Learning to Breathe

She is neither surprised nor disappointed when no one asks her who her tutor is, and for once she is grateful for the fact that people still tend to tiptoe around Harry. Studying with Draco is her secret, and she's feeling selfish about it. She moves quietly through the common room, past Harry and Ron's intense game of chess, past Neville's nightly discussion with Hermione, and up the stairs to the girls' dormitory.

She sits down on her bed and reaches over to her nightstand, withdrawing a small, crimson book from the drawer. Her journal is beaten and well worn, and the cover is missing. The spine is creased. The pages are yellowing, and yet she can't seem to part with it. She's written in it every night since she turned nine years old, and she finds immense comfort in the ritual.

The journal has been her closest friend and confidante ever since Ron left for Hogwarts, leaving her at home alone with her parents for the majority of the year. The only time she's ever neglected to write in it, in fact, was during the brief period when she wrote to Tom Riddle in his journal.

She has never been able to recall the incidents in which she wrote on the wall with any amount of clarity; at best they are foggy recollections that only show her how weak willed she once was. She is not like that anymore, and sometimes she wishes she could have thanked Tom for that.

Hermione knows that she keeps a journal, and she regularly cautions Ginny about it. Her words of warning always go in one ear and out the other, however; Ginny knows that she could never tell a live person the things that she writes about in her journal.

One of those things is Draco Malfoy.

She pulls a quill from the side table drawer and begins to write quickly, lest she be discovered by Hermione again. She writes his name and the necessary descriptives - the familiar scent of the cologne he's favored since his third year, the new way he styles his hair by letting it fall in loose waves around his face, and the new way he speaks to her. She also documents the things about him that have not changed - the arrogant way he walks, the color of his eyes, the way his mouth turns up on one side when he smirks.

She chews on the feathered end of her favorite quill as she pauses to think about this last thing. He still smirks, she is sure of it - but had he done it while they were together tonight? She cannot remember, so she writes that down as well, making a note to remind herself that she wants to watch more carefully next time to see if he does it.

She finishes writing in her journal and puts it away, being sure to cover it back up with the parchments full of her doodling. She knows that if Hermione gets it in her head to go snooping and finds these pages, she will stop. The pages are from Ginny's first and second year, and contain nothing but her name and Harry's intertwined with tiny hearts. She keeps them because they remind her that she isn't the same person that she used to be, and that hero worship should never be mistaken for love.

She extinguishes her candles and changes into her bedclothes, and then crawls beneath the down comforter that she loves so well. She closes her eyes and the first thing she sees behind them is him, looking defeated even as he retains his regal mannerisms.

Two days pass without another tutoring session being arranged, and Dumbledore calls her into his office to question her about this. She tells him the truth - that she didn't realize that all of the meetings weren't prearranged. The old man watches her carefully over those same half moon spectacles that he's worn forever, and she weighs her next question very heavily in her mind before she asks it.

"Where does he sleep?"

Dumbledore doesn't seem surprised by this question, and in truth, even appears to be mildly amused by it. He confides in her that the old Astronomy Tower, the one that Hogwarts stopped using in the mid 70's because of the ghoul that haunted it, has been refurbished for Draco's use. She knows the place he speaks of, and thanks him quietly before leaving and heading straight to Madam Pomfrey.

Once in front of Madam Pomfrey, she begs for several bottles of headache relief potion, spinning a tall tale of how she sometimes wakes in the mornings with unbearable migraines. She says that she fears that not having the potions will render her unable to attend her morning classes, and cries real tears when she says that a good education is her only sure escape from a life of poverty. Madam Pomfrey tsk-tsks and takes pity on her, giving her more vials of potion than she is sure she can carry.

She thanks the kind woman profusely and heads towards the tower, eager to give Draco the gifts she's brought him. She stops when she gets halfway there, and realizes that she has not had dinner. She doesn't think twice about tickling the pear and sneaking to the kitchens, where she manages to sweet talk Dobby into giving her enough food for a small army. She makes him promise not to tell anyone that he's seen her, and then continues on her way to Draco's room.

When she arrives at her destination, she is unsurprised to find that his door is unlocked. She knocks lightly before entering, and within seconds, he appears and frowns at her. She is mildly surprised when he doesn't rage at her and demand to know what she's doing there, so she decides to tell him of her own volition.

