Of Binding Spells and Chartreuse

Things are seldom all they seem,

Skim milk masquerades as cream...

-- Gilbert and Sullivan, The Mikado

December 24^th, 1997

The Leaky Cauldron

When they finally broke apart, Ginny felt almost shy. She bustled around the room, making tea, stirring up the fire, and fluffing pillows on the couch. Draco only stood and looked at her. She cleared her throat self-consciously.

"Would you like some tea?"

"Oh, yes." He took a cup. So did she. They sat on the couch, not quite facing each other.

"So," said Ginny.

"So," agreed Draco.

"Sugar?"

"What? Oh, no--no." He stirred his tea. "Are you afraid?" he asked suddenly.

"Of course not," she lied.

"Well, I am," he said flatly.

"But why? You've certainly done this before." She was startled.

"I know my way around a bedroom, if that's what you mean." The familiar smirk popped up on one side of Draco's mouth. It was almost comforting to see it. Everything else is changing, Ginny thought. But at least I can always count on the Malfoy smirk.

"Good job one of us does, I suppose," said Ginny. "This would be an awful train wreck if neither one of us knew what we were doing."

"Oh, I do," said Draco. "Don't worry about that. But you're wrong, Ginny, when you said that I'd done this before." He moved closer to her. "Not like this. Not with you."

She felt his warm breath stirring the hair just above her ear, and she began to tremble.

"You are afraid, aren't you?" he whispered.

"I suppose I am, a little."

"Do you want this, Ginny?"

"Yes," she said. She couldn't help remembering what had happened two nights ago, when Harry had sat on this same couch, and asked her the same question. This time, her reply was the truth.

He was silent for a long time, and when he spoke, his words were not what she expected to hear. "I know about the Chamber. What happened there, during your first year. I know about the diary, and Tom Riddle, and all of it."

She tensed until all her muscles felt as if they had turned to stone.

"Shhh." His hands traced soothing little circles on her back. "I didn't say that to make you afraid. I said it because I know why you're afraid. I understand."

"Harry knows. But he doesn't understand," she said.

Draco made a noise that was very like a snort. "Isn't that the stunner of the year. Potter doesn't understand something."

"Really, though, it doesn't make sense. The Dark Lord put something of himself into Harry, you know? Something dark. That's what happened when he survived the Killing curse as a baby. But all Harry's ever done is to deny it."

Draco sighed. "I have darkness in me as well, Ginny. But you know that, don't you? You've always known that."

"I knew that before I knew anything else about you. But there's more than darkness in you; I know that now."

He did not reply.

"And anyway you don't try to deny it."

"No, I don't. I don't."

Ginny clasped her hands lightly around Draco's lower back. The solid feel of him was comforting. "Harry thinks what everybody thinks. Because nothing really happened to me in the Chamber--because Tom Riddle wasn't solid enough to do more than touch me a bit, I mean--they all think that none of the rest of it, nothing else that he did to me, had any importance at all."

"I know better," said Draco. He sat back and put his hands flat on the couch, away from her. "If I ask you something, Ginny, will you answer me?"

"Yes."

He smiled faintly. "Rather rash to promise, when you don't know what the request is.... Have you ever seen a boy... or a man... naked before?"

Ginny thought. Seeing Percy getting out of the bathtub when I was nine years old doesn't count, I suppose. "No," she said.

"Well, now's your chance."

A terrifying mixture of feelings rose in her. "I--" she began, torn between excitement, craving, panic, and a desire to flee.

"But it'll be on your terms, Ginny, not mine. I want you to undress me. Go as slowly as you like. I won't lay a finger on you until you've finished."

If Draco had moved toward her then, Ginny might have panicked entirely. But he sat perfectly still. The orange firelight flickered and spread little pulses of light across him as he sat on the couch, one arm extended over its back, one leg folded under him. It touched his ashy-blond hair with gold, and lent colour to the pale skin of his face and neck and hands. I want to know if he's that pale all over, Ginny realized. I want to see him... all of him. Slowly, slowly, her hands reached out to him.

She pulled the green cashmere sweater with the little snake crest over his head. She unbuttoned the crisp white cotton shirt underneath it, and slipped it off his body. Beneath that was a white silk undershirt, and he lifted his arms so that she could get that off as well. His bare chest was lean and pale as marble, thin but beautifully shaped, almost smooth, with a light sprinkling of ashy blond hair. She ran her palms along the muscles of his chest, his shoulders, and his arms. One of her fingernails caught on a flat male nipple and she heard his sharp intake of breath. How strange, she thought, that boys should have those too. I wonder... Acting on impulse, she bent her head and kissed first one nipple, and then the other, feeling the tiny pebbles rise under her tongue. Ginny's hands smoothed down his taut abdomen, feeling the muscles quiver under her exploring fingers.

His hands were clenched into almost-fists against the couch. Ginny could feel all of the desperation she'd felt in him two nights before, when he had slammed her up against the closed door of his room and torn her clothes off. But tonight, he still had not touched her. He was keeping his promise. Ginny had never even imagined trusting Draco Malfoy about anything before in her life, but... I can trust him now. About this, anyway. That realization filled her with a faint sense of wonder.

"Should I go on?" she asked.

"Please," he said. He sucked in his breath sharply when she began to unbutton his woolen trousers. "Gods, yes, please!" he repeated.

You don't seem to mind begging a Weasley now, thought Ginny. Her fear was leaving her mind. She could feel it beginning to lose its moorings and slip away even as she slipped the trousers down his legs, feeling the long muscles of his thighs and calves underneath, perfectly sculpted from all those years of Quidditch. But there was some fear in her still, and her hands stopped at the border of his green silk boxers.

"I--I can't, yet," she admitted. "Not just yet."

