Of Binding Spells and Chartreuse

Dream a Little Dream of Me is by Louis Armstrong.

This chapter contains a LOT of clues to how OBSaC is going to end, btw. ;) To clarify a few things, too: Binding Spells (in my little world, anyway) aren't necessarily used for protection. They're used to get power for a spell that needs a lot of it, and is very important. In Chapter 8 of HC, for example (if you're following that, and it is linked to this fic,) Lucius Malfoy tries to put the same kind of Binding Spell on Ginny, but it doesn't have anything to do with protection.

Ginny went up to her room, threw herself across the bed, and slept dreamlessly for an hour. Then she dressed herself with great care, beginning with the jade green bra and knickers set, which she had had laundered. She tucked her hair under a hood so that none of it showed, and wrapped a woolen scarf around her face so that only the tip of her nose peeked out. The sun had already set, and the air was cold and blue as she hurried down Diagon Alley. When she reached the corner where Gringotts was, she hesitated, and glanced around her. She couldn't see anyone she knew. But she pulled her hood up even more firmly around her face before she started down Knockturn Alley.

It didn't really look so very different from the rest of Diagon Alley. She'd expected something darker and more sinister from Harry's descriptions of the one time he'd been there. The alleyway was narrower, perhaps, and a bit more dingy, but candles shone brightly from many of the windows of the shops. She looked closer. Ugh. One shop window was entirely filled with candles shaped like human hands. Maybe they were human hands. Ginny decided that she didn't want to know.

She passed Borgin and Burkes. Harry had told her about the time he'd spied on Draco and his father there at the start of his second year, omitting no lurid detail. She'd thought even at the time, though, that the story sounded extraordinarily sad. Even having heard about it only from Harry's point of view, Lucius Malfoy had sounded awful. Ginny tried to imagine Arthur Weasley coldly telling a shopkeeper in front of her that he hoped his daughter would amount to more than a common thief, but that might be all she was ever fit for, and she shuddered.

She paused in front of an elegant two-story building with ornately carved teak double doors. This must be it. There was no sign on the front and no name-plate on the doors, but it was the only place that could have fit the description Draco gave. She looked for the side door he'd mentioned, and found it under a little green awning. There was a tiny brass plate just above the doorknob. She read the copperplate engraving on it. J'arrive, et je rêve. The words gave her an odd feeling, although she didn't know what they meant. She took a deep breath, raised her hand, and gave it three light raps of her fingers.

The door swung open a little way to reveal a tall, cadaverously thin, ebony-coloured man in a black cloak, standing in such a way as to bar the entrance. Ginny felt herself shrink under his gaze, and she fought a strong urge to turn tail and run. "Malfoy sent me," she said, and fumbled for the little silver serpent, holding it up.

The man nodded and opened the door all the way, beckoning for her to follow him in. Ginny gulped, gathered together every last bit of her courage, and walked into the little foyer.

The doorman had melted away as soon as she entered the club, and Ginny glanced around the small, dark room, feeling very much at loose ends. She'd thought that the Three Broomsticks tended to be dark, but it was nothing like this. She could barely see the floor under her feet. A candle at each table cast a little pool of light around itself, and as her eyes adjusted, she could see that a vast crystal chandelier hung above a long mahogany bar at the front, each prism winking ever so faintly at her. Clouds of smoke eddied through the bits of light. A dark-skinned woman in a green silk robe swayed in a tiny spotlight next to the bar, singing throatily, and a little piano next to her played quiet accompaniment all by itself. The odd thing was that Ginny could have sworn the woman had been singing in some soft, unidentifiable language. But as soon as Ginny tried to actually hear the words, the singer switched to English with a lilting accent, right in the middle of a phrase.

Stars shining bright above you,
Night breezes seem to whisper, "I love you",
Birds singing in the sycamore tree,
Dream a little dream of me...

Still, the music calmed Ginny a little. She let her eyes seek out the figures that were sitting at each dark table with its little pool of light. And finally she saw the shimmer of silvery hair. Draco. He sat at a small round table halfway across the room, but he did not sit alone. There was another, much smaller figure next to him, and Ginny knew without needing to see more clearly that it was Pansy. She stole around the edge of the room, slipping through the deepest pools of shadow, and stopped in a little foyer that had to lead to the bathrooms. She could hear and see everything at that table, now.

"I don't like this liqueur, Draco," Pansy was saying. "I don't know why you like it. It's too strong."

"I don't want your opinion," he said.

