all the Portable Holes for Disappearing Homework deliveries!"

Ginny ground her cigarette butt underfoot. "I have to go."

Draco caught at her arm. She looked down at his hand. In the stark moonlight, it looked cut off from the rest of his body, just as her arm did from hers. "I'll see you again, Weasley," he said. "Soon." The words were so flat and emotionless that they might have been a threat. But she only nodded in reply, and turned to go back into the shop. She didn't look back at Draco, but she could tell that he didn't move until she had gone inside because she couldn't hear his footsteps on the cobblestones.

It was only then that she opened her closed hand, and looked down at the thing Malfoy had placed there. It was a little silver serpent coiled into a circle. She put it into the pocket of her robes with a gesture that was as nearly as possible unconscious.

After midnight, George walked her back to the Leaky Cauldron and dropped her off at her room.

"Don't come in until noon tomorrow, Gin," he said at her door. "We worked you pretty hard tonight, I know." She nodded.

"Are you going to be all right?"

"Of course," she said.

A little fire burned in the grate, and Ginny pulled up one of the wing-back chairs to it. She tapped the orange witchlight on the little table and unfolded the parchment she had received that afternoon. The light played over it, casting uneven shadows on the words. She almost knew them by heart, by now.

Ginny dear,

I do hope that Fred and George aren't working you too hard. I'm glad that you're willing to help your brothers, dear, but don't let them run you ragged. Come home soon, sweetheart, and enjoy Christmas with us. Between Ron, Hermione, Charlie, Bill, and your father and I, it's a full house. But we need you here, Ginny; it isn't Yule without you.

I'm really writing you about something else, though, and I didn't want to wait until you returned home on Christmas Eve. It's the sort of news that won't wait. Ginny, dear, I have the most wonderful secret to tell you. But you must promise to keep it strictly to yourself, for now. Although Harry certainly is involved with the secret, there are things in this world that women must keep to themselves. And there are things that only a mother can explain to her daughter, which is why I asked Albus Dumbledore to let me be the one to explain it to you.

I know very well that you've always been so terribly fond of Harry. And in the past year, he's opened his eyes and found a lovely, charming young lady right in front of him, rather than chasing after girls that aren't nearly good enough for him.(That's a little secret too, and I hope you won't share it with Cho and Luna. They're charming girls as well, but we both know, dear, that they're not in your class.) I wish in a way--I really do, dear--that the unfolding of your emotions towards each other could be left to follow a path that mattered to nobody but yourselves. But such is not the case.

Ginny, you've always been mature for your years. I've never told you this, but you are the wisest of my children. Yet another thing to keep to yourself. And you are wise enough, and mature enough, to understand what I am about to write to you.

You and Harry are now under a very powerful Binding charm, which Albus and I cast upon the two of you last week. This bond means that he must marry you directly after his eighteenth birthday. I can't explain anything more to you now, but believe me, daughter, this is necessary. Not only for the two of you, but for us all.

So now we can plan a summer wedding. Isn't that wonderful? A theme of white roses, I think, and peace lilies to go with your lovely hair. But we can discuss that much more later, dear. I'll see you on Christmas Eve. And please believe me, Ginny, that all my love, all my care, and all my thoughts go with you, from now until then, and from today until always.

Much, much, love,

Mum.

Ginny carefully refolded the parchment and tucked it into her purse. She slipped between the flannel sheets on the four-poster bed. They were toasty warm; Tom the innkeeper must have sent a maid to run a magical warming-pan between them. She watched the last dying embers of the fire cast their long shadows across the floor of the room. There really seemed to be no thoughts in her head just now. It was as if they were all contained behind a thick wall that she herself had erected.

But as she drifted off to sleep, her defenses relaxed, and she remembered one of the many days she had spent with Hermione in the library during the autumn. There was a book they'd got out of the Restricted Section, an extremely old one with a gnarled green silk cover and nearly half its pages looking as if they'd been eaten away by rats. There was a large section about Binding spells. Yes. I remember now... Binding spells, and how they could be broken. Then her mind fell into sleep, and that last waking thought drifted down and through like an autumn leaf on the wind.