Draco gave a deep sigh that made his entire body quiver, but he nodded. "What do you want now, Ginny?"

She simply looked at him for a long moment, because that was what she most wanted to do. He seemed to understand, sitting very still in the position where she had left him after taking off all of his clothes... except for that last scrap of green silk. He's beautiful, she thought. Like a specimen of some strange magical animal that's wandered into my rooms, a hippogriff or a cockatrice, something perfect and wild and dangerous. But he's sheathed his claws for me.

"I want you to undress me," she said, surprising herself.

Draco opened his eyes, which had fallen shut. "Has anyone ever done that for you before?" he asked.

"No. Not all the way. I've never let them. I've... never really wanted anyone to do it, either."

One corner of his mouth went up. "Then it will be an honor," he said, with a sort of quaint courtliness, "to be the first."

He caressed her back and arms and shoulders under her striped silk blouse for a long time before doing anything else. Ginny had certainly experienced this before at the hands of other boys. But it had never felt like this. Nothing could have been further from the memory of Harry's awkwardness, or Seamus's greedy urgency to get her clothes off, or Neville's fumbling hands. Ginny floated in the sensual pleasure of feather-light touches through cloth, sighing luxuriously.

His hands were so gentle when he began to slip the buttons of her blouse from their buttonholes that Ginny almost didn't realize what he was doing, at first. Then the silk slipped off her shoulders and to the floor. His palms crept up to stroke her breasts. Even through the stiff white nylon webbing of her brassiere, the sensation was so acute that Ginny didn't know if she'd be able to stand much more. And then... oh God... she felt him undoing the hooks in the back. The fabric slipped off her chest. His hands were on her naked breasts and they overflowed his palms. His fingers circled her nipples and they grew stiff and hard, and little darts of pure pleasure shot down between her legs. His bright head bent down and he took one nipple in his mouth. She had remembered that so well from two nights before; it was one of the few sensations that she had been able to pull whole and complete from the maelstrom. But this was so, so different. Slowly, slowly his tongue explored the nubbly surface of each nipple, one at a time, exquisitely careful and thorough. Ginny pressed her chest forward as far as she could, into his hands, into his mouth, wanting to get as close to Draco as she could. They were going to get so much closer than this, and she wanted it to happen with a desperation so fierce that it almost tore her apart. His mouth was still at her breasts, but his hands moved down and down.

"You look so beautiful in green," he whispered against the stiff flesh of her nipples. His thumbs hooked into the silk knickers and pulled them down, trailing the lace trim along her thighs, making her shiver.

"But you're so much more beautiful in nothing."

At the promise in his voice, a little pulse ran down to the most secret part of her. She held out her hands to him, then whimpered when he moved away. "No," she pleaded. "Don't go--" An awful fear bloomed in her mind from some dark place. Maybe this entire thing was some kind of elaborate trick. Maybe he would sneer at her, and leave her sprawled naked on the couch, panting for him, ready for the final consummation that would never come now. How could you think that I would take you to bed... She could nearly hear the words.

"How could you think that I wouldn't take you to a bed?"

She really had heard that. Ginny blinked. "Wh--what?"

"Your first time isn't going to be on a couch. Especially not the one where Potter tried so ineptly to seduce you." Draco shuddered.

"How did you know about that?" Ginny asked.

He shrugged. "You must've said something, I suppose."

Ginny didn't think she had, but the point hardly seemed worth pursuing at the moment. "Well, you weren't so fastidious the other night," she said.

. "I was wrong," Draco said. His eyes had become very dark, the pupils swallowing up almost all the bright grey. "It would have been all wrong, that way."

"But it was what you wanted," Ginny said.

"I would have felt pleasure, but not you. I would have hurt you without meaning to... and I'm glad that I didn't. Even though I almost went mad, looking for you... Where's your bed?"

"In the other room."

He reached out his hand to her. She took it. Together, they walked into the bedroom. He turned to shut the door, leaving Ginny standing uncertainly by the bed. Now what? She felt cold although the room was warm, suddenly and painfully aware of the fact that she was completely naked. Then Draco took one step forward and seized her in his arms, kissing her passionately, and her flesh was no longer an uncomfortable garment but a great shivering map of pleasure. He knew where to touch--everywhere to touch, and every bit of skin became an erotic zone, not only her breasts and nipples but the skin on the backs of her arms, her inner elbows, her wrists, the curve of her buttocks, the smooth skin on her hips. When his fingers finally slipped between her legs, she simply collapsed onto the bed behind her, and he followed.

"Lie back," he whispered, and he moved between her thighs. He had been slow and gentle so far, but his hands were uncompromising, firm and shockingly accurate. He seemed to know her better than she had ever known herself.

Finally he let her rest. She lay back on the bed, panting, eyes half-closed, watching him. Draco drew her hands towards the last piece of silk at his hips. "Take these off me," he said thickly.

She wasn't afraid anymore, Ginny realized. She still trembled at the unknown, but she was no longer afraid. Slowly, slowly, knowing that there would be only one first time for this, she took the waistband of his boxers between her hands. She pulled them down Draco's legs, losing a bit of her courage at the last minute, looking away. She saw the green silk slide to the floor.

She was totally naked and now, so was he; they were lying together in a bed; they were really going to do this thing... so she had to look at him now. Ginny held her breath and opened her eyes.

"That can't fit," she said flatly.

"Flattery will get you everywhere," Draco said. Something like his old smirk spread over his face, but it was softer now. "I've made you ready for me, Ginny."

"Yes," she whispered. "I think so... but...it will hurt. Won't it?"

"Do you trust me?" he asked.

She nodded.

He pulled her hand to him. "Touch me, Ginny."

She did, tentatively. He groaned. She dropped what she held.

"Oh! Did I hurt you?"

"No," he said, his voice very rough. "But I don't think you should do that again."