"Dumbledore says that you and I are to begin meeting every night."

He takes a moment to digest this, and then shrugs lightly before turning his back to her and sitting down at his desk. She shifts her weight nervously from one foot to the other, wondering what she should say first.

"I brought you some headache relief potion." She places approximately twelve vials on his desk, and he doesn't even so much as glance at them. She realizes that she hadn't expected him to, either. She sits the basket full of food down on the floor and begins to withdraw the sandwiches. He turns and gives her an incredulous look, and she is aware that it's the most emotion he's shown since she saw him three days ago.

"What are you doing?"

"I missed dinner by getting the potions for you, so I brought it with me."

"You have a lot of nerve, sitting down like you just belong here."

"I don't fancy eating standing up," she explains, pulling out a container of heavily iced pumpkin juice. This seems to get his attention, and he is silent as he watches her remove the other food items from the basket. When she has a veritable feast spread out before her, she looks up at him. "I brought enough for you, too."

"You brought enough for several people," he observes with a sneer. "Are you expecting guests?"

She ignores his comment, although she is heartened by it. It feels as if the old Malfoy that she used to know still lives here, just beneath a shell of his own creation. She eats in silence, and finally he gets the idea and picks up a sandwich of his own. He regards her with open curiosity, and she basks in it, until they have finished eating. She replaces the leftover food in the basket, careful not to include anything that she has nibbled off of. He watches as she places the basket on the floor next to his desk and pulls her book from her backpack, readying herself for tonight's study session.

"Whoa," he says, holding his hands up. She stops her movements and looks up at him. "I never agreed to a session tonight."

"I see," she says, hating the frown that she feels gathering on her face. She puts her book back into her bag and rises from her place on the floor. "I'll be back tomorrow night, you know."

He sighs and his rigid posture gives way to the slumped shoulders of a man who's been beaten into submission. While he tries to form a response, she glances around his room. She notices that his bed is unmade, and that his sheets and coverlet are in a tangled heap at the foot of the bed, and that there is an open book splayed across his night table. She knows that all of these things are unmistakable signs of insomnia, because she suffers from it as well.

"Won't your housemates notice that you've gone missing again?" he asks, in a desperate attempt to get her not to return. She is ready for this objection, though, and discounts it before the grain of doubt has time enough to plant itself in his mind. She will not be kept at bay, now that he's back and she has a chance to get back the normality that she once knew.

"They wouldn't notice me if I wore nothing but Dobby's tea cozy and did a belly dance in front of them."

Something surfaces in his eyes, and before she has time to correctly identify it, he nods and turns away from her. She lets herself out, but not before casting a quick warming charm on the basket of food. She returns to Gryffindor Tower and is climbing into bed before she realizes with startling certainty what it was that he was trying to hide from her.

His laughter.

The next day passes mostly in a haze, and she is surprised at herself to be anticipating her tutoring session as much as she does. She skips lunch and sits impatiently through Professor Binns' class, even answering a question he asks despite the fact that he's called her Amanda. She shrugs this off, as well as the stunned looks that she's getting from her classmates. She's not usually one to speak in her classes anymore, but today she wants to give no one reason to detain her.

Before dinner, she goes to her room and unlocks the trunk that she keeps at the foot of her bed. She removes a bottle of dreamless sleep draught along with four empty vials. She divides the draught between the bottles, saving only one vial for herself, and puts the empty draught bottle and single vial back into her trunk. For some reason, it occurs to her to grab one of her favorite books as well - just in case he decides not to take the potion and has finished his own book. She relocks the trunk and heads down to the kitchen for the second night in a row.

This time she doesn't see Dobby and is careful not to mention that she's a friend of his; the other house elves are still wary of his desire for freedom, and she fears that if they know that she knows him, they will skimp on the food.

When she reaches Draco's tower, she raps lightly on the door once before entering. He is in the same place where he was the previous night when she left him. If she couldn't smell the soap or see his wet hair hanging around his shoulders, she would think that he'd never left that chair. He doesn't look up as she comes in, and she sits in a small but comfortable chair in front of the small fire.