"And I don't like coming here all the time. It's so dark, and we never see anybody we know, and those black waiters are so creepy."

"I don't care what you think."

Ginny was close enough to see Pansy's lips tightening at the corners. There was clearly something boiling under the surface of the Slytherin girl, something that was just about to break. She rearranged her features into a pleasant expression and looked up at Draco.

"I'm tired. And it's time. I want to go upstairs now, I don't want to sit down here anymore."

"Well, I don't want to," said Draco.

"Don't you?" She put her little hand over his, caressing it. He moved his own hand away. Ginny had the sudden feeling that she was witnessing the final act of a very long play. Without having seen the rest, there was a great deal that she didn't know about the plot. But she was suddenly sure what the final scene would be.

"No," said Draco. "I don't. Because I don't want you, Pansy. I've never wanted you."

"You certainly shagged me enough times," Pansy said spitefully, the pretty mask of her face straining at its seams.

"I haven't touched you for months and you know it."

"Oh, I know it all right." Pansy pushed back her chair and leaned forward. "What do you want from me, Draco? You know that I'm just as trapped in this thing as you are."

"You really want to know?" His eyes appraised her coldly. "I want you to get out of here."

"Are you expecting someone else? Xanthia Morgan or Sadina von Tussel, maybe? One of those girls who comes up to your rooms, or meets you in a back alley on the sly?"

Pansy's eyes glittered in the orange light from the wall sconces. Ginny realized that she herself had already done one of the things the other girl had mentioned, and was about to do the second. She shrank further back into the foyer.

"None of your bloody business if I am," said Draco.

"You can do that sort of thing any other night you want, Draco. But not tonight. We both know that."

"I know everything I need to know," he said flatly. "Get out."

"If I leave now, I'm never coming back to you."

"I don't dare to hope that I could be so lucky."

"You know what that'll mean, don't you? To me, but most of all to yourself."

"I know."

Pansy rose. "If this is how you want it, Draco," she said. She bent down and whispered something into his ear. His expression did not change.

"I'll risk it," said Draco, his voice light, although Ginny wondered if it shook just the tiniest bit. Maybe that was only her imagination.

Ginny waited at least five minutes after Pansy had gone, just in case she thought of more undoubtedly nasty things to say and came back. Then she walked up to the table. She'd thought he would turn as soon as he heard her footsteps behind him, but maybe he thought they were Pansy's.

"Hello," she said.

She had expected him to look unconcerned when she showed up. She had been counting on his coolness to help her keep her own self together. But when he turned and saw her behind him, he almost jumped out of his seat. His face looked thin and drawn, and full of shadows. He knocked over his small liqueur glass, and a yellowish-green liquid spilled out onto the table, like dragon's blood.

"I'm sorry," Ginny said, uncertainly. "I didn't mean to startle you--"

"It's all right," he said. A silent woman with a few strands of red hair peeping out of her bright headwrap appeared. Her face was turned downwards, so that Ginny could not see her features clearly, although she thought that the woman shot her a brief, searching glance. She flicked her hand at the spill. It disappeared, and then so did she. Ginny blinked. Had she really disappeared, or just slipped away more noiselessly than any house-elf? What a strange, strange place.

He gestured towards a chair. It was the one Pansy had sat in. Ginny took another.

"I thought you'd come. I wasn't sure. But I thought so. Drink with me now," said Draco. He had regained his composure and spoke like a young man used to being obeyed, but Ginny found that she did not mind that tonight. She did not want to have to think for herself too much, tonight. A second little glass appeared filled with the same liqueur that Draco had been drinking. She poured it down her throat quickly, and then coughed.

"What is it?"

"Chartreuse."

"Oh..." Ginny looked down into her glass, and tried again. She sipped more slowly this time, letting the mingled flavours of citrus, anise, mint, rosemary and lavender roll across her tongue.

"Have you had this before?" Draco asked.

"No. I like it, though."

"So do I. It was invented by wizarding monks in France, and supposedly they're the only ones who know the recipe. Some people say that it has mysterious powers, but I think that's a load of rubbish."

"Really?"

"Well, Chartreuse does bring vivid dreams. That's true enough," Draco said, and then lapsed into silence.

Minutes passed while the warmth seeped into her chilled bones, and she said nothing. She finally looked up. It seemed as if some of the tables had rearranged themselves while she was absorbed in her drink, and the lighting looked all different. The woman next to the bar kept singing.