"Didn't you like it?"

"Oh, I liked it." He took her hand in his. "I want to hold back, Ginny, and if you touch me, I can't...When your hand was on me, I almost..." His breathing had grown harsher. She could hear it. He pressed her up against the headboard and began kissing her neck, urgently.

"I can't wait any longer," he said. "Are you ready?"

"Yes," Ginny said. She wasn't at all sure that she was telling the truth. But the moment had come; she was dangling her foot over a precipice, and she wanted to jump.

Draco was still holding one of her hands in his. He took the other and pushed both hands down to the bed so that her head was on the lace-trimmed pillow and their faces were only a few centimeters apart. "Spread your legs for me," he whispered. Ginny parted her thighs and felt his knee pushing them apart further. "Raise them at the knee," he said, and when she had moved into the position he wanted, he moved between her open legs, pinning her down.

Between Draco's weight on her body and his hands trapping her own, Ginny couldn't move a muscle. A little tremor of fear went through her.

"Shh, shh, it's all right," he said. "Here." He pulled her hands up and clasped them around his lower back, angling her fingers so that her nails were set on his skin. Their eyes met.

"Now," she said. Then, made shy by her own boldness, Ginny glanced up and over Draco's shoulder. She saw two slender pale bodies in a glass, darkly. One ivory figure knelt between the spread legs of the other.

"What's wrong?" asked Draco.

"Nothing--only I forgot about the mirror. I can see us, Draco." It was a shocking sight. And yet...

"We're beautiful, aren't we?" he whispered.

"Are we?"

"Yes, yes. I'm about to make love to you, Ginny, and you're going to take me into yourself for the very first time. And even though you're still frightened, you won't be soon, because I'm going to show you how beautiful this can be." He lowered his head until their foreheads were touching. "And you can watch, if you like... you can watch your first time, Ginny..." The dark secret forbiddenness of his words sent a shocking thrill through her. She had not meant to watch, but she did watch him slowly lowering his hips to meet hers. Then she could not watch anymore; she could only feel.

He moved forward and down with exquisite slowness. Her body gave a little quiver at this totally unfamiliar new sensation, but he was so very gentle that she did not yet feel any pain. She relaxed. Ginny could still see the mirror hazily, out of the corner of one eye, as she floated in this wonderful sensation of being held close, of his skin pressing against every inch of hers, of his arms holding her so tightly...

She saw Draco pull his slim hips back, but her mind did not yet register what that meant. That part of him she had already learnt to crave drew away from her slightly. She whimpered. "Please," she said.

In answer, he thrust his hips forward. Hard.

Pain... pain... it splintered through her lower body, radiated down into her legs, up into her belly and almost to her chest. She struggled to keep from crying, because she didn't want Draco to stop, even though there was pain... or was there? Tears spilled over her lashes but she didn't know what was causing them anymore. It wasn't pain, what she felt. It wasn't pleasure. It was some sensation beyond both. Then there was one final thrust, and some last thing within her gave way, and he lay still.

"Are you all right, Ginny?" he asked in a harsh rasp of a whisper. She nodded, completely unable to speak. She felt dizzy. Draco was inside her. He was a part of her. She had expected pain. She had not expected this possession. She felt as if every bit of her had been deliciously flayed and laid bare to him, and she quivered under the touch of his skin and the weight of his body that invaded her so... sweetly?

He began to move upon her, rhythmically, gently. Yes. This invasion of her most private self was sweet. He sucked in his breath sharply. His face contorted as if he, too, were in pain.

"I'm--not--- going to last," he gasped. "Can't--I've been waiting too long--"

"For me?" she whispered.

"For you," he said. "For you, Ginny. You... you... it's always been you..."

The meaning of his words did not quite penetrate her mind; he was penetrating her body too fully, too thoroughly, rocking into her over and over and over again. But some part of her suddenly understood the weakness that was in him. She had been his weakness. She did not know why, or for how long, but she sensed that truth through all her being. And now she had given her own self to him; whatever that might mean. In turn, he had made her his, sweetly and relentlessly; even if she ran to the ends of the earth, or sailed beyond the sea, something of her would always remain his. A terrible tenderness spread through all of her. She reached up her hand and smoothed a lock of pale hair back from his sweaty forehead, and that gesture was his undoing.

He tensed in every muscle, hovering above her. "Ginny," he whispered, in something between a moan and a sigh. "Ginny..." And she felt him bury his face in her neck, sobbing out his pleasure as his essence passed from him to her. Then he collapsed at last, spent and safe in her arms, like a sailor come to shore after a long and weary voyage.

Afterwards, they lay together silently for a long time. Ginny wasn't sure what to say, and didn't know if she was yet ready to say anything. She felt sore and a little battered, even though Draco had been as gentle as he'd promised he would be, except, as she now realized, when it was kinder for him not to be. But it all melted into one wonderful feeling; the soreness, the aching between her legs, the aftermath of all the tension in her thighs where she'd held them apart for him in such an unfamiliar way, the soft scratchiness of his hair on her shoulder, the warmth of his arms around her, the solid weight of his legs draped over hers. I've come home, she thought, not knowing in the least what she meant. Home...

"Thank you," he finally said.

She nuzzled her nose into the curve of his neck in response. She knew what he meant, but still she felt that she should be thanking him.

"No-one's ever given me that gift before."

Ginny raised an eyebrow. "I should think you would've gotten enough gifts in your life, Draco."

"Not like this one. You were the first to ever choose me as your first, Ginny; I told you that. And you were the first person I ever chose."

She thought about that. "But what about Pansy?"

"I didn't really choose Pansy. We were always thrown together, that's all. We always knew how right we were for each other, how perfectly our families matched each other."