She opens the food basket she's brought with her, but tonight she only takes out two sandwiches and a small container of milk. She leaves the rest of the things in the basket and closes the lid before using her foot to slide it over to him. He ignores it, and she wonders how long it will take for him to open it and discover the sleeping draughts inside.

He opens his book and turns pages until he's where he wants to be, then speaks without looking up. "Page ninety seven, paragraph two. You answered this wrong on your last exam." She looks up, surprised that he's been given access to her exam.

She turns to the page he's indicated, and reads the paragraph carefully. She is slightly distracted when he opens the food basket and freezes. He's only paused for a millisecond, but she knows what it means. He's seen the draughts. She wonders if he knows what they are, since she's forgotten to label them.

"Alihotsy stinks," she mumbles, staring at the page again.

"No, you're thinking of Hellebore. Alihotsy has no smell at all."

"I meant figuratively, not literally."

"Oh."

She pauses for a moment in thought before speaking again. "Alihotsy does so stink. When you break the leaves open, it smells horrible."

"You're not supposed to break the leaves open," he says impatiently. "You don't have to eat the leaves in order to be affected by them. The smell alone can make you wonky."

"That's a very interesting kernel of knowledge to possess," she observes, filing this away in her memory. And then there it is; his smirk. She takes a deep, silent breath and stares at him, trying to burn the image of him smirking into her brain. She never wants to lose that picture again.

"It is, indeed," he agrees, the smirk fading as quickly as it came. Disappointment rolls over her in waves, and it's so strong that she wonders if he can feel it, too. He bends over her exam again, frowning in thought. "Your essay answers are barely legible. You have sloppy handwriting."

"It's my downfall, what can I say," she quips back. His frown deepens, and she sighs inwardly. She'd been hoping that he'd laugh again, but apparently he has prepared himself for this possibility and is dead set on preventing it from recurring.

"I can't read your answers well enough to help you." He pushes her exam away, and she rises from her seat. She stands behind him and bends over to look at her paper, not realizing that her copper hair is falling around his face as she does so.

"I can read it just fine," she says, her eyes moving over the page one line at a time. He brushes her hair away from his face with the back of his hand and manages to level a glare at her.

"I don't know what worries me more," he says, shaking his head. "That you can actually read it, or that you managed to write something this illegible in the first place."

"Why should it worry you at all?" she asks. He rolls his eyes.

"I meant figuratively, not literally."

"Oh."

"Weasley?"

"Yes?"

"Why did you bring me a sleeping draught?" He doesn't look at her as he asks; instead his eyes are focused on the quill that he's gripping. She notices that his knuckles are white from the effort he's exerting, and she wonders that the quill hasn't snapped in two yet.

"I don't know," she lies. "I guess I just thought that you might need it. Everyone has trouble sleeping sometimes, and you don't have any access to healing potions. I don't want you to have an excuse to miss our sessions."

She can tell that he doesn't believe a word of what she's just said, but he nods anyway. That is all the thanks she will get from him, and they both know it. She is curious to know when he will take the food out and find the book underneath everything, but she doesn't say anything about it.

"Translate this," he commands, pointing at an essay response. She reads it out loud to him, and then waits for him to tear it apart. He frowns. "I don't understand. It's not perfect, but it's not bad enough to have warranted such low marks."

"Professor Snape doesn't take well to handing out high marks to Gryffindors," she points out. He shakes his head slowly.

"It's not like him not to give credit where credit is due," he retorts.

"It is when the credit is due to a Gryffindor." He turns at this and looks at her.

"Is he really this biased?"

"Didn't you know he was?"

"I suppose I did, and just didn't care because it was in my favor." He pauses, and then: "Is this the only reason that you need help in potions? Because if it is, all you'd have to do is talk to Dumbledore, and I'm sure he'd fix it."

"Dumbledore knows."

"He can't know. He'd never let something like this continue if he did."

"He does, and it continues because he trusts Snape to do the right thing... eventually. And sometimes he surprises us and does, just not when the Gryffindors are the ones involved."

"It must be frustrating to know that you're doing good work and receiving low marks for it anyway."

She shrugs even though her heart skips a beat as his admission that she's done a good job. "It doesn't bother me as much as it bothers Harry." Draco's expression darkens.

"Are you talking about Potter?" he asks, disdain saturating his features.