Just say "goodnight" and kiss me,
Oh, hold me tight and tell me you miss me;
While I'm alone and blue as can be,
Dream a little dream of me...

"This is a strange place," Ginny said.

"It is," said Draco. "Nothing ever seems quite real here, does it?"

"Maybe that's what seems so strange."

He smiled at the table, not quite looking at her. "Do you ever wonder what's real and what isn't, Ginny Weasley?"

"Sometimes," she said. Quite deliberately, she slid her hand across the table and placed it over his. He felt feverishly warm. "But you're real, aren't you?" she asked.

"I think so," he said, finally looking up. "I think you are as well."

What a strange conversation, thought Ginny. "Nobody I know would come here, would they?" she asked.

"They couldn't get in," he said.

She nodded. "Good. I don't want to be found."

His grey eyes glittered in the flickering light of the candle. "What do you want, Ginny?"

She put her glass down. "I want to go upstairs with you, Draco."

As they left the table, Ginny saw out of the corner of her eye that the woman by the bar was still singing, but had turned her head to watch her pass by with Draco.

Sweet dreams till sunbeams find you,
Sweet dreams that leave all worries behind you,
But in your dreams whatever they be,
Dream a little dream of me.

He brought her up a dimly lit flight of stairs and down a richly carpeted hall, the walls paneled with teak and ebony. He stopped in front of a door. There were no numbers on its outside, but perhaps that sort of thing wasn't needed here. If you were considered special enough to stay up here, Ginny thought, you knew where you were supposed to be. Her thoughts felt more and more random, like sparks struck off a wand during a badly composed spell. If she didn't grab onto something soon to anchor herself, she didn't know what would happen. Draco Malfoy still wasn't opening the door. His hand was on the doorknob, but he did not turn it. Why won't he go in?

"Draco," she said.

"Yes?"

"You bring girls up here, don't you?"

He didn't answer her.

"I already know you do. I've seen you with a lot of different girls in the past year. I don't mind. I'm not asking you because I mind."

"Not here," Draco said. "I've never brought anyone else here. Pansy's never even been in these rooms."

"Well, other places, then. You know what I mean. You've shagged a lot of girls, haven't you?"

He smiled faintly, his face looking strangely unguarded. "Ginny, Ginny. The questions you ask. A nice girl wouldn't ask a question like that. But then you're not so nice as everyone thinks, are you?"

"No," Ginny said. "But it is true, isn't it? About you, I mean. I want to hear you say it."

"Yes," he said. "It's true."

She stepped very close to him, until she could feel the warmth of his body radiating outwards, touching the skin of her hands and face. "Open the door, Draco," she said.

He finally did. A little witchlight went on as he stepped inside. Ginny still hung back at the threshold of the door. She saw a cozy sitting room with a little couch in front of a fire, low wooden tables, flocked wallpaper in a soothing brown colour, and rich window hangings that shut out the cold night. Draco stood just inside the room, looking back at her. She spoke to him very clearly and slowly, each word so precise that there could be no mistake as to her meaning.

"I want you to do to me what you do to those girls."

The words had hardly left Ginny's mouth before Draco yanked her into the room by her arm and slammed the door. Then the breath was knocked out of her lungs. She gave a reflexive gasp and breathed in mint and anise, the sweet taste of lavender, the bitter flavour of rue, and more, a thousand subtleties that could belong only to the mouth of Draco Malfoy. He had shoved her up against the closed door, and his lips and tongue and teeth were everywhere at once, devouring her lips, ravaging her collarbone, nipping at her neck like a vampire too long starved for blood. And all the while he pressed her up against the door with all his strength, and she couldn't have moved a muscle if she'd wanted to. Yet even in this frenzy of hand and mouth and body, of ragged cries and harsh gasps and more than a few struggles for air when Ginny remembered that she'd forgotten to breathe, he always stopped short of causing her pain. Draco wasn't hurting her, Ginny realized. He was consuming her.

Her blouse was slipping off her shoulders now with a ripping sound. Buttons clattered to the floor. Now his mouth was on her breasts, moving from nipple to nipple, and at that sensation Ginny shrieked, honestly shrieked in a sort of terrified pleasure. The sound ended in a guttural moan. But Draco didn't seem to mind. He was pulling her hips forward and yanking her trousers down her thighs... now her knickers... the cooler air of the room struck her bare flesh and his hands kept moving down and oh God, oh God, he was touching her there, where no hand but her own had ever been. Every one of her nerve endings was screaming with sensations she had never imagined. Ginny's mind grappled frantically with the vast sensory overload, but it was too much, too hard, too fast. She couldn't begin to catalogue each separate thing that was happening to her, much less respond to it.