"Maybe that's why she slept with someone else before you," Ginny said softly, unable to believe that she was actually feeling sympathy for Pansy Parkinson. But her heart had been expanded in the last hour somehow, and she was thinking of things that had never occurred to her before. "Maybe she wanted someone for her first time that she chose. That's why I gave this to you, Draco."

"You did, didn't you? You chose me..." he whispered. "Are you glad?"

"Yes, yes." He had such a strange, agitated way of speaking whenever he said things like that, thought Ginny. As if he's sure he'll be overheard... found out... punished. She put an arm around him and felt the shape of his ribs under his too-thin chest. "But what about all those other girls?" she asked, teasingly.

The familiar smirk came back. "Oh, I don't know... who am I to deny the girls of Hogwarts the greatest lover they'll ever have?"

She smacked him.

"Ouch! That hurt."

"You deserved it."

"Well, you did ask." His face turned serious. "I didn't exactly choose any of them, either. They were there, that's all. They were willing. I didn't sleep with anyone who wasn't already experienced, or who didn't understand exactly what I offered them. And I wanted to break that bond with Pansy so badly... but it never worked anyway."

She traced a path down his smooth chest with a finger, loving the way he shivered under her touch. "Who was your first, Draco?"

He gave an embarrassed laugh. "Ginny..."

"I want to know. I'm curious. It wasn't Pansy, was it?"

"Oh Gods no. Not that she didn't try, but I didn't trust her. Still, I don't think that you really--"

"Did you get a bed-elf on your fifteenth birthday? Some of the older families do that, I know. Fred and George were furious that they didn't." Ginny giggled. "I wasn't supposed to hear about that, but I have my ways of finding out things. Come on, Draco... I'll torture it out of you if you don't tell me..." She scratched her fingers over his nipples, feeling them rise.

"Witch," he muttered, catching her hands in his and kissing the fingers.

"Well spotted. Come on. Talk."

"I already told you that I didn't get a bed-elf, remember?"

"Oh. I forgot. So what did happen?"

Draco sighed and looked up at the ceiling, locking his arms behind his head. "Well, there's a place called the Crystal Palace, in Hogsmeade--it's been there for millennia, before the Romans ever came to the British Isles. You probably haven't heard of it--"

"I have."

He looked at her sharply. "How?"

"Oh... a friend told me." Remembering her conversation with Colin, Ginny was hard put to it not to laugh.

"Fine, don't tell me then. Anyway, if you must know-- there's another tradition besides the giving of bed-elves. My mother wouldn't have them in the house..." He trailed off, staring at the ceiling. Ginny began to regret that she had ever brought this subject up. "Sorry," he said shortly. "The other one is to bring wizard boys to the Crystal Palace on their sixteenth birthdays. That's what was done for me, over the Christmas holidays of my fifth year."

"Oh," said Ginny. Her bravado seemed to have evaporated. "Was it, uh... nice?"

His mouth twisted up. "I'd say. It's one of the specialties of the house. There's a very elegant parlor, all red silk and low lighting, and the girls are sitting on sofas, or talking with each other. I was brought in by myself, I remember, and left alone... the girls don't try to chat you up or anything so tacky as that, especially not with the very young boys. They waited for me to choose one of them. And I did... it was a choice of sorts, I suppose, though nothing like this. I chose a girl with long red hair and bright brown eyes. A woman really I suppose; she was older. Marie-France was her name. And I came back to see her on all the Hogsmeade weekends." Something about his voice told her that this was not the end of the story.

"I never heard about that," said Ginny.

"You don't think that I was going to tell Gryffindors about it, do you?"

"No, I suppose not... I always did wonder why I never seemed to see you on Hogsmeade weekends that spring."

"Well, that was why. I never told anyone though, actually. No-one knew." Draco wrapped his arms around his knees, broodingly.

"What happened then?" Ginny asked, already knowing that she might not really want to find out.

"I became... too attached. It was only supposed to last through the second half of my fifth year, though, and I knew it."

"You mean, er... it wasn't just a one-night thing?" Ginny asked, fascinated in spite of herself.

"Oh, no. It's a sort of magical contract, really; it goes back thousands of years. An experienced woman has to be willing to take on the responsibility of awakening a young wizard boy to the world of sex, and that can't be done overnight. It never lasts less than four or five months... but never more. Still, I made plans to meet Marie-France over the summer, and she agreed..."

Ginny did not ask any more.

"Then she simply disappeared. The accountants at the Crystal Palace said that there was no record of her ever having been there. My father said that he didn't know anything about it. I always hoped that he was telling me the truth."

"Did--did you ever see her again, this Marie-France?"

"No." Draco continued to stare at the ceiling.

She held him tightly, not knowing what else to do. He did not respond. She whispered something in his ear, sounds rather than words, really, sshhh, shhhh, it'll be all right, Draco, it'll all, all be all right. She kissed his shoulder, his chest, the curve where his neck met his collarbone. He seemed to really see her again then, and he grabbed her in his arms and rolled over on top of her and kissed her with an awful, painful desperation. She felt how hard he was again already, and a warm rush of sensation spread down to her loins. But then he ground his hips against hers, and she winced. His expression changed.

"You must be sore, Ginny. I'm sure I hurt you--I tried to be as careful as I could, but I still couldn't keep from hurting you, I know." He got up, out of bed, and reached out a hand to her. "Come on."

Ginny really began to feel the soreness when she walked, and she was glad to stop in the little bathroom. She sat on the edge of the toilet while he ran a bath for her and added a purple stream of liquid from a small bottle on the sink. The air was filled with the scent of lavender. He helped her into the large bathtub.

"Mmmmm," she sighed, feeling the perfumed water soak all the aches away. "Is there room for two?"