"The one and only. Snape has been doing this to him ever since he came to Hogwarts. It bothers him to the point of just copying from Hermione most of the time. Even when he does that, though, Snape gives him less than stellar marks."

"I don't understand."

"He wanted Harry to get better at Potions because he knew that Harry would ultimately have to face Voldemort. My guess would be that he was just harder on Harry because he expected more from him than anyone else - and now that Voldemort is gone, he just doesn't know how to change."

"Interesting theory," he murmurs, the disdain gone now.

"Do you miss flying?" she asks suddenly, resting her hand on the back of his chair. He gapes at her for a moment.

"What business is that of yours?"

"It's not," she concedes, tilting her head to one side as she regards him. "But I'm curious."

"Well, you can stay curious," he snaps, concentrating on her exam again. She goes back to her place on the floor and sits down. The rest of the tutoring session continues without incident, and Draco doesn't entertain any more of her attempts at conversation. When she leaves, she takes the empty basket she used to bring up the food the last time she came.

She takes her time going back to her dormitory, thinking hard on her tutor. She wonders why he hasn't objected more forcefully to her repeated visits to his quarters, and when she returns to her bedroom, puzzles over it at length in her journal. She muses that perhaps he sees enduring her presence as some sort of penance. She begins a list in her journal, with this idea at the very top.

For the second reason, she lists the potions that she keeps bringing to him. What he hasn't asked and she won't volunteer is the information pertaining to where she keeps getting the potions.

Madam Pomfrey continues to give her the headache potions, but has stopped giving her the dreamless sleep draught, despite her very real pleas for it. She needs the draught to sleep almost as much as Malfoy does, but the nurse is adamant in her refusal. War survivors are given an allotment of the draught every month, and Ginny has already exceeded hers.

Ginny considers going to Dumbledore about the situation, but feels that since the man is already semi-omnipotent, he is already aware of it. If he doesn't intercede on either her behalf or Malfoy's, there must be a reason. And so that night, she tosses and turns, unable to sleep. She resolves to be more careful with her draught next time, and save enough for herself before she gives Malfoy some.

She awakens the next morning to the sounds of Hermione singing badly. She is cranky and sore; the night has not been kind to her. She pulls aside the curtains on her bed and winces when her bare feet touch a very cold floor. Ignoring Hermione's concerned looks, she grabs her towel and robe and heads to the showers. After she has bathed, she feels better, though she is still tired. When she looks at her reflection in the small mirror, she realizes what Hermione must have been looking at. There are dark smudges beneath her eyes from the lack of sleep, and she reminds herself to cast a concealment charm when she gets back to her room.

Today is Friday, and she knows that it is her last day of tutoring with Malfoy for a while, since it is the last weekend before the Christmas break. She heads down to the Great Hall to eat, and is unsurprised to find Blaise beside Harry. Both boys are laughing with their heads thrown back, and Ginny is struck by the thought that it might be Malfoy by Harry's side, if things had turned out differently. Because really, where is the difference between Blaise and Malfoy?

Malfoy refused to fight the same as his fellow Slytherin; it was just hard to convince people that he wasn't a spy of some sort. If Blaise's father had been one of the most renowned Death Eaters, he might be the one hiding in a tower instead. The thought angers her, and she looks away when Blaise tries to smile at her. She notices how his smile falters, but sees also how it lights right back up when he turns back to his friends.

She is silent throughout breakfast, and mostly stares at the empty Slytherin table while she eats. She stares a lot when she's tired, so her brother doesn't see anything amiss, and stops Hermione's questions before they start.

She doesn't notice when the quartet of friends leaves, and is somewhat dismayed when she realizes that they're gone. She isn't upset over their absence; she is upset because she has missed them leaving due to her exhaustion. She prides herself on noticing everyone and everything, and it is clear to her that today she is too tired to exert the effort it takes.

She sleepwalks through her classes, not blinking when Professor Snape is the only one who assigns the students homework over the holiday break. She skips lunch, opting to return to her room and try to take a nap. She gets a total of fifteen minutes of sleep before it is time to go to her last class of the day, Transfiguration. After class, she returns to her room and withdraws her journal from the side table drawer, and turns to the page where her list is.

She writes at the very, very bottom of the page: He likes to spend time with me. After she stares at the words for a moment, they seem alien, and she crosses them out.