Somehow his shirt and sweater were on the floor and his trousers were around his ankles and he was pressing against her; there was only the thin layer of his silk boxers separating them, and she moaned softly as the full weight of her ignorance flooded through her. Too late, she saw that she had needed this to be slow and gentle, and instead it was coming at her as relentlessly as a force of nature. An experienced girl would have been able to cope with the onslaught that was Draco Malfoy, but Ginny was as overwhelmed as a sparrow in a hurricane.

The last scrap of green silk slithered down his calves and puddled on the floor. Her legs were being shoved apart, and he was lifting her against the door. She had to say something. She had to stop him. But she couldn't seem to even draw breath to speak. Her hands came up and pushed faintly at his bare chest.

He blinked, his eyes enormous and vague. "Wh--what?" he asked.

"Stop," she whispered. "Don't. No!"

The words penetrated Draco's mind a little too late. He was driven by a more primal force than anything words could communicate to him now. Still, her hands were braced against his chest with increasing strength, and the words that she had said began to seep into his mind and to make a little sense. He tried to pull himself back, to stop the seemingly unstoppable forward motion of his own body, and so his first thrust into her was not as hard and swift and complete as it otherwise would have been. He could feel himself meeting resistance, and then she yelped and stiffened, her whole body contracting. He stumbled back. She slipped to the floor, crying. The tears had sprung to her eyes as suddenly as if he'd slapped her. Draco stared at her in astonishment.

"What the hell?" he managed to say.

Ginny cried harder. He knelt next to her, turning her face up to his with a hand on her chin. She tried to pull away, but he had her fast.

"I didn't want to tell you," she said.

"Tell me what?"

"You know perfectly well what." She swiped at her nose with the back of her hand.

"No, I don't know! Fuck, Ginny, what just happened?"

She gritted her teeth. Apparently, he really was going to make her spit out all the gory facts. "I'm a virgin, Malfoy. Or was. Don't tell me you didn't know."

She'd never actually seen anybody's mouth drop open before. "A--a virgin? I didn't know. I didn't have the slightest-- Are you sure?"

"You think I'd lie about that? To you?"

His face hardened. "How the hell should I know? It's not as if I've ever come across one of them before. Not in bed, anyway."

"We're not exactly in bed, are we?" Ginny pointed out with a sort of prim bitterness.

"Wait. Wait a second. What about all those boyfriends you've had? What about the other day, when you said you weren't pure, and weren't innocent?"

"I didn't mean this. There are other kinds of purity, and I've lost them all long ago. This was about the only sort I had left." Ginny felt around on the floor for her knickers and put them on, pulling her knees up and wrapping her arms around them. She felt suddenly exhausted. She didn't know if she could ever get up off the floor again.

Draco looked at her very hard. "But why?" he asked. "Why me?" He began to pace, shooting sharp looks down at her from time to time.

"It doesn't matter." Gods, but what a disaster this had been! There was only one good thing about it. She wasn't a virgin anymore, so the Binding spell was broken, and she wouldn't have to go through with marrying Harry. Or at least Ginny thought she'd lost her virginity to Draco Malfoy. Does this actually count as sex? she wondered. She'd felt a slight stab of pain, and she'd certainly heard from all the whispered conversations girls held after hours in the Gryffindor room that there was supposed to be pain. But there hadn't been any real pleasure, either. Not for her, anyway; it had all been too overwhelming for that. Was that necessary, though? Ginny thought it likely wasn't.

So they were done, she and Draco; no matter how abortive the experience had been, it was over now. She tried to get up. He pushed her down and sat next to her.

"You're not going anywhere until I get some answers," he said.

"Why do you need answers?" Ginny pulled on her trousers. "You got what you wanted."

Draco looked very much as if he might explode. "Great Merlin, you idiot, I didn't get anything, and neither did you! Are you really too thick to realize that?"

Knowing what he meant, she blushed scarlet. Of course Malfoy didn't come. I suppose I am a bit thick to not realize that! But, then... oh dear...

"Does that mean that this doesn't count?" she blurted.

Draco laughed. It wasn't a pleasant sound. "Nobody could be this innocent. It's got to be some sort of act. But I know now that it's not, I suppose... I haven't done anything to you, Weasley; you're still as intact as the day you were born."