"Maybe. It's not quite as big as the prefect's bath, is it? But we'll try." Carefully, Draco eased himself into the water next to her. It came perilously close to slopping over the edge. She giggled. He leaned forward and kissed her, and she sighed again with the pleasure of hot water, steam, the scent of lavender, the wonderful pressure of his lips, and the joyous feeling of being naked in a bathtub with Draco Malfoy.

He laved her with a washcloth, rubbing gently, and when he had done, she did the same for him. His body is so beautiful, she thought. I never thought that a boy's body would be beautiful, but his certainly is. She felt that she could never get enough of touching him, and she grew bolder, changing the rhythm of her touch in accordance with his words and cries and whispered pleas, until finally all speech left him. She studied Draco's face at the moment of his greatest pleasure, and thought that she had never seen anyone or anything so vulnerable. And he showed this to me. He laid himself open for me...

Afterward, he dried her, and wrapped her in a huge towel.

"Better now?" he asked.

"Much. I barely feel sore at all. Maybe we could..." She played with the edge of her towel.

He grinned. "Maybe we could. But, listen, Ginny; there's something I forgot about before, and I have to do it now." He reached for his wand on the dressing-table.

"What are you doing?" she asked, her brow furrowed.

"A Post-Contraceptive spell."

"Oh, you don't have to worry about that," she said, shrugging. "I took a potion a couple of days ago."

He froze. "Did you," he said. She did not miss the coldness in his voice.

She raised her chin. "Yes, I did," she said defiantly. "So you don't have to worry about it, Draco."

"You took it for Potter, didn't you?" he asked, his voice very calm. Too calm.

"I planned ahead, if that's what you mean," she said. "You certainly know now that I didn't use it the way I thought I would when I took it." She heard the snap in her own voice. "Draco, I didn't choose Harry in the end. I chose you. There's nothing for you to be upset about."

Draco stood tensely for another moment, and then sighed. "You're right," he said, and led her back to bed. "Lie down. I want to give to you what you gave to me."

She expected to feel his fingers on her, but she didn't. Instead, he kissed her mouth, her neck, her chest, each breast, her abdomen, her hips, her inner thighs, her--

"Oh!" Her eyes flew wide open. "I didn't know you could--"

Draco raised his head from between her legs. "That's all right. I'll show you," he said. And he did.

***

Ginny lay in Draco's arms, her head on his shoulder, her hair spread across his chest. She could see a sliver of the quarter-moon through a gap in the curtains at the window. She wondered what time it was. It seemed late, but the last thing she wanted was to go to sleep. Now, in the ebb tide of their shared passion, something was niggling at her mind. Something he had said...

"Draco?"

"Mm?"

"Will you tell me something?"

"If I can."

"Do you remember what you said earlier?"

"I said a lot of things earlier... but yes, Ginny. I remember all of them."

"It was when we were, er, and you were about to... well, you know." Ginny's eyes dropped. "You said..." She felt suddenly very shy. "You said that you had been waiting too long for me. That it had always been me."

"Yes. I did."

"I didn't understand what you meant. Or did you mean anything?" She cleared her throat. "Some of the girls used to talk in the Gryffindor common room, late at night, and I used to listen, sometimes. All right, I used to spy on them, if you must know. They were the girls who'd already had sex, and they had this way of looking at you if you hadn't--anyway, I never wanted to let them know I was there. And one of the things they used to say was that, well, when a boy was in the middle of having sex, he'd sometimes say things he didn't really mean. They said it wasn't anything to get upset about. It just happened. So I wondered if that's what that was. The things you said."

"Oh, what I said meant something, all right," said Draco. "Do you really want to know what it was?"

"Of course I do," said Ginny.

"Are you sure?" He looked at her, and there was something sorrowful and almost defiant in his eyes.

"I asked, didn't I?"

"All right," he said. "All right, I'll tell you, Ginny." His voice was almost harsh and pitched very low, and as he spoke it turned into a choked, whispering growl.

"I still remember the first time I saw you. Standing outside that bookshop, Flourish and Blotts, waiting for Potter in your shabby patched robes with your second-hand cauldron. I saw you before you saw me. I didn't know who you were. I should have known, from your hair, but I didn't. Something in me just stopped when I saw you, Ginny. Like a giant hand had grabbed my heart and squeezed it hard--I don't think I breathed for a full minute--I just stood and stood where no-one could see me, and I willed you to look up and look at me, but you didn't. And then Potter came out and I saw by the way you looked at him that your whole heart was pinned on him, even though you were just a child. We were all children then, Ginny, but it didn't make any difference really, did it? You loved him--"

"I didn't," interrupted Ginny. "I really didn't, Draco. I only thought--"

"Yes, maybe you only thought you did, but you're one of those people who loves or hates with everything that's in them, and even your thoughts are so powerful, Ginny. You blazed up at me, defending him, and I saw hatred in your face for me. I was so angry that I told the truth, the absolute truth. 'Potter, you've got yourself a girlfriend.' I still remember my exact words. And Potter was so thick that he didn't begin to understand anything that really happened that day. He still doesn't, I think... I didn't start hating him until then. Did you know that, Ginny? Oh, I didn't like him before that, don't think I did; I tried to get him in trouble whenever I could, but I didn't truly hate him until that day... that day when I knew you were his, even if he never wanted you."

Furious words of denial sprang to Ginny's lips. But she couldn't say them, somehow. She remembered how long and hopelessly she had pinned all her hopes on Harry, and how stubbornly she had stuck to him after he finally started dating her, even though she now realized that she had always known it wasn't right. She couldn't speak. She could only listen as Draco poured out his heart to her.

"I tormented you every chance I could get that year. Remember?"

Yes, she remembered.

"I tried to always do it when Potter wasn't around. I didn't want it to have anything to do with him. Sometimes he was there anyway... like the time when I told you that I didn't think he liked that Valentine you sent very much. But usually not. I wanted to see those golden eyes of yours snap at me in anger. I wanted to hear your voice, even if it was saying terrible things to me. I wanted you, Ginny. Not the same way I do now. You were a child then and so was I, but I wanted something of you that is eternal, that will be the same when you're very, very old, Ginny... something of your soul, your spirit..."

She swallowed hard, and laid a hand on his chest. "You have it," she whispered in his ear.

"No, I don't," he said dully. She jerked back as if he had slapped her. He did not seem to notice. "I was the first to know a part of your body that nobody else has ever known. That's all. It's so trivial, really... Anyway, I found out the truth about what had really happened to you that year over the next summer, when I overheard my father talking to Nott. He didn't feel any guilt over what he'd done to you with that diary. So I think I took into myself what he didn't feel, couldn't feel, even though I never spoke of it. I didn't speak to you for years either, Ginny... I tried to forget that you existed, or that I'd ever felt anything for you... until you hit me with the Bat-Bogey Hex, that day in Umbridge's office."

She pulled away from him and wrapped a sheet around her naked body, fire in her eyes. "You tried to get us in horrid trouble. She was going to expel us all, and use Cruciatus on Harry, and you just stood there and laughed--"

"Try to use your brain, if you have one, Weas--No, I'll never call you by that name again. I'll call you Ginny now, whether you like it or not!"

He sat up suddenly, his hands clenched into fists. They stared at each other from opposite sides of the bed, like adversaries.

"Didn't you ever think it was strange that I did what I did, that day?" he asked. "Didn't it ever occur to you that what my father and the other Death Eaters wanted was to have you and Potter and Granger and the rest lured out of the castle? If I was really on the side of darkness, what sort of sense would it have made to keep you there, even if it was in Umbridge's office?"

"I--I never thought of that," stammered Ginny.

"There are a hell of a lot of things you've never thought of." He rubbed his hand over his neck, wearily. "They left scars, those Bat-Bogeys..." And now that Ginny knew where to look, she could see that they had. Long, very faint, silvery-coloured scars marred the pristine whiteness of his neck. In this light, she could see them. She hadn't noticed them before.

"Were you really trying to save us?" she asked.

"There wasn't any 'us' about it. I didn't really care if all the rest went to the Department of Mysteries like a bunch of idiots and got themselves killed. But you, Ginny." He rolled round very suddenly to face her. She gave a startled cry. "I wanted to save you," he said. "And you went with them anyway."

She bit her lip. Did he expect her to thank him? How could she, when she didn't even know if he was telling the truth? When she remembered all too well the look of sadistic glee on his face when they had all thought that Umbridge was going to put Harry under Cruciatus? And the way he had laughed when Umbridge had said that Hogwarts would shortly be a Weasley-free zone; how could she forget that?

"So why'd you start talking to me after I began dating Harry?" she asked.

He propped his chin on his hand, and did not answer her directly. "Everything changed after the Department of Mysteries, after my father went to prison. But what I expected least was that things would change in me... because something in me had changed. I never thought he'd be caught. I never believed they could get him into Azkaban. And then they did, and most of Slytherin suddenly didn't talk to me anymore..." He shrugged. "It was crumbling, crumbling away under me, and... there were expectations thrust on me too soon."

"What does that have to do with--"

"And then I saw that something else had changed, as well," he said, ignoring her interruption. "Potter decided that he would deign to notice you. I heard about it long before that day in Hogsmeade."

"How?" she asked, feeling like a fool. Was she the only one who hadn't known?

He snorted. "He talked about it to Granger and your brother. Haven't you ever heard the saying, three wizards can keep a secret if two are in their graves? I made it my business to find out. I knew I shouldn't care--couldn't care. And then I saw you with him, that day, and there was nothing to do but laugh."

"But--what about after? When you started talking to me?"

Draco stared into the distance. "Things began to change even more, then. You don't know, Ginny... no-one knows, except for... well, I think I went a bit mad for awhile. Just the pressure of everything..."

"I still don't understand why you started to talk to me, when you never had done before," she insisted.

"Don't you?" His eyes were hooded, and looked very dark. "No, you don't, and you should be glad."

Ginny set her teeth. She had given him her body that night, but she had also given him more than her body, even though she had never planned it that way. She had whispered the secret of her gift to him. And he had looked right through her and dismissed her, coldly. Now he was rambling on about things she didn't understand, refusing to explain them to her. An icy anger had been rising in her during all his words, battling an awful urge to break down and cry. Something in me just stopped when I saw you, Ginny. Like a giant hand had grabbed my heart and squeezed it hard... But how could she believe him, when he had rejected the secrets of her own heart?

"I don't think that you do have to tell me, Draco," she said, each word clear and cold. "I think I do understand. I should have known when you got so angry about my taking the potion for Harry."

"You don't know enough to understand it," he said.

"Oh, I know enough," she replied.

"You're not making any sense," he said.

"I'm making plenty of sense." Ginny could hear her own voice rising. "This whole thing has been about getting one up on Harry, hasn't it? He didn't sleep with me, but you managed to! He was my boyfriend, but you shagged me first! I'm like a Snitch you stole out from under his nose, no more than that--"

"You're so wrong," Draco said tiredly. "Everything isn't about Potter. If you only knew the truth, you wouldn't--"

"And what is the truth?" she demanded, stabbing her forefinger into his chest. The sheet had fallen, but Ginny didn't care, didn't even notice her own nudity; didn't think about anything but the fury pouring out of her mouth. "Maybe it's that it isn't Harry you're jealous of! It's me!"

"You're raving," he said.

"Am I? I don't think so!" Ginny dimly knew that she was probably was raving by now, but she could not seem to stop herself. "Why else have you always hated him so much? Hatred's the other side of desire, isn't it? That explains it all! You've always secretly wanted Harry, and you knew you could never have him, but if you could steal me from him then you'd get your revenge, and--"

Draco began to laugh.