"But--" she stuttered. "But, it hurt--you hurt me, a little anyway, and I'd always heard that--"

"If you knew anything about sex, you'd know that that wasn't it. No. You can still ride a unicorn into your white wedding with Potter, followed by choirs of poncy elves carrying loads of nargle-infested orange blossoms--"

"Oh, no," breathed Ginny. She scrubbed at her streaming eyes, then glared up at him. "Damn you, Draco Malfoy! You were supposed to deflower me, and you didn't!"

He scanned her face silently. "Flattering as I find your sudden desire for me, Weasley," he said in a low, dangerous drawl, "something is making it very hard for me to believe that you decided to throw your virginity away on me just because you were overcome by passion."

"But--" She swallowed hard. I did feel something for you, Draco, she nearly said. When you kissed me in the alleyway last night. I felt something I've never felt for anyone before. She did not say a word.

"Suppose you tell me what this is really all about," he said.

She sighed. She was too tired to lie to him anymore, as she now realized that she had been doing all along. I used him, she thought. Or I tried to, anyway. And it didn't even work. "There's some sort of Binding spell that was put on Harry and me," she said dully. "But it wasn't finished. That sort can't be, until the two people involved finish it themselves, in the old way, with their bodies. I tried to, with Harry. But I couldn't. He's good and sweet and dear, and a thousand other good things I'm not, and I ran away from him when he tried to make love to me, and I haven't talked to him since. Hermione figured out that I could break the spell by sleeping with somebody else."

Draco leaned his head back against the door as if the weight was just too heavy to support. "And you actually came to me." There was something strange about the way he phrased that sentence, Ginny thought.

"I came to you. And you see how well that worked out," she said.

"So you came here to use me, did you?" he asked, smiling as if at some private amusement.

He saw too much, Ginny thought uncomfortably. "Don't behave as if you weren't trying to use me," she snapped.

He looked at her strangely and then shook his head. "But I don't understand. Why didn't you run through everyone else you could think of first?"

"That's obviously the sort of idea you've already taken to heart," she said tartly.

"What do you think you know about me, Weasley?" Draco asked, his eyes narrowing. "Or about why I do the things I do?"

"Nothing." She got up. "I know that I've been a fool, and that's enough."

He rose to his feet as well. "But then, I suppose you're right. About running through every girl I could think of, I mean; you'll have to decide for yourself what sort of fool you've been to come to me."

"And you thought you'd add me to your list of conquests," said Ginny.

"If you could hear how stupid you sound, taking that injured tone with me," sneered Draco. "Who was it that threw themselves at me before we'd even gotten in the doorway, and begged me to do to her what I do to all the other girls--"

Ginny blushed fiery red. "Well, I'm sorry, Malfoy," she said formally. "What I did was wrong."

"I'm quite sure you think so now," he said, in his most arrogant tones. "But if I'd had you properly, you'd be begging me for more, Weasley. Just like the rest of them."

She winced, deciding not to rise to the bait. "I don't mean that. I mean the way I tried to use you. I am sorry for that."

He raised an eyebrow. "Even though it's me?" His voice was quieter.

"Even though it's you," Ginny agreed, reaching for the doorknob. She felt something pulling on her sleeve, and looked down to see his hand.

"What is it, Malfoy?" she asked.

He didn't speak. His eyes looked at her as if he could say none of the things he wanted to say with words. For the briefest instant, she might almost have imagined that they were pleading with her silently, as he could not do in speech. That is, she might have done if those bright grey eyes had belonged to anyone except Draco Malfoy.

"You've already succeeded in humiliating me, if that was what you wanted to do," she said. She wasn't being fair at all, Ginny knew, but at that moment she didn't care. "Isn't that enough? What more do you want, Malfoy?"

Still he was silent, but it was the sort of silence with frenzied words behind it, beating at a locked door like birds with broken wings.

Please...

Ginny almost believed she heard the thought, fluttering from his mind to hers.

Stay with me...

Let me show you... let me be slow with you, Ginny, slow and gentle and lingering, let me bring you pleasure like you've never known, let me hear you call me by my name as you clasp me in your arms. Let me hear you say Draco, Draco, Draco...

She shook her head. His face closed. There was no secret self struggling behind it, she thought. It had all been illusion, and the imaginings of her own mind. Quickly, she slipped out the door. It slammed shut behind her.

"Ginny," Draco said, reaching out his hand. But they were too late, the word and the motion both. She neither heard nor saw.