"It's not funny!" screeched Ginny. "Admit it, Draco! Admit your secret lust for Harry--"

"Oh! Oh, gods, that's the funniest thing I've ever heard--" Draco doubled up with laughter, pounded the sheets, and fell off the bed with a thump.

"Ouch," he said, sitting up and rubbing his head.

Ginny burst into tears. "You--you don't want me," she hiccupped, crying so hard that she could barely get the words out.

"You're out of your mind if you really think that. Maybe you could use a good stint at St. Mungo's anyway, if you honestly think I would touch Potter with a ten-metre pole. Ugh."

Her sobs quieted, and she looked up at him with wet eyes. "You don't trust me," she whispered brokenly.

He sat on the edge of the bed, facing away from her. "You want the truth?" he asked. His voice was very quiet.

"Yes."

"I doubt it."

"Just tell me, Draco. Tell me the truth."

"The truth..." he said musingly. "I'm not even sure that I know what the truth is, anymore." He picked something up from the bedside table. Then he turned to face her. He was holding her wand, and he pressed it into her hand.

"What's this for?" she asked.

"I'm going to tell you the truth," he said. "I'm going to tell you what I was supposed to do, over these Christmas holidays. And what I didn't do. It's strange, really...but I want you to have your wand when you hear it."

She clutched it tightly. The familiar feel of the smooth mahogany was reassuring.

"I was supposed to complete the Binding spell with Pansy, first of all," he said.

"I guessed that."

"It was thought that maybe the real problem was the fact that we'd only slept together once since the spell was put on us both. So we were supposed to do it again. And I wouldn't."

"I see," she said. "Is that all?"

"No, that's not all." He looked at her. She tried to read what he was feeling in his eyes. But they were too hooded, too dark, too weary. "I was supposed to kidnap you and take you to my father."

Her mouth opened, but no sound came out.

"I've known for a long time that the Order planned to put a Binding spell between you and Potter. That's why I was ordered to start talking to you, Ginny. I had to know when they were going to do it... but the Death Eaters had their own ways of finding that out. No, the real reason I had to stay close to you was so that I'd know when the two of you were going to consummate that bond."

"And when Harry came to see me at the shop..." whispered Ginny.

Draco nodded. "I overheard enough to know that he was planning it for the next night. That was when it all began to fall apart, you know. The Binding spell with Pansy was supposed to be consummated before that night. It would provide enough power to carry out the plan. But I couldn't do it. I couldn't touch her."

Ginny licked her lips. They were suddenly very dry. "Then why didn't you take me when I came to you from Harry and threw myself at you?" she demanded.

"You didn't want--"

"Why would you care about what I wanted? You could have completed the ritual of power then. Or maybe the setting wasn't pleasant enough for you; is that it?" She looked around the room, scornfully. He seemed about to speak, and she forestalled him. "You liked this sort of thing better. You wanted to take your time, Draco... oh, I'm sure that you wanted to get your own pleasure out of this thing, as well. But that's not why you wanted this, is it? I was right. You didn't want me, not really. You wanted the power that you could get through me. Now you've got it. I walked right into your trap, didn't I? But you overlooked one thing. I've got this." Ginny raised the wand, and pointed it at Draco's chest.

But, wait... he didn't overlook it at all. He gave it to me. The thought was so strange that her grip wavered. In that moment, Draco grabbed her arm, twisted her wrist, and snatched the wand away from her.

"That's the last noble impulse I ever have," he muttered, his face white. "You could have killed me."

"And that's supposed to surprise you?" said Ginny. "After what you did to me--what you planned to do--"

"No! No! You weren't even listening!" Draco ran a hand through his hair, making it all stand on end. "I was supposed to kidnap you, Ginny, not make love to you. I wasn't supposed to lay a finger on you! That's the point of all of this. You had to be a virgin when I brought you to them... to him."

"Oh..." The full meaning of Draco's words sank into Ginny's mind. She rolled into a small ball, clutching her stomach, feeling suddenly and desperately sick.

"They had a ritual of power planned, Ginny," Draco said, his voice deliberate. "My-- Lucius Malfoy was going to take you in front of a select group of Death Eaters on the high altar. There was a break from Azkaban planned, you see. And you'd befriended me, just a little. You'd let me in just a tiny way. I was going to be the bait. You'd trust me enough to walk into the trap, and I'd Stun you and bring you to Malfoy Manor, with Pansy's help." He bent over her. "But it didn't work out that way." She clamped her hands over her ears. He pried them off.

"I didn't bond with Pansy, which I was supposed to do. Pansy ran off, which she wasn't supposed to do. And then you came to my rooms; I didn't even have to go looking for you. You came to me like a sacrificial lamb, Ginny, but I still thought that maybe I wouldn't have to go through with what I'd promised my father and the rest of them. I was so relieved when you told me you weren't pure and innocent, Ginny. Remember when you told me that, in the alley behind your brothers' shop? I thought it meant that the Death Eaters were wrong, that you weren't a virgin after all, that you were safe from them. But then I found out that you were, that night. I think I overdid my surprise a bit when I knew, because I'd really known all along that it wasn't going to be that easy to escape what they had planned for me. I could have kidnapped you then. I didn't. Then I searched for you, but when I found you, I didn't tell anyone, which is what they'd told me to do. Instead, I came back to your rooms with you. And when I took your virginity, I ruined all the Death Eaters' plans. If they ever get hold of me, after this..." His hand forced her chin upwards, and his eyes bored into hers. "They don't forgive, Ginny."

"I don't understand," she whispered.

"No," he said. "You still don't know everything. There's still one more thing." Draco sat up and wrapped his arms around his knees, staring broodingly into space. He began to speak, low and very fast, as if to himself.

"They'd all take their turns with you then, Ginny. After my father was done. The sacrifice of your virginity was the purpose of the ritual, but after that... there was another purpose as well. They'd be allowed to... play."

"Have you seen this done before?" she asked, through numbed lips.

"No. I only heard... but I heard enough. There'd be eight or nine of them... Rookwood, Mulciber, Avery, Dolohov... I can't think of who else just now. Not everyone. There are some men who won't do these things, even though they're Death Eaters. For this ritual, it would be have to be the ones who wouldn't be moved by your screams and promises and pleas. And then... then, when they'd all done with you... it would be my turn."

And, at last, Ginny did understand. Still, she listened as he continued to explain.

"We were watched, Ginny. All year. There are spies everywhere. They knew that I was getting too close to you. My cover was too deep. I was beginning to care... and that was the last thing they wanted me to do..." Draco shivered. "So this ritual of power would also be a test for me. If I could stand by and watch you brutally raped, that was half of the test. But it wasn't enough. The other half would come when they were done with you, and turned you over to me. When I walked up to the altar where you were bound, and undid my robes, and looked down at your naked body. Could I look into your eyes, Ginny, and refuse to see their desperation? Could I hear your crying and begging and screaming and pleading, and turn a deaf ear to it all? Could I know what had been done to you, and still do what I had to do? Of course..." Draco said musingly. "I suppose they counted on you being half mad by then, with fear and shock and pain. You wouldn't even look like yourself by that point, Ginny; you'd be only a victim, trapped and torn and violated. It's easier to violate someone who's already a victim. Yes, they were counting on that. And if I did what I was supposed to do in front of them all, then I would have passed."

But you didn't, thought Ginny.

"No," he said, as if reading her unspoken thought. "I didn't. I failed." His shoulders went down, and he gave a long, shuddering sigh, slumping across the bed. "I failed the test."

Ginny sat up and crawled over to Draco, touching his arm. "No," she said softly. "No, you didn't fail, Draco, no, no, no."

His entire body shook, but his eyes were dry. She ran her hands over him. "Shh, shh," she crooned. "It's all right..."

"You shouldn't touch me," he said.

"It's too late for that," said Ginny. Slowly, deliberately, she bent her head and kissed him. A terrible joy spread all through her at the feel of his lips on hers.

"Ginny--" he began.

"Don't talk," she said urgently.

Gravely, he nodded. Then he pulled her down to him, seized her in his arms as if he would never let her go again, and began to cry, noisily and inelegantly. He cried for a long time, and when he was done, he lay in her arms. They kissed, spending at least as much time on this simple connection as Draco had spent crying. Even though they had already known each other's bodies in so many ways, the kissing seemed more intimate than anything else they had done. She brushed his lips lightly with hers, feeling their texture; he suckled on her tongue; she tasted the tears that had fallen into his mouth, licking away their saltiness. Their mouths slid along each other over and over, and since they were already in each other's arms, and already naked, she was not even sure when his body slid into hers as well. He moved slowly on her for a very long time, lasting and lasting until pain and pleasure melted into each other.

"Do you believe now that I want you?" he whispered.

"Yes," she replied.

"Believe, then, that I have never wanted anything so much as this." And Draco reached down and touched her between their joined bodies, and again and again he proved it to her. When she was limp and spent with her pleasure, he took his at last, gasping out her name over and over. It was the sweetest sound she had ever heard.

Somewhere in the deepest part of the night, they fell asleep, locked tightly in each others' arms, the scent of mingled tears and sweat and sex mingling like some exotic perfume around them. Ginny and Draco slept long and dreamlessly. Her sleep had been broken by dreams too often lately, and he was more exhausted than she could guess. His secret battle had worn out his body and soul, and it had been a long time since he had slept the whole night through.

Ginny didn't know what awakened her, but she found herself blinking sleepily up at the canopy of the bed. Some sort of sound in the hallway, maybe? I don't hear anything now. She felt the warmth of another body curled up against hers, and smiled. She propped herself up on one elbow and looked down at Draco's sleeping face. He looked very vulnerable when he was asleep, his pink lips parted slightly as he breathed, his hair tousled and mussed, as he would never permit it to be if he were awake. Ginny drew her forefinger lightly down the long curve of his nose. His eyes snapped open, and he sat up in one quick movement and pinned her against the wall. She gasped.

"Sorry," he muttered, releasing her arms. "Sorry, Ginny."

She rubbed her wrists. "Is that how you treat all your bed partners?"

"I thought--well, never mind what I thought." Draco kissed the curve of her wrist where it met her hand. She shivered at the simple feel of his lips moistly touching her skin. "Better?" he asked softly.

"Mm-hm. But what about here?" She pointed to her neck. He kissed the pulse throbbing just above her collarbone.

"And here," she said, her hand trailing up to her jaw. His tongue seemed to find all the nerves in her neck just below the hollow of her ear, and she felt her nipples harden, although he had not yet touched them.

"Anywhere else?" he asked.

"Here..." she whispered, lifting her fingers to her mouth. And she closed her eyes then, and lost herself in his long slow lingering kiss.

Neither of them even heard the door open.

Too late, Ginny heard the sound of footsteps moving across the floor, light and quick, more than one set. In the split second before her head snapped up to look, a torrent of thoughts rushed through her head. It's Ron. I'll see my brother's face looming over me. He's got to be with Harry, and maybe Mum and Dad... oh, God. They were expecting me back at the Burrow for Christmas Eve, and I didn't come. That's why they're here. Oh God, this couldn't be worse... But then she did see who had entered the room, and it wasn't Ron, or Harry, or her parents.

And that was when Ginny knew just how much worse things could be.